His doctor’s triennium had scarcely expired when he was recalled to

Cologne to take the Regency of the _Studium Generale_, newly erected

in that city; and St. Thomas accompanied him to teach, as licentiate

or bachelor, in the school which proved the germ of a future

university. This epoch of Albert’s life appears to have been that in

which most of his philosophic writings were produced. They consist

chiefly of his “Commentary on Aristotle,” in which, after collating

the different translations of that author with extraordinary care, he

aims at presenting the entire body of his philosophy in a popular as

well as a Christian form; a commentary on the Book of the Sentences;

other commentaries on the Gospels, and on the works of St. Denys,

all of which are preserved; and a devout paraphrase of the Book of

the Sentences cast into the form of prayers, which has been lost.

His published works alone fill twenty one folio volumes, and it is

said that a great number of other treatises exist in manuscript.

Fleury, who is pleased to say that he knows nothing great about this

writer except his volumes, takes in very bad part the labour he has

expended on the study of natural science. The course of the stars;

the structure of the universe; the nature of plants, animals, and

minerals, appear to him unsuitable subjects for the investigation

of a religious man; and he hints that the seculars who paid for the

support of such students by their liberal alms expected them to

spend their time on more profitable studies. The reader need not be

reminded that Albert was not singular in directing his attention to

these subjects, and that the scientific labours of our own Venerable

Bede have ever been considered as among his best titles to admiration

as a scholar. But more than this, it is surely a narrow and illiberal

view to regard the cultivation of science as foreign to the purposes

of religion. At the time of which we are now speaking, as in our

own, physical science was unhappily too often made an instrument

for doing good service to the cause of infidelity. It was chiefly,

if not exclusively, in the hands of the Arabian philosophers, who

had drawn great part of their errors from the physics of Aristotle.

Schlegel, indeed, considers that the extraordinary popularity of

Aristotle in the Middle Ages did not so much arise from the love of

the mediæval schoolmen for his rationalistic philosophy, as from

the attraction they felt to some great and mysterious knowledge

of nature. His works seemed to give promise of unlocking to them

those vast intellectual treasures reserved for the scrutiny of our

own age, but of the existence of which they possessed a kind of dim

half-consciousness. Hence the teachers of the thirteenth century

could hardly do more effective service to the cause of truth than by

handling these subjects according to a Christian method, and proving

that faith and science were in no sense opposed to one another.

Hallam affects to grieve over the evil inflicted on Europe by the

credit which Albert’s influence gave to the study of astrology,

alchemy, and magic. The author of Cosmos, however, passes a very

different verdict on the nature of his scientific writings, and

one which our readers will be disposed to receive as more worthy

of attention. “Albertus Magnus,” he says, “was equally active and

influential in promoting the study of natural science, and of the

Aristotelian philosophy.... His works contain some exceedingly acute

remarks on the organic structure and physiology of plants. One of

his works, bearing the title of _Liber Cosmographicus de Natura

Locorum_, is a species of physical geography. I have found in it

considerations on the dependence of temperature concurrently on

latitude and elevation, and on the effect of different angles of

incidence of the sun’s rays in heating the ground, which have excited

my surprise.”[194] Jourdain, another modern critic, says, “Whether we

consider him as a theologian or a philosopher, Albert was undoubtedly

one of the most extraordinary men of his age; I might say, one of the

most wonderful men of genius who has appeared in past times.”

It may be of interest to notice here a few of the scientific views of

Albert, which show how much he owed to his own sagacious observation

of natural phenomena, and how far he was in advance of his age. He

decides that the Milky Way is nothing but a vast assemblage of stars,

but supposes, naturally enough, that they occupy the orbit which

receives the light of the sun. The figures visible on the moon’s

disk are not, he says, as has hitherto been supposed, reflections

of the seas and mountains of the earth, but configurations of her

own surface. He notices, in order to correct it, the assertion of

Aristotle that lunar rainbows appear only twice in fifty years;

“I myself,” he says, “have observed two in a single year.” He has

something to say on the refraction of the solar ray, notices certain

crystals which have a power of refraction, and remarks that none of

the ancients, and few moderns, were acquainted with the properties

of mirrors. In his tenth book, wherein he catalogues and describes

all the trees, plants, and herbs known in his time, he observes, “all

that is here set down is the result of our own experience, or has

been borrowed from authors, whom we know to have written what their

personal experience has confirmed: for in these matters experience

alone can give certainty.” (_Experimentum solum certificat talibus._)

Such an expression, which might have proceeded from the pen of Bacon,

argues in itself a prodigious scientific progress, and shows that the

mediæval friar was on the track so successfully pursued by modern

natural philosophy. He had fairly shaken off the shackles which had

hitherto tied up discovery, and was the slave neither of Pliny nor of

Aristotle.

He treats as fabulous the commonly-received idea, in which Bede had

acquiesced, that the region of the earth south of the equator was

uninhabitable, and considers that, from the equator to the south

pole, the earth was not only habitable, but, in all probability,

actually inhabited, except directly at the poles, where he imagines

the cold to be excessive. If there are any animals there, he says,

they must have very thick skins to defend them from the rigour of

the climate, and are probably of a _white colour_. The intensity of

cold is, however, tempered by the action of the sea. He describes

the antipodes and the countries they comprise, and divides the

climate of the earth into seven zones. He smiles with a scholar’s

freedom at the simplicity of those who suppose that persons living

at the opposite region of the earth must fall off--an opinion

which can only arise out of the grossest ignorance, “for, when we

speak of the _lower_ hemisphere this must be understood merely

as relatively to ourselves.” It is as a geographer that Albert’s

superiority to the writers of his own time chiefly appears. Bearing

in mind the astonishing ignorance which then prevailed on this

subject, it is truly admirable to find him correctly tracing the

chief mountain chains of Europe, with the rivers which take their

source in each, remarking on portions of coast which have in later

times been submerged by the ocean, and islands which have been

raised, by volcanic action, above the level of the sea, noticing the

modification of climate caused by mountains, seas, and forests; and

the divisions of the human race, whose differences he ascribes to

the effect of the countries they inhabit. In speaking of the British

Isles, he alludes to the commonly-received idea that another distant

island, called Tile or Thule, existed far in the Western Ocean,

uninhabitable by reason of its frightful climate, but which, he says,

has perhaps not yet been visited by man. He was acquainted with the

sleep of plants, with the periodical opening and closing of blossoms,

with the diminution of sap during evaporation from the cuticle of the

leaves, and with the influence of the distribution of the bundles

of vessels on the folial indentations.[195] His minute observations

on the forms and variety of plants intimate an exquisite sense of

floral beauty. He distinguishes the star from the bell flower, tells

us that a red rose will turn white when submitted to the vapour of

sulphur, and makes some very sagacious observations on the subject

of germination. The extraordinary erudition and originality of

this treatise has drawn from M. Meyer the following comment:--“No

botanist who lived before Albert can be compared to him, unless it be

Theophrastus, with whom he was not acquainted; and after him none has

painted nature in such living colours, or studied it so profoundly,

until the time of Conrad, Gesner, and Cesalpini. All honour, then, to

the man who made such astonishing progress in the science of nature

as to find no one, I will not say to surpass, but even to equal him

for the space of three centuries.”

In the Treatise on Animals which Jourdain particularly praises,

nineteen books are a paraphrase of Michael Scott’s translation of

Aristotle, but the remaining seven books are Albert’s own, and form,

says Jourdain a precious link between ancient and modern science.

It was not extraordinary that one who had so deeply studied nature,

and had mastered so many of her secrets, should by his wondering

contemporaries have been judged to have owed his marvellous knowledge

to a supernatural source, or that his mechanical contrivances,[196]

his knowledge of the power of mirrors, and his production of a winter

garden, or hothouse, where, on the feast of the Epiphany 1249, he

exhibited to William of Holland, king of the Romans, plants and

fruit-trees in full blossom, should have subjected him in the mind

of the vulgar to the suspicion of sorcery. But it is certainly

surprising that such charges should be reproduced by modern critics,

who, it might have been thought, would have condemned the very belief

in witchcraft as a mediæval superstition. The more so as Albert

devotes no inconsiderable portion of his pages to the exposure and

refutation of those forbidden arts, which he will not allow to be

reckoned among the sciences, such as geomancy, chiromancy, and a

formidable list of other branches of magic.

During the time that Albert was engaged in these labours, his daily

life was one which might rather have seemed that of a contemplative

than of a student of physical science. “I have seen, and know of a

truth,” says his disciple Thomas of Cantimpré, “that the venerable

Albert, whilst for many years he daily lectured on theology, yet

watched day and night in prayer, daily recited the entire Psalter,

and at the conclusion of every lesson and disputation gave himself up

to Divine contemplation.” His skill as a master drew an incredible

number of students to Cologne, whom he not only inspired with his

own love of science, but directed in the spiritual life. Among

these were the blessed Ambrose of Siena, and Ulrich of Engelbrecht,

who afterwards became provincial of Germany, and made use of the

mechanical and scientific lore he had acquired from his master in the

construction of the great organ in Strasburg cathedral.

But the fame of all the other pupils of Albert pales like his own

before that of St. Thomas of Aquin, who claims our notice in these

pages less in his character of saint and theologian than in that of

Regent of schools. From the period of his promotion to the doctorate

to the day of his death, he was incessantly engaged in the work

of teaching, as a very brief outline of his life will show. After

lecturing for four years in Cologne, he was recalled to Paris in

order to take his degrees, and though under the accustomed age, for

he was then but twenty-five, no opposition was offered on the part

of the university to his being received as Bachelor, and lecturing

as such in the public schools. But at the end of the year, when he

should, by right, have proceeded to the degree of Doctor, the quarrel

which had already broken out between the Seculars and Regulars was

fanned into a flame by the calumnies of William de St. Amour, and the

secular Regents persisted in refusing to admit the friars to any of

the theological chairs. The dispute being at last referred to Rome,

St. Thomas was summoned thither, and by his eloquent defence procured

the condemnation of St. Amour’s book on “The Perils of the Latter

Times,” in which the religious orders were attacked in scandalous

terms. Not only were the deputies of the university obliged to

subscribe this condemnation, but also to promise on oath, in presence

of the cardinals, to receive members of the two mendicant orders

to their academic degrees, and especially St. Bonaventure and St.

Thomas, who had hitherto been unable to obtain their Doctor’s caps.

The publication of the Pope’s bull, and the authority of St. Louis,

finally brought this vexatious dispute to a close, but the university

authorities, though forced to yield, contrived to give expression to

their ill-will by an act which provided that the Dominicans should

always hold the last place, not only after the secular regents, but

after those of every other religious body.[197]

On the 23rd of October, 1257, the two saints were received to

their Doctor’s degree. St. Thomas, who had no small difficulty in

overcoming the scruples of his humility, and who only yielded at

last to the orders of his superiors, chose for the text of his “Act

of Theology,” not as it would appear without a divine inspiration,

the words of the Psalmist, “Thou waterest the hills from Thy upper

rooms; the earth shall be filled with the fruit of Thy works;”[198]

words which he interpreted to refer to Jesus Christ, who, as the Head

of men and angels, waters the heavenly mountains with the torrent

of His graces, and fills the Church with the fruit of His works, in

the Sacraments which convey to us the merits of His Passion. But as

Père Croiset observes, the event gave to this text the character of a

prophecy regarding his own future career.

Having taken his Doctor’s degree, he now, according to custom, taught

in his own school, having under him a bachelor, who appears to have

been either Annibal Annibali, his particular friend, and afterwards

cardinal, or Peter Tarantasio, afterwards Pope Innocent V. Many of

his theological works were composed during the time he was teaching

at Paris, and among the rest his “Summa against the Gentiles,”

written at the particular request of St. Raymond Pennafort. Father

Nicholas Marsillac, one of his disciples, who gave evidence at

the process of his canonisation, speaking of his extreme love of

poverty, declared that when he was composing this work, he was often

in want of paper to write it on. Nor were his charity and humility

less remarkable than his spirit of detachment. In the arena of

disputation, where the desire to be right, and the shame of appearing

wrong, are apt enough to elicit warm feelings and sharp words, those

who watched him the most closely never saw his tranquillity for one

moment disturbed;[199] master of himself and of his passions, he

possessed his soul in meekness and patience.

On the death of Alexander IV., in 1261, his successor, Urban IV.,

summoned St. Thomas to Rome, where he continued to discharge the same

functions as at Paris, and composed a great number of his theological

treatises. It was also during this period of his life that he visited

England, being present as Definitor to the General Chapter, held

at the Blackfriars in London, in the year 1263. Immediately on his

return he was called to Orvieto, and charged by Urban to draw up an

office for the newly-appointed Feast of Corpus Christi. “What chiefly

strikes us in this office,” says Dom Guéranger,[200] “is the grand

scholastic form which it presents. Each of the Responsories at Matins

is composed of two sentences, one drawn from the Old, and the other

from the New Testament, which are thus made to render their united

testimony to the great mystery which is the object of the Feast.

