YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

THOUGHT AND EXPRESSION
IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Ancient Ideals: A Study of Intellectual and
Spiritual Growth from Early Times to the
Establishment of Christianity (2 Volumes)
The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages
The Mediaeval Mind: A History of the De
velopment of Thought and Emotion in the
Middle Ages (2 Volumes)
Prophets, Poets, and Philosophers of the
Ancient World

THOUGHT
AND EXPRESSION IN THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY

BY
HENRY OSBORN TAYLOR

Vol. I

H3eto ^orfe
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1920
All rights reserved

Y*te Divinity Library
flew Havei, Corui.

Copyright, 1920,
Bt THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and printed. Published, July, 1920

TO
J. I- T.

PREFACE
My purpose is to give an intellectual survey of the six
teenth century. I would set forth the human suscep
tibilities and faculties of this alluring time, its tastes,
opinions and appreciations, as they expressed themselves
in scholarship and literature, in philosophy and science,
and in religious reform. Italian painting is presented
briefly as the supreme self-expression of the Italians.
The more typical intellectual interests of the fifteenth
century also are discussed for their own sake, while those
of the previous time are treated as introductory. I have
tried to show the vital continuity between the prior me
diaeval development and the period before us.
The mind must fetch a far compass if it would see the
sixteenth century truly. Every stage in the life and
thought of Europe represents a passing phase, which is
endowed with faculties not begotten of itself, and brings
forth much that is not exclusively its own. For good or
ill, for patent progress, or apparent retrogression, its ca
pacities, idiosyncrasies and productions belong, in large
measure, to the whole, which is made up of past as well
as present, the latter pregnant with the future. Yet,
though fed upon the elements (sometimes the refuse) of
the past, each time seems to develop according to its own
nature. Waywardly, foolishly, or with wholesome orig
inality, it evolves a novel temperament and novel
thoughts. We shall treat the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as
a final and objective present; and all that went before will
be regarded as a past which entered into them. It in
cluded pagan Antiquity, Judaism and the Gospel, the
influence of the fecund East, the contribution of the
Christian Fathers, — this whole store of knowledge and
emotion, not merely as it came into being, but in its

viii PREFACE
changing progress through the Middle Ages, until it
entered the thought of our period and became the stim
ulus or suggestion of its feeling. Distinctive mediaeval
creations likewise must be included, seeing that they
also entered formatively into the constitutions of later
men. The Middle Ages helped antiquity to shape the
faculties and furnish the tastes of the sixteenth century.
These faculties and tastes were then applied to what the
past seemed also to offer as from a distinct and separate
platform. Only by realizing the action of these forma
tive and contributive agencies, shall we perceive this pe
riod's true relationships, and appreciate its caused and
causal being, begotten of the past, yet vital (as each pe
riod is) with its own spirit, and big with a modernity
which was not yet.
Two pasts may be distinguished, the one remote, the
other proximate. The former may be taken as consist
ing of the antique world as it became its greater self,
and then as it crumbled, while its thought and mood were
assuming those forms in which they passed into the Mid
dle Ages. The proximate or immediate past was the
mediaeval time, itself progressing century after cen
tury under the influence of whatever had entered into it,
chiefly through those last solvent and transition cen
turies in which the remote past ended.
The Middle Ages and the fifteenth or sixteenth cen
tury bore the same fundamental relationship to this re
mote past. Each succeeding mediaeval century, besides
inheriting what had become known in the time directly
preceding it, endeavored to reach back to the remote past
for further treasure. Thus the twelfth century sought
to reach behind the eleventh, in order to learn more of
the greater past, and the thirteenth reached behind the
twelfth. So Petrarch, in the fourteenth, would reach be
hind the vociferously damned thirteenth century to an
tiquity itself; and the fifteenth century humanists en
deavored to do likewise. That century, like Petrarch's
time, drew from its immediate mediaeval past as co
piously as each mediaeval century drew from its predeces-

PREFACE ix
sor, and willy nilly resembled the mediaeval centuries in
striving to reach back of them for treasures previously un
disclosed. One thinks of the transmitted influence of the past,
whether remote or proximate, as knowledge and sugges
tion, as intellectual or emotional or social material to be
appropriated and made further use of. It is well to think
of it also as flowing on in modes of expression, which
constitute the finished form of the matter, whether the
form lie in language or in the figures of plastic art.
Thoughts and emotions cannot pass from one time to
another save in modes of their expression. And the
more finished and perfect, the more taking, the more beau
tiful, the form of expression, the more enduring will be
its influence and effect. The seemingly formless ma
terial which is transmitted orally or in manuscripts or
printed books from age to age, had necessarily reached
some mode of expression, however vile. And although
much wretched matter has come down through time, we
may not ascribe its survival to the shortcomings of its
form, but rather to the fact that somehow in its wretch
edness and intellectual squalor it suited the squalid ig
norance of men.
So it is fruitful to think, for instance, of each mediaeval
century, as well as of the great sixteenth, as drawing the
language of its thinking from the past, and then building
up its own forms of thinking and expression. Each prov
ince of discipline furnisihes concepts and a vocabulary.
As each century appropriates them and makes them its
own, they become its modes of thought, and the forms of
its self-expression. Thus not only thought, but the lan
guage of expression, is handed on with enhancements
from generation to generation. Each generation uses
the thought, and expresses itself in the forms and con
cepts, which it has made its own — has made into its
self-expression. Yet there is some change, some in
crease, some advance. To the transformation of inher
ited thought and phrase into modes of self-expression,
each century or generation brings a tone and temper of

x PREFACE
its own, perhaps some change of attitude toward life,
and at all events the increment and teaching of the ex
perience which has come to it through living.
Difficulties of arrangement confront a work like the
present. Shall it cleave to racehood and nationality or
follow topics? Topics ignore racial lines and geographi
cal boundaries.
The plan must bend to the demands on it. Sometimes
racial traits dominate an individual, and the conditions of
his life and land shape his career, even a great career
like Luther's. A national situation may point the sub
stance of an issue, as, in England, in Wyclif's contro
versy with the papacy. For quite another illustration,
one may observe how a diversity of interest and taste
between Italians and Frenchmen impressed a different
purpose and manner upon classical studies in Italy and
France. On the other hand such a story as that of the advance
of the physical sciences in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen
turies has little to do with land or race; the votaries be
long to every people, and pursue their investigations indif
ferently in their own countries or where foreign localities
offer greater advantages. So a general survey should
follow the course of the most dominant and vital ele
ments. A kindred question goes to the roots of the truth of
phenomena : should one adhere to a temporal arrange
ment, century by century, or follow sequences of influence
and effect across the imaginary boundaries of these arbi
trary time divisions? While it is convenient to speak of
" centuries," one is always pursuing the vital continuity
of effect. The virtue of fruitful effort passes into future
achievement. One seeks to follow facts in their progeny.
Yet this is difficult, since the genealogical tree is infinitely
ramified, and every event, every achievement, has as
many forbears as a human being! The truthfulness of
events lies in the process of becoming, rather than in the

PREFACE xi
concrete phenomenon which catches our attention. It
would be as foolish to end the consideration of Petrarch
with his death as it would be to treat him as if he and
his work and influence really began the day when he was
born, or first read Cicero. Nothing begins or ends.
We may even think of all that is, or ever was or will be,
as one mighty self-evolving present, which holds the ef
fective being, the becoming, of the past, and contains the
future, of which this present is in turn the becoming.
Henry Osborn Taylor.
New York, May, 1920.

CONTENTS BOOK I
THE HUMANISM OF ITALY
CHAPTER I
The Litterae Humaniores: Petrarch and Boccaccio 3
CHAPTER II
Italian Humanists of the Early Fifteenth Century 26
CHAPTER III
Lorenzo, Poliziano, Ariosto, Tasso  54
CHAPTER IV
Machiavelli and Guicciardini and Their Forerun
ners  j2
CHAPTER V
Italian Self-Expression in Painting  97
BOOK II
ERASMUS AND LUTHER
CHAPTER VI
Scholarship in Germany and the Netherlands . . 141
CHAPTER VII
Desiderius Erasmus, the Northern Apostle of Let
ters and Reasonableness  155
CHAPTER VIII
The Spiritual and Political Preparation for Luther 183

CONTENTS
CHAPTER IX
Martin Luther  207
I. Ferment and Explosion  207
II. Luther's Freeing of His Spirit  219
III. The Further Expression of the Man . . . .231
Appendix on Melanchthon and Zwingli .... 269

BOOK III
THE FRENCH MIND
CHAPTER X
The Unlettered Wit of Louis XI, Commynes, and
Villon  279
CHAPTER XI
Some French Humanists  295
CHAPTER XII
The Circle of Marguerite of Navarre  312
CHAPTER XIII
Franqois Rabelais  319
CHAPTER XIV
Poetic Ennoblement of French through Imitation
of the Classics  , . . 334
CHAPTER XV
Self-Expression through Translation and Appropria
tion: Amyot, Bodin, Montaigne  348
CHAPTER XVI
Ramus  376
CHAPTER XVII
John Calvin  384
I. Humanist Reformers  384
II. Calvin's Formative Years  389
III. The Work at Geneva  395
IV. The Christian Institute  402

BOOK I
THE HUMANISM OF ITALY

THOUGHT AND EXPRESSION IN
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER I
THE LITTERAE HUMANIORES : PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO
Humanism in a literary sense is usually thought of as
referring to humane studies, the litterae humaniores.
Their academic field has always been the literature and
plastic arts of Greece and Rome. The conception seems
just, as far as it reaches. For, in the main, the thought,
the literature and the plastic arts of Greece and Rome are
the record and expression of man living on the earth, and
aU things are conceived, reflected on, and felt in their re
lationships to humanity. Occasionally Greek thought
and its expression soared beyond the sphere of man, as
sometimes with Plato and his spiritual descendants. And
the world of nature was embraced by Aristotle and those
who preceded or followed him in physical researches.
Among the Greeks there were wise physicians, great phys
icists, mathematicians and astronomers. Greek achieve
ments in physical science are liable to be ignored because
we have gone so far beyond them.
But in the sixteenth century, Greece still offered much
physical science for profitable study by the learned world,
which was only beginning a systematic investigation of the
phenomena of nature. Interest in natural phenomena
was as yet scarcely de-humanized, or accepted and pursued
without regard to the assumed connection between the
world of nature and the fortunes or designs of men. Na
ture bristled with portents. The science of Astrology
observed the heavens for horoscopes and looked to celes
tial influences upon men. But Astronomy was Astrol
ogy de-humanized and set upon the basis of its own ex-
3

4 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
planatory truth regarding the movements of the sun and
moon and stars.
Such astronomy had been pursued by the astronomers
of Alexandria, who still did not neglect its astrological
bearings. With the Greeks, natural science generally was
mindful of the connection between the apparent ends of
nature and the welfare or miscarriages of men. Greek
science was apt to be anthropomorphic, and Greek philos
ophy in its treatment of physical and metaphysical truth
remained genially human. In all Greek thinking, man
remained the tto'Ak, the city-state, whence thoughts as citi
zens went forth to return with sheaves of knowledge that
were to be transformed to human wisdom.
So philosophy and natural science, as part of the Greek
consideration of life, are not excluded from Greek human
ism, which brought all intellectual interests into its web
and kept them circling around man. This is why, al
though we no longer quite determine our thinking by what
Plato said or Aristotle, we cherish their metaphysics as
a beautiful and still moving human creation, closely knit
into the intellectual needs of man. And the Greek and
Latin literature, the poetry, the immortal stories of hu
man fortunes, the profound and inclusive consideration of
human life, all these have never ceased to charm the gen
erations of men, nor have they ceased to be perennial
fonts of human illumination and consideration of human
life. They are a well which no one can exhaust, but from
which every one may draw according to the capacities of
his understanding.
Accordingly the literature of Rome and Greece, the
Classics par excellence, have been called the humanities;
the reading and study of them have been called humane
studies, and their votaries have been known as humanists.
Yet the proper humanist, whether belonging to the six
teenth century or to other times, is such not only in his
pursuits, but in his mind. He must be as that which he
reads and loves, interested and absorbed in man here on
this earth, in his individuality and accordant or disaccord-
ant fortunes, in his loves and hates, his fancies and de
sires, in all that makes the atmosphere of mortal life.

PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO 5
He will be not merely a reader of the classics, but an
individual of definite temperament and taste, with which
his favorite studies accord. His pursuits are the fruit
of his desires and opinions, the fruit of his personality in
fine. Consequently his humanism with its occupations,
pre-occupations, and achievement, is an expression of him
self. And when there are many humanists, living and
reading and studying at the same time, delighting in the
discussion and exploitation of their common pursuits, hu
manism becomes a phase of the time, a phase of its self-
expression. Such humanism is not apt to flourish now,
because our horizons are too large, and we have a differ
ent consciousness of a universe, in which man is a rather
recent counter and one that possibly may also pass, as the
creatures of prior geologic ages have had their aeons and
have passed away. It is not that we constantly look be
yond to another and immortal sphere, as most people did
in the Middle Ages, and many humanists in the next cen
turies more perfunctorily. But natural science, physical
science, biological science, all for their own sake, have
their innings now, and the man-centered equilibrium of the
old humanists is at least tipped, if not upset.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a large propor
tion of active-minded men devoted themselves to humane
studies, possessed humanistic tempers, and took a human
istic view of life. They were absorbed in the mortal life
of man, their own especially; in its conduct, deeds and
passions, in its whims and desires and fancies, in its suc
cess or failures, and in the moral, philosophical, esthetic
consideration of it all. They read and studied the great
writings which were the universal and glorious exponents
of these fascinating matters, and they were drawn by
everything connected with that antique world of which
these classic writers were the flower. So humanism may
be deemed a phase of the self-expression of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries and a characteristic feature of
their entire mental progress.

THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

The disparate humanity of the early Middle Ages re
quired some centuries to develop a full complement of
humane qualities. Only the antique Latin literature
could be the guide, and furnish the means, of such devel
opment. Too constantly this literature of litterae hu-
maniores was used wrongly and wilfully as the vehicle of
what it did not contain. Men found in it instruction, set
in allegory, touching the mysteries of all the worlds and
man their denizen. Yet no century was completely lack
ing in humanists, who, perhaps in a hampered or unin-
structed way, looked at the classics truly, and found in
them solace and suggestion touching life.
The litterae humaniores were admirably cultivated by
certain men in the twelfth century ; 1 yet as it closed, the
absorbing interest in Aristotelian scholasticism began to
prove detrimental to letters, although it did not hamper
the splendid advance in building and sculpture and glass
painting, which is as great a glory of the thirteenth cen
tury as Thomas Aquinas himself. The main inspiration
of that Gothic art was religious, even theological, rather
than humane. Yet it embraced and seemed to carry
heavenward humanity's daily round of tasks and inter
ests, thus representing an ennobled or sublimated human
ism. But while it lifted human nature, it did less to en
large it or promote the capacity for mortal happiness and
joy. This was to be the office of the Latin and Greek Clas
sics. Through the Middle Ages and afterwards, they
were to expand and equip humanity upon the earth, and
uplift it so far as might be without drawing it up to
heaven. They were to enrich human life by humanizing
all that made man's environment, transforming the world
in which he found himself into objects of human percep
tion, interest, sentiment. They also furnished their
lovers with a variety of just reflections upon life, and fos
tered in them the habit of consideration.
1 Cf. Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind, Chap. XXXI. My references to
this work are to the paging and chapters of the second and third editions.

PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO 7
The vigorous literary use of the vernaculars had, by
the fourteenth century, lowered the vitality and impaired
the clarity of the Latin still employed by educated men.
Especially, the Latin of scholastic philosophy and politi
cal controversy had become a dreadful example of how a
language could be mishandled. While the learned of no
one country held the monopoly of this abuse, still the ob
noxious jargon of scholasticism was in the main a product
of northern lands, where interest in theology had pos
sessed so many minds. Men who were free from that
obsession would naturally detest its lingo. But in dis
torting the Latin tongue, the treatises upon the civil law
were not so far behind, and it happened that the strongest
personal reaction against these logical and linguistic de
cadences arose in one who hated scholasticism and had no
liking for the law, to which his father would have appren
ticed him. This reaction proved a lasting irritant with
Petrarch, although it was not a dominant influence in his
life. For such, one turns to his admiration for antiquity and
his love of the classic Latin literature. Thousands of his
countrymen had felt the like before him. One thinks not
only of Dante himself, but of the Paduan Mussato, who
cared for Latin letters and was crowned poet in Padua in
13 14.2 In Italy the cult of antiquity, with a dumb cultiva
tion of the classics, had not been as sporadic, or as pressed
upon by other intellectual interests, as in the north. It
was always there, in more or less clear consciousness,
working with more or less energy. In the fourteenth
century it was natural that a love of classic letters should
spring up in an Italian breast; and there were men in
Italy ready to catch the fire — just as in England, when
Wyclif's ideas were once started, there were men of kin
dred mind to carry them on.
But Petrarch was a great inaugurator. While young,
he was recognized as poeta, a title dear to Italian ears
and hearts. That gave him popular acclaim. He pos-
«Cf. Zardo, Mussato, (Padua 1884). He was particularly studious of
Livy, Seneca and Ovid.

8 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
sessed a penetrating and sensitive intelligence. He had
also a quality helpful to a successful man of letters, the
faculty of pose, — in his case the faculty of posing for
what he really was, with added pretensions to much that
he was not. He never laid aside the pose of gifted poet,
supreme man of letters : restorer of the glories of an
tiquity. If this was pose, it was also fact. But such a
poet, scholar, restorer of a greater past, should be above
personal vanities, free from envy, superior to greed.
Petrarch posed as such a one, in his writings and before
his world; and such he was not. For he was vain and
envious, and if not inordinately greedy, he was not the
divitiarum contemptor eximius that he calls himself in his
Letter lo Posterity; in which he otherwise elaborates his
pose : " In others I perceived pride, not in myself, et cum
parvus fuerim, semper minor judicio meo fui. Kings and
princes cherished me, I know not why, and I was with
some of them as if they rather were with me ! " Even in
writings devoted to searchings of himself, but which also
safeguarded his pose, one sees that he was enormously
self-satisfied. If these traits give a certain smugness to his character,
they helped to make him, in his lifetime and with poster
ity, the most successful of literary men: successful in
leading his life as he wished and in accomplishing what
he was capable of; successful in impressing himself upon
contemporaries and posterity exactly as he would be taken.
Although he thought himself unfortunate in the hour of
his birth, he was most fortunate both in the hour and
place. For his genius led him to those very pursuits to
which Italy, and after her the north, were soon to turn
with unprecedented ardor. While he lived, large and
distinguished circles of like-minded admirers revered him
as unique in his knowledge and virtuosity. It became an
amiable convention among them to speak of him as equal
ling Cicero in eloquence and Virgil in poetry. Boccaccio
says it, and Nelli writing thus : Te solum legens, Maro-
nem Ciceronemque legam.3 The same sweetly friendly
s Lettres de Francesco Nelli a PSlrarque, ed. H. Cochin (Champion.
1892), Ep. 14 — Boccaccio in Ef. Seniles, XVII, a.

PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO 9
Nelli begs to be numbered among his little slaves (servu-
los), and accounts himself happy to have lived in the
same age with him. He describes the excitement over
the supposed, and then assured, arrival of a letter from
Petrarch: pulsat nuntius januam — a cry bursts forth,
the servants run to usher in the bearer, who delivers to
us " thy letters, nay rather, thy most precious pearls." 4
Who would have written this to Dante or Michelangelo?
Or when did the great of this earth come to watch Dante
composing his Inferno, as Pandolfo Malatesta, although
sick, is brought supported by his servants to see Petrarch
in his own chair, surrounded by his books? Petrarch
was an excellent flatterer himself, especially of Kings
from whom he sought emolument and honor. His
praise of the epigrams of Robert, King of Naples, de
served much.5
In fine, before his death his fame was spread abroad,
and afterwards grew mightier, because he had been in life
a lovely poet in the volgare, and above that had been the
lofty leader and achiever in what was becoming a domi
nating intellectual movement. He was thus the proto
typal embodiment of the rising zeal for classical study,
and of the best critical phases of it, for he saw the classics
as clearly as any one with his available lights could, see.
He embodied also the ambition and misdirected effort of
the coming period, in Italy at least, to compose works in
Latin prose and metre, modelled upon classical standards
of beauty. His attitude toward his own exquisite poems
in the volgare was that which was held to be correct by
later Italian humanists, who often professed to despise
the vulgar tongue, including their own indiscretions in the
same. Finally there was nothing in his career or char
acter that the coming time could not admire. He had
professed his contempt for wealth, and declared his free
dom from such little weaknesses as envy and malice; and
even if he were not quite taken at his word (like state-
*Ep. n. Lettres de Francesco Nelli a Petrarque. _
5 Sen. I, 6; Fam. IV, 3. Petrarch's letters — Familiares, Variae, Seniles
— are usually thus cited: Fam., Var., Sen,

10 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
ments were to be humanist conventions), his foibles could
not appear as blots to later men whose characters openly
presented the same. For most of them were vain, self-
conscious and affected, and addicted to envy, hatred, and
malice and all unseemliness.
As touching Petrarch, we may say, for ourselves, that
like Cicero, whom he adored, and like Erasmus after him,
he was a great man of letters, and, like them, a man one
must sympathize with in order to judge rightly, and " be
to his faults a little blind." "Libris satiari nequeo," he
writes in a pleasant letter on books and reading (Fam.
Ill, 17) . Wherever there are books, some men are born
with a sheer love of them, and it may be with that added
impulse toward expression which makes a man of letters.
In the fourteenth century what should a scholarly Italian
read, when he disliked the law and detested scholasticism?
— what indeed, except the Latin classics, especially when
he was a poet, and born with a love of literary form?
Despising his own age, foolishly wishing to have lived in
some other time, he attached himself to the cult of an
tiquity: " Incubui unice inter multa ad notitiam vetu-
statis," he says in his Letter to Posterity. But he is glad
to have been born in Italy and not in the Scythian north.
He praises Roman Italy in comparison with Greece, and
the Latin as compared with the Greek literature, of
which he knew nothing save from report.
Naturally when Petrarch came to Rome, he felt a great
sensation — how many pilgrim hearts had swelled at the
sight of those towers, through all the Middle Ages ! It
was there that his heart's vainest wish was to be fulfilled,
when he was given the laurel crown upon the Capitol.
He was acquainted with that self-deceived arouser of en
thusiasms, Rienzi — Tribune of the Roman People ! —
and writes to him in words as foolish as the shouts of the
Roman populace : " Salve, noster Camille, noster Ro-
mule," (or by whatever name thou wouldst be called) —
" salve Romanae libertatis, Romanae pacis, Romanae
tranquillitatis auctorl " (Var. 48.)
Toward the Catholic faith Petrarch stood as a med-

PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO n
iaeval man, but with some supervening waverings which,
in our eyes, make his religious attitude more reasonable.
He had read the Fathers, especially Augustine, whose
Confessions he liked to have at hand; he took them
with him in that ascent of Mt. Ventoux, which was sug
gested to him by reading in Livy how the King of Mace-
don ascended Mt. Haemas in Thrace, from which both the
Euxine and the Adriatic could be seen (Fam. IV, i).
Petrarch, a poor climber, used the difficulties of the as
cent to illustrate how hard is virtue to attain — the Mid
dle Ages had always put mountains to this symbolic moral
use ! At the top Petrarch's thoughts run in the old chan
nels of sin and concupiscence as he reads Augustine's Con
fessions. An odd place to worry over concupiscence and
read Augustine !
Like any scholar, Petrarch was fond of quiet and soli
tude. Replying sympathetically (Fam. IX, 14) to an
ecclesiastic's letter praising the solitary life, and speaking
for himself, he declares it practically impossible to live
or die well save in solitude — " natura dux nostra nos
solitarios fecit." And he is capable of decrying carnal
love and approving of monastic asceticism. (Fam. X,
3 and 5.) Yet it is easy to see that his reason for pre
ferring the solitary life is the scholar's reason simply,
just as he points out in his De Vita Solitaria, that the oc-
cupatus living in the world is exposed to more interrup
tions and annoyances than the solitarius. The imaginary
dialogue with Augustine, which Petrarch named Secretum
Meurn,6 seems to discuss how man may win his best tran
quillity. Augustine searches into Petrarch's faults, re
proves them gently, recognizes his freedom at least from
the sin of envy, points out the incompatibility of carnal
passion with man's best peace of mind, and shows the
remedy in clarity of judgment, unity of aim, and strength
of will to follow it. Petrarch sees the vanity of striv
ing after many things, and has qualms as to the classic
studies to which he is addicted — so had St. Jerome and
many a mediaeval lover of the classics !
« Translated by W. H. Draper. Petrarch's Secret, Ice. (London, 1911.)

t% THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Petrarch had solved the last difficult problem by lead
ing the life of a man of letters. In this he had found his
happiness and peace. And with the practical wisdom
with which he had conducted his own life, he writes to
his friend Boccaccio when both were grey. The latter,
seized with compunctions, was proposing to abandon sec
ular themes and studies, and prepare for death somewhat
more exclusively than he had done. Petrarch views the
situation fairly : an old scholar surely should not discard
the studies which have been the occupation of his life,
and are the best solace for old age. Without such need
less sacrifice, he can still prepare for death (Sen. I, 5).
So Petrarch's attitude toward religion was that of the
man of scholarly tastes, not deeply religious, who dec
orously recognized, and occasionally felt, religion's
claims. Somewhat more firmly than a man of like tem
perament would have done a century before, he kept re
ligion in its proper place. He would not have men think
him either a Ciceronian or a Platonist, but of a surety a
Christian. He was, however, always ready to attack the
current scholasticism, though, of course, as a man of an
tique letters, he must be himself a follower of philosophy.
" I love philosophy," he says, " not the loquacious, scho
lastic, windy brand . . . but the true, which lives in souls
rather than in books." (Fam. XII, 3.) One suspects
that he did not know much about what he was condemn
ing or what he was praising. He took from Cicero or
Augustine the idea of Plato's primacy, and in his De Ig-
norantia 7 conducts a moderate literary polemic against
Aristotle. Yet he professed to respect that master, while
he despised his hair-splitting so-called followers. " Vir
ardentis ingenii," he once called him. Nevertheless,
much as he knew or did not know about it, Petrarch's
acute intelligence perceived the emptiness of the current
scholasticism. It was also characteristic of him that he
should take a rational view of dreams (Fam. V, 7), see
the falsity of astrology (Sen. Ill, 1) and note the quack
ery in the medicine then practiced. Nor would he accept
7 Ed. Capelli (Champion, Paris, 1906).

PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO 13
Virgil as a magician, although Boccaccio was inclined to.8
As a scholar, Petrarch has rightly remained illustrious.
He was not such incidentally, or in the midst of other oc
cupations; but primarily and unremittingly with his whole
bent of mind and purpose. Of course, he was an ardent
assembler of manuscripts, the tools and means of his vo
cation. He passionately desired to collect and own them,
and have the best and most correct. He was, perhaps
had to be, a bibliophile as well as a scholar, the leader of
that multitude of ardent lovers of the classics who loved
to collect manuscripts, and had to be collectors in order
to be students. Of course, one must not think of this
as a new phenomenon in the world, although it was to
manifest itself on an unprecedented scale. Through all
the mediaeval centuries, scholars had been collectors of
their precious books. " I am eagerly collecting a library ;
and as formerly at Rome and elsewhere in Italy, so like
wise in Germany and Belgium, I have obtained copyists
and manuscripts with a mass of money, and the help of
friends in those parts. Permit me to beg of you also to
promote this end. We will append at the end of this
letter a list of those writers we wish copied." This ex
tract is not from one of Petrarch's letters, though he
wrote many like it; but from a letter of Gerbert who
became Pope Sylvester II in the year 999.®
But undoubtedly Petrarch marks a new stage in the
study and appreciation of the classics. And naturally.
In a general way, if allowance be made for definite inter
ruptions and catastrophes, and different fields of inter
est and effort, each mediaeval century shows an intel
lectual advance. Accordingly, a revival of classical study
in the fourteenth century would start from a base of
maturer intelligence than in the twelfth. On the other
hand, being but the great pioneer of the movement,
Petrarch's knowledge was less than that of the follow
ing generations of humanists who were stimulated and
8 De Nolhac, Petrarque et Vhumanisme, pp. 126-7 (Paris, Champion,
1907) .
9 Ep. 44, Havet's Edition. Gerbert was not single in these tastes — see
The Mediaeval Mind, chaps. XII and XIII.

14 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
assisted by his labors. The chief gap in his knowledge
was his ignorance of Greek, which made his perspective
faulty and left his ordering of classical authors still med
iaeval. Says he with comical sententiousness : " Plato
magnus vir, magnus Pythagoras, magnus Aristoteles,
magnus Varro " (Fam. XVII, i). The last had been a
great figure in the Middle Ages.
Within the range of its knowledge, his acute mind dis
criminated justly. His idol in prose was Cicero; through
long study and devotion he seemed to himself to have
attained a personal intimacy with him. Yet, as it was
only in middle life that he found a manuscript of Cicero's
letters, he did not form his own epistolary style on them.
In fact, Seneca influenced him as much as Cicero. One
may remark that not only in the Middle Ages, but from
Petrarch's time onward through the fifteenth and six
teenth centuries, humanists took kindly to the Latin writ
ers of the silver and even the brass age, and when they
came to know Greek, they preferred the later Greek
authors. Some reasons for this are clear. Both the late
Latin and late Greek writers were more cosmopolitan
and easier to appreciate than their greater and often
austere predecessors. The Romans themselves had not
cared for Aeschylus and Aristophanes, who, like Plato,
were distinguished by a sublime provincialism. More
promiscuous and readily tangible human affinities were
offered by the Hellenistic Plutarch. For analogous rea
sons, Seneca was the really popular moralist, and con
tinued so through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
He was closer to the Christian mood, and at so many
points touched the commonplace nature of man. Thus
we may also see why Petrarch sought moral instruction
from Ovid's Elegies, while he revered and imitated Virgil.
Following the examoles of scholars before him,
whether living in the fifth century or the thirteenth,
Petrarch took the classic poets allegorically. One of his
later letters (Sen. IV, c) has much to say of the moral
or allegorical interpretation of Virgil, and maintains that
the end and subject — finis et subjectum — gf the deneid.

PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO 15
is the perfect man, or man made perfect — vir perfectus.
To discover an allegory in a narrative means commonly
to moralize the narrative, generalize it from a moral
point of view, or generalize a lesson from it. Allegory
is a kind of generalization. And sometimes, as we fol
low an allegorical interpretation of a story, for example
Petrarch's interpretation of the Aeneid, we perceive that
much of it is but a pointing of its " lesson." Some such
lesson, or revelation of the universal in the concrete, lies
in every great story. And who shall say that the poet
did not feel or mean it too, at least when he is so thought
ful, even contemplative, a writer as Virgil? Is it not
possible also that the Greek critics, who held before Vir
gil's day that all great poetry should be taken allegori-
cally — is it not possible that sometimes they may have
meant little more than when we say such and such a nar
ration carries a lesson?
The trouble was that some of those critics and inter
preters overelaborated and specialized their allegorical
interpretation, making it quite beside the probable in
tention of the author, pointing it, as in the' case of the
Old Testament, to apologetic uses, or making it silly and
unlikely, as in the case of a great poem like the Aeneid.10
Thus while Petrarch, in his letters just referred to, some
times says little more than we ourselves might choose
to fancy as the " lesson " of the tale, he is also, like his
mediaeval forbears, or the grammarians of the transi
tion centuries, quite capable of foolishness. The Vir-
gilian picture {A en. IV, 554) of Aeneas, when all was
ready to set sail from Carthage, asleep on his ship, celsa in
puppi, he interprets as alta in mente certo proposito con-
quiescens — or, so to speak, at peace in his high purpose.
We do not think that Virgil meant this by celsa in puppi.
So for Petrarch all great poetry carries allegory. He
intends his own Latin poetry to be taken in the same
way. He sends his eclogue Parthenias to his brother, ex
pounding it allegorically (Fam. X, 4). In fact, it is
difficult to understand his eclogues without a key to the
10 See The Mediaeval Mind, Chap. XXXI. (Vol. II, p. 141-3.)

16 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
symbolism of their language ; in one of them, the Bucoli-
cum Carmen, in the person of Silvius, he explains to his
brother through allegories his need to write the Africa.11
What shall one say of that supreme effort of Petrarch
after immortal fame? Few human beings have read
it ! 12 It seems to open with heavy notes of egotism and
adulation; there is no epic plunge in medias res! As
one proceeds, one finds classic involutions without the
classic movement. It seems to go through the motions
of the Aeneid stylistically; yet does riot move. With its
borrowed thoughts and borrowed phrases, not repro
duced in ipsissimis verbis, it affects one as a sort of pseudo-
copy. One gathers from it the way in which Petrarch sought
to form his style. He advises not to copy the words, but
rather to master the classic thoughts. He would not
slavishly imitate the phrasing of one writer, but avail of
the excellences of many: nee huius stilum aut illius, sed
unum nostrum conflatum ex pluribus habeamus. Not
everyone can learn to write well by reading the classics;
he must have, or gain through them, a serene and well
equipped mind: he must be something, or have become
something, in himself: " For speech is no slight index
of the mind, nor the mind a slight director of speech;
one depends on the other." 13
Many a .scholar in the generations and centuries before
Petrarch had tried to write as well as possible, had
striven for style and form. The vernacular poetry of
the troubadours of Provence was mainly a thing of form;
and often a mediaeval Latin writer in the twelfth or thir
teenth century modelled his style quite consciously on the
classics or on the approved writers of his time. With
Petrarch, the effort for style has become portentously
self-conscious. He is the forerunner of those genera-
11 Poemata minora Francisci Petrarcae, ed. Rosetti, (Milan 1823); II
Bucolicum Qarmen, ed. Avila (Padua 1906).
12 The present writer has only read at it.
13 Fam. I, 7 & 8; XXIII, 19. See his later remarks on style in a letter
to Bruni. Sen. II, 3.

PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO 17
tions of Italian humanists who pursued " art for art's
sake," and by striving utterly for form in writing, emptied
themselves of substance. This forerunner, who himself
was not always creative, tried so consciously for form,
that most of his works have entered the company of
those which a/re not read, but read about. His letters,
carefully edited by him, are interesting as a record of his
life. They may have done much to bring into vogue
the genre of epistolary writing consisting of intimate
short self-revealing letters or essays upon topics other
than theology and politics. Beyond them, and perhaps
his Secretum, who but a special student reads Petrarch's
Latin works? In some of them the dullness of the Mid
dle Ages seems clothed upon, as in the De remediis utri-
usque fortunae, where every conceivable good, and then
every conceivable ill of human life is presented seriatim,
with opposed or compensating considerations.
The De viris illustribus,1* a work of greater rhetorical
effort, is more alive by reason of its subject, the life his
tories of Roman worthies. Its substance was drawn
from Livy, where that was possible, or again from Cae
sar's Commentaries, which Petrarch, in common with
men before and also after him, ascribed to one Julius
Celsus. Petrarch's principle of selection, as given in
his preface, is to use only those matters which illustrate
the virtues or their contraries ; for the fructuosus finis of
historians is to present that which the reader ought either
to follow or avoid: — which is a way of writing history
for the purpose of moral improvement, as more than one
mediaeval compiler had done. The preface turns also
to posterity, and expresses the author's wish to be dear
to it. As the work warms up to the important people,
it becomes good rhetorical exposition. Such is the story
of Camillus; and a long, intelligently composed biography
of Caesar is presented.
It is illuminating to compare Petrarch with Hildebert
of Lavardin and John of Salisbury, noteworthy humanists
i* Ed. Razzolini (Bologna 1874).

18 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.15 The former,
who lived from about 1055 to 1130, ended his life as
Archbishop of Tours. He was an enthusiastic lover of
the classic Latin literature, and the spell of the antique
lay on him. Visiting Rome, he wrote admirable elegies
upon its ruined state, elegies in which the gods are made
to marvel at the beauty of their own sculptured images.
The prose of his letters was not disturbed by attempts at
a pseudo-classic style ; it has grace as well as force. His
letters were studied as models after his death. John
of Salisbury was born about 11 15 and died as Bishop of
Chartres in 1 1 80. He was the friend both of Becket and
of Henry II, and in his time had sat at the feet of many
famous teachers, Abelard for instance, as well as Ber
nard of Chartres. He gives a charming picture of the
latter's method of teaching. Always an advocate of a
thorough classical education, John poured his sarcasms
on those who " preferred to seem rather than be, phi
losophers and professors of the arts, engaging to impart
the whole of philosophy in less than three years, or even
two." He was quite at home with the classic authors,
citing their lives as readily and as appositely as he cited
Scripture. A student and clever historian of the antique
philosophy, he knew as much of it as was possible for a
man living before the unearthing of Aristotle. His
writings as well as his personality were imbued with its
spirit; he applied its teachings in his life and contempla
tion, and could look with even eye on all things. Mod-
eratrix omnium was his favorite term for philosophy.
According to the present writer's taste, these men
wrote Latin more agreeably than Petrarch. Since they
were active in affairs of Church and State, they did not,
like him, follow letters exclusively. Their writings do
not disclose such absorbing curiosity as to everything
connected with antiquity. It would indeed be hard to
find anyone before Petrarch so completely devoted as
himself to the study of the classics and so consciously
15 See chapters XXXI and XXXII of The Mediaeval Mind, and Vol.
II, pp. 403 sqq.

PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO 19
striving to be intimate with antiquity. Moreover, while
these men had a just and true. feeling for the classics,
they lived when men knew less and had experienced less.
One cannot expect to find them as mature as he. The
clearest difference between them lay in their intellectual
environment and in the immediate destinies of their re
spective epochs, with reference to the litterae humaniores
of Rome and Greece. The twelfth century was the best
period of mediaeval Latin writing, and also one when
many scholars cared for the classics and read them dili
gently. But even then there were men of other minds,
who looked on Latin letters merely as a means towards
quite different pursuits. Before many decades, the domi
nant intellectual interests of the time moved away from
the litterae humaniores somewhat more definitely. The
period of the great and, on the whole, unliterary scho
lastic philosophers arrived — even as our time is the
period of unliterary science ; and although classical schol
ars may now know more than their predecessors of the
eighteenth century, nevertheless interest in classical lit
erature is on the wane, and the classics are less generally
read and have less effect upon educated men than hereto
fore. But Petrarch, in contrast with Hildebert of Lavardin
and John of Salisbury, lived at the opening of an epoch
which was to be intellectually characterized by a renewed,
an enthusiastic, a fashionable, modish, almost universal,
interest in the classics as veritable fonts of humanity.
He and his labors and his fame were borne onwards upon
the increasing currents of the coming time. Fate made
him a precious pioneer. By reason of his happy time
liness, the fame of him and the effect of him and the
inspiration of his example were not lost.
Thus in his Latin studies and Latin writings, Petrarch
was a spokesman of the coming time. But beyond his
classical virtuosity, through his sonnets and Canzoni in
Italian, he devised modes of sentiment and the forms of
their expression destined to royal fortunes. It was he
more than any other who set the sonnet fashion for the

20 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
following centuries, and within the sonnet form gave
expression to those exquisite or precieuse sentiments which
became conventions with the writers of love poetry of
many nations. He was the main source and inspiration
of an enormous sonnet literature in Italy, next in France,
and ultimately in England. As the creator of these
forms of expression one can find no definite limit to his
influence.

II
Boccaccio was a slightly younger contemporary, a de
voted friend, and an humble but gifted admirer of Pe
trarch. While his genius was drenched with his im
mediate mediaeval antecedents, he went beyond or behind
them to grasp the fuller riches of the antique. Still
more vitally he turned to the instincts and capacities
of his own nature, and absorbed the living currents of his
time. His personality and life and labors brilliantly
represent his time and place, and with this advantage
over Petrarch, that Boccaccio was less self-conscious and
quite free from pose. He presents himself in his sym
bolical and mediaeval elements, in his enthusiastic study
of the classics, and in the turning of his genius to life
and to the expression of it in the vernacular.
The mediaeval centuries contained many kinds of men,
though we justifiably choose to see mainly the more strik
ing types. We are interested, for instance, in the type
which created chivalry and the Arthurian romances, or
again in those lines of spiritual energy which blended in
the personalities of a St. Bernard, an Aquinas or a Dante.
Yet one remembers that if the first part of the Roman de
la Rose was written by the exquisite De Lorris, the clever
and somewhat encyclopaedic second part had for its au
thor that De Meunp; who has been likened to Voltaire,
and may with equal justice be compared with Boccaccio.
Both De Meung and Boccaccio employed the mediaeval
machinery of presentation, the dream, the vision, the
allegory, while both also saw human nature, along the

PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO 21
level of its actuality. Neither of them dwelt in the
machina, — the vision or the allegory — which they con
ventionally used.
That the intellectual conventions and primary mental
attitudes of this Florentine were those of the fourteenth
century, and the centuries immediately behind it, is evi
dent from his earlier works, which are mediaeval in sub
stance and in the conventions of their construction. One
notices the mediaevalism of that Vita di Dante in which
Boccaccio expressed his admiration for the figure then
dominating literary Italy. As Boccaccio was not mys
tically winged, but well equipped with human hands and
feet and eyes, he does not cleave the empyrean with his
poet, but makes him walk the earthy levels of the me
diaeval meadows, and credits him with motives, romantic,
pretty, by no means sublime. Boccaccio's own vocabu
lary was then full of the words and phrases of the Corn-
media.16 And at the close of life, when his last labor
was to deliver his lectures or Commento on it, he adopts
scholastically what probably was Dante's own explana
tion of his purpose, when considering a commentary upon
his own poem. The causes, says Boccaccio, of the Corn-
media, are the material, the formal, the efficient and the
final. The first of these, which is to say the subject of
the poem, is twofold, literal and allegorical. It is, " ac
cording to the literal sense, the state of souls after the
body's death, taken simply . . . while, according to the
allegorical sense, it is how man, mounting or falling
through his free will, is bound to the justice which re
wards and punishes." So he proceeds with the rest, say
ing at last that " the final cause is to help those who
are living in the present life, to pass from a state of mis
ery to one of felicity." 17 One may add, that this ar
dent admirer transferred to Dante himself the Dantesque
and mediaeval appellative of Aristotle, calling him in the
Amorosa Visione, " il signor d'ogni savere."
18 E.g. the " infiniti guai," at the opening of the Fiammetta, and shortly
after in the lover's words: "O donna, tu sola se' la beatudine nostra."
17 Commento, Cap. I in Moutier's Ed. I, pp. 3-4.

22 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
That Boccaccio's way of handling the classics, and pre
senting their extracted substance in exhaustive compila
tions, was still mediaeval, may be seen in his De Casibus
Virorum Illustrium, which shows the fatal turns of for
tune through a line of ancient worthies, beginning with
Adam; likewise in his De claris Mulieribus, a companion
treatise ; and finally in his vast Genealogiae deorum gen-
tilium, in which he endeavors to satisfy his insatiate in
terest in mythology. No work of Petrarch shows such
exhaustive learning. Yet it is clear that Petrarch appre
ciated the classics more intelligently than this younger
man who equalled him in diligence of study and in zeal
to extend the knowledge of them. There was no more
eager searcher after manuscripts than Boccaccio.
Theoretically, Boccaccio joined with his friend in plac
ing the writing of Latin above Italian composition. But,
in fact, more genially and truly than Petrarch he recog
nized the value and dignity of the volgare, and accepted it
as a worthy vehicle of narrative and thought, as Dante
fortunately had done. Here lay the true progress of
Boccaccio, wherein a realization that the classics also
drew from life may have helped him on. Looking to
life, drawing from life, Boccaccio knew that the volgare
alone had the living power to depict it. In this he was
not " mediaeval " ; no man is when he goes straight to the
life about him.
This great advance did not come suddenly, or in Boc
caccio's early years, when he wrote his first poems in
the volgare. They and their author were still entan
gled in the acceptance and conventional treatment of
conventional subjects. It was not so much that the sub
jects were timeworn, as that his treatment of them still
subscribed to the old notions; for there was life and
beauty in the old story of Flore and Blanchfleur, of
Troilus and Cressid, or of Palamon and Arcite. The
poems made by Boccaccio from these tales, the Filocolo,
Filostrato, and Teseide, have still too much rhetoric and
convention, with too little of life's closer observation.
Imitation and the old ideas enveloped him most appall-

PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO 23
ingly in his Amorosa Visione. In form it copied, par
odied rather, the Divina Commedia, and in contents was
an encyclopaedic " Hall of Fame," in which the author
beheld every imaginable person belonging to classical
and biblical antiquity, or to the mediaeval time, and also
the whole company of allegorical personifications. The
enumerating habit followed him. Even in his prose Fi-
ammetta, which so aptly delineated passion, he could not
help letting Venus set before his heroine the tale of all
the gods and demigods and heroes who had been over
come by love, as an argument why she should not resist
it. Nor does she.
That Boccaccio at last should have emerged from these
entanglements to write the Decameron! Its opening
stories still carry conventional moralizings. But as the
tales proceed, the author reaches an artistic freedom of
his own, and, drawing upon universal life, gives pictures
of manifold humanity. His cheerful and facile and
abundantly carnal nature did not rise to those spiritual
heights which may be just as veritable as the streets and
gutters of human life. But, with this qualification, the
wide actual world throngs through these tales, the world
of men and women, resourceful lovers, clever rogues,
shameless villains, caught hot in their doings. Many
pretty stories, and stories unabashed, with author and
audience ready to laugh at folly and applaud the success
ful ruse. Throughout, cleverness, quick faculty, virtus
and prudentia, apery and Tnwrf}, to go back through Rome
even to Homer, win life's prizes and applause. High
principle, self-sacrifice, humility, gain scant attention,
when not laughed out of court. Boccaccio's world has
passion and desire, but not much heart or benevolence.
It is not malevolent; but as the author does not let the
wish to instruct or benefit deflect his story, or spoil his
art, so no one in the tale is stayed from his desire by
moral nicety.
Boccaccio did not invent many of the tales; he drew
from books and on the cloud of homeless stories float
ing through the world. But his observation and his art

24 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
made these stories the amusing things they have proved
themselves to be for half a thousand years. The life
about him and his quick selecting eye gave matter and
form. And then his art, — that was a faculty which
sprang from the whole Boccaccio and his entire training.
Was he not courtier, man of the world, and lady's man
and frequent lover? And was he not as well a careful
writer, and a deep student of the Latin classics? If he
felt that the volgare was the tool of life, did he not utterly
admire Latin, and deem it better in itself? Could he not
use the life which pulsed in the volgare, and yet mould
that energy to seemliness, perhaps to the seemliness of
the Latin period? This, was what he did; nor did he
fail to inject in it his own apt sense of fitness. So he
built his style. And in that style, so apt if still rotund,
and, in Boccaccio's faculty of composition, so disciplined,
so slowly won, lay the best humanistic progress, the best
which that time or any century after it could gain from
the study of the classics : to wit, discipline, sense of form,
knowledge of literary effectiveness, even a more excel
lently trained humanity directed toward self-expression.
Such were to be the results of a broader and more in
structed study of the classics. Yet the Italians seem
hampered by the constraint of the antique in their own
natures, and by its survival in their customs and their
environment. It was not the revival of classical studies
that checked the Italian literary creativeness. Rather,
the strength of the antique survival in the Italian nature
through every mediaeval century, had checked creative
ness. The revival of classical studies gave academic pur
pose to this hampering survival. Italian scholars, rather
more than those of other lands, were touched with the
ambition to write classic Latin. This absorbing purpose
impeded the creative imagination. With such a darling
of delight as Ariosto the fling of fancy would have its
play; but many are the names of those Italian humanists,
to whose zeal for the resurrection of the Greek as well
as Latin classics we remain indebted, yet in whose own
Latin compositions self-conscious purpose ill supplies

PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO 25
the place of life. A mediaeval Latin writing might be
more alive just because the author used Latin as of course,
with little stylistic consciousness.
Through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the
Italian cities had advanced in wealth, and in human expe
rience and capacity. Elsewhere, in England for exam
ple, such development of human faculty might take the
form of sharpened political and theological insight, and
address itself to religious reform. But, in Italy, it nat
urally directed itself to studies relating to the Roman
past, which still was in the blood. As the prime Italian
intellectual achievement of the twelfth and thirteenth cen
turies had been the revival of the Roman Law, so now
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the finer intel
lectual energies of the land wound themselves about the
classics. If Petrarch was the hierarch of these studies,
they were pursued by many other men, in cities less rude,
more generally cultured, civilized, urban, than the towns
across the Alps. Not without reason Petrarch contrasts
his Italy with the Scythian barbarism of the north, of
devastated France for instance, where nevertheless he
found upon his journey groups of Latin scholars.
So, as of course, the great revival, the new florescence
of classical studies began in Italy. There it presents it
self as an original or indigenous movement, which had
not come over the borders from another counfv; there,
also, it was a direct study of the Latin and gradually the
Greek authors, an acceptance of their influence unmixed
with intrusions from neighboring contemporary peoples.
This Italian humanism had thus the purity and originality
belonging to priority. But in France, England, Ger
many, so many suggestions came from Italy that there
was always a foreign contemporary flavor or suggestion
mingling with the study of the classic writings. What
ever came from Italy, in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen
turies, was almost as that which was taken from the
classic literature of Rome.

CHAPTER II
ITALIAN HUMANISTS OF THE EARLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY
Undoubtedly the general culture of the Middle Ages
rested upon material conditions. The life of court and
camp and town and castle, with the delectable productions
of poets, church-builders, sculptors, artists in glass, was
supported by the economic situation, if not part of it.
Monks in monasteries and the student hordes thronging
the universities were fed and clothed, and many of their
intellectual needs ministered to, through the same sup
porting wealth. Nevertheless, the finest flowering of the
mediaeval spirit ignored bodily well-being, even ascet-
ically deprecated it. But in the coming time, the forms
of intellectual achievement and the Protestant religious
movement frankly made much of bodily well-being, and
hung upon the increase of wealth and material civiliza
tion. Starting with any mediaeval century, the twelfth for
instance, one may observe how the factors in the increase
of wealth were identical with the means or conditions of
expansion of the human mind. Mental and material
elements acted upon each other reciprocally, now appear
ing as result and again as cause. Intellectual develop
ment produced discoveries and alternately sprang from
them: discoveries in knowledge, discoveries of mechani
cal contrivances like the compass; discoveries regarding
building, sculpture, painting, the weaving of textile fab
rics; relating to commerce and the routes of commerce,
to the extension of the knowledge of the earth's surface
through exploration of hitherto unknown lands and seas.
All this had as much to do with the improvement of man's
physical well-being as with the enlargement of his mind.
The maritime discoveries afford the most picturesque illus
tration. From the time of the Scandinavian and Norman
26 S^W--:....,^,,.,,,,,

EARLY ITALIAN HUMANISTS 27
voyages, from the time of the Crusades, from the time
of the Genoese and Portuguese explorations of the west
coast of Africa, to that of the gradually led up to and
grandly accomplished voyages of Columbus and Vasco
da Gama, the course of maritime exploration is con
nected with the intellectual development of Europe, and
on the other hand becomes the mightiest of factors in
that increase in wealth which amounted to an economic
revolution. During the sixteenth century, the money sup
ply in Europe would seem to have been quadrupled; and
the increase of gold and silver was matched by the expan
sion of the mental horizon.
A realization of the growth of wealth and luxury in
Italy and Spain and France, not to mention England and
Germany, is needed for any proper view of the intel
lectual progress of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Humanism, the study of the classics, while not neces
sarily a thing of luxury and ease, will be seen to have
advanced with the luxurious adornment of life, made
possible through wealth. The prosperity of the Italian
cities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was the
foundation of the brilliant life and culture of the fifteenth,
and the necessary basis for the subsequent progress of
humanism, science, and philosophy. Support from
wealthy patrons, dynasts, tyrants, successful condittieri,
enabled the humanists to prosecute their studies, or gave
Leonardo da Vinci opportunity for observation and ex
periment. The famous arsenal at Venice, with its store
of costly machines, proved full of teaching for him, as it
did for Galileo.
One recalls the industrial growth of Florence. Her
wars and treaties had been inspired by her industrial and
commercial needs, the need, for instance, of a sea-port,
which was not satisfied till Pisa was captured in 1406.
A quick commercial expansion resulted. Before then,
however, industrious and intriguing Florence traded vig
orously with Bruges and the west of Europe, as well as
with the near and further Orient. She had given atten
tion to navigation, and to astronomy and other sciences

28 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
useful in commerce and manufacture. The woolen in
dustry was well developed. Two of her Arti maggiori,
(the greater Guilds) were engaged in the finishing of
foreign woolens and the making of the cloth itself.
When English and Flemish competition impaired this
lucrative business, the manufacture of silk was profitably
taken up. Lawyers too, and money-changers who be
came great bankers, assisted in the ordering and exten
sion of her industry and commerce. The city continued
dominantly Guelf, and with reason, since great gain and
the control of Italian finance came to the Florentines as
Bankers to the Holy See.1
So, for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in western
Europe, one sees how closely allied were the expansion
of the mental vision and the increase of wealth and ma
terial civilization. But regarding this expansion of the
mind and the varied advance of thought and knowledge,
we meet again the question of the causal antecedence of
one phase of intellectual progress, with respect to other
phases possibly to be regarded as effects. The apparent
stimulus came from the antique letters, including antique
philosophy and political enlightenment. Yet in a way,
these had been there always, and the palm of prece
dence might just as well be awarded to the advancing
humanity which, with increasing intellectual capacity,
turned to them for illumination.
Thus a questionable priority resolves itself into a more
likely cooperation. Nevertheless, the intellectual prog
ress of these centuries seems to begin with a renewed
study of the classic literature. This led to a more varied
philosophy, and even facilitated the advance of science.
Hence a survey of the period's intellectual accomplish
ment properly begins with that revival of classic studies
which has come to us as inaugurated by Petrarch and
Boccaccio. One need not retell the story of this revival of an
tique letters, which has been told so often, and with such
1 Cf. P. Villari, J $rimi due secoli delta storia di Firenxe, chap. VI,
(Revised Ed. Florence 1905).

EARLY ITALIAN HUMANISTS 29
charm and pleasurable excitement. Yet some of its more
illustrative and personal incidents or phases may be
given, and not too briefly, for the subject is beguiling.
One passes quite naturally from Petrarch to the younger
generation of his followers and admirers. These, with
their pupils, included the majority of noted humanists
flourishing in the first half of the fifteenth century. Pe
trarch had never made his home in Florence; but most
of Boccaccio's life was passed either there or in the
neighboring village of Certaldo. And, before long,
Florence, chiefly through the energies and tastes of its
citizens, became the centre of the classical revival, and
one may say, of the new intellectual eagerness inspiring
or accompanying it. The city's prosperity under the
rule of an aristocracy of wealth, during the half cen
tury or more following Boccaccio's death, led to the same
end. That the rich Florentines were keenly interested
in the Latin classics, as well as in Christian scholarship
and Italian literature, appears from an account, true
enough if actually fictitious, of the conversation of a
distinguished company assembled at the villa of the mer
chant prince, Antonio degli Alberti.2 There is costly
food and wine, there is music; stories are told, frequently
ending in pleasant riddles; philosophy is discussed and
Augustine; Ovid and Livy, and the origins of Florence
and Prato; also Dante and Petrarch and Boccaccio; the
greatness of these men and the richness and worth of the
volaare find staunch supporters.
The finer Florentine spirits were constantly meeting
for the serious pleasures of study and discussion before
the fourteenth century had closed. Among them the
name of Luipri de Marsigli should not be forgotten, nor
will that of Coluccio Salutato. Both of them had " as
sisted " at the storied conversazione. The voluminous
correspondence of the latter3 brings the man and his
thoughts before us, and affords an enlightening picture of
a deeply respected Florentine official and meritorious hu-
2 // Paradiso degli Alberti, ed. A. Wesselofsky, 3 vols. (Bologna, 1867).
sEpistolario di Coluccio Salutati, Ed. Fr. Novati (4 vols.,'1891 sqq.).

30 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
manist of the generation immediately following Petrarch.
Born in 1330, Salutato was some twenty-five years
younger than his pole-star of a poet. Educated princi
pally at Bologna, he fitted himself there for the busi
ness of a notary. He had even then heard of Petrarch,
had sent him verses, and had received a little golden let
ter in return. Afterwards he moved about through va
rious cities, and gained experience as a scribe in the papal
Curia. He was forty years old when he came to Flor
ence. For a while he acted as secretary to the Priori,
and in 1375 was made Cancellarius, or, as one might say,
Secretary of the Republic. Until his death thirty years
later, he filled this office, enhancing both its dignity and
his own repute through his abilities and uprightness. He
was a man of presence, somewhat austere in manner, but
of deep, controlled affections. All Italy regarded him
highly; and his official papers, which everywhere were
preserved as models, efficiently upheld the Republic's
policy and fortunes in times of stress and conflict with
the papacy. His honor never was impeached, and hav
ing trained a family of noble sons, he left them no ill
gotten gains. He was given a public funeral, and
crowned with laurel in his coffin as a poet. He had com
posed poems enough; yet their merits scarcely won for
him this crown, but rather his public services and his
reputation as a humanist.
One marks his boundless admiration for Petrarch, his
pietas toward him. The poet was dead; the world of
scholarly taste was agog to know about his Africa —
had he destroyed it, as he had threatened, or had he left
directions for its destruction, as Virgil had ordered the
destruction of the Aeneid? No! the "divine Africa"
still existed, for the joy and solace of mankind. After
urgent efforts, it was copied and brought to Florence,
where the new-made humanistic Cancellarius set himself
reverently to expunge such harsh expressions as the poet
himself would have remedied, had he lived to perfect his
work. At the news of Petrarch's death, Salutato had added

EARLY ITALIAN HUMANISTS 31
a postscript to a letter he was writing: " I have heard,
woe is me ! that our Petrarch has migrated to his stars."
He soon begins to write more at length about him; for
instance, to the Count of Battifolle, somewhat as fol
lows : Since Petrarch lived enough for nature and glory,
there was nothing more for him to enjoy among mortals,
but only to say with the Doctor to the Gentiles, "I de
sire to be dissolved and be with Christ." He excelled all
in wisdom and learning, and in his matchless eloquentia,
the eloquendi facultas, " from which either prose melody
(prosaica melodia) pours forth with loosened reins, or
is constrained by the continuous straits of metres." Di
viding prose into that which serves debate and that
which serves instruction {contentio and sermocinatio, a
division in mediaeval use), the letter maintains that
Petrarch in his "Invective against a physician," surpassed
the Philippics and Catiline orations of Cicero. " Be
lieve me, though someone should contend that Cicero was
his equal in oratorical power, yet in the adornment of
speech and weight of meaning . . . without any doubt
it would be admitted that the parent of Roman eloquence
was conquered by this one of ours." Cicero excelled
only in the one form of eloquentia, and Virgil in the other :
Petrarch, who achieved so gloriously in both, is to be set
before either of them. And if Greece should insolently
compare herself with Latium, we still have Petrarch to
set above them. Besides there are his poems in the vol
gare, in which it is acknowledged that he excelled Dante.4
All hail ! consummate man — summe vir, cui etiam se
tota equare non potest antiquitas 1 " H
Such epistolary rhetoric reveals the writer's mentality.
Salutato could worship many gods, though for the time
one of them should fill his vision. Later he writes in
praise of Virgil, saying: "Placet mihi stilus, quern hac-
tenus nemo versibus adequavit, nee putem posse ad eius
altitudinem atque dulcedinem humanis viribus pervenire."
* Probably this was not Salutato's more considered opinion. In Lib.
XI, 10, he says at great length that there is nothing greater than the
Commedia. 6 Epistolario, Lib. Ill, Ep. 13 and 15.

32 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Yet still later, in 1379, when Petrarch had been dead for
five years, he argues, lengthily as was his wont, that
Petrarch is superior to Virgil, and in prose the equal of
Cicero.6 If Salutato appears stupid, Bruni and Pbggio were
among his proteges. The latter could not endure that
his venerable friend and benefactor should put Petrarch
above Cicero and Virgil; and the aged Salutato writes to
defend his views. You seem to hold, says he, that no
modern can be compared with the ancients. That is
easy to answer. But first one should consider the Chris
tians, Origen, Chrysostom, Jerome, and Augustine, the
best of all. Would you set Plato or Aristotle or Cicero
or Virgil above Augustine ? And surely, the Latins were
superior to the Greeks.7
Such crude comparisons, and the conviction of the su
periority of Latin over Greek, of which Salutato knew
next to nothing, were not common in the next generation.
The letter last referred to is so long and tedious that
one loses any likely thread of argument. In it Salutato
distinguishes between sapientia and eloquentia, and ar
gues that Aristotle, Plato, and all the Gentiles were neces
sarily inferior in sapientia to the Christians, and there
fore inferior to Petrarch. And if they failed in sa
pientia, their eloquentia was vain. He expresses his
agreement with Cicero that writing should progress from
age to age, and correspond with speech and customs.
And, returning to his comparisons, he intimates that in
putting Petrarch before Cicero and Virgil, he really
meant that Petrarch excelled Cicero in verse and Virgil
in prose !
Through a small hole, the old man emerges to this
ridiculous conclusion. Was he failing mentally, or just
involved in stupid mental habits? He does not seem
foolish when, in a still later letter, he says that we should
not slavishly imitate the ancients. But his head is full
of them; sometimes they mould his own mood or seem-

°Ep. Lib. IV, 15 and 20.
t Ep. Lib. XIV, 18. Dec. 1405.

EARLY ITALIAN HUMANISTS 33
ingly living thoughts, or again they are as names which
he keeps waving in his letters. He can argue as to the
authorship of the tragedies ascribed to Seneca, with bet
ter knowledge and acumen than could have been found,
say, before Petrarch, and can show a real appreciation
of Cicero's character drawn from his letters; and he
wrote frequently upon questions of textual interpretation.
But his critical knowledge was so incomplete that appar
ently he took no exception to the statements of " Dares "
and " Dyctys," in their wretched Trojan forgeries, which
the Middle Ages also had followed. Nor does he feel the
absurdity of his long epistle combatting the charge that
Aeneas was not the legitimate son of Venus.8 He is
ready with the string of names that so long had served
as band-horses. He consoles a young Count for the
death of a father whose writing and speech redolebat of
the streams of Cicero, the pointedness of Quintilian, the
vehemence of Demosthenes. He would have the young
man lift up his heart; — how are our minds inflamed for
virtue in thinking on the " Claudios, Fabricios, Curios,
Catones, Fabios, Metellos, Scipiones, Decios, Lucullos et
ceteros." And writing to a prominent citizen of Lucca,
he finds him not inferior to Brutus in one respect, nor to
Manlius in another, nor to Camillus in a third. Coluc
cio knew himself and the compass of his mind, when he
wrote to Cardinal Orsini, urging the reading of the good
old ancients; for we invent nothing new, and are but
patchers of antique apparel.9
Though naturally maintaining that zeal for sacred
studies did not call for the banishment of the pagan
poets, Salutato was not a pagan, but a serious person, who
liked to discuss free will and predestination. He was a
man of piety, distinctly recognizing how fraught with
dangers were the praise and glory of this world. It was
natural that Greeks and Romans should have delighted
" ardently in the extinguishable light of glory, and have
found it dulcissimum pro gloria mori. But be it far

8 lb. V, 18; VIII, 7; X, 9 and 12; XII, 21.
» lb. II, 18; III, 17; VI, 4-

34 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
from me, a Christian man, to glory in knowledge which
puffeth up, or in anything save the Mediator of God and
men." And in the following letter which is an argument
for the use of tu instead of vos when addressing a single
person, he says " we are born for glory, eternal glory,
not the fragile and fleeting glory of the world." 10
In sundry letters, written to console Andrea de Volterra
for the death of his sons, the antique temper supports
Christian sentiments and convictions. These letters were
less completely pagan than one written in the early twelfth
century by Bishop Hildebert to Henry I of England on
the drowning of his son.11 Salutato borrows thoughts
which Scipio and Laelius might express concerning friend
ship, and blows them up to a thin flame. Yet, beneath
these quasi-affectations, classic sentiment had entered and
disciplined his nature.
Although this worthy man affected to set Latin above
Greek, no one did more to bring to Florence the Greek
language and literature, in the person of the excellent
Chrysoloras,12 a Byzantine of quite another class from
the charlatans who had imposed on Boccaccio. He was
ever quick and generous in aiding the cause of letters;
and, in his old age, was like a father to Bruni and Poggio,
who then enter his life and correspondence. The fif
teenth epistle of Liber XIV (Aug. 1405) to Pope Inno
cent VII, is a hearty and ornate recommendation of
Bruni for the post of Apostolic secretary; and the same
Liber contains many letters to the young Poggio, affec
tionate and filled with good advice. Poggio as well as
Bruni called him " father and teacher"; and a picture
of the old man is given in Bruni's " Libellus de Disputa-
tionum etc. usu," 1S written in 1401, when the author was
about thirty.
This little book enlightens us as to the change which
i°Ib. IV, 18; VII, 17; VIII, 10 and n.
11 VIII, 17, 18, 19, cf. XI, 8. See The Mediaeval Mind, II, p. 173. In
Lib. IX; 9, Salutato mentions Hildebert, Abelard, St. Bernard and other
mediaeval worthies, as good letter writers.
12 Lib. IX, 14 (1406) formally invites him to Florence at a salary.
13 Printed in T. Klette, Beitrage zur Ges. und Lit. der Italienischen
Gelehrtenrenaissance, (Greifswald 1888).

EARLY ITALIAN HUMANISTS 35
had come over the younger generation of scholars. It
opens with the friends, Bruni, Niccolo and de Rossi, going
to see the venerable man, just as Scipio and Laelius go to
see the aged Cato in Cicero's de Senectute. The nominal
subject of their talk is the value of discussion of literary
themes. Niccolo opens with a harsh note : " I fail to
see, Coluccio, how in these dregs of time (in hac faece
temporum, a common humanistic phrase) and in this great
dearth of books, anyone can acquire the faculty of dis
cussing." Our ancestors, he continued, preserved Cassi-
odorus, and suffered Cicero to perish. Then, assailing
the ignorant present-day followers of Aristotle, he de
plores the condition of philosophy, dialectic, grammar,
and rhetoric.
Salutato is less pessimistic: if we have lost much, much
is left; and consider the pre-excellence of Dante, Pe
trarch, and Boccaccio. Niccolo will not hear of praising
them, whom the crowd praises. Dante showed his ig
norance in giving a white beard to Cato, who died at the
age of forty-eight; and his treatment of Brutus was very
bad. He should be left out of any " concilium littera-
torum." As for Petrarch, his long looked for Africa was
born a " ridiculus mus "; his friends were sick of it; it
was a poor performance. Enough could be said against
Boccaccio too.
Smiling; as was his wont, Salutato postpones the defense
of these men to the next dav, when the friends meet again
at his house. The task of defense is laid on Bruni; but
Niccolo says that he had spoken as he had only to hear
what Salutato would say; in fact he admires them all,
and he proceeds to praise each in turn, but stands to it
that he does not care for the Africa or Petrarch's 'Bucolics.
These vounger men had thrown off the Petrarch spell,14
and had discarded certain of Salutato's stupid notions.
They knew more; some of them knew Greek, and had
14 After writing the lives of Dante and Petrarch, Bruni compares the
two He speaks of Petrarch's greater faculty of keeping the friendship of
princes, and comments thus: "E certo il vivere in reputazione ed in
vita on'orato da tutti i Signori, e Popoli, non fu senza gradissima virtu, e
sapienza e costanza." This was written about 1436.

36 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
read Greek authors. They had thus gained a better per
spective. They wrote easier Latin than Salutato or
Boccaccio or Petrarch. They and their generation were
eagerly engaged in the search for manuscripts, and their
efforts were rewarded.15
Florence was still the hearth and home of humanists;
und it was of lasting import for the cause of learning that
Chrysoloras came there to lecture. We turn to Bruni's
story of the call he felt to study Greek, told in his History
of his own times in Italy.16 The closing years of the
fourteenth century are referred to :
" Then first came a knowledge of Greek, which had not been
in use among us for seven hundred years. Chrysoloras the Byzan
tine, a man of noble birth and well versed in Greek letters, brought
Greek learning to us. When his country was invaded by the
Turks, he came by sea, first to Venice. The report of him soon
spread, and he was cordially invited and besought and promised a
public stipend, to come to Florence and open his store of riches
to the youth. I was then studying Civil Law, but ... I burned
with love of academic studies, and had spent no little pains on
dialectic and rhetoric. At the coming of Chrysoloras I was torn
in mind, deeming it shameful to desert the law, and yet a crime to
lose such a chance of studying Greek literature; and often with
youthful impulse I would say to myself: 'Thou, when it is per
mitted thee to gaze on Homer, Plato and Demosthenes, and the
other poets, philosophers, orators, of whom such glorious things
are spread abroad, and speak with them and be instructed in their
admirable teaching, wilt thou desert and rob thyself? Wilt thou
neglect this opportunity so divinely offered? For seven hundred
years, no one in Italy has possessed Greek letters ; and yet we con
fess that all knowledge is derived from them. How great ad
vantage to your knowledge, enhancement of your fame, increase of
vour pleasure, will come from an understanding of this tongue?
There are doctors of civil law everywhere ; and the chance of
learning will not fail thee. But if this one and only doctor of
Greek letters disappears, no one can be found to teach thee. Over
come at length by these reasons, I gave myself to Chrysoloras, with
15 The exciting story of the search and rescue of manuscripts of the
classics is told bv J. A. Svmonds in his "Revival of Learning," and more
circumstantially in G. Voigt's Wiederhelebuna des Klassiscken Alterthum's.
16 Commentarius rerum suo tempore in Italia, pestarum, by Leonardus
Aretinus (of Arezzo) called Bruni; Muratori, Script. T. 19, pp. qi4 sqq.
Bruni was born about 1370 and died in 1444. The passage quoted begins
on page 920 of Muratori.

EARLY ITALIAN HUMANISTS 37
such zeal to learn, that what through the wakeful day I gathered,
I followed after in the night, even when asleep."
Bruni gives the names of fellow students, who studied
Greek with more or less pertinacity and success. Some
of them were to be noted humanists; but none of them
was as good a Greek scholar, or did as much with his
knowledge of Gnek, as Bruni himself. The fame of
Greek, even the enthusiasm for it, was spreading among
Italian students of the humanities; but its study presented
more difficulties than opportunities ; and through the first
half of the fifteenth century, more humanists talked
about Greek than seriously attempted to acquire it. Of
those who did, not a few were discouraged by the diffi
culties of the script and language, and the lack of com
petent teachers and manuscripts. Bruni himself col
lected Greek manuscripts, as he had to in order to pur
sue his studies; but he never carried his search into the
East. It was Giovanni Aurispa who returned from
Constantinople to Venice in 1423, with a grand load of
manuscripts; and a few years after him, Filelfo, of many-
sided repute, brought not a few, and did much to advance
the study of Greek literature in Italy. If the renewed
study of the Latin Classics, with the unearthing of new
manuscripts, proceeded with zeal and pleasurable excite
ment, and became the darling pursuit of many a man of
wealth, one may imagine the expectation aroused at the
prospect of a new and greater world of Greek literature;
an expectation which was not to be disappointed.
So, in Bruni's time, an acquaintance with Greek was
hardly more common in Italy than a knowledge of San
scrit is at present in America. The difference was in the
hope of enlightenment, which no one expects from San
scrit, but which those men of the fifteenth century fer
vently looked for from the Greek gospel of knowledge.
Of course, all knowledge of the language, even that pos
sessed by the very facile Bruni, was imperfect, and his
translations faulty. But his accomplishment was extraor
dinary, and the spirit of his labors admirable. He trans-

38 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
lated many of Plutarch's Lives, Plato's Phaedo, Gorgias,
Phaedrus, Crito, and Apologia; ten books of Aristotle's
Ethics, eight books of his Politics, two books of -his Eco
nomics; then Aeschines against Ctesiphon and Demos
thenes' de Corona, and something more from Demos
thenes with bits from Aristophanes, and extracts from
Xenophon. In a letter to his occasionally rasping friend,
Niccolo Niccoli,17 Bruni writes that his love for Plato
grows as he advances with his translations; and he is
grateful to " Coluccio patri ac praeceptori meo " for urg
ing the work upon him.
" There is in Plato the utmost urbanity, the finest method of
reasoning, and subtlety; while the abundant and divine opinions
of the disputants are given with marvellous pleasantness and an
incredible fluency of phrase. His is the utmost facility of speech,
with an abundance of that admirable x°-Pvs> as tne Greeks call it.
There is neither sweating nor violence; everything is said as by a
man who holds words and their laws in his power. . . . Such
a one indeed is Plato among the Greeks, and unless I show him
such to the Latins, let them be sure that he is made worse through
my fault, and not think they are reading Plato, but my ineptitudes.
I promise to labor to keep that from happening; I do not promise
to succeed, for I would not dare make any such promise. But un
less I am mistaken, I will warrant you, that you shall read your
Plato without annoyance, and, I will add, with the greatest pleas
ure; which I think neither Calcidius, nor the other [translator]
who has carefully withheld his name, has enabled you to do. They
perhaps set about it in one way, and I in another. For they, de
parting from Plato, have followed syllables and figures of speech;
but I adhere to Plato, whom I imagine to, myself as knowing Latin,
so that he can judge, and be a witness to his translation; and I
translate in such wise as I know will please him best. In the first
place, I preserve all his ideas, so as not to depart from them in the
least. Then if I can render him word for word, without impro
priety or absurdity, I choose that way. But if that is impossible,
I am not afraid of falling into the crime of lese majeste, if, when
I have kept the idea, I depart ever so little from the words, so as to
avoid absurdity. For Plato himself presently orders me to do this,
since he, who is most elegant of speech among the Greeks, does not
wish, among the Latins, to appear absurd. Following these prin
ciples, unless I do as I promise, I do not object to being thrown
into the oven."
"Lib. I, ep. 8, in L. Mehus's edition of Bruni's letters — Leonardi
Bruni Aretini Epistolarum Libri VIII, Florence 1741, 2 vols. (There are
in fact ten libri in this edition.)

EARLY ITALIAN HUMANISTS 39
In the next generation, Bruni's translations of Plato
were to be superseded by Ficino's; and in his lifetime, he
had many a battle to fight over his renderings of Aris
totle. He vows that he never added one jot or tittle to
Aristotle's meaning, and had differed from former trans
lators only after deep consideration. Let his critics first
understand Greek and know the force of its words, upon
which he has spent more than eighteen years of study, and
has overlooked no point of brilliancy in the Greek tongue.
" Besides Aristotle, so much from Plato, Demosthenes,
Plutarch, Xenophon, have we translated, that we have
become veterans in that art, not tyros ! " Bruni admired
Aristotle even as a writer: " I do not see how anyone
could write more suitably or pleasantly or fluently upon
those matters which Aristotle treated. . . . Surely, if
anyone should throw dirt on one of Giotto's pictures, I
could not stand it. How then do you think it is with me,
when I see Aristotle's works, more precious than any
picture, defiled with such dirt of a translation! " 18
Bruni's letters, though less brilliant than Poggio's, are
pleasant reading. He wrote many books, among which
he may have attached most value to his History of
Florence. Innocent VII called him, while still little more
than a protege of Salutato's, to the post of papal secre
tary. The pope was taken aback at his youthful appear
ance, but was amply reassured by the first letters which he
composed, as Bruni recounts to his old friend and mas
ter.19 His clear and sprightly epistolary style attracts
one now; the writer was very much awake. Passing over
the Eastern Alps from Trent to the Council of Constance,
this papal secretary was impressed with the asperities of
the way : " Mountains so great and cliffs so high, such
ridges, peaks and summits, such giants everywhere rise
up, that one marvels exceedingly what that parent and
framer of the world, Nature, was after when she made
them. Horror, indeed, and awe held me as I gazed on
those eternal and everlasting masses, and I cannot recall
is Lib. X, Ep. 26; IV, Ep. 22. cf. VII, 4 and 7.
19 Lib. I, Ep. 1 and a.

40 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
them now without a shudder." 20 Doubtless Bruni felt
this ; he is still close to the classic attitude toward moun
tains, for which the Middle Ages also had no love.
Bruni appreciated the humane influence to be gained
from classic studies. " Let your application have a two
fold end," he writes to a youth, " the one the knowledge
of letters, the other an understanding of those things
which pertain to life and manners, which on that account
are called humanitatis studia, because they perfect and
equip the man." He was finely conscious of the inner
significance of language, the meaning to be read between
the lines: "Intent is grasped not only from words,
which may be feigned, but from the expression in the
face and eyes of the speaker. ... I also seem to notice
the same in the letters of a good writer ... in which,
besides words and sound, there is something behind, a
tacit indication of the mind, which, as from the movement
of a speaker's eyes, you may catch, in a writer, from the
very vibration of his discourse." 21
Bruni held his papal secretaryship under successive
popes; but he closed his life as chancellor of Florence, as
his master Coluccio before him; and, like Coluccio, as he
lay in his coffin, " indutus sericam vestem calore ferru-
gineo," he was crowned with laurel by Mannetti, who gave
a long oration upon his career and virtues; to which
Poggio added a shorter and admirable one.22
The cleverest of all these early Latin-writing, Greek-
studying scholars was this Poggio Bracciolini.23 Al
though he spent most of his life in the service of the
Curia at Rome, he belongs to the Florentine group,
through birth in the neighborhood of Florence, through
early education, and through life-long association. Born
in 1380 of impoverished parents, he came when but a boy
20 Lib. IV, Ep. 3.
21 Lib. VI, Ep. 6 ; VII, Ep. 3.
22 These orations are printed in Mehus's edition of Bruni's letters, Vol.
I, pp. LXXXIX-CXXVI.
23 There is a good monograph on Poggio, E. Walser, Poggius Floren
tine, (Berlin 1914), which has been translated into English.

EARLY ITALIAN HUMANISTS

4i

to the city, where Salutato became interested in him, and
soon treated him as a son. He made friends, above all
with that collector of friends as well as books, the excel
lent Latinist, Niccolo Niccoli, who lent him his counte
nance and books and money. He heard Chrysoloras lec
ture; but at that early age had still to devote himself to
Latin and to earning a living by copying manuscripts.
When twenty-three, he went to Rome to begin a long and
wellpaid, though often interrupted, service of the Curia.
But his mind clung to Florence, whether his body was at
Rome, or in England, or at Constance, Baden or St. Gall.
And afterwards in the Florentine contado, when he was
rich, and the father of two families, he still would build
his villa, and fill it with books and broken antique statues,
coins and gems and other paraphernalia of a fifteenth
century Italian lover of the classics. Florence in her
turn honored him ; sent him her citizenship when far away
in Constance, recognized his quickness to use that pen
of his in her defense, and at the end, when he was seventy-
three, pressed the office of Chancellor upon him. He
died six years after.
In the meanwhile, what a life of student energy had
been his ! how had he as a hound hunted out manuscripts,
freeing them from their dungeons (ergastula) in German
cloisters, and restoring more than one classic to actual life.
In this hunt he was facile princeps, rescuing Quintilian's
Institutes in St. Gall, and Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica,
copying them with his own skilled hand. To his credit
also should be placed Lucretius, Ammianus Marcellinus,
and some of Cicero's orations. He also proved his
scholar's intelligence in his ceaseless copying of ancient
inscriptions from the monuments, which he recognized as
a source of sure contemporary information. And a
propos of Poggio, one may remark how naturally classical
studies joined with an interest in antiquities of all kinds,
with a love for old heads and broken statues, which were
also beautiful; and so with the love of visible, sensual
beauty, and all things ministering to it. Thus letters

42 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
were at one with the love of beauty, luxury, and gorgeous
living, which one associates with the Italian quattrocento
and cinquecento.
Some of Poggio's letters strike us as rhetoric; but
often they are delightful, and usually are written in bright,
easy Latin, yet with the constant sufficient correctness of
a great scholar and litterateur. Well known is his letter
telling of the life of Baden, with men and women enjoying
themselves socially in the baths. The next epistle is
renowned for its narrative of the trial and defense and
burning of Jerome of Prague at the Council of Con
stance, where the martyr heretic dies with the constancy
of a Cato, an admirable sight. Again how colloquial
Poggio can be — writing to his closest friend : " Quid
mihi agendum fuisse existimas, mi Nicole? Constitue
te in locum meum: " — put yourself in my place.24 And
what eagerness and impatience fill his page when he scents
a new manuscript to be unearthed — in one case the sup
posed manuscript of Livy; hurry! hurry! pants the letter;
get Cosimo to put up the money; get it quick! In this
case, he was chasing an ignis fatuus. And so he writes
and writes, about getting books and books and books,
from this and that other German monk or monastery;
and he can be sharp enough — why mince words with a
friend? as he says to Niccolo: " De libris Germanis nil
dicam amplius, nisi me non dormire more tuo, sed vig-
ilare." 25
Obviously these people, Poggio above all, gave them
selves over utterly to collecting books and to classical
studies, as men had not done in the Middle Ages. Pog
gio and Bruni were reputed to be pagans. Italy in their
time had no objection to such, hating only heretics.
Poggio and his friends do not play, as in the Middle
Ages, at making all knowledge the handmaid of theology;
yet he knows well the phrase, parens et regina scien-
tiarum omnium. Even Poggio has not quite thrown over
"This is Ep. I, ii, of Vol. I of Tonelli's edition. The two others
precede it.
25 Ep. Ill, I.

EARLY ITALIAN HUMANISTS 43
the Fathers, will at least read them in default of other
occupation; in London, for example, whither he had
gone, and had been disappointed in his hopes of emolu
ment. There he reads Augustine, and the homilies of
Chrysostom in translation. There also he had three
months' leisure for Aristotle, turning over his works to
see what was in each — reason enough for studying
Greek (in which Poggio never was proficient), to know
this man in his own tongue, who in another tongue is
" elinguis et absurdus." For an expositor, he had
Thomas Aquinas, " virum egregium et fecundum." But
he returns quickly to Chrysostom and Augustine, wishing
to read Augustine on Paul and Matthew: "nam, pace
aliorum dixerim, hie vir longe humero supereminet
omnes." " Hie vir " is Augustine, and this letter shows
how that great Father could hold his own with Poggio,
as he had half dominated Petrarch.26
Poggio says that the English monasteries had few books
to interest him; he saw catalogues containing nothing
" dignum studiis humanitatis." Curiously enough, in the
same letter he evinces qualms : he cannot adjust his con
duct with his principles; even his interests waver. " The
sacred books which I have read, and daily read, have
cooled my early studium humanitatis, to which, as you
know, I have been devoted from boyhood. For the foun
dations of these studies are vain, partly false; — all
vanity! But the foundation of sacred eloquence is truth,
which lost, we can hold and do nothing good." He adds,
" If you think I have mended my ways, they are worse
than ever." But on his fiftieth birthday, he writes to
Niccolo that he will seek gradually a better sort of life.27
One may smile ! Poggio's morals were weak enough,
though at the age of fifty-five he gave up his mistress,
from whom he is said to have had fourteen children, to
take a fresh young wife. He was true to his friends, and
grateful; but a vile reviler of his enemies, as was the cus
tom of his tribe. Likewise he hunted the emoluments of

2« Ep. II, 16; I, 6 & 8.
« Ep. I, 13 ; IV, 5-

44 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
life and learning; and none equalled him in turning dedi
cations of his writings into money. His Facetiae were
more often foul than funny. But he was quite of his
time, and a fine scholar, to whose zeal for rescuing manu
scripts the world owes much.
One cannot speak at length of all the men composing
this chief group of early humanists, whose hearth and
home was Florence, and whose Maecenas was Cosmo dei
Medici. One feels that they were very happy in their
enthusiasms. The antique world was a sort of new world
for them, newly discovered by them, as it seemed; for they
had come to it with such a young new interest; and an
interest which in the volume and diffusion and effect of its
energy was new in fact. So they felt themselves happily
exploring a land unexplored and full of fascinations, full
of promise. Their way of life was also new. They did
not live in monasteries, nor cluster around Cathedral
schools, or hold chairs at universities. They were
literati, secretaries to cities, to despots, to popes, court
scribes, court poets. But among themselves they formed
a band, not of brothers, often of hateful foes, but still of
men united in their enthusiasms and pursuits. They
helped each other enormously. No one of them could
have done as much as he did to advance classical scholar
ship, had not the others aided him; each to each was a
tap of information, a lending library, sometimes a source
of cash. Those who did not produce much themselves,
like Niccolo Niccoli and Ambrosio Traversari, were
pivots around whom the others profitably circled. Nic
colo Niccoli, a fat little man and autocratic Latinist, is
spoken of by Cortesius of the next Florentine generation
as one " who gained great glory through cultivating the
friendships of the most learned men." He had the best
library in Florence; of its eight hundred volumes, two
hundred were in lending in 1437, when he expired de
voutly, in the arms of his friend Traversari, the General
of the Order of Camalduli. The voluminous collected
correspondence of the latter, comprising his own and his

EARLY ITALIAN HUMANISTS 45
friends' letters, serves to bring these men into a group.28
As monk and General of his Order, Traversari was a
prelate active m ecclesiastical intrigues, and a pillar of
conventional piety; but as a man and humanist, he was a
vivacious companion, an eager student, and an aid to
others. He was worried often by religious compunc
tions, as in his work at translating the heathen historian
of heathen philosophy, Diogenes Laertius. In his own
compositions he endeavored to avoid profane citations!
He sends to Pope Eugenius IV St. Bernard's De Con
siderations, as an apt book for a new pope; he is much
interested in Greek, and in books, books, books. Also a
great reader of the Church Fathers, with a predilection
for Lactantius because of his Ciceronian style, and for
Athanasius as the rock of orthodoxy. Admiration for
that " eximius vir " so holds him, as he says, " ut ab eo
divelli non possim." He will devote himself to that
" igneo ac coelesti homini," when he can command time.
The letters to his close friend Niccolo are generally inter
esting. A number of them are taken up with his delight
ful humanistic journey to Rome, and to Venice, Ferrara,
Mantua, Ravenna. He stays at the monasteries of his
Order and rummages them for manuscripts ; he also looks
at the antique curiosities of each town: at Ravenna he
admires the churches (templa) and many-colored marble
columns, and all the mosaics; at Venice, Ciriaco shows
him his coins.29
The man last named, Ciriaco of Ancona, is known to
fame as the tireless, fearless explorer of antique sites, and
collector of gems and coins, statues and manuscripts, and
all sorts of information from places far and difficult.30
It were a long task to describe his journeys. He was a
trader with a passion for exploration, and gained his
knowledge and his education as he travelled, even his
Latin and Greek. In Rome he visits antique tem-
28 Ambrosius Traversarius Camaldunensis, — Epistolae, Vita &c, ed.
by L. Mehus (Florence 1749).
29 Lib. VIII, ep. 12 and 42-54.
30 See G. Voight, Wiederbelebung &c, I, p. 269 sqq. (3rd Ed. 1891).

46 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
pies, theatres, palaces, baths, triumphal arches, aqueducts
as well, and bridges; he makes drawings of columns,
and copies inscriptions. He takes ship for Byzantium,
and searches for antiquities in Chios, and collects Greek
and Latin inscriptions. He visits Rhodes and then Beirut
and Damascus, everywhere buying, both as connoisseur
and trader, manuscripts and bronzes, coins and gems,
any object of antiquarian interest. He visited Adria-
nople ; and afterwards ranged Italy through and through,
from Sicily to the northern bounds : he travelled in Dal-
matia, Greece, Egypt, visited Crete: it were hard to say
where his restless feet did not tread. He appears in
humanistic circles, with antiquities to show or sell, and
all manner of information (some of it wrong) to im
part. His scholarship might be questioned, — that of
the self-taught man is likely to be peccable ; but he was a
well-known and interesting personality. In spite of his
faulty knowledge, his collections of inscriptions were of
great value.
There was another and more important man, who wan
dered also, or at least often changed his abode, not from
love of exploration, but from restlessness and the diffi
culties caused by his insolence. This was Filelfo,31 a man
of much learning for his time. He had lived and studied
in Constantinople, and had married a Greek wife. In
1427, when not yet thirty years old, he returned from the
East, landing at Venice. Well equipped with Greek, he
taught there for a while, making a sensation, as he says.
About two years afterwards, having tried various ruses to
secure a high salary, he came to Florence, at the invita
tion of Niccolo and Traversari, and under the patronage
of Cosimo and other great ones. Besides his Greek ac
complishments, he was one of the best of Latin writers
in prose and metre. He was to lecture on Livy and
Cicero, and Terence, Thueydides, Xenophon and the
si On Filelfo, see Voight, Wiederhelebung etc., I, 348 sqq. (3rd Ed.) ;
G. Benadduci, Prose e poesie volgari di Francesco Filelfo (Ancona 1901) ;
F. Legrand. Cent-dix lettres grecques de Francois Filelfe, (Paris 1892) ;
T. Klette, Die griechische Brief e des Franciscus Philelphus, (Greifswald
189°).

EARLY ITALIAN HUMANISTS 47
Iliad. His lectures drew great audiences, and he gave
hours at home on the humanities, all most successfully.
His friendship was sought by the best men. But his head
began to strike the clouds a little overmuch; the earth
could hardly hold him. He fell out with the tempera
mental Niccolo — a bad man to fall out with — and sun
dry others. Cosimo and his brother showed estrange
ment. In 1433 a revolt of the nobles brought Cosimo to
prison. Filelfo spoke out, and urged his death. Cosimo
was exiled, but recalled to power within the year, and
Filelfo fled advisedly. Some months afterwards a bravo
attempted his life in Sienna. The feud was on, the liter
ary feud, with Poggio the chief gladiator on the other
side : the weapons ink and filth. Foul as were the mutual
accusations, they were not all calumnies. We will not
take up this oft-told story. After many decades, when
Cosimo had long been dead, Filelfo, reconciled and par
doned by the Medici, returned to Florence a man of
eighty-three. It was in the summer ; the heat and fatigue
of the journey were too much for him. He died as the
result. He had done much in Greek as well as Latin
prose and verse, and in the volgare too.
It is necessary to speak more particularly of Lorentius
Valla, unquestionably the hardest thinker and closest
scholar that had so far appeared among the Italian hu
manists. Alfonso of Arragon had made good by force
of arms his claim to the Kingdom of Sicily and Naples.
He adopted the humanistic fashions of the time in Italy,
by showing a constant interest in the classics, having them
read to him in translations daily after dinner. He culti
vated the society of the learned, and was a patron of
those men whose writings should immortalize his deeds
and enhance the glory of his reign. Lorentius Valla at
tached himself to the King in the midst of a campaign.
He accompanied him to Naples, and for some years dwelt
beneath his aegis, serving him in various literary capa
cities. Valla loved to call himself a Roman, although he seems
to have been born in Piacenza in 1407. But he passed

48 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
his youth in Rome, and his early manhood, enjoying there
the society and instruction of Bruni, Poggio, and the
Greek scholar Aurispa, who had brought his fund of
learning and his store of books from Constantinople.
Valla was never at his best in Greek, but he possessed a
close knowledge of classic Latin, a powerfully reasoning
mind, and a temper none too sweetly combative, when he
left Rome in 143 1. He first taught in Pavia, there at
tacking both the dialecticians and the jurists. Then he
stayed transiently in Milan and Genoa, Ferrara and
Mantua, and at last more permanently in Naples, under
Alfonso's protection, which he needed.
For Valla did not content himself with piling factitious
scorn on rival humanists; he attacked long-held accep
tances, and made himself a danger to papal pretensions,
if not to Christian morals. With all his devotion to
Latin letters, his mind was destructively and constructively
critical, and recalcitrant against authority. Curiously
enough, in part from an instinct to combat received opin
ion, Valla maintained the superiority of Quintilian as a
rhetorician over Cicero; he later was to assert the su
periority of Demosthenes over Cicero as an orator. He
stands out among his fellows as an absolute classicist.32
The humanist theory, beginning with Petrarch, was to
contemn the post-classical and mediaeval changes in Latin,
and insist upon conformity to classical models. Yet the
practice had been looser, and many current usages were
accepted. Valla alone, with strenuous consistency and
unique grammatical insight, insisted upon adherence to
classical correctness in practice; and proceeded by gram
matical analysis to distinguish between classical and all
aberrant forms. He set forth these principles with am
ple illustration in his Elegantiae of the Latin tongue, a
work occupying him for years, and containing the closest
consideration of the meanings and proper use of words.
No work of the period evinces such profound reverence
82 The works of Valla, except the Elegantiae, are difficult to come by.
I have gained much from Vahlen's excellent essay on him, in Almanach
der Kaiserl. Akad. der Wissenschaften, Vienna, XIV Jahrg. 1864, pp.
183 sqq.

EARLY ITALIAN HUMANISTS 49
for the ancient language of the Romans, nostrorum
majorum, an ancestorship which Valla held to as a faith.
The Praefatio proclaims the benign conquest of Europe
by the Latin tongue, when arms indeed had failed the
Romans: Magnum ergo Latini sermonis sacramentum
est:
" Great therefore is the saving power — the sacrament — of the
Latin speech, great surely its divinity, which is preserved these
many centuries among foreigners, among barbarians, among ene
mies, scrupulously and religiously, so that we Romans should not
' grieve, but rejoice, while the whole listening earth should glory.
We have lost Rome, we have lost empire, we have lost dominion,
not by the fault of us, but of the times; nevertheless, in virtue of
this more splendid dominion, we reign until now in a large part of
the world."
Rome is indeed captured by the Gauls, he continues,
through the horrid decay of Latinity; which this book
shall do its share in re-establishing. So far the preface
to Book I.
The preface to the next book reviles the Latinity of
those who came after Donatus, Servius and Priscian —
" to whom I ascribe this much, that whoever after them
wrote something of Latin (aliquid de Latinitate), would
seem to stammer: of those untaught ones, the first and
most arrogant is Isidore." The preface to Book III
takes a grammarian's view of jurisprudence, agreeing
with Quintilian, that " every legal right rests on the inter
pretation of words, or on the distinction of right and
wrong." The preface to the next book turns against
those who despise classical learning. Some years later,
in 1455, Valla delivered an inaugural Oratio in Rome, at
the opening of the academic year, taking for his theme
the great value of the Latin tongue, which, universally
diffused, spreads and preserves knowledge, and enables
all men to build together the tower of knowledge under-
standingly, and not as at Babel.33
If Valla's Elegantiae laid the foundations of modern
83 Text published by Vahlen, L. Vallae tria opuscula, — Sitz-ber. Phil.
Hist. Classe, Vienna Acad. 1869, B'd 62 pp. 93 sqq.

