Excited by the prospect of the rebirth (or ‘renaissance’) of classical culture, Petrarch’s followers, who began to be known as ‘humanists’, believed that they could end the ‘Dark’ or ‘Middle’ Age in their own day. ‘Ad fontes!’ (‘To the sources!’) was their battle-cry as they laid siege to the ignorance of their day with the beautiful weapons of classical literature and culture. It was unfortunate for papal Rome, for it was in the darkness of that Middle Age that she had grown, and the light of the new learning would not be kind to her.
