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Ramus 2000
Author(s): Peter Sharratt

Source: Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric , Vol. 18, No. 4 (Autumn 2000),
pp. 399-455
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the International Society for the
History of Rhetoric
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PETER SHARRATT
Ramus 2000
Abstract: This article reviews studies on Ramus amd Ramism

published between 1987 and 2000 under the headings: Biographical
and General Studies, Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Scientific, and
Ramism, this latter subdivided by geographical areas. It finds that the
study of Ramus is in a very healthy state, particularly through
international collaboration, though there are still considerable
problems for scholars in securing access to the different versions of
his works. Rcunus is now presented primarily as a teacher and
educationalist. The debate about Ramus's "humanism" has produced
new work on his classical commentaries. Attempts have been made to
achieve better definitions of Ramism.
he recent renewal of interest in Peter Ramus suggests

that this is a suitable moment to try to take stock of what
has been written on him and on Ramism in the last ten
or twelve years. The purpose of the present article is to
bring up to date two previous articles I pubUshed on the subject, in
Studifrancesiin 1972 and in Rhetorica in 1987.'
The intervening years have seen the pubUcation of two new
editions of works by Ramus, several major books and three
important coUective volumes devoted to Ramus and Ramism (as
weU as a large number of articles in journals and chapters of
books). Some studies on closely related topics, for example on
Agricola and Melanchthon, have helped to illuminate the subject,
and the pubUcation in 1999 of the monumental Histoire de la
' "The Present State of Studies on Ramus", Studi francesi 47-48 (1972) pp. 201-
13 and "Recent Work on Peter Ramus (1970-1986)", Rhetorica, 5 (1987) pp. 7-58. An
asterisk indicates work which I have not seen or not been able to consult recentiy in
the preparation of this article.
© The International Society for the History of Rhetoric, Rhetorica, Volume
XVm, Number 4 (Autumn 2000). Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights
and Permissions, University of CaUfomia Press, Journals Division, 200 Center St,
Ste 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223, USA 399

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400 RHETORICA
rhetorique dans I'Europe modeme 1450-1950, edited by Marc

Fumaroli, has helped to situate Ramus in the tiistory of this
discipline and re-evaluate his work and influence.
The two editions are the Brutinae Quaestiones (1992) by James J.
Murphy and Carole Newlands and La Dialectique (1996) by NeUy
Bruyere. Among the books are Merino Jerez's La Pedagogia en la
Retdrica del Brocense (1992), Andre Robinet's Aux Sources de I'Esprit
cartesien (1996), and Guido Oldriru's La Disputa del metodo nel
Rinascimento (also 1996).
To take the collective volumes in order of pubUcation, firstly,
in 1991, the Belgian joumal Argumentation brought out a special
number devoted to Ramus (vol. 5, no. 4, 1991, pp. 335-456) of
wfuch I was guest-editor. The volume was clearly intended to
focus on Ramus's rhetoric and its appUcations, with a slant towards
argumentation and communication. Secondly, a new departure in
Ramus studies was marked by the pubUcation in 1997 of Autour de
Ramus: Texte, theorie, commentaire, under the editorship of Kees
Meerhoff and Jean-Claude Moisan (Quebec: Nuit Blanche). This
400-page coUection of essays appears as the first volume produced
under the auspices of the Reseau International d'Etudes Ramistes
to which I shaU retum in my conclusion. This volume also is
concemed with rhetoric and in particular with the Ramist
commentary, and with what Ramus, the self-styled autodidact,
owes to his predecessors. Thirdly, a further new departure is to be
fovmd in another coUective volume. The Influence of Peter Ramus,
edited by Mordechai Feingold, Joseph Freedman and WoUgang
Rother (Basel: Schwabe, 2000), which contains the papers deUvered
at a conference in Wolfenbvittel in 1997, which I have been able to
see prior to pubUcation through the kindness of Professor
Feingold. The significance of this volume for the study and
definition of Ramism wUl become evident when I discuss the
articles in the various sections of my survey.

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Ramus 2000 401
BIOGRAPHICAL AND GENERAL STUDIES
There is stUI no modem life of Ramus, in spite of the fact that he

merited three near-contemporary biographies. There have been,
however, a few articles which clarify certain moments in his life
and so help us to understand better his writing and thought. Andre
TuUier, in Histoire de I'Universite de Paris et de la Sorbonne, vol. I, Des
Origines a RicheUeu, (Paris: G.-V. Labat, 1994) NouveUe Librairie de
France, 620pp., places him in his historical and academic context
and concludes, "En definitive Ramus etait un humaniste au sens
complet du terme, et U reste a cet egard l'un des representants les
plus typiques de la Renaissance frangaise, qui brUle d'un vif eclat
au seizieme siecle" (p. 364). TuiUer analyses the dispute between
Ramus and the CathoUc AristoteUan Charpentier over the Chair of
Mathematics at the CoUege Royal: Ramus lost the argument but
was successful in instituting pubUc examination of chair
candidates. TuiUer sets him in the broader political and social
world of his time, analysing his clear reUgious and even
epistemological aims, and pointing to his isolation in spite of his
being typical. Ramus emerges in short as of the avant-garde and a
precursor ( a view not universaUy accepted). Andre TuiUer retums
to the subject in "Ramus, lecteur royal, et I'enseignement
universitaire a Paris au miUeu du seizieme siecle", pubUshed in
Marc FumaroU ed., Les Origines du College de France (Paris,
KUncksiek, 1998) pp. 375-90. In the same volume an article , by
Jean-Eudes Girot, "La Notion de lecteur royal: Le Cas de Rene
GuUIon (1500-1570)", has a section (pp. 69-85) which also tteats of
"La (JuereUe entte Ramus et Charpentier". This article makes good
use of archival sources and here analyses Charpentier's speeches of
1566, correcting some errors of dating, and shifting the balance in
favour of Charpentier, who has too often been demonised in the
dispute with ELamus. In the end Girot sees this as a victory for
neither Charpentier nor Ramus but for the University, and as
leading to the Catholic reaction of 1568. See also Colette
Demaiziere, *"Le Projet de Ramus pour moraUser les pratiques de
I'Universite de Paris", in Recherches et Travaux 50 (1996) pp. 177-86.
There are two other items conceming academic rivals of
Ramus. In his book Adrien Tumebe (1512-1565): A Humanist

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402 RHETORICA
Observed (Geneva: Droz, 1998) 373pp., John Lewis gives fuU

consideration to, and a measured view of, the controversy between
Tumebe and Ramus about the dialectical interpretation Ramus
proposed for certain works of Cicero: De fato. Pro I^birio, De
legibus, De lege agraria (pp. 213-61). Lewis shows that Tumebe's
posthumous De methodo was written in the late 1550s or early 1560s
at a time when the quarrel had already run its course, and
constituted "a complex of academic, ideological and personal
differences" (p. 213) which sapped Tumebe's energies. In the same
area is a lengthy section on Joachim de Perion, another adversary
of Ramus, written by Catherine Magruen, in La France des
Humanistes: Hellenistes I, edited by Jean-Francois Maillard, Judith
Kecskemeti, Catherine Magnien, Monique PortaUer (Brussels:
Brepols, 1999) 650pp.
Yvonne Bellenger, has pubUshed an article entitled "Le
Cardinal de Lorraine, protecteur de Ramus", in a series of
conference papers which she edited herself, Le Mecenat et l'influence
des Guises (Paris: Champion, 1997) pp. 365-80, in which she talks of
the thirty-year friendship between Ramus and the Cardinal de
Lorraine, his one-time fellow-pupil (Ramus himseU claimed in 1570
that the friendship had lasted thirty-five years, but BeUenger points
out that relations had become sttained and the Cardinal's
protection had stopped long before Ramus's death). The article
ttaces the origins of this relationship between patrician and
peasant, and its development and eventual decUne, defines its
nature and describes how efficacious it was. The rift between the
two was partly due to Ramus's move towards Protestantism, partly
because of his difficult character and his provocative teaching. This
explains the Cardinal's injunction that he should refuse the offer of
the Chair in Bologna, his disapproval of Ramus's ttavels in
Germany and Switzerland, and his support of Ramus's rival
Charpentier in the affaire des jesuites. In the same volume Marie-
Madeleine Fontaine, in "Dedicaces lyonnaises aux Guises-
Lorraines (1517-1570)", pp. 39-65, discusses Ramus's influence on
the young Charles de Lorraine and his obsession with linguistic
clarity and method both in leaming and in the use of power. (See
below the article by Michel Magruen in Autour de Ramus, which
also refers to Charles de Lorraine and has additional new
biographical material about Ramus and his entourage.) On

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Ramus 2000 403
Ramus's joumey to Switzerland and his contact with Swiss

scholars and academics see the article by Wolfgang Rother below.
Just as there is no modem biography of Ramus, so there is no
single modem general monograph on Ramus and Ramism
although several recent pubUcations contain good lucid
presentations of the thought of Ramus, usually with reference to
some other writer or some particular topic. It is worth mentioning
here as general inttoductions works which wUl on occasion be
tteated elsewhere in particular contexts.
*Centuriae Latinae: Cent une figures humanistes de la Renaissance
aux Lumieres offertes a Jacques Chomarat, edited by Colette Nativel
(Geneva: Droz, 1997), has useful articles by Colette Demaiziere on
Ramus, Josef IJsewijn on Agricola, and Kees Meerhoff on
Melanchthon. Various encyclopedic entties and summary
bibUographies can be found on the internet, but usuaUy of a non-
scholarly nature. The best one I found was at <ramus.htm>
presented by the Centre d'Etudes en Rhetorique, Philosophie et Histoire
des Idees: De I'Humanisme aux Lumieres (CERPHI) at the Ecole
Normale Superieure at Fontenay/St Cloud. This site is well set up,
and a valuable mitiative, but the workmanlike bibUography needs
updating and extending.
Among general surveys which are particularly useful the
foUowing stand out. In English, Renaissance Philosophy, by Brian P.
Copenhaver and Charles B. Schmitt (Oxford: Oxford Uruversity
Press, 1992), A History of Westem PhUosophy, vol. Ill, 450pp., is
Copenhaver's substantial reworking and enlarged version of an
unfinished manuscript by the late Charles Schmitt. A hvelve-page
section, "The Simple Method of Peter Ramus and its Forerunners"
helpfuUy situates Ramus in the larger context of AristoteUanism
and later medieval phUosophy, as weU as of Platonism, Stoicism,
Scepticism and Epicureanism. Peter Mack's Rermissance Argument
(1993) discussed below includes a clear presentation of Ramus.
Further good general accounts are to be found, in French, in the
book by Robinet already mentioned, ui one by PhiUppe Desan,
Naissance de la methode (Paris: Nizet, 1987), and in a long article by
Michel Magnien in Fumaroli's Histoire de la rhetorique dans I'Europe
modeme. In other languages there are similar surveys, in books by
Meruio Jerez (Spanish) and Oldrini (ItaUan), and articles by Hinz
(German) and Sellberg (Swedish) to all of which I shaU return.

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404 RHETORICA
GRAMMAR
There has been considerable attention paid to Ramus as a

grammarian. Genevieve Clerico pubUshed an article "Ramisme et
Post-ramisme: La Repartition des 'Arts' au XVIe siecle", Histoire,
Epistemologie, Langage 8 (1986) pp. 53-70, which discusses the
changing relation between grammar, rhetoric and dialectic at the
time of the Renaissance, through a comparison of Ramus and
Sanchez (Sanctius). In grammar Ramus tties to keep his subject
autonomous by excluding semantic criteria of classification. She
compares his work with Sanchez's books {De Arte dicendi (1556),
Organum dialecticum et rhetoricum (1579)); above aU, Sanchez's
Minerva (1562-1587) is partly based on Ramus but centtes grammar
more firmly than Ramus did on syntax. (I shaU retum to recent
work on Sanchez in the section on Ramism in Spain.) The article
concludes with a discussion of "figures of construction" and sees
ElUpsis as a mediator between language as a system and the
varieties of usage; this figure is "a la fois une propriete de la
langue, un principe d'economie, et un outU d'investigation" (p. 67).
Historians of grammar consider Ramus's conttibution "comme un
cas Umite, sinon comme vme rencontte manquee" which does not
quite live up to its promise of being a formaUsed stuctviral
grammar. The grammarians of Port-Royal, Clerico notes,
disapproved of his restticting logic within itseU, yet in fact aU they
are doing is carrying his views further.
A volume of essays edited by Pierre Swiggers and WiUy van
Hoeeke, La Langue frangaise au seizieme siecle: usage, enseignement et
approches definitives (Louvairi: Louvain Uruversity Press, 1989)
173pp., contains some articles which have material relating to
Ramus. M.Glatigny, "Norme et usage dans le fran^ais du XVIe
siecle" (pp. 7-31) talks of Ramus and the reign of popular usage as
"le degre zero de la norme", since usage is the norm; Colette
Demaiziere, in "L'Expression du frangais en France et I'emergence
d'une grammaire frangaise au XVIe siecle" (pp. 32-53) provides a
good critical bibliography of primary sources on leaming French in
the sixteenth century (and at the same time situates Ramus better
in the history of grammar); Pierre Swiggers in "Les Grammaires
frangaises (1562, 1572) de Ramus: vers une methode descriptive"
(pp. 116-35) describes Ramus's interest in the methodology of this

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Ramus 2000 405
work which he rethought between the two editions. Swiggers

agrees with the view of Jean-Claude ChevaUer (Histoire de la
Syntaxe (Geneva: Droz, 1968)) on the formal and methodical nature
of Ramus's grammar, which, however, remains a mere sketch of
what was to come; a view shared by Clerico. The author points out
that the greatest defect of Ramus's grammar lies in its
"uniplanarite", which means that he often fails to rise above the
words themselves to a theory of sentence-formation and resorts to
Usts as a descriptive sttategy. There is a further very useful chapter
"La grammaire frangaise au XVIe siecle. BibUographie raisonnee"
(pp. 157-73) by Michele Goyens and Pierre Swiggers wtiich
includes bibUographieal and biographical sources, giving a Ust of
principal works with handy references to reprints pubUshed by
Slatkine, the Scolar Press and Archives de la Linguistique frangaise.
In Autour de Ramus, pp. 53-86, Genevieve Clerico writes about
"Ramus et le materiau sonore de la langue". The subject of this
article is grammatical or Unguistic rather than rhetorical since it
tteats of the classification and naming of sounds and letters in
Latin and French (but not of quantities or accents which do not
appear either in Ramus's rhetoric or in his grammar, except vmder
numerus). Ramus and others address the problem of pronvmciation
of Latin at a time when humanists found they could communicate
in writing but not oraUy. Ramus's interest in physiological detaU is
more precise than that of other grammarians. This article very
usefuUy places Ramus in the context of other writers on Latin and
French grammar at the time (and both before and after him), thus
showing that he was not a lone figure: for Latin she Usts Nebrija,
Perotti, Despautere, Erasmus, J.-C. Scaliger, and later Lipsius and
Vossius; and for French: Tory, Dubois, BoveUes, Meigret, SebiUet,
Du BeUay, Peletier, Du FaU. This discussion of the modalities of
vocal persuasion is clearly also relevant to rhetoric. Clerico argues,
with due acknowledgment to Meerhoff's Rhetorique et poetique au
XVIe siecle en France (1986), that "toute la rhetorique ramiste se
caracterise justement par le souci de fonder une poetique en langue
vulgaire en abandonnant progressivement les implications
quantitatives de la notion de numerus au profit des figures de mot
et de I'euphorue" (p. 70).
Ramus appears sporadicaUy in Marie-Luce Demonet's, Les Voix
du signe: Nature et origine du langage a la Renaissance (1480-1580),

