Came the terrible splash of the Renaissance and overnight everything was changed. But it was only a beginning. For just when the poor burghers had almost recovered from the shock, that dreadful German monk appeared with a whole cartload of specially prepared bricks and dumped them right into the heart of the pontifical lagoon. Really, that was too much. And no wonder that it took the world three centuries to recover from the shock.
The older historians who studied this period often fell into a slight error. They saw the commotion and decided that the ripples had been started by a common cause, which they alternately called the Renaissance and the Reformation.
Today we know better.
The Renaissance and the Reformation were movements which professed to be striving after a common purpose. But the means by which they hoped to accomplish their ultimate object were so utterly different that Humanist and Protestant not infrequently came to regard each other with bitter hostility.
They both believed in the supreme rights of man. During the Middle Ages the individual had been completely merged in the community. He did not exist as John Doe, a bright citizen who came and went at will, who sold and bought as he liked, who went to any one of a dozen churches (or to none at all, as suited his tastes and his prejudices). His life from the time of his birth to the hour of his death was lived according to a rigid handbook of economic and spiritual etiquette. This taught him that his body was a shoddy garment, casually borrowed from Mother Nature and of no value except as a temporary receptacle for his immortal soul.
It trained him to believe that this world was a halfway house to future glory and should be regarded with that profound contempt which travelers destined for New York bestow upon Queenstown and Halifax.
And now unto the excellent John, living happily in the best of all possible worlds (since it was the only world he knew), came the two fairy god-mothers, Renaissance and Reformation, and said: “Arise, noble citizen, from now on thou art to be free.”
But when John asked, “Free to do what?” the answers greatly differed.
“Free to go forth in quest of Beauty,” the Renaissance replied.