Chapter I (4)

70. Besides these glosses on obscure passages, some lawyers attempted to abridge the body of the law. Placentinus wrote a summary of the Code and Institutes. But this was held inferior to that of Azo, which appeared before 1220. Hugolinus gave a similar abridgment of the Pandects. About the same time, or a little after, a scholar of Azo, Accursius of Florence, undertook his celebrated work, a collection of the glosses, which, in the century that had elapsed since the time of Irnerius, had grown to an enormous extent, and were of course not always consistent. He has inserted little, probably, of his own, but exercised a judgment, not perhaps a very enlightened one, in the selection of his authorities. Thus was compiled his Corpus Juris Glossatum, commonly called Glossa, or Glossa Ordinaria: a work, says Eichhorn, as remarkable for its barbarous style and gross mistakes in history as for the solidity of its judgments and practical distinctions. Gravina, after extolling the conciseness, acuteness, skill, and diligence in comparing remote passages, and in reconciling apparent inconsistencies, which distinguished Accursius, remarks the injustice of some moderns, who reproach his work with the ignorance inevitable in his age, and seem to think the chance of birth which has thrown them into more enlightened times, a part of their personal merit.[125]

[125] Origines Juris, p. 184.

|Character of early jurists.|

71. Savigny has taken still higher ground in his admiration, as we may call it, of the early jurists, those from the appearance of Irnerius to the publication of the Accursian body of glosses. For the execution of this work indeed he testifies no very high respect; Accursius did not sufficient justice to his predecessors; and many of the most valuable glosses are still buried in the dust of unpublished manuscripts.[126] But the men themselves deserve our highest praise. The school of Irnerius rose suddenly; for in earlier writers we find no intelligent use, or critical interpretation, of the passages they cite. To reflect upon every text, to compare it with every clause or word that might illustrate its meaning in the somewhat chaotic mass of the Pandects and Code, was reserved for these acute and diligent investigators. “Interpretation,” says Savigny, “was considered the first and most important object of glossers, as it was of oral instructors. By an unintermitting use of the original law-books, they obtained that full and lively acquaintance with their contents, which enabled them to compare different passages with the utmost acuteness, and with much success. It may be reckoned a characteristic merit of many glossers, that they keep the attention always fixed on the immediate subject of explanation, and, in the richest display of comparisons with other passages of the law, never deviate from their point into anything too indefinite and general; superior often in this to the most learned interpreters of the French and Dutch schools, and capable of giving a lesson even to ourselves. Nor did the glossers by any means slight the importance of laying a sound critical basis for interpretation, but on the contrary, laboured earnestly in the recension and correction of the text.”[127]

[126] Vol. v. pp. 258-267.

[127] Vol. v. pp. 199-211.

72. These warm eulogies afford us an instance, to which there are many parallels, of such vicissitudes in literary reputation, that the wheel of fame, like that of fortune, seems never to be at rest. For a long time, it had been the fashion to speak in slighting terms of these early jurists; and the passage above quoted from Gravina is in a much more candid tone than was usual in his age. Their trifling verbal explanations of _etsi_ by _quamvis_, or _admodum_ by _valde_; their strange ignorance in deriving the name of the Tiber from the Emperor Tiberius, in supposing that Ulpian and Justinian lived before Christ, in asserting that Papinian was put to death by Mark Antony, and even in interpreting _pontifex_ by _papa_ or _episcopus_, were the topics of ridicule to those whom Gravina has so well reproved.[128] Savigny, who makes a similar remark, that we learn, without perceiving it, and without any personal merit, a multitude of things which it was impossible to know in the twelfth century, defends his favourite glossers in the best manner he can, by laying part of the blame on the bad selection of Accursius, and by extolling the mental vigour which struggled through so many difficulties.[129] Yet he has the candour to own, that this rather enhances the respect due to the men, than the value of their writings; and, without much acquaintance with the ancient glossers, one may presume to think, that in explaining the Pandects, a book requiring, beyond any other that has descended to us, an extensive knowledge of the language and antiquities of Rome, their deficiencies, if to be measured by the instances we have given, or by the general character of their age, must require a perpetual exercise of our lenity and patience.

[128] Gennari, author of Respublica Jurisconsultorum, a work of the
last century, who under colour of a fiction, gives rather an
entertaining account of the principal jurists, exhibits some
curious specimens of the ignorance of the Accursian interpreters,
such as those in the text. See too the article Accursius in Bayle.

[129] v. 213.

|Decline of jurists after Accursius.|

73. This great compilation of Accursius made an epoch in the annals of jurisprudence. It put an end in great measure to the oral explanations of lecturers which had prevailed before. It restrained at the same time the ingenuity of interpretation. The glossers became the sole authorities so that it grew into a maxim,--No one can go wrong who follows a gloss: and some said, a gloss was worth a hundred texts.[130] In fact, the original was continually unintelligible to a student. But this was accompanied, according to the distinguished historian of mediæval jurisprudence, by a decline of the science. The jurists in the latter part of the thirteenth century are far inferior to the school of Irnerius. It might be possible to seek a general cause, as men are now always prone to do, in the loss of self-government in many of the Italian republics. But Savigny, superior to this affectation of philosophy, admits that this is neither a cause adequate in itself, nor chronologically parallel to the decline of jurisprudence. We must therefore look upon it as one of those revolutions, so ordinary and so unaccountable, in the history of literature, where, after a period fertile in men of great talents, there ensues, perhaps with no unfavourable change in the diffusion of knowledge, a pause in that natural fecundity, without which all our endeavours to check a retrograde movement of the human mind will be of no avail. The successors of Accursius in the thirteenth century contented themselves with an implicit deference to the glosses; but this is rather a proof of their inferiority than its cause.[131]

[130] Bayle, ubi suprà. Eichhorn, Gesch. der Litteratur, ii. 461.
Savigny, v. 268.

