V. ENGLISH LITERATURE
The English literature of Columbus' Century obtained some of its triumphs very early in the period in a literary department, that of dramatics, in which other nations achieved little success. England in the latter part of the fifteenth century produced a series of plays whose high place in literature was only recognized properly during the past two or three generations. Ordinarily it is assumed that dramatic literature of serious significance did not develop in any modern language until much later than this time. Indeed, as a rule, the English drama of Shakespeare's time is supposed to be the first development of any importance in this department. The Spanish drama developed almost immediately after our Shakespearean period, the French came half a century later, and curiously enough Italy and Germany did not develop a national drama until the nineteenth century. The mystery and morality plays of the latter half of the fifteenth century in England have been revived in recent years and have illustrated beyond all doubt the genius of their authors and the fine evolution of drama at this time. Specimens that have been played in many places, in public performances, have proved to possess a gripping power over audiences, surpassing the dramatic literature of our own time, and the dramatic ability and genius of the men who wrote them has now come to be generally recognized.
"Everyman," for instance, has been played to crowded houses in many of the large cities of the country, audiences listening intently for the two hours without an intermission and then paying the highest possible tribute by going out always in silence. The story is only a dramatic rendition of the place in life of the "four last things to be remembered"--death, judgment, heaven and hell--of interest to every man. Such a subject would seem to be quite out of harmony {486} with the temper of our time and above all with the mood in which our people attend the theatre. The man who wrote it and was able to give it such enduring interest was a dramatic genius of the first order, for he was able to take the familiar things of life, even those to which men are not prone to give much attention, and make them compelling.
Mystery plays have come to have much more significance for us since the wide popularity of the Passion Play at Oberammergau. Thousands of people go up to the little village of scarcely more than a thousand inhabitants every ten years to see and hear the simple villagers tell the old, old story of the Passion and Death of Him that died on the Cross for us. Some, perhaps, of the attendance is due to the fact that it has become a fad to go, yet most of it is a real act of devotion, but to a shrine that is literary and truly dramatic as well as religious. From all over the world people have flocked to it and have confessed the dramatic force of the story in its simple setting in such a way as to make us realize what a powerful appeal the old mystery plays must have had for the people of the later Middle Ages when they came to their perfection of presentation. The appeal that the Passion Play had to the older folk, the Nativity Plays had for the children, though also for their elders and especially the women.
It is exactly during Columbus' Century that these mystery and morality plays reached their highest development and greatest perfection of expression and presentation. In England this development proved to be the fertile field out of which sprang the great Elizabethan dramatic literature. There are all the elements of a great dramatic literature in them. There is simplicity and directness with the presentation of subjects that have the highest appeal and yet very humanly done, so that wit, and above all, humor, has its role, and the problems concerned are those which interest all mankind. So little is known about this phase of dramatic literature, though it represents such a charmingly simple expression of dramatic poetry, containing a lesson of sincerity, naturalness and occupation with the higher things, which our generation needs above all in order to be lifted out of the rut of over-attention to problem plays, that some review of it seems necessary not {487} only for a complete picture of the literature of Columbus' time, but also for the sake of the enduring social significance of this early dramatic literature.
While we have greater examples of this mode of literature from England, in nearly every country in Europe the Passion Plays had a wonderful development toward the end of the fifteenth century. They were particularly striking, both in their literary value and their presentation in the Teutonic {488} countries and in England. There was a whole series of plays in England, many of which have come down to us. There is question whether "Everyman" was originally of Dutch or of English origin. The first production of it was as a translation of the Dutch "Elkerlijk." In Germany, the period in which the Passion Play reached its highest development was from about 1450 to 1550. The great Frankfurt Passion Play, the Alsfelder and the Friedburger plays came at this time. Many other towns, however, had their special Passion Plays written for them and presented in their own way. There was the Vienna Passion, the St. Gall Passion and the Maestricht Passion. But there were Passion Plays also at Eger, at Augsburg, Freising and Lucerne. From very early times Passion Plays were given in various parts of the Tyrol, always attracting the deep attention of the people, and it is here that the single example which has survived still serves to show us how genuinely dramatic and how powerful in their appeal were these plays. [Footnote 46]
[Footnote 46: It is almost amusing to be told that knowledge of the Scriptures was kept from the people at this time, before the Reformation, when these popular plays to which all the countryside flocked, and in which so many took part, were making them thoroughly familiar with all the details of Christ's life. There was much more than this, however, for connected with many of the Passion Plays were cycles of tableaux or presentations of special scenes in which, beginning with the Creation, the whole story of the Bible, and particularly those portions which are related to the coming of Christ, were set clearly before them. No better way of impressing upon the people the great truths of Christianity or the life of Christ as the central fact of the world's history could possibly have been imagined. The people were not encouraged to read difficult passages, which even the profoundest theologians find it hard to understand, to take their own meaning out of them and to argue about them, convicting everyone of heresy who did not agree with their interpretations of them, but they were taught the deep moral and religious significance of all the Old and New Testament. They learned the value of the Scriptures as literature as well as their quality as the underlying document of religion, but above all they were taught their relation to life. All this was so put before them that it came as an amusement and not a task, and from their earliest years they became familiar with the great thoughts underlying religion so as to secure its influence over them.]
Dodsley's collection of Old English Plays, which, in its {489} fourth edition as edited by W. Carew Hazlitt (London, 1874), contains a number of old plays little known, is particularly rich in material from this century of Columbus. The series of morality plays, "The Interlude of the Four Elements," "Everyman," "The Pardoner and the Friar," "The World and the Child," "Hick's Corner," "God's Promises," and the "Four P's," are typical examples. They all show the true dramatic spirit, and while lacking the theatrical technique of modern plays, are almost infinitely superior in their expression of the realities of human interest and their revelation of the depths of human sympathy to the presentation of superficialities which now pass for drama.
It was towards the end of Columbus' Century that the "Marriage of Witte and Science," which was not published until 1570, was written. This was marked off into five acts and the scenes designated, being the first play in which such an arrangement had been made. The modern dramatic mould was thus created. It is easy to understand that on the deep foundations, literary and technical, thus laid in the century before 1550, the great structure of the Elizabethan drama could be built up.
How much the appreciation for the morality plays has risen may be judged very well from some recent expressions with regard to them by students of the drama. Everyone is particularly loud in praise of "Everyman." In the introduction to "Everyman with other Interludes" in the Everyman series, the writer says that "to turn from Bayle's play (one of the later moralities, 'God's Promises') to the heart-breaking realities of 'Everyman' is like turning from a volume of law to the edifying sermons of one of the gospels." He adds:
"It was written, no doubt, like most of the plays in this volume, by a churchman; and he must have been a man of profound imagination and of the tenderest human soul conceivable. His ecclesiastical habit becomes clear enough before the end of the play, where he bids every man go and confess his sins. Like many of the more poignant scenes and passages in the miracle plays that follow it, this morality too leaves one exclaiming on how good a thing was the plain English of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries."
{490}
It would be a mistake to think that only the serious side of life was portrayed in these old dramas. Quite the contrary, they were full of humor, and the writer of the Introduction to Everyman, already quoted, says in this regard: "In these religious and moral interludes, the dramatic colouring, however crude, is real and sincere. The humours of a broad folk-comedy break through the Scriptural web continually in the guild plays like those in which Noah the ship-builder, or the proverbial three shepherds, appear in the pageant. Noah's unwilling wife in the 'Chester Deluge,' and Mak's canny wife in the Wakefield's shepherd's play, where the sheep-stealing scenes reveal a born Yorkshire humorist, offer a pair of gossips not easy to match for rude comedy. Mak's wife, like the shepherd's in the same pastoral, utters proverbs with every other breath: 'A woman's avyse helpys at the last!' 'So long goys the pott to the water, at last comys it home broken!'
"'Now in hot, now in cold, Full woeful is the household That wants a woman!'
And her play upon the old north-country asseveration, 'I'll eat my bairn,'
"'If ever I you beguiled, That I eat this child That lies in this cradle,'
(the child being the stolen sheep), must have caused townsfolk and countryfolk outrageous laughter. Mak's wife is indeed as memorable in her way as the Wife of Bath, Dame Quickly, or Mrs. Gamp."
Some idea of the extent to which the men of this time went in attempting spectacles on a large scale may be appreciated from "Mary Magdalen," which combines elements of all the various kinds of religious plays of the time. It was a miracle play because it treats of the life and death of St. Mary Magdalen. It is a mystery play inasmuch as it introduces scenes from the Life of Christ.
{491}
{492} It is a morality play because abstract personages are introduced upon the stage in the presentation of the struggle between good and evil in human life. Dr. Furnivall has divided the play into two parts, with fifty-one scenes altogether, twenty in the first and thirty-one in the second part. There is some evidence that some of the scenes were inserted only to give time for a shift of scenes. Probably they had two pageants or movable trucks which would remind one somewhat of the movable stage that was attempted in the last generation. The burning of the temple and some of the incidents of the wanderings at sea may very well have provided opportunity for spectacular effects of ambitious character. We have no record of how far they went in this regard, though some hints of attempts in the direction of surprising scenic introductions are to be found in contemporary documents, and we know that in Italy they staged an earthquake very effectively.
