CHAPTER VII
THE MODERN ERA
I N the matter of social progress, Italy had the bet
ter of other European nations at the beginning
of the modem period, both in the fact that she oc
cupied one of the sites of early civilization, the pul
sations of which had never quite died out, and in that
she had a clear waterway to the Mohammedan
countries at the eastern end of the Mediterranean,
and her commercial relations with them inoculated
her directly with their culture. And the ruins of
ancient Greece, lying along the shore of this trade-
route, did their part in reviving the ancient ideas
and aspirations in the minds of modern man. Thus
it happened that the new arts of printing and book
making became the means of spreading the classical
literature and learning among the Italians, while in
the Bible, had a wider popularity, and served to
communicate somewhat of the spirit of that earlier
patriarchal period to the northern civilizations.
But aside from this generalization, it was the more
educated classes everywhere who took up the study
and adopted the spirit of the classics, while the