Humanism and Renaissance Civilization (Variorum Collected Studies) [1 ed.] 9781409433316, 1409433315

Table of contents :
Cover
Series Page
Half Title
Title Page
Copyight Page
Table of Contents
Publisher's Note
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Scholastic Doctors and Humanist Challengers
I: The Clash of Humanists and Scholastics: An Approach to Pre-Reformation Controversies
II: Humanist Infiltration into the Academic World: Some Studies of Northern Universities
III: Humanism as Method: Roots of Conflict with the Scholastics
IV: The Humanist Challenge to Medieval German Culture
V: Peter of Ravenna and the “Obscure Men” of Cologne: A Case of Pre-Reformation Controversy
VI: Graf Hermann Von Neuenahr and the Limits of Humanism in Cologne
VII: Humanists, Scholastics, and the Struggle to Reform the University of Cologne, 1523–1525
Erasmus and The Conflict Over Humanism
VIII: “A Remarkably Supercilious and Touchy Lot”: Erasmus on the Scholastic Theologians
IX: “The Articular Disease”: Erasmus’ Charges That the Theologians Have Let the Church Down
“Christian Humanism” In Renaissance Culture
X: Rethinking “Christian Humanism”
XI: Marguerite, Lefèvre d’Étaples, and the Growth of Christian Humanism in France
Science in the Renaissance: Natural and Occult
XII: Humanists, Scientists, and Pliny: Changing Approaches to A Classical Author
XIII: Magic and Skepticism in Agrippa’s Thought
XIV: Agrippa in Renaissance Italy: The Esoteric Tradition
Directions in Renaissance Intellectual Life
XV: The Mind
Index

Citation preview

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VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES

Humanism and Renaissance Civilization

Charles G. Nauert

Charles G. Nauert

Humanism and Renaissance Civilization

First published 2012 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition © 2012 by Charles G. Nauert Charles G. Nauert has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents $FWWREHLGHQWL¿HGDVWKHDXWKRURIWKLVZRUN

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice.. Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data 1DXHUW&KDUOHV*&KDUOHV*DU¿HOG ± Humanism and Renaissance civilization.  ±9DULRUXPFROOHFWHGVWXGLHVVHULHV   +XPDQLVP±+LVWRU\5HQDLVVDQFH(XURSH±,QWHOOHFWXDOOLIH I. Title II. Series 940.2'1–dc23 ISBN 978–1–4094–3331–6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2011942503 ISBN 13: 978-1-4094-3331-6 (hbk)

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS995

CONTENTS Introduction Acknowledgements

ix xiv

SCHOLASTIC DOCTORS AND HUMANIST CHALLENGERS I

The clash of humanists and scholastics: an approach to pre-Reformation controversies

1–18

Sixteenth Century Journal 4, no. 1, April 1973

,,

+XPDQLVWLQ¿OWUDWLRQLQWRWKHDFDGHPLFZRUOGVRPH studies of northern universities 799–812, 818–824 Renaissance Quarterly 43, 1990 (published in February 1991)

,,,

+XPDQLVPDVPHWKRGURRWVRIFRQÀLFWZLWKWKH scholastics

427–438

Sixteenth Century Journal 29, 1998

IV

The humanist challenge to medieval German culture

277–306

Daphnis: Zeitschrift für mittlere deutsche Literatur 15, 1986 (published in 1987)

V

Peter of Ravenna and the “obscure men” of Cologne: a case of pre-Reformation controversy

609–640

Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, eds A. Molho and J.A. Tedeschi. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press; Florence: G.C. Sansoni Editore, 1971

VI

Graf Hermann von Neuenahr and the limits of humanism in Cologne +LVWRULFDO5HÀHFWLRQV5pÀH[LRQVKLVWRULTXHV (Festschrift for William J. Bouwsma)

65–79

vi

VII

CONTENTS

Humanists, scholastics, and the struggle to reform the University of Cologne, 1523–1525

39–76

Humanismus in Köln / Humanism in Cologne, ed. J.V. Mehl (Studien zur Geschichte der Universität zu Köln 10). Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1991

ERASMUS AND THE CONFLICT OVER HUMANISM VIII

“A remarkably supercilious and touchy lot”: Erasmus on the scholastic theologians

37–56

Erasmus of Rotterdam Society, Yearbook 22, 2002

IX

“The articular disease”: Erasmus’ charges that the theologians have let the church down

9–27

Figuring Protest and Lament: Perspectives on SixteenthCentury France (Mediaevalia 22, special issue), 1999

“CHRISTIAN HUMANISM” IN RENAISSANCE CULTURE X

Rethinking “Christian humanism”

1–25

Interpretations of Renaissance Humanism, ed. A.Mazzocco. Leiden: Brill, 2006 (actually published in 2007), pp. 155–180

XI

Marguerite, Lefèvre d’Étaples, and the growth of Christian humanism in France

38–43

Approaches to Teaching Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron, ed. C.H. Winn. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2007

SCIENCE IN THE RENAISSANCE: NATURAL AND OCCULT XII

Humanists, scientists, and Pliny: changing approaches to a classical author

72–85

The American Historical Review 84, 1979

XIII

Magic and skepticism in Agrippa’s thought

161–182

Journal of the History of Ideas 18, 1957

XIV

Agrippa in Renaissance Italy: the esoteric tradition Studies in the Renaissance 6, 1959

195–215

CONTENTS

vii

DIRECTIONS IN RENAISSANCE INTELLECTUAL LIFE XV

The mind

116–144, 222–228

The Sixteenth Century, ed. E. Cameron. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006

Index

1–5

This volume contains xiv + 340 pages

PUBLISHER’S NOTE The articles in this volume, as in all others in the Variorum Collected Studies Series, have not been given a new, continuous pagination. In order to avoid confusion, and to facilitate their use where these same studies have been referred to elsewhere, the original pagination has been maintained wherever possible. Article X has been reset, with the original page numbers given in square brackets within the text. Each article has been given a Roman number in order of appearance, as listed in the Contents. This number is repeated on each page and is quoted in the index entries.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF PERMISSIONS Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following institutions, journals and publishers for their kind permission to reproduce the papers included in this volume: Sixteenth Century Journal, Truman State University, Kirksville, MO (articles I and III); The Renaissance Society of America and the University of Chicago Press (II, XIV); Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam (IV); Historical 5HÀHFWLRQV5pÀH[LRQV+LVWRULTXHV (VI); Böhlau Verlag GmbH, Cologne (VII); the Erasmus of Rotterdam Society, New York (VIII); the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Binghamton, NY (IX); Koninklijke Brill N.V., Leiden (X); the Modern Language Association of America, New York (XI); The American Historical Association, Washington, DC, and the University of Chicago Press (XII); the University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA (XIII); and Oxford University Press (XV). Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the QHFHVVDU\DUUDQJHPHQWDWWKH¿UVWRSSRUWXQLW\

INTRODUCTION 7KH HVVD\V FROOHFWHG LQ WKLV YROXPH VWUHWFK EDFN WR P\ YHU\ ¿UVW SXEOLVKHG DUWLFOHEDVHGRQP\GLVVHUWDWLRQRQ$JULSSDYRQ1HWWHVKHLPDWWKH8QLYHUVLW\ RI ,OOLQRLV WKH\ H[WHQG IRUZDUG WR VHYHUDO TXLWH UHFHQW SLHFHV $V D JURXS WKH\ UHÀHFW PDQ\ \HDUV RI UHVHDUFK DQG WHDFKLQJ IRFXVHG RQ WKH KLVWRU\ RI 5HQDLVVDQFHKXPDQLVPDQGPRUHSDUWLFXODUO\RQKXPDQLVPQRUWKRIWKH$OSV 0XFKRIWKHHDUO\ZRUNLQYROYHGWKHVLJQL¿FDQWEXWRIWHQRYHUORRNHGKLVWRU\RI KXPDQLVPDWWKH8QLYHUVLW\RI&RORJQHQRWRULRXVO\WKHPRVWDQWLKXPDQLVWRI WKH*HUPDQXQLYHUVLWLHV 2WKHU EURDG WKHPHV UHSUHVHQWHG KHUH JURZ RXW RI P\ ZRUN DV KLVWRULFDO annotator for two volumes of The Correspondence of Erasmus, a wonderful YHQXHIRUOHDUQLQJWKHLQVDQGRXWVRIKXPDQLVPLQWKHHDUO\VL[WHHQWKFHQWXU\ Another major focus of my research was my work on a census of medieval and Renaissance commentaries on one major classical Latin work, the Historia naturalis RI3OLQ\WKH(OGHUZKLFK,H[SHFWHGWREHTXLFNDQGEULHIEXWZKLFK DIWHU\HDUVRIHIIRUWJUHZLQWRDERRNOHQJWKDUWLFOHRQ3OLQ\IRUWKH Catalogus translationum et commentariorum 7KH PDMRU FRQFOXVLRQV RI WKLV VWXG\ DUH UHSUHVHQWHGKHUHE\WKHDUWLFOH³+XPDQLVWVVFLHQWLVWVDQG3OLQ\´2WKHULWHPV LQWKHSUHVHQWYROXPHZHUHRXWJURZWKVRIP\EURDGHULQWHUHVWLQWKHLQWHOOHFWXDO KLVWRU\RI5HQDLVVDQFH(XURSHWKDWOHGWRP\ZULWLQJDVKRUWKLVWRU\RIKXPDQLVP LQWKHFXOWXUHRI5HQDLVVDQFH(XURSH$QG\HV,GRFRQWLQXHWRXVHWKHQRZ XQVW\OLVK WHUP ³5HQDLVVDQFH´ EHFDXVH WKH FRQFHSW RI FXOWXUDO UHQDLVVDQFH RUUHELUWKZDVDSRZHUIXOIRUFHLQWKHWKRXJKWRIWKHHGXFDWHGFODVVHVRIWKH IRXUWHHQWK¿IWHHQWKDQGVL[WHHQWKFHQWXULHVZKHUHDVQRSHUVRQRIWKDWSHULRG HYHUWKRXJKWRIKLPVHOIRUKHUVHOI DVEHLQJ³HDUO\PRGHUQ´ 7KH¿UVWDQGODUJHVWVHFWLRQGHDOVZLWKLQWHOOHFWXDODQGFXUULFXODUFRQÀLFWVLQ WKHXQLYHUVLWLHVRIQRUWKHUQ(XURSHWKDWDURVHIURPDERXWDV\RXQJPDVWHUV RIDUWVEHJDQSUHVVLQJIDFXOWLHVRIDUWVWRXQGHUWDNHVLJQL¿FDQWUHIRUPRIWKH OLEHUDO DUWV FXUULFXOXP WKH SURJUDP OHDGLQJ WR WKH %$ DQG 0$ GHJUHHV  E\ UHGXFLQJ DWWHQWLRQ WR FHUWDLQ WUDGLWLRQDO VXEMHFWV HVSHFLDOO\ $ULVWRWHOLDQ logic and its medieval offshoots) and introducing elements of the humanist HGXFDWLRQDOSURJUDPWKDWKDGGHYHORSHGLQ,WDO\GXULQJWKH¿IWHHQWKFHQWXU\ 7KLVDJLWDWLRQE\MXQLRUIDFXOW\SURGXFHGDQXPEHURIFRQÀLFWVWKDWUHPDLQHGDQ H[FOXVLYHO\QRUWKHUQHVSHFLDOO\*HUPDQ SKHQRPHQRQVLQFHWKHXQLYHUVLWLHVRI QRUWKHUQ(XURSHWRDUHPDUNDEOHGHJUHHZHUHFRQWUROOHGE\WKHLURZQIDFXOW\ ± RU PRUH SUHFLVHO\ E\ WKHLU VHQLRU IDFXOW\ PRVWO\ SURIHVVRUV LQ WKH WKUHH

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KLJKHUIDFXOWLHVRIWKHRORJ\ODZDQGPHGLFLQH7KLVDXWRQRP\ZDVUDGLFDOO\ different from the situation in the Italian universities, which were mainly federations of law and medical schools and devoted only minimal attention WROLEHUDODUWVVXEMHFWVZKLFKLQ,WDO\ZHUHWDXJKWE\WKHVHFRQGDU\VFKRROV ,WDOLDQXQLYHUVLWLHVZHUH¿UPO\XQGHUWKHFRQWURORIWKHORFDOJRYHUQPHQWWKH SURIHVVRUVZHUHFLYLFHPSOR\HHVKLUHGDQG¿UHGE\WKHWRZQDQGKHOGWRULJLG REVHUYDQFHRIWKHSURIHVVLRQDOSURJUDPDSSURYHGE\WKHFLW\¶VRYHUVHHUV $OORIWKHDUWLFOHVLQWKLVVHFWLRQIRFXVRQWKH8QLYHUVLVW\RI&RORJQH'XULQJ WKH ¿IWHHQWK FHQWXU\ LW EHFDPH RQH RI WKH ODUJHVW DQG PRVW KLJKO\ UHJDUGHG XQLYHUVLWLHV LQ WKH *HUPDQ (PSLUH DQG SUREDEO\ EHFDXVH RI LWV VXFFHVV LW ZDV DPRQJ WKH PRVW UHVLVWDQW WR SUHVVXUH IRU LQWURGXFWLRQ RI FKDQJHV LQ WKH HVWDEOLVKHGSURJUDP7KHSRZHUWRPDNHWKHFKDQJHVGHPDQGHGE\KXPDQLVWV QHZWH[WERRNVQHZVXEMHFWVRIVWXG\QHZW\SHVRIDFDGHPLFH[HUFLVHV ZDV LQWKHKDQGVRIFRQVHUYDWLYHVHQLRUSURIHVVRUV7KHPRVWVLJQL¿FDQWHDUO\FDVH RI FRQÀLFW DW &RORJQH IRFXVHG RQO\ LQGLUHFWO\ RQ UHIRUP RI WKH FXUULFXOXP LQYROYHG HIIRUWV RI WKH PRVW SRZHUIXO IDFXOW\ WKHRORJ\ WR VLOHQFH RU H[SHO WKH RXWVSRNHQ ,WDOLDQ MXULVW 3HWHU RI 5DYHQQD IRU FULWLFLVPV RI ORFDO SUDFWLFH LQ SDVWRUDO FDUH RI FRQGHPQHG IHORQV 'HVSLWH WKH V\PSDWK\ RI PDQ\ RI WKH \RXQJHUPDVWHUVRIDUWV3HWHUZDVFHQVXUHGDQGHYHQWXDOO\OHIW&RORJQH7KH GHIHQGHUVRIPHGLHYDOWUDGLWLRQZRQ1HYHUWKHOHVVDVLQWHUHVWLQKXPDQLVWLF studies grew, German students wanted to study the new and fashionable subjects IDYRUHGE\KXPDQLVWVDQGZKHQWKH&RORJQHIDFXOW\UHIXVHGWRPDNHFKDQJHV SURVSHFWLYHVWXGHQWVEHJDQFKRRVLQJWRVWXG\DWRWKHUXQLYHUVLWLHVWKDWKDGEHHQ PRUH RSHQ WR FXUULFXODU FKDQJH %\ WKH EHJLQQLQJ RI WKH V WKH IDFXOW\ RIDUWVZDVH[SHULHQFLQJDVKDUSGHFOLQHLQWKHQXPEHURIPDWULFXODQWV7KLV GURSLQHQUROOPHQWVFRXOGQRWEHLJQRUHG6LQFHWKHPDLQ¿QDQFLDOIRXQGDWLRQ RIDOO*HUPDQXQLYHUVLWLHVZDVWKHIHHVSDLGE\VWXGHQWVLQWKHIDFXOW\RIDUWV E\ IDU WKH ODUJHVW SDUW RI WKH HQUROOPHQW  IRU PDWULFXODWLRQ JUDGXDWLRQ DQG attendance at courses, the decline in new enrollments devastated revenues and HQGDQJHUHGWKHVXUYLYDORIWKHZKROHLQVWLWXWLRQ7KH8QLYHUVLW\RI&RORJQH HQWHUHG D ORQJ SHULRG RI UDSLG GHFOLQH IURP ZKLFK LW QHYHU IXOO\ UHFRYHUHG The turmoil of the Reformation caused enrollments to decline throughout *HUPDQ\ LQ WKH V EXW VRPH XQLYHUVLWLHV WKDW ZHUH RSHQ WR FKDQJH KDG EHJXQWRUHFRYHUE\WKHV&RORJQHUHFRYHUHGWRREXWQRWYHU\UREXVWO\ DQGIURPRQHRI*HUPDQ\¶VODUJHVWDQGPRVWSURVSHURXVXQLYHUVLWLHVLWEHFDPH SHUPDQHQWO\VPDOODQGQHHG\7KH¿QDQFLDOFULVLVRIWKHVGLGFUHDWHVRPH SUHVVXUHIURPLQÀXHQWLDOIDFXOW\PHPEHUVDQGSURPLQHQWORFDOFLWL]HQVWRDGRSW DSURJUDPRIKXPDQLVWLFFXUULFXODUUHIRUPDQGDIWHURQHIDOVHVWDUWLQD PRGHVWSURJUDPRIUHIRUPVZDVDGRSWHGEXWWKLVUHIRUPZDVWRROLPLWHGDQG WRRLQGHFLVLYHO\FDUULHGRXWWRSUHYHQWORQJWHUPGHFOLQH

INTRODUCTION

xi

Two essays deal with the most famous humanist of the early sixteenth century, Erasmus of Rotterdam, in particular with his criticisms of the theologians who had consistently opposed his proposals for reform of the institutional church and the prevailing tenor of spiritual life and who regularly tried to link him with the heresies of Martin Luther. Another pair of essays deals more broadly with the reformist humanism of the early sixteenth century. “Rethinking ‘Christian humanism’” analyzes the concept of an explicitly Christian humanism, conceived as a moderate and gradual reform of religious life. In the early years of the Reformation, this reformist humanism attracted many able and learned young men who almost unconsciously evolved from the gradualist ideal upheld by Erasmus toward an openly Lutheran program of reform, even at the cost of disunity; but it also included others who constituted the moderate or Erasmian Catholic reformers, people who (like Erasmus himself) did not approve of Luther’s Evangelical theology or his willingness to defy the authority of the pope, and who (again like Erasmus) still thought that both reform and religious unity could be preserved through negotiation and compromise. The second essay in this section turns from Germany to French reformist humanism and shows how the most famous French humanist of the early sixteenth century, Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, became a source of spiritual advice that Lefèvre’s patron, the reformist bishop Guillaume Briçonnet, passed on to Marguérite d’Alençon, sister of King Francis I and patron and protector of DQLQÀXHQWLDOJURXSRI)UHQFKKXPDQLVWVZKRKRSHGWRDFKLHYHVSLULWXDOUHIRUP without destroying the unity of the church. Natural philosophy, a broad term covering many subjects now associated ZLWK QDWXUDO VFLHQFH LV WKH WRSLF RI WKUHH HVVD\V 7KH ¿UVW ³+XPDQLVWV scientists, and Pliny,” is an interpretive summary of conclusions in my census of medieval and Renaissance commentaries on the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. Pliny’s lengthy work was related not only to questions of science, medicine, pharmacology, and agriculture but also to topics that included SKLORVRSK\ DVVRUWHG ELWV RI LQIRUPDWLRQ DERXW WKH 5RPDQ ZRUOG LQ WKH ¿UVW century of the Christian era, and even a large and unique body of information about monuments of Greek and Roman art now lost but still available in Pliny’s time. The editorial problems of producing the early printed editions of Pliny inspired a large number of commentaries that tried to organize, clarify, and understand what even today remains one of the most textually corrupt major ZRUNVRIDQFLHQW5RPDQOLWHUDWXUH7KHVWRU\RIWKHVHFRPPHQWDULHVDOVRUHÀHFWV WKHJUDGXDOGHYHORSPHQWRIKXPDQLVWWH[WXDOVFKRODUVKLSWKH¿IWHHQWKFHQWXU\ FRPPHQWDULHVDUHDOPRVWDOOE\,WDOLDQVFKRODUVEXWOHDGHUVKLSLQWKLV¿HOGRI classical study gradually passed from Italy to France, Germany, and Spain EHWZHHQWKHHQGRIWKH¿IWHHQWKFHQWXU\DQGWKHEHJLQQLQJRIWKHVHYHQWHHQWK

xii

INTRODUCTION

In both medieval and Renaissance culture, the concept of natural philosophy LQFOXGHGPXFKWKDWPRGHUQVHFXODUWKRXJKWKDVGLVPLVVHGDVSVHXGRVFLHQFH VXSHUVWLWLRQDQGIUDXGPDJLFDVWURORJ\YDULRXVV\VWHPVRISUHGLFWLQJIXWXUH events, even witchcraft and sorcery – in general, the “occult sciences.” The rather eccentric but able German humanist and student of magic (and lawyer DQGSK\VLFLDQ $JULSSDYRQ1HWWHVKHLPKDVEHFRPHD¿JXUHRIFRQVLGHUDEOH interest to recent scholars who insist that such persons and such strange bodies of knowledge must be included within the scope of Renaissance scholarship since, even though we may now dismiss most of these works as learned nonsense, they played an important part in the culture of Renaissance Europe DQG LQÀXHQFHG PDQ\ WKLQNHUV 1HZWRQ IRU H[DPSOH  ZKR DUH QRZ ¿UPO\ HVWDEOLVKHGLQWKHPDLQOLQHRILQWHOOHFWXDODQGVFLHQWL¿FGHYHORSPHQW$JULSSD a student of occult learning since his youth and early education at Cologne, led a vagabond life that took him for extended periods to Italy, France, the 1HWKHUODQGVDQGIDUPRUHEULHÀ\ WR(QJODQGDQG6SDLQ0\DUWLFOH³0DJLF DQGVNHSWLFLVP´DQDO\]HVDSUREOHPWKDWVWLOOSX]]OHVVFKRODUVKRZFRXOGWKH VDPH PDQ DFWLQJ QRW ÀLSSDQWO\ EXW VHULRXVO\ KDYH SXEOLVKHG ZLWKLQ WKUHH years one of the most comprehensive works of his time on the occult arts, De occulta philosophia (Book 1 in 1531 and the whole work in 1533), while also writing and publishing a widely read, widely translated, and widely discussed book that dismisses all human learning, explicitly including his own book on occult philosophy, which he was busily revising even as he wrote the book UHMHFWLQJLW"+LVDe incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum et artium / On the Uncertainty and Vanity of Sciences and Arts¿UVWHGLWLRQPDQ\UHSULQWV and translations) does not mark a full recovery of ancient Greek skeptical philosophy, but it does declare that except for the revealed truths of Christian religion, all human arts and sciences are uncertain and useless. Agrippa may not have read any works of the ancient Pyrrhonist skeptic Sextus Empiricus, still unpublished in his lifetime, and he does not explicitly cite the one work of his ,WDOLDQ FRQWHPSRUDU\ *LDQIUDQFHVFR 3LFR GHOOD 0LUDQGROD WKDW UHÀHFWV GLUHFW knowledge of Sextus’ writings; but my original conclusion, that Agrippa knew a great deal about ancient skepticism and was attracted to a skeptical point of view, remains solid. A further point of interest is that although Agrippa’s interest in the occult sciences began very early and culminated in the brief preliminary version of De occulta philosophia that he presented to Abbot Trithemius of Sponheim in 1510, he spent much of the following decade in Italy, associating with other scholars of the occult sciences and broadening his knowledge of the occult. My article in Studies in the Renaissance studies these years in Italy, especially the way in which his contacts in Italy enriched his knowledge of the esoteric learning of late Antiquity. 8QOLNHWKHRWKHUFRQWHQWVWKH¿QDOHVVD\³7KHPLQG´LVV\QWKHWLFLQQDWXUH a broad interpretation of the intellectual history of the educated classes of

,1752'8&7,21

xiii

:HVWHUQDQG&HQWUDO(XURSHGXULQJWKHVL[WHHQWKFHQWXU\7KLVHVVD\PDNHVWZR EDVLFDVVXPSWLRQV  7KH UHYLYDO RI LQWHUHVW LQ WKRVH SDUWV RI WKH FODVVLFDO OLWHUDU\ KHULWDJH that the earlier revival of learning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had QHJOHFWHGGRHVLQGHHGPDUNDQLPSRUWDQWVKLIWLQWKHLQWHOOHFWXDOKLVWRU\RIWKH :HVWDVKLIWIURPSKLORVRSKLFDODQGGLDOHFWLFDOVWXGLHVWRJUHDWHUHPSKDVLVRQ WKHVXEMHFWVWKDWHYHUVLQFH&LFHURKDGEHHQNQRZQDVWKHstudia humanitatis ± WKH +XPDQLWLHV$ULVWRWHOLDQ ORJLF ZKLFK KDG GRPLQDWHG WKH VWXG\ RI WKH liberal arts in the universities of the Middle Ages, faced a challenge from an DOWHUQDWLYHDSSURDFKWRWKHOLEHUDODUWVWKDWVWLOOLQFOXGHGVWXG\RIORJLFEXWQRZ JDYHIDUJUHDWHUDWWHQWLRQWRFODVVLFDOODQJXDJHVWKHH[SORUDWLRQRI*UHHNZRUNV unknown to the Latin readers of the Middle Ages, and the study of literary JHQUHV LJQRUHG E\ PHGLHYDO HGXFDWLRQ VXFK DV SRHWU\ GUDPD KLVWRU\ DQG PRUDOSKLORVRSK\7KLVVKLIWLQLQWHUHVWVZDVSHUFHLYHGE\WKRVHZKRSURPRWHG it as a recovery of a lost heritage from Antiquity, that is, as a Renaissance; DQGWKHLGHDRIFXOWXUDOUHQHZDOZDVDQLPSRUWDQWIRUFHLQWKHWKRXJKWRIWKH ¿IWHHQWKDQGVL[WHHQWKFHQWXULHV 7KLVUHRULHQWDWLRQRILQWHOOHFWXDOOLIHLPSOLHGDUHRULHQWDWLRQRIHGXFDWLRQ LQWKHOLEHUDODUWV¿HOGVWKDWZDVFDUULHGRXWUDWKHUTXLHWO\DQGTXLFNO\LQ,WDO\ ZKHUHOLEHUDODUWVZHUHQRWDXQLYHUVLW\OHYHOVXEMHFWEXWDPDWWHURIFRQFHUQIRU WKH/DWLQJUDPPDUVFKRROVZKLFKUDSLGO\HPEUDFHGWKHFODVVLFL]HGFXUULFXOXP RIWKHKXPDQLVWV7KH,WDOLDQXQLYHUVLWLHVEHLQJHVVHQWLDOO\VFKRROVRIODZDQG PHGLFLQHKDGRQO\OLPLWHGLQWHUHVWLQWKLVVKLIWRIJUDPPDUVFKRROHGXFDWLRQ WRWKHKXPDQLVWV¶SURJUDP,QQRUWKHUQ(XURSHKRZHYHUZKHUHXQGHUJUDGXDWH HGXFDWLRQGLGWDNHSODFHLQWKHODUJHIDFXOWLHVRIOLEHUDODUWVDQGZDVGHVLJQHG WR SUHSDUH JUDGXDWHV WR HQWHU VPRRWKO\ LQWR WKH KLJKHU IDFXOWLHV RI WKHRORJ\ ODZDQGPHGLFLQHWKHKXPDQLVWV¶GHPDQGVIRUUHIRUPRIWKHDUWVFXUULFXOXP HQFRXQWHUHGVWXEERUQUHVLVWDQFH 7KLV¿QDOFKDSWHUDQGLQGHHGWKLVERRNDVDZKROH LVYHU\PXFKDVWXG\ RI LQWHOOHFWXDO GHYHORSPHQW DPRQJ (XURSHDQ HOLWHV7KLV UXQV FRXQWHU WR WKH FXUUHQWLQUHFHQWKLVWRULFDOVFKRODUVKLSWKDWLQVLVWVWKDWKLVWRU\PXVWWXUQDZD\ IURPVWXG\RIHOLWHVDQGPXVWHPEUDFHWKHH[SHULHQFHVDQGFXOWXUHRIRUGLQDU\ SHRSOH7KHUHLVPXFKWUXWKLQWKLVREMHFWLRQWRHOLWLVWLQWHOOHFWXDOKLVWRU\EXWRQH PXVWUHPHPEHUWKDW:HVWHUQVRFLHW\LQWKHDJHRIWKH5HQDLVVDQFHZDVVKDSHG DQGJRYHUQHGE\LWVHOLWHVDQGQRWE\WKHPDVVHVZKRSOD\HGDQDFWLYHUROHRQO\ LQUDUHDQGWHPSRUDU\PRPHQWVRIWXUPRLO7KHUHZHUHQRGHPRFUDFLHV±DQG FHUWDLQO\QRVRFLDOGHPRFUDFLHV±LQ5HQDLVVDQFHDQGHDUO\PRGHUQ(XURSH    Overland Park, Kansas 14 October 2011





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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A body of publications stretching over several decades involves the encouragement and help of many more people than I can possibly acknowledge here, but I must recall the advice and encouragement of three distinguished scholars who were crucial to my work: William J. Bouwsma, who directed P\GLVVHUWDWLRQKLVUROHFDPH¿UVWDQGZDVWKHPRVWHQGXULQJ+DQV%DURQ who quite early warned me that my dissertation topic, which I regarded as rather narrow in scope, had broad implications and would lead me into a vast range of complex topics, as it did; Paul Oskar Kristeller, who encouraged my work and over many years sent a stream of closely-typed postcards suggesting relevant issues and valuable bibliography. Throughout my teaching career, I had the good fortune to be a member of history departments committed to both research and teaching, especially during more than four decades at the University of Missouri. I appreciate and acknowledge the encouragement of PDQ\FROOHDJXHVLQKLVWRU\DQGRWKHUDFDGHPLFGLVFLSOLQHV,QWKH¿QDOVWDJHV RISUHSDULQJWKLVFROOHFWLRQ,KDYHEHQH¿WHGIURPWKHLQWHUHVWJXLGDQFHDQG patience of Ashgate Publishing, especially my editor Claire Jarvis, my desk editor Lindsay Farthing, and the publisher John Smedley. Although I was a mere bachelor when all this work started, my wife Jean has long been a patient and loving companion, and a far more effective manager of the household than I could ever be. I am thankful for the honor of sharing my life with her. I dedicate this book to her. &+$5/(6*1$8(57

I

The Clash of Humanists and Scholastics: an Approach to Pre-Reformation Controversies HISTORY'S WELL-FILLED DUSTBIN contains many events and persons that once attracted great attention but have since been eclipsed by greater events and greater individuals, and that languish in an historical limbo, disturbed only by an occasional doctoral candidate trying to exhume events and personages that (so far as our general comprehension of the past is concerned) might almost never have existed at all. Yet sometimes these historical non-events can cast light on the greater events which have eclipsed them. A good case in point is the numerous controversies over religious questions which occurred in Northern Europe during the last decade or two preceding the Reformation. In a general way, most (but not all) of these appear to be confrontations between the educational and church-reform proposals of the humanists, on the one hand and, on the other hand, the established academic and ecclesiastical authorities, especially the scholastic theologians and the religious orders. Historians have traditionally so depicted these controversies, if indeed they have recognized their occurrence at all. With the single exception of the famous conflict between the humanist John Reuchlin and the theological faculty of Cologne, a conflict which produced the scandalous Letters of Obscure Men, these controversies have been consigned to oblivion. The cause is not far to seek. Just think for a moment of the issues which they concerned: whether it was a mortal sin to leave the corpses of executed criminals exposed on the gallows; whether the St. Mary Magdalen of the liturgical tradition was really one person who appeared in the New Testament on three different occasions, or First published in Sixteenth Century Journal 4, no. 1 (April 1973): 1–18.

