The importance of biography for the study of history can hardly be
overrated. In a sense it is true that history should be like the law
and 'care not about very small things'; concerning itself not so much
with individual personality as with fundamental causes affecting the
rise and fall of nations or the development of mental outlook from one
age to another. But even if this be conceded, we still must not forget
that the course of history is worked out by individuals, who, in spite
of the accidental condensation that the needs of human life thrust
upon them, are isolated at the last and alone--for no man may deliver
his brother. In consequence, it is only in periods when the stream of
personal record flows wide and deep that history begins to live, and
that we have a chance to view it through the eyes of the actors
instead of projecting upon it our own fancies and conceptions.
One of the features that makes the study of the Renaissance so
fascinating is that in that age the stream of personal record, which
had been driven underground, its course choked and hidden beneath the
fallen masonry of the Roman Empire, emerges again unimpeded and flows
in ever-increasing volume. For reconstruction of the past we are no
longer limited to charters and institutions, or the mighty works of
men's hands. In place of a mental output, rigidly confined within
unbending modes of thought and expression, we have a literature that
reflects the varied phases of human life, that can discard romance and
look upon the commonplace; and instead of dry and meagre chronicles,
rarely producing evidence at first hand, we have rich store of memoirs
and private letters, by means of which we can form real pictures of
individuals--approaching almost to personal acquaintance and
intimacy--and regard the same events from many points of view, to
perception of the circumstances that 'alter cases'.
The period of the Transalpine Renaissance corresponds roughly with the
life of Erasmus (1466-1536); from the days when Northern scholars
began to win fame for themselves in reborn Italy, until the width of
the humanistic outlook was narrowed and the progress of the reawakened
studies overwhelmed by the tornado of the Reformation. The aim of
these lectures is not so much to draw the outlines of the Renaissance
in the North as to present sketches of the world through which Erasmus
passed, and to view it as it appeared to him and to some of his
contemporaries, famous or obscure. And firstly of the generation that
preceded him in the wide but undefined region known then as Germany.
The Cistercian Abbey of Adwert near Groningen, under the enlightened
governance of Henry of Rees (1449-85), was a centre to which were
attracted most of the scholars whose names are famous in the history
of Northern humanism in the second half of the fifteenth century:
Wessel, Agricola, Hegius, Langen, Vrye, and others. They came on
return from visits to Italy or the universities; men of affairs after
discharge of their missions; schoolmasters to rest on their holidays;
parish priests in quest of change: all found a welcome from the
hospitable Abbot, and their talk ranged far and wide, over the pursuit
of learning, till Adwert merited the name of an 'Academy'.
Earliest of these is John Wessel (d. 1489), and perhaps also the most
notable; certainly the others looked up to him with a veneration which
seems to transcend the natural pre-eminence of seniority.
Unfortunately the details of his life have not been fully established.
Thirty years after his death, when it was too late for him to define
his own views, the Reformers claimed him for their own; and in
consequence his body has been wrangled over with the heat which seeks
not truth but victory. His father, Hermann Wessel, was a baker from
the Westphalian village of Gansfort or Goesevort, who settled in
Groningen. After some years in the town school, the boy was about to
be apprenticed to a trade, as his parents were too poor to help him
further; but the good Oda Jargis, hearing how well he had done at his
books, sent him to the school at Zwolle, in which the Brethren of the
Common Life took part. There, as at Groningen, he rose to the top,
and in his last years, as a first-form boy, also did some teaching in
the third form, according to the custom of the school. He came into
contact with Thomas à Kempis, who was then at the monastery of Mount
St. Agnes, half an hour outside Zwolle, and was profoundly influenced
by him. The course at Zwolle lasted eight years, and there is reason
to suppose that he completed it in full. He was lodged in the Parua
Domus, a hostel for fifty boys, and we are told that he and his next
neighbour made a hole through the wall which divided their
rooms--probably only a wooden partition--and taught one another:
Wessel imparting earthly wisdom, and receiving in exchange the fear
and love of the Lord. In the autumn of 1449 he matriculated at
Cologne, entering the Bursa Laurentiana; in December 1450 he was B.A.,
and in February 1452, M.A.
