In this article the Renaissance will be considered as implying a comprehensive movement of the European intellect and will toward self-emancipation, toward reassertion 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 regu lative 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 ex clude the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation wholly from the survey is impossible. 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 ex istence. 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 his tory 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 Ger man 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.
Chronology.—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 chrono logical limits. There is one date, however, which may be remem bered with advantage as the starting-point in time of the Renais sance, of ter the departure from the middle ages had been defi nitely and consciously made by the Italians. This is the year 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 East ern 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, ham pering 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. 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 'To the humanists themselves "humanitas" meant nothing more nor less than "culture."
'Most scholars now deny that the fall of Constantinople had any appreciable influence on the culture of Western Europe. For Symonds' date of 1453 they would substitute the date of the invention of print ing about 1440.
universal monarchy, and separate religious constitutions for the previous Catholic unity. At the same time the new learning intro duced 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 impor tance. If we look a little forward to the years 1492-1500, we ob tain a second date of great importance. In these years the expedi tion 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 was marked by the discovery of America, the exploration of the Indian seas, and the consolidation of the Spanish nation ality. It also witnessed the application of printing to the diffusion of knowledge. Thus, speaking roughly, the half-century between 1450 and 150o may be termed the culminating point of the Ren aissance. The transition of 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 153c) 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 Span ish 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 was accomplished without premonitory symp toms and previous endeavours. In the main we mean by it the re covery 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 success ful 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 precur sors to the Renaissance.