§ 120. The Revival of Learning.The classical literature of Greek, and especially of Roman, antiquity was during the Middle Ages in the West by no means so completely unknown and unstudied as is commonly supposed. Rulers like Charlemagne, Charles the Bald, Alfred the Great, and the German Ottos encouraged its study. Such scholars as Erigena, Gerbert, Barnard Sylvester, John of Salisbury, Roger Bacon, etc., were relatively well acquainted with it. Moorish learning from Spain and intercourse with Byzantine scholars spread classical culture during the 12th and 13th centuries, and the Hohenstaufen rulers were its eager and liberal patrons. In the 14th century the founders of a national Italian literature, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, earnestly cultivated and encouraged classical studies. But an extraordinary revival of interest in such pursuits took place during the 15th century. The meeting of Greeks and Italians at the Council of Florence inA.D.1439 (§ 67, 6) gave the first impulse, while the Turkish invasion and the downfall of Constantinople inA.D.1453 gave it the finishing touch. Immense numbers of Byzantine scholars fled to Italy, and were accorded an enthusiastic reception at the Vatican and in the houses of the Medici. With the aid of printing, invented aboutA.D.1450, the treasures of classical antiquity were made accessible to all. From the time of this immigration, too, classical studies took an altogether new direction. During the Middle Ages they were made almost exclusively to subserve ecclesiastical and theological ends, but now they were conducted in a thoroughly independent spirit, for the purpose of universal human culture. This “humanism” emancipated itself from the service of the church, assumed toward Christianity for the most part an attitude of lofty indifference, and often lost itself in a vain worship of pagan antiquity. Faith was mocked at as well as superstition; sacred history and Greek mythology were treated alike. The youths of all European countries, thirsting for knowledge, crossed the Alps, to draw from the fresh springs of the Italian academies, and took home with them the new ideas, transplanting into distant lands in a modified form the libertinism of the new paganism that had now over-run Italy.
The classical literature of Greek, and especially of Roman, antiquity was during the Middle Ages in the West by no means so completely unknown and unstudied as is commonly supposed. Rulers like Charlemagne, Charles the Bald, Alfred the Great, and the German Ottos encouraged its study. Such scholars as Erigena, Gerbert, Barnard Sylvester, John of Salisbury, Roger Bacon, etc., were relatively well acquainted with it. Moorish learning from Spain and intercourse with Byzantine scholars spread classical culture during the 12th and 13th centuries, and the Hohenstaufen rulers were its eager and liberal patrons. In the 14th century the founders of a national Italian literature, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, earnestly cultivated and encouraged classical studies. But an extraordinary revival of interest in such pursuits took place during the 15th century. The meeting of Greeks and Italians at the Council of Florence inA.D.1439 (§ 67, 6) gave the first impulse, while the Turkish invasion and the downfall of Constantinople inA.D.1453 gave it the finishing touch. Immense numbers of Byzantine scholars fled to Italy, and were accorded an enthusiastic reception at the Vatican and in the houses of the Medici. With the aid of printing, invented aboutA.D.1450, the treasures of classical antiquity were made accessible to all. From the time of this immigration, too, classical studies took an altogether new direction. During the Middle Ages they were made almost exclusively to subserve ecclesiastical and theological ends, but now they were conducted in a thoroughly independent spirit, for the purpose of universal human culture. This “humanism” emancipated itself from the service of the church, assumed toward Christianity for the most part an attitude of lofty indifference, and often lost itself in a vain worship of pagan antiquity. Faith was mocked at as well as superstition; sacred history and Greek mythology were treated alike. The youths of all European countries, thirsting for knowledge, crossed the Alps, to draw from the fresh springs of the Italian academies, and took home with them the new ideas, transplanting into distant lands in a modified form the libertinism of the new paganism that had now over-run Italy.
§ 120.1.Italian Humanists.—Italy was the cradle of humanism, the Greeks who settled there (§ 62, 1, 2), its fathers. The first Greek who appeared as a teacher in Italy was Emmanuel Chrysoloras, inA.D.1396. After the Council of Florence,BessarionandGemisthus Plethosettled there, both ardent adherents of the Platonic philosophy, for which they created an enthusiasm throughout all Italy. FromA.D.1453 Greeklittérateurscame in crowds.From their schools classical culture and pagan ideas spread through the land. This paganism penetrated even the highest ranks of the hierarchy.Leo X.353is credited with saying, “How many fables about Christ have been used by us and ours through all these centuries is very well known.” It may not be literally authentic, but it accurately expresses the spirit of the papal court. Leo’s private secretary, CardinalBembo, gave a mythological version of Christianity in classical Latin. Christ he styled “Minerva sprung from the head of Jupiter,” the Holy Spirit “the breath of the celestial Zephyr,” and repentance was with him aDeos superosque manesque placare. Even during the council of Florence Pletho had expressed the opinion that Christianity would soon develop into a universal religion not far removed from classical paganism; and when Pletho died, Bessarion comforted his sons by saying that the deceased had ascended into the pure heavenly spheres, and had joined the Olympic gods in mystic Bacchus dances. In the halls of the Medici there flourished a new Platonic school, which put Plato’s philosophy above Christianity. Alongside of it arose a new peripatetic school, whose representative,Peter Pompanazzo [Pomponazzo], who diedA.D.1526, openly declared that from the philosophical point of view the immortality of the soul is more than doubtful.The celebrated Florentine statesman and historianMacchiavelli,354who diedA.D.1527, taught the princes of Italy in his “Prince,” in direct contradiction to Dante’s idealistic “Monarchia,” a realistic polity which was completely emancipated from Christianity and every system of morality, and presented the monster Cæsar Borgia (§110, 12) as a pattern of an energetic prince, consistently labouring for the end he had in view. Looseness of morals went hand in hand with laxity in religion. Obscene poems and pictures circulated among the humanists, and their practice was not behind their theory. Poggio’s lewd facetiæ, as well as Boccadelli’s indecent epigrams, fascinated the cultured Christian world as much by their lascivious contents as by their classical style. From the dialogues of Laurentius Valla on lust and the true good, which were meant to extol the superiority of Christian morals over those of the Epicureans and Stoics, comes the saying that the Greek courtesans were more in favour than the Christian nuns. The highly gifted poet, Pietro Aretino, in his poetical prose writings reached the utmost pitch of obscenity. He was called “the divine Aretino,” and not only Charles V. and Francis I. honoured him with presents and pensions, but also Leo X., Clement VIII., and even Paul III. showed him their esteem and favour. In their published works the Italian humanists generally ignored rather than contested the church and its doctrines and morality. ButLaurentius Valla, who diedA.D.1457, ventured in hisAdnotationes in N.T.freely to find fault with and correct the Vulgate. He did even more, for he pronounced the Donation of Constantine (§ 87, 4) a forgery, and poured forth bitter invectives against the cupidity of the papacy. He also denied the genuineness of the correspondence of Christ with Abgarus [Abgar] (§ 13, 2), as well as that of the Areopagite writings (§ 47, 11) and questioned if the Apostles’ Creed was the work of the apostles (§ 35, 