This idea, which has in it something truly great, was unknown to St.

Gregory and the other authors of the ancient liturgy. But St. Thomas

possessed the genius not only of a theologian, but of a poet. In his

prose _Lauda Sion_, as the same writer observes, he has found means

to unite scholastic precision to poetry, and even to rhyme. For,”

he adds, “every sentiment of order necessarily resolves itself into

harmony, and hence, St. Thomas, the most perfect scholastic of the

thirteenth century, is on that very account its most sublime poet.”

About the same time he appears to have composed his Treatise on the

“Unity of the Intellect,” against the errors of Averrhoes; at least

it is known to have been written during the pontificate of Urban IV.,

who died in 1264.

Clement IV., who succeeded him, showed himself no less sensible

of the merits of the great doctor than his predecessor had been.

He wished to have raised him to the archbishopric of Naples, and

even published a Bull conferring that dignity on him, but the

prayer of the saint induced him to suppress it, being unwilling, by

persisting in his design, to afflict one so dear to him. St. Thomas

was therefore left in peace, and he used his liberty to commence his

great work, “The Summa of Theology,” of which John XXII. is reported

to have said, that if the author had worked no other miracle, he

might be deemed to have worked as many as there were articles in the

book. Tolomeo of Lucca says, that it was begun in the year 1265,

and that the saint devoted to it the remaining nine years of his

life, during which time, however, he never ceased to preach and

teach publicly both at Rome, Bologna, and Naples. At Bologna, in

particular, his lectures caused a sort of revival of learning in that

city, and drew thither a great number of foreigners. He remained

there for three years, at the end of which time he was called to

Paris to attend the General Chapter of his order, and, according to

Echard, was again raised to the professor’s chair in that university,

which he filled for two years. On his return to Bologna, in 1271,

the publication of the second part of his “Summa” produced such an

excitement that all the universities of Europe disputed which should

gain possession of him. Naples won the preference, and thither the

saint repaired, passing on his way through Rome, where he began the

third part of his “Summa” and lectured in public according to his

custom. A contemporary writer, quoted by the Bollandists, affirms

that being engaged in explaining the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the

waxlight, which he held in his fingers, burnt down and scorched them

without his being conscious of the pain, so entirely was he absorbed

in the greatness of his subject.

At Naples he found a very different state of things from that which

had prevailed there when he had studied as a youth in the Ghibbeline

university of Frederic II. The rule and the race of that emperor had

passed away like a dream, and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies was now

held by Charles of Anjou, the brother of St. Louis, and the faithful

supporter of the rights of the Holy See. He reckoned it among the

glories of his reign to have drawn to his capital the greatest doctor

of the Church; and an inscription engraved on marble was long to

be seen at the entrance of the school of the Dominican Convent at

Naples, bidding the visitor, before entering, do reverence to the

chair whence St. Thomas had taught an infinite number of disciples,

King Charles I. having procured this happiness for his kingdom and

assigned an ounce of gold per month for the support of the said

doctor. During the year and a half that he resided at Naples, St.

Thomas continued his accustomed labours; only during the three last

months of his life did he lay aside his pen, and cease to write or

dictate.

It appeared as though he were conscious of his approaching end, for

which God was preparing him by astonishing revelations. Often he was

rapt in ecstasies at the altar, concerning which, when questioned,

he could only answer, “So great are the things that have been

revealed to me, that all I have hitherto taught and written seems

to me as nothing.” Yet he was able, before his death, to complete

the third part of the Summa, which he left in the state in which we

still possess it, and besides this to compose several other lesser

treatises. On his deathbed, as is well known, his humility yielded to

the entreaties of the religious who surrounded him, and he consented

to explain to them the Canticle of canticles. His dying words, as

they are reported by the Bollandists, are precious as the last

instruction of the greatest of Christian scholars. When he beheld the

Sacred Host in the hands of the priest who was about to administer to

him the last sacraments, he made his profession of faith according to

the accustomed form. Then he added, “I have written much, and have

often disputed on the mysteries of Thy law, O my God! Thou knowest I

have desired to teach nothing save what I have learnt from Thee. If

what I have written be true, accept it as a homage to Thine Infinite

Majesty; if it be false, pardon my ignorance. I consecrate all I have

ever done to Thee, and submit all to the infallible judgment of Thy

Holy Roman Church, in whose obedience I am about to depart this life.”

It will be seen that the career of St. Thomas was exclusively that of

a scholastic professor, and the anecdotes left us by his biographers

prove with what a hearty and genuine earnestness he devoted himself

to the cause of sacred learning. His prodigious powers of mind were

accompanied with a childlike simplicity of character, which has been

recognised by every writer of his life, and which, no less than the

purity of his doctrine, won him the title of the Angelic Doctor. In

the schools he was known as the sweetest and most charitable, as

well as the most learned, of masters; no harsh word was ever heard

to pass his lips, and the youngest of his scholars could reckon on

commanding his whole attention. He had no thoughts apart from his

religions duties and his books; and the splendours of the courts

of France and Naples, in both of which he was received with such

distinguished honour, had no power to dazzle him. Seated at the table

of St. Louis, he was absorbed in a convincing argument against the

Manicheans, and became wholly forgetful of the royal presence; and

at Naples his student-like absence of mind was not less conspicuous.

When the cardinal legate and the Archbishop of Capua came to visit

him, he descended into the cloister to receive them; but on the way,

revolving in his mind the solution of a theological difficulty,

became so absorbed in his subject that by the time he reached the

cloister he had forgotten all about the business and the visitors

that had called him thither, and stood like one in a dream. The

archbishop, who had formerly been his pupil, persuaded the cardinal

to leave him alone till he should have recovered himself, and assured

him that these reveries were perfectly well understood by those

familiar with his habits.

F. Daniel d’Agusta once pressed him to say what he considered the

greatest grace he had ever received from God, sanctifying grace, of

course, excepted. He replied, after a few moments’ reflection, “I

think, that of having understood whatever I have read.” St. Antoninus

says, in his life, that no doubt was ever proposed to him that he did

not solve, and that he remembered everything he had once heard, so

that his mind was like a huge library. He often wrote, dictating at

the same time on other subjects to three or four secretaries. Erveo

Britto, one of these secretaries, declared that on one occasion the

saint becoming weary, closed his eyes and appeared to have fallen

asleep, but that in this state he nevertheless continued to dictate

as before.

There are few saints, in fact, of whose daily life and habits we know

more than St. Thomas. He is familiar to us as one of ourselves. We

seem to see him enjoying his ordinary recreation of walking up and

down the cloister of his convent, occasionally dragged off by his

brethren to take a breath of fresh air in the garden, but sure in

such cases to be found before long in some remote corner, absorbed

in cogitation. Or we behold him contentedly following a lay brother

through the markets of Bologna, who, ignorant of the rank of the new

guest in the convent, had summoned him to be his companion on the

quest, and charged him with the bag, which he carried all day on his

shoulder, with undisturbed good-humour. His clothes were always the

poorest in the whole convent, and his love of poverty was so great,

that we are told that he wrote his “Summa against the Gentiles” on

old letters and other scraps of paper. He ate but once in the day,

and his total indifference to comfort or convenience, seemed to

indicate that he had been heard, in what is said to have been his

daily prayer for detachment: _Da mihi, Domine, cor nobile, quod nulla

deorsum trahat terrena affectio._ And with these homely anecdotes

are mingled others which exhibit him to us in ecstasy before his

crucifix, preparing himself for his daily celebration of Mass by

penance, confession, and meditation, and making his thanksgiving by

humbly serving another, feeding his devotion by acts of charity,

and binding himself by a law never to admit into his soul a single

thought that should not be directed to God.[201]

In the last chapter we have seen something of the ravages caused

by that pagan philosophy which had gradually established itself in

the schools, and without some knowledge of which it is impossible

to appreciate the work accomplished by St. Thomas. The university

professors of the thirteenth century regarded Aristotle much as

the masters of Carthage had done, of whom St. Augustine says that

they spoke of the Categories of that philosopher with their cheek

bursting with pride, as of something altogether divine. To displace

a system which had obtained so firm a hold of the European mind,

would probably have been a hopeless enterprise, and St. Thomas

therefore achieved his triumph in another way. He humbled the proud

Agar, Reason, under the hand of her mistress, Faith, and presented

the truths of Revelation in the language of philosophy. In the five

volumes which he devoted to his Commentaries on Aristotle he purged

the text of the pagan philosopher from everything opposed to the

truths of Christianity, and in his Summa of Theology he used the

Aristotelian system of reasoning to combine those truths in one vast

and harmonious whole.[202] Far from depreciating the office of the

understanding, he vindicated its rights, by proving how close an

alliance existed between Faith and Reason, and drove from the field

the pantheistic dreams of Averrhoes by defining the nature and powers

of the individual intellect.

The Arabian philosopher had attempted to explain the existence of

universal ideas as found alike in all minds, by the hypothesis that

mankind had but one common intellect, and that their ideas were

therefore the creation not of many intellects, but of one. His view

was embraced by many of the schoolmen, and carried to its extremest

consequences, so that it was not uncommon to hear it asserted

that after death all souls were merged in one, and thus that all

distinction of rewards and punishments would be impossible.

“St. Thomas fought the new sceptical school with their own weapons;

with the Conceptualists he admitted the axiom that the mind is the

creator of its own objects:[203] by its own powers it forms its ideas

of external things; yet its ideas are no false representations of

the external world, for the matter of these ideas has been furnished

from without by the senses.[204] There was, therefore, no necessity

for imagining such a oneness of intellect as Averrhoes held, in

order to give objective certainty to human knowledge. The intellect

of each man has its own powers, and is the image of the Everlasting

Wisdom; and its ideas are shadows of the archetypal ideas of the

Divine mind, according to which the world was created. Limited as are

its powers, by looking on itself it can form a notion of God, which,

though feeble and inadequate, is capable of being developed by the

Church on earth, and more perfectly still in heaven. The Pantheism

of Averrhoes was nothing but the perversion of a great truth. There

is, indeed, one Light ‘which lighteneth every man who cometh into the

world,’ but the intellect of each man is a substantive thing with

its own powers and operations. Moreover, Averrhoes had removed the

intellect utterly out of the control of the conscience; according to

him and his disciples the doctrines of faith and the conclusions of

reason were the direct contradictory to each other; nevertheless,

both might exist together in the mind without the necessity of coming

to any conclusion. In other words, they believed in nothing whatever;

and truth was a mere matter of words. St. Thomas, therefore, set

himself to place faith and reason in right relations to each other.

The intellect, he said, was a sacred gift of God, and could never be

really contrary to the truth.[205] In its own sphere it was perfect,

but the field of faith was a vast system lying beyond the sphere of

the intellect. It was out of the jurisdiction of the reason which

could pronounce nothing on the matter. Yet though powerless as an

organ for the discovery of the faith, it may serve as an expression

of the doctrines of revelation. Faith no more excludes reason than

grace excludes nature,[206] and Divine truths when received into

the human mind, must take the shape of human ideas and human words.

Therefore it was that St. Thomas conceived it possible that the great

truths of revelation might be expressed in terms of reason, and that

the faith might be systematised and presented as one vast whole. And

to effect this he chose the terms of Aristotle’s philosophy, as the

most scientific classification of the ideas of the human mind.”[207]

The mind of Europe, which had been fast lapsing into infidelity,

found itself at last in possession of a system of Christian

philosophy wherein the Aristotelian dialectics were employed to

defend the Catholic dogmas. “In the Summa of Theology was presented,”

says Ozanam, “a vast synthesis of the moral sciences, in which was

unfolded all that could be known of God, of man, and of their mutual

relations,--a truly Catholic philosophy.” The value of such a gift,

at such a time, was at once apprehended, and so instantaneously was

the doctrine of St. Thomas accepted in the schools of his own order,

that only four years after his death we find a decree of the general

chapter of Milan directing that certain English friars should be

severely punished for having departed from his teaching, and having

had the temerity to call in question some of his propositions. Before

the end of the century decrees were passed[208] expressly requiring

all the brethren to adhere to the doctrine which he taught, without

allowing the least departure from it, and this even before his

canonisation. But it was not his own order alone which thus adopted

his teaching, and bore witness to his position as a Doctor of the

Church. That very university of Paris, which in 1255 had refused

him his Doctor’s cap in 1259, agreed to refer to his sole decision

a theological question of deep interest, regarding the Sacramental

species which then agitated the schools; and in 1274 addressed a

letter to the Chapter-General of the Order, in which it speaks of

the consternation into which the schools of the metropolis have

been cast by the news of his death. They know not where to find

expressions honourable enough by which to designate him; he is the

morning star, the luminous sun, the light of the whole Church.