By 1455 he had arrived at Paris and entered upon his studies for the
theological degree. Within a year he conceived a profound distaste for
the philosophy dominant in the schools; and though he persevered for
some time, his frequent dissension from his teachers earned for him
the title of 'Magister contradictionis'. After this his movements
cannot be traced until 1470, when he was at Rome in the train of
Cardinal Francesco della Rovere. In the interval he studied medicine,
and, if report be true, travelled far; venturing into the East, just
when the fall of Constantinople had turned the tide of Hellenism
westward. In Greece he read Aristotle in the original, and learnt to
prefer Plato; in Egypt he sought in vain for the books of Solomon and
a mythical library of Hebrew treasures.
In 1471 his Cardinal-patron was elected Pope as Sixtus IV. The
magnificence which characterized the poor peasant's son in his
dealings with Italy, in his embellishment of Rome and the Vatican, was
not lacking in his treatment of Wessel. 'Ask what you please as a
parting gift', he said to the scholar, who was preparing to set out
for Friesland. 'Give me books from your library, Greek and Hebrew',
was the request. 'What? No benefice, no grant of office or fees? Why
not?' 'Because I don't want them', came the quiet reply. The books
were forthcoming--one, a Greek Gospels, was perhaps the parent of a
copy which reached Erasmus for the second edition of his New
Testament.
After his return to the North, Wessel was invited to Heidelberg, to
aid the Elector Palatine, Philip, in restoring the University, _c._
1477. He was without the degree in theology which would have enabled
him to teach in that faculty, and was not even in orders: indeed a
proposal that he should qualify by entering the lowest grade and
receiving the tonsure, he contemptuously rejected. So the Theological
Faculty would not hear him, but to the students in Arts he lectured on
Greek and Hebrew and philosophy. For some years, too, he was physician
to David of Burgundy, Bishop of Utrecht, whom he cured of gout by
making him take baths of warm milk. The Bishop rewarded him by
shielding him from the attacks of the Dominicans, who were incensed
by his bold criticisms of Aquinas; and when age brought the desire for
rest, the Bishop set him over a house of nuns at Groningen, and bought
him the right to visit Mount St. Agnes whenever he liked, by paying
for the board and lodging of this welcome guest.
Wessel's last years were happily spent. He was the acknowledged leader
of his society, and he divided his time between Mount St. Agnes and
the sisters at Groningen, with occasional visits to Adwert. There he
set about reviving the Abbey schools, one elementary, within its
walls, the other more advanced, in a village near by; and Abbot Rees
warmly supported him. Would-be pupils besought him to teach them Greek
and Hebrew. Admiring friends came to hear him talk, and brought their
sons to see this glory of their country--Lux mundi, as he was called.
Some fragments of his conversation have been preserved, the
unquestioned judgements which his hearers loyally received. Of the
Schoolmen he was contemptuous, with their honorific titles: 'doctor
angelic, doctor seraphic, doctor subtle, doctor irrefragable.' 'Was
Thomas (Aquinas) a doctor? So am I. Thomas scarcely knew Latin, and
that was his only tongue: I have a fair knowledge of the three
languages. Thomas saw Aristotle only as a phantom: I have read him in
Greece in his own words.' To Ostendorp, then a young man, but
afterwards to become head master of Deventer school, he gave the
counsel: 'Read the ancients, sacred and profane: modern doctors, with
their robes and distinctions, will soon be drummed out of town.' At
Mount St. Agnes once he was asked why he never used rosary nor book of
hours. 'I try', he replied, 'to pray always. I say the Lord's Prayer
once every day. Said once a year in the right spirit it would have
more weight than all these vain repetitions.'
He loved to read aloud to the brethren on Sunday evenings; his
favourite passage being John xiii-xviii, the discourse at the Last
Supper. As he grew older, he sometimes stumbled over his words. He was
not an imposing figure, with his eyes somewhat a-squint and his slight
limp; and sometimes the younger monks fell into a titter, irreverent
souls, to hear him so eager in his reading and so unconscious. It was
not his eyesight that was at fault: to the end he could read the
smallest hand without any glasses, like his great namesake, John
Wesley, whom a German traveller noticed on the packet-boat between
Flushing and London reading the fine print of the Elzevir Virgil, with
his eyes unaided, though at an advanced age.
