4. The tone which Bembo and others of that school were studiously giving

to ancient literature, provoked one of the most celebrated works of

Erasmus, the dialogues entitled Ciceronianus. The primary aim of these

was to ridicule the fastidious purity of that sort of writers, who would

not use a case or tense for which they could not find authority in the

works of Cicero. A whole winter’s night, they thought, was well spent in

composing a single sentence; but even then it was to be revised over and

over again. Hence they wrote little except elaborated epistles. One of

their rules, he tells us, was never to speak Latin, if they could help

it, which must have seemed extraordinary in an age when it was the

common language of scholars from different countries. It is certain,

indeed, that the practice cannot be favourable to very pure Latinity.

5. Few books of that age give us more insight into its literary history

and the public taste than the Ciceronianus. In a short retrospect

Erasmus characterises all the considerable writers in Latin since the

revival of letters, and endeavours to show how far they wanted this

Ciceronian elegance for which some were contending. He distinguishes in

a spirit of sound taste between a just imitation which leaves free scope

for genius, and a servile following of a single writer. “Let your first

and chief care,” he says, “be to understand thoroughly what you

undertake to write about. That will give you copiousness of words, and

supply you with true and natural sentiments. Then will it be found how

your language lives and breathes, how it excites and hurries away the

reader, and how it is a just image of your own mind. Nor will that be

less genuine which you add to your own by imitation.”

6. The Ciceronianus, however, goes in some passages beyond the limited

subject of Latin style. The controversy had some reference to the

division between the men of learning and the men of taste, between the

lovers of the solid and of the brilliant, in some measure also, to that

between Christianity and Paganism, a garb which the incredulity of the

Italians affected to put on. All the Ciceronian party, except Longolius,

were on the other side of the Alps.[631] The object of the Italian

scholars was to write pure Latin, to gleam little morsels of Roman

literature, to talk a heathenish philosophy in private, and leave the

world to its own abuses. That of Erasmus was to make men wiser and

better by wit, sense, and learning.

[631] Though this is generally said, on the authority of Erasmus

himself, Peter Bunel is asserted by some French scholars of great

name, and particularly by Henry Stephens, to have equalled in

Ciceronian purity the best of the Italians; and Paulus Manutius

owns him as his master, in one of his epistles: Ego ab illo maximum

habebam beneficium, quod me cum Politianis et Erasmis nescio quibus

miserè errantem, in hanc rectè scribendi viam primus induxerat. In

a later edition, for Politianis et Erasmis, it was thought more

decent to introduce Philelphis et Campanis. Bayle, art. Bunel, Note

A. The letters of Bunel, written with great purity, were published

in 1551. It is to be observed, that he had lived much in Italy.

Erasmus does not mention him in the Ciceronianus.

|Scaliger’s invective against it.|

7. Julius Cæsar Scaliger wrote against the Ciceronianus with all that

unmannerly invective, which is the disgrace of many scholars, and very

much his own. His vanity blinded him to what was then obvious to Europe,

that with considerable learning, and still better parts, he was totally

unworthy of being named with the first man in the literary republic. Nor

in fact had he much right to take up the cause of the Ciceronian

purists, with whom he had no pretension to be reckoned, though his reply

to Erasmus is not ill written. It consists chiefly in a vindication of

Cicero’s life and writings against some passages in the Ciceronianus

which seem to affect them, scarcely touching the question of Latin

style. Erasmus made no answer, and thus escaped the danger of

retaliating on Scaliger in his own phrases.

|Editions of Cicero.|

8. The devotedness of the Italians to Cicero was displayed in a more

useful manner than by this close imitation. Pietro Vettori (better known

as Victorius), professor of Greek and Roman literature at Florence,

published an entire edition of the great orator’s writings in 1534. But

this was soon surpassed by a still more illustrious scholar, Paulus

Manutius, son of Aldus, and his successor in the printing-house at

Venice. His edition of Cicero appeared in 1540. It is by far the most

important edition of any ancient author that had hitherto been

published. In fact, the notes of Manutius, which were very much

augmented in later editions,[632] form at this day in great measure the

basis of interpretation and illustration of Cicero, as what are called

the Variorum editions will show. A further accession to Ciceronian

literature was made by Nizolius in his Observationes in M. Tullium

Ciceronem, 1535. This hardly indicates that it is a dictionary of

Ciceronian words, with examples of their proper senses. The later and

improved editions bear the title of Thesaurus Ciceronianus. I find no

critical work in this period of greater extent and labour than that of

Scaliger de Causis Latinæ Linguæ; by “causis” meaning its principles. It

relates much to the foundations of the language, or the rules by which

its various peculiarities have been formed. He corrects many alleged

errors of earlier writers, and sometimes of Valla himself; enumerating,

rather invidiously, 634 of such errors in an index. In this book he

shows much acuteness and judgment.

[632] Renouard, Imprimerie des Aldes.

|Alexander ab Alexandro.|

9. The Geniales Dies of Alexander ab Alexandro, a Neapolitan lawyer,

published in 1522, are on the model of Aulus Gellius, a repertory of

miscellaneous learning, thrown together without arrangement, on every

subject of Roman philology and antiquities. The author had lived with

the scholars of the fifteenth century, and even remembered Philelphus;

but his own reputation seems not to have been extensive, at least

through Europe. “He knows every one,” says Erasmus in a letter; “no one

knows who he is.”[633] The Geniales Dies has had better success in later

ages than most early works of criticism, a good edition having appeared,

with Variorum notes, in 1673. It gives, like the Lectiones

Antiquæ of Cælius Rhodiginus, an idea of the vast extent to which the

investigation of Latin antiquity had been already carried; though so

much was left for the _coryphæi_ of these researches, whom the

ensuing age was to produce.

[633] Demiror quis sit ille Alexander ab Alexandro. Novit omnes

celebres Italiæ viros, Philelphum, Pomponium Lætum, Hermolaum, et

quos non? Omnibus usus est familiariter; tamen nemo novit illum.

Append. ad Erasm. Epist. ccclxxiii. (1533). Bayle also remarks,

that Alexander is hardly mentioned by his contemporaries.

Tiraqueau, a French lawyer of considerable learning, undertook the

task of writing critical notes on the Geniales Dies about the

middle of the century, correcting many of the errors which they

contained.

|Works on Roman antiquities.|

10. A very few books of the same class belong to this period; and may

deserve mention, although long since superseded by the works of those to

whom we have just alluded, and who filled up and corrected their

outline. Marlianus on the Topography of Rome, 1534, is admitted, though

with some hesitation, by Grævius into his Thesaurus Antiquitatum

Romanarum, while he absolutely sets aside the preceding labours of

Blondus Flavius and Pomponius Lætus. The Fasti Consulares were first

published by Marlianus in 1549; and a work on the same subject in 1550

was the earliest production of the great Sigonius. Before these the

memorable events of Roman history had not been critically reduced to a

chronological series. A treatise by Raphael of Volterra de Magistratibus

et Sacerdotibus Romanorum is very inaccurate and superficial.[634]

Mazochius, a Roman bookseller, was the first who, in 1521, published a

collection of inscriptions. This was very imperfect, and full of false

monuments. A better appeared in Germany by the care of Apianus,

professor of mathematics at Ingoldstadt, in 1534.[635]

[634] It is published in Sallengre, Novus Thesaurus Antiquit. vol. iii.

[635] Burmann, præfat. in Gruter, Corpus Inscriptionum.

|Greek less studied in Italy.|

11. It could not be expected, that the elder and more copious fountain

of ancient lore, the Greek language, would slake the thirst of Italian

scholars as readily as the Latin. No local association, no patriotic

sentiment, could attach them to that study. Greece itself no longer sent

out a Lascaris or a Musurus; subdued, degraded, barbarous in language

and learning, alien, above all, by insuperable enmity, from the church,

she had ceased to be a living guide to her own treasures. Hence we may

observe even already, not a diminution, but a less accelerated increase

of Greek erudition in Italy. Two however among the most considerable

editions of Greek authors, in point of labour, that the century

produced, are the Galen by Andrew of Asola in 1525, and the Eustathius

from the press of Bladus at Rome in 1542.[636] We may add, as first

editions of Greek authors, Epictetus, at Venice, in 1528, and Arrian in

1535; Ælian, at Rome, in 1545. The Etymologicum Magnum of Phavorinus,

whose real name was Guarino, published at Rome in 1523, was of some

importance, while no lexicon but the very defective one of Craston had

been printed. The Etymologicum of Phavorinus, however, is merely “a

compilation from Hesychius, Suidas, Phrynichus, Harpocration,

Eustathius, the Etymologica, the lexicon of Philemon, some treatises of

Trypho, Apollonius, and other grammarians and various scholiasts. It is

valuable as furnishing several important corrections of the authors from

whom it was collected, and not a few extracts from unpublished

grammarians.”[637]

[636] Greswell’s Early Parisian Greek Press, p. 14.

[637] Quarterly Review, vol. xxii. Roscoe’s Leo, ch. xi. Stephens is

said to have inserted many parts of this lexicon of Guarino in his

Thesaurus. Niceron, xxii. 141.

|Schools of classical learning.|

12. Of the Italian scholars, Vettori, already mentioned, seems to have

earned the highest reputation for his skill in Greek. But there was no

considerable town in Italy, besides the regular universities, where

public instruction in the Greek as well as Latin tongue was not

furnished, and in many cases by professors of fine taste and recondite

learning, whose names were then eminent; such as Bonamico, Nizzoli,

Parrhasio, Corrado, and Maffei, commonly called Raphael of Volterra.

Yet, according to Tiraboschi, something was still wanting to secure

these schools from the too frequent changes of teachers, which the hope

of better salaries produced, and to give the students a more vigorous

emulation, and a more uniform scheme of discipline.[638] This was to be

supplied by the followers of Ignatius Loyola. But their interference

with education in Italy did not begin in quite so early a period as the

present.

[638] Vol. viii. 114, x. 319. Ginguéné, vii. 232, has copied

Tiraboschi’s account of these accomplished teachers with little

addition, and probably with no knowledge of the original sources of

information.

|Budæus; his commentaries on Greek.|

13. If we cross the Alps, and look at the condition of learning in

countries which we left in 1520 rapidly advancing on the footsteps of

Italy, we shall find that, except in purity of Latin style, both France

and Germany were now capable of entering the lists of fair competition.

France possessed, by general confession, the most profound Greek scholar

in Europe, Budæus. If this could before have been in doubt, he raised

himself to a pinnacle of philological glory by his Commentarii

Linguæ Græcæ, Paris, 1529. The publications of the chief Greek authors

by Aldus, which we have already specified, had given a compass of

reading to the scholars of this period, which those of the fifteenth

century could not have possessed. But, with the exception of the

Etymologicum of Phavorinus, just mentioned, no attempt had been made by

a native of western Europe to interpret the proper meaning of Greek

words; even he had confined himself to compiling from the grammarians.

In this large and celebrated treatise, Budæus has established the

interpretation of a great part of the language. All later critics write

in his praise. There will never be another Budæus in France, says Joseph

Scaliger, the most envious and detracting, though the most learned, of

the tribe.[639] But, referring to what Baillet and Blount have collected

from older writers,[640] we will here insert the character of these

Commentaries which an eminent living scholar has given.

[639] Scaligerana, i. 33.

[640] Baillet, Jugemens des Savans, ii. 328. (Amst. 1725) Blount,

in Budæo.

|Its character.|

14. “This great work of Budæus has been the text-book and common

storehouse of succeeding lexicographers. But a great objection to its

general use was its want of arrangement. His observations on the Greek

language are thrown together in the manner of a commonplace book, an

inconvenience which is imperfectly remedied by an alphabetical index at

the end. His authorities and illustrations are chiefly drawn from the

prose writers of Greece, the historians, orators, and fathers. With the

poets he seems to have had a less intimate acquaintance. His

interpretations are mostly correct, and always elegantly expressed;

displaying an union of Greek and Latin literature which renders his

Commentaries equally useful to the students of both languages. The

peculiar value of this work consists in the full and exact account which

it gives of the Greek legal and forensic terms, both by literal

interpretation, and by a comparison with the corresponding terms in

Roman jurisprudence. So copious and exact is this department of the

work, that no student can read the Greek orators to the best advantage

unless he consults the Commentaries of Budæus. It appears from the Greek

epistle subjoined to the work that the illustration of the forensic

language of Athens and Rome was originally all that his plan embraced;

and that when circumstances tempted him to extend the limits of his

work, this still continued to be his chief object.”[641]

[641] Quarterly Review, vol. xxii., an article ascribed to the Bishop

of London. The commentaries of Budæus are written in a very

rambling and desultory manner, passing from one subject to another

as a casual word may suggest the transition. Sic enim, he says, hos

commentarios scribere instituimus, ut quicquid in ordinem seriemque

scribendi incurreret, vel ex diverticulo quasi obviam se offerret,

ad id digredi. A large portion of what is valuable in this work has

been transferred by Stephens to his Thesaurus. The Latin criticisms

of Budæus have also doubtless been borrowed.

Budæus and Erasmus are fond of writing Greek in their correspondence.

