Rejecting a thousand years of commentary and discussion, new men in a new age sought truth in ancient sources.
Those who had the ability and the determination to master difficult ancient languages with the corresponding grammar, rhetoric, poetics, history and moral philosophy, became members of an intellectual nobility. These scholars of the studia humanitatis adopted classical names to identify them as a literary nobility, the nobilitas literaria.
Some took the name of their place of origin, others translated their names into Latin, and others derived their name from the occupation of their father.
All were engaged in the same noble pursuit: to find and study the manuscripts of the ancient civilizations of Rome and Greece. They hoped dissemination this knowledge could restore society to the former glory of thought, when free men of virtue and prudence, spoke and wrote with eloquence.
Ad fontes! They cry. To the sources!