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three distinct individuals, only one of whom is correctly identified as Mary Magdalen; whether St. Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary, was married one time or three. Even on their own merits, these subjects seem minor; and when contrasted with the great issues which Martin Luther raised (justification of man, freedom of the will, the nature and authority of the Church, for example), many of these issues which aroused Northern Europe's intellectuals on the eve of the Reformation seem totally inconsequential. If they deserve any mention at all, why not simply list them as minor examples of the irrepressible conflict between humanists and scholastics? The problem with such a summary dismissal of these and other pre-Reformation controversies is that it neglects two points which (unlike the controversies themselves) are not inconsequential. First and most obviously, the system long used to classify them is not itself proven. The relations between humanists and scholastics in pre-Reformation Europe need to be the subject of far more studies than are now available, but already we know enough to say that the idea of an irrepressible conflict needs to be demonstrated, not taken for granted. Humanism was a new and challenging force in the intellectual and ecclesiastical life of the early sixteenth century, but it did not destroy scholasticism or traditional religion, nor even try to do so. In each local situation, and even in each individual, practical accommodations and compromises were not only possible but inevitable. Even the most established members of the scholastic Establishment sometimes admitted that the fruits of humanistic study (for example, reform of grammar, or textual work on ancient authors) ought to be incorporated into the university curriculum, while at the same time humanists not only sought but often achieved a place within the universities for themselves and their studies, and also shared many of the traditional intellectual concerns of the scholastics. 1 Even at Cologne, which probably deserved its reputa-

1 Lewis W. Spitz, The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanists (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 134-35; Hajo Holborn, l.Rrich von Rutten and the German Reformation, trans. Roland H. Bainton (New Haven: Yale University Press, 193 7), p. 31; and, for the concept of "scholastic" humanism, Paul Joachimsen, Geschichts-

auffassung und Geschichtschreibung in Deutschland unter dem Einfluss des Humanismus

(Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1968; reprint of ed. Leipzig, 1910), pp. 77-78.

I The Clash of Humanists

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tion for academic conservatism, the humanists had their place; and the dean of Cologne cathedral, the aristocratic Hermann von Neuenar, was in fact the editor of two of the publications that defended John Reuchlin against the conservative Cologne theologians. 2 In short, humanism and scholasticism were not two irreconcilable philosophies struggling to monopolize the minds and souls of men and the curricula of schools and universities - a point which the work of Professor P. 0. Kristeller should already have established long ago. 3 Rather, in the academic and intellectual world of the early sixteenth century, they were two distinct clusters of academic subjects, each with its own distinctive methodology, but neither claiming to represent the totality of culture. The second reason for not being content to dismiss the minor pre-Reformation controversies without further study is that they provided the immediate context into which the new and more significant debate opened by Martin Luther was injected; and inevitably they conditioned the earliest reactions to Luther's ideas. In the beginning, few people had even the remotest suspicion that the cause of Luther was something other than the cause of the humanist controversialists of the preceding decades. For a brief moment, nearly all the Northern humanists understood Luther as an eloquent new recruit to their own program of church reform; and hence nearly all of them, at least for the crucial two or three years when the Lutheran movement was winning support of its own, sympathized with Luther and urged that no summary and extreme measures be taken against him. Thus these pre-Reformation controversies, because they sheltered the nascent Reformation by obscuring the novelty and profundity of the issues raised by Luther, significantly affected the course of history. This point is in fact well known. Although Luther and the established humanist leaders soon parted ways, humanism provided the mechanisms through which Luther's

2 Hermann, Graf von Neuenar, Epistolae trium illustrium uirorum, ad Hermannum comitem Nuenarium. Eiusdemy responsoria una ad Io. Reucblinum, et,altera ad lectorem . ... (Cologne: Eucharius Ceruicornus, 1518). He also edited Giorgio Benigni, Defensio praestantissimi viri Joannis Reucblin .... (N.p., 1517). 3 Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought: The Qassic, Scholastic, and Humanist Strains, Harper Torchbooks (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), pp. 10, 19-20, and

especially 99-102, 108-17.

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ideas were first diffused among the intellectuals of Northern Europe. 4 No doubt because of this obvious connection with the successes of the early Reformation, and also because of our growing awareness of the complexity of relations between humanists and scholastics in the Northern universities, several recent works have attempted to re-evaluate one or another of the controversies. Professor James Overfield has published a thoughtful re-evaluation of the Reuchlin case, seriously questioning whether that bitter conflict was in fact a confrontation between humanists and scholastics, as has been generally believed. 5 Two scholars, Professors Richard Cameron and Anselm Hufstader, have even dared to study topics more obscure than the Letters of Obscure Men, namely the attacks by scholastic conservatives on the efforts of the French humanist Jacques Lefevre I d'Etaples to question the accuracy of the Vulgate Bible and the validity of traditions concerning St. Mary Magdalen and St. Anne. 6 On a slightly earlier period and on a subject perhaps even more obscure, I have myself studied the controversy between the Italian jurist Peter of Ravenna and the Cologne theological faculty. 7 What emerges from these studies is not, I think, mere antiquarian rediscovery of long-dead controversies that might well have been left untouched. Professor Overfield's thesis is essentially that antiSemitism, not hostility to humanism, was the driving force behind the activities of Reuchlin's foes; and that at least down to the end of 1514, the desire of humanists to study the Greek and Hebrew

4

Lewis W. Spitz, "The Third Generation of German Renaissance Humanists," in

Aspects of the Renaissance: A Symposium, ed. Archibald R. Lewis (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1967), pp. 106-QS; and Bernd Moeller, "The German Humanists and the Beginnings of the Reformation," in his Imperial Cities and the Reformation: Three Essays, trans. H. C. Erik Midelfort and Mark U. Edwards, Jr. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), pp. 24-26. 5 James H. Overfield, "A New Look at the Reuchlin Affair," Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, etl. Howard L. Adelson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971), VIII, 165-207. , 6 Richard Cameron, "The Attack on the Biblical Work of Lefevre d'Efaples, 15141521," Ozurch History, XXXVIII (1969), 9-24; Anselm Hufstader, "Lefevre d'Etaples and the Magdalen," Studies in the Renaissance, XVI (1969), 31-60. 7 Charles G. Nauert, Jr., "Peter of Ravenna and the 'Obscure Men' of Cologne: A Case of Pre-Reformation Controversy," Renaissance: Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi (Florence: G. C. Sansoni; DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971), pp. 609-40.

I The Clash of Humanists

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sources of Christianity was never an issue. He also shows that few of the Northern humanists shared Reuchlin's concern for Hebrew studies or feared that the efforts of the Cologne theologians to destroy Hebrew literature posed a threat to the progress of humanistic scholarship. Overfield also notes the deafening silence of many of the leading German humanists throughout the controversy, and observes that even some who did publicly support Reuchlin, such as Mutianus Rufus, 8 were privately critical. Erasmus, as was his wont, carefully distinguished between the cause of Reuchlin and his own program of studies and reforms, and limited his rare public statements in behalf of Reuchlin to general character-references. 9 Even those humanists who did speak out for Reuchlin were motivated chiefly by resentment at seeing a pious and learned man whom they respected maligned by Dominican friars whom they despised. 1 0 In their statements they attacked only those individuals who had slandered Reuchlin, not scholasticism as such. Overfield may in fact be underestimating the distaste of the German humanists for scholasticism and exaggerating the uniqueness of Crotus Rubianus and Ulrich von Hutten, chief authors of the Letters of Obscure Men, in treating scholastic philosophy and theology as the enemy. Yet he is no doubt correct in his contention that those two extremists in their famous satire went far beyond either the public or the private statements of most humanists. Indeed, Crotus and Hutten were the real creators of the traditional interpretation which teaches that the Reuchlin case was a life-and-death struggle between humanists and scholastics. Thus Overfield's work provides a significant reassessment not only of the Reuchlin case but also of the relations between humanists and scholastics on the eve of the Reformation. Although they deal with far less publicized conflicts, the works of Professors Cameron and Hufstader on Lefevre d 'Etaples also demonstrate that even the most obscure controversies involved issues of real significance. The question of authority in religious matters, which was perhaps the fundamental dividing-line between Protestants and Catholics, was clearly raised by Lefevre and his opponents. Also

Overfield, pp. 194-95. Ibid., pp. 195-201. I O Jbid., p. 201.

8

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at issue were such matters as the proper method of Scriptural exegesis, the validity of popular tradition and patristic authority, the criterion by which one distinguishes between truth and falsity, and even the right of (limited) free inquiry by the individual. My own study of Peter of Ravenna at Cologne points to a factor less theoretical than these but perhaps more intensely human: the conflict between the individual's commitment to truth and his need to reach an accommodation with the social group - in this case, the university community -within which he conducted his search for truth; in other words, the constant tension between the need for a sense of community and the need for intellectual consistency and personal integrity. The case of the supposedly renegade humanist Ortwin Gratius, first the friend and later the critic of Peter of Ravenna, and finally the chief butt of the Letters of Obscure Men, is a particularly instructive example of this tension. 1 1 The whole area of pre-Reformation controversies provides opportunities for further studies which will give historians a clearer and more accurate picture of the intellectual and spiritual situation on the eve of Martin Luther's emergence as the leader of a powerful new movement. Much though Erasmus has been studied already, his conflicts with individuals like Jacobus La tom us, Martin Dorp, Edward Lee, and Jacobus Stunica, and even his later controversies with Noel Beda and Alberto Pio, 1 2 might cast light on the relation between humanism and the defenders of established traditions of learning and religion. Much the ~arne could be said for other leading humanists, notably Lefevre d'Etaples. Furthermore, much depth might be added to our understanding of the early Reformation if we knew more about some controversies which had little or nothing to do with humanism, such as the struggle over the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which reflected the rivalries between the two chief mendicant orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans.

Nauert, p. 639. See, for example, Myron P. Gilmore, "Erasmus and Alberto Pio, Prince of Carpi," in Action and Conviction in Early Modem Europe: Essays in Memory of E. H. Harbison, ed. Theodore K. Rabb and Jerrold E. Seigel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 299-318. 11

12

I The Clash of Humanists

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After all, even the humanist Ulrich von Hutten, later one of Luther's most vociferous champions, initially shrugged off the indulgence controversy as a mere quarrel among monks; and there can be no doubt that the rivalries between orders contributed both to the Augustinians' slowness to act against Luther and to the Dominicans' eagerness to prosecute him. In addition to these and other special studies of individual conflicts of the period, historical scholarship could learn much from a comparative assessment of these and many other controversies, with special attention to the issues of authority, respect for tradition, and freedom for scholarly innovation, and also with attention to party alignments, methods used to conduct the controversies, and tendencies (if any) of one controversy to influence the course of others. Some of the effects of pre-Reformation controversies are already widely recognized. The rise of a whole literature of controversy, typically expressed in brief, inexpensive, and widely circulated pamphlets, marks the rising power of the press as a means of forming and mobilizing public opinion. This development implied a breakdown of the techniques which the religious orders, the hierarchy, and the universities had heretofore used to maintain their control of public opinion. Not until after the damage was largely done did the established authorities devise effective ways to control the press and prevent its use by critics of the authorities themselves. This use of the press is most strikingly illustrated by the propaganda success of the Letters of Obscure Men, which may well have offended even most of the humanists, but which certainly did hold up the monastic and scholastic conservatives to ridicule. Yet it can be seen in earlier controversies also. Peter of Ravenna, in consciously appealing over the heads of the Cologne university authorities to general educated opinion through his published tracts, not only pointed the way to the Letters of Obscure Men (whose authors had known his case at first hand) but even prefigured the general picture of the Cologne theologians as a conspiratorial band of ignorant knaves. 13 None of the

1 3 Heinrich Heidenheimer, "Petrus Ravennas in Mainz und sein Kampf mit den Kolner Dunkelmiinnern," Westdeutsche Zeitschrift jiir Geschichte und Kunst, XVI (1897), 234-40.

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humanists, of course, not even Crotus and Hutten, could compare with Martin Luther as a controversial pamphleteer; but the pattern of using the printed word as a means of appealing to the people over the heads of the constituted authorities had already been set. A second obvious effect of the pre-Reformation controversies was that they tended to make the humanists a self-conscious group with a heightened sense of common interests and solidarity and hence made the sympathy of a few key figures such as Erasmus and Pirckheimer sufficient to give Luther the initial wave of support that made German humanism the matrix out of which the new Reformation leadership emerged. 1 4 Professor Overfield would perhaps qualify this contention by reminding us of the aloofness of many humanists during the Reuchlin case and of the dismay expressed by still more humanists over the coarseness and radicalism of the Letters of Obscure Men. Nevertheless, the northern humanists of the early sixteenth century did express distaste for scholasticism frequently enough that it must count as one of their chief characteristics. 1 5 On balance, the controversies probably tended to draw them closer together.

Although in a vague sort of way, historians have long recognized the importance of the printing press in the success of Luther's movement, the subject has seldom been investigated in detail. In particular, the emergence of the press as a power during the pre-Reformation controversies has rarely been admitted, except in the spectacular Reuchlin case. There is some acknowledgment of this point in the article of Louise W. Holborn, "Printing and the Growth of a Protestant Movement in Germany from 1517 to 1524," Olurch History, XI (1942), 123-37, especially pp. 125-26, where the role of the "humanist" controversies is understated. See also Lucien Febvre and Henri-jean Martin, L 'Apparition du Livre (Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1958), especially Chapter VIII. For the broadest and most challenging interpretation of the impact of the printed book on the period, see the articles by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, "Some Conjectures About the Impact of Printing on Western Society and Thought: A Preliminary Report," 1he Journal of Modem History, XL (1968), 1-56; "The Advent of Printing and the Problem of the Renaissance," Past and Present, No. 45 (November, 1969), 19-89; and especially "L'avenement de l'imprimerie et Ia Reforme: Une nouVflle approche au probleme du demembrement de Ia chretiente occidentale," Annales: Economies, societes civilisations, XXVI (November-December, 1971), 1355-1382. Professor Eisenstein's interest in the effects of printing passes far beyond its role in the diffusion of Protestantism or even the antecedents of that diffusion, but she does give attention to this narrower problem also, especially in the last-cited article. 14 Moeller, pp. 24-30, 35-36; Spitz, "Third Generation," pp. 106-Q8, for more detailed evidence. 1 5 Spitz, Religious Renaissance, pp. 7-8, 275-76, and passim (in his discussions of Celtis, Hutten, Pirckheimer, and Erasmus).

I The Clash of Humanists

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Thirdly - a point which is little documented but seems obvious enough - the constant dissemination of vague, loose charges of scandalous irreverence, undue levity, and even heresy must have done something to depreciate the seriousness of any accusation of heresy. By the years 1517-15 21, when Luther was winning his original base of support in Germany, so many pious and virtuous men (Reuchlin, Erasmus, Lefevre, for example) had been mailicously accused of heresy, and on such dubious or inconsequential questions, that the charges made against one Augustinian friar by a rival group of Dominican friars were not very likely to convince people that this time the Church did in fact have a real heretic to contend with. Thus at least down to 1520, when his three famous treatises of that year finally alerted some of the more conservative spirits, German humanists tended to shrug off the attacks of Luther's critics as just another example of malevolent and obscurantist hostility to good learning. These three major effects of the controversies are obvious enough, though each point merits careful further investigation. But the recent studies also suggest some other generalizations which are not so obvious but which may well ,help us to understand the age if they are borne out by further research. Of one point my own research on the Peter of Ravenna controversy at Cologne has left me firmly convinced: the emergence of humanism as a new intellectual method and of the printing press as a new way of arousing public opinion posed a serious challenge to the corporate solidarity of the medieval university. Masters and students alike were sworn to observe the statutes of the university, which was a highly privileged corporation with a high degree of self-consciousness and solidarity, and with well established rules of procedure and propriety. Such an institution made allowance for internal disagreements which might arise, but its members bitterly resented any attempt to expose these disagreements to the external world through unauthorized appeals to the press - a trait which they share with more than one university in twentieth-century America. When Peter of Ravenna was first challenged on his teachings concerning the burial of executed criminals in 1507, he was offered the opportunity to defend himself, but only on condition that he did so "in a scholastic manner" and that he not publish any writings on the controversy without the consent of the rector. As a university professor he was under discipline; and what ultimately made his

I 10

supporters at Cologne abandon him and so left him no choice but to depart was not his original teaching on a disputed point of law, but the offense of publishing works in which he reasserted his opinion and defended himself against his critics. Still worse, his works were emotional and polemical rather than sober and scholarly. He had appealed over the heads of his faculty peers to the general educated (Latin-reading) public, and had even threatened to expose the malevolence and ignorance of Jacob van Hochstraten and his other critics to the whole European world of learning. Such a man had violated the integrity of the university community, and not only had to be forced out of Cologne but also had to be troubled by renewed accusations when he began teaching law at Mainz. 1 6 The clash between traditional corporate solidarity and individual freedom to challenge corporate opinion, which was one of the central issues of the Reformation, can already be seen in this early and minor conflict; and obviously it was also one issue in the attempts of conservative schoolmen I to silence the innovative criticisms which Erasmus and Lefevre d'Etaples levelled at various traditions coming out of the medieval period. The studies of Professors Cameron and Hufstader also suggest that while humanism was certainly not identical with Protestantism, it did in fact contain latent revolutionary tendencies that inevitably made it challenge both the intellectual traditions of medieval scholasticism and the religious traditions of the medieval Church. I find the same point at least implied by the views of Professors Spitz and Moeller about the importance of the "third generation" of German humanists - the ones who were young in 1517 - to the success of the Protestant Reformation. 1 7 In a very real sense, and despite the peaceful coexistence and substantial accommodation which they could at times achieve, humanism and scholasticism really were fundamentally opposed. After all the sober wisdom which Professor Kristeller has preached about the folly of regarding humanism and scholasticism as two opposed and rival philosophies struggling for the control of

16 Nauert, 17

pp. 637-40. Spitz, "Third Generation," pp. 106-19; Moeller, pp. 3o-35.

I The Clash of Humanists

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intellectual life, one hesitates to speak thus of an inevitable conflict. 1 8 Yet though there is much truth in Kristeller's suggestion that the conflicts between the two groups sometimes appear analogous to interdepartmental rivalries in a modern university and often involved little more than rivalry for academic positions and prestige, 1 9 there is nevertheless another respect in which the split between the two traditions was very fundamental indeed. Kristeller defines Renaissance humanism in a very strict and narrow sense, as a movement which emphasized the educational and intellectual importance of a limited number of subjects which ever since ancient times had been regarded as "the humanities" (litterae humaniores: grammer, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy), all of them studied, of course, through the medium of classical literature. 2 0 These fields of study in no sense claimed to represent the totality of human learning. In the opinion of the humanists who taught them, however, they were the most truly practical and valuable fields of learning because they focused on problems of immediate concern in daily life rather than on speculative issues; the "humanities" were indeed "human" because their central focus was the problems of human behavior (i.e., morality, both private and public), and also the techniques useful for controlling human behavior (i.e., the study of rhetoric, the art of persuasive speech and writing). Thus they were more truly central to the problems of real life than were the traditional scholastic fields of study. Hence even though humanism was not in itself a new philosophical system, it did contain philosophical implications about the nature of reality and the ability of human reason to comprehend that reality. These humanistic views are conventially but poorly summarized in the trite and imprecise notion that humanism exalted the dignity of man's life in this world. Their real significance was that they questioned whether it was either part of man's business or part of man's capacity to comprehend eternally valid truths through reason. Perhaps the universe and the powers of man were such that only the practical problems of social relations

Kristeller, p. 113. 9Jbid. 20 /bid., pp.lO, 100-Ql, 108-11, 122. 18 I

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and behavior (the matters with which humanistic studies chiefly dealt) were of real concern to man, and hence that the scholastic concern with logical and metaphysical questions was useless if not indeed actually harmful. 2 1 Thus on basic philosophical issues such as the nature of reality and the capacity of man's reason, humanism may have implied new and challenging philosophical views, and in that sense may have been a real philosophical threat to scholasticism. Of more immediate practical effect, however, was the obvious tendency of humanistic thought, at least from the later fifteenth century, to pass beyond its originally restricted area of competence and to intrude into the subject-matter of other, nonhumanistic fields such as law, medicine, theology, and logic. Even Professor Kristeller has noted this tendency and has observed that these humanistic intrusions were the occasion for many of the conflicts between humanists and scholastics in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. 2 2 But one wonders whether this tendency to intrude into other fields of study, and the resultant controversies, could have been merely accidental. Although humanism, strictly defined, dealt with only a limited group of subjects, it was something more than the totality of those subjects, for it was also a method of intellectual inquiry. So conceived, its methodological principles were potentially applicable not just to grammar, rhetoric, poetry, and moral philosophy but also to every field of study which rested on the precise interpretation of certain texts universally admitted to be authoritative, as in fact all fields of learning then did. If the critical humanist through his mastery of the arts of grammar and rhetoric were allowed to control the primary interpretation of these texts - such as Aristotle in philosophy, the Bible and the Fathers in theology, the Corpus juris Civilis in law, or Galen in medicine- then in a very real sense he would control the fields of philosophy, theology, law, and

21 For two suggestive recent discussions of the humanists' attitude toward truth and. man's ability to discover truth, starting from very different presuppositions but both suggesting that humanism did imply certain characteristic philosophical attitudes, at least in its Italian expressions, see Jerrold E. Seigel, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism: The Union of Eloquence and Wisdom, Petrarch to Valla (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), and Wiiliam J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), especially Chapter I. 22 Kristeller, pp.19,100-01, 110,123-24.

I The Clash of Humanists

13

medicine. A canon lawyer who was suddenly informed by Valla or Hutten that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery, a civil lawyer who was told that the medieval Italian legal commentators had misunderstood and distorted the law, or a theologian who was told that St. Gregory the Great lived too late to be a valid authority on the identity of Mary Magdalen, or that the Latin Vulgate text at various points misinterpreted the true meaning of the Greek New Testament, was keenly aware that humanism had in fact (if not in theory) intruded into his area of professional competence. The point is that humanistic method, when applied to the texts of received authorities, and especially when accompanied by the typical humanistic animus against all things medieval, did pose a fundamental challenge to the scholastic tradition in all fields of learning. Professor Guido Kisch has ably traced the conflict at the University of Basel which resulted from the attempt of humanistoriented jurists like Johannes Sichardus to make the new humanistic mos gallicus prevail in legal education and to reduce or even destroy the authority of mos italicus, the established ·legal science of the great Italian glossa tors and commentators of the Middle Ages. 2 3 The sharpest conflict, however, occurred in the field of theology, for the theologians at Paris, Cologne, Louvain, and elsewhere rather quickly saw that the work ,of Biblical humanists like ] ohn Colet, ] ohn Reuchlin, Lefevre d'Etaples, and Erasmus not only involved an arrogant repudiation of centuries of theological learning and ecclesiastical tradition but also in effect amounted to a declaration that the only true way to valid theological learning was through the textual analysis which only humanists trained in the three languages (classical Latin, Greek, and Hebrew) and in philology were qualified to conduct. In other words, they rightly saw in humanism an implication that their own scholastic theological science had no validity at all, and that a lifetime devoted to study of scholastic theology was no real qualification for the theologian's prime business of defining and

2 3 Guido Kisch, Humanismus und Jurisprudenz: Der Kampf zwischen mos italicus und mos gallicus an der Universitit Basel, Basler Studien zur Rechtswissenschaft, Heft 42 (Basel:

Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1955).

I 14

explaining the content of the Christian faith. 2 4 Thus even though the established scholastic learning and the new humanist movement coexisted relatively harmoniously at many times and in many places, the conflicts that did break out were not coincidental but did spring from profound differences, arising ultimately from the difference in intellectual method. The pre-Reformation controversies also illustrate a weakness in late medieval Catholicism which was to have disastrous consequences for the Church during the religious crisis. This weakness was the widespread confusion about the locus of authority within the Church. 2 5 The Spanish theologian Jacobus Stunica charged that the views of Erasmus and Le:fevre on the Vulgate and on many religious traditions amounted to a dangerously un-catholic disrespect for authoritative tradition. In defense of their views on St. Mary Magdalen, Lefevre and his friend Josse Clichtove both maintained that on questions where the Church had not made a dogmatic definition, qualified scholars had a perfect right to challenge traditional opinions, arguing on the basis of scriptural and patristic evidence, and applying the linguistic and historical criteria which humanists had long used in the evaluation of classical literary texts. In assigning relative weight to human testimonies on the Magdalen issue, Lefevre and Clichtove applied the historical principle that the source chronologically nearest to the events related possesses the greatest authority. They also regarded Biblical evidence as far superior to any tradition, even patristic, and concluded that lack of Biblical testimony for a tradition was a strong argument for rejecting that tradition even in the face of plentiful evidence of other sorts. 2 6 This attitude is the result of the characteristic humanistic desire for a return ad fontes - to the Bible, basically - in religious belief and practice. This principle did not drive all humanists to reject the authority of the Church or to rebel against all its practices and doctrines, but it may explain the tendency of those humanists who

2 4 This awareness is expressed in the scholastic attacks on Lefevre d'Etaples discussed by Cameron and Hufstader. On Erasmus and his critics, Roland H. Bainton, Erasmus of Olristendom (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969), pp. 134-40. 2 5 Cameron, p. 13. 26 lbid., pp. 16-18.

I The Clash of Humanists

15

later were converted to Protestantism to take a far more negative attitude toward traditional Catholic beliefs and practices than did the non-humanist Luther. Such a tendency was already apparent in the attitude of Melanchthon and Justus Jonas toward radical reformers at Wittenberg in 1521-1522 and is even more clearly illustrated in the reform career of the ex-humanist Zwingli at Zurich- to say nothing of the humanistic antecedents of many of the early Swiss Anabaptists and of antitrinitarian radicals like Servetus. 2 7 All of these tendencies still lay in the future until at least 15 20, but some of the conservative critics of Lefevre's views on Mary Magdalen and of Erasmus' Paraphrase of the New Testament warned of the dangerous implications of the humanists' disregard for nonScriptural tradition. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a man not unfriendly to humanism, attacked Lefevre's opinions on the Magdalen and enunciated a theory of authority quite contrary to the humanistic tendency toward sola Scriptura. He argued that the centuries-long acquiescence of the faithful in the sermons, liturgical passages, and hymns that contained the Magdalen tradition was normative in establishing the validity of that tradition in such a way that the humanistic criticisms were not permissible. In other words (at least on a question where Rome had not spoken) the community of the faithful through the centuries was the authority in matters of faith and practice. Furthermore, he argued, the sudden casting-aside of such long established traditions by humanist critics would unsettle the minds of the faithful and so should also be rejected on purely pastoral grounds. Bishop Fisher's position was clear even if rather subtle, but his clarity on this point of authority was about as rare as his later willingness to face martyrdom in the cause of a united Christendom. 2 8 The other critics of Lefevre and Clichtove were less perceptive; and while figures like Marc de Grandval, Noel Beda, and Petrus Sutor also warned of the dangers of failing to respect tradition, they did not manage to convince the leaders of educated opinion that reliance

2 7 28

Moeller, p. 34; Spitz, "Third Generation," p. 107. Cameron, pp. 18-20; Hufstader, pp. 43-53.

