Thereupon Otto looked southward, over the Alps. To say that Italy was sick

with turmoil and corruption, and exposed to the attack of every foe, is to

give but the negative and least interesting side. She held more of

civilized life and of education than any northern land; she differed from

the north in her politics and institutions. Feudalism did not fix itself

widely there, although the Roman barons, who made and unmade popes,

represented it; and in many regions, as later among the Normans in the

south, there was to be a feudal land-holding nobility. But in Italy, it

was the city, whether under civic or episcopal government, or in a

despot’s grip, that took the lead, and was to keep the life of the

peninsula predominantly urban, as it had been in the Roman time.

Tenth-century Italy contained enough claimants to the royal, even the

imperial, title. Rome reeked with faction; and the papal power was nearly

snuffed out. Pope followed pope, to reign or be dragged from his

throne--eight of them between 896 and 904. Then began at Rome the

domination of the notorious, but virile, Theodora and her daughter

Marozia, makers and perhaps mistresses of popes, and leaders in feudal

violence. Marozia married a certain valiant Alberic, “markgrave of

Camerino” and forerunner of many a later Italian soldier and tyrant of

fortune. When he fell, she married again, and overthrew Pope John X., who

had got the better of her first husband. In 931 she made her son pope as

John XI. For yet a third husband she took a certain King Hugo, a

Burgundian; but another son of hers, a second Alberic, roused the city,

drove him out, and proclaimed himself “Prince and Senator of all the

Romans.”

It was in this Italy that Otto intervened, in 951, drawn perhaps by the

wrongs of Queen Adelaide, widow of Hugo’s son, Lothaire, a landless king,

since Markgrave Berengar had ousted him from his Italian holdings. This

Berengar now persecuted and imprisoned the queen-widow. She escaped; Otto

descended from the Alps, and married her; Lombardy submitted; Berengar

fled. This time Otto did not advance to Rome, being impeded by many

things--Alberic’s refusal to admit him, and behind his back in Germany the

rebellion of his own son Liudolf aided by the Archbishop of Mainz, and

later by those whom Otto left in Italy to represent him as he hurried

north. These were straitened times for the king, and the Hungarians poured

over the boundaries to take advantage of the confusion. But Otto’s star

triumphed over both rebels and Hungarians--a bloody star for the latter,

as the plains of Lech might testify, where they were so handled that they

never ravaged German lands again.

Otto’s power now reached its zenith. He reordered the German dukedoms,

filled the archbishoprics with faithful servants, bound the German clergy

to himself with gifts and new foundations, and ruled them like another

Charlemagne. It was his time to become emperor, an emperor like

Charlemagne, and not like later weaklings. In 961 he again entered Italy,

to be greeted with universal acclaim as by men longing for a deliverer. He

was crowned king in Pavia; the levies of the once more hostile Berengar

dispersed before him. In February 962 he was anointed emperor at Rome by

John XII., son of that second Alberic who had refused to open the gates,

but whose debauched son had called for aid upon the mighty German. Once

more the Holy Roman Empire of the Germans was refounded to endure a while

with power, and continue a titular existence for eight centuries.

The power of the first Otto was so overwhelming that the papacy could not

escape the temporary subjection which its vile state deserved. And the

Empire was its honest patron, for the good of both. So on through the

reigns of Otto II., who died in 983, aged twenty-eight, and his son Otto

III., who died in 1002, at the age of twenty-two, a dreamer and would-be

universal potentate. Then came the practical-minded rule of the second

Henry (1002-1024), who still aided and humbly ruled the Church. Conrad

II., of Franconia, followed, faithful to the imperial tradition.[289] He

was succeeded in 1039 by his son Henry III., beneficent and prosperous, if

not far-seeing, who again cared for both Church and State, and imperially

constrained the papacy, itself impotent in the grip of the Roman barons

and the Counts of Tusculum. Henry did not hesitate to clear away at once

three rival popes (1046) and name a German, Clement II. It was this worthy

man, but still more another German, his successor, Leo IX. (1049-1054),

who lifted the papacy from its Italian mire, and launched it full on its

course toward an absolute spiritual supremacy that was to carry the

temporal control of kings and princes. But the man already at the helm was

a certain deacon Hildebrand, who was destined to guide the papal policy

through the reigns of successive popes until he himself was hailed as

Gregory VII. (1073-1085).[290]

With Hildebrand’s pontificate, which in truth began before he sat in

Peter’s chair, the reforming spirits among the clergy, aroused to his keen

policy, set themselves to the uplifting of their order. In all countries

the Church, heavy with its possessions, seemed about to become feudal and

secular. Bishops and abbots were appointed by kings and the great

feudatories, and were by them _invested_ with their lands as fiefs, for

which the clerical appointee did homage, and undertook to perform feudal

duties. Church fiefs failed to become hereditary only because bishops and

abbots could not marry; yet in fact great numbers of the lower clergy

lived in a state of marriage or “concubinage.” Evidently the celibacy of

the clergy was a vital issue in Church reform; and so were investitures

and the matter of simony. Under mediaeval conditions, the most open form

of this “heresy” called after Simon Magus, was the large gift from the new

incumbent to his feudal lord who had invested him with abbey or bishopric.

Such simony was not wrong from the feudal point of view, and might

properly represent the duty of bishop or abbot to his lord.

Obviously, for the reform and emancipation of the Church, and in order

that it should become a world-power, and not remain a semi-secular local

institution in each land, it was necessary that the three closely

connected corruptions of simony, lay investitures, and clerical

concubinage should be destroyed. To this enormous task the papacy

addressed itself under the leadership of Hildebrand.[291] In his

pontificate the struggle with the supreme representative of secular power,

to wit, the Empire, came to a head touching investitures. Gregory’s

secular opponent was Henry IV., of tragic and unseemly fame; for whom the

conflict proved to be the road by which he reached Canossa, dragged by the

Pope’s anathema, and also driven to this shame by a rebellious Germany

(1076, 1077). Henry was conquered, although a revulsion of the

long-swaying war drove Gregory from Rome, to die an exile for the cause

which he deemed that of righteousness.

Between the papacy and the secular power represented in this struggle by

the Empire, a peaceful co-equality could not exist. The superiority of the

spiritual and eternal over the carnal and temporal had to be vindicated;

and in terms admitting neither limit nor condition, Hildebrand maintained

the Church’s universal jurisdiction upon earth. The authority granted by

Christ to Peter and his successors, the popes, was absolute for eternity.

Should it not include the passing moment of mortal life, important only

because determining man’s eternal lot? The divine grant was made without

qualification or exception _in saeculo_ as well as for the life to come.

If spiritual men are under the Pope’s jurisdiction, shall he not also

constrain secular folk from their wickedness?[292] Were kings excepted

when the Lord said, Thou art Peter?[293] Nay; the salvation of souls

demands that the Pope shall have full authority _in terra_ to suppress the

waves of pride with the arms of humility. The _dictatus papae_ of the year

1075 make the Pope the head of the Christian world: the Roman Church was

founded by God alone; the Roman pontiff alone by right is called

_universal_; he alone may use the imperial insignia; his feet alone shall

be kissed by all princes; he may depose emperors and release subjects from

fealty; and he can be judged by no man.[294]

In the century and a half following Gregory’s reign the papacy well-nigh

attained the realization of the claims made by this great upbuilder of its

power.[295] Constantine’s forged donation was outdone, in fact; and the

furthest hopes of Leo I. and the first, second, and third Gregories were

more than realized.

II

One might liken the Carolingian period to a vessel at her dock, taking on

her cargo, casks of antique culture and huge crates of patristic theology.

Then western Europe in the eleventh century would be the same vessel

getting under way, well started on the mediaeval ocean.

This would be one way of putting the matter. A closer simile already used

is the likening of the Carolingian period to the lusty schoolboy learning

his lessons, thinking very little for himself. By the eleventh century he

will have left school, though still impressionable, still with much to

learn; but he has begun to turn his conned lessons over in his mind, and

to think a little, in the terms, of what he has acquired--has even begun

to select therefrom tentatively, and still under the mastery of the whole.

He perceives the charm of the antique culture, of the humanly inspiring

literature, so exhaustless in its profane fascinations; he is realizing

the spiritual import of the patristic share of his instruction, and

already feels the power of emotion which lay implicit in the Latin

formulation of the Christian Faith. Withal he is beginning to evolve an

individuality of his own.

Speaking more explicitly, it should be said that instead of one such

hopeful youth there are several, or rather groups of them, differing

widely from each other. The forefathers of certain of these groups were

civilized and educated men, at home in the antique and patristic

curriculum with which our youths are supposed to have been busy. The

forefathers of other groups were rustics, or rude herdsmen and hunters,

hard-hitting warriors, who once had served, but more latterly had rather

lorded it over, the cultivated forbears of the others. Still, again, the

forefathers of other numerous groups had been partly cultivated and partly

rude. Evidently these groups of youths are diverse in blood and in

ancestral traits; evidently also the antique and patristic curriculum is

quite a new thing to some of them, while others had it at their fathers’

knees.

Our different youthful groups represent Italians, Germans, and the

inhabitants of France and the British Isles. One may safely speak of the

ninth-century Germans as schoolboys just brought face to face with

Christianity and the antique culture. So with the Saxon stock in England.

The propriety is not so clear as to the Italians; for they are not newly

introduced to these matters. Yet their household affairs have been

disturbed, and they themselves have slackened in their study. So they too

have much to learn anew, and may be regarded as truants, dirtied and

muddied, and perhaps refreshed, by the scrambles of their time of truancy,

and now returning to lessons which they have pretty well forgotten.

Obviously, in considering the intellectual condition of western Europe in

the tenth and eleventh centuries, it will be convenient to regard each

country in turn: and, besides, a geographical is more appropriate than a

topical arrangement, because there was still little choice of one branch

of discipline rather than another. The majority still were conning

indiscriminately what had come from the past, studying heterogeneous

matters in the same books, the same forlorn compendia. They read the

_Etymologies_ of Isidore or the corresponding works of Bede, and followed

as of course the Trivium and Quadrivium. In sacred learning they might

read the Scriptural Commentaries of Rabanus Maurus or Walafrid Strabo, or

study the works of Augustine. This was still the supreme study, and all

else, properly viewed, was ancillary to it. Nevertheless, as between

sacred study and profane literature, an even violent divergence of choice

existed. Everywhere there were men who loved the profanities in

themselves, and some who felt that for their souls’ sake they must abjure

them.

For further diverging lines of preference, one should wait for the twelfth

century. Many men will then be found absorbed in religious study, while

others cultivate logic and metaphysics, with the desire to know more

active in them than the fear of hell. Still others will study “grammar”

and the classics, or, again, with conscious specializing choice, devote

their energies to the civil or the canon law. In later chapters, and

mainly with reference to this culminating mediaeval time which includes

the twelfth, the thirteenth, and at least, for Dante’s sake, the first

part of the fourteenth, century, we shall review these various branches of

intellectual endeavour in topical order. But for the earlier time which

still enshrouds us, we pass from land to land as on a tour of intellectual

inspection.

III

We start with Italy. There was no break between her antique civilization

and her mediaeval development, but only a period of depression and decay.

Notwithstanding the change from paganism to Christianity and the influx of

barbarians, both a race-continuity and a continuity of culture persisted.

The Italian stock maintained its numerical preponderance, as well as the

power of transforming newcomers to the likeness of itself. The natural

qualities of the country, and the existence of cities and antique

constructions, assisted in the Italianizing of Goth, Lombard, German,

Norman. Latin civic reminiscence, tradition, custom, permeated society,

and prevented the growth of feudalism. Italy remained urban, and continued

to reflect the ancient time. “Consuls” and “tribunes” long survived the

passing of their antique functions, and the fame endured of antique

heroes, mythical and historical. Florence honoured Mars and Caesar; Padua

had Antenor, Cremona Hercules. Such names remained veritably eponymous.

Other cities claimed the birthplace of Pliny, of Ovid, of Virgil. An altar

might no longer be dedicated to a pagan hero, yet the town would preserve

his name upon monuments, would adorn his fancied tomb, stamp his effigy on

coins or keep it in the communal seal. Of course the figments of the

Trojan Saga were current through the land, which, however divided, was

conscious of itself as Italy. _Te Italia plorabit_ writes an

eleventh-century Pisan poet of a young Pisan noble fallen in Africa.

In Italy, as in no other country, the currents of antique education,

disturbed yet unbroken, carried clear across that long period of

invasions, catastrophes, and reconstructions, which began with the time of

Alaric. Under the later pagan emperors, and under Constantine and his

successors, the private schools of grammar and rhetoric had tended to

decline. There were fewer pupils with inclination and ability to pay. So

the emperors established municipal schools in the towns of Italy and the

provinces. The towns tried to shirk the burden, and the teachers, whose

pay came tardily, had to look to private pupils for support. In Italy

there was always some demand for instruction in grammar and law. The

supply rose and fell with the happier or the more devastated condition of

the land. Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, re-established municipal schools

through his dominion. After him further troubles came, for example from

the Lombards, until they too became gentled by Italian conditions, and

their kings and nobles sought to encourage and acquire the education and

culture which their coming had disturbed. In the seventh and eighth

centuries the grade of instruction was very low; but there is evidence of

the unintermitted existence of lay schools, private or municipal, in all

the important towns, from the eighth century to the tenth, the eleventh,

and so on and on. These did not give religious instruction, but taught

grammar and the classic literature, law and the art of drawing documents

and writing letters. The former branches of study appear singularly

profane in Italy. The literature exemplifying the principles of grammar

was pagan and classical, and the fictitious themes on which the pupils

exercised their eloquence continued such as might have been orated on in

the time of Quintilian. Intellectually the instruction was

poverty-stricken, but the point to note is, that in Italy there never

ceased to be schools conducted by laymen for laymen, where instruction in

matters profane and secular was imparted and received for the sake of its

profane and secular value, without regard to its utility for the saving of

souls. There was no barbaric contempt for letters, nor did the laity fear

them as a spiritual peril. Gerbert before the year 1000 had found Italy

the field for the purchase of books;[296] and about 1028 Wipo, a native of

Burgundy and chaplain of the emperor Conrad II., contrasts the ignorance

of Germany with Italy, where “the entire youth (_tota juventus_) is sent

to sweat in the schools”;[297] and about the middle of the twelfth

century, Otto of Freising suggests a like contrast between the Italy and

Germany of his time.[298]

In Italy the study of grammar, with all that it included, was established

in tradition, and also was regarded as a necessary preparation for the

study both of law and medicine. Even in the eleventh century these

professions were followed by men who were “grammarians,” a term to be

taken to mean for the early Middle Ages the profession of letters. In the

eleventh century, a lawyer or notary in Italy (where there were always

such, and some study of law and legal forms) needed education in a

Latinity different from the vulgar Latin which was turning into Italian. A

little later, Irnerius, the founder of the Bologna school, was a teacher

of “grammar” before he became a teacher of law.[299] As for medicine, that

appears always to have been cultivated at least in southern Italy; and a

knowledge of grammar, even of logic, was required for its study.[300]

The survival of medical knowledge in Italy did not, in means and manner,

differ from the survival of the rest of the antique culture. Some

acquaintance had continued with the works of Galen and other ancient

physicians; but more use was made of compendia, the matter of which may

have been taken from Galen, but was larded with current superstitions

regarding disease. Such compendia began to appear in the fifth century,

and through these and other channels a considerable medical knowledge

found its way to a congenial home in Salerno. There are references to this

town as a medical community as early as the ninth century. By the

eleventh, it was famous for its medicine. About the year 1060 a certain

Constantine seems to have brought there novel and stimulating medical

knowledge which he had gained in Africa from Arabian (ultimately Greek)

sources. Nevertheless, translations from the Arabic seem scarcely to have

exerted much influence upon medicine for yet another hundred years.[301]

Thus in Italy the antique education never stopped, antique reminiscence

and tradition never passed away, and the literary matter of the pagan past

never faded from the consciousness of the more educated among the laity

and clergy. Some understanding of the classic literature, as well as a

daily absorption of the antique from its survival in habits, laws, and

institutions, made part of the capacities and temperament of Italians.

