THE NORTHERN RENAISSANCE

The specific achievement of the Humanists, their bringing within the ambit of contemporary knowledge those sectors of the classical heritage which the Middle Ages had failed to explore, was accomplished in two stages. The earlier representatives of the movement, such as Guarino and Erasmus, had written in Latin and the material they had mastered had been accessible only to the learned. It was left to the sixteenth century to contrive the transference of their gains into a more popular medium so that with the rise of the vernacular literatures the New Learning became familiar to all who could read. When that had happened, the absorption of the classical heritage by European culture may be regarded as virtually complete within the limits set by the techniques of the time. The long process we have been following since the seventh century was at an end. But this crowning of a millennium of patient work had an inevitable corollary. Men's attitude to antiquity changed. As the content of the classical literatures became available in the vernaculars and merged in that common background of ideas which is the starting-point of all new thought, the direct study of these literatures lost much of its old interest. The architects of cultural progress had little incentive to concern themselves with the Greek and Latin authors in particular, since most of what these had to offer was already contained within the contemporary tradition. Nevertheless, the study of the classics was too well established to be peremptorily abandoned. Its place in European life was guaranteed by long-standing custom.

When Petrarch was crowned with laurel on the Capitol, the students of Paris were listening to Buridan's lectures on the pons asinorum. The event which was to serve future generations as the aptest symbol of the Renaissance coincided in time with the typical pursuits of Scholasticism; and by a similar paradox only three years separate the revolt of the Florentine popolo against Walter of Brienne from the battle of Crécy. The proper characterisation of the fourteenth century has therefore been a matter of dispute; and the question has been asked whether the epoch which produced both Ockham's razor and the Decameron belongs more typically to the end of the Middle Ages or the beginning of the Renaissance.

The historians who have sought to answer this question have commonly drawn attention to the dividing line of the Alps and presumed the existence of two distinct cultures, one to the south, the other to the north. We can, the argument runs, look upon the Renaissance as evolving in time. We can note how certain books were read, first by a few and then by many, how they were translated and interpreted, imitated and gradually absorbed into contemporary tradition. We can trace the history of techniques from their first introduction to their eventual acceptance as commonplace routines. We can follow the elaboration of particular ideas, which make their début as concepts in some specialised field and were then applied to other spheres of experience. We can note how the culture which we associate with the name of Petrarch became more complex and played a larger role in European life with each passing decade, how each year brought some fresh advance, some new development.

Having arrived at the very threshold of the Renaissance, we must now return to the beginning of the Dark Ages and consider the development of the West during those same seven hundred years whose course we have just surveyed in the East. For conditions in the two halves of Europe were vastly different. In Byzantium we saw the shrinking nucleus of a superior civilisation, fearful of loss, constantly on the defensive, stereotyped in its institutions and culture. In the West we shall see by contrast evidences not of atrophy but of growth. The Western peoples were more anxious to acquire new blessings than to preserve the few they could already command. Their world had touched rock bottom, had been plunged into chaos and was now in mid-passage out. Unafraid of change, they were not desirous of barring its effects from any sector of their lives. The period of the Roman past glittered in their traditions as a golden age which having existed once could no doubt be restored; and that conviction in the midst of their ever-present discontents made them eager to throw as much as possible into the melting-pot.

Our proper starting-point is in time the sixth century and in space a remote island to which Roman power had never extended its latinising sway. The Ireland of St Patrick was the first place to which the literary heritage of the classics came, as it was to come eventually to the whole of Western Europe, from the outside, a gift of the gods to be won through judicious learning, a gift possibly of forbidden fruit.

Roman education under the Empire used to emulate the god Janus in looking two ways at once; and schoolboys were expected to acquire a simultaneous knowledge of Latin and Greek. A smaller state could not have been so prodigal of human effort. In the ages to which we turn now, which lie between antiquity and the Renaissance, East and West having parted company in politics saw no reason why they should labour to maintain a difficult cultural concord. The West gave its mind to Latin and neglected Greek. It met Greek books only in translation, or in the libraries of the supremely erudite; while in the East the Byzantines, who used Greek currently, knew no Latin at all. The two halves of Europe were thus educationally distinct. They must be studied separately; and for reasons which will appear later, it is convenient to take the East, that is Byzantium, first.

