Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/75

 EDUCATION AND THE OLDER HUMANISTS 63 It is a noteworthy fact that the intellectual bent of these men was influenced by him who is known by his works as the highest type of ascetic piety among the The older Humanists were no less enthusiastic over the grand heirloom left by the classic nations of antiquity than their successors, who by their united energies founded the later school of Humanists in the second decade of the sixteenth century. They recog- nised in classic literature most precious material for cultivating the mind, an inexhaustible field of noble sentiment. The Greek and Eoman classics, however, should not be studied merely to achieve intellectual greatness, but as a means towards Christian ends. Though eager for refreshment and revival from the intellectual life of the ancients, and desirous of gaining a scientific knowledge of that life, their chief aim was to attain to a fuller understanding of Christianity and to the purification of moral life. This standpoint of theirs was by no means a new one. Already, in the first centuries of Christianity, the Fathers of the Church had pursued and advocated the study of the ancient languages for the same reasons. In the schools of the Middle Ages also, up to the thirteenth century, the classics had been diligently read. And now, after a long interval of degradation and barbarism, the leaders of the German ' New Learning ' were endeavouring to take up the threads of this former period of classic culture. Now that by the conquest of Constantinople so many new treasures had been added to the already existing store, while the invention of printing so greatly facilitated the spread of them, they strove in every way both to get living hold of the new know-
 * Brethren of the Social Life.'