WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 55 



ture which, were so instrumental in producing that inter- 

 esting phenomenon known in history as the Eevival of 

 Learning. But whatever date be assigned for the begin- 

 ning of the Eenaissance, whether it be the year when Con- 

 stantinople fell into the hands of the Turk or the fateful 

 millennial year which was to witness the termination of all 

 things, there certainly was never at any period a distinct 

 breach of historical continuity between the old order and 

 the new. 



This is particularly true of Italy where the Renaissance 

 had its origin. For here, during the entire mediaeval pe- 

 riod, there never was a time when the study of antiquity 

 was completely neglected; when the traditions of the old 

 Roman culture had died out, or when the art and the 

 literature of the classical ages of the past had ceased to 

 exert an influence on artists and scholars. Ozanam was, 

 then, right when he declared that the night of the Dark 

 Age, which in Italy intervened between "the intellectual 

 daylight of antiquity and the dawn of the Renaissance," 

 was, in reality, like ' ' one of those luminous nights in which 

 the fading brightness of evening is prolonged into the 

 first beaming of the morning. ' ' 1 



So much, indeed, was this the case that those who have 

 made the most profound study of the Middle Ages recog- 

 nize a first Renaissance in the twelfth century, which was 

 not less real than the Renaissance par excellence of the 

 fifteenth century, a renaissance which counts such masters 

 of Latinity as Abelard, John of Salisbury and Hildebert 

 of Tours, and such schools as that of Chartres, where clas- 

 sical Latin was taught with as much thoroughness as in 

 the great universities of Europe during the brilliant age 

 of the humanists. It was then, as Rashdall truly observes, 

 that "a revival of architecture heralded, as it usually 



i"Une de ces nuits lumineuses ou les derni&res claries du soir 

 se prolongent jusqu'aux premieres blancheurs du matin." Documents 

 Inedits, p. 78, Paris, 1850. 



