The Century of Columbus Part 37

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 cla.s.sical languages afforded than along the Rhine, at Nuremberg 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 pa.s.sing 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 inst.i.tution 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 const.i.tution, 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 cla.s.sics 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 a.s.sisi, 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 cla.s.ses, 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 sh.o.r.es of the Netherlands. The asceticism of this n.o.ble 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 cla.s.sic form were never more honored than {516} when these n.o.ble-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 a.s.sisted 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 n.o.bler 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 G.o.d. To the young clerics he (their founder) had joined certain priests and laymen, thus making a mixed society. Idleness and acc.u.mulation 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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 Cusa.n.u.s' 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 antic.i.p.ated the most modern views.

Cusa.n.u.s 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 princ.i.p.alities. 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 a.s.surance 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CIMA DA CONEGLIANO, INCREDULITY OF ST. THOMAS (VENICE)]

"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 att.i.tude of men towards knowledge and truth may be gathered from a paragraph of Cardinal Cusa.n.u.s, which is so comprehensive and so full of the love of wisdom in the best sense of the word as to be cla.s.sical 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 Munster: "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 cla.s.sics. 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 Munster, 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 n.o.bility 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 cla.s.sic remains. His many monographs and dialogues meant much for the diffusion of right views as to cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sics and published a series of commentaries on Cicero, Terence, Sall.u.s.t, 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 cla.s.sical scholarship at this time and shared in the art impulse of the period. Nuremberg, Augsburg, Innsbruck, Vienna, as well as Stuttgart, Ingoldstadt and Tubingen, 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 Tubingen, 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude. 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 _Mutia.n.u.s 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 Cla.s.sical 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 'G.o.d 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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sicizing 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 ma.n.u.scripts. 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 ma.n.u.scripts that he found.

As Librarian of the Imperial Library, founded by Maximilian I of Vienna, Celtes gathered together many Greek and Latin ma.n.u.scripts and generally exercised his influence to secure precious old doc.u.ments 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 inst.i.tution 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 a.s.sumption 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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.siduity, 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 Durer 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 inst.i.tutions. 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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sics 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 cla.s.sical antiquity from the point of view of absolute faith in Christianity, and they had pressed the cla.s.sics 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 cla.s.sic 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 cla.s.sic literature on the German University curriculum; that had led Alexander Hegius to make the cla.s.sics 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 cla.s.sics, 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 n.a.z.ienzen,' he went on to say, 'had described the opponents of cla.s.sic study as the enemies of true learning, and Pope Gregory the Great had shown conclusively that cla.s.sic 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.