ABSTRACT
The joint influence of the Renaissance and Reformation, championing intellectual progress as they did, helped to open up Catholic theology to debate and criticism. The creation of a safe place to send young men away from their homes where they would be occupied and receive some oversight, universities continued to blossom, thrive, and consolidate local power in their host communities as the Renaissance slowly swept northward through Europe. During the Enlightenment, secular questioning would continue to make inroads in institutions where it was allowed, and by the close of the American and French revolutions, students across Europe and the Atlantic would have numerous models for leaders of ideological or political resistance movements. During the Enlightenment thousands of public and private schools of all levels appeared throughout Europe; in England, education extended even to the poor, and by 1714 tens of thousands of poverty-stricken children all over the country attended charity schools.
