역사적 사례를 통해 본 인문교육의 중요성 : 엘리자베스 1세의 성공과 휴머니즘 교육

Abstract

Queen Elizabeth I of England (reigned: 1558~1603) is evaluated to have laid the foundation for the development of a world-class empire by saving the country from crisis due to national conflict and division. Although she had the critical weakness of being the first female monarch in the history of England, she was able to overcome numerous difficulties such as religious conflicts between Catholicism and Protestantism and build successful achievements. There were fresh policy ideas centered on Renaissance humanism, prompt judgment of the situation and the ‘political prudence’ in choosing the policy means of the government, and excellent speech ability to effectively persuade the people behind of her brilliant success. Her religious ‘via-media; middle way’ policy she chose was a religious compromise that thoroughly excluded the extreme claims of Catholicism and Protestantism and left room for compromise in sensitive areas. Unlike the moderation for ethical feasibility, it simply set the middle zone across the middle of the two extremes, and it was largely Elizabeth's invention. Also, Elizabeth made full use of the commonwealth community theory, which was spreading to the elite at the time, and she used a strategy to place herself at the center of the community. Through her speeches on the battlefield, in college, and more frequently in Parliaments, she effectively imprinted on the people that she was a cosmological being, a mediator between God and man, man and nature, and the sole integrator of the community. In particular, she succeeded in securing the voluntary cooperation and consent of her subjects by defining the relationship between herself and her subjects as ‘solidarity of love’. Behind all of her success was her education, grounded in her Renaissance humanism, which she received from a group of humanists. Her direct teachers, William Grindal and Roger Ascham, and other Cambridge men including John Checke, Richard Cox, and Thomas Smith, were the foremost scholars of her day. They shared pragmatism, relativism of law, and the ‘commonwealth’ idea. In particular, their idea to instruct the teenage girl in a discipline that most thought profoundly unfit for a woman at all, the art of public speech, was fully outstanding.