Others had the same fancy; and it is curious, that they ventured

upon what was wholly gone out of use since the language has been so

well understood. But probably this is the reason that later

scholars have avoided it. Neither of these great men shine much in

elegance or purity. One of Budæus, 15 Aug. 1519, (in Erasm. Epist.

cccclv.) seems often incorrect, and in the mere style of a

schoolboy.

|Greek grammars and lexicons.|

15. These Commentaries of Budæus stand not only far above any thing else

in Greek literature before the middle of the sixteenth century, but are

alone in their class. What comes next, but at a vast interval, is the

Greek grammar of Clenardus, printed at Louvain in 1530. It was, however,

much beyond Budæus in extent of circulation, and probably, for this

reason, in general utility. This grammar was continually reprinted with

successive improvements, and, defective as, especially in its original

state, it must have been, was far more perspicuous than that of Gaza,

though not perhaps more judicious in principle. It was for a long time

commonly used in France; and is in fact the basis of those lately or

still in use among us; such as the Eton Greek grammar. The proof of this

is, that they follow Clenardus in most of his rules, erroneous or not,

and, nine times or more out of ten, in the choice of instances.[642] The

account of syntax in this grammar, as well as that of Gaza, is

wretchedly defective. A better treatise, in this respect, is by Varenius

of Malines, Syntaxis Linguæ Græcæ, printed at Louvain about 1532.

Another Greek grammar by Vergara, a native of Spain, has been extolled

by some of the older critics, and depreciated by others.[643] The Greek

lexicon, of which the first edition was printed at Basle in 1537, is

said to abound in faults and inaccuracies of every description. The

character given of it by Henry Stephens, even when it had been enlarged,

if not improved, does not speak much for the means that the scholars of

this age had possessed in labouring for the attainment of Greek

learning.[644]

[642] Clenardus seems first to have separated simple from contracted

nouns, thus making ten declensions. Wherever he differs from Gaza,

our popular grammars seem to have followed him. He tells us, that

he had drawn up this for the use of his private pupils. Baillet

observes, that the grammar of Clenardus, notwithstanding the

mediocrity of his learning, has had more success than any other;

those who have followed having mostly confined themselves to

correcting and enlarging it. Jugemens des Savans, ii. 164. This is

certainly true, as far as England is concerned; though the Eton

grammar, bad as, in the present times, it appears, is in some

degree an improvement on Clenardus.

[643] Vergara, De omnibus Græcæ Linguæ Grammaticæ Partibus, 1573;

rather 1537, for “deinde Parisiis,” 1550, follows in Antonio, Bibl.

Nova.

[644] H. Stephanus, De Typographiæ suæ Statu. Gesner himself says of

this lexicon, which sometimes bore his name: Circa annum 1537

lexicon Græco-Latinum, quod jam ante a diversis et innominatis

nescio quibus miserè satis consarcinatum erat, ex Phavorini

Camertis Lexico Græco ita auxi, ut nihil in eo extaret, quod non ut

singulari fide, ita labore maximo adjicerem; sed typographus me

inscio, et præter omnem expectationem meam, exiguam duntaxat

accessionis meæ partem adjecit, reservans sibi forte auctarium ad

sequentes etiam editiones. He proceeds to say, that he enlarged

several other editions down to 1556, when the last that had been

enriched by his additions appeared at Basle. Cæterum hoc anno, quo

hæc scribo, 1562, Genevæ prodiisse audio longe copiosissimum

emendatissimumque Græcæ linguæ thesaurum a Rob. Constantino

incomparabilis doctrinæ viro, ex Joannis Crispini officinâ. Vide

Gesneri Biblioth. Universalis, art. Conrad Gesner: this is part of

a long account given here by Gesner of his own works.

|Editions of Greek authors.|

|Latin Thesaurus of R. Stephens.|

16. The most remarkable editions of Greek authors from the Parisian

press were those of Aristophanes in 1528, and of Sophocles in 1529; the

former printed by Gourmont, the latter by Colinæus; the earliest edition

of an entire Diodorus in 1539, of Dionysius Halicarnassensis in 1546,

and of Dio Cassius in 1548; the two latter by Robert Stephens. The first

Greek edition of the elements of Euclid appeared at Basle in 1533, of

Diogenes Laertius the same year, of five books of Diodorus in 1539, of

Josephus in 1544; the first of Polybius in 1530, at Haguenaw. Besides

these editions of classical authors, Basil, and other of the Greek

fathers, occupied the press of Frobenius, under the superintendence of

Erasmus. The publications of Latin authors by Badius Ascensius continued

till his death in 1535. Colinæus began to print his small editions of

the same class at Paris about 1521. They are in that cursive character,

which Aldus had first employed.[645] The number of such editions, both

in France and Germany, became far more considerable than in the

preceding age. They are not, however, in general, much valued for

correctness of text; nor had many considerable critics even in Latin

philology yet appeared on this side of the Alps. Robert Stephens stands

almost alone, who, by the publication of his Thesaurus in 1535,

augmented in a subsequent edition of 1543, may be said to have made an

epoch in this department of literature. The preceding dictionaries of

Calepio and other compilers had been limited to an interpretation of

single words, sometimes with reference to passages in the authors who

had employed them. This produced, on the one hand, perpetual barbarisms

and deviations from purity of idiom, while it gave rise in some to a

fastidious hypercriticism, of which Valla had given an example.[646]

Stephens first endeavoured to exhibit their proper use, not only in all

the anomalies of idiom, but in every delicate variation of sense to

which the pure taste and subtle discernment of the best writers had

adapted them. Such an analysis is perhaps only possible with respect to

a language wherein the extant writers, and especially those who have

acquired authority, are very limited in number; and even in Latin, the

most extensive dictionary, such as has grown up long since the days of

Robert Stephens, under the hands of Gesner, Forcellini, and Facciolati,

or such as might still improve upon their labour, could only approach an

unattainable perfection. What Stephens himself achieved would now be

deemed far too defective for general use; yet it afforded the means of

more purity in style than any could in that age have reached without

unwearied exertion. Accordingly, it is to be understood, that while a

very few scholars, chiefly in Italy, had acquired a facility and

exactness of language, which has seldom been surpassed, the general

style retained a great deal of barbarism, and neither in single words,

nor always in mere grammar, can bear a critical eye. Erasmus is

often incorrect, especially in his epistles, and says modestly of

himself in the Ciceronianus, that he is hardly to be named among writers

at all, unless blotting a great deal of paper with ink is enough to make

one. He is, however, among the best of his contemporaries, if a vast

command of Latin phrase, and a spirited employment of it, may compensate

for some want of accuracy. Budæus, as has been already said, is hard and

unpolished. Vives assumes that he has written his famous and excellent

work on the corruption of the sciences with some elegance; but this he

says in language which hardly warrants the boast.[647] In fact, he is by

no means a good writer. But Melancthon excelled Erasmus by far in purity

of diction, and correctness of classical taste. With him we may place

Calvin in his Institutes, and our countryman Sir John Cheke, as

distinguished from most other cisalpine writers of this period by the

merit of what is properly called style. Bunel of Toulouse is reckoned

the best model of language in this period. The praise, however, of

writing pure Latin, or the pleasure of reading it, is dearly bought when

accompanied by such vacuity of sense as we experience in the elaborate

epistles of Paulus Manutius and the Ciceronian school in Italy.

[645] Greswell’s History of the early Parisian Greek Press.

[646] Vives de causis corrupt. art. (Opera Lud. Vives, edit. Basle,

1555, i. 358.) He observes, in another work, that there was no full

and complete dictionary of Latin. Id. p. 475.

[647] Nitorem præterea sermonis addidi aliquem, et quod non expediret

res pulcherrimas sordidè ac spuriè vestiri, et ut studiosi

elegantiarum [orum?] literarum non perpetuo in vocum et sermonis

cognitione adhærescerent; quod hactenus fere accidit, tædio nimirum

infrugiferæ ac horridæ molestiæ, quæ in percipiendis artibus

diutissimè erat devorata, i. 324.

|Progress of learning in France.|

17. Francis I. has obtained a glorious title, the Father of French

literature. The national propensity (or what once was such) to extol

kings may have had something to do with this; for we never say the same

of Henry VIII. In the early part of his reign he manifested a design to

countenance ancient literature by public endowments. War, and

unsuccessful war, sufficiently diverted his mind from this scheme. But

in 1531, a season of peace, he established the royal college of three

languages in the university of Paris, which did not quite deserve its

name till the foundation of a Latin professorship in 1534. Vatable was

the first professor of Hebrew, and Danés of Greek. In 1545 it appears

that there were three professors of Hebrew in the royal college, three

of Greek, one of Latin, two of mathematics, one of medicine, and one of

philosophy. But this college had to encounter the jealousy of the

university, tenacious of its ancient privileges, which it fancied to be

trampled upon, and stimulated by the hatred of the pretended

philosophers, the scholastic dialecticians, against philological

literature. They tried to get the parliament on their side; but that

body, however averse to innovation, of which it gave in this age, and

long afterwards, many egregious proofs, was probably restrained by the

king’s known favour to learning from obstructing the new college as much

as the university desired.[648] Danés had a colleague and successor as

Greek professor in a favourite pupil of Budæus, and a good scholar,

Toussain, who handed down the lamp in 1547 to one far more eminent,

Turnebus. Under such a succession of instructors, it may be naturally

presumed that the knowledge of Greek would make some progress in France.

And no doubt the great scholars of the next generation were chiefly

trained under these men. But the opposition of many, and the coldness

almost of all, in the ecclesiastical order, among whom that study ought

principally to have flourished, impeded in the sixteenth century, as it

has perhaps ever since, the diffusion of Grecian literature in all

countries of the Romish communion. We do not find much evidence of

classical, at least of Greek, learning in any university of France,

except that of Paris, to which students repaired from every quarter of

the kingdom.[649] But a few once distinguished names of the age of

Francis I. deserve to be mentioned. William Cop, physician to the king,

and John Ruel, one of the earliest promoters of botanical science, the

one translator of Galen, the other of Dioscorides; Lazarus Baif, a poet

of some eminence in that age, who rendered two Greek tragedies

into French verse; with a few rather more obscure, such as Petit, Pin,

Deloin, De Chatel, who are cursorily mentioned in literary history, or

to whom Erasmus sometimes alludes. Let us not forget John Grollier, a

gentleman who, having filled with honour some public employments, became

the first perhaps on this side of the Alps who formed a very extensive

library and collection of medals. He was the friend and patron of the

learned during a long life; a character little affected in that age by

private persons of wealth on the less sunny side of the Alps. Grollier’s

library was not wholly sold till the latter part of the seventeenth

century.[650]

[648] The faculty of theology in 1530 condemned these propositions:

1. Scripture cannot be well understood without Greek and Hebrew; 2.

A preacher cannot explain the epistle and gospel without these

languages. In the same year they summoned Danés and Vatable with

two more to appear in Parliament, that they might be forbidden to

explain scripture by the Greek and Hebrew, without permission of

the university; or to say, the Hebrew, or the Greek, is so and so;

lest they should injure the credit of the Vulgate. They admitted,

however, that the study of Hebrew and Greek was praiseworthy in

skilful and orthodox theologians, disposed to maintain the

inviolable authority of the Vulgate. Contin. de Fleury, Hist.

Ecclesiast., xxvii. 233. See also Gaillard, Hist. de François I.,

vi. 289.

[649] We find, however, that a Greek and Latin school was set up in

the diocese of Sadolet (Carpentras), about 1533; he endeavoured to

procure a master from Italy, and seems, by a letter of the year

1540, to have succeeded. Sadol. Epist., lib. ix. and xvi.

[650] Biog. Univ., Grollier.

|Learning in Spain.|

18. In Spain, the same dislike of innovation stood in the way. Greek

professorships existed, however, in the universities; and Nunnes,

usually called Pincianus (from the Latin name for the city of

Valladolid), a disciple of Lebrixa, whom he surpassed, taught the

language at Alcala, and afterwards at Salamanca. He was the most learned

man Spain had possessed; and his edition of Seneca, in 1536, has

obtained the praise of Lipsius.[651] Resende, the pupil of Arias Barbosa

and Lebrixa in Greek, has been termed the restorer of letters in

Portugal. None of the writings of Resende, except a Latin Grammar,

published in 1540, fall within the present period; but he established,

about 1531, a school at Lisbon, and one afterwards at Evora, where

Estaco, a man rather better known, was educated.[652] School divinity

and canon law over-rode all liberal studies throughout the Peninsula; of

which the catalogue of books at the end of Antonio’s Bibliotheca Nova is

a sufficient witness.

[651] Antonio, Bibl. Nova. Biogr. Univ.

[652] Biogr. Univ.

|Effects of Reformation on learning.|

19. The first effects of the great religious schism in Germany were not

favourable to classical literature.[653] An all-absorbing subject left

neither relish nor leisure for human studies. Those who had made the

greatest advances in learning were themselves generally involved in

theological controversy; and, in some countries, had to encounter either

personal suffering on account of their opinions, or, at least, the

jealousy of a church that hated the advance of knowledge. The knowledge

of Greek and Hebrew was always liable to the suspicion of heterodoxy. In

Italy, where classical antiquity was the chief object, this dread of

learning could not subsist. But few learned much of Greek in these parts

of Europe without some reference to theology,[654] especially to the

grammatical interpretation of the Scriptures. In those parts which

embraced the Reformation a still more threatening danger arose from the

distempered fanaticism of its adherents. Men who interpreted the

Scripture by the Spirit could not think human learning of much value in

religion; and they were as little likely to perceive any other advantage

it could possess. There seemed, indeed, a considerable peril, that,

through the authority of Carlostadt, or even of Luther, the lessons of

Crocus and Mosellanus would be totally forgotten.[655] And this would

very probably have been the case, if one man, Melanchthon, had not

perceived the necessity of preserving human learning as a bulwark to

theology itself, against the wild waves of enthusiasm. It was owing to

him that both the study of the Greek and Latin languages, and that of

the Aristotelian philosophy, were maintained in Germany. Nor did his

activity content itself with animating the universities. The schools of

preparatory instruction, which had hitherto furnished merely the

elements of grammar, throwing the whole burthen of philological learning

on the universities, began before the middle of the century to be

improved by Melanchthon, with the assistance of a friend, even superior

to him, probably, in that walk of literature, Joachim Camerarius. “Both

these great men,” says Eichhorn, “laboured upon one plan, upon the same

principle, and with equal zeal; they were, in the strictest sense, the

fathers of that pure taste and solid learning by which the next

generation was distinguished.” Under the names of Lycæum or Gymnasium,

these German schools gave a more complete knowledge of the two

languages, and sometimes the elements of philosophy.[656]

[653] Erasm. Epist. passim.

