subject and apologizes for his digression in another paragraph that
should remove any lingering doubt there may be with regard to the
genuineness of his monastic character. The personal element in his
confession is so naive and so simply straightforward that instead of
seeming to be the result of conceit, and so repelling the reader, it
rather attracts his {71} kindly feeling for its author. The paragraph
would remind one in certain ways of that personal element that was to
become more popular in literature after Montaigne had made such
extensive use of it.
But of these enough; for it becomes not a religious man to insist
too long upon these cogitations, or to give place to such a flame in
his heart. Hitherto (without boasting I speak it) I have throughout
the whole course of my life kept myself safe and free from it, and I
pray and invoke God to vouchsafe me his Grace that I may keep holy
and inviolate the faith which I have sworn, and live contented with
my spiritual spouse, the Holy, Catholick Church. For no other reason
have I alleaged these than that I might express the love with which
all tinctures ought to be moved towards metals, if ever they be
admitted by them into true friendship, and by love, which permeates
the inmost parts, be converted into a better state
The application of the figure at the end of his long digression is
characteristic of the period in which he wrote and to a considerable
extent also of the German literary methods of the time.
In this volume on the use of antimony there are in most of the
editions certain biographical notes which have sometimes been accepted
as authentic, but oftener rejected. According to these, Basil
Valentine was born in a town in Alsace, on the southern bank of the
Rhine. As a consequence of this, there are several towns that have
laid claim to being his birthplace. M. Jean Reynaud, the distinguished
French {72} philosophical writer of the first half of the nineteenth
century, once said that Basil Valentine, like Ossian and Homer, had
many towns claim him years after his death. He also suggested that,
like those old poets, it was possible that the writings sometimes
attributed to Basil Valentine were really the work not of one man, but
of several individuals. There are, however, many objections to this
theory, the most forceful of which is the internal evidence of the
books themselves and their style and method of treatment. Other
biographic details contained in "The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony"
are undoubtedly more correct. According to them, Basil Valentine
travelled in England and Holland on missions for his Order, and went
through France and Spain on a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella.
Besides this work, there is a number of other books of Basil
Valentine's, printed during the first half of the sixteenth century,
that are well-known and copies of which may be found in most of the
important libraries. The United States Surgeon General's Library at
Washington contains several of the works on medical subjects, and the
New York Academy of Medicine Library has some valuable editions of his
works. Some of his other well-known books, each of which is a
good-sized octavo volume, bear the following descriptive titles (I
give them in English, though, as they are usually to be found, they
are in Latin, sixteenth-century {73} translations of the original
German): "The World in Miniature: or, The Mystery of the World and of
Human Medical Science," published at Marburg, 1609;--"The Chemical
Apocalypse: or, The Manifestation of Artificial Chemical Compounds,"
published at Erfurt in 1624;--"A Chemico-Philosophic Treatise
Concerning Things Natural and Preternatural, Especially Relating to
the Metals and the Minerals," published at Frankfurt in
1676;--"Haliography: or, The Science of Salts: A Treatise on the
Preparation, Use and Chemical Properties of All the Mineral, Animal
and Vegetable Salts," published at Bologna in 1644;--"The Twelve Keys
of Philosophy," Leipsic, 1630.
The great interest manifested in Basil Valentine's work at the
Renaissance period can be best realized from the number of manuscript
copies and their wide distribution. His books were not all printed at
one place, but, on the contrary, in different portions of Europe. The
original edition of "The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony" was published
at Leipsic in the early part of the sixteenth century. The first
editions of the other books, however, appeared at places so distant
from Leipsic as Amsterdam and Bologna, while various cities of
Germany, as Erfurt and Frankfurt, claim the original editions of still
other works. Many of the manuscript copies still exist in various
libraries in Europe; and while there is no doubt that some unimportant
additions to the supposed works of Basil Valentine have come {74} from
the attribution to him of scientific treatises of other German
writers, the style and the method of the principal works mentioned are
entirely too similar not to have been the fruit of a single mind and
that possessed of a distinct investigating genius setting it far above
any of its contemporaries in scientific speculation and observation.
The most interesting feature of all of Basil Valentine's writings that
are extant is the distinctive tendency to make his observations of
special practical utility. His studies in antimony were made mainly
with the idea of showing how that substance might be used in medicine.
He did not neglect to point out other possible uses, however, and knew
the secret of the employment of antimony in order to give sharpness
and definition to the impression produced by metal types. It would
seem as though he was the first scientist who discussed this subject,
and there is even some question whether printers and type founders did
not derive their ideas in this matter from Basil Valentine, rather
than he from them. Interested as he was in the transmutation of
metals, he never failed to try to find and suggest some medicinal use
for all of the substances that he investigated. His was no greedy
search for gold and no accumulation of investigations with the idea of
benefiting only himself. Mankind was always in his mind, and perhaps
there is no better demonstration of his fulfilment of the character of
the monk than this constant {75} solicitude to benefit others by every
bit of investigation that he carried out. For him with medieval
nobleness of spirit the first part of every work must be the
invocation of God, and the last, though no less important than the
first, must be the utility and fruit for mankind that can be derived
from it.
