Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/95

ACADEMY. be applied to various associations of scholars, artists, literary men and scientists organized for the promotion of general or special intellectual or artistic interests. Not only was the name applied particularly to the followers of Plato, but it soon came to he given as well to general societies of learned men unconnected with a philosophical school. In the Middle Ages the name and institution survived not merely among the Arabs, particularly in Spain, but, passing over the fable of Alfred's foundation of an academy at Oxford, we find such an institution under the name of academy among the group of scholars whom Charlemagne gathered around him.

At the Renaissance the academy sprang into sudden prominence as a favorite form of intellectual organization, and took its place as an intellectual force beside the universities. From these it differed, as it does to-day, in being not a teaching body but a group of investigators, who, generally under royal or state patronage, encouraged learning, literature, and art by research and publication. Laying aside the claims of Alost to a society of scholars in 1107, and that of Diest to a society of poets in 1302, academies of this type seem to have first appeared in Italy and to have been devoted to literature, art, and architecture. The Academy of Fine Arts, founded at Florence about 1270 by Brunetto Latini; that of Palermo, about 1300, by Frederick II.; and the Academy of Architecture of Milan (1380?) were among the first of these. Language and literature were not far behind. The so-called Academy of Floral Games (Académie des Jeux Floraux), founded at Toulouse about 1325 by one Clemens Isaurus as a part of the great Troubadour movement, was probably the earliest of these literary academies, and has had an almost continuous history till the present day. With this exception the earliest academies rose in Italy, and found their prototype in that brilliant group of scholars, critics, and literati gathered at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent, and Cosmo de' Medici in Florence, the so-called Platonic Academy which, founded about 1474, was dissolved after the expulsion of the Medici in 1527. It was succeeded in Florence by the Academy of Florence, formed in 1540 especially for the study of Tuscan, particularly Petrarch. Before the Platonic Academy of the Medici only Naples boasts an earlier academy, that founded in 1440 by Alfonso. But the sixteenth century was rich in academies devoted to literature. The Introvati of Siena, 1525: the Infiammati of Padua, 1534; the Rozzi of Siena, later suppressed by Cosmo de' Medici. 1568; and the Accademia della Crusca or Furfuratorum, founded in 1587, and still in existence, the most famous of them all, are perhaps the best known of that astonishing burst of academic vigor which produced in the sixteenth century in Italy a number variously estimated from 170 to 700 of this form of organization. In these, under curious names but with common purpose, the Italian aristocracy especially, barred from political interests by tyrants and republics alike, found vent for their activity.

One academy of distinction alone devoted to science appears in this period, the Academia Secretorum Naturæ. founded at Naples in 1560, and after a short existence suppressed by the Church. It was succeeded by the Accademia della Lincei, founded by Prince Chesi in 1603, counting Galileo among its members, and still existing in Rome after many changes. The foundation of this society heralded that great burst of interest in sciences of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which to some extent succeeded the purely literary activity of the sixteenth. The Reformation had destroyed or altered much of the ecclesiastical power which had served to check investigation earlier, and the foundation of several societies indicated a new interest in science. Of these the Academia Naturæ Curiosorum, Leipzig, established by Dr. J. L. Bausch in 1651-52, still exists under the name of Cæsareo-Leopoldinia, in honor of the Emperor Leopold I., who patronized it liberally. Since 1808 it has had its headquarters at Bonn. The Royal Society in England (q.v.), the Academy of Sciences in Paris, the Academy or Collegium Curiosum established by Professor Sturm of the University of Altdorf, and similar institutions brought about an astonishing increase of interest and consequent advance in scientific pursuits and methods. The importance of these academies to science indeed can hardly be overestimated.

This was maintained in the eighteenth century, and the establishment of academies was further stimulated then by the influence of Louis XIV., so important in this as in so many other intellectual as well as political interests throughout Europe. In this, however, as in so many other ways, he and his ministers but carried further the plans of their predecessors. In 1635 Richelieu established the most famous of all such organizations, the old French Academy, which had its inception six years before in the minds of eight men of letters. It consisted of forty members, with a director, a chancellor, and a secretary, and its avowed purpose was to control the French language and regulate literary taste. Its constitution provided for the publication of a grammar, a treatise on rhetoric, and one on poetry, besides a dictionary of the French language. Though its condition has been somewhat changed, it is the same in all essentials to-day as it was at its foundation. In this plan Richelieu was copied, as usual, by his successor, Mazarin, who established the Academy of Fine Arts (Beaux-Arts) in 1655. Colbert continued this policy by founding the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres in 1663, as a committee of the old academy to draw up inscriptions for monuments and medals to commemorate the victories and glories of Louis XIV. This was remodeled in 1706. Colbert established also an Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1664, the Academy of Sciences in 1666, the Academy of Architecture in 1671, later merged into the Academy of Fine Arts, and the Academy of France at Rome. All these, save the last, together with the Academy of Moral and Political Science, founded in 1832, came to form the Institute (q.v.). To Louis XIV. other cities in France owed the charters of their academies, notably Montpellier in 1706.

Largely owing to these two causes, that is to say, the interest in science and the fashion of royal patronage set by Louis XIV., the foundation of academies reached its height in the eighteenth century, especially in Germany and the north and east of Europe. Frederick I. of Prussia founded the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin in 1700, on a plan drawn up by Leibnitz, its first president. That savant aided also in drawing up the scheme adopted by Peter the Great and carried out by Catharine I. in the foundation of the Imperial Academy of Sciences