Linacre's influence on English medicine / by Sir George Newman.

  • George Newman
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Linacre's influence on English medicine / by Sir George Newman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/44 (page 7)
    THE LIFE AND WORK OF EINACRE. Linacre was born at Canterbury probably in 1460, and went to the monastery school at Christ Church, Canterbury, under the priorship of William Tilly, more commonly called Selling, from the name of the Kentish village of which he was a native. Selling was a Fellow of All Souls and an old pupil of Politian at Bologna, and as presiding monk in the Canterbury monastery the tutor and preceptor of Linacre, who at the age of 20 was re¬ moved to Oxford, There he was elected in 1484 Fellow of All Souls, which became at that time an English home of Greek learning. Under Vitelli he studied Greek in company with Grocyn and William Latimer, and became an accomplished scholar. When Archbishop Warham appointed Selling, the Prior of Christ Church in Canterbury, as an eccle¬ siastical ambassador to Rome, Linacre accompanied him and by him was introduced to Politian. Whether or not he sojourned en route at Bologna, Linacre soon found himself in the midst of the Platonic Academy at Florence, patronised by Lorenzo de Medici, the companion and fellow stu¬ dent of his sons, Piero and Giovanni, and the pupil of Chalcondyles and Politian. We do not know the exact pursuits or studies of Linacre; we only know he stayed in Florence for more than twelve months, that he associated with the habitues of the Medician court, attended the Academy classes and disputa¬ tions, read in the libraries, shared in the pleasures and gaieties of Florence and became intimately ac¬ quainted with Chalcondyles, Politian, and Ficino, the leaders of the Academy and brilliant friends of Lorenzo de Medici. We cannot here enter into the scholarship and lives of these four men, but it cannot be doubted that they left an enduring mark, the love of learning, upon him. It is as if he came