{76}
{77}
IV.
LINACRE: SCHOLAR, PHYSICIAN, PRIEST.
{78}
Linacre, as Dr. Payne remarks, "was possessed from his youth till his
death by the enthusiasm of learning. He was an idealist devoted to
objects which the world thought of little use." Painstaking, accurate,
critical, hypercritical perhaps, he remains to-day the chief literary
representative of British Medicine. Neither in Britain nor in Greater
Britain have we maintained the place in the world of letters created
for us by Linacre's noble start. Quoted by Osler in _AEquanimitas_.
[Illustration: THOMAS LINACRE]
{79}
IV.
LINACRE: SCHOLAR, PHYSICIAN, PRIEST.
Not long ago, in one of his piquant little essays, Mr. Augustine
Birrell discussed the question as to what really happened at the time
of the so-called Reformation in England. There is much more doubt with
regard to this matter, even in the minds of non-Catholics, than is
usually suspected. Mr. Birrell seems to have considered it one of the
most important problems, and at the same time not by any means the
least intricate one, in modern English history. The so-called High
Church people emphatically insist that there is no break in the
continuity of the Church of England, and that the modern Anglicanism
is a direct descendant of the old British Church. They reject with
scorn the idea that it was the Lutheran movement on the Continent
which brought about the changes in the Anglican Church at that time.
Protestantism did not come into England for a considerable period
after the change in the constitution of the Anglican Church, and when
it did come its tendencies were quite as subversal of the authority of
the Anglican as of the Roman Church, Protestantism is the mother of
Nonconformism in England. It can be seen, then, that the question as
to what did really take place in the time {80} of Henry VIII and of
Edward VI is still open. It has seemed to me that no little light on
this vexed historical question will be thrown by a careful study of
the life of Dr. Linacre, who, besides being the best known physician
of his time in England, was the greatest scholar of the English
Renaissance period, yet had all his life been on very intimate terms
with the ecclesiastical authorities, and eventually gave up his
honors, his fortune, and his profession to become a simple priest of
the old English Church.
Considering the usually accepted notions as to the sad state of
affairs supposed to exist in the Church at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, this is a very remarkable occurrence, and deserves
careful study to determine its complete significance, for it tells
better than anything else the opinion of a distinguished contemporary.
Few men have ever been more highly thought of by their own generation.
None has been more sincerely respected by intimate friends, who were
themselves the leaders of the thought of their generation, than Thomas
Linacre, scholar, physician and priest; and his action must stand as
the highest possible tribute to the Church in England at that time.
How unimpaired his practical judgment of men and affairs was at the
time he made his change from royal physician to simple priest can best
be gathered from the sagacity displayed in the foundation of the Royal
College of Physicians, an institution he was endowing with the {81}
wealth he had accumulated in some twenty years of most lucrative
medical practice. The Royal College of Physicians represents the first
attempt to secure the regulation of the practice of medicine in
England, and, thanks to its founder's wonderful foresight and
practical wisdom, it remains down to our own day, under its original
constitution, one of the most effective and highly honored of British
scientific foundations. No distinction is more sought at the present
time by young British medical men, or by American or even Continental
graduates in medicine, than the privilege of adding to their names the
letters "F.R.C.P.(Eng.)," Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of
England. The College worked the reformation of medical practice in
England, and its methods have proved the suggestive formulae for many
another such institution and for laws that all over the world protect,
to some extent at least, the public from quacks and charlatans.
Linacre's change of profession at the end of his life has been a
fruitful source of conjecture and misconception on the part of his
biographers. Few of them seem to be able to appreciate the fact,
common enough in the history of the Church, that a man may, even when
well on in years, give up everything to which his life has been so far
directed, and from a sense of duty devote himself entirely to the
attainment of "the one thing necessary." Linacre appears only to have
done what many another in the history of {82} the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries did without any comment; but his
English biographers insist on seeing ulterior motives in it, or else
fail entirely to understand it. The same action is not so rare even in
our own day that it should be the source of misconception by later
writers.
