Christian Schools and Scholars / or, Sketches of Education from the Christian Era to the Council of Trent

by Augusta Theodosia Drane

To his other vices Filelfo added that of a grasping avarice: he was continually appealing to the different princes of Italy for larger money advances, and loading them with abuse if they did not satisfy his demands. He threatened Pius II. to turn Turk, if the pension granted by that Pontiff were not more regularly paid; and his contemporary scholars continually complained that, after promising them books, he would afterwards withdraw from his bargain, and demand back again from them what was not really his own property. But, in candour, it must be confessed that, in this last-named matter, Filelfo appears to have been more sinned against than sinning. A very bad habit prevailed at that time among literary men of borrowing books and never returning them. Francesco Barbaro is accused of keeping a chest of Filelfo’s books for thirty years; and similar peccadilloes are charged to the account of Aurispa and Giustiniani. Possibly, observes Tiraboschi, they regarded book thefts in the same light as monks had been used occasionally to regard the pilfering of holy relics. Anyhow, the injury was sensibly felt by the unfortunate owner, and did not improve the asperity of his temper.

Whatever infamy attaches to the character of Filelfo, he met with his match in one of the literary rivals whom he encountered at Florence. Poggio Bracciolini had received his education in his native city, and to a perfect knowledge of Latin and Greek literature added the rarer merit of being a good Hebrew scholar. For thirty-four years of his life he held the office of apostolic secretary under successive Pontiffs, and during all that time he never spent an entire year in any one city. He was present in his official capacity at the Council of Constance, and to while away the hours that hung heavy on his hands, made an excursion to the neighbouring abbey of St. Gall, and disinterred from a damp tower the mouldering manuscript of Quinctilian’s “Institutes.” From thence he passed over to England to pursue his researches in the monastic libraries of this country, but declares that they were full of nothing but “modern doctors, whom we should not think worthy so much as to be heard.” By his discoveries of classic authors, and his own critical and historical writings, he contributed more than any other scholar of his time to the revival of learning, so that some writers have gone so far as to confer on the first half of the fifteenth century the title of “the age of Poggio.” But his glory was sadly clouded by the furious quarrels in which he engaged with all his contemporaries, and the foul and disgraceful language which he poured out against every one who was unhappy enough to come into collision with him. Among the works of this great champion of classic Latinity are four “Invectives” against Filelfo, and five against Lorenzo Valla. The latter were written in revenge for certain criticisms which Valla had published of his Epistles, and are, says Tiraboschi, “a disgraceful monument to the memory of a writer who observes neither rule nor measure, but defiles his pen with every hideous abomination which malice could suggest against his adversaries.” Valla, who was a scholar of precisely the same temper, replied in his “Antidotes to Poggio,” and Filelfo in his “Satires”—all of which are said to be conceived in the same rabid and malignant strain. Nor was it only against such men as these that Poggio directed his venom. Guarino was made the subject of another ferocious onslaught, for no worse misdemeanour than having differed from Poggio in preferring the character of Cæsar to that of Scipio! George of Trebizond, a man of like temper to his own, was another of his opponents, and on one occasion the two disputants, after publicly giving each other the lie, came to blows, and were with difficulty separated by their hearers. And at last this detestable spirit grew on him to such a degree that, no longer content with attacking individuals, he published libels, if we may so say, on the literary world at large, and did his best in his “Dialogue against Hypocrites,” to slaughter the reputation of every man of virtue and celebrity in the world of letters, such as the Blessed John Dominic, Ambrose Traversari, Cardinal Luca Manzuoli, and the entire Franciscan Order. With all this, Poggio probably held the first place among the scholars of his time, unless the superiority be given to his adversary, Lorenzo Valla, who is generally held to have surpassed him in grammatical erudition. Erasmus, indeed, treated the merits of Poggio very lightly. “Poggio was possessed of so little real learning,” he says, “that, even if his books were less full of abominations than they are, they would not repay perusal; as it is, were he even the most erudite of writers, all good men must regard him with horror.” Nor can a much better character be given to Valla; in arrogance and vanity he equalled Filelfo; and in his famous “Treatise on the Elegance of the Latin Tongue,” gave the world to understand that he was about to explain a language which before his time had been understood by none. “These books,” he says, “will contain nothing that has ever been said by anybody else. For many ages past, not only has no one been able to speak Latin, but none have understood the Latin they read, the philosophers have had no comprehension of the philosophers, the advocates of the orators, the lawyers of the jurists,” and so of the rest. This kind of self confidence is, however, so universal among scholars of the age as hardly to call for special notice; but it was the least fault of which Valla stands charged. Passing over grosser accusations brought against him by adversaries whose habits of calumny render their testimony of little value, there was a taint of ingratitude in Valla’s character which is particularly offensive. Having, in his “Declamation against the Donation of Constantine,” attacked the claims of the Holy See in terms which Hallam himself admits could not be excused, be retired from Rome, and found a warm welcome at the court of Naples. Here, however, he soon got involved in difficulties with the Inquisition, in consequence of certain impieties to which he gave utterance on the subject of the Holy Trinity and other fundamental dogmas of the faith. He was only released from prison through the friendly interference of Panormita. Yet as soon as he recovered his liberty he engaged in a furious quarrel with his benefactor, and spared no calumnies by which he could bring discredit on his name and character. He treated it as a crime for any one to differ from him in any point of taste and criticism, and punished all such transgressions by blackening the fair fame of his opponents. Nevertheless, he met with far gentler treatment than he deserved, for it was after he had established his renown as the best Latinist, and, next to Poggio, the most malignant calumniator of his day, that Nicholas V. invited him back to Rome, made him a canon of St. John Lateran, and employed him in numerous translations, all of which were liberally paid for. Valla accepted the dignities and the money offered him by the Pope, and took advantage of his favourable turn of fortune to complete that attack on the papal sovereignty which he had before left unfinished; and he did so in a style which, Hallam informs us, rather resembles the violence of Luther than what might have been expected from a Roman official of the fifteenth century. The clemency shown him by the Pope was perhaps excessive, for he was suffered to live at Rome unmolested, and retained the office and pension of apostolic secretary to the day of his death.

