Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 1.djvu/594

 chiefly in the households of princes or nobles, where horsemanship, hunting, and martial sports were in vogue. Vittorino was in some sort continuing this old training; many of his pupils were young nobles destined to the life of courts and camps. But his point of view was a novel one. The idea which dominated his whole system was the classical, primarily Greek, idea of an education in which mind and body should be harmoniously developed. The force with which this idea appealed to the humanists was partly due to its contrast with medieval theory and practice. The new type of school-education developed by Vittorino is rightly called humanistic; but the reason for so calling it is not solely or chiefly that the intellectual part of it was based on the Greek and Latin classics. It was humanistic, in a deeper sense, because it was at once intellectual, moral, and physical. Vittorino was resolved that the advantages of his school should be open to all boys who were fitted to profit by them. Pupils were sent to him from several of the Italian Courts to be educated with the young Mantuan princes. But he also maintained at his own cost a large number of poorer scholars, for whom lodgings were found near the villa. The rules of life and study were the same for all. Many of the most distinguished scholars of the century had enjoyed his teaching. Among these were George of Trebizond, Valla, Nicholas Perotti and John, Bishop of Aleria, who prepared for the Roman press (in 1469-71) the editlones prindpes of many Latin classics.

Next to Vittorino must be named the other great schoolmaster of the time, his contemporary and friend Guarino da Verona. Guarino, after studying Latin under Giovanni di Conversino, had learned Greek at Constantinople, where for five years he lived in the house of Manuel Chrysoloras (1403-8). No other Italian of that day was probably Guarino's equal as a Greek scholar. Filelfo and Aurispa were indeed the only contemporary Italians who shared his facility in speaking and writing Greek. It was in 1414 that Guarino opened at Venice the first humanistic school which had been established in that city. Vittorino studied Greek with him there for a year and a half. In 1418 Guarino finally left Venice. He was subsequently invited by Niccolo d' Este, Marquis of Ferrara, to undertake the education of his son and heir, Lionello. After the early death of Lionello, a youth of great promise, Guarino remained at Ferrara, where he enjoyed the highest repute as a teacher, drawing pupils from all parts of Italy. He died there in 1460, aged ninety.

Thus, before the middle of the fifteenth century, school and lecture-room had diffused the influences of humanism throughout Italy. The spirit of humanistic study had given a new bent to the intellectual interests of cultivated society, and had become a potent factor in the education of youth. In all the principal cities there were men who found themselves drawn together by a common taste for ancient