Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/62

48 been sent by the Reformers from Prague to communicate with the Wycliffites here. Pilgrimages were in high estimation in Scotland as well as in England, and Whithern, in Galloway, was a place of immense resort, to the shrine of St. Ninian.

The archbishopric of St. Andrew's was erected by Pope Sixtus IV., in 1471, but the act having been done without the consent of the crown and Parliament, brought down destruction upon its first occupant, Patrick Grahame, who was deposed, and, after being confined in several successive dungeons, perished in that of the castle of Lochleven.

During this century, two events of the highest importance to art and learning took place—the introduction of the knowledge of Greek, and the invention of printing.

If the knowledge of Greek had not entirely died out in western Europe, it had nearly so till this century. The crusades, leading the Christians of western Europe to the east, had opened up an acquaintance betwixt the people of the Greek empire and those of the west. The destruction of that empire in this century drove a number of learned men into Italy, where they taught their language and literature. Amongst these were Theodore Gaza, Cardinal Bessarion, George of Trebizond, Demetrius Chalcondyles, John Argyropulus, and Janus Lascaris. Before that time some knowledge of the Greek philosophy had reached us through the Arabians, but till the fourteenth century very little of the literature of Greece was known in the western nations, not even the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" of Homer. In Italy Petrarch and Boccaccio learned the language and studied the writings of Greece, and an enthusiasm for Greek literature spread over all Europe. Grocyne studied it in Italy in 1488, under Chalcondyles, and came and taught it in England. But there were no more munificent promoters of this new knowledge than Pope Nicholas V. and Cosmo de' Medici. Gibbon says, "To the munificence of Nicholas, the Latin world was indebted for the versions of Xenophon, Diodorus, Polybius, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Appian, of Strabo's 'Geography,' of the 'Iliad,' of the most valuable works of Plato and Aristotle, of Ptolemy and Theophrastus, and of the fathers of the Greek church. The example of the Roman pontiff was preceded or imitated by a Florentine merchant, who governed the republic without arms and without a title. Cosmo of Medicis was the father of a line of princes whose name and age are almost synonymous with the restoration of learning. He corresponded at once with Cairo and London, and a cargo of Indian spices and Greek books was often imported in the same vessel. He encouraged the emulation of Demetrius Chalcondyles and Angelo Politian, and his active missionary, Janus Lascaris, returned from the East with a treasure of 200 manuscripts, fourscore of which were, as yet, unknown to the libraries of Europe."

At the same moment that Greek began to be studied, Latin in Europe was in the lowest and most degraded state. Though it still continued the language of divines, lawyers, philosophers, historians, and even poets, it had lost almost every trace of its original idiom and elegance. Latin words were used, but in the English order, and where words were wanting, they Anglicised them. William of Worcester, speaking of the arrival of the Duke of York from Ireland, says—"Et arrivavit apud Redbanke prope Cestriam;" that is, And arrived at Redbanke, near Chester. But the style of most writers at this period was equally barbarous; that of Thomas of Walsingham and a few others was better, but far from classical.

So low, indeed, was learning and the respect for it fallen in this age of continual distractions, fighting and revolutions, that Anthony à Wood says that there were frequent complaints from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge to Parliament, that all the most valuable livings were bestowed on illiterate men, or on foreigners, by the Pope. The son of a mad knight was made Archdeacon of Oxford before he was eighteen years of age; and soon after obtained two rich rectories and twelve prebends. The Chancellor of Oxford asked him one day what he thought of learning. "As for learning," said he, "I despise it. I have better livings than any of you great doctors, and I believe as much as any of you!" "What do you believe?" "I believe that there are three Gods in one person: I believe all that God believes!" "The best scholars in the kingdom were," adds Wood, "often driven to the necessity of begging their bread from door to door, with recommendations of the Chancellor of their university to public charity."

He says that "two of these learned mendicants came to the castle of a certain nobleman, who, understanding from their credentials that they had a taste for poetry, commanded his servants to take them to a well; to put one into the one bucket, and the other into the other bucket, and let them down alternately into the water, and to continue that exercise till each of them had made a couplet on his bucket. After they had endured this discipline for a considerable time, to the great entertainment of the baron and his company, they made their verses and obtained their liberty."

If such were the rewards of learning in the fifteenth century amongst the aristocracy, and in the persons of its most distinguished professors, we may conceive what must have been the dense darkness of the illiterate mass. Till the reign of Henry IV. no villein, farmer, or manufacturer was allowed to put his children to school, nor long afterwards dared they educate a son for the church without a licence from their lord. At no period had the condition of England been more benighted.

But that wonderful art which was destined to chase this darkness like a new sun, was already on its way from Germany to this country. The Chinese had printed from engraved wooden blocks for many centuries, when the same idea suggested itself to a citizen of Haerlem, named Laurent Janszoon Coster. Coster, who was keeper of the cathedral, first cut his letters in wood, then made separate wooden letters, and employed them in printing books by tying them together with strings. From wood he proceeded to cut his letters in metal, and finally to cast them in the present fashion. Coster concealed his secret with great care, and was anxious to transmit it to his children; but in this he was disappointed, for at his death one of his assistants, John Gensfleisch, the Gutenberger, and thence afterwards called Gutenberg, Gensfleisch, or Gansefleisch, Goose-flesh—not being a particularly lovable name—went off to Mayence, carrying with him movable types of Coster's casting.