THIS chapter will focus particularly on the roles attributed to the vernacular and Latin in the spreading of the Reformation message in different contexts and also on the Latin training of some of the main reformers such as Martin Luther (1483–1546), Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), John Calvin (1509–1564), and Théodore de Bèze (1519–1605). Special attention will be paid to the use of Latin textbooks, ancient and contemporary, in Protestant schools and universities; to the different methods of teaching Latin to Protestant youth; and to the coexistence of Latin with the vernacular. The final part of the chapter will concern itself with the education system put into operation by the Zurich reformer Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575). Bullinger does not focus his attention on the status of Latin, but his system tells us a lot about the importance and the nature of the Latin recommended, given that it can be examined in the light of the Latin training he received and the type of Latin training he passed on during his early years as head of the cloister school at Kappel near Zurich from 1523 onwards.
There have been no studies of the specific issue of whether Protestantism—be it Lutheran, Zwinglian, or Calvinist—contributed to the renewal and reshaping of Latin in the early modern era, tending instead to favor Hebrew and Greek as the authentic biblical languages. However, recent work on the Protestant Latin Bible (especially Gordon and McLean 2012) has shown that, along with its vested interest in vernacular Bible translations, Protestantism, especially in its Calvinist manifestation, did much to promote its own Latin Bible translations intended as a replacement of and an improvement upon the Vulgate. The three most representative examples are: Robert Estienne’s (1503–1559) Latin Bible of 1557; Théodore de Bèze’s Greek-Latin New Testament, corrected and supplemented with new annotations over its five editions in 1557 (Latin only, published with Estienne’s Latin Bible), 1565, 1582, 1588, and 1598 (the latter four all in Greek and Latin; Backus 1980, 1–8); and Immanuel Tremellius’s (1510–1580) and Franciscus Junius’s (1545–1602) Old Testament, published between 1575 and 1579 and reprinted in 1580 (Austin 2007). De Bèze, significantly, juxtaposed his own Latin translation of the New Testament with the Vulgate, showing the exact nature of his corrections. De Bèze attributed the Vulgate to a vetus interpres (“ancient translator”), not to Jerome, as he explained in his preface to Estienne’s 1557 Bible. He did not believe that Jerome was actually the Latin translator of the Vulgate, because it was full of errors, too far removed from the Greek, and unworthy of Jerome, who would never have produced such a poor piece of scholarship (de Bèze 1962, 226):
Nam quod istam de qua agimus Hieronymo tribuitis cum summa illius infamia coniunctum esse res ipsa clamat, quia si ita esset, necesse est fateamur Hieronymum plurima eaque manifesta errata non animadvertisse.
But your attribution of this translation to Jerome is pure insult to him because, if this is so, we have to say that necessarily Jerome failed to notice so many obvious errors.
De Bèze’s own Latin version relies mainly on Erasmus’s; departures from Erasmus and the Vulgate are indicated and justified in marginal annotations. Naturally, de Bèze, in common with many other early modern scholars, was unaware that the Greek text on which the Vulgate rested was in many ways better founded than his own Byzantine or “Eastern” text, the more recent New Testament text found in the majority of the manuscripts. Although de Bèze owned two witnesses to the earlier “Western” text, one comprising the Gospels and Acts (D or Codex Bezae), and the other the Epistles (D* or the Codex Claromontanus), he only used these minimally when establishing his own text (Backus 1980, 1–15; Krans 2006, 227–36). His Erasmian-style Latin translation was closer to classical Latin and more elegant, but not more accurate, than the Vulgate. Acts 1.3 in the 1565 Greek-Latin version of the New Testament is just one example of de Bèze’s translation (de Bèze 1565, 2):
Quibus etiam seipsum postquam ipse passus fuit repraesentarat vivum multis indubitatis signis per dies quadraginta conspectus ab eis et dicens quae ad regnum Dei spectant.
And after he passed away, he manifested himself to them as alive through many sure signs, and he was seen by them for forty days and spoke of things concerning the Kingdom of God.
Compare the simpler and less classical Latin of the Vulgate:
Quibus et praebuit seipsum vivum post passionem suam in multis argumentis, per dies quadraginta apparens eis et loquens de regno Dei.
After his Passion he presented himself to them showing by many proofs that he was alive, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking about the Kingdom of God.
Its greater concern with translating the Bible into Latin is one of the chief hallmarks of “Reformed” Protestantism, and a feature that distinguishes it from Lutheranism, but it is not the only one. This chapter will now focus on other perhaps slightly less well-known aspects of Protestantism and Neo-Latin.
