Chapter XXIV (32)

We have the satisfaction of knowing that the frugal and laborious training of Henry’s early life was the means of forming a manly and Christian character. Nor is the portrait less pleasing which the biographer of Budæus has left us of the domestic life of that great man, who, though he had visited the court of Leo X., in quality of ambassador of France, and was the chief lion of the French world of letters, retained to his dying day those simple tastes and habits, which we are assured resulted from no affectation of laconic manners, but a certain genuine sentiment of humility.[314] His secretary and constant fellow-labourer was his wife, who sat in his study, found out passages in his books of reference, copied his papers, and withal did not forget his domestic comfort. Budæus needed some such good angel by his side, for he belonged to that class of scholars who are more familiar with the Latin _As_ than with the value of louis d’ors. His mind was in his books, and whilst busy with the doings of the Greeks and Romans he could not always call home his absent thoughts. It is to be regretted, that with a character in many respects so amiable, Budæus should have permitted his love of Greek to lead him to take part with the Humanists in the ferocious onslaughts which they directed against the adherents of the mediæval learning. It was surely possible to revive the study of Homer and Cicero with rejecting the philosophy of St. Thomas, nor did there seem any reason why the lovers of polite literature should seek to establish their fame as scholars by savage and unseemly pasquinades on their literary rivals. And here it may be remarked that the title of _Humanists_, applied to the rising school, was one of their own choosing. By it they intended at one and the same time to indicate themselves as the only cultivators of “humane” letters, and to imply that the professors of the old school were barbarians. They were not content with advocating good Latin, and reviving the study of Greek; no one could join their camp who was not ready to rail at monks and schoolmen as offensive idiots. The former, in the choice vocabulary of Luther, were “locusts, caterpillars, frogs, and lice,” the latter, in the more polished phraseology of Budæus, “prating sophists,” and “divines of the Sorbonian Lake,” “Monks,” says Erasmus (himself an apostate canon[315]), “are only acceptable to silly women, bigots, and blockheads.” The Dominicans had the audacity to protest against the freedoms he had taken with the Latin Vulgate, and to complain of his version as that of a poet and orator rather than of a divine. “Most men who know anything of the value of a poet,” replies Erasmus, “think _you_ to be swine rather than men, when they hear your stupid raving. Poetry is so little known to you, that you cannot even spell its name;[316] but let me tell you, it would be easier to cut two _Thomists_ out of a log of wood, than one tolerable orator.” No matter what were a man’s talents, or how reasonable were his arguments, the moment he opened his mouth in opposition to these writers, he was placarded as a dunce. Erasmus, in his new Version of the Greek Testament, had given just cause of complaint by his use of a phraseology more elegant than theological. A certain Franciscan friar ventured to object in particular to his rendering of the Magnificat, whereupon Erasmus vented his spleen in a Colloquy, and branded the critic as “a pig and a donkey; more of a donkey than all donkeys put together;” and proceeded to justify his translation by quoting the comedies of Terence. Standish, Bishop of St. Asaph, took exception to another blot in the new version, the substitution, namely, of the word _Sermo_, for that of _Verbum_, in the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel; and Erasmus and his friends considered that they sufficiently vindicated their good Latin by nicknaming the objector, the _Bishop of St. Ass_. In the same style of wit, Vincent the Dominican was _Bucentum_ the ox-driver, and the Carmelites were commonly designated the _Camelites_. “I have hopes of Cochlæus,” writes Luther, speaking of some of his adversaries, “he is only an idiot; as for the other two, they belong to the devil.” This was the ordinary style of the humanist controversialists; their puns and sarcasms being, in most cases, accompanied with a shower of mud.

With these, however, we need not more particularly concern ourselves, but turn our glance on Louvain, where, in the early part of the century, a new university had arisen, under Duke John of Brabant, which received its first diploma from Pope Martin V. in 1425, the theological faculty being erected six years later by Eugenius IV. The latter Pontiff had the satisfaction of receiving the firmest support from the Louvain doctors during the troublous times of the Council of Basle; and during the following century Louvain continued to be not merely the chief seat of learning in Flanders, but one of the soundest nurseries of the faith. She held stoutly to scholasticism, and was distinguished by her resolute opposition to the Lutheran heretics; yet it was in vain that her enemies attempted to charge her with retrogression, for even Erasmus owns in his letters, that the schools of Louvain were considered second only to those of Paris.

It is not difficult to explain the hostility which the Louvain scholars had to encounter on the part of the partisans of the new learning. Louvain, from the first, consecrated herself to the defence of the scholastic theology. Immediately on the erection of the theological faculty in 1431, the Dominicans arrived at Louvain, and opened a school whence they sent forth fourteen doctors in the space of twenty years. In 1447 they were formally admitted to all the rights of the university, and obtained chairs of theology, and the other privileges formerly granted to them at Paris and Bologna. Their brethren were frequently aggregated to the college of the strict faculty, and one of their order was always a member of the council _strictæ facultatis_. From this period the _studium generale_ of the order at Louvain ranked as one of the highest character in the order, and the influence of the Dominican doctors made itself powerfully felt throughout the whole university. St. Thomas of Aquin was _the_ doctor, _par excellence_, of the Louvain schools, and in 1637 was chosen by the faculty of theology their perpetual patron and protector. It is needless to say that this determined _Thomism_ was not more agreeable to the humanists and their partisans than the _Scotism_ of the Paris theologians; and they sought, with very poor success, to squib down the university by representing it as nothing but a nest of friars.

