Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter männer, 3 vols., Zurich, 1795, but
it is wholly taken from Petrarch’s Letters, and from Mehus’s Life
of Traversari, p. 348. See also Tiraboschi, v. 554.
[192] Geschichte der Litteratur, ii. 241.
95. A few subjects, affording less extensive observation, we have
postponed to the next chapter, which will contain the literature of
Europe in the first part of the fifteenth century. Notwithstanding our
wish to preserve in general a strict regard to chronology, it has been
impossible to avoid some interruptions of it without introducing a
multiplicity of transitions incompatible with any comprehensive views;
and which, even as it must inevitably exist in a work of this nature, is
likely to diminish the pleasure, and perhaps the advantage, that the
reader might derive from it.
CHAPTER II.
ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1400 TO 1440.
_Cultivation of Latin in Italy--Revival of Greek Literature--Vestiges
of it during the Middle Ages--It is taught by Chrysoloras--his
Disciples--and by learned Greeks--State of Classical Learning in
other Parts of Europe--Physical Sciences--Mathematics--Medicine and
Anatomy--Poetry in Spain, France, and England--Formation of New Laws
of Taste in Middle Ages--Their Principles--Romances--Religious
Opinions._
|Zeal for classical literature in Italy.|
1. Ginguéné has well observed, that the fourteenth century left Italy in
the possession of the writings of three great masters, of a language
formed and polished by them, and of a strong relish for classical
learning. But this soon became the absorbing passion, fortunately, no
doubt, in the result, as the same author has elsewhere said, since all
the exertions of an age were required to explore the rich mine of
antiquity, and fix the standard of taste and purity for succeeding
generations. The ardour for classical studies grew stronger every day.
To write Latin correctly, to understand the allusions of the best
authors, to learn the rudiments at least of Greek, were the objects of
every cultivated mind.
|Poggio Bracciolini.|
|Latin style of that age indifferent.|
2. The first half of the fifteenth century, has been sometimes called
the age of Poggio Bracciolini, which it expresses not very inaccurately
as to his literary life, since he was born in 1381, and died in 1459;
but it seems to involve too high a compliment. The chief merit of Poggio
was his diligence, aided by good fortune, in recovering lost works of
Roman literature, that lay mouldering in the repositories of convents.
Hence we owe to this one man eight orations of Cicero, a complete
Quintilian, Columella, part of Lucretius, three books of Valerius
Flaccus, Silius Italicus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Tertullian, and several
less important writers: twelve comedies of Plautus were also recovered
in Germany through his directions.[193] Poggio besides this was
undoubtedly a man of considerable learning for his time, and still
greater sense and spirit as a writer, though he never reached a very
correct or elegant style.[194] And this applies to all those who
wrote before the year 1440, with the single exception of Gasparin; to
Coluccio Salutato, Guarino of Verona, and even Leonard Aretin.[195] Nor
is this any disparagement to their abilities and industry. They had
neither grammars nor dictionaries, in which the purest Latinity was
distinguishable from the worst; they had to unlearn a barbarous jargon,
made up with scraps of the Vulgate, and of ecclesiastical writers, which
pervades the Latin of the middle ages; they had great difficulty in
resorting to purer models, from the scarcity and high price of
manuscripts, as well as from their general incorrectness, which it
required much attention to set right. Gasparin of Barziza took the right
course, by incessantly turning over the pages of Cicero; and thus by
long habit gained an instinctive sense of propriety in the use of
language, which no secondary means at that time could have given him.
[193] Shepherd’s Life of Poggio. Tiraboschi. Corniani. Roscoe’s Lorenzo,
ch. i. Fabricius, in his Bibliotheca Latina mediæ et infimæ ætatis,
gives a list not quite the same; but Poggio’s own authority must be
the best. The work first above quoted is for the literary history
of Italy in the earlier half of the fifteenth century, what
Roscoe’s Lorenzo is for the latter. Ginguéné has not added much to
what these English authors and Tiraboschi had furnished.
[194] Mr. Shepherd has judged Poggio a little favourably, as became a
biographer, but with sense and discrimination. His Italian
translator, the Avvocato Tonelli (Firenze, 1825), goes much beyond
the mark in extolling Poggio above all his contemporaries, and
praising his “vastissima erudizione” in the strain of hyperbole too
familiar to Italians. This vast learning, even for that time,
Poggio did not possess; we have no reason to believe him equal to
Guarino, Filelfo, or Traversari, much less to Valla. Erasmus,
however, was led by his partiality to Valla into some injustice
towards Poggio, whom he calls rabula adeo indoctus, ut etiamsi
vacaret obscœnitate, tamen indignus esset qui legeretur, adeo autem
obscœnus ut etiamsi doctissimus esset, tamen esset a viris bonis
rejiciendus. Epist. ciii. This is said too hastily; but in his
Ciceronianus, where we have his deliberate judgment, he appreciates
Poggio more exactly. After one of the interlocutors has called him,
vividæ cujusdam eloquentiæ virum, the other replies:--Naturæ satis
erat, artis et eruditionis non multum; interim impuro sermonis
fluxu, si Laurentio Vallæ credimus. Bebel, a German of some
learning, rather older than Erasmus, in a letter quoted by Blount
(Censura Auctorum, in Poggio), praises Poggio very highly for his
style, and prefers him to Valla. Paulus Cortesius seems not much to
differ from Erasmus about Poggio, though he is more severe on Valla.
It should be added, that Tonelli’s notes on the life of Poggio are
useful; among other things he points out that Poggio did not learn
Greek of Emanuel Chrysoloras, as all writers on this part of
literary history had hitherto supposed, but about 1423, when he was
turned of forty.
[195] Coluccio Salutato belongs to the fourteenth century, and was
deemed one of its greatest ornaments in learning. Ma a dir vero,
says Tiraboschi, who admits his extensive erudition, relatively to
his age, benche lo stil di Coluccio abbia non rare volte energia e
forza maggiore che quello della maggior parti degli altri scrittori
di questi tempi, è certo però, che tanto è diverso da quello di
Cicerone nella prosa, e ne’ versi da quel di Virgilio, quanto
appunto è diversa una scimia da un uomo, v. 537.
Cortesius, in the dialogue quoted above, says of Leonard
Aretin:--Hic primus inconditam scribendi consuetudinem ad numerosum
quendam sonum inflexit, et attulit hominibus nostris aliquid certe
splendidius.... Et ego video hunc nondum satis esse limatum, nec
delicatiori fastidio tolerabilem. Atqui dialogi Joannis Ravennatis
vix semel leguntur, et Coluccii Epistolæ, quæ tum in honore erant,
non apparent; sed Boccacii Genealogiam legimus, utilem illam
quidem, sed non tamen cum Petrarchæ ingenio conferendam. At non
videtis quantum his omnibus desit? p. 12. Of Guarino he says
afterwards:--Genus tamen dicendi inconcinnum admodum est et
salebrosum; utitur plerumque imprudens verbis poeticis, quod est
maxime vitiosum; sed magis est in eo succus, quam color laudandus.
Memoria teneo, quendam familiarem meum solitum dicere, melius
Guarinum famæ suæ consuluisse, si nihil unquam scripsisset, p. 14.
|Gasparin of Barziza.|
3. This writer, often called Gasparin of Bergamo, his own birthplace
being in the neighbourhood of that city, was born about 1370, and began
to teach before the close of the century. He was transferred to Padua by
the Senate of Venice, in 1407; and in 1410 accepted the invitation of
Filippo Maria Visconti to Milan, where he remained till his death, in
1431. Gasparin had here the good fortune to find Cicero de Oratore, and
to restore Quintilian by the help of the manuscript brought from St.
Gall by Poggio, and another found in Italy by Leonard Aretin. His fame
as a writer was acquired at Padua, and founded on his diligent study of
Cicero.
|Merits of his style.|
4. It is impossible to read a page of Gasparin without perceiving that
he is quite of another order of scholars from his predecessors. He is
truly Ciceronian in his turn of phrases and structure of sentences,
which never end awkwardly, or with a wrong arrangement of words, as is
habitual with his contemporaries. Inexact expressions may of course be
found, but they do not seem gross or numerous. Among his works are
several orations which probably were actually delivered: they are the
earliest models of that classical declamation which became so usual
afterwards, and are elegant, if not very forcible. His Epistolæ ad
Exercitationem accommodatæ was the first book printed at Paris. It
contains a series of exercises for his pupils, probably for the sake of
double translation, and merely designed to exemplify Latin idioms.[196]
[196] Morhof, who says, primus in Italia aliquid balbutire cœpit
Gasparinus, had probably never seen his writings, which are a great
deal better, in point of language, than his own. Cortesius,
however, blames Gasparin for too elaborate a style; nimia cura
attenuabat orationem.
He once uses a Greek word in his letters; what he knew of the
language does not otherwise appear; but he might have heard Guarino
at Venice. He had not seen Pliny’s Natural History, nor did he
possess a Livy, but was in treaty for one. Epist. p. 200,
A.D. 1415.
|Victorin of Feltre.|
5. If Gasparin was the best writer of this generation, the most
accomplished instructor was Victorin of Feltre, to whom the marquis of
Mantua entrusted the education of his own children. Many of the Italian
nobility, and some distinguished scholars were brought up under the care
of Victorin in that city; and, in a very corrupt age, he was still more
zealous for their moral than their literary improvement. A pleasing
account of his method of discipline will be found in Tiraboschi, or more
fully in Corniani, from a life written by one of Victorin’s pupils,
named Prendilacqua.[197] “It could hardly be believed,” says Tiraboschi,
“that in an age of such rude manners, a model of such perfect education
could be found: if all to whom the care of youth is entrusted would make
it theirs, what ample and rich fruits they would derive from their
labours.” The learning of Victorin was extensive; he possessed a
moderate library, and rigidly demanding a minute exactness from his
pupils in their interpretation of ancient authors, as well as in their
own compositions, laid the foundations of a propriety in style, which
the next age was to display. Traversari visited the school of Victorin,
for whom he entertained a great regard, in 1433; it had then been for
some years established.[198] No writings of Victorin have been
preserved.
[197] Tiraboschi, vii. 306. Corniani, ii. 53. Heeren, p. 235. He is
also mentioned, with much praise for his mode of education, by his
friend Ambrogio Traversari, a passage from whose Hodopæricon will
be found in Heeren, p. 237. Victorin died in 1447, and was buried
at the public expense, his liberality in giving gratuitous
instruction to the poor having left him so.
[198] Mehus, p. 421.
|Leonard Aretin.|
6. Among the writers of these forty years, after Gasparin of Bergamo, we
may probably assign the highest place in politeness of style to Leonardo
Bruni, more commonly called Aretino, from his birthplace, Arezzo. “He
was the first,” says Paulus Cortesius, “who replaced the rude structure
of periods by some degree of rhythm, and introduced our countrymen to
something more brilliant than they had known before; though even he is
not quite as polished as a fastidious delicacy would require.” Aretin’s
history of the Goths, which, though he is silent on the obligation, is
chiefly translated from Procopius, passes for his best work. In the
constellation of scholars who enjoyed the sunshine of favour in the
palace of Cosmo de’ Medici, Leonard Aretin was one of the oldest and
most prominent. He died at an advanced age in 1444, and is one of the
six illustrious dead who repose in the church of Santa Croce.[199]
[199] Madame de Staël unfortunately confounded this respectable scholar,
in her Corinne, with Pietro Aretino; I remember well that Ugo
Foscolo could never contain his wrath against her for this mistake.
|Revival of Greek language in Italy.|
|Early Greek scholars of Europe.|
|Under Charlemagne and his successors.|
7. We come now to a very important event in literary history,--the
resuscitation of the study of the Greek language in Italy. During the
whole course of the middle ages we find scattered instances of scholars
in the west of Europe, who had acquired some knowledge of Greek; to what
extent it is often a difficult question to determine. In the earlier and
darker period, we begin with a remarkable circumstance, already
mentioned, of our own ecclesiastical history. The infant Anglo-Saxon
churches, desirous to give a national form to their hierarchy, solicited
the Pope Vitalian to place an archbishop at their head. He made choice
of Theodore, who not only brought to England a store of Greek
manuscripts, but, through the means of his followers, imparted a
knowledge of it to some of our countrymen. Bede half a century
afterwards, tells us, of course very hyperbolically, that there were
still surviving disciples of Theodore and Adrian, who understood the
Greek and Latin languages as well as their own.[200] From these he
derived, no doubt, his own knowledge, which may not have been
extensive; but we cannot expect more, in such very unfavourable
circumstances, than a superficial progress in so difficult a study. It
is probable that the lessons of Theodore’s disciples were not forgotten
in the British and Irish monasteries. Alcuin has had credit, with no
small likelihood, if not on positive authority, for an acquaintance with
Greek;[201] and as he, and perhaps others from these islands, were
active in aiding the efforts of Charlemagne for the restoration of
letters, the slight tincture of Greek that we find in the schools
founded by that emperor, may have been derived from their instruction.
