ABSTRACT
What the Renaissance was and how it was disseminated will always be a matter of controversy. 1 That a far-reaching series of changes took place in the culture of early modern Europe between c.1450 and c.1650 is not really in doubt. However, the old narrative – that Italian humanism travelled north across the Alps, transforming a theocentric medieval universe as it went, until modernity was established via the adoption of the principles of perspective in artworks, Machiavellian belief in the lack of principles in politics and the dominance of the printing press – has been modified. We now have a more nuanced understanding of the European Renaissance as a global phenomenon, which looked east for cultural enrichment, as well as west to spread its influence; which changed the nature of religious worship, but which did not imagine or desire a waning of its influence; and which understood the significance of humanism and the recovery of humanist texts but could not easily determine whether the answer was to change the nature of Latin culture or to develop the vernacular (Cummings and Simpson).
