The century of Columbus

by James J. Walsh

Almost without his wishing it, a religious community grew up around him, and when Geert de Groote died, near the end of the fourteenth century, his successor, Florence Radewyns, founded the famous monastery of Windesheim, the mother-house of the new religious life. These new religious taught especially the middle and lower classes, copied books and themselves wrote commentaries in language as simple as possible on all manner of spiritual subjects. Their schools became centres of the spiritual and intellectual life of the Low Countries and the Rhineland, and during the course of the fifteenth century they grew in numbers and in the attendance of scholars. Deventer, one of their most famous schools, counted over 2,000 students about the time of the discovery of America, and some of the greatest men of this first part of Columbus' Century had been students of the Brethren of the Common Life.

Mr. Hamilton Mabie, in his collection of essays, "My Study Fire," has paid a worthy tribute to these dear old scholars and teachers which sums up succinctly and sympathetically their work and its significance. He said (page 92):

"I confess that I can never read quite unmoved the story of the Brethren of the Common Life, those humble-minded, patient teachers and thinkers whose devotion and fire of soul for a century and a half made the choice treasures of Italian palaces and convents and universities a common possession along the low-lying shores of the Netherlands. The asceticism of this noble brotherhood was no morbid and divisive fanaticism; it was a denial of themselves that they might have the more to give. The visions which touched at times the bare walls of their cells with supernal beauty only made them the more eager to share their heaven of privilege with the sorely-burdened world without. Surely Virgil and Horace and the other masters of classic form were never more honored than [{516}] when these noble-minded lovers of learning and of their kind made their sounding lines familiar in peasant homes."

Many people seem inclined to think that the education of the poor became possible only in our time. The guild schools of the Middle Ages are a contradiction of this, but the story of the Brethren of the Common Life shows how much organized effort was given to the educational care for poor students. In his "Life of Thomas à Kempis," Kettelwell has told what they did for the poor and also how broad and wide were the foundations of the education that they laid (p. 165):

"But there was another safeguard which was of great service in preserving them (the Brethren) from being led away by fanaticism or wild enthusiasm, because it gave them a useful object and purpose in life to look after, and that was the encouragement they gave to intellectual pursuits and the interest they took in education. Much of the instruction given in schools at that time was often only within the reach of those who could pay for it, whilst there was no little defect in imparting it. . . . The Brothers of the Common Life, on the contrary, not only promoted the giving of instruction gratuitously, or assisted those unable to pay for it, and thus brought the arts of reading and writing within the reach of many that could not otherwise attain them; but, what was of more consequence, they infused into education quite a new life, and imparted to it a purer and nobler aim.
"It is well known to the student of history that a great improvement in the character of education took place about this time, and that the advance of learning in the Northern parts of Germany is greatly indebted to the efforts of the Brothers of the Common Life. Though Gerard charged the members of the Brotherhood to look to Christ as the source of all light and truth, all life and peace, and without Whom all learning or gifts were but as vain shadows, yet he would not confine them to none but Christian authors. Among the ancient philosophers he would have his educated disciples to read the works of Plato and Aristotle, and valued the former for his excellent discourses in the person of Socrates. The morals of Seneca pleased him much, and he recommended them to the Brothers as a rich mine of wisdom. He himself [{517}] was versed in the art of medicine and knew something of law, and it is evident that some of his disciples were much esteemed for their knowledge of them. And from what Thomas à Kempis says of Gerard, he would have the clerics to study geometry, arithmetic, logic, grammar and other subjects. From which it will be perceived that the Brothers of the Common Life were urged to the pursuit of what at that time was a liberal and enlightened education, and consequently were the first in their generation, and in those parts, to promote and encourage it, and were thereby the less likely to be led away or inflated by an ignorant or foolish enthusiasm."

They did copying, but under instructions made their copying of value for their own education. This was an important development (p. 167):

"It had begun, as we have shown, in great simplicity under the blessing of God. To the young clerics he (their founder) had joined certain priests and laymen, thus making a mixed society. Idleness and accumulation of worldly goods had been the rock on which so many of the Monastic Orders had made shipwreck, and therefore, to the cultivation of the Interior life had been joined some useful employment and the pursuit of fine letters. And that the mind should not become enervated by the work of copying manuscripts being too long carried on as a mere manual operation, Gerard had prescribed to each of the clerics that he should make extracts of the finest sayings he met with, especially of the Fathers and of the Saints, and even make minutes of his own reflections, and inscribe them in a certain book called 'Rapiarium.' And, as the enthusiastic deacon of Deventer always joined example with precept, he himself transcribed and published many little works composed from the works of the Saints, most of which are now lost. It is doubtless from this custom, which Thomas à Kempis largely carried out in the early days of his connection with the Brotherhood, that we are mainly indebted for those many little devotional works which he afterwards wrote, at the head of which he places the books of the 'De Imitatione Christi.'"

It would be easy to think that probably these good religious devoted themselves much more to the cultivation of piety than [{518}] of good literature, and that perhaps even their devotion to culture was rather superficial. As a matter of fact, however, their schools became famous for their thoroughness, and all along the Rhine the sons of "the butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker" learned to read and write Latin fluently, corresponded in Latin letters and above all seem to have received very precious inspirations for the intellectual life that were not extinguished even by a merely money-making career. A good many of the graduates of their schools became famous in the German scholarship of this period. Not all of them became clergymen, though of course a great many did.

Probably the most important of their students was Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, the greatest and most original thinker of the fifteenth century. Strange as it may seem, his achievements in the intellectual life were nearly all made in mathematics and in science. His work is sketched in the chapter on [Physical Science of the Century.] Because of an important contribution to medicine, he has a chapter in my "Old-Time Makers of Medicine" (Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1911).

The thoroughly practical character of Cusanus' mind and its education from books and experience can be readily appreciated from a paragraph of his with regard to the unification of his Fatherland, in which his far-seeing patriotism anticipated the most modern views.