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THE MAKING OF EUROPE / EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY

From Hutton Webster's, Early European History (1917); edited for this on-line publication, by ELLOPOS

Em. Macron, Rediscovering the Path to Europe

» Contents of this Chapter

Meaning of the Renaissance   * Revival of Learning in Italy   * Paper and Printing   * Revival of Art in Italy   * Revival of Learning and Art beyond Italy   * The Renaissance in Literature   * The Renaissance in Education   * The Scientific Renaissance   * The Economic Renaissance

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DANTE AND THE ITALIAN LEAGUE

Dante exerted a noteworthy influence on the Italian language. He wrote the Divine Comedy, not in Latin, but in the vernacular Italian as spoken in Florence. The popularity of this work helped to give currency to the Florentine dialect, and in time it became the literary language of Italy. Italian was the first of the Romance tongues to assume a national character.

PETRARCH, 1304-1374 A.D.

Petrarch, a younger contemporary of Dante, and like him a native of Florence, has been called the first modern scholar and man of letters. He devoted himself with tireless energy to classical studies. Writing to a friend, Petrarch declares that he has read Vergil, Horace, Livy, and Cicero, "not once, but a thousand times, not cursorily but studiously and intently, bringing to them the best powers of my mind. I tasted in the morning and digested at night. I quaffed as a boy, to ruminate as an old man. These works have become so familiar to me that they cling not to my memory merely, but to the very marrow of my bones."

 

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Cf. Jacob Burckhardt's, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

THE MAKING OF EUROPE / EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY: Table of Contents

url: www.ellopos.net/politics/european-history/default.asp

IN PRINT

Cf. The Ancient Greece * The Ancient Rome
Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) * Western Medieval Europe * Renaissance in Italy