They remind the Fathers how vehemently they had desired to have him

restored to them, and beg that they may now at least be permitted to

have his ashes. Two years after his canonisation, certain students

in arts having revived some of the philosophical errors refuted by

St. Thomas, Stephen, Bishop of Paris, immediately issued a letter,

condemning every article which seemed to affect “the doctrine of

that most excellent Doctor, the Blessed Thomas,” whom he calls “the

great luminary of the Catholic Church, the precious stone of the

priesthood, the flower of Doctors, and the bright mirror of the

university of Paris.” The universities of Bologna, Padua, Naples,

Toulouse, Salamanca, Alcala, and Louvain, at various times and in

various ways formally declared their adhesion to his doctrine, as did

also a great number of the religious orders, enumerated by Touron

in his life of the saint.[209] And even during the lifetime of the

saint, as Echard remarks,[210] the numerous disciples whom he had

trained in his school, carried his teaching into the universities of

Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna, Rome, and Cologne, for so great was the

authority which his name enjoyed, that they seldom made use of any

other commentaries than those of their master.

The character of St. Thomas is commonly regarded as presenting us

with the perfect model of a Christian doctor. The ideal of such a

character has been sketched by his own pen in that commentary on St.

Matthew’s Gospel, wherein he reminds the reader that it is not enough

for the scholar to study the truths of religion, if he does not draw

near to God in his life. For God is the source of light, whom if we

approach by faith and charity we shall be truly illuminated, and

it is by a holy life rather than by subtlety of reasoning that we

must seek for a knowledge of the truth. There is a light which men

may gain by study, but it suffices not to fill the soul; and there

is a light which God pours out on those who sanctify study with

prayer, and this is the true wisdom; according to the words of the

Wise Man--“I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came upon

me.” The perfect Doctor, therefore, he continues, is he whose life,

as well as whose doctrine, is light. Three things are necessary to

him: stability, that he may never deviate from the truth; clearness,

that he may teach without obscurity; and purity of intention, that

he may seek God’s glory, and not his own.[211] The life and the

writings of St Thomas verified his own words. “The most learned of

the saints,” said Cardinal Bessarion, “he was also the holiest among

the learned.” He has himself expressed the guiding principle of his

scholastic career in a passage which we may be permitted to quote

here for the edification of all scholars. It occurs in his Summa

against the Gentiles, wherein he attempts to define the office of the

true philosopher, and shows that, even according to Aristotle, the

only real philosophy is the science of truth. But, if truth is to be

held, error must be refuted; hence, the office of the wise man is

twofold--to meditate on the divine truths, and to combat all errors

opposed to them. “Encouraged, therefore, by the divine goodness to

undertake this office, albeit the enterprise is far beyond my powers,

my intention is, according to my scanty measure, to manifest the

truth professed by the Catholic faith, and to eliminate the contrary

errors; for to use the words of St. Hilary, I feel and am persuaded

that the chief duty of my life which I owe to God is, in all my

words, as in all my thoughts, to speak His praise.”[212]

What an earnest loyalty to God breathes forth in these words! What a

deep conviction of the oneness of philosophy with divine dogma! What

a majesty of resolve in his determination to make the manifestation

of Catholic truth the “duty of his life,” and how rare a picture of

lifelong purpose nobly achieved when we compare these expressions

with his dying words!--“_Sumo Te pretium redemptionis animæ meæ,

sumo Te viaticum peregrinationis animæ meæ; pro cujus amore studui,

vigilavi et laboravi, prædicavi et docui; nihil unquam contra Te

dixi; sed si quid dixi ignorans, non sum pertinax in sensu meo. Totum

relinquô correctioni Sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ, in cujus obedientia nunc

transeo ex hac vita._”[213]

The reconciliation of revealed truth and philosophy to which St.

Thomas devoted his life must doubtless be regarded as the great

intellectual triumph of the thirteenth century; and when we

contemplate the group of illustrious men who took part in that work,

it is impossible not to render homage to the good providence of God,

who, in the hour of need, supplies His Church with fit instruments

with which to effect His own purposes. The Friar Minors shared with

the Friar Preachers the toils and glory of this great enterprise.

Their order had not, indeed, been founded with the same express view

of cultivating sacred science; but they were required to labour

for the salvation of souls, and as souls could only be saved at

this crisis by the vigorous defence of Catholic dogma, the humble

sons of St. Francis scrupled not to enter the university schools,

and soon gave to the Church a long line of doctors. The seraphic

St. Bonaventure was bound to St. Thomas in the ties of friendship,

and intimately associated with him in his work; and his teaching

regarding the office of the human intellect, and the source of its

illumination, is homogeneous with his. “All illumination descends

to man,” he says, “from God, the Fontal Light: all human science

emanates, as from its source, from the Divine light.” This light, he

goes on to say, is fourfold--there is the inferior, the exterior, the

interior, and the superior light. The first gives us the knowledge of

those things manifested by the senses. The second illuminates us in

respect of artificial forms, and includes a knowledge of the useful

and ornamental arts, even those of the loom and the needle.[214]

The third is the light of philosophical knowledge, and its object

is intelligible truth; and this is threefold, for there are three

kinds of verities--truth of language, truth of things, and truth of

morals. Lastly, superior truth is that of grace and holy Scripture,

and illuminates us in respect of saving truth. “Thus, the fourfold

light descending from above has yet six differences, which set forth

so many degrees of human science. There is the light of sensitive

knowledge, the light of the mechanical arts, the light of rational

philosophy, of natural philosophy, and of moral philosophy, and

lastly, the light of grace and holy Scripture. And so there are six

illuminations in this life of ours, and they have a setting, because

all this knowledge shall be destroyed. And therefore there succeedeth

to them the seventh day of rest, which hath no setting, and that is

the illumination of glory.”[215]

It is obviously beyond our present purpose to attempt anything

like an account of the Dominican theologians who succeeded St.

Thomas, and were formed in his school; and I shall content myself,

therefore, with noticing a few of those friars of the thirteenth

century, whose influence may be said to have told on education rather

than on theology. And the first who claims our attention as having

distinguished himself in this line, is, naturally, the librarian

of the good king St. Louis, and the tutor of his children, Vincent

of Beauvais. He devoted a great part of his life to a gigantic

undertaking, the very conception of which attests the colossal scale

on which men of those days thought and laboured for futurity. He

desired to facilitate the pursuit of learning by collecting into

one work everything useful to be known. The plan was not a new one;

many such Encyclopædias had already been produced, as that of St.

Isidore, and their value was great in an age when the scarcity of

books rendered it next to impossible for any ordinary student to

procure all the authors he would require to consult, if he desired to

perfect himself in various sciences. But it is also possible that a

more profound motive than that of mere convenience induced so many of

the Christian writers to spend their labours on these encyclopædiac

collections. They desired to present to the student the idea of

knowledge as a whole, the parts of which were intimately connected,

and could not be dissevered from one another without mutual injury.

By philosophy, they understood a knowledge of truth in all its

parts; and hence the student, according to the old established

system, was steadily led through his trivium and quadrivium, those

seven liberal arts selected as representing the chief divisions of

philosophy, properly so called. The scholastics of Abelard’s stamp

had revolutionised this system, and, as we have seen, had all but

banished the arts from the school, and made philosophy to consist in

little more than the science of reasoning. And this was one point on

which Hugo of St. Victor attacked them. Bred up in the old school

of monastic students, he contended that their philosophy was no

philosophy at all, and that the seven liberal arts cohered one with

another, so that, if one were wanting, philosophy, which consisted

in a comprehensive knowledge of all science,--rational, physical,

and moral,--must necessarily be imperfect.[216] The same teaching

is implied in the passage from St. Bonaventure, quoted above; and

it seems probable that this sound view of the intimate connection

of all parts of human knowledge flowing, as separate streams, from

One Fontal source, prompted Vincent of Beauvais to undertake his

gigantic work, that so the great edifice of science should be

once more presented with all its halls and porticoes forming one

harmonious whole, _domed_ over, if we may so express ourselves, with

Theology, and surmounted by the Cross.

He had some special facilities for carrying out his design which were

not at the command of ordinary students. He was able to make free use

of that noble library collected by St. Louis, and attached by him

to the Sainte Chapelle. It was thence that he drew the materials of

his work, and nature had endowed him with exactly the kind of genius

which his task demanded. Antoine Poissevin says of him that he was a

man who was never tired of reading, writing, teaching, and learning;

the most gigantic labours did not alarm him; neither work, watching,

nor fasting was ever known to cause him fatigue; and after devoting

one-half of his life to reading the royal library, and every other

collection of books that came within his reach, he did not shrink

from employing the other in producing a compendium of all he had

read. He limited himself to no one subject, or section of subjects;

but resolved to embrace all arts and all sciences, whatever he found

that was beautiful and true in the physical or in the moral world;

whatever could make known the wonders of nature, or the yet greater

wonders of grace; all that poets, philosophers, historians, or

divines had said that was worth remembering--all this he determined

to set before his reader in orderly arrangement; and undismayed at

the magnitude of his enterprise, he laboured at it day and night till

it was accomplished. “The Great Mirror,” as he calls his work, is

divided into three parts, in which are treated separately, Nature,

Doctrine, and History. All his scientific and philosophic views are

not, of course, original, for he proposed rather to give to the world

the cream of other men’s thoughts than of his own. But for this very

reason the statements contained in his book are of greater value, as

they show the shallowness of those charges so continually brought

against the science of the Middle Ages, by writers who have probably

concerned themselves very little to ascertain in what that science

consisted. Vincent did not write to support new theories or explain

away vulgar errors; he aimed only at presenting, in a compendious

form, the commonly-received views of his own time, and of times

anterior to his own, occasionally illustrating his subject with a

sagacious remark, derived from reflection or personal observation.

And what a host of misconceptions and traditional calumnies fall

to pieces, as we glance through such an analysis of his pages as is

given by Rohrbacher![217] How then, we exclaim, did not the mediæval

_savants_ oscillate between the opinion that the earth was a flat

plane, and that other equally luminous view, that it was a cube?

Is it possible that they knew anything of the principle of the

attraction of gravitation, and stranger still, that they explained

the spherical form of the earth by reasoning drawn from that very

principle? Are we to believe our eyes when we read that Vincent of

Beauvais illustrates this part of his subject by reminding us of the

globular form of the rain drops, which he says, in language which

reads like an anticipation of the verses of Montgomery, are so formed

by the very same law as that which regulates the shape of the earth?

And who would expect to find the librarian of St. Louis putting

forth the argument which still does good service in our popular

class-books, wherein the spherical form of the earth is demonstrated

by the gradual disappearance below the horizon of the hull and sails

of a receding ship, and their as gradual reappearance in a contrary

order, on its approach towards us? Yet there it is, together with

yet more learned things; such as the method for measuring an arc

of the meridian as a means of obtaining the circumference of the

earth, quoted from the writings of Gerbert. His treatment of the

metaphysical questions which occupied so much attention at the time

at which he wrote, is no less remarkable than his natural philosophy,

and Rohrbacher, comparing his explanation of _universal ideas_ with

that of Bossuet, gives the preference in point of profundity to the

mediæval friar. “Thus, then,” he continues, “by the middle of the

thirteenth century, the religious of St. Dominic and St. Francis

had resumed all Christian doctrine, the teaching of the Scriptures,

the Fathers, and the Councils into a sum of theology; St. Thomas

had examined in detail the pagan philosophy, had corrected it, and

reconciled it with Christian truth. Roger Bacon, the Franciscan, not

content with the ancient sciences catalogued by Aristotle, had begun

to penetrate deeper into the secrets of nature, and the Dominican,

Vincent of Beauvais, presented in his ‘Mirror’ an epitome of all that

man, up to that time, knew in nature, science, art, philosophy, and

history.”[218]

Even had the benefits conferred by the friars on the world of

letters stopped here, they would have done very much to counteract

that narrowing tendency which has been noticed in the last chapter

and to restore the broader and truer theory of education which in

the twelfth century had been gradually pushed out of place. But to

complete our idea of the work achieved by the Dominicans, we must add

that they largely encouraged the cultivation of Biblical studies,

and of the Greek and Oriental tongues. The Cardinal Hugh de St.

Cher claims the gratitude of students as the author of the first

Biblical Concordance, a work which he commenced in the year 1236.

The Chapter-General of the Order, which was that year held in Paris,

entered with large liberality into so useful a design, and appointed

a great number of the brethren to labour at it under his direction.

Martene, in his _Thesaurus Anecdotorum_, gives an ordinance of the

Chapter of Paris, directing that all copies of the Sacred Scriptures

used in the Order should be revised, corrected, and punctuated

according to the correction of the body of religious thus employed.

