hment to intellectual tradition as there was throughout the medieval period relied on the protection and authority of the Church and looked for intellectual support to the dim memory of ancient Greece and Rome. In effect, the intelligentsia wanted to reclaim a civilization that had been lost. As Baumer puts it:
It used to be thought proper to begin a discussion of modern European thought with the Renaissance and Reformation. But Renaissance humanists and Protestant reformers did not for the most part think of themselves as moderns, except in opposition to the Middle Ages Both were at core "fundamentalists," seeking to revive, and to rival, primitive or ancient models of thought and civilization, ancient Greece or Rome, or the early Christian Church. This is not to deny in the least that the Renaissance, centering in a new sort of humanism, and the Reformation, defiant of traditional doctrines and authorities, were mighty movements in thought, or that they had important implications for modern ways of thinking. Psychologically, however, these movements te
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