It must be owned that the portrait gallery through which we are passing, has thus far been anything but pleasing, nor can it be denied that in their main features of malice and presumption, most of the scholars of the age exhibit a family resemblance to those noted above. Hallam observes that the inferior renown enjoyed by Giannozzo Manetti, is probably owing to the greater mildness of his character, which involved him in fewer of those altercations to which Poggio and Valla owed a great part of their celebrity. And Tiraboschi apologises to his readers for leaving some portions of his history somewhat obscure, on the ground that the calumnies and misrepresentations indulged in by almost all writers of the period, render it nearly impossible to rely on any of their statements, and to accept as facts anything which they may say unfavourable of one another.

Some noble exceptions, however, are to be found, and among them may be quoted the example of Leonard Bruni, or, as he is more frequently styled from the place of his birth, Leonard Aretino. Whilst Chancellor of Florence he one day engaged in a public philosophic dispute with Giannozzo Manetti, in which the latter gained the advantage over him. Stung with annoyance, Leonard let fall some injurious words, to which, however, Giannozzo replied with his customary good temper, and both returned to their respective homes. But Leonard was so pursued by remorse for his fault that he could not close his eyes all night, and so soon as morning dawned, he hastened to the house of Giannozzo, who was greatly surprised to see the first magistrate of Florence at his door at such an early hour. Leonard, however, only bade him follow him into the city, and conducting him to the great bridge over the Arno, then the most frequented thoroughfare, he publicly asked his pardon, and acknowledged he had had no rest since he had spoken injuriously of so noble an adversary. Giannozzo received his apology with a modesty which was equally admirable, and the friendship which from that day sprung up between these two great men, remained unbroken to the death of Leonard, on which occasion the funeral oration was spoken over his body by Giannozzo.

