The Portable Renaissance Reader

Edited with an Introduction by James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin

Essential passages form the works of more than 100 fifteenth-and sixteenth-century thinkers and writers, including Erasmus, Cervantes, Boccaccio, Montaigne, Bodin, Dürer, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Rabelais, Leonardo, Cellini, Copernicus, Galileo, Savonarola, Luther, and Calvin.

IntroductionSuggestions for Further Reading (Revised, 1967)Biographical List of AuthorsChronological TablePart One: An Age of GoldThis Our AgeWar and the Golden AgeJean de MontreuilThe Turkish Menace Cardinal BessarionA Bleak ProspectPope Pius IIThe Golden Age in Florence Marsilio FicinoAn Age of GoldErasmus of RotterdamThe Restoration of the Gospel Jacques Lefèvre d'ÉtaplesThe Necessary EvilsRichard EdenThe Golden Age Toquato TassoThe Excellence of This Age Loys Le RoyThe Evils of the Times Justus LipsiusDon Quixote and the Golden Age Miguel de Cervantes SaavedraThe Return of the MusesThe Man of Letters Francesco PetrarcaThe Return of the Muses Giovanni BocaccioPetrarca and the Art of Poetry Leonardo BruniThe Glory of the Latin Language Lorenzo VallaGermany Invokes the Muses Joachim von WattThe Arts Reborn Giorgio VasariThe New-Found WorldThe Golden World Pietro Martire d'AnghieraJoyful News from the New-Found World Nicolas MonardesAvarice Luis de LeónThe Old World and the New Michel de MontaigneTobacco, Tobacco AnonymousPart Two: The City of Man