Renaissance humanism in Northern Europe

scholastic theology

which reigned at the universities. Humanism may be dated from the

Italian humanism was superseded by the papal counter-Reformation

.

However, the Netherlands was influenced by humanism and the Renaissance until arguably roughly 1550.^[1]

Marked features distinguished the new culture north of the

German people

was far from being a slavish imitator. It received an impulse from the South, but made its own path.

Overview

In the North, humanism entered into the service of religious progress. German scholars were less brilliant and elegant, but more serious in their purpose and more exact in their scholarship than their Italian predecessors and contemporaries. In the South, the ancient classics absorbed the attention of the literati. It was not so in the North. There was no consuming passion to render the classics into German as there had been in Italy. Nor did Italian literature, with its often relaxed moral attitude, find imitators in the North.

Anabaptists

.

What was true of the scholarship of Germany was also true of its art. The painters, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), who was born and died at Nuremberg, Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), and for the most part Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543), took little interest in mythology, apart from Cranach's nudes, and were persuaded by the Reformation, though most continued to take commissions for traditional Catholic subjects. Dürer and Holbein had close contacts with leading humanists. Cranach lived in Wittenberg after 1504 and painted portraits of Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon and other leaders of the German Reformation. Holbein made frontispieces and illustrations for Protestant books and painted portraits of Erasmus and Melanchthon.

The Italian roots of humanism in Germany

If any one individual more than another may be designated as the connecting link between the learning of Italy and Germany, it is

Aeneas Sylvius. By his residence at the court of Frederick III and at Basel, as one of the secretaries of the council, he became a well-known character north of the Alps long before he was chosen pope. The mediation, however, was not effected by any single individual. The fame of the Renaissance was carried over the pathways of trade which led from Northern Italy to Augsburg, Nuremberg, Konstanz and other German cities. The visits of Frederick III and the campaigns of Charles VIII and the ascent of the throne of Naples by the princes of Aragon carried Germans, Frenchmen and Spaniards to the greater centres of the peninsula. A constant stream of pilgrims travelled to Rome and the Spanish popes drew to the city throngs of Spaniards. As the fame of Italian culture spread, scholars and artists began to travel to Venice, Florence

and Rome, and caught the inspiration of the new era.

To the Italians, Germany was a land of barbarians. They despised the German people for their rudeness and intemperance in eating and drinking. Aeneas was impressed by the beauty of Vienna, though it was quite small when compared to the greatest Italian cities.^[2] However, he found that the German princes and nobles cared more for horses and dogs than for poets and scholars and loved their wine-cellars better than the muses. Campanus, a witty poet of the papal court, who was sent as legate to the Diet of Regensburg (1471) by Pope Paul II, and afterwards was made a bishop by Pope Pius II, abused Germany for its dirt, cold climate, poverty, sour wine and miserable fare. He lamented his unfortunate nose, which had to smell everything, and praised his ears, which understood nothing. Johannes Santritter, himself being a German living in Italy, admitted that Italy was slightly ahead of Germany in the humanities. However, he also contended that many Italians were jealous of German science and technology, which he considered superior taking the examples of the printing press and the work of the astronomer Regiomontanus.

Such impressions were soon offset by the sound scholarship which arose in Germany and the Netherlands. And, if Italy contributed to Germany an intellectual impulse, Germany sent out to the world the printing press, the most important agent in the history of intellectual culture since the invention of the alphabet.

Universities

Before the first swell of the new movement was felt, the older German universities were already established:

Halle

.

Most of these universities had the four faculties, although the popes were slow to give their assent to the sanction of the theological department, as in the case of Vienna and Rostock, where the charter of the secular prince authorized their establishment. Strong as the religious influences of the age were, the social and moral habits of the students were by no means such as to call for praise. Parents, Luther said, in sending their sons to the universities, were sending them to destruction, and an act of the Leipzig university, dating from the close of the 15th century, stated that students came forth from their homes obedient and pious, but "how they returned, God alone knew", to university archives and library.

