INTELLECT AND FAITH.
The only heresies which really troubled the Church were those which
obtained currency among the people unassisted by the ingenious
quodlibets of dialecticians. Possibly there may be an exception to this
in the theories of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, which apparently
owed their origin to the speculations of Amaury of Bène and David of
Dinant; but, as a whole, the Cathari and the Waldenses, the Spirituals
and the Fraticelli, even the Hussites, had little or nothing in common
with the fine-spun cobwebs of the schoolmen. For a heresy to take root
and bear fruit, it must be able to inspire the zeal of martyrdom; and
for this it must spring from the heart, and not from the brain. We have
seen how, during centuries, multitudes were ready to face death in its
most awful form rather than abandon beliefs in which were entwined their
sentiments and feelings and their hopes of the hereafter; but history
records few cases, from Abelard to Master Eckart and Galileo, in which
intellectual conceptions, however firmly entertained, were strong enough
to lead to the sacrifice. It is sentiment rather than reason which
renders heretics dangerous; and all the pride of intellect was
insufficient to nerve the scholar to maintain his thesis with the
unfaltering resolution which enabled the peasant to approach the stake
singing hymns and joyfully welcoming the flames which were to bear him
to salvation.
The schools, consequently, have little to show us in the shape of
contests between free thought and authority pushed to the point of
invoking the methods of the Inquisition. Yet the latter, by the system
which it rendered practicable of enforcing uniformity of belief,
exercised too potent an influence on the mental development of Europe
for us to pass over this phase of its activity without some brief
review.
There were two tendencies at work to provoke collisions between the
schoolmen and the inquisitors. The ardor of persecution, which rendered
the purity of the faith the highest aim of the Christian and the most
imperative care of the ruler, secular and spiritual, created an
exaggerated standard of orthodoxy, which regarded the minutest point of
theology as equally important with the fundamental doctrines of
religion. We have already seen instances of this in the questions as to
the poverty of Christ, as to whether he was dead when lanced on the
cross, and as to whether the blood which he shed in the Passion remained
on earth or ascended to heaven; and Stephen Palecz, at the Council of
Constance, proved dialectically that a doctrine in which one point in a
thousand was erroneous was thereby rendered heretical throughout.
Moreover, erroneous belief was not necessary, for the Christian must be
firm in the faith, and doubt itself was heresy.[597]
The other tendency was the insane thirst which inflamed the minds of the
schoolmen for determining and defining, with absolute precision, every
detail of the universe and of the invisible world. So far as this
gratified itself within the lines of orthodoxy laid down by an
infallible Church it resulted in building up the most complex and
stupendous body of theology that human wit has ever elaborated. The
_Sentences_ of Peter Lombard grew into the _Summa_ of Thomas Aquinas, an
elaborate structure to be grasped and retained only by minds of peculiar
powers after severe and special training. When this was once defined and
accepted as orthodox, theology and philosophy became the most dangerous
of sciences, while the perverse ingenuity of the schoolmen, revelling in
the subtleties of dialectics, was perpetually rearguing doubtful points,
raising new questions, and introducing new refinements in matters
already too subtle for the comprehension of the ordinary intellect. The
inquirer who disturbs the dust now happily covering the records of these
forgotten wrangles can only feel regret that such wonderful intellectual
acuteness and energy should have been so wofully wasted when, if rightly
applied, it might have advanced by so many centuries the progress of
humanity.
The story of Roger Bacon, the _Doctor Mirabilis_, is fairly illustrative
of the tendencies of the time. That gigantic intellect bruised itself
perpetually against the narrow bars erected around it by an age
presumptuous in its learned ignorance. Once a transient gleam of light
broke in upon the darkness of its environment, when Gui Foucoix was
elevated to the papacy, and, as Clement IV., commanded the Englishman to
communicate to him the discoveries of which he had vaguely heard. It is
touching to see the eagerness with which the unappreciated scholar
labored to make the most of this unexpected opportunity; how he
impoverished his friends to raise the money requisite to pay the scribes
who should set forth in a fair copy the tumultuous train of thought in
which he sought to embody the whole store of human knowledge, and how,
within the compass of little more than a single year, he thus
accomplished the enormous task of writing the _Opus Majus_, the _Opus
Minus_, and the _Opus Tertium_. Unfortunately, Clement was more
concerned at the moment with the fortunes of Charles of Anjou than with
the passing fancy which had led him to call upon the scholar; in little
more than two years he was dead, and it is doubtful whether he even
repaid the sums expended in gratifying his wishes.[598]
It was inevitable that Bacon should succumb in the unequal struggle at
once with the ignorance and the learning of his age. His labors and his
utterances were a protest against the whole existing system of thought
and teaching. The schoolmen evolved the universe from their internal
consciousness, and then wrangled incessantly over subtleties suggested
by the barbarous jargon of their dialectics. It was the same with
theology, which had usurped the place of religion. Peter Lombard was
greater than all the prophets and evangelists taken together. As Bacon
tells us, the study of Scripture was neglected for that of the
Sentences, in which lay the whole glory of the theologian. He who taught
the Sentences could select his own hour for teaching, and had
accommodations provided for him. He who taught the Scriptures had to beg
for a time in which to be heard, and had no assistance. The former could
dispute, and was held to be a master; the latter was condemned to
silence in the debates of the schools. It is impossible, he adds, that
the Word of God can be understood, on account of the abuse of the
Sentences; and whoso seeks in Scripture to elucidate questions is
stigmatized as whimsical, and is not listened to. Worse than all, the
text of the Vulgate is horribly corrupt, and where not corrupt it is
doubtful, owing to the ignorance of would-be correctors and their
presumption, for every one deemed himself able to correct the text,
though he would not venture to alter a word in a poet. First of moderns,
Bacon discerned the importance of etymology and of comparative
philology, and he exposed unsparingly the wretched blunders customary
among the so-called learned, who only succeeded in leading their pupils
into error. Bacon's methods were strictly scientific. He wanted facts,
actual facts, as a basis for all reasoning, whether on dogma or physical
and mental experiences. To him all study of nature or of man was
empirical; to know first, and then to reason. Mathematics was first in
the order of sciences; then metaphysics; and to him metaphysics was not
a barren effort to frame a system on postulates assumed at caprice and
built up on dialectical sophisms, but a solid series of deductions from
ascertained observations, for, according to Avicenna, "the conclusions
of other sciences are the principles of metaphysics."[599]
The vast labors of the earnest life of a great genius were lost to a
world too conceited of its petty vanities to recognize how far he was in
advance of it. It was enamored of words; he dealt in things: the actual
was rejected for the unsubstantial, and an intellectual revolution of
priceless value to mankind was stifled in its inception. It was as
though Caliban should chain Prospero and cast him into the ocean. How
completely Bacon was unappreciated by an age unable to understand him
and his antagonism towards its methods is evidenced by the scarcity of
manuscripts of his works, the fragmentary condition of some of them, and
the utter disappearance of others. "It is easier," says Leland, "to
collect the leaves of the Sibyl than the titles of the works of Roger
Bacon." The same evidence is furnished by the absence of detail as to
his life no less than by the vulgar stories of his proficiency in magic
arts. Even the tragic incident of his imprisonment by his Franciscan
superiors and the prohibition to pursue his studies is so obscure that
it is told in contradictory fashion, and its truth has been not
unreasonably denied. According to one account he was accused of
unorthodox speculations, in 1278, to Geronimo d'Ascoli, General of the
Order; his opinions were condemned, the brethren were ordered
scrupulously to avoid them, and he himself was cast into prison,
doubtless because he did not submit as serenely as Olivi to Geronimo's
sentence. He must have had followers and sympathizers, for Geronimo is
said to have prevented their complaints by promptly applying to Nicholas
III. for a confirmation of the judgment. How long his imprisonment
lasted is not known, though there is a tradition that he perished in
jail, either through sickness or the ill-treatment which we have seen
was freely visited by the Franciscans on their erring brethren. Another
statement attributes his incarceration to the ascetic Raymond Gaufridi,
who was General of the Order from 1289 to 1295. In either case it would
not be difficult to explain the cause of his disgrace. In the fierce
passions of the schools, one who antagonized so completely the
prevailing currents of thought, and who exposed so mercilessly the
ignorance of the learned, could not fail to excite bitter enmities. The
daring scholar who preferred Scripture to the Sentences, and pronounced
the text of the Vulgate to be corrupt, must have given ample opportunity
for accusations of heresy in a time when dogma had become so intricate,
and mortal heresy might lurk in the minutest aberration. The politic
Geronimo might readily listen to enemies so numerous and powerful as
those whom Bacon must have provoked. The ascetic Raymond, whose aim was
to bring back the Order to its primitive rudeness and simplicity, would
regard Bacon's labors with the same aversion as that manifested by the
early Spirituals to Crescenzio Grizzi's learning. It was a standing
complaint with his section of the Order that Paris had destroyed Assisi.