Grammarians, lawyers, doctors, monks even, might think and produce under

the influence of that which never had quite fallen from the life of Italy.

And just as the ancient ways of civic life and styles of building became

rude and impoverished, and yet passed on without any abrupt break into the

tenth and the eleventh centuries, so was it with the literature of Italy,

or at least with those productions which were sheer literature, and not

deflected from traditional modes of expression by any definite business or

by the distorting sentiments of Christian asceticism. This literature

proper was likely to take the form of verse in the eleventh century. A

practical matter would be put in prose; but the effervescence of the

soul, or the intended literary effort, would fall into rhyme or resort to

metre.

We have an example of the former in those often-cited tenth-century verses

exhorting the watchers on the walls of Modena:

“O tu qui servas armis ista moenia,

Noli dormire, moneo, sed vigila.

Dum Hector vigil extitit in Troia,

Non eam cepit fraudulenta Graecia.

“Vigili voce avis anser candida

Fugavit Gallos ex arce Romulea.”

The antique reminiscence fills this jingle, as it does the sensuous

“O admirabile Veneris ydolum

Cuius materiae nichil est frivolum:

Archos te protegat, qui stellas et polum

Fecit et maria condidit et solum.”[302]

And so on from century to century. At the beginning of the twelfth, a

Pisan poet celebrates Pisa’s conquest of the Balearic Isles:

“Inclytorum Pisanorum scripturus historiam,

Antiquorum Romanorum renovo memoriam,

Nam ostendit modo Pisa laudem admirabilem,

Quam olim recepit Roma vincendo Carthaginem.”

For an eleventh-century example of more literary verse, one may turn to

the metres of Alphanus, a noble Salernian, lover of letters, pilgrim

traveller, archbishop of his native town, and monk of Monte Cassino, the

parent Benedictine monastery, which had been the cultured retreat of

Paulus Diaconus in the time of Charlemagne. It was destroyed by the

Saracens in 884. Learning languished in the calamitous decades which

followed. But the convent was rebuilt, and some care for learning

recommences there under the abbot Theobald (1022-1035). The monastery’s

troubles were not over; but it re-entered upon prosperity under the

energetic rule of the German Richer (1038-1055).[303] Shortly after his

death two close friends were received among its monks, Alphanus and

Desiderius. The latter was of princely Lombard stock, from Beneventum. He

met Alphanus at Salerno, and there they became friends. Afterwards both

saw something of the world and experienced its perils. Desiderius was born

to be monk, abbot, and at last pope (Victor III.) against his will.

Alphanus, always a man of letters, was drawn by his friend to monastic

life. Long after, when Archbishop of Salerno, he gave a refuge and a tomb

to the outworn Hildebrand.

The rebuilding and adorning of Monte Cassino by Desiderius with the aid of

Greek artists is a notable episode in the history of art.[304] Under the

long rule of this great abbot (1058-1087) the monastery reached the summit

of its repute and influence. It was the home of theology and

ecclesiastical policy. There law and medicine were studied. Likewise

“grammar” and classic literature, the latter not too broadly, as would

appear from the list of manuscripts copied under Desiderius--Virgil, Ovid,

Terence, Seneca, Cicero’s _De natura deorum_. But then there was the whole

host of early Christian poets, historians, and theologians. Naturally,

Christian studies were dominant within those walls.

Alphanus did not spend many of his years there. But his loyalty to the

great monastery never failed, nor his intercourse with its abbot and

monks. He has left an enthusiastic poem descriptive of the place and the

splendour of its building.[305] A general and interesting feature of his

poetry is the naturalness of its classical reminiscence and its feeling

for the past, which is even translated into the poet’s sentiments toward

his contemporaries and toward life. In his metrical verses _ad

Hildebrandum archidiaconum Romanum_, his stirring praise of that statesman

is imbued with pagan sentiment.

“How great the glory which so often comes to those defending the

republic, has not escaped thy knowledge, Hildebrand. The Via Sacra

and the Via Latina recall the same, and the lofty crown of the

Capitol, that mighty seat of empire.... The hidden poison of envy

implants its infirmity in wretched affairs, and brings overthrow only

to such. That thou shouldst be envied, and not envy, beseems thy

skill.... How great the power of the anathema! Whatever Marius and

Julius wrought with the slaughter of soldiers, thou dost with thy

small voice.... What more does Rome owe to the Scipios and the other

Quirites than to thee?”

Perhaps the glyconic metre of this poem was too much for Alphanus. His

awkward constructions, however, constantly reflect classic phrases. And

how naturally his mind reproduced the old pagan--or fundamental

human--views of life, appears again in his admiring sapphics to Romuald,

chief among Salerno’s lawyers:

“Dulcis orator, vehemens gravisque,

Inter omnes causidicos perennem

Gloriam juris tibi, Romoalde,

Prestitit usus.”

Further stanzas follow on Romuald’s wealth, station, and mundane felicity.

Then comes the sudden turn, and Romuald is praised for having spurned them

all:

“Cumque sic felix, ut in orbe sidus

Fulseris, mundum roseo jacentem

Flore sprevisti....”

Apparently Romuald had become a monk:

“Rite fecisti, potiore vita

Perfruiturus.”[306]

This turn of sentiment curiously accorded with the poet’s own fortune and

way of life; for Alphanus, with all his love of antique letters, was also

a monk and an ascetic, of whom a contemporary chronicler tells that in

Lent he ate but twice a week and never slept on a bed. Yet monk, and

occasional ascetic, as he was, the ordinary antique-descended education

and inherited strains of antique feeling made the substratum of his

nature, and this although he could inveigh against the philosophic and

grammatical studies flourishing in a neighbouring monastery, and advise

one of its studious youths to turn from such:

“Si, Transmunde, mihi credis, amice,

His uti studiis desine tandem;

Fac cures monachi scire professum,

Ut vere sapiens esse puteris.”[307]

Eleventh-century Italian “versificatores” were interested in a variety of

things. Some of them gave the story of a saint’s or bishop’s life, or were

occupied with an ecclesiastic theme. Others sang the fierce struggle

between rival cities, or some victory over Saracens, or made an idyl of

very human love with mythological appurtenances. The verse-forms either

followed the antique metres or were accentual deflections from them with

the new added element of rhyme; the ways of expression copied antique

phrase and simile, except when the matter and sentiment of the poem

compelled another choice. In that case the Latin becomes freer, more

mediaeval, ruder, if one will; and still antique turns of expression and

bits of sentences show how naturally it came to these men to construct

their verses out of ancient phrases. Yet borrowed phrases and the

constraint of metre impeded spontaneity, and these feeble versifiers could

hardly create in modes of the antique. A fresher spirit breathes in

certain anonymous poems, which have broken with metre, while they give

voice to sentiments quite after the feeling of the old Italian paganism.

In one of these, from Ivrea, the poet meets a nymph by the banks of the

Po, and in leonine elegiacs bespeaks her love, with all the paraphernalia

of antique reference, assuring her that his verse shall make her immortal,

a perfectly pagan sentiment--or affectation:

“Sum sum sum vates, musarum servo penates,

Subpeditante Clio queque futura scio.

Me minus extollo, quamvis mihi cedit Apollo,

Invidet et cedit, scire Minerva dedit.

Laude mea vivit mihi se dare queque cupivit,

Immortalis erit, ni mea Musa perit.”[308]

It is obvious that in the tenth and eleventh centuries there were Italians

whose sentiments and intellectual interests were profane, humanistic in a

word. These men might even be high ecclesiastics, like Liutprand, Bishop

of Cremona (d. 972).[309] He was of Lombard stock, and yet a genuine

Italian, bred in an atmosphere of classical reminiscence and contemporary

gossip and misdeed. Politically, at least, the Italy of John XII. was not

so much better than its pope; and the _Antapodosis_ of Liutprand goes

along in its easy, and often dramatic way, telling of crime and perfidy,

and showing scant horror. It was a general history of the historian’s

times, written while in exile in Germany; for Liutprand had been driven

out of Italy by King Berengar, whom he had once served. He hated Berengar

and his wife, and although well received at the Court of the great Otto,

he did not love his place of exile.[310]

In exile Liutprand wrote his book to requite Berengar. The work had also a

broader purpose, yet one just as consolatory to the writer. It should

acknowledge and show the justice of the divine judgments exemplified in

history. Herein lay a fuller, although less Italian, consolation for his

exile than in Berengar’s requital. Liutprand keeps in mind Boëthius and

his _De consolatione_, and regards his own work as a Consolation of

History, as that of Boëthius was a Consolation of Philosophy. The paths of

Liutprand’s Consolation are as broad as the justice and power of the

Trinity, “which casts down these for their wicked deeds and raises up

those for their merits’ sake.”[311]

Quite explicitly he explains the title and reason of his work at the

opening of its third book:

“Since it will show the deeds of famous men, why call it Antapodosis?

I reply: Its object is to set forth and cry aloud the acts of this

Berengar who at this moment does not reign but tyrannize in Italy, and

of his wife Willa, who for the boundlessness of her tyranny should be

called a second Jezebel, and Lamia for her insatiate rapines. Me and

my house, my family and kin, have they harassed with so many javelins

of lies, so many spoliations, so many essays of wickedness, that

neither tongue nor pen can avail to set them forth. May then these

pages be to them an antapodosis, that is retribution, to make their

wickedness naked before men living and unborn. None the less may it

prove an antapodosis for the benefits conferred on me by holy and

happy men.”[312]

Liutprand’s narrative is breezy and interspersed with ribald tales. The

writer meant to amuse his readers and himself. These literary qualities

give picturesqueness to his well-known _Embassy to Constantinople_, where

he was sent by Otto the Great, for purposes of peace and to ask the hand

of the Byzantine princess for Otto II. The highly coloured ceremonial life

of the Greek Court, the chicane and contemptuous treatment met with, the

spirited words of Liutprand, and the rancour of this same thwarted envoy,

all appear vividly in his report.[313]

There were also many laymen occupied with Latin studies. Such a one was

Gunzo of Novara, a curiously vain grammarian of the second half of the

tenth century. According to his own story, the fame of his learning

incited Otto the Great to implore his presence in Germany. So he

condescended to cross the Alps, with all his books, perhaps in the year

965. On his way he stopped with the monks of St. Gall, themselves proud of

their learning, and perhaps jealous of the southern scholar. As the weary

Gunzo was lifted, half frozen, from his horse at the convent door, and the

brethren stood about, a young monk caught at a slip in grammar, and made a

skit on him--because, forsooth, he had used an accusative when it should

have been an ablative.

Gunzo neither forgave nor forgot. Passing on to the rival congregation of

Reichenau, he composed a long and angry epistle of pedantic excuse and

satirical invective, addressed to his former hosts.[314] In it he parades

his wide knowledge of classic authors, justifies what the monks of St.

Gall had presumed to mock as a ridiculous barbarism, and closes with a

prayer for them in hexameters. His letter contains the interesting avowal,

that, although the monk of St. Gall had wrongly deemed him ignorant of

grammar, his Latin sometimes was impeded by the “usu nostrae vulgaris

linguae, quae latinitati vicina est.” So a slip would be due not to

unfamiliarity with Latin, but to an excessive colloquial familiarity with

the vulgar tongue which had scarcely ceased to be Latin--an excuse no

German monk could have given. It is amusing to see an Italian grammarian

of this early period enter the lists to defend his reputation and assuage

his wounded vanity. Later, such learned battles became frequent.[315]

Gunzo died as the tenth century closed. Other Italians of his time and

after him crossed the Alps to learn and teach and play the orator. From

the early eleventh century comes a satirical sketch of one. The subject

was a certain Benedict, Prior of the Abbey of St. Michael of Chiusa, and

nephew of its abbot--therefore doubtless born to wealth and position. At

all events as a youth he had moved about for nine years “per multa loca in

Longobardia et Francia propter grammaticam,” spending the huge sum of two

thousand gold soldi. His pride was unmeasured. “I have two houses full of

books; there is no book on the earth that I do not possess. I study them

every day. I can discourse on letters. There is no instruction to be had

in Aquitaine, and but little in Francia. Lombardy, where I learned most,

is the cradle of knowledge.” So the satire makes Benedict speak of

himself. Then it makes a monk sketch Benedict’s sojourn at a convent in

Angoulême: “He knows more than any man I ever saw. We have heard his

chatter the whole day. _O quam loquax est!_ He is never tired. Wherever he

may be, standing, sitting, walking, lying, words pour from his mouth like

water from the Tigris. He orders the whole convent about as if he were

Abbot. Monks, laity, clergy, do nothing without his nod. A multitude of

the people, knights too, were always hastening to hear him, as the goal of

their desires. Untired, hurling words the entire day, he sends them off

worn out. And they depart, saying: Never have we seen sic eloquentem

grammaticum.”[316]

Another of these early wandering Italian humanists won kinder notice, a

certain Lombard Guido, who died where he was teaching in Auxerre, in 1095,

and was lamented in leonine hexameters: “Alas, famous man, so abounding,

so diligent, so praised, so venerated through many lands--

“Filius Italiae, sed alumnus Philosophiae.

