CHAPTER XIII. FRANCE FROM 1360 TO 1600. IN France, where the early stages in the Revival of Learning were mainly marked by Italian influence, the chief centres of intellectual life were the Royal Court, and the University of Paris. Petrarch, who was unfamiliar with French, and consequently never felt quite at home in Paris, wrote a letter in 1367 congratulating Urban V on exchanging Avignon for Rome. He there praises Italy at the expense of France, and even describes the French as a barbarous people'. The letter naturally aroused the indignation of a champion of France identified as Jean de Hesdin, who in his reply gives proof of his familiarity with the Latin Classics in general and with the historians in particular?. Among the constant companions of Petrarch during the three months that he spent in Paris in 1361, was Pierre Bersuire (d. 1362), the French priest who trans Bersuire Oresme lated for king John the Good all the books of Livy that were then known. Under that king's son, Charles the 'Wise' (who was familiar with Latin), Sallust, Suetonius, Seneca, Vegetius, with Lucan and parts of Ovid, were translated into French. A French rendering of the Latin translation of the Politics, Economics, and Ethics of Aristotle was produced by Nicole Oresme (d. 1382), chaplain to the king, and dean of Rouen, who, after his promotion to the bishopric of Lisieux, produced a translation of Aristotle De Caelo3. As a translator, he introduced into French a large number of words of Greek origin, which were then new, such as aristocratie, démocratie, oligarchie, 2 Voigt, ii 3333 f. 1 Epp. Sen. ix i. 3 Fr. Meunier, Essai (1857) 84-117. demagogue and sophiste, and even métaphore, poète and poème1. While Oresme belongs in spirit to the Middle Ages, a certain sympathy with the Revival of Learning is shown by Laurent de Premierfait, a priest of Troyes, who died in Paris in 1418. He translated the De Senectute and the De Amicitia of Cicero for an uncle of Charles the 'Wise". The library of king Charles included Lucan, Boëthius, portions of Ovid and Seneca, Latin translations of Plato's Timaeus, and of parts of Aristotle, with French translations from Aristotle, Valerius Maximus, Sallust and Vegetius. Virgil is conspicuously absent'. But Virgil's Eclogues (as well as Pliny and Terence) were to be found in the library of the king's brother, John, duke of Berry". The influence of the University is exemplified in the textbooks prescribed for the academic course. In the fourteenth century they included authors such as Virgil, Ovid, Juvenal, Terence, with Sallust and Livy, as well as Cicero, Seneca and Quintilian. Of the two foremost representatives of the University, Pierre d'Ailly (d. 1425) and Jean Charlier de Gerson (d. 1429), the latter was far more familiar with classical authors, his speeches and sermons including quotations from Virgil and Terence, Horace and Statius, Cicero and Seneca, as well as Caesar, Sallust, Livy, Suetonius and Valerius Maximus. But his Latin style is obscure, and teems with Gallicisms and with scholastic terminology". The earliest genuine humanist in France was Jean de Montreuil (1354-1418), secretary to the Pope and the Dauphin, as well as to the dukes of Burgundy and Orleans, and ultimately chancellor to Charles VI. Jean de Montreuil He regarded Petrarch as the most famous of moral philosophers; 1 Fr. Meunier, l.c.; Egger, Hellénisme en France, i 128 f; Voigt, ii 3393 f. 2 Voigt, ii 3403. 3 The translation begun by Simon de Hesdin for Charles the 'Wise' (1375), and completed by Nicolas de Gonesse for John, duke of Berry (1401), was adorned with fine miniatures by Jean Fouquet (c. 1475) for Philippe de Comines (reproduced from two Harleian MSS in 1907). 4 Cp. Delisle, Cabinet des MSS, i 18—46, iii 115-170, 335 f, quoted in Tilley's Essay on the preludes of the French Renaissance (1885), 139. Tilley, .c. 139 f. • Voigt, ii 3423. 7 ib. ii 3433 f. he had a special admiration for the Remedia Utriusque Fortunae, but his model in Latin style was Salutati, 'the father of Latin eloquence'. As envoy of his king in 1412, he spent some time in Rome, where Leonardo Bruni gave him an introduction to Niccoli in Florence. He thus obtained transcripts of plays of Plautus and certain books of Livy, with Varro De Re Rustica, being apparently the first Frenchman who derived classical learning from Italy. In his letters he is fond of quoting Virgil and Terence, with Cicero, Sallust and Seneca; he is the first in France to follow the example of Petrarch in adopting the classical second person singular, instead of the plural, in addressing Popes and Princes; he even urges the Pope to imitate the actions recorded in the ancient history of Rome'. Among his most intimate friends was Nicolas de Clemanges2 (1360-c. 1440), who taught the rhetoric of Cicero and Aristotle in the schools of Paris, and was an eager student of the Latin Classics, especially Quintilian and Cicero, from