Italy, a country divided into numerous small States, and so-called Republics, offered great opportunities for individual development and became famous in those paths in which individualism has gained its greatest triumphs. Thus in literature, in law, in medicine, in painting and in sculpture, the Italians were preëminent. In architecture and in the drama they reached no such heights as were attained by the French, the Germans and the English. It was in the northwest part of Italy, in the province of Tuscany, that the Renaissance gained its greatest victories. Among the earliest of the leaders of the New Learning was the Florentine poet, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). “To Dante”, says Symonds, “in a truer sense than to any other poet, belongs the double glory of immortalising in verse the centuries behind him, while he inaugurated the new age”. His _Vita Nuova_ (New Life) and _Divina Commedia_ (Divine Comedy) are essentially modern in thought, but ancient in the manner in which the thought is expressed. Petrarch may be said to fairly open the new era. Like Dante, he was a Florentine. He was the apostle of Humanism, that system of philosophy which regarded man “as a rational being apart from theological determinations” and perceived that “classic literature alone displayed human nature in the plenitude of intellectual and moral freedom”. To a revolt against the despotism of the Church, it added the attempt to unify all that had been taught and done by man. Petrarch was a poet, a lawyer, an orator, a priest, and a philosopher. He lived between the years 1304-1374. He was a great traveler, and visited the leading continental cities in order to converse with learned men. Petrarch delighted in the study of Cicero, in collecting manuscripts, and in accumulating coins and inscriptions for historic purposes. He advocated public libraries and preached the duty of preserving ancient monuments. He opposed the physicians and astrologers of his day, and ridiculed the followers of Averröes.