The B.I.H.R. is the product of the international cooperation between eighteen countries where the Fédération is represented (for Europe: Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland; on other continents: Latin America and Brazil, Japan, the United States of America). Each contributor inventories, year after year, every monograph, journal article, and collective work (miscellany, conference proceedings, etc.), not including reviews, that has appeared in his country,. The central editorial staff takes care of gathering the different contributions for an annual publication. The terms Humanism and Renaissance are understood here in their larger meaning; they embrace all human activity - economics, law, science, technology, literature, philosophy, religion, art - in the course of the 15th and 16th centuries. We have, however, kept a certain suppleness with regard to the chronologic limits in order to take into account the asynchronous development of these cultural movements within the different countries.