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More's Letter to Dorp: Remapping the Trivium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Daniel Kinney
Daniel Kinney*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

Thomas More's long letter to Martin van Dorp, Louvain humanist turned theologian, has begun to distinguish itself in the minds of many Renaissance scholars as something more than indifferent episode in the long and inconclusive history of Erasmus' personal differences with Dorp. In fact, More's letter is one of the first systematic defenses of humanist method, encompassing a critique of Scholastic grammar, dialectic, and theology, as well as a tightly argued defense of the new philological theology. More's debt to Valla, long obscured by More's strategic unwillingness in this letter to make much of a figure whom Dorp so detests, has finally begun to receive due attention.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , Summer 1981 , pp. 179 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1981

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References

1 More's text is cited according to E. F. Rogers’ line numbers in The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More (Princeton, 1947), ep. 15, pp. 27-74, hereafter cited as Correspondence. In all Latin citations, from whatever source, I have modernized the orthographical treatment of i/j and u/v. All translations here used are my own. More's text has been translated by Marcus Haworth in St. Thomas More: Selected Letters, ed. E. F. Rogers (New Haven, 1961); G. Marc'hadour, St. Thomas More: La Lettre i Dorp … (Namur, 1962); and M. A. Nauwelaerts et at. in La Correspondance d'Erasme, II (Brussels, 1974). For the history of Erasmus’ relations with Dorp, see (with some caution) Vocht, H. De, Monumenta Humanistica Louaniensia: Texts and Studies about Louvain Humanists in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century (Louvain, 1934), esp. pp. 139–178 Google Scholar. For critical commentary see De Vocht; Castelli, A., Note suit’ Umanesimo in Inghilterra (Milan, 1949), pp. 77–87 Google Scholar; Mesnard, P., “Ou l'Abb€ Marc'hadour nous introduit dans l'Univers de Thomas More,” Moreana, 1 (1963), 26–35 Google Scholar, and “Humanisme et theologie dans la controverse entre Erasmeet Dorpius,” Filosofa, 14, supp., tofasc. 4 (1963), 885-900;G. Marc'hadour, “Additions et corrections a l'Univers de Thomas More,” Moreana, 1 (1963), 159-161, and Thomas More et la Bible (Paris, 1969), pp. 124-136; M. S. Cooper, O.S.B., “More and the Letter to Martin Dorp,” Moreana, 6 (1965), 37-44; R. S. Sylvester, “Thomas More: Humanist in Action,” Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies), 1 (1966), ed. O. B. Hardison, 125-137 (rpt. in Essential Articles for the Study of Thomas More, ed. R. S. Sylvester and G. Marc'hardour [Hamdcn, Ct., 1977], pp. 462-469); Prevost, A., Thomas More et la crise de la pensie europiennt (Paris, 1969), pp. 131–141 Google Scholar; Fleisher, M., Radical Reform and Poltical Persuasion in the Life and Writings of Thomas More (Geneva, 1973), pp. 71–123 Google Scholar; S. Camporeale, “Da Lorenzo Valla a Tommaso Moro,” in Umanesimo e Teologia tra ‘400 e ‘500, Memorie Domenicane, n. s. 4 (Pistoia, 1973), 9-105; H. Holeczek, Humanistische Bibelphilologie als Reformproblem bei Erasmus von Rotterdam, Thomas More, und William Tyndale (Leiden, 1975). PP- 138-165; G. Santinello, “Teologia e linguaggio in Tommaso Moro,” Studia Patavina: Rivista discienze religiose, 24 (1977), 617-629; A. de Silva, “Sir Thomas More y la Teologia: El Quehacer teológico según la carta a Martin van Dorp,” Studium, 17 (1977). 513-527; G. Marc'hadour, “Thomas More convertit Martin Dorp a l'Humanisme Erasmien,” in Thomas More 1477-1977, Actes de l'Institutpour l'Étude de la Renaissance, VI (Brussels, 1980), 13-25; and my response in Moreana, 64-65 (June 1980), 128. Most of these studies challenge the traditional dismissal of More's letter to Dorp as a “hasty, rambling composition” of little acuteness or cogency (J. H. Hexter, in Utopia, ed. E. Surtz, S. J., and J. H. Hexter, The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More [New Haven and London, 1963- ; hereafter CW], IV, lxvii