The play of "The Four Elements" was written just at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The date of its writing is designated by one of the speeches of Experience in this play, who says:
"Till now, within this twenty years. Westward be found new lands, That we never heard tell of before this By writing nor other means."
The passage illustrates the tendency to make these plays instructive as well as entertaining, and many similar passages might be quoted to show that a definite effort was made to convey information by means of them, though, as a rule, this had much more reference to religion and to social life than to things more distant from every-day living.
One of the important dramatic writers of the first half of our Columbus' Century was John Skelton, born about 1460, and who was one of the most prominent of literary men of England of his time. He had a series of literary quarrels with many of the prominent writers, Alexander Barclay and William Lily, the grammarian, among others, and for a time he {493} enjoyed the patronage of Wolsey, but apparently could not restrain his tendency to satire and so fell into the Cardinal's bad graces. Alexander Dyce edited his works in two volumes in 1843 and called particular attention to the genuine worth of his four dramatic compositions, the "Interlude of Virtue," the comedy called "Achidemoios," the "Nigramansir" (necromancer) and "Magnyfycence." Only one of these, the last, now remains, though there are traditions with regard to the others, and the single one left shows what precious material was lost.
An even more important contributor to this mode of dramatic literature and very significant predecessor of Shakespeare was John Heywood, a friend and neighbor of Sir Thomas More in Hertfordshire, who wrote a series of dramatic works, consisting of five interludes. Of these the "Four P's" is the best known and is the typical example of this form of dramatic literature. Its full title is "A Very Mery Enterlude of A Palmer, A Pardoner, A Pothecary and A Pedlar," and the story turns on the contest arranged between them, and especially the first three, as to which could tell the greatest lie. Palmers were real or supposed returned pilgrims from the Holy Land, bearing palms as a symbol of their pilgrimage, and were noted as a rule for their ability to tell strong stories. Pardoners were wandering merchants who sold printed prayers and various objects of devotion to which indulgences, pardons, in the language of the day were attached. They too were noted for drawing the long bow. The Pothecary and the Pedlar, because of their familiar gossip with the people, knew all the news of the neighborhood in which they lived, and had the reputation of being able to add to the vividness and sensational qualities of stories so that the Four P's might very well be expected to give some fine illustrations of the ability to lie.
The Palmer takes the prize in the contest with the very first story. All are agreed at once that no one can even hope to surpass it. The passage in which he does so is worth while quoting because it gives an illustration at once of the language and style as well as of the kind of humor to be found in Heywood's interludes:
{494}
"And this I would ye should understand, I have seen women five hundred thousand; And oft with them have long time tarried. Yet in all places where I have been, Of all the women that I have seen, I never saw or knew in my conscience Any one woman out of patience."
Thus, quietly, and with this force of earnest asseveration, does the largest and most palpable lie leap out of the Palmer's lips. The contestants themselves are at once unanimous in their decision.
Pothecary: "By the mass, there is a great lie!"
Pardoner: "I never heard a greater, by our Lady!"
Pedlar: "A greater! Nay, know ye any so great?"
In his account of the Pardoner, Heywood does not hesitate to satirize many of the pretensions of this class and especially their catering to the superstition of the ignorant by the sale of impossible relics of all kinds. Catholics realize very well that such frauds are practised at all times. Even in our day men go around selling prayers, the recital of which is supposed to give thousands of years of indulgence and other like absurdities. Besides, the trade in manufactured relics is well known, and the ecclesiastical authorities have tried to regulate it at all times. Heywood has his Pardoner offer for sale such relics as a bit of the thumb nail of the Holy Trinity and a feather from the wing of the Holy Ghost and like impossible absurdities. Impositions in the name of religion are still with us. It is interesting to know that before the religious revolution they were fought with that best of weapons, satire.
Before the end of Columbus' Century the first English comedy in the modern sense had been written. It was by Nicholas Udall and was called, from its hero, "Ralph Royster Doyster." He was a swaggering simpleton, a conceited fop of the time who is played upon by one Matthew Merrygreek, a needy humorist who represents the parasite of the old Latin drama under the influence of which this first English comedy was written. For Nicholas Udall was the Headmaster of Eton School, and the play in lively rhyming couplets, {495} interspersed with merry songs, was written to be played by the Eton boys according to their custom of having several plays each year. The play partakes somewhat of the nature of farce and contains a number of situations of the kind that have always drawn a laugh and will doubtless always continue to do so. In one of the scenes in the play, Ralph and his man are beaten in a brisk battle by the women of the play armed with broomsticks. A lesson in the need for punctuation is introduced, showing how completely the sense of writing can be reversed by putting the stops in the wrong places. Udall wrote some other plays, notably one called "Ezekias," used for the entertainment of Queen Elizabeth on her visit to Cambridge.
The other form of literature besides the drama which came to ripe fruition at this time in England is also of a popular character. It consists of the stirring English ballads which were gathered into a volume by Bishop Percy in his "Reliques" at the end of the eighteenth century. There probably has never been more stirring martial singing than is to be found in the "Ancient Ballad of Chevy Chase" or "Adam Bell" or "Clym of the Clough." It has been well said that "in graphic terseness, in poetic simplicity, in fiery fervor, in tenderness of pathos, our modern poetry does not approach these old ballads." Sir Philip Sidney said of "Chevy Chase," "I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart more moved than with a trumpet." While the language is simple, the verse rude, the thoughts rugged and the story over-full of sympathy for the outlaw, at all times, even the most refined, these ballads have stirred English hearts. The writers of them are unknown, but they had the genius of true poets, the power of vision and striking ability of expression. The ballads will live as long as our English tongue and will continue to be read even by the cultured, distant in every way from the rudeness of the time in which and the men for whom these ballads were written.
After the Ballad Poetry of this period came quite naturally Sir Thomas Malory's "Morte d'Arthur." There have been many and varying expressions of opinion with regard to the merit of this work, and it is at best a medley from many {496} sources. What Mr. Andrew Lang has called its "splendid patchwork" is harmonized and solemnized by the dignified conclusion "in tenderness and inexpiable sorrow." In spite of its many sources there is a unity of spirit and feeling, and Malory was an admirable narrator. Malory's vitality is attested by edition after edition in the nineteenth century. The book has an appeal to human nature that is eternal and that will always give it a distinguished place among the books of the educated at least. Of style in the literary sense of that term there is very little, and Malory's anomalous constructions have always puzzled grammarians, but as Garnett says in his English Literature, [Footnote 47] "These do not render him obscure for the readers of any period." Caxton laid English literature under an immense obligation by insuring the preservation of the work, through his selection of it to be one of his early-printed books. It has done credit to his taste in popular literature ever since.
[Footnote 47: "English Literature: an Illustrated Record in Four Vols." Garnett and Gosse: New York, 1903.]
In the latter part of the fifteenth and the first years of the sixteenth century a wonderful development of English poetry took place in Scotland. Just before Columbus' Century opened, James First of Scotland, who had been detained in an English prison for nineteen years, began the literature of Scotland in glorious fashion. The loneliness of these years prompted him to seek and gain that literary culture which has made his name famous in the world of letters. It is possible that the "King's Quair" (a quire or book), which is a poetical record of his sight of Jane Beaufort, granddaughter of John of Gaunt, from his prison window, and his winning her as his queen, may not be from his hand. There is no doubt at all, however, of his taste in literature, his patronage of it and of his establishment of the tradition which has made the English literature of Scotland so important during most of the centuries since. Four poets of the middle of Columbus' Century in Scotland deserve to be named, Blind Harry, Robert Henryson, Gawin Douglas and William Dunbar. All of them are still read affectionately by Scotchmen, but there are very few among the educated people of the English-speaking countries who would {497} care to confess ignorance of them, and to many they are favorite poets. Dunbar is the greatest of poets in English from Chaucer to Shakespeare, and Scottish critics at least have been loud in its praise. Mr. Craik says:
"This admirable master, alike of serious and of comic song, may justly be styled the Chaucer of Scotland, whether we look to the wide range of his genius, or to his eminence in every style over all the poets of his country who preceded and all who for ages came after him. Burns is certainly the only name among the Scottish poets that can yet be placed on the same line with that of Dunbar; and even the inspired ploughman, though the equal of Dunbar in comic power and his superior in depth of passion, is not to be compared with the older poet either in strength or in general fertility of imagination."
The two English poets of our period are Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, who, in spite of inequality in merit, possess so much in common that their names are closely associated. How well they were appreciated in Elizabeth's time and how much their influence meant for Shakespeare's contemporaries may be judged from Puttenham's expression, who said in 1589:
"Henry, Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, between whom I finde very little difference, I repute them for the two chief lanternes of light to all others that have since employed their pennes upon English Poesie; their conceits were loftie, their stiles stately, their conveyance cleanly, their termes proper, their metres sweete and well proportioned."
