· Italian: Dante (‘ divine comedy’),Petrarch (founder of humanism & known as the ‘father of humanism), Boccaccio (‘decameron’), Machiavelli (‘the prince’)
· Spanish: Cervantes (‘don Quixote’).
· Portuguese cameos:(‘the lusiad’)
· Dutch Erasmus: (‘in the praise of folly’)
· French Rabelais: (‘pant gruel’ & ‘gargantuan’) Montaigne (‘essays’)
· German Thomas kermis: (‘the imitation of Christ’).
· English Chaucer: (‘Canterbury tales’) Spenser (‘the faerie queen’),bacon (‘the advancement of learning’) Shakespeare (‘Romeo & Juliet’, ‘the merchant of Venice’, ‘as you like it’,’julieus Caesar’, ‘hamlet’, Macbeth), Thomas more (‘utopia’).
REFORMATION
· The reformation was another movement that the 16th century witnessed.
· It was started by martin Luther in Wittenberg, ceremony in 1517 by publicly protesting against the sale of letters of indulgence.
· It was a revolt against the control of conscience by the priests.
· Thanks to the inborn spirit of revolt against the catholic church, Henry VIII of England could take the bold step of breaking away from the papacy i.e., authority of the pope on the issue of his first divorce in 1534.henry VIII declared himself the head of the church when the pope would not give him permission to divorce his wife, chattering.
· With the breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church by such leaders as Luther of Germany and Calvin of Switzerland, Western Europe was split between catholic & protestant countries, a situation which developed enmities of the fiercest nature.
· ;the movement, which began within the catholic churl h to combat the effects of the protestant reformation, was known as counter reformation movement.
· The movement, which began within the Catholic Church to combat the effect of the protestant reformation, was known as counter-reformation movement.