Where Did It Begin and Why?
It is a natural transition from these considerations to a discussion of why the movement first showed itself in Italy and why it became so widespread. The answer to this query will naturally depend somewhat upon the conception of the movement which has already been agreed upon by teacher and class. If the Renaissance is to be considered, as has been suggested, as primarily a revival of learning, care should be taken to point out the fact that learning had not entirely died out in the Europe of the Middle Ages, but that considerable progress had been made back in the days of Charles the Great and again in the thirteenth century in the rise of universities and the development of the scholastic philosophy. The greater stimulus which followed the revival of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was due rather to a more favorable set of conditions than had heretofore prevailed in Europe. This was especially true of Italy. “It is no mere political mutation,” says Symonds, “no new fashion of art, no restoration of classical standards of taste. The arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the books, which suddenly became vital at the time of the Renaissance, had long lain neglected on the shores of the Dead Sea, which we call the Middle Ages. It was not their discovery which caused the Renaissance; but it was the intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence which enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them.”[4] The enumeration of these favoring circumstances will make necessary a return on the part of the teacher and class to the time of the crusades; and the nearer they approach the fourteenth century, the closer will appear the relation between such phenomena as the passing of feudal conditions, the rise of the bourgeoisie and the awakening of the individual man to a consciousness of his latent powers and resources. The weaving of this chain of circumstances will bring up among other things the rise of national literatures, the founding of universities, the development of town life, the appearance of the Ottoman Turks in Europe, the political and economic condition of the Italian cities, the work of Dante and Petrarch, and the timely invention of the printing press.