From this class of men the German professorships were chiefly recruited, and little foresight was needed to anticipate the consequences which must ensue when the work of education had passed into such hands. The state of the German universities during the century subsequent to the Lutheran revolution, has been described by the Protestant historian Menzel, from whom Rohrbacher has quoted some remarkable passages. “The colleges where the future ministers of the Lutheran religion spent six or seven years, were the abode of a ferocity and licentiousness from which our moral sensibility shrinks aghast. In the German schools and universities, the elder students obliged new-comers to go about in ragged garments, filled their mouths with ‘soup’ made of mud and broken bits of earthenware, compelled them to clean their boots and shoes, and by way of salary, to imitate the barking of dogs and the mewing of cats, and to lick up the filth from under the table. In vain did the princes endeavour to banish these savage customs; they held their ground in spite of ordinances and edicts.”[317] At the University of Jena, the younger students were robbed of their money, their clothes, and their books by their elder companions, and compelled to discharge the most disgraceful services. Those who had received what was called “absolution,” treated new-comers in the same way; and these outrages were often committed in the streets, and even in the churches during the preaching, when the poor victims were pulled and knocked about, and otherwise maltreated by their persecutors. And that no one might escape, a particular part of the church was devoted to the reception of “freshmen,” who were installed there with these edifying ceremonies. Hence, during the whole time of divine service, one incessant clamour went on, made up of the trampling, the cries, the murmurs, and coarse laughter of the combatants.
If such were the manners of the future pastors, those of their flocks may be imagined. Any one who tried to lead a good life, observes Menzel, was stigmatised as an enthusiast, a Schwenkfeldian, an Anabaptist, and a hypocrite; Luther’s dogma of justification by faith only having brought good works into actual discredit. It was dangerous at that time for a preacher to exhort his people to keep the commandments—as if they were able to do so—it was quite sufficient to render him a suspected person.[318] But we have no heart to dwell on this subject, or to realise the degradation of those old German dioceses and schools, the names of which are so linked in our hearts with the memory of St. Boniface and St. Wilibald, St. Bernward and St. Anscharius. So we will turn our back on Germany and seek on Catholic soil for some more consoling spectacle. We shall hardly find it in France: there, indeed, a revival of letters is going on, under the splendid patronage of Francis I.; and Budæus, the prodigy of his country, as Erasmus called him, is writing his learned treatise on Ancient Money, and persuading the king to found the College Royal. There perhaps the greatest scholar of his time, though known to posterity chiefly by his artistic fame, Leonardo da Vinci, is expiring at Fontainebleau in the arms of the king. But the French Renaissance school is mostly remarkable for its poets, by whom, indeed, the revival of letters was first set on foot. Much edification was not to be anticipated from a movement that reckoned as its originator Villon, whose verses were as infamous as his life, and who found a worthy successor in Clement Marot. The French kings, who by their Pragmatic Sanctions[319] had condemned the Papal provision of benefices as a crying abuse, used their royal patronage of the same as a convenient mode of rewarding Court poets. Thus Octavien de St. Gelais, the translator of Terence, obtained the bishopric of Angoulême from Charles VIII.; and his son, Melin de St. Gelais, surnamed the French Ovid, was rewarded by Francis I. for his “Epigrams” with an abbey. Ronsard, formally proclaimed “the Poet of France, par excellence,” who was born on the same day as the defeat of Pavia—as though (to make use of the king’s words) “Heaven would make up to France, by his birth, for the disgrace sustained by her arms”—who was the literary idol of his time, had statues erected to his honour, and silver images of the goddess Minerva presented to him by learned academies, to whom Elizabeth sent a rich diamond, and Mary Stuart presented a gilded model of Parnassus—the most appropriate present that could be offered to the new Apollo—Ronsard, the vainest of men, as he might well be, for assuredly he was the most flattered, died, literally overwhelmed under the weight of his laurels and his priories. I will not attempt the enumeration of his benefices, and perhaps he would hardly have undertaken the task himself, for the prince of poets enjoyed the revenues of half the royal monasteries of France. It would be unbecoming to notice any writer of less renown, after so very illustrious a personage, and the bare name of Rabelais will probably content most readers. These were the stars of the French Renaissance, well worthy of the monarch who patronised them, and the Court over which he presided. Warton has thought good to praise the enlightened wisdom which induced this prince to purge his Court from the monkish precision of old-fashioned times, and enliven it with a larger admixture of ladies’ society. There was certainly not much to be complained of on the score of precision in the coteries of Fontainebleau; yet it is curious that the fair dames who graced the royal circle were chosen by the grim disciples of Calvin as the likeliest agents for disseminating their views. The ladies of the Court of Francis I. were the first Huguenot apostles, and it was in this school that Anne Boleyn, in her quality of maid of honour to Queen Claude, acquired, together with her inimitable skill in dancing, that “gospel light” which, the poet informs us, first shone on England and her king “from Boleyn’s eyes.”