Let Gaul grieve, and thou Philosophy who nourished him: Grieve Grammar,

thou. With his death the words of Plato died, the work of Cicero is

blotted out, Maro is silent and the muse of Naso stops her song.”[317]

A final instance to close our examples. In the middle of the eleventh

century flourished Anselm the Peripatetic, a rhetorician and humanist of

Besate (near Milan). In his _Rhetorimachia_ he tells of a dream in which

he finds himself in Heaven, surrounded and embraced by saintly souls.

Their spiritual kisses were still on his lips when three virgins of

another ilk appear, to reproach him with forsaking them. These are

Dialectic and Rhetoric and Grammar--we have met them before! Now the

embraces of the saints seem cold! and to the protests of the blessed

throng that Anselm is theirs, the virgins make reply that he is altogether

their own fosterling. Anselm gives up the saints and departs with the

three.[318] This was his humanistic choice.

This rather pleasant dream discloses the conflict between Letters and the

call of piety, which might harass the learned and the holy in Italy.

Distrust of the enticements of pagan letters might transform itself to

diabolic visions. Such a tale comes from the neighbourhood of Ravenna, in

the late tenth century. It is of one Vilgard, a grammarian, who became

infatuated with the great pagan poets, till their figures waved through

his dreams and he heard their thanks and assurances that he should

participate in their glory. He foolishly began to teach matters contrary

to the Faith, and in the end was condemned as a heretic. Others were

infected with his opinions, and perished by the sword and fire.[319]

Evidently Vilgard’s profane studies made him a heretic. But, ordinarily,

the Italians with their antique descended temperament were not troubled in

the observance and the expression of their Faith by the paganism of their

intellectual tastes. Such tastes did not produce open heretics in Italy in

the eleventh century any more than in the fifteenth. A pagan disposition

seldom prevented an Italian from being a good Catholic.

Yet the monastic spirit in Italy, as elsewhere, in the eleventh century

defied and condemned the pagan literature, and in fact all Latin studies

beyond the elements of grammar. The protest of the monk or hermit might

represent his individual ignorance of classic literature; or, as in the

case of Peter Damiani, the ascetic soul is horrified at the seductive

nature of the pagan sweets which it knows too well. Peter indeed could say

in his sonorous Latin: “Olim mihi Tullius dulcescebat, blandiebantur

carmina poetarum, philosophi verbis aureis insplendebant, et Sirenes usque

in exitium dulces meum incantaverunt intellectum.”[320] So a few decades

after Peter’s death, Rangerius, Bishop of Lucca, writes the life of an

episcopal predecessor in elegiacs which show considerable knowledge of

grammar and prosody; and yet he protests against liberal

studies--philosophy, astronomy, grammar--with pithy commonplace:

“Et nos ergo scholas non spectamus inanes

* * * * *

Scire Deum satis est, quo nulla scientia maior.”[321]

So with the Italians the antique never was an influence brought from

without, but always an element of their temperament and faculties. We have

not seen that they recast it into novel and interesting forms in the

eleventh century; yet they used it familiarly as something of their own,

being quite at home with it. As one may imagine some grand old Roman

garden, planned and constructed by rich and talented ancestors, and still

remaining as a home and heritage to descendants whose wealth and

capacities have shrunken. The garden is somewhat ruinous, and fallen to

decay; yet these sons are still at home in it, their daily steps pursue

its ancient avenues; they still recline upon the marble seats by the

fountains where perhaps scant water runs. Fauns and satyrs--ears gone and

noses broken--with even an occasional god, still haunt the courts and

sylvan paths, while everywhere, above and about these lazy sons, the

lights still chase the shadows, and anon the shadows darken the green and

yellow flashes. Perhaps nothing in the garden has become so subtly in and

of the race as this play of light and shade. And when the Italian genius

shall revive again, and children’s children find themselves with power,

still within this ancient garden the great vernacular poems will be

composed; great paintings will be painted in its light and shade and under

the influence of its formal beauties; and Italian buildings will never

escape the power of the ruined structures found therein.

IV

In the tenth and eleventh centuries, as remarked already, studiously

inclined people made no particular selection of one study rather than

another. But men discriminated sharply between religious devotion and all

profane pursuits. Energies which were regarded as religious might have a

political-ecclesiastical character, and be devoted to the purification and

upbuilding of the Church; or they might be intellectual and aloof; or

ascetic and emotional. All three modes might exist together in

religious-minded men; but usually one form would dominate, and mark the

man’s individuality. Hildebrand, for example, was a monk, fervent and

ascetic; but his strength was devoted to the discipline of the clergy and

the elevation of the papal power. In the great Hildebrandine Church which

was his more than any other man’s achievement, the organizing and

political genius of Rome re-emerges, and Rome becomes again the seat of

Empire.[322]

Eminent examples of Italians who illustrate the ascetic-emotional and the

intellectual mode of religious devotion are the two very different saints,

Peter Damiani and Anselm. The former, to whom we shall again refer when

considering the ideals of the hermit life, was born in Ravenna not long

after the year 1000. His parents, who were poor, seem to have thought him

an unwelcome addition to their already burdensome family. His was a hard

lot until he reached the age of ten, when his elder brother Damianus was

made an archpresbyter in Ravenna and took Peter to live with him, to

educate the gifted boy. From his brother’s house the youth proceeded in

search of further instruction, first to Faenza, then to Parma. He became

proficient in the secular knowledge comprised in the Seven Liberal Arts,

and soon began to teach. A growing reputation brought many pupils, who

paid such fees that Peter had amassed considerable property when he

decided upon a change of life. For some years he had been fearful of the

world, and he now turned from secular to religious studies. He put on

haircloth underneath the gentler garb in which he was seen of men, and

became earnest in vigils, fasts, and prayers. In the night-time he quelled

the lusts of the flesh by immersing himself in flowing water; he overcame

the temptations of avarice and pride by lavishly giving to the poor, and

tending them at his own table. Still he felt unsafe, and yearned to escape

the dangers of worldly living. A number of hermits dwelt in a community

known as the Hermitage of the Holy Cross of Fonte Avellana, near Faenza;

Peter became one of them shortly before his thirtieth year. They lived

ascetically, two in a cell together, spending their time in watching,

fasting, and prayer: thus they fought the Evil One. Damiani was not

satisfied merely with following the austerities practised at Fonte

Avellana. Quickly he surpassed all his fellows, except a certain mail-clad

Dominic, whose scourgings he could not equal. His chief asceticism lay in

the temper of his soul.

From this congenial community (the hermits had made him their prior)

Damiani was drawn forth to serve the Church more actively, sorely against

his will, and was made Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia by Pope Stephen IX. in

1058. It was indeed the hand of Hildebrand, already directing the papal

policy, that had fastened on this unwilling yet serviceable tool. Peter

feared and also looked askance upon the relentless spirit, whom he called

Sanctus Satanas, not deeming him to be altogether of the kingdom of

heaven. He deprecates his censure upon one occasion: “I humbly beg that my

Saint Satan may not rage so cruelly against me, and that his worshipful

pride may not destroy me with long-reaching rods; rather, may it,

appeased, quiet to a calm around his servant.” In this same letter, which

is addressed to the two conspiring souls, Pope Alexander II. and

Archdeacon Hildebrand, he sarcastically likens them to the Wind and the

Sun of Aesop’s fable, who contended as to which could the sooner strip the

Traveller of his cloak.[323] Peter’s tongue was sharp enough, and apt to

indulge in epigram:

“Wilt thou live in Rome, cry aloud:

The Pope’s lord more than the Pope I obey.”

And another squib he writes on Hildebrand:

“Papam rite colo, sed te prostratus adoro;

Tu facis hunc dominum, te facit iste deum.”[324]

It was, however, for his own soul that Damiani feared, while in the

service of the Curia. To Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, he exclaims:

“He errs, Father, errs indeed, who imagines he can be a monk and at the

same time serve the Curia. Ill he bargains, who presumes to desert the

cloister, that he may take up the warfare of the world.”[325]

Albeit against his will, Damiani became a soldier of the Church in the

fields of her secular militancy against the world. He was sent on more

than one important mission--to Milan, to crush the married priests and

establish the Pope’s authority, or to Mainz, there to quell a rebellious

archbishop and a youthful German king. Such missions and others he might

accomplish with holy strenuousness; his more spontaneous zeal, however,

was set upon the task of cleansing the immoralities of monks and clergy.

In spite of his enforced relations with the powers of the world, he was a

fiery reforming ascetic, a scourge of his time’s wickedness, rather than a

statesman of the Church. His writings were a vent for the outcries of his

horror-stricken soul. The corruption of the clergy filled his nostrils:

they were rotten, like the loin-cloth of Jeremiah, hidden by the

Euphrates; their bellies were full of drunkenness and lust.[326] As for

the apostolic see:

“Heu! sedes apostolica,

Orbis olim gloria,

Nunc, proh dolor! efficeris

Officina Simonis.”[327]

These, with other verses written in tears, relate to schisms of pope and

antipope which so often rent the papacy in Peter’s lifetime.[328] He never

ceased to cry out against monks and clergy, denouncing their simony and

avarice, their luxury, intemperance and vile unchastity, their viciousness

of every kind. Such denunciations fill his letters, while many of his

other writings chiefly consist of them.[329] They culminate in his

horrible _Liber Gomorrhianus_, which was issued with the approval of one

pope, to be suppressed by another as too unspeakable.

Naturally over so foul a world, flame and lower the terrors of the Day of

Judgment. For Damiani it was near at hand. He writes to a certain judge:

“Therefore, most dear brother now while the world smiles for thee,

while thy body glows in health, while the prosperity of earth is sweet

and fair, think upon those things which are to come. Deem whatever is

transitory to be but as the illusion of a dream. And that terrible day

of the last Judgment keep ever present to thy sight, and brood with

quaking bowels over the sudden coming of such majesty--nor think it to

be far off!”[330]

Beware of penitence postponed!

“O how full of grief and dole is that late unfruitful repentance, when

the sinful soul, about to be loosed from its dungeon of flesh, looks

behind it, and then directs its gaze into the future. It sees behind

it that little stadium of mortal life, already traversed; it sees

before it the range of endless aeons. That flown moment which it has

lived it perceives to be an instant; it contemplates the infinite

length of time to come.”[331]

From Damiani’s stricken thoughts upon the wickedness of the age, we may

turn to the more personal disclosures of one who wrote himself _Petrus

peccator monachus_. There is one tell-tale letter of confession to his

brother Damianus, whom he loved and revered:

“To my lord Damianus, my best loved brother, Peter, sinner and monk,

his servant and son.

“I would not have it hid from thee, my sweetest father and lord in

Christ, that my mind is cast down with sadness while it contemplates

its own exit which is so near. For I count now many long years that I

wait to be thrown to dogs; and I notice that in whatever monastery I

come nearly all are younger than myself. When I consider this, I

ponder upon death alone, I meditate upon my tomb; I do not withdraw

the eyes of my mind from my tomb. Nor is my mind content to limit its

fear and its consideration to the death of the body; for it is at once

haled to judgment, and meditates with terror upon what might be its

plea and defence. Wretched me! with what fountains of tears must I

lament! I who have done every evil, and through my long life have

fulfilled scarce one commandment of the divine law. For what evil have

not I, miserable man, committed? Where are the vices, where are the

crimes in which I am not implicated; I confess my life has fallen in a

lake of misery; my soul is taken in its iniquities. Pride, lust,

anger, impatience, malice, envy, gluttony, drunkenness, concupiscence,

robbery, lying, perjury, idle talking, scurrility, ignorance,

negligence, and other pests have overthrown me, and all the vices like

ravening beasts have devoured my soul. My heart and my lips are

defiled. I am contaminate in sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.

And in every way, in cogitation, in speech or action, I am lost. All

these evils have I done; and alas! alas! I have brought forth no fruit

meet for repentance.

“One pernicious fault, among others, I acknowledge: scurrility has

been my besetting sin; it has never really left me. For howsoever I

have fought against this monster, and broken its wicked teeth with the

hammer of austerity, and at times repelled it, I have never won the

full victory. When, in the ways of spiritual gladness, I wish to show

myself cheerful to the brethren, I drop into words of vanity; and when

as it were discreetly for the sake of brotherly love, I think to throw

off my severity, then indiscreetly my tongue unbridled utters

foolishness. If the Lord said: ‘Blessed are they that mourn, for they

shall be comforted,’ what judgment hangs over those who not only are

slack at weeping, but act like buffoons with laughter and vain

giggling. Consolation is due to those who weep, not to those who

rejoice; what consolation may be expected from that future Judge by

those who now are given to foolish mirth and vain jocularity? If the

Truth says: ‘Woe unto ye who laugh, for ye shall weep,’ what fearful

judgment shall be theirs who not only laugh themselves, but with

scurrilities drag laughter from their listeners?”

The penitent saint then shows from Scripture how that our hearts ought to

be vessels of tears, and concludes with casting himself at the feet of his

beloved “father” in entreaty that he would interpose the shield of his

holy prayers between his petitioner and that monster, and exorcise its

serpentine poison, and also that he would ever pour forth prayers to God,

and beseech the divine mercy in behalf of all the other vices confessed in

this letter.[332]

A strange confession this--or, indeed, is it strange? This cowled Peter

Damiani who passes from community to community, seeing more keenly than

others may, denouncing, execrating every vice existent or imagined, who

wears haircloth, goes barefoot, lives on bread and water, scourges himself

with daily flagellations, urging others to do likewise,--this Peter

Damiani is yet unable quite to scourge out the human nature from him, and

evidently cannot always refrain from that jocularity and _inepta laetitia_

for which the Abbess Hildegard also saw sundry souls in hell.[333]

Perhaps, with Peter, revulsions from the strain of austerity took the form

of sudden laughter. His imagination was fine, his wit too quick for his

soul’s safety. His confession was no matter of mock humility, nor did he

deem laughter vulgar or in bad taste. He feared to imperil his soul

through it. Of course, in accusing himself of other, and as we should

think more serious crimes--drunkenness, robbery, perjury--Peter was merely

carrying to an extreme the monkish conventions of self-vilification.