[654] Erasm. Adag. chil. iv. c. v. § 1. Vives, apud Meiners, Vergl.

der sitten, ii. 737.

[655] Seckendorf, p. 198.

[656] Eichhorn, iii. 254, et post.

|Sturm’s account of German schools.|

20. We derive some acquaintance with the state of education in this age

from the writings of John Sturm, than whom scarce any one more

contributed to the cause of letters in Germany. He became in 1538, and

continued for above forty years, rector of a celebrated school at

Strasburg. Several treatises on education, especially one, De Literarum

Ludis rectè instituendis, bear witness to his assiduity. If the scheme

of classical instruction which he has here laid down may be considered

as one actually in use, there was a solid structure of learning erected

in the early years of life, which none of our modern academies would

pretend to emulate. Those who feel any curiosity about the details of

this course of education, which seems almost too rigorous for practice,

will find the whole in Morhof’s Polyhistor.[657] It is sufficient to

say, that it occupies the period of life between the ages of six and

fifteen, when the pupil is presumed to have acquired a very extensive

knowledge of the two languages. Trifling as it may appear to take notice

of this subject, it serves at least as a test of the literary

pre-eminence of Germany. For we could, as I conceive, trace no such

education in France, and certainly not in England.

[657] Lib. ii. c. 10.

|Learning in Germany.|

21. The years of the life of Camerarius correspond to those of the

century. His most remarkable works fall partly into the succeeding

period; but many of the editions and translations of Greek authors,

which occupied his laborious hours, were published before 1550. He was

one of the first who knew enough of both languages, and of the subjects

treated, to escape the reproach which has fallen on the translators of

the fifteenth century. His Thucydides, printed in 1540, was superior to

any preceding edition. The universities of Tubingen and Leipsic owed

much of their prosperity to his superintending care. Next to Camerarius

among the German scholars we may place Simon Grynæus, professor of Greek

at Heidelberg in 1523, and translator of Plutarch’s Lives. Micyllus, his

successor in this office, and author of a treatise De Re Metrica, of

which Melanchthon speaks in high terms of praise, was more celebrated

than most of his countymen for Latin poetry. Yet in this art he fell

below Eobanus Hessus, whose merit is attested by the friendship of

Erasmus, Melanchthon, and Camerarius, as well as by the best verses that

Germany had to boast. It would be very easy to increase the list of

scholars in that empire; but we should find it more difficult to exhaust

the enumeration. Germany was not only far elevated in literary progress

above France, but on a level, as we may fairly say, with Italy herself.

The university of Marburg was founded in 1526, that of Copenhagen in

1539, of Königsberg in 1544, of Jena in 1548.

|In England. Linacre.|

22. We come now to investigate the gradual movement of learning in

England, the state of which about 1520 we have already seen. In 1521,

the first Greek characters appear in a book printed at Cambridge,

Linacre’s Latin translation of Galen de Temperamentis, and in the

title-page, but there only, of a treatise περι Διψαδων [peri Dipsadôn], by

Bullock. They are employed several times for quotations in Linacre de

Emendata Structura Orationis, 1524.[658] This treatise is chiefly a

series of grammatical remarks, relating to distinctions in the Latin

language now generally known. It must have been highly valuable, and

produced a considerable effect in England, where nothing of that

superior criticism had been attempted. In order to judge of its proper

merit, it should be compared with the antecedent works of Valla and

Perotti. Every rule is supported by authorities; and Linacre, I observe,

is far more cautious than Valla in asserting what is not good Latin,

contenting himself, for the most part, with showing what is. It has been

remarked that, though Linacre formed his own style on the model of

Quintilian, he took most of his authorities from Cicero. This treatise,

the first fruits of English erudition, was well received, and frequently

printed on the Continent. Melanchthon recommended its use in the schools

of Germany. Linacre’s translation of Galen has been praised by Sir John

Cheke, who in some respects bears rather hardly on his learned

precursor.[659]

[658] The author begins by bespeaking the reader’s indulgence for the

Greek printing. Pro tuo candore, optime lector, æquo animo feras,

si quæ literæ in exemplis Hellenismi vel tonis, vel spiritibus, vel

affectionibus careant. Iis enim non satis erat instructus

typographus, videlicet recens ab eo fusis characteribus Græcis, nec

parata ea copia quæ ad hoc agendum opus est.

[659] Johnson’s Life of Linacre.

|Lectures in the universities.|

23. Croke, who become tutor to the Duke of Richmond, son of Henry VIII.,

did not remain at Cambridge long after the commencement of this period.

But in 1524, Robert Wakefield, a scholar of some reputation, who had

been professor in a German university, opened a public lecture there in

Greek, endowed with a salary by the king. We know little individually of

his hearers; but notwithstanding the confident assertions of Antony

Wood, there can be no doubt that Cambridge was, during the whole of this

reign, at least on a level with the sister university, and indeed, to

speak plainly, above it. Wood enumerates several persons educated at

Oxford about this time, sufficiently skilled in Greek to write in that

language, or to translate from it, or to comment upon Greek authors. The

list might be enlarged by the help of Pits; but he is less of a scholar

than Wood. This much, after all, is certain, that the only

editions of classical authors published in England before 1540, except

those already mentioned, are five of Virgil’s Bucolics, two of a small

treatise of Seneca, with one of Publius Syrus; all evidently for the

mere use of schoolboys. Lectures in Greek and Latin were, however,

established in a few Colleges at Oxford.

|Greek perhaps taught to boys.|

24. If Erasmus, writing in 1528, is to be believed, the English boys

were wont to disport in Greek epigrams.[660] But this must be understood

as only applicable to a very few, upon whom some extraordinary pains had

been bestowed. Thus Sir Thomas Elyot, in his Governor, first published

in 1531, points out a scheme of instruction which comprehends the

elements of the Greek language. There is no improbability in the

supposition, and some evidence to support it, that the masters of our

great schools, a Lily, a Cox, an Udal, a Nowell, did not leave boys of

quick parts wholly unacquainted with the rudiments of a language they so

much valued.[661] It tends to confirm this supposition, that in the

statutes of the new cathedrals established by Henry in 1541, it is

provided, that there shall be a grammar-school for each, with a head

master, “learned in Latin and Greek.” Such statutes, however, are not

conclusive evidences that they were put in force.[662] In the statutes

of Wolsey’s intended foundation at Ipswich, some years earlier, though

the course of instruction is amply detailed, we do not find it extend to

the merest elements of Greek.[663] It is curious to compare this with

the course prescribed by Sturm for the German schools.

[660] An tu credidisses unquam fore, ut apud Britannos aut Batavos

pueri Græcè garrirent, Græcis epigrammatiis non infeliciter

luderent? Dial. de Pronuntiatione, p. 48, edit. 1528.

[661] Churton, in his Life of Nowell, says that he taught the Greek

testament to the boys at Westminster school, referring for

authority to a passage in Strype, which I have not been able to

find. There is nothing at all improbable in the fact. These

inquiries will be deemed too minute by some in this age. But they

are not unimportant in their bearing on the history of literature;

and an exaggerated estimate of English learning in the age of the

Reformation generally prevails. Sir Thomas Pope, founder of Trinity

college, Oxford, observes in a letter to Cardinal Pole in 1556,

that when he was “a young scholar at Eton, the Greek tongue was

growing apace; the study of which is now alate much decayed.”

Warton, iii. 279. I do not think this implies more than a reference

to the time, which was about 1520.

[662] Warton, iii. 265.

[663] Strype’s Ecclesiast. Memorials. Appendix, No. 35.

|Teaching of Smith at Cambridge.|

25. But English learning was chiefly indebted for its more rapid advance

to two distinguished members of the university of Cambridge, Smith,

afterwards secretary of state to Elizabeth, and Cheke. The former began

to read the Greek lecture in 1533. And both of them, soon afterwards,

combined to bring in the true pronunciation of Greek, upon which Erasmus

had already written. The early students of that language, receiving

their instructions from natives, had acquired the vicious uniformity of

sounds belonging to the corrupted dialect. Reuchlin’s school, of which

Melanchthon was one, adhered to this, and were called Itacists, from the

continual recurrence of the sound of Iota in modern Greek, being thus

distinguished from the Etists of Erasmus’s party.[664] Smith and Cheke

proved by testimonies of antiquity, that the latter were right; and “by

this revived pronunciation,” says Strype, “was displayed the flower and

plentifulness of that language, the variety of vowels, the grandeur of

diphthongs, the majesty of long letters, and the grace of distinct

speech.”[665] Certain it is, that about this time some Englishmen began

to affect a knowledge of Greek. Sir Ralph Saddler, in his embassy to the

king of Scotland, in 1540, had two or three Greek words embroidered on

the sleeves of his followers, which led to a ludicrous mistake on the

part of the Scotch bishops. Scotland, however, herself was now beginning

to receive light; the Greek language was first taught in 1534 at

Montrose, which continued for many years to be what some call a

flourishing school.[666] But the whole number of books printed in

Scotland before the middle of the century was only seven. No classical

author, or even a grammar, is among these.[667]

[664] Eichhorn, iii. 217. Melanchthon, in his Greek grammar, follows

Reuchlin; Luscinius is on the side of Erasmus. Ibid. In very recent

publications, I observe that attempts have been made to set up

again the “lugubres sonos, et illud flebile iota” of the modern

Greeks. To adopt their pronunciation, even if right, would be

buying truth very dear.

[665] Strype’s Life of Smith, p. 17. “The strain I heard was of a

higher mood.” I wonder what author honest John Strype has copied or

translated in this sentence; for he never leaves the ground so far

in his own style.

[666] M’Crie’s Life of Knox, i. 6, and note C. p. 342.

[667] The list in Herbert’s History of Printing, iii. 468, begins with

the Breviary of the Church of Aberdeen; the first part printed at

Edinburgh in 1509, the second in 1510. A poem without date,

addressed to James V., De Suscepto Regni Regimine, which seems to

be in Latin, and must have been written about 1528, comes the

nearest to a learned work. Two editions of Lindsay’s Poems, two of

a translation of Hector Boece’s Chronicles, two of a temporary

pamphlet called Scotland’s Complaint, with one of the statutes of

the kingdom, printed in pursuance of an act of parliament passed in

1540, and a religious tract by one Balnaves, compose the rest.

|Succeeded by Cheke.|

26. Cheke, successor of Smith as lecturer in Greek at Cambridge, was

appointed the first royal professor of that language in 1540, with a

respectable salary. He carried on Smith’s scheme, if indeed it were not

his own, for restoring the true pronunciation, in spite of the strenuous

opposition of bishop Gardiner, chancellor of the university. This

prelate, besides a literary controversy in letters between himself and

Cheke, published at Basle in 1555, interfered, in a more orthodox way,

by prohibiting the new style of speech in a decree which, for its

solemnity, might relate to the highest articles of faith. Cheke however

in this, as in greater matters, was on the winning side; and the corrupt

pronunciation was soon wholly forgotten.

|Ascham’s character of Cambridge.|

27. Among the learned men who surrounded Cheke at Cambridge, none was

more deserving than Ascham; whose knowledge of ancient languages was not

shown in profuse quotation, or enveloped in Latin phrase, but served to

enrich his mind with valuable sense, and taught him to transfer the

firmness and precision of ancient writers to our own English, in which

he is nearly the first that deserves to be named, or that is now read.

He speaks in strong terms of his university. “At Cambridge also, in St.

John’s college, in my time, I do know that not so much the good statutes

as two gentlemen of worthy memory, Sir John Cheke and Dr. Redman, by

their only example of excellency in learning, of godliness in living, of

diligence in studying, of counsel in exhorting, by good order in all

things, did breed up so many learned men in that one college of St.

John’s at one time as I believe the whole university of Louvain in many

years was never able to afford.”[668] Lectures in humanity, that is, in

classical literature, were, in 1535, established by the king’s authority

in all colleges of the university of Oxford where they did not already

exist; and in the royal injunctions at the same time for the reformation

of academical studies a regard to philological learning is

enforced.[669]

[668] Ascham’s Schoolmaster. In the Life of Ascham by Grant, prefixed

to the former’s Epistles, he enumerates the learned of Cambridge

about 1530. Ascham was himself under Pember, homini Græcæ linguæ

admirabili facilitate excultissimo. The others named are Day,

Redman, Smith, Cheke, Ridley, Grindal (not the archbishop), Watson,

Haddon, Pilkington, Horn, Christopherson, Wilson, Seton, et

infiniti alii, excellenti doctrinâ præditi. Most of these are men

afterwards distinguished in the church on one side or the other.

