The History of Education Part 24

Cosimo de' Medici (1393-1464), a banker and ruler of Florence, spent great sums in collecting and copying ma.n.u.scripts. Vespasiano, a fifteenth- century bookseller of Florence, has left us an interesting picture of the work of Cosimo in founding (1444) the great Medicean library [16] at Florence (R. 130) and of the difficulties of book collecting in the days before the invention of printing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 71. BOOKCASE AND DESK IN THE MEDICEAN LIBRARY AT FLORENCE (Drawn from a photograph) This library was founded in 1444. It contains to-day about 10,000 Greek and Latin ma.n.u.scripts, many of them very rare, and of a few the only copies known. The building was designed by Michael Angelo, and its construction was begun in 1525. The bookcases are of about this date. It shows the early method of chaining books to the shelves, and cataloguing the volumes on the end of each stack.]

Under Cosimo's grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent, who died in 1492, two expeditions were sent to Greece to obtain ma.n.u.scripts for the Florentine library. Vespasiano also describes for us the books collected (c. 1475-80) for the great ducal library at Urbino (R. 131), the greatest library in the Christian world at the time of its completion, and the work of Pope Nicholas V [17] (1447-1455) in laying the foundations (1450) for the great Vatican Library at Rome (R. 132). Nicholas was an enthusiast in the new movement, and formed a plan for the translation of all the Greek writers into Latin. A later Pope, Leo X (1513-1521), planned to make Rome the international center for Greek learning.

THE MOVEMENT EXTENDS TO OTHER COUNTRIES. Petrarch made his first great find in 1333, and up to 1450 the Revival of Learning, often termed the Renaissance, was entirely an Italian movement. By that date the great work in Italy had been done, and the Italians were once more in possession of the literature and history of the past. With them the movement was literary, historical, and patriotic in purpose and spirit. With them the movement was known as _humanism_, from an old Roman word (_humanitas_) meaning culture, and this term came to be applied to the new studies in all other lands. In their work with the literatures, inscriptions, coins, and archaeological remains of the Greeks and Romans, their own literature, history, mythology, and political and social life was reconstructed. The methods employed were the methods used in modern science, and the result was to develop in Italy a new type of scholar, possessed of a literary, artistic, and historical appreciation unknown since the days of ancient Rome, and with the greatest enthusiasm for Latin as a living language.

By the time the revival had culminated in Italy it began to be heard of north of the Alps. France was the first country to take up the study of Greek, a professorship being established at Paris in 1458. There was but little interest in the subject, however, or in any of the new studies, until two events of political importance, forty years later, brought Frenchmen in close touch with what had been done in northern Italy. In 1494 Charles VIII, of France, claiming Naples as his possession, took an army into Italy, and forcibly occupied Rome and Florence. Four years later his successor, Louis XII, claimed Milan also and seized it and Naples, maintaining a French court at Milan from 1498 to 1512. Though both these expeditions were unsuccessful, from a political point of view, the effect of the direct contact with humanism in its home was lasting. New ideas in architecture, art, and learning were carried back to France, French scholars traveled to Italy, and early in the sixteenth century Paris became a center for the new humanistic studies. In Greek, France completely superseded Italy as the interpreter of Greek life and literature to the modern world.

In 1473 a Spanish scholar, Mebrissensis (1444-1522), returned home after twenty years in Italy and introduced Greek at Seville, Salamanca, and Alcala.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 72. TWO EARLY NORTHERN HUMANISTS

RUDOLPH AGRICOLA (1443-85) Early Dutch Humanist.

Lectured at Heidelberg (From a contemporary engraving)

THOMAS LINACRE (c. 1460-1524) English Professor of Medicine and Lecturer on Greek (From a portrait in the British Museum)]

About 1488 Thomas Linacre (c. 1460-1524) and William Grocyn (1446-1514), two Oxford graduates, went to Florence from England, studying Greek under Demetrius Chalcondyles, and, returning, introduced the new learning at Oxford. [18] Linacre, as professor of medicine, translated much of Galen (p. 198) from the Greek, and he and Grocyn lectured on Greek at the University. From Oxford the new learning was transmitted to Cambridge, and, over a century afterward, to Harvard in America. A third Oxford man to study Greek in Italy was John Colet (1467-1519), who studied in Florence from 1493 to 1496, and returned home an enthusiastic humanist. He was the first Englishman to attract much attention to the new studies, and to him is chiefly due their introduction into the English secondary school.

