Linacre's successful disputation at Padua is preserved in a dialogue by Richard Pace, where Grammar and Rhetoric are made to dispute as to the respective merits of Theodore Gaza and Thomas Linacre. Grammar first claims Linacre as her own; Rhetoric contends that he was by right her son, and that Grammar was only the occupation of his leisure moments. On one occasion, says Rhetoric, he condescended to dispute with some Grammarian on certain minutiæ connected with the vocative case, but gained a more brilliant victory when he defended his theses for graduation at Padua, "Nam quum in gymnasio Patavino professionis artis medicæ ei (ut nunc moris est) darentur insignia, publice non sine summâ laude disputavit, et seniorum medicorum adversaria argumettta accuratissime refellit."[1]
From Padua Linacre turned his steps homewards, passing through Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo and Milan. While at Vicenza he attended the lectures of Nicolaus Leonicenus, a celebrated physician and scholar, best known as the author of the earliest treatise on Syphilis but also celebrated for having translated several works of Galen from the Greek, one of which, viz., the treatise "De motu Musculorum," was afterwards published by Linacre with some of his own.[2]
His departure from Italy was accompanied by those proofs of friendship which the learned in that age were accustomed to exchange. Dr. J. N. Johnson gives examples of some of the Latin odes that were then addressed to him. On his return to England he seems to have resumed his residence at All Souls' College, Oxford. The English universities used, at this period, to recognize the honours conferred upon their members by foreign academies, and the degree of Doctor of Medicine which he had received at Padua was confirmed to him at Oxford by an act of incorporation immediately after his return home.
It is believed that this incorporation by his own university was followed by a similar act at Cambridge. It has been suggested
