Why didn't the translations of the Renaissance masters occur earlier in world history?

Hold on a minute, let me explain things first.

What I mean are the original works of the Renaissance masters. Come to think of it, the only few that really stands out from this time is Niccolo Machiavelli, Columbus' letters, and Nostradamus.

I guess Montaigne and Erasmus are a bit known by some more casual literary folks and there is indeed an opera crowd and poetry crowd that knows about Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.

I know that there are many disagreements about when the "renaissance" ends. Personally, I would say it ends with the start of the Thirty Years War in 1618, but sometimes I flirted with the defeat of Philip's armada in 1588 as a final date. But this whole business is messy, Im not trying to get lost in it.

Anyways, my point is that we have such a rich collection of Italian writers that really dont have much attention for centuries in the English world and other countries, even in the Spanish and Portuguese world, for example.

Im primarily focusing on fiction writers and poets. We don' see the poets of the renaissance getting that much translation until much later, until the 20th century really. In fact, a lot of the English translations of Italian renaissance works are still under copyright.

There are also a ton of works in Latin by German and Dutch/Flemish writers who still aren't translated or, at any rate, translated just in the last 50 years.

What's up with this? Why didn't folks get to work in earlier times?