Introductory material
Reading edition
The discovery of America but one of a series of notable achievements in Columbus' time. His century, 1450 to 1550, had more great men than any other in human history. In the arts it is unsurpassed. In its deeds it rivals every other century, above all in social work, in scholarship, in education and in its achievements in the sciences, physical as well as biological, and in medicine and surgery. Its literature is behind that of certain other periods of history, but this is the age of Leo X and one of the most interesting epochs of world literature in every European country.