As the title of this volume intimates, I see considerable virtue in continuing to speak about the era of the Renaissance. This commitment needs defending, however, since the concept of the Renaissance has in recent times fallen into disrepute, and a number of reasons have been given for avoiding it. One is simply that the term is too vague to be of much use. A second doubt has stemmed from the post-modern critique of meta-narratives and the teleological forms of historical writing to which they give rise. But the most widespread suspicion has arisen from the fact that the metaphor embodied in speaking of the Renaissance – the metaphor of revival and more specifically of rebirth – is so clearly an honorific one. The difficulty here is that, as soon as we reflect on the contours of early-modern European history, it becomes embarrassingly obvious that a majority of the population would have been surprised to learn about a rebirth or a recovery of anything that added any value to their lives. The most prevalent objection to employing the term is thus that it marginalises and devalues those for whom the Renaissance never happened.

These are serious objections, but there is no escaping the fact that, in the period covered by the chapters that follow, there was something that, for some people, was undoubtedly reborn and restored.