 Beyond seeking to identify civic humanism with a particular time and place, Baron studied the political culture of Renaissance Florence as an instance of an exemplary mode of communal existence. Florentine civic humanism represented for him furthermore a decisive turning point in history. For Baron it was an epochal event that, by looking backward to antiquity, pointed forward to modernity—a movement that he embraced wholeheartedly as a liberating, civilizing, progressive process. The advent of civic humanism marked for Baron the victory of secular economic, social, and political ideals versus the asceticism, religious obscurantism, and hierarchy of the Middle Ages. Civic humanism provided the vital vehicle for the translation of the exalted ancient idea of citizenship to the modern age. The humanist defense of republican liberty against monarchical tyranny announced for him the beginnings of modern democratic thought, elevated by an educational ideal of classical inspiration, and accompanied by renewed cultural creativity. Civic humanism was thus the harbinger of the unequivocally positive trends in modern European civilization. The value of such achievements appeared all the more compelling since they were not theoretical postulates derived from abstract speculation, but represented historically realized exempla.