Article VI: “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.”

Article XXIV: “It is not necessary that the Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing be ordained against God’s Word. Whosoever, through his private judgment, willingly and purposely, doth openly break the Traditions and Ceremonies of the Church, which be not repugnant to the Word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly, (that others may fear to do the like,) as he that offendeth against the common order of the Church, and hurteth the authority of the Magistrate, and woundeth the consciences of the weak brethren.
“Every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish, Ceremonies or Rites of the Church ordained only by man’s authority, so that all things be done to edifying.”

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I think we can use Paul’s metaphor of the Law as a “schoolmaster” over Israel to better understand what the Reformed humanist thought about the scholastic commentaries. They did not hate them, as I briefly noted, Sturm encouraged the students to read them outside of school. Paul believed that the Law is “holy, righteous, and good” but he also believed that it was inferior to Christ because it only condemns sinful man and it was handed down by intermediaries – and most of all, it was intended to lead us to Christ, not replace him.

So, as the Law is good when set in its place below Christ our mediator, in a similar manner the commentaries of the scholastics are good when set in their place below the knowledge and skill of the wise man. Calvin was influenced by Lombard as Vermigli and Zanchi were influenced by Aquinas. The problem comes when students and institutions begin to use the mediating documents (commentaries) as if they are the esse. These commentaries took the place of honest study and skill of the original languages and the knowledge of the Fathers’ writings.

To your question, “what happens when the student who has so engaged the text writes his own thoughts down?” I think they Reformed humanists at least (I can’t speak for all humanists) would and did encourage commentaries on the text of the ancient authors and also wrote Medieval-like texts systematizing theology, as you know. For example, Vermigli’s commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics was not repudiated. But, it was not used as a replacement for what we would call philology.

Linguistic and grammatical analysis is essentially what distinguishes the commentaries of the Renaissance period from those of the Medieval period. Sure, you find some textual stuff in Aquinas’s commentaries (like his definition of “ethos”) but you don’t find authors learning the original Greek and commenting on the difference between ho anthropos and anthropon tina, as you find in the humanist works.

No, I don’t think this method leads to a disrespect for tradition. As I have said, Sturm encouraged the reading of commentaries outside of school and the reading of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes in the catechism class. He was a moderate for sure, but he was still interested in maintaining the unity of the corpus Christi. And, commentaries did continue in this period but with a different emphasis. The shift is mainly seen in education, where students learned classical Latin and imitated the style of Cicero and the orations of the same. So, you may say, they would actually have more respect for tradition. These guys still thought in slightly Platonic terms about education. An education that more thoroughly trains students in the pursuit of truth will produce students who resemble Truth and are less likely to steer away from it. These students would read the Fathers’ original meaning, not the meaning placed upon them by Scotus or Ockham, or the Magisterium.

Eric