Chapter 22

THE CULTURE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: "Culture"]

"Culture" is a word generally used to denote learning and refinement in manners and art. The development of culture--the acquisition of new knowledge and the creation of beautiful things--is ordinarily the work of a comparatively small number of scientists and artists. Now if in any particular period or among any special people, we find a relatively larger group of intellectual leaders who succeed in establishing an important educated class and in making permanent contributions to the civilization of posterity, then we say that it is a cultured century or a cultured nation.

[Sidenote: Greek Culture]

All races and all generations have had some kind of culture, but within the recorded history of humanity, certain peoples and certain centuries stand out most distinctly as influencing its evolution. Thus, the Greeks of the fourth and fifth centuries before Christ gathered together and handed down to us all manner of speculation about the nature of the universe, all manner of hypothetical answers to the eternal questions--Whence do we come, What are we doing, Where do we go?--and this was the foundation of modern philosophy and metaphysics. From the same Greeks came our geometry and the rudiments of our sciences of astronomy and medicine. It was they who gave us the model for nearly every form of literature--dramatic, epic, and lyric poetry, dialogues, oratory, history--and in their well-proportioned temples, in their balanced columns and elaborate friezes, in their marble chiselings of the perfect human form, they fashioned for us forever the classical expression of art.

[Sidenote: Roman Culture]

Still in ancient times, the Romans developed classical architecture in the great triumphal arches and in the high-domed public buildings which strewed their empire. They adapted the fine forms of Greek literature to their own more pompous, but less subtle, Latin language. They devised a code of law and a legal system which made them in a real sense the teachers of order and the founders of the modern study of law.

[Sidenote: Mohammedan Culture]

The Mohammedans, too, at the very time when the Christians of western Europe were neglecting much of the ancient heritage, kept alive the traditions of Greek philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. From eastern Asia they borrowed algebra, the Arabic numerals, and the compass, and, in their own great cities of Bagdad, Damascus, and Cordova, they themselves developed the curiously woven curtains and rugs, the strangely wrought blades and metallic ornaments, the luxurious dwellings and graceful minarets which distinguish Arabic or Mohammedan art.

[Sidenote: Medieval Culture]

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries--the height of the middle ages --came a wonderful outburst of intellectual and artistic activity. Under the immediate auspices of the Catholic Church it brought forth abundantly a peculiarly Christian culture. Renewed acquaintance with Greek philosophy, especially with that of Aristotle, was joined with a lively religious faith to produce the so called scholastic philosophy and theology. Great institutions of higher learning--the universities-- were now founded, in which centered the revived study not only of philosophy but of law and medicine as well, and over which appeared the first cloud-wrapped dawn of modern experimental science. And side by side with the sonorous Latin tongue, which long continued to be used by scholars, were formed the vernacular languages--German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.--that gave a wealth of variety to reviving popular literature. Majestic cathedrals with pointed arch and flying buttress, with lofty spire and delicate tracery, wonderful wood carvings, illuminated manuscripts, quaint gargoyles, myriad statues of saints and martyrs, delicately colored paintings of surpassing beauty--all betokened the great Christian, or Gothic, art of the middle ages.

[Sidenote: New Elements in Culture of Sixteenth Century]

The educated person of the sixteenth century was heir to all these cultural periods: intellectually and artistically he was descended from Greeks, Romans, Mohammedans, and his medieval Christian forbears. But the sixteenth century itself added cultural contributions to the original store, which help to explain not only the social, political, and ecclesiastical activities of that time but also many of our present-day actions and ideas. The essentially new factors in sixteenth-century culture may be reckoned as (1) the diffusion of knowledge as a result of the invention of printing; (2) the development of literary criticism by means of humanism; (3) a golden age of painting and architecture; (4) the flowering of national literature; (5) the beginnings of modern natural science.

THE INVENTION OF PRINTING

The present day is notably distinguished by the prevalence of enormous numbers of printed books, periodicals, and newspapers. Yet this very printing, which seems so commonplace to us now, has had, in all, but a comparatively brief existence. From the earliest recorded history up to less than five hundred years ago every book in Europe [Footnote: For an account of early printing in China, Japan, and Korea, see the informing article "Typography" in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 11th edition, Vol. XXVII, p. 510.] was laboriously written by hand, [Footnote: It is interesting to note the meaning of our present word "manuscript," which is derived from the Latin--_manu scriptum_ ("written by hand").] and, although copyists acquired an astonishing swiftness in reproducing books, libraries of any size were the property exclusively of rich institutions or wealthy individuals. It was at the beginning of modern times that the invention of printing revolutionized intellectual history.

Printing is an extremely complicated process, and it is small wonder that centuries of human progress elapsed before its invention was complete. Among the most essential elements of the perfected process are _movable type_ with which the impression is made, and _paper_, on which it is made. A few facts may be conveniently culled from the long involved story of the development of each of these elements.

[Sidenote: Development of paper]

For their manuscripts the Greeks and Romans had used papyrus, the prepared fiber of a tough reed which grew in the valley of the Nile River. This papyrus was very expensive and heavy, and not at all suitable for printing. Parchment, the dressed skins of certain animals, especially sheep, which became the standard material for the hand- written documents of the middle ages, was extremely durable, but like papyrus, it was costly, unwieldy, and ill adapted for printing.

The forerunner of modern European paper was probably that which the Chinese made from silk as early as the second century before Christ. For silk the Mohammedans at Mecca and Damascus in the middle of the eighth century appear to have substituted cotton, and this so-called Damascus paper was later imported into Greece and southern Italy and into Spain. In the latter country the native-grown hemp and flax were again substituted for cotton, and the resulting linen paper was used considerably in Castile in the thirteenth century and thence penetrated across the Pyrenees into France and gradually all over western and central Europe. Parchment, however, for a long time kept its preeminence over silk, cotton, or linen paper, because of its greater firmness and durability, and notaries were long forbidden to use any other substance in their official writings. Not until the second half of the fifteenth century was assured the triumph of modern paper, [Footnote: The word "paper" is derived from the ancient "papyrus."] as distinct from papyrus or parchment, when printing, then on the threshold of its career, demanded a substance of moderate price that would easily receive the impression of movable type.

[Sidenote: Development of Movable Type]

The idea of movable type was derived from an older practice of carving reverse letters or even whole inscriptions upon blocks of wood so that when they were inked and applied to writing material they would leave a clear impression. Medieval kings and princes frequently had their signatures cut on these blocks of wood or metal, in order to impress them on charters, and a kind of engraving was employed to reproduce pictures or written pages as early as the twelfth century.

