The History of Education Part 23

17. What do the two time-tables reproduced (122, 123) reveal as to the nature of a university day, and the instruction given?

18. Show how Rashdall's statement (124) that lawyers have been a civilizing agent is true.

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

Boase, Charles William. _Oxford_ (Historic Towns Series).

Clark, Andrew. _The Colleges at Oxford_.

Clark, J. W. _Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods_.

* Clark, J. W. _The Care of Books_.

Corbin, John. _An American at Oxford_.

* Compayre, G. _Abelard, and the Origin and Early History of the Universities_.

* Jebb, R. C. _The Work of the Universities for the Nation_.

Mullinger, J. B. _History of the University of Cambridge_.

* Norton, A. 0. _Readings in the History of Education; Medieval Universities_.

* Paetow, L. J. _The Arts Course at Mediaeval Universities_. (Univ.

Ill. Studies, vol. in, no. 7, Jan. 1910).

* Paulsen, Fr. _The German Universities_.

Rait, R. S. _Life of a Mediaeval University_.

* Rashdall, H. _Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages_.

Sandys, J. E. _History of Cla.s.sical Scholarship_, vol. I.

Sheldon, Henry. _Student Life and Customs_.

PART III

THE TRANSITION FROM MEDIAEVAL TO MODERN ATt.i.tUDES

THE RECOVERY OF THE ANCIENT LEARNING THE REAWAKENING OF SCHOLARSHIP AND THE RISE OF RELIGIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

CHAPTER X

THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING

THE PERIOD OF CHANGE. The thirteenth century has often been called the wonderful century of the mediaeval world. It was wonderful largely in that the forces struggling against mediaevalism to evolve the modern spirit here first find clear expression. It was a century of rapid and unmistakable progress in almost every line. By its close great changes were under way which were destined ultimately to shake off the incubus of mediaevalism and to transform Europe. In many respects, though, the fourteenth was a still more wonderful century.

The evolution of the universities which we have just traced was one of the most important of these thirteenth-century manifestations. Lacking in intellectual material, but impelled by the new impulses beginning to work in the world, the scholars of the time went earnestly to work, by speculative methods, to organize the dogmatic theology of the Church into a system of thinking. The result was Scholasticism. From one point of view the result was barren; from another it was full of promise for the future.

Though the workers lacked materials, were overshadowed by the mediaeval spirit of authority, and kept their efforts clearly within limits approved by the Church, the "heroic industry" and the "in tense application"

displayed in effecting the organization, and the logical subtlety developed in discussing the results, promised much for the future. The rise of university instruction, and the work of the Scholastics in organizing the knowledge of the time, were both a resultant of new influences already at work and a prediction of larger consequences to follow. In a later age, and with men more emanc.i.p.ated from church control, the same spirit was destined to burst forth in an effort to discover and reconstruct the historic past.

During the thirteenth century, too, the new Estate, which had come into existence alongside of the clergy and the n.o.bility, began to a.s.sume large importance. The arts-and-crafts guilds were attaining a large development, and out of this new burgher cla.s.s the great general public of modern times has in time evolved. Trade and industry were increasing in all lands, and merchants and successful artisans were becoming influential through their newly obtained wealth and rights. The erection of stately churches and town halls, often beautifully carved and highly ornamented, was taking place. Great cathedrals, those "symphonies in stone," of which Notre Dame (Figure 53) is a good example, were rising or being further expanded and decorated at many places in western Europe. Mystery and miracle plays had begun to be performed and to attract great attention. In the fourteenth century religious pageants were added. "All art was still religion," but an art was unmistakably arising amid cathedral-building and the setting- forth of the Christian mysteries, and before long this was to flower in modern forms of expression in painting, sculpture, and the drama.

THE NEW SPIRIT OF NATIONALITY. The new spirit moving in western Europe also found expression in the evolution of the modern European States, based on the new national feeling. As the kingly power in these was consolidated, the developing States, each in its own domain, began to curb the dominion of the universal Church, slowly to deprive it of the governmental functions it had a.s.sumed and exercised for so long, and to confine the Pope and clergy more and more to their original functions as religious agents. The Papacy as a temporal power pa.s.sed the maximum period of its greatness early in the thirteenth century; in the nineteenth century the last vestiges of its temporal power were taken away.

