The Century of Columbus; by James J. Walsh

While we have greater examples of this mode of literature from England, in nearly every country in Europe the Passion Plays had a wonderful development toward the end of the fifteenth century. They were particularly striking, both in their literary value and their presentation in the Teutonic {488} countries and in England. There was a whole series of plays in England, many of which have come down to us. There is question whether "Everyman" was originally of Dutch or of English origin. The first production of it was as a translation of the Dutch "Elkerlijk." In Germany, the period in which the Passion Play reached its highest development was from about 1450 to 1550. The great Frankfurt Passion Play, the Alsfelder and the Friedburger plays came at this time. Many other towns, however, had their special Passion Plays written for them and presented in their own way. There was the Vienna Passion, the St. Gall Passion and the Maestricht Passion. But there were Passion Plays also at Eger, at Augsburg, Freising and Lucerne. From very early times Passion Plays were given in various parts of the Tyrol, always attracting the deep attention of the people, and it is here that the single example which has survived still serves to show us how genuinely dramatic and how powerful in their appeal were these plays. [Footnote 46]

[Footnote 46: It is almost amusing to be told that knowledge of the Scriptures was kept from the people at this time, before the Reformation, when these popular plays to which all the countryside flocked, and in which so many took part, were making them thoroughly familiar with all the details of Christ's life. There was much more than this, however, for connected with many of the Passion Plays were cycles of tableaux or presentations of special scenes in which, beginning with the Creation, the whole story of the Bible, and particularly those portions which are related to the coming of Christ, were set clearly before them. No better way of impressing upon the people the great truths of Christianity or the life of Christ as the central fact of the world's history could possibly have been imagined. The people were not encouraged to read difficult passages, which even the profoundest theologians find it hard to understand, to take their own meaning out of them and to argue about them, convicting everyone of heresy who did not agree with their interpretations of them, but they were taught the deep moral and religious significance of all the Old and New Testament. They learned the value of the Scriptures as literature as well as their quality as the underlying document of religion, but above all they were taught their relation to life. All this was so put before them that it came as an amusement and not a task, and from their earliest years they became familiar with the great thoughts underlying religion so as to secure its influence over them.]

Dodsley's collection of Old English Plays, which, in its {489} fourth edition as edited by W. Carew Hazlitt (London, 1874), contains a number of old plays little known, is particularly rich in material from this century of Columbus. The series of morality plays, "The Interlude of the Four Elements," "Everyman," "The Pardoner and the Friar," "The World and the Child," "Hick's Corner," "God's Promises," and the "Four P's," are typical examples. They all show the true dramatic spirit, and while lacking the theatrical technique of modern plays, are almost infinitely superior in their expression of the realities of human interest and their revelation of the depths of human sympathy to the presentation of superficialities which now pass for drama.

It was towards the end of Columbus' Century that the "Marriage of Witte and Science," which was not published until 1570, was written. This was marked off into five acts and the scenes designated, being the first play in which such an arrangement had been made. The modern dramatic mould was thus created. It is easy to understand that on the deep foundations, literary and technical, thus laid in the century before 1550, the great structure of the Elizabethan drama could be built up.

How much the appreciation for the morality plays has risen may be judged very well from some recent expressions with regard to them by students of the drama. Everyone is particularly loud in praise of "Everyman." In the introduction to "Everyman with other Interludes" in the Everyman series, the writer says that "to turn from Bayle's play (one of the later moralities, 'God's Promises') to the heart-breaking realities of 'Everyman' is like turning from a volume of law to the edifying sermons of one of the gospels." He adds:

"It was written, no doubt, like most of the plays in this volume, by a churchman; and he must have been a man of profound imagination and of the tenderest human soul conceivable. His ecclesiastical habit becomes clear enough before the end of the play, where he bids every man go and confess his sins. Like many of the more poignant scenes and passages in the miracle plays that follow it, this morality too leaves one exclaiming on how good a thing was the plain English of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries."

It would be a mistake to think that only the serious side of life was portrayed in these old dramas. Quite the contrary, they were full of humor, and the writer of the Introduction to Everyman, already quoted, says in this regard: "In these religious and moral interludes, the dramatic colouring, however crude, is real and sincere. The humours of a broad folk-comedy break through the Scriptural web continually in the guild plays like those in which Noah the ship-builder, or the proverbial three shepherds, appear in the pageant. Noah's unwilling wife in the 'Chester Deluge,' and Mak's canny wife in the Wakefield's shepherd's play, where the sheep-stealing scenes reveal a born Yorkshire humorist, offer a pair of gossips not easy to match for rude comedy. Mak's wife, like the shepherd's in the same pastoral, utters proverbs with every other breath: 'A woman's avyse helpys at the last!' 'So long goys the pott to the water, at last comys it home broken!'

"'Now in hot, now in cold,
Full woeful is the household
That wants a woman!'