This great work was begun under the generalship, and with the hearty

concurrence, of Blessed Jordan of Saxony; his successor St. Raymund

Pennafort, whose election had been mainly brought about through the

exertions of Hugh de St. Cher, made yet more important provision

for the encouragement of the Scriptural sciences. With a view of

promoting the critical study of the Scriptures, and arming his

brethren with weapons of controversy against the Jews and Mahometans,

whose influence in this century was far more powerfully felt among

Christians than it now is, he established Arabic and Hebrew studies

in all the convents of Spain. Not content with this, he founded two

colleges more expressly intended for the same purpose, attached

to convents of the Order, one at Murcia, and the other at Tunis,

filling them with religious whom he selected as best qualified to

devote themselves to these pursuits. One of these was his celebrated

namesake, Raymund Martin, the author of the _Pugio Fidei_, whom

a learned French academician, M. Houtteville, has, by a singular

blunder, numbered among the literary stars of the sixteenth century,

unable, as it would seem, to credit the fact that so erudite a

scholar could have flourished before the age of Francis the First. He

was, however, a contemporary of St. Raymund, and is declared to have

been as familiar with the Arabic, Hebrew, and Chaldaic tongues, as he

was with Latin. The two last parts of his book are written in Hebrew,

and he employed his last years in teaching the same language to a

number of disciples, as well secular as religious.[219] The value of

St Raymund’s labours in founding these schools, which won him the

title of the Restorer of Oriental Studies, was publicly acknowledged

in a Bull of Clement VIII., who declares that the revival of the

Eastern languages in the Dominican schools has contributed to the

glory both of Spain and of the entire Church, and has been the

proximate cause of a vast number of conversions.[220] Ten thousand

Saracens had already been won to the faith before the year 1236.

Nevertheless, no charge is more commonly brought against the

scholars of the Middle Ages, than that of neglecting the study of

the Greek and Oriental languages. Hallam, in his “Literary History,”

with a great show of candour and painstaking research, notices

certain examples of authors belonging to the twelfth, thirteenth,

and fourteenth centuries, who, he says, appear to have known a few

words of Greek. Greek books, he admits, were to be found in the

libraries of the eleventh century, and Greek lexicons were compiled

by Benedictine abbots, which seems an odd waste of labour if no

one ever dreamed of using them. In the “Philobiblon” of Richard

of Bury, written in the fourteenth century, he gravely informs us

that he has counted five words of Greek. As to the statement made

in the same book to the effect that the learned author had caused

Greek and Hebrew grammars to be drawn up for the use of students,

he dismisses the passage with the comment that no other record of

such grammars is to be found. Nor does the decree of the Council of

Vienne, passed in 1311, ordering the establishment of Greek, Hebrew,

Arabic, and Chaldaic professorships in the universities of Paris,

Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca, strike him as offering any evidence

that these languages were really cultivated. The decree, he says

(though he brings no authority in support of his words), “_remained

a dead letter_.” He accounts for the occasional phenomenon which is

to be met with, of a scholar acquainted with five words of Greek, by

attributing it to the assistance of Greek priests who found their

way into Europe; and observes, that after all, supposing anybody

did really know the language, he only used it to read “some petty

treatise of the Fathers, or apocryphal legend.” One is tempted to

criticise the accuracy of a writer who begins by denying that any

mediæval scholars in the West were acquainted with Greek, and then

goes on to tell us what they did, and what they did not, read in

that language. But there is a more serious fault in these statements

than their bad logic. Having made an assertion of this nature on a

subject which is certainly of no mean importance in the history of

literature, he was bound to take some pains in investigating it.

And it is difficult to understand how he can really have examined

the literary history of the thirteenth century, without coming

across some incidental proof of the ardour with which the Greek and

Oriental languages were being at that time pursued in the Dominican

schools. It was a fact of such world-wide notoriety that the motive

which induced the university of Oxford to assign the Jews’ quarter

of the town to the Friars Preachers, was their known familiarity

with the learned tongues, by means of which it was hoped they might

become efficient instruments for the conversion of their Jewish

neighbours. General after General added to the ordinances made by his

predecessors for keeping up these studies. Humbert de Romanis, the

fifth General of the Order, to whom St. Raymund had communicated the

success of his own efforts in Spain, at once determined to extend

the ordinance, which had hitherto been partial in its operation, to

all the convents of the order; and in 1256 he addressed a circular

letter to the brethren, in which he invites all who feel themselves

inspired by the grace of God to devote themselves to the study of

Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, to communicate with him, because the

knowledge of these languages is most necessary in order to extend

the light of the Gospel among the Greek schismatics and Moorish

infidels.[221] F. Penna, auditor of the Rota to Clement VIII.,

assures us that it was the success of the colleges established by the

Friars Preachers, and specially in Spain, that moved the Council of

Vienne to issue the decree already quoted, and the same is repeated

by other writers. The acts of that council are, however, by others

attributed to the influence of the celebrated Franciscan Raymund

Lully, the Illuminated Doctor, as he was called, who devoted many

years and much labour to the endeavour to obtain the foundation

of colleges for the study of these languages, in order to provide

missionaries qualified to labour among the infidels. He himself was

a profound Orientalist, and the legendary tales which multiplied in

connection with his extraordinary life, represent the tree under

which he constructed his mountain hut, as bearing on its very leaves

the Greek, Arabic, and Chaldaic characters. At last he persuaded

King James of Arragon to found a college in the island of Miraman

for thirteen Franciscans who were to be given up to the study of the

learned tongues. Pope Honorius IV. entered warmly into his views, but

died before he was able to forward them; Philip le Bel acceded so far

as to endow a college at Paris, and the Council of Vienne passed its

decree confirming the erection of that college, and directing that

similar establishments should be formed in the other chief European

universities. Hallam, as we have seen, boldly asserts that the decree

remained “a dead letter.” How generally it was carried out, or how

long its provisions remained in force, may not be easy to determine;

but there are precise documents to prove that it was at least put

in force at Paris and Oxford. A letter is preserved, written in

1325, by Pope John XXII., to his legate in Paris, recommending him

to watch the holders of the new professorships very closely, lest,

under colour of the study of the Oriental tongues, they introduce

any of the pernicious philosophical doctrines already condemned, and

gathered out of the Gentile books.[222] The historic evidence of the

_bonâ fide_ existence of the professorships at Oxford is yet more

circumstantial, and is thus referred to by Ayliffe in his history

of that university. “I pass on,” he says, “to speak of the lectures

founded by Pope Clement V. for the teaching of the Hebrew, Chaldaic,

Arabic, and Greek languages, among which lectures John de Bristol, a

converted Jew, read the Hebrew for many years at Oxford with great

applause; and this year (1318), received a stipend settled on him by

Walter Reynolds, Archbishop of Canterbury, and a tax of an halfpenny

per mark from every ecclesiastical benefice throughout his province.

This money was collected at the beginning of every Lent, and was

lodged with the prior of the Holy Trinity.”[223] He goes on to notice

some frauds committed in the collection of this tax in 1327, which,

he says, is the last notice he finds concerning it. It is very

probable that the professorships afterwards fell into abeyance, but

the assertion that they were never founded is manifestly one of those

made by a writer who draws his bow at a venture, and never cares to

inquire into the fact.

Among those who took part in the deliberations of the Council of

Vienne was Aymeric of Placentia, twelfth General of the Order of

Preachers, who in the previous year had established a house of

studies in every Province for the Greek and Oriental languages,

requiring the Provincials to provide very learned teachers of the

same, and if none such were to be found among the brethren, they

were to engage the services of secular professors, to be paid out of

the revenues of the Province,[224] a provision which certainly seems

to imply that such professors were there to be found. This Aymeric,

whom the chronicle of the Masters-General call “a learned man, and a

great lover of letters,” did much also to promote the study of the

Scriptures at other chapters of his Order. Echard tells us of the

magnificent present bestowed by him on the convent of Bologna, in the

shape of a Hebrew Pentateuch, which Bernard of Montfauçon describes

as having himself seen. It contained an inscription, declaring the

book to be the identical copy written by Esdras the scribe after

the return from Babylon, and which he read in the ears of the

people. After being preserved in various Jewish synagogues with the

utmost veneration, Aymeric had obtained possession of it, and its

authenticity was attested by several learned Jews. Though Echard

hesitates to yield full credit to the tradition, he admits that the

antiquity of the copy was not to be doubted.

The culture of Greek in the Order is no less distinctly proved than

that of the Oriental tongues. William de Moerbeka made a number

of translations from Plato, Galen, and Proclus of Tyre; and his

translation of Aristotle was made directly from the original, at

the request of St. Thomas, who himself understood the language well

enough to criticise his friend’s version. Moerbeka was appointed

Archbishop of Corinth in 1277, after being several times despatched

as apostolic missionary to the East. Another fellow-student and

intimate friend of St. Thomas, the cardinal Annibal Annibaldi,[225]

is declared to have been learned both in Greek and Arabic

philosophy. These examples of the linguistic erudition of the

friars are but few out of many that might be given, and it is clear

that their Greek reading was not limited to Apocryphal legends and

petty treatises of the Fathers. It certainly included the Greek

philosophy, both Plato and Aristotle having found translators among

the Friars Preachers of the thirteenth century. But it is more than

probable that the poets and historians of Greece were little known

or cultivated, for the object of these studies was less literary

than practical. The Friars had to contend with a false philosophy,

drawn out of the books of the Gentiles, and to maintain controversies

with Greek schismatics and Jewish and Moorish unbelievers; and they

studied to arm themselves for the work in which they were engaged.

Practical views predominated very generally in that wonderful

thirteenth century, which we are so disposed to contemplate through

a poetic medium; and so we may safely admit the likelihood that

the Greek poetry was not much studied before the period of classic

renaissance.

The influence of the Dominicans meanwhile extended to other

universities besides those of Paris, Cologne, and Bologna, to which

they were first affiliated. At Toulouse, the nursery of their Order,

they naturally held a forward position, and led the struggle against

the Albigensian errors, for the suppression of which the university

had been mainly founded. At Orleans their convent was used as the

place of assembly for the doctors, and the establishment of the

university being for some reason regarded with disfavour by the

citizens, they directed their spleen against the friars, regarding

them as the main prop of the unpopular institution, and did their

best to level the convent with the ground. But they always held

their ground at Orleans, and their larger theories on the subject

of education may have had something to do with the character which

distinguished that university, for Orleans opposed itself to the rage

for logic, and always upheld the study of the arts.

One other foundation must be named, which, though it in no way shares

the brilliant historic fame of so many sister academies, is too

illustrative of the position held by the Dominicans in the mediæval

schools to be passed over in this place.

The ancient university of Dublin was founded in 1320 by Archbishop

Bicknor, in virtue of a Bull from Pope Clement V., confirmed by Pope

John XXII.; one of its first masters and doctors being an Irish

Dominican, William De Hardite.[226] This university was established

in connection with St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but from the troubles

of the times and the want of funds, it very soon declined, and

in the following century became all but extinct. To supply the

means of academic education to the youth of Ireland, therefore,

the Dominicans of Dublin made a noble effort. In 1428 they opened

a gymnasium, or high school, on Usher’s Island, dedicated to St.

Thomas Aquinas, in which all branches of knowledge were taught, from

grammar to theology, and to which all classes of students, whether

ecclesiastical or secular, were admitted. Hither a great number of

young men flocked to pursue their course of philosophy and theology.

As the convent was on one side of the river, and the house of studies

on the other, the friars, with that munificence which characterised

the ancient regular orders, erected a stone bridge of four arches

at their own expense, long known as the “Old Bridge,” which was not

destroyed till 1802, and which for two centuries was the only bridge

of the kind in Dublin. With the consent of the common council, a

Dominican lay brother received the tolls paid by carriage passengers

over the bridge, and sprinkled the passers-by from a font for holy

water, which was erected there. “It is an interesting fact in the

history of education in Ireland,” says Mr. Wyse,[227] “that the

only stone bridge in the capital of the kingdom was built by one of

the monastic orders as a communication between a convent and its

college, a thoroughfare thrown across a dangerous river for teachers

and scholars to frequent halls of learning, where the whole range of

the sciences of the day _was taught gratuitously_.” But even this

noble foundation did not satisfy the Irish Dominicans. In 1475, the

four mendicant Orders, headed by the Friars Preachers, presented a

memorial to Pope Sixtus IV., praying for canonical authority to erect

their schools in Dublin into a university for the liberal arts and

theology, which petition was granted, and a Brief[228] was issued the

same year to that effect, granting the new academy the same rights

and privileges that were enjoyed by the members of the university

of Oxford. It appears certain that the proposed scheme was really

carried into effect, for Campion, in his History of Ireland, written

in 1570, before his conversion to the Catholic faith, declares that

before the subversion of the monasteries, “divines were cherished” in

them, “and open exercise maintained.” But whatever were the success

or the failure of the scheme, it is equally worthy of our admiration

that four mendicant Orders should thus unite, under the leadership of

the children of St. Dominic, to supply an academic education to the

youth of their country solely out of their own resources. They asked

neither for royal charters nor state endowments, but, content with

the authority of the Papal Brief, they offered to their countrymen,

with more than princely munificence, a gratuitous university

education.

