Christian Schools and Scholars - or Sketches of Education from the Christian Era to the Council of Trent

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Title: Christian Schools and Scholars - or Sketches of Education from the Christian Era to the Council of Trent
Author: Drane, Augusta Theodosia
Language: English
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CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS AND SCHOLARS.

CHRISTIAN
SCHOOLS AND SCHOLARS

_SKETCHES OF EDUCATION FROM
THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE
COUNCIL OF TRENT_

AUGUSTA THEODOSIA DRANE

AUTHOR OF “THE THREE CHANCELLORS,” “KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN,”
“THE HISTORY OF ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA,” ETC.

Anastatic Reprint of the Second Edition
Published in London 1881.

NEW YORK
G. E. STECHERT & Co.
1910.

PREFACE.

The following pages have been written with the view of presenting a
general and connected sketch of the history of Christian Education
down to the period of the Council of Trent, illustrated from the
lives of those who have, in successive ages, taken part in that great
work. A subject extending over so wide a field could of necessity be
only partially treated, and it seems desirable, therefore, to explain
certain omissions which might otherwise cause disappointment. It was
believed that the object aimed at would, in most cases, be better
accomplished by introducing the reader to the teachers themselves,
than by undertaking to give a complete account and critical
examination of their writings. Such an examination would properly
enter into a history of Christian Literature, a grand _desideratum_
indeed, but one which the present volumes makes no pretensions to
supply. Again, for obvious reasons, the philosophical and theological
controversies connected with the lives of the great men who form the
subjects of the following studies, have been designedly touched on
with the greatest possible brevity: the history of such controversies
seeming to belong to Ecclesiastical History, and to be unsuitable in
a work like the present.

It has been the wish of the writer to treat the subject from a purely
historical point of view, and to increase the value of the narrative
by, as far as possible, preserving the colouring, and sometimes even
the very language, of the original historians.

The notes appended to the text will give a general idea of the
authorities whence the matter has been derived. The Ecclesiastical
Histories of Fleury and Rohrbacher have furnished the groundwork
of the general narrative. In the account of the Irish schools,
the chronology and the main facts have been drawn from Lanigan’s
Ecclesiastical History of Ireland. The sketch of the restoration
of letters under Charlemagne has been chiefly taken from Crevier’s
_Histoire de l’Université de Paris_, Launoy’s Treatise _De Scholis
Celebrioribus_, and the various lives, both ancient and modern, of
Charlemagne. In the chapters referring to the subsequent history of
the Dark Ages, constant use has been made of the _Acta Sanctorum Ord.
S. Benedicti_, by D’Achery and Mabillon, and of the collections of
the Lives of the Saints by Surius and the Bollandists; also of the
_Vetera Analecta_ of Mabillon, the _Spicilegium_ of D’Achery, the
_Amplissima Collectio_ of Martene, and the _Histoire Litteraire de la
France_, by the Benedictines of St. Maur. Much valuable matter has
also been derived from the _Monumenta Germaniæ Historica_ of Pertz,
and the collection of ancient German Chronicles by Meibomius; the
account of the school and scholars of St. Gall’s being taken from
Ekkehard’s History _De Casibus S. Galli_, printed in the first volume
of Goldasti’s collection, and from the Benedictine Life of B. Notker.
The notices of the foreign universities are chiefly drawn from
Crevier, and from Tiraboschi’s _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_,
which latter work has been almost exclusively used in the chapters
on the Renaissance in Italy. The chapter on the Dominicans and the
Universities is compiled from a considerable number of authorities;
chiefly, Touron’s _Vies des Hommes Illustres_, the _Scriptores
Ordinis Prædicatorum_ by Echard and Quetil, the French translation of
Dr. Sighart’s _Life of Albert the Great_, and the _Constitutions of
the Order_.

The sketches of our English schools and universities are mostly
derived from Wood’s _Antiquities of Oxford_, Ayliffe’s _Ancient
and Present State of the University of Oxford_, and Dugdale’s
_Monasticon_; whilst various notices of early English scholars
have been gathered from Wright’s _Biographia Britannica_, Warton’s
_History of English Poetry_, and the original lives of the English
Saints, as given in the three collections already named. Hallam’s
_Literary History of Europe_, and Ranke’s _History of the Popes_,
have also been made considerable use of in treating of the period of
the Renaissance, while the sketches of Colet and Pole have been drawn
from their respective lives by Knight and Philipps. Pallavicini’s
_History of the Council of Trent_, and Touron’s _Life of St. Charles
Borromeo_, have furnished the chief materials for the concluding
chapter of the work.

ST. DOMINIC’S CONVENT, STONE,
_May 1867_.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

RISE OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS.--A.D. 60 TO 543.
PAGE

St. Mark at Alexandria. The canonical life of the clergy gives
rise to the foundation of the Episcopal schools. The school of
the Patriarchium at Rome. Decrees of early Councils regarding the
education of the clergy. Catechetical schools. The public schools
of the Empire, and their distinctive character. The Christian
method of education, as explained by St. Basil and St. Augustine.
The Monks of the desert, and the first germ of monastic schools.
The rules of St. Pachomius, St. Cæsarius, and St. Leander of
Seville. Domestic education among the early Christians. The
destruction of the Imperial schools on the fall of the Empire.
General decay of letters. Some degree of learning survives in the
ecclesiastical schools. The schools of Gaul in the fifth century.
Boëthius and Cassiodorus. The academy of Toulouse. The seminaries
of Tours and Lerins. 1

CHAPTER II.

SCHOOLS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND.--A.D. 380 TO 590.

Mission of St. Ninian. St. Germanus and St. Lupus in Britain.
Colleges established by them. The rule of St. David. St. Palladius
in North Britain. St. Kentigern at Glasgow, and Llan-Elwy. St.
Cadoc and St. Gildas. Early history of St. Patrick. His arrival
in Ireland. Rapid extension of schools and monasteries in that
Island. Aran of the Saints. Clonard. St. Finian, St. Kieran, and
St. Columba. St. Kieran founds the monastery of Cluain-Macnois.
St. Fintan at Cluain-Ednech. St. Comgall the founder of Benchor.
Scholars of Benchor: St. Columbanus and St. Luanus. St. Luanus the
founder of Clonfert. The voyage of St. Brendan. St. Carthag the
founder of Lismore. Character of the Irish learning. The labours of
the Irish scholars in foreign countries; in France, Italy, Germany,
and Iceland. Iona and its scholars. 35

CHAPTER III.

ANGLO-SAXON SCHOOLS.--A.D. 590 TO 875.

State of Europe at the beginning of the sixth century. St. Gregory
the Great. The mission of St. Augustine. The first English library.
St. Augustine’s monastery at Canterbury. The schools of Lindisfarne
and Ripon. Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Adrian. The school of
Canterbury and its scholars. St. Aldhelm, and a sketch of his
school studies. St. Bennet Biscop founds his two monasteries of
Wearmouth and Jarrow. His collection of books and pictures. The
manner of life in these monasteries. The Venerable Bede: a sketch
of his life and learning. His scientific writings. The grammatical
formation of modern languages mainly the work of the monastic
scholars. St. Bede’s labours on the formation of English. His
death. The school of York under Archbishops Egbert and Albert.
Alcuin receives his education here. Its noble library. Manner in
which the Bishops personally directed the studies of their young
clergy. Danish invasions, and ruin of the Anglo-Saxon schools.
Destruction of Lindisfarne. 56

CHAPTER IV.

ST. BONIFACE AND HIS COMPANIONS.--A.D. 686 TO 755.

Birth of St. Boniface. His early monastic life. The English
missions in Friesland. St. Wilibrord. St. Boniface passes over into
Germany. Story of St. Gregory of Utrecht. The canonical life of the
clergy established among the missionaries. Episcopal monasteries
and schools. St. Luidger: his childhood and his monastic
foundations. Virgil, Bishop of Salzburg, and his supposed errors,
and condemnation by Pope Zachary. Schools founded by St. Boniface.
Letters from him and St. Lullus to English friends. Correspondence
between Boniface and the Abbess Edburga. The nuns of Wimbourne and
their learned pursuits. St. Lioba’s first letter to St. Boniface.
Her Latin verses. New foundations in Germany. St. Sturm. The great
foundation of Fulda. St. Boniface sends to England for some nuns.
St. Walburga and St. Lioba cross over to Germany. The studies of
St. Lioba. Reform of the Frankish Church by St. Boniface. He is
appointed Papal Vicar. His interest in the state of religion in
England. The Council of Cloveshoe, and its decrees on the subject
of education. Martyrdom of St. Boniface. 89

CHAPTER V.

CHARLEMAGNE AND ALCUIN.--A.D. 747 TO 804.

Decay of letters and Church discipline in Gaul under the
Merovingian dynasty. Prospects of a reform under Pepin. St.
Chrodegang of Metz. Accession of Charlemagne. His early teachers:
Paul Warnefrid, St. Paulinus of Aquileja. Alcuin is invited over
into France. Foundation of the Palatine school. Nature of the
studies introduced by Alcuin. They are chiefly ecclesiastical.
Proof, however, that classical studies were not entirely neglected.
Charlemagne’s application to study of all kinds. His introduction
of the Roman chant. His attempts to perfect the Tudesque or German
dialect. Method of teaching of the Anglo-Saxon scholars. Their
fondness for dialogues and enigmas. Alcuin’s correction of the
liturgical books. Schools of copyists founded in monasteries.
Charlemagne’s public schools. Proofs that these were in every sense
monastic schools. Difference between the exterior and interior
schools of the Benedictine monasteries. University of Paris,
properly so called, of far later date. Great men who took part
in the restoration of learning under Charlemagne: Theodulph of
Orleans, Smaragdus, St. Benedict Anian, St. Adalhard. Alcuin at
Tours. Clement and Dungal. Death of Alcuin. 113

CHAPTER VI.

THE CARLOVINGIAN SCHOOLS.--A.D. 804 to 900.

The Palatine school after the death of Alcuin. Scotus Erigena. The
great monastic schools. Rabanus Maurus. A visit to Fulda. Rabanus
and his scholars: Lupus of Ferrières, Walafrid Strabo, Otfried,
&c.; their writings and characters. Cultivation of the German
vernacular by the Fulda scholars. Troubles of Rabanus. He becomes
Archbishop of Mentz. His controversies with Scotus and Gotteschalk.
Classical studies of Lupus of Ferrières, Heiric, and Remigius
of Auxerre. Remigius founds the schools of Paris. Old Corby and
its Scholasticus. St. Paschasius Radpert: his early education.
Importance attached to the study of music. St. Anscharius and New
Corby. Reichnau and St. Gall. Description of St. Gall. Its great
monastic school: varieties of studies pursued there. Reichnau.
Story of Meinrad. General character of monastic studies examined
and illustrated. The classics. The study of the Scriptures. 144

CHAPTER VII.

KING ALFRED.--A.D. 873 TO 900.

His restoration of learning. 195

CHAPTER VIII.

ST. DUNSTAN AND HIS COMPANIONS.--A.D. 924 TO 992.

Restoration of monastic schools under St. Dunstan, St. Oswald,
and St. Ethelwold. Foundation of Ramsey Abbey. Bridferth. 212

CHAPTER IX.

THE IRON AGE.--A.D. 900 TO 1000.

Popular notions of the tenth century. Explanations of the causes
of social disorder in that century. The break-up of Charlemagne’s
empire. Incursions of Normans, Saracens, and Huns. Destruction of
monasteries and their schools. Concealment of books. Anecdotes of
the time. The relics of St. Evroult. Efforts made by the Popes
and Bishops to preserve a knowledge of sacred letters. Heraclius
of Liege. Fulk of Rheims attempts to restore the monasteries. The
foundation of Cluny. St. Odo and St. Maieul. Stories from their
lives illustrating the state of learning at this time. Abbo of
Fleury and his travels in search of science. Restoration of the
abbey of Gorze. John of Gorze and his studies. Village schools
existed at this time. 225

CHAPTER X.

THE AGE OF THE OTHOS.--A.D. 911 TO 1024.

Prosperous state of Germany under her great emperors. The school of
Utrecht, the fashionable school of the German nobles. St. Bruno:
his education and after-career. Ratherius of Verona. The example of
Bruno imitated by other Bishops, who found and restore episcopal
schools. Poppo of Wurtzburg. Sketch of some early masters.
Wolfgang’s school-days. St. Udalric of Augsburg. St. Bernward of
Hildesheim. His early school-days. He becomes Bishop of Hildesheim,
and restores the school. His disciples. Story of Bennon of Misnia
and his master Wigger. St. Meinwerc of Paderborn. St. Adalbert
of Prague. Anecdotes of these early schools, showing the nature
of their studies and discipline. The schoolmasters of St. Gall:
Notker, Radpert, Tutilo, and Ekkehard. Stories from their lives.
Duchess Hedwiga, and the Greek studies of St. Gall. Familiarity of
schoolboys with their masters. Anecdotes. Amiable character of the
monastic _Scholastici_. The career of Gerbert. His science and his
disciples. Guy of Arezzo. Hroswitha, the nun of Gandersheim. 254

CHAPTER XI.

THE SCHOOLS OF BEC.--A.D. 1000 TO 1135.

Close of the dark ages. Change observable in the scholastic
system. First appearance of lay professors, who teach for gain.
Character of the new teachers. Berengarius, a pupil of Fulbert of
Chartres. Errors and character of Berengarius. The foundation of
Bec. Vocation of Lanfranc. He opposes Berengarius. St. Anselm,
as scholasticus of Bec. Their influence on learning in England.
Anecdotes of English monasteries at this time. Encouragement of
learning by Henry Beauclerk. Athelhard of Bath. Odericus Vitalis. 300

CHAPTER XII.

THE RISE OF SCHOLASTICISM.--A.D. 1049 TO 1200.

State of letters in Italy at the beginning of the twelfth century.
Law schools of Bologna, founded by Irnerius. Other Italian schools.
St. Peter Damian, scholasticus at Parma. His writings and poetry.
The monastic masters still eminent. Anecdotes of some of them.
Revival of classical studies in their schools at this time.
Multiplication of books and libraries. Extraordinary activity of
copyists. The libraries of Tegernsee and St. Emmeran’s. Othlonus
and his studies. Customs of Cluny. Earliest known versions of the
Scripture in the vulgar tongue. Frequent mention at this period of
conversions to religious life of learned men. St. Bruno, founder
of the Carthusians. Odo of Tournay. Stories of their lives. Odo’s
school and disciples. The Nominalists and Realists. The state of
the school of Paris. Notice of its most celebrated masters. Bernard
of Chartres and his excellent system. Anselm of Laon. William of
Champeaux. Abelard and his career. Scholasticism. Origin of the
system of graduation. The school of St. Victor rises in opposition
to the new school of scholastics. Character of its teaching. State
of the schools as exhibited in the life of John of Salisbury. The
heretical bias of the new independent professors. Their neglect of
classical studies, and exclusive preference given by them to logic.
The Cornificians. Scholastic sophistries. Peter Lombard, the real
founder of scholastic theology. Gradual rise of the University of
Paris. 324

CHAPTER XIII.

PARIS AND THE FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES.--A.D. 1150 TO 1250.

Paris University in the thirteenth century. Its popularity. Its
want of moral discipline. Total change by this time effected in the
system of education, which has become exclusively intellectual. A
sketch of the state of the Paris schools. Rise of the collegiate
system to meet these evils. Early Parisian colleges. The
monasteries and the Bishops obliged to send their students to the
universities. Academic statutes of Robert de Courçon. Partial
adaptation of the monastic system. Amount of time given by the
Catholic system to religious duties. Decay of arts and rhetoric.
Predominance of dialectics and law. Good and bad results of this.
Necessary part of the mental development of Europe. Book trade in
Paris University. Anecdotes of great men. Maurice of Sully. Fulk of
Neuilly. Universities of Bologna, Padua, Naples, &c. Exertions of
the Popes in the cause of education. Examination of the university
system. Its result on the education of the clergy. From this date
to the Council of Trent Church seminaries disappear. The old system
of episcopal seminaries contrasted with that of universities.
Political and religious errors fostered at the universities. Their
support of State supremacy. Heresies which sprang out of the abuse
of scholasticism, and the predominance of reason. 366

CHAPTER XIV.

THE DOMINICANS AND THE UNIVERSITIES.--A.D. 1215 TO 1300.

The foundation of the Dominican Order. Devotion to theological
studies one of its primary objects. Its system of graduation. Its
schools established in connection with the universities. Exactly
adapted to correct the evils of those institutions. Albert the
Great. His scientific writings. St. Thomas and his philosophy.
Reconciliation of divine and human science the work of St. Thomas.
Other great Dominican professors and writers. Vincent of Beauvais.
The study of Oriental languages encouraged by the Dominican
Order. Decrees of the Council of Vienne. Proofs of the existence
of Oriental professors at Paris and Oxford, notwithstanding the
denial of Hallam. Oriental scholars. Dominican influence on art.
Contemplative character of the early scholastic theologians. 410

CHAPTER XV.

ENGLISH SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES.--A.D. 1149 TO 1170.

Early history and legends of Oxford. Its old inns and halls. Its
early masters and scholars, previous to the thirteenth century.
Want of regular discipline, and tumults among the scholars. Robert
Pullus restores sacred studies. Curious illustrations of the state
of studies. Rise of Cambridge University. Giraldus Cambrensis.
Schools of Reading, Ramsay, St. Albans, &c. Alexander Neckham and
his writings. London schools. School of Sempringham. Old English
poor-schools. What was taught in them, and how. 451

CHAPTER XVI.

OLD OXFORD.--A.D. 1200 TO 1300.

Description of Oxford in the thirteenth century. Its customs. St.
Edmund of Canterbury. Robert Grosteste. The arrival of the Friars.
Distinguished Dominican and Franciscan scholars. Roger Bacon.
Nicholas de Lyra. St. Richard of Chichester, Chancellor of Oxford.
Opposition of the secular clergy to the mendicants. Decay of pure
Latinity. Kilwarby, and John of Peckham. St. Thomas of Hereford,
Chancellor of Oxford. Rise of Oxford Colleges, Baliol and Merton
Colleges. The monastic colleges of Gloucester and Durham. Exeter
College. 476

CHAPTER XVII.

DANTE AND PETRARCH.--A.D. 1300 TO 1400.

Dante regarded as the representative university student of
the thirteenth century. Character of his learning as shown by
a critical examination of his poem. His theology, scholastic
learning, acquaintance with learned languages and love of science,
especially of music and astronomy. His political views. The
anti-papal tendencies of the universities. Petrarch and his revival
of classical tastes. Share taken in the revival by Italian monks.
Ambrose Traversari. State of letters in France under Charles V.
Effect of the Gallican and anti-papal doctrines introduced by
Philip le Bel hostile to letters. 508

CHAPTER XVIII.

ENGLISH EDUCATION IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.--
A.D. 1300 TO 1400.

Effect of French wars not favourable to learning. Richard of Bury
and his libraries. State of the universities. They were not then,
as now, places of education for the lay higher classes. System
of education fostered by chivalry explained. Its advantages.
The baronial households schools for noble youths. Christian
principles fostered by this system. Elzear of Sabran. Education
of women at the same period. The domestic virtues cultivated.
Illustrations from old romances. Cultivation of the English
language. Poor-schools. School books of the fourteenth century.
Primers. Versified instructions. Chaucer as the representative of
an educated Englishman of the fourteenth century. Character of
his learning examined. Classics imperfectly known. Wickliffe and
the Lollards. Their influence on learning. Early English Catholic
versions of the Scriptures existed before the time of Wickliffe.
Proofs and illustrations. 529

CHAPTER XIX.

THE RED AND WHITE ROSES.--A.D. 1386 TO 1494.

Foundations of Wykeham, Waynflete, and Henry VI. Education provided
for all classes by colleges and hospitals. Details concerning the
real character of these institutions from their statutes. Other
schools kept up by religious houses. Ancient English religious
poetry, with specimens. English book-collectors. Humphrey of
Gloucester and Abbot Whethamstede. London schools. William Caxton
as the representative of an educated London citizen of the
fifteenth century. His life and works. 569

CHAPTER XX.

THE RENAISSANCE AT FLORENCE.--A.D. 1400 TO 1492.

Classic revival in Italy encouraged by her princes. Robert of
Naples. Great men of the Renaissance. School of Victorino da
Feltre, and the “Casa Giojosa.” Encouragement given by the Popes
to the new learning. Depraved character of many of the classic
scholars. Filelfo and Lorenzo Valla. The Medici at Florence. Its
Greek scholars. Poggio Bracciolini. The Platonic Academy of Cosmo
de’ Medici. Marsilius Ficinus. John Picus Mirandola. The Roman
Academy. Pomponius Lætus. Politian begins to lecture at Florence.
Fascination of his style. Florence under Lorenzo de’ Medici.
Corruption of manners at this time. Savonarola. 599

CHAPTER XXI.

DEVENTER, LOUVAIN, AND ALCALA.--A.D. 1360 TO 1517.

Reaction against the irreligious tendency of the Renaissance.
Popular instincts against the new learning. The origin of
the school of Deventer. Sketch of Gerard der Groote, and his
followers. Thomas à Kempis. German professors, and restorers
of classical studies. Hegius, Langius, Dringeberg, and Rodolph
Agricola. The Rhenish Academy. Tendency of the new learning in
Germany increasingly irreligious. Reuchlin and Budæus at Paris.
The “Humanists.” Erasmus. The art of printing, its early effects.
The University of Louvain, founded from the first on Catholic
principles. Protestantism supported by the new professors. Musculus
and Bullinger. Effect of Protestantism on the German universities
according to Menzel. The Renaissance in France under Francis I.
French poets. State of letters in Spain. Ximenes and Alcala. 628

CHAPTER XXII.

THE RENAISSANCE IN ROME.--A.D. 1513 TO 1528.

Accession of Leo X. His entry into Rome. State of Rome at this
time. Its brilliant society. The Roman Court. The wits and poets.
Leo’s magnificent patronage of letters. Corruption of manners.
Spread of infidelity in the literary circles of Italy. The Fifth
Council of Lateran. Restoration of the Roman University. The
Ciceronians. Sadolet and Bembo. Paganism of art and literature.
Erasmus and Luther at Rome. Impressions received by both. Death
of Leo, and accession of Adrian VI. Dismay of the professors. His
attempts at Reform. Clement VII. Tokens of a change. The Oratory of
Divine Love. St. Cajetan and the Theatines. The sack of Rome. 655

CHAPTER XXIII.

ENGLISH SCHOLARS OF THE RENAISSANCE.--A.D. 1473 TO 1550.

Scholars of Magdalen College. Visit of Erasmus to England. His
opinion of Oxford. Dean Colet. His character and his friends. His
friendship with Erasmus. Foundation of St. Paul’s School. Court
of Henry VIII. Its brilliancy and learned character. Reginald
Pole. Progress of the Reformation. Controversy between Erasmus and
Luther. The divorce. The king consults the foreign universities.
The Humanist professors espouse his cause. Pole retires from
England. His life in Italy. Effect of the Reformation on the
English universities. Utter decay of Oxford under Edward VI. 672

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.--A.D. 1534 TO 1580.

Election of Paul III. His Cardinals. The Commission of Reform. Its
important declaration on the subject of the state of education,
especially at the universities. The sixteenth article on the
professorial system. St. Ignatius and the Jesuit Colleges. The
Council of Trent. Influence of Cardinal Pole in that Council. He
is recalled to England. His attempts to reform the universities
and establish Church seminaries. His provincial decrees. B. Peter
Canisius. Decrees on education passed by the Council of Trent.
Establishment of Church seminaries. Illustrious men who forwarded
this work. St. Pius V. Ghiberti, Bartholomew of the Martyrs and St.
Charles Borromeo. The schools and seminaries of Milan. Conclusion. 704

INDEX. 727

CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS AND SCHOLARS.

_CHAPTER I._

THE RISE OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS.

A.D. 60 to 543.

In the seventh year of the Emperor Nero, and the sixtieth of the
Christian era, a little ship entered the harbour of Alexandria, and
after rounding the great Pharos that stood at its northern extremity,
cast anchor by that granite quay, round which was grouped, as in an
amphitheatre, six miles in span, a city of palaces and temples. It
bore on its decks one of whom that proud city as yet knew nothing,
but who had come to erect his patriarchal throne in the midst of her
sea girt walls, bringing with him his Gospel and the sovereignty of
St. Peter’s keys. It was St. Mark, the interpreter and spiritual son
of the Prince of the Apostles, sent in his name and by his authority
to plant the Church in the southern capital of the Empire. Descending
from the ship, and crossing the crowded quay overshadowed by its
plane-trees, he made his way towards the great Moon-gate which opened
into the street of the Seven Stadia. He was partially bald, and his
hair and beard were sprinkled with grey hairs; but his beautiful
eyes flashed beneath their high arched eyebrows, and there was a
quickness in his step and a grace in his movements which bespoke him
not yet past the middle age.[1] So at least he has been described by
the historian Simeon Metaphrastes, who, though writing in the tenth
century, has embodied in his narrative the account of far earlier
authors, who have minutely recorded the circumstances which attended
the entry into Alexandria of her first patriarch.

We need not describe the world in which he found himself. It was
the fairest city of the East; Greek in its aspect and population
though planted on Egyptian soil, with a clearer sky than even that
of Athens; a nobler harbour than Corinth could boast of; and that
which was denied to Rome and Carthage, the command of a mighty river,
which brought down to the port the corn and rose-coloured granite
of Upper Egypt, the ivory of Ethiopia, the spices and gold-dust of
Arabia, and the gems of Eastern lands. Like that other more ancient
city on whose site she was reared, she “dwelt in the midst of the
rivers; the sea was her riches, the waters were her walls.”[2] Then
as now the highway to India lay through Egypt, and her seaport of
Arsinoe on the Arabian Gulf communicated by a canal with the Nile,
the western branch of which flowed out into the Mediterranean just
north of the Alexandrian harbour. Thus the capital of the Ptolemies
became the central point between East and West, and into her
markets flowed the costly Oriental luxuries which were carried by
her merchants into every European port. She was rich and she was
populous; all nations met to traffic in her harbour, all tongues were
spoken in her “many-peopled” streets. Yet her trading pre-eminence
formed but a small part of her glory. It is not often that a great
commercial emporium becomes the haunt of the Muses; but Alexandria
united graces and attractions of the most opposite character, and her
fame for learning eclipsed even that of her wealth. Three hundred
years before the time of which we are speaking, one of Alexander’s
royal successors, after erecting the temple of Serapis and the great
Pharos, which last was numbered among the wonders of the world,
bethought him of another way of rendering his name immortal, and
gathered together a society of learned men whose duty was to consist
in studying and teaching every known science. He built schools for
them to lecture in, halls in which they ate in common, and marble
porticoes, where, after the fashion of the Greek philosophers, they
could walk and converse with their disciples. A noble library, which
was enlarged by successive princes till it consisted of seven hundred
thousand volumes, completed the Musæum or University of Ptolemy
Soter, and the whole was joined to his own palace and delicious
gardens by stately marble colonnades. Royal patronage was scarcely
needed to foster the intellectual life of a city which had been
designed by its founder to be the capital of the world; but with
such encouragement the schools of Alexandria grew apace, and in the
Apostolic age ranked as the first within the wide dominions that
owned the Roman sway.

Here then the Blessed Peter came in the person of his chosen
disciple, to claim for Christ the southern capital of the Empire,
as he had already in his own person taken possession of East and
West--of Antioch and Rome. Solitary and unknown, the Evangelist came
there bent on conquests vaster than those of Alexander, for he had
but enslaved a base material world; but St. Mark, as he stood at
the Mendion, or Moon-gate, that led from the harbour into the busy
streets, was deliberating on the conquest of a million of souls.
How was he to begin? Where should he first bear his message of good
tidings? Should he bend his steps to the porticoes of the Musæum,
or try to find a listener in the crowded exchange which met his eye
through that open gate? Providence itself was to give the reply, and
neither wealth nor science was to yield him his first convert. The
thong of his sandal snapped in two, and to get it mended he entered
the shop of a cobbler that stood close at hand. The cobbler, whose
name was Anianus, gave him hospitality that night; and questioning
him as to who he was, heard in reply that he was the servant of
Jesus Christ, declared in the Scriptures to be the Son of God. “Of
what Scriptures do you speak?” he inquired; “I have never heard of
any writings but the Iliad and the Odyssey, and other such things
as are taught to the sons of the Egyptians.” Then St. Mark sat down
and unfolded to him the Gospel; through the long hours of the night,
in the midst of that heaving world of idolatry and sin--the teacher
spoke, and the disciple listened; and when morning dawned the first
fruits of Alexandria had been laid up in the garner of Christ.[3]

It was meet that an Evangelist should deliver his first message to
the poor; but it was not with the poor alone that he had to do. The
Church of Alexandria was to receive into her embrace the philosopher
of the Musæum as well as the despised Egyptian slave. She was to
address herself to the wise and prudent of this world as well as
to little ones. So St. Mark, as we are told, surrounded his see
with learned men, and became the founder of a catechetical school.
Although its chief celebrity dates only from the end of the second
century, yet its first foundation is universally attributed to St.
Mark.

It rose under the shadow of the temple of Serapis, near those
marble porticoes where the Neo-Platonists, who despised such vulgar
idolatry, were dreaming of some misty impersonal abstraction to
which they gave the name of God; where Pyrrhonists took refuge
in a system of universal doubt; where many were content to know
nothing at all about the soul, and concerned themselves rather with
mathematics and material prosperity; where Greek Epicureans talked
of a world that had made itself by chance, and set up sense as the
standard of certainty, and enjoyment as the end of life; while Roman
freethinkers quoted the witty atheisms of Lucretius, and then went
to burn incense before the statue of the Emperor. What new elements
of knowledge could a Christian Evangelist contribute to such a world
as this? There was no need for him to bring it the literature of
Greece and Rome; and as to the sciences of figures and numbers, Egypt
was their native soil. Even the Hebrew Scriptures had long ago been
translated into Greek and laid up in the library of Ptolemy. But he
brought the Gospel--his own Gospel in particular;[4] the one Book out
of which for long ages the faithful of Alexandria were exclusively
instructed, and which the teacher of the catechetical school was
required to hold in his hand when he stood before his hearers. He
brought the traditions of St. Paul and of St. Peter, for he had been
the disciple of both. He brought the Creed, the Apostolic symbol,
which in the brief compass of its twelve articles contains more
truths than Plato or Cicero had ever known, and which discovered in
the certainty of faith that _Eureka_ which every system of human
philosophy had sought in vain. He brought his Liturgy too; if not
that which bears his name, at least some earlier form which served
as its groundwork. And lastly, he brought that Liturgy’s musical
voice--the eight ancient tones, which, like so many things that
belong to the Church, when first we meet with them in history, are
already clothed with venerable antiquity: those tones to which the
Jewish Church had for centuries chanted the Psalms of David; which
must so often have fallen on the ears of Jesus, and in whose melody,
it may be, His Divine Voice had sometimes mingled; the sweet songs
of Sion which Jewish captives had sung by the rivers of Babylon, and
whose echoes now floated from Christian lips over the dark waters
of the Nile.[5] The Holy Gospels, the Creed, the Liturgy, and the
Ecclesiastical Chant, these were the contributions which were offered
by the Patriarch of Alexandria to her learned stores, and which
formed the first class-books of the Christian schools. But St. Mark
did something more than this. All early writers agree in declaring
that he established among his clergy that canonical rule of life
which was a copy of the community life of the first Christians; while
at the same time, as St. Jerome and Cassian[6] inform us, some of
his disciples retiring into the neighbourhood of the city, and there
giving themselves up to prayer and the study of the Scriptures, laid
the first foundations of the cœnobitical, or monastic life.

To St. Mark, therefore, and through him to the Prince of the
Apostles, may be traced up every one of those institutions which
were the nurseries of the Christian schools. For, as will hereafter
be seen, the Christian seminaries took their origin in the episcopal
and monastic schools, and these again grew out of that system of
community life which, being first embraced by the faithful at
Jerusalem, was afterwards elsewhere established by the Apostles, who
lived with their immediate followers as they themselves had lived
with their Divine Master. The Apostolic origin of the canonical rule
of life has never been denied. When St. Augustine was accused by
Petilianus the Donatist of introducing a novelty into the Church by
establishing his community of regular clergy, he defended himself
by appealing to the example of the first Christians, and showing
that, if the name of monastery were new, the manner of life which he
and his brethren followed was as old as Christianity itself. It is
thus that the author of the ancient book called the “Recognitions”
describes St. Peter as living, with a chosen number of disciples,
among whom were St. Mark, St. Clement, St. Evodius, and St. Linus;
so St. Paul was accompanied by St. Luke and St. Timothy, and St.
John the Evangelist by St. Polycarp and St. Papias. St. Irenæus, a
disciple of the last-named saints, carried into Gaul the discipline
of the school in which he had been nurtured, and, writing in after
years to the heresiarch Florinus, reminds him how, when yet a child,
he had been accustomed to meet him in the house of Polycarp. “Early
recollections,” he says, “grow with the soul, and entwine themselves
about it, so that I could tell of the very place where the blessed
Polycarp sat when he spoke, of his employments and his external
appearance.”[7]

Out of this manner of life, as we shall presently show, sprang up
the episcopal seminaries, which were designed for the training of
the younger clerics, whilst the catechetical schools were intended
for the religious instruction of the neophytes. But though this
last-named institution was, of course, _sui generis_, and exclusively
belonged to those primitive ages when adult converts from Paganism
had to be prepared for baptism by at least a two years’ course of
instruction, yet their history, and specially that of the Alexandrian
school, helps us in a convenient manner to watch the absorption
into the Christian system of education of every branch of learning
afterwards cultivated in the schools.

In the absence of more particular details of the kind of instruction
which prevailed at Alexandria before the time of St. Pantænus, we
may reasonably suppose that the same system was adopted in that
city as we find established at Jerusalem under St. Cyril. There the
_Hearers_ or Catechumens assembled in the porch of the church; the
men and women sat separate from one another, and the master stood
to deliver his instruction. The catecheses of St. Cyril that are
preserved are twenty-three in number, eighteen being a summary of
the chief articles of the Faith, given in the form of an exposition
of the Creed, and the five others intended for the _competent_, or
those preparing to receive the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation,
and the Holy Eucharist. The last-named subject is treated in an
explanation of the Liturgy of St. James. This, of course, was the
sort of teaching for which the catechetical schools were primarily
intended, and up to the year 179 the teachers of Alexandria do not
appear to have aimed at anything of a higher character. But about
that time Pantænus, a former stoic, whose eloquence earned him
the title of _the Sicilian Bee_, became master of the school, and
introduced a wider range of studies. He made use of his old learning
to illustrate and defend his new faith. Clement of Alexandria, his
earliest disciple, speaks of his “transcendent powers,” and St.
Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem, gloried in calling him his lord and
blessed father.

The renown of St. Pantænus passed into the Indies, carried thither
by some of the swarthy Hindoos, who were no strangers in the busy
streets of Alexandria, and who had managed to find their way to that
school where Jew and Gentile, bond and free, met together without
distinction. The Indians invited him to come among them, and St.
Pantænus accordingly exchanged his mastership for an apostolic
life, and went to preach the faith to the Brahmins. Clement, his
former disciple and assistant, succeeded him. He had visited all
lands and studied in all schools in search of truth, and had found
it at last on the humble bench of the Catechumen. No one understood
better than he the emptiness of human learning when pursued as an
end, or its serviceableness when used as a means. His end was to win
souls to Christ; and to reach it, he laid hands indifferently on
all the intellectual weapons that fell within his reach; poetry and
philosophy, science and even satire;--he neglected nothing that would
serve his turn. He did not disdain to give a Christian interpretation
to Pagan fables, and took occasion from the stories of Orpheus and
Amphion, who, as the poets pretended, had moved the stones and tamed
the wild beasts with the music of their lyres, to present to his
hearers the Word made Flesh, conquering the stony and ferocious heart
of fallen man, and restoring that universe which he beautifully
calls “a lyre whose harmony has been destroyed by sin.” He could
use with equal ease the phraseology of the Neo-Platonists whilst
engaged in dispersing their transcendentalism into thinnest air, or
the plainer language of the Gospel when he had to put heretics to
silence. Nor was he too deep or profound for the comprehension of the
simple-hearted faithful; he could write hymns for little children to
sing in church, and when he spoke to exclusively Christian hearers
set forth no other wisdom, no other model for their imitation, than
“Jesus Christ and Him Crucified.”

The result of all this may be imagined. While the first neophytes of
St. Mark and his immediate followers had been chiefly gained from
the ranks of the Jews, to whom Alexandria was a second home, Gentile
converts now flowed into the Church in ever-increasing numbers. The
philosophers found in the Christian teachers those who could beat
them with their own weapons, and human learning became elevated
and ennobled by its marriage with the faith. It may be taken as a
proof how thoroughly it was now recognised that Christians were men
who could think and reason like other men, had as fair a knowledge
of books and as great a command of what the Roman world valued far
more than mere book-knowledge--eloquence; in short, that they were
men of whom a university city need not be ashamed, and who might
even be capable one day or other of setting up a university of
their own--that it was becoming possible for Christians to gain a
livelihood by teaching grammar and profane letters. There was one
who so began his career, and who, at the age of eighteen, succeeded
Clement in the direction of the catechetical school. The child of a
martyr, Origen had been the pupil of saints. He had been taught not
only by Clement, but also by St. Hyppolitus the martyr, commonly
called Bishop of Porto, the disciple of Irenæus, the disciple of
Polycarp, the spiritual son of the Apostle St. John. Hyppolitus was
a man of many sciences, a philosopher, a poet, and a mathematician.
He was one of the earliest who comes before us as attaining eminence
in that distinctively Christian science, which will often appear in
these pages under the name of the _Computum_. The computum was in
fact the art of calculating the time of Easter, and included so much
astronomical and arithmetical knowledge as was necessary for that
purpose.[8] Hence it was a science indispensable in the education
of clerics; for in those days the _Tabula Paschalis_ did not as now
figure at the beginning of every Prayer-book; nor did the invention
of almanacs bring home much science in a simple form to the fireside
of the most unlettered layman. The calculation of Easter, therefore,
had to be painfully gone through year after year, to the sore travail
of many heads; and he was a benefactor to his species who first
thought of lightening the labour. Hyppolitus, who is supposed to have
been an Alexandrian by birth, and to whom, therefore, astronomy and
arithmetic were second nature, composed two cycles which determined
the Easter for a hundred and twelve years to come; and after his
death a statue was erected representing the bishop, with the cycles
engraved on his chair, which is still preserved in the Christian
Museum of the Lateran.[9]

Under Hyppolitus and the other masters provided for him by his
father’s care, Origen had made progress in every human science; but
on becoming chief catechist of Alexandria he had to make a sacrifice.
He was forced to resign his grammar-school and to sell his books.
Not, indeed, that he had no further need of these treasures, but
they were his solitary riches; and as even he could not absolutely
live on nothing, he parted from them and lived on the small pension
of four oboli a day, which was paid him by the purchaser. And having
thus wedded himself to poverty, alike the spouse of the scholar
and the saint, he began to study Hebrew, and entered on those vast
labours which had for their object the production of a correct
version of the Sacred Text. And all the time the business of the
school went on, and persecution raged with small intermission. Seven
of his disciples suffered under Severus--a glorious crown for the
master who envied them their palms. But we are only concerned with
the history of Origen in so far as it exhibits the expansion of the
Christian studies. So passing over twenty years of his life, we
shall follow him to Cæsarea, where in 231 he retired from the storm
that had driven him from Alexandria, and accepted the direction
of another school entrusted him by the two bishops, Theoctistus
of Cæsarea and Alexander of Jerusalem. It appears to have been a
combination of the episcopal seminary and the catechetical school,
for scholars of all classes resorted to it. Among them were Theodore,
better known by his Christian name of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus,
and his brother Athenodorus, who were then studying in the famous
law-schools of Berytus. The conversation of Origen, however, soon
put Roman jurisprudence out of their heads, and determined them to
apply exclusively to philosophy under the guidance of their new
friend. Both were at this time pagans, and Origen had to prepare
their minds to receive the truth in a very gradual manner. He began
by mercilessly rooting out the weeds and briars of bad habits and
false maxims which he found choking up the soil, a process which at
first, as his pupils acknowledged, cost them not a little. Then
he taught them in succession the different branches of philosophy:
logic, in order to exercise their minds and enable them to discern
true reasoning from sophistry; physics, that they might understand
and admire the works of God; geometry, which by its clear and
indisputable demonstrations serves as a basis to the science of
thought; astronomy, to lift their hearts from earth to heaven; and
finally, philosophy, which was not limited like that taught in the
pagan schools to empty speculations, but was conveyed in such a way
as to lead to practical results. All these were but steps to ascend
to that higher science which teaches us the existence and nature
of God. He permitted his pupils freely to read whatever the poets
and philosophers had written on this subject, himself watching and
directing their studies, and opening their eyes to distinguish those
sparks of truth which are to be found scattered in the writings of
the pagans, however overlaid by a mass of fable. And then at last he
presented them with the Sacred Scriptures, in which alone the true
knowledge of God is to be found. In one of his letters to St. Gregory
he explains in what way he wishes him to regard the profane sciences.
“They are to be used,” he says, “so that they may contribute to
the understanding of the Scriptures; for just as philosophers are
accustomed to say that geometry, music, grammar, rhetoric, and
astronomy all dispose us to the study of philosophy, so we may
say that philosophy, rightly studied, disposes us to the study of
Christianity. We are permitted when we go out of Egypt to carry with
us the riches of the Egyptians wherewith to adorn the tabernacle;
only let us beware how we reverse the process, and leave Israel to go
down into Egypt and seek for treasure: that is what Jeroboam did in
old time, and what heretics do in our own.”

In addition, therefore, to the elements of education which have been
named before, we see that, at the beginning of the third century,
Christians were expected to teach and study the liberal arts,
profane literature, philosophy, and the Biblical languages. Their
teachers commented on the Scriptures, and devoted themselves to a
critical study of its text; positive theology, as it is called, had
established itself in the schools, together with a certain systematic
science of Christian ethics, and, we may add, many branches of
physical science also. It matters very little that these latter were
but imperfectly known; the real point worth observing is, that every
branch of human knowledge, in so far as it had been cultivated at
that time, was included in the studies of the Christian schools;
and, considering that this had been the work of scarcely more than
two centuries, and those centuries of bloody persecution, it must be
acknowledged to have been a tolerably expansive growth.

We have now to consider the gradual development of the episcopal
seminaries, which in their early stage formed but a part of the
bishop’s household. I have already spoken of the sort of community
life established among the bishops and their clergy in apostolic
times. During the first four centuries of the Church this manner
of life was the more easily carried out, as the clergy were to be
found only in towns. The establishment of rural parishes and the
appointment of parochial priests to country villages, is first spoken
of in the Council of Vaison, held in 528. The community life of
the city clergy had many obvious advantages, and afforded singular
facilities for training younger aspirants to the ecclesiastical
state under the eye of the chief pastor. Accordingly, we very early
find notices of the schools for younger clerics, which sprang up in
the episcopal households. Thus, the martyr St. Vincent is stated to
have been educated in sacred letters, even from his childhood, by
Valerius, Bishop of Saragossa. St. John Chrysostom studied for three
years as lector in the household of Meletius, Bishop of Antioch,
St. Cyril in that of his uncle Theophilus, and St. Athanasius with
Alexander of Alexandria. Towards the close of the second century we
read how Pope St. Eleutherius placed the future martyr St. Felicianus
in the school which was then presided over by his archdeacon, St.
Victor,[10] his successor in the Apostolic Chair; and all the early
annals of the Roman Church represent her clergy as for the most
part educated in this manner, under the eye of her Pontiffs. The
author of the _Philosophumena_ acquaints us with the fact that Pope
Calixtus I. established a school of theology at Rome, which appears
from his account to have been crowded with disciples. When, after
the conversion of Constantine, the imperial palace of the Lateran
became the residence of the popes, their ecclesiastical school was
maintained within the _Patriarchium_, as the papal palace was called,
and in it not a few of the greatest popes of the first nine centuries
received their education. It possessed a noble library, and the names
of its librarians are preserved in unbroken order from the fifth
century. Here, ecclesiastical students were received at an early age,
and admitted to the successive degrees of holy orders only at long
intervals and after careful preparation. The very first Decretal that
exists of known authenticity, that of Pope St. Siricius, addressed,
in 385, to Himerius, Bishop of Tarragona, lays down the rules to
be observed in promoting clerics to holy orders, and indicates the
existence of such episcopal seminaries as we have described. _Those
who have been devoted to the service of the Church from childhood_
are to be first placed in the rank of lectors. Then, if they have
persevered to the age of thirty, they may be advanced through the
inferior orders to the subdiaconate, and thence to the diaconate,
in which they must pass five years before being admitted to the
priesthood.[11] A few years later we find St. Zozimus ordaining that
the young clerics should remain in the rank of lectors till their
twentieth year, and that they should not be raised to the priesthood
until after many years of trial. St. Leo I. writes to the African
bishops, about the middle of the fifth century, appealing to the
venerable ordinances of the holy fathers on the ordination of those
_who have lived from childhood subject to ecclesiastical discipline_,
by which expression we must certainly understand the young lectors of
the episcopal seminaries. And, glancing on to the eighth and ninth
centuries, we find exactly the same discipline kept up in the school
of the Patriarchium as had existed in the seventh. Pope Gregory II.
is spoken of as brought up from childhood in the Lateran palace,
“under the eye and discipline of the Blessed Pontiff Sergius,”[12]
as being promoted by him to the subdiaconate, and after having for
some years discharged the offices of treasurer and librarian, being
advanced to the rank of deacon and, subsequently, of priest. So,
too, Pope Leo III. is described as “educated from infancy in all
ecclesiastical and divine discipline in the _vestiarium_ of the
Lateran Palace.” In most cases the Lateran seminary was presided over
by the Roman archdeacon, and, as we shall see, the superintendence of
the cathedral schools continued, in after ages, to form one of the
duties commonly attached to the archdiaconate.

In the fourth century, when the monastic institute spread from the
East into the West, the community life of the bishops and their
clergy assumed, in many places, a yet more regular form. St. Eusebius
of Vercelli, who had himself been committed by his mother in early
youth to the care of Pope Eusebius, and had been instructed and
baptized by him, was the first to erect an episcopal monastery in his
own city, which became a nursery of illustrious prelates. This was
in 354, and forty years later St. Augustine established a similar
monastery at Hippo, which is regarded as the parent of all houses
of canons regular. Yet, though these establishments are sometimes
called _monasteries_, the rule of life observed in them is ordinarily
designated the _Apostolic_ rule,[13] and the monasteries or colleges
of a similar kind established in Gaul and Britain are said to be “of
the Apostolic Order.” From this time the community life of the clergy
became subject to fixed rules or canons. In 398 the fourth Council of
Carthage, whilst prescribing the laws for the administration of holy
orders, regulates the manner of life to be observed by the bishops
with their clergy in very precise terms. The bishop is to have his
residence near the church; he is to commit the care of temporalities
to his archdeacon, and to occupy himself exclusively with prayer,
study and preaching. In the church he is to have a higher seat
than his clergy, but in the house he must recognise them as in all
respects his colleagues, and never to suffer them to remain standing
while he is seated.[14] Similar canons were passed in the first
Council of Toledo, held two years later.

In all this there is no distinct reference to the education of the
younger clerics as forming one of the duties of the cathedral clergy.
The Council of Vaison, held in 528, speaks, indeed, of the parish
priests, who are required, according to the practice of the priests
of Italy, to bring up young lectors in their houses, who may succeed
them in their cure; and the establishment of similar schools was
solemnly ordered, in 680, by the General Council of Constantinople;
but the institution, of which we here see the germ, was not the
episcopal, but the priest’s or parochial school. However, in 531, the
second Council of Toledo passed several canons, which bear distinct
reference to the bishop’s seminary, which by this time is evidently
supposed to be attached to the cathedral church. Those children
who are destined by their parents for the ecclesiastical state are
to receive the tonsure, and to be placed in the rank of lectors in
order to be instructed _in the house of the church under the eyes of
the bishop, by him who shall be appointed over them_. At the age of
eighteen their vocation is to be publicly examined, that no one may
embrace the ecclesiastical state save with his own free consent. If
this be given, they may be ordained sub-deacons at twenty and deacons
at twenty-five. And clerics so educated cannot pass to any other
diocese, but owe canonical obedience to the bishop at whose charge
they have been brought up.[15]

Here, then, is the cathedral seminary fairly established, and a few
years later we find it expanding into a noble public school. It was
St. Leander, of Seville, who first conceived the idea of establishing
a staff of professors for teaching the liberal arts in connection
with his cathedral. He directed their labours in person, and received
among his first scholars his own brother Isidore, who afterwards
succeeded him in his see. Isidore greatly extended the range of
studies, which included the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew tongues, and all
the liberal arts, besides law and medicine. His famous _Origines_
drawn up for the use of this school present an encyclopedia of every
known subject, and embody several fragments of ancient authors which
would otherwise have been lost to us. The first five books treat
of Grammar, Rhetoric, Philosophy, Dialectics, Music, Geometry,
Mechanics, Astronomy, Jurisprudence, Chronology, and History. The
sixth is on the Holy Scriptures, the seventh and eighth are on God
and the Angels, the ninth on the various nations and languages of
the earth, and the remaining books treat of Etymology. But his
efforts for the promotion of Christian education did not stop here.
In 633 he presided over the fourth Council of Toledo, at which all
the bishops of Spain were required to establish seminaries in their
cathedral cities on the model of that of Seville, the study of the
three learned languages being specially enjoined. This decree was
carried into effect, and hence it is commonly said that the system of
cathedral schools took its origin in Spain.

Besides the catechetical and episcopal schools, instances occur,
even in the age of martyrdom, of private schools kept by Christian
teachers. Such was the school of Imola, presided over by the martyr
Cassian; and the story of his martyrdom exhibits to us the light in
which the brutal pagan school-boy regarded his master. Yet there were
cases when the hearts even of Gentile scholars were softened by the
influence of a sanctity which they comprehended not. The exquisite
story of the Eight Martyrs of Carthage, as related in their authentic
Acts, exhibits to us the pagan scholars of the deacon Flavian
obtaining his reprieve from the judge by vehemently denying his
ecclesiastical character; and when he at last succeeds in proving
a fact which brings with it the joyful death-warrant, his Christian
disciples follow him to the place of execution to gather up the last
words of instruction from their master’s lips.[16] We have a yet more
particular account of the school established at Cæsarea by the martyr
St. Pamphilius. He had been educated, as a Gentile, in the public
schools of Berytus, where he attained to great proficiency in profane
science. But, on his conversion, he became desirous of acquiring
a knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures, and for this purpose placed
himself under the tuition of Pierius, the successor of Origen in the
catechetical school of Alexandria. On his return to Syria he was
ordained priest, and devoted the rest of his life, and his wealth, to
the creation of a Christian school and library. No Florentine scholar
in the age of the Renaissance had a more passionate love of books
than he. He caused them to be sent to him from every quarter, and his
library numbered no fewer than thirty thousand volumes, many of which
had been copied by his own hand. They included the best works of the
ancients, besides those of Christian writers. Pamphilius spent the
greater part of his life in transcribing books, and both bought and
wrote out an amazing number of copies of the Holy Scriptures, which
he distributed gratis to all who desired to have them. He applied
himself with unwearied diligence to obtain a correct edition of the
whole of the Sacred Text; and, in the midst of these labours, he
directed a school of sacred learning, wherein was reared more than
one martyr.

The public schools of the Empire were not generally resorted to
by the faithful until after the conversion of Constantine, when
Christians were permitted to aspire to the professor’s chair. But
this privilege, great as it was, did not produce any material change
in the character of the State academies; they continued to flourish
under the Christian Cæsars as they had done under their pagan
predecessors, but they never merited to be regarded as Christian
institutions. Though both Constantine and Gratian did much to provide
excellent rhetoricians and grammarians to instruct their subjects,
and though Valentinian I. made some laudable efforts, to correct
the worst abuses of the schools, they continued to bear the stamp
of their origin; and it is a significant fact that, long after the
establishment of a nominal Christianity in the institutions of the
Empire, the saint whose children were destined to hold in their
hands the future education of Europe is introduced to us in the
first incident of his life, flying into the wilderness to escape
the corruption of the semi-pagan schools of Rome.[17] St. Augustine
has told us something of the condition of the schools of Carthage
in his time, which may probably be taken as a fair specimen of the
State gymnasia in other parts of the Empire. The masters exercised
an excessive severity with their pupils, so that, as the saint
confesses, he first began the use of prayer when yet a child, to
beg of God that He would save him from a school flogging. His
elders, and even his parents, were so used to the idea of these
punishments, “whereby labour and sorrow are multiplied to the sons
of Adam,” that they only made a jest of his sufferings. All the
sweets of Greek poetry were, he says, sprinkled with gall to him,
he being forced to learn them by “cruel terrors and stripes.” He
lets us know moreover that the wholesome admonitions of Quinctilian
were altogether neglected, and that the worst writings of the pagan
authors were placed in the hands of the scholars. In academies where
the professorial system reigned supreme, moral training was neither
given nor expected; the professors were paid for teaching their
pupils grammar and rhetoric, and, as St. Augustine remarks, would
have treated it as a greater fault to pronounce _homo_ without the
aspirate than to hate a man. Many were pagans, like Libanius, the
master of St. Chrysostom; others were content with the smallest
possible seasoning of Christianity. They were, in short, the
_sophists_ by profession--a pragmatical race of beings whose mental
horizon hardly extended beyond the logic of Aristotle and the rules
of rhetoric. Honourable exceptions of course were to be found, such
as Marius Victorinus, who in the Julian persecution resigned his
school rather than renounce the Divine Word who maketh eloquent
the tongues of children.[18] But as a general rule the professors
troubled themselves very little about questions of Christian faith
or ethics. Absolute dictators of a petty circle, they were devoured
by a vanity which tainted their very eloquence, and expressed itself
in such a turgid and affected style, that, as Cicero said of one of
their class, if you wanted to be dumb for the rest of your life you
had nothing to do but to study their lectures. This vanity showed
itself moreover in perpetual squabbles and rivalries, in which the
disciples took part with their masters. New-comers were laid violent
hands on by the scholastic jackals, who would endeavour by all manner
of insolence to press them into the school of their own particular
sophist, initiating them by burlesque and uproarious ceremonies.
Thus it was that they prepared to seize St. Basil on his first coming
to Athens, when St. Gregory of Nazianzen, who well knew how offensive
such riotous scenes would prove to one of his grave and reserved
character, interfered to protect him, and thus laid the foundation
of a friendship which has inspired some of the most exquisite pages
of Christian literature. I need not quote the well-known passage
that describes their university life: it is often cited as a model
for Christian students; yet St. Gregory does not forget to inform us
that it was as difficult for a youth to preserve his innocence in
the midst of such an atmosphere as it would be for an animal to live
in the midst of fire, or for a river to preserve its sweetness when
flowing through the briny ocean.

Nevertheless, the circumstances of the times compelled the
faithful to resort to these academies. Many had done so even when
the professorships were exclusively in the hands of the pagans.
Tertullian, in his treatise on Idolatry, examines the lawfulness of
the practice, and decides that though it would be impossible for
Christians to _teach_ in schools wherein the masters were obliged
to recommend the worship of false gods, and to take part in pagan
sacrifices and ceremonies, they might properly attend them as
students, because they could not otherwise acquire that necessary
knowledge of letters which he calls “the key of life,” and because
they were perfectly free to reject the fables to which they listened.
Such an argument of course implies the existence of very powerful
safeguards on the side of faith; and he seems to take it for granted
that Christian students will imbibe only the honey from the flowers
of eloquence, and reject the poison. The general feeling certainly
was that human learning was sufficiently necessary to justify some
risks being incurred in its acquisition. After the triumph of the
Church, the most religious parents, such as those of St. Basil,
hesitated not to send their sons to the public schools; and when
the crafty attempt was made by Julian the Apostate to close them to
the Christians, and to prohibit even their private study of pagan
literature, we know how strenuously the bishops protested against
his edict, as a cruel and unheard-of tyranny. So long as it remained
in force they exerted themselves to supply the want of the old
class-books, the use of which was interdicted, by imitations of the
poets from their own pens. No one was more active in this work than
St. Gregory Nazianzen, who took up the cudgels against his imperial
schoolfellow in good earnest. “For my part,” he exclaims, in his
fourth discourse, “I trust that every one who cares for learning will
take part in my indignation. I leave to others fortune, birth, and
every other fancied good which can flatter the imagination of man.
I value only science and letters, and regret no labour that I have
spent in their acquisition. I have preferred, and shall ever prefer,
learning to all earthly riches, and hold nothing dearer on earth,
next to the joys of heaven and the hopes of eternity.” The decree was
revoked by Valentinian at the request of St. Ambrose, so unanimous
were the Christian prelates in regarding human learning as a treasure
the possession of which the faithful were jealously to vindicate.
Even in those passages which occur in the writings of the Fathers
wherein they appear to undervalue polite studies, it is evident that
they only do so relatively, and the scholar is pretty sure to peep
out before you have turned the page. “You ask me for my books,”
writes St. Gregory to his friend Adamanthus; “have you then turned a
boy again that you are going to study rhetoric? I have long ago laid
aside such follies, for one cannot spend all one’s life in child’s
play. We must cease to lisp when we aspire to the true science, and
sacrifice to the Divine Word that frivolous eloquence which formerly
so charmed our youth. However, take my books, my dear Adamanthus--all
at least that are not devoured by the worms, or blackened with the
smoke, on the shelves where they have lain so long. Take them, and
use them well. Study the sophists thoroughly, and both acquire and
teach to others all the learning you can, provided the fear of God
reign paramount over these vanities.” But though the Fathers, both
by word and example, authorised the study of the pagan literature,
they required that it should be read with certain restrictions,
and according to what may be termed the Christian method. This is
explained by St. Basil, in a treatise he wrote on the subject for
the guidance of some young relations. He advocates the right use of
human learning, comparing the soul to a tree, which bears not only
fruit but leaves also. The fruit is truth, to be found only in the
Sacred Scriptures, but the leaves are the ornaments of literature
which cover truth and adorn it. Moses and Daniel both became skilled
in the Gentile learning before they devoted themselves to the study
of sacred science. And it is not to be doubted that the poets and
philosophers have many wise and virtuous precepts, which cannot be
too deeply engraved on our minds. Christians are engaged in a mighty
struggle, in which they should make use of everything that can
help them--poetry, philosophy, rhetoric, or the arts. They should
contemplate the Sun of Truth as it is reflected in the waters of
human literature, and then lift their eyes to gaze on it in its full
effulgence in the heavens.

He then goes on to cite many passages from Homer, Hesiod, and
Socrates, and other ancient writers, showing that they abound in
excellent maxims, which a Christian may very well apply to his own
benefit. A Christian student, he says, should follow the example of
the bees, who draw out honey from flowers which seem only proper to
charm the eye, or gratify the smell. But then they must also imitate
them, in only selecting those flowers that yield honey; and when they
extract the sweet juices, let them be careful to leave the poison
behind. In like manner we should gather together from the heathen
literature whatever may be useful, and leave what is pernicious to
morals behind.[19] This was but saying what Plato and Cicero had said
before him, and it cannot be charged to the account of a Christian
prelate as narrow bigotry, that he should insist on at least as much
reserve in the use of profane writers as had been required by the
pagan moralists themselves.

It cannot be supposed that the Christian prelates were insensible
to the dangers incurred by students in the State academies. St.
Chrysostom, indeed, who knew what they were by experience, and who
was certainly the last man to undervalue a knowledge of letters,
was induced to weigh the arguments for and against a public school
education, and decides that the risk is too great to be compensated
for by any intellectual advantage. He declares that he knows of no
school in his neighbourhood where the study of profane literature can
be found united to the teaching of virtue; and this being the case,
he considers that Christian parents will generously sacrifice the
superior tuition given in the State gymnasia, and send their children
to be brought up in a monastery. His words are the more remarkable
from the extreme moderation of their tone, and the evident reluctance
with which he advocates a course of conduct which must needs place
the faithful at a disadvantage. They are also important as showing
how very early the monasteries began to be regarded as places of
education, for seculars as well as religious. “If you have masters
among you,” he writes,[20] “who can answer for the virtue of your
children, I should be very far from advocating your sending them to
a monastery; on the contrary, I should strongly insist on their
remaining where they are. But if no one can give such a guarantee,
we ought not to send children to schools where they will learn
vice before they learn science, and where in acquiring learning of
relatively small value, they will lose what is far more precious,
their integrity of soul. Are we then to give up literature? you
will exclaim. I do not say that; but I do say that we must not kill
souls.... When the foundations of a building are sapped, we should
seek rather for architects to reconstruct the whole edifice, than
for artists to adorn the walls. In fact, the choice lies between two
alternatives; a liberal education which you may get by sending your
children to the public schools, or the salvation of their souls,
which you secure by sending them to the monks. Which is to gain the
day, science or the soul? If you can unite both advantages, do so by
all means; but if not, choose the most precious.”[21]

It will be apparent from what has been said, that the State
academies of the Empire are not to be numbered among the nurseries
of the Christian schools. The only imperial foundation which had a
distinctly Christian character about it, appears to have been that
which grew up at Constantinople, under the patronage of the Greek
emperors. It was established in the Basilica of the Octagon, built
by Constantine the Great, where an immense library was collected,
which in Zeno’s time amounted to 120,000 volumes. Seven librarians
and twelve professors were maintained at the public expense, and the
college was presided over by a president, called the _Œcumenicus_,
because he was supposed to be a sort of university in himself. The
church attached to this academy was served by sixteen monks, and
prelates were often chosen from the ranks of the professors to
fill the first sees of the Empire. This noble foundation perished
in 730, by the hands of Leo the Isaurian, who, finding that the
academicians would not enter into his Iconoclastic views, and fearing
their learning and their influence, caused fire to be applied to the
building by night, so that the Basilica, the vast library, and the
professors themselves, were all pitilessly consumed together.

But the parentage of the Christian schools is to be traced to less
splendid sources than the Greek universities or the palace of the
Cæsars. What these were has been indicated at the beginning of the
chapter; the catechetical and the episcopal schools have been already
spoken of, and we have now to examine how the work of education came
to be embraced by the fathers of that monastic life which, like the
canonical life of the clergy, found its first development among the
followers of St. Mark. St. Chrysostom’s words, above quoted, show
that in his time the monks of the East were already in the habit of
receiving and training children. In the West, the work of education
did not fall into the hands of the Church until the dissolution of
the Roman Empire, when she saw herself obliged to open the doors
of her episcopal and monastic schools to secular students. But one
thing is evident, that from the first, the Western cœnobites had a
certain organised system among them for the education of their own
younger members and that the germ of the monastic school is to be
found even in the deserts of Egypt. In the rule of St. Pachomius,
special directions are given for the instruction of all those who
shall come to the monastery. If ignorant of letters, they are to
have the rule explained to them, and shall be sent to one who can
teach them, and standing before him, shall diligently learn from him,
with all thankfulness. After that they shall write for him letters,
syllables, words, and names, and they shall be compelled to read,
even if unwilling; there shall be no one in the monastery who shall
not learn letters, and know something of the Scriptures, at least
the New Testament and the Psalter.[22] Twice a week there were to
be disputations; that is, spiritual conferences or catechisms. Here
is evidently the origin of the interior or claustral school for the
instruction of the younger or more ignorant of the monks; and the
object of such very stringent regulations is better understood when
we study the rest of the rule, and observe the great importance
attached to the exercise of spiritual reading, which occupied almost
as large a place in the horarium of St. Pachomius as prayer or manual
labour.

Nor was this all. The rule of this great monastic legislator
distinctly proves that children were received, and that at a very
early age, to be educated among the monks. He felt great compassion,
we are told, for the young, and was accustomed to say, that in the
soil of their minds good seed might be sown more easily than in more
advanced years. He considered them particularly capable of being
trained to acquire the habit of the presence of God; by which they
might afterwards advance to great perfection. Accordingly, his rule
is full of provisions for the proper care of these young disciples.
The monks are warned not to scandalise them, even by an incautious
word: they are to have the recreation and food proper to their
age, but the monks are not to sport or laugh with them; and if any
boy be too much given to play and idleness, he is to receive sharp
correction. They are to eat in the refectory with the brethren, and
join them at their work, but at other times a sort of separation
is to be observed between them and the community.[23] The terms on
which the Fathers lived with their little disciples exhibit that
character of paternal tenderness which was one of the distinctive
features of the early Christian schools, offering a striking contrast
to the state of things existing in the pagan academies. There is,
indeed, frequent mention of the rod, but strict discipline was
never held incompatible with affectionate familiarity. The Fathers
of the Desert had received their traditions on this head from the
immediate followers of Him who took the young children in His arms,
and willingly suffered them to approach Him; and so it seemed
but natural that they who sought to imitate their Master, should
surround themselves with little ones, and permit them a certain holy
familiarity which constantly reappears in the intercourse between
monks and children. Every one will remember the anecdote that is told
of St. Pachomius, who, in his extreme humility, did not disdain to
be set right by a little boy. As he sat at work with his brethren,
making mats, one of the children said to him, “My father, you are
not working in the right way; the abbot Theodore does it quite
differently.” “Then sit down, my child,” replied the saint, “and
show me how I ought to do it;” and having received his lesson, he
untwisted his osiers, and began his work all over again. Another
time, the saint having returned to the monastery after an absence of
some weeks, one of the children ran out to meet him, saying, “I am
glad you have come back, my father; since you have been away they
have given us neither soup nor vegetables for dinner.” “Well, my
child,” was the kind reply, “I will take care that you do not want
them for the future;” and calling the cook, he administered to him a
sharp rebuke.

Sometimes, even solitaries were induced to undertake the care of
children not intended for the religious state. Thus St. Chrysostom
relates the example of a Christian lady living at Antioch, who
was very desirous to procure for her son the blessings of a holy
education, and induced a certain solitary to leave his retreat among
the mountains, and undertake the care of the youth: and he adds,
the boy made great progress in the sciences, but yet more in piety,
and by his example won many of his playfellows to embrace a life of
virtue. When, therefore, the great father of the monastic life in the
Western world received his two disciples, Placidus and Maurus, with a
view to their education, and so gave his followers an example which
resulted in the foundation of the great Benedictine schools, he was
not departing from the earlier monastic tradition, as Mabillon is
careful to show.[24] Nor must the decrees of certain councils which
prohibit monks from receiving any children, save those “offered” by
their parents to the religious state, be understood as implying more
than that such children could not be received into the _interior_
or claustral school; for, as the same writer proves, seculars were
always freely admitted into the _exterior_ schools of monasteries.

St. Pachomius was not the only monastic legislator of ancient times
who in his rule provided for the admission and education of children.
St. Basil permitted them to be received into his monasteries at a
very early age, especially if they had lost their parents, because
monks should be the fathers of orphans. Their education, he says,
should be strictly religious; they are to have a separate portion of
the monastery assigned them, and are to be governed by one of the
elder monks who shall be both mild and learned, and experienced in
the care of children. He is very precise on the point which proves
the _crux_ in most systems of education, namely, the method to be
observed in inflicting punishment; and though he does not prohibit
the use of the rod, he recommends in preference the adoption of such
penances as may correct the fault, as well as punish the offender.
“Let every fault have its own remedy,” he says, “so that while
the offence is punished the soul may be exercised to conquer its
passions. For example, has a child been angry with his companion?
Oblige him to beg pardon of the other and to do him some humble
service, for it is only by accustoming them to humility that you will
eradicate anger, which is always the offspring of pride. Has he eaten
out of meals? Let him remain fasting for a good part of the day.
Has he eaten to excess, and in an unbecoming manner? At the hour of
repast, let him, without eating himself, watch others taking their
food in a modest manner, and so he will be learning how to behave at
the same time that he is being punished by his abstinence. And if he
has offended by idle words, by rudeness, or by telling lies, let him
be corrected by diet and silence.”

After this he passes on to the studies of the children, and desires
that instead of learning the fables of the poets they should be
taught the wonderful events narrated in Scripture History. They are
to learn by heart sentences chosen from the Book of Proverbs, and
little prizes are to be given them in reward for their exercises of
memory, “to the end that they may learn with the less reluctance,
nay rather with pleasure, and as though engaging in agreeable
recreation.” The masters are particularly enjoined to train them to
recall their wandering thoughts and fix their attention on their
work, by frequently interrogating them as to what they are thinking
about. And whilst acquiring a knowledge of letters, they are likewise
to be taught some useful art or trade.[25]

In most of the rules drawn up by the early Gallican prelates we
see that stringent regulations were introduced for obliging all
the brethren to acquire a certain knowledge of letters. “Literas
omnes discant,” is the thirty-second brief and emphatic rule of
St. Aurelian, Bishop of Arles in the sixth century. What is more
remarkable, we find exactly the same provisions in rules drawn up
for religious women, as in those of St. Donatus and St. Cæsarius of
Arles.[26] The sixth chapter of the rule of St. Leander of Seville,
is headed thus: _Ut jugiter virgo oret et legat._ “Let your time and
occupation be so divided,” he says, “that after reading you pray,
and after prayer you read; and let these two good works perpetually
alternate, so that no part of your time be wholly without them. And
when you do any manual work or refresh your body with needful food,
then let another read, that when the hands and the eyes are intent
on work the ear may be fed with the Divine Word. For if even when
we read and pray we are hardly able to withdraw our minds from the
temptations of the devil, how much more prone will not the soul be
to vice, if it be not held back by the chain of prayer and assiduous
reading.”[27] And in the chapter that follows he gives directions for
the proper manner of studying the books of the Old Testament.

Before bringing these remarks to a close we cannot omit all notice
of the education received in primitive times by the children of the
faithful, in the bosoms of their own families. Fleury points out to
his readers as one proof of the care taken by Christian parents in
the instruction of their children, that in all antiquity we do not
find the least notice of any public catechism for children, or any
public instruction for those who had been baptized before they came
to the use of reason. It was not needed, he says, for in those days,
to use the words of St. Chrysostom, “every house was a Church.”[28]

The office of religious instruction generally devolved on the mother.
Even in Scripture there is evidence of this, for St. Paul, writing
to St. Timothy, reminds him of what he owed to the “faith unfeigned”
of his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice.[29] St. Basil, and
his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa, gloried in preserving the faith
in which they had been trained by their grandmother St. Macrina
the elder. Their other brother, St. Peter of Sebaste, was chiefly
brought up by his sister of the same name. St. Gregory thus describes
the extraordinary care bestowed by his mother on the education of
her daughter. “My mother,” he says, “took extreme pains with her
instruction, not after the manner customary with those of her age,
who are ordinarily taught the fables of the poets.... Instead of
these she made her learn such portions of Scripture as were easiest
to understand. She began with the book of Wisdom, and thence went on
to the Psalms.”[30] St. Fulgentius owed his education, not merely in
sacred science, but also in polite literature, to the care of his
mother Mariana, the _religiosa mater_ as she is called in his life,
who was so solicitous about the purity of his Greek accent that she
made him learn by heart the poems of Homer and Menander before he
studied his Latin rudiments.[31] The early education, both liberal
and religious, of St. John Chrysostom was in like manner directed
by his admirable mother Anthusa, whose conduct in this particular
drew from the lips of the pagan sophist, Libanius, the exclamation,
“Ye gods of Greece! how wonderful are the women of the Christians!”
In fact it is remarkable how many Christian women of early times
are spoken of as being learned. Not to mention St. Catherine of
Alexandria, whose case was possibly exceptional, we know that St.
Thecla, the disciple of St. Paul, was versed in philosophy, poetry,
and rhetoric; St. Olympia, the holy widow of Constantinople, not
only corresponded with St. Chrysostom, seventeen of whose letters
are addressed to her, but received the dedication of several of
St. Gregory of Nazianzen’s poems. St. Jerome, again, dedicated his
commentaries on Isaias and Ezechiel to his pupil St. Eustochium,
who, he assures us, wrote, spoke, and recited Hebrew without the
least trace of a Latin accent. And, not to multiply examples, we
may just refer to that passage in his epistles where he speaks of
St. Marcella, “the glory of the Roman ladies,” as showing that the
learned accomplishments of these illustrious women were not acquired
at any sacrifice of qualities more peculiarly becoming their sex.
“What virtues did I not find in her?” he says, writing to her
spiritual daughter, Principia; “what penetration, what purity, what
holiness! She became so learned that after my departure from Rome,
when difficulties were found in any obscure passage of Scripture,
people applied to her as to a judge; yet she possessed in a sovereign
degree that delicate discernment which always perceives what is
becoming; and used always to communicate her ideas as if they had
been suggested by somebody else, so that while instructing others,
she appeared herself to be a pupil.”[32]

Never, surely, was there a greater error than that into which one
of our most learned critics has fallen, when he asserts that “the
idea and place of woman has been _slowly and laboriously_ elevated
by the Gospel.”[33] He could not have written thus had he been as
familiar with the records of the Christian Church as with those of
pagan antiquity. The most perfect exemplars of Christian womanhood
appear in the history of the primitive ages. The grand ideal of the
Roman virgin or matron, softened, purified, and elevated by the
Gospel precepts and the Apostolic teaching, retaining all its former
strength, but acquiring a new element of tenderness, produced those
exquisite flowers of sanctity whom the Church appears in some sort to
regard as her children of predilection. They were not the growth of
one Church or province, but simultaneously, wherever the Christian
faith was preached, they expanded their beautiful petals to the Sun
of Justice; and we have in Rome an Agnes and a Cecilia; in Sicily
a Lucy and an Agatha; in Carthage a Felicitas; in Alexandria a
Catherine; a Blandina in Gaul, and in barbarous Britain, an Ursula.

Whence arose this instantaneous regeneration of the womanly
character? The Catholic hardly needs to ask himself the question,
for the form on which it was modelled is so obvious that it requires
not to be indicated. It grew out of no dead code of precepts, but
out of the living memory of her, the Mother _par excellence_, the
Virgin-Mother of God, and the model of all Christian virgins and
mothers; she whose countenance St. Isidore describes as “gravely
sweet and sweetly grave;” whose tranquil gait and gentle voice St.
Ambrose has dwelt on, as well as her modesty and reverence, “rising
up in the presence of her elders.” And it was she of whom he also
says, gathering up the precious fragments of ancient tradition, that
she was “diligent in reading,” _legendi studiosior_, a trait which
reappears in the character of the holy women of early times, and
which we are thus able to link on to the source whence they derived
their ideal of womanly perfection.

It cannot be doubted that the influence of such women, and specially
of such mothers, was a powerful means of preserving the Roman youth
from the infection which hung over the public academies, even after
the establishment of a nominal Christianity in the institutions of
the State. But of these academies I need speak no further. They
formed a part of the old Roman civilisation, and perished in its
wreck, swallowed up in those waves of barbarism which, as they poured
over Europe, ground to pieces every monument of the Empire, and swept
their fragments into oblivion. In the midst of the deluge, however,
the Ark of God floated over the waters, and accepted the mission of
reconstructing a ruined world. The Church alone preserved so much
as the memory of letters, though in the inconceivable troubles of
the crisis her utmost efforts for a time only sufficed to keep up
schools in which the clergy received the instruction necessary for
their state; and secular learning for the most part fell into decay.
But the want was felt and lamented by the clergy themselves, a proof
that learning, at any rate, never lost its value in their eyes. Thus,
in his letter to the Council of Constantinople in 680, Pope Agatho
excuses the simplicity of his legates; “for how,” he says, “can we
look for great erudition among men living in the midst of barbarous
nations, forced with difficulty to earn their daily bread by the
labour of their hands? Nevertheless,” he adds, “they will expound to
you the faith of the Apostolic Church, not with human eloquence, for
they have none; but with the simplicity of the faith which we have
held from our cradles.” The synodal letter of the Western bishops
to the same council is couched in similar terms. “As to secular
eloquence,” they say, “we think no one in our time will boast of
possessing it. Our countries are continually agitated by the fury
of different nations; there is nothing around us but war, invasion,
and plunder. In the midst of the barbarians our life is full of
disturbance, the patrimony of our churches has been seized, and we
have to live by the labour of our hands. The faith is all that is
left us, and our solitary glory is to preserve it during life, and to
be ready to die in its defence.”

