DISCOVERY 



181 



studies, and particularly the study of Greek literature, 

 revived : then the veil was lifted, and the new birth, 

 the Renaissance, of Europe took place. 



The date of this Renaissance has been conventionally 

 placed at the j'ear 1453, when Constantinople, the 

 capital and last stronghold of the " Greek " or " By- 

 zantine " Empire, fell before the Turks, under the 

 Sultan Mohammed II. It has been assumed that many 

 Greek scholars, bearing with them ancient Greek 

 manuscripts, fled from Constantinople in the face of 

 the Turks, and spread classical learning throughout 

 Western Europe. To support this theory, however, 

 practically no facts can be advanced ; the fall of 

 Constantinople makes a landmark in European history, 

 but its influence upon the Renaissance appears to have 

 been comparatively little. By closing the land-routes 

 to the East, the Turks may have helped to turn men's 

 minds towards finding out the ocean-routes in the 

 West, but they cannot be said to have had any part 

 in producing, by their misdeeds, the revival of learning. 

 This re\'ival, and its consequent freeing of the human 

 intellect, had already been going on for more than a 

 century when Constantinople fell. 



Knowledge of the Greek tongue was never quite 

 dead in Italy at any time in the Middle Ages, because 

 in the extreme south of Italy, in Calabria, the tONvns 

 had been originally colonised by Greeks, and the use 

 of Greek speech had never since died out. Moreover, 

 imtil the middle of the eleventh century the Byzantine 

 Empire retained some shreds of its authority in Italy, 

 and throughout the rest of the Middle Ages, diplomatic 

 communications and personal missions between Italy 

 and Constantinople were quite frequent. Greek 

 manuscripts, copied by scribes in Byzantimn, were 

 conveyed over to Italy as presents, or perhaps for 

 sale. Petrarch, who flourished in the middle of the 

 fourteenth century, possessed a copy of Homer, which 

 came from Byzantium ; ha was unable to read it, 

 however. Another great contemporary Florentine, 

 Boccaccio, both possessed and could read Greek classics. 

 It was in the year 1360 that, owing to the efforts of 

 Boccaccio, a chair of Greek was instituted at Florence, 

 the first professor being Leo Pilatus, a Calabnan who 

 had learned Greek as his mother-tongue in South 

 Italy. He was induced by Boccaccio to translate the 

 Iliad into Latin. Mr. A. C. Clark, the Corpus Professor 

 of Latin at Oxford University, who has been lecturing 

 on "Scholars of the Renaissance," states that, if any 

 specific date must be given for the beginning of the 

 scientific study of Greek, it should be the year 1396, 

 when Manuel Chrysoloras, an accomplished scholar 

 from Constantinople, began teaching Greek in Florence. 

 His career as a teacher and as a man of learning 

 lasted till 1415, by which time classical studies may 

 be said to have been re-established in Western Europe. 



The Revival of Learning, however, was not wholly 

 Greek. In the middle of the fourteenth century there 

 was also a great revival of Latin studies. Petrarch, 

 who lived from 1304 to 1374, was a Latinist of the 

 highest quality ; it was he who discovered the above- 

 mentioned manuscript of Cicero's Letters to Atticus, 

 at Verona, in 1345. But the greatest scholar of the 

 Early Renaissance was Poggio, who was born in 1380 

 and lived till 1459. His most important work for 

 classical scholarship was done in 1414 and 1415, when 

 he was one of the Papal Secretaries at the Council 

 of Constance. In the intervals between his attend- 

 ances at the Council, he visited the chief monasteries 

 of Switzerland and Burgundy, and also Cologne, and 

 searched their libraries. It is to his initiative and 

 energy that we thus owe the redisco\-ery of many 

 classical manuscripts, in particular a number of Cicero's 

 speeches, which had lain forgotten for centuries in 

 the monastic libraries. It was about fifteen years after 

 Poggio had discovered these manuscript treasures 

 that Laurentius Valla began his epoch-making work 

 in critical scholarship ; his method of examining 

 texts and manuscripts led to the separation of the 

 genuine from the spurious. He is best known for his 

 exposure of the " Donation of Constantine," the 

 supposed fourth century grant of temporal dominion 

 to the Papacy. 



Thus the Revival of Learning, the modern zeal for 

 education and inquiry, must be dated from the be- 

 ginning of the " Later Middle Ages," from about the 

 early years of the fourteenth century, if not earlier. 

 Some of its greatest achievements had taken place 

 long before Constantinople feU, in 1453, and it cannot 

 be proved that this event had any particular influence 

 upon the course of the Renaissance. 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN THE LATER 

 MIDDLE AGES 



The Early Renaissance may be still studied with advantage 

 in Pater's Retiaissance and Symond's Renaissance in Italy 

 (1897). Creighton's History of the Papacy (1882) and Lindsay's 

 History of the Reformation (1908) are classical works. Scar- 

 tazzini's Companion to Dante (1893). translated by Butler, 

 gives good information on Dante's learning. The classical 

 work on the early history of Humanism is Voigt's Die Wieder- 

 belebung des classischen Alterthums, which has been several 

 times re-edited. The history of discoveries of manuscripts in 

 theLater Middle Ages is given by Walser in Poggius Florentinus : 

 Leben und Werken (1914), and in Sabbadini, Le scoperte dei 

 codici latini e greci ne' secoli xiv e xv, 1905- The standard 

 work on the history of scholarship is Sandys, A History of 

 Classical Scholarship (1908). Mowat, The Later Middle Ages 

 (191 7) is a general account of the period. 



Popular Chemical Dictionary. By C. T. Kingzett, 

 F.I.C. (Bailliere, 15s. net.) 



