an Empire. In
fighting the battles against unbelief, ignorance, and political
corruption, it had become a powerful hierarchy. As the conservator of
learning, it eventually began to settle the limits of knowledge and
belief on its own interpretation and to force this upon the world. It
saved the elements of knowledge from the destruction of the barbarians,
but in turn sought to lock up within its own precincts of belief the
thoughts of the ages, presuming to do the thinking for the world. It
became dogmatic, arbitrary, conservative, and conventional. Moreover,
this had become the {349} attitude of all inert Europe. The several
movements that sought to overcome this stifling condition of the mind
are called the "revival of learning."

A more specific use of the term renaissance, or revival of learning,
refers especially to the restoration of the intellectual continuity of
Europe, or the rebirth of the human mind. It is generally applied to
what is known as humanism, or the revival of classical learning.
Important as this phase of general progress is, it can be considered
only as a part of the great revival of progress. Humanism, or the
revival of classical learning, having its origin and first great
impulse in Italy, it has become customary to use humanism and the
Italian renaissance interchangeably, yet without careful consideration;
for although the Italian renaissance is made up largely of humanism, it
had such wide-reaching consequences on the progress of all Europe as
not to be limited by the single influence of the revival of the
classical learning.

_Influence of Charlemagne_.--Clovis founded the Frankish kingdom, which
included the territory now occupied by France and the Netherlands.
Subsequently this kingdom was enlarged under the rule of Charles
Martel, who turned back the Moslem invasion at Poitiers in 732, and
became ruler of Europe north of the Alps. His son Pepin enlarged and
strengthened the kingdom, so that when his successor Charlemagne came
into power in 768 he found himself in control of a vast inland empire.
He conquered Rome and all north Italy and assumed the title of Roman
emperor. The movement of Charlemagne was a slight and even a doubtful
beginning of the revival. Possibly his reform was a faint flickering
of the watch-fires of intellectual and civil activity, but they went
out and darkness obscured the horizon until the breaking of the morn of
liberty. Yet in the darkness of the a