2 Besides Camporeale's long essay cited above (1973), see his Lorenzo Valla: Umanesimo e Teologia (Florence, 1972), pp. 43 5-436, and da Napoli, G., Lorenzo Valla: Filosofta e religione nell’ umanesimo italiano (Rome, 1971), p. 365 Google Scholar.

3 Tractatus, called afterwards Summule Logicales, ed. L. M. de Rijk (Assen, 1972), I. i, p. 1; I have translated the commonest reading of More's day.

4 Walter J. Ong, Ramus: Method and the Decay o/Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), p. 166. T. Heath's excellent article, “Logical Grammar, Grammatical Logic, and Humanism in Three German Universities,” Studies in the Renaissance, 18 (1971), 9-64, undertakes the analysis of how humanists reformed actual German university curricula from a similar point of departure. See also Gilbert, N. W., Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York, 1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See Ong, pp. 92-130.

6 See M. A. Nauwelaerts, “Grammatici, Summularii et auteurs reprouves: Erasme et ses contemporains à la Remorque de Valla,” Paedogogica Historica, 13 (1973), 471-485.

7 Rashdall's own source (Rashdall-Powick-Emden, The Universities of Medieval Europe [Oxford, 1936], I, 448 [not 441, as in Rogers]) is Schreiber, H., Geschichte der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität zu Freiburg-im-Breisgau, H/i (Freiburg, 1857), 45 Google Scholar. The Tractatus Alberti mentioned by Schreiber was studied alongside the Sphaera materialis of Johannes de Sacro Bosco and was therefore most probably not a logic at all, but a science text, e.g. the Philosophia pauperum of either Albertus Magnus or Albert of Orlamunde.

8 Two Low Countries editions of the Modi significandi Alberti and Wynkyn de Worde's edition of March 16, 1515, bear the subtitle, ”… sine quibus grammatice notitia haberi nullo pacto potest.” Cf. More's Latin in 11. 348-350: ”… ut is propemodum solus aliquid in Grammatica valere censeatur, quisquis fuerit Albertistae nomen assequutus.” All the pertinent early editions of the Modi significandi are mentioned in Campbell, M. F. A. G., La typographic Néerlandaise au XVe sièle (The Hague, 1874), nos. 73-74Google Scholar, and A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England between 1475 and 1640, ed. A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave (London, 1926), nos. 268 and 272. Nos. 270-271 both refer to a distantly kindred text. As More twice elsewhere mentions a De modis significandi assigned to the same Albert who left us a textbook De secretis mulierum, while the letter text, almost invariably, bore an inscription to Albertus Magnus, it is likely that More here, too, speaks of that very Scholastic. Cf. More's Responsio ad Lutherum, ed. J. M. Headley, and A Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, ed. L. A. Schuster etal., CW, V, 584. 20-21, and VIII, 212. 30-32. On the other hand, More's friend J. L. Vives in his De causis corruptarum artium, Part I of the De disciplinis (1531), seems to ascribe our De modis significandi to “Albertus Saxo“; see Vives’ Opera Omnia, ed. Majansius, VI (Valencia, 1745; rpt. London, 1964), 92. Fleisher, p. 94, states that More “undoubtedly had [speculative grammar] in mind” in this passage, but does nothing to pin down More's reference. For more information on the Modist grammars, this one in particular, see Thomas of Erfurt, Grammatica speculativa, tr. G. L. Bursill-Hall (London, 1972), and G. A. Padley, Grammatical Theory in Western Europe 1500-1700 (Cambridge, 1976), with bibliographies.