[131] Savigny, v. 320.

|Respect paid to him at Bologna.|

74. It has been the peculiar fortune of Accursius, that his name has always stood in a representative capacity, to engross the praise, or sustain the blame, of the great body of glossers from whom he compiled. One of those proofs of national gratitude and veneration was paid to his memory, which it is the more pleasing to recount, that, from the fickleness and insensibility of mankind, they do not very frequently occur. The city of Bologna was divided into the factions of Lambertazzi and Gieremei. The former, who were Ghibelins, having been wholly overthrown, and excluded, according to the practice of Italian republics, from all civil power, a law was made in 1306, that the family of Accursius, who had been on the vanquished side, should enjoy all the privileges of the victorious Guelf party, in regard to the memory of one “by whose means the city had been frequented by students, and its fame had been spread through the whole world.”[132]

[132] Ib. v. 268.

|Scholastic jurists. Bartolus.|

75. In the next century a new race of lawyers arose, who, by a different species of talent, almost eclipsed the greatest of their predecessors. These have been called the scholastic jurists, the glory of the schoolmen having excited an emulous desire to apply their dialectic methods in jurisprudence.[133] Of these the most conspicuous were Bartolus and Baldus, especially the former, whose authority became still higher than that of the Accursian glossers. Yet Bartolus, if we may believe Eichhorn, content with the glosses, did not trouble himself about the text, which he was too ignorant of Roman antiquity, and even of the Latin language, unless he is much belied, to expound.[134] “He is so fond of distinctions,” says Gravina, “that he does not divide his subject, but breaks it to pieces, so that the fragments are, as it were, dispersed by the wind. But, whatever harm he might do to the just interpretation of the Roman law as a positive code, he was highly useful to the practical lawyer by the number of cases his fertile mind anticipated; for though many of these were unlikely to occur, yet his copiousness and subtlety of distinction is such that he seldom leaves those who consult him quite at a loss.”[135] Savigny, who rates Bartolus much below the older lawyers, gives him credit for original thoughts, to which his acquaintance with the practical exercise of justice gave rise. The older jurists were chiefly professors of legal science, rather than conversant with forensic causes; and this has produced an opposition between theory and practice in the Roman law, to which we have not much analogous in our own, but the remains of which are said to be still discernible in the continental jurisprudence.[136]

[133] The employment of logical forms in law is not new; instances of
it may be found in the earlier jurists. Savigny, v. 330; vi. 6.

[134] Gesch. der Litteratur, ii. 449. Bartolus even said, de _verbibus_
non curat jurisconsultus. Eichhorn gives no authority for this, but
Meiners, from whom perhaps he took it, quotes Comnenus, Historia
Archigymnasii Patavini. Vergleichung der Sitten, ii. 646. It seems,
however, incredible.

[135] Origines Juris, p. 191.

[136] Savigny, vi. 138; v. 201. Of Bartolus and his school it is said
by Grotius, Temporum suorum infelicitas impedimento sæpe fuit, quo
minus recte leges illas intelligerent; satis solertes alioqui ad
indagandam æqui bonique naturam; quo factum ut sæpe optimi sint
condendi juris auctores, etiam tunc cum conditi juris mali sunt
interpretes. Prolegomena in Jus Belli et Pacis.

|Inferiority of jurists in fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.|

76. The later expositors of law, those after the age of Accursius, are reproached with a tedious prolixity, which the scholastic refinements of disputation were apt to produce. They were little more conversant with philological and historical literature than their predecessors, and had less diligence in that comparison of texts, by which an acute understanding might compensate the want of subsidiary learning. In the use of language, the jurists, with hardly any exceptions, are uncouth and barbarous. The great school of Bologna sent out all the earlier glossers. In the fourteenth century this famous university fell rather into decline; the jealousy of neighbouring states subjected its graduates to some disadvantage; and while the study of jurisprudence was less efficacious, it was more diffused. Italy alone had produced great masters of the science; the professors in France and Germany during the middle ages have left no great reputation.[137]

[137] In this slight sketch of the early lawyers, I have been chiefly
guided, as the reader will have perceived, by Gravina and Savigny,
and also by a very neat and succinct sketch in Eichhorn, Gesch. der
Litteratur, ii. 448-464. The Origines Juris of the first have
enjoyed a considerable reputation. But Savigny says with severity,
that Gravina has thought so much more of his style than his
subject, that all he says of the old jurists is perfectly worthless
through its emptiness and want of criticism. iii. 72. Of
Terrasson’s Histoire de la Jurisprudence Romaine he speaks in still
lower terms.

|Classical literature and taste in dark ages.|

77. IV. The universities however, with their metaphysics derived from Aristotle through the medium of Arabian interpreters who did not understand him, and with the commentaries of Arabian philosophers who perverted him,[138] the development of the modern languages with their native poetry, much more the glosses of the civil lawyers, are not what is commonly meant by the revival of learning. In this we principally consider the increased study of the Latin and Greek languages, and in general of what we call classical antiquity. In the earliest of the dark ages, as far back as the sixth century, the course of liberal instruction was divided into the trivium and the quadrivium; the former comprising grammar, logic, and rhetoric; the latter music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. But these sciences, which seem tolerably comprehensive, were in reality taught most superficially, or not at all. The Latin grammar, in its merest rudiments, from a little treatise ascribed to Donatus and extracts of Priscian,[139] formed the only necessary part of the trivium in ecclesiastical schools. Even this seems to have been introduced afresh by Bede and the writers of the eighth century, who much excel their immediate predecessors in avoiding gross solecisms of grammar.[140] It was natural that in England, where Latin had never been a living tongue, it should be taught better than in countries which still affected to speak it. From the time of Charlemagne it was lost on the continent in common use, and preserved only through glossaries, of which there were many. The style of Latin in the dark period, independently of its want of verbal purity, is in very bad taste; and none seem to have been more inflated and empty than the English.[141] The distinction between the ornaments adapted to poetry and to prose had long been lost, and still more the just sense of moderation in their use. It cannot be wondered at that a vicious rhetoric should have overspread the writings of the seventh and eighth centuries, when there is so much of it in the third and fourth.

