Hegel, in his _Philosophy of History_, refers to the renewed interest in the writings of the ancients which was brought about through the service of the printing-press. He points out, further, that the Church felt at the outset no anxiety concerning the influence of the pagan literature and that the ecclesiastical authorities evidently had no understanding of the new elements of suggestion and enquiry that this literature was introducing into the minds of men. It may be considered as one of the fortunate circumstances attending the introduction of the art of printing that the popes of the time were largely men of liberal education and intellectual tastes, while one or two, such as Nicholas V, Julius II, and Leo X, had a keen personal interest in literature and were themselves creators of books. The fact that Leo X was a luxury-loving, free-thinking prince rather than a devoted Christian leader or teacher, may very probably have been a favourable influence for the enlightenment and development of his own generation and of the generations that were to come. An earnest and narrow-minded head of the Church could, during the first years of the 16th century, have retarded not a little the development of the work of producing books for the community at large. It was a number of years before the dread of the use of the printing-press for the spread of heretical doctrines, and of a consequent undermining of the authority of the Church, assumed such proportions in the minds of the popes in Rome and with the bishops elsewhere as to cause the influence of the Church to be used against the interests of the world of literature. As a result of this early acceptance by the Church of the printing-press as a useful ally and servant, the first Italian presses were supported by bishops and cardinals in the work of producing classics for scholarly readers, while at the other extremity of the Church organisation, and at a distance of a thousand miles or more from Rome, the Brothers of Common Life in the Low Countries were using their presses for the distribution of cheap books among the people. Many citations could be made of the approval with which the scholarly ecclesiastics of the time regarded the new art. Felix Fabri, prior of the Dominican monastery in Ulm, says in his _Historia Suevorum_, issued in the year 1459, that “no art that the world has known can be considered so useful, so much to be esteemed, indeed so divine as that which has now, through the Grace of God, been discovered in Mayence.” Johannes Rauchler,[89] the first rector of the Tübingen School, rejoices that through the new art so many authors can now be brought within the reach of students in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, authors who are witnesses for the Christian faith, and the service of whose writings to the Church and to the world is so great that he can but consider “this art as a gift directly from God himself.”