If it appears from this letter that Damiani had been unable quite to

scourge his wit out of him, another letter, to a young countess, will show

more touchingly that he had been unable quite to fast out of him his human

heart.

“To Guilla, most illustrious countess, Peter, monk and sinner, [sends]

the instancy of prayer.

“Since of a thing out of which will issue conflict it is better to

have ignorance without cost, than with dear-bought forgetting wage

hard war, we prudently accord to young women, whose aspect we fear,

audience by letter. Certainly I, who now am an old man, may safely

look upon the seared and wrinkled visage of a blear-eyed crone. Yet

from sight of the more comely and adorned I guard my eyes as boys from

fire. Alas my wretched heart which cannot hold Scriptural mysteries

read through a hundred times, and will not lose the memory of a form

seen but once! There where the divine law remains not, no oblivion

blurs vanity’s image. But of this another time. Here I have not to

write of what is hurtful to me but of what may be salutary for thee.”

Peter then continues with excellent advice for the young noblewoman,

exhorting her to deeds of mercy and kindness, and warning her against the

enjoyment of revenues wrung from the poor.[334] Indeed Damiani’s writings

contain much that still is wise. His advice to the great and noble of the

world was admirable,[335] and though couched in austere phrase, it

demanded what many men feel bound to fulfil in the twentieth century. His

little work on Almsgiving[336] contains sentences which might be spoken

to-day. He has been pointing out that no one can be exercising the ascetic

virtues all the time: no one can be always praying and fasting, washing

feet and subjecting the body to pain. Some people, moreover, shun such

self-castigation. But one can always be benevolent; and, though fearing to

afflict the body, can stretch forth his hand in charity: “Those then who

are rich should seek to be dispensers rather than possessors. They ought

not to regard what they have as their own: for they did not receive this

transitory wealth in order to revel in luxury, but that they should

administer it so long as they continue in their stewardship. Whoever gives

to the poor does not distribute his own but restores another’s.”[337]

This sounds modern--it also sounds like Seneca.[338] Yet Damiani was no

modern man, nor was he antique, but very fearful of the classics. Having

been a rhetorician and grammarian, when he became a hermit-monk he made

Christ his grammar (_mea grammatica Christus est_).[339] Horror-stricken

at the world, and writhing under his own contamination, he cast body and

soul into the ascetic life. That was the harbour of escape from the carnal

temptations which threatened the soul’s hope of pardon from the Judge at

the Last Day. Therefore Peter is fierce in execration of all lapses from

the hermit-life, so rapturously praised with its contrition, its

penitence, and tears. His ascetic rhapsodies, with which, as a poet might,

he delighted or relieved his soul, are eloquent illustrations of the

monastic ideal.[340]

Other men in Italy less intelligent than Damiani, but equally picturesque,

were held by like ascetic and emotional obsession. Intellectual interest,

however, in theology was less prominent, because the Italian concern with

religion was either emotional or ecclesiastical, which is to say,

political. The philosophic or dialectical treatment of the Faith was to

run its course north of the Alps; and those men of Italian birth--Anselm,

Peter Lombard, Bonaventura, and Aquinas--who contributed to Christian

thought, early left their native land, and accomplished their careers

under intellectual conditions which did not obtain in Italy. Nevertheless,

Anselm and Bonaventura at least did not lose their Italian qualities; and

it is as representative of what might come out of Italy in the eleventh

century that the former may detain us here.

The story of Anselm is told well and lovingly by his companion

Eadmer.[341] His life, although it was drawn within the currents of

affairs, remained intellectual and aloof, a meditation upon God. It opens

with a dream of climbing the mountain to God’s palace-seat. For Anselm’s

boyhood was passed at Aosta, within the shadows of the Graian Alps.[342]

Surely the heaven rested upon them. Might he not then go up to the hall

where God, above in the heaven, as the boy’s mother taught, ruled and held

all?

“So one night it seemed he must ascend to the summit of the mountains,

and go to the hall of the great King. In the plain at the first

slopes, he saw women, the servants of the King, reaping grain

carelessly and idly. He would accuse them to their Lord. He went up

across the summit and came to the King’s hall. He found Him there

alone with His seneschal, for it was autumn and He had sent His

servants to gather the harvest. The Lord called the boy as he entered;

and he went and sat at His feet. The Lord asked kindly (_jucunda

affabilitate_) whence he came and what he wished. He replied just as

he knew the thing to be (_juxta quod rem esse sciebat_). Then, at the

Lord’s command, the Seneschal brought him bread of the whitest, and he

was there refreshed in His presence. In the morning he verily believed

that he had been in Heaven and had been refreshed with the bread of

the Lord.”

A pious mother had been the boy’s first teacher. Others taught him

Letters, till he became proficient, and beloved by those who knew him. He

wished to be made a monk, but a neighbouring abbot refused his request,

fearing the displeasure of Anselm’s father, of whom the biographer has

nothing good to say. The youth fell sick, but with returning health the

joy of living drew his mind from study and his pious purpose. Love for his

mother held him from over-indulgence in pastimes. She died, and with this

sheet-anchor lost, Anselm’s ship was near to drifting out on the world’s

slippery flood. But here the impossible temper of the father wrought as

God’s providence, and Anselm, unable to stay with him, left his home, and

set out across Mount Senis attended by one clericus. For three years he

moved through Burgundy and Francia, till Lanfranc’s repute drew him to

Bec. Day and night he studied beneath that master, and also taught. The

desire to be a monk returned; and he began to direct his purpose toward

pleasing God and spurning the world.

But where? At either Cluny or Bec he feared to lose the fruit of his

studies; for at Cluny there was the strictness of the rule,[343] and at

Bec Lanfranc’s eminent learning would “make mine of little value.” Anselm

says that he was not yet subdued, nor had the contempt of the world become

strong in him. Then the thought came: “Is this to be a monk to wish to be

set before others and magnified above them? Nay,--become a monk where, for

the sake of God, you will be put after all and be held viler than all.

And where can this be? Surely at Bec. I shall be of no weight while he is

here, whose wisdom and repute are enough for all. Here then is my rest,

here God alone will be my purpose, here the single love of Him will be my

thought, and here the constant remembrance of Him will be a happy

consolation.”

Scripture bade him: Do all things with counsel. Whom but Lanfranc should

he consult? So he laid three plans before him--to become a monk, a hermit,

or (his father being dead) for the sake of God administer his patrimony

for the poor. Lanfranc persuaded Anselm to refer the decision to the

venerable Archbishop of Rouen. Together they went to him, and such, says

the biographer, was Anselm’s reverence for Lanfranc, that on the way,

passing through the wood near Bec, had Lanfranc bade him stay in that

wood, he would not have left it all his days.

The archbishop decided for the monastic life. So Anslem took the vows of a

monk at Bec, being twenty-seven years of age. Lanfranc was then Prior, but

soon left to become Abbot of St. Stephen’s at Caen.[344] Made Prior in his

place, Anselm devoted himself in gentleness and wisdom to the care of the

monks and to meditation upon God and the divine truths. He was especially

considerate of the younger monks, whose waywardness he guided and whose

love he won. The envy of cavillers was stilled. Yet the business of office

harassed one whose thoughts dwelled more gladly in the blue heaven with

God. Again he sought the counsel of the archbishop; for Herluin, the first

Abbot and founder of Bec, still lived on, old and unlettered, and

apparently no great fount of wisdom. The archbishop commanded him _per

sanctam obedientiam_ not to renounce his office, nor refuse if called to a

higher one. So, sad but resolute, he returned to the convent, and resumed

his burdens in such wise as to be held by all as a loved father. It was at

this period that he wrote several treatises upon the high doctrinal themes

which filled his thoughts. Gradually his mind settled to the search after

some single proof of that which is believed concerning God--that He

exists, and is eternal, unchanging, omnipotent, just, and pitying, and is

truth and goodness. This thing caused him great difficulty. Not only it

kept him from food and drink and sleep, but what weighed upon him more, it

interfered with his devotion to God’s service. Reflecting thus, and unable

to reach a valid conclusion, he decided that such speculation was a

temptation of the devil, and tried to drive it from his thoughts. But the

more he struggled, the more it beset him. And one night, at the time of

the nocturnal vigils, the grace of God shed light in his heart, and the

argument was clear to his mind, and filled his inmost being with an

immense jubilation. All the more now was he confirmed in the love of God

and the contempt of the world, of which one night he had a vision as of a

torrent filled with obscene filth, and carrying in its flood the countless

host of people of the world, while apart and aloof from its slime rose the

sweet cloister, with its walls of silver, surrounded by silvery herbage,

all delectable beyond conception.

In the year 1078 old Herluin died. Anselm long had guided the convent, and

with one voice the brethren chose him Abbot. He reasoned and argued, but

could not dissuade them, and in his anxiety he knew not what to do. Some

days passed. He had recourse to entreaties; with tears he flung himself

prostrate before them all, praying and protesting in the name of God, and

beseeching them, if they had any bowels of compassion, to permit him to

remain free from this great burden. But they only cast themselves upon the

earth, and prayed that he would rather commiserate them, and not disregard

the convent’s good. At length he yielded, for the command of the

archbishop came to his mind. Such a scene occurs often in monastic

history. None the less is it moving when the participants are in earnest,

as Anselm was, and his monks.

So Anselm’s life opened; so it sought counsel, gathered strength, and

centred to its purpose, pursuing as its goal the thought of God. Anselm

had love and gentleness for his fellows; he drew their love and reverence.

Yet, aloof, he lived within his spirit. Did he open its hidden places even

to Lanfranc? Although one who in his humility always desired counsel,

perhaps neither Lanfranc nor Eadmer, the friend whom the Pope gave him for

an adviser, knew the meditations of his heart. We at all events should

discern little of them by following the outer story of his life. It might

even be fruitless to sail with him across the channel to visit Lanfranc,

now Primate of England. The biographer has nothing to tell of the converse

between the two, although quite rightly impressed at the meeting between

him who was pre-eminent in _auctoritas_ and _scientia_ and him who

excelled in _sanctitas_ and _sapientia Dei_. Nor would it enlighten us to

follow Anselm’s archiepiscopal career, save so far as to realize that he

who lives in the thought of God will fear no brutal earthly majesty, such

as that of William Rufus, to admonish whom Anselm once more crossed the

Channel after Lanfranc’s death. Whatever this despoiler of bishoprics then

thought, he fell sick afterwards, and, being terrified, named Anselm

archbishop, this being in the year 1093. One may imagine the unison

between them! and how little the Red King’s ways would turn the enskied

steadfastness of Anselm’s soul. But the king had the power, and could keep

the archbishop in trouble and in peril. Anselm asked and asked again for

leave to go to Rome, and the king refused. After more than one stormy

scene--the storm being always on the Red King’s part--Anselm made it plain

that he would obey God rather than man in the matter. At the very last he

went in to the king and his Court, and seating himself quietly at the

king’s right he said: “I, my lord, shall go, as I have determined. But

first, if you do not decline it, I will give you my blessing.” So the king

acquiesced.

The archbishop went first to Canterbury, to comfort and strengthen his

monks, and spoke to them assembled together:

“Dearly beloved brothers and sons, I am, as you know, about to leave

this kingdom. The contention with our lord the king as to Christian

discipline, has reached this pass that I must either do what is

contrary to God and my own honour, or leave the realm. Gladly I go,

hoping through the mercy of God that my journey may advance the

Church’s liberty hereafter. I am moved to pity you, upon whom greater

tribulations will come in my absence. Even with me here you have not

been unoppressed, yet I think I have given you more peace than you

have had since the death of our Father Lanfranc. I think those who

molest you will rage the more with me away. You, however, are not

undisciplined in the school of the Lord. Nevertheless I will say

something, because, since you have come together within the close of

this monastery to fight for God, you should always have before your

eyes how you should fight.

“All retainers do not fight in the same way either for an earthly

prince, or for God whose are all things that are. The angels

established in eternal beatitude wait upon Him. He has also men who

serve Him for earthly benefits, like hired knights. He has also some

who, cleaving to His will, contend to reach the kingdom of heaven,

which they have forfeited through Adam’s fault. Observe the knights

who are in God’s pay. Many you see leading a secular life and cleaving

to the household of God for the good things which they gain in His

service. But when, by God’s judgment, trial comes to them, and

disaster, they fly from His love and accuse Him of injustice. We

monks--would that we were such as not to be like them! For those who

cannot stand to their professed purpose unless they have all things

comfortable, and do not wish to suffer destitution for God, how shall

they not be held like to these? And shall such be heirs of the kingdom

of heaven? Faithfully I say, No, never, unless they repent.

“He who truly contends toward recovering the kingdom of life, strives

to cleave to God through all; no adversity draws him from God’s

service, no pleasure lures him from the love of Him. _Per dura et

aspera_ he treads the way of His commands, and from hope of the reward

to come, his heart is aflame with the ardour of love, and sings with

the Psalmist, Great is the glory of the Lord. Which glory he tastes in

this pilgrimage, and tasting, he desires, and desiring, salutes as

from afar. Supported by the hope of attaining, he is consoled amid the

perils of the world and gladly sings, Great is the glory of the Lord.

Know that this one will in no way be defrauded of that glory of the

Lord, since all that is in him serves the Lord, and is directed to

winning this reward. But I see that there is no need to say to you

another word. My brothers, since we are separated now in grief, I

beseech you so to strive that hereafter we may be united joyfully

before God. Be ye those who truly wish to be made heirs of God.”

The clarity and gentle love of this high argument is Anselm. Now the story

follows of Anselm and Eadmer and another monk travelling on, sometimes

unknown, sometimes acclaimed, through France to Italy and Rome. Anselm’s

face inspired reverence in those who did not know him, and the peace of

his countenance attracted even Saracens. Had he been born and bred in

England, he might have managed better with the Red King. He never got an

English point of view, but remained a Churchman with Italian-Hildebrandine

convictions. Of course, two policies were clashing then in England, where

it happened that there was on one side an able and rapacious tyrant, while

the other was represented by a man with the countenance and temperament of

an angel. But we may leave Anselm now in Italy, where he is beyond the Red

King’s molestation, and turn to his writings.