This is a sufficient refutation of Wood’s idle assertion of the

superiority of Oxford; the fact seems to have been wholly

otherwise. Ascham himself, in a letter without date, but evidently

written about the time that the controversy of Cheke and Gardiner

began, praises thus the learning of Cambridge. Aristoteles nunc et

Plato, quod factum est etiam apud nos hic quinquennium, in sua

lingua a pueris leguntur. Sophocles et Euripides sunt hic

familiariores, quam olim Plautus fuerat, cum tu hic eras.

Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, magis in ore et manibus omnium

tenuntur, quam tum Titus Livius, etc. Ibid. p. 74. What then can be

thought of Antony Wood when he says, “Cambridge was in the said

king’s reign overspread with barbarism and ignorance, as ’tis often

mentioned by several authors?” Hist. and Antiq. of Oxford, A.D.

1545.

[669] Warton, iii. 272.

|Wood’s account of Oxford.|

28. Antony Wood, though he is by no means always consistent, gives

rather a favourable account of the state of philological learning at

Oxford in the last years of Henry VIII. There can, indeed, be no doubt

that it had been surprisingly increasing in all England through his

reign. More grammar schools, it is said by Knight, were founded in

thirty years before the Reformation, meaning, I presume, the age of

Henry, than in three hundred years preceding. But the suddenness with

which the religious establishment was changed on the accession of

Edward, and still more the rapacity of the young king’s council, who

alienated or withheld the revenues designed for the support of learning,

began to cloud the prospect before the year 1550.[670] Wood, in reading

whom allowance is to be made for a strong, though not quite avowed bias

towards the old system of ecclesiastical and academical government,

inveighs against the visitors of the university appointed by the crown

in 1548, for burning and destroying valuable books. And this seems to be

confirmed by other evidence. It is true that these books, though it was

a vile act to destroy them, would have been more useful to the English

antiquary than to the classical student. Ascham, a contemporary

protestant, denies that the university of Cambridge declined at all

before the accession of Mary in 1553.

[670] Strype, ii. 258. Todd’s Cranmer, ii. 33.

|Education of Edward and his sisters.|

29. Edward himself received a learned education, and, according to

Ascham, read the ethics of Aristotle in Greek. Of the princess

Elizabeth, his favourite pupil, we have a similar testimony.[671] Mary

was not by any means illiterate. It is hardly necessary to mention Jane

Grey and the wife of Cecil. Their proficiency was such as to excite the

admiration of every one, and is no measure of the age in which they

lived. And their names carry us on a little beyond 1550, though Ascham’s

visit to the former was in that year.

[671] Of the king he says: Dialecticam didicit, et nunc Græcè discit

Aristotelis Ethica. Eo progressus est in Græca lingua, ut in

philosophia Ciceronis ex Latinis Græca facillime faciat, Dec. 1550.

Ascham, Epist. iv. Elizabeth spoke French and Italian as well as

English; Latin fluently and correctly; Greek tolerably. She began

every day by reading the Greek Testament, and afterwards the

orations of Isocrates, and tragedies of Sophocles. Some years

afterwards, in 1555, he writes of her to Sturm: Domina Elizabeth et

ego una legimus Græcè orationes Æschinis et Demosthenis περι

στεφανου [peri stephanou]. Illa prælegit mihi et primo aspectu tam

scienter intelligit non solum proprietatem linguæ et oratoris

sensum, sed totam causæ contentionem, populi scita, consuetudinem

et mores illius urbis, ut summopere admireris, p. 53. In 1560 he

asserts that there are not four persons, in court or college (in

aula, in academia), who know Greek better than the queen.

Habemus Angliæ reginam, says Erasmus long before of Catherine,

feminan egregiè doctam, cujus filia Maria scribit bene Latinas

epistolas. Thomæ Mori domus nihil aliud quam musarum est

domicilium. Epist. Mxxxiv.

|The progress of learning is still slow.|

30. The reader must be surprised to find that, notwithstanding these

high and just commendations of our scholars, no Greek grammars or

lexicons were yet printed in England, and scarcely any works in that or

the Latin languages. In fact, there was no regular press in either

university at this time, though a very few books had been printed in

each about 1520; nor had they one till near the end of Elizabeth’s

reign. Reginald Wolfe, a German printer, obtained a patent, dated April

19th, 1541, giving him the exclusive right to print in Latin, Greek, and

Hebrew, and also Greek and Latin grammars, though mixed with English,

and charts and maps. But the only productions of his press before the

middle of the century, are two homilies of Chrysostom, edited by Cheke

in 1543. Elyot’s Latin and English Dictionary, 1538, was the first, I

believe, beyond the mere vocabularies of schoolboys; and it is itself

but a meagre performance.[672] Latin grammars were of course so

frequently published, that it has not been worth while to take notice of

them. But the Greek and Latin lexicon of Hadrian Junius, though

dedicated to Edward VI., and said to have been compiled in England, (I

know not how this could be the case), being the work of a foreigner, and

printed at Basle in 1548, cannot be reckoned as part of our stock.[673]

[672] Elyot boasts that this “contains a thousand more Latin words

than were together in any one dictionary published in this realm at

the time when I first began to write this commentary.” Though far

from being a good, or even, according to modern notions, a

tolerable dictionary, it must have been of some value at the time.

It was afterwards much augmented by Cooper.

[673] Wood ascribes to one Tolley or Tolleius a sort of Greek grammar,

Progymnasmata Linguæ Græcæ, dedicated to Edward VI. And Pits, in

noticing also other works of the same kind, says of this: Habentur

Monachii in Bavaria in bibliotheca ducali. As no mention is made of

such a work by Herbert or Dibdin, I had been inclined to think its

existence apocryphal. It is certainly foreign.

|Want of books and public libraries.|

31. It must appear on the whole, that under Edward VI. there was as yet

rather a commendable desire of learning, and a few vigorous minds at

work for their own literary improvement, than any such diffusion of

knowledge as can entitle us to claim for that age an equality with the

chief continental nations. The means of acquiring true learning were not

at hand. Few books, as we have seen, useful to the scholar, had been

published in England; those imported were of course expensive. No public

libraries of any magnitude had yet been formed in either of the

universities; those of private men were exceedingly few. The king had a

library, of which honourable mention is made; and Cranmer possessed a

good collection of books at Lambeth; but I do not recollect any other

person of whom this is recorded.

|Destruction of monasteries no injury to learning.|

32. The progress of philological literature in England was connected

with that of the Reformation. The learned of the earlier generation were

not all protestants, but their disciples were zealously such. They

taunted the adherents of the old religion with ignorance; and though by

that might be meant ignorance of the Scriptures, it was by their own

acquaintance with languages that they obtained their superiority in this

respect. And here I may take notice, that we should be greatly deceived

by acquiescing in the strange position of Warton, that the dissolution

of the monasteries in 1536 and the next two years gave a great

temporary check to the general state of letters in England.[674] This

writer, however, is inconsistent with himself; for no one had a greater

contempt for the monastic studies, dialectics and theology. But, as a

desire to aggravate, in every possible respect, the supposed mischiefs

of the dissolution of monasteries, is abundantly manifest in many

writers later than Warton, I shall briefly observe, that men are

deceived, or deceive others, by the equivocal use of the word learning.

If good learning, _bonæ literæ_, which for our present purpose

means a sound knowledge of Greek and Latin, was to be promoted, there

was no more necessary step in doing so, than to put down bad learning,

which is worse than ignorance, and which was the learning of the monks,

so far as they had any at all. What would Erasmus have thought of one

who should in his days have gravely intimated, that the abolition of

monastic foundations would retard the progress of literature? In what

protestant country was it accompanied with such a consequence, and from

whom, among the complaints sometimes made, do we hear this cause

assigned? I am ready to admit, that in the violent courses pursued by

Henry VIII. many schools attached to monasteries were broken up, and I

do not think it impossible that the same occurred in other parts of

Europe. It is also to be fully stated and kept in mind, that by the

Reformation the number of ecclesiastics, and consequently of those

requiring what was deemed a literate education, was greatly reduced. The

English universities, as we are well aware, do not contain by any means

the number of students that frequented them in the thirteenth century.

But are we therefore a less learned nation than our fathers of the

thirteenth century? Warton seems to lament, that “most of the youth of

the kingdom betook themselves to mechanical or other illiberal

employments, the profession of letters being now supposed to be without

support or reward.” Doubtless many who would have learned the Latin

accidence, and repeated the breviary, became useful mechanics. But is

this to be called, not rewarding the profession of letters? and are the

deadliest foes of the Greek and Roman muses to be thus confounded with

their worshippers? The loss of a few schools in the monasteries was well

compensated by the foundation of others on a more enlightened plan and

with much better instructors, and after the lapse of some years, the

communication of substantial learning came in the place of that tincture

of Latin which the religious orders had supplied. Warton, it should be

remarked, has been able to collect the names of not more than four or

five abbots and other regulars, in the time of Henry VIII., who either

possessed some learning themselves, or encouraged it in others.

[674] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iii. 268.

|Ravisius Textor.|

33. We may assist our conception of the general state of learning in

Europe, by looking at some of the books which were then deemed most

usefully subsidiary to its acquisition. Besides the lexicons and

grammatical treatises that have been mentioned, we have a work first

published about 1522, but frequently reprinted, and in much esteem, the

Officina of Ravisius Textor. Of this book Peter Danés, a man highly

celebrated in his day for erudition, speaks as if it were an abundant

storehouse of knowledge, admirable for the manner of its execution, and

comparable to any work of antiquity. In spite of this praise, it is no

more than a commonplace book from Latin authors, and from translations

of the Greek, and could deserve no regard except in a half-informed

generation.

|Conrad Gesner.|

34. A far better evidence of learning was given by Conrad Gesner, a man

of prodigious erudition, in a continuation of his Bibliotheca

Universalis (the earliest general catalogue of books with an estimate of

their merits), to which he gave the rather ambitious title of Pandectæ

Universales, as if it were to hold the same place in general science

that the Digest of Justinian does in civil law. It is a sort of index to

all literature, containing references only, and therefore less generally

useful, though far more learned and copious in instances, than the

Officina of Ravisius. It comprehends, besides all ancient authors, the

schoolmen and other writers of the middle ages. The references are

sometimes very short, and more like hints to one possessed of a large

library, than guides to the general student. In connection with the

Bibliotheca Universalis, it forms a literary history or encyclopædia, of

some value to those who are curious to ascertain the limits of knowledge

in the middle of the sixteenth century.

CHAPTER VI.

HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.

_Advance of the Reformation--Differences of Opinion--Erasmus--The

Protestant Opinions spread farther--Their Prevalence in Italy--

Reaction of Church of Rome--Theological Writings--Luther--Spirit of

the Reformation--Translations of Scripture._

|Progress of the Reformation.|

1. The separation of part of Europe from the church of Rome is the great

event that distinguishes these thirty years. But as it is not our object

to traverse the wide field of civil or ecclesiastical history, it will

suffice to make a few observations rather in reference to the spirit of

the times, than to the public occurrences that sprung from it. The new

doctrine began to be freely preached, and with immense applause of the

people, from the commencement of this period, or, more precisely, from

the year 1522, in many parts of Germany and Switzerland; the Duke of

Deuxponts in that year, or, according to some authorities, in 1523,

having led the way in abolishing the ancient ceremonies, and his example

having been successively followed in Saxony, Hesse, Brandenburg,

Brunswick, many imperial cities, and the kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden,

by the disciples of Luther; while those who adhered to Zwingle made

similar changes in several cantons of Switzerland.

|Interference of civil power.|

2. The magistrates generally proceeded, especially at the outset, with

as great caution and equity as were practicable in so momentous a

revolution; though perhaps they did not always respect the laws of the

empire. They commonly began by allowing freedom of preaching, and forbad

that any one should be troubled about his religion. This, if steadily

acted upon, repressed the tumultuous populace, who were eager for

demolishing images, the memorials of the old religion, as much as it did

the episcopal courts, which, had they been strong enough, might have

molested those who so plainly came within their jurisdiction. The

Reformation depended chiefly on zealous and eloquent preachers; the more

eminent secular clergy, as well as many regulars, having espoused its

principles. They encountered no great difficulty in winning over the

multitude; and when thus a decisive majority was obtained, commonly in

three or four years from the first introduction of free preaching, the

government found it time to establish, by a general edict, the abolition

of the mass, and of such ceremonies as they did not deem it expedient to

retain. The conflict between the two parties in Germany seems to have

been less arduous than we might expect. It was usually accompanied by an

expulsion of the religious of both sexes from their convents, a measure,

especially as to women, unjust and harsh,[675] and sometimes by an

alienation of ecclesiastical revenues to the purposes of the state, but

this was not universal in Germany, nor was it countenanced by Luther. I

cannot see any just reason to charge the Protestant princes of the

empire with having been influenced generally by such a motive. In

Sweden, however, the proceedings of Gustavus Vasa, who confiscated all

ecclesiastical estates, subject only to what he might deem a sufficient

maintenance for the possessors, have very much the appearance of

arbitrary spoliation.[676]

[675] Bilibald Pirckheimer wrote to Melanchthon complaining that a

convent of nuns at Nuremberg, among whom were two of his sisters,

had been molested and insulted because they would not accept

confessors appointed by the senate. Res eo deducta est ut quicunque

miserandas illas offendere et incessere audet, obsequium Deo se

præstitisse arbitretur. Idque non solum a viris agitur, sed et a

mulieribus; et illis mulieribus, quarum liberis omnem exhibuere

caritatem. Non solum enim viris, qui alios docere contendunt, se

ipsos vero minime emendant, urbs nostra referta est, sed et

mulieribus curiosis, garrulis et otiosis, quæ omnia potius quam

domum propriam gubernare satagunt. Pirckheimer Opera, Frankf. 1610,

p. 375. He was a moderate man, concurring with the Lutherans in

most of their doctrine, but against the violation of monastic vows.