50 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
classical philology, they also disclosed the quality of their
author, his intellectual method, and the sequence of his
intellectual activities. He was fundamentally a philolo
gist and grammarian ; and it is from the discipline of his
analysis of the Latin language that he passes on to criti
cize the loose or empty thinking obfuscating the minds
of contemporaries. In all branches of thought, it is his
way to reach greater clarity by analyzing the meanings of
words, or again by discovering the impossibilities hinging
upon the inconsistencies of statement. So this incisive
questing spirit, from the suggestions of a scientific phi
lology, proceeded to attack grammarians, literati, jurists,
dialecticians and philosophers, and monks. By sifting
the exact from the loose, realities from falsities, he
passes to broader criticism, historical or philosophical.
Throughout, he shows himself as inconsiderate of other
men's opinions as he was considerate of fact.
A true Valla note is struck in a letter touching his old
friend Bruni : " I have read through his Laudation of
Florence, — plenam levitatis et supinitatis. . . . He
speaks as if he expected no one to reply to him and much
less that anyone should not assent to his absurdities. He
would have Florence the heir of the imperium of the
Roman people, as if Rome herself were extinct ! . . . The
style is lax and fluid and enervated, lacking dignity and
character, and in many places speaking unlatinly, not to
say corruptly." 34
This hard-headed Valla, so critical of Bruni's patriotic
foolishness, can readily be imagined declaring that Hector
and Aeneas, even Rinaldo, were imaginary persons; or
we hear him entering upon a critical discussion of the
Roman legends, and pointing out inconsistencies in Livy;
as in his Emendationes sex librorum T. Livii de secundo
bello punico. He proceeded more hardily in the inter
ests of Alfonso, as well as truth, to show by lengthy
analysis that " Constantine's Donation " was a later
34 To Petrus Candidus (cir. 1435), taken from Barozzi e Sabbadini,
Studi sul Panormita e sul Valla (Florence 1 891).

EARLY ITALIAN HUMANISTS 51
forgery.35 His patron's protection was needed when he
was attacked in Naples by the Inquisition, on many
grounds, and among others for impugning the accepted
view that the Apostles successively enunciated the clauses
of the " Apostles' Creed."
There were plenty of other grounds. Valla's quest
of truth, and of solid reasons even to support alleged
other-worldly thinking, rode rather roughshod over time-
honored acceptances as well as interests. The sequence
of his writings is not certain. But it was not far from
1447, and when the desire to see Rome again was strong
in this Roman fosterling, that he produced his critical In
Novum Testamentum adnotationes, in which he sought
to hark back to the Greek original, and to criticize the
Vulgate translation from the invidious vantage ground
of a closer philological investigation. He also noted
certain inconsistencies among the Gospels.36
Only a little less revered than the Vulgate, were the
dialectic traditions of the universities; and by attacking
these — even the Ten Categories ! — Valla made him
self obnoxious to the scholastics of his time, whose hate
he also drew by the contempt he poured on them, in his
book of Dialecticorum Disputationum. A veritable
pruning of dialectic, repastinatio as his sub-title called it,
was this writing, which should show how simple an affair
was logic really; much simpler than grammar, if only
hair-splitting dialecticians would let it stay so.
But before this book had appeared, indeed before he
ever came to Naples, he had made himself suspect to
serious people by his famous De Voluptate, in which, fol
lowing Epicurus, he showed that man's highest good lay
in a tranquil mind; or, rather, perhaps he did, for he
seemed to let Christian teaching triumph in the end. Yet
through the work, arguments setting sense-pleasure above
all are given with enthusiasm, and may have been intended
35 De falso crediia et ementita Constantini donatione Declamatio.
36 Erasmus was the first really to appreciate and indeed appropriate
many of Valla's suggestions, §ee post, Chapter VII.

52 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
to prove a valid human truth.37 At all events, Valla
was a hardy reasoner in this book, as well as in his De
libero arbitrio; and these works seem to have had their
effect on the great Leibnitz.
None of these writings stirred such ecclesiastic hate
as the dialogue De Professione Religiosorum,38 against
the monks. Valla, as one of the speakers, denies them
the name of religiosi, since they do not make a religio
but a secta, a word corresponding to the Greek aipeo-w,
and pregnant with the detestable innuendo of this deriva
tion. The Frater answers. But the course of the argu
ment invalidates his claims to a superior mode of life;
an analysis of his statements shows them to prove nothing.
Valla prefers to twist his opponent up in his own misused
words, rather than put forward counter allegations.
Naturally, the monk's side is feebly stated, and Valla's
cleverly. Yet some years later, in an Apologia addressed
to Eugene IV, Valla queries whether he did not, in the
Dialogue concede too much in admitting that the monas
tic life, while not melior, might be tutior. " Etenim via
a Christo tradita nulla est tutior, sicut nee melior, in qua
nulla professio nobis injungitur." 39 However this may
be, the Dialogue is an instance of the cold light of a new
worldly reason, without faith, playing upon the monastic
argument. This Apologia did not make Rome livable for Valla
till after Eugene had been succeeded by that lover of the
humanists, Nicholas V. Then indeed Valla might re
turn, to spend the last decade of his life in the city he
loved best. Nicholas set him to work translating Thuey
dides, and other Greek works, it being this Pontiff's dar
ling wish to possess the Greek literature in readable Latin.
The huge income from the papal Jubilee of 1450 enabled
him to subsidize the scholar world and set it to this task.
Yes, wealth and humanism went together; nor did these
37 F. Gabotto has an article on L'epicureismo di L. Valla in Rivista di
filosofia scientifica for 1889 (pp. 651-672).
38 Published by Vahlen — Laurentii Vallae opuscula tria. Sitz-ber.
Phil. Hist. Classe, Vienna Acad. 1869, B'd 62, pp. 99-134.
S9 Luther took a like position regarding monks' vows. See post chap. IX.

EARLY ITALIAN HUMANISTS 53
flattering humanists care for the glory of a threadbare
coat. The joi de vivre and a more splendid life suitably
accompanied the renewed delight in the classics, them
selves exponents of a full round of human quality, and
friendly to the glory of this world. Those ancients were
nobly garbed and splendid gentlemen; and it will seem
proper enough that the elderly and none too prosperous
Machiavelli, living on his farm, after coming in from his
daily rustic mire, should lay aside his dirty clothes, and
put on abiti regali e curiali, before sitting down with those
stately masters of the world. Moreover, a taste for let
ters and the love of luxury and art and splendor, naturally
are found together in those lordly patrons, those proper
amateurs, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy;
and craft and letters often would work together in the
creation of the work of art, as when Bruni was called in
to advise upon the choice of subjects for Ghiberti's doors
to the Baptistry.
If the other humanists had been, and were to be, artists
in words, Valla was a man of science, whether as philolo
gist or philosopher. His literary powers were not
marked, and his instinct was at fault in his weeding out of
current Latin usage, and his demand for a no longer pos
sible adherence to the classic phrase and use of words.
After all, the question of writing classical or unclassical
Latin was becoming a battle of shades, in the face of the
likewise academic strife between Latin and the volgare,
and the actual literary triumph of the latter. One should
realize that in Italy the study of the Latin humanities
was a phase of human growth, leading on to a fuller ex
pansion and expression of humanity not only in art but
in the other living medium, to wit, the volgare. The
humanists of the fifteenth century were not quite so dumb
as to fail to see the worth of the Italian works of Dante,
Petrarch and Boccaccio.

CHAPTER III
LORENZO, POLIZIANO, ARIOSTO, TASSO
Touching the earlier humanists spoken of in the last
chapter, one may ask, what advance of thought, what
growth of human intelligence, what novelties of expres
sion do they present? They drew inspiration from Pe
trarch and Boccaccio; and more unreservedly than had
been possible in the Middle Ages, their minds were fixed
upon the intellectual and artistic concerns of mortal life.
They were disposed to love it all; only upon intrusive
reminders would they doff their caps to the threats and
promises of their religion.
Palpably and, as it were, externally, their education and
progress hung upon devotion to the antique, its study
and its imitation. They brought to the reading of the
classics a renewed openness of mind, and perceived their
significance more truly than mediaeval students. The
early fifteenth century to which they belonged had profited
from the increase of wealth and the accumulation of ex
perience. The fields of knowledge were broadening.
And if Petrarch was a better classical scholar than anyone
before him, he was surpassed by his successors, who
availed of his example and accomplishment. Many lost
classics had been brought to light by eager searches
through forgotten places; and a century of devotion to
the classics bore its fruit.
The veritable progress of these men, so far as it ex
isted, lay within themselves, although seemingly it issued
from their studies. Those we have taken as examples
were diligent and clever; and at least one among them
showed an incisively critical intelligence. Yet intelli
gent and clever as were Valla, Filelfo, Poggio and Bruni,
they do not appear to have evolved and compassed novel
54

LORENZO 55
and interesting modes of expression, which are the sure
proof and exponent of human progress. They were still
students and assemblers ; their self-expression lay in their
ardent scholarship. Perfected and, as it were, classical
forms of humanistic expression in Latin and Italian prose
and verse were to arise from the finished humanistic
genius of younger men, who likewise had absorbed the
accomplishment of their immediate predecessors.

Some of these younger men were notable artist-schol
ars; one or two of them were extraordinary personalities.
Not merely they surpassed their predecessors in knowl
edge of the classics; they had achieved a more intimate
appropriation and transmutation of them into active
faculty. They can do more with them, or with the
knowledge and discipline acquired through their study.
Beyond this, they can do more with the volgare, than the
men nearer to Petrarch; they have attained, partly
through their classic discipline, a better mastery over the
proper forms of Italian compositions in prose and verse.
They have reached the power to express artistically the
fruits of their discipline and knowledge. Like their
immediate forbears, they owe much to each other, much
to the circumstance that there is an enthusiastic well-
equipped group of them. They help each other in their
education and their work. More particularly Lorenzo
the Magnificent and Politian, whom we especially have in
mind, were assisted by one of the last and most admirable
of Cosimo's proteges, Ficino, who was born in 1433, and
was to be the central luminarv of the Platonic Academy
in Florence. He will be considered in a future chapter,
in connection with the philosophy of the period.
Cosimo's grandson, Lorenzo, merits the epithet of
superman, from his qualities of temperament, his exceed
ing energy, and his notable and diverse powers. He was
an Italian of his time. This most astute and unscrupu
lous politician sang ballads of his own making in the

56 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
streets of his city, equally to please the people and him
self. If he ruled his people, he belonged to them, and
delighted in them, in their songs, in their fetes and dances,
and in the hot embraces of their daughters. He was re
puted as licentious as he was intellectual. The splendid
and unbridled festivals, with which he tamed and de
bauched the Florentines, gave him spontaneous joy. No
mere politician, no merely voracious ruler, but only one
who had, besides, another nature, could have written this
verse from his Trionfo di Bacco e Arianna:
Quant' e bella giovinezza,
Chi si fugge tuttavia!
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
Di doman non c'e certezza.
The lines dance of themselves, as Lorenzo also danced
from delight.
Educated in the classics, instructed in some sort of
antique philosophy, he still loved his own Italian literature
and his Italian tongue. He was a deep admirer of
Dante, a devoted lover and imitator of Petrarch's Can-
zoniere. He defended the volgare, and with such suc
cess, or in such accord with life's insistence to express
itself in the vernacular, that the volgare needed no advo
cate after him to maintain its complete supersession of
Latin as the vehicle of living literature. Lorenzo gives
his voice for the volgare, not only because it is in general
use, but because it is " copiosa e abondante, ed atta a
esprimer bene il senso e il concetto della mente," and be
cause of its " dolcezza ed armonia," and because of its
good repute and fame and the many noble things already
written in it.1
Doubtless Lorenzo's most effective vindication of the
volgare was his use of it in his ballads and other writ
ings; — indeed it had already won the victory in the
greatest of all literary creations of the Italian mind and
mood, the Divina Commedia. One might as well realize
1 See the great Florentine edition of the Opere de Lorenzo de" Medici,
Vol. IV, p. 15, sqq.

LORENZO 57
the essential feebleness and sheer academic quality of
whatever the humanists had said or done to re-classicize
and maintain the literary vitality of Latin. One will
still encounter misprisals of the volgare,2 but they had
no effect upon the period's real progress in thought and
faculty.3 Cosimo was an able financier and politician, and an
intelligent patron of arts and letters. With equal ability
in politics and statecraft, Lorenzo had but casual taste
for banking, and even in politics, with his enormous apti
tude, and under the incessant need to guard his power and
life, he shows the dilettante nature, which is amused by
its task, rather than absorbed in it. Was not Lorenzo
entertained by all the means he used to beguile and rule
the Florentines? Must he not have enjoyed that possibly
last cast of the die, when he went to Naples and put him
self within the power of his enemy, King Ferdinand, and
won a favorable peace from him by sheer virtuosity of
argument ?
Indeed in Lorenzo one has the superman as dilettante,
a character which he shows more clearly in fields other
than politics. A dilettante was he in things spiritual; he
would try the charm of this and that — would turn from
love-songs to Augustine and then again to music. What
a connoisseur he was; and a collector, if not unrivalled,
at least unequalled in Italy; and with what copiousness
he spoke on painting, sculpture, philosophy, poetry and
music! Lavish in his expense, lavish in his patronage of
letters. And yet even as dilettante, he was still the man
of more than human energy, always the superman:
whether in his discourses or his revels, or his licentious
ness, and so markedly in the mass of his vivid poetry.
Political power came to him when he was twenty-one ; and
he was but forty-four when he died, leaving, as some
2 For instance, L. Gyraldus, De Poetis nostrorum temporum, ed. by
Wotke, (Berlin, 1894), P- 4° and p. 85.
3 Yet such a considerable man as Pontano wrote altogether m Latin.
Although born in Umbria, he was much more of a Neapolitan than a
north Italian. See A. Gaspary, Ges. der italienischen Literatur, B'd II,
pp. 301-321.

58 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
think, Italy to break in ruin after him for lack of his
shrewd balancing mind.
Politian's often quoted letter to one Jacobus Anti-
quarius describing Lorenzo's pious death, is to be taken
rather as a comment on the times than on Lorenzo indi
vidually, a comment on the times indeed, that toward the
last gasp a famous doctor should arrive with a medica-
mentum compounded of pearls and all manner of gems.
It was administered, and still the patient died. After
his death, prodigies currently were reported.
A certain Benedetto of Montepulciano, which was in the
Florentine territory, realizing that he was in danger of
assassination from his wicked neighbors, recommended
himself and his children to the protection of Piero, son of
Cosimo, and father of Lorenzo, and was murdered some
months after, as he had feared. His eldest child, Angelo,
was sent to Florence. This was in 1464, when Angelo
was ten years old. Apparently he lived and studied in
poverty for several years, and attended lectures at the
Florentine Studium Generale or University, which, having
started in 132 1, was re-inaugurated in the year of the
great pestilence, 1348, according to Matteo Villani.
Probably the Medici knew of Angelo, and of his study
ing in the School. His precocity attracted the notice of
Ficino, and the flowing translation of the second book of
the Iliad which he sent to Lorenzo in 1470, apparently
led Lorenzo himself, so young and newly come to power
upon his father's death, to remove the " Homeric youth "
from his poor lodgings to a Medici palace. From that
time until his death twenty-four years later this Angelo,
called Poliziano from his birth place, was praised and
fostered as the paragon of poets and scholars. In the
minds, or words, of some of his admirers such was the
masterful excellence of his translation of those few books
of the Iliad, that old Homer, but for his natural patriot
ism, would have wished himself a Latin. Nor has the
name of Politian ever lost its glamor; his name and face,
and the fame of Lorenzo's friendship for him, still touch

POLIZIANO 59
the imaginations of men and women who love Florence.
One need not credit the myth of his having produced
the Giostra, at the age of fourteen. He was over twenty
when he composed that piece, and had written the
" Orfeo " two years before. Soon he began to lecture in
the rooms where he had been a learner, and men of twice
his age came from near and far to listen to his fluent
learning. For Florence it was the very golden time of
letters and Platonism, — those short decades which were
still to pass before Lorenzo's death in 1492. Then came
revulsions and catastrophes. Politian died in 1494, at
the age of forty, having seen the approach of evil days;
and Ficino died, a much older man, in 1499; while the
most astounding phoenix of them all, Pico, prince of
Mirandula, had ascended to his star the same year with
Politian, when but little over thirty.* Savonarola was
left to reform the threatened city, and go to the stake in
I498\ Politian was a Greek scholar. He wrote Latin ad
mirably. He excelled as a poet in the volgare: the
bosom friend of Lorenzo could not pretend to despise the
volgare. Indeed it triumphed distinctly in this humanist
of humanists, in whom, as with Boccaccio, it reaped the
benefit of the classical disciplina. Politian brought Latin
metrical suavity to Italian verse, and his poems became
veritably popular, and took root among the people. He
also, like Lorenzo, often imitated Petrarch's sonnets.
There was not very much originality in his Italian poetry.
Yet through his skill, and because he could draw from
nature as well as from books, his poems on love and
springtime have a delightfulness which is their own.
From his youth, Politian studied and absorbed, and
through his life never ceased to assimiliate, the classics.
Although he lectured on many parts of the philosophy of
Aristotle, and wrote whimsical Praelectiones to his
courses, he insisted in one of these that he was not a
philosopher, but an interpreter, having the equipment of
* On Pico see post Chapter XXX.

60 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
a grammaticus, according to the Greek word, or literatus,
as one should say in Latin : " nee aliud inde mihi nomen
postulo quam grammatici." B Politian was not a serious
Aristotelian; nor was his knowledge of Plato always
worthy of a pupil of Ficino; at least he makes an unac
countable slip in this same Praelectio, when he gives the
Platonic fable of the shadow-seers in the cave, and as
cribes it to Iamblichus, " whom the consensus of Ancient
Greece called divinissimum." Altogether this is rather
dreadful, seeing that " Ancient Greece " knew nothing
of that fourth century hierophant, and we hope would
not have regarded him highly. Yet if Politian culti
vated Iamblichus more than the veritable Plato, he did
but follow the tendency of his time really to read and
enjoy the later Greek and Latin authors. His own
Giostra reeks with Statius, and was modelled on those
poems of eulogy which, with their mingled elements of
myth and lyricism, are to be found in Latin literature
from the time of Statius to its last decline.6
In the Orfeo, Politian did a stroke of genius, by apply
ing the form of the Mystery-representation to the classic
fable of Orpheus and Eurydice. He wrote this short and
pleasant piece for a festival at the Mantuan Court of the
Gonzagas in 1471 ; a lovely little pastoral play he made of '
it, a different and lesser Comus, less transforming, less
transcendent, if one will.7 With the borrowed fable
5 Politian gave the title of " Lamia " to his Praelectio to the course on
the Prior Analytics. It is printed in Del Lungo's Florentia (Florence
!897), pp. 133 sqq. The phrase quoted is from page 169-170.
6 Carducci, p. xlviii, of the introduction to his edition of Le Stanze,
V Orfeo e le Rime (Florence 1863).
7 The pastoral composition which was read far and wide, and influenced
French and English literature, was the Arcadia of the valiant and worthy
scholar, the Neapolitan, Sannazaro. The work belongs to the last decade
of the fifteenth century. It was a pastoral romance in prose and verse.
Its author had Virgil and Theocritus on his tongue's end, and knew the
Greek romances. For Italian antecedents, the work harked back perhaps
to Boccaccio's Filocolo and his Ameto. It was the cleverest of mosaics
of borrowings and imitations, filled with the sentiments and phrases of
the old bucolic poems, which the author used as naturally as if they were
the current words of his language. It also incorporated long extracts
from those poems. It is edited, with introduction and discussions by
Scherillo (Turin, 1888). Tasso's Aminta (1573) and Guarini's Pastor
Fido (1581) are more organic compositions than either the Arcadia or
the Orfeo.

POLIZtANO 61
went many borrowings of classical phrase and sentiment
quite naturally, and all so trippingly and lightly put to
gether, fused into a melodious idyllic play.
Much the same may be said of the Stanze per la Gios-
tra, a more difficult and slowly composed poem, descrip
tive, rather than dramatic. It was intended to immortal
ize the prowess of Giuliano de'Medici in the jousts, and
his love for the gentle Simonetta, whose death followed
not long after. Either that sad event, or the catastrophe
of Giuliano's own assassination in 1478, discouraged the
completion of a poem which may have proved tiresome to
its author. For, as the subject of an elaborate compo
sition, the matter was empty enough, though Politian
made the most of
Le gloriose pompe e' fieri ludi,
commanded by the great house who would thus show
how they had turned from banking to the noble arts of
chivalry. Reading the poem, one can hardly believe one's
eyes, and the learned footnotes of Carducci's edition, to
find its sonorous octaves built of reminiscence, sentiment
and phrase taken from classic poetry; not " taken," per
haps, but rather imbibed, breathed in, appropriated, made
the new poet's own, and breathed forth again, or at least
reissued, in flowing and well molten verse. Lucretius,
Virgil, Ovid, Statius, Claudian, with touches from the
Greeks, are there. But in the Orfeo and the Giostra, as
well as in Politian's love poems and ballads, not merely
sentiments and phrases were borrowed from the antique ;
but more subtly the discipline and order of classic letters
were drawn into Italian poetry.
So the classical literature yielded forms and phrases to
these humanists, through which they gave expression to
their tastes and their own natures, though in borrowed or
imitated language, and, as it were, at second hand. The
spirit of the Orfeo and the Giostra likewise reflects some
thing of the spirit of the antique, as a summer pool,
stirred by a sunny breeze, reflects, with a brightness of
its own, the branches waving overhead.

62 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Politian was not satisfied with merely studying, under
standing, and enjoying the classics. He would follow
and imitate their beauty, reproduce that in words of his
own, whether in Latin or Italian. For he and others of
his time were endeavoring to transform their knowledge
of classic style and substance into a facility of their own
in Latin composition. And then they would bring all
this discipline to the aid of their Italian prose and verse.
This meant to turn knowledge into art, and, in accordance
with the Italian nature, into the art of producing that
which was beautiful in form.
But the endeavor to imitate the phrases, and follow the
patterns, of classic literature tended to make form the
chief consideration, and to disregard substance. Yet
these unoriginal composers were not so conscious of their
emptiness; nor did they really intend to set mere empty
form (were such conceivable) before them as their goal.
An endeavor to be and express themselves is observable
in the best among them, and, curiously enough, in this
paragon of a Politian, who was in fact so unoriginal and
for the most part indifferent to substance. More than
once he reminded his pupils that their own talents and
judgment should not be buried beneath other men's opin
ions. He also adjured them not to blunt the point of
their discourses with overmuch verbosity, nor lose the
thread of argument.8 And again, when someone had said
that his own letters were not Ciceronian, he had answered
" in epistolari stilo silendum prorsus esse de Cicerone."
But if another should accuse him of imitating Cicero, he
might answer : " nihil mihi esse magis in votis quam ut
vel umbram Ciceronis assequar." 9 So the propriety of
following or ignoring Cicero depended on what one was
writing; in letters there is a virtue in negligence. He
blames his friend Paulus Cortesius, a great stickler for
Ciceronian Latinity, for blind imitation: and if it be said:
8 Cf. Del Lungo, Florentia, p. 131.
9 Omnia Opera Angeli Politiani (Venice, Aldus 1498) Ep. 1 to Petrus
Medici.

POLIZIANO 63
" Thou dost not speak like Cicero — non exprimis Cice-
ronem — what then! for I am not Cicero. Yet, as I
opine, I express myself — me tamen exprimo." 10
Politian, dead at forty, was also a wonderful scholar;
one is tempted to call him an " elegant " scholar, but
without using that term disparagingly. His sheer schol
arship is shown in his Miscellanea, a work of the nature of
Valla's Elegantiae, and composed of matter from the lec
tures given at the University. It discussed all sorts of
questions affecting scholarship: the origins of classic in
stitutions and ceremonies, the significance of fables, words
and their uses, even spellings. His mind was clear and
penetrating; his treatment pertinent to the matter; and
he showed a true scholarly aversion to pretense and sub
terfuge. He was an admirable critic and restorer of bet
ter readings in corrupt texts. The Miscellanea met the
needs of an advancing scholarship, just as, some centuries
before, the needs of a scantier knowledge were met by
orthographies and grammars. Politian was also a vali
ant translator from the Greek. Besides those early
glorious translations from the Iliad, he rendered into
Latin Herodian's History, the Enchiridion of Epictetus,
and the Problemata of Alexander Aprodisias.
Whatever a man may say, the truth of him lies in what
he does preponderantly. And preponderantly Politian
was the ideal Italian humanist, wonderfully clever in his
faculty of giving beauty, perhaps a new beauty, to his
assimilation of classic sentiments and phrases; not deeply
caring for the validity or seriousness of the substance, but
beyond others clever in reaching the form which pleases,
whatsoever be the content which is therein beautified.11
10 In Lib. VIII of epistles, same edition.
11 Francesco de Sanctis calls Politian " la piu spiccata espressione della
letteratura in questo secolo. Ci e gia l'immagine schietta del letterato,
fuori di ogni participazione alia vita publica, vuoto di ogni coscienza
religiosa o politica o morale. ... II Poliziano aveva uno squisito senti-
mento della forma nella piena indifferenza di ogni contenuto." From
page 367 of Storia della Letteratura italiana (Naples, 1870) — whatever
else one reads for information, De Sanctis always should be read for his
impressive suggestiveness.

64 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Withal one may appreciate his excellent judgment by con
trasting the opinions of his young friend who disagreed
with him.
Paulus Cortesius, to give his name in Latin form, as
he would have preferred, was a younger member of the
Florentine group of humanists. He had upbraided Poli
tian for the lack of Ciceronian qualities in his letters, and
had been taunted by him for his own ape-like imitative
habits. He defended his implicit copying of Cicero, but
added that he preferred to be called his filius or alumnus,
rather than his Simia! In 1490 he dedicated to Lorenzo
a Dialogus de hominibus doctis12 which spoke (rather
rashly) of past and present Florentine notables. To the
learned, says he, Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio are al
ready antiquated. The first is as an old picture with its
colors gone, while its lines still please. His poem was
wonderful — if he had only put his marvellous thoughts
in Latin ! As for Petrarch, a man, of course, greatly to
be admired, his rough style is scarcely Latin; his matter
was composed diligently, rather than elegantly. Natu
rally the " ornamenta scribendi were lacking to a man
born in faece omnium saeculorum."
Cortesius then censures Boccaccio's Latin and Coluc-
cio's, which never laid aside asperitas and maestitia.
Bruni was the " first to bring a certain rhythmic tone to
that rough way of writing; and he certainly gave us some
thing rather brilliant . . . weighty and judicious in
everything, for those times he was not uncultivated."
His History was better than his funeral orations because
" there remained no funeral orations from the ancient
authors for him to imitate." One may praise him as
learned and eloquent, and the best in his time, " but you
know the way of our men to approve of nothing unless it
is refined, and elegant and polished and embellished."
Incidentally, the Dialogue states that " Latin letters had
suffered from the destruction of Greece (i.e. the " fall of
Constantinople "), since much was brought by the Greeks
12 Printed in a volume entitled Philippi Villani liber de civitatis Flor-
entiae famosis civibus etc., ed. by G. C. Galletti (Florence 1847).

ARIOSTO 65
to Italy, and our scholars were wont to go to Byzantium
for study, as to the home of learning."

II
Among the literary productions of the late fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries, certainly one, perhaps two,
and possibly three poems have proved a perennial source
of entertainment. They made use of that facile and effi
cient Italian octave which the latest of the three authors
perfected to the admiration of the world, in spite of a fool
named Bembo, who advised him, Ariosto, to write the
Orlando Furioso in Latin! This most delightful of
Italian narrative poems was finally finished and revised the
year before the author's death in 1533. It had been
written in an Italy devastated by the lustful struggles of
Spaniards, French and Germans. Boiardo, the noble
count of Scandiano, had completed the Orlando Inna-
morato in 1494, ending his glad chivalric poem with a cry
of sorrow: —
Mentre che io canto, o Iddio redentore,
Vedo la Italia tutta a ferro e a foco.
And Pulci had finished putting together the matter of 77
Morgante in 1483, eleven years before the fatal French
invasion. Pulci was a Florentine, belonging to the Medici circle ;
and as the composition of his poem was suggested by
Lucrezia, the mother of Lorenzo, so its successive parts
appear to have been recited at Lorenzo's table, presum
ably before such intimates as Politian and Ficino. If
these made an exceedingly clever literary circle, they were
not a knightly company; nor was the Medici house either
aristocratic or chivalric in its tastes and temper, any more
than in its dealings with men and states. Luigi Pulci
himself was a genial and comic soul, cast in no heroic
mould; and one need not wonder that the martial and
adventurous elements in his poem should be outweighed

66 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
by the more jovial. The heroic note stirs indeed through
his recital of the route of Roncevalles; but who could tell
that unheroically? The half comic giant Morgante
sways the poem, and the lesser but wholly comic and aban
doned Margutte. Pulci used the matter of the French
Chansons de Geste, as it had passed into Italian compo
sitions in prose and verse. He also drew from the popu
lar recitations of the same matter, which delighted the
Italian folk of town and country; for the legends of Char
lemagne and his paladins had long since won a new home
and a new life with the Italian people. Pulci did not
turn the heroic to burlesque with satirical intent; but the
people's loud laughter pervaded the stuff he drew from,
and he was no knightly prude, that he should suppress it.
The poem is serious or comic to suit the episode; certain
passages show a philosophic knowledge which has led
the critics to find in them the hand of the author's friend,
the famous Toscanelli. For its frequent classical allu
sions, one need not think of any special contribution from
Politian. Pulci was scholar enough to supply them, and
make Orlando apostrophize his friends already dead upon
the field, — O terque, quaterque beati !
The chivalric epic was not to come to its true florescence
in Medicean Florence, but around the more castellated
and feudal court of the Este at Ferrara. Matteo Boi
ardo was the honored liegeman of that ducal house, from
whom he held the governorships of Modena and of
Reggio. The same house was to be the patron, niggardly
and exacting as he thought, of Ariosto. Both had
proved themselves men of achievement in Latin letters as
well as in Italian poetry before setting out upon their
great poems. These were to be the chief romantic crea
tions of the time. The knowledge and attainment of the
period entered into their composition, palpably appearing
in their matter, but more vitally in the disciplined faculties
of their authors.
As for antique allusions, personages, episodes, enough
of them were taken into these poems, and romanticized
by Boiardo, and by Ariosto made utterly his own. Then

ARIOSTO 67
there was the mediaeval material, and the somewhat di
shevelled and fantasticized mediaeval atmosphere.
Charlemagne and his paladins, domesticated everywhere
in Italy, pressed upon the poets. Those personages were
too romantically real and insistent to be passed by, and too
popular. They were fictile, plastic, ubiquitous in their
gallopings and voyages, unheld by any land, unhindered
by sea or mountain; as early as the twelfth century those
paladins and their emperor had travelled through the
East, encountering strange adventures in Constantinople !
Then their stories, their progressively romanticizing
chansons, went on along the usual way of mediaeval
legend, passing from crusading and feudal war to giants
and enchantments and wandering damsels, jousts, sword-
encounters, and adventures everywhere occurring for their
own delightful sakes. Boiardo and Ariosto were also
steeped in the tales of Arthur's Knights, whose curvetting
careers never had any real purpose or set aim, beyond the
joy of adventure and romantic love. Boiardo first, and
following him, Ariosto, wherever the Carolingian cycle
had not become sufficiently romantic, could readily intro
duce Arthurian adventure, Arthurian love and exquisite
Arthurian courtesy :
Amore e quel che dona la vittoria
E dona ardire al cavaliero armato.
This chivalric love which enveloped Arthur's court, fur
nished a leading motive in the composition of both the
Innamorato and the Furioso. Boiardo was a leal-hearted
gentleman, with whom love and courtesy were moving
sentiments. The quiet humor, which was also his, occa
sionally broadened to laughter in his poem. That had a
sufficiently insistent plot. Its whole matter, antique,
mediaeval, or invented and well imagined by the poet, was
made into an artful epic, congruous in tone and color.
Borrowed strains were put together with a new art, and
made to live again with a new life.
What that new art was, and whence that new life game,

68 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
is clearer in the Orlando Furioso. This was the last
issue of the late antique and mediaeval love-and-adven-
ture motive. It was also a harmony of all its elements,
and a perfected work of art. If indeed its plot seems to
take up with each new fancy, and wander over the fields of
the imagination, it nevertheless passes very happily from
field to forest, and over seas and mountains, and even
through the entertaining and instructive regions of the
moon. Every incident, every inwoven tale, is aptly placed
and happily composed. The whole forms an ample can
vas of delight; no mosaic either, but a well tempered pic
ture, with values and perspectives, and flooded with the
atmosphere of high romance. And what compass and
inclusion! Its structure was of mediaeval legend; it car
ried easily old matter from classic Greece and Rome, from
the early Christian ages too ; chivalry was there, long since
emerged from the dour actuality of feudalism, and moving
in a spacious and joyful unreality, such as never was nor
could ever be, yet satisfying to the whims of mortal
fantasy. This still will hanker for a magic lance to over
throw foes so easily, for a horn to scare armies from
their trenches, a ring to make invisible, a hippogriph to
carry one to the moon; and for the chances too of
draughts from fountains of quick love and rude aversion.
Such fantasy would have youth and beauty everywhere,
with love and wrath and courtesy, and delicious fighting,
best joy of all.
Over all his scenes the poet smiles with an artist's sym
pathy, and with an irony free from bitterness. There is
neither malice nor denunciation in his satire, but sheer
fun, as when Michael searches the cloisters through for
Silence, quite in vain, and readily finds Discord; or
when Astolfo flies to the moon and journeys through it
seeking the lost wits of Orlando, finding there most of
his own as well ! Forever famous stories !
Ariosto wrote his poem in a shattered Italy. How he
must have taken refuge in it ! It had the truth and valid
ity of art, achieved through constantly revising labors.
It was the creation of an untiring genius, which had

TASSO 69
grasped the virtue of all that his and the preceding Italian
generation had been acquiring. That had passed into
the strength and temperament and poetic faculty of
Ariosto. Touching his subject-matter, how could he, the
poet-child of his age, have treated it save with an artist's
sympathy and with art's irony? There was in Italy no
deep sentiment of chivalric honor, and little loyalty to
anything, except the beauty of life and literature and art.
The Furioso was no fierce epic of crusading faith, or of
any faith at all. Its spirit was as the spirit of the time
and land, playing with a past of chivalry which had never
been Italian, transforming it into a poem. Irony was
the means and method of this poet's art. Through it
alone could the poem be true to the convictions and lack
of convictions of the poet and his time. For the poem
was the poet's truth; his aim, to make it fit, delightful,
beautiful. Only through gentle plastic irony could he
fashion the matter of his subject to the kind of epic which
Ariosto in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, under
the patronage of the court of Ferrara, could create.
Ariosto died in 1533. Tasso, born eleven years after,
closed his unhappy eyes in 1595. But his work had been
done years before. He had written his smoothest lyrics ;
the lovely pastoral drama, the Aminta, was given in July,
1573, on a luxurious island in the Po near Ferrara; and
the Gerusalemme liberata was completed two years later.
Ariosto's Furioso offered the still surviving truth of ar
tistic excellence. Tasso, with a different temperament,
was separated from Ariosto by an altered time. The
moment was less favorable for the composition of a ro
mantic epic. Italy, sombre beneath the Spanish pall,
trembled before the Inquisition and the terror of the
Turk, while dully stiffening her sinews with the revived
and sharply defined Catholicism of the Council of Trent.
Humane literature was critical, meticulous, empty. But
a genius was there and would produce a poem, despite the
stifling environment and the ligaments of criticism, which
the poet's mind accepted too.

70 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
For Tasso was a self-conscious critic, and morbidly
deferential to the criticism of others, as well as fearful of
offending the Inquisition. But, at least in his young
years, he was an unquenchable and incomparable poet.
He was gifted with melody of language, and an imagina
tion overflowing with delightful images. Reading had
strengthened his mind with the discipline of classic liter
ature, and had enriched it with the wealth of fable. De
fining his purpose in his own critical prose, he said that
he had set himself the task of composing an epic having
its unity in the dominance of a single theme or " action,"
but diversified by chivalric and romantic episode, and with
every incident so organically interwoven that to omit a
single one or change its place would ruin all. The poet's
blood was warm; he drew breath in the sentiments of love
and passion; he delighted in the bewitchments of romance,
which art might make convincing. He was a potent and
very conscious artist.
The instant peril of the Turk in which the poet lived,
gave him his theme, the First Crusade. His chivalric
and romantic power rendered the theme in epically splen
did verse, and festooned it with enchanting episodes. As
conceived and written, the poem told the passions and
subtler sentiments of love, and made romance and en
chantments live for their own delightful sake. After
wards compunctions seized the poet, and perhaps fears
touching the opinions of Inquisitors. So he bethought
him of allegory, which had not been within his first inten
tion. He saved his enchanted woods and gardens, and
the molten words uttered in them, by moralizing their
significance. He even imagined a concurrent allegory as
the spiritual double of his romantic epic.13 Such in
vested meaning was not far to seek; for he could draw it
from his own deeply moral and religious nature.
So the poem passed through many perils; from the
critics to whom Tasso submitted it, from his own morbid
13 See the " discorso proemiale " to Solerti's critical edition of the
Gerusalemme liberata, vol. I, pp. 37 sqq., and extracts from Tasso's state
ments given there.

TASSO 71
fears and the qualms of rather friendly Inquisitors. But
it was saved, and was to live for the world in its unde-
stroyed charm and beauty. Too seriously religious for a
chivalric romance, too flowering with romantic episode for
an epic, it still shaped its variety to the unity of a pervad
ing nobility of statement and an unfailing music of diction.
A gentle element of elegy preserved its hardiest episodes
from baseness. The result was something as uniquely
beautiful in Italian poetry as the Faerie Queen in English.

CHAPTER IV
MACHIAVELLI AND GUICCIARDINI AND THEIR
FORERUNNERS
The disillusionments and civic deterioration which, to
some extent, were both the cause and the result of the
stricken state of Italy, could not fail to impress certain
scholars who had share in the renewed and larger inti
macy with the classics, which we have been following.
Such would naturally consider the fortunes of their cities
in the light of their classic reading. Ever since the re
vival of Justinian's Digest in the twelfth century by the
Bologna School, imperial and royal statecraft had looked
to the principles of the Civil Law; and since the time of
Aquinas the Politics of Aristotle had become part of the
political consciousness of Europe. Why not now apply
the lessons of the actual political experience of the an
cients, as well as their civic wisdom more formally ex
pressed? So it seemed at least to Niccolo Machiavelli,
whose, practically instructed yet generalizing genius set
itself to draw from Roman history the closer teaching of
the actual courses of affairs at Rome, and to deduce from
them the imperative logic of facts — the forza delle cose.
Such lessons and examples of political consequences this
Florentine gathered in his Discourses upon the histories
of Livy, and brought to sharper, but more questionable,
expression in his Prince.

There had been bold, if less instructed, forerunners
in the field of political observation and theorizing. The
boldest had been Nogaret, a Provencal of heretical ex
traction ; then Pierre Dubois, a. Frenchman and interna-
73

ITALIAN PUBLICISTS 73
tional theorist; there had been the Englishman Occam,
and the important pair of co-workers, John of Jandun
and Marsiglio of Padua.
The relation of the Church to secular government was
par excellence the political controversy of the Middle
Ages. In the course of it, the claims of the Papacy were
extended to a universal absolutism, while Emperors and
Kings sought to maintain their co-ordinate if not superior
authority. Unity was always dear to mediaeval thinking,
and thought moved in allegories as readily as in facts.
Mankind was conceived as a great organism; from which
idea flowed endless allegory. Disputants in the contro
versy between Pope and Emperor argued from mankind
as a mystical body whereof the head was Christ. Should
this body have one head or two, the papacy alone, or
papacy and Empire? Or could a single head be found
above the two in Christ? Thereupon the body-analogy
was carried out into the imagined details of physiological
function. Curiously enough the most elaborate construc
tion of the allegory comes at last from Nicholas of Cusa,
whose life does not fall within the Middle Ages, and
whose thoughts presaged much that came to expression
in the years following his death.1
But the men who seem more like Machiavelli's prede
cessors cared little for the arguments of allegory; and as
against the authority of the Canon Law set up the im
perial law of Rome. They were actors or pleaders in
two notable political conflicts which marked the passing
of mediaeval politics. In the first, the national French
monarchy under Philip the Fair broke the power of the
universal papal monarchy under Boniface VIII: the sec
ond was that noisy battle between the Avignonese Pope,
John XXII, and the would-be Emperor, Louis of Bavaria.
It was in 1302 that Philip summoned the States Gen
eral in order to assure himself that the French nation
stood behind him in his struggle with the indomitable and
raging octogenarian Boniface. Assured of his subjects,
1 Cf . post, Chapter XXX,

74 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
he won the victory through his lawyer ministers, who up
held the royal claims with the authority of the civil law.
Among them was Guillaume de Nogaret, learned, astute,
and daring beyond the thoughts of others. Armed with
a letter of credit and some royal vague authority, Nogaret
went with one or two confidential aids to Italy. His pur
pose was to kidnap the Pope and carry him to Lyons.
He enlisted Sciarra Colonna and other desperate charac
ters in the plot, and in September, 1303, made the famous
attempt at Anagni, the Pope's natal town, where the aged
despot was staying at the papal palace, and was just
about to launch against Philip a final bull of excommuni
cation and dethronement. It was never launched. No
garet and his fellows broke in, seized and insulted and
made a prisoner of Boniface. To carry him off to Lyons
was absurdly beyond their power, and they were soon
fleeing for life; but his authority was broken, and within
a fortnight he died in senile rage. Nogaret and the King
afterwards forced this pope's successor to anathematize
his memory, and free from his excommunications the dese-
crators of the papacy.2
No literal dare-devil like Nogaret, another legist,
Pierre Dubois, devised a rather far-off scheme, in which
the rights of kings should be exalted, peace assured among
Christian peoples, the papacy be put in its right place,
and the Holy Land recovered from the infidels. He
called his work De Recuperatione Terre Sancte.3 It ad
vocated peace among Christian princes as the first step
toward the recovery of the Holy Land, the nominal ob
ject of the book. There should be a council of the
princes and the pope, to adjust all differences. Whoever
breaks the peace by war with brother Catholics shall be
punished by the pope, but not excommunicated, since that
2 The whole story of Nogaret is told with consummate skill by Renan
in his contribution to the Histoire litteraire de la France, Tome XXVII;
republished in Etudes sur la politique religieuse de Philippe le Bel
(Paris 1899).
8 Written probably in 1306; edited in Collection de Textes, etc., by
Langlois (Paris 1891). See also Renan, Pierre Dubois, in the same volume
with his Nogaret. In his youth, Dubois heard both Aquinas and his
Averroist opponent Siger at Paris. He mentions Roger Bacon,

ITALIAN PUBLICISTS 75
is merely to augment the number of damned souls, and is
less efficacious than temporal punishments. In the case
of disputes between potentates who acknowledge no su
perior, the Council shall appoint arbitrators to hear and
determine.4 The work proceeds, devising reforms and remedies for
political ills. For example: Since the possession and
government of the patrimony of St. Peter has caused so
many wars, the pope should hand it over to some secular
potentate in return for a fixed charge payable to him in
some place he shall select; the revenues of the Cardinals,
which are far beyond their needs, should in part be applied
to the recovery of the Holy Land; the temporalities of
bishops and other secular clergy, as well as of the regu
lar orders, should be turned over to lay management, in
return for a suitable fixed income; the celibacy of the
clergy is undesirable; schools for the instruction of girls
should be established, and the present revenues of the
nunneries applied to their support. Dubois did not balk
at the thought of tearing down and building anew: " It
is scarcely possible to discover anything in this world that
will prove good and desirable in every time and place and
for all people. So the laws should vary with places, times
and people. Many philosophers have taught the expe
diency of this, and the Lord and Master of all sciences,
and of the Holy Fathers and the philosophers, has not
feared to proclaim it, since many things which He ap
pointed in the Old Testament He changed in the New." B
The victory of Philip and the fatal migration to Avig
non marked the beginning of the end of the papacy's
spiritual headship of western Europe. Its prestige was
4 In these days of a League of Peace the passage is of interest: . . .
quod concilium statuat arbitros religiosos aut alios eligendos, viros pru-
dentes et expertos ac fideles, qui jurati tres judices prelates et tres alios
pro utraque parte, locupletes, et tales quod sit verisimile ipsos non posse
corrumpi amore, odio, timore, concupiscentia, vel alias, qui convenientes
in loco ad hoc aptiori, jurati strictissime, datis antequam conveniant
articulis petitionum et defensionum singularum, summarie et de piano,
rejectis primo superfluis et ineptis, testes et instrumenta recipiant, diligen-
tissime examinent. De Recup. § 12. If one of the parties rejects the
award the matter may be sent to the Pope.
5 De Recup. § 48, p. 39 of Langlois' edition; also cited by Renan.

76 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
impaired forever ; legitimate reasons for its universal au
thority could not continue in a predominantly French city,
with no tradition behind it. There was danger lest the
papacy become a French appanage. Its revenues de
creased, and the means to which the Avignon popes re
sorted to recruit their finances strengthened the opposition
to their claims. The Minorite Order was estranged by a
bitter polemic concerning the poverty of Christ and all
true Christians. Moreover, the growing force of nation
ality was inimical to church unity; while the revivified an
tique conception of the State countered the papal authority
in men's minds. There seemed no longer any need for
the universal papal tutelage, maintained so usefully
through the Middle Ages. The Great Schism which
broke out upon the return of Urban VI to Rome, and
lasted from 1378 to 1417, was not merely the adventi
tious and deplorable result of an angry clash of tempers
and interests between that intemperate pope and his
worldly Cardinals, who were mostly French. It sprang
from the stay at Avignon, and from all the forces and
conditions which had compelled that sojourn. Indeed as
one reflects upon the energies of national growth which
were to break this pope-dominated Church unity, one
comes to view the whole Avignon episode, with the de
pendence of the popes on France, their hostility to the
Empire, their weakness, the Great Schism, and all that it
brought forth, as necessitated under peculiarly obvious
compulsion. The conflict which those partisans of France, John
XXII (13 16-1334), Benedict XII (1334-1342), and
Clement VI (1342-1352), waged against the German
Empire, under Louis of Bavaria, was a noisy battle. Al
though Louis's unsteady nature brought upon him dis
grace and defeat, victory proved pernicious to the papacy,
by aggravating its French bias, and by stiffening its
secularization to the detriment of its spiritual authority.
The papal victory was a victory only over " the Empire,"
an idea to which no actual might of arms and loyalty re
sponded. But there were powerful German princes, Ger-

ITALIAN PUBLICISTS 77
man cities, and a German people, all becoming alienated
from the papacy.
In this last lost battle of " the Empire," the champions
of the State set forth arguments which anticipated later
thinking. Occam, a fearless scholastic destroyer and in
itiator, took his stand against the papacy's worldly lord
ship and the pope's supremacy in matters of the faith.
More effective enemies of the papacy were Marsiglio of
Padua and John of Jandun. Something is known of each
of them. John of Jandun was clever, a learned Aristo
telian, and withal a sensitive soul, as appears from his
appreciation of the charms of Senlis, where he lived for
a time; and then from his vivid sketch of the impression
made on his provincial eye by Paris, with its motley street-
life, its overwhelming cathedral — terribilissima, and yet
such that the soul knows no satiety in gazing — and
above all with its glorious university. Paris then, as
now, was the city of the mind, as this scholar realized.6
But with his eye fixed also on advancement, he did not
refrain from fulsome praise of Charles le Bel, whose
deafness to his by no means mute appeal turned John
eventually to the service of the German monarch.
This was in 1323, and within a year John had helped
his greater friend Marsiglio to achieve that veritable
hammer of the papacy, the Defensor Pads. Marsiglio,
in quest of emolument and fame, had reached Paris more
than ten years before, and had been honored with the
post of rector of the University. From a poem by his
friend, the Paduan Mussato, he seems to have been
trained in medicine and physics, and exceedingly bent on
self-advancement. He also made the trip to Avignon,
and both he and John obtained favors from John XXII,
before they composed their book. There is no means
of determining the share of each in the work, though one
may surmise that John supplied the Aristotelian learning,
and Marsiglio the constructive plan and the envenomed
6 What is known of John of Jandun (and of his De Laudibus Parisius)
as well as of Marsiglio, is skillfully put together in Tome XXXIII (1906)
of the Histoire litteraire de la France, pp. 538-623.

78 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
thought that the papacy was in its very nature the chief
disturber of that peace of the world which it was the aim
of the Defensor Pads to establish. As the decades wore
on after their deaths, fame ascribed the leading role to
Marsiglio.7 Divided into three parts, the work sets forth in logi?
cal continuity the authors' conception of the State, then
their ideas of the Church and its relations to the State,
and finally the conclusions from their argument. Peace
is society's sovereign boon: the chief disturber is the
papacy. The Church should be made into a properly
subordinated department or function of the State. This
is the burden of the argument of this lengthy book.8
7 As to the critical insight of our authors, the worst that can be said is
that neither perceived that the " Donation of Constantine," which they
discussed and sought to minimize, was a forgery.
8 The usual, though unsatisfactory, edition is in Goldast's De Monorchia,
II, folio 154-312. Some of the points of the argument are as follows;
According to Scripture as well as Aristotle, the maker or primary effective
cause of law is the people or its duly chosen better part (pars valentior).
Def. Pacis I, 12. The people may express its will directly or through
representatives; it appoints the executive, that is, the Ruler, and may
depose him. The ruler is a part of the greater whole, — pars principans;
he is bound by the laws, and his government will be best as it best con
forms to the will and consent subditorum suorum. Marsiglio thought that
the whole multitude, because comprising the more intelligent part, was
as capable of wise legislation as the intelligent part acting alone. It is
for the ruler to appoint and direct all public functionaries according to
law. For the preservation of order he should have at his disposal a
moderate military force, but not enough to make him a tyrant. Marsiglio
advocates an elective monarchy, and his arguments lead on to the final
conclusion of Part One, that political disturbances are due to the improper
claims and actions of the papacy, striving for control, instead of permitting
the Church to subordinate itself to the State of which it is a part. He
sets forth the successive papal usurpations. He doubts whether Peter
ever was in Rome, and argues that in any case he had no greater au
thority than the other apostles. The constitution of the papal hierarchy
is examined and its secular authority disproved. This is the second part
of the Defensor. The last part states conclusions: The People are the
ultimate human sovereign. They legislate through their chosen repre
sentatives; unanimity being an impractical demand, a majority vote is
valid; the ruler is the people's executive, answerable to the laws; the
priesthood has only spiritual authority; it is subject to human laws;
priests and bishops should be chosen by the people ; the Church should own
nothing, and have the use only of necessities; the primacy of the Popes
can properly rest only on the delegation of power by a Council; the
Bible is the foundation of the Christian faith, and Councils, not popes,
should decide points of doctrine; only the community or the Council can
excommunicate; heretics should be punished only when they transgress
human laws: no one should be forced in his belief; (Dei. Pac., II, 9) men

ITALIAN PUBLICISTS 79
A year or two after the composition of the Defensor
Pads, its authors presented themselves with their book at
the Court of Louis of Bavaria. They were his counsel
lors during his descent into Italy. His coronation at
Rome, where he received from the hands of a Colonna
the crown bestowed by the Roman People, his creation
of an anti-pope, and other acts of his in Italy, carried
out the principles of the Defensor Pads. Apparently
the Emperor made John of Jandun, bishop of Ferrara,
and Marsiglio, archbishop of Milan; but whether they
actually enjoyed these princely offices is doubtful. Tur
moil and trouble resulted from Louis's Italian expedition,
till that weak personage was driven to make his peace
with the pope, and vow to punish these heretics, John
and Marsiglio. This was in 1336; but John had in fact
died long before; and Marsiglio seems to have continued
in Louis's service as late as 1342.
The Defensor Pads did not die with its authors. To
the popes it was a stumbling block and scandal, worthy
of repeated condemnation; while to men who opposed the
papacy it remained a store of living arguments. A papal
bull of 1377 declared that Wyclif took his heresies from
it. Through the Great Schism and the Conciliar move
ment, men drew on it. Nicholas of Cusa used it in his
De Concordantia Catholica (1431); Matthew Doring
drew from it in his Confutatio Primatus Papae (1443).
Later still, Luther apparently used it and other Protestant
leaders, possibly even Calvin.9

II
Marsiglio and these other fourteenth century publicists
were students of antiquity and observers of affairs. To
them the papacy was an obstacle to the peace and welfare
of the world. Keenest of Italian haters of the papacy,
should not be held to the Mosaic law, but only to the precepts of the New
Testament. Cf. Riezler, Die Iiterarischen Widersacher der Papste, p. 225
sqq. (Leipsic 1874).
9 See James Sullivan in American Hist. Review, Vol. II, (1896-97);
also Hist. lit. de la France, T. XXXIII, p. 622.

80 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Machiavelli also gained his knowledge of politics from
his experience of affairs and a constant study of antiquity.
The writings of the ancients furnished him with ideas,
and suggestions for their expression. With matter from
his own genius, he still largely expresses himself through
the thoughts of the old writers, and conforms his argu
ment to the events of ancient history. In his dedication
of The Prince, he presents to Lorenzo, grandson of the
Magnificent, this most precious " cognizione delle azioni
degli uomini grandi, imparata da me con una lunga spe-
rienza delle cose moderne, ed una continova lezione delle
antiche." Born in Florence in 1469, he received the usual educa
tion of the son of a respectable family. The first real
news of him is from a letter written in his thirtieth year,
maintaining the rights of his family to the patronage of
a certain church. Savonarola was burned in the piazza
on the twenty-third of May, 1498, and soon afterwards,
the Republic of Florence, being engaged in the long strug
gle to reconquer Pisa, employed Machiavelli as secre
tary to the Ten. He was briskly occupied in the Pisan
war, as appears by his Discorso sopra le cose di Pisa.
Next, the Republic sent him with another on a mission
to placate the temper of Louis XII of France, ruffled
at the lack of progress of the war, in which his mercenary
Swiss had played no glorious role. Their conduct, ap
parently, convinced Machiavelli that a State's only sure
defence is its own citizen soldiery — if such soldiery
would only fight!
Fie was sent the next year to Duke Valentino, com
monly called Cesare Borgia, whose doings were causing
anxiety to Florence. After this, in 1502, the people of
the Val di Chiana, and more especially the townsfolk of
Arezzo, rebelling, this thoughtful secretary sought to ap
ply the lessons of Roman experience, in his paper on How
to treat the rebel peoples of the Val di Chiana. " Lucius
Furius Camillus," he began, " having conquered the rebel
lious peoples of Latium, entered the Senate and said: I
have done what is possible through war; it is now for

ITALIAN PUBLICISTS 81
you, Conscript Fathers, to ensure the quiet of these rebels
in the future." And the Senate generously pardoned the
conquered, making an exception only " of two cities, one
of which they demolished, and in the other replaced the
inhabitants with men faithful to Rome." With such an
effective policy as this, Machiavelli contrasts the folly of
half-measures, especially making the point that while the
Florentines had done so much to persecute and anger the
people of Arezzo, they had left the city intact, and a
source of danger to Florence.
In the latter part of 1502, Machiavelli was again sent
to Duke Valentino in the Romagna, to watch his move
ments and report, a delicate and perilous task. He came
to admire this fearless and unscrupulous man, and took
many lessons to himself from his acts and bold successes,
and at last from his downfall through the unexpected con
junction of two facts, the death of his father, Pope Alex
ander VI, and his own desperate illness at the time.
From these missions, and others to Pope Julius II,
Machiavelli gained knowledge of political affairs ; and in
1506 and 1507 he realized his darling project of a Flor
entine citizen militia; but what it would accomplish was
still hidden ! There were yet more missions before him,
to the Emperor Maximilian, and to France; and he was
otherwise kept busy in the affairs of the Republic.
Things were confused and violent in Italy; with leagues
and breakings of them, as well as fighting, among Im
perialists and French, and Pope Julius II, protagonist in
the restless strife. Machiavelli proved himself an apt
diplomat, appearing at his best in his letters and reports.
His acuteness of intellect exceeded his powers of action,
and even his skill in devising efficient measures. Like
Italy herself, he was a. mind, understanding much, seem
ingly unprejudiced and clear-seeing. His own Florence
was involved in politics beyond the control of a rather
impotent Republic honey-combed with Medicean influ
ences. The Spaniards were approaching; Prato was
sacked, Florence came to terms; she was in fact in the
power of the Medici before their palpable restoration.

82 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The heads of the house were Cardinal Giovanni (after
wards Pope Leo X) and his brother Giuliano, sons of
the Magnificent. As for Machiavelli, if he entertained
hopes of a Republic under the Medici, with himself an
active official in the same, he was to be disappointed.
Just what he did and said in those trying times is not as
clear as what was done to him; for in November, 15 12,
he was stripped of all his offices, constrained in his lib
erty, and the next year, being in some way compromised
by a conspiracy against the Medici, he was imprisoned
and examined under torture. He was soon released, but
write and speak and flatter as he might, he was not taken
into their confidence nor given employment. It was only
many years afterwards, in 1526 and 1527, when his life
was closing, and the affairs of Italy were hopeless, that
Machiavelli, with busy patriotism, again circulated among
the men and things he could not influence. Shortly after
the sack of Rome, he died broken-hearted over the mis
fortunes of the land and the realization that his Florence
did not desire his services, although the Medici had been
again expelled. It was in the intervening years of rus
tication and straitened inactivity at his villa in the Flor
entine contado, that this man who never was of great
importance in affairs, produced the works which assured
him a permanent position among the world's publicists.
From the days of Rome, the quick Italian mind had
never been unoccupied with politics. Italian cities were
the homes of political discussion, as well as conflict.
What politicians were the Medici and many of the Popes!
And that great reforming Friar, Savonarola, who looked
through shows and shams to sheer reality, which might
be clothed for him in the mystic light of holiness, had a
shrewd mind for practical measures of government.
The constitution adopted by Florence in 1494—5, so
largely following the recommendations of Savonarola,
was excellent, and his tax reforms became the enduring
basis of a system tolerable for centuries. He looked to
the Venetian Constitution as a model. Its stability and

ITALIAN PUBLICISTS 83
efficiency had long excited admiration, and were yet to
endure for the wonder of centuries.
The Venetian ambassadors were noted for their re
ports to their government of what they saw and heard
in foreign courts. These were veritable sources of po
litical suggestion and enlightenment. Ambassadors or
lesser emissaries from other Italian cities made like re
ports. Machiavelli's were clear and penetrating, but
none equalled those which his younger Florentine con
temporary, Guicciardini, sent from Spain, or there wrote
down for his own and others' information. They con
tained detailed accounts of the general and particular
conditions of that land, its inhabitants and customs, re
sources and military power. Guicciardini was a match
less observer of the concrete human fact. Machiavelli's
observations might be deflected to the constructive uses of
his thoughts. While the insight of two men may be
equal, they will nevertheless see and treat facts differently
when one is interested in their practical bearing and the
other treats them as material for intellectual construction.
Guicciardini never would have reasoned from the career
of Cesare Borgia, as Machiavelli did in The Prince.
The latter was at his best when analyzing the records of
history, and drawing general inferences from them, as in
his Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio.10
Machiavelli was not a close professional student, but
a constructive thinker. In critical knowledge, he was,
for instance, far inferior to Valla, who had noticed some
of Livy's inconsistencies, and would not have casually
referred to the new city built by Aeneas, as Machiavelli
did. The latter's mind was not fixed upon such investi
gations. He accepted Livy implicitly. Yet one will rec
ognize the originality of his analysis of situations and
results, and may conclude that it would be hard to find,
all things considered, a more interesting consideration of
the causes of the greatness of the Roman Republic, than
i° There is an English translation of the Discorsi by N. H. Thompson
(Kegan Paul Trench & Co., 1883).

84 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
these Discorsi. Their view of human nature and its mo
tives may be unsatisfactory, yet none can fail to see the
large validity of the author's consideration of the human
motives and grounds of action which must be reckoned
with by those whose business is with the welfare and sta
bility of states. His method is to establish general
principles of action drawn as inductions from the teach
ing of history, of Roman history above all.
The preface notes that in law and medicine, people still
follow what the ancients arrived at through experience;
but in conducting the affairs of Republics and Kingdoms,
the teachings of ancient history are ignored, as if men
and their physical surroundings were not still the same.
At the beginning of Book I, the author sketches the foun
dation of states, refers to the creation by Lycurgus of a
" mixed government," as tending to ensure stability.
Romulus, on the other hand, founded a monarchy; "but
that which at Rome the legislator did not provide for,
followed through the forza naturals of things and
through good fortune. The insolence of the King
brought a government of consuls and optimates, and the
insolence of the last let in the people to a share of power,
but without overthrowing either the consuls or the opti
mates." Machiavelli drew the substance of these remarks from
a translation of Polybius. But he soon develops inde
pendently the assumption that all men are bad, and act
viciously when not restrained by laws, an idea, close
enough to certain mediaeval clerical views touching the
origins of secular governments. " Men never do good
except through necessity," says Machiavelli. And along
this line, he argues that the dissensions between the Sen
ate and the Plebs made the Roman Republic free and
powerful; yet his argument indicates that much of this
good effect was due to the self-control exercised in the
course of these dissensions. Nevertheless he shows that
the elimination of these tumults would have impeded
Rome's march to greatness, adding the remark that " in
all human affairs one evil cannot be abolished without

ITALIAN PUBLICISTS 85
another arising." It is impossible to adjust matters sat
isfactorily once for all. " Human affairs being in mo
tion, and unable to rest as they are, they must either rise
or fall; and necessity leads you to measures to which rea
son would not have led you."
Machiavelli's purpose in the Discorsi was to elicit the
working verities of Roman history applicable in the con
struction of rules of political action for the princes and
statesmen of his day. He sought its political rather than
moral teaching; and there may have been an intellectual
blunder in his not realizing that the " political " and the
" moral " are but different sides of the complex of social
well-being. Possibly there were inconsistencies in his
view of the State and human welfare, attributable to the
weakness of his will and purpose, — an individual weak
ness analogous to the impotence of an Italy equipped
with intelligence and knowledge, possessed of physical
strength and material resources, and yet crushed by brutal
forces from without, which in some way drove on with
a will to grasp and get. Machiavelli, without the
strength of purpose which unifies a man's thinking, was
impelled to seek the rule of action seemingly applying
to the case in hand, and valid for all other similar cases.
His furthest intellectual end and practical object all in
one, was validity, pragmatic truth, verita effettuale, the
rule that may be acted on successfully. Such a rule must,
of course, recognize facts, and the forces of events, the
physical logic of a situation. It must be built out of such
logic, be a true reflex or recognition of force in action,
that is of all the forces making and controlling the sit
uation. Possibly Machiavelli's intellectual pragmatism,
which of course took no thought of absolute truth or
underlying being, was to find its counterpart in those
sixteenth century philosophies and systems of physics,
which were substituting force for matter as their funda
mental conception.11 In this way, also, his consideration
of politics and the rise and fall of states, had in it some
thing that is represented in all modern thought.
« Post, chapter XXXIV.

S6 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Through the Discorsi, through The Prince as well,
Machiavelli's personal or temperamental convictions af
fect the logic with which he construes a situation and its
necessary consequences. His underlying conviction,
readily to be gathered from antiquity, is that the state —
patria, his Italian heart loves to call it — is of first im
portance and utterly supreme above all its citizens: its
ends, its mere advantage, overrides individual interest
and private morality. Religion, a Church, is well; may
even be necessary; but it should be in all respects sub
ordinate to the patria, and promote its well-being. He is
also convinced, or at least feels, that a republic where
men are in some way free and equal, is better than a
kingdom or tyranny. Italy is the patria of his mind;
would it were united in patriotism ! The cause of its dis
union, of its weakness, of much of its corruption is, and
through the centuries has been, the papacy.
The essence of Italy's impotence and corruption is the
selfishness of individuals, their lack of corporate patriot
ism, whereby a citizen forgets private gain and private
hate, and is quick to risk life and fortune for the common
weal. There could be no mutual dependence in an Italy
where there was no common bravery, which is strength.
He had proved again and again that the strength of a
land does not lie in its fortresses, nor in its material re
sources and money, with which to hire mercenaries; it lies
in the patriotic valor of its people.12 Such patriotic valor
is good, since it is the means by which the patria at
tains its ends, or maintains them. So with great indi
viduals, kindness and humanity are good qualities, which
12 See Discorsi II., 24. In Chap. 36 of B'k III of the Discorsi Machia
velli speaks of three kinds of armies, the first and best possessing valor
(furore) and discipline (ordine), by which valor is made firm; the second
has valor, like the French, and must win at the first rush; the third kind
has neither valor nor discipline, like the Italian, and wins only by acci
dent. In his Arte della Guerra the pith of his argument is that the
strength of a state lies in the armed people, fighting chiefly on foot, and
to that end military discipline should be ordained. " It has proved a
fatal error in Italy to have separated the military from the civil life,
making^ of the former a trade, such as is followed by the mercenary
companies. Thus the soldier becomes violent, threatening, corrupt, and
an enemy to all civil life." From the dedicatory letter to Lorenzo Strozzi.

ITALIAN PUBLICISTS 87
enable the possessor to attain his ends, just as in the
proper place severity and cruelty may also gain them.
And in so far as justice and the like good qualities attain
the ends of the patria, they are desirable. It is always a
matter of attaining ends. Humanity revolts at the
thought that the means, in themselves, are indifferent;
yet they stand or fall by their efficacy; by that they must
be judged; therein lies their justification; there is no
other. Machiavelli was of his own Italian time, part of its
weakness and corruption, of its mind — one of the very
best of its minds. But well he knew, both for himself
and Italy, how impotent is the intellect without strength
of purpose. Lacking that, men are the prey of chance,
of fortune : " For when men are weak, Fortune shows
herself strong; and because she changes, states and gov
ernments change with her; and will continue to change,
until someone arise, who, following reverently the exam
ple of the ancients, shall so control her, that she shall
not have opportunity with every revolution of the sun to
display anew the greatness of her power." 13
A man weak in character may write books of different
flavor, as he bends to the matter of his composition and
the end in view. In the Discorsi Machiavelli would show
the rules of action by which a Republic might attain
power and maintain it. He will apply his same reason
ing to a despot, who, privately viewed, may be an evil
man. He too, good or evil, would maintain his rule and
aggrandize his power; he too must employ means suited
to that end — and again it is the end that justifies.
Moreover, if the end be good, that is, if it embrace
the welfare of many people, it will seem to ennoble the
means, as the aggrandizement of a tyrannous individual
cannot ennoble them. Many of the notorious doctrines
of The Prince appear in the Discorsi, wherein the welfare
of the patria is made to justify the murderous act:
" Where the welfare of the patria is at stake, you should
13 Discorsi, Bk. II, ch. 30, Thompson's translation.

88 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
not consider whether a measure be just or unjust, merci
ful or cruel, praiseworthy or ignominious ; rather, all else
laid aside, you should do what will ensure the safety of
the patria and maintain its liberty." 14 This may be an
indecorous amplification of the old motto — salus populi
suprema lex. But when the end in view is the strength
ening of a tyrant in his tyranny, the evil end will seem
to us to aggravate the villainy of the means. So it did
not seem to Machiavelli, who looked solely to the efficacy
of the means with respect to the end desired by the doer.
He admired success and the abilities which win it, and
not the least among the latter was the faculty of using
relentlessly and logically whatever means were best suited
to the end. It is the old worship of dper^, virtus, virtu,
which is faculty, or better, superfaculty. Machiavelli
admires and somewhat idealizes Cesare Borgia as the vir
tuoso, who unhesitatingly uses any apt means. He would
never have been guilty of the fault of Giovanpagolo Bag-
lioni, whose scruples kept him from seizing Julius II in
Perugia in 1505 when he had the chance.15
There is a chapter on Conspiracies in the Discorsi16
which is an expansion of passages in The Prince. It is a
masterly examination of the odds and chances and the
psychological phenomena of conspiracies. The employ
ment of men who have already had experience in assas
sinations, is recommended because even brave men who
are used to arms and death under different circumstances,
may prove uncertain instruments of assassination. Public
sentiment has commonly applauded the tyrannicide. But
Machiavelli's professional consideration of the best
methods for conspirators would not have been affected
by the circumstance that their object was the overthrow
of a free government.
In reading The Prince, one should beware of thinking
of the prince as a mere individual. He is also the sym
bol of the State he rules; and therefore, as touching the
14 Discorsi, III, 41. Passage quoted in Villari's Machiavelli.
lsDis. I, 27.
"Z>W. Ill, 6,

ITALIAN PUBLICISTS 89
justice or atrocity of his measures, one should remember
that the principle of salus populi applies to him, the sov
ereign. And at the end of the book, the fading light
of Italian patriotism casts its gleam backward over the
work of the sinister personality of its protagonist, till one
beholds, in hope at least, this ideal Prince as the instru
ment of Italian strength and unity. The author closes
with his grand appeal to the Medici to assume the role
which some centuries later was fulfilled by the House of
Savoy. Machiavelli's famous work suffers from too much logic
and the unqualified application of general principles to
human affairs. One may doubt whether it carries as
large a consideration of human nature, with its gusts of
feeling and its waves of unpredictable conduct, as the
Discorsi. The latter was the slower fruit of years of
thought, and had the unliterary advantage of being more
desultory. It is especially clear in The Prince that one
weakness of Machiavelli's reasoning lies in itself — that
it is sheer reasoning, and will not fit the unexpected
turns of human life. A writer who sets forth, not what
men should do, but how they will necessarily act, may fool
himself as readily as one who takes into account the irra
tional and generous conduct of men struggling for ideals
or uplifted by a situation. The author of The Prince
never could have foreseen or imagined that which has
been the greatest fact in the experience of our own gen
eration, the mighty awakening of America's enthusiasm
and resolve for a war of righteousness and the ideals of
man. It is indeed a general characteristic of Machiavelli that
his statements are but half-truths : every statement a half-
truth, and usually the dirty side. Possibly no man ever
speaks a whole one, since the human mind cannot formu
late more than one phase of life at a time. Machiavelli
at least might have corrected some of his half-truths from
Plato ! It is clear that one devilish fallacy pervades his
reasoning. He never realizes the evil effect of the evil
act upon the doer, be the doer an individual or a gov-

go THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
ernment or a partly responsible people. Again to refer
to our own time, as modern Germany has shown herself
the most Titanic example of Machiavellianism that the
world has seen, so has she calamitously exemplified the
specific Machiavellian fallacy which ignores the degenera
tion entering the nature of the evil-doer.

Ill
Like Machiavelli, another Florentine, fourteen years
his junior, harboured the thought of Italy, and hated the
French, the Spaniards, the Germans and the Swiss; but
unlike Machiavelli, Francesco Guicciardini brooded and
hated without hope. He was no theorist, but the hard-
headed man of an Italy politically disillusioned and ob
viously lacking in those qualities which once had driven
the small city by the Tiber on to greatness. Machiavelli
had unmasked that Italy in his Florentine History, giving
the story of those wars in which no warriors fell ! Wars
that might be entered on without fear, waged without
danger, ended without loss — if one had the wit ! Such
was the war between Florence and Venice, which he nar
rates in his fifth and sixth books: Duke Filippo Maria
Visconti of Milan with Francesco Sforza on the one side,
and skillful Piccinino on the other; safe marauding, blood
less battles, till the war ends when the Duke has married
his much promised daughter to Sforza, after lies and
double dealing, tedious, but curious to relate.
This was before the middle of the fifteenth century;
and Machiavelli ends his History with the death of
Lorenzo de' Medici in 1492. Guicciardini takes up the
tale in his Storia d'ltalia, beginning with the descent of
the French, that dire event of 1494, a year apparently
marked by prodigies which the historian does not care to
discredit. Charles VIII wavered to the last, ready to
abandon the enterprise, when he was caught again by the
argument of Cardinal della Rovere (destined to be Pope
Julius II) that " fatale instrumento e allora e prime e
poi de' mali d'ltalia." Besides the excellent artillery of

ITALIAN PUBLICISES gi
the French, Guicciardini gives further reasons for their
military superiority over Italians; the men at arms were
subjects of the King, and gentlemen, and paid by his min
isters, having the best of horses and arms, and, above all,
the sense of honor, with the fair chance of promotion.
So their captains, all of noble blood, even barons and
lords, and subject to the King, eager to merit his praises,
and without other chance of betterment. This was quite
different from the Italian armies, in which were peasants
and plebs, and subjects of other princes, dependent for
pay on their captains, who were rarely the subjects of
the cities or princes whom they served, but had interests
of their own, with envy and hatred of each other; ava
ricious, unstable, these captains were the mere padroni of
their companies.
The Storia d'ltalia passes on through rapine, villainy,
and perfidy, the. sack of cities and the ruin of liberty.
Years are consumed, till the mingled tide of impotence
and wickedness, for want of some brave and able man
to stop it, nears the Eternal City, with no barrier except
the knavery and poltroonery of Pope Clement VII !
Who cared? Who should stop it? So the vile army
of Spaniards and German Lutherans presses on for plun
der, — fate helping, no one impeding — to the sack of
Rome. That was in 1527, and in two or three years
there is accord between the royal scoundrels, and Italy is
pacified, enslaved as she deserved (Ah! if we all should
get our deserts) ; and abandoned Florence is fighting help
lessly for her liberties, till she too is taken in the be
sieger's net.
Assuredly Guicciardini was the successful Italian diplo
mat and statesman of his time — successful, that is to
say, in his own advancement. He loved Italy and hated
the priests, but above all else he loved himself, and was
ready to bend his sentiments to serve his purposes. Ad
vantageously born and advantageously married in Flor
ence, he was sent as Ambassador to the king of Spain,
at the age of twenty-eight. This was in 151 1. After
his return, he progressed in favor with the Medici and

92 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
the popes. In his city he occupied one important posi
tion after another. Then, in the service of Leo X,
Adrian VI, and Clement VII, he was governor of va
rious cities, commissary-general, president of the Ro-
magna, and held the rank of lieutenant-general in that
papal army which did not prevent the sack of Rome.
Nor did he afterwards lack papal employment.
During all the years while he served his papal masters
— shall we say " faithfully"? — his own opinions, and
such feelings as he had, were as he expressed them in his
Ricordi: " I know none more disgusted than myself by the ambition, the
avarice, and the effeminacy of the priests; each of these vices is
odious, and ill-fitting those who profess the life which depends on
God. . . . Yet my relations with the popes have compelled me to
love their grandeur per il particulare mio — for the sake of my
own interest; and if it were not for this, I should have loved
Martin Luther as myself, not for freeing me from the laws of the
Christian religion as it is universally interpreted and understood,
but to see this troop of scoundrels put in their right place, where
they should remain either without vices or without authority."
Again: " Three things I wish to see before my death, but doubt,
even though I live long, of seeing any one of them : — a well
ordered republic in our city; Italy freed from all the barbarians;
and the world freed from the tyranny of these vile priests." 1T
Guicciardini passes for a man without illusions — un
less to be such be the great delusion ! Yet, as with most
men, several souls dwelt in his breast; and no single ex
pression reflects his whole nature. He could at least ap
preciate moral qualities, speaking of his own father as a
man of " large judgment, and good conscience, a lover of
the welfare of the city and of the poor; nor did he ever
do the least wrong to anyone." He even speaks of his
own endeavor to keep a good name, and repeats that he
had ever loved " la patria." He can consider life " as
a Christian, as a philosopher, as a man of the world.18
"Ricordi politici, XXVIII and CCXXXVI.
ie Ricordi Autobiografici, Opere inedite, X, pp. 90, 103, 13a.

ITALIAN PUBLICISTS 93
Nevertheless, he appears predominantly as a man of in
sight and clever faculty, pursuing the interests of his em
ployers, and certainly his own. His thoughts usually dis
credit or ignore the more general human motives, and
place little reliance upon such general principles as Ma
chiavelli constructed from his study of Roman history.
To him, Machiavelli was a theorist, with his head wrapt
in dreams of what could not come to pass. Guicciardini
viewed facts as they were. The contrast between the two
appears in his Consider azione of Machiavelli's Discorsi
upon Livy; in which the younger man quickly sees such
holes as there might be in the arguments of his friend,
pointing out, for instance, the fallacy of regarding the
disunion between Patricians and Plebs as the cause of
Roman liberty. Sometimes he approves points in the
Discorsi, but again he finds expositions in them suitable
to books and to the imagination, rather than agreeing
with the way things actually take place. This critic
rightly felt that he had the larger knowledge of affairs.
Of course, with Machiavelli, he regarded fraud and vio
lence as praiseworthy or foolish according to circum
stances. He was not himself an unqualified admirer of
antiquity, thinking it had been over-praised, and that his
own time in some respects was preferable. He thought
less highly of the Roman civil constitution than of their
military system. Machiavelli had laid the ills of Italy,
and its disunion, upon the papacy, which had been always
so ready to call in the barbarians. Guicciardini points
out that the barbarians had begun their invasions in the
times of the Roman Empire. It was true that the papacy
had hindered Italy from becoming a single State; but it
were hard to say whether that was an ill thing or a good.
A single republic might have made the name of Italy
glorious, but it would have ruined the other Italian states.
This view was correct with regard to such Italian repub
lics as these men had known, since their way was to ex
ploit the towns and territories conquered by them, with
out extending the privileges of their citizenship to the
conquered.

94 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The tenor of Guicciardini's opinions may be gathered
from his Storia d'ltalia. But his thoughts are put in
nugget-form in his commonplace book, which goes by the
name of Ricordi politici e civili. There his penetrating
consideration of humanity appears, and his distrust of
theory. " It is a great mistake to speak of mundane af
fairs without distinguishing and qualifying, and as it
were, by rule ; for they all involve distinctions and excep
tions due to circumstances, and the same measure will not
fit; these variations are not in the bookstand discretion
must instruct us" (vi). Precedents (esempli) are fal
lacious guides; since they do not serve us unless they agree
in every particular, and the least variation in the case
may lead to great variation in effect, and those little dif
ferences are so hard to see (cxvii). Still, the same
proverbs are found with every people, — for they are
born of like experiences (xii). And while it is said that
one cannot judge well without knowing all the par
ticulars, nevertheless I have often noticed with people
of mediocre judgment, that they do better with only a
general knowledge, than when all the particulars are laid
before them, through which they are confused, while upon
the general idea a good resolution may be based (civ).
" These Ricordi are rules such as one may write in a
book; but the particular cases, which for various rea
sons call for other decisions, are difficult to write down
save in the libro della discrezione " (cclvii). Guicciar
dini's Italian has been occasionally condensed in the fol
lowing examples of his sentiments :
If youmust insult another, be careful to say what will
offend him alone, and not many other people (viii).
Do everything to appear good, which helps infinitely;
but, as false opinions do not endure, you will hardly
succeed in seeming good in the long run, unless you are in
truth (xliv). States cannot be ruled according to con
science, for their origins were in violence. The Empire
is no exception, and as for the priests, their violence is
enforced by spiritual as well as temporal weapons
(xlviii). Neutrality in a war between others is a safe

. ITALIAN PUBLICISTS 95
policy for that state which is so powerful as to be un
concerned which of the belligerents is victorious. The
weak neutral will be the victor's prey. But the worst
policy for a neutral is to be drawn through vacillation to
a course which his judgment disapproves, and he pleases
neither belligerent. This happens more frequently with
republics than with despots, because the people are di
vided, and counsel this and that (Ixviii). " I observed
while I was Ambassador in Spain, that the Catholic
King, Ferdinand of Aragon, when he wished to under
take some new enterprise, or make an important deci
sion, managed so that the Court and people were clam
oring for it, before he made known his mind "
(lxxvii). Do not start a revolution in the hope of
being followed by the people; for the people may show
no mind to follow you, and may have ideas quite differ
ent from what you think (cxxi). "Who speaks of a
people, speaks of a fool animal, filled with a thousand
errors, a thousand disorders (confusioni), without taste,
without joy, without stability " (cxl). No wonder there
is ignorance of the things past or remote, when so
little is known of the present, or even of what is going
on in the same city, where often between the palace and
the piazza there is a cloud so dense and a wall so high,
that the eye cannot penetrate it — so much the people
know of what their rulers do, or of their reasons
(cxli). The same mood, or strain of opinion, is not always
represented in these Ricordi; slowly and carefully the au
thor says : " He errs who thinks that the success of en
terprises turns on their being just or unjust; for one sees
the contrary every day; that not the just cause, but pru
dence, force, and good fortune bring the victory. It is
true that in him who has justice with him is born a cer
tain confidence based on the opinion that God gives vic
tory to just undertakings, which makes men keen and ob
stinate; and sometimes victory springs from such condi
tions. A just cause may thus help indirectly; it does not
help directly " (cxlvii).

96 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
But again : " I do not blame fasting, prayer and such
like works, which are ordained by the Church or advised
by the Friars; but the best of all, in comparison with
which the rest are slight affairs, is not to injure another,
and to help everyone as you may be able " (clix) .
Following close upon the last, this excellent sentiment
takes one's breath away. In the very next note, the mood
is not quite the same. Everyone knows he has to die,
and yet lives as if he was to live forever. " I believe
this comes because nature wills that we should live as
the body requires and the true disposition of this mun
dane machine ; for not wishing us to stay dead and sense
less, nature has given us the property of not thinking on
death, which if we thought about, the world would be
full of sloth and torpor " (clx) .
And finally : " It has been truly said that too much
religion spoils the world, because it enfeebles the minds,
envelops men in a thousand errors, and turns them from
many noble and manly undertakings, — nor do I wish
through this to disparage the Christian faith."

CHAPTER V
ITALIAN SELF-EXPRESSION IN PAINTING
Voluble as were the Italian people, loving talk and
song, and possessing a melodious language, they were a
seeing, rather than a reading or listening, folk. Their
minds ran to visible images, painted in color. Not only
did they think, they felt in images; which thronged in
their emotion as well as in their thought. Leonardo
was constant to the instincts of his race • in his impas
sioned arguments that painting is a nobler and more po
tent art than poetry.
All Italians, from the unlettered rustic to the much
lettered prince or condottiero, looked naturally to painted
forms and decorations not merely for their pleasure but
for their ideas. The visualizing faculty, the need of
forms to fill it, was part of their Graeco-Roman heri
tage of mental habit. Those who were conversant with
antique letters, saw the figures of the old gods and he
roes, and the forms of antique personifications. And all
the people, lettered and unlettered, saw the saints and
angels, the Virgin, Christ, and even God Almighty, whom
the mightiest of Italian geniuses painted on the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel.
Books were for priests and scholars. The people
loved painted forms, appreciated them, and could criti
cise them too. Painting was for interior embellishment,
and for the exemplification of the people's faith upon the
walls of churches and over the high altars. For the
outside, there was carving in stone and marble, or better,
in the warmer and more salient tones of bronze. Color
was a delight, whether within or without the church or
palace or civic structure. No building should lack its
97

98 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
raiment, pictorial or sculpturesque, decorative and beau
tiful, of course ; but also illuminative, speaking. The col
ors, lights and shades, the expressive figures, addressed
themselves both to the outer and to the inwardly speak
ing eye of this Italian people, whose thoughts were forms
and images, and rarely disembodied or unclothed them
selves in colorless ratiocination. Naturally again, this
same people, high and low, delighted in the passing gor-
geousness, the living, entrancing figures of civic pageants,
or those through which princely despots displayed their
power and magnificence.
The Italian passion for the delights of vision might
becloud the intelligent appreciation of other factors of
expression, which might be equally clever and pleasur
able and even more to the point. The Elizabethan
drama culminating in Shakespeare was immeasurably
greater than the Italian drama of the sixteenth century;
it was given naked, with no more setting than the needs
of its action positively required. But when a play,
whether by Terence or by Ariosto, was given at Urbino,
Ferrara, Mantua or Milan, it was an occasion for dis
play. Its trappings, its mechanical contrivances and fan
tasies, its magnificence of tapestry and painting, not to
mention the interjection of scenic masking and dancing,
tended to distract attention from the play. All eyes were
fastened pleasurably upon the gorgeous pictures that en
framed it, and bore such stately and delectable testimony
to the wealth and taste of the Magnifico who had set the
festival. The plays themselves might be weakened in their com
position by the Italian passion for pictures; their dialogue
might become word-painting, as in the Orfeo or the
Stanze of Politian. Though an Ariosto or a Machia
velli might write clever comedy, great drama could no
more come into existence in sixteenth century Italy than
a great era of painting could arise in Elizabethan Eng
land. The achievement in either case sprang from the
genius of Italian painters or English playwrights, sup
ported by the enthusiasm of the people.

ITALIAN PAINTING 99
Springing thus from the. demands and appreciations of
a people, painting and sculpture utterly surpassed the lit
erature, whether prose or poetry, of the fifteenth and six
teenth centuries in Italy. However scholars and poets
might esteem themselves, and grace the tables of the
rich, the painters and sculptors, with now and then an
architect, were the best men of the period. It was no
accident, but due to the nature of the time and people,
that Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael are the true
representatives and indeed the greatest Italians of their
era. Who should rival them? In sheer scholarship the
Italians were not destined to equal the energy and in
sight of the Flemings and the French. Poetry, in its
finer modes, was clogged with classical conventions and
the weight of antique phrase; it was, moreover, of rather
courtly and parasitic growth; it fed or starved at the
courts of the Medici or the Gonzagas or the Este. The
mightier energies of Italian painting were instructed, but
not hampered, by the antique ; while a far stronger popu
lar demand supported them along a broader way of
growth. And if sculpture carried on the antique tradi
tion more markedly than painting, that tradition was as
a guiding form within an organism which was unfolding
its own living powers.
Nor until Galileo came, might one look to science for
rivals of these great painters, who were sculptors, archi
tects, engineers, as well. The best physical science in the
fifteenth and earlier sixteenth centuries still consorted
with the arts of construction and design. Alberti and
Leonardo proved and glorified this union. While Leon
ardo lived, no other investigator of the properties of
things might touch the hem of Leonardo's cloak.
Among the rulers were men of finesse and subtlety,
and one at least, Lorenzo the Magnificent, possessed as
tounding faculties. The rule of these picturesque des
pots did not lack gracious elements. The Medici, the
Sforzas, the Gonzagas, the house of Este, did much to
adorn and render prosperous their states. They were

ioo THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
enlightened patrons of the arts, taking pleasure in them
and recognizing that it was the political function of the
plastic arts to spread the fame and establish the ruler's
power in the very eyes of men. Nor were these rulers
beyond measure evil. Doubtless they exemplified in their
various personalities, and in their methods of aggrandize
ment and political self-preservation, the principles set
out by Machiavelli and the clever Venetian diplomats.
Commonly they used even truth but to deceive. Yet it
was only in their rather personally directed employment
of poison, strangulation, and the dagger, that they seem
more vicious than apparently greater men of other times
who have directed the destinies of larger states. The
largest Machiavellian criminality in all history has gone
on through the decades in which we ourselves have lived,
and has come to its own in war and overthrow. So with
Italian rulers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
They scarcely reached the redeeming goal of stable suc
cess and lasting prosperity for their houses and their
people. Their policies seem afflicted with some sort of
impotence : — were not inspired by an efficient, and po
tentially self-sacrificing, national sentiment; were too in
ternecine; too deeply affected with the cormorant indi
vidualism of the men who devised them. So these men,
with all their subtlety and deceit and knowledge, will
scarcely impress us as great statesmen who might over
top the greatness of Leonardo and Mantegna, Michel
angelo and Raphael.
In considering the origins of Italian painting, it is best
not to draw distinctions between substance and form.
One may assume that the sculptor, mosaicist, or fresco
painter, who worked at his art in the fourth century or the
fourteenth possessed the current knowledge of the Chris
tian storv: that he was acquainted with the more popu
lar Old Testament incidents, with the life of Christ and
the Virgin, and the lives of the Saints, beginning with
the Virgin's parents,_ Joachim and Anna. Yet that which
filled and shaped his work would always be the repre-

ITALIAN PAINTING 101
sentation of these salient incidents in the mosaics, fres
coes, or carvings of earlier artists. Their presentation
of the same matter which it was his task to present gave
him at once the form and method and the theme. In
these compositions in stone and color, the theme or con
tent of the work had no separate existence from the form
or method of its presentation. One and the other made
a single whole, coming to him as a theme expressed, even
as his task was to express the same, possibly with modi
fication or improvement. The finished execution or ex
pression of the theme had been given him; and not on
the one hand, forms or method or technique, and on the
other the substance of the theme which he must render.
The theme was composed, rendered, expressed, even in
such form of expression as he should use with such de
velopment or improvement as his mind might aspire to,
and his faculties achieve.
The expression of these Christian themes in modes of
painting and sculpture begins in the Catacombs of Rome,
where scenes from the Old Testament and the New are
crudely rendered: Adam and Eve, Noah in the Ark,
Moses smiting the Rock, Daniel among the Lions, and
the story of Jonas. From the New Testament are taken
the Adoration of the Magi, the Miracle of the Loaves,
the Raising of Lazarus. Most frequent of all is the
figure of Christ as the Good Shepherd, carrying a sheep,
a figure directly copied from a type of Hermes. There
were also mythological figures and decoration taken from
the current pagan painting, and Christian symbols, like
the fish, the dove or the lamb. These frescoes range
from the first to the middle of the fourth century, when
the Catacombs ceased to be used for burial. The style
is that of the poorer contemporary pagan work. Prac
tically the same subjects are rendered in the figures carved
in high relief upon the Christian sarcophagi of the fourth
and fifth centuries.
The themes will be found to enlarge in the decoration
of the great Christian basilicas erected after the official
conversion of the Empire. Upon their walls the lessons

ioa THE Sixteenth Century
of the Christian faith were to be set forth, as it were,
prophetically in the prefigurative types and incidents of
the Old Testament; then, in the miraculous and saving
scenes of the life of Christ; and triumphantly in the final
victory of the Cross and the visions of the Apocalypse.
Mosaic was the chief means through which the Christian
artists sought to decorate and glorify the walls of the
new-built churches with these impressive Christian themes,
— which Christian preaching had made familiar to the
people. The selection was not left to the artist, but
prescribed by custom or authority. These fourth and
fifth century mosaicists followed the traditional concep
tions of the scenes and personages which they now sought
to depict in stately compositions. The subjects were not
limited to the canon of the Old and New Testaments; but
were drawn as well from the Old Testament apocrypha
and from the apocryphal Gospels. The series grew
from century to century until they included the whole
story of the Virgin's life and parentage, and many a
theme from the great company of angels, saints, and
martyrs. Yet tradition and authority guided the com
positions. The nave of the church was assigned to scenes
from the Old Testament and the earthly life of Christ;
while the apse and triumphal arch presented the glory
of the apocalypse or a Christ enthroned in majesty.
These compositions were an enormous advance over
their childlike beginnings in the Catacombs. Instead of
the rudest, they represented the best craftsmanship of
the time. The dignity of Rome had entered them; the
ceremony of Byzantium is approaching. The leading fig
ures have reached a typical individuality. The subjects
are no longer given through crude outline suggestions,
but are adequately treated, with a larger historical ren
dering, and a stricter dogmatism. Yet the effort of the
artist seems exhausted in presenting his subject with dig
nity and correctness. Emotional qualities are lacking.
These stately compositions were to be as type-patterns
through the following centuries. They were carried on

ITALIAN PAINTING 103
in countless repetitions, while undergoing modification,
deterioration, or development; they might even change
with the changing spirit and capacity of later times.
Just as the matter of a tale may be retold in sagas, and
resung in epic and ballad forms ; and yet continue funda
mentally the same story, though modified and perhaps
made perfect, and imbued with a feeling which its first
rude telling scarcely held.
At all events, however the style might change, what
ever modification there might be of incidents or figures,
whatever increment of feeling might enter, the sacred
themes were carried on and delivered from generation to
generation of artists in modes of pictorial or sculp
turesque expression. In this expression, form and com
position and technique blended with theme or sub
stance. Meaning and significance, as well as esthetic
value, were held in this blended result, this finished whole.
Style, pattern, composition, and the theme thus em
bodied and expressed, passed through deterioration or
development, and varied change of manner, in the cen
turies between the fifth and the thirteenth. There was
the fundamental Graeco-Roman style, invigorated and
re-inspired by Christian energy and the need to express
these novel sacred themes. Then followed general de
terioration or barbarizing. This was countered by the
influence of the developing Byzantine style, making for
dignity and balance, but stiffening into a ceremonial man
ner. The Byzantine style dominates the stately mosaics
of Ravenna from the fifth to the eighth century. It had
likewise much effect upon the contemporary art at Rome.
In the eleventh century, Byzantine artists were brought
to Monte Cassino by its Abbot Desiderius; and in the
twelfth, in the Norman kingdom of Sicily, the final glories
of Byzantine mosaic color and composition made beauti
ful the churches of Palermo and Cefalu. The remark
able reign of the Emperor Frederic II in the next cen
tury effected a great revival of palace and cathedral
building in Apulia and Campania, with a clear return to

104 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
the antique style of sculpture, as in the still surviving por
trait-busts executed at Capua to adorn the palace of this
admirer of antiquity.1
The imitation of the antique, which made the con
scious note of the revival of sculpture under Frederic,
was but a clearer emphasizing of what had always formed
the basis of Italian art. Italy itself was a constant al
teration and effacement, with an equally constant renewal,
of the Rome of Trajan. The face of the land to-day
might still be Roman, had not Italy so industriously
preyed upon her antique heritage, constantly rebuilding
herself from the old structures. It is the land-wide ex
tension of the story of the lime kilns of the Forum, of
the travertine blocks of the Colosseum taken for St.
Peter's, of the columns of palaces and temples taken for
the naves of churches. Not the devastation of war, but
the industrial demolition of the antique buildings, has
partially transformed the land. But for this, one might
still see the Forum and the Colosseum, and the Appian
Way, and the whole land indeed, very much as it was
in the days of Constantine.
Allowing for changed purposes, even the mediaeval
buildings constructed from such demolitions or from new
cut marble, still were as antique as they might be. If
the Pisan Cathedral (begun in 1069), with the Baptistry
and Leaning Tower, represent some development of a
new Romanesque architecture, they also represent re
newed skill and replenished resources still following the
methods and the forms which Italy never had departed
from. So much for building, antique in modelling and method,
Christian merely in purpose. In painting or mosaic and
in sculpture, not only did style and method derive from
the antique, and constantly hark back to its source; but
decorative motives also were antique, and the great mass
of subsidiary figures, which in the later times of the fif-
1 See Emile Bertaux, L'Art dans Vltalie mtridionale, Tome I. These
busts have also been thought real antiques. The Byzantine style tends to
Italianize in the mosaics in St. Mark's and the Florence Baptistry.