"'If ever I you beguiled,
That I eat this child
That lies in this cradle,'

(the child being the stolen sheep), must have caused townsfolk and countryfolk outrageous laughter. Mak's wife is indeed as memorable in her way as the Wife of Bath, Dame Quickly, or Mrs. Gamp."

Some idea of the extent to which the men of this time went in attempting spectacles on a large scale may be appreciated from "Mary Magdalen," which combines elements of all the various kinds of religious plays of the time. It was a miracle play because it treats of the life and death of St. Mary Magdalen. It is a mystery play inasmuch as it introduces scenes from the Life of Christ.

It is a morality play because abstract personages are introduced upon the stage in the presentation of the struggle between good and evil in human life. Dr. Furnivall has divided the play into two parts, with fifty-one scenes altogether, twenty in the first and thirty-one in the second part. There is some evidence that some of the scenes were inserted only to give time for a shift of scenes. Probably they had two pageants or movable trucks which would remind one somewhat of the movable stage that was attempted in the last generation. The burning of the temple and some of the incidents of the wanderings at sea may very well have provided opportunity for spectacular effects of ambitious character. We have no record of how far they went in this regard, though some hints of attempts in the direction of surprising scenic introductions are to be found in contemporary documents, and we know that in Italy they staged an earthquake very effectively.

The play of "The Four Elements" was written just at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The date of its writing is designated by one of the speeches of Experience in this play, who says:

"Till now, within this twenty years.
   Westward be found new lands,
   That we never heard tell of before this
   By writing nor other means."

The passage illustrates the tendency to make these plays instructive as well as entertaining, and many similar passages might be quoted to show that a definite effort was made to convey information by means of them, though, as a rule, this had much more reference to religion and to social life than to things more distant from every-day living.

One of the important dramatic writers of the first half of our Columbus' Century was John Skelton, born about 1460, and who was one of the most prominent of literary men of England of his time. He had a series of literary quarrels with many of the prominent writers, Alexander Barclay and William Lily, the grammarian, among others, and for a time he {493} enjoyed the patronage of Wolsey, but apparently could not restrain his tendency to satire and so fell into the Cardinal's bad graces. Alexander Dyce edited his works in two volumes in 1843 and called particular attention to the genuine worth of his four dramatic compositions, the "Interlude of Virtue," the comedy called "Achidemoios," the "Nigramansir" (necromancer) and "Magnyfycence." Only one of these, the last, now remains, though there are traditions with regard to the others, and the single one left shows what precious material was lost.

An even more important contributor to this mode of dramatic literature and very significant predecessor of Shakespeare was John Heywood, a friend and neighbor of Sir Thomas More in Hertfordshire, who wrote a series of dramatic works, consisting of five interludes. Of these the "Four P's" is the best known and is the typical example of this form of dramatic literature. Its full title is "A Very Mery Enterlude of A Palmer, A Pardoner, A Pothecary and A Pedlar," and the story turns on the contest arranged between them, and especially the first three, as to which could tell the greatest lie. Palmers were real or supposed returned pilgrims from the Holy Land, bearing palms as a symbol of their pilgrimage, and were noted as a rule for their ability to tell strong stories. Pardoners were wandering merchants who sold printed prayers and various objects of devotion to which indulgences, pardons, in the language of the day were attached. They too were noted for drawing the long bow. The Pothecary and the Pedlar, because of their familiar gossip with the people, knew all the news of the neighborhood in which they lived, and had the reputation of being able to add to the vividness and sensational qualities of stories so that the Four P's might very well be expected to give some fine illustrations of the ability to lie.

The Palmer takes the prize in the contest with the very first story. All are agreed at once that no one can even hope to surpass it. The passage in which he does so is worth while quoting because it gives an illustration at once of the language and style as well as of the kind of humor to be found in Heywood's interludes:

"And this I would ye should understand,
   I have seen women five hundred thousand;
   And oft with them have long time tarried.
   Yet in all places where I have been,
   Of all the women that I have seen,
   I never saw or knew in my conscience
   Any one woman out of patience."

Thus, quietly, and with this force of earnest asseveration, does the largest and most palpable lie leap out of the Palmer's lips. The contestants themselves are at once unanimous in their decision.

In his account of the Pardoner, Heywood does not hesitate to satirize many of the pretensions of this class and especially their catering to the superstition of the ignorant by the sale of impossible relics of all kinds. Catholics realize very well that such frauds are practised at all times. Even in our day men go around selling prayers, the recital of which is supposed to give thousands of years of indulgence and other like absurdities. Besides, the trade in manufactured relics is well known, and the ecclesiastical authorities have tried to regulate it at all times. Heywood has his Pardoner offer for sale such relics as a bit of the thumb nail of the Holy Trinity and a feather from the wing of the Holy Ghost and like impossible absurdities. Impositions in the name of religion are still with us. It is interesting to know that before the religious revolution they were fought with that best of weapons, satire.