As Jacopone da Todi sang:
"Tal'è, qual'è, tal'è,
Non religione c' è.
Mal vedemmo Parigi
Che n' a destrutto Assisi,"
and the Spiritual General might well like to strike a blow at the
greatest scholar of the Order.[600]
While Bacon suffered because he antagonized the thought of his time,
there was much of scholastic bitterness which escaped animadversion
because it was the development of the tendencies of the age, and the
schoolmen were allowed to indulge in endless wrangling for the most part
without censure. The great quarrel between the Nominalists and the
Realists occupies too large a space in the intellectual history of
Europe to be wholly passed over, although its relation to our immediate
subject is not intimate enough to justify detailed consideration.
In the developed theory of the Realists, genera and species--the
distinctive attributes of individual beings, or the conceptions of those
attributes--are real entities, if not the only realities. Individuals
are ephemeral existences which pass away; the only things which survive
are those which are universal and common to all. In man this is
humanity, but humanity again is but a portion of a larger existence, the
animate, and the animate is but a transitory form of an Infinite Being,
which is All and nothing in particular. This is the sole Immutable.
These conceptions took their origin in the Periphyseos of John Scot
Erigena in the ninth century, whose reaction against the prevailing
anthropomorphism led him to sublimated views of the Divine Being, which
trenched closely on Pantheism. The heresy latent in his work lay
undiscovered until developed by the Amaurians, when the book, after
nearly four centuries, was condemned by Honorius III., in 1225.[601]
Nominalism, on the other hand, regarded the individual as the primal
substance; universals are only abstractions or mental conceptions of
qualities common to individuals, with no more of reality than the sounds
which express them. Even as Realism in the hands of daring thinkers led
to Pantheism, so, step by step, Nominalism could be brought to recognize
the originality of the individual and finally to Atomism.[602]
The two antagonistic schools were first clearly defined in the beginning
of the twelfth century, with Roscelin, the teacher of Abelard, as the
leader of the Nominalists, and William of Champeaux at the head of the
Realists. Discussion continued in the schools with constantly increasing
bitterness, though neither side dared to push their own views to their
ultimate conclusions. Realism in a modified form achieved a triumph with
the immense authority of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. Duns Scotus
was a Realist, though he differed with Aquinas on the problem of
individuation, and the Realists became divided into the opposing
factions of Thomists and Scotists. While they were thus weakened with
dissension, William of Ockham revived Nominalism, and it became bolder
than ever. The perennial hostility between the Dominicans and
Franciscans tended to range the two Orders under the opposing banners,
while Ockham's defence of Louis of Bavaria in his quarrel with the
papacy served to impress upon the new school of Nominalists his views
upon the relations between Church and State.[603]
The schools continued to resound with the clangor of disputation,
occasionally growing so hot that blows supplied the deficiency of words,
and even murder is said to have not been wanting. Under Peter d'Ailly
and John Gerson the University of Paris was Nominalist. With the English
domination the Realists triumphed and expelled their adversaries, who
were unable to return until the restoration of the French monarchy. In
1465 there arose in the University of Louvain a strife which lasted for
ten years over some propositions of Pierre de la Rive on fate and divine
foreknowledge, in which the rival sects took sides. The University of
Paris was drawn in; the Nominalists triumphed in condemning de la Rive,
and the Realists took their revenge by procuring from Louis XI. an edict
prohibiting the teaching of Nominalist doctrines in the University and
in all the schools of the kingdom; all Nominalist books were boxed up
and sealed until 1481, when Louis was persuaded to recall his edict, and
the university rejoiced to regain her liberty. One tragic incident in
the long quarrel has been already alluded to in the trial of John of
Wesel which led to his death in prison, and it illustrates how readily
scholastic ardor assumed that in gratifying its vindictiveness it was
vindicating the faith. The contemporary reporter of the trial assumes
that the persecution was caused by the antagonism of the Dominican
Realists to the Nominalism of the victim, and he deplores the rage which
led the Thomists to regard every one who denied the existence of
universals as though guilty of the sin against the Holy Ghost, and as a
traitor to God, to the Christian religion, to justice, and to the
State.[604]
The annals of the schools are full of cases which show how the
recklessness of disputatious logic led to subtleties most perilous in
minute details of theology, and also how sensitive were the conservators
of the faith as to anything that might be construed by perverse
ingenuity as savoring of heresy. Duns Scotus did not escape, nor Thomas
Bradwardine; William of Ockham and Buridan were enveloped in a common
condemnation by the University of Paris, of which the latter had been
rector. The boundaries between philosophy and the theology which sought
to define everything in the visible and invisible world were impossible
of definition, and it was a standing grievance that the philosophers
were perpetually intruding on the domains of the theologians. When their
daring speculations were unorthodox they sought to shelter themselves
behind the assertion that according to the methods of philosophy the
Catholic religion was erroneous and false, but that it was true as a
matter of faith, and that they believed it accordingly. This only made
matters worse, for, as the authorities pointed out, it assumed that
there were two opposite truths, contradicting each other. It was not
merely that orthodox sensitiveness was called upon to condemn, as was
done in 1447 by the University of Louvain, such vain sophisms as the
assertion that it is possible to conceive of a line a foot long which
shall yet have neither beginning nor end, and that a whole may be in
England while all its parts are in Rome; or those of Jean Fabre,
condemned by the University of Paris in 1463, that any part of a man is
a man, that one man is infinite men, that no man is ever corrupted,
though sometimes a man is corrupted--propositions in which lurked the
possibilities of heretical development--or the apparently yet more
innocent grammatical obtuseness which recognized no difference between
the phrases "the pot boils" and "pot, thou boilest"--an obtuseness which
Erasmus tells us was regarded as an infallible sign of infidelity.
