R. Nisbet Bain - The Cambridge Modern History

During the century which followed the death of Turnebus, the history of French humanism is illustrated by names of the first magnitude. Such are those of Joseph Scaliger, Salmasius, and Casaubon; but these great scholars stand beyond the borders of the Renaissance, and belong, like Bentley, to a maturer stage in the erudite development of classical philology. In them, however, the national characteristics of humanism were essentially the same that had appeared in French scholars of the preceding period. These characteristics are alert intelligence, fine perception, boldness in criticism, and lucid exposition. There is a notable difference between the Italian and the French mind of the Renaissance in relation to the antique. The Italian mind surrendered itself, without reserve, to classical antiquity: the Italian desire was to absorb the classical spirit, and to reproduce it with artistic fidelity. The French mind, on the other hand, when brought into contact with the antique, always preserved its originality and independence. It contemplated the work of the ancients with intelligent sympathy, yet with self-possessed detachment, adopting the classical qualities which it admired, but blending them with qualities of its own; so that the outcome is not a reproduction, but a new result. This may be traced in the French architecture and sculpture of the Renaissance no less than in the criticism and the literature.

The seeds of humanism were brought to the Iberian peninsula by a few students who had visited Italy in the fifteenth century. The Spaniard Arias Barbosa, who had studied under Politian, was regarded by his countrymen as their first effective Hellenist. He lectured on Greek for about twenty years at the University of Salamanca, attracting his hearers not only by “a large and rich vein of learning,” but also by his poetical taste. A higher fame, however, was gained by his contemporary, Antonio Lebrixa (“Nebrissensis”). After a sojourn of ten years in Italy, Lebrixa returned to Spain in 1473, and taught successively at the Universities of Seville, Salamanca, and Alcalä. He is described as inferior to Barbosa in Greek scholarship, but wider in his range of knowledge, which included Hebrew. Lebrixa’s reputation among his Spanish contemporaries, though not in Europe at large, was comparable to that which Budaeus enjoyed in France. He had some distinguished pupils. One of them was Fernando de Guzman Nunez, better known as “Pintianus” (from Pintia, the ancient name of Val-ladolid), whose fame even eclipsed his master’s. Nunez taught Greek at Alcalä, and subsequently at Salamanca, but in literature was best known by an edition of Seneca which appeared in 1536. Another pupil of Lebrixa, the Portuguese historian and poet Resende, did much to promote classical education at Lisbon.

Thus the early part of the sixteenth century afforded grounds for the hope that in the Peninsula, as in other countries of Europe, humanism was destined to flourish. Cardinal Ximenes, the founder of the College at Alcalä, caused the Greek text of the New Testament to be printed there; a task which was completed in 1514. It formed the fifth volume of the Complutensian Polyglott, published at Alcalä in 1522. That work reflected honour on the country, and might well be deemed a good omen for the future of Spanish learning. But after the compact of Charles V with Clement VII, concluded at Bologna in 1530, Spain was definitely ranged on the side of those forces which were reacting against the liberal studies of the Renaissance. The Spanish humanists had never been anything more than centres of cultivated groups, enabled by powerful patronage to defy the general hostility of priests and monks. Humanism had gained no hold on Spanish society at large; and its foes •were now more influential than ever. The Jesuits, who afterwards did so much for classical education elsewhere, were then no friends to it in Spain. The Spanish Inquisition was a terror to every suspected pursuit. It is not strange that, under such conditions, Greek learning did not prosper in the Peninsula; though it still produced good Latinists, such as Francisco Sanchez, of Brozas (1523-1601), who wrote on grammar, and the Portuguese Achille Esta9o (Achilles Statius, 1524-81) whose criticism of Suetonius was highly praised by Casaubon. The vigorous Iberian mind, with its strongly-marked individuality, showed the impetus given by the Renaissance in other forms than those of classical scholarship. It found expression in the romance of Cervantes, in the epic of Camoens, and in the dramas of Lope de Vega; or, not less characteristically, in the wistful ardour of exploration which animated Vasco da Gama and Colombo.

