f logical thought based upon actual facts.
They had turned from credulity to inquiry.

_Who Were the Humanists?_--Dante was not a humanist, but he may be said
to have been the forerunner of the Italian humanists, for he furnished
inspiration to Petrarch, the so-called founder of humanism. His
magnificent creation of _The Divine Comedy_, his service in the
foundation of the Italian language, and his presentation of the
religious influence of the church in a liberal manner made him a great
factor in the humanizing of Europe. Dante was neither modern nor
ancient. He stood at the parting of the ways controlling the learning
of the past and looking toward the open door of the future, and
directed thought everywhere to the Latin. His masterpiece was well
received through all Italy, and gave an impulse to learning in many
ways.

Petrarch was the natural successor of Dante. The latter immortalized
the past; the former invoked the spirit of the future. He showed great
enthusiasm in the discovery of old manuscripts, and brought into power
more fully the Latin language. He also attempted to introduce Greek
into the Western world, but in this he was only partially successful.
But in his wide search for manuscripts, monasteries and cathedrals were
ransacked and the literary treasures which the monks had copied and
preserved through centuries, the products of the classical writers of
the early times, were brought to {366} light. Petrarch was an
enthusiast, even a sentimentalist. But he was bold in his expression
of the full and free play of the intellect, in his denunciation of
formalism and slavery to tradition. The whole outcome of his life,
too, was a tendency toward moral and aesthetic aggrandizement.
Inconsistent in many things, his life may be summed up as a bold
remonstrance against the binding influences of tradition and an
enthusiasm for something new.

"We are, therefore," says Symonds,[1] "justified in hailing Petrarch as
the Columbus of a new spiritual hemisphere, the discoverer of modern
culture. That he knew no Greek, that his Latin verse was lifeless and
his prose style far from pure, that his contributions to history and
ethics have been superseded, and that his epistles are now read only by
antiquaries, cannot impair his claim to this title. From him the
inspiration needed to quicken curiosity and stimulate zeal for
knowledge proceeded. But for his intervention in the fourteenth
century it is possibl