Several letters passed between him and Erasmus. The latter, though

he could not approve the hard usage of women, hated the monks so

much, that he does not greatly disapprove what was done towards

them. In Germaniâ multa virginum ac monachorum monasteria

crudeliter direpta sunt. Quidam magistratus agunt moderatius.

Ejecerunt eos duntaxat, qui illic non essent professi, et vetuerunt

novitios recipi; ademerunt illis curam virginum, et jus alibi

concionandi quam in suis monasteriis. Breviter, absque magistratus

permissu nihil licet illis agere. Videntur huc spectare, ut ex

monasteriis faciant parochias. Existimant enim hos conjuratos

phalangas et tot privilegiis armatos diutius ferri non posse.

(Basil. Aug. 1525.) Epist. Dcccliv. Multis in locis durè tractati

sunt monachi; verum plerique cum sint intolerabiles, alia tamen

ratione corrigi non possunt. Epist. Dcclvii.

[676] Gerdes Hist. Evangel. Reform. Seckendorf, et alii supra nominati.

The best account I have seen of the Reformation in Denmark and

Sweden is in the third volume of Gerdes, p. 279, &c.

|Excitement of revolutionary spirit.|

3. But while these great innovations were brought in by the civil power,

and sometimes with too despotic a contempt of legal rights, the mere

breaking up of old settlements had so disturbed the minds of the people,

that they became inclined to further acts of destruction, and more

sweeping theories of revolution. It is one of the fallacious views of

the Reformation, to which we have adverted in a former page, to fancy

that it sprung from any notions of political liberty, in such a sense as

we attach to the word. But, inasmuch as it took away a great deal of

coercive jurisdiction exercised by the bishops, without substituting

much in its place, it did unquestionably relax the bonds of laws not

always unnecessary; and inasmuch as the multitude were in many parts

instrumental in destroying by force the exterior symbols of the Roman

worship, it taught them a habit of knowing and trying the efficacy of

that popular argument. Hence the insurrection of the German peasants in

1525 may, in a certain degree, be ascribed to the influence of the new

doctrine; and, in fact, one of their demands was the establishment of

the Gospel. But as the real cause of that rebellion was the oppressive

yoke of their lords, which, in several instances before the Reformation

was thought of, had led to similar efforts at relief, we should not lay

too much stress on this additional incitement.[677]

[677] Seckendorf.

|Growth of fanaticism.|

4. A more immediate effect of overthrowing the ancient system was the

growth of fanaticism, to which, in its worst shape, the antinomian

extravagances of Luther yielded too great encouragement. But he was the

first to repress the pretences of the Anabaptists;[678] and when he saw

the danger of general licentiousness which he had unwarily promoted, he

listened to the wiser counsels of Melanchthon, and permitted his early

doctrine upon justification to be so far modified, or mitigated in

expression, that it ceased to give apparent countenance to immorality;

though his differences with the church of Rome, as to the very question

from which he had started, thus became of less practical importance, and

less tangible to ordinary minds than before.[679] Yet in his own

writings we may find to the last such language as to the impossibility

of sin in the justified man, who was to judge solely by an internal

assurance as to the continuance of his own justification, as would now

be universally condemned in all our churches, and is hardly to be heard

from the lips of the merest enthusiast.

[678] Id. Melanchthon was a little staggered by the first Anabaptists,

who appeared during the concealment of Luther in the castle of

Wartburg. Magnis rationibus, he says, adducor certè ut contemnere

eos nolim, nam esse in iis spiritus quosdam multis argumentis

apparet, sed de quibus judicare præter Martinum nemo facile possit.

As to infant baptism, he seemed to think it a difficult question.

But the Elector observed that they passed for heretics already, and

it would be unwise to moot a new point. Luther, when he came back,

rejected the pretences of the Anabaptists at once.

[679] See two remarkable passages in Seckendorf, part ii. p. 90, and

p. 106. The æra of what may be called the palinodia of early

Lutheranism was in 1527, when Melanchthon drew up instructions for

the visitation of the Saxon churches. Luther came into this; but it

produced that jealousy of Melanchthon among the rigid disciples,

such as Amsdorf and Justus Jonas, which led to the molestation of

his latter years. In 1537, Melanchthon writes to a correspondent:

Scis me quædam minus horridè dicere, de prædestinatione, de assensu

voluntatis, de necessitate obedientiæ nostræ, de peccato mortali.

De his omnibus scio re ipsa Lutherum sentire eadem, sed ineruditi

quædam ejus Φορτικωτερα [Phortikôtera] dicta, cum non videant quo

pertineant, nimium amant. Epist. p. 445. (edit. 1647.)

I am not convinced that this apology for Luther is sufficient.

Words are of course to be explained, when ambiguous, by the context

and scope of the argument. But when single detached aphorisms, or

even complete sentences in a paragraph, bear one obvious sense, I

do not see that we can hold the writer absolved from the imputation

of that meaning, because he may somewhere else have used a language

inconsistent with it. If the Colloquia Mensalia are to be fully

relied upon, Luther continued to talk in the same antinomian strain

as before, though he grew sometimes more cautious in writing. See

chap. xii. of that work; and compare with the passages quoted by

Milner, v. 517, from the second edition (in 1536) of his Commentary

on the Galatians. It would be well to know if these occur in that

of 1519. But Luther had not gone greater lengths than Melanchthon

himself.

|Differences of Luther and Zwingle.|

5. It is well known that Zwinglius, unconnected with Luther in throwing

off his allegiance to Rome, took in several respects rather different

theological views, but especially in the article of the real presence,

asserted by the Germans as vigorously as in the Church of Rome, though

with a modification sufficient, in the spirit of uncompromising

orthodoxy, to separate them entirely from her communion, but altogether

denied by the Swiss and Belgian reformers. The attempts made to disguise

this division of opinion, and to produce a nominal unanimity by

ambiguous and incoherent jargon, belong to ecclesiastical history, of

which they form a tedious and not very profitable portion.

|Confession of Augsburg.|

6. The Lutheran princes, who the year before had acquired the name of

Protestants, by their protest against the resolutions of the majority in

the diet of Spire, presented in 1530 to that held at Augsburg the

celebrated confession, which embodies their religious creed. It has been

said that there are material changes in subsequent editions, but this is

denied by the Lutherans. Their denial can only be as to the materiality,

for the fact is clear.[680]

[680] Bossuet, Variations des Eglises Protestantes, vol. i. Seckendorf,

p. 170. Clement, Bibliothèque Curieuse, vol. ii. In the editions of

1531 we read: De cœna Domini docent, quod corpus et sanguis Christi

vere adsint, et distribuantur vescentibus in cœna Domini, et

improbant secus docentes. In those of 1540, it runs thus: De cœna

Domini docent, quod cum pane et vino vere exhibeantur corpus et

sanguis Christi vescentibus in cœna Domini.

|Conduct of Erasmus.|

7. Meantime, it was not all the former opponents of abuses in the church

who now served under the banner of either Luther or Zwingle. Some few,

like Sir Thomas More, went violently back to the extreme of maintaining

the whole fabric of superstition; a greater number, without abandoning

their own private sentiments, shrunk, for various reasons, from an

avowed separation from the church. Such we may reckon Faber Stapulensis,

the most learned Frenchman of that age after Budæus; such perhaps was

Budæus himself;[681] and such were Bilibaldus Pirckheimer,[682] Petrus

Mosellanus, Beatus Rhenanus, and Wimpfeling, all men of just renown in

their time. Such, above all, was Erasmus himself, the precursor of

bolder prophets than himself, who, in all his later years, stood in a

very unenviable state, exposed to the shafts of two parties who forgave

no man that moderation which was a reproach to themselves. At the

beginning of this period, he had certainly an esteem for Melanchthon,

Œcolampadius, and other reformers; and though already shocked by the

violence of Luther, which he expected to ruin the cause altogether, had

not begun to speak of him with disapprobation.[683] In several points of

opinion, he professed to coincide with the German reformers; but his own

temper was not decisive; he was capable of viewing a subject in various

lights; his learning, as well as natural disposition, kept him

irresolute; and it might not be easy to determine accurately the tenets

of so voluminous a theologian. One thing was manifest, that he had

greatly contributed to the success of the Reformation. It was said, that

Erasmus had laid the egg, and Luther had hatched it. Erasmus afterwards,

when more alienated from the new party, observed, that he had laid a

hen’s egg, but Luther had hatched a crow’s.[684] Whatever was the bird,

it pecked still at the church. In 1522, came out the Colloquies of

Erasmus, a book even now much read, and deserving to be so. It was

professedly designed for the instruction and amusement of youth; but

both are conveyed at the expense of the prevalent usages in religion.

The monkish party could not be blind to its effect. The faculty of

theology at Paris, in 1526, led by one Beda, a most bigoted enemy of

Erasmus, censured the Colloquies for slighting the fasts of the church,

virginity, monkery, pilgrimages, and other established parts of the

religious system. They incurred of course the displeasure of Rome, and

have several times been forbidden to be read in schools. Erasmus

pretended that in his Ιχθυοφαγια [Ichthyophagia] he only turned into

ridicule the abuse of fasting, and not the ordinances of the church. It

would be difficult, however, to find out this distinction in the

dialogue, or, indeed, anything favourable to the ecclesiastical cause in

the whole book of Colloquies. The clergy are everywhere represented as

idle and corrupt. No one who desired to render established institutions

odious could set about it in a shorter or surer way; and it would be

strange if Erasmus had not done the church more harm by such

publications than he could compensate by a few sneers at the reformers

in his private letters. In the single year 1527, Colinæus printed 24,000

copies of the Colloquies, all of which were sold.

[681] Budæus was suspected of Protestantism, and disapproved many

things in his own church; but the passages quoted from him by

Gerdes, i. 186, prove that he did not mean to take the leap.

[682] Gerdes, vol. i. § 66-83. We have seen above the moderation of

Pirckheimer in some respects. I am not sure, however, that he did

not comply with the Reformation after it was established at

Nuremberg.

[683] Male metuo misero Luthero; sic undique fervet conjuratio; sic

undique irritantur in illum principes, ac præcipuè Leo pontifex.

Utinam Lutherus meum secutus consilium, ab odiosis illis ac

seditiosis abstinuisset. Plus erat fructus et minus invidiæ. Parum

esset unum hominem perire; si res hæc illis succedit, nemo feret

illorum insolentiam. Non conquiescent donec linguas ac bonas

literas omnes subverterint. Epist. Dxxviii Sept. 1520.

Lutherus, quod negari non potest, optimam fabulam susceperat, et

Christi pene aboliti negotium summo cum orbis applausu cœperat

agere. Sed utinam rem tantam gravioribus ac sedatioribus egisset

consiliis, majoreque cum animi calamique moderatione; atque utinam

in scriptis illius non essent tam multa bona, aut sua bona non

vitiasset malis haud ferendis. Epist. Dcxxxv. 3d Sept.

1521.

[684] Epist. Dccxix. Dec. 1524.

|Estimate of it.|

8. But about the time of this very publication we find Erasmus growing

by degrees more averse to the radical innovations of Luther. He has been

severely blamed for this by most Protestants; and doubtless, so far as

an undue apprehension of giving offence to the powerful, or losing his

pensions from the emperor and king of England might influence him, no

one can undertake his defence. But it is to be remembered, that he did

not by any means espouse all the opinions either of Luther or Zwingle;

that he was disgusted at the virulent language too common among the

reformers, and at the outrages committed by the populace; that he

anticipated great evils from the presumptuousness of ignorant men in

judging for themselves in religion; that he probably was sincere in what

he always maintained as to the necessity of preserving the communion of

the Catholic church, which he thought consistent with much latitude of

private faith; and that, if he had gone among the reformers, he must

either have concealed his real opinions more than he had hitherto done,

or lived, as Melanchthon did afterwards, the victim of calumny and

oppression. He had also to allege, that the fruits of the Reformation

had by no means shown themselves in a more virtuous conduct; and that

many heated enthusiasts were depreciating both all profane studies, and

all assistance of learning in theology.[685]

[685] The letters of Erasmus, written under the spur of immediate

feelings, are a perpetual commentary on the mischiefs with which

the Reformation, in his opinion, was accompanied. Civitates aliquot

Germaniæ implentur erroribus, desertoribus monasteriorum,

sacerdotibus conjugatis, plerisque famelicis ac nudis. Nec aliud

quam saltatur, editur, bibitur ac subatur; nec docent nec discunt;

nulla vitæ sobrietas, nulla sinceritas. Ubicunque sunt, ibi jacent

omnes bonæ disciplinæ cum pietate (1527) Epist. Dccccii. Satis jam

diu audivimus, Evangelium, Evangelium, Evangelium; mores

Evangelicos desideramus. Epist. Dccccxlvi. Duo tantum quærunt,

censum et uxorem. Cætera præstat illis Evangelium, hoc est,

potestatem vivendi ut volunt. Epist. Mvi. Tales vidi mores

(Basileæ) ut etiamsi minus displicuissent dogmata, non placuisset

tamen cum hujusmodi [sic] fœdus inire. Epist. Mlxvi. Both these

last are addressed to Pirckheimer, who was rather more a protestant

than Erasmus; so that there is no fair suspicion of temporising.