It is, however, an equally probable hypothesis, that it was communicated
by Greek teachers, whom it was easy to procure. Charlemagne himself,
according to Eginhard, could read, though he could not speak, the Greek
language. Thegan reports the very same, in nearly the same words, of
Louis the Debonair.[202] The former certainly intended, that it should
be taught in some of his schools;[203] and the Benedictines of St. Maur,
in their long and laborious Histoire Littéraire de la France, have
enumerated as many as seventeen persons within France, or at least the
dominions of the Carlovingian house, to whom they ascribe, on the
authority of contemporaries, a portion of this learning.[204] These were
all educated in the schools of Charlemagne except the most eminent in
the list, John Scotus Erigena, for whom Scotland and Ireland contend,
the latter probably on the best grounds. It is not necessary by any
means to suppose that he had acquired by travel the Greek tongue, which
he possessed sufficiently to translate, though very indifferently, the
works attributed in that age to Dionysius the Areopagite.[205] Most
writers of the ninth century, according to the Benedictines, make use of
some Greek words. It appears by a letter of the famous Hincmar,
archbishop of Rheims, who censures his nephew Hincmar of Laon for doing
this affectedly, that glossaries, from which they picked those exotic
flowers, were already in use. Such a glossary in Greek and Latin,
compiled, under Charles the Bald, for the use of the church of Laon,
was, at the date of the publication of this Benedictine History, near
the middle of the last century, in the library of St. Germain des
Prés.[206] We may thus perceive the means of giving the air of more
learning than was actually possessed; and are not to infer from these
sprinklings of Greek in mediæval writings, whether in their proper
characters, or latinised, which is rather more frequent, that the poets
and profane, or even ecclesiastical, writers were accessible in a French
or English monastery. Neither of the Hincmars seems to have understood
it. Tiraboschi admits that he cannot assert any Italian writer of the
ninth century to be acquainted with Greek.[207]
[200] Hist. Eccles. l. v. c. 2. Usque hodie supersunt ex eorum
discipulis, qui Latinam Græcamque linguam æque ac propriam in qua
nati sunt, norunt. Bede’s own knowledge of Greek is attested by his
biographer Cuthbert: præter Latinam etiam Græcam comparaverat. He
once, and possibly more often, uses a Greek word; but we must
suspect his knowledge of it to have been trifling.
A manuscript in the British Museum (Cotton, Galba, i. 18,) is of
some importance in relation to this, if it be truly referred to the
eighth century. It contains the Lord’s prayer in Greek, written in
Anglo-Saxon characters, and appears to have belonged to king
Athelstan. Mr. Turner (Hist. of Angl.-Sax., vol. iii. p. 396) has
taken notice of this manuscript, but without mentioning its
antiquity. The manner in which the words are divided shows a
perfect ignorance of Greek in the writer; but the Saxon is curious
in another respect, as it proves the pronunciation of Greek in the
eighth century to have been modern or Romaic, and not what we hold
to be ancient.
[201] C’était un homme habile dans le Grec comme dans le Latin. Hist.
Litt. de la Fr. iv. 8.
[202] The passages will be found in Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. ii. 265 and
290. That concerning Charlemagne is quoted in many other books.
Eginhard says in the same place, that Charles prayed in Latin as
readily as in his own language; and Thegan, that Louis could speak
Latin perfectly.
[203] Osnabrug has generally been named as the place, where Charlemagne
peculiarly designed that Greek should be cultivated. It seems
however, on considering the passage in the Capitularies usually
quoted (Baluze, ii. 419) to have been only one out of many.
Eichhorn thinks that the existence of a Greek school at Osnabrug is
doubtful, but that there is more evidence in favour of Saltsburg
and Ratisbon. Allg. Gesch. der Cultur, ii. 383. The words of the
Capitulary are, Græcas et Latinas Scholas in perpetuum manere
ordinavimus.
[204] Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. v. Launoy had commenced this
enumeration in his excellent treatise on the schools of
Charlemagne; but he has not carried it quite so far. See, too,
Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. ii. 420; and Gesch. der Litt. i. 824.
Meiners thinks that Greek was better known in the ninth century,
through Charlemagne’s exertions, than for five hundred years
afterwards. ii. 367.
[205] Eichhorn, ii. 227. Brucker. Guizot.
[206] Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. iv. Duncange, præf. in Glossar.
p. 40.
[207] iii. 206.
|In the tenth and eleventh centuries.|
8. The tenth century furnishes not quite so many proofs of Greek
scholarship. It was, however, studied by some brethren in the abbey of
St. Gall, a celebrated seat of learning for those times, and the library
of which still bears witness, in its copious collection of manuscripts,
to the early intercourse between the scholars of Ireland and those of
the continent. Baldric, bishop of Utrecht,[208] Bruno of Cologne, and
Gerbert, besides a few more whom the historians of St. Maur record,
possessed a tolerable acquaintance with the Greek language. They
mention a fact that throws light on the means by which it might
occasionally be learned. Some natives of that country, doubtless
expatriated catholics, took refuge in the diocese of Toul, under the
protection of the bishop, not long before 1000. They formed separate
societies, performing divine service in their own language, and with
their own rites.[209] It is probable, the Benedictines observe, that
Humbert, afterwards a cardinal, acquired from them that knowledge of the
language by which he distinguished himself in controversy with their
countrymen.[210] This great schism of the church, which the Latins
deeply felt, might induce some to study a language, from which alone
they could derive authorities in disputation with these antagonists. But
it had also the more unequivocal effect of drawing to the west some of
those Greeks who maintained their communion with the church of Rome. The
emigration of these in the diocese of Toul is not a single fact of the
kind; and it is probably recorded from the remarkable circumstance of
their living in community. We find from a passage in Heric, a prelate in
the reign of Charles the Bald, that this had already begun; at the
commencement, in fact, of the great schism.[211] Greek bishops and Greek
monks are mentioned as settlers in France during the early part of the
eleventh century. This was especially in Normandy, under the protection
of Richard II., who died in 1028. Even monks from Mount Sinai came to
Rouen to share in his liberality.[212] The Benedictines ascribe the
preservation of some taste for the Greek and oriental tongues to these
strangers. The list, however, of the learned in them is very short,
considering the erudition of these fathers, and their disposition to
make the most of all they met with. Greek books are mentioned in the few
libraries of which we read in the eleventh century.[213]
[208] Baldric lived under Henry the Fowler; his biographer says:--Nullum
fuit studiorum liberalium genus in omni Græca et Latina eloquentia
quod ingenio sui vivacitatem aufugeret Launoy, p. 117. Hist Litt.
vi. 50.
[209] Vol. vi. p. 57.
[210] Vol. vii. p. 528.
[211] Ducange, præfat. in Glossar. p. 41.
[212] Hist Litt. de la France, vii. 69, 124. et alibi. A Greek
manuscript in the royal library at Paris, containing the liturgy,
according to the Greek ritual, was written in 1022, by a monk named
_Helie_, (they do not give the Latin name,) who seems to have lived
in Normandy. If this stands for Elias, he was probably a Greek by
birth.
[213] Id. p. 48.
|In the twelfth.|
9. The number of Greek scholars seems not much more considerable in the
twelfth century, notwithstanding the general improvement of that age.
The Benedictines reckon about ten names, among which we do not find that
of St. Bernard.[214] They are inclined also to deny the pretensions of
Abelard;[215] but, as that great man finds a very hostile tribunal in
these fathers, we may pause about this, especially as they acknowledge
Eloise to have understood both the Greek and Hebrew languages. She
established a Greek mass for Whitsunday in the Paraclete convent, which
was sung as late as the fifteenth century; and a Greek missal in Latin
characters was still preserved there.[216] Heeren speaks more favourably
of Abelard’s learning, who translated passages from Plato.[217] The
pretensions of John of Salisbury are slighter; he seems proud of his
Greek, but betrays gross ignorance in etymology.[218]
[214] Hist. Litt. de la France, pp. 94, 151. Macarius, abbot of St.
Fleuri, is said to have compiled a Greek Lexicon, which has been
several times printed under the name of Beatus Benedictus.
[215] Id. xii. 147.
[216] Id. xii. 642.
[217] P. 204. His Greek was no doubt rather scanty, and not sufficient
to give him an insight into ancient philosophy; in fact, if his
learning had been greater, he could only read such manuscripts as
fell into his hands; and there were hardly any then in France.
[218] Ibid. John derives analytica from ανα [ana] and λεχις [lexis].
|In the thirteenth.|
10. The thirteenth century was a more inauspicious period for learning;
yet here we can boast, not only of John Basing, archdeacon of St.
Albans, who returned from Athens about 1240, laden, if we are bound to
believe this literally, with Greek books, but of Roger Bacon and Robert
Grostête, bishop of Lincoln. It is admitted that Bacon had some
acquaintance with Greek; and it appears by a passage in Matthew Paris,
that a Greek priest, who had obtained a benefice at St. Albans, gave
such assistance to Grostête as enabled him to translate the testament of
the twelve patriarchs into Latin.[219] This is a confirmation of what
has been suggested above, as the probable means by which a knowledge of
that language, in the total deficiency of scholastic education, was
occasionally imparted to persons of unusual zeal for learning. And it
leads us to another reflection, that by a knowledge of Greek, when we
find it asserted of a mediæval theologian like Grostête, we are not to
understand an acquaintance with the great classical authors, who were
latent in eastern monasteries, but the power of reading some petty
treatise of the fathers, or, as in this instance, an apocryphal legend,
or at best, perhaps, some of the later commentators on Aristotle.
Grostête was a man of considerable merit, but has had his share of
applause.
[219] Matt. Par. p. 520. See also Turner’s History of England, iv. 180.
It is said in some books that Grostête made a translation of
Suidas. But this is to be understood merely of a legendary story
found in that writer’s Lexicon. Pegge’s Life of Grostête, p. 291.
The entire work he certainly could not have translated, nor is it
at all credible that he had a copy of it. With respect to the doubt
I have hinted in the text as to the great number of manuscripts
said to be brought to England by John Basing, it is founded on
their subsequent disappearance. We find very few, if any, Greek
manuscripts in England at the end of the fifteenth century.
Michael Scot, “the wizard of dreaded fame,” pretended to translate
Aristotle; but is charged with having appropriated the labours of
one Andrew, a Jew, as his own. Meiners, ii. 664.
|Little appearance of it in the fourteenth century.|
11. The titles of mediæval works are not unfrequently taken from the
Greek language, as the Polycraticus and Metalogicus of John of
Salisbury, or the Philobiblon of Richard Aungerville of Bury. In this
little volume, written about 1343, I have counted five instances of
single Greek words. And, what is more important, Aungerville declares
that he had caused Greek and Hebrew grammars to be drawn up for
students.[220] But we have no other record of such grammars. It would be
natural to infer from this passage, that some persons, either in France
or England, were occupied in the study of the Greek language. And yet we
find nothing to corroborate this presumption; all ancient learning was
neglected in the fourteenth century; nor do I know that one man on this
side of the Alps, except Aungerville himself, is reputed to have been
versed in Greek during that period. I cannot speak positively as to
Berchœur, the most learned man in France. The council of Vienne,
indeed, in 1311, had ordered the establishment of professors in the
Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Arabic languages, at Avignon, and in the
universities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca. But this decree
remained a dead letter.
[220] C. x.
|Some traces of Greek in Italy.|
12. If we now turn to Italy, we shall find, as is not wonderful, rather
more frequent instances of acquaintance with a living language, in
common use with a great neighbouring people. Gradenigo, in an essay on
this subject,[221] has endeavoured to refute what he supposes to be the
universal opinion, that the Greek tongue was first taught in Italy by
Chrysoloras and Guarino at the end of the fourteenth century, contending
that, from the eleventh inclusive, there are numerous instances of
persons conversant with it; besides the evidence afforded by
inscriptions in Greek characters found in some churches, by the use of
Greek psalters and other liturgical offices, by the employment of Greek
painters in churches, and by the frequent intercourse between the two
countries. The latter presumptions have in fact considerable weight; and
those who should contend for an absolute ignorance of the Greek
language, oral as well as written, in Italy, would go too far. The
particular instances brought forward by Gradenigo are about thirty. Of
these, the first is Papias, who has quoted five lines of Hesiod.[222]
Lanfranc had also a considerable acquaintance with the language.[223]
Peter Lombard, in his Liber Sententiarum, the systematic basis of
scholastic theology, introduces many Greek words, and explains them
rightly.[224] But this list is not very long; and when we find the
surname Bifarius given to one Ambrose of Bergamo in the eleventh
century, on account of his capacity of speaking both languages, it may
be conceived that the accomplishment was somewhat rare. Mehus, in his
very learned life of Traversari, has mentioned two or three names, among
whom is the Emperor Frederic II. (not indeed strictly an Italian), that
do not appear in Gradenigo.[225] But Tiraboschi conceives, on the other
hand, that the latter has inserted some on insufficient grounds.
Christine of Pisa is mentioned, I think, by neither; she was the
daughter of an Italian astronomer, but lived at the court of Charles V.
of France, and was the most accomplished literary lady of that age.[226]
[221] Ragionamento istorico-critico opra la litteratura Greco-Italiana.