These two documents, often quoted, have perhaps given rise to
somewhat exaggerated notions regarding the extent of the ignorance
complained of. It is certain that there were periods of comparative
tranquillity during which liberal studies were at least partially
preserved. The schools of Gaul did not begin to decay till the end
of the fifth century, and even then some were found who exerted
themselves to keep alive the ancient learning; such as St. Sidonius
Apollinaris, who received his education in the public schools of
Lyons before his elevation to the Episcopate in 471, and Claudian
Mamertus, a monk by profession and education, who was declared by
his friend Sidonius to be equally incomparable in every science
to which he applied. Besides being an amazing reader, he was an
original thinker. His great work on “The Nature of the Soul” is said
to display the precision and method of the latter scholastics, and
contains proofs of the existence and immateriality of the soul drawn
from its capacity of thought, which appear like anticipations of the
famous Cartesian formula _Cogito, ergo sum_. In his arguments he
appeals not only to the authority of Scripture and the Fathers, but
also to that of Plato and other Greek philosophers, and shows himself
not unacquainted with the systems of Zoroaster and the Brahmins. To
him we owe the arrangement of a great part of the Breviary office,
and the beautiful hymn for Passion Sunday, _Pange lingua gloriosi
prœlium certamina_. For poetry, no less than philosophy, found
votaries in the Gallican schools. The lyre, which had fallen from the
hands of Prudentius, was still touched by St. Prosper of Aquitaine
and St. Avitus of Vienne, the former of whom may be called the poet
of Divine grace, whilst the latter, eleven centuries before the time
of Milton, chose for the theme of his verses the Fall of Man.

Down to the beginning of the seventh century the schools of Gaul
still taught Virgil and the Roman law, and in them the sons of the
barbarous Visigoths received some tincture of polite letters. The
Gallo-Roman nobility showed the utmost solicitude to obtain such
education for their children as the times afforded; and we find
notices of schools wherein grammar, rhetoric, and law were taught in
separate courses after the Roman fashion. The Gallican orators, as
in the time of St. Jerome, betrayed their Celtic origin by a certain
verbose eloquence, which had to be pruned according to the severer
rules of Roman rhetoric. The mother of Rufinus had sent him to the
imperial capital, that the Roman gravity might temper the too great
fecundity of the Gallic speech, and St. Desiderius of Cahors was made
to go through a course of Roman jurisprudence with the same intention.

Nor, whilst noticing these evidences of a love of letters, surviving
even in the period of decay, must I neglect to mention that notable
academy of Toulouse, which at one time did its best to involve all
Europe in a fog of learned perplexity. Its eccentricities would
scarcely merit to be recorded, had they not left very distinct
traces both in the Irish and Anglo-Saxon literature. The history
of this academy has been written by one of its members, the false
Virgil, as he is called, who has contrived to mystify both the date
and whereabouts of its foundation. It is presumed, however, to have
flourished at Toulouse sometime in the sixth century. Holding to
the principle that pearls must not be cast before swine, certain
enthusiasts of Aquitaine formed among themselves a secret scholastic
society, the members of which spoke a language understood only by
the initiated, and conferred on men and places the nomenclature of
ancient Greece and Rome. The grand, I might almost say the exclusive,
study of these illuminati was grammar. An assembly of thirty of their
number had gravely determined that the subject most worthy of a wise
man’s meditation was the conjugation of the Latin verb, and on this
momentous theme they split into two sects, which rivalled Guelph and
Ghibelline in the ardour of their mutual animosities. The heads of
these two parties, whose academic names were Terence and Galbungus,
spent fourteen days and nights discussing the question whether
the pronoun _Ego_ had a vocative case: at last the difficulty was
referred to Eneas, who decided that it might be allowed to possess
one when employed in the interrogative phrase. These grammatical
debates took place when Virgil was but a youth, but in his riper
years he thoroughly maintained the reputation of his masters. It was
the exact government of words which left him no repose, and he tells
us how one night, having retired to rest, he was awaked by a knocking
at his door, and found that the disturbance was caused by the arrival
of a certain Spanish grammarian, named Mitterius, whom he honoured
neither more nor less than if he had been a prophet of God. Mitterius
begged for a night’s lodging, promising in return to answer any
question which his entertainer might put to him. The opportunity was
not to be lost; there was but one thing just then that Virgil desired
to know, and, springing from his bed, he at once required, as the
price of his hospitality, a direct rule by which he could determine
when the word _hic_ was an adverb and when it was a pronoun. These
anecdotes, however, give us but a faint notion of the labours of the
Toulouse grammarians. The difficulties of the Latin syntax were not
sufficient to satisfy their thirst for obscurity, and they therefore
expended their ingenuity on inventing new means of perplexing their
own brains and those of their scholars. “Was it to be supposed,”
they asked, “that this noble tongue was so poor and barren, that its
words could be used in one sense only? On the contrary, the true
grammarian knew very well that, besides the vulgar Latin known to the
common herd, there existed eleven other kinds, each of which had a
distinct grammar of its own.” According to this system of “the twelve
Latinities,” everything had twelve names, any one of which might be
used according to pleasure. New vocabularies had to be invented,
either by the Latinising of Greek roots, or transposing the letters
of the original words in such a way as to form a variety of new
combinations. New conjugations and declensions adorned the grammar of
the initiated, and to complete their system a new prosody was added,
in which the dactyls and spondees appear to have been measured, not
by quantity, but by accent.[34]

Even the triumphs of the barbarians did not in all cases result in
the immediate extinction of letters. In Italy a second Augustan
age bid fair at one time to arise under the rule of Theodoric,
the Ostrogoth. His court was adorned by the genius of two great
men--Boethius, the Christian philosopher, and the last of the classic
writers; and Cassiodorus, in whom closed the long line of Roman
consuls. Both of them exerted a powerful influence over the studies
of succeeding generations. The original Latin works of Boethius
supplied the schools with a series of Christian classics which were
naturally held in extraordinary esteem by teachers who, as time went
on, felt with increasing force the difficulty of training Christian
youth exclusively out of pagan class-books. And it was chiefly by
his translations from the Greek that the mediæval scholars acquired
their knowledge of the Greek philosophy, at a time when the study
of that tongue had ceased to be generally pursued. A yet further
addition to scholastic literature was contributed by Cassiodorus. He
was not indeed the only statesman who had distinguished himself in
this line. Towards the close of the fifth century Marcian Capella,
an African pro-consul, had produced his celebrated work on the
Espousals of Mercury and Philology, which he chooses to personify as
a goddess; the seven liberal sciences, into which all known learning
had been classified since the days of Philo, being represented
as the handmaidens presented by the bridegroom to the bride. His
_Satiricon_, written in nine books, continued to be one of the most
popular text-books in use during the middle ages, and was at an early
period translated into the vernacular.

But Cassiodorus was not merely a writer of schoolbooks; he was the
founder of a monastic school, which, for the variety of sciences
which it cultivated, has not unfrequently been given the title of a
university. And indeed it was not undeserving of the name. Its noble
founder, when still in the service of Theodoric, had attempted, in
conjunction with Pope St. Agapetus, to found a catechetical school at
Rome, on the model of those which formerly flourished at Jerusalem,
Alexandria, and Nisibis, in which he proposed to maintain a staff
of professors at his own expense. This magnificent design having
failed, in consequence of the troubles of the time, Cassiodorus
retired from a world in which he had nobly toiled for seventy years,
and devoted his old age to the creation of a seminary of Christian
learning on his own estate of Vivaria, at the very extremity of the
Calabrian peninsula. He collected a rich library, which he increased
by the labours of his monks, on whom he enjoined the transcription
of books as their principal manual labour. It was to ensure their
accuracy in this employment that, at the age of eighty-three, he
undertook the composition of his treatise _De Orthographia_. He drew
up a plan of studies for his scholars, and wrote for their use two
treatises, one “On the Teaching of Sacred Letters,” and the other
“On the Seven Liberal Arts.” This latter was a kind of encyclopædia,
including separate treatises on each subject, which formed some of
the favourite elementary class-books in use during the middle ages.
Hallam remarks of this encyclopædia and of others undertaken on a
similar plan, that they themselves furnish significant indications
of a decadence of letters. Such collections must necessarily include
only the most meagre sketches of the sciences of which they profess
to treat, and their multiplication at this period indicates that men
were beginning to be content with a very superficial description
of knowledge. So also the numerous translations from the Greek
undertaken by Boethius and Cassiodorus are sufficient evidence that
the knowledge of that language was becoming rare. Nor will the
praises bestowed by Cassiodorus on his friend’s versions, which he
declares superior to the originals, probably raise his character as
a critic in the judgment of scholars. But the fact that his labours
were undertaken at a period of literary decay, when the inconceivable
disorders of the time seemed to present an insuperable obstacle to
the pursuit of learning, increases our admiration of the energy and
zeal displayed by the old Roman, which enabled him in spite of every
discouragement to create a school of sacred and profane learning,
where strangers were encouraged to seek that hospitality the
exercise of which was regarded as one of the most sacred duties of
the brethren. There, under porticoes and gardens adorned with every
beauty that could charm the eye or soothe the heart, pilgrims, weary
with those scenes of violence and devastation that were turning many
a fair district of Gaul and Italy into a howling wilderness, found
all that remained of Roman learning and civilisation linked with the
higher attractions of Christian devotion; and were able, amid the
monastic shades of Vivaria, to enjoy at one and the same time the
calm of retirement and the solace of prayer.

The foundation of Cassiodorus took place in the year 540. Eighteen
years previously--in 522--the two Roman senators, Equitius and
Tertullus, had taken their sons Maurus and Placidus to the grotto of
Subiaco, and committed them to the care of a solitary named Benedict.
Maurus was twelve years old and Placidus seven, and they were soon
joined by other children of the same age. They were humble beginnings
indeed of a mighty edifice, the first fruits of the Benedictine
schools.[35] In 543 St. Maurus carried the rule of St. Benedict into
Gaul, where monasteries soon multiplied, in which were cultivated
letters both sacred and profane.[36] But they were not the earliest
monastic schools which had sprung up on the Gallican soil. I need not
here remind the reader of that famous abbey of Marmoutier, erected by
St. Martin of Tours in the fourth century, and formed on the model
of those episcopal monasteries founded by St. Eusebius of Vercelli
and St. Ambrose of Milan. Yet more celebrated, and more closely
associated with the history of letters in our own country, was the
school of Lerins, a rocky isle off the coast of Gaul, where, about
the year 400, St. Honoratus fixed his abode, peopling it with a race
of monks who united the labours of the scholar to the penitential
practices of the recluse. Its rule, though strictly monastic, aimed
at making its disciples apostolic men, “thoroughly furnished to all
good works.” Hence the brethren were not required to renounce the
pursuit of letters. St. Honoratus himself did not disdain the flowers
of eloquence, and the sweetness of his style drew from St. Eucher
the graceful remark, that “he restored the honey to the wax.”[37]
St. Hilary of Arles, another of the Lerins scholars, is represented
by his biographer sitting among his clergy with a table before him,
whereon lay his book and the materials of his manual work, and while
his fingers were busy making nets, dictating to a cleric, who took
down his notes in shorthand. It would take us too long to enumerate
the distinguished prelates who were sent forth from the school of
Lerins during the sixth century. The names of St. Cesarius of Arles
and St. Vincent of Lerins; of Salvian, the master of bishops as
he was called; of St. Eucher, the purity of whose Latin eloquence
even Erasmus has praised; and of St. Lupus of Troyes, whom Sidonius
Apollinaris hesitated not to call the first bishop in the Christian
world--may suffice to show what sort of scholars were produced by
this holy congregation.

Such then was the state of letters at the opening of the sixth
century, an epoch when Europe was covered with the shattered remains
of an expiring civilisation, and when whatever literary activity
lingered about the old academies of Italy and Gaul must be regarded
as the parting rays of a light, fast sinking below the horizon. Yet,
as it sank, another luminary was sending forth its rising beams, and
the essentially Christian institution of the monastic schools was
acquiring shape and solidity. Such an epoch stood in need of a master
to harmonise its disordered elements, and such a master it found
in St. Gregory. But before speaking of him and of his Anglo-Saxon
converts we must glance at the state of letters among that earlier
Celtic population which sent students from Britain to the schools
of Rome in the days of St. Jerome and St. Damasus. Nor whilst doing
so, can we forget that sister-isle which never felt the tread of the
Roman legions, and which, sharing with Britain the glorious title
of the “Isle of Saints,” merited by its extraordinary devotion to
learning to be designated also the “Isle of Scholars.”

_CHAPTER II._

SCHOOLS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

A.D. 380 TO 590.

Although the monastic institute existed in Britain almost from the
period of her first conversion to the faith, yet the seminaries
which produced her most illustrious scholars were only founded at
a comparatively later date. Whatever schools may have existed in
connection with the British episcopal monasteries of earlier times,
had fallen into decay by the beginning of the fifth century, when
fresh foundations of learning began to spring up, the origin of which
must be traced to three distinct sources. I say _three_ distinct
sources, because the apostolic labours of St. Ninian among the Picts,
of St. Palladius in North Britain, and of St. Germanus and St.
Lupus in the southern portion of the island, were undertaken among
different races, and on different occasions; nevertheless, in reality
these three streams flowed forth from one common fountain, which was
no other than the Holy and Apostolic See of Rome.

The mission of St. Ninian was the first in order of time. The son of
a petty prince of Cumberland, he travelled to Rome for the purpose
of study, about the year 380, and being introduced to the notice
of Pope Damasus, was placed by him under the care of teachers, and
in all probability received into the school of the Patriarchium.
There he was thoroughly instructed, _regulariter edoctus_, in
all the mysteries of the faith, and after spending fifteen years
in Rome he at last received consecration from the hands of Pope
St. Siricius, by whom he was sent back to exercise the episcopal
functions in his own country. The fifth century, which was then
just opening, was precisely that in which the discipline of the
Church received its fullest development. Ninian, who had so long
studied the ecclesiastical system at its fountain-head, and who on
his homeward journey had visited Tours, and conversed with St.
Martin, then drawing near his end, was fully prepared to introduce
into his northern diocese the rule and manner of life which he had
seen carried out in the churches of Italy and Gaul. At Whitherne in
Galloway, where he fixed his see, he built a stone church, after
the Roman fashion, and lived in a house adjoining it, together with
his cathedral clergy, in strict observance of the ecclesiastical
canons. In this episcopal college the younger clerics followed their
ecclesiastical studies, whilst a school was likewise opened for the
children of the neighbourhood, as appears from the anecdote related
by St. Ælred of one little rebel who ran away to escape a flogging,
and was nearly drowned when attempting to put to sea in a coracle,
or wicker boat, which chanced to be without its usual covering of
hides.[38] The great school, as St. Ninian’s seminary is often
styled, was resorted to both by British and Irish scholars, and among
the works left written by the founder was a Book of Sentences, or
selections from the Fathers, which seems to have been intended for
the use of his students.

The death of Ninian took place at the time when the churches of
South Britain were suffering from the ravages of the Pelagian
heresy. Pelagius, himself a Briton by birth, had nowhere found more
ready recipients of his doctrines than among his own countrymen,
and the infection spread with such alarming rapidity that at the
solicitation of Palladius, deacon of the Church of Rome, Pope St.
Celestine commissioned the two Gallican bishops, St. Germanus of
Auxerre and St. Lupus of Troyes, to visit Britain in the quality of
Papal legates, and take the necessary steps for putting a stop to
the troubles caused by the heretics. Their first visit took place in
429, on which occasion they introduced many reforms of discipline.
One of the chief measures which they adopted in order to check the
progress of error was the foundation of schools of learning both
for clergy and laity. At Caerleon, then the British capital, they
themselves began the good work by lecturing on the Holy Scriptures
and the liberal arts. Their scholars appear to have done them credit,
for some, we read, became profound astronomers, able to observe the
course of the stars and to foretell prodigies (that is, to calculate
eclipses), whilst others wholly devoted themselves to the study of
the Scriptures.

Under these disciples a vast number of monastic schools soon sprang
up in various parts of Britain. Indeed so undoubted is the claim of
Germanus to be considered as the founder of the ancient British
colleges, that some imaginative writers have assigned to him the
origin of our two Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. His most
celebrated followers were Dubricius and Iltutus, the first of whom
established two great schools of sacred letters on the banks of the
Wye, one of which, situated at Hentland, was attended by a thousand
students. But this was surpassed by the monastery of Lantwit in
Glamorganshire, where St. Iltutus presided over a community of two
thousand four hundred members, including many scholars of note, such
as the historian Gildas, the bard Taliesin, and the famous prelates,
St. Sampson and St. Paul of Leon. Here, according to the Triads, the
praises of God never ceased, but one hundred monks were employed each
hour in chanting the divine office, which was kept up both by day and
night. Iltutus was also the founder, or restorer, of the school of
Bangor on the Dee, where had been a college of Christian philosophers
in the days of King Lucius, and where, according to Bede, there were
seven houses or colleges, each containing, at least, three hundred
students; and this, says William of Malmesbury, “we may well believe
by what we see; for so many half-ruined walls of churches, so many
windings of porticoes, and so great a heap of ruins you may scarce
see elsewhere.”

Another Bangor, the same that still retains the name which was
indeed common to all these foundations, owed its origin to Daniel,
the fellow disciple of St. Iltutus, who, we are assured, received
under his care all the most hopeful youths of West Britain. Paulinus,
one of his scholars, founded the college of the White House, in
Caermarthenshire, afterwards known as Whitland Abbey, or Alba Landa;
receiving among other pupils St. David, who began his studies at
Bangor under Iltutus. This celebrated man, whose name in our days is
often regarded as almost as legendary as that of his contemporary,
King Arthur, completed the extirpation of the Pelagian heresy, and by
his apostolic labours merited the title bestowed on him by British
historians of “the father of his country.” He was the founder of
no fewer than twelve monasteries, in all of which he contrived to
combine the hard work of the scholar and the equally hard labour of
the monk. Ploughing and grammar-learning succeeded each other by
turns. “Knowing,” says Capgrave, “that secure rest is the nourisher
of all vices, he subjected the shoulders of his monks to hard
wearisomeness.... They detested riches, and they had no cattle to
till their ground, but each one was instead of an ox to himself and
his brethren. When they had done their field-work, returning to
the cloisters of their monastery, they spent the rest of the day
till evening in reading and writing. And in the evening at the sound
of the bell, presently laying aside their work, and leaving even a
letter unfinished, they went to the church and remained there till
the stars appeared, and then all went together to table to eat, but
not to fulness. Their food was bread with roots or herbs, seasoned
with salt, and they quenched their thirst with milk mingled with
water. Supper being ended they persevered about three hours in
watching, prayer, and genuflections. After this they went to rest,
and at cock-crowing rose again, and abode in prayer till the dawn of
day. Their only clothing was the skins of beasts.” Yet these austere
cœnobites cultivated all the liberal arts, and the monastery of the
Rosy Valley, near Menevia, founded in the year 519, was no less a
school of polite learning than it was a nursery of saints.

To St. Dubricius, St. Daniel, and St. David, the three dioceses
of Llandaff, Bangor, and Menevia owe their origin; the fourth of
the ancient sees, that of St. Asaph, sprang out of a monastic
foundation which must be traced to a different source. It has
been already said that the mission of St. Germanus and St. Lupus
had been conferred on them by St. Celestine at the solicitation
of the deacon Palladius, who by some writers is said to have been
himself a Briton by birth. However that may be, his interest in the
affairs of our northern islands induced St. Celestine, in the year
430, to send him to Ireland, after having first consecrated him
bishop “over the Scots believing in Christ.” The Christian faith
had, in fact, already penetrated into Ireland, either from Gaul or
Britain, but the faithful were as yet few in number, and possessed
no regular hierarchy. Palladius at first met with such success,
that St. Prosper, in his book against Cassian, written about this
time, was able to say that St. Celestine, after preserving the
_Roman_ island Catholic, had made the _barbarous_ island Christian.
He baptized many persons, and erected three churches in which he
deposited the sacred books, some relics of SS. Peter and Paul,
and his own writing-tablets. But soon afterwards the hostility of
the native princes obliged him to withdraw from the country, in
order not to expose his followers to persecution. As his mission
was to the Scottish people, and not to any particular province or
kingdom, he crossed over to North Britain, where several colonies
of the Scots had already settled, and there pursued his apostolic
labours with more prosperous results. His subsequent history is
differently related by different authors. Some represent him as
surviving for many years, and firmly establishing the ecclesiastical
discipline of the North British Church. Others, with more appearance
of probability, represent his death as taking place very shortly
after his arrival in Scotland. It is certain, however, that regular
discipline was established by him among his clergy, and that
episcopal colleges were founded either by him or his immediate
successors, in which young children were received and trained for the
ecclesiastical state. Here the Scottish Christians of Hibernia would
naturally repair, before the establishment of similar seminaries had
begun in their own island, and among those who acquired the first
seeds of learning in the Bishop’s school was Cœlius Sedulius, whose
Irish name is said to have been Sheil. His history is obscure, but,
according to Trithemius, he passed over from Ireland into Britain
about the year 430, and afterwards perfected his studies in the best
schools of Gaul and Italy. Having embraced the ecclesiastical state,
he thenceforward devoted himself exclusively to sacred letters; but
his “Carmen Paschale,” a Latin poem on the life of our Lord, betrays
his familiarity with the poetry of Virgil. From another smaller poem
on the same subject are taken two of the hymns used by the Church on
the festivals of Christmas and the Epiphany.[39] St. Servanus, the
first bishop of Orkney, is represented by some as a disciple of St.
Palladius, but it is probable that he lived some years later. He was
the founder of the monastery of Culross, where he brought up many
youths from childhood, and educated them for the sacred ministry.
Among these was one named Kentigern, so beautiful in person, and so
innocent in manners, that his companions bestowed on him the title of
_Mungo_, or the dearly beloved, by which name he is still best known
in Scotland. When only twenty-five years of age the people demanded
him for their bishop; he was accordingly consecrated by an Irish
prelate, and chose for his residence a certain solitary place at the
mouth of the river Clyde, the site of the present city of Glasgow.
Here he erected a church and monastery, where he lived with his
clergy according to the apostolic rule, his diocese extending from
the Atlantic to the shores of the German Ocean; and over its vast
extent he constantly journeyed on foot, preaching and administering
baptism. The throne of the Scottish prince Rydderch the Liberal
having been seized by one of his rebellious nobles, St. Kentigern
was forced by the usurper to quit the country, and took refuge in
Wales, where, after visiting St. David at Menevia, he received from
one of the Welsh princes a grant of the tract of land lying between
the rivers Elwy and Clywd, where he erected the monastery and school
of Llan-Elwy. Local tradition affirms that the name of Clywd was
bestowed by him on the stream that bounded his domain, in memory
of his old home on the banks of the Clyde. Here he was joined by a
great number of followers, among whom he established regular monastic
discipline. His rule, however, had some peculiarities in it. He
divided his community into three companies, two of them, who were
unlearned, were employed in agriculture and the domestic offices,
the third, which was formed of the learned, devoted their time to
study and apostolic labours; and this last class numbered upwards of
three hundred. These again were divided into two choirs, one of whom
entered the church as the others left, so that the praises of God at
all hours resounded in their mouths. From this college a great number
of apostolic missionaries went forth, not only into different parts
of Britain, but also to Norway, Iceland, and the Orkney Islands St.
Kentigern himself continued to journey about, preaching the faith,
silencing the Pelagian heretics, and founding churches. On the
restoration of Rydderch, in 544, St. Kentigern was recalled to his
see, and left the government of his monastery and school at Llan-Elwy
to St. Asaph, his favourite scholar, whose name was afterwards
conferred upon the church and diocese.

One other British school must be named before passing on to the
nurseries of sacred science established in the sister isle, it is
that of Llancarvan, whose founder was indeed a British saint and
prince, but one who had received his early education in the seminary
of an Irish recluse. Few names in the ecclesiastical annals of
Britain are more illustrious than that of St. Cadoc; the son of a
prince of Brecknockshire, he was placed at the age of seven years
under the care of Tathai, an Irish teacher, who had been induced
to leave his mountain hermitage, and to take the government of the
monastic college of Gwent in Monmouthshire. There Cadoc spent twelve
years, studying the liberal arts and the Divine Scriptures. The times
were simple, and the habits of the Irish doctor, as he is called,
were somewhat austere. The young prince lighted his master’s fire
and cooked his frugal repast, whilst in the interval of such homely
duties he conned his Latin grammar, and construed Virgil. This sort
of school discipline, however, far from disgusting him with learning,
inspired him with such a passion for letters, that when his father
retired from the world to embrace an eremitical life, Cadoc would
not accept of the dignity of chief thus left vacant, but chose to
travel to various schools in Britain and Ireland, in order to perfect
his studies. At last he fixed on a rural solitude in Glamorganshire,
about three miles from the present town of Cowbridge, and there
laid the foundation of a church and monastery, which became one of
the most famous of all the British schools. It obtained the name of
Llancarvan, or the Church of the Stags, because, according to the
ancient legend, whilst it was in course of building, some stags from
the neighbouring forest, forgetting their natural wildness, came and
offered themselves to the service of the saint, suffering him to yoke
them to the cart which two weary or discontented monks had refused to
draw.

Gildas the Wise, the pupil of St. Iltutus, was invited by Cadoc to
deliver lectures in his college, which he did for the space of one
year, desiring no other stipend than the prayers of his scholars;
and during this time, says John of Tinmouth, he with his own hand
copied out a book of the Gospels long preserved in the monastery of
Llancarvan. At last the troubles caused by the advancing arms of “the
dragons of Germany,” as the Saxons were sometimes termed, obliged
Cadoc and Gildas to quit Llancarvan, and take refuge in some small
islands lying at the mouth of the Severn called the Holmes. Tradition
still points to the Steep Holmes as the place of their retreat; and
the wild peony and onion, which blossom there in profusion, but are
not to be found on any part of the neighbouring coast, are commonly
said to have sprung from those which grew in the garden of Gildas. He
did not, however, long remain there, but in company with Cadoc joined
some bands of British emigrant who had crossed over to Armorica. The
two saints chose for their residence a cave in the little island of
Ronech, where their fame attracted a crowd of disciples, who were
accustomed twice a day to pass over from the mainland in little boats
in order to enjoy their instruction. Cadoc was touched by their
perseverance, and at last employed his mechanical genius in the
contrivance of a bridge for their use, and did not refuse to deal
out to them the bread of science. He made them learn Virgil by heart
as well as the Scriptures; indeed his love for the old Mantuan was
so enthusiastic that he generally carried the Æneid under his arm,
and was accustomed to express his regrets to Gildas that one who on
earth had sung so sweetly should be for ever shut out from the joys
of heaven. St. Cadoc is said by some to have returned to Britain and
found a martyr’s crown at the hands of the pagan Saxons. According
to the Glastonbury historians, St. Gildas also returned to his own
country, and lies buried among the unnumbered saints of the isle of
Avalon.

We have now to turn to the shores of that island which, if termed
barbarous by St. Prosper from the circumstance of its never having
formed any portion of the Roman Empire, was soon to become the means
of enlightening many a land of more ancient civilisation. The history
of the mission of St. Patrick has found too many narrators to need
repetition in this place, and we shall only advert therefore to such
points as have a particular interest in connection with the Irish
schools. Whatever disputes have arisen as to the birthplace of St.
Patrick, there has never been any difference of opinion as to the
sources whence he derived his education. It seems certain that after
his return from his second captivity in Ireland he studied for four
years at Tours under St. Martin, whose nephew he is commonly said to
have been; after which, in the thirtieth year of his age--that is to
say, about the year 418--he placed himself under the direction of
St. Germanus of Auxerre, with whom he continued his studies. Hence
in the hymn attributed to Fiech it is said of him that “he read his
canons under Germanus.” The chronology of the next twelve years of
his life is exceedingly confused, but he is stated to have been
sent by Germanus to study in an island in the Mediterranean Sea,
_in mari Tyrrheno_, which was evidently Lerins. Nennius adds that
he also visited Rome, and spent nearly eight years there, “reading
and searching into the mysteries of God, and studying the books of
Holy Scripture.” The length of time spent by him in Rome appears
uncertain, but most writers agree on the point of his having visited
the city, and of his being _Romanis eruditus disciplinis_. Having
returned to Germanus, he is said to have accompanied him in his first
visit to Britain, and was afterwards sent back to Rome by that holy
prelate, who recommended him to Pope St. Celestine as a fit person to
be employed in the Irish mission. The endless differences to be found
in the various versions of his life do not affect the main facts here
established, namely, that he acquired his ecclesiastical training
in the first schools then existing in Christendom--those of Tours
Auxerre, Lerins, and Rome--and that his institution to the apostolic
office was received from the hands of the Vicar of Christ.

On his journey through Gaul we are told by Jocelin that he turned
out of his road in order to pay a farewell visit to “his nurse and
teacher,” St. Germanus, who furnished him with a welcome supply of
chalices, priestly vestments, and books. The same writer adds that he
was accompanied into Ireland by twenty Roman clerics, but it appears
probable that his companions were chiefly gathered in Gaul and
Britain, and Lanigan mercilessly reduces their number from twenty to
two. Passing over the circumstances of his first arrival on the Irish
coast, and his ineffectual efforts to convert his old master Milcho,
we next find the saint in the neighbourhood of Down Patrick, where he
instructed, baptized, and tonsured a young disciple named Mochoe, to
whom he also taught the Roman alphabet. This last-named incident is
one of very frequent recurrence in the life of St. Patrick. Nennius
indeed affirms that he wrote no less than 365 alphabets;[40] but,
as Bishop Lloyd quaintly remarks, “the writers of those times, when
they were upon the pin of multiplying, used generally to say that
things were as many as the days of the year.” It is quite certain,
however, that this teaching of the Roman alphabet, the first step
necessary for acquiring a knowledge of Latin, formed a very common
item in the instruction of the Irish converts. We are not to conclude
from this with the Bollandists, that previous to the arrival of St.
Patrick the Irish possessed no knowledge of written characters, but
it is at least clear that the apostle of Ireland considered it a part
of his office to diffuse among the people committed to his pastoral
care a knowledge of the letters, as well as of the faith of Rome.
He also received into his company a number of young disciples, who,
after being instructed in the faith, were gradually admitted to holy
orders, and given the care of the newly-formed congregation. Thus, on
his road to the great festival of Tara, which fills so conspicuous a
place in the history of the saint, he preached the faith to a certain
man whose young son Benan, or Benignus, fell at his feet weeping, and
desiring ever to be in his company; and the saint, with the consent
of his parents, received him as his disciple, or, as he is elsewhere
called, his _alumnus_. This event took place on Good Friday; on the
following Easter Sunday, when St. Patrick was invited to Tara to
hold a conference with the pagan priests in presence of the king,
the young neophyte, robed in white, carried the book of the gospels
before his master, who advanced with his clergy in solemn procession,
chanting an Irish hymn which he had composed for the occasion.

At another time a pious mother brought him her son Lananus, whom
St. Patrick delivered to St. Cassan to be instructed in all good
learning; and such was the ardour with which the boy applied himself
to study, that in fifteen days he had learned the entire Psalter.[41]
Again, Enda of Westmeath is represented entrusting his son Cormac to
the care of the saint, to be educated by him; and he himself, in his
confession, alludes to the sons of the kings who journeyed about with
him (_qui mecum ambulant_). For this first seminary was not fixed in
any college or monastery, but, as the above words imply, was formed
of those who accompanied the apostle of Ireland in his ceaseless
wanderings over the country. Popular accounts, indeed, generally
represent him as founding at least a hundred monasteries, and even
those who consider that the greater number of the Irish colleges
were raised by his followers after his death, admit the fact of his
having established an episcopal monastery and school at Armagh, where
he and his clergy carried out the same rule of life that he had seen
followed in the churches of Gaul. The government of this monastery
was committed in the first instance to Benignus, who afterwards
succeeded St. Patrick in the primacy.

The school, which formed a portion of the Cathedral establishment,
soon rose in importance. Gildas taught here for some years before
joining St. Cadoc at Llancarvan; and in process of time the number of
students, both native and foreign, so increased that the university,
as we may justly call it, was divided into three parts, one of which
was devoted entirely to students of the Anglo-Saxon race. Grants for
the support of the schools were made by the Irish kings in the eighth
century; and all through the troublous times of the ninth and tenth
centuries, when Ireland was overrun by the Danes, and so many of her
sanctuaries were given to the flames, the succession of divinity
professors at Armagh remained unbroken, and has been carefully traced
by Usher. We need not stop to determine how many other establishments
similar to those of Armagh were really founded in the lifetime of St.
Patrick. In any case the rapid extension of the monastic institute in
Ireland, and the extraordinary ardour with which the Irish cœnobites
applied themselves to the cultivation of letters remain undisputed
facts. “Within a century after the death of St. Patrick,” says Bishop
Nicholson, “the Irish seminaries had so increased that most parts
of Europe sent their children to be educated here, and drew thence
their bishops and teachers.” The whole country for miles round
Leighlin was denominated the “land of saints and scholars.” By the
ninth century Armagh could boast of 7000 students, and the schools
of Cashel, Dindaleathglass, and Lismore vied with it in renown. This
extraordinary multiplication of monastic seminaries and scholars may
be explained partly by the constant immigration of British refugees
who brought with them the learning and religious observances of their
native cloisters, and partly by that sacred and irresistible impulse
which animates a newly converted people to heroic acts of sacrifice.
In Ireland the infant church was not, as elsewhere, watered with
the blood of martyrs; it was, perhaps, the only European country
in which Christianity was firmly established without the faithful
having to pass through the crucible of persecution. And hence the
burning devotion which elsewhere swelled the white-robed army of
martyrs, but which here found no such vent, sent its thousands to
people the deserts and the rocky islands of the west, and filled the
newly raised cloisters of Ireland with a countless throng who gave
themselves to the slower martyrdom of penance and love. The bards,
who were to be found in great numbers among the early converts of
St. Patrick, had also a considerable share in directing the energies
of their countrymen to intellectual labour. They formed the learned
class, and on their conversion to Christianity were readily disposed
to devote themselves to the culture of sacred letters. At the Easter
festival at Tara, already alluded to, the first convert gained by
St. Patrick was Dubtach, the arch-priest and poet of the country.
His conversion took place in 433, and after that time he devoted his
talents to the service of the faith, and taught whatever science he
possessed to a school of Christian disciples.

It would be impossible, within the limits of a single chapter, to
notice even the names of all the Irish seats of learning, or of their
most celebrated teachers, every one of whom has his own legend in
which sacred and poetic beauties are to be found blended together.
One of the earliest monastic schools was that erected by Enda, prince
of Orgiel, in that western island called from the wild flowers which
even still cover its rocky soil, Aran-of-the-Flowers, a name it
afterwards exchanged for that of _Ara-na-naomh_, or Aran-of-the
Saints. There may yet be seen the rude stone church of the sixth
century within which rest the bodies of the 127 saints of Aran,
and at no great distance the remains of small beehive houses which
served as the abode of the monks. According to Lanigan, who is seldom
disposed to assign a very early date to the monastic establishments
of Ireland, the foundation of Enda cannot be fixed later than the
year 480. It became the nursery of some of the greatest Irish
teachers, and was also the resort of students from beyond the sea.
Hither came St. Carthag the elder, St. Kieran, and St. Brendan. Here
too St. Fursey spent many years in solitude before going forth to
found his monasteries in England and France, and here he at last
returned from his splendid cloisters of Lagne on the Marne to end his
days and be laid to rest in the rude sanctuary of the “Four beautiful
Saints.” Nor does the holy soil of Aran fail to cherish a remembrance
of St. Columba the Great. He came here before undertaking his mission
to North Britain, and his admiration for the Isle of Saints is
commemorated in verses wherein he declares that to sleep on the dust
of Aran and within the sound of her church-bells is as desirable as
to be laid to rest on the threshold of the Apostles.

A little later St. Finian founded his great school of Clonard,
whence, says Usher, issued forth a stream of saints and doctors,
like the Greek warriors from the wooden horse. Finian was baptized
and instructed by one of the immediate disciples of St. Patrick,
and after studying under various Irish masters he passed over into
Britain, and there formed an intimate friendship with St. David, St.
Gildas, and St. Cadoc. He remained for several years in Britain, and
on returning to his own country founded several religious houses,
in one of which he lectured on the Holy Scriptures for seven years.
At last, about the year 530, he fixed his residence in the desert
of Clonard in Westmeath, which had up to that time been the resort
of a huge wild boar. This desolate wilderness was soon peopled by
his disciples, who are said to have numbered 3000, of whom the
twelve most eminent are often termed the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.
Finian himself is commonly spoken of as the Master of Saints, and is
esteemed, next to St. Patrick, as the greatest doctor of the Irish
Church. “He was,” says the writer of his life, “replenished with all
science as a learned scribe to teach the law of God; and he was most
compassionate and charitable, weeping with those that wept and mildly
healing the bodies and souls of all who applied to him. He slept
on the bare ground with a stone under his head, and ate nothing but
bread and herbs,” and his disciples followed the same severe manner
of life. Among them none were more famous than St. Columba, St.
Kieran, and St. Brendan. The first of these is known to every English
reader as the founder of Iona; and Kieran, the carpenter’s son, as
he is called, is scarcely less renowned among his own countrymen.
Some anecdotes are told of the school life of these two great men,
in which the youthful infirmities[42] so frankly recorded of both
will certainly not prejudice our opinion of their future sanctity.
A school in those days was not exactly arranged after the fashion
of Eton or Rugby: the scholars worked for their own maintenance and
that of the house; and under monastic masters this initiation into
the holy law of labour was never spared even to those of princely
blood. The prince and the peasant were accustomed to work and study
side by side; and so it was in the school of Clonard. Columba was of
royal extraction, while Kieran was of humble birth. The first task
assigned the young prince was to sift the corn that was to serve
for next day’s provision, and to the surprise of his more plebeian
associates he accomplished it so neatly and with such rapidity
that they all declared he must have been helped by an angel. Royal
and noble scholars, however, are seldom popular in public schools,
and Columba had not a little to endure from his companions on the
score of his gentle blood. He exacted a deference from them which
Kieran in particular would not submit to, and the result was a
continual bickering. But at last, says the old legend, an angel
appeared to Kieran, and laying before him a carpenter’s rule and
other instruments of his trade, said to him, “Behold what thou hast
renounced in giving up the world, but Columba has forsaken a royal
sceptre.” The good heart of the carpenter’s son was touched with this
reproach, and from that time he and Columba only contended in the
generous rivalry of the saints.

Of St. Columba’s apostolic mission to North Britain we shall
presently have occasion to speak; but first we must trace the
fortunes of his schoolfellow, Kieran, who became the founder of
another of the most renowned schools of Ireland. Kieran’s future
sanctity had been detected by the quick eye of St. Finian before
he left Clonard. One day as he was studying St. Matthew’s Gospel,
having come upon the sentence, “All things that ye would that men
should do unto you, do ye to them also,” he closed the book, saying,
“This is enough for me.” One of his comrades, jesting with him,
observed, “Then we shall call you not Kieran, but _Leth-Matha_
(half-Matthew), for you have stopped in the middle of the Gospel.”
“No,” said Finian, who overheard the remark, “call him rather
_Leth-Nerion_ (half-Ireland), for one-half of this island shall be
his,”--a prophecy which was fulfilled when half the Irish monasteries
accepted his rule. After leaving Clonard, Kieran, having received his
master’s blessing and license, repaired to an island in the lake of
Erne, where he spent some time studying under St. Nennidius, another
of the Clonard scholars. At last he found his way to Aran, where
Enda, who was still living, received him joyfully, and employed him
during the intervals of study in threshing out the corn for the use
of the other monks. After remaining there seven years he founded two
great monasteries, one of which was situated on the west bank of the
Shannon, at a spot called Cluain-Mac-Nois,[43] or the Retreat of the
Sons of the Noble. This foundation took place about the year 548, and
thence the austere rule or law of Kieran spread into a vast number of
other religious houses.

It is indeed worthy of note that all the great masters of the Irish
schools were followers of the most severe monastic discipline.
The nurseries of science were often enough the rude cave, or
forest hut of some holy hermit, such as St. Fintan, the founder of
Cluain-Ednech, or the Ivy Cave, near Mount Bladin in Queen’s County;
whose disciples lived on herbs and roots, laboured in the fields,
and, like the monks of Menevia, renounced the assistance of cattle.
Yet Abbot Fintan was a polished scholar, and particularly noted for
his skill as a logician; and learned men came in crowds to the Ivy
Cave to perfect themselves in sacred science and the rules of a holy
life. One of Fintan’s most celebrated scholars was St. Comgall, who
in 559 became the founder of Benchor, near the bay of Carrickfergus.
The fame of this great school of learning and religion has been
celebrated by St. Bernard, who, in his “Life of St. Malachi,” speaks
of the swarm of saints who came forth from Benchor, and spread
themselves like an inundation into foreign lands. In the Latin hymn
of its old Antiphonary it is extolled as the ship beaten with the
waves, the house founded on the rock, the true vine transplanted
out of Egypt whose rule is at once holy and learned, _simplex simul
atque docta_. The most famous of its scholars was St. Columbanus, the
founder of Luxeuil in Burgundy and of Bobbio in Italy, whose rule
spread over most European countries, and promised at one time to
rival that of St. Benedict. The letters of Columbanus prove him to
have been “a man of three tongues,” to use the ordinary term applied
in old times to one who added to his Greek, Hebrew. His acquaintance
with the Latin poets is evident in his letter to Hunaldus, and his
familiarity with those of Greece in his poetical epistle to Fedolius.
And as he was fifty years of age before he left his native land,
it is certain that his learning must have been entirely gained in
her native seminaries. Another of the Benchor scholars was Molua,
or Luanus, as he is called by St. Bernard, who tells us that he
founded at least a hundred monasteries. The story of his first
introduction to St. Comgall has been often told, but is one of those
that can scarcely be told too often. He was keeping his flocks on the
mountain-side, when Comgall, attracted by his appearance, wrote out
the alphabet for him on a slate, and seeing his eagerness to learn,
took him to Benchor and placed him in the school. Luanus conceived
such a thirst for the waters of science that he prayed night and day
that he might become learned. The prudent abbot, while he admired
the zeal of his new scholar, was not without some anxiety lest his
craving after human learning might sully the purity of his soul. One
day he beheld the boy seated at the feet of an angel, who was showing
him his letters and encouraging him to study. Calling Luanus to him,
he said, “My child, thou hast asked a perilous gift from God; many,
out of undue love of knowledge, have made shipwreck of their souls.”
“My father,” replied Luanus, with the utmost humility, “if I learn
to know God I shall never offend Him, for those only offend Him who
know him not.” “Go, my son,” said the abbot, charmed with his reply,
“remain firm in the faith, and the true science shall conduct thee on
the road to heaven.”

Luanus was the founder of the monastery of Clonfert, in Leinster, and
the author of another religious rule highly prized by his countrymen.
The no less celebrated school of Clonfert, in Connaught, owed its
foundation to St. Brendan, the fellow-student of Kieran and Columba.
Having passed some years under the direction of St. Jarlath at Tuam,
and St. Finian at Clonard, and become as familiar with Greek as he
was with Latin, he is declared by his historians to have set sail on
a voyage in search of the Land of Promise, which lasted seven years.
In the course of these wanderings by sea he discovered a vast tract
of land lying far to the west of Ireland, where he beheld wonderful
birds, and trees of unknown foliage, which gave forth the perfumes of
such excellent spices, that the fragrance thereof still clung to the
garments of the travellers when they returned to their native shores.

But it is time to speak of the Irish monastic patriot, whose name
is known in our own time, as it was probably revered in his own,
beyond any of those that have hitherto been mentioned. It was in
the year 563 that St. Columba,[44] after founding the monasteries
of Doire-Calgaich and Dair-magh in his native land, and incurring
the enmity of one of the Irish kings, determined on crossing over
into Scotland in order to preach the faith to the Northern Picts.
Accompanied by twelve companions, he passed the Channel in a rude
wicker boat covered with skins, and landed at Port-na Currachan, on
a spot now marked by a heap of huge conical stones. Conall, king of
the Albanian Scots, granted him the island of I, Hi, or Ai, hitherto
occupied by the Druids, and there he erected the monastery which,
in time, became the mother of three hundred religious houses. If
Johnson felt his piety grow warmer amid the ruins of Iona, we surely
cannot be indifferent while contemplating the site of that missionary
college which educated so many of our early apostles, and diffused
the light of faith from Lindisfarne to the Hebrides. The life led by
its inmates was at once apostolic and contemplative. If at one time
the monks of Iona were to be met with travelling through the islands
and highlands of Scotland, preaching the faith and administering
baptism where no Christian missionaries had hitherto penetrated,
at others they were to be seen tilling the soil, teaching in their
schools, and transcribing manuscripts. In whatever labours they
engaged, Columba himself was the first to lead the way. “He suffered
no space of time,” says Adamnan, “no, not an hour, to pass in which
he was not employed either in prayer, or in reading, or writing, or
manual work. And so unwearied was his labour both by day and night,
that it seemed as if the weight of every particular work of his
seemed to exceed the power of man.” He penetrated into the Hebrides,
and twice revisited his native shores, but on his return from such
expeditions he loved to take part in the agricultural or scholastic
pursuits of his brethren. He would hear them read or himself read to
them, and overlook their work in the Scriptorium, where he required
the most scrupulous exactitude. He himself was a skilful penman, and
the magnificent Codex of Kells, still preserved in the library of
Trinity College, is known to have been written by his hand. Iona, or
I-Colum-kil, as it was called by the Irish, came to be looked on as
the chief seat of learning, not only in Britain, but in the whole
Western world. “Thither, as from a nest,” says Odonellus, playing on
the Latin name of the founder, “these sacred doves took their flight
to every quarter.” They studied the classics, the mechanical arts,
law, history, and physic. They improved the arts of husbandry and
horticulture, supplied the rude people whom they had undertaken to
civilise with ploughshares and other utensils of labour, and taught
them the use of the forge, in the mysteries of which every Irish monk
was instructed from his boyhood. They transferred to their new homes
all the learning of Armagh or Clonard. Of St. Munn, one of the pupils
of Columba, it is said that he spent eighteen years in uninterrupted
study, yet this devotion to intellectual pursuits was accompanied by
a singular simplicity and love of poverty. Wherever the apostles of
Iona appeared, they carried with them the reputation of frugality and
self-devotion. Thus Bede remarks on the extreme simplicity of life
observed by Bishop Colman and his disciples, how they were content
with the simple fare, “because it was the study of their teachers
to feed the soul rather than the body.” “And for that reason,” he
continues, “the religious habit was then held in great veneration,
and wherever any monk appeared, he was joyfully received as God’s
servant; and if men chanced to meet him on the way they ran to him
bowing, glad to be signed with his hand and blessed by his mouth. And
when a priest came to any village the inhabitants immediately flocked
to hear from him the Word of Life, for they went about on no other
account than to preach, baptize, visit the sick, and take care of
souls.”

In every college of Irish origin, by whomsoever they were founded
or on whatever soil they flourished, we thus see study blended with
the duties of the missionary and the cœnobite. They were religious
houses, no doubt, in which the celebration of the Church office was
often kept up without intermission by day and night; but they were
also seminaries of learning, wherein sacred and profane studies were
cultivated with equal success. Not only their own monasteries but
those of every European country were enriched with their manuscripts,
and the researches of modern bibliopolists are continually
disinterring from German or Italian libraries a Horace, or an Ovid,
or a Sacred Codex whose Irish gloss betrays the hand which traced
its delicate letters. The Hibernian scholars were remarkable for
combining acuteness of the reasoning powers with the gifts of the
musician and the poet. There were no more accurate mathematicians and
no keener logicians than the sons of Erin, whose love of syllogism
is spoken of in the ninth century by St. Benedict of Anian. They are
admitted to have been the precursors of the mediæval schoolmen, and
to have been the first to apply the subtleties of Greek philosophy
to Christian dogma. Their love of Greek was, perhaps, excessive,
for they evinced it by Hellenising their Latin, and occasionally
writing even their Latin missals in the Greek character. In the
disputes that arose on the subject of the Paschal computation, they
astonished their adversaries with their arithmetical science and
their linguistic erudition. St. Cummian, in the Paschal epistle
wherein he so ably defends the Roman system, examines all the various
cycles in use among the Jews, Greeks, Latins, and Egyptians; quotes
passages from Greek and Latin fathers, and manifestly proves how
well the libraries of Ireland were furnished, and how competent her
scholars were to use them. Nor whilst cultivating the exact sciences
did they abandon the muses. Both St. Columbia and St. Columbanus
enjoyed a reputation as poets. St. Ængus, the martyrologist, began
life as a professional bard, and did not lay aside his harp when he
assumed the cowl of the cœnobite; while Ruman, the son of Colman,
was called “the Virgil of Ireland,” and is described as an “adept in
chronology, history, and poetry.” Rhyme, if not invented in Ireland,
was at least adopted by her versifiers so generally, and at so early
a period, as sometimes to be designated “the art of the Irish;” and,
as Moore observes, the peculiar structure of their verse shows that
it belonged to a people of strong musical feeling. Hence they soon
became famous for their skill in psalmody, and were esteemed both at
home and abroad as first-rate choir-masters; and the legends of the
Irish saints are full of passages which describe the kind of ecstasy
produced in the minds of this people, so susceptible to the beautiful
in every form, by the melody of the ecclesiastical chant. We will
give one of these stories, because it introduces us to the founder of
the school of Lismore, the last of the great Irish seminaries which
we shall notice in this place. Though said to be of noble extraction,
Mochuda was employed by a chief in the humble capacity of swineherd.
One day as he tended his herd by the banks of the river Mang, he was
rapt out of himself by a sight and a sound of beauty altogether new
to him. It was the holy bishop St. Carthag the elder, accompanied by
a procession of his clergy, who as they went along made the hills
of Kerry re-echo to the Psalm-tones, ever ancient and ever new, of
the Gregorian chant. St. Augustine has confessed to their power over
his heart, and the poor Irish swineherd was not less enraptured by
their beauty than the African rhetorician had been. Drawn along, as
it were, by the charm of the melody, he left his herd in the fields
and followed the singers to their monastery. All night he remained
outside the gates, catching at intervals the distant sound of the
night office, till when morning dawned he was found there by his
master Moelthuili, who desired to know why he had not returned home
in the evening as was usual. “Because I was charmed with the holy
songs of the servants of God,” replied Mochuda, “and I desire nothing
else on earth than that I also may learn to sing those songs.”
Moelthuili, who loved the boy, made him large promises of favour if
he would remain in his service, but finding his words unheeded, he
at last took him to the bishop and begged him to receive the youth
among his disciples. St. Carthag bestowed his own name upon him, and
admitted him among his scholars, and in process of time the fame of
the pupil surpassed even that of his master. In 630 St. Carthag the
younger, as he is called, became the founder of Lismore, the fame of
whose schools extended into Italy.

“One-half of this holy city,” says an ancient writer, “is a sanctuary
into which no woman may enter; it is full of cells and monasteries,
and religious men resort thither from all parts of Ireland and
England.”[45] One of the most famous masters of Lismore was St.
Cathal or Cataldus, the patron saint of Tarentum in Italy, and his
numerous biographies in prose and verse never fail to commemorate the
glories of his Alma Mater.

Whatever exaggeration may have been committed by the national
annalists when they speak of the foreign students who resorted to
the Irish schools, it is impossible to doubt that they were eagerly
sought by nations of the most distant lands, who, in an age when
the rest of Europe was sunk in illiterate barbarism, found in the
cloisters of Armagh, Lismore, Clonard, and Clonmacnois, masters
of philosophy and sacred science whose learning had passed into a
proverb. Camden remarks how common a thing it is to read in the
lives of our English saints that they were sent to study in Ireland,
and the same expression occurs quite as frequently in the Gallican
histories. The prodigious Litany of the Saints, composed in the
eighth century by St. Ængus, includes the names not only of Britons,
Picts, and Saxons, but also of Gauls, Germans, Romans, and Egyptians,
all buried in Ireland. The tomb of the “Seven Romans” may still be
seen in the churchyard of St. Brecan in the Isle of Aran, and a
church at Meath was commonly known as the Greek Church, so called
from having been served by Greek ecclesiastics. Even in the eleventh
century the fame of the Irish schools was undiminished, and Sulgenus,
bishop of St. David’s, spent ten years studying under their best
masters.

Great as was the learning of the Irish scholars, it had in it a
certain character of its own. Their theology was deeply tinged with
a metaphysical spirit, and in their grammar, no less than their
poetry, they displayed a taste for the mystic and the obscure.
This is partly to be attributed to the influence of the Toulouse
academicians, with whom the Irish scholars eagerly fraternised. They
seem to have found something unspeakably attractive in the bizarre
language of the twelve Latinities and the novelties of the Toulouse
prosody. The strange jargon in which some of their professors were
accustomed to indulge occasionally steals into the Hibernian hymns
and antiphons; and the Anglo-Saxons who flocked in such multitudes to
the Irish seminaries, were not slow in catching the infection. They
soon learnt to disfigure their pages with a jumble of Greek, Latin,
and Anglo-Saxon syllables, and to expend their patience and ingenuity
over compositions in which the great achievement was to produce
fifteen consecutive words beginning with a P.

If Ireland gave hospitality in these remote ages to men of all
tongues and races, she in her turn sent forth her swarms of saints
who have left their traces in countless churches founded by them in
Gaul, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. The children of St. Columbanus
reformed the Austrasian clergy, and were the first apostles of
the Rhetian wildernesses. At Fiesole, in Tuscany, we find the
Irish St. Donatus, compelled by the people to accept the office of
bishop, and restoring, at one and the same time, sacred studies and
ecclesiastical discipline. The myrtle bowers of Ausonia, however,
did not make him forget his native land, for in some Latin verses
which Moore has thought worthy of translation, he dwells like a true
patriot on the praises of that remote western island, so rich in gems
and precious metals, where the fields flow with milk and honey, and
the lowing herds and golden harvests supply all the wants of man.
At Lucca the English traveller is still startled to find the relics
of his own Anglo-Saxon countrymen, St. Richard and St. Winibald,
preserved and venerated in a church dedicated to the Irish bishop,
St. Frigidian. And whilst the southern shores of Italy were welcoming
the coming of St. Cataldus, Iceland and the distant Orcades were
receiving missionaries of the same Celtic race.[46]

Hereafter we shall see the scholars of Ireland taking part in the
Carlovingian revival of learning, and making it their boast that
the two first universities of Europe, those of Paris and Pavia,
owed their foundation in no small degree to Hibernian professors.
But before that era dawned, they had found rivals, both in their
literary and apostolic labours, in the Anglo-Saxon race. The
“sea-dragons of Germany,” who had extinguished faith and civilisation
in the British provinces which they had overrun and conquered, had
received anew those precious gifts from the hands of a great pope,
whose instinctive genius led him to transfer to this remote corner
of the world the sciences which were fast dying out of the Italian
and Gallican schools. The story has been often told, but the course
of our history obliges us to tell it over again in the following
chapter.

_CHAPTER III._

THE ANGLO-SAXON SCHOOLS.

A.D. 590 TO 875.

The Donatist heresy was still raging in Africa; the Arians were
triumphant in Spain and Northern Italy; a miserable schism arising
out of the affair of the Three Chapters was vexing the Istrian
provinces; France was torn by intestine wars, and the imperial power
which nominally held rule in Italy was fast crumbling to pieces; the
almost civilised dominion of the Ostrogoths had been exchanged for
the wild barbarism of the half pagan, half Arian Lombards; floods,
plague, and famine were rapidly depopulating the southern peninsula,
when, in the year 590, St. Gregory the Great was placed in the chair
of St. Peter, and received into his hands the destinies of the
Western world.

“There are,” says the German philosopher, Frederic Schlegel,
“grand and pregnant epochs in the history of the world, in which
all existing relations assume a new and unexpected form. At such
junctures, God Himself seems, as it were, to interfere, and establish
a theocracy.” Such was the epoch of which we speak. All the power
of human government had come to nought, and while men’s hearts were
failing them for fear, the reins were falling into the hands of a
frail and feeble monk, worn out with sickness and austerity, and so
little conscious of possessing in himself the capacity of ruling,
that, when the unanimous voice of clergy and people raised him to the
pontifical dignity, he fled in terror to the woods, and was brought
back weeping, and giving vent to his anguish in accents almost of
despair. It will suffice very briefly to remind the reader what
kind of pontificate it was that was thus begun. During the fourteen
years that St. Gregory governed the Church, he achieved greatness
enough to furnish fame to a dozen autocrats. He defended Rome from
the Lombards, and the Lombards themselves from the treachery of the
Eastern emperors; he won them from Arianism, extirpated Donatism
from Africa, and put an end to the Istrian schism. Whilst providing
for the necessities of the Italian provinces, desolated by the
cruel calamities of the times, he firmly resisted the exactions of
the Byzantine court, and maintained the independence of the Church
against the Cæsars. From the effete civilisation of the corrupt East,
he turned to the new and semi-barbarous races of the West,--taught
the Frankish kings the duties of Christian sovereignty, and urged
their bishops to wage war against ecclesiastical abuses. His
prodigious correspondence carried his paternal care into the most
distant provinces. He condemned slavery, defended the peasants, and
protected even the Jews. And in the midst of these multifarious
labours, he found time to preach and write for future ages also.
Thirty-five books of “Morals,” thirteen volumes of Epistles, forty
Homilies on the gospels, twenty-two on the prophet Ezechiel, an
immortal treatise on the Pastoral care, four books of Dialogues, and
the reformation of the Sacramentary or ritual of the Church, are the
chief works left us by the Fourth Latin Doctor. Nevertheless, as
most readers must be aware, there exists a certain tradition which
represents this great pope as the enemy of learning, a tradition
elaborated out of the rebuke administered by him to Didier, Bishop
of Vienne, on occasion of that prelate having delivered lectures on
the profane poets, and the supposed fact of his having burnt the
Palatine Library, a fact which, however, remained without record
until six centuries had elapsed.[47] We need not pause to examine
charges which, however often refuted or explained, will always find
credence among a certain class of writers and readers, who cling
to a time-honoured _mumpsimus_. But it was necessary to recognise
the existence of this view of his character before presenting the
supposed destroyer of the Palatine Library as the undoubted founder
of a Palatine school. And first we will hear how his biographer,
John the Deacon, describes his manner of life. After naming several
of the ecclesiastics, whom he chose as his chief councillors, among
whom occur the names of Paul the Deacon, and our English apostles,
Augustine and Mellitus, he goes on to relate how, in company with
these, St. Gregory contrived to carry out monastical perfection
within the walls of his own palace. “Learned clerks and religious
monks,” he says, “lived there in common with their pontiff, so that
the same rule was exhibited in Rome in the time of St. Gregory as St.
Luke describes as existing in Jerusalem under the Apostles, and Philo
records as established by St. Mark at Alexandria.”

These clerks assisted St. Gregory in his learned labours. Some were
notaries, who wrote out his Homilies under his direction; and Paul
the Deacon is introduced as the interlocutor in his Dialogues. And
the historian goes on to tell us, that out of the canonical life
established in the pontifical palace, there sprang a school. “Then
did wisdom visibly fabricate to herself a temple,” he continues,
“supporting the porticoes of the apostolic see by the seven liberal
arts as by columns formed of the most precious stones. In the family
of the pontiff, no one from the least to the greatest, dared utter
a barbarous word; the purest Latinity, such as had been spoken in
the time of the best Roman writers, was alone permitted to find
another Latium in his palace. There, the study of all the liberal
arts once more flourished, and he who was conscious to himself
that he was wanting either in holiness or learning, dared not show
his face in presence of the pontiff.” He goes on to speak of the
number of learned men constantly to be found in the company of the
pope, who encouraged poor philosophy rather than rich idleness.
But he confesses that one thing was wanting: the “Cecropian muse”
was absent; in other words, there was no one skilful in the
interpretation of Greek.

In addition to this Palatine academy, if I should not rather say in
connection with it, St. Gregory founded a school destined to have a
more world-wide influence and more lasting fame. The extraordinary
diligence bestowed by the holy pontiff on the reformation of the
ecclesiastical chant gave rise in after times to a graceful legend,
which represented him as visited in his sleep by a tenth Muse,
who appeared to him with her mantle covered with the mystic notes
and neumas, and inspired him with that skill in science of sacred
melody, which he ever afterwards possessed. The legend, like most
legends, only embalms and beautifies a fact. The Church was the real
Muse who inspired her pontiff to give to her order of sacred chant
the same perfection he had already bestowed upon her Liturgy. Other
popes and prelates had laboured before him at the same work, and
indeed the very name of _Centon_, which is given to his Antiphonary,
shows that it was a compilation of those ancient melodies which
passed from the Temple to the Church, and which may be traced through
St. Mark at Alexandria, and through St. Ignatius at Antioch, up
to St. Peter himself.[48] In process of time the Eastern churches
introduced a more pompous and florid style, but in Africa, thanks to
the exertions of St. Athanasius, the ancient severity was preserved,
and made matter of reproach against the Catholics by the Donatist
heretics, who attributed it to the natural heaviness and stupidity
of the African character. Baronius observes that, according to the
most ancient monuments, the Roman Church appears to have taken the
middle course, between the extreme simplicity of the Africans and the
florid ornamentation of the Orientals, and thus united gravity with
sweetness.

St. Ambrose, who introduced the chant into Milan, permitted women
to join in the chanting of the Psalms, a custom which degenerated
in some churches into the establishment of female choirs; though
this abuse was prohibited by many popes and councils. Everywhere
the bishops encouraged the cultivation of the chant, and Fortunatus
describes St. Germanus of Paris presiding in the apse of the Golden
Church, and directing the singing of his two choirs. But, as St.
Augustine remarks in one of his letters, no uniformity existed among
the different churches, and both variations and corruptions were
introduced according to the genius of different nations. Hence, the
reformation of the Cantus, and the establishment of some uniform
standard based on the ancient models, had engaged the attention of
several popes before the time of St. Gregory, and particularly of
St. Gelasius and St. Damasus. St. Gregory completed their work: he
collected in his Centon, or Antiphonary, all the ancient fragments
still existing, corrected and arranged them with his own pen, and
added some original compositions, bearing the same character of
majestic simplicity with the venerable melodies on which they were
formed. And finally, to secure the permanence of these reforms, and
to extend the use of the ecclesiastical chant throughout the Church,
he founded a school which, three centuries later, still survived
and flourished. “After the manner of a wise Solomon,” says John
the Deacon, “being touched by the sweetness of music, he carefully
compiled his _Centon_ or Antiphonary of chants, and established a
school of those chants which had hitherto been sung in the Roman
Church, and built for this purpose two houses, one attached to the
Church of St. Peter the Apostle, and the other near the Lateran
Patriarchium, where, up to this day, are preserved, with becoming
veneration, the couch whereon he was accustomed to rest when singing,
and the rod with which he was wont to threaten the boys, together
with the authentic copy of his Antiphonary.”

The important place which the Roman school of chant occupied in the
history of Christian education will be seen in the following pages.
Its value in our own day can hardly be appreciated, for the training
of Christendom has long since ceased to be liturgical. But an era
was about to open on the world during which the human intellect was
no longer to receive its shape and colouring from the forms, however
beautiful, of pagan antiquity, but from that Christian Muse whom our
English poet has invoked. St. Gregory lived at a time when the old
empire, with its letters and civilisation, was fast passing away.
The little stone had struck the statue, and the iron, the clay, the
brass, the silver, and the gold, had been carried away by the wind,
and become as the chaff on the summer’s threshing-floor. He beheld
new races rising out of the dust of fallen empires. What now are
Homer and Horace to the grim Goth or savage Lombard who has spent his
life in beating to pieces with his battle-axe the fairest monuments
of Greece and Rome? To him no inspiration will flow from Castaly or
Parnassus.

The mossy fountains and the sylvan shades,
The dreams of Pindus and the Aonian maids
Delight no more,

and the name of Woden is far more venerable in his eyes than that
of Apollo. But there is _One_ Power that has caught him in its
golden nets and holds his soul a willing captive. When the waters of
baptism flowed over his brow he was brought face to face with that
mighty Mother from whose hands he was to receive the knowledge of
letters, and a far vaster education than the knowledge of letters
alone can ever give. Heart, will, imagination, and understanding,
all found their teacher in the Church of the Living God. Her sacred
offices appealed to his soul through a thousand avenues, by their
inspired ceremonial, their matchless poetry, their solemn melody,
and their pictured art. The following pages will sadly fail of their
main object if they do not succeed in conveying to the reader a
faint notion of that marvellous education which the Church supplied
to countless populations who, it may be, never learnt to read. Her
Liturgy became the class-book of the barbaric races: it was to them
all, and far more than all, that Homer or Ossian had been to the
children of a darker age. What wonder, then, that the study of its
musical language should be erected by them into a liberal art, and
that those who were receiving their civilisation from the Rome,
not of the Cæsars, but of the Popes, should welcome among them the
teachers of the Roman music with as great enthusiasm as ever Florence
in the fifteenth century, welcomed her professors of Greek?

The importance of St. Gregory’s foundation regarded from this point
of view will readily appear. It was in some sort the mother of
those grand liturgical schools which were afterwards to cover the
face of Europe, the erection of which in any country serves as an
epoch to mark the introduction or restoration of Christian letters.
Henceforth, for nine centuries at least, grammar and the Cantus, the
Latin tongue and the Roman music, were to take their places side
by side as the two indispensables of education. Up to this time
even the Christian learning had been coloured by a civilisation of
pagan growth; but a new era had now begun: the Holy Scriptures and
the Liturgy of the Church were to become to Christian Europe what
the profane poets had been to the ancient world--the fountains of
inspiration and the intellectual moulds wherein a new generation was
to be cast; and though scholars were far from abandoning Virgil,
yet for long ages the Muse of Solyma was to hold the mastery in the
schools.

This new era of letters may be said to commence with St. Gregory, for
the schools of Christian origin which existed before his time were
fast becoming extinct, and it was chiefly from the new foundation,
planted by him on English soil, that the torch of science was relit.
How truly was he termed the Great, this pontiff, prince, and tutor
of a barbarous world! Yet to conceive aright of his greatness we
must remember that his work was painfully wrought out in the midst of
continual bodily sufferings and mental troubles yet harder to bear.
He who may be said to have founded the temporal sovereignty of the
Roman Pontiffs had his throne in the midst of ruins. He delivered his
discourses on Ezechiel while the barbarous Lombards were marching
against his capital. He had to witness the Roman nobles dragged off
into slavery with ropes about their necks, to be sold like dogs in
the markets of Gaul. Then came the news that Monte Cassino was in
flames and its monks cast out as houseless wanderers. “Woe is me!” he
exclaims, “all Europe is in the hands of the barbarians. Cities are
cast down, villages in ruins, whole provinces depopulated; the land
has no longer men to cultivate it; and the idolaters pursue us even
to death.” Yet in this awful crisis his mind was bent on effecting
new conquests for the faith, and he was planning the conversion
of the Anglo-Saxons with the Lombards at his gates. Many writers
have not hesitated to ascribe the pertinacity with which he carried
out this, his favourite enterprise, to the profound sagacity of an
ecclesiastical politician, who foresaw that the loyal devotion of the
new converts to the Holy See would repair the losses inflicted by the
barbarians on the rest of Christendom. But it may safely be affirmed
that no mere natural acuteness could possibly have predicted anything
favourable from the dispositions which had hitherto been manifested
by the Anglo-Saxons. Ancient writers are unanimous in classing them
among the most savage of the northern tribes. They slaughtered their
captives taken in war, and drove a lucrative trade by the sale
of their countrymen, and even of their own children, to foreign
merchants. The courage which formed their solitary virtue too often
degenerated into a brutal ferocity, and their notions of a future
state were exceedingly faint. In Gaul they were regarded with terror
as barbarians of uncouth speech and aspect, and strange stories
were told of their reckless deeds of bloodshed and cruelty. Gregory
himself would probably have found it difficult to explain the hold
they had gained on his heart ever since he first beheld the blue-eyed
and golden-haired Angles in the market-place of Rome. But from that
moment the thought of them never left him; and though frustrated in
his purpose of himself becoming their apostle, he made it a labour of
love to provide for their conversion by other hands.

His first plan had been a sort of anticipation of the system since
so successfully carried out by the Roman Propaganda. He conceived
the idea of redeeming a certain number of the Anglo-Saxon youths
annually brought into the slave-markets of Gaul, educating them in
some monastery school, and then sending them back as missionaries to
their own country. We are not told why this scheme was abandoned, but
in 596 the English mission was at last opened, and a band of Roman
monks, headed by St. Augustine, the former prior of St. Gregory’s
monastery set out for the barbarous and unknown island. Never was any
mission more amply cared for. St. Gregory had poured out his whole
heart upon it; he multiplied letters to the bishops and Sovereigns of
Gaul to secure his monks hospitality on the road; his letters cheered
them on their way, and when the welcome tidings came that their work
had begun under prosperous auspices, he sent them a reinforcement of
labourers under the abbot Mellitus, bringing everything necessary for
the celebration of the Divine offices--sacred vessels, vestments,
church ornaments, holy relics, and “many books.”

A catalogue of the library which St. Augustine and his companions
brought with them into England is preserved at Trinity College,
Cambridge. It consisted of a Bible in two volumes, a Psalter and
a book of the Gospels, a Martyrology, the Apocryphal Lives of the
Apostles, and the Exposition of certain Epistles and Gospels. The
brief catalogue closes with these words: “These are the foundation
or beginning of the library of the whole English Church, A.D. 601.”
These were the books sent to us by a Pope to be the beginning of our
national library, and from them did St. Augustine and his companions
begin to teach the English.

The manner of life to be adopted by the missionaries was plainly laid
down by St. Gregory in his instructions to St. Augustine. “You, my
brother,” he writes, “who have been brought up under monastic rules,
are not to live apart from your clergy in the English Church; you
are to follow that course of life which our forefathers did in the
time of the primitive church, when none of them said that anything
he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.”[49]
The ancient canonical life was to be the rule of the new clergy, and
measures were at once taken for carrying this precept into effect.
A monastery dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul was speedily founded at
Canterbury. In after years it bore the title of St. Augustine’s, and
obtained rare privileges as the first-born of our religious houses,
being designated “the Roman Chapel in England.” The abbot took his
place in general councils next to the abbot of Monte Cassino, and the
monastery was recognised as under the immediate jurisdiction of the
Holy See. Here, then, at one and the same time, began the apostolic
and scholastic labours of the missionaries. It was not, indeed, until
some years later, that the school of Canterbury attained its full
celebrity under the abbot Adrian, but thirty years before his time
it had become the model of other seminaries founded in different
parts of England. When Sigebert, King of the East Angles, who had
been baptized and instructed in France, wished to set up a school for
youth to be instructed in literature, “after the good fashions he had
seen in that country,” he sent to Canterbury for his schoolmaster,
and obtained one in the person of Felix the Burgundian, who became
the apostle of the East of England. At this time the liberal sciences
are said to have been cultivated at Canterbury, and some writers
persuade themselves that the school of Bishop Felix was the germ of
Cambridge University.

Northumbria was meanwhile receiving the light of faith from the monks
of Iona, who, being invited into his kingdom by St. Oswald, in 635,
despatched thither the holy bishop Aidan. He chose for the site of
his cathedral monastery the island of Lindisfarne, which soon became
the ecclesiastical capital of the north of England. This celebrated
spot, which is an island only at high tide, and is connected with
the mainland when the sea retires by a firm neck of sand, doubtless
bears at the present day an aspect very different from that which it
presented when the monks raised their first cathedral of oak-planks
thatched with reed. The ruins of a far statelier pile may now
be seen, built of dark-red sandstone, to which time has given a
melancholy hue not out of character with the scene. But there are
some features which time itself can never quite efface; the bold
promontories of the coast visible to the north and south, the wide
expanse of that tossing sea so often ploughed by the keels of the
Vikings, and those ruddy golden sands, are unchanged since the days
when the brethren of Lindisfarne raised their eyes, weary with the
labours of the Scriptorium, to rest them on that beautiful line of
wooded coast, or on the sparkling waves beyond it. Their manner of
life differed in no degree from that of their brethren at Iona. “It
was very different,” says Bede, “from the slothfulness of our times,
for all who bore company with Aidan, whether monks or laymen, were
employed either in studying the Scriptures or in singing Psalms.
This was his own daily employment wherever he went and if it happened
that he was invited to eat with the king, he went with one or two
clerks, and having taken a small repast, he made haste to be gone
with them either to read or write.” All the money that came into his
hands he employed in relieving the poor or ransoming slaves, and many
of the latter he made his disciples, instructing them and advancing
them to the ecclesiastical state.

Whilst the north was being thus evangelised by the disciples of
St. Columba, the south also had received a foundation of Hibernian
origin. In the wilds of Wiltshire a school had arisen round the
cell of Maidulf, an Irish recluse, who had been tempted to settle
there by the sylvan beauty of the spot, which was then surrounded by
thick luxuriant woods. To procure the means of support he received
scholars from the neighbourhood who supplied his scanty wants and as
his pupils increased his school became famous; and the name of its
teacher is preserved in that of the modern town of Malmsbury. But it
is remarkable how very soon both the Scottish and Irish foundations
became _Romanised_.[50] One of the first scholars of Lindisfarne was
St. Wilfrid, who, not satisfied with the ecclesiastical discipline of
the Scottish monks, found his way to Canterbury, and there learnt
the whole Psalter over again, according to the Roman version, which
differed from that used in the Northern schools. He was joined by
another North Country scholar, St. Bennet Biscop, and the two set out
together on a pilgrimage to Rome.

The after history of these two saints was full of momentous results
to the Anglo-Saxon schools. At Rome Wilfrid studied the Scriptures,
the rules of ecclesiastical discipline, and the system of Paschal
computation under the Archdeacon Boniface, secretary to Pope Martin
I., and Scholasticus of the Lateran school. He returned to England to
found the Abbey of Ripon, into which he introduced the Benedictine
rule, and whither he invited Eddi, the chanter of Canterbury, to
come and teach his monks the Roman chant. Then he set himself to
reform the errors of the Northern churches, and thirty years after
the foundation of Lindisfarne, the Scottish discipline was, by his
vigorous exertions, exchanged for that of Rome. Biscop, meanwhile,
was not less busy. After his first visit to the Holy City, he
returned there a second time, and devoted himself not only to
ecclesiastical studies, but also to the acquisition of many useful
arts which he was resolved to plant in his native land. Next he went
to Lerins, where he received the habit of a monk, and spent two years
learning and practising the monastic rule; and then he returned a
third time to Rome, at the very moment when the death of Deusdedit,
sixth archbishop of Canterbury, had induced Pope Vitalian to nominate
as his successor the Greek scholar, Theodore. He was a native of
St. Paul’s city of Tarsus, and well skilled in all human and divine
literature. So says St. Bede, and so the Western bishops seem to
have thought, when they delayed drawing up their synodal letter to
the Third Council of Constantinople until “the philosopher Theodore”
should be able to take part in their deliberations. Vitalian had the
prosperity of the English mission scarcely less at heart than St.
Gregory, and discerned the full importance of providing the infant
Church with men who should be capable of laying a solid foundation
of sacred learning in her schools. With this view he sent together
with Theodore, the abbot Adrian, whom William of Malmsbury calls “a
fountain of letters, and a river of arts.” At the same time Benedict
Biscop received orders to join the company of the new archbishop and
to him was committed the direction of the monastery and school of
Canterbury. But Benedict had one purpose fixed in his heart; it was
to devote his life and extraordinary energies to the foundation of
a great seat of learning and religion in his own land, and to fit
himself thoroughly for the work before he began it. The weald of Kent
might have richer pastures, the sky of Italy a softer glow, but the
brown moors of Northumbria were ever present to his mind’s eye, and
it was there that he desired to spend and be spent for Christ. He
was not long before he found out that Adrian’s acquirements were far
beyond his own; so resigning the abbacy into his hands, from a master
he became a scholar, and spent two years more studying under him,
and acting as interpreter to him and to the archbishop. Theodore had
brought with him a large addition to the English library, and among
his books were a copy of Homer (which, in Archbishop Parker’s days,
was still preserved at Canterbury), the works of Josephus, and the
homilies of St. Chrysostom. Bede’s account of the new life infused
into the English schools by these two illustrious foreigners is
doubtless familiar to all readers. Yet it is too much to the purpose
to be omitted here. “Assisted by Adrian,” he says, “the archbishop
everywhere taught the right rule of life and the canonical custom of
celebrating Easter. And forasmuch as both of them were well read in
sacred and secular literature, they gathered a crowd of disciples,
and there daily flowed from them rivers of knowledge to water the
hearts of their hearers: and together with the books of Holy Writ,
they also taught the arts of ecclesiastical poetry, astronomy, and
arithmetic. So that there are still living to this day some of their
scholars who are as well versed in the Greek and Latin tongues as
in their own wherein they were born. Never were there happier times
since the English came to Britain, for their kings being brave men
and good Christians, were a terror to barbarous nations, and the
minds of all men were bent upon the joys of the heavenly kingdom of
which they had heard; and all who desired to be instructed in sacred
literature had masters at hand to teach them.”

