Salutati’s humanism, focused on the continuity or discontinuity between ethics and politics became the civic turning point of the humanistic spiritual and philosophical reinterpretation of Cicero’s political tenets that would later culminate with the notable Niccolò Machiavelli.

What classifies Petrarch as a humanist was his belief that secular literature and philosophy could enlighten all men and bring about an end to, what Flavio Biondi called, the darker ages of distrusting the critical thinking and non-religious wisdom of the ancients.