in the character of education took place about this time, and that
the advance of learning in the Northern parts of Germany is greatly
indebted to the efforts of the Brothers of the Common Life. Though
Gerard charged the members of the Brotherhood to look to Christ as
the source of all light and truth, all life and peace, and without
Whom all learning or gifts were but as vain shadows, yet he would
not confine them to none but Christian authors. Among the ancient
philosophers he would have his educated disciples to read the works
of Plato and Aristotle, and valued the former for his excellent
discourses in the person of Socrates. The morals of Seneca pleased
him much, and he recommended them to the Brothers as a rich mine of
wisdom. He himself {517} was versed in the art of medicine and knew
something of law, and it is evident that some of his disciples were
much esteemed for their knowledge of them. And from what Thomas a
Kempis says of Gerard, he would have the clerics to study geometry,
arithmetic, logic, grammar and other subjects. From which it will be
perceived that the Brothers of the Common Life were urged to the
pursuit of what at that time was a liberal and enlightened
education, and consequently were the first in their generation, and
in those parts, to promote and encourage it, and were thereby the
less likely to be led away or inflated by an ignorant or foolish
enthusiasm."
They did copying, but under instructions made their copying of value
for their own education. This was an important development (p. 167):
"It had begun, as we have shown, in great simplicity under the
blessing of God. To the young clerics he (their founder) had joined
certain priests and laymen, thus making a mixed society. Idleness
and accumulation of worldly goods had been the rock on which so many
of the Monastic Orders had made shipwreck, and therefore, to the
cultivation of the Interior life had been joined some useful
employment and the pursuit of fine letters. And that the mind should
not become enervated by the work of copying manuscripts being too
long carried on as a mere manual operation, Gerard had prescribed to
each of the clerics that he should make extracts of the finest sayings
he met with, especially of the Fathers and of the Saints, and even
make minutes of his own reflections, and inscribe them in a certain
book called 'Rapiarium.' And, as the enthusiastic deacon of Deventer
always joined example with precept, he himself transcribed and
published many little works composed from the works of the Saints,
most of which are now lost. It is doubtless from this custom, which
Thomas a Kempis largely carried out in the early days of his
connection with the Brotherhood, that we are mainly indebted for
those many little devotional works which he afterwards wrote, at the
head of which he places the books of the _'De Imitatione Christi.'"_
It would be easy to think that probably these good religious devoted
themselves much more to the cultivation of piety than {518} of good
literature, and that perhaps even their devotion to culture was rather
superficial. As a matter of fact, however, their schools became famous
for their thoroughness, and all along the Rhine the sons of "the
butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker" learned to read and
write Latin fluently, corresponded in Latin letters and above all seem
to have received very precious inspirations for the intellectual life
that were not extinguished even by a merely money-making career. A
good many of the graduates of their schools became famous in the
German scholarship of this period. Not all of them became clergymen,
though of course a great many did.
Probably the most important of their students was Cardinal Nicholas of
Cusa, the greatest and most original thinker of the fifteenth century.
Strange as it may seem, his achievements in the intellectual life were
nearly all made in mathematics and in science. His work is sketched in
the chapter on Physical Science of the Century. Because of an
important contribution to medicine, he has a chapter in my "Old-Time
Makers of Medicine" (Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1911).
The thoroughly practical character of Cusanus' mind and its education
from books and experience can be readily appreciated from a paragraph
of his with regard to the unification of his Fatherland, in which his
far-seeing patriotism anticipated the most modern views.
Cusanus was sent out as Papal Legate to Germany, just about the
beginning of Columbus' Century, in order to correct abuses and bring
Christendom into closer touch with the Holy See. During the course of
his journeys in Germany he recognized all the weakness and the evils
connected with the splitting up of the German people into many petty
principalities. He saw clearly how much their union under one head
would mean for the people themselves, their happiness and progress,
and above all for the peace of mankind. Nearly four centuries before
the actual accomplishment of the dream of the German Empire, he
expressed himself very emphatically on this point, and curiously
enough drew his main arguments from economic conditions and the
failure of any assurance of lasting peace afforded by the existence of
many petty governments. {519} It is characteristic of his very
practical scientific bent of mind that he should have entered so far
into the details of the accomplishment of his vision as to suggest the
making of a budget and the giving of formal accounts of how the money
was spent to the legislative body.
[Illustration: CIMA DA CONEGLIANO,
INCREDULITY OF ST. THOMAS (VENICE)]
"The law and the kingdom should be placed under the protection of a
single ruler or authority. The small separate governments of princes
and counts consume a disproportionately large amount of revenue
without furnishing any real security. For this reason we must have a
single government, and for its support we must have a definite
amount of the income from taxes and revenues yearly set aside by a
representative parliament and before this parliament (_Reichstag_)
must be given every year a definite account of the money that was
spent during the preceding year."
Some idea of the intellectual aspirations of the time and the attitude
of men towards knowledge and truth may be gathered from a paragraph of
Cardinal Cusanus, which is so comprehensive and so full of the love of
wisdom in the best sense of the word as to be classical and to deserve
a place in the notebook of every teacher. It may well be taken as the
motto of the schools of the Brethren of the Common Life.
"To know and to think, to see the truth with the eye of the mind, is
always a joy. The older a man grows, the greater is the pleasure
which it affords him, and the more he devotes himself to the search
after truth, the stronger grows his desire of possessing it. As love
is the life of the heart, so is the endeavor after knowledge and
truth the life of the mind. In the midst of the movements of time,
of the daily work of life, of its perplexities and contradictions,
we should lift our gaze fearlessly to the clear vault of heaven, and
seek ever to obtain a firmer grasp of and a keener insight into the
origin of all goodness and beauty, the capacities of our own hearts
and minds, the intellectual fruits of mankind throughout the
centuries, and the wondrous works of nature around us, at the same
time remembering always that in humility alone lies true greatness,
and that knowledge and wisdom are alone profitable in so far as our
lives are governed by them."
One of the greatest of the students of the Brethren of the {520}
Common Life is the famous Rudolph Agricola, who was educated at
Deventer, but, with the intellectual curiosity characteristic of his
time and the ardor for study and opportunities for intellectual
development which was so often seen in Columbus' Century, wandered on
to Erfurt, Louvain, and then Cologne and Paris in order to miss no
possible educational opportunity. When he was twenty-five he went down
to Italy, where he studied law and rhetoric at Pavia and then to
Ferrara, where he studied Greek under Theodore Gaza. He held a
political office for some time, but John of Dalberg, Bishop of Worms,
recognizing his scholarship, secured for him the opportunity to teach
at Heidelberg. He lectured on Aristotle and translated Lucian. Above
all he was the great pioneer of humanism in Germany, and by his
personal influence lighted a torch that was soon to illuminate the
country. He wrote to Rudolph von Langen once when he was seeking a
headmaster for the Cathedral School at Muenster: "I entertain the
highest hope that by your aid we shall one day wrest from proud Italy
her vaunted glory of pre-eminence in education and literature."
Jacob Wimpheling, who came later to be known as "the Schoolmaster of
Germany," is another one of these students of the Brethren of the
Common Life who reached distinction. He was educated at Schlettstadt
in what is now Alsace. Like the others, he wandered far afield,
however, for his scholarship. He studied at Freiburg and Erfurt and
also at Heidelberg and was probably in Italy for a time. He returned
to Heidelberg as professor, his lectures being mainly upon St. Jerome.
In nearly every city in which he stayed for any length of time he
founded literary societies and devoted himself to the reform of
educational methods. He insisted above all on the importance of moral
training in education, and has made it very clear that he felt that an
educated man without high moral training was more dangerous for evil
than one without education. His writings obtained a wide circulation
and did much to determine the character of education for two
centuries. His idea was that education should produce able and
conscientious citizens rather than accomplished scholars. He was
eminently practical in his way of looking at things and deprecated
{521} the notion so common at many times in history that the storing
of the memory with information, instead of the training of the mind by
thoughtful work so as to make it capable of the best judgment when
that is needed, is the true ideal in education.
One of the pupils of Agricola in Greek, though he was an older man,
was Alexander Hegius, who, during the last fifteen years of his life,
which correspond almost exactly with the last fifteen years of the
fifteenth century, made the school of Deventer the great educational
centre of North Germany. Among his pupils at Deventer was Erasmus.
Hegius did much to put an end to the older mediaeval ideas in
education, which had become outworn, and to bring in the study of the
classics. One of his great friends, Rudolph von Langen, was a student
of Erfurt who visited Italy and came back full of enthusiasm for
humanistic studies and finally succeeded in founding a school of the
New Learning at Muenster, where he was the Canon of the Cathedral
Church. He tried to secure Hegius as the headmaster of this school,
but had to be content with his pupil, Murmellius, who wrote a series
of very useful textbooks at this time.
The greatest of the pupils of the Brethren of the Common Life, who is
also one of the greatest scholars of all time, is Desiderius Erasmus.
Probably no better idea can be obtained of the high estimation in
which scholarship was held at this time in Europe than from the career
of Erasmus. He was welcomed everywhere. He was looked upon as one of
the moving forces of the time. His opinions were eagerly sought, his
books were read, he had the friendship not only of scholars, but of
high ecclesiastics, the nobility and even royalty. He did an immense
amount of work and exercised a deep influence over his time. His
influence over England was especially deep, and he aided Dean Colet in
his great design for the future school of St. Paul's by writing his
treatise, _"De ratione Studii";_ he was a friend of Bishop Warham and
of Sir Thomas More; through the influence of Bishop Fisher of
Rochester he became Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge;
in a word, he entered into all the intellectual life of the time
everywhere. He was in Italy for years, helped Aldus, the printer, at
Venice, drawing inspiration from the {522} libraries, the scholars and
the classic remains. His many monographs and dialogues meant much for
the diffusion of right views as to classical education. His editions
of Latin authors comprise Seneca, Suetonius, certain works of Cicero,
Pliny and Terence. His Greek texts include Aristotle and Ptolemy. He
made recensions of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom,
with three editions of St. Jerome. His edition of the Greek Testament
is probably more important than any of these.
One of the important scholars and teachers of Germany at this time,
though anyone who reviews his life work with some care will surely be
inclined to think that his import has been exaggerated because of his
connection with the reform movement, and that in comparison with many
other scholars of the time he does not deserve that high pre-eminence
of reputation which has been accorded him, was Philip Schwarzerd, who
translated his family name of Black-earth into the Greek Melanchthon
and is known by that name. He was but one of the many great German
scholars at this time, though many people seem to think that he stands
almost alone, a striking example of the supposed freedom of
intellectual development that was ushered in by the Reformation.