Let us rather direct our steps across the Pyrenees, and watch the erection of a Catholic university on the orthodox soil of Spain. Up to this time the education which prevailed in the peninsula appears to have been thoroughly of the old school. The Spanish universities had indeed some peculiarities arising from their proximity to the Moorish schools, and appear to have cultivated the geometrical sciences and the Eastern tongues more generally than was elsewhere the practice. But the prevailing tone was scholastic and ecclesiastical. The monasteries still maintained those public schools, which served as feeders to the universities, and in these a discipline was kept up differing very little from that of Fulda and St Gall. At Montserrat, peasants and nobles were received together, and each wore a little black habit, and, in church, a surplice. They sang every day at the Mass, and recited the Office of Our Lady, eating always in the refectory of the brethren, and sleeping in a common dormitory. Every month they went to confession, as well as on all festivals, and their studies were of the monastic stamp, with plenty of Latin and plain chant, and also instrumental music. A number of the bravest Spanish knights had their education in these monastery schools, and one of them, John of Cardonna, who commanded the galleys of Sicily, and relieved Malta when besieged by the Turks, chose as his patroness, in memory of his school days, Our Lady of Montserrat, and bore her banner into battle. He used to call himself Our Lady’s page, and said he valued the privilege of having been brought up in her house more than his rank as admiral.
But these are old-fashioned memories, and must give place to something more in accordance with the requirements of the age. The Renaissance was making its way even into the Spanish schools, and the literary movement had been fortunate enough to find a nursing mother in the person of Isabella the Catholic. German printers and Italian professors were invited into her kingdom, and Spanish students sent to gather up the treasures of learning in foreign academies. Among these was Antonio de Lebrija, whom Hallam calls the restorer of classical literature in Spain. Italian masters directed the education of the royal children, and from them the Princess Catherine, doomed to be the hapless Queen of Henry VIII., received those learned tastes which won the admiration of Erasmus. A Palatine school was attached to the Court, in imitation of that of Charlemagne, and was placed under the direction of Peter Martyr,[320] whose letters are filled with accounts of the noble pupils who thronged his school, won from frivolous pastimes by the charm of letters. In 1488 he appeared at Salamanca to deliver lectures on Juvenal, and writes word that the audience who came to hear him so blocked up the entrance to the hall, that he had to be carried to his place over the heads of the students, “like a victor in the Olympic games.” The rage for learning went on at such a pace that the proudest grandees of Castile thought it not beneath them to ascend the professor’s chair, and even noble ladies delivered lectures on classical learning in the halls of universities.[321] The queen’s noble encouragement of learning had been fostered by her confessor, F. Francis Ximenes; and when, in 1495, the Franciscan friar became Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain, one of his first thoughts was the erection of a model university, to which he resolved to devote the immense revenues of his see.
It has been said that seats of learning require the accessories of a fine air, and even the charms of natural scenery; and we might quote one of the most exquisite pieces of word-painting to be found in any language,[322] which is written to show the special gift enjoyed by Athens, rendering her worthy to be the capital of mind. It was the clear elastic air of Attica which communicated something of its own sunniness and elasticity to the intellect of her citizens, just as it imparted a golden colouring even to the marble dug out of that favoured soil. So it had been with Paris, the Athens of the Middle Ages, where students from the foggy shores of Britain conceived themselves endowed with some new faculty when relieved from the oppression of their native atmosphere. And even Louvain, though less favoured than these by nature, had been chosen in preference to other Flemish cities, chiefly on account of her purer air and her pleasant entourage of copses and meadows, with their abundant store of “corn, apples, sheep, oxen, and chirping birds.”