From the scholars of Florence let us now turn to her Mecænas, the merchant prince, who, for thirty years, held the first rank in the Republic, and deserved to obtain from his grateful fellow citizens the title of “Father of his country.” Cosmo de’ Medici was beyond all question the greatest of his illustrious race. Machiavel calls him the most magnificent and most generous of men, and Flavio declares that he surpassed all his contemporaries in wisdom, humanity, and liberality. His political career seems to have been for the most part free from the vice of selfish ambition; whilst as a patron of letters, even in that age of splendid patrons, he had no equal. In Florence alone he founded three public libraries, expending 36,000 ducats on that of St. Mark’s, which he enriched with 400 Latin and Greek manuscripts, whilst he appointed as librarian Thomas di Sarzana, afterwards Pope Nicholas V. A few years later he rebuilt the library, and added a collection of Hebrew, Arabic, Sanscrit, and Chaldaic books, collected at enormous cost. His love of literature was so genuine, and so superior to the selfishness of a mere bibliopolist, that even when in temporary exile at Venice, he could not help opening his purse-strings in favour of the Venetian library of St. George, and employed his fellow exile, the architect Michelozzi, in providing it with reading benches and other conveniences, presenting it also with many books. It was his wish to draw to Florence all the learned men of the day. He it was who invited thither the Greek Professor Argyrophilus, to the end that he might instruct the Florentine youth in the philosophy of Aristotle. A vast number of Greek exiles received from him a princely welcome, to say nothing of the crowd of native scholars who thronged his palace. Pages might be filled with the mere enumeration of the convents, churches, and hospitals which he built or endowed, not merely at Florence, but even at Jerusalem, where he founded a large hospital for poor pilgrims. He had stewards and administrators in every part of Europe, who helped him to dispense his treasures on worthy objects. Yet with all this, his own establishment was always conducted on the most modest scale, and he who enriched scores of Florentine families, never assumed a more brilliant appearance than that of an ordinary citizen. His liberality was altogether free from ostentation, and appears to have flowed from the purest and most Christian motives. “Never yet,” he complained to one of his friends, “have I been able to spend in God’s honour the sums for which, when I look over my ledger, I find myself indebted to Him.”

It was in the year 1438, whilst Pope Eugenius IV. was residing at Florence, and the Council was still sitting which had for its object the extinction of the Greek schism, that a certain Greek, named George Gemistus, arrived in the city, and one day entered the palace of Cosmo with a copy of Plato under his arm. This celebrated scholar had received the surname of Pletho, in consequence of his enthusiastic admiration of the academic philosopher, and is more commonly known by this sobriquet than by his patronymic. Pletho, as we shall therefore call him, read a few pages of his book to the enraptured ears of Cosmo, and very soon communicated to him a portion of his own enthusiasm. Until then Cosmo had been a stranger to all save the Peripatetic philosophy, and the ideas which now presented themselves to his mind seemed like the opening of some new world. In his delight he conceived the plan of establishing a Platonic academy at Florence, a design which was put into execution without delay. Platonism, however, was then so new in the schools of the West, that Cosmo could find no professor who seemed capable of filling the chair of philosophy to be attached to this academy; and he resolved to educate for that purpose a child whose talents had already attracted his notice. Marsilius Ficinus was the son of his physician; his tiny frame and delicate constitution seemed incapable of making head against the host of maladies with which he had been beset from the cradle. But Cosmo’s quick eye discerned the indications of early genius. “This boy,” he said, “is destined to cure, not the maladies of the body, but those of the soul.”

