Originally published: New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1939.

This book presents a revisionist examination of the development of European intellectual culture between the high middle ages and 1550. It draws particular attention to the roles of Marsilio Ficino and Erasmus and analyzes major aspects of the work of Aquinas, Soctus, and Ockham, before moving on to Petrarch, Valla, Pico della Mirandola, the devotio moderna, More, Luther, Calvin, and their contemporaries. It establishes radically new perspectives on the Renaissance and the Reformation and on the continuity between them. "It is an important work and sets forth new constructs about Renaissance and Reformation that must be considered."--Marion Leathers Kuntz, American Historical Review "[Levi's] skillfully navigated intellectual journey is a tour de force."--Choice "A refreshingly broad vision of the period."--Times Literary Supplement "A massive and learned work. . . . [A] great wealth of learning."--History: Reviews of New Books

This volume brings together an international team of experts who have synthesized and summarized the most recent research on French history of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Using a topical approach to provide broad thematic coverage of the period from 1500 to 1660, eachchapter focuses on a specific area of French history: politics and the state, the economy, society and culture, religion, gender and the family, and France's burgeoning overseas empire, which was constructed in this period. The book is more than a collection of topical essays, however, as eachchapter is linked to the others, together forming a coherent narrative of French history from the advent of the Reformation, through the civil wars of the second half of the sixteenth century, to the Fronde. The result is the most up-to-date synthesis of this period, showing how recent scholarshiphas significantly revised the traditional narrative of French history.

The New York Times bestselling author of How the Irish Saved Civilization reveals how the innovations of the Renaissance and the Reformation changed the Western world. • “Cahill is our king of popular historians.” —The Dallas Morning News This was an age in which whole continents and peoples were discovered. It was an era of sublime artistic and scientific adventure, but also of newly powerful princes and armies—and of unprecedented courage, as thousands refused to bow their heads to the religious pieties of the past. In these exquisitely written and lavishly illustrated pages, Cahill illuminates, as no one else can, the great gift-givers who shaped our history—those who left us a world more varied and complex, more awesome and delightful, more beautiful and strong than the one they had found.

Part of a series aiming to help students and researchers understand key periods in world history, this volume is divided into nine chapters that focus on arts and communication through the period of renaissance and reformation within Europe.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 152-156) and index.