Polydore Vergil Reconsidered: The Anglia Historia and the English Universities

Abstract

“Polydore Vergil Reconsidered: The Anglia Historia and the English Universities.” This article reassesses the caliber of Polydore Vergil as a historian in the light of an analysis of the data on the English Universities scattered throughout the Anglica Historia, a study that has not hitherto been attempted. Although Vergil had ready access to the relevant information, his depiction of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge is most inadequate, even by the standards of the early sixteenth century. His evaluation of their origins, development, and collegiate foundations is marred by so many shortcomings, inaccuracies, omissions, eulogies, and superficial or careless research that this area of Vergil’s Anglica Historia is hard to reconcile with his eminence as a historian who did much to introduce to the English literary scene the advanced critical standards of historiography that were generated by the Renaissance. The fact that Vergil, with one or two exceptions, is so often adrift when commenting upon English university and collegiate affairs demonstrates that this celebrated humanist author did not always employ that discerning approach or those systematic investigative techniques that have so enhanced his reputation. This being so, his patent deficiencies in this area of university history casts a rather dubious light upon the author and, to some degree, detracts from his overall standing as a humanist scholar of high renown.