German Culture Past and Present | Page 7

Canon or Ecclesiastical
law--consisting of papal decretals on various points which were
founded partially on the Roman or Civil law--a juridical system which
also fully and indeed almost exclusively recognized the individual
holding of property as the basis of civil society (albeit not without a
recognition of social duties on the part of the owner).
Learning was now beginning to differentiate itself from the
ecclesiastical profession, and to become a definite vocation in its
various branches. Crowds of students flocked to the seats of learning,
and, as travelling scholars, earned a precarious living by begging or
"professing" medicine, assisting the illiterate for a small fee, or
working wonders, such as casting horoscopes, or performing
thaumaturgic tricks. The professors of law were now the most
influential members of the Imperial Council and of the various Imperial
Courts. In Central Europe, as elsewhere, notably in France, the civil
lawyers were always on the side of the centralizing power, alike against
the local jurisdictions and against the peasantry.
The effects of the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, and the
consequent dispersion of the accumulated Greek learning of the
Byzantine Empire, had, by the end of the fifteenth century, begun to
show themselves in a notable modification of European culture. The
circle of the seven sciences, the Quadrivium, and the Trivium, in other
words, the mediæval system of learning, began to be antiquated.
Scholastic philosophy, that is to say, the controversy of the Scotists and
the Thomists, was now growing out of date. Plato was extolled at the
expense of Aristotle. Greek, and even Hebrew, was eagerly sought after.
Latin itself was assuming another aspect; the Renaissance Latin is
classical Latin, whilst Mediæval Latin is dog-Latin. The physical
universe now began to be inquired into with a perfectly fresh interest,
but the inquiries were still conducted under the ægis of the old habits of

thought. The universe was still a system of mysterious affinities and
magical powers to the investigator of the Renaissance period, as it had
been before. There was this difference, however; it was now attempted
to systematize the magical theory of the universe. While the common
man held a store of traditional magical beliefs respecting the natural
world, the learned man deduced these beliefs from the Neo-Platonists,
from the Kabbala, from Hermes Trismegistos, and from a variety of
other sources, and attempted to arrange this somewhat heterogeneous
mass of erudite lore into a system of organized thought.
The Humanistic movement, so called, the movement, that is, of revived
classical scholarship, had already begun in Germany before what may
be termed the sturm und drang of the Renaissance proper. Foremost
among the exponents of this older Humanism, which dates from the
middle of the fifteenth century, were Nicholas of Cusa and his disciples,
Rudolph Agricola, Alexander Hegius, and Jacob Wimpheling. But the
new Humanism and the new Renaissance movement generally
throughout Northern Europe centred chiefly in two personalities,
Johannes Reuchlin and Desiderius Erasmus. Reuchlin was the founder
of the new Hebrew learning, which up till then had been exclusively
confined to the synagogue. It was he who unlocked the mysteries of the
Kabbala to the Gentile world. But though it is for his introduction of
Hebrew study that Reuchlin is best known to posterity, yet his services
in the diffusion and popularization of classical culture were enormous.
The dispute of Reuchlin with the ecclesiastical authorities at Cologne
excited literary Germany from end to end. It was the first general
skirmish of the new and the old spirit in Central and Northern Europe.
But the man who was destined to become the personification of the
Humanist movement, us the new learning was called, was Erasmus.
The illegitimate son of the daughter of a Rotterdam burgher, he early
became famous on account of his erudition, in spite of the adverse
circumstances of his youth. Like all the scholars of his time, he passed
rapidly from one country to another, settling finally in Basel, then at the
height of its reputation as a literary and typographical centre. The
whole intellectual movement of the time centres round Erasmus, as is
particularly noticeable in the career of Ulrich von Hutten, dealt with in

the course of this history. As instances of the classicism of the period,
we may note the uniform change of the patronymic into the classical
equivalent, or some classicism supposed to be the equivalent. Thus the
name Erasmus itself was a classicism of his father's name Gerhard, the
German name Muth became Mutianus, Trittheim became Trithemius,
Schwarzerd became Melanchthon, and so on.
We have spoken of the other side of the intellectual movement of the
period. This other side showed itself in mystical attempts at reducing
nature to law in the light of the traditional problems which had been set,
to wit, those of alchemy and