This great intellectual curiosity was very lucrative for the Frobens and the Alduses and the Etiennes and the other new firms of printers who were making a fortune out of the invention which had ruined Gutenberg, but otherwise the literary output of the Renaissance did not very greatly affect the state of that world in which the authors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries happened to find themselves. The distinction of having contributed something new was restricted to only a very few heroes of the quill and they were like our friends of the big guns. They rarely discovered during their own lifetime in how far they had been successful and how much damage their writings had actually done. But first and last they managed to demolish a great many of the obstacles which stood in the way of progress. And they deserve our everlasting gratitude for the thoroughness with which they cleaned up a lot of rubbish which otherwise would continue to clutter our intellectual front yard. Strictly speaking, however, the Renaissance was not primarily a forward-looking movement. It turned its back in disgust upon the recent past, called the works of its immediate predecessors “barbaric” (or “Gothic” in the language of the country where the Goths had enjoyed the same reputation as the Huns), and concentrated its main interest upon those arts which seem to be pervaded with that curious substance known as the “classical spirit.” If nevertheless the Renaissance struck a mighty blow for the liberty of conscience and for tolerance and for a better world in general, it was done in spite of the men who were considered the leaders of the new movement. Long before the days of which we are now speaking, there had been people who had questioned the rights of a Roman bishop to dictate to Bohemian peasants and to English yeomen in what language they should say their prayers, in what spirit they should study the words of Jesus, how much they should pay for an indulgence, what books they should read and how they should bring up their children. And all of them had been crushed by the strength of that super-state, the power of which they had undertaken to defy. Even when they had acted as champions and representatives of a national cause, they had failed. The smoldering ashes of great John Huss, thrown ignominiously into the river Rhine, were a warning to all the world that the Papal Monarchy still ruled supreme. The corpse of Wycliffe, burned by the public executioner, told the humble peasants of Leicestershire that councils and Popes could reach beyond the grave. Frontal attacks, evidently, were impossible.