9 Vives, De Causis, p. 92.

10 Several similar but less famous treatises were also called Parva logicalia, but the fact that Vives in his closely related “Epistola in Pseudodialecticos” (1519) speaks only of Peter's Parva logicalia suggests that More has the same treatise in mind here. This contradicts the assertion of De Rijk (Tractatus, p. xcvii; see also p. xcix) that Peter's treatise “never seem to have enjoyed a great vogue in England.” Cf. Des. Erasmi Roterodami Opus Epistolarum, ed. P. S. Allen (hereafter EE), II (1910), Ep. 456,1. 229, where Erasmus states that the Parva logicalia formed a main part of the Cambridge curriculum.

11 ”… in suppositionibus quas vocant, in ampliationibus, restrictionibus, appellationibus… . “

12 This and the subsequent definitions come from The Summulae Logicales of Peter of Spain,tr.J. P. Mullally (Notre Dame, Ind., 1945), pp. 3, 47, 39, and 45. The first three are quoted by Surtz in his useful discussion of the parallel passage in the Utopia (The Praise of Pleasure [Cambridge, Mass., 1957], pp. 91-93). For the further development of supposition-theory in the late Renaissance see E. J. Ashworth, “The Doctrine of Supposition in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Archivjur Geschkhte der Philosophie, 51 (1969), 260-285, and Language and Logic in the Post-Medieval Period (Dordrecht, 1974). PP- 77-100. For the relation of Peter of Spain to the humanist dialecticians, see Ong, pp. $3-91.

13 See Ashworth, “The Doctrine of Supposition … ,” p. 263: ”… one basic criticism can be made, namely that the [supposition-] logicians concentrated on the meaning of individual words rather than the meaning of sentences.“

14 See Peter of Spain, Tractatus, VIII. vii, “De Relativis,” p. 187 (“The man sees an ass, who is rational,” or “The man, who is rational, sees an ass“).

15 See Utopia, ed. Surtz and Hexter, CW, IV, I $9.

16 Tractatus IX.iv, p. 195. For More, 1. 395, cf. John Buridan, Sophisms on Meaning and Truth, tr. T. K. Scott (New York, 1966), “On Ampliation,” sophism 8 (“Everything which will be, is“), p. 153. For 1. 399, cf. sophism 3 (“Antichrist is“), p. 146. For 11. 414-415, 448-449, 456, cf. Vives, De caiisis, p. 143, “In ampliationibus et restrictionibus ilia sunt prodigiosa: ‘meretrix erit virgo*…” For 1. 420, cf. Buridan, sophism 2 (“No man is dead“), p. 144.

17 Cf. More, 11. 374-379. This “solution” comes from Buridan, “On Connotation,” solution of second sophism, p. 118. For 11. 379-382 and 457, cf. sophism 15 (“I owe you a horse” or “I owe you a denarius“), pp. 137-143; for 11. 385-387, cf. Vives, De causis, p. 143: “In appellationibus: ‘non vidi papam’ et ‘papam vidi,* ‘consulem cecidi’ et ‘non cecidi consulem'…” For more on the underlying theory, cf. Buridan, pp. 126-127.

18 On the sophism “I owe you a horse” see P. Geach, “A Medieval Discussion of Intentionality,” in Inquiries into Medieval Philosophy, ed. J. F. Ross (Westport, Ct., 1970. PP- 23-34, and the introduction to Vincent Ferrer, Tractates de Suppositionibus, ed. J. A. Trentman (Stuttgart, 1977), pp. 41-49.

19 On “performative” and “cognitive” assertion see J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, Mass., 1962).

20 Cf. Ong, p. 139:

Ramus [Scholae in Liberates Artes (1569), cols. 1075, 1022] says that students who were in their first three years of philosophy … were commonly styled summulistae (after Peter of Spain's work), logici, and physici respectively… . All these philosophy students, Ramus further explains, were lumped together zsphilosophi, while the arts students not yet philosophi, that is, those studying grammar or rhetoric, were lumped together aregrammatici… . dialectic or logic has migrated from the trivium to become associated with “physics” and the rest of “philosophy” ….

