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Henry VII
The Seed Time; Part 3
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The Seed Time; Part 3
3. So, too, with the new learning. Taking its second birth, its "renaissance" in Italy, it spread to other lands, bringing with it an enthusiasm for learning, especially for classical learning, and a desire to search out what was true. In its origin there was nothing about the new learning hostile to the old faith. At first more than one Pope encouraged and patronized the scholars. And when some of these, in their enthusiasm for Greek and Roman culture, were tempted into irreligious expressions, the Church treated them on the whole with the mild disregard which parents extend to wilful children. Unfortunately, though there was nothing anti-religious in the study of classical Latin, and even of Greek, part of the authority of the Popes was held to rest on certain documents, such as the Donation of Constantine and the statements in the Forged Decretals, which in an ignorant age had been accepted as genuine, but which could not really bear investigation. The new spirit of research and criticism did not confine itself to classical texts; it attacked theological claims also. This the Papacy felt to be undesirable, if not dangerous; and thus the new learning and the theologians gradually parted company. In Henry VII's reign the severance of the ways had not been reached; Grocyn and Linacre, who taught Greek at Oxford, and Colet, who lectured on the Greek Testament, were only interested in spreading learning. Yet in the Flemish scholar Erasmus the signs of the coming struggle appear. Erasmus was always ready to mock the theology of the monks. Doubtless the monks' erudition was old-fashioned and often absurd. Yet ridicule is the first step in sapping the foundations of belief. Erasmus never became a Protestant, but he set the feet of many of his followers on the road. Again the seed lay in the ground germinating.
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Chronology
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