The result of the Christian philosophy established in the schools

by the labours of St. Thomas, and propagated by the brethren of

his Order, spread far beyond the academic circles. That philosophy

appeared in an age which was full of the force and passion of youth,

and ready to find utterance in the language of the heart and the

imagination. It spoke, not in the Summa alone, but in the poetry of

Dante, in the paintings of Cimabue and Giotto, and in the minsters of

Salisbury or Cologne. For in each and all of these we see in various

ways the reflection of Christian dogma. If we may credit the voice of

tradition, it was to the geometrical science, united to the profound

Christian mysticism of Albert the Great, that the German architects

were indebted for many of the secrets of their art. He is known to

have consecrated, and is believed to have designed, more than one

of those superb cathedrals which date their existence from the same

century which witnessed the rise of the universities; and the choir

of the Dominican convent at Cologne, which Rodolph tells us was

rebuilt by the great master “according to the rules of geometry, and

as a most skilful architect,” is said to have served as the model on

which the cathedral itself was designed. Almost at the same time the

two Dominican artists, Fra Sisto, and Fra Ristoro, were initiating an

architectural reform in Italy, and it was the Greek paintings that

decorated their beautiful church of Sta. Maria Novella, at Florence,

that gave the first impulse to the genius of Cimabue. That great man,

the father of Italian art, was a pupil of the Florentine Dominicans.

The friars, “in order to carry out that portion of their rule which

commands them to be useful,” says Marchese, “had opened a grammar

school for the instruction of the Florentine youth, as well as for

their own novices. The grammar master was sometimes one of the

friars, and sometimes a secular; and in the latter case he received

a fixed salary of a florin a month, with board and lodging.” At this

time the office happened to be filled by an uncle of Cimabue, who

numbered his own nephew among his scholars. The boy often escaped

from his books in order to watch the painters at work in the church;

and in school, instead of attending to his lessons, would sometimes

employ himself in making rude pen-and-ink sketches. His masters

discerned his rare gifts, and instead of punishing him for preferring

his pencil to his grammar, they wisely determined to encourage his

genius, and placed him under the tuition of the Greek artists, whom

he soon surpassed, as he was himself surpassed by his own pupil

Giotto. The latter also was largely indebted to the Dominican Order,

for his first patron was Pope Benedict XI., a Friar Preacher, and a

disciple of St. Thomas, who was gifted with that love of art which

has ever been hereditary in the order. Giotto was the friend of

Dante, and, like him, steeped in the essentially Christian ideas of

the age. The hero of his pencil was St. Francis, and he has left his

poems in honour of that hero painted on the walls of the church of

Assisi.

We may judge how very powerfully the Christian philosophy of the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries told on the restoration of art

by a glance at such documents as the statutes drawn up for the

corporation of Siennese painters, in 1335. “We are called by the

grace of God,” they say, “to manifest to rude and ignorant men who

cannot read the miraculous things operated by the power of the holy

faith. Now our faith chiefly consists in believing and adoring one

eternal God--a God of infinite power, immense wisdom, and boundless

love and goodness; and we are persuaded that nothing, however small

it may be, can be begun or finished without three things--namely,

power, wisdom, and will, with love.”[229] Who drew up these statutes,

and whence were such ideas of art derived? We know not; yet the

theological cast of the phraseology leads us to infer that their

author must have been perfectly familiar with the writings of St.

Thomas.[230]

To speak broadly, then, we may say that the victory achieved in

the thirteenth century, through the labours of the scholastic

theologians, was that which established the supremacy of dogma in the

schools, and which made its power indirectly felt in every province

of thought, art, and literature. The immediate result may be stated

in the words wherein Rohrbacher sums up the ecclesiastical history

of this period. “During the whole of this time,” he says, “in spite

of the prodigious activity which we have seen taking possession of

men’s minds in the West, moving them to embrace and examine every

question of theology, philosophy, and other sciences, as well in

general as in detail, _not a single new heresy arose_.”[231] Order

had been introduced into the wild chaos of opinion, and the Christian

schoolmen assumed the position as masters of thought, which had

hitherto been held by pagans.

Before closing this chapter, we will anticipate an objection which

has probably suggested itself to some who have accompanied us through

the foregoing studies. Whilst freely acknowledging the services

rendered to the faith by the scholastic theologians, they may be

disposed to fear lest something of the elder tone of spirituality was

lost when the lecture halls of university professors were substituted

for the claustral schools of the Benedictines. There was doubtless

more accurate science; but was there the old contemplative wisdom

that fed itself in silent communing on God? Had the heart kept pace

with the intellect, or had not the schools become more rich in dogma,

and less full of love? And this kind of doubt as to the possibility

of uniting things apparently so little in harmony as philosophic

acuteness and unction of heart, is the more natural and excusable

as we find that it actually prevailed to a very considerable extent

among the religious students of the period, and gave rise to not a

few disputes. Hence, in the early days of the order of Preachers,

conscientious scruples were entertained by some among the friars

themselves as to the lawfulness of cultivating philosophy and the

liberal arts; and we find a decree passed, in consequence, at one

of the first Chapters-General, declaring the use and necessity of

such studies. So powerful, however, was the impulse felt in the

order towards the contemplative life during the first century of

its existence, that some still felt uneasiness lest the too great

application to scholastic science should leave the heart dry and

barren. But Humbert de Romanis severely condemned such scruples,

comparing those who entertained them to the Philistines, who deprived

the children of Israel of all smiths’ tools;[232] and declared

the study of philosophy to be necessary on the part of Christian

scholars, inasmuch as it was now employed by unbelievers as a weapon

with which to attack the dogmas of the Church.

Dryness and spiritual barrenness, in fact, were the last faults which

could be charged against the dogmatic theologians of the thirteenth

century. It is remarkable that the Dominican convent most noted as a

house of studies north of the Alps, and which was the nursery of all

the greatest doctors of the order, was precisely that in which the

brethren most eagerly devoted themselves to the contemplative life.

All the first friars of Cologne, including Brother Henry, the first

prior, distinguished themselves as contemplative writers.[233] Albert

the Great--the greatest star of the Cologne school--displayed in his

later writings the germs of that tender mysticism which afterwards

appeared in the writings of Tauler and Suso. In the distinction he

draws between Christian and pagan philosophy, he clearly shows that

the studies then pursued in the order, whilst they illuminated the

intellect, were far from drying up the heart. “The contemplation of

the Catholic Christian is one thing,” he said, “and that of a pagan

philosopher is another. The philosopher meditates for his own utility

alone--his end is merely to learn and to know. But the Christian

contemplates out of love for Him whom he contemplates--that is, God.

Hence, not only has he a more perfect knowledge for his end, _but he

passes from knowledge into love_.” And the very last of his works,

written in his old age, and, as his biographer says, with the view

of refreshing his mind when weary with the fatigues of teaching,

bears the title _De Adhærendo Deo_, and opens with these touching

words:--“Having desired to write something, in order, as far as

possible, to end well our labours in this region of exile, we have

proposed to ourselves to inquire how a man may best detach himself

from all below, in order to attach himself solely, freely, and

purely, to our Lord God. For the end of Christian perfection is love,

and it is by love that we adhere to God.”[234]

To the same effect are the words of St. Thomas: “In the perfect

contemplative life, divine truth is not merely _seen_, but

_loved_.”[235] The soul, plunging itself in the contemplation of

the Divine greatness, acquires a knowledge of God, not so much by

means of light and cognition, as by an experimental union with Him;

so that, through the affections thence derived, it knows and it

contemplates. “Hence it comes to pass,” he continues, “that He is

loved more than He is known, because He can be perfectly loved, even

although He be not perfectly known.”[236]

His life corresponded to his teaching. Though not exhibiting to

the ordinary observer that miraculous and extraordinary character

which attaches to many of the saints, all his biographers agree

in asserting that his union with God became at last wholly

uninterrupted. “So entirely was his mind intent upon God,” says

Flaminius, “that nothing was able to separate him from this

contemplation.” “I have learnt more by prayer than by study,” were

his own words to his familiar companion, Brother Reginald, and he

often repeated the warning that, Wisdom being the gift of God, a

man ought not to endeavour or hope to acquire it by dint of study,

without humbly asking for it in prayer. From none of the writings

of the saints could there be collected maxims of more tender piety

than from St. Thomas; it was he who said that the measure of our love

of God was to love Him without measure,[237] who called the Holy

Scriptures _the Heart of Christ_,[238] and who confessed to one of

his friends that there were two things he did not understand: how a

religious could ever think or speak of anything, but God, and how a

man who had committed mortal sin could ever smile. Divine science

took in him its most attractive form, and, to use his own words in

describing the truly wise man, it lifted him into a world beyond

the moon where he enjoyed a perpetual serenity.[239] The violence

and injustice to which he was exposed in the long and vexatious

controversy with the Parisian doctors never had power to disturb him;

and this sweet serenity of heart was so apparent on his countenance

that he is said to have had a peculiar power of imparting the gift

of spiritual joy to all who conversed with him.

When he preached the Lent to the people of Naples, he appeared in

the pulpit like one rapt in ecstacy, with his eyes closed and his

face turned towards heaven, as though he were contemplating another

world. Even at table he was always ruminating divine things, and St.

Antoninus tells us that, when he was asleep, he was often heard to

pray aloud. It is clear that he fully recognised the possibility of

a life of study drying up the fountains of devotion, for he gave as

his reason for daily reading the Collations of Cassian, after the

example of his holy patriarch St. Dominic, that he might draw thence

devotion, and that by means of devotion his understanding might be

raised to sublimer things.[240] And it was the same principle which

made him, like Bede, inflexible with himself in never absenting

himself from assisting in choir, both by day and night, frequently

telling his religious that a student must by all means keep open the

wells of devotion, so that the work of the head may never cause the

heart to grow dry and tepid.

Some particular instances are recorded of his special love for

the Divine Office, and the singular relish he took in the Sacred

Psalmody. Flaminius speaks of the frequent raptures and devout tears

which certain portions of it elicited from him, such as the versicle

“_Ne projicias me in tempore senectutis_,” which recurs so frequently

in the time of Lent. It may also be observed that all his biographers

notice the unction which attached to his preaching, for he possessed

an extraordinary power of moving the hearts of his hearers, and

exciting compunction and amendment of life. He was frequently called

upon to preach the Lent both at Rome and Naples, and on one of these

occasions, when preaching in St. Peter’s to an immense audience on

Good Friday, all the people who heard him were moved to tears, and

ceased not to weep until Easter day, when his Paschal sermon filled

them with holy jubilation.

Massoulié, one of the greatest commentators on St. Thomas, has

remarked the erroneous impression entertained by many who believe

that great doctor to have been “so completely occupied with the

speculations of the intellect as not to have applied himself equally

to excite the emotions of the heart.... It is, however, certain,” he

continues, “that, if we attentively read his works, we shall find

his love to have been equal to his knowledge, for they contain all

the secrets of the mystical life, and the sublimest and most divine

operations of grace in the hearts of those consecrated to God. In

fact, there is nothing really important in all the states to which

a soul can be raised in the spiritual life, and in all God’s secret

communications with holy souls, which he has not explained in the

second part of his _Summa_; whilst in his smaller works he has given

his heart full liberty to expand itself.... Hence,” he adds, “we must

not suppose that St. Thomas received the name of the Angelic Doctor

only on account of his profound arguments and vast knowledge of the

truths of faith; but still more justly on account of those ecstacies

which made him enter into the society of the blessed Spirits.”[241]

So far, indeed, was the Angel of the Schools from being all intellect

and no heart, that even the more human side of his character exhibits

him to us as peculiarly accessible to the tenderness of Christian

friendship. He described it with his pen, he felt it in his heart,

and he failed not to excite corresponding sentiments in others. The

tie which existed between him and St. Bonaventure is well known, nor

was that which bound him to Blessed Albert less close and enduring.

After the death of St. Thomas, Albert was never able to speak of his

great pupil without shedding tears, a circumstance which is even

alluded to in the process of canonisation. His brethren wondered at

it, and feared lest this excessive weeping should arise from some

weakness of the head. But his tears flowed only out of the abundance

of his love. The very name of his beloved disciple sufficed to draw

from him these tokens of affection, and he never wearied in repeating

to those around him that they had lost “the flower and ornament of

the world.”

The stem that produced that flower did not lose its fertility when

its fairest blossom was transplanted to Paradise. The “Order of

Truth,” as it was called, continued to bud forth a long succession

of philosophers and theologians, the bare enumeration of whose

names would fill a volume, for according to a moderate computation

they number about 5000. When St. Dominic and his six disciples

first entered the school of Alexander of Toulouse, who could have

anticipated the mighty stream that was to flow from that seemingly

humble source? Yet now “the brook had become a river,” and the river

had swelled into a sea, and the doctrine of his sons “shone forth as

the morning light,” and was poured out to “all those who sought the

Truth.”[242]

_CHAPTER XV._

ENGLISH SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES.

A.D. 1149 TO 1170.