Cf. also Vives, “In Pseudodialecticos,” Opera Omnia, III, 56: Si quid paullo cultius scriptum est… illud … non philosophiam, non theologiam, non ius, non medicinam, sed grammaticam vocant… .

21 Dorp insists on an absolute distinction between the language, whatever it is, in which useful disciplines are transmitted and the disciplines themselves (EE, II, 327,11. 65-92; 247-253). He bolsters his arguments with two telling citations of St. Augustine, in which “literary dispensations received from previous speakers” and “the knowledge of signs which inflates” are starkly contrasted with God's “timeless dispensations of eternal salvation” and “the knowledge of things which edifies” (Aug. Conf. I. 18; Doct. Chr. II. 13). Augustine's own allusion to Paul's admonition that “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth” (I Cor. 8:1) might be thought to lend even more weight to Dorp's argument. Dorp also insists that it is possible to be eloquent without knowing Greek, thereby establishing his own lack of interest in the heuristic stress of the humanists’ program; cf. More, 11. 1248-1267.

22 Cf. Aristotle, Nic. Eth. X; Metaph. XII. 9. In his general insistence that even disciplines without obvious practical applications must possess either moral or propaedeutic utility More is obviously closer to Cicero than to Aristotle.

23 On induction (epagoge) as establishing the principles of science, cf. Anal. Post. II. 19, 100b3-5; I- 18, 81a38-b9; Top. I. 12, 105a10-19.

24 For these two senses of “sensus communis,” see 11. 469 and 621. Quintilian's distinction runs as follows: “Sermo constat ratione vel vetustate, auctoritate, consuetudine” (I. vi. 1), where the latter three terms correspond to More's own “proprietas sermonis” (cf. 11. 447-452). Quintilian's ratio comprises “analogy in particular and sometimes etymology“; More uses both methods rhetorically. For More's arguments “a re ipsa,” cf. further Erasmus, Adagia, 2349, “res ipsa indicabit.“

25 “Grammatics recte loqui docet, nee ea tamen insuetas loquendi regulas comminiscitur, sed quae plurimum in loquendo videt observari, eorum loquendi rudes, ne contra morem loquantur, admonet… .”

“Dialecticorum … officum est, ut more nostro loquentes quovis nos veris rationibus impellant.”

The text of the first edition of this letter (Basel, 1563) supports my adjectival reading of “quovis” in 1. 464 (“whatever it is“) against the adverbial reading of the Selected Letters translation: the Basel edition accents “eò” and “quò” in 1. 465 as adverbs, but leaves “quovis” unaccented.

More here may have in mind the Medieval mnemonic, “Gram, loquitur; Dia. vera docet; Rhe. verba ministrat…” (cf. E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. W. Trask [Princeton, 1973], p. 37). More almost certainly alludes to Quintilian's attack on a priori grammatical principles based on “analogy“:

Non enim, cum primum fingerentur homines, analogia demissa caelo formam loquendi dedit, sed inventa est postquam loquebantur … Itaque non ratione nititur sed exemplo, nee lex est loquendi sed observatio, ut ipsam analogiam nulla res alia fecerit quam consuetude.

26 Fleisher, pp. 97-98.

27 ”… Grammaticum idem omnino significare quod litteratum, cuius officium per omnes litterarum species, hoc est, per omnes sese disciplinas effundit… . litteratus, mea certe sententia, nisi qui omnes omnino scientias excusserit, appellari nemo debet … “

28 ”… meaquidem sententia nemo potent esse omni laude cumulatus orator nisi erit omnium rerum magnarum atque artium scientiam consecutus … “

29 Cf. Metaph. I. i and Camporeale, “Da Lorenzo Valla … . “ p. 39: According to the great Scholastics of the thirteenth century … theology, once included by means of a “transpositio analogica” in the structure of Aristotelian episteme, had necessarily to appropriate the operative instruments of research and argumentation elaborated in the Analytics… For Erasmus and More, as w e l l … the renovation of theology had to effect itself according to this same process, in an inverse direction. Theology, that is, once “litterarum scientia” had been accepted as a scientific model, had to take over (by means of a “transpositio analogica“) operative instruments of research from either “grammatica” or “iitteratura.” Of course the science of grammar itself is post-Aristotelian in origin; see most recently Michael Frede, “Principles of Stoic Grammar,” in The Stoics, ed. J. M. Rist (Berkeley, 1978), pp. 27-76.

