Twelve Catholic men of science / edited by Sir Bertram Windle.

  • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Twelve Catholic men of science / edited by Sir Bertram Windle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    both parties stood equal— Of what he had he could give,” and the prayer for the benefactor went far to balance the account between the two parties. To the same influence is due the democratic policy that pervades the old foundations. All men were equal for the purposes of these charitable trusts. Linacre was a product of the early Italian Renais- sance : there was free intercourse between Italy and England in his time. William de Selling had introduced Humanistic learning, in its new and attractive form ; and at the monastery school of Christ Church, Canterbury, where Selling taught (he was afterwards Prior), Linacre came under his influence. The impress was never lost. At Oxford (probably All Souls College, where Linacre was elected Fellow in 1484) he came under the influence of Vitelli, said to have been the first teacher of Greek in England; at Oxford, too, were Grocyn and Latimer. The atmosphere ” could not be more humanistic,” and the fervour that attends nascent culture more than made up for the formalities of organized procedure. I am often set wondering by the mass of regulations and statutes modem universities think fit to set up when starting house on their own account, as if rules could take the place of men ! The mortmain ” of paper constitutions is not a good substitute for living personal influence ; worse than that, the paper formulae tend to oust the influence of the living agents. I like to think of Oxford at the close of the fifteenth century: then, as now, a place to dream in, but where, as not now, the student had the full enjoyment of the founders’ inten- tions. The college chapels, that to-day can only suggest the purpose of the early benefactors, were then its living embodiment. In 1485 Selling went to Rome as ambassador from Henry VII. to the Pope, and Linacre travelled in his suite. The master did not forget his old pupil, and 3
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