The University of Louvain enjoyed some advantages in which the more ancient academies had been wanting. Not having grown up out of accidental circumstances, like so many of her elder sisters, but having been begun at a time when the principles necessary for governing such institutions had been made manifest by long experience, her founders were careful to provide her, from the first, with a body of statutes sagaciously drawn up, so as to ensure the preservation of regular discipline; and a well-organised collegiate system protected the students from those disorders which had disgraced the beginnings of Paris and Oxford.

In course of time separate schools and colleges were established for the different faculties, one for medicine, eight for arts, and eight for mixed studies. Among the latter was Standonch’s college of poor scholars, and the celebrated _Collegium Trilingue_ founded in 1516 by Jerome Busleiden, the friend of More and Erasmus, for the study of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. The idea of this academy had been suggested to the founder by a visit to Alcala, where Cardinal Ximenes was then completing the establishment of his university. Hallam tells us that its foundation was fiercely opposed by the monks and friars, “those unbeaten enemies of learning,” and it is true that the old professors did at first regard the new institution with some jealousy. They had been used to write and speak mediæval Latin, and grumbled sorely when required to turn Ciceronians. The college happened to be first opened in the fish-market, and hence arose the favourite bon-mot of the Louvain Conservatives, “_We_ do not talk _Fish-Market_ Latin.” In time, however, the fish-market Latin established its supremacy, and Louvain grew proud of her classical professors, such as Louis Vives and Conrad Goclen. The colleges gradually multiplied in number, and even at the present day the city is filled with splendid buildings, all of which owe their existence to the university of which they once formed part.

It was at Louvain that Pope Adrian VI. received his education, and from a poor scholar rose to fill the posts of professor and rector of the university. The son of a boat-builder of Utrecht, he was admitted among a certain number of poor boys whom the university bound itself to educate gratuitously, and endured rather more than his share of the hardships and privations to which scholars of that class are usually exposed. Seldom able to provide himself with the luxury of a lamp or a candle, he was accustomed to prosecute his studies after dark in the porch of some church, where a lamp was then usually suspended, or at the street corner, which supplied him with a feeble light. However, he seems sometimes to have been able to procure himself a better sort of light, for we read that, one cold winter’s night, Margaret, the widow of Duke Charles of Burgundy, then governess of the Netherlands, remarked a tiny ray that issued from one of the college windows at a very late hour, and bidding her chamberlain find out which of the students sat up so late in such intense cold, she was told that it was only “little Florentius” over his books. With a woman’s instinct of compassion, she sent him the next day three hundred florins for the purchase of books and firewood.

When he was afterwards raised to the head of the university, he exhibited the same zeal for the promotion of ecclesiastical discipline which afterwards won him so much unpopularity from his Roman subjects. In spite of their contemptuous strictures on his supposed barbarism, Adrian was revered in Louvain as a generous patron of letters. He erected and endowed one of the most magnificent colleges of which Louvain could boast, and in it was deposited the autograph copy of his works, which is still preserved in the great seminary of Mechlin.

A considerable number of other new universities sprang up in Germany about the beginning of the sixteenth century, all more or less stamped with the literary character of the age. Of these the most famous was Wittemberg, marked out by an evil destiny as the cradle of the Lutheran apostasy. It was founded in 1502 by Frederic, elector of Saxony, who commissioned Staupitz, the provincial of the Augustinians, to seek out men of learning and ability to fill its vacant professorships. Luther was invited hither in 1508 to teach the Aristotelian logic, and, four years later, after his return from Rome, received his doctor’s cap, and took the customary oaths to defend the faith against heresy to the last drop of his blood. In 1516 the professor was to be found waging open war against the philosophy he was engaged to teach, and drawing up ninety-nine theses against the scholastic theology, in which is clearly laid down the fundamental dogma of Lutheranism--the denial of free-will. They were published many years later with a preface by Melancthon, declaring them to contain the veritable sum of the reformed religion, which had thus been reduced to system a year before that quarrel with Tetzel, usually represented as the origin of Luther’s revolt.

