View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages Part 43

Solverat interea zephyris melioribus annum Frigore depulso veris tepor, et renovari Coeperat et viridi gremio juvenescere tellus; c.u.m Rea laeta Jovis rideret ad oscula mater, c.u.m jam post tergum Phryxi vectore relicto Solis Agenorei premeret rota terga juvenci.

The tragedy of Eccerinus (Eccelin da Romano), by Albertinus Mussatus, a Paduan, and author of a respectable history, deserves some attention, as the first attempt to revive the regular tragedy. It was written soon after 1300. The language by no means wants animation, notwithstanding an unskilful conduct of the fable. The Eccerinus is printed in the tenth volume of Muratori's collection.

[898] Booksellers appear in the latter part of the twelfth century.

Peter of Blois mentions a law book which he had procured a quodam publico mangone librorum. Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. ix. p. 84.

In the thirteenth century there were many copyists by occupation in the Italian universities. Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 72. The number of these at Milan before the end of that age is said to have been fifty. Ibid. But a very small proportion of their labour could have been devoted to purposes merely literary. By a variety of ordinances, the first of which bears date in 1275, the booksellers of Paris were subjected to the control of the university. Crevier, t. ii. p. 67, 286. The pretext of this was, lest erroneous copies should obtain circulation. And this appears to have been the original of those restraints upon the freedom of publication, which since the invention of printing have so much r.e.t.a.r.ded the diffusion of truth by means of that great instrument.

[899] Tiraboschi, t. v. p. 85. On the contrary side are Montfaucon, Mabillon, and Muratori; the latter of whom carries up the invention of our ordinary paper to the year 1000. But Tiraboschi contends that the paper used in ma.n.u.scripts of so early an age was made from cotton rags, and, apparently from the inferior durability of that material, not frequently employed. The editors of Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique are of the same opinion, and doubt the use of linen paper before the year 1300. t. i. p. 517, 521. Meerman, well known as a writer upon the antiquities of printing, offered a reward for the earliest ma.n.u.script upon linen paper, and, in a treatise upon the subject, fixed the date of its invention between 1270 and 1300. But M. Schwandner of Vienna is said to have found in the imperial library a small charter bearing the date of 1243 on such paper. Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. i. p. 394.

Tiraboschi, if he had known this, would probably have maintained the paper to be made of cotton, which he says it is difficult to distinguish. He a.s.signs the invention of linen paper to Pace da Fabiano of Treviso. But more than one Arabian writer a.s.serts the manufacture of linen paper to have been carried on at Samarcand early in the eighth century, having been brought thither from China. And what is more conclusive, Casiri positively declares many ma.n.u.scripts in the Escurial of the eleventh and twelfth centuries to be written on that substance.

Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispanica, t. ii. p. 9. This authority appears much to outweigh the opinion of Tiraboschi in favour of Pace da Fabiano, who must perhaps take his place at the table of fabulous heroes with Bartholomew Schwartz and Flavio Gioja. But the material point, that paper was very little known in Europe till the latter part of the fourteenth century, remains as before. See Introduction to History of Literature, c. i. -- 58.

[900] Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 122.

[901] Velly, t. v. p. 202; Crevier, t. ii. p. 36.

[902] Warton, vol. i; Dissert. II.

[903] Ibid.

[904] Warton, vol. i. Dissert. II. Fifty-eight books were transcribed in this abbey under one abbot, about the year 1300. Every considerable monastery had a room, called Scriptorium, where this work was performed.

More than eighty were transcribed at St. Albans under Whethamstede, in the time of Henry VI. ibid. See also Du Cange, V Scriptores.

Nevertheless we must remember, first, that the far greater part of these books were mere monastic trash, or at least useless in our modern apprehension; secondly, that it depended upon the character of the abbot, whether the scriptorium should be occupied or not. Every head of a monastery was not a Whethamstede. Ignorance and jollity, such as we find in Bolton Abbey, were their more usual characteristics. By the account books of this rich monastery, about the beginning of the fourteenth century, three books only appear to have been purchased in forty years. One of those was the Liber Sententiarum of Peter Lombard, which cost thirty s.h.i.+llings, equivalent to near forty pounds at present.

Whitaker's Hist. of Craven, p. 330.

[905] Ibid.; Villaret, t. xi. p. 117.

[906] Niccolo Niccoli, a private scholar, who contributed essentially to the restoration of ancient learning, bequeathed a library of eight hundred volumes to the republic of Florence. This Niccoli hardly published any thing of his own; but earned a well-merited reputation by copying and correcting ma.n.u.scripts. Tiraboschi, t. vi. p. 114; Shepherd's Poggio, p. 319. In the preceding century Colluccio Salutato had procured as many as eight hundred volumes. Ibid. p. 23. Roscoe's Lorenzo de' Medici, p. 55.

[907] Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. v. p. 520.

[908] He had lent it to a needy man of letters, who p.a.w.ned the book, which was never recovered. De Sade, t. i. p. 57.

[909] Tiraboschi, p. 89.

[910] Idem, t. v. p. 83; De Sade, t. i p. 88.

[911] Tiraboschi, p. 101.

