the humanists were not atheists
This is a crucial point to keep in mind – “humanism” did not in any way mean “non-religion” in the 14th century. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), for all his humanist status, was not at liberty to declare the old polytheistic worldview to be correct without also declaring himself an apostate. Boccaccio was in fact expressly Christian, and would not have claimed the Roman gods were “real gods” even if he could. Still, he recognised the significance of these “characters” in Roman culture and adapted them accordingly into his own. Instead of dismissing the Roman gods and goddesses as demons and/or flights of fancy, he reworked them into the highest status he could possibly give them: He revered them as kings and queens of old. Considering Boccaccio’s own (Christian) cultural context, why did he choose to admire pagan figures instead of renounce them?
…but they were scholars
Boccaccio was not the first to euhemerise the pagan gods into “historical” figures, but he was one of the first to expressly study them as examples of nobility and virtue. His massive, 15-book Genealogy of the Pagan Gods was one of the Renaissance’s first scholarly works on the culture of classical antiquity. The Genealogy became incredibly influential and remained popular for several hundred years. It is with Boccaccio (among some other early humanists) that we find the beginnings of the admiration for classical antiquity that became so characteristic of the Renaissance.
Current research on boccaccio’s roman gods
Today, the Genealogy of the Pagan Gods is not the most widely read among Boccaccio’s works (that award would have to go to the Decameron) – nevertheless, it has been and is an object of study among Boccaccio-scholars. One of the most recent and most relevant contributors is Jon Solomon, a classicist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Solomon has edited and translated the Genealogy, written about Boccaccio’s interpretation of specific gods (e.g. the Demogorgon, which ironically was not actually part of the ancient canon of gods), and he has written more general works on the reception of Classical mythology in humanist literature. In Solomon’s scholarship, as well as in the work of other Boccaccio-scholars, variants of the word “reduction” are prevalent in discussions of Boccaccio’s adaption of the pagan gods. This is the view that I want to contest, because I do not believe Boccaccio himself intended to “reduce” the status of the pagan gods. He reveres them as kings, which is the highest status he could reasonably give them. Boccaccio’s Genealogy is a display of humanist admiration for antiquity – in this context, the newfound humanness of the gods is almost irrelevant.