The Council of Basel (1431) had in one respect a remarkable and far-reaching influence on literature. A Dominican, John of Ragusa, afterwards Cardinal, who figured there, left in the Dominican convent of the city a collection of books which in later years acquired a peculiar importance. They included three manuscripts of parts of the New Testament in Greek: and others were subsequently added to their number by purchase by the brethren of the House. These manuscripts were not only the first Greek books to which Johann Reuchlin had access, but were in after years wellnigh the sole authorities used by Erasmus for the constitution of the first published text of the Greek Testament. Few cities outside Italy could at that time have supplied even such facilities as this to an intending editor of the Sacred Text; and we may be grateful for the accident on which their presence at Basel depended. Another of this Cardinal’s books, which since his day has found a home at Eton College, is still the only known source of a tract of some celebrity, current under the name of Athanasius.
It seems not unfair to say that Germany-the country which in the middle of the fifteenth century gave to the cause of enlightenment its mightiest weapon, in the shape of the printing press-did little more for that cause, at least of her own initiative, in the course of that century. To the learning of the next her contributions were enormous; but for the moment she is conspicuous not by bringing to light her own hidden treasures but by parting with them to strangers. The number of ancient texts, both classical and patristic, which were exported from German Abbeys to Italy was very large: and scarcely less remarkable was the number and quality of those which remained undiscovered, until native scholars of a later generation scented them out. Yet there were German book-collectors before 1450: and to cue of them it may be well to devote a few words. In the letters of Poggio and his contemporaries there is not unfrequent mention of one Nicholas of Trier as a successful collector and discoverer. It is a probability, and indeed it has been accounted nearer a certainty, that he is identical with Nicholas of Cusa, afterwards Cardinal, who became famous as a politician, as a mathematician and reformer of the Calendar, and as a writer against Islam. Cusanus died in 1464, and bequeathed to a hospital he had founded at Cues on the Mosel, his native town, the books brought together by him during his residence in Italy and his journeys to the Greek lands. At Cues a good many of them still remain. The collection has, to some extent, suffered from an exchange of old lamps for new, which was effected in the last century to the advantage of the Harleian Library: but the books which are now at the Hospital of St Nicholas at Cues are both individually and collectively worthy of notice.
Two Graeco-Latin Psalters, of the eighth and ninth centuries, three other Greek manuscripts (one being an early and famous Catena on St John’s Gospel), and two copies of most of the Old Testament in Hebrew are the striking features among the Biblical books. In the patristic section is a volume transcribed for the Cardinal which contains certain works then of very rare occurrence: Optatus of Milevis Against the Donatists, Origen De Principiis, Tertullian’s Apology, and The Shepherd of Hernias. There are moreover two early Cyprians, and copies of the Latin versions, old or recent, of works of Athanasius, of Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelien, of Cyril, of Philo, of Aristeas, and of Dionysius. In addition to these, the presence of the earlier polemics against the Mohammadans, of works of Raymond Lull in great profusion, and of the new versions of Plato and Aristotle, gives a special character to this forgotten storehouse. In spite of the losses it has suffered, the library of Cues is to be reckoned among the most perfect and unadulterated examples that have survived of the collection of a single scholar of the middle of the fifteenth century.
So much as to the formation of libraries in various parts of Europe, and of its relation to the Christian Renaissance. We have designedly devoted a considerable space to this side of our subject, inasmuch as it has not as yet been adequately appreciated by the generality. To most men the study of inventories and catalogues seems dry work; but the evidence derivable from it is of a kind not easily to be upset. It must be remembered, besides, that the existence of these libraries did not affect their possessors only. Most of them were thrown open to students of all classes; so that they were centres not only for the preservation of literature, but for a wide and rapid diffusion of knowledge. We may have occasion to recur shortly to the topic of book-preservation. At present two other subjects intimately connected with the development of learning in the fifteenth century appear to require comment.
The first is the work of those who made translations of the newly imported Greek literature. The fact that very many of those who welcomed the fresh materials for study were unable to use them in their original forms needs little explanation. Petrarch himself never mastered Greek. But, whichever of several readily intelligible causes it was that gave rise to the demand for translations, it is certain that they were actually made in great numbers. There was, as we have noted, a considerable stock of them, of older date, already in circulation. Works of Origen, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, and Chrysostom were all available. Many of these, and particularly those by Burgundio of Pisa, were, or were accounted, obscure and barbarous: many other works of the same authors had never been current in Latin at all. There was thus room for a fresh translation of a whole literature. We have already encountered by the way the names of some of those who put their hands to the work. Probably the most important labourer in this field was Ambrogio Traversari, General of the Camal-dulite Order who died in 1438. To him the Church owed an improved version of the Homilies of Chrysostom on the Pauline Epistles, of other tracts by the same Father, of the Greek Vitae Patrum, of Dionysius the Areopagite, of Aeneas of Gaza, and not a few other books. His joy in his labour of translating, which was the great object of his life, appears over and over again in the hundreds of letters we possess from his pen. The interruptions in his work, which his appointment to the Generalship of his Order occasioned, were a constant grievance. Bitter were his regrets when he had yielded to the persuasions of Cosmo de’ Medici, and undertaken to make a Latin version of Diogenes Laertius: not solely because the task distracted his attention from the holy Doctors, but because the lives of the pagan philosophers were not a subject upon which a Christian monk should spend his time. Of all the prominent translators, Traversari is perhaps the one who has most clearly before him the thought that it is a worthy task to reopen to the Latins the mines of Greek theology. We see of course in him the same rather disappointing want of interest in the writers of the very earliest Christian period that we have noticed in studying the library catalogues-disappointing, because the conviction can hardly be resisted that, had the scholars of the fifteenth century made special and definite enquiries, they would have been in time to recover writings which have since perished.
It is impracticable to discuss at any length the productions of the multitude of translators contemporary with or subsequent to Traversari. We may mention but one of the most notable among them. Next to the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria, no patristic treatise is more remarkable for the number and value of the ancient authorities whom it quotes than the Praeparatio Evangelica of Eusebius. It therefore naturally attracted the attention of the lover of pagan antiquity as well as of the smaller band who desired to learn more of the origins of Christianity; and to the men of the Middle Ages it had been absolutely unknown. The Latin version of it, by George of Trebizond, was one of the most important additions to learning which that age could have seen. It opened up a whole realm of forgotten history. From it men first learned the names of such writers as Sanchoniathon, Manetho, and Berosus; indeed, the publication of the book may very probably have paved the way for the once famous forgeries of Annius of Viterbo. Translations of some part of Philo’s works, and of the venerable Hellenistic forgery known as the Letter of Aristeas, were also produced before the middle of the fifteenth century.
Much, then, had been done towards reopening the ancient storehouses before the date at which it was long fashionable to say that the revival of Greek learning began-the taking of Constantinople in 1453; much, too, before the printing press had been set up. Great libraries had been formed, and translators had been at work, and to such good purpose that a very representative collection of Greek theology was readily accessible to any studious Western.
The next development that we look for is the rise of the critical instinct. The fifteenth century produced one critic who died before its close, Lorenzo Valla. He, though uninspired by any interest in the Christian religion, did a considerable service