New national languages also were coming into being, and the national epics of the people--the Cid, the Arthurian Legends, the _Chansons_, and the _Nibelungen Lied_--were reduced to writing. With the introduction from the East, toward the close of the thirteenth century, of the process of making paper for writing, and with the increase of books in the vernacular, the English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German languages rapidly took shape. Their development was expressive of the new spirit in western Europe, as also was the fact that Dante (1264-1321), "the first literary layman since Boethius" (d. 524), wrote his great poem, _The Divine Comedy_, in his native Italian instead of in the Latin which he knew so well--an evidence of independence of large future import. New native literatures were springing forth all over Europe. Beginning with the _troubadours_ in southern France (p. 186), and taken up by the _trouveres_ in northern France and by the _minnesingers_ in German lands, the new poetry of nature and love and joy of living had spread everywhere. [1] A new race of men was beginning to "sing songs as blithesome and gay as the birds" and to express in these songs the joys of the world here below.

TRANSFORMATION OF THE MEDIAEVAL MAN. The fourteenth century was a period of still more rapid change and transformation. New objects of interest were coming to the front, and new standards of judgment were being applied. National spirit and a national patriotism were finding expression. The mediaeval man, with his feeling of personal insignificance, lack of self-confidence, "no sense of the past behind him, and no conception of the possibilities of the future before him," [2] was rapidly giving way to the man possessed of the modern spirit--the man of self-confidence, conscious of his powers, enjoying life, feeling his connection with the historic past, and realizing the potentialities of accomplishment in the world here below. It was the great work of the period of transition, and especially of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to effect this change, "to awaken in man a consciousness of his powers, to give him confidence in himself, to show him the beauty of the world and the joy of life, and to make him feel his living connection with the past and the greatness of the future he might create." [3] As soon as men began clearly to experience such feelings, they began to inquire, and inquiry led to the realization that there had been a great historic past of which they knew but little, and of which they wanted to know much. When this point had been reached, western Europe was ready for a revival of learning.

THE BEGINNINGS IN ITALY. This revival began in Italy. The Italians had preserved more of the old Roman culture than had any other people, and had been the first to develop a new political and social order and revive the refinements of life after the deluge of barbarism which had engulfed Europe. They, too, had been the first to feel the inadequacy of mediaeval learning to satisfy the intellectual unrest of men conscious of new standards of life. This gave them at least a century of advance over the nations of northern Europe. The old Roman life also was nearer to them, and meant more, so that a movement for a revival of interest in it attracted to it the finest young minds of central and northern Italy and inspired in them something closely akin to patriotic fervor. They felt themselves the direct heirs of the political and intellectual eminence of Imperial Rome, and they began the work of restoring to themselves and of trying to understand their inheritance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 68. PETRARCH (1304-74) "The Morning Star of the Renaissance"]

In Petrarch (1304-74) we have the beginnings of the movement. He has been called "the first modern scholar and man of letters." Repudiating the other-worldliness ideal and the scholastic learning of his time, [4]

possessed of a deep love for beauty in nature and art, a delight in travel, a desire for worldly fame, a strong historical sense, and the self-confidence to plan a great constructive work, he began the task of unearthing the monastic treasures to ascertain what the past had been and known and done. At twenty-nine he made his first great discovery, at Liege, in the form of two previously unknown orations of Cicero. Twelve years later, at Verona, he found half of one of the letters of Cicero which had been lost for ages. All his life he collected and copied ma.n.u.scripts. His letter to a friend telling him of his difficulty in getting a work of Cicero copied, and his joy in doing the work himself (R.

125), is typical of his labors. He began the work of copying and comparing the old cla.s.sical ma.n.u.scripts, and from them reconstructing the past. He also wrote many sonnets, ballads, lyrics, and letters, all filled with a new modern cla.s.sical spirit. He also constructed the first modern map of Italy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 69. BOCCACCIO (1313-75) "The Father of Italian Prose"]

Through Boccaccio, whom he first met in 1350, Petrarch's work was made known in Florence, then the wealthiest and most artistic and literary city in the world, [5] and there the new knowledge and method were warmly received. Boccaccio equaled Petrarch in his pa.s.sion for the ancient writers, hunting for them wherever he thought they might be found. One of his pupils has left us a melancholy picture of the library at Monte Ca.s.sino, as Boccaccio found it at the time of his visit (R. 126). He wrote a book of popular tales and romances, filled with the modern spirit, which made him the father of Italian prose as Dante was of Italian poetry; prepared the first dictionaries of cla.s.sical geography and Greek mythology; and was the first western scholar to learn Greek.