Melancthon was given the chair of Greek in 1518, on the recommendation of his master Reuchlin, and was introduced to Wittemberg at the moment when Luther’s quarrel had been taken up by the students and professors. In him Luther gained a disciple whose learning and natural moderation of character were worthy of better things than to become the author of the Confession of Augsburg, and the colleague of Bucer. That horrible apostate, a renegade Dominican, who condescended to every one of the rival schools of heresy, provided only he was suffered to enjoy the license which first tempted him to abjure the faith, filled for twenty years the theological chair at Strasburg. Everywhere the reins of power had fallen into the hands of the pedagogues, and the Lutheran army was to be seen officered by humanists and university professors. The facilities offered by the numerous academies that had sprung up since the beginning of the century encouraged a rage for learning among all classes, and many a poor artisan’s son, like Wolfgang Musculus, or the notorious Henry Bullinger, scraped together a scanty pittance by street singing, which they afterwards spent in procuring the means of study at one or other of the universities. Musculus, indeed, found charitable patrons in the person of some Benedictine monks, who educated him, and gave him the habit; but he soon abandoned the cloister, and after a wild adventurous life, during which we find him working as a mason, and, during the scanty moments he could snatch from his toil, studying the Hebrew grammar, he became “Minister” of Strasburg, and theological professor in the Protestant University of Berne. About the same time the Greek professorship of Calvin’s college at Geneva was filled with another of these strange itinerant scholars, Sebastian Castillon, a native of Dauphiny, who studied the Oriental tongues in the early morning hours, before he went to his day labour in the fields. He afterwards quarrelled with Calvin, who accused him of theft, and went to teach Greek and Hebrew at Basle. Here he produced a Latin and French version of the Scriptures, and endeavoured to render the sacred books into the classical diction of profane authors. We can scarcely form any correct idea of the period of the Reformation without a glimpse at men of this stamp, who then swarmed in every part of Germany; restless, self-sufficient, often more than half self-taught, their minds untrained with the healthy discipline of the schools, disposed to run after every novelty, and to overvalue themselves and their attainments, they inevitably fell into the extravagances to which vanity commonly betrays her victims.

From this class of men the German professorships were chiefly recruited, and little foresight was needed to anticipate the consequences which must ensue when the work of education had passed into such hands. The state of the German universities during the century subsequent to the Lutheran revolution, has been described by the Protestant historian Menzel, from whom Rohrbacher has quoted some remarkable passages. “The colleges where the future ministers of the Lutheran religion spent six or seven years, were the abode of a ferocity and licentiousness from which our moral sensibility shrinks aghast. In the German schools and universities, the elder students obliged new-comers to go about in ragged garments, filled their mouths with ‘soup’ made of mud and broken bits of earthenware, compelled them to clean their boots and shoes, and by way of salary, to imitate the barking of dogs and the mewing of cats, and to lick up the filth from under the table. In vain did the princes endeavour to banish these savage customs; they held their ground in spite of ordinances and edicts.”[317] At the University of Jena, the younger students were robbed of their money, their clothes, and their books by their elder companions, and compelled to discharge the most disgraceful services. Those who had received what was called “absolution,” treated new-comers in the same way; and these outrages were often committed in the streets, and even in the churches during the preaching, when the poor victims were pulled and knocked about, and otherwise maltreated by their persecutors. And that no one might escape, a particular part of the church was devoted to the reception of “freshmen,” who were installed there with these edifying ceremonies. Hence, during the whole time of divine service, one incessant clamour went on, made up of the trampling, the cries, the murmurs, and coarse laughter of the combatants.

If such were the manners of the future pastors, those of their flocks may be imagined. Any one who tried to lead a good life, observes Menzel, was stigmatised as an enthusiast, a Schwenkfeldian, an Anabaptist, and a hypocrite; Luther’s dogma of justification by faith only having brought good works into actual discredit. It was dangerous at that time for a preacher to exhort his people to keep the commandments--as if they were able to do so--it was quite sufficient to render him a suspected person.[318] But we have no heart to dwell on this subject, or to realise the degradation of those old German dioceses and schools, the names of which are so linked in our hearts with the memory of St. Boniface and St. Wilibald, St. Bernward and St. Anscharius. So we will turn our back on Germany and seek on Catholic soil for some more consoling spectacle. We shall hardly find it in France: there, indeed, a revival of letters is going on, under the splendid patronage of Francis I.; and Budæus, the prodigy of his country, as Erasmus called him, is writing his learned treatise on Ancient Money, and persuading the king to found the College Royal. There perhaps the greatest scholar of his time, though known to posterity chiefly by his artistic fame, Leonardo da Vinci, is expiring at Fontainebleau in the arms of the king. But the French Renaissance school is mostly remarkable for its poets, by whom, indeed, the revival of letters was first set on foot. Much edification was not to be anticipated from a movement that reckoned as its originator Villon, whose verses were as infamous as his life, and who found a worthy successor in Clement Marot. The French kings, who by their Pragmatic Sanctions[319] had condemned the Papal provision of benefices as a crying abuse, used their royal patronage of the same as a convenient mode of rewarding Court poets. Thus Octavien de St. Gelais, the translator of Terence, obtained the bishopric of Angoulême from Charles VIII.; and his son, Melin de St. Gelais, surnamed the French Ovid, was rewarded by Francis I. for his “Epigrams” with an abbey. Ronsard, formally proclaimed “the Poet of France, _par excellence_,” who was born on the same day as the defeat of Pavia--as though (to make use of the king’s words) “Heaven would make up to France, by his birth, for the disgrace sustained by her arms”--who was the literary idol of his time, had statues erected to his honour, and silver images of the goddess Minerva presented to him by learned academies, to whom Elizabeth sent a rich diamond, and Mary Stuart presented a gilded model of Parnassus--the most appropriate present that could be offered to the new Apollo--Ronsard, the vainest of men, as he might well be, for assuredly he was the most flattered, died, literally overwhelmed under the weight of his laurels and his priories. I will not attempt the enumeration of his benefices, and perhaps he would hardly have undertaken the task himself, for the prince of poets enjoyed the revenues of half the royal monasteries of France. It would be unbecoming to notice any writer of less renown, after so very illustrious a personage, and the bare name of Rabelais will probably content most readers. These were the stars of the French Renaissance, well worthy of the monarch who patronised them, and the Court over which he presided. Warton has thought good to praise the enlightened wisdom which induced this prince to purge his Court from the monkish precision of old-fashioned times, and enliven it with a larger admixture of ladies’ society. There was certainly not much to be complained of on the score of precision in the coteries of Fontainebleau; yet it is curious that the fair dames who graced the royal circle were chosen by the grim disciples of Calvin as the likeliest agents for disseminating their views. The ladies of the Court of Francis I. were the first Huguenot apostles, and it was in this school that Anne Boleyn, in her quality of maid of honour to Queen Claude, acquired, together with her inimitable skill in dancing, that “gospel light” which, the poet informs us, first shone on England and her king “from Boleyn’s eyes.”

