CONQUEST OF MEXICO.—The Spanish conqueror of Mexico, the land of the Aztecs, was Hernando Cortes (1485-1547). The principal king in that country was Montezuma, whose empire was extensive, with numerous cities, and with no inconsiderable advancement in arts and industry. From Santiago, in 1519, Cortes conducted an expedition composed of seven hundred Spaniards, founded Vera Cruz, where he left a small garrison, subdued the tribe of Tlascalans who joined him, and was received by Montezuma into the city of Mexico. Cortes made him a prisoner in his own palace, and seized his capital. The firearms and the horses of the Spaniards struck the natives with dismay. Nevertheless, they made a stout resistance. To add to the difficulties of the shrewd and valiant leader, a Spanish force was sent from the West Indies, under Narvaez, to supplant him. This force he defeated, and captured their chief. In 1520 Cortes gained over the Mexicans, at Otumba, a victory which was decisive in its consequences. The city of Mexico was recaptured (1521); for Montezuma had been slain by his own people, and the Spaniards driven out. Guatimozin, the new king, was taken prisoner and put to death, and the country was subdued. Cortes put an end to the horrid religious rites of the Mexicans, which included human sacrifices. Becoming an object of jealousy and dread at home, he was recalled (1528). Afterwards he visited the peninsula of California, and ruled for a time in Mexico, but with diminished authority.
CONQUEST OF PERU.—The conquest of Peru was effected by Francisco Pizarro, and Almagro, both illiterate adventurers, equally daring with Cortes, but more cruel and unscrupulous. The Peruvians were of a mild character, prosperous, and not uncivilized, and without the savage religious system of the Mexicans. They had their walled cities and their spacious temples. The empire of the Incas, as the rulers were called, was distracted by a civil war between two brothers, who shared the kingdom. Pizarro captured one of them, Atahualpa, and basely put him to death after he had provided the ransom agreed upon, amounting to more than $17,500,000 in gold (1533). Pizarro founded Lima, near the sea-coast (1535). Almagro and Pizarro fell out with each other, and the former was defeated and beheaded. The land and its inhabitants were allotted among the conquerors as the spoils of victory. The horrible oppression of the people excited insurrections. At length Charles V. sent out Pedro de la Gasca as viceroy (1541), at a time when Gonzalo Pizarro, the last of the family, held sway. Gonzalo perished on the gallows. Gasca reduced the government to an orderly system.
THE AMAZON.—Orellena, an officer of Pizarro, in 1541 first descended the river Amazon to the Atlantic. His fabulous descriptions of an imaginary El Dorado, whose capital with its dazzling treasures he pretended to have seen, inflamed other explorers, and prompted to new enterprises. The cupidity of the Spaniards, and their eagerness for knightly warfare, made the New World, with its floral beauty and mineral riches, a most enticing field for adventure. To devout missionaries, to the monastic orders especially, the new regions were not less inviting. They followed in the wake of the Spanish conquerors and viceroys.
REVIVAL OF LEARNING.—The stirring period of invention and of maritime discovery was also the period of "the revival of learning." Italy was the main center and source of this intellectual movement, which gradually spread over the other countries of Western Europe. There was a thirst for a wider range of study and of culture than the predominantly theological writings and training of the Middle Ages afforded. The minds of men turned for stimulus and nutriment to the ancient classical authors. Petrarch, the Italian poet (1304-1374), did much to foster this new spirit. In the fifteenth century the more active intercourse with the Greek Church, and the efforts at union with it, helped to bring into Italy learned Greeks, like Chrysoloras and Bessarion, and numerous manuscripts of Greek authors. The fall of Constantinople increased this influx of Greek learning. The new studies were fostered by the Italian princes, who vied with one another in their zeal for collecting the precious literary treasures of antiquity, and in the liberal patronage of the students of classical literature. The manuscripts of the Latin writers, preserved in the monasteries of the West, were likewise eagerly sought for. The most eminent of the patrons of learning were the Medici of Florence. Cosmo founded a library and a Platonic academy. All the writings of Plato were translated by one of that philosopher's admiring disciples, Marsilius Ficinus. Dictionaries and grammars, versions and commentaries, for instruction in classical learning, were multiplied. These, with the ancient poets, philosophers, and orators themselves, were diffused far and wide by means of the new art of printing, and from presses, of which the Aldine—that of Aldus Minutius—at Venice was the most famous. "By the side of the Church, which had hitherto held the countries of the West together (though it was unable to do so much longer) there arose a new spiritual influence, which, spreading itself abroad from Italy, became the breath of life for all the more instructed minds in Europe."
