Born out of a love of language, text, classical learning, art, philosophy, and philology, the Christian Humanist project lasted beyond the turmoil of sixteenth-century Europe to survive in a new form in post-Reformation thought. Jonathan Arnold here explores the finest intellects of late-Renaissance Europe, providing an essential guide to the most important scholars, priests, theologians, and philosophers of the period, now collectively known as the Christian Humanists. The Great Humanists provides an invaluable context to the philosophical, political, and spiritual state of Europe on the eve of the Reformation through inter-related biographical sketches of Erasmus, Thomas More, Marsilio Ficino, Petrarch, Johann Reuchlin, Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples, and many others. The legacy of these thinkers is still relevant and widely-studied today, and this book will make invaluable reading for scholars and students of philosophy and early-modern European history.