2. France.—The conquest of Naples by the French king, Charles VII (1494), marks the beginning of the inflow of Renaissance ideas from Italy into France. The house of Valois ever and anon urged its claims to certain Italian provinces. Military expeditions over the Alps as well as the interveningpeaceful relations with the Italians brought about in France a shifting of the nobility and the learned to Italian culture and ideals. The spring-tide of the French Revival of Learning was not antago nistic to the teaching and authority of the Church either in the direction of the paganism of Italian ultra-humanism or along the way of Luther's revolt. Aleandro, an Italian lecturer on Latin, Greek and Hebrew early in the 16th century, became rector of the University of Paris, and wielded a powerful influence against Luther. The Sorbonne was in those days a leader at once in science and in orthodoxy. It condemned the Bibles of Estienne, because they lacked annotations from approved Catholic sources. The first critical editions of the Greek New Testament were those of the devout Cath olics Simon de Colines (1534) and Robert Estienne (1st ed., 1546; 3d ed., 1550; 4th ed., 1551). The latter was the first to publish an apparatus criticus for the restora tion of the New Testament text. French poetry takes on a new form in Marot, Ronsard and their followers. The first French humanists to go the way of Boccaccio and his set are Rabelais (c. 1490-1553) and Montagne (1533-92). The former was a priest and a physician; he is known chiefly for the masterful style of his indecent, satirical, humorous and brilliant Epicureanism. Montaigne, the elegant essayist, sets a pace of hostility to the Church and her institutions that has been kept up in France until this day. The most decided return to classic forms is seen in poets, essayists and preachers of a century later — Fenelon, Racine, Corneille, Bossuet, Bourdaloue — all devoted Catholics. Pointed architecture had reached the height of its glory in France dur ing the 13th century; it became florid, perfor ated, embroidered, in the style flamboyant of the 15th century; and the Renaissance intro duced forms that, though deprecated by lovers of Gothic, were the natural evolution conse quent upon the inroad of Italian ideas into the valley of the Loire. In painting, there is not a real French Renaissance school; the work of Claude and the Poussins is of the early modern period.
3. The the Low Countries, Renaissance architecture pales by the side of mediaeval structures. The Van Ey Mem ling, Metsys and others surpassed in their oil coloring; but painting does not reach its glory in the Flemish and Dutch schools until the 17th century. The exquisite sepias of Rembrandt, the gorgeous coloring of the all too sensuous Rubens, the heavenly beauty of Vandyck, the light effects of Ruysdael and Cuyp will ever be the objects of enthusiastic admiration. In let ters the critical work of Lipsius and Grotius is to be grouped with the marvels of the Elzevir and Plantin presses. The greatest humanist of the Netherlands was Erasmus. That he was a loyal Catholic is clear from his opposition to Luther; an excellent edition of the works of Saint Jerome (1516), the first critical work done in this Patristic field; and an edition of the Greek New Testament (1516). This latter was not critical. Erasmus relied on a few late manuscripts. For the Apocalypse he had only a single, imperfect codex. So the Dutch scholar went the full length of boldness; he garbled the text and filled in with his own translation from the Vulgate when the original Greek source could not be deciphered or was deemed to be wrong. Some of these readings of Eras mian coinage found their way into the textus reeeptus were borrowed from the Dutch work basket by Luther and appear in the Greek Testament of the British and Foreign Bible Society as well as the Authorized Version. Erasmus is merciless and sarcastic in attacking the extravagances of the schoolmen and the abuses that existed among the clergy; but he must be interpreted in the spirit of the times. His lasting and close friendship for Blessed Thomas More, after whom the 'Praise of Folly' ((Mona Encomium') is playfully en titled, suggests a far greater loyalty to the Church than one might conclude from the in vectives and pitiless spirit of that work, the and the 'Colloquia.' 4. the English humanists were More, Blessed Car Fisher, Hadley, Lin g, filet and Fox. Blessed holhas More, ce thrreahn, martyred for refusal to take the oath of the supremacy of Henry VIII over the Church in England, was scholarly, witty, learned, an adept in Latin style, and per haps the best example of Renaissance English extant in our literature. Though later Eliza bethan English became classic, the clearness, strength and elegance of More must be ad mitted. His 'Utopia' is entirely free from any humanistic slavishness of imitation and shows a firm grasp on social and religious problems of the day. More is not spring of whatsoever he found to be unbecoming in ecclesiastics, yet his writings breathe a noble, truly Catholic spirit. The revolt of England from the Church
cannot be attributed to a freedom of private judgment, which infiltrated from Italy. The germs of this spirit were long developing in England. Witness the conflict between the papacy, represented by Saint Anselm, Primate of England, and the Norman kings, William Rufus and Henry Beanelerc, during the 11th and 12th centuries. Chaucer (1340-1400) was influenced by Italian models, but long preceded the Renaissance in England. Wye.lif (1335-84) and the LoUards of the 14th and 15th centuries anticipated the Lutheran Reformation by more than a century in the substitution of simple Bible reading for the authoritative teaching of the Church. The so-called Wyclif Bible, as signed to 1380, which was used by the Lollards, was a translation from the Latin Vulgate, prob ably of Catholic and not Wyclifite origin (con sult Dom Gasquet, (The Old English Bible,' pp. 102 ff.). Tyndale (1484-1536) showed some influence by the Reformation in Germany; but when his Bible was issued (1525), it by no means marked the beginning of England's movement away from the authority of the Catholic Church.
