Of schools and studies
The commodity of learned schools is of no small moment to draw people, especially young men, to a city of whose greatness we are in speech. For inasmuch as there be two means for men of wit and courage to rise to some degree of honour and reputation in the world, the one by arms, the other by book, the first is sought for in the field, with the spear and the sword, and the last in the academy, with pen and book.
And forasmuch as men long for honour or for profit, and of liberal arts and sciences some bring certain wealth to men and some promotions and preferments to honourable functions, it is a thing of no small importance that in a city there be provided an academy or such a school as young men, desirous to attain to virtue and learning, may thereby have occasion to repair rather thither than to any other place. And that will be effected soon if besides the commodity of the school and good teachers they may enjoy convenient immunities and privileges. I say convenient, for that I would not have impunity afforded unto faults, nor licence given to fall to vice and wickedness, but honest liberty allowed to them that they may the more commodiously and cheerfully attend to their studies.
For to say truth, study is a matter of great labour and travail, both of the mind and body. And thereupon our forefathers in times past called the goddess of arts and sciences Minerva, because the toil of speculation weakeneth the strength and cuts the sinews. For an afflicted body afflicteth many times the mind, whereof groweth melancholy and sadness. And therefore it stands with good reason that all convenient privilege and liberty be granted unto scholars that may maintain them in contented and cheerful minds; but no dissoluteness allowed in any wise unto them, whereof the academies in Italy are grown too full. For the pen is there turned into a poignard, and the dwell into a flask and touch-box for a gun, the disputations into bloody brawlings, the schools into lists, and the scholars into cutters and to hacksters. Honesty is there flouted at and scorned, and bashfulness and modesty accounted a discredit and a shame. So that a young man that were like enough to lead the modest and sober life of a good student shall have much to do if he scape to be undone. But let us leave complaints; and yet I must needs say this much first: no academy can flourish aright, without quarrels, cards and dice be banished quite, and clean cast out.
Francis the First, King of France, because the scholars of the University of Paris (which in his time were almost an infinite sight) should have commodity and means to take the air and to recreate themselves with honest exercises, he assigned them a great meadow near the city and the river where without let or trouble to them they might disport and solace themselves at their will and pleasure. There they fell to wrestling, there they played at the barriers, at the ball and the football, there did they cast the sledge and leap and run, with such cheerfulness and pastime as it delighted the beholders thereof no less than themselves. And so ceaseth by this means the clatter and the noise of weapons and of armour, and also play at cards and dice.
For the same reasons it is necessary that the city wherein you will found an academy be of an wholesome air, and of a pleasant and delightful situation, where there may be both rivers, fountains, springs and woods. For these things of themselves, without any other help, are apt to delight and cheer up the spirits and minds of students. Such were in times past Athens and Rhodes, where all good arts and learning flourished most above all other.
Galeazzo Visconti (besides these invitings and allurements)being earnestly desirous to illustrate and appopulate Pavia, was the first that forbad his subjects, under a great pain, to go anywhere else to study, which course some princes else of Italy hath since his time followed.
But these are means full of distrust and trouble. The honourable and notable means to retain subjects in their country, and to draw strangers also home to it, is to procure them means of honest recreation, to provide them plenty of victual, to maintain to them their privileges, to give them occasion to rise to degrees of honour by their learned exercises, to make account of good wits, and to reward them well, but above all to store them with plenty of doctors and learned men of great fame and reputation.
The great Pompey was not ashamed to enter into the schools;for after they had conquered all the East he went to the schools at Rhodes to hear the professors there dispute.
But for a far greater reason Sigismund King of Poland gave a strait commandment that none of his subjects should wander out of his kingdom to study anywhere else (and the Catholic King commanded the like not many years since). And it was to this end, that his subjects should not be infected with the heresies that began in the time of King Sigismund and are at the height in these our days throughout all the provinces of the north.