Melanchthon, through the influence of his uncle, Reuchlin, became
Professor of Greek at Wittenberg. He had been a lecturer on Virgil,
Terence and Cicero. During his teaching he wrote a Greek and Latin
grammar and edited many editions of the classics and published a
series of commentaries on Cicero, Terence, Sallust, Ovid, Quintilian,
as well as selections from Aristotle's "Ethics" and "Politics." He was
a gentle, kindly scholar, deeply Christian in his principles, without
any sympathy at all with the paganizing spirit of many of the lesser
humanists, above all outside of Germany. His gentler spirit was
overborne by Luther's strong character. He is said to have told his
mother on her death-bed that the old Church was a good one to die in,
though the reformed might be well enough to live in. The spread of the
Reformation in Germany led to the adoption of his text-books widely,
hence his name _preceptor Germaniae._
Scholarship was not, however, confined to the Rhineland {523} and the
Western part of Germany. Many of the cities of the Eastern portion had
magnificent developments of education and classical scholarship at
this time and shared in the art impulse of the period. Nuremberg,
Augsburg, Innsbruck, Vienna, as well as Stuttgart, Ingoldstadt and
Tuebingen, shared in the movement. The great teacher in this part of
Germany was Johann Reuchlin, who studied Greek at Paris and at Basel,
as well as in Italy, taught at Basel, Orleans and Poitiers and then
spent nearly twenty-five years in teaching at Stuttgart, Ingoldstadt
and Tuebingen, where he was Professor of Greek and of Hebrew. When he
was but twenty he produced a Latin dictionary called _"Vocabularius
Breviloquus,"_ noted for its brevity, conciseness and orderly
arrangement, which passed through twenty editions in less than thirty
years. He became so proficient in Latin, Greek and Hebrew that he was
called "the three-tongued wonder of Germany." His Hebrew text-books
gave a great impetus to the study of that language and literature in
Germany.
He was very highly thought of, was sent on various diplomatic missions
to Italy, occupied important judicial positions under the government
and wielded an immense influence over the men of his time. He died
some five years after the beginning of the Lutheran movement, but had
no sympathy with the Wittenberg professor's schismatic attitude. When
he found that his nephew Melanchthon, for whom he had secured the
chair of Greek at the University of Wittenberg, had attached himself
to Luther, he expressed his disapproval and cancelled the bequest of
his library, which had previously been destined for Melanchthon.
Reuchlin was a representative of the widest culture of the time, a
source of inspiration and incentive to scholarship for all who came in
contact with him. A bitter controversy over some of his writings
occupied the attention of all literary Germany during the early part
of the sixteenth century, showing how widespread was interest in all
intellectual questions at this time.
The men who led in the defence of Reuchlin in this controversy were
mainly Ulrich von Hutten, Johann Jaeger of Dornheim and Conrad Muth,
or as he came to be known from his Latin name _Mutianus Rufas,_
another of the students of {524} the Brethren of the Common Life, a
school-fellow of Erasmus at Deventer. He had subsequently studied in
Italy, where he became an intimate of Pico della Mirandola and took
the degree of Doctor in Law at Bologna. Sandys has told his story in
his "History of Classical Scholarship" (page 257):
"On his return he (Muth) settled at Gotha, where he placed, in
golden letters, over the door of his canonical residence, the words
BEATA TRANQUILLITAS, and thereafter devoted his thoughts to 'God and
the Saints and the study of all Antiquity.' He took the keenest
interest in his younger friends, the humianists of Erfurt, inspiring
them with an eager desire for the spread of classical literature, a
hatred for the pedantry and formalism of the old scholastic methods
and a critical spirit which felt little reverence for the past.
After organizing the victory of the humanists over the scholastic
obscurantists of the day, their leader lived to see his 'tranquil'
home ruthlessly plundered by a Protestant mob, at a time when the
quiet waters of Humanism had been overwhelmed by the stronger stream
of the Reformation."
One of the great German scholars and editors of the Renaissance was
Conrad Celtes, whose real name was Conrad Picket, but was changed with
the typical classicizing tendency of the Renaissance to the antique
form Celtes. He had received his education under such men as Bishop
John of Dalberg and Rudolph Agricola, and then after travelling in
Italy, where he was in intimate relations with Pomponius Laetus,
Ficino and the famous printer Aldus Manutius, he was, on his return to
Germany, crowned poet laureate at Nuremberg and there also received
the doctor's degree. During his travels through the Northern
countries, he founded, in imitation of the Roman Academy, literary
societies in many of the cities. There was the _Societas Literarum
Vistuliana,_ whose seat was at Cracow; the _Sodalitas Literarum
Danubiana,_ founded originally in Hungary, but afterwards transferred
to Vienna, and the _Sodalitas Literarum Rhenana,_ which had members
along the Rhine.
This last Academy was founded at Mainz the year before the discovery
of America. Three of the most distinguished men of the time were among
its members. {525} Johann von Dalberg, the Bishop of Worms, whose name
occurs so often in the history of the scholars of the time because of
his munificent patronage of learning, was its first president. The
Abbot Trithemius of Trittenheim and Wilibald Pirkheimer of Nuremberg
were among its prominent members. Trithemius spent much time and money
in the collection of old manuscripts. Pirkheimer was eminent as a
statesman and a patron of humanism and as a translator of Greek texts
and a student of archaeology.
Besides founding these academies, Celtes lectured in many universities
and issued an edition of the writings of Hroswitha, the nun dramatist
of the tenth century. It was such a surprise to his generation (it is
scarcely less to ours, so little diffusion of true historical
information is there) to find that there had been any literature in
the convents along the Rhine in the tenth century, that for some time
there was considerable discussion as to whether Celtes had not forged
these writings, but it has been definitely settled on absolutely
unimpeachable evidence that Celtes only edited manuscripts that he
found.
As Librarian of the Imperial Library, founded by Maximilian I of
Vienna, Celtes gathered together many Greek and Latin manuscripts and
generally exercised his influence to secure precious old documents
from destruction by proper care for them. As a poet he attracted no
little attention in his own time, though his poetry is not of a high
order. He was the head of the Poets' Academy at Vienna, the first
institution of its kind in Europe, and his influence as a scholar and
a literary man was much more than his originality as a writer. He was
an intimate friend of Charity Pirkheimer and many of the Nuremberg
group of humanists, and some of the freedom of his poetry might seem
to indicate a lack of religion, but these friendships apparently
indicate carelessness in religious matters, but not rejection of
religion. On a number of occasions Charity Pirkheimer reproved him for
the freedom of his poetry.
The careers of the Pirkheimers give a good idea of the interest in
scholarship on the part of both men and women in Germany during this
Renaissance period. Charity Pirkheimer, afterwards the Abbess of the
Convent of the Poor Clares in Nuremberg, deserves mention in this
regard as much as her {526} brother, but the sketch of her career
properly finds a place among the Women of the Renaissance. Wilibald
Pirkheimer deserves the immortality that his scholarship has secured
for him. He translated Xenophon, Plato, Plutarch and Lucian into
Latin, but the spirit of the time will be better understood when it is
recalled that he also made translations of Euclid and Ptolemy. The
ordinary assumption that interest in the old pagan authors lessened
attachment to the Church is refuted by his translations of the Greek
Fathers also into Latin. He was himself the author of a history of
Germany which won for him the title of the German Xenophon. His
interest in letters, however, was only one portion of his scholarship,
for astronomy, mathematics and the natural sciences were not only
favorite subjects of study, but fields in which he carried on
successful investigation. Besides, he took up the study of numismatics
with great assiduity, and helped to bring about a general recognition
of its value as a distinct department of historical research.
It was typical of the universality of the aesthetic interests of the
men of the times in which he lived that Pirkheimer was also deeply
attracted to art and that Albrecht Duerer was one of his closest
friends. We owe to the great German artist a characteristic picture of
the scholar. Like Erasmus, Wilibald Pirkheimer recognized the
necessity for reform in the Church in Germany, and at the beginning of
the reform movement he sided with Luther and wrote in defence of the
German reformer and the doctrines that he was teaching. In the course
of a few years, however, he came to see that the religious revolt, far
from correcting the evils, was emphasizing them, and besides was so
disturbing men's minds in Germany as to make the proper cultivation of
the fine arts and literature impossible. In addition he soon learned
that the so-called reformers were bent on disturbing the convent in
Nuremberg in which so many of his feminine relatives found not only
peace and happiness and the opportunity to cultivate the spiritual
life, but also to live the intellectual life to the full measure of
their desires. Charitas, his sister, was the Abbess of the Convent of
St. Clare, and among the nuns there were another sister, Clare, and
Wilibald's daughters, Catherine and Crescentia. {527} He wrote a
defence of the monastic life for women, in which he pointed out the
opportunities for peace, and joy in the cultivation of the
intellectual life, as well as the spiritual life, enjoyed in these
institutions. During the writing of this apologetic work he became
himself entirely convinced of the necessity for adherence to the old
Church.
The relations of the humanists, the classical scholars and devotees of
the New Learning in Germany, to the Church have been the subject of
many and varying opinions. Sandys has summed this up very well in a
paragraph which deserves to be quoted because of the importance of the
subject, the authority of the writer and the probability that the
position which he occupies as regards both Germany and the Church make
him, as far as is possible in a subject so fraught with personal
feelings, an impartial critic. He said (page 258):
"The humanists of Germany may be divided into three successive
schools distinguished from one another in their relation to the
Church, (1) The Earlier or Scholastic Humanists, who were loyal
supporters of the Church, while they were eager for a revival of
classical learning and a new system of education. They are
represented by the three great teachers of North Germany, Rudolfus
Agricola, Rudolf von Langen and Alexander Hegius; also by
Wimpheling, the restorer of education in South Germany; by
Trithemius, one of the founders of the Rhenish Society of
Literature, and by Eck, the famous opponent of Luther. They worked
for the revival of learning in all branches of knowledge, while they
hoped that the New Learning would remain subservient to the old
theology. (2) The Intermediate or Rational Humanists, who took a
rational view of Christianity and its creed, while they protested
against the old scholasticism, and against the external abuses of
the Church. 'They either did not support Luther, or soon deserted
him, being conscious that his movement would lead to the destruction
of all true culture.' Their leaders were Reuchlin and Erasmus,
Conrad Muth, the Canon of Gotha. 'Their party and its true work of
culture were shipwrecked by the tempest of the Reformation.' (3) The
Later or Protestant Humanists, who were ready to 'protest' against
{528} everything, young men of great talent, but of less learning,
whose love of liberty sometimes lapsed into license. Their leading
spirit was Ulrich von Hutten. In course of time, some of them became
Rational Humanists; others, supporters of Luther. 'While Erasmus,
Reuchlin and Muth viewed Luther's propaganda with distrust,' these
younger Humanists 'flocked to the new standard of protest and
revolt, and so doing brought culture into disgrace and shipwrecked
the Revival of Learning in Germany.'"