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406 RHETORICA
(Paris: Champion, 1992), an important work. The author suggests

that the logical analysis of language in the sixteenth century is not
supplanted by Ramist reforms in rhetoric and dialectic. His study
of languages and their history is restticted to a critical accovmt of
authors. The only merit of Ramist theories in this context would be
a re-ordering, a simplification of ttaditional grammar, for example
with reference to the parts of speech, yet, even though the writers
on new method do not deal with Unguistic analysis, the study of
languages is affected by current reflexion on method. Traditional
methods of composition, she thinks, such as are found in Pierre
Belon's Histoire de la nature des animaux, 1555, (which appeared in
the same year as Ramus's Dialectique), bring more to linguistic
analysis than do Ramist dichotomies. An article by the same author
"'Si les signes vous fachent...': inference natureUe et sciences de
signes a la Renaissance", in Reforme, Humanisme, Renaissance 38
(1994) pp. 7-44, has a few pages on Ramus in a survey covering
some rhetoricians and logicians and ending up with Montaigne.
Danielle Trudeau, Les Inventeurs du bon usage (1529-1647) (Paris:
Les Editions de Minuit, 1992) 226pp., studies Ramus's Traite des
fagons et coustumes des anciens Gaulloys (1559), notably in chapter FV
which is entitled "La Grammaire Gauloise de Pierre de La Ramee"
(pp. 95-115). The range of this book extends from Tory's Champ
Fleury to Vaugelas's Remarques and deals with the problems of bien
dire and usage vray. Ramus talks about the "original" French
language, atttibuting morphological and syntactic differences
between French and Latin to the survival of the GauUish system.
True usage is conttasted with the artificial rules of the
grammarians. It is found first of aU in Latin authors, and then in
French, not in the language of university professors, but in that of
the people, as they speak it "au Louvre, au Palais, aux HaUes, en
Greve, a la place Maubert" (Grammaire, 1572, p. 30). As Ramus says
in the same place, "Le peuple est souverain seigneur de sa langue".
He sees a unity in court and popular usage, but (rather curiously)
in the language of Paris and not in provincial dialects, rather on the
model of ancient Rome. He appears as the first French grammarian
formaUy to give Paris such lingusitic pre-eminence, as he
progresses from the myth of a GauUish language to the Utopian
ideal of a common French language uniting the community at a
time of bitter internal divisions. The author is careful to distinguish

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Ramus 2000 407
between bon usage and bel usage: the aim of good usage is "se
conformer a ee qui est commun a tous les styles, a ce qui, dans toute
la communaute linguistique, est constant, obligatoire, necessaire"
(p. 115). The author concludes that in thus marginalizing what
differentiates various styles of speaking Ramus is at odds with the
earUer outlook which stUl prevaUed in his time.
See also *Manuel Breva Claramonte "El Renacimiento y la
teoria gramatical de Pedro Ramus (1515-1572)", Athlon (1987) pp.
115-22. Alexandre Lorian compares *"Pierre Ramus et Pierre
Martin" in Grammaire et histoire de la grammaire: homage a la memoire
de ]ean Stefanini, ed. Claire Blanche-Benveniste et al., (Aix-en-
Provence: Presses de I'Universite de Provence, 1989) pp. 281-89,
and Ramus presumably figures largely in Bernard Colombat, *Ui
Grammaire Mine en France a la Renaissance et d I'Age classique:
Theories et pedagogies (Grenoble: ELLUG, Universite Stendhal, 1999)
724 pp.
LOGIC
It is not clear whether logic or rhetoric should be tteated first. In

any case, in the general humanist context of rhetorical logic, and in
the particular case of Ramus, the separation between logic and
rhetoric is somewhat artificial and arbittary. There is thus
necessarUy some overlapping of subject between this section and
the next one, but I shaU begin with logic because of the place it had
in Ramvis's thought.
NeUy Bruyere-Robinet has provided a useful tool with her
edition of Pierre de La Ramee, Dialectique 1555: un Manifeste de la
Pieiade (Paris: Vrin, 1996) 93pp. Bruyere presents a modernised
text, with only four pages of inttoduction and no notes. She
discusses the evolution in the use Ramus makes of Plato and
Aristotle and emphasises that the many references to Aristotle in
his Dialectique are evidence of a continuous approach rather than a
renewal, and that his Platonism is just as present as in 1543. His
subsequent gradual dropping of references to Plato and Aristotle is
attributed to a more mature phUosophical spirit and a greater

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408 RHETORICA
confidence in his own original theory of the one and only method,
the importance of which Bruyere underlines. Her edition includes
the important variant passage fiom the Latin edition of 1572,
translated in the posthumous French edition published by Auvray
in 1576 and 1577. As in her Methode et dialectique dans I'oeuvre de La
Ramie: Renaissance et Age classique (Paris: Vrin, 1984) Bruyere argues
that Ramus himseU composed the 1572 Latin edition. She notes that
editions after 1565 reverse the order of the four causes, as the order
"Fmal, Formal, Efficient, Material" becomes "Efficient, Material,
Formal, Final", a change already adumbrated in 1555, and
concludes: "On peut voir dans cette evolution un acheminement
vers une metaphysique de I'efficace, prefigurative de la pensee
baconierme et cartesienne". I shaU retum to this point in a moment.
The main purpose and value of this new edition Ues in its
accessibUity. The modernization of the text, as Bruyere says, is in
line with Ramus's own pedagogic principle of making knowledge
easUy avaUable. The editorial changes which have been made are
in spelUng, syntax, pvmctuation and accentuation, aU in a state of
flux at the time, in vocabulary (either substituting a modem form
for a less comprehensible older form, or "ttanslating" into modem
French). There is an index of concepts and one of proper names.
The author's purpose then has been achieved, although this edition
does not render superfluous either facsimUe reprints or
Dassonville's edition (Geneva: Droz, 1964) with its substantial
inttoduction and its copious notes. There is stiU scope, I beUeve, for
a new critical edition based on the most recent research and with
an even fuller annotation which would take account of the
stemmatology of editions estabUshed by Bruyere-Robinet herseU
and the sources and parallels to be foimd in classical writers as
weU as in the Northem logicians, about which so much has been
written in the thirty-six years since DassonviUe published his
edition. I must admit that I disagree with the implication of the
sub-title.
Andre Robuiet has published Aux Sources de I'Esprit cartesien:
L'Axe La Ramie-Descartes: De la Dialectique de 1555 aux Regulae
(Paris: Vrin, 1996) 316 pp. This is a major work Ui French by a
proUfic historian of Renaissance and later philosophy, which aims
to fill a gap often commented on, in the history of philosophy. In
the first place it is significant because it is in French, since untU

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Ramus 2000 4O9
relatively recently French scholars h a d n o t really come to grips

with Ramus. The notable exception is, of course Nelly Bruyere-
Robinet w h o s e Methode et dialectique broke n e w g r o u n d b y its close
analysis of the development of R a m u s ' s thought, a n d has greatly
influenced subsequent writing about R a m u s . A n d r e Robinet's
point of d e p a r t u r e is that the ancient a n d the m e d i e v a l sources of
Descartes h a v e b e e n adequately studied, b u t the m o r e i m m e d i a t e
Renaissance sources scarcely at aU, although the p r e v i o u s hvmdred
years before Descartes (say 1520 to 1620) s a w the pubUcation of
twenty thousand works with the w o r d "dialectic" in the title.
Robinet points out that w h e n Keekermann proclaimed "ce siecle
fut logique" h e could almost have said "fut ramiste", either
positively in the person of Ramus's foUowers, or negatively in the
various reactions against him. At the e n d of the p e r i o d Deseartes's
Regulae appear as " u n e dialectique tardive" (p. 8) w h i c h r e m a i n s
present in his later works. At the centte of Robinet's s t u d y is the
relation between mathematics a n d logic, in particular the
appUcation to mathematics and the rest of k n o w l e d g e of the
dialectic embodied in mathesis universalis. H e sees a decisive break
ki 1555, with the first pubUcation of La Dialectique in French: this,
he beUeves, constitutes the first step in a d e v e l o p m e n t w h i c h
continues untU Descartes.
In m y view it is arguable w h e t h e r the pubUcation of the
Dialectique reaUy represents such a n important n e w d e p a r t u r e .
Robinet too sees it as "ce manifeste phUosophique d e la Pieiade",
destined for the defence and Ulusttation of French in a n intellectual
miUeu "jusque-la reserve aux barbarismes des logiques
peripateticiermes" (p. 8). N o t all w o u l d agree w i t h this
oversimplification. Robinet picks u p the point m e n t i o n e d earlier
about the relative order of different kinds of causes. Rather
grandiosely he dates the birth of the m o d e m spirit from R a m u s ' s
revision of 1565-66 w h e n he m a k e s a change in the order of
presentation of the arguments of invention, aUotting the first place
to efficient cause (and not final cause) a n d going o n to assert: "Ce
passage du concept de cause en tete des techniques de I'invention
constitue la caraderistique primordiale de la mentalite philosophique
rermissante...La naissance de I'esprit modeme tient dans ce renversement
et dans cette mise en place" (pp. 29-30, all itaUcised for emphasis in
Robinet). This point is centtal to his argument and he retums to it

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410 RHETORICA
in his final analysis of Deseartes's Regulae, where he describes it as

"le principe de base de la logique renaissante modeme et du
mecanisme scientifique" (p. 223). This is a bold idea which it seems
to me impossible to substantiate.
This book provides a good overview of Ramus's dialectic and
the evolution of his thought on the relation between art and nature,
on enunciation and deduction, and on the methodus unica as it was
developed by his foUowers, who, however, as is demonsttated,
made excessive use of the tables which he originaUy meant only as
a graphic or visual aid. Robinet brings out weU the fact that the
rhetoricians' use of method for ordering discourse according to the
rules of grammar, syntax and eloquence, gives way to a new
concept which has Ijeen completely refashioned by the time it
enters dialectic. In that discipline it concems "les dispositions
propres a I'esprit connaissant, en acte de connaitte" (p. 51).
Ramus's dialectic is distinguished from other dialectics by its
exclusive use of ttus single method.
A large part of the book is taken up with the Ramist
conttoversies about these subjects, especiaUy in Germany. There is
a wealth of information here, which at times, unfortunately, suffers
from a lack of organization and in spite or because of an
unnecessarily schematised presentation of the material is not
always easy to foUow, and to foUow up (there are references to
sources but no footnotes which partly explains the density of the
text).
The last third of the book deals with the Ramist influence on
Deseartes's Regulae, giving evidence of paraUels with the
terminology Ramus uses and the structure of his thought on
intuition, deduction, method and mathesis universalis. To attempt to
summarize this dense and detaUed argument would, however, be
to do it a serious injustice.
On the subject of Ramus's influence on Descartes see also an
article by G. Jamart, "Logique, mathematique et ontologie: La
Ramee, precurseur de Descartes", Les Etudes philosophiques XXX
(1996) pp. 17-28, a special number on Descartes. This article
compares Ramus's dialectic with Deseartes's Mathesis universalis:
both describe the mathematical bases of thought and are concemed
with ontological knowledge. According to this argument Ramus's
dialectic is mathematical rather than rhetorical. Peter Mack,

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Ramus 2000 411
Renaisssance Argument: Valla and Agricola in the Traditions of Rhetoric

and Dialectic (Leiden: BrUl, 1993) 395pp., which incorporates some
material pubUshed earUer in the form of articles, shows how this
new appUcation of topical logic to persuasive argumentation
relates to reading and Uterary composition, and to the broader
problem of the arts of language, of which I shaU say much more.
Ramus appears at various stages in this book, and there is a whole
chapter devoted to his use of Agricola (pp. 334-57). Agricola's
comments on the Pro lege Manilla are seen as the model for the
dialectical analyses of Ramus, Piscator and their followers,
privUeging dialectic over aU else, and Mack demonsttates clearly
how Ramus's own dialectic grows out of Agricola's emphasis on
usefiUness and Uterary examples, yet has its own individual colour
(for details see p. 344).
Peter Mack's article in Autour de Ramus, pp. 17-35, "Agricola
and the Early Versions of Ramus's Dialectic", takes further tfus
study of Ramus with a detailed consideration of the manuscript of
Partitiones dialedicae (BibUotheque nationale de France, Ms.Latin
6659) compared with the second printed edition, Dialedicae
Institutiones, oi September 1543, and with Agricola's De Inventione
dialedica. He also indicates how these embryonic ideas will develop
in later editions and grow into the fully mature Ramist docttine,
and shows that the enlarged version of die text in the printed book
adds a discussion of natural dialectic and a much fuUer tteatment
of invention, and is better structured generaUy, with increased
reference to Aristotie, Cicero and (QuintUian and the use of Uterary
examples, which was to become a feature of his work. Mack pins
dovwi the additional passages in which the influence of Agricola is
to be found, in particular with reference to the question, and the
topics, the structure of dialectic and practice, perhaps through
intermediaries such as Melanchthon, Latomus and Sturm. The
possible influence of Lorenzo Valla is also mentioned briefly. It is
of great interest to see here Ramus at work as he began to
formvdate his ideas, as his own thoughts interact with what he was
reading. Curiously Agricola's influence becomes evident in the
period between the writing of the manuscript and the pubUcation
of the Dialedicae Institutiones oi 1543 only to be removed ki the later
versions of the same text during the foUowing twenty years.
Further analysis of the printed edition of the Dialedicae Partitiones

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412 RHETORICA
which appeared earlier in 1543 would, for this reason, be very

iUuminating.
Kees Meerhoff has written on Ramus and Uterature Ui his
article in the Wolfenbuttel volume "'The Beauty and the Beast':
Nature, Logic and Literature in Ramus" which is a spirited and
wide-ranging accovmt of reactions to the relation between the text
and humanist logic or dialectic, arguUig against Genette's view of
the "rhetorique restteinte" of Ramus and his foUowers. Ramus's
work is seen as part of the "golden chain of humanism", not the
beginning of an unfortunate development but the conclusion of a
long ttadition which reUed on the reading of texts for "creative
invention as weU as the stmcture of the human sciences". The
article analyses the ttiad natura-ars-exercitatio the last of which is
divided into interpretatio-scriptio-dictio, and teases out the
impUcations of the method of prudence.
Manfred Hinz "Eine ramistische Literaturwissenschaft?
Dialektik, Rhetorik und Literatur in Pierre de La Ramee: Dialectique
(1555)", Romanistische Zdtschrift fUr Literaturgeschichte 16 (1992) pp.
46-74, is a carefully argued article which draws attention to the
need for more work on German and Spanish Ramism. It discusses
the influence of Ramus on manuals of rhetoric and poetics, as weU
as on Uterature.
Timothy J. Reiss, "The Idea of Meaning and Practice of Method
in Peter Ramus, Henri Estierme, and Others", in Humanism in
Crisis: the Decline of the French Renaissance, edited by PhiUppe Desan
(Ann Arbor, Uruversity of Michigan, 1991) pp. 125-51, argues that
method was developed to solve problems of meaning, especiaUy
denotation and reference, being "more or less a side effect in the
endeavour to set the relation between idea, word, and thing on
some firm philosophie and linguistic ground" (p. 126). Reiss insists
on the distinction between logic as a teaching process (which reUed
on the visual devices) and logic "as a procedure for understanding
reason and acquiring knowledge" which did not (p. 134). Ramus's
simplifications were useful and a step on the way to a coherent
theory of truth and knowledge.
There is an article on a sunUar topic by Ian Maclean, "Logical
Division and Visual Dichotomies: Ramus in the Context of Legal
and Medical Writing" pubUshed in the Wolfenbuttel volume,
which discusses die subject of division, defirution and taxonomy.