I 16

on the literal interpretation of Scripture alone, without respect for long-standing traditions or for the exegetical conclusions of the scholastic doctors of the preceding centuries, was dangerous procedure for men who still claimed to be loyal sons of the Roman Church. Finally, the pre-Reformation controversies already studied suggest one habit of controversial procedure which had grave consequences when applied to the case of Martin Luther. This was the tendency of many conservative schoolmen, even when discussing matters which had not become matters of official dogma and perhaps never would, to regard their own views as unquestionably the opinion of "the Church" and hence to utter loosely phrased charges of heresy against individuals who at worst were taking questionable positions on debatable issues. Thus they often transferred the argument from the issue of concern for discovery of the truth to the issue of loyalty to "the Church" - that is, to the views of the Church as defined not by a council or by Rome but by some pressure group within the Church. Such attempts to overwhelm the opposition sometimes worked. Ortwin Gratius abandoned his defense of Peter of Ravenna at Cologne and bowed to the will of the theological faculty. Josse Clichtove in 1521 retracted his earlier support of Lefevre's views on the Magdalen and even drew up the text of the Determinatio in which the Sorbonne the next year formally condemned Lefevre's views on Mary Magdalen, though without condemning the humanist by name. 29 Where a critical humanist was less pliable, he might be subjected to attacks, not only within academic channels but also by public denunciations through the mendicant orders' control of the pulpit. Lefevre's young admirer at Metz, Agrippa von Nettesheim, found that as a result of his endorsement of Lefevre's views during private discussions, several friars publicly denounced him from the pulpit as an enemy of the faith. 3 0 In the same way, somewhat earlier, the

29 Cameron,

p. 23. G. Nauert, Jr., Agrippa and the Crisis of Renaissance Thought, Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, vol. 55 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), pp. 61-62. 3

°Charles

I The Clash of Humanists

17

Reuchlin controversy really began when the fomentor of all the trouble, Johannes Pfefferkorn, on learning that Reuchlin had privately advised the Emperor Maximilian against the plan to confiscate and burn all Jewish books, published a slanderous vernacular pamphlet accusing Reuchlin of taking bribes from the Jews. Thus not all those who recklessly incited public opinion during the pre-Reformation period where humanists. But this traditional method of arbitrarily determining a debatable issue by the fiat of some group that presumed to speak in the name of the Church, and then compelling the opponent to recant or face denunciation as a heretic, was ndt only inherently vicious but also on the point of breakdown. We have seen how in the Peter of Ravenna case, and even more in the Reuchlin case, the accused or his self-appointed defenders used the developing power of the press to appeal to public opinion over the heads of the academic officials, and to balance the power of artfully written appeals to educated opinion over against the friars' traditional use of sermons that appealed to popular hatred of heresy. Furthermore, the humanists were particularly hard for the friars and theologians to silence in this traditional way because the fashion for humanistic culture had spread at the royal courts and among the ruling classes of the towns by the early sixteenth century. This fashion assured the humanists of ready access to the rulers of nations and cities and hence won for them effective protection from the governing authority. Erasmus, for example, corresponded with popes, cardinals, bishops, emperors, kings, nobles, and town councillors. Both by letter and by personal contact he promoted his ideals of scholarship and church reform. The Pope, the Emperor, the Kings of France and England contended for ~he honor of becoming his patron and protector. Similarly, Lefevre d'Etaples by the early 1520's was under the special protection of the French royal family. Though on one occasion he found it necessary to flee the kingdom for a time, the influence of his friends at court persistently thwarted the efforts of his opponents to have him condemned as a heretic. Such great humanists could still be opposed, criticized, and even accused of impiety and heresy; but they could not be isolated and silenced. Thus the system of using broad accusations of impiety and heresy, and of forcing an isolated individual to submit, broke down as the humanists became more numerous, more politically influen-

I 18

tial, and more skilled at using the printed word in their own defense. Any attempt to compel an earnest critic of scholastic theology and current religious practice to submit, merely by demanding blind obedience to what was in fact a highly uncertain authority, now could lead to successful defiance and even to religious revolution, if that critic possessed the loyal protection of a powerful secular prince, a genius for preaching and for the writing of popular pamphlets, the sympathetic respect of the particular social organism of which he was a member, and the ability to win endorsement from the interlocking directorate of humanistic sodalities which influenced the intellectual and even the political life of the imperial court, the princely states, and the free German cities. Martin Luther was that critic. His greatness as a religious thinker and as a leader of men may transcend the power of historical explanation; but his ability to survive long enough to create a great religious upheaval depended on a specific set of historical circumstances; and some of these circumstances may well have been created by the inherently minor but historically significant controversies of the last pre-Reformation generation.

II Humanist Infiltration into the Academic World: Some Studies of North ern Universities

L

"The history of the universities was terra incognita until the early 1950s, inhabited only by pious hagiographers, myopic chroniclers, and that most dangerous of pre-historic animals, the historian of education. This latter creature ... only seems to be concerned with gathering historical justifications for contemporary educational nostrums, or identifying the earliest instance of a pedagogic practice that meets with modern approbation" (Morgan, 142). This statement by Victor Morgan may be not generous in spirit, and it certainly needs to be qualified by recognition of some extremely valuable research done in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.* But it does point accurately to the intellectual deficiencies of most of the older histories of universities. Though they provide valuable information and sometimes print precious documents, they tend to be filiopietistic compilations with their horizons limited to the local scene. They are also, with few exceptions, totally innocent of ideas. They tell us much about statutory requirements, organizational structures, endowed institutes, outstanding individuals, and occasionally, dramatic incidents. But they rarely tell much about who came to study, or what they actually studied; and they rarely even hint that anything so scandalous as an idea was found lurking in the inner recesses of alma mater (Schubert, 13). All this has changed. Two fresh lines ofinvestigation into the history of universities have opened up in recent decades. Social history, the premier historical specialty of the 1970s and 1980s, offers one. Intellectual history provides the other. About 1950, social historians began to realize that university records offered a valuable source. A flood of studies dealing with formerly neglected questions has followed, such as what social groups attended the university, in which faculties they studied, what degrees they took, and what careers they pursued. Morgan points to an article published ET ME BEGIN WITH A QUOTATION:

*I w ish to acknowledge a grant from the Research Council of the University of Missouri- Columbia for this project, which is related to a broader study that has received grant support from the American Philosophical Society and a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.

© 1990 by the Renaissance Society of America, Inc. All rights reserved. Permission granted by The University of Chicago Press, publisher of Renaissance Quarterly.

II Soo

in 1950 by J. H. Hexter as the turning-point; others would point to the work of Mark Curtis and Lawrence Stone. My own area of study is intellectual history, not social history, and I focus on the intellectual history of northern European universities in the Renaissance age, particularly on the encounter between the new culture of humanism and the established culture of scholasticism. In this essay, I concentrate on the publications of the past twenty years, and on developments in England and the German Empire, with some attention to France and the Netherlands. Social history of the universities has enormous significance for the historian of ideas and educational practices. Once we have learned that new classes of students-especially young aristocratswere flocking into the universities, and that university education prepared them for new kinds of employment, questions arise about the intellectual life and the course of study. These are exactly the sort of questions that the traditional histories of universities have done a very poor job of answering or even asking: precisely what did students study? how were the curricular materials presented to them? what did the material learned mean to the students and the society that they would serve? Many of these questions can be answered. The new scholarship has concentrated on the faculties of liberal arts, which were by far the largest in northern Europe, and whose degrees (the B.A. and M.A.) were normally required for entry into the three higher faculties of theology, law, and medjcine. Long before I 500, degree programs in the universities of England, Germany, France, and the Low Countries had given up anx, pretense of embracing the whole range of human knowledge. The. bachelor of arts program had shrunk almost entirely to study of that portion of the seven liberal arts known as the trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, with some attention to natural philosophy and ethics. Furthermore, within the trivium, rhetoric received quite limited attention, grammar was concentrated in the early years, and dialectic had come to occupy the lion's share of the curriculum Gardine, 1974, 32-34; Fletcher, 1967, 417-21; Lewry, 43133). The program for the master of arts degree focused largely on natural philosophy and the old quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Since fewer than half of those who entered the universities completed even the bachelor's degree, university study for most students meant especially the study of dialectic. Humanist critics most wanted to reform the B.A. program, especially

II HUMANIST INFILTRATION INTO THE ACADEMIC WORLD Sor

dialectic; one of the major findings of the newer university historiography is that they succeeded in changing liberal arts education to a substantial degree. They did not succeed- and did not even seriously try-to make their own humanistic subjects totally replace the traditional arts curriculum (Fletcher, 1981, esp. 5-14; Jardine, 1974, 41-60). Probably the most startling part of this conclusion is that it applies even in England. Cambridge and especially Oxford made very few statutory changes and therefore have been commonly thought to have remained essentially medieval. But actual academic practice appears to have been much more flexible and adaptable to Renaissance tastes than a mere inspection of the statute-books suggests. The landmark third volume of the History of the University ofOxford edited by James McConica, especially the chapters by the editor himself and by J. M. Fletcher, establishes this beyond doubt. Just as Curtis suggested back in 1959, recent scholarship shows that the transfer of nearly all undergraduate teaching from the university at large to the colleges, a process that proceeded rapidly during the Tudor age, introduced a large element of humanistic reform into liberal arts education without much formal statutory change. This flatly contradicts the conclusions of older historians of Oxford. They believed that only the most minimal educational changes occurred, because they did not ask what was really taught Oardine, 1974, 31-35, 56-62; Fletcher, 1986, 157-59, I7I-76; Cobban, I7720I; McConica, I986, ch. I and 693-95). Even those scholars who ignored the revolutionary implications of collegiate teaching, however, should not have discounted the new public and private lectureships associated with the endowment of Magdalen College (I448) and Corpus Christi (I5I7) and the royal foundation of Christ Church (I546). These and other new collegiate foundations accelerated the entry of undergraduates into the collegiate society where they came under the direction of college tutors. Furthermore, their charters required them to provide free lectures, open to all members of the university. Thus Corpus Christi in I 519 provided Oxford's first regular salaried lectureship in Greek, the curricular darling of all Renaissance educational reformers. Cobban's account of these developments shows that Cambridge went through the same course of development. And Henry VIII's creation of the regius professorships in divinity, civil law, medicine, Hebrew, and Greek at both universities in I 542 gave

II 802

further evidence of humanist gains that older historians should not have discounted (McConica, 1986, 3-7, 29-42; Cobban, 193-206, 251-52). Damian Leader has shown that these salaried lectureships aided the expansion ofhumanist education. He also established that these new foundations of the early sixteenth century were almost exclusively the work of courtly and episcopal patrons of humanism, such as Lady Margaret Beaufort and Bishop John Fisher (Leader, 1983 and 1988; Cobban, 250-52). The publications of McConica, Jardine, and Leader show that public lecturers and collegiate tutors gave up-to-date and diverse instruction, even though the official curriculum of books studied for degrees underwent only limited change. The evidence comes from probate inventories of books owned by students, teachers, and graduates of both universities, and also to some extent from diaries, letters, and account books Gardine, 1975, 16-17, 19-20, 4041; Leader, 1984; McConica, 1979, 3 14-19). The young gentlemen who flocked to the universities without the slightest intention of taking degrees used non-statutory books found in decedents' estates for the penumbra of unofficial, non-degree courses that tutors and others offered, ranging from modern languages, geography, and navigation to dancing, vaulting, and swordsmanship. But the inventoried books were also used for instruction in the degree subjects. McConica warns against assuming that nearly all young aristocrats avoided the statutory courses or that the poor scholarship boys aiming for B.A. degrees and clerical careers were separated from the young gentlemen who used the same colleges and tutors for a finishing-school education. He concludes that undergraduates and even the young gentlemen fulfilled the statutory obligations but in a flexible manner. All in all, Oxford now looks much less old-fashioned than formerly. As for Cambridge, Leader's new history of the university to 1546 (1988) and the works of Cobban and Jardine confirm the impression that it was even more successful at making room for humanistic studies (McConica, 1986, 695-701; Fletcher, 1986, 179-81; Cobban, 178-207). In order to provide instruction in humanistic subjects, universities had to overcome the obstacle of"necessary regency." This system required recipients of theM. A. degree to continue in residence at the university for one or two years after graduatioh as unsalaried instructors (regents) teaching most of the obligatory material needed by students in the arts faculty. Graduates eager to pursue

II HUMANIST INFILTRATION INTO THE ACADEMIC WORLD 803

lucrative employment resented the obligation. Necessary regency was incompatible with selection of the most talented teachers and, still worse, was incompatible with the use of specialists in new, humanistic subjects, because it presumed that all masters of arts were competent to teach all subjects in the statutory arts curriculum. Necessary regency had already broken down in German universities, where the newer foundations had great difficulty in compelling graduates to stay and teach; the universities often had to provide salaried lectureships in the faculties of arts, long the practice in the three higher faculties (Seifert, 144-45; Meuthen). Boehm (330-32) points out other structural problems involved in introducing humanist teachers there. In Oxford, Congregation (the governing assembly of doctors and masters) adapted the system of necessary regency by granting exemptions or "graces" in order to create a corps of masters who would do all the mandatory teaching and presumably would have enough fee-paying students to ensure adequate income. Cambridge faced the problem more directly. In 1488 the faculty created three salaried lectureships, one of them for humanistic studies and called "Terence," because the Latin comic poet was the principal author studied. The university produced the funds for salaries by levying charges on the masters of colleges and heads of halls. In 1495 Cambridge revised its statutes to require candidates for the B.A. to attend the new lectures in order to qualify for degrees (Cobban, 203-06; Leader, 1983, 218-20). One clear mark oflasting cultural change which would never be discovered from reading university statutes becomes evident from study of the printing industry and library inventories. The old textbooks used for a century or more to study trivial subjects like dialectic dropped out of use rather abruptly about 1530 in favor of new books created to teach the new humanistic curriculum. This change is parallel to other measures, such as the adoption ofhumanistic translations or the Greek text of Aristotle, and presenting the text alone or with ancient Greek and modern humanistic commentary in place of medieval commentaries. The changing of the guard in the field of textbooks can also be demonstrated for Paris, Louvain, and all of the German universities in the early sixteenth century (Ashworth). Nevertheless, scholasticism did survive in the universities, in part because humanists never claimed or even aspired to embrace directly all fields of study necessary for a good ed-

II

ucation (as Kristeller, 1961, 10, 100-02, IIO-I5, 121-24, showed long ago). But scholasticism did not survive unchanged. Significant change also occurred in the higher faculties: the emergence of the humanistic mos gallicus in the teaching oflaw; the complex struggle between Hellenists and Arabists in the medical faculties; and the shattering changes associated with the introduction of Protestant theology into many universities. But the main focus for anyone interested in studying cultural change in the universities must be on the faculties of arts, and more specifically on the teaching of the three subjects of the medieval trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. In all three of these fields, recent scholarship (Fletcher, 1981; Baumgart) has made significant advances, especially regarding developments in England and Germany. Let us begin with grammar. Even the nineteenth-century studies of early humanist lecturers in German universities pointed to humanist complaints against the "barbarism" of the most widely used manual of university Latin grammar, the Doctrinale of Alexander of Villedieu. This difference between humanists and defenders of scholastic tradition erupted in a number of literary conflicts about the textbooks to be used. Humanists became bolder after I 500, and they introduced a reform of grammar in most German universities in the ten or twenty years after 1515. Such reforms almost always involved abandoning the Doctrinale and either adopting one of the surviving ancient manuals or, more commonly, using one of the fifteenth-century humanistic grammars produced by Italian humanists such as Niccolo Perotti or sixteenth-century manuals written by northern humanists (Heath, 16-17, 26-28). This quarrel at first glance appears to be nothing but a conflict between unthinking traditionalism and an effete linguistic purism. But in 1971 Terrence Heath produced a brilliant analysis of these conflicts. He concluded that the real struggle was not a fight between those who wanted to uphold inferior Latin style and those who wanted to teach a Ciceronian Latin but a fight over the underlying goals of university-level grammatical study. The defenders of tradition believed that Latin grammar prepared young students for success in the rigorous study of dialectic, the dominant subject of the entire arts curriculum. The humanist reformers taught grammar in order to prepare boys to read the principal Latin authors and to compose writings of their own in a reasonable imitation of the classical style. Heath emphasizes that the medieval curriculum,

II HUMANIST INFILTRATION INTO THE ACADEMIC WORLD 805

whatever its defects, was a single, coherent program. While the old grammar book may have used a silly, unclassical, rhymed doggerel verse, it was well designed to teach boys the specialized vocabulary and the logical habits needed for dialectic. The Doctrinale presented Latin as a logically coherent system, as students were expected to learn not only what Latin writers did but also why logically they did it. But the humanists knew that mere custom or usage, not logic, determined the vocabulary and structure of any language; and they objected strongly to a grammar book which promoted not only inferior stylistic habits but also an erroneous view of how language is constructed. Their textbooks of grammar made no effort to teach logical reasons for what the language did. They were historical and descriptive, not logical. The humanists sought to summarize and describe the actual practice of standard classical authors and then to illustrate that practice by reading selections from the best authors. Their principle was irresistible; within two decades after they openly attacked the Doctrinale, the old logical grammar was dead and the new textbooks everywhere used. But the price paid was that the new grammar no longer indoctrinated boys in the vocabulary and mental habits necessary for the all-important study of dialectic. A tendency to redefine grammar as a pre-university subject often accompanied the spread of descriptive grammar and the decline oflogical grammar. Conservative arts masters at Cologne early in the century had objected to the use of the Ars minor ofDonatus, an ancient text, in place of the Doctrinale, because it was too elementary (Mehl). In England, both universities by mid-century had prohibited the teaching of grammar within the university, on the grounds that it was a pre-university subject (Bartlett; Jardine, 1975, 18-19). As part of the sweeping humanistic reforms associated with the introduction of Protestantism at several German universities, most teaching of grammar was relegated to special secondary-level institutions variously known as Piidagogien or Gymnasien. In the second half of the sixteenth century, the Society ofJesus took control of part or all of the liberal arts faculties of those German universities which remained Catholic. The Jesuits then systematically relegated all instruction in grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic to secondary schools, while teaching the three main branches of philosophyethics, natural philosophy, and metaphysics-in universities (Seif-

II 8o6

ert, 149-54; Lebrun, 2: 350-54; Boehm, 1978, 344-45; Meuthen, 301-14). The tendency to separate grammatical, rhetorical, and lit~ erary teaching from the universities is also evident in France. The rapid growth of lay-controlled humanistic colleges in nearly all French cities is well known and has been admirably surveyed by George Huppert (see also Lebrun, 2: 198-236, 315-34, 354-67; LeGoff, 94-100). Although recent historians have equated Renaissance humanists with rhetoricians, the reform of rhetoric teaching seems to have generated much less pain than the changes in either grammar or dialectic. This was partly because many elements of rhetoric were incorporated into the revised programs in dialectic-about which more presently. The medieval liberal arts curriculum had assigned a very modest place to rhetoric, which was conventionally taught from book four of Boethius' De topicis di.fferentiis and sometimes from the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium (Lewry, 43 I 32). Rhetoric's modest place in the whole course of study made it easy to introduce a classical rhetorician, Cicero or Quintilian, into the teaching program, either as a supplement to Boethius or as a substitute. The same was not true for dialectic, by far the most important subject in the medieval curriculum and the target of the shrillest attacks by humanist educational reformers. The humanists' assault on traditional dialectic was intense and highly successful. The old medieval manuals virtually disappeared after about 1530; a large number of new and very different manuals were in use in many places already by the 1520s and everywhere from at least the middle of the sixteenth century. Dialectic remained central to liberal arts education: humanist reform did not end its favored position. This conclusion is confirmed by the inventories of books owned by members of English universities, where manuals of dialectic were the largest single category ofbooks, and also appears from the statutory requirements for the B.A. degree in both English and German universities. But the nature of dialectic changed Oardine, 1975, 16-17, 19-20). The reform of dialectic was fully successful and very significant, because it involved a fundamental change in the goals of dialectic courses and of university liberal arts education in general. The key to understanding the change is the nature of dialectic as taught in the scholastic curriculum. The manuals actually used in introduc-

II HUMANIST INFILTRATION INTO THE ACADEMIC WORLD 807

tory courses puzzle most modern non-specialists. As represented by the most widely-used textbook, the Summulae logicales ofPetrus Hispanus, they covered only a narrow range of logical topics and concentrated heavily on analysis of terms and logical relationships, and especially on analysis of sophisms. This aspect of the dialectical course especially aroused the ire ofhumanist educational reformers. A number of studies have shed considerable light on this obscure subject; they define the issues in the sixteenth-century debate and explain the nature of the substantial change that occurred. Even Fletcher, who tends to minimize the extent of curricular change in sixteenth-century Oxford, concedes that the replacement of medieval "sophistry" by humanist dialectic was a radical change (Jardine, 1974, 40-41, 54-60; Jardine, 1975; Leader, 1984; Perreiah, esp. 12-22; Jardine, 1977; Fletcher, 1986). It is difficult to understand what late medieval dialecticians were doing unless one realizes that they presented a strictly formal logic. The barbarous terms attacked by humanists were not just the result of poor stylistic habits. Moreover, humanist criticisms of barbarous Latin were motivated by more than a prissy classical purism: in objecting to medieval dialectic, the humanists objected to the educational goals of scholasticism. The study of dialectic had been narrowed to concentrate on very carefully defined goals. The introductory course aimed to accomplish just one thing: training students to excel in the formal academic disputations which were the principal public exercises of the faculty of arts and the key to success in the three higher faculties. The philosophy oflanguage embedded in the Summulae did not involve real Latin-or any real language-at all. Modern historians oflogic recognize that the language used was not a natural language but a metalanguage, that is, the terminology used in playing the game of academic disputation. The brainier humanists beginning with Lorenzo Valla in Italy and Rudolf Agricola in Germany objected to this language not because it was unclassical but because it was unreal. In their view, it was the technical terminology of a closed intellectual system, a game played within the academic world. Valla insisted that while such abstract, formal language might be acceptable for advanced study in logic, true philosophy applicable to life and suitable for teaching to all university students must be expressed in real language. For the humanist reformers, the proper goal of arts education was not winning academic disputations but the acquisition of

II 8o8

skills useful in the discourses of everyday living Oardine, I975, 2028; Jardine, I974, 6o-62; Jardine, I976; McConica, I982; Jardine, I977). Late in the fifteenth century, Rudolf Agricola, the first significant German humanist, wrote De inventione dialectica. This dialectical textbook looked beyond the narrow scope of traditional logic; it included questions involving persuasive as well as formal argumentation and it covered the demonstration of probable as well as philosophically certain conclusions. This book remained unpublished until an incomplete version was printed in I 5 I 5. Then humanist reformers quickly seized on it as the kind of book needed to teach a dialectic that would be useful in real life and not just in academic disputations. Humanists demanded the replacement of the medieval manuals with the book of Agricola or similar but simplified manuals by other humanists. The rapid disappearance of the old manuals from the publication lists of printing presses, and the abundance of reformed manuals of dialectic found in estate inventories from later in the century, document the victory of the new dialectic. Judged purely as manuals for formal analysis of problems in logic, these new textbooks were inferior to the old. But judged by the humanists' avowed goal of making the undergraduate curriculum a preparation for joining the ruling elites of early modern Europe, the new dialectic seemed successful and eminently practical Oardine, I975. 20-28). The changes in grammar and especially in dialectic suggest that scholasticism survived the sixteenth-cenury reforms but underwent change (Kristeller, I987, I3; McConica, I983, 38-48;Jardine, 1974, 50-60). The reforms in dialectic imply a redefinition of the goals of liberal arts education in a way that seems well adapted to the new and more socially prominent clientele who in England and Germany-although apparently not in France-were flocking to the universities in the second half of the sixteenth century. But if this is so, what are we to make of the apparently unbroken domination of Aristotle in the universities? Although Martin Luther vowed to drive this pagan philosopher out of the university, herelented in later life; his associate Melanchthon was instrumental in restoring Aristotle to a central position in the universities of Protestant Germany. Meanwhile, in England the drift away from Aristotle during the period of rapid humanist success under Edward VI reversed itself in the closing decades of the sixteenth century.

II HUMANIST INFILTRATION INTO THE ACADEMIC WORLD 809

The late Charles Schmitt has reminded us that historians, misled by the anti-Aristotelian propaganda of the seventeenth century, forget that Aristotle's philosophy remained intellectually dominant in the universities until almost the end of the seventeenth century. Schmitt denied that surviving Aristotelianism demonstrated a decline in university intellectual life, as previous scholars had it. Aristotle's philosophy, and especially his logic and natural philosophy, survived not because the universities were degenerate but because he provided the only adequate framework on which a coherent and comprehensive view of reality could be built (Schmitt, 1973, 162-64, 177-80; Fletcher, 1986, 176-79, 194; McConica, 1986, 702-08, 714-21, and 1979, esp. 3 10-15; Schmitt, 1975, 48790). But the continued Aristotelian predominance does not prove that humanists lost the battle for academic reform. Aristotle survived just as dialectic survived: still dominant but altered. This was a new Aristotle stripped of the centuries of accumulated and often highly technical commentary produced by medieval professors, and now presented more directly from the text. The text itself was likely to be one of the new Latin translations prepared by humanists, or even the original Greek. When commentaries were still used, they were likely to be humanistic ones that explicated the text; they might also be rediscovered ancient commentaries. Proponents of the new humanistic Aristotelianism of the late sixteenth century were keenly aware that Aristotle's opinion on many important questions was not necessarily the truth, but they believed that his general method was the only effective way to organize knowledge. Aristotelianism survived for so long because it was both powerful and flexible. The spell of his comprehensive intellectual system was broken only when his Physics collapsed in the middle of the seventeenth century (McConica, 1986, 666-72, 695-714; Schmitt, 1978, 168-70, and 1984). Other themes in the history of Renaissance universities merit consideration. The manner in which humanism entered the German academic scene has colored and even distorted the way historians have interpreted the relation between humanism and scholasticism. In Germany as a whole, humanist reform pressure sometimes gave rise to sharp local conflicts. However, in 1973 I suggested that the relationship between humanists and scholastics was more complex than had been generally been assumed and

II 8ro

ought not to be viewed as an inevitable conflict. More recently, James Overfield has demonstrated that German university teachers did not generally attack humanistic studies, despite some instances of conservative resistance on specific issues. Erich Kleineidam has perceptively suggested that because humanism was not a rival philosophy but a means of providing instruction that fitted into or supplemented the traditional arts subjects of grammar and rhetoric, early humanism at Erfurt was able to establish itself gradually and peaceably on the fringes of the arts curriculum. Only after I 500 did the local humanists begin to agitate seriously for changes that might disrupt the traditional academic program. Then in I5I9 the Erfurt humanists carried through a sweeping curricular reform. Indeed, there were significant reforms in all German universities during the decade beginning in I 5 I 5 (Overfield; Kleineidam, 2: 38-39, 24043, 249-52, 264-69; 3: 4I-43, 236-52; Helmrath; Boehm, 322-24). None of these reforms represented total victory for the humanists, and many of them, such as the one at the University oflngolstadt led by Johannes Eck, were a strange mixture of old and new (Seifert, I40; Iserloh, I8-I9; Liess, 2: 25-29; Hradil, 47-48). But the reformers made gains everywhere. Overfield may be a bit too optimistic; the reform at Erfurt was largely abortive. The reform at Cologne, Germany's most conservative university, was very limited; and humanism did not get an effective foothold there until the Jesuits took control of one of the local colleges (bursae) in the second half of the sixteenth century (Meuthen, I76-78). I can mention other topics only in passing. One is the Wegestreit, or conflict between the realist philosophy of the via antiqua and the nominalist opinions of the via moderna, which marked university life in fifteenth-century Germany. Although the roots of this conflict lie back in the fourteenth century, Heiko Oberman and others show that these divisions continued into the early sixteenth century. The neo-Thomist habit of discounting all scholastic traditions of the late Middle Ages as "decadent" is not supportable (Oberman, I963 and I98I). Cologne's conservatism in the face of humanist pressures for reform may have been partly the result of a high degree of self-confidence bred by that university's success in extending the via antiqua to several other universities in the second half of the fifteenth century (Meuthen, I 76-78). The Reformation affected the universities in all northern lands, but that is another story with its own historiography. However, it

II HUMANIST INFILTRATION INTO THE ACADEMIC WORLD 8r1

is important to recall that Luther initially wanted to abolish scholastic theology at Wittenberg and to provide a humanist program in the arts faculty because that was prerequisite for the evangelical theology that he intended to introduce. Only later did he turn from university reform to reform of the whole church (Grossman, 42, 45-46, 53-60, 74-83; Spitz, 1981 and 1984). The general picture presented by the publications here surveyed is one of significant change. Though reluctant and occasionally downright hostile to the changes demanded by their humanist critics, nearly all university arts faculties in Germany, the Low Countries (Lou vain), and England underwent serious reform by the middle or latter part of the sixteenth century. France seems to have gone its own way; the major venue for humanist influence after the earliest part of the century seems to have been the municipal colleges rather than the universities. In closing, I must briefly discuss a challenging evaluation of these academic changes, one that pictures them not as improvements but as regrettable aberrations whose ill effects live on in the universities of today. Generally such bleak assessments of humanistic educational reforms are the product of ultra-conservative and overenthusiastic neo-Thomists. Or they come from historians of science who have imbibed from Lynn Thorndike the notion that humanism was nothing but intellectual posturing, a detour on the path that should have led straight from fourteenth-century Paris and Oxford to the physics of Galileo and Newton. But the perpetrators here are an eminent British historian of the classical tradition, R. R. Bolgar, and two of the most productive intellectual historians of the Renaissance, Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine. Taking both their cue and their title from an essay by Bolgar, Grafton and Jardine claim that when one looks beyond the glowing generalities of educational manifestos, the humanist reforms in practice boiled down to an intellectually impoverished curriculum that imparted to most of its victims nothing more than narrow, mindless drill in the forms of classical Latin style and a very nodding acquaintance with the factual content (but hardly the ideas) of a tiny faction of that vast body of classical authors supposedly made available by humanistic learning. The new education represented aregrettable turning away from a scholasticism that was far better suited to the needs of European society; and the whole humanistic tradition from then to now was largely a mystification whose value

II 812

rests on unexamined assumptions. The real goal of the new education as it was actually practiced was· not to enlarge human consciousness but to produce a docile elite of functionariesclergymen, lawyers, and public officials-needed to extend the power of the emergent absolute monarchies. In short, the goal was not to enrich and liberate the human mind but to help impose the shackles of early-modern absolutism on the oppressed population. The redefined liberal arts curriculum was designed to uphold the developing Establishment of modern Europe; it still functions within education in the form of the traditional canon of Great Books in order to preserve the status of dominant elites. Whether this book ought to be taken seriously as history or discounted as essentially a manifesto addressing current academic and political debates is a matter that each reader will have to decide. In many respects it has the ring of Whig History, or perhaps Whig History in Reverse. I am not convinced that historians ought to lament the demise of medieval scholasticism and should assume that it was murdered by humanist intervention rather than brought down by its own deficiencies. And I am not convinced that the development of strong centralized monarchy was an evil thing: the nations that failed to develop a powerful monarchy-Germany, Italy, Poland, and much of southeastern Europe- became the political basket-cases of modern European history. But at least this argumentative book does remind us that there was a gap between the noble ideal and the more prosaic achievement of Renaissance education, and that whatever virtues it may have had, humanist education was no more definitive, no more a final solution to all the world's needs, than the medieval educational tradition that it displaced.

