DOCUMENT #1

Giovanni Dondi, Letter to Fra Guglielmo Centueri c.1370

If we think of the cultivation of virtues, the reward of duties, the robustness and efficacy of minds, and finally of the excellence of minds, I shall not cease to claim boldly that we our greatly outdone by our predecessors, and that Modern times have notable declined from the Ancient….And so I never cease to wonder and become indignant at the fact that we, brought up and nourished in the light of true religion, have departed so much from former virtue; we have so ceased to be men that in many respects we are driven almost like sheep.

 DOCUMENT #2

Leonardo Bruni, Concerning the Study of Literature, 1440

The foundations of all true learning must be laid in the sound and thorough knowledge of Latin: which  implies study marked by a broad spirit, accurate scholarship, and careful attention to details.  … But the wider question now confronts us, that of the subject matter of our studies….First among such studies I place History: a subject which must not on any account be neglected by one who aspires to true cultivation….For the careful study of the past enlarges our foresight in contemporary affairs and affords to citizens and to monarchs lessons in th eordering of public policy. From History, also, we draw our store of examples of moral precepts.

 DOCUMENT #3

Montaigne, Essay on cannibals, 1577

It is the quality of a porter, not of valor, to have sturdier arms and legs; it is a stroke of luck to make your enemy stumble, or dazzle his eyes by the sunlight; it is a trick of art and technique to be an able fencer. The worth and value of a man is in his heart and his will; there lies his real honor. Valor is the strength of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.

 DOCUMENT #4

Montaigne, Essay on books, 1578

I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well: This is the goal toward which my sweating horse should strain…. The aim of our absurd educational system has been to make us, not good and wise, but learned; and it has succeeded. It has selected, for our instruction, not those books which contain the soundest and truest opinions, but those which speak the best Greek and Latin

 DOCUMENT #5

Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music, 1581

Music was numbered by the ancients among the arts that are called liberal, that is, worthy of a free man, and among the Greeks its masters, like those of almost all the other sciences, was held in great esteem. And by the best legislators it was decreed that it must be taught, not only as a lifelong delight but as useful to virtue, to those who were born to it.

 DOCUMENT #6

Erasmus of Rotterdam, Letter to Henry Bullock, 1516

Let those who attribute all qualities to authors of that sort show that I am at sea while they hit the target. They think it beneath them to descend to these schoolmasterly questions; for so they are wont to refer to those who have had a good literary education, as though it would be an insult to call a man a schoolmaster, as though it would be a credit to a theologian to be innocent of schooling. Knowledge of grammar itself is not the making of a theologian, but much less is he made by ignorance of grammar. Jerome, Ambrose and Augustine, the principal authorities on whom out theology rests, were all teachers. For in those days Aristotle was not yet accepted as an authority in the theological schools, and the philosophy current in our universities nowadays was not yet invented.

 DOCUMENT #7

Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II), On the Education of a Free Man, 1450

So far we have touched upon studies (grammar, rhetoric, geometry, music) by which we may attain enlightenment of the mind. However, we have not yet directly considered how we may most surely distinguish the true and the just from the base and degrading. Need I then impress upon you the importance of the study of Philosophy and of Letters . . . our guide to the true meaning of the past, to a right estimate of the present, to a sound forecast of the future. Where Letters cease, darkness covers the land; and a Prince who cannot read the lessons of history is a helpless prey of flattery and intrigue.

 DOCUMENT #8

Battista Guarino, On the Method of Teaching and Learning, 1459

Learning and training in Virtue, which the ancients called the “Humanities,” are peculiar to man, for they are the pursuits and the activities proper to mankind.

 DOCUMENT #9

Baldassare Castiglione, Book of the Courtier, 1528

The courtier should be passably learned in the humanities, in the Latin poets, orators, and historians, and should also be practiced in writing verse and prose, especially in our own vernacular. In this way he will never want for pleasant entertainment with the ladies, who are usually fond of such things, and even if his writings should not merit great praise, at 1east he will be capable of judging the writing of others.

 DOCUMENT #10

Francesco Guicciardini, Reflections, 1530

When I was young, I made light of good penmanship, knowing how to ride, play, dance and sing, and dress well, which are things that seem more decorative than substantial in a man. But later, I wished I had not done so. For although it is not wise to spend too much time cultivating these arts, I have seen that they lend dignity and reputation even to men of good rank. Skills of this sort open the way to the favor of princes, and sometimes to great profit and honors.

 DOCUMENT #11

Anonymous, Letter to the Parlement of Dijon concerning the reopening of a Jesuit school, c.1640

In general, it can be said that schools are useful in a civilized society, but having too many of them is always a bad thing. The study of literature is appropriate only to a small minority of men. Such study weakens the body and inspires contempt for all other occupations. More farmers are needed than magistrates, more soldiers than priests, more merchants than philosophers, more hardworking bodies than dreamy and contemplative spirits.

 DOCUMENT #12

Pico della Mirandola, Oration of the Dignity of Man, 1486

Therefore, God took man, a creation of indeterminate form, and placing him at the midpoint of the world spoke to him in this way: “I have given you no fixed abode, O Adam, so that you might have and possess the abode, form and gifts you yourself desire according to your will and judgment. The defined nature of other beings is confined by laws which I have prescribed. You, compelled by no limitations, according to your free choice in whose hands I have placed you, shall prescribe your own limits. I have set you in the center of the world, that you might more easily observe whatever there is in the world….You can degenerate toward lower beings, which are brutes, or, if you will, you can be reborn among higher beings, which are divine.”

 DOCUMENT #13

Petrus Paulus Vergerius, On Noble Manners and Liberal Studies, 1404

We call those studies liberal which are worthy of a free man; those studies by which we attain and practice virtue and wisdom; that education which calls forth, trains and develops those highest gifts of body and of mind which ennoble men, and which are rightly judged to rank next in dignity to virtue only…. In your own case, Ubertinus, you had before you the choice of training in Arms or in Letters. Either holds a place of distinction amongst the pursuits which appeal to men of noble spirit; either leads to fame and honor in the world. It would have been natural that you, the scion of a House ennobled by its prowess in arms, should have been content to accept your father’s permission to devote yourself wholly to that discipline. But to your great credit you elected to become proficient in both alike: to add to the career of arms traditional in your family, an equal success in that other great discipline of mind and character, the study of Literature