2). The Inquisition sought to get hold of him, but Nicholas V. (§110, 10) frustrated the attempt and showed him kindness. With all his classical culture, however, Valla retained no small reverence for Christianity. In a still higher degree is this true ofJohn Picus, Prince ofMirandola, the phœnix of that age, celebrated as a miracle of learning and culture, who united in himself all the nobler strivings of the present and the past. When a youth of twenty-one he nailed up at Rome nine hundred theses from all departments of knowledge. The proposed disputation did not then come off, because many of those theses gave rise to charges of heresy, from which he was cleared only by Alexander VI. inA.D.1493. The combination of all sciences and the reconciliation of all systems of philosophy among themselves and with revelation on the basis of the Cabbala was the main point in his endeavours. He has wrought out this idea in hisHeptaplus, in which, by means of a sevenfold sense of Scripture, he succeeds in deducing all the wisdom of the world from the first chapter of Genesis. He died inA.D.1494, in the thirty-first year of his age. In the last year of his life, renouncing the world and its glory, he set himself with all his powers to the study of Scripture, and meant to go from land to land preaching the Cross of Christ. His intentions were frustrated by death. His saying is a very characteristic one:Philosophia veritatem quærit, theologia invenit, religio possidet.§ 120.2.German Humanism.—The home of German humanism was the University ofErfurt, foundedA.D.1392. At the Councils of Constance and Basel Erfurt, next to Paris, manifested the greatest zeal for the reformation of head and members, and continued to pursue this course during the twenty years’ activity of John of Wesel (§119, 10). AboutA.D.1460 the first representatives of humanism made their appearance there, a German Luder and a Florentine Publicius. From their school went forth among others Rudolph of Langen, who carried the new light into the schools of Westphalia, and John of Dalberg, afterwards Bishop of Worms. When these two had left Erfurt,Maternus Pistoriusheaded the humanist movement. Crowds of enthusiastic scholars from all parts of Germany gathered around him. As men of poetic tastes, who appreciated the ancient classics, they maintained excellent relations with the representatives of scholasticism. But inA.D.1504 Busch, a violent revolutionist, appearing at Erfurt, demanded the destruction of the old scholastic text-books, and thus produced an absolute breach between the two tendencies. Maternus retired, andMutian, an old Erfurt student, assumed the leadership in Gotha. Erfurt and Gotha were kept associated by a lively intercourse between the students resident at these two places. Mutian had no literary ambitions, and firmly declined a call to the new University of Wittenberg. All the more powerfully he inspired his contemporaries. His bitter opposition to hierarchism and scholasticism was expressed in keen satires. On retiring from public life, he devoted himself to the study of Holy Scripture and the Fathers. Shortly before his death he wrote down this as his confession of faith:Multa scit rusticus, quæ philosophus ignorat; Christus vero pro nobis mortuus est, qui est vita nostra, quod certissime credo. The leadership passed over to Eoban Hesse. The members of the society joined the party of Luther, with the exception of Crotus Rubianus.Ulrich von Huttenwas one of the followers of Mutian, a knight of a noble Franconian family, inspired with ardent patriotism and love of freedom, who gave his whole life to battle against pedantry, monkery, and intolerance.Escaping inA.D.1504 from Fulda, where he was being trained for the priesthood, he studied at Erfurt, fought in Maximilian’s army with the sword, in Mutian’s and Reuchlin’s ranks with the pen, and after the fall of Sickingen became a homeless wanderer, until he died in want, inA.D.1523, on Ufenan, an island in the Lake of Zürich.355§ 120.3. Next to Erfurt,Heidelberg, founded inA.D.1386, afforded a congenial home for humanist studies. The most brilliant representative of humanism there wasRudolph Agricola, an admirer and disciple of À. Kempis and Wessel. His fame rests more on the reports of those who knew him personally than on any writings left behind by him. His pupils mostly joined the Reformation.—The University ofWittenberg, founded by Frederick the Wise inA.D.1502, was the nursery of a wise and moderate humanism. Humanist studies also found an entrance into Freiburg, founded inA.D.1455, intoTübingen, founded inA.D.1477, where for a long time Reuchlin taught, and intoIngolstadt, founded inA.D.1472, where the Duke of Bavaria spared no efforts to attract the most distinguished humanists. Conrad Celtes, a pupil of Agricola, taught at Ingolstadt until his removal to Vienna inA.D.1497. Eck and Rhegius, too, were among its ablest alumni. As a bitter opponent of Luther, Eck gave the university a most pronounced anti-reformation character; whereas Rhegius preached the gospel in Augsburg, and spent his life in the service of the Reformation. Reuchlin also taught for a time in Ingolstadt, and the patriotism and reformatory tendencies of Aventinus the Bavarian historian received there the first powerful impulse. AtNurembergthe humanists found a welcome in the home of the learned, wealthy, and noble Councillor Pirkheimer. In Reuchlin’s controversy with the scholars of Cologne he showed himself an eager apologist, and headed the party of Reuchlin. He greeted Luther’s appearance with enthusiasm, and entertained the reformer at his own house on his return from the discussion with Cajetan (§122, 3), on account of which Eck made the papal bull against Luther tell also against him. What he regarded as Luther’s violence, however, soon estranged him, while the cloister life of his three sisters and three daughters presented to him a picture of Catholicism in its noblest and purest form. His eldest sister, Christas, abbess of the Clara convent at Nuremburg [Nuremberg], one of the noblest and most cultured women of the 16th century, had a powerful influence over him. He died inA.D.1530.§ 120.4.John Reuchlin, born inA.D.1455 at Pforzheim, went to the celebrated school at Schlettstadt in Alsace, studied at Freiburg, Paris, Basel, and Orleans, taught law in Tübingen, and travelled repeatedly in Italy with Eberhard the Bearded of Württemberg. After Eberhard’s death he went to the court of the Elector-palatine Philip, and along with D’Alberg [Dalberg] did much for the reputation of the University of Heidelberg. Afterwards he was for eleven years president of the Swabian court of justiciary at Tübingen. When inA.D.1513 the seat of this court was removed to Augsburg he retired to Stuttgart, was called inA.D.1519 by William of Bavaria to Ingolstadt as professor of Greek and Hebrew. On the outbreak of the plague at Ingolstadt inA.D.1520, he accepted a call back to Tübingen, where he died inA.D.1522. He never gave in his adhesion to the reforming ideas of Luther. He left unanswered a letter from the reformer inA.D.1518. But as a promoter of every scientific endeavour, especially in connection with the study of the original text of the O.T., Reuchlin had won imperishable renown.He was well entitled to conclude hisRudimenta linguæ HebraicæofA.D.1506 with Horace’s words,Stat monumentum aëre perennino, for that book has been the basis of all Christian Hebrew philology.356He also discussed the difficult subject of Hebrew accents in a special treatise,De Acc. et Orthogr. Hebr.11. iii, and the secret doctrines of the Jews in hisDe arte Cabbalistica. He offered to instruct any Jew who wished it in the doctrines of Christianity, and also to care for his temporal affairs. His attention to rabbinical studies involved him in a controversy which spread his fame over all Europe. A baptized Jew, Pfefferkorn, in Cologne inA.D.1507 exhibited a neophyte’s zeal by writing bitter invectives against the Jews, and inA.D.1509 called upon the Emperor Maximilian to have all rabbinical writings burnt because of the blasphemies against Christ which they contained. The emperor asked the opinion of the universities of Mainz, Cologne, Erfurt, and Heidelberg, as well as of Reuchlin and the Cologne inquisitor