II

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Philology. Trans. by J. M. Kennedy. New York, 1924. Nipperdey, Thomas. "Luther und die Bildung der Deutschen." In Luther und die Folgen: Beitriige zur sozialgeschichtlichen Bedeutung der/utherischen Riformation, r 3-2 7. Ed. by Hartmut Lowe and Claus-Jiirgen Roepke. Munich, 1983. Oberman, Heiko A. The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Bie/ and Late Medieval Nominalism. Cambridge, MA, 1963. - - . Masters of the Riformation: The Emergence ofa New Intellectual Climate in Europe. Trans. by Dennis Martin. Cambridge, Eng., 198r. Orme, Nicholas. English Schools in the Middle Ages. London, 1973. - - . Education and Society in Medieval and Renaissance England. London and Ronceverte, r 989. Ozment, Steven. Rev. of Luther's House of Learning by Gerald Strauss. Journal of Modern History 51 (1979): 837-39. Pelliccia, Guerrino. La scuola primaria aRoma dal secolo XVI a/ XIX: L'istruzione popolare e Ia catechesi aifanciu/li, nell 'ambito della parrocchia e dello 'Studium Urbis ,' dal Leone X a Leone XII-1513-1829. Rome, 1985. Percival, W. Keith. "The Historical Sources of Guarino's Regulae Grammaticales: AReconstruction ofSabbadini's Evidence." In Civilta de/l'Umanesimo, 263-84. Ed. by Giovannangiola Tarugi. Florence, 1971. - - . "The Grammatical Tradition and the Rise of the Vernaculars." In Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. 13. Historiography of Linguistics, 23 r-75. Ed. by T. A. Sebeok. The Hague, I975· - - . "Renaissance Grammar: Rebellion or Evolution?" In Interrogativi dell'umanesimo, 2: 73-90. Ed. by Giovannangiola Tarugi. Florence, 1976. Perreiah, Allan. "Humanist Critiques of Scholastic Dialectic." Sixteenth Century Journal 13 (1982): 3-22. Petrarca, Francesco. Opera omnia. 4 vols. Basel, I554· Rpt. Delmar, NY, 1980. - - . Prose. Ed. by G. Martellotti, P. G. Ricci, E. Carrara, and E. Bianchi. Milan and Naples, 1955. Petrat, Gerhardt. "Der Kalender im Haus

II 823 des Illiteraten und Analphabeten: seine Inanspruchnahme als Lebenshilfe vor Beginn der Aufklarung." In BrUckner, Blickle, and Breuer, 2: 70I-26. Petrucci, Armando. "Scrittura, alfabetismo ed educazione grafica nella Roma del primo Cinquecento: Da un libretto di conti di Maddalena pizzicarola in Trastevere." Scrittura e civilta 2 (I978): I63-207. Petti Balbi, Giovanna. L'insegnamento nella

Aristotelianism: A Consideration of the Praefatio to De generatione animalium (I 65 I)." In Humanismus und Medizin, II 7-

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I942. Pigman, G. W., Ill. "Demystifying Humanist Education." Annals of Scholarship 5 (I988): I97-205. Power, Eileen. Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535. Cambridge, Eng., I922. Proctor, Robert E. Education's Great Amnesia: Reconsidering the Humanities from Petrarch to Freud, with a Curriculumfor Today 's Students. Bloomington and Indianapolis,

I988. Rabil, Albert, Jr., ed. Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy. 3 vols. Philadelphia, I988. - - . See also King, Margaret L. Reinhard, Wolfgang, ed. Humanismus im Bildungswesen des 15. und 16. ]ahrhunderts. Weinheim, I984. Schindel, Ulrich. "Die 'auctores' im Unterricht deutscher Stadtschulen im Spatmittelalter und in der frUhen Neuzeit." In Moeller, Patze, and Stackmann, 430-52. Schmidt, Karl Adolf. Geschichte der Erziehung vom Anfang an his auf unsere Zeit. 5

vols. Stuttgart, I884-I90I; rpt. Aalen, I970. Schmitt, Charles B. "Towards a Reassessment of Renaissance Aristotelianism." History of Science II (I973): I59-93· - - . "Philosophy and Science in Sixteenth-Century Universities: Some Preliminary Comments." In The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning, 485-530. Ed. by John E. Murdoch and Edith Dudley Sylla. Dordrecht, I975· - - . "William Harvey and Renaissance

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Toronto and Buffalo, I97I. Seifert, Arno. "Der Humanismus an den Aristenfakultatendes IS. und I6.Jahrhunderts." In Reinhard, I35-54. Sollbach, Gerhard E. "Die Einrichtung des Gymnasiums in Dortmund I543: Schulpolitik zwischen Humanismus und Reformation." In Goebel, 97-126. Sommers, Christina Hoff. "Ethics Without Virtue: Moral Education in America." American Scholar 53 (I984): 38I-89. Sowards, J. Kelley. "Erasmus and the Education ofWomen." Sixteenth CenturyJournal I3 (I982): 77-89. Spitz, Lewis M. Rev. of Luther's House of Learning by Gerald Strauss. American Historical Review 85 (I98o): I43· - - . "The Impact of the Reformation on the Universities." In University and Reformation: Lectures from the University of Copenhagen Symposium, 9-26. Ed. by Leif

Grane. Leiden, I98I. - - . "Thelmportance ofthe Reformation for the Universities: Culture and Confessions in the Critical Years." In Kittelson and Transue, 42-67. Stock, Phyllis. Better than Rubies: A History of Women's Education. New York, I978. Stone, Lawrence. "The Educational Revolution in England, I 540-I 640." Past and Present 28 (I964): 4I-8o.

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- - , ed. The University in Society. 2 vols. Princeton, I 97 4· Strauss, Gerald. Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation. Baltimore and London, I978. - - . "The Reformation and Its Public in an Age of Orthodoxy." In The German People and the Reformation, I94-2I4. Ed. by R. Po-chia Hsia. Ithaca, NY, I988. - - . "Techniques oflndoctrination: The German Reformation." In Graff, I98I', 96-I04. --"Lutheranism and Literacy: A Reassessment." In Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800, ro9-23. Ed. by Kaspar von Greyerz. London, I984. - - . Rev. of Public Schools in Renaissance Frmzce by George Huppert. journal of Social History I9 (I985): 36I-67. - - , and Richard L. Gawthrop. "Protestantism and Literacy in Early Modern Germany." Past and Present I04 (I984): 3I-55· Swetz, Frank J. Capitalism and Arithmetic: The New Math of the 15th Century. Including the Full Text ofthe 'Treviso Arithmetic' of 1478 translated by David Eugene Smith. La Salle, IL, I987. Tobbicke, Peter. "Untersuchungen zur Prinzenerziehung des I6. bis I8.Jahrhunderts." IzebF r2/r3 (I979): 337-38.

Turrini, Miriam. " 'Riformare il mondo a vera vita christiana': le scuole di catechismo nell'Italia del Cinquecento." Annali dell'Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trento 8 (I982): 407-89. Van Egmond, Warren. Practical Mathematics in the Italian Renaissance: A Catalog of Italian Abbacus Manuscripts mzd Printed Books to 1600. Florence, I981. Wartenberg, GUnther, "Vistationen des Schulwesens im albertinischen Sachsen zwischen I 540 und I 5 So." In Goebel, 5578. Weyrauch, Erdmann. "Die Illiteraten und ihre Literature." In BrUckner, Blickle, and Breuer, 2: 465-74. Wiersing, Erhard. "Martin Luther und die Geschichte der Erziehung." In Goebel, 27-54· Wiesner, Merry E. Women in the Sixteenth Century: A Bibliography. St. Louis, I983. Wirth, Karl-August. "Von mittelalterlichen Bildern und Lehrfiguren im Dienste der Schule und des Unterrichts." In Moeller, Patze, and Stackmann, 256-370. Wriedt, Klaus. "Schulen und bUrgerliches Bildungswesen in Norddeutschland im Spatmittelalter." In Moeller, Patze, and Stackmann, I52-71. Wright, William]. "The Impact of the Reformation on Hessian Education." Church History 44 (1975): 182-98.

III

Humanism as Method: Roots of Conflict with the Scholastics Recent scholarship on Northern Humanism has asked whether humanist-scholastic conflicts represent a clash of rival cultures or only isolated quarrels. Overfield favored the latter view. Now Rummel challenges this conclusion, arguing that discourse degenerated from polite discussion to cultural war. Two major issues emergeddefense of orthodoxy, and professional competence to discuss certain questions. Research must focus on humanism as an intellectual method which challenged tradition not only in the liberal arts but also in theology, law, and medicine. Scholars must ask whether humanists (e.g., Lefevre and Erasmus) as professional rhetoricians undermined the scholastic quest for absolute truth. Second, they must ask how humanists as experts in grammar (including textual criticism) lodged a claim to control the ancient texts on which all traditional learning was founded. Both as an attack on dialectic and as a movement for textual criticism, humanism constituted a fundamental challenge to medieval intellectual tradition.

MoRE TIIAN TWO DECADES AGO, this journal published my article on "the clash of humanists and scholastics" in the early sixteenth century.1 I wish to return to this theme in order to assess where we are now in our effort to understand the encounter between the new humanist culture and the traditional scholastic culture in Northern Europe. My hope is to review what we have learned since the Sixteenth Century Journal published my essay in 1973, and then to identify some areas where the scholarship of the intervening years has raised questions that need further study. Erika Rummel's recent book, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation, confirms the idea that a reconsideration of the humanist-scholastic relationship is due.2 This book surveys the scholarship and then draws some frank and well-founded conclusions about the relationship between the new academic culture and the old. In between my article of 1973 and this book came many other studies, notably James Overfield's 1984 book, Humanism and Scholasticism in LAte Medieval Germany, which advanced the study of the subject greatly but with which 1Charles G. Nauert,Jr., "The Clash of Humanists and Scholastics: An Approach to Pre-Reformation Controversies," Sixteenth Century journal 4, no. 1 (April 1973): 1-18. 2£rika Rummel, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Riformation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

Both this essay and the 1973 article are revisions of papers presented at plenary sessions of the 6L[WHHQWK&HQWXU\6WXGLHV&RQIHUHQFHLQDQG 7KHDXWKRUDFNQRZOHGJHVWKH¿QDQFLDO support of Washington University for the 1996 presentation and the help of Professor Colette Winn, president of the conference, in arranging the presentation.

First published in Sixteenth Century Journal 29 (1999): 427–38.

III 428 Rununel expresses some important disagreements. Simply put, the issue is whether the many documented incidents of conflict between the academic establishment and the humanists amount to a fundamental cultural shift or are only a series of more or less isolated disagreements that involved local issues and personal rivalries. The latter position is essentially the conclusion drawn by Overfield. He argues that even the Reuchlin affair, which is the only one of the humanist-scholastic conflicts ever mentioned in general histories of the early sixteenth century, did not pit humanists against scholastics but was a by-product of the raw anti-Semitism typical oflate medieval society. 3 My earlier article agreed in part with the conclusions reached by both Overfield and Rununel, not because I discovered how to uphold both sides of a debate at the same time but because there is merit in both positions: there was no total incompatibility between humanists and scholastics, who often coexisted peaceably within the same academic conununity; nevertheless, there was always an undercurrent of suspicion and hostility, suggesting that underneath the petty local and personal feuds, there was something deeper, something that bred private tension and occasionally open conflict. That is what I suggested in 1973, and that is what I believe today. This opinion is broadly in harmony with Rununel's new book. So, despite the often petty and local scale of their clashes, I do think that conflict between humanism and scholasticism was inevitable. The Protestant Reformation, of course, complicated this relationship; but it did not cause the conflict. A further complication is that the broader humanist-scholastic encounter never attained a resolution. Humanism lacked the capacity-and the ambition-to replace scholastic learning entirely, while scholasticism did not have the decency to turn up its toes and die, but in fact reasserted its dominance over the academic world in the middle and later decades of the sixteenth century and remained powerful well into the seventeenth century. Any serious reflection on humanism has to go back to the pathbreaking essays of Paul Oskar Kristeller, collected in his Renaissance Thought (1961).4 His thought underlay Overfield's studies, in that Overfield demonstrates, exactly as Kristeller argued, that in the German universities, humanism never for a moment became a comprehensive philosophical system rivaling the Aristotelian systems that we label scholastic. In Germany as in Italy, humanism was a limited cluster of academic subjects, the studia humanitatis. Even at their most ambitious point, humanists never claimed (as scholastics did) that their disciplines constituted the totality of human knowledge. Kristeller suggests that something akin to interdepartmental rivalries in modern universities may have been responsible for the conflicts.50verfield's study 3James H. Overfield, Humanism and Scholasticism in Late Medieval Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), chap. 7, pp. 247-97, and his earlier article, "A New Look at the Reuchlin Affair," Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 8 (1971): 167-207. More recendy, Hans Peterse,Jaco-

bus Hoogstraten gegen Johannes Reuchlin: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Antijudaismus im 16. Jahrhundert (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1995). 4Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanist Strains (New York: HarperTorchbooks, 1961), esp. chaps. 1, 2, 5, 6. S[bid., 43.

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reaches essentially the same conclusion, though he also attributes much of the heat to personal rivalries and personal idiosyncracies. The only two general attacks on humanism produced in Germany were written not by scholastics but by humanists, albeit very conservative ones, Jakob Wimpheling and Ortwin Gratius.6 The work of Kristeller and particularly of Overfield helped to direct scholarship on Northern humanism toward study of the universities, and especially toward the gradual penetration of the faculties of liberal arts by young humanists trained in Italy who increasingly pressed for reform of traditional liberal arts education. The history of this effort to reform the faculties of arts is well known. Overfield provides a good survey, and my own essay entided "The Humanist Challenge to Medieval German Culture"7 surveyed the diffusion of humanism through the German universities. Nor was Germany the only country affected by this desire for educational reforms. New histories of Oxford and Cambridge show that the supposedly immobile English universities significandy changed the nature ofliberal arts education during the sixteenth century, especially through the rise of the collegiate system and growing reliance on the informal tutorial.8 In the Netherlands, the growing influence of humanism at Louvain is well known. The development of humanism in the arts faculties of Paris and the other French universities appears to be less adequately studied. Certainly there is nothing comparable to the work that James Farge has published on the Paris faculty of theology. 9 The reforms enacted were substantial. At an increasing number of Northern universities, Greek became a regular subject and specialists were hired to teach it. Old textbooks-such as the Doctrinale in Latin grammar and the Parva logicalia in dialectic-were abandoned after having been used for centuries and were replaced with products ofhumanism such as Niccolo Perotti's Rudimenta for Latin grammar and Rudolf Agricola's De dialectica inventione for dialectic. In a symposium paper at the Renaissance Society of America at Toronto in 1989, I surveyed some of the scholarship that traces these changes.10 Anyone who samples this scholarship can 6Qverfield, Humanism and Scholastidsm, 329. 7Charles G. Nauert, "The Humanist Challenge to Medieval German Culture," Daphnis: Zeitschrifi

for mitt/ere deutsche Uteratur 15 (1986): 277-306. 8Damian Riehl Leader, A History of the University

of Cambridge, vol. 1: The University to 1546, general editor Christopher Brooke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), and James McConica, ed., the Collegiate University, vol. 3 of The History of the University of Oxford, general editor T. H. Aston (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986). 9James K. Farge, Orthodoxy and Reform in Early Reformation France: The Faculty ofTheology of Paris, 150G-1543 (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1985); see also idem, Biographical Register of Paris Doctors ofTheology, 150G-153 6, Subsidia Mediaevalia, 10 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980), and his edition of the proceedings of the theological faculty, Registre des proces-verbaux de Ia Faculte de Theologie de 1' Universite de Paris, de janvier 1524 a novembre 1533 (Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1990). There can be no doubt that education in the studia humanitatis was available in the faculty of arts at Paris. For example, George Huppert, Public Schools in Renaissance France (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), chaps. 4 and 5, shows that possession of the M.A. degree from Paris became a prime qualification for applicants seeking positions in the new, humanistic colleges being established by many sixteenth-century French municipalities. Further research is needed into the role of the humanities in the arts curriculum at Paris. lOCharles G. Nauert, "Humanist Infiltration into the Academic World: Some Studies of Northern Humanism," Renaissance Quarterly 43 (Winter 1990): 799-812, and bibliog. at 818-24.

III 430 see evidence of significant gains for the humanist reformers of liberal arts education. Most studies focus largely, sometimes exclusively, on humanist reform in the lowest level of university education, the faculties of liberal arts. Despite the evidence of deep-rooted conflict, no one seriously wants to return to the discredited idea that Renaissance humanism constituted new philosophy that replaced a dying scholasticism, thus ushering in the modern intellectual world. Kristeller is still correct: humanism was not a philosophy at all but at most a movement aiming to improve society by reasserting the value of the studia humanitatis, a narrow cluster of five subjects. In fact, as Kristeller observed, scholasticism itself was not a single philosophical system. There were many scholasticisms. They agreed only in their tendency to look to Aristode for guidance and in their possession of a common method of intellectual inquiry, the dialectical method. Nevertheless, this method, as Peter of Spain confidendy declared, claimed the capacity to investigate, classify, and definitively resolve the major questions in all fields of learning; in his own words: "Dialectic is the art of arts, the science of sciences, possessing the way to the principles of all curriculum subjects."11 Erika Rummel's new book takes this discussion a long step farther. She thinks that broader issues were in play than just the reorientation ofliberal arts education. She discerns a rising crescendo of conflict. Although criticism of scholastic learning is common even in the work of early humanists like Petrarch, and a wide-ranging attack on the supposedly pagan tendencies of humanism appeared in the Lucula noctis of the Dominican friar Giovanni Dominici in 1405, discussion between humanists and scholastics in fifteenth-century Italy remained moderate and civil. The most famous such debate occurred in 1485 between Pico della Mirandola, who had humanistic interests but also studied scholastic dialectic at Paris, and the famous Venetian humanist, Ermolao Barbaro. Barbaro counseled against study of the uncouth dialectic of the North, while Pico belitded rhetoric, the focal center of humanist interests, as something deceitful, superficial, and unable to satisfy the mind's hunger for truth.Yet the general tone of even this exchange is respectful and friendly; and Rummel concludes that in such early debates, each side is willing to concede some merit to the other. There is no fight to the death between rival cultures. But in the first two decades of the sixteenth century, as Northern humanists began to demand significant reform of liberal arts education, the debate became sharper. Humanists singled out specific individuals on the opposite side and ridiculed their trite, inelegant, and poindess teaching and writing, while conservative scholastics not only took reprisals against outspoken young teachers who pushed too hard for educational reform but also took specific measures to limit or ban the use of nontraditional textbooks, to discourage the study of poetry and the classical and biblical languages, and to justify the traditional curriculum. Conservatives watched carefully for any intrusion by humanists-mere grammarians and rhetori!!Quoted by Overfield, Humanism and Scholastidsm, 30.

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cians, as they regarded them-into questions properly belonging to the three higher faculties, law, medicine, and (above all) theology. As Kristeller suggested, this was in part a defense of professional and academic turf. But it led to an increasingly hostile tone on both sides and found its full development in the savage attacks by conservative preachers and theologians on the application of humanistic textual, historical, and linguistic skills to the study of the Bible by the two greatest figures of Northern humanism, Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples and Desiderius Erasmus. Two issues were involved in these attacks. One, of course, was defense of orthodox doctrine; after the outbreak of the Reformation, this issue produced an increasingly poisonous atmosphere. The second issue, closely linked to the first and also to the question of professional qualifications, was the inherent validity of the opponent's intellectual method, either dialectical or linguistic/philological. The scholastic conservatives flatly declared that only their own traditional method, based on dialectical argumentation and closely guided by the writings of earlier generations of scholastic theologians, could provide sure guarantees of orthodoxy in doctrine and catholicity in religious practice. They scorned Lefevre and Erasmus as mere grammarians and opposed their application of humanistic scholarship to religious texts as useless at best, and probably outright dangerous. Humanist criticism was the work of" mere grammarians;' such as Lefevre and Erasmus, who supposedly lacked theological training and hence had neither a legal nor an intellectual right to speak and publish on questions involving theology and the Bible. The two great humanists, with somewhat greater caution since both of them were determined to defend their status as orthodox Catholics, responded in kind. Both of them-Erasmus far more dearly-insisted that the dialectical method of the academic theologians had produced a theological science that concentrated on trivial, abstruse questions of little or no real value to the needs of the church. Scholastic theology, they charged, neglected full and reflective study of what the Bible actually said. It forced degree candidates to waste years learning what ignorant, half-educated, and Greekless medieval commentators had written. It disingenuously extracted isolated passages from authors (including the Bible itself, the Church Fathers, and modern writers). It then ignorantly or maliciously twisted these passages into statements that had no relation to the intention of the author or the historical and textual context in which those statements had been made. It unfairly blackened the reputation of good Christians who had incurred the selfinterested wrath of ambitious academic politicians. And, as Erasmus bluntly wrote in letters of 1525 to two of his most dangerous critics, Noel Beda of Paris and Alberto Pio, prince of Carpi, scholastic theologians arrogantly sat back and issued condemnations of articles extracted from the writings of Catholic defenders of the faith, while they offered nothing of practical value to those who were struggling to preserve a church that in Germany, at least, was collapsing over their heads.12 12Erasmus to Beda,June 15, 1525, ep. 1581, in Collected IMJrks of Erasmus [henceforth CWE], 11:142-43, lines 35D-79; Erasmus to Alberto Pio, October 10, 1525, ep. 1634, in CWE, 11:330-31, lines 49-118 Oine citations are given only for unusually long letters).

III 432 The point here is not whether either the scholastic attacks on the humanists or the humanist denunciations of the scholastics were valid. What Rummel has led us back to is awareness that the clashes between humanist and scholastic ways of thinking had turned into an encounter between two rival cultures. True, humanism as such was not a philosophy. True also, the great majority of humanist academics accommodated themselves to the realities of a world controlled by senior professors. But at some much more profound level, the issues that divided humanists and scholastics cut deeper than just personal feuds, competition for courses and offices and income, or petty squabbling about the quality of someone's Latin style. In my opinion, the issues cut even deeper than the disputes over reform of the liberal arts curriculum. The conflicts studied by Overfield and others may have been localized, personal, and muddled; but they reflect a disharmony that is fundamental. Conflict was not accidental; it was fated, irrepressible. Laetitia Boehm implied as much in an essay published in 1976, and Rummel draws the line even more clearly, defining the dispute over academic competency and "the exacerbation of the debate during the Reformation" as the two forces that made the humanist-scholastic conflicts fundamental rather than incidental.13 Future studies of this question need to pursue two major lines of inquiry. Both have to do with intellectual method. The more difficult, but potentially the more rewarding, is to focus on those aspects of humanism that challenged the whole enterprise of rational philosophy, the scholastic aspiration toward attainment of absolute truth. This involves humanism in its aspect as rhetoric. It calls for further investigation of rhetorical thought, that art of persuasive argument which sought to establish probable truths and questioned whether the human mind is capable of attaining absolute certitude. There is already a substantial literature on this topic, and we were urged long ago by Jerrold Seigel and Hanna Gray to explore the central role of rhetorical thought in shaping the identity and goals ofhumanism.14This 13Laetitia Boehm, "Humanistische Bildungsbewegung und mittelalterliche Universitatsverfassung: Aspekte zur friihneuzeitlichen Reformgeschichte der deutschen Universitaten," in Jozef I]sewijn and Jacques Paquet, eds., The Universities in the Late Middle Ages, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, series 1, studia, 6 (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1978), 315-46, and also in Waldemar Schlag! and Peter Herde, eds., Grundwissenschajien und Geschichte: Festschrift fur Peter Acht, Miinchener Historische Studien, Abteilung Geschichtliche HilfSwissenschaften, vel. 15 (Kallmiinz Opf:Verlag Michael Lassleben, 1976), 311-33; Rummel, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate, 17-18. Referring principally to the intellectual situation in Italian universities, Walter Riiegg, "Epilogue: The Rise of Humanism," in Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, ed., A History of the University in Europe, vol. 1: Universities in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 456-59, also points to an underlying disagreement concerning proper intellectual method. 14jerrold E. Seigel, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism: The Union of Eloquence and Wisdom, Petrarch to lillla (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968); Hanna H. Gray, "Renaissance Humanism: The Pursuit ofEloquence;'journa1 of the History of Ideas 24 (1963): 497-514. For the general history of rhetoric, see Thomas Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990);James J. Murphy, ed., Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983);James J. Murphy, ed., Renaissance Rhetoric: A Short- Title Catalogue ofl#rks on Rhetorical Theory from the Beginning of Printing to A. D. 1700 (New York: Garland, 1981); Winifred Bryan Horner, ed., The Present State of Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1983); idem, ed., Historical Rhetoric: An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Sources in English (Boston: G. D. Hall, 1980).