The reader may also look at the 788th and 793d Epistle, on the wild

doctrines of the Anabaptists and other reformers, and at the 731st,

on the effects of Farel’s first preaching at Basle in 1525. See

also Bayle, Farel, note B.

It is become very much the practice with our English writers to

censure Erasmus for his conduct at this time. Milner rarely does

justice to any one who did not servilely follow Luther. And Dr.

Cox, in his life of Melanchthon, p. 35, speaks of a third party,

“at the head of which the learned, witty, vacillating, avaricious,

and artful Erasmus is unquestionably to be placed.” I do not deny

his claim to this place; but why the last three epithets? Can

Erasmus be shown to have vacillated in his tenets? If he had done

so, it might be no great reproach; but his religious creed was

nearly that of the moderate members of the church of Rome, nor have

I observed any proof of a change in it. But vacillation may be

imputed to his conduct. I hardly think this word is applicable;

though he acted from particular impulses, which might make him seem

a little inconsistent in spirit; and certainly wrote letters not

always in the same tone, according to his own temper at the moment,

or that of his correspondent. Nor was he avaricious; at least I

know no proof of it; and as to the epithet artful, it ill applies

to a man who was perpetually involving himself by an unguarded and

imprudent behaviour. Dr. Cox proceeds to charge Erasmus with

seeking a cardinal’s hat. But of this there is neither proof nor

probability; he always declared his reluctance to accept that

honour, and I cannot think that in any part of his life he went the

right way to obtain it.

Those who arraign Erasmus so severely (and I am not undertaking the

defence of every passage in his voluminous Epistles), must proceed

either on the assumption that no man of his learning and ability

could honestly remain in the communion of the church of Rome, which

is the height of bigotry and ignorance; or that, according to his

own religious opinions, it was impossible for him to do so. This is

somewhat more tenable, inasmuch as it can only be answered by a

good deal of attention to his writings. But from various passages

in them, it may be inferred, that, though his mind was not made up

on several points, and perhaps for that reason, he thought it right

to follow, in assent as well as conformity, the catholic tradition

of the church, and above all, not to separate from her communion.

The reader may consult, for Erasmus’s opinions on some chief points

of controversy, his Epistles, Dcccxxiii.,

Dcccclxxvii. (which Jortin has a little misunderstood),

Mxxxv., Mliii., Mxciii. And see Jortin’s

own fair statement of the case, i. 274.

Melanchthon had doubtless a sweeter temper and a larger measure of

human charities than Erasmus, nor would I wish to vindicate one

great man at the expense of another. But I cannot refrain from

saying, that no passage in the letters of Erasmus is read with so

much pain as that in which Melanchthon, after Luther’s death, and

writing to one not very friendly, says of his connection with the

founder of the Reformation, Tuli servitutem pœne deformen, &c.

Epist. Melanchthon, p. 21 (edit. 1647). But the characters of

literary men are cruelly tried by their correspondence, especially

in an age when more conventional dissimulation was authorised by

usage than at present.

|His controversy with Luther.|

9. In 1524, Erasmus, at the instigation of those who were resolved to

dislodge him from a neutral station his timidity rather affected,

published his diatribe, De Libero Arbitrio, selecting a topic upon which

Luther, in the opinion of most reasonable men, was very open to

attack. Luther answered in a treatise, De Servo Arbitrio, flinching not,

as suited his character, from any tenet because it seemed paradoxical,

or revolting to general prejudice. The controversy ended with a reply of

Erasmus, entitled Hyperaspistes.[686] It is not to be understood, from

the titles of these tracts, that the question of free will was discussed

between Luther and Erasmus in a philosophical sense; though Melanchthon,

in his Loci Communes, like the modern Calvinists, had combined the

theological position of the spiritual inability of man with the

metaphysical tenet of general necessity. Luther on most occasions,

though not uniformly, acknowledged the freedom of the will as to

indifferent actions, and also as to what they called the works of the

law. But he maintained that, even when regenerated and sanctified by

faith and the Spirit, man had no spiritual free will; and as before that

time he could do no good, so after it, he had no power to do ill; nor,

indeed, could he, in a strict sense, do either good or ill, God always

working in him, so that all his acts were properly the acts of God,

though, man’s will being of course the proximate cause, they might, in a

secondary sense, be ascribed to him. It was this that Erasmus denied, in

conformity with the doctrine afterwards held by the council of Trent, by

the church of England, and, if we may depend on the statements of

writers of authority, by Melanchthon and most of the later Lutherans.

From the time of this controversy Luther seems to have always spoken of

Erasmus with extreme ill-will; and if the other was a little more

measured in his expressions, he fell not a jot behind in dislike.[687]

[686] Seckendorf took hold of a few words in a letter of Erasmus, to

insinuate that he had taken a side against his conscience in

writing his treatise, De Libero Arbitrio. Jortin, acute as he was,

seems to have understood the passage the same way, and endeavours

to explain away the sense, as if he meant only that he had

undertaken the task unwillingly. Milner of course repeats the

imputation; though it must be owned that, perceiving the absurdity

of making Erasmus deny what in all his writings appears to have

been his real opinion, he adopts Jortin’s solution. I am persuaded

that they are all mistaken, and that Erasmus was no more referring

to his treatise against Luther, than to the Trojan war. The words

occur in an answer to a letter of Vives, written from London,

wherein he had blamed some passages in the Colloquies on the usual

grounds of their freedom as to ecclesiastical practices. Erasmus,

rather piqued at this, after replying to the observations,

insinuates to Vives, that the latter had not written of his own

free will, but at the instigation of some superior. Verum, ut

ingenue dicam, perdidimus liberum arbitrium. Illic mihi aliud

dictabat animus, aliud scribebat calamus. By a figure of speech far

from unusual, he delicately suggests his own suspicion as Vives’s

apology. And the next letter of Vives leaves no room for doubt:

Liberum arbitrium non perdidimus, quod tu asserueris,--words, that

could have no possible meaning upon the hypothesis of Seckendorf.

There is nothing in the context that can justify it; and it is

equally difficult to maintain the interpretation Jortin gives of

the phrase, aliud dictabat animus, aliud scribebat calamus, which

can mean nothing but that he wrote what he did not think. The

letters are Dcccxxix. Dccclxxi. Dccclxxvi. in Erasmus’s Epistles;

or the reader may turn to Jortin, i. 413.

[687] Many of Luther’s strokes at Erasmus occur in the Colloquia

Mensalia, which I quote from the translation. “Erasmus can do

nothing but cavil and flout, he cannot confute.” “I charge you in

my will and testament, that you hate and loath Erasmus, that

viper.” ch. xliv. “He called Erasmus an epicure and ungodly

creature, for thinking that if God dealed with men here on earth as

they deserved, it would not go so ill with the good, or so well

with the wicked.” ch. vii. Lutherus, says the other, sic respondit

(diatribæ De Libero Arbitrio), ut antehac in neminem virulentius;

et homo suavis post editum librum per literas dejerat se in me esse

animo candidissimo, ac propemodum postulat, ut ipsi gratias agam,

quod me tam civiliter tractavit, longe aliter scripturus si cum

hoste fuisset res. Ep. Dcccxxxvi.

|Character of his epistles.|

10. The epistles of Erasmus, which occupy two folio volumes in the best

edition of his works, are a vast treasure for the ecclesiastical

and literary history of his times. Morhof advises the student to

commonplace them; a task which, even in his age, few would have spared

leisure to perform, and which the good index of the Leyden edition

renders less important. Few men carry on so long and extensive a

correspondence without affording some vulnerable points to the criticism

of posterity. The failings of Erasmus have been already adverted to; it

is from his own letters that we derive our chief knowledge of them. An

extreme sensibility to blame in his own person, with little regard to

that of others; a genuine warmth of friendship towards some, but an

artificial pretence of it too frequently assumed; an inconsistency of

profession both as to persons and opinions, partly arising from the

different character of his correspondents, but in a great degree from

the varying impulses of his ardent mind, tend to abate that respect

which the name of Erasmus at first excites, and which, on a candid

estimate of his whole life, and the tenor even of this correspondence,

it ought to retain. He was the first conspicuous enemy of ignorance and

superstition, the first restorer of Christian morality on a scriptural

foundation, and, notwithstanding the ridiculous assertion of some

moderns that he wanted theological learning, the first who possessed it

in its proper sense, and applied it to its proper end.

|His alienation from the reformers increases.|

11. In every succeeding year the letters of Erasmus betray increasing

animosity against the reformers. He had long been on good terms with

Zwingle and Œcolampadius, but became so estranged by these party

differences, that he speaks of their death with a sort of triumph.[688]

He still however kept up some intercourse with Melanchthon. The latter

years of Erasmus could not have been happy; he lived in a perpetual

irritation from the attacks of adversaries on every side; his avowed

dislike of the reformers by no means assuaging the virulence of his

original foes in the church, or removing the suspicion of lukewarmness

in the orthodox cause. Part of this should fairly be ascribed to the

real independence of his mind in the formation of his opinions, though

not always in their expression, and to their incompatibility with the

extreme doctrines of either side. But an habitual indiscretion, the

besetting sin of literary men, who seldom restrain their wit, rendered

this hostility far more general than it need have been, and, accompanied

as it was with a real timidity of character, exposed him to the charge

of insincerity, which he could better palliate by the example of others

than deny to have some foundation. Erasmus died in 1536, having returned

to Basle, which, on pretence of the alterations in religion, he had

quitted for Friburg in Brisgau a few years before. No differences of

opinion had abated the pride of the citizens of Basle in their

illustrious visitor. Erasmus lies interred in their cathedral, the

earliest, except Œcolampadius, in the long list of the literary dead,

which has rendered that cemetery conspicuous in Europe.

[688] Bene habet, quod duo Coryphæi perierint, Zuinglius in acie,

Œcolampadius paulo post febri et apostemate. Quod si illis favisset

ενυαλιορ [enyalior], actum fuisset de nobis. Epist. Mccv. It is of

course to be regretted, that Erasmus allowed this passage to escape

him, even in a letter. With Œcolampadius he had long carried on a

correspondence. In some book the latter had said, Magnus Erasmus

noster. This was at a time when much suspicion was entertained of

Erasmus, who writes rather amusingly, in Feb. 1525, to complain,

telling Œcolampadius that it was best neither to be praised nor

blamed by his party; but if they must speak of him, he would prefer

their censure to being styled _noster_. Epist. Dccxxviii. Milner

quotes this, leaving poor Erasmus to his reader’s indignation for

what he would insinuate to be a piece of the greatest baseness. But

in good truth, what right had Œcolampadius to use the word

_noster_, if it could be interpreted as claiming Erasmus to his

ownside? He was not theirs as Œcolampadius well knew, in exterior

profession nor theirs in the course they had seen fit to pursue.

It is just towards Erasmus to mention, that he never dissembled his

affection for Lewis Berquin, the first martyr to protestantism in

France, who was burned in 1528, even in the time of his danger.

Epist. Dcccclxxvi. Erasmus had no more inveterate enemies

than in the university of Paris.

|Appeal of the reformers to the ignorant.|

12. The most striking effect of the first preaching of the Reformation

was that it appealed to the ignorant; and though political liberty, in

the sense we use the word, cannot be reckoned the aim of those who

introduced it, yet there predominated that revolutionary spirit which

loves to witness destruction for its own sake, and that intoxicated

self-confidence which renders folly mischievous. Women took an active

part in religious dispute; and though in many respects the Roman

catholic religion is very congenial to the female sex, we cannot be

surprised that many ladies might be good protestants against the right

of any to judge better than themselves. The translation of the New

Testament by Luther in 1522, and of the Old a few years later, gave

weapons to all disputants; it was common to hold conferences before the

burgomasters of German and Swiss towns, who settled the points in

controversy, one way or other, perhaps as well as the learned would have

done.

|Parallel of those times with the present.|

13. We cannot give any attention to the story of the Reformation,

without being struck by the extraordinary analogy it bears to that of

the last fifty years. He who would study the spirit of this mighty age

may see it reflected as in a mirror from the days of Luther and Erasmus.

Man, who, speaking of him collectively, has never reasoned for himself,

is the puppet of impulses and prejudices, be they for good or for evil.

