Kitabı oku: «The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France», sayfa 14

Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples

A leading French humanist of the late fifteenth century was Jacques Lefèvre. He was born at Etaples in Picardy about 1450, but we know little about his early life. After becoming an MA in Paris, he learnt Greek from Hermonymos while studying mathematics, astronomy and music. Like all keen scholars of his day he travelled to Italy, visiting Pavia, Padua, Venice, Rome and Florence. Wherever he went, he made friends with humanists and other scholars. After teaching in Paris for a few years, he returned to Rome, then visited Germany. On his return he took up a lodging at the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés under the protection of the abbot, Guillaume Briçonnet, the future bishop of Meaux.

At first Lefèvre devoted himself mainly to the study of philosophy. In his approach to the subject he combined mystical tendencies with the precision of a mathematician. In February 1499 he published an edition of the Mystical Theology of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, a work that describes the ascent of the soul to union with God. Lefèvre’s admiration for Dionysius was unbounded: ‘Never’, he wrote, ‘outside Scripture, have I met anything which has seemed to me as great and as divine as the books of Dionysius.’ In April he published some works by Raymond Lull expressing the horror which he himself felt for Islam and Averroistic materialism. By 1501, Lefèvre had fallen under the influence of the fifteenth-century German cardinal and philosopher Nicholas of Cusa, from whom he learnt that Truth is unknowable to man and that it is only by intuition that he can discover God wherein all contradictions meet.

Lefèvre gave himself heart and soul to Aristotle, whom he translated and explained with boundless enthusiasm and whose many texts he edited after careful expurgations. He wrote commentaries for nearly all the Aristotelian works on the curriculum of the Paris schools. His aim was to set Christian doctrine on the firm foundation of an Aristotelianism freed from scholastic sophism. Yet, even as he explained Aristotle, his mysticism expressed itself. ‘While Aristotle writes of things that are deciduous and transitory’, he explained, ‘he is also treating of the divine mysteries. All this philosophy of tangible nature tends towards the divine things, and, starting from elements that can be sensed, opens the way to the intelligible world.’

He also looked to Plato. During his visit to Florence in 1492 he fell under the influence of Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), founder of the Florentine Academy, who interpreted the contemplative life as a gradual ascent of the soul towards always higher degrees of truth and being, culminating in the immediate knowledge and vision of God. Closely related to Ficino’s moral doctrine were his theories of the immortality of the soul and of Platonic love. Another Florentine humanist much admired by Lefèvre was Pico della Mirandola (1463–94), who sought to reconcile ancient philosophy with modern doctrines and Christian dogma. With Pico, as with Marsilio, philosophical speculation was fused with divine love. Like many of his contemporaries, Lefèvre was fascinated by the Hermetic Books. Thus, in 1494, he published Ficino’s Latin translation of the Liber de potestate et sapientia Dei, attributed to the Egyptian priest Hermes Trismegistus.

The ideas and theories which Lefèvre drew from so many sources ancient and medieval turned him from a philosopher into a theologian, but he remained a humanist. He was firmly committed to textual purity, proclaiming that ‘one should only ascribe to God what Scripture teaches about Him’. Thus he looked for the precise meaning of Scripture after ridding it of the barbarous language and useless subtleties of the schoolmen. Yet Lefèvre’s command of Latin was always heavy and clumsy. He also condemned most pagan poets, even preferring Battista Spagnuoli to Virgil.

Lefèvre placed his learning at the service of religion. His purpose was ‘to give souls the taste for and understanding of Scripture’. He saw philosophy and learning not as ends in themselves but as assisting the triumph of a purer, more enlightened faith. In an edition of Aristotelian works (August 1506) he set out a complete educational programme, but one that was very different from that contained in Erasmus’s recently published Enchiridion. Lefèvre and Erasmus stood for different Christian ideals. Both wanted their students to write pure and correct Latin, but their attitude to ancient writers differed. Whereas Erasmus believed that their wisdom could lead to a reception of Christian revelation, Lefèvre regarded them simply as models of style. Whereas Erasmus found in Plato the most suitable introduction to the Gospel, Lefèvre regarded Aristotle as the superior teacher. Both men wanted to return to the Bible as interpreted by the church fathers, not by the schoolmen. But Erasmus was no mystic; he turned to Scripture for practical counsel. He ceased to believe in the virtues of monasticism, while Lefèvre wished that his health would allow him to enter a Benedictine or Carthusian monastery and neglected none of the traditional religious observances which Erasmus dismissed as useless.

