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THE INTRODUCTION OF GREEK INTO ENGLISH SCHOOLS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2014

Matthew Adams
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Extract

At the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, knowledge of ancient Greek for most educated Englishmen was something one could aspire to but not necessarily attain. Greek was learnt for reading alone and so less time was spent on its study than Latin, which at this period was learnt also for conversation: this might explain why today, Greek remains a second language in schools, to be learnt after Latin. Even in continental Europe, for one as learned as Erasmus, difficulties could be encountered in the study of the new language. ‘My Greek studies are almost too much for my courage’, he wrote in 1500, ‘while I have not the means of purchasing books nor the help of a master’. What Erasmus lacked – namely a teacher and reading material necessary to learn from – was paralleled across Europe, but nowhere more so than in English schools in the mid-sixteenth century. Without these, the schools in England also found it hard to introduce and maintain Greek in the classroom.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 61 , Issue 1 , April 2014 , pp. 102 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2014 

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References

1 Clarke, M. L., Classical Education in Britain, 1500–1900 (Cambridge, 1959), 19Google Scholar.

2 Clarke, M. L., Greek Studies in England 1700–1830 (Cambridge, 1945), 10Google Scholar.

3 Woodward, W., Desiderius Erasmus. Concerning Education (Cambridge, 1904), 11Google Scholar.

4 See Hallam, H., Introduction to the Literature of Europe (London, 1864), i.233Google Scholar. The issue for Erasmus was a lack of money and teacher, rather than books.

5 Woodward (n. 3), 13.

6 Epistulae Erasmi, 14, in Hallam (n. 4), i.236–7: tantum eruditionis non illius protritae ac trivialis, sed reconditae, exactae, antiquae, Latinae, Graecaeque, ut iam in Italiam nisi visendi gratia non multum desideres.

7 Hence the ‘Grocyn lecturer’ in Classics at the University of Oxford today. For Grocyn, see Knight, S., The Life of Dr John Colet (Oxford, 1823), 24Google Scholar; Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, to AD 1500, (Oxford, 1957), ii.828Google Scholar.

8 Vitelli was praelector (teacher and lecturer) in Greek at Oxford c.1475–89.

9 William Lily was first High Master. Erasmus had associations with the school.

10 Elogia quorundam Anglorum, 91, in Knight (n. 7), 24, and Hallam (n. 4), i.236.

11 Epistulae Erasmi, 363, in Hallam (n. 4), i.236.

12 Catto, J. I. and Evans, R. (eds.), The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. II (Oxford, 1992), 780–1Google Scholar.

13 Emden (n. 7), ii.963.

14 Vulgaria were English prose passages with model Latin translations, written for boys to practise their colloquial Latin; they were so called because they were common phrases in the vulgar, or English, tongue. Vulgaria first appeared in print in England in 1483 and were intended to supply schoolboys with words and phrases taken from everyday life.

15 Aesop was always read in Latin at this period, never in Greek.

16 Horman, W., Vulgaria (London, 1519), 121 ffGoogle Scholar.

17 E.g. Watson, Foster, The English Grammar Schools to 1660 (Cambridge, 1908), 495Google Scholar; Alexander, M., The Growth of English Education, 1348–1648 (University Park, PA, 1990), 188Google Scholar.

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19 Leach, A. F., The Schools of Mediaeval England (London, 1915), 247Google Scholar.

20 In Warton, T., The Life of Sir Thomas Pope (London, 1772), i.226 f.Google Scholar; McDonnell, M., A History of St. Paul's School (London, 1909), 48Google Scholar; M. L. Clarke (n. 2), 18.

21 See e.g. Maxwell Lyte, H. C., A History of Eton College, 1440–1910 (4th edn, London, 1911), 100Google Scholar; McDonnell (n. 20), 48.

22 Watson (n. 17), 488.

23 Gardiner, Robert Barlow (ed.), The Admission Registers of St. Paul's School, 1748–1876 (London, 1884), 376, 382–3Google Scholar. Possibly Colet's aspiration was for the teaching of both Greek and Latin literature, though the statutes hint at the teaching of Latin language and literature but only Greek language.

24 Details of Lily in Emden (n. 7), ii.1147 and Catto and Evans (n. 12), 781–2.

25 Hallam (n. 4), ii.42; Carlisle, Nicholas, A Concise Description of the Endowed Grammar Schools in England and Wales (London, 1818), ii.136Google Scholar.

26 McDonnell (n. 20), 45.

27 McKitterick, D. J., A History of Cambridge University Press, Vol. 1. Printing and the Book Trade in Cambridge, 1534–1698 (Cambridge, 1992), 44Google Scholar.

