IV.

EDUCATION FROM THE REFORMATION TO THE PRESENT TIME.

THE Reformation of the sixteenth century is the greatest event in modern history. Its vast influence upon human development is surpassed only by the advent of Christ. It marks the close of a long, dark night, and dates a new era in human progress.

It was not, however, an isolated fact. There were many concurring circumstances which prepared the way for it, and gave it power in the world. The revival of classical learning, which had its central point in the downfall of Constantinople in 1453, exerted a favorable influence. It opened the literary treasures of Greece and Rome, provided a new culture for the mind, awakened dissatisfaction with the scholastic teaching of the Church, and tended to emancipate thought from subjection to ecclesiastical authority. The invention of gunpowder brought about an important and wholesome change in the organization of society. It destroyed the influence and power of the knightly order, elevated the producing class, and thus became a mighty leveler. Before this invention a single knight, clad in a full suit of armor, and mounted upon a powerful charger, was

a match for a whole company of foot-soldiers. The strength of armies was measured by the number of knights. But after the invention of gunpowder, in the fourteenth century, which made the humblest footman with a musket more than a match for the proudest knight, chivalry necessarily declined. The discovery of America, and of a sea-passage to the East Indies, exerted an elevating influence by enlarging the circle of knowledge. Correct views of the earth supplanted the Ptolemaic system. The commercial activities of the world began to move in new directions, and to assume enlarged proportions. But the most important of all was the invention of printing, about the middle of the fifteenth century. At once supplanting the tedious and costly method of copying books by hand, it multiplied the sources of knowledge, and brought them within reach of a larger circle of readers. Each of these circumstances was a lever to lift the world up to a higher plane. The Reformation broke the fetters yet holding it, and started it forward in a new course of intellectual, moral, and religious development.

1. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING AND THE Humanists.

The revival of learning was so intimately related to the Reformation, and to the educational advancement dating from that time, that it calls for consideration in some detail. It had its origin in Italy. The three great Italian writers of the fourteenth century-Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, all of whom had made a more or less profound study of the ancient classics-may be regarded as its pioneers. The widely extended scientific

spirit, which has already been noticed at some length, prepared the way for its rapid spread. The first Greek to introduce the literary treasures of his country into Italy was Manuel Chrysoloras, who received from the city of Florence, in 1396, an appointment as teacher. This was the humble beginning to be followed by great results. When Constantinople was captured by the Turks, in 1453, many Greek scholars took refuge in Italy. The times were propitious for them. Noble and wealthy patronage was not lacking, and under its fostering care they became for a time the teachers of Europe. They succeeded in kindling a remarkable enthusiasm for antiquity. Manuscripts were collected, translations were made, academies were established, and libraries were founded. Several of the popes became generous patrons of ancient learning; Nicholas V. founded the celebrated Vatican Library, and collected for it a great number of Greek and Latin manuscripts; and under Leo X. Rome became a center of ancient learning. Eager scholars from England, France, and Germany, sat at the feet of Italian masters, in order afterward to bear beyond the Alps the precious seed of the new culture.

The revival of letters produced different results in different countries. Everywhere it contributed to the emancipation of the human mind, but in Italy it tended strongly to paganize its adherents. Ardor for antiquity became at last intoxication. Infidelity prevailed in the highest ranks of the Church; Christianity was despised as a superstition; immorality abounded in the most shameful forms. The heathenism of Athens was revived in Christian Rome. The remark that Leo X. is said to have made to Cardinal Bembo well accords with

the prevailing spirit of the time: "All the world knows how profitable this fable of Christ has been to us." The wide-spread infidelity made it necessary for the tenth Lateran Council to establish the doctrine of the immortality of the soul by a special decree. When Luther was dispatched to Rome as envoy of the Augustine brotherhood, he was one day at table with several distinguished prelates. Their conversation, as he tells us, was impious. Among other things, they boasted that at mass, instead of the sacramental words which were to transform the bread and wine into the body and blood of our Saviour, they mockingly pronounced over the elements, "Bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain; wine thou art, and wine thou shalt remain." Blasphemy was never more shameless.

The simple language of the Scriptures, which was offensive to the devotees of the ancient classics, was subject to outrageous parody, and its sublime truths were translated into the terms of heathen mythology. The Holy Ghost was written the "breath of the heavenly zephyr"; the expression to forgive sins was rendered "to bend the manes and the sovereign gods"; and Christ, the Son of God, was changed into "Minerva, sprung from the head of Jupiter." The representatives of the Church, even those of the highest station, were guilty of monstrous crimes. The Vatican became the scene of treachery and murder, and the dissolute entertainments given in the pontifical palace surpassed the impure groves of antiquity in horrible licentious

ness.

Such was the state of belief and morals prevailing in Rome at a time when ancient learning and the fine arts

were cultivated in a high degree. Well may Raumer exclaim: "How strangely united in one and the same land, at one and the same time, the most splendid and the most horrible! What an angelic child must Raphael have been, yet his childhood falls at the iniquitous time of Alexander VI. Yea, how often in one and the same hero of art were united the most beautiful and the most hateful, the noblest and the most debased, pious devotion and detestable sensuality! Into what sins he fell and sank, when his love for Nature and antiquity degenerated into unrestrained and godless lust, and his art as his life became truly pagan!"

But we gladly turn from Italy in order to contemplate the results that followed the revival of learning in Germany. Fortunately for the world, the Germanic mind did not lose its earnestness and depth in studying the literary treasures of antiquity. The new learning was cultivated with as much zeal in Germany as beyond the Alps, but its results were utilized in the interests of a purer Christianity. The Greek and Hebrew Scriptures were studied as well as the classics of Greece and Rome. Critical editions of the Old and New Testaments were published by able scholars, and thus the means were supplied for discovering and correcting the abuses introduced into the Church by the papacy. The traditions of the middle ages were broken, dissatisfaction with the existing state of the Church was awakened, and the reformers were supplied with an invincible weapon. In Italy the new learning became a minister of infidelity; in Germany, of religion.

The revival of learning in Germany led to a bitter conflict with the monks. The monasteries at this period