This was the time of the Renaissance in Europe, where people sought a new birth of society. They believed this would come through a return to the eternal principles underlying classical society. The religious reformers sought a return to the pure Word. In law, the humanists were a parallel movement, seeking a return to classical Roman law. This involved purifying the texts. The humanists had great confidence in the mind and so originally this was done through a conjectural knowledge of antiquity. However, Cujaccius recognized the importance of studying the best and most original text, and thus used the Florentine manuscript. This enabled a better study of the interpolations of the text. However, as more and more interpolations were revealed, the quasi-Biblical status of the texts was undermined, which undermined the work of the humanists.
