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He is described, by Petrarch and Boccace, as a man of a diminutive stature, though truly great in the measure of learning and genius; of a piercing discernment, though of a slow and painful elocution. For many ages (as they affirm) Greece had not produced his equal in the knowledge of history, grammar, and philosophy; and his merit was celebrated in the attestations of the princes and doctors of Constantinople. One of these attestations is still extant; and the emperor Cantacuzene, the protector of his adversaries, is forced to allow that Euclid, Aristotle, and Plato were familiar to that profound and subtle logician. In the court of Avignon, he formed an intimate connexion with Petrarch, 92 the first of the Latin scholars; and the desire of mutual instruction was the principle of their Studies of literary commerce. The Tuscan applied himself with eager A.D. 1339 curiosity and assiduous diligence to the study of the Greek language; and, in a laborious struggle with the dryness and difficulty of the first rudiments, he began to reach the sense, and to feel the spirit, of poets and philosophers whose minds were congenial to his own. But he was soon deprived of the society and lessons of this useful assistant. Barlaam relinquished his fruitless embassy; and, on his return to Greece, he rashly provoked the swarms of fanatic monks by attempting to substitute the light of reason to that of their navel. After a separation of three years, the two friends again met in the court of Naples; but the generous pupil renounced the fairest occasion of improvement; and by his recommendation Barlaam was finally settled in a small bishopric of his native Calabria.93 The manifold avocations of Petrarch, love and friendship, his

Petrarch,

1374

happy than the age of Charlemagne. [Barlaam was a native of Seminaria in Calabria. His work (against the Roman church) πepì tâs àpxôs tоû Táτа is published in Migne, P. G., 151, p. 1256 sqq. There is an account of Barlaam's work in T. Uspenski's essay, Philosophskoe i bogoslovkoe dvizhenie v xiv viekie, printed in his Ocherki, p. 246-364 (1892).]

99 See the character of Barlaam in Boccace, de Genealog. Deorum, 1. xv. c. 6. 91 Cantacuzen. 1. ii. c. 36.

92 For the connexion of Petrarch and Barlaam, and the two interviews at Avignon in 1339 and at Naples in 1342, see the excellent Mémoires sur la Vie de Pétrarque, tom. i. p. 406-410, tom. ii. p. 75-77. [G. Mandolori, Fra Barlaamo Calabrese, maestro del Petrarca, 1888; P. de Nolhac, Pétrarque et l'humanisme, 1892 (new ed. 1907). On Petrarch see further below, chap. lxx. ad init.]

93 The bishopric to which Barlaam retired was the old Locri, in the middle ages Scta Cyriaca, and by corruption Hieracium, Gerace (Dissert. Chorographica Italiæ medii Evi, p. 312). The dives opum of the Norman times soon lapsed into poverty, since even the church was poor: yet the town still contains 3000 inhabitants (Swinburne, p. 340).

various correspondence and frequent journeys, the Roman
laurel, and his elaborate compositions in prose and verse, in
Latin and Italian, diverted him from a foreign idiom; and, as
he advanced in life, the attainment of the Greek language was
the object of his wishes rather than of his hopes. When he
was about fifty years of age, a Byzantine ambassador, his friend,
and a master of both tongues, presented him with a copy of
Homer; and the answer of Petrarch is at once expressive of
his eloquence, gratitude, and regret. After celebrating the
generosity of the donor, and the value of a gift more precious
in his estimation than gold or rubies, he thus proceeds: "Your
present of the genuine and original text of the divine poet, the
fountain of all invention, is worthy of yourself and of me; you
have fulfilled your promise and satisfied my desires.
Yet your
liberality is still imperfect with Homer you should have given
me yourself: a guide, who could lead me into the fields of light,
and disclose to my wondering eyes the specious miracles of the
Iliad and Odyssey. But, alas! Homer is dumb, or I am deaf;
nor is it in my power to enjoy the beauty which I possess. I
have seated him by the side of Plato, the prince of poets near
the prince of philosophers; and I glory in the sight of my
illustrious guests. Of their immortal writings, whatever had
been translated into the Latin idiom, I had already acquired;
but, if there be no profit, there is some pleasure in beholding
these venerable Greeks in their proper and national habit.
am delighted with the aspect of Homer; and, as often as I
embrace the silent volume, I exclaim, with a sigh, Illustrious
bard with what pleasure should I listen to thy song, if my
sense of hearing were not obstructed and lost by the death of
one friend, and in the much lamented absence of another!
Nor do I yet despair; and the example of Cato suggests some
comfort and hope, since it was in the last period of age that he
attained the knowledge of the Greek letters." 94

I

The prize which eluded the efforts of Petrarch was obtained of Boccace, by the fortune and industry of his friend Boccace, the father &c.

