In the second place, it was not, like the German Reformation, a renewal of Christianity at its sources, but a resuscitation of mediaeval Catholicity, in direct antagonism to the intellectual tendencies of the age.

The new learning among northern races disintegrated that system of ideas upon which mediaeval society rested; but it also introduced religious and moral conceptions more vital than those ideas in their decadence.

In Italy the disintegrating process had been no less thorough, nay far more subtle and pervasive.

Yet the new learning had not led the nation to attempt a reconstruction of primitive Christianity.

The Catholic Revival gave nothing vital or enthusiastic to the conscience of the race.