Their choice and treatment of subject was partly guided by the needs of

his pupils and friends at Bec and elsewhere in Normandy or Francia or

England. For he wrote much at their solicitation; and the theological

problems of which solutions were requested, suggest the intellectual

temper of those regions, rather than of Italy. In a way Anselm’s works,

treating of separate and selected Christian questions, are a proper

continuation of those composed by northern theologians in the ninth

century on Predestination and the Eucharist.[345] Only Anselm’s were not

evoked by the exigency of actual controversy as much as by the insistency

of the eleventh-century mind, and the need it felt of some adjustment

regarding certain problems. Anselm’s theological and philosophic

consciousness is clear and confident. His faculties are formative and

creative, quite different from the compiling instincts of Alcuin or

Rabanus. The matter of his argument has become his own; it has been remade

in his thinking, and is presented as from himself--and God. He no longer

conceives himself as one searching through the “pantries” of the Fathers

or culling the choice flowers of their “meadows.” He will set forth the

matter as God has deigned to disclose it to him. In the _Cur Deus homo_ he

begins by saying that he has been urged by many, verbally and by letter,

to consider the reasons why God became man and suffered, and then,

assenting, says: “Although, from the holy Fathers on, what should suffice

has been said, yet concerning this question I will endeavour to set forth

for my inquirers what God shall deign to disclose to me.”[346]

Certain works of Anselm, the _Monologion_, for instance, present the dry

and the formal method of reasoning which was to make its chief home in

France; others, like the _Proslogion_, seem to be Italian in a certain

beautiful emotionalism. The feeling is very lofty, even lifted out of the

human, very skyey, even. The _Proslogion_, the _Meditationes_, do not

throb with the red blood of Augustine’s _Confessions_, the writing which

influenced them most. The quality of their feeling suggests rather Dante’s

_Paradiso_; and sometimes with Anselm a sense of formal beauty and

perfection seems to disclose the mind of Italy. Moreover, Anselm’s Latin

style appears Italian. It is elastic, even apparently idiomatic, and

varies with the temper and character of his different works. Throughout,

it shows in Latin the fluency and simple word-order natural to an author

whose _vulgaris eloquentia_ was even closer to Latin in the time of Anselm

than when Dante wrote.

So Anselm’s writings were intimately part of their author, and very part

of his life-long meditation upon God. Led by the solicitations of others,

as well as impelled by the needs of his own faculties and nature, he takes

up one Christian problem after another, and sets forth his understanding

of it with his conclusion. He is devout, an absolute believer; and he is

wonderfully metaphysical. He is a beautiful, a sublimated, and idealizing

reasoner, convinced that a divine reality must exist in correspondence

with his thought, which projects itself aloft to evoke from the blue an

answering reality. The inspiration, the radiating point of Anselm’s

intellectual interest, is clearly given--to understand that which he first

believes. It is a spontaneous intellectual interest, not altogether

springing from a desire to know how to be saved. It does not seek to

understand in order to believe; but seeks the happiness of knowing and

understanding that which it believes and loves. Listen to some sentences

from the opening of the _Proslogion_:

“Come now, mannikin, flee thy occupations for a little, and hide from

the confusion of thy cares. Be vacant a little while for God, and for

a little rest in Him.... Now, O Lord my God, teach my heart where and

how to seek thee, where and how to find thee. Lord, Lord, illuminate

us; show us thyself. Pity us labouring toward thee, impotent without

thee.... Teach me to seek thee, and show thyself to my search; for I

cannot seek thee unless thou dost teach, nor find thee unless thou

dost show thyself.... I make no attempt, Lord, to penetrate thy

depths, for my intellect has no such reach; but I desire to understand

some measure of thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. I do not

seek to know in order that I may believe; but I believe, that I may

know. For I believe this also, that unless I shall have believed, I

shall not understand.”[347]

So Anselm is first a believer, then a theologian; and his reason devotes

itself to the elucidation of his faith. Faith prescribes his intellectual

interests, and sets their bounds. His thought does not occupy itself with

matters beyond. But it takes a pure intellectual delight in reasoning upon

the God which his faith presents and his heart cleaves to. The motive is

the intellectual and loving delight which his mind takes in this pursuit.

His faith was sure and undisturbed, and ample for his salvation. His

intellect, affected by no motive beyond its own strength and joy, delights

in reasoning upon the matter of his faith.[348]

We may still linger for a moment to observe how closely part of Anselm’s

nature was his proof of the existence of God.[349] It sprang directly from

his saintly soul and the compelling idealism of his reason. In the

_Monologion_ Anselm ranged his many arguments concerning the nature and

attributes of the _summum bonum_ which is God. Its chain of inductions

failed to satisfy him and his pupils. So he set his mind to seek a sole

and unconditioned proof (as Eadmer states in the _Vita_) of God’s

existence and the attributes which faith ascribes to Him. Anselm says the

same in the Preface to the _Proslogion_:

“Considering that the prior work was woven out of a concatenation of

many arguments, I set to seek within myself (_mecum_) whether I might

not discover one argument which needed nothing else than itself alone

for its proof; and which by itself might suffice to show that God

truly exists, and that He is the _summum bonum_ needing nothing else,

but needed by all things in order that they may exist and have

well-being (_ut sint et bene sint_); and whatever we believe

concerning the divine substance.”

The famous proof which at length flashed upon him is substantially this:

By very definition the word _God_ means the greatest conceivable being.

This conception exists even in the atheist’s mind, for he knows what is

meant by the words, the absolutely greatest. But the greatest cannot be in

the intellect alone, for then conceivably there would be a greater which

would exist in reality as well. And since, by definition, God is the

absolutely greatest, He must exist in reality as well as in the mind.[350]

Carrying out the scholia to this argument, Anselm then proves that God

possesses the various attributes ascribed to Him by the Christian Faith.

That from a definition one may not infer the existence of the thing

defined, was pointed out by a certain monk Gaunilo almost as soon as the

_Proslogion_ appeared. Anselm answered him that the argument applied only

to the greatest conceivable being. Since that time Anselm’s proof has been

upheld and disproved many times. It was at all events a great dialectic

leap; but likely one may not with such a bound cross the chasm from

definition to existence--at least one will be less bold to try when he

realizes that this chasm is there. Temperamentally, at least, this proof

was the summit of Anselm’s idealism: he could not but conceive things to

exist in correspondence to the demands of his conceptions. He never made

another so palpable leap from conception to conviction as in this proof of

God’s existence; yet his theology proceeded through like processes of

thought. For example, he is sure of God’s omnipotence, and also sure that

God can do nothing which would detract from the perfection of His nature:

God cannot lie: “For it does not follow, if God wills to lie that it is

just to lie; but rather that He is not God. For only that will can will to

lie in which truth is corrupted, or rather which is corrupted by forsaking

truth. Therefore when one says ‘if God wills to lie,’ he says in

substance, ‘if God is of such a nature as to will to lie.’”[351]

Anselm’s other famous work was the _Cur Deus homo_, upon the problem why

God became man to redeem mankind. It was connected with his view of sin,

and the fall of the angels, as set forth chiefly in his dialogue _De casu

Diaboli_. One may note certain cardinal points in his exposition: Man

could be redeemed only by God; for he would have been the bond-servant of

whoever redeemed him, and to have been the servant of any one except God

would not have restored him to the dignity which would have been his had

he not sinned.[352] Or again: The devil had no rights over man, which he

lost by unjustly slaying God. For man was not the devil’s, nor does the

devil belong to himself but to God.[353] Evidently Anselm frees himself

from the conception of any ransom paid to the devil, or any trickery put

on him--thoughts which had lowered current views of the Atonement.

Anselm’s arguments (which are too large, and too interwoven with his views

upon connected subjects, to be done justice to by any casual statement)

are free from degrading foolishness. His reasonings were deeply felt, as

one may see in his _Meditationes_, where thought and feeling mutually

support and enhance each other. So he recalls Augustine, the great model

and predecessor whom he followed and revered. And still the feeling in

Anselm’s _Meditationes_, as in the _Proslogion_, is somewhat sublimated

and lifted above human heart-throbs. Perhaps it may seem rhetorical, and

intentionally stimulated in order to edify. Even in the _Meditationes_

upon the humanity and passion of Jesus, Anselm is not very close to the

quivering tenderness of St. Bernard, and very far from the impulsive and

passionate love of Francis of Assisi. One thinks that his feelings rarely

distorted his countenance or wet it with tears.[354]

CHAPTER XII

MENTAL ASPECTS OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY: FRANCE

I. GERBERT.

II. ODILO OF CLUNY.

III. FULBERT AND THE SCHOOL OF CHARTRES; TRIVIUM AND QUADRIVIUM.

IV. BERENGAR OF TOURS, ROSCELLIN, AND THE COMING TIME.

I

It appeared in the last chapter that Anselm’s choice of topic was not

uninfluenced by his northern domicile at Bec in Normandy, from which, one

may add, it was no far cry to the monastery (Marmoutier) of Anselm’s sharp

critic Gaunilo. These places lay within the confines of central and

northern France, the home of the most originative mediaeval development.

For this region, the renewed studies of the Carolingian period were the

proper antecedents of the efforts of the eleventh century. The topics of

study still remained substantially the same; yet the later time represents

a further stage in the appropriation of the antique and patristic

material, and its productions show the genius of the authors more clearly

than Carolingian writings, which were taken piecemeal from patristic

sources or made of borrowed antique phrase.

The difference is seen in the personality and writings of Gerbert of

Aurillac,[355] the man who with such intellectual catholicity opens the

story of this period. One will be struck with the apparently arid crudity

of his intellectual processes. Crude they were, and of necessity; arid

they were not, being an unavoidable stage in the progress of mediaeval

thinking. Yet it is a touch of fate’s irony that such an interesting

personality should have been afflicted with them. For Gerbert was the

redeeming intellect of the last part of the tenth century. The cravings of

his mind compassed the intellectual predilections of his contemporaries in

their entirety. Secular and by no means priestly they appear in him; and

it is clear that religious motives did not dominate this extraordinary

individual who was reared among monks, became Abbot of Bobbio, Archbishop

of Rheims, Archbishop of Ravenna, and pope at last.

He appears to have been born shortly before the year 950. From the

ignorance in which we are left as to his parents and the exact place of

his birth in Aquitaine, it may be inferred that his origin was humble.

While still a boy he was received into the Benedictine monastery of St.

Geraldus at Aurillac in Auvergne. There he studied grammar (in the

extended mediaeval sense), under a monk named Raymund, and grew to love

the classics. A loyal affectionateness was a life-long trait of Gerbert,

and more than one letter in after life bears witness to the love which he

never ceased to feel for the monks of Aurillac among whom his youthful

years were passed, and especially for this brother Raymund from whom he

received his first instruction.

Raymund afterwards became abbot of the convent. But it was his

predecessor, Gerald, who had received the boy Gerbert, and was still to do

something of moment in directing his career. A certain duke of the Spanish

March came on a pilgrimage to Aurillac; and Gerald besought him to take

Gerbert back with him to Spain for such further instruction as the convent

did not afford. The duke departed, taking Gerbert, and placed him under

the tuition of the Bishop of Vich, a town near Barcelona. Here he studied

mathematics. The tradition that he travelled through Spain and learned

from the Arabs lacks probability. But in the course of time the duke and

bishop set forth to pray for sundry material objects at the fountainhead

of Catholicism, and took their _protégé_ with them to Rome.

In Rome, Gerbert’s destiny advanced apace. His patrons, doubtless proud of

their young scholar, introduced him to the Pope, John XIII., who also was

impressed by Gerbert’s personality and learning. John told his own

protector, the great Otto, and informed him of Gerbert’s ability to teach

mathematics; and the two kept Gerbert in Rome, when the Spanish duke and

bishop returned to their country. Gerbert began to teach, and either at

this time or later had among his pupils the young Augustus, Otto II. But

he was more anxious to study logic than to teach mathematics, even under

imperial favour. He persuaded the old emperor to let him go to Rheims with

a certain archdeacon from that place, who was skilled in the science which

he lacked. The emperor dismissed him, with a liberal hand. In his new home

Gerbert rapidly mastered logic, and impressed all with his genius. He won

the love of the archbishop, Adalberon, who shortly set the now triply

accomplished scholar at the head of the episcopal school. Gerbert’s

education was complete, in letters, in mathematics including music, and in

logic. Thenceforth for ten years (972-982), the happiest of his life, he

studied and also taught the whole range of academic knowledge.

Fortune, not altogether kind, bestowed on Gerbert the favour of three

emperors. The graciousness of the first Otto had enabled him to proceed to

Rheims. The second Otto listened to his teaching, admired the teacher, and

early in the year 983 made him Abbot and Count of Bobbio. Long afterwards

the third Otto made him Archbishop of Ravenna, and then pope.

Bobbio, the chief foundation of Columbanus, situated not far from Genoa,

was powerful and rich; but its vast possessions, scattered throughout

Italy, had been squandered by worthless abbots or seized by lawless

nobles. The new count-abbot, eager to fulfil the ecclesiastical and feudal

functions of his position, strove to reclaim the monastery’s property and

bring back its monks to decency and learning. In vain. Now, as more than

once in Gerbert’s later life, brute circumstances proved too strong. Otto

died. Gerbert was unsupported. He struggled and wrote many letters which

serve to set forth the situation for us, though they did not win the

battle for their writer:

“According to the largeness of my mind, my lord (Otto II.) has

enriched me with most ample honours. For what part of Italy does not

hold the possessions of the blessed Columbanus? So should this be,

from the generosity and benevolence of our Caesar. Fortune, indeed,

ordains it otherwise. Forsooth according to the largeness of my mind

she has loaded me with most ample stores of enemies. For what part of

Italy has not my enemies? My strength is unequal to the strength of

Italy! There is peace on this condition: if I, despoiled, submit, they

cease to strike; intractable in my vested rights, they attack with the

sword. When they do not strike with the sword, they thrust with

javelins of words.”[356]

Within a year Gerbert gave up the struggle at Bobbio, and returned to

Rheims to resume his duties as head of the school, and secretary and

intimate adviser of Adalberon. Politically the time was one of uncertainty

and turmoil. The Carolingian house was crumbling, and the house of Capet

was scheming and struggling on to a royalty scarcely more considerable. In

Germany intrigue and revolt threatened the rights of the child Otto III.