94 I will transcribe a passage from this epistle of Petrarch (Famil. ix. 2): Donasti Homerum non in alienum sermonem violento alveo derivatum, sed ex ipsis Græci eloquii scatebris, et qualis divino illi profluxit ingenio. . . . Sine tuâ voce Homerus tuus apud me mutus, immo, vero ego apud illum surdus sum. Gaudeo tamen vel adspectu solo, ac sæpe illum amplexus atque suspirans dico, O magne vir! &c.

95 For the life and writings of Boccace, who was born in 1313, and died in 1375, Fabricius (Bibliot. Latin. medii Ævi, tom. i. p. 248, &c.) and Tiraboschi (tom. v.

A.D. 1360,

first Greek

at Flor

ence, and West, A.D.

in the

1360-1363

of the Tuscan prose. That popular writer, who derives his reputation from the Decameron, an hundred novels of pleasantry and love, may aspire to the more serious praise of restoring in Italy the study of the Greek language. In the year one thousand three hundred and sixty, a disciple of Barlaam, whose name was Leo or Leontius Pilatus, was detained in his way to Avignon by the advice and hospitality of Boccace, who lodged the stranger in his house, prevailed on the republic of Florence to allow him an annual stipend, and devoted his leisure to the first Greek professor who taught the language in the Western Leo Pilatus countries of Europe. The appearance of Leo might disgust the professor most eager disciple: he was clothed in the mantle of a philosopher, or a mendicant; his countenance was hideous; his face Was overshadowed with black hair; his beard long and uncombed ; his deportment rustic; his temper gloomy and inconstant; nor could he grace his discourse with the ornaments or even the perspicuity of Latin elocution. But his mind was stored with a treasure of Greek learning; history and fable, philosophy and grammar, were alike at his command; and he read the poems of Homer in the schools of Florence. It was from his explanation that Boccace composed and transcribed a literal prose version of the Iliad and Odyssey, which satisfied the thirst of his friend Petrarch, and which perhaps, in the succeeding century, was clandestinely used by Laurentius Valla, the Latin interpreter. It was from his narratives that the same Boccace collected the materials for his treatise on the genealogy of the heathen gods: a work, in that age, of stupendous erudition, and which he ostentatiously sprinkled with Greek characters and passages, to excite the wonder and applause of his more ignorant readers.96 The first steps of learning are slow and laborious: no more than ten votaries of Homer could be enumerated in all Italy; and neither Rome nor Venice nor Naples could add a single name to this studious catalogue. But their numbers

p. 83, 439-451) may be consulted. The editions, versions, imitations of his novels are innumerable. Yet he was ashamed to communicate that trifling and perhaps scandalous work to Petrarch his respectable friend, in whose letters and memoirs he conspicuously appears.

96 Boccace indulges an honest vanity: Ostentationis causâ Græca carmina adscripsi . jure utor meo; meum est hoc decus, mea gloria scilicet inter Etruscos Græcis uti carminibus. Nonne ego fui qui Leontium Pilatum, &c. (de Genealogiâ Deorum, 1. xv. c. 7, a work, which, though now forgotten, has run through thirteen or fourteen editions). [It was Leontius Pilatus himself who translated Homer.]

would have multiplied, their progress would have been accelerated, if the inconstant Leo, at the end of three years, had not relinquished an honourable and beneficial station. In his passage, Petrarch entertained him at Padua a short time he enjoyed the scholar, but was justly offended with the gloomy and unsocial temper of the man. Discontented with the world and with himself, Leo depreciated his present enjoyments, while absent persons and objects were dear to his imagination. In Italy, he was a Thessalian; in Greece, a native of Calabria; in the company of the Latins, he disdained their language, religion, and manner: no sooner was he landed at Constantinople, than he again sighed for the wealth of Venice and the elegance of Florence. His Italian friends were deaf to his importunity; he depended on their curiosity and indulgence, and embarked on a second voyage; but, on his entrance into the Adriatic, the ship was assailed by a tempest, and the unfortunate teacher, who, like Ulysses, had fastened himself to the mast, was struck dead by a flash of lightning. The humane Petrarch dropped a tear on his disaster; but he was most anxious to learn whether some copy of Euripides or Sophocles might not be saved from the hands of the mariners.97

tion of the

guage in

Manuel

ras, A.D.

