The Age of Erasmus by P. S. Allen

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The 'breath of something better' which Hegius and Zinthius brought was
seen in the substitution of the _Doctrinale_ of Alexander of
Ville-Dieu, near Avranches (_fl._ 1200), as the school Latin grammar.
This also is a metrical composition; and it has the merit of being
both shorter and also more correct. It was first printed at Venice by
Wendelin of Spires (_c._ 1470), and after a moderate success in Italy,
twenty-three editions in fourteen years, it was taken up in the North
and quickly attained great popularity. By 1500 more than 160 editions
had been printed, of the whole or of various parts, and in the next
twenty years there were nearly another hundred, before it was
superseded by more modern compositions, such as Linacre's grammar,
which held the field throughout Europe for a great part of the
sixteenth century. The number of Deventer editions of the _Doctrinale_
is considerable, mostly containing the glosses of Hegius and Zinthius,
which overwhelm the text with commentary; a single distich often
receiving two pages of notes, so full of typographical abbreviations
and so closely packed together as to be almost illegible. This very
fullness, however, probably indicates a change in the method of
teaching, which by quickening it up must indeed have put new life into
it; for it would clearly have been impossible to dictate such lengthy
commentaries, or the boys would have made hardly any progress.

Thirty years ago in England a schoolboy of eleven found himself
supplied with abridged Latin and Greek dictionaries, out of which to
build up larger familiarity with these languages. Erasmus at Deventer
had no such endowments. A school of those days would have been thought
excellently equipped if the head master and one or two of his
assistants had possessed, in manuscript or in print, one or other of
the famous vocabularies in which was amassed the etymological
knowledge of the Middle Ages. Great books are costly, and scholars are
ever poor. The normal method of acquiring a dictionary was, no doubt,
to construct it for oneself; the schoolboy laying foundations and
building upon them as he rose from form to form, and the mature
student constantly enlarging his plan throughout his life and adding
to it the treasures gained by wider reading. A sure method, though
necessarily circumscribed, at least in the beginning. We can imagine
how men so rooted and grounded must have shaken their heads over
'learning made easy', when the press had begun to diffuse cheap
dictionaries, which spared the younger generation such labour.

Though they were scarcely 'for the use of schools', it will repay us
to examine some of the mediaeval dictionaries which lasted down to the
Renaissance in general use; for they formed the background of
educational resources, and from them we can estimate the standards of
teaching attained in the late fifteenth century. First the
_Catholicon_, compiled by John Balbi, a Dominican of Genoa, and
completed on 7 March 1286; a work of such importance to the age we are
considering that it was printed at Mainz as early as 1460, and there
were many editions later. Badius' at Paris, 1506, for instance, was
reprinted in 1510, 1511, 1514. In his preface Balbi announces that his
dictionary is to be on the alphabetical principle; and, what is even
more surprising to us, he goes on to explain at great length what the
alphabetical principle is. Thus: 'I am going to treat of amo and bibo.
I shall take amo before bibo, because a is the first letter in amo and
b is the first letter in bibo; and a is before b in the alphabet.
Again I have to treat of abeo and adeo. I shall take abeo before adeo,
because b is the second letter in abeo and d is the second letter in
adeo; and b is before d in the alphabet.' And so he goes on: amatus
will be treated before amor, imprudens before impudens, iusticia
before iustus, polisintheton before polissenus--the two last being
from the Greek. 'But note', he continues, 'that in polissenus, s is
the fifth letter and also the sixth, because s is repeated there. A
repetition is therefore equivalent to a double letter; and thus this
arrangement will show when l, m, n, r, s or indeed any other letter is
to be doubled. And in order that the reader may find quickly what he
seeks, whenever the first or second letter of a word is changed, we
shall mark it with azure blue.' His preface ends with an appeal. 'This
arrangement I have worked out with great labour; yet not I, but the
grace of God with me. I entreat you therefore, reader, do not contemn
my work as something rude and barbarous.'

