II. THE RISE OF THE NEW LEARNING (1453-92).

II. THE RISE OF THE NEW LEARNING (1453-92).

[Sidenote: The old and new school of thought.]

In all ages, more or less, there is a new school of thought rising up under the eyes of an older school of thought. And probably in all ages the men of the old school regard with some little anxiety the ways of the men of the new school. Never is it more likely to be so than at an epoch of sharp transition, like that on which the lot of these Oxford doctors had been cast.

[Sidenote: An age of progress and transition.]

[Sidenote: Advance of Infidel arms in Europe.]

We sometimes speak as though our age were _par excellence_ the age of progress. _Theirs_ was much more so if we duly consider it. The youth and manhood of some of them had been spent in days which may well have seemed to be the latter days of Christendom. They had seen Constantinople taken by the Turks. The final conquest of Christendom by the infidel was a possibility which had haunted all their visions of the future. Were not Christian nations driven up into the north-western extremity of the known world, a wide pathless ocean lying beyond? Had not the warlike creed of Mahomet steadily encroached upon Christendom, century by century, stripping her first of her African churches, from thence fighting its way northward into Spain? Had it not maintained its foothold in Spain’s fairest provinces for seven hundred years? And from the East was it not steadily creeping over Europe, nearer and nearer to Venice and Rome, in spite of all that crusades could do to stop its progress? If, though little more than half the age of Christianity, it had already, as they reckoned it had, drawn into its communion five times[16] as many votaries as there were Christians left, was it a groundless fear that now in these latter days it might devour the remaining sixth? What could hinder it?

[Sidenote: Internal weakness of the Church.]

A Spartan resistance on the part of united Christendom perhaps might. But Christendom was not united, nor capable of Spartan discipline. Her internal condition seemed to show signs almost of approaching dissolution. The shadow of the great Papal schism still brooded over the destinies of the Church. That schism had been ended only by a revolution which, under the guidance of Gerson, had left the Pope the constitutional instead of the absolute monarch of the Church. The great heresies of the preceding century had, moreover, not yet been extinguished. The very names of Wiclif and Huss were still names of terror. Lollardy had been crushed, but it was not dead. Everywhere the embers of schism and revolution were still smouldering underneath, ready to break out again, in new fury, who could tell how soon?

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Defeat of the Moors in Spain, and discovery of America.]

It was in the ears of this apparently doomed generation that the double tidings came of the discovery of the Terra Nova in the West, and of the expulsion of the infidel out of Spain.

The ice of centuries suddenly was broken. The universal despondency at once gave way before a spirit of enterprise and hope; and it has been well observed, men began to congratulate each other that their lot had been cast upon an age in which such wonders were achieved.

Even the men of the old school could appreciate these facts in a fashion. The defeat of the Moors was to them a victory to the Church. The discovery of the New World extended her dominion. They gloried over both.

But these outward facts were but the index to an internal upheaving of the mind of Christendom, to which they were blind. The men who were guiding the great external revolution--reformers in their way--were blindly stamping out the first symptoms of this silent upheaving. Gerson, while carrying reform over the heads of Popes, and deposing them to end the schism or to preserve the unity of the Church, was at the same moment using all his influence to crush Huss and Jerome of Prague. Queen Isabella and Ximenes, Henry VII. and Morton, while sufficiently enlightened to pursue maritime discovery, to reform after a fashion the monasteries under their rule, and ready even to combine to reform the morals of the Pope himself in order to avert the dreaded recurrence of a schism,[17] were not eager to pursue these purposes without the sanction of Papal bulls, and without showing their zeal for the Papacy by crushing out free thought with an iron heel and zealously persecuting heretics, whether their faith were that of the Moor, the Lollard, or the Jew.

[Sidenote: The revival of learning.]

The fall of Constantinople, which had sounded almost like the death-knell of Christendom, had proved itself in truth the chief cause of her revival. The advance of the Saracens upon Europe had already told upon the European mind. The West has always had much to learn from the East. It was, for instance, by translation from Arabic versions that Aristotle had gained such influence over those very same scholastic minds to which his native Greek was an abomination.

