Chapter II (1)

ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1400 TO 1440.

_Cultivation of Latin in Italy--Revival of Greek Literature--Vestiges of it during the Middle Ages--It is taught by Chrysoloras--his Disciples--and by learned Greeks--State of Classical Learning in other Parts of Europe--Physical Sciences--Mathematics--Medicine and Anatomy--Poetry in Spain, France, and England--Formation of New Laws of Taste in Middle Ages--Their Principles--Romances--Religious Opinions._

|Zeal for classical literature in Italy.|

1. Ginguéné has well observed, that the fourteenth century left Italy in the possession of the writings of three great masters, of a language formed and polished by them, and of a strong relish for classical learning. But this soon became the absorbing passion, fortunately, no doubt, in the result, as the same author has elsewhere said, since all the exertions of an age were required to explore the rich mine of antiquity, and fix the standard of taste and purity for succeeding generations. The ardour for classical studies grew stronger every day. To write Latin correctly, to understand the allusions of the best authors, to learn the rudiments at least of Greek, were the objects of every cultivated mind.

|Poggio Bracciolini.|

|Latin style of that age indifferent.|

2. The first half of the fifteenth century, has been sometimes called the age of Poggio Bracciolini, which it expresses not very inaccurately as to his literary life, since he was born in 1381, and died in 1459; but it seems to involve too high a compliment. The chief merit of Poggio was his diligence, aided by good fortune, in recovering lost works of Roman literature, that lay mouldering in the repositories of convents. Hence we owe to this one man eight orations of Cicero, a complete Quintilian, Columella, part of Lucretius, three books of Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Tertullian, and several less important writers: twelve comedies of Plautus were also recovered in Germany through his directions.[193] Poggio besides this was undoubtedly a man of considerable learning for his time, and still greater sense and spirit as a writer, though he never reached a very correct or elegant style.[194] And this applies to all those who wrote before the year 1440, with the single exception of Gasparin; to Coluccio Salutato, Guarino of Verona, and even Leonard Aretin.[195] Nor is this any disparagement to their abilities and industry. They had neither grammars nor dictionaries, in which the purest Latinity was distinguishable from the worst; they had to unlearn a barbarous jargon, made up with scraps of the Vulgate, and of ecclesiastical writers, which pervades the Latin of the middle ages; they had great difficulty in resorting to purer models, from the scarcity and high price of manuscripts, as well as from their general incorrectness, which it required much attention to set right. Gasparin of Barziza took the right course, by incessantly turning over the pages of Cicero; and thus by long habit gained an instinctive sense of propriety in the use of language, which no secondary means at that time could have given him.

[193] Shepherd’s Life of Poggio. Tiraboschi. Corniani. Roscoe’s Lorenzo,
ch. i. Fabricius, in his Bibliotheca Latina mediæ et infimæ ætatis,
gives a list not quite the same; but Poggio’s own authority must be
the best. The work first above quoted is for the literary history
of Italy in the earlier half of the fifteenth century, what
Roscoe’s Lorenzo is for the latter. Ginguéné has not added much to
what these English authors and Tiraboschi had furnished.

[194] Mr. Shepherd has judged Poggio a little favourably, as became a
biographer, but with sense and discrimination. His Italian
translator, the Avvocato Tonelli (Firenze, 1825), goes much beyond
the mark in extolling Poggio above all his contemporaries, and
praising his “vastissima erudizione” in the strain of hyperbole too
familiar to Italians. This vast learning, even for that time,
Poggio did not possess; we have no reason to believe him equal to
Guarino, Filelfo, or Traversari, much less to Valla. Erasmus,
however, was led by his partiality to Valla into some injustice
towards Poggio, whom he calls rabula adeo indoctus, ut etiamsi
vacaret obscœnitate, tamen indignus esset qui legeretur, adeo autem
obscœnus ut etiamsi doctissimus esset, tamen esset a viris bonis
rejiciendus. Epist. ciii. This is said too hastily; but in his
Ciceronianus, where we have his deliberate judgment, he appreciates
Poggio more exactly. After one of the interlocutors has called him,
vividæ cujusdam eloquentiæ virum, the other replies:--Naturæ satis
erat, artis et eruditionis non multum; interim impuro sermonis
fluxu, si Laurentio Vallæ credimus. Bebel, a German of some
learning, rather older than Erasmus, in a letter quoted by Blount
(Censura Auctorum, in Poggio), praises Poggio very highly for his
style, and prefers him to Valla. Paulus Cortesius seems not much to
differ from Erasmus about Poggio, though he is more severe on Valla.

It should be added, that Tonelli’s notes on the life of Poggio are
useful; among other things he points out that Poggio did not learn
Greek of Emanuel Chrysoloras, as all writers on this part of
literary history had hitherto supposed, but about 1423, when he was
turned of forty.

[195] Coluccio Salutato belongs to the fourteenth century, and was
deemed one of its greatest ornaments in learning. Ma a dir vero,
says Tiraboschi, who admits his extensive erudition, relatively to
his age, benche lo stil di Coluccio abbia non rare volte energia e
forza maggiore che quello della maggior parti degli altri scrittori
di questi tempi, è certo però, che tanto è diverso da quello di
Cicerone nella prosa, e ne’ versi da quel di Virgilio, quanto
appunto è diversa una scimia da un uomo, v. 537.