"In the dim light of learning's dawn they stand, Flushed with the first glimpses of a long-lost land."

A CENTURY OF RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION. The work done by these two friends in discovering and editing was taken up by others, and during the century (1333-1433) dating from the first great "find" of Petrarch the princ.i.p.al additions to Latin literature were made. The monasteries and castles of Europe were ransacked in the hope of discovering something new, or more accurate copies of previously known books. At monasteries and churches as widely separated as Monte Ca.s.sino, near Naples: Lodi, near Milan; Milan, itself; and Vercelli, in Italy: Saint Gall and other monasteries, in Switzerland: Paris; Cluny, near the present city of Macon; Langres, near the source of the Marne; and monasteries in the Vosges Mountains, in France: Corvey, in Westphalia; and Hersfeld, Cologne, and Mainz in Germany--important finds were made. [6] Thus widely had the old Latin authors been scattered, copied, and forgotten. In a letter to a friend (R. 127 a) the enthusiast, Poggio Bracciolini, tells of finding (1416) the long-lost _Inst.i.tutes of Oratory_ of Quintilian, at Saint Gall, and of copying it for posterity. This, and the reply of his friend (R. 127 b), reveal something of the spirit and the emotions of those engaged in the recovery of Latin literature and the reconstruction of Roman history.

The finds, though, while important, were after all of less value than the spirit which directed the search, or the careful work which was done in collecting, comparing, questioning, inferring, criticizing, and editing corrected texts, and reconstructing old Roman life and history. [7] We have in this new work a complete break with scholastic methods, and we see in it the awakening of the modern scientific spirit. [8] It was this same critical, constructive spirit which, when applied later to Christian practices, brought on the Reformation; when applied to the problems of the universe, revealed to men the wonderful world of science; and when applied to problems of government, led to the questioning of the theory of the divine right of kings, and to the evolution of democracy. We have here a modern spirit, a craving for truth for its own sake, an awakening of the historical sense, [9] and an appreciation of beauty in literature and nature which was soon to be followed by an appreciation of beauty in art.

A worship of cla.s.sical literature and cla.s.sical ideas now set in, of which rich and prosperous Florence became the center, with Venice and Rome, as well as a number of the northern Italian cities, as centers of more than minor importance.

THE REVIVAL OF GREEK IN THE WEST. With the new interest in Latin literature it was but natural that a revival of the study of Greek should follow. While a knowledge of Greek had not absolutely died out in the West during the Middle Ages, there were very few scholars who knew anything about it, and none who could read it. [10] It was natural, too, that the revival of it should come first in Italy. Southern Italy (_Magna Graecia_) had remained under the Eastern Empire and Greek until its conquest by the Normans (1041-71), and to southern Italy a few Greek monks had from time to time migrated. With southern Italy, though, papal Italy and the western Christian world seem to have had little contact. In 1339, and again in 1342, a Greek monk from southern Italy visited the Pope, coming as an amba.s.sador from Constantinople, and from him Petrarch learned the Greek alphabet. In 1353 another envoy brought Petrarch a copy of Homer. This he could not read, but in time (1367) a poor translation into Latin was effected. Boccaccio studied Greek, being the first western scholar to read Homer in the original.

Near the end of the fourteenth century it became known in Florence that Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1350-1415), a Byzantine of n.o.ble birth, a teacher of rhetoric and philosophy at Constantinople, and the most accomplished Greek scholar of his age, had arrived in Venice as an envoy from the Eastern Emperor. Florentine scholars visited him, and on his return accompanied him to Constantinople to learn Greek. In 1396 Chrysoloras was invited by Florence to accept an appointment, in the university there, to the first chair of Greek letters in the West, and accepted. From 1396 to 1400 he taught Greek in the rich and stately city of Florence, at that time the intellectual and artistic center of Christendom. For a few years, beginning in 1402, he also taught Greek at the University of Pavia. He had earlier written a _Catechism of Greek Grammar_, and at Pavia he began a literal rendering of Plato's _Republic_ into Latin. From his visit dates the enthusiasm for the study of Greek in the West.

OTHER GREEK SCHOLARS ARRIVE IN ITALY. Chrysoloras returned to Constantinople for a time, in 1403, and Guarino of Verona, who had been one of his pupils, accompanied him and spent five years there as a member of his household. When he returned to Italy he brought with him about fifty ma.n.u.scripts, and before his death he had translated a number of them into Latin. He also prepared a Greek grammar which superseded that of Chrysoloras. In 1412 he was elected to the chair at Florence formerly held by Chrysoloras, and later he established an important school at Ferrara, based largely on instruction in the Latin and Greek cla.s.sics, which will be referred to again in the next chapter.