Let us rather direct our steps across the Pyrenees, and watch the erection of a Catholic university on the orthodox soil of Spain. Up to this time the education which prevailed in the peninsula appears to have been thoroughly of the old school. The Spanish universities had indeed some peculiarities arising from their proximity to the Moorish schools, and appear to have cultivated the geometrical sciences and the Eastern tongues more generally than was elsewhere the practice. But the prevailing tone was scholastic and ecclesiastical. The monasteries still maintained those public schools, which served as feeders to the universities, and in these a discipline was kept up differing very little from that of Fulda and St Gall. At Montserrat, peasants and nobles were received together, and each wore a little black habit, and, in church, a surplice. They sang every day at the Mass, and recited the Office of Our Lady, eating always in the refectory of the brethren, and sleeping in a common dormitory. Every month they went to confession, as well as on all festivals, and their studies were of the monastic stamp, with plenty of Latin and plain chant, and also instrumental music. A number of the bravest Spanish knights had their education in these monastery schools, and one of them, John of Cardonna, who commanded the galleys of Sicily, and relieved Malta when besieged by the Turks, chose as his patroness, in memory of his school days, Our Lady of Montserrat, and bore her banner into battle. He used to call himself Our Lady’s page, and said he valued the privilege of having been brought up in her house more than his rank as admiral.

But these are old-fashioned memories, and must give place to something more in accordance with the requirements of the age. The Renaissance was making its way even into the Spanish schools, and the literary movement had been fortunate enough to find a nursing mother in the person of Isabella the Catholic. German printers and Italian professors were invited into her kingdom, and Spanish students sent to gather up the treasures of learning in foreign academies. Among these was Antonio de Lebrija, whom Hallam calls the restorer of classical literature in Spain. Italian masters directed the education of the royal children, and from them the Princess Catherine, doomed to be the hapless Queen of Henry VIII., received those learned tastes which won the admiration of Erasmus. A Palatine school was attached to the Court, in imitation of that of Charlemagne, and was placed under the direction of Peter Martyr,[320] whose letters are filled with accounts of the noble pupils who thronged his school, won from frivolous pastimes by the charm of letters. In 1488 he appeared at Salamanca to deliver lectures on Juvenal, and writes word that the audience who came to hear him so blocked up the entrance to the hall, that he had to be carried to his place over the heads of the students, “like a victor in the Olympic games.” The rage for learning went on at such a pace that the proudest grandees of Castile thought it not beneath them to ascend the professor’s chair, and even noble ladies delivered lectures on classical learning in the halls of universities.[321] The queen’s noble encouragement of learning had been fostered by her confessor, F. Francis Ximenes; and when, in 1495, the Franciscan friar became Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain, one of his first thoughts was the erection of a model university, to which he resolved to devote the immense revenues of his see.

It has been said that seats of learning require the accessories of a fine air, and even the charms of natural scenery; and we might quote one of the most exquisite pieces of word-painting to be found in any language,[322] which is written to show the special gift enjoyed by Athens, rendering her worthy to be the capital of mind. It was the clear elastic air of Attica which communicated something of its own sunniness and elasticity to the intellect of her citizens, just as it imparted a golden colouring even to the marble dug out of that favoured soil. So it had been with Paris, the Athens of the Middle Ages, where students from the foggy shores of Britain conceived themselves endowed with some new faculty when relieved from the oppression of their native atmosphere. And even Louvain, though less favoured than these by nature, had been chosen in preference to other Flemish cities, chiefly on account of her purer air and her pleasant _entourage_ of copses and meadows, with their abundant store of “corn, apples, sheep, oxen, and chirping birds.”