Philosophers were not satisfied unless they could prove by logic the
profoundest and holiest mysteries of theology, and, however zealous they
were in the faith, the intrusion of reason into the theological
preserves was not only resented as an interference, but was rightfully
regarded with alarm at its possible consequences. When the Arab
philosophers were disputing as to the nature and operation of the Divine
Knowledge, the calm wisdom of Maimonides interposed, saying, "To
endeavor to understand the Divine Knowledge is as though we endeavored
to be God himself, so that our perception should be as his.... It is
absolutely impossible for us to attain this kind of perception. If we
could explain it to ourselves we should possess the intelligence which
gives this kind of perception." Ambitious schoolmen, however, as well as
orthodox theological doctors, refused to admit that the finite cannot
grasp the infinite, and their pride of reason awakened, not unnaturally,
the jealousy of those who considered it their exclusive privilege to
guard the Holy of Holies and to explain the will of God to men. This
feeling finds expression as early as 1201 in the story told of the
learned doctor, Simon de Tournay, who proved by ingenious arguments the
mystery of the Trinity, and then, elated by the applause of his hearers,
boasted that if he were disposed to be malignant, he could disprove it
with yet stronger ones, whereupon he was immediately stricken with
paralysis and idiocy. The self-restraint of such men was a slender
reliance, and yet slenderer was the chance that the interposition of
Heaven would always furnish so salutary a warning.[605]
The audacity of these rash intruders upon the sacred precincts increased
immeasurably with the introduction of the works of Averrhoes in the
second quarter of the thirteenth century, constituting a real danger of
the perversion of Christian thought. In the hands of the Arab
commentators the theism of Aristotle became a transcendental
materialism, carried to its furthest expression by the latest of them,
Ibn Roschd or Averrhoes, who died in 1198. In his system matter has
existed from the beginning, and the theory of creation is impossible.
The universe consists of a hierarchy of principles, eternal, primordial,
and autonomous, vaguely connected with a superior unity. One of these is
the Active Intellect, manifesting itself incessantly and constituting
the permanent consciousness of humanity. This is the only form of
immortality. As the soul of man is a fragment of a collective whole,
temporarily detached to animate the body, at death it is reabsorbed into
the Active Intellect of the universe. Consequently there are no future
rewards or punishments, no feelings, memory, sensibility, love, or
hatred. The perishable body has the power of reproducing itself and thus
enjoys a material immortality in its descendants, but it is only
collective humanity that is immortal.[606] To those whose conceptions of
paradise and the resurrection were as material as the Swarga of the
Brahman or the Kama Loka heavens of the Buddhist, such collective and
insensible immortality, like the Moksha and Nirvana, was virtually
equivalent to annihilation, and the Averrhoists were universally
stigmatized as materialists.
Such theories as these necessarily induced the loftiest indifferentism
as to religious formulas, although a wholesome dread of the rising
Moslem fanaticism, from which Averrhoes had not escaped scathless,
rendered him cautious as to assailing the established faith. "The
special religion of philosophers," he says, "is to study what exists,
for the most sublime worship of God is the contemplation of his works,
which leads us to a knowledge of him in all his reality. In the eye of
God this is the noblest of actions, while the vilest is to accuse of
error and presumption him who pays to divinity this worship, nobler than
all other worship; who adores God by this religion, the best of all
religions." At the same time the received religions are an excellent
instrument of morality. He who inspires among a people doubts as to the
national religion is a heretic, to be punished as such by the
established penalties. The wise man will utter no word against the
national religion, and will especially avoid speaking of God in a manner
equivocal to the vulgar. When several religions confront each other, one
should select the noblest. Thus all religions are of human origin, and
the choice between them is a matter of opinion or policy--but policy, if
nothing else, must have prevented Averrhoes from uttering the phrase
commonly attributed to him--"The Christian faith is impossible; that of
Judaism is a religion of children, that of Islam, a religion of
hogs."[607]
Still less credible is the popular assertion which assigns to him the
famous speech referring to Moses, Christ, and Mahomet as the three
impostors who had deluded the human race. This saying became a
convenient formula with which the Church horrified the faithful by
attributing it successively to those whom it desired to discredit.
Thomas of Cantimpré fathered it upon Simon de Tournay, whose paralytic
stroke in 1201 he ascribed to this impiety. Gregory IX., when in 1239 he
arraigned Frederic II. before the face of Europe, did not hesitate to
assert that he was the author of this utterance, which Frederic made
haste to deny in the most solemn manner. A certain renegade Dominican
named Thomas Scot, who was condemned and imprisoned in Portugal, was
said to have been guilty of this blasphemy among others, and the phrase
drifted through the centuries until there was a current belief that an
impious book existed under the title _De Tribus Impostoribus_, the
authorship of which was attributed variously to Petrus de Vineis,
Boccaccio, Poggio, Machiavelli, Erasmus, Servetus, Bernardino Ochino,
Rabelais, Pietro Aretino, Étienne Dolet, Francesco Pucci, Muret, Vanini,
and Milton. Queen Christina of Sweden vainly caused all the libraries of
Europe to be searched for it, but it remained invisible until, in the
eighteenth century, various scribblers put forth volumes to gratify the
popular curiosity.[608]
Yet to Frederic II. may be attributed the introduction of Averrhoism in
central Europe. In Spain it was so prevalent that about 1260 Alonso X.
describes heresies as consisting of two principal divisions, of which
the worst was that which denies the immortality of the soul and future
rewards and punishments, and in 1291 we find the Council of Tarragona
ordering the punishment of those who disbelieved in a future existence.