To Surrey, English literature owes two important literary innovations--the introduction of the sonnet and the use of polished blank verse. The influence of Italy and of the classic authors can be seen very clearly, and his version of the second and fourth books of the AEneid, in what Milton called "English heroic verse without rhyme," was a fundamental influence in English poetry. His sonnets are mainly the amatory effusions which were becoming fashionable everywhere at this time and which Shakespeare indulged in in his turn a little later. Some of his biographers and editors have woven a series of fanciful theories over his relations to the {498} "fair Geraldine," in whose honor many of the best sonnets were written, but it is doubtful whether these love poems are anything more than the wandering poetic fancies of the time. Surrey's unmerited death on the scaffold at the early age of thirty has deepened the romantic interest that attaches to his name as a poet. Sir Thomas Wyatt, though more than a dozen years older than his friend Surrey, must be considered his disciple in poetry. He, too, wrote some of the new sonnets on the theme that occupied so many of the poets of the time--Love--but, as in the case of Surrey also, we have from him some satires and metrical versions of the psalms.
Probably the greatest contribution to the English prose of the time is Sir Thomas More's "Life of Edward V." Mr. Hallam pronounced it "the first example of good English--pure and perspicuous, well chosen, without vulgarisms or pedantry." Many others have declared More the first great master of English prose and even the father of English prose. There have been dissentient voices among the critics from these high praises. There is no doubt, however, that More wrote a direct straightforward English that deeply influenced the course of English speech, and tradition has given him a high place among the great English orators. The language undoubtedly received a deep impress from him, and though his most important work in literature is "Utopia," written in Latin, his high place in English cannot be denied.
Authorities on English have always recognized this, but owing to religious feelings, and the anti-Catholic tradition created during Elizabeth and James' time, More's work has been neglected, except by the deeper scholars. Samuel Johnson, in the "History of the English Language," prefixed to his dictionary, devotes nearly one-third of all the space that he takes for his purpose to More. He apologizes somewhat for his copiousness of quotation from the chancellor, but justifies it by saying that, "It is necessary to give a larger specimen both because the language was to a great degree formed and settled and because it appears from Ben Jonson that his works were considered as models of pure and elegant style."
A recent writer, [Footnote 48] Prof. J. S. Phillimore, says of More's style: {499} "His usual prose has the easy elastic abundance of Boccaccio and a lawyer's love of proving a point exhaustively in controversy. But he has all the qualities of a great prose style: sonorous eloquence, less cumbersome than Milton; simplicity and lucidity of argument, with unfailing sense of the rhythms and harmonies of English sound. He is a master of Dialogue, the favorite vehicle of that age; neither too curiously dramatic in the ethopoia of the persons, nor yet allowing the form to become a hollow convention, the objector in his great Dialogue (the Quod he and Quod I) is anything but a man of straw. We can see that if Lucian was his early love he had not neglected Plato either. Elizabethan prose is tawdry and mannered compared with his: at his death Chaucer's thread is dropped, which none picked up till Clarendon and Dryden. With his colloquial, well-bred, unaffected ease, he is the ancestor of Swift. His style--so Erasmus tells us--was gained by long and careful studies and exercises; he took a discipline in Latin, of which the fruits were to appear in English, when the increasing gravity of the times warned him that it would be well to speak to a larger public than Latin could reach. Even where he is prolix--and that may seem prolix in black-letter folio which reads easy and pleasant enough in modern form--his merry humor is not long silent."
[Footnote 48: Dublin Review, July, 1913.]
As in French, some of the translations into English at this period are almost as admirable prose as Amyot's "Plutarch." Even when the translations of the time have the quaintness of the English of that period, they are admirable in their closeness to the original and in a certain rhythm of their sentences. Of Berner's translation of Froissart's "Chronicles," Snell in "The Age of Transition" ("Handbooks of English Literature," Scribners) says: "The English is so thoroughly idiomatic that in reading it one loses all sensation of the book being merely an interpretation, and resigns one's self to its easy and familiar flow with the same joyful complacency as if it were an original work. On the other hand, if one insists on breaking the spell and comparing it with the French text, one is struck not only with the felicity, but also the fidelity of the rendering."
The literary quality of the prose of the first half of the {500} sixteenth century in England is best revealed in the translations of the Scriptures done into the vernacular at this time and in the unequalled Collects of the English Prayerbook. Tyndale and Coverdale are responsible for the translations of the Scriptures, and to Cranmer is usually attributed the writing of the Collects, though, as has been said by Saintsbury, "this attribution derives but very faint corroboration from the Archbishop's known work." It was with these models of marvellously expressive, thoroughly idiomatic English, exquisite examples of style, that the translators of the King James version of the Bible were placed in a position to give us the wonderful fundamental literary work that was to come from their hand half a century later. It has been said that one argument of the most irresistible kind for the divine authorship of the Scriptures lies in the faculty which they have of making all the translations of them great literature. It was their influence that is felt in the English Prayerbook and in those parts of the Breviary which we owe to the first half of the sixteenth century.
{501}
VI. SCHOLARSHIP IN ITALY
One of the most important chapters in the great accomplishment of the men of this century is its scholarship--that is, the critical and appreciative knowledge of what men had written before their time and especially of the great classical works of antiquity. In this, almost needless to say, Italy is not only a pioneer, but was the alma mater studiorum--of whom Linacre was so proud--for those desirous of knowledge of the classics and true scholarship from all over the world. From every country, France, Spain, Germany, distant Poland and Denmark, as well as England, those looking for opportunities for study that could not be obtained at home flocked to Italy. Besides, Italian teachers are to be found teaching everywhere, though Italy herself proved no stepmother to those who came to be nurtured in good learning at her great institutions. Many a foreigner who had proved his ability was given a professorship and spent many years in teaching others in Italy as he had been taught himself.
This is the age of printing, and it was of first importance that good editions of the classics should be printed as soon as possible in order to prevent any further degeneration of their texts and avoid all further risk of losing the precious treasures of antiquity. Scholars in Italy took up the making of good texts, and within a century after the invention of printing, all the important Greek and Latin authors had been published in scholarly editions, the texts of which still command respect. The amount of labor required for this, the judicious scholarship demanded, the patience that was needed and the unselfish devotion to a most trying task, only scholars can properly appreciate. No debt that we owe to the Renaissance is greater than this, what it accomplished for classical literature, and by far the greater part of this debt is owed to Italy.
{502}
Everywhere, that is, in every important city, there was a school of the New Learning, and usually some munificent patrons of what they came to call Humanism because it represented humanity's highest interests, supporting scholars who were writing and correcting manuscripts and afterwards forming libraries of the printed books and making it possible for the great printers to continue their work by subscribing for their first editions. Only that the Church was deeply interested in this new movement, it would have been quite impossible for it to have continued. Unfortunately, as always happens whenever men get new knowledge, many of them, that is, the restless and the smaller minds among them, who are always likely to be in a great majority in any new movement, were taken with the idea that they knew so much more than those who went before them that they could not be expected to accept old-fashioned ideas in religion and philosophy. Because of the disturbances produced by such restless characters, there sometimes seems at this time to be opposition between the Church and the New Learning. This false impression is partly due to the fact that in certain countries, notably Germany and England, the reform doctrines were, as pointed out by Gasquet, often called the New Learning, to which, of course, there was opposition. Most of the great classic scholars, however, were ecclesiastics, some of them of very high rank and influence in the councils of the Church, even Cardinals and Popes, and in general the vast majority of the prominent scholars were in the closest of sympathy with the ecclesiastical authorities. The exceptions are so few as to make the existence of this rule very clear, though so much of emphasis has been placed on the exceptions in the modern time that an entirely false impression with regard to Church opposition to education has been produced in a great many minds.
The first name that deserves to be mentioned among the scholars of Italy is AEneas Sylvius of the family of Piccolomini, who is better known under the name of Pius II, which he bore as Pope. He is a typical example of the scholars of the Renaissance, in so far as that, as a younger man, his studies of classical antiquity led him to the expression of pagan ideas in life as well as in language. At the age of forty he {503} reformed and became as well known for his devotion as for his previous looseness of character. He was created Imperial Poet by the Emperor Frederick III, and his reputation for scholarship created a fashion in this regard that did great good for the rising movement of the New Learning. His influence as Pope continued this, though he made it the main business of his pontificate to organize Europe against the Turks so as to prevent the further increase of their power with all that would mean for the destruction of culture as well as religion. Indeed, his love for letters seems to have been at least as great an incentive for the organization of the crusade as his duty as an ecclesiastic. When he heard of the Fall of Constantinople, he exclaimed, "How many names of mighty men will perish! It is a second death to Homer and to Plato. The fount of the muses is dried up forevermore." How much he was thought of by his contemporaries and how much the example of his scholarship meant will be best appreciated from the Piccolomini Palace and other buildings of Pienza, but particularly the exquisitely beautiful Piccolomini Library at Siena. Pinturicchio's decorations for this library are only added testimony to the admiration of his generation. Sylvius' letter to Ladislas, the young king of Bohemia and Hungary who had sought his advice with regard to education, is one of the important documents in the history of education. It contains the oft-quoted passage with regard to the place of memory in education:
"We must first insist upon the overwhelming importance of Memory, which is in truth the first condition of capacity for letters. A boy should learn without effort, retain with accuracy, and reproduce easily. Rightly is memory called 'the nursing mother of learning.' It needs cultivation, however, whether a boy be gifted with retentiveness or not. Therefore, let some passage from poet or moralist be committed to memory every day."
