as begun and rational thought became pitted against religious mysticism. Use of the intellect and man’s capacity for rational thought were the main virtues of the individual. This is not to say that all those who felt this way were virtuous men. Indeed, in the writings of individuals like Pomponazzi, we are expressly told that there is a difference between acting virtuous and being virtuous. It is a condition that has proscriptions attached to it. As Pomponazzi writes in The Immortality of the Soul: “One who acts conscientiously, expecting no other reward than virtue, seems to act far more virtuously and purely than he who expects some reward beyond virtue. And he who shuns vice on account of the foulness of vice, not because of the fear of due punishment for vice, seems more to be praised than he who avoids vice on account of the fear of punishment as in the verses: ‘The good hate sin from love of virtue, / The evil hate sin from fear of punishment’” (394). One can see that acting virtuous because of fear of punishment or due to expectation of reward did not cut it in the Renaissance. However, such reasoning also demonstrates an opposition to Christian precepts which basically teach that those who lead virtuous lives will be rewarded by entering the kingdom of Heaven upon death. It also opposed the precept that one should act virtuous in order to escape the punishment of living in eternal Hell.
The rise of the individual in terms of the arts and the intellect was definitely a reaction against the Christian piety that until such time pretty much dominated the thinking of the medieval world. Such a change of focus placed human beings at the center of the universe, capable of discovering the answers to the meaning of life without the help of a supernatural God. In
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