The world whose brightest stars were Photius, Psellus and Anna Comnena inevitably presents a number of strange features: and the causes of its educational pre-eminence and its educational failures must be sought in the action of somewhat unexpected factors.

The wealth of Byzantium made it the target of constant attacks. Its domains were ringed by enemies who fought now singly, now in alliance, but who were never quiet. Generally, they were held at bay; but from time to time, as the movements of peoples drew reinforcements into the battle, the assailants were in a position to outclass the defence; and the Byzantine State had to look for survival to the circumstance that its territories, originally very large, were criss-crossed by natural ramparts.

The twenty years which have passed since this book was written have done much to make the history of the classical tradition a more inviting field of research. The basic information, on which the historian of classical survivals so largely depends, has continued to accumulate. The Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes, B. Bischoff, P. O. Kristeller, Giuseppe Billanovich and his collaborators in the Italia medievale e umanistica, L. D. Reynolds writing on Seneca's letters and G. Zuntz on Euripides have established the provenance and fortunes of a great many manuscripts. L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson have given us in Scribes and Scholars an excellent short guide to the transmission of ancient literature before the invention of printing. Many early catalogues and book-lists, many medieval and renaissance texts have appeared in convenient modern editions, among which special mention should perhaps be made of that noble work in progress, the new Erasmus; and a growing body of monographs, whose findings still await tabulation, have added to our knowledge of what was translated from Greek into Latin, from Latin into the vernaculars. The student who takes up the subject to-day has more adequate tools at his disposal than his predecessors had a generation ago.

Advances have also been made in certain specialised areas. In the medieval period, C. Mohrmann has made a start with a much-needed analysis of Christian Latin usage. B. Bischoff, L. Bieler, P. Riché have gone some way to rescue the history of Irish scholarship from the realm of legend.

THE POPULARISATION OF A NEW METHOD OF STUDY

When the fourteenth century gives way to the fifteenth, we seem to pass from the gloom of a passage into the brilliant light of a sunlit room. The long process whose stages we have been tracing now reaches its climax. The widened interests of scholarship embrace for the first time the whole of the classical heritage. Not only is the movement started by Petrarch for the recovery of Roman eloquence and the Roman way of life brought to a triumphant conclusion, but the work of earlier ages in law, medicine and philosophy is once again examined, criticised and completed. Moreover, the cultural scene is enriched and complicated at this juncture by the almost simultaneous appearance of two new elements. Greek studies which had so long wilted in obscurity take their place alongside Latin, their long-hidden treasures accessible at last to a multitude of scholars; and the invention of printing radically changes the basic conditions of education and research. The world suddenly wears a different face.

The impressive growth of trade, the collapse of feudal independence, better government and a greater mastery of material resources, new discoveries and new ideals, all played their part in effecting this transformation, which involved the educational field along with the rest. But if our interest goes beyond the mere fact of progress, and we want to understand why the new education took the form it did, we must look beyond the broad social and political factors to a more specific cause. We must look to the work of the teachers.

The period from the middle of the tenth to the beginning of the thirteenth century not only witnessed a great number of changes affecting nearly every important field of human experience; but the changes were most subtly connected one to another. Independent in their origins, they became interdependent in their effects; and their interdependence was not of the simple sort which is adequately represented by the familiar analogy of threads uniting to form a pattern. For the threads did not merely cross and recross. It would be more exact to describe them as continually untwisting into their constituent fibres which then reappear in fresh combinations. And they did not just exist side by side; they altered one another's substantial character by their proximity. Moreover—and this perhaps is the circumstance which makes the period most difficult to clarify—the renaissance following from these new departures failed to come to that brilliant fruition which an observer of its first beginnings would have naturally expected. Every change that occurred generated such a vigorous opposition that the innovators had to come to terms everywhere with those who wished to preserve the status quo. So there was not a single clear-cut line of growth. There were only a series of false starts. Tendencies which were later to become dominant in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries showed themselves for the first time. But they met with hostility and were aborted. Nothing developed freely. Every thesis was countered by an immediate and more powerful antithesis.

The new age owed its progressive character to a variety of circumstances. Life was generally more settled. The impetus of the great migrations had worn itself out.