It was from Toledo that Michael Scot came with translations of Aristotle
and Averrhoes, and was warmly welcomed at the court of Frederic, whose
insatiable thirst for knowledge and whose slender reverence for formulas
led him to grasp eagerly at these unexpected sources of philosophy. It
was probably these translations which formed the body of Aristotelism
distributed by him to the universities of Italy. Hermannus Alemannus
continued Michael's work at Toledo and brought versions of other books
to Manfred, who inherited his father's tastes, so that by the middle of
the century the principal labors of Averrhoes were accessible to
scholars.[609]
The infection spread with rapidity almost incredible. Already, in 1243,
Guillaume d'Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, and the Masters of the University
condemned a series of scholastic errors, not indeed distinctively
Averrhoist, but manifesting in their bold independence the influence
which the Arab philosophy was beginning to exercise. In 1247 the papal
legate Otto, Bishop of Frascati, condemned Jean de Brescain for certain
heretical speculations concerning light and matter; he was banished from
Paris and forbidden to teach, or dispute, or to live where there was a
college. At the same time a certain Master Raymond who had been
imprisoned for his erroneous views was found to be contumacious and was
ordered back to prison, while, for the future, logicians were forbidden
to argue theologically and theologians logically, as they were growing
accustomed to do. This accomplished little, and as little was effected
by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, who employed their keenest
dialectics to check the spread of these dangerous opinions. Bonaventura
likewise denounced the audacious philosophy which denied immortality and
asserted the unity of intellect and the eternity of matter, showing that
Dominicans and Franciscans could co-operate against a common enemy. In
1270, Étienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris, was called upon to condemn a
series of thirteen errors, distinctively Averrhoist, which found
defenders among the schools, to the effect that the intellect of all men
is the same and is one in number; that human will is controlled by
necessity; that the world is eternal and there never was a first man;
that the soul is corrupted with the corruption of the body and does not
suffer from corporeal fire; that God does not know individual things, he
knows nothing but himself, and cannot give immortality and
incorruptibility to that which is mortal and corruptible.[610]
This availed as little as the previous effort. In 1277 it was deemed
necessary to invoke the authority of John XXI., under which Bishop
Tempier condemned a list of two hundred and nineteen errors, mostly the
same as the previous ones, or deductions drawn from them, tending to
systematize materialism and fatalism. The daring progress made by
free-thought is shown by the sharply defined antagonism proclaimed
between philosophy and theology: The philosopher must deny the creation
of the world because he relies upon natural causes alone, but the
believer may assert it because he relies upon supernatural causes; the
utterances of the theologians are based upon fables, and theology is a
study unworthy the pursuing, for philosophers are the only sages and the
Christian law impedes the progress of learning: prayer, of course, is
unnecessary, and sepulture is not worth consideration by the wise man,
but confession may be practised to save appearances. The Averrhoist
theory of the universe and the celestial spheres was fully expressed, as
well as the controlling influences of the stars upon human will and
fortunes, for which, as we have seen, Peter of Abano and Cecco d'Ascoli
subsequently suffered. In addition we have the speculation that with
every cycle of thirty-six thousand years the celestial bodies returned
to the same relative positions, producing a repetition of the same
series of events.[611]
About the same time Robert Kilwarby, Archbishop of Canterbury, together
with the Masters of Oxford, condemned some errors evidently originating
from the same source, but not asserting materialism in a manner so
absolute, and this condemnation was confirmed in 1284 by Archbishop
Peckham, but the only punishment threatened was deposition for a Master,
and for a Bachelor expulsion with disability for promotion. These
articles were combined with those of Bishop Tempier, and together the
collection had wide currency, as shown by the number of MSS. containing
it. That the opinions thus condemned continued to be regarded as a
source of real danger to the Church is manifested by the articles being
customarily printed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries at the
end of the fourth book of the _Sentences_, and also in an edition each
of Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Bonaventura.[612]
Yet after the death of Bishop Tempier these articles aroused
considerable complaint as interfering with freedom of discussion, and
they became the object of no little debate. In fact, in so long a list
of errors, many of them scarce apprehensible save by the scholastic
mind, it was almost impossible to avoid trenching upon positions held to
be orthodox in a theology of which the complexity had grown beyond the
grasp of finite intelligence and finite memory. Considerable trouble was
occasioned by the fact that some of the articles assailed positions held
by Thomas Aquinas himself; others were attacked by William of Ockham and
Jean de Poilly. How perilous, indeed, was the position of the
theological expert in the war of dialectics is seen in the case of the
_Doctor Fundatissimus_, Egidio Colonna, better known as Egidio da Roma.
There was no more earnest and active opponent of Averrhoism, and his
list of its errors long continued to be the basis of its condemnation.
Yet he translated a commentary on Aristotle, and in 1285 he was accused
in Paris of entertaining some of the errors condemned in 1277. After
considerable discussion the matter was carried before the Holy See, and
Honorius IV. referred him back to the University of Paris for sentence.
He made his peace so effectually that Philippe le Bel, whose tutor he
had been, presented him to the great archbishopric of Bourges.[613]
At the close of the thirteenth and the commencement of the fourteenth
century the principal figure in the contest with Averrhoes is Raymond
Lully--aptly styled by Renan the hero of the crusade against it--but the
career of Lullism was so remarkable that it must be considered
independently hereafter. All efforts failed to suppress a philosophy
which offered such attractions to the rising energies of the human
intellect. An avowed school of Averrhoists arose, whose tenets,
introduced in the University of Padua seemingly by Peter of Abano,
reigned there supreme until the seventeenth century. The University of
Bologna likewise adopted them. Jean de Jandun, the collaborator of
Marsilio of Padua, was a modified Averrhoist, as were Walter Burleigh,
Buridan, and the Ockhamists. John of Baconthorpe, who died in 1346 as
General of the Carmelites, rejoiced in the title of Prince of
Averrhoists, and through him the philosophy became traditional in the
Order. These men might conceal to themselves the dangerous irreligion
which lurked under their cherished theories, but when these spread among
the people, divested of the subtle dialectics of the schools, they
developed into frank materialism. Dante's description of the portion of
hell where
"Suo cimitero da questa parte hanno
Con Epicuro tutti i suoi seguaci
Che l'anima col corpo morta fanno" (INFERNO, X.)
manifests by its occupants that Averrhoism in its crudest form was
openly professed by men high in station; and some proceedings of the
Inquisitions of Carcassonne and Pamiers in the first quarter of the
fourteenth century indicate that even in the lower strata of society
such opinions were not uncommon. The indignation of Petrarch shows us
how fashionable and how outspoken by the middle of the century this
indifferentism had become in the Venetian provinces, where men did not
hesitate to ridicule Christ and to regard Averrhoes as the fountain of
wisdom. In Florence the tradition of the same philosophic contempt for
dogma is indicated by Boccaccio's story of the Three Rings, wherein
Melchisedech the Jew, by an ingenious parable, conveys to Saladin the
conclusion that all three religions are on the same plane, with equal
claims for reverence. In Spain, although philosophy was little
cultivated, Moorish tradition seems to have kept Averrhoism alive. The
revolted nobles who, in 1464, presented their complaints to King Enrique
IV., declare him suspect in the faith because he keeps about his person
enemies of Catholicism, and others who, while nominally Christians,
boast of their disbelief in the immortality of the soul.[614]
Averrhoism had thus fairly conquered a position for itself, and it is
one of the inscrutable problems why the Inquisition, so unrelenting in
its suppression of minor aberrations, should have conceded impunity to
speculations which not only sapped the foundations of Christian faith,
but by plain implication denied all the doctrines on which were based
the wealth and power of the hierarchy. Even the University of Paris, so
vigilant in its guard over orthodoxy, seems during the remainder of the
fourteenth century to have abstained from condemning Averrhoism and its
deductions, although there were numerous decisions against minute errors
of scholastic theology. Yet to Gerson Averrhoes was still the most
insolent adversary of the faith; he was the man who had condemned all
religions as bad, but that of the Christians as worst of all, for they
daily ate their God; and, in the allegorical paintings of Orcagna,
Traini, Taddeo Gaddi, and their successors, Averrhoes commonly figures
as the impersonation of rebellious unbelief.[615]
It was not till 1512 that Averrhoism had its first recorded victim since
Peter of Abano, in the person of Hermann of Ryswick, who, in 1499, had
been condemned for teaching its materialistic doctrines--that matter is
uncreated and has existed with God from the beginning, that the soul
dies with the body, and that angels, whether good or bad, are not
created by God. He abjured and was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment,
but escaped and persisted in propagating his errors. When again
apprehended, in 1512, the inquisitor at The Hague had no hesitation in
handing him over as a relapsed to the secular arm, and he was duly
burned.[616]
In northern Europe, where scholastic theology was engaged in mortal
combat with Humanism, rigor like this is to be looked for, but the case
was different in Italy. There letters had long before got the better of
faith. The infection of culture and philosophy, of elegant paganism,
pervaded all the more elevated ranks of society. A succession of
cultured popes, who were temporal princes rather than vicars of Christ,
and who prided themselves on the patronage of scholars, could turn aside
from the affairs of state to stimulate the burning of miserable
witches, but not to condemn the errors of the philosophers who adorned
their courts. If Rome was to remain the mistress of the world under the
New Learning, she could not afford to be relentless in repressing the
aspirations and speculations of scholars and philosophers.[617] The
battle had been fought and lost over Lorenzo Valla. It is true that his
destructive criticism of the Donation of Constantine was written at
Naples about 1440, when Alfonso I. was in conflict with Eugenius IV.
