The Greatest Story in the World, Period 3 by Horace G. Hutchinson

Apart from the discovery of the West and of the new sea-route to the / East, the most important events in the early years of the sixteenth / century happened in Italy -- Northern Italy. We have seen that Italy / was almost the only country which showed no sign, as yet, of settling / down within something like the boundaries which delimited the / European nations up to the time of the Great War. It must be / understood that this is a statement which takes no account of the / differences made by Napoleon's victories at the beginning of the / nineteenth century. We may disregard them, for the moment, because / they were not lasting.

But the most important of all the events happening in Italy had / nothing to do with changes of territories or national boundaries. / Far more interesting and more helpful to the world was the growth of / that Renaissance, or new birth, of love of letters and of all / artistic beauty which we saw beginning with Dante and Petrarch and / Boccaccio, and some of the early Italian painters, sculptors, and / jewellers. Moreover, we must not forget the glorious architecture / which goes by the name of Gothic, nor the noble buildings in that / Byzantine style which the influence of the Moors carried into Spain.