The paramount importance attaching to the schools of Paris has too

long detained us from following the history of scholarship in our own

island; and we shall now have to retrace our steps some two hundred

years, in order, before speaking of the Oxford schools and scholars

of the thirteenth century, to say something of the origin of the

university, and to notice the other English schools existing at the

same period. It would be little less than audacious to pretend to

give any authentic account of the rise of Oxford University, and we

may as well at once admit the fact that one of our great national

institutions, alive and vigorous in the nineteenth century, dates its

beginning from ages whose traditions are purely mythical. However

far we go back in the history of Oxford, we are always referred to

some date that is yet earlier. From the reign of the Confessor, we

glance back to the days of the great Alfred, who allotted one-eighth

of his revenue to the support of her schools, and is popularly

regarded as her founder. But even Alfred cannot claim to have done

more than restore the schools which had existed there before his

time, and the history of St. Frideswide carries us back to the eighth

century, and tells us how in the reign of her father, Didan, King of

Mercia, certain inns were constructed in the vicinity of St. Mary’s

Church, _diversoria religioni aptissima_, which were used as places

of education, and grew into a religious house, afterwards dedicated

to St. Frideswide. This famous priory was the real nucleus of the

university. In 1049 Harold, then Earl of Oxford, placed canons here;

then came the Norman Conquest, and in the reign of Henry the Scholar,

who had received his early education from the monks of Abingdon, the

king handed the priory over to his favourite chaplain Guimond, who

established therein a community of Norman canons, and set about

building, as none but a Norman prior knew how to build.

From St. Frideswide’s priory let us now turn to the old residence of

the Mercian kings, in which Offa resided, which Alfred made a “king’s

house,” which had Saxon towers, deemed to be ancient in the days of

the Confessor, and which, eight years after the Conquest, was granted

to Robert D’Oyley, who added the great keep and other buildings.

Within the castle of Oxford thus founded, he and his sworn brother in

arms, Robert D’Ivery, raised a church dedicated to St. George, and

served by secular canons. This was the second foundation stone of

the university; and in 1149 his nephew, Robert D’Oyley the Second,

transferred the foundation to his priory of Austin Canons at Osney. I

cannot withhold from the curious reader the legend of the foundation

of Osney, as it is quaintly related by Leland. After telling us that

Robert D’Oyley had married a wife named Edith, and founded a priory

of black canons “at Oseney by Oxford, among the isles that Isis river

ther makyth,” he continues: “Sum write that this was the occasion

of the making of it. Edithe usid to walke out of the Castelle with

her gentlewomen to solace, and oftentimes wher yn a certen place in

a tre, as often as she cam, a certen Pyes usid to gither to it, and

ther to chattre, and as it were, to speke on to her. Edithe much

mervelyng at this matter, and was sometyme sore ferid as by a wondre,

whereupon she sent for one Radulphe, a Chanon of S. Frediswide’s,

a man of a vertuous lyfe, and her confessour, askyng hym counsell:

to whom he answerid aftir he had sene the faschion of the Pyes

chatteryng only at _her_ cummyng, that she shulde bilde sum chirche

or monasterie in that place. Then she entreated her husband to bilde

a priorie, which he did, makyng Radulphe first prior of it. The

cummynge of Edithe to Oseney, and Radulphe waiting on her, and the

tre with the chatteryng Pyes be payntid in the waulle of the arch

over Edith’s tumbe in Oseney Priorie.”[243]

The two priories of Osney and St. Frideswide became both of them

great houses of study, but the little church of St. George had also

its share in the same work. The apartments in the castle formerly

occupied by the canons were, after their removal to Osney, made

over to certain poor scholars, known as “the wardens and scholars

of St. George, within the castle of Oxford.” They formed perhaps

the earliest collegiate establishment of the university, being

governed by a body of statutes, wherein mention is made of a warden,

fellows, scholars, and commoners. The warden was always one of the

Osney canons, who came once or twice in the week to see that good

order was preserved, and in his absence governed through his deputy.

Tanner gives some curious particulars of the customs in use among the

fellows, and the ceremonies of their installation, and tells us that

Henry V. had intended to have enlarged this college into a splendid

royal foundation, but was prevented by death from carrying out his

design.

Other inns and halls of a _quasi_ collegiate character gradually

clustered round these religious houses. No fewer than forty-two

_hospitia_, or inns for scholars, were inhabited in Robert D’Oyley’s

time. So early as 1175, the Benedictines of Winchcombe Abbey had

established a _studium generale_ at Oxford, for the use of their

monks, and a great number of schools, some attached to religious

and collegiate houses, and others presided over by independent

masters, very early gave their name to “School Street.” In these

buildings there was no attempt at architectural grandeur. They

were only distinguished from those devoted to “base mechanic uses”

by quaint devices and inscriptions over their doors. Both halls

and schools before 1170 were built of timber and thatched with

straw, when a great fire destroyed the greater part of the city,

and the inhabitants were induced to erect a few stone and slated

edifices, the “stramina,” or thatched houses, still appearing in

many localities. The schools of Osney Abbey were only rooms over

certain shops, and the lectures were read by the masters in their

own chambers. The effect of the “Aularian” system, as it has been

called, was certainly to multiply the _number_ of the scholars; for

many were able to pursue their studies in the wretched accommodation

thus afforded them, who could find no place in the richer colleges

of later times. To the thousands of native scholars were added

those who, after the fashion of the times, resorted to Oxford from

other countries, no man being then content with studying at a

single academy, or thinking he had qualified himself for the post

of doctor till he had passed some years in foreign schools. It was

no easy matter to preserve discipline in such a motley society; the

chancellor was the only recognised authority, and when his single

arm proved insufficient for the task of government, he was assisted

by an officer named the Hebdomadarius, now represented by the

Hebdomadal Board. The disorders which prevailed here, as at Paris,

finally led to the establishment of colleges with regular statutes

of discipline; but this change, which had the immediate effect of

diminishing the number of students, was not even begun before the

reign of Henry III.

Previous to that date, it would not be easy to determine with any

exactness the system of discipline or of studies that prevailed. We

know, however, that in 1133, when Robert Pulleyne came over from

Paris and opened his school in Oxford, he found sacred letters had

for some years fallen into neglect, and, to restore them, not only

read lectures on the Scriptures gratuitously, but obtained the

services of other professors at his own expense. He also preached

every Sunday to the people, and left no stone unturned to instruct

the students in the learned languages. In 1142 he was summoned to

Rome by Innocent II., and, becoming Cardinal and Chancellor of the

Roman Church, obtained large privileges for the Oxford scholars.

In 1149, the very date of the Osney foundation, when England was

in the thick of the disturbances of Stephen’s reign, Vacarius, a

Bolognese professor, began to deliver lectures on civil law at

Oxford, and that with so much success as to throw the schools of

arts and theology into the shade. Before the end of the century, the

study of canon law was added, and about the same time the lectures

on medicine began to attract so much attention that the authorities

felt a reasonable alarm lest their university should altogether

cease to be a seat of liberal learning. “Physic brings men riches,”

they said, “and law leads to honour, while logic is forced to go

a-foot.” All the divines of the day, both at home and abroad, agreed

in condemning the preference given to law over theology. “What is

this?” exclaims St. Bernard, “from morning till night we litigate

and hear litigation: day after day uttereth strife, and night after

night indicateth malice.” And in the same spirit Stephen Langton

reproves his fellow-ecclesiastics for “leaving the true field of

Booz, the study of Holy Scripture, in order that they may win the

poor honour of being called decretalists.” Arts, indeed, always

continued to be regarded _theoretically_ as the proper subject of

Oxford University studies, but in their eagerness to acquire the more

lucrative branches of learning, the students were too often content

with a smattering of polite letters. Hence, according to Wood, they

came to be divided into three classes, the Shallow, the Patchy, and

the Solid. The first did not study arts at all, the second crammed

from convenient abstracts, and the third, a very small minority, laid

a good foundation, and thereon built a tolerable superstructure.

The troubles which affected the English Church in the reign of Henry

II. affected the university very unfavourably. The persecution

directed against St. Thomas and his adherents, created such a general

feeling of insecurity that, in 1169, a great number of the Oxford

students emigrated in a body to Paris, where they were well received

by Louis VII. Indeed, at this time there was no European country

in which some English scholars might not be found, who preferred

a voluntary exile to the dangers to which they thought themselves

exposed at home from the hands of the royal tyrant. This crisis

hastened the decay of liberal studies at Oxford. Daniel Merlac, who,

about the close of Henry’s reign, travelled into Spain to collect

books and perfect himself in mathematics, declares, in the preface

to his treatise _De Rerum Naturis_, that it was his knowledge of the

neglect of good learning which prevailed in his own country which

induced him to remain so long in exile. He passes a very severe

criticism on the ignorance of the professors, not only at Oxford, but

at Paris also, agreeing pretty much with the strictures passed by

John of Salisbury on the “Cornificians.” In particular, he describes

with great disgust the conduct of certain “beasts,” as he calls

them, whom he saw occupying seats at the latter university with an

air of great importance, having desks set out before them, with huge

books adorned with golden letters, wherein, from time to time, they

solemnly jotted down a word or two. It was all very well, so long

as they kept silence, but as soon as they opened their mouths they

betrayed their ignorance. Wood, who complains bitterly of the decay

of humane learning caused by the reign of law at Oxford, and of logic

in France says that polite letters would never have fallen into such

neglect had the monastic schools retained their ascendancy. As it

was, he says, “purity of speech decayed, philosophy was neglected,

and nothing but Parisian quirks prevailed.”

Oxford revived a little during the reign of the Lion-hearted Richard,

who loved the city as his birthplace, and, moreover, was inclined

to favour the university, were it only to emulate his great rival,

Philip Augustus, who had declared himself the protector of the Paris

scholars. His brother John seemed at first disposed to follow his

example, and granted the students their first charter, exempting them

from the jurisdiction of the Ordinary; but he soon counterbalanced

this favour by hanging three clerks--an act so deeply resented by the

ecclesiastical authorities that the city was laid under an interdict,

and the scholars dispersed to Cambridge, Reading, and Maidstone.

Better days dawned on the Church on the accession of Henry III.

The arrival of the mendicant orders in England gave an immense

stimulus to the schools, and in 1229 the king took occasion of the

quarrel just then raging between the civil and academic authorities

at Paris, to invite the discontented masters and scholars over to

England. This immigration from France raised Oxford to a high degree

of prosperity. The number of her students is said to have risen to

30,000, though Wood admits that the company was not always the most

select. “Among these,” he says, “were a set of varlets, who pretended

to be scholars, shuffling themselves in, and doing much villany in

the university by thieving, quarrelling, &c. They lived under no

discipline and had no tutors, but, only for fashion’s sake, would

sometimes thrust themselves into the schools at ordinary lectures;

and when they went to perform any mischief, then would they be

accounted scholars, that so they might free themselves from the

jurisdiction of the burghers.”

The presence of so many “varlets” will perhaps account for the

frequency of unseemly brawls which disturbed the peace of the city,

and brought sad discredit on the university. One instance will

suffice to show the semibarbarous state of society in the city of

letters at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Cardinal Otho,

the cardinal legate, coming to Oxford in 1238, was honourably

entertained at Osney Abbey. The scholars sent him a handsome present

for his table, and a deputation of them came after dinner to pay

their respects. The Italian porter, however, not only refused them

admission, but, through the half-open door, loaded them with abuse.

This, of course, was not to be endured; the door was forced in a

moment, and a lively contest ensued between the English and the

Italians. The cardinal’s steward, stung with the derisive epithets

lavished on him by the scholars, threw some dirty water in the face

of a poor Irish priest, who was patiently waiting at the door for

some broken victuals. This was the signal for a call to arms, and one

of the party, seizing a bow, shot the unhappy steward dead on the

spot. The legate took refuge in the church tower, whence, escaping by

night, he joined the king and demanded justice. Thirty scholars were

accordingly arrested, the city was laid under another interdict, and

all the university exercises suspended. Nor was tranquillity restored

till ample satisfaction had been offered by the English bishops, who,

says Matthew Paris, were ready to make any sacrifice necessary to

preserve “the second school of the Church.”

Brawls of this sort make up a very large portion of early Oxford

history. Here, as at Paris, the division of “nations” was a fruitful

source of squabbling. Northerns and Southerns, Welshmen, Englishmen,

and Irishmen, fought pitched battles, one with another, on all

available opportunities; and the Jews, whose audacity reached an

incredible height, did their best to add another element of discord

by disturbing the scholars at their prayers. We need not enter into

the history of these strange disturbances. The Irish seem to have

exhibited the greatest pugnacity, and obliged the magistrates to pass

many wholesome laws for their correction and conversion to “more

civil walking,” though, as it would seem, with very small success.

The chief occasions on which the king’s peace was wont to be broken

were the national festivals celebrated in honour of St. George, St.

Patrick, and St. David; and at length it became necessary to forbid

popular demonstrations on these days, under pain of the greater

excommunication.

