In Switzerland from 1516 to 1525 - James Aitken Wylie

not – my work must be done nevertheless; but alas!
for the opposers; nor throne, nor realm, nor name
shall be left them.
One thing has struck all who have studied, with
minds at once intelligent and reverent, the era of
which we speak, and that is the contemporaneous
appearance of so many men of great character and
sublimest intellect at this epoch. No other age can
show such a galaxy of illustrious names. The
nearest approach to it in history is perhaps the wellknown
famous half-century in Greece. Before the
appearance of Christ the Greek intellect burst out
all at once in dazzling splendor, and by its
achievements in all departments of human effort
shed a glory over the age and country. Most
students of history have seen in this wondrous
blossoming of the Greek genius a preparation of
the world, by the quickening of its mind and the
widening of its horizon, for the advent of
Christianity. We find this phenomenon repeated,
but on a larger scale, in Christendom at the opening
of the sixteenth century.
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