Essays Literary, Critical and Historical

by Thomas O'Hagan

The poet Petrarch is justly styled the “Father of Humanism,” but were it not for the influence, kindly offices and patronage of the Papal Court of Avignon, the sweetest of Italian sonneteers might have lived unheeded—obscure in a lonely villa of Parma or Verona.

Let us, then, examine the share which the Popes of Avignon justly have in this great movement which filled the world of Italy of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as with the glory of a new and dazzling sunrise.

It should not be forgotten that the revival of classical learning in Italy really began early in the twelfth century with the revival of the study of Roman law. Italy was heir to the mid-day splendor of Roman literature, with its Virgils, its Horaces, its Ciceros, its Quintilians. Not only this, but as Carducci says, “By the fall of Constantinople Italy became sole heir and guardian of the ancient civilization of Greece.”

But it is a mistake to consider that it was the discovery of some manuscripts by Petrarch at Verona, or the appointment of Manuel Chrysoloras to the chair of Greek at the Florence University in 1396, that set aglow the skies of the Italian Renaissance.

A writer tells us that the growth of civilization is as gradual and imperceptible as that of an oak tree. It does not suddenly pass from night to day, not even from night to twilight. So was the Renaissance in Italy ushered in slowly, and the factors which contributed to this great intellectual awakening were indeed many.

Now, not the least of these factors was the Papal Court, whether its influence went out from Rome or Avignon. It seems to us strange—nay, absurd—that historians of the Italian Renaissance eagerly gather up every vagrant straw that may contribute to their theory as to the cause of the great intellectual awakening of Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but absolutely ignore the influence of the Catholic Church as a potent force in the Renaissance movement.

Non-Catholic historians are fond of quoting the Latin poet’s words: “Nihil humani est mihi alienum,” and hold that it was out of this spirit—this attitude towards the world and mankind—that the Italian Renaissance was born. This is quite true, but as Guiraud points out in his admirable work, “L’Eglise et Les Origines de la Renaissance,” the need of simplifying and generalizing—of studying man in himself rather than any man in particular—could find recognition in the classical spirit only because it already existed in the spirit of the Renaissance.

One thing is quite certain, that it was the relation of the Papal Court to the Greek Church at Constantinople and the religious controversies that took place during the fourteenth century between Avignon and Constantinople that gave an impetus to the study of the Greek Fathers, a large number of whose works were in the Papal library at Avignon. In fact, relations of friendship bound together the men of letters of Avignon and Constantinople in such manner that there was often an exchange of manuscripts between the East and West. The life of Petrarch furnishes examples of this.

From the very beginning of the Papal occupancy of Avignon the Vicars of Christ enriched the library of the Holy See with numerous copies of the works of the Latin and Greek writers—now the works of Seneca, Pliny, Sallust, Suetonius and Cicero, now the Ethics of Aristotle and the Poems of Virgil.

As to theological works written in Greek, it was most natural that at a time when theology reigned incontestably as the chief of the sciences the Papal Library was well supplied.