The pagan Renaissance is no more. A hundred years of interpretation of Burckhardt's thesis has erased most traces of those fearless individuals whose fascination with the almost living statuary of antiquity, whose reckless disregard for Christian symbols, whose awe before the figures of Scipios and Catos had brought them to despise the theological and abnegatory world which had mothered them. Renaissance man remained a Christian, even a pious one. The shapes of the world and its art might be in transition, but the cosmology of its inhabitants remained Christian.

What exactly is meant by: ‘This remained a Christian age’? I think the idea is that Christian dogmas and beliefs remained essentially unaltered: first, the authority of the church to define doctrine was unquestioned; second, the leading figures of the age were generally traditionally Christian in their attitudes, neither better nor worse, perhaps, than previous generations.

Several excellent studies of the theology of Lefèvre d'Étaples are in print. Although they approach his work from a variety of perspectives all it seems reach essentially similar conclusions. They all take for granted that Lefèvre's application of humanist principles to the study of the Bible marked a notable break with the past. All admit that his stress on the inner reception of the Word, his consequent insistence on a hermeneutic which was at the same time more direct and more spiritual, and his more or less exclusive evangelicism represented a clear departure from the established modes of religious thought. On the other hand, Hahn, Dörries, and the others all agree that Lefèvre's thought must be clearly differentiated from the more radical evangelicisms of Luther or Calvin.

At the beginning of 1445 the kingdom of France lay in ruins after a century of warfare. Yet in the spring of that year a reform began which ultimately brought military victory to the house of Valois and restored peace and effective political direction to the lands of the French monarchy. Charles VII, acting with the support of many elements of French society, created the famed Compagnies d'ordonnance which proved instrumental in ending the chaos which had threatened the destruction of the realm. Charles's military innovation was strikingly simple and clearly evolutionary. It amounted to little more than the enforcement of many previous royal edicts concerning military affairs directed against independent mercenary companies.

One of the crucial problems in early modern history continues to be the relationship between the movements commonly called the Renaissance and the Reformation, and the part played by the Northern Humanists in both. Detrimental to its solution has been the comparative neglect of the strategic role of Philipp Melanchthon, as well as the school of humanist educators that graduated from the halls of this Praeceptor Germaniae. In him as in none other, not even Erasmus, we have the full convergence of Northern Humanism with the Protestant Reformation. On the other hand, some scholars have mistakenly assumed that the emphasis on the Bible among the German reformers led to its domination of their schools.

For Thomas More the topic of suicide clearly had special significance. In his public life he encountered several instances of self-destruction; his concern with suicide in all its aspects is reflected in his major works, including Utopia and A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation; and ultimately he had to decide whether his decision not to recognize Henry the Eighth as spiritual leader of England was equivalent to an act of suicide. More's approach to suicide is consistent throughout his writings, and there is no discrepancy at all between his written statements and the actions of his life. His earliest known contact with suicide occurred at the end of 1514, when a certain Richard Hunne, a wealthy merchant tailor who had been committed to the Lollards’ Tower at St. Paul's on a charge of heresy, was found hanged in his cell.

In his description of life at the courts of Italian princes during the Renaissance, Jacob Burckhardt looks upon the ideal cortegiano of Baldassare Castiglione as an embodiment of the self-possessed and self-centered individualism of the period. The courtier, he asserts, ‘was regarded by the civilization of that age as its choicest flower; and the court existed for him rather than he for the court'. As a consequence of his assumption, Burckhardt could discern no. unity between the earlier and the later portions of Castiglione's work.

When John of Legnano died in Bologna on 16 February 1383, the University lost an esteemed professor and the city one of its best loved leaders. Born in Milan and educated at Bologna, Legnano became well known as a professor of canon law at the University and a man of wide learning, loyal both to the Church and to the city which adopted him. His writings were numerous, ranging from standard legal commentaries and tracts to treatises on theology, moral and political philosophy, astronomy, and optics. His broadest reputation, however, came from the authorship of De Fletu Ecclesiae (1378-1380), a series of arguments defending the validity of Urban VI's election at the outbreak of the Great Western Schism. Through this work he became the chief spokesman for the Italian Pope on a politicalecclesiastical question which concerned every state in Europe.

It was Petrarch's lot to live through the massive onslaught of bubonic plague in 1348 known as the Black Death. In poetry and prose, he recorded his subjective response. We know him indeed more intimately than any other man of the late medieval West. This paper concerns the way he looked at the event—the way he responded to private losses and to public calamity. My plan is essentially narrative, to tell a psychological story. The story helps to illuminate both Petrarch's creative processes and the way the Black Death touched and modified cultural history.

Petrarch scholars have recognized, of course, the centrality of the theme of death in his work. Of Bosco's Francesco Petrarca, it has been said, ‘Seeking a single key, [Bosco] views the sense of life's transitoriness as the radiant core of the Petrarch phenomenon … ‘.

Almost all Elizabethan criticism of any seriousness and weight was written in Latin. Yet no one would imagine this, to look at the literary histories.’ A Latin treatise in defense of poetry and acting by Alberico Gentili, which it is my purpose here to edit and translate, has altogether escaped the notice of historians of criticism and students of Elizabethan literature, even though it was published at Oxford by the University Printer, in the greatest days of Queen Elizabedi's reign.

The main outlines of the life of Alberico Gentili are well enough known. He was born in Italy at San Ginesio in 1552, and studied at the University of Perugia, whence he graduated as a doctor of civil law in 1572. A Protestant, suspected of heresy, he was compelled to flee the Inquisition, along with his father Matteo, and younger brother Scipione.

Almost all Elizabethan criticism of any seriousness and weight was written in Latin. Yet no one would imagine this, to look at the literary histories.’ A Latin treatise in defense of poetry and acting by Alberico Gentili, which it is my purpose here to edit and translate, has altogether escaped the notice of historians of criticism and students of Elizabethan literature, even though it was published at Oxford by the University Printer, in the greatest days of Queen Elizabedi's reign.

The main outlines of the life of Alberico Gentili are well enough known. He was born in Italy at San Ginesio in 1552, and studied at the University of Perugia, whence he graduated as a doctor of civil law in 1572. A Protestant, suspected of heresy, he was compelled to flee the Inquisition, along with his father Matteo, and younger brother Scipione.