You are on page 1of 13

Humanism as Method: Roots of Conflict with the Scholastics Author(s): Charles G.

Nauert Reviewed work(s): Source: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 427-438 Published by: The Sixteenth Century Journal Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2544524 . Accessed: 02/11/2012 11:48
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Sixteenth Century Journal is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Sixteenth Century Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXIX/2(1998)

Humanism as Method: Roots of Conflictwith the Scholastics


CharlesG. Nauert University ofMissouri-Columbia Humanism hasasked whether humanist-scholastic Recentscholarship on Northern a clashofrival or onlyisolated Overfield favored conflicts represent cultures quarrels. thisconclusion, thelatter view.Now Rummelchallenges thatdiscourse arguing war.Twomajorissuesemergedfrom to cultural degenerated politediscussion of orthodoxy, and professional certain questions. defense competenceto discuss which on humanism as an intellectual method challenged tradiResearch must focus andmedicine. Scholars tionnotonlyin theliberal arts butalsoin theology, must law, humanists Lefevre andErasmus) as professional rhetoricians underaskwhether (e.g., askhow humanists minedthescholastic questforabsolute truth. Second, they must in grammar textual the as experts (including criticism) lodgeda claimto control wasfounded. Bothas an attack on diaancient texts on whichalltraditional learning fortextual humanism constituted a fundamental lecticand as a movement criticism, to medieval tradition. challenge intellectual
MoRE THAN TWO DECADES AGO, this journal publishedmy articleon "the clash I wish to return to this of humanists and scholastics" in the earlysixteenth century.1 to understand the encounthemein orderto assesswhere we are now in our effort ter between the new humanistculture and the traditionalscholastic culturein NorthernEurope. My hope is to reviewwhat we have learned since the Sixteenth some areaswhere CenturyJournal publishedmy essayin 1973, and then to identify of the intervening study. the scholarship yearshas raisedquestionsthatneed further Erika Rummel's recentbook, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in theRenaissance and confirmsthe idea that a reconsiderationof the humanist-scholastic Refrrmation, and then drawssome frank is due.2 This book surveys the scholarship relationship and well-foundedconclusions about the relationship between the new academic cultureand the old. In between myarticleof 1973 and thisbook came manyother and Scholasticism in Late studies, notablyJamesOverfield's1984 book, Humanism which advanced the studyof the subjectgreatly but with which Medieval Germany, AnApproach to Pre-Reformaand Scholastics: *Charles G. Nauert,Jr., "The ClashofHumanists 4, no. 1 (April 1973):1-18. Sixteenth Century Journal tionControversies," Renaissance andReformation Debatein the (Cambridge, 2Erika Rummel, TheHumanist-Scholastic MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). at plenary oftheSixpresented sessions Boththis essay and the1973 article arerevisions ofpapers Studies acknowledges thefinancial supteenth Century Conference (in 1972and 1996).Theauthor forthe1996 presentation and thehelpof Professor Colette Winn, portofWashington University president ofthat conference, in arranging thepresentation.

427

428

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXIX /2 (1998)

Rummel expresses some important disagreements. Simplyput,the issue is whether the many documented incidentsof conflictbetween the academic establishment and the humanists amount to a fundamental culturalshift or are only a series of more or less isolateddisagreements thatinvolvedlocal issuesand personalrivalries. The latter positionis essentially the conclusiondrawnby Overfield. He arguesthat even the Reuchlin affair, which is the only one of the humanist-scholastic conflicts ever mentioned in general historiesof the early sixteenthcentury, did not pit humanists againstscholastics but was a by-product of the raw anti-Semitism typical of late medievalsociety.3 My earlierarticleagreed in partwith the conclusionsreachedby both Overfieldand Rummel, not because I discovered how to uphold both sides of a debate at the same time but because thereis meritin both positions:therewas no total betweenhumanists and scholastics, incompatibility who oftencoexistedpeaceably withinthe same academic community; nevertheless, therewas alwaysan undercurrentof suspicionand hostility, suggesting thatunderneath the pettylocal and personal feuds,therewas somethingdeeper,something thatbred privatetensionand That is what I suggestedin 1973, and that is what I occasionally open conflict. believe today. This opinion is broadlyin harmonywith Rummel's new book. So, despite the oftenpetty and local scale of their clashes,I do think that conflict between humanismand scholasticism was inevitable. The Protestant Reformation, of course,complicatedthisrelationship; A further but it did not cause the conflict. encounter never attaineda complication is thatthe broader humanist-scholastic resolution. Humanismlacked the capacity-and the ambition-to replacescholaswhile scholasticism did not have the decency to turn up its tic learningentirely, toes and die, but in factreasserted its dominance over the academic world in the middle and laterdecades of the sixteenth and remainedpowerful well into century the seventeenth century. on humanismhas to go back to the pathbreaking Any seriousreflection essays collected in his Renaissance of Paul Oskar Kristeller, Thought (1961).4 His thought in that Overfielddemonstrates, underlayOverfield'sstudies, exactlyas Kristeller humanismneverfora momentbecame a argued,thatin the German universities, theAristotelian thatwe label comprehensive philosophicalsystem rivaling systems In Germanyas in Italy, humanism was a limitedcluster of academic subscholastic. Even at theirmost ambitiouspoint, humanistsnever jects, the studiahumanitatis. constituted of human claimed (as scholastics the totality did) thattheirdisciplines akinto interdepartmental in thatsomething rivalries knowledge.Kristeller suggests forthe conflicts.50verfield's modern universities mayhave been responsible study
Princeton Germany (Princeton: andScholasticism in LateMedieval H. Overfield, Humanism 3James "A New Look at the Reuchlin article, Press, 1984),chap.7, pp. 247-97, and his earlier University Hans PeterseJacoHistory 8 (1971):167-207.More recently, inMedieval andRenaissance Studies Affair," im 16.Jahrhundert zur Geschichte des Ein Beitrag gegen Reuchlin: busHoogstraten Johannes Antyjudaismus 1995). von Zabern, (Mainz:Philipp andHumanist (NewYork: Strains Renaissance Classic, Scholastic, Thought:The 4PaulOskarKristeller, 1,2, 5, 6. 1961), esp.chaps. Harper Torchbooks, 43. 5Ibid.,

