The quest for religious ethos

Theodor Rumpel’s view of modern classical humanism as an intrinsically unchristian phenomenon was obviously time-bound. In the Vormärz period there was a great anxiety in Christian circles about the many disrupting forces that threatened to change German society beyond recognition. Liberalism and nationalism, which after the French domination had gone hand in hand, constituted a major progressive political force. Although most liberals were admittedly moderate, they were all to some extent dissatisfied with the still substantially feudal outlook of German society. Many of them mobilised enthusiasm for Germany as a cultural, rather than a political unity, while others went further and claimed a unitary state with a national parliament as well as reduction of the local monarch’s absolute power.⁶⁷¹ The liberal writers of ‘Young Germany’ (Junges Deutschland), who aimed at a total transformation of religious and social ideas by daily reading (Tagesliteratur), articulated their ideas in serial political writings.⁶⁷² The true republicans, such as Arnold Ruge (1802–80), Bruno Bauer (1809 – 82) and Karl Marx (1818 – 83), who praised the French Revolution as the “realisation of philosophy” and passionately summoned the Germans to follow the French example,⁶⁷³ remained a small minority. Yet, in the second quarter of the 19^th century, especially after the French July Revolution of 1830, the revolutionary threat was felt so sharply, that even moderate forms of liberalism or nationalism easily became suspect.⁶⁷⁴ The increasing political unrest was accompanied by catastrophic mass poverty (Pauperismus) as the result of exponential population growth and the related increase of wage labour. This problem triggered the rise of the utopian socialism of Wilhelm Weitling (1808 – 1871) and Moses Hess (1812 –1875) and eventually resulted at a European level in Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto (1848). The belief that society could only be saved by a fundamental transformation of property relations quickly gained popularity.⁶⁷⁵

In orthodox Christian circles, these turbulent, unsettling developments were widely associated with the declining influence of Christianity and particularly with ‘rationalism,’ a powerful current in theology that aimed to reduce religion to morality and to exclude from it everything that related to so-called “positive” Christianity, such as its historical aspects as well as the doctrines of grace and revelation. Theological rationalism emerged in the mid-18^th century, when it was better known as “neology,” represented by prominent theologians and philosophers such as Christian Wolff (1679 – 1754), Johann Semler (1725 – 1791) and Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741–1792).⁶⁷⁶ After it had been transmitted to the 19^th century through Kant, Fichte and Hegel, rationalism was put to extremes from the 1830s onwards by the so-called ‘Young Hegelians’ (Junghegelianer). In particular the work of David Friedrich Strauss (1808 – 1874) and Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 –1872) undermined the foundations of traditional Christian theology. In their respective works Das Leben Jesu (1835 f.) and Das Wesen des Christentums (1841), Strauss and Feuerbach drew the ultimate conclusion that, since man can have no knowledge of the supernatural, the moral law of nature is left as the sole foundation of religion, which is thereby equated with ethics. The entire domain of revelation, that is, everything that belonged to historical (or “positive”) Christianity, was thus relegated to the realm of fantasy.⁶⁷⁷ No authority could be acknowledged but man himself, with his rational understanding of the natural world.⁶⁷⁸ In the view of many orthodox Christians, rationalism was exceptionally harmful, not only because it seemed to deal the final blow to Christian religion, but also because it seemed to lie at the root of the social and political turmoil characteristic of the time. Thus, they invested much energy into exposing “the deep, inner coherence between spiritual radicalism (…) and the material direction” of the time.⁶⁷⁹ According to orthodox Christians, “the Hegelian and Weitling-ian teach precisely the same: God and his will are dismissed and gone, but he who does the will of the world (…) lives forever.”⁶⁸⁰ In short, the many initiatives to reorganise society on a preconceived theoretical basis characteristic of the Vormärz period were ultimately retraced to the fallacy of rationalism.

It was this analysis of rationalism as the core problem of modern society that underlay the so-called ‘Erweckungstheologie’ (‘revivalist theology’) that gained strong momentum after the Wars of Liberation (1813–1815).⁶⁸¹ Erweckungstheologie aimed to defend a positive theological position against the rationalists’ immoderate overestimation of Reason. It was represented by leading theologians such as August Neander (1789 – 1850), August Tholuck (1799 – 1877) and Wilhelm Hengstenberg (1802 – 1869), the latter of whom founded the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung in 1827, one of the most influential platforms for revivalist theology at the time.⁶⁸² Revivalist theologians aimed to turn the rationalist tide by reawakening the moral and religious layers of the human mind. These layers were often collectively grouped under the common denominator ‘Gesinnung’ (ethos). ‘Gesinnung’ is an interesting but hard-to-grasp concept that figured very prominently in the publications of religious revivalists. Being mostly contrasted with knowledge-based concepts such as ‘Wissenschaft,’ ‘Bildung’ and ‘Vernunft,’ it was often mentioned in one breath with terms such as ‘Charakter’ or ‘Tatkraft.’⁶⁸³ It might therefore be defined as denoting a person’s ‘cast of mind to the extent that it is not determined by knowledge.’ Religious revivalists almost invariably used it in a religious sense. Their central objective was to counterbalance rationalism by reawakening a “truly Christian, ecclesiastical Gesinnung.”⁶⁸⁴

Education and ethos

The quest for religious Gesinnung is of crucial importance to our present investigation, as many religious revivalists were convinced that the alarming spread of rationalism was closely associated with recent developments in education. A substantial percentage of the publications in the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung and the Literarische Zeitung dealt with educational topics. In the first place, rationalism was found in the spectacular rise of German essay writing, which encouraged students to form an opinion about a broad range of different topics.⁶⁸⁵ Widely branded as a “national plague,”⁶⁸⁶ it was criticised for encouraging students to “narrate, present and treat of topics of which they have no knowledge (…) nor can have [knowledge] nor (…) should have [knowledge].”⁶⁸⁷ Rationalism was also measured by the reduced importance of religious education, both in scope and content. At many early 19^th-century schools, religion was assigned far fewer hours than had been common in the past.⁶⁸⁸ Moreover, religious education increasingly aimed, not at cultivating religious Gesinnung, but at establishing a rational and critical understanding of Christianity. This appears above all from August Niemeyer’s successful but highly controversial Lehrbuch für die oberen Religionsclassen in Gelehrtenschulen (1801), in which a complete Biblical literary history was presented, including the highly complicated source studies of rationalist theologians such as Johann Michaelis (1717–1791), Johann Eichhorn (1753 – 1827) and Wilhelm de Wette (1780–1849).⁶⁸⁹ Thirdly, and most importantly, the spirit of rationalism was understood to have been nourished by classical education. Theodor Rumpel’s attack on Friedrich August Wolf was motivated by his conviction that in Wolf’s view, education in its entirety – i. e. not only intellectual, but also moral education – could be made dependent on something as intellectual as the study of ancient culture. In Rumpel’s view, it was by incorporating morality and religion into the intellectual study of antiquity that Wolf showed his fundamentally unchristian nature.⁶⁹⁰ “Pagan morality,” Rumpel wrote, “has as its highest principle [the notion] that all morality is based on knowledge; the consciousness that by virtue of this knowledge one can and will, by one’s own absolute power, do what is good, arrive at perfection, consummation and final satisfaction.”⁶⁹¹ (it. added) In Rumpel’s view, then, paganism and rationalism came down to one and the same thing.