Before the end of Columbus' Century the first English comedy in the modern sense had been written. It was by Nicholas Udall and was called, from its hero, "Ralph Royster Doyster." He was a swaggering simpleton, a conceited fop of the time who is played upon by one Matthew Merrygreek, a needy humorist who represents the parasite of the old Latin drama under the influence of which this first English comedy was written. For Nicholas Udall was the Headmaster of Eton School, and the play in lively rhyming couplets, {495} interspersed with merry songs, was written to be played by the Eton boys according to their custom of having several plays each year. The play partakes somewhat of the nature of farce and contains a number of situations of the kind that have always drawn a laugh and will doubtless always continue to do so. In one of the scenes in the play, Ralph and his man are beaten in a brisk battle by the women of the play armed with broomsticks. A lesson in the need for punctuation is introduced, showing how completely the sense of writing can be reversed by putting the stops in the wrong places. Udall wrote some other plays, notably one called "Ezekias," used for the entertainment of Queen Elizabeth on her visit to Cambridge.

The other form of literature besides the drama which came to ripe fruition at this time in England is also of a popular character. It consists of the stirring English ballads which were gathered into a volume by Bishop Percy in his "Reliques" at the end of the eighteenth century. There probably has never been more stirring martial singing than is to be found in the "Ancient Ballad of Chevy Chase" or "Adam Bell" or "Clym of the Clough." It has been well said that "in graphic terseness, in poetic simplicity, in fiery fervor, in tenderness of pathos, our modern poetry does not approach these old ballads." Sir Philip Sidney said of "Chevy Chase," "I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart more moved than with a trumpet." While the language is simple, the verse rude, the thoughts rugged and the story over-full of sympathy for the outlaw, at all times, even the most refined, these ballads have stirred English hearts. The writers of them are unknown, but they had the genius of true poets, the power of vision and striking ability of expression. The ballads will live as long as our English tongue and will continue to be read even by the cultured, distant in every way from the rudeness of the time in which and the men for whom these ballads were written.

After the Ballad Poetry of this period came quite naturally Sir Thomas Malory's "Morte d'Arthur." There have been many and varying expressions of opinion with regard to the merit of this work, and it is at best a medley from many {496} sources. What Mr. Andrew Lang has called its "splendid patchwork" is harmonized and solemnized by the dignified conclusion "in tenderness and inexpiable sorrow." In spite of its many sources there is a unity of spirit and feeling, and Malory was an admirable narrator. Malory's vitality is attested by edition after edition in the nineteenth century. The book has an appeal to human nature that is eternal and that will always give it a distinguished place among the books of the educated at least. Of style in the literary sense of that term there is very little, and Malory's anomalous constructions have always puzzled grammarians, but as Garnett says in his English Literature, [Footnote 47] "These do not render him obscure for the readers of any period." Caxton laid English literature under an immense obligation by insuring the preservation of the work, through his selection of it to be one of his early-printed books. It has done credit to his taste in popular literature ever since.

[Footnote 47: "English Literature: an Illustrated Record in Four Vols." Garnett and Gosse: New York, 1903.]

In the latter part of the fifteenth and the first years of the sixteenth century a wonderful development of English poetry took place in Scotland. Just before Columbus' Century opened, James First of Scotland, who had been detained in an English prison for nineteen years, began the literature of Scotland in glorious fashion. The loneliness of these years prompted him to seek and gain that literary culture which has made his name famous in the world of letters. It is possible that the "King's Quair" (a quire or book), which is a poetical record of his sight of Jane Beaufort, granddaughter of John of Gaunt, from his prison window, and his winning her as his queen, may not be from his hand. There is no doubt at all, however, of his taste in literature, his patronage of it and of his establishment of the tradition which has made the English literature of Scotland so important during most of the centuries since. Four poets of the middle of Columbus' Century in Scotland deserve to be named, Blind Harry, Robert Henryson, Gawin Douglas and William Dunbar. All of them are still read affectionately by Scotchmen, but there are very few among the educated people of the English-speaking countries who would {497} care to confess ignorance of them, and to many they are favorite poets. Dunbar is the greatest of poets in English from Chaucer to Shakespeare, and Scottish critics at least have been loud in its praise. Mr. Craik says:

"This admirable master, alike of serious and of comic song, may justly be styled the Chaucer of Scotland, whether we look to the wide range of his genius, or to his eminence in every style over all the poets of his country who preceded and all who for ages came after him. Burns is certainly the only name among the Scottish poets that can yet be placed on the same line with that of Dunbar; and even the inspired ploughman, though the equal of Dunbar in comic power and his superior in depth of passion, is not to be compared with the older poet either in strength or in general fertility of imagination."

The two English poets of our period are Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, who, in spite of inequality in merit, possess so much in common that their names are closely associated. How well they were appreciated in Elizabeth's time and how much their influence meant for Shakespeare's contemporaries may be judged from Puttenham's expression, who said in 1589:

"Henry, Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, between whom I finde very little difference, I repute them for the two chief lanternes of light to all others that have since employed their pennes upon English Poesie; their conceits were loftie, their stiles stately, their conveyance cleanly, their termes proper, their metres sweete and well proportioned."

