PINTURICCHIO, HOLY FAMILY (SIENA)

The names of a number of women scholars have come down to us who did not belong to the higher nobility, and some of {327} their achievements have become a part of the great tradition of scholarship of the time. Alessandra Scala and Cassandra Fedele, for instance, were among the most learned correspondents of Politian and were looked upon as ladies with whom deep questions of scholarship might be discussed seriously. Domitilla Trivulzio delivered Latin orations before thronged assemblies and women orators were quite common. The tradition that women should not speak in public did not obtain at all at this time in Italy and we hear much of their eloquence. The impression so prevalent at the present moment, that this is the first time in history that women have dared to proclaim their rights publicly, is quite erroneous and is founded on a deep ignorance of realities, with a corresponding characteristic presumption of knowledge. Isotta of Verona took part in public controversies with regard to the relative value of men and women in life. It is strangely familiar to find that, for instance, one of the subjects which she discussed was whether man or woman was most to be blamed for what happened in the Garden of Eden, and still more familiar to find that her argument was that man was the responsible party. These learned women, however, were touched also by the tender passion, and one of the most distinguished of the feminine scholars, Veronica de Gambara, comes down to us in history as a pattern of conjugal faithfulness, while Gaspara Stampa, the distinguished poetess, according to tradition, died of love.

One of the little known scholars among the Women of the Renaissance, who deserves a better fate than oblivion, is Olympia Morata, a veritable prodigy of learning. She received most of her education at the court of Duchess Renée at Ferrara. When she came, at the age of twelve, to be the companion of the Duchess's daughter, she was already familiar with Greek and Latin literature. This is surprising enough, but her subsequent progress is even more remarkable. "At fourteen she wrote Latin letters and essayed to imitate the dialogues of Cicero and Plato. At sixteen she lectured at the University of Ferrara on the Ciceronian Paradoxes" (Sandys). At twenty she married a good German, of whom almost the only thing we know is that he was her husband, and she {328} died at the early age of twenty-nine at Heidelberg. When her literary remains were collected they were dedicated to one who was reputed "the most learned lady of her age, Queen Elizabeth of England."

The movement for the education of women of this time would have been quite incomplete, however, if the women themselves had not taken part in the organization of feminine education. In treating of "The Women of the Century" I have already suggested that this important element of feminine education was not lacking. There is abundant evidence of the presence and enduring work of at least one great woman educator, in the sense of an organizer of educational methods, whose influence has been continuously felt in many parts of the world ever since and whose work is not only alive in our time but has shown its power to adapt itself even to the needs and demands of the twentieth-century woman. This is, after all, only what might be expected of an educator of this time, since the other accomplishments of her contemporaries have proved so lasting in their effects.

This very interesting woman of Columbus' Century, whose life is comparatively little known, though her work occupies a very important place in the history of education ever since, was Angela Merici, the foundress of the Ursulines. When twenty years of age this daughter of the lesser Italian nobility became convinced that the great need of that time was the better instruction of young girls in Christian doctrine and their training in a thoroughly Christian life. She converted her home into a school, where at certain hours of the day she gathered all the little girls of her native town of Desenzano, a small municipality on the southwestern shore of Lake Garda in Lombardy, and gave them lessons in the elements of Christianity. The work, thus humbly begun, proved to have so many factors of worth in it that it very soon attracted attention. Before long she was invited to the neighboring city of Brescia to establish a similar school, but on a much larger scale and more ambitious scope. She did so all the more willingly because one day during her earlier life in the small town of Desenzano she had had a vision in which it was revealed to her that she was to found an association of young women {329} who would take vows of chastity and devote their lives to the religious training of young girls.

After years of patient waiting and thoughtful consideration of the subject of organizing the education of young women and providing for continuance of her work--the delay mainly due to the fact that Angela feared that she might not be capable of accomplishing it properly--she came to the establishment of a religious order that would take up this service. When the constitutions which she had written were presented to Paul III, the Pope, who in spite of his resolve not to increase the number of religious orders, had felt compelled to approve the Jesuits after reading their constitutions because, as he said, he perceived "the finger of God is here"; also found himself forced to approve of those written by Angela Merici, saying to St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, as he did so, "I have given you sisters." What the Jesuits did for the education of young men during the next two centuries, the Ursulines did for the young women. They spread rapidly until they had communities in all the Catholic countries of Europe, and then houses were established beyond the seas in the Latin-American countries and almost wherever missionaries succeeded in founding churches. Mother Incarnation came to Quebec and is one of the most wonderful women in the early history of the continent. That was before the end of the seventeenth century. At the beginning of the eighteenth (1726) they established a house in New Orleans.

When persecutions came the Ursulines were, as a rule, picked out as an object of special enmity by those who sought to injure the Church. During the French Revolution they were the special butt of the intolerance of the French Republic and gave many martyrs to the cause of religion. When the Kulturkampf came in Germany they were as specifically selected for banishment as the Jesuits, and indeed they have nearly always shared the fate of the Jesuits in times of trial. They have not been without special distinction by persecution even here in America. Their convent was burned down at Charlestown in Massachusetts during the bitter wave of feelings against the religious orders that had been aroused among Protestants in 1835. Their house was the very centre of {330} danger in the "Know Nothing" riots in Philadelphia some twenty years later.