ITALIAN PAINTING 105
teenth and sixteenth centuries were to reassert their in
dependent interest, and their right to be depicted and re-
expressed for their own sake. A fund of antique motives
and figures, allegorical or otherwise, had carried clear
across from the pagan era to all times of Christian art —
a limitless number of graphic and plastic conceptions of
such clarity and distinction that Italian sculpture and
painting should never even wish to discard them. As
personifications or personal realities they included Sun
and Moon and Ocean, the Seasons and the Hours, the
Winds and Rivers, Victories and Liberal Arts, the Vir
tues and the Vices, Sibyls, Muses, Sirens, Psyche, Cupid,
Orpheus, not to mention Alexander, Caesar and Trajan;
all in patterns and compositions, completed forms of pic
torial and plastic expression.
In the time of the great inception of truly Italian sculp
ture and painting — the time of the Pisani for the one,
of Duccio and Giotto for the other — these pervasive
pagan elements of expression were made use of as of
course. The consciously presented theme was Christian,
as suited the pulpits of baptistries and cathedrals, and the
resting places for the dead who looked to Christ. Yet
though the theme was Christian, the very thought of ex
pressing any religious theme in carved or painted forms
was pagan, that is, Graeco-Roman, or indeed Hellenic.
Left to themselves, Jewish followers of Jesus, like the
ancient Hebrews from whose loins they sprang, would
have held pictorial representations of sacred personages
as rank idolatry — as the racially kindred sects of Ma
hometans still hold. It was the Graeco-Roman world
that, turning to Christianity, required images of its new
faith, just as its habit had always been to worship its gods
and goddesses in plastic forms. So the sacred art of the
Christian faith is pagan in the original demand for it and
in its consequent inception.
Looking at the sculpture of Niccola Pisano (cir. 1206-
1280) and his son Giovanni, one may realize what blends
of stylistic method and patterning, and what intricacy
of cultural and religious sentiment and conception en-

106 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
tered their work, to be appropriated by them, and made
their own. Niccola accepts the topics of his Christian
theme — the Annunciation and the Birth of Christ, the
offerings of the Magi, the Crucifixion, the Last Judg
ment — from his predecessors; their methods 'and
schemes of composition were also part of his equipment.
Since apparently he came from Apulia, he may have felt
the influence of almost any style used before his day in
Italy. Most obviously his own early work, the pulpit of
the Pisan Baptistry, (completed by 1260) imitates the re
lief carvings of certain Roman sarcophagi, which may still
be seen in Pisa. Toward the end of his career, as when
working with his son upon the pulpit of the Sienna Cathe
dral, he had progressed toward a freer and more natural
manipulation of his figures, and had availed of the les
sons of contemporary French Gothic sculpture, as one
may plainly see in the figure of the Madonna holding the
Child at one of the angles of the Sienna pulpit. His
sculpture has become more expressive and more beauti
ful. The son Giovanni likewise shows the French influ
ence; but his admirable reliefs, as upon his pulpits in Pis-
toia and in the Pisan Cathedral (finished respectively
about 1301 and 1311), mark energetic progress toward a
natural beauty in his figures; pointing onward to the beau
tiful bronze door of Andrea Pisano designed for the bap
tistry at Florence, and to the painting of Giotto.2 It
was doubtless by reason of the presence of so many an
tique models, that the progress of sculpture under Nic
cola Pisano and his son preceded Giotto's grand uplift
ing of the art of painting: a phenomenon which repeats
itself in the next century, when Ghiberti and Donatello
are the predecessors of Masaccio, Fra Lippo Lippi and
Mantegna. In the work of these great artists of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries is seen the growth of a veritable
2 The door was completed and installed by 1336. Giotto, born some
thirty years before Andrea, died in 1337. He aided Andrea with counsel.
Vasari says that he furnished the designs.

ITALIAN PAINTING 107
Italian style, which was progressing through the constant
rendering and re-rendering of the same themes, and the
modifying and perfecting of them, incited by compari
son with former renderings and by contemporary living
competition. Each artist who does not merely copy some
previous rendering, but makes the theme his own and
endeavors to improve the rendering, uses his own imag
ination, and follows his idea of improvement or perfec
tion. He is thus expressing himself : his work is his self-
expression. And when a succession of great artists, Nic
cola and Giovanni and Andrea, perfects, each of them,
the rendering of his master, his work, which is his self-
expression, becomes part of a larger self-expression, which
may be called that of the race or time or people.
This remains true even when we turn to so great a
creator of living and dramatic composition as this tre
mendous Giotto. He too had accepted from convention
and authority, and from his predecessors in pictorial and
plastic presentation, the round of sacred topics hitherto
expressed. It was not for him to seek beyond this cir
cle for novel subjects. Remaining well within it in his
early work in the Arena Chapel at Padua, he re-expressed
and again presented the story of the life of the Virgin
and the story of the life of Christ, but with a power of
living and speaking composition which never had been
given them before. Herein certainly was an expression
of Giotto's faculties and of his realizations of life and
the power of painting to represent it, of his nature in
fine, whereof his work was a disclosure, an actualization
in the old scholastic sense, and assuredly an expression.
Yet providentially — for all things that happen fitly
happen providentially — there had been a wonderful life
which passed to its apotheosis a generation before Giot
to's birth; and this wonderful life of Francis of Assisi,
with the religious experience of the generation so stirred
by it, supplied this inventive or creative painter with a
new series of topics, almost a new gospel story.
Giotto did not have to seek for this ; it flooded his con-

108 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
sciousness, and insisted upon presentation. It was so
telling, so dramatic, and, above all, so pictorial. Paint
ers before Giotto had but feebly rendered its episodes.
Now he would take it, transform it somewhat in his
potent nature, and give it new dignity and stateliness in
frescoes which should present Francis as canonized by
the Church and beatified in the adoration of the Italian
people.3 The frescoes which present Francis in allegory
and beatification, on the ceiling of the lower Assisi
Church; those later ones which gave the great scenes
of his life and death, in the Bardi chapel in Santa Croce;
— are likewise expressions of Giotto's artistic tastes and
faculties and composition, of his supreme artistic balance
and self-control; they are a self-expression of the man.
Giotto's career held many elements of progressing
greatness. Summing up the past's attainment, it incor
porated riches of its own, and altogether was a prefig-
urement of the culmination of Italian painting in the
Cinquecento. It was, first of all, a great advance toward
naturalness, toward life. Possibly in the imitative rep
resentation of living forms, it hardly equalled the sculp
ture of Giovanni Pisano, not to mention Andrea. The
technique of painting was not abreast of sculpture. But
Giotto made a giant stride in composition, a wonderful
stride onward toward the representation of life, its ac
tion, its aspirations and attainments, its deflections, its
constraints and sufferings : and all as exemplified by noble
beings in significant situations. In this way his painting
follows life, seizes upon telling acts, presents significant
groupings, with the figures of the tableau naturally par
ticipating. In becoming natural in this large sense, Giot
to's compositions have become dramatic and endowed
with the power of narrative. Perhaps the story of the
Virgin and the story of her Son were never painted as
tellingly as Giotto painted them on the walls of the Arena
3 Giotto was no painful biographer or portrait painter. Individualized
conscientious portraiture had not yet entered painting. Giotto's St. Francis
is idealized, more excellent in physical form and feature, than the early
Lives would justify. St. Bonaventura had in like fashion transformed
the Legend in his, as it were, official life of Francis.

ITALIAN PAINTING 109
Chapel. Painting and sculpture in Giotto's time had to
tell the sacred story which people did not read so readily
in books. They should also tell the story truly, rendering
its incidents as they occurred. None could be more ear
nest than Giotto in his endeavor to represent the holy
scenes truthfully.
In this dramatic naturalism, this trenchant following
of life, nothing is more marked than the advance which
has been made in the expression of emotion; — of emo
tion which, whether expressed or visibly subdued, makes
part of every human event. Failure to realize and ex
press this most natural element in the incidents of the
Gospel had been the great shortcoming of the frescoes
and mosaics which illuminated the walls of Christian
basilicas in the fifth century. As the truths of salvation
and condemnation were pondered on and lived with from
generation to generation, men saw them through a gath
ering emotion, which, for a while, a decadent and bar
barized art could not express. In Italy, with some slight
advance in technical skill, the endeavor to express the
feeling of these moving scenes appears in the thirteenth
century. With Cavallini at Rome,4 with Cimabue at
Assisi, with Niccola and Giovanni Pisano, and then with
Giotto, whose frescoes belong to the fourteenth, comes a
new capacity to realize the feeling or emotion proper and
natural to these scenes, and technical ability to express it.
One may also think that the life of St. Francis had
renewed men's religious sentiments, stirred their emo
tions; and that because of Francis and his legend, sculp
tors and painters had become more sensitive. At all
events an hitherto pictorially unexpressed intensity of
emotion is rendered by Giotto on the walls of the Arena
Chapel, culminating in the scenes of the Crucifixion and
the Deposition from the Cross. The expression of emo
tion in the faces and the gestures of the Mother and the
disciples and the angelic host is unexampled in previous
painting or sculpture. These may have been completed
4 In his mosaics in S. Maria in Trastevere and his frescoes in S. Cecilia
in Trastevere executed in the last part of the thirteenth century.

no THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
by the year 1306, when Giotto was about forty. His
later work, depicting allegorically the glorified St. Fran
cis on the ceiling of the lower church at Assisi, shows a
larger balance entering his composition ; a balance which
is well fitted to the dignity of saintly grief, visibly re
strained, shown in the still later fresco of the death of
Francis, in the Bardi Chapel in Santa Croce. Although
the life and death of this most loving and beloved of
saints were the theme of his mature work, Giotto's genius
for large and balanced composition and his sense of seem
liness control the final self-expression of this painter. In
the next generation the combination of feeling and nat
uralness with composition in the grand style, is carried
on by Orcagna, Giotto's greatest and most independent
follower. The many other disciples of Giotto, copyists
of their master, tend to retrograde in style and composi
tion. One feels that the tradition of antique sculpture was
dominant in the work of Niccola Pisano and his son, and
in the work of Andrea. Antique personifications, decora
tive patterns and the lessons of antique sculpture, either
directly or through the Pisani, entered the art of Giotto.
The result appears, for example, in the beautiful figure
of Hope, draped in antique fashion, which he painted as
a Christian virtue on the Arena Chapel. At the same
time these sculptors and this great painter were striving
for fidelity to nature. These two intentions are not in
consistent, and may promote each other, when the artist
is no mere copyist of antique statues or the antique man
ner; but is more vitally appropriating that antique ideal
izing fidelity to nature which seeks to ennoble the type
by following the pointing of nature's best suggestions.
Since much antique statuary survived, and very little
painting,5 sculptors were more strongly drawn than paint
ers to follow the antique in the thirteenth and succeeding
centuries. Yet from Niccola Pisano to Michelangelo
the imitation of the antique by Italian sculptors was
.5Pompeian frescoes had not yet been unearthed.

ITALIAN PAINTING in
usually but part of that idealizing imitation of nature,
which likewise characterized the sculpture of the Greeks.
There was no such servile copying as might have kept
their work from being an expression of their own facul
ties and tastes, instincts and judgment.
Although the scanty remains of antique painting do not
permit a sure comparison, it is probable that the painting
of the ancients as an independent art was inferior to their
sculpture, which might, however, use color or rich ma
terials like gold and ivory to enhance its beauty. Sculp
ture had the closer affinity with the Hellenic genius, and
would seem to have been more highly prized by the com
posite Graeco-Roman taste.
The opposite was to prove true of Christian Italy.
From the fourth century, mosaic, rather than sculpture,
was employed to tell the sacred story, express the Chris
tian faith.6 Mosaic continued the chief vehicle of expres
sion in the Greek Christian, or Byzantine, art, whether
practiced in Constantinople, Sicily or Italy. In Italy,
with the revival of civilization, sculpture was the first to
blossom in the thirteenth century, and was to continue as
a chosen vessel for the self-expression of the Italian
genius. Yet painting overtook it, surrounded and en
veloped it with quickly budding myriad energies, answer
ing to the universal Italian love of painted forms. And
if it was the nature of the Italians to see their ideas, or
find them, in forms and images, then painting was the
most facile means of expressing those pictorial ideas on
church walls and palaces. Yet the fact that painting
could perform this function more quickly and at less ex
pense than sculpture scarcely explains why painting be
came, and never ceased to be, the supreme expression of
Italy. The Italian genius unfolded itself most com
pletely in painting, found in it scope for the study of
6 Was mosaic better adapted than sculpture to give such ample expres
sion of the Christian matter as was demanded? Possibly. Yet where
the national genius ran to sculpture rather than painting, sculpture was
the chief means employed, as on French Gothic cathedrals; and who shall
say that it did not do its office as effectively and as beautifully as mosaic,
or fresco painting?

ii2 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
human beings and of the circumambient world; found in
it scope and satisfaction for its love of the gorgeous and
the visibly delightful, and for its love of ideal, harmon
ious, even formal beauty, by which its continuance of the
Greek spirit was made clear.
Notwithstanding this affinity with Greek art and the
many lessons which Italian painting drew from it, along
with its adoption of antique patterns and figures, the
course of Italian painting was one of organic growth, a
clear and free self-expression of the Italian people.
Painters and those who wrote about them, and the peo
ple who delighted in their works, regarded the progress
of painting as progress in the imitation or portrayal of
nature, until the painters should achieve its perfect ren
dering in their pictures. This view of the matter, which
seems to be the view of Leonardo as well as Vasari, must
be taken with all the observations and explanations in
which Leonardo enwrapped it, and the qualifications
which he made and illustrated in his practice. First of
all, the many ways of " imitating " nature should be re
membered, and the vast and varied range of the objects
of imitation. Beyond the visages and forms of man in
infinite variety, " nature " includes animals and trees,
herbs, grass and rocks, all the natural objects in a land
scape, and such works of man as buildings. To paint all
these as they are, it is necessary to observe linear and
aerial perspective, and paint, or " imitate," the atmos
phere, its light and shade and color, clouds, sunsets, rain
bows, darkness, and all the phenomena of the air.
Moreover, in order to imitate these matters truly,
which include the facts of human life and the actions of
human beings, the " imitation " must embrace congruous
grouping and arrangement, composition. And if the
painter is to rise to the portrayal of beauty, that is, to the
idealizing of the objects of his art, he must have mastered
their particular realities, before he can advance to per
fection, which is beauty, along the lines of nature's truth.
To this end, besides the idealizing choice of types and
elements, he must attain to principles of inclusion and

ITALIAN PAINTING 113
exclusion, to the high notes of unity in composition, that
he may present his theme consonantly and perfectly, with
the fewest possible detractions or distractions. It is in
the presentation of forms and colors pleasing to the eye,
as well as consonant with the spirit of his theme, that he
will be likely to reach principles and realizations of pic
torial composition, which will bring his painting into
agreement with those modes of Greek art which also had
passed onward, through somewhat analogous stages, to a
like attainment. For example, when the purpose of a
composition is to present a significant event, the inter
est and action would increase toward the centre of the
design, and decline to quietude at the extremities. Leon
ardo da Vinci never saw the eastern pediment of the
Parthenon; but in his Last Supper, in Milan, from the
comparative quiescence of the disciple at either end of
the table, the eye is led on through the excited action of
the other disciples to the contrasted and momentous calm
of the Christ at the centre who has spoken. All this pre
sents a spiritual analogy to the pedimental grouping of
the figures which set forth the birth of Athene : wherein
the action and interest culminate at the centre, and lit
erally slope down to quietude and contemplation in the
figures toward the extremities of the triangle.
Leonardo's exhaustive notes, or treatise, upon the study
of nature for the purposes of painting indicate what paint
ing as an imitation of nature might signify and include.
The complete and perfect imitation of all natural phe
nomena is inculcated and elaborately illustrated from
such penetrating observation of natural appearances as
perhaps none other ever made. " Darkness, light, body
and color, form and position, distance and nearness, move
ment and rest, — this little work of mine will be a tissue
of these attributes, recording for the painter the rule and
method by which his art should imitate all these things,
the works of Nature and ornament of the world." 7 So
he investigates perspective " the best guide to painting,"
7 J. P. Richter, Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, § 23.

n4 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
perspective both linear and aerial; then light and shade
and color, the appearance of trees and other natural ob
jects, the proportions and movements of the human fig
ure, and all of this with wonderful care and minuteness,
and accompanied with such drawings as may not be found
elsewhere. There is no detail so slight as not to be
worthy of the painter's study, whether in the muscles of
the human body, in the modulations of shadows or of the
lustre and transparency of a leaf.8 It is fundamental in
painting that the objects shall stand out, appear in re
lief, show natural modelling; and that the backgrounds
and distances be shown in true perspective. In judging
a picture, the first thing to consider is whether the figures
have the relief required by their position and the light
which falls on them; next the distribution of the figures,
and whether they are arranged to meet the needs of the
story, and thirdly, whether each is doing its part.9
Obviously excellence of grouping, with each feature of
the picture performing its function, is part of a truthful
imitation of nature, and leads on to that idealizing and
ennobling imitation, which selects and combines that
which is most beautiful or effective.10
At this point one touches Leonardo's virtual qualifica
tions to his general principle of fidelity to nature, qualifi
cations which his own painting tacitly exemplified. The
painter argues and vies with nature — disputa e gareggia
— says he.11 He will try to improve upon her, excel her
if he can, in his endeavor to paint what is significant,
noble, and beautiful. This Leonardo did, and Raphael,
and Michelangelo, and Titian. In order to make his
painting effective, the painter will even, literally and me
ticulously speaking, falsify nature, by altering or omitting
such details of appearance as actually may be seen in na
ture, but which blunt the effectiveness of his painting, ob
scure the form or contour of his conception or of the chief
8 lb. §§ 148 sqq., 363, 365, 423 sqq.
» lb. §§ 17, 554.
« See e.g. lb. §§ 587, 5«8, 593, 593-
11 lb. § 662.

ITALIAN PAINTING 115
objects by which he designs to present it. Leonardo says
this substantially; and this he also did, and Raphael and
Michelangelo and Titian.
Nevertheless that the principle of fidelity, or the higher
fidelity, to nature must in general obtain, Leonardo shows
in a pregnant paragraph upon the course of Italian paint
ing: The painter's work will have little merit if he
merely copies another artist; but only if he studies from
nature. The painters after the Romans imitated each
other, and art declined. " Then came Giotto the Floren
tine who was not content to imitate the works of his
master Cimabue . . . but began to draw on the rocks the
actions of the goats he kept." He drew all the ani
mals in the country till after much study he surpassed the
masters of his time and of many centuries before him.
After him, art declined again by copying what had been
done, until Masaccio, a Florentine, " showed by his per
fect work how those who take any guide but nature, mis
tress of masters, weary themselves in vain." 12
So Leonardo brings us to this remarkable Masaccio,
who looked into the face of nature and saw more per
fectly than anyone before him how painting should imi
tate. Vasari says that he painted things as they are, and
was the first to make his figures stand firmly on their feet.
He individualized his people, making them look real; and
greatly improved his perspective, giving his pictures at
mospheric depth. Every figure has its place where there
is room for it, not merely for the part which shows, but
for the rest of the figure remaining invisible behind an
other form. Light and shadow have become important
in his painting, as they are in every actual scene. So this
young genius expressed his understanding of the face
of nature, and died, not much over twenty-seven, about
the year 1428, leaving those frescoes in the Carmine at
Florence to be studied by all Italian painters of his own
time arid long after him.
Masaccio marks a stage in the progress of painting to
ward that complete and perfect modelling which Leon-
12 lb. § 660.

n6 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
ardo held to be the " soul of painting," and exemplified
in his Mona Lisa. After Masaccio, or in his time, others
worked diligently, bringing out their understanding of
how things looked, and endeavoring to arrange and paint
them beautifully, decoratively; sometimes raising their
types, and even trying to educe the soul. Such a one was
Fra Angelico, born before Masaccio and long outliving
him. Of a truth he was a saintly soul, and one whose
constant study and subtle skill invested with loveliness
and saintliness the forms he painted. All his long life
(1387-1455) he observed and studied. Starting from
idyllic sweetness, he progressed year by year, improv
ing the shading of his backgrounds, thus beautifying them
with truth. He raises the ordered composition of his
pictures, as in the Uffizi Coronation of the Virgin and the
Last ludgment in the Academy at Florence. He ad
vances in the individualizing of figures and the rendering
of expression, and in the naturalness of his grouping, even
reaching that impressive and beautifully composed group
ing which may still harmonize with the natural. Hav
ing impressed the walls of his Convent, San Marco, with
an intensive and hitherto unpainted saintliness, he put his
very last pictorial attainment into the Preaching of St.
Stephen and the Saint's Martyrdom, in Pope Nicholas's
Chapel in the Vatican.13 Thus through his art, and as
it were progressively, Fra Angelico expresses his own
lovely nature, which was a painter's also, and imbued
with the instinct of beauty and the passion to see and
paint appearances.
After Masaccio, in Florence, a realistic and more
analytical study of things went on with Paolo Uccello
and the Pollajuoli. Then painting turns toward a full
expression of the vivid life of Florence in the quattro
cento, which shall be painted in its whole pageantry and
individual delightfulness. Upon this alluring actuality
of street life about him, as well as upon Masaccio's fres
coes, is turned the gifted though over-greedy eye of the
Carmelite, Fra Lippo Lippi. He is delightful in his
*8See generally Langton Douglas, Fra Angelico (London, i960).

ITALIAN PAINTING 117
cheerful human rendering of sacred themes; a portrait
painter always, yet executing many lovely altar pieces
filled with pleasing women, he approached great com
position in his decoration of the Prato Duomo, even at
taining it, and with a more refined beauty, in the Annun
ciation in the Duomo at Spoleto. A little younger than
Fra Lippo, was Benozzo Gozzoli, who put life's cheer
ful pageantry into the anything but sacred scenes of the
Riccardi chapel. Still younger were Ghirlandajo and
Botticelli. Both were students of Fra Lippo as well as
of Masaccio's frescoes, and both were to become famous
and significant painters. No painter has rendered on so
ample a scale the complete life of quattrocento Florence
as Ghirlandajo (1449-1498), a man of extraordinary
aptness and facility in composition, who, with his pupils,
covered a goodly acreage of surface, and sometimes with
admirable pictures. His Calling of Peter and Andrew on
the wall of the Sistine Chapel is scarcely surpassed by any
of those compositions over which arches Michelangelo's
ceiling. His best known, and most amply illustrative
work fills the choir of S. Maria Novella. Among those
quite delightful pictures, The Birth of the Virgin excels in
deftness of general composition and in the beauty of the
figures. Yet Ghirlandajo's pleasing rendering of the de
tail and incident of life, which made him a great painter
of genre, scantily covers the incongruity between his
gaiety and the sacred themes. In spite of his cheerful
attractiveness, the thoughtful mind may be disturbed by
a certain pervasive irrationality, or at least by the incom
plete rationalizing of his composition. He does not ob
ject to irrelevancy of detail and corner incident, an ir
relevancy which will serve as contrast to the more strictly
drawn principles of composition and mightier harmony
of design already showing in Leonardo, and to attain
more obvious splendor in Raphael. Yet Ghirlandajo of
fers a brilliant expression of himself and of his quattro
cento Florence.
A very different painter and human being was Sandro
Botticelli (1444-15 10), to whom Ghirlandajo's success-

u8 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
ful and rather superficial art may have been a spiritual
thorn. Yet he was a cheerful soul, beneath his rather
sad and pregnant painting. The charmed study of the
classics, pervading a Florence ruled by Lorenzo dei
Medici, and by Politian in the humanities, affected Bot
ticelli as a new and high romance. He was touched by
the joyful-sad vibrations of their poetry, by Politian's
Orfeo and his " Ben venga Maggio," and why not by
Lorenzo's " Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne," begin

ning:

Quant' e bella giovinezza,
Che si fugge tuttavia.

His later life was as deeply moved by the strident elo
quence, and then the fate, of Savonarola. Yet Bot
ticelli, in some saddened sense, remained Botticelli, and
still felt and thought either in allegories or in images
which were living symbols. His ludith seems as much a
symbol as his Fortezza. Pallas crushing the Centaur,
but not with physical force, whether it signified Lorenzo's
victory over the Pazzi (1478), at least symbolized much
that then was pressing to expression in the painter's
phantasy. A puzzled sense of life's loveliness and pathos
speaks unspoken from the face and form of Venus —
newly born? one doubts it. The Spring is sheer al
legory, classical in its provenance, romantic in its quality;
and the Calumny is allegory so completely veiled that
men have felt impelled to link it with the unjust destruc
tion of Savonarola. But Botticelli was a splendid
draughtsman too, having early learned his lesson from
Antonio Pollajuolo; and he showed the resources of his
composition in those scenes from the life of Moses,
painted by him in the Sistine Chapel. Leonardo re
proved him for belittling landscape, and thinking it a
thing that might be done offhand. Botticelli did not set
himself to that as he did to his Madonnas, and to his
boys or angels, and to his Venus which allures as through
some subtler sense-fascination working within the veil
of flesh. His phantasy which pervades his apprehension

ITALIAN PAINTING 119
of the antique, his very personal imagination and in
dwelling mood, find expression in these forms through this
painter's mastery of a significant and speaking line.
A different reflection of the antique was brought to
masterful expression in the painting of another man,
Mantegna (1430-1506), the Paduan who worked so
long at Mantua. His painting drew lessons from the
sculpture of Donatello who came to Padua in 1443, and
executed his equestrian statue of Gattamalata. This uni
versal Donatello was a gluttonous observer of nature, and
here Mantegna gained from him; but the antique had
not failed to work upon the sculptor and his fellows:
Alberti says that " the spirit of the ancients passed into
the frames of Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Donatello and Ma
saccio, and fitted them for the most honorable enter
prises." 14
Mantegna absorbed the plastic qualities of Donatello
and of the antique sculpture, showing them even in his
early frescoes in the Eremitani chapel in Padua, executed
before he went in 1459 to serve the Gonzagas at Mantua.
He could paint action naturally, and was a great por-
trayer of individualities when the task was set him, for
example, to paint Lodovico Gonzaga and his family.
But he had always been, and more and more became a
student of ancient monuments and a signal lover of the
antique and its qualities. No painter before him had so
masterfully brought the lines and motives and emblems
of antique art into effective union with his own, one
might say, classic genius'. He is the great quattrocento
painter who advances to that beauty which rises above
the charms of the individual and above the so humanly
attractive painting which delights in them. Mantegna
rises above such actual or imagined portraiture, as Leon
ardo will rise, and Raphael and Michelangelo. He has
likewise made his own advances toward their greater art
in the high unity of his composition and the discarding of
distracting incident. Such classic self-expression of Man
tegna may be seen in the historical composition of the
11 Quoted by Crowe and Cavalcaselle.

120 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Triumph of Caesar, what there is left of it, in Hampton
Court, and in the mythological Parnassus in the Louvre.
Art is the best criticism of art; and never was so great
criticism passed on the previous manner and achievement
of painting as that contained in the work of those three
great men whose names have just been set together.
Two of them (not Raphael, who was altogether a
painter) were capable of criticism in words; a more final
judgment lay in their painting, and the manner in which
it lifted itself above much that had been and still was
popular. So lofty and so ideal became the painting and
sculpture of these three great artists and certain of their
fellows, that it indirectly compels attention to the char
acter of the society in which they had their being, and the
effect of it in promoting or hindering their attainment.
There are different phases of personality within that
mysterious form which cloaks a so-called individual — as
may be seen, outside of Italy, amply illustrated in many an
English Elizabethan. The same is true of a people, or
of what we call the genius of a race. If its phases are
indeed parts of an unity, at least they appear separable
and distinct one from another. The virtues of mind and
disposition, all the positive and exemplary elements of
human being, rarely work together either in an individual
or a people. Some of them may exist in marked degree,
while others, which might seem their normal concomi
tants, are as noticeably wanting. One might ideally hope
to find intellectual power accompanying a correspondingly
large benevolence; one might expect the religious sense
of reverence and dependence on the divine to be associated
with the social virtues, for which it sometimes is a sub
stitute; and still more reasonably might one look for a
close association between beauty of character and a delight
in the beauty of visible things and their representations.
But we know that these wished for conjunctions fail quite
as often as they greet us in the records.
The universal Italian delight in all the delightful things
of form and color which may be created, fashioned, or

ITALIAN PAINTING 121
put together by human craft, bore slight relationship to
civic virtue. It was connected with Italian religious
feeling, because that demanded images, delighted in them,
functioned by means of them. It was akin to the Italian
critical sense, or reason, in so far as that employed itself
upon the pleasure-giving qualities of the products of hu
man art.
Another point of comparison: in a large way Eliza
bethan plays accorded with the popular taste and the ap
provals and disapprovals issuing from the English mind
and character. But many of the plays, especially those
which were Italianate, did not represent the ethics of the
audience. The audience, listening to Webster's White
Devil or Duchess of Malfey, might enjoy upon the stage
what it neither was nor approved of. Likewise Italian
painting assuredly corresponded with Italian taste, and
yet its themes and the beauty and loveliness of their pres
entation might bear no obvious resemblance to the charac
ters of the men who ordered the paintings and took
pleasure in them. These paintings were what they liked,
agreeing with their tastes rather than their morals.
Pietro Aretino (1492— 1557), the blackmailing litterateur
who plied his vile trade from the tolerant security of
Venice, was an intimate of Titian and an excellent critic
of painting; he was very sensitive to the beauties of Vene
tian sunsets, and could describe them charmingly.
Nor were Italian paintings necessarily a reflection of
the moral natures of the painters themselves. One may
fall back on the Aristotelian-scholastic thought, as given
by Aquinas : Ars est recta ratio factibilium — the right
reason, or way, of making things that are makeable. In
itself ars is innocent — the locus innocentiae — in the
sense that the making of a thing, the building of a house
or the painting of a picture, is not an act of ethical import;
is neither moral nor immoral, righteous or wicked.
It was not the moral natures of the Italians, or their
truthfulness, their civic loyalty and patriotism (which
were conspicuously lacking) that painted their beautiful
pictures. It was Italian love and genius for painting.

122 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The genius, the heaven bestowed grace of form, was
theirs. They succeeded more splendidly in painting than
in their poetry and belles lettres, where form seems won
at the expense of substance. Indeed in their writing, form
stands out plastically. In Castiglione's famous book, the
qualities, the equipment, the manners of a perfect Cour
tier appear as forms visible and pleasing to the eye.
Painting and sculpture naturally change their style and
manner, and incidentally their aims, as they move on to a
culmination. The painters of the quattrocento had
shown individual differences in conception, method, and
achievement, according to their faculties and tempera
ments. Their painting had been an expression of them
selves, and withal an image of the tastes and fancies of
the time. Italy had been growing richer; had been con
stantly increasing the assets of her civilization. There
was ampler means to indulge the taste for painting and
remunerate the painters. Little had occurred to check
life's happy effervescence. The last decade of the cen
tury opened as a glad climacteric, at Florence especially;
but was to end in perturbation. Lorenzo dei Medici died
in 1492, and his great scholars soon followed him to the
tomb. The French invasion came, with its easy over
throw of states, to demonstrate insultingly Italian weak
nesses. With their Medici for the time expelled, the
Florentines, scared by the demonstrations of Savonarola,
rather calamitously abandoned art for goodness; then
they burned the prophet, as they had burned their finery,
and returned to earth and art. In Milan quite as rude
events took place a little later, and the Moro (Lodovico
Sforza) passed to a dungeon at Loches, with the shame
of Italy's invasion on his head. Cesare Borgia too, after
his baleful meteor course, had flitted to a prison in Spain.
Such object lessons might damp the Italian mood. Per
haps sobering Spanish manners were entering the high
society, which possibly looked for a more sedate decora
tion of its habitation. Perhaps some influence flowed
from the new study of Plato.
It is. hard to bring such events or changes, local or

ITALIAN PAINTING 123
general, to bear upon the progress and mounting style of
Italian painting. Rather, we see the advance taking to
itself the previous attainment, and as from its milieu ris
ing to its culmination. It even re-asserts its affinity with
the earlier achievements of Giotto and of Masaccio,
which Leonardo recognized as epoch-making. But most
assuredly this supreme advance was due to the genius of
three men, and to the significant work of contemporary
craftsmen. The careers of these three began, indeed
that of Leonardo reached its meridian, in the quattro
cento. Born in 1452, Leonardo's Last Supper was
painted before the century closed. Michelangelo, born
in 1475, passed the susceptible and pregnant years of
youth at work among the art treasures of Lorenzo, as
sociating with his great Platonists, before Lorenzo died in
1492. Raphael was born in 1483; he also had much
to learn before the sixteenth century ushered in his
eighteenth year. His feet were planted in the quattro
cento; schooled in its art, he took its lessons with him
even to his fresco-painting in the Vatican.
The creations of these men of genius — their self-ex
pression — can neither be detached from their enabling
antecedents nor accounted for by them. Their work
passed onward from what had been done; it asserted its
affinity with what was most significant in the past : at the
same time it was distinct creation. Their art opened new
depths of truthfulness in the modeling of natural objects
invested with the verities of light and shadow. Their
genius realized the beauty and the profound representa
tive significance of the human form, which their art ren
dered with intrinsic dignity and lofty graciousness. They
intensified the import of its movements and postures.
They grouped human forms and other matter of their
compositions beautifully, so as to give pleasure to the
eye, and functionally, so as to contribute to the action of
the piece. They avoided irrelevance and distraction,
and kept all things true to the master motive of their
composition. The mind of Leonardo, analytic, curious as to all things

i24 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
visible and their effective relationships, the mind to which
there was nothing negligible or unimportant; the eye to
which likewise there was nothing insignificant or unim
pressive, an eye that discerned more subtleties in the ap
pearance of things than ever had been imagined; the artist
temper delighting in the import and beauty of appear
ances, eager to fix their fleeting loveliness; the deft finesse
of hand which could execute, change, or retract whatever
might be supplied by eye or mind; and then the re-com
posing, intensifying, creative faculty which could present
the inclusive and enduring verities of the human person
ality, and the moment of supreme import in the human
drama — such may have been the qualities of this, in all
respects wonderful, Leonardo, through which he brought
painting to a perfection never before realized, and in its
intimate intent and execution not to be surpassed.
Leonardo was a true Italian, to whom vision, the func
tion of the corporeal eye, the sense of sight, was the chief
purveyor both of pleasure and of knowledge of the world.
Under its instigation worked the investigating, re-produc
ing and constructive hand; both eye and hand reporting
the data of their visual and tactile inquiry to the common
sense which dwells behind the other senses, and judges and
compares the testimony of its five instruments.15 Paint
ing is the means and art par excsllsnce which captures
and preserves the phenomena of the visible world — le
opere di natura — for future pleasure and enlighten
ment, and presents them as they are in reality.
" He who disparages painting, the sole imitator of all
the visible works of nature, of a surety disparages a
subtle invention, which with philosophy and subtle specu
lation, considers all the qualities of forms, backgrounds
and settings (arie e siti), plants, animals, herbs and flow
ers, which are enveloped in shadow and light. And
15 . . . l'occhio riceve le spezie overo similitudini delli obbietti, e dalli
alia imprensiva, e da essa imprensiva al senso commune, e 11 i giudicata.
E. Solmi, Leonardo-Frammenti (Florence, Barbera, 1904) p. 241.
L'occhio, che si dice finestra dell'anima, e la principale via, donde il
comune senso pu6 piu copiosamente e magnificamente considerare le infinite
opere di natura. ib. p. 235.

ITALIAN PAINTING 125
truly this is the science and legitimate daughter of nature,
because painting is born from Nature. Or, more cor
rectly, we should call it Nature's grandchild, because all
visible things have been' born from Nature, from which
things born from Nature painting is born. So we rightly
call it grandchild of nature and kin to God." 16
But the painter is no sheer copyist, for he argues and
vies with nature. He shall even have a conception in his
imagination, an idea, a composition, and bring out its de
sign, and build it up so that it may express his idea ; but
with all his figures drawn and placed in true perspective,
and executed according to reason and natural effects."
Such statements indicate why painting was one of
Leonardo's dominant passions, and through what courses
of reasoning he justified his profound interest in it, con
necting it with other branches of his scientific inquiry into
the kinetic values and relationships of things.
It was impossible that Leonardo should not have set
painting above the descriptions and narrations of poetry,
being an Italian man to whom all things addressed them
selves in images, — to the eye and tactile hand, rather
than in words. He constantly emphasizes the greater
power, directness, and instantaneity of the impressions
of sight, as compared with the infiltration of the meaning
of words through the ear to the ssnso communs. Paint
ing presents the essence of its matter in a single instant,
and all at once gives the impression of the natural objects
in the harmony and proportion of the parts and the whole
which they compose.18
Leonardo follows again the genius of his people in
judging painting to be superior to sculpture; — through
its " larger mental discourse," and more universal powers
of representation; through its means of linear and aerial
perspective and power of bringing the remote and the
near into the same composition; and because of its beauty
of color and its marvels of nuance and finesse.19
16 Solmi, Leonardo o. c. p. 276.
" Solmi, o. c. p. 278.
i8 Solmi, o. c. pp. 233-251.
iB Solmi, o. c. pp. 289-297. , i ¦ >.['

126 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
His own painting and his own work in sculpture never
satisfied Leonardo's passion for fidelity to nature and for
the effective presentation of the modifying conception in
his mind. His love of beauty might omit distracting in
cidents in order to enhance the impressiveness of the
painted reality. He had always realized that the truth
ful apprehension and representation of the outward ap
pearance of an object depends upon knowledge of its
inner structure and organic rationale, whether the object
be living or inanimate. Never did his mind cease to
impel his eye and hand to the investigation of the struc
tural or causal relationships which produced the outer
appearance. If he was a painter, he was just as integrally
a man of science, and indeed one whose curiosity and
passion for knowledge constantly checked the painter's
productivity. In the end, the man of science mastered
the artist.20 The painting and the sculpture of Leonardo
da Vinci were but a partial self-expression of this man of
insatiable intellectual curiosity and utterly astounding in
tellectual insight.
Leonardo, painter and man of science, lived in a world
of nature's works (which include man), as well as in his
own modifying conceptions of these natural creations.
But he who is not half withdrawn from his art through
following after knowledge infinite, and is altogether
painter, may build a world more completely in accord with
his creative sense of beauty and other factors of his plas
tic genius. There had been a Giotto world, made of per
sonages whom we quickly recognize as belonging to it.
There was a Fra Angelico world of blessed saints : — who
would have the heart to exile a single one even of his some
what less blessed damned to any region of hard actuality!
There was a cheerful human world of Fra Filippo, an
other more daintily fashionable of Ghirlandajo, and a
strange world of Botticelli. There was a world of Peru-
gino, with its admirably composed array of regularly
beautiful balanced figures, where one might feel scanted
of spiritual or vital sustenance. And now there was to be
20 See post, Chap. XXXI.

ITALIAN PAINTING 127
a world, of Raphael, indeed, more than one of them.
First an idyllic world like Perugino's, only with a bit more
soul; then a world of perfect groupings, mother and
child and often the young John, the world of altogether
lovely Granduca and Del Sedia Madonnas and Belles
Jardinieres; and then a finally ennobled world, composed
and patterned in beauty, and peopled with beings per
fected in new grace. Compared with these final compo
sitions, those of other painters seemed to lack life's com
plete harmony; in the presence of the beings who filled
them, the figures of previous painters might seem to lack
something of the fullness of life's comeliness. This
world had no meticulous realistic insistences, as that all
things in it should submit to compass and yard stick. In
that great cartoon of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes,
had the two boats been drawn large enough to hold the
Apostolic fishers, the dramatic greatness of these human
figures would have been sacrificed. Yet such was the
visual validity and appeal of this final pictorial world of
Raphael that it carried no suggestion of unreality. Ra
phael's historical personages in their portraits, a Julius
II, a Castiglione, fit in to this same world.
Perhaps nothing lent more beauty to this final world of
Raphael than the position of each figure in it: the pleas
ing relative position as well as posture of every figure in
the School of Athens, for example. That was part of the
nobility of the whole design, the visual effect. The eye
draws as great pleasure from the whole picture as from
the beautiful figures that fill it so adequately, and neither
crowd nor impede or jar upon each other. Thus Raph
ael's supreme faculty of pictorial composition found ex
pression, and the efficient harmonies of his nature. He
felt no craving for novelty; his painting sought no drastic
innovation. He accepted his subjects easily, as from
tradition. He presents them with more potent and more
beautiful unison of composition than had been reached
before. Even the so beautiful and so telling contrast of
gesture between the arm of Plato pointing aloft in the
School of Athens, and that of Aristotle horizontally

128 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
covering the field of nature's works, was traditional in
literature, though it might never have been so shown in
fresco. In Raphael artistic interest and creative faculty direct
themselves to this perfected unison of composition, this
harmony of lovely forms, which admits neither discord
nor irrelevance. He conceives the composition as a
whole throughout its parts; he represents it as a whole,
and as a whole will the spectator see it. It is simplified
through exclusion of the impertinent, and yet is intensified
and given dramatic energy through the presentation of
well directed contrasts and the ennoblement of all par
ticipating forms. The drapery will drape and render
speaking, but neither overload nor obscure, the action of
the figures; while the action of each will fit so perfectly
into the action of the others, that no detail can be altered
without disturbance of the whole.
In all these qualities the compositions of Raphael are
approaching the noblest manner of antique sculpture, but
without direct or conscious imitation.21 His painting,
and with greater emphasis, the sculpture and painting of
Michelangelo, are rising to the level of the work of Sco-
pas or Praxiteles, even to that of the masters of the
Parthenon. The great art of Raphael and Michelangelo
ascends to the peak of excellence reached by the ancient
masters, not necessarily by following in their footsteps,
but by climbing, it may be, the opposite side of the
mountain. Of a surety Italian painting had never been ignorant of
the antique, had never been slow to borrow whatever
figures or patterns or ideas it felt impelled to use; some-
21 Of course, Raphael borrowed scores of antique decorative patterns,
frankly enough: as one may see abundantly in the Loggia of the Vatican.
And sometimes he manifestly imitates the ancient sculpture, as in the
nude figure of Apollo ( ?) in the niche to the left of the centre in the
School of Athens. But in the grand manner of his composition there
would seem to have been no conscious copying of the antique. Doubtless
he had drawn the symmetry of his compositions from Perugino or Fra
Bartolommeo, even as for energy in action he drew upon Michelangelo
and Leonardo.

ITALIAN PAINTING 129
times it would appear mindful of the antique lessons, and
again quite disregardful of them. Whatever detail
might be borrowed, the painting of Ghirlandajo, in gen
eral motive, form, and composition, was as unantique as
possible. With the same antique background behind
them, Raphael and Michelangelo in the clear develop
ment and progress of their Italian arts of painting and
sculpture approach the classical. They have adopted, and
made vitally their own, principles of composition, concep
tions of beauty, realistic idealizing methods of compassing
artistic excellence, all intimately related to the ways of an
cient sculptors. But if, for instance, Michelangelo had
any direct forbear, it was Signorelli and no antique statue;
and, passing over the disputes as to details of his early
instruction, we know that Raphael first imitated Perugino,
then availed himself of what he could learn from Floren
tine painting, and took his last lessons from Michel
angelo. It was through mastering all these lessons, and the
vital absorption into his own artistic faculty of the in
fluences composing his physical and spiritual environment,
that Raphael, prince of painters, brought to expression
the last possibilities of his genius — of himself; the last
possibilities which he might realize before dying at the age
of thirty-seven in the year 1520, to the grief of Italy.
We have nothing of Raphael that reveals him except
his painting. There we stop. Leonardo and Michel
angelo have left much besides, — Leonardo some thou
sands of pages of manuscript which disclose the workings
of his mind. Besides Michelangelo's poems, there are
hundreds of his letters, many to his father and brothers
disclosing his devoted and querulous affection, and his
habit of living miserably and complaining of it. He
writes to his father from Rome in 15 12: "I live in a
miserable fashion, caring neither for life nor for honors
and I suffer excessive hardships assailed by a thou
sand anxieties. It is now about fifteen years since I had
an hour's repose, and all that I have ever done has been

130 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
to help you ; and you have never . . . believed it. God
pardon us all." 22
To his brother Buonarroti : "I live here surrounded
by the greatest anxieties, suffering the greatest bodily
fatigues. I have not a friend of any sort, and I do not
want one ; I have not so much time as suffices for me to
eat the necessary food. However, I trust I may have no
additional worries, for I could not bear another ounce." 23
Michelangelo did live miserably at Rome and else
where. While working on Pope Julius's statue at Bo
logna, he did not take off his clothes or boots for weeks
at a time, and slept in the same bed with his three work
men. On removing his boots the skin might peel off with
them. His letters show how wretchedly he kept himself,
complaining always. He was difficult and violent in tem
per, suspicious, thinking that people were cheating him.
He was nervous and timid. When about twenty, he
cleared out of Florence with a man who had had bad
dreams of the coming downfall of Piero dei Medici.24
Thirty-five years later, while directing the fortifications
of his city during the fatal siege, he fled again, suddenly,
to Venice; a letter of his tells about it.25 He could also
be very prudent politically, avoiding speech with the
Florentine exiles at Rome, lest it compromise him.26
Such apparent weakness of character may be only indi
rectly relevant. But the man's virtues were touched with
weakness, at least with lack of judgment. Michelangelo
was generous, the main support of a father as complain
ing as himself; he was always helping his brothers and a
nephew whom he eventually made his heir, and wrote
quantities of letters to, the following among them: " As
I was quite unable to decipher thy last letter, I put it in
22 Trans, from R. W. Carden, Michelangelo, a Record of his life as told
by his letters, p. 84.
23 lb. p. 63, Rome 1509.
24 Condivi, Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti, § XIV. This Vita speaks
from a close intimacy with Michelangelo, and was published some years
before he died.
25 Carden, o. c. p. 168 (Letter dated Sept. 25, 1529).
26 See letter of March, 1548, o. c. p. 232.

ITALIAN PAINTING 131
the fire." 27 He was comically obstructive touching this
nephew's marriage, objected, for example, to a wife who
was near-sighted; altogether he was fearful of the ways
of women. Besides his family, Michelangelo was gen
erous and affectionate toward Urbino, his trusted servant.
He would show impulsive love for those he liked, whether
or not they were worthy of his regard. His praise was
apt to be as extreme as his anger or irritation. He could
debase himself before mediocrity, and was over-grateful
to Vasari, who, of course, worshipped him. Yet he can
write with very noble modesty, as to one Martelli who had
sent him a sonnet in his praise: " I perceive that you
have imagined me to be as God wished me to be. I am
a simple man and of little worth, spending my time in
striving to give expression to the art God gave me." 28
Michelangelo had deep affection for Sebastian del
Piombo, and praised him prodigiously,29 as well he might;
but he ascribed Raphael's success to his great diligence.
The passionate devotion expressed for Tommaso Cava-
lieri, a cultivated Roman gentleman of great personal
beauty, falls in the same category with the love for Vic
toria Colonna, soon to be referred to in connection with
the sonnets.
The mention of these paltry incidents of character is
pardonable if they prove not quite irrelevant to the self-
expression of this complete and prodigious artist person
ality. Michelangelo adored beauty, and, above all, the
beauty which might be rendered through the human form,
which he glorifies in his painting and sculpture as Pindar
glorified it in his Odes. Not altogether painter, but alto
gether artist, he seems to us. His temperament, his
impulses and devotion, his imagination, his intellect and
faculty, the complete efficient nature of the man, drew
the whole compass of his life, — knowledge, opportunity,
experience and incidental passion, — into the creation of
beauty through the media of poetry, sculpture, painting,
"Carden, o. c. p. 248 (1548)-
2s Carden, o. c. p. 185 (Jan'y, 1542).
2<i Carden, o. c. p. 154, 'etter of May, 1525.

132 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
and architecture. He was an artist, and he lived no other
life, save casually, distractedly, impertinently, under the
passing jar of insignificant irritations, fears, and small
infatuations. With soft human spots in his soul, he might be hungry
for affection, or, rather, might feel the need of feeling
affection and expressing it. He cast his pearls before
objects worthy or unworthy. His need was to cast his
pearl, but not that the pearl should be taken into some
warm and sympathetic bosom. Such an artist's love is
like the first love of a youth, whose need is to love, and
feel and think it out to its full reaches, imagine its rela
tions with the eternal stars, express it in hidden or fear
fully revealed adoration. This love is most fortunate
when not returned. For responsive affection from the
object of it would check the youth's imagination, and
might clog the expansion of his nature and faculties.
So with the love of an artist, an artist in his whole na
ture and through all his years, like Michelangelo. The
youthful lover is or should be a poet. This artist was
always young, loving imaginatively, seeking to clothe his
affection in beauty. Michelangelo's love, as we find it
in his poems, was Petrarchian, expressional and creative.
It was the artist's love for the thing of beauty which he
creates, while likewise uplifting to the spheres his concep
tion of devotion to it. Unwise Pygmalion, to wish to
have his statue come to life, in response to the love which
had created it! The love expressed in Michelangelo's
sonnets looked for no more return than did the ardor
which he put into his painting and his sculpture. An
equivalent return from the object of these impassioned
expressions would have perplexed him; he could not have
recognized himself as a fitting altar for such worship.
He might even have been in a predicament; as if those
creatures of his brush upon the Sistine ceiling, or, horror
upon horror, those in the Last Judgment, had come to
life and were thronging to clasp the knees of their creator
and cover him with their Titanic affection!
We may not err in finding the sonnets of Michelangelo

ITALIAN PAINTING 133
and the passionately sublime thought contained in them,
to be sheer art. In them thought and imagination and
emotion fuse and press with energy to artistic utterance;
while the upper reaches of human passion are forced along
the tortuosities of a hyper-poetic imagination. Were the
sonnets an expression of a real passion? Assuredly; but
it was a passion for beauty, perhaps rather for the ex
pression or the creation of beauty; and not for the pos
session of the body and soul of another human being.
They were the self-expression of the poet who composed
them, and incidentally accepted the suggestions of certain
actual relationships or experiences. The suggestions
sprang from actuality; and the sonnets in which they were
uplifted and finally enshrined were as true as art could
make them. Theirs was the truth of valid and beautiful
conceptions set in fitting words.
As befitted a sixteenth century Italian, this artist was
less great as poet than as painter and sculptor. He
seems to have composed verses through most of his life,
certainly throughout the latter portion of it. He did not
fling them off casually and carelessly; but corrected and
rewrote them, and permitted a collection of them to be
made for circulation among chosen spirits who could un
derstand. The latest editor of these difficult poems 30
believes that he has succeeded in printing them in their
proper temporal sequence; though often he has felt less
certain of the individuals to whom they were sent, or ad
dressed in the poet's mind. A number were addressed to
a man, Cavalieri,31 and these gave rise to the same ques
tionings which have attached to some of Shakespeare's
sonnets. In both cases the answers lie in the poet's
impulse to express himself, already commented on. A
more interesting analogy may be found in the way each of
these poets has used the literary conventions in the air
80 Die Dichtungen des Michelagniolo Buonarroti, herausgegeben etc., by
Carl Frey (Berlin 1897). The first critical edition, that of C. Guasti,
(Florence 1863), contains helpful prose renderings of the contents of each
poem. J. A. Symonds's translations of the Sonnets must suffice for the
English reader. They are not always the equivalent of the Italian; but
represent a brave attempt at the impossible.
31E.g;. Sonnet 50 (Frej^s edition), beginning Se net volto.

134 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
about him, and made of them vehicles for his own power
ful and significant self-expression.
From the affinities of his own nature, Michelangelo
revered Dante and felt the power of Dante's meaning.
Occasionally he uses the metre of the Commedia, and his
verse becomes Dantesque in phrase. But Petrarch af
forded the chief store of conventional conceits and images.
Michelangelo's thought also reflects the current Platon-
ism of the Medici circles, as well as the sinuous far off
rivulets of seeming Platonism which had percolated
through Italian lyrics. Whether he read Plato for him
self has been much disputed.
A number of these sonnets and madrigals are Petrar-
chian in sentiment and phrase. The query, for example,
whether the beauty seen by the lover in his mistress is
verily in her or in his own soul, is an echo of Petrarch
as well as Dante.32 But all such apparently borrowed
notes have been revitalized in Michelangelo's deeply
emotional as well as deeply intellectual nature, and re-
emerge in the sonnets as elements of his own rending
self-expression. Power, rather than facility, marks the work of Michel
angelo, whether in marble or pigment or in verse. There
is neither ease nor clarity in his sonnets. One feels in
them first the difficulty of the thought, and then the power
which compels the words to do the master's utterance.
No other sonnets, Italian, French or English, evince such
strainings. Yet the mind breaks through and conquers.
And, when love is the burden of the sonnet, though the
lines may not keep their significance sweetly and surely
human, love is the more sublimely lifted to its eternal goal
of beauty; and the love of beauty in mortal form unites
with the love of the beauty and goodness of God.
Some of the sonnets move with the feeling of an indi
vidual or reciprocal situation. Surely those do which
express the grieving thought of Michelangelo on the
death of Victoria Colonna. But still he is an artist and a
poet, obeying the compulsions of his conception of eternal
32 No. 32 (Frey) — Dimmi di gratia. See Frey's notes,

ITALIAN PAINTING 135
love and beauty. The personal feeling or situation of
the writer seems to inspire and guide the poems giving
utterance to sorrow and contrition over the caducity and
vain waste of life, when at the end the soul must cast itself
on the piteous saving sacrifice of Christ. Alas I when it
knows itself near death, but far from God ! —
presso a morte e si lontan da Dio.83
Michelangelo wrote a number of sonnets and frag
ments of sonnets having this theme in the last years of
his life, and among them the most famous of all his
poems: Giunto e gia '1 corso della vita mia. . . .
Now that his life has reached the port where account of
every unhappy or good deed must be given, alas for the
life-long passion, the afectuosa fantasia, which has made
art for him idol' e monarchal Death is near and cer
tain, and the second death, the everlasting, menaces.
Neither painting nor carving can calm the soul now turned
to that love divine which to receive us opens his arms
upon the cross.34
If the poems of Michelangelo were to be for the
world the least important exponent of his genius, they
illuminate the passionate tension of his sculpture and his
painting. Also they show the manifold completeness of
this man of four natures, as he was called, or of four
gifts or faculties, which unfolded themselves in his four
arts of poetry, sculpture, painting and architecture.
These four arts were the expressions of his nature which
was one in its manifold striving to create the beauty which
it yearned to realize. The poems gave their harnessed
utterance to the same endeavor which the mightier plastic
genius of the man was embodying in sculpture and paint
ing. St. Peter's dome was its last realization. Through
all his arts, though in architecture least articulately, he
sought to express the forms of visible beauty. Its high-
83 No. 48 (Frey), and see 49.
"No- 147 (Frey).

136 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
est type was the human form, the veritable human body
stripped of obscuring accessories and distractions.
The instincts of his dynamic nature turned to the mascu
line rather than the feminine form; and in the masculine
achieved its grandest triumphs: the Adam of the Sistine
ceiling is incomparably more beautiful than the Eve:
though one may stand astounded before the feminine
figure of Night in the Medici Chapel. But the sheer
decorative idealized athletic figures on the painted beams
of the Sistine ceiling are all male. No man before or
since ever drew forth such import and beauty from the
trunk and limbs of man. Yet when the figure and situa
tion warranted, he gave proportionate emphasis to the
human visage, as the crowning and most complex and sub
tle feature of the human form.
None had ever shown such knowledge of the human
form; and no man's work approached such miracles of ex
pressive tension and repose. Michelangelo studied and
followed nature, the natural body; and then along the
principles of its organic structure he passed beyond his
source, surpassed his teacher. He is the grand exponent
of Leonardo's pregnant words, the artist disputes and
vies with nature, that his work may present further beau
ties and perfections through following the principles and
suggestions of the natural world.
The work of no other artist has ever represented such
enormous effort; and one may doubt whether the work
of any other artist has surpassed it in achievement. The
vocabularies of critics have been drained bare in describ
ing these stupendous creations of sculpture and painting,
or in criticising their alleged exaggerations and possibly
baneful effect upon the following time. The effect may be
condoned for the sake of the achievement! There is no
call here to go beyond the works themselves or add to the
discussion of them. The Pieta, the Sistine Ceiling, those
recumbent demi-gods of pain on the Medici tombs, the
statues in the niches over them, the Slaves in the Louvre,
the Moses in S. Pietro in Vincoli, are exhaustless in
beauty and import. They are like the Bible, like Shake-

ITALIAN PAINTING 137
speare, like the Phidian Parthenon or the Cathedral of
Chartres. Each thoughtful person shall appreciate and
draw from them according to his understanding; and a
residue will still be there ! They were the self-expression
of a daemonic artist.
It seems absurd to end this chapter without any refer
ence to Venetian painting, which was so utterly expressive
of the whole esthetic soul of Venice. The Venetian soul
cast itself upon painting and color. Painting, colored
decoration, was their art, their art par excellence, almost
their sole and single art. Was this due to their affinity
with the Byzantine East, where art was color rather than
salient modelling? Was it due to their own atmosphere
and sea and sunset? Who knows? The fact remained:
Venice was all for painting. Her sculpture was insigni
ficant, her poetry a blank.
But the field becomes too vast. Venetian painting is
better to look at, and surrender one's self to, than to read
and write about. All painting is primarily to be seen;
but Venetian painting is somewhat more altogether to be
seen rather than reflected on. Is not this true of Titian?
He loved the naked body quite as dearly as did Michel
angelo, and painted its flesh, its feminine color far more
exquisitely. But Michelangelo's bodies, not Titian's, are
meet for thought and reflection. The glories of the
Venetian master's color surpassed all the coloring of
Florence and of Rome; while the blander harmonies of
his composition equalled Raphael's achievement. And
he was a grand inaugurator of landscape painting.
And what like things might be said of his master
Giorgione? And of Veronese? And what more like
things, and other things besides, of that last Venetian
Titan of a painter, Tintoretto, who seems to hurl his
compositions on the canvas, miracles of light and dark.
Nevertheless, there is too much to write about, or it is all
better to be seen.

BOOK II
ERASMUS AND LUTHER

CHAPTER VI
SCHOLARSHIP IN GERMANY AND THE NETHERLANDS
Whether in her times of mental squalor or her times of
brilliancy, Italy was reminiscent of her past and sensitive
to its influence. Classic literature and art were for her
an expression of a greater pagan manhood, once hers
and still having silent part in whatever her people might
achieve. It was natural that a renewed and broader
reading of the Classics and a more facile imitation of the
ancient buildings and the ancient sculptures should be the
chief element in her intellectual and catholic progress in
the fourteenth and following centuries.
But the Roman past was not the source of all intellec
tual elements in the North. The northern peoples had
their own potent antecedents. They were not the direct
descendants of the Romans, but, at most, spiritual col
laterals with other strains of blood. Their past had been
monastic and feudal, rather than secular and urban.
Monasticism had scant sympathy for the classics, and feu
dalism had developed a taste for turbulent epics and
adventurous romance. The North had looked on the
classics as a store of knowledge; and northern intellectual
energies, focussing at last in the University of Paris, de
voted themselves to a most unhumanistic exploitation of
ancient philosophy in scholasticism and mediaeval science,
false or true. Christianity itself as understood and de
veloped or corrupted in the North had but loose kinship
with the Latin paganism which underlay the religiousness
of Italy. The northern religion held Celtic and Teutonic
heathen elements, unhumanistic and unmalleable. It
proved more unyielding to the influence of pagan human
ism than the Christianity of Italy.
Nevertheless, the Latin language and the great works
composed in it had been the vehicle of educational disci-
141

142 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
pline in France and Germany and England. And in
those countries as well as in Italy, the classics offered
human wisdom and a broad consideration of life to who
ever might read and partially understand them.
Accordingly when, under suggestions from the pas
sionate classical revival in Italy, the peoples of the north
turned to the classics with a renewed and deeper zeal,
their purpose was not confined to improvement in educa
tion and Latinity. The intentions and desires of the
northern humanists were as broad as their own natures,
and their natures were developing with the study of this
humanizing literature. Their pursuits were an expres
sion of their wish for a more humane, a more rational
and reasonable, treatment of life. Clearly the growing
interest in the classics and the broadening of the purpose
of their study was part of the general intellectual and
social development, and a moving factor in the same.
The whole matter is illustrated by the career and func
tion and effect of the northern apostle of humanism and
reasonableness, Desiderius Erasmus. Since all classes
in the north were keenly interested in their religion, the
labors of Erasmus were naturally directed to the scholarly
study of the New Testament and the Church Fathers as
well as to a better understanding of the pagan classics.
What is true of the great Erasmus is true of northern
scholars before him as well as those who felt his influence.
And with them, as with their leader, classical studies were
part of a more instructed appreciation of what was ra
tional, and of what was irrational, absurd or intolerable,
not merely in social life but in religious doctrine and prac
tice. Humanism became an early factor in the coming
religious revolution, from which it was destined later to
part company in Germany and France and England.
In the Low Countries, where Erasmus was a native,
as well as in the Germany educationally affiliated with
them, there had been educational and intellectual prog
ress in the fourteenth century. Stimulus usually would
come, or seem to come, from some person gifted with
energy, vision, or initiative, above his fellows,, Toward.

NORTHERN SCHOLARSHIP 143
the close of the century an influence making for the diffu
sion of a better education sprang from Gerard Groot,
founder of the Brothers of the Common Life at his home
city of Deventer, in the northeastern part of what now is
Holland. He had been a vigorous preacher against the
lusts of the clergy; and it was a simple teaching and
preaching fraternity that he founded, composed of men
who inclined toward evangelical piety, yet were obedient
to the Church, and had no revolutionary aims. They
were not bound by monastic vows; they taught the poor
gratis, and preached in the vernacular, urging those who
could not read Latin to read the Bible in their own tongue.
On the other hand, they advocated frequent reference to
the original texts in order to correct errors in the Vulgate.
They spoke little of dogmas in their sermons.
One senses a certain freedom of the spirit among these
Brethren, with a perception of the religious and educa
tional elements which soon were to be recognized as
cardinal. One also sees in them a tendency toward a
purer Gospel faith, and an effort to better the lives of
clergy and laity. Groot died in 1384, still in the prime
of life. Able coadjutors remained; and Deventer be
came the home of pious and sensible education. The
Brethren extended their labors, and opened schools at
many places in the Low Countries, the influence of which
reached the neighboring parts of Germany. These
schools attracted capable teachers and pupils, and seemed
to develop the talents both of those who taught and those
who studied in them. The numbers were great, and the
list of names is impressive. Thomas a Kempis, born
near Cologne, was one of the Brethren; and Nicholas of
Cusa, whose intellectual power was unequalled in his
time, studied 'at Deventer.
Rudolf Agricola touched this circle, and Hegius was
very part of it. The former, a Frisian, born in 1442,
studied at Deventer and Louvain, and then spent several
years in Italy completing his classical equipment. Re
turning to Germany, he devoted himself to translating
the old German chronicles and diffusing a knowledge of

144 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
the classics. He did not fail in Christian piety, and held
to the idea that all learning should serve the Faith. He
died in 1485.
Of about the same age as Agricola was the Westphalian
Hegius, who chose to call himself his pupil and became
Deventer's greatest schoolmaster. He had been a pupil
with the Brethren, and in middle life fixed himself at
Deventer, where he taught from 1475 until his death in
1498. A man of unquestioned piety, he was also a
scholar and knew Greek. He improved the methods of
teaching, replaced the old text books by better ones, and
made a study of the classics the centre of his curriculum.
Pupils came to him from near and far, till his school
numbered above two thousand. His crown of praise lay
in the names of those who called him master. Erasmus
was among them.
We turn from the Brethren and their pupils to a famous
German educator who in no way belonged to them, the
Alsatian Wimpheling. Born in 1450, he first studied at
Freiburg, where the old Doctrinale was his grammar.
Next at Erfurt, where he touched the new humanism, but
only to be drawn back to Heidelberg, whose university
was still threshing the old scholastic straw and little else.
Disgusted with the Canon Law, to which he had been
destined, he felt various currents drawing him to belles
lettres and versemaking, to public questions, and to re
ligion, for he too was looking for salvation. He became
a bachelor of Theology in 1483; but instead of following
that vocation, turned to teaching the sadly needed hu
manities at Heidelberg. The futility of the dispute as
to universals became with him a favorite topic of dis
course. Later in life, he went to Strassburg, and there
rather vainly undertook to establish better schools. He
did not die till 1528. His life and somewhat confused
labors at least evince serious endeavors for a better
scheme of education, for the diffusion of liberal knowl
edge, and a reform of the morals of the clergy. The
writings of this occasionally bitter disputant were effective
and popular. They laid bare the absurdities of current

NORTHERN SCHOLARSHIP 145
ways of education, and presented rational methods of
teaching the ancient languages, and training the intelli
gence and character of pupils.
The lives of these men covered the period of the inven
tion of printing, or more specifically speaking, of the art
of casting metal type. Wimpheling said truthfully that
the Germans could so justly pride themselves over no
other invention of the mind. From the year 1462, when
the secret process was divulged at Maintz, presses were
established rapidly through Germany, and in Italy and
France. Printing was hailed as a portentous event, for
good or evil. It was indeed the main title of the Germans
to intellectual fame. They might respect themselves for
the improvement of their education and their progress in
classical studies; yet so far there was small matter in one
or the other to attract the praise or attention of other
peoples, Italians, French, English or Lowlanders. The
historian who is not a German will trace without enthusi-
ism the advent and progress of the new waves of human
ism. " Educators of Germany," arose, a title given to
Rabanus Maurus in the ninth century, and now to be
shared by Wimpheling with the younger man, Melanch-
thon, and perhaps others. But these educators of Ger
many were not like the Italian humanists, educators of the
world. The one man who rightly won a towering fame
was not a German, but Erasmus of Rotterdam.
The classics had not been left unread in mediaeval Ger
many, but the taste of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen
turies turned to a scholastic exploitation of Aristotelian
logic and metaphysics, with some incursions into the an
tique field of physical science. The renewed interest in
the classics, appearing here and there in the fifteenth cen
tury, usually carried a lively detestation of the methods
and topics of scholasticism, which still occupied the uni
versities. But this reaction did not spring from any such
natural disposition toward antique humanism as marked
the Italian mind. There had been no substratum of an
tique civilization in Germany, a land never subjected to
the transforming discipline of the imperial Roman order.

146 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The German past had been that of Teutonic barbarism,
with its hard heathen religion. Next, Germany became
feudal and monastic, still unsuited to the urban antique hu
manism. What city life there was remained dull and
uninstructed far into the fifteenth century. Moreover,
although the Germans showed few signs of becoming a
nation, they had attained a stubborn racial character,
which would hardly yield itself to alien moulds. They
had, to be sure, been ready to accept literary and social
fashions, for example from the French side of the Rhine;
but they had sturdily remained Germans; and now were
to prove again in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that
they could take up the study of Latin and Greek litera
ture, and interest themselves in the Italian humanism,
without imperilling their German natures. It held true
as a corollary that they would use the new knowledge ac
cording to their own convictions and abiding interests.
German scholars did not become humanists after the
Italian fashion, bent solely upon absorbing the classics;
but rather they sought to apply the new knowledge to the
conditions of life in Germany and the problems of the
approaching religious upheaval. Least of all, did Ger
man scholarship attempt an artistic or creative imitation
of the classics, as the Italians did; but earnestly studied the
Greek and Latin languages and endeavored to obtain a
solid understanding of their literatures.
Stimulus and suggestion came from Italy. For exam
ple, the chancellor of the Emperor Karl IV, Johann von
Neumarkt, who flourished between 1350 and 1375, drew
an inflated inspiration from Petrarch. In the next gen
eration, another German thinks Salutato the wonder of
scholars, and seeks his acquaintance in Florence. Soon
the Emperor Sigismund was to feel a lively interest in the
literature, the history, the ruins of antiquity, and become
a patron of Italian humanists. Then incitement to an
tique studies came from Italy in the person of Aeneas
Silvius, ardent humanist, clever diplomat, future cardinal,
and at last Pope.1 He did his best to infuse a love of
1 Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini was born near Sienna in 1405. He went

NORTHERN SCHOLARSHIP 147
letters into these northern swine, as he deemed them;
but the result fell short of his wishes. His race and per
sonality roused distrust in the German bosom. We see
the antipathy toward him concentrate in Gregor Heim-
burg, jurist and statesman, and most emphatic German,
whom Aeneas by no blandishment could win either to his
policy or his friendship. This able speaker professed to
despise the artifices of rhetoric and all Italianate imitation
of the ancients.
Study of the classics did not shake the piety of German
students in the fifteenth century, whose names and par
ticular accomplishments need not be catalogued. An
earlier generation was succeeded by those born in decades
when the German people were entering a period of re
ligious and political conflict. These younger men were
affected by the controversies of the time, and some of
them caught by its whirlwinds. Naturally they used
their faculties and inclined the fruit of their studies to
timely ends.
One may make one's approach to the years of larger
conflict through the achievements and troubles of the most
distinguished German scholar of his time, Johann Reuch-
lin.2 Born in Pforzheim, the gate of the Black Forest,
in 1455, he studied for a while at Freiburg, and then
made his way to Paris, where he learned some Greek.
He went next to Basel and then to Paris again, to learn
more Greek. But having chosen jurisprudence as his
profession, he turned his steps to Orleans. He had be
come a teacher now, of Latin and Greek, and as such went
to Tubingen at the close of the year 148 1. There the
patronage of the great came upon him, and within a few
months he was taken to Italy by the Count of Wiirtem-
berg. So he made the acquaintance of Italian humanists,
and impressed them with his Greek. It was, however,
on a later Italian journey that he met Pico della Miran-
to the Council of Basel. in 1432; and afterwards was much at Vienna and
elsewhere in Germany. He became Pope Pius II in 1458, and died in
2 See L. Geiger, Johann Reuchhn, (Leipsic 1871).

148 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
dola. This may have inspired him to take up the study of
Hebrew and the Cabbala, as he did under the guidance
of learned Jews. Reuchlin moved with people of station :
as a man, as a publicist, as a scholar, he was honored by
all. The list of his writings opens with a brief Latin
Dictionary, produced at the age of twenty. In course of
time, he wrote Latin verses and comedies, some of the
last apparently in imitation of a French model. He
made Latin translations from the Greek; Homer's Battle
of the Frogs and Mice and some treatises of Athanasius
were among them, and denote his range.
All this was respectable. But Reuchlin's service to
scholarship was his work in Hebrew. His Rudamenta
hebraica laid the foundations of its study among the
Germans. He did not stop, however, with scholarly and
unquestionably meritorious work upon the languages; but
chose to follow the venturesome Pico into the caves of the
Cabbala, which held nostrums of blessedness not found so
clearly in the Old Testament. Like Pico he took from
it according to his taste. Rejecting its sorcery and as
trology, he made his own its equally wonderful wisdom,
which linked man with his beatitude. The " wonder
working word " he made the title of his book, De Verbo
mirifico. This was followed by further seductive expo
sition in his De Arte Cabalistica; which appeared in 15 17,
when Luther was already holding forth other matters !
Troubles fell on Reuchlin. The Vulgate was the au
thoritative sacred vehicle of truth; and to many church
men Hebrew and Greek scholarship, with its appeal to
the original texts, was irritating and disturbing. So
Erasmus learned when he had edited the Greek New
Testament, and so Reuchlin might learn from the fortunes
of his Hebrew grammar. Some people likewise looked
askance on his ponderous flirtation with the Cabbala.
Such were the suspect fringes of his great repute, when
partly through the force of circumstances, and partly
through his self-respect, he became the centre of a strug
gle for the freedom of scholarship. A preposterous con
verted Jew named Pfeffercorn, with malignant eagerness

NORTHERN SCHOLARSHIP 149
to convert his stiffnecked people, obtained a decree from
the Emperor Maximilian authorizing him to find and de
stroy those Jewish books which were hostile to the Chris
tian faith. He was supported by the Dominicans of the
Cologne university. A bitter and most elaborate and
complicated controversy followed. The universities gave
their opinions. Reuchlin was drawn in, and showed him
self the champion of the Jewish books; for he held the
cause of scholarship, as well as true religion, to be in
volved. The Dominicans brought charges of heresy
against him and his writings. The cause, tried once and
again in Germany, was decided there in Reuchlin's favor;
and the Dominicans appealed to Rome, where, after
years, a halting decision was rendered. That did not end
it. The matter was still fought out in Germany, and even
in other lands. The scholar humanists were Reuchlin's
partisans, with many a good reactionary on the other side.
A few years before Reuchlin's death, his grandnephew
Philip Melanchthon, a prodigy of precocious scholarship,
was called to Wittenberg, and the great uncle sent him
with his blessing. The Lutheran revolt was already mov
ing briskly with great noise. The venerable Reuchlin,
like many another humanist of his generation, drew back
from it and died within the bosom of the church.
If Reuchlin's cause was won, it was won by wit and
laughter, quite as much as by more solemn means. Wit's
best contribution to the fray was from the humanists of
Erfurt, aided by the redoubtable Ulrich von Hutten. It
was a vicious kind of confetti, these Epistolae Obscuro-
rum Virorum, written in the funniest hog-Latin. The
fun carries sheer across the centuries, and stirs to laughter
yet. The Cologne Dominicans could never pick these
burrs out of their hides.3
A leader of the Erfurt humanists was one Konrad Mut,
called Mutianus Rufus, or, less euphoniously, the red-
haired. Though not shown to have contributed to the
Letters of the Obscure, he wrote many of his own,
3 There is an admirable edition of the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum,
with introduction and English translation by F. G. Stokes (London 1909).

ISO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
through which he remains noticeable, if not notable. He
will answer for a closing example of the German humanist
of Erasmus's generation.
Born at Homberg in 147 1, he too studied under Hegius
at Deventer. He came to Erfurt in i486 and is found
teaching there in 1492. Three years later he set out for
Italy, travelled through its cities and listened to the hu
manists, Pico and Ficino among others. He did not re
turn to Germany till 1502. He tried official life, aban
doned it, and built himself a little house in Gotha, near
the Cathedral. Inscribing Beata Tranquillitas upon the
door in golden letters, he settled himself within, and lived
there till his death in 1526.
Mutianus was a cultivated man, devoted to carrying
out his tastes. The classics were his chief love, as schol
asticism, according to the humanistic convention, was his
abomination. He had a good knowledge of the Civil
Law, and held, with the new school of jurists, that one
should study the Corpus Juris itself, and not the commen
tators. He was not unread in medicine and Pliny; had a
mild belief in astrology, but rejected magic.
Naturally he was a partisan of Reuchlin. But Eras
mus was his idol, in scholarship and in attitude toward
life. He saw in him the restorer of theology and the
font from which CEcolampadius, Luther, and Melanch-
thon drew.4 This was the view of many. As a fol
lower of Erasmus, Mutianus took a rational or rational
istic view of religion, going a little further than his model,
or at all events expressing thoughts which Erasmus would
have disavowed. Indeed he strikes us as one of those
paganizers whom Erasmus disapproved in his Ciceroni-
anus? One God or Goddess, Natura, he would adore
under many names or manifestations — nomina or
numina. They included the old Pantheon, to which
Moses and Christ should be added. " When I say Jupi
ter, I mean Christ and the true God." Of course, Muti-
4 As in Epistle to Lang, (1520) printed p. 641 of C. Krause, Briefivechsel
des Mutianus Rufus (Kassel, 1885): with a full introduction.
0 See post, chap. VII.

NORTHERN SCHOLARSHIP 151
anus finds a Christianity before Christ, whose humanity
he regarded merely as a semblance. " The true Christ is
soul and spirit, not to be handled with the hands." So he
interpreted Christianity loosely and easily, discarding,
for example, the resurrection of the body. His wit
hovered on the edge of irreverence.
This man of scholarly habit, who disliked tumult as
much as Erasmus did, drew back from Luther, of whom
at first he approved. He preferred books and a rational
life; and like Erasmus, he found himself rather solitary
in his closing years, having declined the conflict in which
his countrymen were engaged. Yet he held himself a
good German, read books in his native tongue and pro
fessed a high regard for at least the possibilities of Ger
man culture.
So we are brought back to the fact that the German
humanists were emphatically Germans; they held them
selves as German patriots, and evinced not infrequently
an active interest in the history and literature of Germany.
Kaiser Max set the fashion, and German princes imitated
his patronage of studies, which threw light on the German
past and enhanced the Fatherland's repute. Here hu
manist patricians, leaders in their cities, like Wilibald
Pirckheimer of Nuremberg or Conrad Peutinger of Augs
burg, vied with scholars of private station, like Celtis or
Beatus Rhenanus. Or one may name Trithemius, abbot
of Sponheim near Kreuznach, reformer of his Order, and
founder of something like a learned Academy. He was
perhaps the first to outline a history of German literature.
A different and more tempestuous German patriot will be
found in Ulrich von Hutten, who will cry aloud for men
tion when we come to speak of the German hatred of the
Italian papacy.
Before leaving Germany proper, one notes the hostility
of Cologne and other universities to the newer better
learning. This fact was by no means peculiar to Ger
many. The hostility of the established faculties at Lou-
vain will drive Erasmus to abandon his attempt to estab
lish there a college for the study of Greek, Hebrew and

152 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Latin. In France, the attitude of the Sorbonne, that is,
the theological faculty of the University of Paris, was
even more malignantly reactionary. As the fifteenth cen
tury passes into the sixteenth, the Sorbonne became sus
picious of the slightest change in institution or opinion,
and was quick to crush any attempt for the reform of
education or the advancement of learning. Rightly they
felt that light from any side might imperil their position.
Many a French scholar sought a freer air in the large
provincial cities like Lyons, or found it at the court of
Margaret of Navarre.6 Likewise in Germany learning
was cultivated by individual scholars apart from uni
versities, or in liberal minded circles in the great com
mercial cities of Strassburg, Augsburg or Nuremberg.
The routes of commerce brought the good things of the
spirit too, and the wealth of the leading burghers was
turned to the patronage of art and letters.
Looking now more particularly to the Netherlands,
one notes the general establishment of printing presses
between the years 1473 and 149 1. As in Germany so in
the Netherlands, the diffusion of knowledge, and espe
cially of the new humanism, was facilitated and en
couraged through the new art of printing. Deventer was
among the first to have its press ( 1476) . And with De
venter and the Brethren of the Common Life one recalls
that the currents of school education overran political
boundaries. Yet there was a difference between German and Nether-
land scholars, and between the purposes to which they
applied their culture. The Germans, as remarked, were
enthusiastic, sometimes rampant, Germans; the scholars
of the Low Countries had no corresponding passion.
Theirs was not a great self-conscious country, feeling its
racehood perhaps the more acutely through despair of
political union. The Netherlands had no such hope.
This little country had been a battle ground for rival
potentates w'hose homes were elsewhere; politically it
8 See post, chaps. XII and XVI.

NORTHERN SCHOLARSHIP 153
seemed doomed to be an appanage of Burgundy, of Aus
tria, of Spain. It had no national tongue; but hung di
vided between Dutch, Flemish and French. Territorial
pride and intellectual energy did not unite in the creation
of a national literature. The country was too small; its
people too few. It was a highway of commerce and
ideas; the people had industrial and commercial aptitude;
their cities were as factories and marts, open to the traffic
of the world. Thought and scholarship were not im
pressed with local aims or national ambitions, nor pro
vincialized through patriotism. Till persecution came,
there was nothing to prevent acceptance of whatever
might present universal human interest and validity.7
It may be remarked that an advance in sacred studies
usually accompanied the progress of classical scholarship.
There were efforts in the Middle Ages to reach a closer
understanding of the Scriptures than could be had from
the Vulgate, which a few scholars dared to say was
sometimes faulty in its renderings. To this end at Cam
bridge in the thirteenth century, Robert Grosseteste and
Roger Bacon planned and labored to revive a knowledge
of Hebrew and of Greek.8 The result of their labors did
not perish, but continued, trickling in hidden currents,
which now and then rose to the surface in the work of
some man we know. Such a one was Nicholas of Lyra
in the diocese of Evreux, where he was born toward the
close of the thirteenth century. He became a Franciscan
monk, and died about the middle of the next century.
He acquired a considerable knowledge of both Greek and
Hebrew and was a good Biblical scholar, writing brief
commentaries upon the Scriptures, and a much needed
work distinguishing the canonical from the Apocryphal
books. As a commentator his chief and rather individual
merit was that he tried to ascertain the actual meaning of
the text, and did not abandon himself to the conventional
allegorical interpretations.9
1 Cf. H. Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique, t. III. pp. 285 sqq. (1907).
8 See The Mediaeval Mind, chap. XXXI.
8 See Altmeyer, Let Precurseurs de la Riforme aux Pays-Bos, vol. Iv

154 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
In Italy the fifteenth century brought a reviving inter
est in Christian letters, especially in the works of the great
fourth and fifth century doctors. Even earlier Christian
writings occasionally appear in the large libraries, as that
of Pope Nicholas V. (1447-55) and tnat °f Niccolo
Niccoli, the Florentine, who died in 1437. Christian
letters owed much to the labors of Niccolo's friend,
Ambrogio Traversari, both as a collector of manuscripts,
and as a painful translator from the Greek.10 Lorenzo
Valla, most critical of Italian scholars, exposer of the for
gery of the " Donation of Constantine," was a younger
contemporary of these men. In the next generation
comes the Florentine, Ficino, who lectured upon Paul as
well as Plato, and whose influence may have suggested
the famous lectures which were given at Oxford about
the year 1500 by Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, a liberal and
intelligent Christian scholar, a friend of Thomas More
and Erasmus. All three were bent upon applying the
resources of the new scholarship to the interpretation of
Christian documents, and their best intelligence to an un
derstanding of the faith. Their friends and admirers,
especially those of Erasmus, were so great in number and
so conspicuous in attainments and influence, as to consti
tute a party in favor of a rational and considerably re
formed Catholic religion. Colet and More will come be
fore us hereafter. We turn now to Erasmus who pre
sents the culmination of this revival of Christian scholar
ship in the North, and a good deal besides.
pp. 99-101 (The Hague, 1886). I wish to express my indebtedness to the
admirable chapter entitled " The Christian Renaissance " by M. R. James,
in vol. I. of The Cambridge Modern History. Cf. also P. Wernle, Die
Renaissance des Christentums im 16. Jahrhundert (1904).
10 Cf. ante chap. II.

CHAPTER VII
DESIDERIUS ERASMUS, THE NORTHERN APOSTLE OF
LETTERS AND REASONABLENESS
Erasmus was the most influential man of letters of his
time and the most catholic in the scope of his pursuits.
He was the universal humanist, not merely following the
profession of humane letters but inculcating their lessons
of reasonableness in his writings and his life. And as
he exemplified the northern tendency toward erudition and
at the same time cultivated the elegances of composition
as aptly as any Italian, he combined the intellectual char
acteristics noticeable on opposite sides of the Alps.
He happened to be born in Holland,1 which was one-
reason why he was an unattached citizen of the world —
the world of letters. Many of his later years were passed
at Basel, where he died in 1536. Basel was a chief city
in a small country divided in race and language, religion
and politics. Erasmus was attracted by the absence of
national obsessions, as well as by the facilities afforded
there for the printing of his books. But he felt at home
wherever he was comfortable, had the food and wine
which suited him, found congenial friends, was let alone
to work, and left unmolested by religious strife. Of un
certain health and delicate physique, he required a con
siderable income for his comfort; and was importunate
and industrious in obtaining it. He insisted upon free
dom of movement and occupation; ties and obligations,
1 The year was 1466. The facts of Erasmus's life as far as known, and
a little further, may be left to the numerous biographies, and introductions
to his various works. P. S. Allen's Age of Erasmus is a summary by one
whose knowledge of Erasmus's life and letters is unequalled. Several
volumes of Allen's edition of the- letters have appeared. I should also
refer to F. M. Nichol's Epistles of Erasmus, 2 vols, in translations (Long
mans 1901) and E. Emerton's Life of Erasmus, (New York, Putnams,
1899). 155

156 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
such as regular teaching at a university, were intolerable
to him. He belonged to no country, was untouched by
-national prejudices, hates, or aspirations, social, political,
or religious. Void of racial sympathy and antipathy, de
testing partisanship, except that making for intellectual
enlightenment, he would link himself to no revolutionary
movement nor to the reactionary powers seeking to sup
press it. The one or the other might imperil the advance
of letters and true piety. Reckoning wrongly with the
power, even the power of advance, which lies in passion
ate rejection, he held to the futile hope of purifying and
rationalizing Catholicism, without breaking its unity.
Yet his efforts to incorporate in religion the spirit and
certified results of the best scholarship, bore fruit. Of
course he did not realize that the will to remake the
Church represented the most intense phase of the north
ern desire for truth, a desire heated by antagonism to
Rome and empassioned with yearning for unmediated
-union with the saving grace of God.
The moving sincerities of Erasmus, and the motives
of his conduct, appear in the very things in which he
was thought a dissembler. His was a rational and pene
trating intelligence; a strong and educated common
sense. He had the gift of seeing the point, the veritable
principle : for example, that virtue lies in good intent and
corresponding conduct, and not in the letter of the in
different and superstitious observance. He saw the lack
of essential connection between such observance and
spiritual betterment. If this had been perceived by men
before him, from the time when Isaiah reported that
Jehovah would have righteousness and not sacrifice,
nevertheless Erasmus saw for himself, with a renewed
and timely insight, the silliness and brutishness of the
current religious and social life. He would apply an in
formed intelligence to the improvement of education, the
betterment of society, the purification of religion. As the
fanatic impulse was not his, he had no wish to destroy
whatever might be harmlessly retained in the established
order of religion, government, or daily living. Enlight-

ERASMUS 157
enment based on scholarship was his aim for himself and
for society. In religion, as in secular culture, this pious,
but not extravagantly religious, man loved the truth that
was definite and tangible, and had no taste for the mystic
or metaphysical. The ethical element appealed to him
more than the theological. He wished to establish and
publish the most authentic Christian record, which for him
set forth the surest religious truth. Hence he spent a
good part of his life and strength in editing the texts of
Holy Scripture and the accredited Fathers of the Church.
At the same time Erasmus was always a wit, a litter
ateur, a professional author of prodigious facility and ar
tistic temperament. He was drawn to the artistically
admirable in life as well as literature. He could not
complacently endure physical discomforts, or the incon
gruous or disagreeable in his relations with other men.
With him the pressing trouble was apt to give shape and
color to a situation, which he might then set forth plausi
bly and even self-deceptively, so as to accredit himself,
dispel his annoyance, or present a means of escape. Not
infrequently he sees his relations to other men as he would
have them, and as he thought they should be. His sup
ple epistolary faculty lent itself to the subconscious, or
sometimes conscious, manipulation of fact. Just as in
his youth he had been addicted to the over-expression of
friendship; which is one way of idealizing actual relation
ships and apprehending them as they should preciously be,
but not quite as they are, and certainly not as they endure.
This scholar-artist passed three years in Italy when
Leonardo, Michelangelo, - and Raphael were at their
zenith; his own portrait was painted many times by the
greatest of German painters. He was himself an ob
server of moeurs. Yet as with many supremely bookish
people, his writings show small interest in art outside of
literature. Even in literature, he had little taste for
poetry. He was not gifted with the emotionally impelled
imagination of the poetic faculty. His imagination was
entirely rational. Even in religion he apprehended ra
tionally, not with quick intuitions; and entertained no

158 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
feelings, experiences, convictions, which he could not ra
tionally explain and justify.
There is no need to worry because the letters of Eras
mus show flaws of character, shared with many other
humanists: readiness to flatter for money, querulous
fault-finding, a tendency to abuse those whom he had un
successfully adulated. Why insist upon staunchness of
character in a man of letters, who is a lover of learning
and rational enlightenment, and a sincere commender of
sensible and pious conduct? Erasmus's strength lay in
the genius which responded to these desires, and boldly
enough displayed itself in the witty and purposeful
presentation of the ridiculous and the rational, the de
graded and the intelligent, and from a like point of view,
the evil and the good. There was enough strength of
character in his will, which kept him free to pursue his
scholar-quest of knowledge, even truth, and through a
long life, set it forth in books.
One may say that the central purpose of the' life and
labors of Erasmus was to get an education, and enable
others to obtain one. To this end, the first step, taken or
forced upon him in his youth, was an acquaintance with
the current methods and knowledge included in the cur
riculum of elementary and university teaching. He ab
sorbed this discipline with a conscious acceptance of some
of its principles, and an irritated rejection of others.
Those processes of acceptance and rejection included re
ligious as well as secular education. They extended
through Erasmus's long apprentice years, and, in the na
ture of things, never were concluded. On such founda
tions he built the higher stages of his education, which
led on through improving the educational apparatus of
his early years, through acquiring further knowledge, and
through presenting with novel insight whatever he had
learned. Judged by Erasmus's standards, the schools of the clos
ing fifteenth century were backward in methods and text
books. The barbarous Graecismus of the twelfth cen-

ERASMUS 159
tury was dictated to Erasmus at Deventer. A rather
better grammar, likewise metrical, the Doctrinale of
Alexander de Ville-Dieu, was still in universal use. The
scholarly bent of the masters of Deventer seems not to
have affected the routine of the school. Erasmus studied
under them from 'his eleventh to his eighteenth year. He
next spent two years at the school of the Brethren of the
Common Life at Bois-le-Duc ; and then, impelled by cir
cumstances, he entered as a novice the house of the Augus-
tinian canons at Stein, near Gouda, where he remained
for seven or eight years, and took the vows. Later, he
inveighed against the barbarous and monkish education
of this period of his life. Yet at Stein he studied the
Latin classics and occupied himself fruitfully with the
Elegantiae of Valla, making an epitome of it. He could
have found no better compend of the newer classical
scholarship. Erasmus had progressed notably in learning by the
year 1493, when at the age of twenty-seven he was taken
from Stein by the Bishop of Cambrai, and two years
afterwards sent to study theology at Paris, where he was
entered in the malodorous College of Montaigu. His
contempt deepened for the " Scotists," and for scholastic
philosophy which they seemed to symbolize. So he culti
vated the classics as best he might, and also taught. He
thus fell in with a number of Englishmen, among them
his pupil-patron, Lord Mountjoy, whom he accompanied
to England in 1499, where he became the friend of
Thomas More and John Colet, to the lasting pleasure
and advantage of the three. At Oxford, Colet suggested
lectures on the Old Testament, to supplement those novel
discourses on the Epistles of Paul with which he was then
stirring the University.2 Erasmus's antipathy to current
scholastic ways of treating Scripture needed no goad.
But he became acutely conscious of the need of Greek for
one who would be a New Testament scholar. As Oxford
possessed little Greek, he returned to Paris to resume
its study.
2 Post, chapter XVIII.

160 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Greek concluded the predominantly acquisitive stage of
Erasmus's education. He studied it without instructors
or the modern apparatus of dictionary and grammar.
By the year 1506, when he was no longer young, he had
made such progress as to embolden him afterwards to
assert that he learned nothing from his sojourn in Italy,
which extended from that year to 1509. There was a
Frenchman, named Bude, who could still have taught
him, and doubtless did, since the two became frequent
correspondents, if not friends. As the years increased
Erasmus's fame, he did not evince a genial spirit towards
his great rival for the primacy of European scholarship.
The education of Erasmus, as with all intelligent peo
ple, continued through his life. The acquisitive phases
were always interwoven with his critical development and
conscious rejection of much that he had previously been
taught. To these educational processes of learning,
criticism and rejection, were joined his more productive
activities, which also were to be educational for himself
as for the student world. These extended back into his
acquisitive period, and on through his entire life.
This most effective educator of northern Europe spent
little time teaching in universities. In consequence his
influence, his effect, was tenfold greater. Unhampered
and undulled, he gave his entire strength to scholarship
and the making of books which were of enormous educa
tional effect. In them one can follow — if one has suffi
cient leisure ! — the cumulative self-expression of the
author. They are of endless bulk, ten large folios in the
Leyden edition. Had Erasmus written less, he might be
more read today. But that would signify little. His
writings are not needed now; they tell us mostly things
we either know or have forgotten to our advantage.
But they were needed in their time, and were found
neither too many nor too long. They were serviceable
to the people of Germany and France and England in
the sixteenth century, and contained much matter which
it was well at that time to bring to men's attention.