On his death-bed Wessel was assailed with scepticism, and began to
doubt about the truth of the Christian religion. But the cloud was of
short duration. That supreme moment of revelation, which comes to
every man once, is no time for fear. Patient hope cast out
questioning, and he passed through the deep waters with his eyes on
the Cross which had been his guide through the life that was ending.
Of Rudolph Agricola we know more than of the others; his striking
personality, it seems, moved many of his friends to put on record
their impressions of him. One of the best of these sketches is by
Goswin of Halen (d. 1530), who had been Wessel's servant at Groningen,
and had frequently met Agricola. Rudolph's father, Henry Huusman, was
the parish priest of Baflo, a village four hours to the north of
Groningen; his mother being a young woman of the place, who
subsequently married a local carrier. On 17 Feb. 1444 the priest was
elected to be warden of a college of nuns at Siloe, close to
Groningen, and in the same hour a messenger came running to him from
Baflo, claiming the reward of good news and announcing the birth of a
son. 'Good,' said the new warden; 'this is an auspicious day, for it
has twice made me father.'
From the moment he could walk, the boy was passionately fond of music;
the sound of church bells would bring him toddling out into the
street, or the thrummings of the blind beggars as they went from house
to house playing for alms; and he would follow strolling pipers out of
the gates into the country, and only be driven back by a show of
violence. When he was taken to church, all through the mass his eyes
were riveted upon the organ and its bellows; and as he grew older he
made himself a syrinx with eight or nine pipes out of willow-bark. He
was taught to ride on horseback, and early became adept in
pole-jumping whilst in the saddle, an art which the Frieslanders of
that age had evolved to help their horses across the broad rhines of
their country. In 1456, when he was just 12, he matriculated at
Erfurt, and in May 1462 at Cologne. But the course of his education is
not clear, and though it is known that he reached the M.A. at Louvain,
the date of this degree is not certain. He is also said to have been
at the University of Paris.
Of his life at Louvain some details are given by Geldenhauer (d. 1542)
in a sketch written about fifty years after Agricola's death. The
University had been founded in 1426 to meet the needs of Belgian
students, who for higher education had been obliged to go to Cologne
or Paris, or more distant universities. Agricola entered Kettle
College, which afterwards became the college of the Falcon, and soon
distinguished himself among his fellow-students. They admired the ease
with which he learnt French--not the rough dialect of Hainault, but
the polite language of the court. With many his musical tastes were a
bond of sympathy, in a way which recalls the evenings that Henry
Bradshaw used to spend among the musical societies of Bruges and Lille
when he was working in Belgian libraries; and on all sides men frankly
acknowledged his intellectual pre-eminence as they marked his quiet
readiness in debate and heard him pose the lecturers with acute
questions. By nature he was silent and absorbed, and often in company
he would sit deaf to all questions, his elbows on the table and biting
his nails. But when roused he was at once captivating; and this
unintended rudeness never lost him a friend. There was a small band of
true humanists, who, as Geldenhauer puts it, 'had begun to love purity
of Latin style'; to them he was insensibly attracted, and spent with
them over Cicero and Quintilian hours filched from the study of
Aristotle. Later in life he openly regretted having spent as much as
seven years over the scholastic philosophy, which he had learnt to
regard as profitless.
From 1468 to 1479 he was for the most part in Italy, except for
occasional visits to the North, when we see him staying with his
father at Siloe, and, in 1474, teaching Greek to Hegius at Emmerich.
Many positions were offered to him already; gifts such as his have not
to stand waiting in the marketplace. But his wits were not homely, and
the world called him. Before he could settle he must see many men and
many cities, and learn what Italy had to teach him.
For the first part of his time there, until 1473, he was at Pavia
studying law and rhetoric; but on his return from home in 1474 he went
to Ferrara in order to enjoy the better opportunities for learning
Greek afforded by the court of Duke Hercules of Este and its circle of
learned men. His description of the place is interesting: 'The town is
beautiful, and so are the women. The University has not so many
faculties as Pavia, nor are they so well attended; but _literae
humaniores_ seem to be in the very air. Indeed, Ferrara is the home of
the Muses--and of Venus.' One special delight to him was that the
Duke had a fine organ, and he was able to indulge what he describes as
his 'old weakness for the organs'. In October 1476, at the opening of
the winter term of the University, the customary oration before the
Duke was delivered by Rodolphus Agricola Phrysius. His eloquence
surprised the Italians, coming from so outlandish a person: 'a
Phrygian, I believe', said one to another, with a contemptuous shrug
of the shoulders. But Agricola, with his chestnut-brown hair and blue
eyes, was no Oriental; only a Frieslander from the North, whose cold
climate to the superb Italians seemed as benumbing to the intellect as
we consider that of the Esquimaux.
