Descripción

Aus der Bibliothek von Prof. Wolfgang Haase, langj�igem Herausgeber der ANRW und des International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT) / From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Altersbedingt vergilbt, Einband leicht berieben und besto�n / Yellowed due to age, binding slightly rubbed and scuffed. - INTRODUCTION The exact limits of the historical period called the Renaissance have never been fixed to general satisfaction. But certainly very few have ever thought of Petrarch as a medieval poet. On the other hand, few JL have denied that Francis Bacon was a child of the Renaissance. If we take as terminal points the crowning of Petrarch with the laurel at Rome on April 8, 1341, and the death of Bacon on April 9, 1626, we have a stretch of almost exactly two hundred and eighty-five years that covers the transition from the medieval to the modern world. For that much can be said without fear of effective contradiction: between 1341 and 1626 a world died and a new world was bom. Yet to attempt to characterize succinctly the almost three centuries that intervened is a bewildering task. Small wonder that there has been so much disagreement about the meaning of the term Renaissance, so many variant interpretations, and as much confusion about the relation between the Renaissance and the Reformation. Without attempting to impose an arbitrary and artificial pattern upon the period, however, I have come to believe that there are three large distinct intellectual movements discernible between the mid-fourteenth and the early seventeenth century. The first of these is the classical renaissance or the humanistic revival. The second I call the Counter-Renaissance, since it originated as a protest against the basic principles of the classical renaissance, as well as against those of medieval Scholasticism. (At the same time, the CounterRenaissance constitutes, of course, a part of the historical period called the Renaissance.) The third movement, led by Galileo and Kepler, is perhaps best termed the Scientific Reformation.