§ 71. HUMANISM IN ENGLAND. 645
time Clement Marot, 1495-1544, the first true poet of the French literary revival, vras composing his French versification of the Psalms and of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The Psalms were sung for pleasure by French princes and later for worship in Geneva and by the Huguenots. When Calvin studied the humanities and law at Bourges, Orleans and Paris, about 1520, he had for teachers Cordier and L'Etoile, the canonists, and Melchior Wolmar, teacher of Greek, whose names the future Reformer records with gratitude and respect. He gave himself passionately to Humanistic studies and sent to Erasmus a copy of his work on Seneca's Qlemency^ in which he quoted frequently from the ancient classics and the Fathers. Had he not adopted the new religious views, it is possible he would now be known as an eminent figure in the history of French Humanism.
§ 71 . Humanism in England.
Use well temporal things : desire eternal things.
— John Colet.
Humanism reached England directly from Italy, but was greatly acTvanced by Erasmus during his' tTifee sojourns at Oxford and Cambridge and by his close and abiding friendship with the leading English representatives of the movement. Its history carries us at once to the universities where the conflict between the new learning and the old learning was principally fought out and also to St. Paul's school, London, founded by Colet. It was marked with the usual English characteristics of caution and reserve, and never manifested any of the brilliant or paganizing traits of the Italian literary movement, nor did it reach the more profound classical scholarship of the German Humanists. In the departments of the fine arts, if we except printing, it remained unresponsive to the Continental leadership. JEnglisli Humanism, like the theology of the English Reformation, adopted the work of others. It wasjQot creative. On the other hand, it laid more distinctive emphasis upon the religious and ethical elements than the Humanistic circles of Italy, though not of Germany. Its chief leaders were John Colet and Sir Thomas More, with
646 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
whom Erasmus is ^soto be_associated. It had patrons in high places in Archbishop Warham oT Canterbury, Cardinal Wolsey and John Fisher, bishop of Rochester.^
The English revival of letters was a direct precursor of the English Refoiimatipn, although its earliest leaders died in the Catholic Church. Its first distinct impetus was received in the last quarter of the 15th century through English students who visited Italy. It had been the custom for English archdeacons to go to Italy for the study of the canon law. Richard de Bury and Peter de Blois had shown interest in books and Latin profane authors. Italians, Poggio and Polidore VirgiP among them, tarried and some of them taught in England, but the first to introduce the new movement were William Sellyng, Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn.
Sellyng, of All Souls^ College, Oxford, and afterwards prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, 1471-1495, made a visit to Italy in 1464 and at Bologna was a pupil of Politian. From this tour, or from a later one, he brought back with him some Greek MSS. and he introduced tlie studying of Greek in Canterhljry. Linacre, d. 1524, the most celebrated medical man of his day in England, studied under Sellyng at Christ Church and then in Oxford, where he took Greek under Cornelio Vitelli, the first to publicly teach that language in England in the later Middle Ages. He then went to Florence, Rome and Padua, where he graduated in medicine. On returning to England, he was ordained priest and later made physician to Henry VIII. He translated the works of Galen into English. ^
While Linacre was studying in Florence, Grocyn arrived in that city. He was teaching Greek in Oxford before 1488 and, on his return from the Continent, he began, 1491, to give Greek lectures in that university. With this date the historian,
^ Wolsey applied the proceeds of 20 monasteries, which he closed, to the endowment of a school at Ipswich and of Cardinal College, Oxford. In 1516, Fox, bishop of Winchester, founded (Corpus Christi College at the same university to teach the new learning.
2 He wrote a History of England and revenged himself by disparaging Wolsey, who had refused to give him his favor.
8 For his services to medicine, see W. Osier; Thos. Linacre, Cambr., 1908, pp. 23-27.