The earlier German humanists were not carried away by the idea that
the only thing worth while studying was the New Learning, and that
only the classics of Greece and Rome could form the proper substance
of any right education. In the later period of German humanism this
exaggeration was very common. In the earlier period, however, the
place and the value of the German language itself is recognized, and
due acknowledgments were made to the men of the later Middle Ages for
all that they had accomplished for scholarship and for real progress
in philosophy and theology. Janssen in the third volume of his
"History of the German People" has sketched this very clearly (pages
1-3):
"The earliest humanists had contemplated classical antiquity from
the point of view of absolute faith in Christianity, and they had
pressed the classics into the service of their creed. They valued
the works of the ancient writers for the deeply religious nature of
the ideas embodied in them; they regarded them as echoes of
primaeval inspiration; but they were at the same time decided and
active opponents of mere pagan systems of thought and life. They
studied antiquity in a scientific spirit of exhaustive research, and
they justified their incorporation of pagan materials into their
systems of culture on the plea that these classic works were an
indispensable groundwork of scholarship, a splendid means of mental
gymnastic training for forming independent judgment and sharpening
the intellect for the apprehension and presentation of truth. By the
profounder knowledge they acquired of the intellectual life of the
ancient world, they hoped to facilitate the understanding of the
Scriptures and to put fresh life and reality into the contemporary
systems of philosophical and theological {529} study. It was this
motive that had inspired the unwearied labors of Nicholas of Cusa
and his pupil Agricola in their efforts to graft the study of
classic literature on the German University curriculum; that had led
Alexander Hegius to make the classics the groundwork of education,
and Jacob Wimpheling to write his epoch-making words. 'It is not the
story of the heathen writers in itself which is dangerous to Christian
culture,' said the latter, 'but the false apprehension and handling
of them. It would undoubtedly be absolutely fatal if, as is often
the case in Italy, by means of the classics, pagan ways of thought
and life, prejudicial to pure Christian morality and the patriotic
spirit of the rising generation, were spread abroad or were to creep
into the teaching of our writers and poets. But, on the other hand,
the legitimate use of the ancient writers might render the most
invaluable services to Christianity and learning. Had not the
Fathers of the Church themselves derived the greatest help in their
explanations of Scripture from the study of these profane writers,
and had they not in consequence recommended them to the veneration
of Christian students? St. Gregory Nazienzen,' he went on to say,
'had described the opponents of classic study as the enemies of true
learning, and Pope Gregory the Great had shown conclusively that
classic study was a useful preparation and an indispensable aid to
the understanding of theology.'
"For the same reasons the leading theologians of the fifteenth
century, Heynlin von Stein, Gregory Reisch, Geiler of Kaisersberg,
Gabriel Viel, Johannes Trithemius, had been zealous advocates and
promoters of the labors of the Christian humanists.
"'With a good conscience,' says Trithemius, 'we can recommend the
study of the ancient writers to all such as do not make use of them
in a worldly spirit for mere intellectual sport, but for the serious
cultivation of their mental powers, and who, after the example of the
Fathers of the Church, seek to cull from them good fruit for the
nourishment of Christian scholarship.'"
These quotations will serve to show how clearly all the value of the
classical studies to scholarship, yet all the danger to real education
as well as to Christianity was recognized by {530} the scholars of
this time. They represent a critical wisdom often presumed not to have
been developed at this time. Critical judgment is supposed to be a
much later evolution. Those who make such a presumption, however, are
led by ignorance of the realities of the education and scholarship of
this time which has only properly come into its own true appreciation
in comparatively recent years. German scholarship during the
Renaissance period, that is, in Columbus' Century before the
Reformation came to disturb it, represented as fine an expression of
German ability and intellectual genius as has ever come to that
capable people.
{531}
CHAPTER VIII
SCHOLARSHIP OUTSIDE OF ITALY AND GERMANY
While Italy was literally the _alma mater studiorum_ during the
Renaissance, and Germany probably accomplished more in scholarly
education at this time that influenced succeeding generations than any
other country except Italy, all the countries of Europe shared very
largely in the New Learning and did much for classical scholarship
before 1550. Indeed, it is probable that to a great many thoroughly
educated students of this time the comparisons of achievement that I
have suggested will seem invidious or at least uncalled for. Certainly
no one appreciates more than I do the magnificent work of the
scholarly humanists of France, Spain, Portugal and England during
Columbus' Century. Each of them shared magnificently in the
intellectual incentive that had been given by the reintroduction of
classical studies and especially of Greek, and each of them, in fine
compensation for the impetus lent them by the movement, gave back to
it achievements in scholarship that swelled the tide and helped in the
diffusion of Humanism throughout all of Western Europe at least. There
are national accomplishments of all of these countries that are worthy
of note, and each of them accomplished much at this time in education
that will never be forgotten.
Probably the easiest way to tell the extent of the scholarship of
France during Columbus' Century is to say that many good authorities
have declared that before the end of the century France had taken away
from Italy the palm for classical scholarship. The first important
teacher of the French was, however, an Italian, Jerome Aleander, who
arrived in France shortly after the beginning of the sixteenth century
with an introduction from Erasmus. He lectured on Greek as well as
Latin, and probably also on Hebrew. He became Rector of {532} the
University of Paris in 1512, but returned to Rome in 1517 and was
appointed Librarian to the Vatican. His distinguished services for
learning and the Church brought him a cardinal's hat, and he became
one of the most prominent members of the Papal Court at this time. It
was under his direction that the first Greek printing in France was
done. Three of Plutarch's treatises on Morals were printed in Paris in
1509 in order to serve as text-books for his pupils.
His successor as a teacher of the classics in Paris was the
distinguished Frenchman Budaeus, who, before the end of his life, came
to be looked upon as perhaps the most eminent of living scholars. He
went on diplomatic missions to Popes Julius II and Leo X and thus
became very much interested in the New Learning. He learned Greek for
himself, and under Francis I and Henry II his fame as a Greek scholar,
to quote Sandys, [Footnote 49] was "one of the glories of his
country." "He opened a new era in the study of Roman Law by his
annotations on the 'Pandects' of Justinian, and a little later he
broke fresh ground as the first serious student of the Roman coinage
in his treatise _'De Asse,'_ It was the ripe result of no less than
nine years' research, and in twenty years passed through ten editions.
Its abundant learning is said to have aroused the envy of Erasmus"
(Sandys).
[Footnote 49: "A History of Classical Scholarship," Cambridge
University Press, 1908, p. 170.]
His devotion to study became a proverb. It is said that even on his
wedding day, by an exceptional act of self-denial, he limited his time
of study to three hours only. It is interesting to learn that his wife
shared his enthusiasm for study at least to the extent of aiding him
in every possible way by devoted attention, which prevented him from
being interrupted or harassed by any cares. Once, when he was busy
reading in his library, one of the servants suddenly rushed in to
inform him that the house was on fire. The scholar, without lifting up
his eyes from his book, simply said: "Go and tell my wife; you know
very well that I must not be bothered about household matters." He
suffered greatly from headaches, which the best physicians of his day
vainly endeavored to cure by the application of the actual cautery to
his scalp. {533} After a time, however, it was suggested to him that
what was needed was not a cure, but a better regulation of his life.
He learned to take long walks, and spent some time each day
cultivating his garden to the great alleviation of his headaches.
His greatest contribution to the scholarship of the time was his
successful urging of Francis I, helped as he was by that monarch's
sister, Marguerite of Navarre, to establish the College de France,
though for a time at the beginning it had no such ambitious title, but
was called simply the Corporation of the Royal Readers. It had no
official residences or even public lecture rooms. As was said at the
time, "it was built on men." Budaeus' statue rightly stands before the
College buildings now, for he was the real founder. The amount that
was accomplished for genuine education and scholarship before the
buildings were erected and the machinery of a college set going shows
how much more men mean than an institution.
This Corporation of the Royal Readers had at first teachers of Greek,
Hebrew and Mathematics, five in number. The first two teachers in it
were Pierre Danes, Danesius as he is known, who edited an important
edition of Pliny and later of Justin Martyr and afterwards became
Bishop of Lavaur and took an important part in the Council of Trent,
and Jacques Toussain, an industrious scholar, the compiler of a Greek
and Latin Dictionary. Three men are said to have attended Toussain's
lectures for some time, whose influence on the after-time was to be
very marked, and yet the contrast of whose characters is very
striking. They were Ignatius Loyola, John Calvin and Francois
Rabelais. Turnebus was also one of the students of Toussain, and
himself later became a distinguished professor, first at Toulouse and
afterwards as the successor of his master at Paris. Toussain had been
famous for his erudition. He was a living library. Turnebus, though
attracting great attention when a young man by his marvellous memory,
became a specialist in Greek textual criticism. He published a series
of Greek texts, including Aeschylus and Sophocles, just at the end of
Columbus' Century, and edited Cicero's "Laws." He wrote commentaries
on Varro and the elder Pliny.
[Illustration: FRANCIS I LISTENING TO MACAULT's TRANSLATION
OF DIODORUS SICULUS, TITLE PAGE OF WOOD-ENGRAVING (TORY)]
We have from Montaigne, who was one of his pupils just as our century
closes, a curiously interesting description of {534} Turnebus, which
serves to show that the genus professor has been at all times about
the same and that his pupils have loved him often just in proportion
as they have found many things to laugh at in his dress and manners.
It is, indeed, a distinction, {535} however, to have been the thus
beloved master of Montaigne, himself no laggard in scholarliness.
"I have seen Adrianus Turnebus, who, having never professed anything
but studie and letters, wherein he was, in mine opinion, the
worthiest man that lived these thousand years, . . . notwithstanding
had no pedanticall thing about him but the wearing of his gowne, and
some external fashions, that could not well be reduced and
uncivilized to the courtiers' cut. For his inward parts, I deeme him
to have been one of the most unspotted and truly honest minds that
ever was. I have sundry times of purpose urged him to speake of
matters farthest from his study, wherein he was so clear-sighted,
and could with so quicke an apprehension conceive, and with so sound
a judgment distinguish them, that he seemed never to have professed
or studied other facultie than warre, and matters of state."
The French educators of this time seem to have realized very well the
true meaning of education. Rabelais is usually not taken seriously,
except by students of his works who have given them much attention,
but his books contain a number of most interesting contributions to
this subject. His striking contrast between what education had been
when he was a boy and in his old age, drawn by Gargantua, represents
the great advance that took place in education at this time. The
paragraphs may be taken as the testimony of a contemporary to the
devotion to scholarship on the part of both men and women which then
developed in France. He has the usual Renaissance contempt for Gothic
culture, a contempt that exists even at the present time among those
who know no better.
"I had no supply of such teachers as thou hast had. The time was
still dark, and savouring of the misery and calamity wrought by the
Goths, who had entirely destroyed all good literature. But by Divine
goodness its own light and dignity has been in my lifetime restored
to letters, and I see such amendment therein that at present I
should hardly be admitted into the first class of the little
grammar-boys, although in my youthful days I was reputed, not
without reason, as the most learned of that age. . . .
{536}
"But now all methods of teaching are restored, the study of the
languages renewed--Greek, without which it is a disgrace for a man
to style himself a scholar; Hebrew, Chaldean, Latin; impressions of
books most elegant and correct are in use through printing, which
has been invented in my time by Divine inspiration, as on the other
side artillery has been invented by devilish suggestion.
"All the world is full of knowing folk, of most learned preceptors,
of most extensive libraries, so that I am of opinion that neither in
the time of Plato, nor Cicero, nor Papinian was there ever such
conveniency for study as is seen at this time. Nor must any
hereafter adventure himself in public, or in any company, who shall
not have been well polished in the workshop of Minerva. I do see
robbers, hangmen, freebooters, grooms, of the present age, more
learned than the doctors and preachers of my time.
"What shall I say? Women and young girls have aspired to this praise
and celestial manna of good learning. So much is this the case that
at my present age I have been constrained to learn the Greek tongue
which I had not contemned, like Cato, but which I had not had
leisure to learn in my youth; and I do willingly delight myself in
reading the Morals of Plutarch, the fine Dialogues of Plato, the
Monuments of Pausanias, and the Antiquities of Athenaeus, whilst I
wait for the hour when it shall please God my Creator to call me and
command me to depart from this earth."
