Early modern scholars, from Francesco Patrizi da Cherso in the sixteenth century to Johann Jacob Brucker in the eighteenth, hailed Lefèvre as a leading humanist, particularly praising his replacement of scholastic questions with humanist eloquence.
Agrippa, Van der Poel notes, consciously modelled his declamations on the rhetorical model used by the leading humanist of his time, Desiderius Erasmus, in works like The Praise of Folly.
He became a close friend of the leading humanists, scholars, and churchmen.
One of the leading humanists in the booming Serene Republic, Aldus had connections both to the Venetian Senate and to the Pope; a volume of Cicero's letters on view here threatens plagiarists with excommunication.
Suspecting that the Roman Academy and its founder, the Italian humanist Julius Pomponius Laetus, were opposing Christian ideals and endorsing a materialistic vision of life inspired by an admiration for the ancient world, Paul dissolved the academy and arrested its members in February 1468, subjecting one of its leading humanists, Bartolomeo Platina, to torture on additional charges of conspiracy.
One of America's leading humanists, Mumford defined himself as a 'generalist' who sought an integrated approach to the study and renewal of contemporary society.
He embarked on an extended academic journey to Italy, ending in Rome, where he became private secretary to Cardinal Granvelle, to whom he had dedicated his Variae lectiones, and where he made the acquaintance of leading humanists such as Marc-Antoine Muret, Fulvio Orsini, Paolo Manuzio and Guglielmo Sirleto.
Attended, among others, by the eminent historian Jonathan Spence, the Chinese "New Left" thinker Wang Hui and Harvard's own leading Confucian humanist, Tu Weiming, it was titled "Humanistic International: Humanism, China, Globalism".
"I call it joyful creativity," said Mr. Kurtz, who at 75 is probably the country's leading secular humanist and skeptic.
And 500 years later, we've come full circle: Europe's leading secular humanist philosopher has found God (again) (Peter Berger on the political and religious thought of Juergen Habermas at The American Interest).
Vives' career as a leading northern European humanist starts with the publication in 1519 of In pseudodialecticos, a satirical diatribe in which he voices his opposition to scholastic logic on several counts.