Nauert / Humanism as Method 429 reachesessentially the same conclusion,thoughhe also attributes much of the heat to personalrivalries and personal idiosyncracies. The only two generalattackson humanism producedin Germanywere written not by scholastics but by humanists, albeitveryconservative ones,Jakob Wimphelingand Ortwin Gratius.6 The work of Kristeller and particularly of Overfieldhelped to directscholarshipon Northernhumanismtowardstudyof the universities, and especially toward the gradualpenetration of the faculties ofliberalartsby younghumanists trained in Italywho increasingly pressedforreform of traditional liberalartseducation.The history of thiseffort to reform the facultiesof artsis well known. Overfieldpro"The HumanistChallenge to Medivides a good survey, and myown essayentitled eval German Culture"7 surveyed the diffusion of humanismthrough the German universities. Nor was Germanythe only countryaffected by thisdesireforeducational reforms. New histories of Oxford and Cambridgeshow thatthe supposedly immobileEnglishuniversities significantly changedthe natureofliberalartseducation during the sixteenthcentury, especially throughthe rise of the collegiate systemand growing reliance on the informaltutorial.8In the Netherlands, the growinginfluenceof humanismat Louvain is well known.The developmentof humanismin the artsfaculties of Paris and the otherFrenchuniversities appearsto be less adequatelystudied.Certainlythereis nothingcomparableto the work that of theology.9 JamesFargehas publishedon the Parisfaculty The reforms enacted were substantial. At an increasing numberof Northern universities, were hired to teach it. Greek became a regularsubject and specialists Old textbooks-such as the Doctrinale in Latin grammar and the Parvalogicalia in dialectic-were abandoned after and were replaced havingbeen used forcenturies withproducts of humanismsuch as Niccolo Perotti's Rudimenta forLatin grammar In a symposium and RudolfAgricola'sDe dialectica fordialectic. inventione paper at the Renaissance Society of America at Toronto in 1989, I surveyedsome of the scholarship thattracesthese changes.10 Anyone who samplesthisscholarshipcan
6Overfield, Humanism andScholasticism, 329. 7Charles G. Nauert, "The Humanist Challenge to Medieval German Culture," Daphnis: Zeitschrft furmittlere deutsche Literatur 15 (1986):277-306. 8Damian RiehlLeader,A History oftheUniversity ofCambridge, vol.1:TheUniversity to 1546,generaleditor Christopher Brooke(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988),andJames McConica, T. H. Aston ed., theCollegiate University, vol.3 ofTheHistory oftheUniversity ofOxford, general editor (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986). K. Farge, France: TheFaculty 9James Orthodoxy andReform inEarly Reformation of Theology ofParis, 1500-1543 (Leiden:EJ. Brill,1985); see also idem,Biographical Register ofParisDoctors ofTheology, 1500-1536, Subsidia Mediaevalia, 10 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute ofMediaeval Studies, 1980),andhis deTheologie edition oftheproceedings ofthetheological Registre des proces-verbaux dela Facultj de faculty, 1' Universite' AuxAmateurs de Paris, 1533 (Paris: de Livres, dejanvier 1524 a novembre 1990).Therecan be no doubt in thestudia in thefaculty ofarts atParis. Forexamthat education humanitatis wasavailable ple,GeorgeHuppert, Public Schools in Renaissance France (Urbana: University of IllinoisPress, 1984), 4 and 5, shows chaps. that possession oftheM.A. degree from Paris becamea primequalification for in thenew, applicants seeking positions humanistic colleges beingestablished bymany sixteenth-century in thearts French municipalities. Further research is neededintotheroleofthehumanities curriculum at Paris. ofNorthern 10Charles G. Nauert, intotheAcademic World: SomeStudies "Humanist Infiltration Humanism," Renaissance Quarterly 43 (Winter 1990):799-812,andbibliog. at 818-24.

