Arthur De Gobineau

The Renaissance: Savonarola, Cesare Borgia, Julius II., Leo X., Michael Angelo (Classic Reprint) Arthur De Gobineau

Publisher Marketing: Excerpt from The Renaissance: Savonarola Cesare Borgia Julius II. Leo X. Michael Angelo It has been generally thought and stated that the past century was a profoundly irreverent and irreligious age, the age of the twilight of old gods, the shattering of old idols, the ruin of an old and holy creed. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. In every department of human knowledge, in philosophy, in science, and in politics as well as in art, the nineteenth century was deeply imbued with religious ideas; nay, spoilt by what may almost be called a spiritual intoxication. It was the only century known to history in which theology and its favourite offspring, morality, had swamped everybody and everything. Whether it paraded itself as cold and scientific, as warm and humanitarian, as lukewarm and agnostic, as progressive and liberal, as ethical and socialistic, as anarchical and revolutionary, as conservative and reactionary, as rationalistic and freethinking or as romantic and artistic, there was always one and the same personality behind that cloak of many colours, behind that medley of divers fashions; and that personality was a good man, a religious man - a Christian. Thank heaven, this good man is growing wiser and a little wickeder. Thank heaven, that gloomy and oppressive century is past! Thank God, the spiritual deluge of the nineteenth century is fast dispersing! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.