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Ramus 2000 413
with reference to their visual representation, fracing changing

attitudes to questions of difference, identity and similarity from
Plato and Aristotle to the time of Ramus. Maclean compares
writers on law who do and do not use diagrams, and notes that
although Ramus is influential (for example on Freige and others)
some legal diagrams predate him (for example those of Christoph
Hegendorf, 1536) and indeed spatial diagrams appear in the
Middle Ages. Maclean is interested also in other ways of
presenting distindiones. In medicine Galen is at the centte of
discussion about method and division, especially after the
pubUcation Ui 1528 in Paris of two key works and the inclusion of
dichotomies in early editions of his works. Maclean further
iUusttates the subject with examples of Paduan witers on medicine,
notably with reference to the shift from method as teaching to
method as discovery. The conclusion is that there were other
subtier, more flexible forms of presenting division, such as
commentaries and quaestiones, and that where diagrams exist they
need not owe anything to Ramus, who, it appears, has little
influence on these higher disciplines.
Something on the appUcation of logic wiU be fovmd in Claude-
GUbert Dubois, who writes on "Cesar et Ramus", in Prisence de
Cesar, ed. R.ChevaUier (Paris: Les BeUes Letttes, 1985) pp. 109-18,
arguing that as a commentator in De moribus veterum Gallorum and
De Caesaris militia Ramus makes plain that his interest is purely
methodological. I have not seen the articles by Teresa Rinaldi,
*"Pierre de la Ramee, dialettica e metodo, 1543-1555", Annali della
Facolta di lettere e filosofia dell'Universita di Bari 35-6 (1992-93) pp.
423-58, and Paola MviUer, *"I1 nuovo Aristotele di Pietto Ramo",
Studi Umanistid Piceni 12 (1992) pp. 163-69. Charles H. Lohr's Latin
Aristotelian Commentaries: II, Renaissance Authors (Florence: Leo
S.Olschki, 1988) lists the commentaries of Ramus as weU as of
various Ramists and Anti-Ramists. And finaUy, in Erika Rummel,
The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Rermissance and Reformation
(Cambridge MA: Harvard Uruversity Press, 1995) Ramus figures
prominently in chapter 7 "Humanist Critique of Scholastic
Dialectic". The author links the debate between humanism and
scholasticism with the movement towards curricular reform at the
university and ecclesiastical reform. There is a good account of the
different ways in which such conttoversy was expressed, including

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414 RHETORICA
dialogue, apologiae, satire and invective. She joins forces with

Oldrini, Grafton and Jardine and others in emphasizing the
professional aspect where power struggles and power poUtics
affect ideas.
RHETORIC
In the last few years there has appeared a substantial body of work
on Ramus's rhetoric. James Murphy and Carole Newlands have
foUowed up their Arguments in Rhetoric against Quintilian (1986), an
edition and translation of Ramus's Rhetoricae Distindiones in
Quintilianum, with Peter l^mus's Attack on Cicero (Davis, Califomia:
Hermagoras Press, 1992), Iv -¥ 136pp., which contains the original
text of the Brutinae Quaestiones and a facing ttanslation into
English. The Latin text is taken from the 1549 (second) edition
published in Paris by Matthieu David. The infroduction gives a
brief overview of Ramus on method and rhetoric and sites the
work in a series of his books corresponding to confirmatio oi his
own theories and refutatio oi those of others: Aristotle, QuintiUan
and Cicero. In spite of his respect for Cicero as an orator Ramus
attacked his theory of rhetoric and advocated the imitation of many
authors rather than one. The Rhetorica oi 1548, written under
Talon's name, is here atfributed to Ramus who "claims aU the
interior aspects of communication for dialectic, leaving ordy the
exterior to rhetoric" (p. xx). Murphy argues that Ramus chose to
write on the Orator precisely because it corresponded most closely
to fus own views since it eoncenfrates on style. The author uses the
example of Ramus's commentary on Cicero's De lege agraria to
Ulusfrate tus method of commentary and to show what he
approved of in Cicero: Ramus explains the poUtical and legal
context, provides a summary of Cicero's arguments, a line by line
commentary and short dialectical and rhetorical analyses. This
pedagogic approach is seen as based on praelectio and lectio which
are likened to modem expUcation de texte. The editor notes the
sfrange absence of QuintUian from Ramus's commentary,
suggestuig ttiat ttus work "may weU be the only major sixteenth-

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Ramus 2000 415
century book on rhetoric with no mention of QuintiUan" probably

because Ramus was simultaneously attacking Quintilian in the
Rhetoricae distindiones (p. xxxU).
As one would expect there is much of interest on Ramus in
Histoire de la rhetorique dans I'Europe moderne 1450-1950 (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1999) 1359pp., pubUshed by a
team of scholars under the direction of Marc FumaroU. Cesare
VasoU's "L'Humanisme rhetorique en ItaUe au XVe siecle", pp.45-
129 is a lucid account of late medieval rhetoric and the fransition to
the Renaissance, but the tide is misleading since more than half of
it is devoted to Northem humanism and to the sixteenth century; it
includes twelve pages on Ramus alone. VasoU's account of Ramus
hints at the influence of Ficino (dialectic as the supreme degree of
metaphysical knowledge of being) without analysing or justifying
it. VasoU discusses the renewal of dialectic by rhetorical methods
and techniques, and the appUcation of method to different
domains: grammar, rhetoric, 'physics' and history. One of the
merits of this article is the bibUography (nine pages), although
since the book was ten years in the making, it does not take much
account of anything written in the 1990s. Jean-Claude Margolin, in
"L'Apogee de la rhetorique humaniste (1500-36)", pp. 191-257,
describes the inteUectual world in which Ramus grew up (again
with a useful bibUography), as does, from a different angle, OUvier
MiUet's "La Reforme protestante et la rhetorique (circa 1520-50)",
pp. 259-312, which discusses among other matters the relation
between faith and persuasion, and rhetoric as a method of
interpreting texts; this is not expUcitly related to Ramus, whose
protestantism develops rather later, but its relevance to him is
clear. These articles are indeed aU relevant to the study of Ramus's
rhetoric since they provide a re-evaluation of the study of rhetoric
in the two generations before Ramus and the inteUectual cUmate in
which he grew up.
There is in this weighty book one major article which is entirely
relevant to Ramus, Michel Magruen's, "D'une mort I'autre (1536-
72): la Rhetorique reconsideree" pp. 341-409 which links up neatly
with the earUer articles, taking us from the death of Erasmus to that
of Ramus. The author does not agree with those who suggest that
the Ramist "resfriction" of rhetoric brought about the death of
rhetoric since it soon revived, starting with the work of Lipsius in

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416 RHETORICA
the North and otiiers in Italy. This article- gives an exceUent

detailed account of the wealth of editions and franslations of
Aristotle, Cicero and QuintUian and of commentaries on them, and
of rhetoric manuals. The author freats also of Ciceroruanism, and
imitation, making an interesting comparison between the imitation
of Cicero and the Imitation of Christ in the devotio modema and thus
linking up with earUer articles here. As Magnien says succinctly,
the debate about Ciceroruanism is important because it is "le
creuset ou se congoit, oil s'elabore la possibiUte d'une Utterature
dans la langue nationale" (p. 355). He ttaces its history from
Erasmus and Dolet to the foUowers of Ramus—Harvey, Freige and
Ascham, noting other influences by the way. The close Unk
between imitation and franslation ensures a movement towards
more popular vemacular rhetorics. FoUowing Meerhoff he
discusses Ramus's "deeonstruction" of Cicero's theory, and the
different versions of Ramist rhetoric, reaffirming once more the
importance of the role of Talon and especiaUy of the 1567 Audomari
Talaei Rhetorica P. Rami praelectionibus illustrata. As he says, "Ramus
se donne pour objectif de reformer et redefinir la metalangue, ou
plutot le metadiscours antique, a ses yeux inconsistant et
inconsequent" (p. 376). Ramist rhetoric, much less important than
his dialectic, is not radieaUy innovative, nor is it the rhetoric of the
Pieiade (p. 392). Even though the overall purpose of Histoire de la
rhetorique, oi which this article forms a substantial part, was not to
break new ground, this survey, along with some of the others, does
provide new insights into the evolution of ideas and their
fransmission across Europe.
Alain Michel, in his preface to the coUective volume Prosateurs
latins en France au seizieme siecle (Paris: CNRS, 1987), edited by
Stephen Bamforth, Guy BedoueUe, Jacques Chomarat, and Colette
Demaiziere, has much to say about Ramus. In the Une of his major
work on Cicero and rhetoric Michel notes how Ramus appUes the
ttaditional distinctions of the ttivium to Cicero's theories of the
unity of the arts, but then shatters this unity by what he does to
rhetoric: "la rhetorique semblait ne conserver que la part baroque
du langage (figures, ttopes, actio)" (p. 12). At the end of his life
Ramus, Uke Dolet, turned to French instead of Latin (this needs
qualifying, I think). Cicero's language has performed its task and
can withdraw because French has become a Uterary language, in

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Ramus 2000 417
part because of the Unk between rhetoric and philosophy. Michel

underlines one of Ramus's quaUties—"I'acuite d'esprit qui lui
permet de developper en lui-meme la precision critique" (p.
19)—and sees him as blazing the ttaU for a phUosophy of doubt
and method. There is a teUing comparison between Cicero's
academic doubt, one of the bases of his rhetoric, and Ramus's
emphasis on judgement:
En realite. Ramus n'armonce pas Descartes, dont le doute est
provisoire et n'exclut pas la certitude des idees claires et distinctes.
Notre Picard part de I'humanisme ciceronien pour proposer une
conception du doute a la fois plus encyclopedique et plus nuancee
puisqu'eUe n'exclut pas le probabilisme: on va vers Pascal, Leibniz et
vers les philosophies modemes de la science (p. 20).
Michel makes a further succinct comparison between Ramus and
Descartes on method:
La theorie de la methode qui nous est proposee ici est, eUe aussi, ttes
differente de ce qui apparaitta chez Descartes. Celui-ci partira d'une
demarche scientifique et concrete, inspiree notamment par Galien
(analyse et synthese), fondee sur les denombrements et proche de la
geomettie. Ramus est bien plus litteraire: pour lui, le vrai probleme
est de conduire par ordre nos pensees. II ne suffit pas de definir les
termes et de les faire entter dans des raisonnements ou des
syllogismes corrects. II faut encore enchainer des raisormements.
Descartes n'ignorera pas cette exigence. II essayera d'y repondre
grace aux mathematiques. Comme toujours. Ramus est a la fois plus
limite et plus ouvert. II cherche un plus grand equilibre entre les
modeles litteraires et geometriques. Ici encore, on attend Pascal (p.
20).
In the same volume (pp. 535-69) Pierre Laurens and Pierre

Magnard present selected polemical texts by Ramus, excerpts from
Rhetoricae Distindiones in Quintilianum, Scholae Dialedicae,
Commentarii reUgionis Christianae. Pierre Laurens provides four
pages of infroduction and bibUography. Ramus emerges as a
simpUfier, a reducer, responsible for the excessive logicising of the
analysis of discourse and of the divorce between logic and rhetoric:
"Ramus porte certainement une large part de responsabUite dans
I'evolution historique que G. Genette a decrite sous le titte de

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418 RHETORICA
'rhetorique resttemte'" (p. 537) (several recent scholars make tiie

same point). His curtailing of QuintiUan's classification of fropes
makes him a forerunner of more modem rhetorical theorists. The
passage chosen from Ramus's posthumous work of theology deals
with die Eucharist as a kind of frope: "Ramus s'efforce ici de
reduire la religion a vm art, similaire aux aufres arts d'expression"
(p. 538). Much more would be welcome on this subject.
Renaissance Rhetoric, edited by Peter Mack (Basingstoke:
MacmiUan, 1994) 188 pp., contains the papers of a conference
which took place at Warwick University. DUwyn Knox's "Order,
Reason and Oratory: Rhetoric in Protestant Latin Schools" (pp. 63-
80) argues that printed sources suggest that Melanchthon's rhetoric
was stUI the standard one in the first quarter of the seventeenth
century, confrary to the accepted opinion about the dominance of
Ramist rhetoric (which was not, however, in the end very different
from it) and the undoubted popularity which it enjoyed because of
its simpUcity and ease of being memorised. The author comments:
"Perhaps the most that can be said for Ramist rhetoric is that it
loosened the hold of Melanchthon's rhetoric in Protestant Latin
schools and thereby prepared the way for new primers that drew
eelecticaUy on many sources, including Melanchthon, Ramus and
thefr foUowers" (p. 72). Kees Meerhoff concludes an article entitied
"The Significance of PhiUp Melanchthon's Rhetoric in the
Renaissance" (pp. 46-62) with a reference to a speech by David
Chyfraeus (a student and friend of Melanchthon's, who wrote to
Ramus from Rostock in 1570) which provides an early judgment on
the close relationship between Melanchthon and Ramus in the
logical analysis of Uterature, although Meerhoff also points to
Ramus's reluctance to acknowledge his inteUectual parentage.
In the special number of Argumentation my infroductory article
"Ramus, Perelman and Argumentation, a Way through the Wood",
pp. 335-45, starts from the fact that Walter Ong's two weU-known
books. Ramus, Method and the Decay of Dialogue and Ramus and Talon
Inventory, and PereUnan's and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's La nouvelle
Rhetorique: Traite de I'argumentation, ffrst appeared in the same year,
1958, and fraces some of the connections between them and
ensuing work on Ramus, on rhetoric and argumentation, and
studies of commvuiication; the links and origins are to be found in
Renaissance views of rhetoric and dialectic. A clear paraUel is to be

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Ramus 2000 419
found in the fact that just as for Ramus logic becomes more
rhetorical when it takes over invention and disposition from
ttaditional rhetoric, so for Perelman new rhetoric is also a new
dialectic. Moreover, in Ramus there is a simUar ambivalence in the
relations between logic and dialectic and between both of these and
rhetoric, and one is never quite sure whether the aim is certainty or
probabiUty. His theory of the one common method (analytic,
scientific) in aU discourse is nuanced by his beUef in the need for a
"method of prudence" which takes account of circumstances with a
view to persuasion. Ramus's tteatment of rhetorical fropes and
figures is not unUke modem accovmts of persuasive arguments,
and his classification foreshadows some modem argumentational
schemata. The many published dialogues, prefaces and speeches
(juridical, deUberative, epideictic) of Ramus, whose ruckname was
"adversarius", provide good examples of Renaissance
argumentation in practice, as do his educational theories of usus
and exercitatio in the early stages, and then in the advanced study
of law, philosophy, mathematics or science. This is mfrrored in his
views on the practical outcome of education in later pubUc life, "in
forum, in Senatum, in concionem populi, in omnem hominum
conventum" as he puts it in his Pro philosophica Parisiensis Academiae
disciplirm of 1551.
The same number contained a posthumous article by Chaim
Perelman "Pierre de La Ramee et le declin de la rhetorique" (pp.
347-56), the last one he wrote, which gives a general overview of
Ramus's ideas on rhetoric and dialectic with reference to
argumentation. Perelman sees Ramus's confusion of logic and
dialectic and his resttiction of rhetoric to ornamentation as primary
causes of the decline of rhetoric in the centuries foUowing the
Renaissance, and consequently of delaying the revival of
argumentation. The rest of the articles in this special number,
however, show that this is something of an oversimplification. In
spite of his importance Ramus cannot be held solely responsible for
such a vast ttansformation in the history of ideas. That Ramus was
not the originator of many of the ideas he popularizes emerges
clearly from Kees Meerhoff's article "Logic and Eloquence: A
Ramusian Revolution?" (pp. 357-74): many of his ideas have an
undoubted origin in the 1530s and 1540s in Germany and the Low
Counfries, in the work of Agricola and Melanchthon, as weU as in

