"scholasticism was an intellectual system wonderfully coherent and consistent in itself, of which only those judge slightingly who have not yet overcome their hostility to it and have not yet arrived at the objective view of history."[1]
From Italy the literary renaissance spread to Spain, France, England and Germany. The flourishing condition of the schools in England and Germany, described on previous pages, was chiefly due to this movement. The radical school of humanism, hostile to Christianity, did not enter England. The most distinguished English humanists were thorough and practical churchmen,[2] or laymen, most loyal to the Church. Two of them, Bishop Fisher and Thomas More, have been raised by the Church to the honor of the altar. In Germany, matters developed very differently. The humanistic movement began to be felt in the German universities after 1450. Its gradual entrance into the various seats of learning is well traced by Professor Paulsen.[3] However, it is the inner development of humanism in Germany which is of greater importance.[4]
The earlier humanists, as Hegius and his friends, had contemplated classical antiquity from the point of
- ↑ Quoted by Willmann, Geschichte des Idealismus, vol. III , p. 855. For an excellent criticism of scholasticism see vol. II , pp. 321-652.
- ↑ See above p. 30; cf. Gasquet, The Eve of the Reformation, chapter II, The Revival of Letters in England, pp. 14-50. – Einstein, The Italian Renaissance in England, pp. 18-57.
- ↑ Gesch. des gel. Unt., pp. 44-127. (I, 74-170).
- ↑ On this subject see Creighton, History of the Papacy, vol. V. The German Revolt, ch. I. "Humanism in Germany," pp. 1-49.
