25-The Renaissance. Humanism. Cultura I

​The statutes [of St Paul's School] laid down that classical Latin and Greek were to be taught, and that the best classical authors were to take the place of the old medieval disciplines; and these principles spread slowly to other English schools.

In contrast to medieval Christian ideals it (Humanism) aimed at self-reliance and self-expression, and the development of personality; and the emphasis was transferred from the education of bookish clerks to the production of scholar-gentlemen, cultured laymen trained to be men of affairs. By 1531, these ideals found expression in England in The Boke named the Governour by Sir Thomas Elyot, a book on the training, not of clerics for the service of the Church, but of the governing classes for the service of the State. He emphasized the importance of physical training, he advocated the use of the mother tongue in learning Latin and Greek, and he appealed often to concrete experience. (Myers, 1963 pp. 231-232)