"Quod tamen ad corruptam institutionem

loquendi emendandam pertinet, quam pueri

in scholis accipimus, huius mihi admonendus

videris: fac suspectum tibi sit, quicquid

hactenus didicisti, damnes omnia atque

abiicienda putes, nisi meliorum auctorum

testimonio et velut decreto rursus in eorum

mittaris possessionem."¹

One of the major articles in the first volume of Les Pays-Bas des humanistes I (ca. 1480-ca. 1575) is going to be dedicated to Rodolphus Agricola (1444-1485). Born in the north of the Low Countries, near Groningen, he probably received his early education at the school of the Brethren of the Common Life in that city. In May 1456, he matriculated at Erfurt, getting his bachelors degree after two years. He then chose to continue his studies at the University of Cologne, where he matriculated in 1462, again in the faculty of arts. From there he went to Louvain, where he took his master’s degree in 1465. His experience with international humanism went back to his first stay in Italy from about 1468, and it was largely through his activities that new insights spread into the Low Countries as well as neighbouring Westphalia and the Rhineland.

Agricola was held in sincere esteem by Erasmus, who characterised him in his Ciceronianus as ‘the first who brought with him from Italy some spark of better literature.’² But Agricola cannot be said to have written a considerable amount of books: his death came relatively early and all of his works were published posthumously. As one of the early northern humanists, he is best known for his De inventione dialectica, which brought about an essential change of view on the study of rhetoric and dialectic. Without going into a profound theoretical discussion, it must be clear that Agricola stood in the same respectable tradition as Lorenzo Valla and Desiderius Erasmus. For men like these, rhetoric and dialectic had to be ‘concentrated’, as a matter of speaking, into a better inquiry into the simple facts of everyday life. It was commonly felt among humanists that reasoning, once based on loci communes or ‘seats of argumentation’, should lead to essential truths where moral or practical decisions were to be made; for example why and if a philosopher should do well to get married. Agricola shared this vision, but upon that he shows himself to have been a pragmatic thinker. As such he was the opposite for example of a man like Boethius, whose main concern was not the particular case or habit: in his view, rhetoric was subordinate to dialectic, which he regarded primarily as an almost mathematical and abstract method of deduction, leading to commonly valid axioms serving as a ‘mould’ in which all facts of life should fit.

The fact that Agricola had his own particular thoughts on rhetoric and dialectic needs to be stressed in view of the letters he wrote. It should be realised that only until the days of Romanticism letters came to be seen as a means for the individual to express himself and reflect on the pathos of his soul. During the Renaissance however, there was a common agreement that letters should be based on the art of rhetoric. Well written letters were therefore used as a means by which humanists could educate and convince one another. Although they clearly avoided to indulge in inner frictions, they were not afraid to expose some personal habits: mutual relations based on confidence were indeed one of the main reasons to write - as well as to convince. Agricola for example liked to propagate a particular attitude to study by making use of rhetorical and dialectical methods. Proof of this can be found in his correspondence, of which fifty-one letters are left: a rather modest lot in relation to their importance.

One of these letters illustrates the above mentioned arguments. Its importance was soon understood and it came to be published as De formando studio or De ratione studii, frequently in combination with related educative programs, for example by Erasmus and Melanchthon.³ The fact that it was reprinted many times adds to the positive reception of this ‘master plan for students’. But originally, it was addressed to one man: Jacques Barbireau, a young musician from Antwerp, who had asked Agricola to come and settle himself and be his teacher. Agricola rejected the offer, but as a kind of compensation he wrote an extensive guideline to his friend on how to organise his studies. Like in most cases, practical circumstances prevented any personal contact between the master and his pupil: ‘writing is the only way that is open to me’, Agricola says. He expresses his intention to act as a teacher, but he also refers to his insufficient knowledge. Barbireau is praised for his personal talents; a common habit for those who hoped to gain some personal kind of sympathy. Apart from this, we find two main arguments if we look at the contents in a larger sense; firstly about how to choose the right kind of study and secondly about how to seize the special kind of knowledge which rhetoric and dialectic have to offer.