Cortesius, in the dialogue quoted above, says of Leonard
Aretin:--Hic primus inconditam scribendi consuetudinem ad numerosum
quendam sonum inflexit, et attulit hominibus nostris aliquid certe
splendidius.... Et ego video hunc nondum satis esse limatum, nec
delicatiori fastidio tolerabilem. Atqui dialogi Joannis Ravennatis
vix semel leguntur, et Coluccii Epistolæ, quæ tum in honore erant,
non apparent; sed Boccacii Genealogiam legimus, utilem illam
quidem, sed non tamen cum Petrarchæ ingenio conferendam. At non
videtis quantum his omnibus desit? p. 12. Of Guarino he says
afterwards:--Genus tamen dicendi inconcinnum admodum est et
salebrosum; utitur plerumque imprudens verbis poeticis, quod est
maxime vitiosum; sed magis est in eo succus, quam color laudandus.
Memoria teneo, quendam familiarem meum solitum dicere, melius
Guarinum famæ suæ consuluisse, si nihil unquam scripsisset, p. 14.

|Gasparin of Barziza.|

3. This writer, often called Gasparin of Bergamo, his own birthplace being in the neighbourhood of that city, was born about 1370, and began to teach before the close of the century. He was transferred to Padua by the Senate of Venice, in 1407; and in 1410 accepted the invitation of Filippo Maria Visconti to Milan, where he remained till his death, in 1431. Gasparin had here the good fortune to find Cicero de Oratore, and to restore Quintilian by the help of the manuscript brought from St. Gall by Poggio, and another found in Italy by Leonard Aretin. His fame as a writer was acquired at Padua, and founded on his diligent study of Cicero.

|Merits of his style.|

4. It is impossible to read a page of Gasparin without perceiving that he is quite of another order of scholars from his predecessors. He is truly Ciceronian in his turn of phrases and structure of sentences, which never end awkwardly, or with a wrong arrangement of words, as is habitual with his contemporaries. Inexact expressions may of course be found, but they do not seem gross or numerous. Among his works are several orations which probably were actually delivered: they are the earliest models of that classical declamation which became so usual afterwards, and are elegant, if not very forcible. His Epistolæ ad Exercitationem accommodatæ was the first book printed at Paris. It contains a series of exercises for his pupils, probably for the sake of double translation, and merely designed to exemplify Latin idioms.[196]

[196] Morhof, who says, primus in Italia aliquid balbutire cœpit
Gasparinus, had probably never seen his writings, which are a great
deal better, in point of language, than his own. Cortesius,
however, blames Gasparin for too elaborate a style; nimia cura
attenuabat orationem.

He once uses a Greek word in his letters; what he knew of the
language does not otherwise appear; but he might have heard Guarino
at Venice. He had not seen Pliny’s Natural History, nor did he
possess a Livy, but was in treaty for one. Epist. p. 200,
A.D. 1415.

|Victorin of Feltre.|

5. If Gasparin was the best writer of this generation, the most accomplished instructor was Victorin of Feltre, to whom the marquis of Mantua entrusted the education of his own children. Many of the Italian nobility, and some distinguished scholars were brought up under the care of Victorin in that city; and, in a very corrupt age, he was still more zealous for their moral than their literary improvement. A pleasing account of his method of discipline will be found in Tiraboschi, or more fully in Corniani, from a life written by one of Victorin’s pupils, named Prendilacqua.[197] “It could hardly be believed,” says Tiraboschi, “that in an age of such rude manners, a model of such perfect education could be found: if all to whom the care of youth is entrusted would make it theirs, what ample and rich fruits they would derive from their labours.” The learning of Victorin was extensive; he possessed a moderate library, and rigidly demanding a minute exactness from his pupils in their interpretation of ancient authors, as well as in their own compositions, laid the foundations of a propriety in style, which the next age was to display. Traversari visited the school of Victorin, for whom he entertained a great regard, in 1433; it had then been for some years established.[198] No writings of Victorin have been preserved.

[197] Tiraboschi, vii. 306. Corniani, ii. 53. Heeren, p. 235. He is
also mentioned, with much praise for his mode of education, by his
friend Ambrogio Traversari, a passage from whose Hodopæricon will
be found in Heeren, p. 237. Victorin died in 1447, and was buried
at the public expense, his liberality in giving gratuitous
instruction to the poor having left him so.

[198] Mehus, p. 421.

|Leonard Aretin.|

6. Among the writers of these forty years, after Gasparin of Bergamo, we may probably assign the highest place in politeness of style to Leonardo Bruni, more commonly called Aretino, from his birthplace, Arezzo. “He was the first,” says Paulus Cortesius, “who replaced the rude structure of periods by some degree of rhythm, and introduced our countrymen to something more brilliant than they had known before; though even he is not quite as polished as a fastidious delicacy would require.” Aretin’s history of the Goths, which, though he is silent on the obligation, is chiefly translated from Procopius, passes for his best work. In the constellation of scholars who enjoyed the sunshine of favour in the palace of Cosmo de’ Medici, Leonard Aretin was one of the oldest and most prominent. He died at an advanced age in 1444, and is one of the six illustrious dead who repose in the church of Santa Croce.[199]

[199] Madame de Staël unfortunately confounded this respectable scholar,
in her Corinne, with Pietro Aretino; I remember well that Ugo
Foscolo could never contain his wrath against her for this mistake.

