I. Significance of the Renaissance

The Renaissance, or Revival of Learning, was that intellectual movement, chiefly of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with its revival of letters and art, which marked the transition from medieval to modern history. It included a rediscovery of the past, but it also ushered in a new concept of philosophy and religion, and marked a rebirth of the arts and sciences. It produced a new concept of man’s duty and destiny and reciprocal relations. It emerged from the encompassing decay of church and empire, and resulted in the fuller development of modern nationalities and languages. It liberated the minds of men, bringing to an end the domination of Scholasticism and Feudal ism, and challenging the control of the church over secular matters.PFF2 9.3

The concept of universal monarchy and indivisible Christendom, incorporated in the Holy Roman Empire and the secularized Roman church, had lost its grip, and was gradually supplanted by new theories of church and state. The empire was in its dotage. The visionary restoration of this Western Empire, which had imposed itself upon the imagination of Europe for six long centuries, hampering Italy and impeding the consolidation of Germany, diminished as a political force while the Roman world disintegrated. It was a period of gradual transition and fusion, of preparation and zealous endeavor. It provoked inquiry. It awakened free thought. It encouraged curiosity and criticism. It shattered the narrow mental barriers of the past, and prepared the best minds in Europe for “speculative audacities” from which most medieval schoolmen would have recoiled. Men became intrigued with ancient pagan literature, and this intellectual activity was often accompanied by moral laxity.PFF2 10.1

Many close the Middle Ages with Dante (d. 1321), the fascinating character with whom we begin this volume, and begin the Renaissance with Petrarch (d. 1374), treated next, who lifted letters to the rank heretofore occupied by logic and philosophy. A remarkable interest in Greek and Latin marked the period, and Humanism came to the forefront as the vital element in the Renaissance. Humanism was, of course, that specific literary movement at the close of the Middle Ages centering in the revival of the classical learning of Greek and Roman antiquity. It was a revolt against authoritarianism. As its name implies, it made man the center of interest, and stressed the humanities, or culture, rather than the divine side. It was secular, not religious. Humanism found its ideals in the golden age of Greece and Rome; the Reformation, in the primitive age of Christianity. One section of Humanism sought to engraft this classical learning on the tree of Christianity; the other endeavored not only to revive the literature but to inculcate the pagan spirit of the ancient heathen cults as well.PFF2 10.2

After the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, the scattering of more Greek scholars throughout Europe gave impetus to the revival of scholarship already in progress. The invention of movable type and of printing, new methods of paper making, the passage of the Cape of Good Hope, the discovery of America, the exploration of the Indian Ocean, the consolidation of the Spanish nationality, the invention of the marine compass and of gunpowder, the substitution of the Copernican system for the Ptolemaic system in astronomy, the struggle for religious freedom as a result of the papal breakdown following the Babylonian captivity and the Great Schism, and the abolition of feudal customs, as well as the further development of the great universities—all helped to make up the picture and to change the face of Europe.PFF2 11.1

Each country had its own characteristic form and time of the Renaissance. In contrast to Italy, the later Humanistic emphasis in Germany and the Low Countries was soon superseded by the Reformation, and Biblical language studies were earnestly cultivated under the lead of such noted scholars as Erasmus, Melanchthon, Reuchlin, and Von Hutten. Over in England, Wyclif and Chaucer were the forerunners of the Renaissance and the Reformation there. But the main streams of both these movements reached England contemporaneously, and the brilliant Elizabethan literature resulted.PFF2 11.2

In France the Renaissance is commonly dated from the invasion of Naples by Charles VIII, in 1495, which led to intellectual contact between the two peoples, this in turn ushering in the period of great French literature. Spain, with her wars of imperial aggrandizement, her voyages of discovery, her expulsion of the Jews, her Catholic despotism, along with the Inquisition and the Society of Jesus, headed the reaction against reform, and was largely without a revival of learning.PFF2 11.3

But they all had their common starting point in reaction against the long dominant medieval ideas that had become obsolete, and in the development of the energizing forces noted. Individualism came of age. The culminating point of the Renaissance was reached. The Rubicon had been crossed. The Reformation soon took hold of Northern Europe, and the Counter Reformation impended. Such is the setting for the early part of Volume II. It is the background against which the moving figures of the period are to be viewed, the encompassing framework within which the exposition of prophecy is to be understood. The Reformation will follow along naturally, as well as succeeding periods up to the French Revolution, which marks the terminal point of Volume II.PFF2 12.1