Rumpel’s views were broadly shared by religious revivalists. The classical humanistic Gymnasien were regularly branded as “seedbeds of rebellion and revolution.”⁶⁹² An anonymous critic in the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung associated the “nearly exclusive occupation (…) with pagan literature” characteristic of the Gymnasien with the fact that they were “occupied by supporters of a philosophy that was hostile to Christianity [and], indeed, to all religion.”⁶⁹³ The Protestant theologian Bernhard Snethlage (1753 – 1840) held that the “moral disintegration” caused by “turning Gymnasium students into Solons and Catos” would be followed by “political disintegration.”⁶⁹⁴ Konrad Zeug (1803–33), clergyman and teacher at the Gymnasium in Bamberg, was forced to defend classical education against the charge of spreading “anti-Christianism, philosophism (Philosophis-mus) and revolutionism (Revolutionismus).”⁶⁹⁵ To religious revivalists, then, it seemed obvious that the essentially pagan spirit of rationalism that threatened to ruin society at large drew substantial nourishment from the Gymnasium’s major focus on the ancient classics.⁶⁹⁶

‘Neohumanism’ and Christianity

Although Theodor Rumpel’s view of 18^th- and 19^th-century humanism as an essentially unchristian phenomenon was unmistakably time-bound, embedded in Vormärz religious revivalism, it was not entirely unfounded. It is well known, for instance, that some prominent representatives of 18^th-century classical humanism were strongly influenced by neology.⁶⁹⁷ Under the influence of Kant, Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729 – 1812) lost his belief in the possibility of knowing the transcendental.⁶⁹⁸ Friedrich August Wolf, an enthusiastic adherent of the theology of Johann Semler, made a typically rationalist distinction between theology – as dogmatics – and religion, the last of which he only deemed accessible as far as it leaned on “inner righteousness and goodness of heart,” that is, on morality.⁶⁹⁹ Because of his conception of religion as a basically moral phenomenon, Wolf subsumed it under the heading of philosophy (instead of theology), thus following the ancients’ example.⁷⁰⁰ Wilhelm von Humboldt had comparable difficulties with the notion of revelation and once contended that believing in a supernatural world “easily leads to Schwärmerei.”⁷⁰¹ In view of their marked preference for a rationalist interpretation of Christian faith, it is not surprising that Heyne, Wolf and Humboldt, as well as other eminent 18^th-century classical humanists, were downright sceptical about traditional, so-called ‘positive’ Christianity. As they could make little of the concept of the ‘supernatural’ – as expressed, for example, by the divine nature of Jesus or the doctrine of revelation – they were strongly attracted to classical civilisation, with its major focus on earthly life. It was in this sense that Heyne said: “if I’ve not become an entirely bad person, I owe it more to the pagans than to the Christians.”⁷⁰² Wolf praised the Greeks and Romans as “the only enlightened and learned nations of the ancient world”⁷⁰³ and considered the transition from antiquity to Christianity a decline into “barbarism, ignorance and immorality.”⁷⁰⁴ Humboldt complained that Christianity had introduced a “conflict” (between spirit and nature) into the world⁷⁰⁵ that encouraged man to “distrust the divinity of his own pure and uncorrupted nature.”⁷⁰⁶ He was convinced that “morality (…) is simply independent of religion and not even connected with it.”⁷⁰⁷