Hoogstraten. Erfurt and Heidelberg gave a qualified, Reuchlin an unqualified answer in opposition to the proposal. The openly abusive Jewish writings,e.g.the notoriousToledoth Jeschu, he would indeed condemn, but all other books,e.g.the Talmud, the Cabbala, the biblical glosses and commentaries, books of sermons, prayers, and sacred songs, as well as all philosophical, scientific, poetic, and satirical writings of the Jews, he was prepared unconditionally to defend. Pfefferkorn contended against him passionately in his “Handspiegel” ofA.D.1511, to which Reuchlin replied in his “Augenspiegel.” The theological faculty of Cologne, mostly Dominicans, pronounced forty-three statements in the “Augenspiegel” heretical, and demanded its suppression. Reuchlin now gave free vent to his passion, and in hisDefensio c. calumniatores suos Coloniensesdenounced his opponents as goats, swine, and children of the devil. Hoogstraten had him cited before a heresy tribunal. Reuchlin did not appear, but appealed to Pope Leo X. (A.D.1513). A commission appointed by Leo met at Spires inA.D.1514, and declared him not guilty of heresy, found Hoogstraten liable in the costs of the process, which was enforced with hearty satisfaction by Franz von Sickingen inA.D.1519. But meanwhile Hoogstraten had made a personal explanation of his affairs at Rome, and had won over the influentialmagister sacri palatii, Sylvester Prierias (§122, 2), who got the pope inA.D.1520 to annul the judgment and to condemn Reuchlin to pay the costs and observe eternal silence. The men of Cologne triumphed, but in the public opinion of Germany Reuchlin was regarded as the true victor.§ 120.5. A multitude of vigorous and powerful pens were now in motion on behalf of Reuchlin. In the autumn ofA.D.1515 appeared the first book of theEpistolæ obscurorum virorum, which pretended to be the correspondence of a friend with the Cologne teacher Ortuinus Gratius of Deventer. In the most delicious monkish Latin the secret affairs of the mendicant monks and their hatred of Reuchlin were set forth, so that even the Dominicans, according to Erasmus, for a time regarded the correspondence as genuine. All the more overwhelming was the ridicule which fell upon them throughout all Europe. The mendicants indeed obtained from Leo a bull against the writers of the book, but this only increased its circulation. The authors remained unknown; but there is no doubt they belonged to the Mutian party. Justus Jonas, a member of that guild, affirms that Crotus Rubianus had a principal hand in its composition. The idea of it was probably suggested by Mutian himself. Ulrich von Hutten repudiated any share in it, and on internal and external grounds this is more than probable. Busch, Urban, Petrejus, and Eoban Hesse most likely contributed to it. In order to keep up the deception, Venice was given as the place of publication, the name of the famous Aldus Manutius, the papal publisher of Venice, was put upon the title, and a pseudo-papal imprimatur was attached. The second book was issued inA.D.1517 by Frobenius in Basel. The monkish party published as a counterblastLamentationes obscurorum virorumat Cologne inA.D.1518, but the lame and forced wit of the book marked it at once as a ridiculous failure.The monks and schoolmen were once and for ever morally annihilated.357§ 120.6.Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdamwas the most brilliant of all the humanists, not only of Germany, but also of all Europe. Born inA.D.1465, he was educated by the Brothers of the Common Life at Deventer and Herzogenbusch, and afterwards forced by his relatives to enter a monastery inA.D.1486. InA.D.1491 he was relieved from the monastic restraints by the Bishop of Cambray, and sent to finish his studies at Paris. He visited England inA.D.1497, in the company of young Englishmen to whom he had been tutor. There the humanist theologian Colet of Oxford exerted over him a wholesome influence that told upon his whole future life. After spending a year and a half in England, he passed the next six years, sometimes in France, sometimes in the Netherlands; was in Italy fromA.D.1507 tillA.D.1510; then again for five years in England, for most of that time teaching Greek at Cambridge; then other six years in the Netherlands; and at last, inA.D.1521, he settled with his publisher Frobenius in Basel, where he enjoyed intercourse with the greatest scholars of the day, and maintained an extensive correspondence. He refused every offer of official appointment, even the rank of cardinal, but in reality held undisputed sway as king in the world of letters. He did much for the advancement of classical studies, and in various ways promoted the Protestant Reformation. The faults of the scholastic method in the study of theology he unsparingly exposed, while the misdeeds of the clergy and the ignorance and sloth of the monks afforded materials for his merciless satires. The heathenish spirit of many of the humanists, as well as the turbulent and revolutionary procedure of Ulrich von Hutten, was quite distasteful to him; but his Pelagianising tendencies also prevented him from appreciating the true character of the gospel. He desired a reformation of the Church, but he had not the reformer’s depth of religious emotion, world-conquering faith, self-denying love, and heroic preparation for martyrdom. He was much too fond of a genial literary life, and his perception of the corruption of the church was much too superficial, so that he sought reformation rather by human culture than by the Divine power of the gospel. When the Reformation conquered at Basel inA.D.1529, Erasmus withdrew to Freiburg. He returned to Basel inA.D.1536 for conference with Frobenius, and died there under suspicion of heresy without the sacraments of the church. His friends the monks at an earlier period, on the occasion of a false report of his death, had said in their barbarous Latin that he died “sine lux, sine crux, sine Deus.” The most important of his works are his critical and exegetical treatises on the N.T. The first edition of his Greek N.T., with Latin translation, short notes, and three introductory sections, was published inA.D.1516. In the second edition ofA.D.1519, one of these introductory sections,Ratio veræ theologiæ, appeared in a greatly extended form; and fromA.D.1522 it was issued separately, and passed through several editions. Scarcely less important were his paraphrases of all the biblical books except the Apocalypse, begun inA.D.1517. He did much service too by his editions of the Fathers. On his polemic with Luther see §125, 3. HisEcclesiastes s. concionator evangelicusofA.D.1535 is a treatise on homiletics admirable of its kind. In his “Praise of Folly” (Ἐγκώμιον μωρίας,s. Laus stultitiæ) ofA.D.1511, dedicated to his friend Sir Thomas More, he overwhelms with ridicule the schoolmen, as well as the monks and the clergy; and in his “Colloquies” ofA.D.1518, by which he hoped to make boyslatiniores et meliores, he let no opportunity pass of reproaching the monks, the clergy, and the forms of worship which he regarded as superstitious. Also hisAdagiaofA.D.1500 had afforded him abundant scope for the same sort of thing.A piety of the purest and noblest type, derived from the schools of the Brothers of the Common Life, and from intercourse with Colet, breathes through hisEnchiridion militis christianiofA.D.1502.358—Continuation §123, 3.§ 120.7.Humanism in England.