To Surrey, English literature owes two important literary innovations--the introduction of the sonnet and the use of polished blank verse. The influence of Italy and of the classic authors can be seen very clearly, and his version of the second and fourth books of the AEneid, in what Milton called "English heroic verse without rhyme," was a fundamental influence in English poetry. His sonnets are mainly the amatory effusions which were becoming fashionable everywhere at this time and which Shakespeare indulged in in his turn a little later. Some of his biographers and editors have woven a series of fanciful theories over his relations to the {498} "fair Geraldine," in whose honor many of the best sonnets were written, but it is doubtful whether these love poems are anything more than the wandering poetic fancies of the time. Surrey's unmerited death on the scaffold at the early age of thirty has deepened the romantic interest that attaches to his name as a poet. Sir Thomas Wyatt, though more than a dozen years older than his friend Surrey, must be considered his disciple in poetry. He, too, wrote some of the new sonnets on the theme that occupied so many of the poets of the time--Love--but, as in the case of Surrey also, we have from him some satires and metrical versions of the psalms.

Probably the greatest contribution to the English prose of the time is Sir Thomas More's "Life of Edward V." Mr. Hallam pronounced it "the first example of good English--pure and perspicuous, well chosen, without vulgarisms or pedantry." Many others have declared More the first great master of English prose and even the father of English prose. There have been dissentient voices among the critics from these high praises. There is no doubt, however, that More wrote a direct straightforward English that deeply influenced the course of English speech, and tradition has given him a high place among the great English orators. The language undoubtedly received a deep impress from him, and though his most important work in literature is "Utopia," written in Latin, his high place in English cannot be denied.

Authorities on English have always recognized this, but owing to religious feelings, and the anti-Catholic tradition created during Elizabeth and James' time, More's work has been neglected, except by the deeper scholars. Samuel Johnson, in the "History of the English Language," prefixed to his dictionary, devotes nearly one-third of all the space that he takes for his purpose to More. He apologizes somewhat for his copiousness of quotation from the chancellor, but justifies it by saying that, "It is necessary to give a larger specimen both because the language was to a great degree formed and settled and because it appears from Ben Jonson that his works were considered as models of pure and elegant style."

A recent writer, [Footnote 48] Prof. J. S. Phillimore, says of More's style: {499} "His usual prose has the easy elastic abundance of Boccaccio and a lawyer's love of proving a point exhaustively in controversy. But he has all the qualities of a great prose style: sonorous eloquence, less cumbersome than Milton; simplicity and lucidity of argument, with unfailing sense of the rhythms and harmonies of English sound. He is a master of Dialogue, the favorite vehicle of that age; neither too curiously dramatic in the ethopoia of the persons, nor yet allowing the form to become a hollow convention, the objector in his great Dialogue (the Quod he and Quod I) is anything but a man of straw. We can see that if Lucian was his early love he had not neglected Plato either. Elizabethan prose is tawdry and mannered compared with his: at his death Chaucer's thread is dropped, which none picked up till Clarendon and Dryden. With his colloquial, well-bred, unaffected ease, he is the ancestor of Swift. His style--so Erasmus tells us--was gained by long and careful studies and exercises; he took a discipline in Latin, of which the fruits were to appear in English, when the increasing gravity of the times warned him that it would be well to speak to a larger public than Latin could reach. Even where he is prolix--and that may seem prolix in black-letter folio which reads easy and pleasant enough in modern form--his merry humor is not long silent."

As in French, some of the translations into English at this period are almost as admirable prose as Amyot's "Plutarch." Even when the translations of the time have the quaintness of the English of that period, they are admirable in their closeness to the original and in a certain rhythm of their sentences. Of Berner's translation of Froissart's "Chronicles," Snell in "The Age of Transition" ("Handbooks of English Literature," Scribners) says: "The English is so thoroughly idiomatic that in reading it one loses all sensation of the book being merely an interpretation, and resigns one's self to its easy and familiar flow with the same joyful complacency as if it were an original work. On the other hand, if one insists on breaking the spell and comparing it with the French text, one is struck not only with the felicity, but also the fidelity of the rendering."

The literary quality of the prose of the first half of the {500} sixteenth century in England is best revealed in the translations of the Scriptures done into the vernacular at this time and in the unequalled Collects of the English Prayerbook. Tyndale and Coverdale are responsible for the translations of the Scriptures, and to Cranmer is usually attributed the writing of the Collects, though, as has been said by Saintsbury, "this attribution derives but very faint corroboration from the Archbishop's known work." It was with these models of marvellously expressive, thoroughly idiomatic English, exquisite examples of style, that the translators of the King James version of the Bible were placed in a position to give us the wonderful fundamental literary work that was to come from their hand half a century later. It has been said that one argument of the most irresistible kind for the divine authorship of the Scriptures lies in the faculty which they have of making all the translations of them great literature. It was their influence that is felt in the English Prayerbook and in those parts of the Breviary which we owe to the first half of the sixteenth century.