To-day, four centuries after their foundation, the institute is still actively alive and doing its work in every part of the world. When the first sisters elected Angela as their superior they asked that the name of the institute should be the Angelines, after her own name. She was shocked and insisted that, as their superior, she would require them to take the name of Ursulines in honor of St. Ursula. With all this humility, her personality was so pervasive that it still lives in all her houses. There are schools for young women in many of the States of the Union and in many parts of Canada. They are to be found in distant Alaska, teaching within the Arctic Circle. There are Ursulines under the equator, both on this continent, in Brazil and in Africa. This is only another example of the sort of work that the wonderful characters of Columbus' Century accomplished. Whatever they did had a vital force in it that made it live and prove a stimulus and an example to the generations and the centuries down to our own time. Angela of Merici, though almost unknown outside of the Catholic Church, was one of the very great women of the Renaissance. Probably no woman of the time, not even St. Teresa, has had so wide and deep an influence over succeeding generations as the retiring Angela of Merici.

As might well be expected, the movement for feminine education which was felt so strongly in Italy affected France to a scarcely less degree. Indeed, there were much more intimate relations between the nobility of the two countries and among the scholars of the time all over Europe than is usually supposed. As all the scholarly writing was done in Latin, the barrier of language was removed and educational interests readily became very widely diffused. Early in Columbus' Century, Queen Anne of Bretagne is famous for her insistence on education for the women of the French Court. There was a school of Latin at which they all attended, but besides they were expected to know Italian as well as French, and while doing their needlework books were read to them that were calculated to enrich their memories and enhance their literary taste. Queen Anne believed very thoroughly in the fullest of {331} intellectual development for women, and yet insisted also on their duties as managers of their households, and above all as home-makers in the best sense of the term. She knew the dangers of merely intellectual education, and expressions of hers on this subject are often quoted.

The court of Queen Marguerite of Navarre was at least as intellectual as that of Queen Anne, and besides it had the advantage of the deeper knowledge of the classics that had come in the meantime. Marguerite encouraged literature, and herself contributed to it. She had the large tolerance of mind of the educated woman and used it to protect some of those who had fallen under the suspicion, so rife at the time because of the religious troubles in Germany, of favoring or attempting to teach heretical doctrines. As a consequence, she has herself fallen under the suspicion of leanings towards heresy and sympathy with the reformers. This was only, however, to the extent in which that sympathy was shared by Erasmus and others of the time, who saw the abuses that needed correction and hoped that the reform movement would correct them, but who broke with it at once when they realized that revolution and not true reformation was intended. The correspondence between Vittoria Colonna and Marguerite is evidence at once of the intimate relations of the learned women of different countries and also of the sympathy existing between these two scholarly women whose influence over their contemporaries meant so much for the intellectual life of the time. The education given Mary Queen of Scots, which is mentioned later in this chapter, shows how much intellectual development was appreciated for the ruling classes of the time in France.

There are certain expressions from some of these educated women, especially those without much to do, that are wonderful anticipations of some of the things that are heard very commonly now as regards the attitude of educated women toward man's suppression of her in the preceding time. How strangely familiar are these words from Louise Labé, the French poetess of the middle class, one of whose poems of passion will be found in the chapter on French literature. "The hour has now struck," she declared, "when man can no {332} longer shackle the honest liberty which our sex has so long yearned for, when women are to prove how deeply men have hitherto wronged them." That expression is not, however, any more familiar than one of the comments of a masculine contemporary on this occupation of the educated women of the time with political ideas, which is quoted by Miss Sichel in her "Men and Women of the French Renaissance": "Political women go on chattering as if it were they who did everything."

The women of the time, however, occupied themselves with practical work of many kinds, and not merely with book-learning or political scheming. There is a tradition of a feminine architect of the Tuileries--Mlle. Perron (Porch) being her not inappropriate name. Many Frenchwomen were particularly interested in the diffusion of education among the poorer classes, and we have the story of many school foundations. Mlle. Ste. Beuve, who founded a school and took up her residence opposite to it, became very much interested in the pupils, whom she called her "bees," and whom she encouraged by prizes and distinctions of various kinds. After her death, by the request of the scholars her place was set at table in their midst for the occasions on which she used to come to them, for they felt that her spirit was still with them. Mlle. Saintonge wanted to take up the work of education, but was opposed by her father. She was very much misunderstood, and at one time was stoned by the children on the street. She began with the teaching of five little girls in a garret. Ten years later she was brought in procession by all the people to the great new convent school erected for her, because they realized now how much her work was to mean and how thoroughly unselfish was her devotion to the cause of education and uplift for their children. In the course of the single century after the beginning of our period over three hundred Ursuline schools were opened in France for the education of girls, and the opportunities for education were greatly extended.

Perhaps the greatest surprise for most people in our time is the fine development of feminine education that took place in Spain during this period. English-speaking people have, {333} as a rule, inherited English prejudices with regard to Spain and are likely to be somewhat in the position of asking, Has any good ever come out of Spain? As a matter of fact, the century just after Columbus' Century belongs to Spain for achievement in every department of intellectual and artistic culture. Her literature, her painting, her philosophy, her educators ruled the world of thought and aesthetics. For those who know something of the high worth of Spanish achievement it is no surprise to learn that education reached a high standard of development in the peninsula during Columbus' Century and that, above all, feminine education was magnificently organized, so that the intellectual achievements of the women of this time deserve a high place in the world's history. All this is mainly due to the influence of Isabella of Castile, and has been known for as long as the history of this period has been properly understood.