[138] It has been a subject of controversy, whether the physical and
metaphysical writings of Aristotle were made known to Europe at the
beginning of the thirteenth century, through Constantinople, or
through Arabic translations. The former supposition rests certainly
on what seems good authority, that of Rigord, a contemporary
historian. But the latter is now more generally received, and is
said to be proved in a dissertation which I have not seen, by M.
Jourdain. Tennemann, Manuel de l’Hist. de la Philos., i. 355. These
Arabic translations were themselves not made directly from the
Greek, but from the Syriac. It is thought by Buhle that the logic
of Aristotle was known in Europe sooner.

[139] Fleury, xvii. 18. Andrès, ix. 284.

[140] Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. ii. 73. The reader is requested to
distinguish, at least if he cares about references, Eichhorn’s
Allgemeine Geschichte der Cultur, from his Geschichte der
Litteratur, with which, in future, we shall have more concern.

[141] Fleury, xvii. 23. Ducange, preface to Glossary, p. 10. The
Anglo-Saxon charters are distinguished for their pompous absurdity;
and it is the general character of our early historians. One
Ethelwerd is the worst; but William of Malmsbury himself, perhaps
in some measure by transcribing passages from others, sins greatly
in this respect.

|Improvement in tenth and eleventh centuries.|

78. Eichhorn fixes upon the latter part of the tenth century, as an epoch from which we are to deduce, in its beginnings, the restoration of classical taste; it was then that the scholars left the meagre introductions to rhetoric formerly used for the works of Cicero and Quintilian.[142] In the school of Paderborn, not long after 1000, Sallust and Statius, as well as Virgil and Horace, appear to have been read.[143] Several writers, chiefly historical, about this period, such as Lambert of Aschaffenburg, Ditmar, Wittikind, are tolerably exempt from the false taste of preceding times, and, if they want a truly classical tone, express themselves with some spirit.[144] Gerbert, who by an uncommon quickness of parts shone in very different provinces of learning, and was beyond question the most accomplished man of the dark ages, displays in his epistles a thorough acquaintance with the best Latin authors and a taste for their excellencies.[145] He writes with the feelings of Petrarch, but in a less auspicious period. Even in England, if we may quote again the famous passage of Ingulfus, the rhetorical works of Cicero, as well as some book which he calls Aristotle, were read at Oxford under Edward the Confessor. But we have no indisputable name in the eleventh century, not even that of John de Garlandia, whose Floretus long continued to be a text-book in schools. This is a poor collection of extracts from Latin authors. It is uncertain whether or not the compiler were an Englishman.[146]

[142] Allg. Gesch., ii. 79.

[143] Viguit Horatius magnus atque Virgilius, Crispus et Sallustius,
et Urbanus Statius, ludusque fuit omnibus insudare versibus et
dictaminibus jucundisque cantibus. Vita Meinwerci in Leibnitz
Script. Brunsvic. apud Eichhorn, ii. 399.

[144] Eichhorn, Gesch. der Litteratur, i. 807. Heeren, p. 157.

[145] Heeren, p. 165. It appears that Cicero de republicâ was extant
in his time.

[146] Hist. Litt. de la France, viii. 84. They give very inconclusive
reasons for robbing England of this writer, who certainly taught
here under William the Conqueror, if not before, but it is possible
enough that he came over from France. They say there is no such
sirname in England as Garland, which happens to be a mistake; but
the native English did not often bear sirnames in that age.

The Anglo-Saxon clergy were inconceivably ignorant, ut cæteris
esset stupori qui grammaticam didicisset. Will. Malmsbury, p. 101.
This leads us to doubt the Aristotle and Cicero of Ingulfus.

|Lanfranc, and his schools.|

79. It is admitted on all hands, that a remarkable improvement both in style and in the knowledge of Latin antiquity was perceptible towards the close of the eleventh century. The testimony of contemporaries attributes an extensively beneficial influence to Lanfranc. This distinguished person, born at Pavia in 1005, and early known as a scholar in Italy, passed into France about 1042 to preside over a school at Bec in Normandy. It became conspicuous under his care for the studies of the age, dialectics and theology. It is hardly necessary to add, that Lanfranc was raised by the Conqueror to the primacy of England, and thus belongs to our own history. Anselm, his successor both in the monastery of Bec and the see of Canterbury, far more renowned than Lanfranc for metaphysical acuteness, has shared with him the honour of having diffused a better taste for philological literature over the schools of France. It has, however, been denied by a writer of high authority, that either any knowledge, or any love of classical literature, can be traced in the works of the two archbishops. They are in this respect, he says, much inferior to those of Lupus, Gerbert, and others of the preceding ages.[147] His contemporaries, who extol the learning of Lanfranc in hyperbolical terms, do so in very indifferent Latin of their own; but it appears indeed more than doubtful whether the earliest of them meant to praise him for this peculiar species of literature.[148] The Benedictines of St. Maur cannot find much to say for him in this respect. They allege that he and Anselm wrote better than was then usual; a very moderate compliment. Yet they ascribe a great influence to their public lectures, and to the schools which were formed on the model of Bec.[149] And perhaps we could not without injustice deprive Lanfranc of the credit he has obtained for the promotion of polite letters. There is at least sufficient evidence that they had begun to revive in France not long after his time.

