attacking, that he bequeathed the valuable library which he had
brought together with such labour.

Had the Humanists contented themselves with advocating merely a return
to classical studies, and had the Scholastics recognised that
philosophy was not the only path to culture, it might have been
possible to avoid a conflict. But, unfortunately for religion, there
were extremists on both sides. On the one hand, some of the later
Humanists, influenced largely by the low moral tone of the age, aimed
at nothing less than the revival of Paganism, pure and simple; while,
on the other, not a few of the Scholastics insisted strongly that
Pagan literature, however perfect, should have no place in Christian
education. Between these two conflicting parties stood a large body of
educated men, both lay and cleric, who could see no irreconcilable
opposition between Christianity and the study of the classics, and who
aimed at establishing harmony by assigning to the classics the place
in education willingly accorded to them by many of the Fathers of the
Church.

But the influence of this latter body could not effect a
reconciliation. A large section of the Humanists openly vindicated for
themselves freedom from the intellectual and moral restraints imposed
by Christianity. Laurentius Valla[5] (1405-57) in his work, /De
Voluptate/, championed free indulgence in all kinds of sensual
pleasures, attacked virginity as a crime against the human race, and
ridiculed the idea of continence and self-denial, while in his own
life he showed himself a faithful disciple of the Epicurianism that he
propounded in his writings. His denunciations, too, of the Popes as
the usurping tyrants of Rome in his work on the Constantine Donation
were likely to do serious injury to the head of the Church in his