hope, unbreakable treaty of peace, I feel
entitled to hope with confidence that not only the moral virtues and
Christian piety but also the true learning, purified of corruption, and
the fine disciplines will revive and blossom forth; particularly as this
aim is being prosecuted with equal zeal in different parts of the world,
in Rome by Pope Leo, in Spain by the Cardinal of Toledo,[59] in England
by King Henry VIII, himself no mean scholar, here by King Charles, a
young man admirably gifted, in France by King Francis, a man as it were
born for this task, who besides offers splendid rewards to attract and
entice men distinguished for virtue and learning from all parts, in
Germany by many excellent princes and bishops and above all by the
Emperor Maximilian, who, wearied in his old age of all these wars, has
resolved to find rest in the arts of peace: a resolve at once more
becoming to himself at his age and more fortunate for Christendom. It is
to these men's piety then that we owe it that all over the world, as if
on a given signal, splendid talents are stirring and awakening and
conspiring together to revive the best learning. For what else is this
but a conspiracy, when all these great scholars from different lands
share out the work among themselves and set about this noble task, not
merely with enthusiasm but with a fair measure of success, so that we
have an almost certain prospect of seeing all disciplines emerge once
more into the light of day in a far purer and more genuine form? In the
first place polite letters, for long reduced almost to extinction, are
being taken up and cultivated by the Scots, the Danes and the Irish. As
for medicine, how many champions has she found! Nicholas Leonicenus[60]
in Rome, Ambrose Leo of Nola[61] at Venice, William Cop[62] and John
Ruell[63] in France, and Thomas Linacre in England. Roman law is being
revived in Paris by William Budaeus[64] and in Germany by Ulrich
Zasius,[65] mathematics at Basle by Henry Glareanus.[66]

In theology there was more to do, for up till now its professors have
almost always been men with an ingrained loathing for good learning, men
who conceal their ignorance the more successfully as they do this on
what they call a religious pretext, so that the ignorant herd is
persuaded by them to believe it a violation of religion if anyone
proceeds to attack their barbarism; for they prefer to wail for help to
the uneducated mob and incite it to stone-throwin