As an introduction to the history of the Revival, and in order that the work to be performed by the Italian students may be accurately measured, it will be necessary to touch briefly upon the state of scholarship during the dark ages. To underrate the achievement of that period, especially in logic, theology, and law, is only too easy, seeing that a new direction was given to the mind of Europe by the Renaissance, and that we have moved continuously on other lines to other objects since the opening of the fifteenth century. Mediæval thought was both acute and strenuous in its own region of activity. What it lacked was material outside the speculative sphere to feed upon. Culture, in our sense of the word, did not exist, and the intellect was forced to deal subtly with a very limited class of conceptions.
Long before the fall of the Roman Empire it became clear that both fine arts and literature were gradually declining. Sculpture in the age of Constantine had lost distinction of style; and though the practice of verse survived as a rhetorical exercise, no works of original genius were produced. Ausonius and Claudian, just before the division of the Empire and the irruption of the barbarian races, uttered the last swan's note of classic poetry. Meanwhile true taste and criticism were extinct.[12] The Church, while battling with Paganism, recognised her deadliest foes in literature. Not only were the Greek and Latin masterpieces the stronghold of a mythology that had to be erased from the popular mind; not only was their morality antagonistic to the principles of Christian ethics: in addition to these grounds for hatred and mistrust, the classics idealised a form of human life which the new faith regarded as worthless. What was culture in comparison with the salvation of the soul? Why should time be spent upon the dreams of poets, when every minute might be well employed in pondering the precepts of the Gospels? What was the use of making this life refined and agreeable by study, when it formed but an insignificant prelude to an eternity wherein mere mundane learning would be valueless? Why raise questions about man's condition on this earth, when the creeds had to be defined and expounded, when the nature of God and the relation of the human soul to its Creator had to be established? It was easy to pass from this state of mind to the belief that learning in itself was impious.[13] 'Let us shun the lying fables of the poets,' cries Gregory of Tours, 'and forego the wisdom of sages at enmity with God, lest we incur the doom of endless death by sentence of our Lord.' Even Augustine deplored his time spent in reading Virgil, weeping over Dido's death by love, when all the while he was himself both morally and spiritually dead. Alcuin regretted that in his boyhood he had preferred Virgil to the legends of the Saints, and stigmatised the eloquence of the Latin writers by the epithet of wanton. Such phrases as poetarum figmenta, gentilium figmenta sive deliramenta (the fictions or mad ravings of Pagan poets) are commonly employed by Christian authors of the Lives of Saints, in order to mark the inferiority of Virgil and Ovid to their own more edifying compositions. Relying on their spiritual pretensions, the monkish scribes gloried in ignorance and paraded want of grammar as a sign of grace. 'I warn the curious reader,' writes a certain Wolfhard in the 'Life of S. Walpurgis,' 'not to mind the mass of barbarisms in this little work; I bid him ponder what he finds upon these pages, and seek the pearl within the dung-heap.' Gregory the Great goes further, and defies the pedantry of pedagogues. 'The place of prepositions and the cases of the nouns I utterly despise, since I deem it unfit to confine the words of the celestial oracle within the rules of Donatus.' 'Let philosophers and impure scholars of Donatus,' writes a fanatic of Cordova, 'ply their windy problems with the barking of dogs, the grunting of swine, snarling with skinned throat and teeth; let the foaming and bespittled grammarians belch, while we remain evangelical servants of Christ, true followers of rustic teachers.' Thus the opposition of the Church to Paganism, the conviction that Christianity was alien to culture, and the absorption of intellectual interest in theological questions contributed to destroy what had remained of sound scholarship in the last years of the Empire. The task of the Church, moreover, in the Middle Ages was not so much to keep learning alive as to moralise the savage races who held Europe at their pleasure. Pure Latinity, even if it could have been instilled into the nations of the North, was of less moment than elementary discipline in manners and religion. It must not be forgotten that the literature of ancient Rome was artificial in its best days, confined to a select few, and dependent on the capital for its support. After the dismemberment of the Empire the whole of Europe was thrown open to the action of spiritual powers who had to use unlettered barbarians for their ministers and missionaries. To submit this vast field to classic culture at the same time that Christianity was being propagated, would have been beyond the strength of the Church, even had she chosen to undertake this task, and had the vital forces of antiquity not been exhausted.
At this point an inevitable reaction, illustrating the compromise thrust upon the Church by her peculiar position, made itself apparent. In proportion as the dangers of Paganism decreased, the clergy, on whom devolved the double duty of civilising as well as moralising society, began to feel the need of arresting the advance of ignorance. Knowledge of Latin was required for ecclesiastical uses, for the interpretation of Scripture, for the study of the Fathers, and for the establishment of a common language among many divers nationalities. A middle course between the fanaticism which regarded classical literature as worthless and impure, and the worldliness that might have been encouraged by enthusiasm for the ancients, had therefore to be steered. Grammar was taught in the schools, and where grammar was taught, it was impossible to exclude Virgil and some other Latin authors. A conflict in the monkish mind was the unavoidable consequence. Since the classics alone communicated sound learning, the study of them formed a necessary part of education; and yet these authors were unbaptized Pagans, doomed to everlasting death because of their impiety and immorality. Poets who had hitherto been regarded as deadly foes, were now accepted as auxiliaries in the battle of the Church against barbarism. While copying the elegies of Ovid, the compassionate scribe sought to place them in a favourable light, and to render them edifying at the cost of contradicting their plain meaning.[14] Virgil was credited with allegorical significance; and the strong sympathy he roused in those who felt the beauty of his style, produced a belief that, if not quite, he was almost a Christian. The piety and pity for Virgil as a gentle soul who had just missed the salvation offered by Christ, found expression in the service for S. Paul's Day used at Mantua:[15]—
| Ad Maronis mausoleum Ductus, fudit super eum Piæ rorem lacrymæ; Quem te, inquit, reddidissem Si te vivum invenissem, Poetarum maxime! |
Meanwhile the utter confusion consequent upon the downfall of the Roman Empire and the irruption of the Germanic races was causing, by the mere brute force of circumstance, a gradual extinction of scholarship too powerful to be arrested. The teaching of grammar for ecclesiastical purposes was insufficient to check the influence of many causes leading to this overthrow of learning. It was impossible to communicate more than a mere tincture of knowledge to students separated from the classical tradition, for whom the antecedent history of Rome was a dead letter. The meaning of Latin words derived from the Greek was lost. Smaragdus, a grammarian, mistook Eunuchus Comœdia and Orestes Tragœdia, mentioned by Donatus, for the names of authors. Remigius of Auxerre explained poema by positio, and emblema by habundantia. Homer and Virgil were supposed to have been friends and contemporaries, while the Latin epitome of the 'Iliad,' bearing the name of Pindar, was fathered on the Theban lyrist. Theological notions, grotesque and childish beyond description, found their way into etymology and grammar. The three persons of the Trinity were discovered in the verb, and mystic numbers in the parts of speech. Thus analytical