—In England we meet with two men in the end of the 15th century, closely related to Erasmus, of supreme influence as humanists in urging the claims of reform within the Catholic church.John ColetinA.D.1496 returned to England after a long sojourn in Italy, where he had obtained, not only humanistic culture, but also, through contact with Savonarola and Mirandola, a powerful religious impulse. He then began, at Oxford, his lectures on the Pauline epistles, in which he abandoned the scholastic method and returned to the study of Scripture and the Fathers. There, inA.D.1498, he attached himself closely to Erasmus and to young Thomas More, who was studying in that place. InA.D.1505 Colet was made doctor and Dean of St. Paul’s, in which position he expounded with great success whole biblical books and large portions of others in his sermons. After his father’s death inA.D.1510, he applied his great wealth to the founding of a grammar school at St. Paul’s for the instruction of more than 150 boys in classical, biblical, and patristic literature. A convocation of English bishops inA.D.1512, to devise means for rooting out heresy (§119, 1), gave him the opportunity in his opening sermon to speak plainly to the assembled bishops. He told them that reform of their own order was the best way to protect the church against the incursion of heretics. This aroused the bitter wrath of the old, bigoted Bishop Fitzjames of London, who disliked him exceedingly on account of his reforming tendencies and his pastoral and educational activity. But the archbishop, Warham of Canterbury, repelled the bishop’s fanatical charge of heresy as well as King Henry’s suspicions in regard to the political sympathies of the simple, pious man. Colet died inA.D.1519.—Thomas More, born inA.D.1480, was recommended to the king by Cardinal Wolsey, and rose from step to step until inA.D.1529 he succeeded his patron as Lord Chancellor of England. In bonds of closest intimacy with Colet and Erasmus, More also shared in their desires for reform, but applied himself, in accordance with his civil and official position, more to the social and political than to the ecclesiastical aspects of the question. His most comprehensive contribution is found in his famous satire, “Utopia,” ofA.D.1516, in which he sets forth his views as to the natural and rational organization of all social and political relations of life in contrast to the corrupt institutions of existing states. The religious side of this utopian paradise is pure deism, public worship being restricted to the use of what is common to all religions, and peculiarities of particular religions are relegated to special or private services. We cannot however from this draw any conclusion as to his own religious beliefs. More continued to the end a zealous Catholic and a strict ascetic, and was a man of a singularly noble and steadfast character. In the controversy between the king and Luther (§125, 3) he supported the king, and as chancellor he wrote, in direct contradiction to the principles of religious toleration commended in his “Utopia,” with venomous bitterness against the adherents of the anti-Catholic reformation.But he decidedly refused to acquiesce in the king’s divorce; and when Henry quarrelled with the pope inA.D.1532 and began to carry out reforms in a Cæsaro-papistic manner (§139, 4), he resigned his offices, firmly refused to acknowledge the royal supremacy over the English church, and, after a long and severe imprisonment, was beheaded inA.D.1535.359§ 120.8.Humanism in France and Spain.—InFrancehumanist studies were kept for a time in the background by the world-wide reputation of the University of Paris and its Sorbonne. But a change took place when the young king Francis I.,A.D.1515-1547, became the patron and promoter of humanism. One of its most famous representatives wasBudæus [Buddæus], royal librarian, who aided in founding a college for the cultivation of science free from the shackles of scholasticism, and exposed the corruptions of the papacy and the clergy. But much as he sympathized with the spirit of the Reformation, he shrank from any open breach with the Catholic church. He died inA.D.1540. His like-minded contemporary,Faber Stapulensis, as a teacher of classical literature at Paris gathered crowds of pupils around him, and fromA.D.1507 applied himself almost exclusively to biblical exegetical studies. He criticised and corrected the corrupt text of the Vulgate, commented on the Greek text of the gospels and apostolic epistles, and on account of this, as well as by reason of a critical dissertation on Mary Magdalene ofA.D.1521, was condemned by the Sorbonne. Francis I. and his sister Margaret of Orleans protected him from further persecution. Also his former pupil, William Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, who was eagerly endeavouring to restore morality and piety among his clergy, appointed him his vicar-general, and gave him an opportunity to bring out his French translation of the New Testament from the Vulgate inA.D.1523, which was followed by a translation of the Old Testament and a French commentary on the pericopes of the Sundays and festivals. As Faber here represented the Scriptures as the only rule of faith for all Christians, and taught that man is justified not by his works, but only by faith in the grace of God in Christ, the Sorbonne charged him with the Lutheran heresy, and Parliament, during the king’s imprisonment in Spain (§126, 5) inA.D.1525, appointed a commission to search out and suppress heresy in the diocese of Meaux. Faber’s books were condemned to the flames, but he himself, threatened with the stake, escaped by flight to Strassburg. After his return the king provided for him a safe retreat at Blois, where he wrought at his translation of the Old Testament, which he completed inA.D.1528. He spent his last years at Nérac, the residence of his patroness Margaret, now Queen of Navarre, where he died inA.D.1536 in his 86th year. Though at heart estranged from the Catholic church, he never formally forsook it.—InSpainCardinal Ximenes (§118, 7) acted as the Mæcenas of humanist studies. The most distinguished Spanish humanist wasAnton of Lebrija, professor at Salamanca, a fellow labourer with Ximenes on the Complutensian Polyglott, and protected by him from the Inquisition, which would have called him to account for his criticism of the Vulgate. He died inA.D.1522.§ 120.9.Humanism and the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century.—Humanists, in common with the reformers, inveighed against the debased scholasticism as well as against the superstition of the age. They did so however on very different grounds, and conducted their warfare by very different methods. While the reformers employed the word of God, and strove after the salvation of the soul, the humanists employed wit and sarcasm, and sought after the temporal well-being of men. Hence the reaction of the despised scholasticism and the contemned monasticism against humanism was often in the right. A reformation of the church by humanism alone would have been a return to naked paganism. But, on the other hand, classical studies afforded men who desired a genuine reformation of the church a rich, linguistic, philosophical, and scientific culture, without which, as applied to researches in church history, the exposition of Scripture, and the revision of doctrine, the reforms of the sixteenth century could hardly have been carried out in a comprehensive and satisfactory manner. The most permanent advantage won for the church and theology by the revival of learning was the removal ofHoly Scripturefrom under the bushel, and giving it again its rightful place as the lamp of the church. It pointed back from the Vulgate, of which sinceA.D.1500, some ninety-eight printed editions had appeared, to the original text, condemned the allegorical method of exposition, awakened an appreciation of the grammatical and historical system of interpretation, afforded scientific apparatus by its philological studies, and by issuing printed Bibles secured the spread of the original text. From the time of the invention of printing the Jews were active in printing the Old Testament. FromA.D.1502 a number of Christian scholars, under the presidency of Ximenes, wrought at Alcala at the great Complutensian Polyglott, published inA.D.1520. It contained the Hebrew and Greek texts, the Targums, the LXX., and the Vulgate, as well as a Latin translation of the LXX. and of the Targums, with a much-needed grammatical and lexical apparatus. Daniel Bomberg of Antwerp published at Venice various editions of the Old Testament, some with, some without, rabbinical commentaries. His assistants were Felix Pratensis, a learned Jew; and Jacob ben Chaijim, a rabbi of Tunis. As the costly Complutensian Polyglott was available only to a few, Erasmus did great service by his handy edition of the Greek New Testament, notwithstanding its serious critical deficiencies. Erasmus himself brought out five successive editions, but very soon more than thirty impressions were exhausted.
