Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2

e to the age of
Racine and Descartes. Germany was so distracted by religious wars, Spain
was so down-trodden by the Inquisition, that they do not offer equally
luminous examples.[8] It may be added that in all these nations the end
of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries are
marked by a similar revolt against formality and common sense, to which
we give the name of the Romantic movement.

[Footnote 8: With regard to Germany, see Mr. T. S. Perry's acute and
philosophical study, entitled _From Opitz to Lessing_ (Boston).]

Quitting this sphere of speculation, we may next point out that the
European system had undergone an incalculable process of transformation.
Powerful nationalities were in existence, who, having received their
education from Italy, were now beginning to think and express thought
with marked originality. The Italians stood no longer in a relation of
uncontested intellectual superiority to these peoples, while they met
them under decided disadvantages at all points of political efficiency.
The Mediterranean had ceased to be the high road of commercial
enterprise and naval energy. Charles V.'s famous device of the two
columns, with its motto _Plus Ultra_, indicated that illimitable
horizons had been opened, that an age had begun in which Spain, England
and Holland should dispute the sovereignty of the Atlantic and Pacific
oceans. Italy was left, with diminished forces of resistance, to bear
the brunt of Turk and Arab depredations. The point of gravity in the
civilized world had shifted. The Occidental nations looked no longer
toward the South of Europe.

While these various causes were in operation, Catholic Christianity
showed signs of re-wakening. The Reformation called forth a new and
sincere spirit in the Latin Church; new antagonisms were evoked, and
new efforts after self-preservation had to be made by the Papal
hierarchy. The center of the world-wide movement which is termed the
Counter-Reformation was naturally Rome. Events had brought

John Addington Symonds (October 5, 1840 - April 19, 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. He was an early advocate of the validity of male love which included for him pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships, and which he would refer to as lamour de limpossible.

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