Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Tradition and Innovation in Latin Schools from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century

by Robert Black

• ISBN13: 9780521401920
• ISBN10: 0521401925
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-09-24
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Based on the study of over 500 surviving manuscript school books, this comprehensive study of the curriculum of school education in medieval and Renaissance Italy contains some surprising conclusions. Robert Black's analysis finds that continuity and conservatism, not innovation, characterize medieval and Renaissance teaching. The study of classical texts in medieval Italian schools reached its height in the twelfth century; this was followed by a collapse in the thirteenth century, an effect on school teaching of the growth of university education. This collapse was only gradually reversed in the two centuries that followed: it was not until the later 1400s that humanists began to have a significant impact on education. Scholars of European history, of Renaissance studies, and of the history of education will find that this deeply researched and broad-ranging book challenges much inherited wisdom about education, humanism and the history of ideas.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	viii
List of abbreviations	x
Editorial note regarding citations from manuscripts and publications	xiii
A note on chronological terminology	xv
Introduction	1	(11)
Italian Renaissance education: an historiographical perspective	12	(22)
The elementary school curriculum in medieval and Renaissance Italy: traditional methods and developing texts	34	(30)
Doctores puerorum	34	(2)
Tabula, carta, salterium	36	(8)
Ianua	44	(20)
Ianua: its origins and early character	45	(3)
Ianua's early prevalence in Italy	48	(2)
Other early manuscripts of Ianua: the character and development of the text before the fifteenth century	50	(5)
The later development of Ianua	55	(9)
The secondary grammar curriculum	64	(109)
The ancient and medieval background	64	(5)
The twelfith century and the invention of secondary grammar	69	(13)
The thirteenth century and the emergence of a distinctive Italian approach	82	(16)
The fourteenth century and the rise of the vernacular	98	(26)
The fifteenth century: an era of failed reform	124	(47)
Conclusion	171	(2)
Latin authors in medieval and Renaissance Italian schools: the story of a canon	173	(102)
Major and minor authors	173	(1)
The Dark Ages: decline and renaissance of the classics	174	(5)
The tenth and eleventh centuries: the ascendant classics	179	(6)
The twelfth century: the classical apogee	185	(7)
The thirteenth century: revolution	192	(8)
The fourteenth century: counter-revolution	200	(25)
The fifteenth century: tenacious traditions and new fashions	225	(50)
The minor authors	225	(11)
Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy	236	(2)
The Latin classics	238	(1)
Lucan, Claudian, Seneca the Tragedian	239	(1)
Valerius Maximus, Statius and Horace	240	(7)
Ovid, Persius, Juvenal, Terence, Vergil and Sallust	247	(15)
Cicero	262	(8)
The late fifteenth century and the triumph of humanism	270	(3)
Conclusion	273	(2)
Reading Latin authors in medieval and Renaissance Italian schools	275	(56)
Glossing between the lines: the struggling pupil	275	(11)
The role of the vernacular	275	(6)
Word order	281	(2)
Interlinear Latin synonyms	283	(2)
Grammatical analysis	285	(1)
Glossing in the margins: the triumph of Philology over morality	286	(39)
Rhetorical figures	286	(2)
Grammar	288	(2)
Mnemonic verses	290	(3)
Geography	293	(1)
History	293	(3)
Mythology	296	(2)
Paraphrase	298	(3)
Authorities	301	(3)
Introductory philosophy	304	(4)
Introductory rhetorical analysis	308	(3)
Introductory and accompanying material	311	(1)
Probationes pennae, drawings and colophons	311	(3)
Accessus	314	(4)
Metric analysis	318	(2)
Sententiae	320	(4)
Allegory	324	(1)
School glosses and learned commentaries: Tradition and adaptation in reading Boethiu's Consolation	325	(6)
Rhetoric and style in the school grammar syllabus	331	(38)
The secondary syllabus as an integrated curriculum	331	(5)
Grammar and rhetoric	336	(2)
Rhetoric and style in the Italian grammar syllabus before the Renaissance: the force of tradition	338	(11)
Rhetoric and style in the grammar curriculum during the fifteenth century: innovation triumphant	349	(17)
Conclusion	366	(3)
Appendix I BL Harley 2653: the earliest known manuscript of Ianua	369	(4)
Appendix II A handlist of manuscripts of Ianua	373	(6)
Appendix III Manuscripts of Tebaldo's Regule	379	(7)
Appendix IV Handlist of manuscripts of school authors produced in Italy and now found in florentine libraries	386	(40)
Appendix V Theoretical grammar manuscripts in Florentine libraries examined and included or eliminated as Italian school grammars	426	(2)
Appendix VI Authorities cited explicitly in manuscripts of major school authors in Florentine libraries	428	(7)
Bibliography	435	(21)
Index of manuscripts	456	(10)
General index	466