With all his jesting, humorous spirit (some people would call it
ludicrous buffoonery), Rabelais had no illusions with regard to the
true meaning of education. The concluding sentences of Gargantua's
letter to his son on Education may very well be taken as representing
the serious side of Rabelais' views with regard to the place of
religion in education and his profound recognition of the utter
failure of any education which did not include moral training. His
golden words, "science without conscience is the ruin of the soul,"
have often been quoted. It is doubtful, however, whether most people
have realized how precious is the context in the midst of which these
words occur. The whole passage is well worth while for educators at
least to have near them:
{537}
"But because (according to the wise Solomon) wisdom entereth not
into a malicious soul, and science without conscience is but the
ruin of the soul, it behoveth thee to serve, love, and fear God, and
in Him to put all thy thoughts and all thy hope, and to cleave to
Him by faith formed of charity, so that thou mayest never be
separated from Him by sin.
"Hold in suspicion the deceits of the world. Set not thy heart on
vanity; for this life passeth away, but the Word of the Lord
endureth for ever. Be serviceable to all thy neighbors and love them
as thyself. Revere thy preceptors. Flee from the company of those
whom thou wouldst not resemble, and receive not in vain the graces
which God hath given thee.
"And when thou shalt perceive that thou hast attained unto all the
knowledge that is acquired in those parts, return unto me, that I
may see thee and give thee my blessing before I die.
"My son, the peace and grace of our Lord be with thee. Amen."
One of the important teachers at this time in France was Julius Caesar
Scaliger, born in Italy, particularly famous for the part that he took
in the controversy over Ciceronianism, and who defended Cicero from
the attacks of Erasmus, maintaining that the Latin orator was
absolutely perfect. Scaliger is notorious for having introduced the
bitterest kind of personalities into classical controversy.
Unfortunately, his example was widely followed. His son is the better
known Scaliger, but was only ten years old at the time our century
closes. His education gives an idea of the educational methods of the
century. When he was but fourteen he was required to produce daily a
short Latin declamation and to keep a written record of the perennial
flow of his father's Latin verse. It was thus that he acquired his
early mastery of Latin. But he was already conscious that "not to know
Greek was to know nothing" (Sandys).
In Spain there was a magnificent development of scholarship which
began to make itself felt shortly after the discovery of America.
Here, as elsewhere, contact with Italy gave the initiative. A Spanish
nobleman, Guzman, who visited Italy during the Council of Florence,
returned with translations of some of Cicero's works and of
Quintilian, and interest was {538} awakened. Antonio of Lebrixa,
commonly called Nebrisensis, after spending twenty years in Italy,
returned in 1473 to lecture at Seville, Salamanca and Alcala and to
publish grammars of Latin and Greek as well as Hebrew. After this
Barbosa, a pupil of Politian, taught Greek at Salamanca. Many of the
Spanish bishops who visited Rome in the performance of their
ecclesiastical obligations came back with manuscripts, and above all
with awakened interest in classical studies to scatter the seeds of
the New Learning. Indeed, this constituted a large factor in the great
movement for humanism in all the Western countries at this time.
The most important factor for Spanish culture and scholarship,
however, was the famous Cardinal Ximenes, sometimes known by his
family name of Cisneros. With a career of importance opening out
before him in the ecclesiastical life, Ximenes, who had been the Grand
Vicar to Cardinal Gonzales of Sigueenza, resigned that office to become
a Franciscan of the Strict Observance. His administrative ability soon
brought about his election as Guardian of his monastery, and he became
known among his brethren for his devotion to the spiritual life. The
year of the discovery of America he was selected as the confessor of
Queen Isabella. He accepted with the condition that he should be
allowed to live in his monastery and appear at Court only when sent
for. He had much to do with the successful appeal of Columbus to her
Majesty. Three years later he was chosen to succeed his friend Mendoza
as Archbishop of Toledo. This post carried with it the Chancellorship
of Castile at this time. Ximenes refused the dignity, and it was only
after six months of delay, and then in obedience to the express
command of the Pope, that he accepted it. As archbishop he continued
to live as a simple Franciscan, devoting the greater part of the
immense revenues attached to his see to the relief of the poor and
particularly for the redemption of captives. Just at this time the
activity of the Turks made this one of the burning social needs of the
time.
Ximenes was even reprimanded, it is said, by the Pope for neglecting
the external splendor that belonged to his rank. He would not wear an
episcopal dress, except in such a way {539} that his Franciscan habit
might remain visible underneath. His fulfilment of his duties as
Chancellor of Castile gave him ample opportunity for the exercise of
his administrative ability and demonstrated his power and high sense
of justice. He used his high office to the fullest extent to encourage
culture and above all classical studies. In 1504 he founded the
University of Alcala, obtaining some of the most distinguished
scholars from Bologna, Paris and the other Spanish universities to
fill its chairs. Practically all the religious orders established
houses at Alcala in connection with the University. Among those who
were attracted to Alcala was Nunez de Guzman, who brought out an
edition of Seneca that earned the praise of Lipsius, and who besides
suggested valuable emendations of Pliny's "Natural History." He also
published, mainly at the suggestion of Cardinal Ximenes, it is said,
an interlinear Latin rendering of Saint Basil's tract on the study of
Greek literature. He is known as Pincianus from Pintia, the ancient
name of Valladolid, his birthplace, and much of his enthusiasm for
classical studies had been derived from visits to Italy during which
he collected a number of manuscripts that he brought back with him as
precious treasures.
The great work of Cardinal Ximenes, however, was the publication under
his patronage of the first Polyglot Bible, known as the Complutensian
Polyglot from Complutum, the ancient name for Alcala. This occupied
fifteen years, cost an immense sum of money, considerably over a
million of dollars in our values, occupied a great many scholars,
attracted wide attention and above all created an interest in
linguistic studies that spread all over the country and was felt even
in other countries. This was completed only four months before the
Cardinal's death and was dedicated to Leo X. Most of the revenues of
his archbishopric, which had accumulated because of his careful use of
them, he left to his beloved University of Alcala. In spite of a
self-denial in the matter of food and drink that had been carried to
an extent which it was feared might injure his health, and what seemed
to many even at that time, a serious deprivation of sleep for prayer
and study, continued amid all his great administrative work,--for he
was often regent of the kingdom and displayed great ability in {540}
military organization--he lived to the age of eighty-one. He has been
honored as a saint, though this honor has never been confirmed by any
formal declaration.
After this, the development of scholarship was comparatively easy. Men
like Vives, Vergara, who published a Greek grammar, praised by many of
the scholars of the time and thoroughly appreciated by Scaliger, and
Sanchez, who was professor of Greek at Salamanca when he was but
thirty-one, carried on the New Learning. Sanchez' text-book on Latin
syntax called "The Minerva" came to be more used throughout Europe
than almost any other. Haase declared that he had done more for Latin
grammar than any of his predecessors, and Sir William Hamilton, the
English philosopher, even held that the study of "Minerva" with the
notes of the editors was more profitable than that of Newton's
_"Principia."_ Sandys notes that "it is at any rate written in good
Latin and the author shows a familiarity with the whole range of Latin
literature as well as Aristotle and Plato."
After this, indeed, grammar, the science of language, came to a great
extent to be under the domination of Spanish minds. Nunez, or as he is
known by his Latin name Nunnesius of Valencia, who studied in Paris
and was professor of Greek at Barcelona, was the author of an
interesting little Greek grammar which, according to Sandys, differs
little from those now used in schools. With the coming of the Jesuits,
Emmanuel Alvarez produced the Latin grammar in which for the first
time the principles of the language were formally laid down and the
fancies of ancient grammarians laid aside. It became the text-book in
all the Jesuit schools, has often been reprinted since, is the
foundation of all our modern Latin grammars and is said by experienced
teachers to surpass all its successors. Spain did not neglect other
phases of scholarship, however. Agostino, after graduation at
Salamanca, taught law at Padua and at Florence, became a member of the
Papal Tribunal in Rome, studying the inscriptions and ancient
monuments as well as the manuscripts of the old city. Later he became
the Bishop of Lerida and then Archbishop of Taragona. He published a
treatise on Roman Laws, often reprinted, but his masterpiece in
classical archaeology was his {541} book on coins, inscriptions and
other antiquities, published originally in Spanish and attracting
wide, popular attention.
Portugal follows in scholarship the rest of the peninsula and owed its
initiative to contact with Italian sources. Resende taught Greek at
Lisbon and Evora and counted among his pupils the famous Achilles
Statius, whose career comes mainly after the conclusion of Columbus'
Century, though he was twenty-six before the century closed and his
scholarship is a product of our period. He won his high reputation in
Rome by a work on ancient portraits and by commentaries on the _"Ars
Poetica"_ of Horace, when he was not yet thirty, and confirmed this by
subsequent fine work on Catullus and Tibullus. He was associated with
Muretus in an edition of _Propertius,_ and his studies on the
"Illustrious Men of Suetonius" attracted the attention of the learned
world of his time and was highly praised by Casaubon. The Jesuit
Father Alvarez, whose grammar I have already mentioned, though of
Spanish extraction, lived in Portugal and was educated and taught
there. The University of Coimbra took on renewed vigor just at the end
of Columbus' Century and its classical school became famous especially
under the Jesuits. The University became noted for its Teachers'
College, for graduates who purposed to follow teaching as a vocation,
and for its opportunities for the training of the teaching religious
orders.
England was often looked upon at the beginning of the Renaissance as
so distant from the centres of culture on the Continent that very
little was expected of her in scholarship. Of course, the same thing
was more or less true with regard to Germany, not because of distance
in space, but of speech. The peoples of the Latin languages felt a
brotherhood to each other which they did not share with the Germans or
English, whose speech it must be confessed, somewhat after the narrow
fashion of the Greeks of the older times towards all nations not Greek
in origin, they considered barbarous. It is always true that nations
quite fail to understand each other, and our own attitude toward Italy
at the present time, though the civilization and culture of the world
owes more to Italy than to all the other nations of modern history put
together, is typical of this constant tendency to national
misunderstanding. {542} The Italians were very much surprised to have
pupils from England rather early in Columbus' Century, and still more
surprised apparently to have them succeed admirably. They soon came to
appreciate them highly, and such men as Linacre, John Free and Caius
were even made teachers at Italian universities. Over and over again,
the Italians expressed their gratification at the spread of
scholarship among the English and their congratulations on their
success in the New Learning. The congratulations were amply deserved.
Bishop Creighton, in his "Early Renaissance in England," [Footnote 50]
says that the first English humanist was Lord Grey of Codnor, who went
from Balliol College to Cologne, which was famous at the time for its
general culture and education, but as he desired to get classical
culture more particularly, he stole away to Florence at night lest his
going should be hampered by the many friends that he had made at
Cologne. He found much of interest at Florence, ordered a library
there and then went to Padua, where he studied for a time. He was
attracted to Ferrara, however, by the reputation of Guarino, and from
there went to Rome, where the scholarly Nicholas V nominated him
Bishop of Ely. One of the next of the great English scholars was John
Free, a physician, whose expenses during his Italian trip were paid by
Lord Grey, and who had no less success among the Italian scholars. The
scholarly doctor was appointed Bishop of Bath in 1465, but died before
his consecration.
[Footnote 50: Cambridge University Press, 1895.]
