Abstract
Vittorino da Feltre is presented here as an example of the lay teacher in Italy before the Reformation. He represents the type of schoolmaster now little known or almost forgotten, for which the Italy of that century was truly remarkable. Vittorino is not, however, to be considered merely as a teacher famous in Italy in the fifteenth century; he is offered here as an exemplary teacher for all times. Vittorino had that mysterious and indefinable quality which makes a born teacher. One of those men who devote their whole life to a cause for which their natural gifts constitute a special vocation, Vittorino synthesizes in his life and profession all that Is best in educational principles. Educators to-day might well look to him as an educational diagnostician and find in his theory remedies for the modern malignant diseases of triviality, vocationalism, and materialism.