ABSTRACT
The achievements of the Christian Renaissance were, however, as extraordinary as the saintliness of Saint Francis and the genius of Dante. The Renaissance is therefore one of the decisive moments in man's destiny. The Renaissance represented the discovery of both nature and antiquity. This communion with the natural foundations of human life and the discovery of creative forces in the natural sphere prepared the ground for humanism. The dualistic vision of the quattrocento contributes a profound knowledge of man's destiny and provides a striking demonstration of the limits of man's creative expression in the Christian period of universal history. It revealed that free play of creative energies which followed man's liberation from his mediaeval confinement. Humanism, it is clear, reaches its highest point of development and creative effort when it maintains itself on a purely human level as, for example, in the German Renaissance and the personality of Goethe.