CHAPTER VI

SCHOLARSHIP IN ITALY

One of the most important chapters in the great accomplishment of the men of this century is its scholarship--that is, the critical and appreciative knowledge of what men had written before their time and especially of the great classical works of antiquity. In this, almost needless to say, Italy is not only a pioneer, but was the alma mater studiorum--of whom Linacre was so proud--for those desirous of knowledge of the classics and true scholarship from all over the world. From every country, France, Spain, Germany, distant Poland and Denmark, as well as England, those looking for opportunities for study that could not be obtained at home flocked to Italy. Besides, Italian teachers are to be found teaching everywhere, though Italy herself proved no stepmother to those who came to be nurtured in good learning at her great institutions. Many a foreigner who had proved his ability was given a professorship and spent many years in teaching others in Italy as he had been taught himself.

This is the age of printing, and it was of first importance that good editions of the classics should be printed as soon as possible in order to prevent any further degeneration of their texts and avoid all further risk of losing the precious treasures of antiquity. Scholars in Italy took up the making of good texts, and within a century after the invention of printing, all the important Greek and Latin authors had been published in scholarly editions, the texts of which still command respect. The amount of labor required for this, the judicious scholarship demanded, the patience that was needed and the unselfish devotion to a most trying task, only scholars can properly appreciate. No debt that we owe to the Renaissance is greater than this, what it accomplished for classical literature, and by far the greater part of this debt is owed to Italy.

Everywhere, that is, in every important city, there was a school of the New Learning, and usually some munificent patrons of what they came to call Humanism because it represented humanity's highest interests, supporting scholars who were writing and correcting manuscripts and afterwards forming libraries of the printed books and making it possible for the great printers to continue their work by subscribing for their first editions. Only that the Church was deeply interested in this new movement, it would have been quite impossible for it to have continued. Unfortunately, as always happens whenever men get new knowledge, many of them, that is, the restless and the smaller minds among them, who are always likely to be in a great majority in any new movement, were taken with the idea that they knew so much more than those who went before them that they could not be expected to accept old-fashioned ideas in religion and philosophy. Because of the disturbances produced by such restless characters, there sometimes seems at this time to be opposition between the Church and the New Learning. This false impression is partly due to the fact that in certain countries, notably Germany and England, the reform doctrines were, as pointed out by Gasquet, often called the New Learning, to which, of course, there was opposition. Most of the great classic scholars, however, were ecclesiastics, some of them of very high rank and influence in the councils of the Church, even Cardinals and Popes, and in general the vast majority of the prominent scholars were in the closest of sympathy with the ecclesiastical authorities. The exceptions are so few as to make the existence of this rule very clear, though so much of emphasis has been placed on the exceptions in the modern time that an entirely false impression with regard to Church opposition to education has been produced in a great many minds.

The first name that deserves to be mentioned among the scholars of Italy is AEneas Sylvius of the family of Piccolomini, who is better known under the name of Pius II, which he bore as Pope. He is a typical example of the scholars of the Renaissance, in so far as that, as a younger man, his studies of classical antiquity led him to the expression of pagan ideas in life as well as in language. At the age of forty he {503} reformed and became as well known for his devotion as for his previous looseness of character. He was created Imperial Poet by the Emperor Frederick III, and his reputation for scholarship created a fashion in this regard that did great good for the rising movement of the New Learning. His influence as Pope continued this, though he made it the main business of his pontificate to organize Europe against the Turks so as to prevent the further increase of their power with all that would mean for the destruction of culture as well as religion. Indeed, his love for letters seems to have been at least as great an incentive for the organization of the crusade as his duty as an ecclesiastic. When he heard of the Fall of Constantinople, he exclaimed, "How many names of mighty men will perish! It is a second death to Homer and to Plato. The fount of the muses is dried up forevermore." How much he was thought of by his contemporaries and how much the example of his scholarship meant will be best appreciated from the Piccolomini Palace and other buildings of Pienza, but particularly the exquisitely beautiful Piccolomini Library at Siena. Pinturicchio's decorations for this library are only added testimony to the admiration of his generation. Sylvius' letter to Ladislas, the young king of Bohemia and Hungary who had sought his advice with regard to education, is one of the important documents in the history of education. It contains the oft-quoted passage with regard to the place of memory in education:

"We must first insist upon the overwhelming importance of Memory, which is in truth the first condition of capacity for letters. A boy should learn without effort, retain with accuracy, and reproduce easily. Rightly is memory called 'the nursing mother of learning.' It needs cultivation, however, whether a boy be gifted with retentiveness or not. Therefore, let some passage from poet or moralist be committed to memory every day."

One of the greatest scholars of the period and one of the leaders in the Renaissance movement towards the classics which brought about the reawakening of artistic and literary men at this time was Cardinal Bessarion, whose long life of over eighty years gave him nearly a quarter of a century in {504} Columbus' period. He came with the Emperor John Palaeologus to the Council of Ferrara in 1438, where his reputation for scholarship and vast erudition in all theological matters gave him great authority among the Greek Bishops. To him more than any other must be attributed the formal reunion with the Latin Church, which was the happy issue of that Council. To him, therefore, was committed the honor of reading the Greek formula of the Act of Union. Unfortunately, the union was but short-lived, but Bessarion changed to the Latin rite and in 1439 was created Cardinal.