It is not surprising, therefore, that Ximenes, when seeking the fittest spot in which to plant his academy, took very gravely into consideration the question of scenery and climate. The clear atmosphere of Alcala, and the tranquil landscapes on the banks of the Henares, so soothing to the meditative eye, had their share in determining him to fix his foundation at the ancient Complutum. In its grammar schools he had made his early studies, and old boyish recollections attached him to the spot, the ancient traditions of which rendered it dear to Christian scholars.[323] There, then, in the year 1500 he laid the foundation of his first college, which he dedicated to his saintly predecessor, St. Ildefonsus. This was intended to be the head college of the university, to which all the others were in a manner to be subordinate. It consisted of thirty-three professors, in honour of the years of our Lord’s earthly life, and twelve priests or chaplains, in honour of the twelve Apostles. These latter had nothing to do with the education of the students, but were to recite the divine office in common, and carry out the rites of the Church with becoming solemnity. The professors, who were all to be theologians, were distinguished by their dress, a long red robe, which, being flung over their left shoulder, hung to the ground in large and graceful folds. The colleges of St. Balbina and St. Catherine were intended for students in philosophy, each containing forty-eight students. There was a small college, dedicated to Our Lady, for poor students in theology and medicine; and a larger one, used for the reception of the sick. The college of SS. Peter and Paul was exclusively for Franciscan scholars, corresponding in character to the monastic colleges or houses of study at Oxford. There were also two classical schools for young students, forty-two of whom received a free education for three years; these were severally dedicated to St. Eugenius and St. Isidore. And lastly, there was the college of St. Jerome for the three languages, in which ten scholars studied Latin, ten Greek, and ten Hebrew; a foundation which, as we have seen, formed the model on which the _Collegium Trilingue_ at Louvain was afterwards established.[324] I will say nothing of the libraries, refectories, and chapels, all of which were finished with great splendour; and the whole city was restored and beautified, so as to make it more worthy of being the site of so magnificent a seat of learning. Other houses of study soon sprang up in connection with the different religious orders, all of which were anxious to secure for their members advantages which were nowhere else to be found in such abundance. For though Ximenes was a mighty builder, and thereby exposed himself to many bad puns from Court wits, who made much of the “_edification_” he gave when he superintended his workmen rule in hand, he certainly did not neglect the spiritual for the material building. Eight years after he had solemnly laid the foundation stone of his first college, the university was opened, and a brilliant staff of professors--in all forty-two in number--were gathered round the Cardinal primate to receive their respective offices from his hands. The government of the university was vested in the hands of a chancellor, rector, and senate. The system of graduation was copied from that of Paris, except that the theological degrees were given a pre-eminence over the others, and made both more honourable and more difficult to attain. The professorships were distributed as follows:--Six for theology; six for canon law; four for medicine; one, anatomy; one, surgery; nine, philosophy; one, mathematics; four, Greek and Hebrew; four, rhetoric; and six, grammar. There was no chair of civil law, as this faculty was excellently taught at the other Spanish universities, and Ximenes had no liking for it, and did not wish to introduce it at Alcala, probably fearing lest it might prevent that predominance of the theological faculty which he desired should be the characteristic of his university. Provision was made for the support of the aged and infirm professors; and on this point the Cardinal consulted his former colleague in the regency of Castile, Adrian of Utrecht, and established similar regulations to those which existed at Louvain. The system of studies and rule of college discipline were drawn up by himself, the former being in a great degree borrowed from that established at Paris. Frequent disputations and examinations quickened the application of the students, and at these Ximenes loved to preside, and encourage the emulation of his scholars with his presence. In the choice of his professors he considered nothing but the merit of the candidates, and set at nought all the narrowness of mere nationality. Spain was by this time, however, able to furnish humanists and philologists equal to those of Italy or Germany. And most of the first professors were of native birth. Among them was Antonio de Lebrija, and though he afterwards accepted a chair at Salamanca, yet he finally returned to Alcala, and rendered invaluable aid to Ximenes in the philological labours in which he was about to engage, and which shed an additional lustre over the new academy.

Ximenes had always manifested a peculiar predilection for the cultivation of Biblical literature. In his earlier years his love of the Holy Scriptures had induced him to devote himself to the study of Hebrew and Chaldaic, and he had often been heard to say that he would willingly give up all his knowledge of jurisprudence to be able to explain a single verse of the Bible. He considered a thorough revival of biblical studies the surest means of defeating the new heretics, and in the midst of Court engagements and political toils, he at length conceived the plan of his great Polyglot Bible, in which the sacred text was to appear in the four learned languages, after the most correct versions that could be obtained. This great work, which was to serve as the model for all subsequent attempts of a similar kind, was no sooner designed than he set about its execution, and secured the co-operation of a number of skilful scholars, fixing on Alcala as the scene of their labours. Immense sums were expended in obtaining Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldaic manuscripts; and in his dedication, Ximenes acknowledges the invaluable assistance which he received from Pope Leo X. The plan was exactly one sure to engage the sympathies of that generous Pontiff, who accordingly placed at his command all the treasures of the Vatican Library. The costly work when complete presented the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Greek version of the Septuagint, the Latin version of St. Jerome, and the Chaldaic paraphrase of the Pentateuch, together with certain letters, prefaces, and dissertations to assist the study of the Sacred Books. The work was commenced in 1502, and the last volume was published in 1517. The same energy which had succeeded, in the brief space of eight years, in raising a university which received the title of “the eighth wonder of the world,” was able, in fifteen years, to bring to a happy conclusion a literary undertaking which might well have occupied thrice that space of time. Ximenes, who felt his end approaching, desired to leave all his great works complete, and urged on his scholars with frequent admonitions on the shortness of human life. If _they_ lost _him_ as their patron, or if _he_ were to lose _their_ labours, the whole design might fall to the ground. On the 10th of July 1517 the last sheet of the great Complutensian Polyglot was printed, and the young son of the printer, Bocario, putting on his holiday garments, ran at once to present it to the Cardinal. Ximenes received it with a solemn emotion of gratitude and joy. “I thank Thee, O Lord Christ,” he said, “that Thou hast brought this work to a desired end.” It was as though he had been permitted this as his last earthly consolation, for four months later he closed his great and useful career, being in the eighty-second year of his age.