The most striking feature of the dictionary is its etymology. Almost
every word is supplied with a derivation, often very far-fetched. Thus
glisco is derived from 'glykis, quod est dulcis; que enim dulcia sunt
desiderare solemus': gliscere therefore is equivalent to desiderare,
crescere, pinguescere and several other words. After this we are not
surprised at the following account of a dormouse. 'Glis a glisco:
quoddam genus murium quod multum dormit. Et dicitur sic quod sompnus
facit glires pingues et crescere.' Here is another piece of natural
history. 'Irundo ab aer dicitur: quia non residens sed in aere capiens
cibos edat, quasi in aere edens.' There is simplicity in the
following: 'Nix a nubes, quia a nube venit.' Again: 'Ouis ab offero
vel obluo: quia antiquitus in inicio non tauri sed oues in sacrificio
mactarentur. Priscianus vero dicit quod descendit a Greco ... oys.'
Besides his philology the good Dominican was also a theologian; and
when he comes to the words upon which his world was built, he cannot
dismiss them as lightly as the snow. So Antichristus has two columns,
that is to say a folio page: confiteor 11/2, conscientia 21/4, ordo 21/2,
virgo two columns.

Much light is thrown on Balbi's work by the dictionary of his
predecessor, Huguitio of Pisa, Bishop of Ferrara (d. 1210). The title
of this, _Liber deriuationum_, indicates its character. Instead of the
alphabetical principle the words are arranged according to their
etymology; all that are assigned to a given root being grouped
together. This made it necessary, or at any rate desirable, to find a
derivation for every word; and with ingenuity to aid this was done as
far as possible. Besides derivatives even compounds came under the
simple root; and in consequence it must have been extremely difficult
to find a word unless one already knew a good deal about it. It is no
wonder that the book was never printed; although it occurs frequently
in the catalogues of mediaeval libraries.

A few examples will suffice. Under capio are found capax, captiuus,
capillus, caput with all its derivatives, anceps, praeceps,
principium, caper, capus, caupo, cippus, scipio, ceptrum; and even
cassis and catena. Similarly under nubo come nubes, nebula, nebulo,
nix, niger, nimpha, limpha, limpidus. With such a book as one's only
support it was clearly of the highest importance to be good at
etymology; with ouis, for instance, not to be troubled by Priscian's
fanciful derivation from the Greek, but to know that it came from
offero, and was therefore to be found under fero; or again to look for
hirundo under aer. Nor need we be surprised at the strange derivations
upon which arguments were sometimes founded: that Sprenger, the
inquisitor, could explain femina 'quia minorem habet et seruat fidem';
or the preacher over whom Erasmus' Folly makes merry, find authority
for burning heretics in the Apostle's command 'Haereticum deuita'.

We are now in a position to understand Balbi's performance in the
_Catholicon_. From the apologetic tone of his preface it is clear that
he felt Huguitio's work to be the really scientific thing, the only
book that a scholar would consult: but evidently experience had shown
the difficulty of using it, and therefore for the weakness of lesser
men like himself he reverted to the sequence of the alphabet. In
cumbering himself with derivations, too, he shows that he knows his
place. He may have had a glimmering that some of them were absurd; and
that Priscian with his reference to the Greek was a safer guide. But
to a scholar brought up on Huguitio derivations were of the first
importance; and to leave them out would have been only another mark of
inferiority.

Beyond Huguitio we may go back to Papias, a learned Lombard (_fl._
1051), whose Vocabulary was still in use in the fifteenth century, and
was printed at Milan in 1476. The editions of it are far fewer than
those of the _Catholicon_; a fact which presumably points to the
superiority of the later work. Papias also used the alphabetical
principle; and his lengthy explanation of it, which lacks, however,
the lucidity of Balbi's, probably implies that his predecessors had
adopted the etymological arrangement by derivations, or the divisions
of Isidore according to subjects. In a few cases he makes concession
to etymology, by giving derivatives under their root, e.g. under ago
come all the words derived from it: but he has regard to the weak, and
places them also in their right alphabetical position. Not many
derivations are given; but one of them is well known. Lucus is defined
as 'locus amenus, vbi multae arbores sunt. Lucus dictus [Greek: kata
antiphrasin] quia caret luce pro nimia arborum vmbra; vel a colocando
crebris luminibus (_aliter_ uiminibus), siue a luce, quod in eo
lucebant funalia propter nemorum tenebras.' This in the hands of Balbi
becomes 'per contrarium lucus dicitur a lucendo', or, as we say
popularly, 'lucus a non lucendo.' December, again, is derived from
decem and imbres 'quibus abundare solet'; and so too the other
numbered months.