30 Quoted by Heath, p. 48, from Johannes Versor's commentary on the Summule Logicales. Foipositiva (1. 610) cf. Prévost, pp. 131ff.

31 EE, II, 337,11. 768-789.

32 Hexter, Utopia, ed. Surtz and Hexter, CW, IV, lxvii.

33 See Erasmus, Moriae Encomium: id est, Stultitiae Laus, ed. Clarence H. Miller (Amsterdam, 1979), pp. 68, 70,11. 21-22, 65-67. This text appears in the Amsterdam Opera Omnia (henceforth ASD).

34 EE, II, 502,11. 3-4 (More to Erasmus). Erasmus’ own sense of how sharply More countered Dorp's challenge is expressed in a letter written many years later to More's sometime enemy, G. Brixius:

… ubitragoedianonlevisexortafuissetin Martinum Dorpium, in quern Hieronymus Buslidius ac Thomas Morus acerrime scripserant, consopivi turbam omnem, diligenter pressis libellis… . (EE, IX, ep. 2379, 11. 218-220)

35 More, 11. 429, 621. In the Moriae Encomium, p. 40, 1. 635, Folly calls the Stoics’ paragon of philosophical virtue “stupidum et ab omni prorsus humano sensu alienum“; see also p. 34,11. 524-525, and p. 45,11. 7431F.

36 More, 1. 1082 (“relictas a messore spicas“), seems to allude to the Book of Ruth; see also Johannes Ulpius’ addition to the adages gathered by Erasmus on the subject of “Avaritia et Sordes” (Des. Erasmi Roterodami Adagiorum Chiliades iuxta Locos Communes Digesta [Orleans, 1606], p. 225), “spicilegium relinquere.“

37 More to Edward Lee, on die occasion of another controversy very similar to the one between Dorp and Erasmus, Correspondence, ep. 82,11. 344-352: … non aliud unquam quicquam tantundem honoris conciliarit Dorpio, quam quod tantum autoritatis Erasmus ei praesertim lacessitus attribuit. Quae res una facit ne facile adducar ut credam eius beneficii oblitum Dorpium amiucum in se tarn candidum denuo velle lacessere. Qua in sententia vel eo confirmor, quod illam epistolam quam calore quodam dictarat acerbius, defervescente impetu, consilio censuit consultiore supprimendam; qua de re ego quoque vicissim pressi meam… . Cf. also my n. 34. Curiously, in view of the fact that More's letter was quickly suppressed, it is possible to prove that the two early manuscripts of this letter, “Paris” and “Selestat” in Rogers, represent two substantially different recensions. Note for instance the alternative hexa meter verses, “Personae mutae truncoque simillimus Hermae” and “Mercurii statuae truncoque simillimus Hermae,” which the two texts afford us at 1.951. “Paris” seems to be generally superior.

38 EE, II, 347, intro.

39 EE, II, 347, intro.

40 “Da Lorenzo Valla …” p. 48; “Alcuni anni piu tardi, nel 1519, scrivendo a Erasmo (Allen 4. 268), egli [sc, More] approverà in pieno la pubblicazione dell'opuscolo di Vives in pseudodialecticos, ribadendo in tal modo la sua polemica antiscolastica.“

