Causes of the dislike

Had not the sovereign pontiffs been so completely occupied with maintaining their temporalities in Italy, they might have made the whole Continent advance like one man. Their officials could pass without difficulty into every nation, and communicate without embarrassment with each other, from Ireland to Bohemia, from Italy to Scotland. The possession of a common tongue gave them the administration of international affairs, with intelligent allies speaking the same language in all directions.

Not, therefore, without cause was the hatred manifested by of Rome to Rome to the restoration of Greek and introduction of Hebrew, the Greek, and the alarm with which she perceived the modern languages forming out of the aboriginal and vulgar dialects. The prevalence of Latin was the condition of her power, its deterioration the measure of her decay, its disuse the signal of her limitation to a little principality in Italy. In fact, the developement of European languages was the instrument of her overthrow. Besides their forming an effectual communication between the low, dissatisfied ecclesiastics and the illiterate populace, there was not one of them that did not display in its earliest productions a sovereign contempt for her. We have seen how it was with the poetry of Languedoc.

And danger

from modern

languages.

The rise of the many-tongued European literature was therefore coincident with the decline of Papal Christianity. European literature was impossible under the Catholic rule. A grand, and solemn, and imposing religious unity enforced the literary unity which is implied in the use of a single language. No more can a living thought be embodied in a dead language Public dis- than activity be imparted to a corpse. That principle of staadvantages of a sacred bility which Italy hoped to give to Europe essentially rested on the compulsory use of a dead tongue. The first token of intellectual emancipation was the movement of the great Italian poets, led by Dante, who often, not without irreverence, broke the spell. Unity in religion implies unity through a sacred language, and hence the non-existence of particular national literatures.

tongue.

Effect of modern

Even after Rome had suffered her great discomfiture on the languages. scientific question respecting the motion of the earth, the

Restoration of Greek Philosophy.

187

conquering party was not unwilling to veil its thoughts in the Latin tongue, partly because it thereby ensured a more numerous class of intelligent readers, and partly because ecclesiastical authority was now disposed to overlook what must otherwise be treated as offensive, since to write in Latin was obviously a pledge of abstaining from an appeal to the vulgar. The effect of the introduction of modern languages was to diminish intercommunication among the learned.

of a crisis

The movement of human affairs, for so many years silent Approach and imperceptible, was at length coming to a crisis. An ap- in Europe. peal to the emotions and moral sentiments at the basis of the system, the history of which has occupied us so long, had been fully made, and found ineffectual. It was now the time for a like appeal to the understanding. Each age of life has its own logic. The logic of the senses is in due season succeeded by that of the intellect. Of faith there are two kinds, one of acquiescence, one of conviction; and a time inevitably arrives when emotional faith is supplanted by intellectual.

Medici.

As if to prove that the impending crisis was not the offspring Cosmo de' of human intentions, and not occasioned by any one man, Florence. though that man might be the sovereign pontiff, Nicholas V. found in his patronage of letters and art a rival and friend in Cosmo de' Medici. An instructive incident shows how great a change had taken place in the sentiments of the higher classes. Cosmo, the richest of Italians, who had lavished his wealth on palaces, churches, hospitals, libraries, was comforted on his death-bed, not, as in former days would have been the case, by ministers of religion, but by Marsilius Ficinus, the Platonist, who set before him the arguments for a future life, and consoled his passing spirit with the examples and precepts of Greek philosophy, teaching him thereby to exchange.faith for hope, forgetting that too often hopes are only the daydreams of men, not less unsubstantial and vain than their kindred of the night. Ficinus had perhaps come to the conviction that philosophy is only a higher stage of theology, the philosopher a very enlightened theologian. He was the repre- Reappearance of sentative of Platonism, which for so many centuries had been Platonism in Italy. hidden from the sight of men in Eastern monasteries since its

overthrow in Alexandria, and which was now emerging into existence in the favouring atmosphere of Italy. His school looked back with delight, and even with devotion, to the illustrious Pagan times, commemorating by a symposium, on November 13th, the birthday of Plato. The Academy of Athens was revived again in the Medicean gardens of Florence. Not that Ficinus is to be regarded as a servile follower of the great Doctrines philosopher. He alloyed the doctrines of Plato with others. derived from a more sinister source-the theory of the Mohammedan Averrhoes, of which it was an essential condition that there is a soul of humanity, through their relations with which individual souls are capable of forming universal ideas, for such, Averrhoes asserted, is the necessary consequence of the emanation theory.

of Marsilius Ficinus.

Revival of
Greek

Under such auspices, and at this critical moment, occurred learning in the revival of Greek literature in Italy. It had been neglected Italy. for more than seven hundred years. In the solitary instances of individuals to whom here and there a knowledge of that language was imputed, there seem satisfactory reasons for supposing that their acquirements amounted to little more than the ability of translating some "petty patristic treatise." The first glimmerings of this revival appear in the thirteenth century; they are somewhat more distinct in the fourteenth. The capture of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders had done little more than diffuse a few manuscripts and works of art, along with the more highly-prized monkish relics, in the West. It was the Turkish pressure, which all reflecting Greeks foresaw could have no other result than the fall of the Byzantine power, that induced some persons of literary tastes to seek a livelihood and safety in Italy.

