24 Facts About Petrus Ramus

Petrus Ramus was a French humanist, logician, and educational reformer.

Petrus Ramus was born at the village of Cuts, Picardy; his father was a farmer.

Petrus Ramus gained admission at age twelve to the College de Navarre, working as a servant.

Petrus Ramus was accused, by Jacques Charpentier, professor of medicine, of undermining the foundations of philosophy and religion.

Arnaud d'Ossat, a pupil and friend of Petrus Ramus, defended him against Charpentier.

Petrus Ramus was made to debate Goveanus, over two days.

Petrus Ramus withdrew from Paris, but soon afterwards returned, the decree against him being canceled by Henry II, who came to the throne in 1547, through the influence of Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine.

Petrus Ramus obtained a position at the College de Navarre.

Petrus Ramus had to flee from Paris; and, though he found asylum in the palace of Fontainebleau, his house was pillaged and his library burned in his absence.

Petrus Ramus spent around two years, in Germany and Switzerland.

The La Rochelle Confession of Faith earned his disapproval, in 1571, rupturing his relationship with Theodore Beza and leading Petrus Ramus to write angrily to Heinrich Bullinger.

Petrus Ramus's death was compared by one of his first biographers, his friend and colleague Nicolas de Nancel, to the murder of Cicero.

Petrus Ramus sought to infuse order and simplicity into philosophical and scholastic education by reinvigorating a sense of dialectic as the overriding logical and methodological basis for the various disciplines.

Petrus Ramus published in 1543 the Aristotelicae Animadversiones and Dialecticae Partitiones, the former a criticism on the old logic and the latter a new textbook of the science.

The logic of Petrus Ramus enjoyed a great celebrity for a time, and there existed a school of Ramists boasting numerous adherents in France, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

Petrus Ramus admits only the first three figures, as in the original Aristotelian scheme, and in his later works he attacks the validity of the third figure, following in this the precedent of Laurentius Valla.

Petrus Ramus set the modern fashion of deducing the figures from the position of the middle term in the premises, instead of basing them, as Aristotle does, upon the different relation of the middle to the major term and minor term.

Petrus Ramus insisted on rhetoric to be studied alongside dialectic through two main manuals: invention and judgement under the dialectic manual, and style and delivery in the rhetoric manual.

Memory, one of the five skills of traditional rhetoric, was regarded by Petrus Ramus as being part of psychology, as opposed to being part of rhetoric, and thus dispensed from his idea of rhetoric and dialectic.

Petrus Ramus was known as a mathematician, a student of Johannes Sturm.

Petrus Ramus corresponded with John Dee on mathematics, and at one point recommended to Elizabeth I that she appoint him to a university chair.

The teachings of Petrus Ramus had a broadly based reception well into the seventeenth century.

The first writings on Ramism, after the death of Petrus Ramus, included biographies, and were by disciples of sorts: Freigius, Banosius, Nancelius, of whom only Nancelius was closely acquainted with the man.

Petrus Ramus published fifty works in his lifetime and nine appeared after his death.