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is a hard path, leading through the Renaissance attacks on Aristotelian logic and into the thickets of Ramist thought.15 This path also leads toward study of the rebirth of philosophical skepticism, which has been given inadequate attention. Although we have the fine essay of Alan Perreiah on this topic, and Richard Popkin's history of Renaissance skepticism, 16 no one has adequately probed the persistent war of the humanists-that is, the great ones, such as Petrarch, Valla, Erasmus, and Vives-on the fundamental assumptions of scholastic thought. Few humanists directly raised the epistemological questions that scholastic philosophy failed to address. Nevertheless, their emphasis on rhetorical argument and on the attainment of moral rather than metaphysical certitude, together with their dismissive attitude toward syllogistic argumentation, shows that under the surface there was a yawning chasm between two antithetical conceptions of proper intellectual method. Humanists did not just challenge the conclusions of their scholastic critics. They denied the appropriateness of the questions being investigated and the validity of the types of proof offered. The impression that humanists and scholastics were failing to communicate, were talking past one another, is correct: they were not engaged in the same enterprise, did not pursue the same goals, and most assuredly did not have compatible ideas about the proper use of human reason-that is, about valid intellectual method. This methodological quarrel was precipitated by the humanists' identity as rhetoricians, and it was constantly in play. But there was another, humbler methodological issue, one that led more directly to the bitter hostility of the humanist-scholastic debates. Rummel defines this as an issue of professional competence, and she is right. But at bottom it is a disagreement on method. It focuses on the second major humanist discipline, grammar. Humanists were not only rhetoricians but also students of grammar, a subject which through their work came to embrace study of ancient languages and particularly the critical evaluation and reconstruction of ancient texts. Scholastic philosophers and theologians spent long years acquiring the skills of dialectical argumentation and familiarity with the opinions of the past authorities, both ancient and medieval. When faced with publications by humanists who disagreed with their opinions, their usual reaction was to reject the criticisms because the authors were not professionally qualified by advanced degrees in the appropriate higher faculty but were mere grammarians-that is, men who had mastered only the most elementary of the seven liberal arts. This charge was to some extent justified in the case of Lefevre d'Etaples and Lorenzo Valla; it was not exactly true of Erasmus, who did have a doctorate in theology, though a somewhat irregular one. Nevertheless, the method that Erasmus followed in his biblical and patristic studies was grammatical: like Valla and Lefevre, he focused attention on the critical evalu15WaJter Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958; reprinted., New York: Octagon, 1979). 16AJan Perreiah, "Humanistic Critiques of Scholastic Dialectic," Sixteenth Century journal 13 (1982): 3-22; Richard H. Popkin, A History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (Assen:Van Gorcum, 1960); expanded edition: A History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).

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arion of ancient texts, including the New Testament, and challenged the adequacy of the texts traditionally cited by scholastic thinkers, notably the Book qf Sentences and the Latin Vulgate Bible. Although occasionally Erasmus became irritated enough by the pettifogging attacks of his critics to assert his right to be treated as a qualified theologian, 17 in general he conceded that his work as biblical and patristic editor constituted only the humblest, most elementary level of theological scholarship.18 That is, it dealt with the text. But as his scholastic critics quickly sensed, his modest claim to control the text amounted to claiming control of the whole field. Scholastic methodology contained a number of vulnerable spots, and humanists identified and attacked many of them. In some ways the most intellectually perverse was the process of extracting isolated statements from a text and then treating those sentences as accurate reflections of the author's opinion, without attention to what the sentence implied in its original context. The humanists' criticism of the theologians' reliance on anthologies such as Peter Lombard's Book of Sentences was a protest against this shoddy intellectual procedure. They demanded a shift of focus in theological training from medieval anthologies and commentaries to intensive study of the biblical text itself. The issue arose starkly in Erasmus' controversial exchange with the Louvain theologian Jacobus Latomus, who flatly denied that under modern conditions study of the text of scripture should be the first or the principal focus of theological education.19 Indeed, one of the ablest of the Paris doctors, the Scottish theologian John Mair, who had previously defended the traditional focus on medieval commentators and anthologies, admitted in 1523, in the face of the Protestant challenge, that his fellow theologians had been forced to give up speculative theological issues and to get back to work on the Bible.20 A more immediately pressing issue, however, was the kind of textual criticism represented by the biblical scholarship of Lefevre and Erasmus, especially by Erasmus' Novum Instrumentum. This publication, which first appeared in 1516, included not only the Greek text of the New Testament but also an extended set of notes critically evaluating vulnerable passages in the traditional Latin text. Its revised second edition of 1519 added a new Latin translation based on the Greek text and the critical notes.Already before the first edition appeared in 1516, the young Louvain theologian Martin van Dorp had urged Erasmus to abandon the project.21 He feared that such a publication inevitably challenged the authority of the church, which had based its teaching on the traditional Vulgate text for a thousand years. In an even stronger letter, he explicitly challenged the right of people who used grammatical arguments and lacked theological training to intrude into the interpretation of the Bible and hence ultimately into the determination of doctrinal issues. 22 He denied Erasmus' contention that a competent theologian must be able to consult 17Erasmus to Noel Beda,June 15, 1525, ep. 1581, in CWE, 11:131, lines 21-27. 18fbid., ep. 1581, in CWE, 11:135, lines 134-39. 19Jacobus Latomus, De trium linguarum et studii theologid ratione dialogus (Antwerp: Michael Hillenius, 1519),fols.B3v,C2r. 20farge, Orthodoxy and Reform, 13-14, 179-80. 21Dorp to Erasmus, September 1514, ep. 304, in CWE, 3:17-23. 22Dorp to Erasmus, August 27,1515, ep. 347, in CWE, 3:154-67, esp. 160,162-65.

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the original Hebrew and Greek texts. He explicitly upheld the value of the traditional scholastic commentaries and doctors for the education of theologians. He even raised the somewhat silly and wholly undocumented suggestion that since the Greeks had subsequently fallen away from the Roman church, they may well have deliberately corrupted the Greek Bible. Erasmus' one surviving reply to Dorp at this period not only defends his effort to reconstruct and retranslate the text of the New Testament but bluntly ridicules the inability of the older theologians to comprehend the principles underlying his work.23 Dorp himselfhad studied and taught humanist texts before he turned to the study of theology. Admonished by a second letter from Erasmus (now lost) and above all by a brilliant letter from Erasmus' friend Thomas More, Dorp drew back. In 1517 he presented a university lecture which openly endorsed not only the textual and philological approach to the Bible but also the humanists' criticism of the traditional theological curriculum. Although Dorp's senior colleagues punished him by withdrawing for a year his right to lecture on theology, he published his defense ofErasmian theology in 1520.24 Anyone who has ever wondered at the meteoric rise ofThomas More to the top of the English legal profession and then to high public office should read More's letter of October 21, 1515, to Dorp.25 It goes right to the central issues. It redefmes the foundation of grammatical science in the humanist way, as something based on usage instead of logic. Then it attacks the scholastics' misapplication of dialectic, their narrowness and lack of general culture, and their uselessness for the practical tasks of preaching the gospel and refuting heretics. Most shrewdly of all, More charges that it is not the humanist grammarians with their philological criticism of biblical and patristic texts who are undermining and distorting the true sense of scripture, but rather the arrogant dialecticians. They know little beyond scholastic commentaries and the excerpts in the Book qf Sentences, but they apply their sophistical dialectic to twist and distort the sacred text. For More, as for Erasmus himself, a humanist who criticizes and revises a biblical passage is not subjecting revealed truth to the rules of human grammar-as scholastic critics had charged-but is using linguistic and textual methods to get at the meaning originally placed there by the sacred author. It is the dialecticians, the scholastic theologians, who are subjecting the sacred text to human fancy. No author I have read, not even Erasmus or the subtle Juan Luis Vives, laid out more starkly the issues on which humanist scholars and scholastic theologians were at loggerheads. The conversion of Dorp to the Erasmian side did not, of course, end the conflict. Jacobus Latomus in 1519 reasserted the scholastic case by attacking the humanists' demand that all theologians should be able to use the Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible, 26 and others followed his example. 23Erasmus to Dorp, 1515, ep. 337, in CWE, 3:111-39. 24Dorp, De laudibus Pauli, de literis sacris ediscendis ... (Basel: Froben, 1520). 25More to Dorp, in The Complete U0rks ofThomas More, vol. 15, ed. Daniel Kinney (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986): 2-127 (Latin text and English trans. on facing pages). 26Latomus, De trium linguarum; on this and other controversies involving Erasmus, see Erika Rummel, Erasmus and His Catholic Critics, 2 vols., Bibliotheca Hurnanistica et Reforrnatorica, 45 (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1989).

III 436 The modest humanist claim to analyze and establish the authoritative texts as a first step in theological discourse was, in fact, a claim for prior control of interpretation. One of the vulnerable points in the monopoly exercised by all three of the higher faculties-law and medicine as well as theology-was that all three fields depended on some authoritative text handed down from ancient times: the Bible for theology, of course, the Corpus iuris civilis for civil law, and the ancient Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen for medicine. The special competence claimed by all three professions involved the interpretation and application of the ancient text to modern needs, a procedure which by the sixteenth century had produced a vast body of scholastic. commentaries, treatises, and handbooks. The humanists dismissed this medieval learning as worthless trash, the product of a barbarous and incompetent age, an incompetence symbolized by the inability of the scholastic doctors to consult the original Greek and Hebrew texts. Humanists now wanted to intervene at the very outset of the interpretive process by insisting, as grammarians, that the grammarian-the humanist expert on languages and on the reconstruction of texts-had to establish the text itself and explain to those who could not read the original what the words really meant. Only then, even if one conceded the appropriateness of applying dialectical method to a revealed text, could any more sophisticated explication begin. Thus despite their apparently modest claim, the humanists were demanding the first cut, authority over the text itself, over the literal meaning of its words, and even over the range of possible meanings that those inspired words could have had for the ancient author. As Jerry Bentley makes clear in his discussion of Erasmus' critical work on the text of the NewTestament, this meant quite literally that the humanist editor decided what was in and what was out. The most extreme case involved Erasmus' decision that since none of his Greek manuscripts contained the comma ]ohanneum at 1 John 5:7, the one clear and unmistakable biblical witness to the doctrine of the Trinity, he must omit that passage from his edition. Although he affirmed his own loyalty to Trinitarian orthodoxy and noted that Saint Jerome himselfbelieved that Latin scribes had inserted the passage to provide scriptural support against the Arians, his act of omission stirred up charges that he was an Arian heretic.27 Actually, Erasmus was in no way attacking the Trinitarian doctrine. But he was telling theologians that in their defense ofTrinitarian orthodoxy, they could not cite this helpful text, because it did not exist. They did not like this, nor did they like the other textual emendations or retranslations that affected their freedom to draw proof-texts from the traditional Vulgate Bible. In his counterblast against Petrus Mosellanus and Erasmus in 1519,Jacobus Latomus seemed totally unable to conceive how theology, a subject based on authoritative texts, might differ from manual arts like shoemaking or painting, whose modern practitioners clearly had no need to rely on some ancient Greek-language text on their subject.2BLatomus maintained that the truth of scripture exists objectively and externally to the text 27Jerry H. Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 152. 28Latomus, De trium linguarum, fol.A4v.

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and does not inhere in the words of scripture; indeed, that those who already possess true doctrine do not need scripture at all, still less need the ability to read it in the originallanguages.29 As for patristic texts, Latomus insists that they must be read reverendy and in accord with dogmatic truth, "even (so to speak) contrary to what the words say."30 It is also clear that Latomus totally lacked the concept of an original text, an urtext, which a competent editor can closely approximate by drawing on multiple witnesses even if none of the existing manuscripts is free from corruption. He presented a pettifogging criticism of the arguments advanced in defense ofErasmus' program ofbiblical humanism, while also presenting a far more plausible case for the continuing value of the long scholastic tradition of exegesis. But when he faced the central issues of textual authority and philological criticism, he was simply lost. Between him and Erasmus there was exchange of treatises but no real discourse. They functioned in two quite different cultural worlds-exacdy the point I want to establish here. Theology was the hot and dangerous field, of course. Even before the Reformation it touched on issues of religious belief; and the scholastic doctors even before Luther were quite ready to insinuate or openly charge that humanist scholarship on biblical or patristic texts was heretical. But although the two other professional fields never produced equally noxious conflicts, humanist textual scholarship challenged them also, precisely because they also relied on the authority of ancient texts. In law, humanist scholars attacked the vast body of glosses and commentaries produced by medieval professors of law. Inspired by the work of Angelo Poliziano and Guillaume Bude on ancient legal texts,AndreaAlciato established a whole new approach to the teaching of Roman law. His teaching, first at the papal university in Avignon and then at Bourges, turned away from the traditional Italian method (mos italicus) of teaching the opinions of the medieval legal scholars. Instead, he concentrated his efforts on the philological analysis of the ancient text itself.31 This new approach, known as mos gallicus because it became dominant in French law faculties, did not win the upper hand very far beyond the borders of France; but it did represent another humanist challenge to the prevailing university tradition, once again based on the philologist's special ability to probe beneath the surface of an authoritative ancient text.

29fuid., fols. B3 v, C2 r. 30Jbid., fol. D2v: "reverentius et quamque cum sermonis improprietate (ut sic loquar)." 31Donald Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 96. On the importance of Alciato's teaching and the rise of the new mos gallicus in legal education, see also Guido Kisch, Humanismus und jurisprudenz: Der Kampf zwischen mos italicus und mos gallicus an der Universitilt Basel (Basel: Helbing und Lichtenhahn, 1955; Myron P. Gilmore, Humanists and jurists: Six Studies in the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1963), 32-33; Steven Rowan, Ulrich Zasius (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1987), 206-9. On humanism in both legal and medical education, see also August Buck, "Die Rezeption des Humanismus in den juristischen und medizinischen Faku!taten;' in Guldolf Keil, Bernd Moeller, and Winfried Trusen, eds., Der Humanismus und die oberen Fakultiiten, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Komrnission ftir Humanismusforschung, Mitteilung XIV (Weinheim: Humaniora,VCH, 1987), 267-84.

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Medical science, too, rested on ancient texts which humanist philologists claimed the right to edit, translate, and interpret. Humanists claimed an ability to restore ancient medicine while purging it of the barbarous influences of the intervening centuries. At the end of the fifteenth century, Niccolo Leoniceno, professor of medicine at the University of Ferrara, was hailed as "the restorer of ancient medicine"; as a well-trained Hellenist he produced new translations of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates and several of Galen's treatises as well as scientific works of Aristotle and Ptolemy. He also agitated for the purging of"barbarian" texts-that is, Arabic medical works-from the medical curriculum.32 Humanists with medical education produced the first Greek editions ofAristotle (1495-99) and Galen (1525) for the Aldine press ofVenice. Although medical controversy was not so sharp as that in law and especially theology, the humanist method of philological criticism also affected this third of the three professional faculties of the universities-and it did so largely through its claim to determine questions of textual authenticity and meaning. Thus Renaissance humanism penetrated not only the liberal arts but also the three higher faculties which were theoretically beyond the professional competence of its practitioners. Conflict was the almost inevitable result. Humanism did not destroy scholasticism. It did not even try. But both its rhetorical challenge to the value of dialectic and its grammarians' claim to determine the wording and meaning of authoritative texts did pose a serious challenge to the older academic culture by pointing to vulnerable spots in the medieval intellectual tradition. In the long run, this humanistic philological and textual method grew into the rather bloodless field of classical philology, but in a deeper sense it also caused more profound and unsettling cultural changes, such as the rise of modern legal history, the discovery of the documentary sources of medieval history, and the potentially revolutionary method of historical investigation which subjected all ideas and institutions to the cold light of document-based historical criticism.33

32Heinrich Schipperges, Ideologie und Historiographie des Arabismus, Sudhoffs Archiv ftir Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, Beiheft 1 (Wiesbaden, 1961), 14-26; Buck, "Rezeption," especially pp. 267, 276, 279-80. On the importance of the 1525 Greek edition of Galen, see Gerhard Baader, "Die Antikerezeption in der Entwicklung der medizinischen Wissenschaft wiihrend der Renaissance," in Rudolf Schmitz and Gustav Keil, eds., Humanismus und Medizin (Weinheim, 1984), 61, and Nikolaus Mani, "Die griechische Editio princeps des Galenos (1525), ihre Entstehung und ihre Wirkung;• Gesnerus 13 (1956): 39. Also Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 58, 70-72, 190. 330n the broader lines of intellectual challenge to scholastic learning that developed out of the humanist method in the later sixteenth century, mainly in the application of critical philology in directions leading toward modern classical philology, legal history, discovery of the documentary sources of medieval history, and general historical method, see Donald Kelley. Foundations; George Huppert, The Idea rf Perfect History: Historical Erudition and Historical Philosophy in Renaissance France (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970); Anthony Grafton, joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History rf Classical Scholarship, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983-95); and Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Tradition of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450-1800 (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).

IV

THE HUMANIST CHALLENGE TO MEDIEVAL GERMAN CULTURE The recent publication of James Overfield's book, Humanism and Scholasticism in Late Medieval Germany (1985), represents a landmark in the study of the reception of Renaissance humanism among the learned classes of the German Empire. Overfield sweeps aside many untenable myths concerning the relationship between humanism and scholasticism. He documents fully what earlier scholars from at least the time of Paul J oachimsen, Gerhard Ritter, and Hajo Holborn had already suggested: that by 1500 humanism was present to a substantial degree in all German universities. 1 He also demonstrates that humanists, at first so modest and respectful in their behavior toward traditional scholastic learning, became more aggressive and even more openly hostile during the two decades that followed 1500. He concludes, nevertheless, that our conventional picture of open war between humanists and scholastics is a gross exaggeration; and after shrewdly analyzing several well advertised instances of conflict between the two groups, he observes that virtually all the contemporary accounts of these conflicts are polemics against scholasticism by humanists, while there is virtually no anti-humanistic polemic from the pens of scholastic authors. Indeed, the only two anti-humanist polemical treatises were the work not of tradition-bound scholastics but of humanists (albeit conservative ones), Jacob Wimpheling of Stras-

1. James H. Overfield: Humanism and Scholasticism in Late Medieval Germany. Princeton 1984. On 'scholastic humanism', see Paul Joachimsen: Geschichtsauffassung und Geschichtsschreibung in Deutschland unter dem EinfluB des Humanismus. Leipzig 1910. S. 37; Gerhard Ritter; Studien zur Spiitscholastik. 3 Biinde. Heidelberg 1922; and Hajo Holborn: Ulrich von Hutten and the German Reformation. New Haven 1937. S. 31. © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam, 1986. First published in Daphnis: Zeitschrift für Mittlere Deutsche Literatur 15 (1986): 277–306. Reproduced by permission.

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bourg and Ortwin Gratius of Cologne. 2 He shows that the true issue in the infamous Reuchlin affair was not hatred of humanism but rather hatred of Jews. 3 Finally, after outlining the demands of the humanists for academic reform and documenting the resistance of the university faculties to most of these proposals, he makes a comparative study of the fate of humanistic reforms at various universities and draws the rather surprising conclusion that "medieval scholasticism lost its hold on Germany's universities in the two decades between 1515 and 1535."4 He is not maintaining that all traces of scholasticism were obliterated or that the educational ideals of the humanists were everywhere (or anywhere) realized in full. But he does demonstrate that significant academic reforms were achieved everywhere- more in some places (such as Wittenberg) and less in others (such as Cologne) - but still, everywhere. One may not agree with all of Professor Overfield's judgments, but his book encompasses the whole story of humanist-scholastic relations in pre-Reformation Germany with such comprehensive erudition and such penetrating insight that it seems high time to step back and reflect on the history of humanism's entry into German cultural life. The main outlines of this history are now clear. From about the 1450's until the end of the century, itinerant humanistic scholarsthe 'Wanderpoeten' - lectured at various German universities, giving instruction on various humanistic topics, chiefly oratory or rhetoric, letter-writing, and poetry. Some of them were Italian scholars of secondary rank. More of them were Germans who had lived and studied in Italy. None of them held an official- still less, salaried- position, and their lectures were not an integral part of the academic program. Nevertheless, though all of them seem to have experienced poverty and insecurity and to have been painfully aware of how marginal their position was, there clearly was a 2. Overfield: Humanism and Scholasticism. S. 202-205, for Wimpheling, and S. 273-277, for Gratius. 3. Ebenda, Chapter VII, based on his A New Look at the Reuchlin Affair. In: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 8 (1971) S. 167-207. 4. Overfield: Humanism and Scholasticism. S. 298.

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demand for their services. They did earn enough to live, even if not to live well. As individuals, most of them were of mediocre talent; and while their surviving works certainly show them touting the importance of their own subjects in the formation of a well educated man, rarely did they even hint at any direct challenge to the traditional curriculum of the faculties of arts to which most of them were loosely attached. The only significant exception was Rudolf Agricola (1444-1485), who had far deeper learning and a far more penetrating intelligence than the ruck of wandering humanists. He was sharply critical of the German universities, especially on account of what he regarded as the pervasive and destructive dominance of a narrowly conceived, sophistical logic over all other academic subjects. Yet though he had the ability to produce a revolutionary new work of logic, De dialectica inventione, which became a university textbook widely adopted by humanist academic reformers of the sixteenth century, he was far too sophisticated to have much influence on his own generation; and his famous book was not even printed until 1515, long after his death. 5 One final point about the 'Wanderpoeten' is that much of the limited success that they had was due to the support they received from powerful people outside the academic world. During the last three years of his life, when he lectured at the University of Heidelberg, Agricola enjoyed the patronage of the Elector Philipp, Count Palatine, and resided in the home of his close friend Johannes von Dalberg, Bishop of Worms. 6 An even better example comes from the life of the ablest poet among the 'Wanderpoeten', Conrad Celtis, who despite an incredibly irregular career at several German universities where his performance was marked chiefly by absenteeism and lack of diligence in teaching, was appointed lecturer in poetry in 1497 by authority of the Emperor Maximilian I and with the support of Bernhard Perger, whom the Emperor had put in charge of reform

5. Lewis W. Spitz: The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanists. Cambridge, Mass. 1963. S. 20-40; Walter J. Ong: Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue. From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason. New York 1979; reprint of ed. Cambridge, Mass. 1958. Chapter V; Overfield: Humanists and Scholastics. S. 88-94. 6. Spitz: Religious Renaissance. S. 24.

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and reorganization of the University of Vienna. 7 Although the 'Wanderpoeten' may indeed have been the pioneers, Overfield argues that the occasional teaching of classical texts by regular masters in the faculties of arts was probably more lastingly important, even though those masters also taught more traditional subjects. 8 The most prominent early figures of this sort were Georg Peurbach and Johannes Regiomontanus, both at Vienna, and both noted astronomers who also lectured on Vergil, Cicero, and other ancient authors. Since the early twentieth century, historical scholarship has usually called such teachers scholastic humanists, because their lectures were presented as supplemental to the academic subjects required for traditional bachelor of arts and master of arts degrees. 9 Unlike a number of the 'Wanderpoeten', they themselves pursued and received conventional academic degrees and taught traditional arts subjects. Sometimes they proposed modest changes in degree requirements or methods of instruction, but they proposed no sweeping alterations in scholastic education. In general, they accepted their role as junior and marginal figures in their university and were in turn accepted as junior colleagues whose humanistic courses - usually private courses - had some utility. The past two decades of scholarship have shown that there is a certain generational difference within German humanism and that what Lewis Spitz defines as the second and third generations of German humanists became increasingly critical of the established academic system. 10 Whereas the earliest humanists rarely voiced any fundamental disagreements with the traditional program of 7. On Celtis, ebenda, Chapter V. See also his Conrad Celtis, the German Arch-Humanist. Cambridge, Mass. 1957. 8. Overfield: Humanists and Scholastics. S. 63. 9. Joachimsen: Geschichtsauffassung. S. 37; and Gerhard Ritter: Die geschichtliche Bedeutung des deutschen Humanismus. In: Historische Zeitschrift 127 (1923) S. 393-453. For a useful historiographical survey of the relationship between humanists and scholastics, see Overfield: Humanists and Scholastics. S. xi-xvi. 10. Lewis W. Spitz: The Third Generation of German Renaissance Humanists. In: Aspects of the Renaissance. A Symposium. Ed. by Archibald R. Lewis. Austin, Tex. 1967. S. 105-121.

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studies, younger humanists who became active after about 1500 were openly critical. Their criticism aimed at the textbooks used for teaching arts subjects, such as the Doctrinale of Alexander of Villedieu, the most widely used textbook for study of Latin grammar. They also criticized the accuracy and literary quality of the medieval translations of Aristotle's works, and the great attention paid to logic at the expense of grammar, rhetoric, and other liberal arts. They wanted to cut back the time devoted to logic, to increase the number of courses devoted to the study of poetry and other works of classical literature, and to introduce the use of new translations of Aristotle made by Italian humanists. They also wanted to teach from new humanistic textbooks of grammar. In time, some of them also wanted to introduce regular instruction, at least private and perhaps public (that is, official and formal), in Greek and Hebrew. And an increasing number of them began urging that the new humanistic courses must be made compulsory for degrees in arts and must be included in the examinations for degrees. A complication in this generational pattern of increasing radicalism is the emergence of the Lutheran Reformation. Lewis Spitz and Bernd Moeller have both noted that while most humanists who were mature, established leaders before 1517 gave Luther some support in the early years, they drew back when they realized that the agenda of the Lutheran reformer-; went far beyond anything they had proposed and might even threaten the further progress of humanistic studies. But, according to Spitz and Moeller, the younger humanists, the 'third generation', who were not yet mature and established figures in 1517, were more permanently attracted to Lutheranism. Although men like Melanchthon or Lang or Capito remained in many respects humanists, they had also become something more than humanists. Their primary goal now became the reform of religion, and humanistic studies were valued only as a means to achieve that goal. 11 Thus we now have a credible account 11. Bernd Moeller: Die deutschen Humanisten und die Anfange der Reformation. In: Zeitschrift fiir Kirchengeschichte, 4. Folge, 8 (1959) S. 46-61. This essay appeared in English in Bernd Moeller: The German Humanists and the Reformation. Three Essays. Trans!. H.C. Erik Midelfort and Mark U. Edwards, Jr. Philadelphia 1972. S. 19-38.

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not only of the origins of humanism but also of its maturation and increasing radicalism, and finally of its further transformation into a different and still more radical entity, early Protestantism. Of course there were also many humanists, including even young ones, who remained Catholic. But humanism, both Catholic and Protestant, existed under new conditions and inevitably became something different from what it had been before 1517. One of the great issues in interpreting the origins of German humanism has been to define its relationship to the humanism of Italy. While the decline of classical nineteenth-century liberalism and the growth of German nationalism in the early twentieth century produced some tendency to minimize the Italian influence on German culture, 12 research has shown in case after case that Italian influence was decisive, though of course the demonstration of an Italian source does not prove that German humanism remained an identical twin of its Italian predecessor. The biographies of the key figures in the introduction and early diffusion of humanism offer clear evidence. Every one of the crucial early figures, Peter Luder, Rudolf Agricola, Georg Peurbach, Johannes Regiomontanus, Conrad Celtis, Mutianus Rufus, Willibald Pirckheimer, and even Ulrich von Hutten, had travelled, lived, and studied in Italy for some period in his youth. Erasmus did get to Italy, but not until he was already a mature man, when he probably had little to learn from the Italians. 13 Only Jacob Wimpheling and Johann Reuchlin among the major figures of pre-Reformation German humanism were entirely home-grown products and never went to Italy (though Reuchlin went to France) for study. 14 12. Wallace K. Ferguson: The Renaissance in Historical Thought. Five Centuries of Interpretation. Boston 1948. S. 276-289. 13. Margaret Mann Phillips: Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance. London 1949. S. 61. For a more positive evaluation of the Italian trip, mainly because it gave Erasmus an opportunity to meet Greek scholars who worked for the printing firm of Aldus Manutius, see Roland H. Bainton: Erasmus of Christendom. New York 1969. S. 78, 82-83. 14. Spitz: Religious Renaissance. S. 43, who notes that in his 'Expurgatio contra detractores', Wimpfe1ing "pointed out with a sense of relief, not to say pride, that he had never been in Italy, France, or even Swabia." Reuchlin studied in Paris and then pursued the study of law at Orleans and

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This evidence from the biographies of major humanists is only the shadow of a much broader reality. Study of the increasing number of Germans who flocked to Italian universities, especially to Italian faculties of law, explains not just how German humanists assimilated the new learning but also why there were well-placed and wealthy patrons to assist them after they returned to Germany. A recent study provides some suggestive examples ofltalian-educated German jurists who became advisers to princes and city councils, university professors, canons of cathedrals and collegiate churches, and even bishops and cardinals. 15 Such persons could provide not only encouragement but also salaries, gifts, permission to lecture, and even ecclesiastical benefices and positions in secular administration. Bernhard Perger at Vienna is an excellent example of an Italian-trained scholar who brought back an interest in humanism and subsequently used his position as an adviser to the Emperor Maximilian I to promote humanism at the University of Vienna. 16 The humanistic interests of many Italian-educated prelates and princely councillors can be documented in good part from the books they collected in Italy and brought back to Germany. 17 What all this means is that the upper reaches of German society were increasingly filled by men whose study of law (or medicine) in Italy had also made them well disposed to the new learning. The high positions they attained made them able to foster the growth of humanism in Germany. Scholarship of the early twentieth century also raised another Poi tiers. He did visit Italy several times as a mature man, not as a student but on business for the Duke of Wiirttemberg. See Spitz: Religious Renaissance. S. 61. 15. Agostino Sottili: La Natio Germanica dell'Universita di Pavia nella storia dell' Umanesimo. In: The Universities in the Late Middle Ages. Ed. by Jozef ljsewijn and Jacques Paquet. Louvain 1978. (= Mediaeva1ia Lovaniensia. Series 1: Studia. VI.) S. 347-352. See also the pioneering work of Gustav Carl Knod: Deutsche Studenten in Bologna. Biographischer Index zu den Acta nationis Germanicae Universitatis Bononiensis. Berlin 1899. 16. Alfons Lhotsky: Die Wiener Artistenfakultat. 1365-1497. Wien 1965. s. 173-175, 178-184, 194-199. 17. Sottili: La Natio Germanica. S. 355-358.

