Translations have been made of many of the most valuable works in
medieval and modern history written by leading Catholic scholars of
Europe. We usually find what we look for. Why, for instance, not put on
the list of reference books the lives of St. Benedict, St. Dominic, St.
Francis and St. Ignatius written by members of their own communities?
They should best understand the meaning, spirit and purpose of the
religious society in which they live. Why not put on the list the great
German historian Jansen’s work dealing with the history of Germany on
the eve of the Lutheran revolt, or Father Denifle’s monumental work,
“The Life of Luther”? For the beginnings of Christianity why not put on
the list Dr. Shahan’s excellent studies in this subject, as well as his
scholarly work on the Middle Ages? For a study of the Thirteenth
Century, which saw the founding of the medieval university, the rise of
the Gothic cathedral, the development of scholastic philosophy, the
birth of Dante, the world’s greatest epic poet, the composition of the
great Latin hymns, the foundation of great libraries, and the origin of
democracy, Christian socialism and self-government, is there a better
work of reference than Dr. J. J. Walsh’s “The Thirteenth, Greatest of
Centuries”? Why, then, not put it on the list? And beside this, why not
put on the list Pastor’s “Lives of the Popes Since the Close of the
Middle Ages”?
If the purpose in the study of history be to reach truth, why accept in
the court of history the testimony of but one set of witnesses? Such a
proceeding is neither judicial nor just. It would not be permitted in
the law courts of our land; why, then, permit it in the history courts
of our schools and colleges?
Nor is this _ex-parte_ study of history more obvious in the curriculum
of the High Schools of Ontario than is the objectionable character of
many of the poems that are assigned for literary study. In the
selections from Browning of last year this choice stanza greeted the
Catholic pupils in their study and appreciation of “Up at a Villa—Down
in the City”:
“Or a sonnet with flowery marge to the Reverend Don So and So,
Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, St. Jerome and Cicero.
‘And moreover’ (the sonnet goes rhyming), ‘the skirts of St. Paul has
reached,
Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he
preached.’
Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and
smart
With a pink gauze gown all spangles and seven swords stuck in her
heart!
Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife;
No keeping one’s haunches still: it’s the greatest pleasure in life.”
It may, we think, be legitimately questioned whether either the study in
our secondary schools of a one-sided presentation of the facts of
history or the interpretation of poems which ridicule the tenets and
ceremonies of any Church conduces to that breadth of scholarship and
culture and to the upbuilding of that large-minded Canadian citizenship
which we all so heartily desire in our land.
Is it not on the plea that these higher institutions of learning—High
Schools and Normal Schools—are broad and just and free from prejudice
in their teaching that the Roman Catholic Separate School System has
been persistently denied by successive Governments in this Province the
right to develop beyond an elementary status, though this right is
manifestly inherent or implied in the very pact which made provision for
the establishment of Separate Schools for the minorities in the
Provinces of Quebec and Ontario. The Government of Quebec has recognized
the right; the Government of Ontario refuses to do so.
Now a word as to certain conditions educational which prevail in Ontario
and which have not only led to abuses but are contributing factors to
the degradation of scholarship as well as to the debasement of the
teaching profession.
And first of these is the system of creating “specialists”—a system or
method which has not scholarship as its basis. Why should a university
graduate whose average is sixty-six per cent. in his examinations be
regarded as having the academic standing for a specialist, while the
graduate whose average is sixty per cent., though he may have pursued
post-graduate work for two or three years, is refused this standing? How
large a part does not mere memory play in examination percentages? If
specialism were based upon the post-graduate work of one, two or three
years it would have some meaning or value, but as it exists to-day in
Ontario it is largely a sham.
Then as regards the professional qualifications of a specialist, are
they not almost wholly based upon the opinion of an examiner or
inspector? Now this opinion may be worth a good deal; it may be worth
very little; it may be worth nothing. As a matter of fact the High
School inspectors of a few years ago often differed as widely as the
poles in their estimate or rating of the High School teachers of this
Province, and the High School inspectors of to-day are rating teachers
high who had been marked low by the former inspectors.
And what shall be said of educational officials who, lacking a fine
sense of duty, dignity and honor, have been playing the part of
educational Warwicks in the Province, crowning and uncrowning, making
and unmaking teachers, now in one part of Ontario, now in another? We
endeavor to keep education out of politics, while gross partisanship is
doing its work.
