PART II. CHAP. master of his college in 1497-facts which, as his bicgrapher observes, sufficiently indicate the estimation in which the master he was held'. Flected to slup, 1497. Prosperity of Machinel se con trusted with of other foun It may be reasonably inferred that Michaelhouse had throughout enjoyed the benefits of good government and the coalition that its resources had been wisely administered, for not long dations. after the time that Fisher succeeded to the mastership we find that, with respect to revenue, it stood sixth in the list of college foundations. That Fisher himself was a conscientious administrator admits of little doubt; and at Character and views of Fisher at this periud time when the neighbouring hospital of St. John the Evangelist was sinking into decay under the reckless rule of Wi'am Towny, until the very stones of the street were silent witnesst - ainst him, and when the depredations of bishop Booth, as master of Gonville, were still fresh in the memory of the university, the members of Michaelhouse may well have congratulated themselves on the character of their heads. On the other hand, we have nothing to indicate that Fisher was, at this time, an advocate of extensive reforms or of startling innovations. All in fact that we know about him would lead us to infer the contrary. He appears to have been generally recognised as a man of exemplary life, signal ability, extensive learning, and unusual disinterestedness; but he was now approaching his fortieth year; he had received his early education in a city and at a school pervaded by monastic influences, and his more advanced education in one of the most monastic and conservative of our English colleges; over that college he was now called to preside; it was natural that he should be 1 Lewis, Life of Fisher, 1 4.. He was presented' at the Law Booth, bishop of Exeter, master of Gonville, 1465-78, was charged with having most disgracefully made away with the best cup and the best piece of silver plate, together with as much money as he could scrape together.' Riley's Second Report of the Royal Commission of Historical MSS. At the survey of the colleges in 1515, conducted by Parker, Redman, and May, Michaelhouse and Queens' College (a foundation, it is to be borne in mind, that had also for some years the benefit of Fisher's administra. tion) were the only two where the expenditure was not found considerably to exceed the revenue. Sce Cooper, Annals, 1 431-8. PART L odium theologicum was not more powerfully and actively in- CHAP.. voked against them, especially after the spread of Greek learning had lent new force to the old arguments, from the supposed connexion of its literature with a formidable and widespread heresy. In reviewing these different features it is easy to perceive The that the moot question of the advantages and disadvantages fra of classical learning was again already challenging the attention of the world: and it is impossible not therewith to be reminded of those warning voices which, some sen centuries before, had been so emphatically lifted up against the allure ments of pagan genius. The evils which conservatism foretells are certainly not always mere chimaras. We may feel assured that could Gregory the Great have revisited Italy at this crisis, and have seen the licentious muse of the Italian scholars sheltering itself from censure by pleading the example of classic models,-or could Alcuin again have trod the soil that once acknowledged the rule of Charlemagne, and have witnessed the changes that resulted from the teaching of Erasmus and the Reformers, they would each have pointed to what they beheld as affording the amplest justification of their own oft-repeated warnings. And not merely this, they would also have seen that the ancient power of the Church, to eradicate evils like those which had come to pass, was no longer hers. With the discovery of printing the tares sown by the enemy had acquired a new and irrepressi ble capacity of reproduction. With the rise of the art of criticism a new weapon had been brought to bear upon the defenders of the Church; a weapon which, it has been aptly said, changed the whole character of the strife between mind and mind, as completely as did the invention of firearms that of the art of war. The student of pagan literature was no longer an isolated solitary monk, timidly and often furtively turning the page of Terence or Virgil, exposed to the sarcasms of his brethren or the rebuke of his superior, but one of an illustrious band whose talents and achievements were winning the admiration of Europe. The Ligotry of the adherents to the old discipline found itself confronted by PART I. CAP. V. weapons to which it could offer no effectual resistance; the ancient terrorism was in its turn besieged by the combined forces of reason, eloquence, and satire. The Nunan1st and the dera. Ist at the As might be easily conjectured, but few of the Humanists Aloor were to be found among either the monastic or the mendicant fraternities. Traversari belonged to the order of the Camuldules; Antonio da Rho was a Franciscan, and Cardinal Bessarion was protector of the same fraternity; Maffeo Begio retired in his latter life to a Benedictine monastery'. But these were notable exceptions, and generally speaking it was among the religious orders that the most obstinate and The Human- bigoted opposition was to be encountered. As regards the universities universities, it is of importance to observe the general character of their culture at this period. We have already incidentally noted the progress of nominalism in one or two of the most influential of these centres, and those who may be desirous of tracing its progress more in detail will find ample guidance in the fourth volume of Prantl's