430

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXIX /2 (1998)

see evidence of significantgains for the humanist reformersof liberal arts education. Most studiesfocus largely, in the sometimesexclusively, on humanistreform lowest level of university education,the facultiesof liberal arts.Despite the evidence of deep-rooted conflict, no one seriously wantsto return to the discredited idea thatRenaissance humanismconstituted new philosophythatreplaceda dying thususheringin the modernintellectual scholasticism, world.Kristeller is stillcorrect:humanismwas not a philosophyat all but at most a movement aiming to improvesocietyby reasserting the value of the studiahumanitatis, a narrowcluster of fivesubjects.In fact,as Kristeller observed,scholasticism itself was not a single philosophicalsystem. There were many scholasticisms. They agreed only in their tendencyto look to Aristotleforguidance and in theirpossession of a common method of intellectual inquiry, the dialecticalmethod.Nevertheless, thismethod, as Peter of Spain confidently declared,claimed the capacityto investigate, classify, and definitively resolve the major questions in all fieldsof learning;in his own the way to the words:"Dialectic is the artof arts, the science of sciences, possessing principlesof all curriculumsubjects."11 Erika Rummel's new book takesthisdiscussiona long stepfarther. She thinks of liberalartseducation. thatbroaderissueswere in playthan just the reorientation of scholastic She discerns a risingcrescendoof conflict.Although criticism learning is common even in the work of earlyhumanists like Petrarch, and a wide-ranging attackon the supposedlypagan tendenciesof humanismappeared in the Lucula noctis of the Dominican friarGiovanni Dominici in 1405, discussion between in fifteenth-century humanists and scholastics Italyremainedmoderateand civil. The most famous such debate occurredin 1485 between Pico della Mirandola, who had humanistic interests but also studiedscholasticdialecticat Paris,and the Ermolao Barbaro.Barbaro counseled againststudyof famousVenetian humanist, the focal center the uncouth dialecticof the North,while Pico belittledrhetoric, as somethingdeceitful, and unable to satisfy the of humanistinterests, superficial, the generaltone of even thisexchangeis respectful and mind'shungerfortruth.Yet and Rummel concludes thatin such earlydebates,each side is willingto friendly; concede some merit to the other.There is no fightto the death between rival cultures. two decades of the sixteenth as Northernhumanists But in the first century, reformof liberalartseducation,the debate became began to demand significant Humanistssingledout specificindividualson the opposite side and ridisharper. and pointlessteachingand writing, while conservative culed theirtrite, inelegant, not only took reprisals scholastics againstoutspokenyoung teacherswho pushed but also took specificmeasuresto limitor ban the too hardforeducationalreform to discouragethe studyof poetryand the classical use of nontraditional textbooks, and biblical languages, and to justifythe traditionalcurriculum.Conservatives forany intrusion and rhetoriwatchedcarefully by humanists-meregrammarians
30. Humanism andScholasticism, llQuoted byOverfield,

as Method 431 Nauert / Humanism cians, as they regarded them-into questions properlybelonging to the three this As Kristeller suggested, higher faculties, law,medicine,and (above all) theology. But it led to an increasingly and academic turf. was in parta defenseof professional by in the savageattacks hostiletone on both sides and found its fulldevelopment textual, conservative preachersand theologianson the applicationof humanistic figures skillsto the studyof the Bible by the two greatest historical, and linguistic of Northernhumanism,Jacques Lefevred'Etaples and Desiderius Erasmus. Two issues were involved in these attacks.One, of course, was defense of thisissue produced an orthodoxdoctrine;afterthe outbreakof the Reformation, and increasingly poisonous atmosphere.Thesecond issue,closelylinkedto the first of the was the inherent validity also to the question of professional qualifications, The opponent'sintellectualmethod, either dialectical or linguistic/philological. scholasticconservativesflatlydeclared that only their own traditionalmethod, and closely guided by the writingsof earlier based on dialecticalargumentation of orthodoxy of scholastictheologians, could providesure guarantees generations scornedLefevreand Erasmus in religiouspractice.They in doctrineand catholicity to scholarship as mere grammarians and opposed theirapplicationof humanistic Humanistcritidangerous. religioustextsas uselessat best,and probablyoutright who supsuch as Lefevreand Erasmus, cismwas the work of"mere grammarians," a legal nor an intellectual and hence had neither posedlylacked theologicaltraining theologyand the Bible. rightto speak and publishon questionsinvolving caution since both of them with somewhatgreater The two greathumanists, to defendtheirstatusas orthodoxCatholics,respondedin kind. were determined Both of them-Erasmus farmore clearly-insistedthatthe dialecticalmethod of on the academic theologianshad produced a theologicalscience thatconcentrated Schotrivial, abstruse questionsoflittleor no realvalue to the needs of the church. lastictheology, studyof what the Bible theycharged,neglectedfulland reflective actuallysaid. It forced degree candidates to waste yearslearningwhat ignorant, had written.It disingenuand Greeklessmedieval commentators half-educated, ously extracted isolated passages fromauthors (including the Bible itself,the or maliciouslytwisted and modern writers).It then ignorantly Church Fathers, of the authoror thathad no relationto the intention thesepassagesinto statements had been made. It the historicaland textual context in which those statements who had incurredthe selfblackened the reputationof good Christians unfairly wrote interested wrathof ambitiousacademic politicians. And, as Erasmusbluntly Noel Beda of Paris and in lettersof 1525 to two of his most dangerous critics, sat back and issued AlbertoPio, prince of Carpi, scholastictheologiansarrogantly of the of Catholic defenders fromthe writings condemnations of articlesextracted value to thosewho were struggling to while theyoffered nothingof practical faith, a churchthatin Germany, at least,was collapsingover theirheads.12 preserve
[henceforth Works ofErasmus CWE], to Beda,June15, 1525,ep. 1581,in Collected 12Erasmus Pio,October10, 1525,ep. 1634,in CWE, 11:330-31, to Alberto 11:142-43, lines350-79; Erasmus unusually longletters). aregiven onlyfor lines 49-118 (linecitations

