Introduction

INTRODUCTION IN THE LECTURE ROOMS that lined the narrow, crowded streets of the "Latin quarter" of Paris, there evolved during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries an approach to learning that would dominate the intellectual world of northern Eu rope for the next three hundred years. This new method of thought, known to historians as scholasticism, held out the intoxicating possibility that, through reason and the powerful tool of Aristotelian logic, men could resolve the seeming con tradictions between faith and reason, Christian truth and Greek science, and attain insights into the nature of the world, of man, and of God. In these same years, as the teaching masters of Paris gained a corporate identity as the University ofParis, they formally adopted this new intellectual program as the basis oflearning and instruction. Subsequently, these Parisian methods became the model for dozens of universities founded in England, Spain, the Low Countries, and the Holy Roman Empire. As a result, scholasticism-with its veneration of Aristotle, cultivation oflogic, and enthusiasm for disputation and debate-became synonymous with northern European academic life for the remainder of the medieval era. Some two hundred years after the emergence of scholas ticism, another intellectual movement, known as Renaissance humanism, began to evolve in the rich and populous cities of northern Italy. Unlike the scholastics, the disciples of this new cultural movement had scant interest in Aristotelian thought, theological speculation, and sophisticated logical concepts. Spurred by a new appreciation of the classics, these Italian thinkers-in particular Petrarch (1304-1374)-warmed to the ix Introduction - Ciceronian ideal of the studia humanitatis, an approach to learn ing that stressed literary and moral rather than philosophical training. Rhetoric and oratory, with the related disciplines of Latin grammar, poetry, history, and moral philosophy, pro vided the foundation of humanist thought and culture. For the humanists, not logical acuity or the attainment of philo sophical and theological truth, but eloquence and an ability to appreciate the literary heritage of antiquity became the hallmarks of true education and culture. These two intellectual currents, one the creation of the Mid dle Ages and the other of the Renaissance, began to exist side by-side in Germany for the first time during the middle dec ades of the fifteenth century. By then scholasticism had played a role in Germany's intellectual life for better than two cen turies. Since the 1200s, small numbers of Germans had pur sued scholastic studies in foreign universities or their own cathedral and monastic schools. When the first German uni versities were established in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, scholasticism, with its stress on dialectic, meta physics, and speculative thought, dominated their curricula. By the 1450s, however, it was facing a challenge, albeit a weak one at first, from a handful of individuals who viewed the humanist educational program as a superior alternative to existing scholastic practices. During the next seven decades, humanism in Germany steadily gained adherents, until by the 1520s and 1530S, humanist reformers were able to achieve fundamental changes in the goals and methods of university studies. These changes broke the dominance of scholasticism and marked a watershed in Germany's intellectual history. How did these changes come about? What was the nature of the relationship between humanism and scholasticism? To what extent can the intellectual history of pre-Reformation Germany be understood in terms of a "clash" between hu manists and scholastics? Despite more than a century of mon ographs and interpretive studies, these and other related ques tions have never been adequately treated. In fact a survey of X Introduction - the literature leaves the reader with little more than a jumble of confused and contradictory hypotheses. The notion that humanists and scholastics were implacable enemies locked in an unceasing struggle can be traced back to the writings of the humanists themselves. Their works were filled with doleful plaints about unlettered scholastics who mocked, scorned, or ignored their efforts and whose stubborn resistance was overcome only through heroic struggle. This interpretation found its way into many scholarly works when, in the nineteenth century, Germans began to study and write seriously about their past. Influenced by the Burckhardtian conception of the modernity of the Renaissance or perhaps by a commitment to liberalism or nationalism, most nine teenth-century historians depicted the humanists as heralds of the modern world, destined to free the German soul from medieval bondage and scholastic barbarism. An example of