During this period Agricola translated Isocrates _ad Demonicum_ and
the _Axiochus de contemnenda morte_, a dialogue wrongly attributed to
Plato, which was a favourite in Renaissance days. Also he completed
the chief composition of his lifetime, the _De inuentione dialectica_,
a considerable treatise on rhetoric. His favourite books, Geldenhauer
tells us, were Pliny's Natural History, the younger Pliny's Letters,
Quintilian's _Institutio Oratoria_, and selections from Cicero and
Plato. These were his travelling library, carried with him wherever he
went; two of them, Pliny's Letters and Quintilian, he had copied out
with his own hand. Other books, as he acquired them, he planted out in
friends' houses as pledges of return.
In 1479 he left Italy and went home. On his way he stayed for some
months with the Bishop of Augsburg at Dillingen, on the Danube, and
there translated Lucian's _De non facile credendis delationibus_. A
manuscript of Homer sorely tempted him to stay on through the winter.
He felt that without Homer his knowledge of Greek was incomplete; and
he proposed to copy it out from beginning to end, or at any rate the
Iliad. But home called him, and he went on. At Spires, in quest of
manuscripts, he went with a friend to the cathedral library. He
describes it as not bad for Germany, though it contained nothing in
Greek, and only a few Latin manuscripts of any interest--a Livy and a
Pliny, very old, but much injured and the texts corrupt--and nothing
at all that could be called eloquence, that is to say, pure
literature.
When he had been a little while in Groningen, the town council
bethought them to turn his talents and learning to some account. He
was a fine figure of a man, who would make a creditable show in
conducting their business; and for composing the elegant Latin
epistles, which every respectable corporation felt bound to rise to on
occasions, no one was better equipped than he. He was retained as town
secretary, and in the four years of his service went on frequent
embassies. During the first year we hear of him visiting his father at
Siloe, and contracting a friendship with one of the nuns[1]; to whom
he afterwards sent a work of Eucherius, bishop of Lyons, which he had
found in a manuscript at Roermond. Twice he visited Brussels on
embassy to Maximilian; and in the next year he followed the Archduke's
court for several months, visiting Antwerp, and making the
acquaintance of Barbiriau, the famous musician. Maximilian offered him
the post of tutor to his children and Latin secretary to himself; the
town of Antwerp invited him to become head of their school. He might
easily have accepted. He was not altogether happy at Groningen. His
countrymen had done him honour, but they had no real appreciation for
learning, and some of them were boorish and cross-grained. It was the
old story of Pegasus in harness; the practical men of business and the
scholar impatient of restraint. His parents, too, were now both
dead--in 1480, within a few months of each other--and such homes as he
had had, with his father amongst the nuns at Siloe and with his mother
in the house of her husband the tranter, were therefore closed to him.
And yet neither invitation attracted him. Friesland was his native
land; and for all his wanderings the love of it was in his blood.
Adwert, too, was near, and Wessel. He refused, and stayed on in his
irksome service.
[1] In view of Geldenhauer's testimony to Agricola's high
character in this respect, we need not question, as does
Goswin of Halen, the nature of this intimacy.
But in 1482 came an offer he could not resist. An old friend of Pavia
days, John of Dalberg, for whom he had written the oration customary
on his installation as Rector in 1474, had just been appointed Bishop
of Worms. He invited Agricola for a visit, and urged him to come and
join him; living partly as a friend in the Bishop's household, partly
lecturing at the neighbouring University of Heidelberg. The opening
was just such as Agricola wished, and he eagerly accepted; but
circumstances at Groningen prevented him from redeeming his promise
until the spring of 1484. For little more than a year he rejoiced in
the new position, which gave full scope for his abilities. Then he set
out to Rome with Dalberg, their business being to deliver the usual
oration of congratulation to Innocent VIII on his election. On the way
back he fell ill of a fever at Trent, and the Bishop had to leave him
behind. He recovered enough to struggle back to Heidelberg, but only
to die in Dalberg's arms on 27 Oct. 1485, at the age of 41.