ERASMUS 161
Among the formal educational treatises of Erasmus,
the De Ratione Studii,3 written in 15 11 at Colet's re
quest, presents a plan for imparting to the pupil some
thing of the wisdom of the Ancients, which embraced all
knowledge: " omnis fere rerum scientia a Graecis auctori-
bus petenda est " ; — one need not be surprised at
mediaeval echoes in Erasmus's writings.4 The teacher,
says he, should learn the contents of the classics and
arrange their matter in his note books, that he may im
part it methodically. If he lacks a full library, he will
find Pliny most rich in information, and next to him
Macrobius, Aulus Gellius and Athenaeus. But he must
" seek the fontes ipsos, to wit, the old Greeks. Plato
best teaches philosophy, and Aristotle, and his disciple
Theophrastus, and Plotinus, made up of them both. In
Christian theology none is better than Origen, none more
subtil than Chrysostom, none holier than Basil." The
Latin Fathers Ambrose and Jerome are recommended,
and other authors for various reasons.
Erasmus was well on in his sixties when he wrote an
educational tract which laid intelligent stress on the need
of beginning the boy's education very early, and under
the most competent masters, who should employ methods
of gentleness and understanding, rather than those of
violence and fear. This was the De pueris ad virtutem ac
literas liberaliter instituendis idque protinus a nativitats.5
3 Leyden edition of Erasmus's Opera, Tome I, fo. 521-530. I have used
to advantage W. H. Woodward's Desiderius Erasmus concerning the aim
and method of Education (Cambridge 1904), which also gives a transla
tion of this treatise and the De Pueris Instituendis. I cannot but think
that Prof. Woodward might have made his translations somewhat closer
to Erasmus's language, and have been less free in the use of modern educa
tional phrases, which represent concepts not current in the sixteenth century.
4 Sometimes he uses exactly the mediaeval phrase, as in his letter dedi
cating the first edition of the Adagia to Lord Mountjoy: "Accordingly,
laying aside all serious labors, and indulging in a more dainty kind of
study, I strolled through the gardens provided by various authors, culling
as I went the adages most remarkable for their antiquity and excellence,
like so many flowers of various sorts, of which I have made a nosegay."
F. M. Nichol's translation.
5 Published in 1529, — Leyden Ed. I, fo. 489-516. Translated by
Woodward.

1 62 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
One notes the last words of the title — " from their very
birth." An uneducated man is not a man; institutio or
training is more important than natura. Here man dif
fers from the dumb animals,
"whose protection nature has set in their inborn faculties; but
since divine providence has bestowed the power of reason on man
alone, it has left the chief share to training (Efficax res est natura,
sed hanc vincit efficacior institutio). When nature gave thee a
son, she delivered nothing but a rudem massam. It is for thee to
impress the best character upon this submissive plastic material.
If thou art remiss, thou wilt have a wild beast, but if vigilant, a
divinity." This treatise is not all wisdom. Erasmus gives, ap
parently from his favorite Pliny, plenty of absurd exam
ples of what man may learn from brutes. And he says
that boyhood's proneness to depravity, which so puzzled
the ancients, is due to Adam's sin. But one will not
ignore the fault of bad early training, he adds, perhaps
with a submerged smile. He is clear as to the abomina
tion of spoiling a child by indulgence and bad example;
and shows how foolish it is to leave youth to acquire by
experience such practical knowledge as might properly
be taught.
For the rest, the treatise intelligently anticipates many
of the demands of modern enlightenment touching ju
venile education; for example the need to consider the
disposition and faculties of each child. As a parent
should instil in his child reverence and love, rather than
fear, so in the boy's education, intelligent kindness and
encouragement, not flogging, are the means to be em
ployed. The very best and most scholarly men should
be selected for schoolmasters. There is no more im
portant function. A teacher should not be too old; in
deed he should become a boy again, that he may be loved
by the boy. If he understands boy nature he will not
treat his pupil like an uneducated little old man.
Erasmus speaks of suitable primary studies. Among
them is language^ which may be taught through pleasant
fables, and by bringing the boy up among good talkers.

ERASMUS 163
There are hints for modern kindergartens, summed up in
the recognition of the need to adapt the teaching to the
child's nature. The closing paragraphs criticise the
methods then pursued, and deride the still more wretched
instruction of Erasmus's boyhood, when he learned Latin
grammar through the repetition of absurd distiches, and
wasted precious time in the labyrinth of dialectic. So,
through ignorant teachers, the critical years of life are
thrown away ! His words echo the endless wail over the
teaching of children; — teaching by rote, learning by
rote; not easy to avoid even by enlightened modernity,
and perhaps having some disciplinary value.
Erasmus descended more nearly to the needs of pupils
in his Ds Copia,6 a book to assist young people to acquire
a Latin style. Admirable are its generalities : when and
how to enrich, or condense, the expression of one's
thoughts, while avoiding repetition in the one case, or an
inept bareness in the other. The need of something to
say is pointed out, as well as the need of a scholarly com
mand of Latin to clothe one's thought. Erasmus pro
ceeds, usefully and drearily, to a mass of detail and ex
ample which make the work a store of varied classical
phrase and circumlocution. At Colet's solicitation
weighted with coin, Erasmus dedicated it to the use of
his friend's foundation, St. Paul's school. It proved a
wonderful schoolbook and was republished sixty times in
Erasmus's lifetime, and afterwards indefinitely reprinted
and epitomized. Our author's De conscribendis epistolis,
written ten years later (1521) makes more attractive
reading, and was very useful, judging from the great num
ber of editions. It is an excellent treatise on the episto
lary art by a past-master of the same.7
6 De duplici copia verborum ac rerum, Leyden ed. T. I. fo. 3-110.
7 Leyden Ed. T. I. fo. 345-484. The excellent Spaniard, Juan Luis
Vives (1492-1540), an admirer of Erasmus, merits more than a short note
for the excellence and influence of his educational works. He was a man
of broad intelligence and moral purpose, an industrious scholar and
writer. Living and studying for many years at_ Louvain, Paris and
Bruges, he achieved a cosmopolitan education, while retaining some of
his Spanish instincts. He became the educational adviser of Catharine

1 64 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
By the side of this treatise upon Latin composition may
be placed the polemic Ciceronianus.s It was a dialogue
upon the best form of literary expression, directed against
those pedant humanists who recognized Cicero as their
only model, and were becoming indecently pagan in
thought and expression. The controversy was not new.
Intelligent men had fought it out before against the
" apes of Cicero." ° Yet the latter never received a more
elaborate drubbing than from this dialogue, in which
Erasmus displays his magnificent and enlightened common
sense, though at such length as to make a modern reader
cry, How long, O Lord!
To us the one side of the argument seems so plain,
the opposite so foolish. The Erasmian position, sub
stantially that of Politian, Pico della Mirandola and
many others, is that Latin still is a living language, to be
adapted to present needs, and to the faculties and char
acters of the living individuals who use it. Cicero also
was a living man, as well as a great writer. The whole
Cicero, " totus Cicero," is only in himself. Since you
are yourself, with your own surroundings, and your own
exigencies of conception and expression, you cannot be
Cicero, nor think or express yourself through his phrases.
In attempting to be his mirror, you make a fool of your
self. We should not strive specifically to imitate Cicero,
but to imitate or attain to that true art of oratory and
writing, which we find in him, and in others also. Some
change of forms, some novelties of expression are de
manded by novel subjects and novel thoughts. Christian
of Aragon and the tutor of the princess Mary. He was more interested
than Erasmus in instruction in the vernacular, and equalled him in his
intelligent ideas upon juvenile education. His voluminous works have
been published, and selections from them translated from the Latin into
various languages: into English, for example, by Foster Watson in his
Tudor School-boy Life (1908) and Vives and the Renascence Education
of Women _ (1912). The benevolent intelligence of Vives is strikingly
shown in his letter to the Senate of Bruges Concerning the relief of the
Poor, etc., translated by Margaret M. Sherwood in Studies in Social Work,
No. 11 (New York, 1917).
8 Leyden Ed. T. I. fo. 973-1026, translated by Miss I. Scott, (New York
1908). 9 Cf. e.g. ante Chapter III.

ERASMUS 165
thoughts, for example, will not altogether fit the language
of Cicero. Every phrase, every word, once had its in
ception. If novelty were always barbarism, every word
was once a barbarism.
Erasmus shows all this through the convincing satire
of his Dialogue. His own theory and practice recognized
the rightfully constraining power of the genius of a lan
guage upon everyone using it in speech or writing.
Within that broad conformity, there was scope for indi
vidual genius to express itself, as it did in fact in his own
writings. Theirs was a pure Latinity, a formal Latin
grace; yet they were pervaded and enlivened by a per
sonal variety of style adapted to the subject and the
situation. The evil pedantry which eschewed all words and
phrases not found in Cicero, had led, argues the Dialogue,
to a paganization of Christian concepts in a classical
nomenclature; it was part and parcel of the paganism
which was pervading conduct, ethics, religion, till it
threatened not merely to color, but to vitiate the Christian
life. " We are Christian in name only," says the right-
minded interlocutor. The opposite should be striven
for; all our studies should have the effect of making us
better Christians; they should be pursued to the glory of
Christ: " His est totius eruditionis et eloquentiae scopus."
If the last words seem an echo of pious convention,
Erasmus nevertheless believed that all scholarship should
make for a better understanding of Christianity. Before
tracing the proof of this in his religious writings and
sacred studies, let us notice his Adagia which were so ef
fective in spreading the humanizing influence of the
classics. Like Montaigne after him, he had a genius for
modernizing their lessons, and making them live again in
the life of the present. In him humane studies produced
their perfect fruit in the dissemination of human en
lightenment. His whole life was educational for him
self and for his age. There was instruction in everything
he wrote, in his educational tracts which we have noticed,
in his religious writing, in his editings and translations, in

166 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
his imaginative Colloquies and symbolic Satire, and no
where more diffusely than in his huge volume of Adagia.10
Most genially this great work adapted the wisdom of
the Greeks and Romans to the tempers and understanding
of sixteenth century Europeans. It became the common
place book, par excellence, from which everyone, includ
ing Luther himself, drew his classical quotations. Year
by year, Erasmus enlarged the collection for successive
editions, until they became " Thousands four of Adages,"
as published the year he died. The name included what
one would, in the way of proverbs, pithy sayings, ad
mirable phrases, taken from the Ancients. They were all
full of vitality, pregnant with meaning, charged with con
sideration of life.
The scholastic spirit, the need to classify and present
through classification, worked in the author while he was
writing his prolegomena and was setting forth the many
uses of the wisdom packed in these old sayings. Yet
their charm and usefulness were but academically sug
gested by the statement that the knowledge of proverbs
conduces to many ends, and most potently to four, to wit :
ad philosophiam, ad persuadendum, ad decus et gratiam
orationis, ad intelligendos optimos quosque auctores.
Having got the prolegomena off his mind, Erasmus be
gins auspiciously with pleasant comment on his first pro
verb, ret ™v dAwv Koiva, id est, Amicorum communia sunt
omnia. He speaks of the early forms of this thought,
and then of its later applications, as among the Romans,
and so makes clear its general human value. He usually
gives the original Greek saying first, and then its Latin
equivalent, with the Greek and then the Latin
examples of its use. The first proverb of the " first cen
tury " of the " Second thousand " is again an apt instance
— " SireuSe /JpaSe'ws, i.e., festina lente," and he expands the
matter of its wisdom through several folios. The third
thousand opens with the 'H.Pa.K\etot m>voi, i.e., Herculei la-
bores. This is, as it were, a topic become proverbial,
10 The Adages fill Tome II of the Leyden edition, fo. 1-1212.

ERASMUS 167
and Erasmus elucidates it with abundant comment, as he
does also the more cryptic Sileni Alcibiadis.
Occasionally his treatment of a proverb expands into
an essay. A noted instance is the Dulce bellum inexperto,
which opens the Fourth Thousand, and has been fre
quently published and translated separately.11 Erasmus
hated war, as well might one whose life had been sur
rounded by its fruitless ravages. Tellingly he gives the
adverse arguments, which applied so obviously to the
Franco-Italian-Spanish struggles, with which he was fa
miliar, as he was writing this pacifist tract about the year
1 5 14. His arguments do not quite reach the case of a
state or people protecting its freedom from a foreign foe
or a domestic tyrant. It is easy to point out the wicked
ness of dynastic wars, and the folly of Xerxes invading
Greece; but the armory of the stoutest pacifist would be
taxed to find a valid argument against resistance on the
part of the victors of Marathon and Salamis.
The lengthy disquisition is exceptional in the Adagia,
where the vast majority of proverbs and phrases are
treated shortly. In 1532 Erasmus published a not en
tirely dissimilar work, his eight books of Apophtheg-
mata, which were sayings and incidents carrying a lesson,
collected from the Ancients and adapted to the use of
youthful princes. In them the brave Lacedaemonians
pass before us, Socrates and the philosophers, Philip of
Macedon, his great son, and many other valiant worthies
and wise men. Quite pleasantly the lengthy work 12 fol
lowed the Adages in adapting the experience of the an
cients to contemporary needs and tastes.
The religious writings and sacred studies of Erasmus,
capped by his edition of the New Testament in Greek,
would have been more palpably epoch-making had not
the tumultuous genius of Luther merged all things gen
tler in a vast explosion. In Erasmus the love of letters-
fed the desire to let the light of reason fall temperately
11 The old English translation is printed — Erasmus against War — in
the Humanist Library (Boston 1907).
12 Leyden Ed. T. IV fo. 93-379.

1 68 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
upon the profane and sacred follies of mankind. The
same love of letters and of reasonableness held him back
from Luther's paths of violence, an abstention destined
to embitter his later years.
When about thirty-five years old, his temper still un-
warped by controversy, he wrote, nominally for a carnal-
minded friend, — the Enchiridion Militis Christiani.13
It was an outline of Erasmian piety, and quickly became
a popular manual. The friend, or his godfearing wife,
apparently had asked Erasmus to prescribe a " vivendi
rationem " or system of living, by which he might attain
a mind worthy of Christ. Erasmus's title means either
Manual or Dagger of the Christian soldier; and he be
gins with the assertion that the Christian life is warfare.
Rites and professions will not help, unless we fight verily
and spiritually against evil. This is the constant Eras
mian ethical religious note. The Enchiridion will lay
stress upon the heart set right and striving valiantly for
Christ, and will minimize the value of ceremonies, vows,
outward acts, and even the dogmatic theological element.
The worthlessness of the outer act, when unaccompanied
by any change of heart, had been recognized by good
men and even by the Church before Erasmus. Yet he
perceived this spiritual principle with ethical intelligence.
There was a more portentous spiritual originality in his
subconscious depreciation of dogmatic theology. Defini-
tude, elaborate exactness of orthodoxy, he made little of.
His reason and his humane studies thus led him into what
many of his contemporaries deemed rationalism in a bad
sense, but to which modernity will attach no evil imputa
tion. Yet the rationality of Erasmus was not quite freed
from its intellectual environment. The second chapter
of the Enchiridion indicates that he had not disembar
rassed himself of the conventional allegorical interpreta
tion of Scripture.14 He and his fellow humanists of Italy
and elsewhere commonly applied the same fancy to the
13 Leyden Ed. T. V fo. 1-66. Written in 1501, published in 1503.
14 See Enchiridion, Cap. II and Cap. VIII, Canon V.

ERASMUS 169
interpretation of the classic poets. " As divine Scripture
has little fruit for him who sticks to the letter, so the
Homeric and Virgilian poetry will be found helpful if one
remembers that it is all allegorical — earn totam esse
allegoricam — which none denies whose lips have so much
as tasted the learning of the ancients."
Chapter third of the Enchiridion had for its topic the
wisdom which is self-knowledge, and the distinction be
tween the false knowledge of the world and the true wis
dom of Christ which the world thinks folly.15 A manual
of the Christian life could not omit these topics. Hence
this chapter and several following, in which with little
novelty Erasmus shows man to be corpus and mens: with
out the first, he were a deity; without the second he were
a swine. There is also the usual teaching concerning
the outer and the inner man; and the threefold man,
anima, spiritus, carnis, is spoken of with little novel in
sight. Erasmus does better in his practical applications,
for instance in pointing out that man may love Christ in
his own wife, when he cherishes Christlike qualities in
her. His eighth chapter sets forth, without much novelty,
the rules of Christian living: the point is the moral pur
pose of the act, the end for which it is done. This de
termines the religious worth of fasting and prayer, of let
ters and learning, and likewise the worship of the saints.
" Deem Christ to be no empty word, but nothing else
than love, simplicity, patience, purity; in fine, whatever
he taught. Understand the devil to be nothing else than
that which draws one from these." Taken by itself this
is sheer morality, emptied of dogma. But Erasmus trims
the course of his argument to navigate the open sea, if
not the tortuous bays, of the accepted faith. He had no
fancy to cast down whatever might be upheld with ra
tional decency.
So he continues through this treatise, sensible and in
telligent, pointing always to the intent and moral pur-
15 Fo. 11. Using phrases from Paul, Erasmus here adumbrates some of
the meanings which he will attach to this word stultitia in his " Praise
of Folly."

170 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
pose, keeping means distinct from ends ; showing how the
spiritual life does not lie in observances, but in the love
of neighbor; and how monks, even those reputed holy,
may walk not in the spirit, but in the very flesh, with
fasts and vigils. In this full sense, Christ is the end of
the Law; one shall change his heart, rather than his gar
ment; follow the spiritual lesson and imitate the Virgin
and the saints, to whom one prays. Erasmus would not
sanction reliance on the sacraments, without spiritual con
formity to their import. For the still carnal-minded
Christian, worship may be no better than the sacrifice
of bulls to heathen gods. Yet he does not condemn rites
performed as outer manifestations of the spirit, or as an
aid to such as need them. He who does not feel this
need, should still follow the observances that he may not
cause his weaker brother to stumble.16
The years 1 5 1 1 to 1514 were passed by Erasmus
chiefly at Cambridge. During portions of this period he
taught Greek grammar and lectured on the Letters of
Jerome. But the best of his time seems to have been
put upon his forthcoming editions of Jerome's Opsra and
the Greek New Testament, on both of which he had long
been working. From Cambridge he proceeded to Basel
to arrange for their publication with Froben. Scholars
and printers connected with the great printing-house of
Amorbach and Froben were already preparing an edition
of Jerome; and Erasmus joined his work to theirs. By
15 16 the complete edition appeared. Erasmus gave his
time also to editions of Augustine and other Church
Fathers. But that spent on Jerome, especially upon his
epistles, was a labor of love; for above all the other
fathers, he admired Jerome, who, he says in a letter to
Leo X, delights by his eloquence, teaches by his erudi
tion, ravishes by his holiness. He is tempted to place
Jerome's stvle above Cicero's; this was rhetorical exag
geration. But the writings of this admirable scholar
10 The rational qualities of the Enchiridion reappear in the Institutio
Principis Christiana, written for Charles V. Leyden Ed. T. IV fo. 560-
612.

ERASMUS 171
and letter-writer appealed most sympathetically to Eras
mus. Reasons for going behind the Vulgate to the Greek
text of the New Testament appealed to few. For what
strikes us as the only sure method, that of always looking
beyond popular versions to the original document, was
then accepted only by the most advanced scholarship ; and
when applied to Scripture it seemed subversive of au
thority and faith. The theology of the early sixteenth
century, like that of the fifteenth or the twelfth, in so far
as it rested upon Scripture and its interpretation, rested
on the Vulgate. To suggest that there was a more cer
tain text might impugn the authority of the Church, not
to mention the Holy Ghost who always had inspired the
Church's dictates and beliefs.
So one realizes how profoundly educational was the
publication of the Greek New Testament, with annota
tions upon its meanings and a revised Latin version; also
what suspicion and disapproval were aroused. An ex
ample may be given from the well-meaning pen of his cor
respondent Dorphius, who sought by expostulation and
lengthy argument to turn Erasmus from his undertaking:
" You are proposing to correct the Latin copies by the
Greek. But if I show you that the Latin version has no
mixture of falsehood or mistake, will you not admit that
such a work is unnecessary? But this is what I claim
for the Vulgate, since it is unreasonable to suppose that
the Universal Church has been in error for so many
generations in her use of this edition, nor is it probable
that so many holy Fathers have been mistaken, who in re
liance upon it have defined the most arduous questions in
General Councils, which, it is admitted by most theolo
gians as well as lawyers, are not subject to error in mat
ters of faith." 17
Besides such decent arguments, there was abuse from
the more violent. But Erasmus cut the wind from many
hostile sails by obtaining the approval of Pope Leo X,
11 Trans, from Nichols, Epist. of Erasmus, II, p. 169.

172 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
and dedicating the work to him. He laid stress upon his
reverence and conservatism.
" The New Testament in Greek and Latin," he writes to Leo
in August, 15 16, "revised by us, together with our annotations,
has been published for some time, under the safeguard of your
auspicious name. I do not know whether the work pleases every
one, but I find that up to this time, it has certainly been approved
by the principal theologians. ... By this labour we do not intend
to tear up the old and commonly accepted edition, but to emend
it in some places where it is corrupt, and to make it clear where it
is obscure ; and this is not by the dreams of my own mind, nor as
they say, with unwashed hands, but partly by the evidence of the
earliest manuscripts, and partly by the opinion of those whose learn
ing and sanctity have been confirmed by the authority of the
Church, I mean Jerome, Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom,
and Cyril. Meantime we are always prepared to give our reasons,
without presumption, for anything which we have rightly taught,
or to correct, without grudging, any passage where, as men, we
have unwittingly fallen into error." 18
In the preface to the later edition of 1524, Erasmus
says : Habemus fontes Salvatoris — what but salvation
can we draw from them? It is safer to go to them than
read the theologians. It is proper to draw from the
sources this philosophy — hanc philosophiam — from
which we are called Christians. Whoever would be
called such, should not be ignorant of the dogmata of his
King. Who could be a Franciscan and not know the
rsgula of Francis; so one should know the rsgula of
Christ. For the editing of the text, Erasmus had not the ap
paratus, or the knowledge, or the painstaking habit of
modern scholarship. Yet he perceived the problems and
difficulties which he had not the patience and equipment
to solve. Incited perhaps by Colet's way of viewing
Paul's epistles in their historical setting, Erasmus weighed
the human knowledge, or ignorance, possessed by the in
spired writers of the New Testament, and sought to
elucidate their meanings from a consideration of the his-
18 Trans, from Nichols o. c. II, p. 316. See also Erasmus to Bullock,
Nichols, u. c. II, pp. 324 sqq.

ERASMUS 173
torical conditions under which they wrote. He was
brave as a scholar. If ingenuousness did not mark his
relations with friends and patrons, and if the dilemmas of
a distasteful religious conflict drove him to tergiversa
tion, he never lacked courage when defending the freedom
of intelligent thinking and the sort of truth he understood
and cared for. It was the bravery of a man defending
his own home.
Erasmus effectively defended his Greek Testament, as
well as his Latin version and his separately published
Paraphrase, in an Apologia Argumentum " against cer
tain unlearned and evil men." A passage not of a pole
mic nature may be given to show how he expressed the
views of sundry of his mediaeval predecessors in open-
mindedness. More than one of them had found fore-
shadowings of Christian truth in the heathen philoso
phers; and it was also a usual conviction, picturesquely set
forth by Hugo of St. Victor,19 that the Old Testament
was the umbra of the New. Erasmus expresses the same
opinions :
" Since the Old Testament was the shadow and preparatory
discipline for the Evangelical Philosophy, and since the Evangelical
teaching is at once the restoration and perfection of nature, as first
created in purity, it should not seem surprising if it were given to
certain gentile philosophers, by the force of nature to discern some
matters which agree with the doctrine of Christ. Paul bears wit
ness that, from the visible fabric of the world, they gathered what
the eye could not see, but the mind could comprehend, even the
eternal power and divinity of God. It was especially congruous
that Christ should bring nothing save that of which the shadow or
scintilla had gone before in the books of the Old Testament, by
which the faith of all would be the more inclined toward a thing
not altogether sudden and unexpected. Therefore, whatever
Christ set forth, was first promised in the oracles of the holy
prophets, shadowed in figures, and even fragmentarily expressed." 20
This passage presents the fact of spiritual evolution or
development, as many passages had done in the works of
19 See The Mediaeval Mind, Vol. II, p. 100.
20 Erasmus, Epistola de Phil. Evangelica, printed in T. VI of the Leyden
Ed. before the New Testament,

174 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
mediaeval doctors. But in the Middle Ages, and still in
the time of Erasmus, men saw more definitely than to
day the preordainment of God and his providential direc
tion of the entire process.
Two works remain to be spoken of, perhaps the most
constantly read of all Erasmus's writings, both in his life
time and since his death : The Praise of Folly and the
Colloquies.21 Though differing in form, they agree in
substance; and together express the opinions of the au
thor upon those matters of contemporary life, belief, and
superstition, which roused his interest-, elicited his ap
proval, or drew his criticism and contempt.
The Praise of Folly is called a declamatio by its author,
a term carrying the idea of something entertaining.
That the composition was a jeux d'esprit is abundantly
stated in a letter of dedication to Thomas More,22 in
whose house the book was written. Its scheme had been
the writer's diversion when returning from Italy; and
now he wished the protection of More's name " For
wranglers perhaps will not be wanting, who may assail it,
on the score that these trifles are sometimes more friv
olous than becomes a theologian, and again more biting
than accords with Christian moderation; or will exclaim
that we are bringing back the Old Comedy or the pen of
Lucian, and seizing everything with the teeth." Yet
study should have its relaxations, especially when they
are such as may bring suggestion to the reader who is not
dull. " Others will pass judgment on me ; and yet, un
less I am egregiously deceived by self-conceit, we have
praised Folly not altogether foolishly." It is not too
biting, seeing that he has mentioned no names, and has
impartially satirized the vices of all sorts and conditions
of men.
So then the Praise of Folly is a satire, meant to amuse,
21 Mwp/as 'EyKcb/tiov id est Stultitiae Laus, declamatio, Leyden Ed. IV
fo. 402-504, first published in 1511; Colloquia familiaria, Leyden Ed. I,
627-890; first published in 1516, and added to in the innumerable subse
quent editions.
"Printed and usually translated with the work; also by Nichols, Epist.
of Erasmus, II, p. 1 sqq.

ERASMUS 175
but also, as gradually becomes, evident, intended to in
struct and improve. The writer does not bind himself
to any single idea of his protagonist. Folly has many
shades of meaning. At the first it appears as life's hi
larious and impulsive energy of desire, a child of Plutus.23
Folly is impulse, childish or mature, innocent or debased,
at all events not disillusioned. For illusion is a part of
desire and action; who is without it is a dried and ham
strung Stoic !
At first the book makes kindly and approving fun of
the ways of action and the foibles and weaknesses of man
kind. It is not mordant, only amused. But gradually
from fools innocent and natural and undebased, it passes
to those whose illusions are vicious in their setting and
results. Such are stultified grammarians, scribblers, so-
phisters; such are passionate dicers; and then those ad
dicted to the marvellous and incredible, gaping fools,
greedy of strange tales, who ascribe virtue to shrines and
images, and to vows made to saints. Worse than such
are they who rely on rotten pardons, and think to meas
ure, as by clepsydras, the ages, years, months, days, which
they have knocked off from Purgatory. Priests promote
these evil follies, and reap gain from them. Now the
satire becomes mordant: it ridicules, it lashes the fool-
vices, their panders and their votaries ; the f ool-sophisters,
Scotists, dabblers in split hairs and things incomprehen
sible, and the like-minded theologians, with their impos
sible fool-questions; and then the Monks! These are
well scourged. As to kings, allowance is made for the
blinding effect of their exalted station; but their cour
tiers are handled roughly. The discourse pounces upon
Popes and Cardinals and bishops; the lashing becomes
merciless. Luther might lay on more violently, but not
more deftly.
After this, the satirical element is genially dispersed;
the bitterness is past. Citing first the sayings of gentile
authors and then the teaching of Christ, Folly finds the
23 One may compare it with that all-embracing animal desire symbolized
by Rabelais in his " Gaster." See post, Chapter XIII.

176 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
earth full of fools, and none to be called good or wise
save God alone. Folly is part of man, and may even be
his better part, more excellent than his wisdom. St.
Paul speaks " as a fool." Christ bids his followers con
sider the lilies of the field; bids them take no thought of
what they shall say when delivered up. Woe unto the
wise ! he cries, and gives thanks to his Father for hav
ing hidden the Kingdom of heaven from them and re
vealed it unto babes. Seeing that " the foolishness of
God is wiser than man," let us be " fools for Christ's
sake," for the sake of Him who crowned his life by the
" foolishness of the Cross." In fine, concludes the au
thor, " the Christian religion seems to have some rela
tionship with folly, and is not in accord with wisdom."
The true Christian will scorn the crowd which relies on
the ceremonial of the flesh, and address himself utterly
to the spirit. The crowd will think this insanity. And
truly the life which is in the spirit and has foretaste of
eternal beatitude, partakes of madness, like the madness
of lovers praised by Plato.
The Colloquies, the Familiar Talks or Dialogues, of
Erasmus passed through sixty editions in the author's
life-time. Condemned by the Sorbonne, also denounced
by Luther, they only became more widely read; they were
used in schools as texts of Latinity and of enlightenment.
They had been written and brought together by the au
thor in the course of the twenty-five years or so begin
ning about 1500. More voluminous, more multifarious,
than the Praise of Folly, they are withal simpler. No
elusively doubling thread of meaning runs through them;
they are just what they are, a series of familiar dialogues,
between various fictitious persons, upon almost any topic
of daily life or current practice and opinion. Opening in
formulae of polite conversation; they quickly turn to chat
of plays and pastimes; of horse-cheats and the tricks of
common beggars; of the villainies of a soldier's life; of
the contemptible lots of benefice-hunters; of early rising
and temperate living; of marriages and funerals; of
convivial feasts and those at which there is more serious

ERASMUS 177
flow of soul. They discuss common superstitions, rash
vows, and the deceits practised on would-be nuns; the
vain pilgrimages made to St. James of Compostella and
across the sea ; they hold up to view the heathen follies,
the ceremonials and corruptions, which marked the con
duct of the Church. The speakers are shown in all man
ner of situations : in shipwrecks, funerals, on silly pilgrim
ages, fooled by astrologers and alchemists, grovelling
in superstition or practising upon the superstitious.
Through them runs the most uncommon common sense of
the writer; his intelligent apprehension of the real point;
his rational consideration of it. One sees his tolerance of
whatever is not positively false and harmful; his respect
for honest and respectable opinion, qualities conducing to
a recognition of the worth of honest scholarship and the
desirableness of intellectual freedom, within the bounds
of decency. The book itself is brave and free in its ridi
cule of abuses which still reposed on the authority of the
Church, and from which came part of the Church's
revenue. Erasmus maintained that he attacked the abuse and not
the ecclesiastical institution. But attacks on the one are
apt to smirch the other. Men do not notice such distinc
tions. An attack on indulgences goes to the heart of
much, although one may insist that nothing has been said
against absolution following upon repentance and atone
ment. Who shall draw the line between abuse and in
stitution? And in Christianity, when has the line been
drawn between true faith and piety, and the superstitions
wrapping the hearts of ignorant believers? Assuredly
the worship of the Virgin and the saints is a Roman Cath
olic tenet. But " The Shipwreck " 24 ridicules calling on
the saints and on the Virgin by flattering titles. What
had she to do with the Sea? Note the utterly disinte
grating answer: " In ancient times, Venus took care of
mariners, because she was believed to be born of the sea;
and because she has left off to take care of them, the Vir-
24 Vol. I p- 275 sqq. of Bailey's translation, 2 vols. (London, 1878). It
is the Naufragium, Leyden Ed. I. fo. 712 sqq.

178 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
gin Mother was put in the place of her that was a mother,
but not a Virgin." This quite indelibly connects the
worship of the Virgin with the heathen cult of Venus.
In the Religious Pilgrimage, 2S more ridicule is put upon
the Virgin and the saints and upon pilgrimages. At the
end, the sensible speaker tells how he, who never saw
Rome, performs his 'Roman Stations : " After that man
ner I walk about my house, I go to my study, and take
care of my daughter's chastity; thence I go into my shop,
and see what my servants are doing; then into the kitchen,
and see if anything be amiss there ; and so from one place
to another, to observe what my wife, and what my chil
dren are doing, taking care that everyone is at his busi
ness. These are my Roman Stations." Such excellent
sense may be rather solvent of religious observance.
But the Colloquies give utterance to a piety which is
direct, sincere, ethical, pregnant with the religion of the
spirit. Examples are " An Enquiry concerning Faith,"
" The Religious Treat," and " A Child's Piety." 28 In
the last the excellent youth, stating his own creed, comes
near to stating that of Erasmus : " I believe firmly what
I read in the Holy Scriptures, and the Creed called the
Apostles, and I don't trouble my head any farther; I leave
the rest to be disputed and defined by the clergy, if they
please; and if anything is in common use with Christians
that is not repugnant to the Holy Scriptures, I observe it
for this reason, that I may not offend other people."
His friend asks, " What Thales taught you that phi
losophy? "
" When I was a boy, and very young, I happened to live
in the house of that honestest of men, John Colet."
In this way Erasmus testifies to the pious and reason
able influence exerted on him by that balanced and pene
trating English mind.
The purposes, the opinions, the qualities of Erasmus
reveal themselves in his works. These reflect his en-
25 Bailey, o. c. II, i ; Leyden Ed., fo. 774 sqq.
20 This is the Oonfabulatio pia, Leyden Ed. f 0. 648 sqq. The two former
are fo. 728 sqq.; and 672 sqq. They are all in Vol. I of Bailey's Trans.

ERASMUS 179
vironment and his nature, making a very adequate self-
expression of the man Erasmus; and the self-expression
of a man is always true. Had Erasmus possessed the
Titan nature of a Luther, convulsed with convictions as
violent as they were trenchant, his self-expression would
have appealed to us more pointedly than it does from
out the compass of those huge ten folios of the Leyden
edition. His innumerable writings did their work in their
time, and still interest us historically. They spread the
Erasmian personality before us. He who may bring
himself to read them will note everywhere facility of
presentation, broad, proportioning scholarship, not too
exact, nor always profound; balanced common sense and
clear intelligence which grasp the veritable point; inter
est in well authenticated fact, linguistic, historical and ra
tional, which is the scholar's truth; care for what is truly
ethical, dependent on motive and interest, and not bound
up in ceremony and observance ; insistence on unhampered
study, on the rights of scholarship, on freedom to reach
the most rationally verified result; recognition also of mu
tually tolerating differences of sensible opinion, but no
patience for wilful ignorance and stubbornness; a cherish
ing of piety and rational religion, but with no taste for
dogma or metaphysics, and as little for the transports of
religious rapture.
Erasmus followed earthly, rather than heavenly light.
He cared for the religion of Christ, and he loved schol
arship. From some of his expressions one or the other
might seem his chief care. But, with him, both belonged
to the same quest of rational truth. He followed letters;
as a scholar also he studied Scripture, still seeking to es
tablish the surest record of the Faith. He was the
scholar, not the sceptic, in religion; and never doubted of
the salvation brought by Christ, as evidenced by Scrip
ture. Thus he was evangelical, but tolerantly, without a
wish to tear down whatever had been recognized or built
up by the Church, so far as it did not counter either the
Gospel or a rational morality.
One can foresee the attitude of such a nature toward

180 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
the Lutheran Reformation. As was generally said, no
one had done as much to open men's eyes to the follies,
abuses and corruptions, infecting the Roman Catholic re
ligion. His writings had had universal currency and cor
responding influence. The number of editions printed
of them one and all is almost incredible.27 Never was a
scholar so widely read; and never was a scholar's word
more potent. It seems safe to say that no man had done
as much to prepare the mind of Europe for religious re
formation as Erasmus of Rotterdam.28
Yet when it came through Luther, he could not go
along with it. It was to be national; this universal Lat-
inist had no appreciation of nationality. It was to be
passionate, violent, intolerant, proceeding with fixed
ideas. There was little here to gain his sympathy. Still
less could he sympathize' with the Catholic Church, which
was more corrupt and quite as violent. With his mind
set on enlightened scholarship, both sacred and profane,
how could Erasmus not oppose whatever threatened
either? How he hated this mutual intolerance and
wrath, which might extinguish letters and intellectual free
dom 1
There had been a conflict into which he could throw
himself with all his mind, because there, as it seemed to
him, one side stood for piety and the full light of schol
arship, while the other's strength lay in ignorance and
prejudice. It was the struggle of Johann Reuchlin,
against those who fought to suppress the study of He
brew and with it the freedom of letters. Erasmus was
on Reuchlin's side. He felt himself defending every
thing he cherished, while Reuchlin's persecutors were the
kind of men he detested and despised.29
27 The stupendous lists are modestly and succinctly given in Biblioteca
Erasmiana, Repertoire des oeuvres dErasme, published in 1893 at Ghent,
and distributed gratis and graciously to promote the study of Erasmus.
28 By the year 1517, Erasmus's religious influence had been recognized:
"me Christum sapere docuisti," writes one correspondent, (Allen o. c. II;
p. 341 .(1516), and another hails him: "Salve Erasme vas electionis et
secunde post Paulum doctor gentium." Allen o. c. II, p. 505.
29 See Nichols, Epist. of Erasmus, Vol. II, pp. 189, 193, and ante, Chapter
VI. Later, under stress of the Lutheran conflict, Erasmus was inclined to

ERASMUS 181
Erasmus's later years were made unhappy by the part
ing of the ways between the humanism of the North and
the Reform which at first it had seemed to carry in its
train. He recognized no hostile rivalry between secular
and religious truth. It was monstrous that the truth
which came by faith should not respect the aid of letters
and cherish the truth which came through scholarship.
Toward the end he wrote bitterly to Pirckheimer:
" Wherever Lutheranism reigns, there is an end to let
ters. Yet these men have been chiefly (maxime) nour
ished on letters." 30 His life had been an unhampered
progress in scholarship and fame till the Lutheran con
troversy reached such importance as to compel men to
take sides. Incapable of this, Erasmus became suspect
to both and was driven to subterfuge. His discomfort
and unhappiness appear in his correspondence from this
time to the close of his life.31
Erasmus never could have joined with Luther. The
opposite tempers of the two would have held them apart.
And before many years, Erasmus thought he saw the Re
form throwing the world into a spiritual and political
anarchy. But he could not go along with the Church in
its measures to suppress the Reform; for he detested per
secution, and deemed force worse than useless in matters
of the Faith. The Church should conquer only through
its reasonableness and its persuasion, and its imitation of
Christ. Alas! neither side seemed to hold a brief for
scholarship and the simple truth and freedom of the Gos
pel. In the end, Erasmus elected to adhere to the
Church; and it was as touching the point of veritable
freedom, free-will indeed, on which he first formally
took his stand against the teaching of Luther. His de
libero Arbitrio (i<;24) evinced his common sense in the
matter and showed him on the side of freedom, to which
he felt free-will to be essential.
minimize his interest in Reuchlin. See Ep. to Wolsey (1519), Allen, o. c.
Ill, p. 589-
30 Leyden Ed. T. Ill, Ep. 1006, fo. 1139.
81 The letter to Wolsey, 1519, Allen o. c. Ill, p. 587 sqq., is typical.
See ib. Ill, pp. 527 and 54°-

18a THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
At all events he was facile princeps among the men of
letters of the North. He enumerates his works in the
Catalogus addressed to Botzheim in 1523.32 Touching
upon reflections made upon him by Luther's friends, he
says :
" they have nothing that they can bring against me, except that
I would not profess at the peril of my head, what either I did not
accept, or held as doubtful, or did not approve, or should have pro
fessed to no purpose. For the rest, who has written more against
faith in ceremonies, against the superstition of fasts, of cult and
vows, against those who ascribe more to the commentaries of men
than to the divine Scriptures, who set human edicts above God's
precepts, and rely for aid upon the saints more than on Christ him
self ; against the scholastic theology corrupted by philosophic and
sophistic subtleties, against the rashness of defining what you will ;
against the absurd opinions of the crowd? . . . These and much
besides, which I have taught according to the measure of grace
given me, I have taught steadfastly, not clamoring against anyone
who could teach something better. And Erasmus has taught noth
ing but rhetoric (eloquentiam) ! Would that they could persuade
my silly friends of this, who continually boast that whatever Luther
has taught he has drawn from my writings ! . . . The sum of my
crimes is that I am more moderate; and for this I hear ill things
from both sides, because I exhort both to gentler counsels. I do
not condemn liberty founded on love."
Erasmus was not always quite so sweet as in the last
phrase. 32 Allen, u. c. I, pp. 1-46. The passage I have translated is on p. 29.
Compare it with the letter to Gacchus, Leyden Ed. T. Ill, col. 1724-1730.

CHAPTER VIII
THE SPIRITUAL AND POLITICAL PREPARATION FOR
LUTHER
If ever a man expressed himself and his people, it was
Martin Luther. Yet he spoke mainly in the language of
the past. His doctrines won their acceptance through
their religious strength, their timely pertinency to the
German social and political situation, and through their
emphatic statement. Luther's power of expression
drove his teachings into the German mind. The rugged
phrases of the Address to the German Nobility and The
Freedom of the Christian man worked themselves into
the German blood. Yet still they spoke in the language
of the past. If Luther violently rejected such of its for
mularies as shocked his intelligence and countered his con
victions, he continued to express himself and his people
through old and well-tried forms. But he brought to his
expression his own spiritual experiences and his under
standing of the world about him.
Expression in language is not merely the symbol of
thought, but its completion, its finished form. Some
times, however, as these symbols, these phrases or formu
lations, pass from one generation to another, they fall
out of accord with other thoughts and convictions, fruits
of further experience and knowledge, which may be seek
ing expression in the later time. To some more zeal
ously advancing minds, old symbols and formulations will
seem to have become outworn, used up, fit only for dis
carding and the new time's intellectual scrap-heap; and
even more patient souls may dumbly feel that their time-
honored thoughts fail to bring comfort or conviction.
In fine as the old symbols cease to correspond with the
current consideration of life, they cease to express vitally
the later generation. 183

1 84 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Moreover, when concepts or symbols, and the institu
tions in which they may have been incorporated, cease to
correspond with the thinking of a later time, and for that
reason are no longer instinct with life, then, like sickly
human bodies, they become open to corruption, prone to
disease. This is seen most clearly when the conception
has worked itself out in customs, pilgrimages for exam
ple, or the granting of indulgences for sins; or when it is
embodied in an institution, monasticism, if one will, or a
priesthood, or a universal church. Let us note some in
cidents of the course through which concepts or symbols
conceived in the patristic period, or before it, and ac
cepted in the Middle Ages, were developed into dogmas,
expanded in beliefs, and incorporated in institutions.
Then how some of them began to lose their validity, and
became husks.
The Gospel symbolized divine strength, virtue, love, in
the life and words and acts, the personality in fine, of
Christ. The vitality of that symbol Christ has not
passed away, because it has not ceased to correspond with
human thoughts and yearnings. But in the centuries fol
lowing the Crucifixion, Christ was elaborated, sublimated,
rendered metaphysical in dogma, fixed in the larger sym
bol of the Trinity. This formulation obliterated some of
the qualities which had been very living in the Gospel
Christ. Thereupon the needy human mind, as it were,
out of the lost bits of Christ, made other symbols. Chief
among them was the Virgin Mary, symbol of refuge, pre
serving the divine qualities of love and pity and forgive
ness that they might not be entombed in the metaphysics
of the Triune God. Mary and the saints and angels
were symbols made by the plastic mind in answer to its
longings; symbols of realized assurance, they were held
in the imagination, seen in visions, even touched in states
of rapture. Yet with all their loveliness and comfort,
they tended to lose vitality as the sixteenth century ap
proached. For they no longer corresponded with men's
larger thoughts of the workings of the divine. They
had even taken on corruption, in that they had been

PREPARATION FOR LUTHER 185
brought to pander to what the keener moral perceptions
of the time recognized as immoralities.1 Soon they
would be numbered among superstitions by large sections
of Europe.
Monasticism was the expression of another Christian
ideal. The celibate ascetic life for men and woman rep
resented the fear of the devil, the horror of sin, the anx
ious detestation of the world and the flesh; also a yearn
ing for purity, utter devotion to the Crucified. Through
monastic living and mortification of the flesh, and abject
penitence, ardent men and women had reached assurance
and consolation, even had attained to union with God.
Monasticism had had a great role in Christianity; had
been instituted and developed, had fallen from its high
estate, and had been time and again reformed. Its re
formers and reinstitutors — Benedict, Damiani, Ber
nard, Guigo, Francis, — presented phases of its ideals :
their lives also had become symbols. There was abun
dant monastic slackness and corruption in the sixteenth
century. If that had resulted from the sheer weakness
of human nature unable to adhere to an ideal, it might
have been remedied again by strenuous reformers. But
now monasticism was countered by a new ideal of living.
Not human weakness, but a new and rationally supported
attitude toward religion and toward life opposed its prin
ciples and prepared to demonstrate their invalidity. If
the monastic ideal could not keep its throne in the human
mind, its practice might become hypocrisy and its preten
sions be laughed out of court. That also came to pass in
parts of Europe.
The faith of Christ was dogmatized in creeds; first
in the simple Apostolic creed, and then in the Nicene elab
oration. Both creeds were symbols, the first represent
ing the youthful still impressionable body of Christian be
lief; the second presenting its rock-ribbed metaphysical
conciliar formulation. The Nicene symbol became the
citadel of dogmatic Christianity, with subsidiary dogmas
supporting it as buttresses. The power of patristic
1 See, for example, the Colloquies of Erasmus, passim, ante, Chap. VII,

186 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Christian thought had built it. Through the Middle
Ages it stood sublime, intact, the Faith's foregone con
clusion. To bulwark this citadel was the chief end of
scholastic philosophy. In the fifteenth century the citadel
showed no open signs of weakening. In the sixteenth,
Protestants as well as Catholics professed to lock them
selves within it. Yet it had long stood peak-like above
Christian emotion, and now no longer held or symbolized
the vital currents of Christian thinking. The religious
storm swept by it, apparently.
Yet the storm shattered the transubstantiation of bread
and wine, one sacramental buttress, and even disturbed
the " real presence " in the Eucharist. Such dogmas were
not yet emptied symbols, and were fiercely maintained
and contested.
There was a paramount symbol of the unity and to
tality of the Christian salvation, which the storm con
spicuously struck, and broke in twain. That was the im
perial Roman Catholic Church, visible, tangible, august;
sacerdotal mediator between God and men; sole vehicle
and ministrant of salvation. Not that the thought, the
symbol itself, seemed to have weakened or to have ceased
to correspond with living ideals. Indeed the shattered
reality continued to furnish an ideal to those men who
in fact had broken it. Lutherans and Calvinists pro
fessed to belong to the one true Church composed of all
true believers.
But the concept of the Church had never been quite
settled and at one with itself. At any given moment, it
had a different form in different minds, and it was al
ways changing. The papal Curia and its priestly sup
porters did not hold the same idea as the laity, who paid
church tithes throughout the world, and the secular rulers
who might be hostile to the pope. Unlike the symbol of
the Trinity or that of the Virgin birth, the Church idea
was inextricably involved in practice and politics, bound
up in things temporal, in the world, the flesh, and the
devil. The Church was flesh as well as spirit. Its other
worldly functions might not have been contested, had they

PREPARATION FOR LUTHER 187
not needed to support themselves on temporal power and
material emoluments. The concept of the Church had
necessarily to embody itself in an institution; and institu
tions are of this world, part of its dragging needs and
lowering practices.
In its temporal and material flesh the Church never
could be free from shortcoming and corruption; or fail
to be involved in practices inconsistent with its other
worldly purpose. Hence it never could be void of of
fense; and would always be attacked by saints as well as
sinners. Moreover, its material corruptions were always low
ering its doctrines to correspond with its practices, and
de-spiritualizing its teachings. Doubtless, even from
Apostolic times unspiritual superstitions had been ac
cepted, like the notion, for example, that the physical
thing, the relic or the bread blessed by the priest, might
have a magic or miraculous effect, in no way germane
to its actual properties. Priests and laity could free
themselves from such ideas only by perceiving more
clearly that a thing cannot produce something else of an
entirely different nature. Cause and effect must lie in
the same categories : a physical thing cannot work spiritual
miracles; a corporeal act cannot in itself produce a higher
spiritual state. Both Erasmus and Luther (not to men
tion Wyclif ) perceived this as touching gifts and pil
grimages and mortifications of the flesh. Possibly some
such rational principle might before their time have been
accepted by the Church, had not the needs of the Church
as a temporal institution proved an obstacle. Instead,
irrational unspiritual notions, which may have had their
root in paganism, were retained through this degrading
influence, and sometimes were aggravated. It was the
plainly corrupt and material abuse of these derelict no
tions that aroused men's indignation; otherwise the doc
trines themselves would have quietly fallen away or re
mained as negligible anachronisms. Luther's attack upon
Indulgences and its immense results afford the most ob
vious illustration, while the futility of the reforming pur-

1 88 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
poses of Erasmus was partly due to their primarily in
tellectual character. They demonstrated the absurdity
of prevalent irrationalities in doctrines and practices, in
stead of attacking directly the corruptions which made
those irrationalities abominable, and were the real rea
sons for overthrowing them. His labors helped to pre
pare men's minds. The explosion came otherwise.
The preparation for the revolt of Luther from the
„ Roman Catholic Church is not to be sought in specific
antecedents which happen to agree in form with some
of the reformer's thoughts. Such merely mark the mile
stones on the way. Luther's revolt was led up to by the
--intellectual, economic and political progress of Europe
and, especially, of the German people. As the men
tality of Europe advanced in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, disturbing glances were directed toward the
Church and the kinds of salvation which it furnished.
The differences between peoples became more marked,
and the consciousness of nationality stronger. Europe
was progressing from homogeneity to diversity. One
form of Christianity, one Catholic Church, possibly might
no longer answer the spiritual and economic needs of all
the nations. At all events, the deepening of the national
<- consciousness of Englishmen and Germans carried some
distrust of a church seemingly rooted in an Italian papacy
which was always draining other peoples of their gold.
Such conditions moved the revolt of Wyclif and led to
tht Hussite wars.
"^Religiously the Lutheran revolt and reformation was
. an announcement of man's dependence upon God for his
salvatton, to the necessary exclusion of sacerdotal media
tion r intellectually it im»lied. insistence upon a revised
kind of mental freedom ; politically it broke the unity of
ecclesiastical authority.
The Church was the Catholic exponent of Christianity.
Luther issued from the Church. Doctrinally, he shook
himself free only iust so far as he was compelled to by
^the need to establish his salvation immediately in Jesus

PREPARATION FOR LUTHER 189
Christ. Catholic church doctrine was exceedingly inclu
sive; suited, in its various aspects or phases to different
minds and different tempers. It was an omnium gath
erum of saving means and doctrines. Luther's rejec
tion of certain of its teachings was grounded in his more
absolute acceptance of what it also taught. Salvation
by faith had always been proclaimed; yet the Church, as
a Catholic result of centuries of accretion, proffered other /
means of grace for such as needed other disciplines.
There were different kinds of Christianity or quasi-Chris-
tianity within the Church, with opportunities for religious
¦conviction and practices ranging from the sublime to the
abject. Luther', more intense, more consistent, more in
dividual, and more narrow, committed himself to certain
Christian doctrines so absolutely and exclusively that
others were thereby rejected, many of them make-shift
teachings and practices which human weakness demanded,
and the Catholic nature of the Church not only tolerated
but, as it were, personally felt the need of.
Before Luther, there were men who accepted the same
vital doctrines in such a way as to lead them also to reject
much that he rejected. There was one Johann von
Goch, a Low German or Netherlander, who died in
1475, having made little stir, and leaving writings which
were not read by Luther, but were unearthed in later
times. Goch held with inchoate pre-Lutheran insistence^
upon certain of the doctrines which the Church so cath-
olicly gathered together, along with some ill-sorted prac
tices. He emphasized justification by faith, and held that
the Faith should be based upon Scripture, and that the
Sacrament did not save when taken by the unrepentant.
He also held that the Church might err, which the church -
knew well enough, but could not formally admit. An
other Johann, Joannes de Vesalia, or Wesel, wrote
against the papal indulgences issued at the pope's Jubilee
of 14^0. He maintained that the pope could not ab- ¦
solve from divine punishment, and other things besides,
which Luther was to hold.
A more notable figure is still another Johann, this time

ioo THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
a Johann Wessel spelled with double s, and if possible
-not to be confused with his older contemporary, Wesel.
Wessel, who lived from 1420 to 1490, had been taught
by Thomas a Kempis, his senior by forty years, and is
even thought to have influenced his teacher. He early
inclined toward Plato, and may have known a little Greek.
He studied for many years in Paris, and spent some time
in Rome. When sixty years old, he settled down at
Heidelberg three years before Luther was born.
Wessel held so many of the doctrines which Luther was
to hold, that the latter's enemies reproached him with
wholesale borrowing. Luther recognized him as a fore
runner, and Erasmus also spoke well of him. He sought
to base his theology directly on the Bible, and endeavored
to hold to the real meaning of its words. He stated the
principle of justification by faith alone, and developed the
idea of faith as the source of man's communion with
God. Then he followed St. John in the conception of
love, of God's love of man and man's answering love of
God. Love nourishes love, and without it there is no
life. Love is perfected in us through the spirit of God,
till we are brought where man and angel pass away, and
we become a new creature in Christ. The Church is the
communion of all the Saints, living and dead. Its bond
is love. We have faith in the Gospel through God; and
faith in the Church through the Gospel. The reverse is
untrue. Wessel approaches Luther's conception of the priest
hood. For him the pope is not infallible; his headship
is an accident. The saving effect of the Sacrament de
pends on the spiritual state of the recipient. Wessel's
conception of the Eucharist was less conservative than
Luther's ; it was like that of Zwingli, and appears to have
influenced the radical Carlstadt. He questioned the
Catholic doctrines of penance and priestly remission of
sins. Christ did not entrust the power to remit sins to
any one person, but to the unity. — " non uni sed unitati
¦donavit." The pope cannot exclude man from the grace
and love of God, nor enhance the believer's spiritual bene-

PREPARATION FOR LUTHER 191
fits. Wessel argued against indulgences, advancing, as
it were, from the position of Wesel even beyond the
points taken by Luther's Theses. Consistently with these
ideas, he treats Purgatory as a stage of purification mid
way between human sinfulness and heavenly perfection.
The purgatorial fire is spiritual; it is God himself, and
Christ and the Gospel, working in love — an element
not absent from Dante's Purgatory.2
In spite of the correspondence of their thoughts with
Luther's own, these men affected him less than certain con
templative pietists, mystics as they commonly are called,
whose ways of thinking were part of Luther's very Ger
man religious nature. They also were Germans or Low-
landers by birth. Meister Eckhart was the most crea--
tive genius among them, indeed, the creative type of much
that was German and of much that became Luther. For
this reason a few pages must be devoted to his pro
found obscurity.
Mysticism is a vague name for much that is amorphous.
Along the Rhine and in the Low Countries, a directly
yearning and contemplative piety had marked the Broth
ers of the Free Spirit and the partly kindred evangelical
Beghards and Beguines, societies of men and women who
had never been high in the Church's favor and were even
tually to be treated as heretics. But Mary of Ognies,
Elizabeth of Schonau, Hildegarde of Bingen, had been
saints of the Church in the twelfth century, and, in the
next, with Mechthilde of Magdeburg, the religious im
pulse had become a personally addressed symbolic and
sense passion.3 In their religious experience there had
been scant admixture of justifying reason; but warm had
been their zeal for the honor of God and for the purifi
cation of His Church. Then had come Meister Eckhart,-
who was born in Thuringia in 1260 and died in 13 27.*
His learning and genius made a frame for his religious
2 On Wessel, see Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der Reformation, II, pp.
486-514 (Gotha, 1866).
3 See The Mediaeval Mind, Chapter XX.
4 On Eckhart, see Delacroix, Myslicisme speculatif en Allemagne au 14.
siecle (Paris, 1900).

192 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
impulses, and brought the difficult content of his thought
to striking expression in vital paradox and symbolism.
He was a Dominican and held high office in his Order.
He was likewise a Doctor of Theology, versed in the
teachings of Aquinas, and in the writings of the Arab
commentators of Aristotle. He also had studied Augus
tine , but seemingly knew best of all the pseudo-Dionysius,
the " Areopagite." There can be no doubt of Eckhart's
full scholastic equipment, which is evinced by his Latin
treatises and to a less degree by his German utterances.
These sermons and other German tracts of Eckhart
disclose a vigorous ethical nature and tense thought, which
they must also have demanded of their auditors. The
Master was a severe thinker. Further, he was a specula
tive spirit, whose whole being drew toward God, one
might even say toward the ultimate universal reality.
Rather than a scholastic, he was a masterful personality
moulding what he had received into what he was and
would be and attain to. Wherein lay the chief emphasis
of his thought and mood may not be easy for other men
to state.
At all events Eckhart's teaching had to do with God
-and the Soul, or with the ultimate reality whereinsoever
that be found. One may also be sure that its rational
structure was but a vehicle of the man's desire and in
tent, at least if allowance be made for the necessary at
tachment of a Dominican Doctor to the scholasticism rep
resented by his Order. Shall we say, the goal both of
desire and of the thought which justifies it is the soul's
oneness with God? The soul is of the divine essence;
may the completed soul, conscious of its nature and over-
nature, so perfect this union as to convert the Divine
from object to an inner experience? Even God brings his
being to its full actuality and consciousness through com
ing to expression in the beings He creates and remains
the essence of. Conversely, the true life of the soul lies
in its turning, or perhaps returning, utterly to God,
abandoning its worse than worthless distractions, com
forts, pleasures. It may profitably exercise this ascetic

PREPARATION FOR LUTHER 193
rejection and mortal humiliation in order to attain its
true homing in That which is its source and final blessed
ness. God, by passing out into His veriest actuality, be
comes the true reality of that which He creates; and by
knowing this, and living in accord with it, the human
creature helps God to fulfil His realization of Himself,
till God be All in All. In this perfected absorption
which is re-absorption, the Soul attains its heights of love
and inner contemplation, which is its bliss and its sal
vation. Of this, Christ was and is the absolute example and
realization. " Says our Lord, ' I am gone forth from the Father and am
come into the world. Again I leave the world and return to the
Father.' Here he means that his coming forth is his entry into
the soul. But the soul's entry is her coming forth : she must pass
out of her outermost into her innermost, out of her own into the
Son's own. Thereupon she is drawn into the Father as the Son
leaves the world and returns to the Father with the Soul." But
the Son is God, and his coming forth is very God : " His coming
forth is his entry. Even as he comes forth from the Father, in the
same way he enters the Soul. His coming forth is God Himself." B
So creation is God's pouring forth of Himself. This
is the old Emanatio of Gnostic and Neo-platonist, dear
forever to the German mind. One may try to follow
Eckhart as he brings similar thoughts to expression in
another discourse — on seeing and contemplating God
through the " wurckende vernunft," creative reason, the
vov<s iroiT/roco's of the " Areopagite " and of Aristotle too.
" King David said, Lord in thy light shall we see light.
. . . Man has within him a light, that is the creative rea
son; in this light shall he see God in blessedness. Man
is created so imperfect that he cannot through his nature
know God as creator and as type and form. For this a
power above his nature is needed, the light of grace.
Now mark my meaning. Saint Paul says, through the
grace of God I am that I am. He does not say that he
6 From a sermon on John XVI, 28 (Pfeiffer, Deutsche Mystiker, 2 181.
Printed in Vetter, Lehrhafte Litteratur des 14 u. 15 Jahrhundert, p. 15*9) .

194 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
exists through grace. The difference is between being by
grace and being [the true] self by grace. The masters
say that true form gives being to matter. Now there is
much talk among them as to what grace is. I say that
grace is nothing else than a light flowing 6 immediately
out of the nature of God into the Soul, and it is an over-
natural form of the soul that gives it an over-natural
being." 7
So grace imparts a being to the soul exceeding the
soul's nature. Without it the soul cannot, beyond her
own nature, understand and love. " When the soul is
steadfast in an overcoming of herself and passes into a
not-herself 8 then is she through grace. . . . This is the
highest office of grace that it brings the soul to the true
self (das sie die sele bringet in das sie selb [not ir-selb]
ist). Grace robs the soul of her own works (ir eygen
werck) , grace robs the soul of her own existence. . . ."
"The worthy Dionysius [the "Areopagite"] says:
' when God is not in the soul, the eternal image is not in
the soul, which is her eternal source." God keeps this
eternal image in the soul through his grace, or light, or
" wurckende vernunft." In this the soul is raised out of
her natural being, which had kept her subject to her own
desires that draw away from God. And in this trans
forming of the soul, God is very God: " In my eternal
Hid is God God." 9
The structural thought of German mysticism is due to
Eckhart.., As has been often said, this German mysticism
was a very inward business. It was a power within each
man and woman which might exert itself individually and
Germanically, in the end most separatistically, one may
say. One seems also to perceive in this German mysti-
6 With Eckhart's " ein fliessendes liecht," we are back with Mechthilde
of Maprdeburg and her " fliessendes liecht der Gottheit " — see The Medi
aeval Mind, Chap. XX.
7 Observe how Eckhart uses the concepts of the dominant Aristotelianism
of his Order.
8 . . stet in einem uberschwang ir selbers und in ein nicht ir selbers
geit. . . .
9 The above is translated from the "Traktat von dem Schauen Gottes
durch die wirkende Vernunft " in H. Hildebrand's Didaktik aus der Zeit
der Kreuzziige, pp. 38 sqq. (Deutsche Nat. Lit.).

PREPARATION FOR LUTHER 195
cism, as in other things Germanic, the absence of the orig
inal discipline, subjection, if one will, to form and order,
which the Roman domination imposed upon the peoples
of the " Latin " countries.
Eckhart was followed by Ruysbroeck, Suso, Tauler, ex
cellent contemplators all, diffusers and preachers of his
thoughts. There is no need to investigate Luther's par- -
ticular indebtedness to each ; for the thoughts of one and
all seem to converge in a small pregnant volume, com
posed toward the close of the fourteenth century, which
Luther published and named Theologia Deutsch.10
Deutsch it was unquestionably, and adapted altogether
to the German temperament, and not to French reform
ers, who never liked it. Luther said in his preface that
he had not learned more about God, Christ, man and all
things, from any other book except the Bible and St.
Augustine. Thsologia Deutsch at all events discloses
the contemplative religious elements directly entering the
German Reformation.
It opens with Paul's " when that which is perfect is
come, that which is in part shall be done away." The
perfect is God; the " in part " (geteilte) is the self, the
creature ; and the perfect comes as the creature puts itself
away. Sin is nothing else than the turning of the crea
ture from the unchanging good to the changeable, ,4:hat
is, to the imperfect and " in part," and worst of all to
itself. This is what the devil did when he would be
something. Adam's fall was a turning from God.
How shall there be a restoration? Man can do noth
ing without God, and God would do nothing without
man. So God took on manhood and was made man,
and man thereby was made divine (vergottet). Hence
I, that is, each one of us, can do nothing without God,
and God will do nothing without me. God must be made
man (vermenscht) in me, so that He may take on him
self all that^s in me, until there is nothing of me left
10 Luther found the book in 1516, and published it; but gave it this>-
name only in his completed edition of 1518. It has frequently been edited.
I have used the edition of Mandel, in Quellenschriften zur Ges. des
Protestantismus (Leipzig 1908).

196 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
that strives against Him. The Incarnation would not
help me unless God became man in me. All good and
righteousness, yea God himself, cannot help me while
remaining without my soul. Eternal blessedness lies in
our own soul alone.11
And in this renewal and bettering of myself, I do
nothing but suffer it to be done. God works it all; I
merely suffer His will to be done in me. I hinder God
by willing what is me and mine. Yet we do not become
loveless, will-less, and without knowledge or perception.
Rather these faculties in us become divine, and part of
the eternal will and knowledge. The more we make
surrender of them, the more perfect they become in us.
As Christ's soul went into hell before rising to heaven,
so must the soul of man. By realizing its own vileness,
it makes the more complete surrender to God.
There is purification, by repentance and renunciation;
there is enlightenment, and then union with God. If
one could renounce oneself and perfectly obey, he would
be free from sin as Christ was. Man is good, better, or
best, or the reverse, as he is obedient or disobedient. So
the more there is of se'lf-ness and me-ness, the more sin;
and the less of me, the more of God.12
Further on it is said: " Let no one think he can at
tain true knowledge, or reach the life of Christ, through
many questions, or by hearing or reading or study; nor
through great skill and cunning, nor through the highest
natural reason." Follow Christ in poorness and meek
ness of spirit. In the union of God, the inner man abides
moveless, while the outer man may be tossed hither and
thither.13 Our extracts have brought us to the middle of the
book, which here enters upon a metaphysical discussion
of the Absolute Godhead and the conscious working
"I have changed the position of the last sentence. These and the fol
lowing passases have much that became part of Luther. One recalls
that in the old pagan Mysteries the votary becomes one with the pod
"Here Luther wrote on the margin: Quanta decrescit ego hominis
tanto crescit in eis Ego divinum. '
13 These sentences, as most of the rest when not in quotation marks
are condensed, rather than literally translated. '

PREPARATION FOR LUTHER 197
God, recalling the metaphysical side of Eckhart. After
beating this upper air for a while, the Theologia Deutsch
returns to our level with the statement that God does not
compel anyone to do or refrain, but suffers each man to
act after his will, be it good or bad. God will withstand
no one, as Christ bade Peter put up his sword. " More
over one shall note that God's commands and His en
lightenment are addressed to the inner man united with
God. And when that takes place, the outer man is
taught and directed by the inner man, and needs no outer
law or teaching."
The book lays stress upon the distinction, dear to these
German contemplators, between the two lights, the false
and the true, the divine and the natural.
" The true light is God or divine, the false light is nature or
natural. It belongs to God to be neither this or that, nor to will
this or that, nor to seek what is particular and individual in the
man that is made divine, but only the good as such. So it is with
the true light. But it pertains to the creature and to nature to be
something particular, and to signify and desire this and that, and
not simply to desire what is good, and desire it for the sake of the
good, but for the sake of something that is this or that. And as
God and the true light are without me-ness and self-ness, and seek
not their own, so what is me and mine, and seeks itself and its own
in all things, rather than the good as good, belongs to nature and
to the false natural light."
It is false, and belongs to the false light, for man to
think to be as the Godhead, unmoved, suffering nothing
and possessing all. He must not think to transcend the
incarnate life of Christ on earth. So it pertains to the
false light to lift human action above the sphere of the
moral conscience, and think whatever it may do is well.
The false light curses everything that goes against na
ture and is hard for man to do. " In fine, where the true
light is, there is a true and righteous life, that is pleasing
and dear to God. And if it is not the Christlife utterly,
it still is patterned on the Christlife and holds it dear.
To the Christlife belong honesty, order and all the vir
tues; it seeks not its own, but only the good, and for

198 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
goodness's sake. But where the false light is, man is
careless of Christ and all the virtues, and cares only for
what is pleasing to nature." The false light loves to
know too much and too many things, and glories in its
knowledge. So one shall not love himself, but the good. Even
God does not love himself as self, and would have greater
love for something better, did it exist. All self-love and
self-will is sin. He who knows the Christlife, knows
Christ; he believes in Christ who believes his life is the
best; so much of the Christlife as there is in man, so
much Christ is in him. Where the Christlife is, there
is Christ; and where it is not, Christ is not.
Reason and will are the noblest in man; but let him
know that they are not from himself. The eternal will
in its origin and essence is in God; moveless and unwork-
ing in Him, it works and wills in the creature's created
will. Let the creature not will as of himself, but as
if his will were part of God's will. The devil came and
Adam, who is nature, and sought to turn the divine will
in man into self-will. The noble freedom of the will is
to work as God's will; whatever makes it self-will, robs it
of this noble freedom. And the freer the will is in this
divine freedom, the more repugnant is evil to it, as it was
utterly repugnant to Christ. In the Kingdom of heaven,
there is no own; and anyone there seeking his own would
go to hell, and anyone in hell who is without self-will
rises to heaven. Man on earth is between heaven and
hell, and may turn to the one or the other. By giving
up self-will, one comes to Christ, and through Christ to
the Father, that is, to the perfect single Good which is
all in all, and in which there is no creaturehood or this
and that. Disclosure of the perfect good draws the
soul to it; and thus the Father draws men to Christ.
And no one comes to the Father save through Christ,
which is through his life, as has been shown. Thus more
than once the book brings human life and thinking back
to Christ and to the Christ pattern.
The Theologia Deutsch contains much that passed into

PREPARATION FOR LUTHER 199 -7
Luther, much also that devout souls have clung to even
to our day. It says nothing about indulgences, or popes
or the sacerdotal functions of the priesthood. Yet it
annihilated them all. For it presented a religion in
which they had no place.
The greatest of all Luther's forerunners, John Wyclif,
has not yet been mentioned. He was universally recog
nized as an arch-heretic, which he certainly was from any
Roman Catholic point of view. There is no reason to
suppose that Luther read any of his writings, either in
the formative period preceding the posting of the Theses
against Indulgences or afterwards. John Huss, how
ever, drew his doctrines from the Englishman. Luther
appears to have read nothing of Huss, likewise a uni
versally recognized heretic, before the time of his Leipzig
disputation with Eck, in the summer of 15 19, when he
was accused of holding certain views of that schismatical
and heretical Bohemian. Soon afterwards he received
warm letters from Bohemia, with a book written by
Huss;14 and not long after he declared in an argumenta
tive letter to Eck, that he found himself holding more
tenets of Huss than he had held to at Leipzig.15 Indeed
he had " unconsciously held and taught all the doctrines
of John Huss. . . . We are all Hussites without know
ing it." u^ . .
If Luther was a Hussite without having been taught of
Husi^/dTrectly, he was a Wyclifite by the same token.
Wyclif did not seize upon the Pauline justification by
faith, and make it the all in all of Christianity, as Luther
did. But in other respects the doctrines of the two men
ran parallel, and also the circumstances of their lives.
They both were nationalists or patriots, revolting against
the abuses of a foreign papal church; and both of them
as champions of their people won such. popular support
that they could defy papal bulls launched against them.
Both took the same stand as to papal excommunications
14 Letter to Staupitz, Oct., 1530, De Wette's edition of Luther's letters, I.
p. 341.
15 Nov., 1530, De Wette, I. p. 356.

200 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
and interdicts; both assailed the pope as Anti-Christ
and both held (though Luther only for a time) a con
ception of the Church as"the~Community of all the saints
of God alive and dead. They were both active in af
fairs, working under a dominant impulse to destroy re
ligious abuses ; and both had the power of wrath as well
as the power of speech. They both attacked papal indul
gences and absolution, pilgrimages and the worship of
relics; they both denounced the notion of the funded
supererogatory merits of the saints making a treasury
from which popes drew and distributed for value re
ceived. Both were hostile to the monks, and deemed
their vows unsanctioned by Scripture; both thought that
priests should marry. Both assaulted the doctrine of
transubs'tantiation, Wyclif being the less conservative of
the two; but on the other hand, Luther threw off the
scholastic form in his writings more completely than
Wyclif, who never rid himself of it when writing in
Latin, but only when writing English. Both of them
translated the Bible, or parts of it, into their native
tongue, held Scripture to be the sole authority in re
ligion, and denounced whatever went beyond it as un
sanctioned and erroneous.16 In expounding Scripture,
both sought the actual meaning, and made temperate use
of allegorical interpretation. With both of them, their
religious doctrines were of gradual growth: they were
progressive in their " heresies." But unwarranted ap
plication of their teachings and peasant wars tended to
make them conservative socially and politically in the
end.17 Regarded from the standpoint of Church politics, the
sixteenth century followed the period of the complete de
feat of the so-called Conciliar Movement. The fifteenth
10 Wyclif's older contemporary Occam declares that popes and councils
may err, and that Scripture only is infallible: ergo Christianus de necessi
tate salutis non tenetur ad credendum nee credere quod nee in Biblia
continetur nee ex solis contentis in Biblia potest consequentia necessaria et
manifesta inferri. See Seeberg, in Protestantische Encyclopaedic, article
on Occam, p. 271.
17 Wyclif will be spoken of more particularly in Chap. XIX.

PREPARATION FOR LUTHER 201
had opened with the Church and papacy struggling out
of the Great Schism, consequent upon the return of the
popes from Avignon. Distinguished statesmen of the
Church, the Frenchmen Gerson and D'Ailly, and after
them the German Nicholas of Cusa, not to mention
Gregor Heimburg, sought to subject the pope to the con
trol of councils representative of the catholic nations.
It was a time when councils deposed popes and attJsmptecl
Church reforms. There was the Coiincilof Pisa in 1409,
and the great GaunciL-Qf Constance from 1414 to 1418.
Finally came the Council of Basel, which dragged out its
existence from 143 1 to 1449. Its preposterous conduct,
corruption, and palpable impotence abashed Nicholas of
Cusa and other honest supporters of conciliar authority.
Aided by international jealousy and the impossibility of_
concord among the churchmen of Spain, England, France
¦ and ^Germany, papal diplomacy triumphed'. iFriaal
played off interest against interest, order against orderj
nation against nation. The threat of a general council
might still be used to worry popes; but the politico-ec
clesiastical incompetence of councils had been demon
strated. The Church was again a monarchy, governed
by a papal Curia which was becoming completely Italian.
Never had the papacy been so glaringly and Hauntingly
secular as under an Alexander VI., a Julius II. , or a Leo
X. The effect of their reigns was to aggravate the mam
mon in the Church at large. The Church smacked always
-of this world; had at least its feet of clay. It existed on
the fruits of the earth, and was at any epoch an ex
ponent and expression of the time — in the fourth cen
tury, or in the twelfth, as well as in the fifteenth. In the
early Middle Ages it became part of the feudal system -
so far as concerned its tenor and occupancy of land and
the performance of its landed functions. Abbots and
bishops held feudal rank, and usually were scions of noble ¦*
or princely houses. This general condition of the-
Church did not pass with the Middle Ages. In Germany -
at the close of the fifjte£nrii_c£mury, the higher ranks of
the German clergy wereTfilled witF the sons of the no-

202 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
bility and the great benefices were held by princes.18
Such a condition might prove fuel for peasant uprisings,
but could not, like papal exactions, incite Germans to re
volt against a foreign papal Church.
Before men revolt, they must distinguish and separate
from themselves what they would revolt against. Every
where the mediaeval clergy, with their practices and
privileges, made part of the social structure of the coun
try. If they enjoyed exemptions and exclusive rights, so
did the nobles, so did the burghers of the towns. Law
applying to all men was of slow and jealous growth.
Special rights of a locality or an order, or even of indi
viduals, existed everywhere, and when contested were
contested by some other special right. Hence the pe
culiar privileges of the clergy did not seem to separate
them from other classes of society, whose rights were
likewise privileges. Some monarch or potentate, the
king of France for instance, or the king of England,
might have his quarrel with the pope, and yet the va
rious orders of his realm might not feel themselves con
cerned as partisans. Such an affair was out of their
sphere, went on above their heads.
In Germany, however, the conflict over the investiture
of the clergy, with their lands and offices was long and
bitter. It seemed to center in a struggle between Em
perors and popes, and tended to rouse national antipathy.
The German clergy took one side or the other. But the
struggle produced in the minds of the nobility and princes
and their followers, a sense of antagonism to the papacy.
That seemed a foreign foe, and not the less so when it
intervened in German politics, in favor of one royal
candidate as against another. From the thirteenth cen
tury, German antipathy to Rome is voiced by those great
German voices, Walter von der Vogelweide and Freidank,
whoever the latter was.19 The current comes down the
centuries, till it finds expression in the effective violence
of an Ulrich von Hutten.
is Jansen, Ges. des deutschen Volkes., Vol. I, p. 681 sqq. (seventeenth
edition). i° Cf. The Mediaeval Mind, Vol. I, Chapter XXVII,

PREPARATION FOR LUTHER 203
He was a knight; a thorny sprig of the German no
bility. A hater of Rome, he became a truculent par
tisan of Luther on realizing that the latter had defied
the pope. He cared not a whit for dogma or doctrine;
but hated the papal power and the papal abominations
imposed upon his fatherland. He fought with his pen,
though he would have preferred fighting with the sword
against the Italian usurper and extortioner.
If ever a book had struck hard against the temporal
pretensions of the papacy, it was the book of Lorenzo
Valla against the forged " Donation of Constantine."
Erasmus's admiration for Valla, and the political situa
tion, had brought this seventy-year-old writing to men's
attention ; and Hutten published it in 1512.1 "W'ith a preface
of his own addressed to Leo X.20 "Henever surpassed
the insolent satire and mock adulation of this dedication.
It had nothing to do with doctrine, and everything with
^false papal usurpations; and the same may be said of
all Hutten's attacks upon the papacy. He speaks as a
patriot, as a liberty-loving German, opposing alien tyr
anny. Thus for example in his Vadiscus, or his Bulla vel
Bullacida, two violent invectives in the form of dialogues,
belonging to the year 1520.21 Likewise in his fierce dia
tribes against Caracciolo and Aleander, the papal legates
at the Diet of Worms, Hutten's invective has nothing to
do with doctrine: "You," he cries, "all you Roman
legates are robbers of our people, betrayers of Ger
many, destroyers of law and justice."22 He inveighs as
well against the higher German clergy: " Out with ye, un
clean swine, out from the holy place, ye trucksters ; do ye
not see that the air of freedom blows?" He attacks
even the Emperor Charles for bowing down before the
priests. A somewhat more definite statement may be made of
the papal abuses which bore intolerably upon Germany
20Hutteni Opera, ed. Boecking, Vol. I, pp. 155-161.
21 Both printed in Vol. IV. of Boecking' s edition of Hutten: Vadiscus
dialogus qui et Trias Romana inscribitur, pp. 145-268; Bulla &c, pp.
309-331. 22 Opera Hutteni, Ed. Boecking, Vol. II, pp. 12-21.

204 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
at this time. It will be recalled how enormous was the
Church's share in the landed property of Europe. The
-Church is reported to have owned a quarter or all the
land; its revenues vastly exceeded those of any king; it
offered riches and power to its bishops, abbots, and the
rest of the higher clergy, making a huge army, and all
exempt from the jurisdiction of any court except the ec
clesiastical. Limitations upon the papal prerogative
were uncertain and contested. As watchful as it was
elastic, that prerogative was prompt to take advantage of
weakness on the part of princes. In 15 11, Julius II. ex
communicated the King and Queen of Navarre, and of
fered their little Kingdom to whoever would seize it.
JThe popes had always claimed the right to grant king
doms and territories, to deprive rulers of their domains
and annul their subjects' allegiance. The exercise of
papal prerogatives forms a large part of mediaeval po
litical history. The Church held a monopoly of .salva
tion ; and the popes found that the keys of heaven and
hell were mighty levers to move the kingdoms of the
earth. Diligently they worked them. Through the cen-
^tury preceding the revolt of Luther, the need felt by the
popes to regain their"power after the Great Schism and
the attacks of councils, combining with the tendencies of
life and thought in Italy, went far toward making the
papacy a sheer politicj,! institution. Its story for that
century is~one or effort to maintain and aggrandize its
power, and prevent those ecclesiastical reforms which
would have weakened its temporal resources and influ
ence. In the later Middle Ages, on through the fourteenth
and the fifteenth centuries, into the sixteenth as well, the
papacy put forth systematic claims to control the patron
age of the universal Church. Popular protests and royal
statutes were uncertain barriers to this sleepless encroach
ment upon the rights of local or national churches and of
states. The papacy had abundant use for the enormously
lucrative proceeds of this patronage. The expenses of
the Holy See were great. In the time before us, the

PREPARATION FOR LUTHER 205
lavishness of Leo X. led to that indiscreet and indecent
sale of indulgences which drew out Luther's Theses.
The papacy's extravagance made it a universal vendor
of privileges and offices within its granting, of indul
gences and marriage dispensations, of bishoprics and car-
dinalships. Tithes and annates from the clergy were important
sources of papal revenue. The annates, consisting of<^
about half the annual value of a benefice, were exacted
upon a change of the incumbent. They attached to every
ecclesiastical holding, from a parish living of twenty-five
florins value to the most opulent archbishoprics. It may
be added that a good part of these revenues were ab
sorbed in their collection. As fiscal agents of the papacy,
the banking house of the Fuggers, at Augsburg, is said
to have retained one half.
Germany was a convenient mine for the papacy. Ger-""
man kings and emperors had interposed so-called Prag
matic Sanctions and Concordats; but they could not, like
the French or English kings, enforce the observance of
them. And while the German princes could prevent
abuses in their own dominions, they failed to unite in a
protective antipapal policy. Hence the resistance from
great personages, or from combinations of the clergy
and laity could be effective only for the time and the oc
casion. The German grounds of complaint against the
papacy, as set forth by public men or formulated by
synods of the clergy or diets of the realm, have been
termed gravamina. The so-called Centum gravamina
drawn up by the diet of Worms_in 1521, are a summa of
what had been stated from time to time through the pre
ceding centuries. In substance they embrace : ( 1 )
Complaints over papal interference with elections to
bishoprics and other church offices; over the bestowal of
benefices on foreigners or on unfit Germans; and over
the burdens placed upon the administration of the same.
(2) Complaints over the grievous exactions for the papal -
revenue: annates and tithes and other matters. (3)
Complaints over the papal judicial procedure, in that -

206 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
causes which should be decided in Germany were with
drawn to Rome, and there decided arbitrarily; also over
exemptions granted by the Curia from the jurisdiction
of German courts, both lay and spiritual, and over other
abuses of ecclesiastical procedure.23
23 See B. Gebhardt, Die gravamina der deutschen Nation gegen den
romischen Hof. (Breslau 1895) passim, and especially pp. 103-113, and
pp. 126 sqq.

CHAPTER IX
MARTIN LUTHER
I. Ferment and Explosion
II. Luther's Freeing of his Spirit
III. The Further Expression of the Man

The Centum Gravamina, spoken of at the close of the
last chapter, summed up the German protests against
the papal church. They reflected Luther's palpable at
titude toward the ecclesiastical, social, and political situa
tion. Pointedly they corresponded with Luther's ad
dress To the Christian nobility of the German nation,
which had appeared six months before.1 It was one of
Luther's most effective writings, and if so, one of the
most immediately effective ever written by any man.
Incisively, explicitly, constructively, it set forth the ec
clesiastical situation, and expressed the convictions, preju
dices and antipathies of the nation. It brought sound
doctrine and the truth of God to bear upon conditions
grasped and presented by genius. A resume of it will
disclose those conditions and abuses which had already
directed the yearnings and anxieties of Luther's religious .
nature into a torrent of revolt from Rome.
Having premised the necessity compelling so poor an
individual to address their High Mightinesses, Luther
opens with a warning not to rely on one's own power or
wisdom, but on God. The Romanists have reared three
walls around them, defenses against reform. They are
these : First that the temporal power has no authority'
over the spiritual, but just the contrary; secondly, that
no one except the pope may interpret the Scriptures;
thirdly, that only the pope can call a council.
1 Some of Luther's points touched other grievances and in a style unsuited
to a state paper. See Gebhardt, Gravamina &c, pp. 126-133.
207

208 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The first wall is overthrown by proof that the spiritual
order is not composed of the pope alone, with his monks
and bishops, but by all of us; for we are all a royal priest
hood through baptism. Oil and tonsure make puppet
idols; only baptism can make a Christian or a priest.
Humanly the choice of priests lies with the Christian
community. " For no one may take upon him
self that which is common, without the mandate of the
community. A priest is priest while he holds the office;
he may be deposed, and then becomes peasant or burgher
again. It follows that there is no distinction save that
of office or function between laity and priests, between
princes and bishops, between ' spiritual ' and ' temporal '
or worldly, as they are called. For all are members of
the spiritual order, and really bishops, priests and popes,
though they have not the same function; but neither has
every priest and monk."
Now just as the " spiritual " are worthier than other
Christians only because of their ministry, " so the tem
poral magistrates hold the sword and the rods that they
may punish the wicked and protect the just. A shoe
maker, a smith, a peasant, has the office of his handi
work; yet they are consecrated priests and bishops; and
everyone should be useful and serviceable to the other,
with his work or office, as all kinds of works are directed
to serve the needs of one community, body and soul."
It is for the temporal authorities to aid and punish
priests, just as much as it is for shoemakers to make their
shoes. Beyond their office, the alleged greater worth of
-the spiritual order is a human invention.
Think for yourselves, he bids his auditors, and recog
nize how preposterous is the notion that only the wicked
pope may interpret Scripture, or call a council. The ab
surdity of the last idea grows as we consider the matters
which councils properly may handle: to wit, the worldly
pride of the pope with his three crowns, when the great
est king is content with one; the plundering of Germany
and other countries, to find benefices for the cardinals,
through which the land is wasted and the flock of Christ

MARTIN LUTHER 209
deprived of its pastors; the monstrous papal court which
Germany helps to support by sending three hundred thou
sand gulden annually to Rome, and gets nothing in re
turn — no wonder we are poor, but rather that we have
not starved! "Here my complaint is not that God's
command and Christian right is despised in Rome, for all
is not so well in the rest of Christendom that we may
make this high accusation. Neither do I complain that
natural or temporal law and reason are made of no effect.
The trouble lies deeper. I complain that Rome does not
observe her own cunningly devised canon law, which in
itself is tyranny, avarice, pride, rather than law."
The complaints thus far set forth were not novel.
Other men had stated one or more of them before Luther,
who now passes to more specific grievances. He begins
with the Annates, and then points to one abusive exaction
after another through which the pope and his cardinals
plunder Germany. " How long will ye, ye noble princes
and lords, leave your land open to such ravening wolves?
... If Rome is not a brothel above all other brothels
imaginable, I know not what a brothel is." There all
things conceivable and inconceivable are done for gold.
He refers briefly to other impositions — indulgences, per
mission to eat meat in Lent; and then proceeds to the
remedies which the temporal power or a general council
should prescribe. It will be enlightening to follow his
points :
1. Let every prince, nobleman, and city forbid and
abolish the annates.
2. Let them also see that no more benefices pass to
the use of Rome.
3. Let an imperial edict prohibit bishops and other dig
nitaries from going to Rome for their installation; and
forbid appeals to Rome in controversies: for now bishops
and archbishops have no real power, but only the pope.
4. Prohibit the carrying of civil suits to Rome. What
touches the temporalities of the clergy may be decided
before a consistory of German prelates; only let them not
sell justice as it is sold at Rome.

210 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
5. Abolish the papal reservation of benefices upon the
death of the incumbent; and if Rome send an unrighteous
ban, let it be despised, as from a thief.
6. Abolish casus reservati, i.e. sins reserved for the
pope to absolve from.
7. Let the Roman Curia abolish its useless offices and
reduce its pomp.
8. Let the bishop no longer take those oaths that bind
them to the Curia, and let the Kaiser resume the right of
investiture. 9. Let the Kaiser cease to abase himself by kissing the
pope's toe; and let the pope have only the authority over
the Kaiser of a bishop who crowns and anoints him.
10. Let the pope surrender his claim to the Kingdom of
Naples and Sicily and other principalities which do not
belong to him.
1 1 . Have done with kissing his feet ; let him ride or
walk and not be borne by men, and no longer receive the
sacrament seated, from a kneeling cardinal offering it on a
golden salver.
12. Let pilgrimages to Rome be abolished, not as evil
in themselves, but because it is not well for pilgrims to see
the wickedness of Rome. Pilgrimages after all are ques
tionable; it is better for a man to attend to his duties at
home. 13. Build no more cloisters for the Mendicants; let
them stop their begging, preaching, and confessing.
14. The marriage of the clergy was not forbidden in
"apostolic times. " I advise that it again be made free and
left to the discretion of each to marry or not." Espe
cially the parish priests should be allowed to marry their
housekeepers, with whom they live, and legitimatize their
children. 15. Let the rules of confession for the wretched clois
ters be changed, so that monks and nuns more freely may
confess their secret sins.
16. Give up the masses and fixed prayers for the souls
of the dead; which are done without love. "It is im-

MARTIN LUTHER 211
possible that a work should be pleasing to God which is
not done freely in love."
17. Abolish various ecclesiastical penalties, including
the interdict.
1 8. Give up all saints' days, with their carousing, except
Sundays. 19. Change the degrees within which marriage is for
bidden; abolish fasts.
20. Tear down the forest chapels, where miracles occur
for gold; give up pilgrim jaunts, and let God exalt the
saints. 21. Forbid begging through Christendom; let each
town care for its poor.
22. Abolish the new foundations for prayers and
masses for departed souls.
23. Have done with papal dispensations and indul-'
gences — a measure which Luther urges with telling
invective against the pope, and a call on Christ to descend
and destroy the devil's nest in Rome.
24. Come to an accord with the Bohemians, and recog
nize whatever truth and justice there may be in their
convictions. 25. Reform the universities, where there is too much
Aristotle and too little Christ. Throw out Aristotle's
Physics, Metaphysics, and the rest of him, except his
Logic, Rhetoric, and Poetics, which, in condensed form
might be kept for elementary discipline. Maintain Latin,
Greek and Hebrew, with mathematics and history. I
leave it to the physicians to reform their faculty; but with
regard to jurisprudence it were well to omit the Canon
Law, especially the Decretals. There is enough in the
Bible. As for our secular law, God help us, it is a jumble •
of territorial law and custom and imperial law. For the
theologians, I say, let them give up the Sentences [of the
Lombard] for the Bible, and reduce the number of
treatises. Let the Bible be read in the schools.
26. The papacy professes to have taken the Empire
from the Greeks, and to have handed it over to the Ger-.

212 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
mans. But the pope has our goods and honor, our bodies,
lives and souls! Nevertheless, though the papacy took
the Empire dishonestly, we have honestly received it : let
- us rule and manage it in freedom, not as slaves of the
pope. Let the German Emperor be emperor indeed, in
right and freedom.
27. For ourselves, we are luxurious and extravagant.
We should be as well off with less trade and commerce.
It were better to have more agriculture. And alas for
our excesses in eating and drinking, for which we Germans
have such ill repute abroad. Finally, alas for the houses
of ill-fame among us ! and alas also for their complement,
the mistaken vows of chastity, on the part of monks and
nuns and priests, which so few can keep ! I have spoken
boldly; perhaps too sharply. But it is better to anger
-the world than God !
In the power of its wrathful reason, the address to the
German nobility is Luther truly, and yet Luther speaking
as a German. It shows him as an element in a situation,
and serves to introduce us to him through his participation
in the convictions and detestations of his people. It is
far from an expression of his innermost self, or of the
needs, anxieties, and impulses which first drove him into
a convent and then drove him out from that bounden way
of living which brought no rest to his soul. His nature
was religious fundamentally; its anxieties and impulses
hung on his soul's relationship to God. To all this he
gave convincing utterance in his tract upon The Freedom
of a Christian, the pronunciamento of his very self. But
before examining that writing, it were well to remember
the lines of antecedents which drew together into this
burning nature, and then observe the youthful fermenta
tion preceding the explosion.
The inner verity (or falsity!) and outward facts of
Luther's life — themes of whole libraries ! Of outward
facts it will be recalled that he was born at Eisleben in
1483 of well-to-do peasant stock. While he was a baby,
his parents moved to the neighboring town of Mansfield,

MARTIN LUTHER 213
where mining was the chief industry. His father became
a miner, a work for which the boy Martin showed himself
unfit; the mines impressed him as murky places where
devils bewitch and fool men with pockets of false ore,
which were not so easy in the light of day. From his
childhood to his dying day Luther believed in devils pres
ent and perceptible, perplexing men and hindering them,
filling them with wicked doubts and devilish fears. One
remembers his circumstantial story of devils throwing
hazel nuts at him in bed in his chamber at the Wartburg.
In due course he was sent away from home to schools
(of which he has little good to say) at Magdeburg, and
then at Eisenach, where his pleasing boy's voice, singing
in the street for his supper, won him the affection of Frau
Cotta, wife of a prosperous merchant. When seventeen
he entered the flourishing university of Erfurt. There
he pursued philosophy of the scholastic type, adhering to
the popular and progressive nominalism of Occam. A
band of youthful humanists were gathering there at Er
furt. But Luther was never tempted toward classicism
of style, though his earliest letters are not free from cur
rent humanistic phrases. He read the usual Latin
authors, and became as ready with that tongue as he was
with his mother German. It is not recorded that he was
addicted to reading the Bible, or noticeably affected by
religion. At the end of a year he received his Bachelor's
degree, and three years later was made a magister with
some eclat. He entered now upon the study of law, for
which his father intended him.
But something happened to him, or perhaps had
already happened, or been prepared, within him. In July,
1505, near Erfurt, he was caught in a heavy thunderstorm,
and cried out: " Help, good St. Anna, I will become a
monk." Something within him, beyond physical terror,
must have responded to the thunder. It was the moment,
or occasion, of his conversion. He announced his pur
pose, bade formal farewell to his friends, and entered the
Augustinian convent there at Erfurt. The town had
seven other monasteries, and he chose well; for the

214 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Augustinian convent was pious and orderly, given to
preaching and clean living; and had the admirable Stau-
pitz for its head. Luther found there nothing to make
him waver. He had fifteen months to consider his deci
sion before taking the final vows. In the year following
that event he was ordained priest ( 1 507 ) .
Luther's convent life passed in study and strenuous ob
servance. He devoted himself to scholastic theology and
philosophy, still following Occam, in whose system lay
much disintegrating criticism of the whole scholastic
structure. He also studied the works of Peter D'Ailly, a
broadminded churchman, who favored the authority of
Councils, and those of Gabriel Biel, an influential German
scholastic who had recently died. He began a close read
ing of the Bible, which was not as yet to bring him certi
tude or peace. What was taking place in his mind? It
was tortured with anxieties and fears beyond the under
standing of his fellows. But one should not think of him
as on the verge of religious melancholia ; for a mental con
dition which might to-day denote weak reason and a neuro
tic temperament, had no such significance in the early six
teenth century, when the most intelligent were still justi
fied by their intellectual environment in entertaining a
lively fear of hell. In Luther's personality a powerfully
reasoning faculty and an immense rational perception
were united with emotional energy and that religious or
self-depreciating temperament which contemplates human
destinies as dependent on a mightiest being, and deems its
salvation to lie in obedient union with that Being. Thus
Luther's mind was held in dilemmas of its general educa
tion and doctrinal instruction, and its furthest spiritual
intuitions. It was tormented by its sinfulness and inabil
ity to attain a righteousness that should unite him with
the Being in whom was its salvation. The young Luther
was endeavoring punctiliously to fulfil the righteousness of
a monk; but his life, exemplary to others' eyes, seemed to
him infected with shortcomings and frustration. Deep
spasms of unhappiness came over him. One may also
remember that he was twenty-five years old, and of a

MARTIN LUTHER 215
temper that might be prone to the ardors of the flesh.
In 1508 the watchful Staupitz procured Luther's call to
Wittenberg, to teach logic and ethics of the Aristotelian
brand in the Saxon Elector's new university. But before
many months elapsed he returned to the Erfurt convent
in order to teach or study theology. In 15 11 Staupitz
sent him with a brother monk on an errand to Rome.
There his heart filled with reverence for the Eternal City
with its myriad tombs and relics of the martyred saints;
but he was shocked, as any earnest inexperienced German
would have been, by the worldliness and immorality of
the clergy. After his return in 15 12 he settled perma
nently in the Augustinian convent at Wittenberg, to teach
theology and philosophy at the university, which now
made him a doctor of theology. He called himself Pro
fessor of Holy Scripture. Preaching was soon added to
his duties ; he had the gift for this, though at first he spoke
with trepidation. In 15 15 he was made district vicar of
his Order, an office which put eleven monasteries under his
care. His life had ceased to be that of a recluse monk;
he had become a man of varied duties among men, with a
huge correspondence, and the beginnings of a prodigious
literary activity. No greater preacher had appeared in
Germany; and never was there so great a pamphleteer as
Luther became. His occupations freed him from the
danger of morbidity, and with his studies and lecturing,
promoted the growth of all his faculties.
Luther's first lecture course was upon the Psalms. The
next year he took up Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and in
expounding it, learned much for himself, as he says, " saw
the light." He continued with a course on Galatians.
According to the traditional interpretation concurred in
by Erasmus, Paul's " works of the law " referred to Jew
ish ceremonies. Luther maintained that Paul meant the
whole moral law included in the Decalogue. 2 It mat
tered little if man could not fulfil the minutiae of a
ceremonial abrogated by Christ; but it was quite a differ-
2 Letter to Spalatin of Oct. 19, 1516 — De Wette's Edition, I, p. 39.
My references to Luther's letters are to this edition.