With his customary bounty, he became a second father to his future professor, and under his direction, Ficinus received a thoroughly Platonic education. He was carefully reared in the maxims and philosophy of the great master, to the end that having early imbibed the principles of Platonism as a kind of second nature, he might be qualified afterwards to become the head preceptor of the new academy. The whole scheme had something visionary about it, and no less so was the character of the man chosen to carry it out. From his boyhood he was a poet and a dreamer. He loved to wander at early daybreak by the banks of the Arno, and recite aloud to the woods and the stream the verses of Virgil’s “Georgics.” Light and country air were his two necessaries; he seemed to live in the sunshine, and on those rare occasions when the fair sky of Florence was overspread with clouds, he could neither write nor study. His work as a composer was exclusively carried on in the early morning hours; then it was that his genius seemed to wake with the sunrise; and if he also spent long night hours over his manuscripts, he only then applied himself to the labour of revision. Cosmo gave him a little lamp, which was often found burning when daylight dawned in the east; he also provided him with books, and specially with manuscripts of Plato procured from Venice at an enormous cost, and to these Ficinus applied himself with such incessant application, that his health almost entirely gave way; in fact, his life seemed always hanging by a single thread, and was preserved only by such extraordinary precautions as are bestowed on some exotic plant. At the age of twenty-three, the young student considered himself ready to read to a learned assembly, presided over by Cosmo, the first pages of his “Platonic Institutions.” When the lecture was over, his patron smiled and gently shook his head. Ficinus understood the gesture, but was not discouraged; he prepared for a fresh course of studies, and placed himself under the historian Platina, more illustrious for his Greek erudition than for his orthodoxy, but the latter condition was not greatly cared for by the young Platonist. In a few months he found that he had made such rapid progress, that, remodelling his work, he submitted it to the judgment of Marcus Musurus, the Greek professor of Venice, and the first editor of Aristophanes. He found Musurus sitting at his writing-table, and having engaged him to give an impartial opinion, began the reading of his manuscript. As the professor listened, he amused himself with turning over the various implements before him. Ficinus at last paused, and asked him what he thought of it.

“I think this,” said Musurus, and taking the ink bottle, he shook it over the open manuscript as if it had been sand. Ficinus betrayed no impatience, which is saying something for his philosophy; and retiring to the country house which Cosmo had presented to him, devoted himself to the task of a third revision. Before it was completed his great patron died leaving his son Pietro and his grandson Lorenzo de Medici to succeed him in his pre-eminence, both in the literary and political world. Pietro and Lorenzo showed themselves as eager to encourage the Platonic academy as its first founder had been; and their enthusiasm was shared by their contemporaries. All the scholars of Italy aspired to the honour of membership; Landino, Alberti, and John Picus of Mirandola, these met together, and contended for the silver laurel wreath, which was the prize of merit; and one of Pietro’s first acts was to establish a professorship, the chair of which was immediately bestowed on Ficinus. In the meetings of this academy the honours bestowed on Plato came very near to idolatry. Its festivals were the anniversaries of his birth and death, a lamp was burnt in his honour, and the professor, in lecturing to his fellow academicians, addressed them, not as “my brethren in Christ,” but as “my brethren in Plato.” It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Ficinus did not rest content with his professor’s chair and his academic reputation. In such a position his Platonic enthusiasm might have been productive of little injury, but at the age of forty-two he entered the priesthood, became canon of Florence, and took up the study of theology. Plato, however, was not laid aside for St. Paul. On whatever subject he wrote or spoke, says Tiraboschi, he seemed unable to refrain from tinging it with the doctrines of the academy. Gemistus, his first master, had been an avowed disciple of the Alexandrian school, and in the furious controversy then raging between the Platonists and the Aristotelians, had highly lauded not only the writings of the Greek philosopher, but those of Hermes and Zoroaster. In fact, as Hallam cautiously expresses it, “there were some grounds for ascribing to him a rejection of Christianity.” Ficinus cannot be charged with similar scepticism, though his lectures seem to have sown the seeds of religious doubt in the minds of some of his hearers. He believed the Gospels, but they were the Gospels Platonised. He went so far as to desire that his favourite author should be read in the Christian churches, and published eighteen books of what he called “Platonic Theology.” Hallam calls this work “a beautiful, but visionary and hypothetical system of Theism.” He did not attack the Christian dogmas, but he treated them as a philosopher rather than as a theologian. He was not content with gathering up and giving to the world the profound maxims of his illustrious master; but he undertook to harmonise the teaching of Plato and the teaching of Scripture, and attempted to prove that all the most prominent Christian mysteries were to be found in the Criton, which he regarded almost as a second Gospel.[308]

