of the Hussite storm in Bohemia. The council of Constance thought to
quell it by condemnation of Wycliffe's teaching and by the execution of
John Huss (1415). But in vain. The flame burst forth, not in Bohemia
alone, where Huss's death gave the signal for a general rising, but also
in England among the Lollards, and in Germany among those of Huss's
persuasion, who had many points of agreement with the remnant of the
Waldenses.

(See HUSS; WYCLIFFE; LOLLARDS; WALDENSES.)

This was open opposition; but there was besides another opposing force
which, though it raised no noise of controversy, yet was far more widely
severed from the views of the Church than either Wycliffe or Huss: this
was the Renaissance, which began its reign in Italy during the 14th
century. The Renaissance meant the emancipation of the secular world
from the domination of the Church, and it contributed in no small
measure to the rupture of the educated class with ecclesiastical
tradition. Beauty of form alone was at first sought, and found in the
antique; but, with the form, the spirit of the classical attitude
towards life was revived. While the Church, like a careful mother,
sought to lead her children, never allowed to grow up, safely from time
into eternity, the men of the Renaissance felt that they had come of
age, and that they were entitled to make themselves at home in this
world. They wished to possess the earth and enjoy it by means of secular
education and culture, and an impassable gulf yawned between their views
of religion and morality and those of the Church.

This return to the ideals of antiquity did not remain confined to Italy,
but the humanism of the northern countries presents no close parallel to
the Italian renaissance. However much it agreed in admiration of the
ancients, it differed absolutely in its preservation of the fundamental
ideas of Christianity. But neither Reuchlin (d. 1522), Erasmus (d.
1536), Faber d'Etaples (d. 1536), Thomas More (d. 1535), nor the
numerous others who were their disciples, or who shared their views,
were in the least degree satisfied with the conditions prevailing in the
Church. Their ideal was a return to that simplicity of primitive
Christendom which they believed they found revealed in the New Testament
and in the writings of the early Fathers.

To this theology could not point the way. Since the time of Duns Scotus
(d. 1308) theologians had been conscious of the discrepancy between
Aristote