Christian Schools and Scholars, by Augusta Theodosia Drane

[244] Nevertheless, oddly enough, the susceptibility to natural beauty and the power of describing it with the pen is often claimed as one of the good things restored to us by the Renaissance. The author of Cosmos, in that beautiful Introduction to his work in which he traces the history of the love of nature, observes that, “when the sudden intercourse with Greece caused a general revival of classical literature, we find as the first example among prose writers a charming description of nature from the pen of Cardinal Bembo.” Had the writer opened any of the monastic Chronicles in which his own country is so rich, he would have found that the monks, whom Bembo would have regarded as barbarians, had been before him as landscape painters in words, by at least six centuries.

[245] Fescennia, a town of Etruria, was noted in the days of Horace for the rude extempore verses, full of coarse raillery, composed by its inhabitants, and commonly known as Fescennina carmina (Hor. Ep. ii. 1. 145). The Theonine tooth is likewise an expression derived from Horace (Ep. i. 18. 82); and seems to have been a proverbial expression derived from Theon, the name of a certain Roman freedman, well known for his malignant wit. (See Notes on Horace by Rev. A. J. Maclean.)

[246] If the suggestion to restore the teaching of the Latin prayers and the plain song of the Church in our parochial schools be deemed preposterous on the ground of its difficulty, we would simply beg objectors to try the experiment before passing judgment. A very short experience will prove that with ordinary perseverance nothing is easier than to make a class of boys recite fluently and chant correctly from note the Psalms of Vespers or Compline, or the Credo, Gloria, and other portions of the Mass; and we may add, that nothing seems more acceptable to the scholars themselves. What was possible in an age when the whole instruction must have been given orally, cannot have any insuperable difficulties about it in days when every child may be provided with a printed book. Possibly in a congregation thus trained there might be fewer complaints than there now are on the score of children behaving badly in church: for when children understand and take part in what is going on around them, they do not behave amiss. More valid objections can be conceived as arising from the difficulty of sparing the time when so many other subjects have to be taught. But what is more essential to teach Catholics than their Catholic prayers? and what branch of secular learning will prove a substitute for sound, genuine, and intelligent Catholic Faith?

[247] Many different versions exist of this hymn, which may be thus rendered into modern English: “Saint Mary, pure Virgin Mother of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, take, shield, help mine Godric, take, bring him safe with thee into the kingdom of God., Saint Mary, bower of Christ, purity of virgins, flower of mothers, take away my sins, reign in my mind, and bring me to dwell with the only God.”

[248] The custom was very general in poor parishes. Thus Reginald of Durham tells us of a certain scholar, Haldene by name, who was wont to attend the school which, “according to the known and accustomed usage,” was held in the Church of St. Cuthbert, at Northam. One day Haldene, who did not know his lessons and was afraid of the rod, conceived the bright idea of getting hold of the key and throwing it into the Tweed, so that when the hour of Vespers came no key was to be found. The example, in far later times, of “Wonderful Walker,” keeping school in his village church, was therefore but a surviving relic of the primitive manners.

[249] Antiquities of the Monastical Church of Durham, pp. 54, 77.

[250] Wood. Antiq. of Oxford, lib. i. p. 135.

[251] Ralph Bocking was a Dominican Friar and a native of Chichester, and wrote the life of the Saint (whose confessor he was) with great feeling and devotion.

[252] He adds that this decking of the well was prohibited by the Parliament, as a popish abomination, after which “the water shranke up.” On this the rustics set the Parliament at defiance and revived the ancient custom, whereupon, to their inexpressible consolation the water recommenced flowing.

[253] For a statement of the arguments by which this opinion is supported, see Rohrbacher, Histoire Eccl. t. xviii. pp. 478-482.

[254] Fleury, who in his fifth Discourse has spoken with equal contempt of the theological and literary merits of the scholastics, winds up by reminding the reader that they wrote at a time when everything exhibited the same bad taste as was displayed in Gothic architecture, that absurd assemblage of petty ornaments “which no architect would ever dream of imitating.” Nothing endurable in point of style or art was, according to him, to be seen in Europe from the fall of the Roman empire until the fifteenth century, that is, during the whole essentially Christian period. With what amazement would he have beheld the Christian Renaissance of our own days, and the reflux of taste into mediæval channels!