When Agricola goes into the choice of a study he seems to advocate pragmatism, by stating that it generally depends on material circumstances as well as natural talent. In both cases, a student should be prepared for certain inevitable interferences that might prevent him from reaching the top. If his main desire was to gain wealth, he should go for civil law or medicine. If however, he was one of those who tend to study for nothing but the sake of knowledge, the choice should be philosophy - this being the essential discipline for anybody who wants to acquire not only the best way to think, but also to shape and express one’s thoughts.

Now if the choice is to be philosophy, students should realise that it has two main aspects. First of all they need to try and develop a mental attitude which enables the individual to hold on to himself in case of ethical choices to be made in daily life. For this purpose, Agricola suggests well known classical authors like Aristotle, Cicero and Seneca, together with a number of philosophers, historians, poets and orators whose writings were available in Latin. Being a Christian humanist, he immediately thereafter mentions the Holy Script, which he regards as an essential contribution to any kind of study: was not this the only text to confide in safely, so as to lead a morally responsible life? Whether or not it was a modern kind of doubt, Agricola wants us to remember that ‘everything handed down by others contains mistaken idea’s of one kind or another’.

The second matter of importance for students in philosophy should be the acquaintance of natural phenomena in a broader sense. Studying the nature of things seems necessary to prevent us from passing our time unduly. But what exactly does Agricola mean by claiming that a student should take care ‘to reach and touch the things themselves’?⁴ What he in fact suggests is a personal reconnaissance of the encyclopaedia, focussing on subjects like ‘great empires’, ‘biology’, ‘agriculture’ and ‘medicine’. In doing so, Agricola wants us first of all to develop a methodical disciplinary habit, leading to an independent and creative way of thinking, not in the least by doing away with old-fashioned methods of education: ‘The majority of students will also choose that talkative discipline rattling with futile clamour that we now commonly call ‘the arts’. They waste their days arguing in complicated beating about the bush or even in riddles (...)’.⁵

After this important statement, for which many humanists were to fight a severe struggle, Agricola continues on the importance of expressing in words, properly and methodically, the results of ethics and natural science. Remarkably enough he starts with the vernacular, being the natural language of thought of a student. Latin should be translated, he says, into the vernacular, in order to get to the essence of Latin; on the other hand, students should translate any spontaneous thought into Latin again.

Next to the choice of a study, Agricola wants the student to practice the best method to educate himself. For this, three aims had to be realised: first of all to absorb the texts by devoted reading, secondly to cultivate the memory by constant repetition, and finally to expand personal knowledge in regular practice. In the eyes of Agricola, the last item is obviously the most interesting one, because it demands from a student to look at himself not only as a book of facts. Again, Agricola takes a firm stand: ‘If we are not capable of handing over anything of our own to posterity, or of conveying anything else to our contemporaries besides what we have learned, what then is the difference between ourselves and a book?’ So the mind needs to be cultivated: books always offer unchanged knowledge to an audience, whereas the memory of a human being is dynamic and fallible. And Agricola wants knowledge to be practical, otherwise it seems useless to him. Students should not limit their ambitions to use the right kind of knowledge at the right moment, but they should strive instead to add something important of their own.

If we want to reach this last goal, Agricola says, we are faced with two conditions. First we must learn to arrange human phenomena within the framework of clear categorical thinking; for example ‘virtue’ against ‘vice’, ‘life’ against ‘death’, ‘hatred’ against ‘benevolence’ and so on. Secondly, once a student is able to master these rules, he must also be able to activate his inventio, i.e. the way to discover and express new insights and arguments in order to convince an audience that has to deal with the same daily facts of life.⁶ But this elevated kind of thinking poses its own kind of problems, which Agricola tries to prove by referring to the remarks made by Livy about the rape of Lucretia, a very chaste woman;⁷ under which heading should it be categorised? He hands us another case by quoting Virgil: ‘Life’s fairest days are ever the first to flee for hapless mortals.’⁸ Every word is analysed in its particular context in order to demonstrate the rules of dialectic.

Agricola’s letter is nothing less than a plea. In a clear and carefully chosen Latin vocabulary, we are offered a series of items and sub-items. The fact that he repeats his regret about the usual limitation of a letter does not prevent him to present his correspondent with a subtle and detailed description of his rhetorical method. He may have written it as a model to be printed for the sake of a large audience, but it still remains a personal letter addressed to a personal admirer, Jacques Barbireau. We should not be surprised therefore to read some details about Agricola’s private life, for example his intention to study Hebrew again, in spite of the fact that he did not yet possess an advanced knowledge of Greek.