A rage for Greek learning and Greek books now for a time set in. Aurispa, a Sicilian, went to Constantinople, learned Greek, and returned to Italy, in 1422, with 238 Greek ma.n.u.scripts. Messer Filelfo, of Padua, after seven years at Constantinople, returned, in 1427, with forty ma.n.u.scripts and with the grand-niece of Chrysoloras as his wife. In 1448 Theodorus Gaza (c. 1400-75), a learned Greek from the city of Thessalonica, who had fled from his native city just before its capture by the Turks (1430), came to Ferrara as the first professor of Greek in the university there. He made many translations, prepared a very popular Greek grammar, and in 1451 became professor of philosophy at Rome.

Another Greek of importance was Demetrius Chalcondyles of Athens (1424- 1511), who reached Italy in 1447. In 1450 he became professor of Greek at Perugia, and of his lectures there one of his enthusiastic pupils [11]

wrote:

A Greek has just arrived, who has begun to teach me with great pains, and I to listen to his precepts with incredible pleasure, because he is a Greek, because he is an Athenian, and because he is Demetrius. It seems to me that in him is figured all the wisdom, the civility, and the elegance of those so famous and ill.u.s.trious ancients. Merely seeing him you fancy you are looking on Plato; far more when you hear him speak.

In 1463 Demetrius transferred to Padua as professor of Greek, and was the first professor of Greek in a western European university to be paid a fixed salary. He also taught for a time at Milan, and from 1471 to 1491 was professor of Greek at Florence.

A number of other learned Greeks had reached Italy prior to the fall of Constantinople (1453) before the advancing Turks, [12] and after its fall many more sought there a new home. Many of these found, on landing, that their knowledge of Greek and the possession of a few Greek books were an open sesame to the learned circles of Italy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 70. DEMETRIUS CHALCONDYLES (1424-1511) (Drawn from a picture of a fres...o...b.. Ghirlandajo, painted in 1490, on the walls of the church of Santa Maria Novella, at Florence)]

ENTHUSIASM FOR THE NEW MOVEMENT; LIBRARIES AND ACADEMICS FOUNDED. The enthusiasm for the recovery and restoration of ancient literature and history which this work awakened among the younger scholars of Italy can be imagined. While most of the professors in the universities and most of the church officials at first had nothing to do with the new movement, being wedded to scholastic methods of thinking, the leaders of the new learning drew about them many of the brightest and most energetic of the young men who came to those universities which were hospitable to the new movement. [13] Greek scholars in the university towns were followed by admiring bands of younger students, [14] who soon took up the work and superseded their masters. Academies, named after the one conducted by Plato in the groves near Athens, whose purpose was to promote literary studies, were founded in all the important Italian cities (R. 129). The members usually Latinized their names, and celebrated the ancient festivals. In Venice a Greek Academy was formed in which all the proceedings were in Greek, and the members were known by Greek names. The _Academia of Aldus_, at Venice, of which his celebrated press was a department, became a veritable university for cla.s.sical learning, and to partic.i.p.ate in its proceedings scholars came from many lands. It was the curious and enthusiastic Italians who, more than the Greek scholars who taught them the language, opened up the literature and history of Athens to the comprehension of the western world.

The financial support of the movement came from the wealthy merchant princes, reigning dukes, and a few church authorities, who a.s.sisted scholars and spent money most liberally in collecting ma.n.u.scripts and acc.u.mulating books. Says Symonds:

Never was there a time in the world's history when money was spent more freely upon the collection and preservation of MSS., and when a more complete machinery was put in motion for the sake of securing literary treasures. Prince vied with prince, and eminent burgher with burgher, in buying books. The commercial correspondents of the Medici and other great Florentine houses, whose banks and discount offices extended over Europe and the Levant, were instructed to purchase relics of antiquity without regard for cost, and to forward them to Florence. The most acceptable present that could be sent to a king was a copy of a Roman historian. The best credentials which a young Greek arriving from Byzantium could use to gain the patronage of men like Palla degli Strozzi was a fragment of some ancient; the merchandise insuring the largest profit to a speculator who had special knowledge in such matters was old parchment covered with crabbed characters.

[15]