Yet, as he not only swept away the foundations of the temporal power,
but argued that the papacy should be deprived of it, the impunity which
he enjoyed is a remarkable proof of the freedom of speech permitted at
the period. His troubles arose from a different cause, and even these he
would probably have escaped but for the quarrelsome humor of the man,
and his unsparing ridicule of the horrible jargon of the schools and
even of the earlier Humanists. He made enemies enough to conspire for
his ruin at the court of Naples, where Alfonso had studied Latin under
his teaching, and he soon gave occasion for their attack. Becoming
involved in a contest with an ignorant priest who asserted that the
Symbol was the production of the Apostles, the discussion spread to the
authenticity of the communications between Christ and King Abgar of
Edessa. Valla posted a list of the propositions assailed, and hired a
hall in which to defend them against all comers, when his enemies
procured from the king a prohibition of disputation. Valla then posted
on the hall-door a triumphant distich:
"Rex pacis miserans sternendas Marte phalanges,
Victoris cupidum continuit gladium."
Then the Inquisition interposed, but Alfonso exercised the royal
Neapolitan prerogative of putting a stop to the prosecution, Valla
being only forced to make a general declaration that he believed as Holy
Mother Church believed--the sincerity of which appeared when, attacked
on a point of dialectics, he defended himself by saying: "In this, too,
I believe as Mother Church believes, though Mother Church knows nothing
about it." When, in 1443, Alfonso and Eugenius were reconciled, Valla
sought to go to Rome, but was unable to do so; but when the monkish
Eugenius was succeeded by the humanist Nicholas V., the way was opened.
Nicholas not only welcomed him, but gave him a position among the papal
secretaries and rewarded his translation of Thucydides with a gift of
five hundred ducats. Calixtus III. provided him with a prebend in the
pope's own church of St. John Lateran, and here he was honorably buried.
So little reverence, indeed, existed at the time for the most sacred
subjects that Æneas Sylvius relates with admiration, as an illustration
of Alfonso's keenness, that when he had been wearied with a sermon by
Frà Antonio, a Sicilian Dominican, on some questions concerning the
Eucharist, he put to the preacher the following puzzle: A man enclosed a
consecrated host in a vase of gold; a month later, on opening it, he
found only a worm; the worm could not have been formed from the pure
gold, nor from the accidents which were there, without the subject; it
was therefore produced from the body of Christ; but from the substance
of God nothing but God can proceed, therefore the worm was God. In such
a spiritual atmosphere it was in vain that Lorenzo's enemy Poggio, whom
he had mercilessly ridiculed and abused, urged that his errors as to the
nature of God and the vow of chastity should be reproved by fire rather
than by argument. His commentary on the New Testament, in which he
corrected the errors of the Vulgate by the aid of the Greek text,
although subsequently put in the index by Paul IV. in 1559, was not
condemned at the time. Nicholas V. saw it, Bessarion contributed to it,
Nicholas of Cusa begged a copy of it, and Erasmus, in 1505, published it
with enthusiastic encomiums, under the patronage of Christopher Fischer,
papal prothonotary. We have seen from Bacon how hopelessly corrupt the
text of the Vulgate had become; Valla's attempt to purify it was warmly
contested, but in his controversy over it with Poggio he won the
victory, and the right to do so was thenceforth conceded.[618]
After this, scholarship, however heretical, had little to fear in Italy;
and the toleration thus extended to the most daring speculations offers
abundant food for thought, when we remember that at this very time the
Franciscans and Dominicans were turbulently endeavoring to burn each
other over the infinitesimal question as to whether the blood of Christ
shed in the Passion remained on earth or not. It is true that in 1459
the Lombard inquisitor, Jacopo da Brescia, condemned to degradation and
perpetual imprisonment Doctor Zanino da Solcia, Canon of Bergamo, who
entertained some crazy theories that the end of the world was
approaching, and that God had created another world populated by human
beings, so that Adam was not the first man, together with some
Averrhoistic tenets that it was the power of the stars, and not love for
humanity that led Christ to the cross, and that Christ, Moses, and
Mahomet governed mankind at their pleasure; but Pius II., in confirming
the sentence, moderated it with the evident purpose in due time of
remedying the over-zeal of the inquisitor. He also interfered when the
Inquisition had condemned a high official of Udine for virtually denying
immortality by asserting that the blood is the soul: the sentence was
set aside, and the offender was offered the easy opportunity of escaping
punishment as a heretic by publicly declaring this to be an error. Pius,
however, showed his orthodoxy by reproving the laxity of Eugenius IV. in
the case of Braccio da Montone, the condottiere lord of Perugia, an
avowed infidel, whose body, on his death in 1424 at the siege of Aquila,
was brought to Rome and thrust into unconsecrated ground until Eugenius
had it translated and honorably buried in the cathedral of Perugia. A
more typical case is that of Gismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini. He was
a man of high culture, and an ardent adept of the new philosophy, who
manifested his zeal by bringing from the Peloponnesus and burying with a
laudatory inscription, in the cathedral of Rimini, Gemistus Plethon, the
half-pagan founder of a new philosophical religion. All this might have
escaped animadversion had not his ambition led him to extend his
dominions at the expense of papal territory. In the quarrel which ensued
his heterodoxy served as a convenient object of attack, and in 1461 Pius
II. condemned him as a heretic who denied the immortality of the soul,
and in default of his body burned his effigy before a Roman crowd. So
little effect had this that the Venetians maintained their alliance with
Gismondo, and the Bishop of Treviso incurred imminent risk of losing his
see by reason of publishing the sentence. More efficacious was a
crusade, in 1463, under the Cardinal of Theane and Federigo d' Urbino,
when Gismondo was stripped of nearly all his possessions and was forced
to sue for peace. His heresy then was so little regarded that he was
allowed to abjure by deputy, and was reconciled under the trifling
penance of Friday fasting on bread and water.[619]
In fact, as Gregory of Heimburg bitterly declares, it was safer to
discuss the power of God than that of the popes. This was very clearly
demonstrated in the persecution of the "Academy" by Paul II. Pius II.
