A Degree and an Enemy
Ramus related that after three years of studying Aristotelian logic he had been unable to see its use in science, or its fit with the world of life, even in a single case. It was a credit to the professors of the University of Paris, and a sign of Ramus's knowledge, skill and courage, that after that examination he was granted the master's degree; perhaps the professors themselves had grown weary of logic and moderation. Yet some of them cried scandal, for they felt that the goods they sold would be ruined by the awe of that one-day debate. Enmities began that followed Ramus until his death.
Having received his degree, Ramus at once began teaching at the university; his subject was a mixture of Greek and Roman philosophy and literature. His classes grew, his income increased, and he was able to repay the sums his widowed mother had paid out of her savings for the cost of his degree.
The Books of 1543 and the Trial
After seven years of research, in 1543 (the same "miraculous year" of Copernicus and Vesalius), he sharpened his struggle against the rule of Aristotelian logic with two important books. The first, the Aristotelian Animadversions (the source calls it "Inquiry on Aristotle"), was an attack on the heart of the enemy host, sometimes drawn up in harsh and abusive sentences; the second, the Divisions of Dialectic, laid down new principles to replace the old logic. This book redefined logic, called it the "art of discourse," and from a blend of logic, literature and rhetoric created a new method for persuading an opponent in debate or making statements trustworthy.
The university authorities rightly foresaw dangers in this way of thinking. They viewed with suspicion some of Ramus's sentences that smelled of heresy, such as "Unbelief is the beginning of acquiring knowledge" (Cartesian doubt before Descartes); or his insistence that instead of adding volumes on scholastic knowledge it would be better to study Scripture more, which had a Protestant ring; or his refusal to present theology as anything but the "principles of good living," a threat to reduce theology to ethics. Besides all this, Ramus constantly showed an abrasive manner, a violent pride, an aggressive tongue and a decisive superiority toward every settled opinion.
Soon after the two books appeared, the rector of the university accused Ramus before the provost of Paris of hostility to religion, disturbing public peace and corrupting youth with his harmful "illuminations." The court was a royal commission of five: two chosen by Ramus, two by his accusers, and one from Francis I. Dissatisfied with the proceedings, Ramus rejected his two chosen representatives; the remaining three voted against him (1544), and a royal edict forbade him to teach, to publish and to attack Aristotle. The text of the sentence was posted throughout the city and sent to other universities. Students staged burlesques mocking Ramus, and Rabelais too sneered at the uproar.
Recovery and Reform
After a while, when Ramus's life had calmed, he began a course at the College of Ave Maria, but this time confined his talks to rhetoric and mathematics, and the government overlooked his disobedience. In 1545 he was appointed principal of the College of Presles, and soon his class was full of pupils. When Henry II succeeded Francis I, he annulled the verdict against Ramus and left him free "in speech and in pen"; a year later he made him professor at the Royal College, where he was safe from the university's supervision.
At the height of his rise, recognized as the most famous teacher of Paris, he devoted all his time and effort to reforming teaching methods. If he insisted on the importance of rhetoric, which then meant literature, it was not only to enliven philosophy with poetry but to blend lectures grown dry and heavy with abstractions and school rules with a gentle feeling for humanism. In five treatises on grammar he adapted logic to the science of language and urged that French spelling be made phonetic, a plea that came to nothing. He did succeed in introducing the letters j and v into the French alphabet to replace the consonant forms of i and u. Remembering always the pain of his own poverty in seeking knowledge, Ramus encouraged grants for poor students and protested the heavy cost of degrees. At the same time he worked hard to raise teachers' pay. In 1555 he published his Dialectic, the first work on logic in French.
He was now arguing not only for the independence of the intellect but for reason itself. Ramus was by nature an enemy of tradition and of appeals to authority; the only real authority in his eyes was the verdict of reason. With the characteristic zeal of the Renaissance, he believed that if reason were released from its bonds and left free, it could within a century bring all the sciences near perfection. He wrote: "My constant research has been to remove from the path of the sciences and the arts taught in the schools every kind of intellectual obstacle and difficulty, and make the road smooth and level, so that it might be easier to reach not only the understanding of knowledge but also the practice and use of the sciences and arts taught."
Protestant Sympathies and Quarrels
His thought and character inclined him to sympathy with the Protestant rebels. When the Huguenots were for a time tolerated and even trusted by the government, Ramus declared himself a partisan of the reformed religion (1561). In early 1562 some of his students tore down the religious images in the chapel of the College of Presles. Although the government went on paying his salary, his position had become shaky. When civil war broke out in 1562, he left Paris with a safe-conduct from Catherine de Medici, and returned a year later when the peace treaty was signed. By then he had politely declined the University of Bologna's offer of a chair, on the plea that he owed too much to France to leave it.
The dispute that led to Ramus's death came into the open when his great enemy Jacques Charpentier, who frankly admitted his ignorance of mathematics, obtained by bribery the Royal College's chair of mathematics (1562). Ramus complained to the court and asked for protection; Charpentier was jailed but soon released. There were two attempts on Ramus's life, and when civil war between Catholics and Protestants broke out again, Ramus left Paris once more; the government decreed that from then on only Catholics could teach at the university or the Royal College. Ramus returned to Paris and lived in seclusion, but Catherine doubled his salary and left him free to devote himself to research and writing.
In July 1572 Montluc, bishop of Valence, invited Ramus to join the political delegation he was taking to Poland, perhaps because the bishop had wind of the coming St. Bartholomew massacre and thought of bringing the aged philosopher out of the storm. Ramus declined, for he had no heart to take part in the plan to seat Henry of Anjou on the throne of Poland. Montluc set out on 17 August, and on the twenty-fourth the St. Bartholomew massacre began. On the twenty-sixth armed men entered the College of Presles and found Ramus in his room, at his prayers, and he was killed (the details of his death are omitted here). We do not know who hired the killers; the government apparently had no hand in it, since both Charles IX and Catherine seem to have kept their help and protection for him to the last moment. Charpentier rejoiced at the slaughter, in words the source records; he died two years later, some said from remorse, though that may be too much credit to him. Ramus seems to have failed in life and won no lasting intellectual influence. His enemies triumphed, and although the voices of some of his followers (the Ramists) were heard in the next generation in France, Holland and Germany, scholastic philosophy regained its mastery in spite of his struggles, and French thought and philosophy bowed to it until Descartes appeared.
A Century of Revolution
Yet if philosophy did not flower in this period, the advances of science were revolutionary, so that modern science may be said to have been founded by Copernicus and Vesalius. The extent of the known earth was doubled, and man's view of the universe changed as it had never changed in all recorded history. Knowledge grew in depth and breadth with rising speed. The use of the vernacular in science and philosophy, Paracelsus and Pare in medicine and Ramus in philosophy, spread teachings and ideas that had been the monopoly of scholars and tonsured priests among all the middle classes. The "dry dough of habit," the mold of prejudice and the monopoly of authority were broken. Faith was freed from its bonds and with its new freedom took a hundred forms.
Everything was growing and expanding except the Church. In the midst of the revolution the Church stood stunned for a time, at first hardly grasping the importance and menace of those events. Then, with firm resolve, it stood to meet the difficulty that threatened its life: should it adapt its teachings to the new climate and the new flow of ideas, or stand fast amid the surging waves of change and wait until the swing of thought and feeling, in its return, brought man back in humility and need to the Church's consoling embrace and the power of its authority? The Church's answer in those days would determine its fate today.