Christian humanism did begin in Italy. I am not following you when you say a ‘reformed idea’ of Christian humanism. Can you step me through that please? It sounds interesting. Thank you.
Humanism is the nineteenth century term (Renan’s, I think) retrojected upon the fourteenth century and after for the efforts of men, more or less beginning with Petrarca, who set the highest standards and, in Latin especially (to his chagrin, he never got Greek), example for the recovery, dissemination, and application of classical Greece and Rome.
Umanisti was what these men were calling themselves, in Italy, by the fifteenth century, perhaps a little earlier.
They were Catholic to a man and, in what we now call the classics, this tradition in Italy really never ends; in some regards, it has a stronger ending in Italy than elsewhere: Vico’s thought, which people now approach as if a stand-alone system, owes everything to Greece and Rome.
In the sixteenth century, humanism had developed powerfully enough in Italy to find itself deeply and permantly a part of Europe and England.
Henry VII, the century before, and his son you know who patronize humanists, and everything worth reading in the English renaissance from More to Milton springs from humanism.
Christian humanism is even more recent than humanism: it recognizes that, nearly without exception, the study of Greece and Rome was carried out by Christians, reformed or otherwise, also that a lot of the creative arts had their origin in the Bible, Greece, and Rome combined: the obvious examples you find in Rome, but the poetry of Spenser and Sidney and Donne, and Wren’s chapels and libraries are among the finest example of Christian humanism before Milton.
In England, by 1550, probably earlier, Christian humanists (more or less strictly protestant, but most, nominally, Anglican), had to cast about for examples of the new model school: Christian (but how? religious opinion differed even if there was one Anglican church) and humanist at the same time and both by necessity: the Bible, Greece, and Rome: this is what culture was.
So, very concretely put, some bright English minds set about looking for the proper method of instruction, the right books to read, true criticism, and found in present-day Germany in the two writers (and others) I mentioned. What Melancthon clearly did others had in Italy and would in Europe: apply classical Roman ideas of education, the canons of Quintilian, his and Cicero’s ideals of oratory, Aristotle’s and Horace’s literary theory…
Why Germany? Protestantism and ‘modernism’ combined worked. The Jesuit model–which would be ascendant for two hundred years and more–was not available for obvious reasons, although its scholarship was certainly known throughout England–as was the best scholarship no matter the religion or country of origin.
If Christendom is splintered and splintering today, in the sixteenth century and after it at least shared the deepest Biblical and classical culture, which bourgeoned (if no doubt slowed at times) despite the religious clashes and which inspired all the arts in ways never bettered.
P. S. Sorry if this is off topic. It’s my hobbyhorse I’m riding.
Since belief in the Trinity would be required in my point of view to even be called Protestant, I don’t think we should get rid of the Trinity, but it is noted that some who can no longer be considered Protestant much less Christian, claim to be such and use part of the name “pentecostal”