It was a natural but slow evolution from block-impressing to the practice of casting individual letters in separate little pieces of metal, all of the same height and thickness, and then arranging them in any desired sequence for printing. The great advantage of movable type over the blocks was the infinite variety of work which could be done by simply setting and resetting the type.

The actual history of the transition from the use of blocks to movable type--the real invention of modern printing--is shrouded in a good deal of mystery and dispute. It now appears likely that by the year 1450, an obscure Lourens Coster of the Dutch town of Haarlem had devised movable type, that Coster's invention was being utilized by a certain Johan Gutenberg in the German city of Mainz, and that improvements were being added by various other contemporaries. Papal letters of indulgence and a version of the Bible, both printed in 1454, are the earliest monuments of the new art.

Slowly evolved, the marvelous art, once thoroughly developed, spread with almost lightning rapidity from Mainz throughout the Germanics, the Italian states, France, and England,--in fact, throughout all Christian Europe. It was welcomed by scholars and applauded by popes. Printing presses were erected at Rome in 1466, and book-publishing speedily became an honorable and lucrative business in every large city. Thus, at the opening of the sixteenth century, the scholarly Aldus Manutius was operating in Venice the famous Aldine press, whose beautiful editions of the Greek and Latin classics are still esteemed as masterpieces of the printer's art.

The early printers fashioned the characters of their type after the letters that the scribes had used in long-hand writing. Different kinds of common hand-writing gave rise, therefore, to such varieties of type as the heavy black-faced Gothic that prevailed in the Germanics or the several adaptations of the clear, neat Roman characters which predominated in southern Europe and in England. The compressed "italic" type was devised in the Aldine press in Venice to enable the publisher to crowd more words upon a page.

[Sidenote: Results of Invention of Printing]

A constant development of the new art characterized the sixteenth century, and at least three remarkable results became evident. (1) There was an almost incalculable increase in the supply of books. Under earlier conditions, a skilled and conscientious copyist might, by prodigious toil, produce two books in a year. Now, in a single year of the sixteenth century, some 24,000 copies of one of Erasmus's books were struck off by one printing press.

(2) This indirectly increased the demand for books. By lessening the expense of books and enabling at least all members of the middle class, as well as nobles and princes, to possess private libraries, printing became the most powerful means of diffusing knowledge and broadening education.

(3) A greater degree of accuracy was guaranteed by printing than by manual copying. Before the invention of printing, it was well-nigh impossible to secure two copies of any work that would be exactly alike. Now, the constant proof-reading and the fact that an entire edition was printed from the same type were securities against the anciently recurring faults of forgery or of error.

HUMANISM

Printing, the invention of which has just been described, was the new vehicle of expression for the ideas of the sixteenth century. These ideas centered in something which commonly is called "humanism." To appreciate precisely what humanism means--to understand the dominant intellectual interests of the educated people of the sixteenth century --it will be necessary first to turn back some two hundred years earlier and say a few words about the first great humanist, Francesco Petrarca, or, as he is known to us, Petrarch.

[Sidenote: Petrarch, "the Father of Humanism"]

The name of Petrarch, who flourished in the fourteenth century (1304- 1374), has been made familiar to most of us by sentimentalists or by literary scholars who in the one case have pitied his loves and his passions or in the other have admired the grace and form of his Italian sonnets. But to the student of history Petrarch has seemed even more important as the reflection, if not the source, of a brilliant intellectual movement, which, taking rise in his century, was to grow in brightness in the fifteenth and flood the sixteenth with resplendent light.

In some respects Petrarch was a typical product of the fourteenth century. He was in close touch with the great medieval Christian culture of his day. He held papal office at Avignon in France. He was pious and "old-fashioned" in many of his religious views, especially in his dislike for heretics. Moreover, he wrote what he professed to be his best work in Latin and expressed naught but contempt for the new Italian language, which, under the immortal Dante, had already acquired literary polish. [Footnote: Ironically enough, it was not his Latin writings but his beautiful Italian sonnets, of which he confessed to be ashamed, that have preserved the popular fame of Petrarch to the present day.] He showed no interest in natural science or in the physical world about him--no sympathy for any novelty.

Yet despite a good deal of natural conservatism, Petrarch added one significant element to the former medieval culture. That was an appreciation, amounting almost to worship, of the pagan Greek and Latin literature. Nor was he interested in antique things because they supported his theology or inculcated Christian morals; his fondness for them was simply and solely because they were inherently interesting. In a multitude of polished Latin letters and in many of his poems, as well as by daily example and precept to his admiring contemporaries, he preached the revival of the classics.

[Sidenote: Characteristics of Petrarch's Humanism]

This one obsessing idea of Petrarch carried with it several corollaries which constituted the essence of humanism and profoundly affected European thought for several generations after the Italian poet. They may be enumerated as follows:

(1) Petrarch felt as no man had felt since pagan days the pleasure of mere human life,--the "joy of living." This, he believed, was not in opposition to the Christian religion, although it contradicted the basis of ascetic life. He remained a Catholic Christian, but he assailed the monks.

(2) Petrarch possessed a confidence in himself, which in the constant repetition in his writings of first-person pronouns partook of boastfulness. He replaced a reliance upon Divine Providence by a sense of his own human ability and power.

(3) Petrarch entertained a clear notion of a living bond between himself and men of like sort in the ancient world. Greek and Roman civilization was to him no dead and buried antiquity, but its poets and thinkers lived again as if they were his neighbors. His love for the past amounted almost to an ecstatic enthusiasm.

(4) Petrarch tremendously influenced his contemporaries. He was no local, or even national, figure. He was revered and respected as "the scholar of Europe." Kings vied with each other in heaping benefits upon him. The Venetian senate gave him the freedom of the city. Both the University of Paris and the municipality of Rome crowned him with laurel.

[Sidenote: "Humanism" and the "Humanities"; Definitions]

The admirers and disciples of Petrarch were attracted by the fresh and original human ideas of life with which such classical writers as Virgil, Horace, and Cicero overflowed. This new-found charm the scholars called humanity (_Humanitas_) and themselves they styled "humanists." Their studies, which comprised the Greek and Latin languages and literatures, and, incidentally, profane history, were the humanities or "letters" (_litterae humaniores_), and the pursuit of them was humanism.

Petrarch himself was a serious Latin scholar but knew Greek quite indifferently. About the close of his century, however, Greek teachers came in considerable numbers from Constantinople and Greece across the Adriatic to Italy, and a certain Chrysoloras set up an influential Greek school at Florence. [Footnote: This was before the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453.] Thenceforth, the study of both Latin and Greek went on apace. Monasteries were searched for old manuscripts; libraries for the classics were established; many an ancient masterpiece, long lost, was now recovered and treasured as fine gold. [Footnote: It was during this time that long-lost writings of Tacitus, Cicero, Quintilian, Plautus, Lucretius, etc., were rediscovered.]