The Cardinal was high in favor with succeeding Popes and just at the beginning of Columbus' Century was sent as papal legate to Bologna, as "an angel of peace," in the hope that he would be able to quell the factional disturbances and pacify the divided interests. Cardinal Bessarion succeeded admirably in this difficult mission, calmed the internal dissensions and succeeded in introducing wise reforms into the city government and the administration of justice. His principal attention, however, was given to the University. He rebuilt the building and gathered there some of the most famous teachers of the world, encouraging particularly the study of the classics, and above all of Greek. He himself supplied out of his personal revenues whatever was lacking in the salaries, and he gathered around him a notable band of scholars, writers and poets, and began that magnificent outburst of interest in the intellectual life which was to make Bologna so famous.

He continued to be active in his influence on the scholarship of Italy until well beyond eighty years of age, yet was always a factor in the practical life of his time. When he was eighty-one he wrote for Pope Paul II a letter on the organization of a new crusade against the Turks. When he was eighty-three he went on an embassy to Paris in order to bring about the union of the Western nations for a crusade. While at Rome during his later years, Bessarion gathered round him the scholars and writers in all departments. The scientists of the time particularly owe much to his patronage. He was a friend of Peurbach of Vienna, of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, of Regiomontanus and many others. In his house the first Accademia was founded, and he was known as the patron of {505} letters. He gathered an immense number of valuable manuscripts at very great expense, had copies of others made and gave his treasures at his death to found a library in Venice, his collection forming the nucleus of the famous library of St. Mark.

After these two great Churchmen and patrons of learning and education, there are a series of scholars whose names deserve to be mentioned for the influence which they exerted on the learning of Europe at this time. At the beginning of our century came the Greeks, who were driven out of their native country by the conquest of the Turks. Demetrius Chalcondyles, Theodore Gaza, George Trebizond and Joannes Argyropulos, unable to pursue their studies in peace in the midst of the alarms produced by the Turks, reached Italy before the Fall of Constantinople. Gaza was lecturing on Demosthenes at Ferrara in 1448, where among his pupils was the subsequently distinguished German scholar Rudolph Agricola. The first year of our century Gaza was invited to Rome by Pope Nicholas V to fill the chair of philosophy and take a principal part in the plan which the Pope had conceived for the translation of the principal Greek classics. Gaza's translations were mainly concerned with scientific Greek works, Aristotle "On Mechanical Problems" and "On Animals" and Theophrastus' "Botany." For a time he withdrew to a monastery, but was recalled to Rome by Pope Paul II to take part in the editio princeps of Gellius. After the death of Bessarion he retired once more to his monastery, where he died in 1475. His Greek grammar became famous and was used as a text-book by Budaeus in Paris and by Erasmus in Cambridge. He is described by Manutius as easily chief among the Latin and Greek scholars of his age, an age replete with scholarship be it said, and he is eulogized by Scaliger over a century later as magnus vir et doctus, a great man and a learned.

George Trebizond, after teaching for many years in Venice, was invited to Rome, where he became one of the Papal Secretaries. He also took part in the plan for translating the Greek classics, and his translations include the "Rhetoric and Problems of Aristotle" and "The Laws and Charmenides of Plato." Argyropulos taught first at Padua and then for {506} fifteen years under the patronage of the Medici at Florence. He, too, was invited to Rome by the Pope and was highly esteemed there. His part in the great plan of translation concerned mainly the works of Aristotle, whose "Ethics," "Politics," "Economics," "On the Soul" and "On Heaven" were all printed in his versions. He was the master of Politian, and his lectures were attended by Tiptoff, the Earl of Worcester, and by Reuchlin, the great German humanist. It was to Reuchlin that Argyropulos, after having heard him read and translate a passage of Thucydides, exclaimed with a sigh, "Lo! through our exile Greece has flown across the Alps." Chalcondyles, at the early age of twenty-six, made an immediate conquest of his Italian audience at Perugia in 1450. Subsequently he lectured at Padua, being the first teacher of Greek who received a salary at any of the Universities of Europe. For twenty years he lectured in Florence, and there prepared the editio princeps of Homer, the first great Greek author to be printed. After the death of Lorenzo de Medici he withdrew to Milan and there edited "Isocrates" and "Suidas." His emendation of Greek texts is the best proof of his scholarship, and few men of his time equalled his power in this. He was noted for the gentleness of his disposition and his integrity of character, and he made many friends. There is a famous picture by Ghirlandajo in Santa Maria Novella at Florence which contains portraits of Ficino, Landino, Politian and Chalcondyles.