Brescia, 1759.
[222] P. 37. These are very corruptly given, through the fault of a
transcriber; for Papias has translated them into tolerable Latin
verse.
[223] Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 144.
[224] Meiners, iii. 11.
[225] Pp. 155, 217, &c. Add to these authorities, Muratori, dissert.
44; Brucker, iii. 644, 647; Tiraboschi, v. 393.
[226] Tiraboschi, v. 388, vouches for Christine’s knowledge of Greek.
She was a good poetess in French, and altogether a very remarkable
person.
|Corruption of Greek language itself.|
13. The intercourse between Greece and the west of Europe, occasioned by
commerce and by the crusades, had little or no influence upon
literature. For, besides the general indifference to it in those
classes of society which were thus brought into some degree of contact
with the Eastern Empire, we must remember that, although Greek, even to
the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II., was a living language in
that city, spoken by the superior ranks of both sexes with tolerable
purity, it had degenerated among the common people, and almost
universally among the inhabitants of the provinces and islands, into
that corrupt form, or rather new language, which we call Romaic.[227]
The progress of this innovation went on by steps very similar to those
by which the Latin was transformed in the West, though it was not so
rapid or complete. A manuscript of the twelfth century, quoted by Du
Cange from the royal library at Paris, appears to be the oldest written
specimen of the modern Greek that has been produced; but the oral change
had been gradually going forward for several preceding centuries.[228]
[227] Filelfo says, in one of his epistles, dated 1441, that the
language spoken in Peloponnesus “ad eo est depravata, ut nihil
omnino sapiat priscæ ilius et eloquentissimo Græciæ.” At
Constantinople the case was better; “viri eruditi sunt nonnulli, et
culti mores, et sermo etiam nitidus.” In a letter of Coluccio
Salutato, near the end of the fourteenth century, he says that
Plutarch had been translated de Græco in Græcum vulgare. Mehus, p.
294. This seems to have been done at Rhodes. I quote this to remove
any difficulty others may feel, for I believe the Romaic Greek is
much older. The progress of corruption in Greek is sketched in the
Quarterly Review, vol. xxii., probably by the pen of the Bishop of
London. Its symptoms were very similar to those of Latin in the
West; abbreviation of words, and indifference to right inflexions.
See also Col. Leake’s Researches in the Morea. Eustathius has many
Romaic words; yet no one in the twelfth century had more learning.
[228] Du Cange, præfatio in Glossarium mediæ et infimæ Græcitatis.
|Character of Byzantine literature.|
14. The Byzantine literature was chiefly valuable by illustrating, or
preserving in fragments, the historians, philosophers, and, in some
measure, the poets of antiquity. Constantinople and her empire produced
abundantly men of erudition, but few of genius or of taste. But this
erudition was now rapidly on the decline. No one was left in Greece,
according to Petrarch, after the death of Leontius Pilatus, who
understood Homer; words not, perhaps, to be literally taken, but
expressive of what he conceived to be their general indifference to the
poet: and it seems very probable that some ancient authors, whom we
should most desire to recover, especially the lyric poets of the Doric
and Æolic dialects, have perished, because they had become
unintelligible to the transcribers of the lower empire; though this has
also been ascribed to the scrupulousness of the clergy. An absorbing
fondness for theological subtleties, far more trifling among the Greeks
than in the schools of the west, conspired to produce a neglect of
studies so remote as heathen poetry. Aurispa tells Ambrogio Traversari,
that he found they cared little about profane literature. Nor had the
Greek learning ever recovered the blow that the capture of
Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204, and the establishment for sixty
years of a Latin and illiterate dynasty, inflicted upon it.[229] We
trace many classical authors to that period, of whom we know nothing
later, and the compilations of ancient history by industrious Byzantines
came to an end. Meantime the language, where best preserved, had long
lost the delicacy and precision of its syntax; the true meaning of the
tenses, moods, and voices of the verb was overlooked or guessed at; a
kind of latinism, or something at least not ancient in structure and
rhythm, shows itself in their poetry; and this imperfect knowledge of
their once beautiful language is unfortunately too manifest in the
grammars of the Greek exiles of the fifteenth century, which have so
long been the groundwork of classical education in Europe.
[229] An enumeration, and it is a long one, of the Greek books not
wholly lost till this time will be found in Heeren, p. 125; and
also in his Essai sur les Croisades.
|Petrarch and Boccace learn Greek.|
15. We now come to the proper period of the restoration of Greek
learning. In the year 1339, Barlaam, a Calabrian by birth, but long
resident in Greece, and deemed one of the most learned men of that age,
was entrusted by the emperor Cantacuzenus with a mission to Italy.[230]
Petrarch, in 1342, as Tiraboschi fixes the time, endeavoured to learn
Greek from him, but found the task too arduous, or rather, had not
sufficient opportunity to go on with it.[231] Boccaccio, some years
afterwards, succeeded better with the help of Leontius Pilatus, a
Calabrian also by birth,[232] who made a prose translation of Homer for
his use, and for whom he is said to have procured a public appointment
as teacher of the Greek language at Florence, in 1361. He remained here
about three years; but we read nothing of any other disciples; and the
man himself was of too unsocial and forbidding a temper to conciliate
them.[233]
[230] Mehus. Tiraboschi, v. 398. De Sade, i. 406. Biog. Univ., Barlaam.
[231] Incubueram alacri spe magnoque desiderio, sed peregrinan linguæ
novitas et festina præceptoris absentia præciderunt propositum
meum. It has been said, and probably with some truth, that Greek,
or at least a sort of Greek, was preserved as a living language in
Calabria; not because Greek colonies had once been settled in some
cities, but because that part of Italy was not lost to the
Byzantine empire till about three centuries before the time of
Barlaam and Pilatus. They, however, had gone to a better source;
and I should have great doubts as to the goodness of Calabrian
Greek in the fourteenth century, which of course are not removed by
the circumstance that in some places the church service was
performed in that language. Heeren, I find, is of the same opinion,
p. 287.
[232] Many have taken Pilatus for a native of Thessalonica: even Hody
has fallen into this mistake, but Petrarch’s letters show the
contrary.
[233] Hody. De Græcis Illustribus, p. 2. Mehus, 273. De Sade, iii. 625.
Gibbon has erroneously supposed this translation to have been made
by Boccace himself.
|Few acquainted with the language in their time.|
16. According to a passage in one of Petrarch’s letters, fancifully
addressed to Homer, there were at that time not above ten persons in
Italy who knew how to value the old father of the poets; five at the
most in Florence, one in Bologna, two in Verona, one in Mantua, one in
Perugia, but none at Rome.[234] Some pains have been thrown away in
attempting to retrieve the names of those to whom he alludes: the letter
shows at least, that there was very little pretension to Greek learning
in his age; for I am not convinced that he meant all these ten persons,
among whom he seems to reckon himself, to be considered as skilled in
that tongue. And we must not be led away by the instances partially
collected by Gradenigo out of the whole mass of extant records, to lose
sight of the great general fact, that Greek literature was lost in Italy
for 700 years, in the words of Leonard Aretin, before the arrival of
Chrysoloras. The language is one thing, and the learning contained in it
is another. For all the purposes of taste and erudition, there was no
Greek in western Europe during the middle ages: if we look only at the
knowledge of bare words, we have seen there was a very slender portion.
[234] De Sade, iii. 627. Tiraboschi, v. 371, 400. Heeren, 294.
|It is taught by Chrysoloras about 1395|.
|His disciples.|
17. The true epoch of the revival of Greek literature in Italy, these
attempts of Petrarch and Boccace having produced no immediate effect,
though they evidently must have excited a desire for learning, cannot be
placed before the year 1395,[235] when Emanuel Chrysoloras, previously
known as an ambassador from Constantinople to the western powers, in
order to solicit assistance against the Turks, was induced to return to
Florence as public teacher of Greek. He passed from thence to various
Italian universities, and became the preceptor of several early
Hellenists.[236] The first, and perhaps the most eminent and useful of
these, was Guarino Guarini of Verona, born in 1370. He acquired his
knowledge of Greek under Chrysoloras at Constantinople, before the
arrival of the latter in Italy. Gaurino, upon his return, became
professor of rhetoric, first at Venice and other cities of Lombardy,
then at Florence, and ultimately at Ferrara, where he closed a long life
of unremitting and useful labour in 1460. John Aurispa of Sicily came to
the field rather later, but his labours were not less profitable. He
brought back to Italy 238 manuscripts from Greece about 1423, and thus
put his country in possession of authors hardly known to her by name.
Among these were Plato, Plotinus, Diodorus, Arrian, Dio Cassius, Strabo,
Pindar, Callimachus, Appian. After teaching Greek at Bologna and
Florence, Aurispa also ended a length of days under the patronage of the
house of Este, at Ferrara. To these may be added, in the list of public
instructors in Greek before 1440, Filelfo, a man still more known by his
virulent disputes with his contemporaries than by his learning; who,
returning from Greece in 1427, laden with manuscripts, was not long
afterwards appointed to the chair of rhetoric, that is, of Latin and
Greek philology, at Florence; and, according to his own account, excited
the admiration of the whole city.[237] But his vanity was excessive, and
his contempt of others not less so. Poggio was one of his enemies; and
their language towards each other is a noble specimen of the decency
with which literary and personal quarrels were carried on.[238] It has
been observed, that Gianozzo Manetti, a contemporary scholar, is less
known than others, chiefly because the mildness of his character spared
him the altercations to which they owe a part of their celebrity.[239]
[235] This is the date fixed by Tiraboschi; others refer it to 1391,
1396, 1397, or 1399.
[236] Literæ per hujus belli intercapedines mirabile quantum per Italiam
increvere; accedente tunc primum cognitione literarum Græcarum quæ
septingentis jam annis apud nostras homines desierant esse in usu.
Retulit autem Græcam disciplinam ad nos Chrysoloras Byzantinus, vir
domi nobilis ac literarum Græcarum peritissimus. Leonard Aretin
apud Hody, p. 28. See also an extract from Manetti’s Life of
Boccace, in Hody, p. 61.
Satis constat Chrysoloram Byzantinum transmarinam illam disciplinam
in Italiam advexisse; quo doctore adhibito primum nostri homines
totius exercitationis atque artis ignari, cognitis Græcis literis,
vehementer sese ad eloquentiæ studia excitaverunt. P. Cortesius, De
Hominibus Doctis, p. 6.
The first visit of Chrysoloras had produced an inclination towards
the study of Greek. Coluccio Salutato, in a letter to Demetrius
Cydonius, who had accompanied Chrysoloras, says, Multorum animos ad
linguam Helladum accendisti, ut jam videre videar multos fore
Græcarum literarum post paucorum annorum curricula non tepide
studiosos. Mehus, p. 356.
The Erotemata of Chrysoloras, an introduction to Greek grammar, was
the first, and long the only, channel to a knowledge of that
language, save oral instruction. It was several times printed, even
after the grammars of Gaza and Lascaris had come more into use. An
abridgment by Guarino of Verona, with some additions of his own,
was printed at Ferrara in 1509. Ginguéné, iii. 283.
[237] Universa in me civitas conversa est; omnes me diligunt, honorant
omnes, ac summis laudibus in cœlum efferunt. Meum nomen in ore est
omnibus. Nec primarii cives modo, cum per urbem incedo, sed
nobilissimæ fœminæ honorandi mei gratiâ loco cedunt, tantumque mihi
deferunt, ut me pudeat tanti cultus. Auditores sunt quotidie ad
quadringentos, vel fortassis et amplius; et hi quidem magna in
parte viri grandiores et ex ordine senatorio. Phililph. Epist. ad
ann. 1428.
[238] Shepherd’s Life of Poggio, ch. vi. and viii.
[239] Hody was perhaps the first who threw much light on the early
studies of Greek in Italy; and his book, De Græcis Illustribus,
Linguæ Græcæ Instauratoribus, will be read with pleasure and
advantage by every lover of literature; though Mehus, who came with
more exuberant erudition to the subject, has pointed out a few
errors. But more is to be found as to its native cultivators, Hody
being chiefly concerned with the Greek refugees, in Bayle,
Fabricius, Niceron, Mehus, Zeno, Tiraboschi, Meiners, Roscoe,
Heeren, Shepherd, Corniani, Ginguéné, and the Biographie
Universelle, whom I name in chronological order.