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issue about early German humanism: where did it find its main centers for diffusion into German society? In one sense, this emergence of an Italian-educated elite is an answer. In addition, Elizabeth Eisenstein has demonstrated the decisive role of the printing press in diffusing humanistic culture throughout Europe; and she shows specifically that both Erasmus and Reuchlin depended heavily on books published by Aldus Manutius of Venice for their pioneering work in advancing humanism north of the Alps. 18 But how were young Germans of the fifteenth century made ready to feel the attraction of the new Italian culture? They went to Italy to study the practical and lucrative profession of law, not languages and literature. What were the native educational foundations of their interest in humanism? The traditional answer has pointed to certain popular religious movements in the Netherlands and northwestern Germany, notably the 'Devotio Moderna', sometimes emphasizing an affinity between humanists and Devotionalists based on the Devotionalists' antipathy for scholastic intellectualism, and sometimes emphasizing rather the association of the Brethren of the Common Life with the Latin grammar schools where boys were prepared for the university. This explanation was established largely through the works of Paul Mestwerdt on Erasmus and of Albert Hyma on the 'Devotio Moderna'; 19 and it is more recently reflected in the influential works of Myron Gilmore and Lewis Spitz. 20 But whatever one may say in 18. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein: The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe. 2 Biinde. Cambridge, England 1979. Bd. 1, S. 221. On the building of the Electoral library's collection of books, see also Irmgard Hoss: Georg Spalatin. 1484-1545. Ein Leben in der Zeit des Humanismus und der Reformation. Weimar 1956. S. 65-67, and Walter Friedensburg: Geschichte der Universitiit Wittenberg. Halle a.S. 1917. S. 153-154. 19. Paul Mestwerdt: Die Anfiinge des Erasmus. Humanismus und 'Devotio Moderna'. Leipzig 1917; Albert Hyma: The Christian Renaissance. A History of the 'Devotio Moderna'. 2nd ed. Hamden, Conn. 1965; reprint of ed. Grand Rapids, Mich. 1924, with an appended Part II discussing scholarship since 1924. 20. Myron P. Gilmore: The World of Humanism. 1453-1517. New York

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criticism of the polemical style and awkward structure of his book The Modern Devotion, R.R. Post has demonstrated beyond question that the foundation for regarding the Brethren of the Common Life as a major force in preparing the way for humanism in the German Empire is weak. The Brethren as a matter of policy avoided the university education that alone would have prepared them to teach in Latin grammar schools. Only in a few cases did they conduct schools of their own, and rarely were their members employed (or qualified to be employed) as teachers in schools owned by ecclesiastical corporations or by city governments. Their primary connection with such schools was that they conducted hostels in which students lived and ministered to the spiritual needs of the students. In some places they seem to have conducted repetitions, or review sessions, for students who resided in their hostels. 21 What this deflation of claims for the 'Devotio Moderna' means is that we are left with the universities as the main centers through which humanism was diffused among the educated classes of preReformation Germany. Despite their reluctance to change their official courses of instruction, their traditional textbooks, and their requirements for degrees, the universities were the most important places where young Germans acquired humanistic interests and learning. Most of the relevant teaching occurred in private classes taught by masters of arts who sought part of their living from fees paid by those who attended. They lectured on popular Latin authors, on letter-writing, and occasionally on such rare subjects as Greek and Hebrew grammar. Such subjects formed no part of the curriculum required for degrees, but their availability from private teaching meant that those who were interested in the newer studies often had opportunities to investigate them many decades before there were official courses in them. Availability of private courses in humanistic subjects gradually increased; and complaints from

1952. S. 220: Spitz: Religious Renaissance. S. 57,292,375. Also Spitz: The Protestant Reformation. New York 1985. S. 57, 292. 21. R.R. Post: The Modern Devotion. Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism. Leiden 1968. For criticism of some (but not all) of Post's conclusions, see He1mar Junghans: Der EinfluB des Humanismus auf Luthers Entwicklung bis 1517. In: Luther-Jahrbuch 37 (1970) S. 58-60.

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faculties that humanist teachers were unlawfully offering private lessons at hours reserved for mandatory subjects suggest that interest in the new learning spread readily among German university students. 22 The universities, therefore, were the principal points where the new culture of humanism came into close contact with the old culture of scholasticism; and if for a long time the humanistic subjects were peripheral to the formal program of study, they were nevertheless present in or around the universities. If there was sometimes friction between humanists and defenders of traditional studies, the reason was that the two groups lived together within the same institutions but held different views of the goals and also the methods that should be adopted. Since masters in the arts faculties lived chiefly from student fees, there was also a financial reason for traditional masters' resentment of the new learning. Nevertheless, the eventual success of the humanists in winning some concessions for their own educational program was almost inevitable. Young masters of arts and students still studying for their B.A. and M.A. degrees were those most likely to be attracted to humanism. Older professors were those most likely to feel loyalty to the traditional subjects which they had studied in their youth. But young masters (then as now) eventually become old professors. As those youths who were attracted to humanism but had quietly conformed to the old degree system gradually acquired seniority and influence within the universities, they were in a position to adopt humanistic reform proposals which earlier generations of professors would never have considered. This does not mean that the scholasticism of pre-Reformation Germany was so intellectually bankrupt as its humanist critics claimed. Late medieval scholastic thought has traditionally been neglected by modern scholars. But in recent decades, a few brave researchers have plunged into close study of the philosophical and 22. The Cologne faculty of arts in 1525 tried to explain away its catastrophic decline by complaining that private teachers were drawing students away by offering humanistic subjects during the hours which the statutes reserved for mandatory lectures. See Cologne, Stadtarchiv. Ms. Univ., Akten. Nr. 74. fol. F.

IV 287 theological schools of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and have concluded that the intellectual life of the universities was by no means so moribund as was once thought. Heiko Oberman, who has been the leader in recent reassessment of late scholasticism in Germany, has focused his attention on Gabriel Biel and on the University ofTi.ibingen, where toward the end of his life, Biel served for about five years as professor of theology_23 Oberman is chiefly interested in tracing the influence of the 'via moderna' of Ti.ibingen on the intellectual and spiritual development of Martin Luther. Yet the broader significance of Oberman's work is to demonstrate that the universities into which humanism was penetrating were not intellectually stagnant and that academic opposition to the changes demanded by humanists was not based solely on unthinking obscurantism. An important feature of the fifteenth-century German universities was the 'Wegestreit', or conflict between philosophers and theologians known as 'antiqui' because they followed the tradition of the major thirteenth-century doctors such as Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, and Duns Scotus, and those known as 'moderni' because they rejected the older doctors and favored the teachings of William of Ockham or his followers. This tangled topic has been discussed at length in the works of Oberman and others, but Overfield supplies perhaps the clearest and most succinct evaluation of the whole issue. 24 Most German universities in the earliest period favored the nominalist way, the 'via moderna'; but from almost the 23. A number of scholars, including Leif Grane in Denmark and David C. Steinmetz and Steven Ozment in the United States, have contributed to the study oflate-medieval nominalism in Germany; but the central figure is Heiko A. Oberman, especially in his books: The Harvest of Medieval Theology. Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism. Cambridge, Mass. 1963; Werden und Wertung der Reformation. Tiibingen 1977; and: Luther. Mensch zwischen Gott und Teufel. Berlin 1983. The second of these books has also appeared in English: Masters of the Reformation. The Emergence of a New Intellectual Climate in Europe. Trans!. Dennis Martin. Cambridge, England 1981. 24. Erich Kleineidam: Universitas studii Erffordensis. Oberblick iiber die Geschichte der UniversiUit Erfurt im Mittelalter. 1392-1521. 2 Bande. Leipzig 1969. Bd. 2. S. 21-23; Astrik L. Gabriel: 'Via antiqua' and 'via moderna' and the Migration of Paris Students and Masters to the German

IV 288 beginning, some were strongly committed to the 'antiqui': Cologne and its daughter university at Louvain were examples. During the later fifteenth century, the 'via antiqua' forced its way into several German universities that from their origins had allowed only 'via moderna'. Some of these schools came to tolerate both 'viae' in their arts faculty; and in such cases, it was customary to have some 'bursae' or colleges that were inhabited by nominalist masters and students and others inhabited by realists, the 'antiqui'. Prophetically for the future introduction of humanist reforms and then of the Protestant Reformation, at several places the authorization of the 'via antiqua' was enforced by the local prince. The actual issues that divided 'antiqui' from 'moderni' are difficult to define and are not directly relevant to the growth of humanism. 25 In local university situations, it is obvious that the intellectual and even the methodological differences were often less important than rivalry for appointments and especially for student fees. Sometimes such rivalry became bitter, especially when it involved competition for enrollments and for the fees that these produced. Princely governments, which in several cases had intervened to compel arts faculties to introduce the 'via antiqua', occasionally also had to intervene to limit the rivalry or even, as at lngolstadt in 1518, to declare the two distinct 'viae' abolished and the arts faculty to be a single, unified body. 26 Universities in the Fifteenth Century. In: Antiqui und Moderni. Traditionsbewu13tsein und Fortschrittsbewul3tsein im spaten Mittelalter. Hrsg. von Albert Zimmermann. Berlin 1974. (=Miscellanea Mediaevalia. 9.) S. 439-483. 25. Overfield: Humanism and Scholasticism. S. 49-60. For broader, general background on nominalism, see Steven Ozment: The Age of Reform. 1250-1550. An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe. New Haven 1980. S. 42-63. 26. On princely pressure to introduce realism at Freiburg, Gabriel: 'Via antiqua' and 'via moderna'. S. 469-479. On the repeated intervention of the ruler at Heidelberg, Johannes Haller: Zur Geschichte der deutschen Universitaten. In: Historische Zeitschrift 159 (1938) S. 94-95. Cf. also Johannes Haller: Die Anfange der Universitat Tiibingen. 1477-1537. 2 Bande. Stuttgart 1927-29. Bd. 1, S. 206-207; and Overfield: Humanism and Scholasticism. S. 58-59.

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Whether the 'Wegestreit' had any special relevance to the penetration of humanistic studies into the universities is open to question. Although scholars have occasionally tried to argue that one or the other of the 'viae' was more receptive to humanism, they seem unable to agree which one that was. 27 Cologne, the most determined upholder of 'via antiqua', probably was the most unreceptive of all universities to humanism; but on the other hand, Wittenberg, which was unusually open to humanism from the moment of its founding in 1502, was dominated by 'via antiqua' down to the time when Martin Luther- one of the few nominalists there - led a curricular revolution which rendered both 'viae' totally irrelevant. My own conclusion is that whether an individual scholar or a particular university was receptive to humanism had nothing at all to do with the philosophical 'via' that he followed. 28 As humanistic studies developed and became more mature and aggressive, the 'Wegestreit' was simply pushed aside. Its issues carne 27. For criticism of Friedrich W. Kampschulte's early (1858) attempt to claim that nominalism was conducive to humanism, see Gustav Bauch: Die Universitiit Erfurt im Zeitalter des Friihhumanismus. Breslau 1904. S. 14-15. Oberman: Harvest. S. 19-20 demonstrates friendly connections between the leaders of Tiibingen nominalism and early humanists there, but he concludes that this merely shows that there was no inherent conflict. He does not claim that nominalism had some special affinity for humanism. Early in this century, Heinrich Hermelink claimed that revived Thomist realism in the later fifteenth century was conducive to humanism; but Gerhard Ritter soon demonstrated that this opinion rested on a misunderstanding of the term 'realism'. For discussion of these opinions, see Ferguson: Renaissance in Historical Thought. S. 312; and Overfield: Humanism and Scholasticism. S. xiii. Anm. 9. 28. For an opinion that essentially concurs, see Laetitia Boehm: Humanistische Bildungsbewegung und mittelalterliche Universitiitsverfassung. Aspekte zur friihneuzeitlichen Reformgeschichte der deutschen Universitiiten. In: The Universities in the Late Middle Ages. Ed. by Jozef ljsewijn and Jacques Paquet. Louvain 1978. (= Mediaevalia Lovaniensia. Series 1: Studia. VI.) S. 324-325; the same essay in another edition, in: Grundwissenschaften und Geschichte. Festschrift fiir Peter Acht. Hrsg. von Waldemar Schlogl und Peter Herde. Kallmiinz 1976. (= Miinchener Historische Studien. Abteilung Geschichtliche Hilfswissenschaften. 15.) S. 311-333, hereS. 317.

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to seem irrelevant to the needs and interests of the day. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, while the traditional scholastic curriculum of studies was intact and the domination of the universities by conservative senior professors not only was intact but even was tending to become more pronounced, humanism was also everywhere present, though in a subordinate role. Even Cologne, notorious as it became for hostility to humanism, educated men who later became important humanists, including Rudolf Agricola, Conrad Celtis, Petrus Mosellanus, and Heinrich Glareanus. Although there was no official course in Greek until the middle of the sixteenth century, both Greek and Hebrew were occasionally available through private lessons, first documented with the arrival of the Spanish 'converso' Flavius Wilhelmus Raimundus in 1484. About 1510-1511, both Georg Libanius of Liegnitz and the far more noted humanist Johannes Caesarius of Jiilich were giving private lessons in Greek. 29 So although many Cologne humanists (Celtis and Caesarius, for example) complained about indifference and even hostility to humanism on the part of the university, and although study of library records and Cologne imprints suggests that local libraries held mostly scholastic books and were poor in the works of classical authors and recent Italian humanists, 30 the picture even in Germany's most tradition-bound university was mixed. Study at Cologne certainly did not guarantee a humanistic education; but it was possible to lay the foundations of humanistic learning there, especially after about 1500, when Cologne presses became more active in publishing classical texts and when humanists of considerable reputation, such as Hermann von dem Busche, Johannes Caesarius, and Johannes Aesticampianus, as well as the Italian jurist Peter of Ravenna, taught there. If 29. Hermann Keussen: Die alte UniversiUit Koln. Grundziige ihrer Verfassung und Geschichte. Koln 1934. (= Veroffentlichungen des Kolnischen Geschichtsvereins E.V. 10.) S. 183-191. Cf. Heinrich Kammel: Die Universitat Koln in ihrem Kampfe gegen den aufstrebenden Humanismus. Umrisse. In: Neue Jahrbiicher fiir Philologie und Padagogik. 45. Jahrgang. 112. Band (1875) S. 401-417, especially S. 410. 30. Hermann Keussen: Beitrage zur Geschichte der Kolner Universitat. In: Westdeutsche Zeitschrift fiir Geschichte und Kunst 18 (1899) S. 331-352.

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this was true at Cologne, humanistic influence on students must have been far more available at universities like Erfurt or Wittenberg, where a far stronger humanist presence is demonstrable. 31 Humanism was ubiquitous in German universities by the early sixteenth century, but until about 1500 its claims were modest. Its early spokesmen made no direct attack on traditional scholastic learning but merely argued that their subjects, grammar, rhetoric, and poetry, were also a worthy part of a good educationY Such 'scholastic humanists' conformed to the imperatives of institutional tradition; and even the best-received of them held marginal positions in the universities. They rarely held salaried positions; and when they did, the salary was often paid by a prince or some other external patron. Only with the passage of time, as young humanists acquired seniority and became heads of 'bursae' or doctors in the higher faculties, did humanists have any voice on faculty councils or other agencies which were used to keep control of universities safely in the hands of senior professors and out of the hands of the numerous and impoverished young masters of arts. 33 But of course the humanists or humanist sympathizers who eventually rose to power within the academic institutions were moderate, cautious, compromise-minded figures, not leaders and agitators; and Kleineidam shows that although the humanists were becoming influential on the faculty council ol Erfurt by the second decade of the sixteenth century, those known to be closely linked to the radical 31. On Erfurt, Kleineidam: Universitas studii Erffordensis. Bd. 2. S. 38-57, 98, 143-146, 157-159, 163-165, 183-215, 222-225. On humanism at Wittenberg, Friedensburg: Geschichte der Universitiit Wittenberg. S. 39, 66, 68-77; and Maria Grossman: Humanism in Wittenberg. Nieuwkoop 1975. On humanism in both universities, see also Helmar Junghans: Der junge Luther und die Humanisten. Gottingen 1985. S. 31-49, 53-62, et passim. 32. For an example, see the discussion of Peter Luder's very early (1456) oration at Heidelberg in praise of humanistic studies, in Overfield: Humanism and Scholasticism. S. 65-68. 33. Kleineidam: Universitas studii Erffordensis. Bd. 2. S. 143-144, contends that already by 1500, all of the five large 'bursae' at Erfurt were dominated by masters sympathetic to humanism.

IV 292 group around Mutianus Rufus were systematically kept out of positions of power. 34 This willingness to tolerate humanism but determination to keep extremists out of power is a prime example of a trait little noted by historians of the pre-Reformation universities, their emphasis on solidarity. The medieval university was organized as an autonomous corporation (the word universitas itself implies as much) and was keenly aware of its claim to autonomy. Of course universities were authorized, and their liberties confirmed, by charters granted by the pope and the emperor. As ecclesiastical institutions they were subject to church supervision, and their authority to grant degrees always depended on the co-operation of an external ecclesiastical officer, the chancellor. 35 Also, many senior professors, chiefly in the higher faculties, were supported by ecclesiastical benefices over which prelates or secular rulers had some control. All German universities were more dependent than they admitted on the authority of the territorial prince or the local city council. Indeed, all of them had been originally founded by some such territorial power. Already in the fifteenth century, princely intervention in the collation of benefices, in the rivalry between 'antiqui' and 'moderni', and in compelling acceptance of humanist lecturers showed signs of the future. In the sixteenth century, princes or city governments repeatedly intervened in the struggles over humanistic reform of universities. And of course in the Reformation, princes ruthlessly pushed aside claims of autonomy and imposed their own decisions for or against adoption of the Reformation. Nevertheless, the principle of corporate liberties did impede attempts by princes and city councils to break through the governing structures of the universities and dictate academic or ecclesiastical reform. But it also worked against changes proposed from within the academic world. The use of benefices and of salaried positions within 'bursae' to support university teachers

34. Ebenda. Bd. 2. S. 210-211. 35. Haller: Anfange ... Tiibingen. S. 339, observing that after the ducal government introduced the Reformation in 1535, Tiibingen was unable to produce graduates for many years because the chancellor, Ambrosius Widmann, withdrew to Rottenburg and refused to confer degrees on heretics, while also refusing to resign his chancellorship.

IV 293 created great rigidity when universities were considering reform, for incumbent older faculty possessed property rights in their sources of income and so tied up benefices that might otherwise have been used to finance new humanistic instructors. The rigidity of institutional structures also meant that when reformers did manage to finance the appointment of a humanist professor, his position within the academy was isolated and indeterminate. Laetitia Boehm has noted that because of this rigidity, universities where humanism did find external patronage experimented with awkward new structural forms that left humanists relatively isolated and powerless. The humanist institute at Louvain, the Collegium Trilingue, was organized as a separate college; and its courses did not qualify students for degrees. At Vienna, the Poets' College organized under Celtis was within the university (subject to the rector) but not within the faculty of arts (hence not subject to the dean). Hence it also was unable to confer degrees in the liberal arts. At Paris, Francis I created an ill-defined group of public lecturers who were completely external to the university. Sometimes part or all of the humanistic institution was organized as a 'Paedagogium' or pre-university preparatory school, as at Ingolstadt and Wittenberg. 36 To introduce a new humanistic program of studies on a basis not dependent on student fees or on temporary grants by princes or city councils was a difficult and costly business. Of the first two German universities to undertake far-reaching humanistic reform, Erfurt was able to enact the necessary statutory changes (a remarkable achivement in a university that did not have a prince to dictate reform); but though the reform was undertaken with great good will and enthusiasm by a group of younger masters who had gained dominance gradually between 1510 and 1519, its final result was failure. The city government was too impoverished to finance the new professorships required, and the social and religious tensions produced by the Reformation tore the university apart and left it depopulated. Matriculations (and the resultant income from fees) declined precipitately; and most of the younger masters, the men who had pushed for the reform, departed forever. What remained 36. Boehm: Humanistische Bildungsbewegung. In: ljsewijn and Paquet. S. 328, 331-332; or in: Schlogl and Herde. S. 320-322.

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was the older men, holders of endowed prebends and salaried collegiate positions in the 'bursae'. Though some of these were still well disposed to humanism, they were firmly opposed to the Protestant religious movement. A Catholic university in a largely Protestant town had no future; 37 and its well intentioned humanistic reforms of 1519 thus failed in the long run. Erfurt never recovered either the enrollments or the educational reputation which had made it one of the leading German universities in the fifteenth century. The other university to undertake really significant humanistic reforms in the early period was Wittenberg. Its reform program was perhaps even more comprehensive, and in Martin Luther the reform had a leader so dynamic that at least some of the senior faculty members volunteered to abandon their statutory courses and to begin teaching the new subjects. But the other key to Wittenberg's success was that the Elector of Saxony was both willing and able to incur the substantial additional expenses involved in creating the new professorships of Greek and Hebrew that were the centerpiece of the whole reform. 38 Given the inability (and unwillingness) of other university faculties to terminate existing lectures and to seize control of resources in the possession of doctors who taught either the old courses or nothing at all, far-reaching reform was impossible unless the state intervened vigorously. One further result of the autonomous nature of the medieval university was the sense of group solidarity which university life fostered. Every matriculant at his matriculation swore an oath to obey the rector and to respect the statutes. Furthermore, university students normally began their studies at an early age, about thirteen or fourteen. Hence they quite literally grew up, emotionally and intellectually, within their 'alma mater'. The pressure to conform, to keep all disagreements private, and to go along with decisions of the rector, the dean, or the faculty was great. To dissent openly and persistently from decisions of the corporation seemed a sign of serious disloyalty. The humanist who pressed too hard to change 37. Kleineidam: Universitas studii Erffordensis. Bd. 2. S. 266-269. 38. For the financial commitment by the Electoral Saxon government, see Hoss: Georg Spalatin. S. 122.

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existing degree requirements or to substitute new textbooks for traditional ones was likely to be regarded as a troublemaker. He might expect to be overlooked when salaried positions in a 'bursa' were available. If he should be so foolish as to continue the argument outside the university by appealing to political authorities or publishing books critical of university decisions, he could expect to be summoned before the faculty, to be ordered to apologize, to be fined, or even to be expelled. This was true not only of a young humanist master but even of a senior and highly respected doctor of laws such as Peter of Ravenna. The sin for which Peter was forced to leave Cologne in 1508 was not just his criticism of the denial of the sacraments to condemned felons but rather his rashness, once the theological faculty had condemned his views, in publishing books that criticized the theologians and continued to defend his own opinions. 39 Scholarship on German humanism has been so captivated by the cases of conflict that there has been much confusion and misunderstanding about its relationship with scholasticism. Overfield has performed a real service by pointing out this confusion and reminding us that open conflicts were few and that most of the literary polemics were conducted by only one side, the humanists, with little response from the defenders of tradition. Neither irrepressible conflict nor peaceful coexistence is an accurate term to describe the relation between humanists and scholastics. Erich Kleineidam has shrewdly observed that because humanism was not a philosophical system, it could, up to a point, insinuate itself into the universities without generating immediate conflict. 40 On the philosophical and theological issues that might exercise scholastic thinkers, humanism had absolutely nothing to say; and in its early decades in Germany, its representatives were usually prudent enough not to insist too openly that they regarded those issues as insignificant. Overfield looks carefully at the famous controversy

39. Charles G. Nauert, Jr.: Peter of Ravenna and the 'Obscure Men' of Cologne. A Case of Pre-Reformation Controversy. In: Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron. Ed. by Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi. Firenze 1971. S. 609-640. 40. Kleineidam: Universitas studii Erffordensis. Bd. 2. S. 38-39.

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between Johann Reuchlin and the Cologne theological faculty, and also at two interesting but less famous conflicts that broke out at Leipzig (Martin Polich von Mellerstadt vs. Konrad Wimpina) and at Ingolstadt (Jakob Locher Philomusus vs. Georg Zingel and others). He finds that while they were indeed bitter quarrels conducted both within university channels and through the press, they are not evidence of a clear confrontation between humanism and scholasticism. 41 He also shows that when conflicts did break out, the humanists did indeed allege persecution and publish works expressing contempt for scholastic learning, but that the scholastics rarely expressed any general opposition to humanism (as distinguished from opposition to a specific humanist). As noted above, it has recently become fashionable to explain the controversies (or at least the instances in which humanists alleged mistreatment and hatred of good learning) in terms of generational differences. The first generation of humanists, trying merely to establish a toehold for themselves and their subjects within the universities, were meek. They accepted without too much complaint their own subordinate position. The second generation, whose greatest figures were Erasmus, Reuchlin, and Mutianus Rufus, was much more openly critical of scholasticism and much more insistent on the need for drastic educational reforms which would put the literary and linguistic subjects, rather than the dialectical and philosophical ones, at the center of the curriculum in the liberal arts. But few people have remarked on the singular fact that while many - perhaps most - of this second generation lived from university teaching, none of the three great leaders of that generation had a very extensive teaching career. They made their living outside the academic world, and perhaps that is why they could dare to be openly critical of it. Then the third generation of German humanists, those who were still young in 1517, were strongly drawn toward the early Reformation. Unlike the generation of Erasmus, many of them remained permanently on the side of the Evangelical reformers. Indeed, though they retained many humanist interests and aspirations, they ceased being merely humanists. They were, 41. Overfield: Humanism and Scholasticism. S. 173-207. On Reuchlin, see his Chapter VII and his article cited at n. 4 above.

IV 297 next to Luther himself, the most important early leaders of the Protestant Reformation. The same line of evolution can be defined in terms of years rather than generations. Up to about 1500, the German humanists were cautious and generally willing to work within the established scholastic culture, which they merely proposed to enrich. From about 1500 to 1518, humanists in many places began pushing harder for humanistic curricular reforms, though with only limited success. Then from late 1517 or early 1518 the humanists became involved in the events of the early Protestant Reformation, with which most of them warmly sympathized. From about 1524 or 1525, as the likelihood of a permanent religious schism began to become obvious, and as social and political unrest emerged as a possible by-product of the Reformation, humanism split. Some (mostly the older ones, led by Erasmus) broke openly with Luther, while others (chiefly young men under thirty) committed themselves fully to the Evangelical cause. Leaving aside for now the much-studied question of humanism's contribution to the Reformation, I am nevertheless struck by how little these theories of generation gaps or chronological turningpoints explain about the increasing aggressiveness of the humanists. It seems obvious that at first humanists who wanted permission to teach poetry or rhetoric or grammar in a university would have to be cautious about criticizing the institution in which they wanted to work. But once the humanists had edged their way into the academy and had become fairly numerous there, they could afford to be a bit more outspoken. Nevertheless, we still have to explain the humanists' proclivity to be dissatisfied with the universities, for even in the earliest period, their orations and other works contain occasional expressions of such dissatisfaction. 42 From the very beginning, humanism implied some reform of university education. To understand the latent tension and occasional outbreaks of

42. Overfield: Humanism and Scholasticism. Chapter II shows that despite their caution and eagerness to fit into the universities, early German humanists did occasionally express some criticism of the prevailing scholastic culture. For Peter Luder's complaint about the overwhelming dominance of logic in the curriculum, ebenda. S. 86-87.