The first German of whom we have any record as having studied in Italy was Peter Luder (c. 1415-74), who returned in 1456, and lectured on the new learning at the Universities of Heidelberg, Erfurt, and Leipzig, but awakened no response. In 1470 Johann Wessel (1420-89) and in 1476 Rodolph Agricola (1443-85), two noted Dutch scholars, studied in Italy. On returning, Agricola, [19] who has been called "the Petrarch of German lands," did much "to spread the great inheritance of antiquity and the new civilization to which it had given birth among his uncouth countrymen"

(_barbari_, he calls them). He made Heidelberg, for a time, a center of humanistic appreciation. Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), a German by birth, studied in Florence and elsewhere in Italy in 1481 to 1490, and there learned Hebrew. Returning, he became a professor at Heidelberg and the father of modern Hebrew studies. In 1506 he published the first Hebrew grammar. In 1493 the University of Erfurt established a professorship of Poetry and Eloquence, this being the first German university to countenance the new learning. In 1523 the first chair of Greek was established at Vienna. Thus slowly did the revival of learning spread to northern lands.

THE REVIVAL AIDED BY THE INVENTION OF PAPER AND PRINTING. Very fortunately for the spread of the new learning an important process and a great invention now came in at a most opportune time. The process was the manufacture of paper; the invention that of printing.

The manufacture of paper is probably a Chinese invention, early obtained by the Arabs. During the Mohammedan occupation of Spain paper mills were set up there, and a small supply of their paper found its way across the Pyrenees. The Christians who drove the Mohammedans out lost the process, and it now came back once more from the East. By about 1250 the Greeks had obtained the process from Mohammedan sources, and in 1276 the first paper mill was set up in Italy. In 1340 a paper factory was established at Padua, and soon thereafter other factories began to make paper at Florence, Bologna, Milan, and Venice. In 1320 a paper factory was established at Mainz, in Germany, and in 1390 another at Nuremberg. By 1450 paper was in common use and the way was now open for one of the world's greatest inventions.

This was the invention of printing. From the difficulty experienced in securing books for the great libraries at Florence, Urbino, and Rome, as we have seen (Rs. 130, 131, 132), and the great cost of reproducing single copies of books, we can see that the work of the humanists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Italy probably would have had but little influence elsewhere but for the invention of printing. To disseminate a new learning involving two great literatures by copying books, one at a time by hand, would have prevented instruction in the new subjects becoming general for centuries, and would have materially r.e.t.a.r.ded the progress of the world. The discovery of the art of printing, coming when it did, scattered the new learning over Europe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 73. AN EARLY SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PRESS "The prynters have founde a crafte to make bokis by brasen letters sette in ordre by a frame." An engraving, dated 1520. The man at the right is setting type, and the one at the lever is making an impression. A number of four-page printed sheets are seen on the table at the right of the press.]

SPREAD AND WORK OF THE PRESS. The dates connected with this new invention and its diffusion over Europe are:

1423. Coster of Harlem made the first engraved single page.

1438. Gutenberg invented movable wooden types.

1450. Schoeffer and Faust cast first metal type.

1456. Bible printed in Latin by Gutenberg and Faust at Mainz. This the first complete book printed. [20]

1457. The Mayence Psalter, the first dated book, printed. [21]

1462. Adolph of Na.s.sau pillaged Mainz, drove out the printers, and in consequence scattered the art over Europe.

1465. Press set up in the German monastery of Subiaco, in the Sabine Mountains, in Italy.

1467. This press moved to Rome.

1469. Presses at Paris and Vienna.

1470. Printing introduced into Switzerland.

1471. Presses set up at Florence, Milan, and Ferrara.

1473. Printing introduced into Holland and Belgium.

1474. Printing introduced into Spain.

1474-77. Printing introduced into England. Caxton set up his press in 1477.