Perhaps the most interesting feature of Italy's welcome for these
students from Britain, "which is situated outside the world," was the
absolutely unprejudiced way in which they were chosen to important
posts in the University in competition with the Italians. Reynold
Chicheley, who studied at Ferrara under Guarino, became Rector of the
universities there. John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, compelled to
leave England by political conditions at the beginning of the latter
half of the fifteenth century, went to Venice and to the Holy Land and
studied Latin at Padua, visited the aged Guarino at Ferrara, as Sandys
in his "History of Classical Scholarship" tells us, and heard
Argyropulos lecture on Greek. The Latin oration {543} which he
delivered in the presence of Pope Pius II (AEneas Sylvius) is said to
have drawn tears of joy from the eyes of the Pope because of the
feeling of satisfaction that classical scholarship was now a world
possession.
Erasmus, who was certainly in a position to judge both because of his
own scholarship and his many years of residence in England, wrote a
letter in December, 1499, to a friend in Italy in highest praise of
English scholarship. It is a panegyric of his English friends, but it
is a glorious tribute:
"I have found in England . . . so much learning and culture, and
that of no common kind, but recondite, exact and ancient, Latin and
Greek, that I now hardly want to go to Italy, except to see it. When
I listen to my friend Colet, I can fancy I am listening to Plato
himself. Who can fail to admire Grocyn, with all his encyclopaedic
erudition? Can anything be more acute, more profound, more refined,
than the judgment of Linacre? Has nature ever moulded anything
gentler, pleasanter, or happier, than the mind of Thomas More?"
In England, as elsewhere, the Reformation worked sad havoc on
education. The confiscation of educational endowments and the
suppression of monasteries and the scattering of their libraries
almost put an end to scholarship in England. The descent in education
continued until the end of the eighteenth century. Only in the past
hundred years has England begun to recover lost ground.
At this time men mainly studied Latin, but towards the end of the
fifteenth century they took up Greek, The first Englishman who studied
Greek in the revival of learning was William Selling, a Benedictine
monk. Sandys tells us that "Night and day he was haunted by the vision
of Italy, that next to Greece was the nursing mother of men of
genius." He was the uncle of Linacre, who had the privilege of
accompanying him on his embassy to the Pope in 1485. Modern English
classical scholarship in both Greek and Latin begins with Linacre and
his two friends, William Grocyn and William Latimer. Latimer was a
great friend of Sir Thomas More. The younger of the group of English
Greek scholars was William Lily, who, while on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem, studied Greek in Rhodes. He was one of the poor scholars of
history {544} who worked his way through school in the midst of all
kinds of difficulties and privations. While earning his living in
Venice he succeeded in keeping up his studies.
Grocyn was one of the greatest of the Greek scholars of this
generation in Europe. He proved that the book known as the
"Ecclesiastical Hierarchy" was not by Dionysius the Areopagite, to
whom it had been so long attributed, and thus gave the first proof of
the critical scholarship of English students of Greek. Still another
distinguished Greek scholar was John Fisher, afterwards Bishop Fisher,
whose patron, Lady Margaret, under his direction did so much for
education and particularly for classical scholarship in England.
{545}
APPENDIX I
SIR THOMAS MORE AND MAN'S SOCIAL PROBLEMS
There is a very general impression that this is the first time in
history that the general social problems of humanity have been taken
seriously and solutions of them deliberately sought. At least there is
a very prevalent feeling that no generation before our time recognized
all of these problems so well as we do and seriously tried to reach
rational solutions in spite of vested interests of all kinds and
old-time prejudices and traditions. Because Sir Thomas More's "Utopia"
represents a complete contradiction of this complacent attitude of
mind toward our sociological interests, it seems worth while to quote
here a series of passages from his book which illustrate very well how
as a young man of twenty-seven he faced all our social problems, which
are of course those of humanity at all times when in a reasonably
civilized condition, and saw as clearly as anyone has ever done, and
expressed quite as thoroughly, the rational solutions of them.
Perhaps the most surprising passage is that with regard to religious
toleration, which in Utopia was complete. It has often been said that
More himself afterwards, as Lord Chancellor, violated his own
principles in the matter, but he has been ably defended from such
imputations by some of the best lawyers of England. The supposed stain
on his character is due to religious prejudices in those who write.
After religion, the question of armament for nations is More's most
important contribution to political science, and there is a full
discussion of the evil of standing armies and of the foolish reasons
for keeping the nations on a war footing. As might be expected, there
is severe condemnation of the vulgar display of such objects as costly
precious stones, and More has the children of the Utopians even make
great fun of such childish barbaric tendencies. The over-value of gold
is laughed to scorn. More's idea of a certificate of health before
marriage anticipates many eugenic ideas of our day in a very simple
way. The future Lord Chancellor had a fine appreciation for
physicians, though surprisingly enough not so much for his own
profession of lawyer, and his descriptions of the hospitals of Utopia
shows how thoroughly they comprehended what a hospital should be and
how little there is of any development in our modern plans for
hospitals, though we are so inclined to think of these as a great
evolution in hospital construction.
{546}
There are many other phases of thought that he introduces which are
extremely interesting in our time. Indeed one can scarcely turn a page
of the "Utopia" without finding that it fulfils what James Russell
Lowell suggested as at least the accidental definition of a classic
when he said that "to read a classic is to read a commentary on the
morning paper." The books the Utopians were interested in show More's
own breadth of interest in great literature, and the fact that the
great scientific writers are included contradicts many modern notions
as to the limitations of intellectual curiosity at this time. In
Utopia they reject astrology, have music during meals, which are
prepared in common, saving much time for the individuals, think that
discipline is the watchword of education, have invented door springs,
care for their forests, anticipating all our conservation ideas, and
divided their time so that there is six hours of work and eight hours
of sleep and the rest for culture and recreation. These are but
examples chosen at random of the surprises that meet one constantly in
the book.
The passage with regard to religious toleration is all the more
striking because, written in 1515, or at the latest 1516, it
represents his opinion before the beginning of Luther's disturbance
and just before that series of disturbances began in Europe which
during the next three centuries was to prove of such serious detriment
to art and literature and education, as well as the politics of
Europe. It runs as follows:
"At the first constitution of their government, Utopus having
understood that before his coming among them the old inhabitants had
been engaged in great quarrels concerning religion, by which they
were so divided among themselves that he found it an easy thing to
conquer them, since, instead of uniting their forces against him,
every different party in religion fought by themselves. After he had
subdued them he made a law that every man might be of what religion
he pleased, and might endeavor to draw others to it by the force of
argument and by amicable and modest ways, but without bitterness
against those of other opinions; but that he ought to use no other
force but that of persuasion, and was neither to mix with it
reproaches nor violence; and such as did otherwise were to be
condemned to banishment or slavery.
"This law was made by Utopus, not only for preserving the public
peace, which he saw suffered much by daily contentions and
irreconcilable heats, but because he thought the interest of
religion itself required it. He judged it not fit to determine
anything rashly, and seemed to doubt whether those different forms
of religion might not all come from God, who might inspire man in a
different manner, and be pleased with this variety; he therefore
thought it indecent and foolish for any man to threaten and terrify
another to make him believe what did not appear to him true. And
supposing that only one religion was really true, and the rest
false, he imagined that the native force of truth would at last
break forth and shine bright, if supported only by the strength of
argument and attended to with a gentle and {547} unprejudiced mind;
while, on the other hand, if debates were carried on with violence
and tumults, as the most wicked are always the most obstinate, so
the best and most holy religion might be choked with superstition,
as corn is with briars and thorns; he therefore left men wholly to
their liberty, that they might be free to believe as they should see
cause; only he made a solemn and severe law against such as should
so far degenerate from the dignity of human nature as to think that
our souls died with our bodies, or that the world was governed by
chance, without a wise over-ruling Providence: for they all formerly
believed that there was a state of rewards and punishments to the
good and bad after this life; and they now look on those that think
otherwise as scarce fit to be counted men, since they degrade so
noble a being as the soul, and reckon it no better than a beast's:
thus they are far from looking on such men as fit for human society,
or to be citizens of a well-ordered commonwealth; since a man of
such principles must needs, as oft as he dares to do it, despise all
their laws and customs: for there is no doubt to be made, that a man
who is afraid of nothing but the law, and apprehends nothing after
death, will not scruple to break through all the laws of his
country, either by fraud or force, when by this means he may satisfy
his appetites. They never raise any that hold these maxims, either
to honors or to offices, nor employ them in any public trust, but
despise them as men of base and sordid minds. Yet they do not punish
them, because they lay this down as a maxim, that a man cannot make
himself believe anything he pleases; nor do they drive any to
dissemble their thoughts by threatenings, so that men are not
tempted to lie or disguise their opinions; which being a sort of
fraud, is abhorred by the Utopians: they take care indeed to prevent
their disputing in defence of these opinions, especially before the
common people: but they suffer, and even encourage them to dispute
concerning them in private with their priest and other grave men,
being confident that they will be cured of those mad opinions by
having reason laid before them."
Standing armies would seem to be a subject that would interest
statesmen mainly in the present time. It would rather be expected that
we had evolved the arguments we now use against them in comparatively
recent years. Some of Sir Thomas More's remarks then are extremely
interesting because they show the problem as we have it fairly stated
and the reasons for and against armies set forth very simply, but very
emphatically. Four hundred years has made no difference in the
situation, though we are prone to think of evolution as having made
great changes in that length of time. Only the evils have been
emphasized. More said at the beginning almost of his "Utopia":
"In France there is yet a more pestiferous sort of people, for the
whole country is full of soldiers, still kept up in time of peace
(if such a state of nation can be called a peace); and these are
kept in pay upon the same account that you plead for those idle
retainers upon noblemen: this being a maxim of those pretended
statesmen, that it is necessary for public safety to have a good
body of veteran soldiers ever in readiness. They think raw men {548}
are not to be depended on, and they sometimes seek occasions for
making war, that they may train up their soldiers in the art of
cutting throats, or, as Sallust observed, 'for keeping their hands
in use, that they may not grow dull by too long an intermission.'
But France has learned to its cost how dangerous it is to feed such
beasts. The fate of the Romans, Carthaginians and Syrians, and many
other nations and cities, which were both overturned and quite
ruined by those standing armies, should make others wiser."
And still we can find no better reason for large armies than what
Thucydides called [Greek text], "the balanced fear," which we have
come to designate by the courtlier term, the balance of power.
The passage in "Utopia" in which More discusses the wearing of fine
clothes and of precious stones and jewels has often been quoted. After
400 years it will still come home with great force to all those who
think seriously on the subject. Of course it is literal common sense,
but then what has common sense ever availed against fashion? The
mid-African wears brass rings and fancy calico because they are hard
to get and expensive and therefore give distinction to their wearer.
His cultured European brother--and sister--wears what is equally
childish and barbaric because costly and distinctive and will
doubtless continue to do so. Sir Thomas More's ideas on the subject
are interesting, but will fall on quite as deaf ears in our generation
as in all the others since his time.
