The century of Columbus

by James J. Walsh

Cusanus was sent out as Papal Legate to Germany, just about the beginning of Columbus' Century, in order to correct abuses and bring Christendom into closer touch with the Holy See. During the course of his journeys in Germany he recognized all the weakness and the evils connected with the splitting up of the German people into many petty principalities. He saw clearly how much their union under one head would mean for the people themselves, their happiness and progress, and above all for the peace of mankind. Nearly four centuries before the actual accomplishment of the dream of the German Empire, he expressed himself very emphatically on this point, and curiously enough drew his main arguments from economic conditions and the failure of any assurance of lasting peace afforded by the existence of many petty governments. [{519}] It is characteristic of his very practical scientific bent of mind that he should have entered so far into the details of the accomplishment of his vision as to suggest the making of a budget and the giving of formal accounts of how the money was spent to the legislative body.

CIMA DA CONEGLIANO, INCREDULITY OF ST. THOMAS (VENICE)

"The law and the kingdom should be placed under the protection of a single ruler or authority. The small separate governments of princes and counts consume a disproportionately large amount of revenue without furnishing any real security. For this reason we must have a single government, and for its support we must have a definite amount of the income from taxes and revenues yearly set aside by a representative parliament and before this parliament (Reichstag) must be given every year a definite account of the money that was spent during the preceding year."

Some idea of the intellectual aspirations of the time and the attitude of men towards knowledge and truth may be gathered from a paragraph of Cardinal Cusanus, which is so comprehensive and so full of the love of wisdom in the best sense of the word as to be classical and to deserve a place in the notebook of every teacher. It may well be taken as the motto of the schools of the Brethren of the Common Life.

"To know and to think, to see the truth with the eye of the mind, is always a joy. The older a man grows, the greater is the pleasure which it affords him, and the more he devotes himself to the search after truth, the stronger grows his desire of possessing it. As love is the life of the heart, so is the endeavor after knowledge and truth the life of the mind. In the midst of the movements of time, of the daily work of life, of its perplexities and contradictions, we should lift our gaze fearlessly to the clear vault of heaven, and seek ever to obtain a firmer grasp of and a keener insight into the origin of all goodness and beauty, the capacities of our own hearts and minds, the intellectual fruits of mankind throughout the centuries, and the wondrous works of nature around us, at the same time remembering always that in humility alone lies true greatness, and that knowledge and wisdom are alone profitable in so far as our lives are governed by them."

One of the greatest of the students of the Brethren of the [{520}] Common Life is the famous Rudolph Agricola, who was educated at Deventer, but, with the intellectual curiosity characteristic of his time and the ardor for study and opportunities for intellectual development which was so often seen in Columbus' Century, wandered on to Erfurt, Louvain, and then Cologne and Paris in order to miss no possible educational opportunity. When he was twenty-five he went down to Italy, where he studied law and rhetoric at Pavia and then to Ferrara, where he studied Greek under Theodore Gaza. He held a political office for some time, but John of Dalberg, Bishop of Worms, recognizing his scholarship, secured for him the opportunity to teach at Heidelberg. He lectured on Aristotle and translated Lucian. Above all he was the great pioneer of humanism in Germany, and by his personal influence lighted a torch that was soon to illuminate the country. He wrote to Rudolph von Langen once when he was seeking a headmaster for the Cathedral School at Münster: "I entertain the highest hope that by your aid we shall one day wrest from proud Italy her vaunted glory of pre-eminence in education and literature."

Jacob Wimpheling, who came later to be known as "the Schoolmaster of Germany," is another one of these students of the Brethren of the Common Life who reached distinction. He was educated at Schlettstadt in what is now Alsace. Like the others, he wandered far afield, however, for his scholarship. He studied at Freiburg and Erfurt and also at Heidelberg and was probably in Italy for a time. He returned to Heidelberg as professor, his lectures being mainly upon St. Jerome. In nearly every city in which he stayed for any length of time he founded literary societies and devoted himself to the reform of educational methods. He insisted above all on the importance of moral training in education, and has made it very clear that he felt that an educated man without high moral training was more dangerous for evil than one without education. His writings obtained a wide circulation and did much to determine the character of education for two centuries. His idea was that education should produce able and conscientious citizens rather than accomplished scholars. He was eminently practical in his way of looking at things and deprecated [{521}] the notion so common at many times in history that the storing of the memory with information, instead of the training of the mind by thoughtful work so as to make it capable of the best judgment when that is needed, is the true ideal in education.

One of the pupils of Agricola in Greek, though he was an older man, was Alexander Hegius, who, during the last fifteen years of his life, which correspond almost exactly with the last fifteen years of the fifteenth century, made the school of Deventer the great educational centre of North Germany. Among his pupils at Deventer was Erasmus. Hegius did much to put an end to the older mediaeval ideas in education, which had become outworn, and to bring in the study of the classics. One of his great friends, Rudolph von Langen, was a student of Erfurt who visited Italy and came back full of enthusiasm for humanistic studies and finally succeeded in founding a school of the New Learning at Münster, where he was the Canon of the Cathedral Church. He tried to secure Hegius as the headmaster of this school, but had to be content with his pupil, Murmellius, who wrote a series of very useful textbooks at this time.

The greatest of the pupils of the Brethren of the Common Life, who is also one of the greatest scholars of all time, is Desiderius Erasmus. Probably no better idea can be obtained of the high estimation in which scholarship was held at this time in Europe than from the career of Erasmus. He was welcomed everywhere. He was looked upon as one of the moving forces of the time. His opinions were eagerly sought, his books were read, he had the friendship not only of scholars, but of high ecclesiastics, the nobility and even royalty. He did an immense amount of work and exercised a deep influence over his time. His influence over England was especially deep, and he aided Dean Colet in his great design for the future school of St. Paul's by writing his treatise, "De ratione Studii"; he was a friend of Bishop Warham and of Sir Thomas More; through the influence of Bishop Fisher of Rochester he became Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge; in a word, he entered into all the intellectual life of the time everywhere. He was in Italy for years, helped Aldus, the printer, at Venice, drawing inspiration from the [{522}] libraries, the scholars and the classic remains. His many monographs and dialogues meant much for the diffusion of right views as to classical education. His editions of Latin authors comprise Seneca, Suetonius, certain works of Cicero, Pliny and Terence. His Greek texts include Aristotle and Ptolemy. He made recensions of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom, with three editions of St. Jerome. His edition of the Greek Testament is probably more important than any of these.