[Sidenote: Humanism and Christianity]

At first, humanism met with some opposition from ardent churchmen who feared that the revival of pagan literature might exert an unwholesome influence upon Christianity. But gradually the humanists came to be tolerated and even encourage, until several popes, notably Julius II and Leo X at the opening of the sixteenth century, themselves espoused the cause of humanism. The father of Leo X was the celebrated Lorenzo de' Medici, who subsidized humanists and established the great Florentine library of Greek and Latin classics; and the pope proved himself at once the patron and exemplar of the new learning: he enjoyed music and the theater, art and poetry, the masterpieces of the ancients and the creations of his humanistic contemporaries, the spiritual and the witty--life in every form.

[Sidenote: Spread of Humanism]

The zeal for humanism reached its highest pitch in Italy in the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth, but it gradually gained entrance into other countries and at length became the intellectual spirit of sixteenth-century Europe. Greek was first taught both in England and in France about the middle of the fifteenth century. The Italian expeditions of the French kings Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I, 1494-1547, served to familiarize Frenchmen with humanism. And the rise of important new German universities called humanists to the Holy Roman Empire. As has been said, humanism dominated all Christian Europe in the sixteenth century.

[Sidenote: Erasmus, Chief Humanist of the Sixteenth Century]

Towering above all his contemporaries was Erasmus, the foremost humanist and the intellectual arbiter of the sixteenth century. Erasmus (1466-1536) was a native of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, but throughout a long and studious life he lived in Germany, France, England, Italy, and Switzerland. He took holy orders in the Church and secured the degree of doctor of sacred theology, but it was as a lover of books and a prolific writer that he earned his title to fame. Erasmus, to an even greater degree than Petrarch, became a great international figure--the scholar of Europe. He corresponded with every important writer of his generation, and he was on terms of personal friendship with Aldus Manutius, the famous publisher of Venice, with Sir Thomas More, the distinguished statesman and scholar of England, with Pope Leo X, with Francis I of France, and with Henry VIII of England. For a time he presided at Paris over the new College of France.

A part of the work of Erasmus--his Greek edition of the New Testament and his _Praise of Folly_--has already been mentioned. In a series of satirical dialogues--the _Adages_ and the _Colloquies_--he displayed a brilliant intellect and a sparkling wit. With quip and jest he made light of the ignorance and credulity of many clergymen, especially of the monks. He laughed at every one, himself included. "Literary people," said he, "resemble the great figured tapestries of Flanders, which produce effect only when seen from the distance."

[Sidenote: Humanism and Protestantism]

At first Erasmus was friendly with Luther, but as he strongly disapproved of rebellion against the Church, he subsequently assailed Luther and the whole Protestant movement. He remained outside the group of radical reformers, to the end devoted to his favorite authors, simply a lover of good Latin.

Perhaps the chief reason why Erasmus opposed Protestantism was because he imagined that the theological tempest which Luther aroused all over Catholic Europe would destroy fair-minded scholarship--the very essence of humanism. Be that as it may, the leading humanists of Europe--More in England, Helgesen in Denmark, and Erasmus himself--remained Catholic. And while many of the sixteenth-century humanists of Italy grew skeptical regarding all religion, their country, as we have seen, did not become Protestant but adhered to the Roman Church.

[Sidenote: Decline of Humanism]

Gradually, as the sixteenth century advanced, many persons who in an earlier generation would have applied their minds to the study of Latin or Greek, now devoted themselves to theological discussion or moral exposition. The religious differences between Catholics and Protestants, to say nothing of the refinements of dispute between Calvinists and Lutherans or Presbyterians and Congregationalists, absorbed much of the mental energy of the time and seriously distracted the humanists. In fact, we may say that, from the second half of the sixteenth century, humanism as an independent intellectual interest slowly but steadily declined. Nevertheless, it was not lost, for it was merged with other interests, and with them has been preserved ever since.

Humanism, whose seed was sown by Petrarch in the fourteenth century and whose fruit was plucked by Erasmus in the sixteenth, still lives in higher education throughout Europe and America. The historical "humanities"--Latin, Greek, and history--are still taught in college and in high school. They constitute the contribution of the dominant intellectual interest of the sixteenth century.

ART IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: Humanism and the Renaissance of Art]

The effect of the revived interest in Greek and Roman culture, which, as we have seen, dominated European thought from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, was felt not only in literature and in the outward life of its devotees--in ransacking monasteries for lost manuscripts scripts, in critically studying ancient learning, and in consciously imitating antique behavior--but likewise in a marvelous and many-sided development of art.

The art of the middle ages had been essentially Christian--it sprang from the doctrine and devotions of the Catholic Church and was inextricably bound up with Christian life. The graceful Gothic cathedrals, pointing their roofs and airy spires in heavenly aspiration, the fantastic and mysterious carvings of wood or stone, the imaginative portraiture of saintly heroes and heroines as well as of the sublime story of the fall and redemption of the human race, the richly stained glass, and the spiritual organ music--all betokened the supreme thought of medieval Christianity. But humanism recalled to men's minds the previous existence of an art simpler and more restrained, if less ethereal. The reading of Greek and Latin writers heightened an esteem for pagan culture in all its phases.

Therefore, European art underwent a transformation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. While much of the distinctively medieval culture remained, civilization was enriched by a revival of classical art. The painters, the sculptors, and the architects now sought models not exclusively in their own Christian masters but in many cases in pagan Greek and Roman forms. Gradually the two lines of development were brought together, and the resulting union--the adaptation of classical art-forms to Christian uses--was marked by an unparalleled outburst of artistic energy.

From that period of exuberant art-expression in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, our present-day love of beautiful things has come down in unbroken succession. With no exaggeration it may be said that the sixteenth century is as much the basis of our modern artistic life as it is the foundation of modern Protestantism or of modern world empire. The revolutions in commerce and religion synchronized with the beginning of a new era in art. All arts were affected--architecture, sculpture, painting, engraving, and music.

[Sidenote: Architecture]

In architecture, the severely straight and plain line of the ancient Greek temples or the elegant gentle curve of the Roman dome was substituted for the fanciful lofty Gothic. A rounded arch replaced the pointed. And the ancient Greek orders--Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian-- were dragged from oblivion to embellish the simple symmetrical buildings. The newer architecture was used for ecclesiastical and other structures, reaching perhaps its highest expression in the vast cathedral of St. Peter, which was erected at Rome in the sixteenth century under the personal direction of great artists, among whom Raphael and Michelangelo are numbered.