Archbishop Adalberon, guided by Gerbert, was a powerful factor in the

dynastic change in France; and the two were zealous for Otto. Throughout

these troubles Gerbert constantly appears, directing projected measures

and divining courses of events, yet somehow, in spite of his unmatched

intelligence, failing to control them.

Time passed, and Adalberon died at the beginning of the year 989. His

successor, Arnulf, a scion of the falling Carolingian house, was

subsequently unseated for treason to the new-sprung house of Capet. In 991

Gerbert himself was made archbishop. But although seeming to reach his

longed-for goal, troubles redoubled on his head. There was rage at the

choice of one so lowly born for the princely dignity. The storm gathered

around the new archbishop, and the See of Rome was moved to interfere,

which it did gladly, since at Rome Gerbert was hated for the reproaches

cast upon its ignorance and corruption by bishops at the council which

elected him and deposed his predecessor. In that deposition and election

Rome had not acquiesced; and we read the words of the papal legate:

“The acts of your synod against Arnulf, or rather against the Roman

Church, astound me with their insults and blasphemies. Truly is the

word of the Gospel fulfilled in you, ‘There shall be many

anti-Christs.’... Your anti-Christs say that Rome is as a temple of

idols, an image of stone. Because the vicars of Peter and their

disciples will not have as master Plato, Virgil, Terence or the rest

of the herd of Philosophers, ye say they are not worthy to be

door-keepers--because they have no part in such song.”[357]

The battle went against Gerbert. Interdicted from his archiepiscopal

functions, he left France for the Court of Otto III., where his intellect

at once dominated the aspirations of the young monarch. Otto and Gerbert

went together to Italy, and the emperor made his friend Archbishop of

Ravenna. The next year, 999, Gregory V. died, and the archbishop became

Pope Sylvester II. For three short years the glorious young imperial

dreamer and his peerless counsellor planned and wrought for a great united

Empire and Papacy on earth. Then death took first the emperor and soon

afterwards the pope-philosopher.

Gerbert was the first mind of his time, its greatest teacher, its most

eager learner, and most universal scholar. His pregnant letters reflect a

finished man who has mastered his acquired knowledge and transformed it

into power. They also evince the authorship of one who had uniquely

profited from the power and spirit of the great minds of the pagan past,

had imbibed their sense of form and pertinency, and with them had become

self-contained and self-controlled, master of himself and of all that had

entered in and made him what he was. Notice how the personality of the

writer, with his capacities, tastes, and temperament, is unfolded before

us in a letter to a close friend, abbot of a monastery at Tours:

“Since you hold my memory in honour, and in virtue of relationship

declare great friendship, I deem that I shall be happy for your

opinion, if only I am one who in the judgment of so great a man is

found worthy to be loved. But since I am not one who, with Panetius,

would sometimes separate the good from the useful, but rather with

Tully would mingle it with everything useful, I wish these best and

holiest friendships never to be void of reciprocal utility. And as

morality and the art of speech are not to be severed from philosophy,

I have always joined the study of speaking well with the study of

living well. For although by itself living well may be nobler than

speaking well, and may suffice without its fellow for one absolved

from the direction of affairs; yet for us, busied with the State, both

are needed. For it is of the greatest utility to speak appositely when

persuading, and with mild discourse check the fury of angry men. In

preparing for such business, I am eagerly collecting a library; and as

formerly at Rome and elsewhere in Italy, so likewise in Germany and

Belgium, I have obtained copyists and manuscripts with a mass of

money, and the help of friends in those parts. Permit me likewise to

beg of you also to promote this end. We will append at the end of this

letter a list of those writers we wish copied. We have sent for your

disposal parchment for the scribes and money to defray the cost, not

unmindful of your goodness. Finally, lest by saying more we should

abuse epistolary _convenances_, the cause of so much trouble is

contempt of faithless fortune; a contempt which not nature alone has

given to us--as to many men--but careful study. Consequently when at

leisure and when busied in affairs, we teach what we know, and learn

where we are ignorant.”[358]

Gerbert’s letters are concise, even elliptical to the verge of obscurity.

He discloses himself in a few words to his old friend Raymund at the

monastery of Aurillac: “With what love we are bound to you, the Latins

know and also the barbarians,[359] who share the fruit of our studies.

Their vows demand your presence. Amid public cares philosophy is the sole

solace; and from her study we have often been the gainer, when in this

stormy time we have thus broken the attack of fortune raging grievously

against others or ourselves....”[360]

Save for the language, one might fancy Cicero speaking to some friend, and

not the future pope of the year 1000 to a monk. The sentiment is quite

antique. And Gerbert not only uses antique phrase but is touched, like

many a mediaeval man, with the antique spirit. In another letter he

writes of friendship, and queries whether the divinity has given anything

better to mortals. He refers to his prospects, and remarks: “sed involvit

mundum caeca fortuna,” and he is not certain whither it will cast

him.[361]

Doubtless such antique sentiments were a matter of mood with Gerbert; he

can readily express others of a Christian colour, and turn again to still

other topics very readily, as in the following letter--a curious one. It

is to a monk:

“Think not, sweetest brother, that it is through my fault I lack my

brethren’s society. After leaving thee, I had to undertake many

journeys in the business of my father Columbanus.[362] The ambitions

of the powers, the hard and wretched times, turn right to wrong. No

one keeps faith. Yet since I know that all things hang on the decree

of God, who changes both hearts and the kingdoms of the sons of men, I

patiently await the end of things. I admonish and exhort thee,

brother, to do the same. In the meanwhile one thing I beg, which may

be accomplished without danger or loss to thee, and will make me thy

friend forever. Thou knowest with what zeal I gather books everywhere,

and thou knowest how many scribes there are in Italy, in town and

country. Come then, quietly procure me copies of Manlius’s (Boëthius)

_De astrologia_, Victorinus’s _Rhetoric_, Demosthenes’s

_Optalmicus_.[363] I promise thee, brother, and will keep my word, to

preserve a sacred silence as to thy praiseworthy compliance, and will

remit twofold whatever thou dost demand. Let this much be known to the

man, and the pay too, and cheer us more frequently with a letter; and

have no fear that knowledge will come to any one of any matter thou

mayest confide to our good faith.”[364]

When he wrote this letter, about the year 988, Gerbert was dangerously

deep in politics, and great was the power of this low-born titular Abbot

of Bobbio, head of the school at Rheims and secretary to the archbishop.

The tortuous statecraft and startling many-sidedness of this “scholar in

politics” must have disturbed his contemporaries, and may have roused the

suspicions from which grew the stories, told by future men, that this

scholar, statesman, and philosopher-pope was a magician who had learned

from forbidden sources much that should be veiled. Withal, however, one

may deem that the most veritable inner bit of Gerbert was his love of

knowledge and of antique literature, and that the letters disclosing this

are the subtlest revelation of the man who was ever transmuting his

well-guarded knowledge into himself and his most personal moods.

“For there is nothing more noble for us in human affairs than a

knowledge of the most distinguished men; and may it be displayed in

volumes upon volumes multiplied. Go on then, as you have begun, and

bring the streams of Cicero to one who thirsts. Let M. Tullius thrust

himself into the midst of the anxieties which have enveloped us since

the betrayal of our city, so that in the happy eyes of men we are held

unhappy through our sentence. What things are of the world we have

sought, we have found, we have accomplished, and, as I will say, we

have become chief among the wicked. Lend aid, father, in order that

divinity, expelled by the multitude of sinners, bent by thy prayers,

may return, may visit us, may dwell with us--and if possible, may we

who mourn the absence of the blessed father Adalberon, be rejoiced by

thy presence.”[365]

So Gerbert wrote from Rheims, himself a chief intriguer in a city full of

treason.

Gerbert was a power making for letters. The best scholars sat at his feet;

he was an inspiration at the Courts of the second and third Ottos, who

loved learning and died so young; and the great school of Chartres, under

the headship of his pupil Fulbert, was the direct heir to his instruction.

At Rheims, where he taught so many years, he left to others the elementary

instruction in Latin. A pupil, Richer, who wrote his history, speaks of

courses in rhetoric and literature, to which he introduced his pupils

after instructing them in logic:

“When he wished to lead them on from such studies to rhetoric, he put

in practice his opinion that one cannot attain the art of oratory

without a previous knowledge of the modes of diction which are to be

learned from the poets. So he brought forward those with whom he

thought his pupils should be conversant. He read and explained the

poets Virgil, Statius, and Terence, the satirists Juvenal and Persius

and Horace, also Lucan the historiographer. Familiarized with these,

and practised in their locutions, he taught his pupils rhetoric.

After they were instructed in this art, he brought up a sophist, to

practise them in disputation, so that practised in this art as well,

they might seem to argue artlessly, which he deemed the height of

oratory.”[366]

So Gerbert used the classic poets in teaching rhetoric, and doubtless the

great prose writers too, with whom he was familiar. Following Cicero’s

precept that the orator should be a proficient reasoner, he prepared his

young rhetoricians by a course in logic, and completed their discipline

with exercises in disputation.

Richer also speaks of Gerbert’s epoch-making mathematical knowledge.[367]

In arithmetic he improved the current methods of computation; in geometry

he taught the traditional methods of measurement descended from the Roman

surveyors, and compiled a work from Boëthius and other sources. For

astronomy he made spheres and other instruments, and in music his teaching

was the best obtainable. In none of these provinces was he an original

inventor; nor did he exhaust the knowledge had by men before him. He was,

however, the embodiment of mediaeval progress, in that he drew

intelligently upon the sources within his reach, and then taught with

understanding and enthusiasm. Richer’s praise is unstinted:

“He began with arithmetic; then taught music, of which there had long

been ignorance in Gaul.... With what pains he set forth the method of

astronomy, it may be well to state, so that the reader may perceive

the sagacity and skill of this great man. This difficult subject he

explained by means of admirable instruments. First he illustrated the

world’s sphere by one of solid wood, the greater by the less. He fixed

it obliquely as to the horizon with two poles, and near the upper pole

set the northern constellations, and by the lower one those of the

south. He determined its position by means of the circle called by the

Greeks _orizon_ and by the Latins _limitans_, because it divides the

constellations which are seen from those which are not. By his sphere

thus fixed, he demonstrated the rising and setting of the stars, and

taught his disciples to recognize them. And at night he followed their

courses and marked the place of their rising and setting upon the

different regions of his model.”

The historian passes on to tell how Gerbert with ingenious devices showed

on his sphere the imaginary circles called parallels, and on another the

movements of the planets, and on still another marked the constellations

of the heavens, so that even a beginner, upon having one constellation

pointed out, could find the others.[368]

In the province of philosophy, Gerbert’s labours extended little beyond

formal logic, philosophy’s instrument. He could do no more than understand

and apply as much of Boëthius’s rendering of the Aristotelian _Organon_ as

he was acquainted with. Yet he appears to have used more of the Boëthian

writings than any man before him, or for a hundred and fifty years after

his death. Richer gives the list. Beyond this evidence, curious testimony

is borne to the nature of Gerbert’s dialectic by Richer’s account of a

notable debate. The year was 980, when the fame of the brilliant young

_scholasticus_ of Rheims had spread through Gaul and penetrated Germany. A

certain master of repute at Magdeburg, named Otric, sent one of his pupils

to report on Gerbert’s teaching, and especially as to his method of laying

out the divisions of philosophy as “the science of things divine and

human.” The pupil returned with notes of Gerbert’s classification, in

which, by error or intention, it was made to appear that he subordinated

physics to mathematics, as species to genus, whereas, in truth, he made

them of equal rank. Otric thought to catch him tripping, and so managed

that a disputation was held between them at a time when Adalberon and

Gerbert were in Italy with the Emperor Otto II. It took place in Ravenna.

The emperor, then nineteen years of age, presided, there being present

many masters and dignitaries of the Church. Holding in his hand a tablet

of Gerbert’s alleged division of the sciences, His Majesty opened the

debate:

“Meditation and discussion, as I think, make for the betterment of

human knowledge, and questions from the wise rouse our thoughtfulness.

Thus knowledge of things is drawn forth by the learned, or discovered

by them and committed to books, which remain to our great good. We

also may be incited by certain objects which draw the mind to a surer

understanding. Observe now, that I am turning over this tablet

inscribed with the divisions of philosophy. Let all consider it

carefully, and each say what he thinks. If it be complete, let it be

confirmed by your approbation. If imperfect, let it be rejected or

corrected.

“Then Otric, taking it before them all, said that it was arranged by

Gerbert, and had been taken down from his lectures. He handed it to

the Lord Augustus, who read it through, and presented it to Gerbert.

The latter, carefully examining it, approved in part, and in part

condemned, asserting that the scheme had not been arranged thus by

him. Asked by Augustus to correct it, he said: ‘Since, O great Caesar

Augustus, I see thee more potent than all these, I will, as is

fitting, obey thy behest. Nor shall I be concerned at the spite of the

malevolent, by whose instigation the very correct division of

philosophy recently set forth so lucidly by me, has been vitiated by

the substitution of a species. I say then, that mathematics, physics,

and theology are to be placed as equals under one genus. The genus

likewise has equal share in them. Nor is it possible that one and the

same species, in one and the same respect, should be co-ordinate with

another species and also be put under it as species under a genus.’”

Then in answer to a demand from Otric for a more explicit statement of his

classification, he said there could be no objection to dividing philosophy

according to Vitruvius (Victorinus) and Boëthius; “for philosophy is the

genus, of which the species are the practical and the theoretical: under

the practical, as species again, come _dispensativa_, _distributiva_ and

_civilis_; under the theoretical fall _phisica naturalis_, _mathematica

intelligibilis_, and _theologia intellectibilis_.”

Otric then wonders that Gerbert put mathematics immediately after physics,

omitting physiology. To which Gerbert replies that physiology stands to

physics as philology to philosophy, of which it is part. Otric changes his

attack to a flank movement, and asks Gerbert what is the _causa_ of

philosophy. Gerbert asks whether he means the cause by which, or the cause

for which, it is devised (_inventa_). Otric replies the latter. “Then,”

says Gerbert, “since you make your question clear, I say that philosophy

was devised that from it we might understand things divine and human.”

