ABSTRACT
By the 1300s, Italians believed that their society was suffering from a lack of knowledge and poor education. At its most basic, then, the European renaissance was a reform movement that tried to make art, education, religion, and politics similar to the reformers' ideals of classical Greek, Roman, and early Christian cultures and traditions. The reformers believed that this renewed focus on education would create an educated population that could participate in public life in virtuous manner—a philosophy that would also underlie the vision of the founders of the United States in the 1780s. Drawing on renaissance practice of dialogue and debate, Martin Luther called for an academic dialogue, with research based on traditional authority, to establish truth regarding the use of indulgences to wash away sin. Thus was born the Protestant Reformation. Although the Reformation took slightly different paths in different areas of Europe, especially in England, the splintering of Christian denominations had a profound effect on western world.
