Alpha Book

Virgil, Cicero,
Caesar, Tacitus, and the comedies of Plautus and Terence were again
read by educated people for their substance and for their style.
Petrarch imitated the manner of Latin classics in his letters; Erasmus
wrote his great works in Latin. The revival of Greek, which was also
due to the humanists, added to the learning and to the literature of
the cultured folk, but Greek, even more than Latin, was hardly
understood or appreciated by the bulk of the people.
Then came the sixteenth century, with its artistic developments, its
national rivalries, its far-away discoveries, its theological debates,
and its social and religious unrest. The common people, especially the
commercial middle class, clamored to understand: and the result was the
appearance of national literatures on a large scale. Alongside of
Latin, which was henceforth restricted to the liturgy of the Roman
Catholic Church and to particularly learned treatises, there now
emerged truly literary works in Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese,
German, English, etc.


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