had formed in the curia a college of sixty "abbreviators" for the
expedition of papal briefs, which became for the most part a refuge for
needy men of letters. Platina, the papal biographer, who was one of
them, tells us that it was customary among both philosophers and
theologians to dispute about the soul, the existence of God, the
separated essences, and other matters, and he seeks to palliate the evil
repute thence arising by saying that people confounded search for the
truth with heretical doubt. The people probably had ample cause for
scandal in such debates among papal officials, which was not diminished
when Pomponio Leto founded in honor of Plato an academy of the leading
Humanists, who bestowed on their leader the title of Pontifex Maximus,
offered sacrifices on the anniversary of the foundation of Rome, and
discarded their baptismal names in favor of classical ones. Pomponio
himself would study nothing later than the golden age of Roman
literature, thus dismissing with contempt the Scriptures and the
Fathers, and he daily knelt before an altar dedicated to Romulus. All
this might have passed unrepressed had these classical zealots borne
with philosophy the withdrawal of papal patronage. One of the early acts
of Paul II., in his effort to reform abuses, was the suppression of the
College of Abbreviators in consequence of ugly rumors as to the venality
and extortion of its members. The men of letters, many of whom had
purchased their positions, were indignant at this deprivation of their
means of livelihood. Platina was hardy enough to ask the pope to have
their rights decided by the Auditors of the Rota, and was refused with
abundant emphasis. He then had the incredible audacity to write to Paul
threatening him with an appeal to the princes of Christendom to call a
council on the subject. After Constance and Basle, the word council was
not one to be safely uttered within earshot of a pope; Platina was
promptly arrested on a charge of high-treason and thrown into jail,
where he lay in chains, without fire, during four winter months, until
released on the intercession of Cardinal Gonzaga. All this was not
likely to create harmony between Paul and the Humanists; we can readily
imagine that epigrams and satires on the pope were freely circulated and
that the breach grew wider, but the men of letters, if allowed to remain
hungry, were not molested until, early in 1468, Paul was informed that
the members of the Academy were conspiring against him. That a crazy
admiration of antiquity should culminate in an effort to restore the
liberty of Rome was not improbable, and the situation in Italy was such
as to render an effort of the kind abundantly capable of causing
trouble. Paul was thoroughly alarmed, and at once imprisoned the
suspected conspirators. The unlucky Platina, who was one of them, has
given us an account of the relentless tortures to which, for two days,
about twenty of them were subjected, while Pomponio, who chanced to be
in Venice, was dragged to Rome like another Jugurtha. No criminating
evidence of treason was discovered, but they were kept in durance for a
year, and, in order to find some justification for the affair, which had
excited much comment, they were accused of heresy, of disputing about
the immortality of the soul, and of venerating Plato. It proves how
leniently such aberrations were regarded that they were finally
acquitted of all heresy and discharged; and that although Paul abolished
the Academy, prohibiting even the mention of its name, his successor,
Sixtus IV., as a patron of letters, permitted its re-establishment and
appointed Platina librarian of the Vatican library which he
founded.[620]
The tolerance thus extended to the paganism of the enthusiastic votaries
of the New Learning produced a curious development of religious
sentiment among them as insidiously dangerous to the faith, except in
its lack of popular attractiveness, as the dogmas so ruthlessly
exterminated by Peter Martyr and François Borel. Marsilio Ficino, the
Platonist, evidently regarded himself, and was regarded, as a champion
of Christianity and a most deserving son of the Church, and yet he kept
a lamp lighted in honor of Plato, whom he repeatedly declared to be a
Greek-speaking Moses. He brought all religions upon the same level. The
worship of the pagan gods of antiquity was a worship of the true God,
and not, as the Church held, an adoration of demons. He found Paradise
in the Elysian Fields, and Purgatory in Hades. Zoroaster, Orpheus,
Hermes Trismegistus, Socrates, Plato, and Virgil were prophets on whose
evidence he relies to prove the divinity of Christ. The Crito confirms
the Evangel and contains the foundation of religion. Even the
Neo-Platonists, Plotinus and Proclus, and Iamblichus, are shown to have
been supporters of the faith which they so earnestly combated while
alive. For teachings far less dangerous than this hundreds of men had
been forced to the alternative of recantation or the stake, but Marsilio
was honored as a light of his age. It is true that he avoided the errors
of Averrhoism, but as these were likewise tolerated his impunity is not
to be ascribed to this. While admitting the importance of astrology, he
held that the stars have no power of themselves; they can merely
indicate, and their indication of the future by their regular
revolutions shows that affairs are not abandoned to chance, but are
ruled by Providence. So, while human character is affected by the
position of the stars at the hour of birth, it is much more the result
of heredity and training. Perhaps the most curious illustration which
Marsilio gives us of the confusion and upturning of religious ideas in
the Renaissance is a letter addressed to Eberhard, Count of Wirtemberg,
in which he seriously proves that the sun is not to be worshipped as
God. In one respect he was more orthodox than most of his brethren of
the New Learning, for he believed in the immortality of the soul, and
maintained it in a laborious treatise, but he could not convince his
favorite pupil, Michele Mercato, and made with him a compact that the
one dying first should return, if there was a future life, and inform
the other. One morning Mercato was awakened by the trampling of a horse
and a voice calling to him: on rushing to the window the horseman
shouted, "Mercato, it is true!". Marsilio had that moment died.[621]
An exception to this prevalent tolerance is commonly said to be found
in the case of Matteo Palmiere of Pisa, reported to have been burned in
1483 for maintaining in his poem, the _Città di Vita_, that the souls of
men are the angels who stood neutral in the revolt of Satan. In reality,
however, although the Inquisition disapproved his book, the author was
not persecuted; he was honorably buried in Florence, and his portrait by
Sandro Botticelli was placed over the altar of San Pietro Maggiore.[622]
That it was not, however, always safe to presume on this favor shown to
humanism is evident by the case of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the
wonder of his age, who in 1487, when but twenty-four years old,
published a series of nine hundred propositions which he offered to
defend in Rome against all comers, paying the expenses of scholars who
might travel for the purpose from distant lands. The list was virtually
_de omni scibili_, comprising everything recognized as knowable in
theology, philosophy, and science, even including the mysteries of the
East. It was doubtless the pretentiousness of the young scholar which
provoked enmity leading to animadversion on his orthodoxy, and it was
not difficult in so vast an array of conclusions to find some thirteen
which savored of heresy. To us it might appear a truism to say that
belief is independent of volition; we might hesitate to affirm
positively whether Christ descended into hell personally or only
effectively; we might even agree with him that mortal sin, limited and
finite, is not to be visited with chastisement unlimited and infinite;
and we might hesitate to embark with him in investigating too narrowly
the mysteries of transubstantiation; but these speculative assumptions
of the self-sufficient thinker were condemned as heretical by the
theologians appointed for their examination by Innocent VIII., who
quietly remarked: "This youth wishes to end badly, and be burned some of
these days, and then be infamous forever like many another." Pico was
urged to resist and raise a schism, but nothing was further from his
thoughts. His few remaining years were passed in the assiduous study of