However, care should be taken not to caricature the alleged unchristian nature of Wolf’s and Humboldt’s worldview. Firstly, the above remarks can be easily qualified by other statements or facts invoking a substantially different picture. For example, in his Consilia Scholastica, Wolf stated that all basic education (Grundbildung) should consist of “the principles of morality and religion” (in addition to knowledge of the native language).⁷⁰⁸ In Wolf’s view, teaching about nature could lay the “fundament of the idea of the greatness of the Creator, on which religion is built.”⁷⁰⁹ Wolf also confessed to Heyne that “the excessive desire to doubt” (Zweifelsucht) was no better than “the excessive desire to believe” (Glaubsucht), and considered the former’s intrusion into sermons and humanistic schools a “disgrace.”⁷¹⁰ His memoirs, begun in 1824, commenced with the following words: “Here, supreme Being who rules the world and directs the fate even of the most insignificant [human being], I turn to Thee, moved by gratitude for so much unmistakable proof of Thy grace, whereby my life was made happy, beautiful and blessed. Oh how unworthy I feel of Thy goodness.”⁷¹¹ Wilhelm von Humboldt, being downright sceptical about Christianity in the 1790s and early 1800s, changed his viewpoint shortly afterwards, reading the Bible several times over in its entirety during his stay in London in 1818.⁷¹² Both the Old and the New Testament he counted “among the most powerful, pure and beautiful voices that have come to us from dark (!) antiquity (aus dem grauen Alterthum).”⁷¹³ In his personal letters he underlined the importance of Christian humility, praised the “peace that the world does not give [us]” and even spoke of undeserved grace.⁷¹⁴ Secondly, neither Heyne, Wolf, nor Humboldt, or any other contemporary classical humanist I know of ever seized an opportunity to publicly draw attention to the perceived tension between humanism and Christianity. Their allegedly pagan worldview has been constructed from scattered remarks which almost invariably derive from private correspondence. In their published educational writings, they hardly ever commented on a tension between humanism and Christianity. On the contrary, to the extent that Wolf and Humboldt were involved in the practice of classical school education, they seem to have adopted a distinctly traditional attitude. As headmaster of the Gymnasium of Osterode, Wolf insisted that students show true reverence towards God and religion and fully participate in religious life and prayer.⁷¹⁵ Humboldt, in his function as an educational reformer, fully acknowledged the importance of religious education.⁷¹⁶ In the ‘unitary school’ plan published in 1819, religion was mentioned as the first subject at all three school levels, before the classics and German.⁷¹⁷ In other words, the fact that classical humanists such as Wolf and Humboldt combined their deep sympathy with classical civilisation with a private scepsis towards positive Christianity does not mean that they understood humanism and Christianity to be conflicting forces in educational practice. On the contrary, as far as being involved in the practice of education, both Wolf and Humboldt had no difficulty with the fact that the same classical schools that initiated students into the paradise of classical humanness, offered schedules of daily prayer, meditations and collective worship.⁷¹⁸ Thirdly, and most importantly, Wolf and Humboldt remain after all highly exceptional cases. The large majority of early 19^th-century classical humanists were guided by the belief that classical studies and Christian religion were not mutually exclusive. By solely focusing on the example of Friedrich August Wolf, Theodor Rumpel created a highly tendentious picture that has been adopted by historians of education ever since. Precisely on this point Rumpel was fiercely criticised at his time. Friedrich Ellendt (1796 – 1855), for example, director of the Gymnasium in Eisleben (Saxony), was downright indignant about Rumpel’s insinuations. He pointed out that most schoolteachers still “regarded religious education as the vital principle and bond of all tuition.”⁷¹⁹ An anonymous critic in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung derided Rumpel’s article as an “unimaginable defamation,”⁷²⁰ assuring readers that “the philological Lehrstand (…), especially among its professors and [school] rectors, no matter whether they were mere philologists or also theologians, [were] (…) a very respectable and influential group of men, who are generally recognised and honoured as firm in their ecclesiastical conviction and way of teaching.”⁷²¹ The critic in question not only pointed to the example of schoolteachers, but also to that of other academic philologists. At about the same time as Wolf, he argued, other famous philologists likewise contributed to the establishment of philology as an independent discipline, such as Wolfgang Reiz (1733 – 1790), Friedrich Creuzer (1771– 1858), Friedrich Jacobs (1764 – 1847), Christian Lobeck (1781–1860), Philipp Buttmann (1764–1829), Georg Spalding (1762–1811), Immanuel Becker (1785–1871) and August Böckh (1785–1868). These men, however, were not mentioned by Rumpel since there was not a single reason to doubt their Christian faith.⁷²²

In other words, the common image of late 18^th- and early 19^th-century humanism as an essentially unchristian phenomenon stands in need of serious qualification. Although it is true that some of its leading exponents cherished private scepsis about certain aspects of positive Christianity, as a broad phenomenon, classical humanism is inappropriately described as opposed to Christianity. Most late 18^th- and early 19^th-century humanists held that using the ancient classics to cultivate “the purely-human in the nature of man” by no means exempted them from the obligation “to do the will of God from all [their] heart and with good intentions, as the servants of Christ.”⁷²³ At most schools, classical studies and Christian devotion coexisted peacefully, just as they had done in the past. For all the attention paid to pagan literature, a classical-humanistic education that was “hostile” to Christianity never existed.

Introduction

Theodor Rumpel’s critique of the classical Gymnasien found a wide audience, which included not only theologians and clergymen, but also many schoolteachers. Most classical humanists, while not sharing Rumpel’s radical conclusions, took his criticisms very seriously. Keen to free classical education of the suspicion of being conducted to the detriment of Christianity, they invested much energy into exposing parallels and similarities between the Christian and the classical worldview. They argued that classical education, when properly conducted, could have a beneficial effect on Christian religiosity. Only a very small number of humanists were of the opinion that the study of antiquity seriously endangered Christian religiosity and that the classics should therefore be replaced by Biblical or patristic literature. In the present chapter, we will have a closer look at each of these two positions.

Classical antiquity as precursor of Christianity

With his attack on modern classical humanism, Rumpel had in mind anything but dispelling classical studies.⁷²⁴ For all his polemical pungency, he was guided by the reconciliatory objective of encouraging philology to rediscover “itself and its object in its proper relation to the highest truth, to the highest life: to Christianity.”⁷²⁵ To Rumpel, redefining classical studies came down to reassessing antiquity’s historical role as anticipating Christianity. He found that the “idealising conception [of the classical world] (…) prevails too much and prevents antiquity from being recognised in its specific, historical existence; still one sees with partisan fondness only the beautiful and great in isolation, without thinking of its embeddedness in life (Lebensverband), through which one would be easily brought (…) to [see] terrible dark sides (Nachtseiten).”⁷²⁶ Rumpel contended that the widespread, idealised presentation should be replaced by an “objective presentation” of antiquity, “in which its historical development through different nationalities and epochs of Bildung are clearly understood.”⁷²⁷ Rumpel expected historicising classical education to benefit Christian religiosity, as a historical presentation can “only arise from a deep knowledge of the eternal, revealed truth, [because] only in [such truth] the measure of everything else is given.”⁷²⁸ In short, what Rumpel was after, was to restore to classical education the perspective of the Christian history of salvation. It is noteworthy that many classical humanists did not refute but rather adopt Rumpel’s argument to a remarkable extent. Firstly, they fully agreed with Rumpel that it was of vital importance that education contribute to a sound religious Gesinnung, as can easily be seen from titles such as ‘Über die Bildung zu einer ächt christlichen Gesinnung’ (L.v. Döderlein, 1836⁷²⁹); “Über den Einfluss der klassischen Studien auf sittlich-religiöse Gesinnung” (C.F. Most, 1843); Über das religiös-sittliche Bewußtsein der Philologen und Schulmänner (Fr. Ellendt, 1843), etc.⁷³⁰ Secondly, most classical humanists agreed with Rumpel that in the decades around the turn of the century, classical studies had been overestimated and that this evil should be fought by redefining classical studies in its proper historical relationship with Christianity.⁷³¹ August Vilmar, for example, director of the Marburg Gymnasium, contended that generating “a sense for history” was one of the “major tasks of education.”⁷³² In Vilmar’s view, the three “fundaments of all culture, (…) classical Bildung, Christianity and the history of [the German] people” should be understood in their proper historical relationship.”⁷³³ Students should be made to understand “that Christian education, with respect to its outer foundation, is supported by classical education, which it recognises as its predecessor and servant, and [that it] influences German life in a creative, penetrative and sanctifying way. If one of these elements is missing, Bildung becomes anti-historical, revolutionary, and ultimately falls prey to corruption and putrefaction.”⁷³⁴ To Vilmar and other classical humanists, the ultimate task of the Gymnasium was not to provide classical Bildung as an end in itself, but to lead through classical Bildung “into the church of Christ.”⁷³⁵ At the Gymnasien, students should receive a “consecration preparatory of Christian science” (Vorweihe zur christlichen Wissenschaft).⁷³⁶