[255] Godwin, and some other writers, claim Kilwarby as a Franciscan. But the evidence in favour of his being a Dominican is irresistible. He was present at the general chapter of the Order of Preachers held at Barcelona in 1261; he attended the Provincial chapter of Montpelier in 1271, and is named in the acts of that council among other distinguished men of the Order then present. He was discharged from his office of Provincial in the General Chapter held at Florence, 1272, but was re-elected by the Provincial Chapter of England the same year. He is described as a Friar Preacher in the Patent Rolls of Edward I., when the temporalities of Canterbury were restored; and Nicholas Trivet, the historian of the Order, who lived only fifty years after the archbishop, distinctly names him as a Dominican. Finally, his name does not occur in the Catalogue of English Franciscan Provincials.

[256] Collier, Eccl. History; vol. i. Book 5, p. 484.

[257] Nich. Trivet. Annales regum Angliæ.

[258] For the beautiful narrative of this event see the Life of St. Edmund, by the Abbé Massé.

[259] His name appears in the MS. Catalogue of Fellows of Merton under Edward II., preserved in the College Library.

[260] In his inedited commentary on the Divina Commedia, written whilst attending the Council of Constance, he says, “Anagogice dilexit theologiam sacrum in qua diu studuit tam in Oxoniis in regno Angliæ, quam Parisiis.” And again: “Dante se in juventute dedit omnibus artibus liberalibus, studens eas Paduæ, Bononiæ, demum Oxoniis et Parisiis, ubi fecit multos actus mirabiles, intantum quod ab aliquibus dicebatur magnus philosophus, ab aliquibus magnus theologus, ab aliquibus magnus poëta.” It is possible that his authority for this statement was drawn from English sources; for his own Latin translation of the poem was undertaken at the request of two English bishops present at the Council, Bubwith of Bath and Halam of Salisbury.

[261] Il maestro vostro ben vi scrive.—Par. canto viii.

[262] Par. xxiv. 130.

[263] It must not be supposed, from the mention of burning, that Dante was the object of religious persecution. A reference to the annals of Florence, Siena, or any of the other Italian republics, will show that this punishment was very commonly decreed by the dominant party against their political opponents. Thus Silvestro de’ Medici, on gaining the upper hand in Florence, burnt several citizens of note, with their palaces. And these atrocious cruelties were perpetrated for no imaginable crime, but simply to get rid of hated rivals. In the Revolution of 1369 we read that Bruno da Renaldini had his head cut off, senza cagione niuna.

[266] The celebrated Dominican, Durandus, Bishop of Mende, wrote his Rationale Divinorum Officiorum about the year 1290. He may be considered almost the last of the great liturgical writers of the Church, the catalogue of whom includes the names of St. Isidore of Seville, Alcuin, Amalarius of Metz, Walafrid Strabo, Rabanus Maurus, Bruno of Asti, the Abbot Rupert, Honorius of Autun, and Pope Innocent III.

[267] Purgatorio, xxii. 101 (Carey’s translation).

[269]

Rafel maì amech zàbi almi,

Comincio a gridar la fiera bocca

Cui non si convenien più dolci salmi.—Inferno, xxxi. 70.

[271] Par. i. 37; Purg. xxx. 89.

[272] Inferno, xxxiv. 110.

[273] See particularly the description of the falcon (Purg. xix. 63), the lark (Par. xx. 73), the rooks (Par. xxi. 34), the pigeon (Purg. ii. 118), the cranes (Purg. xxiv. 63), and of other birds (Par. xviii. 68, xxiii. 1).

[274] Purg. xxviii. 18, i. 113, and xxvii. 76; Par. xxxiii. 77.

[275] Purg. x. 37; Par. xx. 73, and xxxi. 40.

[276] Par. xv. 124 (Carey’s translation).

[277] Tiraboschi, Istoria della Lit. Ital. v. 43.

