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. 7. We come now to a very important event in literary history,—the resuscitation of the study of the Greek language in Italy. |Early Greek scholars of Europe.| 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. |Under Charlemagne and his successors.| 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.