6. § VI
The intercourse of all these scholars with Italians was carried
on before mid-fifteenth century. Their chief interest
was in Latin books, although a large number of Greek manuscripts had
been brought to Italy by Angeli da Scarparia, Guarino, Giovanni Aurispa,
and Filelfo. After the fall of Constantinople the Greek immigrants
introduced books into Italy much more freely. George Hermonymus of
Sparta, a Greek teacher and copyist of Greek manuscripts, visited
England on a papal mission in 1475, but whether he had any influence on
our intellectual pursuits does not appear.
[9.40] Certainly, however, English scholars soon
appreciated this new literature.
Letters sent to Pope Sixtus in 1484 by the king, refer to the
skill of John Shirwood, bishop of Durham, in Latin and Greek.
[9.41] Shirwood seems to have collected a
respectable library. His Latin books were acquired by Bishop Foxe, and
formed the nucleus of the library with which the latter endowed Corpus
Christi College, Oxford. Some thirty volumes, a number of them printed,
now remain at the College to bring him to mind: among them we find
Pliny, Terence, Cicero, Livy, Suetonius, Plutarch, and Horace. Less
fortunate has been the fate of his Greek books, which went to the
collegiate church of Bishop Auckland. At the end of the fifteenth
century this church owned about forty volumes. The only exceptions to
its medieval character were Cicero's Letters and
Offices, Silius Italicus, and Theodore Gaza's Greek
grammar.[9.42] But Leland tells us that
Tunstall, who succeeded to the bishopric in 1530, found a store of
Shirwood's Greek manuscripts at this church. What became of them we do
not know.[9.43]
About this same time a certain Emmanuel of Constantinople seems
to have been employed in England as a
copyist. For Archbishop Neville he produced a Greek manuscript
containing some
sermones judiciales of Demosthenes, and letters
of Aeschines, Plato, and Chion (1468).
[9.44]
Dr. Montague James has shown that this manuscript of Emmanuel is by the
same hand as the manuscripts known as the "Ferrar group," which
comprises "a Plato and Aristotle now at Durham, two psalters in
Cambridge libraries, a psalter and part of a Suidas at Oxford, and the
famous Leicester Codex of the Gospels."
[9.45] Dr. James believes the Plato and the
Aristotle to have been transcribed for Neville by Emmanuel. In 1472 the
archbishop's household was broken up, and the "greete klerkys and famous
doctors" of his entourage went to Cambridge. Among them, it is
conjectured, was Emmanuel, and so it came to pass that three manuscripts
in his writing have been at Cambridge; two psalters, as we have said,
are there now, land in the beginning of the sixteenth century one of
them, with the Leicester Codex, was certainly in the hands of the Grey
Friars at Cambridge. This happy fruit of Dr. James' research throws a
welcome ray of light on the pursuit of Greek studies in the last quarter
of the fifteenth century.
[9.46]
In view of all the hard things which have been said of the
religious, it is significant to find them taking a leading part in
bringing Greek studies to England. We cannot collate all the instances
here, but a few may be brought together. Two Benedictines named William
of Selling and William Hadley, some time warden of Canterbury College,
Oxford, were in Italy studying and buying books for three years after
1464.[9.47] The former became distinguished
for his aptitude in learning the ancient tongues, and
consequently won the friendship of Angelo Poliziano. At least two other
visits to Italy were made by him; the last being undertaken as an
emissary of the king. On these occasions he got together as many Greek
and Latin books as he could, and brought them—a large and precious
store—to Canterbury.
[9.48] For some reason
the books were kept in the Prior's lodging instead of in the monastic
library, and here they perished through the carelessness of Layton's
myrmidons.
[9.49] Among the books lost was
possibly a copy of Cicero's
Republic. Only five manuscripts
have been found which can be connected with Selling's library: a
fifteenth-century Greek Psalter, a copy of the Psalms in Hebrew and
Latin, a Euripides, a Livy, and a magnificent Homer.
[9.50] This; Homer we have already referred to in
an earlier chapter, when describing the work of Theodore of Tarsus. The
signature Θεοδωρος has now been more
plausibly explained, "The following note," writes Dr. James, "which I
found in Dr. Masters's copy of Stanley's
Catalogue, preserved
in [Corpus Christi] College Library, suggests another origin for this
Homer. I have been unable to identify the document to which reference is
made. It should obviously be a letter of an Italian humanist in the
Harleian collection.... `Mem.: Humphrey Wanley, Librarian to the late
Earl of Oxford, told Mr. Fran: Stanley, son of the author, a little
before his death, that in looking over some papers in the papers in the
Earl's library, he found a Letter from a learned Italian to his Friend
in England, wherein he told him there was then a very stately Homer just
transcribed for Theodorus
Gaza, of whose Illumination he gives him a very particular description,
which answer'd so exactly in every part to that here set forth, that he
[Wanley] was fully perswaded it was this very Book, and y
t the
Θεοδωρος at the bottom of 1st page
order'd to be placed there by Gaza as his own name, gave occasion to
Abp. Parker to imagine it might have belonged to Theodore of Canterbury,
which however Hody was of opinion could not be of that age.' Th. Gaza,"
continues Dr. James, "died in 1478; the suggestion here made is quite
compatible with the hypothesis that Sellinge was the means of conveying
the Homer to England, and does supply a rather welcome interpretation of
the Θεοδωρος inscription." This
reasonable hypothesis may be strengthened if we point out that Gaza was
in Rome from 1464 to 1472, and Selling visited that city between 1464
and 1467 and again in 1469. Selling may have got the manuscript from
Gaza on one of these occasions.
There is evidence of Greek studies at other monasteries, —at
Westminster after 1465, when Millyng, an "able graecian," became prior
at Reading in 1499 and 1500, and at Glastonbury during the time of Abbot
Bere.[9.51]
But Canterbury's share was greatest Selling seems to have taught
Greek at Christ Church. In the monastic school there Thomas Linacre was
instructed, and probably got the rudiments of Greek from Selling
himself. Thence Linacre went to Oxford, where he pursued Greek under
Cornelius Vitelli, an Italian visitor acting as prælector in New
College.[9.52] In 1485-6 Linacre went with
his old master to Italy—his Sancta Mater Studiorum—where
Selling seems to have introduced him to Poliziano. Linacre perfected his
Greek pursuits under Chalcondylas, and
became acquainted with Aldo Manuzio the famous printer, and Hermolaus
Barbarus. A little story is told of his meeting with Hermolaus. He was
reading a copy of Plato's
Phaedo in the Vatican Library when the
great humanist came up to him and said "the youth had no claim, as he
had himself, to the title Barbarus, if it were lawful to judge from his
choice of a book"—an incident which led to a great friendship between
the two. Grocyn and Latimer were with Linacre in Rome. The former was
the first to carry on effectively the teaching of Greek begun at Oxford
possibly by Vitelli; but he was nevertheless a conservative scholar,
well read in the medieval schoolmen, as his library clearly proves. This
library is of interest because one hundred and five of the one hundred
and twenty-one books in it were printed. The manuscript age is well
past, and the costliness of books, the chief obstacle to the
dissemination of thought, was soon to give no cause for remark.
[Description: A SCRIBE (ST. MARK WRITING HIS GOSPEL)
FROM THE BEDFORD HOURS]