“But why use so many words,” says Otric, “to designate the cause of one

thing?” “Because one word may not suffice to designate a cause. Plato uses

three to designate the cause of the creation of the world, to wit, the

_bona Dei voluntas_. He could not have said _voluntas_ simply.” “But,”

says Otric, “he could have said more concisely _Dei voluntas_, for God’s

will is always good, which he would not deny.”

“Here I do not contradict you,” says Gerbert, “but consider: since God

alone is good in himself, and every creature is good only by

participation, the word _bona_ is added to express the quality

peculiar to His nature alone. However this may be, still one word will

not always designate a cause. What is the cause of shadow? Can you put

that in one word? I say, the cause of shadow is a body interposed to

light. It is not ‘body’ nor even ‘body interposed.’ I don’t deny that

the causes of many things can be stated in one word, as the genera of

substance, quantity, or quality, which are the causes of species.

Others cannot so simply be expressed, as _rationale ad mortale_.”

This enigmatic phrase electrifies Otric, who cries: “You put the mortal

under the rational? Who does not know that the rational is confined to

God, angels, and mankind, while the mortal embraces everything mortal, a

limitless mass?”

“To which Gerbert: ‘If, following Porphyry and Boëthius, you make a

careful division of substance, carrying it down to individuals, you

will have the rational broader than the mortal as may readily be

shown. Since substance, admittedly the most general genus, may be

divided into subordinate genera and species down to individuals, it is

to be seen whether all these subordinates may be expressed by a single

word. Clearly, some are designated with one word, as _corpus_, others

with several, as _animatum sensibile_. With like reason, the

subordinate, which is _animal rationale_, may be predicated of the

subject that is _animal rationale mortale_. Not that _rationale_ may

be predicated of what is mortal simply; but _rationale_, I say, joined

to _animal_ is predicated of _mortale_ joined to _animal rationale_.’

“At this, Augustus with a nod ended the argument, since it had lasted

nearly the whole day, and the audience were fatigued with the prolix

and unbroken disputation. He splendidly rewarded Gerbert, who set out

for Gaul with Adalberon.”[369]

Evidently Richer’s account gives merely the captions of this disputation.

There was not the slightest originality in any of the propositions stated

by the disputants; everything is taken from Porphyry and Boëthius and the

current Latin translation of Plato’s _Timaeus_. Yet the whole affair, the

selection of the questions, the nature of the answers, the limitation of

the matter to the bare poles of logical palestrics, is most illustrative

of the mentality and intellectual interests of the late tenth century. The

growth of the mediaeval intellect lay unavoidably through such courses of

discipline. And just as early mediaeval Latin had to save itself from

barbarism by cleaving to grammar, so the best intellect of this early

period grasped at logic not only as the most obviously needed discipline

and guide, but also with imperfect consciousness that this discipline and

means did not contain the goal and plenitude of substantial knowledge.

Grammar was then not simply a means but an end in the study of letters,

and so was logic unconsciously. In the one case and the other, the

palpable need of the _disciplina_ and its difficulties kept the student

from realizing that the instrument was but an instrument.

Moreover, upon Gerbert’s time pressed the specific need to consider just

such questions as the disputation affords a sample of. An enormous mass of

theology, philosophy, and science awaited mastering, the heritage from a

greater past, antique and patristic. Perhaps a true instinct guided

Gerbert and his contemporaries to problems of classification and method as

a primary essential task. Had the Middle Ages been a period when

knowledge, however crude, was perforce advancing through experience,

investigation, and discovery, the problems of classification and method

would not have presented themselves as preliminary. But mediaeval

development lay through the study of what former men had won from nature

or received from God. This was preserved in books which had to be studied

and mastered. Hence classifications of knowledge were essential aids or

sorely needed guides. With a true instinct the Middle Ages first of all

looked within this mass of knowledge for guides to its mazes, seeking a

plan or scheme by the aid of which universal knowledge might be

unravelled, and then reconstructed in forms corresponding to even larger

verities.[370]

II

The decades on either side of the year 1000 were cramped and dull. In

Burgundy, to be sure, the energies of Cluny,[371] under its great abbots,

were rousing the monastic world to a sense of religious and disciplinary

decency. This reform, however, took little interest in culture. The monks

of Cluny were commonly instructed in the rudiments of the Seven Arts. They

had a little mathematics; bits of crude physical knowledge had unavoidably

come to them; and just as unavoidably had they made use of extracts from

the pagan poets in studying Latinity.[372] But they did not follow letters

for their own sake, nor knowledge because they loved it and felt that love

a holy one. Monastic principles hardly justified such a love, and Cluny’s

abbots had enough to do in bringing the monastic world to decency, without

dallying with inapplicable knowledge or the charms of pagan poetry.

Religious reforms in the ninth century had helped letters in the cathedral

and monastic schools of Gaul. The latter soon fell back to ignorance; but

among the cathedral schools, Chartres and Rheims continued to flourish. A

moral ordering of life increases thoughtfulness and may stimulate study.

Hence, in the latter part of the tenth century, the Cluniac reforms, like

the earlier reforming movements, affected letters favourably in the

monasteries. Here and there an exceptional man created an exceptional

situation. Such a one was Abbo, Abbot of St. Benedict’s at Fleury on the

Loire, who died the year after Gerbert. He was fortunate in his excellent

pupil and biographer, Aimoin, who ascribes to him as liberal sentiments

toward study as were consistent with a stern monasticism:

“He admonished his hearers that having cast out the thorns of sin,

they should sow the little gardens of their hearts with the spices of

the divine virtues. The battle lay against the vices of the flesh, and

it was for them to consider what arms they should oppose to its

delights. To complete their armament, after the vows of prayer, and

the manly strife of fastings, he deemed that the study of letters

would advantage them, and especially the exercise of composition.

Indeed he himself, the studious man, scarcely let pass a moment when

he was not reading, writing, or dictating.”[373]

It is curious to observe the unavoidable influence of a crude Latin

education upon the most strenuous of these reforming monks. In 994 Odilo

became Abbot of Cluny. After a most notable and effective rule of more

than half a century, he died just as the year 1049 began. The closing

scenes are typically illustrative of the passing of an early mediaeval

saint. The dying abbot preaches and comforts his monks, gives his

blessing, adores the Cross, repels the devil:

“I warn thee, enemy of the human race, turn from me thy plots and

hidden wiles, for by me is the Cross of the Lord, which I always

adore: the Cross my refuge, my way and virtue; the Cross,

unconquerable banner, the invincible weapon. The Cross repels every

evil, and puts darkness to flight. Through this divine Cross I

approach my journey; the Cross is my life--death to thee, Enemy!”

The next day, “in the presence of all, the Creed is read for a shield of

faith against the deceptions of malignant spirits and the attacks of evil

thoughts; Augustine is brought in to expound, intently listened to, and

discussed.”[374]

For Odilo, the Cross is a divine, not to say magic, safeguard. His prayer

and imprecation have something of the nature of an uttered spell. No

antique zephyrs seem to blow in this atmosphere of faith and fear, in

which he passed his life, and performed his miracles before and after

death. Nevertheless the antique might mould his phrases, and perhaps

unconsciously affect his ethical conceptions. He wrote a Life of a former

abbot of Cluny, ascribing to him the four _cardinales disciplinas_, in

which he strove to perfect himself “in order that through _prudentia_ he

might assure the welfare of himself and those in his charge; that through

_temperantia_ (which by another name is called _modestia_), by a proper

measure of a just discretion, he might modestly discharge the spiritual

business entrusted to him; that through _fortitudo_ he might resist and

conquer the devil and his vices; and that through _justitia_, which

permeates all virtues and seasons them, he might live soberly and piously

and justly, fight the good fight and finish his course.”[375]

Thus the antique virtues shape Odilo’s thoughts, as seven hundred years

before him the point of view and reasoning of Ambrose’s _De officiis

ministrorum_ were set by Cicero’s _De officiis_.[376] The same classically

touched phrases, if not conceptions, pass on to Odilo’s pupil and

biographer, the monk Jotsaldus, to whom we owe our description of Odilo’s

last moments. He ascribes the four cardinal virtues to his hero, and then

defines them from the antique standpoint, but with Christian turns of

thought:

“The philosophers define Prudence as the search for truth and the

thirst for fuller knowledge. In which virtue Odilo was so

distinguished that neither by day nor night did he cease from the

search for truth. The Book of the divine contemplation was always in

his hands, and ceaselessly he spoke of Scripture for the edification

of all, and prayer ever followed reading.

“Justice, as the philosophers say, is that which renders each his

due, lays no claim to what is another’s, and neglects self-advantage,

so as to maintain what is equitable for all.” [To illustrate this

virtue in Odilo, the biographer gives instances of his charity, by

which one observes the Christian turn taken by the conception.]

“Fortitude is to hold the mind above the dread of danger, to fear

nothing save the base, and bravely bear adversity and prosperity.

Supported by this virtue, it is difficult to say how brave he was in

repelling the plots of enemies and how patient in enduring them. You

might observe in him this very privilege of patience; to those who

injured him, as another David he repaid the grace of benefit, and

toward those who hated him, he preserved a stronger benevolence.”

[Again the Christian turn of thought.]

“Temperance, last in the catalogue of the aforesaid virtues, according

to its definition maintains moderation and order in whatever is to be

said or done. Here he was so mighty as to hold to moderation and

observe propriety (_ordinem_) in all his actions and commands, and

show a wonderful discretion. Following the blessed Jerome, he tempered

fasting to the golden mean, according to the weakness or strength of

the body, thus avoiding fanaticism and preserving continency. Neither

elegance nor squalor was noticeable in his dress. He tempered gravity

of conduct with gaiety of countenance. He was severe in the correction

of vice as the occasion demanded, gracious in pardoning, in both

balancing an impartial scale.”[377]

III

A friend of Odilo was Gerbert’s pupil Fulbert, Bishop of Chartres from

1006 to 1028. His name is joined forever with that chief cathedral school

of early mediaeval France, which he so firmly and so broadly

re-established as to earn a founder’s fame. It will be interesting to

notice its range of studies. Chartres was an ancient home of letters.

Caesar[378] speaks of the land of the Carnuti as the centre of Druidism in

Gaul; and under the Empire, liberal studies quickly sprang up in the

Gallo-Roman city. They did not quite cease even in Merovingian times, and

revived with the Carolingian revival. Thenceforth they were pursued

continuously at the convent school of St. Peter, if not at the school

attached to the cathedral. For some years before he was made bishop, the

grave and kindly Fulbert had been the head of this cathedral school,

where he did not cease to teach until his death. As bishop, widely

esteemed and influential, he rebuilt the cathedral, aided by the kings of

France and Denmark, the dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy, the counts of

Champagne and Blois. His vast crypt still endures, a shadowy goal for

thousands of pilgrim knees, and an ample support for the great edifice

above it. Admiring tradition has ascribed to him even this glory of a

later time.

From near and far, pious students came to benefit by the instruction of

the school, of which Fulbert was the head and inspiration. Close was their

intercourse with their “Venerable Socrates” in the small school buildings

near the cathedral. From the accounts, we can almost see him moving among

them, stopping to correct one here, or looking over the shoulder of

another engaged upon a geometric figure, and putting some new problem.

Among the pupils there might be rivalry, quarrels, breaches of decorum;

but there was the master, ever grave and steadfast, always ready to

encourage with his sympathy, but prepared also to reprove, either silently

by withdrawing his confidence, or in words, as when he forbade an

instructor to joke when explaining Donatus: “spectaculum factus es

omnibus; cave.”

Some of these scholars became men of sanctity and renown--Berengar of

Tours gained an unhappy fame. A fellow-student wrote to him in later years

addressing him as foster-brother:

“I have called thee foster-brother because of that sweetest common

life led by us while youths in the Academy of Chartres under our

venerable Socrates. Well we proved his saving doctrine and holy

living, and now that he is with God we should hope to be aided by his

prayers. Surely he is mindful of us, cherishing us even more than when

he moved a pilgrim in the body of this death, and drew us to him by

vows and tacit prayer, entreating us in those evening colloquies

(_vespertina colloquia_) in the garden by the chapel, that we should

tread the royal way, and cleave to the footprints of the holy

fathers.”[379]

The cathedral school included youths receiving their first lessons, as

well as older scholars and instructors. They lived together under rules,

and together celebrated the services of the cathedral, chanting the

matins, the hours, and the mass. The Trivium and Quadrivium made the basis

of their studies. Text-books and courses were already some centuries old.

The first branch of the Trivium was Grammar, which included literature by

way of illustration; and he who held the chair had the title of

_grammaticus_. For the beginners, _Donatus_ was the text-book, and

_Priscianus_ for the more advanced.[380] Nor was Martianus Capella

neglected. The student annotated these works with citations from the

_Etymologies_ of Isidore. Divers mnemotechnic processes assisted him to

commit the contents to memory. The grammatical course included the writing

of compositions in prose and verse, according to rule, and the reading of

classic authors. For their school verses in metre the pupils used Bede’s

_De arte metrica_, an encyclopaedia of metrical forms. They also wrote

accentual and rhymed Latin verse. Of profane authors the Library appears

to have contained Livy, Valerius Maximus, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Statius,

Servius the commentator on Virgil; and of writers who were Christian

Classics in the Middle Ages, Orosius, Gregory of Tours, Fortunatus,

Sedulius, Arator, Prudentius, and Boëthius, the last named being the most

important single source of early mediaeval education. Rhetoric, the second

branch of the Trivium, bore that vague relationship to grammar which it

bears in modern parlance. The rules of the rhetoricians were learned; the

works of profane or Christian orators were read and imitated. This study

left its mark on mediaeval sermons and _Vitae Sanctorum_.

As for the third branch, Dialectic, Fulbert’s pupils studied the logical

treatises in general use in the earlier Middle Ages: to wit, the

_Categories_ and the _De interpretatione_ of Aristotle, and Porphyry’s

_Introduction_, all in the Latin of Boëthius. For works which might be

regarded as commentaries upon these, the school had at its disposal the

_Categories_ ascribed to Augustine and Apuleius’s _De interpretatione_,

Cicero’s _Topica_, and Boëthius’s discussion of definition, division, and

categorical and hypothetical syllogisms--the logical writings expounded

by Gerbert at Rheims. The school had likewise Gerbert’s own _Libellus de

ratione uti_ and Boëthius’s _De consolatione_, that chief ethical compend

for the early Middle Ages; also the writings of Eriugena, and Dionysius

the Areopagite in Eriugena’s translation. Whether or not it possessed the

current Latin version of Plato’s _Timaeus_, Fulbert and Berengar at all

events refer to Plato in terms of eulogy.