In his "History of Ferdinand and Isabella" Prescott has told the story of the education and scholarship of Spain with words of high praise. With regard to the feminine education of the time he said in the chapter on "Castilian Literature" (Vol. II):

"In this brilliant exhibition, those of the other sex must not be omitted who contributed by their intellectual endowments to the general illumination of the period. Among them the writers of that day lavish their panegyrics on the Marchioness of Monteagudo, and Doña Maria Pacheco, of the ancient house of Mendoza, sisters of the historian, Don Diego Hurtado, and daughters of the accomplished Count of Tendilla, who, while ambassador at Rome, induced Martyr to visit Spain and who was grandson of the famous Marquis of Santillana, and nephew of the Grand Cardinal. This illustrious family, rendered yet more illustrious by its merits than its birth, is worthy of specification, as affording altogether the most remarkable combination of literary talent in the enlightened court of Castile. The queen's instructor in the Latin language was a lady named Doña Beatriz de Galindo, called from her peculiar attainments La Latina. Another lady, Doña Lucia de Medrano, publicly lectured on the Latin classics in the University of Salamanca. And another, Doña Francisca de Lebrija, {334} daughter of the historian of that name, filled the chair of rhetoric with applause at Alcalá. But our limits will not allow a further enumeration of names which should never be permitted to sink into oblivion, were it only for the rare scholarship, peculiarly rare in the female sex, which they displayed in an age comparatively unenlightened. Female education in that day embraced a wider compass of erudition, in reference to the ancient languages, than is common at present; a circumstance attributable, probably, to the poverty of modern literature at that time, and the new and general appetite excited by the revival of classical learning in Italy. I am not aware, however, that it was usual for learned ladies, in any other country than Spain, to take part in the public exercises of the gymnasium, and deliver lectures from the chairs of the universities. This peculiarity, which may be referred in part to the queen's influence, who encouraged the love of study by her own example as well as by personal attendance on the academic examinations, may have been also suggested by a similar usage, already noticed among the Spanish Arabs." [Footnote 28]

[Footnote 28: While Prescott's information with regard to the education of Spanish women is very interesting, certain parts of this passage are amusing because they represent mid-nineteenth century ideas with regard to the Renaissance period. Prescott talks of the age as "comparatively unenlightened," but then at that time we had not taken to imitating Renaissance architecture, studying Renaissance literature and art, copying Renaissance book-making and binding, admiring the marvellous workers of the Renaissance in every department and wondering how we could get some of the superabundant intellectual and artistic life of that time into ours. Prescott's complacency is typically American of two generations ago. Since his time we have learned much more of the old-time phases of feminine education as I have reviewed them briefly at the beginning of this chapter. We have learned that every country in Europe had a corresponding feministic movement to that of Spain, with learned ladies in profusion everywhere. His innuendo at the end of his paragraph on the subject that the Spanish development was probably due to similar Arabian customs is of a piece with that marked tendency in his time to find any source for good except Christianity. The Christian nations were supposed to have done nothing worth while till the Reformation. The Middle Ages were still the dark ages and men were supposed to have accomplished nothing. I need scarcely say that we have changed all that and that now the later Middle Ages are looked upon as one of the most productive periods of human history.]

The English ladies of the Renaissance are quite as distinguished as their sisters of Italy, France and Spain for their interest in education and the intellectual life. The first one who deserves mention was, though a Queen of England, a Frenchwoman by birth. This was Margaret of Anjou, the wife of the unfortunate Henry VI. If her husband had possessed half the spirit or administrative ability of his wife, the future history of England might have been very different. As it was, the failure of Margaret to secure the throne either for her husband or her children, left it to the Tudors with all that their tyranny meant for England and with the unfortunate religious disturbances which came as a consequence of the headstrong ways of the passionate descendants of the Welsh knight. Margaret founded Queen's College, Cambridge, just about the beginning of Columbus' Century and gave that example of enlightened patronage of learning which was to bear ample fruit among the Englishwomen of the Renaissance during the succeeding centuries. One of her successors, Queen Elizabeth Woodville, who refounded Queen's College when it was threatened with disaster because of the impairment of its endowment and efficiency by the Wars of the Roses, is another of the enlightened patronesses of learning at this time.

About the middle of Columbus' Century, Margaret Beaufort founded the Divinity Lectureships of Oxford and Cambridge, since known as the Margaret Lectureships. She refounded Christ's College and St. John's College in Cambridge a few years later. She also founded a free school at Wymbourn in Dorsetshire. Her own intellectual abilities and education are attested by her translation of the "Imitation of Christ" at this time. Her wise counsellor in all of her efforts for the benefit of education was the martyred Bishop Fisher, who has left us a panegyric of her which enables us to appreciate her place as one of the distinguished learned women of the Renaissance. Like nearly all of these women, she was interested not only in books, but also in artistic work of many kinds and believed that an educated woman's first duty must be the decoration of the home. She excelled in ornamental needlework at a time {336} when a great many of the noble ladies were accustomed to do this sort of art work and when many beautiful examples of it were produced. Another member of the nobility who became well known for her intellectual attainments was Mary, Countess of Arundel, the compiler of "Certain Ingenious Sentences," a collection of proverbial expressions that had a wide popularity at this time.

Toward the end of our Century came the women on whom the Renaissance had a more direct influence. A great many of the daughters of the nobility were given the opportunity for the highest education, and many of them took it very brilliantly. The names of the distinguished women scholars, or at least of women who were noted for their attainments, are numerous and include many even of royal blood. Evidently feminine education had become the fashion, and many others must have been interested in it since it affected the great ladies so deeply. It would be quite impossible to think that what occupied so much the attention of the daughters of the highest nobility would not also prove a great attraction for many others. Perhaps the best known of the "blue stockings" of the time is Lady Jane Grey, of whose attainments we have so sympathetic an account from Roger Ascham. He says that she was deeply read in philosophy, and that she knew Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, Arabic and French. We are told that she cared much more to read her Greek authors than to go to routs and parties, or even to go hunting, which was the most fashionable amusement of the time. Besides, she knew music well and was particularly skilled in needlework. Indeed, there is none of these distinguished scholarly women of England of whose devotion to needlework we do not hear.