One of the greatest scholars of the period and one of the leaders in the Renaissance movement towards the classics which brought about the reawakening of artistic and literary men at this time was Cardinal Bessarion, whose long life of over eighty years gave him nearly a quarter of a century in {504} Columbus' period. He came with the Emperor John Palaeologus to the Council of Ferrara in 1438, where his reputation for scholarship and vast erudition in all theological matters gave him great authority among the Greek Bishops. To him more than any other must be attributed the formal reunion with the Latin Church, which was the happy issue of that Council. To him, therefore, was committed the honor of reading the Greek formula of the Act of Union. Unfortunately, the union was but short-lived, but Bessarion changed to the Latin rite and in 1439 was created Cardinal.
The Cardinal was high in favor with succeeding Popes and just at the beginning of Columbus' Century was sent as papal legate to Bologna, as "an angel of peace," in the hope that he would be able to quell the factional disturbances and pacify the divided interests. Cardinal Bessarion succeeded admirably in this difficult mission, calmed the internal dissensions and succeeded in introducing wise reforms into the city government and the administration of justice. His principal attention, however, was given to the University. He rebuilt the building and gathered there some of the most famous teachers of the world, encouraging particularly the study of the classics, and above all of Greek. He himself supplied out of his personal revenues whatever was lacking in the salaries, and he gathered around him a notable band of scholars, writers and poets, and began that magnificent outburst of interest in the intellectual life which was to make Bologna so famous.
He continued to be active in his influence on the scholarship of Italy until well beyond eighty years of age, yet was always a factor in the practical life of his time. When he was eighty-one he wrote for Pope Paul II a letter on the organization of a new crusade against the Turks. When he was eighty-three he went on an embassy to Paris in order to bring about the union of the Western nations for a crusade. While at Rome during his later years, Bessarion gathered round him the scholars and writers in all departments. The scientists of the time particularly owe much to his patronage. He was a friend of Peurbach of Vienna, of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, of Regiomontanus and many others. In his house the first Accademia was founded, and he was known as the patron of {505} letters. He gathered an immense number of valuable manuscripts at very great expense, had copies of others made and gave his treasures at his death to found a library in Venice, his collection forming the nucleus of the famous library of St. Mark.
After these two great Churchmen and patrons of learning and education, there are a series of scholars whose names deserve to be mentioned for the influence which they exerted on the learning of Europe at this time. At the beginning of our century came the Greeks, who were driven out of their native country by the conquest of the Turks. Demetrius Chalcondyles, Theodore Gaza, George Trebizond and Joannes Argyropulos, unable to pursue their studies in peace in the midst of the alarms produced by the Turks, reached Italy before the Fall of Constantinople. Gaza was lecturing on Demosthenes at Ferrara in 1448, where among his pupils was the subsequently distinguished German scholar Rudolph Agricola. The first year of our century Gaza was invited to Rome by Pope Nicholas V to fill the chair of philosophy and take a principal part in the plan which the Pope had conceived for the translation of the principal Greek classics. Gaza's translations were mainly concerned with scientific Greek works, Aristotle "On Mechanical Problems" and "On Animals" and Theophrastus' "Botany." For a time he withdrew to a monastery, but was recalled to Rome by Pope Paul II to take part in the editio princeps of Gellius. After the death of Bessarion he retired once more to his monastery, where he died in 1475. His Greek grammar became famous and was used as a text-book by Budaeus in Paris and by Erasmus in Cambridge. He is described by Manutius as easily chief among the Latin and Greek scholars of his age, an age replete with scholarship be it said, and he is eulogized by Scaliger over a century later as magnus vir et doctus, a great man and a learned.
George Trebizond, after teaching for many years in Venice, was invited to Rome, where he became one of the Papal Secretaries. He also took part in the plan for translating the Greek classics, and his translations include the "Rhetoric and Problems of Aristotle" and "The Laws and Charmenides of Plato." Argyropulos taught first at Padua and then for {506} fifteen years under the patronage of the Medici at Florence. He, too, was invited to Rome by the Pope and was highly esteemed there. His part in the great plan of translation concerned mainly the works of Aristotle, whose "Ethics," "Politics," "Economics," "On the Soul" and "On Heaven" were all printed in his versions. He was the master of Politian, and his lectures were attended by Tiptoff, the Earl of Worcester, and by Reuchlin, the great German humanist. It was to Reuchlin that Argyropulos, after having heard him read and translate a passage of Thucydides, exclaimed with a sigh, "Lo! through our exile Greece has flown across the Alps." Chalcondyles, at the early age of twenty-six, made an immediate conquest of his Italian audience at Perugia in 1450. Subsequently he lectured at Padua, being the first teacher of Greek who received a salary at any of the Universities of Europe. For twenty years he lectured in Florence, and there prepared the editio princeps of Homer, the first great Greek author to be printed. After the death of Lorenzo de Medici he withdrew to Milan and there edited "Isocrates" and "Suidas." His emendation of Greek texts is the best proof of his scholarship, and few men of his time equalled his power in this. He was noted for the gentleness of his disposition and his integrity of character, and he made many friends. There is a famous picture by Ghirlandajo in Santa Maria Novella at Florence which contains portraits of Ficino, Landino, Politian and Chalcondyles.
The work of all of these men was greatly assisted by Pope Nicholas V, who was himself distinguished as a scholar in this scholarly time. During his pontificate in the first years of Columbus' Century he did more for the encouragement of learning than anyone else of the time. His wide knowledge of manuscripts made him personally an expert, and he gathered from all lands and is the founder of the Vatican collection of manuscripts. Besides the translations of Aristotle, Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon, Polybius and Epictetus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and Appian were translated under his direction. The catholicity of his taste, and above all the inclusion of the scientific books of the Greeks, is a tribute to the liberty of spirit of the Pope. On his death-bed he declared that his {507} greatest consolation was that he had been liberal in the rewarding of learned men.
After the Papal influence, the most important factor for the encouragement of scholarship was the academies which were founded at this time. Lorenzo de Medici revived, after an interval of 1200 years, the ancient custom of celebrating the memory of Plato by an annual banquet. Out of this arose the Accademia of Florence, nearly every one of the members of which were distinguished scholars. The best known among them are Landino and Ficino, both of whom had been Lorenzo's tutors, Pico della Mirandola and Politian. The first account that we have of the Academy is to be found in the introduction to Ficino's edition of Plato's "Symposium." He tells that his rendering of all the seven speeches in the "Symposium" was read aloud and discussed by five of the guests. Undoubtedly Ficino was the centre of the Accademia and one of the greatest scholarly influences of the time. At the age of forty he took Holy Orders and was noted for the next twenty-five years, until his death, as a faithful priest whose scholarship was devoted to showing how Plato illuminated Christianity. In the latter part of his life he lectured on and translated Plotinus.
The best known of these scholars in Florence was undoubtedly Politian, much more interested in Latin than in Greek, though Sandys, in his "History of Classical Scholarship" (Cambridge University Press, 1908), says that he was probably the first teacher in Italy whose mastery of Greek was equal to that of the Greek immigrants. Though he died at the early age of forty, we owe to him valuable textual criticisms of Lucretius, Propertius, Ovid, Statius, Ausonius, Celsus, Quintilian, Festus, and Catullus and Tibullus. His monograph on the chronology of Cicero's letters, his discussion of the use of the aspirate in Latin and Greek and of the differences between the aorist and the imperfect as illustrated by the signatures of Greek sculptors, as well as his power of solving textual difficulties, made him one of the great contributors to the magnificent work accomplished at this time for classical scientific grammar and erudition, as well as for the provision of proper texts of the classics for the world. Besides pure {508} literature, he was interested very much in law and made a special study of the "Pandects" of Justinian. He refused to follow those who slavishly imitated Cicero, and denounces the Ciceronians as the mere apes of Cicero. His expressions in the matter are famous. "To myself the face of a bull or a lion appears far more beautiful than that of an ape, although the ape has a closer resemblance to man. But, someone will say you do not express Cicero. I answer I am not Cicero, what I really express is myself."
Academies were formed in other cities and accomplished excellent results for scholarship, though at times they fell under the suspicion of the authorities of dabbling in politics or of actually favoring political factions or even revolutionary ideas. Nearly always they owe their origin to the patronage of high ecclesiastics or those who were in very close sympathy with the Church and always they contained clergymen of distinction. After that of Florence the next in chronological order was that of Rome. There is even some question whether the Roman Academy was not the first in time, only it did not receive this name until after it had been adopted in Florence. The most important figure in the Roman Academy was the man who, for want of a better, assumed the old Roman name Pomponius Laetus. He was narrow enough of intellect to refuse to learn Greek, because he feared that it would spoil his Latin style. The members of the Roman Academy, under his ruling spirit, celebrated the foundation of Rome on the annual return of the festival of the Palilia, a custom which is still retained by many of the Roman academies. Pomponius did his gardening according to the precepts of Varro and Columella, the Latin writers on agriculture, and nothing pleased him better than to be regarded as a second Cato. It is to him that is due the revival of the regular performances of Plautus' plays.