Many classical humanists shared this point of view. Indeed, the historical relationship between classical antiquity and Christianity was one of the most frequent themes in publications by classical humanists in the period 1830 – 1860.⁷³⁷ Taking the criticisms on the alleged pagan character of humanistic education very seriously, many humanists undertook to demonstrate that classical Gymnasium education, if properly given, could be made “useful and salutary to the conviction of the truth of Christianity and to the promotion of true religiosity.”⁷³⁸ To this end, classical antiquity should be defined, not as an isolated, ideal world, but as an invaluable, preliminary stage (Vorstufe) in the Christian history of salvation.

Before we embark on a discussion of the concept of classical antiquity as a Vorstufe of Christianity, I would like to point out that we should take care not to interpret the historical redefinition of classical studies as an example of 19^th-century historicism. Historicism is commonly understood to be characterised by a primary focus on historical context, which leads to a relativisation of the concept of historical truth and a rejection of the possibility of deriving universal values from first principles.⁷³⁹ Classical humanists, on the contrary, aimed at the very opposite: to them, approaching classical antiquity historically meant measuring it by the absolute criterion of Christianity. Historicising classical education, as one of its fervent advocates put it, was a way to make Christianity the universal “corrective of classical studies.”⁷⁴⁰ Classical humanists recommended historicising classical education as a means of combating the risk of relativisation and to cling to Christian standards and values they considered of eternal and universal validity.

The representation of antiquity as an invaluable but imperfect Vorstufe of Christianity pervaded the writings of classical humanists in the middle decades of the 19^th century.⁷⁴¹ Some of them devoted entire studies to this theme. In Der Fall des Heidenthums (1856), Friedrich Lübker, director of the Friedrich-Franz-Gymnasium in Parchim (Mecklenburg-Schwerin), suggested that in ancient Eastern civilisations, nature and spirit were still separated. Still completely submerged in nature, man was not yet able to gain freedom of spirit. The first people who succeeded in doing so were the Greeks. They conjectured that man is of divine lineage and managed to bridge the gap between nature and spirit. Instead of raising themselves to the gods, however, they brought the gods down to the world of man, whereby ‘man became God.’ Only in Christianity this misunderstanding was set right, when God, in his son Jesus Christ, finally became man.⁷⁴² August Gladisch, director of the Gymnasium in Krotoschin (eastern Prussia), developed a theory of standard patterns of development of human thought, which recurred in several phases of history. The succession of the Chinese belief in a Primal Unity (das Ur-Eine), the Bactrian explanation of evil from a transformation of Primal Unity, the Indian negation of change and exclusive acknowledgment of the ‘One’ (das Eine) and the Egpytian view of Primal Unity as an amalgam of the four elements, was repeated in Greek history in a very short time by Pythagoras (Primal Unity), Heraclitus (transformation of Primal Unity), Parmenides (the One) and Empedocles (four elements), respectively. Only with Plato, a specifically Greek, and markedly proto-Christian, contribution to the history of thought was made: the doctrine of the ideas. When in Aristotle’s thought these ideas had come to include not only the essence, but also the empirical character of the “real,” the way had been finally prepared for the rise of Christianity, in which reality is derived from the one and only spiritual God.⁷⁴³ In Gladisch’s view, Greek thought constituted the penultimate phase of his plan of salvation.⁷⁴⁴

These attempts to understand classical antiquity as a stage within the overall scheme of human history were accompanied by endeavours to gain precise insight into the classical concept of (the) God(s). Karl Nägelsbach, for example, professor at the Gymnasium of Nürnberg, acquired great fame with his Homerische Theologie (1840), in which he analysed the Homeric concept of the gods, their relation to man, sin, atonement, life and death in great detail.⁷⁴⁵ Friedrich Lübker did comparable work on Sophocles and Euripides.⁷⁴⁶ The most important goal classical humanists set themselves, however, was to prove that the great individual authors and thinkers from classical civilisation had come astoundingly close to essential Christian truths. This viewpoint they substantiated with a wide range of different arguments.⁷⁴⁷ Firstly, religion had been of central importance to ancient life in general. As there existed no separation between religion, state, culture and other segments of communal life, religion was the binding and sustaining force of public life in general.⁷⁴⁸ It was not coincidental that only in times of political and religious decline (Hellenism) did rationalist philosophies (like Euhemerism) attempt to explain away religion and myth.⁷⁴⁹ Moreover, the ancients had been fully aware of their dependence on the gods.⁷⁵⁰ Next, behind the polytheistic facade lurked a notion of God’s unity and a divine world order.⁷⁵¹ Finally, the notion of an omniscient, omnipotent and righteous deity had been familiar to the ancients, as evinced by many passages in Pindar and the tragedians.⁷⁵²

With regard to the relationship between God and man, the ancients had captured much of Christian truth. The notion of sin underlay their acknowledgment of hybris as the most serious crime against the gods.⁷⁵³ The concept of ultimate justice could be deduced from the belief in punishments in the underworld,⁷⁵⁴ and even a belief in salvation had not been entirely unfamiliar to the ancient mind, as could be illustrated by the myth of Prometheus, who was finally saved from his plight by Heracles, as well as from the peace offerings that were so highly popular among the ancients.⁷⁵⁵ The ancients, though ignorant of Christian revelation, had clearly come remarkably close to the heart of Christian doctrine. In the words of Friedrich Lübker, there was “no important and deeply engaging truth of [the] Christian creed (…) that had not in any way been pursued by the Greeks by a certain idea or presumption.”⁷⁵⁶ Ignorant of Christian religion as such, the ancients had fully observed the “religion of truth.”⁷⁵⁷

No matter how closely the ancients had approached Christian truths, however, their many delusions, caused by their ignorance of Christian revelation, should not be obscured. The ancients might have considered man as dependent on the gods, but they also inappropriately represented the gods as dependent on man.⁷⁵⁸ Fate, though sometimes presented as a righteous, guiding principle, in other cases displayed a “ghostly mug” (gespenstige Fratze) which dispelled every association with these positive qualities.⁷⁵⁹ Likewise, beneath the level of divine providence, many writers (including Homer) assumed the existence of many individual gods, whom they depicted as capricious and erring.⁷⁶⁰ Next, notwithstanding their conception of hybris as a religious crime, the ancients were ignorant of typically Christian virtues like humility and self-denial.⁷⁶¹ They often equated the immortality of the soul with the immortality of fame⁷⁶² and the vague notion of salvation they adumbrated was grossly obscured by false mythological images.⁷⁶³ The classical concept of the gods and man’s relation to them, then, was clearly defective.

