Ramus and Reform: University and Church at the End of the Renaissance.(Book Review)(Brief Article)

By James Veazie Skalnik. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman University Press, 2002. 172 pp. np.

Over the past four hundred years, Ramist methodology has attracted much more scholarly attention than its progenitor, Petrus Ramus (1515-1572). Like any theoretical methodology, Ramism quickly took on a life of its own just as modern analyses of Ramism are quite disconnected from the circumstances surrounding it. This presents a problem for historians who believe that neglecting the context leads to misunderstanding the text. Thus, James Veazie Skalnik reconstructs the historical context of Ramus's life work to account for his controversial theories and iconoclastic views.

Skalnik paints a portrait of Ramus as a self-made social outsider from the backwoods of Picardy, whose peasant values shaped his view of society and his attitude to pressing issues of his day. The relative ease of social mobility in early sixteenth-century France enabled Ramus to attend the University of Paris in the 1530s. As a student, he made friends with Charles of Guise, later Cardinal of Lorraine, who became an invaluable patron and whose influence led to his appointment as royal professor at the university in 1551. Despite many powerful enemies and numerous attempts to unseat him, Ramus more or less held this position from 1551 until his murder in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572. According to Skalnik, Ramas's dramatic rise from humble origins to a heady royal professorship reinforced his visceral antipathy for growing hierarchical tendencies in French society. Consequently, Ramus opposed nepotism in the appointment of royal ...