Passing to the Quadrivium, we find that Fulbert had studied its four

branches under Gerbert. In Arithmetic the students used the treatise of

Boëthius, and also the Abacus, a table of vertical columns, with Roman

numerals at the top to indicate the order of units, tens, and hundreds

according to the decimal system. In Geometry the students likewise fell

back upon Boëthius. Astronomy, the third branch of the Quadrivium, had for

its practical object the computation of the Church’s calendar. The pupils

learned the signs of the Zodiac and were instructed in the method of

finding the stars by the _Astrolabius_, a sphere (such as Gerbert had

constructed) representing the constellations, and turning upon a tube as

an axis, which served to fix the polar star. Music, the fourth branch of

the Quadrivium, was zealously cultivated. For its theory, the treatise of

Boëthius was studied; and Fulbert and his scholars did much to advance the

music of the liturgy, composing texts and airs for organ chanting.

In addition to the Quadrivium, medicine was taught. The students learned

receipts and processes handed down by tradition and commonly ascribed to

Hippocrates. For more convenient memorizing, Fulbert cast them into verse.

Such “medicine” was not founded on observation; and a mediaeval

scholar-copyist would as naturally transcribe a medical receipt-book as

any other work coming within the range of his stylus. One may remember

that in the early Middle Ages the relic was the common means of cure.

The seven _Artes_ of the Trivium and Quadrivium were the handmaids of

Theology; and Fulbert gave elaborate instruction in this Christian queen

of the sciences, expounding the Scriptures, explaining the Liturgy, and

taking up the controversies of the time. As a part of this sacred

science, the students apparently were taught something of Canon and Roman

law and of Charlemagne’s Capitularies.[381]

IV

The Chartres Quadrivium represents the extreme compass of mathematical and

physical studies in France in the eleventh century, when slight interest

was taken in physical science--a phrase far too grand to designate the

crass traditional views of nature which prevailed. Indifference to natural

knowledge was the most palpable intellectual defect of Ambrose and

Augustine, and the most portentous. The coming centuries, which were to

look upon their writings as universal guides to living and knowing, found

therein no incentive to observe or study the natural world. Of course the

Carolingian period evolved out of itself no such desire; nor did the

eleventh century. At the best, the general understanding of physical fact

remained that which had been handed down. It was gleaned from the books

commonly read, the _Physiologus_ or the edifying stories of miracles in

the myriad _Vitae Sanctorum_, quite as much as from the scant information

given in Isidore’s _Origines_, Bede’s _Liber de temporibus_, or the _De

universo_ of Rabanus Maurus.

So much for natural science. In historical writing the quality of

composition rarely rose above that of the tenth century.[382] No sign of

critical acumen had appeared, and the writers of the period show but a

narrow local interest. There was no France, but everywhere a parcelling of

the land into small sections of misrule, between which travel was

difficult and dangerous. The chroniclers confine their attention, as

doubtless their knowledge also was confined, to the region where they

lived. To lift history over these narrow barriers, there was needed the

renewal of the royal power, which came with the century’s close, and the

stimulus to curiosity springing from the Crusades.[383]

In fine, the eleventh century was crude and inchoate, preparatory to the

intellectual activity and the unleashed energies of life which mark the

opening of the twelfth. Yet the mediaeval mind was assimilating and

appropriating dynamically its lessons from the Fathers, as well as those

portions of the antique heritage of thought which, so far, it had felt a

need of. Difficult problems were stated, but in ways presenting, as it

were, the apices of alternatives too narrow to hold truth, which lies less

frequently in warring opposites than in an inclusive and discriminating

conciliation. This century, especially when we fix our attention upon

France, appears as the threshold of mediaeval thinking, the immediate

antecedent to mediaeval formulations of philosophic and theological

conviction. The controversies and the different mental tendencies which

thereafter were to move through such large and often diverging courses,

drew their origin from still prior times. With the coming of the eleventh

century they had been sturdily cradled, and seemed safe from the danger of

dying in infancy. Thence on through the twelfth century, through the

thirteenth, the climacteric of mediaeval thought, opinions and convictions

are set in multitudes of propositions, relating to many provinces of human

meditation.

These masses of propositions, convictions, opinions, philosophic and

religious, constitute the religious philosophy of the Middle

Ages--scholasticism as it commonly is called. Hereafter[384] it will be

necessary to consider that large matter in its continuity of development,

with its roots or antecedents stretching back through the eleventh century

to the Carolingian period, and beyond. Mediaeval thinkers will then be

seen to fall into two classes, very roughly speaking, the one tending to

set authority above reason, and the other tending to set reason above

authority. Both classes appear in the ninth century, represented

respectively by Rabanus Maurus and Eriugena. In the eleventh they are also

evident. St. Anselm, who came from Italy, is the most admirable

representative of the first class, being in heart and mind a theologian

whose philosophy revolved entire around his faith. Of him we have spoken;

and here may mention in contrast with him two Frenchmen, Berengar of Tours

and Roscellinus. In place and time they come within the scope of the

present chapter; nor were their mental processes such as to attach them to

a later period. By temperament, and in somewhat confused expression, they

set reason above authority, save that of Scripture as they understood it.

Berengar was born, apparently at Tours, and of wealthy parents, just as

the tenth century closed. After studying under his uncle, the Treasurer of

St. Martin, he came to Chartres, where Fulbert was bishop. Judging from a

general consensus of expression from men who became his opponents, but had

been his fellow-pupils, he quickly aroused attention by his talents, and

anxiety or enmity by his pride and the self-confident assertion of his

opinions. He would neither accept with good grace the admonitions of those

about him, nor follow the authority of the Fathers. He was said to have

despised even the great grammarians and logicians, Priscian, Donatus, and

Boëthius. Why err with everybody if everybody errs, he asked. He appears

as a vain man eager for admiration. The report comes down that he imitated

Fulbert’s manner in lecturing, first covering his visage with a hood so as

to seem in deep meditation, and then speaking in a gentle, plaintive

voice. From Chartres he passed to Angers, where he filled the office of

archdeacon, and thence he returned to Tours, was placed over the Church

schools of St. Martin’s, and in the course of time began to lecture on the

Eucharist. This was between the years 1030 and 1040.

That a man’s fortunes and fame are linked to a certain doctrine or

controversy may be an accident of environment. Berengar chose to adduce

and partly follow the teachings of Eriugena, whose fame was great, but

whose orthodoxy was tainted. The nature of the Eucharist leant itself to

dispute, and from the time of Ratramnus, Radbertus, and Eriugena, it was

common for theologians to try their hand on it, if only in order to

demonstrate their adherence to the extreme doctrines accepted by the

Church. These were not the doctrines of Eriugena, nor were they held by

Berengar, who would not bring himself to admit an absolute substantial

change in the bread and wine. Possibly his convictions were less

irrational than the dominant doctrine. Yet he appears to have asserted

them, not because he had a clearer mind than others, but by reason of his

more self-assertive and combative temperament. He was not an original

thinker, but a controversial and turgid reasoner, who naturally enough was

forced into all kinds of tergiversation in order to escape condemnation as

a heretic. His self-assertiveness settled on the most obvious theological

dispute of the time, and his self-esteem maintained the superiority of his

own reason over the authorities adduced by his adversaries. Of course he

never impugned the authority of Scripture, but relied on it to

substantiate his views, merely asserting that a reasonable interpretation

was better than a foolish one. Throughout the controversy, one may observe

that Berengar’s understanding of fact kept somewhat closer than that of

his opponents’ to the tangible realities of sense. But a difference of

intellectual temperament lay at the bottom of his dissent; and had not the

Eucharist presented itself as the readiest topic of dispute, he would

doubtless have fallen upon some other question. As it was, his arguments

gained adherents, the dominant view being repellent to independent minds.

Still, it won the day, and Berengar was condemned by more than one

council, and forced into all manner of equivocal retractions, by which at

least he saved his life, and died in extreme old age.

It may be that a larger relative import attributed by Berengar and also

Roscellin to the tangibilities of sense-perception, led the latter at the

close of the century to put forth views on the nature of universals which

have given him a shadowy repute as the father of nominalism. The

Eucharistic controversy pertained primarily to Christian dogmatics. That

regarding universals, or general ideas, pertains to philosophy, and, from

the standpoint of formal logic, lies at the foundations of consistent

thinking. So closely does it make part of the development of

scholasticism, that its discussion had best be postponed; merely assuming

for the present that Roscellin’s thinking upon the topic to which his name

is attached was not superior in method and analysis to Berengar’s upon the

Eucharist.

One cannot escape the conclusion that intellectually the eleventh century

in France was crude. The mediaeval intellect was still but imperfectly

developed; its manifestations had not reached the zenith of their energy.

Yet doubtless the mental development of mankind proceeds at a more uniform

rate than would appear from the brilliant phenomena which crowd the eras

of apparent culmination, in contrast with the previous dulness. The

profounder constancy of growth may be discerned by scrutinizing those dumb

courses of gestation, from which spring the marvels of the great epoch.

The opening of the twelfth century was to inaugurate a brilliant

intellectual era in France. The efficient preparation stretched back into

the latter half of the eleventh, whose Catholic progress heralded a period

of awakening. The Church already was striving to accomplish its own

reordering and regeneration, free itself from things that drag and hinder,

from lay investiture and simony, abominations through which feudal

depotentiating principles had intruded into the ecclesiastic body; free

itself likewise from clerical marriage and concubinage, which kept the

clergy from being altogether clergy, and weighted the Church with the

claims of half-spurious priests’ offspring. In France the reform of the

monks comes first, impelled by Cluny; and when Cluny herself becomes less

zealous, because too great and rich, the spirit of soldiery against sin

reincarnates itself in the Grand-Chartreuse, in Citeaux and Clairvaux. The

reform of the secular clergy follows, with Hildebrand the veritable

master; for the Church was passing from prelacy to papacy, and the Pope

was becoming a true monarch, instead of nominal head of an episcopal

aristocracy.

The perfected organization and unceasing purification of the Church made

one part of the general progress of the period. Another consisted in the

disengaging of the greater powers from out the indiscriminate anarchy of

feudalism, and the advance of the French monarchy, under Louis the

Sixth,[385] toward effective sovereignty, all making for a surer law and

order throughout France. Then through the eleventh and twelfth centuries

came the struggle of the people, out of serfdom into some control over

their own persons and fortunes. The serfs were affranchised and became

peasants; the huddled dwellers in the squalid towns tended to become

burghers with actual strength and chartered power to protect themselves

against signorial tyranny. Their rights limited and fixed the exactions of

their lords. Everywhere the population increased; old cities grew apace,

and a multitude of new ones came into existence. Economic evolution

progressed, advancing with the affranchisement of industry, the

organization of guilds, the growth of trade, the opening of new markets,

fairs, and freer avenues of commerce: thus more wealth was diffused among

the many. Architecture with new civic resources was pushing on through

Romanesque toward Gothic, while the affiliated arts of sculpture and

painting were becoming more expressive. Then the Crusades began, and did

their work of spreading knowledge through the Occident, carrying foreign

ideas and institutions across provincial barriers. The Crusades could not

have taken place had it not been for the freeing of social forces during

the half century preceding their inception in the year 1099. They were led

up to and made possible by the advance of the papacy to domination, by the

growth of chivalry, and the habit of making far pilgrimages to holy

places, and by the wealth coming with more active trade and industry.

Thus humanity was universally bestirring itself throughout the land we

know as France. Such a bestirring could not fail to crown itself with a

mightier winging of the spirit through the higher provinces of thought.

This was to show itself among saints and doctors of the Church in their

philosophies and theologies of the mind and heart; with like power it was

to show itself among those hardier rationalists who with difficulty and

misgivings, or under hard compulsion, still kept themselves within the

Church’s pale. It showed itself too with heretics who let themselves be

burned rather than surrender their outlawed convictions. It was also to

show itself through things beautiful, in the strivings of art toward the

perfect symbolical presentation of what the soul cherished or abhorred;

and show itself too in the literature of the common tongues as well as the

literature of the time-honoured Latin. In fine, it was to show itself,

through every heightened faculty and appetition of the universally

striving and desirous soul of man, in a larger, bolder understanding and

appreciation of life.

CHAPTER XIII

MENTAL ASPECTS OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY: GERMANY; ENGLAND; CONCLUSION

I. German Appropriation of Christianity and Antique Culture.

II. Othloh’s Spiritual Conflict.

III. England; Closing Comparisons.

I

In the Germans of the eleventh century one notes a strong sense of German

selfhood, supplemented by a consciousness that Latin culture is a foreign

matter, introduced as a thing of great value which it were exceeding well

for them to make their own. They are even conscious of having been

converted to Latin Christianity, which on their part they are imbuing with

German thoughts and feeling. They are not Romance people; they have never

spoken Latin; it has never been and will never be their speech. They will

master what they can of the antique education which has been brought to

them. But even as it was no part of their forefathers’ lives, so it will

never penetrate their own personalities, so as to make them the spiritual

descendants of any antique Latin or Latinized people. They have never been

and never will be Latinized; but will remain forever Germans.

Consequently the appropriation of the Latin culture in Germany is a labour

of translation: first a palpable labour of translation from the Latin

language into the German tongue, and secondly, and for always, a more

subtle kind of translation of the antique influence into a German

understanding of the same, and gradually into informing principles made

use of by a strong and advancing racial genius. The German genius will be

enlarged and developed through these foreign elements, but it will never

cease to use the Latin culture as a means of informing and developing

itself.

No need to say that these strong statements apply to the Germans in their

home north of the Alps and east of the Rhine; not to those who left the

Fatherland, and in the course of generations became Italians, for example.

Moreover, general phrases must always be taken subject to qualification

and rounding of the corners. No people can absorb a foreign influence

without in some degree being made over into the likeness of what they are

receiving, and to that extent ceasing to be their unmitigated selves. In

general, however, while Latin Christianity and the antique culture both

were brought to Germany from abroad, the Germans were converted or

transformed only by the former, and merely took and used the latter--a

true statement this, so far as one may separate these two great mingled

factors of mediaeval progress.