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

by Augusta Theodosia Drane

Enough has been said to indicate the nature of Dante’s learning, which was undoubtedly the learning of his time. It differed from that of his contemporaries in degree, but not in kind. When Mr. Berington gives expression to his delight at having at last found a man who could admire Virgil, he shows not only a very imperfect appreciation of the acquirements of mediæval scholars, but even of the poet whom he condescends to praise. Dante’s aim was avowedly to write a popular poem; he desired to be read, not merely by the learned, but by the mass of his countrymen; and it was with this object that he sacrificed his first intention of writing in Latin verse, and chose the rude Italian vernacular, not without a certain regret, but with the design of being more widely intelligible, for, to use his own words, “we must not give meat to sucklings.” We may safely dare to affirm that had not the Latin classics been freely admitted into the Christian schools of the thirteenth century, Dante would never have ventured to have chosen Virgil as his representative of Moral Philosophy. And if the world to which he addressed himself had not known something—perhaps a good deal—of classical history and poetry, his poem could not have achieved the popularity at which he successfully aimed. But it is probable that on this point things were not greatly changed from what they had been in the days of his ancestor Cacciaguida, when, as he tells us, the ladies of Florence, as they sat with their maidens,

Drawing off

The tresses from the distaff, lectured them

Old tales of Troy, and Fesole, and Rome.[276]

Certain it is that the erudition of the “Divina Commedia” proved no obstacle to its popularity. There is nothing in the history of literature that can be at all compared with the instantaneous conquest which it achieved over the Italian public. Within thirty years of the poet’s death an Archbishop of Milan appointed a carefully-chosen commission of learned men to write a commentary on the poem; Florence, which had cast him out of her walls when living, now founded a public lecture to explain his works; and in 1373, called on Bocaccio to deliver this lecture in the Church of St. Stefano, at the annual salary of a hundred florins.

We are not, however, concerned with the literary history of Dante, who is only here spoken of as the representative scholar of his times. His profound learning has never been disputed; yet it is worthy of remark that if it be good criticism to measure a man’s scholarship solely by the style of his Latin compositions, we should have to number the author of the “Divina Commedia” among the other writers whose “incredible ignorance” disgraced their age. His prose treatises, De Monarchia and De Vulgari Eloquio, in substance learned and full of acute observation, are declared to be rude and unclassical in style; a fact which suggests doubts how far this standard of criticism is a just one. It was fortunate indeed that he abandoned his first purpose of writing his poem in the Latin tongue, and chose rather that vernacular idiom which he raised to the dignity of a language. How he dealt with it is the real marvel; he built up his verse, much as the Athenians constructed their walls in the days of Themistocles, laying hold of any material that came in his way, quarrying words and phrases out of the Latin at his pleasure, filling up chinks and vacancies with verbs and adjectives which, whatever may have been their plebeian origin, became ennobled by his use; and creating many a good strong word of mighty meaning which it would have been well if his countrymen could have persuaded themselves to retain. After his time the formation of the Italian language rapidly developed, and the majestic mass which had been hewn into shape by Dante, received a finer and softer polish from Bocaccio and Petrarch.

Of the latter poet we now have to speak; for any sketch of mediæval scholarship would be imperfect without some notice of him who is commonly regarded as the restorer of polite letters. The father of Petrarch had been banished from Florence at the same time with Dante; and when a child, he himself had once beheld the great poet, whose fame he was in some respects destined to surpass. When he was nine years old his parents removed to Avignon in France, where the establishment of the papal court drew many Italians. There for four years he learnt as much grammar, logic, and rhetoric as the schools of Avignon and Carpentras could teach, and that does not appear to have been much. However, even at this age his classic tastes betrayed themselves. Whilst his comrades were still reading Æsop’s fables and the verses of Prosper, he studied the works of Cicero, which delighted his ear long before he understood their sense. Then came another four years at Montpelier, after which he went to Bologna, and there studied civil law for three years more. But as soon as he found himself removed from his father’s watchful eye the study of jurisprudence somewhat languished. “It was thus,” he says, “that I spent, or rather wasted, seven years; and if I must say the truth, disgusted with my legal studies, I spent my time mostly in reading Cicero, Virgil, and the other poets. My father learnt this, and one day he unexpectedly appeared before me. Guessing at once the object of his coming, I hastily hid the great Latins, but he drew them from their hiding-place, and threw them into the fire, as if they had been books of heresy. At this sight I cried out as though I myself had been burnt. My father, seeing my affliction, drew out two volumes half-scorched with the flames, and holding one in his left and the other in his right hand, he said, “Here, this is Virgil, take it, and it will comfort your soul a little—and here is Cicero, you may have him too, for he will teach you how to plead.” Somewhat consoled by this, I ceased my lamentations.”

