This essay (an extended version of a paper originally published in the early seventies) examines both the changing attitudes towards translation and translators which occurred with the development of Romance languages and the shifting focus from an instrumental and didactic view of translation in the Middle Ages to a view of this activity as an artistic endeavour in the Renaissance era. Folena traces the developments of translation practices, ideas and terminology, focusing on the transition from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 15th century. Folena argues that all the homologous terms which in Romance languages now refer to translation have a common origin in Italian Humanism.