It is noticeable that Papias has some knowledge of Greek, for
derivations in Greek letters occur, e.g. 'Acrocerauni: montes propter
altitudinem & fulminum iactus dicti. Graece enim fulmen [Greek:
keraunos] ceraunos dicitur, et acra [Greek: akra] sumitas'; and a
great many Greek and Hebrew words are given transliterated into Latin,
ballein, fagein, Ennosigaeus. Like Balbi, Papias travels outside the
limits of a mere dictionary, and his interests are not restricted to
theology. Aetas draws him into an account of the various ages of the
world, regnum into a view of its kingdoms. Carmen provokes 7 columns,
31/2 folio pages, on metres; lapis 2 columns on precious stones. Italy
receives 2 columns, and 3/4 of a column are given to St. Paul.
Contrariwise there is often great brevity in his interpretations:
'Samium locus est', 'heroici antiqui', 'mederi curare'. His treatment
of miraculum is interesting; 'A miracle is to raise the dead to life;
but it is a wonder (mirabile) for a fire to be kindled in the water,
or for a man to move his ears.' The next heading is mirabilia, for
which his examples are taken from the ends of the earth. He begins:
'Listen. Among the Garamantes is a spring so cold by day that you
cannot drink it, so hot at night that you cannot put your finger into
it.' A fig-tree in Egypt, apples of Sodom, the non-deciduous trees of
an island in India--these are the other travellers' tales which serve
him for wonders.

The alphabetical method did not hold its own without struggle. It
prevailed in Robert Stephanus' Latin _Thesaurus_ (1532), the most
considerable work of its kind that had been compiled since the
invention of printing; but Dolet's Commentaries on the Latin Tongue
(1536), are practically a reversion to the arrangement by roots. Henry
Stephanus' Greek _Thesaurus_ (1572) and Scapula's well-known
abridgement of it (1579) are both radical; and as late as the
seventeenth century this method was employed in the first Dictionary
of the French Academy, which was designed in 1638 but not published
till 1694. That, however, was its last appearance. The preface to the
Academy's second Dictionary (1700 and 1718), after comparing the two
methods, says: 'The arrangement by roots is the most scientific, and
the most instructive to the student; but it is not suited to the
impatience of the French people, and so the Academy has felt obliged
to abandon it.'[11] The ordinary user of dictionaries to-day would be
surprised at being called impatient for expecting the words to be put
in alphabetical order.

[11] Cf. R.C. Christie, _Etienne Dolet_, ch. xi.

In mediaeval times there was one very real obstacle to the use of the
alphabetical method, and that was the uncertainty of spelling. Both
Papias and Balbi allude to it in their prefaces; but it did not deter
them from their enterprise. Even in the days of printing language
takes a long time to crystallize down into accepted forms, correct and
incorrect. You may see Dutchess with a t at Blenheim, well within the
eighteenth century, and forgo has only recently decided to give up its
e. In the days of manuscripts men spelt pretty much as they pleased,
making very free even with their own names; and uncritical copyists,
caring only to reproduce the word, and not troubling about the exact
orthography of their original, did nothing to check the ever-growing
variety. Such licence was agreeable for the imaginative, but it made
despairing work for the compilers of dictionaries. Some of their
difficulties may be given as examples. In the early days of minuscule
writing, when writing-material was still scarce, to save space it was
common to write the letter e with a reversed cedilla beneath it to
denote the diphthongs -ae and -oe. In the Middle Ages the cedilla was
commonly dropped, leaving the e plain; and so mostly it remained until
the sixteenth century revived the diphthong, or at least the two
double letters.

At all periods down to 1600, some hands are found in which it is
impossible to distinguish between c and t; and hence in mediaeval
times, and even later, such forms as fatio, loto, pecieris, licterae
are not infrequently found for facio, loco, petieris, litterae. An
extreme example of the confusion which this variability must have
caused is in the case of the fourteenth-century annalist, Nicholas
Trivet, whose surname sometimes appears as Cerseth or Chereth.

The doubling of consonants, too, was often a matter of doubt, and the
Middle Ages, possibly again for reasons of space, used many words with
single consonants instead of two--difficilimus, Salustius, consumare,
comodum, opidum, fuise. The letter h was the source of infinite
trouble. Sometimes it was surprisingly omitted, as in actenus, irundo,
Oratius, ortus--in the latter cases perhaps under Italian influence;
sometimes it appears unexpectedly, as in Therentius, Theutonia,
Thurcae, Hysidorus, habundare, and even haspirafio; or in abhominor,
where it bolstered up the derivation from homo: or it might change its
place from one consonant to another, as in calchographus, cartha.
Papias found it a great trouble, and indeed was quite muddled with it,
placing hyppocrita, hippomanes among the h's, but hippopedes and
several others under the i's, though without depriving them of initial
h. In France, h between two short i's was considered to need support,
and so we find michi, nichil, occurring quite regularly. The
difficulty of i and y was met by the suppression of the latter; so
that though it sometimes appears unexpectedly, as in hysteria, it is
only treated as i. Between f and ph there was much uncertainty; phas,
phanum, prophanus are well-known forms, or conversely Christofer,
flenbothomari, Flegeton. B and p were often confused, as in babtizare,
plasphemus; and p made its way into such words as ampnis, dampnum,
alumpnus. A triumph of absurd variation is achieved by Alexander
Neckam, who begins a sentence 'Coquinarii quocunt'.