§ 120.1.Italian Humanists.—Italy was the cradle of humanism, the Greeks who settled there (§ 62, 1, 2), its fathers. The first Greek who appeared as a teacher in Italy was Emmanuel Chrysoloras, inA.D.1396. After the Council of Florence,BessarionandGemisthus Plethosettled there, both ardent adherents of the Platonic philosophy, for which they created an enthusiasm throughout all Italy. FromA.D.1453 Greeklittérateurscame in crowds.From their schools classical culture and pagan ideas spread through the land. This paganism penetrated even the highest ranks of the hierarchy.Leo X.353is credited with saying, “How many fables about Christ have been used by us and ours through all these centuries is very well known.” It may not be literally authentic, but it accurately expresses the spirit of the papal court. Leo’s private secretary, CardinalBembo, gave a mythological version of Christianity in classical Latin. Christ he styled “Minerva sprung from the head of Jupiter,” the Holy Spirit “the breath of the celestial Zephyr,” and repentance was with him aDeos superosque manesque placare. Even during the council of Florence Pletho had expressed the opinion that Christianity would soon develop into a universal religion not far removed from classical paganism; and when Pletho died, Bessarion comforted his sons by saying that the deceased had ascended into the pure heavenly spheres, and had joined the Olympic gods in mystic Bacchus dances. In the halls of the Medici there flourished a new Platonic school, which put Plato’s philosophy above Christianity. Alongside of it arose a new peripatetic school, whose representative,Peter Pompanazzo [Pomponazzo], who diedA.D.1526, openly declared that from the philosophical point of view the immortality of the soul is more than doubtful.The celebrated Florentine statesman and historianMacchiavelli,354who diedA.D.1527, taught the princes of Italy in his “Prince,” in direct contradiction to Dante’s idealistic “Monarchia,” a realistic polity which was completely emancipated from Christianity and every system of morality, and presented the monster Cæsar Borgia (§110, 12) as a pattern of an energetic prince, consistently labouring for the end he had in view. Looseness of morals went hand in hand with laxity in religion. Obscene poems and pictures circulated among the humanists, and their practice was not behind their theory. Poggio’s lewd facetiæ, as well as Boccadelli’s indecent epigrams, fascinated the cultured Christian world as much by their lascivious contents as by their classical style. From the dialogues of Laurentius Valla on lust and the true good, which were meant to extol the superiority of Christian morals over those of the Epicureans and Stoics, comes the saying that the Greek courtesans were more in favour than the Christian nuns. The highly gifted poet, Pietro Aretino, in his poetical prose writings reached the utmost pitch of obscenity. He was called “the divine Aretino,” and not only Charles V. and Francis I. honoured him with presents and pensions, but also Leo X., Clement VIII., and even Paul III. showed him their esteem and favour. In their published works the Italian humanists generally ignored rather than contested the church and its doctrines and morality. ButLaurentius Valla, who diedA.D.1457, ventured in hisAdnotationes in N.T.freely to find fault with and correct the Vulgate. He did even more, for he pronounced the Donation of Constantine (§ 87, 4) a forgery, and poured forth bitter invectives against the cupidity of the papacy. He also denied the genuineness of the correspondence of Christ with Abgarus [Abgar] (§ 13, 2), as well as that of the Areopagite writings (§ 47, 11) and questioned if the Apostles’ Creed was the work of the apostles (§ 35, 2). The Inquisition sought to get hold of him, but Nicholas V. (§110, 10) frustrated the attempt and showed him kindness. With all his classical culture, however, Valla retained no small reverence for Christianity. In a still higher degree is this true ofJohn Picus, Prince ofMirandola, the phœnix of that age, celebrated as a miracle of learning and culture, who united in himself all the nobler strivings of the present and the past. When a youth of twenty-one he nailed up at Rome nine hundred theses from all departments of knowledge. The proposed disputation did not then come off, because many of those theses gave rise to charges of heresy, from which he was cleared only by Alexander VI. inA.D.1493. The combination of all sciences and the reconciliation of all systems of philosophy among themselves and with revelation on the basis of the Cabbala was the main point in his endeavours. He has wrought out this idea in hisHeptaplus, in which, by means of a sevenfold sense of Scripture, he succeeds in deducing all the wisdom of the world from the first chapter of Genesis. He died inA.D.1494, in the thirty-first year of his age. In the last year of his life, renouncing the world and its glory, he set himself with all his powers to the study of Scripture, and meant to go from land to land preaching the Cross of Christ. His intentions were frustrated by death. His saying is a very characteristic one:Philosophia veritatem quærit, theologia invenit, religio possidet.
