The revival of learning was essentially an educational movement, it had from the beginning to do primarily with the school.  It had as its object a complete change both in the subject-matter and in the spirit of education.  Always it drew its inspiration from the literature of Greece, and this meant the fullest freedom of the human intellect, freedom of speculation, freedom of inquiry on the conditions of human life, and in particular it was a revolt from the ascetic ideas of the mediaeval Church; it was the assertion of the dignity of the body and mind of man.  Now whereas in Italy, its original home, this took a warp definitely antagonistic to Christian faith and Christian ethics, in Northern Europe the new classical learning was harmonized with Christianity, and classical learning was applied to the interpretation of the Bible.  It was the synthesis of what mediaeval Europe had regarded as irreconcilable opponents.  That was the inspiration of the school reform, and this is the guiding principle of all higher education for the next three centuries.  It was a movement that originally was not local or national but European, and in its first form was not in opposition to the maintenance of the ecclesiastical unity of Western Europe.  The figure in whom it reaches its clearest expression is that of Erasmus.  Standing at the transition between two epochs, he was the last of the great European scholars, and belongs to the undivided Catholic Church as much as did Abelard or Anselm.  The wandering scholar of the Renaissance, without father, without mother, completely freed from ties of family or country, at home equally in Deventer or Cambridge, in Basel or in Paris or in Rome, without even a native language, for to him Latin was the only vernacular (he has, I believe, left no word written in any other language), he saw the vision of a Europe still united in obedience to the one Church, but a Europe in which the culture of the humanist would go side by side with the common faith inherited from early days.

The hopes of Erasmus were not to be fulfilled.  It is indeed true that he laid the foundation on which the recognized and official scheme of education has continued almost to our own day; the Latin schools of Germany and the Grammar Schools of England were each alike conducted on the basis of the Church and the classics, but even before the foundations had been completed the real unity was gone.  The Renaissance was met by two forces, each stronger than itself, and the common stream was broken into a number of smaller currents.  These have since increased in strength till the sense of the common origin has almost disappeared.

The common mediaeval system (and in this the spirit of the Renaissance was still mediaeval) depended on the common Church, and especially in education, in the use of Latin as the universal language of learning.  During the sixteenth century both were overthrown.  Luther was stronger than Erasmus, and the new languages, Italian, French, Spanish, English, quickly began to encroach on the claims of Latin to be the one language of the school.