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420 RHETORICA
Sturm and Latomus who provided the link with Paris, especially
with reference to krypsis which is the basis of his "method of
pmdence", and thus at the heart of this rhetorical logic. Ramus
attempted to cover his ttacks but modem scholarship has shown
(Mack, Meerhoff himself elsewhere, and others) how his
apparently revolutionary ideas were in the air at the time and often
dealt with explicitly t)y the writers on whom he relies. For
Meerhoff the originaUty of Ramism is marginal and he details
Ramus's borrowings from his Northem masters. An enlarged
French version of Meerhoff's article, "Logique et Eloquence: Une
Revolution ramusienne", appears, with two new appendices, in
Autour de Ramus, pp. 87-132. The ffrst of these appendices is a ten-
page mini-article "Barthelemy Latomus: Analyse d'un discours du
dictateur M. F. Camille (1529-1532)" which is of particular interest
in the present context. The infroduction to this analysis points out
that pedagogic practice in humanist schools once again gives the Ue
to the idea that Renaisance rhetoric was a "rhetorique resfreinte".
Meerhoff shows that in practice Ramus was in this at least a
committed humanist who advocated "la lecture assidue des textes
au moyen de techniques hermeneutiques de plus en plus
sophistiquees" (p. 110) in which logic, rhetoric and textual analysis
are integrated. Latomus, too, proclaimed the union of plulosophy
and eloquence and influenced Ramus in his early days.
StUl on the subject of rhetoric in Autour de Ramus Lawrence D.
Green writes about "Aristotle's Rhetoric made Methodical" (pp.
135-72). Green analyses clearly the different ways in which the
Rhetoric is presented in the Renaissance, emphasising that Ramus
did not invent the methodical or graphic approaches to rhetoric, as
may be seen from, for example, Georgius Maior's ordering of
Melanchthon's Institutiones rhetoricae (1525), or Susenbrotus's
Epitome troporum ac schematum (1543). Early diagrams are usuaUy
intended for presentation rather than conceptualization. Green
shows also that although early commentaries on Aristotle's Rhetoric
were not presented in graphic form, they graduaUy become
spatialized, but at first independently of Ramus or Ramism, as may
be seen ui the work of the ItaUan humanist Raphael CyUenius
Angelus (1571). Later commentators do, however, apply Ramus's
schemes to the Rhetoric, even if they are not necessarUy Ramist
themselves. Green is here particularly concemed with the EngUsh

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Ramus 2000 421
ttadition. John Rainolds, for example, for whom Ramus was one
commentator among others, has "a Ramist inclination, but hardly a
Ramist habit of thought." (p. 155). Green analyses also the Ramist
input into the De Rhetorica (1619) of Theodore Goulston, a
physician who wrote about Galen. The article continues with a
discussion of Hobbes's A Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique (c. 1637). This
shows some influence of Ramus although for Green Hobbes is not
quite a Ramist, but later editions by others link Hobbes more
closely with Ramus.
Also in Autour de Ramus, James J. Murphy examines "The
Relation between Omer Talon's Institutiones Oratoriae (1545) and
the Rhetorica (1548) atfributed to him" (pp. 37-52). Murphy here
develops the argument he outlined in his edition of the Brutinae
Quaestiones about the atfribution of the Rhetorica to Ramus. Murphy
compares the Rhetorica oi 1548 with an earUer work by Talon out of
which it has often been presumed to have grovwi and finds that the
later work is by Ramus himseU. The argument is based on the fact
that Ramus appropriated the text after Talon's death in 1562, on the
further fact that the sources of the Rhetorica are to be fovmd in his
attacks on Cicero and QuintiUan, and on the near impossibiUty
from a stylistic point of view for the same person to have written
the rambling and run of the mill Institutiones oratoriae and the weU-
structured Rhetorica and then nothing else comparable. Murphy
suggests that the earUer work was afready written before Ramus's
works on dialectic of 1543 and that the preface, and some Ramist
revisions, were added later. The conclusion is that Ramus had no
involvement in the earUer work, but is the sole author of the 1548
Rhetorica which is entfrely independent of its predecessor, at a time,
it should be remembered, when rhetoric was one of Ramus's
cenfral concems, as the pubUcation of his commentaries on Cicero
and QuintiUan makes plain.
Alex Gordon, Ui the same volume, "De QuintUien a Ramus: La
Perte du contexte rhetorique" (pp. 175-94) provides a comparison
between (QuintUian and Ramus particularly on invention,
disposition, and the three genres of oratory, as weU as on
prudence, on the scope of rhetoric, and on definition. The
comparison made here is to the disadvantage of the French
phUosopher, ascribing the difference to a clash of temperaments:
Ramus's sarcasm and limited outlook is confrasted with

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422 RHETORICA
Quintilian's toleration and urbanity, and his experience as a lawyer

and teacher. WhUe it is salutary to tiiink m terms of conflicting
personaUties I should like to say that whUe Ramus emphasises the
task of teaching he is also concemed with moving and even
pleasing (through the "method of prudence") and has a deep
commitment to the social purposes of education and the role of
rhetoric within it. Even at this early date Ramus too was an
accomplished teacher and orator.
Michel Magruen's confribution to Autour de Ramus, "La Satfre
au CoUege de Presles: Le Commentafre sur Perse d'Antoine
Fouquebn (1555)", pp. 269-93, analyses a Uttie-known work of
Ramus's pupU Antoine FouqueUn, who is familiar to students of
rhetoric as ttie author of the Rhetorique francoyse of 1555, an exact
counterpart to Ramus's Dialectique of the same year. FouqueUn's
commentary on Persius, Uke Amariton's on Horace's ffrst Epistle,
and Ramus's lectures and commentaries on VfrgU, is a new
departure in the Ramist "workshop" away from the rhetoricians
and philosophers and towards Uterature. Magnien points out too a
change in editorial poUcy, since the pubUsher of the book was
Andre Weehel, who was to become Ramus's printer from then on,
partly because of reUgious affiruties but also perhaps through the
influence of Cardinal Charles de Lorraine. The author discusses the
different editions of this commentary, and its place in the history of
this popular text, and is the first to analyse its Ramist presentation
and orientation. The programmatic preface (which is printed here)
sets out FouqueUn's intention of combining phUosophy with
eloquence, of providing dialectical analyses, indicating the
question, arguments and syUogisms where appropriate, as weU as
listing fropes and figures, aU acording to the rules of method and
disposition which are universaUy accessible. As Magruen points
out, this exfreme of systematization is often at odds with the
disruptive, fragmentary, discontinuous, anarcfuc purpose of satfre.
The two editors of Autour de Ramus have written a joint article
entitled "Precepte et usage: un commentafre ramiste de la 4e
PhiUppique" (pp. 305-70). Kees Meerhoff and Jean-Claude Moisan
here describe an anonymous book: Rhetoricae et Dialedicae
praeceptiones singulari artificii laude descriptae, et luculentis exemplis
partim ex omnibus prope artibus, partim ex quarta Philippica Ciceronis
sumptis, illustratae (Paris: Denis Du Pre, 1572), which they see as

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Ramus 2000 423
"un moment majeur dans la demarche ramiste" (p. 305). This book
underlines the usws or practice so much proclaimed by Ramus and
his foUowers. Here we see at work the Ramist principles of analysis
and genesis which the authors show is part of the broader
humanist "Socratic" way of reading and teaching. The interest of
the commentary analysed here is what it tells us indfrectly of
Ramus's own method of commenting on classical texts in his
lectures and writing. The only such commentaries of Ramus on
Cicero which survive out of the twenty or so which he is known to
have written are the eight consular speeches. It is not possible to
teU if the commentary under discussion is based dfrectly on notes
from Ramus's lectures but it is certairdy very close in spfrit to his
manuals and other commentaries, at the same time as it belongs to
a recent ttadition of coUective volumes of Latin speeches
accompanied with commentaries by various scholars, as books
published in Basel, Paris and Lyon make manifest. The
infroductory section of this article provides an exceUent detaUed
overview of Ramus's educational theory and practice (and also that
of Talon) especiaUy with reference to textual analysis and Uterary
creation (genesis). There is a good discussion of a cenfral problem:
"comment reconcUier la logique, discipline de la rigueur et de la
regularite, avec la Utterature, ou regne une Uberte creattice?" (p.
327), which eUcits an accovmt of the way in which oratorical
prudence fits into the one and only method of teaching all subjects
(pp. 327-30). There are three appendices which are useful for an
understanding of how Ramus approached Uterary commentary
and how his views fit in with other contemporary positions: (i) the
prefatory letter to Cardinal Charles de Lorraine which
accompanies Ramus's commentaries on Cicero's Pro C. Rabirio, and
exttacts from a simUar one to the De lege agraria, as weU as further
exfracts from his rhetorical and logical analysis of the ffrst
CataUnian oration; (U) two key texts of Ramus about analysis and
genesis; (iU) an account of the ttansmission of the fourth PhiUppic
oration at the time of the Renaissance. (Reference may also be
made to related articles by Jean-Claude Moisan, *"Edition d'vm
epitome ramiste anonyme de 1572, les Rhetoricae praeceptiones",
Cahier des Etudes anciennes 23 (1990) pp. 145-58; *"Commentafres
sur les Rhetoricae praeceptiones, epitome ramiste de 1572",
Humanistica Lovaniensia, 39 (1990) pp. 246-305, and *"Le systeme

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424 RHETORICA
ramiste et la Scholae rhemensis rhetorica de Joarmes MoreUus", Etudes

litteraires 25 (1991-92) pp. 87-104.)
An article by Ann Moss, "Commonplace Books and Ramist
Branches" (pp. 371-87), concludes the volume Autour de Ramus,
noting that Ramus is almost totaUy silent about this subject (ttie
ordy real exception being his admission in the preface to his
Ciceronianus (1557) that he used such a cento). Moss discusses
Ramus's place in the commonplace fradition of topical logic,
showing that his vfrtual resfriction of rhetoric to elocutio and his
freatment of the places in inventio which he fransferred to dialectic
meant that there was no room for "rhetorical" commonplaces as
general subjects of discourse. The ordy place where it could fit into
his doctrine would be under testimony or proof by authority, but
Ulis has the disadvantage that it is external to rational argument.
Ramus, of course, made it a point of principle to Ulusfrate his own
works by drawing on other authors and his books are fviU of such
quotations. Moss is even able to say that "the commonplace book
was his data bank, the missing Unk between Ramist analysis and
genesis" (p. 375). This is a stimulating idea and would be worth
developing further. (I might add that since Ramus's Ubrary has
disappeared with the exception of a few books and manuscripts
scattered throughout the world, and since we do not have a
commonplace-book in his hand, we may only surmise how exactly
he did remember or otherwise rettieve the passages he wanted to
Ulusttate his work. The remark of his biographer Naneel that he
wrote much and read Uttle suggests that he must have used
commonplace books.) Moss examines the work of two of his
foUowers, Johann Freige and Gabriel Harvey, who each pubUshed
a book called Ciceronianus. Freigius, a biographer of Ramus, makes
some use of commonplaces in his Quaestiones logicae et ethicae
(1574); in his Ciceronianus of 1575 he combines the usual capitula
and tituli, which the reader is expected to fUl in, with a closed
Ramist scheme of deduction which is however superimposed and
not essential to it. Within the chapters, the seats of the arguments
which the reader is to provide are mairdy the Ramist places of
argumentation, although Freigius has aUowed room for
simiUtudes, exempla, sententiae and thus most of the normal
commonplace material (p. 379). As with the commonplace books
analysis leads to genesis through the rettieval and reordering of the

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Ramus 2000 425
contents, in this case according to Ramus's use of arguments, a

process which Moss sees as here closer to the composition of
Montaigne's essays than to a reconstruction of Cicero. Gabriel
Harvey, whose Ciceronianus dates from 1577, acknowledged a great
debt to Freigius; this work of his is in some ways more "Ramist",
though he is not concemed with genesis; it emerges also that he
feels that the commonplace book is greatly overvalued.
Ann Moss's Printed Commonplace Books and the Structuring of
Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996) 345pp., sets this m a
broader context, emphasising that Ramus "did not expressly
employ the commonplace book either as an inteUectual paradigm
or as an instrument of research" (p. 156) and that he aUotted only a
weak role in dialectic to proofs from authority or testimony. In
spite of this, his theory and practice imply the existence of a
rettieval system and this is borne out by his reUanee on Uterary
quotations. Here Moss compares the different attitudes which
Ramists adopt towards the commonplace: Henricus Schorus, who
advocates jotters, Freigius who adapts Ramus (and Cicero) to the
commonplace book and so helps to systematise it, David Chyttaeus
who links it with the process of reading and Alsted who relates it
to the systematisation of knowledge. Francis Goyet, Le subUme du
'lieu commun': L'Invention rhetorique dans I'Antiquite et a la
Renaissance (Paris: Champion, 1996) 785 pp., is also concemed with
different kinds of commonplace. In so far as the Renaissance
section is concemed this weighty analysis covers mairdy France in
the period 1550-1650, although Ramus appears more prominently
in the conclusion than in the body of the text. The author freats of
him with reference to etymology, the relation between movere and
docere, and dialectical and rhetorical proof.
The importance which the articles in Autour de Ramus assign to
Ramus's commentaries and thefr relation to his views on rhetoric is
picked up again by Peter Mack in a substantial article entitled
"Ramus Reading: The Commentaries on Cicero's Consular
Orations and VergU's Eclogues and Georgics", in Joumal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 61 (1998) pp. 111-41. Mack reminds
us that Ramus is now often seen as an author of textbooks, a
simpUfier, particularly reductive in the understanding of Uterature,
remembered for his insistence on the three laws of method and his
free diagrams. He points out, however, that this is not the image

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426 RHETORICA
presented by Ramus's freatises on education nor by his

commentaries from which he emerges as a humanist reformer, and
even, in comparison to others, "more single-minded in unravelling
implied arguments and more thorough in assigning arguments to
thefr topics of invention" (p. 3); he is also more aware of different
poetic structures and persistent in discovering paraUels from Greek
poefry.
Mack convincingly porfrays him as foUowing in the Une of
Agricola and Melanchthon and carrying thefr ideas further. This,
then, is the justification for a detailed analysis of the commentaries
which have too often been brushed aside as insignificant. This
article analyses the five Uterary commentaries: Cicero's consular
orations Pro Rabirio, De lege agraria. In Catilinam, and VergU's
Eclogues and Georgics, aU published between 1551 and 1556 in the
years immediately foUowing his appointment to the Chafr of
Eloquence and PhUosophy at the CoUege Royal. Ramus's plan to
finish off with a commentary on the Aeneid apparently came to
nothing. In the commentaries on Cicero's speeches Ramus is shown
concenfrating on the dialectical force of the whole as weU as the
individual arguments, impUed syUogisms, and fransitions,
sometimes on fropes and figures and other rhetorical skills such as
humour, and (in two of them) giving a concluding rhetorical and
logical summary of the forms of argumentation. Yet in spite of the
close reading on occasion Ramus misses the fuU emotional force of
the work on which he is commenting.
Mack points to the "tension between Ramus the humanist and
Ramus the methodical reductionist" as he oscUlates between the
strict appUcation of the three laws and the gentler method of
prudence. In the commentaries on VergU the attention to structure
and the logical connections is even more pronounced (though
Ramus over-simpUfies and there are some omissions) and the
topics of invenfion and the figures of rhetoric are again in
evidence. In the one ease Ramus foUows closely Servius (though
disagreeing with him on occasion) in the other the Roman
agriculturaUsts ColumeUa, Varro and the Elder Pliny. He quotes
Theocritus in Greek as a source, sometimes from Servius,
sometimes apparently at ffrst hand. Mack notes that in spite of a
"tiioughtful and thorough engagement with the text" (p. 129).
Ramus is not so good at capturfrig the tone of the piece and even