As it is impossible to dwell on the subject within the limits of
these pages, I will refer the reader to the most useful of the
above writings, some of which, being merely biographical
collections, do not give the connected information he would
require. The lives of Poggio and of Lorenzo de’ Medici will make
him familiar with the literary history of Italy for the whole
fifteenth century, in combination with public events, as it is best
learned. I need not say that Tiraboschi is a source of vast
knowledge to those who can encounter two quarto volumes. Ginguéné’s
third volume is chiefly borrowed from these, and may be read with
great advantage. Finally, a clear, full, and accurate account of
those times will be found in Heeren. It will be understood that all
these works relate to the revival of Latin as well as Greek.
|Translations from Greek into Latin.|
18. Many of these cultivators of the Greek language devoted their
leisure to translating the manuscripts brought into Italy. The earliest
of these were Peter Paul Vergerio (commonly called the elder, to
distinguish him from a more celebrated man of the same names in the
sixteenth century), a scholar of Chrysoloras, but not till he was rather
advanced in years. He made, by order of the emperor Sigismund, and,
therefore, not earlier than 1410, a translation of Arrian, which is said
to exist in the Vatican library; but we know little of its merits.[240]
A more renowned person was Ambrogio Traversari, a Florentine monk of the
order of Camaldoli, who employed many years in this useful labour. No
one of that age has left a more respectable name for private worth; his
epistles breathe a spirit of virtue, of kindness to his friends, and of
zeal for learning. In the opinion of his contemporaries, he was placed,
not quite justly, on a level with Leonard Aretin for his knowledge of
Latin, and he surpassed him in Greek.[241] Yet neither his translations,
nor those of his contemporaries, Guarino of Verona, Poggio, Leonardo
Aretino, Filelfo, who with several others, rather before 1440, or not
long afterwards, rendered the historians and philosophers of Greece
familiar to Italy, can be extolled as correct, or as displaying what is
truly to be called a knowledge of either language. Vossius, Casaubon,
and Huet speak with much dispraise of most of these early translations
from Greek into Latin. The Italians knew not enough of the original, and
the Greeks were not masters enough of Latin. Gaza, upon the whole, than
whom no one is more successful, says Erasmus, whether he renders
Greek into Latin, or Latin into Greek, is reckoned the most elegant, and
Argyropulus the most exact. But George of Trebizond, Filelfo, Leonard
Aretin, Poggio, Valla, Perotti, are rather severely dealt with by the
sharp critics of later times.[242] For this reproach does not fall only
on the scholars of the first generation, but on their successors, except
Politian, down nearly to the close of the fifteenth century. Yet, though
it is necessary to point out the deficiencies of classical erudition at
this time, lest the reader should hastily conclude, that the praises
bestowed upon it are less relative to the previous state of ignorance,
and the difficulties with which that generation had to labour, than they
really are, this cannot affect our admiration and gratitude towards men
who, by their diligence and ardour in acquiring and communicating
knowledge, excited that thirst for improvement, and laid those
foundations of it, which rendered the ensuing age so glorious in the
annals of literature.
[240] Biogr. Univ., Vergerio. He seems to have written very good Latin,
if we may judge by the extracts in Corniani, ii. 61.
[241] The Hodopœricon of Traversari, though not of importance as a
literary work, serves to prove, according to Bayle (Camaldoli, note
D), that the author was an honest man, and that he lived in a very
corrupt age. It is an account of the visitation of some convents
belonging to his order. The life of Ambrogio Traversari has been
written by Mehus very copiously, and with abundant knowledge of the
times: it is a great source of the literary history of Italy. There
is a pretty good account of him in Niceron, vol. xix., and a short
one in Roscoe; but the fullest biography of the man himself will be
found in Meiners, Lebenbeschreibungen berühmter Männer, vol. ii.
pp. 222-307.
[242] Baillet, Jugemens des Savans, ii. 376, &c. Blount, Censura
Auctorum, in nominibus nuncupatis. Hody, sæpies. Niceron, vol. ix.
in Perotti. See also a letter of Erasmus in Jortin’s Life, ii. 425.
Filelfo tells us of a perplexity into which Ambrogio Traversari and
Carlo Marsuppini, perhaps the two principal Greek scholars in Italy
after himself and Guarino, were thrown by this line of Homer:--
Βούλομ᾽ ἐγὼ λαὸν σόον ἔμμεναι, ἢ ἀπόλεσθαι.
[Boulom egô laon soon emmenai, ê apolesthai.]
The first thought it meant populum aut salvum esse aut perire;
which Filelfo justly calls, inepta interpretatio et prava.
Marsuppini said ἢ ἀπόλεσθαι [ê apolesthai] was, aut ipsum perire.
Filelfo, after exulting over them, gives the true meaning.
Philelph. Epist. ad ann. 1440.
Traversari complains much, in one of his letters, of the difficulty
he found in translating Diogenes Laertius, lib. vii. epis. ii.; but
Meiners, though admitting many errors, thinks this one of the best
among the early translations, ii. 290.
|Public encouragement delayed.|
19. They did not uniformly find any great public encouragement in the
early stages of their teaching. On the contrary, Aurispa met with some
opposition to philological literature at Bologna.[243] The civilians and
philosophers were pleased to treat the innovators as men who wanted to
set showy against solid learning. Nor was the state of Italy and of the
papacy, during the long schism, very favourable to their object.
Ginguéné remarks, that patronage was more indispensable in the fifteenth
century than it had been in the last. Dante and Petrarch shone out by a
paramount force of genius, but the men of learning required the
encouragement of power, in order to excite and sustain their industry.
[243] Tiraboschi, vii. 301.
|But fully accorded before 1440.|
20. That encouragement, however it may have been delayed, had been
accorded before the year 1440. Eugenius IV. was the Pope who displayed
an inclination to favour the learned. They found a still more liberal
patron in Alphonso, king of Naples, who, first of all European princes,
established the interchange of praise and pension, both, however, well
deserved, with Filelfo, Poggio, Valla, Beccatelli, and other eminent
men. This seems to have begun before 1440, though it was more
conspicuous afterwards until his death in 1458. The earliest literary
academy was established at Naples by Alphonso, of which Antonio
Beccatelli, more often called Panormita, from his birthplace, was the
first president, as Pontana was the second. Nicolas of Este, marquis of
Ferrara, received literary men in his hospitable court. But none were so
celebrated or useful in this patronage of letters as Cosmo de’ Medici,
the Pericles of Florence, who, at the period with which we are now
concerned, was surrounded by Traversari, Niccolo Niccolì, Leonardo
Aretino, Poggio; all ardent to retrieve the treasures of Greek and Roman
learning. Filelfo alone, malignant and irascible, stood aloof from the
Medicean party, and poured his venom in libels on Cosmo and the chief of
his learned associates. Niccolì, a wealthy citizen of Florence, deserves
to be remembered among these; not for his writings,--since he left none;
but on account of his care for the good instruction of youth, which has
made Meiners call him the Florentine Socrates, and for his liberality as
well as diligence in collecting books and monuments of antiquity. The
public library of St. Mark was founded on a bequest by Niccolì, in 1437,
of his own collection of eight hundred manuscripts. It was, too, at his
instigation, as has been said, and that of Traversari, that Cosmo
himself, about this time, laid the foundation of that which, under his
grandson, acquired the name of the Laurentian library.[244]
[244] I refer to the same authorities, but especially to the life of
Traversari in Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen, ii. 294. The suffrages
of older authors are collected by Baillet and Blount.
|Emigration of learned Greeks to Italy.|
21. As the dangers of the eastern empire grew more imminent, a few that
had still endeavoured to preserve in Greece the purity of their
language, and the speculations of ancient philosophy, turned their eyes
towards a haven that seemed to solicit the glory of protecting them. The
first of these, that is well known, was Theodore Gaza, who fled from his
birthplace, Thessalonica, when it fell under the Turkish yoke in 1430.
He rapidly acquired the Latin language by the help of Victorin of
Feltre.[245] Gaza became afterwards, but not, perhaps, within the period
to which this chapter is limited, rector of the university of Ferrara.
In this city, Eugenius IV. held a council in 1438, removed next year, on
account of sickness, to Florence, in order to reconcile the Greek and
Latin churches. Though it is well known that the appearances of success
which attended this hard bargain of the strong with the weak were very
fallacious, the presence of several Greeks, skilled in their own
language, and even in their ancient philosophy, Pletho, Bessarion, Gaza,
stimulated the noble love of truth and science that burned in the bosoms
of enlightened Italians. Thus, in 1440, the spirit of ancient learning
was already diffused on that side the Alps: the Greek language might be
learned in at least four or five cities, and an acquaintance with it was
a recommendation to the favour of the great; while the establishment of
universities at Pavia, Turin, Ferrara, and Florence, since the beginning
of the present century, or near the close of the last, bore witness to
the generous emulation which they served to redouble and concentrate.
[245] Victorin perhaps exchanged instruction with his pupil; for we
find by a letter of Traversari (p. 421, edit. Mehus), that he was
himself teaching Greek in 1433.
|Causes of enthusiasm for antiquity in Italy.|
22. It is an interesting question, What were the causes of this
enthusiasm for antiquity which we find in the beginning of the fifteenth
century?--a burst of public feeling that seems rather sudden, but
prepared by several circumstances that lie farther back in Italian
history. The Italians had for some generations learned more to identify
themselves with the great people that had subdued the world. The fall of
the house of Swabia, releasing their necks from a foreign yoke, had
given them a prouder sense of nationality; while the name of Roman
emperor was systematically associated by one party with ancient
tradition; and the study of the civil law, barbarously ignorant as its
professors often were, had at least the effect of keeping alive a
mysterious veneration for antiquity. The monuments of ancient Italy were
perpetual witnesses; their inscriptions were read; it was enough that a
few men like Petrarch should animate the rest; it was enough that
learning should become honourable, and that there should be the means of
acquiring it. The story of Rienzi, familiar to every one, is a proof
what enthusiasm could be kindled by ancient recollections. Meantime the
laity became better instructed; a mixed race, ecclesiastics, but not
priests, and capable alike of enjoying the benefices of the church, or
of returning from it to the world, were more prone to literary than
theological pursuits. The religious scruples which had restrained
churchmen, in the darker ages, from perusing heathen writers, by degrees
gave way, as the spirit of religion itself grew more objective, and
directed itself more towards maintaining the outward church in its
orthodoxy of profession, and in its secular power, than towards
cultivating devout sentiments in the bosom.
|Advanced state of society.|
23. The principal Italian cities became more wealthy and more luxurious
after the middle of the thirteenth century. Books, though still very
dear, comparatively with the present value of money, were much less so
than in other parts of Europe.[246] In Milan, about 1300, there were
fifty persons who lived by copying them. At Bologna, it was also a
regular occupation at fixed prices.[247] In this state of social
prosperity, the keen relish of Italy for intellectual excellence had
time to develop itself. A style of painting appeared in the works
of Giotto and his followers, rude and imperfect, according to the
skilfulness of later times, but in itself pure, noble, and expressive,
and well adapted to reclaim the taste from the extravagance of romance
to classic simplicity. Those were ready for the love of Virgil, who had
formed their sense of beauty by the figures of Giotto and the language
of Dante. The subject of Dante is truly mediæval; but his style, the
clothing of poetry, bears the strongest marks of his acquaintance with
antiquity. The influence of Petrarch was far more direct, and has
already been pointed out.
[246] Savigny thinks the price of books in the middle ages has been
much exaggerated; and that we are apt to judge by a few instances
of splendid volumes, which give us no more notion of ordinary
prices than similar proofs of luxury in collectors do at present.
Thousands of manuscripts are extant, and the sight of most of them
may convince us, that they were written at no extraordinary cost.
He then gives a long list of law books, the prices of which he has
found recorded. Gesch. des Römischen Rechts, iii. 519. But unless
this were accompanied with a better standard of value than a mere
monetary one, which last Savigny has given very minutely, it can
afford little information. The impression left on my mind, without
comparing these prices closely with those of other commodities, was
that books were in real value very considerably dearer (that is, in
the ratio of several units to one) than at present, which is
confirmed by many other evidences.
[247] Tiraboschi, iv. 72-80. The price for copying a bible was eighty
Bolognese livres; three of which were equal to two gold florins.
|Exclusive study of antiquity.|
24. The love of Greek and Latin absorbed the minds of these Italian
scholars, and effaced all regard to every other branch of literature.
Their own language was nearly silent; few condescended so much as to
write letters in it; as few gave a moment’s attention to physical
science, though we find it mentioned, perhaps as remarkable, in Victorin
of Feltre, that he had some fondness for geometry, and had learned to
understand Euclid.[248] But even in Latin they wrote very little that
can be deemed worthy of remembrance, or even that can be mentioned at
all. The ethical dialogues of Francis Barbaro, a noble Venetian, on the
married life (De Re Uxoria),[249] and of Poggio on nobility, are almost
the only books that fall within this period, except declamatory
invectives or panegyrics, and other productions of circumstance. Their
knowledge was not yet exact enough to let them venture upon critical
philology; though Niccolì and Traversari were silently occupied in the
useful task of correcting the text of manuscripts, faulty beyond
description in the later centuries. Thus we must consider Italy as still
at school, active, acute, sanguine, full of promise, but not yet become
really learned, or capable of doing more than excite the emulation of
other nations.
[248] Meiners, Lebensbesch, ii. 293.
[249] Barbaro was a scholar of Gasparin in Latin. He had probably
learned Greek of Guarino, for it is said that, on the visit of the
emperor John Paleologus to Italy in 1423, he was addressed by two
noble Venetians, Leonardo Guistiniani and Francesco Barbaro, in as
good language as if they had been born in Greece. Andrès, iii. 33.