216 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
ent affair to become convinced that no man could fulfil the
unabrogated moral law of God. This conviction appears
to have driven Luther to take refuge with Paul in salva
tion through faith.
As Luther had little knowledge of Greek or Hebrew,
he was obliged to use the Vulgate. He sought guidance
in the works of the Church Fathers, especially Augustine ;
and also studied the commentary of Nicholas of Lyra, and
the very recent work of Lefevre of Staples.3 Besides
which, he read Tauler and the Theologia Deutsch. In
15 16 appeared Erasmus' edition of the Greek New Testa
ment, and Luther set himself to master that tongue. His
mind always pressed for the best scholarship on the sub
jects holding his interest; before this, he had spoken out
boldly for Reuchlin, against the bigots of Cologne. He
cared little for Aquinas and his school; and began to
abjure their pagan master, Aristotle. His influence was
already felt by his friends at Wittenberg, among whom
was Carlstadt, whose later radical views were to prove
such a thorn in Luther's side. By May, 15 17, he speaks
of " our theology " as progressing, while Aristotle is de
clining to defeat.
Naturally Luther's keen mind perceived the follies of
sundry religious practices, while his increasing knowledge
of men and affairs acquainted him with the corruption in
the priesthood and the monastic orders. He began to
think pilgrimages foolish, and to say so in his sermons.
While not as yet condemning in principle the worship of
the saints, he protested vigorously, as Erasmus did,
against the preposterous prayers which they were asked
to grant; and he showed the silliness of some of their
legends. He was painfully impressed with the dearth of
true Gospel preaching in the Church.
Through the crying corruption of an institution, one
may be led to denounce the institution itself on principle.
It was thus with Luther in regard to indulgences. As
early as July, 15 16, he spoke with some uncertainty against
abuses of the practice. And in later sermons through
8 Cf. ante p. 153 and post p. ^84 sqcj.

MARTIN LUTHER 217
that year and the first half of the next, he continued his
attack upon their pernicious effects, while still recognizing
their legitimate basis in the merits of Christ and the
saints. Indulgences indeed were very old, and, within
limits, justified by good church doctrine. It had long
been held that sins committed after baptism could be
blotted out only through the sacrament of penance. Re
pentance, confession to a priest, and acts in atonement
were required. The priest pronounced absolution from
eternal punishment, yet the satisfaction of penitential
acts must be rendered, to relieve the sinner from punish
ment in purgatory. Various forms of penance were al
lowed : one could go on a crusade, or undertake less dan
gerous pilgrimages; then there were fasts and scourgings,
and at last the payment of money. The souls of the
dead might be released from purgatory by money pay
ments. In the popular mind, and often by the connivance
of the clergy, such payments freed the sinner from all the
evil consequences of his sins.
This system appeals to many instincts, and, considering
the level of intelligence through the Middle Ages, one
realizes that the Church could not have maintained moral
discipline by any more spiritual means. The old wergeld
was in the blood ; men understood penance and absolution
upon atonement, payment — the painful costly act, or the
money handed to the priest. Righteousness through
faith alone would have been intangible.
By the sixteenth century, men had become more intelli
gent, and the abuses of the penitential system appeared
grosser, and, in fact, had become more pronounced and
demoralizing. In the famous instance before us, Pope
Leo X., needing money to complete St. Peter's, proclaimed
a " plenary indulgence " offering sweeping benefits to pur
chasers; and the impecunious Hohenzollern Albrecht,
Archbishop of Mainz, bargained with the pope to manage
the sale of indulgences in Germany on shares. Tetzel, a
Dominican, was his agent. Now be it marked that the
campaign of Tetzel, whose approach to Wittenberg
roused Luther to post those famous Theses, had already-

218 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
led Duke George of Saxony, stanchest of Catholics, to
forbid the sale within his territory. The great Elector
too, Luther's Elector Frederic, had forbidden Tetzel to
enter his part of Saxony. But without crossing the Saxon
border, Tetzel had come near enough to draw many good
Wittenbergers to his sale.
Luther devoted some months of study and reflection to
the whole matter of penance and indulgences; and on the
-last day of October, 15 17, he posted on the door of the
Castle church the notice of a disputation together with the
ninety-five propositions, or theses, which he proposed to
maintain. These began with a statement that when Christ com
manded repentance he meant that the entire life of the
believer should be a state of penitence. Passing on from
this broad premise, the Theses, point by point, or rather
blow on blow, demonstrated the futility of the sale and
purchase of indulgences, and attacked the heart of the
papal, or Catholic, penitential system. For example : the
pope can remit only those punishments which he has pre
scribed in accord with sound doctrine : when the coin clinks
in the box, though avarice may gain, forgiveness still de
pends on God ; whoever thinks that the Indulgence makes
his salvation sure, is damned eternally with those who
taught him so; every Christian who lives in true repent
ance has complete remission of his sins, without any letter
of indulgence; true penitence loves punishment, the indul
gence marks its rejection; he does better who gives his
money to the poor; the indulgences issuing from the so-
called treasury of the Church makes the last first; Christ's
gospel is the true treasure of the church, and makes the
first last.
The doctrinal details of this controversy are no longer
of interest. But the conflict was important for the world,
being the obvious occasion of Luther's rupture with the
papal church; for himself it was important as a stage in
the attainment of his spiritual freedom; a fact of which
he seems to have been conscious, since he now took to
signing himself in letters to his friends, Martin Eleuther-

MARTIN LUTHER 2i$
ius, or Martin the Free. There is no need to speak of
the storm of enthusiasm as well as condemnation, which
the Theses roused, loosed, one might say. Germany was
stirred; so were the indulgence sellers and papal advo
cates, and in time the papacy itself. Thousands of books
have told the story, not always quite in the same words I
The course of the dispute educed the steadfast intrepidity
of Luther's nature, and served to show him where he
stood and perforce must stand. Thus his defense before
the papal legate Cajetan at Augsburg, his argument with
the more deft and understanding Miltitz, the formal
disputation with Doctor Eck at Leipzig, the lowering and
certain papal excommunication, and at last its fall, all
helped to evoke the man and propel him onward to the
final freeing of his spirit. Friends and adherents anx
iously upheld his hands, and the protection of his prince
prevented his bodily snuffing out by papal legates.

II
A man whom the papal catholic church sought to
annihilate, and who on his side was preparing to cast loose
from it, would feel the need to justify and strengthen his
steps. Luther felt as well the deeper need to make firm
his convictions touching his new assurance of salvation,
which was grounded, and had its height and depth, in
faith, and had freed his soul not only from the salvation
which the papal church claimed to monopolize, hierarchi
cally and sacerdotally as it were, but also from the bond
age of the works which the Church held needful for every
one that should be saved. Thus, both within his soul and
for the edification of the world, Luther had to establish a
justification of his severance from the papal church, and
the grounds of his saving faith.
Since the papal ban was about to fall on him, his first
task was to demonstrate its nullity. Shortly after posting
his Theses he had spoken on this, but by no means finally.
Afterwards, returning to the subject (15 19), he wrote a
sermon on the Holy Sacrament of the Communion, as

220 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
preparatory to the examination of the obviously con
nected excommunicatio which he considered in his
weighty "Sermon on the Ban," written in 1519,
and published early in the next year. He argues
thus: As the Sacrament is both sign and significance,
so is the Communion twofold. Priest or pope cannot
sever the believer from the spiritual communion which
rests in faith, though he may be excluded from outer par
ticipation in the Sacrament. This was the lesser excom
munication. When extended to the prohibition of all
intercourse as well as Christian burial, it became the
greater excommunication. Later it carried with it fire
and sword, thus going beyond Scripture, which leaves the
sword to the secular authorities. An excommunicated
person may be forbidden the Sacrament and even deprived
of burial, and yet be safe and blessed in the Communion of
Christ. Conversely, many who are admitted to the Sacra
ment may be in a state of spiritual separation. No ex
communication has the effect of delivering the soul into
hell, though, when deserved, it may be a sign that the
faithless soul has given itself over to the devil through its
sins. The object of the excommunication is to bring the
damned soul back. Christians should honor and love it
as the warning punishment of motherly love. So the
sermon showed that even a rightful excommunication
should not be regarded as an object of terror; while an
unjust ban was a spiritual nullity. After Luther's ex
communication, the latter point received adequate treat
ment in his polemic, Against the Bull of the Antichrist.
With his mind settled as to the spiritual impotence of
papal bulls, the ills which might happen to his body could
safely be left with God and the secular powers. He was
a fearless man. But now while his opponent Dr. Eck was
publishing the Bull in Saxony, Luther launched a mighty
blow at the papal edifice, from which he had just emerged,
or been ejected. At the close of his Address to the Ger
man Nobility, he had announced another little song about
Rome and about his enemies who would accept no peace
from him, and loud would he sing it. If the Address had

MARTIN LUTHER 221
breached those three walls with which Rome had bul
warked her corruption, he would now shatter her inner
defenses and the armory where she forged her weapons
and the chains in which she held the Church. In fine, it
was the papal sacramental system that he sought to de
stroy by this Prelude upon the Babylonian Captivity of the
Church. As his argument dealt largely with dogma, he
chose to write the piece in Latin.
" I learn more every day, as I must, since so many clever
masters push me on," — says Luther, mockingly. " And
now would that what I have written on indulgences might
be burnt, so that I might simply declare : indulgences are a
vain invention of the Roman Flatterer. Eck and his like
have taught me such things of the pope's high mightiness,
that I could also throw away whatever I have written on
that matter; for now I see that the papacy is Babylon, the
dominion of the mighty hunter, the sheer dumping ground
of the bishop of Rome."
The sacraments are not seven, but three, Baptism, Pen
ance, and the Eucharist; and indeed Penance should be
excluded if a sacrament is a promise coupled with a sign.
The Eucharist is held captive first through the pope's
godless withholding of the cup from the laity, whose con
science craves it; secondly through the doctrine of tran-
substantiation; thirdly, by the teaching that the mass is a
sacrifice and a good work. But neither the pope nor even
a general council can make new articles of belief. In the
celebration of the mass, only faith is needed, faith in
Christ promising forgiveness of sins to those who believe
that his body and blood were given for them.
Through baptism, he who believes and is baptized will
be saved: the belief is everything; the act is but the outer
sign, carrying no saving virtue. But the freedom of our
baptism is led captive by the pope through set prayers and
fasts and gifts. And as for further vows, would that all
those of monks and nuns and pilgrimages could be swept
away; for they impugn the freedom of baptism, wherein
indeed we undertook more than we ever shall fulfil ! All
rash vows, and vows of the young should be held void.

222 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The pope alone can dispense vows ! Absurd ! Everyone
may, for his neighbor or himself. But neither the pope
nor another can dispense from the holy vows of marriage.
Divorce is such an abomination that bigamy were better.
Nor has the pope authority to invent artificial impedi
ments, for the breach of which, unless he dispense them,
the marriage may be dissolved. Yet marriage is not a
sacrament, since it carries no promise and exacts no faith.
Neither is confirmation, ordination, or extreme unction.
As for penance (whether it be a sacrament or not), its
virtue which lies in the divine promise and our faith, has
been made null by prescribed works of repentance, con
fession and atonement. Whereupon Luther returns to
his attack upon indulgences.
The " Babylonian Captivity of the Church " was for
Luther himself, and for all the world, a sufficiently em
phatic declaration of the Christian's independence of the
papacy and its sacramental monopoly. But it did not con
tain the demonstration of that fuller freedom of the
human spirit which lies in the certitude of man's salvation
in his direct relationship with God through Christ. A
broad foundation for this freedom was laid in Luther's
sermon On good works, written in the early part of 1520,
Those only are good works which are commanded by
God; only those acts which He has forbidden are sins.
The first and noblest of good works is faith, without
which prayers, fasts, pious foundations and all outer acts,
are vain. With faith every daily act of life and business
is good; and everyone knows when he does right by the
inner confidence that his act is pleasing to God. Any
work done without faith might be done by Turk or
heathen, Jew or sinner. Faith is not to be classed with
other works, since it alone makes all other works good,
and brings with it love, peace, joy, hope. In faith, distinc
tions between works fall away, and all works are equally
good, since they are good and pleasing to God not in
themselves but through faith in His word. Doubt leads
the Christian to distinguish between works and question
which is better. Only faith comforts us in our works,

MARTIN LUTHER 223
sorrows, and disappointments and dispels the thought that
God has forsaken us, even when we stand in prospect of
death and fear of hell.
Works without faith justify no one in the sight of God.
Our works are praiseworthy only through our faith that
they are pleasing to Him. Had every one faith, no laws
would be needed. All things and works are free to a
Christian through his faith ; but because others do not yet
believe, he works with them, and suffers them, freely,
knowing that this pleases God. Thus the freedom of
faith is no freedom to do evil, harmful acts. And Luther
proceeds to set forth in detail that excellence of living
which comes with faith in Christ and accords with the com
mands of God.
Such is the foundation of the freedom which Luther
sought for himself and for every man. But in the tract
upon the " Freedom of the Christian Man " written also
in 1520, Luther completes the structure of this freedom,
and indicates the way his mind had reached it ; as Paul set
forth in the Epistle to the Galatians the way of freedom
which he had found, and now declared to them.
Miltitz, a gentleman of the world as well as a papal
agent, seeing the dangers involved in the Lutheran revolt,
sought a means of truce. He tried to persuade Luther
into some sort of submission to the pope, perhaps unaware
as yet of the vast truculence of Luther's nature. In the
autumn of 1520 when Luther in fact was under excom
munication, Miltitz asked him to write a letter to the pope
and dedicate a conciliatory work to him. The request
bore other fruit! Luther wrote a letter and prefixed it
to The Freedom of the Christian Man, which was nearly
through the press, antedating both the letter and the
treatise, that they might not seem to have been written
under the pressure of the ban. Indeed they scarcely
would have given that impression. The letter was writ
ten in Latin and German, while the treatise was written in
German, but was shortly followed by a Latin translation
bearing the title Tractatus de libertate Christiana. *
4 The German Title " Von der Freiheit einesi Christenmenschen " is usu-

224 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Luther begins his letter with an elaborate protestation
that he has never said a word against His Holiness, and
has always spoken of him with the respect felt by all.
Indeed he had called Leo a Daniel in Babylon! He had,
to be sure, attacked certain impious doctrines, and those
who maintained them. Yet he will be found pliable and
yielding, except as to the word of God, by which he must
stand. True it is, continues Luther, that I have attacked
your Chair, which is called the Curia; but no one knows
better than yourself that its state is worse than Sodom or
Gomorrah or Babylon ! And I am grieved that in your
name and that of the Roman Church, they have betrayed
and robbed the poor throughout the world. I will stand
against that! None is better aware than you, that for
years nothing but corruption of body, soul, and estate has
come out of Rome : all the people see that the once holy
Roman church has become a den of cutthroats and a house
of shame, of death and damnation ! And you, Holy
Father, sit as a sheep among wolves !
The writer goes on, pouring the vials of his wrath upon
the papacy, with revilings not unlike those in the letter
which Hutten prefixed to Valla's book on the forged
" Donation of Constantine." " It is for you and your
cardinals to cure this woe. But the disease laughs at the
physic. . . . This is why I am sad, you pious Leo, to see
you pope, for you are worthy of being pope in better
times. The Roman chair is not fit for such as you: the
evil spirit ought to be pope. . . . Would to God, you
would resign this honor, as your spiteful enemies call it.
. . . O thou most unhappy Leo, seated on the most
perilous of chairs ! . . ."
" See, my lord Father, this is why I have struck at this
pestilential chair so violently. I had hoped to have
earned your thanks. I thought it would be a blessing to
you and many others to rouse intelligent and learned men
against the ruinous disorder of your court. They who
ally rendered into English, as " the freedom of a Christian man," perhaps
the best rendering, if one will bear in mind that Mensch means human
being. Both versions of the letter are given in De Wette, Vol I, pp.
497 sqq.

MARTIN LUTHER 225
attack such a Curia do the work which you should do;
they honor Christ who put that court to shame." In fine,
those are good Christians who are bad Romans ! — And
for me, when I had thought to keep silence, and had said
' Adieu ! sweet Rome, stink on ' ; then the devil set on
his servant Eck to drag me to a disputation! But that I
should recant, and submit to be ruled in the interpretation
of God's word, which is freedom, — never ! As for thee,
trust not those who would exalt thee as its sole inter
preter; but honor those who would bring thee down. I,
who cannot flatter, am forced to come to thy aid, and not
with empty hands, but with a little book. — and Luther
presents him The Freedom of a Christian Man.
The letter to Leo was written as a letter to Leo; but
the little book which Luther as an afterthought presented
him, was written to set forth for himself and those who
might hold with him, the moving convictions of his spirit
ual freedom. The soul of Paul lives in this German six
teenth century book, which opens with a lofty Pauline par
adox: "A Christian is a free lord over all things, and
subject to no man. A Christian is a bounden servant to
all things, and subject to everyone."
The solid reasoning of Luther's argument will best be
brought out by following it point by point, on to its ver
itable attainment.
A Christian is both spirit and body. After the first he
is a spiritual, new, and inner man ; according to flesh and
blood, he is a corporeal, old, outer man. Hence the scrip
ture paradox, that he is both bond and free.
In so far as he is a spiritual inner man, no outer thing
can make him pious and free. For piety and freedom, or
their opposites, are not of the outer man. That the
body is free and satisfied, or the reverse, neither helps nor
hurts the soul.
The soul is not helped when the body puts on holy garb,
frequents churches, prays, fasts, or does any good work;
for an evil man can do all this. Nor is the soul injured
when the body abstains from all this.
The soul needs only the holy Gospel, the word of God

226 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
preached by Christ; she has food and joy and light and
truth, wisdom and freedom in that.
In that word thou shalt hear thy God telling thee that
thy life and works are nothing in God's sight, but must
eternally perish (ewiglich verderben). Believing in thy
guiltiness, thou must despair of thyself, and with firm
faith give thyself to God's dear Son and trust in him.
Then thy sins will be forgiven thee through faith, thy
destruction (verderben) vanquished, and thou wilt be
righteous, at peace, with all commands fulfilled, and
free from all things, as St. Paul says (Rom. i, 17;
IO>-4)- Therefore the true work and practice for Christians lies
in building up Christ and the word within them, and in
constantly strengthening their faith.
Faith alone, without works, makes righteous. Scrip
ture consists in commands and promises. The former
belong to the Old Testament, and bring no strength to
fulfil them, which we cannot do.
Then the man despairs. But the divine promise as
sures him ; if thou wilt fulfil all, and be free from sin and
from desire of evil, believe on Christ in whom I promise
thee grace and righteousness, peace and freedom. Be
lieving, thou hast; unbelieving, thou hast not. God alone
commands; and God alone fulfils. The promises are
God's words in the New Testament.
" These and all words of God are holy, true, righteous,
peaceful, free, and full of all good things; therefore, who
soever cleaves to them in right faith, his soul is so entirely
united with them, that all the virtues of the word become
the soul's, and through faith the soul is by God's word
holy, righteous, peaceful, free and full of all good things,
a true child of God. . . . No good work cleaves to God's
word like faith, nor can be in the soul, where only the
word and faith can reign. What the word is, that the
soul becomes through the word, as iron becomes glowing
red as the fire, through union with it. Hence one sees
faith is sufficient for the Christian; he needs no work in

MARTIN LUTHER 227
order to be righteous. If then he needs no work, he is
assuredly loosed from all commands and laws." 5
To believe in God is to honor Him : to disbelieve is to
dishonor Him. When God sees the soul thus honoring
Him, He honors the soul, and holds it righteous.
Faith joins the soul to Christ, as bride to bridegroom.
They become one. All the good things of Christ be
comes the soul's, and the sins and negligences of the soul
become Christ's. All sins are swallowed up in Christ's in
vincible righteousness.
Faith fulfils all commands, and makes righteous ; for it
fulfils the First Commandment, to honor God, and that
fulfils them all. " But works are dead things, which can
not honor and praise God, though they may be done in
His honor. Here we seek not that which is done like the
works, but the doer and workman who honors God and
does the works. That is none other than the heart's
faith, which is the head and entire being of piety.
( Frommigkeit. ) Therefore it is a dangerous dark say
ing, when one exhorts to fulfil the commands of God with
works, since the fulfilment must take place through faith
before all works ; and the works follow the fulfilment, as
we shall hear."
In the Old Testament, God reserved the first born male
of man and beast, and gave him lordship and priesthood.
This was a symbol of Christ, to whom is given the spir
itual priesthood and kingship; which he shares with all
who believe on him. Hence spiritually we are lords over
all things, not as bodily possessing them, but as spiritually
made free regarding them.
Through faith all believers are priests and intercessors,
and lords of all, through God's power, who does their
will ; and we need nothing, and have abundance — spir
itually. We lose it by thinking to achieve it by good
works, and not through faith.
In Christendom, priests are distinguished from laity
5 I use quotation marks here, because I have translated this passage in
full. Elsewhere I have usually condensed the substance of the tract.

228 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
merely as ministers of the word and servers, with no
further privilege over other Christians.
It is not enough for the preacher to tell the story of
Christ; he must make plain all that Christ is to us;
through whom we are kings and priests, with lordship
over all things, and freed from the works of the Law, our
sins taken by Christ, and his righteousness ours through
faith. But men are not all spirit; not altogether the inner man.
We are also bodies. Thus the Christian is the servant
of all, and bound to the service of all. Let us see.
Though we are " inner " men, justified through faith,
yet we continue in this bodily life, associating with other
men. Here works begin; and the body must be practised
in good works, that it may conform to faith and the inner
man, and not cause him to stumble. The inner man is
one with God, and joyful in the doing of Christ's will in
love freely; but he finds a contrary will in his own flesh,
willing the lusts of the world, which faith cannot endure,
as Paul saith.
Works must not be done in the thought that they make
the man righteous before God; but voluntarily, and
freely, to please God; as Adam did what pleased God,
while still righteous in Eden.
Thus it is truly said, just works do not make a just man;
but a just man does just works. Nor do evil works make
an evil man; but an evil man does evil works.
Conversely, good works will not save one who is with
out faith; nor will evil works bring him to perdition, but
his unbelief. So it is vain and damnable to rely on works,
or preach them uncoupled with faith.
As toward men, our works must be done in love. My
God has given to me, utterly worthless and damned,
righteousness and salvation through Christ, so that hence
forth I need only to believe that this is so. I will act
toward my neighbor likewise. So the Virgin, after
Christ's birth, went to the Temple for her purification;
not that she was impure, but did it freely out. of love, so
as to show no contempt for other women. And so Paul

MARTIN LUTHER 229
circumcised Timothy. On like grounds, we should be
subject to the authorities.
Thus no work is good, unless its end is to serve an
other. Few cloisters, churches, masses, have been
founded or endowed from love, but rather, vainly, to cure
the founder's sins. Freely must the good things of God
flow from one to another of us.
" From all this, the conclusion follows that a Christian
does not live unto himself, but in Christ and his neighbor :
in Christ through faith, in his neighbor through love.
Through faith he ascends above himself in God, and
through love passes out from God again beneath himself,
yet abides always in God and godlike love. . . . Behold,
that is the true, spiritual Christian freedom which frees
the heart from all sins, laws and commands, which sur
passes all other freedom as the heaven the earth. This
may God give us truly to understand and keep. Amen."
So love and service of one's neighbor are made the cri
terion and sanctification of all the Christian's acts. His
conduct shall not be hampered and harassed by anxieties
regarding his sinlessness, holiness, aloofness from the
dross of life. He does not need the safeguard of monas
tic vows : let him marry and beget children, or bear them
if the Christian be a woman. Let the two take part in
the business of life, plant and hoe and cook unpestered
with vows and fasts and pilgrimages, so long as their
lives are useful and do not cause their neighbor to stumble.
Righteousness needs no other guararity than faith, and the
motive of useful service springing from it.
The incidents of Luther's life, which have been men
tioned and the writings that have been analyzed, indicate
the progress of his convictions until the time of his revolt
and excommunication. To recapitulate : we know little of
the experiences of his mind during his years at school and
at the Erfurt university. But we know that from the
time of his apparently sudden conversion he felt acute
anxiousness over his sinfulness and consequent perdition.
Life in the Augustinian convent consisted in conformity
to a moral and religious code, in the observance of m'onas-

236 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
tic rules, and the performance of incidental or occasional
duties. Luther found that he could not clear his con
science and assure himself of salvation by the strictest
fulfilment of these requirements, any more than Paul could
satisfy his mind and justify himself by his efforts to do the
work of the Law. Spiritual certitude was an imperative
need with both. Paul, perhaps in that spiritually fruitful
sojourn in Arabia (Gal. 1,17) cast off the saving agency
of works and ensconced himself in the principle of faith in
Christ Jesus. Luther in the early years of his professor
ship at Wittenberg (15 12-16) following the example and
the doctrine of Paul, accepted faith in Christ as the sole
means and principle of salvation. It was a saving grace
flowing directly from the Saviour to the sinner, without
the intervention of any pope or priest, who to Luther's
mind were prescribers of the outer act, the good work, the
work of the Law, and were guarantors of its efficacy,
which Luther had disproved in himself. So in accepting
faith as the sole principle of salvation, he virtually freed
himself both from the need of the visible church and from
its authority.
He had accomplished this for himself, and had im
parted some of the freedom of his faith to his associates
and pupils, by the year 1516 or 1517. Then Tetzel
came with his indulgences. Luther was aroused to a pro
test pregnant with defiance and revolt, by the abominable
nature of this bartered and sold salvation, and by the
realization that it directly countered salvation through
faith, which he had reached by grace and not through
money. Had there been no abuse, Luther would not have
been stung to an open attack first upon the abuse and then
upon the doctrine ; but might have kept on quietly teaching
salvation through faith. The sale of indulgences, which
was his call to action, made clear to him his strength and
independence. The posting of his Theses, and their as
tounding reception, impressed him with his role and duty
to act for his Germans too.
The angry controversy which followed served to clear
his thoughts, expand his arguments, and demonstrate the

MARTIN LUTHER 231
need to abandon other practices and tenets of the papal
church. Moreover, the war against indulgences pushed
on this very willing man to champion the cause of his
Germans against Rome; and as the fray progressed he
carried them along with him, from point to point, to ever
clearer opposition to the papal church. He frees them,
as he frees himself, from subjection to the papal hier
archy, and from the system of salvation which depends on
priestly mediation and consists so largely in the perform
ance of acts prescribed by priestly authority. Thus from
denunciation of the abuse he advances to emphatic oppo
sition to the institution from which the abuse had eman
ated, and emancipates his people, all stirred with German
wrath against Rome, from Papal authority, and leads
them on into that freedom of the Christian which is
through faith alone. As a result, the imperial unity of the
Roman Catholic church is broken, and the way laid open
to other kinds of intellectual freedom with which Luther
might have had scant sympathy. Ill
The dynamic quality of religion is exhaustless. Man's
conception of relationship to the divine Might, on Which
or Whom his life and eternal destinies depend, constantly
renews and manifests itself in all his faculties; it moulds
his purposes and inspires his action. It seems to be the
energy of God in man. It was so in Paul, so in Augustine,
in Anselm, Bernard, Francis. It was so in Luther.
There was a rebirth of Christianity in all these men.
Luther had no more doubt than Paul that a personal
revelation of God had come to him, and a divine call ; and
that Christ was actually reborn in him. The last thought
might have come to him from the Theologia Deutsch as
well as from his greatest teacher, Paul, who in another
than a mystic sense was likewise reborn in Luther. Once
more the power of the Gospel was shown, energizing and
directing the nature and faculties of Luther, and spending
its surplus force in the picturesque doings of Anabaptists

232 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
for example, and the Peasants' War, where it worked
along with other causes.
Luther was guided more directly by Paul than by the
Sermon on the Mount. Yet he deemed himself to be fol
lowing all the Scriptures, assuredly the Ten Command
ments, assuredly the passion of the Psalmist, assuredly
the teachings of his Lord in the four Gospels. Besides
hts almost superhuman grasp of Paul, he continued the
strain of Gospel piety which appears in mediaeval saints.
He says substantially in his Tabls Talk: Let no one
stumble over the simple tales in Scripture; they are the
very words and works and judgments of God. This is
the book that makes fools of little wiselings. Thou shalt
find in it the angels who guided the shepherds and the
swaddling clothes and cradle in which Jesus lay : mean and
wretched, but how precious the treasure, Christ, which
lies in them. These phrases might be Bernard's as well
as Luther's, and so might be many passages in Luther's
letters. Do we not almost hear Bernard in the following
to Spalatin, written in 15 19: Quicumque velit salubriter
de Deo cogitare aut speculari, prorsus omnia postponat
praeter humanitatem Christi. Hanc autem vel agentum
vel patientem sibi praefigat, donee dulcescat ejus benign-
itas.6 Again : thou shalt find peace only in Him, through
faithful despairing of thyself and thy work — per fiducia-
lem desperationem tui et operum tuorum.7 One notes
that this sweet piety, whether of Francis, Bernard, or
Luther, is filled with faith.
In his study of the Bible, Luther sought the veritable
meaning of the text. The downrightness of his nature
would have led him to this, even if he had not been in
fluenced by the comments of Nicholas de Lyra and Johann
Wessel.8 More and more he was repelled by the
strained and twisted applications which were made to
support those teachings, practices, or institutions of the
papal church which he found himself revolting from.
8De Wette's Edition, Vol. I, p. 226.
7 To Spenlein, ib. p. 17; Of. to Scheurl, ib. p. 49. Letters of 1516 and
1517. 8 Ante, p. 189-191.

MARTIN LUTHER 233
Yet no more than Erasmus did he give over the allegor
ical interpretation of the Old Testament, or even of the
New. But he looked in the New Testament for confirm
ation of allegorical interpretations of words and state
ments in the Old.9 He makes fewer references to alle
gorical meanings in his later writings, referring to him
self as early as December, 1522, as "being already less
curious regarding allegories." 1Q To be sure, like any
student of the Scriptures, in any age, with doctrines to
uphold, Luther could bend the meaning to his own
support. Inevitably Luther judged the different books of the
Bible by their bearing on the Gospel of faith in Christ, as
he grasped it. Paul's Epistles were his chief armory.
In the preface to his New Testament of 1522 he puts
John's Gospel and Paul's Epistles, especially to the
Romans, above Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which tell of
Christ's works. In comparison James's Epistle is dry fod
der, " eine rechte stroherne Epistel." J1 In the preface
to Romans in the same edition, he says " Diese Epistel ist
das rechte Hauptstiick des Neuen Testaments, und das
allerlauteste Evangelium." It was for him the great ex
position of faith, which he thus characterizes in the same
preface : " Faith is a divine work in us that changes and
regenerates us as from God, and kills the old Adam, and
makes us into different men . . . and brings the Holy
Spirit with it."
The Psalter moved him strongly. In his Preface to it
(1528) he holds it as the mirror of the Church and of
the storm-tost Christian soul driven by anxiety and fear.
Every soul can find apt counsel in the Psalter; can there
find itself expressed: " In fine, if thou wouldst see the
Holy Christian Church painted in living form and color
. . . take the Psalter, and thou hast a clear pure mirror
showing thee Christendom. Thou wilt also see thyself
9 See generally the argumentation in Vom Pdpstthum zu Rom, etc.
(1520). 10 Letter to Spalatin, De Wette, II, p. 267. Cf. to the same, ib. II, 356.
11 This preface was omitted from later editions. In the preface to
James's Epistle, he said it was not the work of an Apostle.

234 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
therein, and find the true ' know thyself ' and God and all
Creatures." Later in life, in his Table Talk he says that the Psalms,
St. John's Gospel and Paul's Epistles are the best to
preach from when opposing heretics ; but for the ordinary
man and for young people, Matthew, Mark and Luke
are best. Luther grasped the Scriptures very humanly,
with all sides and faculties of his nature. Says he, also
in his Table Talk, one must not attempt to weigh and un
derstand them through our reason alone; but meditate
upon them diligently with prayer. He had read the Bible
through twice each year, for many years, and, as if it were
a tree, had shaken each one of its branches and twigs, and
every time some apples or pears had fallen to him. He
felt the exhaustlessness of meaning in the Lord's Prayer.
In his address to his Augustines at Wittenberg on the
Misuse of the Mass, Luther said, " Scripture cannot
err, and who believes it cannot sin in his life." But while
he held this large view of its inerrancy, and especially of
its infallible presentation of the Gospel of faith, he did
not hold meticulously to the inerrancy of the letter of
every statement in it.
The authority of the pope was the real point at issue
between Luther and the papal church. He writes of his
Leipzig disputation, " if only I would not deny the power
of the pope, they would readily have come to an accord
with me." 12 But even he who was coming to the realiza
tion that he feared no man, felt the strain and danger of
his situation. He implores the Emperor not to condemn
him unheard 13 and exclaims to his friend Spalatin : " It
is hard to dissent from all prelates and princes; but there
is no other way to escape hell and the divine wrath." u
After much thought and ample notice to his friends, he
burnt the papal bull against him, and the Canon Law as
well, before the city church of Wittenberg on the tenth of
12 To Spalatin, 1519, De Wette, I, p. 287.
13Tan'y, 1520. De Wette, I, p. 393.
14 Nov., 1520, ib. I, p. 521.

MARTIN LUTHER 235
December, 1520. As he wrote to Staupitz, he did it in
" trembling and prayer, but afterwards felt better over
it than over any act in all my life." 15
He was and always remained, opposed to resisting au
thority with arms 16 ; but he had become convinced that he
and every one who would be saved must fight to the last
— though not with arms — against the papal laws.
Though fearing no man, he stood in awe before the be
liefs in which he had been educated, abandoning portions
of them only under the compulsion of his reason, his con
science, and his circumstances; and still he felt anxious
over what he had done, as appears in paragraphs intended
to fortify the consciences of his Wittenberg Augustines
placed at the beginning of his tract upon the Misuse of
the Mass, written at the Wartburg in 1521. It is noth
ing that the world and all the priests of Baal dub us
heretics and cry out on us, says he in substance; but we
hear the cry of our own consciences, stricken with fear of
God's judgment lest we be leading men astray. Even I
was in doubt and fear. Could I alone be right, and all
the rest of the world mistaken? Till God strengthened
me, and made my heart as a rock against which the
waves of apprehension beat in vain.
He had need of all his strength for his journey to
Worms and his defense before the Emperor and the
princes and prelates of Germany. A papal sentence, of
death in this world and damnation afterwards, lay on
him; and the Emperor Charles who sent him a safe-con
duct commanded the burning of his books. John Huss
had been burnt at Constance, whither he had gone under
an emperor's safe-conduct. The Church held no faith
with a condemned heretic. Luther had cause to tremble.
His natural anxieties resulted in repeated illness. Yet
his resolve and faith were unshaken; and he assured the
Elector that he would go if he had to be carried. His
journey in fact was made in a covered wagon. Cities
16 De Wette, I, p. 542.
16 See e.g. to Spalatin, 1521, De Wette, I, p. 543.

236 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
along the route received him with acclaim. He was a
hero, and the pope was hated. He writes ahead from
Frankfort :
" We are coming, my Spalatin, although Satan has tried to stop
me with more than one illness. All the way from Eisenach I have
been ailing, and am still ailing, in ways quite new to me. And
Charles's mandate [against his books] , I know, has been published
to frighten me. But Christ lives, and we will enter Worms in
spite of all the gates of hell and powers of the air. I send a copy
of the Emperor's letter. It seems best to write no more letters till,
on my arrival, I see what should be done, lest we puff up Satan,
whom my purpose is rather to terrify and contemn. Therefore
arrange a lodging. Farewell." "
The papal legate, Aleander, tells of Luther's arrival
at the city gates, sitting in a wagon with three companions,
and protected by a hundred horsemen. As he alighted at
his lodging near the Saxon Elector, he looked round with
those demon eyes of his, and said " God be with me."
A priest ecstatically threw his arms about him. He was
soon visited by many personages, and people ran to see
him. So far, in substance, Aleander.
On appearing before the Diet on the first day Luther
seems to have hesitated in the presence of so august and
largely hostile an assembly; but the next day he made a
well ordered argument and spoke courageously in defense
of his books and his convictions, to the wrath of the
papal legates who protested that an excommunicated
heretic had no right to defend his heresies. As for the
Emperor, his face was against Luther whatever might
be his own relations with the pope. For in his office
Charles, equally with the pope, was heir to the Roman
tradition of imperial unity. To one as to the other,
Luther could only be a rebel; and the Emperor, an intense
Catholic, was already started on his career of arch ex
terminator of heretics, in his dominions in the Low
Countries, where he had the power that he lacked in
German lands. He and the papal party would quickly
have put an end to Luther's words and life, if Luther had
17 April 14, 1 521, De Wette, I, p. 586.

MARTIN LUTHER 237
not had the protection of the Saxon Elector and the sup
port of a large proportion of all classes in Germany.
In spite of commands, exhortations and persuasion,
within the Diet and without, Luther refused to recant,
or materially to retract his statements. He left Worms
as he had entered it, an excommunicated heretic. The
Emperor's ban followed quickly, proclaiming him an out
law. But from these cumulative dangers he was spirited
away, out of the sight and ken of enemies and friends
alike, to a benignant confinement at the Wartburg, the
historic castle, then belonging to the Saxon Elector.
There he stayed for eight months, translating the New
Testament, writing letters and tracts to exhort trembling
or over-zealous friends, fighting the devil as well as mor
tal enemies, and advancing in his faith from strength to
strength. It was irksome to be confined, and bodily withheld
from the strife. Half humorously, half lugubriously,
Luther dates his letters, " in the region of the birds,"
" on my Patmos," " from my hermitage." Vehemently
he works ; or, again, the perturbations of his soul and body
prostrate his energies. " Now for a week, I do neither
write, nor pray, nor study, vexed with temptations of the
flesh and other ills," he writes Melanchthon.18 His
words had already become a power with his friends, a
terror to others. Albrecht, archbishop of Mainz, to
relieve whose impecuniousness Tetzel had sold indul
gences, now bethought him to do a little business quietly
in that line at Halle. The Elector had no wish to make
an enemy of the princely primate of Germany, and know
ing that Luther was breathing forth threatenings, asked
him to keep silence. Neither then, nor ever afterwards,
did Luther hold his peace when speech was called for;
and the vigor of his threats of public attack, made in a
private letter to the archbishop,19 caused the latter to
stop the sale and excuse himself to Luther in a letter.
18 De Wette, II, p. 22.
19 De Wette, II, pp. 112-114. So Luther did not publish his Against
the Idol at Halle.

238 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
In fact while at the Wartburg, as before and after
wards through his life, Luther worked and wrote tor-
rentially. There were years when his productions mon
opolized the presses of Germany. At the Wartburg he
seems first to have completed a little writing which showed
how dearly he still loved the teachings and traditions of
the Church. It was a charming piece for the Elector, On
the Song of Praise of the holy Virgin Mary, called the
Magnificat. He honors her sinlessness, and almost
prays to her, saying at the beginning, "May the same gen
tle Mother procure me the spirit to interpret her song
aright," and at the end, " This may Christ grant us
through the intercession of his dear Mother Mary."
Paying this tribute to the clinging sentiments of reli
gious habit, Luther proceeded none the less manfully to
disembarrass his mind of matters which more loudly de
manded discarding. He wrote a tract On the power
of the pope to compel Confession, which he sent with
an inspiring letter to a doughty patron and protector of
his, the great swashbuckler knight Von Sickingen.20 He
then took up the marriage of priests, on which Carlstadt
and Melanchthon had already taken a radical stand.
Luther fundamentally agreeing with them, still wished to
test their grounds more thoroughly. Next he undertook
to settle the burning question whether monastic vows
were binding. He sent his Opinion to his own father,
who had so bitterly opposed his purpose to become a
monk, and with it a telling letter,21 in which he recalls
the anxieties and the sudden fear that drove him into the
convent, and his father's doubt whether it was not a
crazed delusion: — and now, dear father, " wilt thou still
drag me out? For still art thou father, and I am son, and
all vows mean nothing. . . . But the Lord has forestalled
thee, and has himself delivered me. For what signifies
it, whether I wear the cowl or lay it off ? Cowl and ton-
20 De Wette, II, 13.
21 De Wette, II, 100 sqq.— also printed as a preface to Luther's Urtheil
fiber die Mbnchsgeliibde.

MARTIN LUTHER 239
sure do not make the monk. ' All is yours,' says Paul,
' and you are Christ's' ; and why should I be the cowl's and
not the cowl rather be mine ? My conscience has become
free, which means that I have become free. So I am a
monk and yet no monk, a new creature, not the pope's,
but Christ's." Satan foresaw what great scathe he was
to suffer from me, and attempted my ruin. But from
this book " thou mayest see through what signs and won
ders Christ has loosed me from the monk's vow and
given me such freedom that, while he has made me the
servant of all, I am subject to none but him alone. For
he is my bishop, directly over me, my abbot, prior, lord,
father and teacher. Henceforth I recognize none other."
In this tract, which was written in Latin, Luther main
tains that the monk's vow is opposed to God and scrip
ture; for whatever goes beyond the words of Christ is
man's invention. To turn that which was at most a
counsel in the Gospel into a command, is to go beyond
and against the Gospel. The monastic vow is opposed to
faith, and to the freedom wherein faith makes us free
from all things. It infringes the gospel freedom set by
God, which is no less a sin than to break any other com
mandment. It is opposed to love of neighbor, to obedi
ence to parents, and to natural reason. " Those who
make their vows intending to become good and blessed
through this way of life, to blot out their sins and gain
riches through good works, are as godless Jews fallen
from faith."
At the same time Luther made ready another tract, On
the Misuse of the Mass, from which certain opening
reflections have already been taken. It presented Luth
er's conception of the priesthood and the sacrament of
the body and blood of Christ, maintaining that this sacra
ment is not a sacrifice offered to God in propitiation for
our sins, but is received from Him in token of His free
forgiveness. There is one priest, who is Christ ; the New
Testament ordains no visible priesthood beside him; but
all Christians are priests with Christ. Consequently the

240 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
papal priesthood is nothing, their acts and laws are noth
ing; and the Mass which they call a sacrifice is sheer idol
atry, a fabrication added to God's Testament.
It is hard for weak consciences to think that so many
people have been damned in this idolatry, despite all the
churches and cloisters where myriad daily masses are said;
and they are tempted to believe the mass is instituted
by God because it has been instituted by the Church. But
the Church did not institute it, since the Church ordains
nothing beyond God's word; and whatever body makes
the attempt is no Church. Let us have done with the
pope's priesthood and their mass; and to the argument
that ordained power has authority to command, make
reply : Go and take counsel with the blasphemers of those
Gomorrahs, Paris and Louvain; we maintain with the
power of the Gospel, that when ye rule without God's
word, ye are the devil's priests, and your office and priest
hood is the work of the devil to crush out the Spirit and
Word of God.
The time was at hand when Luther no longer could
endure to write and fight from his retreat. Disturbances
among his own Wittenbergers demanded his presence and
his voice. His more radically minded followers — whom
Luther declared hurt him more than all his enemies and
all the devils too 22 — had rudely gone to work ; and
fanatics were come from Zwickau, who would overthrow
all things. Wittenberg was becoming a scandal; the town
council petitioned him to return. The Elector, himself
troubled by many thorny questions, felt still greater
anxiety lest Luther's return should embroil him with the
Emperor and endanger the reformer's life: demands
would be made for his surrender, to his certain death.
So at least it seemed to the Elector, and he wrote asking
Luther not to come. Luther did not tarry at the Wart
burg to reply, but answered from the road to Wittenberg.
His letter respectfully explained the urgency of the situa
tion, and then proceeded : " As for my own fate, most
22 De Wette, II, p. 165.

MARTIN LUTHER 241
gracious Lord, I answer thus: Your Electoral Grace
knows, or if not, will be informed by this, that I have
received the Gospel not from men, but solely from
Heaven, through our Lord Jesus Christ, and well might
and henceforth will declare and subscribe myself a ser
vant and evangelist. If I have submitted to be heard and
judged, it has been through no doubt of this, but from
over-humility in order to win others. Now I see my
humility bringing the Gospel into contempt, and that the
devil will take the whole place, where I intended to give
him but a palm; so my conscience compels me to act
otherwise." " I have done enough for your Electoral Grace by retiring for a
year, obediently. For the devil knows that I have not done this
from cowardice. He saw it in my heart, as I entered Worms, that
had there been as many devils there as tiles on the roofs, I would
have sprung into their midst gladly. Duke George 23 is not the
equal of a single devil. And since the Father of all mercies has
through his Gospel made us glad lords over all the devils and death,
so that we may call him our own dear Father, your Grace will see
what shame we should put on Him if we did not trust Him to
make us lords over the anger of Duke George. . . .
" These things I have written to your Grace so that your Grace
may know that I come to Wittenberg under a higher guard than
that of the Prince Elector. Nor do I propose to seek that pro
tection of your Electoral Grace. Rather it is I that would protect
you. Indeed if I knew that your Grace could and would protect
me, I would not come. In this business the sword should not and
cannot either advise or aid ; God must do all by Himself. There
fore he who has most faith will best protect. And since I perceive
your Electoral Grace to be still weak in faith, I cannot find in you
the man who could protect or save me."
The letter proceeds further to absolve the Elector
from responsibility for Luther's safety; and begs him
not to oppose the carrying out of any imperial edict. For
himself, Christ has not so taught him that he should be
a burden to another Christian. " Herewith I commend
your princely Electoral Grace to the grace of God. . . .
23 Duke George, ruler over the other parts of Saxony, an earnest Catholic,
and Luther's enemy.

242 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
If your Grace believed, you would see the glory of God;
since you do not yet believe, you have seen nothing." 24
So Luther made his way to Wittenberg. The Elector,
better than his protest, continued his protection. If
Luther's word had first unchained the tempest which so
rudely was throwing down the old forms and ceremonies
of worship, his word and presence now restored peace.
Mightily had he grasped for himself, and set forth for
others, Paul's great doctrine of justification by faith.
Now with equal power and effect he set forth another
side of the great apostle's teaching, that it is not the
Christian's part to cause his weaker brother to stumble.
He preached sermons on eight successive days, and cast
a spell of order and toleration over the city.
In the first sermon he pointed out to his hearers, who
thronged the large city church, that each Christian must
answer and fight for himself against the devil and death.
Each should know the tenets of his faith. We are all
children of wrath; our acts and thoughts are sinful and as
nothing in the sight of God. But God gave his Son;
and at this point the preacher briefly recalled the sub
stance of Christ's gospel. To benefit by it faith is
needed; then love of one another, in which his auditors
seemed to have failed. Patience also is required, and
forbearance. Each shall not insist upon his own way,
but yield so as to win those who are without. No one
should so use his freedom as to give offense to those who
are weak in faith. You have surely the pure word of
God; act then soberly and considerately. Our warfare
is with the devil, who has many wiles. Those have erred
who have inconsiderately swept away the mass, without
advising with me — with me, who was called to preach,
not by my will, but against it. Suppose your taunts to
have driven some brother, against his conscience, to eat
meat on Friday, and in the hour of death he is seized
with fear; — on whose head falls the blame?
So speaks Luther's broad human and Pauline forbear-
24 This, perhaps the most famous of all Luther's letters, is printed in
De Wette, II, 137 sqq., and elsewhere very often.

MARTIN LUTHER 243
ance. His rock-ribbed intolerance will elsewhere strike
us. The second sermon opens with the avowal that the
popish sacrificial mass is an abomination; but it is not for
us to tear it out by the hair; leave it to God. Why?
Because / do not hold men's hearts as clay in my hand;
I can speak to the ear, but cannot force my words into
their hearts. Let our words work free ; but use no force.
We preach the truth ; let that work. Paul came to Athens,
and saw the altars of idolatry. Did he rush to kick them
over with his foot? Let faith be free. I will preach
against the mass; but will not cast it out by force. I
spoke against indulgences, gently, with the word of God,
raising no tumult; and so I weakened the papacy more
than the Kaiser ever did. Blood might have been poured
out, had I done differently.
Monks' vows are null, affirms the next sermon; as null
as if I had vowed to strike my father in the face. Yet
to hurry out of convents and marry, is not yet for all.
It should be left to the conscience of each. So images
are useless; but do ye leave each man free to keep or
reject them. Only one must not pray to them. ' Let us
preach that images are vanities, but that no outer thing
can injure faith.
The remaining sermons consider points of contention:
taking the Sacrament into the communicant's hands; in
sistence upon both the bread and wine; the question of
confession. Also the fruit of the Sacrament which is
love. The incidents of Luther's life so far referred to,
with his words and writings, tempt us to further efforts
to place him in proper categories of appreciation and
form some estimate of him. At all events, he calls for
emphatic statements. One must not approach him minc-
ingly, nor be overnice. To be misled or repelled by
certain of his qualities would be to hesitate over the
immaterial and tarry with the impertinent. If we find
contradictions in the man as well as in his doctrines, we
should seek their harmony in the reaches of his nature

244 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
and the reasonings which there had their home. We may
find the contradictions bound together, as by the grace of
God, into a mighty personality speaking always to one
high argument.
In a letter to Melanchthon,25 Luther says that his
opponents to show their smartness gather contradictions
from his books. " How can those asses judge the con
tradictions in our doctrine, who understand neither of the
contradictories? For what else can our doctrines be in
the eyes of the wicked than sheer contradiction, since it
both requires and condemns works, abolishes and restores
ritual, honors and reproves the magistrates, asserts and
denies sin? "
" I am a peasant's son," says Luther, " my father,
grandfather, and forebears, were echte Bauern. My
father when young was a poor miner; my mother carried
the wood on her back: and so they brought us up."
Luther was a peasant too. The rank and ready coarse
ness of the peasant was an obvious element of his nature
to the end. It crops out through his talk and writing in
language absolutely unquotable even for purposes of illus
tration. It should not be compared with the expressions
of many an Italian humanist; for such men were them
selves contaminate, while Luther's soul, even as his life,
was pure. A juster comparison lies with the great-natured
Rabelais ; but the latter's obscenity is a thing of imagina
tive art. Luther's coarseness is never for its own sake.
Sudden, and uncalled for as it sometimes seems to us, it
was with him a natural mode of speech, the ready weapon
of anger and denunciation.
For Luther was a man of wrath, of violent and Cyclo
pean indignation. He did not restrain it; but poured it
out on the offense, as the wrath of God, given him to de
liver. If he felt that the occasion called for tolerance and
love, he was persuasive and compelling in these qualities,
as when he calmed the Wittenberg disorders. But anger
naturally nerved him to combat; he says in his Table Talk
that people had warned him at the outset not to attack
25 July, 1530, De Wette, IV, p. 103.

MARTIN LUTHER 245
the pope : " but when I was angry, I went at it like a
blindfold horse." That was human or animal; but he was
also convinced of the divine sanction of his wrath: " The
anger of my mouth is not my anger, but God's anger,"
he cried to a papal legate. And there could not be enough
of it. "I have never satisfied myself and the enormous-
ness of my anger against the papal monster; nor do I
think I shall ever be able to satisfy it."26 Luther was a
German, and understood the gospel of hate as well as
love.27 As the years passed, neither his hate nor his
language became mollified. In his tract of 1545, Against
the Roman papacy founded by the devil, the pope instead
of the allerheiligster (most holy) has become the aller-
hollischte (most hellish) father, Sanctus Paulus Tertius.
That pope, forsooth, has written to the Kaiser, angrily
maintaining that the pope alone may call a council —
which shall meet at Trent. Against such a council, whose
decrees may be given, changed or nullified by the " abom
inable abomination at Rome calling himself the pope,"
Luther protests with vigorous wrath, addressing the pope
always as " your hellishness." " I mock the pope ! " he
exclaims. " Good God, I am too slight a thing to mock
that which has mocked the world to its perdition for six
hundred years."
His convinced wrath was directed not only against
Rome and her partisans; but against any one whom he
thought was falsifying God's doctrine. " My one sole
glory," he writes to Melanchthon, " is that I have deliv
ered the pure and unadulterated word of God. ... I be
lieve that Zwingli is deserving of holy hate for his obstin
ate wickedness against the holy word of God."28 Thus he
delivered himself because of the Swiss reformer's view
of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Luther abom-
26 Aug., 1 545, De Wette, V, p. 754-
27 It seems to me that in spirit the recent German war harks back to
Luther, even to his tract upon the Freedom of a Christian man: each man
outwardly subject to the powers that be, bounden in outward obedience
but inwardly free, and even finding in his inward freedom a certain de
tachment from responsibility for the nature of his outward acts com
manded by the powers that be.
28 Oct., 1527, De Wette, III, 215.

246 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
inated transubstantiation ; but on no point of doctrine
did he insist more violently than on the real presence of
the body and blood of Christ. This was the rock of con
troversy on which he and Zwingli wrecked the cause of
Protestant unity two years later, at the Marburg collo
quy, when Luther sat him at the conference table and
wrote on it in chalk the words " This is my body," —
from which he would not swerve. He and Zwingli
reached an agreement on other points; but on this they
parted. The German Bucer, an early admirer of Luther, who
was destined to carry on so excellently the work of the
Reform at Strassburg, held views like Zwingli' s. Having
him in mind, Luther wrote : " Satan is angry, and per
haps feels that the Day of Christ is at hand. Therefore
he rages so cruelly and will deprive' us of the Saviour
Jesus Christ through his trickery. Under the papacy he
was sheer flesh, making out that even monks' cowls were
holy. Now will he be sheer spirit, making out that the
flesh and word of Christ are nothing." 29
The vehemence of Luther's, speech, the violence of his
convictions, alike were needed for the doing of the work
he did. Millions of protests had been wasted on the
mighty mammon of the Church. Soft words and gentle
persuasions would still have been futile. Even the rapier
satire of Erasmus did not pierce the monster. No reform
could be achieved by anyone so long as the authority of
the pope remained unimpeached, and the unity of the
Roman Catholic Church unbroken. Vituperation, revolt,
attack, were needed. It may be, as men have thought,
that Luther's breach with Rome not only underlay the
spiritual remaking of the lands which became Protestant,
but compelled the Roman Catholic Church to redeem
itself from its overgrowth of abuse and corruption.
One may also argue for the need of Luther's firm, not
to say violent, insistence upon certain doctrines, that of
the Real Presence, for example. For the man was
preaching no Erasmian piety, or ethics, of the obvious ra-
29 De Wette, III, 206.

MARTIN LUTHER 247
tional type, which men might accept and remain unmoved.
He was preaching religion; he was delivering doctrine, not
rationalism, to his followers : the doctrines which he held
to be those of the true Christian faith and necessary for
salvation. " Men still doubt that my preaching is God's
word: that the true body and blood of Christ is received
in the Sacrament, or that in baptism sins are washed
away by the blood of Christ. But that I teach and preach
the veritable word of God, I will pledge my soul and will
die for it. . . . If thou believest this thou art blessed;
if thou dost not, thou art damned." (Table Talk.)
The Protestant religion needed to be as stiff and
staunch in doctrine as the Catholic, and as imperative.
The world was not yet interested in liberalism and toler
ance. It wanted sure salvation. Luther fought for and
established his way of salvation, and disproved the Roman
system, showed its falsity, its inefficiency. He who fol
lowed the Roman way would be damned just as surely,
according to the Lutheran conviction, as in Catholic eyes
men would be damned for following Luther. Who would
have cared for Luther's faith had he taught or admitted
that men could just as well be saved in the bosom of the
Catholic Church ? It did not irk Luther and his followers,
any more than it did the Calvinists or the Catholics, or
the Mohammedans for that matter, to think of many
damned. Luther wrote a book of Fourteen Consolations for the
Downcast and Oppressed, and more especially for the
Elector, sick and weary in the year 15 19. In this work of
reasonable Christian comfort, after reviewing the ills of
life and the pains of hell, he remarks : " How many
thousand are in hell's eternal damnation who have scarce
ly a thousandth part of our sins? How many young girls
and boys are there, and, as we say, ' innocent children ' ?
How many monks, priests, married people, who seemed
to serve God all their lives, and now are eternally pun
ished perhaps for a single sin? For ... the same jus
tice of God does its office on each sin, hating and damning
it in whomsoever found." So, argues Luther, we realize

248 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
the boundless pity of God in not damning us, and may well
be thankful. He agrees with Augustine that he would
not willingly live his life again, with its pains and anx
ieties. He speaks of the seven ills and seven compensa
tions, or goods, such as a glad heart, and the goods of the
mind, the sense of the glory of God, and the good things
promised us through Christ hereafter, which include sat
isfaction from the punishment of sin in the damned, while
through love we make the joys and sorrows of the saints
our own.
Wonderful have been human consolations and con
victions ! Without earnest, sincere, terrible convictions
the world might have stayed still ; they are also among the
plagues which have fallen upon men, driving those
obsessed by them to blood and pious rapine.
So many elements, so many potent antecedents came to
effective combination and living actuality in Luther. In
the vortex of his nature, the vivida vis of living life made
them all to live again. He was altogether alive, and put
life into whatever he thought or said or wrote. His per
sonality lives in every sentence, one is tempted to say,
from the beginning to the end at last of the enormous
array of his writings. He was a superman in power, in
energy, in fertile facility. His reason does not work
alone, nor does he ever act by impulse merely : his facul
ties act together spontaneously — with a spontaneity not
always calculable for other men. No man was like him.
Not another one of the reformers in his time or after him
was spontaneous and alive as Luther was alive, not
Zwingli, not Calvin.
The strength of Luther's faith, and the firm and violent
convictions of which we have been speaking, owed some
thing to his aliveness and vital imagination, and to his
sensitive perception and realization of the intimacies of
life about him, and the immeasurable reaches of existence
which were as assured as the stars above his head. If
Duke George was not the equal of a single devil, what
was he then compared with the power of God shown in
the rose which Luther holds in his hand, while he

MARTIN LUTHER 249
wonders at God's workmanship in the budding of trees
in the spring, and in the functions of the human body.
Consciousness of nature's marvels is a stay and comfort in
times of trial, and how surely such for one who knows
them to be creatures of Him who holds alike the faithful
man and all his enemies in the hollow of His hand ! Lu
ther likewise loved his own children intimately and imag
inatively. He saw them as God's best gifts, and let his
mind play around their child natures, so ready for love
and faith. Such love of children is another stay and
comfort. Wonderful illustrations of the calm and happy
assurance thus given him lie in letters written from the
Elector's castle of Coburg in the year 1530. It was
an anxious time. The imperial diet was sitting at Augs
burg, with the hostile Emperor at its head. The Saxon
Elector John 30 was there, with Melanchthon and other
theologians, who were to draw up the presentation of
their faith known as the Augsburg Confession. But
Luther was left at Coburg, a hundred and thirty miles
away, on the Saxon border. Being under the imperial
ban, he could not appear before the Emperor; and his
presence would have excited animosity when the Luther
ans desired concord. So Luther abode those anxious
months at Coburg, while others fought the fight that was
his. A restless, anxious state was that of this sequestered
leader, restricted to reports of the battle, and to his letters
of exhortation and admonishment in return. As all men
knew, he would have yielded nothing, and could not have
tipped his speech with velvet, or " walked as softly " as
Melanchthon. He approved of the " Confession," if only
they would leave t>ff dallying with compromises and quit
the diet. Quivering with impatience, he writes to them
in July to leave, since they had spoken : " Igitur absolvo
vos in nomine Domini ab isto conventu. Immer wieder
heim, immer heim ! ! " 31 Constantly and most directly,
30 Who had succeeded the Elector Frederick in 1525.
31 De Wette, IV, 96. Luther often mingles Latin and German in his
letters, as the one or the other tongue best expresses him.

250 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
he comforts himself with his trust in God, for himself and
for his cause, as we read in many a letter to Melanchthon
and to others. He assures Melanchthon that the troubles
which seem to master the latter are huge only through
his lack of faith. It is his learning that bothers him —
as if anything could be accomplished through useless solici
tudes. He is his own direct foe, armed by the devil
against himself. " Christ died once for our sins, but for
justice and truth he does not die, but lives and reigns. If
this is true, what fear then for the truth, if he reigns?
But, do you say, it will be overthrown by the anger of
God? Let us be overthrown with it, but not through
ourselves." 32 And again: " If we shall fall, Christ falls
with us, to wit, he, the ruler of the world ! So be it : if he
shall fall, I had rather fall with Christ than stand with
Caesar." 33 Later in the summer, he writes comforting
a certain Jonas : " Gratiam et pacem in Christo. Ego, mi
Jonas, nostram causam Christo commendavi serio
(earnestly), et is promisit mihi . . . suam hanc causam
esse et fore : 3i And he has promised me that our cause is
His and shall be! "
Such were his direct self-heartenings. The more subtle
serenity reflected in his mind from God's creation is illus
trated by a letter written in lighter vein to those who lived
with him at Wittenberg :
" To my dear table-companions, Peter and Jerome Weller, and
Henry Schneidewin, and others at Wittenberg, severally and
jointly: Grace and peace in Christ Jesus, dear sirs and friends.
I have received the letter you all wrote and have learned how
everything is going. That you may hear in turn how we are doing,
I would have you know that we, namely, I, Master Veit, and
Cyriac, did not go to the diet at Augsburg, but have come to an
other diet instead.
" There is a grove just under our windows like a small forest.
32 June 27, 1530, De Wette, IV, p. 49.
33 June 30, 1530, ib. p. 62.
3*De Wette, IV, p. 157. I leave this sentence in the Latin. Luther's
Latin letters are as direct and forcible as his German. Perhaps he never
wrote a finer body of letters than those written from Coburg, from April
to October, 1530. They make the first two hundred pages of De Wette's
fourth volume,

MARTIN LUTHER 251
There the jackdaws and crows are holding a diet. They ride in
and out, and keep up a racket day and night without ceasing, as if
they were all crazy-drunk.' Young and old chatter together in
such a fashion that I wonder voice and breath hold out. I should
like to know whether there are any such knights and warriors still
left with you. It seems as if they must have gathered here from
all the world.
" I have not yet seen their emperor ; but the nobility and bigwigs
constantly flit and gad about before our eyes, not very expensively
clothed, but simply, in one color, all alike black, and all alike gray-
eyed. They all sing the same song, but there is an agreeable con
trast between young and old, great and small. They care nothing
for grand palaces and halls, for their hall is vaulted with the beau
tiful, broad sky, its floor is paved with lovely green branches, and
its walls are as wide as the world. They do not ask for horses or
armor ; they have feathered chariots to escape the hunters. They
are high and mighty lords, but I don't yet know what they are
deciding. So far as I have been able to learn from an interpreter,
they plan a great war against wheat, barley, oats, malt, and all
sorts of grain, and many a one will show himself a hero and do
valiant deeds.
" So we sit here in the diet, listening and looking on with great
pleasure, as the princes and lords with the other estates of the realm
so merrily sing and feast. It gives us special delight to see in how
knightly a fashion they strut about, polish their bills, and fall upon
the defense that they may conquer and acquit themselves honorably
against corn and malt. We wish them fortune and health, that
they may all be impaled on a spit together.
" Methinks they are none other than the sophists and papists
with their preaching and writing. All of them I must have in a
crowd before me that I may hear their lovely voices and sermons,
and see how useful a tribe they are, destroying everything on earth,
and for a change chattering to kill time.
" To-day we heard the first nightingale, for she was afraid to
trust our April. We have had lovely weather and no rain except
a little yesterday. It is perhaps otherwise with you. God bless
you ! Take good care of the house.
" From the Diet of the Malt-Robbers, April 28, 1530.
" Martin Luther, Doctor." 35
Two or three months later Luther wrote to Briick, the
Elector's chancellor, a letter of wonderful comforting in-
35 I have taken this translation from the excellent book of A. C. McGif-
fert, Martin Luther, the Man and his Work. The original is in De Wette,
IV, p. 8. Luther was so amused with his idea of a Reichstag (diet) of
rooks and daws, that he repeated it in several letters.

252 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
dicative of the peace which he drew from the sublimities
of nature. He speaks of anxieties common to them both,
and his trust in God who listens to their prayers, and will
forget them never, and then says :
" I have lately seen two miracles. I looked out of the window,
I saw the stars in heaven and the whole great vault of God, and
saw nowhere any pillars on which the Master had set it. Yet the
heavens fell not, and the vault stands fast. Now there are some
who look for such pillars, and gladly would feel and grasp them.
Because they cannot, they worry and tremble, as if the heavens
would fall in, just because they cannot see and grasp the pillars.
If they could grasp them, the heaven would stand fast!
" Again, I saw great thick clouds sweeping over us, so heavy that
they seemed like a great sea ; and I saw no footing for them and
nothing to constrain them. Yet they did not fall on us, but
greeted us with a sour face, and flew away. When they were gone
the rainbow shone forth, as floor and roof, above us, which had
held them — a weak thin little floor and roof, vanishing in the
clouds, and more like a ray shining through painted glass than a
strong floor. . . . Yet it upheld the weight of water and protected
us. Still there are those who fearfully regard the weight of the
cloud masses, rather than this thin small ray. They would gladly
feel and make sure of its strength, and since they cannot, they
fear that the clouds will bring an eternal Deluge (Siindfluth).
" So much I write to your Honor in friendly jest, and yet not in
jest; since I learn with joy of your Honor's steadfast and trustful
courage in this our trial. I had hoped that at least political peace
could be maintained ; but God's thoughts are above ours . . . and
if He were to grant us peace from the Kaiser, the Kaiser and not
He might have the glory. . . . Our rainbow is weak; their [the
enemies'] clouds are mighty ; but in the end it will appear whose is
the thunderbolt." S6
But there were catastrophes in Luther's life more dire
than any arising from the attack of enemies. Against
direct attack his courage was invincible and his faith a
shield. The tragedies of his life were those conditions
or events which seemed to show the futility or the evil
results of what he had taught and worked for. Among
such positive ill results from Luther's point of view might
be set the obstreperous spiritual anarchy, as of Zwickau
36 Aug., 1530, De Wette, IV, 127 sqq.

MARTIN LUTHER 253
prophets and Anabaptists, which went so far beyond the
orderly conservative religious revolution that was Luth
er's plan. Yet his enemies alleged, and Luther feared,
that the fervor of his own teachings had loosed the mis
guided energies and entered the abominable opinions of
intellectual radicals like Carlstadt and fanatic anarchists
like Miinzer.
Carlstadt was a keenly reasoning, radically minded
man. He had been Luther's associate in the Leipzig de
bate against Eck in 152 1. But while Luther was in the
Wartburg, Carlstadt became moved with desire to set
aside every religious practice and convention for which
he could not find direct authority in Scripture. He was
as radical in handling Holy Writ, and disposed to attack
everybody's prejudices and acceptances in his insistence
upon his new evangelical way of living and worshipping.
Luther had become to him a time-server and a tyrant;
while on his part he became an active thorn in Luther's
flesh. Miinzer was an evangelical anarchist, preaching
the Gospel of God's fiery word resounding within the in
dividual soul. Its dictates were to be made good not
merely by persuasion, but with fire and sword, as Miinzer
demonstrated by taking up the peasants' cause, and urging
them to blood. He was akin to the Anabaptists, as
various anarchistic sects were called who were for throw
ing down the social structure altogether, and agreed in
little beyond denying the validity of infant baptism and
demanding adult immersion, for the full cleansing of sin.
They too took to the sword, and largely perished by it
too, when the forces of the established order, as well as
the power of religious intolerance, were driven against
them. But they spread far and wide in the sixteenth cen
tury, in Germany, the Low Countries, Switzerland, even
France; the proper Lutherans in Germany were just as
anxious as Calvin and the French adherents of the Re
form, to clear their skirts of all connection with the
Anabaptist anarchy.
The Peasants' War (1525-6) was worst of all. Its
distressful causes broke out repeatedly in blood before

254 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Luther's day. But now unquestionably his doctrine of
Christian liberty was bearing fruit beyond his purpose
and intent. Relief from oppression was the spiritual
freedom which the peasants sought, and formulated in
their Articles. These seem to us quite reasonable, but in
1525 they meant drastic change. The harsh rejection of
them by the princes, the bloody dispersal of the peasants'
gatherings, aroused fiercer passions in the sufferers, and
drew Miinzer and other preachers into a joint tumultuous
movement for a manhood equality set on the prior mass
acre of magistrates and rulers. Of course Luther was
appealed to, and his writings quoted, to support these
aims. His first reply was An Exhortation to Peace, in
response to the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants.
He admonished them to present their grievances in an
orderly and peaceful way, and reminded the princes too
that there had been injustice and oppression to justify
the peasants' discontent. But he was staunch against
mob violence, maintaining, as he always maintained, that
the rulers alone could use the sword divinely committed
to them. Let not the peasants invoke Christ's Gospel
which had not to do with such affairs. If they were fol
lowers of Christ, they would drop their arms and take
to prayer. Earthly society is built on inequalities; the
Christian's liberty touches them not, but exists and serves
in the midst of them.
Thus Luther was on the side of Christian freedom
and the divine authority of rulers. He had spoken moder
ately, so far, but the outrages and riots witnessed by him
soon after, and the appeal to his teaching to justify them,
drove him mad. In his pamphlet, Against the Murder
ous and Robbing Mobs of Peasants, he turned on them
with fury. He likened them to mad dogs ; all the devils
of hell must have entered into them. He urged the
princes not to hesitate for conscience's sake, but to slay
them without mercy; if a ruler fighting in this war himself
was slain, it was a martyr's death.
Luther was a peasant's son; yet, before this insurrec
tion, he held a low opinion of the common man's intelli-

MARTIN LUTHER 255
gence. The spiritual disturbance, which outran so wildly
the respectability of his own reforms, confirmed his con
tempt for the common people who were led so easily
beyond decency and reason and the correct understand
ing of Christ's Gospel. He expressed this contempt in
his diatribe, Against the heavenly prophets (1524-15 25),
saying that the Common herd — Herr Omnes — must be
made to behave by the sword and the constraint of law,
as wild beasts are held in chains and cages. Although
Luther was the most steadfast of men, and with a mighty
faith in God, he and his reformed religion were in fact
protected and preserved by the favor of the princely
rulers of the land. In return, Luther and his state-pro
tected Church were on. the side of law and order and au
thority; and the spokesmen of that church, even though
unconsciously, were influenced by social and political con
siderations. As was shown in the matter of the fatal bigamy of Land
grave Philip of Hesse. The political fortunes of Luth
eran Protestantism were at their zenith in 1540 when
Philip, the ablest of the Protestant princes, feeling a
resistless desire to marry a lady-in-waiting, wedded her
secretly, but with the consent of his still living though not
in all respects satisfactory consort. It was bigamy, and
a crime by the laws of the Empire. The Landgrave ap
pealed to Luther and Melanchthon to assuage his con
science, for he was a zealous Protestant, and had long felt
qualms at the immoralities to which the vigor of his
body impelled him.
Before this, the example of the Patriarchs had led
some of the Anabaptists to declare for polygamy.
Luther himself said in his Babylonian Captivity of the
Church that bigamy was better than divorce. He had
elsewhere written that he found no Scripture authority
barring plurality of wives, but he hoped the custom would
not be introduced among Christians; and some years be
fore 1540 he so advised the Landgrave. But now moved
by the Landgrave's urgent appeal and presentation of his
scruples, Luther, Melanchthon and Bucer formally ex-

256 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
cused and sanctioned his bigamy, but as an exceptional
case, not to be made a precedent, and if possible to be
kept a secret.
This weak and baneful decision brought discredit and
disaster on the Protestants. In connection, however, with
this failure of Luther in firmness and foresight, one may
add that he was a man by nature sympathetic with the
stress of bodily desire. His own life was absolutely free
from reproach, save, of course, that his marriage was a
deadly sin in Catholic eyes. He was forty-two years old in
1525 when it took place; and if he was moved by natural
need and impulse, he had given long and earnest doctrinal
consideration to the question, and for several years had
held all men free to marry or abstain. There is no evi
dence that personal desire to marry influenced his acts or
doctrines. When he did marry, he made a faithful hus
band and a loving father. He was also a true lover of
his friends, a hater of his enemies. His speech was mostly
of religion; but he could be a jovial companion, eating and
drinking like a German, and delighting in song.
To the Peasants' War and the Landgrave's bigamy,
events which proved so tragic for the life and work of
Luther, may be added disappointment over the result of
his teaching and great labors. He had held high hopes
that when men had been shown the Gospel truth, and
accepted it, their lives would correspond; and there would
be a regeneration of the nation. None such took place.
Lutherans remained much as they had been before; while
through Lutheran lands worship and education deterior
ated, because the old compulsory ordinances were weak
ened or disturbed, and men were slack and negligent.
Luther declared that had he foreseen the toil and dan
ger to come to him, wild horses would not have dragged
him into the struggle. He had thought men sinned from
ignorance, and only needed to be shown the right wayl
He had not supposed that the world would continue evil,
when the true gospel had been preached. He had no idea
how men, especially the clergy, despised God's Word
in their hearts. Before the gospel was preached, men's

MARTIN LUTHER 257
hearts were hidden. Christ is the revealer of hearts; and
now we know that princes, bishops, nobles, burghers,
peasants, all are a lot of devils !
So Luther spoke in disappointment and depression.
A little over a year before his death, when plagued by the
course of events, by sickness in his family and his own
bodily ills, he writes to a friend from out of even blacker
depths: " Grace and peace in the Lord. I write briefly,
my Jacob, lest I should write nothing at all, as if forgetful
of thee. I am dull, tired, feeble, a useless old man. I
have finished my course; it remains that the Lord should
gather me to my fathers, and that worms and corruption
should have their due. I have lived enough, if it is to be
called life. Do thou pray for me, that the hour of my
passing may be pleasing to God and salutary to myself. I
care nothing for Caesar and the whole empire, except to
commend them in my prayers to God. The world also
seems to me to have come to the hour of its passing away,
and to have waxed old like a garment, as the Psalm says,
and soon to suffer change. Amen. There is no heroic
virtue left in the princes, but only incurable hatred and
dissension, avarice and the cupidity of profit. So the
State is without strength, and the head runs the full course
of Isaiah third. Wherefore no good can be hoped for,
unless that the day of the glory of the great God and our
redemption be revealed." 37
But Luther had always assaulted vigorously those evils'
which were the chief ground of his depression. Thus in
October, 1525, he informed the new Elector John of the
wretched state of the parish priests : " No one gives, no
one pays. Offerings have ceased, and parish incomes dim
inished. The common man has no regard for either
preacher or pastor. Unless your Electoral Grace estab
lishes order and support for them, the clergy will have
no homes, and there will be neither schools nor scholars;
and God's Word and service will fall to the ground." 38
The Elector appointed a commission to visit the par-
37 To Jacob Probst, Dec, 1544, De Wette, V, p. 7703.
38 Oct. 31, 1525, De Wette, III, p. 39.

258 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
ishes and take action. There was need. For if the
Roman clergy, as Luther said, had shamefully neglected
church worship and religious instruction, the condition of
the churches had since become worse, especially in the
country, where the peasants seemed to have lost all re
ligion. Gradually, however, as may be read, the tide of
demoralization was checked in Saxony; and following the
example of the Elector, the Lutheran princes of Germany
established reformed state churches in their domains,
conserving as much as seemed feasible of the old eccles
iastical order. 39
Sometime after returning from his visitation of the
Saxon churches, Luther composed the Shorter and the
Longer catechisms to remedy the ignorance of pastors as
well as flocks. Catholic primers existed, as well as man
uals of preparation for confession and the Communion. 40
These may have afforded him suggestion. But in his
hands and under his direction the Catechism became a
most important means of instruction in the Lutheran
faith, as well as an expository declaration of its principles
and substance. The Shorter Catechism opened with an
exhortation to pastors and preachers and a cry to God:
Hilf ! lieber Gott ! in this ignorance so abominable that
many pastors do not know the Lord's Prayer or the Creed
or the Ten Commandments. The pastors were then in
structed as to their duties, and admonished that those
among their flocks who refused to learn should be kept
from the land. Afterwards comes the substance of the
Catechism, that which every good householder should
impress upon his household. The Ten Commandments
are given and briefly and piously explained; likewise the
Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer, in telling words.
Next a brief explanation of the sacraments of baptism
and the communion; also short forms of confession, of
private prayer and grace at table ; and forms for pastors
to use in marrying and baptising.
The Longer Catechism expands the matter. Great
89 See chap. XXI. of McGiffert's Martin Luther.
40 See Jannsen, Ges. des deutschen Volkes, I, pp. 46 sqq. (18th edition).

MARTIN LUTHER 259
stress is laid upon the Ten Commandments, which are so
taken and expounded as to include the compass of Chris
tian piety. " So we have the Ten Commandments as a
pattern of the divine doctrine, what we shall do that our
whole life be pleasing to God, and the true spring and
conduit in which must flow everything that is to be a good
work: so that beyond the Ten Commandments no work
or thing can be good and pleasing to God, however great
and precious it may be before the world." The Creed,
the Lord's Prayer, the sacraments of baptism and com
munion, with other matters, are then given with lengthy
comment. These two Catechisms became the vehicle
of Christian instruction in the Lutheran churches, a func
tion likewise to be fulfilled by Calvin's Catechisms in
the churches following the Geneva Reform.
Luther likewise energetically met the need to re-es
tablish education, in the tract To the Burgermasters and
Councillors of the Cities, written in 1524. He speaks of
the general admission that in German lands the high-
schools are declining and the convent schools falling to
pieces : — well enough that the latter should go down and
that people should refuse to send their children to such
nests of the devil. Now, raging at the fall of convents,
where he was wont to trap young souls, he aims at the
destruction of all schools, to the further ensnaring of the
young. Alas! men give gulden for the war against the
Turks, but do not see that they should give a hundred
times as much to make their children Christians. I beg
you, dear friends, to realize how much it profits Christ
and all of us, to help the young.
So Luther speaks of the need of education in order that
young men and women may understand their faith. The
tract proceeds : if every burgher now, through God's mer
cy, has been released from iniquitous payments for indul
gences, masses, monks, pilgrimages and the like, let him
give part of this for schools, where boys now may learn
more in three years than as heretofore in forty, when they
became asses and blocks in the cloisters. Never before
has Germany heard God's word as it is now heard. Let,

260 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
us then seize upon that word, lest it leave us as it left the
Jews. There is no greater sin against God than not to
teach the children. Do you say that this is the business
of parents, not of town councils ? But what if the parents
do not do it : shall it then be neglected, and the authorities
not have to answer? Often the parents are unfit, or have
no time; and there are orphans. What is to become of
city government if children are not educated ? The busi
ness of a town is not merely to lay up wealth, but to bring
up its citizens properly.
But someone says, why learn Latin, Greek and He
brew, when we can have the Scriptures in German? So
we Germans will ever be beasts, as other people call us.
We would have foreign wares, and yet despise the for
eign tongues and learning which might ennoble us ! This
is to continue German fools and beasts ! We should ac
cept the gift which God has given us, not without a pur
pose. He put his Scriptures in Hebrew and Greek : they
are holy tongues. " Let us not think to hold the Gospel
unless we hold the tongues." And, besides losing the
Gospel from ignorance of the tongues, we should become
unable to write Latin or German properly. A dreadful
example is afforded by those schools and cloisters where
they not only have mislearned the Gospel, but have fallen
into a rotten Latin and German, like beasts. After apos
tolic times, as Greek and Hebrew disappeared, the Gos
pel, the Faith, Christendom, all declined, till they sank
beneath a pope. Now the resurrection of the tongues has
brought such light, that the world wonders at the purity
of our gospel knowledge.
Here Luther points out that even Augustine erred in
the interpretation of the Scripture through ignorance of
the tongues; while that greatest of teachers, St. Bernard,
is often carried beyond the true meaning. From lack
of the tongues, the good Fathers encumbered the text
with comment quite beside the point. " For as the sun
is to the shadow, so is the tongue to all the Fathers'
glosses." They would have been happy if only they could
have learned as we can.

MARTIN LUTHER 261
Luther proceeds further: though there were neither
soul, nor heaven, nor hell, the government requires the
education of boys and girls, in order that excellent and
capable men may govern the land, and the women may
manage their households. By pleasant methods children
should be taught the tongues and liberal arts, with history,
mathematics and music. " I only wish I had read more
history and poetry myself." In fine, educated people are
needed for worldly as well as spiritual functions. There
should be libraries for books, from which we may well
omit the Commentaries of the Jurists on the Law and of
the theologians on the Sentences, as well as Quaestiones
and monks' sermons. Have the Holy Scriptures first of
all, in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and German, and if need
be, other languages; with the best interpreters. The
libraries should also contain books which aid linguistic
studies; and the poets and orators, heathen and Christian,
Greek and Latin. One learns grammar from them. Also
text-books of the liberal arts, of law and medicine; with
chronicles and histories, which preserve good tales.
It behoved Luther to urge the reinstatement of educa
tion. For the Lutheran revolt, reformation, awakening,
however one may call it, troubled the universities, which
needed troubling then as always, to keep their waters
fresh; it also distracted the attention of students from
their humane studies, and drew their spirits into the
maelstrom of religious disturbance and revival, to the
temporary dislocation of all other intellectual interests.
Erasmus was not alone in saying, " Wherever Lutheran-
ism reigns, there is an end to letters. Yet these men
have been nourished and helped by letters."
Luther's revolt from papal authority and his reformed
faith did not spring from humanism and arise in human
istic circles as clearly, or to the same degree, as the Re
form in France. Nevertheless Erfurt with its university,
where Luther received much of his education, was humane
and liberal; and there he associated with as ardent human
ists as Germany afforded. He was moderately read in
the classics; but such classical allusions as may be found

262 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
through his writings seem largely taken from the
Adagia of Erasmus. Yet even in France, the Re
formed religion, as it became more sternly conscious of its
principles and aims, drew apart from humanism, natur
ally, since humanism in the main was pagan, or at least of
this world, and the Reform was bent on Christian salva
tion. Likewise, Luther, with the impulses, energies, pur
poses of his dominantly religious nature set upon the
proof and vindication of his faith, could not possibly be.
interested in classical studies for their own sake. Nor
was he a man that was likely to maintain intimate and
trusted relations with those whose aims and interests were
quite different from his own. On their side, the human
ists discovered that Luther's ways and Luther's interests
were not theirs. They were free-minded men and patri
otic Germans, who disliked the papal church as unfriendly
to liberal studies and oppressive to Germany. The most
typical production of these humanists was the book of
Letters of Obscure Men, indicted in the Reuchlin contro
versy, a controversy which was altogether theirs.*1
But Germans who were devoted to liberal studies were
not alike in other respects, nor moved by the same mo
tives. Beyond this common taste, there was little like
ness between Ulrich von Hutten and Mutianus. When
Luther had posted his Theses, and afterwards defied
Rome both as a German and a true believing and enlight
ened Christian, his cause attracted the sympathies of
humane scholars and roused the truculent enthusiasm of
such a one as Hutten. Hutten lived long enough to
quarrel with Erasmus, but his violent anti-papal soul found
no reason to draw back from Luther, and would rather
have urged the Wittenberger on to bloodier war against
the Roman tyrant. Other humane scholars, Melanch
thon, chief among them, merged themselves enthusiasti
cally in the Lutheran movement, or kept manfully by its
side. But quite as many, caring for letters above all
things, and fearing to imperil their temporal fortunes and
eternal souls in warfare with the Church, drew back from
41 Ante, Chapter VI.

MARTIN LUTHER 263
the Reformer, choosing to remain in the bosom of the
mother who had nourished their souls, and might either
clothe or castigate their tender bodies.
The body of Erasmus was extremely tender, and its
wants insistent. Nor was he inclined toward strenuous
defense of any cause save that of liberal thought and
study. Our observation of him in a previous chapter has
disclosed how impossible it was for an Erasmus to march
hand in hand with Luther. The parting of their ways
typified the incompatibility between devotion to letters
and absorption in an enthusiastic evangelical agitation.
It remains to see what Luther thought of Erasmus.
Early in March, 15 17, Luther writes: " I am reading
our Erasmus, and day by day my estimation of him lessens.
It pleases me how learnedly he convicts monks and priests
of their inveterate and sleepy ignorance; 42 but I fear that
he does not sufficiently emphasize Christ and God's grace,
wherein he is much more ignorant than Lefevre of
fitaples. 43 Human considerations outweigh the divine
with him." ** Thus from the first, Luther discerned ra
tional ethics rather than religious unction in Erasmus's
attitude toward religion and Scripture.
In September 1521, Luther will not listen to a sugges
tion coming from Erasmus that he should show himself
more moderate. " His opinion has not the slightest
weight with me. . . . when I see him far from a knowl
edge of grace, and in all his writings looking to peace
rather than to the cross of Christ. He thinks all these
matters should be handled politely and gently; but Behe
moth cares not for that, nor will emendment come of it.
I remember, in his preface to the New Testament, that he
says, referring to himself, that a Christian easily despises
glory. But, O Erasmus, I fear, you err. Magna res
est gloriam contemnere 1 " 45
So he closes with a pious but quite human gibe. Three
years later when Luther's friends no longer spared Eras-
42 Seems to refer to reliance on ritual, etc.
¥See post, Chapter XVII, 1.
44 De Wette, I, p. 52.
45 De Wette, II, p. 49"5°-

264 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
mus, and that gifted man was also dipping his pen in gall,
Luther wrote directly to him, asking that there might be
at least a friendly truce between them. 40 Later, how
ever, for the benefit of his son John, he characterized
Erasmus as the " enemy of all religions and especially
hostile to that of Christ, a perfect exemplar and type of
Epicurus and Lucian." *7 Finally in 1534 Luther wrote
to his friend Amsdorff, lengthily criticising the man Eras
mus, his pernicious views of religion, and his erroneous
understanding of Scripture. The letter leaves very little
of him uncondemned, and ends with the wish that his
works might be excluded from the schools, since even
when harmless they are useless.48
Long before this, these two protagonists, the one of
religion the other of humane piety, sacred and profane,
had crossed arguments on the weighty matter of human
free will and God's fore-ordainment. Erasmus, fretted
by the stress of many subtle as well as palpable compul
sions to declare against Luther, could refrain no longer.
Had he selected purgatory, pilgrimages or indulgences, as
the topic of his polemic, his argument must have stultified
his real agreement with Luther upon such matters. But
as a humanist in the broadest sense, he could not but up
hold human liberty and the freedom of the will. This
topic fell in with the scope and temper of his intellectual
life; and as a subject of philosophy suited his position in
the eyes of men. He treated it rationally and humanly,
as a subject of discussion and opinion, yet adduced the
support of scriptural passages.
The topic was vital to Luther's conception of God and
man and the nexus of creatorship and creaturehood be
tween them. For years he had devoted study and earnest
consideration to it, and as early as 15 16 had composed in
46 De Wette, II, p. 498; April, 1524. Erasmus was already writing his
De libero arbitrio against Luther. .
47 De Wette, IV, 497.
48 De Wette, IV, pp. 507-520. Cf. another letter to Amsdorff, De
Wette, IV, p. 545. There is a good deal in Luther's Table Talk on
Erasmus's foolishness as a theologian, and his utter failure to recognize
the function and meaning of Christ. See e.g. Preger, Tischreden Luthers
(Leipzig 1888) nos. 357, 365.

MARTIN LUTHER 265
scholastic fashion a searching Quaestio de viribus et volun-
tate hominis sine gratia. i3 With him it was a question
of Christian faith, of salvation or damnation. Natur
ally, in 1525, as he wrote his de servo arbitrio in confuta
tion of Erasmus's de libero arbitrio, he condemned his
opponent's attitude in treating the subject as a matter of
philosophical opinion and probability. " The Holy
Ghost is no sceptic, and has not written dubious opinions
in our hearts, but solid certitudes, — more solid and as
sured than life and all experiences."
You say, Erasmus, continues Luther warming to his
argument, that all things in Scripture are not necessary
for faith, and that some matters in it are obscure, and you
cite Romans XI, 33, " O the depth of the riches both of
the wisdom and knowledge of God ! how unsearchable are
his judgments, and his ways past tracing out." But I say:
"God and God's scripture are two things; just as the
Creator and the creation are two things. No one doubts
that much is hidden in God that we do not know. . . .
But that anything in Scripture is confused and not plain
and clear, is a notion spread abroad by the godless
sophists, with whose mouth thou speakest, Erasmus; but
they have never brought forward an article, nor can
they, through which this madness of theirs could be
established." To be sure, continues Luther, to one ignorant of the
language and grammar of Scripture, much may be hidden;
but not because of the height or difficulty of the substance.
All is written for our instruction, and any seeming obscur
ity is due to the blindness of the reader. It is not to be
endured that you put this matter of free will among those
which are needless. On the contrary, we must know
what the will can do and how it stands in relation to God's
grace. We must distinguish surely between what is God's
work and what is ours, if we would be righteous. " It
is also necessary and salutary for Christians to know that
God foreknows nothing casually and conditionally; but
49 Stange, Quellenschriften zur Ges. des Protestantismus I. (Leipzig
1904).

