Another influence of the time, more powerful because more permanent, was the renaissance movement, which was at this period working its greatest changes and inspiring the most fervid enthusiasm.  A new world had been disclosed to the people of the fifteenth century in the revival of knowledge concerning classic literature and art, and there came to be an absorbing, passionate interest in whatever pertained to the ancients.  Manuscripts were eagerly sought after, translations were diligently made, literature was modelled after the classic writers, to quote and to imitate the ancients became the habit of the day.  A change the most striking was produced in the modes of thought and of life.  The love of nature was revived, and with it a graceful abandonment to the dominion of the senses.  Paganism seemed likely to return upon the world again and to reconquer from Christianity all that it had once lost.  The pagan spirit revived, its tastes and modes of life came back again.  Plato was restored to his old place, and in the minds of the cultured seemed worthier of homage than Christ.  With such as Lorenzo Medici and his literary friends, Platonism was regarded as a religion.

The recovery of classic literature came to the men of this period as a revelation.  It opened a new world to them, it operated upon them like a galvanic shock, it kindled the most fervid enthusiasms.  It also had the effect to restore the natural side of life, to liberate men from a false spiritualism and an excessive idealism.  From despising the human faculties, men came back to an acceptance of their dictation, and even to an animal delight in the senses and passions.  The natural man was deified; but not in the manner of the Greeks, in simplicity and with a pure love of beauty.  An artificial love of nature and the natural in man was the result of the renaissance; a hothouse culture and a corrupting moral development followed.  Passion was given loose rein, the senses took every form of indulgence.  Yet the Church was even worse, while many of the classic scholars were stoic in their moral purity and earnestness.  This movement developed individualism in thought, a selfish moral aim, and intellectual arrogance.  The men who came under its influence cared more for culture than for humanity, they were driven away from the common interests of their fellows by their new intellectual sympathies.  It was the desire of Savonarola to restore the old Christian spirit of brotherhood and helpfulness.  In this his movement was wide apart from that of the renaissance, which gave such tyrants as the Medici a justification for their deliberate attacks on the liberties of the people.  He loved man, they loved personal development.