In Lutheran territories, Luther’s German translation of the entire Bible (1521–1534) seems to have acted as a sign to those communities that no further Latin versions were required, and commanded wide attention from the start. Luther had received basic Latin training at the local schools in Mansfeld, then in Magdeburg, and finally at Eisenach. The three schools focused on the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic); in other words, the standard medieval curriculum, which would have involved grammar based on that of Donatus, Aristotelian logic, and Boethian rhetoric, which was subordinated to logic. While Luther obviously mastered Latin, there was nothing in his early education to qualify him as a Latin innovator. However, as has been pointed out more recently by Carl P. E. Springer among others, Luther was bilingual in Latin and German and switched from one to the other in his Tischreden (Table Talks) and other writings (Springer 2007). His most outstanding contributions to the Latin language, however, were satirical verse compositions against his religious opponents, such as the verses against Simon Lemnius (1511–1550), the Latin poet of Swiss origin, sacked by Luther from his teaching post at the University of Wittenberg for dedicating his first published collection of poetry to the Roman Catholic Albrecht of Brandenburg, and the author of the famous Monarchopornomachia (The Battle of Monks and Whores, 1539), a swingeing verse satire of Luther’s, his disciples’, and their wives’ personal morality which appeared about a year after his sacking. Luther’s verses against Melanchthon’s one-time disciple and student are scatological but not without wit. The poem is entitled Dysenteria Martini Lutheri in merdipoetam Lemchen (Martin Luther’s Flux of Dysentery Against the Excremental Poet Lemnius): its impact depends on its varied use of the Latin term merda (“excrement”), as the following example amply demonstrates (Luther 1883–2009, 2.4: 89–90):
Quam bene conveniunt tibi res et carmina, Lemchen!
Merda tibi res est, carmina merda tibi.
Dignus erat Lemchen merdosus carmine merdae,
Nam vatem merdae nil nisi merda decet.
Infelix princeps, quem laudas carmine merdae!
Merdosum merda quem facis ipse tua.
Ventre urges merdam, vellesque cacare libenter.
Lemnius, how well what you do fits in with your verses. / What you do is excrement and so are the poems you write. / I found you worthy, O excremental Lemnius, of an excremental poem, / As only excrement is suitable for the singer of excrement. / Unfortunate is the prince whom you praise with your excremental song. / The excrement you fabricate makes him defecate. / You force your belly to spout excrement and you would like to defecate it freely.
Contrary to appearances, Luther was also capable of writing lyrical poetry in Latin, and we should distinguish here between Luther’s sacred and profane poetry. Self-evidently, he thought that nothing to do with the divinity should serve as the object of mockery, as shown by his verses from the first-person perspective of the Teichel spring in Wittenberg, composed ca. 1544 (Luther 1883–2009, 1.35:605):
Qui mare, qui fontes, qui flumina cuncta creavit,
Me quoque iussit aquae particulam esse suae.
Corpore sum parvo, scatebris exilibus ortus,
Magni me sed opus glorior esse Dei.
He who created all rivers and their sources / Also commanded me to be small part of his waters. / My body is small; I take my beginnings from a thin gush, / But I glory in being the work of the great God.
The quatrain on the death of his daughter Magdalena written in 1542 is also to be placed in the category of sacred poetry (Luther 1883–2009, 2.5:185–86):
Dormio cum sanctis hic Magdalena, Lutheri
Filia et hoc strato tecta quiesco meo.
Filia mortis eram, peccati semine nata,
Sanguine sed vivo, Christe, redempta tuo.
I Magdalena the daughter of Luther am asleep here / And rest in peace covered with this thin layer over me. / I was the daughter of death, born from the seed of sin, / But O Christ I live again, redeemed by your blood.
What emerges quite clearly, however, is that Luther did not think that Latin should count as the language most suitable for the text of the Bible, even though it was perfectly suitable for biblical commentaries and theological treatises, as well as for poetry, obscene or sacred.
Be that as it may, it was not Luther but his colleague Philipp Melanchthon whose predilection for poetry and drama primed the pump for the outpouring of late humanist literature in Germany (1540–1620; Fleischer 1989). The appropriation of Neo-Latin for literary purposes by German Reformation circles completed the translation of the empire of the Neo-Latin language from Italy to Germany, which had been started by Konrad Celtis, who delivered in 1492 a famous speech to students at Ingolstadt in which he called on Germans to rival Italians in learning and letters. On stage and in the battle of the books, it put the Reformation on an equal footing with, and turned the tables on, Rome. At the same time, Melanchthon’s humanism provided a key to scripture, replacing the one in the hand of the papacy. The rhetorical tradition united the Protestant poet, preacher, and playwright in a cultural communication system without which the Reformation would have remained a cry in the wilderness (Fleischer 1989). What Fleischer does not say in his article but what is generally an acknowledged fact is that Melanchthon was known as the “teacher of Germany” (praeceptor Germaniae) and that he had a major impact on German Protestant education (Walter 1999; Maag 1999; Seigel 1968; and, most influentially, Hartfelder 1889).
