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early part of the sixteenth century must always rank among the most remarkable periods in the history of civilisation. The invention of printing had made literature the property of many to whom it had hitherto been inaccessible, and the downfall of the Byzantine Empire had scattered over Europe a number of fugitive Greeks, who carried with them many treasures of classical literature hitherto unknown in the Western world, while Raphael, Michael Angelo, and other contemporaries of Leo X. revived the glory of the ancients in the realm of art. The narrow limits of the old world had vanished, and the Portuguese and Spanish navigators had led the way to boundless fields for human enterprise, while the Reformation revolutionised the spirit of mankind and put an end to the age of ignorance and superstition.

During this active period there were also signs of renewed vigour among the devotees of science, and the time was particularly favourable to a revival of astronomical studies. Students of astronomy were now enabled to study the Greek authors in the original language, instead of having to be content with Latin reproductions of Arabian translations from the Greek, which, through the Italian 1