[Sidenote: In Italy]

The revival of Greek and Roman architecture, like humanism, had its origin in Italy; and in the cities of the peninsula, under patronage of wealthy princes and noble families, it attained its most general acceptance. But, like humanism, it spread to other countries, which in turn it deeply affected. The chronic wars, in which the petty Italian states were engaged throughout the sixteenth century, were attended, as we have seen, by perpetual foreign interference. But Italy, vanquished in politics, became the victor in art. While her towns surrendered to foreign armies, her architects and builders subdued Europe and brought the Christian countries for a time under her artistic sway.

[Sidenote: In France]

Thus in France the revival was accelerated by the military campaigns of Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I, which led to the revelation of the architectural triumphs in Italy, the result being the importation of great numbers of Italian designers and craftsmen. Architecture after the Greek or Roman manner at once became fashionable. Long, horizontal lines appeared in many public buildings, of which the celebrated palace of the Louvre, begun in the last year of the reign of Francis I (1546), and to-day the home of one of the world's greatest art collections, is a conspicuous example.

[Sidenote: In Other Countries]

In the second half of the sixteenth century, the new architecture similarly entered Spain and received encouragement from Philip II. About the same time it manifested itself in the Netherlands and in the Germanies. In England, its appearance hardly took place in the sixteenth century. it was not until 1619 that a famous architect, Inigo Jones (1573-1651), designed and reared the classical banqueting house in Whitehall, and not until the second half of the seventeenth century did Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723), by means of the majestic St. Paul's cathedral in London, render the new architecture popular in England.

[Sidenote: Sculpture]

Sculpture is usually an attendant of architecture, and it is not surprising, therefore, that transformation of the one should be connected with change in the other. The new movement snowed itself in Italian sculpture as early as the fourteenth century, owing to the influence of the ancient monuments which still abounded throughout the peninsula and to which the humanists attracted attention. In the fifteenth century archaeological discoveries were made and a special interest fostered by the Florentine family of the Medici, who not only became enthusiastic collectors of ancient works of art but promoted the study of the antique figure. Sculpture followed more and more the Greek and Roman traditions in form and often in subject as well. The plastic art of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was strikingly akin to that of Athens in the fifth or fourth centuries before Christ.

The first great apostle of the new sculpture was Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), whose marvelous doors on the baptistery at Florence elicited the comment of Michelangelo that they were "worthy of being placed at the entrance of paradise." Slightly younger than Ghiberti was Donatello (1383-1466), who, among other triumphs, fashioned the realistic statue of St. Mark in Venice. Luca della Robbia (1400-1482), with a classic purity of style and simplicity of expression, founded a whole dynasty of sculptors in glazed terra-cotta. Elaborate tomb- monuments, the construction of which started in the fifteenth century, reached their highest magnificence in the gorgeous sixteenth-century tomb of Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, the founder of the princely family of Visconti in Milan. Michelangelo himself was as famous for his sculpture as for his painting or his architecture; the heroic head of his David at Florence is a work of unrivaled dignity. As the style of classic sculpture became very popular in the sixteenth century, the subjects were increasingly borrowed from pagan literature. Monuments were erected to illustrious men of ancient Rome, and Greek mythology was once more carved in stone.

The extension of the new sculpture beyond Italy was even more rapid than the spread of the new architecture. Henry VII invited Italian sculptors to England; Louis XII patronized the great Leonardo da Vinci, and Francis I brought him to France. The tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain was fashioned in classic form. The new sculpture was famous in Germany before Luther; in fact, it was to be found everywhere in sixteenth-century Europe.

[Sidenote: Painting]

Painting accompanied sculpture. Prior to the sixteenth century, most of the pictures were painted directly upon the plaster walls of churches or of sumptuous dwellings and were called frescoes, although a few were executed on wooden panels. In the sixteenth century, however, easel paintings--that is, detached pictures on canvas, wood, or other material--became common. The progress in painting was not so much an imitation of classical models as was the case with sculpture and architecture, for the reason that painting, being one of the most perishable of the arts, had preserved few of its ancient Greek or Roman examples. But the artists who were interested in architecture and sculpture were likewise naturally interested in painting; and painting, bound by fewer antique traditions, reached a higher degree of perfection in the sixteenth century than did any of its allied arts.

Modern painting was born in Italy. In Italy it found its four great masters--Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian. The first two acquired as great a fame in architecture and in sculpture as in painting; the last two were primarily painters.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), a Florentine by birth and training, was patronized in turn by the Sforza family of Milan, by the Medici of Florence, and by the French royal line. His great paintings--the Holy Supper and Madonna Lisa, usually called La Gioconda--carried to a high degree the art of composition and the science of light and shade and color. In fact, Leonardo was a scientific painter--he carefully studied the laws of perspective and painstakingly carried them into practice. He was also a remarkable sculptor, as is testified by his admirable horses in relief. As an engineer, too, he built a canal in northern Italy and constructed fortifications about Milan. He was a musician and a natural philosopher as well. This many-sided man liked to toy with mechanical devices. One day when Louis XII visited Milan, he was met by a large mechanical lion that roared and then reared itself upon its haunches, displaying upon its breast the coat-of-arms of France: it was the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo influenced his age perhaps more than any other artist. He wrote extensively. He gathered about himself a large group of disciples. And in his last years spent in France, as a pensioner of Francis I, he encouraged painting in that country as well as in Italy.

Michelangelo (1475-1564), Florentine like Leonardo, was probably the most wonderful of all these artists because of his triumphs in a vast variety of endeavors. It might almost be said of him that "jack of all trades, he was master of all." He was a painter of the first rank, an incomparable sculptor, a great architect, an eminent engineer, a charming poet, and a profound scholar in anatomy and physiology. Dividing his time between Florence and Rome, he served the Medici family and a succession of art-loving popes. With his other qualities of genius he combined austerity in morals, uprightness in character, a lively patriotism for his native city and people, and a proud independence. To give any idea of his achievements is impossible in a book of this size. His tomb of Julius II in Rome and his colossal statue of David in Florence are examples of his sculpture; the cathedral of St. Peter, which he practically completed, is his most enduring monument; the mural decorations in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, telling on a grandiose scale the Biblical story from Creation to the Flood, are marvels of design; and his grand fresco of the Last Judgment is probably the most famous single painting in the world.

[Sidenote: Raphael]

Younger than Michelangelo and living only about half as long, Raphael (1483-1520), nevertheless, surpassed him in the harmonious composition and linear beauty of his painting. For ineffable charm of grace, "the divine" Raphael has always stood without a peer. Raphael lived the better part of his life at Rome under the patronage of Julius II and Leo X, and spent several years in decorating the papal palace of the Vatican. Although he was, for a time, architect of St. Peter's cathedral, and displayed some aptitude for sculpture and for the scholarly study of archæeology, it is as the greatest of modern painters that he is now regarded. Raphael lived fortunately, always in favor, and rich, and bearing himself like a prince.