Melanchthon wrote numerous treatises dealing with education and learning in which he touched on the value of ancient letters. Here I shall examine two of them: namely, the lecture De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis (On Improving the Studies of Young People) delivered in 1518 (Melanchthon 1843, 15–25) and the oration In laudem novae scholae (In Praise of the New School) delivered in 1526 (Melanchthon 1843, 106–111). In the former, he outlines his views on literature as dealing with things that pertain to the knowledge of nature and also to the forming of manners; literature, moreover, teaches one to evaluate morals according to the correct criteria, since reading the writings of other people helps one to understand what humans are like. Melanchthon explicitly distinguishes the study of humanities (artes) from the study of God (theologia) while affirming that the two are inseparable, since reading ancient literature correctly and getting to the sources of Christian civilization leads inevitably to piety and understanding of Christ’s message: Atque cum animos ad fontes contulerimus, Christum sapere incipiemus (“When we turn our minds to the sources, we shall begin to taste Christ”; Melanchthon 1843, 23). At the same time, he warns his students not to contaminate the sacred with alien literature, referring to Titus 2.7–8 where Paul orders Christians to have steadfast faith and not to contaminate Christian with pagan writings. In fact, according to Melanchthon, one of the medieval church’s main lapses was that it failed to distinguish between the profane and the holy, between Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology. The works of God cannot be compared with the works of man, he argues, for “the perfume of the ointments of the Lord is far sweeter than the aroma of human disciplines” (Melanchthon 1843, 23). While the mouths of men speak lies continually, all truth is from God. Nevertheless, since the “sacred things are the most powerful for the mind, work and care are necessary,” one must be educated in order to understand God’s word and his will in our lives. Therefore, duce Spiritu comite artium nostrarum cultu ad sacra venire licet (“with the Spirit as leader, and the cultivation of the arts as an ally, we may approach things sacred”; Melanchthon 1843, 23). In keeping with this principle, Melanchthon proposes to his students that he begin lecturing on Homer’s epic poetry and Paul’s letter to Titus. The role of Latin here is crucial, as it is only by speaking good, classically founded Latin that a human can show himself to be truly educated.
The address In laudem novae scholae was delivered upon the opening of a new school in Nuremberg in 1526. The city’s civic leaders and merchants had responded to Luther’s call to establish schools, and Melanchthon begins his speech by complimenting them on their action. In Praise of the New School deals with the role of classical education in preparing good citizens. In the well-constituted state, says Melanchthon, “the first task for schools is to teach youth, for they are the seedbed of the city” (Melanchthon 1843, 109). A liberal education is crucial for this task, as without it “there could be no good men, no admiration of virtue, no knowledge of what is honest, no harmonious agreements concerning honest duties, no sense at all of humanity” (Melanchthon 1843, 107). As in his inaugural lecture at Wittenberg, so here, too, Melanchthon alerts his audience to the value of studying history, literature, and philosophy for the cultivation of good citizens. Melanchthon encourages parents to look beyond the obvious but simple goal of getting a job. Virtuous and noble citizens, who seek to promote the well-being of the temporal realm in which they live, are those who have studied the subjects that teach them about social life. Thus Melanchthon asks how anyone can be a good civic leader if he has never read that literature in which is contained all thought on the ruling of cities. Going beyond the practical advantages granted by schooling, Melanchthon instructs parents to encourage their children to learn about virtues, ideas, and principles. Children who will best contribute to the state are those who understand the higher goals of their vocations.
Naturally, a very considerable part of Melanchthon’s educational efforts was therefore devoted to writing textbooks of Latin grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, all of which were a huge success and went through several editions in the author’s lifetime and thereafter. They also influenced curricula in new Protestant academies (providing university-level education) such as Strasbourg and, somewhat later, Geneva. As regards his Latin grammar, it was intended for beginners and, like his other textbooks, underwent very numerous editions in his lifetime, the most authoritative being the Basel edition published by Oporinus in 1553. Melanchthon defines grammar as the science of speaking and writing correctly, as it teaches not just the parts of speech but also their genders, tenses, and inflections. He goes out of his way to make the explanations as simple as possible, often resorting to verse mnemonics, such as might also help Latin beginners nowadays. Here is just one example, a hexameter intended to help memorize the genders of third declension nouns ending in –is in the nominative and the genitive: Mascula sunt panis, penis, crinis, cinis, ignis (“The following are masculine: bread, penis, hair, ash, fire”; Melanchthon 1553, 54). Grammar is intended to give children a sure way of avoiding these and similar errors, and in Melanchthon’s view, it constitutes the foundation of all the other arts. It is worth noting here that Melanchthon, following the model of Cicero, establishes close links between rhetoric and dialectic, which share the common foundation of Latin. As he put it, in his Elementa rhetorices (Elements of Rhetoric, 1531), Tanta est dialecticae et rhetoricae cognatio vix ut discrimen deprehendi possit (“Dialectic and rhetoric are so closely related that there is hardly any difference between them”; Melanchthon 1546, 10). Some, he goes on to say, are of the opinion that dialectic “explains things as they are” (res nudas proponit) whereas rhetoric adds to this eloquence “as a sort of dress” (quasi vestitum). Melanchthon is not fundamentally opposed to this view, but he prefers to consider rhetoric as a separate study, that of eloquence. However, granted that rhetoric concerns all realms of learning and is not just limited to law or similar matters, it cannot be separated from dialectic completely, the latter being in his view, the art of teaching (ars docendi). Referring to Cicero’s example, he distinguishes the two disciplines as that of teaching (dialectic) and that of moving and compelling one’s audience or interlocutors to a particular course of action (rhetoric). He gives the example of penance. When we want to teach someone what penance is, we use the definitions, propositions that are the staple of Aristotelian dialectic, such as predicables, categories, and so on. When we want to move someone to repentance, rhetoric is the appropriate tool, whether it be as an addition to dialectic or not (Melanchthon 1546, 10–11). In short, Melanchthon, although not the first writer to do so, was nonetheless the first Protestant writer who broke with the medieval tradition of Latin as learned language and the language of logic. He linked grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, thus moving reasoning from its medieval strictly formal mode towards the mode of living communication in the Latin that closely approximated the classical model and broke with medieval Latin neologisms.