whose speeches (he assures us) he learnt many more lessons in eloquence than from his rhetorical works". He spent some twelve years at Avignon as the only humanist among the papal secretaries, was made a Canon of Langres, and late in life resumed his lectures on Rhetoric in Paris. Among the Classics familiar to him were several that were then imperfectly known in Italy, such as Persius, Cicero, De Oratore and Pro Archia, and the Letters Ad Familiares'. The Revival of Learning in France was promoted by the introduction of printing. In 1470 Michael Freyburger of Colmar, Ulrich Gering of Constance, and Martin Crantz, were invited by Guillaume Fichet and Jean Heynlyn to set up a press in the precincts of the Sorbonne. The first book printed in France by these German printers was the work of an Italian humanist,— the model Letters of Gasparino da Barzizza. The prefatory epistle, with its reference to Heynlyn as 'prior' and Fichet as 1 Ep. 19 in Epp. Sel., Martène and Durand, Vet. Script. et Mon. Amplissima Collectio, Paris, 1724, ii 1311—1465; Voigt, ii 344-93. Eight new letters in A. Thomas, De Joannis de Monsterolio vita et operibus, Paris, 1883. 2 Or Clamanges. 4 Voigt, ii 349-3553. 3 Ep. 43. Б p. 23 supra. 'doctor', determines the date as 1470. In the next year the editio princeps of Florus was produced by the same printers; their Sallust (1471) was soon followed by Terence, and by Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics, Juvenal and Persius, Cicero, De Oratore, Tusculan Disputations and De Officiis (1472), and Valerius Maximus'. ne ab õnibus te defertu effe iudices! cgo Foelix Eptare Gafpatini finis; CONCLUSION OF THE EPISTOLAE GASPARINI. The first book printed in France (1470); part of facsimile in British Museum Guide to the King's Library (1901), p. 40. The study of Greek was slow in making its way in France. The Council of Vienne (1311) had decreed the appointment of two Lecturers in Greek, as well as Hebrew, in the University of Paris, no less than in those of Bologna, Salamanca, and Oxford, but the decree, which was passed in the interest of theological rather than classical learning, remained a dead letter'. It was not until 1430 that a stipend was assigned to teachers of Greek and Tifernas Hebrew in Paris, and not until 1456 that Gregorio 1 Cp. Tilley, Essay (1885), 155 f, and the earlier authorities there quoted; also A. Claudin's First Paris Press (Bibliogr. Soc. 1898), and Hist. de l'Imprimerie en France, i (1900), with illuminated facsimile of Gasparino p. 1, and colophon, facing p. 22; and P. Champion, Les plus anciens monuments de la typographie parisienne (1904), 86 planches. 2 vol. i 5841, 6072. 3 Bulaeus, Hist. Univ. Paris. v 393. 1415 and had lived in Greece and had taught Greek in Naples, Milan and Rome, applied for permission to teach it in Paris!. The permission was granted and a salary assigned, on condition that the lecturer charged no fees and that he lectured daily on Rhetoric as well as on Greek. He continued to lecture for four years, and then left for Venice, where he died in 1466. Hermonymus About 1476 another teacher of Greek appeared in the person of a skilful copyist', George Hermonymus of Sparta, the somewhat incompetent instructor of Erasmus and Budaeus and Reuchlin. Lectures in Greek were occasionally given by John Lascaris, who was invited to France in 1495 by Charles VIII, aided Louis XII in organising the library at Blois, and joined Budaeus in doing similar service to Francis I, when the library at Blois was transferred in 1544 to Fontainebleau. A more regular and continuous course of instruction was supplied by the Italian, Jerome Aleander, who arrived in 1508, armed with an introduction from Erasmus®. In and after that year, he lectured on Greek as well as Latin, and perhaps also on Hebrew. He became Rector of the University of Paris in 1512; on his return to Rome, in 1517, he was appointed librarian to the Vatican, and, as Cardinal Aleander, he became prominent in the ecclesiastical history of the age'. Aleander It was with the aid of Aleander that the text of three treatises from Plutarch's Moralia was printed in Paris in 1509, doubtless to serve as text-books for Aleander's pupils. The printer was Gourmont, who had established Gourmont the first Greek press in Paris, producing in 1507 a little volume 1 The dates in Crevier, Hist. de l'Univ. de Paris, iv 243 f, are 1458 or 1470. Omont, Mém. Soc. Hist. (Paris, 1885). * Catal. Lucubr. in Pref. to Leyden ed. i, Graece balbutiebat...; neque potuisset docere si voluisset ; neque voluisset, si potuisset. Cp. Egger, i 146f; Omont, in Mém. de la Soc. d'histoire de France, xii 65-98; Tilley, Essay, 146 f. • Removed to Paris under Henri IV (1595). Cp. Omont, Cal. des MSS grecs de Fontainebleau, 1889; also (in general) Tilley, Essay, 148 f. Cp. De Nolhac, in Revue des Études grecques, i 61 f; and Lefranc, Hist. du Collège de France, 29 f. 7 Tilley, Essay, 149 f. |