ABSTRACT
The fertile vigour of little Italian States from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century created a new world. Its momentum is still felt in literature, in art and in social life. It was then that woman began to emerge from the protective bondage which barbarism and social insecurity had rendered necessary. The intellectual energy of Italians, fostered by growing wealth and civic pride, culminated in that fine blossoming of life which we speak of as the High Renaissance. Too much stress has been laid on certain men of the Renaissance who lauded the worst vices and indecencies of classical times. Yet it is obvious that the liberation of personal character, in the female hardly less than in the male, gave freedom of action to the whole individual nature; and human nature is of very mixed quality. Some have said that the loss of civic independence was the ruin of Italian virtue.
