THE RENAISSANCE* 



By C. Martin-Sperry. 



It is quite impossible to define the Renaissance in so many words, 

 because there was nothing definite about it either in time or in action. 

 It was a movement which marked a break in the world's history such as 

 cannot elsewhere be equalled, except perhaps by the appearance of 

 Christianity, and possibly by the rise of Mahomedanism. History cannot 

 be studied in periods because periods have no beginning and no end, and 

 because while one country is passing through one phase, its neighbour is 

 passing through another. It has been said that Modern History deals 

 with the period in which the problems that still occupy us came into con- 

 scious recognition, and were dealt with in ways intelligible to us. If this 

 be so, then Modern History dates from the Renaissance. The atmos- 

 phere of the centuries before that movement is wholly different from the 

 one in which we live'. The frame of mind of the Crusader is utterly unin- 

 telligible to us ; it requires a considerable effort of the imagination to 

 picture baronial society in the time of the Wars of the Roses. But from 

 the Renaissance downwards men, customs, ideas, modes of thought all 

 begin to be intelligible. With Shakespeare, Galileo or Elizabeth, we 

 seem to have something in common, but Dante and Roger Bacon seem 

 men made in another mould. No one can afford to disregard the 

 Renaissance: It is the one movement in History that affects not only 

 one or two subjects, but almost every department of human interest. 

 Put shortly, the Renaissance was the revival of learning, the emancipation 

 of the individual from the environment of circumstances, or as one writer 

 describes it : " the intellectual, moral, spiritual and artistic rebirth of 

 Europe, the emancipation of the soul of Western Humanity from the 

 bondage of scholasticism, and of authority in ethics and theology." 



The fact cannot be too strongly insisted upon that it was a move- 

 ment, and therefore no precise dates can be given for its beginning or its 

 end. It was the transition from the Middle Ages to Modern Times, and 

 it is no more possible to say that it dated from one year and ended in 

 another, than to say when boyhood ends and manhood begins ; the two 

 are insensibly merged in each other. 



The movement took place practically all over Europe, but of the 

 countries in which it was most evident, Italy comes easily first not only 

 in point of time but in the matter of importance, followed later by France 

 Germany and England. No two people agree as to what may be put 

 down as its earliest appearance in Italy, but we may certainly consider it 

 as having been in full swing by the middle of the 15th century. 



The pervading idea is emancipation. Where there has been the 

 restraint of rules, of conventions, of narrow modes of thought, the 

 authority of these is frankly questioned, and is if necessary to be swept 



'Lscture to Yountf M«n'i Guild, June 20th l'J16. 