§ 120.2.German Humanism.—The home of German humanism was the University ofErfurt, foundedA.D.1392. At the Councils of Constance and Basel Erfurt, next to Paris, manifested the greatest zeal for the reformation of head and members, and continued to pursue this course during the twenty years’ activity of John of Wesel (§119, 10). AboutA.D.1460 the first representatives of humanism made their appearance there, a German Luder and a Florentine Publicius. From their school went forth among others Rudolph of Langen, who carried the new light into the schools of Westphalia, and John of Dalberg, afterwards Bishop of Worms. When these two had left Erfurt,Maternus Pistoriusheaded the humanist movement. Crowds of enthusiastic scholars from all parts of Germany gathered around him. As men of poetic tastes, who appreciated the ancient classics, they maintained excellent relations with the representatives of scholasticism. But inA.D.1504 Busch, a violent revolutionist, appearing at Erfurt, demanded the destruction of the old scholastic text-books, and thus produced an absolute breach between the two tendencies. Maternus retired, andMutian, an old Erfurt student, assumed the leadership in Gotha. Erfurt and Gotha were kept associated by a lively intercourse between the students resident at these two places. Mutian had no literary ambitions, and firmly declined a call to the new University of Wittenberg. All the more powerfully he inspired his contemporaries. His bitter opposition to hierarchism and scholasticism was expressed in keen satires. On retiring from public life, he devoted himself to the study of Holy Scripture and the Fathers. Shortly before his death he wrote down this as his confession of faith:Multa scit rusticus, quæ philosophus ignorat; Christus vero pro nobis mortuus est, qui est vita nostra, quod certissime credo. The leadership passed over to Eoban Hesse. The members of the society joined the party of Luther, with the exception of Crotus Rubianus.Ulrich von Huttenwas one of the followers of Mutian, a knight of a noble Franconian family, inspired with ardent patriotism and love of freedom, who gave his whole life to battle against pedantry, monkery, and intolerance.Escaping inA.D.1504 from Fulda, where he was being trained for the priesthood, he studied at Erfurt, fought in Maximilian’s army with the sword, in Mutian’s and Reuchlin’s ranks with the pen, and after the fall of Sickingen became a homeless wanderer, until he died in want, inA.D.1523, on Ufenan, an island in the Lake of Zürich.355
§ 120.3. Next to Erfurt,Heidelberg, founded inA.D.1386, afforded a congenial home for humanist studies. The most brilliant representative of humanism there wasRudolph Agricola, an admirer and disciple of À. Kempis and Wessel. His fame rests more on the reports of those who knew him personally than on any writings left behind by him. His pupils mostly joined the Reformation.—The University ofWittenberg, founded by Frederick the Wise inA.D.1502, was the nursery of a wise and moderate humanism. Humanist studies also found an entrance into Freiburg, founded inA.D.1455, intoTübingen, founded inA.D.1477, where for a long time Reuchlin taught, and intoIngolstadt, founded inA.D.1472, where the Duke of Bavaria spared no efforts to attract the most distinguished humanists. Conrad Celtes, a pupil of Agricola, taught at Ingolstadt until his removal to Vienna inA.D.1497. Eck and Rhegius, too, were among its ablest alumni. As a bitter opponent of Luther, Eck gave the university a most pronounced anti-reformation character; whereas Rhegius preached the gospel in Augsburg, and spent his life in the service of the Reformation. Reuchlin also taught for a time in Ingolstadt, and the patriotism and reformatory tendencies of Aventinus the Bavarian historian received there the first powerful impulse. AtNurembergthe humanists found a welcome in the home of the learned, wealthy, and noble Councillor Pirkheimer. In Reuchlin’s controversy with the scholars of Cologne he showed himself an eager apologist, and headed the party of Reuchlin. He greeted Luther’s appearance with enthusiasm, and entertained the reformer at his own house on his return from the discussion with Cajetan (§122, 3), on account of which Eck made the papal bull against Luther tell also against him. What he regarded as Luther’s violence, however, soon estranged him, while the cloister life of his three sisters and three daughters presented to him a picture of Catholicism in its noblest and purest form. His eldest sister, Christas, abbess of the Clara convent at Nuremburg [Nuremberg], one of the noblest and most cultured women of the 16th century, had a powerful influence over him. He died inA.D.1530.
§ 120.4.John Reuchlin, born inA.D.1455 at Pforzheim, went to the celebrated school at Schlettstadt in Alsace, studied at Freiburg, Paris, Basel, and Orleans, taught law in Tübingen, and travelled repeatedly in Italy with Eberhard the Bearded of Württemberg. After Eberhard’s death he went to the court of the Elector-palatine Philip, and along with D’Alberg [Dalberg] did much for the reputation of the University of Heidelberg. Afterwards he was for eleven years president of the Swabian court of justiciary at Tübingen. When inA.D.1513 the seat of this court was removed to Augsburg he retired to Stuttgart, was called inA.D.1519 by William of Bavaria to Ingolstadt as professor of Greek and Hebrew. On the outbreak of the plague at Ingolstadt inA.D.1520, he accepted a call back to Tübingen, where he died inA.D.1522. He never gave in his adhesion to the reforming ideas of Luther. He left unanswered a letter from the reformer inA.D.1518. But as a promoter of every scientific endeavour, especially in connection with the study of the original text of the O.T., Reuchlin had won imperishable renown.He was well entitled to conclude hisRudimenta linguæ HebraicæofA.D.1506 with Horace’s words,Stat monumentum aëre perennino, for that book has been the basis of all Christian Hebrew philology.356He also discussed the difficult subject of Hebrew accents in a special treatise,De Acc. et Orthogr. Hebr.11. iii, and the secret doctrines of the Jews in hisDe arte Cabbalistica. He offered to instruct any Jew who wished it in the doctrines of Christianity, and also to care for his temporal affairs. His attention to rabbinical studies involved him in a controversy which spread his fame over all Europe. A baptized Jew, Pfefferkorn, in Cologne inA.D.1507 exhibited a neophyte’s zeal by writing bitter invectives against the Jews, and inA.D.1509 called upon the Emperor Maximilian to have all rabbinical writings burnt because of the blasphemies against Christ which they contained. The emperor asked the opinion of the universities of Mainz, Cologne, Erfurt, and Heidelberg, as well as of Reuchlin and the Cologne inquisitor Hoogstraten. Erfurt and Heidelberg gave a qualified, Reuchlin an unqualified answer in opposition to the proposal. The openly abusive Jewish writings,e.g.the notoriousToledoth Jeschu, he would indeed condemn, but all other books,e.g.the Talmud, the Cabbala, the biblical glosses and commentaries, books of sermons, prayers, and sacred songs, as well as all philosophical, scientific, poetic, and satirical writings of the Jews, he was prepared unconditionally to defend. Pfefferkorn contended against him passionately in his “Handspiegel” ofA.D.1511, to which Reuchlin replied in his “Augenspiegel.” The theological faculty of Cologne, mostly Dominicans, pronounced forty-three statements in the “Augenspiegel” heretical, and demanded its suppression. Reuchlin now gave free vent to his passion, and in hisDefensio c. calumniatores suos Coloniensesdenounced his opponents as goats, swine, and children of the devil. Hoogstraten had him cited before a heresy tribunal. Reuchlin did not appear, but appealed to Pope Leo X. (A.D.1513). A commission appointed by Leo met at Spires inA.D.1514, and declared him not guilty of heresy, found Hoogstraten liable in the costs of the process, which was enforced with hearty satisfaction by Franz von Sickingen inA.D.1519. But meanwhile Hoogstraten had made a personal explanation of his affairs at Rome, and had won over the influentialmagister sacri palatii, Sylvester Prierias (§122, 2), who got the pope inA.D.1520 to annul the judgment and to condemn Reuchlin to pay the costs and observe eternal silence. The men of Cologne triumphed, but in the public opinion of Germany Reuchlin was regarded as the true victor.