[Sidenote: Titian]

Titian (c. 1477-1576) was the typical representative of the Venetian school of painting which acquired great distinction in bright coloring. Official painter for the city of Venice and patronized both by the Emperor Charles V and by Philip II of Spain, he secured considerable wealth and fame. He was not a man of universal genius like Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo; his one great and supreme endowment was that of oil painting. In harmony, light, and color, his work has never been equaled. Titian's portrait of Philip II was sent to England and proved a potent auxiliary in the suit of the Spanish king for the hand of Mary Tudor. His celebrated picture of the Council of Trent was executed after the aged artist's visit to the council about 1555.

From Italy as a center, great painting became the heritage of all Europe. Italian painters were brought to France by Louis XII and Francis I, and French painters were subsidized to imitate them. Philip II proved himself a liberal patron of painting throughout his dominions.

[Sidenote: Dürer]

In Germany, painting was developed by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), a native of Nuremberg, who received a stimulus from Italian work and was royally patronized by the Emperor Maximilian. The career of Dürer was honored and fortunate: he was on terms of friendship with all the first masters of his age; he even visited and painted Erasmus. But it is as an etcher or engraver, rather than as a painter, that Dürer's reputation was earned. His greatest engravings--such as the Knight and Death, and St. Jerome in his Study--set a standard in a new art which has never been reached by his successors. The first considerable employment of engraving, one of the most useful of the arts, synchronized with the invention of printing. Just as books were a means of multiplying, cheapening, and disseminating ideas, so engravings on copper or wood were the means of multiplying, cheapening, and disseminating pictures which gave vividness to the ideas, or served in place of books for those who could not read.

The impetus afforded by this extraordinary development of painting continued to affect the sixteenth century and a greater part of the seventeenth. The scene shifted, however, from Italy to the Spanish possessions. And Spanish kings, the successors of Philip II, patronized such men as Rubens (1577-1640) and Van Dyck (1599-1641) in the Belgian Netherlands, or Velasquez (1590-1660) and Murillo (1617-1682) in Spain itself.

[Sidenote: Rubens and Van Dyck]

If the work of Rubens displayed little of the earlier Italian grace and refinement, it at any rate attained to distinction in the purely fanciful pictures which he painted in bewildering numbers, many of which, commissioned by Marie de' Medici and King Louis XIII of France, are now to be seen in the Louvre galleries in Paris. And Van Dyck raised portrait painting to unthought-of excellence: his portraits of the English royal children and of King Charles I are world-famous.

[Sidenote: Velasquez] [Sidenote: Murillo]

Within the last century, many connoisseurs of art have been led to believe that Velasquez formerly has been much underrated and that he deserves to rank with the foremost Italian masters. Certainly in all his work there is a dignity, power, and charm, especially in that well- known Maids of Honor, where a little Spanish princess is depicted holding her court, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, her dwarfs and her mastiff, while the artist himself stands at his easel. The last feat of Velasquez was to superintend the elaborate decorations in honor of the marriage of the Spanish Infanta with King Louis XIV of France. Murillo, the youngest of all these great painters, did most of his work for the Catholic Church and naturally dealt with ecclesiastical subjects.

A somewhat different type of painter is found in the Dutchman, Rembrandt (1606-1669), who lived a stormy and unhappy life in the towns of Leyden and Amsterdam. It must be remembered that Holland, while following her national career of independence, commerce, and colonial undertaking, had become stanchly Protestant. Neither the immoral paganism of antiquity nor the medieval legends of Catholicism would longer appeal to the Dutch people as fit subjects of art. Rembrandt, prototype of a new school, therefore painted the actual life of the people among whom he lived and the things which concerned them--lively portraits of contemporary burgomasters, happy pictures of popular amusements, stern scenes from the Old Testament. His Lesson in Anatomy and his Night Watch in their somber settings, are wonderfully realistic products of Rembrandt's mastery of the brush.

[Sidenote: Rembrandt] [Sidenote: Music]

Thus painting, like architecture and sculpture, was perfected in sixteenth-century Italy and speedily became the common property of Christian Europe. Music, too, the most primitive and universal of the arts, owes in its modern form very much to the sixteenth century. During that period the barbarous and uncouth instruments of the middle ages were reformed. The rebeck, to whose loud and harsh strains the medieval rustic had danced, [Footnote: The rebeck probably had been borrowed from the Mohammedans.] by the addition of a fourth string and a few changes in form, became the sweet-toned violin, the most important and expressive instrument of the modern orchestra. As immediate forerunner of our present-day pianoforte, the harpsichord was invented with a keyboard carried to four octaves and the chords of each note doubled or quadrupled to obtain prolonged tones.

[Sidenote: Palestrina]

In the person of the papal organist and choir-master, Palestrina (1524- 1594), appeared the first master-composer. He is justly esteemed as the father of modern religious music and for four hundred years the Catholic Church has repeated his inspired accents. A pope of the twentieth century declared his music to be still unrivaled and directed its universal use. Palestrina directly influenced much of the Italian music of the seventeenth century and the classical German productions of the eighteenth.

NATIONAL LITERATURE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: Latin and the Vernaculars]

Latin had been the learned language of the middle ages: it was used in the Church, in the universities, and in polite society. If a lecturer taught a class or an author wrote a book, Latin was usually employed. In those very middle ages, however, the nations of western Europe were developing spoken languages quite at variance with the classical, scholarly tongue. These so-called vernacular languages were not often written and remained a long time the exclusive means of expression of the lower classes--they consequently not only differed from each other but tended in each case to fall into a number of petty local dialects. So long as they were not largely written, they could achieve no fixity, and it was not until after the invention of printing that the national languages produced extensive national literatures.

Just when printing was invented, the humanists--the foremost scholars of Europe--were diligently engaged in strengthening the position of Latin by encouraging the study of the pagan classics. Virgil, Cicero, Caesar, Tacitus, and the comedies of Plautus and Terence were again read by educated people for their substance and for their style. Petrarch imitated the manner of Latin classics in his letters; Erasmus wrote his great works in Latin. The revival of Greek, which was also due to the humanists, added to the learning and to the literature of the cultured folk, but Greek, even more than Latin, was hardly understood or appreciated by the bulk of the people.