[147] Heeren, p. 185. There seems certainly nothing above the common in
Lanfranc’s epistles.

[148] Milo Crispinus, Abbot of Westminster, in his life of Lanfranc
says of him, “Fuit quidam vir magnus Italia oriundus, quem
Latinitas in antiquum scientiæ statum ab eo restituta tota supremum
debito cum amore et honore agnoscit magistrum, nomine Lanfrancus.”

This passage, which is frequently quoted, surely refers to his
eminence in dialectics. The words of William of Malmsbury go
farther. “Is literatura perinsignis liberales artes quæ jamdudum
sorduerant, a Latio in Gallias vocans acumine suo expolivit.”

[149] Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 17, 107; viii. 304. The seventh
volume of this long and laborious work begins with an excellent
account of the literary condition of France in the eleventh
century. At the beginning of the ninth volume we have a similar
view of the twelfth. The continuation, of which four volumes have
already been published at Paris, I have not seen. It has but begun
to break ground, if I may so say, in the thirteenth century, as I
find from the Journal des Savans. The laboriousness of the French,
as well as the encouragement they receive from their government,
are above all praise, and should be our own shame; but their
prolixity now and then defeats the object. The magnificent work,
the Ordonnances des Rois de France, is a proof of this; time gains
a march on the successive volumes, and the laws of four years are
published at the end of five.

|Italy--Vocabulary of Papias.|

80. The signs of gradual improvement in Italy during the eleventh century are very perceptible; several schools, among which those of Milan and the convent of Monte Cassino are most eminent, were established; and some writers such as Peter Damiani and Humbert, have obtained praise for rather more elegance and polish of style than had belonged to their predecessors.[150] The Latin vocabulary of Papias was finished in 1053. This is a compilation from the grammars and glossaries of the sixth and seventh centuries; but though many of his words are of very low Latinity, and his etymologies, which are those of his masters, absurd, he both shows a competent degree of learning, and a regard to profane literature, unusual in the darker ages, and symptomatic of a more liberal taste.[151]

[150] Bettinelli, Risorgimento d’Italia dopo il mille. Tiraboschi,
iii. 248.

[151] The date of the vocabulary of Papias had been placed by Scaliger,
who says he has as many errors as words, in the thirteenth century.
But Gaspar Barthius, in his Adversaria, c. i., after calling him,
“veterum Glossographorum compactor non semper futilis,” observes,
that Papias mentions an Emperor, Henry II., as then living, and
thence fixes the æra of his book in the early part of the eleventh
century, in which he is followed by Bayle, art. Balbi. It is rather
singular that neither of those writers recollected the usage of the
Italians to reckon as Henry II. the prince whom the Germans call
Henry III., Henry the Fowler not being included by them in the
imperial list: and Bayle himself quotes a writer, unpublished in
the age of Barthius, who places Papias in the year 1053. This date
I believe is given by Papias himself. Tiraboschi, iii. 300. A
pretty full account of the Latin glossaries before and after Papias
will be found in the preface to Ducange, p. 38.

|Influence of Italy upon Europe.|

81. It may be said with some truth, that Italy supplied the fire, from which other nations in this first, as afterwards in the second æra of the revival of letters, lighted their own torches. Lanfranc, Anselm, Peter Lombard, the founder of systematic theology in the twelfth century, Irnerius, the restorer of jurisprudence, Gratian, the author of the first compilation of canon law, the school of Salerno, that guided medical art in all countries, the first dictionaries of the Latin tongue, the first treatise of algebra, the first great work that makes an epoch in anatomy, are as truly and exclusively the boast of Italy, as the restoration of Greek literature and of classical taste in the fifteenth century.[152] But if she were the first to propagate an impulse towards intellectual excellence in the rest of Europe, it must be owned, that France and England, in this dawn of literature and science, went in many points of view far beyond her.

[152] Bettinelli, Risorgimento d’Italia, p. 71.

|Increased copying of manuscripts.|

82. Three religious orders, all scions from the great Benedictine stock, that of Clugni, which dates from the first part of the tenth century, the Carthusians, founded in 1084, and the Cistercians, in 1098, contributed to propagate classical learning.[153] The monks of these foundations exercised themselves in copying manuscripts; the arts of calligraphy, and, not long afterwards, of illumination, became their pride; a more cursive handwriting and a more convenient system of abbreviations were introduced; and thus from the twelfth century we find a great increase of manuscripts, though transcribed mechanically, as a monastic duty, and often with much incorrectness. The abbey of Clugni had a rich library of Greek and Latin authors. But few monasteries of the Benedictine rule were destitute of one; it was their pride to collect, and their business to transcribe, books.[154] These were, in a vast proportion, such as we do not highly value at the present day; yet almost all we do possess of Latin classical literature, with the exception of a small number of more ancient manuscripts, is owing to the industry of these monks. In that age, there was perhaps less zeal for literature in Italy, and less practice in copying, than in France.[155] This shifting of intellectual exertion from one country to another is not peculiar to the middle ages; but, in regard to them, it has not always been heeded by those who, using the trivial metaphor of light and darkness, which it is not easy to avoid, have too much considered Europe as a single point under a receding or advancing illumination.

[153] Fleury. Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 113.

[154] Ibid. ix. 139.