Among the most important members of the Academy were Platina, who became the Librarian of the Vatican, and Sabellicus, who afterwards became the Prefect of the Library of San Marco in Venice. For a time, owing to suspicion of its political, perhaps also its religious, tendencies, the Roman Academy was suppressed and some of its members put in prison, but under Pope Sixtus IV it was revived and all its {509} old customs restored. Pomponius wrote commentaries on the whole of Virgil, on Sallust and Curtius, on Pliny's letters and Quintilian and on his agricultural favorites, Varro and Columella, and his equally great favorites, Festus and Nonius Marcellus, the grammarians. In order to complete his similarity with the old Romans, he had expressed the desire at one time in life that after death his body should simply be placed in an ancient Roman tomb on the Appian Way. When he died at the age of seventy he had changed the views of his earlier years and was given a magnificent Christian funeral. So great was the veneration for his scholarship that his obsequies in the Church of Ara Coeli, in the midst of the Roman antiquities that he had loved so well, were attended, as Gregorovius tells us, by some forty bishops.
This Roman Academy continued to exist, now flourishing, now occupied with trivialities, as is the way with such institutions, until the sack of Rome in 1527. As Sandys says ("Harvard Lectures on the Revival of Learning," Cambridge University Press, 1905), "Its palmy days were in the age of Leo X, when it included the most brilliant members of the literary society of Rome, men like the future Cardinals, Bembo and Sadoleto, as well as Paolo Giovio and Castiglione. It encouraged very much the study of Latin particularly, and its members wrote Latin poems and delivered Latin orations and above all encouraged the development of Roman Archaeology, the preservation of Roman remains of all kinds, the editing of books and the recovery of every possible phase of information with regard to Roman life."
There were minor academies in Rome, one of which, the Vitruvian Academy, occupied itself mainly with architecture. But as was true also at Florence, where there were a number of minor academies, some at least of these were only cloaks for political discussions and organizations, and as a consequence brought other and more serious bodies of the same name under suspicion.
The next academy of importance is that of Naples, which came into existence probably just about the beginning of Columbus' Century during the reign of Alfonso of Aragon, the magnanimous patron of learning. Its most prominent {510} members were Antonio of Palermo, whose Italian name of Beccadelli is often used; Pontano and Sannazzaro, the poets, and Laurentius Valla, the historian and professor of rhetoric. Valla subsequently became professor of rhetoric in Rome at the invitation of Pope Nicholas V, who wanted his assistance for the carrying out of the great plan of translations from Greek to Latin of all the great authors which he constantly cherished. Valla became Papal Secretary under Nicholas' successor, Pope Calixtus III, but unfortunately he died at the early age of fifty. He deserves extended notice because he is one of the founders of historical criticism, and he began that denunciation of exaggerated belief in Aristotle very proper in itself, but which unfortunately went too far and led to under-estimation of the medieval scholars who had studied Aristotle so sedulously, and even of Aristotle himself. His discussion of the Donation of Constantine attracted much attention and showed very clearly how scholarship might be used to good purpose for the correction of false notions even long after events had happened.
The Accademia at Venice deserves more than a passing mention because, though founded much later than the others, it set itself the very practical purpose of bringing about a systematic publication of the Greek classics. It was founded by Aldus in 1500, who called it the New Academy of Hellenists, and was as strongly Grecian as Pomponius' Academy was Roman. Its constitution was written in Greek, Greek was spoken at its meetings and Greek names were adopted by its Italian members. Fortiguerra of Pistoia, the Secretary of the Academy, thus became Carteromachus. The principal aim of the Academy was to produce in each month an edition of at least 1,000 copies of some good author. Among the honorary foreign members were Linacre, some of whose translations Aldus published, and Erasmus, who visited Venice in 1508 and who expressed himself as delighted with the opportunity to take part in the deliberations of the Academy. How successful the Academy was in its purpose of encouraging scholarly printing, all the world knows. Aldus produced no less than 27 editiones principes of Greek authors and Greek works of reference. At the time of his death in 1515 all the {511} principal Greek classics had been printed. The Academy had been a large factor in helping him in this magnificent achievement, which meant more for scholarship throughout the whole of Europe than perhaps any other single movement occupying so short a time.
There are many of the scholars of the Renaissance whose names are scarcely known outside of the narrow circle of modern specialists in their departments, though their influence was felt for many generations and their work is worthy of the highest praise. A typical example of these is Ambrogio Calepino, the Augustinian monk, to whom we owe the first great modern Latin dictionary. Under the title of "Cornucopia" it appeared first at Reggio in 1502 and was reprinted many times during the sixteenth century. The Alduses at Venice printed no less than eighteen editions of it. This lexicon came to be the groundwork on which subsequent lexicographers, recognizing its merit, built up their larger works. There was an edition of it in seven languages by Facciolati, printed at Pavia in 1718, which was reprinted many times. The name of Calepinus became a synonym for the word dictionary or lexicon and is frequently used, without capitalization as a common noun, in Italy during the subsequent generations. His magnificent work well deserved this recognition, for it is a monument of the classical scholarship of the first half of Columbus' Century.
One of the greatest of the Italian scholars of the first half of, Columbus' Century was that distinguished member of the Florentine Academy whose books were the special favorites of Sir Thomas More, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who died at the early age of thirty-one after dreaming the dream of the unity of all knowledge and becoming absorbed in planning a vast work which was to form a complete system of knowledge. He had devoted himself to Greek and to Christian theology and philosophy and even rendered himself liable to suspicion by his delvings into Cabalistic lore and had deeply impressed the generation among whom he lived. His reputation as a marvellous precocious scholar, who died all untimely, still endures, and Sir Thomas More's study and discussion of his works gave him a reputation in England which added greatly {512} to his fame throughout the whole West of Europe. He was happy in his end, for he passed away on the very day in which the invader of Italy, Charles VIII of France, marched into Florence.
Scholarship continued to hold the highest place in Italy until political troubles, and above all the sack of Rome in 1527, drew men's minds from peaceful pursuits, scattered libraries and made patronage of scholarship most difficult for rulers and ecclesiastics.
{513}
VII. THE SCHOLARSHIP OF THE TEUTONIC COUNTRIES
Germany and the closely-related Teutonic countries are the only part of Europe which did not create a distinct national literature during this Renaissance period. It is true that Hans Sachs' popular poetry comes from this time, and this has always been popular in Germany and has often been reprinted, but it has never had any influence on world literature and represents an almost solitary phenomenon in the history of German literature. The reformers wrote vigorous German prose, and in the controversial articles which were so frequent at the time, and above all in the translations of the Scriptures into the vernacular, laid the foundation of modern High German which must be traced to this period, but even Germans scarcely claim the existence of a German literature of the Renaissance.
On the other hand, the scholarship of Germany at this time was as remarkable in its own way as Germany has ever been in subjects in which it was interested. Probably nowhere in Europe did scholarship penetrate more deeply among the people, and nowhere were freer opportunities for mastery in the classical languages afforded than along the Rhine, at Nueremberg and the neighboring cities and even in districts to the north of these. The German thought of the time was written in Latin and much of it was merely academic and passing in character. Some of it, however, as a Kempis' works, above all the "Imitation of Christ," were destined to an immortality of enduring influence. Not a little of the educational writings of Erasmus and those particularly of other students of the Brethren of the Common Life were to witness many revivals of interest down to our own day, when they are again attracting wide attention. Scholarship diverted the intellectual {514} energy that would have been devoted to the production of a national literature for the Germans, and must be studied deeply to appreciate the Germany of the time.
For any proper understanding of scholarship outside of Italy during the Renaissance period, which corresponds with Columbus' Century, the most important preliminary is a knowledge of the institution and spirit and the work and pupils of the Brethren of the Common Life. The significance of their history has not been generally recognized, especially in English-speaking countries, until recent years, and even now many fail to appreciate its high import. Prejudice against religious orders, acquired through sympathy with the Reformation, obscured the value of this great factor in the education and scholarship of the Teutonic countries which can indeed scarcely be exaggerated. The order of the Common Life was, especially in the first half of what we have called Columbus' Century, the great foster mother of scholars whose reputations have deservedly lasted till our time and have now become imperishable landmarks in the history of scholarship. The mention of the names of such pupils of theirs as Agricola, Thomas a Kempis, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, Alexander Hegius and Wimpheling would be quite enough to afford ample proof of this.