432

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXIX /2 (1998)

The point hereis not whethereitherthe scholastic on the humanists or attacks the humanistdenunciations of the scholastics were valid.WhatRummel has led us back to is awareness that the clashes between humanistand scholastic ways of thinking had turnedinto an encounterbetweentwo rivalcultures.True, humanism as such was not a philosophy. True also,the greatmajorityof humanistacademics accommodated themselves to the realities of a world controlledby senior professors.But at some much more profound level,the issuesthatdividedhumanists and scholastics cut deeper thanjust personalfeuds, competitionforcoursesand offices and income, or pettysquabblingabout the qualityof someone's Latin style. In my of the liberalarts opinion,the issuescut even deeper thanthe disputesover reform curriculum.Theconflicts studiedby Overfield and othersmayhavebeen localized, a disharmony personal,and muddled;but theyreflect thatis fundamental. Conflict was not accidental; it was fated, irrepressible. LaetitiaBoehlmimpliedas much in an essaypublished in 1976, and Rummel drawsthe line even more clearly, defining the disputeover academic competency and "the exacerbation of the debate during the Reformation" as the two forcesthat made the humanist-scholastic conflicts rather thanincidental.13 fundamental Futurestudiesof thisquestionneed to pursuetwo majorlinesof inquiry. Both have to do with intellectual method.The more difficult, the more but potentially is to focus on those aspects of humanismthat challenged the whole rewarding, the scholasticaspirationtoward attainmentof enterpriseof rationalphilosophy, absolute truth. This involveshumanismin its aspect as rhetoric. It calls forfurther investigation of rhetorical thatartofpersuasive thought, argument which soughtto establishprobable truths and questioned whetherthe human mind is capable of There is alreadya substantial on this topic, literature attainingabsolute certitude. and we were urgedlong ago byJerrold Seigel and Hanna Grayto explorethe cenin shapingtheidentity tralrole of rhetorical and goals ofhumanism.14 This thought
13Laetitia Boehm, "Humanistische Bildungsbewegung undmittelalterliche Universitatsverfassung: Aspekte zur frtihneuzeitlichen Reformgeschichte derdeutschen inJozef IJsewijn and Universitdten," in the LateMiddle Jacques Paquet, eds.,TheUniversities Ages, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, series1,studia, 6 (Louvain: LeuvenUniversity Press, 1978), 315-46,andalsoinWaldemar Schlbgl andPeter Herde, eds., undGeschichte: Peter Miinchener Grundwissenschaften Acht, Historische Studien, Abteilung Festschriflftr Geschichtliche vol. 15 (Kallmiinz Hilfswissenschaften, Opf:Verlag MichaelLassleben, 1976),311-33; TheHumanist-Scholastic 17-18.Referring in Rummel, Debate, principally to theintellectual situation Italian universities, Walter Riiegg, "Epilogue: The Rise of Humanism," in Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, ed.,A History in Europe, vol. 1: Universities oftheUniversity in the Middle Ages(Cambridge: Cambridge to an underlying University 1992),456-59,alsopoints disagreement concerning proper intellecPress, tualmethod. E. Seigel,Rhetoric andPhilosophy in Renaissance 14Jerrold Humanism: The Union ofEloquence and toValla Wisdom, Petrarch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968);Hanna H. Gray, "Renaissance Humanism:The Pursuit ofEloquence,"Journal ofthe History of Ideas 24 (1963):497-514.Forthegeneral history ofrhetoric, seeThomasConley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990);James J. Murphy, ed.,Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory andPractice ofRenaisofCalifornia sance Rhetoric (Berkeley: University Press, 1983);James J.Murphy, ed.,Renaissance Rhetoric: A Short-Title Catalogue of Works onRhetoricalTheoryfrom the Beginning of Printing toA.D. 1700 (NewYork: Garland, 1981);Winifred Bryan Horner, ed.,ThePresent State ofScholarship inHistorical andContemporary ofMissouri Rhetoric MO: University An Anno(Columbia, Press, 1983);idem,ed., Historical Rhetoric: tated Sources inEnglish G. D. Hall,1980). Bibliography ofSelected (Boston:

Nauert / Humanism as Method 433 is a hardpath,leading throughthe Renaissance attackson Aristotelian logic and into the thicketsof Ramist thought.15 This path also leads toward studyof the rebirth of philosophical skepticism, which has been given inadequate attention. Althoughwe have the fineessayofAlan Perreiahon thistopic,and Richard Popkin'shistory of Renaissanceskepticism,16 no one has adequatelyprobed the persisErasmus, tentwar of the humanists-thatis, the greatones, such as Petrarch,Valla, andVives-on the fundamental of scholasticthought.Few humanists assumptions directly raised the epistemologicalquestions that scholasticphilosophyfailed to address. theiremphasison rhetorical argument and on the attainment Nevertheless, with theirdismissive of moralrather thanmetaphysical attitude certitude, together therewas a yawning towardsyllogistic showsthatunderthe surface argumentation, chasm between two antitheticalconceptions of proper intellectual method. They Humanistsdid not just challengethe conclusions of theirscholasticcritics. denied the appropriateness of the questionsbeing investigated and the validity of the typesof proofoffered.The and scholastics were failimpression thathumanists ing to communicate, were talkingpast one another,is correct: they were not did not pursue the same goals,and mostassuredly engagedin the same enterprise, did not have compatible ideas about the proper use of human reason-that is, about valid intellectual method.This methodological quarrelwas precipitated by in play. the humanists' and it was constantly identity as rhetoricians, But there was another,humbler methodological issue, one that led more to the bitterhostility of the humanist-scholastic debates.Rummel defines directly thisas an issue of professional competence,and she is right.But at bottom it is a disagreementon method. It focuses on the second major humanistdiscipline, but also studentsof grammar, a Humanistswere not only rhetoricians grammar. subjectwhich through their work came to embracestudyof ancientlanguagesand of ancient texts.Scholastic the criticalevaluationand reconstruction particularly philosophersand theologiansspent long years acquiring the skillsof dialectical with the opinions of the past authorities,both argumentationand familiarity ancientand medieval.When faced with publicationsby humanists who disagreed with theiropinions,theirusual reaction was to reject the criticisms because the authorswere not professionally qualifiedby advanced degreesin the appropriate but were mere grammarians-thatis, men who had masteredonly higherfaculty of the sevenliberalarts.Thischargewas to some extent the mostelementary justifiedin the case of Lefevred'Etaples and Lorenzo Valla; it was not exactlytrue of one. who did have a doctoratein theology, though a somewhatirregular Erasmus, studies the methodthatErasmusfollowedin his biblicaland patristic Nevertheless, on the criticalevalulikeVallaand Lefevre, he focused attention was grammatical:
From the Art totheArt Reason 15Walter andthe Method, Decay ofDiscourse of Ong,Ramus, ofDialogue: 1979). Octagon, Press, 1958;reprint ed.,NewYork: MA: Harvard University (Cambridge, Century Journal 13 Dialectic,"Sixteenth 16Alan Perreiah, "Humanistic Critiquesof Scholastic Erasmus toDescartes (Assen:Van Gorcum, ofScepticism from H. Popkin, A History (1982):3-22; Richard University ofCalifor(Berkeley: from Erasmus toSpinoza edition:A History ofScepticism 1960);expanded niaPress, 1979).

434

XXIX /2 (1998) Sixteenth CenturyJournal

includingthe New Testament, and challengedthe adequacy ation of ancienttexts, notablythe Book ofSentences cited by scholasticthinkers, of the textstraditionally and the Latin Vulgate Bible. Although occasionally Erasmus became irritated attacks of his critics to assert his rightto be treated as a enough by the pettifogging qualifiedtheologian,17 in generalhe conceded thathisworkas biblicaland patristic mostelementary level of theologicalscholareditorconstituted onlythe humblest, criticsquicklysensed,his ship.18 That is,it dealtwith the text.But as his scholastic modest claim to controlthe textamountedto claimingcontrolof the whole field. Scholasticmethodologycontaineda numberof vulnerablespots,and humanpermanyof them.In some waysthe mostintellectually istsidentified and attacked from a textand thentreating isolatedstatements versewas the processof extracting to of the author's opinion,withoutattention those sentencesas accuratereflections criticism of the The humanists' what the sentenceimplied in its originalcontext. was theologians'relianceon anthologiessuch as PeterLombard'sBook ofSentences of focus demanded a shift procedure.They a protest againstthisshoddyintellectual to intensive frommedieval anthologiesand commentaries in theological training The issue arose starkly in Erasmus' controversial studyof the biblical text itself. denied that exchange with the Louvain theologianJacobus Latomus,who flatly or the under modern conditionsstudyof the text of scripture should be the first principal focus of theological education.19Indeed, one of the ablest of the Paris defendedthe traJohnMair,who had previously doctors,the Scottishtheologian in 1523, in the and anthologies, admitted ditionalfocuson medievalcommentators thathis fellowtheologians had been forcedto give face of the Protestant challenge, theologicalissuesand to get back to work on the Bible.20 up speculative A more immediately issue,however, was the kind of textualcriticism pressing especiallyby Erasof Lefevreand Erasmus, represented by the biblicalscholarship This publication, which first appearedin 1516, included mus' NovumInstrumentum. but also an extended set of notes not only the Greek text of the New Testament criticallyevaluatingvulnerablepassages in the traditionalLatin text. Its revised based on the Greek textand second editionof 1519 added a new Latin translation beforethe first editionappearedin 1516, the youngLouthe criticalnotes.Already He vain theologianMartinvan Dorp had urgedErasmusto abandon the project.21 of the church, fearedthatsuch a publicationinevitably challengedthe authority In textfora thousandyears. which had based itsteachingon the traditionalVulgate of people who used gramhe explicitly an even stronger challengedtheright letter, into the interpretation to intrude and lacked theologicaltraining maticalarguments of doctrinalissues.22He into the determination of theBible and hence ultimately denied Erasmus'contentionthata competenttheologianmustbe able to consult
lines21-27. 15,1525,ep.1581,in CWE, 11:131, 17Erasmus to Noel Beda,June in CWE, 11:135,lines134-39. 18Ibid., ep.1581, MichaelHille(Antwerp: ratione dialogus theologici linguarum etstudii De trium 19Jacobus Latomus, B3v,C2r. nius, 1519),fols. andReform, 13-14,179-80. 20Farge, Orthodoxy 1514,ep.304,in CWE, 3:17-23. September 21Dorpto Erasmus, 27, 1515,ep.347,in CWE, 3:154-67,esp.160,162-65. 22Dorpto ErasmusAugust