With such conditions educational in our Province, need we wonder that
during the past year an inspector refused to permit a French-Canadian
girl who held a Normal School Entrance and Normal School Professional
Certificate to teach in a school where three-fourths of the children are
of French-Canadian origin? Either the Normal School staff, in granting
that French-Canadian girl a certificate to teach, did not know what they
were doing, or the inspector exceeded his authority. Look at it as you
will, the matter is discreditable.
For how, we ask, may the teacher be expected to grow and reach out
towards higher things if he be not permitted to enjoy the very first
conditions of growth—the right to develop and advance by virtue of his
own gifts and toil? Who stands between the lawyer and the acceptance of
his brief? Who stands between the physician and the diagnosis of his
case? We speak of the dignity of scholarship and the dignity of the
teaching profession, but if the law of development be thwarted and its
attendant right to advancement be denied, degradation, not dignity,
would be the fitting term.
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE AND
THE POPES OF AVIGNON
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE AND THE POPES OF AVIGNON.
There is probably no other period in the history of the world in which
the attitude of the Papacy toward art and letters has been so
misrepresented by certain writers as that of the Italian Renaissance. If
one takes up the works of such well-known historians of this period as
Pastor, Burckhardt and Symonds, the conflict of opinion is so great that
one almost despairs of getting at the real truth.
The charm of style in the work of Symonds is so seductive that for the
moment misrepresentation and contradiction pass unheeded and one is
swept along a current of rhetoric, dazzled now by the coloring of
thought, now by the very atmosphere which rests upon the art headlands
and uplands of this transition period.
The Italian Renaissance flowered during the fifteenth century, but it
drew its nutrition from the soil of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. The spirit of free inquiry and delight in beauty which are
especially credited as belonging to the Italian Renaissance had a place
in the life and art of Italy as well as France long before the fifteenth
century.
The Catholic Church has during no century prohibited free inquiry on
questions that pertain to science, art and letters, and the expression
of her life as represented in art and literature is but the reflection
of that beauty which emanates from the source of all beauty—God.
It is not only unjust to the Catholic Church, but it betrays as well a
superficial knowledge of the basis and genesis of Christian art to
maintain that all great poetry, painting, architecture, sculpture and
music had first soil in the wilderness of the world rather than within
the sanctuary of God. So it is that certain historians, for example,
turn their faces in every direction seeking causes for the great
awakening of life and art in Italy during the fifteenth century, but are
absolutely blind to the light and influence which streamed from the
centre and headship of Christianity.
These historians would fain have us believe that the Popes of the
Renaissance set their faces like flint against the revival of
letters—that they feared it would emancipate the human intellect from
the power of the Church. Indeed, as has been elsewhere pointed out,
Putnam, in his work dealing with the making of books during the medieval
centuries, states in two paragraphs, in almost successive pages, that
the Pope had a certain work burned “because it was _contra bonos
mores_”; and, again, that the Roman Curia looked on and smiled
approvingly at such a work because it was not contrary to faith. The
real truth is that the Catholic Church was the greatest factor in the
Renaissance movement, and he who would understand the forces that
contributed to this great awakening of the human intellect, and the
development of art and letters which followed logically in its train,
must understand the beginnings of the Renaissance in the fourteenth
century and the share which the Popes of Avignon—then in exile—took in
its promotion and extension.
The poet Petrarch is justly styled the “Father of Humanism,” but were it
not for the influence, kindly offices and patronage of the Papal Court
of Avignon, the sweetest of Italian sonneteers might have lived
unheeded—obscure in a lonely villa of Parma or Verona.
Let us, then, examine the share which the Popes of Avignon justly have
in this great movement which filled the world of Italy of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries as with the glory of a new and dazzling sunrise.
It should not be forgotten that the revival of classical learning in
Italy really began early in the twelfth century with the revival of the
study of Roman law. Italy was heir to the mid-day splendor of Roman
literature, with its Virgils, its Horaces, its Ciceros, its Quintilians.
Not only this, but as Carducci says, “By the fall of Constantinople
Italy became sole heir and guardian of the ancient civilization of
Greece.”
But it is a mistake to consider that it was the discovery of some
manuscripts by Petrarch at Verona, or the appointment of Manuel
Chrysoloras to the chair of Greek at the Florence University in 1396,
that set aglow the skies of the Italian Renaissance.
A writer tells us that the growth of civilization is as gradual and
imperceptible as that of an oak tree. It does not suddenly pass from
night to day, not even from night to twilight. So was the Renaissance in
Italy ushered in slowly, and the factors which contributed to this great
intellectual awakening were indeed many.
