Renaissance is a term which lias recently come into i) use to indicate a well-known but indefinite space of time and a certain phase in the development of the European races. On the one hand it denotes the transition from that period of history which we call the Middle Ages to that which we call !Modern. On the other hand it implies those changes in the intellectual and moral attitude of the Western nations by which the transition was characterized. If we insist upon the literal meaning of the word, the Renaissance was a re-birth; and it is needful to inquire of what it was the re-birth. The metaphor of Renaissance may signify the entrance of the European nations upon a fresh stage of vital energy in general, implying a fuller consciousness and a freer exercise of faculties than had belonged to the mediaeval period. Or it may mean the resuscitation of simply intellectual activities, stimulated by the revival of antique learning and its application to the arts and literatures of modern peoples. Upon our choice between these two interpretations of the word depend important differences in any treatment of the subject. The former has the disadvantage of making it difficult to separate the Renaissance from other historical phases—the Reformation, for example—with which it ought not to be confounded. The latter has the merit of assigning a specific name to a limited series of events and group of facts, which can be distinguished for the purpose of analysis from other events and facts with which they are intimately but not indissolubly connected. In other words, the one definition of Renaissance makes it denote the whole change which came over Europe at the close of the Middle Ages. The other confines it to what was known "by our ancestors as the Revival of Learning. Yet, when we concentrate attention on the recovery of antique culture, we become aware that this was only one phenomenon or symptom of a far wider and more comprehensive alteration in the conditions of the European races. We find it needful to retain both terms, Renaissance and Revival of Learning, and to show the relations between the series of events and facts which they severally imply. The Revival of Learning must be regarded as a function of that vital energy, an organ of that mental evolution, which brought the modern world, with its new conceptions of philosophy and religion, its re-awakened arts and sciences, its firmer grasp on the realities of human nature and the world, its manifold inventions and discoveries, its altered political systems, its expansive and progressive forces, into being. Important as the Revival of Learning undoubtedly was, there are essential factors in the complex called the Renaissance with which it can but remotely be connected. When we analyse the whole group of phenomena which have to be considered, we perceive that some of the most essential have nothing or little to do with the recovery of the classics. These are, briefly speaking, the decay of those great fabrics, church and empire, which ruled the Middle Ages both as ideas and as realities; the appearance of full-formed nationalities and languages; the enfeeblement of the feudal system throughout Europe; the invention and application of paper, the mariner’s compass, gunpowder, and printing; the exploration of continents beyond the ocean; and the substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. Europe in fact had been prepared for a thorough-going metamorphosis before that new ideal of human life and culture which the Revival of Learning brought to light had been made manifest. It had recovered from the confusion consequent upon the dissolution of the ancient Roman empire. The Teutonic tribes had been Christianized, civilized, and assimilated to the previously Latinized races over whom they exercised the authority of conquerors. Comparative tranquillity and material comfort had succeeded to discord and rough living. Modern nationalities, defined as separate factors in a common system, were ready to cooperate upon the basis of European federation. The ideas of universal monarchy and of indivisible Christendom, incorporated in the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Church, had so far lost their hold that scope was offered for the introduction of new theories both of state and church which would have seemed visionary or impious to the mediaeval mind. It is therefore obvious that some term, wider than Revival of Learning, descriptive of the change which began to pass over Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, lias to be adopted. That of Renaissance, Rinascimento, or Renascence is sufficient for the purpose, though we have to guard against the tyranny of what is after all a metaphor. We must not suffer it to lead us into rhetoric about the deadness and the darkness of the Middle Ages, or hamper our inquiry with preconceived assumptions that the re-birth in question was in any true sense a return to the irrecoverable pagan past. Nor must we imagine that there was any abrupt break with the Middle Ages. On the contrary, the Renaissance was rather the last stage of the Middle Ages, emerging from ecclesiastical and feudal despotism, developing what was original in mediaeval ideas by the light of classic arts and letters, holding in itself the promise of the modern world. It was therefore a period and a process of transition, fusion, preparation, tentative endeavour. And just at this point the real importance of the revival of learning may be indicated. That rediscovery of the classic past restored the confidence in their own faculties to men striving after spiritual freedom; revealed the continuity of history and the identity of human nature in spite of diverse creeds and different customs; held up for emulation master-works of literature, philosophy, and art; provoked inquiry; encouraged criticism; shattered the narrow mental barriers imposed by mediaeval orthodoxy. Humanism, a word which will often recur in the ensuing paragraphs, denotes a specific bias which the forces liberated in the Renaissance took from contact with the ancient world,—the particular form assumed by human self-esteem at that epoch,—the ideal of life and civilization evolved by the modern nations. It indicates the endeavour of man to reconstitute himself as a free being, not as the thrall of theological despotism, and the peculiar assistance he derived in this effort from Greek and Roman literature, the litter¿v humaniores, letters leaning rather to the side of man than of divinity.

