One factor that inaugurated the Renaissance was a more accurate knowledge of the ancient world. Petrarch (1304-74), pursuing the original texts of classical authors, was the first to feel the need for a precise picture of antiquity. When in Avignon, he profited from the riches of French libraries and from international contacts: in 1328 Landolfo Colonna brought from Chartres the rare Fourth Decade of Livy's History of Rome, enabling Petrarch to assemble the most complete and accurate text of Livy since antiquity; by 1354 other friends had obtained copies of Plato and Homer in Greek for him. In 1333 Petrarch himself discovered the lost Pro Archia of Cicero in a monastery in Liege. This was important, not least because the speech in defence of the poet Archias contained a famous encomium of the 'studia humanitatis'. The phrase became the slogan for disciplines which humanists championed: grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy. In 1345 Petrarch made another discovery in the cathedral library of Verona— Cicero's Letters to Atticus. These personal letters allowed for a more accurate historical picture of
Cicero and encouraged Petrarch and later humanists to publish their personal correspondence.
Boccaccio (1313-75), following Petrarch's example, inspected the library of the great abbey at Monte Cassino. There in 1355 he transcribed for Petrarch another speech of Cicero, Varro's De Lingua Latina and Apuleius' The Golden Ass, a text which not only influenced the author of the Decameron but also many other European novelists. The most important manuscript from Monte Cassino, containing Tacitus' Annals XI-XV and Histories I-V, also found its way to Florence, possibly by the agency of Boccaccio. Tacitus' condemnation of the Roman emperors shaped the republican 'Civic Humanism' of men like Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444). The century ended with Salutati discovering Cicero's Ad Familiares in a manuscript from Vercelli in 1391.
Enthusiasm for original texts expanded in the fifteenth century, leading to the recovery of most of the classical writings known today. Though only the most important can be mentioned, the
Map shows how the pace of discoveries increased and how, following Petrarch in the fourteenth century, the major figure of the new century was Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459). When not on secretarial duty at the Council of Constance, Poggio combed the adjacent monasteries: he found two speeches of Cicero at Cluny (1415), the complete text of Quintilian's Education of the Orator in St Gall (1416), which stimulated the many Renaissance treatises on education, the poems of Lucretius, Manilius and Silius Italicus in other monasteries (1417), and in London (1420) and Cologne (1423) he came across what remains of Petronius' Satyricon. In Italy the complete texts of Cicero's Orator and De Oratore along with his unknown Brutus were discovered by Gherardo Landrianni at Lodi (1422). This manuscript provided the stimulus and terminology for Italian humanists to write the literary histories of their own time. In 1429 Nicholas Cusanus brought to Rome a manuscript containing twelve plays of Plautus, which with the comedies of Terence were influential in shaping Renaissance comedy in Europe. The two most significant texts after 1450 were Tacitus' Minor Works, brought from Fulda to Rome (1455), and Tacitus' Annals I-VI which reached Rome from Corvey (1508) and led to the printing of the first edition of Tacitus' Complete Works (1515).
Interest in Greek texts also began in the Trecento with Petrarch and Boccaccio reading Homer in Latin translation. But in 1397 Manuel Chrysoloras came to Florence and taught humanists like Bruni to read Greek and translate Plutarch and Plato into Latin. An idea of the enthusiasm for Greek can be gained from Giovanni Aurispa's return from Greece in 1423 with 238 manuscripts. In 1438 the Council of FerraraFlorence encouraged a further influx of Greek scholars, as did the fall of Constantinople (1453). Amidst this popularity for Greek culture Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) translated the whole of Plato into Latin (1485) and while Aristotle's Poetics shaped literary criticism in the sixteenth century, the vogue for Plato was to engulf Europe and challenge the medieval domination of Aristotle in the field of philosophy.
M. L.McLaughlin
The Rise of Universities
The first universities emerged after a period of development which began in the late eleventh century. This process can only be understood in the context of economic growth and urban expansion since large numbers of economically unproductive scholars could only gather on a permanent basis when towns could offer adequate accommodation and regular markets at which basic necessities could be bought. From the early twelfth century there were more and more urban schools, centred on cathedrals or individual masters. They were very different from the monastic schools which had long dominated the world of learning. The atmosphere was highly competitive because masters needed to attract and retain the students who paid the fees which enabled the urban schools to survive. It was common for masters to set up school with the intention of poaching a rival's pupils. Institutionally, the situation was highly fluid with masters moving in and out of fashion very quickly. During the twelfth century the schools gradually became more permanent, each school embracing a number of masters. By 1200 the earliest universities had become established at Bologna and Paris. These studia generalia, as they were known, were essentially corporations or guilds. In Bologna the guilds were formed by students, and the students regulated the lives of the masters. Paris, however, was run by the masters; they formed the corporations and students obtained their rights through association with their masters. Subsequent universities followed one or other of these models more or less closely. Crucial to the emergence of a university was the grant of
Privileges from pope, emperor, king or commune. These privileges usually included an element of juridical autonomy, the right to elect officers, powers to make statutes, and other keys to independence. While grants of privileges to the earliest universities simply recognized and reinforced developments which had already taken place, many later universities were deliberately 'founded'.
Universities very quickly developed a system of faculties. A studium generate would have a faculty of arts and at least one other faculty teaching theology, canon law, Roman law or medicine. Key textbooks emerged in what could now be called academic disciplines. Certain basic teaching techniques became established and were used in all disciplines. Lectures consisted of commentary on set texts while disputations involved debate in which the participants were required to take different sides. Scholars who worked in this context developed new ways of thinking in many fields of study.
The process by which universities were set up across Europe was far from smooth. Indeed universities were highly controversial: they had both passionate supporters and vitriolic critics. This is scarcely surprising in view of the roles which many scholars claimed to play in society. Masters of theology at the University of Paris, for example, considered it their responsibility to remove doubt and error, to elucidate the truth, to defend the faith against heretics, and to train others how to preach, teach and see to the cure of souls throughout Christendom. Certainly universities had a major impact on many aspects of medieval society. Scholars played an important role in shaping attitudes and opinions in many areas of life. University men also left the academic world to pursue careers in secular and ecclesiastical administration at every level. The culture of the medieval intellectual was thus an essential part of medieval society.
L. Wei
World History