Now, not the least of these factors was the Papal Court, whether its
influence went out from Rome or Avignon. It seems to us strange—nay,
absurd—that historians of the Italian Renaissance eagerly gather up
every vagrant straw that may contribute to their theory as to the cause
of the great intellectual awakening of Italy in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, but absolutely ignore the influence of the Catholic
Church as a potent force in the Renaissance movement.
Non-Catholic historians are fond of quoting the Latin poet’s words:
“_Nihil humani est mihi alienum_,” and hold that it was out of this
spirit—this attitude towards the world and mankind—that the Italian
Renaissance was born. This is quite true, but as Guiraud points out in
his admirable work, “L’Eglise et Les Origines de la Renaissance,” the
need of simplifying and generalizing—of studying man in himself rather
than any man in particular—could find recognition in the classical
spirit only because it already existed in the spirit of the Renaissance.
One thing is quite certain, that it was the relation of the Papal Court
to the Greek Church at Constantinople and the religious controversies
that took place during the fourteenth century between Avignon and
Constantinople that gave an impetus to the study of the Greek Fathers, a
large number of whose works were in the Papal library at Avignon. In
fact, relations of friendship bound together the men of letters of
Avignon and Constantinople in such manner that there was often an
exchange of manuscripts between the East and West. The life of Petrarch
furnishes examples of this.
From the very beginning of the Papal occupancy of Avignon the Vicars of
Christ enriched the library of the Holy See with numerous copies of the
works of the Latin and Greek writers—now the works of Seneca, Pliny,
Sallust, Suetonius and Cicero, now the Ethics of Aristotle and the Poems
of Virgil.
As to theological works written in Greek, it was most natural that at a
time when theology reigned incontestably as the chief of the sciences
the Papal Library was well supplied.
It is true that the great masterpieces of Greek literature, such as the
works of Homer, Hesiod and Pindar, the great tragedies, and the Latin
writers, Horace and Tacitus, were not as yet well represented in the
Papal Library at Avignon, but it is equally true that on the eve of the
great schism the Popes had collected together an important number of
manuscripts in which Latin literature was well represented, so that in
the number and quality of the volumes the Apostolic Library was second
only to the ancient libraries of the Sorbonne and Canterbury.
In several of his letters the poet Petrarch has shown himself very
severe towards the Popes of the fourteenth century, who, in his eyes,
were guilty of the double crime of being French and of having left
Italy. Meanwhile the very literary reputation and glory which Petrarch
loved so much were due in no small measure to the protection accorded
him by the Popes of Avignon. Was it not, too, at the Papal Court of
Avignon that Petrarch’s father, an exile from Florence, had sought an
asylum, and in the sunshine of whose favor the poet himself had grown in
peace and security?
Nor should it be forgotten that it was from the Papal Curia of Avignon
that the order first went out to search for the Latin manuscripts which
were of so great service in the study of the ancient literature and
language of Rome. The work of copying also went on, so that a manuscript
copy of nearly every valuable Latin work was soon to be found in the
Pontifical Library.
In collecting thus the scattered literary remains of antiquity the Popes
gave proof of an enlightened taste for letters, while at the same time
they favored the movement born of humanism. As in our own day, the
Apostolic Library was thrown open to scholars, and the poet Petrarch, in
several passages of his familiar letters, testifies to the fact that he
himself had full access to the books and manuscripts of the Pontifical
Library at Avignon.
Again, the missionary work carried on in Africa and Asia during the
residence of the Popes at Avignon did much to bring in contact the mind
of the Orient and the Occident. Towards the close of the thirteenth
century, before the Papacy had yet removed to Avignon, the Franciscan
Jean de Montecorvino had established flourishing Christian missions in
China, and in 1306 Pope Clement V. erected for him the see of Pekin.
Numerous missions were also established in the Barbary States, in
Northern Africa, as well as in Tunis.
If, then, the discovery of new worlds, the fall of Constantinople and
the invention of printing were factors in the development of the Italian
Renaissance, assuredly the mission work of the Papal Court of Avignon in
its propagation of the gospel in distant countries contributed
indirectly but incontestably to this great awakening of the human mind.
Indeed, “humanism” may be said to have had birth at Avignon within the
Pontifical Court, with him who has been justly designated “the first of
Humanists”—the poet Petrarch.