I It is now apparent in what sense the Renaissance has

־ to be treated in this article. It will be considered as implying a comprehensive movement of the European intellect and will toward self-emancipation, toward re-assertion of the natural rights of the reason and the senses, toward the conquest of this planet as a place of human occupation, and toward the formation of regulative theories both for states and individuals differing from those of mediaeval times. The revival of learning will be treated as a decisive factor in this process of evolution on a new plan. To exclude the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation wholly from the survey is impossible, as will appear more plainly in the sequel. These terms indicate moments in the whole process of modern history which were opposed, each to the other, and both to the Renaissance; and it is needful to bear in mind that they have, scientifically speaking, a quite separate existence. Yet if the history of Europe in the 16th century of our era came to be written with the brevity with which we write the history of Europe in the 6th century b.c., it would be difficult at the distance of time implied by that supposition to distinguish the Italian movement of the Renaissance in its origin from the German movement of the Reformation. Both would be seen to have a common starting-point in the reaction against long dominant ideas which were becoming obsolete, and also in the excitation of faculties which had during the same period been accumulating energy.

The Renaissance, if we try to regard it as a period, was essentially the transition from one historical stage to another. It cannot therefore be confined within strict chronological limits. This indecision inherent in the nature of a process which involved neither a political revolution nor the promulgation of a new religious creed, but was a gradual metamorphosis of the intellectual and moral state of Europe, is further augmented by the different epochs at which the several nations were prepared to bear their share in it. England, for example, was still feudal and mediaeval when Italy had socially and mentally entered on the modern stadium. A brother of the Black Prince banqueted with Petrarch in the palace of Galeazzo Visconti. That is to say, the founder of Italian humanism, the representative of Italian despotic state-craft, and the companion of Froissart’s heroes met together at a marriage feast. The memories which these names evoke prove how impossible it is to fix boundaries in time for a movement which in 1368 had reached nearly the same point in Italy as it afterwards attained at the close of the 16th century in England. The Renaissance must indeed be viewed mainly as an internal process whereby spiritual energies latent in the Middle Ages were developed into actuality and formed a mental habit for the modern world. The process began in Italy, and gradually extended to the utmost bounds of Europe, producing similar results in every nation, and establishing a common civilization.

There is one date, however, which may be remembered with advantage as the starting-point in time of the Renaissance, after the departure from the Middle Ages had been definitely and consciously made by the Italians. This is the year 1453, when Constantinople, chosen for his capital by the first Christian emperor of Rome, fell into the hands of the Turk. One of the survivals of the old world, the shadow of what had been the Eastern empire, now passed suddenly away. Almost at the same date that visionary revival of the Western empire, which had imposed for six centuries upon the imagination of mediaeval Europe, hampering Italy and impeding the consolidation of Germany, ceased to reckon among political actualities; while its more robust rival, the Roman Church, seemed likely to sink into the rank of a petty Italian principality. Three lights of mediaeval Christendom, the Eastern empire, the Holy Roman empire, and the papacy, at this point of time severally suffered extinction, mortal enfeeblement, and profound internal transformation. It was demonstrated by the destruction of the Eastern and the dotage of the Western empire, and by the new papal policy which Nicholas V. inaugurated, that the old order of society was about to be superseded. Nothing remained to check those centrifugal forces in state and church which substituted a confederation of rival European powers for the earlier ideal of universal monarchy, and separate religious constitutions for the previous Catholic unity. At the same time the new learning introduced by the earlier humanists awakened free thought, encouraged curiosity, and prepared the best minds of Europe for speculative audacities from which the schoolmen would have shrunk, and which soon expressed themselves in acts of cosmopolitan importance. The new learning had been received gladly. Its vast significance was hardly understood. Both secular and spiritual potentates delighted in the beauty and fascination of those eloquent words which scholars, poets, and critics uttered—“words indeed, but words which drew armed hosts behind them !”