"I never saw a clearer instance of the opposite impressions that
different customs make on people than I observed in the ambassadors
of the Anemolians, who came to Amaurot when I was there. As they
came to treat of affairs of great consequence, the deputies from
several towns met together to wait for their coming. The ambassadors
of the nations that lie near Utopia, knowing their customs and that
fine clothes are in no esteem among them, that silk is despised, and
gold is a badge of infamy, used to come very modestly clothed; but
the Anemolians, lying more remote, and having had little commerce
with them, understanding that they were coarsely clothed, and all in
the same manner, took it for granted that they had none of these
fine things among them of which they made no use; and they, being a
vainglorious rather than a wise people, resolved to set themselves
out with so much pomp that they should look like gods and strike the
eyes of the poor Utopians with their splendor. Thus three
ambassadors made their entry with a hundred attendants, all clad in
garments of different colours, and the greater part in silk; the
ambassadors themselves, who were of the nobility of their country,
were in cloth of gold, and adorned with massy chains, earrings, and
rings of gold; their caps were covered with bracelets set full of
pearls and other gems--in a word, they were set out with all those
things that among the Utopians were either the badges of slavery,
the marks of infamy, or the playthings of children. It was not
unpleasant to see, on the one side, how they looked big, when they
compared their rich habits with the plain clothes of the {549}
Utopians, who were come out in great numbers to see them make their
entry; and, on the other, to observe how much they were mistaken in
the impression which they hoped this pomp would have made on them.
It appeared so ridiculous a show to all that they never stirred out
of their country, and had not seen the customs of other nations,
that though they paid some reverence to those that were the most
meanly clad, as if they had been the ambassadors, yet when they saw
the ambassadors themselves so full of gold and chains, they looked
upon them as slaves and forbore to treat them with reverence. You
might have seen the children who were grown big enough to despise
their playthings, and who had thrown away their jewels, call to
their mothers, push them gently, and cry out, 'See that great fool,
that wears pearls and gems as if he were yet a child!' while their
mothers very innocently replied, 'Hold your peace! this, I believe,
is one of the ambassadors' fools.' Others censured the fashion of
their chains, and observed, 'that they were of no use, for they were
too slight to bind their slaves, who could easily break them; and,
besides, hung so loose about them that they thought it easy to throw
them away, and so get from them.' But after the ambassadors had
stayed a day among them, and saw so vast a quantity of gold in their
houses (which was as much despised by them as it was esteemed in
other nations), and beheld more gold and silver in the chains and
fetters of one slave than all their ornaments amounted to, their
plumes fell, and they were ashamed of all that glory for which they
had formerly valued themselves, and accordingly laid it aside--a
resolution that they immediately took when, on their engaging in
some free discourse with the Utopians, they discovered their sense
of such things and their other customs. The Utopians wonder how any
man should be so much taken with the glaring, doubtful lustre of a
jewel or a stone, that can look up to a star or to the sun himself;
or how any should value himself because his cloth is made of a finer
thread; for, how fine soever that thread may be, it was once no
better than the fleece of a sheep, and that sheep was a sheep still,
for all its wearing it." (John G. Saxe told the last generation how
great a difference it made whether one wore the product of an India
plant or an India worm.)
Immediately following this there is almost a more striking passage
with regard to wealth and the changes that it makes in the attitude of
the minds of men towards one another that would seem surely to have
been written by a modern socialist.
"They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a
thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed that even man, for whom
it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of
less value than this metal; that a man of lead, who has no more
sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he is foolish, should
have many wise and good men to serve him, only because he has a
great heap of that metal; and that if it should happen that by some
accident or trick of law (which sometimes reduces as great changes
as chance itself) all this wealth should pass from the master to the
meanest varlet of his whole family, he himself would very soon
become one of his servants, as if he were a thing that belonged to
his wealth, and so were bound to follow {550} its fortune! But they
much more admire and detest the folly of those who, when they see a
rich man, though they neither owe him anything, nor are in any sort
dependent on his bounty, yet, merely because he is rich, give him
little less than divine honors, even though they know him to be so
covetous and base-minded that, notwithstanding all his wealth, he
will not part with one farthing of it to them as long as he lives!"
Perhaps his greatest contribution to social ethics and the solution of
social problems is to be found in his emphatic assertion of the right
of the laborer to a living wage in the best sense of that much abused
term and his insistent deprecation of the fact that laborers must not
be exploited so as to enable men to accumulate great wealth that is
sure to be abused. More believed in profit-sharing very heartily and
had no hesitation in expressing himself. Above all, he deprecates the
injustice worked by predatory wealth. It was the judicial mind of the
greatest Lord Chancellor England has ever had, who, after speaking of
the Utopian state as "that which alone of good right may claim and
take upon it the name of commonwealth," continues:
"Here now would I see, if any man dare be so bold as to compare with
this equity, the justice of other nations; among whom, I forsake
God, if I can find any sign or token of equity and justice. For what
justice is this, that a rich goldsmith, or an usurer, or to be
short, any of them which either do nothing at all, or else that
which they do is such that it is not very necessary to the
commonwealth, should have a pleasant and a wealthy living, either by
idleness or unnecessary business, when in the meantime poor
laborers, carters, ironsmiths, carpenters, and ploughmen, by so
great and continual toil, as drawing and bearing beasts be scant
able to sustain, and again so necessary toil, that without it no
commonwealth were able to continue and endure one year, should get
so hard and poor a living, and live so wretched and miserable a
life, that the state and condition of the laboring beasts may seem
much better and healthier? . . . And yet besides this the rich men,
not only by private fraud but also by common laws, do every day
pluck and snatch away from the poor some part of their daily living.
. . . They invent and devise all means and manner of crafts, first
how to keep safely without fear of losing that they have unjustly
gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor
of the poor for as little money as may be. These devices when the
rich men have decreed to be kept and observed under color of the
commonalty, that is to say, also of the poor people, then they be
made laws. . . . Therefore when I consider and weigh in my mind all
these commonwealths which nowadays anywhere do flourish, so God help
me, I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men
procuring their own commodities under the name and title of
commonwealth."
Everywhere one finds supreme common sense. For instance, Sir Thomas
More points out that while the Utopians "knew astronomy and were
perfectly acquainted with the motions of the {551} heavenly bodies;
and of many instruments, well contrived and divided, by which they
very accurately compute the course and positions of the sun, moon and
stars; but for the cheat of divining by the stars, by their
oppositions or conjunctions, it has not so much as entered into their
thoughts." This sentence was written about the time that Copernicus
was working out his conclusions with regard to the Universe as we now
know it. Most people might presume that astrology had by this time
lost all its weight. More than a century later, however, Galileo and
Kepler were drawing up horoscopes, and astrology was very commonly
accepted during the seventeenth century. Even in the eighteenth
century, Mesmer wrote a thesis for his doctorate at the University of
Vienna on the influence of the stars on human constitutions. The
really great thinkers in humanity had all of them refused to accept
astrology, but it is a tribute to the genius of this man of
thirty-seven who had been trained at the law to have reached so true a
conclusion.
Almost any page of "Utopia" furnishes a quotation that shows how
penetrating was More's view of the significance of life not alone for
his own time, but for all time. Literally I turned over the page from
the quotation with regard to astrology and find this: "A life of
pleasure is either a real evil, and in that case we ought not to
assist others in their pursuit of it, but on the contrary to keep them
from it all we can as from that which is most hurtful and deadly; or
if it is a good thing, so that we not only may but ought to help
others to it, why then ought not a man to begin with himself?" He has
many sentences on that page with reference to the philosophy of what
we now call learnedly hedonism. "They infer that if a man ought to
advance the welfare and comfort of the rest of mankind, nature much
more vigorously leads them to do this for themselves. They define
virtue to be living according to nature, so they imagine that nature
prompts all people on to seek after pleasure as the end of all they
do."
Ideas with regard to many modern questions are touched on only in
passing and yet with sufficient detail to make us realize that
problems that we are sometimes likely to think of as new were faced
and solved in that older time. For instance, the question of
afforestation and the necessity for keeping up a readily available
supply of wood is touched on.
"For one may there see reduced to practice not only all the art that
the husbandman employs in manuring and improving an ill soil, but
whole woods plucked up by the roots, and in other places new ones
planted, where there were none before. Their principal motive for
this is the convenience of carriage, that their timber may be either
near their towns or growing on the banks of the sea, or of some
rivers, so as to be floated to them; for it is a harder work to
carry wood at a distance over land than corn."
{552}
One might think that perhaps so practical a man as More would not
believe in the usefulness of books for his ideal republic and it might
even be thought that, devoted to law and to politics, he would not be
over-familiar with the classic authors. Here is his paragraph on the
subject, however, that reveals at once his estimation and his tastes.
"I happened to carry a great many books with me, instead of
merchandise, when I sailed my fourth voyage; for I was so far from
thinking of soon coming back that I rather thought never to have
returned at all, and I gave them all my books, among which were many
of Plato's and some of Aristotle's works: I had also Theophrastus on
'Plants,' which, to my great regret, was imperfect; for having laid
it carelessly by, while we were at sea, a monkey had seized upon it,
and in many places torn out the leaves. They have no books of
grammar but Lascaris, for I did not carry Theodoras with me; nor
have they any dictionaries but Hesichius and Dioscorides. They
esteem Plutarch highly, and were much taken with Lucian's wit and
with his pleasant way of writing. As for the poets, they have
Aristophanes, Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles of Aldus's edition;
and for historians, Thucydides, Herodotus and Herodian."
His description of how the Utopians divide up their time is
interesting from many standpoints. Six hours of work, eight hours of
sleep and the rest to be employed in learned leisure with lectures,
sports, games and various exercises is indeed an ideal that human
nature would find hard to surpass at any period of the world's
history. Such a division would probably make for human health and
happiness better than anything that has ever been tried.
"But they, dividing the day and the night into twenty-four hours,
appoint six of these for work, three of which are before dinner and
three after; they then sup, and at eight o'clock, counting from
noon, go to bed and sleep eight hours: the rest of the time, besides
that taken up in work, eating, and sleeping, is left to every man's
discretion; yet they are not to abuse that interval to luxury and
idleness, but must employ it in some proper exercise, according to
their various inclinations, which is, for the most part, reading. It
is ordinary to have public lectures every morning before daybreak, at
which none are obliged to appear but those who are marked out for
literature; yet a great many, both men and women, of all ranks, go
to hear lectures of one sort or other, according to their
inclinations: but if others that are not made for contemplation,
choose rather to employ themselves at that time in their trades, as
many of them do, they are not hindered, but are rather commended, as
men that take care to serve their country. After supper they spend
an hour in some diversion, in summer in their gardens, and in winter
in the halls where they eat, where they entertain each other with
music or discourse. They do not so much as know dice, or any such
foolish or mischievous games. They have, however, two sorts of games
not unlike our chess."
{553}
Probably the most striking testimony to the life and character of Sir
Thomas More is to be found in the fact that writers who have studied
his career most carefully are agreed that he exemplified all the great
principles that he has laid down in his "Utopia" in his own
environment and family life. Maurice Adams, in his Introduction to the
Camelot edition of the "Utopia," says:
"Utopia was but the author's home writ large. His beautiful house,
on the river side at Chelsea, was, through his delight in social
life and music, and through the wit and merriment of his nature, a
dwelling of joy and mirth as well as of study and thought. It often
rang with song, and was cheery with the laughter of children and
grandchildren, he himself, in his own words, 'being merry, jocund
and pleasant among them.' Erasmus, who was often his guest, has
given us many delightful glimpses of his family life, of his
children and their tasks, and the monkey and rabbits which amused
their leisure. To the solitary and ever-wandering Erasmus, More's
house was a haven of refuge from the discomforts and vexations of
his bachelor existence. In one of his epistles he writes, 'More has
built near London, upon the Thames, a modest yet commodious mansion.
