(I) From the fourteenth century onwards, especially in Italy, scholars, poets, and artists began to take a new interest in learning. (II) In nearly all the city-states of Northern Italy the power had been seized by certain great families. (III) Instead of studying chiefly theology and the writings of the medieval philosophers they now turned to the philosophers and poets of classical antiquity and began to study them intensively. (IV) The minds of men were now set free and they began to think as they pleased (V) This new learning soon spread to the rest of Europe and the ‘Renaissance' was well under way.