CHAP. II. king's majesty will provide some grave learned man, to maintain God's true learning in his university, yet I think not of all learned men in all points ye shall receive M. Bucer's like, whether ye consider his deepness of knowledge, his earnestness in religion, his fatherliness in life, his authority in doctrine'. The best scholars of the university composed elegies in honour of the deceased, and strewed them on his tomb,-compositions which drew from John Sturm at Strassburg a pathetic acknowledgement of the grateful tribute which had been paid to his lost friend in a foreign land2. A donation from the university to the widow, and another from the Crown, further attested the prevailing feeling3. While long after, when exaggerated sentiment was less likely to find place, another public orator gave expression to the permanent sense of the community, when he declared that the religious life of the whole university had been quickened by Bucer's teaching, while his removal had been followed by a corresponding decline". Deaths of lords Henry and Charles Brandon: 16 July, 1551. Among those who had contributed verses in Bucer's honour had been his two young noble pupils. They were students of rare promise, and had made attainments remarkable for their age. But within a few months of their good teacher's death, the sweating sickness broke out at Cambridge, and the hasty removal of the two youths to a distance from the area of infection failed to avert the danger with which they were menaced. They died on the same day and in the course of the same hour, and with them the dukedom of Suffolk became temporarily extinct. Even in those times, when the span of life was so often shortened by unlooked for or violent ends, the 1 Parker Correspondence, p. 44. -placet mihi pietas vestrae gentis, placet doctrina et orationis genus.' Sturm to Ascham. Ascham, Epist. p. 386. 3 Parker Correspondence, pp. 46-47. 4 Oratio Achworthi in restitutione Dom. Martini Buceri et P. Fagii.' Bucer, Script. Anglic. p. 937. 5 They were conveyed to the bishop of Lincoln's palace, at that time at Buckden; Many in Cambridge died of this sweating sickness, patients spectacle of ingenuous virtues mending or ending in twenty-four hours.' Fuller (ed. Prickett and Wright), p. 246. Mr. Froude describes it as 'the most mortal of all forms of pestilence which have ever appeared in this country.' See his description, Hist. of England, ▾ 15-16. Cooper, Athenae, 1 105. Their portraits by Holbein (Chamberlaine's Holbein Heads) are remarkable for their combined expression of innocence and intelligence. and youthful promise, of tried ability and signal usefulness CHAP. II. thus prematurely cut off, arrested the attention and cast a gloom over the minds of even the most thoughtless'; and the prayer against pestilence and sudden death, in that grand litany which Bucer's piety had helped to frame2, must have carried with it, for a time, a sad significance as it rose in the precincts where he had been laid to rest. LAW. Zasius. The year preceding Bucer's death had seen the removal of The CIVIL one of yet wider fame-the illustrious Alciati, by whose efforts mainly the study of the Roman law had been redeemed from extravagancies and puerilities such as those which characterized it in the days when Poggio and Valla satirized the stolid disciples of Accursius, Baldus, and Bartolus. In Alciati and his hands, and those of Zasius of Freiburg, the juristic lore of Bologna and that of Nova Roma were first combined', the scholarship and learning of the Renaissance for the first time employed to elucidate the obscurities of the Codex and the Pandects. Philology and history now poured new light upon the page which the labours of the later commentators had too often only perplexed and darkened; the vast tomes of the mediaeval teachers, wherein, as Haddon asserted, Scaevola or Papinian would have been unable to recognise his own laws, were consigned to deserved obscurity; and the 1 'God's wroth, I trust, is satisfied in punishing divers orders of the realme for their misordre, with taking away singuler men from them, as learning by Mr. Bucer, counsell by Mr. Denny, nobilitie by the two young Dukes,' Ascham to Cecil, 12th Jul. 1552; see also his Scholemaster (ed. Mayor), p. 220. 2 The English Litany, as is well known, was chiefly taken by Cranmer from that of Hermann von Wied, who had been assisted by Bucer in its preparation. At the same time, Bucer was not altogether satisfied with the English Prayer Book, and issued a series of criticisms on points of detail, which are ably discussed by Collier, who however speaks of his dissertation as wearing a noble air of freedom and integrity.' CollierLathbury, v 388-403. CHAP. II. new civil law, like the new Aristotle, acquired fresh dignity as a study in proportion as its affinities to the institutions and history of civilization stood more plainly revealed. Introduction of their method at Cambridge. Gardiner and Smith. We have no definite information as to the channel through which Alciati's method first became known in England, but it is not improbable that its acceptance was largely aided by the lectures and writings of Ludovicus Vives, who had studied law at Louvain and afterwards taught it at Oxford. His able treatise, the de Causis corruptarum Artium, was widely known and much admired in this country, and in the seventh book he had exposed with his usual vigour the defects which belonged to the national exposition of the civil law'. A reform in which theological considerations were but remotely involved could be dispassionately discussed on its own merits by enlightened scholars of all parties, and in the present instance Gardiner and Smith were completely in accord. The former, who at one time acted as examiner of candidates for the degree of bachelor of laws in the schools, appears to have stoutly supported the introduction. of the new method at Cambridge and to have finally carried the day in spite of strenuous opposition. Unfortunately, however, just as old prejudices had been overcome, the whole study began to enter upon new conditions which foreboded its speedy and complete extinction. In the universities of Germany, as in those of Italy, where it was protected by its imperial associations, the civil law maintained its ground without difficulty; even at Wittenberg, Marburg, and Jena, the chairs were regularly filled and the 1 Vives, Opera (ed. 1555), 1 426435. 