266 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
that He foreknows, preordains and accomplishes all
through His unchanging and eternal and unfailing will.
This principle like a lightning stroke, strikes to earth
and crushes out free will."
After some folios of Christian argument, these sen
tences are amplified as follows in Luther's final conclu
sions: " For if we believe that God foreknows and foreordains all
things, and in his foreknowledge and foreordainment can neither
be deceived nor hindered, then nothing can take place that He does
not Himself will. Reason must admit this, while itself bears wit
ness that there is no free will in men or angels or in any creature.
So if we believe Satan to be the Prince of the World, who fights
against the Kingdom of God in order that bounden men may not
be loosed, and that he is overcome through the divine strength of
the Spirit, it is again clear that there can be no free will. Like
wise, if we believe that original sin has vitiated us . . . there is
nothing left that can turn to good, but only to evil. ... In fine,
if we believe that Christ has saved men through his blood, we must
acknowledge that the whole man was lost ; otherwise we shall make
Christ unnecessary, or into a Saviour of the most worthless part.
This were blasphemous and sacrilegious."
The modern man is loosed quite otherwise from this
particular predestination controversy, — or perhaps
drawn to it by other chains. Luther's whole soul and
faith were in it, and to his comfort. As he says substan
tially in his Table Talk: "when I think of the ineffable
benefits God has prepared for me in Christ, then predes
tination becomes full of comfort : remove Christ, and all
is shattered." The whole temperament of Luther is
speaking and the sum of his convictions: the evangelical
religious temperament, and the faith which it included.
Luther's faith was justified by its prodigious doctrinal
effectiveness. His adamantine conservatism made his
doctrines solid and tangible as rocks; they had body; they
could be grasped and held to ; and they had the sanction of
divine authority. They were not presented as novelties,

MARTIN LUTHER 267
but were restored to men. Luther gave men what they
had already, or might have had at any time from Scrip
ture. And the doctrine which he had to offer, the Pauline
Christian Gospel, was in itself so good, so comforting and
assuring, so saving in this present troubled life, as well as
for that to come.
Thus not only from logical necessity, but actually,
Luther's clinging religious and social conservatism was an
integral element of his reforms. These present a course
of enforced surrender and substitution : the enforced sur
render of one intolerable belief after another, and the sub
stitution of the Scriptural doctrine or principle as he
understood it. He kept what he could of the religion in
which he had been reared, adhering to every belief, prac
tice, or function of the contemporary Roman Catholic
Church that the progress of his Scriptural faith and the
logic and exigencies of his polemic state permitted him to
retain. His primal sources of strength and confidence lay in
his mighty appropriation of the Pauline doctrine of justi
fication by faith. It became the main criterion of his
retentions and rejections. Another pillar of his strength
was his conception of a Church universal, in which the
papacy was but an incident and an evil one. He threw
aside the hierarchical papal monarchy 50 for the older
Pauline and Augustinian conception of a communion of
true believers. Thus, with certain differences, Wyclif
had done before him; and so should Calvin and other
succeeding reformers do.51
50 Cf. Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, III, pp. 410 sqq. Third edition.
51 Luther gives his conception in the third part of his elaborate tract
upon Councils and Churches written in 1539. He says that the Church
according to the Creed is " a communion of the saints, a company or
assembly of such people as are Christians and holy; that is, a Christian,
holy, company or church. . . . The holy Christian Church is holy Christen
dom or the entire Christendom. In the Old Testament it is called the
people of God." It is a pity, says he, that we have not kept that unequivo
cal expression " the holy Christian people of God " ; for that is what the
Church is. This Church, this holy Christian people of God, is recognized
by the following works: It possesses God's Word; uses the sacraments
of baptism and the Communion. It holds the Keys and uses them openly

268 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Justification by faith, a universal church of believers,
the freedom of the Christian man, not in his own will but
God's: here was enough to stay a strong brave man
against the papal dragon. Luther purged religion, even
made those purge it who hated him. Yet one queries
whether his teaching held as much of Christianity as did
that great age-long institution of the Roman Catholic
Church. It would have been hard for one man to be as
universal as the Roman Catholic Church, which was built
upon man as well as upon God. Lutheranism has
changed and subdivided. And the Catholic Church in
spite of its monarch pope, its vain absolutions, its excom
munications and its interdicts, lives on. In spite of its
mammon of abuses and corruption? Rather, because of
it ! For the Roman Catholic Church rests upon the im
perfections and corruptions, as well as on the common
needs, of man. It still has many saints; yet neither now,
nor in Luther's time or before him, does its Catholicism
point to truth for truth's sake, or to righteousness for the
sake of righteousness. Its soul looks to the loaves and
fishes, if not of this world, then of Heaven. Never could
the Roman Church be supplanted by that mighty swash
buckler of the spirit, Martin Luther, though he was him
self as much and as many things as a man could be ; every
thing from a foul-mouthed German peasant to the might
iest of religious seers, and withal the greatest German we
have known.
so that when a Christian sins, he shall be punished, and if not bettered,
shall be cast out, bound in his sins. It selects and calls its servants, to wit,
its bishops, pastors., preachers, who administer its holy things or offices,
named above. God's people are also recognized by their public prayer
and singing of psalms and spiritual songs ; and by their holy cross of (a)
enduring the persecution of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and (b)
obeying the authorities. Such are the constituents of Christian holiness;
and there are besides the outer signs of good conduct in all things accord
ing to the Commandments of God. The devil has aped God> holy
Church in the papacy and its institutions and ceremonies through which
papists think they will be saved. Yet beware, on the other hand, of those
who cry Spirit! spirit! and decry all outer observances.
In closing, he says that the school is needed to educate true preachers;
next, the household to provide scholars, then the Rathhaus to protect the
citizens. The Church, God's own house and city, draws its protection
from the city, and its members from the household. So the three orders
are household, city, Church.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX
MELANCHTHON AND ZWINGLI
There were two men very different from each other in
their characters and careers, who when they met, met as
partial opponents, and were not permitted to agree by the
masterful Luther who held them apart : Melanchthon and
Zwingli. With respect to their inclinations and functions
they may also be regarded as people working at some
half way station between Luther and Erasmus, a position
more apparent with Melanchthon than with the vigorous
and independent Swiss reformer.
In the Lutheran movement Melanchthon is second only
to his chief in importance and effect; his is the one name
besides Luther's which has survived in popular fame.
There was reverence and affection between the two, which
continued unbroken to the end, though sometimes strained.
Melanchthon worked under Luther's leadership though
not altogether under his dominance ; and Luther held him
to be far more gifted than himself. The tutelary deity of
Melanchthon's youth was Reuchlin, his great-uncle, who
saw to his university education and advancement and in
15 18 obtained a call for him from the Elector to teach
Greek at Wittenberg, when Melanchthon was only
twenty-one years old. He was indeed a youthful prodigy
in his studies and intellectual development; nor did his
faculties weaken with the advance of years and knowl
edge. His attainments drew the admiration of Erasmus,
with whom he remained on good terms; for he was a
man inclined to stay at peace with all. Humanist,
scholar, educator, promotor of the classical languages and
thought, Melanchthon would gladly have devoted him
self to Greek, and might have preferred it to theology.
But as he clove at once to Luther, his labors, like his
destinies, were cast in the fields of the great conflict.
269

270 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Next to Luther himself, Melanchthon became par ex
cellence the champion, the expounder, and the formulator
of Lutheranism. He defended his chief in an Apology
directed against the " Furious decree of the Paris Theol-
ogasters," the Sorbonne to wit, who had declared Luther
an arch-heretic. Like his leader, he wrote against the
murderous peasants, and after the deed, he approved the
burning of Servetus in Geneva. He was, however, more
conciliatory, and given to dreams of pace where
Luther saw there could be none, as at the Augsburg diet.
The Augsburg Confession and Apology were his master
pieces of Protestant formulation.
His chief work of theological exposition was of course
the Loci Communes theologici, which emerging from an
embryonic Adumbratio, proceeded onward through a first
and second and third Aetas to its final bulk and form.
Even as Calvin's Institute. And it is a matter of no
slight interest to note that as Melanchthon's work and
Calvin's reached their final form, they followed more
closely the arrangement of the Lombard's Sentences and
the Summa of Aquinas. The fact was that for the Lom
bard and Aquinas, as for Augustine before them, and later
for Calvin and Melanchthon, Scripture itself furnished the
arrangement of a work that should comprehend Scriptural
doctrine. Says Melanchthon at the beginning of his
Secunda Aetas: " Habet ipsa scriptura suam quandam
methodum et quidem artificiosam. Series enim dogma-
tum ab ipso ordine historiae aptissime sumi potest.
Initio de creatione, de peccato hominis, de promissionibus
loquitur, postea tradit legem, deinde docit Evangelium de
Christo : — " most aptly we arrange our matter after the
order of Scriptural history; creation, man's sin, the prom
ises, the law, and finally the Gospel.1
In this excellent work Melanchthon draws away from
scholasticae nugae; and likewise from the Aristotelicae
argutiae, although philosophically he held a profound
1 Melanchthon's Loci Communes occupy Vols. XXI and XXII of the
Corpus Reformatorum, where the work is printed in its three stages, of
1521, 1535 and 1543. The passage quoted is from col. 254 of Vol. XXI;
compare with it col. 341 of the same volume.

MELANCHTHON AND ZWINGLI 271
respect for the Stagirite, and deemed his system salutary
as a barrier against the philosophical disorder of the age.
But the statements and arguments of the Loci Communes
in the main are based on Scripture, and much more direct
ly than those for instance of the Summa of Aquinas. For
unlike the Summa, the Loci Communes does not move and
find its substance in Aristotelian categories of thought.
Melanchthon rather intended it as an ordered Summa of
the Scriptural Testimonia. The new learning is present
throughout the smooth Latin exposition of this master of
clarity; and the work is humanistically flavored with Greek
words and classical allusions. For the author was first
and last a scholar, loving classical scholarship for its own
sake. He also liked to find the analogues to scriptural
truth in the lives and precepts of pagan philosophers; as
one sees so clearly in those paragraphs where he
arranges the precepts of the Law of Nature in
correspondence with the Decalogue.2 His liberal
humanistic inclinations drew him toward Erasmus's side
instead of Luther's in the controversy upon the freedom
of the human will, which is evident in the Secunda Aetas
of his Loci of 1535 and becomes even more pronounced in
the corresponding sections of the Tertia Aetas of 1543.3
Confidence in the best in classical literature and phil
osophy, respect for the lumen naturale which the Fall of
man darkened, but did not destroy, and recognition of the
lex naturae, worked together to strengthen the moral
quality of Melanchthon's theology, and broadened its
consideration of natural reason and the conscience of
mankind. All this tended to moralize his theblogy, as
his tempered exclusion of Aristotelian arguments tended
to simplify it. Again, it was his natural reason and moral
conscience that insisted on the freedom of the human will,
and afforded an independent testimony in favor of the
soul's immortality.
Melanchthon was a moral theologian, and a moral
2 Loci Com. De lege naturae. Third Aetas Vol. XXI, Corp. Ref. Col.
711 sqq.
3 Vol. XXI, Corp. Ref. Col. 274 sqq. and col. 652 sqq.

272 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
philosopher, and in all his labors for education never lost
sight of the moral betterment which should result from
learning. He strove so to enlarge and complete the plan
of education that it might embrace all revealed or tested
truth. To that end he was wont to use the pagan ele
ments to fill out the Christian scheme. His study of
antiquity was Catholic. He admired Plato, yet followed
Aristotle; and as was natural for a sixteenth century
humanist, he found moral and philosophic discussions
adapted to his taste and comprehension in the works of the
eclectic Cicero. Following Aristotle, imbibing Cicero, he
produced manuals of Dialectic, Physics, Ethics, or edited
the Aristotelian treatises on these topics; and composed
Greek and Latin grammars, and other books for the
schools. This great array of admirable text books,
which carried far and wide his stimulating personal in
structions, earned for him the honored title of Praeceptor
Germaniae, which more than one educational worthy had
borne before him.
Zwingli was never a follower of Luther, but rather an
opponent, though holding some of the same doctrines.
He was bred to an utterly different social and political re
gime; his convictions did not come from Wittenberg,
although their development appears to have been influ
enced by Luther's writings. The two men were of in
dependent and rather opposite temperaments, and, when
they met, parted in confirmed disagreement. Zwingli is
supposed to have been jealous of Luther's power, and
Luther always disapproved both of Zwingli and his views,
and thought at last that his fate rightly came on him in
the battle of Kappel; for, having taken the sword, he
perished by it; and if God received him into blessedness
He did it extra regulam! 4 — which is to say, acting not
strictly in accord with Luther's ideas.
Zwingli was born in 1484 in the Toggenburg valley,
dominion over which was disputed by Zurich and Schwyz.
4Preger, Luthers Tischreden, no. 218, cf. no. 509.

MELANCHTHON AND ZWINGLI 273
In 15 18 he was elected priest and preacher for the great
Zurich Minster; and thenceforth guided that city's polit
ical as well as religious destinies, in a way that anticipated
the career of Calvin at Geneva. For Zwingli was a
Swiss civic personality and politician before he became a
reformer. From a certain teacher at Basel named Wyt-
tenbach, he early took the principle of justification by
faith, learned to look to Scripture as the Christian author
ity, and also to disapprove of papal indulgences. His
education was mainly humanistic, and drawn from var
ious masters. He professed to admire and follow Eras
mus. But he was taken by the writings of Pico della
Mirandula; and he drew from the Classics much that
entered his life and affected the development of his con
victions. He was a Greek scholar, and. a student of the
New Testament, who preferred the text to the commen
tators. He was also a reader of the Church Fathers.
The Church was less powerful in Switzerland than in
other countries, less well organized and correspondingly
infected with looseness of conduct. But the papacy was
tenderly disposed toward the people of the little mountain
land, where its pay drew unequalled soldiers, of which the
present papal guard is the last survival. Although he
had profited from it, Zwingli declared himself opposed
to this mercenary service and to the papal pensions which
corrupted Swiss politics and people. He was rather anti-
papal from the beginning; and readily yielded to his de
veloping protestantism to disavow the pope's authority.
He was a preacher and a priest; yet his life was rather
loose, and in 1524 he married.
By this time a general change in the forms of worship
had been effected at Zurich, Zwingli leading the movement.
The church there was made civic and democratic; its
offices were reformed and translated into German ; images
were discarded, and the Mass abolished (April, 1525) ;
the monasteries were secularized, and their incomes de
voted to charity or education. A struggle followed with
the Anabaptists, who were for the most part expelled,

274 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The further course of Zwingli's life was involved in a
tangle of politics, connected with the progress or blocking
of the Reform in Switzerland.
Zwingli's formulation of a Christian faith was not as
important as Luther's on the one hand, or as Calvin's on
the other. If it was not carried through with the origin
ative religious power of the one, or the insistent logic
of the other, it was reasonable and genial. Politician,
man of action, as he was, Zwingli was also a reader and a
student. And, as is common with able busy men, who
are also great readers, he assembled thoughts from many
quarters, worked them into his convictions or philosophy,
but had neither the slow meditative leisure nor the inner
power to transform the matter of his reading into a seam
less system. Yet he grasped with energy the Pauline
Augustinian justification through faith, and genially and
humanely enlarged his religious conceptions with thoughts
drawn from Seneca's eclectic but predominantly Stoic
store, or from the undigested mass of borrowed and yet
temperamentalized ideas offered by the works of Pico.
Through them, and independently of them, he gleaned
from many minds thoughts which served his working
faith. Withal, and this is a vital point, inasmuch as he
was a man of action, a man of working faith, and a re
former of religious practice and doctrine, he did not fail
to vitalize his teachings and endue them with qualities of
power, by which men might live and endure, or fight.
With Seneca, philosophy was a way to virtue. It was
a religion with him; and it became an integral part of the
religion of Zwingli. Seneca expressed as much trust in
God as was felt by a Paul or an Augustine. He had also
said: "We are born in a kingdom; liberty is to obey
God." God has the qualities of a Father, and is also the
summum bonum for all. Zwingli adds the thought that
believers are his willing instruments, working along with
him for their only good, and for the glory which is in the
fulfilment of the divine purpose : a mighty thought.
Zwingli advanced still further in his eclectic stoicism!

MELANCHTHON AND ZWINGLI 275
and Augustinianism, following his own impulse too, and
found God to be the sum total of good, that is of being:
" unum ac solum infinitum . . . praeter hoc nihil esse."
Universal being, (esse rerum universarum) is the being
of God, (esse numinis).5 Hence God includes all finite
beings, who are part of Him and his universal plan. He
is the founder, ruler, administrator of the universe. Man
alone shall not stand without the scope of God's all-
determining purpose. Zwingli brings the full stoical con
ception of providence into the Christian scheme of
election.6 God reveals himself in the consciousness and consciences
of men; and creates faith within them. That faith is true
which directs itself solely to God ; superstition consists in
reliance upon other things.7 He revealed himself to the
minds of the chosen heathen, as well as to the flock of
Christ. So with Zwingli, the outer revelation ceased to
be all important; and incidents and observances became
of no importance. He was disposed to discard the special
miracle and intervention: why demand the particular
supernatural manifestation when God is the sole first
cause, and works all things in all, to the exclusion of secon
dary causes. Surely he who finds God working every
where will need no special miracles. So Zwingli would
admit no miracle in the Eucharist, no miraculous real
presence such as Luther held to. For him, the sacrament
was a memorial and a sign.
The outer ceremony may be negligible, indifferent.
But there is a highest visible manifestation of the will and
law of God, which men may bring to pass, working in
•faith: it is the Christian community or State, founded on
the observance of God's law as well as on the promise of
His Gospel. Here was again the mighty thought with
which Calvin should build, Knox preach, and Cromwell
smite, all of them willing instruments of God. No
5 For these citations and more besides, I am indebted to Dilthey,
Auffassung etc des Menschen in 15. und 16. Jahrhundert.
6 In Zwingli's De providentia.
7 Zwingli, De vera et falsa religione.

276 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Lutheran church formed under the protection of an auto
cratic prince, and obediently adapting at least its outer
self to the existent institutions and policy of a secular
state, could even entertain such an ideal.

BOOK III
THE FRENCH MIND

CHAPTER X
THE UNLETTERED WIT OF LOUIS XI, COMMYNES AND
VILLON
There were analogies of human endeavor and intent
in the intellectual advance of France and Italy in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In both countries the
same fundamental humanity was somehow pushing on,
struggling and manoevering for possessions, also seeking
knowledge, truth, and beauty. Divergencies at the same
time appear, due partly to ancient differences of racial
trait, and assuredly to the different histories of the two
countries. The resulting Gallic-French temperament was
not as the Italian ; and the French mind seemingly sought
other goals. Obviously, moreover, in the period before
us, the opportunities, possibilities, exigencies of the two
lands were very different. The intellectual product, the
finished self-expression of the French in the sixteenth cen
tury, will not resemble the Italian, except when directly
imitating it.
Caesar's conquest of Gaul did not result in any such
indelible Romanization of its people as to preclude a
marked originality of growth through the mediaeval
period. Yet the quick, susceptible Gallic faculties lent
themselves happily to the discipline of the Roman order ;
and this people seem to have gained from it permanent
qualities of clarity and logic. To the west and north,
Gauls and Belgi shaded into Teutons, while the Teutonic
conquests of the fifth and succeeding centuries set a strong
German graft upon the Celtic stock. This resulting
French race, fundamentally Celtic, yet with Teutonic
strains, was akin on the one side to the Irish, and on the
other to the Germans across the Rhine. Neither the
Irish nor the Germans were subjected to the discipline of
279 j .

280 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
the Roman order; and in quite different ways were to
betray through all the centuries the lack of this initial
disciplinary period.
The progress of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in
France would proceed from the equipment and faculties
of the better people, be guided by their tastes, and depend
upon their opportunities and the energy with which they
should master further knowledge, and appropriate or de
velop new elements of life. French faculties and desires
might in some respects show German and English affini
ties, rather than Italian; and Germany and the Low
Countries furnished many of the new intellectual stimuli.
Incentive and aid to better classical studies came not from
Italy alone — Erasmus was an influence in Paris; the art
of printing was introduced from Germany, while the style
and method of Flemish painting extended through the
lands of Burgundy and France. In philosophy, the in
fluence of the German Nicholas of Cusa rivalled that of
Ficino's Platonic translations; while many a new idea in
terrestrial and celestial physics had its first home else
where than in Italy. With Frenchmen, love of formal
beauty did not lead directly to the composition of class
ical centos and empty imitations. And, clearest difference
of all, religious revolt, with its intended reform and re
construction, which was but sporadic in Italy during these
two centuries, in France, in Germany and Flanders, and
in England, became the most drastic issue.
The fourteenth century, which for France was stamped
by the ravages of the Hundred Years' War, was also
marked by the partial disintegration of the social, political
and religious conceptions which had sustained the mediae
val organism. France was still far from the attainment
of political nationality. Much territory was distributed
in dukedoms and count-doms, the lords of which gave
little more than homage to the Valois Kings, who suc
ceeded to the direct Capetian line in 1328. This lack of
unity issued in civil war when Burgundy allied herself with
the English enemies of France, and the kingdom seemed
shattered past recovery. Yet there was vitality in the

LOUIS XI AND COMMYNES 281
French monarchy, which at last came into its own when
Burgundy was joined to the royal domain by Louis XI,
on the death of Charles the Bold (1477).
The contest of wits and arms between Louis and
Charles is famous in history and story through the dra
matic contrast between the two protagonists. It was a
last phase of the conflict between feudalism and the mon
archic principle, and was directly due to the custom of
bestowing huge fiefs as appanages, upon the younger sons
of the royal house. Philip le Hardi, the brother of
Charles V of France, held Burgundy in 1364. Through
the death of his father-in-law in 138 1 he became also
Count of Flanders, a year after the death of his brother
the King. The King's son, Charles VI, a weakling from
birth, became in the course of time an intermittent mad
man. Hostility between his brother Louis, Duke of Or
leans, and his uncle Philip of Burgundy divided the realm
till Philip's death in 1404. Philip's son and successor
John took up the quarrel, and in 1407 had his cousin of
Orleans assassinated. On his avowal of the deed, civil
war broke out, each faction struggling to control the per
son of the King. John, a man of turnings and tergiversa
tions, allied himself with the invader, Henry V of Eng
land, and brought to pass the temporary ruin of the realm.
Upon his murder in 1419, Philip "the Good" came
to the ducal throne. He had little regard either for
France or England. But, deciding to make peace with
Charles VII of France, he abandoned the waning fortunes
of the English, and through apt measures for his own
aggrandizement, succeeded in doubling his already enor
mous patrimony.
There could be little love between the rulers of Bur
gundy and France, and in the end Philip was pleased to
foster trouble for the King by encouraging the latter's
graceless son and dauphin, Louis, in his rebellion. He
received, and for some years magnificently entertained him
against the King's protest, who said: " Mon cousin de
Bourgogne nourrit le renard qui mangera ses poules."
At the Burgundian Court, Louis became the god-parent

282 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
(parrain) of the heavy-fated Marie, daughter of Philip's
son, the future Charles the Bold.
Philip excelled his liege sovereign in wealth and power;
— only he was not a King ! War was imminent between
them, when the death of Charles made way for Louis in
146 1. He was crowned at Rheims under the patronage
and at the expense of the great Duke, whose splendor
fastened all men's eyes. So it was in Paris too, till the
Duke began to perceive that not he, but Louis, was the
King. The Duke was ageing; and his own far from dutiful
son Charles (these Burgundian dukes were much too
choleric) became reconciled to his father in order to direct
the power of Burgundy against Louis whom he hated.
He was soon heading the feudatory league, absurdly
called the " Public Good"; and a critical time for the
King followed the ill-fought and indecisive battle of
Montlhery, near Paris. Thenceforth through truce or
peace, or declared hostilities, the warfare of intrigue and
arms did not cease between them. This long and intri
cate story had its striking episodes, as that of Louis ven
turing almost fatally for him into Charles's Court and the
mutually mistrustful potentates joining in an attack on
Liege. The end of the story came through the perverse
embroilment of Charles with the hard-hitting Swiss,
which, after two disastrous defeats, led to his shameful
death in flight. He was a foolish leader in war, and in
diplomacy lacked patience and understanding.
The character and mental quality of the time appear in
the Memoires of Commynes,1 the chief narrator of
this story. Through his aid we realize how Louis netted
Charles, being so much less foolish than his rival, so much
more patient and self-restrained. Allowing for differ
ences of temperament, the King was no more dishonor
able than that futile man who with such folly and so little
steadfast courage, dashed his choleric head against impos
sibilities. Indeed, Louis XI was no more of a liar and
betrayer than other princes of his time ; but he could hold
1 Porn in 1447, died in 1511.

LOUIS XI AND COMMYNES 283
to his purposes. Commynes while admitting in his Pro
logue that there will be found in his Memoires matters
not to the King's credit, says : " I dare affirm in his praise
that I have known no prince with fewer vices (moins de
vices) everything considered." He has just been remark
ing that princes are men like ourselves — " To God alone
belongs perfection; but in a prince so long as his virtue and
good qualities outweigh his vices, he is worthy of re
membrance and praise."
The writer was a man of wide experience and tolerance ;
a true exponent of his world. His own record required
indulgence. For his father had placed him at the Bur
gundian Court, and he was the servant of Charles before
he chose to yield to the solicitations of his rival, whose
diplomatic minister he became. He preferred to serve a
wise prince, who had knowledge of affairs and took part
in them and did not do everything through others.
With such a master there is surer chance of recognition
and reward. Of course one has to live under those who
are over him, — and our whole hope ought to be in God. 2
It was part of the intelligence of the grasping and prudent
King that he rewarded munificently those who served him
well: " Among all the princes I have known, the King our
master knew best how to act, and how to honor people of
worth." This remark comes toward the end of a digres
sive chapter in which Commynes has been speaking of the
advantage to princes of a knowledge of history; since life
is so short that one cannot learn enough by experience, and
should therefore make use of history's teachings.
Princes should understand men, and how, or at least
when, to treat them well. Commynes brings in these
sentiments when telling how an able Burgundian envoy,
the lord of Humbercourt, preserved his own life and so
handled the people of Liege that they decided to yield
their city to the Duke when he could not have captured it.
Humbercourt gained his end largely through his judicious
treatment of certain hostages from the townspeople,
sending them freely to negotiate with their fellow towns-
2 Livre I, ch. 16. ,

284 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
men. The writer points to the ill-judgment of those
princes who repent them of kindness or of generosity in
pardoning. There will be some ingrates ; but because of
such, one should not forego the chance of doing well by
others when opportunity offers. Commynes will not be
lieve that any " personne saige " would prove ungrateful
for benefits conferred. But princes deceive themselves in
their choice of persons; to attach a fool to oneself will
never profit long. A lord can show no greater sense than
in gaining the attachment of worthy people — " gens
vertueux et honnestes " ; for men will judge him by those
whom he surrounds himself with. And to conclude, says
Commynes, " it seems to me that one should never tire of
treating people well (jamais lasser de bien faire). For
a single and the least one of those whom one has ever
benefited, will perchance render such service and show
such gratitude, as to atone for all the base and evil con
duct of the rest."
According to the ideas of Commynes and King Louis,
and of later times as well, the prince may wisely bestow
gifts on the servants of other princes. Louis did this all
his life with discretion and success. Commynes is capable
of treating the matter with cynical humor, as when at a
late period of Louis's career, after the death of Charles,
he tells how Louis pensioned the great lords of England,
to keep them friendly to his wishes, and prevent their
interfering with his designs upon the lands of the Burgun
dian heiress. By paying Edward IV fifty thousand
crowns a year, he closed his ears to the remonstrances at
home or from abroad: "L'avarice de ces cinquante mil
escuz, renduz tous les ans en son chasteau de Londres, luy
amollissoit le cueur." Louis's ambassadors were always
well entertained, while they beguiled Edward with talk
of a marriage between his daughter and the dauphin.
Yet certain members of Edward's council, or his Parlia
ment, thought differently, " saiges personnaiges " they
were, " who looked ahead, and had received no pensions
like the others."
This King Edward was a valiant leader, as Commynes

LOUIS XI AND COMMYNES 285
says, and had won seven or eight great battles in England,
himself fighting always on foot, which was greatly to his
praise. But he was not as clever as King Louis, as men
had good reason to think from the peace which Louis
made with him when he had invaded France in aid of
Charles. Louis obtained a truce, and sent the English
three hundred chariots of the best wine, and afterwards
made them still more royally drunk in Amiens.3
These happy ways of Louis did not include all his state
craft. Beyond other men, he knew how to sow dissen
sions. As Commynes says: "Que le roy Loys nostre
maistre a mieulx seu entendre cest art de separer les gens,
que nul aultre prince que j'aye jamais veu ne congneu;
et n'espargnoit 1' argent ne ses biens ne sa peine, non point
seullement envers les maistres, mais aussi bien envers les
serviteurs." 4 And if Commynes has shown how Louis
could reward profusely, and even decide to trust, he shows
that none could be more prudent and suspicious, as one
had need to be amid the network of mutual treason and
betrayal which made up the politics of Burgundy, France
and England, the last country being then engaged in the
Wars of the Roses. Speaking of how a clever English
woman won the Duke of Clarence away from the arch in
triguer Warwick and deceived the best wits, our author
remarks " that there is nothing shameful in being suspi
cious, and keeping one's eye on those who come and go;
but it is a disgrace to be deceived, and lose through one's
blunder. However, to be over-suspicious is not well."
King Louis was an adept at discoveries and espials, and
kept himself informed of the intentions of friends and
enemies. Usually he succeeded in laying his plots and
counterplots a little deeper than theirs, and when the
explosion came, it was not his trench that flew into the
air. That was what the Count of St. Pol discovered, or
rather failed to discover: a man who hoped by double or
triple dealing to escape being ground between England,
France and Burgundy. He would trick them all. The
aLivre VI, i; IV, 9.
4Livre II, 1.

286 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
King's counter-wile was St. Pol's undoing when the latter
sent his envoys with excuses. Louis concealed a trusted .
counsellor of the Duke's behind the curtain of the audience
chamber, and then drew the envoys on to tell their mas
ter's mind touching the Duke, even alleging a slight deaf
ness of his own, in order to induce them to speak louder.
The enraged Burgundian counsellor reported what was
said; and thereafter when St. Pol in person came to the
Duke, on the latter's safe-conduct, he was seized, and
handed over for final execution to King Louis, who, after
trial, cut his head off.
Commynes was no Don Quixote. He viewed intrigue
as he did war, of which he said, " qui a le prouffit de la
guerre, il en a d'honneur." But there was a background
of honesty in him, and much fear, or superstition, as to
the anger of God descending upon flagrant injustice and
the pride that puffeth up. He saw God's wrath coming
on the Duke for giving all the glory to himself, and none
to God, and especially for his treachery in delivering up
St. Pol. Profoundly his narrative shows Charles a fatal
fool, a man of rage and weakness, whom in the end God
or his own fitting fate would not fail to destroy.
If the drama ended fitly as to Charles, it ended as fitly
with the King. He was no man to be so foolishly undone
as the potentate whom he deftly helped Fortune undo.
Yet his ambition might vault too eagerly. In the matter
of the Burgundian succession after Charles's death, all
that Louis had been scheming and fighting for throughout
his reign seemed within his reach. He was then unwisely
grasping. Although he got the land of Burgundy, it
would have been better not to have driven the Duke's
daughter, with all her rich Flanders towns, to the arms
and wedlock of Austria. Commynes seems to think that
God had rather darkened the King's mind. He suffered,
to be sure, no outward overthrow; yet he declined through
many months of premature old age, consumed with lust
of power which was slipping from his senile hands, and
tortured with fears of surely approaching death.
Through his whole life of scheming greed, Louis was beset

LOUIS XI AND COMMYNES 287
with superstition. He practised astrology continually,
and grovelled before graven images, and that chief graven
image of a purchasable God ! It is an impressive psycho
logical picture that Commynes draws of the King's slow
end — of his months and years of dying, his vacillations,
yet tricking to the last his enemies, and sending them far
and wide to other countries for horses and dogs so that his
foreign rivals might suppose him strong enough to hunt;
he never looked at these purchases when they had been
brought. He held on to every thread of power and au
thority, the ruler in him outlasting his strength. He was
maddened with desire for life, and paid incredible sums
to his physician, besides sending far and wide for relics
with healing virtues, and calling a famous hermit to come
and restore him by his interposition. Profoundly un
happy, and profoundly foolish, he would not see the
emptiness of the husks he clung to.
One might have preferred Charles's bloody death to
Louis's bed-ridden end. Commynes is impartial in the
long chapter on the small joys and the great pains that
Louis had from being a tireless scheming King, and those
which came to Charles from being a rich and powerful
and consumingly ambitious Duke. From " l'enfance et
l'innocence " Louis had every toil and trouble, with twenty
days of travail and annoyance to one of pleasure. It had
been the same with Charles — " toujours travail, sans nul
plaisir. . . . car la gloire luy monta au cueur " : — and
the end was defeat and death. Nor were other rulers of
the time much more fortunate. And Commynes con
cludes his disquisition:
" So you see the death of all these great men in so short a while,
who labored for glory and to aggrandize themselves, and suffered
such pains and passions, shortening their lives and imperilling their
souls. Here I am not speaking of the Turk, who is lodged with
his predecessors! As to our King, I have hope that our Lord has
had pity on him, and on the others, if it plpase Him. But, humanly
speaking, .... would it not have stood, him in better stead, and
the others too, and men of moderate estate as well, ... to choose
the middle path in these things? To worry and labor less, and
lundertake less; to have more fear of off:nding God, and persecut-

288 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
ing the people and their neighbors by all the cruel means I have
been speaking of, and to take ease through honest pleasures. Their
lives would have been longer; sickness would not have come so
soon; and their death would be more regretted and . . . less de
sired ; and they would have less fear of death." 5
One remembers that Commynes wrote in his later years,
when he was sorely scratched by brambles ; for at Louis's
death, he fell from power, and was beset by foes, who
wished to despoil him of part of the huge estates he had
gained in Louis's service — honestly? That is no simple
question. Commynes was a good manager, a quick ac
cepter of emoluments; he cared for riches; and he was a
man of piety, who feared God, and His way of upsetting
the too flagrant and insolent wrong-doer. The iron had
entered into Commynes's soul and into his view of life
when he wrote.
This man of common sense and craft was a despiser of
chivalry and its vain-glory; he believed in managing men,
rather than fighting; diplomacy was his metier; worldly
sagacity was what he admired. The seventeenth,
eighteenth and nineteenth chapters in his fifth book give
his views on public affairs. He has been telling how the
men of Ghent, after Charles's death, executed certain of
his noble ministers in spite of his daughter's protests, and
of other doings of the people of this city — a city for
which Commynes has little use !
" And I cannot think why God has so long preserved this city
of Ghent, from which so many ills have come, and which is of so
little utility for the land and the public interests of the land where
it is situated, and much less for its Prince; and it is not like Bruges,
which is a great gathering-place of merchandise and foreigners,
where possibly more merchandise is handled than in any other city
of Europe, and it would be an irreparable loss if it were destroyed."
Having delivered himself thus regarding Ghent, Com
mynes feels there may be other considerations. " Indeed
it seems to me that God has created nothing in this world,
neither men nor beasts, without making its contrary to
5 Liv. VI, ch. 12.

LOUIS XI AND COMMYNES 289
keep it in fear and humility. And so this city of Ghent
does very well where it is; for that country [Flanders] is
the most given to pleasure . . . and pomps and lavish
spending. They are good Christians, and God is well
served and honored there.6 It is not the only people to
whom God has given a thorn." And he proceeds to speak
of France as having England for an opposite, and Eng
land, as having Scotland, and so through the rest of
Europe. These checks and thorns which God has set in
every state and for every person are necessary : — " et
de prime face, et parlant comme homme non lettre.7 . . .
principallement pour la bestialite de plusieurs princes, et
aussi pour la mauvaistie d'aultres, qui ont sens assez et
experience, mais ils en veulent mal user," — and Com
mynes expresses the opinion that learning may make evil
princes worse, but will improve the good. Yet knowledge
can teach even an evil prince the fear of God and the
limits to the power which God has given him over his
subjects. Commynes concludes that neither natural reason nor
our common sense (nostre sens), nor the fear of God,
nor the love of our neighbor, nor anything (riens) will
keep us from doing violence to each other. And so God
is constrained to beat us with many rods for our " bestial
ite " and " mauvaistie," — and especially princes of
whose ways Commynes gives a severe picture; their out
rages upon neighbors, injustice toward the nobles serving
them, and toward the common people whom they oppress
with taxes and exactions. Commynes maintains that no
prince has the right to make any levy on his subjects, with
out their consent, except within his own domain; and he
admires England as the realm where least violence is done
the people and the public weal is best cared for. The
King of France has no excuse for asserting the privilege
of levying on his subjects at his pleasure. His true praise
lies in having good and loyal subjects that will refuse him
6 He says the same of Venice. Liv. VII, ch. 18.
7 One bears in mind that neither Commynes nor Louis nor Charles had
part as yet in the new fashions of learning already prevalent in Italy.
They are sheer French.

290 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
nothing. And Commynes praises the great loyalty of
the French toward their young. King, Charles VIII, to
whom though but a child they humbly preferred their re
quests through the assembly of the Trois fitats held after
his father's death; and this notwithstanding that the realm
had been sore oppressed by the levies of the deceased
King. The greatest ills always come from the strongest!
The little people and the poor find plenty who will punish
them for cause or no cause ; but there is none to punish
princes except God. And for that reason God sets His
judgments on them, that is to say on the bad ones — and
there are few good ! The ills they do proceed from the
weakness of their belief in hell. Consider what a large
ransom King John paid when taken captive by the Black
Prince, pledging his lands and impoverishing his realm.
That was to obtain release from prison ! But how little
he did to avoid the evils which brought this punishment
upon him ; and how little would a King do or pay to escape
the pains of hell, which are many times worse than those
of an earthly prison? The ill deeds of the great are due
to their lack of faith.
Of course, Commynes has been compared with his
younger Italian contemporary, Machiavelli, and one may
throw the still younger Guicciardini into the comparison.8
Commynes's protagonist, Louis, should be compared with
Lorenzo dei Medici, rather than with Machiavelli's
Cesare Borgia. In the first place these Frenchmen were
Frenchmen, and these Italians, Italians : that carried some
worlds of difference in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen
turies. Next obviously, as the Frenchmen were some
what older, and as France was tardier than Italy in the
new classical revival, and more especially as both Com
mynes and his master had " small Latin and no Greek,"
these two appear as primarily using their mother wit and
their own political experience and knowledge of men and
affairs. Their educational background was the ordinary
schooling, the current literature, the Christianity and the
8 Ante, chapter IV.

LOUIS XI AND COMMYNES 291
royal or feudal policies, which prevailed in France. To
be sure, in the political education of France there had been
such important foreign elements as the Civil Law and
the Politics of Aristotle. But Lorenzo embodies the new
classical culture of Italy; and Machiavelli bases his theor
izing upon the wisdom contained in Roman History. He
has more learning, and in the thoroughness of his political
theory is as superior to Commynes as he is inferior to him
in practical shrewdness and tact. Guicciardini also excels
the Frenchman in his knowledge of the principles of poli
tics, and may have been his equal in practical ability : but
he is more utterly corrupt, being a creature of that polit
ical corruption which rendered Italian statecraft impotent.
The politics of Commynes were more possible, embracing
happy makeshifts of reasoning, such as a wholesome con
viction that exceptional wickedness or pride would come
to ruin, through God's punishments, — an idea as funda
mentally sound as the Aeschylean conception of vppis,
the vain-glory of insolence, bringing the tyrant low.
This thought was absent from the brains either of Mach
iavelli or Guicciardini. One queries whether it could be
found in the conduct of Louis XI, who treated his God
as purchasable. One notes that his addiction to astrology
is not to be connected with the Italian classical revival,
which strengthened this pseudo-science in fifteenth century
Italy. So France became a strong and united kingdom, whose
forces could be used by its Kings in vain endeavors to
extend their rule over other countries. The fact that
the monarch had become the one source of land and gold
and honors tended to renew the loyalty of the nobility in
warlike devotion to the royal fortunes. Feudalism sank
to a reactionary tradition, which might on occasions assert
itself disastrously. And through the reigns of Louis's
successors, royalty, following its caprice or taste, patron
ized learning and literature and art, and court life sug
gested the topics of art and literature, and affected their
jtreatment.

292 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Louis XI and Commynes, his expounder, were not af
fected by Italy and classical humanism. The forces of
previous French development, those making for the fruits
of this world and those incited by the luridly imagined
next, still energized in their faculties, and led forward the
society within which and upon which these two political
personages worked so effectively. Agriculture and trade
and the industrial crafts had laid the material foundation.
Mechanical experimental methods contributed, proving
themselves in many ways, for example in the effectiveness
of the French artillery. A select few were interested in
the more rational or theoretical physical sciences which
had been developed from statements and premises of Aris
totle, or by departing from them.9 A still vigorous fac
tor in thought and life was the scholastic theology whose
home was the University of Paris. For literature, there
was the mediaeval cumulation of fabliaux, chansons, Ar
thurian and antique romance, and such chronicles as those
of Froissart, his predecessors and successors. The
Roman de la Rose, composed of the allegorical idyl of De
Lorris and the cynical encyclopaedia of De Meung, was
popular and influential. The period was still mainly
mediaeval in literary taste and theme; though the old
motifs were breaking, and losing their vitality.
The fifteenth century writers of prose and verse mani
fest few distinctive qualities. Among them was the first
of professional literary women, Christine de Pisan, a
Venetian by birth, but living in France, and a good French
patriot.10 She wrote interminable verse, and in her old
age greeted the glory of Jean d'Arc, dying shortly after
1429. Somewhat younger was Alain Chartier, a student
of Sallust, Livy, Cicero, but more generally of Seneca.
He was the author of tedious, moralizing poems, but
used a prose which we may think his loyal heart, stung
by his country's disasters, had helped to strengthen and
9 See articles by Duhem, La dynamique parisienne, in Bulletin Italien,
Vols. X, XI, XII, and XIII, and post, chapter XXXI.
10 See sufficiently in Petit de Julleville, Histoire de la langue et de la
litter ature francaise, Vol. 2, pp. 357 sqq.

LOUIS XI AND COMMYNES 293
ennoble. He could not free himself from the mediaeval
conventional setting of a dream even in those works of
moving patriotism, where he adjured the nobility, the
clergy, and the people of France to have pity on their
mother's misery.11 His mind revolved around the dis
aster of Agincourt and the defection of Burgundy. The
lighter nature of Charles d'Orleans might have revolved
about the same, since his father had been murdered by the
Duke of Burgundy, and he had himself been taken pris
oner at that battle, and not liberated until twenty-five
years after, in 1440. Belonging to a race of Kings, he
was an amateur of letters, and a clever maker of small
poems. His faculty of verse was as a light skiff, which
would have labored under heavy freight. Its usual theme
was love, treated prettily, takingly, conventionally, and
sometimes bitterly. Anything in his poetry might have
been written and appreciated a hundred years before ; and
nothing in his cherished library indicated any taste differ
ent from that of the fourteenth century.12 He died an
old man in 1465, in the reign of Louis XI; about the
same time that death put out the flame of Frangois Villon.
It is difficult to speak of this thief and murderer, whose
vivid gift of verse was rendered mordant by the bitterly
insistent, hateful sense of death. Death pervaded his
verse, making a mephitic atmosphere. This man of de
bauch and need execrated the cruelty which withheld from
him gold and wine. Villain life would not keep him
gratis in his lusts! It is the old false cry: had one his
desire, he would do no crime ! " Povre je suis de ma jeu-
ness " — little had he through the heated years of youth,
nor in " 1' entree de viellesse," in his thirtieth year!
Prison had eaten body and soul. Villon saw that his end
might not even be a filthy grave, but the gallows, to which
he was once condemned, where he would be pecked by pies
and crows till his skeleton rattled in the wind.
11 In the Quadrilogue, see Petit de Julleville, o. c. 2, pp. 366 sqq.
There is a monograph on Alain Chartier by D. Delaunay (Rennes 1876)
in which examples of Chartier's passionate eloquence are given.
12 See Pierre Champion, La librairie de Charles d'Orleans (Paris 1910) :
also Poesies de Charles d'Orleans ed. Guichard (Paris 1843).

294 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Ne soiez done de nostre confrairie;
Mais priex Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre!
He had the common knowledge of the schools ; but that
scarcely affected a nature aflame with self. His verse was
the utterance of this self, the cry of a thief and murderer,
and yet the cry of a battered human soul, quivering with
its ills. This cry was an envenomed melody of pain. No
such vibrant lyric note had been heard in France.13
13 The English reader may be referred to Poems of Francois Villon,
translated by H. De V. Stackpoole (1914).

CHAPTER XI
SOME FRENCH HUMANISTS
In the France of the sixteenth century there took place
a revival of classical studies, partly through suggestion
and assistance from Italy, Germany and Flanders. The
movement had power and volume and was to exceed all
previous attainment. It even presents in vigorous ac
celeration the successive stages for which analogous
phases of the study of antique thought had required a
number of mediaeval centuries. That is to say, one sees
a time of learning and appropriation, and then use is made
of the new or increased material through constructive or
imitative efforts in the fields of physical study and observa
tion, imaginative and reflective literature, and the plastic
arts. Standing on the shoulders of the efficient past, sixteenth
century France, vigorous, compact, brimming with life,
reaches out for gain and adventure in military enterprise
and distant exploration; reaches for pleasure in the inter
course of courts, in the grateful ennoblement of life
through poetry and its luxurious adornment through archi
tecture, sculpture and painting; reaches also for further
fact and human values through classical studies, and
through observation and reflection, and for a better verity
in religion. The time's progressive energies may have
equalled those of the twelfth and thirteenth French cen
turies, though their specific activities differed; and in the
sixteenth century French development was more depen
dent on stimulus and aid from other countries. The clas
sical scholarship of the twelfth century in France, the scho
lastic philosophy of that century and the next, and French
Gothic cathedrals, were not due to suggestion and assist
ance from contemporary foreigners, although the master
ful French culture might accept teachers as well as
295

296 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
students from abroad. Paris was par excellence the pro
ductive centre of philosophy and theology in the thirteenth
century; and if Albertus and Aquinas, Roger Bacon and
Duns Scotus were born in other lands, they gravitated to
Paris as of course.
With reference to the antecedents of the sixteenth cen
tury classical revival, one may remark that Petrarch's visit
to the French Court in 1361, as the Visconti's ambassador,
was not without its awakening influences. His ornate
Latin orations were full of antique suggestions. Some of
his Latin writings, and Boccaccio's also, were rendered
into French, and then the Decameron. 1 Translations
were made of Cicero's de Senectute and de Amicitia, and
of the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle, the latter, of
course, from Latin versions. The Roman history of Livy
was translated too, which would serve to diffuse a different
idea of Rome from that in the " Romans de Rome la
grant." These works of translation and the classical
studies of which they were the fruit, helped to develop the
French language. Latin words pressed themselves into
the rough and graceless verses of one considerable poet,
Eustache Deschamps, in whom a national feeling is begin
ning to find voice.
The inchoate classical movement centres in the reign of
Charles V (1364-1380), a king interested in letters and
susceptible to their influence. He had assembled a large
library, which naturally was quite mediaeval in its books.
Among the king's counsellors was Nicholas Oresme, the
principal translator of Aristotle. Through him Aris
totle's ideas vrere brought to bear upon the royal govern
ment. A younger man than Oresme was devoted to
humane letters more entirely for their own sake. Jean de
Montreuil saw the light shortly after the middle of the
fourteenth century, and perished in 141 8 at the hands of
the Burgundian faction. He was secretary to the un
happy Charles VI, and employed by him on diplomatic
1 The Decameron was barbarously translated about 1414, and a good
translation by Le Macon made about 1545. See Henri Hauvette, Les
plus anciennes traductions francaises de Boccaccio, Bulletin Italien, Vols.
VII, VIII and X, ,

SOME FRENCH HUMANISTS 297
missions. While on a mission to Italy in 141 2, he met
Coluccio and the younger humanists, Bruni and Niccolo
Niccoli. Naturally, he admired his Italian friends, and
revered the departed Petrarch, whose works seemed to
him to rank with the classics themselves. His own taste
had already made him a student of Cicero and Terence.
He exerted himself and sought the aid of friends, to
collect a library. In fine, he appears as an enthusiastic
humanist. But when the Burgundians broke into Paris in
141 8, and killed him with his like-minded friend, Gontier
Col, there survived no one now known to fame blessed
with a disinterested love of letters.
Classical studies were continued rather lifelessly under
the grey reign of Louis XI. One Fichet printed a
rhetoric at Paris, and his disciple Gaguin an Ars
Versificatoria.2 For printing was now established in the
leading French cities, an incalculable potential gain. Yet
the presses were busied mainly with what either was
written or was used in the Middle Ages. For example,
the Doctrinale of Alexandre Villedieu, most popular of
mediaeval Latin grammars, was printed and reprinted.
And the new books offered little novelty. The lifting of
the spirit was very slow. It was vigorously stirred by
Jacques Lefevre of fitaples, whose long life did not close
till 1536. He was moved by a strong desire for verity,
which led him to seek better methods of study and general
education ; to endeavor likewise for a surer knowledge of
Aristotle, whom he deemed chief of philosophers and salu
tary to the Christian soul; and above all to search out a
truer understanding of the religion of Christ. No more
than Roger Bacon, does Lefevre impress one as touched
by the literary charm of the classics. And although he
was an incitement to others in their quest for truth, he
was not himself a good Greek scholar at a time when
Greek was coming to be regarded as necessary for the
best understanding of the word of God. Knowledge of
2 Gaguin was an energetic scholar. On Gaguin, Lefevre and others,
see Tilley, Dawn of the French Renaissance, Chapters VI-VIII (1918).
For Lefevre see post, Chapter XVII, I,

298 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
the Greek language was established in France by the
labors of Guillaume Bude.
Bude was born in Paris in 1468, of a substantial bour
geois family who for some generations had held positions
in the royal administration. When a boy, he was sent
to Orleans to study law. There he proved a slack and
pleasure-loving student, and after returning to Paris con
tinued his gay life. When twenty-three, as from some
sudden change of heart, passing from youth to manhood,
he gave himself earnestly to the Civil Law, studying at
first the Commentators. He soon pushed back through
them to the text of the Pandects. There he found himself
with the veritable ancients, though still the Latins. The
thirst for Greek came over him. Scarcely a Greek manu
script was to be had, and the one old Greek available as
an instructor was incompetent. Bude's zeal and genius
surmounted even such insurmountable obstacles. When
a few years later Charles VIII brought with him from
Italy the famous Grecian Lascaris, Bude, already a good
Greek scholar, clave to him. Lascaris's stay in Paris was
all too short; but he left his precious books with Bude,
who had already proved his knowledge by producing more
than one translation. He occupied a small post in a
government office, and was twice included in an embassy
to Italy, where he made acquaintance with men and books.
Through the reigns of Charles VIII and Louis XII, he
worked with zeal, neglecting the chances of emolument at
Court, whither his reputation for learning had penetrated.
Later he found a real patron of letters in Francis I, as
he found a friend in the King's sister, Marguerite.
Bude became an enormous and universal scholar. He
was the incarnation of the beginning of Greek studies in
France; the incarnation too of the scholarship whose
instinct is to penetrate to the source, as he showed in
his Annotationes on the four and twenty books of the
Pandects. The Bologna school of Jurists, working from
the twelfth century onwards, had rescued and explained
this great and veritable source of jurisprudence. But
now that some centuries had passed, the commentaries of

SOME FRENCH HUMANISTS 299
these glossators and their successors, especially the great
commentaries of Accursius and Bartolus, were studied,
rather than the original texts. Bude's work was again
revolutionary, in that his Annotationes were directed to
a renewed and better explanation of those texts, not re
jecting the assistance of the Commentators. But his
notes were interspersed with scornful attacks upon the
wretched Accursians and Bartolists who in barbarous
Latin blindly followed the Commentators even in their
contradictions. Bude's work did more than represent a
return to the methods of the best period of the Bologna
school, for it proceeded with a clearer historical perspec
tive and with the application of a philological erudition
which they had not possessed. He sought to establish a
better text, and to give truer explanations of its meaning.
Nor did he stop there; but through an unprecedented
knowledge of Roman history and institutions, he advanced
to a broader explanation of those Roman customs and in
stitutions, a knowledge of which was taken for granted by
the juris-consults of the Pandects. He cast further light
on matters of interest or difficulty through abundant
Greek citations, which he always translated into Latin.
When the Annotationes had been published, and had
aroused attention and applause, Bude undertook a work
nominally upon Roman coinage, but in reality containing a
store of information touching all antiquity. It appeared
in 1^15 under the title of De Asse et partibus eius and
was greeted with acclaim, and some disparagement; its
fame has not entirely passed away. Its author showed no
care for methodical exposition, and may have lacked the
gift. The main purpose of the work, if it had one, was
to determine the weights and values of the ancient moneys
and measures. To this end Bude subjected to review the
ancient literature, comparing the innumerable passages
bearing on the matter, and endeavoring to extract from
them some certain data which might be expressed in the
weights and measures of his time. He recognized the
complexity of such problems, and his critical sense was
not satisfied with plausible results, but weighed every atom

300 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
of the confusing testimony, as he had actually weighed
every ancient coin that he could find. He used his con
clusions very intelligently to form estimates of the wealth
and expenditures of the Romans. So enormous was the
mass and variety of citations, that the work became a
thesaurus of ancient literature. Bude introduced several
long digressiones, in which he set forth his views on vital
topics, showing in these personal opinions his French
patriotism and his Christian piety. He denied the sole
glory of Italy in scholarship — might not the air and
soil of France produce as good? The trouble lay with
the great, who deemed the arts of peace below their
dignity. He also made it appear, what indeed had been
evident throughout the treatise, that the ancient literary
worthies occupied no unapproachable pinnacle in his mind;
he could criticize their faults, moral and intellectual, and
especially their failure to appreciate Christianity. 3
Bude accomplished other feats of scholarship. Such
was his Commentarii Linguae Graecae, published in 1529,
a work of great use to younger scholars. Then in his
dialogue De Philologia, he pleaded for the universal study
of antique letters, as he did in the only French composition
bearing his name : De I'Institution du Prince. As for his
last large book, De Transitu Hellenismi ad Christian-
ismum (1534) the title held implicitly the argument for
Greek, which the body of the treatise expanded into an
exposition of Greek philosophy as a preparation for
Christianity. And he defended Greek from the imputa
tion of heresy, cast upon it by the Sorbonne.
This great scholar's name has rightly gained honor
from his efforts to prevail on Francis to establish chairs
for " lecteurs royaux," who should teach letters and
science for the ends of scholarship and knowledge, with
out regard to the demands of theology, — so insistent at
the Sorbonne. These chairs of Greek and Hebrew, Latin
and Mathematics, were the beginnings of the Royal Col
lege which in time became the " College de France."
Bude had his disciples and collaborators. Before his
3 Thus far I have followed L. Delarnelle, Guillaume Bude (Paris 1907).

SOME FRENCH HUMANISTS 301
Commentaries of the Greek Language were published,
French presses had printed two books of the Iliad, Plato's
Cratylus, the Tragedies of Sophocles, and parts of Aris
tophanes. In 1539, Francis I commanded the casting of
those beautiful Greek types which were to be the model
for future Greek lettering, and in noble language ap
pointed Conrad Neobar royal printer, confiding to him
the printing of Greek books.4 The royal patronage
proved an incentive to Greek studies. Francis charged
the French Ambassador at Venice with the purchase of
manuscripts for his library at Fontainebleau, and assisted
a scholar named Belon to undertake a voyage of discovery
through Greece and Asia Minor.
The names of two young and exceedingly refractory
scholars, poets, satirists, litterateurs, however one may
characterize them, were Bonaventure des Periers and
Estienne Dolet. They were born about the same time
(1508 or 1509). The former died by his own hand in
1544, and two years later the latter was burnt in the Place
Maubert for his obnoxious personality and opinions. He
also may be said to have perished by his own violent will.
Des Periers was valet de chambre, or secretary, to
Marguerite of Navarre. He held and expressed strong
sympathies for the incipiently reformed religion, like
Marguerite herself, or Marot and Lefevre d'fitaples
and Bude. But he passed on to a satirical scepticism
about the year 1536, when Calvin published his Institutio,
which was to bring Catholics, reformers, and we may
add, humanists, to sharply opposed self-consciousness.
Either a reaction against its tone and tenets, or other
jarring or awakening influences, or his own clever carping
soul, evoked from Des Periers those four allegorical
satires in dialogue form, which he called the Cymbalum
Mundi en francoys. As dramatis personae under mythi
cal and fictitious Latin names, the Catholic church and
its institutions, as well as Luther and Erasmus, were made
ridiculous. Catholics and Reformers united to suppress
both book and author. Marguerite had to dismiss him,
* See Egger, L'HelUmtme en France, Vol. I, Lee. 9.

302 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
and after two or three years of trouble and perhaps in
cipient insanity, he killed himself. He was a good story
teller, and a poet of sensitiveness and feeling, who held
himself a disciple of Marot. He also made French trans
lations from the classics, like his friend, Dolet.
Dolet was a youth of exaggerated self-conceit and
intractable temper: precocious scholar, zealous worker,
addicted to scurrilous depreciation of others, a captious,
impossible young man. His importance is rather facti
tious, due to his insistence on himself, by which some of
his friends took him at his own value. They spoke of him
with that sort of excess of praise which marks the
friendly utterances of Italian humanists.5
He was born in Orleans, and when twelve years old,
went to study in Paris, where he seems to have imbibed
his worship of Cicero. From his eighteenth to his
twenty-first year, he studied at Padua. The university
was then in great repute. The famous philosopher and
teacher Pomponazzi, dying in 1525, had left behind him
his arguments and influence, making for paganism and
for disbelief in the personal Christian immortality.
Bembo, at the height of his dignified reputation, made a
home of lettered affluence in Padua from 1521 to 1539.
Dolet studied under one Villanovanus, a great Ciceron
ian, and imbibed a love of Latin purity and the art of
making orations out of Ciceronian phrases. Upon his
teacher's death, he went to Venice as secretary to Jean
de Langeac, bishop of Limoges, and after a year of study
returned with the bishop to Toulouse where, yielding to
persuasion, he began work on the civil law. His detes
tation of Toulouse the intolerant and superstitious, the
archiepiscopal seat of the Inquisition and the scene of
more burnings of Reformers than any other town in
France save Paris, glares in his two orations of Ciceronian
interpretation. In a letter to Bude, to whose greatness
he had obtained an epistolary introduction, Dolet says
5 Dolet's importance may have been enhanced by an interesting mono
graph on his time: Etienne Dolet, the Martyr of the Renaissance, by]
R. C. Christie (London 1899, 2nd Ed.). I am indebted to this work for
my facts about Dolet,

SOME FRENCH HUMANISTS 303
that the Toulousans are more barbarous than Scythians.
So he began his career of polemic abuse, which at the out
set made him enemies influential enough to bring about
his incarceration, from which only the influence of distin
guished friends procured his release. So frequent were
to be his subsequent imprisonments that someone spoke
of jail as patria Doleti.
About this time a curious Italian impostor swims
across Dolet's ken, whom he treats with proper scorn
and ridicule. It was one Camillo, who through a life of
laborious humbug, had elaborated a scheme of imparting
to anyone a perfect knowledge of Greek and Latin, and
the rest of human knowledge, in about three months. He
devoted years to the perfecting of a sort of theatre of
pigeon-holes, each labelled with some quality of the mind
or division of knowledge. With what sort of key or
handle or rotary movement he proposed to transfer their
contents to the minds of his auditors is not clear. But
he made important friends in Paris, as elsewhere, and
Francis I subscribed five hundred ducats toward the
theatre !
Dolet had found Toulouse too warm for him, and had
withdrawn to the country, when he received news that the
detested city had made an edict forbidding his return. It
was in the summer of 1534, and he decided to set forth on
a two hundred and fifty mile tramp for Lyons, where he
had friends and introductions. Sick and exhausted he
reached that city, the second in the realm, not merely for
wealth and numbers, but for culture and learning, and
where thought was freer than in Paris under the shadows
of the Sorbonne. Lyons was filled with Italians, bankers,
merchants, introducers of the silk industry, and indeed
governors of the city in the able and liberal-minded
family of the Trivulci. Rabelais, Marot, Servetus and
Des Periers sojourned there, and there published their
works, while other scholars were frequent visitors. The
new art of printing had been introduced in 1472, and now
flourished briskly at the presses of many master-printers,
Sebastian Gryphius being the head of that scholarly pro-

304 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
fession. He had scholars (even the great Rabelais) as
proof-readers. Among these Dolet was enrolled, and be
tween him and the scholar-printer sprang up one of the
few unbroken friendships of his life. Lyons remained
his home until his death — when he was not fleeing or in
prison, or visiting fatal Paris.
In 1528 Erasmus published his dialogue called Cicer-
onianus ridiculing the pedants who would use only the
words and phrases, even the very tenses and cases, used
by Cicero. The elder Scaliger brought himself into noto
riety by a reply preposterously abusive, which Erasmus
treated with irritating silence, and what was worse, sup
posed it to have been composed by another ! Dolet saw
fit to enter the fray with a clever Dialogue against Eras
mus, which brought on him the censure of his friends for
its intemperance, and also the wrath of Scaliger for pre
suming to write when he had written. A certain Odonus,
in a letter to Erasmus's secretary, saw no reason why this
fool Dolet should be answered according to his folly,
least of all by the great Erasmus. The letter tells of
his wretched mien, his squalor and premature old age,
his monstrous conceit and scurrility. The picture is not
more abusive than Dolet would have drawn of his reviler.
Dolet wrote this dialogue in Paris, when he was there
in 1534 trying to obtain the royal permission for the pub
lication of his Commentaries. The time was inopportune.
That fatal tirade against the Mass, posted in an October
night throughout the city, had driven the King to violent
measures against heresy and enlightened thought. A year
of persecution and burnings ensued, with edicts forbid
ding the printing of all books. If Dolet had influential
friends, Bude among them, he had also active enemies,
and he failed to obtain the permission. So he returned
to Lyons and began the task of printing the huge work, —
its first folio of seventeen hundred pages. About a year
afterwards, Gryphius obtained the sought-for license, with
exclusive right for four years, to print a book entitled
Commentaries on the Latin Tongue by Estienne Dolet.
There was broader scholarship in Robert Estienne's

SOME FRENCH HUMANISTS 305
Latin Thesaurus, which was a huge dictionary alphabeti
cally arranged. But Dolet classified his words according
to the connection of their ideas, and commented upon their
interrelated meanings. In this he claimed originality.
His illustrative examples, especially in the first volume,
were drawn almost exclusively from Cicero. As the work
progressed, the writer indulged more frequently in digres
sions upon matters touching men and scholarship, his
friends and enemies. In one of these, speaking of letters
in the year 1535, he shows pleasure at the dignified posi
tion and flourishing state of literature,6 but there are
further sides to the picture :
" Nothing is wanting save the ancient intellectual freedom and
the prospect of acquiring distinction by the cultivation of the lib
eral arts. What the learned miss, is the affection, the liberality
... of the powerful ; the patronage of a Maecenas is needed. . . .
Further, there is wanting to us an opportunity for the display of
eloquence, — a Roman senate, a republic in which honour and due
meed of praise would be awarded to it. . . . Instead of these in
ducements to the study of liberal arts, there is among many a con
tempt for literary culture . . . literary labour has to be pursued
without any hope ... of reward ; the life of the student is passed
without honour ; the contempt of the multitude has to be endured ;
the tyranny and insolence of the powerful have to be borne; and
danger to life itself is often the result of intellectual pursuits." 7
The last, at all events, was true !
Pages might be filled with Dolet's labors, quarrels, in
temperances and misfortunes through the remainder of
his short life. He became hateful to the authorities at
Paris, and after various imprisonments and releases, and
renewed offenses, he was condemned to be burned in the
Place Maubert, and there met his death in the year of
grace 1546. Curiously, nothing contributed more directly
to his final condemnation than the words rien du tout
in his translation of a pseudo-Platonic dialogue, the
6 Given by Christie, o. c. pp. 256-262. One recalls Rabelais's com
parisons in the letter of Gargantua.
7 Christie's translation. Dolet proceeds to speak of the war of the
scholars with barbarism, and gives at length their names in Italy, Ger
many, France and England.

306 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Axiochus. The questionable passage referred to the
soul's immortality. Dolet's judges misquoted him as
follows: apres la mort tu ne seras plus rien du tout. This
was the basis of the charge of blasphemy in that Dolet
had falsely made Plato deny the immortality of the soul.
It was joined with charges of sedition and the sale of
forbidden books. His death is one of those many in
stances where the personality, rather than the specific acts
and words of the freethinker, causes his temporal ruin ; —
an instance too of the sad unconquerable heart of man:
Si au besoing le monde m'abandonne,
Et si de Dieu la volonte n'ordonne
Que liberte encores on me donne'
Selon mon vueil;
Doits-je en mon cueur pour cela mener dueil,
Et de regretz faire amas et recueil? . . .
Sus done, esprit, laisses la chair a part,
Et devers Dieu qui tout bien nous depart
Retirez vous . . .
Sus, mon esprit, monstres vous de tel cueur;
Vostre asseurance au besoing soit cogneue:
Tout gentil cueur, tout constant belliqueur,
Jusque a la mort sa force a maintenue! 8
The way for the full flowering of classical, and es
pecially Greek studies, for France, was opened by the
labors of the family of Estiennes (Stephens) who so
grandly united the attributes of scholars, printers, and
publishers. The first Henry Estienne printed a Latin
abridgement of Aristotle's Ethics, with an introduction by
Lefevre d'fitaples, in the year 1502. He maintained a
scholarly press with learned proof-readers. Of his three
sons, printers and scholars all, Robert, born in 1503,
dying at Geneva in 1559, was the most notable. This
talented youth profited from the scholars who were his
father's friends. Like his father, he was an ardent adhe
rent of the reformed religion. In 1523 he printed a
Latin New Testament, and a Greek New Testament in
8 A poem written by Dolet in the Conciergerie of Paris shortly before
his death; given at length by Christie, o. c. pp. 469-470.

| ; . SOME FRENCH HUMANISTS 307
1546. He made a biblical Concordance, in eleven hundred
pages of four columns. He printed a number of the
pagan classics, some for the first time, and in the course
of years produced his prodigious Latin Thesaurus, and
collected materials for a similar Treasury of Greek. But
his scholarly publication of sacred as well as profane writ
ings brought him into such conflict with the theological
inhibitions of the Sorbonne that he left Paris for Geneva,
where he continued his labors. At his death in 1559, he
bequeathed his business and scholarly undertakings to his
eldest son, Henry, his chief aid and consolation. But
this testament bound Henry to Geneva, since it provided
that his heritage should lapse if he changed his vocation,
or forsook the Church of Calvin, a provision which the
Genevan theocracy construed to mean that if he removed
from Geneva, he should leave his books and types and
presses behind him.
This great intractable son was to find the censorship
of Geneva as galling as his father had found the Sor
bonne. His indefatigable life was spent as a printer
and productive scholar and vigorous polemic writer, and
in scarcely intermittent struggle with the intolerable the
ocracy of Calvin's city. If Calvin died in 1564, revered
even by Henri Estienne, his post mortem grip throttled
liberal thought and studies in Geneva. The recalcitrant
Estienne, save for occasional incarceration, might go and
come, but not even the pointed suggestion of the French
King (Henry III) or the influence of his ambassador
could prevail upon the City Council to permit the removal
of Estienne's presses to Paris, where also life and liberty
might be endangered. Estienne, of course, belonged to
the reformed religion. Else he could not have lived in
Geneva. But that same fact imperilled him in Paris, in
spite of the favor of the political weakling and patron of
letters, Henry III. He was bringing out his great The
saurus in Geneva when the massacre of St. Bartholomew's
occurred, in 1572; the crime was due, he maintained, to
Catherine of Medici and her Italian conspirators. After
wards, between 1584 and -1589 he spent much time in

308 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Paris until the assassination of Henry III made France
too dangerous for him. Yet his dairyings with Catholic
royalty in Paris roused the suspicion of Geneva, where
he was otherwise disliked for his writings and rebellious
temper. He was prone to print without previous sub
mission to the censor, and after the censor's revision,
was none too ready to insert or omit as directed. If
his attacks or indiscretions were mainly levelled against
Romanists, he cared not where he put his heel; and licen
tious freedom of speech made him seem to the Geneva
Consistory like another Rabelais.
His French writings brought him the most trouble.
Whatever the title or nominal topic, they were prone to
prove polemic or satirical. His earliest important work,
the Apologie pour Herodote, bears an innocent title; the
author professed to hope that the ministers of the Coun
cil would not trouble themselves to read his " little book "
containing a defense of Herodotus. But they did, and
found too many skits and funny stories reflecting on re
spectable people, and too great licentiousness of speech.
They directed the excision of certain parts, and ordered
Estienne to get back the copies which he had sent to
Lyons. They were particular people, these ministers of
the Council, having no taste for this hodge-podge of an
ecdote and satire; seeing no value in this fatras of argu
ments and funny tales.
It is easier for us to catch the point of Estienne's
writings in defense of his beloved French tongue ; which
both defended its excellence, and urged its preservation
from Italianisms and like foreign affectations, introduced
by the Italianized Court of France and the writers who
ministered to court tastes. Estienne sympathized with
the Defense et Illustration of Du Bellay and Ronsard,
though he deprecated their paganism, their " pindar-
isme " and lofty dithyrambic ways, their abuse of meta
phors, their obscure images and comparisons. There was
no condescension in his vindication of the French tongue,
as there was with those who would defend it only when
classicized and Pindarized. Estienne maintained the pre-

SOME FRENCH HUMANISTS 309
excellence of French as actually written and spoken, and
not merely when fashioned by a school of writers. This
is the argument of his Precellence du langage Frangais,
in which is shown the power and clarity of French, its
convenience, its peculiar aptitude for diplomacy and
statecraft. Perhaps he espoused its cause more academi
cally, after the prevailing fancies among scholars, in his
Conformite du francais avec le grec. There he main
tained that the Greek was the most perfect of all lan
guages, and that the French resembled it most closely,
and was therefore the next perfect. Thus he set French
above the other Romance tongues and above the Latin,
their common mother. His Greek Thesaurus showed in
fact that often truer equivalents of the Greek could be
found in French words than in Latin.9
Such were not unfruitful topics of discussion when the
European languages seemed but crudely to answer to the
needs of science and the higher forms of literature. Then
a scholar might well set himself to build them out and
perfect them, and render them more grammatically exact,
impeccable, and, as it were, inevitable in their expression
of the period's gradually clarifying thought.
The work of Henry Estienne in classical scholarship
(which has not yet been touched on) was distinctive of
the French accomplishment in this field as contrasted with
the Italian. Among the French are not found those
jejune exquisite works of Latin poetry and prose, which
the Italian humanists took pride in. The efforts of French
scholarship was rather to enlarge and solidify the knowl
edge of the Greek and Latin languages and literatures.
Valla may be compared with the Frenchmen; otherwise
Italy cannot match Bude's De Asse or his Commentarii
Linguae Grecae, or the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae of
Robert Estienne, who was so strenuously assembling
materials for a Greek Thesaurus too. It was this that
Henri Estienne brought to completion, and published in
the year of St. Bartholomew, in five huge volumes, mak-
9 For this I have drawn chiefly on Louis Clement, Henri Estienne et
son oeuvre francaise (Paris 1899).

310 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
ing it the crown of French learning in the sixteenth
century. The expense impoverished this redoubtable
author and printer; yet did not prevent his increasing his
fame and poverty by the publication of his splendid
edition of Plato six years later.
Even this Plato was but one great classic among the
many printed by Henry Estienne. For he travelled cease
lessly, searching for new classical matter, rewarding him
self and the world with such discoveries as books of
Diodorus Siculus and the " Anacreon " (what we call the
" Anacreontea ") , both of which he published for the first
time, the latter to become a chief delight with Ronsard
and his Pleiade. He is said to have published fifty-eight
Latin and seventy-four Greek authors, among them
eighteen first editions.10 The texts of many of these pub
lications were so excellent that they were scarcely im
proved upon for centuries. The man was great not
merely in the tireless ardor of his scholarship, but in the
force of his temperament and loyalty to the France which
had driven him and his father forth, but to which he
eagerly returned when the skies of persecution lifted.
Estienne still represents the scholarship of the French
Reform, — of the circle of Marguerite of Navarre, of
Rabelais, of Bude and Lefevre d'fitaples ; the scholarship
of a religious reform which loved classic learning, and
had not submitted to the effective intolerance of Calvin
ism. This union of true scholarship with truth-seeking
in religion, which found its exponent in Erasmus, still
inspired Henri Estienne, fallen on times of persecution
and religious conflict, when the mutual hate and military
exigencies of the warring faiths left little sympathy for
the tastes and labors of neutral scholars.
Without pausing with such admirable scholars as
Turnebus and Lambinus, who were royal lecturers, a
reference to two greater men of the following genera
tion must close our brief and truncated consideration of
French classical studies in the sixteenth century. Joseph
10 Sandys, Hist, of Classical Scholarship, II, p. 175; who does not give
his authority.

SOME FRENCH HUMANISTS 311
Scaliger (1540-1609) and Casau'ban (1559-1614) never
saw each other, and yet became fast friends through corre
spondence and mutual respect. The former was the son
of the learned and truculent Julius Caesar Scaliger, him
of the abusive attack upon Erasmus — and on Cardanus
too. The son, familiar with the classic tongues at an
early age, and later studying with the best scholars at
Paris, developed the qualities of a sound textual critic,
and produced improved editions of a number of Latin
authors. From textual criticism he passed on to pro
found comparative historical studies. The fruit appeared
in his great work upon the reform of antique chronology,
De Emendatione temporum, first published in 1583, and
twice afterwards with improvements and additions in
his lifetime. This work, and the principles of historical
criticism exemplified by it, became the basis of later his
torical and chronological research. Scaliger was of
Italian descent and belonged to the reformed religion.
He spent his last fifteen years of life and learning at the
University of Leyden.
Isaac Casaubon was born at Geneva of Huguenot
parents, and became the son-in-law of Henri Estienne,
who nevertheless would not let him use his library. He
was called to Paris in 1599 by Henry IV, and after the
King's assassination was subjected to well-nigh success
ful pressure to become a Catholic. He preferred, how
ever, to accept an invitation to England, and was given
a prebendal stall in Canterbury. He enjoyed the burden
some favor of King James, and the society of learned
men; but he was unpopular as a foreigner, although he
had been naturalized. Dying at the age of fifty-five, he
was buried in Westminster Abbey. Among his contem
poraries, his scholarship was reputed second only to that
of Scaliger. His great merit as an editor sprang from
his broad and accurate learning, his faculty of eliciting
a true reading from a comparison of manuscripts, and
the abundance of his illuminating commentary.11
11 Good articles in the Ency. Brit, by Mark Pattison and Christie on
these men. Pattison's Life of Qasaubon is an authority.

CHAPTER XII
THE CIRCLE OF MARGUERITE OF NAVARRE
In the broadening of French culture and the opening
of the French mind to novel influences, a certain woman
played a central role, through her station, her tempera
ment and her intellectual gifts. Marguerite of Angou-
leme, the sister of King Francis, by marriage duchess of
Alencon and later Queen of Navarre, was more than a
patroness of the best spirits of the time. She was herself
a moving agent in the diffusion of thought and feeling,
tempering and rendering receptive the minds of those
about her, of King Francis himself, who respected her,
and whom she loved absorbingly.1 Much of the period's
spiritual history may be told in the careers of the men she
at some time protected by her power, aided with her gen
erosity, encouraged with her sympathetic understanding.
Lefevre d'fitaples was among them, Bude, Clement Ma
rot, Rabelais, Des Periers. Calvin was to prove recal
citrant to her influence and hostile to much she cared for.
She was herself an incessant writer of letters without
number, of poems which run on forever, of tales in prose
with moralizings. Her thoughts and feelings could not
keep themselves from ink and paper, either while she was
staying at one of her residences, or while travelling in
her litter, moving with her little court from place to
place, as was her wont. Waiting and hoping for the
coming of a messenger telling of her royal brother's re
covery, she writes: Quand nul ne voy, l'oeil j'abandonne
A pleurer; puis sur le papier
Un peu de ma douleur i'ordonne.

leurer; puis sur le papier
peu de ma douleur j'ordonne.

1 Marguerite was two years older than Francis, and died two years
after him. Their births fell in 1492 and 1494; their deaths in 1547 and
1549. Her grandson became Henry IV.
312

MARGUERITE OF NAVARRE 313
That was her way always. Her conversation must
have been more influential than her writing, at least than
her prolix and interminable verse, through which no
enthusiasm for Marguerite will carry the reader.
Marguerite's breadth of intellectual interest was as
admirable as her piety toward God and man; and the
two will appear commensurate with her woman-faculty
of loving. She and her court were the refuge and centre
of that better scholarship and fuller humanism, and
clearer-seeing piety, which characterized advancing
thought in France, until Calvin so trenchantly severed
goats from sheep. - Marguerite and her friends, according
to their several capacities, cherished the full gospel of
man and God: the charm and lustiness of life; the antique
philosophy and letters; and the truths of the Christian
religion, more nakedly presented than the dominant
Church approved. These people cared for these goods
of life in whole or in part ; and according to their several
tempers fell in with or recoiled from the usages and beliefs
of the Church.
Marguerite's ideal of life was humanly and religiously
inclusive. She would unite the pleasure and excellence of
this life with the Christian faith, and see life rise, stage
upon stage, as it were from the flesh to the spirit, from
man to God. The classics doubtless held the best of
human learning. To them let there be added the book
of the intricacy and sublimation of mortal love between
man and woman. And as the last stage of life's com
pletion let the whole world rise to God, human ambitions
merging in the divine purpose, human loves melting in the
love of God, human learning bowing down before the
divine ineffableness. Marguerite found the method of
this union in that loose and delectable " Platonism "
which was the fashion of the Medicean circle at Florence.
There Ficino had been chief expounder of Plato and
Plotinus; and now, more especially in the decade from
1540 to 1550, his translations, his commentaries, and his
own presentation of Platonic Christian thinking, had
become known to Marguerite and her circle, and through

314 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
their efforts or patronage had been made more accessible
in republications and translations.
At an earlier period, however, Marguerite's first spirit
ual director, Briconnet, had introduced her to the opinions
of a greater than Ficino, to wit, Nicholas of Cusa, whose
thought seemed destined to act as a universal solvent of
case-hardened opinions, and as a suggestion and stimulant
of larger views. As a churchman he had been liberal and
earnest, and his opinions might incline men toward re
ligious, as well as philosophic, reform. Specific traces of
his influence appear in Marguerite's writings, and disclose
the general effect of this great man upon her intellectual
temper.2 It was in those years from 1540 to her death in 1549
that from the midst of her royal trials and disillusionment,
and finally from the deep grief of Francis's death, Mar
guerite turned more completely to literature, philosophy,
and religion. In the first years of this period she com
posed or collected most of the tales constituting the im
properly notorious Heptameron. They are what they
are, less amusing than those of Boccaccio, and with much
the same sort of subject, though purporting to be true
narratives of actual people. The real interest for one
interested in Marguerite lies in the discussion which
follows each story, and serves to moralize and uplift
the tales, and prove them not to have been merely the
pastimes of lubricity. These discussions relate to the
various phases of love, its pain and pleasure, its good
and evil, its brutalities and sublimities. Marguerite's
thoughts, given to the speakers, especially to Dagoucin
and Parlamente who seem to represent her, embrace
Christianity, the new-vamped Platonism, and the pre
ciosities of the mediaeval amour courtois. But the
courteous love was affected by Castiglione's Cortigiano,
2 See generally Abel Lefranc, Le Platonisme et la litterature en France
" VEpoquede la Renaissance. Rev. d'histoire litteraire de la France 1896,
p. 1 sqq.; ib. Marguerite de Navarre et le Platonisme de la Renaissance,
Bib. de l'ficole des Chartres, Vol. 58, p. 259, sqq. Vol. 59, p. 712, sqq.
These essays have been reprinted in one volume: Grands Ecrivains Fran-
cais de la Renaissance (Paris, 1914).

MARGUERITE OF NAVARRE 315
the Platonism was that of Ficino, and the Christianity
that of the dawning Reform, which was not Calvinism.
These elements melted into each other. As a result, a
scheme of human love rises through precieuses insistences
and draughts of Plato's Symposium, to the love which,
perfect and unshakable, is directed toward the utter good.
On its way thither it will permit itself no dishonour.
Replies Parlamente in the nineteenth tale :
" J'appelle parfaicts amans ceulx qui cherchent en ce qu'ilz
aiment quelque perfection, soit beaulte, bonte ou bonne grace; tous-
jours tendans a la vertu, et qui ont le cueur si hault et si honneste
qu'ilz ne veulent, pour mourir, mettre leur fin aux choses basses que
l'honneur et la conscience reprouvent ; car Fame, qui n'est creee que
pour retourner a son souverain Bien, ne faict, tant qu'elle est de
dans ce corps, que desirer d'y parvenir. Mais a cause que les sens
par lesquels elle en peut avoir nouvelles sont obscurs et charnels par
le peche du premier pere, ne luy peuvent monstrer que les choses
visibles plus approchantes de la perfection, apres quoi Fame court,
cuydans (thinking) trouver en une beaulte exterieure, en une grace
visible et aux vertus morales, la souveraine beaulte, grace et vertu.
Mais quand elle les a cherchez et experimentez et elle n'y trouve
point celuy qu'elle ayme, elle passe outre. . . ."
Throughout her life, Marguerite's dominant passion
was to love, and think and talk about loving. It directed
her studies, controlled her life, and moulded her religion
to an emotional mysticism, in which this utter woman
merged all her thoughts concerning man and God in
love's desire and realization. Without change of theme,
we pass from the discussion of love in the Heptameron
to the philosophic-religious poem entitled Prisons,3 which
she wrote at the same time. Its first part has to do with
human love, the first imprisoning illusion of the author's
heart. When through force of will, the prisoner has
freed himself from this embarricaded and fantastic tower,
he sets forth at the opening of the second part to observe
the world in all its grandeur and variety, the cities, the
customs, and the conduct of mankind. He is stung by
8 It fills pages 121 to 297^ in Abel Lefranc's Les derniires PoSsies de
Marguerite de Navarre (Paris, 1896).

316 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
worldly ambition, is drawn toward the advantages of the
Church, then to the Court. But an old man induces him
to betake himself to study, since knowledge of the ancient
philosophers, historians, and Scriptural authors will re
move all ills. So he casts off ambition's chains, and builds
himself, in the third and most elaborate part of the poem,
a palace of knowledge; walls beyond walls, columns on
columns, all learning's branches form this encyclopaedic
structure of books, a prison as it is still to prove : poetry,
law, mathematics, natural history, medicine, history,
rhetoric, none is omitted, nor the name of any author;
but Plato, St. Paul and Dante are the three our prisoner
cares for most. Terrified by the pitfalls of error, and
the danger of condemnation, he studies theology and
Scripture, with watching, fasting, and prayer. From the
prison of the letter, he is delivered by the divine Word:
" I am that I am."
Clearly Marguerite is freed from her last prison
through faith (the central principle of the Reform) . She
flings herself on Christ's universal redemptive power; in
love she will fly to the All in Allness of God and revel
in the antithesis of the All and the Nothing, le Tout et
le Rien, which last is man. Marguerite loved to float
amid sublimations and inflations of the thought of love.
Well might Rabelais address her : " Esprit abstraict, ravy
et estatic." She had proved a kind protector to him, and
many a lesser man. And she herself represented the in
tellectual expansion of her land and time. She even rep
resented that incipient and temperate religious Reform,
which proceeded as much from the basis of the newly en
larged learning, and the accompanying clearer discrimina
tion between fact and foolishness, as from disgust with
the corruptions and superstitions of the Church. Reli
gious reform, carried out in the spirit of Marguerite,
would not have loosed the Furies upon France.
The poet, Clement Marot, wrote better verse than
Marguerite, whose protege he was, and whose views of
religious reform he may have shared, though with differ
ent emphasis. If he had convictions, they were of the

MARGUERITE OF NAVARRE 317
intellect; while Marguerite's represented the mysticism
or metaphysics of religious intuition. The structure and
substance of Marot's verse made no break with the pre
vious, even the mediaeval, achievements of the French
muse, which he absorbed. Still, he had read Boccaccio
and Petrarch, as well as Virgil, Ovid and Catullus.
Slightly and superficially he appears touched by the new
humanism of Italy. For he was born in 1496, two years
after Charles VIII invaded Italy; and he died in 1544,
three years earlier than Francis I, and five years before
Marguerite. At Marguerite's court, at the court of Francis, Marot
was of his entourage and livelihood, a court poet and a
cleverer one than his father had been before him. His
light and occasionally brilliant verse, his epigrams es
pecially, had profited by the talk and badinage of a
lively and superficially polished society. This did not
always preclude the expression of delicate and sincere
sentiment.4 Personally he was gifted with a persistent
gaiety, not to be quenched by dangers or imprisonment,
but which might suffer from the ennui of a refuge sought
in Ferrara and Geneva. Those places were as congenial
to this fugitive libertine of the spirit, as the sanctuary to
the sprightly murderer seeking safety at the altar.
No other work affected Marot as much as the Roman
de la Rose, which he edited and modernized in prison.5
Here he was of his generation, which still delighted in
that famous allegory and pungent disquisition upon life.
Only gradually he developed the individuality of his own
gay personality and environment. Then if he continued
to write rondeaux, he wrote also ballads, and gave his
spirit play in the cleverest of epigrams and epistles in
verse. He also translated a number of the Psalms at
the command of Francis, strange to tell. These trans
lations, made from the Vulgate, are rather flat and nerve
less. But they gained vogue at the court, and formed
* Cf. A. LeFranc. Le Roman d' Amour de Clement Marot. ( Grands
Ecrivains etc.).
5 He edited Villon also.

318 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY -•-'•
the nucleus of the Psalter of the Reform. Naturally,
they rendered their author obnoxious to the Sorbonne,
and Francis was induced to forbid their further dissem
ination and dismiss their author.
Marot is an important personage in the history of
French poetry. He is an effective predecessor not merely
of Ronsard but of Malherbe ; and La Fontaine recognized
him as his master.6 But this man had no temperamental
affinity with the men of the Reform; he could not endure
Calvin's city, nor would Geneva harbor him. Some of
the tenets and practices of the Catholic hierarchy jarred
upon the clarity of his intellectual perceptions, while the
doctrines of the Reform appealed to his mind. Yet he
was and remained essentially a court poet and a man who
followed pleasure after the fashion of court society. He
was not shocked by the moeurs of his time and place,
and even his intellectual revolt against current religious
opinion was not consistently serious.
s Cf. E. Faguet, Seizieme siicle, £tudes litteraires, p. 73, sqq.

CHAPTER XIII
FRANQOIS RABELAIS
The people spoken of in the last few chapters open
the ways. Their tendencies and tastes, studies and en
deavors, their expression of themselves in their pursuits
and writings, naturally precede the rounded thinking, the
perfected utterance, the splendid and final modes of self-
expression achieved by younger and greater men.
In a sense all intellectual labors and utterances endure
in their results ; for nothing that once is done and uttered
fails of some effect. But the modes of self-expression
of a Rabelais, a Montaigne, a Calvin, even an Amyot,
not to speak of Ronsard and his friends', were great and
finished utterances. These achieved self-expressions
represent climaxes, finalities, inasmuch as in their kind
they have not been surpassed. They endure not merely
as influences carried on, but in themselves as entities, as
perfected exemplars, always impressive, moving some
men to imitation, others to avoidance; but in themselves
forever notable.
There was one of these men whose nature included
many surging desires of his people, woven in the warp of
genius. He has been a much commented on puzzle ever
since he lived and wrote that book which seems to hold
all life from the cloaca to the heavens. Its author —
only one of his own words will fit him — was Gargantuan
in his self-expression. Never did a mortal pour forth him
self, his huge, ingens, informis, sprawling self, in such
torrential superabundance as Rabelais. He is the most
prodigious expression of the French sixteenth century,
voicing its life, its scholarships, its ideals, along with much
that the Muse of Decency would leave unsung. Rabelais
shouts it all forth in tumultuous delight. None will dare
319

320 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
paint him; one may but follow his life, and put together
bits of his Gargantuan self.
The intellectual currents of the times flowed into the
capacious mind of Frangois Rabelais, illuminating and ex
panding a nature that was itself an abundant spring of
genial power and appetition. He had a Charybdean maw
for life. Delighting in all knowledge, he ransacked the
stores of learning available in the first half of the sixteenth
century. He also delighted in every act and function of
the human animal; it all made for life. Without sensi
tiveness, he wantoned with the lewd and disgusting.
Feeling no repugnance toward any fact of human ani-
mality, he had no esthetic preference for the more obvi
ously beautiful and ideal. Glowing with enormous
tolerance and benignity for the natural man, his satisfac
tion went rollicking through the vast uncleaned halls of
life. Every good thing was from God; and what was
better than human nature? Unthwarted and untram
melled, it might be trusted in its brave carouse.
Rabelais's scorn and detestation were as tremendous as
his approval and applause. Whatever was not life and
knowledge, but a sham and lie, was a preposterous abom
ination; and likewise whatever broke life's currents and
thwarted the joyful play of nature's functions was hateful
and absurd — the work of charlatans and hypocrites,
of prudes and pettifoggers. Monkish rules for diminish
ing joys and self- fulfilment were lewd hypocrisy usually,
and, when observed, quite as pernicious. Rabelais was a
^supreme satirist, yet with little of the bitterness of hate.
The usual way of his genial nature with the tricks and
follies of besotted manikins was to smother them in
obscene ridicule.
His works have called forth many interpretations.
They and their author are touched with the mystery of
the man endowed with an exceeding abundance of life;
one whose work cannot be tabulated in categories of
influence, or explained by conventions of allegory. These

FRANQOIS RABELAIS 321
writings are alive, prodigiously. One sees in them the
power of temperament, — which lies in the spontaneities
of affinity and desire, — impelling the author's mental
faculties to intellectual creation, supplying symbols and
images. Yet this fecund temperament, so great a factor
of the plastic faculty of this great student and artist,
was not headstrong. It was amenable to worldly pru
dence, while the topics of its play might be suggested
by the interests of the hour.
Francois Rabelais was born in Touraine, supposedly
about the year 1494.1 His father was a lawyer. When
about seventeen, he entered the Franciscan convent at
Fontenay, where not so much within as without its walls
he enjoyed the society of a number of men of letters.
The youth flung himself into his studies, learning Greek
and laying the foundations of the encyclopaedic sort of
knowledge shown in his writings. Later he will be found
among the correspondents of both Bude and Erasmus.
Before long he had himself transferred to the Benedictine
Order, and became the secretary of his opulent and noble
patron Geoffroy d'Estissac, a powerful bishop and a Bene
dictine prior. He found other noble friends, and knew
many scholars, as he moved about and studied and ob
served. Monkhood sat lightly on this eager votary of life
and letters. He would seem at some time to have studied
medicine in Paris; and it is known that he finished his
medical course at Montpellier in 1530. A year or two
afterwards, he settled at Lyons, a great city, situated
at a goodly distance from the sinister authority of the
Sorbonne. In this town which sheltered Marot, Dolet,
Des Periers, and Sainte-Marthe, church abuses were
criticized, and many persons favored the Reform. Rab
elais was appointed physician to the Hotel Dieu, and
won the respect of the learned by editing sundry works
of Galen, the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, and other medi
cal and even legal texts. He was abreast of the best
1 I am following Abel Lefranc in the Introduction to the critical edition
of Oeuvres de Frangois Rabelais (Paris, Champion, 1912-).

322 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
medical knowledge of his time, but appears not notably to
have advanced it. Dissections are advised in Gargan-
tua's letter to his son.
Toward the close of 1532 appeared his Pantagruel,
and about the same time he wrote his famous letter to
Erasmus, calling him his father and mother in learning,
" the tutelary genius of letters, the invincible champion
of truth." Two years later, after the Pantagruel had
been condemned by the Sorbonne, its author went to
Rome, as physician in the suite of the most distinguished
of his patrons, Jean du Bellay, who was soon to be made
Cardinal. This Roman journey over, Rabelais later in
the same year, 1534, published his Gargantua; which
told the life and deeds of Pantagruel's father. Appar
ently this book also was condemned by the Sorbonne,
perhaps, like the Pantagruel, for its obscenity. At all
events, its vituperative epithets and a'buse of monkdom
made it hateful to those theologians.
Almost at the moment of the publication of the
Gargantua, the posting of the famous placards against
the Mass, throughout Paris in the night of October
seventeenth, turned the King from tolerance to persecu
tion. Accord between the liberal minded of both parties
was made impossible, and the next year the publication
of Calvin's Christian Institute prepared the issue for the
eventual arbitrament of the sword. Not long afterwards
Rabelais left Lyons quietly, and accompanied Cardinal
du Bellay to Italy and Rome. There he obtained a papal
absolution for abandoning the Franciscans for the Bene
dictines and following the secular profession of medicine.
Through the next years he led a life of study, medical
practice, and — prudence. He expunged the most hostile
passages of the Gargantua, and kept within the protection
of his powerful friends, among whom was Queen Mar
guerite of Navarre. It was probably through her that in
1545 he obtained from the King the privilege to publish
the third book of the Heroic Deeds of Pantagruel, and
correct and republish the two previous books. The third.