Mary Queen of Scots comes at the very end of the century, and French rather than English or Scotch influence was at work in her education, but the roll of her distinguished teachers shows how seriously the question of proper education for the future queen was taken at this period. George Buchanan was her professor of Latin, she studied rhetoric with Fauchet, history with Pasquier and poetry with Ronsard. We have at least one very interesting Latin poem that has been {337} attributed to her, and if the attribution be correct it is excellent evidence for her scholarliness. [Footnote 29]

Her rival, Elizabeth, was only seventeen years of age when the century closed, but this was also the age of Lady Jane Grey, when she was put to death, yet we hear much of her attainments and Elizabeth was one of her great scholarly rivals. Like Lady Jane, Elizabeth is said to have known five languages and to have studied music, philosophy, rhetoric and history to such good purpose that her accomplishments were much more than mediocre or conventional. With these examples before us there can be no doubt at all of the fashionableness of the higher education for women, and whatever is fashionable attracts the attention of all classes of women.

Probably the best example of the provision of opportunities for even the highest education for women is to be found in Sir Thomas More's household. He thought that his girls should share equally with his boys in their opportunities for the new learning. His daughter Margaret is quite famous for her attainments, Erasmus and others having praised her so highly. She had a thorough knowledge of Greek and Latin and much more than a passing or superficial acquaintance with philosophy, astronomy, physics, arithmetic, logic, rhetoric and music. The affection of her father for her, his encouragement of her studies and the intimate relations between them have made her illustrious not only in the history of feminine education, but in world history. While near the end of his life More was Lord Chancellor, his family was not of the higher nobility, and he himself, as practically a self-made man, belonged only to the professional classes of the time. It seems not far-fetched, then, to conclude that a good many of the daughters of lawyers and physicians at this time must have had abundant opportunities afforded them for as much education as they cared to have, though of course they would {338} not have the advantages of More's children, which were due, however, not to his political importance, but to his friendship for the great scholars of the time. While Margaret is so well known it must not be forgotten, though we hear so much less of them, that More's two other daughters were also very well educated. Leland, the antiquary, wrote of "the three learned nymphs, great More's fair progeny." If so little is known of More's other daughters, it is probable that there were not a few others who had similar advantages to theirs, though no record of it is in history.

Among the many demonstrations that this intellectual movement among women was not confined to Italy, nor even to the Southern nations, is the career of Charitas Pirkheimer, the Abbess of the Convent of the Poor Clares in Nuremberg. She became famous as an educated woman with whom many of the distinguished scholars of the Renaissance were proud to be associated. Her brother Wilibald, who was her guide and teacher, appreciated her so much that he dedicated several of his books to her, and in the preface of one, "On the Delayed Vengeance of the Deity," a Latin translation of Plutarch's treatise, he praises her education and her successful devotion to study. More disturbed than astonished, she protested that she was only the friend of scholars, but not herself a scholar. When Conrad Celtes published his collection of the works of Roswitha, he presented one of the first copies of the book to Charity Pirkheimer, and in a eulogy written on that occasion lauds her as one of the glorious ornaments of the German Fatherland. He enclosed a volume of his poems at the same time, and the good abbess very candidly asked him to devote himself rather to the study of the sacred books and the contemplation of high things than to the study of the sensual and low in the ancients. She was a great friend of Johann Butzbach and of Albrecht Dürer. Christopher Scheurl dedicated to her his book on "The Uses of the Mass," In his article in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Klemens Loffler says of her: "But all the praise she received excited no pride in Charitas; she remained simple, affable, modest and independent, uniting in perfect harmony high education and deep piety. It was thus she resisted the severe temptations which hung over the last ten years of her life."

DÜRER NATIVITY

Some expressions of the women of the Renaissance are famous for their wit and aptness. The famous reply of one of them, the Princess Christina of Denmark, may be taken as evidence that witty power of expression was not confined to the women of the Southern countries. Her picture by Holbein, "The Lady with the Cloak," is so well known that we seem to be able to recreate her personality rather completely. She was approached by the ambassadors of Henry VIII after the death of Jane Seymour with a proposal of marriage. Indeed, Holbein's picture was made for the purpose of giving the uxorious Henry an idea of the charms of the young woman. She was only eighteen at the time, but she was already the widow of Francesco Sforza, and she is said to have replied she would be quite willing to be the Queen of England if she had two heads and could be sure of retaining one of them. As she had only one, however, she could not take any risks in the matter. Julia Cartwright's life of her, recently published, shows what a clever woman of the Renaissance she was. Her reply is quite worthy of the Italian ladies of the time, some of whom were noted for their rather biting wit. One of the nobility in Italy having said that man's duty was to fight and not to take part in social ceremonies, one of the Gonzagas said; "It is too bad, then, that he does not hang himself up in a closet with his armor whenever he is not actually engaged in warfare."

It is often assumed that intellectual development, and especially the higher education, has a tendency to take women away from that devout attitude of mind which makes them religious. There are many examples in the Renaissance time, however, which serve to disprove this idea. The smaller and more superficial minds may be thus affected. It is not true for the larger, more profound intelligence. St. Teresa, in her directions to the Mothers of houses as regards the reception of postulants, said: "Where there is ignorance and piety do not forget that the piety may evaporate and the ignorance remain." Many of the best-known intellectual ladies of the Renaissance time were deeply pious, Vittoria Colonna is a typical example, so in spite of the apparent testimony of her famous book to the contrary is Marguerite of Navarre.

