And that opened up a whole new world for scholars. Well, not a new world, actually, since the texts were more than a thousand years old. But you know what I mean. The scholars who examined, translated, and commented upon these writings were called humanists, which can be a little bit of a confusing term because it implies that they were concerned with, you know, humans rather than, say, the religious world. Which can add to the common but totally incorrect assumption that Renaissance writers and artists and scholars were, like, secretly not religious. That's a favorite area of speculation on the internet and in Dan Brown novels, but the truth is that Renaissance artists were religious. As evidence, let me present you with the fact that they painted the Madonna over and over and over and over and over and Stan!