[912] Tiraboschi, t. vi. p. 104; and Shepherd's Life of Poggio, p. 106, 110; Roscoe's Lorenzo de' Medici, p. 38.

[913] Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. ii. p. 374; Tiraboschi, t. iii.

p. 124, et alibi. Bede extols Theodore primate of Canterbury and Tobias bishop of Rochester for their knowledge of Greek. Hist. Eccles. c. 9 and 24. But the former of these prelates, if not the latter, was a native of Greece.

[914] Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. iv. p. 12

[915] Greek characters are found in a charter of 943, published in Martenne, Thesaurus Anecdot. t. i. p. 74. The t.i.tle of a treatise peri phuseon merismou, and the word theotokos, occur in William of Malmsbury, and one or two others in Lanfranc's Const.i.tutions. It is said that a Greek psalter was written in an abbey at Tournay about 1105. Hist. Litt.

de la France, t. ix. p. 102. This was, I should think, a very rare instance of a Greek ma.n.u.script, sacred or profane, copied in the western parts of Europe before the fifteenth century. But a Greek psalter written in Latin characters at Milan in the 9th century was sold some years ago in London. John of Salisbury is said by Crevier to have known a little Greek, and he several times uses technical words in that language. Yet he could not have been much more learned than his neighbours; since, having found the word ousia in St. Ambrose, he was forced to ask the meaning of one John Sarasin, an Englishman, because, says he, none of our masters here (at Paris) understand Greek. Paris, indeed, Crevier thinks, could not furnish any Greek scholar in that age except Abelard and Heloise, and probably neither of them knew much.

Hist. de l'Univers. de Paris, t. i. p. 259.

The ecclesiastical language, it may be observed, was full of Greek words Latinized. But this process had taken place before the fifth century; and most of them will be found in the Latin dictionaries. A Greek word was now and then borrowed, as more imposing than the correspondent Latin. Thus the English and other kings sometimes called themselves Basileus, instead of Rex.

It will not be supposed that I have professed to enumerate all the persons of whose acquaintance with the Greek tongue some evidence may be found; nor have I ever directed my attention to the subject with that view. Doubtless the list might be more than doubled. But, if ten times the number could be found, we should still be ent.i.tled to say, that the language was almost unknown, and that it could have had no influence on the condition of literature. [See Introduction to Hist. of Literature, chap. 2, -- 7.]

[916] Nemo est qui Graecas literas norit; at ego in hoc Latinitati compatior, quae sic omnino Graeca abjecit studia, ut etiam non noscamus characteres literarum. Genealogiae Deorum, apud Hodium de Graecis Ill.u.s.tribus, p. 3.

[917] Mem. de Petrarque, t. i. p. 407.

[918] Mem. de Petrarque, t. i. p. 447; t. iii. p. 634. Hody de Graecis Ill.u.s.t. p. 2. Boccace speaks modestly of his own attainments in Greek: etsi non satis plene perceperim, percepi tamen quantum potui; nee dubium, si permansisset h.o.m.o ille vagus diutius penes nos, quin plenius percep.i.s.sem. id. p. 4.

[919] Hody places the commencement of Chrysoloras's teaching as early as 1391. p. 3. But Tiraboschi, whose research was more precise, fixes it at the end of 1396 or beginning of 1397, t. vii. p. 126.

[920] Tiraboschi, t. vi. p. 102; Roscoe's Lorenzo de' Medici, vol. i. p.

43.

[921] The authors most conversant with Byzantine learning agree in this.

Nevertheless, there is one manifest difference between the Greek writers of the worst period, such as the eighth century, and those who correspond to them in the West. Syncellus, for example, is of great use in chronology, because he was acquainted with many ancient histories now no more. But Bede possessed nothing which we have lost; and his compilations are consequently altogether unprofitable. The eighth century, the Saeculum Iconoclastic.u.m of Cave, low as it was in all polite literature, produced one man, John Damascenus, who has been deemed the founder of scholastic theology, and who at least set the example of that style of reasoning in the East. This person, and Michael Psellus, a philosopher of the eleventh century, are the only considerable men, as original writers, in the annals of Byzantine literature.

[922] The honour of restoring ancient or heathen literature is due to the Caesar Bardas, uncle and minister of Michael II. Cedrenus speaks of it in the following terms: epemelethe de kai tes exo sophias, (en gar ek pollou chronou pararrhueisa, kai pros te meden holos ch.o.r.esasa te ton kratounton argia kai amathia) diatribas hekaste ton epistemon aphorisas, ton men allon hope per etuche, tes d' epi pason epochou philosophias kat' auta ta basileia en te Magnaura; kai houto ex ekeinou anebaskein hai epistemai erxanto. k. t. l. Hist. Byzant. Script. (Lutet.) t. x. p.

547. Bardas found out and promoted Photius, afterwards patriarch of Constantinople, and equally famous in the annals of the church and of learning. Gibbon pa.s.ses perhaps too rapidly over the Byzantine literature, chap. 53. In this, as in many other places, the masterly boldness and precision of his outline, which astonish those who have trodden parts of the same field, are apt to escape an uninformed reader.