In July 1509, Lefèvre published his edition of the Psalter. Like Erasmus, he insisted on the need for doctrine to be based on accurate editions of Scripture, but he was not content with a purely literal interpretation, believing that a reading of Scripture had to be prepared by meditation and prayer; also by a close familiarity with the writings of the prophets and apostles. In December 1512 his edition of St Paul’s Epistles was published. This set out to explain the apostle’s ideas simply, rejecting the scholastic notion that every passage in Scripture requires a quadruple interpretation. In Lefèvre’s opinion, Scripture has a literal and a spiritual meaning. Before this can be grasped, it is essential to enter the mind of St Paul, an exercise calling for divine inspiration. Lefèvre read St Paul as a mystic committed to the inner life rather than as a dogmatic theologian or logician. He did not deduce the idea of predestination from his work. His aim was to reconcile grace and free will; not to abolish the autonomy of the human will.

Lefèvre’s study of St Paul did not lead him to the same conclusions as those drawn by Erasmus or Luther. He remained loyal to Roman observances. Good works, he says, cannot save by themselves, but they are not useless: they attract, hold and enlarge grace. Nor does faith ensure salvation: it opens the way to God who alone justifies and absolves. Good works make us better men, faith converts us, justification illuminates us. At the same time, his interpretation of dogma was at times extraordinarily free. He denied the magical properties of the sacraments, seeing them rather as signs of spiritual grace, and viewed the mass not as a sacrifice but as a memorial of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Yet he timidly accepted the new doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and was surprisingly conservative regarding church reform. He did not suggest the abolition of clerical celibacy or the introduction of prayers in the vernacular.

Guillaume Budé

In 1497, Lefèvre’s circle of friends and disciples at the collège du cardinal Lemoine was joined by Guillaume Budé. He belonged to a family of the well-to-do Parisian bourgeoisie, which over three generations had risen to the highest offices in the royal chancery. About 1483 he had been sent to study civil law at Orléans. On returning to the capital he seemed only interested in hunting and other pleasures, but in 1491 he became disgusted with his way of life. Resuming his studies, he began to learn Greek. He also got to know Andrelini, who in 1496 dedicated a work to him. Even after becoming a royal secretary in 1497, Budé continued to read classical and patristic texts. He translated some works of Plutarch, dedicating one to Pope Julius II.

In November 1508, Budé published his Annotations on the Pandects which laid down the principle that Roman law can only be understood through the study of Roman history, literature and classical philology. It was also a scathing attack on scholastic jurisprudence as represented by the work of Accursius and Bartolus. Using both philology and history, Budé undermined their assumption that the Corpus Iuris was an authoritative system of law adaptable to the needs of all time. The effect of this onslaught on current legal thinking was comparable to that on theology of Valla’s exposure of the ‘Donation of Constantine’ (a document fabricated in the 8th–9th century to strengthen the power of the Holy See). Yet Budé was more interested in restoring the text of Justinian’s Digest as literature than in using it for legal education and practice. His polemic against contemporary jurisprudence was the first of many similar legal works of the sixteenth century, the best known being Rabelais’s caricature of legal terminology and practice. Almost the entire legal profession was attacked by Budé. He accused its members of using the law not to establish equity or justice but simply to sell and prostitute their words. Deploring the lack of public spirit among his compatriots and the loss of ancient virtues, he expressed the hope that a revival of letters would reawaken their consciences. A theme which assumed importance in Budé’s later work – his absolutist theory of the state – was already present in his Annotations. While refuting Accursius, he showed the invalidity of equating the parlement with the Roman senate.

The Annotations was France’s first great work of philology and its impact, notably on Alciati’s teaching of law at the University of Bourges, was considerable. Budé followed Valla in his use of a philological-historical method and in his opposition to the Bartolists, but he went further by reviving the Aristotelian concept of equity. This was to have a lasting effect on legal practice in France and elsewhere. Budé’s scholarship, though profound, was long-winded and undisciplined. His De Asse (1515), a treatise on ancient coinage, is full of absurdly patriotic digressions in which he seeks to elevate Paris above Athens as a centre of ancient learning.

