Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/405

Rh RENAISSANCE 387 be founded under the title of rhetoric, from which men like Chrysoloras and Guarino, Filelfo and Politian, expounded orally to hundreds of eager students from every town of Italy and every nation in Europe their accumu- lated knowledge of antiquity. One mass of Greek and Roman erudition, including history and metaphysics, law and science, civic institutions and the art of war, mythology and magistracies, metrical systems and oratory, agriculture and astronomy, domestic manners and religious rites, grammar and philology, biography and numismatics, formed the miscellaneous subject matter of this so-styled rhetoric. Notes taken at these lectures supplied- young scholars with hints for further exploration ; and a certain tradition of treating antique authors for the display of general learning, as well as for the elucidation of their texts, came into vogue, which has determined the method of scholarship for the last three centuries in Europe. The lack of printed books in the first period of the Revival, and the comparative rarity of Greek erudition among students, combined with the intense enthusiasm aroused for the new gospel of the classics, gave special value to the personal teaching of these professors. They journeyed from city to city, attracted by promises of higher pay, and allured by ever-growing laurels of popular fame. Each large town established its public study, academy, or university, similar institutions under varying designations, for the exposition of the litterse humaniores. The humanists, or professors of that branch of knowledge, became a class of the highest dignity. They were found in the chanceries of the republics, in the papal curia, in the council chambers of princes, at the headquarters of condottieri, wherever business had to be transacted, speeches to be made, and the work of secretaries to be performed. Furthermore, they undertook the charge of private education, opening schools which displaced the mediaeval system of instruction, and taking engagements as tutors in the families of despots, noblemen, and wealthy merchants. The academy established by Vittorino da Feltre at Mantua under the protection of Gian Francesco Gonzaga for the training of pupils of both sexes, might be chosen as the type of this Italian method. His scholars, who were lodged in appro- priate buildings, met daily to hear the master read and comment on the classics. They learned portions of the best authors by heart, exercised themselves in translation from one language to another, and practised composition in prose and verse. It was Vittorino's care to see that, while their memories were duly stored with words and facts, their judgment should be formed by critical analysis, attention to style, and comparison of the authors of a decadent age with those who were acknowledged classics. During the hours of recreation suitable physical exercises, as fencing, riding, and gymnastics, were conducted under qualified trainers. From this sketch it will be seen how closely the educational system which came into England during the reigns of the Tudors, and which has prevailed until the present time, was modelled upon the Italian type. English youths who spend their time at Eton between athletic sports and Latin verses, and who take an Ireland with a first class in " Greats " at Oxford, are pursuing the same course of physical and mental discipline as the princes of Gonzaga or Montefeltro in the 15th century. sal The humanists effected a deeply penetrating change 1 ls - in social manners. Through their influence as tutors, professors, orators, and courtiers, society was permeated by a fresh ideal of culture. To be a gentleman in Italy meant at this epoch to be a man acquainted with the rudiments at least of scholarship, refined in diction, capable of corresponding or of speaking in choice phrasesj open to the beauty of the arts, intelligently interested in archaeology, taking for his models of conduct the great men of antiquity rather than the saints of the church. He was also expected to prove himself an adept in physical exercises and in the courteous observances which survived from chivalry. The type is set before us by Castiglione in that book upon the courtier which went the round of Europe in the 16th century. It is further emphasized in a famous passage of the Orlando Innamorato where Boiardo compares the Italian ideal of an accom- plished gentleman with the coarser type admired by nations of the north. To this point the awakened intelligence of the Renaissance, instructed by humanism, polished by the fine arts, expanding in genial conditions of diffused wealth, had brought the Italians at a period when the rest of Europe was comparatively barbarous. This picture has undoubtedly a darker side. Human- The moral ism, in its revolt against the Middle Ages, was, as we defects of have seen already, mundane, pagan, irreligious, positive. ^ e ^ The Renaissance can, after all, be regarded o'nly as a " period of transition, in which much of the good of the past was sacrificed while some of the evil was retained, and neither the bad nor the good of the future was brought clearly into fact. Beneath the surface of brilliant social culture lurked gross appetites and savage passions, unrestrained by mediaeval piety, untutored by modern experience. Italian society exhibited an almost unex- ampled spectacle of literary, artistic, and courtly refinement crossed by brutalities of lust, treasons, poisonings, assas- sinations, violence. A succession of worldly pontiffs brought the church into flagrant discord with the principles of Christianity. Steeped in pagan learning, emulous of imitating the manners of the ancients, used to think and feel in harmony with Ovid and Theocritus, and at the same time rendered cynical by the corruption of papal Rome, the educated classes lost their grasp upon morality. Political honesty ceased almost to have a name in Italy. The Christian virtues were scorned by the foremost actors and the ablest thinkers of the time, while the antique virtues were themes for rhetoric rather than moving- springs of conduct. This is apparent to all students of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, the profoundest analysts of their age, the bitterest satirists of its vices, but themselves infected with its incapacity for moral goodness. Not only were the Italians vitiated ; but they had also become impotent for action and resistance. At the height of the Renaissance the five great powers in the peninsula formed a confederation of independent but mutually attractive and repellent states. Equilibrium was maintained by diplomacy, in which the humanists played a foremost part, casting a network of intrigue over the nation which helped in no small measure to stimulate intelligence and create a common medium of culture, but which accustomed statesmen to believe that everything could be achieved by wire-pulling. Wars were conducted on a showy system by means of mercenaries, who played a safe game in the field and developed a system of bloodless campaigns, Meanwhile the people grew up unused to arms. When Italy between the years 1494 and 1530 became the battle- field of French, German, and Spanish forces, it was seen to what a point of helplessness the political, moral, and social conditions of the Renaissance had brought the nation. It was needful to study at some length the main pheno- Diffusion mena of the Renaissance in Italy, because the history of of the that phase of evolution in the other Western races turns new. almost entirely upon points in which they either adhered from 8 to or diverged from the type established there. Speaking Italy broadly, what France, Germany, Spain, and England through- assimilated from Italy at this epoch was in the first place, ut the new learning, as it was then called. This implied the '