Nauert / Humanism as Method 435 the originalHebrew and Greek texts. He explicitly upheld the value of the traditional scholasticcommentariesand doctors forthe education of theologians.He even raisedthe somewhatsillyand whollyundocumented suggestion thatsince the Greekshad subsequently fallenaway fromthe Roman church, theymay well have deliberately corruptedthe Greek Bible. Erasmus'one surviving replyto Dorp at thisperiod not only defends his effort to reconstruct and retranslate the textof the New Testament but bluntly ridiculesthe inability of the older theologiansto comprehendtheprinciples underlying his work.23Dorp himself had studiedand taught humanist textsbeforehe turnedto the studyof theology. Admonishedby a second letterfromErasmus (now lost) and above all by a brilliantletterfromErasmus' friend Thomas More, Dorp drew back. In 1517 he presenteda university lecture which openlyendorsednot only the textualand philologicalapproachto theBible but also the humanists' criticism of the traditional theologicalcurriculum.Although Dorp's seniorcolleaguespunishedhimby withdrawing fora yearhisright to lecture in 1520.24 on theology, he publishedhis defenseof Erasmiantheology Anyone who has everwondered at the meteoricrise ofThomas More to the top of the English legal professionand then to high public officeshould read More's letterof October 21, 1515, to Dorp.25 It goes rightto the centralissues.It redefines the foundation of grammatical science in the humanist way, as something of based on usage instead of logic. Then it attacksthe scholastics' misapplication and theiruselessness theirnarrowness and lack of generalculture, forthe dialectic, practicaltasksof preachingthe gospel and refuting heretics. Most shrewdly of all, with theirphilologicalcritMore chargesthatit is not the humanistgrammarians and distorting icism of biblical and patristic textswho are undermining the true but ratherthe arrogantdialecticians. sense of scripture, They know littlebeyond but theyapply scholasticcommentaries and the excerptsin the Book ofSentences, theirsophistical the sacredtext.For More, as forErasdialecticto twistand distort mus himself, a humanist who criticizesand revises a biblicalpassageis not subjecting revealed truth to the rules of human grammar-as scholastic critics had and textualmethodsto get at the meaningorigicharged-but is using linguistic the scholastic nallyplaced thereby the sacredauthor.It is the dialecticians, theoloNo authorI have read, gians,who are subjectingthe sacred text to human fancy. the issueson not even Erasmusor the subtleJuanLuisVives,laid out more starkly which humanist scholarsand scholastictheologianswere at loggerheads.Theconversionof Dorp to the Erasmianside did not,of course,end the conflict.Jacobus the humanists' demand the scholasticcase by attacking Latomus in 1519 reasserted that all theologians should be able to use the Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible,26and othersfollowedhis example.
23Erasmus to Dorp,1515,ep.337,in CWE, 3:111-39. ediscendis... (Basel: Froben, 1520). 24Dorp, De laudibus Pauli, deliteris sacris of Thomas More, vol.15,ed.Daniel Kinney (New Haven: 25More to Dorp,in TheComplete Works trans. on facing andEnglish pages). YaleUniversity Press, 1986):2-127 (Latin text on thisand othercontroversies see Erika involving Erasmus, 26Latomus, De trium linguarum; 2 vols., 45 (NieuBibliotheca Humanistica etReformatorica, Rummel, Erasmus andHis Catholic Critics, De Graaf, wkoop: 1989).