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conflict, it is necessary to think about the humanists as academic reformers. Humanists from the very outset wanted to change the universities, and many of these changes would not have been particularly controversial. Their desire to improve the practice of Latin grammar and even their criticism of current academic Latin could hardly have been offensive to anyone but specific individuals whom a humanist might have criticized for poor Latin style. In the abstract, at least, no university scholar was likely to defend the writing of ungrammatical Latin or to oppose efforts to improve the teaching of the language. Likewise the humanists' desire to introduce new, improved translations of Aristotle, made directly from the Greek, need not have been regarded as dangerous. In reality, however, humanistic reform of the university was not so simple as it seemed. By the late fifteenth century, German humanists were often critical of the commonly used textbook for Latin grammar, the Doctrinale of Alexander of Villedieu. From the humanists' point of view, its greatest flaw was that it concentrated not on description of actual Latin practice but rather on discovering philosophical reasons for the grammatical rules it presented. Furthermore, it provided absolutely no examples from Latin authors to illustrate the functioning of its rules. Besides, it was written in a clearly postclassical Latin style and verse form. Naturally the humanists proposed to replace this fount of mediocre Latin. They wanted to substitute either one of the late classical grammars, such as that by Donatus, or to adopt one of the grammars produced by Italian humanists. Of these the Rudimenta grammatices of Niccolo Perotti (first published in 1473) was most popular. An adaptation of this book for German use was published by the Viennese humanist Bernhard Perger as early as 1482. But since the Doctrinale was so venerable, more cautious humanists tried to retain its use but to supplement it with commentaries which would emphasize practical usage rather than logical causes and would provide examples drawn from classical authors. The Glosa by the Dutch humanist schoolmaster Alexander Hegius and his associate Johannes Synthen, first published at Deventer in 1484, is an early example. But medieval masters of arts were not free to abandon statutory textbooks and to introduce new ones. In the opening decade of the sixteenth century, there was widespread pressure to have university statutes amended to authorize use of a

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new grammar, and several universities eventually did so. But there was also sharp resistance. The reason, as Terrence Heath demonstrated, was that the existing program of grammatical study, based on the Doctrinale, was not designed merely to teach boys about Latin forms and rules, but also to prepare them for the study oflogic and philosophy which was going to be their principal occupation throughout their studies. The arts curriculum had become a tightly articulated course of study in which all other subjects led up to mastery oflogic, the dominant one among the liberal arts. Adoption of a modern grammar might help boys learn Latin and develop a better Latin style, but it would not give them the preparation for philosophical study which was a desired by-product of learning grammar from the Doctrinale. 43 Thus even so apparently modest a reform as the adoption of a modern humanistic grammar book threatened to undermine the tightly articulated structure of the medieval curriculum. Teachers of more advanced subjects would not be able to count on their students' having mastered certain elements of philosophy if those students had learned their grammar from some book other than the Doctrinale. Eventually the humanists carried the day in all universities, but the adoption of new grammar-books aroused bitter opposition. This contest, perhaps the first issue that produced direct conflict between humanists and defenders of the traditional curriculum, points toward deeper disharmonies between humanism and scholasticism that led inexorably toward conflict. Traditional education was based on the highly intellectual goal of achieving truth through reasoning guided by the rules oflogic. But humanism wanted to challenge this dominance of logic over education in the liberal arts. As P.O. Kristeller has long insisted, humanism implied an attempt to reverse the domination of the liberal arts by logic and to redress the balance by emphasis on other subjects, the 'studia humanitatis', which included grammar, rhetoric, poetry, and moral philosophy. 44 It also implied the study of classical Latin authors. As 43. Terrence Heath: Logical Grammar, Grammatical Logic, and Humanism in Three German Universities. In: Studies in the Renaissance 18 (1971) s. 9-64. 44. Paul Oskar Kristeller: Renaissance Thought. The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanistic Strains. New York 1961. Passim, especially S. 10, 101, 110.

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it explored the depths of classical, biblical, and patristic literature, it also came to require a mastery of Greek and perhaps Hebrew. Thus humanist plans for curricular reform would not only abandon use of the good old Doctrinale but also would greatly reduce the emphasis on logic and would require increased attention to grammar, rhetoric and moral philosophy, plus lectures on poetry, on major authors of Latin literature, on Greek, and on Hebrew. Such a reform program would mark a disruptive break with longstanding educational practice. The degrees of bachelor and master of arts awarded to the graduate of such a revised curriculum would have a very different meaning from the arts degrees heretofore given; and professors in the three higher faculties of law, theology, and medicine would find that while their entering students might write a more classical style of Latin, they would not have the highly sophisticated logical and philosophical skills imparted by successful passage through the medieval curriculum. Medieval liberal arts education was essentially philosophical; humanistic education would be primarily literary and linguistic. Another difficulty, as we have seen in the cases of Wittenberg and Erfurt, was that carrying out an extensive humanistic reform was costly. Even if a university faculty was willing to cast aside the traditions of three centuries of scholastic education (and none except Wittenberg and Erfurt was), a thoroughgoing reform could not be financed without endangering the property rights of those who held university benefices and salaried positions in colleges and 'bursae'; also, not without making obsolete the erudition which traditionally educated scholars had accumulated through many years of difficult and costly study. Both Kristeller and Kleineidam have insisted, though in differing contexts, that humanism was not a new, rival school of philosophy.45 Rather, as Kristeller put it, the humanists ought to be regarded "not as philosophers with a curious lack of philosophical ideas and a curious fancy for eloquence and for classical studies, but rather as professional rhetoricians with a new, classicist ideal of culture, who tried to assert the importance of their field of learning and to impose their standards upon the other fields of learning and 45. Ebenda. S. 8-11,22, 95-102; Kleineidam: Universitas studii Erffordensis. Bd. 2. S. 38-39.

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of science, including philosophy. " 46 Kleineidam is surely correct in maintaining that humanism's lack of distinctive philosophical doctrines explains why it could insinuate itself into either a realist or a nominalist faculty, teaching non-sensitive subjects like grammar, rhetoric, and moral philosophy. Yet in the long run, humanism posed a threat to the old educational system far more dangerous than just its proposal for a reform of grammatical teaching. This threat was twofold. First, the humanists' emphasis on rhetoric and moral philosophy was a challenge to the intellectualism that dominated scholasticism. When humanists denounced scholasticism, they charged not so much that it was false as that it was useless. Scholasticism assumed that the goal of human life is to know, and it emphasized logic because that subject guided the intellect in its endeavor to gain true knowledge. But humanists from the time of Petrarch had regularly rejected this glorification of knowledge and reason. They had instead viewed human beings as moral and social creatures whose primary goal was to live rightly rather than merely to know the truth. That is why the study of moral philosophy, dealing with the practical choices faced by people in real life, and the study or rhetoric, the art of persuasion, seemed inevitably and inherently more important. The study of Cicero was better than the study of Aristotle precisely because Ciceronian eloquence has the power to inspire people to be good rather than merely to teach them how to define goodness. 47 Kristeller is right in maintaining that humanism was not a philosophy. Yet humanism did imply a view of human nature that was different from that implied by scholasticism. It emphasized not intellective power and knowledge but moral grandeur and the power to shape human beha:Vior through eloquence. Humanism does mark a fundamental shift of values; and on that ground, I would not agree with the conclusion of Wilhelm Kolmel that humanism does not mark a significant shift in doctrine, but only in method. 48 The shift in

46. Kristeller: Renaissance Thought. S. 102. 47. Petrarch: On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others. In: The Renaissance Philosophy of Man. Ed. by Ernst Cassirer et al. Chicago 1948. S. 47-133, especially 57-59, 74-75, 101-105. 48. Wilhelm Kolmel: Scolasticus literator. Die Humanisten und ihr

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method implies a fundamental shift in outlook, for method is the outward expression of metaphysic. 49 I do agree with Kolmel that when humanists dealt with the philosophical problems central to scholastic thought, they put forward no distinctive views and often put forward solutions remarkably similar to those offered by the contemporary scholastics. 50 But most of the time, those philosophical problems were of small concern to the humanists. The second threat that humanism posed to scholastic tradition in the early sixteenth century involved the humanistic conception of intellectual method. Kolmel points to method as the principal source of difference and conflict, but he underrates its importance. For humanists, logic, though useful, could never truly grasp reality. Rather, the humanists' method ofliterary and linguistic study alone could recapture the true meaning of authoritative texts, especially the biblical texts on which all theology ultimately stoodY In fact, since all fields of academic study rested on the correct interpretation of certain authoritative texts, the philological method of the humanists, involving the use of literary and linguistic analysis to recapture the authoritative text's original meaning, inevitably claimed to be a universally valid method for all fields of learning. The fundamental vice of scholasticism was its tendency to interpret texts through logical analysis with utter disregard of the question what those texts had meant to their ancient authors. Mature humanism, as represented by masters like Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus, raised the questions of authenticity and historical context, matters which had interested the founders of scholasticism very little. Inevitably, the humanist approach to the Bible, to the Digest, or to Galen differed from that adopted by the medieval tradition. Furthermore, since the humanist through his philological approach Verhaltnis zur Scholastik. In: Historisches Jahrbuch 93 (1973) S. 301-335, especially 308-311, 335. 49. E.A. Burtt: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. Rev. ed. Garden City, N.Y. 1954. S. 229. Burtt contends (correctly, I think) that every scientific investigator has, at least unconsciously, a set of metaphysical assumptions, and that those assumptions tend to be expressed in his method. 50. Kolmel: Scolasticus literator. S. 331-333. 51. Ebenda. S. 311-324.

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asserted control over the questions of authenticity and original (and hence authentic) meaning of any text, he inevitably short-circuited the claim of any scholastic doctor to speak definitively about the truth. This issue emerged most starkly in the work of Erasmus on the New Testament. His scholastic critics such as Martin van Dorp saw clearly that by claiming the first word on whether a particular passage such as the 'comma Johanneum' existed in the original Greek, or precisely what the original Greek word meant, Erasmus was also laying claim to the last word, the determination of true meaning. 52 The scholastic authority of the past was no authority at all if it rested on a false or falsely interpreted text; and if the contemporary scholastic theologian lacked Greek, a humanist would deny his competence to judge textual questions, no matter how many years he had spent attaining a doctorate. In this way, as Kristeller noted, humanism in its methodological aspect would eventually spill over from the limited range of 'studia humanitatis' and would challenge traditional scholarship in the higher faculties as well- theology, law, and medicine. While the work of Erasmus is the clearest example of such intrusion in theology, the tendency of this process to generate conflict is also evident in the study of Roman law. The humanistic 'mos gallicus', represented in Germany by the Freiburg jurist Ulrich Zasius, rejected the reliance of the traditional 'mos italicus' on the great body oflearned commentaries that had accumulated since the late eleventh century. Zasius and his fellows emphasized instead the task of rediscovering the meaning of the original texts preserved in the Digest. In their teaching, they insisted on making that text, rather than medieval commentaries, the center of attention. 53 Thus their approach runs parallel to the 52. Jerry H. Bentley: Humanists and Holy Writ. New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance. Princeton 1983. S. 7-9, 149-152. For Erasmus's discussions with Dorp, Phillips: Erasmus. S. 73-77; and Bainton: Erasmus. S. 134-140. 53. On the intrusion of humanism into the study of law, see the publications of Guido Kisch, especially: Humanismus und Jurisprudenz. Der Kampf zwischen mos italicus und mos gallicus an der Universitat Basel. Basel 1955. (= Basler Studien zur Rechtswissens:::haft. 42.), and: Erasmus und die Jurisprudenz seiner Zeit. Basel 1960. (= Basler Studien zur Rechtswissenschaft. 56.)

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insistence of humanistic theologians that the text of the Bible, not scholastic 'quaestiones' or the opinions of modern doctors, must be emphasized in university lectures. Likewise the humanists insisted that if Aristotle were still to be taught, the original Greek or new humanistic translations must be the basis for teaching. Behind the many specific issues that set humanistic university reformers against those who wanted to preserve the old curriculum, therefore, there lurked these deeper conflicts of value - intellectualism and logic versus moralism and rhetoric - and of scholarly method. The conservatives had the advantage of being in power and having the statutes require the old subjects, old textbooks, and old methods of teaching. Control of universities rested securely with the heads of 'bursae' and senior doctors from the three higher faculties. Thus any reform of importance, even so simple a one as authorizing use of new translations of Aristotle or replacing the Doctrinale or the logical textbooks of Petrus His pan us with new humanistic books, was sure to be opposed and was likely to be blocked. Yet the situation in each university was confused precisely because humanists and scholastics were not two clearly distinct groups, but rather each faculty member had some affinities to both traditions. As time passed, more and more of the dominant doctors in the higher faculties were men who had been exposed to some degree of humanist teaching in their youth. 54 Overfield shows that between about 1500 and 1515, as humanists increasingly voiced open criticism of traditional learning and pushed for adoption of new textbooks and other changes, senior faculty members realized that humanism was not just a harmless ornament but posed a threat to tradition. Hence at several universities, faculty authorities took steps to tighten discipline by forbidding lectures on unauthorized texts and restricting the teaching of poetry. 55 But at most universities, even in this period of reaction, some changes favorable to humanism were introduced. And after 1515, as younger men educated as humanists began to succeed to positions of power, significant reforms became widespread though not universal. Even ultra-conservative Cologne, shocked out of its complacency by a 54. Kristeller: Renaissance Thought. S. 101. 55. Overfield: Humanism and Scholasticism. S. 234-235.

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catastrophic drop in matriculations (and hence in faculty income from fees) flirted with humanistic reform, especially between 1523 and 1526. Yet one should not leave the question of university reform on such an optimistic note. The success of conservative doctors in either blocking reform or frustrating the execution of reforms that had been formally adopted shows that then, as now, universities were irreformable. Reform eventually came in some degree to all universities, but only because it was shoved in firmly from outside. Erfurt, where the younger faculty members gained control in 1518 and the following year enacted sweeping reforms, is the principal exception; and there the reform was abortive in the long run. At Wittenberg, the earliest and most outstanding case of successful and fundamental academic reform, there was dynamic leadership from Martin Luther. Even so, the reform there was essentially the work of the Electoral Saxon government, which initiated the investigation of educational conditions, authorized the preparation of reform proposals, and approved their adoption. At least the Saxon goverment also proved remarkably generous in providing funds to make the reforms financially possible. Everywhere else, when reform came, the princely government took the leading role. Humanists within the universities had learned already in the fifteenth century that what the faculty would not give, might be obtained by appealing over the faculty's head to the political authorities. Such agitation outside normal channels of university governance, involving private appeals to friends at court and even use of printed propaganda, was a serious violation of academic etiquette. It compromised the university's claim to be an autonomous corporation exempt from intervention by external authorities. But such going out of channels worked, and we have already seen that princes had already intervened and overruled faculty preferences in the fifteenth century. Humanistic reform thus came by princely fiat, and it involved close collaboration between the regime and those persons within the faculty who favored humanism. In the great majority of cases- but not in all- princely action to support humanistic reform came as part of a broader decision to support the Lutheran Reformation. Whether the religious preference of the ruler was Protestant or Catholic, however, the successful adoption of humanistic reform required both the active intervention and the

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financial support of a princely government. At Erfurt and Cologne, where the territorial authority was a city council rather than a prince, successful reform was singularly difficult. Erfurt's problem has been discussed already. At Cologne, although there were sympathizers with humanism in the city council, among the higher clergy, and in the faculty itself, there was not the kind of insistent pressure that a princely government could exert; and so Cologne achieved only piecemeal reforms until after 1550. Everywhere, however, the movement for abandonment of the old scholastic curriculum and adoption of new requirements that incorporated humanism proved irresistible. The final proof that humanistic culture had become dominant among educated Germans is in the subsequent history of the universities. All German universities, even Wittenberg, experienced a shocking decline in matriculations during the mid-1520's. But for some universities, the decline was permanent. These were the ones where humanistic reform failed: Erfurt, where reform was attempted but collapsed, and Cologne, where only small and inadequate reforms were adopted. Erfurt and Cologne had been two of Germany's three largest and most prosperous universities in the late fifteenth century (Leipzig was the largest of all). But now they sank into insignificance. Leadership fell to Wittenberg and the other Protestant centers, but those Catholic universities that underwent successful humanistic reform, such as Ingolstadt, eventually shared in the recovery of university life. The German universities, even Wittenberg, retained many characteristics of the medieval period, including a reliance on Aristotelian philosophy which survived the early attempts of Luther and Melanchthon to purge Aristotle from the schools. But they also offered a liberal arts education vastly enriched and broadened by the abolition of many scholastic practices and the incorporation of the linguistic-literary-philological method of humanism into the heart of their curriculum. To that extent, the new culture of humanism had triumphed among the educated classes of sixteenth-century Germany.

V PETER OF RAVENNA AND THE «OBSCURE MEN» OF COLOGNE: A CASE OF PRE-REFORMATION CONTROVERSY* The catastrophic breakdown of the medieval church during the years after I 5I 7 occurred amidst storms of angry polemic and bloody persecution that make the sixteenth century one of the most conflict-ridden periods in human history. The generous and optimistic hopes of reforming humanists like Erasmus and More ended in cruel disappointment; and that great boon to the spread of enlightenment, the art of printing, became the medium by which pamphleteers and polemicists made the sixteenth century the most ideologically divided and intellectually turbulent, perhaps, until our own 1 • But the outpouring of tracts and the angry exchanges by controversialists which marked the age of the Reformation, like most other things in human history, had their precursors. The appearance of a prophetic figure like Martin Luther profoundly modified and immeasurably deepened the current of religious controversy. Nevertheless, there was already a heritage of issues, controversial habits, and perhaps even party alignments which formed a background for the new spiritual upheaval. Older ways of conducting religious disputes, and pre-Reformation ways of thinking about reform of church and society, persisted for a generation at least. New issues and new lines of division became evident only slowly; and for a long time, many men experienced difficulty in comprehending just what these new issues and divisions were, or even that they were new. Thus the conflicts that divided men before Luther's spectacular appearance, and the ways in which men conducted themselves as controversialists, helped to shape the way in which men understood - or misunderstood - the spiritual crisis of the Reformation. This relationship is obvious enough, taken as an abstract proposition. And at least one of the pre-Reformation conflicts, that between the German humanist Johann

1 Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, L'apparition du livre (Paris, 1958), pp. 432-443·

© 1971 by G.C. Sansoni S.P.A. Firenze.

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Reuchlin and the theological faculty of the University of Cologne, has long been regarded as a prelude to the Lutheran Refotmation, particularly because of the way in which the most striking controversial publication of the affair, the Epistolae virorum obscurorum, appealed from constituted authority to general public opinion and also launched destructive attacks that passed far beyond the original issues and tended to undermine respect for the old ecclesiastical institution as a whole. Yet these conflicts as a general phenomenon have been of secondary or incidental interest to modern scholarship; and such fundamental questions as the causes and nature of religious and ecclesiastical disputes, the methods used to conduct them, and the alliances and enmities which they fostered, have hardly been asked, much less answered. The result of this neglect is that important aspects of the religious and intellectual situation on the eve of the Reformation are not well understood, and that many current generalizations about the relationships between humanists and scholastics, or between both of these groups and the Lutheran movement, are open to question. For example, the humanists themselves, especially after the outbreak of the Reuchlin affair, tended to interpret the conflicts in which they were involved as simple encounters between humanistic enlightenment and scholastic obscurantism; and though modern scholarship has tended to undermine this view, it still persists. The real situation in the intellectual world of the early sixteenth century was much more complex. Humanists and scholastics did not always behave like mortal enemies. Even in the most conservative centers, such as Cologne, there were partisans of the newer intellectual currents 2 ; and when conflicts did break out, people sometimes divided in ways that are hardly consonant with the notion of unmitigated hostility between a camp of entrenched, unbending conservatives and a rival camp of bold, innovative humanistic challengers. Thus a fresh look at these literary (and sometimes judicial) contests should contribute significantly to a better 2 Hermann Keussen, Die alte Universitat Kiiln: Grundziige ihrer Verjassung und Geschichte (Veroffentlichung des kolnischen Geschichtsvereins, 10) (Cologne, 1934), p. 195; Charles G. Nauert, Jr., Agrippa and the Crisis of Renaissance Thought (Urbana, Illinois, 1965 ), pp. 10-14, 69.

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understanding of the age, even though the controversies themselves, regarded as isolated events, may often seem of minor importance. As a particular case of pre-Reformation conflict, the encounter between the Italian law professor Peter of Ravenna 3 and the theological faculty (the «obscure men» of the Reuchlin case) of the University of Cologne has several points of special interest. It illustrates an apparent disharmony between the views of a leading Italian scholar and the dominant figures at Germany's most influential and most conservative university. It seems on first sight to pit spokesmen for the new intellectual force of humanism (Peter himself, Hermann von dem Busche, and Ortwin Gratius) against the dominant figures of scholastic conservatism at Cologne (Gerardus Zerbolt van Zutphen and Jacob von Hochstraten). And thus it obviously constitutes a prelude to the more famous incident that set the Cologne theologians at odds with Johann Reuchlin and his defenders among the German humanists. The parallel was quickly seen by contemporaries like the authors of the Epistolae obscurorum virorum 4 and Agrippa von Nettesheim 5 • Modern scholarship has also noted the parallel 6 • Even the cast of characters is strikingly similar, though one, Ortwin Gratius, has changed sides. 3 Peter was probably born about I448 and at an early age won great fame for his prodigious memory. His treatise on the art of memory, the Phoenix, has been studied recently by Paolo Rossi, Clavis universalis: Arti mnemoniche e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz (Milan, I96o ), pp. 27-30, and Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (London, I966), pp. I IZ-II4, and passim. The most extensive modern biographical studies are by Eisenhart, «Petrus Ravennas », Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, XXV, 529-539; by R. Chabanne, « Pierre Ravennas », in Raoul Naz, ed., Dictionnaire de droit canonique, VI, col. 1484-I497; and by Heinrich Heidenheimer, «Petrus Ravennas in Mainz und sein Kampf mit den Ki::ilner Dunkelmiinnern », Westdeutsche Zeitschrift fur Geschichte und Kunst, XVI (I897), zz3-z56. Peter's family name is usually given as Tommai, but this name is not certain. 4 Second series, no. zo and 50, in Eduardus Bi::icking, ed., Ulrichi Hutteni ... Operum supplementum (z vols.; Leipzig, I864-I87o), I, zzo, z65. Henceforth cited as Bi::icking, Supplementum. 5 Agrippa, De beatissimae Annae monogamia, ac unico puerperio ... (N. p., I534), fols. M5 r-M6 v. Reuchlin himself likened his case to the Cologne theologians' persecution of Peter of Ravenna and other jurists in letters of 3I August I5I3 to Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples and I November I5I8 to Cardinal Achille de Grassi, both cited by Heidenheimer, pp. Z5I-zp. 6 Keussen, p. I95; H. J. Liessem, Hermann van dem Busche: Sein Leben

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The story of the conflict between Peter of Ravenna and the Cologne faculty is rather simply told. After a long and successful career as professor of law at several Italian universities (most recently, Padua), Peter was persuaded by Duke Bogeslav X of Pomerania to come to his territorial university at Greifswald as professor of both laws and as reformer of the university. After teaching there successfully for five years (from his matriculation on 24 April I 498 to April of I 5o 3) 7 , he left on account of a plague that cost him the death of a beloved daughter, and went, on the urging of the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony and his brother Johann, to the new University of Wittenberg. There he lectured for a number of years (3 May I503 to summer, I 5o6), perhaps as a professor law and perhaps not: there is no record of his having matriculated, though his son Vincentius became rector in I504 and held the chair of civil law from I 504 until his resignation toward the end of I 5o6. Vincentius then returned to Italy, but the father and his wife Lucretia went to Cologne, somewhat before the son's departure, out of fear of the plague that disrupted the university in the summer of I 506 8 • The appearance of a mature and celebrated teacher from the famous law schools of Italy, a man at least as famous for his prodigious memory and his treatise on the art of memory (the Phoenix) as for his many publications in the field of jurisprudence, was a great event even in an important university like Cologne; and Peter's friend Ortwin Gratius reports (probably with some exaggeration) that his first public lecture was packed to overflowing and received warm applause. The Cologne city und seine Schriften (Programm des Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasiums zu Koln. Ostern 1884-1889) (Cologne, 1884-1889, 2 vols.), I, 54; Dietrich Reichling, Ortwin Gratius, Sein Leben und Wirken: Eine Ehrenrettung (reprinted.; Nieuwkoop, 1963, from ed. Heiligenstadt, 1884), p. 27. 7 Th. Pyl, «Petrus von Ravenna», Baltische Studien, XX (1864), 5 30534· Peter served twice (1498 and 1501) as rector at Greifswald, and his son Vincentius also served twice (1499 and 1502). Cj. Eisenhart, ADB, XXV, 531-532. 8 Chabanne, in Naz, VI, col. 1488-1490; Eisenhart, ADB, XXV, 532-5 34· The eighteenth-century biographer Carl Christian Gercken, Ad historiam Petri ac Vincentii Ravennatum corollarium (Dresden, 1773), concluded that Peter did not hold a professorship at Wittenberg, but reversed this judgment in his later Fata Petri Ravennatis per Germaniam (Dresden, 1777).

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council hastened to secure his services by naming him professor extraordinarius of both laws (at only a small salary, as his enemies later were careful to point out) 9 • His matriculation occurred on 3 August I 5o6, and the customary fees were remitted ob reverentiam personae 10 • Peter's lectures at Cologne covered not only topics in civil and canon law but also matters of religion and morals; and his remarks on his departure suggest that he had pupils from the arts faculty as well as from law 11 • His teaching at Cologne, as previously at Greifswald and Wittenberg, seems to have attracted large numbers of students and to have won him the friendship of a considerable number of persons in the law and arts faculties, and also among the well-to-do patriciate that ruled the city. Ortwin Gratius, Peter's closest friend and apologist, after listing the various princes who were his patrons or who sought to be - Duke Bogeslav of Pomerania, Frederick the Wise of Saxony, the Emperor Maximilian I 12, the King of Denmark, and the Dukes Magnus and Balthasar of Mecklenburg - provided a catalogue of those persons at Cologne who were special friends of the Italian jurist: Andreas de V enroed, apostolic protonotary and provost of St. Cunibert at Cologne, a doctor of canon law who later (I 5I 2) became rector of the university; the jurist Petrus Antonius de Clapis; Johannes Potken, provost of St. Georg and a humanist; Johannes de Burse, a Premonstratensian; Johannes Fastardi Bare de Busco, doctor of laws and rector in 1504; Geraldus Systorp de Kempen, doctor of laws and rector in I5o6; Johannes de Graes (Ortwin's own 9 The chief contemporary source for Peter's career in Germany is Ortwin Gratius, Criticomastix, printed as an appendix to Peter's Alphabetum aureum (Lugduni, I5JI), fols. A3 v-B4 v. The record of his disciplinary heating of 6 March 1507, printed by Franz Joseph von Bianco, Die alte Universitat Kifln und die spateren Gelehrten-Schulen dieser Stadt (Cologne, 1855; 2 vols. in 1), I, 404, mentions his small salary. 1 ° Keussen, p. 195; Bianco, I, 846. 11 Peter's Testamentum, or farewell address, of Palm Sunday (16 April), 1508, printed in his Compendium breue et pulcherrimum in materiam consuetudimmt feudorum (Coloniae, 1508). Henceforth cited as Compendium breue. For mention of his pupils, fol. K4 r. 12 There is some uncertainty about when the Emperor received Peter at court and heard his exploits of memory, but Eisenhart, ADB, XXV, 5p, and Chabanne, in Naz, VI, col. 1486-1487, think that he spent the period 13 February-13 March 1498 at the imperial court at Innsbruck while en route from Venice to Greifswald.

V 614 uncle and guardian, pastor at Deventer); the young humanist and poet Remaclus Florenate; two Biirgermeister, Gerhard von Wessel and Gerhard Wasserfass; Johann von Reidt; Johannes Rinck, who had Peter's portrait painted and kept it in his house; his brother Hermann Rinck; and many others in the university and in the city council. Of less eminent but no less enthusiastic friends, Gratius lists the young English law student William Harris; two other students, Johannes Schudherynck de Nuscia and Johannes Riphan de Weter; and the fiscalis of the Archbishop of Cologne, Urbanus de Viersen 13• Other friends not included in Gratius' catalog were Gratius himself; Agrippa von Nettesheim; the wandering humanist Hermann von dem Busche, who returned to Cologne in I 507 or early I 5o8 and apparently is the author of the Eulogium of Peter printed in the latter's Compendium breue et pulcherrimum in materia consuetudinum feudorum and signed «H. B. P. » 14 ; the scholastic theologian and inquisitor Servatius Vanckel 15 ; and the literary editor for the Quentell publishing house, Walther Tanger von Herzogenbusch 16 • But although Peter of Ravenna had friends and admirers in Cologne, he also had enemies who found scandalous things in his teaching and writing and who spoke, wrote, and acted in order to prevent him from spreading his ideas in the university. Shortly after mid-February of I507, the faculty of theology decided to denounce to the whole university certain of his teachings; and on Saturday, 6 March, the entire faculty was convoked to hear a complaint brought by « certain wise and venerable masters of arts and professors of sacred theo13 Gratius, Criticomastix, in Alphabetum aureum, fols. B8 v-Cr v. Even after his controversy, Peter always avowed his love for Cologne and its university; e. g., Testamentum, in Compendium breue, fol. K4 r; cJ. his Va!ete, ibid., fol. C6 r. Peter in his Notabilia quaedam dicta, in Alphabetum aureum, fol. CLxxxur r, mentions having given legal advice to Reidt, who was later much interested in university reform, according to Keussen, p. I97· 14 Compendium breue, fol. Ar v. This identification was made by Heidenheimer, pp. 228-229. According to Liessem, I, 28, the abbreviation for « Hermannus Buschius Pasiphilus » was a regular signature used by Busch and appeared on the title-page of his Flora (r5o8). 15 Valete, in Alphabetum aureum, fol. D3 r. 16 He wrote a distichon for the title-page of Alphabetum aureum; cJ. Reichling, pp. 22-23.

