Ad fontes

The humanist renaissance in northern Europe was characterized by both piety and learning. The northern humanists, like their southern counterparts, were devoted to the study of original sources in original languages: classical texts, the Bible, the ancient Christian writers, historical texts of all sorts. The ideal of the humanist scholars was the homo trilinguus, the person of three languages: Hebrew, Greek, Latin. This was the scholarly foundation for the biblical interpretation, theological argument, and historical writing that flourished in the era of reform.