Like Lefèvre d’Etaples, Budé repudiated the vocabulary and methodology of the schoolmen and wanted Christianity to rest solely on the correct study of Scripture. But he did not share Lefèvre’s mysticism. He despised devotions that were purely formal or smacked of superstition. He equated Christianity with obedience to Christ’s commands and the imitation of His life on earth. As a scholar Budé was well aware of errors in the Latin Vulgate and favoured a return to the original Greek text of the New Testament. His objective was to revivify religion by uniting the Christian faith and humanism. His admiration for the classics did not persuade him that compromise was possible between Hellenism and Christianity. Given the choice, he preferred the latter and in his last work, De transitu Hellenismi ad Christianismum, he even denied the value of ancient philosophy.

The Reuchlin affair

In 1514 the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris was drawn into a conflict which had been raging for three years between the German humanist Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522) and the German Dominicans. Reuchlin had promoted the Talmud, the Cabala and other Jewish studies as essential to a true understanding of biblical revelation; he also believed that the Bible and all its traditional glosses and interpretations should be re-examined in the light of recent exegetical advances and of the new expertise in Greek and Hebrew. His programme, however, if implemented, was likely to disrupt the traditional curriculum of theological faculties. He was accordingly censured by a special inquisition at Mainz in October 1513, and by another in Cologne four months later. The bishop of Speyer, however, acting for the pope, cleared Reuchlin of all charges and ordered an end to the inquisition, whereupon the Cologne theologians decided to consult their colleagues in Louvain and Paris.

The Parisian doctors received the message from Cologne at the end of April 1514 and promptly set up a committee comprising representatives of the scholastic tradition and friends of humanism to examine extracts from Reuchlin’s Augenspiegel. Numerous meetings followed in the course of which the Cologne theologians sent another book by Reuchlin for examination. There was also an intervention by Duke Ulrich of Württemberg, who asked the faculty to drop its proceedings. On 2 August, however, the faculty decided against Reuchlin. His writings were described as ‘strongly suspect of heresy, most of them smacking of heresy and some actually heretical’. The faculty asked for the suppression of the Augenspiegel and the author’s unconditional retraction. What happened next is not clear. The faculty received a letter from the papal Curia in April 1515, which probably expressed surprise at the decision passed in August, and it ceased to discuss Reuchlin after 2 May. Traditionally, historians have seen the Reuchlin affair as marking a decisive break in the University of Paris between the ‘Old Learning’ and the ‘New’. It was the first serious conflict between schoolmen and humanists. Henceforth Erasmus and Lefèvre d’Etaples were seen by their friends as pursuing the same quest for a deeper faith, and by their enemies as sharing the same heresy.

‘Father of Letters’

Francis I was anxious to be seen as a great patron of learning as well as a great soldier. Though primarily a man of action, he liked books and enjoyed being read to at mealtimes. His baggage train included two chests of books whose titles point to his main interests: Roman history and the heroic deeds of antiquity. Like many other princes of his day, he was also interested in astrology, alchemy and the Cabala, occult sciences which were believed to hold the key to the universe. Francis asked Jean Thenaud to write two works for him on the Cabala, but the author warned him of its dangers: ‘It is far better’, he wrote, ‘to be ignorant than to ask or to look for what cannot be known without sinning.’

In the early sixteenth century the crying need for humanists in France was an institution in which classical languages that were excluded from the universities’ curriculum could be taught. In February 1517, Francis announced his intention to found such a college. He invited Erasmus to take charge of it, but the great Dutchman was far too keen on his own intellectual freedom to tie himself to the service of any prince. So Francis had to fall back on Janus Lascaris, who was now head of the classical college recently founded in Rome by Pope Leo X. As a first step towards establishing a college in France, the king asked Lascaris to set one up in Milan and provided him with some funds, but these soon ran out and Lascaris had to abandon the venture. In January 1522, Francis decided to establish a college for the study of Greek at the Hôtel de Nesle in Paris, but before this could get under way, his attention was absorbed by his war with the emperor which had begun in 1521.

