By the end of the eleventh century it was clear that the long battle for the preservation of civilization had been won, but it was not until the fourteenth century that the Revival of Learning in Italy gave clear evidence of the rise of the modern spirit. By the year 1500 much had been accomplished, and the new modern questioning spirit of the Italian Revival was making progress in many directions. Most of the old learning had been recovered; the printing-press had been invented, and was at work multiplying books; the study of Greek and Hebrew had been revived in the western world; trade and commerce had begun; the cities and the universities which had arisen had become centers of a new life; a new sea route to India had been found and was in use; Columbus had discovered a new world; the Church was more tolerant of new ideas than it had been for centuries; and thought was being awakened in the western world to a degree that had not taken place since the days of ancient Rome. The world seemed about ready for rapid advances in many directions, and great progress in learning, education, government, art, commerce, and invention seemed almost within its grasp. Instead, there soon opened the most bitter and vindictive religious conflict the world has ever known; western Christian civilization was torn asunder; a century of religious warfare ensued; and this was followed by other centuries of hatred and intolerance and suspicion awakened by the great conflict. Still, out of this conflict, though it for a time checked the orderly development of civilization, much important educational progress was ultimately to come. In promulgating the doctrine that the authority of the Bible in religious matters is superior to the authority of the Church, the basis for the elementary school for the masses of the people, and in consequence the education of all, was laid. This meant the creation of an entirely new type of school--the elementary, for the masses, and taught in the native tongue--to supplement the Latin secondary schools which had been an outgrowth of the revival of ancient learning, and the still earlier cathedral and monastery schools of the Church.