41 “Thus, just as nothing which he has written fails to delight everyone wonderfully, even so the things which he wrote against the false dialecticians [in Pseudodialecticos] filled me, indeed, with a certain unique kind of pleasure [peculiari quadam voluptate]… I note that some points therein are set forth [tractata] with practically the same arguments which I once arrived at by myself before I had read anything written by Vives. These features of Vives’ pamphlet please me, not just because my arguments pleased me in the past (for it is generally pleasing to see others present something which occurred to us previously), but rather because I congratulate myself upon being assured that that which I previously suspected was ineptly expressed is by no means unlearned, since I note that it pleased Vives, too. Now here is what moves me and pleases me most of all: since I see that the same theme occupied both his thoughts and mine, and was set forth [tractatum] by both of us in such a way that, while his presentation is more flowing and elegant than mine, yet on some points we present not only the same arguments, but (in a manner of speaking) the same words, as well [propemodum eadem etiam verba], I willingly flatter myself with the thought that some congenial astral influence is aligning our souls with each other through some occult force and conspiracy.” (More to Erasmus, EE, IV, 1106, 11. 63-81)

Allen's note on 1. 69 refers the passage vaguely either to the anti-Scholastic passages in the Utopia or to the letter to Oxford (1519) or to the letter to Dorp. Rita Guerlac, in her recent work, Juan Luis Vives Agonist the Pseudodialecticians: A Humanist Attack on Medieval Logic (Dordrecht, 1979), pp. 24, 26, 158, 159, is the first to take note, in print, of the close parallels between More's text and Vives'. While Guerlac very helpfully goes so far as to include in a lengthy appendix both the letter to Erasmus which I have excerpted and a sizeable part of the Letter to Dorp, Guerlac's acceptance of the traditional thesis that Vives in this case owes most to Valla, Agricola, and his own unique genius allows her to treat Vives’ borrowings from More too dismissively, mainly on the level of humanist commonplaces by then in the public domain (p. 159). Vives’ main borrowing from More, his own carefully articulated theory of discourse as it comes to the fore in this tract, is assuredly no humanist commonplace.

42 Vives’ text is cited according to Majansius in the Opera Omnia, III, 37HS7; Majansius’ text reappears in facsimile, with a facing translation and valuable notes, in Guerlac's recent work. C. Fantazzi has very recently produced a critical edition, with a translation and some useful notes on the terminists’ logic (Leiden, 1979), having earlier published a rougher translation (Renaissance Philosophy: New Translations, ed. L. Kennedy [The Hague, 1973], pp. 69-108). Here are a few of the shorter parallels between More and Vives. Vives has ”… ut cogant [sc, dialectics] ipsam [sc, linguam latinam] a se hominibus infantissimis et barbarissimis loquendi leges accipere” (p. 48); More speaks at two points of “senes infantissimi” (11. 68,946) and has the following rhetorical question: “Quae (malum) regula in angulo quopiam ab his composita, qui vix loqui sciant, universo terrarum orbi novas loquendi leges imponet?” (11. 436-438) Vives has ”… ex quibus rebus [sc, suppositionibus, etc.], tanquam ex equo Troiano, totius sermonis et omnium bonarum artium incendium atque ruina exorta sunt” (p. 49); More has ”… e cuius [sc, Petri Lombardi] sententiis, velut ex equo Troiano, universum istud quaestionum agmen erupit” (11. 814-815) and ”… absurda quaedam portenta ad certam bonarum artium nata perniciem” (11. 338-339). Vives has ”… unus quivis [sc, dialecticus] … pro eo [sc, proposito suo] digladiatur tanquam pro aris et focis” (p. 51); More has ”… digladiari … velut pro aris focisque …” (11. 316, 320) Vives has the following complaint about Scholastic theologians’ irreverence:

… cur senes senibus in Theologia haec traditis, ut ludibrio potius habete videamini gravissimam et sanctissiman disciplinam quam docere? Et facitis quidem more vestro, nusquam non etiam in maxime seriis rebus ludentes, magnamque ubique deludentes audemtium spem … (p. 54)

More's wording is similar:

… ut omittam interim, quod quasdam questiones de Deo tarn ridiculas excogitarunt, ut putes ridere, propositiones tarn blasphemas, ut censeas irridere; certe contra iidem tarn gnaviter obiiciunt, tarn segniter obiecta dissoluunt, ut prevaricatores agere, et (idem ioco tueri, serio oppugnare videantur. (11. 907-912)

Vives plays on the name of Peter of Spain's Parva logicalia: “ … in parum seu parvis logicalibus” (”… in the Scarcely Logicals or Small Logic,” p. 55); while at greater length, More does likewise: ”… liber ille Parvorum Logicalium (quern ideo sic appellatum puto, quod parum habet logices)…” (11. 366-367).

