Highways and Byways in Cambridge and ElyConybeare, John William Edward
History
Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely
Conybeare, John William Edward
Cambridgeshire (England) -- Description and travel; Isle of Ely (England) -- Description and travel
When we disembark once more at Silver Street Bridge, we find ourselves
standing beneath the sombre old red-brick walls of Queens', indented
just above us by a small projecting turret which we should not leave
without notice, for it bears the name and, by tradition, was assigned
to the use of the famous Erasmus during the months he spent in
Cambridge. This great light of the Reformation, or, more properly
speaking, of the intellectual revival which led up to it, was brought
here by the influence of the saintly chancellor, Sir Thomas More,
whose great wish was to broaden the University outlook by the
introduction of the Classical spirit. Hitherto its curriculum had been
almost exclusively confined to Aristotelian philosophy, adapted to
dogmatic Christianity by the great mediaeval Schoolmen, especially St.
Thomas Aquinas. Erasmus brought in the knowledge of Greek, which he
had acquired from the learned exiles whom the capture of
Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 had driven to the west. Unhappily
he, in no small degree, depreciated this great gift, by clogging it
with his own self-opinionated pronunciation of the language, instead
of taking it as actually spoken. Strange to say, this "Erasmian"
barbarism shortly became a badge of Protestantism (though Erasmus
himself lived and died a Catholic). It was thus enforced during the
reign of Edward the Sixth, forbidden in that of Mary, and enforced
again under Elizabeth. To this day it remains with us, and cuts us off
from the living tongue of Hellas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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