It is not surprising, therefore, that Ximenes, when seeking the fittest spot in which to plant his academy, took very gravely into consideration the question of scenery and climate. The clear atmosphere of Alcala, and the tranquil landscapes on the banks of the Henares, so soothing to the meditative eye, had their share in determining him to fix his foundation at the ancient Complutum. In its grammar schools he had made his early studies, and old boyish recollections attached him to the spot, the ancient traditions of which rendered it dear to Christian scholars.[323] There, then, in the year 1500 he laid the foundation of his first college, which he dedicated to his saintly predecessor, St. Ildefonsus. This was intended to be the head college of the university, to which all the others were in a manner to be subordinate. It consisted of thirty-three professors, in honour of the years of our Lord’s earthly life, and twelve priests or chaplains, in honour of the twelve Apostles. These latter had nothing to do with the education of the students, but were to recite the divine office in common, and carry out the rites of the Church with becoming solemnity. The professors, who were all to be theologians, were distinguished by their dress, a long red robe, which, being flung over their left shoulder, hung to the ground in large and graceful folds. The colleges of St. Balbina and St. Catherine were intended for students in philosophy, each containing forty-eight students. There was a small college, dedicated to Our Lady, for poor students in theology and medicine; and a larger one, used for the reception of the sick. The college of SS. Peter and Paul was exclusively for Franciscan scholars, corresponding in character to the monastic colleges or houses of study at Oxford. There were also two classical schools for young students, forty-two of whom received a free education for three years; these were severally dedicated to St. Eugenius and St. Isidore. And lastly, there was the college of St. Jerome for the three languages, in which ten scholars studied Latin, ten Greek, and ten Hebrew; a foundation which, as we have seen, formed the model on which the Collegium Trilingue at Louvain was afterwards established.[324] I will say nothing of the libraries, refectories, and chapels, all of which were finished with great splendour; and the whole city was restored and beautified, so as to make it more worthy of being the site of so magnificent a seat of learning. Other houses of study soon sprang up in connection with the different religious orders, all of which were anxious to secure for their members advantages which were nowhere else to be found in such abundance. For though Ximenes was a mighty builder, and thereby exposed himself to many bad puns from Court wits, who made much of the “edification” he gave when he superintended his workmen rule in hand, he certainly did not neglect the spiritual for the material building. Eight years after he had solemnly laid the foundation stone of his first college, the university was opened, and a brilliant staff of professors—in all forty-two in number—were gathered round the Cardinal primate to receive their respective offices from his hands. The government of the university was vested in the hands of a chancellor, rector, and senate. The system of graduation was copied from that of Paris, except that the theological degrees were given a pre-eminence over the others, and made both more honourable and more difficult to attain. The professorships were distributed as follows:—Six for theology; six for canon law; four for medicine; one, anatomy; one, surgery; nine, philosophy; one, mathematics; four, Greek and Hebrew; four, rhetoric; and six, grammar. There was no chair of civil law, as this faculty was excellently taught at the other Spanish universities, and Ximenes had no liking for it, and did not wish to introduce it at Alcala, probably fearing lest it might prevent that predominance of the theological faculty which he desired should be the characteristic of his university. Provision was made for the support of the aged and infirm professors; and on this point the Cardinal consulted his former colleague in the regency of Castile, Adrian of Utrecht, and established similar regulations to those which existed at Louvain. The system of studies and rule of college discipline were drawn up by himself, the former being in a great degree borrowed from that established at Paris. Frequent disputations and examinations quickened the application of the students, and at these Ximenes loved to preside, and encourage the emulation of his scholars with his presence. In the choice of his professors he considered nothing but the merit of the candidates, and set at nought all the narrowness of mere nationality. Spain was by this time, however, able to furnish humanists and philologists equal to those of Italy or Germany. And most of the first professors were of native birth. Among them was Antonio de Lebrija, and though he afterwards accepted a chair at Salamanca, yet he finally returned to Alcala, and rendered invaluable aid to Ximenes in the philological labours in which he was about to engage, and which shed an additional lustre over the new academy.