436

XXIX /2 (1998) Sixteenth CenturyJournal

textsas The modesthumanist claim to analyzeand establish the authoritative a first step in theologicaldiscoursewas,in fact, a claim forprior controlof interpretation. One of the vulnerablepointsin the monopoly exercisedby all threeof the higherfaculties-law and medicineas well as theology-was thatall threefields depended on some authoritative texthanded down fromancienttimes:the Bible fortheology, of course,the Corpusiuriscivilis forcivil law,and the ancient Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen formedicine.The special competence claimed involvedthe interpretation and applicationof the ancient by all threeprofessions textto modern needs,a procedurewhich by the sixteenth had produced a century vastbody of scholasticcommentaries, and handbooks.The humanists distreatises, missed this medieval learningas worthless the product of a barbarousand trash, incompetentage, an incompetence symbolizedby the inabilityof the scholastic doctorsto consultthe originalGreek and Hebrew texts. proHumanistsnow wantedto intervene at the veryoutsetof the interpretive cess by insisting, as grammarians, thatthe grammarian-the humanistexpert on languagesand on the reconstruction of texts-had to establish the textitselfand explain to those who could not read the original what the words reallymeant. Only then, even if one conceded the appropriatenessof applying dialectical method to a revealedtext,could any more sophisticated explicationbegin.Thus modestclaim,the humanists were demandingthe first cut, despitetheirapparently over the text itself, over the literalmeaning of its words,and even over authority the range of possible meaningsthatthose inspiredwords could have had forthe As Jerry ancientauthor. Bentleymakes clear in his discussionof Erasmus'critical thismeantquite literally workon the textof the New Testament, thatthe humanist editor decided what was in and what was out. The most extremecase involved containedthe comma Erasmus'decision thatsince none of his Greek manuscripts biblicalwitness at 1 John5:7, the one clearand unmistakable to the docJohanneum he must omit that passage from his edition. Although he trine of the Trinity, his own loyalty toTrinitarian and noted thatSaintJerome himaffirmed orthodoxy self thepassageto providescriptural believedthatLatinscribeshad inserted support theArians,his act of omissionstirred against up chargesthathe was an Arian heretic.27 theTrinitarian doctrine.But he Erasmuswas in no way attacking Actually, was tellingtheologiansthatin theirdefenseofTrinitarian orthodoxy, theycould not cite thishelpfultext,because it did not exist. They did not like this,nor did like the othertextualemendations or retranslations theirfreedom thataffected they fromthe traditional to drawproof-texts VulgateBible. In his counterblast against Latomus seemed totally unable to Petrus Mosellanus and Erasmusin 1519,Jacobus a subject based on authoritative from conceive how theology, texts,mightdiffer whose modern practitioners manualartslike shoemakingor painting, clearlyhad no need to relyon some ancient Greek-language text on theirsubject.28Latomus existsobjectivelyand externally to the text maintained thatthe truthof scripture
Renaissance (PrinceScholarship in the NewTestament andHolyWrit: H. Bentley, Humanists 27Jerry ton: Princeton University Press, 1983),152. fol.A4v. 28Latomus, De trium linguarum,

Nauert / Humanism as Method 437 and does not inherein the words of scripture; indeed,thatthose who alreadypossesstruedoctrinedo not need scripture at all,stillless need the ability to readit in the originallanguages.29As forpatristic texts,Latomus insiststhattheymustbe read reverently and in accord with dogmatictruth, "even (so to speak) contrary to what the wordssay."30 It is also clearthatLatomustotally lacked the concept of an original text,an urtext,which a competent editor can closely approximateby on multiplewitnesses drawing even ifnone of the existing manuscripts is freefrom corruption.He presenteda pettifogging criticismof the arguments advanced in defense ofErasmus'programofbiblicalhumanism, while also presenting a farmore plausiblecase forthe continuingvalue of the long scholastictradition of exegesis. But when he facedthe central issuesof textualauthority and philologicalcriticism, he was simplylost.Between him and Erasmustherewas exchange of treatises but no real discourse.Theyfunctioned in two quite different culturalworlds-exactly the point I want to establish here. of course.Even beforethe ReforTheology was the hot and dangerousfield, mation it touched on issues of religious belief;and the scholasticdoctors even beforeLutherwere quite readyto insinuateor openly chargethathumanist scholtextswas heretical. But althoughthe two otherproarshipon biblical or patristic fessional fields never produced equally noxious conflicts,humanist textual scholarship challengedthemalso,precisely because theyalso reliedon the authority of ancient texts.In law, humanistscholarsattackedthe vast body of glosses and commentariesproduced by medieval professors of law. Inspiredby the work of Angelo Poliziano and Guillaume Bude on ancientlegal texts, AndreaAlciato established a whole new approachto the teachingof Roman law. His teaching, first at the papal university in Avignon and then at Bourges,turnedaway fromthe traditional Italian method (mositalicus) of teachingthe opinions of the medievallegal scholars.Instead,he concentratedhis efforts on the philological analysisof the ancienttextitself.31 This new approach,known as mosgallicus because it became dominantin Frenchlaw faculties, did not win the upper hand veryfarbeyondthe bordersof France;but it did represent anotherhumanist challengeto the prevailing once again based on the philologist's university tradition, special abilityto probe beneaththe surfaceof an authoritative ancienttext.

