The History of Education Part 25

12. Compare the financial support of the Revival in Italy with the support of universities and of scientific undertakings in America during recent times.

13. Explain the long-delayed interest in the Revival in the northern countries.

14. Trace the larger steps in the transference of Greek literature and learning from Athens, in the fifth century B.C., to its arrival at Harvard, in Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1636.

15. What was the importance of the rediscovery of Hebrew?

16. Show how the invention of printing was a revolutionary force of the first magnitude.

17. Why should a license from the Church have been necessary to print a book? Have we any remaining vestiges of this church control over books?

18. Do you see any special reason why Venice should have become the early center of the book trade?

19. Show how the printing-press became "a formidable rival to the pulpit and the sermon, and one of the greatest instruments for human progress and liberty."

20. One writer has characterized the Revival of Learning as the beginnings of the emergence of the individual from inst.i.tutional control, and the subst.i.tution of the humanities for the divinities as the basis of education. Is this a good characterization of a phase of the movement?

21. Counting each edition of a printed book at only three hundred copies, how many volumes had been printed before 1500 at the places listed in footnote 3, page 257?

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are reproduced:

125. Petrarch: On copying a Work of Cicero.

126. Benvenuto: Boccaccio's Visit to the Library at Monte Ca.s.sino.

127. Symonds: Finding of Quintilian's _Inst.i.tutes_ at Saint Gall.

(a) Letter of Poggio Bracciolini on the "Find."

(b) Reply of Lionardo Bruni.

128. MS.: Reproducing Books before the Days of Printing.

129. Symonds: Italian Societies for studying the Cla.s.sics.

130. Vespasiano: Founding of the Medicean Library at Florence.

131. Vespasiano: Founding of the Ducal Library at Urbino.

132. Vespasiano: Founding of the Vatican Library at Rome.

133. Green: The New Learning at Oxford.

134. Green: The New Taste for Books.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Is it probable that Petrarch's explanation (125) of why many of the older Latin books were copied so infrequently, psalters being preferred instead, is correct?

2. How do you explain the later neglect of so valuable a library as that at Monte Ca.s.sino (126) or Saint Gall (127 a)?

3. Was Lionardo Bruni's letter to Poggio (127 b) overdrawn?

4. Was there anything unnatural about the work and customs of the Italian societies for studying the cla.s.sics (129)? Compare with a modern literary or scientific society, or with the National Dante Society.

5. What does the extract from Vespasiano, telling how he got books for Cosimo de' Medici (130), indicate as to the scarcity of books in Italy toward the middle of the fifteenth century?

6. The library of the Duke of Urbino (131) was the most complete collected up to that time. List the larger cla.s.sifications of the books copied, as to the lines represented in a great library of that day.

7. What does the work of Pope Nicholas V, in establis.h.i.+ng the Vatican Library (132), indicate as to his interest in the new humanistic movement?

8. Show from the selection from Green (133) that the revival movement in England was essentially a religious revival.

9. Explain Green's cause-and-effect theory, as given in selection 134.

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Adams, G. B. _Civilization during the Middle Ages_.

Blades, William. _William Caxton_.

Duff, E. G. _Early Printed Books_.

* Field, Lilian F. _Introduction to the Study of the Renaissance_.

* Howells, W. D. _Venetian Days_ (Venetian commerce).

* Keane, John. _The Evolution of Geography_.

La Croix, Paul. _The Arts in the Middle Ages and at the Period of the Renaissance_.

* Loomis, Louise. _Mediaeval h.e.l.lenism_.

Oliphant, Mrs. _Makers of Venice_.

* Robinson, J. H., and Rolfe, H. W. _Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters_.

Sandys, J. E. _History of Cla.s.sical Scholars.h.i.+p_, vol. II.

* Sandys, J. E. _Harvard Lectures on the Revival of Learning_.

Scaife, W. B. _Florentine Life during the Renaissance_.