|Revival of Greek language in Italy.|

|Early Greek scholars of Europe.|

|Under Charlemagne and his successors.|

7. We come now to a very important event in literary history,--the resuscitation of the study of the Greek language in Italy. During the whole course of the middle ages we find scattered instances of scholars in the west of Europe, who had acquired some knowledge of Greek; to what extent it is often a difficult question to determine. In the earlier and darker period, we begin with a remarkable circumstance, already mentioned, of our own ecclesiastical history. The infant Anglo-Saxon churches, desirous to give a national form to their hierarchy, solicited the Pope Vitalian to place an archbishop at their head. He made choice of Theodore, who not only brought to England a store of Greek manuscripts, but, through the means of his followers, imparted a knowledge of it to some of our countrymen. Bede half a century afterwards, tells us, of course very hyperbolically, that there were still surviving disciples of Theodore and Adrian, who understood the Greek and Latin languages as well as their own.[200] From these he derived, no doubt, his own knowledge, which may not have been extensive; but we cannot expect more, in such very unfavourable circumstances, than a superficial progress in so difficult a study. It is probable that the lessons of Theodore’s disciples were not forgotten in the British and Irish monasteries. Alcuin has had credit, with no small likelihood, if not on positive authority, for an acquaintance with Greek;[201] and as he, and perhaps others from these islands, were active in aiding the efforts of Charlemagne for the restoration of letters, the slight tincture of Greek that we find in the schools founded by that emperor, may have been derived from their instruction. It is, however, an equally probable hypothesis, that it was communicated by Greek teachers, whom it was easy to procure. Charlemagne himself, according to Eginhard, could read, though he could not speak, the Greek language. Thegan reports the very same, in nearly the same words, of Louis the Debonair.[202] The former certainly intended, that it should be taught in some of his schools;[203] and the Benedictines of St. Maur, in their long and laborious Histoire Littéraire de la France, have enumerated as many as seventeen persons within France, or at least the dominions of the Carlovingian house, to whom they ascribe, on the authority of contemporaries, a portion of this learning.[204] These were all educated in the schools of Charlemagne except the most eminent in the list, John Scotus Erigena, for whom Scotland and Ireland contend, the latter probably on the best grounds. It is not necessary by any means to suppose that he had acquired by travel the Greek tongue, which he possessed sufficiently to translate, though very indifferently, the works attributed in that age to Dionysius the Areopagite.[205] Most writers of the ninth century, according to the Benedictines, make use of some Greek words. It appears by a letter of the famous Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, who censures his nephew Hincmar of Laon for doing this affectedly, that glossaries, from which they picked those exotic flowers, were already in use. Such a glossary in Greek and Latin, compiled, under Charles the Bald, for the use of the church of Laon, was, at the date of the publication of this Benedictine History, near the middle of the last century, in the library of St. Germain des Prés.[206] We may thus perceive the means of giving the air of more learning than was actually possessed; and are not to infer from these sprinklings of Greek in mediæval writings, whether in their proper characters, or latinised, which is rather more frequent, that the poets and profane, or even ecclesiastical, writers were accessible in a French or English monastery. Neither of the Hincmars seems to have understood it. Tiraboschi admits that he cannot assert any Italian writer of the ninth century to be acquainted with Greek.[207]

[200] Hist. Eccles. l. v. c. 2. Usque hodie supersunt ex eorum
discipulis, qui Latinam Græcamque linguam æque ac propriam in qua
nati sunt, norunt. Bede’s own knowledge of Greek is attested by his
biographer Cuthbert: præter Latinam etiam Græcam comparaverat. He
once, and possibly more often, uses a Greek word; but we must
suspect his knowledge of it to have been trifling.

A manuscript in the British Museum (Cotton, Galba, i. 18,) is of
some importance in relation to this, if it be truly referred to the
eighth century. It contains the Lord’s prayer in Greek, written in
Anglo-Saxon characters, and appears to have belonged to king
Athelstan. Mr. Turner (Hist. of Angl.-Sax., vol. iii. p. 396) has
taken notice of this manuscript, but without mentioning its
antiquity. The manner in which the words are divided shows a
perfect ignorance of Greek in the writer; but the Saxon is curious
in another respect, as it proves the pronunciation of Greek in the
eighth century to have been modern or Romaic, and not what we hold
to be ancient.

[201] C’était un homme habile dans le Grec comme dans le Latin. Hist.
Litt. de la Fr. iv. 8.

[202] The passages will be found in Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. ii. 265 and
290. That concerning Charlemagne is quoted in many other books.
Eginhard says in the same place, that Charles prayed in Latin as
readily as in his own language; and Thegan, that Louis could speak
Latin perfectly.

[203] Osnabrug has generally been named as the place, where Charlemagne
peculiarly designed that Greek should be cultivated. It seems
however, on considering the passage in the Capitularies usually
quoted (Baluze, ii. 419) to have been only one out of many.
Eichhorn thinks that the existence of a Greek school at Osnabrug is
doubtful, but that there is more evidence in favour of Saltsburg
and Ratisbon. Allg. Gesch. der Cultur, ii. 383. The words of the
Capitulary are, Græcas et Latinas Scholas in perpetuum manere
ordinavimus.

[204] Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. v. Launoy had commenced this
enumeration in his excellent treatise on the schools of
Charlemagne; but he has not carried it quite so far. See, too,
Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. ii. 420; and Gesch. der Litt. i. 824.
Meiners thinks that Greek was better known in the ninth century,
through Charlemagne’s exertions, than for five hundred years
afterwards. ii. 367.

[205] Eichhorn, ii. 227. Brucker. Guizot.

[206] Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. iv. Duncange, præf. in Glossar.
p. 40.

[207] iii. 206.

|In the tenth and eleventh centuries.|

8. The tenth century furnishes not quite so many proofs of Greek scholarship. It was, however, studied by some brethren in the abbey of St. Gall, a celebrated seat of learning for those times, and the library of which still bears witness, in its copious collection of manuscripts, to the early intercourse between the scholars of Ireland and those of the continent. Baldric, bishop of Utrecht,[208] Bruno of Cologne, and Gerbert, besides a few more whom the historians of St. Maur record, possessed a tolerable acquaintance with the Greek language. They mention a fact that throws light on the means by which it might occasionally be learned. Some natives of that country, doubtless expatriated catholics, took refuge in the diocese of Toul, under the protection of the bishop, not long before 1000. They formed separate societies, performing divine service in their own language, and with their own rites.[209] It is probable, the Benedictines observe, that Humbert, afterwards a cardinal, acquired from them that knowledge of the language by which he distinguished himself in controversy with their countrymen.[210] This great schism of the church, which the Latins deeply felt, might induce some to study a language, from which alone they could derive authorities in disputation with these antagonists. But it had also the more unequivocal effect of drawing to the west some of those Greeks who maintained their communion with the church of Rome. The emigration of these in the diocese of Toul is not a single fact of the kind; and it is probably recorded from the remarkable circumstance of their living in community. We find from a passage in Heric, a prelate in the reign of Charles the Bald, that this had already begun; at the commencement, in fact, of the great schism.[211] Greek bishops and Greek monks are mentioned as settlers in France during the early part of the eleventh century. This was especially in Normandy, under the protection of Richard II., who died in 1028. Even monks from Mount Sinai came to Rouen to share in his liberality.[212] The Benedictines ascribe the preservation of some taste for the Greek and oriental tongues to these strangers. The list, however, of the learned in them is very short, considering the erudition of these fathers, and their disposition to make the most of all they met with. Greek books are mentioned in the few libraries of which we read in the eleventh century.[213]

[208] Baldric lived under Henry the Fowler; his biographer says:--Nullum
fuit studiorum liberalium genus in omni Græca et Latina eloquentia
quod ingenio sui vivacitatem aufugeret Launoy, p. 117. Hist Litt.
vi. 50.