The treatise De Re Uxoria, which was published about 1417, made a
considerable impression in Italy. Some account of it may be found
in Shepherd’s Life of Poggio, ch. iii., and in Corniani, ii. 137;
who thinks it the only work of moral philosophy in the fifteenth
century, which is not a servile copy of some ancient system. He was
grandfather of the more celebrated Hermolaus Barbarus.
|Classical learning in France low.|
25. But we find very little corresponding sympathy with this love of
classical literature in other parts of Europe; not so much owing to the
want of intercourse, as to a difference of external circumstances, and,
still more, of national character and acquired habits. Clemangis,
indeed, rather before the end of the fourteenth century, is said by
Crevier to have restored the study of classical antiquity in France,
after an intermission of two centuries;[250] and Eichhorn deems his
style superior to that of most contemporary Italians.[251] Even the
Latin verses of Clemangis are praised by the same author, as the first
that had been tolerably written on this side the Alps for two hundred
years. But we do not find much evidence that he produced any effect upon
Latin literature in France. The general style was as bad as before.
Their writers employed not only the barbarous vocabulary of the schools,
but even French words with Latin terminations adapted to them.[252] We
shall see that the renovation of polite letters in France must be dated
long afterwards. Several universities were established in that kingdom;
but even if universities had been always beneficial to literature, which
was not the case during the prevalence of scholastic disputation, the
civil wars of one unhappy reign, and the English invasions of another,
could not but retard the progress of all useful studies. Some Greeks,
about 1430, are said to have demanded a stipend, in pursuance of a
decree of the council of Vienne in the preceding century, for teaching
their language in the university of Paris. The nation of France, one of
the four into which that university was divided, assented to this
suggestion; but we find no other steps taken in relation to it. In 1455,
it is said, that the Hebrew language was publicly taught.[253]
[250] Hist. de l’Université de Paris, iii. 189.
[251] Gesch. der Litteratur, ii. 242. Meiners (Vergleich. der Sitten,
iii. 33) extols Clemangis in equally high terms. He is said to have
read lectures on the rhetoric of Cicero and Aristotle. Id. ii. 647.
Was there a translation of the latter so early?
[252] Bulæus. Hist. Univ. Paris, apud Heeren, p. 118.
[253] Crevier, iv. 43. Heeren, p. 121.
|Much more so in England.|
26. Of classical learning in England we can tell no favourable story.
The Latin writers of the fifteenth century, few in number, are still
more insignificant in value; they possess scarce an ordinary
knowledge of grammar; to say that they are full of barbarisms and
perfectly inelegant, is hardly necessary. The university of Oxford was
not less frequented at this time than in the preceding century, though
it was about to decline; but its pursuits were as nugatory and
pernicious to real literature as before.[254] Poggio says, more than
once, in writing from England about 1420, that he could find no good
books, and is not very respectful to our scholars. “Men given up to
sensuality we may find in abundance; but very few lovers of learning;
and those barbarous, skilled more in quibbles and sophisms than in
literature. I visited many convents; they were all full of books of
modern doctors, whom we should not think worthy so much as to be heard.
They have few works of the ancients, and those are much better with us.
Nearly all the convents of this island have been founded within four
hundred years: but that was not a period in which either learned men, or
such books as we seek, could be expected, for they had been lost
before.”[255]
[254] No place was more discredited for bad Latin. “Oxoniensis loquendi
mos” became a proverb. This means that, being disciples of Scotus
and Ockham, the Oxonians talked their master’s jargon.
[255] Pogg. Epist. p. 43. (edit. 1832.)
|Library of Duke of Gloucester.|
27. Yet books began to be accumulated in our public libraries:
Aungerville, in the preceding century, gave part of his collection to a
college at Oxford; and Humphry, duke of Gloucester, bequeathed six
hundred volumes, as some have said, or one hundred and twenty-nine only,
according to another account, to that university.[256] But these books
were not of much value in a literary sense, though some may have been
historically useful. I am indebted to Heeren for a letter of thanks from
the duke of Gloucester to Decembrio, an Italian scholar of considerable
reputation, who had sent him a translation of Plato de Republica. It
must have been written before July, 1447, the date of Humphry’s death,
and was probably as favourable a specimen of our Latinity as the kingdom
could furnish.[257]
[256] The former number is given by Warton; the latter I find in a
short tract on English monastic libraries (1831), by the Rev.
Joseph Hunter. In this there is also a catalogue of the library in
the priory of Bretton in Yorkshire, consisting of about 150
volumes. No date is given; but I suppose it was about the first
part of the sixteenth century.
[257] Hoc uno nos longe felicem judicamus, quod tu totque florentissimi
viri Græcis et Latinis literis peritissimi, quot illic apud vos
sunt nostris temporibus, habeantur, quibus nesciamus quid laudum
digne satis possit excogitari. Mitto quod facundiam priscam illam
et priscis viris dignam, quæ prorsus perierat, huic sæculo
renovatis; nec id vobis satis fuit, et Græcas literas scrutati
estis, ut et philosophos Græcas et vivendi magistros, qui nostris
jam obliterati erant et occulti, reseratis, et eos Latinos
facientes in propatulum adducitis. Heeren quotes this, p. 135, from
Sassi de studiis Mediolanensibus. Warton also mentions the letter,
ii. 388. The absurd idiom exemplified in “nos felicem judicamus”
was introduced affectedly by the writers of the twelfth century.
Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 146.
|Gerard Groot’s college at Deventer.|
28. Among the Cisalpine nations, the German had the greatest tendency to
literary improvement, as we may judge by subsequent events, rather than
by much that was apparent so early as 1440. Their writers in Latin were
still barbarous, nor had they partaken in the love of antiquity which
actuated the Italians. But the German nation displayed its best
characteristic,--a serious, honest, industrious disposition, loving
truth and goodness, and glad to pursue whatever path seemed to lead to
them. A proof of this character was given in an institution of
considerable influence both upon learning and religion, the college, or
brotherhood, of Deventer, planned by Gerard Groot, but not built and
inhabited till 1400, fifteen years after his death. The associates of
this, called by different names, but more usually Brethren of the Life
in Common (Gemeineslebens), or Good Brethren and Sisters, were dispersed
in different parts of Germany and the Low Countries, but with their head
college at Deventer. They bore an evident resemblance to the modern
Moravians, by their strict lives, their community, at least a partial
one, of goods, their industry in manual labour, their fervent devotion,
their tendency to mysticism. But they were as strikingly distinguished
from them by the cultivation of knowledge, which was encouraged in
brethren of sufficient capacity, and promoted by schools both for
primary and for enlarged education. “These schools were,” says Eichhorn,
“the first genuine nurseries of literature in Germany, so far as it
depended on the knowledge of languages; and in them was first taught the
Latin, and in the process of time the Greek and eastern tongues.”[258]
It will be readily understood, that Latin only could be taught in
the period with which we are now concerned; and, according to Lambinet,
the brethren did not begin to open public schools till near the middle
of the century.[259] These schools continued to flourish till the civil
wars of the Low Countries and the progress of the Reformation broke them
up. Groningen had also a school, St. Edward’s, of considerable
reputation. Thomas à Kempis, according to Meiners, whom Eichhorn and
Heeren have followed, presided over a school at Zwoll, wherein Agricola,
Hegius, Langius, and Dringeberg, the restorers of learning in Germany,
were educated. But it seems difficult to reconcile this with known
dates, or with other accounts of that celebrated person’s history.[260]
The brethren Gemeineslebens had forty-five houses in 1430, and in 1460
more than thrice the number. They are said by some to have taken regular
vows, though I find a difference in my authorities as to this, and to
have professed celibacy. They were bound to live by the labour of their
hands, observing the ascetic discipline of monasteries, and not to beg;
which made the mendicant orders their enemies. They were protected,
however, against these malignant calumniators by the favour of the pope.
The passages quoted by Revius, the historian of Deventer, do not quite
bear out the reputation for love of literature which Eichhorn has given
them; but they were much occupied in copying and binding books.[261]
Their house at Bruxelles began to print books instead of copying them,
in 1474.[262]
[258] Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Männer, ii. 311-324.
Lambinet, Origines de l’Imprimerie, ii. 170. Eichhorn, Geschichte
der Litteratur, ii. 134, iii. 882. Revius, Daventria Illustrata.
Mosheim, cent. xv. c. 2, § 22. Biog. Univ., Gerard, Kempis.
[259] Origines de l’Imprimerie, p. 180.
[260] Meiners, p. 323. Eichhorn, p. 137. Heeren, p. 145. Biog. Univ.,
Kempis. Revius, Davent. Illust.
[261] Daventria Illustrata, p. 35.
[262] Lambinet.
|Physical sciences in middle ages.|
|Arabian numerals and method.|
29. We have in the last chapter made no mention of the physical
sciences, because little was to be said, and it seemed expedient to
avoid breaking the subject into unnecessary divisions. It is well known
that Europe had more obligations to the Saracens in this, than in any
other province of research. They indeed had borrowed much from Greece,
and much from India; but it was through their language that it came into
use among the nations of the west. Gerbert, near the end of the tenth
century, was the first who, by travelling into Spain, learned something
of Arabian science. A common literary tradition ascribes to him the
introduction of their numerals, and of the arithmetic founded on them,
into Europe. This has been disputed, and again re-asserted, in modern
times.[263] It is sufficient to say here, that only a very unreasonable
scepticism has questioned the use of Arabic numerals in calculation
during the thirteenth century; the positive evidence on this side
cannot be affected by the notorious fact, that they were not employed in
legal instruments, or in ordinary accounts; such an argument, indeed,
would be equally good in comparatively modern times. These numerals are
found, according to Andrès, in Spanish manuscripts of the twelfth
century; and, according both to him and Cossali, who speak from actual
inspection, in the treatise of arithmetic and algebra by Leonard
Fibonacci Pisa, written in 1202.[264] This has never been printed. It is
by far our earliest testimony to the knowledge of algebra in Europe; but
Leonard owns that he learned it among the Saracens. “This author
appears,” says Hutton, or rather Cossali, from whom he borrows, “to be
well skilled in the various ways of reducing equations to their final
simple state by all the usual methods.” His algebra includes the
solution of quadratics.
[263] See Andrès, the Archæologia, vol. viii., and the Encyclopædias,
Britannic and Metropolitan, on one side, against Gerbert; Montucla,
i. 502, and Kästner, Geschichte der Mathematik, i. 35, and ii. 695,
in his favour. The latter relies on a well-known passage in William
of Malmsbury concerning Gerbert: Abacum certe primus a Saracenis
rapiens, regulas dedit, quæ a sudantibus abacistis vix
intelliguntur; upon several expressions in his writings, and upon a
manuscript of his geometry, seen and mentioned by Pez, who refers
it to the twelfth century, in which Arabic numerals are introduced.
It is answered, that the language of Malmsbury is indefinite, that
Gerbert’s own expressions are equally so, and that the copyist of
the manuscript may have inserted the cyphers.
It is evident that the use of the numeral signs does not of itself
imply an acquaintance with the Arabic calculation, though it was a
necessary step to it. Signs bearing some resemblance to these (too
great for accident) are found in MSS. of Boethius, and are
published by Montucla, (vol. i. planch. ii.) In one MS. they appear
with names written over each of them, not Greek, or Latin, or
Arabic, or in any known language. These singular names, and nearly
the same forms, are found also in a manuscript well deserving of
notice,--No. 343 of the Arundel MSS., in the British Museum, and
which is said to have belonged to a convent at Mentz. This has been
referred by some competent judges to the twelfth, and by others to
the very beginning of the thirteenth century. It purports to be an
introduction to the art of multiplying and dividing numbers;
quicquid ab abacistis excerpere potui, compendiose collegi. The
author uses nine digits, but none for ten, or zero, as is also the
case in the MS. of Boethius. Sunt vero integri novem sufficientes
ad infinitam multiplicationem, quorum nomina singulis sunt
superjecta. A gentleman of the British Museum, who had the
kindness, at my request, to give his attention to this hitherto
unknown evidence in the controversy, is of opinion that the
rudiments, at the very least, of our numeration are indicated in
it, and that the author comes within one step of our present
system, which is no other than supplying an additional character
for zero. His ignorance of this character renders his process
circuitous, as it does not contain the principle of juxtaposition
for the purpose of summing; but it does contain the still more
essential principle, a decuple increase of value for the same sign,
in a progressive series of location from right to left. I shall be
gratified if this slight notice should cause the treatise, which is
very short, to be published, or more fully explained.
