Talk:Christian views on the classics

Renaissance, POV

The final section of the Catholic encyclopedia article needs to be substantially reworked to remove the Catholic POV and to bring the information up to date:

The Renaissance brought to light the hidden treasures of the Middle Ages. Prior to this period classical culture had been an individual, isolated fact. From the fourteenth century on it became collective and social. The attitude of the Church toward this movement is too important to be treated within the brief limits of this article (see HUMANISM; RENAISSANCE; LEO X; PIUS II; etc). As to Latin studies, in particular, the Church continued to influence very actively their development At the beginning of the modern era Latin was the court language of sovereigns, notably of the Italian chanceries. The Roman curia ranks with Florence and Naples, among the first for the eminence, fame, and grace of its Latinists. Poggio was a papal secretary. Bembo and Sadoleto became cardinals. Schools and universities son yielded to the influence of the Humanists (see HUMANISM). In France, the Netherlands, and Germany the study of the ancient classics was more or less openly influenced by tendencies hostile to the Church and Christianity. But the Jesuits soon made Latin the basis of their teaching, organized the same in a systematic way and introduced compulsory and daily construing of Cicero. The newly founded Louvain University (1426) became a centre of Latin studies owing chiefly to the Ecole du I, is founded in 1437 and especially to the Ecole des Trois Langues (Greek Latin, Hebrew), opened in 1517. It was at the Ecole du Lis that Jan van Pauteran (Despauterius) taught, the author of a Latin grammar destined to survive two centuries, but unfortunately too clearly dependent on Alexander de Villedieu's above-mentioned "Doctrinale". In the seventeenth century Port Royal introduced a few reforms in the method of teaching, substituted French for Latin in the recitations, and added to the programme of studies. But the general lines of education remained the same. In the nineteenth century, classical philology revived as a historical science. The men who brought about this progress were mainly Germans, Dutch, and English. The Catholic Church had no share in this labour until towards the close of the century. In the middle of the nineteenth century sprang up in France a controversy of a pedagogical nature, concerning the use of the Latin classics in Christian schools. Abbé Gaume insisted that Christians, especially future priests, should obtain their literary training from the reading and interpretation of the Fathers of the Church, and he went so far as to call classical education the canker-worm (ver rongeur) of modern society. Dupanloup, superior of the Paris seminary of Notre Dame des Champs, later Bishop of Orléans, took up the defence of the classical authors whereupon there broke out a long polemical controversy which belongs to the history of Catholic Liberalism. Louis Veuillot answered Dupanloup, but the Holy See was silent and the French bishops did not alter the curriculum of their "petits séminaires" or preparatory schools for the clergy. Veuillot withdrew from the discussion in 1852. Dübner edited a collection of patristic texts graded as to serve all Christian schools from the elementary to the upper classes. Less positive attempts were made to introduce selections from the principal ecclesiastical writers of Christian antiquity (Nourisson, for the state lycées and colleges; Monier for the Catholic colleges). In Belgium Guillaume urged the simultaneous comparative study of a Christian and a pagan author. Both in Belgium and France the traditional use of the pagan authors has held its own in most educational houses, in this respect, the Jesuit schools and the government institutions do not differ. In recent times attacks have been aimed, not merely at pagan authors, but in general at all mental training in Latin. The leaders of this new opposition are on the one hand the so-called "practical" men, i.e., representatives of the natural and applied sciences, and on the other declared adversaries of the Catholic Church, many of whom hold the opinion that the study of Latin makes men more ready to receive the teachings of Faith. Once again therefore, the destinies of the Church and of the Latin classics are brought into connection. On this subject see the various articles of THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA concerning schools, studies, education, the history of philology, etc.