This further triumph of infidel arms also influenced Christian thought. Eastern languages and Eastern philosophies began to be studied afresh in the West. Exiles who had fled into Italy had brought with them their Eastern lore. The invention of printing had come just in time to aid the revival of learning. The printing press was pouring out in clear and beautiful type new editions of the Greek and Latin classics. Art and science with literature sprang up once more into life in Italy; and to Italy, and especially to Florence, which, under the patronage of the splendid court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, seemed to form the most attractive centre, students from all nations eagerly thronged.

[Sidenote: Its effect on religion. Revival of Neo-Platonism.]

It was of necessity that the sudden reproduction of the Greek philosophy and the works of the older Neo-Platonists in Italy should sooner or later produce a new crisis in religion. A thousand years before, Christianity and Neo-Platonism had been brought into the closest contact. Christianity was then in its youth--comparatively pure--and in the struggle for mastery had easily prevailed. Not that Neo-Platonism was indeed a mere phantom which vanished and left no trace behind it. By no means. Through the pseudo-Dionysian writings it not only influenced profoundly the theology of mediæval mystics, but also entered largely even into the Scholastic system. It was thus absorbed into Christian theology though lost as a philosophy.

[Sidenote: The Platonic Academy, Ficino.]

Now, after the lapse of a thousand years, the same battle had to be fought again. But with this terrible difference; that now Christianity, in the impurest form it had ever assumed--a grotesque perversion of Christianity--had to cope with the purest and noblest of the Greek philosophies. It was, therefore, almost a matter of course that, under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Platonic Academy under Marsilio Ficino should carry everything before it. Whether the story were literally true of Ficino himself or not, that he kept a lamp burning in his chamber before a bust of Plato, as well as before that of the Virgin, it was at least symbolically true of the most accomplished minds of Florence.

[Sidenote: Plato and Christianity.]

Questions which had slept since the days of Julian and his successors were discussed again under Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. The leading minds of Italy were once more seeking for a reconciliation between Plato and Christianity in the works of the pseudo-Dionysius, Macrobius, Plotinus, Proclus, and other Neo-Platonists. There was the same anxious endeavour, as a thousand years earlier, to fuse all philosophies into one. Plato and Aristotle must be reconciled, as well as Christianity and Plato. The old world was becoming once more the possession of the new. It was felt to be the recovery of a lost inheritance, and everything of antiquity, whether Greek, Roman, Jewish, Persian, or Arabian, was regarded as a treasure. It was the fault of the Christian Church if the grotesque form of Christianity held up by her to a reawakening world seemed less pure and holy than the aspirations of Pagan philosophers. It would be by no merit of hers, but solely by its own intrinsic power, if Christianity should retain its hold upon the mind of Europe, in spite of its ecclesiastical defenders.

Christianity brought into disrepute by the conduct of professed Christians, was compelled to rest as of old upon its own intrinsic merits, to stand the test of the most searching scientific criticisms which Florentine philosophers were able to apply to it. Men versed in Plato and Aristotle were not without some notion of the value of intrinsic evidence, and the methods of inductive enquiry. Ficino himself thought it well, discarding the accustomed scholastic interpreters, to turn the light of his Platonic lamp upon the Christian religion. From his work, ‘_De Religione Christianâ_,’ dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, and written in 1474, some notion may be gained of the method and results of his criticism. That its nature should be rightly understood is important in connection with the history of the Oxford Reformers.

[Sidenote: The _De Religione Christianâ_ of Ficino.]

Ficino commences his argument by demonstrating that _religion_ is natural to man; and having, on Platonic authority, pointed out the truth of the one common religion, and that all religions have something of good in them, he turns to the Christian religion in particular. Its truth he tries to prove by a chain of reasoning of which the following are some of the links.

[Sidenote: Argument of Ficino in support of Christianity.]