The members of this religious order took no vows, nor did they ask or receive alms. According to their constitution, they worked for their daily bread, though their first aim was to cultivate the life of the spirit, and they were required by their rules to devote themselves in connection with this purpose to their intellectual development, to education, the copying of classics and the writing of books. Their founder, Geert de Groote (1340-1384), belonged to a rather wealthy merchant family, and when he took orders he obtained ecclesiastical preferment as a canon at Utrecht and at Aachen. Somewhat like St. Francis of Assisi, in the midst of what might well seem a conventionally successful life, he fell ill and had the experience that Dean Stanley described when he said "things look different when viewed from the horizontal position." On his recovery, Geert de Groote resigned his canonries, gave his goods to the Carthusians and spent seven years in solitude. {515} thinking over the significance of life and what was man's true purpose in it. At the end of that time he came out to preach, and his preaching met with wonderful success. Thousands flocked to listen to him, and soon many young men wished to join with him in his simple mode of life, to be directed by him and to help him in his work.
Almost without his wishing it, a religious community grew up around him, and when Geert de Groote died, near the end of the fourteenth century, his successor, Florence Radewyns, founded the famous monastery of Windesheim, the mother-house of the new religious life. These new religious taught especially the middle and lower classes, copied books and themselves wrote commentaries in language as simple as possible on all manner of spiritual subjects. Their schools became centres of the spiritual and intellectual life of the Low Countries and the Rhineland, and during the course of the fifteenth century they grew in numbers and in the attendance of scholars. Deventer, one of their most famous schools, counted over 2,000 students about the time of the discovery of America, and some of the greatest men of this first part of Columbus' Century had been students of the Brethren of the Common Life.
Mr. Hamilton Mabie, in his collection of essays, "My Study Fire," has paid a worthy tribute to these dear old scholars and teachers which sums up succinctly and sympathetically their work and its significance. He said (page 92):
"I confess that I can never read quite unmoved the story of the Brethren of the Common Life, those humble-minded, patient teachers and thinkers whose devotion and fire of soul for a century and a half made the choice treasures of Italian palaces and convents and universities a common possession along the low-lying shores of the Netherlands. The asceticism of this noble brotherhood was no morbid and divisive fanaticism; it was a denial of themselves that they might have the more to give. The visions which touched at times the bare walls of their cells with supernal beauty only made them the more eager to share their heaven of privilege with the sorely-burdened world without. Surely Virgil and Horace and the other masters of classic form were never more honored than {516} when these noble-minded lovers of learning and of their kind made their sounding lines familiar in peasant homes."
Many people seem inclined to think that the education of the poor became possible only in our time. The guild schools of the Middle Ages are a contradiction of this, but the story of the Brethren of the Common Life shows how much organized effort was given to the educational care for poor students. In his "Life of Thomas a Kempis," Kettelwell has told what they did for the poor and also how broad and wide were the foundations of the education that they laid (p. 165):
"But there was another safeguard which was of great service in preserving them (the Brethren) from being led away by fanaticism or wild enthusiasm, because it gave them a useful object and purpose in life to look after, and that was the encouragement they gave to intellectual pursuits and the interest they took in education. Much of the instruction given in schools at that time was often only within the reach of those who could pay for it, whilst there was no little defect in imparting it. . . . The Brothers of the Common Life, on the contrary, not only promoted the giving of instruction gratuitously, or assisted those unable to pay for it, and thus brought the arts of reading and writing within the reach of many that could not otherwise attain them; but, what was of more consequence, they infused into education quite a new life, and imparted to it a purer and nobler aim.
"It is well known to the student of history that a great improvement in the character of education took place about this time, and that the advance of learning in the Northern parts of Germany is greatly indebted to the efforts of the Brothers of the Common Life. Though Gerard charged the members of the Brotherhood to look to Christ as the source of all light and truth, all life and peace, and without Whom all learning or gifts were but as vain shadows, yet he would not confine them to none but Christian authors. Among the ancient philosophers he would have his educated disciples to read the works of Plato and Aristotle, and valued the former for his excellent discourses in the person of Socrates. The morals of Seneca pleased him much, and he recommended them to the Brothers as a rich mine of wisdom. He himself {517} was versed in the art of medicine and knew something of law, and it is evident that some of his disciples were much esteemed for their knowledge of them. And from what Thomas a Kempis says of Gerard, he would have the clerics to study geometry, arithmetic, logic, grammar and other subjects. From which it will be perceived that the Brothers of the Common Life were urged to the pursuit of what at that time was a liberal and enlightened education, and consequently were the first in their generation, and in those parts, to promote and encourage it, and were thereby the less likely to be led away or inflated by an ignorant or foolish enthusiasm."
They did copying, but under instructions made their copying of value for their own education. This was an important development (p. 167):
"It had begun, as we have shown, in great simplicity under the blessing of God. To the young clerics he (their founder) had joined certain priests and laymen, thus making a mixed society. Idleness and accumulation of worldly goods had been the rock on which so many of the Monastic Orders had made shipwreck, and therefore, to the cultivation of the Interior life had been joined some useful employment and the pursuit of fine letters. And that the mind should not become enervated by the work of copying manuscripts being too long carried on as a mere manual operation, Gerard had prescribed to each of the clerics that he should make extracts of the finest sayings he met with, especially of the Fathers and of the Saints, and even make minutes of his own reflections, and inscribe them in a certain book called 'Rapiarium.' And, as the enthusiastic deacon of Deventer always joined example with precept, he himself transcribed and published many little works composed from the works of the Saints, most of which are now lost. It is doubtless from this custom, which Thomas a Kempis largely carried out in the early days of his connection with the Brotherhood, that we are mainly indebted for those many little devotional works which he afterwards wrote, at the head of which he places the books of the 'De Imitatione Christi.'"
It would be easy to think that probably these good religious devoted themselves much more to the cultivation of piety than {518} of good literature, and that perhaps even their devotion to culture was rather superficial. As a matter of fact, however, their schools became famous for their thoroughness, and all along the Rhine the sons of "the butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker" learned to read and write Latin fluently, corresponded in Latin letters and above all seem to have received very precious inspirations for the intellectual life that were not extinguished even by a merely money-making career. A good many of the graduates of their schools became famous in the German scholarship of this period. Not all of them became clergymen, though of course a great many did.
Probably the most important of their students was Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, the greatest and most original thinker of the fifteenth century. Strange as it may seem, his achievements in the intellectual life were nearly all made in mathematics and in science. His work is sketched in the chapter on Physical Science of the Century. Because of an important contribution to medicine, he has a chapter in my "Old-Time Makers of Medicine" (Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1911).
The thoroughly practical character of Cusanus' mind and its education from books and experience can be readily appreciated from a paragraph of his with regard to the unification of his Fatherland, in which his far-seeing patriotism anticipated the most modern views.
Cusanus was sent out as Papal Legate to Germany, just about the beginning of Columbus' Century, in order to correct abuses and bring Christendom into closer touch with the Holy See. During the course of his journeys in Germany he recognized all the weakness and the evils connected with the splitting up of the German people into many petty principalities. He saw clearly how much their union under one head would mean for the people themselves, their happiness and progress, and above all for the peace of mankind. Nearly four centuries before the actual accomplishment of the dream of the German Empire, he expressed himself very emphatically on this point, and curiously enough drew his main arguments from economic conditions and the failure of any assurance of lasting peace afforded by the existence of many petty governments. {519} It is characteristic of his very practical scientific bent of mind that he should have entered so far into the details of the accomplishment of his vision as to suggest the making of a budget and the giving of formal accounts of how the money was spent to the legislative body.
"The law and the kingdom should be placed under the protection of a single ruler or authority. The small separate governments of princes and counts consume a disproportionately large amount of revenue without furnishing any real security. For this reason we must have a single government, and for its support we must have a definite amount of the income from taxes and revenues yearly set aside by a representative parliament and before this parliament (Reichstag) must be given every year a definite account of the money that was spent during the preceding year."
Some idea of the intellectual aspirations of the time and the attitude of men towards knowledge and truth may be gathered from a paragraph of Cardinal Cusanus, which is so comprehensive and so full of the love of wisdom in the best sense of the word as to be classical and to deserve a place in the notebook of every teacher. It may well be taken as the motto of the schools of the Brethren of the Common Life.
"To know and to think, to see the truth with the eye of the mind, is always a joy. The older a man grows, the greater is the pleasure which it affords him, and the more he devotes himself to the search after truth, the stronger grows his desire of possessing it. As love is the life of the heart, so is the endeavor after knowledge and truth the life of the mind. In the midst of the movements of time, of the daily work of life, of its perplexities and contradictions, we should lift our gaze fearlessly to the clear vault of heaven, and seek ever to obtain a firmer grasp of and a keener insight into the origin of all goodness and beauty, the capacities of our own hearts and minds, the intellectual fruits of mankind throughout the centuries, and the wondrous works of nature around us, at the same time remembering always that in humility alone lies true greatness, and that knowledge and wisdom are alone profitable in so far as our lives are governed by them."
