The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Academy

ACADEMY. (1) A school; (2) a society of higher learning. In modern days the word is used to designate British and American schools of higher instruction for youths, ranking with the gymnasia of Germany, and also national military and naval high schools. The name is also applied to various associations of scholars, scientists, literary men, artists, etc., established and organized for the improvement of science, literature or the arts. The origin of the term is traced to the public pleasure ground and gymnasium in the Ceramicus – tile field, a suburb of Athens, said to have belonged in the time of the Trojan war to a local hero, a contemporary of Theseus, named Academus, whence the name. Cimon, the son of Militiades, the proprietor of the land in the 5th century, beautified and planted the grounds with olive and other trees, gave free admission to the public and bequeathed the property to the city at his death. The grounds became a popular resort, where Socrates used to orate, and in its groves Plato taught philosophy. Plato's school became know as the Academie and his followers were called Academists. Subsequently, whenever a Platonist opened a school, he called the institution an academy, and these schools modeled after the original academy, until their abolition by a decree of Justinian, flourished almost continuously for nine centuries. Cicero named his villa near Puteoli “The Academy,” and there wrote his ‘Academic Questions,’ and other philosophic and moral dialogues, based on the conversation and learned discussions of friends whom he entertained as visiting guests. The principal academies of antiquity were the Old, founded by Plato 428–348, and continued by Speusippus, Xenocrates of Chalcedon, Polemo, Crates and Crantor; the Middle Academy, founded by Arcesilaus 241, and the New Academy, founded by Carneades 214–129 Adrian founded an academy at Rome in which all the sciences were taught, but especially jurisprudence. Another academy flourished at Berytus in Phœnicia in which jurists principally were educated. At Alexandria, Ptolemy Soter, one of the generals and successors of Alexander the Great, founded the Musæon, or Museum, the first association of this kind mentioned in history. Devoted to the cultivation of letters and science, he made valuable collections of books and treasures of art, which became the nucleus of the famous great library of Alexandria, and gathered around him scholars of brilliant attainments. In Babylonia, Palestine and Armenia academies were established, and Arabian caliphs, profiting by and improving upon the institutions of their Hebrew and Christian subjects, founded similar establishments for the preservation and increase of learning from Cordoba to Samarkand. At the instigation of David of Alcuin, Charlemagne established an academy in his palace in 782, where men of learning were encouraged to assemble. Cæsar Bardas founded, at Constantinople in the 9th century, a state institution for the promotion of science. Near the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th centuries, institutions of this kind, chiefly devoted to the cultivation of poetry, were established at Florence, Palermo and Toulouse, and vied with universities as seats of learning, culture and intellectual development. Academies of fine arts were established in Florence by Brunetto Latini in 1270, and Frederick II, at Palermo, in 1300. In 1380 an academy of architecture was established at Milan. One of the most celebrated academies of mediæval times, still surviving after a diversified history, is the Academie des Jeux Floraux (Academy of Floral Games), inaugurated May 1323 by a guild of troubadours; it was permanently endowed in 1500 through the munificence of Clemence Isaure, a wealthy lady of Toulouse; was incorporated by letters patent of Louis XIV in 1694, and reorganized in 1773; the original name was ‘College du gai svoir et de la gaie science’ (College of Gay Knowledge and of Gay Science). After the downfall of the Byzantine empire in the 15th century, and the revival of classical culture in Western Europe, academies of a more comprehensive kind were established in Italy. Antonio Beccadella founded, at Palermo, in 1433 the Accademia Pontaniana, so name after Pontaniana, its principal benefactor. Alfonso V founded an academy at Naples in 1440. From 1474 to 1521 the Accademia Platonica, founded by Lorenzo de’ Medici, flourished in Florence. Devoted to the study of Plato and Dante, and to the improvement of the Italian language and letters, it numbered Machiavelli, Mirandola and other famous men among its members and became the model for many other similar institutions. Assuming peculiar names, and endowned by wealthy patrons of learning, or by the state, these academies were centres of literary activity for those members of the Italian nobility, debarred for partisan reasons from political life. The Lincei flourished at Rome; the Ardenti at Naples; the Insensati at Parma; the Addormentati at Genoa. The academies of the Vagabonds, the Thunderers, the Smokers, the Dead, the Nocturnals, the Drowsy, the Unstable, the Confused, were to be found in other towns. The Accademia de’ Lincei (the lynx-eyed), founded at Rome in 1609 by Prince Federico Cesi, and dissolved at his death in 1632, numbered Galileo among its members. It succeeded the Accademia Secretorum Naturæ, established at Naples in 1560 for the study of physical science, which was soon suppressed by the Church. In 1725 Jakeius published at Leipzig an account of over 600 Italian academies. The most influential and enduring of all was the Accademia della Crusca, i. e., chaff, so called in allusion to its principal aim, that of winnowing and purifying the national language. It was founded by the poet Grazzini at Florence in 1582. The dictionary of the Accademia della Crusca, first published in 1612, and subsequently, in augmented form, is considered the standard authority for the Italian language. This academy, incorporated with two older societies, survives as the Royal Florentine Academy. While Italy can thus be regarded as the mother country of modern academies, probably the most celebrated and important of all is the French Academy, founded in 1635 (see ). An Academia Secretorum Naturæ was founded in Madrid in 1652, and the Spanish Royal Academy in 1714. An academy of Portuguese history was established at Lisbon in 1720 by King John V, and a flourishing academy of science, agriculture, arts, commerce and general economy, by Queen Maria in 1779. In Germany the Royal Academy of Sciences and Belles-lettres was established by the Elector Frederick at Berlin in 1700. In Sweden the Royal Academy of Sciences was founded at Stockholm by six scientists, including Linnæus, in 1739. In Holland the Academia Lugduno–Batava was established at Leyden in 1766. In Belgium the Academie Royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts was founded at Brussels by Maria Theresa in 1772. In Switzerland an academy of medicine was founded at Geneva in 1715. In Russia the Imperial Academy of Sciences was founded at St. Petersburg in 1725. In England an academy, first suggested as “King James, His Academie, or College of Honor,” then as “The British Academy,” was finally chartered as the Royal Society (q. v.) in 1662. The term academy in Great Britain is now reserved for institutions devoted to the cultivation of the fine arts and for schools of higher instruction. In Ireland the Royal Irish Academy was founded at Dublin in 1782. See also , and for a record of modern academies consult Kukula, R., and Trübner, K., ‘Minerva: Jahrbuch der Gelehrten Welt’ (Strassburg 1914); Steeves, H. R., ‘Learned Societies and English Literary Scholarship in Great Britain and the United States’ (New York 1913).