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Ramus 2000 427
fails to mention the poetic effectiveness of the description of fire in

the vineyard in Georgics U, 302-11, and gives nothing on any other
celebrated passages. The purpose is didactic as the various prefaces
make clear, and Ramus appUes grammar, logic and rhetoric to the
explaining of classical Uterature. For Mack "the infroduction to the
Georgics commentary and the summaries to the later Cicero
commentaries offer some of the most sustained, detailed critical
description of the sixteenth century" (p. 33). There is an interplay
and mutual influence between the manuals and the commentaries:
the practical activity of criticism and commentary shows the need
for flexibiUty in altering dialectical rules, yet it is the manuals
which survived and were successful.
DUwyn Knox's "Ideas on gesture and universal languages
c.1550-1650", in New Perspectives on Rermissance Thought, edited by
John Henry and Sarah Hutton (London: Duckworth, 1990) pp. 101-
36, provides a very welcome and detaUed accovmt of pronuntiatio in
the Renaissance and the place of Ramus in it.
A stimulating article by Anne Freadman, "Ramus against
QuintiUan: A CivU War, some Readings and a Couple of
AUegorical Divisions", Southem Review 25 (1992) pp. 252-67, written
from an avowedly non-specialist point of view, suggests that "what
is at stake in the story of Ramus against QuintiUan is not ordy
rhetoric as a theory of the poUtical, but also the poUtics of a theory
of rhetoric" (p. 258), and that Ramus's dream of settling all
disputes, Uke aU "settled rhetoric" was inherently unrealizable. The
author attempts to decide what is the diffirend (after Lyotard)
between Ramus and (JuintUian with relation to the question of
genre. The genres of the two texts are different, QuintiUan's being
governed by forensic rhetoric and Ramus's by dialectic. This means
that QuintiUan writes on the "model of precedent and
interpretation, opinion and decision, where Ramus writes on the
model of the syUogism with its drive towards closure" (p. 264).
PhiUppe Desan's article "The Platonization of the Gauls or
French History According to Ramus", published in Argumentation,
pp. 374-86, is a study of Ramus's ethical work, the Traite des meurs
et fagons des anciens Gaulois (1559), wtuch Desan relates to Ramus's
theories of education, and especially of rhetoric, mathematics and
phUosophy. Ramus here discusses the four classical virtues which
were taken over as the cardinal vfrtues by Christian moral

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428 RHETORICA
theologians, the ffrst of which was pmdence, so cenfral to Ramus's

rhetoric and to his general phUosophical approach. Desan discusses
the connection between pmdence and the second virtue, justice, fri
Ramus's understanding both of ancient GauUish civilization and
the emerging contemporary sense of national identity. He analyses
Ramus's attempt in this study of the superiority of the ancient
Gauls to secure a historical and sociological basis for his ideas. The
article reappeared in French vmder the title "La Platonisation des
Gaulois ou I'histoire de France selon La Ramee", fri PhiUppe Desan,
Penser I'Histoire a la Renaissance (Caen: Paradigme, 1993) pp.79-99. It
is useful to see it in the context of ttus book on nationaUsm and
lustory and so be able to compare Ramus with Etienne Pasquier,
Montaigne, Bodin, Loys Le Roy, La Popeliniere and legal writers
such as Hotman, Beze and Duplessis-Momay. Desan's subject is
tteated at much greater length by R. E. Asher in his book National
Myths in Renaissance France: Francus, Samothes and the Druids
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh Uruversity Press, 1993) 269 pp., in which
Asher includes Ramus briefly among the sources on Early French
History. This book is also very useful in situating Ramus's views
on GalUc leaming and miUtary prowess in the context of these
historians and theorists as well as of writers of epics Uke Ronsard.
Marie-Dominique Couzinet, Histoire et mithode a la Rermissance: Une
Lecture de la Methodus de Jean Bodin (Paris: Vrin, 1996) 381pp. argues
that Ramus is a source for Bodin and discusses his Platorusm.
FinaUy the second chapter of Betty Rogers Youngkin, The
Contribution of Walter J. Ong to the Study of Rhetoric: History and
Metaphor (Lewiston: Mellen Uruversity Press, 1995) is entitled "Ong
and Peter Ramus".
SCIENTIFIC
I start with something omitted from my earlier survey, R.

Hooykaas, G. /. Rheticus' Treatise on Holy Scripture and the Motion of
the Earth (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1984) 188pp. This book
contains principaUy a ttanslation, with notes and a commentary, of
an anonymous freatise which the author convincingly presents, by

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Ramus 2000 429
means of academic detective work, as Georg Joachim Rheticus's

lost pamphlet, the Narratio prima, mentioned by Copemicus's
friend Tiedermarm Giese in a letter of 1543. Ramus's link with
Rheticus is weU known but the author here tteats it in depth in
chapter 7 "Rheticus, Ramus and the Copemican hypotheses" (pp.
149-66). He shows that Ramus had considerable admfration for
Copernicus as an asfronomer, yet was prejudiced against the
movement of the earth and rejected hypotheses in asfronomy.
Hooykaas notes that Ramus was aware of the difference between
mathematical and physical hypotheses yet persisted in tus view; he
concludes with a good comparison between the views of Ramus
and Rheticus on the need for a 'natural' system in asfronomy. See
also *R.Hooykaas, "Humanities, Mechanics and Painting (Petrus
Ramus, Francisco de Holanda)", Rivista da Universidade de Coimbra
36 (1991) pp. 1-31.
Nicholas Jardine pubUshed an article, "Scepticism in
Renaissance Astronomy: A Preliminary Study", in Scepticism from
the Renaissance to the EnUghtenment, edited by R. H. Popkin and
Charles B. Schmitt, (Wiesbaden: WoUenbiitteler Forschungen,
1987) pp. 83-102, in which he argues that Ramus "envisaged a pure
calculus for predicting apparent celestial coordinates without
appeal to planetary models" (p. 95) and that sceptical attitudes to
asfronomy were "largely independent of the sixteenth-century
recovery and assimUation of classical scepticism", an argument
which he extends to other scientific disciplines.
Nicholas Jardine and Alain Segonds confribute a joint article to
the WoUenbiittel volume, "A ChaUenge to the Reader: Petrus
Ramus on Astrologia without hypotheses", and so bring this
fascinating subject absolutely up to date. The double starting-point
is Ramus's letter to Rheticus of 1563 condemning all asttonomical
hypotheses as impious, iUogical and unnecessarUy compUcated,
and the chaUenge he laid down in his Proemium mathematicum oi
1567, offering to give up his own Chair of Mathematics at the
CoUege Royal to anyone who could devise an astronomy without
mathematics. What Ramus is looking for is a system which would
reinstate the system he beUeved the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians
and Greeks possessed, based on generalisations derived from
observation. 'The authors show that this approach is clearly linked
to Ramus's programme for the renewal of the arts, and examine the

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430 RHETORICA
real meaning of his erugmatic remarks, what he hoped to adiieve

and by what means. They analyse the response of several
asfronomers: Rheticus, who was diplomaticaUy accommodating;
Tycho Brahe, who was more damaging; Christoph Rotiunann, who
in a "Ramean refutation of Ramus" demoUshed Ramus's views and
branded him as ignorant about astronomy; Nicolaus Ursus, who
scepticaUy relied on hypotheses as fictions; and finaUy Kepler, who
playfuUy, but with serious arguments, claimed the prize. AU except
Rothmann and Kepler accept Ramus's terms. After a lucid and
compelling exposition of the problem and how each of the
interlocutors approached it, Jardine and Segonds conclude that this
erudite exchange and chaUenge was characteristic of the period;
Ramus was being "provocatively obscure" and his text was
exfraordinarily open-ended.
Femand HaUyn's contribution to Autour de Ramus is "Jean Pena
et l'eloge de I'optique" (pp. 217-32) which freats of this briUiant
pupU of Ramus in matiiematics, at twenty-eight professor of
mathematics at the CoUege Royal and dead two years later, author
of three books, an edition and franslation of EucUd's Optica et
Catoptrica, and his Rudimenta musices, and an edition of
Theodosius's Sphaerica. HaUyn eoncenfrates on the important
preface "De usu Optices" to the Optica et Catoptrica, bringing out its
rhetorical characteristics and demonsfrating how Ramus's method
appUes to this mathematical subject essential to asfronomy and
physics. The conclusion is that Pena's preface is a laus not of the
author but of the subject, optics, whereas his preface to the
Sphaerica praises the subject and also his own edition and
franslation. His praise of optics is in the manner of a rhetorical
exordium and is a cohortatio to reading. On the subject of Pena and
Ramus and the reactions they aroused there is an article by Miguel
A. Granada, "EUminazione deUe sfere celesti e ipotesi
asfronomiche in un inedito di Christoph Rothmann: I'influenza di
Jean Pena e la polemica con Piefro Ramo", Rivista di Storia della
Filosofia 52 (1997) pp. 785-821. Rotiunann was mflueneed by Pena's
preface to the Optics and refutes the views which Ramus had set
out in his Scholarum mathematicarum libri unus et triginta and in the
letter to Rheticus. The article includes a lengthy (22pp.) annotated
edition of the relevant chapter of Rothmann's Observationum
stellarum fixarum Uber primus from the manuscript fri Kassel.

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Ramus 2000 43I
PhUippe Desan's article "The Worm m the Apple: the Crisis of

Humanism", in Humanism in Crisis, to which I have afready
referred, pp. 11-34, has a brief comparison of Copernicus and
Ramus, Unked by the date of thefr pubUcations (1543) and by thefr
way of representing space, mathematically and methodologicaUy.
Some considerable attention has been given to the subject of
Ramus's mathematical writing and its influence, especially by
Andre Robinet in Aux Sources de I'Esprit Cartesien, 1996, of which
section IV (1) is entitied "La Ramee et les mathematiques"; Robinet
brings out weU the signficance of Ramus's founding of a new Chafr
of Mathematics at the College Royal, and Usts many
mathematicians and scientists whom he influenced; this lengthy
accovmt of Ramus and mathematics contains useful information not
easUy accessible elsewhere. Guido Oldrini, in La Disputa del metodo
nel Ritmscimento, 1997, which I shaU discuss under Ramism, also
provides an informative analysis of the relation between logic and
mathematics, in Ramus and his foUowers.
RAMISM
The study of Ramus is inseparable from the study of Ramism since

it is now generaUy agreed that the principal sigruficance of Ramus
is the influence he had, or was beUeved to have had, in the
hundred years or so after his death. A major new work, the papers
from the conference at Wolfenbiittel, constitutes a re-evaluation of
what Ramism is and how it is to be defined and cfrcumscribed, and
so caU into question the presuppositions which have become
famUar to us. This is not to minimize the value of earUer
scholarship but to buUd on its foundations, and the result is
particvUarly successful. This book wUl set the parameters for
research on Ramism for many years to come.
I shaU divide my accovmt of work on Ramism according to
broad geographical areas which in some cases have shifting
boundaries. Sometimes areas do have distinctive poUtical or
reUgious characteristics which have a bearing on the way in wliich
the ideas of Ramus took hold or were resisted, but often enough

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432 RHETORICA
they form part of the same international inteUectual community.

Several scholars note that the spread of ideas is often closely Uiiked
to international commerce and the movement of people which this
impUes, and especially to the history of printing and to the book-
frade. I shaU therefore begin this section by mentioning an article
which deals precisely with the question of publishing history. Ian
Maclean's "PhUosophical books in European Markets, 1570-1630:
the Case of Ramus" in New Perspectives on Renaissance Thought,
which I have afready mentioned, freats of the material production
of books, rather than of ideas as "unitary propositions susceptible
of being generated, taken up, exchanged and judged in a pure
semantic space" (p. 253). Maclean talks mainly of schoolbooks
which kept pubUshers going and not scholarly works which were
at first financed by author or pafron and works of general
philosophy which were pubUshed separately. The publishing
vacuum left by Ramus's death in 1572 is filled partly by Wechel,
one of his major pubUshers, now in Frankfurt, and partly by Piefro
Pema and Sebastian Henricpefri, in Basel, both of them encouraged
by Freige. New editions, and especially lengthy commentaries,
appeared in abundance, but, argues Maclean, this was an attempt
to justify the breach of monopoUes, and was driven by classroom
needs and not scholarly debate as is sometimes thought. Maclean's
research is corroborated by many of the papers read at
Wolfenbiittel, which provide substantial information about the
publishing history of Ramist manuals and commentaries in various
countties throughout Europe, so that it is now becoming possible
to establish a more accurate map than before of the spread of his
ideas.
The British Isles and New England
Under this portmanteau heading my principal subject wUl be the

development of Ramism in England, but I include Ireland and
New England since most of the writers concerned had studied and
worked in England before moving abroad. Moreover, Ramism in
this context was an English phenomenon, with (as EUzabethanne
Boran suggests) overtones of colonization.

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Ramus 2000 433
Guido Oldrini, La Disputa del metodo nel Rinascimento: Indagini

su Ramo e sul ramismo (Florence: Le Lettere, 1997) 331pp. is both a
general work on Ramus and Ramism and a study of Ramism in
England. I propose to freat it ffrst here at some length since it also
has a bearing on Ramism throughout Europe. Some of the chapters
have afready appeared elsewhere (for example in the Festschrift to
Garin, and in French in Argumentation) but here they are brought
up to date and fashioned into a new imity to correspond to the
theme of this book. Oldrini here presents the results of fus recent
research into the relation of the phUosophy of Ramus and Ramism
to the social, historical and political events which formed it and
which it helped to form. Ramism, he notes, is mainly studied by
scholars of the history of logic or of rhetoric and not by
phUosophers or even historians of phUosophy, and therefore the
result is often merely bookish. While Oldrini's overaU approach is
Marxist he is weU aware of the danger of anachronism, and that the
confradictions of a fransitional period such as this one (late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries) can be understood only
with tundsight. He is concemed with the rise of autonomous
disciplines, and sees the creation of a body of laws for aU different
kinds of knowledge as a product of bourgeois society with a clear
Unk between ideology, the economic bases of society and capitalist
production. Method is appUed at the time to aU disciplines:
historiography, jurisprudence, poUtical theory and the theory of
the absolute State, art (poetry and Uterary criticism) as well as
science and mathematics. From mathematics we proceed to a
uniting of the speculative and the practical in the various
appUcations of method: asfronomy, cartography, baUistics,
surveying, navigation, technology (manufacturing and artisanal),
commercial and professional practice, and medicine. This
constitutes a new order of knowledge, underlaid with new
techniques in logic and rhetoric, manifest also in new social,
poUtical, reUgious and even institutional and professional
relationships. Oldrini makes it clear that Ramus is not alone.
Certainly method is the cenfre of gravity of his thought but
AristoteUans and humarusts aUke agree on its importance.
However, it is only in Ramism that method has a specific socio-
historical relevance. Ramus's confribution to mathematics is almost
negUgible; what is important is his recourse to the subject "per U

