This is the age of printing, and it was of first importance that good editions of the classics should be printed as soon as possible in order to prevent any further degeneration of their texts and avoid all further risk of losing the precious treasures of antiquity. Scholars in Italy took up the making of good texts, and within a century after the invention of printing, all the important Greek and Latin authors had been published in scholarly editions, the texts of which still command respect. The amount of labor required for this, the judicious scholarship demanded, the patience that was needed and the unselfish devotion to a most trying task, only scholars can properly appreciate. No debt that we owe to the Renaissance is greater than this, what it accomplished for classical literature, and by far the greater part of this debt is owed to Italy.
Everywhere, that is, in every important city, there was a school of the New Learning, and usually some munificent patrons of what they came to call Humanism because it represented humanity's highest interests, supporting scholars who were writing and correcting manuscripts and afterwards forming libraries of the printed books and making it possible for the great printers to continue their work by subscribing for their first editions. Only that the Church was deeply interested in this new movement, it would have been quite impossible for it to have continued. Unfortunately, as always happens whenever men get new knowledge, many of them, that is, the restless and the smaller minds among them, who are always likely to be in a great majority in any new movement, were taken with the idea that they knew so much more than those who went before them that they could not be expected to accept old-fashioned ideas in religion and philosophy. Because of the disturbances produced by such restless characters, there sometimes seems at this time to be opposition between the Church and the New Learning. This false impression is partly due to the fact that in certain countries, notably Germany and England, the reform doctrines were, as pointed out by Gasquet, often called the New Learning, to which, of course, there was opposition. Most of the great classic scholars, however, were ecclesiastics, some of them of very high rank and influence in the councils of the Church, even Cardinals and Popes, and in general the vast majority of the prominent scholars were in the closest of sympathy with the ecclesiastical authorities. The exceptions are so few as to make the existence of this rule very clear, though so much of emphasis has been placed on the exceptions in the modern time that an entirely false impression with regard to Church opposition to education has been produced in a great many minds.
The first name that deserves to be mentioned among the scholars of Italy is AEneas Sylvius of the family of Piccolomini, who is better known under the name of Pius II, which he bore as Pope. He is a typical example of the scholars of the Renaissance, in so far as that, as a younger man, his studies of classical antiquity led him to the expression of pagan ideas in life as well as in language. At the age of forty he [{503}] reformed and became as well known for his devotion as for his previous looseness of character. He was created Imperial Poet by the Emperor Frederick III, and his reputation for scholarship created a fashion in this regard that did great good for the rising movement of the New Learning. His influence as Pope continued this, though he made it the main business of his pontificate to organize Europe against the Turks so as to prevent the further increase of their power with all that would mean for the destruction of culture as well as religion. Indeed, his love for letters seems to have been at least as great an incentive for the organization of the crusade as his duty as an ecclesiastic. When he heard of the Fall of Constantinople, he exclaimed, "How many names of mighty men will perish! It is a second death to Homer and to Plato. The fount of the muses is dried up forevermore." How much he was thought of by his contemporaries and how much the example of his scholarship meant will be best appreciated from the Piccolomini Palace and other buildings of Pienza, but particularly the exquisitely beautiful Piccolomini Library at Siena. Pinturicchio's decorations for this library are only added testimony to the admiration of his generation. Sylvius' letter to Ladislas, the young king of Bohemia and Hungary who had sought his advice with regard to education, is one of the important documents in the history of education. It contains the oft-quoted passage with regard to the place of memory in education:
"We must first insist upon the overwhelming importance of Memory, which is in truth the first condition of capacity for letters. A boy should learn without effort, retain with accuracy, and reproduce easily. Rightly is memory called 'the nursing mother of learning.' It needs cultivation, however, whether a boy be gifted with retentiveness or not. Therefore, let some passage from poet or moralist be committed to memory every day."
One of the greatest scholars of the period and one of the leaders in the Renaissance movement towards the classics which brought about the reawakening of artistic and literary men at this time was Cardinal Bessarion, whose long life of over eighty years gave him nearly a quarter of a century in [{504}] Columbus' period. He came with the Emperor John Palaeologus to the Council of Ferrara in 1438, where his reputation for scholarship and vast erudition in all theological matters gave him great authority among the Greek Bishops. To him more than any other must be attributed the formal reunion with the Latin Church, which was the happy issue of that Council. To him, therefore, was committed the honor of reading the Greek formula of the Act of Union. Unfortunately, the union was but short-lived, but Bessarion changed to the Latin rite and in 1439 was created Cardinal.