This method of reasoning, although it could be traced back to Cicero, found its clearest expression in Rudolphus Agricola (1444–1485) and in his textbook De inventione dialectica (On Dialectical Invention, 1479; Agricola 1997; Akkerman and Vanderjagt 1997). Indeed, Melanchthon recommends Agricola often in his writings, although he separates dialectic more clearly from rhetoric than his model did. As is well known, Agricola’s De inventione dialectica, one of the most influential, if not the most influential, humanist manual of the fifteenth century, assimilated the art of dialectic to that of rhetoric (Agricola 1992). Argumentation for Agricola focused, not on truth or on definitions, predicables, categories, and so on, but on what might be said with reasonable probability (Nauta 2012, 190–92). Accordingly, Agricola focused on Aristotle’s Topics (rather than on the Organon, the name given to Aristotle’s six works on logic), and on Cicero, but also on the writings of classical historians, poets, and orators. Thus, for Agricola, dialectic was an open field; he considered it the art of finding whatever can be said with any degree of probability on any subject. Melanchthon’s distinction was clearer, as we saw, in that he identified dialectic as the part of linguistic communication that dealt with definitions and explanations, while rhetoric appealed more directly to human feelings. Even so, both Agricola and Melanchthon, with their prioritizing of the Topics over the Organon, found themselves at the antipodes of the Aristotelian and Stoic models as described by Cicero in his Topica 6. They followed Cicero in rejecting the Stoic model of giving dialectic a more important role than rhetoric, choosing instead to link the two disciplines. Melanchthon was the first to give this model and its approach to Latin as living language of learned communication a Protestant identity.
Although the Melanchthonian paradigm did also exercise an influence on Calvinist territories, and although Melanchthon was much quoted as a Christian pedagogue and Latinist, there is not much evidence that his textbooks were necessarily standard at all educational institutions. Certain features of Calvinist education were particular to its conditions, circumstances, and the public it was trying to gain. Melanchthon certainly inspired Johannes Sturm (1507–1589), the founder of the Strasbourg gymnasium and Academy (Strasbourg University from 1621; Arnold 2009), and Sturm in turn inspired Calvin and his organization of school and university education in Geneva. However, all three educators had their own preoccupations as well. Like Melanchthon, Sturm, for his part, maintained that the medieval educational model was defective in several respects, but he demarcated himself from Melanchthon by his added criticism that the medieval system did not divide pupils according to age groups and degrees of knowledge already acquired. We can read this criticism in the educational Prospectus (Viewpoint) of Claude Baduel (d. 1561), Sturm’s colleague, the founder of the school and Academy at Nîmes in 1540, who became in 1555 a minister and subsequently professor of mathematics and philosophy at Geneva (Borgeaud 1900, 26). In collaboration with Baduel, Sturm put a new model into operation and founded the modern secondary school system with linguistic training as its priority. Sturm thought that Latin should be the language of learning and instruction, as he said in his discourse on visiting the school of Lauingen in 1564 (Sturm 1995, 246):
We want youth—all of them, including those in the lowest grades—to have Latin conversations. We do not want teachers speaking to them in their native tongue, nor will it be necessary. … When boys enter school, when they play, when they walk together, when they are on the way to school, their language should be Latin or Greek. Let no one come here if he is going impudently to stray in this matter.