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434 RHETORICA
suo apporto aUa teenica della omogeneizzazione (dell'elaborazione

e disposizione omogenea degli enimciati sul modello matematico)"
(p. 69).
The cenfral part of the book concems historiography and law,
which the author, foUowing views stated at the time, insists must
be studied together. In the presence of the vast amount of fiistorical
writing in France in the second half of the sixteenth century Oldrini
debates whether there was a historical revolution which would
correspond to the scientific revolution (the existence of which is
also of course debated). He traces the move away from the
rhetorico-literary tone of humanist historians who based
themselves on Livy and towards a more, critical, independent,
objective approach (the turning point is arovmd 1560) under the
influence of Polybius. There is a new interest in chronology,
sources, analysis of causes, usus and experientia and increased
national awareness. Oldrini is not talking simply about France but
also, for example, about EngUsh city chronicles based on Florentine
models, Tudor antiquaries, and Camden's Britannia (1586). Writers
on law and its practitioners also renounce the rhetorical approach
in favour of a methodic ordering of material, going beyond absfract
phUological questions, and applying a similar critical spfrit in order
to restmcture the juridic order of the state, making the theory of
law more scientific. Here too usus and experientia axe much in
evidence. In both history and law, however, notes Oldrini,
methodology and practice often do not in fact go hand in hand.
Oldrini addresses squarely the problem of deciding who and
what may safely be labelled Ramist, a subject which is currently
exercising scholars. He alerts us to the danger of oversimpUfication
and to the difficulty in establishing aeurately a writer's sources and
also the social, religious and professional context in which he
works: so, for example, a lawyer or historian of Ramist formation
may not follow his method in his writing, and one of a different
formation may, on the other hand, do so. Although Ramus was not
really interested in history and law at a deep level he had a direct
influence on practitioners of these disciplines: it is in the matter of
the logical and rhetorical category of dispositio that a paraUel is to
be made. The external pointers to the presence of Ramism may be
misleading since the dichotomies and tables are not exclusive to
him and appear also in posthumanist AristoteUanism. Oldrini

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Ramus 2000 435
suggests, however, that it is sometimes possible to say where

Ramism is to be found. Negatively, a plurality of methods excludes
such identification and, positively, Ramism is to be found in a
convergence of ideas centered on usus, brevity and clarity. Oldrini
lists three principal classes of writers who may safely be styled
"Ramist": (i) those formed in a Ramist school or influenced by it
and who remain sympathetic to thefr training; (U) miUtant Ramists;
(ui) non-Ramists, even those opposing his docfrine, yet clearly
influenced by his method. Among writers on law, for example,
clearly from the Ramist miUeu are Abraham Fraunce (who wrote
The Lawiers Logicke) and, in France, Nicolas Bergeron, Ramus's
executor (and editor of his Grammaire and the Colledaneae
Praefationes oi Ramus and Talon), Claude Mignault, editor of and
commentator on Talon's Rhetorica, and (less clearly) Antoine Loisel,
Ramus's other executor.
In his thfrd and final section Oldrini provides an overview of
the penefration of Ramism into England, resfricting himself to
matters of logic, rhetoric and method, although some Unks with
mathematics, asfronomy and the natural sciences are touched on
Ughtly. The author is concemed with cultural and educational
changes, the role of the Inns of Court as the so-caUed thfrd
university of the day, and Puritanism in the universities. We learn
of the continuities and ruptures in the development of humanistic
logic, and the spread of Ramism after Ramus's death in 1572,
largely through the important Dialedicae libri duo oi that date. At
Cambridge the key figures are Laurence Chaderton, lecturer in
logic and rhetoric; Gabriel Harvey, professor of rhetoric; George
Downham, professor of logic; William Perkins; and WUUam
Temple (with his Ramist ethics which are reserved for the last
chapter of die book), together with aU their students. Mention is
also made of thefr opponents Everard Digby and Francis Bacon. At
Oxford we find Puritan sympathisers and some other Ramists
(Charles Butler, John Barebone, John Rainolds). The picture is
completed by a discussion of lawyers and scientists in London,
professional schools and grammar schools, court and artistic
cfrcles; the name of Sidney is prominent, as is Abraham Fraunee's
Arcadian Rhetorike.
Oldrini makes good use of the most recent work in a variety of
fields, but also of preceding generations of scholars whose work is

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often neglected, and his copious footnotes provide much useful

bibUographieal information not easily accessible otherwise. He
concenttates on England and France but has much to offer on Italy
and Germany too.
Oldriru retums to the centtal part of his argument in the
Wolfenbuttel volume in an essay entitled "The Influence of
Ramus's Method on Historiography and Jurisprudence", analysing
the influence of Ramist rhetorical and logical techniques on a broad
specfrum of disciplines. In the case of law this is iUusfrated by a
comparison of Jean Bodin's MetJwdus ad facilem historiarum
cognitionem and Joharmes Althusius's Juris Romani libri duo: ad leges
methodi Rameae conformati, both published in 1586, who both
wanted law to be considered a science, based on method, in which
a balance must be struck between universals and particulars, ratio
and experientia.
Another clear area in which Ramist methodology created the
new theoretical foundation for a discipline which Oldriru has
described is writing on theology. In this connection another
confribution to the study of Ramism in England is to be found in
Donald K. McKim's book, Ramism in William Perkins' Theology
(New York: Peter Lang, 1987) 249pp. McKun demonsfrates that
"Perkins' aUegiance to Ramus was more widespread and deeper
than has been realized" (p. 2). Perkins's Ramism, which comes to
him from his tutor Laurence Chaderton, permeates all his writing,
with the exception of works against a specific theological opponent
or addressed to "common", that is, ignorant, people. Thus it is
found in the early works of a polemical nature, such as the
confroversies on artificial memory, or the use of images in worship,
theological works on grace, faith and works, exegetieal books such
as bibUcal commentaries and The Arte of Prophesying, as weU as later
works of systematic and moral theology and a polemical piece
against witchcraft. Perkins foUows Ramus's method of proceeding
from the general to the particular, logical analysis, the use of logical
language, dichotomies, with divisions and subdivisions which
arise from the subject itself, charts, and the "use" of a docfrine. AU
in all "the detailed simUarities between Perkins and Ramus on
memory, method, the commonplaces and 'arguments' are too
striking to ignore" (p. 90). There are other sources too, of course,
yet Ramus's rhetorical logic was by far the most important; if

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Ramus 2000 437
Perkins does not mention Ramus by name among his sources this
is because Ramist logic has become synonymous with good logic.
A final chapter relates the influence of Perkins and his Ramism in
EngUsh Puritan mUieux, especiaUy in Cambridge, with regard to
teaching, and to preaching in the plain style. McKim conducts his
case convincingly.
The relation between Ramism and Puritanism is the subject of
a cluster of articles by J. C. Adams. In "Linguistic Values and
ReUgious Experience: An Analysis of the Clothing Metaphors in
Alexander Richardson's Ramist-Puritan Lectures on Speech,
'Speech is a Garment to Cloath our Reason'", Quarterly Joumal of
Speech 76 (1990) pp. 58-68, Adams buUds on Perry MiUer's view
that Richardson's Logicians School-Master is "undoubtedly the most
important Ramist work in the backgrovmd of New England
thought". Adams establishes new Unks between Ramism and
Puritanism in rhetoric by explaining "the rationale that guided the
employment of clothing metaphors in the teaching of stylistic
omementation" (p. 58), thus endowing the Ramist doetine of
elocutio with the concept of decorum and techniques of persuasion,
and linking fashion, psychology and theology. See also, by the
same author, "Alexander Richardson and the Ramist Poetics of
Michael Wigglesworth", Early American Literature 25 (1990) pp. 271-
98, which argues that Wigglesworth's Day of Doom "embodies a
two-fold interest in dialectic and rhetoric that is distinctively
Ramist" (p. 272) and comparable to other poefry of the time in New
England.
A further article by the same author, "Gabriel Harvey's
Ciceronianus and the Place of Peter Ramus' Dialedicae libri duo in
the Curriculum", Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990) pp. 551-69, takes
issue with one of the arguments of Grafton and Jardine's From
Humanism to the Humanities (1986). For Adams, after Harvey the
Puritan Ramists carried forward the educational ideals of the
humanists and it is not in order to talk of a decline. The author
states that "the evidence supporting Grafton and Jardine's
contention that Harvey's 'pragmatic humanism' was aimed solely
towards material success is not conclusive" (p. 554). Adams prefers
to rely, not on Harvey's MarginaUa, but on his Ciceronianus, which
he links with Ramus's Dialectic in the 1601 edition which contained
the commentary of George Downham. What emerges is a high

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438 RHETORICA
moral purpose connecting the docfrine of imitatio with social,

political and ethical questions. He demonstrates how in England
some Ramists (Roland MacIUnaine, Dudley Fenner, Thomas
Granger, Anthony Wotton) replaced the iUusfrations with which
Ramus eruiched his theories of dialectic, drawn from Latin classical
authors, with bibUcal examples, whereas others (George
Downham, Alexander Richardson) retained the quotations from
the pagans. The Puritan Ramists would find in Ramus's freatment
of the arts of discourse justification for thefr beUef in a God-given
natural moral law and the subordination of seU-interest to the
community. Adams pays particular attention to MUton, who had
studied under Downam, arguing that his poUtical ideals come
partly from Cicero's speeches and writings intiaUy tiuough the
intermediary of Ramus's iUusfrations to the Dialectic. The
educational ideals of the humanists are thus seen to continue weU
into the seventeenth century, especially in this practical appUcation
of the Dialectic to EngUsh ideals of republicanism, among his
Puritan followers, and those who carried the humanist fradition to
New England. Reference may also be made to an earUer article by
Adams, "Ramus, IUusfrations and the Puritan Movement", Joumal
of Medieval and Rermissance Studies 17 (1987) pp. 195-210, which
overlaps the present article to some extent.
In another article entitled "Ramist Concepts of Testimony,
Judicial Analogies, and the Puritan Conversion Narrative",
J^etorica, 9 (1991) pp. 251-68, Adams analysed the use of artistic
("artificial") proofs from Ramist manuals of dialectic in personal
testimorues in early sevententh-century New England churches. He
relates church practice to that of the courfroom with its secular
forensic testimony, and experiential faith with discourse and the
art of reason. This is exemplified once again by recourse to
Alexander Richardson, with some reference to his foUowers,
WiUiam Ames and Thomas Hooker, as weU as John Cotton. FinaUy,
in "Alexander Richardson's PhUosophy of Art and the sources of
the Puritan Social Ettuc", Journal of the History of Ideas 50 (1989) pp.
227-47, Adams relates Richardson's Logicians School-Master to
Ramus's Dialedicae libri duo, concluding that Richardson's work is
either one of the primary sources of the Puritan ethic or one of its
most complete expressions and thus vmderlining the importance of
Ramism in this domain.

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Ramus 2000 439
WUUam H. Sherman's book, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and

Writing in the EngUsh Renaissance (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1995) has Uttie to say about Ramus himself
yet clearly acknowledges his influence on Dee who caUed himself
"the MethodicaU Author" (p. 23) and used the dichotomous
method "in absolute accord with the Ramist Tradition" (p. 137)
with its usefulness in matters of communicafion and opiruon but
with the attendant limitation that it cannot explore truth.
The appUcation of Ramist method to Uterary writing is
discussed by Tamara A. Goeglein who approaches the relation
between logic, rhetoric and poetry in a new and stimulating way in
"'Wherein hath Ramus been so offensious?: Poetic Examples in the
EngUsh Ramist Logic Manuals (1574-1672)", Rhetorica 14 (1996) pp.
73-101. The phrase quoted in the title comes from Marlowe's
Massacre at Paris, and is addressed by the character Ramus to his
murderers, the Dukes of Anjou and Guise, who accuse him of
attacking both Aristotle and the CathoUc church as well as of
superficiaUty, because of the poetic examples within his logical
discourse. The author Unks this with the association between
poetry and lying. Goeglein's article explores what was meant by
this common charge of superficiaUty, which in the end comes
down to his including in dialectic the weU-known poetic
Ulusfrations. She takes as her principal text MacIUnaine's The Logike
of the Most Excellent Philosopher P.Ramus Martyr (London, 1574), and
mentions several others, starting from Abraham Fraunce and
ending up with MUton's Artis logicae plenior institutio oi a century
later. This was in confrast to the scholastics who saw a distinction
between rational truth and figural discourse. As the author puts it:
"This was not so for the Ramists, who violated the scholastic
boundary between the figurative and the Uteral by effectively
equalizing the status of dialectical and poetic languages" (p. 77).
She is concemed to analyse the "creative semiosis infroduced into
the Ramist manuals by the presence of figurative language" (p. 78),
underlining "the semantic mechanisms whereby the poetic
examples are ffrst correlated with actual world-referents and then
axiomaticaUy confirmed (or rejected) as truthfully standing in for
them" (p. 80), aU of this in an entfrely verbal context, so that poetic
signs are no difterent from logical signs. The article also discusses
Temple's Analysis of Sidney's Apology for Poetry which makes

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440 RHETORICA
Ramists alUes of poefry since they see it as divine and consonant

with the one and only method; the author comments on the
"unified and closed cfrcuit" of Ramist thought in which "veritable
and verisimUar discourse become equivalent vehicles for
expressing the tenor of the fruth" (p. 89). Poetry and logic are
interchangeable because they both reflect natural God-given
reason, but natural reasoning is flawed and artificial logic proves
necessary. See also the same author's "Utterances of the Protestant
Soul in The Faerie Queen: The AUegory of Holiness and the
Humanist Discourse of Reason", Criticism 36 (1994) pp. 1-19. This
article comments on a Spenserian dialogue of the self by applying
syllogistic ratio to this oratio, with the help of "godly" Ramist
dialectic, mainly in the form of MacIUnaine's Logike. The author
writes that "the practice of Ramism thus enacts a form of holiness
in which spoken utterances are logicaUy identified with the inner
utterances of the protestant soul" (p. 4).
In a more sfrictly logical vein Ralph S. Pomeroy, " The Ramist
as Fallacy-Hunter: Abraham Fravmee and TJie Lawiers Logike",
Renaissance Quarterly 40 (1987) pp. 224-46, constitutes a re-
evaluation of Fravmee as a confributor to "logical theory and
argumentative practice" (p. 224). FaUacies are seen as a major
theme in the Logike. Pomeroy freats of the genesis of The Lawiers
Logike and The Arcadian Rhetorike and relates them to earUer
unpublished works by Chaderton. He also shows the pertinence of
Fraunee's Unking of law and logic to modem research into
argumentation (Stephen E. Toufrnin, Chaim Perelman, D. L.
Hamblin).
EUzabethanne Boran publishes in the papers from
WoUenbiittel a very detailed and informative account of "Ramism
in Trinity College, Dublin, fri the early seventeenth century", which
draws on her doctoral thesis Libraries and Leaming: The Early History
of Trinity College, Dublin from 1592-1641 (T.C.D. 1996). The present
study is based on material provided by (i) the statutes prepared by
WiUiam Temple (1615), WiUiam BedeU (1628) and WUUam Laud
(1637); (ii) staff notebooks, especiaUy those of Luke ChaUoner and
James Ussher; (Ui) early library collections of the coUege. The
dominance of Ramism, through links with Cambridge (ChaUenor
and Temple) and Scotland (Andrew MelviUe, Robert RoUock) is
made evident, and its relation to Harvard is also considered. Very

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Ramus 2000 441
interestingly Boran points to the role of Ramism, both in DubUn

and Harvard, in the colonizing process: converting and civilizing
the natives are made easier by the new method in theology.
Ramism seems to have faUen out of favour in the mid-1620s.
Kendrick W. Prewitt's "Gabriel Harvey and the Practice of
Mediod", Studies in EngUsh Literature 1500-1900 39 (1999) pp. 19-39,
takes as its starting-point Harvey's early Ode Natalitia (1574), an
elegy to the recentiy murdered Ramus, which figures a cenfral
aUegorical character called Method. Prewitt goes on to ttace the
development in Harvey's writing from a reUgious reverence for
method (as here and in the Ciceronianus) to a "more chastened and
sober assessment through the 1580s and 1590s" (p. 19), a process
mirrored elsewhere in England during these years, where "Method
was not simply a topic in dialectical handbooks, but encompassed
varying degrees of conformity and radicalism, pragmatism,
pmdence, skepticism, and MachiaveUianism" (p. 21). In Harvey's
case, the author argues, this was not just the result of pedagogic
theory but a personal commitment to action. This is presented here
through an analysis of his "Earthquake" letter (1580) and his Foure
Letters and Certeine Sonnets (1592) which are part of the Uterary
flyting with Greene and Nashe in which he makes plain his
disiUusionment with method.
Mordechai Feingold has published two major studies. The ffrst
was published in The History of tlie University of Oxford, volume IV,
Seventeenth-Century Oxford, edited by Nicholas Tyacke (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1997), a book-length chapter entitled 'The
Humanities', pp. 211-357. Feingold's aim is to dispel
impressionistic and often prejudiced perceptions about university
education at the time, which he sees as humanist and encyclopedic,
with classical languages and literatures cenfral to the common
curriculum, rather than late scholastic or AristoteUan. Feingold
points to the profound metamorphosis in the teaching of logic in
the seventeenth century as the humanist attack on overspecialized
logic gives way to a more Uterary approach Unked with the art of
persuasion, which stiU manages to value logic highly, in spite of
satirical attacks upon it. The critical response to Ramism at the time
was complex: "What is insufficiently recognized is that after 1600
those very elements of the Ramist programme that so endeared it
to (mairdy protestant) English and Continental academicians.