[209] Vol. vi. p. 57.

[210] Vol. vii. p. 528.

[211] Ducange, præfat. in Glossar. p. 41.

[212] Hist Litt. de la France, vii. 69, 124. et alibi. A Greek
manuscript in the royal library at Paris, containing the liturgy,
according to the Greek ritual, was written in 1022, by a monk named
_Helie_, (they do not give the Latin name,) who seems to have lived
in Normandy. If this stands for Elias, he was probably a Greek by
birth.

[213] Id. p. 48.

|In the twelfth.|

9. The number of Greek scholars seems not much more considerable in the twelfth century, notwithstanding the general improvement of that age. The Benedictines reckon about ten names, among which we do not find that of St. Bernard.[214] They are inclined also to deny the pretensions of Abelard;[215] but, as that great man finds a very hostile tribunal in these fathers, we may pause about this, especially as they acknowledge Eloise to have understood both the Greek and Hebrew languages. She established a Greek mass for Whitsunday in the Paraclete convent, which was sung as late as the fifteenth century; and a Greek missal in Latin characters was still preserved there.[216] Heeren speaks more favourably of Abelard’s learning, who translated passages from Plato.[217] The pretensions of John of Salisbury are slighter; he seems proud of his Greek, but betrays gross ignorance in etymology.[218]

[214] Hist. Litt. de la France, pp. 94, 151. Macarius, abbot of St.
Fleuri, is said to have compiled a Greek Lexicon, which has been
several times printed under the name of Beatus Benedictus.

[215] Id. xii. 147.

[216] Id. xii. 642.

[217] P. 204. His Greek was no doubt rather scanty, and not sufficient
to give him an insight into ancient philosophy; in fact, if his
learning had been greater, he could only read such manuscripts as
fell into his hands; and there were hardly any then in France.

[218] Ibid. John derives analytica from ανα [ana] and λεχις [lexis].

|In the thirteenth.|

10. The thirteenth century was a more inauspicious period for learning; yet here we can boast, not only of John Basing, archdeacon of St. Albans, who returned from Athens about 1240, laden, if we are bound to believe this literally, with Greek books, but of Roger Bacon and Robert Grostête, bishop of Lincoln. It is admitted that Bacon had some acquaintance with Greek; and it appears by a passage in Matthew Paris, that a Greek priest, who had obtained a benefice at St. Albans, gave such assistance to Grostête as enabled him to translate the testament of the twelve patriarchs into Latin.[219] This is a confirmation of what has been suggested above, as the probable means by which a knowledge of that language, in the total deficiency of scholastic education, was occasionally imparted to persons of unusual zeal for learning. And it leads us to another reflection, that by a knowledge of Greek, when we find it asserted of a mediæval theologian like Grostête, we are not to understand an acquaintance with the great classical authors, who were latent in eastern monasteries, but the power of reading some petty treatise of the fathers, or, as in this instance, an apocryphal legend, or at best, perhaps, some of the later commentators on Aristotle. Grostête was a man of considerable merit, but has had his share of applause.

[219] Matt. Par. p. 520. See also Turner’s History of England, iv. 180.
It is said in some books that Grostête made a translation of
Suidas. But this is to be understood merely of a legendary story
found in that writer’s Lexicon. Pegge’s Life of Grostête, p. 291.
The entire work he certainly could not have translated, nor is it
at all credible that he had a copy of it. With respect to the doubt
I have hinted in the text as to the great number of manuscripts
said to be brought to England by John Basing, it is founded on
their subsequent disappearance. We find very few, if any, Greek
manuscripts in England at the end of the fifteenth century.

Michael Scot, “the wizard of dreaded fame,” pretended to translate
Aristotle; but is charged with having appropriated the labours of
one Andrew, a Jew, as his own. Meiners, ii. 664.

|Little appearance of it in the fourteenth century.|

11. The titles of mediæval works are not unfrequently taken from the Greek language, as the Polycraticus and Metalogicus of John of Salisbury, or the Philobiblon of Richard Aungerville of Bury. In this little volume, written about 1343, I have counted five instances of single Greek words. And, what is more important, Aungerville declares that he had caused Greek and Hebrew grammars to be drawn up for students.[220] But we have no other record of such grammars. It would be natural to infer from this passage, that some persons, either in France or England, were occupied in the study of the Greek language. And yet we find nothing to corroborate this presumption; all ancient learning was neglected in the fourteenth century; nor do I know that one man on this side of the Alps, except Aungerville himself, is reputed to have been versed in Greek during that period. I cannot speak positively as to Berchœur, the most learned man in France. The council of Vienne, indeed, in 1311, had ordered the establishment of professors in the Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Arabic languages, at Avignon, and in the universities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca. But this decree remained a dead letter.