[155] Heeren, p. 197.

|John of Salisbury.|

83. France and England were the only countries where any revival of classical taste was perceived. In Germany no sensible improvement in philological literature can be traced, according to Eichhorn and Heeren, before the invention of printing, though I think this must be understood with exceptions; and that Otho of Frisingen, Saxo Grammaticus, and Gunther, author of the poem entitled Ligurinus (who belongs to the first years of the thirteenth century), might stand on equal terms with any of their contemporaries. But, in the schools which are supposed to have borrowed light from Lanfranc and Anselm, a more keen perception of the beauties of the Latin language, as well as an exacter knowledge of its idiom, was imparted. John of Salisbury, himself one of their most conspicuous ornaments, praises the method of instruction pursued by Bernard of Chartres about the end of the eleventh century, who seems indeed to have exercised his pupils vigorously in the rules of grammar and rhetoric. After the first grammatical instruction out of Donatus and Priscian, they were led forward to the poets, orators, and historians of Rome; the precepts of Cicero and Quintilian were studied, and sometimes observed with affectation.[156] An admiration of the great classical writers, an excessive love of philology, and disdain of the studies that drew men from it, shine out in the two curious treatises of John of Salisbury. He is perpetually citing the poets, especially Horace, and had read most of Cicero. Such at least is the opinion of Heeren, who bestows also a good deal of praise upon his Latinity.[157] Eichhorn places him at the head of all his contemporaries. But no one has admired his style so much as Meiners, who declares that he has no equal in the writers of the third, fourth, or fifth centuries, except Lactantius and Jerome.[158] In this I cannot but think there is some exaggeration; the style of John of Salisbury, far from being equal to that of Augustin, Eutropius, and a few more of those early ages, does not appear to me by any means elegant; sometimes he falls upon a good expression, but the general tone is not very classical. The reader may judge from the passage in the note.[159]

[156] Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 16.

[157] P. 203. Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 47. Peter of Blois
also possessed a very respectable stock of classical literature.

[158] Vergleichung der Sitten, ii. 586. He says nearly as much of Saxo
Grammaticus and William of Malmsbury. If my recollection of the
former does not deceive me, he is a better writer than our monk of
Malmsbury.

[159] One of the most interesting passages in John of Salisbury is that
above cited, in which he gives an account of the method of
instruction pursued by Bernard of Chartres, whom he calls
exundantissimus modernis temporibus fons literarum in Gallia. John
himself was taught by some who trod in the steps of this eminent
preceptor. Ad hujus magistri formam præceptores mei in grammatica,
Gulielmus de Conchis, et Richardus cognomento Episcopus, officio
nunc archidiaconus Constantiensis, vita et conversatione vir bonus,
suos discipulos aliquando informaverunt. Sed postmodum ex quo
opinio veritati præjudicium fecit, et homines videri quam esse
philosophi maluerunt, professoresque artium se totam philosophiam
brevius quam triennio aut quadriennio transfusuros auditoribus
pollicebantur, impetu multitudinis imperitæ victi cesserunt. Exinde
autem minus temporis et diligentiæ in grammaticæ studio impensum
est. Ex quo contigit ut qui omnes artes, tam liberales quam
mechanicas profitentur, nec primam noverint, sine qua frustra quis
progredietur ad reliquas. Licet autem et aliæ disciplinæ ad
literaturam proficiant, hæc tamen privilegio singulari facere
dicitur literatum. Metalog., lib. i. c. 24.

|Improvement of classical taste in twelfth century.|

84. It is generally acknowledged that in the twelfth century we find several writers, Abelard, Eloisa, Bernard of Clairvaux, Saxo Grammaticus, William of Malmsbury, Peter of Blois, whose style, though never correct, which, in the absence of all better dictionaries than that of Papias, was impossible, and sometimes affected, sometimes too florid and diffuse, is not wholly destitute of spirit, and even of elegance;[160] the Latin poetry, instead of Leonine rhymes, or attempts at regular hexameters almost equally bad, becomes, in the hands of Gunther, Gualterus de Insulis, Gulielmus Brito, and Joseph Iscanus, to whom a considerable number of names might be added, always tolerable, sometimes truly spirited;[161] and amidst all that still demands the most liberal indulgence, we cannot but perceive the real progress of classical knowledge, and the development of a finer taste in Europe.[162]

[160] Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 146. The Benedictines are scarcely
fair towards Abelard (xii. 147), whose style, as far as I have
seen, which is not much, seems equal to that of his contemporaries.

[161] Warton has done some justice to the Anglo Latin poets of this
century, who have lately been published at Paris. The Trojan War
and Antiocheis of Joseph Iscanus, he calls “a miracle in this age
of classical composition.” The style, he says, is a mixture of
Ovid, Statius, and Claudian. Vol. i. p. 163. The extracts Warton
gives seem to me a close imitation of the second. The Philippis of
William Brito must be of the thirteenth century, and Warton refers
the Ligurinus of Gunther to 1206.

[162] Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. ix. Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. der
Cultur, ii. 30, 62. Heeren. Meiners.

|Influence of increased number of clergy.|

85. The vast increase of religious houses in the twelfth century rendered necessary more attention to the rudiments of literature.[163] Every monk, as well as every secular priest, required a certain portion of Latin. In the ruder and darker ages many illiterate persons had been ordained; there were even kingdoms, as, for example, England, where this is said to have been almost general. But the canons of the church demanded of course such a degree of instruction as the continual use of a dead language made indispensable; and in this first dawn of learning there can be, I presume, no doubt that none received the higher orders, or became professed in a monastery, for which the order of priesthood was necessary, without some degree of grammatical knowledge. Hence this kind of education in the rudiments of the Latin was imparted to a greater number of individuals than at present.