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442 RHETORICA
brought about its demise"(p. 289). From this time onwards the
inadequacy of Ramism becomes evident as does, curiously, its
threat to the Protestant reUgion. The quarrelsomeness of adherents
and opponents helped to bring about the "resolute rejection of
Ramism" which "stemmed not from a reactionary cabal but from
an informed repudiation of a derivative, superficial, and highly
rancorous body of teaching" (pp. 291-2). This chapter is rich in
detail, painstakingly argued and lucidly presented. The author
made fixrther use of his own findings in an article "Aristotle in
Elizabethan Universities in the Seventeenth Century: A Re-
evaluation", in European Universities in the Age of Reformation and
Counter Reformation, ed. Helga Robinson-Hemmerstein (Dublin:
Four Courts Press, 1998) pp. 135-48.
The second work is Feingold's very substantial article in the
Wolfenbiittel volume "EngUsh Ramism: A Reinterpretation".
Feingold accepts the broad thesis of Walter Ong that in spite of
being juvenUe and shaUow Ramism was pervasive in the English
universities and of great cultural and social significance. He argues,
however, that sometimes those who buUt on Ong's researches have
ttansformed Ramus into the originator of the modem critical and
scientific spfrit, and of radical, democratic ideals in reUgion,
poUtics and society, making him far more of a revolutionary tfian
he was in reaUty. He also questions Bruyere's view of the
coherence of Ramus's thought and its dfrect influence in the
hundred years foUowing his death.
Feingold's article, too, insists that an attempt must be made to
redefine the term "Ramist" which, because of the inadequacy of
definition in the past, has too often become aU-embraeing;
anecdotal evidence, contemporary labelling, possession of books,
the use of dichotomies, attendance at a particular coUege, Puritan
affiliation or anti-Aristotelian tendencies, are simply non-
conclusive. He further quaUfies what may and may not be deduced
about Ramus from Ubrary catalogues and urges against quoting
them out of context. The significance of Ramus's reputation as a
Protestant martyr and of his contentiousness is weU brought out;
the common idea that Ramus may be accurately described as a
humanist is brought into question as is the view that
AristoteUanism pervaded the universities in the second half of the
sixteenth century, Fefrigold points to the literary character of

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Ramus 2000 443
education at Oxford and Cambridge and to the revival of classical

studies. It emerges, too, that the minor academic confroversies
surrounding Ramism are totaUy insigrufieant compared to the
weighty rejection of him by Scaliger, Lipsius, the two Casaubons
and Bacon.
France
It is usuaUy taken for granted that the extensive influence of Ramus

on EngUsh poetry, so often recorded and commented on by
scholars, was not paraUeled in the case of French poetry, apart
from a few minor examples. Any examination of the evidence for
France is therefore timely and welcome. Jan Miemowski's
Dialectique et connaissance dans La Sepmaine de Du Bartas (Geneva:
Droz, 1992) 347pp. is something of a pioneering study. This book
deals with the rhetorical and dialectical sources and resources of La
Sepmaine, concenfrating especiaUy on invention and description,
without, of course, losing sight of the theological and spfritual
purposes of Du Bartas's writing. This analysis of Uterary
description, based on Usts of the place of cause or effect is weU-
conducted and fruitful. As the author says in the conclusion: "Les
dUferents Ueux constituent les categories logiques de la
conceptualisation. Leur combinatoire dessine dans La Sepmaine la
figure de la mathesis encyclopedique" (p. 311). Ramus's dialectic is
considered to be primarUy concemed with epistemology "I'art de
cognoisfre"—ou plutot une epistemologie enseignee ('docfrine'
dont le but est d'apprendre a 'apercevofr toutes choses')" (p. 94).
Miemowski finds some ideological Unks between Ramus and
Ronsard and the Pieiade: thefr Platonism, thefr insistence on terms
relating to nature, thefr theories of invention (dialectical or poetic),
although this general affiruty is not explored in detail. The author
is aware that the historic (or biographical) links between Ramus
and the Pieiade do not imply a programmatic phUosophical
dependence on the part of the poets, yet is able to state: "Toutefois
U semble que I'on puisse parler de I'existence d'un code
ideologique qui, enterine par le systeme educatif de la Renaissance,
constituerait le denominateur commun des phenomenes tels que la

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444 RHETORICA
poesie de la Pieiade et la pensee ramiste" (p. 98). It would be

unUkely, of course, for this to be otherwise, and it is ordy in the
extended analysis of Unguistic usage and of thought patterns that
precise parallels and influences in one dfrection or the other can be
estabUshed. I believe that this is of importance for the main subject
of this book which is the working out of dialectical and rhetorical
theory and practice in one partievdar example of French poetry in
the second hafr of the sixteenth century. Moreover, one of the
earUest commentators on Du Bartas was the Ramist Pantaleon
Thevenin, whose annotations accompanied an edition of La
Sepmaine, published in Paris in 1585, which also included Ramist
tables of tiie whole work and its parts. Rhetorical dialectic of the
Renaissance provides the places which produce Ehi Bartas's
description and the means to sfructure them methodicaUy so that
knowledge is fransmitted most efficiently. "C'est le didactisme de
La Sepmaine, de meme que son adhesion affiehee dans le metatexte
a l'esthetique protestante, qui dictent au poeme la revendication de
la verite" (p. 309).
Jean-Claude Margolin, "Ronsard CoUaborateur de La Ramee",
in Pierre de Ronsard: A propos des Amours, ed. James Dauphine et al.,
Cahiers du Centre Jacques Laprade 5 (Biarritz: Atlantica, 1997) 226pp.
usefuUy complements earUer work by DassonviUe and others, with
abundant annotation.
Germany and Central Europe
On Ramism in Germany reference should be made to the section

on Logic in the book by Andre Robinet, Aux Sources de I'Esprit
cartesien., 1996, which is fuU of information about the presence of
scholars, especiaUy mathematicians, in that country who owed an
allegiance to Ramus, and of books pubUshed there. Joseph S.
Freedman has written an excellent critical article, "The Diffusion of
the Writings of Petrus Ramus in Centtal Europe, c.1570 c.1630".
Renaissance Quarterly 46 (1993) pp. 98-152, which covers
pubUcations in German-language areas, in which the works of
Ramus and Talon were prominent. Freedman finds that these
writings were used less in universities than in preparatory scholae

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Ramus 2000 445
triviales and other more advanced academic institutions during this

period of rapid educational expansion. This author too addresses
the question of what is meant by the imprecise terms Ramist, semi-
Ramist and PhiUppo-Ramist. He does ttus by an analysis of the
way writers such as Alsted and Gockel (Goclenius) classify
phUosophical disciplines, though, as he points out, since we do not
have such a classification from Ramus or Talon, it is not possible to
know which taxonomy is the more Ramist. The article studies also
different ways in which the concept of method was understood,
through an examination of ten works on logic which mention
Ramus. Attention is also given to contemporary views on the
academic value of Ramvis's work, and to its place within the
curriculum: his emphasis on the ttivium corresponded closely to
the aims of these educational establishments, and the abUities of
the younger pupils, and his fafrly basic works on arithmetic and
geometry were also welcome, yet he was unable to provide the
necessary textbooks on ethics and physics. In some places, such as
the higher classes of the Herbom Academy, rhetoric and logic were
studied from Aristotle and his commentators rather than Ramus,
and in others he is dropped as more emphasis is given to the
teaching of metaphysics and a retum to ttaditional AristoteUanism.
E. J. Ashworth, "Changes in Logic Textbooks from 1500 to 1650:
The New AristoteUanism", in Aristotelismus und Renaissance: In
memoriam Charles B.Schmitt, edited by Eckhard Kessler, Charles H.
Lohr and Walter Spam (Wiesbaden: WoUenbutteler Forschungen,
1988) pp. 75-87 shows that in the second half of the sixteenth
century teachers had to supplement the inadequate formal material
in the logic manuals of Agricola and Ramus with Aristotle and his
Greek commentators.
Freedman retums to the subject in his article in the
Wolfenbiittel volume, "PhilUp Melanchthon's Opinion of Pefrus
Ramus and the Utilization of Writings by Melanchthon and Ramus
in Cenfral Europe during the Reformation Era". This article
confrasts Melanchthon's dismissive remarks about Ramus in a
letter of 1543, now in the Folger Shakespeare Library, in which he
describes him as long-winded and useless and prophesies that the
current demand for Ramus's works wiU not last, with Ramus's
later praise of him. (On this fascinating subject see also Joseph F.
Freedman *"PhiUip Melanchthon's Views Conceming Pettus

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446 HHETORICA
Ramus as Expressed in a Private Letter Written fri 1543: A Brief

Assessment" in Phillip Melanchthon und die Marburger Professoren,
edited by Barbara Bauer, 2 vols (Marburg: UniversitatsbibUothek,
1999) II, pp. 841-48.) Freedman discusses the use made in Centtal
Europe of Melanchthon and Ramus and of commentators on them,
especially Lucas Lossius and Victorinus Sfrigel on Melanchthon,
and Freigius and Beurhusius on Ramus, but points out that they
were often used conjointly and ecIecticaUy. Where Melanchthon is
more in evidence this is explained by Ramus's attacks on the ttio of
classical rhetoricians, his reputation for excessive dichotomization
at the expense of content, and the fact that Melanchthon's manuals
covered more subjects and were aimed at universities as weU as at
schools.
Sylvain Matton deals at length with "L'AIehimie chez les
ramistes et semi-ramistes", in the Ramus number of Argumentation,
pp. 403-46, demonsttating that although Ramus himself did not
write about alchemy many German writers on alchemy, and on
chemistry (notably Libavius), consciously made use of a Ramist
method of exposition. The article is supported by a text from
Keekermann in which we see argumentation in practice.
Thomas Elsmann writes in the Wolfenbuttel volume on "The
Influence of Ramism in the Academies of Bremen and Danzig in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: A Comparison", starting
from an exchange of letters in 1570 between Ramus in Heidelberg
and Johannes Molanus, the Flemish Rector of Bremen Academy,
son-in-law of Gerhard Mercator, from which we may infer that
Ramist teaching in German schools dates from around 1560.
Elsmann sees Molanus as an example of a general frend in which
the influence of Ramus is coupled with that of Aristotie and
Melanchthon; he also fraces the rise and faU of the popularity of
Ramus and Talon, showing that freedom of instruction invited
eclecticism and that the late printings of these authors in Bremen
corresponds to the late development of printing there. In Danzig,
which was closely linked with Bremen, reUgious confUcts between
Lutherans, PhUippists, Calvinists and a sfrong CathoUc group
colour the history of education. Except during the years when
Keekermann held the Chair of PhUosophy there (from 1602 to his
death fri 1609) Aristotle and Melanchthon dominated in the
manuals, and Ramus and Ramism were unimportant, perhaps

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Ramus 2000 447
because he was seen as a Calvinist. Johannes Martini alone

published manuals based on Ramus and Talon, in the early
seventeenth century. This article is another salutary reminder of
the need to analyse carefuUy what we mean by Ramism. (See also,
by the same author, *"Das Bremener Gymnasium iUusfre und seine
Vorlaufer in ihrer Bedeutung fifr den Ramismus in Deutschland
(1560-1630)", in Northem Humanism in the European Context, 1469-
1625, edited by Fokke Akkerman et al. (Leiden: BrUl, 1998).
Also in die Wolfenbiittel volume is an article by Riccardo
Pozzo, "Petrus Ramus's Metaphysics and its Criticism by the
AristoteUans at Hefrnstedt" which starts by comparing
Melanchthon and Ramus on the relations between logic and
metaphysics, and the harmonisation of Plato and Aristotle, noting
how scholars have variously interpreted the evolution of each of
these Renaissance writers. The author demonsfrates how (in spite
of his book on Aristotle's metaphysics) Ramus is anti-metaphysical
and reduces the subject to dialectic; he does not need a separate
metaphysics since his logic is afready metaphysics, and this
attitude is highUghted by the Helmstedt AristoteUans. David
Chyfraeus, for example, founder of the Philippistae, is very close to
Ramus on the natural Ught of reason, and leaves no place for
metaphysics.
There is an interesting aside here on a comment of
Melanchthon in 1537 in which he attacks a "GaUus quidem" Ui
Paris, equated by some with Ramus: the date seems too early, but
the question remains open; reference is also made independently to
the 1543 letter discussed by Freedman. The article concludes with
an account of various Ramists, PhiUppists and PhUippo-Ramists
(although the labels sometimes prove inadequate). In the end it is
the "Peripatetici" (notably Johann CaseUus and ComeUus Martini)
who make the break with Ramus and restore metaphysics at
Helmstedt.

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448 RHETORICA
The Netiierlands
Theo Verbeek, in "Notes on Ramism in the Netherlands",

pubUshed in the WoUenbiittel papers, provides a useful survey of
the avaUable information on this subject, concenfrating on the
programme (in education, logic and phUosophy) rather than on
docfrfrie, and mairdy in the universities of Leiden and Franeker. In
Leiden the principal persons involved are Rudolph SneU (who had
met Ramus in Marburg and published commentaries and lectures
on his work) and his disciple Isaac Beeckman, and Snell's son
Willebrord who wrote a commentary on Ramus's arithmetic.
Ramism is seen as representative of a large movement of reform,
which stemmed from Agricola and Erasmus, and indeed it
sometimes, and especiaUy perhaps at Franeker, even formed an
eclectic synthesis with AristoteUanism. The author analyses the
Unks between Ramism and Cartesianism, concluding (against
Robinet and others) that Descartes should not be situated in this
perspective, although the two earUest foUowers of Descartes in the
Netherlands, Henricus Reneri and Heruicus Regius, do show some
influence by Ramus as late as the 1630s; there is even an edition of
Ramus's Dialedica as late as 1664. One additional merit of this
study is that it makes more accessible the conclusions of theses and
other work published in Dutch.
Switzerland
Wolfgang Rother writes in the WoUenbiittel volume on "The

Influence of Pefrus Ramus in Switzerland", on which a monograph
would be welcome: there has been little published on the subject
since the nineteeenth-century work of Waddington, Bemus and
Lobstein. Rother usefully sets out the facts about Ramus's visit to
Basel, Zurich, Bern, Geneva, and Lausanne in 1568-70, the
pubUcation of his Basileia (1571), and his contacts with various
scholars there, including theologians Uke BuUinger, and his lasting
influence on some of them, in particular Freigius whose
commitment to Ramus cost him his teaching career, and Zwinger, a
former student of Ramus who became professor of Greek in Basel.