VIVARINI, ST. CLARE

Lucretia Tornabuoni, the mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, wrote some charming religious verse. The difference of opinion between Clarice dei Orsini, the wife of Lorenzo, and Politian as regards the teaching of religion to her children, in which she came off victor, is well known. Above all, these women were all close to the religious women of the time. Many of them spent some days every year at least, often some weeks, in favorite convents. They took their rest by following the daily exercises of the monastic life in various convents. Vittoria Colonna was noted for this, and during her widowhood spent very much time in this way. Nothing that I know contradicts so completely the slanders as to convent life at this time as these intimate relations with the religious.

It is noteworthy that in our country and time, just in proportion as education for women is widely diffused, the practice of more intimate relations with convents grows more common. Many women of the world, teachers, writers, take a few days each year now for a retreat in a convent. Not a few of those who enter religion are very well educated. A great many of those who belong to the teaching orders are thoroughly trained, and often fine experts in their specialties. In the Renaissance period the daughters of the great noble houses sometimes entered religious orders. Not infrequently they met with opposition, and especially parental and family influence was exerted to divert them from their purpose. Paola and Cecilia Gonzaga both became religious. There was considerable family opposition, especially on her father's part, against Cecilia's accomplishment of her purpose, but her great teacher, Vittorino da Feltre, one of whose favorite pupils Cecilia was, took her side. When her father insisted on finding a husband for her, Vittorino urged that women should be allowed to choose their careers for themselves, and above all, if they felt the call to the spiritual and intellectual life, should be given the opportunity for the self-development that the peace and ordered life of the cloister afforded.

Burckhardt has summed up the qualities of the women of {342} the Renaissance in a single sentence, that is worth while recalling. So much is said about the influence of the study of the classics in producing pagan ideas and looseness of morals and relaxation of old ethical standards during the Renaissance that it is well to recall what this deep student of the time thought. His words will be found to corroborate and sum up the character that we have been trying to paint of the women of the Renaissance in these pages:

"Their distinction consisted in the fact that their beauty, disposition, education, virtue and piety combined to make them harmonious human beings."

CHAPTER X

PHYSICAL SCIENCE OF THE CENTURY

While it is universally conceded that the Renaissance was a supremely great period in all the arts and literature, in education and scholarship, and that its geographical discoveries made it noteworthy from another standpoint, there is a very prevalent impression that it was distinctly lacking in scientific development and that indeed the proper attitude of mind for successful scientific investigation was a much later evolution. Most of the discoveries of even basic notions in science are almost universally thought to have been reserved for our time or at least for generations much nearer to us than Columbus' Century.

Nothing could well be less consonant with the actual history of science than any such impression. At many times before ours man has made great scientific progress. The greatest mystery of human history is that often after great discoveries were made they were somehow lost sight of. Over and over again men forget their previous knowledge and have to begin once more. There was one of these magnificent developments of scientific thought in every department during Columbus' Century and discoveries were made and conclusions reached which revolutionized other modes of scientific thinking just as much as Columbus' discovery of America revolutionized geography, or the work of Raphael or Michelangelo and Leonardo revolutionized the artistic thought of the world.

When we recall that it was at this time that Copernicus set forth the theory which has probably more influenced human thinking than any other and that this discovery developed directly from the mathematics of the time and while Vesalius revolutionized anatomy, the discovery of the circulation of the blood began a similar revolution in physiology and the foundations of botany and of modern chemistry in their relations to medicine were laid, some idea of the greatness of the {344} scientific advance of this period will be realized. Mathematics, particularly, developed marvellously and it is always when new horizons are opening out in mathematics that the exact sciences are sure to have a period of wonderful progress. Beautiful hospitals were erected and whenever there are good hospitals, surgery makes progress and that care for the patient which constitutes the essential part of medicine at all times, receives careful attention.

Above all the men of the Renaissance took it on themselves to edit and translate and publish the ancient classics of science and make them available for the study of their own and subsequent generations. The debt which the modern world owes to the Renaissance in this matter is only coming to be properly realized as a consequence of our own development of scholarship in this generation. Only the profound scholar is likely to appreciate properly how much we are indebted to the patient, time-taking work of this period in making books available. Not only the ancient classics but also the works of the Middle Ages on scientific subjects were all published. The early Christian scholars, the Arabians, and above all, the great teachers of the later Middle Ages were edited and printed as an enduring heritage for mankind.

The index of the feeling of the time toward physical science as well as the interest of the scholars of the period in nearly every phase of it is illustrated by the life of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, who is usually known as Cusanus. He was a distinguished German churchman who was made Bishop of Brixen and afterwards Cardinal and who had the confidence of the Popes to such a degree that he was sent out as Legate for the correction of abuses in Germany. He was particularly interested in mathematics and the great German historian of mathematics. Cantor, devotes a score of pages to the advances in mathematics which we owe to Cusanus. According to tradition during his journeys over the rough roads in the rude carriage of the time, he studied the curve described through the air by a fly as it was carried round the wheel after alighting on the top of it. He recognized this as a particular kind of curve which we know now as the cycloid and he studied many of its peculiarities and suggested its mathematical import.

He was particularly interested in astronomy and declared that the earth was round, was not the centre of the universe and that it could not be absolutely at rest. As he put it in Latin: terra igitur, quae centrum esse nequit, motu omni carere non potest. He described very clearly how the earth moved around its own axis, and then he added what cannot but seem a surprising declaration for those who in our time think such an idea of much later origin, that he considered that the earth itself cannot be fixed, but moves as do the other stars in the heavens, Consideravi quod terra ista non potest esse fixa sed movetur ut aliae stellae. More surprising still, he even seems to have reached by anticipation some idea of the constitution of the sun. He said: "To a spectator on the surface of the sun the splendor which appears to us would be invisible since it contains as it were an earth for its central mass with a circumferential envelope of light and heat and between the two an atmosphere of water and clouds and of ambient air."

