The century of Columbus

by James J. Walsh

The work of all of these men was greatly assisted by Pope Nicholas V, who was himself distinguished as a scholar in this scholarly time. During his pontificate in the first years of Columbus' Century he did more for the encouragement of learning than anyone else of the time. His wide knowledge of manuscripts made him personally an expert, and he gathered from all lands and is the founder of the Vatican collection of manuscripts. Besides the translations of Aristotle, Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon, Polybius and Epictetus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and Appian were translated under his direction. The catholicity of his taste, and above all the inclusion of the scientific books of the Greeks, is a tribute to the liberty of spirit of the Pope. On his death-bed he declared that his [{507}] greatest consolation was that he had been liberal in the rewarding of learned men.

After the Papal influence, the most important factor for the encouragement of scholarship was the academies which were founded at this time. Lorenzo de Medici revived, after an interval of 1200 years, the ancient custom of celebrating the memory of Plato by an annual banquet. Out of this arose the Accademia of Florence, nearly every one of the members of which were distinguished scholars. The best known among them are Landino and Ficino, both of whom had been Lorenzo's tutors, Pico della Mirandola and Politian. The first account that we have of the Academy is to be found in the introduction to Ficino's edition of Plato's "Symposium." He tells that his rendering of all the seven speeches in the "Symposium" was read aloud and discussed by five of the guests. Undoubtedly Ficino was the centre of the Accademia and one of the greatest scholarly influences of the time. At the age of forty he took Holy Orders and was noted for the next twenty-five years, until his death, as a faithful priest whose scholarship was devoted to showing how Plato illuminated Christianity. In the latter part of his life he lectured on and translated Plotinus.

The best known of these scholars in Florence was undoubtedly Politian, much more interested in Latin than in Greek, though Sandys, in his "History of Classical Scholarship" (Cambridge University Press, 1908), says that he was probably the first teacher in Italy whose mastery of Greek was equal to that of the Greek immigrants. Though he died at the early age of forty, we owe to him valuable textual criticisms of Lucretius, Propertius, Ovid, Statius, Ausonius, Celsus, Quintilian, Festus, and Catullus and Tibullus. His monograph on the chronology of Cicero's letters, his discussion of the use of the aspirate in Latin and Greek and of the differences between the aorist and the imperfect as illustrated by the signatures of Greek sculptors, as well as his power of solving textual difficulties, made him one of the great contributors to the magnificent work accomplished at this time for classical scientific grammar and erudition, as well as for the provision of proper texts of the classics for the world. Besides pure [{508}] literature, he was interested very much in law and made a special study of the "Pandects" of Justinian. He refused to follow those who slavishly imitated Cicero, and denounces the Ciceronians as the mere apes of Cicero. His expressions in the matter are famous. "To myself the face of a bull or a lion appears far more beautiful than that of an ape, although the ape has a closer resemblance to man. But, someone will say you do not express Cicero. I answer I am not Cicero, what I really express is myself."

Academies were formed in other cities and accomplished excellent results for scholarship, though at times they fell under the suspicion of the authorities of dabbling in politics or of actually favoring political factions or even revolutionary ideas. Nearly always they owe their origin to the patronage of high ecclesiastics or those who were in very close sympathy with the Church and always they contained clergymen of distinction. After that of Florence the next in chronological order was that of Rome. There is even some question whether the Roman Academy was not the first in time, only it did not receive this name until after it had been adopted in Florence. The most important figure in the Roman Academy was the man who, for want of a better, assumed the old Roman name Pomponius Laetus. He was narrow enough of intellect to refuse to learn Greek, because he feared that it would spoil his Latin style. The members of the Roman Academy, under his ruling spirit, celebrated the foundation of Rome on the annual return of the festival of the Palilia, a custom which is still retained by many of the Roman academies. Pomponius did his gardening according to the precepts of Varro and Columella, the Latin writers on agriculture, and nothing pleased him better than to be regarded as a second Cato. It is to him that is due the revival of the regular performances of Plautus' plays.

CORREGGIO, BLESSED VIRGIN AND ST. SEBASTIAN

Among the most important members of the Academy were Platina, who became the Librarian of the Vatican, and Sabellicus, who afterwards became the Prefect of the Library of San Marco in Venice. For a time, owing to suspicion of its political, perhaps also its religious, tendencies, the Roman Academy was suppressed and some of its members put in prison, but under Pope Sixtus IV it was revived and all its [{509}] old customs restored. Pomponius wrote commentaries on the whole of Virgil, on Sallust and Curtius, on Pliny's letters and Quintilian and on his agricultural favorites, Varro and Columella, and his equally great favorites, Festus and Nonius Marcellus, the grammarians. In order to complete his similarity with the old Romans, he had expressed the desire at one time in life that after death his body should simply be placed in an ancient Roman tomb on the Appian Way. When he died at the age of seventy he had changed the views of his earlier years and was given a magnificent Christian funeral. So great was the veneration for his scholarship that his obsequies in the Church of Ara Coeli, in the midst of the Roman antiquities that he had loved so well, were attended, as Gregorovius tells us, by some forty bishops.

This Roman Academy continued to exist, now flourishing, now occupied with trivialities, as is the way with such institutions, until the sack of Rome in 1527. As Sandys says ("Harvard Lectures on the Revival of Learning," Cambridge University Press, 1905), "Its palmy days were in the age of Leo X, when it included the most brilliant members of the literary society of Rome, men like the future Cardinals, Bembo and Sadoleto, as well as Paolo Giovio and Castiglione. It encouraged very much the study of Latin particularly, and its members wrote Latin poems and delivered Latin orations and above all encouraged the development of Roman Archaeology, the preservation of Roman remains of all kinds, the editing of books and the recovery of every possible phase of information with regard to Roman life."

There were minor academies in Rome, one of which, the Vitruvian Academy, occupied itself mainly with architecture. But as was true also at Florence, where there were a number of minor academies, some at least of these were only cloaks for political discussions and organizations, and as a consequence brought other and more serious bodies of the same name under suspicion.

The next academy of importance is that of Naples, which came into existence probably just about the beginning of Columbus' Century during the reign of Alfonso of Aragon, the magnanimous patron of learning. Its most prominent [{510}] members were Antonio of Palermo, whose Italian name of Beccadelli is often used; Pontano and Sannazzaro, the poets, and Laurentius Valla, the historian and professor of rhetoric. Valla subsequently became professor of rhetoric in Rome at the invitation of Pope Nicholas V, who wanted his assistance for the carrying out of the great plan of translations from Greek to Latin of all the great authors which he constantly cherished. Valla became Papal Secretary under Nicholas' successor, Pope Calixtus III, but unfortunately he died at the early age of fifty. He deserves extended notice because he is one of the founders of historical criticism, and he began that denunciation of exaggerated belief in Aristotle very proper in itself, but which unfortunately went too far and led to under-estimation of the medieval scholars who had studied Aristotle so sedulously, and even of Aristotle himself. His discussion of the Donation of Constantine attracted much attention and showed very clearly how scholarship might be used to good purpose for the correction of false notions even long after events had happened.