These are, in the usual course of things, traditional notions and

sentiments, strengthened by repetition, and running into habitual trains

of thought. Nothing is more difficult, in general, than to make a nation

perceive any thing as true, or seek its own interest in any manner, but

as its forefathers have opined or acted. Change in these respects has

been, even in Europe, where there is most of flexibility, very gradual;

the work, not of argument or instruction, but of exterior circumstances

slowly operating through a long lapse of time. There have been, however,

some remarkable exceptions to this law of uniformity, or, if I may use

the term, of _secular variation_. The introduction of Christianity

seems to have produced a very rapid subversion of ancient prejudices, a

very conspicuous alteration of the whole channel through which moral

sentiments flow, in nations that have at once received it. This has also

not unfrequently happened through the influence of Mohammedism in the

East. Next to these great revolutions in extent and degree, stand the

two periods we have begun by comparing; that of the Reformation in the

sixteenth century, and that of political innovation wherein we have long

lived. In each, the characteristic features are a contempt for

antiquity, a shifting of prejudices, an inward sense of self-esteem

leading to an assertion of private judgment in the most uninformed, a

sanguine confidence in the amelioration of human affairs, a fixing of

the heart on great ends with a comparative disregard of all things

intermediate. In each there has been so much of alloy in the motives,

and, still more, so much of danger and suffering in the means, that the

cautious and moderate have shrunk back, and sometimes retraced their own

steps, rather than encounter evils which at a distance they had not seen

in their full magnitude. Hence we may pronounce with certainty what

Luther, Hutten, Carlostadt, what again More, Erasmus, Melanchthon,

Cassander, would have been in the nineteenth century, and what our own

contemporaries would have been in their times. But we are too apt to

judge others, not as the individualities of personal character and the

varying aspects of circumstances rendered them, and would have rendered

us, but according to our opinion of the consequences, which, even if

estimated by us rightly, were such as they could not determinately have

foreseen.

|Calvin.|

|His Institutes.|

14. In 1531, Zwingle lost his life on the field of battle. It was the

custom of the Swiss that their pastors should attend the citizens in war

to exhort the combatants, and console the dying. But the reformers soon

acquired a new chief in a young man superior in learning and probably in

genius, John Calvin, a native of Noyon in Picardy. His Institutions,

published in 1536, became the text-book of a powerful body, who deviated

in some few points from the Helvetic school of Zwingle. They are

dedicated to Francis I., in language, good, though not perhaps as choice

as would have been written in Italy, temperate, judicious, and likely to

prevail upon the general reader, if not upon the king. This treatise was

the most systematic and extensive defence and exposition of the

protestant doctrine which had appeared. Without the over-strained

phrases and wilful paradoxes of Luther’s earlier writings, the

Institutes of Calvin seem to contain most of his predecessor’s

theological doctrine, except as to the corporal presence. He adopted a

middle course as to this, and endeavoured to distinguish himself from

the Helvetic divines. It is well known that he brought forward the

predestinarian tenets of Augustin more fully than Luther, who seems

however to have maintained them with equal confidence. They appeared to

Calvin, as doubtless they are, clearly deducible from their common

doctrine as to the sinfulness of all natural actions, and the arbitrary

irresistible conversion of the passive soul by the power of God. The

city of Geneva, throwing off subjection to its bishop, and embracing the

reformed religion in 1536, invited Calvin to an asylum, where he soon

became the guide and legislator, though never the ostensible magistrate,

of the new republic.

|Increased differences among reformers.|

15. The Helvetian reformers at Zurich and Bern were now more and more

separated from the Lutherans; and in spite of frequent endeavours to

reconcile their differences, each party, but especially the latter,

became as exclusive and nearly as intolerant as the church which they

had quitted. Among the Lutherans themselves, those who rigidly adhered

to the spirit of their founder’s doctrine, grew estranged, not

externally, but in language and affection, from the followers of

Melanchthon.[689] Luther himself, who never withdrew his friendship from

the latter, seems to have been alternately under his influence, and that

of inferior men. The Anabaptists, in their well-known occupation of

Munster, gave such proof of the tremendous consequences of fanaticism,

generated, in great measure, by the Lutheran tenet of assurance, that

the paramount necessity of maintaining human society tended more to

silence these theological subtilties, than any arguments of the same

class. And from this time that sect, if it did not lose all its

enthusiasm, learned how to regulate it in subordination to legal and

moral duties.

[689] Amsdorfius Luthero scripsit, viperam eum in sinu alere, me

significans, omitto alia multa. Epist. Melanchthon, p. 450 (edit.

1647). Luther’s temper seems to have grown more impracticable as he

advanced in life. Melanchthon threatened to leave him. Amsdorf and

that class of men flattered his pride. See the following letters.

In one, written about 1549, he says: Tuli etiam antea servitutem

pæne deformem, cum sæpe Lutherus magis suæ naturæ, in qua

φιλονεικια [philoneikia] erat haud exigua, quam vel personæ suæ,

vel utilitati communi serviret, p. 21. This letter is too

apologetical and temporising. Nec movi has controversias quæ

distraxerunt rempublicam; sed incidi in motas, quæ cum et multæ

essent et inexplicatæ, quodam simplici studio quaerendæ veritatis,

præsertim cum multi docti et sapientes initio applauderent,

considerare eas cœpi. Et quamquam materias quasdam horridiores

autor initio miscuerat, tamen alia vera et necessaria non putavi

rejicienda esse. Hæc cum excerpta amplecterer, paulatim aliquas

absurdas opiniones vel sustuli vel lenii. Melanchthon should have

remembered, that no one had laid down these opinions with more

unreserve, or in a more “horrid” way of disputation than himself in

the first edition of his Loci Communes. In these and other

passages, he endeavours to strike at Luther for faults which were

equally his own, though doubtless not so long persisted in.

Melanchthon, in the first edition of the Loci Communes, which will

scarcely be found except in Von der Hardt, sums up the free will

question thus:

Si ad prædestinationem referas humanum voluntatem, nec in externis,

nec in internis operibus ulla est libertas, sed eveniunt omnia

juxta destinationem divinam.

Si ad opera externa referas voluntatem, quædam videtur esse,

judicio naturæ, libertas.

Si ad affectus referas voluntatem, nulla plane libertas est, etiam

naturæ judicio. This proves what I have said in another place, that

Melanchthon held the doctrine of strict philosophical necessity.

Luther does the same, in express words, once at least in the

treatise De Servo Arbitrio, vol. ii. fol. 429 (edit. Wittenberg,

1554).

In an epistle often quoted, Melanchthon wrote: Nimis horridæ

fuerunt apud nostros disputationes de fato, et disciplinæ

nocuerunt. But a more thoroughly ingenuous man might have said

nostros for apud nostros. Certain it is, however, that he had

changed his opinions considerably before 1540, when he published

his Moralis Philosophiæ Epitome, which contains evidence of his

holding the synergism, or activity and co-operation with divine

grace, of the human will. See p. 39.

The animosity excited in the violent Lutherans by Melanchthon’s

moderation in drawing up the confession of Augsburg is shown in

Camerarius, Vita Melanchthon, p. 124 (edit. 1696). From this time

it continued to harass him till his death.

|Reformed tenets spread in England.|

|In Italy.|

16. England, which had long contained the remnants of Wicliffe’s

followers, could not remain a stranger to this revolution. Tyndale’s New

Testament was printed at Antwerp in 1526; the first translation that had

been made into English. The cause of this delay has been already

explained; and great pains were taken to suppress the circulation of

Tyndale’s version. But England was then inclined to take its religion

from the nod of a capricious tyrant. Persecution would have long

repressed the spirit of free judgment, and the king, for Henry’s life at

least, have retained his claim to the papal honour conferred on him as

defender of the faith, if “Gospel light,” as Gray has rather affectedly

expressed it, had not “flashed from Boleyn’s eyes.” But we shall not

dwell on so trite a subject. It is less familiar to every one, that in

Italy the seeds of the Reformation were early and widely sown. A

translation of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes under the name of Ippofilo da

Terra Nigra, was printed at Venice in 1521, the very year of its

appearance at Wittenberg; the works of Luther, Zwingle, and Bucer, were

also circulated under false names.[690] The Italian translations of

Scripture made in the fifteenth century were continually reprinted; and

in 1530 a new version was published at Venice by Brucioli, with a

preface written in a protestant tone.[691] The great intercourse

of Italy with the cisalpine nations, through war and commerce, and the

partiality of Renée of France, duchess of Ferrara, to the new doctrines,

whose disciples she encouraged at her court, under the pretext of

literature, contributed to spread an active spirit of inquiry. In almost

every considerable city, between 1525 and 1540, we find proofs of a

small band of protestants, not in general abandoning the outward

profession of the church, but coinciding in most respects with Luther or

Zwingle. It has lately been proved that a very early proselyte to the

Reformation, and one whom we should least expect to find in that number,

was Berni, before the completion, if not the commencement, of his labour

on the Orlando Innamorato; which he attempted to render in some places

the vehicle of his disapprobation of the church. This may account for

the freedom from indecency which distinguishes that poem, and contrasts

with the great licentiousness of Berni’s lighter and earlier

productions.[692]

[690] M’Crie’s Hist. of Reformation in Italy. Epigrams were written in

favour of Luther as early as 1521 (p. 32).

[691] Id. p. 53, 55.

[692] This curious and unexpected fact was brought to light by

Mr. Panizzi, who found a short pamphlet of extreme scarcity, and

unnoticed, I believe, by Zeno or any other bibliographer (except

Niceron, xxxviii. 76), in the library of Mr. Grenville. It is

written by Peter Paul Vergerio, and printed at Basle in 1554. This

contains eighteen stanzas, intended to have been prefixed by Berni

to the twentieth canto of the Orlando Innamorato. They are of a

decidedly protestant character. For these stanzas others are

substituted in the printed editions, much inferior, and, what is

remarkable, almost the only indecent passage in the whole poem. Mr.

Panizzi is of opinion, that great liberties have been taken with

the Orlando Innamorato, which is a posthumous publication, the

earliest edition being at Venice, 1541, five years after the

author’s death. Vergerio, in this tract, the whole of which has

been reprinted by Mr. P. in iii. 361 of his Boiardo, says of Berni:

Costui quasi agli ultimi suoi anni non fù altro che carne e mondo;

di che ci fanno ampia fede alcuni suoi capitoli e poesie, delle

quali egli molti fogli imbrattò. Ma perchè il nome suo era scritto

nel libro della vita, ne era possibile ch’egli potesse fuggire

delle mani del celeste padre, &c. Veggendo egli che questo gran

tiranno non permittea onde alcuno potesse comporre all’aperta di

quei libri, per li quali altri possa penetrare nella cognizione del

vero, andando attorno per le man d’ognuno un certo libro profano

chiamato innamoramento d’Orlando, che era inetto e mal composto, il

Berna [sic] s’immaginò di fare un bel trattato; e ciò fù ch’egli si

pose a racconciare le rime e le altre parti di quel libro, di che

esso n’era ottimo artefice, e poi aggiungendovi di suo alcune

stanze, pensò di entrare con questa occasione e con quel mezzo

(insin che d’Altro migliore ne avesse potuto avere) ad insegnare la

verità dell’Evangelio, &c. Whether Vergerio is wholly to be

trusted in all this account, more of which will be found on

reference to Panizzi’s edition of the Orlando Innamorato, I must

leave to the competent reader. The following expressions of Mr. P.,

though, I think, rather strong, will show the opinion of one

conversant with the literature and history of those times. “The

more we reflect on the state of Italy at that time, the more have

we reason to suspect that the reforming tenets were as popular

among the higher classes in Italy in those days, as liberal notions

in ours.” P. 361.

|Italian heterodoxy.|

17. The Italians are an imaginative, but not essentially a superstitious

people, or liable, nationally speaking, to the gloomy prejudices that

master the reason. Among the classes, whose better education had

strengthened and developed the acuteness and intelligence so general in

Italy, a silent disbelief of the popular religion was far more usual

than in any other country. In the majority, this has always taken the

turn of a complete rejection of all positive faith; but, at the æra of

the Reformation especially, the substitution of Protestant for Romish

Christianity was an alternative to be embraced by men of more serious

temperaments. Certain it is, that we find traces of this aberration from

orthodoxy, in one or the other form, through much of the literature of

Italy, sometimes displaying itself only in censures of the vices of the

clergy; censures, from which, though in other ages they had been almost

universal, the rigidly Catholic party began now to abstain. We have

already mentioned Pontanus and Mantuan. Trissino, in his Italia

Liberata, introduces a sharp invective against the church of Rome.[693]

The Zodiacus Vitæ of Manzolli, whose assumed Latin name, by which he is

better known, was Palingenius Stellatus, teems with invectives against

the monks, and certainly springs from a protestant source.[694] The

first edition is of 1537, at Basle. But no one writer is more

indignantly severe than Alamanni.[695]

[693] This passage, which is in the sixteenth canto, will be found in

Roscoe’s Leo X., Append. No. 164; but the reader would be mistaken

in supposing, as Roscoe’s language seems to imply, that it is only

contained in the first edition of 1548. The fact is that Trissino

cancelled these lines in the unsold copies of that edition, so that

very few are found to contain them; but they are restored in the

edition of the Italia Liberata, printed at Verona in 1729.

[694] The Zodiacus Vitæ is a long moral poem, the books of which are

named from the signs of the zodiac. It is not very poetical, but by

no means without strong passages of sense and spirit in a lax

Horatian metre. The author has said more than enough to incur the

suspicion of Lutheranism. I have observed several proofs of this;

the following will suffice:--

Sed tua præsertim non intret limina quisquam

Frater, nec monachus, vel quavis lege sacerdos.

Hos fuge; pestis enim nulla hac immanior; hi sunt

Fæx hominum, fons stultitiæ, sentina malorum,

Agnorum sub pelli lupi, mercede colentes,

Non pietate Deum; falsa sub imagine vecti

Decipiunt stolidos, ac religionis in umbra

Mille actus vetitos, et mille piacula condunt, &c.

Leo (lib. 5).

I could find, probably, more decisive Lutheranism in searching

through the poem, but have omitted to make notes in reading it.

[695] Ahi cieca gente, che l’hai troppo ’n pregio;

Tu credi ben, che questa ria semenza

Habbian più d’Altri gratia e privilegio;

Ch’altra trovi hoggi in lei vera scienza

Che di simulation, menzogne e frodi.

Beato ’l mondo, che sarà mai senza, &c.

Satir. i.