Adrian had many good pupils, among whom was Albinus, who succeeded
him in the government of his abbey, and greatly assisted Bede in
collecting the materials of his history, and who was besides an
excellent Greek scholar; and St. John of Beverley, whom Oxford
historians fondly believe to have been the first master of liberal
arts in their university. For, according to some authorities, the
Oxford schools grew out of those founded at Cricklade, which place is
said to have derived its original name of “Greeklade” from the good
Greek which was there taught by Adrian’s disciples. Another student
drawn to Canterbury by the fame of its classical learning was St.
Aldhelm, one of Maidulf’s early pupils, who very soon resolved upon
migrating from Malmsbury to the archiepiscopal seminary. Ill-health
did not permit him to remain there long, but a letter from the young
collegian is preserved, addressed to his own diocesan, Hedda, Bishop
of Wessex, which gives very ample information as to the nature and
extent of the studies on which he was engaged. Some suspicion of
exaggeration may naturally attach to such general notices of the
English learning as that given by Bede, but the more minute account
of Aldhelm is open to no such objection. “I confess, most reverend
father,” he says, “that I had resolved, if circumstances had
permitted, to have spent the approaching Christmas in the company of
my relations, and to have enjoyed for some time the pleasure of your
society. But as I find it impossible to do so for various reasons,
I hope you will excuse my not waiting on you as I had intended. The
truth is that there is a necessity for spending a great deal of time
in this seat of learning, specially if one be inflamed with the
love of study, and desirous, as I am, of becoming acquainted with
all the secrets of the Roman jurisprudence. And I am engaged also
on another study still more tedious and perplexing.” Here he enters
at some length on the subject of Latin versification, and describes
the various classical metres, all of which were taught in Adrian’s
school; and in the intricacies of which the Anglo-Saxon scholars
singularly delighted to exercise their ingenuity. He then continues
in a tone of less satisfaction; “but what shall I say of arithmetic,
the long and intricate calculations of which are sufficient to
overwhelm the mind, and cast it into despair? For my own part all
the labours of my former studies are trifling in comparison with
this. So that I may say with St. Jerome on a like occasion, ‘before
I entered on that study I thought myself a master, but now I find I
was but a learner.’ However, by the blessing of God, and assiduous
reading, I have at length overcome the chief difficulties, and have
found out the method of calculating suppositions, which are called
the parts of a number. I believe it will be better to say nothing of
astronomy, the Zodiac and its twelve signs revolving in the heavens,
which require a long illustration, rather than to disgrace that noble
art by too short and imperfect an account, especially as there are
some parts of it--as astrology and the perplexing calculation of
horoscopes--which require a master’s hand to do them justice.”[51]

It must be borne in mind that at the time when Aldhelm wrote, every
problem in arithmetic had to be worked by means of the seven Roman
letters C. D. I. L. M. V. and X., and the decimal system was unknown.
Very often the student was compelled to abandon their use and
_write_ the numbers he was employed on in words. And in default of
more convenient numerals, recourse was had to what might be called
a duodecimal system, by which every number was divided into twelve
parts, the different combinations of which were named and computed
according to the divisions of the Roman money. And lastly, there was
the system of “indigitation,” wherein the ten fingers were made to
serve the purpose of a modern arithmeticon.

St. Aldhelm elsewhere enumerates the studies pursued in the school
of Canterbury as consisting of grammar, that is the Latin and
Greek tongues, geometry, arithmetic, music, mechanics, astronomy,
and astrology: he himself is also said to have studied the Hebrew
Scriptures in their original text, and his works both in prose and
poetry bear witness to his familiarity with the chief Latin poets,
such as Virgil, Juvenal, Lucan, and Persius, whom he frequently
quotes. He was the first Englishman who appeared before the world
in the character of an author; his chief poems being a Treatise
on the Eight Virtues, and one in praise of Virginity. His Latin
versification is of the most artificial structure; in one of his
poetical prefaces the initial letters of each line read downwards,
the terminal letters read upwards, and the last line read backwards,
all repeat the words of the first line read straightforwards; and
this he pleasantly denominates “a square poem.” I will give but one
couplet as a sample of the kind of brain-puzzles which afforded such
solace to the Anglo-Saxon students. The reader will observe that the
lines may be read equally well backwards or forwards, still forming
the same succession of letters:--

Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor
Sole medere pede, ede, perede melos.

All the writings of Aldhelm exhibit instances of the same misplaced
ingenuity, as well as that love of enigma which was general among
his countrymen. In spite of these faults, however, and of a certain
pompous and pedantic style which treats very ordinary subjects in
very big words, and is an anticipation by eleven centuries of the
Johnsonian dialect, it is impossible to deny that our first English
author was a man of genius and erudition. In his poems, which are
redundant with imagery, he gathers his similitudes now from the
household arts of the smith and the weaver, now from the natural
beauties of hill and field. You see that you are reading the thoughts
of one who does not owe everything to books, but who has observed and
reasoned for himself. Thus, desiring to show that perfection does not
consist in chastity alone, but in a combination of all the virtues
in their proper order, he compares it to “a web, not of one uniform
colour and texture, but woven with purple threads and many colours
into a variety of figures by the shuttles flying from side to side.”
Describing a well-stored memory, he compares it to the work of the
sagacious bees, “who, when the dewy dawn appears and the beams of the
limpid sun arise, pour the thick armies of their dancing swarms over
the open fields; and, now lying in the honied leaves of the marigold
or the purple tops of the heather, suck the nectar drop by drop, and
carry home their plunder on burdened thighs.” A copy of his treatise
on Virginity is preserved in the Lambeth library, in which a highly
finished illumination represents him seated in his chair surrounded
by a group of nuns. The book was in fact written for the use of the
Abbess Hildelitha and her religious daughters of Wimbourne; for the
Anglo-Saxon nuns very early vied with the monks in their application
to letters.

On leaving Canterbury Aldhelm returned to Malmsbury and soon raised
the reputation of the school. Pupils flocked to him even from France
and Scotland, for, says William of Malmsbury, “some admired the
sanctity of the man, and others the depth of his learning. He was as
simple in piety as he was multifarious in knowledge, having imbibed
the seven liberal arts so perfectly that he was wonderful in each,
and unrivalled in all.” One of his pupils was Ethilwald, afterwards
Bishop of Lindisfarne, to whom, as to his “most beloved son and
disciple,” he addressed a letter, preserved among his other works.
After warning him against the vain pleasures of the world, “such as
the custom of daily junketings, indulgence in immoderate feasting,
and continued riding and racing,” he admonishes him to be on his
guard against the love of money and silly parade, and exhorts him
rather to apply himself to the study of the Scriptures; and inasmuch
as the meaning of almost every part of them depends on the rules of
grammar, to perfect himself in that art, that so he may dive into
the signification of the text. Ethilwald was a devoted admirer of
the saint, and left some verses in praise of his illustrious master
whom he is too good a scholar to call by his barbarous Saxon name,
preferring to translate it into the more classic appellation of
_Cassis prisca_, or _old helmet_. Another of Aldhelm’s pupils and
correspondents was Eadfrid, who, after the fashion of the times,
passed over into the sister isle to profit by the learning of
the Irish schools. He remained there six years, and was heartily
congratulated by Aldhelm on his return from what he calls the “land
of fog.” “Nowadays,” says the scholar of Malmsbury, “the renown of
the Irish is so great that one daily sees them going or returning;
and crowds flock to their island to gather up the liberal arts and
physical sciences. But if the sky of Ireland has its stars, has not
that of England its sun in Theodore the philosopher, and its mild
moon in Adrian, gifted with an inexpressible urbanity?”

In 675 Malmsbury became an abbey, and Aldhelm was chosen its first
abbot. When the diocese of Wessex was divided into two parts he was
named Bishop of Sherburne, whence the episcopal see was afterwards
removed to Salisbury. A well-known anecdote represents him to us
instructing the rude peasantry of Malmsbury who would not stay to
listen to the Sunday sermon, by singing his verses to them, harp in
hand, after the fashion of a wandering gleeman. We read also of the
pains he took in forming a library in his abbey, and how, being on
a visit to Bretwald, Archbishop of Canterbury (an old companion and
former schoolfellow), he heard of the arrival at Dover of a foreign
ship, and at once hastened down to the coast to see if there were any
_books_ among its cargo. As he was walking on the seashore intently
examining the merchandise that was unlading, he espied a heap of
books, and among them a volume containing the entire Bible. This was
a treasure indeed, and a very rare one, for the books of Scripture
were generally written out separately, and had to be procured and
copied one by one. He determined at once to secure the Bible for his
library, and turning over the pages with a knowing air, began to
bargain with the owners and to beat them down somewhat in the price.
The sailors grumbled at this, and said he might undervalue his own
goods if he liked, but not those of others. At last they turned him
away with very abusive language, and, refusing all his offers, pulled
off with the Bible to their ship. But a terrible tempest arose, which
made them repent of their churlish conduct, and returning to the
shore they entreated the good bishop to pardon their rudeness and
accept the book as a gift, for it seems they considered that they had
only been saved from shipwreck by his prayers. Aldhelm, however, laid
down the half of their original demand, and returned with his prize
to his convent, where the book was still preserved in the time of
William of Malmsbury.

We must now return to St. Bennet Biscop, who, after completing his
studies at Canterbury, was planning a fourth expedition to Rome,
chiefly for the purpose of collecting books. His bibliographical tour
was crowned with complete success. He travelled along purchasing,
and also begging books in all directions, which when procured were
deposited in the keeping of trusty friends, from whom he gathered
them up again on his homeward journey. He returned to England laden
with his treasures, and obtained a grant of land from Egfrid, king
of Northumbria, for the erection of his long-contemplated monastery.
It was dedicated to St. Peter, and situated at the mouth of the
Wear--a spot, says William of Malmsbury, “which once glittered with
a multitude of towns built by the Romans,” and which in our own days
also is a busy scene of trade. Though the Roman towns had disappeared
in Biscop’s time, his monastery was far from standing in the midst
of a solitude. In fact, he sought, not shunned, the haunts of men,
for his main object was their instruction. He had no intention of
being merely “the man wise for himself;” his books and his learning
had been acquired to profit other souls besides his own. So he did
not choose a lonesome wilderness, or a marsh, or a desert island,
but a spot conveniently situated within reach of what, even in the
seventh century, was a tolerably busy port. “The broad and ample
river running into the sea,” says the old historian already quoted,
“received vessels borne by gentle gales on the calm bosom of its
haven;” and the parish of Monk-Wearmouth in the now smoky town of
Sunderland marks the ground occupied by St. Bennet’s first foundation.

It was commenced in the year 674, the monastery being at first only
built of wood, but the church was planned on a more magnificent
scale. Bennet, who thought nothing of a long journey in pursuit
of his cherished designs, crossed over to France to seek out good
masons, and brought them back with him to Wearmouth, where they
built him a very handsome church of hewn stone. The fame of this
noble structure spread far and wide, and Naitan, king of the Picts,
sent ambassadors imploring that the French masons might be sent to
build an exactly similar church in his dominions. As soon as the
walls of his church were up, Bennet sent over once more to France
for glass-makers, who glazed all the windows both of the church
and monastery. Bede tells us that these were the first artificers
in glass who had been seen in England. “It is an art,” he says,
“not to be despised, because of its use in furnishing lamps for the
cloisters and other kinds of vessels.” The church being now finished
and furnished, the books were stored up in the library, and four
years were spent by the abbot in collecting the spiritual stones of
his edifice. The result of his labours was so satisfactory that King
Egfrid desired to see another monastery of similar character founded
in his kingdom, and in 682 the saint obtained a second grant of land
at Jarrow-on-the-Tyne, about five miles from Wearmouth. “The spot has
no claim to beauty,” says a modern writer, “yet it is calculated to
produce an impression of solemn quiet. The church and crumbling walls
of the old monastery standing on a green hill sloping to the bay, the
long silvery expanse of water, the gentle ripple of the advancing
tide, the sea-birds perpetually hovering on the wing or dipping in
the wave, and the distant view of Shields harbour with its clouds of
smoke and forests of masts, form no ordinary combination.”[52] And we
may add that no ordinary feelings stir in the heart of the visitor
who sees in those grey crumbling walls, with their vestiges of Norman
and Saxon ornament, the remains of that monastic seminary which
nurtured the genius and the sanctity of the Venerable Bede. Here
arose the monastery of St. Paul’s; and if you look in the eastern
wall of the church you may still see the inscription, of unquestioned
antiquity, which preserves the memory of its dedication. It is cut on
a small tablet in good Roman letters, and tells you that the church
was dedicated on the eighth of the kalends of May, in the fifteenth
year of Egfrid the king, and during the abbacy of Ceolfrid.

This Ceolfrid deserves a few words to himself. He was originally a
monk of Ripon, where he became master of the school and the novices.
His pupils, who were mostly high-born youths, showed some disdain for
those menial employments that formed part of a monk’s daily life,
and which they associated with the idea of servitude; but Ceolfrid,
himself an earl’s son, overcame their repugnance by his own example.
He undertook the care of the bakehouse, and might daily be seen
cleaning the oven, bolting the meal, and baking the bread for the use
of the brethren. From labours such as these he passed to the school,
and there made his scholars understand that a man may make a very
good baker without losing his taste for the liberal arts. Ceolfrid’s
fame at last reached the ears of St. Bennet, who, it must be owned,
was covetous of learned monks and good books. So he begged him of the
abbot of Ripon, and, having obtained him, placed the new monastery
of Jarrow under his government. The two houses, however, continued
to be so closely united as to form but one community; they were like
one monastery, says Bede, built in two places. Ceolfrid held the
abbacy of St. Paul’s for seven years, during which time the dreadful
pestilence of 686 broke out, which swept away all the choir monks,
with the exception of the abbot himself and one little boy, with
whose aid he still contrived to chant the canonical hours, though
their voices were often enough choked with their tears. This little
boy could be no other than St. Bede himself, who had accompanied the
monks from Wearmouth to Jarrow, and was then seven years of age.

St. Bennet’s journeys were not yet over. As soon as the foundation
of Jarrow was completed he set out on a fifth expedition to Rome
accompanied by Ceolfrid, and this time brought back, not only
books and relics, but also pictures. These last he placed in his
two churches: at the west end of the Church of St. Peter he placed
pictures of our Lady and the twelve Apostles; on the south wall
were scenes from the Gospels, and on the north the visions of the
Apocalypse. The pictures placed in St. Paul’s were intended to
show the connection between the Old and New Testaments. There you
saw representations of Isaac bearing the wood of the sacrifice,
and of our Lord bearing His Cross: of the brazen serpent, and
the Crucifixion. “Those, therefore, who knew not how to read,”
says Bede, “entering these churches, found on all sides agreeable
and instructive objects, representing Christ and His saints, and
recalling to their memory the grace of His Incarnation and the
terrors of the last judgment.” But Bennet had brought from Rome
something even more precious than his pictures. It was not to be
supposed that in his solicitude to provide his monks with the best
instruction that books or teachers could afford he should overlook
the necessity of providing them with masters of the ecclesiastical
chant. The Roman chant had already been introduced into Northumbria
by James the Deacon, the fellow-labourer of St. Paulinus, who, says
Bede, was extraordinarily skilful in singing, and taught the same
to many, after the custom of the Romans. But he was now an old man,
and does not seem to have formed any disciples qualified to succeed
him in his office. Benedict therefore entreated Pope Agatho to allow
him to take back into England no less a personage than John the
Venerable, abbot of St. Martin’s, and arch-chanter of St. Peter’s,
that he might teach in his monastery the method of singing throughout
the year as it was practised in St. Peter’s Church. It argues much
the importance which was attached at Rome to Benedict’s foundations,
that his petition was granted. Abbot John received orders to set out
for the barbarous north, and, taking up his residence at Wearmouth,
he taught the chanters of that monastery the whole order and manner
of singing and reading aloud, and committed to writing all that was
requisite throughout the whole course of the year for the celebration
of festivals; “all which rules,” adds St. Bede, “are still observed
there, and have been copied by many other monasteries. And the said
John not only taught the brethren of that monastery, but such as had
skill in singing resorted from almost all the monasteries of the
same province to hear him, and many invited him to teach in other
places.”[53]

Such, then, was the provision made by St. Bennet for the instruction
of his monks and the establishment among them of a school of sacred
learning. And his enterprise was a grand success. His twin houses
became centres of human and divine science, as well as of regular
discipline. The life led within their walls has been made familiar
to us by the pen of Bede, who, with that simplicity which forms
the charm of his writing, describes it in all its homely features.
The men who were engaged in rearing, on the barbarous shores of
England, a seminary of learning which had not its equal north of
the Alps, might every day be seen taking part in the duties of the
farmyard and the kitchen. Abbot Easterwine, a former courtier of
King Egfrid’s, who was chosen to fill the place of abbot during the
absence of St. Bennet, delighted in winnowing the corn, giving milk
to the young calves, working at the mill or forge, and helping in the
bakehouse. It is thus that Bede describes him; but he dwells also on
the spiritual beauty of the abbot’s “transparent countenance,” his
musical voice and gentle temper, and tells us how, being seized with
his last illness, “coming out into the open air, and sitting down, he
called for his weeping brethren, and, after the manner of his tender
nature, gave them all the kiss of peace, and died at night as they
were singing lauds.”

As St. Bennet was still absent, the monks chose in his room the
deacon Sigfrid, who continued to share the government with Bennet
after his return. Both of them were afflicted with grievous infirmity
during the three last years of their lives, St. Bennet being almost
entirely paralysed, while Sigfrid was wasted with a slow consumption.
The last hours of the saint were in harmony with his life. His monks
read the Scriptures aloud to him during his sleepless nights, and he
often charged them to remember the two things that he most earnestly
recommended to his children, the preservation of regular discipline,
and the care of his books. When unable to leave his bed, and too weak
to recite the Divine Office, he caused some of the brethren to recite
it in his chamber, divided into two choirs, and joined with them as
well as he could. The two venerable abbots, who were both hourly
expecting death, had a great wish to meet once more in this life, and
to satisfy their desire, the monks carried Sigfrid on a litter to
St. Bennet’s cell, and laid them side by side, their heads resting
on the same pillow, that they might give each other a farewell kiss;
but so extreme was their weakness, that even this they were not able
to do without assistance. After their departure Ceolfrid continued
to govern both houses for twenty-eight years, during which time he
did much to advance the studies of the brethren, and sent several of
them to Rome to complete their education. He increased the library,
and caused three copies of the entire Bible to be written out, one
of which he sent as a present to the Pope, whilst the other two were
placed in the two churches, “to the end that all who wished to read
any passage in either Testament might at once find what they wanted.”
Naitan, king of the Picts, applied to him for church ornaments, as he
had applied to St. Bennet for masons. The abbot’s reply may be quoted
as giving some notion of his scholarship. “A certain worldly ruler,”
he wrote, “most truly said that the world would be happy if either
philosophers were kings, or kings philosophers. Now if a worldly man
could judge thus truly of the philosophy of this world, how much more
were it to be desired that the more powerful men are in this world
the more they would labour to be acquainted with the commandments
of God.” In this passage the Anglo-Saxon monk is quoting from the
Republic of Plato.

St. Bede, who has preserved these records of the Fathers of
Wearmouth and Jarrow, dwells with delight on the memory of the many
happy years he himself passed within those walls, and on the thought
that none of them had been spent in idleness. “All my life,” he
says, “I have spent in this monastery, giving my whole attention
to the study of the Holy Scriptures; and in the intervals between
the hours of regular discipline, and the duties of church psalmody,
I ever took delight in either learning, teaching, or writing.” It
was his love of study that made him decline the office of abbot,
“for that office demands thoughtfulness, and thoughtfulness brings
distraction of mind, which is an impediment to learning.” Though
invited to Rome by Pope Sergius, it appears certain that he never
left his own country, and that all he knew was derived from native
teachers, principally, as he tells us, from the abbots Bennet and
Ceolfrid. The science of music, indeed, in which he excelled, and on
which he wrote several treatises, he had studied under John of St.
Martin’s; Trumhere, a monk of Lestingham, was his master in divinity,
and his Greek scholarship was probably acquired from Archbishop
Theodore himself. But the varied character of Bede’s erudition must
be principally explained by his free use of Biscop’s noble libraries.
It was at the command of his abbot, and of St. John of Beverley, who
ordained him priest, that he began, at thirty years of age, to write
for the instruction of his countrymen. For his greater convenience a
little building was erected apart from the monastery, which Simeon
of Durham speaks of as yet standing in the twelfth century, “where,
free from all distraction, he could sit, meditate, read, write, or
dictate.” The original building must have been swept away at the time
of the destruction of the monastery by the Danes in 794, yet Leland
describes what he calls St. Bede’s oratory, as remaining, even in his
time.

His studies, however, were not suffered to interfere with his other
duties, for he was most exact in the minute observance of his rule,
and specially in the discharge of the choral office, though, as he
owns in a letter to Bishop Acca, these necessary demands on his time,
the _monasticæ servitutis retinacula_, as he calls them, proved no
small hindrance to his work. Yet he never sought exemption of any
kind, and least of all from attendance in choir. “If the angels did
not find me there among my brethren,” he would say, “would they not
say, Where is Bede? why comes he not to worship at the appointed time
with the others?”[54] It was thus he found the secret of keeping
alive the spirit of fervour in the midst of continued labour of the
head. Printed among his theological and philosophical works, is a
little manual, drawn up, as it would seem, for his own private use,
and consisting of a selection of favourite verses from the Psalms.
His disciple, Cuthbert, says of him. “I can declare with truth,
that never saw I with my eyes, or heard I with my ears, of any man
so indefatigable in giving thanks to God.” Besides the requirements
of his monastic rule, and his own private studies, Bede had other
duties which engaged a large portion of his time. He was both mass
priest and scholasticus. In the first capacity, he had to administer
the sacraments, visit the sick, and preach on Sundays and festivals;
in the second, to communicate to others the learning he had himself
acquired. Even before his ordination, the direction of the monastic
school was placed in his hands, and here he taught sacred and humane
letters to the 600 monks of Jarrow, as well as to the pupils who
flocked to him from all parts of England. The character of his
teaching is beautifully noticed in the breviary lessons for his
feast. “He was easily kindled and moved to compunction by study,
and whether reading or teaching, often wept abundantly. And after
study he always applied himself to prayer, well knowing that the
knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures is to be gained rather by the
grace of God than by our own efforts. He had many scholars, all of
whom he inspired with extraordinary love of learning; and what is
more, he infused into them the holy virtue of religion; he was most
affable to the good, but terrible to the proud and negligent; sweet
in countenance, with a musical voice, and an aspect at once cheerful
and grave.”

The writings of Bede bear witness to the extent of his learning. He
himself gives a list of forty-five works of which he was the author,
including, besides his homilies and commentaries on Holy Scripture,
treatises on grammar, astronomy, the logic of Aristotle, music,
geography, arithmetic, orthography, versification, the computum,
and natural philosophy. His Ecclesiastical History and Lives of the
Fathers must always be admired as models of unaffected simplicity
of style. He was well skilled in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew
tongues.[55] His Greek erudition is proved by the fact of his having
translated the life of St. Athanasius out of Greek into Latin, and
also by the Retractations, which, with characteristic candour, he
published in his old age, to correct some errors into which he had
fallen in his earlier commentaries on the Acts of the Apostles, and
which he became aware of after meeting with a Greek manuscript of
that portion of the Scriptures which varied from the Latin text. His
treatises on grammar and versification betray an acquaintance with
Latin literature which shows us that St. Bennet’s libraries must
have been well stored with classics.[56] In his scientific views,
he of course followed the generally received theories of the time
in which he lived; though in some points he corrected the errors
of former writers by the result of his own observations. “Bede’s
works,” observes Mr. Turner, “are evidence that the establishment
of the Teutonic nations on the ruins of the Roman Empire did not
_barbarise_ knowledge. He collected and taught more natural truths
than any Roman writer had yet accomplished; and his works display an
advance, not a retrogression, in science.” Thus, he taught that the
stars derived their light from the sun; that the true shape of the
earth was globular,[57] to which he attributes the irregularity of
our days and nights. He explains the ebb and flow of the tide, by the
attractive power of the moon, and points out the error of supposing
that all the waters of the ocean rise at the same moment, instancing
observations which he has taken himself on different parts of the
English coast in support of his statement. He shows that the sun is
eclipsed by the intervention of the moon, and the moon by that of the
earth. He also gives simple and intelligent explanations of various
natural phenomena, such as the rainbow, and the formation of rain
and hail. He had the good sense to condemn judicial astrology as
equally false and pernicious, and applied his scientific knowledge to
useful purposes, constructing tables to serve the place of a modern
ephemeris.

By far the greater part of his writings, however, consist of
commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, in which his design is less
to indulge in original speculation, than to resume the teaching of
the Fathers. After the fashion of the early writers, he reproduces
their metaphysical arguments, and even their words and imagery, his
love of science occasionally appearing in his selections. Thus, in
speaking of the Holy Trinity, he embodies in his text the beautiful
illustration repeated before him by St. John Chrysostom, and other
early Fathers, wherein the Three Divine Persons in one essence
are compared to the form, the light, and the heat of the sun. The
globular body of the sun, he says, never leaves the heavens, but its
light (which he compares to the person of the Son), and its heat
(to that of the Holy Ghost) descend to earth and diffuse themselves
everywhere, animating the mind and kindling the heart. Yet though
universally present, light never really quits the sun, for we behold
it there; and heat, too, is never separated from it; and the whole
is one sun, comprised within a circle, which has no end and no
beginning. He shows the same analogies in other forms of nature, as
in water, wherein we see the fountain, the flowing river, and the
lake--all different in form, yet one in substance, and inseparable
one from the other. In his treatise, _De Natura Rerum_, he not only
exhibits vast erudition but often expresses himself with a certain
unadorned eloquence. “Observe,” he says, “how all things are made
to suit and to govern one another. See how heaven and earth are
respectively adorned; heaven, by the sun, moon, and stars, and earth
by its beautiful flowers, its herbs, trees, and fruits. From these
men derive their food, their shining jewels, the various pictures so
pleasantly woven in their hangings, their variegated colours, the
sweet melody of strings and organs, the splendour of gold and silver,
and the pleasant streams of water which bring us ships and set in
motion our mills, together with the fragrant aroma of myrrh, and the
sweet form of the human countenance.” Bede’s love of music reveals
itself in a thousand passages. “Among all the sciences,” he says,
“this one is most commendable, pleasing, mirthful, and lovely. It
makes a man liberal, cheerful, courteous, and amiable. It rouses him
to battle, enables him to bear fatigue, comforts him under labour,
refreshes the disturbed mind, takes away headaches, and soothes the
desponding heart.”

There is one subject which engaged his attention that deserves a more
particular notice, I mean the labours he directed to the grammatical
formation of his native language, a work of vast importance,
which, in every country where the barbarous races had established
themselves, had to be undertaken by the monastic scholars. Rohrbacher
observes that St. Bede did much by his treatises on grammar and
orthography, to impress a character of regularity on the modern
languages which, in the eighth and ninth centuries, were beginning to
be formed out of the Latin and Germanic dialects. Much more was his
influence felt on the Anglo-Saxon dialect, in which he both preached
and wrote. A curious poetical fragment of the twelfth century,
discovered some years since in Worcester Cathedral, names him among
other saints “who taught our people in English,” and praises him in
particular, for having “wisely translated” for the instruction of
his flock. This is not mere tradition. Besides commenting on nearly
the whole Bible, Bede is known to have translated into English both
the Psalter and the four Gospels. But this involved a labour the
character and amount of which is not easily appreciated, unless we
bear in mind what the state of the vernacular tongue was at that
time. Before their conversion to Christianity the Anglo-Saxons
possessed no literature, that is to say, no _written_ compositions
of any kind, and their language had not therefore assumed a regular
grammatical form. In this they resembled most of the other barbarous
nations, of whom St. Irenæus observes,[58] that they held the faith
by tradition, “without the help of pen and ink;” meaning, as he
himself explains, that for want of letters they could have no use
of the Scriptures. The Anglo-Saxons were indeed acquainted with
the Runic letters; but there is every reason to believe that these
were exclusively used for monumental inscriptions or magic spells.
The Runic letters were indeed so closely associated in the mind of
the people with magical practices that the Christian missionaries
found it necessary to avoid their use,[59] and introduced the
letters commonly called Anglo-Saxon, which are, however, nothing
more than corruptions of the Roman alphabet. Although the Saxons had
no written literature, they had, however, a body of native poetry
consisting of songs and fragmentary narratives which, like the
poems of Homer or Ossian, were preserved solely in the memory of
the bards, who occasionally made additions or enlargements of the
story, as their genius prompted. Together with the change of religion
appeared a change in the character of the popular minstrelsy. Tales
from the Scriptures took the place of legends of pagan heroes, and
the Christian missionaries made use of these for the purpose of
instilling into their rude hearers some knowledge of the mysteries of
faith.

But the Saxon poetry, even in its Christianised form, does not
appear to have been _written down_ until the time of Alfred. Before
any steps could be taken to form a literature, the language itself
had to be laboriously reduced to grammatical rules. The Anglo-Saxon
language, as it exists in the literature of a later period, is of
extremely complex construction, far richer in grammatical inflexion
than our modern English. But in its barbarous state, as we read it in
the early fragments of the bardic poems, it was a barren combination
of verbs, nouns, and pronouns, and nouns freely used in an adjective
and verbal sense, and entirely destitute of all the smaller
particles. The change it underwent during the two centuries that
preceded the time of Alfred was the transformation of a barbarous
dialect into a finished grammatical language, and this change was
mainly effected by the labours of the monks. Nor is it mere matter of
conjecture that Bede had a considerable share in this great work. He
was probably the first who applied himself to it, and has himself let
us know the reasons which induced him to undertake the translation
of certain familiar forms of prayer into the native dialect. In 734,
Archbishop Egbert, who then presided over the school of York, having
invited him thither, Bede accepted the invitation, as he says, “for
the sake of reading,” the York library offering temptations not to be
resisted. He stayed there some months, teaching in the archbishop’s
school; and would have repeated his visit in the following year had
not his declining health rendered this impossible. To excuse the
failure of his promise, he addressed a long and interesting letter to
Egbert, in which, among other things, he suggests the appointment of
priests to the rural districts, who should be diligent in instructing
the peasantry, and who should teach them the Creed and the Our Father
in their own tongue, “which,” he adds, “I have myself translated into
English for the benefit of those priests who are not familiar with
the vernacular.”[60] But the translation of these prayers was a very
small part of his labours; he had, as we have already said, made
an Anglo-Saxon version of the Psalter and the Gospels, and on this
latter work he was engaged up to the day of his death. This we learn
from the beautiful letter written by his pupil Cuthbert to a fellow
reader and schoolfellow Cuthwin, which, often as it has been quoted,
we cannot here omit. After speaking of the way in which his beloved
master had spent the whole of his life, cheerful and joyful, and
giving thanks to God day and night; and how he daily read lessons to
his disciples even to within a fortnight of his death, he relates how
the saint admonished them to prepare for death, “and being learned in
our poetry,” quoted some things in the English tongue; how, according
to his custom, he often sung antiphons, specially that belonging to
the season of the Ascension which then drew nigh, beginning “O Rex
gloriæ.” “And when he came to those words ‘leave us not orphans,’ he
burst into tears and wept much, and we also wept with him. By turns
we read, and by turns we wept; nay, we wept continually while we
read.” ... During this time he laboured to compose two works well
worthy to be remembered, besides the lessons that we had of him, and
the singing of the Psalms; namely, he translated the Gospel of St.
John, as far as the words “But what are these among so many?” into
our own tongue for the benefit of the Church, and some collections
out of St. Isidore’s works; for he said, I will not have my scholars
read falsehoods after my death, or labour in that book without
profit.... When the Tuesday before the Ascension of our Lord came, he
passed all that day dictating cheerfully, for, he said, I know not
how long I shall last, or what time my Maker will take me. And yet to
us he seemed to know very well the time of his departure. And so he
spent the night; and when the morning appeared, that is, Wednesday,
he ordered us to write with all speed what he had begun, and this
done, we walked till the third hour with the relics of saints,
according to the custom of that day. There was one of us with him
who said to him, “Dear Master, there is still one chapter wanting,
will it fatigue you to be asked any more questions?” He answered,
“It is no trouble. Take your pen and mend it, and write quickly.”
He then took farewell of them all, and so continued cheerfully to
speak till about sunset, when the youth before mentioned said again,
“Beloved master, there is still one sentence unwritten.” “Then write
it quickly,” he replied. In a few moments the youth said, “Now it
is finished.” “You have spoken true,” said the dying saint. “It is
finished. Now, therefore, take my head into your hands, for it is a
great delight to sit opposite to that holy place where I have been
wont to pray, and there let me sit once more, and call upon my
Father.” So sitting thus on the floor of his cell, and repeating the
ejaculation “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy
Ghost,” he breathed his last, on May 26, 735.

The school of York was rising into celebrity just as Bede was
withdrawn from the scene of his useful labours. Egbert, who may be
considered as its founder, was himself a pupil of Bishop Eata’s, but
had completed his studies in Rome. He was brother to the reigning
King of Northumbria, and succeeded to the see of York at a time
when the affairs of the diocese had fallen into some disorder. One
of his great works was the collection of a body of canons, and
the publication of his famous Penitential, which furnished the
Anglo-Saxon Church with fixed laws of discipline, gathered from
the early fathers and canonists. While thus engaged, however, the
archbishop applied himself with no less fervour to the encouragement
of learning. He committed the mastership of the school he founded
to his relation Albert, but himself continued to overlook the
studies, and charged himself with the explanation of the Scriptures
of the New Testament, leaving to Albert the other departments of
literature. Under their united care the fame of the York seminary
soon extended beyond the shores of Britain, and it is said to have
embraced a larger course of instruction than was to be found at the
same period in any school either of Gaul or Spain. Alcuin, a pupil of
the academy over which he afterwards presided, enumerates among the
studies there pursued, the seven liberal arts, as well as chronology,
natural history, jurisprudence, and mathematics. Attached to the
school was a library, which, under the munificent care of Egbert,
became rich in all the works both of Christian and heathen antiquity.
Alcuin, who filled the office of librarian, has given a list of its
contents; he enumerates the works of SS. Jerome, Hilary, Ambrose,
Augustine, Athanasius, Gregory the Great, Leo, Basil, Fulgentius and
Chrysostom; of Orosius, Boethius, Pliny, Aristotle, and Cicero; of
the poets Virgil and Lucan, of Prosper, Lactantius, and many others,
together with the writings of Bede and Aldhelm, the two English
writers who had already acquired a literary fame. These books were
chiefly collected by Albert, whose custom it was to pass over to the
Continent on book-hunting expeditions, in which he was generally
accompanied by Alcuin.

The librarian of York afterwards composed a poem on the subject of
the saints and archbishops of that city, in which he celebrates
the virtues of the two illustrious prelates under whom he studied,
and the treasures of science stored up by their praiseworthy care.
Egbert, as he tells us, presided personally over the studies of the
younger clergy, for this was then reckoned one of the chief duties
of a bishop. As soon as he was at leisure in the morning he sent for
some of his young clerks, and, sitting on his couch, taught them in
succession till about noon, when he said mass in his private chapel.
After a frugal dinner he had them with him again, and entertained
himself by hearing them discuss literary questions in his presence.
Towards evening he recited Compline with them, and then, calling them
to him one by one, gave his blessing to each as they knelt at his
feet.

In the collection of canons already mentioned Egbert provided for the
religious instruction of the poor as well as the rich. The teaching
of the common people is one of the duties specially enjoined on the
clergy, every priest being required to “instil with great exactness
into the people committed to his charge the Creed and the Lord’s
Prayer, as well as the whole doctrine and practice of Christianity.”
In the absence of books this was done orally, much use being made of
instructions cast into a metrical form, and so committed to memory.
Thus the multitude, if ignorant of letters, were certainly not
uninstructed, as we see in the case of St. Cædmon whom Bede calls
_illiteratus_, that is, unable to read; but who was nevertheless
perfectly familiar with sacred history, which he had learnt by oral
instruction, and was thus able to sing of the creation, the Deluge,
the journeys of the Israelites, and the last judgment.

Albert, the master of the school, and the successor of Egbert in the
see of York, is described by Alcuin in one of his poems as “a pattern
of goodness, justice, and piety, teaching the Catholic faith in the
spirit of love, stern to the stubborn, but pitiful and gentle to the
good.” If he marked any youths among his pupils who showed peculiar
signs of promise, like a good master, he made them his friends. “He
observed the natural dispositions of each with wonderful skill, and,
drawing them to him, taught and lovingly cherished them. Some he
dexterously imbued with the grammatical art, whilst into the minds of
others he instilled the sweetness of rhetoric. These he endeavoured
to polish with the juridical grindstone, those he taught to cultivate
the songs of the muses, and to tread the hill of Parnassus with lyric
steps. To others, again, he made known the harmony of the heavens,
the motions of the sun and moon, the five zones, the seven wandering
stars; the laws of the heavenly bodies, their rising and setting;
the aerial movements of the sea, and the quaking of the earth; the
nature of man, cattle, birds, and wild beasts; the diversities of
numbers and varieties of figures.” He taught also how to calculate
the return of the Paschal solemnity, and above all expounded the
mysteries of the Sacred Scriptures. He often travelled into Gaul
and Italy in quest of books and new methods of instruction. The
noblest families of Northumbria placed their sons under his care,
not only those who were training for the ecclesiastical state, but
those intended for the world. Indeed it is certain that the pupils
of the episcopal and monastic schools were by no means exclusively
ecclesiastics. Eddi tells us that St. Wilfrid received many youths
to educate, who on reaching man’s estate, if they chose to embrace
a secular life, were presented _in armour_ to the king. Alfred,
the son of king Egfrid of Northumbria, was himself a pupil of St.
Wilfrid, and spent some years in Ireland that he might pursue his
studies with greater advantage. He became a great patron of learning,
and corresponded with St. Aldhelm on philosophical subjects and the
difficulties of Latin prosody; and it was to his son Ceolwulf that
St. Bede addressed the dedication of his Ecclesiastical History.

On the death of Egbert in 766 the unanimous voice of the people
called Albert to the vacant see. He showed himself worthy of their
choice, “feeding his flock with the food of the Divine Word, and
guarding the lambs of Christ from the wolf.” He governed the Church
of York for thirteen years, during which time he never abandoned his
care of the school. The mastership, however, devolved on Alcuin,
and such was the fame of his scholarship as to draw students not
only from all parts of England and Ireland, but also from France and
Germany. Among the latter was St. Luidger, a native of Friesland,
afterwards known as the Apostle of Saxony, of whom we shall have more
to say in the following chapter.

The extent and character of Alcuin’s learning will be more properly
studied when we come to speak of his labours at the court of
Charlemagne; it will be sufficient here to notice the fact that
he was a scholar of exclusively English growth, and drew all the
materials with which he worked in his after career from the library
and the schools of York. In his writings he often alludes to the
want he feels of “those invaluable books of scholastic erudition”
which were there placed at his command, through the affectionate
industry of his master, Albert, who continued, after his elevation
to the episcopate, to add to the treasures already collected. Two
years before his death Albert resolved on resigning his pastoral
charge that he might spend his last days as a simple monk, and devote
himself exclusively to the affairs of his salvation. Calling to him,
therefore, his two favourite pupils, Eanbald and Alcuin, he committed
to the first the care of his diocese, and to the other that of his
books, “the dearest of all his treasures.”[61] Alcuin was despatched
to Rome to obtain the sanction of the Holy See for the appointment
of Eanbald and it was at Parma on his homeward journey that the
solicitations of Charlemagne won his promise to settle at the court
of that monarch, and transfer to a foreign soil the learning he had
acquired on the shores of Saxon England.

With the death of Albert the prosperity of the Early English
schools may be said to have closed. Five years later the Danish
keels appeared for the first time off the Northumbrian coast: it
seemed only a passing alarm, but in 793 another armament effected
a landing at Lindisfarne, and after slaughtering the monks, gave
to the flames the most venerable of the English sanctuaries. This
was but the beginning of sorrows. The following year the twin
monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow shared a similar fate, and all
the treasures of art and literature collected by St. Biscop were
ruthlessly destroyed. For seventy years these scenes of carnage and
plunder went on without interruption in every part of England, and
the riches laid up in the churches everywhere pointed them out as
the first objects of attack. The finishing-blow came in 867, when
“a great heathen army,” as they are called by the Saxon chronicler,
having wintered in East Anglia, and there supplied themselves with
horses, marched northwards and made themselves masters of the city
of York. Thence they overran the kingdom of Northumbria, carrying
fire and sword wherever they appeared, till the whole country
between the Ouse and the Tyne presented only the smoking ruins of
what had once been cities and abbeys. Beverley, Ripon, Whitby, and
Lastingham, all seats of learning and civilisation, were swept away,
and in 875 the sea-king Halden crossed the Tyne and destroyed the
last remains of the monastic institute in Northumbria. After burning
Jarrow for the second time, he directed his course to Lindisfarne,
where the episcopal see was still fixed, and where a new monastery
had sprung up on the ruins of that formerly destroyed by the Danes.
Eardulf was then bishop, and on learning the approach of the pagans
he determined to save the holy relics of St. Cuthbert by a timely
flight. Calling his monks around him, therefore, he communicated
to them his resolve, and having disinterred the body of the saint,
together with those of St. Oswald and St. Aidan, they prepared to bid
farewell to the holy island, whence the light of Christianity had
shone forth over all the north of England for two hundred and forty
years. This closing scene in the history of northern monasticism
exhibits to us the monks of Lindisfarne in the hour of their sorest
trial, surrounded by their school. There were in the monastery,
says Simeon of Durham, a certain number of youths, brought up there
from their infancy, who had been taught by the monks and trained
in the singing of the Divine Office. These boys entreated Eardulf
to suffer them to follow him. They set out, therefore, monks and
children together, carrying the bier with the holy relics, their
sacred vessels, the Holy Book of the Gospels, and their other
books, and commenced that melancholy journey which, after seven
years of wandering, was to bring them at last to the “grassy plain,
on every side thickly wooded, but not easy to be made habitable,”
where afterwards grew up, on the site of their wattled oratory, the
princely city of Durham.

By these and similar calamities, extending not over one district,
but over every part of the country, England was plunged back into
the barbarism out of which she was but just emerging: her seats of
learning were all swept away, and during the century that elapsed
from the first landing of the Danes to the accession of Alfred, a
night of gloomy darkness settled over the land.

_CHAPTER IV._

ST. BONIFACE AND HIS COMPANIONS.

A.D. 686 TO 755.

The prominent importance attaching to the schools of Kent and
Northumbria must not lead us to regard them as the only learned
foundations existing in England during the early period of which we
have hitherto been speaking. The spread of the monastic institute
among the Anglo-Saxons was so rapid and so universal, that we
are sometimes led to wonder how a country so thinly populated as
England must have been in the seventh century, could have furnished
those crowds of religious men and women who hastened to people her
newly-erected cloisters. And wherever those cloisters were reared a
knowledge of letters and the civilised arts was soon introduced, and
pursued with as much ardour at Selsey as at Lindisfarne, among the
nuns of St. Mildred or St. Hildelitha as among the brethren of Jarrow.

If the bold and mountainous scenery of Northumbria has become
indelibly associated in our mind with the lives of those saintly
scholars who have been made known to us by the pen of Bede, far
away at the other extremity of England there is a province which
still claims as its patron saint one whose learning was as great as
theirs, and whose action on the Church was even yet more important.
St Boniface, or Winfrid, as he was called before he entered on his
apostolic labours, was born in the same year that witnessed the
entrance of Bede into the monastery of Jarrow. They were therefore
contemporaries, though widely different in character, as in the
career which awaited them. The simple-hearted scholar whose holy
happy life flowed calmly on from childhood to old age within his
convent walls, like some quiet stream that never overpasses its
verdant banks, is a contrast indeed to the great apostle who, after
having evangelised half Europe, and ruled the churches of France
and Germany, as Vicar of the Vicar of Christ, with a spiritual sway
larger than any ever exercised save by the successors of St. Peter,
died, as was fitting, a martyr’s death, saluting with his parting
words the joy and glory of that “long-expected day.”[62] Yet both in
different ways exhibit to us the noblest features of the Anglo-Saxon
race, whose simple piety and strong good sense are as apparent in
Bede, as the ardour of its active charity is in Boniface.

He was a native then, not of the bleak and hardy north, but of the
softer climate of that southern province,

Where the salt sea innocuously breaks,
And the sea-breeze as innocently plays
On Devon’s leafy shores.

It took its name from the deep hollows where the apple-blossoms
clustered as thickly then as now, and the clematis wove its tangled
wreaths in as wild profusion over bank and wood. Still covered
with those grand primeval forests which made perpetual shadow in
its pathless valleys, and, fearless of the billows that lost their
fierceness as they broke upon that gentle shore, clothed even the
purple rocks themselves with verdure, and bent their branches
into the briny waves, it merited to receive from St. Aldhelm the
title of _dire Dumnonia_. Perhaps he could not resist the tempting
alliteration, or perhaps the wooded hollows of Devonshire oppressed
with their leafy gloom the senses of the traveller who, as he tells
us, had just passed over the barren hills of “Cornwall, void of
flowery turf.” It formed the border-land of English Saxony, and
touched on that unfriendly territory still inhabited by the Britons,
who saw in the newly converted Saxons only a race of giants and
savages, with whom they refused to hold any intercourse.

The Dumnonians, however, from the first era of their conversion,
showed the same readiness to welcome the establishment among them
of monks and schools as was elsewhere exhibited, and the city of
Exeter is said to have received the name of Monkton from the number
of religious which it contained. It was probably some of the Exeter
monks who, in the course of a journey which they had undertaken for
the purpose of preaching to the inhabitants of the wild Western
districts, were hospitably received and entertained at Crediton by
the father of Winfrid. The passing visit left an indelible impression
on the boy’s heart, and he grew up with the fixed desire of becoming
a monk and a scholar. His father did what he could to turn him from
his purpose, but finding himself forced at last to yield to his
son’s entreaties, he committed him to the care of Wulphard, abbot of
Exeter. Winfrid was at that time thirteen years of age. His education
had not been neglected in his father’s house, and he now threw
himself into his studies with an ardour which made it evident that
he deserved some higher kind of teaching than the monks of Exeter
could supply. The school of Nutscell, in Hampshire, a monastery
afterwards destroyed by the Danes, possessed as high a reputation as
any in Wessex, so thither Winfrid was transferred, and placed under
the direction of the learned abbot Winbert. In this monastery Winfrid
was able to satisfy his thirst for grammar, poetry, and the sacred
sciences, and at last, being appointed to the care of the school, he
drew students to hear him from all the southern provinces. In short,
the scholasticus of Nutscell became a famous man; he taught not
only the monks but even the nuns of that part of the world to study
grammar and write hexameter verse; he attended royal councils and
episcopal synods, and he even appeared in the character of an author,
and composed a treatise on the Eight Parts of Speech. “Yet, though
indued with such excellent knowledge,” says his biographer, “he was
nothing puffed up in mind, nor did he despise any who were of meaner
abilities, but the more his learning increased so much also did he
increase in virtue, only showing himself the more humble, devout,
pitiful and obedient.” Both King Ina, of Wessex, and Archbishop
Bretwald, of Canterbury, knew his worth, and desired nothing better
than to raise him to the highest dignities; but neither the charms
of a studious life in his own cloister, nor the certain prospect of
court preferment, sufficed to satisfy his ambition. He had within him
in its fullest measure the apostolic fervour which animated so many
of his countrymen, and led them to carry back to the old Germanic
soil from whence they sprang the new faith which they had learnt in
Britain. Year after year there came the news of English missionaries
who had passed over into that huge province which then extended
between the Elbe and the Rhine, the greater part of which was
swallowed up in the inundation of 1287, and now forms the bed of the
Zuyder Zee. It was called Friesland, and was the chief seat of the
English missions. The first man who gave a certain sort of shape and
system to these missions was an English priest named Egbert, who had
been educated at Lindisfarne by Bishop Colman, and afterwards passed
over to Ireland to improve himself in her schools. The Anglo-Saxon
scholars were accustomed at this time to resort in great numbers to
the sister isle, going about from one master’s cell to another, to
gather from each the science for which he was most renowned. The
Irish received them hospitably, and furnished them with food, books,
and teaching, gratis.

Egbert and his friend Edilhun were studying in the monastery of
Rathmelsigi, in Connaught, when the great pestilence of 664 broke
out, which caused such terrible ravages both in England and Ireland.
It was on this occasion that St. Ultan, bishop of Ardbraccan,
collected all the children who were left orphans, and had them
brought up in a hospital or asylum at his own charge. The two English
students were attacked by the plague, and Egbert, believing his
last hour was at hand, went out in the morning, and sitting alone
in a solitary place thought over his past life, and being full of
compunction at the thought of his sins, watered his face with his
tears, praying to God that he might yet have time granted him to
do penance. He also made a vow that should it please God to spare
his life, he would never return to his native land, but live abroad
as a stranger; and that besides the Divine Office of the Church he
would every day recite the entire Psalter, and every week pass one
whole day and night fasting. Edilhun died the next night, gently
reproaching his friend for having thus prevented their entering into
everlasting life together; and Egbert kept his vow and remained in
Ireland, doing good service as well to the Scots and Picts as to
his countrymen, for it was through his influence that the former
at last conformed to the Roman method of observing Easter, and his
school was resorted to by every Anglo-Saxon student who crossed
the sea in search of Divine wisdom. In his heart, however, Egbert
nursed a great design, which he was never suffered to carry out in
person. He desired to carry the Gospel among the races of Germany
whence the English were originally descended, and Wicbert, one of
his companions, being filled with the like desire, did actually
proceed to Frisia, and there preached for two whole years among the
heathen, but without much fruit. Egbert, understanding that it was
not the will of God that he should himself embrace a missionary life,
and being warned that his vocation lay rather among his own people,
cherished the hope of at least inspiring some of his scholars with
the apostolic spirit. Among these was Wilibrord, who, after receiving
his early education among the monks of Ripon, had passed over into
Ireland in his twentieth year, attracted by the excellent science
which then flourished in her schools, and the fame of his learned
countryman. It appears probable that the two Ewalds, martyred in
Friesland in 695, were likewise pupils or friends of Egbert’s, for
Bede tells us that they were living strangers in Ireland for the sake
of the eternal kingdom; that both were pious, but that Black Ewald
was the more learned of the two. Wilibrord departed for Friesland in
696, accompanied by twelve fellow-missionaries; and the protection
of Pepin, who then ruled the Franks as mayor of the palace to the
Merovingian monarch, enabled him to pursue his apostolic career in
spite of the opposition of Radbod, the Pagan duke of the country.
It would be pleasant, did space permit it, to say something of his
labours;--to relate how he found his way into Denmark and brought
away thirty young Danes, whom he sent to be instructed in the schools
which he had founded at Treves and Utrecht; how on his voyage back
to Friesland he landed at Heligoland, the holy island of the Saxons,
but which then bore the name of Fosetesland, from the hideous idol
to whose worship it was dedicated. It was a wild, mysterious spot.
No animals that had once grazed on its sacred herbage were suffered
to be molested, and near the altar of the god a clear stream bubbled
up of which the natives never drank save in awful silence, for the
utterance of a single word would, as they believed, bring down on
them the vengeance of the dreaded Fosete. Wilibrord caused some of
the cattle to be killed for food, and baptized three converts in
the fountain, over the waters of which he broke the mystic silence
by pronouncing the invocation of the Holy Trinity. This daring act
excited the direful wrath of Radbod, and on the death of Pepin, in
714, Wilibrord found himself forced to leave the country. He was,
however, reinstated in his bishopric of Utrecht by Charles Martel,
and in 717 we find him engaged in destroying another Frisian idol in
the isle of Walcheren.

Tales like these fired the heart of Winfrid with the desire of
sharing in such glorious enterprises. After a journey to Rome,
whither he went to obtain the authority and blessing of Pope Gregory
II., he joined Wilibrord at Utrecht, and for some time laboured
under his direction. But finding that the bishop intended to have
him appointed his successor, he fled away in alarm, and took refuge
in the heart of Germany, where he continued until 723, preaching
among the Saxons and Hessians. According to the old writer, Adam of
Bremen, “Winfrid, the philosopher of Christ,” as he calls him, is
undoubtedly to be regarded as the first apostle of that part of the
country. It was at this time that he gained a young disciple, whose
story is sufficiently connected with the subject which we wish to
illustrate to justify its insertion here. Adela, the daughter of
King Dagobert II., had founded a monastery at Treves, where, on his
journey from Friesland into Hesse, Winfrid was hospitably received
and entertained. After he had said mass, he sat down to table with
the abbess and her family; and her young grandson, Gregory, a boy
of fifteen, who had just come from the court school, was summoned
to read aloud the Latin Scriptures, according to custom, during the
repast. Having knelt and received the holy missionary’s blessing,
he took the book, and acquitted himself of his task with sufficient
success. “You read very well, my son,” said Winfrid, “that is, if
you understand what you are reading.” Gregory replied that he did,
and was about to continue the lecture, when Winfrid interrupted him.
“What I wish to know, my son, is whether you can explain what you are
reading in your native tongue.” The youth confessed that he could not
do this, but begged the missionary to do so himself. “Begin again
then,” said Winfrid, “and read distinctly;” and this being done, he
took occasion to deliver to the abbess and the rest of the community,
a discourse so sublime and touching, that when they rose from table
Gregory sought his grandmother, and announced his determination of
following their guest, that he might learn the Scriptures from him,
and become his disciple. “How foolish!” said the abbess; “he is a
man of whom we know nothing: I cannot tell you whence he comes, or
whither he goes.” “I care nothing for that,” replied Gregory; “and
if you will not give me a horse, I will follow him on foot.” His
importunity prevailed, and he was permitted to join the company of
Winfrid, and journey with him into Thuringia.

The prodigious success that accompanied the labours of Winfrid,
having reached the ears of Pope Gregory II. he was summoned to Rome,
and there consecrated bishop of the German nation. At the same time
he received his new name of Boniface, and solemnly signed an oath
of fidelity to the Holy See, which he placed on the tomb of the
Apostles. Then returning to Germany he pursued his apostolic career
along the banks of the Rhine and the Danube; he penetrated into
the wild fastnesses of Hesse, cut down in the ancient Hercynian
forest the huge _Donner Eiche_, or thunder oak, sacred to Jupiter,
and erected a wooden chapel out of its timbers, on the spot where
now stands the town of Geismar. Within the space of twenty years
one hundred thousand converts had abjured their idols and received
baptism, but the work as it grew on his hands required additional
labourers. The eloquence which in old time had earned for the monk
Winfrid a scholar’s fame, was now employed to rouse the apostolic
spirit in the hearts of his countrymen, and a circular letter
addressed to the bishops and abbots of England, painted the wants of
the German mission in such moving terms that his appeal was quickly
responded to, and he soon found himself surrounded by a noble band of
missioners, among whom were Burchard, Lullus, Wilibald, and Winibald,
the two last named being nephews of the saint.

We find from the lives of these great men, written by their immediate
followers, that the same form of community life was adopted among
them which we have seen had been already established in the English
dioceses. The bishop and his clergy formed a kind of college;[63]
and, in this episcopal monastery, as it may be called, the younger
clerics were trained in letters and ecclesiastical discipline. The
college thus founded by St. Wilibald at Ordorp, became so famous
as to draw learned men from all parts of Europe to take part in
his labours among the populations of Hesse and Thuringia. Yet more
renowned was the episcopal seminary, founded at Utrecht by St.
Gregory, the young disciple of St. Boniface already named, who,
after completing his studies at Ordorp, and following the saint
through the long course of his missions, was sent by him a little
before his death to administer the see of Utrecht, then vacant by
the death of Wilibrord. Gregory formed his clergy into a community,
which he governed in person, and was joined by many illustrious
Englishmen, among whom was St. Lebwin, the apostle of Overyssel, and
the patron saint of Deventer. The seminary of Utrecht produced some
famous _alumni_, of whom I will name but one whose history cannot
be altogether passed over in a narrative of schools and schoolboys.
Luidger was the son of a Friesian noble, who confided him to St.
Gregory’s care at a very early age. In fact, Luidger’s somewhat
premature commencement of his school life was the result of his own
entreaties. He was a precocious child, who cared nothing at all for
play, and so soon as he could walk and talk gave signs of a passion
for books and reading. Whilst his companions were engaged in the
sports of the age he would gather together pieces of bark off the
trees and busy himself in making little books out of these materials.
Then he would imitate writing with whatever fluid he could find, and
running to his nurse with these fine treasures, bid her take care of
them, as though they had been the most precious codices. If any one
asked him what he had been doing all day, he would reply that he had
been making books; and if further questioned as to who had taught
him to read and write, he would answer “God taught me.” It will not
seem astonishing that a child of this temper should be possessed
with a strong desire to learn how to read and write in good earnest.
Yielding to his persevering request his parents accordingly sent
him to Utrecht, where Gregory placed him in his school and gave him
the tonsure. The Monk of Werden, who wrote his life, records his
sweetness with his companions, and his devotion in church. He was
always reading, singing, or praying; and always to be seen with a
bright and smiling countenance, though seldom moved to laughter. And
there was something about him so winning and amiable, that master
and schoolfellows all loved him alike. In course of time he was sent
to England to receive deacon’s orders, Gregory himself not having
received episcopal consecration; and here, for the first time, he
became acquainted with Alcuin, whose scholastic career was just then
commencing. Luidger returned to Utrecht, but an unfortunate blunder
which he made in the public reading of a lesson, and which drew
down on him a severe reproof from his abbot, suggested to him the
desirableness of a further course of study, under the great English
master. Gregory reluctantly consented to his plan, and Luidger
undertook a second voyage to England, and spent three years and a
half in the school of York. Here he was as popular as he had formerly
been at Utrecht, and his biographer seems half disposed to think that
the extraordinary signs of affection lavished on him by his masters
and fellow-students require some excuse, for he tells us they really
could not help it, and that any one who had known him must have done
the same. To none, however, was he so dear as to Alcuin, who always
bestowed on him the title of “son.” During his residence in York,
Luidger read through the whole of the Old and New Testaments besides
a great many books of secular literature, and thoroughly studied
the monastic rule as it was carried out in the English monasteries;
and at the end of that time he returned to Utrecht, laden with
books, and well fitted to instruct others. Alberic, the successor
of Gregory, ordained him priest, and sent him to preach in his
own country, till the Saxons drove him out, and then he became the
apostle of that people also. Charlemagne heard of his merit from
Alcuin, who by that time was fixed at the imperial court, and by
his orders, sorely against the will of the missioner, Luidger was
consecrated first bishop of Mimigardford in Saxony. He immediately
founded a great monastery of regular canons to serve his cathedral,
from which circumstance the name of the place was changed to Minster,
or Münster, which it still bears. But his favourite foundation was
at Werden, a spot which he had chosen in the midst of the huge
virgin forests which clothed the banks of the river Rura. The old
legend makes us understand what sort of work was involved in these
foundations, when it tells us that the bishop and his companions,
having pitched their tents, prepared to cut down the trees and
clear a space large enough to contain a few rude huts; but they
were dismayed when they beheld the massive trunks of the growth of
centuries, with their branches so thickly interlaced that they could
catch no glimpse of the sky, while the summits of the mighty oaks
seemed to touch the clouds. They determined to wait till morning to
commence their task; and meanwhile Luidger knelt down beneath one of
the largest oaks, and was soon absorbed in his devotions. It was then
a clear and beautiful night, the moon and stars shining unclouded
in the heavens. Gradually, however, the clouds gathered, the wind
arose, and a furious tempest burst over the forest. The monks heard
the crash of falling trunks and trembled with fear; they guessed not
that the stormy elements were being forced to do them service. When
morning dawned there was an open space around them, the trees lay
prostrate on all sides, and a sufficient space was cleared for the
foundation of the monastery. One tree alone remained untouched, it
was that beneath which St. Luidger had prayed, and which was long
reverentially preserved. When at last it was cut down, a stone was
placed on the site in memory of the event.

In these episcopal monasteries Luidger established a course of
sacred studies, over which he personally presided. Such was, in
fact, the universal discipline observed by the German missionaries,
and hence the institution of cathedral schools spread over every
province from Denmark to the mountains of the Tyrol. There we find
the same class of foundations established by St. Virgil, Bishop of
Saltzburg, concerning whom it will be necessary to speak a little
more particularly. He was a native of Ireland, and held to be one of
the most learned men of his time. It appears probable, though it
is by no means certain, that he is the same Virgil who, when still
a simple priest, was sent into Bavaria, together with Sidonius, and
was there reported to have given expression to certain scientific
theories of doubtful orthodoxy. It is not easy at the present day
to determine precisely what the supposed errors were, as the only
notice of them that remains occurs in a letter from St. Boniface to
Pope Zachary, wherein Virgil is charged with teaching “that there
is another world, and other men under the earth, another sun and
another moon.” The reply of the Pope was to the effect that if on
examination by a council Virgil should be convicted of teaching
this “perverse doctrine,” he should be degraded; and the matter was
finally settled by his being summoned to Rome, where inquiry was made
into the facts of the case. It would seem that his explanation of
his own doctrine must have proved satisfactory, if the priest Virgil
here spoken of were the same who was shortly afterwards raised to
the see of Saltzburg, and who in 1233 was solemnly canonised by Pope
Gregory IX. These facts have, however, furnished the groundwork of a
story which has been repeated by D’Alembert, and adopted with all its
crowd of attendant blunders by a host of modern imitators. According
to this version, Virgil, Bishop of Saltzburg, was excommunicated by
St. Boniface for teaching the existence of the antipodes, and this
sentence is represented to have been confirmed by Pope Zachary.[64]
It will be seen, however, that the person of whose doctrines Boniface
complained was not a bishop, but a priest; that the opinions
attributed to him bore no reference to the antipodes; that he was not
excommunicated; and that so far from either passing or confirming
such a sentence, the Holy See examined, and it is to be presumed
approved his doctrine, since it raised him to a bishopric, and at a
subsequent period canonised him. St. Boniface reported the supposed
errors of Virgil as they were reported to him, and whatever may be
understood by the expressions which he quotes, they cannot be held to
signify a belief in the antipodes. They rather seem to point to some
theory of the existence of another race of men, distinct in origin
from the sons of Adam, who therefore shared neither in original sin
nor the benefits of redemption, errors which, as Baronius shows,
might reasonably be styled ‘perverse.’ It is indeed true that Bede,
and other early writers on natural philosophy, did not believe in
the antipodes; not, as Mr. Turner remarks, from “any superstitious
scruple,” but because they followed the geographical system of
Pliny, who imagined the climate of the southern hemisphere to be
incapable of supporting human life. Yet this history of Virgil and
his condemned propositions has been made the occasion of impeaching
St. Bede, St. Boniface, and the whole race of monastic scholars, not
only of considering a belief in the antipodes as heretical, but of
denying the spherical form of the earth, a point which was certainly
never involved in the controversy.[65]

Next to the foundation of churches and monasteries, St. Boniface
trusted to the establishment of public schools for the consolidation
of the faith in the newly converted countries. In every place where
he planted a monastic colony a school was opened, not merely for
the instruction of the younger monks, but in order that the rude
population by whom they were surrounded might be trained in holy
discipline, and that their uncivilised manners might be softened by
the influence of humane learning. At Fritislar and at Utrecht, as
afterwards at Fulda, public schools were therefore opened, and how
nearly the maintenance and prosperity of these schools lay at the
heart of their founder, may be gathered from the epistle which he
wrote shortly before his martyrdom to Fulrad, the councillor of King
Pepin, in which he implores the protection of that monarch for such
of his disciples as were engaged in the work of educating children.
We also find incidental notices in his letters of certain monks
appointed by him to the post of schoolmasters (_magistri infantium_).

St. Lullus, who has been named above among the companions of
St. Boniface, and who was destined in after years to become his
successor, had been educated at Malmsbury, whence he removed to
Jarrow and finished his studies under Bede. Nine of his letters are
preserved among those of St. Boniface, and in one of them, addressed
to Cuthbert, abbot of Wearmouth, he entreats that copies of the works
of his venerable master may be sent to him without delay. Cuthbert’s
reply shows in what esteem Bede was already held as a writer, both
at home and abroad, and how great was the demand for his works,
which the copyists could not multiply fast enough. He begs for a
little indulgence, seeing that the terrible cold of the past winter
has disabled the hands of his best writers. “Since you have asked
me for some works of the Blessed Bede,” he says, “I have prepared,
with the help of my boys, what I now send you, namely, his books
in prose and verse on the man of God, Cuthbert. I would have sent
you more had I been able. But this winter the frost in our island
has been so severe, with terrible winds, that the fingers of our
transcribers have been unable to execute any more books.” Here is
a glimpse into what one may call the real life of the scriptorium,
which we are sometimes disposed to regard in a certain picturesque
and sentimental light. Incessant labour and chapped hands formed part
of the business, and the severities of climate made themselves felt
in rooms entirely destitute of the appliances of modern comfort.
Cuthbert goes on to entreat St. Lullus to send him if possible some
foreign artificers skilled in the art of making glass vessels,
and also a _harper_. “I have a harp,” he says, “but no one who
knows how to play on it.” The whole correspondence of St. Boniface
and St. Lullus bears witness to the deep interest felt by their
countrymen in the work on which they were engaged. Their letters are
addressed to bishops, abbots, monks, and nuns, and show how close an
intercourse was kept up with England in spite of the difficulties of
communication. Presents are exchanged between the absent missionaries
and their friends at home. While the English kings and prelates send
contributions of books and altar-plate, and the English nuns despatch
a welcome supply of clothing, Boniface sends back a chasuble, “not
all of silk, but mingled with goats’ hair,” and some linen cloths,
which, before the linen manufactory had been introduced into England,
were highly prized luxuries. To another friend he presents some
fine German falcons. Some of the letters preserved are of peculiar
interest, as showing us what kind of learning was then pursued in
the religious houses of England, and specially in those of the
English nuns, whom Mabillon calls, “the peculiar glory of the Order.”
Boniface in former years had directed the studies of several convents
of religious women, and kept up an active correspondence with his old
pupils, who entered heartily into all his interests, and forwarded
them to the best of their power. Naturally enough, their talk is
often of books. In one of his earliest letters, addressed to the
Kentish abbess Eadburga, he begs her to send him the “Acts of the
Martyrs;” and in her reply, which is written in Latin, she informs
him that, together with the literary offering, she has sent him fifty
pieces of gold and an altar carpet. Her liberality encourages him to
beg for new favours; and whilst he thanks her for her present, he
petitions that she will get written out for him, either by herself
or her scholars, the Epistles of St. Paul in _letters of gold_, in
order to inspire his neophytes with greater reverence for the Holy
Scriptures. In his next epistle he rewards her diligence with the
appropriate present of a silver pen.

Eadburga removed to Rome, whence many of her letters to Boniface were
afterwards addressed. But the correspondence continued to be carried
on by some of the pupils whom she had left behind her in England, and
specially by a relation of the saint’s named Lioba, then a religious
in the convent of Wimbourne.

Of this convent and its learned inmates I must say a few words,
as they deserve a place in our catalogue of English scholars. The
present collegiate church of Wimbourne, ancient as it is--and the
architecture of its tower bears out its claim to have been founded
by the Confessor--does but mark the site of that far more ancient
minster which owed its erection to the two sisters of good King Ina,
Cuthburga and Guenburga by name. This was one of the very earliest
convents of women founded in England, and is noticed by St. Aldhelm
in a letter written in 705, wherein he declares that he has purposed,
in the hidden recesses of his soul, to grant the privilege of free
election to certain monasteries in his diocese; among others, that
which lieth by the river Wimburnia, presided over by Cuthburga,
sister to the king. Perhaps he was moved to this act of favour
by the fact that Cuthburga and Guenburga were pupils of his old
friend the abbess Hildelitha, the first of English virgins who had
consecrated herself to Christ. Hildelitha received her education at
Chelles, in France, and brought into the cloisters of Barking all the
learning of that famous school. This she increased by her intercourse
with St. Aldhelm; and her disciples, as we have seen, were rather
profoundly versed in sacred letters. Neither did the Wimbourne
scholars decline in learning under the good abbess Tetta, who was
governing a community of five hundred nuns with admirable wisdom at
the time when Lioba first introduced herself to the notice of St.
Boniface in the following graceful letter:--

“To the most noble lord, decorated with the pontifical dignity,
Boniface, most dear to me in Christ, and, what is more, united to me
by the ties of blood, Leobgitha, the last of the handmaids of Christ,
health and salvation.

“I beg your clemency to condescend to recollect the friendship which
you had some time ago for my father. His name was Tinne; he lived in
the western parts, and died about eight years ago. My mother also
desires to be remembered by you; her name is Ebba, she is related to
you, and suffers much from infirmity. I am their only daughter, and
desire, though unworthy, to claim you as my brother, for there are
none of my relations in whom I have so much confidence as in you. I
send you a little present, not as being worthy of your greatness, but
that you may preserve the memory of my littleness, and may not forget
me on account of the distance which separates us. What I chiefly ask
of you, dearest brother, is that you will defend me by the buckler of
your prayers from the hidden snares of the enemy. I beg you to excuse
the rustic style of this letter, and not to refuse me a few words
from your affability which may serve me as a model, and which I shall
be eager to receive. As to the little verses you will find written
below, I have endeavoured to compose them according to the rules of
poetry, not out of presumption, but as a first attempt of my weak
little genius, desiring the help of your elegant mind. I learnt this
art from Eadburga, who ceased not to meditate on the Divine law day
and night. Farewell; live long and happy, and pray for me.”

Then follow four rhymed hexameters in Latin, wherein she not
inelegantly commends him to the protection of Heaven. This was a
common way of concluding a letter in the eighth century, and St.
Boniface, in his epistles to his friends, frequently relieves the
graver subjects of which he treats by a Latin distich or acrostic;
sometimes also by a scrap of Saxon verse. He responded very heartily
to Lioba’s appeal, and a familiar correspondence was at once opened
between them. It is supposed, with every show of probability, that
the _lady_ to whom St. Boniface afterwards dedicated his poem on the
Virtues was no other than the Anglo-Saxon nun. In the dedication to
this poem he says, “I send to my sister ten golden apples gathered
on the tree of life, where they hung amid the flowers.” These golden
apples are ten enigmas, each containing the definition of some
virtue, the name of which, in true Saxon taste, is formed by the
initial letters of the lines.

Another of the most constant correspondents and advisers of Boniface
was his old diocesan, Daniel of Winchester, whom he frequently
consulted in the difficulties with which he was beset. Ozanam
observes that the former grammarian and scholasticus peeps out in one
of the questions he sends for solution; namely, if the baptism were
valid, administered by a certain priest who was in the habit of using
the form, _In nomine Patria et Filia, et Spiritui Sancta_?[66] But
we may, I think, acquit our great apostle of the charge of pedantry,
founded on this passage. He was engaged in planting the Church on a
new soil, and a scrupulous exactness, in preserving the sacramental
forms of words from corruption, need not be taken as a sign of
scholastic priggishness. There is no saying where the “Patria et
Filia” might have ended, or what more extensive variations might not
have been added by the _il_-literati of Thuringia. Bishop Daniel gave
him a great deal of excellent advice, and was of considerable service
to Boniface by supplying him with books. On one occasion we find the
missionary writing to his good friend, begging him to send the book
of the Prophets “which the abbot Wimbert, my master, left at his
death. It is written in large and very distinct letters; I could not
have a greater consolation in my old age, for there is no book like
it in this country, and as my sight grows weak I cannot distinguish
the small letters which run together in the volumes I now have.”

In 732, Boniface received the pallium from the hands of Pope Gregory
III., together with the authority of Papal Legate and Vicar over the
bishops of France and Germany. This office empowered him to take
every step necessary for the firm establishment of the faith in
the newly converted countries, and at the same time he was charged
with the far more difficult task of restoring Church discipline in
the Gallican provinces, where, owing to the barbarism of the times,
a frightful state of anarchy prevailed. We shall chiefly follow him
in his apostolic career in Germany, where his first care was to
provide for the necessities of the infant Church by the erection of
several new sees. Burchard was consecrated Bishop of Wurtzburg, and
Wilibald was appointed to the see of Eichstadt, a woody district
overspread with oaks, which as yet contained but one small church.
Other prelates were named to fill the sees of Erfurt, Ratisbon, and
Friesingen. The care of the Archbishop was next directed to providing
a succession of clergy for the new dioceses, and with this view he
founded several monasteries, one of which became in after-times the
greatest monastic school in Germany. In the year 730, when Boniface
travelled into Bavaria, to re-establish ecclesiastical discipline
in that country, many Bavarian nobles committed their sons to his
care, and among these was Sturm, who was offered by his parents to
the service of God. Boniface placed him in the monastery he had
recently founded at Fritzlar, under the care of Wigbert, one of
his English disciples, and took great care of his education. The
innocence and humility of the youth made him dear to all his masters,
and he quickly learnt the Psalter by heart, and studied the hidden
sense of the sacred Scriptures. Being ordained priest, he preached
among the neighbouring population for three years, but at the end of
that time he was seized with the desire to seek out some solitude
where he might found a religious house; and Boniface, approving his
design, sent him into the forest of Buchonia to choose a fitting
site. Taking two companions with him, they travelled on for two
days, seeing nothing but the earth and the sky, and the huge trees
through which they made their way. At the end of the third day they
reached Hirsfield, where they built themselves some rude huts with
the bark of the trees which they felled, and began the practices of
a religious life. Boniface, however, was not satisfied with their
choice of a situation, and at his desire, Sturm, after exploring
the upper course of the river Fulda without success, set out alone,
mounted on an ass, on a journey into the wilderness, through which he
travelled for days, seeing nothing but the huge trees, the birds, and
the wild beasts that roamed at large in the forest glades. At night
he cut down wood enough with his axe to make a little enclosure,
within which he fastened his beast to save it from the wolves; but
for himself he feared nothing, and after tranquilly making the sign
of the cross on his forehead, he lay down and slept till morning. At
last he reached a vast and woody solitude, which Prince Carloman, the
owner, bestowed on him as a free gift, and here, in the year 744,
nine years after their settlement at Hirsfield, Sturm, with seven
companions, laid the foundation of the Abbey of Fulda. St. Boniface
gave them the necessary instructions, and visited them every year;
but being desirous to establish among them the rule of St. Benedict
in its perfection, he sent Sturm into Italy to visit the monastery of
Monte Cassino, and others most renowned for their strict observance,
that he might be the better able to form his own community in
regular discipline. After a year thus spent in studying the monastic
rule, Sturm returned to Fulda, where, before he died, he had the
consolation of seeing a zealous community of 400 monks serving God
in what had before been a desolate wilderness, and the abbey, like
all those founded by St. Boniface, became quickly renowned for the
sanctity of its inmates, and the good scholars whom it nurtured
within its walls.

