of a Christian view of the world; they saw a God-given meaning and worth in the present life, as well as in the life to come. Those who promoted this Renaissance concept of humanism regarded it as nothing less than the regeneration of true culture and therefore of true humanity, after the long medieval centuries of ignorance, superstition, and barbarism, which they scornfully called “the Dark Ages”. Central to this Renaissance critique of medieval civilisation was an adjustment of the claims of this