Sedgwick, H. D. _Italy in the Thirteenth Century_.

* Symonds, J. A. _The Renaissance in Italy_; vol. II, _The Revival of Learning_.

Thorndike, Lynn. _History of Mediaeval Europe_.

Whitcomb, M. _Source Book of the Italian Renaissance_.

* Walsh, Jas. J. _The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries_.

CHAPTER XI

EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. It is often stated that the roots of all our modern educational practices in secondary education lie buried deep in the great Italian Revival of Learning. If we limit the statement to the time preceding the middle of the nineteenth century we shall be more nearly correct, as tremendous changes in both the character and the purpose of secondary education have taken place since that time. The important and outstanding educational result of the revival of ancient learning by Italian scholars was that it laid a basis for a new type of education below that of the university, destined in time to be much more widely opened to promising youths than the old cathedral and monastic schools had been. This new education, based on the great intellectual inheritance recovered from the ancient world by a relatively small number of Italian scholars, dominated the secondary-school training of the middle and higher cla.s.ses of society for the next four hundred years. It clearly began by 1450, it clearly controlled secondary education until at least after 1850. Out of the efforts of Italian scholars to resurrect, reconstruct, understand, and utilize in education the fruits of their legacy from the ancient Greek and Roman world, arose modern secondary education, as contrasted with mediaeval church education.

Mediaeval education, after all, was narrowly technical. It prepared for but one profession, and one type of service. There was little that was liberal, cultural, or humanitarian about it. It prepared for the world to come, not for the world men live in here. The new education developed in Italy aimed to prepare directly for life in the world here, and for useful and enjoyable life at that. Combining with the new humanistic (cultural) studies the best ideals and practices of the old chivalric education-- physical training, manners and courtesy, reverence--the Italian pioneers devised a scheme of education, below that of the universities, which they claimed prepared youths not only for an intellectual appreciation of the great and wonderful past of which they were descendants, but also for intelligent service in the two great non-church occupations of Italy in the fifteenth century--public service for the City-State, and commerce and a business life. This new type of education spread to other lands, and a new type of secondary-school training, actuated by a new and a modern purpose, thus came out of the revival of learning in Italy.

THE MOVEMENT IN ITALY PATRIOTIC. The inspiration for the revival of learning in Italy did not originate with the universities. Even the new chairs when established in the universities were regarded as inferior, and, in true university fas.h.i.+on, the occupants were tolerated by the other professors rather than approved of by them. Some of the universities-- Pavia and Bologna, in particular--had practically nothing to do with the new movement. [1] Even in the rich and learned city of Florence, the head and front of the revival movement, the church scholars and many university men took little or no part in the restoration of the old studies. The learned archbishop, Saint Antoninus, who presided over the cathedral at Florence during the brightest days of that city's history, pursued his mediaeval scholastic instruction undisturbed, and even wrote a _Summa Theologica_ of his own.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 76. SAINT ANTONINUS AND HIS SCHOLARS Saint Antoninus (1380-1459) was the learned and pious Archbishop of Florence from 1446 until his death. The picture of him giving instruction is from the Venice (1503) edition of his _Summa Theologica_.]

The revival movement, on the contrary, was directed in its beginnings by a small group of patriotic Italians possessed of a modern spirit, and was financed by intelligent and patriotic merchants, bankers, and princes.

Surrounded on all sides by monuments and remains testifying to Roman greatness, and with Roman speech in constant use by the scholars of the Church, the revival of Latin literature meant more to Italian scholars than to those of any other country. It seemed to them still possible to revive Roman life and make Roman speech once more the language of the learned world. The revival of Latin literature, too, meant much more to them than the revival of Greek. The chief value of the latter was to open up a still greater past, and through this to illuminate Roman life and literature. After about 1500 the enthusiasm for Greek rapidly died out in Italy, and the further interpretation of Greek life and thought was left to the northern nations.