It is most interesting to observe how the
foundations of the present intellectual greatness
of Europe were laid, and most wonderful to think
that they were ever laid at all. Let us consider 10
how wide and how high is the platform of our
knowledge at this day, and what openings in
every direction are in progress--openings of
such promise, that, unless some convulsion of
society takes place, even what we have attained, 15
will in future times be nothing better than a poor
beginning; and then on the other hand, let us
recollect that, seven centuries ago, putting aside
revealed truths, Europe had little more than that
poor knowledge, partial and uncertain, and at 20
best only practical, which is conveyed to us by the
senses. Even our first principles now are beyond
the most daring conjectures then; and what has
been said so touchingly of Christian ideas as
compared with pagan, is true in its way and degree 25
of the progress of secular knowledge also in the
seven centuries I have named.
"What sages would have died to learn,
[Is] taught by cottage dames."
Nor is this the only point in which the
revelations of science may be compared to the
supernatural revelations of Christianity. Though 5
sacred truth was delivered once for all, and
scientific discoveries are progressive, yet there is
a great resemblance in the respective histories of
Christianity and of Science. We are accustomed
to point to the rise and spread of Christianity as 10
a miraculous fact, and rightly so, on account of
the weakness of its instruments, and the appalling
weight and multiplicity of the obstacles which
confronted it. To clear away those obstacles
was to move mountains; yet this was done by 15
a few poor, obscure, unbefriended men, and
their poor, obscure, unbefriended followers. No
social movement can come up to this marvel,
which is singular and archetypical, certainly;
it is a Divine work, and we soon cease to admire 20
it in order to adore. But there is more in it
than its own greatness to contemplate; it is so
great as to be prolific of greatness. Those whom
it has created, its children who have become such
by a supernatural power, have imitated, in their 25
own acts, the dispensation which made them
what they were; and, though they have not
carried out works simply miraculous, yet they have
done exploits sufficient to bespeak their own
unearthly origin, and the new powers which had 30
come into the world. The revival of letters by
the energy of Christian ecclesiastics and laymen,
when everything had to be done, reminds us of
the birth of Christianity itself, as far as a work of
man can resemble a work of God.
Two characteristics, as I have already had 5
occasion to say, are generally found to attend the
history of Science: first, its instruments have
an innate force, and can dispense with foreign
assistance in their work; and secondly, these
instruments must exist and must begin to act, 10
before subjects are found who are to profit by
their action. In plainer language, the teacher is
strong, not in the patronage of great men, but
in the intrinsic value and attraction of what he
has to communicate; and next, he must come 15
forward and advertise himself, before he can gain
hearers. This I have expressed before, in saying
that a great school of learning lived in demand and
supply, and that the supply must be before the
demand. Now, what is this but the very history 20
of the preaching of the Gospel? who but the
Apostles and Evangelists went out to the ends
of the earth without patron, or friend, or other
external advantage which could insure their
success? and again, who among the multitude they 25
enlightened would have called for their aid unless
they had gone to that multitude first, and offered
to it blessings which up to that moment it had
not heard of? They had no commission, they
had no invitation, from man; their strength lay 30
neither in their being sent, nor in their being sent
for; but in the circumstances that they had that
with them, a Divine message, which they knew
would at once, when it was uttered, thrill through
the hearts of those to whom they spoke, and
make for themselves friends in any place, 5
strangers and outcasts as they were when they first
came. They appealed to the secret wants and
aspirations of human nature, to its laden
conscience, its weariness, its desolateness, and its
sense of the true and the Divine; nor did they 10
long wait for listeners and disciples, when they
announced the remedy of evils which were so real.
Something like this were the first stages of the
process by which in mediæval Christendom the
structure of our present intellectual elevation 15
was carried forward. From Rome as from a
center, as the Apostles from Jerusalem, went
forth the missionaries of knowledge, passing to
and fro all over Europe; and, as Metropolitan
sees were the record of the presence of Apostles, 20
so did Paris, Pavia, and Bologna, and Padua,
and Ferrara, Pisa and Naples, Vienna, Louvain,
and Oxford, rise into Universities at the voice of
the theologian or the philosopher. Moreover, as
the Apostles went through labors untold, by 25
sea and land, in their charity to souls; so, if
robbers, shipwrecks, bad lodging, and scanty fare
are trials of zeal, such trials were encountered
without hesitation by the martyrs and confessors
of science. And as Evangelists had grounded 30
their teaching upon the longing for happiness
natural to man, so did these securely rest their
cause on the natural thirst for knowledge: and
again as the preachers of Gospel peace had often
to bewail the ruin which persecution or
dissension had brought upon their nourishing colonies, 5
so also did the professors of science often find or
flee the ravages of sword or pestilence in those
places, which they themselves perhaps in former
times had made the seats of religious, honorable,
and useful learning. And lastly, as kings and 10
nobles have fortified and advanced the interests
of the Christian faith without being necessary
to it, so in like manner we may enumerate with
honor Charlemagne, Alfred, Henry the First of
England, Joan of Navarre, and many others, as 15
patrons of the schools of learning, without being
obliged to allow that those schools could not have
progressed without such countenance.
These are some of the points of resemblance
between the propagation of Christian truth and 20
the revival of letters; and, to return to the two
points, to which I have particularly drawn
attention, the University Professor's confidence in his
own powers, and his taking the initiative in the
exercise of them, I find both these distinctly 25
recognized by Mr. Hallam in his history of Literature.
As to the latter point, he says, "The schools of
Charlemagne were designed to lay the basis of a
learned education, _for which there was at that time
no sufficient desire_"--that is, the supply was 30
prior to the demand. As to the former: "In
the twelfth century," he says, "the _impetuosity_
with which men _rushed_ to that source of what
they deemed wisdom, the great University of
Paris, _did not depend upon academical privileges
or eleemosynary stipends_, though these were 5
undoubtedly very effectual in keeping it up. The
University _created patrons, and was not created
by them_"--that is, demand and supply were all
in all....
Bec, a poor monastery of Normandy, set up in 10
the eleventh century by an illiterate soldier, who
sought the cloister, soon attracted scholars to its
dreary clime from Italy, and transmitted them
to England. Lanfranc, afterwards Archbishop of
Canterbury, was one of these, and he found the 15
simple monks so necessitous, that he opened a
school of logic to all comers, in order, says William
of Malmesbury, "that he might support his needy
monastery by the pay of the students." The
same author adds, that "his reputation went into 20
the most remote parts of the Latin world, and
Bec became a great and famous Academy of
letters." Here is an instance of a
commencement without support, without scholars, in order
to attract scholars, and in them to find support. 25
William of Jumièges, too, bears witness to the
effect, powerful, sudden, wide spreading, and
various, of Lanfranc's advertisement of himself.
The fame of Bec and Lanfranc, he says, quickly
penetrated through the whole world; and "clerks, 30
the sons of dukes, the most esteemed masters of
the Latin schools, powerful laymen, high nobles,
flocked to him." What words can more strikingly
attest the enthusiastic character of the movement
which he began, than to say that it carried away
with it all classes; rich as well as poor, laymen as 5
well as ecclesiastics, those who were in that day
in the habit of despising letters, as well as those
who might wish to live by them?...