To create a second Renaissance,
translate the first.
The Renaissance itself was written in Latin. We never translated it.
503,486
Latin works, 1450–1700
<3%
translated into English
The Renaissance is waiting to be discovered.
↓ Scroll to explore the gap
The Story of the First Renaissance
In 1460, a monk brought a manuscript from Macedonia to Florence. It changed everything.
The book that transmitted Greek philosophy to Renaissance Europe.
The Rediscovery
When Cosimo de' Medici received a Greek manuscript of the Corpus Hermeticum, he ordered Marsilio Ficino to stop translating Plato and translate this first.
Ficino's translations of Hermes, Plato, and Plotinus into Latin sparked the Renaissance. Ideas that had been locked away in Greek for a thousand years suddenly flowed across Europe.
Where Renaissance "natural magic" became experimental science.
The Path to Science
Renaissance "natural magic" was not superstition—it was the study of nature's hidden forces. Della Porta's work on optics, magnetism, and chemistry laid groundwork for the Scientific Revolution.
All of this was written in Latin—the international language of scholarship. And almost none of it has been translated into English.
A Library Waiting to Be Unlocked
Cosmological diagrams, alchemical emblems, anatomical masterpieces—all written in Latin.
The Pattern Repeats
1460
Ancient Greek texts
locked away for 1,000 years
translated into Latin
2025
Renaissance Latin texts
locked away for 500 years
waiting for translation
The Renaissance happened because someone translated old books.
It can happen again.
Latin dominated European printing for two centuries
From Gutenberg to Newton, Latin was the language of international scholarship. Nearly a third of all books printed in early modern Europe were in Latin.
Source: Universal Short Title Catalogue, n=1,628,578
Classical Latin is well-served. Renaissance Latin is not.
The Loeb Classical Library has 500+ volumes of Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid. But the actual bulk of the Latin corpus—Renaissance scholarship—is almost untouched.
Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca
Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose
Aquinas, scholastics
500,000 works
Printing spread across Europe in 250 years
From Mainz in 1454 to 700+ cities by 1700. Each dot represents a printing center. Watch the spread of Latin scholarship.
Interactive visualization
Explore the Animated Map →
702
Printing centers
250
Years of data
Important thinkers you can't read
These thinkers shaped science, philosophy, and culture. Their Latin works influenced generations. Yet most remain untranslated into English.
Cornelis Drebbel
Inventor of the submarine, perpetual motion
Isaac Casaubon
Classical philology, exposed Hermetica dating
Giambattista della Porta
Natural magic, optics, cryptography
What knowledge is locked away?
The untranslated corpus spans every field of Renaissance thought. History of science, religious history, legal history, philosophy—all depend on texts most scholars cannot read.
~42,000 works
~31,000 works
~38,000 works
~28,000 works
~68,000 works
~24,000 works
This is solvable.
Digitization infrastructure exists. AI-assisted translation is advancing rapidly. The scholarly apparatus for identifying what matters is in place.
What's missing is coordinated effort and funding. A systematic program could transform access to Renaissance thought within a decade.
See our translation priorities →A PROJECT OF THE EMBASSY OF THE FREE MIND
Create a second Renaissance by translating the first
The original Renaissance was sparked by rediscovering ancient texts. Half a million more are waiting. The Ancient Wisdom Trust is working to unlock them—through cataloging, digitization, and translation.
Translations are published freely at Source Library.