As regards Calvin, he self-consciously copied Sturm, incorporating some elements of Baduel’s pedagogy, and adding to these an innovation: following his own Latin teacher, Maturin Cordier (1479?–1564), Calvin considered that more attention should be paid to teaching Latin as a second language after the vernacular. Sturm’s views notwithstanding, for Calvin the relationship between Latin and the vernacular was not to be taken for granted, and the place of Latin as the intellectually superior language was no longer guaranteed. This is no doubt why Baduel differs from Sturm in that he actually proposes a specific curriculum for the learning of Latin as a second language for his Academy of Nîmes, which was strongly oriented towards secondary education. However, some teachers went further, most notably Maturin Cordier, teacher of Latin at the Collège de la Marche in Paris around 1523, where he numbered John Calvin among his pupils. Converted to the Reformation by the humanist printer Robert Estienne, Cordier fled from France around 1536–1537 and found refuge in Geneva, where Calvin, together with the French reformer Guillaume Farel (1489–1565), was in the process of putting his Reformation program into practice. Encountering strong opposition, the two reformers were banished from the city in 1538, and Cordier left at the same time, following Farel to Neuchâtel. In 1545 he accepted the offer to direct the recently founded Protestant college in Lausanne (which offered secondary- rather than the university-level education found at the academies). He remained there until 1559, retiring from the headmastership in 1557. In 1559, the Bernese authorities dismantled both sections of the Lausanne Academy, and Calvin took this opportunity to recall Cordier and several other teachers to Geneva (Le Coultre 1926; Crousaz 2012). It is now well known that Cordier was much concerned not just with the correct method of teaching Latin—which consisted in taking the pupil’s mistakes as a point of departure and gradually guiding him to write pure classical Latin—but also with the fact that Latin sentences constructed by beginners should follow the grammatical structure of correct French. In the section on Latin proverbs in his Principia Latine loquendi et scribendi (Rules of Speaking and Writing Latin, 1557), Cordier frequently gives the French equivalents as well as literal translations of the Latin; for example, the proverb Tu cantas ante festum is annotated both by the literal tu chantes devant la feste (“you are singing [prematurely] before the beginning of the celebration”) and by the more idiomatic Tu cries noel devant qu’il soit venu (“you are shouting ‘it is Christmas’ before it has come”). Cordier’s Colloques en faveur des enfans qui vont à l’escole (Dialogues for the Benefit of Schoolchildren), initially composed in Latin (1564), was printed as a bilingual French–Latin edition in 1598 in Geneva. Given this edition’s simplicity, reliance on common classical vocabulary, and Christian moral message, which its author managed to combine successfully with as many quotations and maxims as possible from non-Christian authors of antiquity (Cottret 1995, 26–29), it is not surprising that it was used as a Latin textbook in schools in French-speaking Switzerland until the nineteenth century (Crousaz 2012, 535). Cordier indeed considered that Latin should be taught as if it were a living language, and since his Colloquia (Conversations) were organized in ascending grades of difficulty, this made them accessible to students of all levels, as illustrated by the posthumous bilingual edition. In short, whatever we may think of his attempt at reforming the study of Latin, Cordier differed fundamentally from Melanchthon and Sturm in that he tried self-consciously to adapt Latin to contemporary French conversation instead of just assuming that it ought to become his students’ first language.
Calvin put Cordier and Baduel’s precepts into practice for the first time in 1541, when he was recalled from exile in Strasbourg to become the city’s undisputed religious leader and submitted to the Council his projected church ordinances. In the paragraph devoted to the doctors “whom our Lord has instituted to govern his church,” he pointed out that Geneva should establish a school or schools whose task it was to oversee and inculcate a solid education based on Christian principles. Granting that a knowledge of the Bible and theology is the most important acquisition in the realm of knowledge, Calvin thought nonetheless that a good grounding in the humanities was indispensable to all future theologians and ministers, which is why he wanted to found both a secondary school and a (university-level) theological Academy in Geneva on the model of Strasbourg and, to some extent, of Lausanne, intended not only for theologians but also for the future governing classes. Calvin’s project was ready by 1541 but would not be fully implemented until 1559. The curriculum of the secondary school was very similar to Strasbourg’s but was also inspired by Baduel’s and Cordier’s methodology of teaching Latin in conjunction with Christian morals. The youngest children in the seventh grade began by learning to read and write Latin and French; the sixth-graders learned the basis of Latin declension and conjugation; the following year, they were instructed in Latin syntax with Virgil’s Eclogues as the textbook. The fourth-graders learned the refinements of syntax with the aid of the shortest and the simplest of Cicero’s letters, as well as the art of translating into Latin and versification using Ovid’s elegies as models. The fourth-graders also began to learn Greek which they were supposed to have mastered well enough by the following year to devote that to stylistic exercises in Greek and Latin. The two final years were devoted to the study of Greek and Latin authors and to the study of dialectic, where Cicero’s Paradoxes and his speeches served as the set texts. Interestingly, students at this stage were expressly discouraged from learning rhetoric, a feature that distinguished the Genevan from the Strasbourg and the Melanchthonian paradigms (Borgeaud 1900, 28–38).
The Zurich reformer Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) did not give any indication of how Latin should be taught in his 1527 Studiorum ratio (How to Study; Bullinger 1987). However, his Diary does provide us with detailed information on how he learned Latin (Bullinger [1904] 1985). Moreover, as we shall see, his pedagogical activities at the Kappel school show us how he taught Latin and how he combined Latin and the vernacular.
In his Von warer und falscher leer (Of True and False Learning, 1527) Bullinger openly expresses his approval of Greek and Latin philologists, starting with Manuel Chrysoloras (ca. 1355–1415), the author of the first Greek grammar published in Western Europe, and moving on to Cardinal Bessarion and Theodorus Gaza, who, in his view, took up the task of renewing Greek studies in the same way that Lorenzo Valla, Niccolò Perotti, Ermolao Barbaro, Angelo Poliziano, and Filippo Beroaldo renewed the study of Latin. Bullinger has particular praise to spare for Valla’s biblical endeavors, exaggerating vastly when he states that Valla was “the first after Jerome” to have translated the New Testament from Greek into Latin. Bullinger concludes that this was a clear sign from God that he had renewed the study of languages so that “his holy word would at last be well understood” (Staedtke 1962, 16–30 and 31). In the same work, Bullinger is more matter-of-fact about Erasmus (cited according to Staedke 1962, 34–35):
The very learned Erasmus has, with incredible industry in both languages, Latin and Greek, treated the New Testament with particular rigor and fidelity. He was the first to translate it after Valla and Lefèvre d’Étaples. He drove, politely but with great force, barbarism, sophistry and scholasticism out of theology and led it back to the languages and the ancient Fathers. He also made their writings available to us in an elegant form, as did the very learned Beatus Rhenanus after him. It is therefore fitting that we should acknowledge very openly our gratitude to Erasmus for having been of great help to us and for his constancy and labors. However, we should thank God first from whom we have everything that we possess and whom we would no doubt make very angry if we spoke ill of the highly deserving Erasmus. May God preserve him for as long as he needs him.
