sance" means, literally, a new birth. With a little less degree of literalness it has come to mean a revival of anything long in decay or in disuse. As applied to a movement in history, it means the movement which marks the transition from the medieval to the modern time, a movement which was distinguished for both a revival of classical, especially ancient Greek, learning, and, along with that learning, an intense interest in all art and literature. This historical movement came first in Italy, as early as the fourteenth century, and reached its height there in the last years of the fifteenth century and the first few years of the sixteenth. After the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, a great number of Greek scholars fled westward from that city and added much impetus to the renaissance movement all over western Europe.

General features of the beginning of the Renaissance in England. It was not until the sixteenth century that the renaissance movement began directly and strongly to influence England. Chaucer in the fourteenth century had come into contact with the early Renaissance through his Italian studies. Yet he was not so much interested in individual details of life as were the Italian men of the Renaissance. While Chaucer

vividly portrayed individual characters, and was interested to some extent in the importance of every individual incident, and situation, and thing, just as the men of the Renaissance were, yet he seems to have directed his attention more to the group than to the individual, for his characters were Knight, Parson, Man-of-Law, Priest, Plowman, Merchant, and the like, or representatives of types, rather than individuals with "given "

names.

But at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Crusades were over, those great military expeditions from the nations of Europe made to the Holy Land to deliver the sepulcher of Christ from the hands of the Turks. All that the Crusaders had brought back of new thoughts and wider visions of life from the East was being absorbed by the rest of the people of western Europe. Many inventions — of gunpowder, of the mariner's compass, of the printing press-made people come together in larger numbers in war, \made sea commerce more safe, and made more rapid the spread of ideas. The scholars from Constantinople stimulated Italy first, and then through Italy stimulated the people of other nations, to an interest in the arts, the literature, and the philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome, and in the quite advanced science of the Arabians. Men began to become more liberal and kindly in their attitude and thought concerning others, and the art of living together, which is civilization, advanced with great strides. England, since the days of Edward I, who reigned from 1272 to 1307, had been a well-unified state. And under Henry VII, a Welshman of the Tudor family who came to the throne in 1485 after the overthrow of Richard III of the house of York, the way had been opened for the union of Scotland with England. All classes of people, including royalty itself, became subject to the law of the land, and hence a new era of

E

unified interests began. Furthermore, with the beginning of the sixteenth century the voyages of Sebastian Cabot laid the foundations of England's colonial empire. The thoughts of men began to widen, and became ready for the makers of literature to lead and to inspire them.

The "Oxford Reformers." —Now about this time many English scholars, eager for greater learning, went from Oxford University to Italy, especially to the fair city of Florence. Among these scholars was one named John Colet. Colet found in Florence a great awakening of mental life under the pressure and inspiration which learned Jews and Greeks were bringing from farther east. He found there also a rather well-advanced movement for making over, or re-forming, the Christian Church and its beliefs. John Colet came back to England inspired by both the new learning and the zeal for reform.

A fellow worker with John Colet was Thomas More, gentle, lovable, happy Thomas More,-who afterwards became Sir Thomas More and Chancellor to the crown. Another fellow worker was Erasmus, who had been a student in the University of Paris, France, but who had come to Oxford University, England, to study Greek, because he was too poor to go to Italy to do so. These three men stood foremost in learning and culture in the England of that day, the time of Henry VIII. There were also many other wise and brilliant and hard-working scholarly men in the University of Oxford, and out of it, too, who, only a little less than these three, were a part of the new movement towards better thinking and better living.

1. To Spenser

When Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509, he was a musician, a scholar, a good business man, a generous and openhearted character in almost every way, whatever in his later

life he turned out to be. The three scholars we have mentioned found him a sympathetic helper. With his encouragement, Erasmus wrote a book entitled The Christian Prince; and More wrote one which he called Utopia. The Italian historian and political thinker, Machiavelli, had already written a book which is still very noted, under the title of The Prince. Machiavelli's book was written at a time when Italy was seething with political turmoil because of the almost uncontrolled power exercised by warring nobles. Machiavelli, therefore, had advocated unlimited power in the hands of one man as Prince of the commonwealth, who would bend every element of the state to the working out of his superior will. But Erasmus and More were living in a realm in which, for the time, at least, a fairer condition prevailed. Erasmus advocated the guiding of a ruler's actions by the Golden Rule. Sir Thomas More urged a similar course, asking that all property be held in common by the people as a whole, and that the election of all priests as well as all magistrates be by the ballot of the people. Colet preached more than he wrote, but along with Erasmus and More undertook to reform the theological system of the day, the scholastic system, and the feudal system of the political and landowning

caste.

The Religious Reformation. In the days of the "Oxford Reformers" there was occurring upon the continent of Europe what in European history is called "The Reformation." This movement was largely under the leadership of Martin Luther, a Saxon monk. But, just as the Englishmen agreed with the Italian Machiavelli in the need for political reform, yet differed with him in the manner of its being achieved, so, while they agreed with Luther in the chief of his doctrines, that of justification by faith, and urged with him that true worship was of the heart and not of ceremonies, yet they disagreed with many

other of the doctrines which Luther had derived from St. Augustine. So it came about that both political and religious reforms took a different course from that followed upon the continent. In the meantime, for all Europe, the progress of reform was complicated by the fact that some able Italians, holding as strongly as Luther or the Oxford reformers to the doctrine of justification by faith alone and aided to some degree by Pope Paul III, attempted to make over the Roman Catholic Church from within; but their attempt was checked at the Council of Trent in 1545 by the new and powerful society of the Jesuits. However, before the date of this council, England, as early as 1529, had broken permanently away from the Papal control, though the immediate occasion for the royal leadership in the break was not all a matter of religious and ecclesiastical conviction and policy; it was partly personal and secular. All of these things were the beginnings of the great wave which finally broke in the French Revolution of 1789.

Tyndale's Bible. The most important literary, as well as religious, event of the last years of Henry's reign was one that we should expect to come from the current turmoil. We should expect it as the result of the endeavor to give to all the people privileges which had hitherto belonged to the few. This event was the sanctioning, in 1536, of the use, in all churches, of the translation of the Scriptures which was made by William Tyndale and revised by Miles Coverdale. Mr. Arnold Bennett has said that the secret of England's greatness lies in the familiarity of the people with the family Bible. It had been Tyndale's ambition to see that the Scriptures in English should be in the hands of even every English plowboy. And he very nearly attained that goal. Furthermore, his translation of the New Testament was made in 1525 in Antwerp, and because that city along with Bruges was the center of the commerce