Given the positive and negative qualities of pagan religion, the task of classical education was to convey a twofold message: on the one hand, it should make clear the great heights to which the ancients had climbed without the support of Christian revelation. Antiquity was often even expressly recommended for showing us the highest plane attainable from a purely human perspective. It showed us “the [human] mind, left to itself in its eternal struggle for truth, (…) the ultimate goal (…) that Reason, without being illuminated by the light of revelation, has ever achieved.”⁷⁶⁴ On the other hand, however, by their ignorance of revelation, the ancients were eventually destined to perish, as could be seen from the history of Hellenism. In the 19^th century, Hellenism was not generally considered to be part of ‘true’ classical antiquity. The prominence of rationalist philosophies and the lack of authenticity were often taken as symptoms of moral decline. With Hellenism there began “an artificial afterlife, built on reflections and restorations, which, without security and inner support, sought for help and salvation from the ever more threatening abyss of ultimate ruin, now in old memories, now in subjective and philosophical morality.”⁷⁶⁵ The rise of Hellenism pointed to man’s incapacity to survive on his own and proved his fundamental dependence on God. Despite the glorious heights classical culture had reached, it represented a “genetic history of decline.”⁷⁶⁶ One of the tasks of classical education, then, was to provide students with a presumption of the preordained replacement of classical civilisation by Christianity. Most humanists agreed that “a thorough contemplation of (…) paganism, both by what is true, and by what is false about it, leads to a better recognition of Christian truth.”⁷⁶⁷ Thus, if one thing is clear from writings by classical humanists in the period 1830 – 1860, it is that they were deeply concerned not to make classical education appear antithetical to Christian faith. This concern was so widely shared that in the 1850s, a number of so-called christliche Gymnasien were founded, which propagated the Christian perspective on education by virtue of their appellation.⁷⁶⁸ Although few of them existed for long,⁷⁶⁹ their foundation in a short period of time points to the major enthusiasm for the Christian cause.⁷⁷⁰ The broad consensus can also be measured by the meetings of the ‘pädagogische Section’ of the conference of philologists and schoolteachers held at the Erlangen Gymnasium in the autumn of 1851.⁷⁷¹ At this conference, President Wilhelm Bäumlein formulated three propositions which concisely summarised the Christian, historical perspective on classical studies:⁷⁷² 1) Classical studies and Christianity can be reconciled. Antiquity is the religious precursor of Christianity. The humane quality (Humanität) of antiquity is in perfect harmony with Christianity. 2) Christian faith does not exclude Humanität. In antiquity, traces of divine wisdom can be found. The study of antiquity should never cause enmity towards Christianity, as dedication to Christianity should not cause contempt of pagan faith. 3) Christian faith should play the leading role at the Gymnasien and constitute the standard by which all education should be measured. However, every particular subject should be preserved in its individuality and not be absorbed by religious education.⁷⁷³ It is a telling fact that the more than eighty philologists present adopted these propositions nearly without any comment.⁷⁷⁴ A better proof of the consensus about the compatibility of classical humanism and Christianity could hardly be given.

Historicisation and educational practice

The newly advocated historical perspective on the ancient world, for all its popularity among classical humanists, seemed to have only a very limited influence on educational practice. The Christliche Gymnasien that were expressly founded to propagate the historical perspective offered curricula that did not significantly deviate from that of the regular Gymnasien.⁷⁷⁵ This continuity of classical education can be accounted for by the following: firstly, the goal that most humanists pursued by advocating a historical perspective on the ancient world was to convince both themselves and their readership that classical education was not intrinsically harmful to Christian religiosity. Their purpose was not to substantially change the practice of classical education itself. Most classical humanists were acutely aware that if a Christian perspective were explicitly projected onto classical texts, the result would be unbearably moralistic. Martin Meister, a fervent advocate of a Christian interpretation of the classics, expressly opposed the view “as if reading and explaining the classics should become as it were a surrogate of religious education. The [textual] passages that are of positive or negative moral-religious content should neither be sought, neither should there be any theological or moral discussions, extensive arguments or unctuous perorations (salbungsvolle Perorationen).”⁷⁷⁶ It was only in rare cases that Meister considered the explicit projection of the Christian perspective on ancient texts acceptable. Only when “without [any] intimation and allusion, either false ideas would be tacitly (…) adopted by the young, or when the positive side of antiquity would not appear in an appropriate light,” he demanded “the required explanation from a Christian standpoint, whether through a quick question, by a simple exposition of the correct facts, by a passage from sacred Scripture that would generate understanding, or by some other clue.”⁷⁷⁷ Ludwig Wiese, another declared proponent of an historical interpretation of classical antiquity, argued in a similar vein that “a special Christian interpretation that aims to use the contrast between different viewpoints in an edifying way is definitely an evil.” For “the young are not made religious by force of instruction, but by force of habit and examples.” Therefore “it suffices when the teacher is a sincere Christian.”⁷⁷⁸ Of central concern to classical humanists, then, was not Christianising the content of classical education, but the religious ‘Gesinnung’ of the teacher. As long as they could trust that the teacher guided the study of classical literature “in a Christian spirit,”⁷⁷⁹ being himself aware of antiquity’s historically subordinated role, they saw no reason to expect the slightest danger from the study of pagan texts. Indeed, they even had an obvious aversion to blunt projections of the Christian perspective, as these could only be performed to the detriment of philological values. Meister emphasised that “when judging the subjective value of individual personalities and their actions, the Christian criterion should be used, since they who were only able to think and act as pagans, should also only be judged as pagans.”⁷⁸⁰ Wiese argued that Homer, Xenophon and Tacitus should not be treated “as (…) only (…) a Christian affair.”⁷⁸¹ By forcing a Christian perspective on classical texts, it was easy to fail on the philological requirement of understanding them within their own context.⁷⁸² It must be avoided “that a Procrustean bed be made out of Christianity, to stretch or cut antiquity when it was too short or too long.”⁷⁸³ A second important reason why classical education remained relatively immune to the newly advocated historical perspective is the fact that it was only susceptible to Christian colouring to a limited extent. Since classical education’s major focus was on grammar, syntax and style – subjects in which Christianity had no role to play – historical conceptions did not stand much chance of gaining influence. Indeed, setting out in detail an historical perspective on classical antiquity would rather seem the task of a history or philosophy teacher than that of a classics teacher.⁷⁸⁴ Finally, although classical humanists spilled much ink underlining the importance of an historical (i. e. Christian) perspective on classical antiquity, most of them did not agree with Theodor Rumpel that the historical perspective should replace the widespread ideal perspective on the ancient world. Unlike Rumpel, most classical humanists were content with integrating the former into the latter. Being very willing to add a Christian, historical dimension to classical education, they stuck to the traditional perspective on classical literature as a treasury of timeless moral and aesthetic exempla. This integration of the historical into the exemplary perspective on the ancient world is nicely illustrated by August Vilmar: “From the knowledge of classical antiquity,” he stated in one of his school addresses, “should be derived a series of subordinated but nevertheless unchanging standards.”⁷⁸⁵ (it. added) In Vilmar’s view, acknowledging antiquity’s historical subordination to Christianity did not exclude a traditional, ideal perspective on the ancient world.