If we look a little forward to the years 1492-1500, we obtain a second date of great importance. In these years the expedition of Charles VIII. to Naples opened Italy to ' French, Spanish, and German interference. The leading nations of Europe began to compete for the prize of the peninsula, and learned meanwhile that culture which the Italians had perfected. In these years the secularization of the papacy was carried to its final point by Alexander VI., and the Reformation became inevitable. The same period w r as marked by the discovery of America, the exploration of the Indian seas, and the consolidation of the Spanish nationality. It also witnessed the application of printing to the diffusion of knowledge, the revolution effected in military operations by the use of gunpowder, and the revolution in cosmology which resulted from the Copernican discovery. Thus, speaking roughly, the half century between 1450 and 1500 may be termed the culminating point of the Renaissance. The transition from the mediaeval to the modern order was now secured if not accomplished, and a Rubicon had been crossed from which no retrogression to the past was possible. Looking yet a little farther, to the years 1527 and 1530, a third decisive date is reached. In the first of these years happened the sack of Rome, in the second the pacification of Italy by Charles V. under a Spanish hegemony. The age of the Renaissance was now closed for the land which gave it birth. The Reformation had taken firm hold on northern Europe. The Counter-Reformation was already imminent.

It must not be imagined that so great a change as that implied by the Renaissance w T as accomplished without premonitory symptoms and previous endeavours. In the main we mean by it the recovery of freedom for the human spirit after a long period of bondage to oppressive ecclesiastical and political orthodoxy,—a return to the liberal and practical conceptions of the world which the nations of antiquity had enjoyed, but upon a new and enlarged platform. This being so, it was inevitable that the finally successful efforts after self-emancipation should have been anticipated from time to time by strivings within the ages that are known as dark and mediaeval. It is therefore part of the present inquiry to pass in review some of the claimants to be considered precursors of the Renaissance. First of all must be named the Frank in whose lifetime the dual conception of universal empireand universal church, divinely appointed, sacred, and inviolable, began to control the order of European society. Charles the Great lent his forces to the plan of resuscitating the Roman empire at a moment when his own power made him the arbiter of western Europe, when the papacy needed his alliance, and when the Eastern empire had passed ·under the usurped regency of a female. He modelled a spurious Roman empire, which was surnamed “Holy,” in consequence of the diplomatic contract struck by him with the bishop of Rome, and in obedience to the prevailing theological beliefs of Latin Christianity. The Holy so-called Roman but essentially Teutonic empire owed such substance as the fabric possessed to Frankish armies and the sinews of the German people. As a structure composed of divers ill-connected parts it fell to pieces at its builder’s death, leaving little but the incubus of a memory, the fascination of a mighty name, to dominate the mind of mediaeval Europe. As an idea, the empire grew in visionary power, and remained one of the cliief obstacles in the way of both Italian and German national coherence. Real force was not in it, but rather in that counterpart to its unlimited pretensions, the church, which had evolved it from barbarian night, and which used her own more vital energies for undermining the rival of her creation. Charles the Great, having proclaimed himself successor of the Csesars, was obscurely ambitious of imitating the August! also in the sphere of letters. He caused a scheme of humanistic education to be formulated, and gave employment at his court to rhetoricians, of whom Alcuin was the most considerable. But very little came of the revival of learning which Charles is supposed to have encouraged; and the empire he restored was accepted by the mediaeval intellect in a crudely theological and vaguely mystical spirit. We should, however, here remember that the study of Roman law, which was one important precursory symptom of the Renaissance, owed much to mediaeval respect for the empire as a divine institution. This, together with the municipal Italian intolerance of the Lombard and Frankish codes, kept alive the practice and revived the science of Latin jurisprudence at an early period.

