In 1983 Helmut Schanze wrote:
The new Protestant theory and practice of the sermon, the emphasis on rhetoric in Protestant humanism and in its new system of education, have continued to influence education in Europe to the present day. Luther, together with Melanchthon, turns Wittenberg into the center of book-learning, based on a new concept of rhetoric … Wherever the classical tradition occurs, it is changed as a whole by the new conditions the media have brought about and by the change in the concept of tradition itself, which is indicated by the term Reformation and the problems surrounding it … Thus Lutheran rhetoric (discernible even among his opponents) can be regarded as the second, decisive trend in the history of Renaissance-rhetoric. This trend also does not leave the classical system untouched but rather tends to transform it often to the point where it is no longer recognizable.Footnote 1
Carl Springer surely would agree with Schanze's asserting that Luther's rhetoric and the Protestant system of education have exerted an ongoing influence, continuing even today. He does, after all, include Schanze's chapter in his bibliography, though it was never cited in the notes or referenced in the text. Nevertheless, Springer's thesis adds nothing to Schanze's assertions of over thirty years ago, though does so without the distracting ‘distinctions’.
The ‘distinctions’ are those referenced by Springer himself. Springer seemingly considers ‘distinctions’ as ‘necessary’ for ‘clarification or contextualization’ though wants to avoid them becoming distractions from the ‘overarching questions posed in this book’ (pp. xiv–xv). Rather, he advocates an approach of ‘intellectual “clumping”’ (p. xv) in his attempt to portray ‘the very long and rich legacy of that ancient wordsmith, Cicero, as viewed through the eyes of Martin Luther and the ecclesiastical movement associated with his name, which also has a rich, albeit shorter, legacy’ (p. xii). Yet what Luther or the ‘ecclesiastical movement associated with his name’ had to do with Catholic missionaries in Mexico is unclear, and Springer relates a vignette of a Castilian priest who was surprised at the Latin skills of the Aztec students; as evidence of the ‘Ciceronian tradition’, seemingly in Springer's account, being continued in the New World, the priest listened to a native student recite the Lord's Prayer in perfect Latin, though questioned the accuracy of one word, to whom the student replied by asking the priest what the case was of the word in question – not related by Springer – but that the Spanish priest did not know (p. 171). This is a story which seemingly evidences the rather astonishing lack of Latinity of the Spanish priest; and reciting the Lord's Prayer in Latin is hardly evidence of Ciceronianism, and seemingly has little to do with Luther's or the Lutheran movement's view of Cicero. This points to one – and one of too many to detail here – of the major problems with this work: Springer, in his ‘intellectual clumping’, does not adequately distinguish between the reception of Cicero, the renewed tradition of classical Latinity in general, rhetoric as such, and the place and role of Latin of any sort. Furthermore, direct and indirect influence too is clumped together when he claims:
But we shall not be as concerned as others with drawing distinctions between ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ influence. The influence exerted by an author upon readers is often mediated in one way or another, even in the author's own lifetime. Indeed, one wonders why encounters with an ancient author as a student in an academic setting should be considered any less ‘direct’ a source of influence than any other sort of influence (such as looking up a passage in a book when one is middle-aged). (p. 145)
The five chapters comprising the book begin with a brief history of classical Latin from biblical times through to the eve of the Reformation. Springer sees the Renaissance, very much in Burkhardtian terms, as the beginnings of the recovery of an interest in Greek and Latin. He skips over most of the medieval period as such, though pauses to mention the ars praedicandi (though does not mention the ars dictaminis or the ‘classicising friars’) and illustrates the level of medieval Latinity with a passage from Aquinas's Summa theologica (pp. 33–4), claiming that the ‘Dark Ages’, while not descriptive of the Middle Ages as such, ‘might well be applied to the 1300s’ (p. 34). Later, however, he presents a more balanced view of medieval Latin (pp. 101–2, 207), yet as with Schanze, Springer does not cite James Murphy's Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, though listed in his bibliography, and he seems unfamiliar with A. G. Grigg's Medieval Latin, or James Overfield's Scholasticism and humanism in late medieval Germany. Springer presents some interesting insights into Bach's Latin training in chapter iv, which he had previously published as a separate article, and points to the decline of Cicero's influence in nineteenth-century Germany, repeating that at no other time did it ‘fare worse’ (p. 221, 223). Such lack of influence seems too to have continued on into American education from the nineteenth century to the present day, even with the Lutheran influence that itself for the most part did away with Cicero and Latin (pp. 238–42). If Springer's book can stimulate interest in the Latin tradition and point to the relevance of it for us still today, it will do a significant service. Unfortunately, the book is of little or no scholarly relevance for scholars who deal with medieval, Renaissance and Reformation Latin on a daily basis.