[220] C. x.

|Some traces of Greek in Italy.|

12. If we now turn to Italy, we shall find, as is not wonderful, rather more frequent instances of acquaintance with a living language, in common use with a great neighbouring people. Gradenigo, in an essay on this subject,[221] has endeavoured to refute what he supposes to be the universal opinion, that the Greek tongue was first taught in Italy by Chrysoloras and Guarino at the end of the fourteenth century, contending that, from the eleventh inclusive, there are numerous instances of persons conversant with it; besides the evidence afforded by inscriptions in Greek characters found in some churches, by the use of Greek psalters and other liturgical offices, by the employment of Greek painters in churches, and by the frequent intercourse between the two countries. The latter presumptions have in fact considerable weight; and those who should contend for an absolute ignorance of the Greek language, oral as well as written, in Italy, would go too far. The particular instances brought forward by Gradenigo are about thirty. Of these, the first is Papias, who has quoted five lines of Hesiod.[222] Lanfranc had also a considerable acquaintance with the language.[223] Peter Lombard, in his Liber Sententiarum, the systematic basis of scholastic theology, introduces many Greek words, and explains them rightly.[224] But this list is not very long; and when we find the surname Bifarius given to one Ambrose of Bergamo in the eleventh century, on account of his capacity of speaking both languages, it may be conceived that the accomplishment was somewhat rare. Mehus, in his very learned life of Traversari, has mentioned two or three names, among whom is the Emperor Frederic II. (not indeed strictly an Italian), that do not appear in Gradenigo.[225] But Tiraboschi conceives, on the other hand, that the latter has inserted some on insufficient grounds. Christine of Pisa is mentioned, I think, by neither; she was the daughter of an Italian astronomer, but lived at the court of Charles V. of France, and was the most accomplished literary lady of that age.[226]

[221] Ragionamento istorico-critico opra la litteratura Greco-Italiana.
Brescia, 1759.

[222] P. 37. These are very corruptly given, through the fault of a
transcriber; for Papias has translated them into tolerable Latin
verse.

[223] Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 144.

[224] Meiners, iii. 11.

[225] Pp. 155, 217, &c. Add to these authorities, Muratori, dissert.
44; Brucker, iii. 644, 647; Tiraboschi, v. 393.

[226] Tiraboschi, v. 388, vouches for Christine’s knowledge of Greek.
She was a good poetess in French, and altogether a very remarkable
person.

|Corruption of Greek language itself.|

13. The intercourse between Greece and the west of Europe, occasioned by commerce and by the crusades, had little or no influence upon literature. For, besides the general indifference to it in those classes of society which were thus brought into some degree of contact with the Eastern Empire, we must remember that, although Greek, even to the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II., was a living language in that city, spoken by the superior ranks of both sexes with tolerable purity, it had degenerated among the common people, and almost universally among the inhabitants of the provinces and islands, into that corrupt form, or rather new language, which we call Romaic.[227] The progress of this innovation went on by steps very similar to those by which the Latin was transformed in the West, though it was not so rapid or complete. A manuscript of the twelfth century, quoted by Du Cange from the royal library at Paris, appears to be the oldest written specimen of the modern Greek that has been produced; but the oral change had been gradually going forward for several preceding centuries.[228]

[227] Filelfo says, in one of his epistles, dated 1441, that the
language spoken in Peloponnesus “ad eo est depravata, ut nihil
omnino sapiat priscæ ilius et eloquentissimo Græciæ.” At
Constantinople the case was better; “viri eruditi sunt nonnulli, et
culti mores, et sermo etiam nitidus.” In a letter of Coluccio
Salutato, near the end of the fourteenth century, he says that
Plutarch had been translated de Græco in Græcum vulgare. Mehus, p.
294. This seems to have been done at Rhodes. I quote this to remove
any difficulty others may feel, for I believe the Romaic Greek is
much older. The progress of corruption in Greek is sketched in the
Quarterly Review, vol. xxii., probably by the pen of the Bishop of
London. Its symptoms were very similar to those of Latin in the
West; abbreviation of words, and indifference to right inflexions.
See also Col. Leake’s Researches in the Morea. Eustathius has many
Romaic words; yet no one in the twelfth century had more learning.

[228] Du Cange, præfatio in Glossarium mediæ et infimæ Græcitatis.

|Character of Byzantine literature.|

14. The Byzantine literature was chiefly valuable by illustrating, or preserving in fragments, the historians, philosophers, and, in some measure, the poets of antiquity. Constantinople and her empire produced abundantly men of erudition, but few of genius or of taste. But this erudition was now rapidly on the decline. No one was left in Greece, according to Petrarch, after the death of Leontius Pilatus, who understood Homer; words not, perhaps, to be literally taken, but expressive of what he conceived to be their general indifference to the poet: and it seems very probable that some ancient authors, whom we should most desire to recover, especially the lyric poets of the Doric and Æolic dialects, have perished, because they had become unintelligible to the transcribers of the lower empire; though this has also been ascribed to the scrupulousness of the clergy. An absorbing fondness for theological subtleties, far more trifling among the Greeks than in the schools of the west, conspired to produce a neglect of studies so remote as heathen poetry. Aurispa tells Ambrogio Traversari, that he found they cared little about profane literature. Nor had the Greek learning ever recovered the blow that the capture of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204, and the establishment for sixty years of a Latin and illiterate dynasty, inflicted upon it.[229] We trace many classical authors to that period, of whom we know nothing later, and the compilations of ancient history by industrious Byzantines came to an end. Meantime the language, where best preserved, had long lost the delicacy and precision of its syntax; the true meaning of the tenses, moods, and voices of the verb was overlooked or guessed at; a kind of latinism, or something at least not ancient in structure and rhythm, shows itself in their poetry; and this imperfect knowledge of their once beautiful language is unfortunately too manifest in the grammars of the Greek exiles of the fifteenth century, which have so long been the groundwork of classical education in Europe.

[229] An enumeration, and it is a long one, of the Greek books not
wholly lost till this time will be found in Heeren, p. 125; and
also in his Essai sur les Croisades.

|Petrarch and Boccace learn Greek.|

15. We now come to the proper period of the restoration of Greek learning. In the year 1339, Barlaam, a Calabrian by birth, but long resident in Greece, and deemed one of the most learned men of that age, was entrusted by the emperor Cantacuzenus with a mission to Italy.[230] Petrarch, in 1342, as Tiraboschi fixes the time, endeavoured to learn Greek from him, but found the task too arduous, or rather, had not sufficient opportunity to go on with it.[231] Boccaccio, some years afterwards, succeeded better with the help of Leontius Pilatus, a Calabrian also by birth,[232] who made a prose translation of Homer for his use, and for whom he is said to have procured a public appointment as teacher of the Greek language at Florence, in 1361. He remained here about three years; but we read nothing of any other disciples; and the man himself was of too unsocial and forbidding a temper to conciliate them.[233]

[230] Mehus. Tiraboschi, v. 398. De Sade, i. 406. Biog. Univ., Barlaam.

[231] Incubueram alacri spe magnoque desiderio, sed peregrinan linguæ
novitas et festina præceptoris absentia præciderunt propositum
meum. It has been said, and probably with some truth, that Greek,
or at least a sort of Greek, was preserved as a living language in
Calabria; not because Greek colonies had once been settled in some
cities, but because that part of Italy was not lost to the
Byzantine empire till about three centuries before the time of
Barlaam and Pilatus. They, however, had gone to a better source;
and I should have great doubts as to the goodness of Calabrian
Greek in the fourteenth century, which of course are not removed by
the circumstance that in some places the church service was
performed in that language. Heeren, I find, is of the same opinion,
p. 287.

[232] Many have taken Pilatus for a native of Thessalonica: even Hody
has fallen into this mistake, but Petrarch’s letters show the
contrary.

[233] Hody. De Græcis Illustribus, p. 2. Mehus, 273. De Sade, iii. 625.
Gibbon has erroneously supposed this translation to have been made
by Boccace himself.

|Few acquainted with the language in their time.|

16. According to a passage in one of Petrarch’s letters, fancifully addressed to Homer, there were at that time not above ten persons in Italy who knew how to value the old father of the poets; five at the most in Florence, one in Bologna, two in Verona, one in Mantua, one in Perugia, but none at Rome.[234] Some pains have been thrown away in attempting to retrieve the names of those to whom he alludes: the letter shows at least, that there was very little pretension to Greek learning in his age; for I am not convinced that he meant all these ten persons, among whom he seems to reckon himself, to be considered as skilled in that tongue. And we must not be led away by the instances partially collected by Gradenigo out of the whole mass of extant records, to lose sight of the great general fact, that Greek literature was lost in Italy for 700 years, in the words of Leonard Aretin, before the arrival of Chrysoloras. The language is one thing, and the learning contained in it is another. For all the purposes of taste and erudition, there was no Greek in western Europe during the middle ages: if we look only at the knowledge of bare words, we have seen there was a very slender portion.

[234] De Sade, iii. 627. Tiraboschi, v. 371, 400. Heeren, 294.

|It is taught by Chrysoloras about 1395|.

|His disciples.|

17. The true epoch of the revival of Greek literature in Italy, these attempts of Petrarch and Boccace having produced no immediate effect, though they evidently must have excited a desire for learning, cannot be placed before the year 1395,[235] when Emanuel Chrysoloras, previously known as an ambassador from Constantinople to the western powers, in order to solicit assistance against the Turks, was induced to return to Florence as public teacher of Greek. He passed from thence to various Italian universities, and became the preceptor of several early Hellenists.[236] The first, and perhaps the most eminent and useful of these, was Guarino Guarini of Verona, born in 1370. He acquired his knowledge of Greek under Chrysoloras at Constantinople, before the arrival of the latter in Italy. Gaurino, upon his return, became professor of rhetoric, first at Venice and other cities of Lombardy, then at Florence, and ultimately at Ferrara, where he closed a long life of unremitting and useful labour in 1460. John Aurispa of Sicily came to the field rather later, but his labours were not less profitable. He brought back to Italy 238 manuscripts from Greece about 1423, and thus put his country in possession of authors hardly known to her by name. Among these were Plato, Plotinus, Diodorus, Arrian, Dio Cassius, Strabo, Pindar, Callimachus, Appian. After teaching Greek at Bologna and Florence, Aurispa also ended a length of days under the patronage of the house of Este, at Ferrara. To these may be added, in the list of public instructors in Greek before 1440, Filelfo, a man still more known by his virulent disputes with his contemporaries than by his learning; who, returning from Greece in 1427, laden with manuscripts, was not long afterwards appointed to the chair of rhetoric, that is, of Latin and Greek philology, at Florence; and, according to his own account, excited the admiration of the whole city.[237] But his vanity was excessive, and his contempt of others not less so. Poggio was one of his enemies; and their language towards each other is a noble specimen of the decency with which literary and personal quarrels were carried on.[238] It has been observed, that Gianozzo Manetti, a contemporary scholar, is less known than others, chiefly because the mildness of his character spared him the altercations to which they owe a part of their celebrity.[239]

[235] This is the date fixed by Tiraboschi; others refer it to 1391,
1396, 1397, or 1399.

[236] Literæ per hujus belli intercapedines mirabile quantum per Italiam
increvere; accedente tunc primum cognitione literarum Græcarum quæ
septingentis jam annis apud nostras homines desierant esse in usu.
Retulit autem Græcam disciplinam ad nos Chrysoloras Byzantinus, vir
domi nobilis ac literarum Græcarum peritissimus. Leonard Aretin
apud Hody, p. 28. See also an extract from Manetti’s Life of
Boccace, in Hody, p. 61.

Satis constat Chrysoloram Byzantinum transmarinam illam disciplinam
in Italiam advexisse; quo doctore adhibito primum nostri homines
totius exercitationis atque artis ignari, cognitis Græcis literis,
vehementer sese ad eloquentiæ studia excitaverunt. P. Cortesius, De
Hominibus Doctis, p. 6.

The first visit of Chrysoloras had produced an inclination towards
the study of Greek. Coluccio Salutato, in a letter to Demetrius
Cydonius, who had accompanied Chrysoloras, says, Multorum animos ad
linguam Helladum accendisti, ut jam videre videar multos fore
Græcarum literarum post paucorum annorum curricula non tepide
studiosos. Mehus, p. 356.