2 It is highly probable that this ground of sympathy and agreement was the cause of the remarkable leniency with which Smith was treated by Gardiner during the reign of Mary. See Strype, Life of Smith, p. 50. 3 A. D. 1523-4. "All commencers in civil and canon law required to satisfy Dr. Gardener." Grace Book: Baker MSS. xxxi 182. Smith himself speaks of Gardiner as 'in hac disciplina exercitatissimus.' Oratio secunda de Ratione Studii Iuris Civilis, Ibid. xxXVII 403. 4 The facts are preserved to us in one of Cheke's letters to Gardiner, but I have been unable to discover any further details on the subject: 'Cantabrigiae cum ipse juris civilis studium repurgares, et a quibusdam glossematariis animos studiosorum sapienter avocares, tamen in mag. nam hominum offensionem incurrebas, et non sine magna disceptationum contentione tam honestum propositum conficiebas.' de Pronuntiatione, p. 47. stances pre the revival in England. lectures fairly attended'. But in England its intimate con- CHAP. II. nexion with the canon law, now abolished, seemed likely to Circuminvolve it in the same fate; while the growing importance of judicial to the common law seemed not less likely to deprive it of all of the study practical value. Already the practitioners of the latter profession, whose numbers were yearly multiplying, regarded with undisguised contempt the waning ranks of those who continued to devote themselves to a laborious acquirement, which, while demanding no ordinary toil and vitiated by so many defects of treatment, seemed likely before long altogether to disappear from the category of useful or remunerative learning. The universities, on the other hand, could not but regret the gradual abolition of a code whereby, in any difficulty, it had been customary to interpret their own statutes, as well as the diminution in their influence which would necessarily result if degrees in civil law were no longer to be required as a passport to professional advancement. The growing jealousies of the two schools sometimes broke out into open feuds, and Wriothesley found himself compelled in 1547 to resign his office of chancellor in consequence of a preference which he had somewhat incautiously displayed for civilians over students at the Inns of Court". The appointment of Smith to the chair of the Regius professorship augured well for a revived interest in the study at Cambridge. His conspicuous ability could always command a respectful audience; while his knowledge of the subject had been, as we have already noted, increased by his sojourn at Padua, where he had listened to Accorambonus and Rubeus, and by visits to nearly all the universities of France, where he had come under the influence of Alciati. 1 Foerstemann, Album. Acad. Viteberg. ann. 1502 to 1560. The Dyer, Privileges, 1 168. degree of D.C.L. or LL.D. became the necessary passport to the College of Advocates at Doctors' Commons (incorporated 1768); this requirement was however abolished in 1856. See Sir Robt. Phillimore's Commentaries upon International Law, 1 lxiii. 3 Froude, Hist. of England, Iv 234. 4...cunctas prope totius Galliae academias perlustrarim...et penetrarim in Italiam ut famosissimos orbis doctores, viva (quod aiunt) voce jura docentes audirem.' Smith, Oratio prima de Ratione Studii Juris Civilis, Baker MSS. xxxvII 418. Laudabo et Zasium et Alciatum, duo clarissima jurisprudentiae lumi count of the method of interpretation which he sought to abolish. CHAP. II. That eminent reformer, driven from his native land, had accepted a chair of civil law at Bourges. His teaching there had been attended with brilliant success and his views were now fast prevailing wherever such studies were still pursued Alciati's ac in France. In two orations which he delivered at Bologna in 1537 and 1539 he has left on record his estimate of the different schools of interpreters who, up to his own day, had been most distinguished by their labours in the same province: Azo and Accursius in the thirteenth century,— Baldus and Bartolus in the fourteenth, and the yet more mechanical and stolid school of later times, among whom he found his most determined opponents. Of these, he humourously compared the first to the dogs who dared only to lap the waters of the Nile as they ran along its banks, so sparing did they appear of glosses when compared with their successors. But even Baldus and Bartolus had kept their passion for commentating within certain bounds and had been content not to make one single passage a peg whereon to hang an exposition of every difficulty'. It had been the practice, he informs us, in those times to postpone for the greater leisure of the vacation difficulties which demanded a specially minute elucidation. These subsidiary lectures were known as 'repetitions.' But now-a-days, exclaimed Alciati, we have nothing but repetitions; the lecturers know no limits and exercise no discretion, but appear to think that if they leave a single difficulty unexplained they have been unfaithful to the performance of their duty, although the explanation of that difficulty might often have been far better reserved for another occasion. It thus not unfrequently happened that the lecturers in the schools would devote a whole year to the exposition of one or two laws, and the na, quorum libri testantur eos in hu- 1 Compare the very different lan- before Alciati's reforms had made their way in Germany: after quoting Cicero's glowing praise of Servius, he says,Hanc ipsam laudem quam Servio tribuit Cicero, doctores probatissimi magno consensu tribuunt Bartolo.' 'Decl. de Irnerio et Bartolo' (? 1537), Corpus Reformat. x1 355. |