Then came the sixteenth century, with its artistic developments, its national rivalries, its far-away discoveries, its theological debates, and its social and religious unrest. The common people, especially the commercial middle class, clamored to understand: and the result was the appearance of national literatures on a large scale. Alongside of Latin, which was henceforth restricted to the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church and to particularly learned treatises, there now emerged truly literary works in Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, English, etc. The printing of these works at once stereotyped their respective languages, so that since the sixteenth century the written forms of the vernacular tongues have been subject to relatively minor change. Speaking generally, the sixteenth century witnessed the fixing of our best known modern languages.

To review all the leading writers who employed the various vernaculars in the sixteenth century would encroach too much upon the province of professed histories of comparative literature, but a few references to certain figures that tower head and shoulders above all others in their respective countries may serve to call vividly to mind the importance of the period for national literatures.

[Sidenote: Italian Literature]

At the very outset, one important exception must be made in favor of Italy, whose poetry and prose had already been immortalized by Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio a hundred years and more before the opening of the sixteenth century. But that country, as we have already repeatedly observed in many kinds of art, anticipated all others in modern times. Italy, almost the last European land to be politically unified, was the first to develop a great national literature.

But Italian literature was broadened and popularized by several influential writers in the sixteenth century, among whom stand preeminent the Florentine diplomat Machiavelli (1469-1527), whose _Prince_ really founded the modern science of politics, and who taught the dangerous doctrine that a ruler, bent on exercising a benevolent despotism, is justified in employing any means to achieve his purpose; Ariosto (1474-1533), whose great poem _Orlando Furioso_ displayed a powerful imagination no less than a rare and cultivated taste; and the unhappy mad Tasso (1544-1595), who in _Jerusalem Delivered_ produced a bulky epic poem, adapting the manner of Virgil to a crusading subject, and in Aminta gave to his countrymen a delightful pastoral drama, the exquisite lyrics of which were long sung in opera.

[Sidenote: French literature]

French literature, like other French art, was encouraged by Francis I. He set up printing presses, established the College of France, and pensioned native writers. The most famous French author of the time was the sarcastic and clever Rabelais (c. 1490-1553), whose memorable _Gargantua_ comprised a series of daring fanciful tales, told with humor of a rather vulgar sort. The language of _Gargantua_ is somewhat archaic--perhaps the French version of Calvin's _Institutes_ would be a better example of the French of the sixteenth century. But France, thus seriously beginning her national literature, was to wait for its supremacy until the seventeenth century--until the institution of the French Academy and the age of Louis XIV.

[Sidenote: Spanish Literature]

Spanish literature flourished in the golden era when Velasquez and Murillo were painting their masterpieces. The immortal _Don Quixote_, which was published in 1604, entitles its author, Cervantes (1547-1616), to rank with the greatest writers of all time. Lope de Vega (1562-1635), far-famed poet, virtually founded the Spanish theater and is said to have composed eighteen hundred dramatic pieces. Calderon (1600-1681), although less effective in his numerous dramas, wrote allegorical poems of unequaled merit. The printing of large cheap editions of many of these works made Spanish literature immediately popular.

[Sidenote: Portuguese Literature]

How closely the new vernacular literatures reflected significant elements in the national life is particularly observable in the case of Portugal. It was of the wonderful exploring voyages of Vasco da Gama that Camoens (1524-1580), prince of Portuguese poets, sang his stirring _Lusiads_.

[Sidenote: German Literature]

In the Germanies, the extraordinary influence of humanism at first militated against the development of literature in the vernacular, but the Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, in his desire to reach the ears of the common people, turned from Latin to German. Luther's translation of the Bible constitutes the greatest monument in the rise of modern German.

To speak of what our own English language and literature owe to the sixteenth century seems superfluous. The popular writings of Chaucer in the fourteenth century were historically important, but the presence of very many archaic words makes them now difficult to read. But in England, from the appearance in 1551 of the English version of Sir Thomas More's _Utopia_, [Footnote: Originally published in Latin in 1516.] a representation of an ideal state, to the publication of Milton's grandiose epic, _Paradise Lost_, in 1667, there was a continuity of great literature. There were Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer and the King James Version of the Bible; Edmund Spenser's graceful _Faerie Queene_; [Footnote: For its scenery and mechanism, the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto furnished the framework; and it similarly shows the influence of Tasso.] the supreme Shakespeare; Ben Jonson and Marlowe; Francis Bacon and Richard Hooker; Thomas Hobbes and Jeremy Taylor; and the somber Milton himself.

BEGINNINGS OF MODERN NATURAL SCIENCE

[Sidenote: Two-fold Development of Culture, Science and Art]

Human civilization, or culture, always depends upon progress in two directions--the reason, and the feelings or emotions. Art is the expression of the latter, and science of the former. Every great period in the world's history, therefore, is marked by a high appreciation of aesthetics and an advance in knowledge. To this general rule, the sixteenth century was no exception, for it was distinguished not only by a wonderful development of architecture, sculpture, painting, engraving, music, and literature,--whether Roman, Greek, or vernacular,--but it is the most obvious starting point of our modern ideas of natural and experimental science.

Nowadays, we believe that science is at once the legitimate means and the proper goal of the progress of the race, and we fill our school curricula with scientific studies. But this spirit is essentially modern: it owes its chief stimulus to important achievements in the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth.

[Sidenote: Characteristics of the Sixteenth Century]

Five elements contributed to impress the period that we are now reviewing with a scientific character. In the first place, the humanists encouraged a critical spirit in comparing and contrasting ancient manuscripts and in investigating the history of the distant past; and their discovery and application of pagan writings served to bring clearly and abruptly before the educated people of the sixteenth century all that the Greeks and Romans had done in astronomy, physics, mathematics, and medicine, as well as in philosophy, art, and literature. Secondly, the invention of printing itself was a scientific feat, and its extended use enabled scientists, no less than artists, immediately to acquaint the whole civilized world with their ideas and demonstrations.

Thirdly, the marvelous maritime discoveries of new routes to India and of a new world, which revolutionized European commerce, added much to geographical knowledge and led to the construction of scientific maps of the earth's surface. Fourthly, the painstaking study of a small group of scholars afforded us our first glimpse of the real character of the vast universe about our own globe--the scientific basis of modern astronomy. Lastly, two profound thinkers, early in the seventeenth century,--Francis Bacon and Descartes,--pointed out new ways of using the reason--the method of modern science.

In an earlier chapter, an account has been given of the maritime discoveries of the sixteenth century and their immediate results in broadening intellectual interests. In this chapter, some attention already has been devoted to the rise of humanism and likewise to the invention of printing. It remains, therefore, to say a few words about the changes in astronomy and in scientific method that characterized the beginning of modern times.