[278] Soc. Hist. Eccl., l. 3, c. 16.

[279] “Pendant deux siècles, ni parmi les évêques, ni parmi les prêtres, ni parmi les moines français, on ne rencontre pas un seul personnage d’une vertu, d’une saintété, d’une doctrine entièrement approuvées par l’Église. Cette expérience de deux siècles accuse dans le clergé français une diminution de l’esprit de Dieu.”—Rohrbacher, xxii. 462.

[280] St. Palaye, Mémoires sur l’Ancienne Chevalerie, part i. 7.

[281] Chaucer, Romaunt of the Rose. Eustache Deschamps is equally emphatic on this point:—

Vous qui voulez l’ordre de chevalier

Il vous convient mener nouvelle vie,

Devotement en oraison veillier,

Péché fuir, orgueil et villenie.

[282] Ordre de Chevalerie, fol. 10, 11.

[283] Godwin, Life of Chaucer.

[284] How significant are the words famulus and famula, by which the household servants are designated in the unclassical Latin of the Middle Ages! The servus of the Romans was, we know, nothing more than a slave; but the famulus, whether bond or free, was a member of the family, and a servant only in that sense in which his master owned himself the servant of Christ—famulus Christi.

[285] Innumerable decrees of provincial councils are to be found directed against these wandering clerks. And Edward II. issued a proclamation setting forth, “that whereas many idle and evil men, under colour of minstrelsy, get received into the houses of the rich to meat and drink, henceforth no great lord shall receive more than three or four minstrels of honour; and that none shall thrust themselves in unless they be sent for.”

[286] Dibdin in his Typographical Antiquities (p. 142) examines the question whether Trevisa did or did not translate the Bible into English. To settle the question whether such a book was preserved at Berkeley Castle (where Trevisa was chaplain in 1387) Dibdin wrote to the Rev. J. Hughes, who filled the same office in 1807, and received the following reply:—

“I have the strongest reason for supposing that such a translation was made in the English language, and that it existed in the family so late as the time of James I. The book translated by Trevisa was given as a very precious gift by the Lord Berkeley of that time to the Prince of Wales, and I have read his letter thanking Lord Berkeley for the same. He does not positively say that the book was the Bible, but he says he hopes to make good use of so valuable a gift. This letter is still extant among the archives of the castle. Lord Berkeley has informed me that the book so given by his ancestor is at present in the Vatican Library. When he was at Rome several persons mentioned to him having seen there such a book, written by Trevisa; but as he had no opportunity of examining it, he cannot ascertain if it were the Bible.”

[287] Lamberde’s Perambulations in Kent, 1570.

[288] S. Anselmi Elucidarii, lib. ii. cap. 18.

[289] Chaucer’s expansion of some of the Latin of Boëthius, in his English version of the “Consolation of Philosophie,” has led some people to suppose that the poet translated from a French rendering of Boëthius, and not direct from the Latin. If he did so, the version he would have used was doubtless that of one of his known favourite authors, Jean de Méung, the continuator of Guillaume de Lorris’s “Romance of the Rose.” A magnificent copy of Jean de Méung’s Boëthius, printed in 1494, is in the British Museum. It is illuminated with miniatures, bound in velvet, and was presented to Henry VII. A chapter of this has lately been compared with Chaucer’s translation and the original Boëthius, by Mr. Edward Bell, for the Early English Text Society; and the result is, that Chaucer’s version was certainly not made from the French of Jean de Méung, but direct from Boëthius; though some phrases of the Latin are paraphrased rather than translated, in order to bring out their meaning more fully.

[290] Wilk. Con. iii, 242. Quoted by Lingard, v. ch. i.

[291] It appears that so far from being a friend to the classics, Wickliffe felt almost a superstitious intolerance for anything that savoured of ancient Rome. In one of his Prologues he condemns the ecclesiastics for their study of a pagan jurisprudence, meaning thereby the Roman law.

[292] See Lingard, iv. ch. 3, where he gives several examples of Wickliffe’s system of non-natural interpretation of his own words.