[163] Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 11.

|Decline of classical literature in thirteenth century.|

86. The German writers to whom we principally refer, have expatiated upon the decline of literature after the middle of the twelfth century, unexpectedly disappointing the bright promise of that age, so that for almost two hundred years we find Europe fallen back in learning where we might have expected her progress.[164] This, however, is hardly true, in the most limited sense, of the latter part of the twelfth century, when that purity of classical taste, which Eichhorn and others seem chiefly to have had in their minds, was displayed in better Latin poetry than had been written before. In a general view, the thirteenth century was an age of activity and ardour, though not in every respect the best directed. The fertility of the modern languages in versification, the creation, we may almost say, of Italian and English in this period, the great concourse of students to the universities, the acute, and sometimes profound, reasonings of the scholastic philosophy, which was now in its most palmy state, the accumulation of knowledge, whether derived from original research, or from Arabian sources of information, which we find in the geometers, the physicians, the natural philosophers of Europe, are sufficient to repel the charge of having fallen back, or even remained altogether stationary, in comparison with the preceding century. But in politeness of Latin style, it is admitted that we find an astonishing and permanent decline both in France and England. Such complaints are usual in the most progressive times; and we might not rely on John of Salisbury when he laments the decline of taste in his own age.[165] But in fact it would have been rather singular, if a classical purity had kept its ground. A stronger party, and one hostile to polite letters, as well as ignorant of them,--that of the theologians and dialecticians,--carried with it the popular voice in the church and the universities. The time allotted by these to philological literature was curtailed, that the professors of logic and philosophy might detain their pupils longer. Grammar continued to be taught in the university of Paris; but rhetoric, another part of the trivium, was given up; by which it is to be understood, as I conceive, that no classical authors were read, or, if at all, for the sole purpose of verbal explanation.[166] The thirteenth century, says Heeren, was one of the most unfruitful for the study of ancient literature.[167] He does not seem to except Italy, though there, as we shall soon see, the remark is hardly just. But in Germany the tenth century, Leibnitz declares, was a golden age of learning, compared with the thirteenth;[168] and France itself is but a barren waste in this period. The relaxation of manners among the monastic orders, which, generally speaking, is the increasing theme of complaint from the eleventh century, and the swarms of worse vermin, the Mendicant Friars, who filled Europe with stupid superstition, are assigned by Meiners and Heeren as the leading causes of the return of ignorance.[169]

[164] Meiners, ii. 605. Heeren, p. 228. Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. der
Litteratur, ii. 63-118.

The running title of Eichhorn’s section, Die Wissenschaften
verfallen in Barbarey, seems much too generally expressed.

[165] Metalogicus, l. i. c. 24. This passage has been frequently
quoted. He was very inimical to the dialecticians, as philologers
generally are.

[166] Crevier, ii. 376.

[167] P. 237.

[168] Introductio in Script. Brunwic., § lxiii., apud Heeren, et
Meiners, ii. 631. No one has dwelt more fully than this last writer
on the decline of literature in the thirteenth century, out of his
cordial antipathy to the schoolmen. P. 589, et post.

Wood, who has no prejudices against popery, ascribes the low state
of learning in England under Edward III. and Richard II. to the
misconduct of the mendicant friars, and to the papal provisions
that impoverished the church.

[169] Meiners, ii. 615. Heeren, 235.

|Relapse into barbarism.|

87. The writers of the thirteenth century display an incredible ignorance, not only of pure idiom, but of the common grammatical rules. Those who attempted to write verse have lost all prosody, and relapse into Leonine rhymes and barbarous acrostics. The historians use a hybrid jargon intermixed with modern words. The scholastic philosophers wholly neglected their style, and thought it no wrong to enrich the Latin, as in some degree a living language, with terms that seemed to express their meaning. In the writings of Albertus Magnus, of whom Fleury says that he can see nothing great in him but his volumes, the grossest errors of syntax frequently occur, and vie with his ignorance of history and science. Through the sinister example of this man, according to Meiners, the notion that Latin should be written with regard to ancient models, was lost in the universities for three hundred years; an evil, however, slight in comparison with what he inflicted on Europe by the credit he gave to astrology, alchemy, and magic.[170] Duns Scotus and his disciples, in the next century, carried this much farther, and introduced a most barbarous and unintelligible terminology, by which the school metaphysics were rendered ridiculous in the revival of literature.[171] Even the jurists, who more required an accurate knowledge of the language, were hardly less barbarous. Roger Bacon, who is not a good writer, stands at the head in this century.[172] Fortunately, as has been said, the transcribing ancient authors had become a mechanical habit in some monasteries. But it was done in an ignorant and slovenly manner. The manuscripts of these latter ages, before the invention of printing, are by far the most numerous, but they are also the most incorrect, and generally of little value in the eyes of critics.[173]

[170] Meiners, ii. 692. Fleury, 5me discours, in Hist. Eccles., xvii.
44. Buhle, i. 702.

[171] Meiners, ii. 721.

[172] Heeren, p. 245.

[173] Id. p. 304.

|No improvement in fourteenth century. Richard of Bury.|

88. The fourteenth century was not in the slightest degree superior to the preceding age. France, England, and Germany were wholly destitute of good Latin scholars in this period. The age of Petrarch and Boccaccio, the age before the close of which classical learning truly revived in Italy, gave no sign whatever of animation throughout the rest of Europe; the genius it produced, and in this it was not wholly deficient, displayed itself in other walks of literature.[174] We may justly praise Richard of Bury for his zeal in collecting books, and still more for his munificence in giving his library to the university of Oxford, with special injunctions that they should be lent to scholars. But his erudition appears crude and uncritical, his style indifferent, and his thoughts superficial.[175] Yet I am not aware that he had any equal in England during this century.

[174] Heeren, p. 300. Andrès, iii. 10.

