Modern Skepticism emerged in the 16th century, not from medieval views but from the intellectual crises of the Renaissance and Reformation and from the rediscovery of the Skeptical classics. The voyages of exploration; the humanistic rediscovery of the learning of ancient Greece, Rome, and Palestine; and the new science--all combined to undermine confidence in man's accepted picture of the world. The religious controversy between the

Protestants and Catholics raised fundamental epistemological issues about the bases and criteria of religious knowledge. At the same time the texts of Cicero and Sextus became available again. (Sextus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism [Hypotyposeis] was published in Latin in 1562, his Adversus matematicos in 1569, and the Greek texts of both in 1621.)