PHILOSOPHIC SCIENCES. 



69 



Plato and Aristotle. The names talked of in the schools were those of 

 Ermolao Barbara, Angelo Politien, and Lorenzo Valla. A student of Louvain, 

 Rudolph Agricola, came to take lessons from these illustrious masters, and 

 returned to Flanders to propagate their doctrines. In Spain, as in France, 

 these doctrines, taken from the ancient philosophers of Greece and of Egypt, 

 were hailed with unanimous enthusiasm. The University of Paris was 

 powerless to arrest this stream of novelties which the Italian Renaissance 



Fig. 50. Bachelors of the Faculty of Theology, and Professors of the Faculties of 

 Theology, Jurisprudence, and Medicine at the University of Pont-a-Mousson. From 

 the Funeral of Henry II., Duke of Lorraine, by Claude de la Ruelle. National 

 Library, Paris. Cabinet of Engravings. 



poured upon the West. There was an end to schools and to discipline; 

 license, anarchy, and confusion reigned supreme. 



Upon the one hand, Nicholas de Cusa declared with Pythagoras that 

 knowledge is hidden in the mysterious notion of numbers, and he went so 

 far as to represent the Divine Essence as an harmonious centre in which all 

 differences are blended. Upon the other hand, Marsilius Ficinus, who died in 

 1499, founded a Platonist academy, and, under colour of explaining the Holy 



