ABSTRACT
Intellectuals shifted away from the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. In the early fourteenth century, the Florentine author Petrarch urged people to ignore Aristotle and read Cicero. Now, dialectics and theology were less important than the writings of classical Greek and Roman authors. It was to these ancient writers that Renaissance thinkers turned to discover both the style in which people ought to write and speak and the eternal truths that ought to govern society. Renaissance scholars worked hard to solve these problems. They edited many inaccurate texts and attempted to reconstruct entire works from the remaining fragments. Library searches sometimes yielded copies of works that people thought no longer existed. The Medicis, a powerful Florentine family that flourished from 1389 to 1534, encouraged original literature and new art, such as that of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