1476. First book printed in Greek at Milan.

1490. The Aldine press established at Venice, by Aldus Manutius.

1501. First Greek book printed in Germany, at Erfurt.

1563. First newspaper established, in Venice.

Inventions traveled but slowly in those days, yet in time the press was to be found in every country of Europe. The professional copyists made a great outcry against the innovation; presses were at first licensed and closely limited in number; in France the University of Paris was given the proceeds of a tax levied on all books printed; and in England the beginnings of the modern copyright are to be seen in the necessity of obtaining a license from the ecclesiastical authorities to be permitted to print a book.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 74. AN EARLY SPECIMEN OF CAXTON'S PRINTING]

In cutting and casting the first type a style of heavy-faced letter, much like that written by the mediaeval monks--the so-called _Gothic_--was used. Caxton, in England, used this at first, and the Germans have continued its use up to the present time. The Italians, however, soon devised a type with letters like those used by the old Romans--the so- called Roman type, this type which was soon accepted in all non-German European countries. The Italians also devised a compressed type--the _Italic_--which enabled printers to get more words on a page.

Venice, almost from the first, became the center of the book trade, and books literally poured from the presses there. By 1500 as many as five thousand editions, often of as many as a thousand copies to an edition, had been printed in Italy. [22] Of this number 2835 had been printed in Venice, and most of them by the Aldine press of Aldus Manutius, and edited by the _Academia_ (p. 250) connected therewith. [23] By 1500 many books had also been printed in a number of northern cities, [24] and Lyons, Paris, Basel, Nuremberg, Cologne, Leipzig, and London soon became centers of the northern book trade. Caxton in England soon vied with Aldus in Venice as a printer of beautiful books. When we remember that it required fifty-three days (Sandys) to make by hand one copy of Quintilian's _Inst.i.tutes_, and forty-five copyists twenty-two months to reproduce two hundred volumes for the Medicean Library at Florence (R. 130), the enormous importance of an invention which would print rapidly a thousand or more copies of a book, all exactly alike and free from copyist errors, can be appreciated. It tremendously cheapened books, [25] made the general use of the textbook method of teaching possible, and paved the way for a great extension of schools and learning (R. 134). From now on the press became a formidable rival to the pulpit and the sermon, and one of the greatest of instruments for human progress and individual liberty.

From this time on educational progress was to be much more rapid than it had been in the past. From an educational point of view the invention of printing might almost be taken as marking the close of the mediaeval and the beginning of modern times.

RISE OF GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY. The new influences awakened by the Revival of Learning found expression in other directions. One of these was geographical discovery, itself an outgrowth of that series of movements known as the _Crusades_, with the accompanying revival of trade and commerce. These led to travel, exploration, and discovery. By the latter part of the thirteenth century the most extensive travel which had taken place since the days of ancient Rome had begun, and in the next two and a half centuries a great expansion of the known world took place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 75. THE WORLD AS KNOWN TO CHRISTIAN EUROPE BEFORE COLUMBUS]

Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville made extended travels to the Orient, and returning (Polo returned, 1295) described to a wondering Europe the new lands and peoples they had seen. The _Voyages_ of Polo and the _Travels_ of Mandeville were widely read. By the beginning of the fourteenth century the compa.s.s had been perfected, in Naples, and a great era of exploration had been begun. In 1402 venturesome sailors, out beyond the "Pillars of Hercules," discovered the Canary Islands; in 1419 the Madeira Islands were reached; in 1460 the Cape Verde Islands were found; in 1497 Bartholomew Diaz rounded the southern tip of Africa; and in 1497 Vasco da Gama discovered the long-hoped-for sea route to India. Five years later, sailing westward with the same end in view, Columbus discovered the American continent. Finally, in 1519-22, Magellan's ships circ.u.mnavigated the globe, and, returning safely to Spain, proved that the world was round. In 1507 Waldenseemuller published his _Introduction to Geography_, a book that was widely read, and one which laid the foundations of this modern study.

The effect of these discoveries in broadening the minds of men can be imagined. The religious theories and teachings of the Middle Ages as to the world were in large part upset. New races and new peoples had been found, a round earth instead of a flat one had been proved to exist, new continents had been discovered, and new worlds were now ready to be opened up for scientific exploration and colonization.

