In Other European Countries

From Italy the Renaissance spread to France, Germany, England, Spain, and other countries. Erasmus (1466?-1536), the great Dutch scholar, often is credited with interpreting the movement for northern Europe. A new school of painting was a notable development in the Netherlands and Flanders. In Germany the strongest expression of the Renaissance was in humanistic philosophy. The humanism of Germany and the Low Countries was less artistic, less worldly on moral questions, and less indifferent to traditional Christian attitudes than was the humanism of Italy.

In France the movement bore a rich harvest in literature. Francois Rabelais (1494?-1553) and Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) typify the new spirit in their country. Pierre de Ronsard and other poets of the Pléiades group contributed to it when they wrote in the meters and on the themes of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

The Renaissance began late in Spain, but it produced the writer Cervantes and the painters Velázquez and El Greco. Scholars from England began pilgrimages to Italy during the latter half of the 15th century. One of these was Thomas Linacre, who taught Erasmus and Sir Thomas More at Oxford. The English Renaissance reached its finest achievement in the Elizabethan age, when Shakespeare was writing his plays and Francis Bacon was pursuing his philosophical and scientific investigations.