To complete the conversion and civilisation of the country,
Boniface conceived the plan of bringing over some religious women
from England, and establishing them in various parts, that they
might provide the means of education to their own sex. Othlonus,
in his history, names Chunihilt and her daughter Berathgilt as the
first Englishwomen who passed over into Germany at the invitation
of Boniface, and calls them _valde eruditæ in liberali scientia_.
But their renown has been eclipsed by that of St. Lioba, to whom
the archbishop naturally turned as the likeliest of his English
friends to aid him in his great designs. In fact, there were many
at Wimbourne disposed to enter heart and soul into the interests of
the German mission. Lioba and her cousin Thecla were nearly related
to the archbishop, and Walburga was sister to his two companions,
Winibald and Wilibald. He knew that their acquirements qualified
them to teach others. They had all been carefully trained by the
abbess Tetta, and were skilful, not merely in the womanly art of the
needle, but likewise in sacred literature. Lioba’s accomplishments
may be truly called surprising, when we remember that their owner was
a nun, living in the middle of the eighth century in a remote abbey
of a half-barbarous land. Instructed from her childhood in grammar,
poetry, and the liberal arts, she had increased her treasure of
learning by assiduous reading. She had attentively studied the Old
and New Testaments, and committed a great part of them to memory.
She was familiar with the writings of the Fathers, and with the
decrees and canons of the Church--grave sort of reading for so fair
a student--(and I do not use the epithet in a conventional sense,
for her biographer tells us she was named Lioba, or the _beloved
one_, because of her exceeding beauty); but in those days lighter
literature there was none. As we have seen, she could write in the
Latin tongue with a graceful simplicity, both in prose and verse.
When not engaged in study she worked with her hands, as was enjoined
by the rule, but she greatly preferred reading, or hearing others
read, to manual employments. Indeed, it was not easy to satisfy her
in this respect. When abbess, she insisted on all those under her
charge taking that midday repose allowed by the rule of St. Benedict,
chiefly, as she said, because the want of sleep takes away the love
of reading. But when she herself lay down at these times to rest,
she had some of her pupils to read the Scriptures by the side of her
couch, and they could not omit or mispronounce a word without her
correcting it, though apparently she might be asleep. Yet all this
learning was accompanied with a modesty and humility that made her
seek in all things to be regarded as the least in the house. There
was nothing of arrogance in her behaviour, nothing of bitterness in
her words, says her biographer, Ralph of Fulda. “She was as admirable
in her understanding as she was boundless in her charity. She liked
to wash the feet of her spiritual children, and to serve them at
table, and she did this when she herself was fasting. Her countenance
was truly angelic, always sweet and joyful, though she never indulged
in laughter. No one ever saw her angry, and her aspect agreed with
her name, which in Saxon signifies the Beloved, and in Greek,
Philomena.”[67]

It was in 748 that the letters from St. Boniface reached Wimbourne,
requesting that Lioba, Thecla, and Walburga might be sent over to
him, together with as many of their companions as might be willing to
share in their enterprise. Thirty nuns at once offered themselves,
and the little colony, after a stormy passage across the sea to
Antwerp,[68] was met at Mentz by the archbishop, who proceeded to
establish Lioba in a monastery he had built for her at Bischoffsheim,
where she very soon collected a numerous congregation of holy
virgins. Walburga went on to Thuringia, where her brother, Winibald,
was superior of seven houses of monks. He had long purposed retiring
to some greater solitude, and, with the advice of his brother, he
chose a wild valley in the diocese, clothed with majestic forests
and watered by mountain streams. It bore the name of Heidensheim;
and here, in 752, Winibald, having cleared the ground, erected a
church and two monasteries, one for himself and his monks, the other
for Walburga’s community. The savage natives beheld with jealous
eyes this intrusion into their solitudes, and the destruction of
their sacred oaks; but ere a few years had passed, the minster of
Heidensheim stood in the centre of a Christian population, and the
wild pagan forest had been converted into a smiling land of woods
and pastures, where all the arts of civilised life were taught and
practised in a society over which the abbot presided with something
like paternal sway.

Walburga and her nuns seem to have cultivated letters as diligently
in their forest home as by the banks of the Wimburnia. The travels
of St. Wilibald, who had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and
often related what he had seen to his sister and her nuns, were
afterwards written by them, not certainly in very classical Latin,
but with a lucidity and truthfulness of style which appears in all
the Anglo-Saxon writers, and which contrasts very remarkably with the
marvellous narrations of Sir John Mandeville. St. Walburga appears
also to have been the author of the “Life of St. Winibald,” and
it is quite clear that the singular taste for literature existing
among German nuns in the tenth century formed part of the tradition
which they had received from their Anglo-Saxon foundresses. Mabillon
praises not merely their erudition, but the zeal they displayed
in employing it for the good of their neighbours, and says that,
moved by a laudable emulation, they devoted themselves to study and
the transcription of books with no less energy than the monks. He
particularly praises the nuns of Eiken, who employed their time in
reading, meditating, transcribing, and painting; specially the two
abbesses Harlinda and Renilda, who wrote out the Psalter, the four
Gospels, and many other books of Holy Scripture, adorning them with
liquid gold, gems, and pearls.

The after-career of St. Boniface exhibits him to us reforming
the Frankish Church, long vexed with schism and other frightful
disorders, which had grown out of a century of treasons and civil
distractions unequalled in any history. The enemies of discipline
were naturally enough enemies also to the authority of the Holy See.
They had taken advantage of the chaotic state to which society had
returned to reject the law of clerical celibacy, and to establish
the practice of simony on a gigantic scale. St. Boniface struck at
the root of the evil by enforcing obedience to the Roman pontiff,
and, happily for the future destinies of the French Church, his
efforts were heartily supported by the brothers Carloman and Pepin,
the two mayors of the palace, and the real sovereigns of Gaul. His
canons of reform were promulgated in a grand national council, and
in 748 Pope Zachary established the authority of the see of Mentz
over all the German provinces from Utrecht to the Rhetian Alps. One
would have thought that the government of such a province would have
sufficed to employ the energies of one man; but Boniface kept a place
in his thoughts for the necessities of his native land. Exile as he
was, he never forgot that he was an Englishman, and though it does
not appear that he ever revisited his own country, he took a very
active part in some of her affairs. It is rather puzzling to make
out how in those days of rude civilization the German missionaries
contrived to carry on their voluminous correspondence with friends
at home, for the transmission of letters was certainly not provided
for by any international postage regulations. It appears, however,
from many passages in the letters of St. Boniface that his mails
were brought to him by the Anglo-Saxon pilgrims who were continually
streaming from England to Rome. Some of these were students, going
to make their studies in the Saxon school, lately established in
the holy city by King Ina; others were devout monks; and others,
unhappily, rather indevout and disedifying characters, who made
their pilgrimage a pretext for gadding about the world, and casting
off the restraints of respectability. The see of Canterbury was at
that time filled by a great friend of St. Boniface, named Cuthbert,
who applied to him for help and advice in the sore troubles which
surrounded him. The evil example of Ethelbald, King of Mercia, was
causing a grievous relaxation of discipline among the clergy, whereby
many grave scandals were brought on the Church, and St. Boniface did
not hesitate to address the king a letter of remonstrance, which
seems to have produced its effect. In 747, the Council of Cloveshoe
was summoned for the reform of abuses by command of Pope Zachary,
Ethelbald also giving it the weight of his presence and authority.

The Fathers of this Council owed much to the advice of Boniface, and
their decrees, which are exceedingly interesting, have a good deal
to say on the subject of education. They ordain that priests should
constantly teach and explain the Creed and the “Our Father” in the
vulgar tongue; that bishops, abbots, and abbesses do by all means
diligently provide that all their people incessantly apply their
minds to reading; that boys be brought up in the ecclesiastical
schools, so as to be useful to the Church of God, and that their
masters do not employ them in bodily labour. Sunday is to be strictly
observed, and no man is to dare to do any servile work on that day,
save for the preparing of his meat; but if it be necessary for him
to journey on that day he may ride, row, or travel by any conveyance
he chooses, provided he first hear mass. It is only fitting that
every man should honour that day, on which God created light, sent
manna to the Israelites, rose from the dead, and sent down the Holy
Ghost, and it is also fitting that Christian men should prepare for
its celebration by coming to church on Saturday, bringing a light
with them, and then hearing evensong, and after midnight, prime
also; being careful whilst there to keep a peaceful mind, and not to
dispute or quarrel. Our forefathers were not left in uncertainty as
to what was comprised under the head of servile work, for on this
point Archbishop Theodore had laid down rules of great exactness.
He divided it into two heads, man’s work, and woman’s work; the
first of which comprised husbandry, garden work, the felling of
trees, the building of houses and walls, the quarrying of stone, and
the digging of ditches; while to the gentler sex belonged weaving,
washing, sewing, baking, brewing, wool-combing, the beating of flax
and the shearing of sheep. The feeling with which the observance of
the Sunday was regarded is best expressed by the beautiful Saxon word
by which it was called, the _freolsday_, or day of _freedom_, on
which even serfs did not do serfs’ work. The _freolsung_, or Sunday
freedom, lasted from noontide on Saturday to the dawn of light on
Monday morning--other similar seasons of freedom being established at
the greater festivals. The council likewise enjoined the exercise of
private prayer after the accustomed formula, wherein prayer to the
saints and intercession for the dead are specially named. In church
schools every one is to learn the psalter by heart, even if he cannot
master the art of chanting it, and the chant itself, as well as the
ritual for the administration of the Sacraments, the order of feasts,
and everything else appertaining to divine worship, is ordered to be
exactly conformed to the custom of the Roman Church.[69]

It may be asked what are the schools to which reference is made
in these decrees? Chiefly, no doubt, the Episcopal and monastic
seminaries; but it would seem that the mass priest’s school is also
intended, of which mention is often made in the Anglo-Saxon councils.
Among our Saxon forefathers the education of the children of his
parishioners was recognised as one of the chief duties of the parish
priest. “Mass-priests shall always have in their houses a school of
learners; and if any good man will trust his little ones to them for
lore, they shall right gladly receive and kindly teach them. For ye
shall remember that it is written: ‘They that be learned shall shine
as heaven’s brightness; and they that instruct many to justice shall
shine as stars for ever.’ They shall not however, for such lore,
demand anything of the parents, besides that which the latter may
give of their own will.”[70] This decree, the parentage of which
is to be traced to the Council of Vaison, reappears in the acts of
several councils of England, France, and Italy, the very language
being preserved in the Carlovingian Council of Orleans, and in the
Constitutions of Atto of Vercelli. And here we see the origin of our
parochial schools, which are as emphatically the priest’s schools, as
the seminaries are the schools of the bishop.

The career of Boniface was now drawing to its close, and he seized
the occasion of Pepin’s coronation to obtain the sanction of the
new monarch to a design he had long secretly cherished. It was that
of resigning his dignities, and ending his life, as he had begun
it, in humble missionary labours. He accordingly wrote, entreating
the king’s protection for his churches, clergy, and scholars. “I
beg his highness,” he says, “in the name of Christ, to let me know,
while I live, in what way he will deal with my disciples after
my death. For they are, almost all of them, foreigners; some are
priests established in distant places, others monks _employed in
their different cloisters in the education of youth_, some of them
are old men, who have been for years the companions and sharers of
my labours. Therefore I am most anxious that they should not be
disturbed after my death, but should remain under the protection of
the king.” Pepin having fully granted all his wishes, and recognised
Lullus, whom, by permission of Pope Zachary, Boniface had named as
his successor, the archbishop published the charter granted by the
Holy See to the abbots of Fulda, which exempted it from episcopal
jurisdiction, and made over to Lullus the church of St. Martin at
Utrecht, the ancient see of his predecessor and countryman, St.
Wilibrord. When all these arrangements had been made, St. Boniface
joyfully prepared for his fourth and last expedition to Frisia, where
he seems to have already anticipated receiving the martyr’s crown.
He wrote to Lullus early in 755 telling him that the end of his life
was approaching, and bidding him finish the church of Fulda, in which
he desired that his body might be laid. “Prepare all things for my
journey,” he says, “and do not forget to enclose with my books a
shroud, to contain my mortal remains.”

He would not depart without bidding farewell to St. Lioba, whom he
recommended to his successor, giving orders that at her death she
also might be buried in the church of Fulda, that together they might
await the resurrection. Having nothing of greater value to bestow on
her, he gave her, as his parting gift, his monk’s cowl, a precious
token of his fatherly regard, and of the absolute poverty which
he professed. He then set out, attended by Eoban, an Anglo-Saxon
monk, whom he had consecrated Bishop of the Frisians, and fifty-one
companions, of whom ten only were priests; and, sailing down the
Rhine, made his way into Eastern Friesland. A great number of the
pagans were induced by his preaching to embrace the faith; and June
5, being the vigil of Pentecost, was fixed for the administration
of Holy Baptism. A tent was erected on a plain near the banks of a
little river, not far from the modern town of Dokkum. But whilst the
saint awaited his converts, the tidings reached him that a band of
pagans were approaching, armed with shields and spears. The laymen in
his company would have offered resistance, but Boniface forbade them
to draw their swords. “Forbear, my sons,” he said, “for the Scripture
teaches us to return not evil for evil, but rather good. To me the
long-expected day has at last arrived: the time of my departure is at
hand. Be comforted, and fear not them who can destroy the body, for
they cannot touch the immortal soul. Trust in God and rejoice in Him,
and fix the anchor of your hope in Him who will give you a place in
His glorious mansion together with the angels.”

Whilst he was yet speaking, the barbarians rushed on him and
struck him to the ground. As he fell, with the instinct of
self-preservation, he raised the hand which held the Book of the
Gospels, in order to protect his head. A sword-stroke from one
ruffian cut through the book, while at the same time the dagger of
another pierced his heart; and the rest of the band turned on his
companions who stood around, and slaughtered them every one. They
then seized the baggage of the archbishop, which they hoped would
prove a rich booty, but to their disappointment found nothing but
books and holy relics, which they scattered about the surrounding
fields, casting some of the books into a neighbouring marsh, whence
they were afterwards rescued by the Frisian Christians. Three of
them are still preserved at Fulda; they consist of the copy of the
Gospel already mentioned, which had been written out by the saint’s
own hand, and which, though cut through with the sword which took
his life, has not so much as a letter destroyed; a Harmony of the
Gospels or Canons of the New Testament, and a Book containing various
Treatises and Letters, the pages of which are stained with his blood.

The body of St. Boniface was carried to Mentz, and thence translated
to Fulda, when the church of that monastery was consecrated by St.
Lullus, the whole history of the event being related by the monk
Candidus, in his metrical Life of Abbot Eigil. St. Lioba survived
her friend for twenty-four years, during which time she founded a
great number of convents, all of which she governed as superior. She
received special marks of respect from Charlemagne and his queen
Hildegardis, who often sent for her to Aix-la-Chapelle, and loved
her as her own soul. She frequently visited Fulda, and on her death,
which took place in 779, her body was carried thither for burial.
The elder monks remembered the wish that had been expressed by St.
Boniface, that their bones should be laid together, but, fearing to
open the sepulchre of the holy martyr, they buried St. Lioba at the
north side of the altar, which he had himself consecrated in honour
of the twelve Apostles. There the two saints still repose, for though
the church of Fulda has been rebuilt four times since the day of its
first dedication, the ancient crypt has always been preserved, and
there the English pilgrim may still revere the relics of his great
countryman which are preserved in their antique shrine, together with
two memorials of him, the ivory crosier which he was accustomed to
use, and the dagger that shed his blood.

_CHAPTER V._

CHARLEMAGNE AND ALCUIN.

A.D. 747 TO 804.

At the moment when the nascent civilisation of Saxon England was
being doomed to extinction, and the Danish hordes were everywhere
making havoc of those religious houses which for 160 years had been
the chief nurseries of learning in the West, light was beginning once
more to dawn over the schools of France, where under the barbarism of
the Merovingian kings liberal studies had all but entirely decayed.
At an earlier period indeed, as we have seen, the Church of Gaul,
far from deserving the charge of barbarism, had produced a crowd
of illustrious writers, by whom the Christian dogmas were clothed
in a classic dress. Down to the end of the sixth century remains
of the old Roman municipal schools continued to exist, wherein
Christian students disdained not “to hold the harp with Orpheus, or
the rule with Archimedes; to perceive with Pythagoras, to explain
with Plato, to imply with Aristotle, to rage with Demosthenes, or to
persuade with Tully”[71]--in other words, they followed the ordinary
course of studies provided in the Roman schools. Even when these
disappeared, the episcopal and monastic schools continued to preserve
some knowledge of letters. The multiplication of monasteries, even
before the arrival of the Benedictines in 543, had progressed with
extraordinary rapidity. We read of one bishop establishing forty
communities in his own diocese; and during the century that succeeded
the first foundation made by St. Maurus, as many as 238 Benedictine
monasteries are known to have arisen in different provinces of Gaul.
It is probable that most of these monasteries, to whatever rule
they belonged, possessed a school. The monastic rules which sprung
up previous to the arrival of St. Maurus--such as those established
by St. Martin, St. Eugendus, St. Yrieix, and St. Columbanus--all
enjoined study and the transcription of books, as well as manual
labour. Nor can it be doubted that secular as well as religious
pupils were received in the monastic schools, and that the education
given was not exclusively ecclesiastical. It even appears as though
the Gallo-Roman nobility of this period were more solicitous to give
their sons a liberal education than their chivalric descendants of
six centuries’ later date. I will give but two examples. At the
monastery of Condat it is expressly stated that noble secular youths
were educated in all the learning of the times; and what this term
implies is explained in the life of St. Eugendus, who received his
entire training there, and never once left the monastery from his
seventh to his sixtieth year. He was as familiar with the Greek
as with the Latin orators, says his biographer, and was besides a
great promoter of sacred studies. The other example is even more
to the point, as showing up to what age secular youths were then
expected to continue students. St. Aicard received his education in
the monastic school of Soissons, about the middle of the seventh
century, and remained there until his seventeenth year, when he
was summoned home by his father to be introduced at court and to
commence his military career--a career, be it remembered, into which
the aspirant to chivalry in the twelfth century would have been
initiated at seven. He afterwards embraced the religious state, and
did much to improve the studies in his monastery of Jumièges. Then
there were the episcopal schools, in which the learning given was
far from being superficial. St. Gregory of Tours tells us that when
King Guntram entered Orleans in 540 he was met by a band of scholars
from the bishop’s school, who welcomed him in Latin, Greek, Hebrew,
and Syriac verses of their own composition. St. Gregory had himself
received his education in the episcopal schools of Clermont and
Vienne, and informs us that even ecclesiastical students, before
entering on their sacred studies, went through a course of the seven
liberal arts, together with one of poetry and the Cantus.[72] M.
Guizot gives a list of the principal monastic and episcopal schools
of which a distant notice is to be found in the histories of the
seventh century. Twenty of them are in Neustria alone, and their
multiplication forms the subject of repeated decrees of provincial
councils.

We need not, however, dwell on their history more particularly,
for whatever may have been their number or their excellence, it
is certain that before the accession of Charlemagne, the Gallican
schools had fallen into general decay. The decline was progressive,
but it ended in something like total extinction. “At the end of the
fourth century,” says M. Guizot, “profane and sacred literature
flourished side by side: pagan letters were indeed dying, but they
were not entirely dead. They soon, however, disappeared, and sacred
literature alone was cultivated. But if we go on a little further,
we find that the cultivation of Christian literature has itself
vanished,”[73]--the decay had, in fact, become universal.

Tennemann, in his history of philosophy, does not hesitate to
attribute this deplorable state of things to the tyranny of the
Church, and the triumph of the principle of faith and authority
over that of liberty and reason. But from the sixth to the eighth
century, the ecclesiastical powers in Gaul had not the strength to
exercise tyranny, even had they possessed the will. The slightest
acquaintance with the history of those centuries and their horrible
social disorders will suffice to show that submission to the
principle of Church authority had not at that time assumed any very
alarming proportions north of the Alps. The Church of Gaul was torn
with petty schisms, and disgraced by scandals arising mainly from
the absence of any authority at all strong enough to repress them,
and the supremacy of the Holy See had to be firmly re-asserted by
St. Boniface before any adequate remedy of these disorders could
be applied. The intellectual sterility of this epoch may rather be
traced to the want of that principle, than to its excess; it was in
fact an unavoidable result of the anarchy and dissolution of all
social ties which followed on the fall of the Roman Empire. Had
ecclesiastical discipline been preserved, we might yet at least
have found the theological studies flourishing; but what could be
expected from bishops who had either simoniacally obtained their
dignities, or had been appointed by barbarian rulers from the ranks
of their own soldiers or courtiers? Destitute themselves of all
knowledge of sacred letters, they were not likely to cherish them
in others; and in many cases they held their sees as baronies might
be held by lay proprietors. The incessant civil commotions that
prevailed perpetuated the reign of darkness, for, as the writer
just quoted remarks, when the state of society becomes rude and
difficult, studies necessarily languish. “The taste for truth and the
appreciation of the beautiful are delicate plants, needing a pure
sky and a kindly atmosphere:--in the midst of storms they droop
their heads and perish.” So far from the Church being held answerable
for the decay of literature, it was she alone that provided it any
asylum in those dismal times, and it was in her monastic houses that
learning, “proscribed and beaten down by the tempest that raged
around, took refuge under the shelter of the altar, till happier
times should suffer it to reappear in the world.”[74]

The dawn of a better state of things began to show itself under the
rule of Pepin. That monarch appears to have contemplated something of
the same plan of reform afterwards carried out by the vaster genius
of his son. His first step was to renew those close relations with
the Holy See, the interruption of which had so largely contributed
to disorganise the Church of France. In 747, being then mayor of
the palace, he despatched an embassy to Pope Zachary, imploring his
assistance and advice in the reformation of the episcopal order. It
has been shown in the foregoing chapter, that a similar reformation
had been set on foot in Austrasia by his brother Carloman, where, by
the assistance of St. Boniface acting as apostolic vicar, the bishops
and secular clergy had solemnly engaged to observe the ecclesiastical
canons, and the abbots, to receive the rule of St. Benedict. The
subsequent change of dynasty was affected by the will, it is true,
of the Frankish people, but not until it had received the sanction
of the Pope, who decided that he who held the power of king should
likewise assume the royal title. This appeal of the Franks to the
authority of the Holy See in the election of their sovereign is a
fact of immense political importance, and from that hour the tide of
barbarism began to ebb. The councils held under Pepin ceased not to
labour at the correction of abuses; and the journey of Pope Stephen
III. into France in 748, if it exhibits him on one hand as a fugitive
from the Lombards, displays him to us no less as receiving from kings
and people the homage due to him as Father of the Christian Church.

Together with the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline and the
legitimate authority of the Holy See, appear the first indications of
an approaching revival of learning. One of the ambassadors despatched
by Pepin to conduct the Pope into France was Chrodegang, Bishop of
Metz, a German by birth, and learned for the times in which he lived.
In 762 he had done his best to restore discipline and letters in his
own diocese, by establishing canonical life among his cathedral
clergy, and giving them a rule in which provision was made for the
maintenance of the episcopal seminary. Previously to this he had
founded several monasteries, with the view of promoting sacred
studies, among others the great abbey of Gorze, the school of which
became afterwards so famous. At the same time Pepin was directing
his attention to the correction of the liturgical books. He obtained
from Pope Stephen an Antiphonary and Responsory, together with
copies of the works of St. Denys, the dialectics of Aristotle, some
treatises on geometry and orthography, and a grammar. The movement
was inaugurated by an attempted reform in the ecclesiastical chant.
During the stay of Pope Stephen at the Frankish court, Pepin was
struck by the majesty of the Roman tones, and entreated that some of
the Papal singers might instruct the choristers of his own chapel.
Simeon, the Pope’s chapel-master, therefore remained in France, and
gave lessons there for some years; but the reform thus effected was
only partial, and was not finally established in Charlemagne’s time
without a struggle.

Pepin’s further plans were cut short by his death, which took
place in 768, and was followed in 771 by that of his son Carloman,
Charlemagne, the surviving son of Pepin, being thus left master of
all the Frankish territories. We need not follow the course of his
conquests, which gradually extended the boundaries of his empire,
from the shores of the Baltic to the banks of the Ebro, and from
the Danube to the Atlantic Ocean. During the forty-six years that
he ruled the destinies of Europe, he was engaged in incessant wars,
which seemed to leave little leisure for literary pursuits, and
was organising a vast political system which, even in peaceable
times, would have demanded the undivided attention of any ordinary
sovereign. But if there ever was a man who by his mere natural
endowments soared above other men, it was Charlemagne. His life,
like his stature, was colossal. Time never seemed wanting to him
for anything that he willed to accomplish, and during his ten years
campaign against the Saxons and Lombards, he contrived to get leisure
enough to study grammar, and render himself tolerably proficient
as a Latin writer in prose and verse. He found his tutors in the
cities that he conquered. When he became master of Pisa, he gained
the services of Peter of Pisa, whom he set over the Palatine school,
which had existed even under the Merovingian kings, though as yet
it was far from enjoying the fame to which it was afterwards raised
by the teaching of Alcuin. He possessed the art of turning enemies
into friends, and thus drew to his court the famous historian, Paul
Warnefrid, deacon of the Church of Rome, who had previously acted
as secretary to Didier, king of the Lombards. When Charlemagne set
the crown of Lombardy on his own head, in 744, Paul resisted the new
order of things, and made three attempts to restore his country’s
independence. The Frankish judges condemned him to lose his eyes and
his hands, but Charlemagne interfered. “We shall not easily find
another hand that can write history,” he said, and Paul, conquered
by his generosity, went back with him to France, and accepted the
charge of teaching Greek to the young princess Richtrude, who had
been affianced to the Greek emperor, Constantine. The Lombard
scholar appeared nothing less than a prodigy in the eyes of the
Frankish courtiers, and Peter of Pisa poured out his admiration in
a poetical epistle, in which he calls him, “in Greek, a Homer; in
Latin, a Virgil; in Hebrew, another Philo.” It speaks well for the
real scholarship of Paul that he declined swallowing all the flattery
conveyed in this pompous address, and plainly stated in his reply
that though he could read Greek, he could not speak it, and that he
knew no more of Hebrew than a few words he had picked up at school.
As to his being a second Homer or Virgil, he seems to have considered
the insinuation anything but a compliment, and declared rather
bluntly that he wished to have nothing in common with two heathens.
He was afterwards employed in establishing the schools of Metz, and
finally became a monk at Monte Cassino, where he wrote his life of
St. Gregory the Great, and the well-known hymn “Ut queant laxis.”[75]

Another Italian scholar, St. Paulinus, of Aquileja, was coaxed into
the service of the Frankish sovereign after his conquest of Friuli;
I will not say that he was _bought_, but he was certainly paid for
by a large grant of confiscated territory made over by diploma to
“the Venerable Paulinus, master of the art of grammar.” But none
of these learned personages were destined to take so large a part
in that revival of learning which made the glory of Charlemagne’s
reign, as our own countryman Alcuin. It was in 781, on occasion of
the king’s second visit to Italy, that the meeting took place at
Parma, the result of which was to fix the English scholar at the
Frankish court. Having obtained the consent of his own bishop and
sovereign to this arrangement, Alcuin came over to France in 782,
bringing with him several of the best scholars of York, among whom
were Wizo, Fredegis, and Sigulf. Charlemagne received him with joy,
and assigned him three abbeys for the maintenance of himself and his
disciples, those namely, of Ferrières, St. Lupus of Troyes, and St.
Josse in Ponthieu. From this time Alcuin held the first place in the
literary society that surrounded the Frankish sovereign, and filled
an office the duties of which were as vast as they were various.
Three great works at once claimed his attention, the correction of
the liturgical books, the direction of the court academy, and the
establishment of other public schools throughout the empire. Alcuin
began with the task first on the list, for until the books at his
command were themselves rendered readable, it was of small avail to
talk of opening schools. In the hands of ignorant copyists the text
of Scripture had become so corrupt as to be hardly intelligible. The
Book of Gospels and Epistles for Sundays and festivals was first
corrected, and such a system of punctuation and accentuation adopted
as might enable even the unlearned to read them without making any
gross error. The more arduous undertaking of correcting the whole
Bible was not completed till the year 800, when on the occasion of
Charlemagne’s coronation at Rome as Emperor of the West, Alcuin
forwarded to him, as the best present he could offer, a copy of the
sacred volume, carefully freed from error.[76]

But it was as head of the Palatine school that Alcuin’s influence
was chiefly to be felt in the restoration of letters. Charlemagne
presented himself as his first pupil, together with the three
princes, Pepin, Charles, and Louis, his sister Gisla and his
daughter Richtrude, his councillors Adalard and Angilbert, and
Eginhard his secretary. Such illustrious scholars soon found plenty
to imitate their example, and Alcuin saw himself called on to
lecture daily to a goodly crowd of bishops, nobles, and courtiers.
The king wished to transform his court into a new Athens preferable
to that of ancient Greece, in so far as the doctrine of Christ is
to be preferred to that of Plato. All the liberal arts were to be
taught there, but in such a way as that each should bear reference
to religion, for this was regarded as the final end of all learning.
Grammar was studied in order better to understand the Holy Scriptures
and to transcribe them more correctly; music, to which much attention
was given, was chiefly confined to the ecclesiastical chant; and it
was principally to explain the Fathers and refute errors contrary
to the faith that rhetoric and dialectics were studied. “In short,”
says Crevier, “the thought both of the king and of the scholar who
laboured with him was to refer all things to religion, nothing being
considered as truly useful which did not bear some relation to that
end.”[77]

At first Alcuin allowed the study of the classic poets, and in his
boyhood, as we know, he had been a greater reader of Virgil than
of the Scriptures. His writings evince a perfect familiarity with
the ancient poets and philosophers, whom he continually quotes,
and though in his old age he discouraged his monastic pupils from
following this study, it is certain that he allowed and even
advocated it while presiding over the Palatine school. This appears
from one of his familiar epistles to Charlemagne, in which he gives
a lively picture of the labours carried on there by the students and
their masters. One he describes as teaching the lectors of the royal
chapel to read without misplacing their accents; another is training
the boys in sacred chant; Eginhard, who is pronounced “learned in
prosody,” seems to have been idling his time, but Gisla had been
contemplating the stars in the silent night. “_But what crime_,” he
continues, “_has harmonious Virgil committed? Is not the father of
poets worthy of finding a master who shall teach the children of the
palace to admire his verse?_” And he concludes with the hope that
two, whom he names Thyrsis and Menalcas, may long survive to keep the
cooks in order, and supply the writer with large goblets of Greek
wine, and smoking dishes.

In this little _jeu-d’esprit_ we see, in the midst of its playful
allusions to their familiar intercourse, what was the serious
work of the Palatine scholars, and when Alcuin thus wrote he
was certainly far from entertaining those severe views regarding
classical studies which are generally attributed to him. It is true
that at a later period he endeavoured to dissuade his disciple,
Sigulf, from studying what he called, “the impure eloquence of
Virgil,” telling him that the Sacred Scriptures should be enough for
him. He also rebuked Rigbod, Archbishop of Mentz, for carrying Virgil
in his bosom, and wished he would carry in its place the Book of
the Gospels; but it is probable that most ecclesiastics would think
with him that an archbishop might spend his time more profitably
over the Gospels than over the Æneid. Sigulf did not certainly feel
himself obliged literally to carry out the advice of his master, for
in the school of Ferrières, which he afterwards governed, the Latin
poets were very generally studied. He established such a classical
taste among his scholars, that in the next reign we find Lupus of
Ferrières correcting the works of Pliny, and sending to Rome copies
of Suetonius and Quintus Curtius. It is clear, therefore, that
the classics were not absolutely excluded from Alcuin’s system of
education, though in the main Crevier’s account must be allowed to
be correct, and gives a fair statement of the views that prevailed
during the whole of the monastic period. The authors whose study
Charlemagne and Alcuin desired to promote, were not so much Virgil
and Cicero, as St. Jerome and St. Augustine; and Charlemagne, in his
excessive admiration of those Fathers, gave utterance to the wish
that he had a dozen such men at his court. The _City of God_ was read
at the royal table, and the questions addressed by the court students
to their master turned rather on the obscurities of Holy Writ than
the difficulties of prosody. In one thing, however, they betrayed a
classic taste, and that was in their selection of names. The Royal
Academicians all rejoiced in some literary soubriquet; Alcuin was
Flaccus; Angilbert, Homer; but Charlemagne himself adopted the more
scriptural appellation of David.

The eagerness with which this extraordinary man applied himself
to acquire learning for himself, and to extend it throughout his
dominions, is truly admirable, when we remember the enormous labours
in which he was constantly engaged. Hincmar, Bishop of Rheims, has
left us an interesting account of the business of all kinds which he
every day personally investigated. Yet, while the “King of Europe,”
as he was fitly called, was regulating with his own hands the affairs
of a mighty empire, he was patiently pursuing a course of studies
which might have befitted a university student. He spoke and wrote
Latin with facility, and read Greek well, though he was not equally
successful in speaking it. He had some knowledge of Syriac, and
towards the end of his life corrected a Latin copy of the Gospels,
after comparing it with the Greek and Syriac text. He studied all
the liberal arts under Alcuin, and was a true German in his love of
music. He completed the reform of the Church chant, which his father
had attempted, an undertaking rendered somewhat difficult by the
obstinacy of his own singers. It was during the Easter festival of
787, that Charlemagne, being then at Rome, was called on to decide a
dispute which had broken out between the Gallican and Roman chanters.
The Gallicans maintained that their tones were the most beautiful,
whilst the Romans appealed to the teaching of St. Gregory, which
had been jealously preserved in his school, but which, as they
affirmed, the Gallicans had corrupted. The dispute grew warm, for
whilst the fiery Franks, trusting in the king’s protection, loaded
their opponents with abusive epithets, the more refined Romans
took refuge in sarcasm, and affected to pity the rusticity of such
ignorant barbarians. Charlemagne listened to what both parties had
to say, and then addressed his own chanters. “Tell me,” he said,
“where is the stream the purest, at its source or in its channel?”
“In its source, of course,” was the reply. “Well, then,” said the
king, “do you return to the source, for by your own showing, the
corruption lies with you.” This was an argument _ad hominem_, and the
crestfallen Franks were fain to own themselves vanquished. To set the
question at rest for ever, Charlemagne requested Pope Adrian to give
him two chanters from the Gregorian school, and an authentic copy
of the Roman Antiphonary, which Adrian had himself noted according
to the system then established at Rome. The two chanters, Theodore
and Benedict, accordingly accompanied the king back to France, and
were employed to teach the correct chant; and to purge the Gallican
Antiphonaries of their corruptions, Charlemagne established two
schools of music, one at Metz, for Austrasia, and the other at
Soissons, for Neustria, which were each presided over by one of the
Roman teachers; all choir masters were commanded to resort thither
and study under their direction, and to send in their books for
correction, which, up to that time, says the monk of Angoulême, every
one had spoiled after his own fancy.[78]

John the Deacon, who wrote in the following century, and who
evidently exceedingly relished the defeat of the Gallicans,
introduces the whole story of the dispute into his life of St.
Gregory. He observes that the Frankish organs were unable to
express certain tremblings and delicacies of the Italian chant.
“The barbarous harshness of their cracked throats,” he says, “when,
by inflections and reverberations, they endeavoured to emit a
gentle psalmody, out of a certain natural hoarseness sent forth
grating sounds like that of carts on a high road; and thus, instead
of delighting the souls of their hearers, their singing, on the
contrary, rather troubled them, by provoking distractions.”[79] This
is bad enough; but the Monk of Angoulême would have us know that it
was not merely through their ears that the Frankish congregations had
to suffer distractions. The sore distress which one inexperienced
singer endured in his attempt to produce the required “tremblings”
must certainly have severely tried the self-command of those who
witnessed it. “It chanced,” says the historian, “that a certain
clerk, ignorant of the accustomed rules, was called on to figure in
the royal chapel, when, agitating his head in a circular manner, and
opening an enormous mouth, he painfully endeavoured to imitate those
around him.” The choir, of course, was in a suppressed titter, but
Charlemagne, without betraying the slightest token of annoyance or
ridicule, called the unfortunate performer to him after the office
was over, and rewarded his good-will with a handsome present. This
great king often assisted at matins, and indicated with his hand the
clerk who was to sing the lessons, or responsory. It is also said
that he used to mark the end of the motetts with a certain guttural
sound (a _grunt_, his historian calls it), which became the diapason
for the recommencement of the phrase. The use of organs began to be
introduced during his reign, and Walafrid Strabo tells us of a woman
who died of the ecstacy occasioned by first hearing one of these
instruments.

It has been repeatedly asserted that Charlemagne, with all his
learning, never knew how to write. The supposition rests on the
words of his secretary, Eginhard, who says, “He tried to write, and
constantly carried little tablets about him, that in his leisure
moments he might accustom his hand to the drawing (_effigiendis_)
of letters, but he succeeded badly, having applied himself to the
art too late.” Even if this passage is to be understood of the
use of pen and ink, it only informs us that the emperor wrote a
schoolboy’s scrawl, a circumstance not altogether without a parallel
in the history of great men. But the expression of _drawing_
or _delineating_ letters seems rather to apply to the art of
illumination and _ornamental writing_, which properly forms the art
of caligraphy: and this explanation derives additional support from
the fact that Charlemagne was a passionate admirer of painting, and
caused innumerable manuscripts to be adorned with miniatures and
ornaments, many of which are still preserved, the portrait of the
emperor being often introduced. His very camp oratory was painted,
and one of the offices of the envoys, whom he sent at stated periods
through his dominions, was to inspect and report on the state of the
paintings in the churches. His warlike hand very probably wielded
the sword with more address than the pen, and, it may easily be
believed, made sad results with the paint-brush, but that he knew how
to write is sufficiently proved by the copy of the Gospels corrected
by his hand, after he had compared it with the Greek and Syriac text,
which is still preserved at Vienna, and by the direct testimony of
Hincmar.[80]

This prelate, in his account of the Council of Nismes, remarks:
“We have often heard the courtiers of King Charles say that this
prince, who excelled all the other kings of France in knowledge of
the Scriptures and of the civil and ecclesiastical law, always had
at his bed’s head _tablets and pens_, to note down, whether by day
or night, any thoughts that occurred to him that might be useful
to Church or State.” He also presented to the Church of Strasburg
a Psalter, in which his name was written with his own hand;[81]
and it is to be presumed that he himself transcribed his numerous
letters to Alcuin. Among the works of that scholar we find thirty
letters addressed to the king, containing answers to his questions on
theological and scientific subjects. These letters show that Alcuin
had no easy task in satistying the intellectual requirements of a man
who thought of everything, and busied himself equally with history,
chronology, morals, astronomy, grammar, theology, and law. He took a
very special delight in the study of astronomy, and on serene nights
was fond of observing the stars from the roof of his palace. In the
year 798 considerable anxiety was felt both by the king and his
academicians, in consequence of the erratic movements of the planet
Mars, whose disappearance for a whole year it passed their powers
to account for. Alcuin was written to, and entreated to explain the
phenomenon, and his reply shows that he had tested the statements
found in his books by careful astronomical observations. “What has
now happened to Mars,” he says, “is frequently observed of all the
other planets, viz., that they remain longer under the horizon than
is stated in the books of the ancients. The rising and setting of the
stars vary from the observations of those who live in the southern
and eastern parts of the world, where the masters chiefly flourished
who have set forth the laws of the universe.” From these words it may
be gathered that Alcuin was acquainted with the globular form of the
earth, and comprehended the phenomena depending on it. Charlemagne
had some claims to the reputation of a poet, and nine pieces of Latin
poetry from his pen are printed in his works, which are given in the
collection of the Abbé Migne.[82] One of these was an epitaph on his
friend Pope Adrian I., which he desired to have placed over the tomb
of that pontiff, and caused it therefore to be engraved in letters of
gold on a marble tablet, and sent to Rome. These verses, thirty-eight
in number, have attained a singular kind of immortality. The tablet
has been preserved in the portico of St. Peter’s Basilica, where
it may still be seen by the pious visitor, together with another
inscription containing the ancient grant from Pope Gregory II. of
a wood of olives to supply the oil for the lamps burning round the
Apostle’s tomb. All ancient writers are unanimous in declaring these
verses to have been the genuine composition of the emperor, and not
of Alcuin, as some pretend. They bear the title, _Epitaphium Adriani
I., Papæ, quo Carolus Magnus sepulchrum ipsius decoravit_.

But one of the most interesting features in Charlemagne’s
intellectual labours was the attempt he made to perfect his native
language, and give it a grammatical form. He began the composition
of a German grammar, which was afterwards continued by Raban Maur;
the other Palatine scholars joined him in the task, and assigned
to the months and days of the week the names which they still bear
in German. In pursuance of the same design, the emperor made a
collection of old Tudesque songs, some of which he took down from
the lips of his soldiers; but after his death Louis the Debonnaire
found the manuscript, and perceiving the names of Scandinavian
deities, with little appreciation of the importance of the work
on which his great father had been engaged, tossed it into the
fire. There was nothing which Charlemagne had more at heart than
the completion of this undertaking, and he was accustomed to say
that he hoped to see the day when the laws should be written in the
Frankish tongue, comparing the shutting them up in a language of
which the common people were ignorant to the conduct of Caligula,
who caused his edicts to be written in illegible characters, and
placed out of sight, that the people might unconsciously break them
and so incur sentence of death. Alcuin no doubt assisted in this
work, which was one that ever found favour with the English monks.
Even before leaving his native country he is said to have made an
Anglo-Saxon version of the Pentateuch, which was preserved and used
so late as the twelfth century; and he would naturally be disposed
to enter into the king’s designs, and specially to provide for the
religious instruction of the people in their own language. Something
in this direction had already been done in Germany by the followers
of St. Boniface; and early in the eighth century we find formulas
of confession, brief confessions of faith, and portions of psalms
and hymns translated for popular use into the rude Tudesque dialect.
Some of the early German hymns appear to have been written by the
monks of St. Gall, and were used as valuable means of instructing
the people in the elements of religion. Specimens of these are given
by Noth in his history of the German language, and among them is
a fragment of the 138th Psalm. It will of course be borne in mind
that the language spoken by the people of Germany was essentially
the same as that of the English missionaries, who thus possessed
peculiar facilities in preaching and instructing their converts.
Thus the form of abjuration and the confession of faith drawn up
by St. Boniface and his followers, for the use of their German
catechumens, is equally akin to the Anglo-Saxon and to the Tudesque
idioms:--“Forsachister Diabolæ? Ec forsachs Diabolæ. Gelobistu in Got
Almehtigan, Fadaer? Ec Gelobo in Got, Almehtigan Fadaer. Gelobistu
in Crist, Godes suno? Gelobistu in Halsgan Gast?” And when we speak
of Charlemagne as cultivating the Tudesque or old German dialect, it
will also be remembered that the Franks were a German race, and that
what we now call _French_ is not formed from their language, but from
the Romanesque, or corrupt Latin, which prevailed in the southern
provinces of Gaul, as well as in Spain and the north of Italy. As
in course of time the Gallo-Roman element prevailed in France,
the Romance language became universally used, while the Tudesque
remained, as before, the language of the Germans. Hence Verstigan was
not dealing in paradox when he asserted that in old times the English
people all talked French, the Frankish and Saxon dialects being
substantially the same language.

The graver studies of the Palatine scholars were enlivened, after the
fashion of the Anglo Saxon schools, by dialogues, in which enigmas
and a play of words are introduced in tiresome profusion. A curious
fragment exists bearing the title of a disputation between Alcuin and
Pepin, wherein the wits of the pupil are stimulated by the questions
of the master. These exercises, _ad acuendos pueros_, as they were
called, were much used by the English teachers, and specimens of a
similar description are to be found which appear to have been used
so late as the fourteenth century. “What is writing?” asks Alcuin.
“The keeper of history.” “What is speaking?” “The interpreter of
the soul.” “What is the liberty of man?” “Innocence.” “What is the
day?” “The call to labour.” “What is the sun?” “The splendour of the
universe.” “What is winter?” “The exile of spring.” “What is spring?”
“The painter of the earth.” Alcuin says, “I saw the other day a man
standing, a dead man walking, a man walking who had never breathed.”
Pepin. “How can that have been? explain yourself.” Alcuin. “It was my
image reflected in the water.” Pepin. “How could I fail to understand
you? I have often seen the same thing.”

In his letters to the young princes Alcuin freely points out their
faults, and gives them excellent advice. “Seek,” he writes, “to
adorn your noble rank with noble deeds; let humility be in your
heart, and truth on your lips; and let your life be a pattern of
integrity, that so God may be pleased to prosper your days.” The
court school, however, was not intended exclusively for princes and
nobles; children of an inferior rank were also admitted, in order to
receive such an education as might hereafter fit them to fill various
offices in church and state. Charlemagne took this charge on himself,
and afterwards promoted his scholars according to their merits and
ability. We learn this from the following charming narrative related
by the Monk of St. Gall.

“The glorious King Charles,” he says, “returning into Gaul after a
prolonged absence, ordered that all the children whom he caused to
be educated should be brought before him, that they might present
him their compositions in prose and verse. Those of an inferior
and obscure rank had succeeded best, whereas the sons of the nobles
brought nothing of any value. Then the wise prince, separating the
good scholars from the negligent ones, and putting the first on his
right hand, said to them, ‘My children, you may rely on my friendship
and protection, since you have done your best to execute my orders,
and have worked hard according to the best of your abilities. Try
to do yet better, and depend upon it you will receive the most
honourable offices I have to give, and that you will always be
precious in my eyes.’ Then turning to those on his left hand; ‘As to
you,’ he said, ‘born of noble blood, and children of the first houses
in my kingdom, vainly confident in your birth and riches you have
neglected to obey my orders, and have preferred play and idleness to
study, which is the proper glory of your age. But I swear to you,
your noble birth shall find no consideration from me; and if you do
not make up for your indolence by earnest study, you will obtain no
favour from Charles.’”

Some writers, and among them M. Ampère, have considered that after
all that has been said and written about the Palatine school,
there was in reality no school, but only a literary academy. The
probability is that there was both a school and an academy, and that
the two institutions, though not identical, were directed by the same
masters. According to this view, the Palatine _Academy_ was formed
of the friends and courtiers of Charlemagne, while the _School_ was
for the education of youths, chiefly, if not exclusively, intended
for the ecclesiastical state, and chosen from all ranks, noble and
simple. The Monk of St. Gall is decisive on this last point, and
mentions two scholars, the sons of millers, who, after leaving
the emperor’s school, in which they do not seem greatly to have
distinguished themselves, obtained admission into the monastery of
Bobbio. The proofs of the actual existence of this school are in
fact too overwhelming to admit of a doubt. M. Ampère appears to have
been staggered at the notion of a crowd of schoolboys accompanying
the emperor wherever he sojourned. However strange and inconvenient
such a system appears to our notions, the historical evidence is very
strong in proof that it really existed. In the life of St. Adalard,
there are allusions to the _turba clericorum palatii_. Alcuin in
his letters complains not a little of the fatigue occasioned by
this constant journeying. And we know that Otho the Great, whose
revival of a Palatine school was undertaken in avowed imitation of
Charlemagne, always required his scholars to accompany him; and that
his brother Bruno, who superintended their studies, followed the
court, and carried his books with him.

It was then, as we must believe, a real school over which Alcuin
presided, and most French writers claim it as the germ of the
university of Paris. The court of the Frankish monarch was indeed
fixed, not at Paris, but at Aix-la-Chapelle, but it seems to have
been removed to Paris in the reign of Charles the Bald, and there the
Palatine school continued to flourish under a succession of famous
masters, and possibly formed the nucleus of that great institution
which fills so large a place in the history of education.

Meanwhile, his scholastic labours did not so occupy the time of
Alcuin, as to hinder him from devoting himself to the correction of
manuscripts, and the multiplication of books went on apace. A staff
of skilful copyists was gradually formed, and so soon as any work had
been revised by Alcuin and his fellow labourers, it was delivered
over to the hands of the monastic scribes. Particular abbeys, as that
of Fontanelles, acquired renown for the extraordinary accuracy of
their transcribers, and the beauty of their writing. At Rheims and
Corby, also, the monks greatly excelled, and laying aside the corrupt
character which had till then been in use, they adopted the smaller
Roman letters. Rules were made forbidding any man to be employed as a
copyist who had not the knowledge of grammar requisite for enabling
him to avoid errors; and treatises on orthography and punctuation
were drawn up by Alcuin for the special use of his scribes. Libraries
were gradually collected in all the principal monasteries, including
the chief works of the Fathers and the Latin classics. In the library
of St. Riquier, of which abbey Angilbert became superior, we find
a few years later copies of Homer, Virgil, and Cicero; in that of
Rheims, Cæsar, Livy, and Lucan; Dijon possessed a Horace, and at
Montierendes there were the works of Cicero and Terence. The text of
the last-named author was revised and corrected by Alcuin himself,
a fact which confirms what has been before said of his toleration
of the poets. From this time the transcription of books came to be
regarded as one of the ordinary branches of monastic manual work, in
a great degree taking the place of that agricultural labour on which,
in earlier ages, the monks were so generally employed. The real
hard work of head, eyes, and hand, which it involved, was pithily
expressed in the well-known couplet:--

Tres digiti scribunt, totum corpusque laborat,
Scribere qui nesciunt, nullum putant esse laborem.

If the hope of gain stimulated those outside to follow it as a
trade, more spiritual motives were laid before the children of the
cloister. As a work of charity done for the love of God and man,
it was promised an eternal reward, and the persevering toils of
a long life were, it was thought, capable of being offered as an
acceptable work of penance. Meanwhile, the spirit of improvement
was diffusing itself from the court through the whole country. The
Capitulars of Charlemagne--so called because arranged in heads, or
chapters--included amongst various laws for the regulation of the
civil government others which regarded the encouragement of learning.
A circular letter addressed by Charlemagne on his return from Rome
in 787 to all the bishops and abbots of the kingdom, after thanking
them for their letters and pious prayers, proceeded to criticise the
grammar in which these had been expressed. “They who endeavour to
please God by a good life,” writes the king, “should not neglect to
please Him by correct phraseology, and it is well that monasteries
and episcopal seminaries should pay attention to literature as well
as to the practices of religion. It is better indeed to lead a good
life than to become learned; nevertheless knowledge precedes action.
Each one, then, should understand what he is about, and the mind
better comprehends its duty when the tongue in praising God is free
from mistakes of language.” The writer then goes on to notice that
the excellent sentiments of his clergy had been expressed in a rude
and uncouth style; they had been inspired by true devotion, but
the tongue had failed for want of culture. “But if errors in words
are dangerous, much more so are errors in their signification. We
exhort you therefore that you fail not to cultivate learning with
the humble intention of pleasing God, so as more surely to penetrate
the mysteries of the Holy Scriptures. We wish, in short, to see you
what the soldiers of Christ ought to be--devout in heart, learned
in intercourse with the world, chaste in life, and scholars in
conversation--so that all who approach you may be as much enlightened
by your wisdom as they are edified by your holy life.” This was
not allowed to remain an empty recommendation; it was followed by
ordinances for reviving the old monastic and cathedral schools, and
for founding other public schools, the establishment of which forms
the most important feature in Charlemagne’s revival of learning.
In the Benedictine monasteries two kinds of schools had always
existed, or been supposed to exist--the greater and the less. In the
minor schools, according to Trithemius, were taught “the Catholic
faith and prayers, grammar, church music, the psalter, and the
_Computum_, or method of calculating Easter,” while in the major
schools the liberal sciences were also taught. In the Capitular of
Aix-la-Chapelle, published in 789, Charlemagne required that minor
schools should be attached to all monasteries and cathedral churches
without exception, and that children of all ranks, both noble and
servile, should be received into them. At the same time the larger
and more important monasteries were to open major schools, in which
mathematics, astronomy, arithmetic, geography, music, rhetoric, and
dialectics were taught; and these again were of two descriptions.[83]
Some were interior, or claustral, intended only for the junior monks,
while others were exterior, or public, and intended for pupils as
well secular as ecclesiastic. Some monk, qualified by his learning,
was appointed scholasticus, and if none such were to be found in the
community, it was not an uncommon practice to invite a monk from
some other religious house to take charge of the school. A claustral
and an exterior school often existed attached to the same monastery
or cathedral, governed by separate masters, the scholars of the
claustral school forming part of the community, while those of the
exterior school, though subject to a certain claustral discipline,
did not follow the same religious exercises. Lay students were
received in these exterior schools, and that far more extensively
than is commonly supposed, most popular writers having represented
the monastic schools as exclusively intended for those in training
for the religious life, thus confusing together the interior and
exterior schools. Public schools of this kind were erected at Fulda,
St. Gall’s, Tours, Hirsauge, Hirsfield, Gorze, Fleury, L’Isle Barbe,
Fontanelles, and Ferrières, as well as at many other monasteries
and cathedrals, a list of which is given by Mabillon.[84] Bulæus,
indeed, endeavours to show that Charlemagne limited the studies of
the ecclesiastical schools to grammar and sacred learning, and
only permitted the monasteries and episcopal churches to retain the
_minor_ schools, “from the clear view that a variety of sciences,
sacred and profane, is inconsistent with the profession of ascetics.”
He even ventures to put forth the notion that the higher schools
were confined to certain central spots, such as Pavia, Bologna, and
Paris. But Bulæus wrote with an object, which was to magnify his
university at the expense of the monastic schools. We ask ourselves
with surprise where he could have found evidence even for the
existence of any schools at all at Paris and Bologna in the reign of
Charlemagne?[85] And as to limiting the monastics to minor schools,
it may be safely affirmed that the idea of limitation of any kind was
the very last that ever suggested itself to the mind of the emperor.
As Theodulph of Orleans says, he did nothing all his life but urge
forward his monks and bishops in the pursuit of learning. During the
whole Carlovingian period the schools of most repute were certainly
not those of Bologna, Paris, and Pavia. They were the episcopal and
monastic schools of Tours, Fulda, Rheims, St. Gall, and Hirsfield,
the teachers of which were all either monks or canons. The ordinance
of 789 must be clearly understood, not as forbidding ecclesiastics
to study anything but theology, grammar, and church music, but as
rendering it obligatory on them to study _at least_ so much; whilst,
to use the words of Trithemius, “where temporal means were more
abundant, and by reason of the number of the monks, more likelihood
existed of finding one skilled in the teaching of sacred letters,”
the other liberal arts were also required. The monks of those
monasteries in which the higher studies were not taught travelled to
other religious houses, and studied in their public schools; and we
certainly find no trace, however faint, of the principle that the
higher studies were considered unsuitable to ascetics, for, in point
of fact, the ascetics were all but the only scholars of the age.
If lay students were also to be met with--and even, as I think we
shall see, more frequently than is ordinarily acknowledged by modern
historians--yet they were still exceptional cases, and the vast
majority of those who studied, as of those who taught, continued for
centuries to be drawn from the monastic body.

The establishment or revival of the ecclesiastical schools scattered
the seeds of learning broadcast over the Frankish empire. All the
great men whom Charlemagne gathered around him took part in one
way or other in this work. Theodulph, Bishop of Orleans, a Goth by
nation, and an Italian by birth, specially distinguished himself by
his zeal in the establishment of schools throughout his diocese. He
published a Capitular on the duties of priests, in which he permitted
them to send their nephews or other relations to certain schools in
the diocese which were not then regarded as public. He also enjoined
that priests should open schools in villages and rural districts,
“and if any of the faithful should wish to confide their little ones
to him in order to study letters, let him not refuse to receive
and instruct them, but charitably teach them.” This was to be done
gratis, no remuneration being accepted save what might be willingly
offered by the parents. One would gladly know more of the kind of
teaching given in these parochial schools, and specially how far
the children of the peasantry were admitted into them. That village
rustics really went to school and learnt something in the days of
Charlemagne seems, however, past dispute; and among the Capitulars of
the King of Europe we find one which requires the peasants, as they
drive their cattle to pasture and home again, to _sing the canticles
of the Church_, that all men may recognise them as Christians. This
command obviously implied that the Latin canticles were well known to
the peasantry, and probably the conning of church hymns and antiphons
formed a very large portion of their school instruction. Theodulph
was one of the _missi dominici_, or envoys sent by Charlemagne
through the provinces of his empire to inquire into and reform
abuses. On his return from one of these expeditions he published a
poem entitled, “An Exhortation to Judges,” in which he gives a very
remarkable account of his progress through the Narbonnese provinces,
and describes the difficulty he found in resisting the attempts that
were made to bribe him. The proffered bribes were of all kinds--gold
and precious stones, delicately chased vases--which, from the classic
subjects they represented, were doubtless relics of ancient Grecian
art--horses, mules, furs, woollen stuffs, and candles. He refused
everything, however, except food for himself and hay for his horses,
and advises all judges to do in like manner. This was the same
Theodulph whose name is familiar to us as author of the Responsory,
_Gloria, laus et honor_. Having incurred the displeasure of the
Emperor Louis, he was imprisoned by order of that prince at Angers;
but on Palm Sunday as the emperor passed in the solemn procession of
the day by the bishop’s prison walls, Theodulph sang from the window
the words which he had composed, and thereby so touched the heart of
the Debonnaire monarch that he gave him his liberty, and caused the
same anthem to be thenceforth introduced into the office of the day,
of which it still forms a part.

The name of Theodulph is to be had in remembrance not only as a
founder of schools, but also as a writer of school-books. He felt
compassion for young and tender minds condemned to gather all their
knowledge from the dry and unattractive treatises of Priscian, and
Martian Capella, and hit on a plan of his own for rendering them a
little more popular. He composed in easy Latin verse the description
of a supposed tree of science, which he caused moreover to be drawn
and painted, on the trunk and branches of which appeared the seven
liberal arts. At the foot of the tree sat Grammar, the basis of all
human knowledge holding in her hand a mighty rod; Philosophy was
at the summit: Rhetoric stood on the right with outstretched hand,
and on the left the grave and thoughtful form of Dialectics; and
so of the rest. The whole was explained in the _Carmina de septem
artibus_, wherein the good bishop endeavoured with all his might to
scatter the thorny path of learning with the flowers of imagination.
The attempt was at least commendable, and in so great a scholar it
had the gracefulness of condescension, for Theodulph is reported to
have pursued some rare branches of study, and to have had at least a
tincture of Greek and Hebrew.

Other ministers of Charlemagne are also named as actively sharing in
the labours of the Renaissance. Smaragdus, abbot of St. Michael’s, in
the diocese of Verdun, and one of the emperor’s prime councillors,
not only established schools in every part of the diocese, and
specially in his own abbey, but wrote a large Latin grammar for
the use of his scholars. The copy which Mabillon saw preserved in
the abbey of Corby bore on the title-page the words: _In Christi
nomine incipit Grammatici Smaragdi Abbatis mirificus Tractatus._
Then follows a prologue in which the abbot declares that having,
according to his capacity, taught grammar to his monks, they had been
accustomed to transfer the pith of his lectures to their tablets,
that what they took in with their ears they might retain by dint of
frequent reading. And from this they took occasion to conjure him to
write this treatise, which he has done, adorning his little book with
sentences not from Maro or Cicero, but from the Divine Scriptures,
that his readers may at one and the same time be refreshed with the
pleasant drink of the grammatical art and also of the Word of God.
And his reason for doing so has been that many defend their ignorance
by saying that in grammar God is not named, but only pagan names
and examples, and that therefore it is an art rightly and justly
neglected. But he is rather of opinion that we should do as the
Israelites did when they spoiled the Egyptians, and offer to God the
treasures taken from the heathen. He appears to have devoted some
attention to the vulgar dialects, and gives lists of Frank and Gothic
patronymics with their Latin interpretations.[86]

St. Benedict of Anian, the cupbearer of Charlemagne, and afterwards
the great reformer of the Benedictine order, was almost as zealous
in restoring studies as in bringing back regular discipline.
“Everywhere,” says his disciple St. Ardo, “he appointed cantors,
taught readers, established grammar-masters, and those skilled in
sacred letters; also he collected a great multitude of books.”
Nor must we omit to notice the labours of Leidrade, the emperor’s
librarian, and one of the “missi dominici,” who, being appointed
Archbishop of Lyons, addressed a curious letter to his imperial
master, in which he describes the result of his various labours. He
has, by God’s grace, established regular psalmody in his church;
he has schools of singers, and schools of readers, who cannot only
read the Scriptures correctly, but who understand the spiritual
sense of the gospels and the prophecies; some even have attained
to the mystical signification of the books of Solomon and of Job.
He has also done what in him lay to promote the copying of books,
and has built, repaired, and decorated an incredible number of
churches and monasteries. Besides these there was Angilbert, the
favourite minister both of Pepin and Charlemagne, who retiring from
court became abbot of St. Riquier and founder of a noble library;
and Adalhard, the emperor’s cousin, created by him count of the
royal palace, who, out of a holy fear of offending God, and losing
His grace in the seductions of a court atmosphere, took refuge in
the abbey of Corby, where he was eventually chosen abbot. In this
capacity he greatly raised the reputation of the Corby schools.
Paschasius, who wrote his life, says that Adalhard was a most elegant
scholar, having been carefully educated in the Palatine school, and
that he was equally eloquent in the Tudesque and Romanesque dialects
as in Latin, and instructed the common people in their own barbarous
tongues. His literary friends gave him the double surname of Antony
Augustine--Antony from his love of that saint, and Augustine, because
like him he studied to imitate the virtues of all those around him.

Meanwhile Alcuin, who had been master to most of these illustrious
men, ceased not to cherish the hope that he might be suffered to
return to his native land. “The searcher of hearts knows,” he
writes, “that I neither came thither, nor do I continue here for
the love of gold, but only for the necessities of the Church.” Like
a true Englishman his heart clung to his old home, to the memory
of his quiet cell at York, where he had studied Horace and Homer,
undisturbed by other sound than the waving of the branches as they
were shaken by the genial morning breeze, a sound which, he says, did
but stir his mind the more to meditation. The flowery meadows and
murmuring streams of England, the smiling garden of his monastery
full of its May apple blossoms or its July roses, and the abundance
of birds singing in the Yorkshire woods, all these find a place in
the sweet verses in which the English exile paints the beloved scenes
in the midst of which he had passed his childish days;[87] and all
the brilliancy of Charles’s court could not compensate to his mind
for the loss of home. In 790 he was, therefore, permitted to revisit
England, but two years later he was recalled by urgent messages
from the emperor, who desired that he should attend the Council of
Frankfort held to condemn the heresy of Elipandus. Alcuin felt
himself obliged to obey the summons, but he did not bid farewell
to York without testifying the regret with which he tore himself
from its peaceful retirement. “I am yours in life and in death,” he
writes to his brethren, “and it may be that God will have pity on
me, and suffer that you should bury in his old age, him whom in his
infancy you brought up and nourished.” Charlemagne, however, having
regained possession of his favourite scholar, was not to be induced a
second time to give him up; the utmost that poor Alcuin could obtain
was permission to retire from the court to some monastery within
the Frankish dominions. Fulda was too far distant from the royal
residence, and the death of Ithier, abbot of St. Martin’s of Tours,
in 796, enabled the emperor to appoint Alcuin as his successor.

Tours at that time held the first rank among the religious houses
of France, and what with the task of reforming its discipline and
establishing a first-rate school within its walls, Alcuin enjoyed
little of the leisure after which he yearned. He found himself in
fact in possession of a great abbatial lordship, to which were
attached vast revenues and 20,000 serfs. The revenues were expended
by him in foundations of charity, such as hospitals, which earned
for him the gratitude of the people of Tours. He applied himself
to his new duties with unabated energy, enriched his library with
the precious manuscripts he had brought from York, and by his own
teaching raised the school of Tours to a renown which was shared
by none of its contemporaries. In the hall of studies a distinct
place was set apart for the copyists, who were exhorted by certain
verses of their master, set up in a conspicuous place, to mind their
stops, and not to leave out letters. Here were trained most of those
scholars whom we shall have to notice in the following reigns,
such as Rabanus Maurus, the celebrated abbot of Fulda. A letter
addressed by Alcuin to the emperor soon after his establishment
at Tours gives a somewhat bombastical account of his labours, but
the reader will pardon the pedantry of one who had spent all his
life as a schoolmaster. “The employments of your Flaccus in his
retreat,” he says, “are suited to his humble sphere, but they are
neither inglorious nor unprofitable. I spend my time in the halls
of St. Martin, teaching the noble youths under my care: to some
I serve out the honey of the Holy Scriptures; others I essay to
intoxicate with the wine of ancient literature: one class I nourish
with the apples of grammatical studies, and to the eyes of others
I display the order of the shining orbs that adorn the azure
heavens. To others again I explain the mysteries contained in the
Holy Scriptures, suiting my instructions to the capacity of my
scholars, that I may train up many to be useful to the Church of God
and to be an ornament to your kingdom. But I am constantly in want
of those excellent books of erudition which I had collected around
me in my own country, both by the devoted zeal of my master Albert
and my own labour. I therefore entreat your majesty to permit me
to send some of my people into Britain that they may bring thence
flowers into France....” After some lengthy praises of the utility
of learning, he proceeds: “Exhort then, my lord the king, the youth
of your palace to learn with all diligence, that they may make such
progress in the bloom of their youth as will bring honour on their
old age. I also, according to my measure, will not cease to scatter
in this soil the seed of wisdom among your servants, remembering the
words, ‘In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold
not thy hand.’ To do this has been the most delightful employment
of my whole life. In my youth I sowed the seeds of learning in the
flourishing seminaries of my native soil. Now in the evening of my
life, though my blood is less warm within me, I do not cease to
do the same in France, praying to God that they may spring up and
flourish in both countries.” In consequence of this suggestion, a
commission was despatched to England for the purpose of transcribing
some of the treasures of the York library. The French scribes made
copies of the English service books, and that so exactly, that they
took no heed of the geographical distinctions of the two countries,
but copied the pontifical of Archbishop Egbert, and its form for the
anointing and coronation of kings, exactly word for word. Hence in a
Rheims pontifical of the ninth century, still preserved in Cologne
cathedral, the emperor of the Franks is addressed as King of the
Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians--a circumstance which has induced
some modern critics to speculate as to the exact time when the North
of England was subject to the Frankish sceptre. The copies procured
through the industry of these scribes were multiplied at Tours, and
thence dispersed throughout the kingdom. Alcuin’s own works were also
in great demand, specially his elementary treatises on the different
sciences. His other works, which are very numerous, consist chiefly
of theological treatises and commentaries on the Scriptures, some
metaphysical and philosophical writings, and a collection of poems,
among which are the _Eulogium on the Archbishops and the Church
of York_, and the _Elegy on the Destruction of Lindisfarne_, the
latter of which is perhaps the happiest production of his pen, and
evinces the real feeling of a poet. The news of the sad event which
it commemorates excited consternation throughout Europe, but by none
was it received with bitterer sorrow than by the abbot of Tours.
“The man,” he says, “who can think of that calamity without terror,
and who does not cry to God in behalf of his country, has a heart
not of flesh but of stone.” He at once wrote letters of sympathy to
Ethelred, King of Northumbria, and the monks who had escaped from
the sword, which would be sufficient to evince how fondly his heart
still clung to his native land even without the touching apostrophe
which he introduces to his cell at York. What view was taken by
Alcuin of the work of education, to which his whole life was devoted
may be gathered from his treatise on the seven liberal arts, the
introduction to which is cast in the form of dialogue between the
master and his disciples. I will give an extract which may suffice
to show the noble and elevated sentiments which these early scholars
entertained on the subject of learning:--

_Dis._ “O, wise master, we have often heard you repeat that true
philosophy was the science that taught all the virtues, and the only
earthly riches that never left their possessor in want. Your words
have excited in us a great desire to possess this treasure. We wish
to know where the teaching of philosophy will lead us, and by what
steps we may attain to it. But our age is weak and without your help
we shall not be able to mount these steps.”

_Master._ “It will be easy to show you the way of wisdom, provided
you seek it purely for God’s sake to preserve the purity of your own
soul, and for the love of virtue; if you love it for its own sake,
and do not seek in it any worldly honour and glory or, still less,
riches or pleasure.”

_Dis._ “Master, raise us up from the earth where our ignorance now
detains us, lead us to those heights of science where you passed your
own early years. For if we may listen to the fables of the poets,
they would seem to tell us that the sciences are the true banquets of
the gods.”

_Master._ “We read of Wisdom, which is spoken of by the mouth of
Solomon, that she built herself a house and hewed out seven pillars.
Now, although these pillars represent the seven gifts of the Holy
Ghost and the seven Sacraments of the Church, we may also discern
in them the _seven liberal arts_, grammar, rhetoric, dialects,
arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, which are like so many
steps on which philosophers expend their labours, and have obtained
the honours of eternal renown.”

As the school of St. Martin rose in celebrity, it became the resort
of a crowd both of foreigners and natives. Alcuin’s own countrymen in
particular flocked around him, and it would seem that the number of
English scholars who constantly arrived, at last excited the jealousy
of the clergy of Tours. One day as four Frankish priests were
standing at the gate of the monastery, a newly arrived Englishman,
Aigulf by name, passed in, and supposing him to be ignorant of their
language, one of them exclaimed, “There goes another of them! When
shall we be free from these swarms of Britons? They gather round the
old fellow like so many bees!” Aigulf hung his head and blushed; but
when Alcuin heard what had passed he sent for the Frenchmen, and
courteously requested them to sit down, and drink the health of the
young scholar in his best wine. “The old Saxon,” as they called him,
ceased not in his retirement to watch over the interests of learning,
even in the remotest provinces. There was hardly a bishop or abbot of
any distinction who had not at one time or other been his pupil, and
he continued to enjoy and exercise among them the privileged freedom
of an old and honoured master. His letters bear evidence of the
immense range over which his influence extended. In his ninety-fourth
epistle he conjures a young missionary to be always reminding the
parish priests to keep up their schools. Another time he addresses
a bishop, and advises him to return to his own country that he may
set in order good grammar lessons for the children of his diocese.
His fifty-sixth letter is to the English Archbishop of York; and in
it he enters into several useful details; and advises him to have
his school divided into different classes--one for reading, one for
writing, and one for chanting, so as to preserve good order. Then
comes a letter to the Emperor, reminding him to have the Palatine
scholars daily exercised in their learning; arithmetical subtleties
accompany another letter, and some sage observations on the utility
of punctuation, which commendable branch of grammar has, he regrets
to say, been of late much lost sight of. In short, his active mind,
thoroughly Anglo-Saxon in its temper, worked on to the end; labouring
at a sublime end by homely practical details. One sees he is of the
same race with Bede, who wrote and dictated to the last hour of his
life, and when his work was finished, calmly closed his book and died.

It was after the retirement of Alcuin from court, that we must date
the arrival in France of the Irish scholars, Dungal and Clement,
concerning whom the monk of St. Gall relates a story which is treated
as apocryphal by Tiraboschi, though it has found a place in most
earlier histories. He tells us, that having landed on the coast of
France, they excited the curiosity of the people by crying aloud,
“Wisdom to sell! who’ll buy?” The rumour of their arrival reaching
Charlemagne’s ears, he caused them to be brought before him, and
finding them well skilled in letters, retained them both in his
service. Clement remained at Paris and received the direction of the
Palatine school, whilst Dungal was sent to Pavia, where he opened an
academy in the monastery of St. Augustine. Whatever may be thought of
the incident connected with their first appearance in France, there
is no doubt as to their historic identity. Tiraboschi quotes an edict
of the Emperor Lothaire published in 823, for the re-establishment of
public schools in nine of the chief cities of Italy, from which it
appears that Dungal was at the time still presiding over the school
of Pavia. He seems to be the same who, in 811, addressed a long
letter to Charlemagne on the subject of two solar eclipses, which
were expected to take place in the following year, and may be yet
further identified with the _Dungalus Scotorum præcipuus_, who is
noticed in the catalogue of the library of Bobbio, where he at last
retired, bringing with him a great store of books, which he presented
to the monastery. Among them were four books of Virgil, two of Ovid,
one of Lucretius, and a considerable number of the Greek and Latin
fathers.

As to Clement, there is no difficulty in tracing his career. He seems
to have been deeply imbued with the learned mysticism of the school
of Toulouse, and in a treatise on the eight parts of speech, which
is still preserved, quotes the rules of the grammarian Virgil, and
the writings of the noble doctors Glengus, Galbungus, Eneas, and
the rest. Alcuin complained much of the disorder introduced into
the Studies of the court school after his departures. “I left them
Latins,” he exclaimed, “and now I find them Egyptians.” This was a
double hit at the gibberish of the twelve Latinites, which Alcuin
could not abide, and at the hankering which the Irish professors
always displayed, both in science and theology, for the teaching of
the school of Alexandria, many of them having embraced the peculiar
views of the Neo-Platonists. The Egyptians, however, found a welcome
at the court of Charlemagne in spite of their eccentricities; for
there no one was ever coldly received who could calculate eclipses,
or charm the ears of the learned monarch with Latin hexameters. And
it is perhaps to one of these Irish professors that we must attribute
those verses preserved by Martene, and professing to be written by an
“Irish exile,” which contain such agreeable flattery of the Frankish
sovereign and of his people, and which were presented to the emperor
as he held one of those solemn New-year courts, at which his subjects
vied one with another in offering him jewels, tissues, horses, and
bags of money. And perhaps, to his mind, the graceful lines that
celebrated the Frankish people as “a race of kings come forth from
the walls of Troy, into whose hands God had delivered the empire of
the world,” were more acceptable than even the glittering heaps of
the precious metals.

Charlemagne did his utmost to draw Alcuin once more to his side, and
specially pressed him to accompany him on his visit to Rome, in the
year 800, when he received the imperial crown. But Alcuin was not to
be moved by his arguments and entreaties, though he did not refuse
to quit his retirement at the call of real duty. In 799 he attended
the council of Aix-la-Chapelle, to oppose in person the heretical
teacher, Felix of Urgel, who, together with Elipandus, had revived
the Nestorian heresy in a new shape. After a disputation of six days,
Felix owned himself vanquished, and frankly renounced his errors.
This was perhaps the most glorious moment in Alcuin’s life; but he
only used the credit which he had thus obtained with his sovereign
to solicit permission to resign all his preferments into the hands
of his disciples, that he might spend the remainder of his life in
retirement. Frèdegise, therefore, succeeded him in the abbacy of St.
Martin’s, and Sigulf in that of Ferrières. “I have made all things
over into the hands of my sons,” writes the old man, rejoicing in
his late-earned freedom, “and laying down the burden of the pastoral
care, I wait quietly at St. Martin’s until my change shall come.”

The short remainder of his life was spent in the humblest exercises
of charity and devotion. He chose the place of his interment and
often visited it with disciples, and his letters show him to have
been incessantly occupied with the great thought of his approaching
end. It came at last, and on the morning of Whitsunday, May 19, 804,
the great scholar passed gently and happily to the eternity he had
so long contemplated. Charlemagne mourned his death as that of a
friend and master, and before his final departure addressed him some
Latin verses, which, if not distinguished for much poetical merit,
at least do justice to the honest affection that dictated them. He
survived Alcuin ten years, and was buried in the royal “chapel”[88]
that he had erected as the place of his sepulture, not reclining in
a coffin, but seated on his throne, with the crown on his brow, the
sceptre in his hand, his good sword Joyeuse by his side, and the book
of the Gospels resting on his knees. And a brief inscription marked
the spot where rested all that was mortal of “the great and orthodox
emperor.”

_CHAPTER VI._

THE CARLOVINGIAN SCHOOLS.

A.D. 804 TO 900.

