Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/80

68 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE Hegius, one of the greatest scholars of the century. ' When a man of forty years old,' Hegius writes of himself, ' I came to the young Agricola, from whom I have learned all that I know, or rather all that others think that I know.' Alexander Hegius, born in the village of Heeck, in the province of Mtinster, educated at the school of the ' Brethren of the Social Life,' was the rector of the school at Wesel, on the Lower Ehine, from 1469 to 1474. He then undertook for about a year the direction of the flourishing school of Emmerich, after which, from 1475, Deventer became the field of his most fruitful labours. Erasmus ranks him among the restorers of pure Latin scholarship, and tells us that, though he was not suffi- ciently careful of his own reputation as a writer, his works are nevertheless, according to the judgment of all learned men, worthy of immortality. His pupil, John Murmellius, says that he was as great a master of Greek as of Latin, and continually urged on his scholars the study of that language, which in those days was not much in vogue in Germany. 1 Hegius enjoys the undisputed credit of having purged and simplified the school curriculums, of im- proving or getting rid of the old school-books, of making the classics the central point of the instruction of youth, and of giving to school education a bias which transformed it into the means of fresh spiritual life. 1 Reichling, pp. 287-303 ; Murmellius, pp. 5-15. Concerning the acquirements of Hegius in Greek, his services as poet, and his opposition to the earlier instructional books of the Middle Ages, see Reichling's Beitrcige, pp. 287-303, and his admirable treatise on Mur- mellius, pp. 5-15. See also Paulsen's Gcschi elite <les i/elehrten TJnter- richts, p. 42. ' Qui Graece nescit,' writes Hegius, ' nescit quoque doctus haberi.'