With the increased learning of the Renaissance these varieties
gradually disappear. The printers, too, rendered good service in
promoting uniformity, each firm having its standard orthography for
doubtful cases, as printers do to-day. The use of e for ae is abundant
in the first books printed North of the Alps; but it steadily
diminishes, and by 1500 has almost vanished. In manuscripts, where it
was easy to forget to add the cedilla, the plain e lasts much longer.
There was also confusion in the reverse direction. Well into the
sixteenth century the cedilla is often found wrongly added to words
such as puer, equus, eruditus, epistola; in 1550 the Froben firm was
still regularly printing aedo, aeditio; and in the index to an edition
of Aquinas, Venice, 1593, aenigma and Aegyptus, spelt in this way, are
only to be found under e. Other forms of error persisted long. To the
end of his life Erasmus usually wrote irito, oportunus; in 1524 he
could still use Oratius. The town of Boppard on the Rhine he styles
indifferently Bobardia or Popardia: just as, much later, editors
described the elder Camerarius of Bamberg as Bapenbergensis in 1583,
as Pabepergensis in 1595. As late as 1540 a little book was printed in
Paris to demonstrate that michi and nichil were incorrect.

In such a state of flux we need not wonder that the mediaeval writers
of dictionaries found the alphabetical arrangement not the way of
simplification they had hoped, but rather to be full of pitfalls; nor
again that the men of the Renaissance thought the work of their
predecessors so lamentably inadequate. We shall do better to admire in
both cases the brilliance and constancy which could achieve so much
with such imperfect instruments.

To complete our sketch of the books on which the scholars of the
fifteenth century had to rely we may consider two more. The first is
the great encyclopaedia of Vincent of Beauvais, a Dominican friar
(_c._ 1190-1264). It was printed in 1472-6 by Mentelin at Strasburg,
in six enormous volumes; and no one can properly appreciate the
magnitude of the work who has not tried to lift these volumes about.
Vincent was not the first to attempt this encyclopaedic enterprise,
for his work is based on that of another Frenchman, Helinand, who died
in 1229. In his preface he states that his prior had urged him to
reduce his _Speculum_ to a manual; being doubtless an old man, and
appalled at these colossal fruits of his friar's industry. But this
was too much for the proud author after all his labour. He did,
however, consent to cut it up into portions. The _Speculum naturale_
gives a description of the world in all its parts, animal and
vegetable and mineral; the _Speculum doctrinale_ taught how to
practise the arts and sciences; the _Speculum historiale_ embraced the
world's history down to 1250; and the _Speculum morale_, which is
perhaps not by Vincent, found room for the philosophies.

But few libraries can have possessed this work in full. Our other book
was much more compassable and more widely circulated. Its author was a
certain Johannes Marchesinus, of whom so little is known that his date
has been put both at 1300 and at 1466. Even the title of the book was
uncertain. Marchesinus names it Mammotrectus or Mammetractus, which he
explains as 'led by a pedagogue'; but a current form of the name was
Mammothreptus, which was interpreted as 'brought up by one's
grandmother'. The book consists of a commentary on the whole Bible,
chapter by chapter; and also upon the _Legenda Sanctorum_, upon
various sermons and homilies, responses, antiphons, and hymns, with
notes on the Hebrew months, ecclesiastical vestments, and other
subjects likely to be useful to students in the Church, especial
emphasis being laid on pronunciation and quantity. It was intended,
Marchesinus tells us in his preface, for the use of the poor clergy,
to aid them in writing sermons and in reading difficult Hebrew names;
and from the sympathy with which he enters into their troubles, it
seems clear that he knew them from personal experience.