The extravagances in which Ficinus indulged were equally maintained in other learned academies. That which flourished at Rome under the direction of Pomponius Lœtus drew on its members the hostility of Paul II., who has been repeatedly charged with “persecuting the learned,” out of that natural antipathy to learning, of which Popes and cardinals are sometimes imagined to possess a kind of monopoly. The historian who originated the charge, however, is no other than Platina, the former master of Ficinus, whom Paul II. had made an enemy by suppressing the college of the Abbreviatori to which he belonged. He was himself a member of the Roman academy, the suppression of which has been differently related by different historians, but it appears certain that the alleged crime of the members was, not their learning, but a real or supposed plot against the Government and certain impious and anti-Christian tenets which they were reported to hold. Tiraboschi considers that their innocence of the charges brought against them may be deduced from the fact that, after a year’s imprisonment, they were all set at liberty, and that Platina in particular was afterwards honourably employed by Sixtus IV., who made him librarian of the Vatican Library. Possibly the impieties of which they were guilty might rather have sprung from the foolish conceit of pedants than any positive unbelief; yet still it must be owned that some of their acts had a suspicious character, and could not but have appeared reprehensible in the eyes of the Pontiff. Michael Canensius declares they were wont to affirm that the Christian religion rested on no sufficient evidence, but only on the testimony of a few weak-headed saints: that they laid aside the use of their Christian names, and adopted others chosen from the great heathens of antiquity; that they were in the habit of swearing by the heathen gods and goddesses; that they disputed concerning the immortality of the soul, and maintained many Platonic errors, that Pomponius disdained the Scriptures, and was wont to say that Christianity was only fit for barbarians, and that, in his enthusiasm for ancient Rome, he even raised and decorated altars to the god Romulus. Some of these charges the accused did not deny; but though examined under the torture, it does not seem that anything transpired which offered satisfactory proofs of the existence of a conspiracy.[309] Paul contented himself, therefore, with suppressing the academy, and thereby earned for himself immense obloquy, and the character of being an enemy of letters; a most undeserved reproach, for, besides maintaining a number of poor scholars in his palace, and being an eager collector of ancient manuscripts and monuments, his biographer tells us that he was accustomed to spend many hours of the night reading the ancient authors, and “that he loved all learned men, provided that to their learning were joined good manners.” This last condition was not always thought equally essential by patrons of letters of this period, who seem, as a general rule, to have cared but little what a man’s life was, provided he knew Greek. Filelfo, however, adds his testimony (which, in this instance, may perhaps be regarded as trustworthy), that Paul II. “was ever a favourer of learned men.”

We must not, however, suppose that the scholars of the Renaissance were exclusively made up of captious grammarians and philosophic sceptics. The movement had its fairer side; it was bewitching in its promise of literary excellence, and was not even devoid of its character of romance. Chivalry was not yet entirely extinct, and among the masters and scholars of the Italian schools some took up the cause of learning in a truly chivalrous spirit, and without a thought of self-interest, devoted themselves to study and teaching, as to a work by which they might benefit their kind. Their enthusiasm for their favourite pursuits appears sometimes in a more amiable character than that which it assumed in the hands of Poggio and his adversaries. Among the grammar professors enumerated by Tiraboschi we find the name of Piattino de’ Piatti, a noble youth brought up as a page in the household of Galeazzo Sforza, who for a very small offence caused him to be imprisoned for fifteen months in a frightful dungeon. We next find him figuring at a splendid tournament at the court of Ferrara, where he bore away the prize, and at the same time struck up an ardent friendship with the poet Strozza, who addressed some verses to him, praising him for knowing how to blend together the merits of the soldier and the scholar. For several years he bore arms under the Duke of Urbino, but his warlike occupations did not hinder him from cultivating the Muses, and he published a volume of Latin poems, which was one of the earliest works printed in Italy. Disappointed at not receiving the promotion he expected from the French kings Charles VIII. and Louis XII., he abandoned the profession of arms, and embraced that of schoolmaster in the little village of Garlasco, opening his humble academy with as much solemnity as if it had been a university, with a learned Latin oration. And we are assured that the number of good scholars then to be found in Italy was so great that many other villages besides Garlasco could boast of possessing as their schoolmasters first-rate professors of eloquence.