In this early period of the university history, the schools

frequented by the scholars were of two kinds,--the secular schools

ruled by masters who rented rooms in the houses and over the shops

of the burghers, and the claustral schools, held in the various

religious houses. As a general rule, the students were expected to

know grammar before matriculating at the university, but in case they

entered very young, or that their early education had been neglected,

they could make up their deficiencies in the grammar schools, some

of which were afterwards attached to colleges, for the benefit of

the clerks and choristers connected with those institutions. Wood

gives some interesting particulars about these grammar schools. He

says they were placed by the chancellor under the supervision of some

master of arts, to whom the grammar master promised obedience. He

moreover engaged to read nothing with his scholars without license

from the chancellor, to instruct them in Latin authors, and make

them construe in French as well as English, and not to read certain

portions of the Latin poets, which might be considered injurious to

good morals. Degrees were at that time granted in grammar, as in

other faculties. Thus, in the reign of Edward I., we find Maurice

Byrchensaw graduating as bachelor of grammar and rhetoric, and

composing, as his customary exercise on that occasion, a hundred

verses in praise of the university, and thereupon having his head

solemnly crowned with laurel.

Some of the illustrations which Wood has collected as to the state

of studies at Oxford in ancient times, are sufficiently amusing.

It seems that Lent was generally a time unfavourable to peace, by

reason of the unusual amount of logical disputation, indulged in at

that season by the scholars who were preparing for their degrees.

Hence the king’s peace was very often broken over the discussion

of quiddities, and the grammar students showed themselves equally

pugnacious over the niceties of Latin syntax. Musical degrees were

very often granted, the candidates being required to read the musical

books of Boëthius, and on the day of inception to present a mass of

their own composition, which was to be sung on the occasion, together

with certain antiphons. The masses and antiphons were generally

composed in two parts, up to the time of Henry VIII., who, being

exceedingly skilful in musical science, was able, not only to sing

his part sure, but to compose masses in four, five, and even six

parts, which more complicated style of composition thus came into

fashion at the university.

The Oxford scholars often complained of the grievance of having to

attend the schools on festival days, and presented more than one

poetical petition to the ruling powers that they might have a little

breathing space, at least on the greater feasts. And certainly, if

we may take the account given us at a considerably later period as

furnishing any notion of the life of a poor scholar of the thirteenth

century, it was one of hard work and little comfort. It occurs in a

sermon preached at Cambridge in the middle of the sixteenth century,

by Thomas Lever, Fellow of St John’s, and has been preserved by the

historian Strype. There is every reason to suppose that the picture

which he gives would apply as well to the reign of the First as

to that of the Sixth Edward; substituting the hearing of Mass for

the attendance of common prayer. “There be divers which rise daily

about four or five of the clock in the morning, and from five to six

use common prayer in a common chapel; and from six till ten of the

clock use ever either private study or common lectures. At ten of

the clock they go to dinner, whereat they be content with a penny

piece of beef among four, having a few pottage made of the broth of

the said beef, with salt and oatmeal, and nothing else. After this

slender diet they be either teaching or learning until five of the

clock in the evening; whereat they have a supper not much better than

their dinner. Immediately after which they go either to reasoning in

problems or to some other study until it be nine or ten o’clock; and

then, being without fires, they are fain to walk, or run up and down

half an hour, to get a heat on their feet when they go to bed.”

At the opening of the thirteenth century, then, we find England

possessed of schools and universities, the value of which was felt

both at home and abroad, and which had already produced several

men of eminence. Among these was Giraldus Cambrensis, the Welsh

historian, who received his early education in the school of his

uncle, the Bishop of St. David’s; after which he passed on to

Paris, which city he twice revisited and lectured there on polite

literature. Giraldus was one of those who deeply deplored the

preference then given to law and logic over classical studies, and

laboured hard to keep alive a better taste among his contemporaries.

The second time he went to Paris he assures us the doctors and

scholars were never weary of listening to him, being thoroughly

bewitched by the sweetness of his voice and the elegance of his

language. Henry II. summoned him to court, and appointed him his

chaplain and tutor to Prince John, with whom he travelled into

Ireland, the result of which expedition was seen in his two works,

the “Topography” and the “Conquest” of Ireland. Then he accompanied

Archbishop Baldwin in his progress through Wales and the western

counties of England, preaching the Crusade, and has given a

description of this journey also in his “Itinerary.” It was performed

on foot, and its difficulties are described with a graphic, and,

sometimes, a poetic pen. We see the weary travellers making their way

through the mountain ravines near Bangor, till the poor archbishop

is forced at last to sit down and rest on an oak tree torn up by the

winds and lying by the wayside. As he converses with his followers,

the sweet notes of a bird are heard from an adjoining thicket. Is it

a thrush or a nightingale? “The nightingale is never heard in Wales,”

observes one. “Is she not? Then she has followed wise counsel never

to come into Wales,” replies the archbishop, “whilst we, following

unwise counsel, are going right through it.” What an exquisite

picture is that which he gives of the Vale of Llanthony, where the

monks, as they sit in the cloister of their abbey, have but to raise

their eyes from their books in order to behold the pleasant prospect

of mountains ascending on all sides to a great height, and may watch

the deer peacefully grazing on the verdant slopes. In old times, he

adds, a hermitage stood on this spot, with no other ornament than

green moss and ivy. One sees in passages like these that artistic

love of beauty which is one of the marked characteristics of our

early writers.[244] In 1179 we find Giraldus at Oxford, where he

recited his “Topography” before the university, dividing it into

three parts and assigning a separate day to each. On each day there

was a great feast--the first day for the poor, the second for the

doctors, the third for the scholars and burghers. The entertainment,

he says, was worthy of classic times, and its like had never before

been seen in England.

By far the greater number of the literary men, however, who

flourished in England at this time were monks, and the pupils of

monks. Such were the historians William of Malmsbury, Florence of

Worcester, Simeon of Durham, Roger Wendover, Matthew of Westminster,

Eadmer of Canterbury, and many more. Some of them indeed had

graduated at the universities before assuming the monk’s cowl, like

Simeon of Durham, who lectured on natural philosophy at Oxford,

“diving into the hidden recesses of nature,” during the reign of

Stephen. In England, as elsewhere, not a few of those who in early

life had won their doctor’s cap in the schools, grew weary of the

vanity which they found there, and took refuge in the cloister. It

seems idle to speak of men whose names are now known only to the

curious, yet, in their own day, who was more thought of than Robert

de Bertune, “the Oxford clerk,” as Gervase calls him, who died

Bishop of Hereford, and whose sanctity of life caused some steps to

be taken to procure his canonisation? Or Thomas of Marleberg, who,

after teaching canon law at Oxford, Paris, and Exeter, retired to

Evesham, bringing with him all the books he had used in the schools,

and became first prior and then abbot of his monastery. His doctor’s

library included one book of Democritus, the Gradual of Constantine,

St. Isidore’s Offices, several of the works of Cicero, Lucan, and

Juvenal, together with a valuable collection of MS. notes, sermons,

and questions on theology. There were, besides, other notes and rules

on the art of grammar, and a book concerning accents. During his

government he caused a great number of useful books to be copied out

and bound, and bought a fine collection of the books of Scripture,

with their accompanying gloss. Evesham always retained its character

for learning, and there, as well as at Reading, St. Alban’s, Ramsey,

and Glastonbury, a great number of excellent scholars were reared.

There can be no doubt that the monastic schools of England continued

to cultivate humane letters long after they had fallen into neglect

at the universities. The Latin poets who flourished in England in

the twelfth century are noticed with respect by all critics; and

the epic poem of “Antiocheis,” composed by Joseph of Exeter, after

his return from the Holy Land, whither he accompanied King Richard

I., is declared by Warton to be “a miracle of classic composition.”

He also praises the elegant versification of Henry of Huntingdon,

Robert of Dunstable, Lawrence of Durham, and others, all of whom were

monks. None of these English Latinists condescended to the barbarism

of Leonine rhymes, which they probably regarded with much the same

feeling that Bede expressed for the “songs of vulgar poets.” One and

all did their utmost to uphold the rules of prosody, and rejoiced

in the solemn protest put forth by their countryman, Geoffrey de

Vinsauf, against the corruption of pure Latinity.

Henry of Huntingdon, named above among our Latin poets, and equally

distinguished as an historian, was altogether a scholar of monastic

training. He received his education in the school of Ramsey, a

monastery which enjoyed the reputation of having none but learned men

for its abbots. The library collected by them was the richest in the

kingdom. The catalogue may still be seen among the Cottonian MSS.,

and contains, besides books of more ordinary occurrence, the works of

Aristotle, Plato, Sallust, Terrence, Martial, Ovid, Lucan, Horace,

Virgil, and Prudentius. There was also a Hebrew Bible, and Hebraic

literature was cultivated by many of the monks. When the Jews were

banished from England, a great number of their books were sold, and

the monks largely possessed themselves of these treasures. A great

sale of Rabbinical MSS. took place at Huntingdon and Stamford, when

Geoffrey, prior of Ramsey, made large purchases, and used the books

he thus procured to such good purpose as to become a great adept in

the Hebrew language, and communicate similar tastes to many of his

brethren. Even down to the middle of the thirteenth century, notices

occur of Hebrew scholars among the monks and librarians of Ramsey,

and one of them, Lawrence Holbech by name, is spoken of as compiling

a Hebrew Lexicon.

Great work at this time went on in the English scriptoria, and a

pleasant sort of barter was practised among the different abbeys,

by means of which each was supplied with the goods most to their

liking. Thus brother Henry, of Hyde Abbey, wrote out with his own

hand the works of Boëthius, Suetonius, Terence, and Claudian, which

he exchanged with a prior of St Swithin’s, who had a more classical

taste than himself, for four missals and a copy of St. Gregory on

the pastoral care. All the monks of Hyde Abbey were good writers and

illuminators, and were taught to bind their books with much care.

In 1240 the library of Glastonbury contained four hundred books,

and among them were the chief Latin classics. At Edmondsbury the

scriptorium was endowed with two mills, and at Ely the revenues of

two churches were granted to the monks “for the making of books.”

At Peterborough Abbey the library at the time of the dissolution

contained 1700 manuscripts. And at Tavistock, besides the ordinary

school and library, there existed another school in which the Anglo

Saxon language was taught, for the purpose of enabling the monks

to decipher their own ancient charters. But Tavistock was not the

only religious house in which the old English tongue continued to

be studied. In the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, is still

preserved a Latin Psalter after two versions, each version written in

a separate column. Over the lines of one column runs an Anglo-Saxon

translation, and over those of the other one in Anglo-Norman. The

writing is exquisite, and the whole manuscript is richly illuminated,

containing several historical paintings, together with the portrait

of Eadmer, the monk of Canterbury, who wrote it out in the reign

of Stephen. He holds in his hand a metal pen, and an inscription

over his head records his caligraphic skill. He is, moreover, found

worthy to be noted in the library catalogue as mighty in the art of

transcription, and from his name is considered to have been of Saxon

lineage.

Some of the larger of our English abbeys had not only schools within

their own precincts, but others dependent on them in the neighbouring

towns. Thus the school of Dunstable was dependent on the abbey of

St. Alban’s, and in 1180 was governed by a pupil of that abbey, who

in every way deserves mention as one of the most remarkable scholars

of his time. Alexander Neckham was foster-brother to Richard I., and

educated in the claustral school of St. Alban’s. Being appointed

regent of the Dunstable school, he taught there for some time with

considerable success, and thence proceeded to Paris, where he

studied and professed for seven years. At the end of that time he

returned to England, and resumed his former functions at Dunstable.

At last, wishing to enter the monastic state, he is said to have

applied for admission to the abbot of St. Alban’s, in an epistle

commencing with the words, “Si vis, veniam,” to which the abbot, who

loved a joke, replied, “Si bonus es, venias,--si _nequam nequaquam_.”

The pun on his name (Neckam) appears to have disgusted him; at any

rate, instead of a Benedictine, he became an Augustinian, and took

the habit in the priory of Cirencester, about the year 1187. He was a

universal scholar, a proficient in canon law, medicine, and theology,

the best Latin poet of his age, and remarkable for the purity of

his style. Like a true scholastic, he was a great lover of grammar,

and wrote several works on the subject, which are still preserved

in MS., some at Oxford, some at Cambridge, and some in the British

Museum. He was also the author of a set of tracts, common enough

in later times, for teaching scholars the Latin names of different

articles by connecting them in a sort of descriptive narrative.

To this work he gives the title of _De nominibus Utensilibus_, in

which he describes every apartment of a house, from the kitchen to

the bedrooms, with the furniture, dress, &c., in use in the twelfth

century. An interlinear version is given in French, and at the end

are grammatical notes and comments. He has also left a poem on the

monastic character, another on science, in which he treats with

some sublimity of the creation of the angels, stars, and elements;

of the birds, fishes, rivers, and principal towns in England; of

the earth, with her metals, plants, fruits, and animals; and of the

seven liberal arts. His remarks on natural history are original

and sagacious, specially those contained in his treatise _De Rerum

Naturis_. In his poems he praises his country with its pastures,

cornfields, and running streams, and celebrates the good qualities

of its sons. “The feathered birds of Lybia, and pheasants,” he says,

“often enrich thy tables, O Anglia. Nowhere are there more joyous

countenances at the festive board, more gracious hosts, more profuse

hospitality. The adornment of the table could not be more exquisite,

or the service more prompt and cheerful. The Englishman, by nature

and from his boyhood, gives gifts worthy to be given; and no age

is too old to give.” After adding much on the liberality of his

countrymen, he observes, that they are fond of hunting, and that they

have a very subtle genius for mechanics, as well as for the liberal

arts.