Few men of letters have made more impression on their contemporaries;
and yet his published writings are scanty. The generation that
followed sought for his manuscripts as though they were of the
classics; but thirty years elapsed before the _De inuentione
dialectica_ was printed, and more than fifty before there was a
collected edition. Besides his letters the only thing which has
permanent value is a short educational treatise, _De formando studio_,
which he wrote in 1484, and addressed to Barbiriau--some compensation
to the men of Antwerp for his refusal to come to them. His work was to
learn and to teach rather than to write. To learn Greek when few
others were learning it, and when the apparatus of grammar and
dictionary had to be made by the student for himself, was a task to
consume even abundant energies; and still more so, if Hebrew, too, was
to be acquired. But though he left little, the fire of his enthusiasm
did not perish with him; passing on by tradition, it kindled in others
whom he had not known, the flame of interest in the wisdom of the
ancients.
Another member of the Adwert gatherings was Alexander of Heck in
Westphalia, hence called Hegius (1433-98). He was an older man than
Agricola, but was not ashamed to learn of him when an opportunity
offered to acquire Greek. His enthusiasm was for teaching; and to that
he gave his life, first at Wesel, then at Emmerich, and finally for
fifteen years at Deventer, where he had many eminent humanists under
his care--Erasmus, William Herman, Mutianus Rufus, Hermann Busch, John
Faber, John Murmell, Gerard Geldenhauer. Butzbach, who was the last
pupil he admitted, and who saw him buried in St. Lebuin's church on a
winter's evening at sunset, describes him at great length; and besides
his learning and simplicity, praises the liberality with which he gave
all that he had to help the needy: living in the house of another
(probably Richard Paffraet, the printer) and sharing expenses, and
leaving at his death no possessions but his books and a few clothes.
And yet he was master of a school which had over 2000 boys.
Rudolph Langen of Munster (1438-1519) was another who was known at
Adwert. He matriculated at Erfurt in the same year as Agricola, and
was M.A. there in 1460. A canonry at Munster gave him maintenance for
his life, and he devoted his energies to learning. Twice he visited
Italy, in 1465 and 1486; and in 1498 he succeeded in establishing a
school at Munster on humanistic lines, and wished Hegius to become
head master, but in vain. Nevertheless it rapidly rivalled the fame of
Deventer.
Finally, Antony Vrye (Liber) of Soest deserves record, since he has
contributed somewhat to our knowledge of Adwert. He also was a
schoolmaster, and taught at various times at Emmerich, Campen,
Amsterdam, and Alcmar. In 1477 he published a volume entitled
_Familiarium Epistolarum Compendium_, the composition of which
illustrates the catholic tastes of the humanists; for it contains
selections from the letters of Cicero, Jerome, Symmachus, and the
writers of the Italian Renaissance. But he chiefly merits our
gratitude for including in the book a number of letters which passed
between the visitors to Adwert and their friends, together with some
of his own. The pleasant relations existing in this little society may
be illustrated by the fact that when Vrye's son John had reached
student age, the Adwert friends subscribed to pay his expenses at a
university; and thus secured him an education which enabled him to
become Syndic of Campen.
A few extracts from their letters will serve to show some of the
characteristics of the age, its wide interest in the past, theological
as well as classical; its eager search for manuscripts, and the
freedom with which its libraries were opened; its concern for
education, and its attitude towards the old learning; and the extent
of its actual achievements. The earliest of these letters that survive
are a series written by Langen from Adwert in the spring of 1469 to
Vrye at Soest. Despite the grave interest in serious study that the
letters show, there are human touches about them. One begins: 'You
promised faithfully to return, and yet you have not come. But I cannot
blame you; for the road is deep in mud, and I myself too am so feeble
a walker that I can imagine the weariness of others' feet.' Another
ends in haste, not with the departure of the post, but 'The servants
are waiting to conduct me to bed'. Here is a longer sample: