During this century, two events of the highest importance to art and learning took place—the introduction of the knowledge of Greek and the invention of printing.
CAXTON SHOWING THE FIRST SPECIMEN OF HIS PRINTING TO KING EDWARD IV., AT THE ALMONRY, WESTMINSTER.
After the Painting by Daniel Maclise, R.A.
If the knowledge of Greek had not entirely died out in western Europe, it had nearly so till this century. The crusades, leading the Christians of western Europe to the east, had opened up an acquaintance betwixt the people of the Greek empire and those of the West. The destruction of that empire in this century drove a number of learned men into Italy, where they taught their language and literature. Amongst these were Theodore Gaza, Cardinal Bessarion, George of Trebizond, Demetrius Chalcondyles, John Argyropulus, and Johannes Lascaris. Before that time some knowledge of the Greek philosophy had reached us through the Arabians, but till the fourteenth century very little of the literature of Greece was known in the western nations, not even the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" of Homer. In Italy Petrarch and Boccaccio learned the language and studied the writings of Greece, and an enthusiasm for Greek literature spread over all Europe. Grocyn studied it in Italy in 1488, under Chalcondyles, and came and taught it in England.
FACSIMILE OF CAXTON'S PRINTING IN THE "DICTES AND SAYINGS OF PHILOSOPHERS" (1477).
At the same moment that Greek began to be studied, Latin in Europe was in the lowest and most degraded state. Though it still continued the language of divines, lawyers, philosophers, historians, and even poets, it had lost almost every trace of its original idiom and elegance. Latin words were used, but in the English order, and where words were wanting, they Anglicised them.
