In the last quarter of the fifteenth century students from the Low Countries, France, Germany, and England flocked to Italy, absorbed the “new learning” of humanism, and carried it back to their own countries. Northern humanists shared the Italians’ ideas about the wisdom of ancient texts and felt even more strongly that the best elements of classical and Christian cultures should be combined. These Christian humanists, as they were later called, saw humanist learning as a way to bring about reform of the church and to deepen people’s spiritual lives.

The Englishman Thomas More (1478–1535) began life as a lawyer, studied the classics, and entered government service. He became best known for his controversial dialogue Utopia (1516). Utopia describes a community on an island somewhere beyond Europe where all children receive a good humanist education and adults divide their days between manual labor or business pursuits and intellectual activities. The problems that plagued More’s fellow citizens, such as poverty and hunger, are solved by a beneficent government. Furthermore, there is religious tolerance, and order and reason prevail.

Better known by contemporaries than Thomas More was the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466?–1536) of Rotterdam. His fame rested largely on his exceptional knowledge of Greek and the Bible, as well as his many publications. For Erasmus, education was the key to moral and intellectual improvement, and true Christianity was an inner attitude of the spirit, not a set of outward actions.