43 I have consulted Valla's Dialecticae Disputationes in Valla's Opera Omnia, 2 vols. (Turin, 1962), I, 643-761; except for corrected page-numbering, this volume is identical to the Opera Omnia printed at Basel in 1540. For Agricola I have used the De inventione dialectica libri omnes … (Cologne, 1539; rep. Nieuwkoop, 1967). Vives follows Agricola in deploring the fact that Scholastic quaestiones have invaded the province of medicine (Vives, p. 54) and in likening these quaestiones to “quaestiones illae divinandi, quas sibi invicem pueri et mulierculae inter lusus proponunt…” (Vives, p. 40; cf. Agricola, p. 179). Vives follows Valla, on the other hand, in adducing against a priori grammatical precepts the fact that a double negative equals a positive in some languages and an intensified negative in others (Vives, pp. 47-48; cf. Valla, D. D., II. xi, p. 709; and for both cf. Peter's Tractatus, XII. xxiv, pp. 224-225). Valla bases a principal argument on Quintilian I. vi. 1-17 (analogia and consuetudo; cf. nn. 24 and 25) not only in the chapter just cited but also in his second Dialogus in Pogium (Opera Omnia, I, esp. 385ft; see also Camporeale's transcript from the autograph MS. in Lorenzo Valla, esp. pp. 524ff.).

44 Cf. n. 43. Camporeale even prints this chapter in parallel with More's central text in “Da Lorenzo Valla …” pp. 101-103.

45 “At philosophia ac dialectica non solent, ac ne debent quidem recedere ab usitatissima loquendi consuetudine, et quasi a via vulgo trita et silicibus strata.” (D.D. I. iii, p. 651) “Haec persequutus sum longius, ut ostenderem maximos etiam viros per incuriam loquendi esse lapsos… . “ (D.D. II. xiv, p. 750) ”… sophistarum qui nova quaedam vocabula ad perniciem adversariorum confinxerunt, relicta veterum consuetudine loquendi, non alia malignitate quam illi qui in praeliis spicula veneno tingunt, aut forte etiam maiore.” (D.D. III. pref., p. 731)

Cf. Further D.D. III. i, p. 732, where Valla rejects Peter of Spain's etymology of dialectic as a “disputation between two” in favor of the more classical etymology “scientia sermocinans.“

46 Cf. Vasoli, C. (La dialettica e la retorica dell’ Umanesimo: “lnvenzione” e “Metodo” nella cultura del XV e XVIsecolo [Milan, 1968], p. 205 Google Scholar), who, unaware of Vives’ dependence on More, speaks of the ”… ‘loci communes’ della polemica umanistica contro la barbarie dei ‘britanni’ e degli ‘spagnoli,’ già ben definiti nelle pagine del Bruni e del Valla, compiutamente formulati da Rodolfo Agricola, e che pochi anni dopo tomeranno in bell’ ordine nel battagliero ‘panflet’ del Vives (in Pseudodialecticos, 1519) [emphasis added].” For appreciations of Valla's own systematic attainments, see H.-B. Gerl, Rhetork ah Philosophie: Lorenzo Valla (Munich, 1974); L. Jardine, “Lorenzo Valla and the Intellectual Origins of Humanist Dialectic, “Journal of the History of Philosophy, 15 (1977). 143-164; and R. Waswo, “The Ordinary Language Philosophy of Lorenzo Valla,” Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 41 (1979), 255-271.