But a lawyer Petrarch was determined never to become. In 1327, having lost both his parents, he returned to Avignon, put on the ecclesiastical dress, and received the tonsure; but he had no more serious intention of following the clerical than the legal profession. He cared only for a life of literary ease, and the “graceful indolence” which has been declared to form one of the charms of his verses, was the predominant feature in his character. It was at this time that he formed that attachment to Laura de Sade which inspired the 400 sonnets, and other “Rime,” which have made the celebrity of their author. At once to soothe his grief and to satisfy his curiosity, he undertook a voyage through France and Germany. He visited Paris, and describes its University as “a basket filled with the rarest fruits of every land.” The French, he says, are “gay of humour, fond of society, and pleasant in conversation; they make war on care by diversion, singing, laughing, eating, and drinking.” He visited Toulouse, and was introduced to the famous academy of the Gaie Science, established in 1324, of which Laura de Sade was herself a member. Seven poets, with a chancellor at their head, held their meetings in a palace surrounded by beautiful gardens, and solemnly granted the degrees of bachelor or doctor to the candidates for Parnassian honours, the prize for the best poem produced at the floral games of the month of May being a golden violet. At last he returned to Avignon, and, retiring to a country house in the solitude of Vaucluse, composed, amid its woods and fountains, some of his sweetest Italian sonnets, some Latin prose treatises, and his heroic Latin poem of “Africa,” on which he bestowed immense labour. Great, indeed, would have been his own surprise could he have foreseen that posterity would have cared nothing at all for the classical imitations which procured him his laurel crown from the hands of the Roman Senate, and that his immortality as a poet would rest on those careless rhymes which he calls the unpremeditated songs of his juvenile sorrows, and which, being written in the despised vernacular tongue, he counted as of little merit. It was as a Latin writer that he desired to be remembered, and it was the fame of his “Africa” that induced the Senate of Rome and the University of Paris to offer him their honours on the same day. Petrarch’s classic predilections, and his intense love of his native country, determined him to give the preference to Rome; and after a three days’ examination, which was presided over by the learned King Robert of Naples, he was crowned on the Capitol, on Easter-day, 1341, and hung up his laurel wreath in the Basilica of the Apostles.

The rest of his life was chiefly spent in Italy, where the reigning princes of the Visconti, the Este, the Scaligeri, and the Gonzaga vied one with another in doing him honour. He devoted himself with a sort of passionate eagerness to the enterprise of seeking out copies of the neglected classics, and his correspondents in all parts of Europe assisted him in his labours. Cicero was his literary idol, and when the strangers who crowded round him asked him what presents they could send him from their distant lands, his reply was ever, “Nothing but the works of Cicero.” He rescued from oblivion some of the epistles of his favourite author, and was once possessed of a copy of his treatise De Gloria, now lost to the world. He had almost an equal zeal in collecting and preserving medals and ancient monuments of art, and severely reprehended the practice, so common among the Romans, of destroying the venerable remains of antiquity, in order to procure building materials at an easy rate. Though never able to master the Greek language, he had the consolation of witnessing the first steps which ushered in the revival of that study. In 1339, Barlaam, a Calabrian monk who had for many years been a resident in Greece, was despatched to Avignon on a mission to Pope Benedict XII., from the Emperor Cantacuzenus. Petrarch took some lessons in Greek from him, but had too little perseverance to profit much from his master’s lessons. Barlaam is declared by Bocaccio to have been a treasury of every kind of learning, and superior to any other scholar of the time. He wrote on theology, astronomy, and mathematics, and was well acquainted with the ancient Greek poetry. And so, after all, the Greek literature was restored to Europe through the instrumentality of a monk! For it was one of Barlaam’s disciples, by name Leontius Pilate, also a Calabrian, who afterwards visited Petrarch at Venice, and from whom Bocaccio acquired a knowledge of Greek. The latter scholar persuaded the Florentine magistrates to appoint Leontius Greek professor in their city, and in 1361 the first Greek chair was erected in the West, and curious crowds flocked to listen to lectures on the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey,” delivered from the lips of one whose outward appearance was that of an uncouth savage. He wore the philosopher’s, or rather the beggar’s, mantle, his countenance was hideous, his beard long and uncombed, his manners rude, and his temper gloomy. He remained at Florence three years, and then returned to the East to search for manuscripts; but such was his overbearing insolence that, in spite of his treasures of classic erudition, Petrarch would have nothing to say to him when he proposed a second visit to Italy. Leontius, however, embarked on board a vessel with the intention of returning to Florence, but was overtaken by a tempest, and struck dead by lightning. Petrarch was concerned at his loss, and yet more so by the fear that his books had perished with him. “Inquire, I beseech you,” he wrote to Bocaccio, “whether there were not a Euripides or a Sophocles among them, or some other of the books he promised to bring me.” He had already procured from Nicholas Sigeros a Greek Homer, which he prized, though unable to read it. “Your Homer,” he writes, “is dumb to me, and I am deaf to it; nevertheless, the sight of it consoles me, and I often kiss its cover. I beg of you send me Hesiod, send me Euripides.”