FRANQOIS RABELAIS 323
book, in its Rabelaisean way, had mainly to do with the
question of Panurge's marriage. Its matter was not un
related to discussions then rife among the ladies. But
the sunny weather gave way before some months of in
tolerant reaction, when Rabelais again found need to
retire from Paris, and indeed from France. Several years
later, in 155 1, the Cardinal du Bellay gave him the cure
of St-Martin-de-Meudon, which he held for two years,
discharging its duties through a vicar. In January 1552
appeared the fourth and last certainly genuine book of
the Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Pantagruel, with the
author's name attached. It contained enormous satires
on the papacy; but it appeared at a time when Rabelais
had many protectors, and when the policy of Henry II
was for the moment anti-papal. He saved himself from
the reproach of Protestantism by calling Calvin the
demoniac impostor of Geneva. Nevertheless this book
was soon condemned by the Sorbonne, and the next year
the author died.
Rabelais's omnivorous mind sought to engulf the entire
learning and knowledge available in France — a France
instructed by Italy as well as by Erasmus, a France which
had its own Bude, who was becoming a colossal scholar
when in 1500 the Adages of Erasmus threw the light of
a penetrating intelligence over the classic literature. By
the time of Rabelais's student years, the work of such
scholars had made possible the study of Greek, and
Rabelais gained a reading and writing knowledge of that
tongue. Yet in his youth and early manhood, men still
held to the educational matter of the prior time. In
France, as in Italy, the mediaeval past was reviled rather
than actually discarded; and the idea of the value of en
cyclopaedic conventional knowledge gained from books,
with little independent thought or observation, still en
veloped the mind of Rabelais. But he satirizes, somewhat
imaginatively, the old curriculum and its stupefying effect
upon the giant prince Gargantua, whose excellent parts
had already been evinced in the dirtiest chapter of the

324 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
book. He is instructed by a great doctor,2 Master Tubal
Holof ernes, who spends five years with him on the alpha
bet, till he can recite it backwards; and keeps him for
thirteen years, six months, and two weeks more on
Donatus and other mediaeval school books, and then six
teen years on others, when the old fellow dies. Next,
another old cougher (tousseux) takes him through other
antiquated books, including the Doctrinale, a grammar
which not all the scholars of that time disapproved.3 In
this way Gargantua was made stupider and stupider.
A neighboring prince comes to visit King Grangousier,
having in his train a sprightly youth Eudemon. The
latter exhibits his courtly accomplishments, and Gran
gousier is enraged over the futile education of his son.
Gargantua is forthwith turned over to the care of Pano-
crates, the tutor of Eudemon, and sets forth in their
company for Paris.4 There, when the young giant has
casually taken the bells of Notre Dame to string around
his mare's neck, more ridicule is cast on current ways of
speech and education in the person of the preposterous
pedant who comes to plead for their return.
This picture of the old education and its teachers, and
the effect on the pupil, is loud caricature and palpable mis
representation. And when in the twenty-third and fourth
chapters, Rabelais describes the new education of Gar
gantua, — after a draught of hellebore has purged his
mind of the old stuff, — then we find a converse idealizing
exaggeration, which befits this romance. Gargantua is
instructed in all the learning of the time, and practiced
in the martial exercises befitting a gentleman — the in
fluence of CastigUone's Courtier is apparent. His studies
are encyclopaedic, and, one may add, administered in
ways similar to those prevailing for years or centuries in
the colleges. Yet Rabelais introduces novel ideas. Gar-
gantua's education is carried on through hours of repast,
2 I, Chapter XIV, Sophiste, i. c. scholastic, in the more prudent editions
of 1542; docteur en theologie, in the edition of 1535.
3 Cf The Mediaeval Mind, Vol. II, pp. 152-154.
4 It has been noted that the names of the representatives of the new
learning are Greek.

FRANCOIS RABELAIS 3^
repose, and recreation : he learns the stars in the wakeful
hours of night, and the nature and qualities of the food
he eats by hearing the ancient authorities read aloud at
meals; and from tricks at cards he gains a taste for math
ematics.5 In rainy weather
" they did recreate themselves in bottling up [bailing] of hay, in
cleaving and sawing of wood, and in threshing sheaves of corn at
the barn. Then they studied the art of painting or carving. . . .
They went likewise to see the drawing of metals, or the casting of
great ordnance; how the lapidaries did work; as also the gold
smiths and cutters of precious stones. Nor did they omit to visit
the alchemists, money coiners, upholsterers, weavers, velvet-workers,
watchmakers, looking-glass framers, printers, organists, and other
such kind of artificers, and, everywhere giving them somewhat to
drink, did learn and consider the industry and invention of the
trades. They went also to hear the public lectures . . . the
pleading of gentle lawyers, and sermons of evangelical preachers." 6
Rabelais joins physical to intellectual training, regu
lates the hours of rising and repose, and advocates a diet
suitable to periods of active exercise, or again to the in
door pursuits of rainy days.7
In the next generation, and the next book, (written two
years before the first, however,) Gargantua's glorious son,
Pantagruel, likewise goes to Paris for his education, but
without the dead weight of a youth besotted with the
pedantries of the past, as Rabelais would deem them.
Pantagruel examines the library of St. Victor, and gives
a list of books, filthy and ridiculous. The eighth chap
ter contains Gargantua's letter setting before his son the
program of a truly liberal education, such as, indeed, he
had himself received in part. It opens with thanks to
God for permitting the writer to see his bald old age re-
flourish in his son's youth. But it would be small joy to
see his body continued in his son, if the young prince's
soul were degenerate. Not that he distrusts him, but
would encourage him to advance from good to better.
5 Cardanus (see post, Chapter XXXII) had this idea.
8 I, Chapter XXIV, Urquhart's Translation (1653).
7 Cf. Lefranc, Introduction, pp. XCIV, sqq.

326 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
" And that which I now write unto thee is not so much that thou
should'st live in this virtuous course, as that thou should'st rejoice
in so living and having lived. . . .
" But although my deceased father of happy memory, Grangou-
sier, had bent his best endeavors to make me profit in all perfection
and political knowledge, and my labour and study . . . went be
yond his desire, nevertheless, as thou may'st well understand, the
time then was not so proper and fit for learning as it is at present,
neither had I plenty of such good masters as thou hast had. For
that time was darksome, and savouring of the infelicity and calam
ity of the Goths, who had brought to destruction all good litera
ture, which in my age hath by the divine goodness been restored
unto its former light and dignity, and, that with such amendment
and increase of the knowledge, that now hardly should I be ad
mitted unto the first form of the little grammar-schoolboys, I who
in my youthful days was, and that justly, reputed the most learned
of that age. . . .
" Now all the Sciences (Disciplines) are restored; the languages
are established, Greek, without which a man may be ashamed to
account him a scholar, Hebrew, Chaldean (i. e. Syriac or Aramaic),
Latin ; and printed books are now in use, so elegant and correct, an
invention of my age by divine inspiration, as artillery is a counter-
invention through the suggestion of the devil. All the world is
full of learned men, of most skilled preceptors, of vast libraries ;
and it appears to me a truth that neither in Plato's time, or Cice
ro's, or Papinian's, was there ever such opportunity for studying as
we see to-day; and henceforth it behooves none to show himself in
society who is not well polished in the shop of Minerva. ... So
much is this so, that I, at the age where I am, have been con
strained to learn Greek, which I had not despised like Cato, but
had no leisure to acquire in my youth. And willingly I delight in
the reading of Plutarch's Morals, the admirable Dialogues of
Plato, the Monuments of Pausanias, and the Antiquities of Ath-
enaeus, in waiting on the hour when it shall please God, my Crea
tor, to call and command me to depart from this earth.
" Wherefore, my son, I admonish thee to employ thy youth to
good profit both in studies and the virtues. Thou art at Paris,
where the laudable examples of many brave men may stir thy mind,
and hast likewise thy preceptor Epistemon, who by his lively and
vocal teaching may instruct thee.
" I intend and will have it that thou learn the languages per
fectly, — first of all the Greek, as Quintilian will have it, secondly
the Latin, and then the Hebrew for the Holy Scripture's sake, and
the Chaldean likewise ; and that thou form thy style as to Greek in
imitation of Plato, as to Latin, upon Cicero. Let there be no his
tory which thou shalt not have ready in thy memory ; and to this

FRANQOIS RABELAIS 327
end books of Cosmography will help thee much. Of the liberal
arts of Geometry, Arithmetic and Music, I gave thee some taste
when thou were yet little, about five or six years old. Follow
them further, and of Astronomy learn all the laws ; but I beg you
to leave out the divinations of Astrology and the art of Lullius, as
vanities and abuses. Of the Civil Law, I would have thee know
the texts by heart and compare them with Philosophy.
" Now, in matter of the knowledge of the works of Nature, I
would have thee apply thyself attentively; so that there be neither
sea, river, or fountain, of which thou dost not know the fishes ; all
the birds of the air, all the several kinds of trees and shrubs
whether in forests or orchards; all the herbs of the earth, all the
metals hidden in the belly of the abyss, the precious stones of the
Orient and the South : let nothing be unknown to thee.
" Then carefully peruse the books of the Greek, Arabian and
Latin physicians, not despising the Talmudists and Cabalists, and
by frequent anatomies get thee a perfect knowledge of the other
world [the Microcosm] which is Man. And for some hours of
the day pay your respects to (commence a visiter) the Scriptures,
first the New Testament in Greek and the Epistles of the Apostles,
and next the Old Testament in Hebrew.
"In fine, let me see a bottomless pit of knowledge; for when
you grow up and are a man, you will have to leave this tranquillity
and repose of study, and learn arms and chivalry in order to de
fend my house, and succour our friends in all their needs against
the assaults of evil-doers. And shortly I would have you try how
much you have profitted, which you cannot do better than by
maintaining publicly Theses and Conclusiones 5 in every branch of
knowledge against all comers, and by haunting the company of
learned men.
" But, since, as the wise Solomon says, wisdom entereth not into
an evil mind, and knowledge without conscience is but the ruin of
the soul, it behooves thee to serve, love, and fear God, and in Him
place all thy thoughts and all thy hope; and by Faith built up of
charity be so linked to Him as never to be overthrown by sin. Sus
pect the abuses of the world. Set not thy heart on vanity, for this
life passes, but the Word of God endureth forever. Be serviceable
to all thy neighbors, and love them as thyself. Respect thy pre
ceptors. Shun the company of people thou wouldst not resemble,
and receive not in vain the graces which God has bestowed upon
thee." 9
Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century had no thought
of forming his Greek and Latin styles on Plato and
8 Compare those of Pico della Mirandola, post, Chapter XXX.
9 Urquhart's translation with emendations,

328 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Cicero ; but for the rest he advocated and tried to realize
a similar program of study and enlightenment. No man
in the sixteenth century felt more deeply than he the need
of an adequate knowledge of the original tongues. And
his ideal of knowledge, for every scholar if one will, was
encyclopaedic. He had as strong a hate as Rabelais for
scholastic obfuscations, and was quite as eager for the ad
vancement of the physical sciences. But living when the
interests of theology were absorbing, he found scant sym
pathy or collaboration. Only a lack of literary feeling
for the classics, a lack of this sort of humanism, marked
the difference between this thirteenth century Franciscan
and sixteenth century scholars, like Rabelais.
From these general approvals and disapprovals shared
by Rabelais with others of his time, one turns to the con
victions more peculiar to him, which he expressed with
power and temperamental vividness. One may note these
factors of his individuality, although one cannot analyze
convincingly this .abounding imaginative and rational
genius, this insatiate man who would reject no positive
element of life.
Indeed this would seem to be Rabelais's broadest prin
ciple: — that is to say, the nature of man is good; his de
sires, his concupiscent lusts, his natural actions, are good,
and when unthwarted, make for life and joy. It is all
from God. He recognized this with week-day devout-
ness. But he was utterly untheological; and had no faith
in any dogma of original sin. For him no subtle poison
pervaded natural desire, making it at best venially sinful.
He worried not at all about sin. But he voided the ex
crements of his wrath upon every drivelling sham which
extended its obscene tentacles across the path of life.
Yes, yes, says he to the imaginary reader who might re
proach him for the fooleries he writes : — you are as much
to blame for reading them; but both of us are better de
serving of pardon than that
" rabble of squint-minded fellows dissembling and counterfeit
saints, demure lookers, hypocrites, pretended zealots, tough friars,

FRANgOIS RABELAIS 329
buskin-monks, and other such sects of men, who disguise themselves
like masquers to deceive the world. . . . Fly from these men,
abhor and hate them as much as I do, and upon my faith you will
find yourself the better for it. And if you desire to be good Pan-
tagruelists, that is to say, to live in peace, joy, health, making your
selves always merry, never trust those men that always peep out
through a little hole."
The heart and soul of Rabelais are in this last passage
of the second book, given here mainly in the translation,
with which Cavalier Urquhart whiled away his captivity
in the Tower of London. Cast out this starveling mum
mery, ye who would be followers of the good Pantagruel,
and live in peace, joy, health, making always good cheer.
And this Pantagruelism is tolerant, kindly, and forgiving.
For in all Pantagruelists there is that " by virtue whereof
they will bear with anything that floweth from a good,
free, and loyal heart." 10 There should be also the salt of
Stoicism, as Rabelais puts it later in life, when he speaks
of Pantagruelism as " a certain gaiety of spirit cured in
contempt of chance and fortune." 1X With prodigious
humor, wit, poetic imagination, Rabelais exemplified, il
luminated, or befouled these principles, making them into
an epic of royal giants, giants in the joy of mind and joy
of lusty living, all one and whole and free from care and
rancor. To this end he devotes his learning, his power
of making borrowed stories live in a new pertinency; to
this end he devotes his flood of words, and the images,
the metaphors and similes, in which he thinks, and on
which his theme moves as on pinions. No ideal beauty
monopolizes any throne. Why not rather enthrone the
belly — Gaster — whose voraciousness is the moving en
ergy of life? Gaster is the master of arts, crafts and
inventions, the mover of the progress of the world.
Gaster indeed may symbolize this inspiring need and mov
ing power as well as any other energy in that life whose
first cry is Gargantua's : a boire ! a boire ! a boire ! 12
A gorgeous illustration of this benevolent love of joy-
10 Bk. Ill Prologue, cf. an example of this tolerance Bk. Ill, Chapter II.
11 Bk. IV, Author's prologue.
" Bk. I, Chapter VI. Cf ¦ Bk. IV, Ch. LVII and XLJ,

33o THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
ous life, and contempt for whatever pinches or addles it,
is the abbey of Theleme, with its name taken from the
Greek ftr'A^a, meaning will or wish. The lusty monk
who did such feats in the war against the tyrant Picrochole
is to be rewarded by Gargantua. Sundry fat abbeys are
offered him; he will have none of them, but will build one
after his own mind. Gargantua bestows on him the coun
try of Theleme by the river Loire ; and the two kindred
spirits found the new order upon the full contrary of all
established rules of monkhood. There shall be no wall
about the abbey, seeing that all others are walled about;
nor shall there be any clock or dial, since what dotage is it
for anyone to direct his courses by the sound of a bell, and
not rather by his own discretion; beautiful women shall
not be kept out, but only the ugly, nor shall any vow bind
monk or nun to stay, when they choose to depart. Inas
much as other Orders take the vows of chastity, poverty,
and obedience, it was ordained that those who would
should marry, and every one should be rich and live at
liberty. The abbey was built in grandeur and magnificence, with
alabaster fountains and arcaded luxuries; with libraries in
every tongue. Over its great gates were emblazoned
verses forbidding bigots, hypocrites, dissemblers, attor
neys, barristers, usurers, thieves, liars, drunkards, canni
bals, to enter; but inviting all noble blades and brisk and
handsome people, faithful expounders of the Scriptures,
and lovely ladies, stately, proper, fair, and mirthful. The
ladies had bowers and courts where they might bathe,
shoot at the butts, and ride and fly their falcons, witness
the tilting, and in fine, have every recreation suited to
ladies of high birth. They slept in embroidered beds,
their chambers hung with tapestry; perfumers waited on
them in the mornings, and gave to each a casket of choice
odours. They were apparelled to suit their pleasure,
stockings of scarlet or crimson, slippers of red or violet,
smocks of any color, coats of satin, damask, velvet, gowns
of cloth of gold or satin: raiment to suit the seasons.
The men were dressed as gallantly, and every morning

FRANCOIS RABELAIS 331
received word of what the ladies were to wear, so that
they might array themselves in harmony.
" Their life was spent not in laws, statutes or rules, but at their
own free will and pleasure. They rose from bed when they
thought good, drank, ate, worked, slept, when the desire came to
them. None did waken them, none constrained them either to
drink or eat, nor to do any other thing: for so had Gargantua
established it. The Rule of their order had but one clause: Do
what thou wilt. Because persons that are free, well born, well
educated, and accustomed to good company, have by nature an in
stinct and spur which prompts them to virtuous acts and withdraws
them from vice. This they call honor. But the same people
when they are oppressed and bound by base subjection and con
straint, turn aside from the noble affections by which they were
freely inclined to virtue, to shake off and break this bond of servi
tude. For we always attempt forbidden things, and covet what is
denied us."
By this liberty, continues Rabelais, they entered into
laudable emulation to do all of them what they saw did
please one. So if one said let us drink, they would all
drink, or let us go a-walking, they would all go, or a-
hunting or a-hawking. So nobly were they taught that
no man or woman of them but could read, write, sing, play
upon musical instruments, speak five or six languages and
compose verse and prose in them. Never were seen
knights so brave and noble, or better skilled in fight on
foot or horse; never ladies so proper and charming, or
more apt in needle work and every act becoming a woman.
And when it came to any man to leave the abbey, he took
with him his ladylove and married her, and lived together
in devoted love and happiness all the rest of their lives.
Rabelais's broad approvals and the butts of his satire
and laughter bore not only on religion, but on the greedy
or pettifogging affairs of men. Nothing could be funnier
than his satire upon the windy irrelevancy of pleadings
and arguments in court.13 Yet what a creature his humor
and toleration could build out of knavery, the character
of Panurge will testify, as wonderful a creation as Fal-
staff. The broad happy acceptance of life includes the
13 Bk. II, Chapter X-XIII.

332 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
cheerful scamp, let him but be clever and funny enough :
and of course Rabelais's whole setting forth of life has
always the permitted exaggerations of comedy and satire.
But the comic does not exclude feeling which sometimes
is as profound as it is large and beautiful. A Lilliputian
may weep over a sparrow's death; but Pantagruel tells
the tale of the strange announcement of the death of Pan,
connects it with the tragedy on Calvary, and remains
silent in contemplation. " A little while after we saw
tears flowing from his eyes as big as ostrich eggs." Or
again, one may find a seriousness in Rabelais's very comic
picture of the underworld, where Emperors and Kings
and Popes suffer ridiculous degradations, while philoso
phers foot it bravely. His own Kings, Grangousier and
Gargantua, are humane in their statecraft, and long-suffer
ing and forgiving, even when war is forced on them.
The religious or theological satire in the works of Rab
elais raises the question whether he belonged to the Re
form. We naturally tend to classify the incipiency of
great movements by the clearer determinations of their
maturity. Their vague beginnings may have carried little
consciousness of the later purpose and resolve. Rabelais
was no member of the Reform as its purport was stated by
Calvin. The two men were repugnant and hostile. But
Rabelais loved fact and verity; and as a penetrating
scholar, he sought the source and despised the gloss.
This was his way in studying the Civil Law, in which he
was no tyro. He would cast aside the Commentators,
and understand the Pandects for himself. So in religion,
he was evangelical, looking back to the sure utterances of
the Gospels and the contemporary testimony of the Epis
tles. His mind rejected the accretions of ecclesiasticism,
which had no warrant in Christ's gospel. Greed and
corruption were the working forces of this sacerdotal elab
oration. Moreover, sacerdotal rules and prohibitions
checked the flood and joyful play of life. Rabelais was
a man of the sixteenth century, his pulses throbbing with
its living currents and with the red blood of his own lusty
nature. Continence, abstinence, any lessening of life's

FRANQOIS RABELAIS 333
play, were in themselves as abominable as the false pre
rogatives and monstrous hypocrisy, which they did not
even cloak. In accordance both with his nature and his
rational principles, he hated the jealous, empty theologi
ans of the Sorbonne, the monks with their rules and dirty
lies, and the greed of Rome which fleeced the nations ab
surdly. All these detestable things were the monstrous
offspring of Antiphysis, malignantly brought forth to spite
the Beauty and Harmony, which Physis, that is to say,
Nature, gave birth to in the beginning.
From such matter of Rabelaisean contempt and disap
proval the Rabelaisean wit and phantasy produced the
mordant, yet side-splitting, chapters of the fourth book.
After Pantagruel and his ship's company have passed by
the Island of Shrovetide and have had their adventures in
the land of Silly Sausages, they come to the Island of the
Papefigues, whose people have been set upon and enslaved
for insulting an image of the Pope adored by the Paps-
maniacs. Sailing on, the next day they reach the blessed
islands of these same Maniacal Papists, where they are
treated with hospitality and veneration because one of
their company, even Panurge, once had seen God, that is
to say, the God on earth, to wit, the Pope. One reads
and learns what, save by him, unspeakable ridicule Rabe
lais could heaD on papist observances and superstitions,
and on their foundation, to wit, Papal Decretals, Clem-
entinae Extravagantes, and the rest, and the miracles
wrought even by their parchment, perhaps the crowning
miracle of all being their subtile power of drawing gold
to Rome. And then, as the good company sail on, frozen
words, wafted from the cries of men battling in hyper
borean regions, are heard as they melt in warmer air.
Once more a landing is made on the Island of Gaster, the
great belly-master of all arts and sciences. Then the ship
sails on, Pantagruel sleeping softly on his quarter deck
with a Greek Heliodorus in his hand.

CHAPTER XIV
POETIC ENNOBLEMENT OF FRENCH THROUGH
IMITATION OF THE CLASSICS
In the year 1549 appeared La Defense et Illustration
de la Langue Francaise, a little book whose sails were
filled with young enthusiasms. The author, Joachim du
Bellay, " gentilhomme angevin," a youth of twenty-four,
was aided and inspired by his friend Pierre de Ronsard,
" gentilhomme vendomois," one year his senior. The two
were destined to be the most memorable of the group of
poets who dubbed themselves " La Pleiade." The name
of Ronsard became as that of a prince in literature.
The Defense was a manifesto of a new school of French
poetry; a precursory and necessarily rash attempt to set
forth principles, if not a system. It contained inconsist
encies, confusions, fallacies. Perhaps no critic has suc
ceeded altogether in stating its doctrines for us. It was
at all events a clarion pronunciamento in favor of French
as the literary vehicle for Frenchmen. Rejecting the old
forms of French verse, it defended the capacities of the
mother tongue for the most glorious kinds of poetry.
But the full resources of the mother tongue should be
utilized, and above all, there was need to ennoble its liter
ary forms through that veritable imitation of the Greek
and Latin Classics which lay in appropriating the truth
and nobility presented in them.1
The author, or authors, of the Defense seem to start
from the idea that the weakness or excellence of languages
depends on the arbitrary will of men. If some, having
been " plus curieusement reglees," become richer than
others, this is not due to any inherent felicity, but solely
1 The modern, and especially the English, use of the word " Illustration "
diverts attention from its meaning in the title to the Defense* where it
means magnifying or rendering illustrious. 2
334 .-.¦¦ . . '

LA PLEIADE 335
to the " artifice et industrie des hommes." Hence the
folly of those scholars who think French unsuited to let
ters and erudition. If our own tongue is less copious than
Greek, the fault lies not in it, but in the rudeness of our
ancestors who chose to leave to posterity examples, rather
than precepts, of excellence. But —
" Je n'estime pourtant nostre vulgaire, tel qu'il est maintenant, es-
tre si vil et abject, comme le font ces ambitieux admirateurs des
langues Greque et Latine. . . . Et qui voudra de bien pres y
regarder, trouvera que nostre langue Francoise n'est si pauvre
qu'elle ne puysse rendre fidelement ce qu'elle emprunte des autres ;
si infertile, qu'elle ne puysse produyre de soy quelque fruict de
bonne invention, au moyen de l'industrie et diligence des cultiveurs
d'icelle. . . ."
Translations will not suffice to raise our language.
The Romans did not omit this labor : but chiefly they en
riched their tongue " immitant les meilleurs aucteurs
Grecz, se transformant en eux, les devorant, et apres les
avoir bien digerez, les convertissant en sang et nourri-
ture." And each selected the Greek author that best
suited his own talents and the purpose which he had in
view. The chief point of art lies in this " imitation." Let
him who would imitate understand that it is not so easy
to copy (suivre) the virtues of a good author, and pene
trate to his hidden qualities. It is profitless to imitate the
old French authors; for that is but to present our lan
guage with what it has already. If Virgil and Cicero had
been content to do this, Latin literature might have
stopped with Ennius and Lucretius.
Yet translations are serviceable, especially of the
science of the Greeks, so that all may study it, and not
have to spend their time on the language. Indeed, that
our men to-day are of less worth in science than the an
cients, is chiefly owing to the study of the Greek and Latin.
" For if the time which we consume in learning the said
languages, had been devoted to the study of the Sciences,
surely Nature is not become so sterile as not to have

336 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
brought forth Platos and Aristotles in our own time.
Of course Du Bellay had no thought of applying this rather
two-edged argument to those who sought to excel in
poetry and eloquence. He did not mean to depreciate
the study of the ancient tongues ; on the contrary, he main
tains that no one can write well in French without a
knowledge of Latin at least. But he pours ridicule on
those " reblanchisseurs de murailles " who think to imitate
the ancients in their own tongues, by copying their phrases,
making poems on half lines of Virgil, and mouthing in
Cicero's sentences. As if through such assembling one
could rebuild an ancient edifice !
As for our old French poetry, continues Du Bellay in
the second part of the Defense, William de Loris and
Jean de Meun are worth reading " pour y voir quasi
comme une premiere imaige de la langue Francoise, ven
erable pour son antiquite." Coming nearer our own
times, Jean le Maire de Beiges seems the first to have
illustre our tongue, enriching it with poetic words and
forms still in use. As for our very best poets after him,
I would say " qu'ilz ont bien ecrit, qu'ilz ont illustre notre
Langue, que la France leur est obligee ; mais aussi diroy
je bien qu'on pourroit trouver en nostre Langue . . . une
forme de Poesie beaucoup plus exquise, laquele il faudroit
chercher en ces vieux Grecz et Latins, non point es auc-
teurs Francoise."
To be sure, natural aptitude without learning can do
more than " Doctrine sans le naturel." But learning is
needed for the " amplification " of our tongue, which I am
discussing, " and 1 advise those who aspire to this glory,
to imitate the good authors, Greek and Roman, and in
deed Italian, Spanish and others." Abandon the old
French forms — " Rondeaux, Ballades, Vyrelaiz, Chantz
Royaulx, Chansons, et autres telles episseries, qui cor-
rumpent le goust de nostre Langue, et ne servent si non a
porter temoinguaige de notre ignorance." Rather, imi
tate the epigrams of a Martial; the " pitoyables Elegies,"
of Ovid, or a Tibullus or Propertius, throwing in some
of those ancient fables, which are no small ornament of

LA PLEIADE 337
poetry; — " chante moy ces Odes, incognues encor' de la
Muse Francoyse. . . . Sonne moy ces beaux Sonnetz, non
moins docte que plaisante invention Italienne." Adopt
also into the " famille Francoyse " those tripping hende-
casyllables, as of a Catullus or a Pontanus. Thus Du
Bellay holds up for imitation those exquisite Italians, Pe
trarch, Sannazaro, Pontanus, even as he would Horace,
Ovid, and still greater classic writers.
As for subjects, let our poet choose the noble ones —
" quelque'un de ces beaux vieulx Romans Francoys, comme
un Lancelot, un Tristan, ou autres; et en fay renaitre au
monde un admirable Iliade, et laborieuse Eneide." Let
him take fragments from our old French Chronicles as
Livy did from ancient annals; and build therefrom a
noble history, with harangues like those of Thueydides
and Sallust. Would that our age had " des Mecenes et
des Augustes " for honor nourishes art; and science will
not flourish when despised by all. Antiquity testifies that
heroes need poets for their fame — " a la verite, sans la
divine Muse d'Homere, le mesme tumbeau qui couvroit le
corps d'Achille eust aussi accable son renom " — a senti
ment expressed in the twelfth century by John of Salisbury
in the Prologue to his Policraticus.2
But Du Bellay is not too proud to advise his poet (es
pecially when he is at work upon a long narrative poem)
to enlarge and enliven his language with the terms of
artisans and mechanics, as well as of the learned: — let
him keep company with " mariniers, fondeurs, peintres,
engraveurs et autres, savoir leurs inventions, les noms des
matieres, des outils, et les termes usites en leurs arts et
metiers, pour tirer de la. ces belles comparaisons et vives
descriptions de toutes choses."
Du Bellay speaks of many other matters, of rhyme
and rhythm, and the correct way of declaiming; and
passes on to an eloquent appeal to Frenchmen to write
in French; as Virgil and Cicero wrote in Latin, and Pe
trarch, Boccaccio and Bembo wrote in Italian, however
well they wrote in Latin too. On, ye Frenchmen, finally
2 The Mediaeval Mind, II, p. 141.

338 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
concludes the peroration: seize the antique treasures;
make them your own. Recall the fashion of your Gallic
Hercules, " tirant les peuples apres lui par leurs oreilles
avec une chaine attachee a sa langue ! "
The precepts, the tone and temper, the general tenor,
of the Defense are strengthened and illuminated in the
prefaces of Ronsard to his hopeless epic La Franciade,
and in his Abrege de I' art poetique Francois. These later
proclamations from the prince of poets are as sonorous
and striking as anything uttered in the first enthusiasm of
the Defense: — " C'est un crime de lese-majeste d'aban-
donner le language de son pays, vivant et florissant, pour
vouloir deterrer [disinter] je ne sais quelle cendre des
anciens." 3
But the grand illustration of whatever principles the
Defense intended to set forth was afforded by the poetic
work of Ronsard and those starlets of the Pleiade whose
lights paled in his effulgence. Their work, moreover,
makes a fuller disclosure of the influence working in their
manifesto, and of the fact that while they and all the
world regarded them as innovating spirits, they had their
definite antecedents. The genius of Alexandrianism
worked in them, the genius of that school of epigonic
Greek poetry that had made its home in the Alexandria
of the Ptolemies, a school which was learned, meticulous
and precieux, and openly made form its idol.4 Their
young talents were also inspired by another and a differ
ent daintiness, that of Petrarch, or perhaps that of his
followers, the Petrarchists. Du Bellay began with the
imitative sensibility and affectation of that school, and
later declared his revolt from it. Ronsard also passed on
and through its atmosphere.
Still nearer influences touched the Pleiade, from French
poets scarcely older than themselves, whose home was
the flourishing and many-minded city of Lyons. Among
3 Printed in rather impossible small type in Laveaux's edition of the
Oeuvres de P. de Ronsard, Tomes, III and VI.
4 The very name Pliiade had been applied to a group of seven poets in
Alexandrian times.

LA PLEIADE 339
these was Maurice Sceve, whose Delie appeared only in
1544; also Pontus de Tyard, no Lyonnais by birth, but
closely connected with that city. He was himself to be
numbered with the Pleiade ; as was Daurat, the admirable
classical scholar, who revealed Aeschylus and Pindar and
Homer to Ronsard and Baif.5
Of the Pleiade, Du Bellay early won note by his De
fense and the Olive, a book of imitated or occasionally
translated sonnets. He was a sensitive soul. If his
Olive showed little beyond apt imitation, his own senti
ments and feelings came to self-expression in his Regrets,
a few years later. From his twenty-eighth to his thirty-
third year, he lived in Rome, in the train of his relative,
Cardinal Du Bellay. There this rather melancholy soul
suffered from homesickness, and tended to withdraw into
spiritual seclusion on account of the same affliction of
deafness, which had so much to do with driving Ronsard
from the life of a courtier to the life of letters. Du
Bellay was also stung, if not afflicted, by the meanness and
poltroonery of ecclesiastical court life at Rome. His dis
gust, put frankly in his volume of Regrets published on
his return to France, nearly cost him the countenance of
his noble relative, the Cardinal.
But his stay in Rome had done much for him, especially
as he had loved a veritable Roman girl. It brought him
close to the realization of his humanistic dreams of the
loves and life of the good old world; perhaps it lured
him, against his principles, to write Latin hendecasyllables
like Catullus. At all events, with such waves of feeling
as had risen in him, his tongue, indeed his self, was
loosed ; and found expression in sonnets, which draw us to
one who was so touchingly sympathetic with himself and
the human yearnings symbolized in his own sensibilities.
Of the humanist poets of his time and race he was the
most personal, the most impulsively and naturally expres-
5 For these influences on the Pleiade see Brunetiere, Hist, de la Lit.
Francoise classique, T. I. pp. 233-261. Besides those already named,
fitienne Jodelle and Remy Belleau make up the seven. The names change,
however,

340 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
sive.6 This charming poet might have had much more
to say had not death cut him short.
In the prodigious fame which was his while he lived
the equal friend of kings, Ronsard was as fortunate as
Petrarch. Their lots differed after death. For Pe
trarch then became the symbolic idol of the coming time ;
while Ronsard's fame was clipped by the unfriendly crit
icism of Malherbe. There was a curious coincidence in
the failure of what each would like to have regarded as his
master-piece; for the fame of Petrarch's Africa existed
only in anticipation and for a factitious moment just after
the poet's death; and La Franciade fell moribund from
the press in spite of Ronsard's enormous fame in 1572,
when it appeared.
The effect, if not the recognized influence of Ronsard,
endured. He is still one of the greatest names in French
literature ; and while he lived, he was the prince of poets.
Prodigies were connected with him. His birth, which
he himself alleged to have taken place on September the
eleventh, 1524, the day of the battle of Pavia when
Francis I was taken prisoner, was thought a providential
glory compensating France for the disaster of that day.7
Pierre de Ronsard came of good family, his
father Louis having been so highly regarded by royalty
that he was sent to Spain in charge of the two children
of Francis I, who on the King's liberation were given as
hostages for the performance of the Treaty of Madrid.
Louis de Ronsard had some taste for letters, but esteem
ing a career at court more highly, he placed his son as
page in the household of the dauphin, in 1536, when the
lad was about eleven years old. Soon the dauphin died,
and Ronsard was passed on to the service of his younger
brother, Charles, Duke of Orleans. Next he was sent to
0 On Joachim du Bellay see £. Faguet, Seizieme siecle; as well as
Brunetiere, o. c. I, pp. 299-322.
7 The poet may have been born on September nth, 1524. The ab
surdity of the statement in the text, which goes back to Binet, his friend
and biographer, lies in the fact that the battle of Pavia took place Febru
ary 24th, 1525!! La vie de P. de Ronsard by Claude Binet (1586), is
short and interesting. There is a critical edition by Paul Laumonier
(Paris, 1909).

LA PLEIADE 34 1
Scotland in the train of the King's daughter, married to
James Stuart. She did not live long, and Ronsard, still
little more than a child, returned to the service of the
Duke. His biographers report that he soon excelled
his fellows in courtly and martial accomplishments; and
indeed he was a graceful, charming youth. He was al
ready fond of poetry. Once more he was transferred to
the service of another royal master, Henry, now the dau
phin, and destined to become king as Henry II, and to
die young, wounded by the lance of Montgomery in a
tournament. Sundry voyages completed the education and widened
the horizon of the young page. But he became afflicted
with deafness, which strengthened his plea to be allowed
to devote himself to letters, or as his prudent father would
have it, to the Church. The Church faded from Ron
sard's view on his father's death in 1544, which removed
the only obstacle to a literary life.
The young man had already found his teacher in Dorat
(or Daurat) who soon was made head of the College de
Coqueret. There Ronsard became fully and devotedly
his scholar, along with Bai'f , still a boy. Others who were
to belong to the Pleiade came, among them Du Bellay, in
1549, whom Ronsard had met on a journey from Poic-
tiers to Paris. Binet, Ronsard's later very humble friend
and biographer, calls Dorat " la source de la fontaine,"
from which all this band of poets drank of the " eaux
Pieriennes." Under him, (with some instruction from
Tournebe as well) Ronsard gained a penetrating knowl
edge of the classical Greek poetry, and equipped himself
from the Latin arsenal as well. He studied Homer; he
studied the great Greek tragedies ; he gave himself to Pin
dar. With equal zest he studied the Alexandrians, Theo
critus, Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius, Aratus. When
Henri Estienne published his Anacreon in 1554, Ronsard
gave himself with delight to those sweet verses which we
recognize as " Anacreontea," but not as the composition
of the Teian master. The Pleiade of course accepted
them as from him, and were delighted to find a classic

342 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
so sweetly to their taste. Ronsard discovered that the
torrents of Pindar were rather rough and difficult:
" Anacreon me plait, le doux Anacreon."
And he would seem to have turned from Pindar to these
smoother forms of verse and feeling. Doubtless one in
fluence and then another might thrust itself into his mood,
and take form beneath his facile pen. His mind, his na
ture, was so thoroughly impregnated with classic reading,
that only under drastic contemporary impulsion (as in his
Discours des Mis ere s de ce Temps) could he write alto
gether from himself. Moreover, he changed and re
arranged his poems so constantly throughout his life, that
the critic moves on unsafe ground in attempting to arrange
his work chronologically, and assign to one period the in
spiration of one classic poet, and to another period the
dominant influence of another. He absorbed the influ
ence of the Latin poets quite as freely as the Greek, and
rather more unconsciously. He owed great debts to Vir
gil always, and most dreadfully in La Franciade. Its first
four books (all that he composed) so exhausted the epi
sodes of the Aeneid, that one wonders with what material
he could have carried his unhappy epic any further.
Horace, and the Horatian forms also influenced him con
stantly; and perhaps it was from the good sense of Horace
(which had kept him from essaying Pindaric strains)
that Ronsard drew a like reluctance in the end.
The classics, Latin, Greek, including the Alexandrians,
were not the only sources of his inspiration. Petrarch
was an alluring mode and fashion. His lovely Italian
sonnets and canzoni had almost classical authority. They
furnished that attractive preciosity of love which fasci
nated these French poets of the sixteenth century. Ron
sard copied Petrarch in sentiment and expression in his
early " Amours a Cassandre." Afterwards he seems to
have passed on and through his influence, as a more sub
stantial body passes through a nebula.
He had devoted seven years to Greek and Latin, and
to the composition of poems under classic inspiration,

LA PLEIADE 343
when in 1550 he published his first volume of Odes. At
once his fame leaped heavenward. Friend and foe alike
saw in him the chief of the band whose war cry had been
the Defense of the year before. His fame and fortunes
reached their zenith through the next ten years; and he
could say to all other poets of the realm :
Vous etes mes sujets, et je suis votre roi.
So long as he lived, his royal place was not seriously
threatened. If his material fortunes were less splendid
than his reputation, they still enabled him to live in the
enjoyment of courtly pleasures and the comforts of town
and country, until his death in 1585. His art was the
mistress of his most strenuous devotions. His towering
consciousness of his position and deserts was chequered by
touches of an inner humility. In fact, his nature was
rather timid and retiring. Rarely he mingled in the
strife of pens and swords, which was desolating France.
To prove his orthodoxy and evince his patriotism, he
wrote his Discours des Miseres de ce temps, against the
reformed and now Calvinized religion; which his love
of France, his love of pleasure, his love of letters, com
bined to impel him to detest. In him, humanism em
phatically rejected the Reform. Catholic in his profes
sions and beliefs, his life was pagan. He passed his days
in the realization of pagan sentiments and the incidents
of pagan mythology. But in his long last illness, he
ended his life piously.
Ronsard's natural talents were large and various.
His poetic accomplishment was diverse and immense.
Much of it was of a high order. He accepted the prac
tice of the ancients as the embodiment of poetic principles,
which he would re-incorporate, and cause to live again,
in French verse. At his best, he did most nobly reflect in
his poetry the training and discipline, and the ennoblement
of language, form, and conception, which classical studies
graft upon a fine poetic talent. When not at his best, he
imitated the classics stiffly and pedantically, deducing

344 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
from their works principles having no living or universal
application ; and incorporating in his poetry classical ma
terial which had not been assimilated and recast in his
own mind and temperament. He delighted to fill, or
adorn, and intriguer his verse with obscure mythological
allusions. He could be pedantic, prolix, and guilty of
false emphasis. 8 Hating the commonplace, he strove,
and often with brilliant success, to ennoble his French
vehicle — verse, words, forms of expression, epithets.
He loved splendid and striking images, despising those
which were conventional and added nothing to the idea.
A marvellous artist in metre and rhythm, he remod
elled and re-established the " Alexandrian " line of twelve
or thirteen syllables. This mightiest of French lines was
a creature of the Middle Ages ; but had fallen into neglect.
Under the influence of his classical training and the im
pregnation of his mind with the Greek and Latin hexa
meter, Ronsard perfected it, restored it to its place of
primacy, and exemplified its adequacy.9 He introduced
as well a number of other verse-forms previously used by
French poets, and fashioned others for himself. He
would fain have composed the music for his verse, as Pin
dar did so naturally. Here he failed. But to find his
equal in the abundance and variety of his verse, invention
or adaptation, one must look back of French verse alto
gether, to the fecund genius for Latin verse-forms of an
Adam of St. Victor or an Abaelard.10 Ronsard had a
fine sense of the harmony which should exist between
rhythm and thought ; a great talent for the adjustment of
verse-forms to the thought and sentiment of the poem.
8 In his occasional flattery, Ronsard may fall into bathos, as in his son
net to Robert Gamier, " prince des tragiques," saying that if Bacchus
should descend to Hades now, he would bring back with him, not Aes
chylus, but Gamier. Sonnets devers, LXXXI, Oeuvres, Tome V, p. 354.
Again, on the death of Charles IX (!!) he declared: "La France
n'estoit pas ny digne de I'avoir, ny de porter ses pas." Epitaphes,
Oeuvres, Tome VII, p. 170.
9 " Les Alexandrins tiennent la place en nostre langue, telle que les
vers heroiques entre les Grecs et Latins, lesquels sont composez de douze
a treize syllabes, les masculins de douze, les foeminins de treize, et ont
tousjours leur repos sur la sixiesme syllable." Ronsard, Abrege de I'Art
Poetique Francois.
10 Cf. The Mediaeval Mind, II, Chapter XXXIII.

LA PLEIADE 345
Five books of Odes, manifold in theme, and following
Pindaric, Horatian, or Anacreontic models; six or seven
books of Amours, some eight thousand lines; two books
of Hymnes, epic and lyric recitals; then other books of
Poemes, of Elegies, of Epigrammes, of Epitaphes, of
Mascarades, of Discours over his Time's miseries, and a
still-born Epic — was not this an unexampled mass for
one man to have achieved?" Succeeding poets would
scarcely go beyond either Ronsard's range of theme or
formal modelling. And through it all, if there was end
less borrowing, there was also much real expression of
a master-poet's personality, of his own loves and feelings,
even thoughts. He expressed a genuine love of nature,
of the country, in his Eclogues and in his poems on his
forest of Gatine. Epic qualities were shown, not in his
hopeless Franciade, but in many of his Odes and Hymnes.
In the best of these last, his long discipline of " imita
tion " of the classics has become veritable assimilation,
is transformed into power and inspiration of his own, —
into the self-expression of a poet.12
The Roman de la Rose, especially that sophisticated
longer portion written by De Meun, incorporated much
substance from the antique philosophy and literature, but
was little affected by classic form. It was not artistic
quality that the author had sought in his reading. The
Pleiade on the other hand — Ronsard above the rest —
strove to gain artistic quality, beauty, ennoblement of
form, from a more thorough and direct classical study.
Especially they were keen Greek scholars; and had read
Homer, Pindar, and the Tragedians, though they may
have found the very beautiful Theocritus and other Alex
andrians quite as congenial to their taste. A taste for
11 See Brunetiere, o. c, I, pp. 323, 396.
12 For example in the Hymn to Death, the last in Bk. II, (Oeuvres,
Tome IV, p. 364).
Ronsard has been so excellently analyzed and criticised by the French
masters of criticism, that a foreigner who will always find difficulty in
appreciating the finer points of French poetry, may leave to them the
literary criticism of Ronsard. See particularly, Brunetiere in his Hist, de
la Lit. franc, classique, Vol. I; $.. Faguet, in his Seizieme Siecle, Etudes
(ifteraires; and J. J. Jusserand's Ronsard,

346 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Petrarch, for Sannazaro, for Bembo, and other Italian
literati, who also cared for form supremely, further in
cited them to the study of form in these Alexandrians, or
in Horace, Tibullus and Catullus ; all of whom exemplified
not merely form, but the palpable endeavor for it. Those
Alexandrians and Latins cared for art, seeking even its
highest ars celare artem.
So the Pleiade represent the love of artistic beauty very
consciously. Not that there had been an utter neglect
of it before them. What good workman lacks this love?
But they emblazoned it, proclaimed it, felt it as an in
spiration throughout their entire poetic consciousness.
And more than all others who had preceded them, they
left it as a rich legacy for future generations of French
poets. Ronsard had foolish friends and degenerate imitators.
The over-learned BaTf pursued an impossible idea of his
own, that of writing French metrically. The result was
abhorrent; yet he was not alone in his idea. Another
poet, Philippe Desportes, with charm and facile skill, was
ignoble in thought and theme, — a sheer court poet.
Perhaps Mathurin Regnier (1573-1613) was the best
of these epigoni. On the other hand, there were adher
ents of the Reformed Religion, who were poets and looked
on Ronsard as their chief. Among them, the tedious Du
Bartas returned to sacred themes. His poetry gained
vogue in Germany, where, later, Goethe admired it. He
may possibly have influenced Milton.
Agrippa D'Aubigne (1551-1630) was a far more in
teresting personality. Learned in Latin, Greek and
Hebrew, he was consecrated in boyhood by his father to
the cause of the Reform, with maledictions on his head if
he should ever blanch. There was no need of them. At
the age of sixteen, after his father's death, he escaped by a
window at night, barefooted, in his shirt, to hurry after
a passing troop of horse. Thus he hurled himself into
the wars of religion, and thereafter, in battles, sieges,
skirmishes and single combats, fought wherever fighting
could be had. Save when sick or wounded or in prison,

LA PLEIADE 347
his sword was rarely laid aside, till the conversion of his
great master Henry IV to Catholicism forced peace upon
this devoted and outspoken follower. He had always
had the habit of writing; he was a pamphleteer as well as
soldier, producing satires, diatribes, and poems constantly.
He would not follow Henry into the Roman church, and
retired to his government of Saintbnge. Verses which he
had composed, some of them literally in the saddle, some
of them when in fever from wounds, he now put together
in his still protesting, still militant Tragiques. He never
gave up the cause of the Reform; and cursed his son for
abandoning it. Long after Henry's death, always con
tending with words or arms, d'Aubigne found refuge in
Geneva. Four times had he been condemned to death !
Militant, active to the end, he induced Berne and other
Swiss cities to construct mural fortifications which he him
self designed. He remarried when over seventy, and
died an octogenarian. He was the grandfather of
Madame de Maintenon.
He left a mass of prose and verse; a Histoire univer
sale of his times; Meditations on the Psalms; satires in
the form of elaborate prose fictions; political discourses;
odes, sonnets, poems of gallantry; for like his master
Henry, though less irrational in love, this Cavalier of the
Reform sighed for the ladies not infrequently. But his
chief work, Les Tragiques in angry Alexandrians, are a
tableau of the miseries of the time. Into it he poured
his wrath at the evil turn of things; while scriptural inci
dent and mythological allusion jostled each other in the
almost epic outcry of this Huguenot, swordsman, coun
cillor, scholar, poet, indomitable soul.

CHAPTER XV
SELF-EXPRESSION THROUGH TRANSLATION AND APPRO
PRIATION : AMYOT, BODIN, MONTAIGNE
Not only in Ronsard and his Pleiade, but in others who,
like him, were scholars and also Frenchmen, one observes
a dual interlocked phenomenon or process, very notice
able through the sixteenth century. It is this: imitation
or appropriation of intellectual material from the an
tique culture combines with the ripening French mind and
personality, promotes Its development, and facilitates
and enriches its self-expression. This dual process may
present the appearance of conflict between the classical or
antique influence and the native French faculties, which
will also make use of contemporary foreign strains from
Italy or Germany, and to some extent fall under their
influence. Some Frenchmen will accept opinions and sen
timents straight from the classics; but in general such
was the organic power of sixteenth century life in France,
that the antique influence becomes a contribution to its
advance. The French mind and personality emerges, as
serts itself, gains strength and even distinctness from the
study and use and assimilation of the ancient material.

The Pleiade made a literary and stylistic use of the
contents of Greek and Latin poems and of the lessons to
be drawn from their form and manner of composition. It
is interesting to consider other Frenchmen, publicists and
moralists, who make a different use of different antique
material, and would distil from it the wisdom of life which
it so notably contained. One may observe in the first
place the more impersonal phases of the appropriation of
the antique by the genius or vigor of the French race or
348

AMYOT AND MONTAIGNE 349
people, especially in that most palpable expression of the
race, its language. This will illustrate plainly both sides
of the dual process. There is the obvious competition be
tween the French and Latin languages. French is used
in daily life, also in poetry. But Latin is in possession of
the sphere of university instruction and of all branches of
learning, of theology and religion, of philosophy and
mathematics, of law and medicine. French is supposed to
be unfit for these higher branches. Yet the advocates of
French not only assert its capabilities, but put their mother
tongue to school; instructing and amplifying it from the
example and resources of its own ancient mother, Latin,
with some light as well from its newly adopted foster-
father, Greek. Under classical tuition this same French
tongue, far from becoming Latin, asserts itself with
mounting energy and enlarging capacities, and presses its
claims to universal use by Frenchmen, even for the highest
literary and intellectual purposes.
For the victory of French, prejudice had to be over
come, and the rude tongue made fit for those higher uses.
In the fourteenth century scholars introduced Latin words
into the French vernacular; through the fifteenth, this
was carried on diligently by greater numbers. Yet in the
sixteenth century much had still to be done to enlarge and
ennoble the French language. So thought Du Bellay and
Ronsard as well as Henri Estienne and others who were
none the less convinced that French was the true literary
vehicle for Frenchmen. Along different paths, they
directed their efforts to this common end.
In spite of men's devotion to the classics, the necessity
of using French became more imperative. As the social
and intellectual life of court and town progressed, ways
of thinking and the contents of thought assumed distinc
tive character, and for that reason would less readily flow
in the thought-forms of antiquity, less easily find expres
sion in Latin. This difficulty was aggravated by the ef
forts of the stricter sort of scholars to purify contempor
ary Latin and bring it back to classical correctness. For
thereby they made it still less suitable for current thinking.

3SO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
One bears in mind that the Romance tongues orginally
had not developed from the Latin of Cicero and Quin
tilian, but from the vulgar Latin of the people, especially
the peoples of the Provinces. Hence classical Latin, with
its suspended thought and different structural articulation,
was always alien to the current expression of the current
thought of the so-called " Latin Countries " of Europe.
The progress of thinking in the sixteenth century, con
tinuing the like mediaeval tendency, could not but draw
away from Latin. And whenever any branch of science
advanced beyond the data supplied from ancient sources,
it would tend to pass further from the antique, and would
less naturally conform to the antique vehicle of expres
sion : it would more vigorously demand expression in a
vernacular language vitally corresponding with its own
progressing ways of thinking. Still for a century or two,
scholars, philosophers, physicists might write in Latin,
deeming it a more satisfactory medium, or in order that
their works might be read abroad. But how inevitably
any such practice was doomed to cease, may be plainly
seen by looking forward through the growth of the
sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, even
to our own time. The different sciences still continue to
derive or devise numberless special terms out of cuttings
and combinations of Latin and Greek words. But it
would now be a stupid tour de force to compose a scien
tific work in Latin; for the people who evolved that lan
guage as a living tongue did not have the conceptions or
turns of thought which the modern author wishes to ex
press. In the sixteenth century, the substance of all the
sciences was largely drawn from the antique. Yet
thought did not run in antique conduits; but already de
manded more closely fitting forms of expression.
A far more obvious reason for using French was that
it was the mother tongue, understood by all, and spon
taneously used by all, and not learned through years of
study. Reasons of State might also intervene, as when
in 1539 a royal decree directed that henceforth all pro
ceedings before magistrates should be in French, a decree

AMYOT AND MONTAIGNE 351
which was enforced even in Provence. G. Tory in his
Champfleury published in 1529, and before him, Claude
de Seyssel in the preface to his translation of Justin, dedi
cated to Louis XII, spoke ardently for French, and made
good use of the political arguments from the example of
the Romans, who insisted on the official use of Latin
throughout their conquered provinces. The crown was
the pulse of France; and as was natural, its influence
through the reigns of Louis XII, Francis I, and their
successors was" on the side of French.
Starting from the general fact that in the first part of
the sixteenth century, Latin was used at the University
(except in the primary classes), as well as in all the
sciences and learned professions, one may observe the
steps by which French intruded upon its stately mother, in
one province after another.1
A plea for the use of French in education was made by
the jurist, Jean Bodin, in 1559; but Ramus, boldest of
educational innovators, was already using French effec
tively, though not exclusively, at his college in the Paris
University. Yet Latin held its own tenaciously; and, if
we turn from education to the Catholic Church, we find
the liturgy in Latin even to our own day. As for the
Scriptures, Erasmus had argued in favor of putting them
before the people : and a few years later Luther followed
with his powerful German translation (1522). The next
year appeared Lefevre's translation of the New Testa
ment, approved by the delicate reformer Bishop Briconnet
and even by King Francis, but at once hateful to the Sor
bonne. The more radical reformers, like the impetuous
Farel, used French in writing and of course in preaching
before the year 1541, when Calvin startled the theological
rookeries by publishing the French translation of his In
stitute. One may say that from the middle of the cen
tury, French became the regular language of the Re
formed Church wherever French was spoken; and in
order to meet the reformers before the nobility and peo-
1 For the following sketch I have relied on F. Brunot, " La langue au
XVI Siecle," in Vol. Ill of Petit de Julleville. Hist, de la langue et de
la literature Francoise.

352 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
pie, Catholic advocates also resorted to the vernacular
when necessary.
Looking to the sciences and professions, we find that,
from the opening of the century, oral surgical instruction
was given in French, because of the ignorance of the
would-be practitioners. A number of French surgical
treatises were in use when the great Pare 2 entered on his
career of surgical practice and teaching. His instruc
tion was carried on in French, and in French were written
his Methode de traicter les playes f aides par harquebutes
(1545), and his Traite sur la peste (1568). Likewise in
spite of many conservative protests, treatises upon the art
of medicine were largely written in French. Through
the latter part of the century, with increasing frequency,
French text-books were composed in Arithmetic, Geom
etry, Astronomy, Cosmography and Geography. Chem
istry, or rather alchemy, and physics were followed rather
in Latin treatises or translations from the Greek or Latin.
But the genial observer of nature, Bernard Palissy, 3
troubled himself as little as possible with the learned
tongues. He was born about 15 10 and died in prison, a
martyr to his religious convictions, about 1589. His ob
servations upon the action of the sea, upon fossils, and
his discoveries as to enamels as well as agriculture, he put
in an individual and taking French. Naturally, as it
were, the fruits of experiment and actual observation were
put in the living language, a practice continued by Olivier
de Serres, who in his Theatre d' agriculture et mesnage des
champs placed the translated precepts of ancient writers
along with the results of his own experience.
Histories, usually composed with a moral or political
purpose, were for the most palrt written in French;
though unfortunately the chief historian of the second
half of the century, De Thou, decided to write his Historia
mei temporis in Latin. On the other hand fitienne Pas-
quier, as patriotic as he was erudite, stanchly advocated
French, and wrote in that language his quite famous
2 Post, Chapter XXXII.
s Post, Chapter XXXIII.

AMYOT AND MONTAIGNE 353
Recherches de la Francs. From history one passes over
to rhetoric and poetry, where Du Bellay, in the Defense,
spoken of in the last chapter, expresses in his way thoughts
and hopes which men of his time or before him had either
expressed or put in practice.
Along with the endeavor to use French for these higher
purposes of education, science and literature, went the
efforts of many to improve the language, as we have no
ticed for example with Robert and Henri Estienne, and
with the Pleiade. Before them Jacques Dubois had made
a sorry attempt to purify his mother tongue, which he
regarded as a decayed Latin, by endeavoring to re-Latin
ize it. But saner and greater men, like the Estiennes,
recognized the sovereign authority of usage. Montaigne
pointed out that the " beaux espris " raise their mother
tongue less by verbal inventions than through the noble
uses to which they put the language, giving weight and
dignity and further meaning to the words they find in it.4
II
From the close of the fifteenth century, the desire for
access to the antique literature created a demand for
translations; and the work of the translator becomes an
important feature of the active-minded life of the time.
Many Latin classics were translated, the popular Italian
authors, as well as certain Spanish books. The transla
tion of the Greek classics was undertaken, at first from
Latin versions, since very few Frenchmen in the early
decades of the sixteenth century knew enough Greek to
translate directly. This was improved upon in the next
generation, when Greek scholarship had made greater
progress, — the generation of Henri Estienne, Danes,
Dorat, Tournebe and Ronsard, the generation also of
Amyot, the translator of Plutarch's Lives and Morals.
Translations of the classics corresponded with a desire
among tolerably educated people to read them. They
implied a tacit recognition by the translator and his audi-
* Essais, Liv. Ill, 5.

354 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
ence that the French language was fit to express the an
tique thought. Making them was a quasi self-assertion,
a claim of victory for the French tongue. The use of
French to translate the round of ancient thought and cir
cumstance enriched the language with new words and
concepts, and gave it new flexibility and capacity. More
over, the reading and enjoyment of the translations meant
a more general reception of Greek and Roman thoughts;
it meant the assimilation of such, their reapplication under
sixteenth century conditions, and their partial transforma
tion in the French temperament and acceptance of life.
This is exemplified in the work of Amyot.
Born of lowly parentage, he was endowed with the
desire and aptitude for learning, and with the faculty of
making his learning acceptable in high places. Some
how he won his education, the best that Paris could give,
under the royal professors Toussain and Danes. They
recommended him to that tutelary goddess of learning,
Marguerite of Navarre, who placed him in a chair of
Greek and Latin at the University of Bourges. His
translation of the Greek romances Daphnis and Chloe and
Theagenes and Chariclea won the gift of a rich abbey
from Francis I. Either the King, or Amyot's affinity
with the old author, commanded him to translate Plu
tarch. The selection was a stroke of fortune or of
genius. Blessed with an income and abundant leisure, he
set forth on a delightful scholar's pilgrimage to Italy.
The year may have been 1547, and he was about thirty-
five. He made long stays in Venice and Rome, studying,
searching for manuscripts, incidentally winning new
patrons. In 1554 he published a translation of Diodorus
Siculus, a manuscript of whose work he had discovered.
Before then, however, he was living with Plutarch, trans
lating his Lives, entering upon his Morals, which he trans
lated afterwards. He lived in Plutarch, and Plutarch
was to live again in him.
Plutarch was indeed a world, and a world wherein a
Frenchman of the sixteenth century could readily find
himself at home. For the man who amid the lengthening

AMYOT AND MONTAIGNE 355
shadows of the antique world, passed his years between
Chaeroneia and Rome, saw his ancient worthies through
human cosmopolitan eyes, and presented them in human
guise with human attributes ; so that they could be admired
and understood by humane-minded men in centuries to
come. His writings were an encyclopaedia of antique
humanity, affording instruction, precept, example, counte
nance or warning, for any man in any situation.
Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto — if
Plutarch did not quote this Menander-Terence line, he
exemplified it at its very best. For he found nothing
alien from him in the human story, that could illumine and
illustrate and teach. Amyot became his mirror, his alter
ego, and yet remained a Frenchman of the sixteenth cen
tury. His translation even carried further the universal
izing of the encyclopaedia of antique man. He was a
true translator, who rendered his original truly. He did
not change Plutarch's illustrious ones to sixteenth century
Frenchmen, nor travesty the ancient world. But with
penetrating sympathy he softened recalcitrant terms and in
apt French phrase made the old names and incidents and
situations live again.
This was necessarily a modernizing and universalizing.
It was a presentation of Plutarch's heroes not as French
men, but in such way that Frenchmen could understand
them, and see the underlying human identity between
Greeks and Romans and themselves. These personages
did not cease to be Greeks and Romans because they were
made to show palpably the same traits which Frenchmen
possessed, by virtue of a common humanity. Nor did
their setting cease to be antique because retouched with
the likenesses or analogies pervading human circumstance.
Even here the splendid result was not Plutarch's alone
— not alone the work of the man of Chaeroneia. It was
also the product of Amyot's understanding of life, and of
the capacities of the French language and Amyot's faculty
of managing and expanding it so as to render the antique
incidents and thoughts. Thus these translations marked
Amyot's French assimilation and presentation of Plu-

356 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
tarch's world, and became an expression of the trans
lator's mind.
Amyot, knew that he was presenting the universal
human which was Plutarch. The expressions of his
lengthy prefatory " aux lecteurs " are quite clear. Plu
tarch is history, and " l'histoire est a la verite le tresor de
la vie humaine." It is the great school — " une regie et
instruction certaine, qui par examples du passe nous
enseigne a juger du present, et a prevoir l'advenir, a. fin
que nous scachions ce que nous devons suyvre ou appeter,
et qu'il nous faut fuir et eviter." As in a picture, it sets
before our eyes
" les choses dignes de memoire, qu'anciennement ont faictes les
puissants peuples, les roys, et princes magnanimes, les sages gou-
verneurs, et vaillans capitaines, et personnes marquees de quelque
notable qualite, nous representant les moeurs des nations estran-
gcres, les loix et coustumes anciennes, les desseings des hommes
particuliers, leurs conseils et enterprises, les moyens qu'ilz ont
tenus pour parvenir, et leurs deportemens, quand ils sont parvenus
aux plus hauts, on bien qu'ilz ont este dejettez au plus bas degrez
de la fortune."
The man who has read these histories will encounter no
chance of peace or war in which he will not find their
counsel apt and prudent, to guide his choice and action,
moderate his elation in prosperity and sustain him in ad
versity. History with its examples is a better teacher
than books of moral philosophy with their precepts.5
" Brief ... la lecture des histoires est une eschole de prudence,
que l'homme se forme en son entendement, en considerant meure-
ment l'estat du monde qui a este par le passe, et observant diligem-
ment par quelles loix, quelles moeurs et quelle discipline, les em
pires, royaumes et seigneuries se sont jadis premierement establies,
et depuis maintenues et grandies, ou au contraire changees, dimin-
uees et perdues."
Such is history's obvious function; and most necessary
for princes and people in high station, giving them in-
s The last thought is in Aquinas's Summa, and so is doubtless Aristo
telian.

AMYOT AND MONTAIGNE 357
struction without flattery, which those they live with will
not give them. Beyond this, what pleasure does it give
us, moving with fear and hope and joy, through pains and
dangers not our own ! Happiness and wonder come upon
us as we view in this eloquent picture " les cas humains
representez au vif, et les variables accidens que le vieil-
lesse du temps a produits des et depuis l'origine du
monde." A spectacle indeed, amazing and most intimate
as well : les cas humains, the human incidents, which might
have been and still may be ours: indeed which certainly
are ours as well as theirs on whom they fell; for nothing
that is human is not ours.
We may leave our Amyot with his Plutarch and ours.
In him Plutarch lived again, delighting and expanding the
natures of Frenchmen and Englishmen through genera
tions. Montaigne seems to have become Montaigne
through Amyot; from North's English version of him
spring Shakespeare's Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, An
thony and Cleopatra. The fortunes of his book were
wonderful; his own were prosperous and troubled. He
was the preceptor of two princes, who became Charles IX
and Henri III of France. He was made grand almoner
of France, and bishop of Auxerre. Troubles came upon
him from the clergy of his diocese. He was in danger
of assassination; he may have been excommunicated; at
least he was compelled to beg for absolution. He died in
1593 eighty years old, — loved by future generations.
Ill
How a French mind — that of a publicist — could make
use of antique (and also mediaeval!) thought, and also
express itself with vigor and originality, is shown in Jean
Bodin, a native of Angers, born in 1530 and dying in
1596. Although living through the bitterest periods of
the Wars of Religion, he rose above the atmosphere of
strife, and viewed human institutions with admirable in
telligence — sometimes.8 His Six livres de la Republique
8 " Jean Bodin est un bon autheur de nostre temps, et accompagne de

358 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
appeared in 1576. Their purpose was to bring the ex
perience of mankind, shown by the histories of ancient
and modern peoples, to bear upon the questions of the
nature of the State and the best forms of government
and law. Bodin would apply the argument of facts, of
universal experience. " La philosophie mourrait d'in-
anition au milieu de ses preceptes, si elle ne les vivifiait
par I'historie," he says in words recalling Amyot. Being
a magistrate and jurist, he would also find in history, the
principles of jurisprudence. For himself, he will decide
his main problem in favor of a law-abiding but absolute
hereditary monarchy.
The Republique was the fruit of enormous reading and
assembling of evidence; its matter was well ordered to
the purpose of the author's arguments. All parts of the
organism of the State were presented more largely and
systematically than by any previous writer, and so the
sum of this great matter was laid before the reading
French public. The work was translated at once into
Latin, that it might reach an international audience.
Ten years before, Bodin had composed in Latin a pre
liminary, but weighty work, entitled: Methodus ad fac-
ilem historiarum cognitionem.
The details of Bodin's argument are beyond the pres
ent purpose. Yet it is interesting to observe how his vig
orous mind moved with apparent independence and at the
same time was enthralled by its inheritance and environ
ment. Bodin had read Plato's Republic and had studied
the Politics of Aristotle. Yet in his conception of the
State, he agrees with neither. For he conceives the State
to consist in the control of a number of menages, (house
holds), and of that which is common to them (qui leur est
commun) , by the sovereign power. He reasons from the
analogy of the family, which consists in the control by its
head of what is common to its members.
Besides his encyclopaedic marshalling of evidence, per
haps his most striking contribution to a knowledge of the
beaucoup plus de jugement que la tourbe des escrivailleurs de son
siecle, et merite qu'on le juge et considere." Montaigne, Essais, II,
XXXII.

AMYOT AND MONTAIGNE 359
factors of the human story was his recognition of the
effect of climate upon racial development, of the role of
environment in the advance or retrogression of the facul
ties and fortunes of a people. In this and in other
matters,7 he was the forerunner of later publicists, above
all of Montesquieu.
So Bodin could think with originality, handle master
fully the ancient thought, and accept or depart from it,
for better or worse, according to the requirements of his
argument. But, — and the " but " is a very large one —
he had other sides. He was held by the current supersti
tions of his time, and even by its cruelty. He believed in
sorcery, and wrote a book entitled Demonomanie des
Sorciers. Again he supported himself upon experience!
As a magistrate, he had conducted trials, and knew the
facts, which had been judicially proved ! He would stand
by the decisions of tribunals, which condemned witch or
sorcerer upon the facts ! Alas ! these facts were but a
proof that this large-minded man was held by the super
stitions of his own time, and of the prior centuries, in
cluding antiquity. His considerations upon the effect of
climates were made half foolish by his acceptance of
astrology, of planetary influence, beliefs which had re
newed their vigor with the revival of antique letters ! 8

IV
The Essays of Montaigne 9 are the most striking ex
ample of the emergence of an ensemble of personal
opinion, and still more personal expression, from its
7 As in his protest against slavery, and his philosophic approval of re
ligious toleration.
8 One cannot blame Bodin. The great surgeon Ambroise Pare ac
cepted sorcery on the same grounds as he. Belief in it was practically
universal: only Montaigne did not accept the evidence. Cf. post, Chap
ter XXXII.
9 Les Essais de Montaigne by Motheau and Jouast in seven small val-
umes (Paris, 1886), is a pleasant and convenient edition. It follows the
text of 1588, and gives the additions of 1595, — a discrimination required
by the intelligent reader. One need not refer to the enormous literature
upon Montaigne. I have found Pierre Villey very useful: Les Sources
et revolution des Essais de Montaigne, 2 vols. (Paris, 1908) ; Montaigne,
Textes choisis, etc., (Bib. Franchise), Paris, 1912.

360 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
classical matrix. In them a French personality reached
self-expression through assimilation and application of
classical material, as well as through consideration of its
own humanity and the ways of humanity at large. Yet
this expression of a French personality does not cease to
represent the humane moralizings of the later classical
spirit. As Seneca was a moralist in his fashion and
Plutarch in his, so was Montaigne in a manner which
had drawn upon them both.
The classics did not make this close scrutinizer of life,
opinion and belief; but they gave him matter for his
scrutiny, and disciplinary instruction throughout the
process. The Essays show the final stages of Montaigne's
evolution, the stages of his final self-expression. They
are the history of the man during the last twenty years
of his life.
With the articulate development of his opinions, the
expression of them, to wit, the Essay, takes form. It
ceases to be a fagot of borrowed instances or opinions;
and becomes a personal composition; cited instances and
opinions are illustrations.
A virtuoso in egotism, Montaigne was an incompara
ble scrutinizer of himself. Self-scrutiny may have various
motives and draw toward different ends; it may become
the agent of intense, even inspired, purpose. In Mon
taigne it never won elan. But it possessed a large fac
ulty of, as it were, reciprocal generalization, bringing this
scrutinizer's consideration of the experience of mankind
to bear upon his knowledge of himself, and in return pre
senting his self-knowledge in its universal bearing upon
the knowledge of man.
The way in which Montaigne was reared and educated
confirmed his natural disposition. Through honorable
exertions his family had become wealthy and respected
in Bordeaux. Within a generation or two an estate in
the neighborhood had been acquired. Montaigne's
father was a prudent man of affairs, and as a gentleman
followed the profession of arms. He brought his son
up carefully, perhaps too tenderly, certainly in a way

AMYOT AND MONTAIGNE 361
to aggravate his physical and intellectual sensitiveness.
The father was a Catholic; his wife, Montaigne's mother,
is said to have been a Protestant and indeed a Jewess.
At all events, the home atmosphere was one of religious
tolerance. The boy, who was born in 1533, was taught
Latin as his mother tongue, was sent to school and college,
and in his early teens put to study law at Toulouse. Fin
ishing his legal studies at the age of twenty-one, he was
made a magistrate and, in a little while, counselor to the
Parlement of Bordeaux. He retained this office till 1570,
when, his father having died, he retired to his estate.
He was already married and a father. In 1580 he pub
lished the first two books of his Essays, and travelled in
Germany and Italy. While absent he was elected mayor
of Bordeaux, an honorable position which he hesitatingly
accepted. He was re-elected two years later. He would
seem to have discharged this office satisfactorily, though
without zeal, keeping away from the city when the plague
raged there. Politically, through the difficult times in
which he lived, Montaigne avoided partisanship. He
was a moderate royalist, a conservative who distrusted
change. He enjoyed health, but seems to have been lazy,
and averse to severe physical exertions or prolonged
mental application. At all events he says so. He pub
lished the third book of his Essays in 1588, and in 1592 he
died. The Essays brought wide repute to this man of
position, whose gentility nevertheless was not so ancient
as to have lost its self-consciousness. Disliking tedious
forms and ceremonies, he did not forget that he was
Michel, Sieur de Montaigne, whose father had been
mayor of Bordeaux, and who himself once held that office
as the successor of one Marechal de France and the pred
ecessor of another. For the rest, his temperament and
mentality, as well as his opinions, disclose themselves in
his Essays, which became an examination and a mirror
of himself.
Of all sixteenth century Frenchmen, Montaigne most
surely made a personal path through the teachings of
antiquity, the practical teachings of its later phases of

362 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
accumulated precept and blended moralizing philosophies.
His affinities were with the late pagan centuries which im
mediately preceded and followed the opening of the
Christian era, and were so practically or ethically con
cerned with human conduct and vicissitudes. Within this
sphere, Montaigne's interest and curiosity appear univer
sal; nothing that was human failed to prick him. But
his mental activity does not reach beyond this round of
domestic consideration; it never addresses itself to the
heights of inhuman knowledge, nor is touched by cosmic
problems or any matter of physics or natural science.
He had not the detached interest of a Democritus, a Plato
or an Aristotle in the knowledge which does not bear
directly upon human life. His mental scope and entire
self-expression lie within the sphere of humanism.
Accordingly it goes without saying that in his studies he
had not mastered the successive systems of Greek phil
osophy, austere and difficult in their aloofness. He did
not know the theories of early Eleatics and Atomists; nor
had he penetrated the thought of Plato, having neither the
temper nor the application. Yet in his later years he
read the Dialogues in Ficino's Latin translation; for
he was fascinated by the personality of Socrates, whose
sayings he gathered also from Xenophon's Memorabilia.
As for Aristotle, Montaigne had spent scant hours in
his perusal. Epicureanism he had studied in Lucretius,
and Stoicism mainly in Seneca. But he vitally mastered
whatever he learned, absorbing the cosmopolitan tempers
and blended philosophic moralizings of Cicero and Vir
gil, Horace and Seneca and Plutarch. He read and re
read and never ceased to read the last, the Illustrious
Lives and the Morals or philosophic pamphlets, all in the
incomparable translations of Amyot, to whom he bears
so warm a testimony of gratitude and admiration at
the beginning of the fourth essay of his second book.
Montaigne also read widely in the Latin, French and
Italian writers of his own and the preceding generations.
They promoted the development of his sixteenth century
personality; and helped him to lay an independent path

AMYOT AND MONTAIGNE 363
through the opinions of the ancients. His own judg
ments are evolved as he proceeds through Stoicism and
Epicureanism; then he is pricked by the Scepticism of
Pyrrho. This also was a phase through which he passed
on to the gentler questionings of the later Academy,
which did not preclude the attainment of sufficiently prag
matic and positive opinions. Horace comes to his aid;
and he expands the sinews of his moral nature with the
experience and fortitude of Plutarch's men and the varied
philosophic suggestions of Plutarch's moral and philo
sophic pamphlets. In the course of these studies and
lucubrations, he turns from Cato, the finished Stoic, to
Socrates, the ideal sage.
Attracted at the first by Stoicism, Montaigne can say:
"La vertu ne veut estre suyvie que pour elle mesme;
et si on emprunte parfois son masque pour autre occa
sion, elle nous l'arrache aussitost du visage." He even
tually wearied of Stoicism, as the antique world wearied
of it. One becomes ennuied with self-reliance and steel
ing oneself against life's trials and last catastrophe : one
is bored with reading about Cato and learning how to die.
An early Essay, composed in 1572 when Montaigne was,
as he says in it, thirty-nine years old, bears the title : Que
philosopher c' est apprendre a mourir, a tedious antique
sentiment, which fortunately had not been exemplified
either in the philosophy or the life of the ancient world.
Montaigne takes it from Cicero. Study and contempla
tion serve this end of severing the soul from the body,
and teaching us how to die. All are agreed that happi
ness is our aim, though men differ as to the means. We
cannot be content, however, with the fear of death before
our eyes; and so philosophies seek to instruct us to de
spise it.
In some such way, none too clearly, Montaigne chooses
to moralize at the beginning of this Essay. He draws
the conclusion: " Le but de nostre carriere c'est la mort:
c'est l'object necessaire de nostre visee; si elle nous
effraye, comme est il possible d'aller un pas avant sans
fiebre? Le remede du vulgarire, c'est de n'y penser pas.

364 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Mais de quelle brutale stupidite luy peut venir un si gros-
sier aveuglement? " As the essay proceeds, the natural
ness of death is made to appear; and a late addition points
to the opinion that life and death are indifferent.
Naturally, Montaigne was more readily influenced by
what he read in the first years of his retirement than
when he had pondered longer upon the relative invalidity
of human opinion. His earlier essays consist rather of
excerpted incidents and sentiments illustrating some topic
in his mind. Later he will not so quickly veer his helm
to puffs of suggestion; his essays will embody his own
thoughts more organically, and those thoughts have be
come more penetrating. He decided to make less of
death: it ceased to be the but or final end, and becomes
merely the bout or terminus, of life. To live happily,
rather than to die happily is the great matter: " A mon
advis, c'est ' le vivre heureusement,' non, comme disoit
Antisthenes, ' le mourir heureusement,' qui faict l'hu-
maine felicite." 10
It may be that stupid peasants follow the better way,
in bothering so little about their latter end. Preparation
for death has tormented men more than the experience.
"Nous troublons la vie par le soing de la mort; et la
mort, par le soing de la vie: l'une nous ennuye; l'autre
nous effraye. Ce n'est pas contre la mort que nous nous
preparons, c'est chose trop momentanee ; un quart d'heure
de passion, sans consequance, sans nuisance, ne merite pas
des praeceptes particuliers." n
Montaigne was not one utterly to abandon his earlier
ways of thinking. Virtue might seem the better part of
pleasure to him even in his last years.12 He was always
Epicurean. In the essay De la Solitude, moderate
Stoicism and Epicureanism mingle in a tempered Hora-
tian view of life. One needs the daily pleasures and
occupations, but should not entangle one's liberty. " II
fault avoir femmes, enfants, biens, et surtout de la
10 III, II, a passage subsequent to the edition of 1588.
11 III, XII, about the middle of the Essay.
12 See a passage appearing only in the 1595 edition, inserted in I, XIX;
(pp. iio-iii in T. I. of Motheau and Jouast's edition).

AMYOT AND MONTAIGNE 365
sante, qui peult; mais non pas s'y attacher en maniere
que nostre heur en despende: il se fault reserver une
arriere boutique, toute nostre, toute franche, en laquelle
nous establissions nostre vraye liberte et principal re-
traicte et solitude."
Although a man of ready social gifts as well as in
clinations, Montaigne felt the value of solitude, especially
for one who, having lived much in the world, would turn
to that fine Horatian goal of belonging entirely to one
self : " La plus grande chose du monde, c'est de scavoir
estre a soy." It is thus that one best may husband the
pleasures that remain, — the intellectual most assuredly,
but also " les commoditez corporelles," which nature bids
us cherish. " J'estime pareille injustice prendre a. con-
trecoeur les voluptez naturelles, que di les prendre trop
a. coeur." One should not belittle the element of plea
sure: — to what other end do we pursue the Muses?
Whoever thinks that this is to debase their office, " ne
scait pas, comme moy, combien vault le plaisir, le jeu, et le
passetemps." But self-content through mental pleasures
and bodily comforts is not for any fool! Self may be
found an empty refuge. " Retirez vous en vous; mais
preparez vous premierement de vous y recevoir."
Montaigne was also as one quite unafraid, ready to
confront any opinion with doubt and inquiry as to its
validity. His was no metaphysical, but very practical
scepticism touching the value of human judgments.
Human ignorance and prejudice impressed him. What
ever men are wont to do and believe, they hold as in
controvertible and necessary for the welfare of man.
It is easy to show that this opinion is unfounded. The
habit of approach through doubting inquiry became part
of Montaigne's mentality. For a period he cultivated
scepticism by pursuing the reasonings of Pyrrho and other
well-instructed doubters. His famous Apologie de Rai-
mond Sebond (II, XII) discusses at rather interminable
length the conflicting opinions of philosophers, and the
variances and oppositions among human customs and
convictions. It concludes that human reason is not to be

366 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
relied on, nor can men penetrate the changing phantas
magoria surrounding them, or attain stable truth.
Should one think of Montaigne as passing through
some sort of sceptical storm at any time? Did he seek
partial shelter from it in some doctrine of practical prob
ability, such as he might find in the teachings of the later
Platonic Academy? He is so apt to utter whatever enters
his mind, that generalizations as to his more abiding
opinions and their sequence are hazardous. One may re
member his own words: "touts jugemens en gros sont
lasches et imparfaicts." Yet temperamental conserva
tism, the habit of weighing probabilities, and the honesty
of his nature which knew its unfitness for the building
of lofty certitudes, seem to have continued to give him
some practical reliance on the instincts of his nature and
the customary acceptances of his time. He would have
been the last man to claim consistency for his temperate
and partial convictions. His own reason, peccable as he
recognized it to be, should also guide him always ; restrain
him, on the one hand, from following hurtful impulses,
and on the other from accepting stupidly cruel practices
and credences. So he condemned judicial torture, and re
jected sorcery and witchcraft as unreasonable and un
proved. That Montaigne recognized himself as a bundle of
inconsistencies, may be read where one will in his Essays,
for example in the first of the second book, " De l'lncon-
stance de nos actions," Likewise his ideas and opinions;
for they were but himself. The Essays as they expressed
his opinions, were just as much an expression of himself,
a study of himself, a mirror of himself. He very con
sciously recognized them as such;, and declared many
times that in them he intended above all to paint and
portray himself, his " humeurs et opinions." Thus ex
pressing himself for others, he painted himself more
clearly for himself, greatly to his own benefit and in
struction. He said late in life : " Je n'ay pas plus faict
mon livre que mon livre m'a faict, Iivre consubstantiel a
son autheur."

AMYOT AND MONTAIGNE 367
He had arrived at this idea and intention before 1580,
when he published the first two books, and wrote his
memorable preface to the reader. That spoke the truth
in opening with the words : " C'est icy un livre de bonne
foy, lecteur." But it may have had its deprecatory af
fectation in asserting that the book was intended for the
use of his relatives and friends. Doubtless it spoke the
truth again, or meant to, in saying that the author wished
to disclose himself without artifice or veil. And of a
surety the truth and kernel of the preface was in the
words: " C'est moy que je peins."
The idea of portraying himself had taken form grad
ually with Montaigne; and only gradually was it clothed
upon with the further idea of painting himself as the mir
ror of men. Autobiography was rife in the late sixteenth
century. Montluc, D'Aubigny, had painted, had nar
rated themselves in their striking acts and sufferings.
Montaigne's life did not afford such. It was always ab
sorbed in its daily incident and experience, its observa
tion and study, in its penetrating consideration of itself.
All this would yield the material of self-portrayal. At
first his tendency is to give the rather trivial outer incident
or experience; then he goes deeper, painting 'the more
inner Montaigne, consisting of thoughts and knowledge
and opinions. " Je ne puis tenir registre de ma vie par
mes actions . . . je le tiens par mes fantasies." He will
make this psychological portraiture as penetrating and
complete as possible. " Ce ne sont mes gestes que
j'escris, c'est mon essence."
This mirror of self may be turned upon the nature and
limitations of man: and justifiably; for I am the measure
of all men. The idea that the individual exemplifies uni
versal human quality seems to rationalize itself through
one of the few bits of metaphysics to be found in the Es
says. Montaigne uses the scholastic Aristotelian concep
tion of the form or species contained in each individual,
which is representative of the universal genus, in this case,
man. Thus he argues : I present in my book a common,
ordinary life ; but it is all one : the whole matter of moral

368 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
philosophy can be hung on such a life as well as on one of
richer substance: " chasque homme porte la forme entiere
de l'humaine condition." Montaigne wrote these words
before 1588, and subsequently attached this further com
ment: "Les aucteurs se communiquent au peuple par
quelque marque special et estrangiere; moy, le premier,
par mon estre universel; comme Michel de Montaigne,
non comme grammairien, ou poete, ou jurisconsult."
Metaphysics was not his metier; and naturally he did
not keep meticulously to his conception of forme. Yet
he keeps near enough to it to preserve and simplify its
illustrative value. It becomes, with him, the abiding
character or nature within each individual, Those, says
he substantially, further on in the same essay, who have
essayed the role of reformers in my time, reform only the
surface vices; " ceulx de l'essence," they do not trouble.
Indeed the reform of these outer casual vices may pander
to the satisfaction of vices " naturels, consubstantiels et
intestins." No one who will listen to himself will fail to
discover " en soy une forme sienne, une forme maistresse,"
which fights against the passions that are contrary to
him. For myself, I am not commonly shaken by such
shocks, and find myself always in my place, like a heavy
body. " Mes desbauches ne m'emportent pas fort loing."
The common trouble with men is that their retreat itself
is befouled; the idea of their amendment is defaced, their
penitence as faulty as their sin. " For myself," continues
Montaigne one or two pages further on, " I can con
demn and mislike ma forme universelle, et supplier Dieu
pour mon entiere reformation, et pour l'excuse de ma
foiblesse naturelle."
In the course of another thoughtful essay, Montaigne
speaks of peculiar and retiring natures — "naturels
particuliers, retirez et internes." Ma forme essentielle,
on the contrary, is communicative and social. The
phrase here means evidently Montaigne's underlying and
relatively abiding nature. He also uses the word itself,
nature, and in various senses, just as we do. This vaguely

AMYOT AND MONTAIGNE 369
changeable, but reassuring, thought underlies his later
more positive philosophy of life. He has adopted this
ancient maxim, that we cannot err in following nature,
and that the " souverain precepte, c'est de ' Se conformer
a elle.' "
Although the illustrative value of the author and his
knowledge of himself are universalized in these later
essays, the intimate self-portrayal does not cease. Rather
the author and his book — mon livre et moy : — become
more intimately in and of each other. All the world will
recognize each in the other. The discussion of broad
human topics is ever and anon brought back to the author
through personal statements, which put Montaigne again
visibly upon the stage. This is all illustrated by the clos
ing essay of the third book, upon Experience. In this
penetrating consideration of life, if anywhere, may be
found the author's own conclusions, — his conclusions as
to the best way of life, according to Nature.
The essay is intricate. Beginning with reflecting on
man's natural desire for knowledge, it notes the many
forms of reason, and the like diversity of experience —
on what shall one lay hold? Philosophy is a maze;
another is the multiplicity of law: comment upon com
ment, adding to obscurity; precedent upon precedent, ob
structing justice. " I study myself more than any other
subject: 'tis my metaphysics, 'tis my physics. ... In
this monstrous maze — en cette universite — I let my
self ignorantly and negligently be fashioned on the general
law of the world. I shall know it well enough when I
feel it ; my knowledge will not make it change its course.
. . . Philosophers rightly refer us to Nature's rules . . .
but they falsify and sophisticate them. . . . The more
simply one commits oneself to nature, the more wisely
he commits himself. . . . From the experience I have
of myself, I find enough to make me wise, were I a good
scholar." Through pages which follow, Montaigne has much to
say of the physicians' ignorant interference with nature's

370 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
ways, a favorite theme with him. As for his own diet,
he has found that whatever disagrees with his palate,
disagrees with his body. " Je n'ay jamais receu nuisance
d'action qui m'eust este bien plaisante." Moreover, as
to bodily ills, — " il fault apprendre a souffrir ce qu'on
ne peult eviter."
If modern readers have found Montaigne common
place, it is because they have begun at the beginning and
not at the end of the Essays. The third book contains
the author's most penetrating and original consideration
of life; and the concluding pages of its last essay (on
which we continue to draw) are of Montaigne's very best.
The thought of following nature underlies them. Else
where Montaigne has shown Socrates, antiquity's most
complete sage, educing from his own nature through
simple truth, his admirable way of life — not like Cato,
" monte sur ses grands chevaux," but " d'un pas mol et
ordinaire," delivering to us the most useful discourses,
and addressing himself either to death or to the thorny
traverses of life. Now Montaigne will speak directly,
and give the results of his own observation.
" Nature has seen to it as a mother that the actions
which she has enjoined for our needs, are also pleasur
able ; she invites us to them not only through our reason,
but through our appetite; it is injustice to corrupt her
rules. When I see Caesar and Alexander in the thick
of their enterprises openly enjoying humane and corporal
pleasures, I do not say that they slacken, but strengthen,
their minds." " We are great fools " continues Mon
taigne in a passage inserted later,
" ' He has passed his life in idleness ' we say: ' I have done noth
ing to-day.' What! have you not lived? That is not only the
fundamental, but the noblest of your occupations. You would
have shown what you could do, had great affairs been given to
your charge? If you have known how to consider and manage
your life, you have done the greatest of all. Nature has no need
of fortune pour se montrer et exploicter. Avez vous su com
poser vos moeurs? Vous avez bien plus fait que celui qui a
compose ses livres. Avez vous su prendre du repos? Vous avez
plus fait que celui qui a pris des empires et des villes."

AMYOT AND MONTAIGNE 371
Le grand et glorieux chef d'oeuvre de l'homme, c'est vivre a
propos, —
that is, to live humanly as a man should; all other mat
ters, reigning, piling up treasure, are the merest acces
sories. I am pleased to see a general, at the foot of a
breach which he is about to attack, give himself over al
together to his dinner with his friends ; or to see Brutus,
with heaven and earth conspiring against him and the
liberty of Rome, snatch some hours of the night to devote
to his abridgement of Polybius. It is for little souls,
buried in the weight of affairs, to know not how to lay
aside and take them up again.
O fortes, pejoraque passi
Mecum saepe viri ! nunc vino pellite curas :
Cras ingens iterabimus aequor."
This, with plenty of antique suggestion, is Montaigne,
either in his own words, or briefly translated, even to the
summing up of his argument with his apt Horatian lines.
And after further illustrations, he observes how men
deceive themselves, failing to recognize how much easier
are extremes than the broad middle path.
" The greatnesse of the minde is not so much to drawe up and
hale forward, as to know how to range, direct and circumscribe it-
selfe. It holdeth for great whatsoever is sufficient. And sheweth
her height in loving meane things better than eminent. There is
nothing so goodly, so faire and so lawfull as to play the man well
and duely ; nor science so hard and difficult, as to know how to live
this life well. And of all infirmities we have, the most savage is
to despise our being." 13
A little further on, he continues: " J'ordonne a mon
ame de regarder et la douleur et la volupte, de vue
pareillement reglee, et pareillement ferme; mais gaie-
ment l'une, l'autre severement. . . . Le voir sainement
les biens tire apres soi le voir sainement les maux " — a
sane view of the good things of life brings a sane view of
the evil.
is Florio's translation,

372 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Montaigne says he has a way and a vocabulary of his
own; he " passes the time " when it is bad, and holds to
it when it is pleasant. Nature has put into our hands our
time so well equipped — " garnie de telles circonstances
et si favorables " — that it is our fault if it hangs heavy
or escapes us unused. There is husbandry in life's enjoy
ment, especially in making the most of it when our days
have become few.
He continues with a subtle passage in which he explains
that he does not merely sense the sweetness of content
and prosperity, as others do; he intellectualizes his feel
ings, associates his mind with his sensations, but does not
entangle it in them. His mind (ame) amplifies its good
fortune, and measures its indebtedness to God; with its
conscience in repose and the body fulfilling natural and
pleasant functions, it experiences a great calm. " As for
me, then, I love life, and cultivate it just as it has pleased
God to bestow it on us," including the natural pleasures
of the senses. " J'accepte de bon coeur, et reconnaissant,
ce que nature a fait pour moi. . . . On fait tort a ce
grand et tout puissant Donneur, de refuser son don, l'an-
nuler et desfigurer. Tout bon, il a fait tout bon : omnia,
quae secundum naturam sunt, aestimatione digna sunt.
" Des opinions de la philosophic, j'embrasse plus vol-
ontiers celles qui sont les plus solides, c'est a dire les
plus humaines et nostres. . . . Socrates . . . prise,
comme il doit, la volupte corporelle; mais il prefere celle
de 1'esprit, comme ayant plus de force, de Constance, de
facilite, de variete, de dignite. Cette-ci ne va seulement
seule, selon lui (il n'est pas si fantastique), mais seule
ment premiere; pour lui, la temperance est moderatrix,
non adversaire des voluptes. Nature est un doux guide,
mais non pas plus doux que prudent et juste." Montaigne
would follow her track, simply and without sophistry, and
make no divorce among the acts which her harmony has
joined together. It is folly to praise the soul and despise
the body; they are a joint gift from God. Rarely are
men's fantasies worth a good ragout, — except for " ces
ames venerables elevees par ardeur de devotion et re-

AMYOT AND MONTAIGNE 373
ligion a. une constante . . . meditation des choses divines
. . . c'est une etude privilege. Entre nous, ce sont choses
que j'ai toujours vues de singulier accord: les opinions
supercelestes et les moeurs souterraines."
So Montaigne ends his paragraph with a note of sar
casm, which he does not leave unsounded as he. closes his
essay. He would show that there is time to spare for
everything. " Die zeit ist unendlich lang," Goethe will
say after him. It is folly to try to lift oneself out of
human nature. " Ces humeurs transcendantes m'effrai-
ent, comme les lieux hautains et inaccessibles. . . .
C'est une absolue perfection, et comme divine, de savoir
jouir loyalement de son etre. Nous cherchons d'autres
conditions, pour n' entendre [from not understanding]
l'usage des notres, et sortons hors de nous pour ne
savoir [from not knowing] quel il y fait " — even when
mounted on stilts we still walk upon our legs, and though
placed' on the highest throne in all the world, we sit upon
what nature has given us. " Les plus belles vies sont,
a mon gre, celles qui se rangent au modele commun et
humain, avec ordre, mais sans miracle, sans extravagance.
Or, la vieillesse a un peu besoin d'etre traitee plus tendre-
ment. Recommandons-la a ce Dieu protecteur de sante
et de sagesse, mais gaie et sociale :
Frui paratis et valido mihi,
Latoe, dones, et, precor, integra
Cum mente; nee turpem seneetam
Degere, nee cithara carentem.
So he ends with a sentiment of Socrates and a verse
from Horace.
Of all sixteenth century Frenchmen, — except Henry
IV ! — Montaigne is still the most universally read or
considered, and written about. In his self-deprecation,
he would not have claimed membership in the company
of " les belles ames . . . ames universelles, ouvertes, et
prestes a tout; si non instruictes, au moins instruisables."
In contrast with such he points to his own ignorance and
ineptitude; and somewhat further on in this essay (II,

374 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
XVII), suggests that his constant preoccupation with
the antique temper, and those " riches ames du temps
passe," disgusts him with himself and his contemporaries.
Yet there he is, in fact, if not the most " instruict," at all
events the most " instruisable " mind of his epoch. How
ceaseless has been his influence, how very close and per
sonal with so many men ! Reading Bacon's Essays, we
see the mark of Montaigne; stepping on briskly through
the centuries, we find our own Emerson soaked with his
manner. The purpose of these few pages has been to distinguish
his place in the intellectual development of sixteenth cen
tury France. Incidents and characteristic details of his
thought and disposition have been passed over. No at
tempt has been made to give a close and intimate picture
of one who has proved just as curiously interesting to
later generations as he was to himself. One may well
refrain from attempting that which has been essayed
time and again, and has been achieved by only one man,
Montaigne himself. None can rival Montaigne in
drawing Montaigne. It is irksome to string excerpt upon
excerpt from one so well known; and to restate him is
to lose his flavor.
Of course he is not always the same Montaigne; in
which respect he is akin to ail of us. We recognize him
in his universal aspect, as a type of the wingless intelli
gence. His is a constant analytical consideration of life,
with the habit of accepting what seemed the better part —
but which was not quite the best! He even recognized
some things (like the most honorable service of the pub
lic) as beyond his energies. If the complete art of life,.
life's full content and wisdom, lies in action as well as
thought, Montaigne did not achieve it wholly.
Undoubtedly good reason for the impression which he
has made upon all the generations after him, lies in the
independence and originality of his consideration of life,
unequalled, even unrivalled, in his time. This joins with
the fact that he was such a wonderful writer, so easy, so
affable, so picturesque. Hence an individuality, nay a

AMYOT AND MONTAIGNE 375
personality, is presented in a book, engagingly, instruc
tively, and in such way as to make plain for every reader
the practical applicable lessons of its experiences and
opinions. The Essays of Montaigne have been a peren
nial source of the wisdom of life. Their persuasive
reason and convincing charm helped to impress a rational
urbanity upon French methods of expression. The Es
says became part of the French mind, a formative element
in the French genius.