Scripture; he designed, after completing certain works in hand, to
wander barefoot over Europe preaching Christ; then, changing his
purpose, he intended to enter the Dominican Order, but his projects were
cut short, at the age of thirty-two, by the fever which carried him
off, gratified in his last hours with a vision of the Virgin. Such a man
was an easy victim; the voluminous apology which he wrote to explain his
errors availed him nothing, and he was compelled to make a full
submission, which earned from Alexander VI., in 1493, not long before
Pico's death, a bull declaring his orthodoxy and forbidding the
Inquisition to trouble him.[623]
In curious contrast to this exceptional rigor was the toleration
manifested towards the Averrhoists. It is true that Leo X., in the
Council of Lateran, December 21, 1513, procured the confirmation of a
bull in which he deplored the spread of the doctrine of the mortality of
the soul and of there being but one soul common to mankind. He also
condemned the opinions which maintained the eternity of the earth and
that the soul has not the form of the body, and in prohibiting their
teaching in the schools he especially alluded to the ingenious device
adopted by professors of arguing against them so equivocally as to lead
to the conviction of their truth. In 1518, moreover, when commissioning
Master Leonardo Crivelli as Inquisitor-general of Lombardy, he calls his
appointee's special attention to those who seek to know more than it is
well to know, and who think ill of the Holy See; these he is to repress
with the free use of torture, incarceration, and other penalties, and to
pay over their confiscated property to the papal camera, no matter of
what condition or dignity they might be. Yet debates on points of
Averrhoistic philosophy were the favorite amusement of the semi-pagan
philosophers who gathered in Leo's court, and who deemed that all that
was necessary to preserve them from the Inquisition was to present
arguments on both sides, pronounce the questions insoluble to human
reason, and conclude with a hypocritical submission to the Church. Such
was the device of Pomponazio (1473-1525), under whom Averrhoism became
more popular than ever, although he ridiculed Averrhoes and called
himself an Alexandrian, from Alexander of Aphrodisias, the Aristotelian
commentator, from whom Averrhoes had derived much. Pomponazio invented
the dilemma, "If the three religions are false, all men are deceived: if
only one is true, the majority of men are deceived." He argued, "If
there is a will superior to mine, why should I be responsible for my
acts and deeds? Now a will, a superior order exists, therefore all that
happens must be in accordance with a preordained cause: whether I do
right or wrong there is neither merit nor sin." In his treatise _De
Incantationibus_ he argued away all miracles. The bones of a dog would
effect cures as readily as the relics of a saint if the patient's
imagination entertained the same belief in them. Like Peter of Abano,
moreover, he held that everything is according to the order of nature;
revolutions of empires and religions follow the course of the stars;
thaumaturgists are but skilful physicists who foresee the occult
influences at work and profit by the suspension of ordinary laws to
found new religions; when the influences cease, miracles cease,
religions decay, and incredulity would triumph if renewed conjunctions
of the planets did not cause fresh prodigies and new thaumaturgists. All
this was far worse than anything for which Cecco d'Ascoli suffered, but
Pomponazio escaped his fate by cautiously excepting the Christian
faith.[624]
In fact, the only work which gave him serious trouble was his treatise
_De Immortalitate Animoe_, written after the Lateran denunciation, in
1516, which Prierias informs us ought rather to have been entitled "_De
Mortalitate_." In this it is true that he rejects the Averrhoist theory
of a universal intelligence as unworthy of refutation through its
monstrous and unintelligible fatuity; but, after stating the various
arguments for and against immortality, with an evident bearing towards
the latter, he sums up by declaring the problem to be "neutral," like
that of the eternity of the earth; there are no natural reasons proving
the soul either to be immortal or mortal, but God and Scripture assert
immortality, and therefore reasons proving mortality must be false. He
evidently seeks to indicate that immortality is a matter of faith, and
not of reason; and he even goes so far as to attribute much of the
popular belief in departed spirits and in visions to the frauds of
corrupt priests, examples of which he says were not uncommon at the
time. The thin veil thus cast over its infidelity did not save the book
in Venice, where the patriarch had it publicly burned, and wrote to
Cardinal Bembo to have it condemned in Rome. Bembo read it with gusto,
pronounced it conformable with the faith, and gave it to the Master of
the Sacred Palace, who reached the same opinion. The latter's successor
in office, however, Prierias, was less indulgent. In his treatise on
witches (1521) he declares that the example of the Venetians ought to be
everywhere followed, while his elaborate argumentation to prove the
immortality of the soul, and that the souls of brutes are not the same
as those of men, shows how widespread were irreligious opinions, and how
freely the questions were debated at the time. This is further
illustrated in the confession of Eugenio Tarralba before the Spanish
Inquisition in 1528, when he testified that as a youth he had studied in
Rome, where his three masters, Mariana, Avanselo, and Maguera, all
taught him that the soul was mortal, and he was unable to answer their
arguments.[625]
Pomponazio did not remain unanswered. In 1492 Agostino Nifo, professor
at Padua, in his work _De Intellectu et Dæmonibus_, had contended for
the Averrhoist theory of the unity of intelligence; a single intellect
pervades the universe, and modifies all things at its will. He had
already had trouble with the Dominicans, and this gave them the
advantage; it would have fared ill with him had not Pietro Barozzi, the
enlightened Bishop of Padua, saved him, and induced him to modify his
teachings. Despite his philosophy, he was a skilful courtier, and became
a favorite with Leo X., who made him count of the palace, and paid him
to prove against Pomponazio that Aristotle maintained the immortality of
the soul. He became the accepted interpreter of Averrhoes throughout
Italy, and his mitigated Averrhoism remained the doctrine taught at
Padua during the remainder of the century.[626]
It was impossible that the ministers of the Church should escape the
contagion of this fashionable infidelity, however little, in their
worldly self-seeking, they might trouble themselves about the theories
of Averrhoism. In his sermons on Ezekiel, in the Lent of 1497,
Savonarola describes the priests of the period as slaying the souls of
their flocks by their wicked example; their worship, he says, is to
spend the night with strumpets and the day in singing in the choir; the
altar is their shop; they openly assert that the world is not ruled by
the providence of God, but that everything is the result of chance, and
that Christ is not in the Eucharist.[627] It was no wonder, then, that
the more thoughtful of the laity, conscious of the evils of the dominant
faith, and yet powerless, under the watchful eye of the Inquisition, to
apply a corrective short of indifferentism or practical atheism;
striving helplessly for something better than they saw around them, and
yet unable to release the primal principles of Christianity from the
incrustations of scholastic theology, should find their only refuge in
these philosophical speculations which virtually reduced Christianity to
nothingness. Had not the Reformation come, the culture of Europe would
inevitably have been atheistic, or devoted to sublimated deism, scarce
distinguishable from atheism. The Church would permit no dissidence
within its pale, and yet was singularly tolerant of these aberrations of
the fashionable Humanism. It persecuted the Fraticelli who dared to
uphold the poverty of Christ, yet it allowed the paganism of the revived
Hellenism to be disseminated almost without interference. Occasionally
some zealous Dominican, eager to defend the inspired doctrines of the
Angelic Doctor, would threaten trouble, and would burn a too daring
book, but the author could readily find protectors high in the Church,
some Barozzi or Bembo, who conjured the storm.
