The Freedom Of Men's Minds

Tonight's story is about a treasure. Fake or real? It's a real treasure. Captain Kid? No. Henry Morgan? Not even Henry Morgan's. No pirates, huh? No pirates, sorry. Well, what kind of treasure are you talking about?

Freedom. Mm-hmm, so that's the treasure. And that's the story. The NBC University of the Air presents We Came This Way. A new historical series for our listeners at home and overseas. With John W. Vanderkook as the narrator, We present chapter 6, a story of the struggle for the freedom of men's minds, and we came this way.

This is a story of men who have no statues or memorials built in their native land, for the heritage of freedom that they left behind has been betrayed. The time is the year of our Lord 1500 and nine.

Europa stands upon the threshold of a modern age. The shadowy shape of the world at Khan looms large. Men's minds question the cold, gothic universe of the Middle Ages, and their senses like an astonished caress discover the beauties of Greek civilization.

A wind blows across Europe, up from the Italian south, bright and vigorous, up from the rich, silken cities of Florence, Genoa and Venice, up from fabulous, warm, and complex, a reawakening, a blossoming, an emancipation of men's reason. The wind brings a new learning, a new philosophy, Humanism, and you expectancy, a renaissance.

Europa's stirred as like Lazarus come from the dead. Only 16 years ago in 1492, an obscure sea captain discovered a new barbaric world. Out of marble and division, Michelangelo fashions his Moses in Rome. Galileo's machine brings the heavens closer to the earth.

Look, there goes Veselius the Anatomus. In Rotterdam, a rasmus argues for the translating of the scriptures into the people's tongue. Copernicus, Holbein, Albrecht Dürer, Sebastian Brand, the year is 1509, and the place, Germany. 16th century Germany, a crazy quilt of a land, an idiot Tom Motatos of armed and suspicious cities under the sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire and its Emperor Maximilian I.