The Erotemata of Chrysoloras, an introduction to Greek grammar, was
the first, and long the only, channel to a knowledge of that
language, save oral instruction. It was several times printed, even
after the grammars of Gaza and Lascaris had come more into use. An
abridgment by Guarino of Verona, with some additions of his own,
was printed at Ferrara in 1509. Ginguéné, iii. 283.

[237] Universa in me civitas conversa est; omnes me diligunt, honorant
omnes, ac summis laudibus in cœlum efferunt. Meum nomen in ore est
omnibus. Nec primarii cives modo, cum per urbem incedo, sed
nobilissimæ fœminæ honorandi mei gratiâ loco cedunt, tantumque mihi
deferunt, ut me pudeat tanti cultus. Auditores sunt quotidie ad
quadringentos, vel fortassis et amplius; et hi quidem magna in
parte viri grandiores et ex ordine senatorio. Phililph. Epist. ad
ann. 1428.

[238] Shepherd’s Life of Poggio, ch. vi. and viii.

[239] Hody was perhaps the first who threw much light on the early
studies of Greek in Italy; and his book, De Græcis Illustribus,
Linguæ Græcæ Instauratoribus, will be read with pleasure and
advantage by every lover of literature; though Mehus, who came with
more exuberant erudition to the subject, has pointed out a few
errors. But more is to be found as to its native cultivators, Hody
being chiefly concerned with the Greek refugees, in Bayle,
Fabricius, Niceron, Mehus, Zeno, Tiraboschi, Meiners, Roscoe,
Heeren, Shepherd, Corniani, Ginguéné, and the Biographie
Universelle, whom I name in chronological order.

As it is impossible to dwell on the subject within the limits of
these pages, I will refer the reader to the most useful of the
above writings, some of which, being merely biographical
collections, do not give the connected information he would
require. The lives of Poggio and of Lorenzo de’ Medici will make
him familiar with the literary history of Italy for the whole
fifteenth century, in combination with public events, as it is best
learned. I need not say that Tiraboschi is a source of vast
knowledge to those who can encounter two quarto volumes. Ginguéné’s
third volume is chiefly borrowed from these, and may be read with
great advantage. Finally, a clear, full, and accurate account of
those times will be found in Heeren. It will be understood that all
these works relate to the revival of Latin as well as Greek.

|Translations from Greek into Latin.|

18. Many of these cultivators of the Greek language devoted their leisure to translating the manuscripts brought into Italy. The earliest of these were Peter Paul Vergerio (commonly called the elder, to distinguish him from a more celebrated man of the same names in the sixteenth century), a scholar of Chrysoloras, but not till he was rather advanced in years. He made, by order of the emperor Sigismund, and, therefore, not earlier than 1410, a translation of Arrian, which is said to exist in the Vatican library; but we know little of its merits.[240] A more renowned person was Ambrogio Traversari, a Florentine monk of the order of Camaldoli, who employed many years in this useful labour. No one of that age has left a more respectable name for private worth; his epistles breathe a spirit of virtue, of kindness to his friends, and of zeal for learning. In the opinion of his contemporaries, he was placed, not quite justly, on a level with Leonard Aretin for his knowledge of Latin, and he surpassed him in Greek.[241] Yet neither his translations, nor those of his contemporaries, Guarino of Verona, Poggio, Leonardo Aretino, Filelfo, who with several others, rather before 1440, or not long afterwards, rendered the historians and philosophers of Greece familiar to Italy, can be extolled as correct, or as displaying what is truly to be called a knowledge of either language. Vossius, Casaubon, and Huet speak with much dispraise of most of these early translations from Greek into Latin. The Italians knew not enough of the original, and the Greeks were not masters enough of Latin. Gaza, upon the whole, than whom no one is more successful, says Erasmus, whether he renders Greek into Latin, or Latin into Greek, is reckoned the most elegant, and Argyropulus the most exact. But George of Trebizond, Filelfo, Leonard Aretin, Poggio, Valla, Perotti, are rather severely dealt with by the sharp critics of later times.[242] For this reproach does not fall only on the scholars of the first generation, but on their successors, except Politian, down nearly to the close of the fifteenth century. Yet, though it is necessary to point out the deficiencies of classical erudition at this time, lest the reader should hastily conclude, that the praises bestowed upon it are less relative to the previous state of ignorance, and the difficulties with which that generation had to labour, than they really are, this cannot affect our admiration and gratitude towards men who, by their diligence and ardour in acquiring and communicating knowledge, excited that thirst for improvement, and laid those foundations of it, which rendered the ensuing age so glorious in the annals of literature.

[240] Biogr. Univ., Vergerio. He seems to have written very good Latin,
if we may judge by the extracts in Corniani, ii. 61.

[241] The Hodopœricon of Traversari, though not of importance as a
literary work, serves to prove, according to Bayle (Camaldoli, note
D), that the author was an honest man, and that he lived in a very
corrupt age. It is an account of the visitation of some convents
belonging to his order. The life of Ambrogio Traversari has been
written by Mehus very copiously, and with abundant knowledge of the
times: it is a great source of the literary history of Italy. There
is a pretty good account of him in Niceron, vol. xix., and a short
one in Roscoe; but the fullest biography of the man himself will be
found in Meiners, Lebenbeschreibungen berühmter Männer, vol. ii.
pp. 222-307.

[242] Baillet, Jugemens des Savans, ii. 376, &c. Blount, Censura
Auctorum, in nominibus nuncupatis. Hody, sæpies. Niceron, vol. ix.
in Perotti. See also a letter of Erasmus in Jortin’s Life, ii. 425.

Filelfo tells us of a perplexity into which Ambrogio Traversari and
Carlo Marsuppini, perhaps the two principal Greek scholars in Italy
after himself and Guarino, were thrown by this line of Homer:--

Βούλομ᾽ ἐγὼ λαὸν σόον ἔμμεναι, ἢ ἀπόλεσθαι.
[Boulom egô laon soon emmenai, ê apolesthai.]