The Cardinal was high in favor with succeeding Popes and just at the beginning of Columbus' Century was sent as papal legate to Bologna, as "an angel of peace," in the hope that he would be able to quell the factional disturbances and pacify the divided interests. Cardinal Bessarion succeeded admirably in this difficult mission, calmed the internal dissensions and succeeded in introducing wise reforms into the city government and the administration of justice. His principal attention, however, was given to the University. He rebuilt the building and gathered there some of the most famous teachers of the world, encouraging particularly the study of the classics, and above all of Greek. He himself supplied out of his personal revenues whatever was lacking in the salaries, and he gathered around him a notable band of scholars, writers and poets, and began that magnificent outburst of interest in the intellectual life which was to make Bologna so famous.
He continued to be active in his influence on the scholarship of Italy until well beyond eighty years of age, yet was always a factor in the practical life of his time. When he was eighty-one he wrote for Pope Paul II a letter on the organization of a new crusade against the Turks. When he was eighty-three he went on an embassy to Paris in order to bring about the union of the Western nations for a crusade. While at Rome during his later years, Bessarion gathered round him the scholars and writers in all departments. The scientists of the time particularly owe much to his patronage. He was a friend of Peurbach of Vienna, of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, of Regiomontanus and many others. In his house the first Accademia was founded, and he was known as the patron of [{505}] letters. He gathered an immense number of valuable manuscripts at very great expense, had copies of others made and gave his treasures at his death to found a library in Venice, his collection forming the nucleus of the famous library of St. Mark.
After these two great Churchmen and patrons of learning and education, there are a series of scholars whose names deserve to be mentioned for the influence which they exerted on the learning of Europe at this time. At the beginning of our century came the Greeks, who were driven out of their native country by the conquest of the Turks. Demetrius Chalcondyles, Theodore Gaza, George Trebizond and Joannes Argyropulos, unable to pursue their studies in peace in the midst of the alarms produced by the Turks, reached Italy before the Fall of Constantinople. Gaza was lecturing on Demosthenes at Ferrara in 1448, where among his pupils was the subsequently distinguished German scholar Rudolph Agricola. The first year of our century Gaza was invited to Rome by Pope Nicholas V to fill the chair of philosophy and take a principal part in the plan which the Pope had conceived for the translation of the principal Greek classics. Gaza's translations were mainly concerned with scientific Greek works, Aristotle "On Mechanical Problems" and "On Animals" and Theophrastus' "Botany." For a time he withdrew to a monastery, but was recalled to Rome by Pope Paul II to take part in the editio princeps of Gellius. After the death of Bessarion he retired once more to his monastery, where he died in 1475. His Greek grammar became famous and was used as a text-book by Budaeus in Paris and by Erasmus in Cambridge. He is described by Manutius as easily chief among the Latin and Greek scholars of his age, an age replete with scholarship be it said, and he is eulogized by Scaliger over a century later as magnus vir et doctus, a great man and a learned.
George Trebizond, after teaching for many years in Venice, was invited to Rome, where he became one of the Papal Secretaries. He also took part in the plan for translating the Greek classics, and his translations include the "Rhetoric and Problems of Aristotle" and "The Laws and Charmenides of Plato." Argyropulos taught first at Padua and then for [{506}] fifteen years under the patronage of the Medici at Florence. He, too, was invited to Rome by the Pope and was highly esteemed there. His part in the great plan of translation concerned mainly the works of Aristotle, whose "Ethics," "Politics," "Economics," "On the Soul" and "On Heaven" were all printed in his versions. He was the master of Politian, and his lectures were attended by Tiptoff, the Earl of Worcester, and by Reuchlin, the great German humanist. It was to Reuchlin that Argyropulos, after having heard him read and translate a passage of Thucydides, exclaimed with a sigh, "Lo! through our exile Greece has flown across the Alps." Chalcondyles, at the early age of twenty-six, made an immediate conquest of his Italian audience at Perugia in 1450. Subsequently he lectured at Padua, being the first teacher of Greek who received a salary at any of the Universities of Europe. For twenty years he lectured in Florence, and there prepared the editio princeps of Homer, the first great Greek author to be printed. After the death of Lorenzo de Medici he withdrew to Milan and there edited "Isocrates" and "Suidas." His emendation of Greek texts is the best proof of his scholarship, and few men of his time equalled his power in this. He was noted for the gentleness of his disposition and his integrity of character, and he made many friends. There is a famous picture by Ghirlandajo in Santa Maria Novella at Florence which contains portraits of Ficino, Landino, Politian and Chalcondyles.