The death of Alcuin in no degree checked the intellectual movement
to which he had communicated the first impulse. He had fairly done
his work; and even after his death his influence survived in the
disciples whom he had so carefully trained and who long supplied the
public schools of the empire with a succession of excellent masters.
St. Martin’s of Tours, indeed, declined under the government of
Fredegise, and the Palatine scholars themselves did not pass into
the best hands. After Alcuin’s withdrawal from court the school of
the palace fell, as we have seen, first under the management of the
Irishman Clement, who had a fancy for changing the whole method
of instruction, and then under that of Claud, Bishop of Turin, a
man of audacious opinions, the only one of the Western bishops who
declared in favour of the Iconoclasts, and who likewise took up the
heretical tenets of Felix of Urgel. The school continued to decline
during the whole reign of Louis le Debonnaire; but it revived under
his son and successor Charles the Bald, who followed the example of
his illustrious grandfather, and gathered around him learned men
from all countries, especially from England and Ireland. The crowds
of scholars who flocked from the latter island is noticed by Henry
of Auxerre, who says, that it seemed as if Ireland herself were
about to pass over into Gaul, and it became a proverb during the
reign of this monarch, that instead of speaking of the school of the
palace, one should rather call the royal residence the palace of the
schools. Charles was not merely an encourager of humane letters;
he possessed a certain philosophical turn of mind which led him to
indulge in abstruse speculations, and to encourage similar tastes
in those around him. He addressed a capitular to the bishops of his
kingdom, questioning them on their opinions as to the immateriality
of the soul; and he placed at the head of his royal school a scholar
more famous for the subtlety of his intellect than the orthodoxy
of his views. John Scotus Erigena, an Irishman by birth, had early
applied himself to the study of the Greek language and philosophy,
and had embraced the chief doctrines of the Neo-Platonic school.
He astonished the Western world by his translation of the works of
St. Denys the Areopagite, an achievement which the Roman scholars,
who still regarded their Transalpine neighbours as essentially
barbarians, could hardly be brought to credit, and which exhorted
compliments from Anastasius, the papal librarian, and some complaints
from Pope Nicholas I., who would have been better pleased had the
work been first submitted to ecclesiastical approval. Erigena’s free
opinions won him no disfavour with Charles the Bald; nevertheless
certain controversies, of which we shall have to speak hereafter,
and in which he took an active part, drew from him the expression
of heterodox sentiments which excited no little scandal. This was
increased by the publication of his philosophical treatise, “_De
Natura Rerum_,” in which he plainly put forth the doctrines of the
Greek Platonists, and represented the Creator and the creature as
essentially one and the same. Besides this radical Pantheistic error,
which runs through all his works, his views on the subject of the
supremacy of reason over authority are liberal in the extreme.[89]
“Authority,” he says, “emanates from reason, not reason from
authority; true reason has no need to be supported by any authority.
We must use reason first in our investigations and authority
afterwards.” He also affirmed that the substance of man was his will.
The only punishment of sin, he says, is sin; there is no eternal
fire; even the lost enjoy a certain happiness, for they are not
deprived of truth. These, and a thousand equally unsound passages,
raised him a crowd of adversaries, all of whom he treated with that
supercilious contempt which would seem necessarily to enter into the
character of the scholastic heretic. “They are all deceived,” he
writes, “owing to their ignorance of liberal studies; they have none
of them studied Greek, and with a knowledge of the Latin language
alone it is impossible for them to understand the distinctions of
science.”

In 855 the Council of Valence, nothing dismayed at having to deal
with a foe who was acquainted with Greek, examined his writings,
declared certain propositions extracted from his treatise on
Predestination to be the invention of the devil, and everywhere
interdicted them from being read. Nevertheless, Erigena was not
removed from his post at court; nor was it until ten years later,
in 865, that he found himself obliged to retire, in consequence of
the remonstrances addressed to the king by Pope Nicholas I., who
required his removal from the Palatine academy, “where he was giving
poison instead of bread, and mingling his tares with the wheat.”
All authorities agree in regarding him as intellectually superior
to any man of his age, though it is possible that his heterodox
principles have had some share in winning him the extraordinary
favour which he has found at the hands of Hallam and Guizot, who
are willing, naturally enough, to make the most of one who in the
Dark Ages set at nought the claims of authority, and raised the
standard of independent reason. In spite, however, of the prominent
position which he holds among men of letters, and the noisy eulogiums
which have been heaped on him at the expense of his more orthodox
contemporaries, I shall say no more of him in this place than that he
withdrew from Gaul,[90] and was succeeded in his office as Palatine
scholasticus by the monk Mannon, who, after teaching with success for
some years, returned to his monastery at Condat; after which we hear
no more of the Palatine school till its revival, at the beginning of
the tenth century, under the famous Remigius of Auxerre.

But the Palatine school by no means held the most important place in
the educational institutions bequeathed by Charlemagne to the empire.
The work begun by Alcuin was being far more successfully carried out
in the monastic schools, especially those of Fulda, Rheims, and the
two Corbys. The abbey of Fulda, mindful of its great origin, was one
of the first to enter heartily into the revival of letters initiated
by Charlemagne; and in order to fit the monks for the work to which
they were called, it was resolved to send two of the younger brethren
to study under Alcuin himself at Tours, that after being there imbued
with all the liberal arts, they might return to their own monastery
as teachers. The two chosen for this purpose were Hatto and Rabanus,
and they accordingly began their studies at St. Martin’s in 802. The
name of Maurus was bestowed by Alcuin on his favourite disciple,
and was afterwards retained by Rabanus in addition to his own. He
studied both sacred and profane sciences, as appears from the letter
he addressed many years later to his old schoolfellow, Haimo, Bishop
of Halberstadt, in which he reminds him of the pleasant days they had
spent together in studious exercises, reading, not only the Sacred
books, and the expositions of the Fathers, but also investigating
all the seven liberal arts. In 813, being then twenty-five years of
age, Rabanus was recalled to Fulda, by the abbot Ratgar, and placed
at the head of the school, with the strict injunction that he was
to follow in all things the method of his master Alcuin. The latter
was still alive, and addressed a letter to the young preceptor,
which is printed among his other works, and is addressed to “the boy
Maurus,” in which he wishes him good luck with his scholars. His
success was so extraordinary that the abbots of other monasteries
sent their monks to study under him, and were eager to obtain his
pupils as professors in their own schools. The German nobles also
gladly confided their sons to his care, and he taught them with
wonderful gentleness and patience. He carried out the system which
had been adopted by Alcuin of thoroughly exercising his scholars in
grammar before entering on the study of the other liberal arts. “All
the generations of Germany,” says Trithemius, “are bound to celebrate
the praise of Rabanus, who first taught them to articulate the sound
of Greek and Latin.” At his lectures every one was trained to write
equally well in prose or verse on any subject placed before him, and
was afterwards taken through a course of rhetoric, logic, and natural
philosophy, according to the capacities of each. From this time the
school of Fulda came to be regarded as one of the first monastic
seminaries of Europe, and held a rank at least equal to that of St.
Gall. It had inherited the fullest share of the Anglo-Saxon spirit,
and exhibited the same spectacle of intellectual activity which we
have already seen working in the foundations of St. Bennet Biscop.
Every variety of useful occupation was embraced by the monks; while
some were at work hewing down the old forest which a few years before
had given shelter to the mysteries of Pagan worship, or tilling
the soil on those numerous farms which to this day perpetuate the
memory of the great abbey in the names of the towns and villages
which have sprung up on their site,[91] other kinds of industry were
kept up within doors, where the visitor might have beheld a huge
range of workshops in which cunning hands were kept constantly busy
on every description of useful and ornamental work in wood, stone,
and metal. It was a scene, not of artistic _dilettanteism_, but of
earnest, honest labour, and the treasurer of the abbey was charged to
take care that the sculptors, engravers, and carvers in wood, were
always furnished with plenty to do. Passing on to the interior of the
building the stranger would have been introduced to the scriptorium,
over the door of which was an inscription warning the copyists to
abstain from idle words, to be diligent in copying good books, and to
take care not to alter the text by careless mistakes. Twelve monks
always sat here employed in the labour of transcription, as was also
the custom at Hirsauge, a colony sent out from Fulda in 830; and
the huge library which was thus gradually formed, survived till the
beginning of the seventeenth century, when it was destroyed in the
troubles of the thirty years’ war. Not far from the scriptorium was
the interior school, where the studies were carried on with an ardour
and a largeness of views, which might have been little expected
from an academy of the ninth century. Our visitor, were he from the
more civilised south, might well have stood in mute surprise in the
midst of these fancied barbarians, whom he would have found engaged
in pursuits not unworthy of the schools of Rome. The monk Probus is
perhaps lecturing on Virgil and Cicero, and that with such hearty
enthusiasm that his brother professors accuse him, in good-natured
jesting, of ranking them with the saints. Elsewhere disputations are
being carried on over the Categories of Aristotle, and an attentive
ear will discover that the controversy which made such a noise in
the twelfth century, and divided the philosophers of Europe into
the rival sects of the Nominalists and Realists, is perfectly well
understood at Fulda, though it does not seem to have disturbed the
peace of the school. To your delight, if you be not altogether wedded
to the dead languages, you may find some engaged on the uncouth
language of their father-land, and, looking over their shoulders, you
may smile to see the barbarous words which they are cataloguing in
their glossaries; words, nevertheless, destined to reappear centuries
hence in the most philosophic literature of Europe. The monks of
Fulda derive their scholastic traditions from Alcuin and Bede, and
cannot, therefore, neglect a study of the vernacular. Yet they are,
I am sorry to say, beset with one weakness common to the scholars
of the time, and are ashamed of their Frankish and Saxon names;
and Hatto, Bruno, and Rechi, three of the best pupils of Rabanus,
are known in his academy under the Latin soubriquets of Bonosus,
Candidus, and Modestus. Brower, in his “Antiquities of Fulda,” has
depicted the two last-named scholars from an illuminated manuscript
of their monastery in which their portraits are introduced. Candidus,
the assistant of Rabanus in the school, holds a book in one hand
while with the other he points out to Modestus a passage on the
page before him. From the open lips and extended hand of his pupil
we surmise that he is reciting the words thus indicated. Both are
clothed in the tunic without sleeves, scapular, and large capuce
which then formed the Benedictine habit. It may be added that
the school of Fulda would have been found ordered with admirable
discipline. Twelve of the best professors were chosen and formed a
council of seniors or doctors, presided over by one who bore the
title of Principal, and who assigned to each one the lectures he was
to deliver to the pupils.

In the midst of this world of intellectual life and labour, Rabanus
continued for some years to train the first minds of Germany, and
counted among his pupils the most celebrated men of the age, such as
Lupus of Ferrières, Walafrid Strabo, and Ruthard of Hirsauge, the
latter of whom was the first who read profane letters to the brethren
of his convent “after the manner of Fulda.” Lupus was a monk of
Ferrières, where he had been carefully educated by the abbot Aldric,
who was a pupil of Sigulf, and had acted for some time as assistant
to Alcuin in the school of Tours. Aldric afterwards became Archbishop
of Sens, and sent Lupus to complete his education at Fulda, under
Rabanus. Like all the scholars of Ferrières, Lupus had a decided
taste for classical literature; the love of letters had been, to use
his own expression, innate in him from a child, and he was considered
the best Latinist of his time. His studies at Fulda were chiefly
theological, and he applied to them with great ardour, without,
however, forgetting “his dear humanities.” It would even seem that
he taught them at Fulda, thus returning one benefit for another. The
monastery was not far from that of Seligenstadt, where Eginhard,
the secretary and biographer of Charlemagne, was their abbot. A
friendship, based on similarity of tastes, sprang up between him and
Lupus, and was maintained by a correspondence, much of which is still
preserved. Lupus always reckoned Eginhard as one of his masters; not
that he directly received any lessons from him, but on account of
the assistance which the abbot rendered him by the loan of valuable
books. In one of his earliest letters to this good friend he begs for
a copy of Cicero’s “Rhetoric,” his own being imperfect, as well as
for the “Attic Nights” of Aulus Gellius, which were not then to be
found in the Fulda library. In another letter, he consults him on the
exact prosody of certain Latin words, and begs him to send the proper
size of the Uncial letters used in manuscripts of that century.

Among the fellow-students of Lupus at this time was Walafrid Strabo,
a man of very humble birth, whose precocious genius had early made
him known in the world of letters. In spite of the unfortunate
personal defect which earned him his surname of Strabo, (or the
lame), Walafrid’s Latin verses had gained him respect among learned
men at the age of fifteen, and they are favourably noticed even
by critics of our own time. He had received his early training
in the monastery of Reichnau, the situation of which was well
fitted to nurture a poetic genius. His masters had been Tetto and
Wettin, the latter of whom was author of that terrible “Vision of
Purgatory” which left an indelible impress on the popular devotion of
Christendom. From Reichnau he was sent by his superiors to study at
Fulda, where he acquired a taste for historical pursuits, and is said
to have assisted in the compilation of the annals of the monastery.
It was out of the Fulda library that he collected the materials for
his great work, the Gloss, or Commentary on the Text of Scripture,
gathered from the writings of the Fathers. It received many additions
and improvements from subsequent writers, and, for more than six
hundred years, continued to be the most popular explanation of the
Sacred text in use among theologians. Returning to Reichnau, Walafrid
was appointed to the office of scholasticus, and filled it with
such success as fairly to establish the reputation of that monastic
school. Ermanric, one of his pupils, says of him, that to the end
of his life he continued to exhibit the same delightful union of
learning and simplicity which had endeared him to his masters and
school-fellows. Even after he was appoined abbot, he found his chief
pleasure in study, teaching, and writing verses, and would steal
away from the weightier cares of his office to take a class in his
old school and expound to them a passage of Virgil. Neither old age
nor busy practical duties dried up the fount of Abbot Walafrid’s
inspiration, and we find him in his declining years writing his poems
entitled “_Hortulus_,” wherein he describes with charming freshness
of imagery, the little garden blooming beneath the window of his
cell, and the beauty and virtue of the different flowers which he
loved to cultivate with his own hands.

Another of the Fulda scholars contemporary with those named above,
was Otfried, a monk of Weissemburg, who entered with singular
ardour into the study of the Tudesque dialect. Rabanus himself
devoted much attention to this subject, and composed a Latin and
German glossary on the books of Scripture, together with some other
etymological works, among which is a curious treatise on the origin
of languages. Otfried took up his master’s favourite pursuits with
great warmth, and the completion of Charlemagne’s German grammar
is thought to be in reality his work, though generally assigned to
Rabanus. On retiring to his own monastery, where he was charged with
the direction of the school, he continued to make the improvement
of his native language the chief object of his study. A noble zeal
prompted him to produce something in the vernacular idiom which
should take the place of those profane songs, often of heathen
origin, which had hitherto been the only production of the German
muse. Encouraged by a certain noble lady named Judith, to whom
he confided his ideas, he conceived the plan of rendering into
Tudesque verse the most remarkable passages from the Life of Our
Lord, which he chose so happily, and wove together with so skilful
a hand, that his work may be regarded as a Harmony of the Gospel
narrative. It was accompanied with four dedicatory epistles, in one
of which, addressed to Luitbert, Archbishop of Mentz, he complains
of the neglect with which the Franks have hitherto treated their own
language. Prudentius, Juvencus, and other Latin writers had written
the Acts of the Lord in Latin verse, wherefore he now desired to
attempt the same in his mother tongue. “I wish,” he says, “to write
the Gospels, the history of our salvation, in the Frankish tongue.
Now, therefore, let all men of good-will rejoice, and let those of
the Frankish tongue also rejoice, and be glad, since we have lived
to celebrate the praises of Christ in the language of our fathers.”
The other epistles were addressed to the Emperor Louis, and to some
of the monks of St. Gall, who were celebrated for the labour which
they bestowed on the cultivation of the Tudesque dialect, and could
therefore appreciate Otfried’s work at its full value. It had the
effect which he anticipated; his verses became familiar in the mouths
of those who had hitherto been acquainted only with the rude songs
of their pagan ancestors, and dispelled much of the prejudice which
existed against the use of the barbarous dialects for the purpose of
religious instruction. And in 847, three months after Rabanus was
raised to the see of Mentz, a decree was published by the provincial
council, requiring every bishop to provide himself with homilies for
the instruction of the people, translated out of Latin into Tudesque
or Romanesque (as the Rustic Latin was sometimes called), that they
might be understood by rude and ignorant persons.

The character of Rabanus may be gathered from that of his pupils.
He was in every respect a true example of the monastic scholar, and
took St. Bede for the model on which his own life was formed. All
the time not taken up with religious duties he devoted to reading,
teaching, writing, or “feeding himself on the Divine Scriptures.” The
best lesson he gave his scholars was the example of his own life, as
Eginhard indicates in a letter written to his son, then studying as
a novice at Fulda. “I would have you apply to literary exercises,”
he says, “and try as far as you can to acquire the learning of your
master, whose lessons are so clear and solid. But specially imitate
his holy life.... For grammar and rhetoric and all human sciences
are vain and even injurious to the servants of God, unless by Divine
grace they know how to follow the law of God; for science puffeth up,
but charity buildeth up. I would rather see you dead than inflated
with vice.”

Nevertheless, the career of Rabanus was far from being one of
unruffled repose, and the history of his troubles presents us with
a singular episode in monastic annals. The abbot Ratgar was one of
those men whose activity of mind and body was a cross to every one
about him. He could neither rest himself nor suffer anybody else to
be quiet. The ordinary routine of life at Fulda, with its prodigious
amount of daily labour, both mental and physical, did not satisfy
the requirements of his peculiar organisation. He had a fancy for
rearranging the whole discipline of the monastery, and was specially
desirous of providing himself with more splendid buildings than
those which had been raised by the followers of the humble Sturm.
Every one knows that the passion for building has in it a directly
revolutionary element; it is synonymous with a passion for upsetting,
destroying, and reducing everything to chaos. Hence, the monks of
Fulda had but an uncomfortable time of it, and what was worse, Ratgar
was so eager to get his fine buildings completed, that he not only
compelled his monks to work as masons, but shortened their prayers
and masses, and obliged them to labour on festivals. Rabanus himself
could claim no exemption; he had to exchange the pen for the trowel;
and to take away all possibility of excuse, Ratgar deprived him
of his books, and even of the private notes which he had made of
Alcuin’s lectures. Rabanus was too good a monk to protest against his
change of employment, and carried his bricks and mortar as cheerfully
as ever he had applied himself to a copy of Cicero; but he did
not conceive it contrary to religious obedience humbly to protest
against the confiscation of his papers, and attempted to soften the
hard heart of his abbot with a copy of verses. “O sweet father!” he
exclaims, “most excellent shepherd of monks! I thy servant pray thee
to be propitious, and to let thy tender pity hear me, who cry to thee
though unworthy. O ever-compassionate Ruler! thy kindness in old time
permitted me to study books, but the poverty of my understanding was
a hindrance to me; and lest my wandering mind should lose all that my
master taught me by word of mouth, I committed everything to writing.
These writings in time formed little books, which I pray thee command
to be returned to thy unworthy client. Whatever slaves possess is
held by right of their masters, therefore all that I have written is
thine by right. Nor do I petulantly claim these papers as my own,
but defer all things to thy judgment; and whether thou grantest my
petition or not, I pray God to grant thee all good things, and help
thee to finish the good fight by an honourable course.”

Such a petition, so just, so modest, and so free from the least
tinge of insubordination might have been thought capable of touching
the hardest heart, but, says Rudolf his biographer, “he sang to a
stone.” The building grievance at last grew to such a pitch, that
the monks in despair appealed to Charlemagne, who summoned Ratgar
to court to answer their charges, and appointed a commission of
bishops and abbots to inquire into the whole matter. Their decision
allayed the discord for a time, and so long as the emperor lived,
Ratgar showed his monks some consideration. But no sooner was he
dead than the persecution recommenced, and Rabanus, again deprived
of his books and papers, seems to have consoled himself by making
a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He describes the unhappy state of Fulda
at this time, in some very doleful verses addressed to one of the
exiled monks; for, not content with overwhelming his brethren with
fresh labours, Ratgar had turned many out of the monastery, chiefly
the aged ones, whose temperate remonstrances annoyed him. We have
in these verses a touching account of the farewell visit paid by
the exiles before their departure to the tomb of St. Boniface, whom
they conjured to intercede in their favour. Some of them did not
rest content with a course of passive submission, but repaired once
more to court and implored the Emperor Louis to apply some remedy to
the abuses, which threatened to end in the disruption of the first
religious house in his dominions. A new commission was therefore
appointed, and the result was that Ratgar was deposed from office
and banished from the monastery, while in his place was elected the
holy and gentle St. Eigil, a disciple of St. Sturm, whose government
presented a singular contrast to that of the harsh and haughty
Ratgar. He did nothing without consulting his brethren, and made it
his aim to heal the wounds which a long course of ill-treatment had
opened in the community. To set his children an example of humility
and paternal concord, he often served them at table, and especially
during the feast of Christmas. In his overflowing love and charity,
he petitioned, as a personal favour, that they would consent to
the recall of poor Ratgar, and on his return it appeared that his
humiliation had not been without a beneficial effect. He showed no
disposition to disturb the peace of the community again, but as the
twofold desire of commanding and of building was not wholly eradicted
from his soul, they let him satisfy it in moderation, by constructing
a small monastery on an adjoining hill, to which he afterwards
removed himself. He seems to have made a good end, asking pardon of
all those whom he had offended, and Fulda very soon recovered its
former flourishing condition. Rabanus was restored to his books and
his school immediately on the election of St. Eigil, and in 822,
on the death of the good abbot, whose life was written by the monk
Candidus, Rabanus was chosen his successor. To him this was a very
sorrowful business, for, with the government of a community of one
hundred and fifty monks on his hands, he was necessarily obliged
to give up his scholars. He resigned them to the care of Candidus,
in all that concerned the humane letters, reserving to himself,
however, the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. Singularly
enough, however, the man whose whole life had been passed in literary
labour, evinced a talent for business not always found united to
great scholarship. He kept up regular discipline, and put all the
offices of the abbey in a state of thorough efficiency, completing
many of the half-finished buildings of Ratgar, and enriching his
treasury with a vast quantity of holy relics. He also looked so well
after the farms and dependencies of the abbey as greatly to increase
its revenues. Still the school was not neglected, and the lectures
he delivered there were destined to be the seeds of a work important
in the history of ecclesiastical literature. His pupils had been
accustomed from time to time to ask him questions on the chief duties
of ecclesiastics and their signification, and the proper manner of
administering the Rites of Holy Church. His answers they noted down
on their tablets, without, however, observing much method, and as
the matter constantly increased in bulk and value, they begged him
at length to revise their notes and arrange them in better order.
The result was his celebrated Treatise _De Institutione Clericorum_,
an invaluable monument of the faith and practice of the Church in
the ninth century. It treats in three books of the Sacraments, the
Divine office, the feasts and fasts of the Church, and the learning
necessary for ecclesiastics, concluding with instructions and rules
for the guidance of preachers. On the last subject he observes that
three things are necessary in order to become a good preacher; first,
to be a good man yourself, that you may be able to teach others
to be so; secondly, to be skilled in the Holy Scriptures and the
interpretations of the Fathers; thirdly, and above all, to prepare
for the work of preaching by that of prayer. As to the studies proper
to ecclesiastics, he distinctly requires them to be learned not only
in the Scriptures, but also in the seven liberal arts, provided only
that these are treated as the handmaids of theology, and he explains
his views on this subject much in the same way as Bede had done
before him. For the rest, he was an enemy to anything like narrowness
of intellectual training. His own works, in prose and verse, embraced
a large variety of subjects, some of them belonging to mystic
theology, such as his book on the Vision of God and his poem on the
Holy Cross, which, in spite of its inaccurate prosody, still raises
the admiration of the reader from the elevation of its sentiments. He
is also commonly reputed the author of the “Veni Creator.”

In 847, Rabanus was raised to the archiepiscopal see of Mentz, in
which office he was called on to examine the errors of Gotteschalk,
a man who, beginning life as a monk of Fulda, had quitted that
monastery in disgust, and subsequently led a wandering and not
very reputable life, though he appears to have considered himself
attached to the monastery of Orbais. The opinions he broached on
the subject of predestination being condemned by the council of
Mentz, Rabanus sent him to his own metropolitan, Hincmar, Archbishop
of Rheims. The severity with which he was treated was disapproved
even by many who condemned his doctrines, and a warm controversy
arose, in the course of which Hincmar, who was far more a man of
action than of the pen, bethought himself of employing on his side
of the argument the genius of Scotus Erigena, then at the head of
the Palatine school. Erigena was as yet only known to the learned
world as a Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic scholar, and a man of surpassing
wit and power of argument. His heterodox tendencies were not even
suspected, and Hincmar congratulated himself on having engaged the
services of one confessedly without a rival in the arena of letters.
But his choice of an ally proved most unfortunate. Erigena opened
fire on the opposite party with the assertion, characteristic enough
of the self-sufficient sophist, that every question, on every
imaginable subject, was capable of solution when submitted to the
four philosophic rules of division, definition, demonstration, and
analysis. To work he went, therefore, with his four rules, and while
combating the ultra-predestination of Gottischalk, gave utterance to
such free opinions on the subject of Divine Grace as raised against
him all the theologians of France. Among these were St. Prudentius
of Troyes, Amolan, Archbishop of Lyons, a Hebrew scholar whose wise
and moderate manner of dealing with the subject aimed at refuting
the errors of both the opposite partisans, and his successor,
St. Remigius. The opinions put forth by Scotus had increased the
difficulties of the question, and writers thickened on both sides.
It is needless to say that neither Rabanus nor Hincmar were any way
responsible for the errors broached by Scotus; nevertheless, the
line of argument which they took did not satisfy the theologians
of Valence and Lyons, and in the course of the controversy which
troubled his declining years, Rabanus found himself opposed by his
former pupil, Lupus of Ferrières. He died in 856, leaving his books
to be equally divided between the abbeys of Fulda and St. Alban’s, of
Mentz.

Meanwhile, Lupus of Ferrières had become abbot of his monastery, for
Sigulf in his old age resigned his dignity, and chose to become the
disciple of his former pupil. Lupus continued after his promotion
to carry on his labours in the monastic school. The favour with
which he was regarded by Charles the Bald was the occasion of much
trouble to the poor scholar, who was constantly summoned to act as
royal ambassador, and sometimes even to join the army and take part
in active war. His monastery happened to be one of those which owed
the king military service, and in an action fought in Angoumois
between Charles and his nephew Pepin, Lupus, who had no taste at all
for the life of a soldier, lost all his baggage and found himself a
prisoner. So soon as he recovered his liberty he addressed a moving
letter to the king, imploring him to set him free henceforth from
his military engagements at any price. “Most willingly,” he says,
“will I resume the office of professor in my monastery, for I desire
nothing better than all my life to teach what I have learnt.” Charles
appears to have seen that by persisting in his feudal claims he would
only be making a very bad soldier out of an admirable scholar, so he
suffered him to return to Ferrières, where he set about collecting
a noble library, as well sacred as profane. As he wrote himself to
Einard, he never grew weary of books; he took extraordinary pains
in seeking for his treasures even in distant countries, in causing
them to be transcribed, and sometimes in lovingly transcribing them
himself. His interesting correspondence contains frequent allusions
to these Bibliographical researches. At one time he asks a friend
to bring him the “Wars of Catiline and of Jugurtha” by Sallust, and
the “Verrines of Cicero.” At another, he writes to Pope Benedict
III., begging him to send by two of his monks, about to journey to
Rome, certain books which he could not obtain in his own country,
and which he promises to have speedily copied and faithfully
returned. They are, the “Commentaries of St. Jerome on Jeremias,”
“Cicero de Oratore,” the twelve books of Quinctilian’s Institutes,
and the “Commentary of Donatus on Terence.” With all his taste for
the classics, however, Lupus had too much good sense not to see the
importance of cultivating the barbarous dialects, and sent his nephew
with two other noble youths to Prom, to learn the Tudesque idiom.[92]
In his school he made it his chief aim to train his pupils, not only
in grammar and rhetoric, but also in the higher art of a holy life.
The monastic seminaries were proverbially schools of good living as
well as good learning, _recte faciendi et bene dicendi_, as Mabillon
expresses it; and there was nothing that Lupus had more at heart
than the inculcation of this principle, that the cultivation of head
and heart must go together. “We too often seek in study,” he writes
in his epistle to the monk Ebradus, “nothing but ornament of style;
few are found who desire to acquire by its means purity of manners,
which is of far greater value. We are very much afraid of vices
of language, and use every effort to correct them, but we regard
with indifference the vices of the heart.” His favourite Cicero had
before his time lifted a warning voice against the capital error of
disjoining mental from moral culture, and in the Christian system of
the earlier centuries they were never regarded apart.

Lupus was not too great a scholar to condescend to labour for
beginners, and drew up, for the benefit of his pupils, an abridgment
of Roman history, in which he proposes the characters of Traian
and Theodosius for the study of Christian princes. He was wont to
boast of his double descent from Alcuin, as being a pupil of Sigulf
and Rabanus, both of them disciples of the great master. His own
favourite scholar Heiric, or Henry of Auxerre, indulged in a similar
morsel of scholastic pride. He had studied under both Lupus and Haimo
of Halberstadt, the former school-fellow of Rabanus, at St. Martin of
Tours. Haimo seems to have lectured for some time at Ferrières, and
Heiric tells us in some not inelegant verses that it was the custom
of the two pedagogues to give their pupils a very pleasant sort of
recreation, relating to them whatever they had found in the course of
their reading that was worthy of remembrance, whether in Christian or
Pagan authors. Heiric, who was somewhat of an intellectual glutton,
and had a craving for learning of all sorts and on all imaginable
subjects, made for himself a little book, in which he diligently
noted down every scrap that fell from the lips of his masters. This
book he subsequently published, and dedicated to Hildebold, Bishop of
Auxerre. Heiric himself afterwards became a man of letters; he was
appointed scholasticus of St. Germain’s of Auxerre, and was intrusted
with the education of Lothaire, son of Charles the Bald, as we learn
from the epistle addressed to that monarch which he prefixed to
his life of St. Germanus, in which he speaks of the young prince,
recently dead, as in years a boy, but in mind a philosopher. Another
of his pupils was the famous Remigius of Auxerre, who, towards the
end of the ninth century, was summoned to Rheims by Archbishop Fulk,
to re-establish sacred studies in that city, and worked there in
concert with his former schoolfellow, Hucbald of St. Amand, who
attained a curious sort of reputation by his poem on bald men, each
line of which began with the letter C, the whole being intended as
a compliment to Charles the Bald. Fulk himself became their first
pupil, and after thoroughly restoring the school of Rheims, Remigius
passed on to Paris, where we shall have occasion to notice him among
the teachers of the tenth century. From his time the schools of
Paris continued to increase in reputation and importance, till they
developed into the great university which may thus be distinctly
traced through a pedigree of learned men up to the great Alcuin
himself. This genealogy of pedagogues is of no small interest, as
showing the efforts made in the worst of times to keep alive the
spark of science and the persistence with which, in spite of civil
wars and Norman invasions, the scholastic traditions of Alcuin were
maintained.

We must not take leave of abbot Lupus without noticing one other
pupil of his, more celebrated than any yet named, the great St.
Ado of Vienne. He studied in the school of Ferrières under Sigulf,
Aldric and Lupus, and from his school life his masters predicted
his future sanctity. The jealousy of his companions obliging him
to leave Ferrières, he removed to Prom, and placed himself under
the discipline of the good abbot Marcward, and there taught the
sacred sciences for some years, after which he found himself able to
return to Ferrières. During the course of a journey into Italy he
met with an ancient martyrology, which served as the basis on which
he compiled his own, which was published in 858. Two years later he
became Archbishop of Vienne, and in that office did much for the
promotion of letters. The scholars of these dark ages were often
bound together in ties of very close friendship, founded on mutual
tastes, the recollection of early school days spent together under
some wise and well-loved master, and the exchange of good offices in
the shape of manuscripts lent and borrowed. If Ado’s intellectual
superiority had made him enemies among a few of the more churlish
spirits of Ferrières, his sweet and amiable disposition elsewhere
earned him many friends. Among these was the Deacon Wandalbert, a
monk of Prom, and the learned Florus of Lyons. When Ado left Prom,
Wandalbert succeeded him as scholasticus, and a famous one he made.
His peculiar line was natural philosophy, and in pursuing it he was
not content with gathering up other men’s ideas, but observed and
experimentalised for himself. He greatly excelled in poetry, and
produced a martyrology written in verse, in which, besides hymns in
honour of the different saints whom he commemorates, he contrives
to introduce short poems descriptive of the seasons, the different
rustic labours proper to each month, the beauties of nature under her
different aspects, seed-time and harvest, the vintage and the chase;
together with other more learned subjects, such as the movements of
the heavenly bodies by which we regulate our time. He gives rules for
telling the time by the length of shadow cast by the sun, though he
is careful to remind the reader that these rules will not be the same
in all countries, inasmuch as in those that lie more to the south
the shadows will necessarily be shorter, the earth being then more
directly under the solar rays.

We must now turn to the great abbey of Old Corby, where, as we have
already seen, Adalhard, a Palatine scholar, and a prince of the
blood-royal, had retired from the perils of a courtier’s life, and
become abbot. Unusual importance attached to its monastic school,
from the circumstance of its having been chosen by Charlemagne as
the academy to which the youth of Saxony were sent for education, in
order that on their return to their own country they might assist in
planting the Church on a solid foundation. The master chosen for the
task of rearing these future missionaries was Paschasius Radpert, one
of the most remarkable men of his time. Originally of very humble
birth, he owed his education to the charity of the nuns of Soissons,
who first received the desolate child into their own out-quarters,
and then sent him to some monks in the same city, under whose tuition
he acquired a fair amount of learning, and addicted himself to the
study of Virgil, Horace, Cicero, and Terence. He never forgot the
kindness of his early benefactresses, and in after years dedicated
his Treatise on the Virginity of the Blessed Virgin to the good nuns,
styling himself therein their _alumnus_, or foster-son. The deep
humility of this great scholar is spoken of by all his biographers
as his characteristic virtue, and is apparent in a passage which
occurs in his exposition of the 44th Psalm, which he dedicates to
these same nuns. In it he refers to the fact of his having received
the clerical tonsure in their Church, and, as it would seem, in their
presence. After expressing the reverence he feels for those whose
names are written in heaven, and whom he regards not only as the
spouses of Christ, but as the choicest flowers in the garden of the
Church, he goes on to say: “When I behold you I sigh bitterly to
think that this sacred crown, which as a boy I received before the
holy altar of the Mother of God, in the midst of your prayers and
offices of praise, I lost long ago, exiled in the world’s wilderness,
and stained by many worldly actions.... I pray you, therefore, when
you lift up your hearts on high, be mindful of me also, and implore
for me the divine grace, that the most clement Judge may restore to
me my lost crown.” In fact, after receiving the tonsure in early
youth, Paschasius, whose tastes for Terence and Cicero rather
predominated at that time over his relish for more sacred studies,
abandoned his first inclination for the cloister, and lived for some
years a secular life. Touched at last by divine grace, he entered the
abbey of Old Corby, and there made his profession under the abbot
Adalhard. All the ardour he had previously shown in the pursuit
of profane literature he now applied to the study of the Divine
Scriptures. Yet he only devoted to study of any kind those “furtive
hours,” as he calls them, which he was able to steal from the duties
of regular discipline, and was never seen so happy as when engaged
in the choral office or the meaner occupations of community life.
Such, then, was the master chosen by Adalhard for the responsible
office of scholasticus, and a very minute account is left us of his
manner of discharging its duties. Every day he delivered lectures
on the sacred sciences, besides preaching to the monks on Sundays
and Festivals. His thorough familiarity with the best Latin authors
appears from the frequent allusions to them which occur in his
writings. Quotations from the classic poets drop from his pen, as it
were, half unconsciously, and we are told that he continued to keep
up his acquaintance with them, so far as was necessary for teaching
others. But his own study was now chiefly confined to the Holy
Scriptures and the Fathers;[93] and among the latter, his favourites
were St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. John Chrysostom,
St. Bede, and St. Gregory the Great. “He did not approve,” says his
biographer, “of the diligence displayed by some men of the time in
explaining and meditating on profane authors.” In a passage which
occurs in the preface to his exposition of St. Matthew’s Gospel, he
blames those lovers of secular learning, “who seek various and divers
expounders, that so they may attain to the understanding of beautiful
lies concerning shameful things, and who will not pass over--I do not
say a single page, but a single line or syllable, without thoroughly
investigating it, with the utmost labour and vigilance, while at the
same time they utterly neglect the Sacred Scriptures. I wonder,” he
continues, “that the Divine words can be so distasteful to them, and
that they can refuse to scrutinise the mysteries of God with the
same diligence they so unweariedly bestow on the follies of profane
tragedies and the foolish fables of the poets. Who can doubt that
such labour is altogether thrown away, being bestowed on a thing
undeserving of reward?” This was not the utterance of a narrow-minded
bigot, who condemned pursuits and tastes to which he was himself a
stranger. Few were more keenly alive than he to the charms of polite
literature, neither did he at all condemn its use within proper
limits, even among cloistered students. It would, indeed, have been
a difficult matter to have eradicated the love of the beautiful from
the heart of Paschasius. He possessed it in every shape, and was not
merely a poet, but a musician also. In one of his writings he lets
fall an observation which might be taken for a prose rendering of a
verse of Shelley’s, although the Christian scholar goes beyond the
infidel poet, and does not merely describe the sentiment which all
have felt, but traces it to its proper source. Shelley complains
that--

Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Paschasius explains the mystery: “There is no song to be found,” he
says, “without a tone of sadness in it; even as here below there are
no joys without a mixture of sorrow; for songs of pure joy belong
only to the heavenly Sion, but lamentation is the property of our
earthly pilgrimage.” His musical tastes were perfectly shared and
understood by his master St. Adalhard, whose sensibility to the
influence of melodious sounds is spoken of by his biographer Gerard.
Even during his residence at the court of Charlemagne, it is said of
him that “he was always so full of a sweet intention towards God,
that if while assisting at the royal council he heard the sound of
some chance melody, he had it not in his power to refrain from tears,
for all sweet music seemed to remind him of his heavenly country.”
The importance attached to the study of music by the Christian
scholastics of these times is not a little remarkable. They inherited
the traditions of the ancients, and with them regarded music as a
science intimately associated with the knowledge of divine things.
They were the true descendants of those holy fathers of old, who, as
the son of Sirach tells us, “sought out musical tunes and published
canticles, and were rich in virtue, studying beautifulness, and
living at peace in their houses.” The narratives of our early
English schools will sufficiently have illustrated the fact that
music held a very prominent place in the system of education which
held sway in the early centuries; and the theory on which this high
esteem was based will nowhere be found better explained than in the
writings of Rabanus. “Musical discipline,” he says, “is so noble
and useful a thing, that without it no one can properly discharge
the ecclesiastical office. For whatsoever in reading is correctly
pronounced, and whatsoever in chanting is sweetly modulated, is
regulated by a knowledge of this discipline; and by it we not only
learn how to read and sing in the church, but also rightly perform
every rite in the divine service. Moreover, the discipline of music
is diffused through all the acts of our life. For when we keep the
commandments of God, and observe His law, it is certain that our
words and acts are associated by musical rhythm with the virtues
of harmony. If we observe a good conversation, we prove ourselves
associated with this discipline; but when we act sinfully, we have in
us no music.”[94]

Paschasius, then, was a poet and a musician, but he was also a
scientific theologian, and one who was in some degree in advance
of his age in the philosophic method he adopted when analysing
the dogmas of faith. In the year 831 he wrote his famous treatise
on the “Sacrament of the Altar,” which was specially intended for
the instruction of his Saxon pupils, who required a plain and
comprehensive exposition of that mystery. He composed it, therefore,
in a very simple style, comparing it to “milk for babes;” and it is
evident that in a treatise drawn up under such circumstances, for the
instruction of young converts, the author would necessarily seek,
not the setting forth of theological subtleties or private views,
but the simple, straightforward statement of the Church’s doctrine
as universally taught and believed by all the faithful. He declares
in very express and distinct terms that “the _substance of bread_ is
not to be found in the Sacrament, and that there is present only the
Real Body of Jesus Christ, the same that was born of the B. Virgin,
and was crucified, and rose again, and ascended into Heaven.”[95]
The treatise was dedicated to Warin, abbot of New Corby, and excited
no controversy until fifteen years later, when a second edition,
dedicated to Charles the Bald, fell into the hands of Scotus Erigena,
whose captious mind found matter of offence in the expressions used
by Paschasius. He, accordingly, wrote in reply _his_ treatise on
the “Holy Eucharist,” of which no copy now exists; for, after being
condemned by several Councils, all the copies that could be found
were ordered to be burnt in 1059, in consequence of the use made of
them by the Berengarian heretics. Paschasius defended his words by a
simple appeal to the universal sense of Christendom, which, since the
days of the Apostles, had never ceased to believe and confess this
salutary doctrine.

At the time when this vexatious controversy broke out he was abbot
of his monastery, and soon after retired from office, and joyfully
returned to his cell and his studies, spending his last days in the
completion of his greatest work, the “Commentary on St. Matthew’s
Gospel.” Whether in public or private life, his lowliness of spirit
was equally remarkable, while the self-sufficient presumption of his
opponent Erigena exhibits an ugly example of that knowledge which
puffeth up. In Paschasius we see the opposite virtue, which faileth
not “when tongues shall cease and knowledge shall be destroyed.”
He styled himself by no more honourable title than the “Monachorum
Peripsema,” and in his last sickness imposed so strict an injunction
on his brethren never to write his life, that they dared not disobey
him, and thus many interesting particulars concerning him have
necessarily been lost.

He left many disciples, among whom was Anscharius, who succeeded
him in the government of his school, and of whom we must now say
something. He had begun his school life very early, being sent to the
monastery after his mother’s death, when a child of only five; and,
says his biographer, Rembert, after the manner of young children, he
showed at first a much greater liking for childish sports than for
learning of any kind. At five this may perhaps be thought excusable,
but there are those whom wisdom preventeth, and when they go forth
they find her “sitting at their door.” And to Anscharius the love of
wisdom was brought by Her who is herself “the Mother of fair love,
and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope; in whom is all
grace of the way and of the truth, all hope of life and of virtue.”
One night he seemed to find himself in a dark and gloomy place, out
of which, when he sought to find some way of escape, he perceived
a delightful path wherein Our Lady appeared to him surrounded by a
crowd of saints clothed in white garments, among whom he recognised
his mother. He ran towards her, stretching out his childish hands;
whereupon the Blessed Virgin addressed him, saying: “My son, do you
wish to come to your mother? Know that if you would share in her
happiness you must fly from vanity, lay aside childish follies, and
abide in holiness of life. For we detest all vice and idleness;
neither can they who delight in such things be joined to our company.”

From this time Anscharius changed his conduct: he applied himself to
his tasks, and spent his whole time in reading and meditation, and
acquiring useful arts; so that his companions wondered at a change
the cause of which was unknown to them. As he grew in years he was
favoured with other heavenly visions, which I notice here, because it
is often said, and doubtless with much truth, that the occupations
of study and teaching have in them a direct tendency to dry up
the sources of devotion. When, therefore, in studying the history
of these ancient Christian schools we find among their teachers a
succession of saints, and even of contemplatives, who enjoyed the
most intimate communications with God, and were distinguished by the
highest supernatural gifts, one cannot but ask wherein the difference
lay; what divine secret they possessed enabling them to keep the
sweet fountain of holy tears from drying up, so that they seem to
have been wholly unconscious of the existence of any danger to the
spiritual life in the occupations of study or teaching, and regarded
such duties as in themselves spiritual. Possibly their safeguard
lay in those happy _retinacula_ of religious life of which St. Bede
speaks, and which, as we have seen, were regarded as their first
object even by scholars like Rabanus and Paschasius, who devoted to
study only the “furtive hours” not claimed by prayer and obedience.
And hence they created a tradition which was kept up in the Christian
schools down to a far later period, the grand principle of which
was to interweave spiritual with intellectual employment, and by
timely interruptions, prevent the whole nature from being poured
out over its mental work. In what manner this was effected in the
collegiate foundations of the Middle Ages we shall have occasion to
show hereafter; it is sufficient here to remind the reader that such
a system was naturally supplied by the discipline of religious life
in those cloistered schools which were the nurseries of Christian
education. And the result was that the monastic teachers were
something very unlike the modern notion of schoolmasters; they were
not mere men of the rod and the grammar; and it cannot but strike us
as remarkable how almost universally they are spoken of as enjoying,
in a very special degree, the gift of prayer. This was preeminently
the case with St. Anscharius, and some of his visions are related by
his biographer, Rembert, who had heard them in confidence from his
own lips. He mentions one remarkable revelation received by the saint
in the early part of his religious life, whence he understood that
he was to be called to preach the faith to heathen nations. Some of
these supernatural incidents are related as mixed up with ordinary
details of his life in the schools. While he was scholasticus of
Old Corby it was his invariable custom, says Rembert, when going to
and returning from the school, to turn aside into a little oratory
dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and there pray awhile in secret.
On one such occasion when he rose from his knees he saw standing
at the entrance One clothed after the Jewish fashion, beautiful in
countenance, from whose eyes went forth a Divine light. Recognising
it to be our Lord Anscharius prostrated at His feet, but in a sweet
voice He bid him rise, saying, “Confess thy sins, Anscharius, that
thou mayst receive pardon.” “What need is there, O Lord,” said
Anscharius, “that I should tell them to Thee, seeing that Thou
knowest them all?” But he replied, “I know them, indeed, nevertheless
I would have thee confess them that thou mayst be justified.”
Anscharius accordingly declared all the sins he had ever committed
since his childhood, and was consoled by the assurance that he
had received their full remission. About the same time, continues
Rembert, it happened that one of his little scholars, named Fulbert,
received a blow with a slate from another lad, of so serious a nature
that within a few days he died. When the accident was made known
to Anscharius, the good master was overwhelmed with anguish at the
thought of such a mischance having befallen a child committed to his
care. During the time that Fulbert continued to linger, Anscharius
never left his bedside, till at last, wearied out with sorrow and
long watching, they persuaded him to take some repose. He fell into
a heavy slumber, in which he was consoled by a gracious vision. He
seemed to see the dear child carried up to heaven by the hands of
the angels, and placed in the company of the martyrs; and, wondering
at the sight, it was explained to him that because Fulbert had borne
his wound with great patience, and had heartily loved and forgiven
him from whom he had received the injury, and had prayed much for
him, accepting his own premature death with loving submission to the
Divine will, his sweetness and resignation had deserved from the
Divine compassion so great a reward as to be placed among the holy
martyrs. Anscharius was still absorbed in the joy of this revelation
when he was roused by Witmar, a younger monk associated with him in
the government of the school, who came to tell him that even at that
very moment Fulbert had expired. He found that Anscharius already
knew it, and doubtless, adds Rembert, this comfort had been given him
by God that he might not grieve overmuch for the death of the child,
but might rather rejoice at the happy state of his soul.

Anscharius was one of those chosen to colonise the monastery of New
Corby, the mention of which requires a few words of explanation. The
foundation of this daughter-house was the great work of St. Adalhard,
who so soon as his young Saxons were sufficiently trained in learning
and monastic discipline, consulted them on the possibility of their
obtaining a suitable site for a foundation in their native land.
After many difficulties had been raised and overcome, ground was
procured, and the building of the abbey was begun. Adalhard repaired
thither to superintend operations in company with Paschasius and his
own brother Wala, who, brought up like himself as a soldier and a
courtier, had in former years held military command in Saxony and won
the affections of the people by his wise and gentle rule. When the
Saxons saw their old governor among them again in the monastic habit,
nothing could exceed their wonder and delight: they ran after him in
crowds, looking at him, and feeling him with their hands to satisfy
themselves that it was really he, paying no attention whatever to the
presence of the abbot or any other of his companions. The first stone
of the new abbey was laid on September 26, 822; Old Corby made over
to the new colony all the lands held by the community in Saxony; the
Emperor Louis gave them a charter, and some precious relics from his
private chapel, and in a few years that great seminary was completed
which was destined to carry the light of faith and science to the
pagan natives of the farther North. It would be hard to say which of
the two Corbies held the highest place in monastic history; a noble
emulation existed between them, each trying to outstrip the other in
the perfection of monastic discipline. New Corby, in her turn became
the mother-house of a vast number of German colonies, over all of
which she continued to maintain a certain superiority. A law was
made obliging every abbot of these branch-houses to keep a chronicle
of his monastery and send a copy of it to the Corby library; and by
another law, every novice on the day of his profession was bound to
present to the library some useful book. The library of new Corby
grew to be one of great value and importance, and its catalogue,
still preserved, exhibits the names of not a few Arabic and Hebrew
works. It was here also that in the days of Leo X. was disinterred
the famous manuscript of Tacitus, which may still be seen at Florence.

A monastery that cared so much for the formation of its library was
not likely to be indifferent to its school. It was the boast of
both Corbies in turns to possess Anscharius as their scholasticus,
“that great preceptor,” as Mabillon calls him, for his reputation
as a master was spread over all Germany. He was at the same time
appointed to preach to the people, an office particularly agreeable
to that apostolic spirit which he had never ceased to nurture in
his heart. The time was approaching when the prophetic vision of
former years, and the secret instincts of his own soul, were to be
accomplished. In 826 Harold, king of Denmark, having embraced the
faith, and been baptized with great pomp at Mentz, petitioned the
Emperor Louis to give him some holy missionaries, who might accompany
him home to Denmark, and plant the Church in that country. Wala,
then abbot of New Corby, fixed on Anscharius, and he, mindful of
the revelation which had long before assured to him the glory of an
apostolic career, joyfully accepted the mission, heedless alike of
the criticism of friends and enemies, who all found something to
say against it. Anscharius turned a deaf ear to their reasonings
and remonstrances, and withdrew to a certain vineyard in the
neighbourhood of Aix-la-Chapelle, where he prepared for his new
duties by a kind of spiritual retreat. Here he was sought out and
discovered by a monk of Old Corby, named Aubert, and thinking that
his visitor had only come to pester him with more advice, Anscharius
bade him spare himself the trouble of arguing the question, as he
had irrevocably made up his mind. “You have nothing to fear from
me,” said Aubert, “my only reason for coming to you, is to beg you
to accept me as your companion, if the abbot Wala can be brought
to give his consent.” Anscharius joyfully welcomed him as a fellow
labourer, and they soon after set out in company with the king. His
majesty, however, was more than half a barbarian, and the equipment
he provided for his missioners was not luxurious. The royal and
ecclesiastical retinue embarked on board a very dirty boat, the only
accommodation on board consisting of two miserable cabins in which
king and missioners were packed together with very little ceremony.
However, they arrived at last at their journey’s end, and began
their labours by opening a little school in Friesland, where they
received twelve children, among whom were the two sons of king Harold
himself. A little later we find them passing on to Sweden, attacked
on the way by pirates, and robbed of all their baggage, containing
their library of forty books. Such were the humble beginnings of a
great apostolate, which at its close found Anscharius Archbishop of
Hamburgh, and papal legate, not only over the Scandinavian kingdoms,
but also over Iceland and the distant shores of Greenland, which
are expressly named in the Bull of Pope Gregory IV. One of the most
successful means adopted by the saint for the propagation of the
faith, was the purchase of young Danes who were offered for sale as
slaves, and whom he then sent to Corby, whence, after receiving a
Christian education, they returned to their own country as zealous
missionaries.

It would take us too long, and probably prove but wearisome to the
reader, were we to examine in detail the foundation and history of
all the monastic schools of this period. Glance where we will, we
shall find indications of the same intellectual activity struggling
to make head against the darkness of a semi-barbarous age. The
schools of Hirschau, Hirsfield, Fleury, and Prom, might all be
made to furnish illustrations of the ardour with which scientific
and literary pursuits were carried on by their scholars. But while
passing over these and others, which have almost equal claims on our
interest, it is impossible to leave without notice two houses whose
prëeminent importance in the history of monastic studies has made
their names especially venerable: I mean the abbeys of Reichnau,
and St. Gall. The first foundation of St. Gall’s belongs indeed
to a date far earlier than that of which we are now treating: it
owed its origin to St. Gall, the Irish disciple of St. Columbanus,
who, in the seventh century, penetrated into the recesses of the
Helvetian mountains and there fixed his abode in the midst of a pagan
population. Under the famous abbot St. Othmar, who flourished in the
time of Pepin, the monks received the Benedictine rule, and from that
time the monastery rapidly grew in fame and prosperity, so that in
the ninth century it was regarded as the first religious house north
of the Alps. It is with a sigh of that irrepressible regret called
forth by the remembrance of a form of beauty that is dead and gone
for ever, that the monastic historian hangs over the early chronicles
of St. Gall. It lay in the midst of the savage Helvetian wilderness,
an oasis of piety and civilisation. Looking down from the craggy
mountains, the passes of which open upon the southern extremity of
the lake of Constance, the traveller would have stood amazed at the
sudden apparition of that vast range of stately buildings which
almost filled up the valley at his feet. Churches and cloisters,
the offices of a great abbey, buildings set apart for students and
guests, workshops of every description, the forge, the bakehouse, and
the mill, or rather mills, for there were ten of them, all in such
active operation, that they every year required ten new millstones;
and then the house occupied by the vast numbers of artisans and
workmen attached to the monastery gardens too, and vineyards creeping
up the mountain slopes, and beyond them fields of waving corn, and
sheep speckling the green meadows, and far away boats busily plying
on the lake and carrying goods and passengers--what a world it was
of life and activity; yet how unlike the activity of a town! It
was, in fact, not a town, but a house,--a family presided over by a
father, whose members were all knit together in the bonds of common
fraternity. I know not whether the spiritual or the social side of
such a religious colony were most fitted to rivet the attention.
Descend into the valley, and visit all these nurseries of useful
toil, see the crowds of rude peasants transformed into intelligent
artisans, and you will carry away the impression that the monks
of St. Gall had found out the secret of creating a world of happy
Christian factories. Enter their church and listen to the exquisite
modulations of those chants and sequences peculiar to the abbey which
boasted of possessing the most scientific school of music in all
Europe; visit their scriptorium, their library, and their school, or
the workshop where the monk Tutilo is putting the finishing touch
to his wonderful copper images, and his fine altar frontals of gold
and jewels, and you will think yourself in some intellectual and
artistic academy. But look into the choir, and behold the hundred
monks who form the community at their midnight office and you will
forget everything, save the saintly aspect of those servants of God
who shed abroad over the desert around them the good odour of Christ,
and are the apostles of the provinces which own their gentle sway.
You may quit the circuit of the abbey and plunge once more into the
mountain region which rises beyond, but you will have to wander
far before you find yourself beyond the reach of its softening,
humanising influence. Here are distant cells and hermitages with
their chapels, where the shepherds come for early mass; or it may be
that there meets you, winding over the mountain paths of which they
sing so sweetly,[96] going up and down among the hills into the thick
forests and the rocky hollows, a procession of the monks carrying
their relics, and followed by a peasant crowd. In the schools you
may have been listening to lectures in the learned, and even in the
Eastern tongues; but in the churches, and here among the mountains,
you will hear these fine classical scholars preaching plain truths,
in barbarous idioms, to a rude race, who before the monks came among
them sacrificed to the Evil One, and worshipped stocks and stones.

Yet, hidden away as it was among its crags and deserts, the abbey of
St. Gall’s was almost as much a place of resort as Rome or Athens--at
least to the learned world of the ninth century. Her schools were
a kind of university, frequented by men of all nations, who came
hither to fit themselves for all professions. You would have found
here not monks alone and future scholastics, but courtiers, soldiers,
and the sons of kings. The education given was very far from being
exclusively intended for those aspiring to the ecclesiastical state;
it had a large admixture of the secular element, at any rate in the
exterior school. Not only were the Sacred sciences taught with the
utmost care, but the classic authors were likewise explained; Cicero,
Horace, Virgil, Lucan, and Terence were read by the scholars, and
none but the very little boys presumed to speak in any tongue but
Latin. The subjects for their original compositions were mostly
taken from Scripture and Church history, and having written their
exercises they were expected to recite them, the proper tones being
indicated by musical notes. Many of the monks excelled as poets,
others cultivated painting and sculpture, and other exquisite
cloistral arts; all diligently applied to the grammatical formation
of the Tudesque dialect and rendered it capable of producing a
literature of its own. Their library in the eighth century was only
in its infancy, but gradually became one of the richest in the world.
They were in correspondence with all the learned monastic houses
of France and Italy, from whom they received the precious codex,
now of a Virgil or a Livy, now of the Sacred Books and sometimes
of some rare treatise on medicine or astronomy. They were Greek
students, moreover, and those most addicted to the cultivation of
the “Cecropian Muse” were denominated the “fratres Ellenici.” The
beauty of their early manuscripts is praised by all authors, and the
names of their best transcribers find honourable mention in their
annals. They manufactured their own parchment out of the hides of
the wild beasts that roamed through the mountains and forests around
them, and prepared it with such skill that it acquired a peculiar
delicacy. Many hands were employed on a single manuscript. Some
made the parchment, others drew the fair red lines, others wrote
on the pages thus prepared; more skilful hands put in the gold and
the initial letters, and more learned heads compared the copy with
the original text, this duty being generally discharged during the
interval between matins and lauds, the daylight hours being reserved
for actual transcription. Erasure, when necessary, was rarely made
with the knife, but an erroneous word was delicately drawn through by
the pen, so as not to spoil the beauty of the codex. Lastly came the
binders, who enclosed the whole in boards of wood cramped with ivory
or iron, the Sacred Volumes being covered with plates of gold and
adorned with jewels.

In such a school it was no wonder that the pupils of St. Gall, like
those of Eton, became famous for their good writing. Ekhehard I. had
a method in this as in everything else; if he found a boy dull over
his grammar he set him to copy; arguing that nature was an economist
in her gifts, and did not dispense all to all; and that often where
the head was somewhat slow in learning, the deficiency was made up by
an extra dexterity with the fingers. But boys were never employed on
the Gospels, or Church service books, these being reserved for men
of perfect age, who would bring greater care to their responsible
task. We have even the copy ordinarily set for beginners in the
monastic scriptorium, a doggerel line, introducing every letter of
the alphabet:

“Adnexique globum Zephyrique Kanna secabant.”

That the labour of transcription was often exceedingly irksome, is
evident from sundry notes scattered over these manuscripts. “As the
sick man desireth health,” writes one, “even so doth the transcriber
desire the end of his volume.” Another contents himself with the
laconic observation, “written with great trouble;” but a third, who
may be supposed to have been employed over a very tough copy, breaks
out into verse, and exclaims at his last page:

“Libro completo
Saltat scriptor pede læto.”

The monks of St. Gall were no less famous for their music than for
their painting. Their musical tastes were inherited probably from
their Irish founders, and were further improved by the teaching
of those Roman cantors, whom we have seen in a former page sent
into France, at Charlemagne’s request, to civilise the barbarous
singing of his Frankish cantors. On their way back into Italy, one
of them, to whom the St. Gall historians give the name of Romanus,
was attacked by fever, and stopping at the Swiss monastery, was
there charitably entertained and nursed by the brethren, who had
excellent doctors among them. In return, he taught them the Roman
chant, and bestowed on them the identical antiphonarium he had
brought from Rome, making a certain case or instrument to contain it.
“And to this day,” writes Ekhehard, “if there is any dispute about
the singing, the error may be detected by consulting this book.”
Moreover, this Romanus was the first who thought of assigning the
letters of the alphabet to the musical notes, a system which Notker
Balbulus afterwards explained, and which, being further elucidated
by a certain friend of his named Lambert, was adopted throughout
Germany.[97]

Leaving a more particular notice of the studies and students of this
great abbey for a future chapter, I must here add a few words on
another religious house, the history of which is closely associated
with that of St. Gall, and where the sciences flourished in equal
perfection under the shelter of those lofty mountains which shut out
the tumult of the world and the incursions of the barbarians. At the
western extremity of the lake of Constance, just where it narrows
towards the outlet of the Rhine, lies a green island sparkling
like an emerald gem on the unruffled surface of the waters. There,
half hidden amid the luxuriant foliage, you may still see the grey
minster of that famous abbey called Augia by its Latin historians,
but better known by its German name of Reichnau. Walafrid Strabo,
the pupil of Rabanus and the chief chronicler of his time, was
abbot of Reichnau in the ninth century, and in one of his poems has
painted its situation in very exact terms. He gives the succession
of abbots from St. Pirminius, who first established himself in the
island in the reign of Pepin, and shows that the school was one of
the very earliest which had at that time attained celebrity. I have
already spoken of Walafrid’s fame as a master, but I cannot here omit
mentioning his pupil and biographer, Ermenric, who has made himself
known to us by a letter which he wrote after paying what seems to
have been a very pleasant visit at St. Gall’s. Walafrid had sent him
there for a holiday, and on his return he expressed the enjoyment it
had given him, in an epistle addressed to abbot Grimoald. As soon as
he crossed the lake, he says, he found himself welcomed by a group of
illustrious men. “There,” he continues, “I found each one humbler and
more patient than his fellow. I saw neither envy nor jealousy, but
all were bound together with the triple chord of charity, simplicity,
and concord. How shall I speak of the generosity of Engilbert, or the
kindness of that most clever brother Hartmod? It would be impossible
for me to do justice to the excellence which these servants of God
had attained in so many of the arts, but you may judge of the birds
by looking at the nests which they inhabit. Examine their cloister
and you will agree with what I say. What else can I call Winhart but
a second Dædalus? or Isenric but another Beseleel? for indeed the
graving tool is never out of his hand, save when he stands at the
altar to exercise his sacred ministry. And yet there is such humility
among them that no one disdains the humblest employment, remembering
those words of Scripture, ‘the prayer of the humble shall pierce the
clouds.’”

Reichnau, however, had its own line of great masters, among whom
Ermenric, who could do such generous justice to the excellence of
others, was himself worthy to be reckoned. The most illustrious
was, perhaps, the cripple Hermann Contractus, originally a pupil
of St. Gall’s, who is said to have prayed that he might not regain
the use of his limbs, but that he might receive instead a knowledge
of the Scriptures. He was master of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and
Arabic; he wrote treatises on history, poetry, ethics, astronomy,
and mathematics; he calculated eclipses, and explained Aristotle,
and, in spite of an impediment in his speech, his lectures were
so learned that he had pupils from the most distant provinces of
Italy. He set his own poems to music, made clocks and organs, and
was as much revered for his sanctity as his universal genius. Many
hymns and antiphons used by the Church are attributed to his pen,
among others the _Alma Redemptoris_. But if Hermann was the most
famous scholar of Reichnau, a yet greater celebrity, though of a
different kind, attaches to the name of Meinrad. The story of his
vocation to the eremitical life affords an apt illustration of the
contemplative character already noticed as so frequently belonging
to the early pedagogues: and as it presents us with an agreeable
picture of a “whole play-day” in the Dark Ages, we will give it as
it stands in the pages of the monk Berno. Meinrad was the son of a
Swabian nobleman of the house of Hollenzollern, and had studied in
the monastic school under abbot Hatto and his own uncle Erlebald.
When the latter became abbot he appointed Meinrad to the care of the
school which was attached to a smaller house dependent on Reichnau,
and situated at a spot called Bollingen, on the lake of Zurich.
He accordingly removed thither, and had singular success with his
scholars, whom he inspired with great affection by reason of his
gentle discipline. He used to take them out for walking parties
and fishing parties, into what Berno, his biographer, calls “the
wilderness,” a wilderness, however, which was adorned with a majestic
beauty to which Meinrad was not insensible. One day he and his boys
crossed the lake in a small boat, and landing on the opposite shore
sought for some quiet spot where they might cast their fishing
lines. Finding a little stream which flowed into the lake and gave
good promise of trout, Meinrad left them to pursue their sport and
strolled about, meditating on the joys of that solitary life after
which he secretly pined. After a while, returning to his scholars, he
found that their fishing had been unusually successful, and taking up
their baskets, they retraced their steps to the village of Altendorf,
where they entered the house of a certain matron to rest and refresh
themselves with food. Whilst the boys ate and drank, and enjoyed
themselves in their own way, Meinrad and their hostess engaged in
conversation, and Meinrad, who was full of the thoughts to which his
mountain walk had given rise, opened his whole heart to her. “Beyond
all riches,” he said, “I desire to dwell alone in this solitude
that so I might wholly give myself to prayer, could I but find some
one who would minister to me in temporal things.” The good lady
immediately offered to provide him with whatever he wanted, in order
to carry out his design; and the result of that day’s fishing-party
was the establishment of the former scholasticus of Bollingen in a
little hermitage which he constructed for himself out of the wattled
boughs of trees. But he found himself in one way disappointed; he
had sought the desert to fly from the world, and the world followed
him thither in greater throngs than he had ever encountered at
Reichnau. The saints possess a strange power of attraction, and
neither mountains nor forests are able to hide them. In his own day
men compared St. Meinrad to the Baptist, because the multitudes went
out into the wilderness to hear him preach penance and remission of
sins. For seven years he continued to dispense the Word of Life to
the pilgrims who gathered about him from all parts of Europe. But one
day unable to resist his longing for retreat, he took his image of
Our Lady, a missal, a copy of St. Benedict’s rule, and the works of
Cassian, and laden with these, his only treasures, he plunged into
the forest, and choosing a remote and secluded spot erected a rude
chapel which he dedicated to Our Lady, and a yet ruder dwelling for
himself. There he lived for thirty years, and at the end of that time
he was assassinated in his hermitage by some ruffians who hoped to
find some hidden treasure in his cell. His body was carried back to
Reichnau, and in after years the great sanctuary of Einsidlen rose
over the site of his hermitage, where is still venerated the image of
Our Lady which he had formerly carried thither with his own hands.

We are now in a position to form some idea of the real character
of these early monastic schools, and of the teaching which they
conveyed. From the eighth to the twelfth century, the scholastic
system underwent so little change, that we may select our
illustrations indifferently from any part of that period, without
risk of inaccuracy.

First, then, as to the schoolroom itself. In most cases the interior
or claustral schools of monasteries and cathedrals were held in the
cloisters. A strange contrast, indeed, to the luxurious requirements
of modern times; but boarded floors, patent stoves, and easy-backed
forms were luxuries undreamt of by the hardy Frankish or Gothic
students who studied under Walafrid or Rabanus. It is not until the
fifteenth century that we meet with a document hinting at the novelty
of providing schoolrooms with boarded floors.[98] The cloisters of
York and Worcester, now so desolate and deserted, were once peopled
with a busy race of scholars, who probably suffered often enough,
like the pupils of Bede, from stiffened fingers and bleeding cracks.
Even so late as the twelfth century, the schools of Paris were held
in the cloisters of Nôtre Dame, and only removed thence when the
repose of the canons was disturbed by the unruly crowds who rushed
to listen to the lectures of Abelard. The number of scholars received
into a monastery varied according to its size. At St. Riquier, where
there were 300 monks, abbot Angilbert wished never to have less than
a hundred children, the sons of dukes, counts, and kings.[99] They
were seldom or never left alone, and in the cloister or schoolroom
the master’s seat was so arranged, that all were under his eye.
It does not seem, however, that the surveillance in school-hours
was carried out with any excessive rigidity, for we find frequent
notice of the pranks and surreptitious consumption of good things
perpetrated by the school boys in the temporary absence of their
masters. In the dormitories, however, the discipline was more strict;
there the lamp was kept constantly burning, and though there are no
traces of an odious espionage, there is evidence of a constant, ever
present vigilance. Awaked in the morning by the wooden signal board
of the master, the children were conducted to the lavatory by the
“pedagogues” or junior assistants of the school. These pedagogues
were very numerous, and their duties were various. Among other things
it belonged to them to see to the cleanliness and neatness of dress
and person, a thing not at all despised in the Dark Ages. At Cluny,
where in the twelfth century all the older monastic traditions of
school discipline were resumed and perfected, it was not permitted
for the children to sit together on benches, but each one had his
own little box, in which he kept his writing materials, and which
also served him for a seat. A midday siesta was allowed at Cluny,
but no one was permitted to read or write on his bed.[100] In all
these regulations may plainly be seen a solicitude for order and
good morals, together with a certain tone of refinement, which is
more than we should expect, and which satisfies us how profoundly
the whole subject of education had been studied by the medieval
masters. Their ideas on the subject of punishment were in more simple
accordance with those of Solomon than our fastidious age would
approve. The rod, in fact, was so very generally used, that under the
form of the ferule it afterwards became the badge of the bachelor
in arts, and was solemnly delivered to him when he took his degree.
Medieval schoolboys were not more fond of a flogging than those of
later growth, and to escape it the scholars of St. Gall once adopted
the extraordinary expedient of setting fire to the monastery. Yet
with all this austerity of discipline, nothing is more certain than
that the monastic masters possessed the secret of making themselves
beloved, and that the love which they inspired was not the less
familiar because mingled with respect. I may add, that at Cluny,
though flogging was permitted, boxing on the ears was strictly
prohibited, apparently with the view of allowing no indulgence to the
irritated feelings of the master. Punishment, like everything else
at Cluny, was administered in an orderly and methodical manner; in
fact, the peculiar excellence of the Cluniacs lay in their manner of
systematising everything, whether homely or sublime.

The masters in most large schools were very numerous, but none were
allowed to hold any office until of mature age. At Fulda there
were twelve professors and a principal (_Principalis_), besides
assistants.[101] In the cathedral schools, in like manner, there
was the _Archischolus_ and his assistants, and the _Proscholus_, or
prefect of discipline.[102] The reader will perhaps smile when he
hears that one of the duties of the _Proscholus_ was to teach the
children how to walk, bow, and behave in presence of superiors. This,
however, was a speciality of the Canons Regular. Learning was not
the only qualification required in a master. He was to be of tried
virtue. The office of teacher was a cure of souls, and so great was
the honour in which it was held, that bishops even, who had formerly
filled the post of scholasticus, not unfrequently affixed their old
to their new title, when signing their names.

The education of the scholars began at a very early age, sometimes at
five or six. The first task consisted in learning by heart certain
portions of Holy Scripture, and specially of the Psalter. Even
those who very early abandoned their books for the more congenial
exercises of the tilt-yard, seldom did so till they had run through
their Psalter: “_decurso psalterio_,” is a common expression used
in speaking of a youth who had left school with the least possible
smattering of an education. As for those who stayed a more reasonable
time at school, they acquired, besides their profane learning, a
familiarity with the Church office and with the words of Holy Writ,
not certainly possessed by all scholars of the present day. This is
abundantly illustrated by the histories of the times. Thus Einold
of Toul, sitting at the window of his cell, hears a voice chanting
the words, “I will give you the heritage of your father Jacob,” and
at once concludes that it must be a schoolboy conning his morning’s
task. How beautiful is that story which we find in the chronicle of
Monte Cassino, of the monk Levitius, who, returning from Jerusalem,
came to Mount Albaneta, where he proposed to build a monastery. As
he was inspecting the site of his new foundation, he saw approaching
him a little school boy, carrying his bag of books on his shoulders,
and the thought came into his head that he would ask him if he
could sing. The boy replying that he could, Levitius told him to
sing the first thing he could remember, secretly resolving that
he would place the church under the dedication of any saint the
boy might happen to name. The little scholar thought a moment, and
then intoned the Antiphon, _Veni electa mea_, which he sang with
much sweetness. Levitius listened with delight, and the monastery
which afterwards rose on the spot was dedicated to the Ever Blessed
Virgin. Scholars of all ages were very largely exercised in what one
old monk calls “the holy memory.” Learning by rote was used more
generally than among ourselves, partly because books were rare, and
all could not enjoy the luxury of a Psalter or Breviary for private
use; and partly, because the teachers of old time sought to sanctify
this power of the soul, by thoroughly informing it with holy words.
Besides the Psalter, the novices of a religious house were expected
to know the New Testament at least by heart, half-an-hour a day being
assigned for the purpose.

The liberal arts were, as is well known, classed under two heads,
the _trivium_, which included grammar, logic, and rhetoric; and
the _quadrivium_, which embraced arithmetic, geometry, music, and
astronomy. This division is expressed in the well-known distich:--

Gram: loquitur. Dia. vera docet. Rhet. verba colorat.
Mus. canit. Ar. numerat. Geo. ponderat. Ast. colit astra.

The trivium, with the Ecclesiastical chant, and so much of arithmetic
as was required for the computation of the calendar, was taught in
all schools; the quadrivium only in those which embraced the higher
studies. Music was divided into two kinds, the _cantus_, which
formed part of the routine of studies even in the lower schools, and
_musica_, properly so called, which included the theory of music,
a knowledge of the laws of sound, and the connection of harmony
with numbers. And this explains how it was that a knowledge of
music was in those days considered a proof that its possessor was a
well-educated man: it evidenced that he had not only gone through
the elementary studies of the trivium, but that he had completed his
education in one of those higher schools in which the quadrivium
also was taught. And these higher schools were frequented not only
by ecclesiastics but by laics, whose inferiority to the clergy in
point of mental culture has been greatly overstated, and where it
existed, was the effect of accident rather than of system. Men who
by force of necessity were called into the field at a very early
age, and engaged in active military service during the greater part
of their lives, had seldom much time to devote to study; but there
was no sort of prejudice against their becoming as learned as they
chose. Abbot Philip, of Good Hope, who lived in the time of St.
Bernard, when the institution of Chivalry had certainly not tended
to render the lay-nobles more studious, protests against the notion
that learning is the exclusive apanage of the clergy. “Many laymen,”
he says, “are well instructed in letters. When a prince can withdraw
from the tumult of arms and business he should study himself in books
just as he contemplates his face in a mirror.” And he proceeds to
speak in commendation of the noble Count Charles who was “as prompt
in meditating the Psalms as in drawing the sword to avenge outraged
justice,” and Count Adolph “who ceased not to bless his parents for
the good education they had given him.” Of Henry, Count of Champagne,
it is said that between his warlike expeditions, when not engaged in
the judicial duties of his rank, he delighted in withdrawing to some
retired part of his castle and entertaining himself with a classic
author or a volume of the Fathers. And in the Imperial library is
still to be seen a fine copy of Valerius Maximus, written out for him
by the monks of Provins. Every one is familiar with the name of Fulk
the Good, Count of Anjou, against whose learning Hallam has directed
so uncourteous a sneer. The story, threadbare as it is, affords too
good an illustration of the subject to be omitted. He was accustomed
to sing in choir with the canons of St. Martin’s of Tours, and when
ridiculed by king Louis IV. of France, for the habit, sent to that
monarch a pithy epistle to the following effect: “Know, sir, that
an illiterate king is a crowned ass.” “It seems, then,” observes
Hallam, “that with the monkish historians a knowledge of music passed
for literature. The same writer calls Geoffrey Plantagenet _optime
literatus_, which perhaps imports little more learning than was
possessed by his ancestor, Fulk.”[103] The monkish biographer here
alluded to meant nothing of the kind, but he knew, as both Fulk and
Louis also knew, that at that time a knowledge of music might be
taken as a tolerably satisfactory token that the musician had studied
at one of the higher schools, and completed the full course of the
quadrivium. And such, indeed, was the case with Fulk, who, as the
same biographer tells us a few pages further on, was well read in
Cicero and Aristotle.