Philosophy attempted to free itself from the trammels s of theological orthodoxy in the hardy speculations of 1 some schoolmen, notably of Scotus Erigena and Abelard. | These innovators found, however, small support, and were j defeated by opponents who used the same logical weapons with authority to back them. Nor were the rationalistic opinions of the Averroists without their value, though the church condemned these deviators from her discipline as heretics. Such mediteval materialists, moreover, had but feeble hold upon the substance of real knowledge. Imperfect acquaintance with authors whom they studied in Latin translations made by Jews from Arabic commentaries on Greek texts, together with almost total ignorance of natural laws, condemned them to sterility. Like the other schiomachists of their epoch, they fought with phantoms in a visionary realm. A similar judgment may be passed upon those Paulician, Albigensian, Paterine, and Epicurean dissenters from the Catholic creed who opposed the phalanxes of orthodoxy with frail imaginative weapons, and alarmed established orders in the state by the audacity of their communistic opinions. Physical science struggled into feeble life in the cells of Gerbert and Roger Bacon. But these men were accounted magicians by the vulgar; and, while the one eventually assumed the tiara, the other was incarcerated in a dungeon. The schools meanwhile resounded still to the interminable dispute upon abstractions. Are onlyuniversals real, or has each name a corresponding entity? From the midst of the Franciscans who had persecuted Roger Bacon because he presumed to know more than was consistent with human humility arose John of Parma, adopting and popularizing the mystic prophecy of Joachim of Flora. The reign of the Father is past; the reign of the Son is passing; the reign of the Spirit is at hand. Such was the formula of the Eternal Gospel, which, as an unconscious forecast of the Renaissance, has attracted retrospective students by its felicity of adaptation to their historical method. Yet we must remember that this bold intuition of the abbot Joachim indicated a monastic reaction against the tyrannies and corruptions of the church, rather than a fertile philosophical conception. The Fraticelli spiritualists, and similar sects who fed their imagination with his doctrine, expired in the flames to which Fra Dolcino, Longino,and Margharitawere consigned. To what extent the accusations of profligate morals brought against these reforming sectarians were justified remains doubtful; and the same uncertainty rests upon the alleged iniquities of the Templars. It is only certain that at this epoch the fabric of Catholic faith was threatened with various forms of prophetic and Oriental mysticism, symptomatic of a widespread desire to grasp at something simpler, purer, and less rigid than Latin theology afforded. Devoid of criticism, devoid of sound learning, devoid of a firm hold on the realities of life, these heresies passed away without solid results and were forgotten.

We are too apt to take for granted that the men of the Middle Ages were immersed in meditations on the other 1 world, and that their intellectual exercises were confined to , abstractions of the schools, hallucinations of the fancy, allegories, visions. This assumption applies indeed in a broad sense to that period which was dominated by intolerant theology and deprived of positive knowledge. Yet there are abundant signs that the native human instincts, the natural human appetites, remained unaltered and alive beneath the crust of orthodoxy. In the person of a pope like Boniface VIII. those ineradicable forces of the natural man assumed, if we may trust the depositions of ecclesiastics well acquainted with his life, a form of brutal atheistic cynicism. In the person of an emperor, Frederick IL, they emerged under the more agreeable garb of liberal culture and Epicurean scepticism. Frederick dreamed of remodelling society upon a mundane type, which anticipated the large toleration and cosmopolitan enlightenment of the actual Renaissance. But his efforts were defeated by the unrelenting hostility of the church, and by the incapacity of his contemporaries to understand his aims. After being forced in his lifetime to submit to authority, he was consigned by Dante to hell. Frederick’s ideal of civilization was derived in a large measure from Provence, where a beautiful culture had prematurely bloomed, filling southern Europe with the perfume of poetry and gentle living. Here, if anywhere, it seemed as though the ecclesiastical and feudal fetters of the Middle Ages might be broken, and humanity might enter on a new stage of joyous unimpeded evolution. This was, however, not to be. The church preached Simon de Montfort’s crusade, and organized Dominic’s Inquisition; what Quinet calls the “Renaissance sociale par 1’Amour” was extirpated by sword, fire, famine, and pestilence. Meanwhile the Provençal poets had developed their modern language with incomparable richness and dexterity, creating forms of verse and modes of emotional expression which determined the latest mediaeval phase of literature in Europe. The naturalism of which we have been speaking found free utterance now in the fabliaux of jongleurs, lyrics of...