29Ibid., fols. B3v,C2r. 30Ibid., fol. D2v: "reverentius et quamquecumsermonis improprietate (utsicloquar)." in the 31DonaldKelley, Foundations ofModern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law,andHistory ofAlciato's *French Renaissance (NewYork:ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1970),96. On theimportance in legaleducation, see also GuidoKisch, teaching and theriseofthenew mos gallicus Humanismus und an derUniversitdt mos italicus Basel(Basel: DerKampf zwischen undmos gallicus und Helbing Jurisprudenz: in the Lichtenhahn, 1955;MyronP.Gilmore, Humanists andJurists: Six Studies Renaissance (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1963),32-33; Steven Rowan, Ulrich Zasius(Frankfurt a.M.:Vittorio in bothlegalandmedical Klostermann, 1987),206-9. On humanism education, see alsoAugust Buck, in Guldolf "Die Rezeption desHumanismus in denjuristischen undmedizinischen Fakultaten," Keil, BerndMoeller, andWinfried Trusen, eds.,Der Humanismus unddieoberen Fakultdten, DeutscheForXIV (Weinheim: Humanischungsgemeinschaft, Kommission fuir Mitteilung Humnanismusforschung, ora,VCH,1987), 267-84.

438

XXIX /2 (1998) Sixteenth CenturyJournal

Medical science, too, rested on ancient texts which humanistphilologists claimed the rightto edit,translate, and interpret. Humanistsclaimed an abilityto restore ancientmedicinewhile purgingit of the barbarous influences of the interveningcenturies. At the end of the fifteenth Niccolo Leoniceno,professor century, of Ferrara, of medicine at the University was hailed as "the restorer of ancientmedicine"; as a well-trained Hellenisthe produced new translations of theAphorisms of Hippocratesand severalof Galen's treatises as well as scientific works of Aristotle He also agitatedforthe purgingof"barbarian"texts-that is,Arabic and Ptolemy. medical works-from the medical curriculum.32 Humanistswith medical educaGreek editionsofAristotle tion produced the first (1495-99) and Galen (1525) for the Aldine pressofVenice.Althoughmedical controversy was not so sharp as that in law and especiallytheology, the humanist method of philologicalcriticism also thisthirdof the threeprofessional of the universities-and it did affected faculties so largelythroughits claim to determine questions of textual authenticity and meaning. Thus Renaissance humanismpenetrated not only the liberalartsbut also the threehigher facultieswhich were theoretically beyond the professional compeConflictwas the almostinevitableresult. tence of its practitioners. Humanism did It did not even try. But both its rhetoricalchallenge to not destroy scholasticism. the value of dialectic and its grammarians' claim to determinethe wording and textsdid pose a serious challengeto the older academic meaning of authoritative In the cultureby pointingto vulnerable tradition. spotsin the medievalintellectual long run, this humanisticphilological and textual method grew into the rather but in a deeper senseit also caused more probloodless fieldof classicalphilology, cultural such as the rise of modernlegal history, the found and unsettling changes, of the documentary sourcesof medievalhistory, and the potentially revdiscovery which subjectedall ideas and institumethod of historical olutionary investigation tionsto the cold lightof document-based historical criticism.33

und des Arabismus, Archiv fuir Geschichte 32Heinrich Schipperges, Ideologie Historiographie Sudhoffi Beiheft 1 (Wiesbaden, 1961),14-26;Buck,"Rezeption," derMedizinund derNaturwissenschaften, of the 1525 Greekedition of Galen, see Gerhard especially pp.267,276,279-80.On theimportance derRenaisBaader, "Die Antikerezeption in derEntwicklung dermedizinischenWissenschaft wdhrend in RudolfSchmitz and Gustav undMedizin (Weinheim, 1984),61, and sance," Keil,eds.,Humanismus und ihre WirNikolaus Mani,"Die griechische Editioprinceps des Galenos(1525),ihreEntstehung 13 (1956):39.Also NancyG. Siraisi, Medieval andEarly Renaissance Medicine:An Introkung," Gesnerus toKnowledge andPractice ofChicagoPress, 1990),58,70-72, 190. duction (Chicago: University to scholastic learning that developed out of the 330n thebroader linesofintellectual challenge in thelater in theapplication in direcsixteenth mainly ofcritical philology humanist method century, discovery ofthedocumentary sources of tions leading toward modern classical philology, legalhistory, medieval and general historical see Donald Kelley, Foundations; GeorgeHuppert, The history, method, Historical Erudition andHistorical Philosophy inRenaissance France (Urbana: UniverIdeaofPerfect History: ofIllinois Study inthe History ofClassical Scholarship, sity Press, 1970);Anthony Scaliger:A Graftonjoseph 2 vols.(Oxford: Grafton, Defenders ofthe Text: TheTradition ofScholClarendon, 1983-95);andAnthony inanAgeofScience, MA: Harvard 1450-1800(Cambridge, University Press, 1991). arship

You might also like