Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators (review)

Reviews 337 briefly); the Slavs; and the Avars. There is a brief re-visiting of the Pirenne thesis and a conclusion that the Germanic peoples 'made a home for themselves' within the R o m a n Empire, 'just as the Spaniards, Gauls, and Illyrians had done before them' (p. 313), hence the title The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples. This rather unromantic conclusion seems to be Wolfram's w a y of defusing the potentially explosive aspects of the past, with which he is clearly preoccupied: the book concludes with a meditation on the 'dream of the Reich' and the need for contemporary Europe to 'accept the European continuity in its totality, preserving what is good about it' while simultaneously protecting ourselves against becoming victims of its terrible dreams, false beliefs, and horrible deeds' (p. 314). This study is a valuable addition to the body of works on the Late Antique Germans. It is not a general introduction, being skewed in particular directions, but is attractively structured and very accessible. Thomas Dunlap's translation is very readable, the notes and bibliography are good, and the contemporary historiographical concerns decidedly intriguing. Carole M. Cusack School of Studies in Religion University of Sydney Woodward, W. H. Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators (Renaissance Society of America Reprint Texts 5), Toronto/ Buffalo/London, University of Toronto Press in association with the Renaissance Society of America, 1996; paper; pp. xix, 261; R.R.P. US$17.95, £13.00. W. H. Woodward's Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators, first published by Cambridge University Press in England in 1897, 338 Reviews was reprinted in 1963 by the Teachers College Press of Columbia University. This third reprint by the University of Toronto Press is evidence enough of its status as a classic text on Italian humanist education and educators from 1400-1460. It has been, and remains, an invaluable text for English-speaking students of the Italian Renaissance and humanist education. The decision to include i t in the Renaissance Society of America Reprint Text series should be lauded. The text is reprinted as it w a s originally with the introduction and essay by Woodward on the famous Vittorino da Feltre and his humanist school at Mantua followed by his English edition of three key humanist texts on education—Leornardo Bruni De Studiis et Literis, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II) D Liberorum Educatione and Battista Guarino De Ordine Docendi et Studendi followed by Woodward's essay on the aims and methods of a humanist education between 1400 and 1460. This reprint has a foreword by Eugene F. Rice Jr. It is a clearly written scholarly, but accessible, introduction to Woodward's text (with the important reminder in the bibliographical note on p. xvii that many of Woodward's translations of passages are paraphrases of texts rather than direct translations). In his preface, Rice provides an account of what a humanist education consisted of during the first half of the fifteenth century, contrasting its secular aims and methods with that of the scholastic theological schools which were overwhelmingly clerical compared to the lay students of the humanists. Rice, however, points out that the humanists were not anti-religious, but preferred to use the Patristic Fathers w h o were part of Christian antiquity rather than the scholastic theologians of the middle ages. Sadly, as Rice notes on p. xvi, w e no longer view the humanist educational program as Woodward did in the 1890s, as being 'modern'. The values of our 'modern' education system are Reviews 339 strikingly different from those of the first half of the fifteenth century or even the late nineteenth century. But perhaps this is why, as Rice argues, this reprint of Woodward's classic text is so important: it enables us to evaluate 'whether it [Renaissance humanism] has become a historical curiosity or whether, and to what extent, its traditional principles and ambitions can be given new meanings appropriate to our o w n society' (p. xvii). Natalie Tomas Department ofHistory Monash University Wright, Roger, ed., Latin and the Romance Languages in the Early Middle Ages, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996; paper; pp. ix, 262...