[923] Du Cange, Praefatio ad Glossar. Graecitatis Medii Evi. Anna Comnena quotes some popular lines, which seem to be the earliest specimen extant of the Romaic dialect, or something approaching it, as they observe no grammatical inflexion, and bear about the same resemblance to ancient Greek that the worst law-charters of the ninth and tenth centuries do to pure Latin. In fact, the Greek language seems to have declined much in the same manner as the Latin did, and almost at as early a period. In the sixth century, Damascius, a Platonic philosopher, mentions the old language as distinct from that which was vernacular, ten archaian glottan huper ten idioten meletousi. Du Cange, ibid. p. 11. It is well known that the popular, or _political_ verses of Tzetzes, a writer of the twelfth century, are accentual; that is, are to be read, as the modern Greeks do, by treating every acute or circ.u.mflex syllable as long, without regard to its original quant.i.ty. This innovation, which must have produced still greater confusion of metrical rules than it did in Latin, is much older than the age of Tzetzes; if, at least, the editor of some notes subjoined to Meursius's edition of the Themata of Constantine Porphyrogenitus (Lugduni, 1617) is right in ascribing certain political verses to that emperor, who died in 959. These verses are regular accentual trochaics. But I believe they have since been given to Constantine Mana.s.ses, a writer of the eleventh century.

According to the opinion of a modern traveller (Hobhouse's Travels in Albania, letter 33) the chief corruptions which distinguish the Romaic from its parent stock, especially the auxiliary verbs, are not older than the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II. But it seems difficult to obtain any satisfactory proof of this; and the auxiliary verb is so natural and convenient, that the ancient Greeks may probably, in some of their local idioms, have fallen into the use of it; as Mr. H. admits they did with respect to the future auxiliary thelo. See some instances of this in Lesbonax, peri schematon, ad finem Ammonii, cura Valckenaer.

[924] Photius (I write on the authority of M. Heeren) quotes Theopompus, Arrian's History of Alexander's Successors, and of Parthia, Ctesias, Agatharcides, the whole of Diodorus Siculus, Polybius, and Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus, twenty lost orations of Demosthenes, almost two hundred of Lycias, sixty-four of Isaeus, about fifty of Hyperides. Heeren ascribes the loss of these works altogether to the Latin capture of Constantinople, no writer subsequent to that time having quoted them.

Essai sur les Croisades, p. 413. It is difficult however not to suppose that some part, of the destruction was left for the Ottomans to perform.

aeneas Sylvius bemoans, in his speech before the diet of Frankfort, the vast losses of literature by the recent subversion of the Greek empire.

Quid de libris dicam, qui illic erant innumerabiles, nondum Latinis cogniti!... Nunc ergo, et Homero et Pindaro et _Menandro_ et omnibus ill.u.s.trioribus poetis, secunda mors erit. But nothing can be inferred from this declamation, except, perhaps, that he did not know whether Menander still existed or not. aen. Sylv. Opera, p. 715; also p. 881.

Harris's Philological Inquiries, part iii. c. 4. It is a remarkable proof, however, of the turn which Europe, and especially Italy, was taking, that a pope's legate should, on a solemn occasion, descant so seriously on the injury sustained by profane literature.

An useful summary of the lower Greek literature, taken chiefly from the Bibliotheca Graeca of Fabricius, will be found in Berington's Literary History of the Middle Ages, Appendix I.; and one rather more copious in Schoell, Abrege de la Litterature Grecque. (Paris, 1812.)

[925] Wood's Antiquities of Oxford, vol. i p. 537.

[926] Roper's Vita Mori, ed. Hearne, p. 75.

[927] Crevier, t. iv. p. 243; see too p. 46.

[928] Incredibilis ingeniorum barbaries est; rarissimi literas norunt, nulli elegantiam. Papiensis Epistolae, p. 377. Campano's notion of elegance was ridiculous enough. n.o.body ever carried further the pedantic affectation of avoiding modern terms in his Latinity. Thus, in the life of Braccio da Montone, he renders his meaning almost unintelligible by excess of cla.s.sical purity. Braccio boasts se numquam deorum immortalium templa viola.s.se. Troops committing outrages in a city are accused virgines vestales incesta.s.se. In the terms of treaties he employs the old Roman forms; exercitum trajicito--oppida pontificis sunto, &c. And with a most absurd pedantry, the ecclesiastical state is called Romanum imperium. Campani Vita Braccii, in Muratori Script. Rer. Ital. t. xix.

[929] A letter from Master William Paston at Eton (Paston Letters, vol.

i. p. 299) proves that Latin versification was taught there as early as the beginning of Edward IV.'s reign. It is true that the specimen he rather proudly exhibits does not much differ from what we denominate nonsense verses. But a more material observation is, that the sons of country gentlemen living at a considerable distance were already sent to public schools for grammatical education.

[930] De Bure, t. i. p. 30. Several copies of this book have come to light since its discovery.

[931] Id., p. 71.

[932] Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xiv. p. 265. Another edition of the Bible is supposed to have been printed by Pfister at Bamberg in 1459.