Louvain and Alcala, the two great Catholic creations of the age of the Renaissance, both fell under the hammer of Revolution. The memory of Ximenes has not prevailed to preserve his university from destruction at the hands of the Spanish Progressistas, and we can but hope that its restoration may be reserved for another generation. That of Louvain has been witnessed even in our own time. Swept away in 1797 by the decree of the French Republic, which at the same time suppressed all the great ecclesiastical seminaries, it was not restored by the Nassau sovereigns who, in 1814, became masters of the Catholic Netherlands. William of Holland, so far from showing his Catholic subjects any larger degree of favour than they had enjoyed under French rule, did his best to render their position worse than it had been under the Revolution. He put down all the little seminaries, and proposed to supply the place of the ancient university of Louvain by a grand royal philosophical college, through which all ecclesiastical students were to be compelled to pass before being received into the great seminaries. This was in the June of 1825; in the January of 1830 the determined resistance of the Belgian Catholics obliged him to suppress his college, which had proved a total failure. The August following witnessed the expulsion of his dynasty and the establishment of Belgian independence; events which were followed in 1834 by the erection at Louvain of a new university, in virtue of an Apostolic brief of Pope Gregory XVI.

Planted on the Belgian soil, which has so long and so successfully resisted the inroads of heresy, and which appears destined in our own day to become the battle-ground of a yet deadlier struggle with open unbelief, the Catholic university of Louvain has already merited to be declared by illustrious lips “the glory of Belgium and of the Church.” She has been presented by the Sovereign Pontiff to the Catholics of these islands, as the model on which our own academic restorations may fitly be formed; and at this very moment her example is understood to have encouraged the prelates of Germany to attempt a similar foundation in that land. May their generous efforts be crowned with ample success, and may such institutions, wherein Faith and Science will never be divorced, multiply in the Church, supported by the prayers and good wishes of every Catholic heart.

_CHAPTER XXII._

THE RENAISSANCE IN ROME.

A.D. 1513 TO 1528.

On the morning of the 11th of April 1513 the streets of Rome were thronged with a joyous and expectant crowd, assembled to witness the public procession of the newly-elected Pontiff, Leo X., on occasion of his taking possession of the Basilica of St. John Lateran. Many circumstances combined to render the accession of Leo welcome to his new subjects: they had already felt the charm of his courteous manners, springing partly from careful culture, and partly from an innate kindness of heart; and whilst the Roman citizens, who were heartily tired of the wars and war-taxes of Julius II., rejoiced at the prospect of peace and plenty, the artists and professors, who made up a population by themselves, regarded the election of a Medici as a sufficient guarantee for the protection of their personal interests. The son of Lorenzo, and the pupil of Politian, of Chalcondylus, and of Bernard Dovizi, he had imbibed a love of art and poetry in the gardens of Florence and the villas of Fiesole. Created a Cardinal at the age of fourteen, he was but thirty-seven at the period of his election to the Papal chair, and during his residence at Rome under the two preceding Pontificates had acquired a character which his friends condensed into a motto, and exhibited in golden letters on the canopy under which he was enthroned, _Litteratorum præsidium ac bonitatis fautor_. If an ancient statue had been disinterred in the baths of Titus, the Cardinal de’ Medici had been the first to celebrate the auspicious event in graceful iambics improvised to the music of his lyre; his house had been the _rendezvous_ of artists, poets, and, above all, of musicians; and whilst men of this stamp loudly proclaimed the taste and munificence of the new Pontiff, the unblemished name which he had preserved in the midst of a society the corruptions of which were matter of public notoriety, put to silence the busy tongue of scandal.

It was truly, therefore, a festa-day which his subjects were now celebrating; and as he rode on his white charger through the brilliant streets, men contrasted his mild and _débonnaire_ countenance, his gay smile, and affable address; with the imperious bearing of his predecessor, the warlike Julius; and the contrast was all to his advantage. What a scene it was through which he was now passing! Rome had been all but rebuilt under the four last Pontiffs, and from the Vatican to the Coliseum the way was marked with monuments of their munificence and of the genius of their artists. Domes, amphitheatres, arcades, and fountains had risen during the last seventy years with magnificent profusion; the old Basilica of the Apostles had disappeared, and was in process of being replaced by a pile worthy of the vast conceptions of its founders and its architects. And now the splendid city had decked herself in gala costume, and amid velvet tapestries and flowery wreaths, triumphal arches, and private houses, with their facades improvised into heathen temples, appeared a strange medley of saints and mythological characters, in which the statues of Mars, Apollo, Minerva, and Venus, were exhibited in close proximity to those of SS. Peter and Paul. On the whole, however, the classic element predominated, and the characters chosen at each resting-place to harangue the new Pontiff were the Muses, the Seasons, and their attendant nymphs.