A methodical idea of the system of education which prevailed in the
higher monastic schools, is given in a little manual called the
“Doctrinale Puerorum,” the authority of which is beyond dispute.
Though the production of the twelfth century, so little change took
place in the system of studies from the time of Charlemagne to that
of Lanfranc that it may be taken as equally descriptive of the
method followed in the ninth and tenth. According to the writer of
this manual a child as soon as he had learnt to read and write, set
to work on the Latin Grammar of Donatus or Priscian, if he were so
fortunate as to be able to provide himself with a book. The larger
number of pupils probably had to depend on the oral instructions
dictated by their master, and their own notes of his lessons. We know
for certain that not only grammar, but rhetoric and the explanation
of classic authors were taught orally, rules and examples being
thus dictated and learnt by frequent repetition. From their ninth
to their twelfth year the boys studied elementary Latin books,
specially the Fables of Esop, and the poems of Christian authors,
such as Theodulus, who, in the tenth century, wrote in verse the
miracles of the Old and New Testaments, with the view of providing
young children with suitable class-books. The _Distichia Moralia_,
commonly attributed to Cato, a very old class-book, was probably
the authorship of some Christian writer of the seventh century;
and has found a home even in the Eastern languages. As the boys
advanced in years, select portions from the works of Seneca, Ovid,
Virgil, Persius, and Horace, but specially of Lucan and Statius
were placed in their hands, explained and committed to memory, and
these were followed by Cicero, Quinctilian, and the Latin version of
Aristotle.[104]

Some readers will, doubtless, be tempted to regard such an account
of the ancient course of classical studies as a work of the
imagination. They will call to mind the scruples of Alcuin and the
condemnation passed by Paschasius on those who spent their time
in the explanation of the profane poets. But it may be observed,
that the very examples so often quoted to prove that the monks
disapproved of the study of the classics, show us that at any
rate they knew a good deal about them. Alcuin had studied Virgil
himself before he forbade Sigulf to do so, and so had St. Odo, who
prohibited the reading of the Mantuan bard, after he had seen in a
vision a vessel full of serpents, which he understood to represent
his works. And the strictures of Paschasius on those who neglected
the Scriptures, while they weighed every line and syllable of Pagan
authors, shows at least how extensively those authors were read. But
it must strike every impartial reader that these prohibitions do,
in fact, prove nothing at all as to the state of school studies.
They apply entirely to the use of the classics, not among students,
but among the monks themselves. Because it was thought undesirable
that young ecclesiastics should spend their time in the study of
the profane poets, and because their attention was rather directed
by their superiors to the cultivation of sacred science, we must
not, certainly, conclude in the face of evidence that the classics
were excluded from the schools. Teachers in the ninth century were
no less solicitous than those of the nineteenth to form the mind
and the style of their scholars; their compositions are perhaps not
quite so full of the _membra disjecta_ of Tully as a scholar of
the Renaissance might have desired, yet he was certainly read, and
though the imitations of Virgil and Ovid attempted by these obscure
writers may be very indifferent, they could only have been produced
by men who were perfectly familiar with the original writings of the
Latin poets. Mabillon has not failed to draw the distinction between
the studies pursued by monks and bishops, and those of masters
and scholars.[105] He quotes two passages very much to the point,
in one of which Lanfranc declines entering into certain questions
appertaining to secular literature, submitted to him by the monk
Domnoald, because he says, “though in my youth I delighted in such
things, I determined wholly to renounce them when I accepted the
pastoral charge.” In the other passage St. Anselm writes to his old
pupil, Maurice, and advises him to read Virgil, and the other good
Latin authors, as much as he can, excepting always such passages as
offend good morals.

This last condition is often insisted on; nor was it until the
period of the classic Renaissance that the _indiscriminate_ use
of the classics by the young was tolerated. Rabanus in his book
_De Institutione Clericorum_, while permitting the study of
profane literature, even to clerics, stipulates that it be read
for edification, and that whatever has a contrary tendency be put
aside. The monastic scholars even recognised that reflection of
primeval tradition which gleams through the pagan authors, and
which, as Ozanam says, opened to Virgil the schools of the Middle
Ages. What they did not allow was that the exclusive study of these
models should be suffered to paganise the Christian mind, and they
contrived, therefore, in explaining the works of Cicero or Plato
to weave a Christian tone into the lessons by connecting them or
comparing them with passages from the Holy Scriptures.

Latin was the only language universally cultivated, though the
other learned tongues were not entirely neglected. Bede and Alcuin
certainly possessed a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and, no doubt,
communicated their learning to some of their pupils. Greek, as we
have seen, was studied at St. Gaul’s, and Charlemagne, who himself
had some knowledge of that tongue, founded a Greek college at
Osnaburgh, chiefly with a view to providing ecclesiastics whose
familiarity with the language of the Eastern empire might be of
service to him in his constant intercourse with Constantinople. Some
writers whose aim it is to represent the learning of these centuries
as altogether unworthy of notice, affect to doubt whether the Greek
college, if proposed, were ever really founded; but the evidence of
contemporary historians is positive on the point. “Do not wonder,”
writes the chronicler of Ottberg, “that the abbot of Hermann should
always have carried with him a Greek Testament, that learned man
was well skilled in the Greek tongue, which he had learnt in the
Caroline college at Osnaburgh, for in that foundation all the clergy
were skilled in Greek as well as in Latin.” Louis the Debonnaire and
Charles the Bald were both Greek scholars, and the latter monarch
had a Greek and Latin glossary compiled for the use of the Church of
Laon, which he would hardly have had done had there been none capable
of using it. Florus, the learned deacon of the Church of Lyons,
was well versed not only in Greek but Hebrew, as we learn from the
following circumstance. A certain abbot, Hyldrade, sent him a Latin
Psalter, begging him to correct it carefully, that it might serve as
a copy for his monks to transcribe from. Among the many curious and
valuable monuments of antiquity discovered by the late Cardinal Mai,
is the reply of Florus to this request. From it we find that he had
compared the Latin version of St. Jerome with the Septuagint, and
suspecting that the text of St. Jerome had itself become corrupted by
careless copying, had likewise collated it with the original Hebrew.
He quotes what he calls “the well-known” letter of St. Jerome to two
learned Celts, pointing out the errors in the vulgar copies; but
Rohrbacher remarks that this letter was well-known only in the ninth
century, for in ours it no longer exists. The whole letter of Floras
is exceedingly valuable as evidence of the extraordinary learning and
diligence bestowed on the correction of the Sacred Text.[106]

Nevertheless, an examination of the catalogues of early monastic
libraries, makes it clear that the study of Greek, if not wholly
neglected, was exceptional, and certainly did not include any
extensive acquaintance with ancient Greek literature. Among the
books named as the favourites of St. Paschasius, we find the works
of St. John Chrysostom; but in general the book collections are only
rich in the Latin Fathers. Scotus Erigena evidently introduced a
novelty when he translated the works of St. Denys the Areopagite,
and the eagerness displayed by Louis the Debonnaire to possess a
Latin version of the works of this author arose, perhaps, less
from an interest in Greek letters, than from the opinion, then
finding favour with Gallican scholars, which identified him with the
Apostle of France.[107] The mention, however, of any Greek poets or
philosophers is exceedingly rare. Homer, as has been said, had been
brought into England by Archbishop Theodore, and the St. Gall library
contained the works of Sophocles, but these are certainly exceptions,
and we may conclude that a knowledge of the Greek language was a
rare accomplishment, from the extreme complacency with which the
possession of a very superficial smattering of it was often regarded.
Hincmar, of Rheims, warns his nephew to avoid the foolish affectation
of some, who pick a handful of Greek words out of their glossaries to
adorn their pages and give them a learned look; a folly too common
also with our native scholars.

The sciences of arithmetic and geometry were probably taught in
rather a meagre form, until the genius of Gerbert, in the tenth
century, gave fresh impulse to these branches of learning. We have
seen what difficulties attended their study in the days of St.
Aldhelm; nevertheless the path of the young student was somewhat
smoothed by pleasant devices, and the Anglo-Saxon masters quickened
the brains of their pupils by problems and questions, some of which,
such is the power of tradition, have kept their places in our own
school-books. Arithmetical problems, such as the following, were
propounded to the schoolboys of Alcuin and Rabanus: “The swallow once
invited the snail to dinner; he lived just a league from the spot,
and the snail travelled at the rate of one inch a day: how long was
he before he dined?” Or, again: “An old man met a child; ‘Good day,
my son,’ he said, ‘may you live as long as you have lived and as much
more, and thrice as much as all that put together, and then if God
give you one year more, you will be just a century old;’ how old was
the boy?”

Besides the sciences above enumerated, some schools, and particularly
those of England, taught a certain amount of natural philosophy,
very imperfect, if compared with our own larger and more accurate
knowledge of these subjects, yet valuable in its way, as directing
the mind to a branch of learning where improvement could only be
hoped for by patient and persevering observation. Geography, again,
though in its infancy, was a favourite study with the Anglo-Saxons,
and from none did it receive greater extension than from king Alfred,
who added whole chapters to the science as it existed before his
time. This, in common with a great many other branches of knowledge,
was sometimes taught to tardy scholars by the help of verses. Several
versified summaries of grammatical rules and geographical definitions
are in existence in very early English, but for the credit of the
geographers, I will not say in what quarter of the globe they place
the land of Egypt.

We have yet to speak, however, of a far more important subject
connected with the early monastic schools, the religious training of
their pupils, and the sacred studies which they pursued. In nothing,
probably, did the ancient system of education differ more widely from
our own, than in the amount of vocal prayer in which children were
expected to take a part. Of course we must bear in mind when reading
of children assisting at all the Canonical Hours of the monastery in
which they were educated, that in most cases the children spoken of
were those “offered” by their parents and intended for the monastic
state. They were the pupils of the interior or claustral schools;
and it is probable that those belonging to the exterior school were
subject to a less rigorous discipline. Still, in either case, they
were children, with the propensities common to all children, whether
of the ninth or nineteenth centuries; yet we find nothing to indicate
that the choral attendance described by the Anglo-Saxon schoolboy in
the dialogues of Ælfric, was found by experience to be excessive.
“To-day,” says the boy, “I have done many things; this night, when
I heard the knell, I arose from my bed and went to the church and
sang Night-song with the brethren; after that we sang the service of
All Saints and the morning Lauds; then followed Prime and the Seven
Psalms, and the Litanies, and the first Mass; then Tierce, and the
Mass of the day; then Sext; and then we ate and drank and went to
sleep, and rose again and sang None; and now we are here before thee
ready to hear what thou hast to say to us.” “Who awakens you for
Night-song?” asks the interlocutor. “Sometimes,” answers the scholar,
“I hear the knell, and rise of myself; but ofttimes the master
arouseth me with his rod.”

If this attendance in choir surprise us as being daily required from
young children, we must remember that the habits of the grown-up
laity in early ages would be equally at variance with our own. The
Divine Office of the Church was not then exclusively recited by
priests and religious; the faithful assisted even at the Night-hours,
and were constantly urged to do so. In the days of Charlemagne, as
in those of St. John Chrysostom, rich and poor, men and women, took
part in that sublime worship, and so eager were they in their desire
to join in the chant, that it became necessary for abbots to issue
injunctions, forbidding their monks to cut up their Psalters in order
to distribute the leaves to seculars who solicited the precious
fragments, certain devout women being foremost among the beggars.
Without some knowledge of the habits of the time, we can form no
tolerably fair judgment on the education which was of course fitted
and adapted to those habits. The spirit of these early ages was
pre-eminently _Liturgical_. The world was as yet too little civilised
to furnish her children with those countless elegant methods of
killing time which later ages have so marvellously multiplied;
theatres had no existence, and even the superabundant games and
pastimes so popular in the Middle Ages, were as yet unthought of.
The people sought not merely their instruction, but their recreation
also in the Church, and their education thoroughly fitted them to
join in her ceremonies and ritual, which it is to be feared, by more
cultivated intellects of a later generation, are too often but very
imperfectly understood. The education of children partook, of course,
of the character of the age; it was more or less ecclesiastical, even
for those not intended for the religious or clerical state; and this
has given rise to the very hasty conclusion that in the centuries of
which we speak, education was given to none save those who aspired to
the priesthood. But in point of fact the whole atmosphere of society
was then so permeated with the Christian, and what we have ventured
to denominate the _Liturgical_ spirit, that children of seculars then
received a training which, to modern eyes, appears exclusively suited
to ecclesiastics.

The one branch of learning, therefore, which, in the judgment
of the monastic teachers, exceeded in importance all the rest,
was undoubtedly the study of the Scriptures. “In the study of
the Scriptures,” says Mabillon, “consisted the whole science of
the monks.” Scholastic theology was as yet unknown, and the Holy
Scriptures and the commentaries of the Fathers formed the exclusive
study of theologians. That alliance between faith and reason, wherein
reason, exercising itself on revealed truth under the control and
guidance of faith, built up the dogmas of the Church into a compact
and well-ordered system, was the work of later centuries; the
monastic scholars of the age of Charlemagne knew nothing about it.
They had the Scriptures, interpreted by the Fathers, and the decrees
of the Church, for their guides in dogma; and for discipline, the
sacred Canons. With these they were abundantly satisfied. Placed in
green pastures and by the side of running waters, they enjoyed the
inheritance that had fallen to them, and sought for nothing more.
Their divines, therefore, hardly aimed at the merit of original
composition, and were content to study, to copy, and to compile
the teaching, and often the very phraseology of St. Augustine, St.
Ambrose, or St. Gregory. Hence the complaint not unjustly brought
against them, is that, though tolerably acquainted with books, they
were for the most part deficient in original argument. In fact, they
sought to hand on the traditions of the Church pure and uncorrupted,
rather than to earn for themselves a fame as original thinkers; and
one of the marks of the age is an absence of the disputatious spirit
which, if it diminishes their rank in the world of letters, forms the
charm of their characters as men. There was nothing of the sophist
or logician in those sweet and venerable countenances, the unruffled
beauty of which is so often dwelt on by their biographers. True,
indeed, controversies did arise, as we have seen in the beginning
of this chapter, but they were out of harmony with the time. The
character of Scotus Erigena, like his learning, was that of a man
born out of due time; he belonged to the twelfth rather than to
the ninth century, and his wrangling must have sounded strangely
discordant in the ears of his contemporaries. The real spirit of the
age was one of reverence for Tradition; and the large and active
intellects of a Bede, a Boniface and a Paschasius, found all they
sought and all they desired in the Positive Theology of the Church.

So much has been done in our time to dispel the vulgar illusion that
the Scriptures were unknown and uncared for in the Dark Ages, that
I need not here enter into any proof of what is now, or at least
ought to be, an uncontroverted fact. Mr. Maitland’s “Essays” have
convincingly proved that if the monks read nothing else they at
least read the Bible. But what he has not shown with equal power,
is the love, the enthusiasm with which, to use the expression of
the biographer of Rabanus, they “fed themselves on the Divine
Scriptures.” Like the Jews of old, they meditated on them, “sitting
in the house or walking on a journey;” they were written “on the
entry and on the doorposts.”[108] At the tables of bishops and
abbots, of nobles and of kings, the Scriptures were daily read aloud:
the little child learnt from them his first lesson, and the old man
died with their accent on his lips. What need had they of the fables
of the poets, when the beauties of the inspired writers were graven
on their memories, familiar as household words? How could they care
to listen to what Ovid had to tell them of the Golden Age, they to
whom the glowing imagery of the Prophet had painted the kingdom of
the Son of Jesse, where the wolf was to dwell with the lamb, and
the kid with the leopard, and a little child should lead them? And
what great wonder was it if the degrading tales of heathen deities,
even when sung by the Muse of Virgil, should fall somewhat flat and
profitless on their ears, accustomed as they were to the sublime
marvels of God’s dealings with His ancient people, and the history of
the Incarnate Word?

It was not merely as the inspired Word of God that the Holy
Scriptures were thus valued; but in the schools of which we are
speaking they held the place of the great Christian classic. They
were not a mere dry repertory of texts illustrative of doctrine, but
they formed at once the favourite book of prayer, of meditation, of
spiritual reading, and of recreative delight. Pondered on day and
night, with all their hidden meaning laid open by the comments of
the Fathers, what a treasury of wisdom, what a fountain of poesy was
there! The very language of Scripture wonderfully harmonised with
the daily monastic life, so patriarchal in its simplicity, its noble
toils, and its humble duties of the shepherd, the husbandman, and the
vinedresser. It harmonised with the scenes in the midst of which they
lived, the mountains, and the wooded valleys, the fields standing
thick with corn, the wilderness in its untrampled beauty, where rose
up “the verdure of the reed and the bulrush,” and where the myrtle
and the olive-tree grew by the running waters. It harmonised with
their deep sympathy with the Beautiful, their intimate acquaintance
with Nature in all her aspects, by day or by night, so familiar to
the eyes of those who sanctified all hours by prayer, and to whom
“the outgoings of the morning and of the evening were made joyful,”
by the Matins and Vesper psalmody. But chiefly and above all, it
harmonised with that thirst that devoured their souls for the true
and living God; a thirst which made them weary of all things in which
He was not to be found, which made all things sweet in which He had
His part; which led them by a strange inspired ingenuity to turn
all things to Him, to Christianise every study, to divinise every
act; which taught them to create new arts to deck His sanctuary, new
sciences to minister to His praise--a thirst which, unslaked by the
choicest fountains of Gentile antiquity, drank deep and refreshing
draughts at those streams of sacred poetry, out of which they framed
the language of their daily Office, and which moulded the very
fashion of their daily speech.

The Scriptures, then, were the Christian classics of the monks
and their pupils. Their study was not confined to ecclesiastical
students, but formed one of the chief branches of every Christian
man’s education.[109] And by their study we must understand, of
course, not a mere familiarity with the dead letter, but an intimate
knowledge of their spiritual sense. We may gather some idea of
what was implied in the monastic study of the Scriptures, from a
letter written by a certain monk of Citeaux to one of his friends,
in which he draws out a compendious method for his guidance.
Together with the different divisions of his subject, he advises
him to read appropriate commentaries. Thus Josephus and Hegesippus
are to be read with the Pentateuch and the Historical Books, and
if any words occur of doubtful signification, the student is to
consult the “Etymologies” of St. Isidore, and St. Jerome on the
“Explanation of Hebrew Names;” and that other book on “Derivations,”
“which is to be found in most large libraries,” and finally the
“Gloss.” Certain passages of more importance, and summaries of the
principal facts, are to be written out and committed to memory;
and the writer proceeds to give directions on this point, adding,
that on all the subjects he names it will be useful to consult St.
Augustine “_De Quæstionibus_.” When the Historical Books have been
carefully studied, the Prophetical Books may be begun. We are to
note which prophecies are fulfilled, and which unfulfilled, and the
exact time and circumstances under which each was written. After
these the Books of instruction, and then the Gospels. In reading the
Gospels, it will be necessary to have St. Jerome’s description of the
“Holy Places of Palestine,” and the “Harmony of the Gospels.” And
we must carefully observe where, when, and before whom our Lord’s
Sermons were delivered, and His miracles worked. The rest of the New
Testament is afterwards to be read. The student is then directed to
read certain works on the Sacraments, on the reason for assigning
different portions of Scripture to different seasons, and some of the
works of St. Augustine. And when the literal sense of the Holy Books
has been thus carefully studied, and not before, he may pass on to
their allegorical and mystic interpretation, and read both Testaments
through in the same order a second time, special authors being
recommended to assist his comprehension of their spiritual sense.[110]

This double method of study, in which the literal meaning of the
Scriptures was made the basis of interpreting their spiritual
signification, was begun very early, and even young children were
considered capable of being introduced by degrees to the spiritual
comprehension of the Sacred Books. So far from these being a treasure
sealed up to all save the clergy, they formed the foundation stone of
all education. Thus Thegan writes of the Emperor Louis le Debonnaire,
that he had been perfectly instructed in the allegorical and mystical
interpretation of the Scriptures, and we learn from St. Aldhelm’s
treatise, “_De Laudibus Virginitatis_,” that the nuns for whom
he intended it were not only accustomed to read the Old and New
Testaments, together with the Commentaries of the Fathers, but that
they also studied the historical, allegorical, and analogical senses
of different passages. Nor is this by any means an exceptional case,
for in the religious houses of women sacred studies were pursued with
hardly less eagerness than in those of men.

And here the temptation presents itself to say something of the
schools provided in the Dark Ages for the education of women, such
as the royal house of Chelles, where the wise Bertilla presided over
scores of English scholars sent by their parents to France, as we
must needs suppose, for fashion’s sake, for there were certainly
plenty of good schools to be found in England. Fashion, however, has
much to do with the selection of a school, and Chelles was naturally
popular with the English, having been founded in the seventh century
by a princess of Anglo-Saxon blood.

Queen Bathildis, indeed, was not of royal birth; she was a poor
maiden who had been sold as a slave into France, and attracting the
attention of Clovis II., was raised by him to share his throne. Her
first thought in her new position was to procure the abolition of
slavery, or at least the amelioration of the condition of slaves.
“She was,” says her biographer, “of a beautiful and cheerful
countenance, to her husband an obedient wife, to the princes a
mother, to boys and youths the best of counsellors; to all an amiable
and gracious friend,” and he adds that among her other good deeds,
“she was always exhorting and encouraging the youth around her to
religious studies.” So soon as her son Clothaire was old enough to
govern, Bathildis, who during his minority had acted as regent,
retired to Chelles and spent the remainder of her days in the humble
office of infirmarian. But her foundation had meanwhile acquired a
great reputation for learning, which was yet further increased when
Gisella, the sister of Charlemagne, and the pupil of Alcuin, assumed
its government in the ninth century.

Nor must it be supposed that these examples of learning in the
cloisters of nuns were confined to those communities which had caught
their tone from the little knot of literary women educated by St.
Boniface. It was the natural and universal development of religious
life. We have but to glance back a century or two, and we shall find
foundations of purely French origin, those of St. Cesarius of Arles,
in which the nuns were to be seen reading even over their work, and
busy at the transcription of the Sacred Books. And we might quote
the account of St. Cesaria’s death, written by one of her devout
children, which M. Guizot hesitates not to rank among the gems of
literature. Or we might turn to the Latin poems of St. Radegundes,
the Queen of Clothaire I., and the friend of Venantius Fortunatus,
who composed his celebrated hymn “Vexilla regis” on occasion of the
translation to her monastery at Poitiers of a relic of the true
Cross. This royal nun of the sixth century was accustomed to read
the Greek and Latin Fathers, and as her biographer tells us, was not
only _vultu elegans_, but _litteris erudita_. She liked her disciples
to be as learned as herself, insisted that all should be able to
read, and should learn the Psalter by heart, and gathered together
more than two hundred daughters of noble families, in whose company
and instruction she took such passing great delight, that, says
Baudoniva, one of them whom she had educated from a child and who
afterwards wrote her life, she would address them in the tenderest
terms, calling them her light, her life, and her chosen little
plants.[111]

The picture of St. Cesaria in the sixth century, and of St. Lioba in
the eighth, is reproduced in that of St. Adelaide of Gueldres, abbess
of Cologne in the tenth. She had enjoyed a learned education, and
took great delight in collecting around her young virgins to whom she
communicated her lessons with a truly maternal care. Every day she
showed herself in the school, and propounded grammatical subtleties
to her disciples; rewarding the diligent with caresses, and punishing
the slothful with a severity for which her tender heart was wont
afterwards often to reproach her. In fact, were I to repeat all that
her biographer relates of her zeal in the matter of correction, I
might convey the impression that the pupils of the abbess Adelaide
lived under a rather terrible taskmistress. She sometimes visited the
offenders with rods, and sometimes with a good box on the ear. The
latter chastisement was even inflicted in choir when her pupils sang
out of tune; but her biographer adds, it was never found necessary to
administer it a second time, for the touch of her saintly hand had
such power in it, as to cure all defects of voice and ear for the
future.[112] But yet she was a tender and a loving mother, and when
she had punished any one, would conjure some of her sisters to go and
console the poor victim whom she immediately began to compassionate.
Nay, her love went so far, that besides the incessant thought she
bestowed on providing her children with good food and raiment, she
would steal into their dormitory in the winter nights, to find out
if any were suffering from cold feet, and would warm them by rubbing
them with her hands.

These examples are all of religious women; but we have direct
evidence that even those who embraced a secular life were expected
to receive a certain amount of education. Amalarius, of Metz, whose
great work on the “Ecclesiastical Offices” appeared in the year 820,
requires that young girls should learn the Psalter, the Books of
Job and Proverbs, the Four Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles.
Perhaps there is no more interesting and decisive testimony as to
the amount of learning to be found among the laity in the Dark Ages,
than the curious will of Count Eberhard, of Terouanne, who died in
860, and left behind him a precious library, equalling in extent
many of those possessed by religious houses. He directed that this
library should, after his death, be divided among his children in
the manner prescribed by his will. The four sons and four daughters
each received their share, though the boys, naturally enough,
obtained the lion’s share. Among the books named in the catalogue are
treatises on law, military affairs, history, and natural philosophy,
besides religious works.[113] One of the books bequeathed to Gisla,
is the “Enchiridion” of St. Augustine. We have besides incidental
notices occurring in the biographies of the time, which represent
mothers writing to their sons and conveying to them sound practical
advice, and noble ladies keeping up a correspondence with learned
ecclesiastics, who seem to have directed their studies. There was
certainly no difficulty in the way of ladies obtaining an education
if they chose, for the convents of Chelles, Farmoutier, Brie,
and Andelys, all had excellent schools, and often enough English
mistresses, whose teaching was held in special esteem. And Theodulph,
of Orleans, does not seem to have been giving the princess Gisella a
piece of advice at all out of harmony with the manners and ideas of
the age, when he counselled her to divide her time equally between
reading and the homely cares of the household, concluding his
admonitions with the two following lines:

Assidue si ores, tibi si sit lectio crebra,
Ipsa Deo loqueris, et Deus ipse tibi.

An attentive study of the history of the following centuries will
convince us that if the dames and spinsters of the Middle Ages were
not exactly blue-stockings, they perfectly understood the value of
Theodulph’s counsels, and that they were often not only learned
themselves, but the cause of learning in others. For not a few of the
learned foundations in England owe their existence to the munificence
of noble ladies, who, in this country at least, have ever shown
themselves the nursing mothers of polite letters. But of this there
will be more to say in its proper place.

_CHAPTER VII._

KING ALFRED.

A.D. 873 TO 900.

The history of King Alfred, and his noble efforts in the cause of
learning, are so familiar to all readers that it may seem unnecessary
to say much of the restoration of letters which took place in England
during his reign. From our childhood, the stories of his life have
been as familiar to us as those of Scripture, and it is probable
that the illuminated manuscript which first tempted him to learn
his alphabet has encouraged not a few of us in our childish love of
picture-books. Every one knows that at the time of his accession
England was plunged in her darkest night of ignorance; and every
one who has studied Hume, Hallam, and other standard writers, knows
that the illiteracy of the English clergy at that precise period is
commonly cited as a sample of the state of things which prevailed
throughout Europe during the Dark Ages. Hallam, indeed, in a note
appended to his remarks on the subject, admits that before the
Danish Invasion, the churches were well furnished with books, but
adds that “the priests got little good from them, being written in
a foreign language they could not understand.”[114] The fact that
the state of things complained of was not normal, but accidental,
is uniformly ignored by these writers; they beheld the waters of an
inundation, and would have their readers believe them to be the ocean
in its natural bed. However, far from wishing to deny the ignorance
which existed in England at the time of Alfred’s accession, I will
add to the colouring of the picture by quoting Dr. Lingard’s brief
but emphatic summary of the grievances under which the kingdom then
groaned. “At the close of this calamitous period,” he says, after a
graphic sketch of the devastations perpetrated by the Danes, “the
Anglo-Saxon church presented a melancholy spectacle; the laity had
resumed the ferocious manners of their pagan forefathers; the clergy
had grown indolent, dissolute, and illiterate; the monastic order was
apparently annihilated, and it devolved on Alfred, now victorious
over his enemies, to apply remedies to all these evils.”

The Whitsuntide of the year 873 had been signalised by the great
battle of Ethandun, gained by Alfred over the Danes; and this was
followed by a short but brilliant campaign, at the close of which
the “heathen men” retired into East Anglia and made their submission
to the crown of Wessex. This final success was succeeded by fifteen
years of comparative tranquillity, which were employed by Alfred in
those multifarious acts of wise legislation which restored order to
his distracted kingdom, and gained for himself the well-merited title
of “the Great.” No work, however, lay closer to his heart than the
restoration of learning, for though at this time quite as illiterate
as the rest of his people, Alfred’s desire to become learned had
very early evinced itself. He had learned to read and write at
twelve years old, in spite of many obstacles, no good masters being
then to be obtained in all Wessex. His reading, however, was not
extensive; it seems to have been confined to a little book in which
were collected the day hours of the church, and a few psalms and
collects, and which he always carried about him. The manuscript
which by its brilliant illuminations had first excited his curiosity
was a collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and there is no reason for
supposing that Alfred was at this time possessed of any other books.

But an intellect like his finds other food than that which can merely
be extracted from books. In company with his father, Ethelwulf,
Alfred had made the pilgrimage to Rome, where Ethelwulf rebuilt
the Saxon school which had been founded by King Ina.[115] On their
homeward journey he had visited the court of Charles the Bald, and
seen and talked with learned men; he had assisted at his father’s
second marriage with the Princess Judith, which was celebrated by
Hincmar of Rheims; and at St. Omer’s he had made acquaintance with
the Provost Grimbald, whose conversation left a lasting impression
on his mind. All this had been a kind of education to him, and by
showing him the superior enlightenment of other countries, made him
more bitterly regret the rudeness of his own. The first step he took
in order to begin a reform was to search out the few learned men
still to be found among the Anglo-Saxon clergy. How few they were
he lets us know in that oft-quoted passage from the Preface to his
translation of St. Gregory, and which, after speaking of the “blessed
times” formerly existing in England, when there were holy kings and
a zealous clergy, and people came hither from foreign countries in
quest of instruction, he laments over the change that has fallen on
the land, and declares that knowledge has now so escaped from the
English people, that few priests south of the Humber can be found
who understand the divine service, or can explain a Latin epistle in
English. “They are so few,” he adds, “that I cannot remember one,
south of the Thames, when I began to reign.”

And yet, says Hallam, the district south of the Thames was “the best
part of England.” This, however, is clearly a mistake, for every one
of the surviving Saxon scholars whom Alfred succeeded in hunting out
and drawing to his court were Mercians. They were Werefrith, Bishop
of Worcester; Plegmund, who when the Danes were ravaging the country
had fled into Cheshire and there became a hermit; and two other
Mercian priests, named Ethelstan and Werwulf. Plegmund was drawn
out of the solitude called from him Plegmundesham, and in 890 was
chosen by God and the people to be Archbishop of Canterbury, says
the Saxon Chronicle, of great part of which he is supposed to have
been the compiler. Werefrith, whom Asser calls most erudite in the
divine Scriptures, was sufficiently a Latin scholar to undertake the
translation of St. Gregory’s dialogues. Ethelstan and Werwulf were
appointed royal chaplains, and had no light office, for they were
required by the king to read to him at every leisure moment, “both
by day and by night,” that so he might become acquainted with books
which he could not read for himself. In Wessex Alfred found no one
fitted to take part in the proposed reform, with the exception of a
poor swineherd named Denewulf, whom he fell in with whilst hunting
in the forest of Selwood; and, charmed with the native genius he
betrayed in his conversation, had him educated, and eventually raised
him to the see of Winchester. These, however, were not sufficient for
the work which the king contemplated, and his thoughts turned to the
foreign monks whose acquaintance he had formed on his journey from
Rome. He specially desired to obtain possession of Grimbald, who was
renowned for his knowledge of the Scriptures and his proficiency in
the musical science, and for this purpose despatched an embassy to
Fulk, Archbishop of Rheims, begging that the learned provost might
be sent to him without delay. Mr. Turner, in his interesting account
of the literary labours of Alfred, informs us that Fulk addressed
the king a very singular letter in reply, wherein he calls both
Grimbald and the English prelates who formed the embassy by the
name of _dogs_. “You have sent me some noble generous dogs to drive
away the irreligious wolves, and they came desiring other dogs, not
dumb dogs like those spoken of by the prophet, but good noisy dogs
that can bark and make themselves heard.” Reference to the original
letter of Fulk however, which is printed at the end of Asser’s Life
of Alfred,[116] will show that this is a very free translation of a
passage capable of simple explanation. The neighbourhood of Rheims
was, it seems, infested with wolves, no uncommon thing even in the
suburbs of great cities in those wild times; and Alfred, among the
costly presents which he sent to the archbishop, had included a pack
of English wolf-hounds. Fulk in his letter thanks him for the welcome
gift. “You have sent us,” he says, “noble and generous, although
mortal and corporal dogs, to drive away the visible wolves with
which, among other scourges of God’s justice, our country abounds;
and you have asked of us, other dogs, not corporal, but spiritual
ones; not such as those of whom the Psalmist speaks, saying, ‘Dumb
dogs not able to bark,’ but such as may guard their master’s house
by their barking, and wisely keep his flock from the wolves of the
unclean spirit, which are the devourers of souls, of which number
one is Grimbald the priest and monk,” whose learning and sanctity
he then proceeds to extol. Grimbald arrived in England in 884, and,
after being honourably received by Alfred and Archbishop Ethelred, is
said to have made an excellent oration to the clergy and nobility in
a Synod held at London, calling on them, one and all, to embrace a
devout life, and to lend their aid in remedying the disorders which
had followed on the Danish invasions. According to most writers,
he began to teach sacred letters in the schools opened by Alfred
at Oxford, and afterwards became abbot of the monastery which the
king had founded at Winchester. Another of Alfred’s foreign scholars
was John of Old Saxony, a monk of Corby, who has been erroneously
confused with John Scotus Erigena. He appears to have brought with
him a small community of French monks who were placed by Alfred in
the monastery newly erected in the Isle of Athelney.

But none of these rendered Alfred such effectual help in his
literary labours as the British scholar Asser, a monk of St.
David’s monastery, whose fame having reached the King’s ears, he
was invited to the royal “vill” of Dene, in Sussex, and travelled
thither “through many wide intervening ways,” under the conduct of
some Saxon guides, in the same year that witnessed the arrival of
Grimbald. Asser, who has told us much concerning his royal patron,
and has traced his genealogy through Woden up to Bedwig, the grandson
of Noe, has been provokingly concise in his account of himself,
and the history of his first introduction to the Saxon court. We
only know that Alfred vainly endeavoured to induce him to give up
his own country, and devote himself entirely to his service; and
that Asser steadily refused to do so, thinking, as he says, that it
was not right to forsake the holy place where he had been nurtured
and consecrated for the prospect of earthly gain and honour. A
compromise was, therefore, agreed to, by which Alfred secured his
services for six months in every year; and the direction of the court
school was delivered into his hands. The plan of this school was
the same as that of Charlemagne’s Palatine academy; and in it not
only the princes and sons of the nobility, but many also of humbler
rank, received their education. They read both Saxon and Latin
books, and wrote in both languages, so that before they were strong
enough to take part in the chase and other manly sports, they were
fully instructed in what Asser calls the liberal arts. Ethelward,
Alfred’s youngest son, is specially commended for his diligence and
love of learning; and his elder brother, Edward, and their sister,
Ethelswitha, continued their studies even after they were grown up.
We have not the same accurate information with regard to the nature
of their acquirements as we have of those of Alcuin’s scholars; but
Asser says they pursued all the liberal sciences, learnt the Psalter,
and read Saxon books very frequently, especially Saxon poems. Another
school was opened at Athelney, which seems to have been exclusively
intended to educate future monks and clergy, and among its scholars
the greater number were foreigners. Asser speaks of having seen one
of the pagan youths studying there, by which expression he probably
means a Dane. He himself had no reason to complain of not being well
paid for his services, for Alfred had the merit, so highly prized
among his nation, of possessing an open hand. He conferred on his
favourite scholar the monasteries of Congresbury and Banwell in one
day; and another time gave him Exeter and all the parishes annexed
to it in Wessex and Cornwall, as well as a silk pallium and a man’s
load of incense, with promises of more at a future time. These
liberal grants of land and possessions were possibly made with the
covert design of eventually fixing Asser altogether on the Saxon side
of the Severn, and not without success, if, as seems probable, he
afterwards became Bishop of Sherborne.

It was Alfred’s own desire to extend the blessing of education to all
his free-born subjects; and he even made it a law that every freeman
possessed of two hides of land should keep his sons at school till
they were fifteen, “because a man born free, who is unlettered, is
to be regarded no otherwise than as a beast, having, like them, no
understanding.” If they had no sons of their own, he encouraged them
to choose among the sons of their vassals those of most promise,
who might at their expense be trained in good learning, and fitted
to fill offices in church and state. He was literally dismayed at
the amount of ignorance which he found among his judges, and by his
reproofs shamed some of them into seeking in their old age for the
instruction they had neglected in their youth. “I marvel,” he would
say, “that you who have been intrusted with the office of the Wise
(Witan) should have neglected the studies of the wise. Therefore,
either at once resign your offices, or apply yourselves to gain
wisdom.” Many, urged by words like these, placed themselves under
the court teachers, and those who considered the labour of learning
to read too gigantic to be undertaken at their age, had their sons
and freed men educated, and employed them to read to them, lamenting
their own ignorance, and extolling the superior advantages enjoyed by
the youth of the present times.

But though the good work was begun, Alfred knew well enough that the
only way to perpetuate it was the foundation of monastic schools;
and here lay his great difficulty, for not only were all the old
monasteries destroyed by the Danes, but the religious spirit that
had formerly peopled the cloisters of Malmsbury, and Jarrow, and
Croyland, and Lindisfarne with communities numbering their hundreds,
were now entirely extinct. Asser informs us that the monastic
institute was held in such contempt at that time, that no freeman
was to be found in all Wessex willing to embrace it, and those
from other provinces who had embraced it neglected all its rules.
A gross sensuality had taken possession of the English people, and
resulted in a wide-spread neglect on the part of the secular clergy
of the sacred canons which bound them to a single life. Their
example was ruinous to the morals of the laity, and the practice of
divorce was becoming common among all ranks; and to complete the
moral degradation of the English, drunkenness was frightfully on the
increase among them, that vice the progress of which St. Boniface
had so often lamented in his letters to the English prelates, saying
that he blushed to find England alone disfigured by a brutal habit to
which the very pagans were strangers. In such a state of society we
are not surprised to find that the monastic profession was generally
regarded with dislike. Athelney had to be peopled with foreign monks,
and the murderous attempts they made on the life of their abbot seems
to show that the community was made up of worthless members. The only
other religious house of any importance which owed its foundation
to Alfred was that at Winchester, and in consequence of the support
it received from the king it seems to have enjoyed a larger share
of prosperity. Still, it must be admitted that Alfred’s efforts to
restore monasticism in England were a failure; and in this respect
his restoration of learning differed from that of Charlemagne. The
Frankish monarch found himself surrounded by institutions which only
needed encouragement to become the fit instruments for his work. The
monastic spirit was vigorous in France in the eighth century, and he
had but to speak the word to see schools and libraries starting up in
connection with the cathedrals and monasteries. But in England the
case was far different, and hence the real good achieved by Alfred
was effected less by the schools that he founded than by the books
that he wrote.

It is truly astonishing to think that we should number among our
authors a king who, when he came to the throne, could barely read and
write, and who during the whole of his reign was overwhelmed with
business of all kinds, and worn down by constant bodily sickness.
If Charlemagne’s greatness had a more brilliant character, that of
Alfred is perhaps more admirable when we remember how very few he
had to assist him in his toils. He had to regenerate every branch
of government, and to see to each department with his own eye. If
Asser’s statement is to be received as literally correct, the king
found himself called on to teach his officers even their most homely
duties. In the midst of Danish incursions and daily infirmities, he
had not only to guide the rudder of the State, but to instruct his
goldsmiths and other artificers, his huntsmen, falconers, fowlers,
and dog-keepers. Many useful arts he himself taught his people; they
were so barbarised and discouraged by their long continued sufferings
that agriculture was becoming neglected in many parts, and the king
was forced to offer premiums to those who would apply themselves
to it, and to distribute seed from the royal storehouses. He was
likewise a great builder, and introduced the fashion of building
brick and stone houses instead of wooden hovels, himself furnishing
the necessary directions and designs. I need not speak of what he did
as a lawgiver, or of the numberless social and political institutions
which he created. He was at once head, eye, and hand to the kingdom,
and found so few among his nobles capable of seconding him in his
efforts for the good of his people, that we are told he had to hang
forty-five of his judges for gross crimes in the execution of their
duty. How in the midst of all these multifarious cares he contrived
to find time for the liberal arts, is only to be explained when we
remember that he was pre-eminently a good manager and an economist
of time; not an economist in that sense of the word in which we
understand one who sacrifices everything to business, for according
to this practical view Alfred might certainly have made more of his
time than he did; and his method of disposing of the eight hours a
day which he devoted to prayer and study, would probably by some be
regarded as anything but economical. A man who was in the habit of
hearing mass and reciting the divine office daily, and of satisfying
his devotion by frequent and stealthy visits to the church, at
such times as he judged himself least likely to be observed by his
attendants, seemed to be expending his few and precious leisure
moments on duties not of obligation. But this holy prodigality
of the time given to God is a speciality in our early Christian
scholars on which it is profitable to dwell. It formed a part of
their system, and was as remarkable in Alfred as it was in Bede.
And however familiar the reader may be with the anecdotes of his
life, some, perhaps, will not be equally familiar with them as they
stand in their original garb, from which the religious element has
been carefully pared away by each successive story-teller. I shall,
therefore, make no apology for introducing so threadbare a subject as
King Alfred and his horn lanthorns, persuaded that comparatively few
of those who have heard of him as their inventor, have ever dreamt
that they had any sort of connection with the spiritual side of our
great king’s character. Here, then, is the story as it appears in the
pages of Asser. After telling us of the many undertakings happily
brought to completion by the king, and his incessant activity in the
government of the realm, he continues: “Having set all these things
in order, mindful of that saying of Holy Writ, ‘Let him who would
give an alms begin with himself,’ he reflected on what he could offer
to God of the service of his own mind and body, wishing to consecrate
these to God as well as his exterior riches. So he promised, as far
as infirmity, possibility, and means would permit, willingly and with
all his might to give to God one-half of the service of his mind
and body, both by day and night. However, as he could not any way
reckon the night hours, by reason of the darkness, nor equally divide
those of the day, because of the frequent rain and clouds, he began
to think how he might, with God’s help, observe the tenor of his
vow even until death. At last he hit on a useful and clever device.
He ordered his chaplains to provide a sufficient quantity of wax,
which when brought he caused to be weighed out in pennyweights. When
seventy-two pennyweights of it had been measured out, he ordered his
chaplains to make thereof six candles, all of equal dimensions, each
candle being marked out into twelve inches of length. This being done
the six candles were burnt day and night without intermission through
the twenty-four hours before the holy relics of many saints, which
he took with him wherever he went. But as sometimes the candle would
not burn through a whole night and day up to the same hour at which
they had been lighted the preceding evening (doubtless because of the
violence of the winds, which often blew through the doors and windows
of the church, or through the many chinks in the walls and roofs,
and their hangings), and as thus they burnt out more quickly than
they should have done, Alfred began to consider how he might prevent
this effect of the wind, and caused a lanthorn to be beautifully
constructed of wood and cow’s horn (for white cows’ horns carefully
scraped are no less transparent than glass), and the candle, being
placed in this lanthorn, shone as brightly without as it did within,
unimpeded by the blasts of wind.”[117]

So, then, it was in fulfilment of a religious vow that King Alfred
cast about to discover how he might accurately measure out his time,
and his horn lanthorns were but the means he hit on to help him how
to give the half of his service of mind and body, day and night, to
God. Truly a vow worthy of a Christian hero, and right faithfully
and heroically kept. Of course, in the time thus consecrated to God,
he included those hours he devoted to study, for this with him was
a religious exercise. How, indeed, he contrived to secure his eight
hours a day of prayer and reading, is a mystery of the same nature
with those marvellous facts which we meet with in the lives of the
saints, whose days and nights seem to have had forty-eight hours
in them, if we measure them by the amount of prayer and work they
accomplished during their course. Alfred, whilst thus disposing of
his time by vow, had, as it might seem, no time to himself. However,
he made the most of what with most men are idle moments, and when not
actually engaged in business was always reading or hearing others
read. In his chamber he always had a book open before him, and never
travelled without carrying his books with him. The attainment of
wisdom, both human and Divine, was his absorbing desire; and Asser,
after speaking of his incomparable affability and cheerfulness with
others, and the great love and honour he showed to all those whom he
drew around him, as well foreigners as natives, and his exceeding
tenderness for his own children, and for the other youths whom he
caused to be bred up in his palace, as though they were all members
of his own family, goes on to say that he had no real consolation
in any of these things, but that day and night he was devoured
with one thought, and with what he calls an anxious sadness, which
he poured out to his familiar friends; and this was his ceaseless
desire that Almighty God would make him skilled in divine wisdom
and in the liberal arts; so that he sought for wisdom even as did
King Solomon, esteeming it to be preferable to glory and riches,
and, like him, found them also together with her; according as it is
written, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all
other things shall be added to you.” This coupling together of divine
wisdom and the liberal arts, as equal objects of solicitude, is
easily understood when we remember the plan according to which human
knowledge was then pursued, always in subordination to that which is
divine, and mainly in connection with it. Intellectual pursuits not
having yet been set free from their holy servitude to the faith, were
not recognised as possessing any peculiar dangers; nay, rather, they
seem invariably to have been regarded as something meritorious; and
knowledge, far from being preached against as perilous to the soul,
was ranked among those better gifts which a good man might earnestly
covet.

Asser has related to us the circumstances which led to the king’s
first applying himself to earnest study. Hitherto, as we have seen,
he had been content with making his chaplains read to him, and when
Asser first took up his residence at the Court of Leonaford, he also
was employed to read to his royal master all the books he desired
to become acquainted with, or that could be at that time procured.
“One day, as we were sitting together,” he says, “conversing as was
our wont, I chanced to recite to him a passage out of a certain
book. He listened with great delight, and showing me the little book
containing his prayers, which he always carried about with him,
asked me to transcribe in it the passage I had quoted.” But every
corner was found to be filled up, and Asser suggested writing out the
quotation on a separate leaf. “We cannot tell,” he said, “whether we
may not meet with other passages which you may like, and if so we
should be glad to collect them.” Some fresh sheets were accordingly
procured, and the same day three more quotations were entered, and
so it went on till at last the new book was filled as completely
as the old one; and this very day, being the feast of St. Martin,
885, Alfred, then thirty-six years of age, resolved without delay to
commence the study of Latin, that he might himself be able to read
and translate books into English for the benefit of his people.

His first work, of which unhappily nothing has been preserved but a
few fragments, was the very collection alluded to above, and which
Asser and William of Malmsbury speak of as his “Enchiridion” or
manual. But there yet remain his more important translations from St.
Gregory, Orosius, Boethius, and Bede, the first of which contains
that admirable preface which explains so modestly and simply the
intention of the writer, and the way in which he executed his work.
In the mere verbal translation he was assisted by the learning of
others, for he tells us with regard to his version of the “Regula
Pastoris” of St. Gregory, that it was done by him into English,
sometimes word for word, and sometimes sense for sense, “as I learnt
it from Plegmund, my archbishop, and Asser, my bishop, and John and
Grimbald, my mass-priests.” But both in this and his other works, he
was far more than a translator, and continually expands the ideas of
his authors, introducing new matter of his own; sometimes even he
substitutes whole chapters for those which he omits, so as to make
his translation almost an original work. In the passages which are
from his own pen, we admire at once the philosophic lucidity of his
thoughts and the noble simplicity with which he expresses them. A
brief sentence of Boethius is thus expanded. “Then, said Reason,
Dost thou like fair lands? and Mind answered to Reason, and said,
Why should I not like fair lands? How? Is not that the fairest part
of God’s creation? Full oft we rejoice at the mild sea, and admire
also the beauty of sun, moon, and stars. Then answered Wisdom and
Reason to the Mind, and said, How belongeth Heaven’s fairness to
thee? Desirest thou to glory as though its beauty were thine? It
is not, it is not. Knowest thou not that thou madest none of these
things? If thou wilt glory, glory in God.... Wherefore now dost
thou rejoice in the fair blossoms of Easter, as if thou hadst made
them; canst thou make any of such things? Not so, not so. Or is it
now in thy power that the harvest is so rich in fruits? I know that
this also is not in thy power.” Boethius says, “Survey the space,
the firmness, and the rapidity of the heavens, and cease to admire
vile things.” This is enlarged by Alfred as follows: “Behold now the
spaciousness, the firmness, and the swiftness of the heavens. Yet all
this is not to be compared to its Creator and Governor. Why do ye
not let yourselves be weary of admiring and praising, that which is
unprofitable? That is, worldly riches. For as heaven is better, and
fairer, and more precious than all within it, excepting only man, so
is man’s body better and more precious than all his possessions. But
much more bethink thee that his soul is better and more precious than
his body. Every being is to be honoured in fit proportion, and always
the highest, most. And therefore the Divine Power is to be honoured,
adored, and worshipped above all other things.” The following
remarkable passage on free-will is entirely his own. “I said, I am
sometimes very much disturbed. Quoth he, at what? I answered, It is
at this, that thou sayest, that God gives to every one freedom to
do evil as well as good, whichsoever he will. Now I wonder much at
this. Then, quoth he, I may very easily answer thee this remark. How
now would it look to thee if there were any very powerful king, and
he had no freemen in all his kingdom, but only slaves? Then, said
I, it would not be thought by me right or reasonable if servile men
only were to wait on him. Then said he, _It would be more unnatural
if God, in all His kingdom, had no free creatures under His power_;
therefore he made two kinds of rational creatures free, angels and
men, and he gave them thus this great gift of freedom.” Mr. Turner,
in quoting this passage, remarks that Alfred’s solution of the
difficulty shows him to have been a true king of the English people.
He felt from his own great heart that the Divine Sovereign must
prefer to govern freemen rather than slaves, because this was his
own sentiment as a king. If it were derogatory to the dignity of an
earthly ruler to have none but slaves for his subjects, far more so
would it be for the King of Heaven to have no creatures endowed with
free-will.

But perhaps the most interesting of all these interpolated passages
is that which occurs in his paraphrase of Boethius, where, treating
of the duties of a king, he speaks thus in his own person: “I never
well liked or strongly desired this earthly kingdom; yet when I was
in possession of it I desired materials for the work I was commanded
to do, that I might fitly steer the vessel, and rule the realm
committed to my keeping. There are tools for every craft, without
which a man cannot work at his craft; and a king also must have his
materials and his tools. And what are these? First, he must have
his land well peopled, and he must have prayer-men, and army-men,
and work-men. Without these tools no king can show his skill. His
materials are provision for these three brotherhoods; land to dwell
in, gifts, and weapons, and meat, and ale, and clothes, and whatever
else they need. Without these he cannot keep his tools, and without
his tools he cannot work. Therefore I desired materials that my craft
and power might not be given up and lost. But all craft and power
will soon be worn out and put to silence if they be without wisdom.
Therefore I desired wisdom. This is now what I can truly say. I have
desired while I lived to live worthily, and after my death to leave
to men that should be after me a remembrance in good deeds.”

In his version of the Chronicle of the World, by Orosius, he followed
the same plan, and took occasion to insert a great many corrections
and additions, specially in those parts relating to geography, a
study for which, like most Anglo-Saxon scholars, Alfred evinced
a special liking. His most important additions are a description
of Germany, and an account of the voyages of Wulfstan and Othere,
the latter of whom was a Norwegian whale-fisher, who sailed round
the North Cape into the White Sea, and also entered the mouth of
the river Dwina. The narrative was taken down from the lips of
the adventurers by the king himself, and is given with the brief
biblical simplicity which marks all the compositions of the writer. A
considerable portion of the coasts of Prussia and the Baltic are here
described for the first time; neither Wulfstan nor Othere removed
the impression then prevalent that the Scandinavian peninsula was an
island, nevertheless, their discoveries added considerably to the
existing geographical knowledge, and the industry shown by the king
in collecting and publishing these important facts is well deserving
of praise.

The treatise of St. Gregory on the pastoral office was translated
by Alfred with peculiar care, and his object in selecting such a
work is sufficiently obvious. It contained the instructions of that
great Pope whose name was venerated in England as that of her first
apostle, on the duties of the pastoral office, and the good king
doubtless trusted that its study would revive a better spirit among
his clergy. It had in fact a very special degree of authority, and
in all the Synods held under Charlemagne was commonly referred to as
the standard of ecclesiastical discipline, and would naturally have
a special claim on the interest of English readers, as being one of
the books bestowed on St. Augustine by the author, and laid up in
the Canterbury Library. So highly did Alfred value the translation
of the “Hirde-boc,” as he calls it, that he caused a copy to be sent
to every cathedral church in his dominions, with strict injunctions
that they should never be removed thence except for the purpose of
transcription, or for the bishop’s own reading. Three of these copies
are still preserved, with the names of the bishops inserted in the
prefatory letters; they are those belonging to Wulfsige of Sherborne,
Werferth of Worcester, and Plegmund of Canterbury.

Many other writings and translations are attributed to Alfred by
Malmsbury and other historians, and we are assured by the former
that he was engaged on an Anglo-Saxon version of the Psalter when
attacked with his last sickness. An Anglo-Saxon translation of the
New Testament also exists bearing his name, and was printed at London
in 1571. Indeed the literary reputation of their “darling,” as the
Anglo-Saxons popularly termed him, induced them to ascribe to his
pen any English writing of uncertain authorship. The real part to
be assigned to him in the history of learning is, in fact, that of
the founder of Anglo-Saxon literature. Up to this time few books had
appeared in the native idiom, with the exception of the national
ballads. But it was his wish to substitute that noble tongue, which
none knew better how to write than himself, in place of the incorrect
Latin which had been used by earlier scholars; his own translations
and paraphrases were the first attempts at anything like extensive
prose works in the vernacular, but from that time the number of
Anglo-Saxon writers rapidly increased.

I have said that the good achieved by Alfred was accomplished
rather by his writings than his schools. Mr. Craik, in his history
of English literature, speaks of it indeed as “probable” that Alfred
restored many of the old episcopal and monastic schools, though he
admits there is no satisfactory evidence of his having done so. We
may safely affirm, from the absence of all historic evidence, that no
such restorations took place, and the reason is obvious; to effect
them he must first have restored the monastic institute, and however
ardently he desired to do so, it is quite clear that his efforts were
crowned with very imperfect success. But his claim to be regarded as
the founder of Oxford University rests on more respectable tradition,
which, to use the words of Hallam, “if it cannot be maintained as a
certain truth, at least bears no intrinsic marks of error.” It is
assumed by most historians that the schools to the support of which
Alfred devoted one-fourth part of the moiety of his revenues, were
those which he founded or restored at Oxford, by the advice, as it
is said, of St. Neot, and where it is further stated that Grimbald
taught theology on first coming to England. Hardyng, the historian,
tells us that these schools were founded in virtue of a brief from
Pope Martin II.

In the yere Eight hundred four score and tweyne
The Pope Marteyne graunte to Kynge Alwerede
To founde and mak a studye then ageyne,
And an universitie for clerkes in to rede,
The whiche he mad in Oxenforde, in dede,
To that intent that clerkes by sapience
Agayn heretiks suld mak resistence.

The passage, indeed, which occurs in one manuscript of Asser’s
history, giving an account of certain dissensions between Grimbald
and the old scholastics whom he found already established at Oxford,
is now very generally held to be an interpolation of later writers,
who were anxious by this means to stretch back the antiquity of their
university to a date of indefinite remoteness.

For the Cambridge professors having, in Queen Elizabeth’s time,
unblushingly claimed for their founder, Eneas, the son of Brute,
those of Oxford cast about for some way of lengthening their own
pedigree to “pre-historic” times, and not content with the reputation
of having Alfred for their founder, boldly asserted that Oxford
had been a place of study for at least a thousand years before the
Christian era; and appealed to the “old scholastics” whom Grimbald is
said to have found in possession, in support of their statement. But
though the disputed passage is not to be found in the more authentic
manuscripts of Asser, yet in them he makes mention of certain schools
founded by Alfred, the locality of which he does not name, and there
seems no solid ground for rejecting the tradition that fixes them
at Oxford, and represents Grimbald as exercising there the office
of teacher. The same tradition assigns St. Peter’s Church as the
scene of his labours, and the Saxon crypt of that church, which is
beyond all doubt one of the highest antiquity, is commonly called
St. Grimbald’s crypt, and is said to have been built by him and
intended as his own place of sepulture. But even granting thus much
to the Oxford antiquarians it is evident that the circumstantial
account which represents the university as founded by Alfred in the
same regular form which it assumed in the thirteenth century is
altogether fabulous. And it must be allowed that national pride has
considerably overstated the work achieved by Alfred as a reviver of
learning, and a reformer of discipline. How small an improvement had
taken place in the general tone of the Anglo-Saxon clergy may be
gathered from the severe reproof addressed to them in the following
reign by Pope Formosus, in which it is declared that the impieties of
paganism had been suffered to revive in England, while the bishops
“remained silent like dogs unable to bark.” Such a deplorable state
of things can in no way be attributed to any negligence on the part
of Alfred, but as he himself has told us, “without tools no man can
do his work,” and in his day the right tools were wanting. Hence,
though several of his successors inherited his learned tastes, they
were able to accomplish but little for the promotion of letters.
Edward the Elder is said to have founded or restored some schools
at Cambridge, and Athelstan is not only styled a _doctarum artium
amator_, but is even to be numbered in our list of royal authors,
some of his books being discovered by Leland in the library of Bath
abbey. But the renewed incursions of the Danes, and the continued
wars in which these princes were engaged, prevented their devoting
much attention to the encouragement of literature, and, as Wood
expresses it, the drum of Mars forced Minerva into a corner. The
dearth at this time of monastic houses, and consequently of schools,
is proved by the fact that the very few Englishmen who were attracted
to a religious life either chose the eremitical state, or emigrated
to the foreign cloisters of Fleury or Montfaucon. But in England
the old sanctuaries of learning and piety were suffered to lie
desolate. The collegiate clergy formerly attached to the cathedrals
were exchanged for secular canons, and in the reign of Edgar the
Peaceable, that monarch was able to affirm, as a fact known to all
men, that, under the rule of his predecessors, monastic institutes
had entirely decayed.

The only surviving establishment that still kept up something like
a monastic school was the little colony of Irish clergy who served
the church of Glastonbury, and it was here that the rudiments of
education were received by that extraordinary man who was destined
to restore the monastic institute in England, and thus to become the
author of a revival of learning more real and lasting than that which
Alfred had attempted. This was a work demanding something more than
royal power and human greatness for its accomplishment; it implied a
struggle with the corrupt sensualism of the world, and a conquest of
those powers of evil which are not to be cast forth save by prayer
and fasting. A spirit had to be breathed into the dry bones, and the
dead, in a certain sense, to be raised to life; and all this called
for nothing less than the ministry of a _saint_. And in the hour of
the darkest need, a saint was granted to the English Church, which
had for more than a century borne the curse of sterility. Or rather
not one, but a cluster of glorious stars suddenly illuminated her
clouded heavens, whose labours, if they were primarily directed
to the reform of ecclesiastical discipline, embraced at the same
time, and as a necessary means for accomplishing that end, the
establishment of monasteries and schools.

_CHAPTER VIII._

ST. DUNSTAN AND HIS COMPANIONS.

A.D. 924 TO 992.

If there be any spot in England consecrated alike by sacred and
poetic traditions, it is surely the “thrice famous isle” of
Glastonbury, where, according to common belief, the faith was first
planted in Britain by St. Joseph of Arimathea, and which was regarded
by the inhabitants of this island with a veneration which induced a
vast number of the British saints who flourished before the Saxon
conquest to retire before their death to the Glassy Isle, that their
dust might mingle with its sacred soil. Still surrounded by the
marshy waters which once formed a glassy lake around it; still made
beautiful in spring by the apple blossoms to which it owes its poetic
name of Avallon; still preserving that mysterious hawthorn-tree
which, like the roses of Pœstum, “boasts its double bloom,” and marks
the spot where our first apostle struck his staff into the ground;
and still covered with the ruins of that noble abbey which kings vied
with one another in beautifying and enriching as “the fountain and
origin of all religion in the realm of Britain,”--Glastonbury might
well claim, even in its present desolation, to draw pilgrims to its
ruined shrines. The poet wanders there to weave new Idylls over the
grave of Arthur, whilst the devout client of our native saints kneels
to kiss the soil which was the cradle of St. Dunstan. And some may
even recall the thought of days long since fled away into the haze
of the past, when those two names, so rich in legendary lore, were
first cast like golden grains into the storehouse of their memory, as
they stood rapt in childish wonder amid those venerable walls, and
there taking root, gave birth in their souls to a new idea, so that
they passed out of the ruins of Glastonbury, believers, for the first
happy moment of their lives, in the possibility of an heroic life.

Glastonbury was at once the birthplace of St. Dunstan and the
nursery of his greatness in riper years. There as an infant he was
offered by his parents at the altar of Our Lady, and so soon as he
could prattle, was given over by them to the care of some Irish
monks who had settled in the deserted abbey, and earned a scanty
subsistence by educating the children of the neighbourhood. His
extraordinary genius soon displayed itself, not merely by a rapid
acquisition of grammar, but by the excellence he attained in music,
poetry, and the arts. Having been introduced to the notice of the
king by his uncle Athelm, Archbishop of Canterbury, his superior
talents excited the jealousy of the courtiers, who accused him of
magic, a charge which they chiefly grounded on his musical skill, by
which they declared that he bewitched the king, and his familiarity
with the old bardic poetry of the Anglo-Saxons. Obliged to withdraw
from court, he returned to Glastonbury, and for some time led an
eremitical life in a small cell adjoining the church. We need neither
the testimony of the old legend, nor the suggestions of romance, to
understand how it was that a mind like Dunstan’s had to pass through
much tribulation ere it could utterly resign itself to the guidance
of grace. The noblest natures have the hardest combats to undergo,
and are not crowned till they have striven and overcome. So it was in
the midst of many trials that Dunstan spent his solitary noviciate,
chasing away the tempter now with prayer, and now with manual labour.
He did not lay aside his artistic tastes, but toiled away at his
smith’s forge, producing those exquisite works in gold and other
metals long preserved with reverence in many English churches, or
carving in wood, or painting, engraving, and moulding in wax and
clay. He used his musical skill, too, to soothe his weary spirit,
by reminding himself of the heavenly harmonies, and once, having
hung his harp against the wall, the wind, it is said, swept over
the strings, and brought out from them a plaintive strain in which
he recognised one of the antiphons sung in the Common of Martyrs,
_Gaudent in cælis animæ sanctorum qui Christi vestigia secuti sunt_.
At last King Edmund, the brother and successor of Athelstan, recalled
him to court, made him his chief councillor, and bestowed on him
the territory of Glastonbury, that he might restore the abbey to
its former splendour. Dunstan therefore collected a community, to
whom he gave the rule of St. Benedict, and according to many writers
he is to be regarded as the first real founder of the Benedictine
order in this country. Even if this be an historical error, and the
early Anglo-Saxon monks may likewise be claimed as Benedictines (a
warmly controverted point on which it is needless here to enter), St.
Dunstan’s work as the restorer of the order is of no less importance
than if we consider him the first English founder, for the firm
establishment of the monastic rule in England at this particular
juncture was the means by which, under God, the Church itself was
preserved in this land.

The corruption of the secular clergy had become so general that the
total decay of religion must soon have been the inevitable result,
had not sacred letters and ecclesiastical discipline been revived
by the monks. Happily, St. Dunstan was not alone; he found a band
of great souls, able and willing to second him in his efforts, and
among these were the three saints, Odo, Oswald, and Ethelwold. Odo
was the son of Danish and heathen parents, who, disgusted at their
son’s interest in everything connected with the Christian worship,
turned him adrift, while still a child, to shift for himself. Athelm,
one of King Alfred’s thanes, took compassion on him, and sent him
to be educated at the court school, where, we are told, he acquired
so thorough a knowledge both of Greek and Latin as to be able to
write in both languages with great facility. Being promoted to the
priesthood, Athelm chose him for his confessor, and, according to
the custom of the more pious laity of early times, recited the
divine Office with him daily. After that he became chaplain to the
good king Athelstan, in which capacity he was present at the great
battle of Brunanburgh. Athelstan procured his election to the see of
Sherburne, whence, in 942, he was translated to the archbishopric
of Canterbury. He hesitated to accept the primacy, however, on the
ground that he was not a monk, as all those had been who had preceded
him in that see. But the king overruled the objection by sending to
the abbot of Fleury, who himself brought over the monastic cowl with
which he invested the archbishop elect. Odo at once addressed himself
to the Augean task of reform, and appointed his nephew, Oswald, to
the deanery of Winchester, hoping thereby to introduce more regular
discipline among the canons of that cathedral. But Oswald found his
efforts so utterly fruitless that he withdrew to Fleury, whence,
however, he was compelled to return at the command of his uncle, who
could ill spare labourers from the English vineyard. The archbishop’s
canons, together with the pastoral letter which accompanied them,
bear evidence alike of his zeal and his learning. But something more
than a paper reform was required to heal the terrible wounds of the
English Church. The only real hope of remedy lay in the formation
of an entirely new body of clergy, who should from their youth have
been trained in sacred letters, holy living, and ecclesiastical
discipline. Church seminaries were needed; and where could these be
established save in the newly-founded abbeys now springing up under
the government of St. Dunstan?

The destruction of the monastic schools had been one chief cause
of the existing evils, and in their restoration Odo saw the only
hope of remedy. And, marvellous to say, they were being restored.
At Glastonbury St. Dunstan had already founded the first regular
monastic school which had been seen in England since the destruction
of her old seminaries; and here some of the most famous ecclesiastics
who flourished during the tenth century received their education.
Dunstan allowed the reading of the Latin poets, because, as he said,
it polished the mind and improved the style; he also encouraged
the study of Anglo-Saxon poetry, as it would seem with a view of
rendering his clergy eloquent in the vernacular tongue, and more
powerful preachers. Neither was science forgotten; and the study of
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music were carefully cultivated
by his pupils, many of whom likewise excelled in those artistic
pursuits in which their master was an adept. Nor was Glastonbury
the only scene of this revived intellectual activity. The combined
influence of great genius and great sanctity was effecting that
reaction in favour of monasticism which Alfred had vainly attempted
to bring about, and to which he also had looked as the only means of
establishing a real reform. In his time monks had sunk so low in the
estimation of the Anglo-Saxon people, that none but churls could be
found willing to wear the cowl. But St. Dunstan’s example had turned
the tide, and Glastonbury was soon able to send out colonies and
found other houses, whose abbots were supplied from the ranks of the
saint’s chosen disciples.

Among these, by far the most distinguished was St. Ethelwold, who,
after for some years filling the office of dean in the monastery of
Glastonbury, formed the design of passing over to Fleury in order to
perfect himself more thoroughly in religious discipline and sacred
science. King Edred, who was then reigning during the minority of
his two nephews, heard of his purpose and forbade him to leave the
kingdom, but, to sweeten his disappointment, offered him the old
ruined abbey of Abingdon, that he might restore the monastic rule
within its walls. He was right in thinking that such an offer
was likely to reconcile Ethelwold to his detention on the English
soil, and the saint at once applied himself to his labour of love.
He began by sending over to Corby for some monks well-skilled in
monastic discipline, whom he desired to have as foundation stones
of his community; and, not content with this, he despatched one of
his brethren from Glastonbury to study all the ways and fashions of
that celebrated seminary of learning. Ethelwold had nothing more at
heart than the restoration of sacred studies, and was resolved that
his monastic school should be the best of its kind. Wolstan, his
biographer, tells us that he had been the companion of St. Dunstan in
his studies, and not only distinguished himself by his proficiency
in grammar, poetry, and the mechanical arts, but had also spent
several years in the work of teaching others. “He taught the art of
grammar with great skill,” says his disciple, “and that of poetical
metre with most mellifluous sweetness; and like the prudent bee
which is used to seek for pleasant scents flying about among the
trees and flowers, and agreeably loading itself with the odoriferous
juices, even so did he pluck the blossoms of the sacred volumes,
and studiously apply himself to the study of the Catholic Fathers.”
He was, moreover, like his master Dunstan, an enthusiastic lover of
science, and a great adept in architecture and bell-founding; and
thus the restoration of the old abbey was one of those undertakings
in which his piety and his taste were able to work in concert.
The new abbey church was adorned with four large bells, two cast
by the hand of its abbot, and two yet larger ones, the handiwork
of St. Dunstan. Nor was Ethelwold less renowned as a musician and
mathematician, and one of his mathematical treatises, addressed to
the celebrated Gerbert, is still preserved in the Bodleian Library.
He had, moreover, that yet more excellent gift, the power of engaging
the affections of those whom he taught. The young were irresistibly
attracted to him, and this was one cause of the influx of youths who
soon filled the schools of Abingdon. The account has been preserved
of the death of one of his scholars, an innocent boy named Ædmer, who
was greatly loved both by the abbot and his schoolfellows, on account
of his holy simplicity and angelic virtue. Whilst still in the happy
state of baptismal grace he was attacked by mortal sickness. As
his death drew on he was rapt in ecstasy, and beheld the Blessed
Virgin seated on a glorious throne surrounded by many saints. With a
kind and loving countenance, she asked him whether he would prefer
remaining amid that heavenly company, or continuing in his mortal
life. And he, seeing no sadness among those on whom he gazed, said he
would far rather abide there with them; whereupon Our Lady promised
that he should have his wish. And so, returning to himself, he made
known to the abbot what he had seen and heard; and presently his
happy soul departed to its rest.

In the reign of the dissolute Edwy, a storm arose which for a time
threatened to overthrow the new foundations, and put a stop to the
good work so happily begun. The courageous reproof administered to
that prince by the abbot of Glastonbury having exposed him to the
royal displeasure, he was obliged to withdraw to Flanders, and the
two abbeys of Glastonbury and Abingdon were dissolved by the king’s
command, and the monks dispersed through the country. The vices of
Edwy, however, brought their own punishment with them: the provinces
north of the Thames threw off his authority, and chose for their king
his brother Edgar, who at once recalled St. Dunstan, and promoted him
to the same post of confidence he had filled under Edmund and Edred.
The see of Worcester falling vacant, Edgar, who by the death of Edwy
was now king of all England, insisted on his accepting the episcopal
charge, and he was accordingly consecrated by St. Odo, in 957. Two
years later, on the death of the primate, Dunstan was chosen his
successor, and going to Rome to receive the Pall, was sent back to
England invested with the authority of Apostolic Legate.

He was now in a position effectually to carry out those great
measures of reform for which he had so long been preparing the
instruments. He found himself surrounded by a band of faithful and
carefully-trained ecclesiastics, animated with his own devoted
spirit; and his first step was to procure the election of Oswald,
the nephew of Odo, to the see of Worcester. Ten years later, St.
Oswald became Archbishop of York, being allowed, by extraordinary
dispensation, to hold both sees together; Dunstan being unwilling
that the good discipline he had established at Worcester should
suffer by his removal. Ethelwold was placed over the see of
Winchester, and, with the help of these two holy coadjutors, the
archbishop entered on the task of enforcing the observance of the
sacred canons. The royal sanction to his plan was formally granted at
a great council, for Edgar entered heart and soul into all the plans
of his primate. “I hold the sword of Constantine,” he said, “and you
that of St. Peter; together we will purify the sanctuary.” The choice
was everywhere offered to the secular clergy of promising obedience
to the laws of the Church, or resigning their benefices. In some
places the secular canons accepted the reform, but where they refused
to do so they were summarily ejected. St. Oswald was fortunate enough
to succeed in winning his Worcester canons, not merely to promise a
regular life, but to embrace the monastic rule; and, under his wise
and gentle government, they in time became excellent religious. St.
Ethelwold was less happy; and finding it impossible to convert his
canons from their life of lawless indulgence, he replaced them with a
body of Benedictine monks.

At the same time that many cathedrals and collegiate churches were
receiving these monastic colonies, new foundations were everywhere
springing up. Ely, Peterborough, Malmsbury and Thorney abbeys
rose once more out of their ruins; and such was the eagerness of
the king and his nobles to promote the ecclesiastical reform,
that more than forty abbeys were founded or restored during the
primacy of St. Dunstan. With these events, however, so important
in the Church history of England, we are only concerned in so far
as they affected the restoration of learning; and, in fact, the
revival of the monastic institute was one and the same thing with
the revival of the English schools. From this time, in spite of
many corruptions and abuses, which resisted even the efforts of
Dunstan to remove them, the Dark Age, _par excellence_, of English
history began to disappear. A new race of scholars sprang up in the
restored cloisters, some of whom were not unworthy to be ranked
with the disciples of Alcuin and Bede. St. Dunstan himself, during
the remainder of his primacy, was occupied with measures rather of
practical, than of educational reform; nevertheless, we find from
his canons that his solicitude was directed in a very special way
to providing for the religious instruction of the common people. He
revived the old parochial schools, and obliged his parish priests to
preach every Sunday to their flocks, requiring them also in their
schools to teach the children of their parishioners grammar, the
church-chant, and some useful handicraft trade.

It was St. Ethelwold, however, who exhibited the greatest zeal for
the restoration of sacred studies. He loved the work of teaching for
its own sake, and had no sooner got possession of his own cathedral,
and banished the canons who had so long disgraced it, than he applied
all his care to collect and educate a staff of young clergy, who,
he trusted, would prove worthy to fill the vacant benefices. “It
was ever sweet to him,” says his charming biographer Wolstan, “to
teach youths and little ones, to explain their Latin books to them
in English, to instruct them in the rules of grammar and prosody,
and allure them by cheerful words to study and improvement. And
so it came to pass that many of his disciples became priests and
abbots, some also bishops and archbishops, in the realm of England.”
Among these was St. Elphege, who afterwards became Archbishop of
Canterbury, and was martyred by the Danes, and Cynewulf, abbot of
Peterborough, an apt and gentle teacher, whose monastic school was
so celebrated that, as Hugo Candidus says, scholars flocked to it
from all countries as to the court of a second Solomon. He wrote some
Anglo-Saxon poems, still preserved; their authorship being detected
by the curious insertion here and there of a Runic letter, which,
when put together, spell the writer’s name.

It will be observed that the new race of scholars did not exclusively
cultivate Latin literature. The labours of Alfred had given a
powerful stimulus to the study of English, and this was yet further
encouraged both by St. Dunstan and St. Ethelwold, who desired nothing
more than to facilitate the instruction of the common people in
their own tongue. Ethelwold translated the rule of St. Benedict
into Anglo-Saxon for the use of his monks, and a copy of this work
may still be seen in the Cottonian Library, the Latin text being
accompanied with an interlinear Anglo-Saxon version. Elfric, one of
Ethelwold’s scholars, devoted himself with particular energy to the
cultivation of English literature. Besides translating a considerable
number of the books of Scripture, at the request of his friend, the
ealderman Ethelward, he composed a Latin and English grammar, and
other school books, such as a Latin and English glossary, and his
well-known “Colloquies,” written in both languages, for the use of
beginners. The grammar has a Latin and English preface, in which
he tells us that he undertook the work for the promotion of sacred
studies, specially among the young, for, he observes, “it is the
duty of ecclesiastics to guard against such a want of learning in
our day as was to be found in England but a very few years ago,
when not a priest could be found to translate a Latin epistle, till
Archbishop Dunstan and Bishop Ethelwold encouraged learning in their
monasteries.”

His most celebrated work was his collection of Homilies[118] for
the use of parish priests. None are original compositions; they
are selections and translations from the early Latin Fathers, as
well as from Bede and a few other French and German homilists. The
Anglo-Saxon into which they are rendered is considered the fairest
specimen that can be cited of our ancient national tongue, and raises
a regret that so noble a language should ever have been allowed to
corrupt into our modern hybrid English. The compiler subscribes his
name to the work as, “Ælfric, the scholar of Ethelwold,” a title he
evidently regarded as no small honour. I may add, that many of his
writings are addressed to his friend Ethelward and another English
thane, Sigwerd of East Heolen, and seems to intimate that the laity
as well as the clergy were now beginning to cultivate letters.

Ethelwold’s zeal for the restoration of the monastic institute moved
him to petition King Edgar for a grant of all the minsters that
had been laid waste in old time by the “heathen men.” It would be
too long to notice all the restoration effected by “the father of
monks” as he was called, or the many works of active benevolence
which earned for him, from his grateful people, his other beautiful
title of “the well-willing bishop.” He exercised his engineering
talents in supplying his cathedral city with water, and in time of
dearth broke up his altar plate to feed the multitudes. He rebuilt
his cathedral church with great splendour, as we learn from the poem
in which Wolstan has dwelt with loving minuteness on every detail
from the crypt to the tower, which last was surmounted by a gilded
weathercock, which says the poet, “stands proudly superior to the
whole population of Winton, and brazen as he is, rules all the
other cocks of the city.” There was likewise an organ of marvellous
construction, and a certain wheel full of bells, called “the golden
wheel,” only brought out on solemn occasions, both of these being the
workmanship of the bishop.