These expressions occur mainly in a book "De Docta Ignorantia," in which the Cardinal points out how many things which even educated people think they know are quite wrong. His other books are on mathematics, though there is a little treatise on the correction of the calendar which shows how thoroughly the men of the time recognized the error that had crept into the year and how capable they were of making the correction. In a book of his on "Static Experiments" he has a very original discussion of laboratory methods for the study of disease which is eminently scientific, and which is described in the chapter on Medicine.

The life of George von Peuerbach, also Puerbach and Purbachius, the Austrian astronomer, one of Cardinal Nicholas' proteges who lived to be scarcely forty and whose greatest work was done just at the beginning of Columbus' Century, is an excellent index of the scientific spirit of the time. About 1440, when he was not yet twenty years of age, he received the degree of Master of Philosophy and of the Liberal Arts with the highest honors at the University of Vienna. After this he seemed to have spent some time at postgraduate work in Vienna, especially in mathematics under Johann von Gmünden. Just about the beginning of Columbus' Century he went to {346} Italy. Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa became interested in him and secured him a lectureship on Astronomy at the University of Ferrara. During the next few years he refused offers of professorships, at Bologna and Padua, because he wanted to go back to Vienna to teach in his alma mater. There, with the true Renaissance spirit of non-specialism, he lectured on philology and classical literature, giving special postgraduate courses in mathematics and astronomy. It was at this time that Johann Müller, Regiomontanus, as he is known, came under his tutelage. Purbach deserves the name that has been given him of the father of mathematical astronomy in modern times.

He introduced the decimal system to replace the cumbersome duodecimal method of calculation, which up to his time had been used in mathematical astronomy. He took up the translation of Ptolemy's "Almagest," replaced chords by sines and calculated tables of sines for every minute of arc for a radius of 600,000 units. This wonderful work of simplification naturally attracted wide attention. Cardinal Bessarion was brought in touch with him during a visit to Vienna and was impressed with his genius as an observer and a teacher. He suggested that the work on Ptolemy should not be done on the faulty Latin translation which was the only one available in Vienna at the moment, but on some of the Greek manuscripts of the great Alexandrian astronomer. He offered to secure them and also to provide for Purbach's support during the stay in Rome necessary for the study. The invitation was accepted on condition that his pupil Regiomontanus should go with him. Unfortunately, however, Purbach died before his journey to Rome. His works were very popular in his own time and his commentary on the "Almagest of Ptolemy" as completed by Regiomontanus became one of the standard text-books of the time. Altogether there are some twenty of his works extant and his "New Theory of the Planets" remained a favorite book of reference for astronomers even long after the publication of Copernicus. His industry must have been enormous but was after all not different from that of many of his contemporaries.

Astronomy was to be the great stimulating physical science of the early part of Columbus' Century and Purbach's successor {347} in the chain of scientific genius at this time was his pupil Johann Müller, or as he has come to be known from the Latinization of the name of the place of his birth, Königsberg (in Franconia, not far from Munich), Regiomontanus. As we have said, young Müller made his studies with Purbach at Vienna, became very much interested in astronomy and mathematics, at his master's suggestion accompanied Cardinal Bessarion to Italy and under his patronage took up the work of providing an abridgment of Ptolemy's great work, the "Almagest," in a Latin translation for those who might be deterred from the Greek.

Cardinal Bessarion became very much interested in him and gave him a chance to study in Italy. Müller chose Padua and spent nearly ten years there. Whenever anybody in almost any country in Europe wanted to secure opportunities for study beyond those afforded by his native land at this time he went down to Padua. Linacre, Vesalius, John Caius went there for medicine, Copernicus, a little later than Regiomontanus, for mathematics and astronomy and it was the ardently desired goal of many a student's wishes. Müller spent nearly ten years in Italy, most of it at Padua and at the age of about thirty-five returned to Germany to take up his life work. He settled down in Nuremberg, where in connection with Bernard Walther he secured the erection of an observatory. Nuremberg, because of its fine work in the metals, was the best place to obtain mechanical contrivances of all kinds, and many of these were used for the first time for scientific purposes at this observatory. It became quite a show place for visitors and while Nuremberg was developing the literary and artistic circles in which the Pirkheimers, Albrecht Dürer and the Vischers and Adam Kraft shone conspicuously, scientific interest in the city was at a similar high level.

Müller made a series of observations of great value in the astronomy of the time and substituted Venus for the moon as a connecting link between observations of the sun, the stars and the earth. He recognized the influence of refraction in altering the apparent places of the stars and he introduced the use of the tangent in mathematics. His most important work for the time, however, was the publication of a series of astronomical {348} leaflets, "Ephemerides Astronomicae" in which his observations were published and also a series of calendars for popular information. These announced the eclipses, solar and lunar, for years before their recurrence and gave a high standing to astronomy as a science. Some of these leaflets even reached Spain and Portugal and encouraged Spanish and Portuguese navigators with the thought that they could depend on observations of the stars for their guidance at sea. In a way, then, Regiomontanus' work prepared the path along which Columbus' discovery was made.

Regiomontanus' work attracted so much attention that he was invited to Rome to become the Papal Astronomer and to take up the practical work of correcting the Calendar. Unfortunately he died not long after his arrival in Rome, though not before he had been chosen as Bishop of Regensberg (Ratisbon) as a tribute to his scholarship and his piety. He thus became a successor of Albertus Magnus (in the bishopric), who had been in his time one of the profoundest of scholars and greatest of scientists. The tradition of appreciation of scholarship and original research had evidently been maintained for the three centuries that separate the two bishop scientists.

