322 A BRIEF SURVEY OF HUMAN HISTORY

lt To understand Petrarch is to understand the Renaissance.
He was the first scholar of the medieval time who fully
realized and appreciated the supreme excellence and beauty
of the classical literature and its value as a means of cul-
ture. His enthusiasm for the ancient writers was a sort
of worship."1 His most distinguished disciple was Boccaccio
(1313-75), the inspirer of Chaucer in England. Among the
most prominent promoters of the New Learning were the
famous Medici (Cosimo and Lorenzo) of Florence, and the
Popes, Nicholos V (1447-55), Julius II (1503-13) and Leo
X (1513-21). Under the latter Rome became a brilliant
centre of Renaissance art and learning. When Constantinople
fell, they said, " Greece has not fallen, she has migrated to
Italy." The enthusiasm for culture and learning shown by
the scholars of the Renaissance, the wonderful experience and
achievements of the discoverers, and, finally, the intellectual
freedom gained in the reformation struggle (Professors
Keatinge and Frazer have observed), resulted in such an
outburst of genius in the sixteenth century as the history
of the world has rarely equalled. Every country of Europe
made some contribution to the glorious output. Science
and literature alike yielded master creations of the human
mind.2

We have already mentioned some of the forerunners of
this great awakening : Albertus Magnus (1206-80), Thomas
Aquinas (1226-74), and Roger Bacon (1214-94). The
spirit and outlook of the age are well reflected in the follow-
ing passage from the last named scholar's Opus Maius :

There are two modes in which we acquire knowledge, argu-
ment and experiment. Argument shuts up the question, and
makes us shut it up too, but it gives no proof, nor does it re-

1. Myers, General History, p. 477.

2. Introduction to World History, p. 227.