[175] The Philobiblon of Richard Aungerville, often called Richard of
Bury, Chancellor of Edward III., is worthy of being read, as
containing some curious illustrations of the state of literature.
He quotes a wretched poem de Vetula as Ovid’s, and shows little
learning, though he had a great esteem for it. See a note of
Warton, History of English Poetry, i. 146, on Aungerville.

|Library formed by Charles V. at Paris.|

89. The patronage of letters, or collection of books, are not reckoned among the glories of Edward III.; though, if any respect had been attached to learning in his age and country, they might well have suited his magnificent disposition. His adversaries, John, and especially Charles V., of France, have more claims upon the remembrance of a literary historian. Several Latin authors were translated into French by their directions;[176] and Charles, who himself was not ignorant of Latin, began to form the Royal Library of the Louvre. We may judge from this of the condition of literature in his time. The number of volumes was about 900. Many of these, especially the missals and psalters, were richly bound and illuminated. Books of devotion formed the larger portion of the library. The profane authors, except some relating to French history, were in general of little value in our sight. Very few classical works are in the list, and no poets except Ovid and Lucan.[177] This library came, during the subsequent English wars, into the possession of the duke of Bedford; and Charles VII. laid the foundations of that which still exists.[178]

[176] Crevier, ii. 424. Warton has amassed a great deal of information,
not always very accurate, upon the subject of early French
translations. These form a considerable portion of the literature
of that country in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Hist. of
English Poetry, ii. 414-430. See also de Sade, Vie de Pétrarque,
iii. 548; and Crevier, Hist. de l’Univ. de Paris, ii. 424.

[177] Warton adds Cicero to the classical list; and I am sorry to say
that, in my History of the Middle Ages, I have been led wrong by
him. Bouvin, his only authority, expressly says, pas un seuil
manuscrit de Ciceron. Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscrip., ii. 693.

[178] Id. 701.

|Some improvement in Italy during thirteenth century.|

|Catholicon of Balbi.|

90. This retrograde condition, however, of classical literature, was only perceptible in Cisalpine Europe. By one of those shiftings of literary illumination to which we have alluded, Italy, far lower in classical taste than France in the twelfth century, deserved a higher place in the next. Tiraboschi says that the progress in polite letters was slow, but still that some was made; more good books were transcribed, there were more readers, and of these some took on them to imitate what they read; so that gradually the darkness which overspread the land began to be dispersed. Thus we find that those who wrote at the end of the thirteenth century were less rude in style than their predecessors at its commencement.[179] A more elaborate account of the state of learning in the thirteenth century will be found in the life of Ambrogio Traversari, by Mehus; and several names are there mentioned, among whom that of Brunetto Latini is the most celebrated. Latini translated some of the rhetorical treatises of Cicero.[180] And we may perhaps consider as a witness to some degree of progressive learning in Italy at this time, the Catholicon of John Balbi, a Genoese monk, more frequently styled Januensis. This book is chiefly now heard of, because the first edition, printed by Gutenberg in 1460, is a book of uncommon rarity and price. It is, however, deserving of some notice in the annals of literature. It consists of a Latin grammar, followed by a dictionary, both perhaps superior to what we should expect from the general character of the times. They are at least copious; the Catholicon is a volume of great bulk. Balbi quotes abundantly from the Latin classics, and appears not wholly unacquainted with Greek; though I must own that Tiraboschi and Eichhorn have thought otherwise. The Catholicon, as far as I can judge from a slight inspection of it, deserves rather more credit than it has in modern times obtained. In the grammar, besides a familiarity with the terminology of the old grammarians, he will be found to have stated some questions as to the proper use of words, with _dubitari solet_, _multum quæritur_; which, though they are superficial enough, indicate that a certain attention was beginning to be paid to correctness in writing. From the great size of the Catholicon, its circulation must have been very limited.[181]

[179] iv. 420. The Latin versifiers of the thirteenth century were
numerous, but generally very indifferent. Id. 378.

[180] Mehus, p. 157. Tiraboschi, p. 418.

[181] Libellum hunc (says Balbi at the conclusion) ad honorem Dei et
gloriosæ Virginis Mariæ, et beati Domini patris nostri et omnium
sanctorum electorum, necnon ad utilitatem meam et ecclesiæ sanctæ
Dei, ex diversis majorum meorum dictis multo labore et diligenti
studio compilavi. Operis quippe ac studii mei est et fuit multos
libros legere et ex plurimis diversos carpere flores.

Eichhorn speaks severely, and, I am disposed to think, unjustly, of
the Catholicon, as without order and plan, or any knowledge of
Greek, as the author himself confesses (Gesch. der Litteratur, ii.
238). The order and plan are alphabetical, as usual in a
dictionary; and though Balbi does not lay claim to much Greek, I do
not think he professes entire ignorance of it. Hoc difficile est
scire et minimè mihi non bene scienti linguam Græcam:--apud
Gradenigo, Litteratura Greco-Italianna, p. 104. I have observed
that Balbi calls himself _philocalus_, which indeed is no
evidence of much Greek erudition.

|Imperfection of early dictionaries.|

91. In the dictionary however of John of Genoa, as in those of Papias and the other glossarists, we find little distinction made between the different gradations of Latinity. The Latin tongue was to them, except so far as the ancient grammarians whom they copied might indicate some to be obsolete, a single body of words; and, ecclesiastics as they were, they could not understand that Ambrose and Hilary were to be proscribed in the vocabulary of a language which was chiefly learned for the sake of reading their works. Nor had they the means of pronouncing, what it has cost the labour of succeeding centuries to do, that there is no adequate classical authority for innumerable words and idioms in common use. Their knowledge of syntax also was very limited. The prejudice of the church against profane authors had by no means wholly worn away: much less had they an exclusive possession of the grammar-schools, most of the books taught in which were modern. Papias, Uguccio, and other indifferent lexicographers, were of much authority.[182] The general ignorance in Italy was still very great. In the middle of the fourteenth century we read of a man, supposed to be learned, who took Plato and Cicero for poets, and thought Ennius a contemporary of Statius.[183]

[182] Mehus. Muratori, Dissert. 44.