A distinguished scientific student born at Nuremberg the same year as Regiomontanus was Martin Behem or Behaim, the well-known navigator and cartographer, who on his return to Nuremberg in 1493 made the famous terrestrial globe which was meant to illustrate for his townsmen the present state of geography as the Spaniards and Portuguese had been remaking it. Behem's work is a striking testimony to the excellence of geographic knowledge at this time, and only for the preservation of this globe we could scarcely have believed in the modern time how correct were the notions of the scholars of the period with regard to the older continent at least.

One of the great physical scientists of this time is Toscanelli, the physician, mathematician, astronomer and cosmographer, over whose connection with Columbus such a controversy has raged in recent years. He and Cardinal Cusanus were fellow students at the University of Padua, where Toscanelli's course consisted of mathematics, philosophy and medicine. He settled down as a practising physician in Florence and took up {349} scientific studies of many kinds which brought him into connection not only with the students of science, but with the scholars and artists of the time. Brunelleschi and he were intimate friends, but he was well known outside of Italy, and Regiomontanus often consulted him. His services to astronomy consist in the painstaking and exact observations on the orbit of the comets of 1433, 1449-50 and especially of Halley's comet on its appearance in 1456 and of the comets of May, 1457, June, July and August of the same year. These show a most accurate power of astronomical observation and profound mathematical knowledge for that time. His famous chart indicated just how a navigator might reach the coast of India by sailing westward, and Columbus is said to have carried a copy of this chart with him on his first voyage. Whether this is true or not, there is no doubt of Toscanelli's place in the history of science because of original work in astronomy, geodesy and geography.

The most important protagonist of physical science during Columbus' Century, however, was undoubtedly Copernicus. Columbus gave the men of his time a new world, but Copernicus gave them a new creation. When early in the sixteenth century he published a preliminary sketch of his theory, one of his ecclesiastical friends remarked to him that he was giving his generation a new universe. There has probably never been a theory advanced which has changed men's modes of thinking with regard to the world they live in and their relation to it as the Copernican hypothesis has done, though it must not be forgotten that there are some as yet insuperable difficulties which keep it still in the class of scientific hypotheses.

The earth had up to this time been universally thought of as the centre of the universe, much more important than any of the other bodies, sun, moon or stars, and all the others were thought to move around it. Their apparent movement was due to the rotation of the earth, which was quite unrecognized. The immense distances of space were entirely undreamt of. In the new order of thinking the earth became a minor planet of small size in our solar system which was of inconspicuous magnitude when compared to the totality of the other bodies of the universe. The acceptance of the new theory sank man in his own estimation very considerably. The change of point of view of {350} the meaning of the universe necessitated by the Copernican theory was ever so much greater than that demanded by evolution in our time.

It took two centuries for men to adjust their thinking to these new ideas. Francis Bacon, a full century after Copernicus' time, declared emphatically that the Copernican theory did not explain the known facts of astronomy as well as the Ptolemaic theory. In Bacon's time Galileo was the subject of persecution and the reason for the persecution was that he was advancing a doctrine which no other great astronomer of his time accepted, and advancing it for reasons which have not held in the after-time. The Copernican theory came eventually to be accepted for quite different reasons from those advanced by Galileo.

How Copernicus succeeded in coming to this magnificent generalization is indeed hard to understand. It is easier to get some notion of it, however, when his achievement is taken in connection with what was being done all around him at this time. Living in a century when great men were accomplishing triumphs in painting, sculpture, architecture that have been the wonder of the world ever since, and when geography was being revolutionized, and nearly every science awakened, it is not surprising that he should have reached a height of mathematical and astronomical expression beyond any that men had ever conceived before and that he should have surpassed many of the generations to come after him, by the clearness of his intuition of the astronomical mystery of the universe.

Copernicus had not made many observations nor were such observations as had been made by him worked out with that painstaking accuracy which might be thought necessary to reach a great new conception of the universe. He had the genius to see from even the few and imperfect data that he had at hand what the true explanation of the diverse phenomena of the heavens was. He had no demonstrations to advance. He argued merely from analogy. Even Galileo, a century later, admitted to Cardinal Bellarmine that he had no strict demonstration of his views to offer, but that "the system seems to be true." While the feeling of many scientists in the modern time is that great discoveries come from patient {351} accumulation of accurate observations in large numbers, the history of science shows that almost invariably the epochal steps in progress have come from men who were comparatively young as a rule and who were not overloaded with the information of their time. The great artists of the Renaissance could probably have given no better reasons for their artistic conceptions than Copernicus for his stroke of genius, but they were all working at a time when somehow men were capable as they never have been since of these far-reaching intellectual achievements.

Copernicus was a Pole who, like other students of his time, gladly welcomed the opportunity to go down to Italy for post-graduate work, studied with Novara at Padua mathematics and astronomy and was quite willing to add the study of medicine, because by so doing he could secure an extension of the length of time he would be allowed to remain in Italy. He then returned to be a canon of the Cathedral of Frauenberg, and spent forty years in quiet patient observation and in the practice of his medical profession not for money, but for the benefit of the poor and such friends of the chapter of the Cathedral as he was under obligations to because of the years they had supported him in Italy. He probably reached his great astronomical theory when he was about thirty. He did not publish the preliminary sketch of it for twenty-five years. He did not publish his great book until just before his death, keeping it by him, making changes in it and while thoroughly convinced of its importance, quite sure that, owing to its lack of definite demonstration, it would not be generally accepted.