CONTEST OF THE NEW AND THE OLD CULTURE.—In Germany, the new learning gained a firm foothold. But there, as elsewhere, the Humanists, as its devotees were called, had a battle to fight with the votaries of the mediæval type of culture, who, largely on theological grounds, objected to the new culture, and were stigmatized as "obscurantists." In Italy, the study of the ancient heathen writers had engendered, or at least been accompanied by, much religious skepticism and indifference. This, however, was not the case in Germany. But the champions of the scholastic method and system, in which logic and divinity, as handled by the schoolmen, were the principal thing, were strenuously averse to the linguistic and literary studies which threatened to supplant them. The advocates of the new studies derided the lack of learning, the barbarous style, and fine-spun distinctions of the schoolmen, who had once been the intellectual masters. The disciples of Aristotle and of the schoolmen still had a strong hold in Paris, Cologne, and other universities. But certain universities, like Tübingen and Heidelberg, let in the humanistic studies. In 1502 Frederick, the elector of Saxony, founded a university at Wittenberg, in which from the outset they were prominent. In England, the cause of learning found ardent encouragement, and had able representatives in such men as Colet, dean of St. Paul's, who founded St. Paul's School at his own expense; and in Thomas More, the author of Utopia, afterwards lord chancelor under Henry VIII.
REUCHLIN: ULRICH VON HUTTEN.—A leader of humanism in Germany was John Reuchlin (1455-1522), an erudite scholar, who studied Greek at Paris and Basel, mingled with Politian, Pica de Mirandola, and other famous scholars at Florence, and wrote a Hebrew as well as a Greek grammar. This distinguished humanist became involved in a controversy with the Dominicans of Cologne, who wished to burn all the Hebrew literature except the Old Testament. The Humanists all rallied in support of their chief, to whom heresy was imputed, and their success in this wide-spread conflict helped forward their cause. Ulrich von Hutten, one of the young knights who belonged to the literary school, and others of the same class, made effective use, against their illiterate antagonists, of the weapons of satire and ridicule.
ERASMUS.—The prince of the Humanists was Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1536). No literary man has ever enjoyed a wider fame during his own lifetime. He was not less resplendent for his wit than for his learning. Latin was then the vehicle of intercourse among the educated. In that tongue the books of Erasmus were written, and they were eagerly read in all the civilized countries. He studied theology in Paris; lived for a number of years in England, where, in company with More and Colet, he fostered the new studies; and finally took up his abode at Basel. In early youth, against his will, he had been for a while an inmate of a cloister. The idleness, ignorance, self-indulgence, and artificial austerities, which frequently belonged to the degenerate monasticism of the day, furnished him with engaging themes of satire. But in his Praise of Folly, and in his Colloquies, the two most diverting of his productions, he lashes the foibles and sins of many other classes, among whom kings and popes are not spared. By such works as his editions of the Church Fathers, and his edition of the Greek Testament, as well as by his multifarious correspondence, he exerted a powerful influence in behalf of culture. If he incurred the hostility of the conservative Churchmen, he still adhered to the Roman communion, and won unbounded applause from the advocates of liberal studies and of practical religious reforms.
LITERATURE IN ITALY.—The first effect of the revival of letters in Italy was to check original production in literature. The charm of the ancient authors who were brought out of their tombs, the belles-lettres studies, and the criticism awakened by them, naturally had this effect for a time. Italy had two great authors in the vernacular, the poet Ariosto (1474-1533), and Machiavelli: it had, besides, one famous historian, Guicciardini (1482-1540).
RENAISSANCE OF ART.—This period was not simply an era of grand exploration and discovery, and of the new birth of letters: it was the brilliant dawn of a new era in art. Sculpture and painting broke loose from their subordination to Church architecture. Painting, especially, attained to a far richer development.
ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE.—In architecture and sculpture, the influence of the antique styles was potent. Under the auspices of Brunelleschi (1377-1446), the Pitti Palace and other edifices of a like kind had been erected at Florence. At Rome, Bramante (who died in 1515), and, in particular, Michael Angelo (1475-1564), who was a master in the three arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, and a poet as well, were most influential. The great Florentine artist Ghiberti (1378-1455), in the bronze gates of the Baptistery, exhibited the perfection of bas-relief. The highest power of Michael Angelo, as a sculptor, is seen in his statue of Moses at Rome, and in the sepulchers of Julian and Lorenzo de Medici at Florence. A student of his works, Cellini (1500-1571) is one of the men of genius of that day, who, like his master, was eminently successful in different branches of art. In the same period, there were sculptors of high talent in Germany, especially at Nuremberg, where Adam Kraft (1429-1507), and Peter Vischer (1435-1529), whose skill is seen in the bronze tomb of Sebaldus, in the church of that saint, are the most eminent. After the death of Michael Angelo, in Italy there was a decline in the style of sculpture, which became less noble and more affected.