Padua in the English Renaissance

Abstract

[EDITOR'S NoTE: A distinguished historian of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Professor A. C. Krey of the University of Minnesota has done much to emphasize the value of studying intellectual and social history with adequate recognition of its international implications. The period of the Renaissance, as he points out, represented more nearly world than our studies of national literatures often suggest. The Huntington Library has emphasized the peculiarly English elements in the Renaissance because the great body of its source material lies in this field and the books and documents for the study of Continental relationships are not available in the West. Although the Huntington Library has one of the greatest collections of English books for the study of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there is in all of this region no adequate library for the study of the Latin countries which were so important to English civilization: Italy, France, and Spain. The opportunity for the development of this Continental field is very great, and discussions with colleges and universities in this area indicate that some mutual program for collecting material for the study of the Latin countries of Europe may be worked out. Meanwhile the following statement from Professor Krey, the outgrowth of a dinner conversation, is printed to illustrate an almost forgotten phase of the indebtedness of England to Italy in the Renaissance. ]