integrated - Medium Aevum - University of Oxford

128 HUMANISM IN ENGLAND DURING THE 15TH CENTURY
[83] one of his letters to Moleyns, he declared that his Latin was
the best written in England since Peter of Blois, and attributed the
high degree of Moleyns’ classical learning to the wise patronage of
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. 92
Moleyns’ achievement is particularly important in showing the
standards to which an Englishman could attain at a time when
neo-classicism was just being slowly introduced into England.
That the scope of his genius was so far limited, must be sought for
in the nature of his occupations, which were such as to preclude
him from taking an active part in the extension of humanism. His
position was too eminent to allow of his teaching, and his offices
perhaps too exacting to furnish him with the necessary leisure for
the composition of literary works. Thus his generous instincts
were limited to letter writing and book collecting. Alone among
the Englishmen of his time, Moleyns found genuine praise abroad
for his Latin learning. But like Bekynton, and after him Grey and
many others, he was handicapped by his station in life: had this
been less exalted and his career less successful, his learning would
perhaps have proved more fruitful.
[84]
B
92
Der Briefwechsel Des Eneas Silvius Piccolomini, vol. I, p. 325. He also
mentions Gloucester’s patronage in a letter to Sigismund of Austria
(Ibid., vol. I, p. 227). Aeneas Sylvius came to England in 1435–6, but it
is most unlikely that he exerted any influence here. On his journey from
Scotland into England cf. J. Wilson, ‘The passage of the Border by
Aeneas Sylvius in the winter of 1435–6’, Transactions of the Cumberland
and Westmoreland Antiquarians and Archaeological Society, new series,
XXIII (1923) pp. 17–28. He says that while in London he was shown an
ancient Latin version of Thucydides in St. Paul’s Cathedral (Der Briefwechsel
Des Eneas Silvius Piccolomini, vol. III, p. 11). But it is quite
obvious from what he says that this was not a translation of this author
but one of the texts about Alexander the Great current during the Middle
Ages.
B Piccolomini’s own description is in Pius II, Commentarii rerum memorabilium
que temporibus suis contigerunt, ed. A. van Heck [Studi e Testi, cccxii & cccxiii] (Città
del Vaticano, 1984), pp. 45–49 (an accessible edition and translation of the relevant
section is provided in Pius II, Commentaries, i, ed. M. Meserve & M. Simonetta [I
Tatti Renaissance Library, xii] (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), pp. 16–28). See also C. M.
Ady, ‘Pius II and his Experiences of England, Scotland and the English’, English
Miscellany, ix (1958), pp. 39–49; R. J. Mitchell, The Laurels and the Tiara. Pope Pius
II, 1458–1464 (London, 1962), pp. 65–73.
A [to n. 92]
Brief mention at Rundle, ‘Humanism
before Tudors’, pp. 22–
24.
C
An explanation of the reference
to Thuycdides in St Paul’s will
shortly appear in D. Rundle,
England and the Identity of
Italian Renaissance Humanism,
c. 1400–c. 1460.