This passage echoes the mechanics of Bullinger’s own conversion after he abandoned the scholastics in favor of the church fathers and the Bible. However, more importantly, it shows us why the reformer erected the myth of Renaissance humanism, and therefore, implicitly, of its Latin, as the forerunner of the Reformation. In his view, the rediscovery of the ancient languages led to the emergence of literary criticism, which in turn permitted the revision of the biblical text, new translations, and a renewal of interest in the Fathers whose works, once available, showed up the lacunae in scholastic collections of patristic texts.
Despite his respect for the Italian education system, Bullinger never studied there himself. His own early education was based on grammar and Latin literature and could be considered humanist only insofar as a relatively small part of it was given over to the study of dialectic, but it differed from the humanist approach in including only a little Greek and no rhetoric. According to his Diary (started in 1541, and ended shortly before his death), he attended the Latin school in Emmerich between 1516 and 1519, which was under the influence of the German humanist Alexander Hegius of Deventer (ca. 1440–1498). Bullinger studied Latin grammar and literature: he mentions Donatus and Aldo Manuzio’s grammars, and, as set reading, singles out selections from Pliny’s, Cicero’s, and Jerome’s letters, as well as poems by Virgil, Horace, and Mantuan (1447–1516). The daily program included many grammatical exercises and much parsing; pupils were expected to speak Latin daily (Perpetuo loquendum Latine), to compose one Latin letter per week (Singulis vero hebdomadis singulae formandae erant epistolae); and Bullinger remembers the discipline as being severe (Disciplina quoque adhibebatur severa; Bullinger [1904] 1985, 2–3). His teachers were all impregnated by the spirit of Northern humanism filtered through the modern devotion (devotio moderna), which went back to Hegius, Murmellius, and others (Bullinger [1904] 1985, 3).
In other words, Bullinger’s earliest education was not very different from that received by Erasmus at Deventer some twenty years earlier. However, it did not correspond to the ideal of humanist education as Erasmus conceived of it in De recta pronuntiatione (On Correct Pronunciation, 1528) and De pueris instituendis (On Education for Boys, 1529). As we know, Erasmus was against severe discipline, and advocated a wide curriculum for even the youngest schoolchildren, who were to acquire a thorough knowledge of Greek and Latin and rhetoric, the rudiments of dialectic, a thorough knowledge of geography, and a smattering of arithmetic, music, astrology, and medicine (Chomarat 1981, 1, 162–63). They were to be initiated, namely, in the seven liberal arts, geometry constituting the sole exception. This broad-based system was much more reminiscent of the Italian curriculum than the education Bullinger received (Grendler 1989).
After enrolling at the University of Cologne in 1519, the future reformer joined the Bursa Montis (Thomist college) where he was plunged into the medieval system in the full sense of the word. Indeed, judging by the Diary entry for July 8, 1519, he exclusively studied the logical works of Peter of Spain and some Aristotle (Petri Hispani tractatus, Parva logicalia … Aristotelica quaedam), as well as the textbook written by the college masters, Copulata omnium tractatuum parvarum logicalium Petri Hispani tribus adiectis modernorum tractatibus (The Tying-Together of All the Short Treatises of Peter of Spain on Logic with Three Treatises by Modern Authors, 1498; Bullinger [1904] 1985, 4). However, scholastic logic was not the sole object of academic attention at Cologne. It was only at this point that Bullinger turned to what he calls humaniora studia, which included lectures on Erasmus’s De copia (On Copiousness), Agricola’s De inventione dialectica, Cicero, Virgil, Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, an introduction to Greek literature, and so on. At the same time, he read Quintilian, Pliny, Homer, and various writings of Erasmus for himself, and began composing letters, speeches, dialogues, and what he calls fictas narrationes (“fictional narratives”). Joachim Staedtke has reconstructed Bullinger’s early attempts at reading and writing Latin, noting among other topics his interest in Prudentius and his own versified harmony of the Gospel accounts of the Passion, entitled Passio domini nostri Jesu Christi (The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ; Staedtke 1962, 261–92; Bullinger [1904] 1985, 7–10; Backus 2007).