[264] Montucla, whom several other writers have followed, erroneously
places this work in the beginning of the fifteenth century.
|Proofs of them in thirteenth century.|
30. In the thirteenth century, we find Arabian numerals employed in the
tables of Alfonso X., king of Castile, published about 1252. They are
said to appear also in the Treatise of the Sphere, by John de Sacro
Bosco, probably about twenty years earlier; and there is an unpublished
treatise, De Algorismo, ascribed to him, which treats expressly of this
subject.[265] Algorismus was the proper name for the Arabic notation and
method of reckoning. Matthew Paris, after informing us that John Basing
first made Greek numeral figures known in England, observes, that in
these any number may be represented by a single figure, which is not the
case “in Latin nor in Algorism.”[266] It is obvious that in some few
numbers only this is true of the Greek; but the passage certainly
implies an acquaintance with that notation, which had obtained the name
of Algorism. It cannot, therefore, be questioned that Roger Bacon knew
these figures; yet he has, I apprehend, never mentioned them in his
writings: for a calendar, bearing the date 1292, which has been
blunderingly ascribed to him, is expressly declared to have been framed
at Toledo. In the year 1282, we find a single Arabic figure 3 inserted
in a public record; not only the first indisputable instance of their
employment in England, but the only one of their appearance in so solemn
an instrument.[267] But I have been informed that they have been found
in some private documents before the end of the century. In the
following age, though they were still by no means in common use among
accountants, nor did they begin to be so till much later, there can be
no doubt that mathematicians were thoroughly conversant with them, and
instances of their employment in other writings may be adduced.[268]
[265] Several copies of this treatise are in the British Museum.
Montucla has erroneously said that this arithmetic of Sacro Bosco
is written in verse. Wallis, his authority, informs us only that
some verses, two of which he quotes, are subjoined to the treatise.
This is not the case in the manuscripts I have seen. I should add,
that only one of them bears the name of Sacro Bosco, and that in a
later handwriting.
[266] Hic insuper magister Joannes figuras Græcorum numerales, et
earum notitiam et significationes in Angliam portavit, et
familiaribus suia declaravit. Per quas figuras etiam literæ
repræsentantur. De quibus figuris hoc maxime admirandum, quod unica
figura quilibet numerus representatur; quod non est in Latino, vel
in Algorismo. Matt. Paris, A.D. 1252, p. 721.
[267] Parliamentary Writs, i. 232, edited under the Record Commission
by Sir Francis Palgrave. It was probably inserted for want of room,
not enough having been left for the word IIIum. It will not be
detected with ease, even by the help of this reference.
[268] Andrès, ii. 92, gives on the whole the best account of the
progress of numerals. The article by Leslie in the Encyclopædia
Britannica is too dogmatical in denying their antiquity. That in
the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, by Mr. Peacock, is more learned.
Montucla is as superficial as usual; and Kästner has confined
himself to the claims of Gerbert, admitting which, he is too
indifferent about subsequent evidence.
|Mathematical treatises.|
31. Adelard of Bath, in the twelfth century, translated the elements of
Euclid from the Arabic, and another version was made by Campanus in the
next age. The first printed editions are of the latter. The writings of
Ptolemy became known through the same channel; and the once celebrated
treatise on the Sphere by John de Sacro Bosco (Holywood, or, according
to Leland, Halifax) about the beginning of the thirteenth century, is
said to be but an abridgment of the Alexandrian geometer.[269] It has
been frequently printed, and was even thought worthy of a commentary by
Clavius. Jordan of Namur (Nemorarius) near the same time, shows a
considerable insight into the properties of numbers.[270] Vitello, a
native of Poland, not long afterwards, first made known the principles
of optics in a treatise in ten books, several times printed in the
sixteenth century, and indicating an extensive acquaintance with
the Greek and Arabian geometers. Montucla has charged Vitello with
having done no more than compress and arrange a work on the same subject
by Alhazen; which Andrès, always partial to the Arabian writers, has not
failed to repeat. But the author of an article on Vitello in the
Biographie Universelle repels this imputation, which could not, he says,
have proceeded from any one who had compared the two writers. A more
definite judgment is pronounced by the laborious German historian of
mathematics, Kästner. “Vitello,” he says, “has with diligence and
judgment collected, as far as lay in his power, what had been previously
known; and, avoiding the tediousness of Arabian verbosity, is far more
readable, perspicuous, and methodical than Alhazen; he has also gone
much farther in the science.”[271]
[269] Montucla, i. 506. Biogr. Univ., Kästner.
[270] Montucla. Kästner.
[271] Gesch. der Mathem. ii. 263. The true name is Vitello, as Playfair
has remarked (Dissertat. in Encycl. Brit.), but Vitello is much
more common. Kästner is correct, always copying the old editions.
|Roger Bacon.|
32. It seems hard to determine whether or not Roger Bacon be entitled to
the honours of a discoverer in science; that he has not described any
instrument analogous to the telescope, is now generally admitted; but he
paid much attention to optics, and has some new and important notions on
that subject. That he was acquainted with the explosive powers of
gunpowder, it seems unreasonable to deny: the mere detonation of nitre
in contact with an inflammable substance, which of course might be
casually observed, is by no means adequate to his expressions in the
well-known passage on that subject.[272] But there is no ground for
doubting that the Saracens were already conversant with gunpowder.
[272] This has been suggested by Professor Leslie, in the article on
arithmetic above quoted; a great chemical authority, but who had
not taken the trouble to look at Bacon, and forgot that he mentions
charcoal and sulphur as well as nitre.
|His resemblance to Lord Bacon.|
33. The mind of Roger Bacon was strangely compounded of almost prophetic
gleams of the future course of science, and the best principles of the
inductive philosophy, with a more than usual credulity in the
superstitions of his own time. Some have deemed him overrated by the
nationality of the English.[273] But if we may have sometimes given him
credit for discoveries to which he has only borne testimony, there can
be no doubt of the originality of his genius. I have in another place
remarked the singular resemblance he bears to Lord Bacon, not only in
the character of his philosophy, but in several coincidences of
expression. This has since been followed up by a later writer,[274]
(with no knowledge, probably, of what I had written, since he does not
allude to it), who plainly charges Lord Bacon with having borrowed much,
and with having concealed his obligations. The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon
was not published till 1733, but the manuscripts were not uncommon, and
Selden had thoughts of printing the work. The quotations from the
Franciscan and the Chancellor, printed in parallel columns by Mr.
Forster, are sometimes very curiously similar; but he presses the
resemblance too far; and certainly the celebrated distinction, in the
Novum Organum, of four classes of _Idola_ which mislead the
judgment, does not correspond in meaning, as he supposes, with the
causes of error assigned by Roger Bacon.
[273] Meiners, of all modern historians of literature, is the least
favourable to Bacon, on account of his superstition and credulity
in the occult sciences. Vergleichung der Sitten, ii. 710, and iii.
232. Heeren, p. 244, speaks more candidly of him. It is impossible,
I think, to deny that credulity is one of the points of resemblance
between him and his namesake.
[274] Hist. of Middle Ages, iii. 539. Forster’s Mahometanism Unveiled,
ii. 312.
|English mathematicians of fourteenth century.|
34. The English nation was not at all deficient in mathematicians during
the fourteenth century; on the contrary, no other in Europe produced
nearly so many. But their works have rarely been published. The great
progress of physical science, since the invention of printing, has
rendered these imperfect treatises interesting only to the curiosity of
a very limited class of readers. Thus Richard Suisset, or Swineshead,
author of a book entitled the Calculator, of whom Cardan speaks in such
language as might be applied to himself, is scarcely known, except by
name, to literary historians; and though it has once been printed, the
book is of the extremest rarity.[275] But the most conspicuous of
our English geometers was Thomas Bradwardin, archbishop of Canterbury;
yet more for his rank, and for his theological writings, than for the
arithmetical and geometrical speculations which give him a place in
science. Montucla, with a carelessness of which there are too many
instances in his valuable work, has placed Bradwardin, who died in 1348,
at the beginning of the sixteenth century, though his work was printed
in 1495.[276]
[275] The character of Suisset’s book given by Brucker, iii. 852, who
had seen it, does not seem to justify the wish of Leibnitz that it
should be republished. It is a strange medley of arithmetical and
geometrical reasoning with the scholastic philosophy. Kästner
(Geschichte der Mathematik, i. 50) seems not to have looked at
Brucker, and, like Montucla, has a very slight notion of the nature
of Suisset’s book. His suspicion that Cardan had never seen the
book he so much extols, because he calls the author the Calculator,
which is the title of the work itself, seems unwarrantable. Suisset
probably had obtained the name from his book, which is not
uncommon; and Cardan was not a man to praise what he had never read.
[276] It may be considered a proof of the attention paid to geometry in
England, that two books of Euclid were read at Oxford about the
middle of the fifteenth century. Churton’s Life of Smyth, p. 151,
from the University Register. We should not have expected to find
this.
|Astronomy.|
|Alchemy.|
35. It is certain that the phenomena of physical astronomy were never
neglected; the calendar was known to be erroneous, and Roger Bacon has
even been supposed by some to have divined the method of its
restoration, which has long after been adopted. The Arabians understood
astronomy well, and their science was transfused more or less into
Europe. Nor was astrology the favourite superstition of both the eastern
and western world, without its beneficial effect upon the observation
and registering of the planetary motions. Thus too, alchemy, which,
though the word properly means but chemistry, was generally confined to
the mystery all sought to penetrate, the transmutation of metals into
gold, led more or less to the processes by which a real knowledge of the
component parts of substances has been attained.[277]
[277] I refer to Dr. Thomson’s History of Chemistry for much curious
learning on the alchemy of the Middle Ages. In a work like the
present, it is impossible to follow up every subject; and I think
that a general reference to a book of reputation and easy
accessibility, is better than an attempt to abridge it.
|Medicine.|
36. The art of medicine was cultivated with great diligence by the
Saracens both of the east and of Spain, but with little of the
philosophical science that had immortalised the Greek school. The
writings, however, of these masters were translated into Arabic; whether
correctly or not, has been disputed among oriental scholars; and Europe
derived her acquaintance with the physic of the mind and body, with
Hippocrates as well as Aristotle, through the same channel. But the
Arabians had eminent medical authorities of their own; Rhases, Avicenna,
Albucazi who possessed greater influence. In modern times, that is,
since the revival of Greek science, the Arabian theories have been in
general treated with much scorn. It is admitted, however, that pharmacy
owes a long list of its remedies to their experience, and to their
intimacy with the products of the east. The school of Salerno,
established as early as the eleventh century,[278] for the study of
medicine, from whence the most considerable writers of the next ages
issued, followed the Arabians in their medical theory. But these are
deemed rude, and of little utility at present.
[278] Meiners refers it to the tenth, ii. 413; and Tiraboschi thinks
it may be as ancient, iii. 347.
|Anatomy.|
37. In the science of anatomy an epoch was made by the treatise of
Mundinus, a professor at Bologna, who died in 1326. It is entitled
Anatome omnium humani corporis interiorum membrorum. This book had one
great advantage over those of Galen, that it was founded on the actual
anatomy of the human body. For Galen is supposed to have only dissected
apes, and judged of mankind by analogy; and though there may be reason
to doubt whether this were altogether the case, it is certain that he
had very little practice in human dissection. Mundinus seems to have
been more fortunate in his opportunities of this kind than later
anatomists, during the prevalence of a superstitious prejudice, have
found themselves. His treatise was long the text-book of the Italian
universities, till, about the middle of the sixteenth century, Mundinus
was superseded by greater anatomists. The statutes of the university of
Padua prescribed, that anatomical lecturers should adhere to the literal
text of Mundinus. Though some have treated this writer as a mere copier
of Galen, he has much, according to Portal, of his own. There were also
some good anatomical writers in France during the fourteenth
century.[279]
[279] Tiraboschi, v. 209-244, who is very copious for a non-medical
writer. Portal, Hist, de l’Anatomie. Biogr. Univ., Mondino,
Chauliac. Eichhorn, Gesch. der Litt. ii. 416-447.
|Encyclopædic works of middle ages.|
|Vincent of Beauvais.|
38. Several books of the later middle ages, sometimes of great size,
served as collections of natural history, and, in fact, as encyclopædias
of general knowledge. The writings of Albertus Magnus belong, in
part, to this class. They have been collected, in twenty-one volumes
folio, by the Dominican Peter Jammi, and published at Lyons in 1651.
After setting aside much that is spurious, Albert may pass for the most
fertile writer in the world. He is reckoned by some the founder of the
schoolmen; but we mention him here as a compiler, from all accessible
sources, of what physical knowledge had been accumulated in his time. A
still more comprehensive contemporary writer of this class was Vincent
de Beauvais, in the Speculum naturale, morale, doctrinale et historiale,
written before the middle of the thirteenth century. The second part of
this vast treatise in ten volumes folio, usually bound in four, Speculum
morale, seems not to be written by Vincent de Beauvais, and is chiefly a
compilation from Thomas Aquinas, and other theologians of the same age.
The first, or Speculum naturale, follows the order of creation as an
arrangement; and after pouring out all the author could collect on the
heavens and earth, proceeds to the natural kingdoms; and, finally, to
the corporeal and mental structure of man. In the third part of this
encyclopædia, under the title Speculum doctrinale, all arts and sciences
are explained; and the fourth contains an universal history.[280] The
sources of this magazine of knowledge are of course very multifarious.