Like so many of these geniuses of the Renaissance he was a simple kindly man who had many good friends among those around him and who had one of the very happy lives accorded to those who, having some great thought and great work to occupy themselves with, have daily duties that afford them diversion and bring them into contact with friends in many ordinary relations in life. His humility of heart and simplicity of character, as well as his deep religious faith, can be very well appreciated from the prayer which at his own request was the only inscription upon his tombstone: "I ask not the {352} grace accorded to Paul, not that given to Peter; give me only the favor Thou didst show to the thief on the Cross."

His attitude toward the reform movement, twenty years of which he lived through in Germany, is interesting. He was an intimate friend of Bishop Maurice Ferber of Ermland, who kept his see loyal to Rome at an epoch when the secularization of the Teutonic Order and the falling away of many bishops all around him make his position and that of his diocese noteworthy in the history of that place and time. Copernicus continued loyal to the old Church and in 1541 his great book "De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium" was dedicated to Pope Paul III, who accepted the dedication and until the Galileo matter brought Copemicanism prominently into question there was never any thought of Copernicus' book as containing matters opposed to faith. It was then placed on the Index, but only until some minor passages should be corrected which set forth the new theory as if it were an astronomical doctrine founded on facts and demonstrations and not a hypothesis still to be discussed by scientists.

The scientific spirit of this century is often scouted because in spite of their scientific knowledge many of the astronomers and mathematicians of this time as well as, of course, other educated men following their example, could not quite rid themselves of the idea that the stars were powerful influences over man's life and health. The history of this idea, however, minimizes the objection. All down the centuries men like Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Nicholas of Cusa, Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola insisted that there could be nothing in what we now call astrology. Men parted with the older ideas very slowly, however. Almost a hundred years after Columbus' Century even Galileo made horoscopes and seems to have thoroughly believed in them, though some of his prophecies were sadly mistaken. Kepler drew up horoscopes, confessing that he had not much confidence in them but that they were paid for much better than other mathematical work and he sadly needed the money. Lord Bacon could not quite persuade himself that there was nothing in astrology. As late as after the middle of the eighteenth century Mesmer's thesis for graduation in medicine at the University of Vienna, which {353} at that time had one of the best medical schools of Europe, was on the influence of the stars on human constitutions. It was accepted by the faculty and he got his degree. Even in our time, though now the educated contemn, the mass of the people still have not entirely rejected astrology. The men of Columbus' Century can scarcely be thought less of for having accepted it, though many of the scientists of the time did not.

The counterpart to the great scientific genius that Copernicus was, the generalizer who discloses a new horizon, was to be found in his contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci, who was an inventor, a practical genius applying discoveries to everyday life. He solved most of the mechanical problems, invented locks for canals, the wheelbarrow and special methods of excavation, a machine for making files by machinery, run by a weight, a machine for sawing marble blocks instead of separating them by natural cleavage, the model of those still employed at Carrara, as well as machines for planing iron, for making vices, saws and planes, for spinning, for shearing the nap of cloth, as well as an artist's sketching stool, a color grinder, a spring to keep doors shut, a roasting jack, a hood for chimneys, movable derricks quite similar to those in use among us to-day, with contrivances for setting up marble columns on their bases, one of which in principle was used to set up Cleopatra's Needle on the Embankment in London in our time. A favorite field of invention was that of all sorts of apparatus relating to war, military engines, devices for pushing scaling ladders away from walls and many others. He was probably the greatest inventive genius in the world's history. He had an eminently practical mind. He devoted himself to the problem of flying, studied the wings of birds and produced a series of mechanical devices, tending toward the solution of that problem.

Taine said of him: "Leonardo da Vinci is the inventor by anticipation of all the modern ideas and of all the modern curiosities, a universal and refined genius, a solitary and inappeasable investigator, pushing his divinations beyond his century so as at some times to reach ours." There was scarcely anything that he touched that he did not illuminate wonderfully by his genius. In studying the muscles of animals he invented a {354} dynamometer, he improved spectacles and studied the laws of light, invented the camera obscura and in his steam experiments anticipated Watt. A very curious feature of his work is his series of experiments with the steam gun, with which he was sure that great destruction might be worked.

A very interesting invention of a scientific instrument of some precision by Leonardo was what may be called a weather gauge. This was made of a copper ring with a small rod of wood, which acted as a balance. On it were two little balls, one covered with wax and the other with material that absorbed moisture readily. When the air was saturated with moisture this ball grew heavy and inclined the beam till it touched one of the divisions marked on the copper ring set behind it. The degree of moisture could thus be seen and the weather, or at least changes in it, could be predicted. We have a whole series of such arrangements mainly in the shape of toys in the modern time. The hygroscopic qualities of cord or the tendency of certain colors to change their tints when more moisture is present are used to indicate approaching changes in the weather. Leonardo seems to have been the first to make use of this practically and he deserves the credit of priority in the invention.

His studies in optics might almost naturally be expected from a painter so much occupied with color and whose intense curiosity prompted him to know not merely the use of things but the causes of and the reasons for them. He evolved much of the science of color vision, suggested the principles of optics that came to be known only much later, analyzed and explained the construction of the eye, invented the camera obscura in imitation of it and gave us a theory of color vision which is as good as any other that we have down to the present day. These optical studies alone might well be considered as enough to occupy an ordinary lifetime, but they seem to have been only the results of a series of interludes of the nature of recreation for Leonardo. He made his notes on the subject, filed them away with others, made no attempt to print his conclusions, probably found very few with whom he could discuss the subject, but he had satisfied himself. That was what he wanted.