CHAPTER XVI
RAMUS
Before speaking of the phase of sixteenth century prog
ress and expression exemplified in the reformed religion
of Calvin, a brief reference should be made to the
work of intellectual and educational reform attempted
by a certain independent and combative Pierre de la
Ramee, commonly called Ramus.1 He also belonged to
the reformed religion, and sealed his faith, willy nilly,
in the massacre of St. Bartholomew's. An Elizabethan
playwright made his death the subject of a tragedy.
His is the story of one born in squalor, with an un
quenchable desire for knowledge. At an incredible early
age, he went in search of it in Paris, and continued
resolute (this child!), and at the alleged age of twelve,
in the year 1527, he became the servant of a rich student
at the college of Navarre. He tried to work for his
master by day and study for himself at night, till his
eyes gave way. His spirit from the first was revolution
ary. One of his early exasperations was at the current
method of teaching logic and practicing it as a boisterous
game of tripping up. He realized the uselessness of his
years devoted to Aristotelian scholasticism, especially to
the study of the Organon. His good angel led him to
Plato, and he became fascinated with the Socratic method
of reaching and testing truth. It occurred to him to
apply it to the scholastic Aristotelian dialectic. With
what result he made manifest when, in 1536, he sus
tained for an academic day against all comers the argu
ment of his Master of Arts thesis Quaecumque ab
Aristotele dicta essent, commentitia esse, that the works
1 For Ramus, see Charles Waddington, Ramus, sa vie, ses ecrits etc.
(Paris, 1855), (from whom I have chiefly drawn), F. P. Graves, Peter
Ramus and the Educational Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (New
York, 1912). 376

RAMUS 377
ascribed to Aristotle were not his, and were, moreover,
full of error. This was to attack the scaffolding, if not
the entire structure, of theology; and the noise of the
conflict echoed through the universities, as far as Italy.
Although looked upon askance by the authorities,
Ramus obtained an opportunity to teach in one of the col
leges. Before long his lecture room was thronged, and
to the end of his career he continued the most popular
and effective of university lecturers. A classical scholar
and lover of letters, French as well as classical, he intro
duced into his lectures apt illustrations from literature
and life. His mind was throbbing with desire to cast
off the futilities of his education, and in the place of smoke
and noise, gain the verities and realities of knowledge.
He pursued this aim in all branches of education, branches
of educational reform, as they became with him.
In 1543 he published an elementary text book of logic,
written in clear and excellent Latin, Dialecticae parti-
Hones, and the same year his Aristotelicae Animadver-
siones, a work of a different sort. In that, with a violence
afterward regretted, he accused Aristotle 'of sophistry,
and reviled his followers for their barbaric Latin and
sterile disputations. Naturally this polemic brought
trouble to its author. The Sorbonne held Aristotle to
be the orthodox philosopher par excellence; his philosophy
was inseparably interlaced with the saving dogmas of
the Church. To attack one was to question the other.
The Sorbonne of the sixteenth century was in a state of
such excited conservatism, that the questioning of any
accepted way of thinking, or the opening of any new
avenue of knowledge, appeared fraught with peril; a
frame of mind not confined either to the Sorbonne or
the sixteenth century. Those sixteenth century theolo
gians were prone to impute " Lutheranism " or like bane
ful tendencies (often with reason) to all innovating
scholars. They were more sensitive as to Aristotle than
Thomas Aquinas or Albertus Magnus had been, who could
admit that he was but a man, and might err. In the case
of Ramus, the Sorbonne was right ; for the same impulse

378 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
for verity which drove him against logical conventions,
alienated him from the Church, along with the better
part of contemporary French scholarship.
The heads of the University were aroused. Process
was instituted against the books, and against their author
for corrupting the youth and disrupting authority. Such
was the noise that Francis himself ordered the matter
to be argued before his royal self and five arbiters, two
appointed by each of the parties, and one by the King.
The topics were as formal and academic as those disputed
on about the year 1000 before the Emperor Otto II, by
Gerbert, the future pope, and his German opponent
Otric.2 Ramus and his antagonist, each provided with a
Greek Aristotle, disputed as to the object and divisions of
logic, and whether a treatise on dialectic should start
from a definition of the subject. The argument wound
on, and Ramus finally obtained such damaging admis
sions from his enemy and had him so cleverly on the hip,
that the three hostile arbitrators adjourned the court,
and ordered the affair reargued from the beginning, with
those admissidns nullified. Ramus objected, but the three,
having the King's authority behind- them, condemned the
book, Ramus's two friends registering their protest in
favor of the freedom of philosophical discussion! The
King issued a long sentence of condemnation, declaring
that the said Ramus had been found temeraire, arrogant
et impudent d' avoir reprouvue et condamne le train et art
de logicque receu de toutes nations.3 All men were for
bidden to buy or sell or read either of the books, and the
university authorities made an orgie of bonfires with
them, regretting only that the author had not been con
demned to the galleys.
Thus the aroused established system defended itself
against innovation. But in a year or two, a pestilence
having in the meanwhile scattered the university, one
of its colleges, the College de Presles, invited the able
innovator to re-establish its membership and add to its
2 See The Mediaeval Mind, I, p. 291, sqq.
3 The whole text is given in Waddington, Ramus, pp. 49-52.

RAMUS 379
prestige. Ramus became its head, and also gained the
protection of the new King, Henry II, through the favor
of the powerful Cardinal of Guise (later Cardinal of
Lorraine) who had been a student with him at the col
lege of Navarre. At the instance of this mighty friend —
who twenty years afterwards threw Ramus to the
assassins — the King founded a new Royal Lectureship
of eloquence and philosophy, where Ramus would be
safe from the persecution of his enemies in the University.
But he was never to be free from their persecution, nor
did he ever cease attacking current methods of university
education, until he fell by the swords of assassins directed
against him probably by his university colleagues.
We turn from the tale of these old rancors (a long
one in the case of Ramus), to the labors of this eager
and restless man, which were spent in simplifying the old
methods, naturalizing and animating them, restating the
educational matter, discarding the superfluous and absurd,
and adding, as it were, a new-found quality of life. He
fought to free education from vicious jugglery, to make
it correspond with human nature and aid human accom
plishment. In the reform of educational methods he
seems to see ever and anon, a panacea for ignorance. In
this he falls in with Roger Bacon long before him, and
with Francis Bacon too, and others who imagined that
all knowledge could be quickly gained through proper
methods of approach. He had the dream that if men
could but freely follow the light of reason, a century
might suffice to bring the sciences to their goal.4
Ramus's chief grievance against Aristotle was that his
logical system did not follow the natural inborn logic of
the human mind. In true dialectic, as in other practical
sciences, there is first the faculty of reason ; next, the pre
cepts for its right employment; and finally the practice
through which precepts become habits, part of the normal
play of the reasoning faculty. Conversely, one will ob
serve that the practice of dialectic pre-supposes the art
or science consisting in a body of precepts which, in turn,
i Scholae in liberates artes, cited by Waddington, Ramus, p. 343.

380 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
pre-suppose the reasoning faculty and the nature of rea
son, of which the body of precepts should be the accord
ant expression. Practice must conform to precept, and
precept to the nature of that of which it is the precept or
expression. The end of dialectic is its practice or exercise in dis
course, in accordance with right precepts, themselves in
harmony with reason itself. These precepts are to be
discovered from the practice of the best and most illum
inating writers and philosophers of Rome and Greece,
who exemplified the art of composing, of arguing and
refuting, in their works. From their works we deduce
the dialectical and rhetorical precepts, which have, in
turn, proceeded from the rational natures of their great
authors. With Ramus, dialectic is a close twin to rhetoric;
and the two rest in scholarship and humanism, the study
and love of classical letters. He makes clear that the
true practice of this art must be real and living, service
able in the affairs of life, in literature, and in the pursuit
of truth. Let no fool think to attain it through the
word play of the schools ! And he illustrates his dialectic
by a multitude of examples drawn from the best works of
literature. It was in this revivifying of dialectic, and then of
other branches of education, that Ramus was creative.
First, in dialectic, he attacked the matter truculently,
shook it up, and worked it over resolutely, though not
independently. For, of course, he could not free himself
from Aristotle's system. His technical modifications were
not as radical as perhaps he imagined.5 His rather vain
glorious and self-conscious boldness made him attribute
undue novelty to his results. Great had been his travail,
as in 1555 he writes in the preface to his Dialectique
addressed to his Maecenas, Cardinal Charles of Lor
raine. But it was worth the pains " to have dared
enter the lists against all the philosophers who ever were,
in order to wrest from them the prize of dialectic which
5 Yet a fairly numerous school in various countries called themselves
Ramists and professed to follow the precepts and practice of the master.

RAMUS 381
they had won by their great genius and diligence, and the
prescription and judgment of centuries had confirmed to
them." a
We turn to his well hated reforms in other fields. In
a Remonstrance au conseil prive,1 in 1567, against the
appointment of his arch enemy Charpentier to a chair
of mathematics, Ramus quotes his enemy's invective
against himself, " que c'est un homme violent, importun,
imperieux, qu'il avoit renverse la grammaire, rhetorique,
logique, philosophic, mathematique, qu'il avoit faict tout
un monde nouveau." " In which, gentlemen," says
Ramus, " he spoke some truth." But Socrates had small
repute at Athens till the Oracle declared him the wisest
of men. " And one part of his admirable wisdom was
his contention that the liberal arts should be kept related
to human life, and help men to think and act well; but
the schools teach subtilties useless in practice. . . .
" Gentlemen, when I came to Paris, I fell among the
subtilties of the sophists, and they taught me the liberal
arts through questions and disputings, without showing
me any other advantage or use. When I had graduated
as master of arts, I . . . decided that these disputes had
brought me nothing but loss of time. Dismayed by this
thought, led by some good angel, I chanced on Xenophon
and then on Plato, and learned to know the Socratic
philosophy." Then when he had learned from this how silly the
University professors were, to think to turn the liberal
arts into sophistries, he spoke up and got himself in
trouble, — as has already been shown. From which he
was delivered by the good King Henry, and given a place
among the royal lecturers.
" Ainsi doncques estant delivre, estant invite par pris et honneur
royal, je me mis en tout diligence de traicter les disciplines a la
socratique, en cherchant et demonstrant 1'usage, en retranchant les
superfluitez des regies et preceptes. En ceste laborieuse et penible
« Given by Waddington, Ramus, pp. 401-407 — a characteristic piece of
writing. 1 Printed in Waddington, Ramus, pp. 411-417.

382 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
contention d'estude, j'ay travaille jour et nuict a enseigner et met-
tre en meilleur ordre la grammaire grecque, latine, francoise, la
rhetorique et surtout la logique, instrument singulier a manier et
traicter tous discours. . . ."
Next he took up in order arithmetic and geometry, in
which he is at present occupied.
This was a truthful picture of his labors. When the
favor of King Henry and the Cardinal in 1551 made him
a royal lecturer, in what was to be the College de France,
he recognized as his the task of universal reform. The
eyes of Paris were upon him. The youth thronged to his
lectures, and he felt the responsibilities of a public man.
His lectures on the classics, especially Cicero, were very
popular. They were meant to illustrate his instruction
in the seven liberal arts. These he taught with constant
endeavor to keep their topics in correspondence with the
practical needs of life and literature. He himself wrote
grammars, of the Latin, Greek and French languages.
In rhetoric he took up the warfare against the fashion of
slavishly imitating Cicero or following Quintilian. Great
was the fracas; Rabelais burlesqued it; Joachim du Bel
lay also satirized it. But Ramus kept sturdily on in
the endeavor to apply to all the liberal arts the principles
of his natural and living dialectic; so as the better to
make education conform to life. To this end also he
translated Euclid, and wrote an arithmetic and a geom
etry, which like his other school books passed through
numerous editions, and exerted influence in Germany and
England as well as France. He was an ardent mathe
matician, and his text-books were better and clearer than
those they superseded.
Ramus thought for himself in every field of education,
testing all things boldly, discarding the useless, and re
forming each topic along the lines of common sense.
Strenuously in all things he endeavored to follow the
light of his own reason. Three years before his death he
wrote in a preface to his Scolae in liberates artes:
" Someone has written recently that Ramus teaches Plato's

RAMUS 383
method, and condemns that of Aristotle. The author, otherwise
well instructed, has never read the Logic of Ramus; for there he
would have seen it held that there is but one method, which was
that of Plato and Aristotle as well as Hippocrates and Galen.
. . . The same is found in Virgil and in Cicero, in Homer and
in Demosthenes; it presides over mathematics, philosophy, and
over the judgments and conduct of all men ; it is not the invention
of Aristotle or Ramus."
This was the method of man's inborn reason, which
more men seek than find, and still more, perhaps, think
they possess. With Ramus the struggle for it had been
attainment. His real life's work, which told upon his
world, lay in his endeavor to apply in every field of knowl
edge this method divinely implanted in man, and man
alone, to which, as he thought, all true education, all
valid knowledge, all human progress, must conform.

CHAPTER XVII
JOHN CALVIN
I. Humanist Reformers
II. Calvin's Formative Years
III. The Work at Geneva
IV. The " Christian Institute "

Reform of the generally accepted and practised Roman
Catholic religion was certain to issue from the human
growth and enlightenment which made some halting
progress in France in the fifteenth century, and in the
sixteenth advanced with broader energy. The Reform
began almost unconsciously as a concomitant of the newly
stimulated scholarship, which was winning a clearer im
pression of the past. Men were studying the Latin
classics with the increasing insight of a larger knowledge,
and were attempting Greek and Hebrew. The em
boldened and deeply religious French scholarship naturally
addressed itself to a like examination of the Bible, and
began to compare what they found there with current
ecclesiastical doctrines. This could not fail to show the
lack of Scriptural authority for many teachings of the
Church, as well as for much in its general complexion.
If these awakening eyes perceived the Church to rest
upon tradition and doctrine in part at least unsanctioned
by Scripture, they would also see it standing upon prac
tices which Scripture implicitly or explicitly condemned.
Moreover, a new study of the Scriptures not improbably
would lead to a constructive understanding of the Faith
different from what the Church had taught for some
centuries. Lefevre of Staples, a coast town of Picardy, was the
chief interpreter of these tentative beginnings of Reform,
384

JOHN CALVIN 385
springing up in truth-seeking natures and issuing appar
ently from the habit of scholarly research. His was a
gentle, earnestly religious, nature which was impelled to
controversy by the love of truth. He is said to have
been almost a centenarian when he died in 1536, and it
is as an old man, at the end of a life of humane studies,
that he comes forward as the exponent of a better truth
in certain matters of the Faith. If he hoped to correct
some baseless teachings, he had no thought of separation
from the established church which held them. His mind
was given to sacred study some time before 1509, when
he published, in spite of his very imperfect knowledge of
Greek and Hebrew, his Quintuplex Psalterium,. saying in
the preface : " For a long time I have been devoted to
humane studies and have scarcely tasted of the studies
which are divine, august, and not to be rashly approached.
But from afar so brilliant a light has already broken on
my sight that human learning seems darkness, compared
with the sacred studies, while these seem to me to exhale
a perfume unequalled for sweetness by anything on
earth."1 The inchoate doctrinal reform that was in him becomes
articulate in his Commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul,
appearing in 15 12. He puts the Scriptures as the one
sure foundation of our religion. The doctrine of Christ
is found in them; let us not follow the precepts and
dogmas of men which have no foundation in the light from
on high.
" There are men to-day," says he, " who teach the people a
silly piety instead of the doctrine of Christ. What profits it to
observe new fasts and pay tithes? Why should I rely on prayers
set by unknown men, and omit apostolic injunctions? Why die in
a monk's frock, when one has all his life worn other clothes?
Nothing of this sort is commanded by Christ. . . . The rest per
haps is superstitious rather than religious. . . . Let us cling to
Christ alone, and to the apostolic teaching. That is enough, and is
the chief thing for salvation."
He states the principle of justification by faith:
1 Given by E. Doumergue, Jean Calvin, etc., I., p. 81 (Lausanne, 1899).

386 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
" It is most profane to speak of the merit of works, especially in
the face of God. For a merit does not seem to ask a favor, but to
demand what is due. To ascribe a merit to works is almost to
hold the opinion of those who believe that we can be justified by
works, the error for which the Jews are condemned. Let us keep
silence over the merit of our works, which is little or nothing ; and
let us celebrate the grace of God which is all. One can attribute
merit only to Christ, who has merited all for us ; but, for ourselves,
let us confess that we have no merit before God, and hope in His
grace." Again: "Wilt thou say, has ever anyone been justified
without the works of the law, written or natural? Yes, innumer
able people." 2
Works alone will justify no one. Neither will mere
belief ; — the devils believe. God alone justifies. Evi
dently Lefevre has not elaborated his position. But he
makes other steps in the direction of that Reform which
was to acquire the name of Lutheran, Calvinist, Protes
tant. For him the waters of baptism are losing their
magic quality, the Eucharist is ceasing to be a priest-made
sacrifice, and becoming a memorial; though he does not
reject the " real presence." He disparages fasts, and
priestly celibacy leading to loose incontinence, and objects
to the Latin liturgy, which is not understood by the laity
who take part in its prayers.
Lefevre plants himself upon the Bible against which
no human doctrinal authority, no custom or tradition of
the Church, can prevail. He set to work upon a trans
lation of the Vulgate into French. This brought him
into conflict with the Sorbonne (the theological faculty of
the university) who would not have the Bible thus pre
sented to the people. His antagonist was the fanatical
Beda, the head of the college of Montaigu. Incidentally
a bitter dispute arose over the " three Maries," as Le
fevre would prove them to be from Scripture, one and
the same as the Church held them to be, and the Sorbonne
again officially affirmed; — another instance of ecclesiastic
fearfulness lest light be let in on some of the untenable
positions of the Church. Francis, influenced by his sister
Marguerite, kept Lefevre from prison and the stake.
2 Passages given in Doumergue, o. c. pp. 81-83.

JOHN CALVIN 387
But Paris was no longer safe from him and he eventually
closed his eyes at Nerac, in Aquitaine, protected and com
forted by Marguerite. His influence had been consider
able; a number of able men had been his disciples, some
of whom saw fit later to purge themselves of their Re
form. But among them was Guillaume Farel, the fiery
exhorter of Calvin.
One may assume that a University whose most power
ful faculty fanatically opposed the acceptance of anything
out of harmony with church tradition, would in other
matters offer but an inferior and hide-bound instruction.
All evidence shows this to have been the fact at Paris in
the first half of the sixteenth century. It is also clear
that the efforts to improve instruction came from men who
were inclined to the Reform or known to be adherents of
it. Bude and Ramus are examples. Mathurin Cordier
was another. He had been converted in 1528 by his
friend Robert Estienne, and was Calvin's first teacher at
Paris. Known as the author of certain repeatedly printed
Colloquies, he taught in Calvin's academy at Geneva,
and died at the age of eighty-five, in 1564, the same year
with his great pupil.
Besides these pronounced reformers, both in educa
tion and religion, there were scholars, poets, ecclesiastics,
men of the world, who approved of the Reform, but fled
from persecution, or escaped it by restraint of speech or,
sometimes, by recantation. Their protector was the
Platonically inclined Marguerite of Navarre, who de
clared (a propos of evangelical preaching) that no one
should fear to hear the word of God. Among them was
Briconnet, bishop of Meaux, who loved Plato and advo
cated the Reform, till he was frightened back from it; and
Clichtove, a pupil of Lefevre, who also recanted. There
was Clement Marot, court-poet and translator of the
Psalms; and Rabelais, greatest of all. Marot shows a
clear, if moderately instructed, intelligence alienated by
the beliefs and practices of the Church. Rabelais's capa
cious mind, filled with the best learning of the time,
despised the silly stories of the theologastres — belly

388 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
theologians — of the Sorbonne, vain talkers, " sophistes
sorbillans, sorbonagres, sorbonigenes " and so forth; and
just as vehemently he despised the futile pedantry of the
education which his youth had been subjected to. Such
a man, of course, and Marot too, would be repelled by the
later ways of the Reform under Calvin's dominance.
For they combined love of the world and love of letters,
with some subordinated rational desire for a religion freed
from palpable untruth and follies.
The reform of education as well as the Reformed re
ligion represented intellectual advance. It meant much
to brush the encrustations from logic, and improve the
study of grammar, rhetoric, and arithmetic. Whatever
value the old crudities once had, to discard them now
meant a truer and larger view of what was useful and
what was useless in education, knowledge, life. Likewise,
a more scholarly perception in matters of the Faith
brought clearer understanding of the foundation of
Christianity, and a rejection of some baseless traditions,
of some conceptions more appropriate to magic, and some
superstitious practices. The contemporaneous study of
the Roman Law was penetrating through the accumula
tion of gloss and commentary to the text of the Digest.
So now this new religious scholarship would pierce the
once living spells of mediaeval symbolism, custom, and
tradition, to the sure records of the pristine Faith, read
them with fresh eyes, and re-interpret them according to
their evident meaning, rather than follow traditional ac
ceptances. The final systematized and ordered culmina
tion of the Reform, which came through Calvin, repre
sents still further intellectual or logical advance. But
the austerity of Calvinism narrowed the fullness of in
terest in life embraced by the prior humanistic generation
of French reformers. Yet his system was a product of
a French mind, working itself out as soul and body in the
Calvinist Church and State.

JOHN CALVIN 389

II
One may observe the environment of genius, and note
the pabulum on which it has fed. But it presents a larger
mystery than the capacities and limitations of common
men. John Calvin was a man of power; the vivida vis of
his nature entered" his deeds and words, and made his
Christian Institute a living sword. He was the incarna
tion of the power of reliance upon Scripture. He spoke
in the assurance that he was the spokesman of God's
truth. He lived in the conviction of God's perfect worth
and sufficiency for men, his energies consecrated to God's
glory. This lifted him above any selfish and meticulous
interest in his own salvation, and made the inspiration of
his leadership.
His Christian Institute 3 was the expression of himself.
But this mighty self-expression of Calvin was emphatic
re-expression. He belongs to the second generation of
Reformers, and stands on Luther's shoulders. He is an
interpreter of Paul and Augustine. He still speaks with
the mouths of the great mediaeval schoolmen. His In
stitute is a Somme, a summa of Christian doctrine, only
somewhat less inclusive and universal than the Summa
Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas.
The arguments of this great book held themselves erect
in Calvin's time and for the generations of his followers.
But it was not merely the contents and the matter of the
argument that made the book's enduring influence. Its
consummate language and power of expression penetrated
and held fast in the consciousness of men. The first
Latin draft overwhelmed the ardent preacher Farel with
its power, and a conviction of the god-given genius of the
author. Here was the man to declare and organize the
Church of God. And Farel had been right. This was
in 1536: five years later Calvin's French version became
a sword of flame in the vernacular. Its words and
3 There is no ground in the Latin and French originals for the plural
title " Institutes," used by all English translators of Calvin's great work,
and followed, so far as I know, by English writers upon Calvin, ,

390 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
phrases transmitted themselves as a rich legacy to the
advancing French language, carrying new disclosures of
clarity and force.
One may mention the apparently formative facts of
Calvin's life, until his final establishment at Geneva.4
He was born at Noyon in Picardy in 1509. His father,
a man of law and business, employed by the clergy and
influential families of the neighborhood, was much inter
ested in the education and worldly welfare of his son,
whom he destined for the church. The town was not
especially bigoted or religious ; nor were its ecclesiastical
affairs edifying. A powerful family held the bishopric as
by hereditary right, and there were quarrels between the
bishop and the chapter, and controversies touching the
forgery of relics; with all of which John Calvin as his
father's son must have been acquainted. His boyhood
was little impressed with reverence for the Church; nor
was his respect likely to increase when at the age of
fourteen he set forth to carry on his education at the
Paris University, which gave instruction in the elementary
as well as the higher branches. There Calvin was first
taught by Mathurin Cordier, and under him progressed
from the barbarous Latin smattering prevailing among
the half-educated youth, toward an ample and effective
command of Latin. His intellect was rapidly develop
ing, his memory was prodigious, and he was an inde
fatigable student. Hence the extraordinary attainments
of his first ten years after reaching Paris.
As Cordier did not teach the higher courses, Calvin
was transferred to the dirty old reactionary college of
Montaigu, where the students' lives were passed in toil
and squalor. Its principal was the most fanatical spirit
of the Sorbonne, the intolerable Noel Beda, " not the Ven
erable," as his enemies remarked. There was war be
tween him and the really venerable Lefevre during these
student years of Calvin; and one cannot doubt to which
4 For them see finally E. Doumergue, Jean Calvin, etc. (Lausanne 1899.
etc.) ; more conveniently, Willeston Walker, John Calvin, the Organizer
of Reformed Protestantism (N. Y., 1906, Putnam's). H. Bossert, Calvin
(Les grands ecnvains francais) —and innumerable other books!

JOHN CALVIN 391
side Calvin had inclined when he left Paris in 1528. This
young man, who had already been given sundry small
benefices, and was destined for the Church, now proceeded
to Orleans to study the Civil Law. His vacant place in
the college of Montaigu, one may almost say, was taken
by a slightly older man, by name Ignatius Loyola !
After some months at Orleans, Calvin was drawn to
Bourges by the fame of the jurist Alciat. Bourges was
the city of Marguerite, who protected many truth-seeking
scholars there. Among them was Melchior Wolmar, a
Lutheran who taught Calvin Greek, and became his friend
for life. At his house Calvin associated with " God
fearing " men, and advanced in his religious convictions
and the knowledge in which they were rooted. He met
there also the little Theodore de Beze, ten years his
junior, who was to become his adoring friend, biographer
and successor.
After Bourges, Calvin is found again in Paris, studying
more Greek under Danes, a highly reputed Royal Reader.
Loyola and Rabelais may have listened with him to this
Greek professor, perhaps, in the year 1531. The fruit
of Calvin's classical studies soon appeared in his first
work, in April 1532, a commentary upon Seneca's De
Clementia, erudite and philological, and perhaps showing
the moral tendencies of his mind.
But henceforth classical scholarship was |to be the
humble handmaid to the Reformed theology, with Calvin.
He went again to Orleans, where at the University he was
the " procureur " or representative, of the " nation " of
Picardy. But by October 1533, he was back in a Paris
excited by an attack upon Queen Marguerite in a comedy
acted by the students of the college of Navarre, and by
the Sorbonne's animadversions on a book known to have
been written by her. The Rector of the University was
Calvin's friend Nicholas Cop. He had spoken already
in the Queen's defense, and is supposed to have asked Cal
vin to prepare for him the annual Rector's discourse be
fore the University. Either Cop or Calvin, or the two
together, prepared this fateful manifesto of the Reform.

392 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Men's passions, already aroused, became enflamed. Cop
fled to Basel, and Calvin left Paris. For a while he lived
at Angouleme, then at Nerac, Marguerite's residence
after she became the Queen of Navarre, and where dwelt
the good old Lefevre. After a while Calvin returned
to Noyon, apparently was imprisoned there, and resigned
his benefices! He went to Poictiers; then the Affair of
the Placards drove him to flight in earnest; and he too
went to Basel, and there composed in 1535 the first draft
of his Institute.
The occasion of its rapid completion and publication
was the need to defend the Reform from the accusations
of lawlessness and anarchy, which the violence of Ana
baptist bands had provoked, and Catholic hate had quickly
seized upon. The first Latin draft, with its powerful
epistle to King Francis, was published at Basel in March
1536. But the date of the letter to the King is August
1535. It opens with the statement that the writer had
had no thought of addressing His Majesty when he first
set himself to write his book. His only purpose was
" d'enseigner quelques rudimens; par lesquelz, ceux qui
seroient touchez d'aucune bonne affection de Dieu, feus-
sent instruictz a vrai piete." 5 But " seeing that the rage
of certain of the wicked had so risen in thy realm as to
leave no place for sound doctrine, I thought it better to
make this book serve both as instruction to those whom I
had intended to teach and as a confession of Faith to
thee, that thou mightest know what is the doctrine against
which those so furiously rage who are troubling thy realm
to-day with fire and sword."
He had felt no shame to present a " somme " " of this
same doctrine, which they think should be punished by
imprisonment or exile, or the fire; and he knows with
what horrible reports the King's ears have been filled,
and the false calumnies by which this doctrine has been
5 From Calvin's French translation of 1541. It is almost impiety to
translate Calvin's mighty French. Where it seems quite clear, I have
not tried to.
6 The Latin, of course, is summam, which takes us back to Thomas
Aquinas. See post p. 404. sqq.

JOHN CALVIN 393
defamed. He has no thought of making a personal de
fense, which might again open France to him. "Mais
j'entreprens la cause comme de tous les fideles, et mesme
celle de Christ." We have no reason to glory, save in
the pity of God, through which with no merit of our own,
we are saved. But our doctrine is above the glory and
power of this world; " car elle n'est pas nostre: mais de
Dieu vivant et de son Christ." Calvin refutes the charge
that it is new and dubious and unconfirmed by miracles,
which are not needed by those who forge no new Gospel,
but can claim the miracles of Christ and his apostles for
their re-assertion of Christ's truth. He shows that the
Church Fathers are not against him; and as for custom, it
were sheer iniquity to yield to it, since the better things
rarely please the majority. So particular vices attain to
a common vicious consent: — " mauvaise coustume n'est
autre chose qu'une peste publique." As to which is the
true Church, he has also much to say. And again, he begs
the King not to be moved by false charges of sedition
brought against those who live simple, peaceable lives,
who even when driven from their homes do not cease to
pray for the prosperity of the King and his realm.
" They have not so ill profited from the Gospel that their
lives are not examples to their defamers, of chastity,
mercy, temperance, patience and modesty. Surely the
truth itself testifies for us that we fear and honor God,
when by our life and by our death we wish to sanctify His
name." Thus this letter reads as an early Christian " Apology "
to a Roman Emperor, using similar arguments. It closes
with a veiled threat. If their just pleas will not be heard,
but are answered only with prison, blows, and burnings,
then truly, as sheep led to the slaughter, they are reduced
to extremity. " Tellement neantmoins, qu'en nostre pa
tience nous possederons noz ames, et attendrons la main
forte du Seigneur : laquelle, sans doubte, se monstrera en
saison, et apparoistra armee, tant pour delivrer les povres
de leur affliction, que pour punir les contempteurs."
" \jt Seigneur Roy des Roys vueille estabjir {on

394 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Throsne en justice, et ton Siege en equite, Tresfort et
Tresillustre Roy."
One should read this epistle to King Francis to feel
its power. The author was twenty-six years old. Be
fore taking up the contents of his Institute, we may follow
for a while the man himself.
Having published his book, Calvin left Basel for
Ferrara, perhaps to counsel its Duchess, Renee of France,
who led an anxious life as an adherent of the Reform.
He exhorted her to steadfastness, and composed writings
against papist rites and superstitions, the Mass, the wor
ship of the wafer, indulgences, and the use of holy water.
He evidently detested Italy, declaring, as Beze reports,
that he entered it only that he might leave it.
From Ferrara, by various circuities of route, with
Strasbourg in his mind, Calvin came to Geneva. The
town had already cast out its objectionable bishops, and
with the aid of Berne, had freed itself from their domina
tion and the over-lordship of the dukes of Savoy.
Through troubles and disturbances, it had organized it
self democratically after the model of other towns in the
Swiss Confederacy. The General Council of all the cit
izens elected the four syndics and the Lieutenant de la
Justice. Sixteen citizens, also chosen by the General
Council, with the four Syndics of the current year and the
four of the year before, made the Little Council, usually
called simply the Council. In emergencies, it could add
thirty-five leading citizens to itself, and thus become the
Council of Sixty. In imitation of Berne, a council of Two
Hundred also was inaugurated, chosen by the Little Coun
cil. Under the exhortations of the fiery preacher Farel,
and with the support of Berne, Geneva had declared itself
" for the holy law of the Gospel and the word of
God. . . . abandoning all masses and other rites and
papal abuses, images and idols." It voted also to estab
lish schools. In this action the Councils represented
Church and State. They adopted the strict discipline of
manners obtaining in other reformed Swiss cities, which
represented the reaction of the French and Swiss Reform

JOHN CALVIN 39S
against the current looseness of morals. At this time,
Geneva had about fifteen thousand inhabitants; and its
violent quarrels were merely stifled for the moment, when
Calvin arrived in July 1536 en route for Strasbourg.
Farel was the most influential leader of the Geneva
Church — and State. He had published a brief " Som-
maire " of the Reformed Faith. But on the appear
ance of Calvin's Institute, this fiery enthusiast de
clared his own book useless, so much more abundantly did
the celestial water flow in Calvin's work. He accosted
Calvin at the inn, and did not stop with gentle persuasion
in his endeavor to change Calvin's plan to proceed to
Strasbourg, and lead a life of study. He swore that God
would curse him and his retired life if he drew back and
refused to aid the Genevan Church in its necessities.
Calvin was as if struck from heaven; he recognized the
call of God, and overcoming his timidity and reserve,
agreed to stay.7 Ill
Under Farel's aegis, Calvin entered upon a career des
tined to create a Reformed Church, with a Reformed
dogma, liturgy, and ethics, and political institutions in
harmony. It was in Geneva that he brought the Calvin-
istic Church-State into most complete existence ; not with
out setbacks, revolts, and many troubles. At times, when
his influence was great in Europe, a city election (1553)
might go against him, or the Council might withhold its
consent to the publication of one of his books! One
thinks of Innocent III lording it over the kingdoms of the
earth, when his unruly Romans had driven him to take
refuge in Viterbo.
The first labor of Calvin, and those with whom he
worked, and later dominated, was to bring about the or
ganization, one might say, the formulation of a godly
community. The fact and its expression lay in the
Articles, the Catechism, and the Confession of Faith, and
7 The scene is described in the writings of both Calvin and Farel.

396 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
their sworn acceptance by the city. The Articles — Arti-
culi de regimine Ecclesiae — were presented with a writ
ten statement in the name of Farel and " other preach
ers " ; and were approved in January 1537. They de
clared that the Communion of the Lord's Supper should
take place every Sunday, in view of the consolation re
ceived from it by the faithful, and seeing that Jesus did
not institute it for commemoration once or twice a year,
but as a frequent exercise of our faith and charity.
Those of evil life should be excluded, so that the sacra
ment might not be polluted and profaned. " Pour ceste
cause, nostre Seigneur a mise en son Esglise la correction
et discipline d' excommunication. . . ." To carry out
this " discipline " good men were to be chosen from the
different quarters of the city whose duty was to report evil
doers to the ministers, for admonishment or exclusion
from the Supper, but not from the preaching, since it
might please the Lord to touch their hearts.8 Whoever
was thus excluded from the Supper was no longer in the
Communion of the Church, and should not be permitted
to remain within the community of the faithful, to wit, the
City. Calvin was as adamant in his insistence upon the
right of the Church to excommunicate, untrammelled by
any authority beyond itself. And here, as often in the
promulgation of the Reform, one is reminded of the or
ganization of the early churches in the Roman Empire.
For the instruction of the rude and ignorant, Calvin
composed the first catechism of the church of Geneva ; in
which the teaching of his Institute was put concisely.9
It was an advance in religious instruction. Like the In
stitute which it summarized, this " Instruction " was not
novel in substance, but new in its function and its efficacy.
From its opening sentence — " Que tous hommes sont nez
pour cognoistre Dieu " — in simple, dignified language, it
moves with force and even sweetness in the power of its
reason :
8 The Articles provided also for church singing, the religious instruc
tion of children, and marriage.
9 It was not till 1541 that he composed the Little Catechism, in dialogue
form.

JOHN CALVIN 397
" II nous fault penser, nous qui faisons profession de piete que
ceste vie caduque, et qui bientost finera, ne doibt estre autre chose
qu'une meditation d'immortalite. Or, on ne peult trouver nulle
parte vie eternelle et immortelle, sinon en Dieu. II fault doncques
que la principale cure et solicitude de nostre vie soit de chercher
Dieu et aspirer a luy de toute affection de cueur et ne reposer ail-
leurs qu'en luy seul."
Present needs demanded a declaration or Confes
sion of the Faith, which " tous bourgeois et habitans de
Geneve et subjectz du pays doyvent jurer de garder et
tenir." The Councils approved the measure. The diffi
culty was to make all the people take the oath, which
should be administered through the local assemblies of
the " dizaines," in which the city was divided. Objections
came from many kinds of people. There were soon two
parties, " jurants " and " non-jurants." In the main the
oaths were sworn at last. But the next election was un
favorable. The preachers were requested by decree to
abstain from politics and devote themselves to preaching.
The powerful reformed city of Berne supported certain
forms of worship, and after a conference with the Bernese
representatives, the government of Geneva demanded of
Farel and Calvin that they administer the Communion in
the manner agreed upon with Berne. Calvin was no
stickler as to such minutiae ; but was a rock against inter
ference. Hence a refusal. Banishment was pronounced
against them. And Calvin made his way to Strasbourg,
upon the strenuous invitation of Sturm, the great Reform
educator, and others. The year was 1538.
In Strasbourg, Calvin taught and preached, gained
much from intercourse with Sturm and Bucer, revised his
Institute, and composed his reply to Cardinal Sadoletus,
through which the godly minded of Geneva saw that there
was none like him. The affairs of Geneva did not pro
ceed securely. There were party tumults. The stren
uously religious faction, friends of Farel and Calvin, were
called Guillermins, after Farel's Christian name : later one
said Calvinists. Farel counselled charity; Calvin for a
while abstained from action. When he spoke, it was to

398 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
express his love for Geneva, and point out that the enemy
of his people was not their fellow citizens, but Satan.10
The new preachers lacked Calvin's power of moral aus
terity. The College, the Hospital, the morals of the
town, deteriorated. A Catholic reaction made some
progress, fostered by the persuasive letter of the Cardinal.
Berne menaced Geneva's liberties. The City could not
safely appeal for succor from without. Solidarity, inner
strength was needed, that it might take its free and inde
pendent place by the side of the other Reformed cantons.
That could come through reorganization, regeneration;
for which Calvin was the only fitting instrument. The
decision was taken to recall him. He had scruples, felt
distrustful of Geneva and of his own timid nature (of
which no one else accused him !) . He had many interests
elsewhere ; at Strasbourg where his influence was growing,
in his studies, in the colloquy at Worms, which he at
tended, as he did the adjourned colloquy in Ratisbonne.
His decision wavered; but again a letter from Farel
turned him toward Geneva. His disinterested friends in
Strasbourg, and also the pastors of Zurich, exhorted him
to undertake the charge, urging that Geneva, situated at
the confines of France, Germany, and Italy, might be the
hearth from which the Gospel was destined to spread, for
the enlargement of the Kingdom of Christ. So the event
proved. Through the genius of Calvin, Geneva became
the capital city of the Reform, radiating energy and
inspiration. Calvin returned to Geneva in September 1541, and
entered on his task. At his request the Council imme
diately selected six of its members to act with him. Three
days later he wrote : " After offering my services to the
Council, I declared that the church could not maintain it
self unless a constitution were established modelled on the
word of God and the practice of the primitive church. I
sketched the chief features, that I might be understood."
His object was to secure the self-government of the
10 Ep. to the Church of Geneva — Bonnet, Lettres de Jean Calvin I p
13 (Paris, 1854).

JOHN CALVIN 399
Church, and give it sufficient disciplinary powers to keep
its members in right belief and conduct. The Ordon-
nances as finally passed, somewhat modified from Calvin's
draft, declared that Christ had instituted in his Church
the four " offices" of pastor, doctor (or teacher), elder
and deacon. Pastors (or ministers) were to be examined
and chosen by the body of pastors in office, and confirmed
by the Council; the elders were chosen by the Council, on
consultation with the ministers. The ministers' duty was
to preach, admonish and reprove, in public or private, and
administer the Sacraments. It was for the teachers,
through the school, to instruct in sound doctrine and in the
" sciences humaines." The deacons were entrusted with
the distribution of alms and the management of the hospi
tals, which were open to the indigent as well as to the sick.
Begging was prohibited. An exceeding abundance of ser
mons was prescribed, not on Sunday alone. The Com
munion was to be administered four times a year. All
the ministers were required to meet weekly for discussion,
and every three months for criticism of one another; if
there was contention among them, the elders should be
called in; and when no decision could be reached upon
grave matters of doctrine or conduct, recourse was to be
had to the magistrates. Under the circumstances, the
body of ministers obtained great influence in affairs. But
the central organ of spiritual government and discipline
was the Consistory, composed of members of the ministry
and of twelve elders. It could summon before it for
examination, censure, or ultimate excommunication, who
ever offended in doctrine or conduct, or failed in church
attendance. As the functions of the Consistory might
impinge upon the powers of the Council to maintain order
and punish for crime, the following significant provision
was inserted :
" That all this [discipline] shall be done in such fashion that
the ministers shall have no civil jurisdiction, and shall use none but
the spiritual sword of the Word of God as St. Paul directs them ;
and that the authority of the government and of ordinary justice
shall in no way be diminished by the Consistory, but that civil

400 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
authority shall remain unimpaired. And, in particular, where it
shall be necessary to inflict some punishment or restrain the par
ties, the ministers with the Consistory, having heard the parties
and made remonstrances and admonitions as shall be fitting, shall
report all to the Council, which shall deliberate on their report and
order and render judgment according to the merits of the case." "
These provisions for the exercise of discipline by the
body of ministers or by the Consistory made the primary
Calvinist solution of the problem of maintaining the inde
pendence and disciplinary power of the Church in harmony
with the authority of the civil government. Calvin set
himself to uphold the Church in this relationship of inde
pendence and cooperation. The struggle was long, and in
moments doubtful. Calvin, although minister, held no
position in the city government, and was not even made
a burgess till 1559. Yet he had become Geneva's auto
crat, "the boss," in the language of American politics;
and that in civil as well as church affairs. Although he
felt the conflict to be repugnant to his timid and retiring
nature, he must have known his ability and fitness for it.
With vividness and tenacity he beheld as set in principle
the import of seemingly small matters ; and the power of
his logic and passionate insistence was not to be with
stood. All effective opposition to him ceased in 1555,
when the Councils by a vote to abide by the Ordonnances,
finally secured to the Consistory the right of excommuni
cation.12 Shortly afterwards the foolish violence of
Calvin's opponents brought upon them cruel measures
of banishment and death. Calvin approved and aided
in the prosecution, and saw the hand of God in the tor
tures which forced questionable admissions from the vic
tims. With Calvin the spread of Christ's Kingdom and
the word of God hallowed every measure. One may add
that his influence in Geneva had been strengthened through
the admission to citizenship of numerous Frenchmen,
11 From Walker's John Calvin, p. 273.
12 See Walker's John Calvin, Chapters VIII-XIII for the story of these
conflicts. Also, " Calvin's Programme for a Puritan State in Geneva," H.
D. Foster, Harvard Theological Rev., Oct., 1908.

JOHN CALVIN 401
exiles for their faith, men of education and intelligence,
devoted to the cause of the Reform.
In accord with the spirit of the Ordonnances, Calvin
formed an Academy combining elementary and university
instruction. It was inaugurated in 1559 under the rec
torship of Beza, the master's most devoted disciple.
Distinguished teachers were installed, and students drew
together from all countries. It became a power for the
spread of Calvinism, as it sent forth convinced and in
structed disciples to teach and preach in France, England,
Scotland and the Lowlands.
Calvin continued in the Academy the courses of theo
logical lectures which he had given unremittingly for
years. They formed the nucleus of his Commentaries on
the books of Scripture. To the task of commentator he
had brought wide reading, an exceptional knowledge of
the tongues, and a new and personal insight into the mean
ing of the sacred writers. They were the inspired enun-
ciators of God's words. Calvin divined that these words
of God had definite and single meaning, to be derived
from the text. His exegesis, following upon the work of
Luther, measurably freed itself from allegorical and
mystical interpretations. His Commentaries have al
ways exerted enormous influence.
The struggle and victory in Geneva, and the lectures in
its Academy, were the fulcrum of Calvin's active influence
upon western Europe, and most directly upon France.
Thither passed innumerable letters from Geneva,
strengthening and sharpening the convictions of the faith
ful, heartening the wavering, insisting upon order and or
ganization. From Lausanne and Strasbourg, as well as
from Geneva, travelled preachers, impressed with the
thoughts and words and the formative ideas of Calvin; —
" daring all things boldly for the word of God, of which
they are made the ministers." The Reformed churches
of France organized themselves along the lines which
Calvin set — a band of communicants, one or more minis
ters, a Consistory, with regular preaching and administra-

402 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
tion of the sacraments.13 But from lack of a co-oper
ating civil government, the Genevan model could not be
wholly followed in these French churches. The minister
was chosen by the elders and deacons, who were elected
by the body of the church. Ministers, elders, and deacons
constituted the governing Consistory. The mode of wor
ship, with the Catechism, came also from Geneva, where
Calvin had fixed the liturgy of the Reform. In 1559 a
small synod of French churches met in Paris to formulate
a Confession of Faith and a general plan of organization.
Calvin's teaching and methods were embodied in the
result, although he had doubted the wisdom of the
meeting.14 IV
Calvin's sweep of purpose made for the greatness of
his Christian Institute. All the discipline of his study and
all the wisdom of his experience rendered this book of
many revisions a complete expression of his personality.
The first draft was completed in 1535, when Calvin
was twenty-six. The strenuously systematized religious
thinking which characterized it must have been gaining
form in the young man's mind through the preceding
years, overarching his classical and legal studies with a
consecrating purpose. Great was the disciplinary value
of these studies. What could have been more suggestive
to the man who was to pierce through church tradition to
the rock of Scripture, than the new training in the Civil
Law, from which gifted students gained the faculty of
penetrating through the maze of gloss and commentary to
the text of the Digest?
His education, his tense purpose, and his conviction
that he was the spokesman of God's truth, contributed to
his style of power. He wrote Latin admirably; and his
French, for lucidity and force, has never been excelled.
I3 Cf. Lemonnier, in Hist, de France (ed. by Lavisse), Vol. V,2 p. 319,

sqq 14

In 1557 Calvin put in the form of a letter "To the King of France,"
idmirable " Confession des Eglises de France." Bonnet, II, p. 151, sqq.

JOHN CALVIN 403
He is one of the great creators, and is often called the
" father," of modern French. Pascal and Bossuet, in
whatsoever they may have equalled or surpassed him,
" stand upon his shoulders." 15 His unequalled talent for
argument and effective presentation was early shown in
the " Reply to the Letter of Cardinal Sadoleto." He
took great pains with the arrangement of topics. The
repeated revisions of the Institute brought some new mat
ter and further elaboration; but most clearly they evince
the author's constant effort to perfect the arrangement,
the general lucid composition of the work.
The power of argument, the power of style, both were
the man; the moving energies were a sense of the over
whelming primacy of God, faith in God's purposes, and a
conviction of the loving nature of those purposes as to
the elect, among whom of a surety was this vessel of
divine truth, John Calvin. The power which reliance
upon God has imparted to chosen men, becomes irresist
ible when increased through the devoted religious sense
that the ineffable Will is enough for man — yea, though
He slay me ! Assurance of his own salvation may steel
the martyr's heart, or the soldier's arm. But conviction
of God's absolute worth and sufficiency for men, devotion
to His Honor and His glory, rather than interest in the
individual's salvation, is needful for the inspired religious
leader. This devotion was possessed by Calvin, who
felt and knew that the chief end of man was not his soul's
salvation, but to know and glorify God.16
These were perhaps the most personal and intimate
elements of the power entering the composition of the
Institute. Around and about and behind them was the
fund of the opinions, knowledge, and convictions belong
ing to the Reformers in France and Germany and Switzer
land. There was no part of Calvin and his work that was
not affected and made possible by this fund of antecedent
Protestant knowledge and opinion.
15 See generally all French works upon the literature of this period, e.g.,
Lanson, Brunetiere, Faguet.
16 Again, see the Reply to Sadoleto; and Bonnet, o. c. II, pp. 164 and
203.

404 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Of the great books which have exerted enormous in
fluence, the Christian Institute of Calvin contains a mini
mum of strictly speaking original thought. In a way,
all books of Christian theology are based on Scripture in
terpreted reasonably or fantastically. The Institute was
founded on Scripture rationally and acutely interpreted.
But here, less learnedly, Luther preceded Calvin. Doc
trinally the mighty antecedent of the Christian Institute
was that man of prodigious doctrinal originality, the
Apostle Paul. Augustine, in his further elaborations, is
the next antecedent of Calvin's book. The Christian In
stitute is Paul and Augustine absorbed by a man of living
power, and re-endowed with life through restatement
and adaptation to the sixteenth century. Calvin added
little to Paul and Augustine doctrinally, but much insti
tutionally as it were, through his constructive faculty of
civic and church organization.
The Institute is indebted to other Fathers of the
Church, and may draw on them by name. Naturally it
has absorbed the Nicene formulation of dogma; and is
thus fundamentally orthodox. Its debt to the mediaeval
schoolmen is less evident, less conscious. But Calvin
knew Peter Lombard, Bernard and Aquinas; Duns Scotus
affects his conception of the will as the primary element
of the divine nature. The Christian Institute is by no
means an unschoiastic work. Calvin and other great
reformers of his epoch strove to re-establish what they
conceived to be the teaching of the New Testament and
the early Church; but they had neither the will nor the
power to shake themselves out of the assumptions, the
modes of thinking and argumentation, which constituted
a large part of their normal mental processes.
The very idea of the Institute as a summary of Chris
tian doctrine reverts to the Sentences of the Lombard and
the Summa Theologiae of Aquinas. But as the name
Institute implies and as Calvin says explicitly,17 it was a
work of elementary instruction, " une clef et ouverture
17 E.g. at the opening of the Epistle to the King in the " Argument " to
the French edition of 1541.

JOHN CALVIN 405
pour donner acces a tous enfans de Dieu, a bien et
droictement entendre l'Escriture saincte," and not a
comprehensive Summa of whatever could be enfolded
beneath the wings of sacra doctrina. Calvin's work has
nothing to do with the " ancillary sciences," and so far
as possible eschews the metaphysics of theology, all of
which were dear to Thomas, and had place in his great
Summa.
It is interesting to compare the arrangement of the two
books. The Summa of Aquinas follows what one may
regard as the natural order of presentation of the Chris
tian matter, which had practically been followed by Peter
Lombard, and is indicated in Augustine's Commentary on
Genesis : i. e. God, His unity and trinity, the creation of
the world, man, his fall, the Incarnation as the restoring
means of his salvation, the Sacraments and the final Judg
ment.18 To a considerable extent, especially in his final
edition of 1559, Calvin follows the same order.19 Thus
in Book I of that edition, he treats of God, and of the
nature of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and so of the doc
trine of the Trinity, in substantially the order of Thomas;
and, in the same order, he takes up the Angels and the
creation of man, body and soul. With Book II comes
the Fall of Man and the Incarnation, and, in fine, the
saving work of Christ. This matter is continued through
Books III and IV, concluding with a treatment of the
Church and Sacraments.20 Thus the order which Calvin
" Cf. The Mediaeval Mind, Vol. II, p. 352 sqq.
19 It will not be necessary, either for this or forour other purposes, to
discuss the numerous editions of the Institute as revised by the author and
published in his lifetime. Suffice it to say that in 1539 he published a
revised and somewhat enlarged edition, and in 1541 what was sub
stantially a French translation of the same; it is this edition of 1541 that
should be read as a monument of French. Calvin continued to revise and
republish until, in 1559, he published what must be taken as the final
and standard edition, divided into four books, jn which the work was re
arranged and much enlarged. In 1560 this edition appeared in a French
translation made by Calvin or under his direction. See the Prolegomena
to Vol. I and the Introduction to Vol. Ill of the Strasbourg edition of the
Opera (1863 sqq.) and the Introduction by A. Lefranc to the French edi
tion of 1 541 (Ecole des Hautes Etudes, 176-177). Among the Reformers,
Calvin's Institute had been preceded by Melanchthon's Loci Communes, by
Zwingli's Commentaries, and Farel's Sommaire brieve, all designed as
Compendia of the reformed religion.
20 There is one last chapter on Civil Government. ,

406 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
adopted in his final revision was, in skeleton, the order fol
lowed in the Summa. The resemblance becomes less
obvious when perusing the substance of the work, because
of the different stress laid by Calvin on his topics. Where
he finds himself in harmony with the Church of all the
centuries, he speaks briefly. Thus in treating the funda
mental dogma of the Trinity, he avoids its metaphysics,
gives a plain discussion of the Scriptural testimony to its
truth, and reaches an orthodox conclusion.21 On the
other hand, in treating of the redemptive work of Christ
and the believer's faith in Him, in Book III, he greatly
enlarges the controversial topics of justification by faith
and the divine election to salvation or damnation; while
in Book IV, his treatment of the Church and its Sacra
ments, though falling in its proper order, becomes largely
a polemic against the Papacy and the Mass, which natu
rally had no place in the Summa of Aquinas.
Like the personality of which it was the expression,
the Christian Institute grew and developed, and yet in
many respects remained the same from the first to the last
edition. Its temper, its point of view, its attitude toward
God and man, its human quality, was unchanged; but its
doctrinal expositions were elaborated and made more
sheer and ineluctable; while the author's accumulations
of experience as well as learning, Christian and profane,
contributed to swell the book. Calvin's personality seems
to project most saliently from the French edition of
1541. That, with the Latin of 1539 on Which it was
based, had been thoughtfully revised from the first draft
of 1536, but was not yet overlaid with the learned ar
gumentation which serves to veil the man Calvin from the
would-be twentieth century appreciator. We have al
ready drawn upon that powerful French version for his
letter to the King, and may advantageously continue with
it for the body of the book, still giving brief extracts in
Calvin's nervous French, so far as they seem readily com
prehensible. The prefatory Argument points out that although Holy
21 It is in Chapter IV of the 1541 edition, say pp. 217-234. It is some
what enlarged in the 1559 edition, where it makes Chapter XIII of Book I.

JOHN CALVIN 407
Scripture contains "une doctrine parfaicte, a laquelle on
ne peut rien adjouster [ajouter], nevertheless the un
trained man needs guidance through it; those who have
received " plus ample lumiere de Dieu," may lend the
hand " pour les conduire et les ayder a trouver la somme
de ce que Dieu nous a voula enseigner en sa parolle."
One notes here a point in Calvin's position : the Bible is
for all, but there is need of guidance from those who
have received more light from God: " a ceste fin j'ay com
pose ce present livre," which shall be a key to a right
understanding of Scripture for all the children of God.
And since we should recognize that all truth proceeds
from God, — " j'oseray hardiment protester, en simpli-
cite, ce que je pense de cest oeuvre, le recognoissant estre
de Dieu, plus que mien." Let God have the praise, for
His is the work, this work of Calvin's which he does not
hesitate to exhort everyone to read diligently if they
would have " une somme de la doctrine Chrestienne, puis
une entree a bien proffiter en la lecture tant du vieil que
du nouveau Testament." Having done that, they will
know " par experience " that I have spoken advisedly.
" Si quelqu'un ne peut comprendre tout le contenu, il
ne fault pas qu'il se desespere pourtant : mais qu'il marche
tousjours oultre, esperant qu'un passage luy donnera plus
familierement exposition de 1' autre. Sur toutes choses, il
fauldra avoir en recommandation, de recourir a l'Escri-
ture, pour considerer les tesmoignages que j'en allegue."
Here is a further disclosure of Calvin's attitude : Let
all read his book for guidance, and prove it, each for him
self, from the passages of Scripture which it cites. This
indeed is Calvinism, or individual judgment exercised
under wise, i. e., Calvin's direction. Independence and
guidance are not easy to reconcile, yet they must be joined
by those who would escape the Charybdis of Romanism
and the Scylla of the Anabaptists.22
22 As to the limits to a proper consideration of the profundities of Scrip
ture, Calvin says that we should keep to the statements of_ the text, and
not probe unrevealed mysteries, and should also study Scripture for our
edification and not to satisfy curiosity. Bk. I, 14, 4, of 1559 edition, the
passage practically the same as in prior editions,

408 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
What would I know, cries Augustine, but God and the
Soul ? — quite enough ! Says Calvin, opening his treat
ise : 23 The sum of all our wisdom falls into two parts,
knowledge of God and of ourselves. The first shows that
there is one God whom all should honor and worship,
" la fonteine de toute verite, sapience, bonte, justice,
jugement, misericorde, puissance, et sainctete," — - from
whom we should expect and ask all these things. The
second, by showing us our weakness, misery and wicked
ness, brings us to mistrust and hate ourselves, and kindles
in us a desire to seek God, since all our good (bien) lies
in him, while in ourselves we find a world of misery.
Augustine echoes through the opening of the Institute;
which passes on to point out the correlations between
knowledge of God and of ourselves: through the con
sciousness of our vanity and wretchedness, we recognize
His truth and wisdom, and every excellence we lack. We
are thus drawn and as it were led by the hand to find
Him.24 On the other hand, man comes to a true abase
ment and knowledge of himself only through contempla
tion of the wisdom and might and purity of God. And
in order that no one may plead a pretended ignorance,
some perception of divinity is implanted in the mind
through natural inclination.
Calvin's emphasis is upon the greatness and righteous
ness and the sovereignty of God. Nothing has been said
thus far of love between God and man. Man's life
should be unbroken obedience to God's will, since men
are His creatures, and He is the source of every good.
Instead, the perversity of man seeks to appease Him
with " quelques petites satisfactions. Au lieu qu'il luy
faillot complaire en sainctete et innocence de coeur, nous
forgeons je ne scay quelz fatras et ceremonies de neant,
esperant l'amuser."
How much of Calvin and of the gist of his indictment
23 When not quoting the French, I do not translate Calvin in full, but
abbreviate the substance.
24 The French is " meni par la main a le trouver," while the Latin
text of 1539 has "quasi manu ducitur," — the verb nfanuducere so frequent
in Aquinas,

JOHN CALVIN 409
of the Roman Church is in this sentence! Oh! let man
beware of that misknowledge of God which comes from
fashioning Him after our image; which the " coeur
fidele " will not do, but will be content to have Him such
as He manifests Himself, beholding Him upon His
throne as a just Judge, " lequel fera une fois rude ven
geance sur tous transgresseurs," and to the good, will
give eternal life. This faithful heart will be moved not
by fear alone to keep from sin: "mais d'autant qu'il
l'ayme et revere comme son pere, et le craint comme son
Seigneur, mesmes quand il n'y auroit nul enfer, si ha-il
horreur de 1'offencer." This is true religion, faith joined
with that fear of God which includes delight in the right
eousness of His law and reverence freely offered to His
majesty. Since we are all born to know God, and the
knowledge which lacks such delight and reverence is vain,
manifestly those who do not address to this end the
thoughts and actions of their lives, fall away from the
purpose of their creation.
So Calvin makes his point and clinches it, and then
confirms it with testimony from pagan philosophers. He
declares in fitting, but not novel terms, that God has
graven upon " chacun de ses oeuvres certains signes de sa
majeste, par lesquelz il se donne a cognoistre a, nous selon
nostre petite capacite." Thus, though His essence re
main hidden, we perceive His virtue in His works. Nor
did He omit to communicate by word and vision with His
chosen people. And though new oracles no longer come
to us from heaven, we have Scripture " en laquelle il a
pleu a Dieu de coucher sa verite a eternelle memoire."
We must consider this question, why Scripture has
" mesme authorite envers les fideles, que pourroit avoir
la voix ouye de la propre bouche de Dieu." Whereupon
Calvin begins his argument to show that Scripture rather
than the Church is the final authority for Christians.
Some ask how we could know that Scripture is from God,
unless the Church declared it? On the contrary, the au
thority of Scripture is founded on the " tesmoinage inte-
rjeur dq Sainct Esprit. Car jacoit [quoique] qu'en sa

410 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
propre majeste elle [Scripture] ait assez dequoy estre
reveree, neantmoins elle nous commence lors a nous
vrayement toucher, quand elle est seellee en noz coeurs
par le Sainct Esprit." Thus enlightened, we do not rely
on the judgment of ourselves or others for the assurance
that Scripture is from God; " mais par dessus tout juge-
ment humain nous arrestons indubitablement, qu'elle nous
a este donnee de la propre bouche de Dieu, par le minis-
tre des hommes: tout ainsi que si nous contemplions a
l'oeil 1'Essence de Dieu en icelle."
Strong words! This is the height of Calvin's argu
ment for his assured reliance upon Scripture — the testi
mony of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. In the light of
that, the excellences of Scripture reveal themselves more
strongly in corroboration; for instance, its divine sim
plicity which uses no artifice beyond truth, so different
from Demosthenes or Cicero or Plato, as to whom, says
Calvin, " je confesse bien qu'ilz attireront mervielleuse-
ment, et delecteront, et esmouveront jusques a ravir mes-
mes l'esprit."
On the other hand, the consensus of the Church " n'est
pas sans importance "; and the witness of so many holy
men who have given the testimony of their blood. Be
ware of such as would lead astray with individual imag
inings and alleged inspirations. It is not the office of
the Holy Spirit " de songer nouvelles revelations . . .
ou forger nouvelle espece de doctrine, pour nous retirer
de la doctrine de l'Evangile, apres I'avoir une fois receu.
Mais plustost de seeler ... en noz coeurs la doctrine
qui nous est dispensee par l'Evangile. . . ." Thus
would Calvin warn off vagaries (as of the Anabaptists if
one will) and bring all men back to the sure foundation
of the Gospel truly and simply understood, as by Calvin.
The second chapter of the French edition of 1541
opens with a reference to an ancient proverb advising
man to know himself — indeed the lack of self-knowledge
is disgraceful. But the old philosophers wrongly sought
through self-knowledge to enhance the dignity of man;
we should seek it that we may humbly realize our misery

JOHN CALVIN 411
and weakness. Gladly men hear good of themselves,
and would fain believe in their ability to live well and
happily. The more modest concede something to God,
while retaining for themselves the better part of wisdom
and virtue. Whoever will exalt human nature is most
welcome everywhere. All this is fatal self-deception.
Although God's truth and human judgments agree that
our best wisdom is self-knowledge, they differ as to the
way of knowing. After the opinion of the flesh, man
seems to know himself when, relying on his understanding
and virtue, he sets out to do his duty. But he who looks
to the standard of God's judgment finds in himself no
hope, nor anything by which to order his life. There
is indeed some seed of nobility in our nature, for we can
not think of our origin or end and not be spurred to con
sider and desire the immortality of the Kingdom of God.
But this should humiliate us. For what is our origin but
that from which we have fallen? And what is our end
but that from which we have turned away? There is
nothing but to groan and sigh for our lost dignity.
It is well to know how man was first created, before we
consider his vices; lest we be led to impute them to the
Author of his nature. So Calvin sets himself to this
great factitious problem of Christian doctrine. And
what sentences he contributes, contending against this
slander upon God: —
" Attendu done que nous voyons la chair desirer tous eschappa-
toires, [loopholes] par lesquelz elle pense la coulpe de ses vices
pouvoir estre transferee allieurs: il fault obvier a ceste malice.
II est done besoing de traicter tellement la calamite du genre hu-
main, que nous couppions la broche a toutes tergiversations de
nostre chair; et que la justice du Seigneur soit delivree, non seule-
ment d 'accusation, mais aussi de toute reproche et murmure. Ne-
ant moins que cela se face en telle sorte, que nous ne declinions
point de la pure verite."
It is certain that our father Adam was created a par
ticipant in the divine wisdom, righteousness, virtue, holi
ness and truth. By his ingratitude he effaced the divine
image which he bore; and ignorance, weakness, filth,

412 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
vanity and injustice took the place of those qualities in
him and in his descendants, born like unto him, infected
with his pollution. Here Calvin pauses, with Augustine,
to thrash the beastly Pelagians who held that this original
sin was transmitted by imitation, and not through gen
eration. It is enough for us to know, that as God set
good gifts in Adam not for himself alone, but for all
human nature; so when Adam lost them, he lost them
for us all. And with clear conviction Calvin declared
original sin to be " une corruption et perversite heredi-
taire de nostre nature, laquelle nous faict coulpables,
premierement de l'ire de Dieu, puis apres produit en
nous les oeuvres, que 1'Escriture appelle oeuvres de la
chair: . . . adultaires, paillardises, larcins, haynes,
meutres, et gourmandises," — the list taken from Paul.
With gathering power of demonstration, following the
good Augustine, he shows this corruption penetrating
our entire nature, becoming our very selves :
"nostre nature n'est seulement vuide et destitutee de tous biens;
mais elle est tellement fertille en tout espece de mal, qu'elle ne
peut estre oysive . . . C'est que toutes les parties de I'homme,
depuis l'entendement jusques a la volunte, depuis l'ame jusques a la
chair, sont souillees et du tout remplies de cette concupiscence, ou
bien, pour le faire plus court, que I'homme n'est aultre chose de
soymesme que corruption."
Having thus delivered himself, Calvin considers how
far there may remain in man, " environne de misere et
necessite," some spark of freedom and desire for good; a
topic which leads (as in the Summa of Aquinas) to a dis
cussion of the human faculties, according to the philos
ophers and the Doctors of the Church. With them, the
Lombard is cited, and St. Bernard. At the end, Calvin
abides in the conviction that the will and understanding
are bound in sin and impotence, requiring the " remede
de la grace de Dieu, par laquelle nostre nature vicieuse est
corrigee." Grace is not bestowed on all men, nor, when
given to one, is it bestowed because of the merit of his
will, but through the free gift of God, whose justice may

JOHN CALVIN 413
also withhold it. And Calvin agrees with Augustine
que la volunte humaine n'obtient point grace par sa
liberte, mais obtient liberte par la grace de Dieu." He
follows the great Father's presentation of the
further offices of grace in reforming and strength
ening the will; discusses points of view from which
grace may be regarded, and with much argu
ment shows the falsity of the Pelagian view of human
liberty and merit, and upholds the position of Augustine.
In opposition to an adverse interpretation of the parable
of the man who fell among thieves, he makes the sound
remark touching allegorical interpretation: "Les
alegories ne doibvent estre receues, si non d'autant qu'elles
sont fondees en l'Escriture." For himself he will admit
that the human soul has some knowledge of good and evil,
and some notion that there is a God, though it does not
know him aright. Nothing impugns the conclusions of
Saint Augustine :
" C'est que les dons gratuitz, qui appartennent a salut, on este
ostez a I'homme apres sa cheute; que les dons naturelz, qui ne le
peuvent conduire a salut, ont este corrompus et pollus . . . que
l'entendement de I'homme est tellement du tout aliene de la jus
tice de Dieu, qu'il ne peut rien imaginer, concevoir, ne comprendre,
sinon toute meschancete, iniquite, et corruption. Semblablement
que son coeur est tant envenime de peche, qu'il ne peut produire
que toute perversite. Et s'il advient qu'il en sorte quelque chose,
qui ait apparence de bien, neantmoins que l'entendement demeure
tousjours envelope en vanite, le coeur adonne a tante malice."
Chapter III is devoted to God's " Loy escrite," given
as a more certain witness to what had become obscured
in the " loy naturelle." In this law God discloses Him
self as a God of righteousness. " Mais le Seigneur, non
content d' avoir monstre, en quelle reverence nous devons
avoir sa justice, a. fin aussi d'adonner noz coeurs a. l'amour
d'icelle [righteousness] et haine d'iniquite, il adjoinct
des promesses et menaces." By threats and promises,
God incites love of righteousness in the hearts of the
faithful — according to Calvin.
Passing over this chapter, in which the Ten Command-

414 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
ments are treated at length, we come to chapter IV, De la
Foy, oil Is Symbols dss Apostrss est explicque. Calvin
accepts the Pauline view ; since we cannot fulfill the Law,
our only way to escape rejection is through God's com
passion, which we must receive in firm Faith, and rely
upon in certain hope. He will consider the nature of the
Faith through which the chosen children of God enter His
Kingdom. It is not the " credulite vulgaire " with which
one assents to the statements of the Gospel. That such
suffices is a pernicious opinion taught by the " Sophistes et
Sorbonistes," who also add " je ne scay quelle distinction
frivole de la foy formee et informe," a distinction, by the
way, not lightly treated by the great Aquinas, whom Cal
vin does not mention here. For faith we must turn to the
Word of God, which is faith's end and object, the mirror
where it beholds and contemplates God, and seeks and
trusts His will, gaining a knowledge of His compassion,
in which the heart of man, touched by grace, may indubit
ably repose. And Calvin gives as the " pleine " definition
of faith: " une ferme et certaine cognoissance de la bonne
volunte de Dieu envers nous: laquelle estant fondee sur la
promesse gratuite donnee en Jesus Christ, est revelee a
nostre entendement, et scellee en nostre coeur par le Sainct
Esprit." If Calvin had not thus kept his discussion
austere and intellectual, carefully avoiding the word
" love," he would have come closer to the fides formata of
Aquinas.25' Calvin's faith is an intellectual certitude.
" Certes la Foy ne gist point en ignorance; mais en cog
noissance " ; and it does not lie in reverence for the
Church. He passes on to discuss each phrase of his defi
nition, and next takes up the successive clauses of the
Apostles' Creed.
In the fifth chapter Calvin turns to the subject of Peni
tence, which not only " est conjoincte a la Foy, mais aussi
en est engendree." He is scandalized at " the fasts and
other things " by which the monks and schoolmen, with
Peter Lombard, their captain, have stuffed their books.
25 Cf. The Mediaeval Mind, Vol. II, p. 510.

JOHN CALVIN 415
And he launches a grand attack on the likewise time-hon
ored Purgatory, which is but a fiction of Satan, built of
blasphemies against the full and sufficient sacrifice made by
Christ. Other reformers had been silent here ;
" Mais quand la purgation des pechez se cerche aillieurs qu'en
Christ, quand la satisfaction est transferree autre part, qu' a luy, il
est dangereux de se taire. II fault done cryer a haulte voix, que
purgatoire est une fiction pernicieuse de Sathan; laquelle faict un
opprobre trop grand a la misericorde de Dieu, aneantit la croix de
Christ, dissipe et subvertit nostre foy. Car qu'est-ce que leur est
purgatoire, sinon une peine que souffrent les ames des trespassez, en
satisfaction de leur pechez ? Tellement que si on oste la phantasie
de satisfaire, leur purgatoire s'en va bas. Or si de ce que nous
avons par cy devant dispute, il est faict plus que manifeste que le
sang de Christ est une seule purgation, oblation, et satisfaction
pour les pechez de fideles, que reste-il plus sinon que le purgatoire
soit un pur et horrible blasphesme contre Jesus Christ? "
Perhaps Calvin never showed more boldly his clear con
sistency of reason than in this hazardous attack upon the
doctrine of Purgatory, so dear and so natural to the
stumbling faith of those who know themselves unfit for
heaven. The sixth chapter takes up the cardinal topic, Justifica
tion by Faith and the merits of works, " le principal article
de la religion Chrestienne." We need not follow Cal
vin through his elaboration of the favorite theme of the
Reform. His position is defined in an opening sentence :
Since most men imagine a mixed righteousness of faith and
works — " imaginent une justice meslee de la Foy et des
oeuvres, monstrons aussi, devant que passer oultre, que la
justice de Foy [the righteousness of. or through Faith]
differe* tellement de celle des oeuvres, que si l'une est es-
tablie, 1'autre est renversee." This assuredly is Paul, and
this is Calvin. And at the end of the long chapter we
note the conclusion of the argument whereby one who has
been guilty of the breach of any one command is worthy
of death, — " entant qu'il a offense la majeste de Dieu,"
he is guilty of them all. The righteousness by works —
" la justice des oeuvres est une parfaicte obeyssance de la

416 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Loy . . . une observation entiere et consommee de la
volunte de Dieu." Obviously impossible : hence there can
be no righteousness, no justification, through works.
This is the Pauline conclusion, not easy for every stomach
to digest.
Passing over the next chapter, in which polemically, and
with scholastic narrowness, Calvin discusses the difference
between the Old and New Testaments, we reach another
pillar of his system, Predestination, a doctrine in its two
fold terror unto salvation or damnation, necessitated by
God's foreknowledge of the Fall of Man with its entail
ment of corruption, and the justification, through Faith,
of the elect.26 So long as election unto salvation, with
Paul, with Augustine, was accepted, to flinch before the
converse election of the rest of men to hell was but an
amiable weakness unjustified by the logic of the situation.
And to-day in an age when science will not blench before
the grim facts of the natural world, and recognizes the
equal grimness of human social fact, we need not stammer
over this theology, which seems to reflect the ways of
nature, and present a divine analogue to the teeth and
fangs of life. And even as to election, predestination,
why go back to Eden and the Fall of Man? We see elec
tion in ourselves and those about us, rich and poor, the
gifted and degenerate, saints and criminals. Did they
make their characters, their faculties, their circumstances,
which raise or damn them? Is there not a surfeit of elec
tion here? And of the double predestination to heaven
and hell, so far as concerns this world? Yet — here we
stammer — the good man or the wise man steers his life
through perils which are seen and through others utterly
unseen by him. Whether his barque is wrecked or not,
seems chance ; and yet somehow he steers.
Calvin did not stammer; but, with unamiable logic, ac
cepted the double predestination of mankind to heaven
and hell, according to the good pleasure and righteous will
26 One queries just when this doctrine of the double predestination
seized upon Calvin. There is next to nothing about it in the Institute of
1536, while it is full fledged in the editions of 1539 and 1541.

JOHN CALVIN 417
of God. He acknowledged predestination to be a difficult
matter, easily obscured. Let faithful inquirers be admon
ished, and first of all remember that when they " enquier-
ent de la predestination, ils entrent au Sanctuaire de la
sagesse divine." The overbold and curious will find it a
labyrinth with no escape. " Les secretz de sa [God's]
volunte, qu'il a pense estre bon de nous communiquer, il
nous les a testifiez en sa parolle — la voye unique, la seule
lumiere " to conduct us through what it is allowed us to
discern of this deep matter: " sortiz des limites de
l'Escriture, nous cheminerons hors du chemin et en
tenebres." We need have no shame " d'ignorer quelque
chose en ceste matiere, ou il y a quelque ignorance plus
docte que le scavoir " — the last phrase reminiscent of
Nicholas of Cusa. But, continues Calvin very finely,
" II fault done garder, d'empescher les fideles d'enquerir ce qui est
contenu en l'Escriture, de la predestination a fin qu'il ne semble, ou
que nous les veuillions frauder du bien que Dieu leur communique,
ou que nous veuillions arguer le sainct Esprit, comme s'il avoit
publie les choses, qu'il estoit bon de supprimer. Permettons done a
I'homme Chrestien d'ouvrir les aureilles et l'entendement a toute
la doctrine qui luy est addressee de Dieu; moyennant qu'il garde
tousjours ceste temperance, que quand il voirra la sacree bouche
de Dieu fermee, il se ferme aussi le chemin d'enquerir."
And much more follows which in its power and narrow
ness may recall Milton : — even as in his language this
same Calvin reminds us of his stylistic child Pascal : " La
vie humaine est environnee, et quasi assiegee de miseres
infinies." Might that not have fallen from the immortal
Pensees ?
He excels in definitions in this chapter. For instance :
" nous appelons Predestination le conseil eternel de Dieu
par lequel il a determine ce qu'il vouloit faire d'un chascun
homme. Car il ne les cree pas tous en pareille condition :
mais ordonne les uns a vie eternelle les autres a. eternelle
damnation. Ainsi selon la fin a laquelle est cree I'homme,
nous disons qu'il est predestine a mort ou a vie." Natu
rally, his argument follows Augustine; and he passes
through the deep waters of God's will covering murder

418 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
and rapine, and wrestles with the equally difficult problem,
why men should plan and pray and strive, seeing that
everything in their lives is predestined. Even Calvin can
not make this quite clear ; — there are limits to the con
sistency of every thinker. But practically and religiously,
he transforms predestination into trust in God; which in
deed had been Calvin's rock before he laid hold upon pre
destination. To him and his followers had come the
power of those who know that no harm can break the
guard of God's protection. Their courage, their energy,
their strength, were doubled through faith in God's pur
poses with them, — and with their evil enemies ! The
Lord is my helper ! True it is, as Calvin says, and ought
to know, that the doctrine of predestination neither shakes
nor troubles faith, but strengthens it, at least, for men of
faith and power.
This is abundantly confirmed by the next chapter upon
Prayer. Beautifully the opening paragraph declares
that, knowing his own impotence, man if he would have
succour in his need, should seek it beyond himself. How
generously has God given us of Himself in his son Jesus
Christ; through him offering us happiness for our misery,
and riches for our poverty : to the end that our Faith shall
look to His dear Son, and our strength and hope repose in
Him. " Ceste est une secrete, occulte, et cachee philos
ophic, laquelle ne se peut entendre par syllogismes; mais
ceux la. comprennent ausquelz nostre Seigneur a ouvert
les yeux, a, fin que en sa lumiere, ilz voyent clairement."
Calvin's heart had its arcana, where logic did not enter :
though logic is present with him when in this same chapter
he shows that prayer should not be offered to the saints.
The following chapter on the Sacraments is incisive.
Only baptism is recognized and the Lord's Supper. A
Sacrament is defined as " un signe exterieur, par lequel
nostre Seigneur nous represente et testifie sa bonne
volunte envers nous, pour soustenir et confermer l'imbe-
cillite de nostre Foy." Calvin goes very far toward
utterly rejecting the magic-mystery element, which from
the time of the early Church had made the sacraments into

JOHN CALVIN 4i9
life-giving miracles, regularly administered. He teaches
that in the Lord's Supper we are spiritually fed with the
body and blood of our Lord, and assured that his body
once given for us is ours forever, and that we possess
Christ crucified. As for the thorny question, how we
possess him, — " pensons premierement que c'est une
chose spirituelle que la Sacrement; par lequel nostre Seig
neur n'a pas voulu repaistre noz ventres, mais noz
ames. ... En somme contentons-nous de I'avoir spirit-
uellement." Calvin rejects transubstantiation, and the
actual physical presence of the body of Christ, — thus: ad
vancing beyond Luther. Mightily he thunders against
the Mass as a sacrifice and oblation: the Saviour offered
once and for all a sacrifice upon the cross, the efficacy of
which endures forever.
We come to the fourteenth chapter, which Calvin in the
edition of 1559 transferred to his discussion of predestina
tion (Book III, ch. XXIV) . It sets forth the freedom of
the Christian from the servitude of the Law : first, in that
the assurance of his Justification rises above the Law and
its righteousness; secondly, in that his conscience is not
bound by the Law, but, having been delivered from its
yoke, freely obeys the will of God ; thirdly, in that he will
not make external things a matter of conscience before
God. " Or il fault diligement considerer que la liberte Chrestienne en
toutes ces parties, est une chose spirituelle: de laquelle toute la
force gist a pacifier envers Dieu les consciences timides, soit qu'elles
travaillent en doubtant de la remission de leurs pechez, soit qu'elles
soient en solicitude et crainte, a scavoir si leurs oeuvres, imparf aictes
et souillees des macules de leur chair, sont aggreables a Dieu, soit
qu'elles soient incertaines de l'usage des choses indifferentes. Pour-
rant elle est mal prinse de ceux, ou qui en veulent colorer leur
cupidite charnelle pour abuser des dons de Dieu a leur volupte;
ou qui pensent ne I'avoir point, s'ilz ne l'usurpent devant les hom
ines; et pourtant en l'usage d'icelle ilz n'ont nul esgard a leurs
freres infirmes."
AH of which is excellent Pauline teaching.
Such freedom would seem to be made vain by subjection

420 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
to men. Yet to set ourselves above human laws would
cause much evil. One must therefore distinguish be
tween what is spiritual, belonging to the things of God,
and what is political or civil ; the first pertaining to the life
of the soul, the second to the present life, enabling men to
live justly and decently, and having to do with " meurs
exterieures." Such are the respective functions of these
two, " l'une Royaume spirituel, et l'autre Civil on
politicq." Calvin argued doughtily throughout his life upon the
distinctness of Church and State ; yet his policy sought to
unite them in the common service of God. He drew
something from the constitution and history of Geneva,
where bishopric and town had the same boundaries, and
the functions of one and the other overlapped. But in
maintaining the liberty of the Church, he tended to super
impose its authority upon the State. If both Church
and State unite in their object of right belief and conduct,
and both have God as their lawgiver and sovereign, the
Church, being concerned with the immortal soul, is supe
rior to the State, which more immediately administers
temporal affairs. Thus the Calvinistic religious element
tends, if not to dominate politics, at all events to direct
them. At the same time the possibly opposing presence
of two organisms exerted reciprocal restraint, and tended
to prevent the tyranny of either. In their righteous union
of purpose, and restraint upon the abuses or usurpations
on the part of either, the Calvinistic Church and State
promoted the development of civic liberty and function in
those who were members as much of one as of the other.
The weapon of the Church was disapproval, censure, ex
communication in the end, which cut off the recalcitrant
civilian from all that he respected. On the other hand,
the actual application of physical punishment, constraint,
or banishment or death, was with the State, and might be
brought to bear even upon the too intolerable ministers of
the Word.
Calvin conceived the Church to consist of all the elect of
God, the dead, the living and the yet unborn. It is one,

JOHN CALVIN 421
inasmuch as Christ cannot be divided; and no one is
saved who is not a member of it. It implies " the Com
munion of the Saints," inasmuch as those who are one in
the fellowship of Christ, impart to each other the divers
spiritual gifts bestowed on them by God. The marks of
the Church are the preaching of the Word of God and
the administration of the Sacraments through its min
isters, and the mode of life, vitae exemplum, shown by
those who are truly its members. Its visible and efficient
union is preserved by its chosen ministers, whose election
properly issues from the people and is sanctioned by the
approval of those who are already ministers. Visibly or
ganized in this manner, each church has charge over the
conduct of its members, and authority to reprove and ex
communicate, whereby it warns the member of his final
condemnation before God. The purpose of excommuni
cation is that those who lead scandalous and wicked lives
shall not be counted among Christians, and corrupt the
good; but rather that they be turned to repentance.
This true and universal church exercising its due au
thority, is to be distinguished from the Papacy and its
corruption of ecclesiastical power; which Calvin char
acterizes in his fifteenth chapter, De la Puissance Ec-
clesiastique.2'' The usurpations of the Roman Church
would " imposer necessite aux consciences, ez choses
desquelles elles sont affranchies par Jesus Christ." That
Church has succeeded to the tyranny of the Law. " II
fault qu'elles [the consciences of Christians] recongnois-
sent pour leur Roy un seul Christ leur Liberateur et
qu'elles soyent gouvernees par la seule Loy de liberte,
qui est la sacre parolle de l'Evangile, si elles veulent
retenir la grace qu'elles ont une fois obtenue en Jesus
Christ. Et qu'elles ne soyent assubjecties a. servitude
aucune." So Calvin would hold his church and people
free from those burdens which St. Paul said should not be
laid on men's consciences. He would reject " toutes les
constitutions qui sont aujourd'huy nominees ecclesias-
27 Here we return to the French edition of 1541. In the last two or
three pages we have drawn from the edition of 1559.

422 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
tiques." Authority is granted to the Church as St. Paul
says, for edification, not for destruction. And Calvin
denounces the usurpations of power to make new articles
of faith and assert for the Church and its tradition an au
thority equal or superior to Scripture. The tyranny of
human traditions lays such inventions falsely on the
Church, and causes it to transgress the command of God.
In chapter XVI, Du Gouvemement Civil, Calvin turns
to that authority whose function is the administration of
civil justice, decency and order. There are those who
when they hear of a liberty assured in Christ, think they
have no fruit of it so long as they see any authority set
over them ; they would alter the world, and abolish laws
and magistrates, by whom they deem their liberty im
pugned. " Mais celui qui scaura discerner entre le corps
et l'ame, entre ceste presente vie transitoire, et la vie
advenir, qui est eternelle, il entendra pareillement assez
clairement, que le Royaume spirituel de Christ, et l'ordon-
nance civile, sont choses fort differentes." The latter has
nothing to do with the Kingdom of Heaven, and would be
needless there. Its purpose — " le but de ce regime tem-
porel est, de nous fere conformer a la campaignie des
hommes, pour le temps qu'avons a. vivre entre les hommes;
d'instituer noz meurs a une justice civile ; de nous accorder
les uns avec les autres; d'entretenir et conserver une paix
et tranquilite commune." Therefore, following the ex
ample of Christ, we should have respect for magistrates,
who are made protectors of public tranquillity and de
cency, and the common peace and safety. Further, the
tributes and imposts set by princes are their legitimate
revenue, which they should use for the maintenance of the
State. We should obey the laws, and recognize even
wicked kings and rulers, and obey them so long as we do
not thereby disobey God. The Lord is King of Kings:
" Nous devons puis apres estre subjectz aux hommes qui
ont preeminence sur nous; mais non autrement sinon en
luy [Christ]." An enormous and elastic reservation this,
as the Roman world had learned from the early Church,

JOHN CALVIN 423
and as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were also
to learn, with much spilling of blood.28
In his last chapter, De la Vie Chrestienne, Calvin sets
the general rule, that we should imitate Christ, and show
forth his image in our lives. If we cannot be perfect, we
should strive to " tendre a la perfection que Dieu nous
commande." It is a chapter of Christian morals and
piety, suited to a time of stress and tribulation. At the
close a special emphasis is laid upon vocation, which God
has commanded us to regard in all the acts of life and
to keep our own " estatz et manieres de vivre." One
should not exceed or go beyond : for example, it is not for
a private man to presume to kill a tyrant. But there also
lay in this conception of vocation the power of the call of
God, which in this man Calvin spoke masterfully to kings
and princes, and moulded a religious revolution.
We leave the Institute, to view Calvin's work more gen
erally. Out of the small distracted city of Geneva, he
created a model church-state, in which the morals, beliefs
and energies of the people were held at the pitch of effi
ciency. If pleasure-lovers sharply were restrained, and
impediments set upon the free intellectual action of indi
viduals, at least it was done by the will of the people,
effectuated through this dual communal organism. Yet,
while he lived, Calvin's masterful genius could not but
make him autocratic; and his direction of affairs promoted
the welfare of the town. He lent the acumen of his mind
and legal training to a codification of the city's laws, and
to the best adjustment of its taxes. He taught that it
was not usury to accept reasonable interest upon money
loaned; an economic recognition greatly to the commercial
28 Paul F. M. Mealy, Les Publicists de la Reforme (Paris, 1903), gives
the political ideas of the French reformers after Caivin, showing their
departure from his quasi-pacific doctrines. After the massacre of St.
Bartholomew (1572), Hotman, de Beze and Marnay turned to the idea
that authority is from the people, who can revoke it when abused. Under
God, the people are sovereign, and from them a delegated authority
passes to King and magistrates. They perceived the importance of the
representative assembly; and their ideas influenced Englishmen.

424 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
advantage of the Reformed. The city's health was the
better for his aid in the construction of sewers and the
erection of hospitals. He concerned himself with
methods of heating and protection against fires ; through
him the weaving industry was revived. His latest years
brought the establishment of an Academy, through whose
eager scholars his influence and the fame of Geneva were
spread through France and England. It is hard to say
what the city did not in some way owe to her illustrious
minister. Looking from Geneva to France, we see in Calvin a
second Paul, taking on himself the care of all the churches.
It is he who organizes them; who moulds and formulates
their beliefs; regulates their conduct,29 who mediates their
differences ; who upholds their courage under persecution.
His letters to the French martyrs take us back to exhorta
tions from the persecuted churches of the second century,
whose situation was reproduced in the decimated, but ever
growing, reformed churches of France.30 Or again in his
letters one might think to hear St. Bernard speaking in the
case of some little monk whose parents would not have
him so robustly fight for Christ. To a cautious friend
who unobtrusively favored the Reform, and would have
his more ardent son act with like prudence, Calvin, almost
in Bernard's words, writes " si vous estes froid et tardif
a sortir de l'abysme ou vous estes plonge, pour le moins
ne portez pas envie a vous enfans si Dieu les en delivre
.... Vous ne debvez estre marri [disturbed] que
l'authorite de Dieu soit preferee a. vostre contentment." 31
It was wonderful how sure he was that he was right,
in the spirit of those who from all Christian times have
been ready to die for their faith, and to glorify God. It
seems also wonderful to us, (as if we again were listening
to Augustine answering queries) what remarkable things
this sixteenth century man of God conceived himself to
know. He writes in a letter, " Aux cinq prisonniers de
20 See e.g. Bonnet, Lettres de Jean Calvin, I, p. 213, II, p. 311-320,
" Aux fideles de France."
80 See Bonnet, Lettres de Jean Calvin, II, pp. 182, 298, 301.
31 Bonnet, o. c. II, p. 285. Compare The Mediaeval Mind, I, p. 415.

JOHN CALVIN 42s
Lyon," who had reason to inquire of such matters:
' Touchant de la nature d'un corps glorifie, vray est que
les qualitez sont changees, mais non pas routes." 32
Calvin had developed his system under German influ
ence at Strasbourg; it came to its full flower only in
Geneva, where it could work itself out actually, soul and
body, Calvinistic Church and State. But it was a product
of the French mind, of the French faculty of undeviating
logical thinking and expression. Yet it was not to prove
permanently suited to the French character, or adaptable
to French institutions. In France, it showed capacity for
organization in the face of persecution, comparable to that
of the early Church in the Roman Empire, and also amaz
ing fighting energy against overwhelming power. But
there it could never reach that full dual church-and-state
development which it attained under Calvinistic govern
ments, as in Scotland, and for a time in England. Only
under such concurring conditions could all its possibilities
be actualized.33
32 Bonnet, o. c. I, p. 343.
33 To pass beyond the boundaries of Fiance, and her wars of religion,
and follow the influence of Calvin in the Low Countries, in Scotland and
in England, would require a history of the second half of the sixteenth
century, and a history of the seventeenth in the New World as well as in
the Old. Calvin " knit the forces of non-Lutheran Protestantism into a
real spiritual communion animated by similar ideals and dominated by
one view of the Christian life. The ill-related Reformation movements
of France, of the Netherlands, of Scotland, to a less degree of Poland and
Hungary, found in him their unifying force. He gave them creed, disci
pline, and organisation. He formulated their theology. He inspired their
martyr-courage. He taught them how best to oppose Rome. He trained
many of their leaders, provided them a city of refuge in persecution, and
an example of a disciplined Christian communitv which attracted their
admiration and imitation. Over all this vast region he exercised an un
official but far-reaching episcopate. By constant correspondence, by per
sonal acquaintance and appeal to those whom he never met
face to face, by the labours of those who had been his pupils and re
produced his spirit, he moulded the growth and determined the form of
the Reformation movement to a degree comparable with the work of no
other among the reformers save Luther. But for him the story of the Re
formation outside of the land of its birth would have been vastly different.
. . [His] authority was not due to office or peculiar advantage of sta
tion. It was purely one of mind over mind. But it was all the more
real and long enduring. Calvin so impressed his interpretation of Chris
tian truth and of the Christian life upon men that they thought his
thoughts after him, and his ideas became part of the mental fabric of a
large portion of the inhabitants of central and western Europe, and ulti
mately of North America.

426 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Nevertheless in France, as well as in Great Britain and
Massachusetts Bay, Calvinism was an educational disci
pline, teaching men to know the Bible, training them to
think straight and true, and giving them courage to apply
their logic to religion, to government and to society. It
carried tremendous educational value as a discipline and
sharpening of the mind. Further; it represented a
heightening and an increase of the effective validity of
thought. If its specific tenets are no longer held by en
lightened people, it was in its time a most specific enlight
enment in religion, piercing through superstitions and the
distortions of the glosses of tradition, to the text and sig
nificance of Scripture. It was a way out from the pit.
Intellectual advance may relate directly to religion and to
ultimate conceptions of the relationship between God and
man. It need not be directly concerned with secular tem
poralities, with physical science, or with belles lettres.
Yet Calvin himself, in the entire compass of his knowl
edge, might perhaps be held the most notable scholar of
his age, surpassing all men in the keenness of his knowl
edge of the Bible, and with splendid training in law and
in classical scholarship. So far as relates to this large
compass of his learning, he was a humanist; though never
a humanist in the sense of regarding the humanities as in
themselves an end. Instead, he was a Deist; his end was
God, and the glory of God, reflected downward through
restoring grace freely given to obedient and adoring men,
that is to the elect. In the otherwise ineradicable cor
ruption of man's nature, there was no good thing, save
what came with this freely imparted saving grace of God.
Rabelais and Calvin, those two greatest of contempo
rary Frenchmen, peers in knowledge and in mental grasp ;
" The influence of Calvinism, for more than a century after the death
of the Genevan reformer, was the most potent force in Western Europe
in the development of civil liberty. What the modern world owes to it is
almost incalculable. Yet Calvin was never by intention a political re
former. His interests were always overwhelmingly religious; and the
results of Calvinism in the cause of religious freedom were the indirect
and unexpected, rather than the anticipated consequences of his work.
They were the effect of the logic of Calvin's principles, rather than any
conscious part of his reformatory aim." W. Walker, John Calvin, pp.
402-404.

JOHN CALVIN 427
in their different ways both set against the superstitions
and corruptions of the Church ; — is it not interesting to
observe their far more fundamental and universal oppo
sition? The understanding and acceptance of life by
Rabelais and by Calvin were in mortal conflict. The one
held all human life, including every positive element of it,
to be good and utterly desirable ; the other held humanity
to be vile and diseased, until restored and changed by the
injection of what was not human, but from God. Rabe
lais was as comprehensive and tolerant in his temperament
as in his mind. Calvin subordinated life to service, and
though abominating monkish vows and like formal re
nunciations, had but casual consideration for any happi
ness or pleasure which did not make for the glorifying of
the Creator and Monarch of the World, the Creator and
restorer of the Saints.

THE END OF VOL. I