§ 120.5. A multitude of vigorous and powerful pens were now in motion on behalf of Reuchlin. In the autumn ofA.D.1515 appeared the first book of theEpistolæ obscurorum virorum, which pretended to be the correspondence of a friend with the Cologne teacher Ortuinus Gratius of Deventer. In the most delicious monkish Latin the secret affairs of the mendicant monks and their hatred of Reuchlin were set forth, so that even the Dominicans, according to Erasmus, for a time regarded the correspondence as genuine. All the more overwhelming was the ridicule which fell upon them throughout all Europe. The mendicants indeed obtained from Leo a bull against the writers of the book, but this only increased its circulation. The authors remained unknown; but there is no doubt they belonged to the Mutian party. Justus Jonas, a member of that guild, affirms that Crotus Rubianus had a principal hand in its composition. The idea of it was probably suggested by Mutian himself. Ulrich von Hutten repudiated any share in it, and on internal and external grounds this is more than probable. Busch, Urban, Petrejus, and Eoban Hesse most likely contributed to it. In order to keep up the deception, Venice was given as the place of publication, the name of the famous Aldus Manutius, the papal publisher of Venice, was put upon the title, and a pseudo-papal imprimatur was attached. The second book was issued inA.D.1517 by Frobenius in Basel. The monkish party published as a counterblastLamentationes obscurorum virorumat Cologne inA.D.1518, but the lame and forced wit of the book marked it at once as a ridiculous failure.The monks and schoolmen were once and for ever morally annihilated.357
§ 120.6.Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdamwas the most brilliant of all the humanists, not only of Germany, but also of all Europe. Born inA.D.1465, he was educated by the Brothers of the Common Life at Deventer and Herzogenbusch, and afterwards forced by his relatives to enter a monastery inA.D.1486. InA.D.1491 he was relieved from the monastic restraints by the Bishop of Cambray, and sent to finish his studies at Paris. He visited England inA.D.1497, in the company of young Englishmen to whom he had been tutor. There the humanist theologian Colet of Oxford exerted over him a wholesome influence that told upon his whole future life. After spending a year and a half in England, he passed the next six years, sometimes in France, sometimes in the Netherlands; was in Italy fromA.D.1507 tillA.D.1510; then again for five years in England, for most of that time teaching Greek at Cambridge; then other six years in the Netherlands; and at last, inA.D.1521, he settled with his publisher Frobenius in Basel, where he enjoyed intercourse with the greatest scholars of the day, and maintained an extensive correspondence. He refused every offer of official appointment, even the rank of cardinal, but in reality held undisputed sway as king in the world of letters. He did much for the advancement of classical studies, and in various ways promoted the Protestant Reformation. The faults of the scholastic method in the study of theology he unsparingly exposed, while the misdeeds of the clergy and the ignorance and sloth of the monks afforded materials for his merciless satires. The heathenish spirit of many of the humanists, as well as the turbulent and revolutionary procedure of Ulrich von Hutten, was quite distasteful to him; but his Pelagianising tendencies also prevented him from appreciating the true character of the gospel. He desired a reformation of the Church, but he had not the reformer’s depth of religious emotion, world-conquering faith, self-denying love, and heroic preparation for martyrdom. He was much too fond of a genial literary life, and his perception of the corruption of the church was much too superficial, so that he sought reformation rather by human culture than by the Divine power of the gospel. When the Reformation conquered at Basel inA.D.1529, Erasmus withdrew to Freiburg. He returned to Basel inA.D.1536 for conference with Frobenius, and died there under suspicion of heresy without the sacraments of the church. His friends the monks at an earlier period, on the occasion of a false report of his death, had said in their barbarous Latin that he died “sine lux, sine crux, sine Deus.” The most important of his works are his critical and exegetical treatises on the N.T. The first edition of his Greek N.T., with Latin translation, short notes, and three introductory sections, was published inA.D.1516. In the second edition ofA.D.1519, one of these introductory sections,Ratio veræ theologiæ, appeared in a greatly extended form; and fromA.D.1522 it was issued separately, and passed through several editions. Scarcely less important were his paraphrases of all the biblical books except the Apocalypse, begun inA.D.1517. He did much service too by his editions of the Fathers. On his polemic with Luther see §125, 3. HisEcclesiastes s. concionator evangelicusofA.D.1535 is a treatise on homiletics admirable of its kind. In his “Praise of Folly” (Ἐγκώμιον μωρίας,s. Laus stultitiæ) ofA.D.1511, dedicated to his friend Sir Thomas More, he overwhelms with ridicule the schoolmen, as well as the monks and the clergy; and in his “Colloquies” ofA.D.1518, by which he hoped to make boyslatiniores et meliores, he let no opportunity pass of reproaching the monks, the clergy, and the forms of worship which he regarded as superstitious. Also hisAdagiaofA.D.1500 had afforded him abundant scope for the same sort of thing.A piety of the purest and noblest type, derived from the schools of the Brothers of the Common Life, and from intercourse with Colet, breathes through hisEnchiridion militis christianiofA.D.1502.358—Continuation §123, 3.