[293] William Lyndwood, LL.D., was Bishop of St. David’s, and a learned canonist. He was the author of a collection of constitutions of the English Primates, entitled, Provinciale, seu Constitutiones Angliæ, which were printed by Caxton.

[294] Strype’s Cranmer, app. 242. We may compare this admission of the Protestant archbishop with the statute of his royal master (33 Henry VIII. c. 12), whereby it was enacted that “no women not of gentle birth, nor journeymen, artificers’ apprentices, should read the Bible in English, either to themselves or others;” whilst another Act of the same monarch forbade the public reading of the Scriptures.

[295] A field of battle is perhaps the last place where one would expect to find a Bible; yet in the British Museum is still preserved the copy of the Scriptures found in the tent of King John of France after the battle of Poictiers. It may be remarked, that versions of the Scriptures seem to have appeared in all languages as soon as the vernacular idiom of any country assumed a literary form. Thus we see Queen Anne had her Bohemian Catholic translation; and in 1399 the Polish translation was made by command of the learned queen St. Hedwiges.

[296] The Lollard heresy had been imported from the University of Oxford into that of Prague by some Bohemian gentlemen, who had come over to England in the suite of Queen Anne during the height of the controversy. Prague University at that time numbered as many as 60,000 scholars, and was divided into several nations, and presided over by sixty deans. Only twelve of the deans were Bohemians, and the rest Germans. John Huss, the rector of the university, who eagerly embraced the new opinions, endeavoured to destroy the German influence; and putting himself at the head of a national party obtained that in future the Bohemians should have two votes in all questions affecting the university and all the other nations united but one. In consequence of this change, which took place in 1409, the German students forsook the university, which from that time fell into decay. This national spirit, which was so largely mixed up with the origin and progress of the Hussite heresy, must be taken into account when studying the history of those social revolutions which followed in the track of the new Apostles.

[297] For an account of these foundations see The Three Chancellors. (Burns, 1860.)

[298] The present revenues amount to something like £4000 a year, and still afford relief to about 140 poor persons. But the beautiful collegiate church, the carved and gilded roof of which is still visible, is now converted to domestic purposes. The choir is occupied by the women’s wards, and the nave by those of the men. This, however, is better than the fate which has awaited St. Paul’s Hospital in the same city, which has been transformed into a Bridewell. Few English cities can have been richer in these charitable houses than Norwich, which contained, besides its great College, seventeen hospitals for the poor and the sick, by means of which it is probable that very sufficient relief was given to all in distress. For, in most cases, while only a limited number were received into the house, outdoor relief was very extensively granted, and at St. Giles’ Hospital it was customary on the Feast of the Annunciation to distribute alms to 130 necessitous persons.

[299] i.e. bread and milk.

[302] Warton says 600, but this possibly included the Angervyle Library, which was united to Gloucester’s in 1480. The 129 volumes named above were valued at £1000. Possibly his collection included not a few of the 853 volumes sent over from Paris by his brother the Duke of Bedford.

[303] Carpenter’s Life has been written by Brewer, and a statue to his memory, on the pedestal of which are engraved all his munificent deeds, has been erected by the Corporation of London. A catalogue of his books is given in the Appendix to his Life.

[305] The Saints Lives printed by Caxton are The Lyf of St. Katherin of Senis, Bradshaw’s Lyf of St. Wenefryde, and The Golden Legende, of which last he printed three editions.

[306] These he never lived to publish, but the autograph MS. of his translation from the French is preserved at Cambridge.

[307] Martene has published in his Collectanea an interesting letter addressed to Cecilia by Gregorio Corraro, an old schoolfellow of hers at the Joyous House, who then filled the office of Apostolic Notary, in which he affectionately encourages her in her vocation. Of her mother, Paula Gonzaga, we read that “she was a woman of singular virtue, the mirror of excellence to all Italy. She had a good knowledge of letters, always dressed with great modesty, and daily recited the Divine Office. It was enough to see her,” adds her biographer, Vespasiano Bisticci, “to understand what she was.”