28 Hallam (n. 4), i.174. Orme, Nicholas, Education and Society in Medieval and Renaissance England (London, 1989), 17Google Scholar, tells us that, even by 1510, English schools were still having so much difficulty in obtaining books printed in England (and this was for Latin books, let alone Greek) that they actually found it easier to purchase books from French printers.

29 Epistulae Erasmi, 59, in Hallam (n. 4), i.233, which also provides evidence for the growth of Greek in France.

30 E.g. ἀλίβαντας, f. 5.

31 Linacre's books contain Greek characters, rather than being complete Greek texts, and both can be seen today in the British Library. The first complete Greek text to be printed at Cambridge was Plato's Menexenus (1587). See McKitterick (n. 27), 102–3.

32 Linacre, T., De temperamentis (Cambridge, 1521)Google Scholar; idem, De emendata structura Latini sermonis (London, 1524).

33 …optime lector, aequo animo feras…iis enim non satis erat instructus typographus videlicet recens ab eo fusis characteribus graecis, nec parata ea copia, qua ad hoc agendum opus est.

34 Watson (n. 17), 501.

35 Hallam (n. 4), ii.42.

36 Ibid., ii.40.

37 See n. 6.

38 In Green, J. R., A Short History of the English People (London, 1874), 306Google Scholar.

39 Dialogus de Pronuntiatione (1528), 48, in Hallam (n. 4), i.345: An tu credidisses unquam fore, ut apud Britannos aut Batavos pueri Graece garrirent, Graecis epigrammatis non infeliciter luderent? (‘Would you ever have believed it that in Britain or Holland boys would chatter away in Greek, and successfully make play in Greek epigrams?’). Was Erasmus talking of St Paul's School, as some would have us believe (e.g. Cook, A. B., About Winchester College [London, 1917], 291Google Scholar)? Certainly his ties with that school were strong.

40 Carlisle (n. 25), ii.405 (Bristol), ii.283–4 (East Retford), i.131 (Witton); ii.50 (Merchant Taylors' School); Woodruff, C. E. and Cape, H. J., Schola Regia Cantuariensis. A History of Canterbury School (London, 1908), 49 (Canterbury)Google Scholar. Watson (n. 17), 491 ff., has a more comprehensive list of statutes of schools requiring Greek, up to 1600.

41 Strype, John, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol I, pt 2 (Oxford, 1822), 822Google Scholar; Watson (n. 17), 488; Watson, F., The Old Grammar Schools (Cambridge, 1916), 16–18Google Scholar.

42 Watson (n. 17), 488 (Saffron Walden); Parry, A. W., Education in England in the Middle Ages (London, 1920), 229Google Scholar; Leach (n. 19), 301 (Cuckfield).

43 See Leach (n. 19), 448; also VCH Hants II.298 and Bucks II.178; Carlisle (n. 25), I.440 (Saffron Walden); Carlisle (n. 25), II.594–8; Parry (n. 41), 229; Leach (n. 19), 290, 301 (Cuckfield).

44 See Parry (n. 42), 229–30; Leach, A. F., Educational Charters and Documents 598–1909 (Cambridge, 1911), 448Google Scholar; Leach (n. 19), 290; Carlisle (n. 25), ii.594; Clarke, (n. 2), 17.

45 British Library 12A XXXIII.

46 E.g. McDonnell (n. 20), 48; Cook (n. 39), 294; Adams, H. C., A History of Winchester College (Oxford, 1878), 75Google Scholar, regards the poem as ‘marking thus the date of the introduction of the study of Greek into the school’; Leach (n. 19), 281–2 calls the poem ‘very creditable’.

47 British Library 12A XX.

48 Goldhill, S., Who Needs Greek? (Cambridge, 2002), 24 ffGoogle Scholar.

49 Ibid., 26, 29 ff.

50 Ibid., 32. The learning of Greek was closely entwined with Protestant theory.

51 British Library 12A XXX.

52 Maxwell Lyte (n. 21), 145.

53 British Library 12A LXVII.

54 Tutored by Roger Ascham, Elizabeth read Latin and Greek with great fluency. See e.g. Rev. Dr Giles, , The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, Vol I (London, 1864), 80 ffGoogle Scholar.

55 Grant had been Headmaster at Westminster since 1572: Sargeaunt, John, The Annals of Westminster School (London, 1898), 8Google Scholar.

56 Cook (n. 39), 291, thinks there is little doubt that Greek was taught at St Paul's School under Lily and his successor, John Ritwise (1522–32); Simon, Joan, Education and Society in Tudor England (Cambridge, 1966), 96Google Scholar, and McDonnell (n. 20), 69–71, 80, believe that no Greek was taught after Ritwise until 1558.