The work of all of these men was greatly assisted by Pope Nicholas V, who was himself distinguished as a scholar in this scholarly time. During his pontificate in the first years of Columbus' Century he did more for the encouragement of learning than anyone else of the time. His wide knowledge of manuscripts made him personally an expert, and he gathered from all lands and is the founder of the Vatican collection of manuscripts. Besides the translations of Aristotle, Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon, Polybius and Epictetus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and Appian were translated under his direction. The catholicity of his taste, and above all the inclusion of the scientific books of the Greeks, is a tribute to the liberty of spirit of the Pope. On his death-bed he declared that his {507} greatest consolation was that he had been liberal in the rewarding of learned men.

After the Papal influence, the most important factor for the encouragement of scholarship was the academies which were founded at this time. Lorenzo de Medici revived, after an interval of 1200 years, the ancient custom of celebrating the memory of Plato by an annual banquet. Out of this arose the Accademia of Florence, nearly every one of the members of which were distinguished scholars. The best known among them are Landino and Ficino, both of whom had been Lorenzo's tutors, Pico della Mirandola and Politian. The first account that we have of the Academy is to be found in the introduction to Ficino's edition of Plato's "Symposium." He tells that his rendering of all the seven speeches in the "Symposium" was read aloud and discussed by five of the guests. Undoubtedly Ficino was the centre of the Accademia and one of the greatest scholarly influences of the time. At the age of forty he took Holy Orders and was noted for the next twenty-five years, until his death, as a faithful priest whose scholarship was devoted to showing how Plato illuminated Christianity. In the latter part of his life he lectured on and translated Plotinus.

The best known of these scholars in Florence was undoubtedly Politian, much more interested in Latin than in Greek, though Sandys, in his "History of Classical Scholarship" (Cambridge University Press, 1908), says that he was probably the first teacher in Italy whose mastery of Greek was equal to that of the Greek immigrants. Though he died at the early age of forty, we owe to him valuable textual criticisms of Lucretius, Propertius, Ovid, Statius, Ausonius, Celsus, Quintilian, Festus, and Catullus and Tibullus. His monograph on the chronology of Cicero's letters, his discussion of the use of the aspirate in Latin and Greek and of the differences between the aorist and the imperfect as illustrated by the signatures of Greek sculptors, as well as his power of solving textual difficulties, made him one of the great contributors to the magnificent work accomplished at this time for classical scientific grammar and erudition, as well as for the provision of proper texts of the classics for the world. Besides pure {508} literature, he was interested very much in law and made a special study of the "Pandects" of Justinian. He refused to follow those who slavishly imitated Cicero, and denounces the Ciceronians as the mere apes of Cicero. His expressions in the matter are famous. "To myself the face of a bull or a lion appears far more beautiful than that of an ape, although the ape has a closer resemblance to man. But, someone will say you do not express Cicero. I answer I am not Cicero, what I really express is myself."

Academies were formed in other cities and accomplished excellent results for scholarship, though at times they fell under the suspicion of the authorities of dabbling in politics or of actually favoring political factions or even revolutionary ideas. Nearly always they owe their origin to the patronage of high ecclesiastics or those who were in very close sympathy with the Church and always they contained clergymen of distinction. After that of Florence the next in chronological order was that of Rome. There is even some question whether the Roman Academy was not the first in time, only it did not receive this name until after it had been adopted in Florence. The most important figure in the Roman Academy was the man who, for want of a better, assumed the old Roman name Pomponius Laetus. He was narrow enough of intellect to refuse to learn Greek, because he feared that it would spoil his Latin style. The members of the Roman Academy, under his ruling spirit, celebrated the foundation of Rome on the annual return of the festival of the Palilia, a custom which is still retained by many of the Roman academies. Pomponius did his gardening according to the precepts of Varro and Columella, the Latin writers on agriculture, and nothing pleased him better than to be regarded as a second Cato. It is to him that is due the revival of the regular performances of Plautus' plays.

Among the most important members of the Academy were Platina, who became the Librarian of the Vatican, and Sabellicus, who afterwards became the Prefect of the Library of San Marco in Venice. For a time, owing to suspicion of its political, perhaps also its religious, tendencies, the Roman Academy was suppressed and some of its members put in prison, but under Pope Sixtus IV it was revived and all its {509} old customs restored. Pomponius wrote commentaries on the whole of Virgil, on Sallust and Curtius, on Pliny's letters and Quintilian and on his agricultural favorites, Varro and Columella, and his equally great favorites, Festus and Nonius Marcellus, the grammarians. In order to complete his similarity with the old Romans, he had expressed the desire at one time in life that after death his body should simply be placed in an ancient Roman tomb on the Appian Way. When he died at the age of seventy he had changed the views of his earlier years and was given a magnificent Christian funeral. So great was the veneration for his scholarship that his obsequies in the Church of Ara Coeli, in the midst of the Roman antiquities that he had loved so well, were attended, as Gregorovius tells us, by some forty bishops.