Ximenes had always manifested a peculiar predilection for the cultivation of Biblical literature. In his earlier years his love of the Holy Scriptures had induced him to devote himself to the study of Hebrew and Chaldaic, and he had often been heard to say that he would willingly give up all his knowledge of jurisprudence to be able to explain a single verse of the Bible. He considered a thorough revival of biblical studies the surest means of defeating the new heretics, and in the midst of Court engagements and political toils, he at length conceived the plan of his great Polyglot Bible, in which the sacred text was to appear in the four learned languages, after the most correct versions that could be obtained. This great work, which was to serve as the model for all subsequent attempts of a similar kind, was no sooner designed than he set about its execution, and secured the co-operation of a number of skilful scholars, fixing on Alcala as the scene of their labours. Immense sums were expended in obtaining Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldaic manuscripts; and in his dedication, Ximenes acknowledges the invaluable assistance which he received from Pope Leo X. The plan was exactly one sure to engage the sympathies of that generous Pontiff, who accordingly placed at his command all the treasures of the Vatican Library. The costly work when complete presented the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Greek version of the Septuagint, the Latin version of St. Jerome, and the Chaldaic paraphrase of the Pentateuch, together with certain letters, prefaces, and dissertations to assist the study of the Sacred Books. The work was commenced in 1502, and the last volume was published in 1517. The same energy which had succeeded, in the brief space of eight years, in raising a university which received the title of “the eighth wonder of the world,” was able, in fifteen years, to bring to a happy conclusion a literary undertaking which might well have occupied thrice that space of time. Ximenes, who felt his end approaching, desired to leave all his great works complete, and urged on his scholars with frequent admonitions on the shortness of human life. If they lost him as their patron, or if he were to lose their labours, the whole design might fall to the ground. On the 10th of July 1517 the last sheet of the great Complutensian Polyglot was printed, and the young son of the printer, Bocario, putting on his holiday garments, ran at once to present it to the Cardinal. Ximenes received it with a solemn emotion of gratitude and joy. “I thank Thee, O Lord Christ,” he said, “that Thou hast brought this work to a desired end.” It was as though he had been permitted this as his last earthly consolation, for four months later he closed his great and useful career, being in the eighty-second year of his age.
Louvain and Alcala, the two great Catholic creations of the age of the Renaissance, both fell under the hammer of Revolution. The memory of Ximenes has not prevailed to preserve his university from destruction at the hands of the Spanish Progressistas, and we can but hope that its restoration may be reserved for another generation. That of Louvain has been witnessed even in our own time. Swept away in 1797 by the decree of the French Republic, which at the same time suppressed all the great ecclesiastical seminaries, it was not restored by the Nassau sovereigns who, in 1814, became masters of the Catholic Netherlands. William of Holland, so far from showing his Catholic subjects any larger degree of favour than they had enjoyed under French rule, did his best to render their position worse than it had been under the Revolution. He put down all the little seminaries, and proposed to supply the place of the ancient university of Louvain by a grand royal philosophical college, through which all ecclesiastical students were to be compelled to pass before being received into the great seminaries. This was in the June of 1825; in the January of 1830 the determined resistance of the Belgian Catholics obliged him to suppress his college, which had proved a total failure. The August following witnessed the expulsion of his dynasty and the establishment of Belgian independence; events which were followed in 1834 by the erection at Louvain of a new university, in virtue of an Apostolic brief of Pope Gregory XVI.
Planted on the Belgian soil, which has so long and so successfully resisted the inroads of heresy, and which appears destined in our own day to become the battle-ground of a yet deadlier struggle with open unbelief, the Catholic university of Louvain has already merited to be declared by illustrious lips “the glory of Belgium and of the Church.” She has been presented by the Sovereign Pontiff to the Catholics of these islands, as the model on which our own academic restorations may fitly be formed; and at this very moment her example is understood to have encouraged the prelates of Germany to attempt a similar foundation in that land. May their generous efforts be crowned with ample success, and may such institutions, wherein Faith and Science will never be divorced, multiply in the Church, supported by the prayers and good wishes of every Catholic heart.