1 This paper was prepared for the session of the International Federation of Societies and Institutes for the Study of the Renaissance at the XIV International Congress of Historical Science, meeting in San Francisco, August 27,1975, on the general theme of ‘Humanism, Religious and Social Utopias in the Renaissance.’ I was asked to make this report on recent American Renaissance studies upon nomination of the Executive Board of the Renaissance Society of America. I was subsequently asked to report on British Renaissance studies also by David Chambers and Nicolai Rubinstein of Britain's Society for Renaissance Studies. I consulted and received information from a number of American, Canadian, and British historians concerning their own work in progress and suggestions concerning themes and books that should be discussed. I found this extremely useful and wish to thank all of them. I only hope my comments have not distorted their statements or their intentions. These scholars were William J. Bouwsma, Gene A. Brucker, Natalie Zemon Davis, Robert M. Kingdon, J. G. A. Pocock, Lewis W. Spitz, and Richard C. Trexler of the United States; Peter Bietenholz, Paul Grendler, and James K. McConica of Canada; A. G. Dickens, Dermot Fenlon, Denys Hay, George A. Holmes, and Philip McNair of Britain. Marvin B. Becker, David Bien, and Raymond Grew of The University of Michigan History Department made valuable criticisms and suggestions concerning earlier drafts of this paper. In the end, however, as is to be expected, this is a highly personal statement concerning certain aspects of Renaissance history, and responsibility for it is entirely mine and not that of so many kind colleagues within the profession.

2 This was predominantly an American matter, and I shall speak of it as such. In Britain a strong traditional interest in constitutional history, in the history of political thought, and a somewhat more recent interest in economic history has continued throughout the twentieth century, with perhaps a much stronger distinction between British history and Italian (or continental Reformation) history than between medieval and Renaissance. A Society for Renaissance Studies has only recently been formed, and to a large degree the slow spread of the influence of the Warburg Institute has kindled an interest in Renaissance studies as well as in history of art and intellectual history.

3 Of course Renaissance studies also retained some vitality in the United States in the early forties, and Panofsky and Kristeller, as the latter reminds me, found a warm reception from such figures as B. L. Ullman, Lester Bradner, and, among historians, Wallace K. Ferguson, at that point writing his important historiographical survey and evaluation of Renaissance history, The Renaissance in Historical Thought (Boston, 1948). Activities of such American scholars on the Committee on Renaissance Studies of the American. Council of Learned Societies led eventually a decade later to the foundation of the Renaisance Society of America. Myron P. Gilmore and the present writer had recently published dissertations in the area of Renaissance history.

4 One effort in recent years to bring about a closer interrelationship of the varying approaches to the study of late medieval and Renaissance religion in its theological, social, and cultural ambience was a conference at The University of Michigan in April 1972. The ensuing volume, The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion (1974), edited by Heiko A. Oberman and myself, may be mentioned for the sake of reference-identification of some of the papers on varying themes whose authors’ work we may want to discuss. Other recent volumes of essays which contain similar matters and to which reference may similarly be made are: Medievalia et Humanistica, N.s. 4 (1973), devoted to medieval and Renaissance spirituality; Transition and Revolution (1974), ed. Robert M. Kingdon; the Festschrifts for E. Harris Harbison, Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe (1969), ed. T. K. Raab and J. E. Seigel; for Hans Baron, Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron (cited above); for “Wallace K. Ferguson, Florilegium Historiale (1971), ed. J. G. Rowe and W. H. Stockdale; for Paul Oskar Kristeller, Itinerarium Italicum: The Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of Its European Transformations (1975), ed. H. A. Oberman (with T. A. Brady, Jr.), Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance (1976), ed. C. H. Clough, and Philosophy and Humanism (1976), ed. E. P. Mahoney. Although they contain a variety of matters falling under various headings, it may be convenient to mention these bibliographically difficult items together.