ABSTRACT
It is commonly accepted that in western Europe, in the period from around 1450 to around 1600, there was a 'Renaissance': a great intellectual movement of rebirth ('re-naissance') aimed at restoring the ways of thinking and acting which had been typical of ancient Greece and Rome. This Renaissance is generally taken as marking the end of the medieval world and hence the beginnings of our 'modern' world. This movement has left its most obvious monuments in painting and architecture, but it affected music, modes of writing, philosophy and most other areas of intellectual endeavour too.