The Reformation served a double purpose in checking this tendency to
dangerous speculation. It destroyed the hard-and-fast lines of the rigid
scholastic theology, and gave to active intellects a wide field for
discussion within the limits of the Christian faith. The assaults of
Luther and Melanchthon and Calvin were not to be met with the dialectics
of the schools, but with a freer and wider scope of reasoning. The
worn-out debates over Aristotle and Alexander and Averrhoes, over
Nominalism and Realism, were replaced with new systems of Scriptural
exegesis and an earnest inquiry into man's place in the universe and his
relations to his fellows and to his God. Then the counter-Reformation
aroused a zeal which could no longer tolerate the philosophical
quodlibets leading to speculations adverse to the received faith.
Servetus and Giordano Bruno belong to a period beyond our present
limits, but their fate shows how little either Protestant or Catholic,
in the fierce strife which enkindled such uncompromising ardor, were
disposed to listen to philosophical discussions upon religious beliefs.
* * * * *
Before leaving this branch of our subject we must recur to the curious
episode of the career of Raymond Lully, the _Doctor Illuminatus_, of
whom Padre Feyjoo truly says, "Raymond Lully, looked upon from every
side, is a very problematical object. Some make him a saint, others a
heretic; some a most learned man, others an ignoramus; some regard him
as illuminated, others as hallucinated; some attribute to him a
knowledge of the transmutation of metals, others deny it; finally, some
applaud his _Ars Magna_, others depreciate it."[628]
This enigmatical being was born in Palma, the capital of Majorca,
January 25, 1235. Sprung from a noble family, he was bred in the royal
court, where he rose to the post of seneschal. He married and had
children, but followed a gay and dissolute career until, like Peter
Waldo and Jacopone da Todi, he was suddenly converted by an experience
of the nothingness of life. He was madly in love with Leonor del
Castello, and his reckless temper manifested itself by pursuing her on
horseback into the church of Santa Eulalia during a Sunday service, to
the great scandal of priest and congregation. To rid herself of such
importunate pursuit, Leonor, with consent of her husband, exhibited to
him her bosom, which was ravaged by a foul and mortal cancer. The shock
brought to him so profound a recognition of the vanity of earthly things
that he renounced the world and distributed his wealth in charity, after
making provision for his family; and the same indomitable ardor which
had rendered him extravagant in his pleasures sustained him to the end
in his new vocation. Thenceforth he devoted his life to the rescue of
the Holy Sepulchre, to the conversion of the Jews and Saracens, and to
the framing of a system which should demonstrate rationally the truth of
the Christian faith, and thus overcome the Averrhoism in which he
recognized its most dangerous adversary.[629]
Ten years or more were spent in preparation for this new career. We hear
of a pilgrimage to Compostella in 1266, and of his retirement to the
Monte de Randa, near Palma, in 1275. He was so ignorant of letters that
he was not even acquainted with Latin, the key to all the knowledge of
the age. This he studied, and also Arabic, from a Saracen slave
purchased for the purpose, and the earnest labors of an indefatigable
mind can account for the enormous stores of learning which he
subsequently displayed; so wonderful that to his followers they appeared
necessarily the result of inspiration. In his retreat on Monte de Randa,
where he conceived his _Ars Universalis_, he is said to have had
repeated visions of Christ and the Virgin, which illuminated his mind;
and the mastic-tree under which he habitually wrote bore testimony to
the miracle, in its leaves inscribed with Latin, Greek, Chaldee, and
Arabic characters. It continued to put forth such leaves. In the
seventeenth century Vicente Mut vouches for the fact, and says he has
some of them, while Wadding tells us that in his time they were carried
to Rome, where they excited much wonder. When his work was completed an
angel in the guise of a shepherd appeared, who kissed the book many
times, and predicted that it would prove an invincible weapon for the
faith.[630]
Emerging from his retreat, for forty years he led a wandering life of
incessant activity, now stimulating popes and kings to renewed crusades,
or to found colleges of the Oriental tongues to aid in missionary
labors, now pouring forth volume after volume with incredible fecundity,
now disputing and teaching against Averrhoism at Montpellier, Paris, and
elsewhere, and now venturing himself among the infidel to spread among
them the light of Christianity. In any one of these fields of action his
labors would seem enough to exhaust the energies of an ordinary man.
While on his way, in 1311, to the Council of Vienne, with projects for
founding schools of Oriental tongues, for uniting in one all the
military Orders, for a holy war against the infidel, for suppressing
Averrhoism, and for teaching his art in all universities, he summed up
his life: "I was married and a father, sufficiently rich, worldly, and
licentious. For the honor of God, for the public weal, and for the
advancement of the faith I abandoned all. I learned Arabic, and I have
been repeatedly among the Saracens to preach to them, where I have been
beaten and imprisoned. For forty-five years I have labored to excite the
rulers of the Church and the princes of Christendom for the public good.
Now I am old, I am poor, and I still have the same purpose, which, with
the help of God, I will retain till I die." At Vienne his only success
was in obtaining a decree founding schools of Hebrew, Arabic, and
Chaldee in the papal court and in the Universities of Paris, Oxford,
Bologna, and Salamanca. Thence he went, for the second time, to Algiers,
where, at Bugia, he made many converts, until thrown into prison and
starved; then he was released and ordered out of the country, but
continued proselyting. With wonderful forbearance the Moors contented
themselves with placing him on board a ship bound for Genoa, and warning
him not to return. Ship-wrecked in sight of land, he saved his life by
swimming, but lost his books. Determined to win the palm of martyrdom,
in August, 1314, he again embarked at Palma for Bugia. Promptly
recognized, he was thrown into jail, beaten, and starved; but in prison
he continued to preach to his fellow-captives, until the Moors, finding
him unconquerable, took him out, June 30, 1315, and stoned him. Some
Genoese merchants about to sail carried his yet breathing body on board
their ship and laid their course for Genoa, but to their surprise found
themselves at the entrance of the port of Palma. In vain they endeavored
to leave the spot till, recognizing the will of Heaven, they carried
the body ashore. Immediately it shone in miracles, and the cult of the
martyr began. In 1448 a splendid chapel was erected in his honor in the
church of the Franciscans, of which Order he was a Tertiary, and another
one was dedicated to him in the beginning of the seventeenth century. In
1487 his bones were deposited in a richly carved alabaster urn, standing
in a niche in the church-wall over an elaborate sepulchral monument,
where they still remain.[631]