Read at the meeting of the Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Histoire de la Renaissance in Vienna 1965. A condensed version of the French text has been printed in the Rapports of the XII^e Congres Internationale des Sciences Historiques (Wien, 1965), III, 75-86.

1 He returns to this subject in the Classkae epistolae of 1565; cf. the edition of Rott, Jean (Paris and Strasbourg, 1938), pp. 24, 64.Google Scholar

2 See the text quoted by Leonard, , Histoiregenerate du Protestantisme (Paris, 1961), 1, 160.Google Scholar

3 Cf. Reuss, op. cit., p. 198.

4 Kuckelhahn, L., Johannes Sturm, Strassburg's erster Schukector (Leipzig, 1872), p. 58.Google Scholar

5 C.E., p. 20.

6 Nobilitas literata, f. 37^v.

7 ‘ad recuperandam quam amisimum veterum Graecorum et Romanorum docendi, declamandi, disputandi, scribendi, dicendi facultatem’ (C.E., p. 32).

8 ‘Maintain in our schools of theology Moses, the prophets, the evangelists, the apostles, and, in order to explain them, the authority of the fathers, before whom all those who are hostile to our doctrine must of necessity bow. But it is neither necessary nor useful to read the fathers in class as long as there remains some text to read of the four types which I have mentioned, and there will always be some. Experience itself has taught our era what evils insinuated themselves into the academies and churches during past centuries, after collectors of sentences and writers of epitomes had chased better writers from their places. These were the inventions of an ignorant laziness, an ingenious advocate of its own cowardliness. Our era has better commentaries and better methods of teaching which need neither intermediary nor glossator, and the church finds in them a sure protection against corruption of doctrine and against idolatry. Therefore let us fight for religion and for letters and wish that only the authors cited above may have their place in the school.’ (C.E., p. 78.)

9 Nobilitas literata, f. 15^V.

10 It is the purpose of their publication. ‘Cupio enim mea studia et meos labores aliis prodesse hominibus, non solum Argentinensibus placere’ (C.E., p. 6).

11 ‘A complete academy should be set up at the common expense of all the Protes tants, to which will be invited, from all nations, even the Catholic, which excel in science and culture, the most gifted scholars and the most remarkable men whose competence and authority no one could contest, each of them holding the palm in his art or his profession' (quoted by Charles Schmidt, op. cit., p. 40, n. 2).

12 ‘Because that which neither the excellent and pious Johann Reuchlin of Pforzheim, nor the eloquent and cultivated Erasmus of Rotterdam, nor, before them, Alexander Hegius and Rudolph Agricola could obtain from the theologians and the monks, namely that the latter at last authorize the teaching of good letters if they do not wish to cultivate them themselves—that the Jesuits undertook of their own motion: they teach languages and the precepts of dialectic and they explain rhetoric to their pupils as far as possible, and that so well that, where the rarer the schools we call academies in comparison with their colleges, springing up on every hand, the more numerous are the people from whom they win gratitude and favor. I rejoice over this work for two reasons: first, because the Jesuits second us and cultivate good letters, the object of all our concern and our great passion. I have in fact seen that authors whom they explicate, the exercises which they practise, and their method of teaching which is so close to our own that it seems to be derived from ours. Thus they do not embarrass us, us and our religion, any more than Bembo, Sadoleto, Contarini, Pole and many other learned and honorable men, some of whose friends have been seen in our camp, even the disciples to whom they gave arms, not against us, whom they defended, but against idolatry, which, with us, they energetically attacked. And here is my second reason for joy: they force us to have more zeal and vigilance for fear that they may surpass us in zeal and train up more learned and lettered men than we.’ (C.E., pp. 14, 16.)

13 ‘That the studies are cultivated also by the papists I am glad and rejoice over, and I praise the cardinal of Augsburg for having founded, at great expense, it seems to me, the college of the Jesuits. The archbishops of Mainz and Trier are doing the same thing, I have been told: it would be most fortunate if they were to tolerate the sound and pure doctrine of the Gospels.… They are indeed endowed with many remarkable qualities; I am familiar with them and esteem them and rejoice over their virtues; but because of these I am saddened to see them, all because of error of their belief and their religion, powerless to spread their fruit abundantly.’ (C.E., p. 8.)