47 “Ep. ad Johannem Serram,” Opera Omnia, II, 81; rpt. from L. Vallensis Oratoris Clarissimi Opuscula Quaedam nuper in Lucent Edita (Florence, 1489). The manuscript text also appears in the Opera Omnia, II, 390. Cf. Elegantiarum Libri, II. pref., Opera Omnia, I, 41. Elsewhere, strictly in passing, Valla associates the Modists with a priori analogical grammarians (D.D. II. xi, p. 709) and neoteric Aristotelianism (in “Encomium Sancti Thomae Aquinatis,” Opera Omnia, II. 3 50, and the preface to the late third recension of the Dialecticae Disputationes [Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla, p. 229]). Valla similarly confounds form and substance in attributing the Scholastics’ attempt to distinguish between “Video Platonem” and “Platonem video” (clearly an appellation-sophism) to some mistranslated passage in Aristotle (D.D. III. xi, p. 752).

48 Cf. Nauwelaerts, “Grammatici … “ pp. 471-485, and J. IJsewijn, “Alexander Hegius: Invectiva in Modos Significandi,” Forum for Modem Language Studies, 7 (1971), 299-318. We may supplement Nauwelaerts’ list of attacks on Scholastic grammarians with several passages, one from the “De utilitate colloquiorum” (ASD I. 3, 747), three from the De conscribendis epistolis (ASD 1.2, 257, 283, 285), and one from 2 letter of 1516 (EE, II, 456,11. 228-234).

49 In 1531 Vives criticizes the Modists separately from other Scholastic grammarians; cf. De causis, pp. 88, 92. In the Depueris instituendis (1529) Erasmus specifies the prime fault of the Modists (”… grammaticen dialectices ac metaphysices difficultatibus obscurabant …“) and, like More, here exempts Alexander de Ville-Dieu (“Nam Alexandrum inter tolerabiles numerandum arbitror“; ASD 1.2, 77).

50 See Camporeale, “Da Lorenzo Valla …“pp. 51-52.

51 “Nam quid aliud est dialectice quam species confutationis; hae ipse sunt partes inventionis; inventio una est ex quinque rhetorice partibus… .” (Valla, D.D. II. pref., P. 693) “• • • totam earn partem [sc, dialecticae] quae est de argumentis inveniendis occuparunt rhetores … “ (Vives, De causis, p. 130; cf. pp. 114-117) Vives never endorses even “purified” Aristotelian dialectic in the “Epistola in Pseu dodialecticos,” a fact which his borrowing of More's 11. 325-337 obscures somewhat. Elsewhere Vives sides with Agricola, criticizing both Valla and Aristotle; cf. De causis, pp. 114, 120, 128, 130, and 151.

52 “Quid enim in philosophia non dico in rationali, quae tota in verbis est … sed morali et naturali, quod sit indubitatum ratumque, nisi quod in naturali … experimenta deprehenderunt?” (Valla, “Encomium Sancti Thomae,” p. 394) ”… perinde ac dialectica naturalis vel moralis esset philosophia, quae modo rem et sensa teneat, neglegit verba, et non potius sit ars, quae non de rebus aliis quam de verbis disputat …” (Vives, “In Pseudodialecticos,” p. 45) Lefevre d'Etaples’ Artificales introductiones (1496) included an Ars Suppositionum, intended to rehabilitate supposition-theory for humanist purposes; cf. the prefatory epistles by Lefevre d'Etaples et al. in E. F. Rice, ed., The Prefatory Letters of Lefevre d'Etaples and Related Texts (New York, 1972), epp. 13, 17, 23-25, 27, and 33. More repeats his enthusiastic economium of Lefevre d'Etaples as the “restorer of true philosophy” (11. 288-301) in a 1520 letter addressed to Erasmus; see EE, IV, ep. 1087,11.. 448-454.

53 ”… ut ipsam analogiam nulla res alia fecerit quam consuetudo.“

54 The effect of Agricola's “rhetorical” emphasis on the marshalling of arguments was to trivalize his logic as logic: it was possible to maintain a fundamentally Scholastic attitude toward the substance of the trivium and still welcome Agricola's new protocol for debating. Thus, Dorp himself had no qualms about arranging the first printed edition of Agricola for the press in January, 1515, the year of his second attack on Erasmus; see De Vocht, pp. 405-406.