How did growing secularism influence European writers during the Renaissance?

C is the Correct answer: They wrote more books about non-religious subjects.

There was a main concern due the importance of rescuing the constant influence of the Church, either by spreading its power in the Middle Age or by showing in the history of thought, its subsequent deterioration from the Renaissance.

The long period designated with the overly generic name of Renaissance is the scene of a series of deep transformations that affect all aspects of culture in the social, political, economic, scientific, artistic, religious and literary fields. Besides the elements from the Middle Age, there are some new ones, whose result is an expansion of horizons and a profound transformation in the living conditions and way of thinking of the European villages.

The cultural process known as "Renaissance" is immediately subsequent to the Middle Age. Its main characteristics are: the exaltation of human being, the esteem of antiquity, individualism, heroic emotion, the appreciation of beauty and nature. With that said, the Renaissance is the period between the Middle Age and the Modern Age. That is to say, it appears as a culmination of the Middle Age and as a start of the Modern Age.

In the era of the so-called Renaissance, there was a desire for the renewal of the human spirit in all the fields. The philosophers of this time devoted their efforts, some to destroy the scholastic thought and others to look for the foundation of a new philosophy in which the human being and the reason occupied a very first place. The slogan was the return to the Greek and Latin spirit.

In the Renaissance, biographies of specific people appeared, with personal and individual characteristics. And, of course, the autobiography was born. As Montagine demonstrates: "I myself am the content of my book". With that said, in the Renaissance the importance is presented in the earthly glory, and not in a celestial level, throughout the desire of perpetuate.

During the years of the Middle Age, religion had guided all philosophical and scientific movement. The decadence of Scholasticism, led by an exaggerated verbalism, the influence of Arab thinkers and the naturalist interpretation of Aristotle, prepared the path of Renaissance science.

Modern philosophers resisted progressively to request the tutelage and the opinion of the leaders of the Church regarding their theses and speculations. An authentic struggle began to free itself from the dictation of theological dogma. Modern philosophers abandoned the rules held by indisputable universally accepted methods, to establish their own verification standards: rational coherence, empirical verification, methodical doubt, etc., breaking with the established dogmas.