Gradual

progress of the Resto

ration.

In the time of Petrarch, 1304-1374, the improvement did not amount to much. That illustrious poet says that there were not more than ten persons in Italy who could appreciate Homer. Both Petrarch and Boccaccio spared no pains to acquaint themselves with the lost tongue. The latter had succeeded in obtaining for Leontius Pilatus, the Calabrian, a Greek professorship at Florence. He describes this Greek teacher as clad in the mantle of a philosopher, his countenance

hideous, his face overshadowed with black hair, his beard long
and uncombed, his deportment rustic, his temper gloomy and
inconstant, but his mind was stored with the treasures of learn-
ing. Leontius left Italy in disgust, but returning again, was
struck dead by lightning in a storm while tied to the mast of
the ship. The author from whom I am quoting significantly
adds that Petrarch laments his fate, but nervously asks whether
'some copy of Euripides or Sophocles might not be recovered
from the mariners."

The restoration of Greek to Italy may be dated A.D. 1395, at which time Chrysoloras commenced teaching it. A few years after Aurispa brought into Italy two hundred and thirtyeight Greek manuscripts; among them were Plato and Pindar. The first endeavour was to translate such manuscripts into Latin. To a considerable extent, the religious scruples against Greek literature were giving away; the study found a patron in the Pope himself, Eugenius IV. As the intention of the Turks to seize Constantinople became more obvious, the emigration of learned Greeks into Italy became more frequent. And yet, with the exception of Petrarch, and he was scarcely an exception, not one of the Italian scholars was an ecclesiastic.

Medici, his

Lorenzo de' Medici, the grandson of Cosmo, used every ex- Lorenzo de' ertion to increase the rising taste, generously permitting his villas, garmanuscripts to be copied. Nor was it alone to literature that dens, and philosophy. he extended his patronage. In his beautiful villa at Fiesole the philosophy of the old times was revived; his botanic garden at Careggi was filled with Oriental exotics. From 1470 to 1492, the year of his death, his happy influence continued. He lived to witness the ancient Platonism overcoming the Platonism of Alexandria, and the pure doctrine of Aristotle expelling the base Aristotelian doctrine of the schools.

language.

The latter half of the fifteenth century revealed to Western Effects instantly proEurope two worlds, a new one and an old; the former by the duced by voyage of Columbus, the latter by the capture of Constanti- the Greek nople: one destined to revolutionize the industrial, the other the religious condition. Greek literature, forced into Italy by the Turkish arms, worked wonders; for Latin Europe found

Causes of the prevailing dislike

of Greek.

190

Clerical Dislike to Greek Learning.

with amazement that the ancient half of Christendom knew
nothing whatever of the doctrine or of the saints of the West.
Now was divulged the secret reason of that bitter hatred dis-
played by the Catholic clergy to Grecian learning. It had
sometimes been supposed that the ill-concealed dislike they
had so often shown to the writings of Aristotle was because
of the Arab dress in which his Saracen commentators had
presented him; now it appeared that there was something
more important, more profound. It was a terror of the Greek
itself. Very soon the direction toward which things must
inevitably tend became manifest; the modern languages, fast
developing, were making Latin an obsolete tongue, and poli-
tical events were giving it a rival-Greek-capable of assert-
ing over it a supremacy; and not a solitary rival, for to Greek
it was clear that Hebrew would soon be added, bringing with
it the charms of a hoary antiquity and the sinister learning of
the Jew, With a quick, a jealous suspicion, the ecclesiastic
soon learned to detect a heretic from his knowledge of Greek .
and Hebrew, just as is done in our day from a knowledge of
physical science. The authority of the Vulgate, that corner-
stone of the Italian system, was, in the expectation of Rome,
inevitably certain to be depreciated; and, in truth, judging
from the honours of which that great translation was soon
despoiled by the incoming of Greek and Hebrew, it was de-
clared, not with more emphasis than truth, yet not perhaps
without irreverence, that there was a second crucifixion be-
tween two thieves. Long after the times of which we are
speaking, the University of Paris resisted the introduction of
Greek into its course of studies, not because of any dislike to
letters, but because of its anticipated obnoxious bearing on
Latin theology.

We can scarcely look in any direction without observing instances of the wonderful change taking place in the opinions of men. To that disposition to lean on a privileged mediating order, once the striking characteristic of all classes of the laity in Europe, there had succeeded a sentiment of self-reliance. Tendency Of this perhaps no better proof can be furnished than the popuImitation larity of the work reputed to have been written by Thomas

of 'The

of Christ.'