§ 62. THE INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING. 565
centre of the arts and culture. The new tastes and pursuits also found a home in Ferrara, Urbino, Naples, Milanj and Mantua.
Glorious the achievement of the Renaissance was, but it was the last movement of European significance in which Italy and the popes took the lead. Had the current of aesthetic and intellectual enthusiasm joined itself to a stream of religious regeneration, Italy might have kept in advance of other nations, but she produced no safe prophets. No Reformer arose to lead her away from dead religious forms to living springs of spiritual life, from ceremonies and relics to the New Testament.
In spreading north to Germany, Holland and England, the movement took on a more serious aspect. There it produced no poets or artists of the first rank, but in Reuchlin and Erasmus it had scholars whose erudition not only attracted the attention of their own but benefited succeeding generations and contributed directly to the Reformation. South of the Alps, culture was the concern of a special class and took on the form of a diversion, though it is true all classes must have looked with admiration upon the works of art that were being produced.
It was, then, the mission of the Renaissance to start the spirit of free inquiry, to certify to the mind its dignity, to expand the horizon to the faculties of man as a citizen of the world, to recover from the dust of ages the literary treasures and monuments of ancient Greece and Rome, to inaugurate a style of fresh description, based on observation, in opposition to the dialectic circumlocution of the scholastic philosophy, to call forth the laity and to direct attention to the value of natural morality and the natural relationships of man with man. To the monk beauty was a snare, woman a temptation, pleasure a sin, the world vanity of vanities. The Humanist taught that the present life is worth living. The Renaissance breathed a cosmopolitan spirit and fostered universal sympathies. In the spirit of some of the yearnings of the later Roman authors, Dante exclaimed again, "My home is the world. "^ 1 Burckhardt, I. 145.
666 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
§ 63. Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio.
Dante, Petrarea and Boccaccio represent tlie-birth and gifiyy of Italian literature and ushered in the new literary and artistiy age^ Petrarea and Boccaccio belong chiefly to the department of literary culture ; Dante equally to it and the realm of religious thought and composition. The period covered by their lives extends over more than a hundred years, from Dante's birth in 1265 to Boccaccio's death, 1375.
Dante_Alighiexi, 1265=-1321, the first of Italian and the greatest of mediajval poe^s, has given us in his Divina Commedia, the Divine Comedy, conceived in 1300, a poetic view of the moral universe under the aspect of eternity, — sub specie ceternitatis. Born in Florence, he xgad under his teacher Brunetto Latini, whom in later years he praised, Virgil, Horace, Ovid and other Latin authors- In the heated conflict of parties, going on in his native city, he at first took the side of the Guelfs as against the Ghibellines, who were in favor of the imperial regime in Italy. InjL3(iP, he was elected one of the priori or chief magistrates, approved the severe measures then employed towards political opponents and, after a brief tenure of office, was exiled. The decree of exile threatened to burn^ him alive if hu ventured to return to the city. After wandering about, going to Pari^and perhaps further west, he settled down in Ravenna, where he died and where his ashes still lie. After his death, Florence accorded the highest honors to his memory. Her request for his body was refused by Ravenna, but she created a chair for the exposition of the Divine Comedo/, with Boccaccio as its first occupant, and erected to her distinguished son an imposing monument in the church of Santa Croce and a statue on the square in front. In 1865, all Italy joined Florence in celebrating the 6th centenary of the poet's birth. Never has study been given to Dante's great poem as a work of art by wider circles and with more enthusiasm than to-day, and it will continue to serve as a prophetic v^nce of ciivine judgment and mercy as long as religious feeling seQ^s expression.
Dante was a layman, married and had seven children. Aij.