Steven and I chose this subject to show that, already in the days of early humanism, letters had developed into a distinctive way of communication between scholars. In our view, three conclusions present themselves.

A) In the days of Agricola, correspondents felt less and less obliged to adapt their letters to the traditional rules of writing. Tight models of the mediaeval ars dictaminis were left to die and writing became more personal. But this attitude did not result in a loss of respect for the art of rhetoric: letters were still related to the short kind of essay from which the reader should learn. Agricola himself has left us with a number of beautiful exercises which permits us to evaluate his contribution to the art of letter writing.

B) Once the printed word started to conquer the world, communication by letters changed in character. Letters were mostly important for the simple fact that there was no chance to meet and talk: geographical distance in general did not allow private contacts. Because of this, letters had to fill the gap between personal and confidential conversation on the one hand and an officially published scholarly work on the other. With this in mind, we should not be surprised to find Agricola personally admonishing the young Barbireau to pay special attention to his treatises on rhetoric and dialectic. His confidentiality is evident, but we are not to forget its limitations: there was always a certain risk that a letter might be read by others who might decide to hand it over to possible opponents, or perhaps even to have it printed unauthorised.

C) Letters tended to lose their confidential and personal status if they were for some purpose printed. Accordingly, readers should always keep in mind the form in which a letter has survived. Is it an autograph, originally written and delivered by mail? Was it meant to create personal ties between two people who would, if possible, have preferred to meet personally? Are we left with a copy, adapted in some way by the sender, whose first desire it was to have a collection worthy enough to represent his own personality and character? Or was it perhaps censured before publication by some descendent, in order to destroy confidential information that might offend outsiders?

Those of us working on Europa Humanistica do not need to be convinced of the necessity to determine and study the special context of each of our much-cherished prefaces. Publication in a book of sources, with the necessary references to later editions in which Agricola’s letter to Barbireau can be found, obviously helps to speed up our studies and those of many others.

Henk J. M. Nellen

Steven Surdèl

1‘On the subject of improving the flawed education in speaking that we receive at school when we are youngsters: I think I need to advise you to be suspicious of anything you have learned until now; you have to forget it all, you have to be willing to discard everything unless the evidence and verdict, as it were, of the better authors restores it into your possession’. A. van der Laan and F. Akkerman (eds), Rudolph Agricola. Letters. Assen 2002, p. 208-209 (no. 38, 7 June 1484).

2 T.M. Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition, Chicago 1994, p. 125.

3 The most recent bibliography by Peter Mack counts 38 editions, almost all of them dating from the sixteenth century. See ‘Rodolphus Agricola’. In: H.-G. Roloff (ed.), Die deutsche Literatur I, Reihe II: Die deutsche Literatur zwischen 1450 und 1620, Bern/Berlin/Frankfurt a.M./New York/Paris/Wien [ca.1998], p. 599-601.

4 ‘Nec ego aditum tantum primaque initia harum artium percipere te velim, quod nunc vulgo in scholis fieri videmus, quodque tu pridem cum magna laude pulchre prolixeque prestitisti, sed res ipsas attingendas censuerim’ (Akkerman and Van der Laan 2002, p. 206-207).

5 ‘Plerique etiam loquaces has et inani strepitu crepitantes, quas vulgo artes iam vocamus, sibi vendicant, et perplexis disputationem ambagibus vel etiam (...) enigmatibus diem terunt (...)’ (Akkerman and Van der Laan 2002, p. 204-205).

6 ‘This everyday emphasis on procedure signals a shift in intellectual phocus on the part of the pedagogic reformers from the ideal end product of a classical education, to the classroom aids (...). It marks a genuinely transitional stage in the institutionalising of Renaissance humanism.’ L. Jardine, ‘Distinctive discipline: Rudoplh Agricola’s influence on methodical thinking in the humanities’. In: F. Akkerman & A.J. Vanderjagt (eds.), Rodolphus Agricola Phrisius. 1444-1485. Proceedings of the International Conference at the University of Groningen, 28-30 October 1985. Leiden-New York-Kobenhavn-Köln 1988, p. 47.

7 Livy, Ab urbe condita 1, 57, 1-1, 59, 2.

8 ‘Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi prima fugit’ (Georgica 3, 66-67).