Curtailing classical education

In the same decades in which many classical humanists attempted to invalidate the charge of paganism by highlighting antiquity’s historical relationship with Christianity, the humanistic Gymnasien were confronted with a much more vehement – though less frequently voiced – critique. Some critics argued that the spirit of paganism that plagued society was not the result of the a-historical character of classical education, but of the intense and extensive occupation with pagan antiquity in general. In the eyes of these critics, Christian religiosity could only be restored, not by historicising, but by drastically curtailing classical education.

One of the first educationalists to argue in this direction was Eduard Eyth (1808 – 1884), teacher of classics at the Latin school in Kirchheim unter Tecak (Württemberg). In 1838, Eyth published a series of school lectures in which he discussed the dangers of studying pagan literature in great detail.⁷⁸⁶ Eyth’s attack on classical school studies, like that of Rumpel a few years later, was motivated by a deep concern over the moral decay of German society. Eyth observed around him a “great indifference and lack of knowledge of things of a higher nature.” (8) His countrymen had “little sense of heavenly and sacred things” (ibid.) and were led by “many incorrect views, disbelief in the good, superstitions and vain virtue.” (160) These deficiencies Eyth particularly perceived to affect the educated classes (gebildete Stände), which thus provided people with bad examples. (160, 8) In Eyth’s view, the moral crisis was largely caused by the disproportionate attention given to the pagan classics in school education. Especially to younger children, Eyth argued, studying pagan literature was seriously dangerous. Classical literature was full of negative examples: as Roman society was incessantly at war (93 f.), Latin textbooks dealt almost exclusively with battles and bloodshed. (94 f.) The ancients were mainly interested in honour and glory, which was true not only for politicians like Themistocles and Caesar, but for poets as well. (96) Classical mythology was pervaded by seduction, murder, falsehood and adultery. (143) How could a child, being persistently confronted with such distorted morality, ever acquire the Christian virtues of peace, gentleness and kindness? (95) How could he ever come to know and respect the one true God? (143)