There he lives, surrounded by his numerous family, including his
wife, his son and his son's wife, his three daughters and their
husbands, with eleven grandchildren. There is not any man living so
affectionate to his children as he, and he loveth his old wife as if
she were a girl of fifteen. Such is the excellence of his
disposition that whatever happeneth that could not be helped, he is
as cheerful and as well pleased as though the best thing possible
had been done. In More's house you would say that Plato's academy
was revived again, only, whereas in the academy the discussion
turned upon geometry and the power of numbers, the house at Chelsea
is a veritable school of Christian religion. In it is none, man or
woman, but readeth or studieth the liberal arts, yet is their chief
care of piety. There is never any seen idle; the head of the house
governs it: not only by a lofty carriage and oft rebukes, but by
gentleness and amiable manners. Every member is busy in his place,
performing his duty with alacrity; nor is sober mirth wanting."
APPENDIX II
AFTER THE REFORMATION
It is such a commonplace of history as written in English, at least,
that the beginnings of our modern progress are to be traced to the
time when the movement called the Reformation freed men's minds from
the domination of the Church, which had used every effort to keep men
in darkness in order to secure their readier submission to Church
teaching, that the tracing of all our modern developments to the
century before the movement began may surprise many readers. Not only
is it true, however, that for nearly a hundred years before the
Reformation was there a climax of intellectual and artistic
achievement in every department in every {554} country in Europe, but
what is much more striking is that immediately after the "reform"
movement set in, decadence made itself felt everywhere. Art in all its
phases, painting, sculpture, architecture, education and scholarship,
literature, and, above all, humanitarianism, reached magnificent
expression during the first three quarters of Columbus' Century. In
the fourth quarter, coincident with the spread of the reforming
doctrines, decadence begins in nearly every phase of human activity
and continues until the revolutions of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries gave a new stimulus to independent thinking. It
has seemed necessary, owing to the position taken in the preceding
pages, to illustrate these facts by quotations from well-known
non-Catholic writers.
No fallacy is cheaper than that of arguing because one set of events
happens after another, therefore it is due to that other. It would
take a much deeper and broader study of history than any that we have
made here, or could make in our limited space, to trace the philosophy
of the history of Columbus' Century and the succeeding centuries and
to indicate the causes at work and their effects. All that can be
pointed out here is that the facts of intellectual history represent
an exact contradiction to the usually accepted impression that
whatever is best in the modern time can be traced to the Reformation.
On the contrary, immediately after the reform movement, human
achievement declined for many generations, and the revival of the past
hundred years represents a reversion to ideas and modes of thought
current before the religious revolt and the evolution of which was
interrupted by that movement.
EDUCATION, BOOKS, INSTITUTIONS
An historical opinion which is considered by a great many people who
are sure that they are well informed to be quite above all question,
is that the Reformation had a wonderfully beneficial effect on
education. As a matter of fact, education, which had been at a very
high degree of cultivation during the Renaissance period, began to
decline immediately after the Reformation nearly everywhere in Europe,
and only for the schools of the Jesuits, would have reached a serious
depth of degradation. As it was, there is a steep descent in the
Protestant countries, until in the eighteenth century Cardinal Newman
thought that education at Oxford was at its lowest possible ebb, and
when Winckelmann wanted to teach Greek in Germany he had to have his
pupils write out copies of Plato, because no edition of the author had
been issued in that country for two centuries. Authorities in the
history of education have emphasized this, and no one more so than
Professor Paulsen, who, after a wide academic experience throughout
Germany, held at the end of his life the chair of philosophy at the
University of Berlin. His book on the history of German education was
{555} translated into English and published with an introduction by
President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University. One does not
have to go very far in it before finding the great German authority's
opinion with regard to the influence of the Reformation on education.
He says:
"After 1520, Humanism, an aristocratic and secular impulse, was
overtaken and succeeded by a movement of vastly greater power and
depth, the religious and popular movement of the Reformation. For a
brief space the Reformation may well have seemed a reinforcement of
Humanism, united as both these were in their hatred of scholastic
philosophy and of Rome. Hutton and Luther are represented in
pamphlets of the year 1520 as the two great champions of freedom.
Inwardly, however, they were very different men, and very different
were the goals to which they sought to lead the German people.
Luther was a man of inward anti-rationalistic and
anti-ecclesiastical religious feeling, and Hutton a man of
rationalistic and libertinistic humanism. Hutton did not live to see
the manifestation of this great contrast; but after 1522 or 1523,
the eyes of the Humanists were open to the fact, and almost without
exception they turned away from the Reformation as from something
yet more hostile to learning than the old Church herself. In very
truth, it appeared for the time as if the Reformation would be in
its effects essentially hostile to culture. In the fearful tumults
between 1520 and 1530 the universities and schools came to an almost
complete standstill, and with the Church fell the institutions of
learning which she had brought forth, so that Erasmus might well
say, 'Where Lutheranism reigns, there is an end of letters.'"
Those who hold a brief for the Reformation and its much vaunted
beneficent influence on education may be tempted to retort that at
least the German religious movement gave liberty of teaching to the
German University. It is a constantly emphasized Protestant tradition
that the incubus of the Church on teaching institutions before this
time had been most serious in its consequences, and that developments
in education had been prevented because of this. Those who assume that
the reformers, so-called, introduced academic liberty into Germany
will find very little support for any such claim in Professor Paulsen.
Paulsen insists that exactly the opposite is true, and that far from
bringing freedom of thought, the new religious movement still further
shackled university and teaching freedom and the liberty of speech and
writing, so that a sadly stilted period of educational development
comes on the scene in Germany. He talks from the standpoint of his own
department of philosophy, and evidently resents the shackles that were
placed on freedom of speculation at this period.
"During this period also a more determined effort was made to
control instruction than at any period before or since. The fear of
heresy, the extra anxiety to keep instruction well within orthodox
lines, was not less intense at the Lutheran than at the Catholic
institutions--perhaps it was even more so, because here doctrine
{556} was not so well established, apostasy was possible in either
of two directions, Catholicity or Calvinism. Even the philosophic
faculty felt the pressure of this demand for correctness of
doctrines. Thus came about these restrictions within the petty
States and their narrow-minded established churches, which well-nigh
stifled the intellectual life of the German people."
A good deal of the misunderstanding of the effect of the reform
movement on education is due to the fact that the novelty of the
reformers' doctrines in religion and theology led to the use sometimes
of the term, the New Learning, for their teaching. The same term,
however, had come to be used for the study of the Latin and Greek
classics, and the supposed opposition of the Church to the humanistic
teachings is founded on the confusion of these two terms. Of course
the ecclesiastics of the old Church opposed the New Learning in as far
as it related to the reformers' doctrines with regard to free will,
the lack of merit in good works and denials of other religious
doctrines. They were, however, the most ardent patrons of the New
Learning in as far as that term may be applied to the study of the
classics. As a matter of fact, the Jesuits, founded at this time,
based all their teaching on the classics and their schools spread all
over Europe.
As to the lack of interest in books, in education, in scholarship,
even in the preservation of the great monuments of national literature
after the change of religion in England, the easiest way to know it is
to read Bishop Bale's account of what happened to the valuable books
which had belonged to the old monastic and educational institutions at
the Reformation. He approved of the suppression of the monasteries and
was an ardent reformer, but he cannot help calling attention to the
absolute neglect of the treasures of literature, not only on the part
of the nobility and the common people, but on the part of the very
universities themselves. It is easy to understand what an awful state
of affairs there must have been to draw this indignant protest from so
good a king's man and follower of the new order and protestant against
everything Catholic. Bishop Bale said, in his preface to Leland's "New
Year's Gift to Henry VIII," in 1549:
"Never had we been offended for the loss of our libraries, being so
many in number and in so desolate places, for the more part, if the
chief monuments and most notable works of our excellent writers had
been preserved. If there had been in every shire of England but one
solemn library for the preservation of those noble works and
preferment of good learning in our posterity, it had been yet
somewhat. But to destroy all without consideration, a great number
of them which purchased those superstitions mansions reserved of
those library books . . . some to scour their candlesticks, and some
to rub their boots. Some they sold to the grocers and soap-sellers,
and some over sea to the book-binders, not in small number, but at
times whole ships full to the wondering of {557} the foreign
nations. Yea, the universities of this realm are not all clear in
this detestable fact. But cursed is . . .(he) which seeketh to be
fed with such ungodly gains and so deeply shameth his natural
country. I know a merchant man, which shall at this time be
nameless, that bought the contents of two noble libraries for forty
shillings' price, a shame it is to be spoken. This stuff hath he
occupied in the stead of gray paper by the space of more than these
ten years, and yet he hath store enough for as many years to come. I
judge this to be true, and utter it with heaviness, that neither the
Britains under the Romans and Saxons, nor yet the English people
under the Danes and Normans, had ever such damage of their learned
monuments as we have seen in our time."
It used to seem some condonation of these sad evils to say that the
suppression of the monasteries was brought because of the evil lives
of the monks. Protestant historians were wont to proclaim that they
were plague-spots of immorality which had to be eradicated. The
careful investigation of historians in our time has completely refuted
any such conclusion as this. A few of the smaller monasteries were
found not to be living up to their high ideals. A few, but a very few
monks, were found to be unworthy of their calling. Even with all the
desire that there was to discredit them, nothing could be found to say
against the greater monasteries, and the governments had to employ
other means in order to bring about their suppression with some shadow
of legality. Creatures of the king were forced into the position of
abbot and then by prearrangement surrendered the monasteries and their
possessions to the crown. Every advance in critical history in modern
times has tended more and more to the vindication of the monks.
An American in our own time might well be expected to hold the balance
straight without disturbance from old-time prejudices. Rev. Dr. George
Hedges, Dean of the Episcopal Theological School, of Cambridge, Mass.,
in his "Fountains Abbey: The Story of a Medieval Monastery," said (p.
88):
"The quiet judgment of the modern historian is in favor of the
monks, and finds most of them to have been men of respectable and
pious lives. The sober persons in white cassocks, who confessed
faults in the chapter meeting and cheerfully suffered chastisement
for them to which the man in the street gave not a moment's thought,
had a passionate longing to be good. They were intent upon the
living of a righteous life."
He says, further quoting from Burke, "An enemy is a bad witness; a
robber is a worse."
EFFECT ON ART
It is generally recognized now that the religious revolt ruined art.
Religion had supplied the motives for great art, but most of these,
and especially the tender feeling of reverence for the Mother of God
and of the saints and the belief in angels, disappeared at {558} this
time or were sadly hampered in their expression, and the whole
tendency of the reform movement was iconoclastic. Image worship was
one of the bitterest imputations against the old Church. It is
curiously interesting to note that just in as much as art has
developed in Protestant countries again, the churches have been raised
from bare conventicles and meeting-houses to shrines of artistic
beauty once more. It must not be forgotten, however, that this is
quite contrary to the "protests" that were originally made against the
old Church and that the ideas involved in this rejection of art in the
Church, helped to lead many in artistic uncultured minds away from
Catholicity in that time of storm and stress.
In his chapter on Parish Life in England in his well-known book,
"Before the Great Pillage," Rev. Augustus Jessop, who in spite of his
bitter condemnation of what happened at and after the Reformation, has
never, I believe, become a Catholic, tells of the marvellous beauty of
the Church structures in the ages which used to be called dark and are
now known to be full of light, and then tells what happened after the
so-called Reformation.