This Roman Academy continued to exist, now flourishing, now occupied with trivialities, as is the way with such institutions, until the sack of Rome in 1527. As Sandys says ("Harvard Lectures on the Revival of Learning," Cambridge University Press, 1905), "Its palmy days were in the age of Leo X, when it included the most brilliant members of the literary society of Rome, men like the future Cardinals, Bembo and Sadoleto, as well as Paolo Giovio and Castiglione. It encouraged very much the study of Latin particularly, and its members wrote Latin poems and delivered Latin orations and above all encouraged the development of Roman Archaeology, the preservation of Roman remains of all kinds, the editing of books and the recovery of every possible phase of information with regard to Roman life."

There were minor academies in Rome, one of which, the Vitruvian Academy, occupied itself mainly with architecture. But as was true also at Florence, where there were a number of minor academies, some at least of these were only cloaks for political discussions and organizations, and as a consequence brought other and more serious bodies of the same name under suspicion.

The next academy of importance is that of Naples, which came into existence probably just about the beginning of Columbus' Century during the reign of Alfonso of Aragon, the magnanimous patron of learning. Its most prominent {510} members were Antonio of Palermo, whose Italian name of Beccadelli is often used; Pontano and Sannazzaro, the poets, and Laurentius Valla, the historian and professor of rhetoric. Valla subsequently became professor of rhetoric in Rome at the invitation of Pope Nicholas V, who wanted his assistance for the carrying out of the great plan of translations from Greek to Latin of all the great authors which he constantly cherished. Valla became Papal Secretary under Nicholas' successor, Pope Calixtus III, but unfortunately he died at the early age of fifty. He deserves extended notice because he is one of the founders of historical criticism, and he began that denunciation of exaggerated belief in Aristotle very proper in itself, but which unfortunately went too far and led to under-estimation of the medieval scholars who had studied Aristotle so sedulously, and even of Aristotle himself. His discussion of the Donation of Constantine attracted much attention and showed very clearly how scholarship might be used to good purpose for the correction of false notions even long after events had happened.

The Accademia at Venice deserves more than a passing mention because, though founded much later than the others, it set itself the very practical purpose of bringing about a systematic publication of the Greek classics. It was founded by Aldus in 1500, who called it the New Academy of Hellenists, and was as strongly Grecian as Pomponius' Academy was Roman. Its constitution was written in Greek, Greek was spoken at its meetings and Greek names were adopted by its Italian members. Fortiguerra of Pistoia, the Secretary of the Academy, thus became Carteromachus. The principal aim of the Academy was to produce in each month an edition of at least 1,000 copies of some good author. Among the honorary foreign members were Linacre, some of whose translations Aldus published, and Erasmus, who visited Venice in 1508 and who expressed himself as delighted with the opportunity to take part in the deliberations of the Academy. How successful the Academy was in its purpose of encouraging scholarly printing, all the world knows. Aldus produced no less than 27 editiones principes of Greek authors and Greek works of reference. At the time of his death in 1515 all the {511} principal Greek classics had been printed. The Academy had been a large factor in helping him in this magnificent achievement, which meant more for scholarship throughout the whole of Europe than perhaps any other single movement occupying so short a time.

There are many of the scholars of the Renaissance whose names are scarcely known outside of the narrow circle of modern specialists in their departments, though their influence was felt for many generations and their work is worthy of the highest praise. A typical example of these is Ambrogio Calepino, the Augustinian monk, to whom we owe the first great modern Latin dictionary. Under the title of "Cornucopia" it appeared first at Reggio in 1502 and was reprinted many times during the sixteenth century. The Alduses at Venice printed no less than eighteen editions of it. This lexicon came to be the groundwork on which subsequent lexicographers, recognizing its merit, built up their larger works. There was an edition of it in seven languages by Facciolati, printed at Pavia in 1718, which was reprinted many times. The name of Calepinus became a synonym for the word dictionary or lexicon and is frequently used, without capitalization as a common noun, in Italy during the subsequent generations. His magnificent work well deserved this recognition, for it is a monument of the classical scholarship of the first half of Columbus' Century.

One of the greatest of the Italian scholars of the first half of, Columbus' Century was that distinguished member of the Florentine Academy whose books were the special favorites of Sir Thomas More, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who died at the early age of thirty-one after dreaming the dream of the unity of all knowledge and becoming absorbed in planning a vast work which was to form a complete system of knowledge. He had devoted himself to Greek and to Christian theology and philosophy and even rendered himself liable to suspicion by his delvings into Cabalistic lore and had deeply impressed the generation among whom he lived. His reputation as a marvellous precocious scholar, who died all untimely, still endures, and Sir Thomas More's study and discussion of his works gave him a reputation in England which added greatly {512} to his fame throughout the whole West of Europe. He was happy in his end, for he passed away on the very day in which the invader of Italy, Charles VIII of France, marched into Florence.

Scholarship continued to hold the highest place in Italy until political troubles, and above all the sack of Rome in 1527, drew men's minds from peaceful pursuits, scattered libraries and made patronage of scholarship most difficult for rulers and ecclesiastics.

CHAPTER VI SCHOLARSHIP IN ITALY

CHAPTER VI

SCHOLARSHIP IN ITALY