To Eyth, the core problem of the ancient world was the absent belief in the “workings of a divine providence.” (98) The ancients, he argued, were capable of only two perspectives. On the one hand, they felt joy and pride about the beauties and glories of earthly life, as could be seen from the ancient epics, but also, for example, from Horace’s famous ode on the Bandusian source.⁷⁸⁷ (38 f.) Secondly, the ancients had full insight into the nullity of everything transient, which they lamented in tragedy and parodied in comedy and satire. (40) Completely lacking, however, was the belief in a supreme divine power which opened a perspective on hope, comfort and salvation (49 f.) As the ancients were irreversibly bound to earthly life (43), they were ultimately godforsaken. (101) Eyth expected that the intensive preoccupation with classical literature almost inevitably brought in its wake the adoption of the erroneous beliefs and crooked values that pervaded pre-Christian civilisation. He warned against the danger of assimilation,⁷⁸⁸ and therefore proposed to altogether remove classical education from the lower grades of the Gymnasium. Its place should be taken by a substantially extended education in the Bible and Biblical history. Pagan literature was only allowed to enter the curriculum later on, when a solid Christian foundation would properly protect pupils against its harmful influence.⁷⁸⁹ (183) In the same year, Eyth’s attack on classical education was countered by Karl Hirzel, director of the Latin school in Nürtingen (Württemberg).⁷⁹⁰ Hirzel’s response exemplifies classical humanists’ attitude towards the alleged danger of assimilating pagan values: in the first place, Hirzel, although acknowledging the potential danger of classical studies, pointed out that a proper treatment of classical literature and civilisation was guaranteed as long as teachers deliberately focused on its positive qualities. It was true, he wrote, that the Romans were often at war, but his opponent seemed to ignore that large parts of the Roman world were at peace for long stretches of time. (51–2) Moreover, Hirzel contended that “the crude, straight and honest,” qualities inherent in most war texts, strongly appealed to the imagination of children. (62) Hirzel agreed with Eyth that antiquity, especially in times of decline, had produced many people with evil motives, such as Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, Marius, Anthony, Alcibiades, Cleon, Critias, Chares and Aeschines. But this should not blind us to the fact that there were many heroes as well. Great men such as Demosthenes, Phocion, Epaminondas, Agesilaus, Cato, Brutus and Cicero (65 – 6) excelled in eminent virtues such as self-sacrifice, energy, insight, humanness, patriotism and religiosity. (59) Hirzel also agreed with Eyth that teaching ancient mythology entailed serious dangers, but unlike Eyth, he found it unnecessary to elaborately lecture on myths at school. (97) In most cases, knowledge of the key names sufficed. (95) Moreover, in the case of a glaringly improper passage, a teacher could very well expressly comment on the immorality involved, instead of banning the entire text from the curriculum. (96)⁷⁹¹ Hirzel could also not accept Eyth’s conviction that the highest divine perspective was wholly absent from the ancient world view. Reconciliation between man and God, he argued, was the very essence of Aeschylus’ Prometheus and Agamemnon-triptych. (29 f.) Antigone, deeming God higher than man, clearly acknowledged the divine perspective. (30 f.) And Ajax’s horrible fate was the apparent result of rebellion against the divine order. (31) In Hirzel’s view, then, the image that Eyth created of classical studies was highly tendentious and failed to take into account the fact that in practice, classical education focused on the many positive values that could be drawn from studying classical literature.⁷⁹² Underlying Hirzel’s elaborate counterargument was a second, equally important conviction that the moral quality of education was not primarily dependent on its content. If Eyth’s fear of assimilation would be justified, hardly any subject seemed appropriate to children except Christianity itself. If poetry and art were about content, Hirzel exclaimed, the protestant student should reject Dante or Tasso, the Catholic Luther or Shakespeare, (24) a conclusion he found obviously ridiculous. To Hirzel, it was essential to “avoid laying crucial emphasis on the content of education.” (8) The conviction that the moral quality of education was not primarily dependent on its content was widely shared among classical humanists. As early as 1821, when the complaints about the pagan influence of classical studies began to multiply, Karl Gottfried Siebelis rhetorically asked “whether we read descriptions of journeys through remote areas of the world with the intent to return to the brutality of their wild inhabitants? (…) Do we acquaint ourselves with the old Spanish Inquisition, with Turkish jurisdiction, with the African pirate system, with slave trade among Christian nations of our time with the intent to recommend their introduction [in] our [country]?⁷⁹³ Friedrich Gotthold in a similar vein countered a charge against the pagan character of classical education by pointing out that an animal painter did not imagine God as a lion. Nor did a mathematician imagine him as a pentagon. Just “ask a Primaner of any Gymnasium,” Gotthold argued, “whether Greek mythology exerted the slightest influence on his Christian faith,” and one will find this young man “laughing [you] in the face and regarding [you] as crack-brained.”⁷⁹⁴ In the eyes of many humanists, the very wish itself to anxiously protect Christianity against external influences was to betray a downright low opinion of Christian religion. “Is it not to suspect the inner strength of Christian faith itself,” wrote an anonymous critic of the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, “when one takes it to be endangered by Stoic doctrine? (…) Nothing would better prove the utter despair about the thing one wants to defend, than when in order to protect it, one deems it necessary to prevent it from being touched by anything strange.”⁷⁹⁵ Again, what mattered most to classical humanists was not the Christianisation of the content of education, but the teacher’s religious Gesinnung. As long as education was given by teachers of sound, Christian principles, most of them did not expect the slightest danger to arise from classical studies.

The response of classical humanists to criticisms such as those by Eduard Eyth reveal a noteworthy ambivalence. On the one hand, classical humanists parried critique of the depraved content of classical literature by highlighting its innumerable positive qualities. On the other hand, they contended that the importance of content should not be exaggerated. Although these arguments might seem contradictory, they in fact reinforced one another. Classical humanists would not have been able to defend their educational ideal if classical education did not primarily focus on the ideal subject matter provided by classical literature and correspondingly turn its back on negative aspects of the ancient world. At the same time, the large majority of humanists held that if the teacher’s religious Gesinnung was beyond criticism, it was not only unnecessary but downright ridiculous to anxiously strip the curriculum of everything that did not perfectly correspond to Christian values. It was because Eduard Eyth proved himself insensitive to both typically humanistic viewpoints that his critique of classical education elicited little more than indignant responses.

The debate on patristic literature

A last proposal to reduce the allegedly unchristian influence of classical education was to substitute patristic for classical literature. Most critics who advanced this radical proposal were members of the Catholic clergy.

1851 saw the publication of a book by the French theologian and abbot Jean-Joseph Gaume (1802 – 1879). Le ver rongeur des sociétés modernes ou le paganisme dans l’éducation (1851), translated into German as Der Nagende Wurm der heutigen Gesellschaften oder das Heidenthum in der Erziehung (1851), contained the most merciless attack on classical education of the entire 19^th century. In this work, the zealous French abbot traced all political, social and moral problems of modern society back to the study of classical antiquity. With the restoration of classical studies at the end of the 15^th century, Gaume argued, man had put himself at the centre of the universe and removed Christianity from its proper place. The principle of the “flesh” had defeated the principle of the “spirit.” (85)⁷⁹⁶ From now on, the “gnawing worm” of paganism started its destructive advance and penetrated into all segments of society. Literature experienced a far-reaching paganising of expression and thought, as could be clearly seen from innumerable examples.⁷⁹⁷ In the visual arts the pagan principle could be recognised in increasingly obscene iconography.⁷⁹⁸ Architecture had been stripped of all Christian elements and thus become “wholly pagan” (128). In the military, the influence of paganism could be traced as well: modern (e. g. Napoleonic) warfare had become so utterly destructive because it sprang from a restoration of the pagan Roman ideal to create nations of soldiers (89).⁷⁹⁹ In philosophy, modern paganism led to a deification of Reason: since Erasmus, who confessed to have become a better man by studying Cicero, the tendency to reduce the importance of Christianity had gained ever more ground, culminating in its outright rejection by modern rationalism as represented by David Friedrich Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach, which was nearly equivalent to atheism. As a last consequence of this development, the 19^th century had seen the birth of the ultimately pagan doctrines of socialism and communism, which propagated an image of man as relying exclusively on himself. (25) To Gaume, then, the immiseration of contemporary society could be traced back to paganism. Unlike Theodor Rumpel, Gaume found the major problem of education not in modern classical philology as represented by Friedrich August Wolf, but in classical philology as such. Gaume believed that at the Gymnasien, the classical languages should not be taught by means of the pagan classics, but by the study of Christian texts, especially those of the church fathers. Studying patristic literature would be as beneficial to learning Latin and Greek as the ancient classics, because its style was not inferior and even wonderfully simple (62). Moreover, the church fathers were only interested in the ancient classics as far as their study could be made fruitful to Christian faith. They never fully rejected the classics but were always thoroughly aware of their subordinate status. (41) Gaume proposed that patristic and other Christian literature should be beginners’ material for every student of the classical languages, whereas the classics had to be entirely expelled from the early phases of Gymnasium education. Only when a solid Christian foundation was laid in this way, the classics, rendered harmless, were allowed to enter the curriculum.