Reactionary Spain, a stepmother to classical studies on her own soil, also delayed their progress in the Netherlands. Little time could be spared to them by men who were struggling against Philip II for political independence and for the reformed religion. But when humanism had once been planted in the Low Countries, its growth was remarkably vigorous and rapid. The University of Leyden became the principal centre of the New Learning. Among scholars of Dutch birth at the period of the Renaissance, Erasmus is the first in time as in rank; but neither his higher training nor his life-work was specially connected with his native land. He was, as we have seen, cosmopolitan. The first great name, after his, in the earlier annals of Dutch scholarship is that of Justus Lipsius (Joest Lips, 1547-1606), who was especially strong in knowledge of the Latin historians and of Roman antiquities. His chief work was his celebrated edition of Tacitus (1575). William Canter (1542-75), of Utrecht, who did good work for Greek tragedy, laid down sound principles of textual criticism in his Syntagma de ratione emendandi Graecos auctores (1566). In the next generation, Vossius (Gerard John Vos, 1577-1649) rendered solid services to the historical study of antiquity, more especially by setting the example of treating ancient religions from the historical point of view. In Daniel Heinsius (1580-1655) Holland produced a scholar who had more affinity with the Italian humanists. He excelled in the composition of Latin verse and prose; and, as an editor, in his treatment of the Greek poets. Hugo Grotius (Huig van Groot, 1583-1645) owes his fame to the De lure Belli et Pads (1625), a work fundamental to the modern science of the law of nature and nations. He wrote Christus Patiens, and two other plays, in Latin verse. With regard to the earlier Dutch humanism as a whole, it may be said that its characteristic aim was to arrange, classify, and criticise the materials which earlier labours had amassed, while at the same time it was distinguished by an original subtlety and elegance.

England felt the movement of the Renaissance somewhat later than France, and with less instinctive sympathy, but also without such active repugnance as had to be overcome in Germany. A few Englishmen had been pupils of the Italian masters. One of the earliest was William Selling, an Oxonian, who died in 1495. Erasmus, when he came to Oxford in 1498, found there a congenial group of Hellenists, chief among whom were William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre. Both had heard Politian at Florence: Linacre had also been a member of Aldo’s Neacademia at Venice. Another Oxonian who did much for the New Learning in England was William Lilly, who had studied Greek in Rhodes, and afterwards at Rome. There were others then at Oxford who had some knowledge of Greek, though the whole number cannot have been large. Few books which could help a beginner with the first rudiments of Greek had as yet found their way to England. An English student desirous of acquiring that language was, as a rule, obliged to go abroad. Erasmus mentions that John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, who began Greek late in life, had been dissuaded by Latimer from attempting it unless he could procure a teacher from Italy. John Colet, a scholar of most active mind and of great industry, lamented in 1516 that he had not been able to learn Greek-a deficiency which he afterwards made strenuous efforts to repair. But the Oxford Hellenists^ though not numerous, represented a new ideal of humane learning, and had a fruitful influence on its progress in England. At Cambridge the study of Greek received its first impulse from the teaching of Erasmus between 1510 and 1513. He began with the rudiments, using first the Erotemata of Chrysoloras, and then the larger manual of Theodoras Gaza. His class was a small one, but included some ardent students, such as his friend Henry Bullock; who, writing to him in 1516, reported that the Greek studies which he had initiated were being vigorously prosecuted. Richard Croke, of King’s College, Cambridge, who took his degree in the year 1509-10, studied Greek at Oxford with William Grocyn; went thence to Paris; and subsequently taught Greek at Cologne, Louvain, Leipzig, and Dresden. Returning to Cambridge in 1518 he began a course of lectures there on the Greek language, though without official sanction. In 1519 he was formally appointed University reader of Greek, and delivered a remarkable inaugural address in praise of Greek studies, which is still extant. His successor in the readership was a man of rare ability, Sir Thomas Smith (1512-77), of Queens’ College, who afterwards rose to eminence in the1 public service. Smith lectured on Greek, with great success, from about 1535 to 1540. In the latter year Henry VIII founded the five Regius Professorships of Divinity, Civil Law, Physic, Hebrew, and Greek. Smith received the chair of Civil Law; that of Greek was given to his close friend, John Cheke (1514-57), of St John’s College, whose repute already stood very high.