[308] According to Echard, the dangerous tendency of his idolatry of Plato was pointed out to Ficinus by St. Antoninus, who engaged him to suspend his studies of the heathen philosopher till he had read the Summa against the Gentiles, of St. Thomas. And he was wont afterwards to acknowledge that if he had been saved from actual heresy, he owed it solely to the care of this good pastor.

[309] Some curious facts in connection with the proceedings of Pomponius and his associates have recently come to light. Among other discoveries made by the Cavaliere de Rossi in the Roman Catacombs, are certain inscriptions left there by the Academicians, who appear to have made use of these sacred excavations, which were at that time quite neglected by the literary world, as convenient places in which to hold their secret assemblies. One of the accusations brought against them by Paul II. was that they sought to make one of their own members Pontifex Maximus. In the Catacombs appear several inscriptions conferring this title on Pomponius: Regnante Pom. Pont. Max., Pomponius Pont. Max., &c.; and others, from which we gather that the unanimes antiquitatis amatores, as they called themselves, were lovers not merely of ancient names but of ancient manners; and that they saw no disgrace in thus perpetuating the dissolute habits of their members. It is remarkable that in none of their writings have any of the Academicians said one word about the Catacombs; for though they boasted of being the lovers of antiquity, it was only Pagan antiquity which they regarded worthy of their study: and the Catacombs were simply chosen by them for their convenient privacy. (See De Rossi, Roma Sutterranea, tom. i.)

[310] In his second journey into Greece, Lascaris brought back 200 manuscripts, of which eighty were, he informs us, of authors at that time unknown in Europe. The Medicean Library, however, was not destined long to survive its noble collector. On the death of Lorenzo, his son Pietro having become odious to the Florentines in consequence of his intrigues with Charles VIII. of France, was compelled to fly, the Medici Palace was sacked, and the great library fell a little later into the hands of the French soldiery and the Florentine mob, by whom its vast treasures were soon dispersed. Such portions as could be recovered, however, were afterwards deposited in St. Mark’s library.

[311] Bacon, Essay on Gardens.

[312] Wisd. vii. 13.

[313]St. Bernard, Serm. xxxvi. in Cantica Canticorum.

[314] Budæus did not escape the suspicion of heretical tendencies, but the charge appears to have been chiefly grounded on certain directions contained in his will for the performance of his funeral obsequies, which his biographers assure us arose from no indifference to religious ceremonial, but from a characteristic modesty and dislike of ostentation.

[315] Perhaps I am wrong in calling Erasmus an apostate canon, for though he quitted his monastery, he at times resumed his habit, whenever he found it convenient. He generally wore it in England, for old-fashioned ideas still held their ground at Oxford; and always appeared with it in Rome, until having been once mobbed by some ragamuffin boys, he applied to the Pope for a formal permission to lay it aside for ever.

[316] This was a hit at the monkish Latin, in which poetria sometimes does duty for poeta, and, as Erasmus seems to intimate, for the ars poetica itself.

[317] Menzel, t. 8, p. 455: t. 6, p. 6-10.

[318] Ibid. t. 6, p. 10-13.

[319] To do Francis I. justice, it must be admitted that he had in his concordat with Leo X. repealed the Pragmatic Sanction; but the same concordat abolished the right of election to benefices, on the plea that such a right was too often abused, and gave the Crown the nomination to all bishoprics, abbeys, and conventual priories within his dominions, with a few privileged exceptions.—See Gaillard, Hist. de Francois I. t. 6, p. 37.

[320] Not Peter Martyr Vermigli, the celebrated heretic who afterwards figured as Professor at Oxford, but Peter of Anghieria, a relation of the Borromeo family, who had come into Spain at the invitation of the Spanish Ambassador at Rome, and at the solicitation of Isabella, chose it for his adopted country.

[321] Prescott, Hist. of Ferd. and Isabella.

[322] See Newman’s Lectures; “Athens, the fit site for a university.”

[323] It was the scene of the martyrdom of the two scholars, Justus and Pastor. See Prudentius, Hymn 4.

[324] By the middle of the seventeenth century the ten colleges of the founder had increased to the number of thirty-five.

