lli, the pupil of his uncle, Vasari, almost
as distinguished, Botticelli, Titian, and very many others, who would
have been famous leaders in art in any other but this supremely great
period.

It was not only in Italy, however, that there was a wonderful outburst
of genius at this time, for Germany also saw the rise of a number of
great men during this period. Jacob Wimpheling, the "Schoolmaster of
Germany," as he has been called, whose educational work did much to
determine the character of German education for two centuries, was born
in 1450. Rudolph Agricola, who influenced the intellectual Europe of
this time deeply, was born in 1443. Erasmus, one of the greatest of
scholars, of teachers, and of controversialists, was born in 1467.
Johann Reuchlin, the great linguist, who, next to Erasmus, is the most
important character in the German Renaissance, was born in 1455. Then
there was Sebastian Brant, the author of "The Ship of Fools," and
Alexander Hegius, both of this same period. The most influential of them
all, Thomas a Kempis, who died in 1471, and whose little book, "The
Following of Christ," has influenced every generation deeply ever since,
was probably a close contemporary of Basil Valentine. When one knows
what European, and especially German scholars, were accomplishing at
this time, no room is left for surprise that Basil Valentine should have
lived and done work in medicine at this period that was to influence
deeply the after history of medicine.

Most of what Basil Valentine did was accomplished in the first half of
the fifteenth century. Coming, as he did, before the invention of
printing, when the spirit of tradition was more rife and dominating than
it has been since, it is almost needless to say that there are many
curious legends associated with his name. Two centuries before his time,
Roger Bacon, doing his work in England, had succeeded in attracting so
much attention even from the common people, because of his wonderful
scientific discoveries, that his name became a byword, and many strange
magical feats were attributed to him. Friar Bacon was the great wizard,
even in the plays of the Elizabethan period. A number of the same sort
of myths attached themselves to the Benedictine monk of the fifteenth
century. He was proclaimed in popular story to have been a wonderful
magician. Even his manuscript, it was said, had not been published
directly, but had been hidden in a pillar in the church attached