The character here bestowed on our countrymen corresponds well enough

with the more satirical portraiture of Nigel Wireker, who, in his

_Speculum Stultorum_, whilst lashing the follies of the world in

general, and the universities in particular, describes the English

students at Paris, as “noble in look and manner, full of strong

sense brightened with wit, lavish with their money, and haters of

everything sordid, whilst their tables groan with dishes, and the

drinking knows no laws.”

The students who frequented the English seminaries were seldom

of the nobler class. So late as the reign of Henry II., the

Anglo-Norman barons preferred sending their sons to French schools

and universities, out of a nervous dread lest their Norman speech

should be barbarised by any admixture of the English accent. Even

in the English schools for the higher orders, the native tongue was

never used. Children were taught the French tongue from their cradle;

and this custom, introduced at the Conquest, continued to prevail

down to the reign of Edward III. However, it was not easy to preserve

the Norman dialect pure from Saxon adulteration in a Saxon land, and

hence the sly allusions which Chaucer throws out to the difference

between the French of Paris and that of the school of “Stratford atte

Bowe.” Robert of Gloucester, who felt the absurdity of the system,

and was one of the first writers after the Conquest who ventured to

use the English language for literary purposes, after telling us that

the Norman spoke nothing but French, and “their children did teche,”

observes that, unless a man know French, men talk of him but little,

and that none but “low men” now hold to their national speech--a

thing not to be found in any other country. “But I wot well,” he

continues, “that it is well to know both, for the more a man knoweth,

the more worth he is.”

Besides the great monastic and cathedral schools, there existed in

London and other large towns certain public schools, of which Fitz

Stephen has given a lively description, doubtless familiar to the

reader. “On holidays,” he says, “it is usual for these schools to

hold public assemblies in the church, in which the scholars engage

in logical disputations, some using enthymems, and others perfect

syllogisms; some aiming at nothing but to gain the victory, and make

an ostentatious display of their acuteness; while others have in

view the investigation of truth. Artful sophists on these occasions

acquire great applause, some by a prodigious inundation of words,

and others by their specious but fallacious arguments. After the

disputation, other scholars deliver rhetorical declamations, in

which they observe all the rules of art, and neglect no topic

of persuasion. Even the younger boys in the different schools

contend against each other about the principles of grammar, and the

preterites and supines of verbs. There are some who, in epigrams,

rhymes, and verses, use that trivial raillery so much practised by

the ancients, freely attacking their companions with Fescennine

license, but suppressing the names, touching with Socratic wit the

failings of their school-fellows, or even of greater personages, or

biting them more keenly with a Theonine tooth.”[245] It was in one

of these London schools that St. Thomas of Canterbury received his

early education, after leaving the school of the Canons Regular at

Merton, and before proceeding to the university. The masters were

generally some of those professors whom Oxford and Paris sent forth

at this time in such abundance that not only cities, but villages

also, had their learned teachers, as Roger Bacon testifies. They

were, of course, skilled in the disputatious sciences of the day, and

extremely well fitted to train a generation of “artful sophists.”

There was one private school of this period of which we must give

a more particular notice, associated as it is with the history of

St. Gilbert of Sempringham, the founder of the only religious order

which we can claim as strictly of English growth. He was the son of

a Norman knight of Lincolnshire and a Saxon mother, inheriting more

of the Saxon than the Norman temperament. In youth he showed no taste

for the chase or the tilt-yard, and gave no promise of intellectual

superiority to make up for his deficiency in manly accomplishments.

But as he grew in years a studious disposition began to manifest

itself, in consequence of which his father sent him to study at

Paris, where he remained until he had received his master’s degree,

and, with it, license to open a school. The school of Sempringham

very soon became famous. It received pupils of both sexes, who were

trained not merely in the rudiments of learning, but also in a holy

life; for, says the biographer of the Saint, the scholars, though

they wore a secular garb, lived under a kind of monastic discipline.

They were not allowed to play and wander about like other children,

but were obliged to keep silence in the church and in the dormitory,

where the boys all slept together, and were only supposed to speak

in certain appointed places. They had, moreover, set hours for study

and prayer, and, in a word, were trained in the rules of strict

discipline. “For, from his childish years, it had been the one

thought of Gilbert how he could best win souls to God, and profit

them by word and example; wherefore, keeping himself unspotted from

the world, he occupied himself incessantly in holy and spiritual

things.”

After a time, two churches were founded on his father’s manor, and

Gilbert was instituted rector of the parishes of Sempringham and

Torington; although, not being at that time in holy orders, he was

obliged to appoint a chaplain to serve the church in his stead.

However, he acted as rector in so far as regarded the government

of his parish and his school. He catechised and instructed his

parishioners, and that with such success that we are told the

greater number of those who heard him served God as if under regular

monastic discipline, although remaining seculars: he was earnest in

his endeavours to withdraw them from the revelries so attractive to

their class, and to accustom them to the practice of the works of

mercy; he particularly made it his aim to instruct them in the ritual

and ceremonies of the Church; and at length it came to be said that

you might tell a parishioner of Sempringham by his way of entering

church, the humility of his attitude, and the devotion he exhibited

in prayer.

The young rector himself resided in a little house which he built for

himself in the churchyard, and spent most of his day in the church.

After a time, however, his reputation reaching the ears of Robert

Bloet, Bishop of Lincoln, he was summoned to the Episcopal Palace,

and, having received minor orders, was appointed to an office in the

bishop’s household, which he retained under his successor, Alexander.

By the latter he was ordained priest, and promoted to the post of

Penitentiary to the diocese. Greater dignities were offered to him;

but Gilbert longed to return to his rustic parishioners, and, in

1130, he escaped from his court life, and with a glad heart made

his way back to Sempringham. He had conceived the idea of attaching

a religious house of some sort to his church, and among his former

pupils he selected seven young women, for whom he built a small

monastery adjoining the north wall of the church of St. Andrew. We

are told that the nuns retained the learned tastes they had acquired

in the founder’s school, so that at last it was found necessary to

forbid them to speak Latin to one another, unless occasion should

oblige them. A very considerable portion of their time was given

to reading and meditation, and minute rules were given as to their

manner of behaving as they read in the cloister, where they were to

sit one behind another, and all looking one way, unless two chanced

to be reading out of the same book. The same rule enjoined that they

should ever preserve a sweet and cheerful countenance, and never

exhibit signs of anger. To provide for the temporal necessities of

his nuns, Gilbert appointed first a community of lay sisters, and

then of lay brothers, and he conceived the idea of establishing

a certain sort of religious rule among all the labourers on his

paternal estate, to which, by the death of his father, he had now

succeeded, and making his various farms dependent, in some sort,

on the monastery, at the same time that they supplied the temporal

necessities of the nuns.

Gilbert’s aim in this singular experiment was the amelioration of

the lower orders; for the expressions used in speaking of those

whom he selected show that they were of the very humblest class.

Some were those whom he had known from childhood, the hinds and

peasants attached to the manor; others were runaway serfs, for whom

he obtained freedom by giving them the religious habit; and others,

again, were very poor beggars. In fact, like the servant in the

Gospel, he went out into the highways and hedges, and wherever he

found the poor and the despised, he invited them into the house of

the Lord. He did not attempt to teach these lay brethren letters,

only requiring them to learn the Pater, Credo, and Miserere in

Latin, but he trained them in obedience, humility, and temperance.

They had constitutions of their own, admirably fitted for their

state, and for giving religious discipline to a community made up

of shepherds, herdsmen, and farm-labourers, who were to discharge

the humble duties of their several callings under the religious

garb. Some of the rules show plainly enough the kind of men for whom

Gilbert was legislating; they were Saxon rustics, whose besetting

sin was a love of the alehouse, and whom Gilbert accordingly forbids

to drink wine, unless it be well watered, and prohibits, under any

pretext, from selling anything to seculars, or from opening any house

for the sale of liquor, _seu, ut lingua Teutonica dicitur, tappam_.

It was a strange experiment this, of converting a gross rustic

population into a religious community, and for a time it seemed

blessed with perfect success. The institute spread rapidly, till at

last Gilbert felt the necessity of providing for its more regular

government, and for this purpose he applied to the Cistercians, in

order that it might be grafted into their family. The request was,

however, declined, and Gilbert had no other course open than to found

another order of canons, who might take the spiritual direction of

his convents of nuns. The foundation of this third branch of the

institute did not take place till nearly twenty years after the

establishment of the first convent. The first canons, like the first

nuns, were chosen from Gilbert’s own scholars; seven were attached

to every priory of the religious sisters, besides which, some houses

were founded exclusively for the canons, and before he died Gilbert

saw himself the spiritual father of fifteen hundred nuns and seven

hundred canons, besides a vast number of lay brethren, whom he had

rescued from their life of abject serfdom, but from whose turbulent

conduct he had unhappily much to suffer. The order, in fact, declined

rapidly after the death of its founder, who lived to extreme old age,

being upwards of a hundred at the time of his death. Its weak point

was the attempt made to unite so many forms of religious life under

one government, and perhaps the hope of long preserving an austere

religious discipline among an association of rural labourers savoured

somewhat of a scholar’s Utopian dream.

The Gilbertine canons, however, continued for many years to cherish

a love of letters, and had the chief part in the foundation of that

pseudo-university of Stamford which threatened at one time to draw

away the north country students from Oxford, the Stamford schools

taking their rise in a Gilbertine house of studies. Among the first

writers who condescended to make use of the English vernacular tongue

was a Gilbertine canon named Robert Manning, who, about the beginning

of the thirteenth century, considering in his heart that the “lewd,”

as well as the “learned,” ought to know something of the history of

their own country, and to be familiar with the deeds of kings,

Whilk did wrong and whilk did right,

And whilk mayntened pees or fight,

composed his metrical chronicle, in which, desiring to lay a good

foundation, and to begin from the beginning, he commences his story,

“gre by gre,

Since the tyme of Sir Noe.”

In the reign of Henry II., however, the English tongue (as

distinguished from the Anglo-Saxon) had not yet assumed a literary

shape. In all higher schools, public or private, the French and Latin

languages were exclusively used. The Saxon or Teutonic dialect,

referred to in the Gilbertine rule, was considered only fit for

peasants, and even they had a certain comprehension of Latin. This

is clear from many circumstances. Thus, Giraldus tells us that

when Archbishop Baldwin journeyed through Wales for the purpose of

preaching the Crusade, he was never so successful as when he preached

in Latin. The populace, as we know, do not always measure their

appreciation of a discourse by the degree in which they understand

it, yet it is difficult to think that these effective sermons can

have been delivered in an altogether unknown tongue. But the fact is

that, in one respect, the rude ignorant peasantry of the Middle Ages

were a great deal more learned than the pupils of our model schools.

In a certain sort of way, every child was rendered familiar with

the language of the Church. From infancy they were taught to recite

their prayers, the antiphons, and many parts of the ritual of the

Church, in Latin, and to understand the meaning of what they learnt,

and hence they became familiar with a great number of Latin words;

so that a Latin discourse would sound far less strange in their ears

than in those of a more educated audience of the same class in the

present day.

In many cases, indeed, the children who were taught in the priest’s,

or parochial school, learnt grammar, that is, the Latin language;

but all were required to learn the Church chant and a considerable

number of Latin prayers, and hymns, and psalms. This point of poor

school education deserves more than a passing notice. Its result

was, that the lower classes were able thoroughly to understand, and

heartily to take part in, the rites and offices of Holy Church. The

faith rooted itself in their hearts with a tenacity which was not

easily destroyed, even by penal laws, because they imbibed it from

its fountain source--the Church herself. She taught her children

out of her own ritual and by her own voice, and made them believers

after a different fashion from those much more highly educated

Catholics of the same class who, in our day, often grow up almost as

much strangers to the liturgical language of the Church as the mass

of unbelievers outside the fold. Can there be any incongruity more

grievous than to enter a Catholic school, rich in every appliance

of education, and to find that, in spite of the time, money, and

method lavished on its support, its pupils are unable to understand

and recite the Church offices, and are untrained to take part in

Church Psalmody? The language of the Church has, therefore, in a

very literal sense, become a dead language to them, and it is from

other, and far inferior, sources that they derive their religious

instruction. Thus they are ignorant of a large branch of school

education, in which the children of a ruder and darker age were

thoroughly trained; no doubt, on the other hand, they know a great

many things of which children in the Middle Ages were altogether

ignorant, and the question is simply to determine which method of

instruction has most practical utility in it. Without dogmatising on

this point, we may be permitted to regret that through any defect in

the system of our parochial schools, Catholic congregations should

in our own days be deprived of the solemn and thorough celebration

of those sacred offices which in themselves comprise a body of

unequalled religious instruction; and that in an age which makes

so much of the theory of education, we should have to confess our

inability to teach our children to pray and sing the prayers of the

Church, as the children of Catholic peasants prayed and sang them six

hundred years ago.[246]