I was struck the first time I started watching The Tudors on Showtime, and again last night when Neta and I watched the first espisode together, by the use of the terms 'humanist' and 'humanism' by King Henry and by Sir Thomas More. I vaguely recalled something about Erasmus that I had read a long time ago.
Wikipedia has a short article on what it refers to as 'Renaissance humanism' (to distunguish it from secular humanism--I rather imagined the gnashing of teeth among the Catholics in the audience at More's advocating 'humanism' which might have seemed to some like a future saint decrying the existence of God! :-)
I'm reminded that there's an awful lot of interesting stuff out in the world of philosophy, if only I had the time and intellect to read and understand it properly.