PART II. Scantiness and poverty of our national literature. CHAP. III. Traversari, Guarino, and Valla. From such scanty records as remain of his impressions we might conclude that the Roman poet on the shores of the Euxine found a scarcely less congenial atmosphere'. If indeed all that the fifteenth century produced in England were subtracted from our libraries, the loss would seem singularly small, and the muses, like the princess in the enchanted castle, might be held but to have slumbered for a hundred years. Whatever still survives to represent the national genius, is chiefly imitative in its character, derived from writers like Bocaccio and the French romancers, who though they might quicken the fancy did little to develope and strengthen the more masculine powers, and, in the opinion of Roger Ascham, were praised by those who sought to divert their countrymen from that more solid reading which, while it developed habits of observation and reflexion, could scarcely fail at the same time to direct the attention to the necessity for ecclesiastical reform. The few original authors of this period, such as Capgrave, Lydgate, Pecock, and Occleve, seem but pale and ineffectual luminaries in the prevailing darkness. Learning in England,' says Hallam, 'was like seed fermenting in the ground through the fifteenth century. Not surely a very happy simile: for the rich sheaves that were afterwards to enter our own ports, were the fruit of seed sown in other lands. But before we permit our attention to be drawn away to events pregnant with very momentous changes, it will be well to follow up the course of external developement at Cambridge, and also to complete our survey of those institutions which may be regarded as taking their rise still in implicit accord with those theories of education which were shortly to undergo such important modifications. 1 Poggio visited England at the invitation of cardinal Beaufort. The motives,' says Shepherd, which induced him to take this step seem to be concealed in studied and mysterious silence.' Life of Poggio, p. 124. Tiraboschi says Ei viaggio ancora cira il 1418 nell' Inghilterra, benchè non si sappia precisamente per quel mottivo; del qual viaggio fa egli stesso più volte menzione; e pare, che ci si trattenesse non poco tempo, perchiocchè egli dice, che dopo lungo intervallo torno finalmente alla Corte.' vi 701. Der Humanist erging sich in grossen Hoffnungen, theils auf dem britischen Boden noch manchen verlorenen Classiker wiederzufinden, theils unter dem Schutze des königlichen Prälaten sein Glück zu machen.' Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums, p. 371. 2 Scholemaster, ed. Mayor, p. 81. PART II. accommo instruction at both univer It will be remembered that the papal decision in the CHAP. II. year 1314 with reference to the privileges of the Mendicants in the universities, was regarded by them as a great blow to their order, inasmuch as they were no longer permitted to receive the general body of students in their houses for lectures and disputations'. Up to the fourteenth century, it Defective does not appear that either university was possessed of schools, dation for in the sense of buildings expressly erected for the purpose; sities. the rooms to which it was necessary to have recourse were those in the ordinary hostels'; and when larger assemblies were convened, St. Mary's church, or that of the Gray Friars, supplied the required accommodation. Under these circumstances the imposing dwellings of the different religious orders had given them an advantage of which they were not slow to avail themselves in their policy of proselytism and self-aggrandisement. At Oxford, in the thirteenth century, the faculty of theology had been indebted to the Augustinian canons for a local habitation, and even in the fifteenth century the university had been fain to take on hire rooms which 1 See pp. 262-3. 'The great schools in the school street of Cambridge are mentioned in a lease from John de Crachal, chancellor of the university, and the assembly of the masters regent and non-regent, to Master William de Alderford, priest, M.A. dated 15th February, 20 Edw. III. [1346-7].' Cooper, Memorials, 111 59. 2 It has even been asserted (Hu. ber, 1 168), that masters of arts were in the habit of assembling their pupils in the porches of houses, but the inference of such a custom from the term in parvisio, from parvis Fr. from paradisus, a medieval word denoting a church porch,' cannot be sustained. In my opinion,' says Wood, the true meaning comes from those inferior disputations that are performed by the juniors, namely "generalls," which to this day are called and written disputationes in parvisiis. For in the morning were anciently, as now, the answering of quodlibets, that is the proposing of questions in philosophy and other arts by certain masters to him or them that intend to commence master of arts, and such as are called the The use of St. Mary's Church PART II. CHAP. III. the rich abbey of Oseney had erected with the express purpose of letting them for such uses. It was not until the year 1480 that the divinity schools were opened; and then only by assistance begged from every quarter, and after the lapse of many years from the time of their foundation. In striking contrast to this deficiency in the resources of the university were to be seen the dwellings of the Mendicants; remarkable not merely for their size and extent but for the Superior ad- beauty of their details. We know from a contemporary this respect poet how the whole effect must have been calculated to overthe religious awe and attract the youthful student; how the curiously vantages in possessed by orders. wrought windows, where gleamed the arms of innumerable benefactors, the pillars, gilded and painted, and carved in curious knots, the ample precincts with private posterns, enclosed orchards and arbours', must have fascinated many a poor lad whose home was represented by the joint occupancy of some obscure garret, and who often depended on public charity for his very subsistence; and we