In the Speculum naturale, at which alone I have looked, Aristotle’s
writings, especially the history of animals, those of other ancient
authors, of the Arabian physicians, and of all who had treated the same
subjects in the middle ages, are brought together in a comprehensive,
encyclopædic manner, and with vast industry, but with almost a studious
desire, as we might now fancy, to accumulate absurd falsehoods. Vincent,
like many, it must be owned, in much later times, through his haste to
compile, does not give himself the trouble to understand what he copies.
But, in fact, he relied on others to make extracts for him, especially
from the writings of Aristotle, permitting himself or them, as he tells
us, to change the order, condense the meaning, and explain the
difficulties.[281] It may be easily believed that neither Vincent of
Beauvais, nor his amanuenses, were equal to this work of abridging and
transposing their authors. Andrès, accordingly, has quoted a passage
from the Speculum naturale, and another to the same effect from Albertus
Magnus, relating, no doubt, in the Arabian writer from whom they
borrowed, to the polarity of the magnet, but so strangely turned into
nonsense, that it is evident they could not have understood in the least
what they wrote. Probably, as their language is nearly the same, they
copied a bad translation.[282]
[280] Biogr. Univ., Vincentius Bellovacensis.
[281] A quibusdam fratribus excerpta susceperam; non eodem penitus
verborum schemate, quo in originalibus suis jacent, sed ordine
plerumque transposito, non nunquam etiam mutata perpaululum ipsorum
verborum forma, manente tamen auctoris sententia; prout ipsa vel
prolixitatis abbreviandæ vel multitudinis in unam colligendæ, vel
etiam obscuritatis explanandæ necessitas exigebat.
[282] Andrès, ii. 112. See also xiii. 141.
|Berchorius.|
39. In the same class of compilation with the Speculum of Vincent of
Beauvais, we may place some later works, the Trésor of Brunetto Latini,
written in French about 1280, the Reductorium, Repertorium, et
Dictionarium morale of Berchorius, or Berchœur, a monk, who died at
Paris in 1362,[283] and a treatise by Bartholomew Glanvil, De
Proprietatibus Rerum, soon after that time. Reading all they could find,
extracting from all they read, digesting their extracts under some
natural, or, at worst, alphabetical classification, these laborious men
gave back their studies to the world with no great improvement of the
materials, but sometimes with much convenience in their disposition.
This, however, depended chiefly on their ability as well as diligence;
and in the mediæval period, the want of capacity to discern probable
truth was a very great drawback from the utility of their compilations.
[283] This book, according to De Sade, Vie de Pétrarque, iii. 550,
contains a few good things among many follies. I have never seen it.
|Spanish ballads.|
40. It seems to be the better opinion, that very few only of the Spanish
romances or ballads founded on history or legend, so many of which
remain, belong to a period anterior to the fifteenth century. One may be
excepted, which bears the name of Don Juan Manuel, who died in
1364.[284] Most of them should be placed still lower. Sanchez has
included none in his collection of Spanish poetry, limited by its title
to that period; though he quotes one or two fragments which he would
refer to the fourteenth century.[285] Some, however, have conceived,
perhaps with little foundation, that several, in the general collections
of romances, have been modernised in language from more ancient lays.
They have all a highly chivalrous character; every sentiment congenial
to that institution, heroic courage, unsullied honour, generous pride,
faithful love, devoted loyalty, were displayed in Castilian verse, not
only in their real energy, but sometimes with an hyperbolical
extravagance to which the public taste accommodated itself, and which
long continued to deform the national literature. The ballad of the
Conde de Alarcos, which may be found in Bouterwek, or in Sismondi, and
seems to be one of the most ancient, will serve as a sufficient
specimen.[286]
[284] Don Juan Manuel, a prince descended from Ferdinand III., was the
most accomplished man whom Spain produced in his age. One of the
earliest specimens of Castilian prose, El Conde Lucanor, places him
high in the literature of his country. It is a moral fiction, in
which, according to the custom of novelists, many other tales are
interwoven. “In every passage of the book,” says Bouterwek, “the
author shows himself a man of the world and an observer of human
nature.”
[285] The Marquis of Santillana, early in the fifteenth century, wrote
a short letter on the state of poetry in Spain to his own time.
Sanchez has published this with long and valuable notes.
[286] Bouterwek’s History of Spanish and Portuguese Poetry, i. 55.
See also Sismondi, Littérature du Midi, iii. 228, for the romance
of the Conde de Alarcos.
Sismondi refers it to the fourteenth century; but perhaps no strong
reason for this could be given. I find, however, in the Cancionero
General, a “romance viejo,” containing the first two lines of the
Conde de Alarcos, continued on another subject. It was not uncommon
to build romances on the stocks of old ones, taking only the first
lines; several other instances occur among those in the Cancionero,
which are not numerous.
|Metres of Spanish poetry.|
41. The very early poetry of Spain (that published by Sanchez) is marked
by a rude simplicity, a rhythmical, and not very harmonious
versification, and, especially in the ancient poem of the Cid, written,
probably, before the middle of the twelfth century, by occasional vigour
and spirit. This poetry is in that irregular Alexandrine measure, which,
as has been observed, arose out of the Latin pentameter. It gave place
in the fifteenth century to a dactylic measure, called _versos de arte
mayor_, generally of eleven syllables, the first, fourth, seventh,
and tenth being accented, but subject to frequent licences, especially
that of an additional short syllable at the beginning of the line. But
the favourite metre in lyric songs and romances was the redondilla, the
type of which was a line of four trochees, requiring, however,
alternately, or at the end of a certain number, one deficient in the
last syllable, and consequently throwing an emphasis on the close. By
this a poem was sometimes divided into short stanzas, the termination of
which could not be mistaken by the ear. It is no more, where the lines
of eight and seven syllables alternate, than that English metre with
which we are too familiar to need an illustration. Bouterwek has
supposed that this alternation, which is nothing else than the trochaic
verse of Greek and Latin poetry, was preserved traditionally in Spain
from the songs of the Roman soldiers. But it seems by some Arabic lines
which he quotes, in common characters, that the Saracens had the line of
four trochees, which, in all languages where syllables are strongly
distinguished in time and emphasis, has been grateful to the ear. No one
can fail to perceive the sprightliness and grace of this measure, when
accompanied by simple melody. The lighter poetry of the southern nations
is always to be judged with some regard to its dependence upon a sister
art. It was not written to be read, but to be heard; and to be heard in
the tones of song, and with the notes of the lyre or the guitar. Music
is not at all incapable of alliance with reasoning or descriptive
poetry; but it excludes many forms which either might assume, and
requires a rapidity as well as intenseness of perception, which language
cannot always convey. Hence the poetry designed for musical
accompaniment is sometimes unfairly derided by critics, who demand what
it cannot pretend to give; but it is still true, that, as it cannot give
all which metrical language is able to afford, it is not poetry of the
very highest class.
|Consonant and assonant rhymes.|
42. The Castilian language is rich in perfect rhymes. But in their
lighter poetry the Spaniards frequently contented themselves with
_assonances_, that is, with the correspondence of final syllables,
wherein the vowel alone was the same, though with different consonants,
as _duro_ and _humo_, _boca_ and _cosa_. These were often intermingled
with perfect or consonant rhymes. In themselves, unsatisfactory as they
may seem at first sight to our prejudices, there can be no doubt but
that the assonances contained a musical principle, and would soon give
pleasure to and be required by the ear. They may be compared to the
alliteration so common in the northern poetry, and which constitutes
almost the whole regularity of some of our oldest poems. But though
assonances may seem to us an indication of a rude stage of poetry, it is
remarkable that they belong chiefly to the later period of Castilian
lyric poetry, and that consonant rhymes, frequently with the recurrence
of the same syllable, are reckoned, if I mistake not, a presumption of
the antiquity of a romance.[287]
[287] Bouterwek’s Introduction. Velasquez, in Dieze’s German
translation, p. 288. The assonance is peculiar to the Spaniards.
|Nature of the gloss.|
43. An analogy between poetry and music, extending beyond the mere laws
of sound, has been ingeniously remarked by Bouterwek in a very favourite
species of Spanish composition, the _glosa_. In this a few lines,
commonly well known and simple, were glosed, or paraphrased, with as
much variety and originality as the poet’s ingenuity could give, in a
succession of stanzas, so that the leading sentiment should be preserved
in each, as the subject of an air runs through its variations. It was
often contrived that the chief words of the glosed lines should recur
separately in the course of each stanza. The two arts being incapable of
a perfect analogy, this must be taken as a general one; for it was
necessary that each stanza should be conducted so as to terminate in the
lines, or a portion of them, which form the subject of the gloss.[288]
Of these artificial, though doubtless, at the time, very pleasing
compositions, there is nothing, as far as I know, to be found beyond the
Peninsula;[289] though, in a general sense, it may be said, that all
lyric poetry, wherein a burthen or repetition of leading verses recurs,
must originally be founded on the same principle, less artfully and
musically developed. The burthen of a song can only be an impertinence,
if its sentiment does not pervade the whole.
[288] Bouterwek, p. 118.
[289] They appear with the name Grosas in the Cancionero General of
Resende; and there seems, as I have observed already, to be
something much of the same kind in the older Portuguese collection
of the thirteenth century.
|The Cancionero General.|
44. The Cancionero General, a collection of Spanish poetry written
between the age of Juan de la Mena, near the beginning of the fifteenth
century, and its publication by Castillo in 1517, contains the
productions of one hundred and thirty-six poets, as Bouterwek says; and
in the edition of 1520 I have counted one hundred and thirty-nine. There
is also much anonymous. The volume is in two hundred and three folios,
and includes compositions by Villena, Santillana, and the other poets of
the age of John II., besides those of later date. But I find also the
name of Don Juan Manuel, which, if it means the celebrated author of the
Conde Lucanor, must belong to the fourteenth century, though the preface
of Castello seems to confine his collection to the age of Mena. A small
part only are strictly love songs (canciones); but the predominant
sentiment of the larger portion is amatory. Several romances occur in
this collection; one of them is Moorish, and, perhaps, older than the
capture of Granada; but it was long afterwards that the Spanish
romancers habitually embellished their fictions with Moorish manners.
These romances, as in the above instance, were sometimes glosed, the
simplicity of the ancient style readily lending itself to an expansion
of the sentiment. Some that are called romances contain no story; as the
Rosa Fresca and the Fonte Frida, both of which will be found in
Bouterwek and Sismondi.
|Bouterwek’s character of Spanish songs.|
45. “Love songs,” says Bouterwek, “form by far the principal part of the
old Spanish cancioneros. To read them regularly through would require a
strong passion for compositions of this class, for the monotony of the
authors is interminable. To extend and spin out a theme as long as
possible, though only to seize a new modification of the old ideas and
phrases, was, in their opinion, essential to the truth and sincerity of
their poetic effusions of the heart. That loquacity which is an
hereditary fault of the Italian canzone, must also be endured in
perusing the amatory flights of the Spanish redondillas, while in them
the Italian correctness of expression would be looked for in vain. From
the desire, perhaps, of relieving their monotony by some sort of
variety, the authors have indulged in even more witticisms and plays of
words than the Italians, but they also sought to infuse a more emphatic
spirit into their compositions than the latter. The Spanish poems of
this class exhibit, in general, all the poverty of the compositions of
the troubadours, but blend with the simplicity of these bards the pomp
of the Spanish national style in its utmost vigour. This resemblance to
the troubadour songs was not, however, produced by imitation; it arose
out of the spirit of romantic love, which at that period, and for
several preceding centuries, gave to the south of Europe the same
feeling and taste. Since the age of Petrarch, this spirit had
appeared in classical perfection in Italy. But the Spanish amatory poets
of the fifteenth century had not reached an equal degree of cultivation;
and the whole turn of their ideas required rather a passionate than a
tender expression. The sighs of the languishing Italians became cries in
Spain. Glowing passion, despair, and violent ecstacy were the soul of
the Spanish love songs. The continually recurring picture of the contest
between reason and passion is a peculiar characteristic of these songs.
The Italian poets did not attach so much importance to the triumph of
reason. The rigidly moral Spaniard was, however, anxious to be wise even
in the midst of his folly. But this obtrusion of wisdom in an improper
place frequently gives an unpoetical harshness to the lyric poetry of
Spain, in spite of all the softness of its melody.”[290]
[290] Vol. i. p. 109.
|John II.|
|Poets of his court.|
46. It was in the reign of John II., king of Castile from 1407 to 1454,
that this golden age of lyric poetry commenced.[291] A season of peace
and regularity, a monarchy well limited, but no longer the sport of
domineering families, a virtuous king, a ministry too haughty and
ambitious, but able and resolute, were encouragements to that light
strain of amorous poetry which a state of ease alone can suffer mankind
to enjoy. And Portugal, for the whole of this century, was in as
flourishing a condition as Castile during this single reign. But we
shall defer the mention of her lyric poetry, as it seems chiefly to be
of a later date. In the court of John II. were found three men, whose
names stand high in the early annals of Spanish poetry,--the marquises
of Villena and Santillana, and Juan de Mena. But, except for their zeal
in the cause of letters, amidst the dissipations of a court, they have
no pretensions to compete with some of the obscure poets to whom we owe
the romances of chivalry. A desire, on the contrary, to show needless
learning, and to astonish the vulgar by an appearance of profundity, so
often the bane of poetry, led them into prosaic and tedious details, and
into affected refinements.[292]
[291] Velasquez, pp. 165, 442. (in Dieze), mentions, what has escaped
Bouterwek, a more ancient Cancionero than that of Castillo,
compiled in the reign of John II., by Juan Alfonso de Baena, and
hitherto, or at least in his time, unpublished. As it is entitled
Cancionero di Poetas Antiguos, it may be supposed to contain some
earlier than the year 1400. I am inclined to think, however, that
few would be found to ascend much higher. I do not find the name of
Don Juan Manuel, which occurs in the Cancionero of Castillo. A copy
of this manuscript Cancionero of Baena, was lately sold (1836),
among the MSS. of Mr. Heber, and purchased for 120l., by the king
of France.