The hopes and expectations of the Roman populace on that day were abundantly fulfilled. Leo did his best to restore peace to Italy, and raised Rome to the dignity of a great capital. Few princes have ever been more richly endowed than he with the qualities which make princedom popular; a liberality which bordered on profuseness, a generous readiness to reward merit, and a charming urbanity of manners, which made every one who approached his person believe himself the object of the Pope’s particular regard. Erasmus felt the magical influence of his presence, and wrote to his friends, saying, that Leo was as far superior to the rest of men, as men are superior, to beasts. “He has the genius and the virtues of all the Leos who have preceded him, and to perfect goodness of heart,” he continues, “he unites an incredible strength of soul.” In the church all beholders admired the majesty with which he officiated at the sacred ceremonies; and his temperate habits in private have been praised by all his biographers. He was not only a passionate lover of literature and science, but was firmly persuaded that the cultivation of letters, rightly regarded, is ever friendly to the faith. “I have always loved learned men and good letters,” he wrote to Henry VIII. “This attraction was born with me, and it has only increased with years; for I always see that those who cultivate literature are most firmly attached to the dogmas of the faith, and form the glory of the Christian Church.” His patronage of arts and letters, therefore, was hearty and munificent enough to satisfy even the requirements of the learned world around him. He restored the Roman University, and appointed a brilliant staff of professors, men not only of the first ability, but of exemplary life. In his Bull addressed to the students, he failed not to warn them against substituting Plato and the poets for more serious studies, and reminded the preceptors that they were called on to defend the faith as well as to teach good letters. His own tastes, however, had the character which might have been anticipated from his education: they inclined almost exclusively to the _belles-lettres_. In many cases the classic acquirements of those who were now promoted to canonries and Cardinals’ hats were more regarded than their personal merits. Bernard Dovizi, who, as tutor to the young Medici, had studiously and successfully laboured to confer on his manners that exquisite polish which was his greatest charm, was now raised to the purple, and, as Cardinal Bibiena, endeavoured to surround the Pontifical palace with every attraction of a secular Court. The literary public of those days was not easily scandalised, but it was at least taken by surprise by the first production which came from the new Cardinal’s pen, his comedy of “Calandra,” written as a carnival piece for the amusement of a noble lady, and acted in the private apartments of the Vatican.[325] Ariosto was also welcomed at Court, and even the infamous Aretino received marks of favour, whilst Bembo and Sadolet, the two first Latinists of their day, were appointed the Pope’s secretaries.

The patronage of Leo was not limited to any one kind of literary excellence. He was as ready to reward a scientific treatise as an imitation of Horace, and whilst encouraging the study of the Eastern tongues, and publishing at his own expense a magnificent edition of Tacitus from the unique manuscript obtained from the abbey of Old Corby, he was accepting the dedication of Italian tragedies and causing the “Rosamunda” of Ruccellai to be acted in his presence. Almost his first act after his accession to the Papal dignity was to summon Lascaris to Rome, and establish him in a palace on the Esquiline, where, in concert with Musurus, he superintended a Greek academy and printing press. Zenobius Acciajoli, the most learned Orientalist of his day, who had shone among the stars of Lorenzo’s Court, and had afterwards assumed the Dominican habit and dedicated his genius to sacred studies, now became Prefect of the Vatican Library; whilst another Oriental scholar of the same order, the celebrated Sanctes Pagninus, found generous encouragement to undertake his Latin translation of the Scriptures from the original tongues.

But whilst extending his splendid patronage to every department of literature, the personal predilections of Leo were undoubtedly for poetry and the arts. Like a true Medici he loved the sunny side of life, and delighted in surrounding himself with poets, wits, and musicians, he himself being the gayest wit and best musician of the party. The Court was crowded with professional improvisatori who enlivened the suppers at the Vatican with their jests and pastimes. In the mornings there were literary assemblies in which the great men of the day recited their poems or epigrams, or more learned works. Now it was Vida, whom Leo had engaged to undertake the composition of his “Christiad,” and who beguiled his lighter hours by setting forth the mysteries of the game of chess in Latin hexameters; or Paulus Jovius,[326] the Italian Livy, who came to read a chapter of his history; or “the divine Accolti,” as he was called, who recited his poems surrounded by a guard of honour, and who in return for his lyric productions was raised to the dukedom of Nepi and a bishopric.

