moral relativism, perhaps atheism, and so on. In the Renaissance, however, the word meant something completely different. A humanist was simply a student of the humanities, a group of subjects that included rhetoric, moral philosophy (i.e., ethics), history, and poetry. Of these, rhetoric—the art of speaking or writing in a clear, convincing style—was the most important. This was an important change from medieval priorities, where education was structured around the seven liberal arts—the trivium