In other words, Bullinger’s studia humanitatis were filtered largely through German humanists and through Erasmus’s works. He never produced any classical editions or commentaries worth a mention; his literary compositions never came to much; and the study of rhetoric never played much of a part in his education. However, there is no doubt that he was strongly influenced by the humanist method of reading, and that after his unhappy encounter with the scholastic methods of the Bursa Montis, he opted to study original works in their entirety and to analyze their language and style. Moreover, since turning to the studia humanitatis exposed him to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans alongside pagan literature, he would have seen how reading scripture could also benefit from humanist methods of reading classical authors. As he says in the Studiorum ratio in 1527/8 (Bullinger 1987, 58):
These studies [of profane letters] lead to the study of sacred letters, as is known to all those who have ever dealt with the holy scripture. … They also make men wise as they can seek sage counsel in them. This wisdom could be observed in the past in the Roman Senate, which assembled men that were extremely learned and very wise such as Cicero, Cato, Caesar, Portius, and others. The Senate did nothing rash, nothing it could be ashamed of, nothing imprudent or regrettable. Indeed these studies make you so wise that practically no aspect of knowledge in human affairs is anything but most familiar to you. They improve morals, they plant honesty and a love of what is good. They give an aversion to what is bad. They also make your household pleasant and charming. That is why they are called humanities and fine literature (humanae et bonae litterae).
Beyond the usefulness of profane studies for sacred letters, Bullinger makes the point that bonae litterae serve the purpose of making us into humans and inculcating the right values. In his view, we can only study scripture if we are good human beings, as he wrote in the Studiorum ratio in the chapter devoted to sacred letters (Bullinger 1987, 58):
Those who practice the art of oratory, require that the orator be a good man as it is unseemly that such an honest skill resides in a wicked and dishonest heart. It is therefore all the more appropriate that we require from the candidates in holy scripture a spirit of devotion to God, a mind clear of all dirt, and morals which are exempt from all impurity.
These qualities, which all theology candidates must possess, are acquired via studying profane letters, which thus constitutes an integral part of becoming a true Christian. In his emphasis on man’s humanity, which he sees as essential to his handling of matters divine, Bullinger, like Melanchthon, appeals directly to the humanist ethical model without emitting the caveats articulated by Maturin Cordier on the differences between pagan and Christian morality.
Bullinger’s method for teaching Latin was full-fledged by the time he was nineteen years old and reached Kappel in January 1523. He did not abandon profane for sacred letters at that stage, but the Kappel program instead shows that he saw the two disciplines as mutually complementary. His elementary curriculum at Kappel has only Donatus’s Grammar in common with the one he had followed as a schoolboy at Emmerich. Bullinger replaced the authors he had studied with Cato’s distichs, a few books of the Aeneid, and several works by Erasmus. The latter included De constructione octo partium orationis (Of the Construction of the Eight Parts of Discourse, 1513) written by William Lily for St. Paul’s School at John Colet’s request, then revised by Erasmus, a manual of syntax known for its simplicity and for incorporating humanist principles into the basic rules of syntax elaborated by the ancient grammarians Priscian and Diomedes. Its chief feature was its anti-Aristotelianism: by according greater importance to the verb than to the noun in a Latin sentence, it weakened the central position of the concept of substance (Bullinger [1904] 1985, 7; Chomarat 1981, 1:267–90). Bullinger also used Erasmus’s Colloquies, and his De copia. By replacing traditional textbooks and authors with humanist material, Bullinger simplified the task of learning Latin and made it more agreeable, fully in keeping with humanist principles (Bullinger [1904] 1985, 7–10; Bullinger 1991).
Of all the reformers we have examined, Bullinger shows the clearest evidence of Erasmus’s direct influence, which did not stop him from lecturing in the vernacular on the Bible, as his Kappel writings show (Bullinger [1904] 1985, 10). Although he did inevitably have recourse to Melanchthon’s theological writings, he does not seem to have been overtly influenced by the Wittenberger’s grammatical, dialectical, and rhetorical literary works, although he shared Melanchthon’s respect for antiquity as a source of moral values.
It is not easy to draw any general conclusions about Protestantism’s input into and dependence on Neo-Latin. As I have argued, it was Melanchthon who first gave a Protestant identity to what was basically Ciceronian Latin adapted to contemporary circumstances, and to Agricola’s model of reasoning. Melanchthon’s influence, while wide, was not universal; we have seen that it bypassed Zurich, where Bullinger seems to have preferred to draw directly on Erasmus’s Latin while retaining respect for Melanchthon’s theological writings and sharing his high opinion of pagan values. Judging by his early attempts at writing verses on Christ’s Passion, Bullinger was not averse to using Latin—not for scatological, satirical poetry as Luther did, but for sacred poetry and biblical adaptations. As for the Genevan paradigm, if we go by Maturin Cordier’s example, Cordier’s input was twofold: on the one hand, he took into account the fact that not Latin but French was his pupils’ first language and adapted his textbooks accordingly; on the other, unlike Bullinger, he did not feel that classical learning automatically improved morality, and issued warnings about some of the pagan models. His manuals, accordingly, are characterized by a relatively large number of Christian examples, while not neglecting pagan authors altogether. If there is a general conclusion to draw, it is that Protestantism needed Latin, and humanist Latin particularly, to affirm itself as a serious alternative to Catholicism. While certain adaptations to the language and to Greco-Roman concepts of civilization were necessary, Latin alone, revised according to the humanist model, could provide the sort of weight and profile that would make the entire religious movement internationally conspicuous and give it a unity and a catholicity, both of which would be lost if Latin were replaced by a multitude of vernacular languages.