Dr. S. Weir Mitchell has, in the early part of _Dr. North and His
Friends_, a very curious passage with regard to Linacre. One of the
characters, St. Clair, says: "I saw, the other day, at Owen's, a life
of one Linacre, a doctor, who had the luck to live about 1460 to 1524,
when men knew little and thought they knew all. In his old age he took
for novelty to reading St. Matthew. The fifth, sixth, and seventh
chapters were enough. He threw the book aside and cried out, 'Either
this is not the Gospel, or we are not Christians.' What else could he
say?" St. Clair uses the story to enforce an idea of his own, which he
states as a question, as follows: "And have none of you the courage to
wrestle with the thought I gave you, that Christ could not have
expected the mass of men to live the life He pointed out as desirable
for the first disciples of His faith?"
Dr. Mitchell's anecdote is not accepted by Linacre's biographers
generally, though it is copied by Dr. Payne, the writer of the article
on Linacre in the (English) _Dictionary of National Biography_, who,
however, discredits it somewhat. The story is founded on Sir John
Cheke's {83} account of the conversion of Linacre. It is very
doubtful, however, whether Linacre's deprecations of the actions of
Christians had reference to anything more than the practice of false
swearing so forcibly denounced in the Scriptures, which had apparently
become frequent in his time. This is Selden's version of the story as
quoted by Dr. Johnson, who was Linacre's well-known biographer. Sir
John Cheke in his account seems to hint that this chance reading of
the Scriptures represented the first occasion Linacre had ever taken
of an opportunity to read the New Testament. Perhaps we are expected
to believe that, following the worn-out Protestant tradition of the
old Church's discouraging of the reading of the Bible, and of the
extreme scarcity of copies of the Book, this was the first time he had
ever had a good opportunity to read it. This, of course, is nonsense.
Linacre's early education had been obtained at the school of the
monastery of Christ Church at Canterbury, and the monastery schools
all used the New Testament as a text-book, and as the offices of the
day at which the students were required to attend contain these very
passages from Matthew which Linacre is supposed to have read for the
first time later in life, this idea is preposterous. Besides, Linacre,
as one of the great scholars of his time, intimate friend of Sir
Thomas More, of Dean Colet, and Erasmus, can scarcely be thought to
find his first copy of the Bible only when advanced in years. This is
{84} evidently a post-Reformation addition, part of the Protestant
tradition with regard to the supposed suppression of the Scriptures in
pre-Reformation days, which every one acknowledges now to be without
foundation.
Linacre, as many another before and since, seems only to have realized
the true significance of the striking passages in Matthew after life's
experiences and disappointments had made him take more seriously the
clauses of the Sermon on the Mount. There is much in fifth, sixth, and
seventh Matthew that might disturb the complacent equanimity of a man
whose main objects in life, though pursued with all honorable
unselfishness, had been the personal satisfaction of wide scholarship
and success in his chosen profession.
With regard to Sir John Cheke's story, Dr. John Noble Johnson, who
wrote the life of Thomas Linacre, [Footnote 7] which is accepted as
the authoritative biography by all subsequent writers, says: "The
whole statement carries with it an air of invention, if not on the
part of Cheke himself, at least on that of the individual from whom he
derives it, and it is refuted by {85} Linacre's known habits of
moderation and the many ecclesiastical friendships which, with a
single exception, were preserved without interruption until his death.
It was a most frequent mode of silencing opposition to the received
and established tenets of the Church, when arguments were wanting, to
brand the impugner with the opprobrious titles of heretic and infidel,
the common resource of the enemies to innovation in every age and
country."
[Footnote 7: "The Life of Thomas Linacre," Doctor in Medicine,
Physician to King Henry VIII, the Tutor and Friend of Sir Thomas
More and the Founder of the College of Physicians in London By John
Noble Johnson, M D., late Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians,
London. Edited by Robert Graves, of the Inner Temple, Barrister at
Law London: Edward Lumley, Chancery Lane 1835.]
The interesting result of the reflections inspired in Linacre by the
reading of Matthew was, as has been said, the resignation of his high
office of Royal Physician and the surrender of his wealth for the
foundation of chairs in Medicine and Greek at Oxford and Cambridge.
With the true liberal spirit of a man who wished to accomplish as much
good as possible, his foundations were not limited to his own
University of Oxford. After these educational foundations, however,
his wealth was applied to the endowment of the Royal College of
Physicians and its library, and to the provision of such accessories
as might be expected to make the College a permanently useful
institution, though left at the same time perfectly capable of that
evolution which would suit it to subsequent times and the development
of the science and practice of medicine.
It is evident that the life of such a man can scarcely fail to be of
personal as well as historic interest.