One of the greatest of the students of the Brethren of the {520} Common Life is the famous Rudolph Agricola, who was educated at Deventer, but, with the intellectual curiosity characteristic of his time and the ardor for study and opportunities for intellectual development which was so often seen in Columbus' Century, wandered on to Erfurt, Louvain, and then Cologne and Paris in order to miss no possible educational opportunity. When he was twenty-five he went down to Italy, where he studied law and rhetoric at Pavia and then to Ferrara, where he studied Greek under Theodore Gaza. He held a political office for some time, but John of Dalberg, Bishop of Worms, recognizing his scholarship, secured for him the opportunity to teach at Heidelberg. He lectured on Aristotle and translated Lucian. Above all he was the great pioneer of humanism in Germany, and by his personal influence lighted a torch that was soon to illuminate the country. He wrote to Rudolph von Langen once when he was seeking a headmaster for the Cathedral School at Muenster: "I entertain the highest hope that by your aid we shall one day wrest from proud Italy her vaunted glory of pre-eminence in education and literature."
Jacob Wimpheling, who came later to be known as "the Schoolmaster of Germany," is another one of these students of the Brethren of the Common Life who reached distinction. He was educated at Schlettstadt in what is now Alsace. Like the others, he wandered far afield, however, for his scholarship. He studied at Freiburg and Erfurt and also at Heidelberg and was probably in Italy for a time. He returned to Heidelberg as professor, his lectures being mainly upon St. Jerome. In nearly every city in which he stayed for any length of time he founded literary societies and devoted himself to the reform of educational methods. He insisted above all on the importance of moral training in education, and has made it very clear that he felt that an educated man without high moral training was more dangerous for evil than one without education. His writings obtained a wide circulation and did much to determine the character of education for two centuries. His idea was that education should produce able and conscientious citizens rather than accomplished scholars. He was eminently practical in his way of looking at things and deprecated {521} the notion so common at many times in history that the storing of the memory with information, instead of the training of the mind by thoughtful work so as to make it capable of the best judgment when that is needed, is the true ideal in education.
One of the pupils of Agricola in Greek, though he was an older man, was Alexander Hegius, who, during the last fifteen years of his life, which correspond almost exactly with the last fifteen years of the fifteenth century, made the school of Deventer the great educational centre of North Germany. Among his pupils at Deventer was Erasmus. Hegius did much to put an end to the older mediaeval ideas in education, which had become outworn, and to bring in the study of the classics. One of his great friends, Rudolph von Langen, was a student of Erfurt who visited Italy and came back full of enthusiasm for humanistic studies and finally succeeded in founding a school of the New Learning at Muenster, where he was the Canon of the Cathedral Church. He tried to secure Hegius as the headmaster of this school, but had to be content with his pupil, Murmellius, who wrote a series of very useful textbooks at this time.
The greatest of the pupils of the Brethren of the Common Life, who is also one of the greatest scholars of all time, is Desiderius Erasmus. Probably no better idea can be obtained of the high estimation in which scholarship was held at this time in Europe than from the career of Erasmus. He was welcomed everywhere. He was looked upon as one of the moving forces of the time. His opinions were eagerly sought, his books were read, he had the friendship not only of scholars, but of high ecclesiastics, the nobility and even royalty. He did an immense amount of work and exercised a deep influence over his time. His influence over England was especially deep, and he aided Dean Colet in his great design for the future school of St. Paul's by writing his treatise, "De ratione Studii"; he was a friend of Bishop Warham and of Sir Thomas More; through the influence of Bishop Fisher of Rochester he became Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge; in a word, he entered into all the intellectual life of the time everywhere. He was in Italy for years, helped Aldus, the printer, at Venice, drawing inspiration from the {522} libraries, the scholars and the classic remains. His many monographs and dialogues meant much for the diffusion of right views as to classical education. His editions of Latin authors comprise Seneca, Suetonius, certain works of Cicero, Pliny and Terence. His Greek texts include Aristotle and Ptolemy. He made recensions of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom, with three editions of St. Jerome. His edition of the Greek Testament is probably more important than any of these.
One of the important scholars and teachers of Germany at this time, though anyone who reviews his life work with some care will surely be inclined to think that his import has been exaggerated because of his connection with the reform movement, and that in comparison with many other scholars of the time he does not deserve that high pre-eminence of reputation which has been accorded him, was Philip Schwarzerd, who translated his family name of Black-earth into the Greek Melanchthon and is known by that name. He was but one of the many great German scholars at this time, though many people seem to think that he stands almost alone, a striking example of the supposed freedom of intellectual development that was ushered in by the Reformation.
Melanchthon, through the influence of his uncle, Reuchlin, became Professor of Greek at Wittenberg. He had been a lecturer on Virgil, Terence and Cicero. During his teaching he wrote a Greek and Latin grammar and edited many editions of the classics and published a series of commentaries on Cicero, Terence, Sallust, Ovid, Quintilian, as well as selections from Aristotle's "Ethics" and "Politics." He was a gentle, kindly scholar, deeply Christian in his principles, without any sympathy at all with the paganizing spirit of many of the lesser humanists, above all outside of Germany. His gentler spirit was overborne by Luther's strong character. He is said to have told his mother on her death-bed that the old Church was a good one to die in, though the reformed might be well enough to live in. The spread of the Reformation in Germany led to the adoption of his text-books widely, hence his name preceptor Germaniae.
Scholarship was not, however, confined to the Rhineland {523} and the Western part of Germany. Many of the cities of the Eastern portion had magnificent developments of education and classical scholarship at this time and shared in the art impulse of the period. Nuremberg, Augsburg, Innsbruck, Vienna, as well as Stuttgart, Ingoldstadt and Tuebingen, shared in the movement. The great teacher in this part of Germany was Johann Reuchlin, who studied Greek at Paris and at Basel, as well as in Italy, taught at Basel, Orleans and Poitiers and then spent nearly twenty-five years in teaching at Stuttgart, Ingoldstadt and Tuebingen, where he was Professor of Greek and of Hebrew. When he was but twenty he produced a Latin dictionary called "Vocabularius Breviloquus," noted for its brevity, conciseness and orderly arrangement, which passed through twenty editions in less than thirty years. He became so proficient in Latin, Greek and Hebrew that he was called "the three-tongued wonder of Germany." His Hebrew text-books gave a great impetus to the study of that language and literature in Germany.
He was very highly thought of, was sent on various diplomatic missions to Italy, occupied important judicial positions under the government and wielded an immense influence over the men of his time. He died some five years after the beginning of the Lutheran movement, but had no sympathy with the Wittenberg professor's schismatic attitude. When he found that his nephew Melanchthon, for whom he had secured the chair of Greek at the University of Wittenberg, had attached himself to Luther, he expressed his disapproval and cancelled the bequest of his library, which had previously been destined for Melanchthon. Reuchlin was a representative of the widest culture of the time, a source of inspiration and incentive to scholarship for all who came in contact with him. A bitter controversy over some of his writings occupied the attention of all literary Germany during the early part of the sixteenth century, showing how widespread was interest in all intellectual questions at this time.
The men who led in the defence of Reuchlin in this controversy were mainly Ulrich von Hutten, Johann Jaeger of Dornheim and Conrad Muth, or as he came to be known from his Latin name Mutianus Rufas, another of the students of {524} the Brethren of the Common Life, a school-fellow of Erasmus at Deventer. He had subsequently studied in Italy, where he became an intimate of Pico della Mirandola and took the degree of Doctor in Law at Bologna. Sandys has told his story in his "History of Classical Scholarship" (page 257):
"On his return he (Muth) settled at Gotha, where he placed, in golden letters, over the door of his canonical residence, the words BEATA TRANQUILLITAS, and thereafter devoted his thoughts to 'God and the Saints and the study of all Antiquity.' He took the keenest interest in his younger friends, the humianists of Erfurt, inspiring them with an eager desire for the spread of classical literature, a hatred for the pedantry and formalism of the old scholastic methods and a critical spirit which felt little reverence for the past. After organizing the victory of the humanists over the scholastic obscurantists of the day, their leader lived to see his 'tranquil' home ruthlessly plundered by a Protestant mob, at a time when the quiet waters of Humanism had been overwhelmed by the stronger stream of the Reformation."
One of the great German scholars and editors of the Renaissance was Conrad Celtes, whose real name was Conrad Picket, but was changed with the typical classicizing tendency of the Renaissance to the antique form Celtes. He had received his education under such men as Bishop John of Dalberg and Rudolph Agricola, and then after travelling in Italy, where he was in intimate relations with Pomponius Laetus, Ficino and the famous printer Aldus Manutius, he was, on his return to Germany, crowned poet laureate at Nuremberg and there also received the doctor's degree. During his travels through the Northern countries, he founded, in imitation of the Roman Academy, literary societies in many of the cities. There was the Societas Literarum Vistuliana, whose seat was at Cracow; the Sodalitas Literarum Danubiana, founded originally in Hungary, but afterwards transferred to Vienna, and the Sodalitas Literarum Rhenana, which had members along the Rhine.
This last Academy was founded at Mainz the year before the discovery of America. Three of the most distinguished men of the time were among its members. {525} Johann von Dalberg, the Bishop of Worms, whose name occurs so often in the history of the scholars of the time because of his munificent patronage of learning, was its first president. The Abbot Trithemius of Trittenheim and Wilibald Pirkheimer of Nuremberg were among its prominent members. Trithemius spent much time and money in the collection of old manuscripts. Pirkheimer was eminent as a statesman and a patron of humanism and as a translator of Greek texts and a student of archaeology.