As to the study of Greek in Italy, long before the dispersion of Greek
scholars consequent on the fall of Constantinople in 1453, long, too,
before the appointment of Manuel Chrysoloras to the chair of Greek at
the Florence University in 1396, the monk Barlaam, a Greek scholar of
great repute, a Calabrian by birth, who had passed his youth at Salonica
and at Constantinople, where he became, thanks to his literary and
scientific culture, a favorite of the Emperor Andronicus, was sent by
the latter to propose to Benedict XII. a reunion of the Greek and Latin
Churches.
On his return from Rome in 1342, where he had received the laurel crown
of poetry, Petrarch found Barlaam at Avignon and requested from him
lessons in Greek. Another instructor of the poet Petrarch in Greek was
Nicolas Sigeros, also a Byzantine envoy to the Court of Avignon. When
the latter had terminated his negotiations with Clement VI. and had to
return to Constantinople, Petrarch made him promise that he would search
for manuscripts of Cicero which might be hidden in the libraries of the
Bosphorus. Sigeros, however, found none, but to show his good-will he
sent to his friend of Avignon a copy of the poems of Homer.
It was Petrarch’s different visits to Rome that inspired in him a love
for antiquity. His first visit to the Eternal City was on the invitation
of his friend, the Bishop of Lombez, in 1337, and it is from this year
that his Roman patriotism dates, which henceforth inspires all his works
and in particular his Latin poem, “Africa,” and which, too, made him the
enthusiastic friend of Rienzi.
A study of the life of Petrarch reveals the fact that it was the good
offices of the Papal Court of Avignon which placed him in touch with the
eminent Greek and Latin scholars of the day and made it possible for
him, in the seclusion of Vaucluse, to pursue his studies of the great
masters of Greek poetry and philosophy.
Petrarch also prevailed upon his friend Boccaccio to publish in Latin
the Iliad and Odyssey. It was Leontius Pilatus who took charge of this
work a little time after and thus began the great work of translating
Greek authors which Pope Nicholas V. was later to bring to so successful
an end.
But the works of the nature-loving Greeks would never have inspired in
the heart and mind of Petrarch a love of the beauty of life around
him—Hellenism was but a factor—were it not that his own beloved
Provence revealed its charms to his eyes and filled his soul with poetic
dreams. In his garden at Vaucluse, among his trees and vines, he found
the inspiration which Nature never refuses to the open and responsive
heart, whether the votary at her altar be a Wordsworth, amid the lakes
and cliffs and scenes of Cumberland; a Burns, treading the hillsides of
his native Ayr, or a Whittier, dreaming amid his Berkshire hills.
Many historians do an injustice to the character of Petrarch on the
moral side. Petrarch, in the moral gospel of his life and living, was
far from being either a Poggio or a Machiavelli. Much as was his respect
for the master geniuses of antiquity, his love for the sacred writings
of St. Jerome and St. Augustine was more profound, and it is said that
on reading for the first time the works of the latter he thought of
abandoning altogether the frivolous study of the classics, with a view
of consecrating himself entirely to Christian meditation and reading.
Petrarch’s respect for the Christian ideal is to be found in the
marginal annotations of his manuscripts. We have the poet’s own word for
it that he took the “Confessions of St. Augustine” for his model when he
wrote his “De Contemptu Mundi.” Practices of scrupulous piety marked his
whole life. Each night he arose to pray to God, and on every Friday he
practised a rigorous fast, while his devotion to the Blessed Virgin was
most ardent and sincere.
It is true that, like all men of the Renaissance period, Petrarch was
intense in his character. He hated with a Renaissance fervor, and he was
not free from the jealousy and vainglory which belonged especially to
the spirit of his times.
In estimating the character of Petrarch one must remember the spirit of
the times in which he had birth—that it was an age of great virtues and
great vices, and that excessive liberty to sin followed in the wake of
the Renaissance in every land. In England it is reflected in the lives
of such men as Green and Marlowe and in Marlowe’s play of “Dr. Faustus,”
while in France the courts of the House of Valois and the camps of the
Huguenots were marked by the greatest wantonness and license. In Germany
men like Ulrich von Hutten were anything but moral.
Petrarch was certainly “the morning star” of the Italian Renaissance,
but it was the Papal Court of Avignon that made possible his light—it
was the Pope, as representative and head of a universal Church, that
quickened by contact the mind of the East with the West—in a word, it
was the enlightened scholarship of fourteen centuries illumined by the
rays of Divine Faith and speaking through the lips of the Vicar of
Christ in exile at Avignon that led the way in that greatest of
intellectual movements—the Italian Renaissance of the Fifteenth
Century.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Hyphenation, and spellings have been retained as in the original.
Punctuation has been corrected without note.