[325] This is generally spoken of as the first Italian comedy. The first dramatic composition of the Italian muse, however, was the Orpheus of Politian. Previous to this time the only scenic representations known in Italy were sacred mysteries drawn from Scripture. The questionable glory of introducing profane performances is due to Pomponius Lætus, who, along with his other revivals of ancient Roman manners, caused the comedies of Terence and Plautus to be acted in Rome, in which enterprise, says Maffei, he was greatly seconded by Cardinal Riario, who opened a theatre in his own private house. Jovius tells us that Cardinal Bibiena organised a staff of skilful players, and encouraged the youths of Rome to take part in his theatricals.

[326] Jovius, the first historian of his time, was accustomed frankly to avow that “he had two pens, one of gold and the other of iron, to write of princes according to the favours or slights which they bestowed.” The Medicean princes were fortunate enough to secure the services of the golden pen, and Clement VII. rewarded his services with the bishopric of Nocera.

[327]

Vivere qui sancte vultis, discedite Roma:

Omnia hic esse licet, non licet esse probum.

[328] Pietro Pomponatus is by some writers erroneously confounded with Pomponius Lætus, the founder of the Roman academy, of whom mention has been made in a foregoing chapter. They resembled one another as in their philosophic errors, so also in their sincere conversion before their death. Pomponius died in 1495; Pomponatus, thirty years later.

[329] The following are the words of Pope Leo X. in the Bull, Apostolici regiminis:—“As truth cannot contradict truth, we declare every assertion contrary to the truth of Divine faith to be absolutely false, and strictly forbid any one to teach differently; we command that those who adhere to such assertions shall be avoided and punished, as men who seek to disseminate damnable heresies.” Moreover, he rigorously prescribes to all and each of those who give public lessons of philosophy in the universities and elsewhere, that when they read or explain to their pupils the principles and conclusions of those philosophers who notoriously wander from the orthodox faith ... “they employ every effort to set before their eyes the truth of the Christian religion, and persuade them to it with all their power, and use every care to refute and expose philosophic arguments of this kind, since there are none such which cannot be refuted.”

[330] His critics, however, accuse him of often enough falling into the like absurdities. In his version of the New Testament he was accused of continually using pagan expressions, and even of adopting the word fable when speaking of the plan of Redemption, using it in the sense in which it is employed by the ancient dramatists to express the action which they portray.

[331] Also known as Philip of Having, or Philip de Bonne Espérance, from the name of the abbey which he governed in the twelfth century. He was the author of many learned works, and the good studies he established in his abbey continued to flourish down to the eighteenth century.

[332] A word first created by the Humanists, who made the name of Duns Scotus to stand for an ignoramus.

[334] For the decrees of the Council on these heads, see Rohrbacher, vol. xxii. ch. v.

[335] Audin. Hist. de Luth., ch. viii.

[336] Zach. viii. 3.

[337] Knight, in his life of Colet, remarks that “the History and Antiquities of Oxford sufficiently confess that nothing was known there but Latin, and that in the most depraved style of the schoolmen.” Yet two pages back he has quoted from Wood an account of Colet’s university studies, which show that this statement, like many of a similar import, is grossly exaggerated. Colet, he says, was educated in grammaticals in London, and then, after spending seven years at Oxford in logicals and philosophicals, was licensed to proceed to arts, “in which he became so exquisitely learned that all Tully’s works were as familiar to him as his Epistles.” He also read, conferred, and paralleled Plato and Plotinus (in Latin translations), and attained great eminence in mathematics. Erasmus, on occasion of his first visit to Oxford, writes thus to his friend Pisco:—“You ask, does our beloved England please me? Nothing ever pleased me so much. I have found here classic erudition, and that not trite and shallow, but profound and accurate, both Latin and Greek, so that I no longer sigh for Italy.” In fact, his own Greek learning was chiefly acquired at Oxford, for previous to his coming thither, his knowledge of that language was very superficial. Elsewhere, he says, “I think, from my very soul, there is no country where abound so many men skilled in every kind of learning as there are here.”