5. Spain.— During the Renaissance, in Spain, architecture added Arabic features to classic forms; sculpture showed strength and individu ality; painting developed apace, until the great 17th century masters, Murillo and Velasquez, rivaled the best work of the Italian Renaissance. Cardinal Ximenes published his monumental Polyglot Bible (1514-22). Spanish prose reached its high-water mark in the humorous and refined Cervantes (1547-1616), whose 'Don Quixote' (1605-15) is unsurpassed in the world's literature for masterful, withering, witty, yet courteous taunts at the evils of the day. Dramatic poetry culminated in the volu minous Lope de Vega (1562-1635), to whom 1,500 plays are accredited, and the renowned Calderon de la Barca (1600-81). In objectivity, freedom from lyric self-unfolding, breadth of vision, interest of plot and counterplot and power of dramatic expression, only Shakespeare and the Greek dramatists surpass these two Spanish poets. Along with them should be men tioned the (Lusiad) of the Portuguese Camoens, who was the first modern epic poet to use a modern theme for his epos and to cut free from ancient trammels in the treatment of his theme. The Spanish and Portuguese Renais sance also expressed itself in exploration and colonization. Columbus, Vespucci, Diaz, Vasco da Gama, Cortez, Pizarro and many others bear witness to the intrepidity and greatheartedness that characterized these Catholic nations. There was in those days an effective league of nations. By common consent of Catholics throughout Europe, the popes had for centuries been the arbiters in national and international disagree ments. It was by this overlordship that Nich olas V (1454) conceded to Portugal the right of colonization from Africa to India; and Alexander VI (1494) divided the Indies into East or Portuguese and West or Spanish.
HI. Counter Reformation.— The Italian pagan Renaissance ended with the sack of Rome by German Lutherans (1527). Its churches were desecrated and libraries pillaged. The papacy was aroused from the lethargy of Leo X. The Counter Reformation began; it was late but most effective. The Council of Trent, the Roman Index and the Society of Jesus were mighty forces in effecting the needed reform of ecclesiastical discipline. (See Jams; Lovot.a; INDEX LIBRORUM PROM IBI TORUM ; TRENT. At the end of the 16th cen tury, chiefly because of the missionary activities of the great religious orders, the Church had so recovered from the staggering blow of the Reformation that the faithful outnumbered those of pre-Lutheran times, and an age of strict religious observance set in.
Sadoleto, (Epistolx' (1760); Michelet, (Histoire de France' (1855) • Burck hardt, (Die Cultur der Renaissance) '(1860) ; Hettinger, (Kunst in Christenthum' (1867) ; Walter Pater, (Essays,' 'The Renaissance' (1873) ; Symonds, 'The Renaissance in Italy' (1875) ; Mfintz, (Pr6curseurs de la Renaissance' (1882), 'La Renaissance en Italie et en France' (1885), de l'art pendant la Renais sance' (1889-95) ; Hughes, 'Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits) (1892) ; Pachtler, 'Ratio Studiorum et institutiones scholastics: Societatis Jest' per Gex inaniam ohm vigentes,' in Monumenta Padagogica, ii, v, ix, xvi (1887-94); Pastor, 'History of the Popes' (Eng. trans., 1895, especially Vol. I); Gothein, 'Ignatius von Loyola and die Gegen reform) (1895) ; Rashdall, 'The Universities in the Middle Ages) (1895) ; Duhr, Studi enordnung der Gesellschaft Jesu) (1895) ; • Gas quet, 'The Eve of the Reformation) (1900); Lilly, 'Renaissance Types' (1901) ; • 'Cambridge Modern History' (Vol. I, 1902) ; Janssens, 'History of the German People> (Eng. trans., 1902) ; Schwickerath, 'Jesuit Education) (1903); Ruskin, 'Modern Painters' (Vol. II, 1903).