The first thought it meant populum aut salvum esse aut perire;
which Filelfo justly calls, inepta interpretatio et prava.
Marsuppini said ἢ ἀπόλεσθαι [ê apolesthai] was, aut ipsum perire.
Filelfo, after exulting over them, gives the true meaning.
Philelph. Epist. ad ann. 1440.

Traversari complains much, in one of his letters, of the difficulty
he found in translating Diogenes Laertius, lib. vii. epis. ii.; but
Meiners, though admitting many errors, thinks this one of the best
among the early translations, ii. 290.

|Public encouragement delayed.|

19. They did not uniformly find any great public encouragement in the early stages of their teaching. On the contrary, Aurispa met with some opposition to philological literature at Bologna.[243] The civilians and philosophers were pleased to treat the innovators as men who wanted to set showy against solid learning. Nor was the state of Italy and of the papacy, during the long schism, very favourable to their object. Ginguéné remarks, that patronage was more indispensable in the fifteenth century than it had been in the last. Dante and Petrarch shone out by a paramount force of genius, but the men of learning required the encouragement of power, in order to excite and sustain their industry.

[243] Tiraboschi, vii. 301.

|But fully accorded before 1440.|

20. That encouragement, however it may have been delayed, had been accorded before the year 1440. Eugenius IV. was the Pope who displayed an inclination to favour the learned. They found a still more liberal patron in Alphonso, king of Naples, who, first of all European princes, established the interchange of praise and pension, both, however, well deserved, with Filelfo, Poggio, Valla, Beccatelli, and other eminent men. This seems to have begun before 1440, though it was more conspicuous afterwards until his death in 1458. The earliest literary academy was established at Naples by Alphonso, of which Antonio Beccatelli, more often called Panormita, from his birthplace, was the first president, as Pontana was the second. Nicolas of Este, marquis of Ferrara, received literary men in his hospitable court. But none were so celebrated or useful in this patronage of letters as Cosmo de’ Medici, the Pericles of Florence, who, at the period with which we are now concerned, was surrounded by Traversari, Niccolo Niccolì, Leonardo Aretino, Poggio; all ardent to retrieve the treasures of Greek and Roman learning. Filelfo alone, malignant and irascible, stood aloof from the Medicean party, and poured his venom in libels on Cosmo and the chief of his learned associates. Niccolì, a wealthy citizen of Florence, deserves to be remembered among these; not for his writings,--since he left none; but on account of his care for the good instruction of youth, which has made Meiners call him the Florentine Socrates, and for his liberality as well as diligence in collecting books and monuments of antiquity. The public library of St. Mark was founded on a bequest by Niccolì, in 1437, of his own collection of eight hundred manuscripts. It was, too, at his instigation, as has been said, and that of Traversari, that Cosmo himself, about this time, laid the foundation of that which, under his grandson, acquired the name of the Laurentian library.[244]

[244] I refer to the same authorities, but especially to the life of
Traversari in Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen, ii. 294. The suffrages
of older authors are collected by Baillet and Blount.

|Emigration of learned Greeks to Italy.|

21. As the dangers of the eastern empire grew more imminent, a few that had still endeavoured to preserve in Greece the purity of their language, and the speculations of ancient philosophy, turned their eyes towards a haven that seemed to solicit the glory of protecting them. The first of these, that is well known, was Theodore Gaza, who fled from his birthplace, Thessalonica, when it fell under the Turkish yoke in 1430. He rapidly acquired the Latin language by the help of Victorin of Feltre.[245] Gaza became afterwards, but not, perhaps, within the period to which this chapter is limited, rector of the university of Ferrara. In this city, Eugenius IV. held a council in 1438, removed next year, on account of sickness, to Florence, in order to reconcile the Greek and Latin churches. Though it is well known that the appearances of success which attended this hard bargain of the strong with the weak were very fallacious, the presence of several Greeks, skilled in their own language, and even in their ancient philosophy, Pletho, Bessarion, Gaza, stimulated the noble love of truth and science that burned in the bosoms of enlightened Italians. Thus, in 1440, the spirit of ancient learning was already diffused on that side the Alps: the Greek language might be learned in at least four or five cities, and an acquaintance with it was a recommendation to the favour of the great; while the establishment of universities at Pavia, Turin, Ferrara, and Florence, since the beginning of the present century, or near the close of the last, bore witness to the generous emulation which they served to redouble and concentrate.

[245] Victorin perhaps exchanged instruction with his pupil; for we
find by a letter of Traversari (p. 421, edit. Mehus), that he was
himself teaching Greek in 1433.

|Causes of enthusiasm for antiquity in Italy.|

22. It is an interesting question, What were the causes of this enthusiasm for antiquity which we find in the beginning of the fifteenth century?--a burst of public feeling that seems rather sudden, but prepared by several circumstances that lie farther back in Italian history. The Italians had for some generations learned more to identify themselves with the great people that had subdued the world. The fall of the house of Swabia, releasing their necks from a foreign yoke, had given them a prouder sense of nationality; while the name of Roman emperor was systematically associated by one party with ancient tradition; and the study of the civil law, barbarously ignorant as its professors often were, had at least the effect of keeping alive a mysterious veneration for antiquity. The monuments of ancient Italy were perpetual witnesses; their inscriptions were read; it was enough that a few men like Petrarch should animate the rest; it was enough that learning should become honourable, and that there should be the means of acquiring it. The story of Rienzi, familiar to every one, is a proof what enthusiasm could be kindled by ancient recollections. Meantime the laity became better instructed; a mixed race, ecclesiastics, but not priests, and capable alike of enjoying the benefices of the church, or of returning from it to the world, were more prone to literary than theological pursuits. The religious scruples which had restrained churchmen, in the darker ages, from perusing heathen writers, by degrees gave way, as the spirit of religion itself grew more objective, and directed itself more towards maintaining the outward church in its orthodoxy of profession, and in its secular power, than towards cultivating devout sentiments in the bosom.

|Advanced state of society.|