[Side Note: Astronomy]

In the year 1500 the average European knew something about the universe of sun, moon, planets, and stars, but it was scarcely more than the ancient Greeks had known, and its chief use was to foretell the future. This practical aspect of astronomy was a curious ancient misconception, which now passes under the name of astrology. It was popularly believed prior to the sixteenth century that every heavenly body exerted a direct and arbitrary influence upon human character and events, [Footnote: Disease was attributed to planetary influence. This connection between medicine and astrology survives in the sign of Jupiter 4, which still heads medicinal prescriptions.] and that by casting "horoscopes," showing just how the stars appeared at the birth of any person, the subsequent career of such an one might be foreseen. Many silly notions and superstitions grew up about astrology, yet the practice persisted. Charles V and Francis I, great rivals in war, vied with each other in securing the services of most eminent astrologers, and Catherine de' Medici never tired of reading horoscopes.

[Sidenote: "The Ptolemaic System"]

Throughout the middle ages the foremost scholars had continued to cherish the astronomical knowledge of the Greeks, which had been conveniently collected and systematized by a celebrated mathematician and scholar living in Egypt in the second century of the Christian era --Ptolemy by name. Among other theories and ideas, Ptolemy taught that the earth is the center of the universe, that revolving about it are the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, the other planets, and the fixed stars, and that the entire machine is turned with incredible velocity completely around every twenty-four hours. This so-called Ptolemaic system of astronomy fitted in very nicely with the language of the Bible and with the popular prejudice that the earth remains stationary while the heavenly bodies daily rise and set. It was natural that for many centuries the Christians should accept the views of Ptolemy as almost divinely inspired.

[Sidenote: "The Copernican System"]

However, a contradictory theory of the solar system was propounded and upheld in the sixteenth century, quite supplanting the Ptolemaic theory in the course of the seventeenth. The new system is called Copernican after its first modern exponent--and its general acceptance went far to annihilate astrology and to place astronomy upon a rational basis.

Copernicus [the Latin form of his real name, Koppernigk (1473-1543)] was a native of Poland, who divided his time between official work for the Catholic Church and private researches in astronomy. It was during a ten-year sojourn in Italy (1496-1505), studying canon law and medicine, and familiarizing himself, through humanistic teachers, with ancient Greek astronomers, that Copernicus was led seriously to question the Ptolemaic system and to cast about in search of a truthful substitute. Thenceforth for many years he studied and reflected, but it was not until the year of his death (1543) that his results were published to the world. His book--_On the Revolutions of the Celestial Bodies_, dedicated to Pope Paul III--offered the theory that the earth is not the center of the universe but simply one of a number of planets which revolve about the sun. The earth seemed much less important in the Copernican universe than in the Ptolemaic.

The Copernican thesis was supported and developed by two distinguished astronomers at the beginning of the next century--Kepler (1571-1630) and Galileo (1564-1642), one a German, the other an Italian. Kepler taught astronomy for a number of years at Gratz and subsequently made his home in Prague, where he acquired a remarkable collection of instruments [Footnote: From Tycho Brahe, whose assistant he was in 1600-1601.] that enabled him to conduct numerous interesting experiments. While he entertained many fantastic and mystical theories of the "harmony of the spheres" and was not above casting horoscopes for the emperor and for Wallenstein, that soldier of fortune, [Footnote: See below, pp. 223, 226.] he nevertheless established several of the fundamental laws of modern astronomy, such as those governing the form and magnitude of the planetary orbits. It was Kepler who made clear that the planets revolve about the sun in elliptical rather than in strictly circular paths.

Galileo popularized the Copernican theory. [Footnote: Another "popularizer" was Giordano Bruno (c. 1548-1600).] His charming lectures in the university of Padua, where he taught from 1592 to 1610, were so largely attended that a hall seating 2000 had to be provided. In 1609 he perfected a telescope, which, although hardly more powerful than a present-day opera glass, showed unmistakably that the sun was turning on its axis, that Jupiter was attended by revolving moons, and that the essential truth of the Copernican system was established. Unfortunately for Galileo, his enthusiastic desire to convert the pope immediately to his own ideas got him into trouble with the Roman Curia and brought upon him a prohibition from further writing. Galileo submitted like a loyal Catholic to the papal decree, but had he lived another hundred years, he would have rejoiced that almost all men of learning--popes included--had come to accept his own conclusions. Thus modern astronomy was suggested by Copernicus, developed by Kepler, and popularized by Galileo.

The acquisition of sound knowledge in astronomy and likewise in every other science rests primarily upon the observation of natural facts or phenomena and then upon deducing rational conclusions from such observation. Yet this seemingly simple rule had not been continuously and effectively applied in any period of history prior to the sixteenth century. The scientific method of most of the medieval as well as of the ancient scholars was essentially that of Aristotle. [Footnote: Exception to this sweeping generalization must be made in favor of several medieval scientists and philosophers, including--Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar of the thirteenth century.] This so-called deductive method of Aristotle assumed as a starting-point some general of principle as a premise or hypothesis and thence proceeded, by logical reasoning, to deduce concrete applications or consequences. It had been extremely valuable in stimulating the logical faculties and in showing men how to draw accurate conclusions, but it had shown a woeful inability to devise new general principles. It evolved an elaborate theology and a remarkable philosophy, but natural experimental science progressed relatively little until the deductive method of Aristotle was supplemented by the inductive method of Francis Bacon.

[Sidenote: Modern Method of Science: Introduction. Francis Bacon]

Aristotle was partially discredited by radical humanists, who made fun of the medieval scholars who had taken him most seriously, and by the Protestant reformers, who assailed the Catholic theology which had been carefully constructed by Aristotelian deduction. But it was reserved for Francis Bacon, known as Lord Bacon (1561-1626), to point out all the shortcomings of the ancient method and to propose a practicable supplement. A famous lawyer, lord chancellor of England under James I, a born scientist, a brilliant essayist, he wrote several philosophical works of first-rate importance, of which the _Advancement of Learning_ (1604) and the _Novum Organum_ (1620) are the most famous. It is in these works that he summed up the faults which the widening of knowledge in his own day was disclosing in ancient and medieval thought and set forth the necessity of slow laborious observation of facts as antecedent to the assumption of any general principle.

[Sidenote: Descartes]

What of scientific method occurred to Lord Bacon appealed even more to the intellectual genius of the Frenchman Descartes (1596-1660). A curious combination of sincere practicing Catholic and of original daring rationalist was this man, traveling all about Europe, serving as a soldier in the Netherlands, in Bavaria, in Hungary, living in Holland, dying in Sweden, with a mind as restless as his body. Now interested in mathematics, now in philosophy, presently absorbed in physics or in the proof of man's existence, throughout his whole career he held fast to the faith that science depends not upon the authority of books but upon the observation of facts. "Here are my books," he told a visitor, as he pointed to a basket of rabbits that he was about to dissect. The _Discourse on Method_ (1637) and the _Principles of Philosophy_ (1644), taken in conjunction with Bacon's work, ushered in a new scientific era, to some later phases of which we shall have occasion to refer in subsequent chapters.

