Much of Spain was still in the hands of the Moors, who were in many respects more civilized than their Christian neighbors. Portugal was enlightened and advanced.
The great schism known as the Babylonish Captivity which had rent the Catholic Church in twain, with rival popes ruling at Rome and Avignon, had come to an end, and for the time being the unity of Christendom was undisturbed.
The political conditions of Europe were thus more favorable than they had been for a long time for the development of the intellectual life. They were still far from ideal and there were many dark days in store, but the bad old times were never fully to come back.
This political condition, however, was only a background for the revival of intellectual activity known as the Renaissance which distinguishes this remarkable period.
This movement may perhaps be said to have begun with Petrarch, the Italian poet, philosopher, and student, who died in 1374. By the middle of the fifteenth century, however, many men had appeared in the world of letters whose names are famous for all time. These great thinkers and writers revived the study of the ancient languages, recast the study of philosophy, and even ventured to discuss the fundamentals of religion. In so doing they not only revived the ancient learning, but started a new one.
New universities sprang up, among them Erfurt in 1392, Leipsic in 1409, St. Andrews, in Edinburgh, in 1411, Louvain in 1426. The revival of the study of great literature in Italy may be said to have begun about 1400. About 1450, there were many eminent Greek scholars and their enthusiasm for Greek literature had led to the revival of the philosophy of Plato.
The revival of interest in the art of the ancients, classic literature, and the philosophy of Plato brought about the great advance of modern art which marked the second half of the century, Perugino, the teacher of Raphael, being born in 1446.
All this intellectual activity stirred a new spirit of adventure. Just as the men whose intellectual energies had been absorbed in the petty quarrels of church and state now devoted themselves to constructive thinking, so those whose physical energies had been devoted to the constant succession of small wars of which we have spoken now gave themselves to exploration. By the middle of the century important discoveries had been made by the exploring expeditions sent out by the Portuguese prince, Henry the Navigator. The known world was to be doubled in size by the voyage of Columbus before the end of the century.
It is easy to see that all this meant the creation of many books. Learning without books is a manifest impossibility. There was a renewed interest in the old books and a great call for copies of them. All this new learning and discovery required books for record and for dissemination. It is true there were many more books than there had been formerly and many more were being made, but the possibility of supply was hopelessly behind the demand. Great libraries were being formed and many individuals had remarkable collections of books. Some of these libraries still exist, the best known probably being the library of the Vatican, at Rome, which was started in 1447. The trade of book-making had long since outgrown the monastery. As we saw in the preceding volume, practically all of the book-making of the so-called Dark Ages was in the monasteries and much was still done there, but there was now in existence a regularly organized trade of copyists. No really good book of this period was complete without its ornamental capitals, pictures, and other embellishments. These adornments, or illuminations, as they were called, extended in some cases to every page of a book. They were not generally made by the men who did the copying or writing of the text, but by a class of specially trained men who were called illuminators.
Clearly the shortcomings of the manuscript books are very evident. First and foremost must be placed the absolute impossibility of making by the laborious process of writing out by hand anything like the number of books required to meet the demand. Either some new method of making books must be devised or the new learning and the new civilization were to be strangled at birth. Moreover, the manuscript books were necessarily very costly and they were also very inaccurate. Any one who has had any experience in the hand-copying of large amounts of manuscript will see how impossible it is to avoid errors, even with the most careful checking over. It is not probable that any two copies of any manuscript book were ever exactly alike. It is true that the invention of printing did not automatically remove errors. Indeed errors and inaccuracies, very common in the early books, are far from unknown at present, but at any rate all the copies of one edition are alike and errors may be corrected either in subsequent editions or by the insertion of errata in the printed book.