can well understand the chagrin of the Mendicants at finding themselves prohibited from reaping the advantage which such opulence and splendour placed within their reach. With the fourteenth century, however, the universities began to seek for a more effectual remedy than was afforded by mere prohibitory measures. In the latter part of the century Sir Robert de Thorpe, lord chancellor of England, and sometime master of Pembroke, had commenced the erection of the divinity schools", which was carried to completion by the executors of his brother, Sir William de Thorpe, about the year 1398. But the grand effort was not made until the latter half of the Schools, circ. following century, when Lawrence Booth, the chancellor, resolved on raising a fund for the building of arts schools and schools for the civil law. Contributions were accordingly levied wherever there appeared a chance of success: on those who hired chairs as teachers of either the canon or Erection of the Divinity Schools at Cambridge, 1398. Erection of the Arts Schools and Civil Law 1458. 1 Creed of Piers Ploughman, ed. Wright, 11 460, 461. Cooper, Annals, 1 111. It is to be observed that the use of the plural does not imply more than one lecture room. Toujours le pluriel,' observes Thurot, même pour designer une salle unique.' 3 Ibid. 143. PART II. civil law, upon every resident religious, whether like the CHAP. III. Benedictines and the canons recognised owners of worldly wealth, or like the Mendicants avowedly sworn to poverty; on the wealthier clergy, and on the higher dignitaries of the Church, though in the last case assistance was besought rather than authoritatively enforced. By efforts like these the university began to attain to a real as well as legal independence of the friars; and it was probably about this time that a statute was formed making it obligatory on all who lectured on the canon or the civil law, to hire the new rooms and deliver their lectures there'. forsakes monastery. Slowly, but surely and inevitably, the tide of learning the was rolling on away from the friary and the monastery. From an attempted combination of the secular and religious elements like that represented in the Hospital of St. John and Pembroke College, and a vigorous effort at independence on the part of the university like that illustrated in the foregoing details, we pass to a fresh stage in the same movement, -the direct diversion of property from the religious orders to the universities. It is evident that with the fifteenth century a new feeling began to possess the minds of many with respect to the monastic foundations, -the feeling of despair. There appears to have been as yet no distinct sen- The patrons timent of aversion to monasticism as a theory, but even the begin to delover of the monastery began to despair of the monk; and it religious or is among the most significant proofs of the corruption of the different religious orders at this period, that the foundations that began to rise at both universities are to be referred not to any dislike of the system which those orders represented, but to the conviction that the rule they had received was habitually and wilfully violated. In the foundation, at Oxford, of New College by William of Wykeham we William of have a signal proof of this state of feeling, The college & itself, though built up as it were out of the ruins of monastic 1 Hence the frequent entries in the Grace Books, of payments pro scholis in jure civili. See Grace Book A 6b; Grace Book B p. 112. For a detailed account of the architectural history of the schools see Cooper, of learning spair of the ders. Wykeham, b. 1324, d. 1404. of NEW COL LEGE, 1380. CHAP. III. foundations, retained more than any similar society, the disciPART II. pline of the monastic life. It was, in fact, half as a substitute Foundation for the monastery that the college appears to have been designed. Long before it was constituted, William of Wykeham had sought among monks and mendicants to find a less glaring discrepancy between theory and practice, and he had sought in vain. 'He had been obliged,' says one of his biographers, with grief to declare, that he could not anywhere find that the ordinances of their founders, according to their true design and intention, were at present observed by any of them'. The college endowed with The extension given by this eminent prelate to the conchased from ception of Walter de Merton is represented by the fact that lands pur religious houses. Statutes of the foundation. he endowed his college with lands purchased from religious houses, and though there was nothing in such an act which the most strenuous supporters of monastic institutions could directly impugn, inasmuch as the new foundation was designed for the secular clergy, we may be quite sure that the alienation of the property from the communities to which it originally belonged, was a measure regarded by many with distrust and suspicion. It needed the stainless reputation, the noble descent, and the high position of the founder to sanction such an innovation, and the precedent probably had weight in those more decisive acts in the same direction which belong to the two succeeding centuries. But there was nothing of an arbitrary character in William of Wykeham's procedure; the lands which he purchased from Oseney Abbey, the priory of St. Frideswide, and St. John's Hospital, were bought with the full consent of the proprietaries; the significance of the proceeding consisted in the fact that such large estates should be appropriated by one, whose example was so potent among his countrymen, to such a purpose. The scheme of his noble foundation threw into the shade every existing college whether at Oxford or Cambridge, and was the first in our own country which could compare with 1 Lowth, Life of William of Wyke ham, p. 21. To exactly similar effect is the language of Colet's biographer: -'Not that he hated any one of their several orders; but because he found. that few or none of them lived up to their vows and professions.' Knight, Life of Colet, p. 72. |