{86}
Thomas Linacre was born about 1460--the year is uncertain--at
Canterbury. Nothing is known of his parents or their condition, though
this very silence in their regard would seem to indicate that they
were poor and obscure. His education was obtained at the school of the
monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, then presided over by the
famous William Selling, the first of the great students of the new
learning in England. Selling's interest seems to have helped Linacre
to get to Oxford, where he entered at All Souls' College in 1480. In
1484 he was elected a Fellow of the College, and seems to have
distinguished himself in Greek, to which he applied himself with
special assiduity under Cornelio Vitelli. Though Greek is sometimes
spoken of as having been introduced into Western Europe only at the
beginning of the sixteenth century, Linacre undoubtedly laid the
foundation of that remarkable knowledge of the language which he
displayed at a later period of his life, during his student days at
Oxford in the last quarter of the fifteenth century.
Linacre went to Italy under the most auspicious circumstances. His old
tutor and friend at Canterbury, Selling, who had become one of the
leading ecclesiastics of England, was sent to Rome as an Ambassador by
Henry VII. He took Linacre with him. A number of English scholars had
recently been in Italy and had attracted attention by their geniality,
by their thorough-going devotion to scholarly studies, {87} and by
their success in their work. Selling himself had made a number of firm
friends among the Italian students of the New Learning on a former
visit, and they now welcomed him with enthusiasm and were ready to
receive his protege with goodwill and provide him with the best
opportunities for study. As a member of the train of the English
ambassador, Linacre had an entree to political circles that proved of
great service to him, and put him on a distinct footing above that of
the ordinary English student in Italy.
Partly because of these and partly because of his own interesting and
attractive personal character, Linacre had a number of special
opportunities promptly placed at his disposal. Church dignitaries in
Rome welcomed him and he was at once received into scholarly circles
wherever he went in Italy. Almost as soon as he arrived in Florence,
where he expected seriously to take up the study of Latin and Greek,
he became the intimate friend of the family of Lorenzo de' Medici, who
was so charmed with his personality and his readily recognizable
talent that he chose him for the companion of his son's studies and
received him into his own household.
Politian was at this time the tutor of the young de' Medici in Latin,
and Demetrius Chalcondylas the tutor in Greek. Under these two eminent
scholars Linacre obtained a knowledge of Latin and Greek such as it
would have been impossible to have obtained under any other {88}
circumstances, and which with his talents at once stamped him as one
of the foremost humanistic scholars in Europe. While in Florence he
came in contact with Lorenzo the Magnificent's younger son, who
afterwards became Leo X. The friendship thus formed lasted all during
Linacre's lifetime, and later on he dedicated at least one of his
books to Alexander de' Medici after the latter's elevation to the
papal throne.
It is no wonder that Linacre always looked back on Italy as the Alma
Mater--the fond mother in the fullest sense of the term--to whom he
owed his precious opportunities for education and the broadest
possible culture. In after-life the expression of his feelings was
often tinged with romantic tenderness. It is said that when he was
crossing the Alps, on his homeward journey, leaving Italy after
finishing his years of apprenticeship of study, standing on the
highest point of the mountains from which he could still see the
Italian plains, he built with his own hands a rough altar of stone and
dedicated it to the land of his studies--the land in which he had
spent six happy years--under the fond title of _Sancta Mater
Studiorum_.
At first, after his return from Italy, Linacre lectured on Greek at
Oxford. Something of the influence acquired over English students and
the good he accomplished may be appreciated from the fact that with
Grocyn he had such students as More and the famous Dean Colet. Erasmus
also was attracted from the Netherlands and {89} studied Greek under
Linacre, to whom he refers in the most kindly and appreciative terms
many times in his after life. Linacre wrote books besides lecturing,
and his work on certain fine points in the grammar of classical
Latinity proved a revelation to English students of the old classical
languages, for nothing so advanced as this had ever before been
attempted outside Italy. In one of the last years of the fifteenth
century Linacre was appointed tutor to Prince Arthur, the elder
brother of Henry VIII, to whom it will be remembered that Catherine of
Aragon had been betrothed before her marriage with Henry. Arthur's
untimely death, however, soon put an end to Linacres' tutorship.
As pointed out by Einstein, the reputation of Grocyn and Linacre was
not confined to England, but soon spread all over the Continent. After
the death of the great Italian humanists of the fifteenth century, who
had no worthy successors in the Italian peninsula, these two men
became the principal European representatives of the New Learning.
There were other distinguished men, however, such as Vives, the
Spaniard; Lascaris, the Greek; Buda, or Budaeus, the Frenchman, and
Erasmus, whom we have already mentioned--all of whom joined at various
times in praising Linacre.
Some of Linacre's books were published by the elder Aldus at Venice;
and Aldus is even said to have sent his regrets on publishing his
edition of Linacre's translation of "The Sphere {90} of Proclus," that
the distinguished English humanist had not forwarded him others of his
works to print. Aldus appreciatively added the hope that the eloquence
and classic severity of style in Linacre's works and in those of the
English humanists generally "might shame the Italian philosophers and
scholars out of their uncultured methods of writing."