Rebirth. Beginning in the mid fourteenth century, many scholars and writers began to be concerned with the decline of the arts and the corruption of the Latin language after the barbarian invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries. Italian poet Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), often considered the father of humanism, called upon his contemporaries to engage in new initiatives in the arts and education that would enable future generations to walk out of "the slumber of forgetfulness into the pure radiance of the past." Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Italian scholars were most keenly aware of the distinctive juncture between the ancient world and medieval society, and they saw themselves as apostles of a new golden age that would usher in the rinascita (rebirth) of civilization by restoring the literary and artistic standards of classical society. These scholars vehemently attacked the relentless...