ADDITIONAL READING

THE RENAISSANCE. GENERAL. _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. I (1902), ch. xvi, xvii; _Histoire générale_, Vol. IV, ch. vii, viii, Vol. V, ch. x, xi; E. M. Hulme, _Renaissance and Reformation_, 2d ed. (1915), ch. v-vii, xix, xxix, xxx. More detailed accounts: Jakob Burckhardt, _The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy_, trans. by S. G. C. Middlemore, 2 vols. (1878), 1 vol. ed. (1898), scholarly and profound; J. A. Symonds, _Renaissance in Italy_, 5 parts in 7 vols. (1897-1898), interesting and suggestive but less reliable than Burckhardt; Ludwig Geiger, _Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland_ (1882), in the great Oncken Series; F. X. Kraus, _Geschichte der christlichen Kunst_, 2 vols. in 4 (1896-1908), a monumental work of great interest and importance, by a German Catholic.

HUMANISM. The best description of the rise and spread of humanism is J. E. Sandys, _A History of Classical Scholarship_, Vol. II (1908). For the spirit of early humanism see H. C. Hollway-Calthrop, _Petrarch: his Life and Times_ (1907); J. H. Robinson and H. W. Rolfe, _Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters_, 2d ed. (1914), a selection from Petrarch's letters to Boccaccio and other contemporaries, translated into English, with a valuable introduction; Pierre de Nolhac, _Pétrarque et l'humanisme_, 2d ed., 2 vols. in 1 (1907). Of the antecedents of humanism a convenient summary is presented by Louise Loomis, _Mediæval Hellenism_ (1906). A popular biography of Erasmus is that of Ephraim Emerton, _Desiderius Erasmus_ (1899); the Latin _Letters of Erasmus_ are now (1916) in course of publication by P. S. Allen; F. M. Nichols, _The Epistles of Erasmus_, 2 vols. (1901-1906), an excellent translation of letters written prior to 1517; Erasmus's _Praise of Folly_, in English translation, is obtainable in many editions. D. F. Strauss, _Ulrich von Hutten, his Life and Times_, trans. by Mrs. G. Sturge (1874), gives a good account of the whole humanistic movement and treats Hutten very sympathetically; _The Letters of Obscure Men_, to which Hutten contributed, were published, with English translation, by F. G. Stokes in 1909. An excellent edition of _The Utopia_ of Sir Thomas More, the famous English humanist, is that of George Sampson (1910), containing also an English translation and the charming contemporary _Biography_ by More's son-in-law, William Roper. The standard summary of the work of the humanists is the German writing of Georg Voigt, _Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums_, 3d ed., 2 vols. (1893). Interesting extracts from the writings of a considerable variety of humanists are translated by Merrick Whitcomb in his _Literary Source Books_ of the Renaissance in Germany and in Italy (1898-1899).

INVENTION OF PRINTING. T. L. De Vinne, _Invention of Printing_, 2d ed. (1878), and, by the same author, _Notable Printers of Italy during the Fifteenth Century_ (1910), two valuable works by an eminent authority on the subject; G. H. Putnam, _Books and their Makers during the Middle Ages_, 2 vols. (1896-1897), a useful contribution of another experienced publisher; Johannes Janssen, _History of the German People_, Vol. I, Book I, ch. i. There is an interesting essay on "Publication before Printing" by R. K. Root in the _Publications of the Modern Language Association_, Vol. XXVIII (1913), pp. 417-431.

NATIONAL LITERATURES. Among the many extended bibliographies of national literatures the student certainly should be familiar with the _Cambridge History of English Literature_, ed. by A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller, 12 vols. (1907-1916); and with G. Lanson, _Manuel bibliographique de la littérature française moderne_, 1500-1900, 4 vols. (1909-1913). See also, as suggestive references, Pasquale Villari, _The Life and Times of Machiavelli_, 2 vols. in i (1898); A. A. Tilley, _The Literature of the French Renaissance_, 2 vols. (1904); George Saintsbury, _A History of Elizabethan Literature_ (1887); and Sir Sidney Lee, _Life of Shakespeare_, new rev. ed. (1915).

ART IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. Architecture: A. D. F. Hamlin, _A Textbook of the History of Architecture_, 5th ed. (1902), a brief general survey; _A History of Architecture_, Vols. I, II by Russell Sturgis (1906), III, IV by A. L. Frothingham (1915); Banister Fletcher, _A History of Architecture_, 5th ed. (1905); James Fergusson, _History of Architecture in All Countries_, 3d rev. ed., 5 vols. (1891-1899). Sculpture: Allan Marquand and A. L. Frothingham, _A Text-book of the History of Sculpture_ (1896); Wilhelm von Lubke, _History of Sculpture_, Eng. trans., 2 vols. (1872). Painting: J. C. Van Dyke, _A Text-book of the History of Painting_, new rev. ed. (1915); Alfred von Woltmann and Karl Woermann, _History of Painting_, Eng. trans., 2 vols. (1894). Music: W. S. Pratt, _The History of Music_ (1907). See also the _Lives of Seventy of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects_ by Giorgio Vasari (1512-1574), the contemporary and friend of Michelangelo, trans. by Mrs. Foster in the Bohn Library; Osvald Siren, _Leonardo da Vinci: the Artist and the Man_ (1915); and Romain Rolland, _Michelangelo_ (1915).

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. _Cambridge Modem History_, Vol. V (1908), ch. xxiii, Vol. IV (1906), ch. xxvii, scholarly accounts of Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, and their contemporaries. A veritable storehouse of scientific facts is H. S. and E. H. Williams, _A History of Science_, 10 vols. (1904-1910). Specifically, see Arthur Berry, _Short History of Astronomy_ (1899); Karl von Gebler, _Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia_, Eng. trans. by Mrs. George Sturge (1879); B. L. Conway, _The Condemnation of Galileo_ (1913); and Galileo, _Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences_, Eng. trans. by Crew and Salvio (1914). _The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon_, ed. by J. M. Robertson (1905), is a convenient edition. On the important thinkers from the time of Machiavelli to the middle of the eighteenth century, see Harald Hoffding, _A History of Modern Philosophy_, Vol. I (1900); W. A. Dunning, _A History of Political Theories from Luther to Montesquieu_ (1905); Paul Janet, _Histoire de la science politique dans ses rapports avec la morale_, 3d ed., Vol. II (1887).