ies of Italy none was more
numerous than the German, a title which embraced many nationalities of
the North: not merely German-speaking races such as the Swiss and
Flemish and Dutch, but all who could by any stretch of imagination be
represented as descendants of the Goths; Swedes and Danes, Hungarians
and Bohemians, Lithuanians and Bulgars and Poles. That they went in
such numbers is not surprising. The prestige of Italian teaching was
great and well-established, whereas their own universities were few
and scarcely more than nascent; indeed, when the Council of Vienne had
ordained the teaching of Greek and other missionary languages in 1311,
its injunctions went to France and Italy and England and Spain: but
Germany had no university to which a missive could be directed. From
Southern Germany, too, and Switzerland and Austria, the distance was
small, notwithstanding the obvious Alps and the difficulties of the
passes. Even Celtis, in spite of his denunciations, sent on his best
pupils to Italy. So there were many who brought home with them to the
North recollections of lofty condescension and of ill-disguised
contempt for the foreigner: insults that they burned to repay.

Italy might vaunt the glories of ancient Rome; but Germany also had
deeds to be proud of. Rome might have founded the World-empire; but
Charlemagne had conquered the dominions of the Caesars and made the
Empire Germanic. Classic antiquity, too, could not be denied to the
land and people whom Tacitus had described; and Germans were not slow
to claim the virtues found among them by the Roman historian. Arminius
became the national hero. German faith and honour, German simplicity,
German sincerity and candour--these are insisted upon by the
Transalpine humanists with a vehemence which suggests that while
priding themselves on the possession of such qualities, they marked
the lack of them in others. We may recall Ascham's horror of the
Englishman Italianated. Not that Germans could not make friends in
Italy. Scheurl loved his time at Bologna, and was eager to fight for
the Bentivogli against Julius II. Erasmus was made much of by the
Aldine Academy at Venice; and ten years later Hutten was charmed with
his reception there. But with many, conscious of their own defects[40]
and of the reality of Italian superiority, the charge of barbarism
must have rankled. To Luther in 1518 Italian is synonymous with
supercilious.

[40] Thus a worthy abbot in the I