The twelfth Satire concludes with a similar execration, in the name

of Italy, against the church of Rome.

|Its progress in the literary classes.|

18. This rapid, though rather secret progress of heresy among the more

educated Italians, could not fail to alarm their jealous church. They

had not won over the populace to their side; for, though censures on the

superior clergy were listened to with approbation in every country,

there was little probability that the Italians would generally abjure

modes of faith so congenial to their national temper as to have been

devised, or retained from heathen times, in compliance with it. Even of

those who had associated with the reformers, and have been in

consequence reckoned among them, some were far from intending to break

off from a church which had been identified with all their prejudices

and pursuits. Such was Flaminio, one of the most elegant of poets and

best of men; and such was the accomplished and admirable Vittoria

Colonna.[696] But those who had drunk deeper of the cup of free thought

had no other resource, when their private assemblies had been detected,

and their names proscribed, than to fly beyond the Alps. Bernard Ochino,

a Capuchin preacher of great eminence, being summoned to Rome, and

finding his death resolved upon, fled to Geneva. His apostacy struck his

admirers with astonishment, and possibly put the Italians more on their

guard against others. Peter Martyr, well known afterwards in England,

soon followed him; the academy of Modena, a literary society highly

distinguished, but long suspected of heresy, was compelled, in 1542, to

subscribe a declaration of faith; and though Lombardy was still full of

secret protestants, they lived in continual terror of persecution during

the rest of this period. The small reformed church of Ferrara was broken

up in 1550; many were imprisoned and one put to death.[697]

[696] M’Crie discusses at length the opinions of these two, p. 164-177,

and seems to leave those of Flaminio in doubt; but his letters,

published at Nuremberg in 1571, speak in favour of his orthodoxy.

[697] Besides Dr. M’Crie’s History of the Reformation in Italy, which

has thrown a collected light upon a subject interesting and little

familiar, I have made use of his predecessor Gerdes, Specimen

Italiæ Reformatæ; of Tiraboschi, viii. 150; of Giannone, iv. 108,

et alibi; and of Galluzzi, Istoria del Gran Ducato, ii. 292, 369.

|Servetus.|

19. Meantime the natural tendency of speculative minds to press forward,

though checked at this time by the inflexible spirit of the leaders of

the Reformation, gave rise to some theological novelties. A Spanish

physician, Michael Reves, commonly called Servetus, was the first to

open a new scene in religious innovation. The ancient controversies on

the Trinity had long subsided; if any remained whose creed was not

unlike that of the Arians, we must seek for them among the Waldenses, or

other persecuted sects. But even this is obscure; and Erasmus, when

accused of Arianism, might reply with apparent truth, that no heresy was

more extinct. Servetus, however, though not at all an Arian, framed a

scheme, not probably quite novel, which is a difficult matter, but

sounding very unlike what was deemed orthodoxy. Being an imprudent and

impetuous man, he assailed the fundamental doctrines of reformers as

much as of the Catholic church, with none of the management necessary in

such cases, as the title of his book, printed in 1531, De Trinitatis

Erroribus, is enough to show. He was so little satisfied with his own

performance, that in a second treatise, called Dialogues on the Trinity,

he retracts the former as ill written, though without having changed any

of his opinions. These works are very scarce and obscurely worded, but

the tenets seem to be nearly what are called Sabellian.[698]

[698] The original editions of the works of Servetus very rarely occur:

but there are reprints of the last century, which themselves are by

no means common.

|Arianism in Italy.|

20. The Socinian writers derive their sect from a small knot of

distinguished men, who met privately at Vicenza about 1540; including

Lælius Socinus, at that time too young to have had any influence,

Ochino, Gentile, Alciati, and some others. This fact has been doubted by

Mosheim and M’Crie, and does not rest on much evidence; while some of

the above names are rather improbable.[699] It is certain, however, that

many of the Italian reformers held anti-trinitarian opinions, chiefly of

the Arian form. M’Crie suggests, that these had been derived from

Servetus; but it does not appear that they had any acquaintance, or

concurred in general with him, who was very far from Arianism; and it is

much more probable that their tenets originated among themselves. If,

indeed, it were necessary to look for an heresiarch, a Spanish

gentleman, resident at Naples, by name Valdes, is far more likely than

Servetus. It is agreed that Valdes was one of the chief teachers of the

Reformation in Italy; and he has also been supposed to have inclined

towards Arianism.[700]

[699] Lubienecius, Hist. Reformat. Polonicæ. M’Crie’s Hist. of

Reformation in Italy, p. 154.

[700] Dr. M’Crie is inclined to deny the Arianism of Valdes, and says

it cannot be found in his writings (p. 122); others have been of a

different opinion. See Chalmers’s Dictionary, art. Valdesso, and

Bayle. His considerations were translated into English in 1638; I

can find no evidence as to this point one way or the other in the

book itself, which betrays a good deal of fanaticism, and

confidence in the private teaching of the Spirit. The tenets are

high Lutheranism as to human action, and derived perhaps from the

Loci Communes of Melanchthon. Beza condemned the book.

|Protestants in Spain and Low Countries.|

21. Even in Spain, the natural soil of tenacious superstition, and the

birthplace of the Inquisition, a few seeds of Protestantism were early

sown. The first writings of Luther were translated into Spanish soon

after their appearance; the Holy Office began to take alarm about 1530.

Several suspected followers of the new creed were confined in

monasteries, and one was burnt at Valladolid in 1541.[701] But in no

country, where the Reformation was severely restrained by the

magistrate, did it spread so extensively as in the Netherlands. Two

Augustine monks were burned at Brussels in 1523, and their death had the

effect, as Erasmus tells us, of increasing prodigiously the number of

heretics.[702] From that time a bitter persecution was carried on, both

by destroying books, and punishing their readers; but most of the

seventeen provinces were full of sectaries.

[701] M’Crie’s Hist. of Reformation in Spain.

[702] Cœpta est carnificina. Tandem Bruxellæ tres Augustinenses [duo?]

publicitus affecti sunt supplicio. Quæris exitum? Ea civitas antea

purissima cœpit habere Lutheri discipulos, et quidem non paucos.

Sævitum est et in Hollandiâ. Quid multis? Ubicunque fumos excitavit

nuncius, ubicunque sævitiam exercuit Carmelita, ibi diceres fuisse

factam hæresion sementem. Ep. Mclxiii. The history of the

Reformation in the Low Countries has been copiously written by

Gerard Brandt, to whose second and third books I refer the reader.

|Order of Jesuits.|

22. Deeply shaken by all this open schism and lurking disaffection, the

church of Rome seemed to have little hope in the superstition of the

populace, the precarious support of the civil power, or the quarrels of

her adversaries. But she found an unexpected source of strength in her

own bosom; a green shoot from the yet living trunk of an aged tree. By a

bull, dated the 27th of September, 1540, Paul III. established the order

of Jesuits, planned a few years before by Ignatius Loyola. The leading

rules of this order were, that a general should be chosen for life, whom

every Jesuit was to obey as he did God; and that besides the three vows

of the regulars, poverty, chastity, and obedience, he should promise to

go wherever the pope should command. They were to wear no other dress

than the clergy usually did; no regular hours of prayer were enjoined;

but they were bound to pass their time usefully for their neighbours, in

preaching, in the direction of consciences, and the education of youth.

Such were the principles of an institution which has, more effectually

than any other, exhibited the moral power of a united association in

moving the great unorganised mass of mankind.

|Their popularity.|

23. The Jesuits established their first school in 1546, at Gandia in

Valencia, under the auspices of Francis Borgia, who derived the title of

duke from that city. It was erected into a university by the pope and

king of Spain.[703] This was the commencement of that vast influence

they were speedily to acquire by the control of education. They began

about the same time to scatter their missionaries over the East. This

had been one of the great objects of their foundation. And when news was

brought, that thousands of barbarians flocked to the preaching of

Francis Xavier, that he had poured the waters of baptism on their heads,

and raised the cross over the prostrate idols of the East, they had

enough, if not to silence the envy of competitors, at least to secure

the admiration of the Catholic world. Men saw in the Jesuits courage and

self-devotion, learning and politeness; qualities the want of which had

been the disgrace of monastic fraternities. They were formidable to the

enemies of the church; and those who were her friends cared little for

the jealousy of the secular clergy, or for the technical opposition of

lawyers. The mischiefs and dangers that might attend the institution

were too remote for popular alarm.

[703] Fleury, Hist. Eccles. xxix. 221.

|Council of Trent.|

24. In the external history of protestant churches, two events, not long

preceding the middle of the sixteenth century, served to compensate each

other,--the unsuccessful league of the Lutheran princes of Germany,

ending in their total defeat, and the establishment of the reformed

religion in England by the council of Edward VI. It admits however of no

doubt, that the principles of the Reformation were still progressive,

not only in those countries where they were countenanced by the

magistrate, but in others, like France and the Low Countries, where they

incurred the risk of martyrdom. Meantime Paul III. had, with much

reluctance, convoked a general council at Trent. This met on the 13th of

December, 1545; and after determining a large proportion of the disputed

problems in theology, especially such as related to grace and original

sin, was removed by the pope in March, 1547, to his own city of Bologna,

where they sat but a short time before events occurred which compelled

them to suspend their sessions. They did not reassemble till 1551.

|Its chief difficulties.|

25. The greatest difficulties which embarrassed the council of Trent,

appear to have arisen from the clashing doctrines of scholastic divines,

especially the respective followers of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus,

embattled as rival hosts of Dominicans and Franciscans.[704] The fathers

endeavoured, as far as possible, to avoid any decision which might give

too unequivocal a victory to either; though it has generally been

thought, that the former, having the authority of Augustin, as well as

their own great champion, on their side, have come off, on the whole,

superior in the decisions of the council.[705] But we must avoid these

subtilties, into which it is difficult not to slide when we touch on

such topics.

[704] Fleury, xxix., 154, et alibi. F. Paul, lib. ii. and iii. passim.

[705] It is usual for protestant writers to inveigh against the

Tridentine fathers. I do not assent to their decision, which is not

to the purpose, nor vindicate the intrigues of the papal party. But

I must presume to say, that, reading their proceedings in the pages

of that very able and not very lenient historian, to whom we have

generally recourse, an adversary as decided as any that could have

come from the reformed churches, I find proofs of much ability,

considering the embarrassments with which they had to struggle, and

of an honest desire of reformation, among a large body, as to those

matters which, in their judgment, ought to be reformed. The notes

of Courayer on Sarpi’s history, though he is not much less of a

protestant than his original, are more candid, and generally very

judicious. Pallavicini I have not read: but what is valuable in him

will doubtless be found in the continuation of Fleury, vol. xxix.

et alibi.

|Character of Luther.|

26. In the History of the Reformation, Luther is incomparably the

greatest man. We see him, in the skilful composition of Robertson, the

chief figure of a group of gownsmen, standing in contrast on the canvas

with the crowned rivals of France and Austria, and their attendant

warriors, but blended in the unity of that historic picture. This

amazing influence on the revolutions of his own age, and on the opinions

of mankind, seems to have produced, as is not unnatural, an exaggerated

notion of his intellectual greatness. It is admitted on all sides, that

he wrote his own language with force and purity; and he is reckoned one

of its best models. The hymns in use with the Lutheran church, many of

which are his own, possess a simple dignity and devoutness, never,

probably, excelled in that class of poetry, and alike distinguished from

the poverty of Sternhold or Brady, and from the meretricious ornament of

later writers. But, from the Latin works of Luther, few readers, I

believe, will rise without disappointment. Their intemperance, their

coarseness, their inelegance, their scurrility, their wild paradoxes,

that menace the foundations of religious morality, are not compensated,

so far at least as my slight acquaintance with them extends, by much

strength or acuteness, and still less by any impressive eloquence. Some

of his treatises, and we may instance his reply to Henry VIII., or the

book “against the falsely-named order of bishops,” can be described as

little else than bellowing in bad Latin. Neither of these books display,

as far as I can judge, any striking ability. It is not to be imagined,

that a man of his vivid parts fails to perceive an advantage in that

close grappling, sentence by sentence, with an adversary, which

fills most of his controversial writings; and in scornful irony he had

no superior. His epistle to Erasmus, prefixed to the treatise De servo

Arbitrio, is bitterly insolent in terms as civil as he could use. But

the clear and comprehensive line of argument, which enlightens the

reader’s understanding, and resolves his difficulties, is always

wanting. An unbounded dogmatism, resting on an absolute confidence in

the infallibility, practically speaking, of his own judgment, pervades

his writings; no indulgence is shown, no pause allowed, to the

hesitating; whatever stands in the way of his decisions, the fathers of

the church, the schoolmen and philosophers, the canons and councils, are

swept away in a current of impetuous declamation; and as everything

contained in Scripture, according to Luther, is easy to be understood,

and can only be understood in his sense, every deviation from his

doctrine incurs the anathema of perdition. Jerome, he says, far from

being rightly canonised, must, but for some special grace, have been

damned for his interpretation of St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans.[706]

That the Zwinglians, as well as the whole church of Rome, and the

Anabaptists, were shut out by their tenets from salvation, is more than

insinuated in numerous passages of Luther’s writings. Yet he had passed

himself through several changes of opinion. In 1518, he rejected

auricular confession; in 1520, it was both useful and necessary; not

long afterwards, it was again laid aside. I have found it impossible to

reconcile, or to understand, his tenets concerning faith and works; and

can only perceive, that, if there be any reservation in favour of the

latter, not merely sophistical, of which I am hardly well convinced, it

consists in distinctions too subtle for the people to apprehend. These

are not the oscillations of the balance in a calm understanding,

conscious of the difficulty which so often attends the estimate of

opposite presumptions, but alternate gusts of dogmatism, during which,

for the time, he was as tenacious of his judgment as if it had been

uniform.

[706] Infernum potius quam cœlum Hieronymus meruit; tantum abest ut

ipsum canonizare aut sanctum esse audeam dicere. Vol. ii. fol. 478.

(Witt. 1554.)