such writing was the popular biography ofUlrich van Hutten by David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874), the controversial scholar who stunned the world in 1836 with his Leben]esu. His study of von Hutten, which was republished many times after it first appeared in 1858, portrayed the colorful humanist as Germany's heroic liberator. He was a fighter "for light against darkness, for culture against barbarism, for freedom against despotism, for the fatherland against foreign oppressors."' In the same volumejohannes Reuchlin, the famed Hebrew scholar, was depicted as the individual who "led the human spirit from the oppressiveness of the declining Middle Ages to the freer air of the Renaissance. " 2 Such treatments of humanism and scholasticism also typified most nineteenth-century university histories. A characteristic example is Friedrich W. Kamp schulte's influential study of the University of Erfurt, which, like Strauss's biography ofvon Hutten, was published in 1858. 3 The author's theme was basically one of conflict between ' Ulrich von Hutten (Leipzig: 1871), vi. • Ibid., 239. ' Die Universitiit Er.fort in ihrem Verhiiltnisse zu dem Humanismus und Refor mation, 2 vols. (Trier: 1858). xi Introduction - progressive humanists and backward scholastics; and when the humanists "triumphed" over their enemies in the wake of the Reuchlin affair, the author's jubilation is barely con cealed.4 Of course not all writers accepted the interpretations of Strauss and Kampschulte. In 1885, for example, Friedrich Paulsen (1846-1908) published his widely read history of Ger man pedagogy without portraying the humanists as heralds of enlightenment battling hordes of dull-witted scholastics.s But Paulsen was an exception, and most studies through the 188os were similar in tone: the relationship between humanists and scholastics was described in terms of a "struggle" or "battle"; the treatment of the struggle was favorable to the humanists; and the final chapter of the tale was always the triumph of the humanists and the scattering of their barbarian opponents.6 Rarely, a writer like Dietrich Reichling defended the scholastics and deplored what he called "the poisonous hate and infernal evil" of the humanists; but he too could only see humanist-scholastic relations in terms of conflict and op position.7 Reactions against such interpretations began in the I 89os, and are best seen in the scholarly work of the Silesian historian, Gustav Bauch (1848-1924). Bauch was among the first to realize that to understand the nature of humanist-scholastic relations it was necessary to go beyond the humanists' em- . passioned rhetoric. Judgments could be reached only after • Other older university histories that followed similar interpretive lines were Johann Friedrich Hautz, Geschichte der Universitiit Heidelberg, 2 vols. (Mannheim: 1862, 1864);johann Kosegarten, Geschichte der Universitiit Greifs wald, 2 vols. (Greifswald: 1856, 1857); Heinrich Schreiber, Geschichte der Albert-Ludwigs-Universitiit zu Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 3 vols. (Freiburg-im-Breis gau: 1868). s Geschichte des gelehrten Untterrichts auf den deutschen Schulen und Universi tiiten, 2 vols. (Leipzig: r8ss)- • Among the many additional works that could be cited, the following must suffice: Heinrich Kammel, "Die Universitat Koln in ihrem Kampfe gegen den aufstrebenden Humanismus," ]ahrbucher for Philologie und Piida gogik, 2 (1875), 401-17; Carl Krause, Helius Eobanus Hessus (Gotha: 1879). 1 Ortwin Gratius, sein Leben und Wirken (Heiligenstadt: 1884). xii Introduction - examing the experience of humanists, both famous and ob scure, within the institutional framework of the universities themselves. Mounting this investigation more or less single handedly, this extraordinary researcher produced studies on the reception of humanism at many universities, including Erfurt, Wittenberg, lngolstadt, Leipzig, Cracow, Frankfurt an der Oder, and Vienna. His works were models of scholarly thoroughness but were so crammed with information that the author often lost sight of broader interpretive issues. When he did draw general conclusions, his viewpoint differed mark edly from those of his scholarly predecessors. 8 Bauch found, to be sure, examples of friction between humanists and scho lastics, but it was not the titanic struggle depicted by Strauss or Kampschulte; nor was the end of the story a clear-cut humanist victory. His theme was rather one of mutual com promise and conciliation. Scholastics gradually overcame their opposition to classical studies and conceded rhetoric and po etry a place in the university curriculum; for their part, hu manists abandoned their "Italian superficialities" and dedi cated themselves to reforming scholasticism

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