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Ramus 2000 449
Rotiier Usts Freigius's editions of Ramus and his many other less
weU-knov\m didactic works which are permeated with Ramist
dichotomies and synopses, although his Trium artium logicarum
schematism! (1568), in fact on aU the arts, inserts AristoteUan
material into the Ramist method. Zwinger, too, whose Theatrum
vitae humanae is a Ramist encyclopedia, acknowledged the interest
of Aristotle sUiee he lectured on him, using Ramist tables. The
article also points to the Lutherans Simon Sulzer and Ufrich Koch
as sources of Ramus's theology. Although there is little sign of the
influence of Ramism in Zurich, where AristoteUan logic holds sway
untU the middle of the seventeenth century, or in Geneva,
elsewhere the influence of Ramism extends even into the
eighteenth century, as is evidenced by the numerous editions of
Ludwig Lutz's Artis logicae praeceptae, ffrst pubUshed in 1620
(which, however, is very differently organised). In Switzerland as
elsewhere there was an eclectic mingling of Aristotle and Ramus
and later of Descartes and Ramus. Rother provides a good account
of the numerous editions of Ramus pubUshed in Switzerland, and
points to the importance of printed Ramist disputations in the
1590s, as weU as making use of the numerous letters of Ramus, to
Zwinger and BuUinger, now preserved in Zurich, Basel and
elsewhere, and stiU largely unpublished.
Sweden
I would Uke ffrst to refer to a sUghtiy earUer work which I had not
come across in my previous round-up of work on Ramus, Eriand
SeUberg, Filosofin och Nyttan. I Petrus Ramus och ramismen
(Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1979) 152pp. The
English summary states that this Swedish work deals with what is
usuaUy seen as a conflict between Swedish AristoteUans and
Ramists, in the early years of the seventeenth century, pinpointing
the year 1639. Sellberg queries the accuracy of this description in so
far as the protagorusts Archbishop Laurentius Paulinus Gothus and
ChanceUor Johan Skytte, University of Uppsala, supposedly
Ramists, and thefr opponent, Laurentius Stigzelius, professor of
logic, supposedly an AristoteUan, are concemed. The confUct

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450 RHETORICA
between AristoteUanism and Ramism in Sweden presents no

uniform picture. In attempting to establish what was actuaUy read
by Ramists the author provides incidentaUy a good resume of
Ramus's thought, and Ramism in the Ught of reUgious reform and
of new pedagogic needs and changing poUtical and social
aspfrations. SeUberg has also contributed an article "The
Usefulness of Ramism" to the Wolfenbuttel volume, which
presents his argument in greater detaU and in a form which wUl be
more accessible. The author situates these academic confroversies
(wliich are not at aU in evidence in Sweden in the sixteenth
century) in the particular poUtical history of the country. The
influence of Ramus does not become evident untU the beginning of
the foUowing century; SeUberg sees him as a humanist, but
untypical and eclectic, working within the framework of scholastic
AristoteUanism. He, too, counsels against confusing Ramus and
Ramism and emphasizes the difficvdty of deciding who was a
Ramist (and even wonders how fruitfvd this question is). This
article revisits the main confroversy which the author had analysed
in his book and discusses several other Ramists from Northem
inteUectual cenfres (BUstenius, Beurhusius, Rigerus, Rennemanus,
Slutems) especiaUy with reference to exercitatio and the role of
metaphysics in the encyclopedia.
Spain
In my last survey of work on Ramus I noted that there had been

vfrtuaUy no work in the preceding fifteen years or so done on
Ramism in Spain, and suggested that this corresponded fafrly
accurately with what existed. This suggestion has been proved
wrong by recent work by Spanish and other scholars. There is now
a book on the subject and several articles have also been devoted to
it. The book, by Luis Merino Jerez, is entitied La Pedagogia en la
Retdrica del Brocense: Los Principios pedagogicos del Humanismo
renacentista (natura, ars y exercitatio) en la Retorica del Brocense
(memoria, methodus y analysis) (Caceres: Universidad de
Exframadura, 1992) 331pp. This study of Francisco Sanchez de las
Brozas has much to say about Ramus, who was one of the leading

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Ramus 2000 45^
influences on tiie Spanish philosopher, now also enjoying a

renewal of interest. The lack of serious attention given so far to the
study of Ramus and Ramism in Spain justifies the lengthy
freabnent of Ramus (over forty pages) which we are presented
with, including a good discussion of Ramist rhetoric. The
presentation of Ramus, which acknowledges a particular debt to
NeUy Bruyere, develops fuUy the way metiiod evolves in Ramus's
dialectic. In Spain writers on rhetoric generaUy foUow classical
rhetoricians rather than Ramus, but Sanchez is a notable exception,
and others do talk of method and have some affiruties with Ramus.
The Institutiones rhetoricae oi Pedro Juan Niifiez (1578) have points
in common with his work, and use method as a rhetorical docfrine,
and his Tabulae institutionum rhetoricarum (1599, Valence) appears
as an exceptional witness to the systematic use of Ramist
dichotomies (p. 54). Other names mentioned are those of Furio
Ceriol, a pupU of Ramus and Talon, whose Rhetorica appeared at
Louvain in 1554, Lorenzo Palmfreno, who published his Rhetorica
in 1567 and Andres Sempere whose Methodus oratoria dates from
1568, the ffrst and last of which show some signs of influence. They
are aU part of the progressive "methodization" of the art of
rhetoric. The book also deals with the new Renaissance rationes
studiorum from Guarino to Ramus and beyond and the place they
accorded to criticism and creativity, the interpretation of texts and
composition, Ramist analysis and genesis, as they appear in
rhetorical and academic contexts.
There is another recent book on Sanchez which I have
unfortunately not yet seen *Ret6rica y Literatura en el siglo XVI: El
Brocense, (Uruversity of VaUadoUd, 1997) 189pp. by AUonso Martin
Jimenez. I can, however, report on two articles by the same author,
ffrst "Rhetoric, Dialectic and Literature in the Work of Francisco
Sanchez, El Brocense", Rhetorica 13 (1995) pp. 43-59, which deals in
detaU with the work of Sanchez. He confrasts the manual De
auctoribus interpretandis which is included in the second (1558)
edition of De arte dicendi with his Organum dialecticum et rhetoricum
(1579) both of which are concemed with the appUcation of rhetoric
(and dialectic) to the interpretation of Uterature, the former dealing
with classical rhetoric and the latter incorporating Ramus's
reorganization and reduction of rhetoric to elocution and
pronunciation. In the earUer book Sanchez shows he was weU

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452 RHETORICA
aware of the "Ramist" view, which he then saw as confroversial,

but by 1579 he has changed his mind and totaUy accepted what
Ramus says about method and analysis and genesis except that
Sanchez is more interested in interpretation than composition. The
author concludes that "El Brocense's freatises do not simply reflect
the process of the 'Uteraturization' of rhetoric implied by reducing
rhetoric to elocutio" (p. 59). A very useful overview of the subject is
to be found in a later article by Martin Jimenez, "La Uteratura en
los fratados espafioles de retorica del siglo XVI", Rhetorica 15 (1997)
pp. 1-39. This article analyses the relation between rhetoric and
Uterature (as it was then understood) in Renaissance Spain,
showing the classical antecedents of the rhetoric of the time (noting
the simultaneous presence of two rhetorical traditions, the Graeco-
Latin and that of Hermogenes) and its emphasis on Ramist
exercitatio, but without the reduction of rhetoric to elocutio, and
usually with the retention of the fraditional five parts. The author
fraces the clear but unequal influence of Agricola, Melanchthon,
Vives, Ramus and Talon. The works of Ramus, it is noted, were
prohibited in Spain from at least 1568. (See also M. de la Pinta
Llorente, *"Una investigacion inquisitorial sobre Pedro Ramus en
Salamanca", ReUgion y Cultura 24 (1993) pp. 234-51.) Ramus here
appears in the much broader cultural context in which freatises of
poetic theory are absent between 1496 and 1580; the author
discusses Nunez and Ceriol, both of whom studied under him, and
also Sanchez, Antonio Lull, son of Ramon, and Juan Lorenzo
PaUnireno among others. Innovations and new terminology are
infroduced into the Ramist docttine of exercitatio.
Jean-Claude Moisan also discusses Sanchez, in "Les
Rhetoriques de Francisco Sanchez de las Brozas et le systeme
ramiste: Etude de VElocutio", in Autour de Ramus (pp. 195-216).
Moisan shows that although his De arte dicendi refers only to Talon
in fact he foUows very closely the Rhetorica of 1548, and early
editions of the Brutinae Quaestiones and Rhetoricae Distindiones, and
the same appUes to his Organum dialecticum et rhetoricum which is
even more Ramist although it does not take account of the many
reworkings of the rhetoric by Ramus and his group in the
intervening years: FouqueUn, 1555 et 1557, Talon 1557, Ranius, 1567
and 1572. Sanchez in fact provides what Moisan calls "un habUe
montage" (p. 200) of the dfrferent early texts by Ramus (with some

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Ramus 2000 453
additions of his own), and includes also the same examples.

Moisan usefuUy sets this out systematicaUy and fuUy witii relation
to fropes and figures.
FinaUy reference may be made to Clerico's article on Ramus
and Sanchez with relation to grammar which I referred to in that
section, and to E.Forasteri-Braschi, *"Etsi Petrus Ramus taceret, res
ipsa loquetur: sobre Ramismo y conceptismo". La Torre 6 (1992) pp.
461-75, which Unks Ramus with Gracian.
Italy
The articles on rhetoric in Italy in Histoire de la Rhetorique dans

I'Europe modeme. 1450-1950 have Uttle to say about Ramus. An
article by Cesare VasoU, "Bruno, Ramo e Patrizi", NouveUes de la
Republique des Lettres 14 (1994) pp. 169-90, suggests paraUels and
affinities rather than precise influences, which indicate future lines
of research rather than conclusions, for example the question of
which edition of the Aristotelicae Animadversiones Bruno may have
used, and what exactly were the personal links between Venice
and Paris (Lazare de Baif, DeUninio and his students).
CONCLUSION
Several common Unes of research emerge from the books and

articles I have Usted and analysed. There is a broad measure of
agreement now that Ramus owed more to fiis predecessors
(especiaUy Melanchthon and Agricola) than he would have us
understand and than had been previously recognized, and it is
even plainer than it was before that he is no revolutionary, no great
philosopher but a teacher, educationalist and communicator, in
spite of one or two dissenting voices. There is, however, no real
consensus about whether he was a humanist or not, and dfrferent
attempts have been made to define his position with relation to
Scholasticism, AristoteUanism, and Northem humanism. Some

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454 RHETORICA
scholars would like to see him as a spokesman for the Pieiade in

matters of phUosophy, which seems rather dubious. There is also
sfrong disagreement about his influence on Descartes. Clearly
more work would be welcome on aU of these subjects.
Perhaps the tiiree most important areas of research in the last
two decades, which have come to fuU fruition only recently, have
been the foUowing. First, the debate about Ramus as a humanist
has produced new work on his classical commentaries, from which
he emerges as more "Uterary" in outlook than was previously
thought, and not as resfricted in his views on rhetoric as many
suggest. Secondly, the attempt to define what is meant by Ramism
in its manifold variations and alliances has been approached from
dfrferent angles and has as a result suggested new alignments and
new genealogies. I wonder if it would not be worthwhUe drawing
up a new dfrectory of Ramists and Anti-Ramists in order to update
Walter Ong's pioneering lists Ui Ramus and Talon Inventory to bruig
them in Une with the research of the last forty years. Thirdly, the
study of Ramus in the social and poUtical context of his time has
led to further new insights and a deeper understanding of what he
wrote and of his influence.
The Reseau International d'Etudes Ramistes (RIER) is an
international project, initiated by Kees Meerhoff (Amsterdam) and
Jean-Claude Moisan (Laval). The ffrst tangible result of this
coUaboration has been the pubUcation of Autour de Ramus. There is
now a fuUy constituted international committee which wUl
produce other pubUcations, including a second volume of Autour
de Ramus dealing with Ramus's attacks on the Ancients and his
confroversies with his contemporaries, and an edition of Selected
Works of Ramus. The aim of RIER, which is still in its infancy, is to
understand better the interaction between Ramus and his
adversaries and to study the major versions of his dfrferent texts.
The committee would be pleased to hear from other scholars
wUlfrig to engage in such a venture. There is, as there has always
been, a problem in editing the works of Ramus and any effort in
this dfrection is very welcome.
The computerization of Ubrary catalogues throughout the
world and thefr appearance on the net have fransformed the
problem of locating copies, but this has not yet resolved the
problem of access to them from a distance. Although we no longer

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Ramus 2000 455
need to do so much international ttavel from Ubrary to Ubrary as

we used to (and as Ong notably had to do in the 1950s in the
preparation of fiis Inventory) it is stUl very dfrficult to obtain access
to the various editions and versions scattered throughout dfrferent
Ubraries. I readUy endorse a remark made by Peter Mack: "I think
it would be very worthwhUe for one British Ubrary to obtain the
microfUms which would enable students to obtain a complete
picture of the development of Ramist rhetoric and dialectic"
{Rermissance Argument, p. 335). But it may be possible to go even
further than this by means of the progressive digitaUsation of texts
which could be made avaUable electtorucaUy to anyone interested.
This may weU be in frain somewhere for aU I know. I have
consulted in the BibUotheque nationale de France a series of
"documents numerises", which is more extensive in the library
itself tiian on the internet tiirough its service "GaUica". Readers in
the Ubrary afready have access on computer to a very good
selection of Ramus's texts. In January 2000 there were several
complete texts avaUable, for example, Colledaneae praefationes
(1599), Dialectique (1555), Gramaire {1572), Opticae libri quatuor
(1615), Dialedicae libri duo (1566), Brutinae Quaestiones (1549),
Ciceronianus (1580), Scholarum rhetoricarum...libri XX (1581), and
Talaei Rhetorica (1572). It would, I beUeve, be a short step to make
aU the important texts avaUable, and fr they were judiciously
chosen, studies on Ramus could be revolutionised. Information on
Ramus on the web is sporadic.
I wUl conclude by saying that studies in Ramus and Ramism
are manfrestly thriving. It is especiaUy encouraging to find so many
coUective projects which have reached a successful completion and
to know that there are others in preparation.

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Ramus 2000

Author(s): Peter Sharratt

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Abstract: This article reviews studies on Ramus amd Ramism

he recent renewal of interest in Peter Ramus suggests

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rhetorique dans I'Europe modeme 1450-1950, edited by Marc

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BIOGRAPHICAL AND GENERAL STUDIES

There is stUI no modem life of Ramus, in spite of the fact that he

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Observed (Geneva: Droz, 1998) 373pp., John Lewis gives fuU

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Ramus's joumey to Switzerland and his contact with Swiss

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There has been considerable attention paid to Ramus as a

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work which he rethought between the two editions. Swiggers

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(Paris: Champion, 1992), an important work. The author suggests

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It is not clear whether logic or rhetoric should be tteated first. In

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relatively recently French scholars h a d n o t really come to grips

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in his final analysis of Deseartes's Regulae, where he describes it as

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Renaisssance Argument: Valla and Agricola in the Traditions of Rhetoric

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which appeared earlier in 1543 would, for this reason, be very

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with reference to their visual representation, fracing changing

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dialogue, apologiae, satire and invective. She joins forces with

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century book on rhetoric with no mention of QuintiUan" probably

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the North and otiiers in Italy. This article- gives an exceUent

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part because of the Unk between rhetoric and philosophy. Michel

In the same volume (pp. 535-69) Pierre Laurens and Pierre

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'rhetorique resttemte'" (p. 537) (several recent scholars make tiie

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Quintilian's toleration and urbanity, and his experience as a lawyer

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ramiste et la Scholae rhemensis rhetorica de Joarmes MoreUus", Etudes

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contents, in this case according to Ramus's use of arguments, a

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presented by Ramus's freatises on education nor by his

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fails to mention the poetic effectiveness of the description of fire in

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theologians, the ffrst of which was pmdence, so cenfral to Ramus's

I start with something omitted from my earlier survey, R.

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means of academic detective work, as Georg Joachim Rheticus's