[183] Mehus, p. 211. Tiraboschi, v. 82.

|Restoration of letters due to Petrarch.|

|Character of his style.|

92. The first real restorer of polite letters was Petrarch. His fine taste taught him to relish the beauties of Virgil and Cicero, and his ardent praises of them inspired his compatriots with a desire for classical knowledge. A generous disposition to encourage letters began to show itself among the Italian princes. Robert, king of Naples, in the early part of this century, one of the first patrons of Petrarch, and several of the great families of Lombardy, gave this proof of the humanising effects of peace and prosperity.[184] It has been thought by some, that but for his appearance and influence at that period, the manuscripts themselves would have perished, as several had done in no long time before; so forgotten and abandoned to dust and vermin were those precious records in the dungeons of monasteries.[185] He was the first who brought in that almost deification of the great ancient writers, which, though carried in following ages to an absurd extent, was the animating sentiment of solitary study; that through which its fatigues were patiently endured, and its obstacles surmounted. Petrarch tells us himself, that while his comrades at school were reading Æsop’s Fables, or a book of one Prosper, a writer of the fifth century, his time was given to the study of Cicero, which delighted his ear long before he could understand the sense.[186] It was much at his heart to acquire a good style in Latin. And, relatively to his predecessors of the mediæval period, we may say that he was successful. Passages full of elegance and feeling, in which we are at least not much offended by incorrectness of style, are frequent in his writings. But the fastidious scholars of later times contemned these imperfect endeavours at purity. “He wants,” says Erasmus, “full acquaintance with the language, and his whole diction shows the rudeness of the preceding age.”[187] An Italian writer, somewhat earlier, speaks still more unfavourably. “His style is harsh, and scarcely bears the character of Latinity. His writings are indeed full of thought, but defective in expression, and display the marks of labour without the polish of elegance.”[188] I incline to agree with Meiners in rating the style of Petrarch somewhat more highly.[189] Of Boccace the writer above quoted gives even a worse character. “Licentious and inaccurate in his diction, he has no idea of selection. All his Latin writings are hasty, crude, and unformed. He labours with thought, and struggles to give it utterance; but his sentiments find no adequate vehicle, and the lustre of his native talents is obscured by the depraved taste of the times.” Yet his own mother tongue owes its earliest model of grace and refinement to his pen.

[184] Tiraboschi, v. 20, et post. Ten universities were founded in
Italy during the fourteenth century, some of which did not last
long. Rome and Fermo in 1303; Perugia in 1307; Treviso about 1320;
Pisa in 1339; Pavia not long after; Florence in 1348; Siena in
1357; Lucca in 1369, and Ferrara in 1391.

[185] Heeren, 270.

[186] Et illa quidem ætate nihil intelligere poteram, sola me verborum
dulcedo quædam et sonoritas detinebat ut quicquid aliud vel legerem
vel audirem, raucum mihi dissonumque videretur. Epist. Seniles,
lib. xv., apud de Sade, i. 36.

[187] Ciceronianus.

[188] Paulus Cortesius de hominibus doctis. I take the translations
from Roscoe’s Lorenzo de’ Medici, c. vii.

[189] Vergleichung der Sitten, iii. 126. Meiners has expatiated for
fifty pages, pp. 94-147, on the merits of Petrarch in the
restoration of classical literature; he seems unable to leave the
subject. Heeren, though less diffuse, is not less panegyrical. De
Sade’s three quartos are certainly a little tedious.

|His Latin poetry.|

93. Petrarch was more proud of his Latin poem called Africa, the subject of which is the termination of the second Punic war, than of the sonnets and odes, which have made his name immortal, though they were not the chief sources of his immediate renown. It is indeed written with elaborate elegance, and perhaps superior to any preceding specimen of Latin versification in the middle ages, unless we should think Joseph Iscanus his equal. But it is more to be praised for taste than correctness; and though in the Basle edition of 1554, which I have used, the printer has been excessively negligent, there can be no doubt that the Latin poetry of Petrarch abounds with faults of metre. His eclogues, many of which are covert satires on the court of Avignon, appear to me more poetical than the Africa, and are sometimes very beautifully expressed. The eclogues of Boccaccio, though by no means indifferent, do not equal those of Petrarch.

|John of Ravenna.|

|Gasparin of Barziza.|

94. Mehus, whom Tiraboschi avowedly copies, has diligently collected the names, though little more than the names, of Latin teachers at Florence in the fourteenth century.[190] But among the earlier of these there was no good method of instruction, no elegance of language. The first who revealed the mysteries of a pure and graceful style, was John Malpaghino, commonly called John of Ravenna, one whom in his youth Petrarch had loved as a son, and who not very long before the end of the century taught Latin at Padua and Florence.[191] The best scholars of the ensuing age were his disciples, and among them was Gasparin of Barziza, or, as generally called of Bergamo, justly characterised by Eichhorn as the father of a pure and elegant Latinity.[192] The distinction between the genuine Latin language and that of the lower empire was from this generally recognised; and the writers who had been regarded as standards were thrown away with contempt. This is the proper æra of the revival of letters, and nearly coincides with the beginning of the fifteenth century.

[190] Vita Traversari, p. 348.

[191] A life of John Malpaghino of Ravenna is the first in Meiner’s
Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter männer, 3 vols., Zurich, 1795, but
it is wholly taken from Petrarch’s Letters, and from Mehus’s Life
of Traversari, p. 348. See also Tiraboschi, v. 554.

[192] Geschichte der Litteratur, ii. 241.

95. A few subjects, affording less extensive observation, we have postponed to the next chapter, which will contain the literature of Europe in the first part of the fifteenth century. Notwithstanding our wish to preserve in general a strict regard to chronology, it has been impossible to avoid some interruptions of it without introducing a multiplicity of transitions incompatible with any comprehensive views; and which, even as it must inevitably exist in a work of this nature, is likely to diminish the pleasure, and perhaps the advantage, that the reader might derive from it.