But the faint rudiments of Greek learning, which Petrarch Founda had encouraged and Boccace had planted, soon withered and Greek lanexpired. The succeeding generation was content for a while ity by with the improvement of Latin eloquence; nor was it before Chrysolothe end of the fourteenth century that a new and perpetual 1390-1415 flame was rekindled in Italy.98 Previous to his own journey, the emperor Manuel dispatched his envoys and orators to implore the compassion of the Western princes. Of these envoys, the most conspicuous or the most learned was Manuel Chrysoloras," of noble birth, and whose Roman ancestors are supposed

97 Leontius, or Leo Pilatus, is sufficiently made known by Hody (p. 2-11), and the Abbé de Sade (Vie de Pétrarque, tom. iii. p. 625-634, 670-673), who has very happily caught the lively and dramatic manner of his original.

99 Dr. Hody (p. 54) is angry with Leonard Aretin, Guarinus, Paulus Jovius, &c., for affirming that the Greek letters were restored in Italy post septingentos annos ; as if, says he, they had flourished till the end of the viith century. These writers most probably reckoned from the last period of the exarchate; and the presence of the Greek magistrates and troops at Ravenna and Rome must have preserved, in some degree, the use of their native tongue.

See the article of Emmanuel, or Manuel Chrysoloras, in Hody (p. 12-54), and Tiraboschi (tom. vii. p. 113-118). The precise date of his arrival floats between the years 1390 and 1400, and is only confined by the reign of Boniface IX. [The Greek

1400]

to have migrated with the great Constantine.

After visiting

the courts of France and England, where he obtained some contributions and more promises, the envoy was invited to [c. A.D. 1397- assume the office of a professor; and Florence had again the honour of this second invitation. By his knowledge, not only of the Greek but of the Latin tongue, Chrysoloras deserved the stipend and surpassed the expectation of the republic; his school was frequented by a crowd of disciples of every rank and age; and one of these, in a general history, has described his motives and his success. "At that time," says Leonard Aretin,100 I was a student of the civil law; but my soul was inflamed with the love of letters; and I bestowed some application on the sciences of logic and rhetoric. On the arrival of Manuel, I hesitated whether I should desert my legal studies or relinquish this golden opportunity; and thus, in the ardour of youth, I communed with my own mind-Wilt thou be wanting to thyself and thy fortune? Wilt thou refuse to be introduced to a familiar converse with Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes? with those poets, philosophers, and orators, of whom such wonders are related, and who are celebrated by every age as the great masters of human science? Of professors and scholars in civil law, a sufficient supply will always be found in our universities; but a teacher, and such a teacher, of the Greek language, if he once be suffered to escape, may never afterwards be retrieved. Convinced by these reasons, I gave myself to Chrysoloras; and so strong was my passion that the lessons which I had imbibed in the day were the constant subject of my nightly dreams." 101 At the same time and place the Latin classics were explained by John of Ravenna, the domestic pupil of Petrarch; 102 the Italians, who illustrated their age and country, were formed in

Grammar of Chrysoloras was printed in Venice in 1484. For the chronology of his life cp. Klette, op. cit. part i.]

100 The name of Aretinus has been assumed by five or six natives of Arezzo in Tuscany, of whom the most famous and the most worthless lived in the xvith century. Leonardus Brunus Aretinus, the disciple of Chrysoloras, was a linguist, an orator, and an historian, the secretary of four successive popes, and the chancellor of the republic of Florence, where he died, A.D. 1444, at the age of seventy-five (Fabric. Bibliot. medii Evi, tom, i. p. 190, &c.; Tiraboschi, tom. vii. p. 33-38).

101 See the passage in Aretin. Commentario Rerum suo Tempore in Italiâ gestarum, apud Hodium, p. 28-30.

102 In this domestic discipline, Petrarch, who loved the youth, often complains of the eager curiosity, restless temper, and proud feelings, which announce the genius and glory of a riper age (Mémoires sur Pétrarque, tom. iii. p. 700-709).

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