SUGGESTED READING
A standard reference for the work of Calvin, Melanchthon, and Zwingli is the Corpus Reformatorum (1834– ) which currently runs to 108 volumes in Latin, French, and German. Hillerbrand (1996) is a useful reference work; see Springer (2014) for a recent survey. Scribner, Porter, and Teich (1994), Opitz (2013), and Selderhuis (2013) are collections relevant to this topic; Green (2009) contains several chapters on Latin in Protestant education. For early Protestantism in general, see Chadwick (2001); for Calvin, see (e.g.) Lane (1999); for Bullinger, see Gordon and Campi (2004). Bloemendal and Norland (2013) discuss Protestant school drama; Ohlemacher (2010) demonstrates the underestimated relevance of Latin for Protestant (Lutheran) catechesis.
REFERENCES
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_____. 1997. Écrits sur la dialectique et l’humanisme. Edited and translated by Marc van der Poel. Paris: Champion.
Akkerman, Fokke, and Arie J. Vanderjagt, eds. 1997. Rodolphus Agricola Phrisius (1444–1485). Leiden: Brill.
Arnold, Matthieu, ed. 2009. Johannes Sturm (1507–1589): Rhetor, Pädagoge und Diplomat. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Austin, Kenneth. 2007. From Judaism to Calvinism: The Life and Writings of Immanuel Tremellius (1510–1580). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Backus, Irena. 1980. The Reformed Roots of the English New Testament: The Influence of Theodore Beza on the English New Testament. Pittsburgh: Pickwick.
_____. 2007. “Bullinger and Humanism.” In Heinrich Bullinger: Life—Thought—Influence, edited by Emidio Campi and Peter Opitz, vol. 2, 637–59. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag.
Bloemendal, Jan, and Howard B. Norland, eds. 2013. Neo-Latin Drama: Contexts, Contents and Currents. Leiden: Brill.
Borgeaud, Charles. 1900. L’Histoire de l’Université de Genève 1559–1956. Vol. 1, L’Académie de Calvin, 1559–1798. Geneva: Georg.
Bullinger, Heinrich. (1904) 1985. Diarium (Annales vitae) der Jahre 1504–1574. Edited by Emil Egli. Basel: Basler Buch- und Antiquariatshandlung.
_____. 1987. Studiorum ratio. 2 vols. Edited by Peter Stotz. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag.
_____. 1991. Theologische Schriften. Vol. 2, Unveröffentlichte Schriften der Kappeler Zeit. Edited by Hans G. vom Berg, Bernhard Schneider, and Endre Zsindely. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag.
Chadwick, Owen. 2001. The Early Reformation on the Continent. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Gordon, Bruce, and Emidio Campi, eds. 2004. Architect of Reformation: An Introduction to Heinrich Bullinger, 1504–1575. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.
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Green, Ian. 2009. Humanism and Protestantism in Early Modern English Education. Farnham: Ashgate.
Grendler, Paul. 1989. Schooling in Renaissance Italy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Hillerbrand, Hans J., ed. 1996. The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Reformation. 4 vols. New York: Oxford University Press.
Krans, Jan. 2006. Beyond What Is Written: Erasmus and Beza as Conjectural Critics of the New Testament. Leiden: Brill.
Lane, Anthony N. S. 1999. John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.
Le Coultre, Jules. 1926. Maturin Cordier et les origines de la pédagogie protestante dans les pays de langue française. Neuchâtel: Université de Neuchâtel.
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Melanchthon, Philip. 1546. Elementorum rhetorices libri duo. Cologne: Gymnicus.
_____. 1553. Grammatica Latina. Basel: Oporinus.
_____. 1843. Corpus Reformatorum. Vol. 11, Declamationes Philippi Melanchthonis usque ad annum 1552. Edited by Karl G. Bretschneider. Halle: Schwetschke.
Nauta, Lodi. 2012. “From Universals to Topics: The Realism of Rudolph Agricola.” Vivarium 50:190–224.
Ohlemacher, Andreas. 2010. Lateinische Katechetik der frühen lutherischen Orthodoxie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.
Opitz, Peter, ed. 2013. The Myth of the Reformation. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.
Scribner, Bob, Roy Porter, and Mikulás Teich, eds. (1994). The Reformation in National Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Seigel, Jerrold. 1968. Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism: The Union of Eloquence and Wisdom, Petrarch to Valla. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Selderhuis, Herman J., ed. 2013. A Companion to Reformed Orthodoxy. Leiden: Brill.
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Staedtke, Joachim. 1962. Die Theologie des jungen Bullinger. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag.
Sturm, Johannes. 1995. “For the Lauingen School.” In Johann Sturm on Education: The Reformation and Humanist Learning, edited and translated by Lewis W. Spitz and Barbara Sher Tinsley, 199–254. St. Louis: Concordia.
Walter, Peter. 1999. “Melanchthon und die Tradition der studia humanitatis.” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 110:191–208.