V PETER OF RAVENNA AND THE« OBSCURE MEN» OF COLOGNE

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logy » against certain doctrines taught by « the venerable and distinguished man, master Peter of Ravenna, U. I. D.» 17 A book of extracts from the records of the theological faculty shows that its action of mid-February concerned the issue that later became the chief subject of the pamphlet controversy, Peter's contention that German princes who refused burial to the bodies of penitent condemned criminals and kept them exposed on the gallows were guilty of mortal sin 18 • The charges, as presented to the entire university faculty by one of the theologians, were that through these teachings « many scandals had arisen in the university and that more were to be feared» 19 • The theologians demanded that prompt remedy be provided, and added that «in the books which he published under his name, certain printed sayings were read which were scandalous and offensive to pious ears, especially to young students» 20 • After deliberation by each faculty separately, it was agreed that Peter should be required to appear with his principal critic (presumably Jacob von Hochstraten, though the record does not specify) before a commission made up of the rector, the entire law faculty (to which he had appealed), and a deputy. from each of the other three faculties 21 • At this hearing, Peter was informed of the articles charged against him, and admonished that however he might undertake to defend them, « nevertheless they were new and unheard of, and too extraordinary, and hardly consonant with law and reason, but offensive to pious ears and extremely tumultuous and scandalous ». He was warned « to abstain from further teaching of these doctrines, publicly or privately, by word of mouth, by writing, by printing, or otherwise », and was instructed to revise and correct the works containing them. « Otherwise, proceedings would be taken against him, and he would be dealt with as the law provides ». If he wished to defend his statements and to discuss their truth or falsity, this would be allowed, provided he did so in a scholastic manner, « that Printed by Bianco, I, 404-406. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS. Nouv. acq. lat. 2165, fol. 4 r. 19 Bianco, I, 404. 20 Ibid. The reference to scandalizing young students probably means that his joking statement that Italian students could not live without whores was already being used against him. 21 Ibid., I, 404-406. 17

18

V 616 is, in the form of a scholastic disputation, showing conclusions containing his opinion, to which he or another would respond, with some [doctors] presiding over the disputation and others opposing, according to the ancient and laudable custom of the aforesaid university ... ». If he should wish to defend his conclusions in writing, this also would be allowed, but only with the proviso that he should communicate his writings to the rector of the university and to none other, and should not further publicize them without authorization by the rector 22 • This stark demand for total conformity or, failing that, for confinement of the debate within the authorized circles of the university, was nothing remarkable in a medieval university, for these bodies claimed extensive rights of discipline over their members. As in any university of the age, Peter at his matriculation had sworn to observe its statutes; and at Cologne these provided explicitly that doctors, licentiates, and bachelors who had taken their degrees elsewhere must swear obedience to the dean of the faculty 23 • Whatever he may have thought about the wisdom of the demands imposed upon him, Peter, a thoroughly conservative academician who well understood the rules of academic life, did not deny the faculty's right to impose discipline. He replied that at the command of the rector and the university, he would abstain from his accustomed teaching of these and similar doctrines. He also promised to revise his books, though he claimed that the errors were not his work but were the fault of the printers 24 • He was then dismissed «with peace and friendship» 25 , and the theologians promised to desist from their attacks on him. Although such strict disciplining of an elderly and famous professor may have seemed somewhat unusual even then, this type of control was not unprecedented at Cologne. In fact during 1496, when the theological faculty was engaged in passing one of several statutes that made belief in the Immaculate Conception obligatory for all its members, two Dominicans (the order had traditionally opposed the doctrine) were required to swear to

22 23

24

~5

Ibid., I, 405. Ibid., II, 56-57. Ibid., I, 406. Ibid.

V PETER OF RAVENNA AND THE

« OBSCURE MEN »OF COLOGNE 617

uphold it before the university licensed them to teach. One of these was none other than «Frater Jacobus de Hochstraten Dominicanus » 26 • Thus Hochstraten himself, Peter's sharpest and most persistent critic, had faced the same sort of disciplinary requirement and had submitted. Unfortunately for the tranquillity of himself and of the university, however, Peter of Ravenna was convinced that he had been the victim of a cabal of presumptuous and insincere persons motivated by jealousy of his fame and popularity 27 • While he was willing to make a formal act of submission, he deeply felt that his teaching was true. Still more, he felt that it was holy and that its contrary was an evil doctrine misleading princes into mortal sin and inflicting unnecessary und unjustifiable ·misery on penitent and religiously reconciled criminals, not only in this life but (much more important) in Purgatory by denying them the spiritual benefits of Christian burial. He felt required by conscience to continue to oppose the German custom of denying church burial to criminals who had shown contrition and had received the sacrament of penance 28 • Keen personal resentment against Hochstraten also forced Peter to continue defending the condemned views. The Ravennan had made his submission to the university when directly confronted by its authority. He felt strongly, however, that the point at issue was fundamentally a question of law, not of theology 29, and that whereas he was a professionally competent lawyer and «a veteran doctor» 30, Jacob (though doubtless a learned theologian) was so ignorant of the law that «he hardly knows the difference between the Clementines and the Liber Sextus», and yet presumed to interpret the laws and in doing

Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS. Nouv. acq. lat. 2165, fol. 4 r. Peter to Gratius, Alphabetum aureum, fol. C4 v; Valete, ibid., fol. CS r; and Compendium breue, fol. K4 r: «Semper enim inuidit glorie mee. et omnia facit que tendant in denigrationem nominis mei ». Gratius, Criticomastix, in Alphabetum aureum, fols. A3 r, B5 v, also attributes the attacks to foolish personal spite and envy. 28 Valete, in Alphabetum aureum, fol. CS r: « et si aliter dicerem vel scriberem, facerem contra conscientiam que non potest aliquo modo deponi ». 29 Notabilia quaedam dicta, in Alphabetum aureum, fols. cLxxxn v26 27

CLXXXIII r. 30 Valete,

in Alphabetum aureum, fols. C5 v, C6 r, and especially CS r.

V 618 so, grossly distorted them 31 • This sense of offended personal and professional pride found clear expression at a latet: stage in the debate when Peter, promising to write a further reply to Hochstraten's tracts, added: «For I shall reply in such a way, shall write in such a way, that he will recall that I am a man. He does not know the character of the Italians, who do not tolerate insults » 32 • Driven by this combination of conviction and resentment, Peter continued to defend the censured doctrines, if not in his public lectures, then certainly in his writings. In the summer of I 507 he brought out a revised edition of his Compendium iuris canonici, and added to it a restatement of his opinions 33 • In the eyes of Peter's critics, this renewed publication of his views constituted a breach of the agreement made the preceding spring; and while the documents do not make clear just what formal disciplinary measures, if any, were taken 3 ' , an exchange of controversial pamphlets ensued. Sometime late in I 507 or early in I 5o8, Hochstraten published (probably at the press of Johannes Landen) a short tract, I ustificatorium principum alamaniae ... di.rsoluens rationes clarissimi atriusque Juris Doctoris et Equitis Magistri Petri Rauennatis quibus principum iudicia carpsit 35 • At 31 Dicta notabilia extrauagantia, in Alphabetum aureum, fol. CLIII r, and Preface to Compendium breue, fol. A2 r: «cum vix adhuc discernat que sint Clementine et qui sit Sextus liber, voluit iura interpretari ... » Since the latter passage speaks of Peter in the third person, it may be not his work but that of his English friend William Harris, who wrote the dedication to the Emperor Maximilian, or of Hermann von dem Busche, who supplied a prefatory poem. 32 Peter to Gratius, in Alphabetum aureum, fol. C4 v: «Ita enim respondebo: ita scribam vt me virum esse meminerit [.] ignorat naturam italorum qui sibi verba dari non patiuntur ». 33 Heidenheimer, pp. 225-226; Eisenhart, ADB, XXV, 536; Chabanne, in Naz, VI, col. 1492-1493. The edition of Compendium juris canonici I have seen (Parisiis, 1521, in the Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve at Paris), does not contain the additions made in 1507. 34 Leonard Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt Kiiln (Cologne, 1863-1880, 5 vols.), IV, 99, states that the theological faculty renewed its earlier censure but gives no evidence or specific details; Reichling, pp. 25-26, states that the university suspended him from lecturing but cites no evidence. 35 Probably printed at Cologne by Johannes Landen in 1508. Both of the two copies in the BibliothCque Nationale at Paris are bound with his Defensio scholastica, which seems to have the same type faces and which

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about the same time, Peter was on the point of publishing his popular dictionary of legal citations, Alphabetum aureum; and to the end of the main text he added three brief appendices as a sort of preliminary reply, entitled Dicta notabilia extrauagantia, Allegationes in materia consuetudinum, and Notabilia quaedam dicta. Parts of these retorted directly to the Iustiftcatorium (which he had just seen), 36 parts dealt more generally with points of law involved in the debate, and parts concerned entirely unrelated legal questions. There is no proof that Peter's former pupil Agrippa von Nettesheim was literally accurate when he wrote that the Cologne obscurantists had driven the famed Italian jurist out of the city, and Peter himself claimed that the city council paid him an entire year's salary though he taught for only half the year 37 • But in the tightly knit community life of a medieval university, to be the focus for such deep animosities must have made life difficult. His open rebellion against the university by continued teaching of the censured doctrines must have offended many who had once been friends; and there is clear evidence that many former friends in Cologne broke with him after the dispute became a matter of public literary polemic. Perhaps he was even forbidden to continue lecturing in the university 38 • Although he continued to express his love and respect for Cologne and its university, he finally decided (despite the pleas of Gratius, Harris, and other loyal friends) to depart. Whether this decision was entirely voluntary or under compulsion is not certain. His departure by boat for Mainz occurred on the Thursday after Easter (i. e., on 27 April), 15 o8. But while he was preparing to leave, the literary polemic continued. Apparently his enemies had tried to blacken his name by insinuating that he was a man of no family or established position at home, and that his departure from Venice and his subsequent travels in Germany proved that he was an unstable, rootless adventurer, unable to hold a job, a man unworthy of carries publication data. Henceforth these two works are cited as Iust~fica­ torium and Dejensio scholastica. as Alphabetum aureum, fol. CLII v. 37 Agrippa, De beatissimae Annae monogamia ... , fols. M5 r-M6 v; Heidenheimer, pp. 241-242. as Reichling, pp. 25-26, thinks so.

V 620 respect 39 • The reply to these slanders was the work of the young arts professor Ortwin Gratius, who on I March I 5o8 dedicated to Peter his tract Criticomastix. Writing this defense of Peter was an act of considerable boldness, for Gratius was an impoverished and very junior master in the bursa (college) Kuyck whose regens, Gerardus Zerbolt van Zutphen, was second only to Hochstraten among the opponents of the Italian. Gratius denounces the insinuations made against Peter's character and learning and in defense not only praises his recently published Alphabetum aureum but also emphasizes the high honors conferred on Peter by many noble princes and by the Cologne city council. He catalogues some of the multitude of learned and influential persons at Cologne who had become Peter's friends. The major portion of the apologia, however, is a detailed narrative of Peter's career between his departure for Germany in I498 and his arrival at Cologne in I 5o6. This account is designed to scotch the dishonorable insinuations against Peter's past career, by making it clear how widely he had been honored, and by what excellent and highly placed men. He concludes with a plea from himself and other friends that Peter should stay in Cologne, and writes a glowing praise of the city and of its university as an excellent place for a scholar to live. Significantly, perhaps, in view of his later desertion from Peter's cause, Gratius confines his argument to denouncing in general terms the jealousy and malevolence of Peter's enemies. He does not discuss the issues of the controversy, nor does he make a specific endorsement of Peter's viewpoint 40 • Peter wrote a reply expressing thanks for this defense, and added the treatise, plus Ortwin's letter of dedication and his own letter, to his Alphabetum aureum 41 • But the Ravennan, whose combative nature had been aroused and who (despite the pleas of Gratius and others that he should remain) had already decided to leave Cologne and eventually to return to Italy 42, was not the man to let others carry the whole burden of his defense. In his note of thanks for Criticomastix, he Gratius, Criticomastix, in Alphabetum aureum, fols. A3 r, A6 v. His failure to do so has been noted by Reichling, pp. 27-28. 41 I have seen only the Lyon, 15II, edition of this book, but it seems that the Cologne edition of 1508 must have appeared early in the year and then have been reissued with the appended materials. 42 Peter to Gratius, in Alphabetum aureum, fol. C4 v. 39

40

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said that he would not leave the city until he had replied to Hochstraten. The first real tract that Peter devoted to the conflict was entitled Valete cum perpetuo silentio ad clarissimum theologie professorem magistrum Iacobum de Alta platea ordinis predicatorum Petri Rauennatis Juris vtriusque doctoris de Bassa platea. Although the tract repeats and expands Peter's arguments based on civil and canon law, and offers rebuttal of the arguments used in Hochstraten's Iustijicatorium (which, Peter has heard, was really the work of several persons) 43, it is characterized more by satirical attacks on Hochstraten and his allies, and by angry denunciation of their malevolence and their ignorance of the law, than by systematic presentation of juridical or theological arguments. As a strictly scientific investigation of the subject being debated, Peter's work cannot bear comparison with the orderly series of nine scholastic quaestiones which constitutes Hochstraten's Iustiftcatorium. But he was not writing a scholarly reply: he was writing an angry polemic, designed not to conduct an argument within the limited circle of scholars, but to appeal to the fairness and decency of all educated men. Toward the end of his tract, though he promised that he would say no more on this subject in Cologne, he threatened that if he lived to see Italy again, he would republish his own and his critics' works and so make their ignorance and malevolence known in that country 44 • At the very end of his Valete, as a further illustration of how his enemies twisted and distorted his words, he mentioned one of the two lesser questions on which he had been attacked: his statement, made in jest, that « students cannot live without whores - I am speaking of Italians, however, not Germans » 45 • One can imagine the class chuckling as the foreign teacher carefully assured his German law students that of course only Italian students, not German ones, consorted with prostitutes. The jest was made as an amusing illustration of a serious principle of law: that a landlord who rents to a person of a given trade or profession cannot evict the tenant for engaging in the actiValete, in Alphabetum aureum, fol. C5 v. Ibid., fols. C7 v, CS r. 45 I quote not Peter but the charge made by Hochstraten in Defensio scholastica, fol. D4 v. Cf Valete, in Alphabetum aureum, fol. CS v. 43

44

V 622 v1t1es customarily associated with his trade. Just as a landlord who rents to an artisan cannot object at law if his renter conducts his customary trade on the premises, so a landlord who rents to students cannot evict them for bringing lewd women onto the premises, for that is an activity habitually associated with the trade of being a student. Peter, who was famed for his memory (in Italy he had been nicknamed «Pietro dalla Memoria») 46 , and who had written the most popular treatise of his age on the art of memory 47 , doubtless used the jocular example to fix a basic legal principle in his students' minds. He complained (and with considerable justice) that Hochstraten's use of this illustration was clear evidence that his enemies were eagerly searching for every word which they could twist into the basis for an attack on him 48 • The second minor charge levied against Peter, that he had taught that princes had no right to impose the death penalty for simple theft, was more honestly germane to the principal issue and was actually the substance of what Peter had taught 49 • Despite Peter's evident bitterness, his final public oration at Cologne, which took place in the Minorite church on Palm Sunday (16 April), 1508, contained no hint of his controversy and abounded in expressions of love for Cologne and the university. It took the form of a «Testament», really a farewell address in the form of a will, in which Peter, explaining that he had embraced the rule (meaning the lay Third Order) of St. Francis and so had no gold or silver to bequeath, willed instead to his heirs a collection of pious counsels and spiritual benefits. The designated heirs of his spiritual treasure were « the most celebrated city of Cologne, which loved and honored me in the beginning, the middle, and the end », and also « the most celebrated University of Cologne, in which there are most learned theologians, most excellent jurisconsults, most expert doctors 46 Pietro Paolo Ginanni, Memorie storico-critiche degli scrittori ravennati ..• (Faenza, I769, 2 vols. in I), II, 420. 47 Yates, p. II2. 48 Valete, in Alphabetum aureum, fol. CS r. 49 Hochstraten mentioned this question at the end of Iustiftcatorium, fol. D4 r, but did not take either it or the question about Italian students up until he published his Dejensio scholastica some months later (the edition is dated 8 May I 5o8 ).

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of medicine, and most acute masters of arts» 50 • There is not the slightest trace of satirical intent. Peter constitutes his son Vincentius, who now lives at Rome in the service of the Cardinal of Santa Sabina, as executor, with instructions to use his influence at the Curia in behalf of any Cologne citizens who need his help 51 • The oration closes with a plea for forgiveness if by word or deed he has offended anyone in Cologne, and with a request that all persons, and especially the secular and regular clergy in the large audience, should pray for the safe return of himself and his wife Lucretia to their fatherland. Although some of the pious sentiments which constitute Peter's «legacy » might have seemed pertinent to his controversy with the theologians (such as Biblical injunctions against the sin of envy or to love one another), there is not even an oblique reference to his troubles in Cologne, not the slightest hint that Peter has suffered because his enemies failed to exercise these virtues in his behalf. The message of the « Testament » is one of reconciliation. In the eyes of his critics at Cologne, however, Peter had broken the promise of silence made a year earlier; and since Hochstraten's lustijicatio had elidted only further arguments and bitter invective, it was now necessary to respond more fully and to demonstrate the scandalous nature of a viewpoint which in effect stated that the princes of Germany (and by implication their spiritual advisers) were living in a state of mortal sin be· cause they denied burial to executed criminals. Two treatises were prepared, one by Hochstraten, Defensio scholastica principttm almanie in eo quod sceleratos detinent insepultos in ligno ... contra nouissimum opus clarissimi vtriusque iuris doctoris et equitis aurati Magistri petri rattennatis. This work, which contained appendices dealing with Peter's attack on use of the death penalty for simple theft and with his joking remarks about Italian students, came off the press of Johannes Landen at Cologne on 8 May 1508, just a few days after Peter left that city. The second work was by Gerardus Zerbolt van Zutphen, Tractatus de cadaveribus maleftcorum morte punitorum ad considerationem Alemanniae Principum

5

° Compendium

51

Ibid.

breue, fols. K3 r-K4 r.

V 624 et aliorum Judicum. It is apparently even rarer than Hochstraten's Defensio scholastica, and I have not located a copy 52 • The Defensio scholastica complains bitterly against the disorganization, the misquotations from the lustiftcatorium, and the unscholarly invective tone of Peter's Valete, and resumes his stance of defending German princes against accusations of mortal sin regarding burial of condemned criminals. This book has the form of a point-by-point rebuttal of the arguments used by Peter. The counter-arguments are partly theological and partly juristic in nature. Aside from the complaints against Peter's avoiding the issues and lapsing into invective unworthy of a scholar 53, the work is relatively moderate in tone; and it avoids personal attacks except for the repeated accusation that Peter has distorted Hochstraten's words on certain questions. The only clearly tendentious part of the tract is the section that tries to make a serious charge out of Peter's rather flippant remarks about Italian students 54 • This book was by no means the last shot of the theologians, and Peter's departure from Cologne did not end the controversy. When he came to Mainz at the end of April, I 5o8, he decided to settle there for a time, since he was finishing work on his manual of feudal law, Compendium breue et pulcherrimum in materia consuetudinum feudorum, for the Cologne publisher Quentell, who brought it out that same year, probably in the summer. In addition, as Peter or one of his friends stated in the preface, he intended to stay near Cologne until he had replied again to Hochstraten; and it is probable that disturbed conditions in Italy on account of the wars would have made an immediate journey home impossible in any case 55 • Once again, this time in a less eminent university, Peter's eloquence, learning, and gifts of memory made a favorable impression. A few days after his arrival, he lectured in the Carme52 Heidenheimer, pp. 235-240, also was unable to find the book and cited it only from the reference in Panzer, Annates, VI, 364. 53 Dejensio scholastica, fols. At v-A2 r, D4 v. 54 Ibid., fols. D4 v-E4 v. 55 Compendium breue, fol. A2 r; cj. Peter's own words on fols. H4 r and K4 r, where he threatens; to write against «another holy father », probably Zerbolt. On the effect of military operations in Italy, Eisenhart, ADB, XXV, 537, and Chabanne, in Naz, VI, col. 1493·

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lite church before a large crowd of scholars, including the papal legate, Bernardino Carvajal, Cardinal of Santa Croce. He won great applause and was quickly appointed professor of canon law at the University of Mainz, where he taught for a little less than a year 56 • But controversy followed Peter to Mainz. In his own account of his favorable reception there, he remarked that everyone approved his first oration « except one theologian, who, however, was not from Mainz », and added that «one may presume that this was Brother Jacob von Hochstraten, Dominican, who either was in the city that day or arrived a few days later» 57 • Peter went on to say that he made this assumption because since Hochstraten had always envied his fame and tried to besmirch his reputation, he must have been the outside critic on this occasion. Whatever the aim of this particular visit by Hochstraten to Mainz, there can be no doubt that the theological faculty at Cologne did attempt to start a judicial process against the Italian scholar before the archiepiscopal court at Mainz, for on I o September the general vicar of the archdiocese, Theodericus Zobel, wrote a letter to the dean and theological faculty at Cologne acknowledging receipt of their letter denouncing Peter of Ravenna. Zobel expressed a desire to fulfill the faculty's demands, but would promise only that he would reserve judgment until he had had a chance to confer with Peter himself, and then would «without doubt do whatever seems to be our duty» 58 • Whether this attempt to prosecute Peter had any further effect is unknown; but the attempt certainly was made. Apparently Peter stayed in Mainz until early 1509, when he and his wife moved to Worms and he gave lectures before the judges of the Reichskammergericht, in his own residence and in the choir of the church of 56 In the summer of I5o8, the student Johannes Sorbillo wrote into one of his books a memorandum that he had heard Peter's course in canon law at Mainz. See Theodor Muther, Aus dem Universitiits- und Gelebrtenleben im Zeitalter der Reformation: Vortriige (Erlangen, r866), p. II7. Cf. Heidenheimer, pp. 223-256, and especially pp. 252-254 for references to Peter's residence at Mainz from the contemporaries Reinhart Noltz of Worms and Johannes Butzbach. Peter's own account of his experience at Mainz is in Compendium breue, fol. K4 r. 57 Compendium breue, fol. K4 r. 68 Printed by Liessem, I, 27, n. 2.

V 626 St. Lorenz 59 • On the last day of February, I 509, he was received as an advocatus before the Reichskammergericht; and later that year, his former pupil at Cologne, Adolphus Eicholtz, visited him at Worms while on his way to study at Bologna 60 • There is no later direct evidence on Peter's life; and since he was a very old man by sixteenth-century standards, it is likely that he died not long afterwards, perhaps at Worms. Some biographers conclude that since his former friend Gratius wrote a distichon favoring Hochstraten's third work against Peter, the Protectorium, Peter must still have been living in I 5I I when that book was published 61 • But at the very end of this same tract, Hochstraten mentions having heard a report of his adversary's death. Ortwin's distichon may have been written for the original text of the main portion of the Protectorium, which is dated zo June I 509; and the verses may then have been retained as a sort of public recantation when the book was printed (or reprinted) in I 51 I 62 • In a letter of I 518, Johann Reuchlin attributed Peter's death to sorrow over the attacks by «this monster» Hochstraten, but named no date or place 63 • But Peter lived long enough to write one final tract against his critics. The Mainz historian Heidenheimer during the last century discovered in his city a book entitled Prima pars egregij et salutiferi[s] operis celeberrimi juris vtriusque doctoris Petri Rauennatis contra Gherardum de Zutphania et fratrem Jacobum Theologie professores 64 • According to Heidenheimer's description, the satirical and polemical elements already found in Peter's earlier works must have been even more pronounced here; and the parallel to the satirical tone of the Epistolae obscurorum virorum Heidenheimer, pp. 252-254. Muther, p. r 2 5, cites the archival record of his reception but is uncertain whether this could be the same person, since he is unaware of the other evidence for Peter's moving to Worms in 1509. On Eicholtz's visit, see P. S. Allen, in a note in his Opus epistolarum Erasmi, III, 390 (no. 866). 61 E.g., Heidenheimer, p. 252. 62 The distichon is on the title-page of Protectorium. Hochstraten's reference to Peter's death is ibid., fol. C4 r. 63 Backing, Supplementum, II, 450. 64 I have been unable to locate a copy and hence must rely on the rather extensive summary given by Heidenheimer, pp. 234-240. The book had no indication of place, publisher, or date, but Heidenheimer attributes it to Johann Schaeffer of Mainz and dates it in the late summer of 1508. 59

60

V PETER OF RAVENNA AND THE « OBSCURE MEN

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was even more obvious. Peter draws an imaginary picture of a cabal of Cologne theologians who, having gained only public obloquy by the first work which they brought out under Hochstraten's name, now conspire once more against the Ravennan. Motivated by jealousy of Peter and by fear lest their failure to silence him might allow the jurists to replace them as the dominant element in the university, the obscurantists decide that since they are unable to destroy the Italian's fame among learned men, they should publish two works aimed at ruining his reputation among the people, who are gullible enough to think that because the theologians publish charges against a man, there must be something dangerous about him. But unlike Peter, whose writings are so popular that printers come, money in hand, begging for his works, the obscurantists know that no printer will take their works unless they pay him the costs of publication. Finally, with great reluctance, the miserly Dr. Gerardus agrees to give two gulden out of his hoard. Then an upright theologian protests against their conspiracy, but they drive him out. The result of the conspiracy, as thus depicted by Peter, is the two tracts Tractatus de cadaveribus maleftcorum by Gerardus and Defensio scholastica by Hochstraten. Now speaking in his own person again, Peter announces his intention to issue a twofold reply, the first part (the one under discussion) aimed mainly at Gerardus, and the second (probably never completed) directed against Hochstraten. The rest of the completed part, the Prima pars, restates his views on burial of criminals, and then lists some seventy ineptiae he has found in the tract of Gerardus. The final work of the controversy was Hochstraten's Protectorium principum Alemanie de maleftcis non sepeliendis contra Rauennatem (probably not printed until the author had collected endorsements from faculties other than his own and had prepared the copy for the edition of I 5I I) 65 • Although the book contains 65 The title-page of the Cologne edition of I 5 I I reads: Ad Reuerendissimum dominum Bernardinum presbyterum Cardinalem Dyaconum tituli sanctae crucis Editio tertia ab eximio sacre Theologie et bonarum artium professore Magistro Jacobo de Hoechstraten. ordinis predicatorum. lam heretice pravitatis Inquisitore. In defensionem principum Almanie compilata. contra clarissimum vtriusque iuris doctorem dominum Petrum Rauennatem. Plurimorum clarissimorum virorum in diuino pariter et humano iure doctissimorum testimonijs et signa/uris approbata. The true title of this tract, in short and usable form, appears at the end,

V 628 a dedicatory epistle from Hochstraten to Cardinal Carvajal (dated 28 May I po) and a letter to the author from an unnamed theologian (dated I 5o8 ), both of which denounce Peter, the tract itself is once again a rather impersonal piece in the manner of traditional scholastic discourse, though it presents a larger number of juridical arguments than its two predecessors. Hochstraten summarizes Peter's position in four points and then composes a quaestio containing the main issue, « Whether princes of Germany and rulers of cities sin mortally when they deny the bodies of condemned criminals to those who request them for burial ... » 66 • He presents a brief positive argument (Peter's viewpoint), emphasizing the spiritual suffering of a longer term in Purgatory that the souls would have to undergo because they were deprived of the spiritual benefits of a funeral. Then Hochstraten argues the negative case (his own) in thirty numbered paragraphs. The I 5I I Protectorium also contains several appendices. The first, dated I 510, discusses a related question raised by the Ravennan during their earlier exchanges, whether even criminals who die impenitent (i.e., not reconciled to the Church) should be granted «canine burial» (simple interment without ceremony and not in consecrated ground). At the end of this section, Hochstraten asks how a man so learned as Peter could have fallen into such patent errors. His solution is that havjng once ardently embraced one fundamental error, Peter was led inexorably into other false conclusions 67 • Next, mindful of his own earlier charon fol. C4 v, which is a sort of second title-page: Protectorium principum Alemanie de maleftcis non sepeliendis contra Rauennatem. Despite the use of the phrase « editio tertia», there is no evidence of any earlier publication, and I assume that the phrase results from the fact that this was the author's third publication against the Ravennan. At the end of the main treatise, on fol. B5 v, there appears: « Finit editio hec anno gratie. M.ccccc.rx. Mensis Iunij. die. xx ». But this notation may well refer only to completion of the manuscript. The colophon at the end of the entire work, in the r 5I I edition, does not say « Finit editio ... », but « Impressum Colonie anno. M.ccccc.xr. &c. » Incidentally, the phrase « editio tertia » has led several authors (e.g., Reichling, pp. 26-27) to assume that the Iustiftcatorium, the Dejensio scholastica, and the Protectorium represent three editions of the same work. They do not: though subject and viewpoint are of course the same, the three books differ greatly. 66 Protectorium, foi. Az v. 67 Ibid., foi. B6 v.

V PETER OF RAVENNA AND THE