In the Netherlands, universities or "Latin schools" spurred on by Renaissance humanists helped the majority of people in the region become more literate than in most other European kingdoms.^[1]

Education

The theological teaching was ruled by the

Asia Minor, and had been previously appointed to a chair in Heidelberg, 1456. He read on Virgil, Jerome, Ovid and other Latin writers. There Agricola studied and there Greek was taught by Nicolas Marschalck

, under whose supervision the first Greek book printed in Germany issued from the press, 1501. There John of Wesel taught. It was Luther's alma mater and, among his professors, he singled out Trutvetter for special mention as the one who directed him to the study of the Scriptures.

Heidelberg, chartered by the elector

Reuchlin. Ingolstadt for a time had Reuchlin as professor and, in 1492, Conrad Celtes was appointed professor of poetry and eloquence

.

In 1474, a chair of poetry was established at Basel. Founded by Pius II, it had among its early teachers two Italians, Finariensis and Publicius.

Zwingli. In 1481, Tübingen had a stipend of oratoria. Here Gabriel Biel taught till very near the close of the century. The year after Biel's death, Heinrich Bebel

was called to lecture on poetry. One of Bebel's distinguished pupils was Philip Melanchthon, who studied and taught in the university, 1512–1518. Reuchlin was called from Ingolstadt to Tübingen, 1521, to teach Hebrew and Greek, but died a few months later.

Leipzig and Cologne remained inaccessible strongholds of scholasticism, till Luther appeared, when Leipzig changed front. The last German university of the

Frederick the Wise and placed under the patronage of the Virgin Mary and St. Augustine

, acquired a worldwide influence through its professors, Luther and Melanchthon. Not till 1518, did it have instruction in Greek, when Melanchthon, soon to be the chief Greek scholar in Germany, was called to one of its chairs at the age of 21. According to Luther, his lecture-room was at once filled brimful, theologians high and low resorting to it.

As seats of the new culture, Nuremberg and

Willibald Pirkheimer

, a patron of learning.

Popular education, during the century before the Reformation, was far more advanced in Germany than in other nations.^[

Brothers of the Common Life had schools at Zwolle, Deventer, 's-Hertogenbosch and Liège in the Low Countries. All the leading towns had schools. The town of Sélestat in Alsace was noted as a classical centre. Here, Thomas Platter found Hans Sapidus teaching, and he regarded it as the best school he had found. In 1494, there were five pedagogues in Wesel

, teaching reading, writing, arithmetic and singing. One Christmas the clergy of the place entertained the pupils, giving them each cloth for a new coat and a piece of money as begun with the 4th class.
Among the noted schoolmasters was
Alexander Hegius, who taught at Deventer for nearly a quarter of a century, till his death in 1498. At the age of 40 he was not ashamed to sit at the feet of Agricola. He made the classics central in education and banished the old text-books. Trebonius, who taught Luther at Eisenach
, belonged to a class of worthy men. The penitential books of the day called upon parents to be diligent in keeping their children off the streets and sending them to school.

Leaders of Northern humanism

Rudolph Agricola by Lucas Cranach the Elder
, ca. 1532

The leading Northern humanists included
Pico della Mirandola
, he was a monk. The inscription on his tomb in Heidelberg stated that he had studied what is taught about God and the true faith of the Saviour in the books of Scripture.

Johannes Trithemius by Tilman Riemenschneider

Another Humanist was
Mutianus Rufus
, in his correspondence, went so far as to declare that Christianity is as old as the world and that Jupiter, Apollo, Ceres and Christ are only different names of the one hidden God.
A name which deserves a high place in the German literature of the last years of the Middle Ages is
Schottenkloster
in Würzburg. He remained there until the end of his life. Prelates and nobles visited him to consult and read the Latin and Greek authors he had collected. These men and others contributed their part to that movement of which Reuchlin and Erasmus were the chief lights and which led to the Protestant Reformation.

References

^
OCLC 52849131
.

^ History of Vienna, Jean-Paul Bled

Sources

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume VI, 1882.

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