Eric Byrd’s Reviews > The Republic of Letters > Status Update

"The humanists also lived double lives...they had their officia, their negotia, and could only dedicate the best of their otium to solitary study...It was the model of the devout brotherhood, rather than the guild of artisans, that gave meetings between savants their regularity, festive rites, and a climate of literary zeal that warmed and familiarized those remnants of antiquity that seemed spectral or affected."