and so forth. The so-called grammar is little more than a vocabulary, in which the words are strung into rude verses illustrating their usage.
The other bugbear of Erasmus’ childhood was John de Garlande. Garlande was the author of a Compendium Grammaticæ and of an epic poem entitled De Triumphis Ecclesiæ. The latter may well have been among the works that the student was expected to read, as its subject-matter would have removed any prejudice to which its monkish eccentricities might have given rise.[1] The main object of learning Latin was to read Ambrose and Hilary. As late as 1523 we find Vives recommending the poems of Prudentius, Sydonius, Paulinus, Arator, Prosper, and Juvencus, as being equal to the classics in style and infinitely superior in matter.[2]
The Reformation may have been prejudicial to the advancement of Humanism at the higher seats of learning, but to schools it was the breath of life. Though a few sensibly-managed institutions were to be found, such as the Collège de Guyenne at Bordeaux, these were great exceptions. In the schools attached to the monasteries prejudiced monks would have little to say to the new learning, looked on it with suspicion, and deemed it safer to abide by Ebrard and the Doctrinal.
But a more energetic man than Erasmus was to turn upon them and tear their pedantry into shreds. Martin Luther had been subjected to the mill of scholasticism, and grammar-lessons, flogged in with the customary vigour, had left an iron impression on his soul. “Instead of sound books,” he cries in 1524, “the insane, useless, harmful, monkish books, the Catholicon,[3] the Florista, the Græcista,
- ↑ It contains “retrogradi Versus,” such as:—
Parisiis proba non pugnat gens parcere clero
Provida, non curat perfidiam sua lex.
Lex sua perfidiam curat, non provida clero
Parcere, gens pugnat non proba Parisiis.
Wright’s Ed. p. 41. - ↑ ‘Jo. Lodovici Vivis Valentini Opera, in duos distincta tomos. Basileæ, 1555’, i. p. 7.
- ↑ ‘A Grammar and Vocabulary,’ by John Balbi, printed by Gutenberg in 1460.