Besides founding these academies, Celtes lectured in many universities and issued an edition of the writings of Hroswitha, the nun dramatist of the tenth century. It was such a surprise to his generation (it is scarcely less to ours, so little diffusion of true historical information is there) to find that there had been any literature in the convents along the Rhine in the tenth century, that for some time there was considerable discussion as to whether Celtes had not forged these writings, but it has been definitely settled on absolutely unimpeachable evidence that Celtes only edited manuscripts that he found.
As Librarian of the Imperial Library, founded by Maximilian I of Vienna, Celtes gathered together many Greek and Latin manuscripts and generally exercised his influence to secure precious old documents from destruction by proper care for them. As a poet he attracted no little attention in his own time, though his poetry is not of a high order. He was the head of the Poets' Academy at Vienna, the first institution of its kind in Europe, and his influence as a scholar and a literary man was much more than his originality as a writer. He was an intimate friend of Charity Pirkheimer and many of the Nuremberg group of humanists, and some of the freedom of his poetry might seem to indicate a lack of religion, but these friendships apparently indicate carelessness in religious matters, but not rejection of religion. On a number of occasions Charity Pirkheimer reproved him for the freedom of his poetry.
The careers of the Pirkheimers give a good idea of the interest in scholarship on the part of both men and women in Germany during this Renaissance period. Charity Pirkheimer, afterwards the Abbess of the Convent of the Poor Clares in Nuremberg, deserves mention in this regard as much as her {526} brother, but the sketch of her career properly finds a place among the Women of the Renaissance. Wilibald Pirkheimer deserves the immortality that his scholarship has secured for him. He translated Xenophon, Plato, Plutarch and Lucian into Latin, but the spirit of the time will be better understood when it is recalled that he also made translations of Euclid and Ptolemy. The ordinary assumption that interest in the old pagan authors lessened attachment to the Church is refuted by his translations of the Greek Fathers also into Latin. He was himself the author of a history of Germany which won for him the title of the German Xenophon. His interest in letters, however, was only one portion of his scholarship, for astronomy, mathematics and the natural sciences were not only favorite subjects of study, but fields in which he carried on successful investigation. Besides, he took up the study of numismatics with great assiduity, and helped to bring about a general recognition of its value as a distinct department of historical research.
It was typical of the universality of the aesthetic interests of the men of the times in which he lived that Pirkheimer was also deeply attracted to art and that Albrecht Duerer was one of his closest friends. We owe to the great German artist a characteristic picture of the scholar. Like Erasmus, Wilibald Pirkheimer recognized the necessity for reform in the Church in Germany, and at the beginning of the reform movement he sided with Luther and wrote in defence of the German reformer and the doctrines that he was teaching. In the course of a few years, however, he came to see that the religious revolt, far from correcting the evils, was emphasizing them, and besides was so disturbing men's minds in Germany as to make the proper cultivation of the fine arts and literature impossible. In addition he soon learned that the so-called reformers were bent on disturbing the convent in Nuremberg in which so many of his feminine relatives found not only peace and happiness and the opportunity to cultivate the spiritual life, but also to live the intellectual life to the full measure of their desires. Charitas, his sister, was the Abbess of the Convent of St. Clare, and among the nuns there were another sister, Clare, and Wilibald's daughters, Catherine and Crescentia. {527} He wrote a defence of the monastic life for women, in which he pointed out the opportunities for peace, and joy in the cultivation of the intellectual life, as well as the spiritual life, enjoyed in these institutions. During the writing of this apologetic work he became himself entirely convinced of the necessity for adherence to the old Church.
The relations of the humanists, the classical scholars and devotees of the New Learning in Germany, to the Church have been the subject of many and varying opinions. Sandys has summed this up very well in a paragraph which deserves to be quoted because of the importance of the subject, the authority of the writer and the probability that the position which he occupies as regards both Germany and the Church make him, as far as is possible in a subject so fraught with personal feelings, an impartial critic. He said (page 258):
"The humanists of Germany may be divided into three successive schools distinguished from one another in their relation to the Church, (1) The Earlier or Scholastic Humanists, who were loyal supporters of the Church, while they were eager for a revival of classical learning and a new system of education. They are represented by the three great teachers of North Germany, Rudolfus Agricola, Rudolf von Langen and Alexander Hegius; also by Wimpheling, the restorer of education in South Germany; by Trithemius, one of the founders of the Rhenish Society of Literature, and by Eck, the famous opponent of Luther. They worked for the revival of learning in all branches of knowledge, while they hoped that the New Learning would remain subservient to the old theology. (2) The Intermediate or Rational Humanists, who took a rational view of Christianity and its creed, while they protested against the old scholasticism, and against the external abuses of the Church. 'They either did not support Luther, or soon deserted him, being conscious that his movement would lead to the destruction of all true culture.' Their leaders were Reuchlin and Erasmus, Conrad Muth, the Canon of Gotha. 'Their party and its true work of culture were shipwrecked by the tempest of the Reformation.' (3) The Later or Protestant Humanists, who were ready to 'protest' against {528} everything, young men of great talent, but of less learning, whose love of liberty sometimes lapsed into license. Their leading spirit was Ulrich von Hutten. In course of time, some of them became Rational Humanists; others, supporters of Luther. 'While Erasmus, Reuchlin and Muth viewed Luther's propaganda with distrust,' these younger Humanists 'flocked to the new standard of protest and revolt, and so doing brought culture into disgrace and shipwrecked the Revival of Learning in Germany.'"
The earlier German humanists were not carried away by the idea that the only thing worth while studying was the New Learning, and that only the classics of Greece and Rome could form the proper substance of any right education. In the later period of German humanism this exaggeration was very common. In the earlier period, however, the place and the value of the German language itself is recognized, and due acknowledgments were made to the men of the later Middle Ages for all that they had accomplished for scholarship and for real progress in philosophy and theology. Janssen in the third volume of his "History of the German People" has sketched this very clearly (pages 1-3):
"The earliest humanists had contemplated classical antiquity from the point of view of absolute faith in Christianity, and they had pressed the classics into the service of their creed. They valued the works of the ancient writers for the deeply religious nature of the ideas embodied in them; they regarded them as echoes of primaeval inspiration; but they were at the same time decided and active opponents of mere pagan systems of thought and life. They studied antiquity in a scientific spirit of exhaustive research, and they justified their incorporation of pagan materials into their systems of culture on the plea that these classic works were an indispensable groundwork of scholarship, a splendid means of mental gymnastic training for forming independent judgment and sharpening the intellect for the apprehension and presentation of truth. By the profounder knowledge they acquired of the intellectual life of the ancient world, they hoped to facilitate the understanding of the Scriptures and to put fresh life and reality into the contemporary systems of philosophical and theological {529} study. It was this motive that had inspired the unwearied labors of Nicholas of Cusa and his pupil Agricola in their efforts to graft the study of classic literature on the German University curriculum; that had led Alexander Hegius to make the classics the groundwork of education, and Jacob Wimpheling to write his epoch-making words. 'It is not the story of the heathen writers in itself which is dangerous to Christian culture,' said the latter, 'but the false apprehension and handling of them. It would undoubtedly be absolutely fatal if, as is often the case in Italy, by means of the classics, pagan ways of thought and life, prejudicial to pure Christian morality and the patriotic spirit of the rising generation, were spread abroad or were to creep into the teaching of our writers and poets. But, on the other hand, the legitimate use of the ancient writers might render the most invaluable services to Christianity and learning. Had not the Fathers of the Church themselves derived the greatest help in their explanations of Scripture from the study of these profane writers, and had they not in consequence recommended them to the veneration of Christian students? St. Gregory Nazienzen,' he went on to say, 'had described the opponents of classic study as the enemies of true learning, and Pope Gregory the Great had shown conclusively that classic study was a useful preparation and an indispensable aid to the understanding of theology.'
"For the same reasons the leading theologians of the fifteenth century, Heynlin von Stein, Gregory Reisch, Geiler of Kaisersberg, Gabriel Viel, Johannes Trithemius, had been zealous advocates and promoters of the labors of the Christian humanists.
"'With a good conscience,' says Trithemius, 'we can recommend the study of the ancient writers to all such as do not make use of them in a worldly spirit for mere intellectual sport, but for the serious cultivation of their mental powers, and who, after the example of the Fathers of the Church, seek to cull from them good fruit for the nourishment of Christian scholarship.'"
These quotations will serve to show how clearly all the value of the classical studies to scholarship, yet all the danger to real education as well as to Christianity was recognized by {530} the scholars of this time. They represent a critical wisdom often presumed not to have been developed at this time. Critical judgment is supposed to be a much later evolution. Those who make such a presumption, however, are led by ignorance of the realities of the education and scholarship of this time which has only properly come into its own true appreciation in comparatively recent years. German scholarship during the Renaissance period, that is, in Columbus' Century before the Reformation came to disturb it, represented as fine an expression of German ability and intellectual genius as has ever come to that capable people.
{531}