the reawakening of the antique in Art and Literature are its component parts; but its essence can only be grasped if we regard the Renaissance as the blossoming and unfolding of the mind of the Italian people. The early Renaissance was indeed the Vita Nuova of the nation. It is an error to believe that it was in opposition to the Church. Art and the artists of the thirteenth century recognised no such opposition. It is the Church who gives the artists employment and sets them their tasks. The circle of ideas in which they move is still entirely religious: the breach with the religious allegory and symbolism of the Middle Ages did not take place until the sixteenth century. In the fourteenth century the spread of naturalistic thought brought about a new conception of the beauty of the human body; this phase was in opposition to the monastic ideal, yet it had in it no essential antagonism to Christianity. It was a necessary stage of the development which was to lead from realism dominant for a time to a union of the idealist and realist standpoints. Many of the Popes were entirely in sympathy with this Renaissance; several of them opposed the pagan and materialistic degeneration of Humanism, but none of them accused the art of the Renaissance of being inimical to Christianity.
Its pagan and materialistic side, not content with restoring antique knowledge and culture to modern humanity, eagerly laid hold of the whole intellectual life of a heathen time, together with its ethical perceptions, its principles based on sensual pleasure and the joy of living; these it sought to bring to life again. This impulse was felt at the very beginning of the fifteenth century; since the middle of the century it had ventured forth even more boldly in Florence, Naples, Rome in the days of Reggio, Valla, Beccadelli, and despite many a repulse had even gained access to the steps of the Papal throne. A literature characterised by the Facetiae, by Lorenzo Valla's Voluptas and Beccadelli's Hermaphroditus could not but shock respectable feeling. Florence was the headquarters of this school, and Lorenzo il Magnifico its chief supporter. Scenes that took place there in his day in the streets and squares, the extravagances of the youth of the city lost in sensuality, the writings and pictures offered to the public, would and must seem to earnest-minded Christians a sign of approaching dissolution. A reaction was both natural and justifiable. Giovanni Dominici had introduced it at the beginning of the century, and Fra Antonino of San Marco had supported it, while Archbishop of Florence, with the authority of his blameless life devoted to the service of his fellow-men. And so Cosimo's foundation became the centre and starting-point of a movement destined to attack his own House. At the head of that movement stood Fra Girolamo Savonarola. Grief over the degradation of the Church had driven him into a monastery and now it led him forth to the pulpits of San Marco and Santa Maria del Fiore. As a youth he had sung his dirge De Ruina Ecclesiae in a canzone since grown