Meanwhile, St. Oswald was pursuing much the same course in his
northern dioceses. He restored the abbeys of Pershore, Winchecombe,
and St. Alban’s, and founded several others, particularly that of
Ramsey, which long maintained the reputation of being the most
learned of the English monasteries. The history of its foundation is
given at length by the monk of Ramsey. A certain ealderman, named
Aylwin, having offered to devote his wealth to some work of piety,
St. Oswald asked him if he had any lands suited for the building
of a monastery. He replied that he had some land, surrounded with
marshes, and free from resort of men, and there was a forest near
it full of various kinds of trees, and having several spots of good
turf and fine grass for pasturage. They went together to view the
spot, which was so solitary and yet possessed of so many conveniences
for subsistence and secluded devotion, that the bishop decided on
accepting it. Artificers of all kinds were at once collected, and
the neighbours willingly offered their services. Twelve monks from
another cloister came to form the new foundation; their cells and a
temporary chapel were first raised, and by the next winter they had
provided iron and timber enough for a handsome church. In the spring
a firm foundation was made in the fenny soil, the workmen labouring
as much from devotion as for profit. Some brought the stones, others
made the cement, and others worked the wheel-machinery that raised
the stones to their places, and so in a short time the sacred
edifice, with two fair towers, appeared in what had before been a
desolate wilderness.

The monks mentioned in this account as having been brought from
“another cloister,” were a colony from Fleury, and among them was the
celebrated Abbo of Fleury, of whom there will be occasion to speak
in another chapter. He remained two years at Ramsey, and thoroughly
established its school. His most distinguished pupil was Bridferth,
originally a monk of Thorney, who migrated to Ramsey soon after its
foundation, and was probably one of the first scientific scholars of
his time. He had received his early education from St. Dunstan, and
imbibed all his tastes. In his Commentary on Bede he incidentally
notices a scientific observation which he had made when a student
at Thionville in France, whence it appears that he had enlarged his
stock of knowledge by visits to foreign academies. His Commentaries
on the treatises De Rerum Natura and De Tempore, consist of notes
of lectures delivered in the Ramsey schools. Whilst explaining his
author he frequently introduces original illustrations, sometimes
supporting Bede’s statements by numerical calculations of his own,
sometimes amplifying the text and clearing up doubtful expressions.
He quotes St. Clement, St. Augustine, Eusebius, St. Ambrose, St.
Jerome, and St. Isidore, also Pliny, Macrobius, Priscian, and Martian
Capella, and continually refers to the Latin poets as familiar to
his hearers. He was also the author of a treatise “De Principiis
Mathematicis,” and a life of his old master. St. Dunstan, the last of
which he dedicated to Ælfric, and extols him in his preface for the
“enormity of his well-known learning.”

The later annals of Ramsey abbey are full of interest, and how
that the school thus brilliantly founded was not suffered to fall
into decay. Some of these will reappear in a later portion of our
narrative; but, before bidding adieu to the old Saxon abbey, I must
notice one little narrative which shows that all the scholars there
educated were not destined for the ecclesiastical state. Four little
boys named Oswald, Etheric, Ædnoth, and Athelstan had been placed in
the school by St. Oswald, all being sons of powerful Saxon thanes.
They were received before they were seven years old, and were of
innocent manners and beautiful countenances. At certain times they
were suffered by their master to go and play outside the cloister
walls. One day, being thus sent out by themselves, they ran to the
great west tower, and laying hold of the bell rope, rang with all
their might, but so unskilfully that one of the bells was cracked by
the unequal motion. The mischief becoming known, the culprits were
threatened with a sound flogging; a threat which occasioned abundance
of tears. At last remembering the sentence they had so often heard
read from the rule of St. Benedict, “If any one shall lose or break
anything, let him hasten without delay to accuse himself of it,”
they ran to the abbot and, weeping bitterly, told him all that had
happened. The good abbot pitied their distress, and calling the
brethren together who were disposed to treat the matter rather
severely, he said to them, “These innocents have committed a fault,
but with no evil intention; they ought, therefore, to be spared, and
when they grow up to be men it will be easy for them to make good
the damage they have done.” Then, dismissing the monks, he secretly
admonished the boys, how to disarm their anger, and they, following
his directions, entered the church with bare feet, and there made
their vow; and when they grew up to manhood and were raised to wealth
and honour they remembered what they had promised, and bestowed
great benefits on the church.[119]

Not the least benefit conferred by the monks on their countrymen
by the foundation of these abbeys was the improvement of the lands
which they drained and cultivated. This, indeed, does not properly
enter into our present subject; but the graphic pictures which
monkish historians have left of the spots which they thus tamed
and beautified, must be referred to as showing that their minds
and tastes were no less richly cultivated. It is thus that William
of Malmsbury speaks of Thorney abbey after its restoration by St.
Ethelwold, who took great pains in planting it with forest and
fruit trees: “Thorney,” says the historian, “is indeed a picture of
paradise, and for pleasantness may be compared to heaven itself,
bearing trees even in the very fens, which tower with their lofty
tops to the clouds; while below, the smooth surface of the water
attracts the eye and reflects the verdant scene. Not the smallest
spot is here unimproved--all is covered with fruit trees or vines,
which creep along the ground, and in some places are supported on
poles.”

But it remains for us to speak of the death of those great men, whose
successful labours had effected so much for the real civilisation
of their country. Ethelwold was the first to depart; and four years
later, in 988, St. Dunstan terminated his grand career, rapt, as
it would seem, in an ecstasy of love; for, after receiving the
Holy Viaticum, he poured out a sublime prayer, and expired with
its accents on his lips. St. Oswald survived his two friends until
the February of 992; and among all the beautiful narrations of the
deaths of the saints, “precious in the sight of the Lord,” few can
be found more touching than that which describes his end. On the day
previously, coming out of his oratory into the open air, he stood for
a while gazing up into the sky, as though fixedly contemplating some
glorious sight. Being asked what he saw, he only smiled, and said he
was looking at the place whither he was going. He then returned to
his oratory and desired them to give him the Holy Unction and the
last Viaticum, although, indeed, he had no appearance of illness.
That evening he assisted at the night office in his cathedral, and
when morning came, according to his custom, he washed the feet of
twelve poor men, reciting as he did so the Gradual Psalms. At their
close, still kneeling, he pronounced the _Gloria Patri_, and then,
bending gently forward, expired at the feet of the poor. When his
holy body was carried to the grave, a milk-white dove, with wings
extended, hovered over the bier all the way. He had been granted the
satisfaction of witnessing the completion of his favourite abbey of
Ramsey, which he consecrated just three months before his death.[120]

The English restoration of letters, inaugurated by St. Dunstan and
his companions, took place at a critical period, when fresh tides of
barbarism were overwhelming the continental territories, and reducing
the monastic institute in France to its very lowest ebb. This tenth
century was, in fact, the famous “Age of Iron,” which, in spite of
its celebrity as the very midnight of the Dark Ages, fills, strange
to say, a very important place in the history of monastic literature.
It will, therefore, be necessary to consider its various bearings at
some length; and we will begin with the ungracious task of painting
it in its blackest aspect.

_CHAPTER IX._

THE IRON AGE.

A.D. 900 TO 1000.

Baronius, when about to enter on the history of the tenth century,
thinks it necessary to prepare his readers for what is coming by
a sentence which, in spite of the wildness of its metaphors, has
obtained an odd kind of immortality. “We are now entering on a
period,” he says, “which for its sterility of every excellence may be
denominated _iron_; for its luxuriant growth of vice, _leaden_; and
for its dearth of writers, _dark_.” Why iron should be chosen as most
fit to typify the sterility of virtue, and lead to figure forth the
luxuriance of vice, is not perhaps at first sight obvious; but these
words, which are certainly not remarkable for the appropriateness
of their imagery, have formed the text for many commentators; from
one of whom, as being a professedly Catholic writer, I select a
passage which claims to explain at least one of the phenomena of this
period--the darkness, namely, that succeeded the establishment of the
Carlovingian schools.

“The want of success in the excellent establishments of Charlemagne,”
observes Mr. Berington, in his “Literary History of the Middle Ages,”
“may be traced to various causes:--to the inaptitude of the teachers,
who, though endowed with the natural powers of intellect, knew not
how to excite attention or interest curiosity; to the subjects called
sciences, or the seven liberal arts, which were so taught as to
disgust by their barbarous elements, and of which the emaciated and
haggard skeleton was alike unfit for ornament or use; to the absence
of the first rudiments of education, as of reading and writing, in
the higher orders of society, and their habitual devotion to martial
exercises; to the oblivion in which the classical productions of
former ages were held; to a want of capacity in the bishops and
clergy and monks, upon whom the weighty charge of education had
devolved; to a selfish reflection in the same order of men that, _in
proportion to the decline of learning and the spread of ignorance,
their churches and monasteries had prospered_, whilst the revival of
letters was likely to direct the copious streams of benevolence into
a channel less favourable to the interests of the clergy and monks;
to a marked aversion in the Bishop of Rome to any scheme by which
the minds of churchmen or others might be turned to the study of
antiquity, and of those documents which would disclose on what futile
reasons and sandy foundations the exclusive prerogatives of his see
were established; and _to the genius of the Christian system_ itself,
which, when it expelled the Pagan Deities from their seats, too
successfully fixed a reproach on many things connected with them, and
thus contributed to banish from the schools, and consign to oblivion
those works on the study and prevalence of which will ever depend the
progress of the arts, of the sciences, and of literary taste.”[121]

The above passage has been somewhat of the longest, and I shall
therefore do no more than allude to the terms in which another
historian of the Middle Ages, of yet greater repute, speaks of “the
inconceivable ignorance which overspread the face of the Church,
broken only by a few glimmering lights which owe almost all their
distinction to the surrounding darkness;” to his unqualified and
unsupported declaration, that “the cathedral and monastic schools
were exclusively designed for religious purposes, and afforded no
opportunities to the laity;” that “for centuries it was rare for a
layman, of whatever rank, to know how to sign his name;” that “with
the monks a knowledge of church-music passed for literature;” and
that as to the religion which prevailed during the same period, “it
is _an extremely complex question whether it were not more injurious
to public morals and the welfare of society than the entire absence
of all religious notions_.”[122]

“One of the later Greek schools,” says Bacon, “is at a standstill
to think what should be in it that men should so love lies;” yet
he presently adds, “the mixture thereof doth ever give pleasure.”
Charity, then, obliges us to believe that the fictitious element
which appears in these passages has only been added to stimulate
the pleasure of the reader. In perusing them, and scores of others
which might easily be accumulated from writers both great and petty,
we are, of course, left with the impression on our minds, that not
only was the ignorance most dense, gross, and universal, but that
it found its cause in the low cunning of the clergy, and especially
of the monks, who had just wit enough to keep the rest of the world
in darkness. And as the first writer has expressly told us that
their object in doing this was to maintain that flourishing state
of monastic prosperity which, we are assured, existed in proportion
to the spread of ignorance, we are logically bound to suppose that
the countries and the times wherein darkness thus prevailed were
the Elysium and the golden age of monkhood. No one certainly would
be led to suppose that the iron, leaden, and pitch-dark state
of society in the tenth century, could be accounted for by any
particular circumstances in the history of the times, which, far
from favouring the monastic institute, all but destroyed it, and
did totally eradicate it in the districts most subject to their
influence. No,--our historians do not so much as allude to such
insignificant episodes in history as the irruptions of three new
races of barbarians, but complacently refer us to the superstition
and selfishness of the Bishop of Rome and his clergy, which they
regard, as a certain astronomer regarded the spots in the sun, as
being “large enough to account for anything.”

The prospect before us looks but dreary; and in candour it must
be confessed that a nearer acquaintance with this unhappy period
will not set it in a more advantageous light. It was indeed a time
as dark and terrible as the imagination can well depict, though
whether the human mind were altogether in a state of ruin, and
whether the darkness were exclusively the work of the monks, and
whether monasteries grew and prospered as ignorance increased, or
whether some other possible causes may not be assigned for the state
of things so universally deplored, are questions which cannot be
resolved without a glance at the current history of the times.

Enough has been said in a former chapter of the restoration of
letters which took place under Charlemagne. If any work ever had fair
promise of success, it was surely this, and yet in a certain sense it
was a failure. The century that followed his decease was precisely
the iron century which all historians have agreed to vilify, and it
is undoubtedly true that in some respects the state of Europe under
the Carlovingian monarchs was even worse than under their Merovingian
predecessors. The dream of a restoration of the Roman Empire, which
had been realised only so long as the European sceptre was grasped
in the mighty hand of Charlemagne, fell to pieces after his death
like a child’s house of cards. The fatal step taken by Louis the
Debonnaire, of dividing his dominions among his sons during his
lifetime, plunged the whole empire into a civil war, which resulted
in his own deposition, and which did not cease on his death. The
various subdivisions into which the empire then split were indeed
reunited under Charles the Fat, but his cowardice and incapacity
having rendered him contemptible to those great feudal vassals who
were gradually assuming all the real power in the realm, he also was
deposed, and the imperial dignity ceased to find a representative
till it was revived under Otho the Great. For a century after the
death of Charles, France was nominally governed by princes of the
Carlovingian race, appointed or removed at the will of the dukes
of France. On the death of Duke Hugh the Great, his son, Hugh
Capet, contented himself for a time with the system adopted by his
predecessors, but in 987 he assumed the royal title, the powers of
which he had long exercised, and became the founder of the Capetian
dynasty. During the progress of these events, the firmly-knit and
centralised government of Charlemagne totally disappeared; the
territories of his empire were divided first into three, then into
seven kingdoms; and were finally dismembered into more than fifty
feudal sovereignties. Florus, the deacon of Lyons, mentioned in a
former chapter, in a poem entitled _Querela de divisione Imperii_,
describes the disorders consequent on these changes with an eloquent
pen. “A beautiful empire,” he says, “once flourished under a glorious
crown. Then there was one prince and one people, and every town had
judges and laws. The word of salvation was preached to nobles and
peasants, and youth everywhere studied the Sacred Scriptures and the
liberal arts.... Now, instead of a king, we see everywhere a kinglet,
instead of an empire, its fragments. The bishops can no longer hold
their synods, there are no assemblies, no laws; and if an embassy
arrive, there is no court to receive it.”[123]

By the end of the tenth century feudalism had fairly established
itself on the ruins of the empire. The new system brought in its
train many evils and some social benefits, but whilst in process of
development its immediate effect was to throw the whole governing
power into the hands of a number of petty lords, who were responsible
to no superior for their exercise of it. In spite, however, of the
turbulence of the times, we shall find, on comparing them with the
Merovingian period, that there was a decided advance in point of
civilisation, which shows that the labours of Charlemagne and his
bishops had not been entirely thrown away. The century which preceded
the coronation of Hugh Capet, with all its intrigues and bloody
contests, does not present us with a single political murder; whereas
the Merovingian annals consist of little else than a catalogue of
such crimes. Nay, after the great battle of Fontenay, fought in
841, in which it is said that a hundred thousand of the noblest
warriors of France were slain, and which for ever established the
preponderance in that country of the Romanesque over the Tudesque
race and dialect,[124] the victorious combatants submitted to the
severe penance imposed on them by the bishops of the realm; and the
same singular spectacle was exhibited in 923, when, after the battle
of Soissons, the bishops assembled in council imposed very severe
penances on all concerned, thus protesting in the name of humanity
and religion against these miserable civil broils.

In the midst of such contests, however, the scholastic system
established by Charlemagne was entirely deprived of that support
which it had received from him and his immediate successors. The
monastic and cathedral schools were left to flourish or decay
according as the ruling abbot or bishop chanced to foster or neglect
them. The withdrawal of imperial patronage was not probably in every
respect a misfortune, but in cases where schools had only been
kept up by state support they would naturally not long survive the
break up of the government. This, however, though one, was not the
main cause of the decline of letters in the tenth century. Schools
disappeared for the simple reason that the churches and monasteries
to which they were attached had disappeared also. It is inconceivable
how any author who has read the most meagre abridgments of European
history can be found to advance the monstrous assertion that
monasticism flourished after the death of Charlemagne in proportion
as ignorance increased. The tenth century, this very century of lead
and iron ignorance, witnessed the all but total extinction of the
monastic institute in France; and in Germany, where it survived and
flourished, schools and letters continued to flourish likewise. If
any spots are discoverable west of the Rhine where sparks of learning
were still kept alive, we shall find them in those remote retreats
where the monks took shelter from the storm which was elsewhere
laying waste all the fairest sanctuaries of the land. In short, the
iron age was an age of darkness because it witnessed a return of
those barbaric incursions which had already swept away the Roman
civilisation, and which were now attacking the Christian civilisation
which had sprung up in its place. The calamities that were already
hanging over Europe before the death of Charlemagne had not been
unforeseen by his eagle glance. So early as 810 the Norman keels
had appeared off the shores of Friesland, and the powerful marine
force which then guarded the coasts of the empire proved but a vain
protection. He himself beheld them in the offing from the windows
of his palace in one of the Narbonnese cities, and sorrowfully
predicted the evils they would bring on his people after his death.
And his words were only too soon fulfilled. In the reign of Louis
the Debonnaire the Normans sailed up the Loire and laid siege to
Tours, reducing the whole country as far as the Cher to a desert.
In the following reign they showed themselves yet bolder. Entering
the Seine they proceeded up that river to Paris, which they sacked,
after massacring all the inhabitants who had not saved themselves
by flight. Treves, Cologne, Rouen, Nantes, Orleans, and Amiens,
shared a similar fate. At Aix-la-Chapelle they turned the chapel of
Charlemagne into a stable: Angers was twice given to the flames; and
in 885 took place that terrible siege of Paris, by an army of thirty
thousand Normans, which has been rendered famous by the historic
poem on the subject written by the monk Abbo, and which lasted for
thirteen months. In the course of this siege the Normans filled up
the ditch which separated them from the walls by the bodies of their
slaughtered prisoners.

The mode of warfare adopted by the invaders was entirely novel.
Their fleets entered the estuaries of rivers and ascended them
almost to their source, predatory bands landing on either bank to
ravage the surrounding country. From the great rivers they proceeded
up the lesser streams, which led them into the heart of fertile
districts. They would seize on some island suited for their purpose,
where they fortified themselves and spent the winter. In this way
whole provinces, even those most remote from the sea-coast, were
devastated, and that so entirely that, says one writer, “not a dog
was left to bark in them.” The inhabitants deserted their villages
and fields at the first alarm, and fled to the woods; towns were
sacked and given to the flames, and the churches and monasteries
which were supposed to contain the greatest treasures were the first
objects of attack. “What else is now to be seen,” says the author
of the “Romaunt of the Rose,” “but churches burnt and people slain?
The Normans do as they please, and from Blois to Senlis there is
not an acre of wheat left standing.” Another monkish historian thus
describes what was passing under his own eyes: “Not a city, not a
town, not a village but has in its turn felt the barbarity of the
heathen men. They overrun the whole country, and their cabins form
great villages where they keep their miserable captives in chains.”
The desolate tracts of country thus laid waste became the resort of
packs of wolves, which prowled about unmolested; it seemed, says one
historian, as if France were abandoned to the wild animals.

The Carlovingian princes offered but a feeble resistance to these
terrible invasions. The Normans themselves were surprised at the
supineness of their victims. “The country is good,” said Ragnar
Lodbrog to the Danish monarch, after returning from the sack of
Paris, “but the people are tremblers. The dead there have more
courage than the living, for the only resistance I met with was
from an old man named Germanus, who had been dead many years, and
whose house I entered.” He spoke of the Church of St. Germain
d’Auxerre, where his sacrilegious marauders had been miraculously
put to flight. In the reign of Charles the Bald the only opposition
to the invaders was offered by Robert the Strong, who in reward of
his exertions received the dukedom of France, by which name was then
designated the country lying between the Seine and the Loire. As to
the king himself he was content to buy off the sea-king Hasting by
the payment of forty thousand livres of silver, promising either to
give up as prisoners, or to ransom at a fixed sum, every Frenchman
who had escaped from the Normans’ hands, and to pay a composition
for every Norman who should be slain; a stipulation which probably
exceeds in infamy any other ever agreed upon by a Christian prince.
A few years later the cowardice exhibited by Charles the Fat, at the
second siege of Paris, moved his indignant subjects to deprive him
of the crown; an heroic defence was indeed offered by Eudes, son
of Robert the Strong, but his chief supporters were three priests,
Gauzlin, Bishop of Paris, his nephew Ebbo, and Anchesius, abbot of
St. Germain-des-Pres. In 912, the devastations committed by Rollo and
his followers obliged Charles the Simple to make peace with them, on
terms which made over to the Norman chieftain the feudal sovereignty
of Neustria. The wild sea-king received baptism, and became the first
duke of Normandy but though a stop was thus put to the attacks on
Paris and the northern coast, the Northmen continued their ravages in
the provinces south of the Loire.

Terrible as they were, however, these barbarians were only one out
of the many savage swarms let loose on Europe at this unhappy time.
In 836, the Saracens, who were the masters of the Mediterranean,
attacked the coasts of Provence. Marseilles, the only city of
Septimania where Roman letters still partially lingered, was
surprised and pillaged, and the monks and clergy carried into
slavery. The Saracens established themselves at Frassinet, a port
between Toulon and Frejus, and held possession of it for more than a
century. From these head-quarters they were able at their pleasure
to ascend the Rhone as far as Arles, and to overrun all the south of
France. About the same time they sailed up the Tiber, and advancing
as far as Rome, burnt a great part of that city. “How many and great
are the things we are suffering from the Saracens!” wrote Pope John
VIII. to Charles the Bald; “why should I attempt to describe them
with the tongue, when all the leaves of the forest, were they turned
into pens, would not suffice. Behold cities, walled towns, and
villages bereft of inhabitants! Wild beasts usurp the sanctuaries
once filled with the chair of doctrine. Instead of breaking the bread
of life to their flocks there, bishops have to buy their own. Rome
herself is left desolate. Last year we sowed, but could not reap our
harvests by reason of the Saracens; this year we can hope for none,
for in seed-time we could not till the ground.” Every part of the
Italian peninsula was wasted by these barbarians, who established
themselves at Benevento, and were not driven thence till the end of
the century. They even had the audacity to seize and hold possession
of fortified posts in Provence, Dauphiny, Savoy, and Piedmont, which
gave them the command of the Alpine passes, so that they could stop
and levy tribute on all the pilgrims travelling from the north to
Rome.

But this was not all. The last and worst of the plagues poured out
on Christendom yet remains to be noticed. Towards the close of the
ninth century, the Magyars or Huns, driven westward by the advance of
other Asiatic tribes, crossed the Carpathian mountains, and descended
into the plains of Dacia. Thence they spread like a torrent over
Germany, which they ravaged as far as the Black Forest. Crossing the
Alps, they laid waste the plain of Lombardy, and thence poured into
Aquitaine, which they overran as far as the Pyrenees. Some bands
proceeded as far as the southern extremity of Italy, others found
their way into Greece, and advanced to the walls of Constantinople.
In 926, they appeared on the frontiers of Lorraine, and laid the
German princes under tribute. Their wild habits and ferocious
appearance inspired such universal terror, that it was commonly
believed that the sun turned blood red at their approach. “They live
not as men, but as savage beasts,” says one chronicler, “eating raw
flesh and drinking blood. It is even reported that they devour the
hearts of their prisoners, and they are never known to be moved to
pity.” Filled with the bitterest hatred of the Christian name, their
track was marked by the smoking ruins of churches and monasteries,
and the panic which they spread has survived even to our own time
in the popular tales of the savage Ogres, a corruption of the name
_Ungren_, by which they were known in the Tudesque dialect. The
incursions of the Hungarians lasted, at intervals, for the space of
eighty years, nor did they entirely cease until the death of their
great chief Tatsong, in 972.

Events such as these will, probably, be thought sufficient to account
for any amount of social disorder and literary decay. As to the
supposed prosperity enjoyed by the monasteries in this darkest of
all the dark ages, it might be illustrated by a catalogue of their
sacked and smoking ruins. Fontanelles, with its noble library, St.
Ouen and Jumièges, were all burnt by the Norman sea-king Hasting
in 851. Marmoutier was pillaged two years later, one hundred and
sixteen of the monks being slain. St. Martin’s of Tours was burnt
in 854, and most of the seats of learning founded in the former
century--such as the abbeys of Corby, Liege, Stavelo, Prom, and
Malmedy--were destroyed about the same time. By the beginning of
the tenth century hardly one of the great French abbeys was left
standing; and the monks being slaughtered or dispersed, their houses
and lands were in many cases seized by laymen, who lived there with
their wives, children, and hunting-dogs, a scandal complained of in
909 by the fathers of the council of Troli. Italy presented much the
same spectacle. The abbey of Nomantula was plundered no less than
seven times over--“first by Christians in the civil wars; next by the
Vandals; a third time by the Saracens in 831; a fourth time by the
Normans, which was _desolatio desolationum_; the sixth, and seventh
time by the Huns,” who in 899 slaughtered all the monks, together
with their abbot Gregory. A page might be filled with the names
of French bishops massacred with their clergy. It could hardly be
expected that schools and letters would greatly flourish at a time
when the whole country was lit up by the flames which were destroying
the only sanctuaries of learning; and when the libraries which had
cost years of persevering toil in their collection were destroyed in
one hour of ruthless barbarism. Mezeray, in his history of France,
particularly notices the destruction of books among the calamities
of the period. “Books,” he says, “were becoming scarce at this time,
the wars had almost destroyed them all by burning, tearing, and
other such like barbarities; and as there were none but monks who
transcribed the copies, _and as monasteries were now for the most
part deserted_, the number of learned men was but small.” Odericus
Vitalis in like manner speaks of the irreparable loss occasioned
by the destruction of those manuscripts, which furnished the only
materials for compiling the history of the times, all of which had
perished with the monastic libraries in which they were preserved.
Hallam, however, while noticing the destruction of the monasteries
and the incursions of the barbarians, sees nothing in these facts to
explain that prevailing ignorance of which he elsewhere so loudly
complains. In one passage only does he so much as connect the two
ideas together, and then it is only in order to direct a sneer
against the monks. “As the Normans were unchecked by religious
awe,” he says, “the rich monasteries were overwhelmed in the storm.
_Perhaps_ they may have sustained some irrecoverable losses of
ancient learning; but their complaints are of monuments disfigured,
bones of saints and kings dispersed, and treasures carried away.”[125]

There is no doubt that the monks did attach a very great value to
the holy relics preserved in their churches, and that they rarely
notice the destruction of any sanctuary without saying something of
their loss, or the efforts made to preserve them. But it is puzzling
to think how Mr. Hallam could have become aware of this fact without
also informing himself of their kindred lamentations over the loss
of their books. The monastic chroniclers generally couple the two
subjects so closely together, that we know not what term to bestow
on that singular organisation which enables a reader to acquaint
himself with one without knowing anything at all about the other.
A very few instances given at random may suffice to show what we
are to think of the innuendo conveyed in the sentence above quoted.
When the Normans burnt Hamburgh, they destroyed not only the city,
but the church and monastery which St. Anscharius had built with
such extreme care, together with the library containing a collection
of books presented to him by Louis the Debonnaire, all beautifully
transcribed. None were saved, excepting so many as each monk was able
to carry with him. They went out of the city, therefore, bearing
_their books and their relics_, not knowing whither to bend their
steps; but Anscharius, who saw the labours of a lifetime destroyed
in a moment, uttered no complaint, repeating only the words of Job:
“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of
the Lord!”[126] Pingonio again gives the following narrative from the
ancient chronicles of the monastery of Novalesa. In 906 the monks of
that house flying on the approach of the Saracens, took with them
_their treasure and their library_, which last numbered upwards
of 6000 volumes. They found their way safely to Turin, where, not
being able to procure a house in which to stow away so many books,
Riculf, Bishop of Turin, took 500 volumes off their hands, in part
discharge of the cost of their maintenance. Erelong, however, the
Saracens entered Turin also, plundered their treasure, and _burnt
their library_; and the books which Riculf had taken were unhappily
lost after his death, so that the poor monks were never able to
recover them. Again, in 842, when the Normans sacked the town of
Nantes, and slaughtered the bishops and clergy in the cathedral, the
historian of Armorica tells us that, having loaded their vessels with
plunder and captives, the heathen men proceeded to a certain island
to divide the spoil. A quarrel ensued over the division, and some of
the captives profited by the confusion to make their escape. One man,
bolder than the rest, thought he might as well secure some of the
valuables. And on what does the reader suppose he pitched? Neither
on jewelled reliquary, nor church-plate, but on the great Bible which
had been used in the cathedral, and which he took on his back and ran
off with to the mines, where he remained concealed with some of his
companions, until the Normans took their departure. “The fugitives
then issued from their hiding place, and returned to Nantes,” says
the chronicler, having lost much in _books_, silver and gold, and
having saved nothing but their Bible.

Sometimes, again, we read of the strange expedients used by the
owners of books to conceal them from plunderers. In the abbey of
Pfeffers, the books and the church-plate were always hidden together,
and on more than one occasion unexpected discoveries were made in
aftertimes, of the deposits thus contrived. In the twelfth century
one of these secret stores was accidentally brought to light, and
contained, besides church plate and vestments, a rich library. Its
catalogue included, besides missals and choral books, the works of
most of the Latin fathers, and those of Virgil, Lucan, Statius,
Sallust, Cicero, and many others. When the great abbey of St. Gall’s
was threatened by the Huns, the first thought of the abbot was to
send the books across the lake to Reichnau. In some of the Italian
convents it was always the custom to bury the books on the approach
of the Saracens; and several manuscripts may still be seen in the
Library of Florence, bearing traces on their covers of having been so
dealt with. Not unfrequently the relics are spoken of as being kept
in the library, of which an instance occurs in an anecdote preserved
by Martene, concerning the monks of St. Florent. When their monastery
was threatened by the Normans, they fled to Tournus, taking with them
the body of their patron saint. The danger being past, they prepared
to return, but their ungenerous hosts, the monks of Tournus, refused
to let them take the body with them. Very disconsolately they bent
their steps back to St. Florent without their treasure: but one of
their number, named Absalon, devised a scheme for its recovery.
“He was,” says the historian, “a very skilful youth, very fond of
law-studies, and much given to letters.” His law-studies had possibly
sharpened his wits, but the reader must forgive his wiliness,
remembering that it was put forth in a just cause. He feigned
illness, and remained behind at Tournus, where the monks entrusted
him with the offices of scholasticus, librarian, and cantor, and one
night, having the keys of the library he effected a quiet entrance,
and taking the body of St. Florent from the place where it was
deposited, lost no time in finding his way with it back to his own
monastery.

One other story may suffice on this subject, which I purposely select
as having more to do with relics than books, because it shows that
even the narratives more specially devoted to chronicling the loss
of saints’ bones often indicate the loss of books also; and because,
moreover, it gives us to understand that monks could sometimes act
as village schoolmasters. It is from the pages of Odericus Vitalis,
and will assist us in forming some notion of the sort of violence to
which monasteries were exposed, not only from Huns and Saracens, but
even from their Christian neighbours.

For many years after the conversion of the Normans, and their
peaceable establishment in the north of France, they continued to be
objects of jealous fear to the French sovereigns, and particularly
to Louis l’Outremer, who, in 943, treacherously got possession of
the young Duke Richard, and detained him prisoner. He then proceeded
to lay plans for recovering possession of the duchy. He offered Hugh
the Great, duke of France, the grant of an enormous territory on
condition of his reducing the strong places of the Normans, and Hugh,
nothing loth, overran the duchy with a powerful army, and sent some
of his men under command of his chancellor, Herluin, to Ouche, where
they were hospitably entertained at the monastery of St. Evroult. The
simple monks, who thought they had nothing to fear from Christians
and Frenchmen, showed them all over the house, and exhibited their
oratories and the secret recesses where the bones of the saints were
deposited. For this act of confidence they soon paid dearly.

Bernard the Dane, uncle to the young duke, finding himself unable
to resist the superior force of the French, had recourse to
stratagem, and persuaded the king that the Normans would at once
own his sovereignty, if the army of Duke Hugh were withdrawn. Louis
accordingly sent orders to Hugh to retire; but the fiery duke,
enraged at this breach of faith on the part of a monarch whose crown
depended on his good will, commanded his soldiers to withdraw indeed
from Normandy, but not till they had wasted the country, burnt the
towns, and driven off the cattle. The savage soldiery executed his
orders with delight, and the band that had been quartered at St.
Evroult, remembering the treasures which had been displayed to them,
hastened thither without delay, and bursting into the church, laid
hands on the body of St. Evroult, with other holy relics, and after
ransacking the house of “everything serviceable to human existence,”
together with books, vestments, and even furniture, they took their
departure, and marched back to their own country laden with their
spoils. The poor monks were left very disconsolate; stripped of their
all, they knew not what to do, but after a while they came to the
resolution of abandoning their ruined monastery, and following the
body of their holy founder into exile. They considered themselves
the guardians of this treasure, and would not desert their trust:
perhaps, too, they hoped to soften the hearts of their enemies, and
move them at least to restore the relics. All therefore prepared to
depart, with the exception of Ascelin, the prior, who refused to quit
the monastery. “Go in God’s name,” he said, “but as for me, I will
never forsake the place where I have received so many blessings:
I shall remain as the guardian of these solitudes, till through
the mercy of the King of kings, a better day shall dawn upon us.”
Finding he was not to be moved, the others took leave of him, and
set out on their melancholy journey. They reached the duke’s camp,
and told their tale, and Hugh, touched by the recital, promised to
protect them and provide for their maintenance, if they would follow
him to his own city of Orleans. There they had the mortification,
however, of seeing the chiefs dividing their spoils. Herluin took
for his share the head of St. Evroult, a portable altar plated with
silver, and one of the books. Ralph de Tracy, who had commanded the
plundering party, obtained the remainder of the saint’s body, which
he very devoutly presented to another abbey, but the poor monks of
Ouche recovered nothing. However, they were treated with tolerable
kindness by the men of Orleans, who provided them with a habitation,
and plenty of fish, bread, and wine, and so ended their days in
France in comparative prosperity.

Meanwhile Ascelin, whom we left in the deserted abbey, did not
waste his time in barren regrets. He set himself to consider what
he could do to provide for the continuance of God’s service in that
place, and at last resolved on a step which must be acknowledged
as not a little creditable in a monk of the Age of Iron: he opened
a school. He sought out and assembled together the youths of the
neighbourhood, and among them his own nephew, and taught them to
read. There is something both picturesque and touching in the idea
thus presented to us, of the old man keeping school among his ruins,
and acting as the faithful guardian of the holy spot, doing what
good he could whilst time and strength remained to him, and with
too much quiet confidence in God to lose heart and courage because
all else was lost. At last, however, he died, persevering to the
last in the observance of his monastic rule, and then his scholars
were scattered, the forest thickets grew up round the ruins, and
gradually the ancient solitude recovered its former wildness, and
became the resort of wild animals. In the next generation, the names
of Ouche and St. Evroult had passed utterly out of mind, till one
day a peasant in search of a strayed bullock, followed him into the
deserted valley, and making his way through bushes and brambles,
found his beast couched on a little plot of soft green grass, before
what seemed a ruined altar, surrounded by grey walls held together by
ivy roots. And then grey-headed men were found who had heard their
fathers talk of the time when St. Evroult, who despised the world,
had made himself a dwelling in these wilds, and how his brethren had
been driven away by the soldiers of Hugh the Great. The good knight
Gaston de Montfort rebuilt the church, and the abbey was afterwards
restored and colonised from Jumièges; and at last, in 1130, two
hundred years after the forcible translation of the relics from
Ouche to Orleans, they were brought back to their rightful home, in
consequence of the eloquent entreaties of St. Bernard.[127]

We have said enough of the disorders of the ninth and tenth centuries
to show that, whatever were the intellectual sterility of the Iron
Age, there was cause enough to account for it. Let us now reverse
the picture, and inquire whether the clergy resigned themselves
contentedly to this lamentable state of things, or what means they
took for amending it. Our wonder is, not that the age was one of
literary decay, but that learning was not wholly extinguished; and
the exertions made by a few to preserve a knowledge of letters in the
midst of such unparalleled discouragements, strike us as more justly
meriting admiration than all the magnificent institutions founded
in more prosperous times. And such efforts were certainly made. In
the ninth century the attention paid to the establishment of schools
and the cultivation of learning under Charles the Bald and his
successors, led Henry of Rheims to declare that it seemed as if the
Grecian muses had migrated to France. This is, perhaps, a rhetorical
flourish; yet most of the episcopal schools, the names of which are
given by Mabillon, were founded during forty years of incessant
civil distraction. Even when the ravages of the barbarians swept
away the fruits of so many labours, how wonderful is the patient,
hopeful perseverance displayed by the bishops in reconstructing
their shattered work! Give them but a few years’ respite, a short
interval of comparative tranquillity in any province, and you will
invariably find the schools restored and the old discipline beginning
over again. Thus Egidius, in his “History of the Bishops of Liege,”
tells us of the extraordinary efforts made by Bishop Heraclius to
re-establish studies in his diocese. It had borne the brunt of the
Norman invasions in the ninth century; all the existing schools
had been destroyed, and the ecclesiastics had grown so indifferent
to the subject that, when Heraclius began his administration, he
found no one to support him in his attempts to organise a fresh
staff of teachers. And yet in a few years he succeeded in restoring
monastic schools throughout the whole province, and reviving a love
of learning among all classes. He accomplished this not so much by
his exhortations as his example; for, says his biographer, “he did
not think it beneath him to frequent these schools by turns, taking
on himself the office of teacher, giving lectures to the elder
students, and patiently explaining and repeating his lessons to
those who did not understand him. When he travelled to any distance
he always corresponded with his scholars, sporting with them in
pleasant verse. Even from Italy and Calabria he remembered to send
them agreeable letters to provoke them to the love of study, and he
generally took some of them with him on his journeys, that he might
beguile the tediousness of the way by conferring with them on the
Holy Scriptures.” His successor, Notger, carried on the good work
with even greater ardour. Like Heraclius, he always taught in his
own cathedral school, and a great many of his pupils afterwards
became bishops. They were so many, and so remarkable for their good
scholarship, that their names and their various excellences were
thought worthy by a certain scholasticus named Adelman, of being made
the subject of some verses, which are still preserved.[128] Notger
had originally been a monk of St. Gall’s, and had been called thence
to direct the school of Stavelot. He naturally, therefore, had a
taste for teaching, and, like Heraclius, he never travelled without
a troop of scholars, abundance of books, and what his biographer
calls _arma scholaria_. Nor were all of his scholars clerks, for we
are expressly told that he had numerous young laics entrusted to
him that he might train them in a manner suitable to their state
of life. He did so much for his cathedral city, that he has been
called its second founder, and not a few of the churches and pious
institutions existing there at the present day owe their erection to
his munificent zeal.[129]

At Rheims, which from its geographical position enjoyed a longer
immunity from pillage than cities situated on the great rivers,
schools and teachers found a safe retreat and ample encouragement
from Archbishop Hincmar. However, the Normans at last made their way
thither; and when Fulk succeeded to the archiepiscopal dignity, he
found both the cathedral school, and that established for the rural
clergy, ruined and deserted. He restored them both, and invited the
two monks, Remigius of Auxerre and Hucbald of St. Amand, to come and
take charge of them. Their scholastic pedigree has been given in a
former chapter, and they are commonly regarded as the chief restorers
of learning in France. Fulk, who knew their value, encouraged his
clergy to profit from their instructions by himself taking his seat
as a scholar among the youngest of his clerks. The Rheims pupils
included many men of note, such as Flodoard the historian, whom
Fleury calls the ornament of his age. The old epitaph on his tomb
praises him as “a good monk, a good clerk, and a better abbot,” and
concludes with two lines somewhat hyperbolical in their expression:--

Per sen histoire maintes nouvelles sauras
Et en ille toutes antiquité auras.

Hucbald was famous as a poet, musician, and philosopher; but his
colleague, Remigius, was great in grammar, and wrote comments on
Priscian, Donatus, and Marcian Capella. He taught humane letters
and theology, and was extraordinarily learned in Scripture and the
Fathers. After the death of Fulk he proceeded to Paris, and opened
the first public school which we know with any certainty to have been
established in that city. This, according to the Paris historians,
was the real germ of the university; at any rate it was the first of
those celebrated schools out of which the university subsequently
developed. Nevertheless, half a century earlier, in the midst of
the great siege of Paris, there had been both schools and scholars,
for Abbo of St. Germain apologises for the incomplete state of his
poem before mentioned, “on account of the multitude of his pupils.”
Whence we gather that even famine and massacre had never entirely
extinguished the Parisian thirst for letters.

Remigius continued to teach at Paris for several years, pupils
coming to him from all parts of France. Among them was one whose
story deserves to be told a little more at length, inasmuch as it
exhibits, in a striking manner, the utter ruin which had fallen on
the monastic institute in the French provinces, and at the same time
shows us that in the tenth century laymen were to be found who were
possessed of a respectable education, and were capable of collecting
libraries. There lived at that time, in the province of Maine, a
certain noble named Abbo, who had been fortunate enough in his youth
to find some school where he not only learnt how to sign his name,
but acquired a great taste for reading. His reading, too, was of
a solid kind, for his favourite studies were the histories of the
ancients, and the “Novellæ” of Justinian, the latter of which he
knew by heart, using his legal erudition when called on to dispense
justice to his feudal subjects, and to act as umpire in the disputes
which arose among his neighbours. The Gospels were always read aloud
at his table, and on the Vigils of solemn feasts he and his family
spent the night in prayer and watching. Nor are we to draw the hasty
conclusion that Abbo’s household, and his way of life, was at all
an extraordinary exception from the common rule. He had friends as
learned and as holy as himself, such as Duke William of Aquitaine,
whose religious habits earned him the surname of “the Pious,” while
his love of letters gained him that of “the Grammarian.” This good
prince had a number of books in his castle, and during the long
winter evenings he amused himself by reading them, never leaving his
studies till fairly overcome by sleep. Abbo had one son named Odo,
born in 879, and whilst yet an infant, his father going to see him
in his cradle, by a devout impulse took him in his arms and offered
him to St. Martin. As he grew up he was given in charge to a priest
to be taught his letters, but it does not appear that there was any
idea of bringing him up to the ecclesiastical state: on the contrary,
his father placed him in the household of Duke William, that he
might acquire the martial exercises becoming a knight. Odo, however,
had no taste for these pursuits, and the chase and the tilt-yard
were insupportably wearisome to him. Praying to Our Lady that he
might be guided in the choice of a state of life, he was for three
years attacked by inveterate headaches, which obliged him to return
home, and which obstinately resisted every remedy. His father at
last became persuaded that it was not the will of God that his son
should pursue a secular calling. Remembering his former promise to
St. Martin, and finding that Odo’s own wishes pointed in the same
direction, he took him to Tours, and placed him, in his nineteenth
year, among the canons of that city. There was a very solemn
reception of the noble postulant, and among those who assisted at the
ceremony was the brave Count Fulk of Anjou, the same who has before
been mentioned as himself holding a canon’s stall, and scandalising
king Louis by his proficiency in music.

No sooner did Odo find himself in quiet possession of his new
retreat than he applied himself to his books with an ardour that
quite astounded his brother canons. They perpetually asked him what
he meant by all this reading, and where could possibly be the good
of it. Odo let them talk as they would, and made no change in his
habits. He often spent the whole day in study, and the whole night in
prayer. He finished his course of grammar, and was about to commence
Virgil, when he was deterred by a vision, in which he seemed to see
a beautiful vessel filled with serpents, which he understood to
indicate the poison to be found in the charms of profane literature.
Putting it aside, therefore, he devoted himself exclusively to
the study of the Scriptures, and to obtain the more freedom from
interruption, he shut himself up in a little cell which Count Fulk
had given him, and distributing all his money to the poor, lived on
the moderate daily allowance of half a pound of bread and a handful
of beans. However, he soon became desirous of better teaching than he
had as yet been able to procure, so he set out for Paris, and entered
at the school of Remigius of Auxerre. That master made him go through
a course of the liberal arts, and gave him to study the treatises of
Marcian Capella, and the “Dialectics” of St. Augustine.[130]

On his return to Tours he applied himself to the study of St.
Gregory’s “Morals,” in which he took such delight that he wrote an
abridgment of it, which is still preserved. His love of letters
may be gathered from the fact that he gradually procured himself a
library of a hundred volumes--a very large collection in those days
for any private individual. Among them were some “Lives of the Holy
Fathers,” and the “Rule” of St. Benedict, the constant study of which
filled Odo with an intense desire to embrace the monastic state. In
this he was encouraged by the intimate friendship he formed about
this time with a knight named Adegrim, one of the household of the
good Count Fulk. At last Adegrim threw up his military employments
and came to live with the young canon at Tours. The talk of the two
friends was ever of monks and of monasteries, and they made many
journeys into different parts of France to seek out the sites of
those once famous abbeys of which they had read, and to discover
if perchance one yet survived in its ancient state of discipline.
But these expeditions invariably ended in disappointment. For more
than sixty years the monastic institute in France had been utterly
ruined. Most of the houses so renowned in the last century were now
nothing but heaps of blackened ruins. The monks had either been
slain or driven out as wanderers. Sometimes they were to be met with
in the guise of poor vagrants; sometimes in places far from public
resort you might come upon a miserable hut, where the remnants of
what had once been a flourishing community were gathered together
in the wilderness, striving to keep their Rule as best they might.
This is not a fancy picture. It was about this very time that William
Longsword, duke of Normandy, was induced to restore the abbey of
Jumièges, having when hunting in the forest come upon two poor monks
who were trying to construct a cell for themselves out of the ruins
of the abbey. All the refreshments they could offer him were some
barley bread and some water; and the spectacle of their poverty,
together with the remembrance that the desolation he witnessed had
been the work of his own Norman forefathers, induced the duke to
undertake the work of restoration. Abbo and Adegrim, however, were
not to be discouraged in their plan. Finding no house in France
where they could embrace the life to which they longed to devote
themselves, they resolved to carry on their search in Italy, and
Adegrim accordingly set out, intending to make the pilgrimage to
Rome. But as he passed through Burgundy he accidentally found his way
to La Baume, a small monastery which had been recently founded by
the abbot Berno, and in which the Rule of St. Benedict was strictly
observed, together with the reformed Constitutions of St. Benedict
d’Anian. Adegrim at once wrote to his friend, bidding him come
without delay, and bring all his books with him; and Odo lost no
time in obeying the summons. In the year 909 he began his noviciate,
being then exactly thirty years of age. Adegrim, after three years of
penitential exercises, begged leave to retire to a little cave about
two miles distant from the monastery, where he spent the rest of
his life as a hermit. But a very different course awaited his friend
Odo. His books pointed him out to be the right sort of man for a
schoolmaster, and he was therefore charged with the education of the
children brought up in the monastery, and the younger monks. He had
much to suffer from the jealousy of some of his brethren; but Berno,
rightly appreciating both his talents and his humility, sent him to
Turpion, Bishop of Limoges, to be ordained priest.

The reformed monastery of La Baume soon became the mother-house of
other foundations. Those who deplored the decay of learning and
religion were eager to provide for the restoration of both, by
erecting houses in which the Rule and spirit of St. Benedict might be
revived in their ancient vigour. Abbo’s old friend, Duke William of
Aquitaine, was of the number of those who desired to take part in the
good work, and he invited Berno to choose a site for a new foundation
in any part of his dominions. Berno selected a beautiful solitude,
about four miles from Macon, on the confines of Burgundy, where the
river Grosne, after passing the village of Bonnay, winds down to the
Seine from the mountains of Beaujolais, through a valley girt in
by high hills covered with forests. It was exactly suited for the
purposes of a religious retreat, but the duke hesitated when Berno
named it, for it was his favourite hunting ground, and was at that
time occupied by his kennel of dogs. “Well, sir,” said Berno, when
the duke had explained his difficulty, “it is only to turn out the
dogs, and to turn in the monks.” This recommendation was accordingly
followed, and in course of time there arose among those wooded hills
the stately abbey of Cluny, the church of which was inferior in size
to none save St. Peter’s of Rome.

On the death of Berno in 927, the bishops of the province obliged
St. Odo to accept the government of Cluny and two of the other five
houses which had sprung under the reformed Rule. Not content with
this, they likewise forced upon him the most odious and difficult
of all imaginable enterprises; that, namely, of restoring monastic
discipline in a vast number of other houses both in France and
Italy, which had fallen into the hands of a dissolute set of men,
who sometimes opposed the entrance of the abbot, sword in hand. Odo
entered on this work in obedience, and accomplished it in the spirit
of meekness. There is no courage like that of gentle souls, and the
history of this great reformer exhibits him to us forsaken by his
terrified attendants, and riding up on his ass to the gates of
Fleury, where a band of armed men were awaiting his coming, having
sworn to kill him if he dared set foot among them. But Odo’s meekness
gained the day, and among the seventeen abbeys which accepted the
Cluniac reform, that of Fleury became one of the most flourishing.

In fact, the character of St. Odo had nothing of that stern austerity
which we commonly associate with the notion of a reformer. Its force
was its amiability. He used to tell his monks that cripples and
beggars were the door-keepers of heaven, and would not endure that
they should be spoken to with harshness. If he heard the porter
giving a gruff answer to the crowds of poor who thronged his gate,
he would go out to them and say, “My friends, when that brother
comes to the gates of Paradise, answer him as he has just answered
you, and see whether he will like it.” On his journeys, if he met
any children, he always stopped, and desired them to sing or repeat
something to him, and he did this, says his biographer, that he might
have an excuse for giving them something. And if he met an old woman
or a cripple, nothing would prevent his getting off his beast and
mounting them in his place, when he would desire his servants to hold
them securely in the saddle, while he himself led them on their way.
This excess of goodness made him so dear to his monks, that they
would often steal behind him and indulge their affection and respect
by secretly pressing to their lips the hem of his garment.

St. Odo died in 942, and in 965 Maieul or Majolus, a former canon of
Macon, was elected abbot. His life, like that of his predecessor,
affords an illustration of the two features in the century which
I am most solicitous to bring before the reader’s notice; the
disordered state of society, consequent on the barbaric invasions,
and the fact that in spite of such disorders, men were not wholly
indifferent to letters, though they were often sadly at a loss to
find the means of acquiring them. Maieul made his studies at Lyons,
which his biographer, Odilo, declares was then regarded as the nurse
and mother of philosophy, under a rather celebrated teacher named
Anthony de l’Isle Barbe. He learnt both kinds of literature, says
the monk Syrus, who also wrote his life, the divine and human, and
attained to whatever was most sublime in the one, and most difficult
in the other. The approach of the Saracens obliged him to leave
Avignon, his native city, and retire to Macon, where he was chosen
first canon and then archdeacon. But as he found that the clergy
and people had it in their mind to procure his further promotion
to the bishopric of Besançon, he fled to Cluny, where he was
received with great affection, and in process of time was appointed
schoolmaster, librarian, and syndic of the house. In this combination
of the intellectual and the temporal government he managed to make
himself greatly beloved, and in 948, with the consent of the whole
community, Aimard, the successor of Odo, whom Syrus styles a son of
innocence and simplicity, surrendered the government of the abbey
and all its dependencies into his hands. Both as scholasticus and
coadjutor to the abbot, Maieul superintended the studies of his
monks, and it is remarkable that he had to use the bridle rather
than the spur. He was obliged to exert his authority to discourage
their excessive study of the profane poets, especially Virgil; not
that he disapproved of a moderate use of humane literature; on the
contrary, he advocated the principle that we should get all the
good out of it that we can; but he would have preferred to see his
monks learned in the Scriptures, the reading of which formed his
own delight. Whether he walked or rode, the Sacred volume was never
out of his hands, and when he travelled into distant countries
he always took with him a portable library. These journeys were
very frequent, for Maieul extended the Cluniac reform into a great
number of abbeys, and made many pilgrimages to Rome. Returning from
that city in 973, he was attacked, whilst crossing the Alps, by
the Saracens of Frassinet, and carried off, together with all his
retinue. His captors chained him hand and foot, and confined him in
a cave among the mountains, plundering him of all his baggage, and
among other things of his books. The saint recommended himself to
God in the spirit of martyrdom, and then lay down on the floor of
the cavern to take what rest he might. On awakening he was surprised
to find lying on his breast one of his lost books, which appeared
to have been overlooked by the plunderers. He opened it, and found
it was a treatise on the Assumption of Our Lady, and counting the
days, he found that there remained exactly twenty-four to the Feast
of the Assumption; so he began to pray that through the intercession
of the Queen of Heaven, he might perhaps be permitted to keep that
Feast among Christians. After a while the Saracens began to treat
him more kindly. They allowed him to write a letter to his brethren
directing them to send the money for his ransom, and seeing that
he did not eat the meat which they set before him, one man took a
shield, and baring his arms, he proceeded to knead some meal in
this strange dish, and produced a cake which the prisoner gratefully
accepted. Another time a Saracen, wishing to clean his lance, set his
foot on the great Bible which formed part of the abbot’s library.
Pained at the irreverence, the saint gently remonstrated with him,
but without effect, and a few days afterwards the man quarrelling
with his companions, they cut off the very foot that had been set
on the Sacred Volume. At last the ransom arrived, and the prisoners
were liberated, and Maieul spent the Feast of the Assumption among
Christians, as he had prayed. Not long afterwards the Saracens were
driven from Frassinet by Duke William of Arles, and the books of St.
Maieul being found among their baggage, were sent back to him at
Cluny to his very great joy.

The information conveyed in stories of this kind will be taken for
what it is worth. It does not certainly represent the monks of the
Iron Age as prodigies of erudition, but it shows that they did a
little more than learn their Psalter. In some cases they certainly
set themselves to overcome the difficulties which then beset the path
of learning with a perseverance and success that merit all praise;
and one example of this sort occurs among the monks of that very
abbey of Fleury, the reformation of which was effected by St. Odo
in the teeth of an armed rabble. Abbo of Fleury, as he is commonly
called, a contemporary of St. Maieul, did not enter the monastery
until some years after it had begun to flourish under the Cluniac
rule, and the good discipline of Abbot Wulfhad. He was a native of
Orleans, and a boy of such a sweet disposition and such a happy
memory, that he forgot nothing of his master’s lessons, and studied
much in private, not merely for the sake of knowledge, says his
biographer, but also because he counted application to study to be
a means of subjecting the flesh to the spirit. The Fleury teachers
at this time were not first-rate; however, far from being disgusted
with “the haggard and emaciated skeleton of barbarous elements,” the
more Abbo learnt the more he desired to learn. He was appointed in
time _scholasticus_ to his convent, but he felt by no means satisfied
as yet with his own attainments. He was tolerably well versed in
grammar, logic, and arithmetic, but he had found no one at Fleury
who could teach him the other liberal arts. With the permission of
his abbot, therefore, he resigned his office, and went first to
Paris, and then to Rheims. In these schools he acquired a knowledge
of philosophy and astronomy, but not so much of the last science as
he desired. So he next proceeded to Orleans, and there not only
perfected himself in other branches of learning, but, by dint of
expending a good sum of money, managed to get some excellent lessons
in music. This, however, could only be done secretly, by reason of
the opposition of envious minds. He had now studied five out of
the seven liberal arts, and he could not rest till he had acquired
the other two. But not being able to find any good master either
in rhetoric or geometry, he endeavoured to supply the first by a
careful study of Victorinus, the master of St. Jerome, and also by
his own exertions gained some knowledge of mathematics. We have seen
in the last chapter how he was summoned to England by St. Oswald of
York, and established sacred and scientific studies in the monastery
of Ramsay. So greatly was he esteemed by both St. Oswald and St.
Dunstan, that an amicable quarrel arose between the two prelates as
to which should keep possession of so great a treasure. The question
was settled by the abbot of Fleury recalling Abbo to his own convent
after a two years’ absence.

His English friends took leave of him with no small regret, and
loaded him with parting presents. St. Dunstan gave him a number of
exquisitely-wrought silver ornaments of his own workmanship, which he
requested him to present as his offerings to St. Benedict, a portion
of whose body was preserved at Fleury. St. Oswald ordained him
priest, and gave him a chalice, some vestments, and everything else
requisite for saying mass. In 988 he became abbot, in which office
he continually recommended his monks to cultivate study as the most
useful exercise next to fasting and prayer. For himself he ceased
not all his life to read, write, or dictate. His favourite studies,
next to the Holy Scriptures, were dialectics and astronomy, and among
his works were some treatises on both those subjects. Renowned for
his learning throughout Europe, he was killed at last in 1004 in an
affray between his servants and some Gascon monks of the monastery of
Reole, whither he had been sent to effect a reform.

In fact, if the age exhibited much decay and many scandals, it found
men ready to spend their lives in the weary work of restoration and
reformation. And it is remarkable that the greatest prelates of the
time invariably regarded the revival of monachism as the only means
of restoring good discipline and learning. Such were the views of St.
Dunstan and his fellow-labourers, and such was also the conviction
of the excellent Adalberon, who in 933 became Bishop of Metz. He
was brother to the reigning duke of Lorraine, and his talents and
zeal equalled the nobility of his birth. In order to provide his
diocese with a seminary of devoted and learned men, he resolved
on restoring the great monastery of Gorze, which had been founded
by St. Chrodegang of Metz, but which had been ruined under the
combined attacks of the Normans and the Hungarians. He completed the
rebuilding of the abbey, but was still uncertain whence he should
procure his colony of monks, when he was informed that a little
society of ecclesiastics, which had been formed in the neighbouring
diocese of Toul, was about to pass into Italy, seeking some spot
where they might unmolested lead a more perfect life. The way in
which this society had been organised was altogether remarkable. At
their head was John of Vandières, the native of a village in the
diocese of Nancy, who, having been born when his father was advanced
in years, had suffered from some of the disadvantages of being a
spoiled child. The fond parent, however, was at last persuaded to
send the boy to school, first at Metz, and then at the monastery
of St. Michael’s, where Master Hildebold, a pupil of Remigius,
gave lessons in grammar. John, however, profited very little by
his teaching, and on his father’s death, his mother, marrying a
second time, recalled him home, and gave him the charge of all the
temporal affairs of the house. John showed considerable ability in
the management of lands and revenues, and absorbed in these cares,
soon forgot the little he had learnt at school. However, as time went
on, he became disgusted with his secular way of life, and embracing
the ecclesiastical state, received two benefices in the diocese of
Toul. There he became acquainted with the learned deacon Berners,
who, by no means approving of illiterate clerks, persuaded John to
begin his studies over again. Divine grace quickening his powers,
he did his best to make up for lost time. But he was never much of
a grammarian. He contented himself with what his biographer calls
a _sprinkling_ of Donatus, just so much as enabled him to read and
understand the Scriptures, to the study of which he then exclusively
devoted himself, and in which he obtained very extraordinary light.
The church which he served was dependent on a convent of nuns at
Metz, where his duties called him from time to time to say mass. He
became acquainted with the community, and the example of their holy
and mortified life inspired him with new ardour. He began a course
of reading with these good religious, which speaks in favour of his
diligence and their patience, and in which, says his biographer, he
persevered “with all his might.”

First, then, having read through with them the whole of the Old and
New Testaments, he committed both to memory, “and that so accurately
that no man could do it better,” also “all the lessons appointed to
be read in church,” which are contained in the book called _Comes_;
then the rules for the computing of Easter and the canonical laws,
that is, the decrees of councils, the judgments of penitents, the
mode of ecclesiastical proceedings, and the secular laws, all of
which he treasured up word for word. Of homilies, sermons, and
treatises on the Epistles and Gospels, I will only say that he was
able to repeat an alarming catalogue of them in the vernacular,
“straightforward from beginning to end, as if he were reading from
the book.” At the same time he laboured hard to acquire a knowledge
of church music, not caring for the derision of some who considered
it an unsuitable enterprise for one of his age to engage in. However,
his perseverance was rewarded with very fair success, and it was thus
that he employed his intervals of leisure time, together with the
handmaids of God.

It must be confessed that John’s choice of reading, considering the
gentler sex of his fellow-students, was somewhat of the driest. Nor
do I at all cite him as a model of erudition, though, considering
the deficiencies of his early education, his achievements in that
line might have saved him from the contempt of Brucker, who notices
him only to string him up among other barbarous dunces. His studies
probably took their direction from the very few books which he had at
his command, and it is at least clear that he made a tolerable use of
those he possessed.

His intercourse with the nuns inspired him with a great desire to
embrace a religious life, but, like St. Odo, he sought in vain for
any religious house in his own part of the country where religious
discipline still flourished. So first he joined the company of a
recluse of Verdun, named Humbert, and then he passed some time
with a hermit in the forest of Argonne, and at last, in company
with Bernacer of Metz, who was a tolerable scholar, he set out on
pilgrimage to Rome. However, even in Italy he found nothing that
exactly suited him, and returning to Verdun, resumed his former
exercises of prayer and study, under the direction of Humbert.

About the same time Einold, Archdeacon of Toul, had been touched
with similar desires after a perfect life; and distributing all his
goods to the poor, he shut himself up in a little cell adjoining
the cloisters of his cathedral, together with his books and his
priestly vestments, living only on what the Bishop Gauzelin sent
him as an alms. The times were, indeed, dreary enough, when, one
after another, these good men were to be found seeking, and seeking
in vain, for some spot untouched by the spoiler’s hand. As Einold
prayed for guidance, what seemed a little schoolboy’s voice in the
street outside chanted the words, “I will give you the heritage of
your father Jacob;” and half disposed to take the words as a sign
of divine encouragement, he was still pondering over their meaning,
when Humbert of Verdun came to ask his counsel. To be brief, the four
friends, Einold, Humbert, John, and Bernacer, determined on migrating
to Italy, and establishing themselves either among the solitaries
of Mount Vesuvius, or in the neighbourhood of Monte Cassino. And it
was this little knot of holy men, who had been drawn together by
the ties of Christian sympathy, whom Adalberon proposed to detain
in France for the purpose of entrusting them with the restoration
of monastic life in the abbey of Gorze. They accepted his offer; a
very few of the old monks who yet survived were brought back, and
willingly accepted the strict reform which Adalberon desired to
establish; Einold was chosen abbot, and the house soon became a model
of good discipline. Sacred studies were at once instituted in the
school, and after his religious profession, John of Gorze, as he was
henceforth called, entered on rather a wider range of reading than he
had hitherto been able to follow. We find him applying himself to St.
Augustine, and working with characteristic energy at certain logical
studies, which were, however, cut short by the prohibition of Einold,
who desired him to leave logic for secular students, and to confine
himself to more spiritual subjects, an injunction which he humbly and
promptly obeyed. He became abbot of Gorze about the year 960.

Adalberon’s zeal was not satisfied with the restoration of Gorze; he
invited a learned body of monks over from Ireland, under a superior
named Cradoc, and established them in another deserted monastery,
that of St. Clement’s at Metz. When Gerard, Bishop of Toul, the
successor of Gauzelin, heard of the arrival of the Irishmen, he never
rested till he had procured some of them for his own diocese. He had
already procured a community of exiled Greek monks, among whom, in
the following century, Cardinal Humbert acquired his Greek learning.
A sort of holy emulation sprang up between the two prelates, which
should outstrip the other in their labours at reform and revival; and
Gerard was not content with setting others to work; he worked himself
as hard as the humblest scholasticus. He took into his own hands the
instruction of his clergy in all that appertained to ecclesiastical
discipline and the ministry of preaching; and acting on the principle
that he who instructs others should never cease to be a learner, he
never considered that his time of study was ended; and his historian
declares that even when he was in bed he appointed some of his clerks
to read to him until he fell asleep.

From all that has been said, it may be seen that there was no want
of solicitude on the part of the pastors of the Church to amend
the disorders of the time. In fact, we might appeal to the acts of
those very councils which show what the abuses of the times were, as
affording proof of the strenuous exertions made to correct them.

In Spain we are told the incursions of the Saracens had left
everything in ruins. The school of Palencia, established in the
sixth century for the education of the clergy, had fallen into
decay; the monastic institute had all but disappeared; and the sites
of many monasteries, like the famous one founded near Vierzo by
St. Fructuosus, had become wildernesses, overgrown with thorns and
brushwood. But here, as in France and Germany, bishops were to be
found stemming the strong tide of barbarism. Gennadius of Astorga
restored a great number of abbeys destroyed by the Saracens, and
placed them under the Benedictine Rule. And as the libraries that
formerly enriched them could not be at once replaced, he introduced
a custom by which the books belonging to one house were lent to a
number of others in regular succession, always returning to their
original owners. Among the books so lent appear the works of St.
Gregory, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine.

Even the education of the poor was not wholly uncared for in the Iron
Age. Witness the constitutions of Ado of Vercelli, Dado of Verden,
and Heraclius of Liege, in which the establishment of “little,”
or parochial, schools, is ordained, wherein poor children of both
sexes, about the age of seven, are to be received and taught gratis,
the girls and boys being always separated from one another. The
regulations, simple as they are, have a very modern sound; and so
also have those other constitutions of Riculf of Soissons, who, for
the improvement of his parish priests, hit on a scheme of _clerical
conferences_, in order to afford them means of mutual edification, on
a plan precisely similar to that adopted in later times.

But we have dwelt long enough on the aspect which the tenth century
presented in France. Something remains to be said of the state of
schools and monasteries during the same period on the other side of
the Rhine, where the achievements of the German prelates were crowned
with a much larger share of success, and well deserve a chapter to
themselves.

_CHAPTER X._

THE AGE OF THE OTHOS.

A.D. 911 TO 1024.

Louis the Fourth, surnamed the Child, the last of the race of
Charlemagne who bore rule in Germany, died in 911, leaving the empire
torn to pieces with feudal wars and the devastations of Hungarians,
Sclaves and Normans. As the right of choosing his successor belonged
to the nobles, they offered the crown to Otho, duke of Saxony, who
with singular disinterestedness refused it, and recommended as
most worthy of the royal dignity, his own feudal rival, Conrad of
Franconia, who accordingly received the crown. Not to be outdone
in generosity, Conrad, at his death, named the son of Otho as
his successor, and thus Henry the Fowler became the first German
sovereign of the house of Saxony. His victory over the Hungarians at
Marsberg, in 933, gave them their first decisive check, and in 936,
his son Otho the Great completed the discomfiture of the barbarians
at the great battle of Leck, after which they never again showed
their face in Germany. In 952, Otho was crowned king of Italy, having
been called into that country to oppose the usurper Beranger. Eight
years later he was invited to Rome by Pope John XII. and crowned
emperor, no prince having borne that title in the West for the space
of forty years. Though on some occasions he failed not to evince that
tendency to despotism in Church matters which was the hereditary
vice of the German emperors, yet his reign was truly glorious, and
is spoken of by ancient writers as a kind of golden age. His mother
Matilda, and his two wives, Editha and Adelaide, the first of whom
was an English princess, together with his brother Bruno, Archbishop
of Cologne, were all canonised saints. He showed himself the friend
of religion and learning, and caused his son, Otho II., to receive
a learned education. His grandson, Otho III., who succeeded to the
crown in 983, was also a scholar, and a pupil of Gerbert’s, and
surnamed the Wonder of the World. At his death the crown passed to
his cousin, St. Henry of Bavaria, whose brother-in-law, St. Stephen
of Hungary, converted his people to Christianity, and changed those
wild barbarians, so long the scourge of Europe, into a civilised and
Christian nation.

Thus, for the space of a century, Germany was blessed with a
succession of great Christian rulers, who, if they had some defects,
were yet on the whole protectors of religion, and encouragers of
learned men. Italy, indeed, is represented by most historians as
presenting during the same period a scene of lamentable decay; and
Tiraboschi gives the names of only two bishops as possessing any
pretensions to learning, namely, Atto of Vercelli, and Ratherius
of Verona. But allowance must be made for the exaggerations of
party-writers, and there are facts which cannot be altogether
reconciled with their sweeping statements. Studies were certainly
carried on in the monasteries that escaped the rage of the Saracens,
and Muratori cites a long catalogue of books, all either copied
or collected at Bobbio during the tenth century. Baronius, whose
strictures on the state of Italy are exceedingly severe, quotes the
acts of a council held at Rheims in 992, wherein it is declared that
there was scarcely one person to be found at that time in Rome who
knew the first elements of learning. Considering the unhappy and
scandalous factions which then held sway in the Roman capital, no
picture of social disorder would seem too black for us to credit; yet
bad as things were, one is staggered at the notion that no one in
the city of the Popes and the Cæsars should know even how to read.
A few years previously to the date assigned, Rome, as we shall see,
not only possessed good masters herself, but supplied them to the
German seminaries; nor is there any reason for supposing that her
political disasters necessarily closed her schools. If, from the
acts of a remote council, we turn to the writings of one thoroughly
conversant with the state of Italy, the man of his age best qualified
to judge of any matter connected with learning--I mean the famous
Ratherius of Verona--we shall find a very different description of
the state of things which he had witnessed with his own eyes. His
testimony is the more remarkable from the fact that he was the great
censor of his age, sparing neither clergy nor bishops in his caustic
attacks. Yet he assures us that in his time, and he died in 974,
there was no place where a man could get better instructed in sacred
letters than in Rome. “What is taught elsewhere on ecclesiastical
dogma,” he says, “that is unknown there? It is there that we find
the sovereign doctors of the whole world; it is there that the most
illustrious princes of the Church have flourished. There the decrees
of the pontiffs are to be found; there the canons are examined; there
some are approved and others rejected; what is condemned there is
nowhere else approved, nor do men elsewhere approve of what is there
condemned. Where, then, could I be more sure to find wisdom than at
Rome, which is its fountain-head?”[131] About the same time Gerbert,
the literary wonder of his age, arrived in Rome, where his scientific
acquirements were so thoroughly appreciated by Pope John XIII. as
to induce that pontiff to prevent his return into Spain; and he
accordingly wrote to the emperor, advising him to secure the services
of a man who was thoroughly well-versed in mathematics, and able to
teach them to others. But how preposterous it seems to suppose that
the mathematics of Gerbert should be thus highly valued in a city
where hardly a man was to be found acquainted with the first elements
of letters! Again, we find from Gerbert’s own correspondence that it
was from Italy that he chiefly obtained his books. There is no city
in that country, he says, where good writers and copyists are not to
be found; a fact which conclusively proves that somebody was also
to be found to buy what was written, for the book trade could not
have been kept up without a fair supply of readers. And in the year
1000 only eight years after the above-named council had furnished
Baronius with its dismal authority for proving Italy to be sunk in
the grossest ignorance, we find a German noble named Wippo exhorting
the emperor Henry II. to send the sons of the German nobles to be
educated “after the manner of the Italians.” Not that it at all
concerns us to whitewash the history of Italy in the tenth century,
confessedly the very _nadir_ of her ecclesiastical annals; but there
is no reason for unfairly blackening even a damaged reputation, and
the united testimonies given above may at least be taken as evidence
that the words of the council must not be too literally understood.

In the present chapter, however, I propose to speak only of the
state of letters in Germany, where the tenth century was certainly
very far from deserving to be stigmatised as an age of iron or lead.
All the monastic chroniclers bear witness to the rapid extension
of letters, which was encouraged by the Saxon emperors, to the
extraordinary multiplication of schools, and the harvest of great
men whom they produced, so that even Meiners is forced to acknowledge
that at no period did Germany possess so many virtuous and learned
ecclesiastics. Much of this happy state of things is to be attributed
to the labours and example of St. Bruno, the younger brother of
Otho the Great, and, like him, a pupil of Heraclius of Liege. His
education began at Utrecht, where he was sent at the mature age of
four, to commence his studies under the good abbot Baldric. Utrecht
had never entirely lost its scholastic reputation since the days of
St. Gregory. Only a few years before the birth of Bruno the see had
been filled by St. Radbod, a great-grandson of that other Radbod,
duke of Friesland, who had so fiercely opposed the preaching of St.
Boniface. Radbod the bishop, however, was a very different man from
his savage ancestor; he was not only a pious ecclesiastic, but an
elegant scholar, for he had been educated in the Palatine school of
Charles the Bald, under the learned Mannon, whose heart he won by his
facility in writing verses; and the cares of the episcopate never
induced him altogether to neglect the Muses. Besides a great number
of poems which he wrote during his residence at Utrecht, we have a
Latin epigram, which he improvised at the moment of receiving the
Holy Viaticum, and which is perhaps as worthy of being preserved as
the dying epigram of the Emperor Hadrian.[132]

In consequence of the encouragement given to learning by so many of
its bishops, Utrecht became the fashionable place of education, and
it had grown a sort of custom with the German sovereigns to send
their sons thither at an early age. Little Bruno made rapid progress
both in Greek and Latin literature; he particularly relished the
works of Prudentius, which he learnt by heart; never let himself be
disturbed by his noisy companions, and took great care of his books.
Indeed, the only thing that ever moved him to anger was the sight of
any one negligently handling a book. His reading included something
of all sorts; historians, orators, poets and philosophers--nothing
came amiss. He had native Greeks to instruct him in their language,
and became so proficient in it as afterwards to act as interpreter
for his brother to the Greek ambassadors who frequented the German
court. With all this he did not neglect the sacred sciences, and a
certain Isaac, a Scotch, or rather Irish professor, who taught at
Utrecht, spoke of him as not merely a scholar, but a saint. The monk
Ditmar, one of his schoolfellows, himself afterwards celebrated in
the literary world by his chronicle of the royal house of Saxony,
bears witness to the habits of piety which adorned the very childhood
of the young prince. “Every morning,” he says, “before he left his
room to go to the school, he would be at his prayers, while the
rest of us were at play.” A certain tone of exaggeration is not
unfrequently indulged in by early writers when extolling the subjects
of their biographies as prodigies of every literary excellence, but
the descriptions left us of Bruno’s intellectual achievements do not
admit of being understood as mere figures of speech. His love of
reading was almost a passion. He read everything, “even comedies,”
says his biographer, who seems a little scandalised at the fact,
but explains that he attended only to the style, and neglected the
matter. To complete the picture of Bruno’s school-days, it must be
added that he was an excellent manager of his time, and always made
the most of his morning hours, a good habit he retained through life.
I will say nothing of his early career as the reformer of Lauresheim
Abbey; he was still young when his brother Otho succeeded to the
throne, and at once summoned Bruno to court, charging him with the
task of erecting there a Palatine academy, after the model of that
of Charlemagne. Nothing was better suited to Bruno’s wishes and
capacity, and he began at once to teach the entire curriculum of the
liberal arts to a crowd of noble pupils. Whatever was most beautiful
in the historians and poets of Greece or Rome, he made known to his
disciples, and not content with the labour entailed on him by his own
lectures, he did not allow the professors whom he chose to assist him
to commence theirs till he had previously conferred with them on the
subjects they were about to explain.

One of Bruno’s chief assistants was that same Ratherius who has
been already named. Originally a monk of Lobes, he had accompanied
his patron Hilduin of Liege into Italy, and there became bishop of
Verona. He was a man of great learning, and zeal too little tempered
with discretion, and his life was a series of episcopal ejectments.
Thrice was he turned out of the see of Verona, and once out of that
of Liege, to which Bruno had procured his nomination after the death
of Hilduin. His writings are of considerable value as monuments of
the doctrine and discipline of the times, but I mention him here
rather in the character of a benefactor to youth. For after being the
second time obliged to fly from Verona, he retired, says Folcuin,
in his history of the abbots of Lobes, “to that part of Burgundy
which is called Provençe, where he taught the son of a certain
rich man named Rostang; and for his benefit composed a little book
on the grammatical art, which he called by the pleasant name of
_Spara-dorsum_, or _Spare-the-back_, to the end that young children
making use of the same in schools might be preserved from scourges.”

