ANATOMY DURING THE EUROPEAN RENAISSANCE 69 



to the west, beginning in 1492 with Cohnnbus; these created vast 

 new sources of weakh and power and stimulated the rise of na- 

 tionalism and the formation of huge empires. The revival of in- 

 terest in the culture of antiquity gathered further momentum 

 when the classical scholars of Constantinople fled westward after 

 the fall of that great city in 1453. This brought new minds to 

 Europe, with different ideas, and it provided a potent impulse 

 to the productive imagination of Renaissance man. The intel- 

 lectual and artistic response was everywhere about the same. 

 First, there was a period of critical scholarship (Humanism), then 

 a time of magnificent artistic and literary flowering, followed by 

 a terminal phase. In the last, the science and criticism of the de- 

 veloping age of reason began to overshadow the creative power of 

 the Renaissance. It was particularly the Italians of the period who 

 influenced the surrounding countries of France, Spain, Germany, 

 the Netherlands and England. 



Toward the end of the Renaissance, cultural decay became 

 evident in various countries. This was due to the growth of na- 

 tionalism in Spain, France and England and their expansion 

 into world powers. Such a development reduced the commercial 

 importance of the Italian cities which had been prosperous. 

 Germany, with her feudal states, was severed by the religious 

 disagreements revolving around the Reformation and the Thirty 

 Years War. Elsewhere the creative energy of the Renaissance ex- 

 perienced a more gradual decline. 



B. The Mind of the Renaissance 



The picture which is painted of the minds of the Renaissance 

 by medical psychologists (Zilborg and Henry, '41) is as follows: 

 According to them, in the early part of the period, the Christian 

 world was in a bad state, suffering from the cumulative effects of 

 centuries of superstition. 



Belief in witches was widespread, the average mental stage 

 being about as low as some of the primitive races existing today; 

 in this respect, many physicians believed in them. Two Domini- 

 can brothers, Johann Sprenger and Heinrich Kraemer, as leaders 

 of a movement to exterminate them, wrote a book, The Witches 

 Hammer, described as one of the most horrible documents of that 