The beginnings of heresy

Heresy was not unknown in France at the close of the Middle Ages, but except in parts of the south which had been infiltrated by Waldensianism (see below p. 221), it was not an organized movement. Thus Erasmus was broadly correct when he described France in 1517 as the only part of Christendom that was free of heresy. But this happy state was short-lived. In 1519, only two years after Martin Luther had posted up his ninety-five theses in Wittenberg, Lutheranism first appeared in Paris. John Froben, the Basle printer, reported on 14 February that he had sent 600 copies of Luther’s works to France and Spain. They were being avidly read, even by members of the Paris Faculty of Theology. In July 1519, Luther and Eck held their famous debate in Leipzig, and soon afterwards they agreed to submit their propositions to the judgement of the universities of Erfurt and Paris. While the Paris theologians were pondering the matter, Luther gave them further food for thought by publishing three radical tracts. On 15 April 1521 the faculty published its Determinatio condemning 104 Lutheran propositions. On 13 June the faculty and the parlement assumed joint control of the book trade in and around Paris. It became an offence to print or sell any religious book without the faculty’s prior approval. On 3 August a proclamation was read out in the streets to the sound of trumpets, calling on all owners of Lutheran books to hand them over to the parlement within a week on pain of imprisonment and a fine.

Whatever his private beliefs may have been, Francis I repeatedly expressed his opposition to heresy, sharing the view, almost universally held in his day, that religious toleration undermined national unity. The oath he had taken at his coronation bound him not only to defend the faith, but to extirpate heresy from the kingdom. However, at this early stage of the Protestant Reformation heresy was not easily recognized; the boundary between Christian humanism, as expressed in the works of Erasmus or Lefèvre, and Lutheranism was far from clear. Nor was the king obliged to endorse any definition of heresy, not even that of the Faculty of Theology. Having already committed himself to the cause of humanism, Francis must have found it difficult to accept Béda’s view that ‘Luther’s errors have entered this [kingdom] more through the works of Erasmus and Lefèvre than any others.’ The king was also much influenced by his sister Marguerite, a deeply devout person, who corresponded with Guillaume Briçonnet, bishop of Meaux, from June 1521 until October 1524, and through his teaching imbibed the ideas of Lefèvre.

Sooner or later trouble was likely to break out between the king and the faculty. While Francis was ready to suppress Lutheranism, he was unwilling to silence the voice of Christian humanism. The first sign of conflict occurred in November 1522, when Guillaume Petit, the king’s confessor, complained to the faculty about the sermons of Michel d’Arande, an Augustinian hermit who had become Marguerite’s almoner. By 1523 the Faculty of Theology and the parlement were seriously worried about the growth of heresy. Lutheran books were being reported from many parts of the kingdom, and evangelical preachers were increasingly active. In June 1523 the faculty was told of scandals provoked by the publication of Lefèvre’s Commentarii initiatorii in IV Evangelia, but it decided not to examine the work after a warning received from Chancellor Duprat. In July it summoned Mazurier and Caroli, two members of the Cercle de Meaux, to answer a complaint arising from their sermons. This marked a change of policy by the faculty: hitherto it had been content to judge doctrine; now it was encroaching on episcopal jurisdiction. The faculty’s action was, in effect, an attack on the entire Cercle de Meaux. In August, prompted by the publication of Lefèvre’s edition of the New Testament, Béda forced through the faculty a condemnation of all editions of Scripture in Greek, Hebrew and French, causing Francis to intervene again. In April 1524 he forbade any discussion of Lefèvre’s work, alleging that he was a scholar of international renown. In October he nipped in the bud a move by the faculty to condemn Erasmus.

By 1523 heresy was so firmly entrenched in France that the Faculty of Theology and the parlement decided that censoring books was not enough: it was time to make an example of the heretics themselves. On 13 May the home of Louis de Berquin, a young nobleman-scholar, was searched by the parlement’s officials. On his shelves they found books by Luther and other reformers as well as Berquin’s own writings. These the faculty was asked to scrutinize, but the king, after giving his consent, changed his mind: he appointed a special commission, headed by Duprat, to carry out the examination. But the faculty, having already examined Berquin’s books, condemned them, and on 1 August he was imprisoned by the parlement. Four days later he was sent for trial on a heresy charge by the bishop of Paris, but Francis evoked the case to the Grand conseil. Meanwhile, Berquin was set free by royal command and allowed to go home. His books, however, were burnt outside Notre-Dame.