_"And we get fairly bewildered by the astonishing wealth of skill
and artistic taste and aesthetic feeling which there must have been
in this England of ours, in times which till lately we had assumed
to be barbaric times._ Bewildered, I say, because we cannot
understand how it all came to a dead stop in a single generation,
not knowing that the frightful spoliation of our churches and other
parish buildings, and the outrageous plunder of the parish guilds in
the reign of Edward the Sixth by the horrible band of robbers that
carried on their detestable work, effected such a hideous
obliteration, such a clean sweep of the precious treasures that were
dispersed in rich profusion over the whole land, that a dull despair
of ever replacing what had been ruthlessly pillaged crushed the
spirit of the whole nation, and _art died out in rural England, and
King Whitewash and Queen Ugliness ruled supreme for centuries."_
(Italics ours.)
Under art is, of course, included sculpture and architecture, as well
as many of the artistic crafts. It is easy to understand that under
the influence of the carping spirit of the Reformation all of these
became decadent. Men gave up old-time faith for individual judgment of
religious truth. The sterilizing influence of the controversial period
which followed can be readily understood. Gerhard Hauptmann, the
German dramatic poet, to whom the Nobel Prize for literature was
recently awarded, characterized this decadence of art under the
reformers in a very striking passage.
"I, as a Protestant, have often had to regret that we purchased our
freedom of conscience, our individual liberty, at entirely too high
a price. In order to make room for a small, mean little plant of
personal life we destroyed a whole garden of fancy, and hewed down a
virgin forest of esthetic ideas. We went even so far {559} in the
insanity of our weakness as to throw out of the garden of our souls
the fruitful soil that had been accumulating for thousands of years,
or else we ploughed it under sterile clay.
"We have to-day, then, an intellectual culture that is well
protected by a hedge of our personality, but within this hedge we
have only delicate dwarf trees and unworthy plants, the poor progeny
of great predecessors. We have telegraph lines, bridges and railroads,
but there grow no churches and cathedrals, only sentry boxes and
barracks. We need gardeners who will cause the present sterilizing
process of the soil to stop and will enrich the surface by working
up into it the rich layers beneath. In my workroom there is ever
before me the photograph of St. Sebald's tomb. This rich German
symbol arose from the invisible in the most luxurious developmental
period of German art. As a formal product of that art, it is very
difficult to appreciate it as it deserves. It seems to me as one of
the most wonderful bits of work in the whole field of artistic
accomplishment. The soul of all the great medieval period enwraps
this silver coffin, giving to it a noble unity, and enthrones on the
very summit of Death, Life as a growing child. Such a work could
only have come to its perfection in the protected spaces of the old
Mother Church."
All the arts of decoration suffered similarly and no art failed to be
affected unfavorably. Music, which had had one great period of
development in the old Plain Chant in the later Middle Ages under
ecclesiastical influence, was just entering on another and glorious
development under the patronage of the Church when the reform movement
began. Plain song had given such masterpieces as the Lamentations, of
which Rockstro said that no sadder succession of single notes had ever
been put together, and the Exultet sung in the Mass on Holy Saturday,
which he declares represents a similarly high expression of joy. Now
figured and harmonic music was about to have its place. Palestrina's
Masses and St. Philip Neri's Oratorios were just beginning. The
reformers, however, would have nothing to do with music.
Congregational singing was adopted from the old Church, but for music
as an art to uplift religion and add its tribute of devotion there was
no place. Part song had originated in Church ceremonials, as dramatic
literature originated in the ceremonies connected with the celebration
of the various mysteries. Like every other human and natural
aspiration, music was under suspicion in the new religion, and the
consequence was a serious detriment to the development of the art. It
was not until the gradual loosening of the bonds of the Puritanic
elements in the Protestant religion that music began to come to her
own again.
DECLINE OF CHARITY
In humanitarianism and the solution of social problems, the
Reformation was particularly backward. The leaders in the new
religions were so intent upon explaining their own doctrines and modes
of thinking and gathering disciples and having other people {560}
think as they did, that charitable works suffered severely. The
destruction of the monasteries and convents left many needy, but there
were but few to care for them. Above all, the new doctrine of
justification by faith alone, which declared that good works were of
no import so long as men believed in a particular way, took away the
motive for much of the charitable work that had been done before. It
is not surprising, then, that hospitals and the care of the ailing and
the old reached a depth of degradation that is rather hard to
understand. We in the twentieth century know how low hospital care and
nursing had sunk in the early nineteenth century, and we have been
inclined to think that it must have been much worse in the generations
preceding. It is a surprise, then, to find that the first half of the
nineteenth century represents what has been well called by Miss
Nutting and Miss Dock, in their "History of Nursing," the Dark Period
of Nursing, during which "the condition of the nursing art, the
well-being of the patient and the status of the nurse all sank to an
indescribable level of degradation."
Jacobson, in his Essays on "The History of Care for the Ailing,"
[Footnote 51] traces just when this decadence began, not long after
the reform movement succeeded in gaining a firm foothold, and he
outlines in detail just how the descent came about. He says:
[Footnote 51: Beitraege zur Geschichte des Krankencomforts,
_Deutsche Krankenpflege Zeitung,_ 1898, in 4 parts.]
"It is a remarkable fact that attention to the well-being of the
sick, improvements in hospitals and institutions generally and to
details of nursing care, had a period of complete and lasting
stagnation after the middle of the seventeenth century, or from the
close of the Thirty Years' War. Neither officials nor physicians
took any interest in the elevation of nursing or in improving the
condition of hospitals. During the first two-thirds of the
eighteenth century, he proceeds to say, nothing was done to bring
either construction or nursing to a better state. Solely among the
religious orders did nursing remain an interest, and some remnants
of technique survive. The result was that in this period the general
level of nursing fell far below that of earlier periods. The hospitals
of cities were like prisons, with bare, undecorated walls and little
dark rooms, small rooms where no sun could enter, and dismal wards
where fifty or one hundred patients were crowded together, deprived
of all comforts and even of necessaries. In the municipal and state
institutions of this period, the beautiful gardens, roomy halls, and
springs of water of the old cloister hospital of the Middle Ages
were not heard of, still less the comforts of their friendly
interiors."
The more careful study of the guilds, particularly, has served to show
what an immense social wrong was done by this confiscation of what for
the moment, strictly for government purposes, was called Church
property. At the beginning of Henry VIII's reign, {561} it has been
calculated by Toulmin Smith that there were some 30,000 guilds in
England. These had very large sums in their treasuries. They responded
to all the social needs that we are now only just waking up to once
more. They provided old age and disability pensions, insurance against
fire and flood, against loss by robbery, by imprisonment, and against
the loss of cattle and farm products; there were forms of insurance
against the loss of sight, against the loss of a limb or any other
form of crippling. The amount of money confiscated from the treasuries
of these guilds has been calculated at a value in our money of several
hundred millions of dollars. When it is recalled that the census of
England made in Elizabeth's time, just before the Great Armada was
expected, showed a total population of less than five million, the
amount of good that could be accomplished by this vast sum of money,
not in the hands of a few, but distributed in 30,000 treasuries and
used for social purposes, can be readily understood. After the reform
in England, practically no more was heard of the guilds, and social
wrongs began to be multiplied.
SUPERSTITION AND TORTURE
It is often said that with the Reformation came the end of
superstition and of that exaggerated faith in religion which keeps
people from using their reason and that over-attention to the things
of the other world instead of this which keeps them from being
practical and prosperous. The subsequent history, however, of the
countries most affected by the German religious revolt, far from
bearing out this declaration, shows how much harm came from the
absence of a strong central religious authority and how much of loss
to idealism there was in the diminution of the childlike faith which
had meant so much, not only for religion, but for literature and for
art in the preceding centuries.
There was no obliteration of superstition, but superstition changed
its object, and now, instead of being poetic, often became cruel and
intolerant. The witchcraft delusion, for instance, which represented
the worst manifestation of superstition which mankind has perhaps ever
suffered from, affected the Protestant countries much more than the
Catholic countries. Thousands and thousands of people were put to
death as witches in Germany, and it was from the Protestant countries
that the delusion spread, by psychic contagion, to the Catholic
countries of Europe. Catholic countries not in intimate relations with
Protestant countries, like Ireland, were not affected by it. Though
Ireland has been the most Catholic of countries, not a witch has been
put to death there, by any formal process of law, for over five
hundred years. Here in America the witchcraft delusion is one of the
sad blots on our history. Many other forms of superstition manifested
themselves, and when there {562} were not religious motives there were
other reasons. Men apparently cannot keep from being influenced by
things they do not understand. Healers of all kinds take the place of
the religious healing of the medieval period, and medical and
scientific superstitions replace religious supercredulity. Electric
belts and pads replace relics. Over-estimated remedies and utterly
inefficient cures of all kinds are believed in much more now without
reason than ever medieval folk allowed themselves to be carried away
by religious superstitions.
A similar historical error proclaims that torture and suffering for
opinions and cruel punishment went out with the Reformation, or at
least wherever that movement gained a firm foothold. This is
absolutely untrue, for the trials of the witches everywhere were
accompanied by torture, and cruel punishments were the rule,
particularly in the Protestant countries. It is rather amusing
sometimes to read, in newspaper and magazine articles, descriptions of
the torture of the Inquisition and the heartlessness of medieval
people, ecclesiastics in the same breath with the mention of the Iron
Maiden and the famous torture boots of Nuremberg. These, however, were
inventions not made for the Inquisition nor for the Middle Ages, but
for the post-reformation period in Protestant Nuremberg. And it must
not be forgotten that Nuremberg was one of the most cultivated cities
of Germany and that its people were highly educated, and that it was
exactly in such a reform city that torture and cruel punishments were
invented and developed. Torture was one of the modes of getting at
truth for legal purposes under the Roman law. It continued almost
until our own time to be a legal mode of procedure. Even at the
present time it has not entirely gone out, and while the means of
physical torture are removed, the "third degree" and various phases of
mental torment replace them.
POLITICAL DECADENCE
Above all, the political import of this movement, so often thought to
be purely religious, must not be forgotten. The nobility lost at this
time, to a great extent, their independence. The king became supreme,
and the new nationalism which developed in Europe knit countries and
peoples very close together which had only been very loosely connected
before. Ferdinand was King of Aragon and Isabella Queen of Castile
when their marriage brought these kingdoms together. Subsequent
developments at this time made the Spanish peninsula a unit.
Practically the same thing happened in France. Pope Julius II planned
a united Italy. It was scarcely half a century after the close of
Columbus' Century that the Scotch and English crowns became united.
Many of the great nobles of these countries lost their prestige. The
foolish extravagance of {563} the Field of the Cloth of Gold is said
to have cost many a nobleman of France and England his estates, or at
least made him absolutely independent in the favor of the king.
In the midst of this political revolution a change in the prevailing
religion made a very valuable asset for monarchs whose position was
not over-secure or whose treasury was exhausted, for it handed over to
them the care of the Church and its property as well as of the State
and its revenues. This enabled them to confiscate large sums of money,
to confer Church estates on noble favorites; but, above all, it left
them without any strong organized ethical factor within the State to
oppose any acts of injustice that they might do. Their Lord
Chancellors had been bishops before, but now they were political
favorites and often the veriest of time-servers. Lord Campbell's
characterization of some of the English post-reformation chancellors
is illuminating for this. The amount of political injustice that
resulted is easy to understand, though it is not easy to comprehend
how the people stood it.