Under such a _régime_ the arts flourished, and men of letters were promoted to wealth and dignities; Rome grew daily more luxurious and more splendid, but, alas! it must be said, her moral atmosphere was a pestilence. The historian Mariana declares that at the opening of the sixteenth century greater disorders existed there than were to be witnessed in any other European capital. Even Bembo, whose own life at this time was a disgrace to the ecclesiastical habit, admits the charge, and owns that he who desired to lead a holy life would do well to fly from Rome.[327] What else could be anticipated of a society made up of artists and professors, paganised to the very core in its literature, its language, and its every maxim? And when we say _paganised_, let it not be supposed that the simple restoration of classical studies is here intended, or that the abuses complained of consisted only of the extravagances of a few learned pedants. In Italian literary circles, if we may credit historians of the time, the Christian ideas were slowly becoming obliterated. It had grown fashionable in certain coteries to scoff at all the Christian dogmas as obsolete and barbarous; and Antonio Bandino complains that you were no longer regarded as a man of education unless you could jest at the Scriptures and indulge in some witty piece of scepticism. Many of the Italian schools were deeply infected with infidelity, particularly the University of Padua, which for more than a century had been notorious as the focus of atheism. Pomponatus,[328] one of the Paduan professors, published a treatise on the immortality of the soul, during the reign of Leo X., in which he endeavoured to show that the doctrine was not held by Aristotle, that it rested _only_ on the authority of Scripture and the Church, and was plainly opposed to reason. A great number of professors taught similar errors, and pretended that though contrary to revelation they might yet be taught as _philosophically_ true. These were condemned in 1513 by the Fifth Council of Lateran, which formally declared that “truth could not contradict truth;” and to counteract the dangerous spirit prevalent in the universities it was at the same time decreed that students aspiring to sacred orders should not follow the course of philosophy and poetry for more than five years, unless at the same time they studied theology and canon law.[329] But little or no fruit was produced by this decree, and as we shall see, at a somewhat later period the “great and pernicious abuses” which were admitted as loudly demanding reform, were formally declared by a commission of Cardinals to have arisen mainly from the impious teaching tolerated in the public schools.

In fact, Italy was at this time _professor-ridden_. Of all odious dogmatisms surely that of pedagogues is the most intolerable form of social tyranny, and under this the Transalpine world was then groaning. Armed with their pens and their tinsel eloquence the men of letters wrote down and talked down all opposition, and made so much noise in the world that they seemed for a time to occupy a much larger and more influential position than was really the case. They dictated their laws to the literary world, and every one who would not be pasquinaded as a barbarian was content to follow the fashion. So in the pulpit preachers called on their audience to contemplate the examples of Epaminondas or Socrates; parallels were drawn between the sacred events of the Passion, and the self-devotion of a Curtius or a Decius: our Divine Lord was commonly spoken of as a hero who had deserved well of his country, and not unfrequently allusions would be introduced to the thunders of Jupiter and the stories of heathen mythology.

The grand object of Italian scholars at this time was to attain a pure Ciceronian style, and in this none were more successful than the two papal secretaries, Sadolet and Bembo. The pains taken by the latter on his compositions at least deserved success. He is said to have kept forty portfolios, into each of which his sheets were successively entered, and only passed on to the one next in order after undergoing careful revision. The rejection of every phrase not absolutely Ciceronian led to very strange affectation when speaking of events of ordinary life, as well as to the more offensive fault of adopting heathen phraseology on matters relating to the Christian faith. Thus the accession of Leo was announced to foreign Courts as having taken place “through the favour of the Immortal Gods;” Divine grace was the _magnificentia divinitatis_; Our Lady was the _Dea Lauretana_, or the _Alma Parens_; and the Christian mysteries were described in terms taken from the sacrificial terminology of the Greeks. Erasmus had good sense enough to despise these extravagances, and he did his utmost to render them ridiculous.[330] He describes the Ciceronian spending a whole winter’s night on the composition of a single sentence, compiling lexicons of Ciceronian words, tropes, locutions, and pleasantries, more bulky than the great orator’s entire works, and struggling with the insuperable difficulties of rendering the wants and habits of a modern age into the colloquial phraseology of the ancients.

The poets and artists followed the example set them by the professors. They still occasionally condescended to choose Christian subjects, but in most cases it was to debase them by a pagan method of treatment. When Sannazar thought fit to employ his muse on so old-fashioned a theme as the birth of Our Lord, he converted it into a pagan fable, placed the prophecies of the Sibyls in the hands of the Blessed Virgin, and the words of Isaias in the mouth of Proteus, omitted the name of Jesus Christ throughout his entire poem, and surrounded the holy crib with nymphs, satyrs, and hamadryads. The very liturgy of the Church had a narrow escape of undergoing a classical reform, and a new _Hymnarium_ appeared, drawn up by Zachario Ferreri, “according to the true rules of Latinity and metre,” in which, says Dom Guéranger, “occur every image and allusion to pagan belief and customs which are to be met with in Horace.” This work was undertaken by command of Leo X., but its use, though permitted by Clement VII., was happily never enjoined on the clergy.

Hand in hand with the paganism of literature advanced the paganism of morals. We are not here engaged in studying the history of the Church, and may therefore be spared the pain of contemplating her scandals--those scandals the existence of which, far from weakening our faith, may rather confirm it, when we remember that they were distinctly prophesied by her Divine Head as evils which “must needs be” accomplished. Our business is with schools and scholars, and, sooth to say, after wandering amid the dim religious light of the mediæval cloisters, the blaze of the Roman literary circles, after first dazzling our eyes, reveals such bewildering spectacles, that we look about for some retreat into which the Christian scholar may creep and hide himself.