[292] Bouterwek, p. 78.
|Charles, duke of Orleans.|
47. Charles, duke of Orleans, long prisoner in England after the battle
of Agincourt, was the first who gave polish and elegance to French
poetry. In a more enlightened age, according to Goujet’s opinion, he
would have been among their greatest poets.[293] Except a little
allegory in the taste of his times, he confined himself to the kind of
verse called rondeaux, and to slight amatory poems, which, if they aim
at little, still deserve the praise of reaching what they aim at. The
easy turns of thought, and graceful simplicity of style, which these
compositions require, came spontaneously to the Duke of Orleans. Without
as much humour as Clément Marot long afterwards displayed, he is much
more of a gentleman, and would have been in any times, if not quite what
Goujet supposes, a great poet, yet the pride and ornament of the
court.[294]
[293] Goujet, Bibliothèque Française, ix. 233.
[294] The following very slight vaudeville will show the easy style of
the Duke of Orleans. It is curious to observe how little the manner
of French poetry, in such productions, has been changed since the
fifteenth century.
Petit mercier, petit panier:
Pourtant si je n’ai marchandize
Qui soit du tout à votre quise
Ne blamez pour ce mon mestier;
Je gagne denier à denier;
C’est loin du trésor de Vénise.
Petit mercier, petit panier,
Et tandis qu’il est jour, ouvrier,
Le temps perds, quand a vous devise,
Je vais parfaire mon emprise,
Et parmi les rues crier:
Petit mercier, petit panier.
(Recueil des anciens poètes Français, ii. 196.)
|English poetry.|
|Lydgate.|
|James I. of Scotland.|
48. The English language was slowly refining itself, and growing into
general use. That which we sometimes call pedantry and innovation, the
forced introduction of French words by Chaucer, though hardly more by
him than by all his predecessors who translated our neighbours’ poetry,
and the harsh latinisms that began to appear soon afterwards, has given
English a copiousness and variety which perhaps no other language
possesses. But as yet there was neither thought nor knowledge sufficient
to bring out its capacities. After the death of Chaucer, in 1400,
a dreary blank of long duration occurs in our annals. The poetry of
Hoccleve is wretchedly bad, abounding with pedantry, and destitute of
all grace or spirit.[295] Lydgate, the monk of Bury, nearly of the same
age, prefers doubtless a higher claim to respect. An easy versifier, he
served to make poetry familiar to the many, and may sometimes please the
few. Gray, no light authority, speaks more favourably of Lydgate than
either Warton or Ellis, or than the general complexion of his poetry
would induce most readers to do.[296] But great poets have often the
taste to discern, and the candour to acknowledge, those beauties which
are latent amidst the tedious dulness of their humbler brethren.
Lydgate, though probably a man of inferior powers of mind to Gower, has
more of the minor qualities of a poet; his lines have sometimes more
spirit, more humour, and he describes with more graphic minuteness. But
his diffuseness becomes generally feeble and tedious; the attention
fails in the schoolboy stories of Thebes and Troy; and he had not the
judgment to select and compress the prose narratives from which he
commonly derived his subject. It seems highly probable, that Lydgate
would have been a better poet in satire upon his own times, or
delineation of their manners; themes which would have gratified us much
more than the fate of princes. The King’s Quair, by James I. of
Scotland, is a long allegory, polished and imaginative, but with some of
the tediousness usual in such productions. It is uncertain whether he or
a later sovereign, James V., were the author of a lively comic poem,
Christ’s Kirk o’ the Green; the style is so provincial, that no
Englishman can draw any inference as to its antiquity. It is much more
removed from our language than the King’s Quair. Whatever else could be
mentioned as deserving of praise is anonymous and of uncertain date. It
seems to have been early in the fifteenth century that the ballad of the
northern minstrels arose. But none of these that are extant could be
placed with much likelihood so early as 1440.[297]
[295] Warton, ii. 348.
[296] Warton, ii. 361-407. Gray’s works, by Mathias, ii. 55-73. These
remarks on Lydgate show what the history of English poetry would
have been in the hands of Gray, as to sound and fair criticism.
[297] Chevy Chace seems to be the most ancient of those ballads that
has been preserved. It may possibly have been written while Henry
VI. was on the throne, though a late critic would bring it down to
the reign of Henry VIII. Brydges’ Brit. Bibliography, iv. 97. The
style is often fiery, like the old war songs, and much above the
feeble, though natural and touching manner of the later ballads.
One of the most remarkable circumstances about this celebrated lay
is, that it relates a totally fictitious event with all historical
particularity, and with real names. Hence it was probably not
composed while many remembered the days of Henry IV., when the
story is supposed to have occurred.
|Restoration of classical learning due to Italy.|
49. We have thus traced in outline the form of European literature, as
it existed in the middle ages and in the first forty years of the
fifteenth century. The result must be to convince us of our great
obligations to Italy for her renewal of classical learning. What might
have been the intellectual progress of Europe if she had never gone back
to the fountains of Greek and Roman genius, it is impossible to
determine; certainly, nothing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
give prospect of a very abundant harvest. It would be difficult to find
any man of high reputation in modern times, who has not reaped benefit,
directly or through others, from the revival of ancient learning. We
have the greatest reason to doubt whether, without the Italians of these
ages, it would ever have occurred. The trite metaphors of light and
darkness, of dawn and twilight, are used carelessly by those who touch
on the literature of the middle ages, and suggest by analogy an
uninterrupted progression, in which learning, like the sun, has
dissipated the shadows of barbarism. But with closer attention, it is
easily seen that this is not a correct representation; that, taking
Europe generally, far from being in a more advanced stage of learning at
the beginning of the fifteenth century than two hundred years before,
she had, in many respects, gone backwards, and gave little sign of any
tendency to recover her ground. There is, in fact, no security, as far
as the past history of mankind assures us, that any nation will be
uniformly progressive in science, arts, and letters; nor do I perceive,
whatever may be the current language, that we can expect this with much
greater confidence of the whole civilised world.
50. Before we proceed to a more minute and chronological history, let us
consider for a short time some of the prevailing trains of sentiment and
opinion which shaped the public mind at the close of the mediæval
period.
|Character of classical poetry lost.|
51. In the early European poetry, the art sedulously cultivated by so
many nations, we are struck by characteristics that distinguish
it from the remains of antiquity, and belong to social changes which we
should be careful to apprehend. The principles of discernment as to
works of imagination and sentiment, wrought up in Greece and Rome by a
fastidious and elaborate criticism, were of course effaced in the total
oblivion of that literature to which they had been applied. The Latin
language, no longer intelligible except to a limited class, lost that
adaptation to popular sentiment, which its immature progeny had not yet
attained. Hence, perhaps, or from some other cause, there ensued, as has
been shown in the last chapter, a kind of palsy of the inventive
faculties, so that we cannot discern for several centuries any traces of
their vigorous exercise.
|New schools of criticism of modern languages.|
52. Five or six new languages, however, besides the ancient German,
became gradually flexible and copious enough to express thought and
emotion with more precision and energy; metre and rhyme gave poetry its
form; a new European literature was springing up, fresh and lively, in
gay raiment, by the side of that decrepid latinity, which, rather
ostentatiously, wore its threadbare robes of more solemn dignity than
becoming grace. But in the beginning of the fifteenth century, the
revival of ancient literature among the Italians seemed likely to change
again the scene, and threatened to restore a standard of critical
excellence by which the new Europe would be disadvantageously tried. It
was soon felt, if not recognised in words, that what had delighted
Europe for some preceding centuries depended upon sentiments fondly
cherished, and opinions firmly held, but foreign, at least in the forms
they presented, to the genuine spirit of antiquity. From this time we
may consider as beginning to stand opposed to each other two schools of
criticism, latterly called the classical and romantic; names which
should not be understood as absolutely exact, but, perhaps, rather more
apposite in the period to which these pages relate than in the
nineteenth century.
|Effect of chivalry on poetry.|
53. War is a very common subject of fiction; and the warrior’s character
is that which poets have ever delighted to pourtray. But the spirit of
chivalry, nourished by the laws of feudal tenure and limited monarchy,
by the rules of honour, courtesy, and gallantry, by ceremonial
institutions and public shows, had rather artificially modified the
generous daring which always forms the basis of that character. It must
be owned that the heroic ages of Greece furnished a source of fiction
not unlike those of romance; that Perseus, Theseus, or Hercules answer
pretty well to knights errant, and that many stories of the poets are in
the very style of Amadis or Ariosto. But these form no great part of
what we call classical poetry; though they show that the word, in its
opposition to the latter style, must not be understood to comprise
everything that has descended from antiquity. Nothing could less
resemble the peculiar tone of chivalry, than Greece in the republican
times, or Rome in any times.
|Effect of gallantry towards women.|
54. The popular taste had been also essentially affected by changes in
social intercourse, rendering it more studiously and punctiliously
courteous, and especially by the homage due to women under the modern
laws of gallantry. Love, with the ancient poets, is often tender,
sometimes virtuous, but never accompanied by a sense of deference or
inferiority. This elevation of the female sex through the voluntary
submission of the stronger, though a remarkable fact in the
philosophical history of Europe, has not, perhaps, been adequately
developed. It did not originate, or at least very partially, in the
Teutonic manners, from which it has sometimes been derived. The love
songs again, and romances of Arabia, where others have sought its
birthplace, display, no doubt, a good deal of that rapturous adoration
which distinguishes the language of later poetry, and have, perhaps, in
some measure, been the models of the Provençal troubadours; yet this
seems rather consonant to the hyperbolical character of oriental works
of imagination, than to a state of manners where the usual lot of women
is seclusion, if not slavery. The late editor of Warton has thought it
sufficient to call “that reverence and adoration of the female sex which
has descended to our own times, the offspring of the Christian
dispensation.”[298] But until it can be shown that Christianity
establishes any such principle, we must look a little farther down for
its origin.
[298] Preface, p. 123.
|Its probable origin.|
55. Without rejecting, by any means, the influence of these collateral
and preparatory circumstances, we might ascribe more direct efficacy to
the favour shown towards women in succession to lands through
inheritance or dower, by the later Roman law, and by the customs of the
northern nations; to the respect which the clergy paid them (a subject
which might bear to be more fully expanded); but, above all, to
the gay idleness of the nobility, consuming the intervals of peace in
festive enjoyments. In whatever country the charms of high-born beauty
were first admitted to grace the banquet or give brilliancy to the
tournament,--in whatever country the austere restraints of jealousy were
most completely laid aside,--in whatever country the coarser, though
often more virtuous, simplicity of unpolished ages was exchanged for
winning and delicate artifices,--in whatever country, through the
influence of climate or polish, less boisterousness and intemperance
prevailed,--it is there that we must expect to find the commencement of
so great a revolution in society.
|It is not shown in old Teutonicpoetry; but appears in the stories of
Arthur.|
56. Gallantry, in this sense of a general homage to the fair, a
respectful deference to woman independent of personal attachment, seems
to have first become a perceptible element of European manners in the
south of France, and, probably, not later than the end of the tenth
century,[299] it was not at all in unison with the rough habits of the
Carlovingian Franks, or of the Anglo-Saxons. There is little, or, as far
as I know, nothing of it in the poem of Beowulf, or in the oldest
Teutonic fragments, or in the Nibelungen Lied;[300] love may appear as a
natural passion, but not as a conventional idolatry. It appears, on the
other hand, fully developed in the sentiments as well as the usages of
northern France, when we look at the tales of the court of Arthur, which
Geoffrey of Monmouth gave to the world about 1128. Whatever may be
thought of the foundation of this famous romance,--whatever of legendary
tradition he may have borrowed from Wales or Britany, the position that
he was merely a faithful translator appears utterly incredible.[301]
Besides the numerous allusions to Henry I. of England, and to the
history of his times, which Mr. Turner and others have indicated, the
chivalrous gallantry, with which alone we are now concerned, is not
characteristic of so rude a people as the Welsh or Armoricans. Geoffrey
is almost our earliest testimony to these manners; and this gives the
chief value to his fables. The crusades were probably the great means of
inspiring an uniformity of conventional courtesy into the European
aristocracy, which still constitutes the common character of gentlemen;
but it may have been gradually wearing away their national peculiarities
for some time before.