• What does she see now when she looks at herself in the mirror? (When before has the same thing happened to her?)
• When Sophie falls asleep, what strange dream comes to her? (When she awakens, what item has she brought with her from the dream world?)
• How does Alberto Knox explain these miracles?
• Have you figured out what is happening to her?

• the rich cultural development that began in the city-states of Northern Italy during the late 14th century and spread rapidly northward from there during the 15th and 16th centuries.
• the rebirth of antiquity's art and culture after a thousand year sleep (two thousand years after the time of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
• an age of humanism: Man once more becomes the focus of intellectual activity after a long period of fascination with the divine light (an age of mythology). The study of ancient writers like Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Sophocles, Cicero, Virgil and the like becomes the core curriculum of a classical education. 
• Hey, what course does that sound like?

the firearm:

the incunabulum:

It would not be long before the new middle class began asserting their power politically. 

How? In what form of government? What rights would they fight to protect? (Derived from whom?)

Instead, poets and artists and architects and musicians and philosophers celebrated man's potential to accomplish great deeds here on earth, in this life, not in the after life.

Man's ability to use his reason, will and character makes him confident that he can not only determine his own destiny but also improve the lot of all society!

(Can a new Sophocles be far behind? Which playwright would arise in this era to reassert the ancient ironic truths of tragedy?) 

But, if anything, the great thinkers of the Renaissance were even more excited, enthusiastic, and .... arrogant than the Greeks about their faith in the power of reason to control nature.

They believed fervently  in progress. The physical universe could be understood and controlled. The moral universe within could be made rational and good. Society itself could be reformed and made better.

They worshipped individualism, particularly people of exceptional talent and genius. The Renaissance Man excelled in all his subjects: in science, art, literature, mathematics, in fencing, riding and battlefield strategy, and yes, the Renaissance Man was adept in the arts of courtly love. (Name a few...)

These artist/scientist/statesmen/poets/athletes embarked on huge projects in the city-states of Northern Italy. In particular, they sought to restore Rome to its original glory in a magnificent building project: St. Peter's Cathedral.

In philosophy, many thinkers reasserted an idea long considered heresy by the Catholic Church: pantheism. Because God is infinite, he must be present throughout the universe, in everything on earth and in everyone. (What poet makes the same point?) (From whom did he get the idea?)

Renaissance thinkers also returned Aristotle to his proper place of honor in the history of ideas. Once again, the scientific method which Aristotle had helped to pioneer became a standard of "natural philosophy'. The measure of the truth of any hypothesis required  systematic demonstration through experiments that could be observed  by the senses (empirical and inductive proof).

Galileo Galilei: "The book of nature is written in mathematics."

Francis Bacon: "Knowledge is power."

Man had begun to intervene in nature in ways previously unimaginable and with consequences nobody foresaw.

A Unified Cosmology: The discoveries in astronomy of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo transformed our understanding of the cosmos. They demonstrated that the earth was not the center of the universe:  it was just a planet like any other planet. Furthermore, the same physical laws applied throughout the universe, on earth as well as in the heavens. The new cosmology would destroy any way of believing in Plato's dualist universe. Eventually, Sir Isaac Newton, in the late 17th century, would devise a mathematical system which could explain the movement of any physical body in the universe, no matter how small or how large. He called his system calculus. (At least, that was what everyone believed until who came along?)

The Reformation: The response of religion to these devastating challenges also took philosophy and society in new directions. The individual's own personal spirituality, his or her own relationship with God, became more important than his relationship to the church. In the late 15th century, the printing press allowed the Bible to be translated from Greek and Latin into national languages, and soon, new religious movements took form in Europe.

Martin Luther, a German priest and scholar, led one of these rebellions against the Catholic Church. Luther, disgusted by the corruption in the Church (such as? The Friar? The Pardoner?), argued that people did not need a church or even a priest to create a relationship with God. Luther translated the Bible into German and declared that if all people could be taught how to read, then they could become their own priests!

Luther believed that no ritual of the Church could help people achieve forgiveness of sins and redemption. He went so far as to say that even good deeds do not enable people to achieve salvation. He believed in redemption by faith alone. Only faith allowed man to see God. (In what ways would St. Augustine have agreed with Luther?)