exhaustive treatise. Everywhere the Byzantine logic, with its Scotian developement and Occamistic illumination, was giving birth to a series of manuals, each designed to introduce some new refinement on the theory of the suppositio or the theory of the Terminists, or on the distinctions between scientia realis and sermocinalis, or on quidditas, hæcceitas, and formalitas. The realists and nominalists however, now known as the Pre of Antiqui and Moderni, constituted the two great parties, and at the un- at almost every university,-Leipsic, Greiswald, and Prague being the principal exceptions,—were still waging, or had but just concluded, the struggle for preeminence. At Paris, as we have already seen, the overwhelming strength of the theologians, notwithstanding the position assumed by Gerson, still kept the nominalistic doctrines under a ban. At Heidel nonnalism versities. 1 Voigt, 468-74. Occam appears to have been, in the opinion of many, the real cause of the interminable warfare. Leonardo Bruni in his treatise De Disputationum 'su, says,—'Quid est, inquam, in dialectica, quod non Britannicis sophismatibus conturbatum sit?' It was in his eyes another proof of the degrading tendencies of the study of logic that it found acceptance among a race so barbarous as our own, etiam illa barbara qua trans oceanum habitat in illam impetum facit.' p. 26. berg, on the other hand, which was now becoming a noted CHAPE school of liberal thought, the nominalists had expelled their antagonists. It was much the same at Vienna and at Erfurt, a centre of considerable intellectual activity, which its enemies were wont to stigmatise as nororum omnium portus. At Basel, under the able leadership of Johannes a Lapide, the realists, though somewhat outnumbered, maintained their ground. Freiburg, Tübingen and Ingoldstadt appear to have arrived at a kind of compromise, each party having its own professor and representing a distinct nation." At Maintz a manual of logic was published with the sanction of the authorities, which, with certain reservations, was essentially a nominalistic manifesto. A period of internal discord might naturally be supposed to have favoured Af the introduction of a new culture, but the attitude of the universities seems to have been almost invariably hostile to the new learning, and both nominalists an realists laid aside their differences to oppose the common foe. To the Humanists, Prantl observes, two courses were open: they could either insist on a restoration of the true logic of Aristotle and a general rejection of the misconstructions and unjustifiable additions made by Petrus Hispanus and his countless commentators, or they could denounce the whole study of logic, as worthless and pernicious, and demand that it should be altogether set aside and its place be filled by rhetoric1. In Italy, the latter course was unfortunately the one almost universally adopted, and the tone of the Humanists was irritating in the extreme. Looking again at the position of the universities, when compared with that when the New Aristotle' claimed admittance, we see that two centuries had materially modified its character. They had acquired distinct traditions in all the branches of learning; they possessed, in many instances, well-endowed chairs, whose occupants were tenacious of the received methods of interpretation, and strongly prejudiced in favour of the current system of instruction. The literature which it was sought to introduce was not only open, as formerly, to the 1 Prantl, Geschichte d. Logik, v 151-2. PART I. CHAP. V. suspicion of heresy, but was undeniably exposed to the charge of licentiousness. Compromise accordingly appears to have been desired by neither party; and canonists and civilians offered as hostile a front as the logicians. Bologna, jealous on behalf of that special learning to which she owed her fame, shut her gates in the face of the new comers. On the one side the cry was 'No surrender,' on the other, 'No quarter.' The Numan 1st attack the civilians. university of The civil law was not, it is true, the weakest point in the prevailing culture, but the absorbing attention given to the study constituted it a central position which the assailants seemed bound at almost any cost to carry, and it was consequently selected for their most energetic attack. It was the predominant school not only at Bologna but also Vall at the at Padua and at Pavia; and when Valla received his appointment to the chair of rhetoric in the last-named university, he soon found that his own readiness for the battle was for once fully equalled by that of his opponents. His previous utterances had not failed to attract the attention of the civilians. The mercenary spirit in which they pursued their calling had, as we have already seen, been sharply commented on by Poggio; but the criticisms of Valla in his Elegantiæ,the foremost production of the age in the field of Latin philology, had wounded their pride much more sensibly. In pursuance of the general assertion which he had therein maintained, that the want of an accurate knowledge of the Latin tongue obscured the true meaning of the writers of antiquity to students in every department of learning, he had proceeded to compare the style of the ancient commentators on the Pandects with that of the more modern school, represented by Accursius, Cinus, Baldus, and Bartolus (the most highly esteemed commentators in his own day), and had pointed out how deplorably the latter fell short of the lucid diction and terseness of expression of the former. Most probably even Valla, notwithstanding his dauntless and fiery nature, would not have cared to revive the controversy in the very heart of such a stronghold of the civil law; but he was not suffered to remain at peace. A jurist of some |