He first shows that ‘the disciples of Jesus were not deceivers;’[18] and he supports this by examining, in a separate chapter, ‘in what spirit the disciples of Christ laboured;’[19] concluding, after a careful analysis of the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, that they did not seek their _own_ advantage or honour but ‘the glory of _Christ_ alone.’ Then he shows that ‘the disciples of Christ were not _deceived_ by anyone,’[20] and that the Christian religion was founded, not in human wisdom, but ‘in the wisdom and power of God;’[21] that Christ was ‘no astrologer,’ but ‘derived his authority from God.’[22] He adduced further the evidence of miracles, in which he had no difficulty in believing, for he gave two instances of miracles which had occurred in Florence only four years previously, and in which he declared to Lorenzo de’ Medici, that, philosopher as he was, he believed.[23] After citing the testimony of some Gentile writers, and of the Coran of the Mahometans, and discussing in the light of Plato, Zoroaster, and Dionysius, the doctrine of the ‘logos,’ and the fitness of the incarnation, he showed that the result of the coming of Christ was that men are drawn to love with their whole heart a God who in his immense love had himself become man.[24] After dwelling on the way in which Christ lightened the burden of sin,[25] on the errors he dispelled, the truths he taught,[26] and the example he set,[27] Ficino proceeds in two short chapters to adduce the testimony of the ‘Sibyls.’[28] This was natural to a writer whose bias it was to regard as genuine whatever could be proved to be ancient.

But it is only fair to state that he relies much more fully and discusses at far greater length the prophecies of the Ancient Hebrew prophets,[29] vindicating the Christian rendering of certain passages in the old Testament against the Jews, who accused the Christians of having perverted and depraved them.[30] He concludes by asserting, that if there be much in Christianity which surpasses human comprehension, this is a proof of its divine character rather than otherwise. These are his final words. ‘If these things be divine, they must exceed the capacity of any human mind. Faith (as Aristotle has it) is the foundation of knowledge. By faith alone (as the Platonists prove) we ascend to God. “I believed (said David) and therefore have I spoken.” Believing, therefore, and approaching the fountain of truth and goodness we shall drink in a wise and blessed life.’[31]

[Sidenote: Christianity a thing of the heart.]

Thus was the head of the Platonic Academy at Florence turning a critical eye upon Christianity, viewing it very possibly too much in the light of the lamp kept continually burning before the bust of Plato, but still, I think, honestly endeavouring, upon its own intrinsic evidence and by inductive methods, to establish a reasonable belief in its divine character in minds sceptical of ecclesiastical authority, and over whom the dogmatic methods of the Schoolmen had lost their power.[32] Nevertheless Ficino, as yet, was probably more of an intellectual than of a practical Christian, and Christianity was not likely to take hold of the mind of Italy--of re-awakening Europe--through any merely philosophical disquisitions. The lamp of Plato might throw light on Christianity, but it would not light up Christian fire in other souls. For Christianity is a thing of the heart, not only of the head. Soul is kindled only by soul, says Carlyle; and to teach religion the one thing needful is to find a man who _has_ religion.[33] Should such a man arise, a man himself on fire with Christian love and zeal, his torch might light up other torches, and the fire be spread from torch to torch. But, until such a man should arise, the lamp of philosophy must burn alone in Florence. Men might come from far and near to listen to Marsilio Ficino--to share the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici, to study Plato and Plotinus,--to learn how to harmonise Plato and Aristotle, to master the Greek language and philosophies,--to drink in the spirit of reviving learning--but, of true Christian _religion_, the lamp had not yet been lit at Florence, or if lit it was under a bushel.

[Sidenote: Oxford students in Italy.]

Already Oxford students had been to Italy, and returned full of the new learning. Grocyn, one of them, had for some time been publicly teaching Greek at Oxford, not altogether to the satisfaction of the old divines, for the Latin of the Vulgate was, in their eye, the orthodox language, and Greek a Pagan and heretical tongue. Linacre, too, had been to Italy and returned, after sharing with the children of Lorenzo de’ Medici the tuition of Politian and Chalcondyles.[34]

These men had been to Italy and had returned, to all appearances, mere humanists. Now five years later Colet had been to Italy and had returned, _not_ a mere humanist, but an earnest Christian reformer, bent upon giving lectures, not upon Plato or Plotinus, but upon St. Paul’s Epistles. What had happened during these four years to account for the change?