From its scope the book might be expected to be as large as Vincent's
_Speculum_, but in fact it can be printed in a quarto volume. It was
not intended to compete with the great commentaries of Peter the
Lombard, or Nicholas Lyra, or Hugh of St. Victor, which fill many
folios. It was to be within reach of the poor parish priest, and so
must not be costly. But the surprising part of the book is its
triviality. With so little space available, one would have expected to
find nothing admitted that was not important: but the fact is that it
has nothing which is not elementary. There is nothing historical,
nothing theological, only a few simple points of grammar and quantity.
For example, in the story of Deborah, Judges iv, the commentary runs
as follows:

2. Sisara: middle syllable short.

4. Debbora: middle syllable short. Prophetes masc., Prophetis
fem.; meaning, propheta.

10. Accersitis: last syllable but one long; meaning, vocatis.

15. Perterreo, perterres; meaning, in pauorem conuertere.
Active.

17. Cinci (the Kenites): middle syllable long.

15. Desilio, desilis, desilii or desiliui: middle syllable
short in trisyllables in the present; meaning, de aliquo salire
siue descendere festinanter.

21. clauus, masc., claui: meaning, acutum ferrum, malleus,
masc., mallei: meaning, martellus.

tempus, neut.: meaning, pars capitis, for which some people say
timpus.

For Daniel vi, the story of Daniel in the lions' den, the commentary
is even briefer:

6. surripuerunt: meaning, falso suggesserunt. Surripio,
surripis, surrepsi(!): meaning, latenter rapere, subtrahere,
furari.

10. comperisset; meaning, cognouisset. Comperio, comperis,
comperi: fourth conjugation.

20. affatus: meaning, allocutus. From affor, affaris; and
governs the accusative.

We must not exalt ourselves above the author. He is very humble. 'Let
any imperfections in the book', says his preface, 'be attributed to
me: and if there is anything good, let it be thought to have come from
God.' He gave them of his best, explaining away such as he could of
the difficulties which had confronted him. But one can imagine the
disgust of even a moderate scholar if, wishing to study the Bible more
carefully, he could obtain access to nothing better than
Mammotrectus.

Though Erasmus has not much to tell us of his time at Deventer, a
fuller account of the school may be found in the autobiography of John
Butzbach (_c._ 1478-1526), who for the last nineteen years of his life
was Prior of Laach.[12] Indeed, his narrative is so detailed and so
illustrative of the age that it may well detain us here. He was the
son of a weaver in the town of Miltenberg (hence Piemontanus) on the
Maine, above Aschaffenburg. At the age of six he was put to school and
already began to learn Latin; one of his nightly exercises that he
brought home with him being to get by heart a number of Latin words
for vocabulary. After a few years he came into trouble with his master
for laziness and truancy, and received a severe beating; his mother
intervened and got the master dismissed from his post, and Butzbach
was removed from the school.

[12] Butzbach's manuscripts from Laach are now in the
University Library at Bonn, but have never been printed.
I have used a German translation by D.J. Becker, Regensburg,
1869.

An opportunity then offered for him to get a wider education. The son
of a neighbour who had commenced scholar, returned home for a time,
and offered to take Butzbach with him when he went off again to pursue
his courses for his degree. The consent of his parents was obtained;
and the scholar having received a liberal contribution towards
expenses, and Butzbach being equipped with new clothes, the pair set
out together. The boy was now ten, and looked forward hopefully to the
future; but the scholar quickly showed himself in his true colours.
He treated Butzbach as a fag, made him trudge behind carrying the
larger share of their bundles, and when they came to an inn feasted
royally himself off the money given to him for the boy, leaving him to
the charity of the innkeepers. At the end of two months the money was
spent, and they had found no place of settlement. Henceforward
Butzbach was set to beg, going from house to house in the villages
they passed, asking for food; and when this failed to produce enough,
he was required to steal. The scholar treated him shamefully and beat
him often; and as it was a well-known practice for fags, when begging,
to eat up delicacies at once, instead of bringing them in, Butzbach
was sometimes subjected to the regular test, being required to fill
his mouth with water and then spit it out into a basin for his master
to examine whether there were traces of fat.

The scholar's aim was to find some school, having attached to it a
Bursa or hostel, in which they could obtain quarters; apparently he
was not yet qualified for a university. They made their way to
Bamberg, but there was no room for them in the Bursa. So on they went
into Bohemia, where at the town of Kaaden the rector of the school was
able to allot them a room--just a bare, unfurnished chamber, in which
they were permitted to settle. Such teaching as Butzbach received was
spasmodic and ineffectual, and after two years of this bondage he ran
away. For the next five years he was in Bohemia in private service,
longing for home, hating his durance among the heathen, as he called
the Bohemians for following John Hus, but lacking courage to make his
escape from masters who could send horsemen to scour the countryside
for fugitive servants and string them up to trees when caught.
However, at length the opportunity came, and after varying fortunes,
Butzbach made his way home to Miltenberg, to find his father dead and
his mother married again.

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