ABOUT 1500 A STIMULATING TIME. The latter part of the fifteenth century and the earlier part of the sixteenth was a stimulating period in the intellectual development of Christian Europe. The Turks had closed in on Constantinople (1453) and ended the Eastern Empire, and many Greek scholars had fled to the West. Though the Revival of Learning had culminated in Italy, its influence was still strongly felt in such cities as Florence and Venice, while in German lands and in England the reform movement awakened by it was at its height. Greek and Hebrew were now taught generally in the northern universities. Everywhere the old scholastic learning and methods were being overturned by the new humanism, and scholastic teachers were being displaced from their positions in the universities and schools. The new humanistic university at Wittenberg, founded in 1502, was exerting large influence among German scholars and attracting to it the brightest young minds in German lands. Erasmus was the greatest international scholar of the age, though ably seconded by distinguished humanistic scholars in Italy, France, England, the Low Countries, and German lands. The court schools of Italy (R. 135) and the munic.i.p.al colleges of France (R. 136) were marking out new lines in the education of the select few. Colet was founding his reformed grammar school (1510) at Saint Paul's, in London (R. 138), the first of a long line of English humanistic grammar schools. Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo were adding new fame to Italy, and carrying the Renaissance movement over into that art which the world has ever since treasured and admired.

The Italian cities, particularly Genoa and Venice, had become rich from their commerce, as had many cities in northern lands. Everywhere the cities were centers for the new life in western Christendom. England was rapidly changing from an agricultural to a manufacturing nation. The serf was evolving into a free man all over western Europe. Italian navigators had discovered new sea routes and lands, and robbed the ocean of its terrors. Columbus had discovered a new world, soon to be peopled and to become the home of a new civilization. Magellan had shown that the world was round and poised in s.p.a.ce, instead of flat and surrounded by a circ.u.mfluent ocean. The printing-press had been perfected and scattered over Europe, and was rapidly multiplying books and creating a new desire to read (R. 134). The Church was more tolerant of new ideas than it had been in the past, or soon was to be for centuries to come. All of these new influences and conditions combined to awaken thought as had not happened before since the days of ancient Rome. The world seemed about ready for rapid advances in many new directions, and great progress in learning, education, government, art, commerce, and invention seemed almost within grasp. Unfortunately the promise was not to be fulfilled, and the progress that seemed possible in 1500 was soon lost amid the bitterness and hatreds engendered by a great religious conflict, then about to break, and which was destined to leave, for centuries to come, a legacy of intolerance and suspicion in all lands.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. In what way was the fact that Dante wrote his _Divine Comedy_ in Italian instead of Latin an evidence of large independence?

2. Was it a good thing for peace and civilization that the modern languages arose, instead of all speaking and writing Latin? Why?

3. Of what value to one is a "sense of the past behind him, and a conception of the possibilities of the future before him," by way of giving perspective and self-confidence? Do we have many mediaeval-type people to-day?

4. Show how the work of Petrarch required a man with a strong historic sense.

5. Show the awakening of the modern scientific spirit in the critical and reconstructive work of the scholars of the Revival.

6. Of what was the exposure of the forgery of the "Donation of Constantine" a precursor?

7. Contrast the modern and the mediaeval spirit as related to learning.

8. Suppose that we should unexpectedly unearth in Mexico a vast literature of a very learned and scholarly people who once inhabited the United States, and should discover a key by which to read it. Would the interest awakened be comparable with that awakened by the revival of Greek in Italy? Why?

9. What does the fact that no copy of Quintilian's _Inst.i.tutes_, a very famous Roman book, was known in Europe before 1416 indicate as to the destruction of books during the early Christian period?

10. What does the fact that the Christians knew little about Greek literature or scholarship for centuries, and that the awakening was in large part brought about by the pressure of the Turks on the Eastern Empire, indicate as to intercourse among Mediterranean peoples during the Middle Ages?

11. How do you explain the fact that the recovery of the ancient learning was very largely the work of young men, and that older professors in the universities frequently held aloof from any connection with the movement?