§ 120.7.Humanism in England.—In England we meet with two men in the end of the 15th century, closely related to Erasmus, of supreme influence as humanists in urging the claims of reform within the Catholic church.John ColetinA.D.1496 returned to England after a long sojourn in Italy, where he had obtained, not only humanistic culture, but also, through contact with Savonarola and Mirandola, a powerful religious impulse. He then began, at Oxford, his lectures on the Pauline epistles, in which he abandoned the scholastic method and returned to the study of Scripture and the Fathers. There, inA.D.1498, he attached himself closely to Erasmus and to young Thomas More, who was studying in that place. InA.D.1505 Colet was made doctor and Dean of St. Paul’s, in which position he expounded with great success whole biblical books and large portions of others in his sermons. After his father’s death inA.D.1510, he applied his great wealth to the founding of a grammar school at St. Paul’s for the instruction of more than 150 boys in classical, biblical, and patristic literature. A convocation of English bishops inA.D.1512, to devise means for rooting out heresy (§119, 1), gave him the opportunity in his opening sermon to speak plainly to the assembled bishops. He told them that reform of their own order was the best way to protect the church against the incursion of heretics. This aroused the bitter wrath of the old, bigoted Bishop Fitzjames of London, who disliked him exceedingly on account of his reforming tendencies and his pastoral and educational activity. But the archbishop, Warham of Canterbury, repelled the bishop’s fanatical charge of heresy as well as King Henry’s suspicions in regard to the political sympathies of the simple, pious man. Colet died inA.D.1519.—Thomas More, born inA.D.1480, was recommended to the king by Cardinal Wolsey, and rose from step to step until inA.D.1529 he succeeded his patron as Lord Chancellor of England. In bonds of closest intimacy with Colet and Erasmus, More also shared in their desires for reform, but applied himself, in accordance with his civil and official position, more to the social and political than to the ecclesiastical aspects of the question. His most comprehensive contribution is found in his famous satire, “Utopia,” ofA.D.1516, in which he sets forth his views as to the natural and rational organization of all social and political relations of life in contrast to the corrupt institutions of existing states. The religious side of this utopian paradise is pure deism, public worship being restricted to the use of what is common to all religions, and peculiarities of particular religions are relegated to special or private services. We cannot however from this draw any conclusion as to his own religious beliefs. More continued to the end a zealous Catholic and a strict ascetic, and was a man of a singularly noble and steadfast character. In the controversy between the king and Luther (§125, 3) he supported the king, and as chancellor he wrote, in direct contradiction to the principles of religious toleration commended in his “Utopia,” with venomous bitterness against the adherents of the anti-Catholic reformation.But he decidedly refused to acquiesce in the king’s divorce; and when Henry quarrelled with the pope inA.D.1532 and began to carry out reforms in a Cæsaro-papistic manner (§139, 4), he resigned his offices, firmly refused to acknowledge the royal supremacy over the English church, and, after a long and severe imprisonment, was beheaded inA.D.1535.359
§ 120.8.Humanism in France and Spain.—InFrancehumanist studies were kept for a time in the background by the world-wide reputation of the University of Paris and its Sorbonne. But a change took place when the young king Francis I.,A.D.1515-1547, became the patron and promoter of humanism. One of its most famous representatives wasBudæus [Buddæus], royal librarian, who aided in founding a college for the cultivation of science free from the shackles of scholasticism, and exposed the corruptions of the papacy and the clergy. But much as he sympathized with the spirit of the Reformation, he shrank from any open breach with the Catholic church. He died inA.D.1540. His like-minded contemporary,Faber Stapulensis, as a teacher of classical literature at Paris gathered crowds of pupils around him, and fromA.D.1507 applied himself almost exclusively to biblical exegetical studies. He criticised and corrected the corrupt text of the Vulgate, commented on the Greek text of the gospels and apostolic epistles, and on account of this, as well as by reason of a critical dissertation on Mary Magdalene ofA.D.1521, was condemned by the Sorbonne. Francis I. and his sister Margaret of Orleans protected him from further persecution. Also his former pupil, William Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, who was eagerly endeavouring to restore morality and piety among his clergy, appointed him his vicar-general, and gave him an opportunity to bring out his French translation of the New Testament from the Vulgate inA.D.1523, which was followed by a translation of the Old Testament and a French commentary on the pericopes of the Sundays and festivals. As Faber here represented the Scriptures as the only rule of faith for all Christians, and taught that man is justified not by his works, but only by faith in the grace of God in Christ, the Sorbonne charged him with the Lutheran heresy, and Parliament, during the king’s imprisonment in Spain (§126, 5) inA.D.1525, appointed a commission to search out and suppress heresy in the diocese of Meaux. Faber’s books were condemned to the flames, but he himself, threatened with the stake, escaped by flight to Strassburg. After his return the king provided for him a safe retreat at Blois, where he wrought at his translation of the Old Testament, which he completed inA.D.1528. He spent his last years at Nérac, the residence of his patroness Margaret, now Queen of Navarre, where he died inA.D.1536 in his 86th year. Though at heart estranged from the Catholic church, he never formally forsook it.—InSpainCardinal Ximenes (§118, 7) acted as the Mæcenas of humanist studies. The most distinguished Spanish humanist wasAnton of Lebrija, professor at Salamanca, a fellow labourer with Ximenes on the Complutensian Polyglott, and protected by him from the Inquisition, which would have called him to account for his criticism of the Vulgate. He died inA.D.1522.
§ 120.9.Humanism and the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century.—Humanists, in common with the reformers, inveighed against the debased scholasticism as well as against the superstition of the age. They did so however on very different grounds, and conducted their warfare by very different methods. While the reformers employed the word of God, and strove after the salvation of the soul, the humanists employed wit and sarcasm, and sought after the temporal well-being of men. Hence the reaction of the despised scholasticism and the contemned monasticism against humanism was often in the right. A reformation of the church by humanism alone would have been a return to naked paganism. But, on the other hand, classical studies afforded men who desired a genuine reformation of the church a rich, linguistic, philosophical, and scientific culture, without which, as applied to researches in church history, the exposition of Scripture, and the revision of doctrine, the reforms of the sixteenth century could hardly have been carried out in a comprehensive and satisfactory manner. The most permanent advantage won for the church and theology by the revival of learning was the removal ofHoly Scripturefrom under the bushel, and giving it again its rightful place as the lamp of the church. It pointed back from the Vulgate, of which sinceA.D.1500, some ninety-eight printed editions had appeared, to the original text, condemned the allegorical method of exposition, awakened an appreciation of the grammatical and historical system of interpretation, afforded scientific apparatus by its philological studies, and by issuing printed Bibles secured the spread of the original text. From the time of the invention of printing the Jews were active in printing the Old Testament. FromA.D.1502 a number of Christian scholars, under the presidency of Ximenes, wrought at Alcala at the great Complutensian Polyglott, published inA.D.1520. It contained the Hebrew and Greek texts, the Targums, the LXX., and the Vulgate, as well as a Latin translation of the LXX. and of the Targums, with a much-needed grammatical and lexical apparatus. Daniel Bomberg of Antwerp published at Venice various editions of the Old Testament, some with, some without, rabbinical commentaries. His assistants were Felix Pratensis, a learned Jew; and Jacob ben Chaijim, a rabbi of Tunis. As the costly Complutensian Polyglott was available only to a few, Erasmus did great service by his handy edition of the Greek New Testament, notwithstanding its serious critical deficiencies. Erasmus himself brought out five successive editions, but very soon more than thirty impressions were exhausted.