Gaume was not the only critic to analyse the historical role played by classical humanism in radically negative terms.⁸⁰⁰ In 1842, the Historisch-Politische Blätter für das katholische Deutschland (henceforth HPBl) published a series of articles (called “Leben und Schule”) in which the Reformation was criticised for launching the emancipation of philology and in which Francis Bacon’s separation of science from religion was analysed as lying at the root of modern atheism.⁸⁰¹ Gaume’s proposal to replace the classics by the church fathers in the lower grades of the Gymnasien found some support, above all from colleague clergymen.⁸⁰² As early as 1832, Franz Georg Benkert, a Catholic theologian and one of Germany’s most fervent proponents of Catholic Erweckung, advocated the foundation of “episcopal” (bischöfliche) Gymnasien, which would be largely devoted to the study of patristic literature.⁸⁰³ Johann Auer, a priest and professor of Greek at the k.k. akademisches Gymnasium in Vienna, devoted an entire book to the subject. In Die Kirchenväter als nothwendige und zeitgemäße Lectüre in den Gymnasien (1853) he extensively discussed the major appreciation of the church fathers among philologists from Muretus to Heyne⁸⁰⁴ (38– 298) and concluded with insisting that the church fathers were indispensable to a restoration of the religious and moral Gesinnung of modern society.⁸⁰⁵ A comparable view was set forth by the philosopher and politician Franz Joseph von Buss (1803 –1878) in his lengthy Die Reform der katholischen Gelehrtenbildung in Teutschland an Gymnasien und Universitäten (1852). Nevertheless, the proposal to replace the classics by patristic literature never gained broad acceptance. At least three reasons account for this. Firstly, patristic literature was widely considered of minor educational value because of its unclassical style. Even the most fervent Catholic theologians themselves had difficulties with denying this fact. Gaume, for example, praised the “simplicity” of the patristic style (62), yet could never bring himself to recommend it as a model. The Catholic theologian Joseph Kleutgen (1801–1883) pointed to the lack of an “exemplary realisation of artistic form” and stated that patristic literature offered no alternative to the canonical classical authors.⁸⁰⁶ The Bavarian philologist Johann Krabinger (1784 – 1860) denied the church fathers educational potential because of their “artificial” and “sophistic” style.⁸⁰⁷ Georg Mezger (1801– 1874) mocked the church fathers’ style for its “clumsiness and opacity.”⁸⁰⁸ The importance of this stylistic argument against the church fathers cannot easily be overrated. For as we have already seen, the stylistic quality of ancient literature ranked very high among classical humanists’ arguments in favour of humanistic studies. With respect to aesthetic qualities, then, there seemed no other option but to acknowledge the unsurpassed quality of the great pagan authors from classical antiquity.

A second argument frequently advanced to contest the replacement of classical by patristic literature was that the church fathers themselves were substantially indebted to classical literature. Although they criticised their pagan forerunners in many respects, Gaume was undoubtedly wrong in stating that they looked upon classical studies only as a “necessary evil.”⁸⁰⁹ Many of them, like Basilius, Chrysostomus and Athanasius, had been educated at the schools of pagan orators, where they acquired deep sympathy with classical literature.⁸¹⁰ Augustine, famously brought to his conversion by reading Cicero’s Hortensius, interpreted the ban on classical education that Julian the Apostate imposed on Christian boys as an act of hostility.⁸¹¹ Furthermore, in defending Christian doctrine, the church fathers amply availed themselves of supportive quotations from Greek poets and philosophers.⁸¹² Lastly, their view of the Roman Empire as a precursor of the kingdom of God seemed to be in conformity with the widely proposed reinterpretation of classical antiquity as a Vorstufe of Christianity.⁸¹³ One could not truly appreciate the church fathers, then, without valuing the classics as well. A third argument to account for the hesitance to include patristic literature in school curricula was its exclusive concern with the topic of religion. Although formally it was indisputably varied (ranging from apologetics and homiletics to exegetics and dogmatics), in terms of content it was strictly confined to the field of theology. As a consequence, granting patristic literature a prominent place at the Gymnasien would be to radically narrow down the curriculum by giving it a decidedly religious twist. In the eyes of most classical humanists, this was as undesirable as it was unnecessary. By continuously engaging young people “with religious things, religious beliefs and thoughts,” their minds would be “necessarily blunted for the religious in general.”⁸¹⁴ Care should be taken not to transform the Gymnasium into a theological seminary, since its task was not “to educate novices of spiritual orders, but young men who (…) live in the world and for the most part remain in the world.”⁸¹⁵ Again, classical humanists protested against the naive fear of assimilation underlying the proposals to replace classical by patristic literature and stuck to the view that the Christian content of education was not primarily determined by the subject matter, but by the Christian Gesinnung of the teacher. As long as they saw no reason to question the latter, they saw no reason either to expect a real danger from classical education. In fact, the consensus on this principle was so widespread that proposals in favour of patristic studies hardly stood any chance of being implemented.

Conclusion

Having examined classical humanists’ response to the challenge of Christianity, we may conclude that it is inappropriate to describe the relationship between 19^th-century classical humanism and Christianity as oppositional. Around the 1800s, when German Hellenophilia reached its highest peak, most humanists, although convinced Christians, saw no need to emphasise the compatibility of classical education and Christian values. In the turbulent political and social climate of Vormärz, however, they were quick to underline the importance of redefining classical antiquity as a preliminary stage in the Christian history of salvation. To this end, they underscored the innumerable parallels that can be drawn between classical antiquity and Christianity. Prompted by the specific religious needs of the time, they diligently highlighted those aspects of classical literature that could best be squared with Christian ideas and values.

Yet, as we have seen, the reinforced Christian perspective on ancient literature did not entail an apostasy from classical-humanistic beliefs. Most humanists agreed that as long as classics teachers were of sound Christian principles, classical education could be safely allowed to steer its traditional, humanistic course. Few things, indeed, were more repulsive to them than to squeeze classical literature into the straightjacket of Christianity. The renewed Christian perspective on the ancient world did not make them abandon the traditional view of classical literature as a storehouse of timeless moral and aesthetic values. Once again, classical humanism proved capable of adapting itself to the needs of the time while remaining unchanged at its core.