In 953, Bruno, in spite of his youth, was demanded by the clergy
and people of Cologne for their archbishop, and being consecrated,
he at once entered on a career of gigantic labours, everywhere
re-establishing ecclesiastical discipline and social order throughout
a province long wasted by war and barbaric invasions. His political
position, moreover, imposed on him yet more extensive cares; for
Otho, who called him his second soul, when summoned into Italy,
created his brother duke of Lorraine and imperial lieutenant
in Germany. The dukedom of Lorraine at that time included all
the country from the Alps to the Moselle, which now, therefore,
acknowledged Bruno as its actual sovereign. But these multiplied
dignities, and the accumulation of business which they entailed, did
not quench Bruno’s love of study. Whenever he travelled, whether in
the visitation of his diocese, or when accompanying his brother’s
court, he always carried his library with him, “as if it had been
the ark of the Lord,” says the monk Rotger, who, moreover, remarks
that this library was stored both with sacred and profane authors,
for, like a good householder, he knew how to bring out of his
treasury things new and old. Nothing ever prevented his finding
time for reading, and he excited every one about him to cultivate
similar tastes, specially his nephew Otho, who was for some time
his pupil. Indeed, Rotger goes so far as to say that the archbishop
felt a certain want of confidence in those who had no attraction to
study; meaning probably to those unlettered clerks who cared not to
acquire the learning proper to their sacred calling. Of these there
was no lack in Lorraine; but Bruno effected a great change in the
condition of that afflicted province, by appointing good bishops,
healing feuds, reforming monasteries, and making men love one another
in spite of themselves. In all these good works he was assisted
by the learning and martial valour of Ansfrid, count of Lorraine,
who was well read both in law and Scripture, and who used his sword
exclusively to repress pillage and defend the helpless. This feudal
noble of the Iron Age spent all his leisure hours in study, and when
at last he embraced the ecclesiastical state, and at the entreaties
of the emperor accepted a bishopric, he was able to lay his sword
on the altar and render witness that it had never been drawn in an
unjust cause.

Bruno’s example made a great stir in Germany, and moved many
bishops to exert themselves in the work of reform. Poppo, Bishop
of Wurtzburg, sent to Rome for a celebrated master named Stephen,
and with his help the episcopal seminary was restored, and soon
boasted of a “crowd of students, and a great store of books.”
Among other pupils educated under Master Stephen were two friends,
named Wolfgang and Henry. Wolfgang was a student of Bruno’s type,
possessing an avidity for all sorts of learning; and though he began
his school-life at seven, he is said in a few years not only to have
acquired an extensive acquaintance with the letter of the Scriptures,
but to have penetrated into the pith and marrow of their mystical
sense. His father had thought it sufficient to place him under a
certain priest, to receive a very scanty elementary education, but
Wolfgang entreated that he might be sent to Reichnau, which then
enjoyed a high reputation; and here he first met with his friend
Henry. Henry was the younger brother of Bishop Poppo, and easily
persuaded Wolfgang to migrate with him to Wurtzburg, for the sake of
studying under the famous Master Stephen. It soon appeared, however,
that the disciple was more learned than the master, and when the
Wurtzburg students found Master Stephen’s lectures very dull, or
very obscure, they were in the habit of applying to Wolfgang, who
possessed that peculiar gift of perspicacity which marked him from
his boyhood as called to the functions of teaching. Moreover, he was
so kind and so willing to impart his knowledge, that his companions
declared he made daylight out of the darkest matters; when Stephen’s
prosy abstruseness had fairly mystified them, five words from
Wolfgang seemed like the “Fiat lux,” and these observations reaching
the ears of Stephen, had the proverbial fate of all comparisons.
At last, one day when Wolfgang was surrounded by a knot of his
schoolfellows, who entreated him to expound a passage in Marcian
Capella, Master Stephen, moved to jealous anger, forbade Wolfgang any
longer to attend the lectures. This ungenerous command obliged him
to continue his studies alone, but he seems to have lost little by
being deprived of the benefit of an instructor whom he had already
far outstripped in learning.

Henry and Poppo were both of them relatives of Otho, who in 956
caused the former to be raised to the archbishopric of Treves. Henry
insisted on carrying his friend with him into his new diocese, and
wished to load him with benefices and honours, all of which, however,
Wolfgang refused. He would accept of no other employment than that
of teaching youth, for which he knew his aptitude, and which he
heartily loved; and, in the true spirit of a Christian teacher,
he chose to discharge this office gratuitously, not as a means of
private gain, but as a work for souls, even supporting many of his
scholars out of his own purse. He cared as much for their spiritual
as their intellectual progress, and set them the example of a holy
and mortified life. The archbishop, in despair at not being able
to promote him as he desired, at last got him to accept the office
of dean to a certain college of canons. Wolfgang did not allow the
dignity to be a nominal one, but obliged his canons to embrace
community life, and to commence a course of sacred studies, assuring
them that the sustenance of the inner man is as necessary as that
of the body. Archbishop Henry dying in 964, Wolfgang, who had only
remained at Treves out of affection to him, prepared to return into
Swabia, which was his native country. But Bruno had his eye on him,
and inviting him to Cologne, offered him every dignity, even the
episcopate itself, if he would only remain in his duchy. Wolfgang,
though he persisted in refusing to accept any promotion, felt himself
obliged to pass some time at the prince-bishop’s court, and testified
afterwards to the fact of his great sanctity. Finding that he could
not move the resolution of his friend, Bruno at last reluctantly
allowed him to return to Swabia, where he remained only just long
enough formally to renounce his hereditary possessions, after which
he withdrew to Einsidlen, and took the monastic habit under the
English abbot Gregory.

At Einsidlen, as at Treves, he devoted himself to the office of
teaching, and with the same success. It was as hopeless for him to
attempt to conceal his talent, as to hide a light under a bushel.
The world soon resounded with the fame of his school, and bishops
travelled to Einsidlen to bargain for his possession. This time the
friendly persecution was revived by St. Udalric of Augsburgh, who
was himself sufficiently learned to understand the merits of the
poor monk, who asked nothing of the world but a quiet hiding-place,
and was never suffered to enjoy it for any length of time. Udalric
was a scholar of St. Gall’s, and had given marks of sanctity even
during his school days. A minute account of his manner of life when
archbishop is given in the beautiful life written by his friend
Gerard. Let it suffice to say, that besides singing the Divine
Office in the cathedral with his canons, and daily celebrating two
or three masses (a privilege then permitted to priests, as we learn
from Walafrid Strabo), he every day recited the entire Psalter, the
Office of Our Lady, together with that of the Holy Cross, and of All
Saints; that he entertained a number of poor persons at his table,
exercised hospitality on a right royal scale, administered strict
justice to his people, and courageously defended them against the
oppression of their feudal lords; finally, that he took particular
care of the education of his clergy, and directed the studies of his
cathedral school in person, none being better fitted to do so than
himself. When he made the visitation of his diocese, he travelled
in a wagon drawn by oxen, which he preferred to riding on horseback
as it enabled him to recite the Psalms with his chaplains with less
interruption. In this arrangement he certainly displayed a sound
discretion, for in the ancient chronicles of these times, more than
one story is preserved of the disasters which befell travelling monks
and bishops, owing to their habit of reading on horseback.[133]
His cathedral city of Augsburgh was repeatedly attacked by the
Huns; and during one of their sieges, the holy bishop, sending the
able-bodied men to the walls collected a number of infants in arms,
and laying them on the floor of the cathedral, before the altar,
prostrated himself in prayer, hoping that their tender cries might
ascend as prayer before the Throne of God. His prayers were heard,
and Augsburgh was delivered. Such was the prelate who at last
succeeded in drawing Wolfgang out of his retirement, and compelling
him to receive priestly ordination. And in 972 the emperor Otho
II., at the united entreaties of his bishops, appointed him Bishop
of Ratisbon, which see he governed for twenty-two years, never,
however, laying aside his monastic habit. Henry, duke of Bavaria,
thoroughly understood his merits, and knowing his love of the office
of teaching, entreated him to take charge of his four children,
St. Henry, afterwards emperor of Germany, St. Bruno, who succeeded
Udalric in the diocese of Augsburgh, and the two princesses, Gisela
and Brigit, who both died in the odour of sanctity. The singular
blessing which attended his labours with these and other noble
children committed to his care, gave rise to a proverb which deserves
remembrance: “Find saints for masters, and we shall have saints for
emperors.”

The emperors of the tenth century were certainly fortunate in this
respect, and as I have just named Otho II., it will not be amiss
to say a few words about him, and about the tutor to whom was
committed the education of his son and successor. Otho II. had been
brought up among the canons of Hildesheim, and had acquired from
them a taste for letters, which was still further increased by his
marriage with the Greek princess Theophania. At this time the court
of Constantinople was the centre of all that survived of the old
imperial civilisation and literature. Theophania was a woman of
beauty and talent, and remarkable for her wit and eloquence, she
soon infused into the Germans a rage for Greek literature, and gave
such a brilliant character to the literary coteries of the imperial
court, that Gerbert, who was then residing there, speaks in one of
his letters of the “Socratic conversation” which he found among the
learned men who thronged the company of the empress, which, he says,
sufficed to console him amid all his troubles. In more peaceful
times it is probable that a sovereign of Otho’s character would
have effected a great restoration of letters, but the ten years of
his reign were occupied with continual wars, which affixed to his
name the appellation of “the Sanguinary,” and gave no scope for the
exercise of his really great abilities. Before his death, which took
place in 983, he obtained the election of his infant son, Otho III.
as emperor, and left him to the guardianship of Theophania, who,
during the minority of her son, governed the empire as regent.

The empress showed herself fully qualified for both offices. She
had it greatly at heart to provide the young emperor with a learned
education, and not unmindful of the proverb we have quoted above, was
equally solicitous to secure for his tutor one who should merit the
title of a saint. The priest whom she chose was a noble Saxon named
Bernward; he was nephew to Folcmar, Bishop of Utrecht, who sent
him when a child of seven years old to be educated in the episcopal
school of Hildesheim, by the grave and holy master Tangmar. This
good old man, who afterwards wrote his life, received him kindly,
and to test his capacities, set him to learn by heart some of the
select passages from Holy Scripture which were usually given to
beginners. Little Bernward set himself to learn and meditate on them
with wonderful ardour, and associating himself to the most studious
of his companions, tried with their help thoroughly to master, not
only the words, but the hidden sense of his lessons. As he was not
yet judged old enough to join any of the classes, he sat apart by
himself, but listened attentively to the lectures of the master, and
the explanations which he gave, and was afterwards found reproducing
the same in a grave and sententious manner for the edification of
his younger schoolfellows. Surprised and delighted at these marks of
precocious genius, Tangmar spared no pains in the cultivation of so
promising a scholar, and had him constantly by his side. “Whenever
I went abroad on the business of the monastery,” he says, “I used
to take him with me, and I was always more and more struck by his
excellent qualities. We often studied the whole day as we rode along
on horseback, only more briefly than we were used to do in school;
at one time exercising ourselves in poetry, and amusing ourselves
by making verses, at another, arguing on philosophic questions. He
excelled no less in the mechanical than in the liberal arts. He wrote
a beautiful hand, was a good painter, and an equally good sculptor
and worker in metals, and had a peculiar aptitude for all things
appertaining to household and domestic affairs.” Under the care of so
devoted a master, the boy Bernward, as the old man always called him,
grew up to be a wise and learned man. He had that singular ardour
for acquiring knowledge which seems one of the gifts poured out over
ages in which its pursuit is hedged about with difficulties that
must necessarily discourage a more ordinary amount of zeal. Bernward
always read during meal times, and when unable to read himself, he
got some one to read to him. His reputation determined Theophania
to choose him as tutor to her son, who made great progress under
his care, and was then sent to finish his education in the school
of the famous Gerbert. Bernward meanwhile was appointed Bishop of
Hildesheim, and in the midst of his episcopal functions, continued
to cultivate literature and the fine arts. He made time by employing
the day in business and the night in prayer. He founded _scriptoria_
in many monasteries, and collected a valuable library of sacred and
profane authors. He tried to bring to greater perfection the arts of
painting, mosaic work, and metal work, and made a valuable collection
of all those curiosities of fine art which were brought to Otho’s
court as presents from foreign princes. This collection Bernward used
as a studio, for the benefit of a number of youths whom he brought up
and instructed in these pursuits. It is not to be said what he did
for his own cathedral, supplying it with jewelled missals, thuribles,
and chalices, a huge golden corona which hung from the centre of
the roof, and other like ornaments. The walls he painted with his
own hands. The visitor to Hildesheim may still admire the rich
bronze gates, sixteen feet in height, placed in the cathedral by its
artist-bishop, the crucifix adorned with filagree-work and jewels,
made by his own hands, and the old rose-tree growing on the cloister,
which tradition affirms him to have planted.

His manner of life is minutely described by his old tutor Tangmar.
After high mass every morning he gave audience to any who desired
to speak to him, heard causes, and administered justice with great
readiness and promptitude. Then his almoner waited on him, and
accompanied him to the distribution of his daily alms, for every day
a hundred poor persons were fed and relieved at his palace. After
this he went the round of his workshops, overlooking each one’s work
and directing its progress. At the hour of nine he dined with his
clerks. There was no worldly pomp observable at his table, but a
religious silence, all being required to listen to the reading, which
was made aloud. The barbarians gave him plenty of trouble, for they
had seized possession of both shores of the Elbe, and were therefore
able to enter Saxony whenever they liked, and often appeared at the
gates of Hildesheim. But Bernward raised troops for the defence of
his diocese, and repeatedly forced them to retire; and at last built
and garrisoned two strong fortresses which kept the pirates in check.

Bernward had many illustrious disciples, and among them was one
destined to be known in history as the Apostle of the Sclaves. The
title may puzzle those readers who have met with other and earlier
narratives of the conversion of these people, but the fact is that
the Sclaves absorbed almost as much Apostolic labour as China has
done in later times. Twice converted they had twice apostatised, and
were finally brought within the fold of the Church by the labours
of Bennon, Bishop of Misnia. This remarkable man belonged to the
family of the counts of Saxony, and was placed under the care of
St. Bernward at the age of five years. The restored monastery of
Hildesheim, dedicated to St. Michael, of course possessed its school,
which was presided over by Wigger, a very skilful master, under
whose careful tuition Bennon thrived apace. “_Now as the age was
learned_,” writes the good canon, Jerome Enser--who little thought
in what light that same age would come to be regarded--“as the age
was learned, and cultivated humane letters, as may be seen by the
lives and writings of so many eminent men, Wigger would not allow the
child committed to his care to neglect polite letters;” so he set him
to work at once to learn to write, being careful to transcribe his
copies himself. And how well Bennon profited from these early lessons
might yet be seen by any who chose to examine the fine specimens
which were preserved in the Church of Misnia when Jerome Enser
wrote his biography. After this Wigger exercised his pupil in the
art of reading and that of composing verses, taking care to remove
from his way everything offensive to piety or modesty. Bennon had a
natural gift of versification, and soon learnt to write little hymns
and poems by way of amusement. His progress and his boyish verses
endeared him to his masters, and indeed, adds Jerome, “he was beloved
by God and man.” None showed him more affection than St. Bernward,
who was now overwhelmed with the infirmities of old age, though his
mind was as bright and active as ever. During the last five years
of his life he was entirely confined to his bed, and all this time
little Bennon proved his chief solace. Sometimes he read aloud to
his beloved father. Sometimes he made verses, or held disputations
to entertain him; never would he leave his side, discharging for him
all the offices of which his youth was capable. When at last death
drew near, Bernward called the child to him together with his master
Wigger, and addressed to him a touching exhortation. “If by reason of
thy tender age,” he said, “thou canst not thyself be wise, promise me
never to depart from the side of thy preceptor that he may be wise
for thee, and that so thou mayest be preserved from the corruptions
of the world whilst thy heart is yet soft and tender. Yea, if thou
lovest me, love and obey him in all things, as holding the place of
thy father.” Then he kissed the child’s little hand, and placed it
in that of Wigger, and soon after departed this life, rich in good
works, and secure of a heavenly reward.

The sorrow of Bennon was too great for words. He wept without
ceasing, and pined away in his grief, till at last Wigger had to
mingle his consolations with timely reprehension. His words in some
degree restored his pupil to peace, but so deep an impression had
been made on his heart of the nothingness of a world which sooner
or later deprives us of all we most love, that he resolved to have
nothing more to do with it, and to devote his life to God in the
monastery. He never forgot his good father Bernward, and the first
composition which he wrote after the death of the bishop was a
poetical epitaph which his biographer inserts, and which is not a
favourable specimen of his genius. Jerome probably felt that it was
open to criticism, which he judiciously forestalls. “The verses,”
he says, “show that if not ignorant of the metrical art, he did
not affect a flowery style, but was content with plain and simple
language. But if some, having delicate ears, should be disposed to
turn up their noses at the line,”

“Quem Deus Emmanuel diligat, et Michael.”

“I would remind them of the singular devotion which the Blessed
Bernward bore to St. Michael whence it will appear that this line did
not escape our Bennon unwarily. They who are moved by the Spirit of
God care not much for the outside shell of words, and prefer a good
life to a good style of writing.” He adds, “the scholastic discipline
of Hildesheim was at this time extremely severe. It was reckoned a
great fault not merely to be absent from choir or refectory, but even
to come late. The scholars each day had to bring their Scripture to
the dean, and rehearse their Psalms. And the rod was freely used.”
Bennon being kept under this strict discipline, passed safely through
the slippery time of youth, and in his after-life proved himself not
unworthy the extraordinary care bestowed on his education.

Many other great prelates of this period might be enumerated,
distinguished either as the founders or the masters of schools.
Of Notger of Liege we have already spoken. The school of Verdun
was founded by one of his disciples, and boasted of possessing
that wonder of the eleventh century, Master Herminfrid, who spoke
and wrote with equal facility Latin, Greek, French, German, and
Italian. Then there was St. Meinwerc, who like Bennon was a pupil
of Hildesheim, where he studied along with his cousin St. Henry of
Bavaria, and the prince, even after he became Emperor, remembered
their schoolboy days together, and was fond of putting him in mind
of them by sundry tricks that savoured of the grown-up schoolboy.
Meinwerc was not much of a scholar himself, but when he became
Bishop of Paderborn, he showed a laudable zeal in promoting good
scholarship among his clergy. In fact, he was the founder of those
famous schools of Paderborn which are described as flourishing in
divine and human science, and which were perfected by his nephew
and successor, Imadeus. The boys were all under strict cloistral
discipline; there were professors of grammar, logic, rhetoric, and
music; both the trivium and quadrivium were there taught, together
with mathematics, physics, and astronomy. Horace, Virgil, and Statius
were read by the students, whose ordinary recreation it was to make
verses, while great attention was paid to the arts of writing and
painting. Brucker treats this account as apocryphal, on the ground
that Meinwerc was an _ignoramus_ himself, and sometimes made blunders
in reading Latin. The story of Bishop Meinwerc and his mules, the
only one, be it remembered, on which this charge of ignorance is
founded, together with the explanation of the same so amusingly given
by Mr. Maitland in his “Dark Ages,” need not here be repeated. When
emperors take to playing tricks, even the wisest of bishops may be
snared into a blunder. But granting the fact that Meinwerc himself
possessed no more scholarship than our own Wykeham, there seems no
reason for supposing it therefore impossible that he should desire to
rear a race of students more learned than himself. We know that he
was a strict disciplinarian in all that regarded the right discharge
of the sacred offices, and that he was wont to examine and burn all
incorrect copies of books used at the altar, administering very
sharp correction, in the shape of stripes, to careless and negligent
priests.

However, the object of the present chapter being chiefly to show
something of the interior of schools in the Dark Ages, we will pass
over a great many names of founders and learned bishops, and take
our way to Magdeburg, where Otho I. had erected a cathedral, and
Archbishop Adalbert had founded a school. Here, in 973, the yet more
famous St. Adalbert of Prague was sent by his parents for education.
They were of the Bohemian nation, and had vowed to offer their son
to God should he recover of a dangerous sickness. Before he left his
father’s house he had learnt the Psalter, and under Otheric, the
famous master then presiding over the school of Magdeburg, he made as
much progress in sanctity as in learning. He had a habit of stealing
away from the schoolroom in the midst of his studies to refresh his
soul with a brief prayer in the church, after which he hastened back
and was safe in his place again before the coming of the master.
To conceal his acts of charity from the eyes of others, he chose
the night hours for visiting the poor and dispensing his abundant
alms. It often happened that when Otheric was out of the school, the
boys would divert themselves with games more or less mischievous to
relieve the weary hours of study. Adalbert seldom took part in these
pastimes, neither would he share in those stealthy little feasts
which they sometimes held in obscure corners, where they contrived to
hide from Otheric’s quick eye the sweets and other dainties furnished
them, as we must suppose, by some medieval tart-woman.[134] However,
if Adalbert was proof against this last-named temptation, it appears
he was not altogether superior to the love of play, and that when his
master’s back was turned, he did occasionally throw aside his books
and indulge in a game of ball. When such delinquencies came to the
ears of Otheric, he did not spare the rod, and on these occasions,
observes his biographer with cruel pleasantry, Adalbert was often
known to speak in three languages. For it was a strict rule that the
boys were always to talk Latin in the schoolroom, and never allow
the ears of their master to catch the sound of a more barbarous
dialect. When the rod was produced, therefore, Adalbert would begin
by entreating indulgence in classic phraseology, but so soon as it
was applied, he would call out for mercy in German, and finally in
Sclavonic. After nine years’ study at Magdeburg, Adalbert returned
to Bohemia, with the reputation of being specially well read in
philosophy, and taking with him a useful library of books, which he
had collected during his college career. After his consecration as
Bishop of Prague, at the early age of twenty-seven, he is said never
again to have been seen to smile. Twice the hard-heartedness of his
people compelled him to abandon his diocese, and after his departure
the second time, he travelled as missioner into the then heathen and
barbarous provinces of Prussia, where he met with his martyrdom in
the year 997. A Sclavonic hymn to the Blessed Virgin, formerly wont
to be sung by the Poles when going to battle, is attributed to this
saint.

Hitherto we have spoken only of the episcopal seminaries of
Germany; those attached to the monasteries were, if possible, more
celebrated. The great school of St. Gall’s attained its highest
degree of splendour in this century. Something has already been
said of the general character of the studies pursued there, but
its succession of great masters deserves a more particular notice.
Originally founded by Irish monks, the monastery owed no little of
its renown to the teaching of Irish professors. In the year 840,
Marx, an Irish bishop, travelling home from Rome in company with his
nephew Moengall, stopped at St. Gall’s, and after a few days’ visit,
both of them entreated the abbot to admit them into his community.
Permission being granted, they dismissed their servants and horses,
threw their money out of the window, and, keeping only their books
and sacred vessels, vowed to spend the rest of their lives in the
seclusion of the cloister. Moengall, to whom the monks gave the less
barbarous name of Marcellus, was soon after appointed master of the
interior or cloistral school, the exterior one being governed by
the famous master, Iso. This last-named personage, whom Ekkehard
styles a _doctor magnificus_, enjoyed such a reputation that all the
monasteries of Gaul and Burgundy were eager to obtain his disciples,
and it was commonly said that he possessed ways of his own for
sharpening the dullest wits. At the precise time of which we speak,
he had among his pupils Solomon, afterwards Bishop of Constance, and
the three friends, Notker Balbulus, or the stammerer, Ratpert, and
Tutilo, all of whom afterwards chose the monastic state, and passed,
therefore, to the interior school, presided over by Marcellus.

The Irish scholar greatly improved the system of studies; he
extended, if he did not first introduce, the study of Greek, and it
is evident that his influence, and that of many of his countrymen,
who filled subordinate professorships, may be traced in the character
which distinguished the education of St. Gall’s from that of most
of its contemporaries. It was larger and freer, and made more of
the arts and sciences; indeed, so far as regards its studies, it
had a better claim to the title of a _university_ than any single
institution which can be named as existing before the time of Philip
Augustus. Marcellus was fortunate in his pupils, but the character
of the three who were most prominent among them must be given in
the words of Ekkehard. Though united in one heart, he says, they
were of very different dispositions. Notker was weak, not in mind
but in body; in speech, but not in spirit, a stammerer. Firm in
spiritual things, patient in adversity, mild to all, yet a strict
disciplinarian, and timorous at any sudden alarm, except of demons,
whom he combated valiantly. He was very assiduous in reading, writing
and composing, and was, in short, a vessel of the Holy Ghost.
Very different was Tutilo; he was a good and useful man; as to his
arms and all his limbs, such as Fabius teaches us to choose for a
wrestler. He was eloquent, with a fine voice, skilful in carving, and
an excellent painter. He was a musician, too, like his companions,
and excelled everybody in all kinds of stringed and wind instruments,
and taught their use to the sons of the nobility educated in the
exterior school. He was, moreover, a very wise builder, powerful in
reading and singing, cheerful whether in jest or earnest, and what
is more, ever diligent in choir; in secret, given to devout tears,
and skilful in the composition of songs and melodies. Ratpert was
something between the two: from his youth he had been schoolmaster
of the external school, where he succeeded Master Iso, and a kind,
straightforward teacher he was, very strict in discipline, and so
seldom given to go abroad that, he made one pair of shoes last
a twelvemonth. He was very famous as a poet, and so fond of the
ancients that he was known, even in chapter, to quote a verse from
Virgil. He died some years before either of his friends; and forty of
his former pupils, all of them priests or canons, stood around his
deathbed, and promised each one to say thirty masses for the repose
of his soul, a thing which gave him infinite joy and satisfaction.

Tutilo was a good classical scholar, and could preach both in Greek
and Latin; but he was chiefly esteemed as an artist and a musician.
He sang his own melodies to the harp, an instrument which the Irish
monks had rendered very popular at St. Gall’s. His magnificent
statuary in bronze and stone continued to decorate the abbey church
till the time of its pillage by the _soi-disant_ reformers, and all
the French and German prelates were eager to obtain his works. With
the permission of his abbot, therefore, he travelled far and wide,
executing devout carvings and paintings, much to the dissatisfaction
of Ratpert, who was wont to say that this gadding about the world was
the destruction of a monk. It did not, however, prove so with Tutilo,
who, to all his brilliant genius and gigantic muscular strength,
united in a singular degree the grace of humility. Whenever he found
that his artistic skill drew on him any notable amount of admiration,
he generally found some excuse for departing from the place where he
was at work, and his long journeys never lessened his devotion, or
deprived him of his gift of holy tears. It was his custom to adorn
his sculptures and pictures with pious verses, in order to draw the
thoughts of those who beheld them from the work of the artist to
the divine mystery which it represented. One of his most celebrated
pieces of sculpture was an image of the Blessed Virgin, which he
carved for the cathedral at Metz. Whilst engaged on this masterpiece,
two pilgrims came up and begged an alms of him, and having received
it, asked of a clerk who was standing by, who that beautiful lady
was whom they saw at his side, holding his compasses, and directing
him in his work. The clerk looked, and saw the same wondrous vision,
and believed it to be Our Lady herself who had come in person to
assist her client. But when the rumour of the thing spread abroad,
Tutilo fled away, nor could he ever be persuaded to return to the
city. His verses were highly esteemed, and some of his elegies are
still preserved. Besides all this, he was great in mathematics and
astronomy, and constructed an astrolabe which showed the course of
the stars. For it must be remembered that scientific studies were
highly prized at St. Gall’s, and that even geographers were to be
found among the monks, such as Abbot Hartmot, who constructed a large
map of the world, in those days a very rare and valuable curiosity.

Among these three famous scholars, we may select Notker as the most
perfect specimen of the monastic type. Like his two friends, he was
a poet and musician, and his brethren considered him a second Horace
for the beauty of his songs and sequences. It was the reputation
of learning enjoyed by St. Gall’s which had first attracted him
thither, for indeed, says Ekkehard, “he was devoured with a love of
grammar.” Like a true poet, he was keenly susceptible to the sights
and sounds of nature, and loved to “study her beautifulness” in
that enchanted region of lakes and mountains. The gentle melancholy
inseparable from exalted genius, which in him was increased by his
exceeding delicacy of organisation, found its expression in the
wild and mystic melodies which he composed. The monotonous sound
of a mill-wheel near the abbey suggested to him the music of the
“Media Vita,” the words being written whilst looking into a deep
gulf over which some labourers were constructing a bridge. This
antiphon became very popular in Germany, and was every year sung
at St. Gall’s during the Rogation Processions. But it was not as a
poet or man of science that the Blessed Notker was best known to
posterity; profoundly learned in human literature, he yet, says
Ekkehard, applied more to the Psalter than to any other book. Even
in his own lifetime he was revered as a saint. He was master of the
interior and claustral school at the same time as Ratpert governed
the exterior school, and kept up the same strict discipline, “stripes
only excepted.” The gentleness of his disposition peeps out in the
fact that one of the faults he was hardest on in his pupils was the
habit of bird’s-nesting. He was always accessible; no hour of day or
night was ever deemed unseasonable for a visit from any who brought a
book in their hands. For the sake of maintaining regular observance,
he once forbade his disciples to whisper to him in time of silence,
but the abbot enjoined him under obedience to let them speak to him
whenever they would. Ratpert relates a story of him, which shows the
opinion of learning and sanctity in which he was held. The emperor
Charles, having on one occasion come to the monastery on a visit, he
brought in his suite a certain chaplain, whose pride appears to have
taken offence at the consideration with which his master treated the
Blessed Notker. When they were about to depart, therefore, seeing the
man of God sitting, as was his custom, with his Psalter in his hand,
and recognising him to be the same man who, on the previous day, had
solved many hard questions proposed to him by Charles, he said to his
companions, “There is he who is said to be the most learned man in
the whole empire; but if you like, I will make this most excellent
wiseacre a laughing-stock for you, for I will ask him a question
which, with all his learning, he will not be able to answer.” Curious
to see what he would do, and how Notker would deal with him, they
agreed to his proposal, and all went together to salute the master,
who courteously rose, and asked them what they desired. Then said
the unhappy man of whom we spoke, “O most learned master, we are
very well aware that there is nothing you do not know. We therefore
desire you to tell us, if you can, what God is now doing in heaven?”
“Yes,” replied Notker, “I can answer that question very well. He is
doing what He always has done, and what He is shortly about to do to
thee, He is exalting the humble, and humbling the proud.” The scoffer
moved away, while the laugh was turned against him. Nevertheless, he
made light of Notker’s words and the prediction of evil which they
seemed to contain regarding himself. Presently the bell rang for the
king’s departure, and the chaplain, mounting his horse, rode off with
a great air in front of his master. But before he came to the gate
of the city the steed fell, and the rider being thrown on his face,
broke his leg. Abbot Hartmot hearing of this accident, desired Notker
to visit the sick man, and pardon him, giving him his blessing. But
the foolish chaplain protested that the misfortune had nothing to
do with Notker’s prediction, and continued to speak of him with the
greatest contempt. His leg, however, remained in a miserable state,
until one night his friends besought Notker to come to him and aid
him with his prayers. He complied willingly enough, and touching the
leg, it was immediately restored; and by this lesson the chaplain
learned to be more humble for the future.

Notker was the author of various works, amongst others of a German
translation of the Psalter, which Vadianus speaks of in his treatise
on the “Ancient Colleges of Germany,” and which he says is scarcely
intelligible by reason of the excessive harshness of the old Tudesque
dialect. He gives a translation of the “Creed,” and the “Our Father,”
from Notker’s version, in which it is not difficult to trace the
German idiom.[135] Notker’s German studies were yet more extensively
carried on by his namesake, Notker Labeo, or the Thick-Lipped, who
wrote many learned works in the vernacular, and was also a great
classical scholar. He translated into German the works of Aristotle,
Boëthius, and Marcian Capella, and some musical treatises, all which
are still preserved. His translation of St. Gregory’s “Morals” is
lost. He is commemorated in the chronicles of his House as “the
kind and learned master,” and whilst he presided over the claustral
school, he educated a great many profound scholars, among whom was
Ekkehard junior, the author of the chronicle “De Casibus S. Galli,”
and of the celebrated “Liber Benedictionum.” This Ekkehard, at the
request of the empress, transcribed Notker’s “Paraphrase of the
Psalms” for her use with his own hand, and corrected a certain poem
which his predecessor Ekkehard I. had written when a schoolboy,
and which was full of Tudesque barbarisms, such as the delicate
ear of Ekkehard junior might not abide. He held that the barbarous
idioms could not be translated into Latin without a great deal of
painstaking. “_Think_ in German,” he would say to his scholars, “and
then be careful to render your thought into correct Latin.” There
was yet a third Ekkehard whose memory is preserved in the annals of
St. Gall under the surname of _Palatinus_. He was nephew to Ekkehard
I., and presided over both the exterior and interior schools, and
that with great success. He made no distinction between noble
and plebeian scholars, but employed those who had less talent for
learning in writing, painting, and other like arts. He was able
to take down in shorthand the substance of anything he heard, and
two discourses are still preserved thus noted by his hand. He was
afterwards most unwillingly summoned to the Court of Otho I., who
appointed him his chaplain and secretary, and tutor to his son Otho
II. So venerated was this great man throughout Germany, that when he
attended the council of Mentz in 976, six bishops rose up to salute
their old master, all of them having been educated in the school of
St. Gall. To this list of masters I must add the name of another
Notker, who, from his strict observance of discipline, received the
surname of “Piperis-granum,” or the Peppercorn, though his pungency
of temper did not prevent his brethren from commemorating him in
their obituary as the “Doctor benignissimus.” He was renowned as a
physician, a painter, and a poet, and was also well skilled in music.
Most of these great men find a place in a narrative which I will give
here for the sake of its connection with the classical studies of St.
Gall, and which is related by Ekkehard junior in his chronicle of the
abbey.

Hedwiga, daughter to Duke Henry of Bavaria, was at that time the
reigning Duchess of Swabia, having been left a widow by the death of
her husband Duke Burkhard. She was a woman of wonderful beauty, but
of so severe and imperious a temper as to be held in terror through
all the surrounding provinces. In her youth she had been promised
in marriage to the Greek prince, Constantine, who sent a cunning
artist to take the portrait of his future bride, and at the same
time to instruct her in Greek literature. But Hedwiga, not admiring
the Greek alliance, made such terrible contortions of her fair nose
and eyebrows whenever the painter applied himself to his task, that
his efforts at a likeness proved fruitless, and the marriage was
broken off in consequence. From the Greek painter, however, Hedwiga
had acquired a very fair proportion of Greek scholarship, and on her
marriage with Burkhard, she likewise applied herself to the study of
Latin. She was a frequent visitor to the abbey of St. Gall, where
her nephew, Burkhard, was then abbot, and in return for her splendid
gifts, insisted on nothing less than that the abbot should make over
to her, as tutor, the hapless Ekkehard Palatinus, who then filled the
office of porter, and was known to be an excellent scholar in both
languages. The abbot very unwillingly consented to her demand, and
poor Ekkehard had to pay frequent visits to the castle of Dwellia,
where, in spite of the beauty and talents of his fair disciple, her
sharp temper and exasperating ways often made his office a hard
one. Once, when out of humility he had begged that a certain canopy
erected over his bed might be taken down, the wrathful duchess
ordered the servant who had executed the order to be flogged, and
would have cut off his head had it not been for the entreaties of
the master. However, she had an open hand, though a somewhat heavy
one, and bestowed liberal gifts on the monks of St. Gall, in the
shape of embroidered copes and chasubles. But even in her bounty she
showed the same wilful disposition, for having once given them a very
rich dalmatic, cunningly worked in fine gold, and representing the
espousals of Mercury and Philology, she took it away again in dudgeon
at the refusal of Abbot Immo to let her have the antiphonary on which
she had set her heart.

The favours which St. Gall’s received at her hands, however, and the
frequent visits exchanged between the abbey and Dwellia roused the
jealousy of Ruodman, abbot of the neighbouring monastery of Reichnau.
He was a prying, gossiping sort of a personage, and set afloat so
many mischievous and ill-natured tales as greatly to distress the
monks. But this was not the worst. Not content with whispering his
calumnies, Ruodman conceived the plan of stealing into the convent
in the absence of Abbot Burkhard, to see if he could not spy out
some matter which he might turn to the disadvantage of the inmates.
On a certain day, therefore, mounting his horse he set out for St.
Gall, and arriving at the monastery about nightfall, stole into
the cloister and cautiously crept about spying this way and that
to see what he could discover. Having satisfied his curiosity by
an inspection of the cloister, he proceeded on tiptoe upstairs to
the dormitory, but not so softly but that the watchful ear of Dean
Ekkehard, the senior, caught the sound. Quietly providing himself
with the abbot’s lantern, he followed the footsteps, and presently
discovered the intruder. Ere long the whole community was down upon
him, and I leave the reader to guess what were their sentiments when
the abbot’s lantern displayed the features of the trembling Ruodman.
The younger part of the monks were earnest in their entreaties that
he might be chastised as his impertinence merited, and some of them
ran forwith to provide themselves with rods. The unhappy Ruodman,
in great anguish of soul, implored their mercy: “Spare me, good
youths!” he exclaimed; “I am in your hands, deal with me gently, or
at least wait to hear the judgment of your dean:” for at that moment
Ekkehard senior was consulting with the elder fathers what was to be
done in so strange an emergency. Meanwhile Notker, the Peppercorn,
appeared on the scene, and his voice was for summary measures. “O
wicked man!” he exclaimed, “dost thou go about as a lion, seeking
whom thou mayest devour, and like another Satan, desiring to accuse
thy brethren?” But he, cunningly taking advantage of the known
mildness of the good dean, threw himself entirely on his mercy. “Most
prudent father,” he exclaimed, “I have indeed done very wickedly; but
lo! I repent, I ask pardon of everybody, and from henceforward I will
utterly abstain from molesting any of you.” The kind-hearted monks
were touched by his speedy repentance; some indeed regretted that he
should be let off without receiving a severe lesson, but the voices
of the seniors prevailed, and Ruodman was conducted by Ekkehard
himself to the spot where his horse awaited him, and dismissed in
peace and forgiveness.

My readers will probably be of opinion that he got off very easily.
So was Abbot Burkhard when he heard of the affair, though he was far
from being of a pugnacious temper; and so too was the mighty duchess.
The next time that Ekkehard Palatinus appeared to give his lesson,
she vented her wrath in very strong language; to be candid, she
swore, “by the life of Hedwiga,” to have her revenge. But her anger
for that day, at least, was dissipated by a pleasant incident which
sets her character in a more amiable light. Ekkehard had brought with
him one of his junior scholars, whose infantine beauty attracted the
admiration of the duchess. “Wherefore have you brought this child?”
she inquired of her tutor; who replied with his customary courtesy,
“For the sake of the Greek, gracious lady, which I hope he will
gather from your lips.” Then the boy, who was well trained in the
versifying habits of the St. Gall’s scholars, spoke for himself in an
extempore line of Latin:--

“Esse velim Græcus, cum sim vix, Dom’na, Latinus.”[136]

Charmed with his ready wit, she drew him to her, and kissing him
kindly on the forehead made him sit on the footstool at her feet,
requiring him to make her some more verses immediately. The child,
confused with these unwonted caresses, looked first at one and then
at the other of his teachers, and then stammered out,

“Non possum prorsus dignos componere versus,
Nam nimis expavi Duce me libante suavi.”[137]

The severe heart of the duchess was fairly conquered, and making
the little poet stand up before her, she then and there taught him
to sing the antiphon, _Maria et flumina_, which she had herself
translated out of Latin into Greek, and frequently afterwards had him
at her castle and taught him how to make Greek verses. Moreover, she
treated him with a tenderness that went nigh to spoiling, and gave
him a Horace, and some other books which one wishes Ekkehard junior
had named, and which were long preserved in the library. I will
not pursue the story of Ruodman, which has been chiefly introduced
for the sake of this graceful ending. He had great difficulty in
making his peace with the abbot and the duchess, though he tried the
mollifying gift to the former of a very handsome horse, which threw
its rider the very first time he mounted it, so that in spite of all
the skill displayed by Notker Piperis-granum, poor Abbot Burkhard
went for some time after on crutches.

The school anecdotes of these times attest the familiar and paternal
relations which existed between the scholars and their masters.
The sports and enjoyments of the boys were amply provided for, and
we find mention of running, wrestling, swimming, country walks,
and fishing parties. Sometimes, as at Eton or Harrow, a visit from
royalty procured an extra play-day, and on certain high festival
days it is recorded that they were regaled with wine and a choicer
fare at dinner. Hartmann, one of the learned disciples of Marcellus,
retained such a liking for the school that even when he became abbot
he spent half his time among the boys. And Solomon, the schoolfellow
of Ratpert and Tutilo, who from abbot became Bishop of Constance,
in like manner never forgot his old pupils, for he, too, had in his
day held the ferule, being assistant to Iso in the external school.
On one occasion, paying a visit to the abbey during the Christmas
festival, on the day after Holy Innocents, before going away he
peeped into the school, and finding the master absent walked into the
midst of the boys to bid them all good-bye. They were about him in
a minute; and the knowing ones among them lost no time in demanding
their rights. There was a custom of long standing in the school that
when any stranger entered the schoolroom, he might be captured
as a prisoner, and not released till he had ransomed himself by a
gift or favour. Undismayed by the rank of their present visitor,
they surrounded him with daring familiarity, and declared him their
captive. Good-naturedly entering into their sport, he suffered
them to do what they liked with him; whereupon they led him to the
master’s chair, and made him understand that he should not come out
thence till he had promised them something handsome. “Very well,” he
said, “as you have put me in the master’s chair, I shall exercise
the master’s authority; prepare all of you to be flogged.” This was
turning the tables on them with a vengeance, but the boys were quick
enough to find a way of escape. “Be it so,” they replied, “only we
claim to be suffered to redeem ourselves as we do with our master.”
“And pray, how is that?” said the bishop. “By making verses, to be
sure,” they replied; and he agreeing to their terms, they proceeded
to spout little metrical compositions of their own, improvised for
the occasion, two of which are even yet preserved. Charmed with their
readiness, the bishop rose and kissed them all, one after the other.
“Yea, as I live,” he said, “I will surely ransom myself nobly.” And
so he did; for, calling the masters, he commanded that from that day
forward and for ever, the boys should every year have three whole
play-days after the Feast of Holy Innocents, and that on each of
these days they should have meat dishes for dinner from the abbot’s
kitchen, which custom continued uninterruptedly till the troubles
occasioned by the Hungarian invasions.

This Abbot Solomon was a learned as well as a kind-hearted man. He
kept up a literary correspondence with two brother bishops, Dado,
of Verdun, and Waldram, of Strasburg, and most of the letters that
passed between them were in verse. He was, moreover, well skilled
in the arts, and no one succeeded so well as he in designing the
capitals for illuminated manuscripts; nay, even after he became
bishop, he did not think this occupation unworthy his episcopal
hand. He always kept up the same affectionate intercourse with
St. Gall’s and its scholars, and loved to encourage their studies
and amuse himself with their innocent freedoms. Nor was it only
by ecclesiastics drawn from the ranks of the community that these
marks of favour and interest were bestowed. All the great German
sovereigns understood the value of St. Gall’s, and frequently
visited it in person. Otho the Great was accustomed to say that he
would willingly break his imperial crown into fragments to preserve
regular observance in that abbey. His sagacious mind discerned the
vast benefits which must flow to his empire from the preservation in
the midst of it of such a centre of civilisation. So very solicitous
was he for the well-being of the monastery, that reports having
reached him in 968 of a rumoured decay of discipline, he used his
imperial authority after the fashion of Charlemagne, and appointed
a commission of abbots and bishops to investigate the case. They
gave a good report of the state of the monastery; but the emperor,
not yet satisfied, dispatched Kebon, abbot of Lauresheim, and some
others, to enforce the observance of the Rule to the very letter. The
only irregularity which the commissioners could discover was, that
the Sunday chant was in too high a key, and that the Friday fast was
too rigorous. Otho did not fail to do justice to the monks, and paid
them a visit in person to console them for the trouble he had given
them by his royal commissioners. It is said that assisting with them
in choir, he let his stick fall as if by accident, and was edified
to see that not one head was turned to observe the cause of the
disturbance.

Ekkehard relates another royal visit from King Conrad I., which
took place in 912. The king being at Constance on Christmas-day,
the bishop happened after dinner to speak of the processions which
were celebrated at that season at St. Gall’s. “Why should we not
go there to-morrow?” said the king; and his courtiers eagerly
assenting, the next day very early they set out in boats across the
lake, and so reached the abbey, where they spent three days. They
specially admired the procession of the children; and to test their
discipline, the king threw an apple among them, which none of them
so much as looked at, whereat he greatly wondered. He dined with
them in the refectory, and took pleasure in hearing the boys read in
succession. As they came down from the desk, he sent some gold to be
put into their mouths, which one of them spitting out again, Conrad
declared he would make an excellent monk. His visit ended pleasantly
to the children, for after causing himself to be enrolled as a
conscript brother, he granted the scholars three extra play-days,
and discharged the expenses of a great feast, furnishing the pepper,
as he said, to season their beans. When Conrad II. and his empress
paid a similar visit in 1033, they contrived to coax Abbot Dietbald
to give them the German Psalter and the book of Job, which had been
written out by Notker Labeo, a treasure worth more to the community
than many such instalments of royal pepper.

I have lingered so long on the history of St. Gall’s as to leave
little space for noticing the other monastic schools of the period.
Most of those in Germany were remarkable for their cultivation of the
arts, in which they far outstripped their Italian contemporaries.
Godeschard, the successor of St. Bernward of Hildesheim, thoroughly
shared his tastes, and carried on his designs. He even founded a
school of painting in his episcopal palace which propagated the art
through all the German dioceses. The subjects chosen were mostly
scenes from the Old and New Testaments, being professedly intended
for the instruction of the unlearned. Rio fixes the latter part of
the tenth century as the date of the invention of glass painting, and
the first fabrication of carpets and hangings. These new branches of
industry were at once taken up by the monks, and at St. Florent de
Saumur, in 985, a manufactory was established for weaving tapestries
adorned with flowers and figures of animals. Sometimes the love of
nature, so inherent in the monkish soul, induced them to decorate
their cloisters with woodland scenes, in which the figures of men,
dogs, horses, and deer, appear taking part in the chase. This was, of
course, a departure from the principles on which the art of religious
painting rested; and in the twelfth century these artistic caprices
drew down severe reproofs from St. Bernard, who particularly disliked
the representation of monsters, such as centaurs, and quadrupeds
with a fish’s tail. He thought that they savoured of heathenism,
and were unsuitable to the gravity of a religious house. Hugo, of
St. Victor, objected even to the natural designs of sheep and oxen;
“It may be well,” he said, “that monasteries should have paintings
for the edification of those who are not delighted with Scriptural
subtleties, but for monks themselves a horse or an ox is more useful
in the fields than in a picture.” These landscape subjects were,
however, exceptional; far more frequently the monastic paintings were
of a character described in their annals as “solemn pictures.” They
were pathetic representations of the Sacred Passion, accompanied with
pious verses, not without a reference to the part of the convent
where they were fixed. Thus, in the lavatory, the monks were bid not
to wash their hands only, but their hearts also; in the refectory,
to remember the gall and vinegar which Our Lord received on the
Cross; and in the cloister, to think how the fashion of this world
flees past us with noiseless step. The great abbey of St. Denis,
in France, was covered all over with carvings and paintings, its
very doors being sculptured with the mysteries of the Passion and
Resurrection; while within the cloister was a whole series of
paintings, historical and mystical, some of the latter exceedingly
quaint, such as that which represented St. Paul turning a mill, and
all the prophets of the Old Testament bringing a sack of corn to be
ground in it; figuring thereby his gift in the interpretation of the
Sacred Scriptures of the Old Law.

One thing cannot be overlooked whilst studying the annals of these
early monastic schools; it is the peculiar charm attaching to the
character of the masters. Everywhere we see the same features of
cheerful labour, and a certain tranquil activity. Turn to the newly
converted land of Normandy, and hear how Oderic Vitalis describes
the abbots and masters of his own monastery of St. Evroult. In one
page he paints the good abbot Theodoric, a very skilful scribe, who
managed to collect a fine library, partly by the diligent exercise
of his own pen and the labours of his youths, and partly by “gentle
solicitations.” Then there was Osbern, eloquent in speech, with a
lively genius for sculpture, architecture, and painting. How we seem
to behold him with “his stately stature, and his head, profusely
covered with black hair sprinkled with grey!” He was always urging
the novices to make progress in reading, singing, and writing; and
loved with his own hands to make the writing implements and waxen
tablets for the use of the boys. Or shall he tell us of that most
promising scholar, William, who was placed in the abbey when nine
years old, and was so diligent at his books, that the monks called
him Gregory the Second? Not only did he make an excellent reader and
chanter, and an exceedingly skilful copyist, but he was so devoted a
student of the Scriptures, that he committed to his tenacious memory
the Epistles of St. Paul, the Proverbs of Solomon, and many other
books of either Testament.

Of another youth, who began his education at five, and who afterwards
became schoolmaster, the same historian remarks, that his special
gift lay in his powers of conversation. He had a knack of making
everything interesting, and told the commonest things in a way that
was quite delightful; and the monks were never weary of hearing him
recite the narratives of Scripture, or the histories of learned men.
It is not merely as men of learning that the character of these
monastic students claims our admiration. It is the union of strength
with tenderness, of scholarship with humility, which renders them
so dear and venerable in our eyes. How seldom in these records are
we disgusted with any of those traits of pedantry and self-seeking,
the offsprings of a pride which had been pruned away by the knife
of religious discipline? The monks were not mere scholars, and the
tendency to literary conceit was effectually corrected by the daily
exercises of community life. In the best days of monasticism, labour
was cultivated hand in hand with letters. The same man who at one
hour was engaged in writing a commentary on the Scriptures, producing
Christian imitations of Horace or Virgil, or elaborating some of the
exquisite master-pieces of cloistral art, found himself at another,
employed on the meanest and humblest offices for the service of his
brethren. The finest glass-painter of one medieval convent had to
leave his paintings to take their chance in the furnace, while he was
sent on the quest; and the Pope’s messengers who brought a cardinal’s
hat to another learned friar, found him busy in the kitchen. This was
the invariable _régime_ which existed wherever the monastic institute
preserved its discipline uncorrupted. Thus Odericus says of Roger de
Warrene, son of the famous earl of Surrey, that entering the abbey
of St. Evroult at the age of forty-six, he never plumed himself on
his noble birth or varied accomplishments, but chose rather base
employments, “cleaning the shoes of the brethren, washing their
stockings, and cheerfully doing other services which appear mean to
stupid or conceited persons.” Yet he was a very skilful artist; and
when he had finished with the shoes and stockings, he gave the rest
of his time to the labours of the scriptorium, where he ornamented
a book of the Gospels with gold, silver, and precious stones. And
the historian knows not how to say enough of his pleasant and
musical voice, his constant attendance in choir, and his courteous
manner with the other monks, “always abstemious towards himself,
always generous to others, always alive for vigils, and incredibly
modest.”[138] What a fragrant sweetness hangs about such notices
as these, coming as they do in the midst of records of bloodshed
and violence! Truly, we may say of the monastic schools, that they
were “as beds of flowers by the dens of lions encompassed!” Huns
and Saracens raged around them, but these gentle scholars fled to
the mountains and the wilderness, and building their nests amid the
rocks, while the world was flooded by new forms of barbarism, they
wrote, they studied, they taught, and they prayed, and perpetuated
that beautiful character which even Michelet has owned to have been
in all ages the appanage of monks; sweetness, goodness of heart, and
innocence. It remained wholly unaffected by the stormy turbulence of
the world around them. They had a world of their own apart from and
above it. All Europe might be in arms, whilst at St. Gall’s Tutilo
was constructing his wonderful table, which showed all the courses of
the stars, or Notker was composing those hymns and sequences which
for centuries afterwards were to be incorporated into the Office of
the Church. Whilst the barbarians were laying all things in ruins,
they, heedless alike of fame or profit, were patiently laying the
foundations of European civilisation. They were forming the languages
of Schiller, of Bacon, and of Bossuet; they were creating arts which
modern skill in vain endeavours to imitate; they were preserving
the codices of ancient learning, and embalming the world, “lying in
wickedness,” with the sweet odour of their manifold virtues. Surely,
it was of such as these that the Wise Man spoke when he described
that wisdom which God has given to His chosen ones. For they had
received “the true knowledge of the things that are: the revolutions
of the year, and the dispositions of the stars; the natures of living
creatures, the reasonings of men, the diversities of plants, and the
virtues of roots,”--and in them was “the spirit of understanding,
holy, one, manifold, eloquent, active, undefiled, sweet, loving that
which is good, beneficent, gentle, and kind.”[139]

But before closing our sketch of the tenth century, we have yet to
speak of its greatest scholastic glory: one whose attainments have
elicited not only the admiration of his contemporaries, but the
respectful notice even of those writers least disposed to believe
that anything good can come out of the Dark Ages. The scholars of
whom we have hitherto spoken, if regarded as great men by their
contemporaries, are spoken of by later critics with very general
contempt. They do not even allow them to have been useful in their
own poor way, as transcribers of volumes that they scarce knew how
to read, for Mr. Berington considers that even as copyists, the
monks were sadly idle. Two names, however, escape the otherwise
universal oblivion to which such writers would willingly consign
the scholars of the Dark Ages, they are Erigena Scotus and Gerbert.
There is, I hope, no malice in supposing that the intellectual
superiority of these men does not form their only claim to exemption
from the obloquy so plentifully heaped on their fellow-students. The
independent views of Erigena were well fitted to win him favour with
all disciples of the Rationalistic school; whilst the _supposed_
circumstance of Gerbert having acquired his knowledge of science in
an Arabic, and not in a Christian, academy, to say nothing of his
having been at one time involved in a dispute with the Holy See, may
have had some share in procuring him a larger meed of indulgence. To
admit his merit did not entail the necessity of giving any credit to
the Christian teachers, for if Gerbert ended his days on the chair of
St. Peter, it is at least a comforting reflection to our historians,
that he began life in the Moorish schools of Granada.

This consolation, alas! they enjoy no longer. Modern researches,
which have upset so many time-honoured traditions, have proved
beyond the possibility of dispute that Gerbert owed nothing either
to Moors or Pagans, that his education was exclusively Christian,
and that whatever be his value as a man of science, the Christian
schools of the Iron century must bear the credit of it. It is hard
to dissipate fables so romantic as those which represent the young
scholar Gerbert enabled, through the favour of a fair Moorish damsel,
to gain possession of her wizard father’s conjuring-book, the mystic
Abacus--and return to Europe with the unholy treasure, which was
to infuse a gleam of Saracenic light into the dull intellects of
Christendom. But the recent discovery of an authentic memoir of this
famous monk, whose name casts so broad a splendour over his age,
written by his own disciple, Richer, of Rheims, has cleared away
every obscurity which hitherto hung over his history.[140]

Few particulars of his early life are known, save that he was the
son of poor parents, that he was a native of Aurillac in Auvergne,
and entered the monastery of that town when still a youth, about
the end of the ninth century. He had already commenced his studies
in grammar, when Borrel, count of Barcelona, came to the monastery
on pilgrimage. The abbot, hearing from him of the excellent schools
which then flourished in Spain, begged him to take back with him
some of their young monks, and Gerbert accordingly accompanied the
count into Spain, and was placed under Hatto, then Bishop of Vich, in
Catalonia, where he formed an intimate friendship with Warin, abbot
of Cusan, one of the most learned men of his time. From this account,
the authenticity of which is beyond question, it appears that the
popular notion which represents Gerbert as acquiring his learning
among the Arabs is incorrect, and all the romantic stories connected
with his acquisition of the mysterious Abacus vanish into thin air.
Doubtless, the Christian schools of Spain profited not a little
from their proximity to the Arabic universities, and the sciences
of mathematics and astronomy were naturally those which were most
successfully cultivated. Gerbert made extraordinary progress in both;
and when he accompanied Borrel and Hatto on their next pilgrimage to
Rome, Pope John XIII. was not long in discovering his talents. The
liberty of the subject seems not to have been much understood in the
tenth century, for when it became known that the young monk was an
adept both in music and mathematics, neither of which sciences were
then taught in Italy, the Pope lost no time in communicating the fact
to the emperor Otho I., who conjured him not to permit his return
to Spain. Gerbert was accordingly most affectionately kidnapped and
sent without delay to Otho’s court, where being interrogated as
to the extent of his knowledge, he replied that he was tolerably
acquainted with mathematics, but was ignorant of logic, which
science he greatly desired to study. It happened that at that time
Gerard, archdeacon of Rheims, an excellent logician, had been sent
as ambassador to Otho from Lothaire, king of France, and Gerbert
at last won the emperor’s consent to his returning home with him,
that he might teach mathematics and study logic in the schools of
that city. Adalberon was then archbishop of Rheims, and he forthwith
committed the studies of his cathedral school to the direction of
the young professor. Richer gives a very precise account of the
method he followed. He began with the “Dialectics of Aristotle,”
going through and thoroughly explaining the propositions of each
book. He particularly explained the Introduction of Porphyry; and
passed on to the “Categories” and the “Topics” of the same author,
as translated out of Greek into Latin by Cicero, and commented on in
six books by the Consul Manlius. In the same way he lectured on the
four books of Topical differences, two of Categorical syllogisms, one
book of Divisions, and one of Definitions. And here the reader will
not fail to observe that these logical lectures must have been the
fruit of studies pursued not in Spain, but in France, for previous
to Gerbert’s coming to Rheims, we have his own acknowledgment that
he knew nothing of that science. After he had taken his scholars
through this course, says Richer, he proceeded to initiate them
into the art of rhetoric; and he set out on the principle, that
in this branch of study a knowledge of the classical poets was
essential. He therefore read and explained Virgil, Statius, and
Terence; then the satirists, Juvenal, Persius, and Horace, and last
of all, Lucan. After this, his pupils were exercised in disputation,
which he taught with such art, that the art was never apparent; a
thing, observes his biographer, which is held to be the perfection
of oratory. Then he popularised the science of music;[141] and as
to arithmetic, mathematics, and astronomy, he made these difficult
studies easy and delightful. Richer devotes several pages to the
description of the various instruments which he constructed, and by
which he contrived to render the science of astronomy, as it were,
sensible to the eyes of his scholars. A round wooden ball, _with
its poles oblique to the horizon_, figured the world, the various
astronomical and geographical phenomena being represented by other
circles. In fact, from the minute description of the writer, we are
obliged to conclude that Gerbert exhibited at his lectures two very
passable specimens of the terrestrial and celestial globes. But the
great boon, which he is commonly represented as bestowing on the
European schools, was the introduction of that wonderful table,
“in which nine ciphers represented all the numbers, and produced
in their infinite combinations all multiplications and divisions.”
This was the mystic _Abacus_, the foundation, no doubt, of our
present system of numeration. It consisted of a tablet, on which
three columns were marked out, sometimes in fixed lines, sometimes
in sand sprinkled over its surface; and in these columns figures
were arranged in units, tens and hundreds. The method in use for
working out calculations, even with the assistance of this decimal
system, as explained by Gerbert in several treatises, was, however,
extremely intricate, though it was probably a vast improvement on the
clumsy contrivances which had been resorted to by former scholars.
How far, however, the Abacus is to be regarded as a new invention,
appears more than doubtful. Its history has been made the subject
of interesting modern researches, and the result seems to be that
the system of numeration used and explained by Gerbert, contained
nothing in it which had been unknown to Boëthius.[142] Nevertheless,
he certainly seems to have elucidated and popularised the science of
arithmetic, which from this epoch began to be more seriously studied.

It is not easy to convey any notion of the enthusiasm excited by
Gerbert’s lectures, or the tide of scholars that flocked to him not
only from every part of France, but from Germany, Italy, and the
British Islands. Brucker is careful to repeat the old calumny, which
represents the dull heads of his contemporaries as attributing his
superior science to the effect of magic. “The knowledge of nature
which Gerbert possessed,” he says, “so far surpassed that of his
contemporaries, that they thought him possessed of magical powers;
_and Benno, a cardinal who owed him a grudge for his opposition to
the See of Rome_, invented a tale of his holding converse with the
devil.” Alas for the accurate historian! this round assertion must
go to keep company with that other from the same pen touching the
trial of Polydore Vergil before the Inquisition. It was, doubtless, a
temptation to represent the person who charged a man of genius with
being a magician as one of the dull orthodox, moved to the malicious
act by his zeal on behalf of the See of Rome, but the facts are
exactly the contrary. Benno, the zealous cardinal who owed Gerbert
a grudge for his opposition to the Pope, happened himself to be a
schismatic and a partisan of the anti-pope; and instead of being a
contemporary of Gerbert’s, he lived a century later, in the time of
St. Gregory VII., and introduced this precious story in a writing,
the express purpose of which was to defame the character of the Roman
pontiffs.[143] In justice to Gerbert it must be added, that not only
was he innocent of sorcery, but that he was altogether above all
petty jealousy and self-seeking, and desired nothing so ardently as
to communicate his discoveries to as many as wished to receive them.
Not content with instructing his own scholars, he corresponded with
the scholastics of Tours, Sens, Fleury, and Aurillac, and spared no
pains or expense in the collection of his library. In this work he
was generously assisted by his friends, scattered over the length
and breadth of Europe. It is in his “Epistles” that we catch a
glimpse of that prodigious activity of mind which took cognisance
of all subjects, and never rested till it had sounded all to the
depth. In one letter, we find him begging the loan of a Cæsar from
his archbishop, and offering in exchange eight volumes of Boëthius
and some excellent geometrical figures. In another, he solicits the
monks of Aurillac to furnish him with a Spanish treatise on the arts
of multiplication and division, and directs them in the work of
correcting a manuscript of Pliny. Then, again, we find him writing on
the medical science, to which he and his disciples directed a good
deal of attention, and in which they followed the Greek masters. In
fact, it was the diversified character of his acquirements that made
Gerbert the wonder of the world in the eyes of his contemporaries. He
knew all things, they said, and all things equally well. If this were
an exaggeration, it is certain that he possessed the rare power of
being able to direct his attention to a very wide range of studies,
though natural philosophy was certainly his special attraction.

Whilst still presiding over his school, Gerbert produced several
treatises on astronomy, mathematics, and geometry; on the formation
of the astrolabe, the quadrant, and the sphere, as well as on
rhetoric and logic. The monk Ditmar tells us that when at Magdeburg
with his old pupil, Otho III., he made a clock, regulating it
according to the movement of the polar star, which he observed
through a kind of tube. Another writer speaks of certain hydraulic
organs which he constructed, in which the wind and necessary
movements were introduced by means of boiling water: and these
obscure notices seem to indicate that wheeled clocks, the telescope,
and the power of steam, were known by Gerbert fully three centuries
before what has been considered their earliest discovery by our
own Roger Bacon. Gerbert did not teach at Rheims alone. Crossing
the Alps, he passed through most of the towns of Northern Italy,
then subject to his great patron, Otho I. In 970 he also visited
Rome in company with the bishop Adalberon, and at Pavia met the
emperor, together with the celebrated Saxon, Otheric, whom we have
seen filling the office of scholasticus in the episcopal school of
Magdeburg. Otheric had up to that time enjoyed the reputation of
being the greatest scholar of his age, and perhaps regarded himself
somewhat in the light of a literary dictator. In the course of
the previous year he had felt no little uneasiness at the daily
increasing renown of the French professor, and had despatched one
of his own Saxon pupils to Rheims to bring him an exact account
of Gerbert’s method of dividing the sciences. The Saxon made an
unsatisfactory report. It was Gerbert’s custom to represent physics
and mathematics as equal and independent sciences. But Otheric’s
disciple, whose head was none of the clearest, made him teach that
physics were subordinate to mathematics, as the species to the genus.
On this, Otheric decided that he knew nothing of philosophy, and
proceeding to the court of the emperor, Otho I., he spoke to that
effect before an assembly of learned men. Otho, who was himself
passionately fond of these studies, was not satisfied, and resolved
to sift the matter to the bottom. He therefore seized the occasion
of Gerbert’s presence at Pavia to inaugurate a grand scientific
tournament, and invited all the _savants_ of his empire to witness
the dispute between the first scholar of France and the first scholar
of Germany. He himself presided at the conference, and opened it with
a brief allocution of his own, in which he very clearly explained
the question in dispute. Then Otheric began his attack, first in
words, and then in writing. The conference lasted the whole day, and
Gerbert, who cited the authorities of Plato, Porphyry, and Boëthius,
was still speaking in reply when the emperor gave the signal for
the conclusion of the debate. Gerbert’s fame never appeared more
illustrious, and he returned to France loaded with magnificent
presents.

His after career was full of troubles; but in 990 the influence of
his imperial pupil, Otho III., obtained his election to the see of
Ravenna, and nine years later to the Apostolic chair. It was a great
day in the annals of learning when the philosopher Gerbert became
Pope Sylvester II., and one which brought no small satisfaction to
the hearts of his pupils. Half the prelates and princes of Europe
gloried in having called him master, and most of them did him credit.
Among them were our own St. Ethelwold; Fulbert of Chartres, the
oracle of his own time; and Robert, king of France, the son of Hugh
Capet, and the most religious and learned sovereign of the age. King
Robert was well skilled in all the humane sciences; but the love of
music, which he had imbibed from his master, amounted to a passion.
Even after his accession to the throne, he devoted no small part of
his time to composing anthems, and motetts, to the indignation of
his queen, Constance, who asked him once, if he must compose, to
compose something upon _her_. Robert sat down and produced the hymn
_O Constantia martyrum!_ and the queen, who fortunately understood
nothing of Latin, was quite satisfied, imagining that her own
perfections formed the subject of the poem. He often assisted in
the choir of St. Denis, dressed in his royal robes, singing with
the monks and directing the chant. Robert is said by his biographer
always to have had a book in his hand, and to have carried the
Psalter in his bosom. He once visited Rome, and during the Pope’s
mass laid on the altar, as his offering, a folded packet, which from
its great size and weight the attendants concluded to be gold. On
opening it, however, they found it to be only a fair copy of his
antiphon, _Cornelius Centurio_. Admiring the writing and the musical
notes, as well as the genius and piety of the author, the Pope
desired that thenceforward this antiphon should always be sung on the
festival of St. Peter, of whose Office it still continues to form a
part.

Not less learned was Gerbert’s other royal pupil, Otho of Germany,
surnamed “the Wonder of the World,” whose early death prevented his
making as much use of his advantages of education as was confidently
expected by all who knew the singular excellence to which he had
attained. Besides these illustrious disciples, Gerbert had others
of every rank and calling. The great St. Ethelwold is said by
many writers to have studied under him for a time, and the rapid
development in England and elsewhere of mathematical studies at
this period must certainly be assigned to the impulse given them by
the teaching of the master of Rheims. His genius was emphatically
_scientific_, and this is the character which we find impressed on
the learning of most of his followers. Thus Richer, the monk from
whose history most of the above particulars have been taken, was
more particularly skilled in the science of medicine. As an instance
of the solicitude which monks of the tenth century displayed in
the pursuit of knowledge, I may refer to the very curious account
which he gives us of the perilous journey he once undertook, for the
purpose of perusing a single book on his favourite science. “It was
in the year 951,” says Richer, “when my mind, being much and deeply
engaged in the study of literature, I had long entertained an ardent
desire of having the opportunity of learning the logic of Hippocrates
of Cos. One day I chanced to meet in the city of Rheims a horseman
coming from Chartres. Asking him who he was, and wherefore he had
come hither, he replied that he was a messenger from Heribrand, a
clerk of Chartres, and that he wished to speak to one Richer, a
monk of St. Rémi. As soon as I heard my friend’s name, and the
subject of his message, I told the stranger that I was the person
he was in quest of; whereupon, having embraced one another, he gave
me a letter, which I found was an invitation to come to Chartres
and peruse the ‘Aphorisms.’ I was much rejoiced at this; wherefore,
taking a servant with me, I determined on accompanying the horseman
back to Chartres. The only assistance I received from my abbot was
a loan of one of the draft horses. Without money, or even a change
of clothes, and destitute of every necessary for the journey, I set
out and reached Orbais, where I was not only delighted with the
conversation of the abbot, but greatly assisted by his noble gifts,
so that next day I was able to get on as far as Meaux. On entering
the woods, however, with my two companions, we were involved in
several disasters; for, deceived by its wild and broken openings, on
coming to a place where two ways met, we took the wrong turning, and
were led six leagues out of our road.

“By the time we passed Château Thierry my cart-horse, which had
at first seemed a sort of Bucephalus, began to lag on the road as
lazily as if he had been a donkey. The sun had been sinking for some
time, and the rain was falling fast. At this moment the horse, worn
out with fatigue, sank under the lad who was riding him, and the
poor beast expired, as though struck by lightning. This happened
when we were about six miles from the city of Meaux. My agitation
and anxiety at this disaster may be well conceived; the boy, quite
inexperienced in such emergencies, lay helpless on the road, by the
side of the dead horse. There lay the luggage also, with no one to
carry it; the rain was pouring down from a dark and cloudy sky, and
the sun was just on the horizon. By God’s goodness a prudent thought,
however, suggested itself to my mind. I left the boy on the road
with the baggage, telling him what he ought to say if questioned by
travellers, urging him not to yield to any inclination to sleep.
Then, accompanied by the horseman from Chartres, I set out for
Meaux. There was scarcely light to see the bridge; and on examining
it, a new misfortune presented itself. It was so broken, and had
such enormous holes in it, that even by day it could hardly have
been crossed in safety. The Chartres horseman, however, here showed
himself a ready man. After vainly searching for a boat, he returned
to the bridge, and, with the help of God, succeeded in getting the
horses over it. In some places he covered the huge holes with his
shield, so as to support the feet of the animals; in others he put
the separated planks close together, and what with stooping, and what
with holding himself erect, and now keeping the beasts together, and
now separating from them, he contrived to get over in safety. It
was a dreadful night, and all around was buried in darkness when I
reached the church of St. Faro, where I was hospitably received by
the monks, and refreshed with kind words and abundance of food. The
horseman was at once sent back with other steeds, again passed the
dangerous bridge, and proceeded to search for the poor boy, whom we
had left on the road. It was the second watch of the night when he
came up with him. He at once brought him to the city, but fearful
of attempting a third time to cross the bridge they determined on
passing the night in a poor cabin, and at break of day appeared
at the gates of the monastery, half dead with hunger. Food was
immediately given them, and corn and straw supplied to the horses.

“Leaving the dismounted boy with Abbot Augustin (of St. Faro), I
hastened on to Chartres with the horseman, whence I sent back horses,
who brought the lad back from Meaux. When he was come, and my mind
was thus set at rest, I sat down at once to the earnest study of the
‘Aphorisms’ of Hippocrates, together with Master Heribrand, a man as
much distinguished for his politeness as for his great learning. But
as in these ‘Aphorisms’ I only learnt the premonitory symptoms of
diseases, and as this knowledge did not satisfy me, I desired also
to study another book showing the concordance between Hippocrates,
Galen, and Suranus. This also I obtained from Heribrand, who was
perfectly well skilled in the science to which he devoted his time.
Indeed, there was nothing in medicine, pharmacy, botany, or surgery
unknown to him.” Richer’s appreciation of his friend’s learning
may possibly have been exaggerated; but who can fail to admire his
perseverance in overcoming such difficulties as a journey then
presented, with the simple view of increasing his stock of scientific
knowledge by the perusal of one precious book?

Allusion has been made to the improvements introduced by Gerbert in
the study of music. A little later a more important addition was made
to the same science by Guy, a monk of Pomposa, commonly called Guy
of Arezzo, from the city which gave him birth. He had been educated
from the age of eight years in the monastery of Pomposa; and being
well skilled in music, was employed in teaching the ecclesiastical
chant to the children brought up in the house. But the immense
difficulties of his task induced him to consider whether some method
of facilitating the notation of music might not be devised. As yet,
the sounds of the musical scale were only represented by the first
seven letters of the alphabet, or by notes, as was the custom in
the abbeys of Corby and St. Gall, which showed indeed the relative
length and value of each tone, but did not render their succession
sensible to the eye. After seeking for a long time for some easy and
precise system, Guy one day recognised in the chant to which the
hymn of St. John Baptist was ordinarily sung, an ascending diatonic
scale, in which the first syllable of each line occupied one note:
_Ut queant laxis_--_Resonare fibris_--_Mira gestorum_--_Famuli
tuorum_,--_Solve polluti_--_Labii reatum_,--_Sancte Ioannes_. He
applied himself to teach this chant to his pupils, and to render them
familiar with the diatonic succession of the syllables, _ut_, _re_,
_mi_, _fa_, _sol_, and _la_. Next, he arranged the notes on lines
and intervals, and thus produced the musical staff with its proper
clefs. By means of these improvements he found himself able, in a few
months, to teach a child as much as a man, under the ancient system,
would have had difficulty in learning in the course of many years.
However, such a storm of jealousy arose against him on the score of
his discovery, that he found himself obliged to leave the monastery;
and accordingly, in 1024, he travelled to Rome, where Pope John XIX.
warmly received both him and his newly-invented gamut.

“The Pope,” he says, “having received me kindly, conversed with me
for a long time, asking many questions, and turning over the leaves
of my antiphonarium, seemed to think it a sort of prodigy. He conned
its rules, and would not rise from his seat till he had tried to
learn a verse which he had never yet heard sung, and to his great
astonishment found himself able to do it.” Guy was not allowed to
leave Rome till he had promised to return the next winter, and
give a regular course of musical instructions to the Pope and his
clergy. The sunshine of Papal favour soon dissipated the storm, but
the humble religious was no way puffed up by his triumph. He only
rejoiced at being able to spread the knowledge of a discovery which
would be useful to others. “The designs of Providence,” he writes,
“are obscure, and falsehood is sometimes suffered to oppress the
truth; God so ordering it lest, puffed up with self-confidence, we
should suffer loss. For then only is what we do good and useful
when we refer all we do to Him who made us. God inspiring me with
the knowledge, I have made it known to as many as I could, to the
end that if I, and those who have gone before me, have learnt the
_Cantus_ with extreme difficulty, those who come after me, doing so
with greater facility, may pray for me and my fellow-labourers, that
we may obtain eternal life and the remission of our sins.”

At the very time when Gerbert was astonishing the world by the
marvels of his genius, a simple nun of Gandersheim had attained a
degree of literary excellence, which is the more remarkable as it
was exclusively acquired within the enclosure of her own convent.
The foundation of this convent had taken place at the same time with
that of New Corby, and its object had been specially to provide for
the education of the Saxon ladies. Peculiar attention was therefore
directed to maintaining its school in a due state of efficiency,
and learned traditions were always kept up among the nuns. Having
fallen into decay in the ninth century, it was restored by Count
Lindolph, whose daughter, Hathmuda, became abbess in 856. Her life
has been left, written by her brother Agius, or Egbert. Hathmuda was
a great lover of letters. “From a child,” says her brother, “she
cared nothing at all for fine clothes, head-dresses, ribbons, combs,
earrings, necklaces, bracelets, handkerchiefs, girdles, and scents,
the possession and wearing of which stirs up the ambition of so many
women.” She preferred to pray and to study, and “the lessons to which
others had to be forced by stripes she willingly applied herself
to, giving herself up to them with indefatigable ardour.” When she
became abbess she was most desirous to keep up those sacred studies
for which the monastery had ever been so famous. “She insisted on
the study of the Scriptures, and those who applied themselves to
reading she greatly loved, but did not admit to equal familiarity
such as herein showed themselves to be slothful.” Her cares were
amply rewarded, and the school of Gandersheim produced a succession
of excellent teachers, among whom was Hroswitha, the fourth abbess,
who died in 906, and was the authoress of a treatise on logic, much
esteemed among the learned of her own time.[144]

It is of a namesake of this fair logician that we are now about to
speak, Hroswitha, the nun of Gandersheim, as she is called. She was
born in the year 940, and was brought up in the convent school,
where she studied Greek and Latin, the philosophy of Aristotle, and
the other liberal arts. We are often told that expressions like
these, however magnificent they look on paper, would dwindle into
insignificance could we test their value by the real amount of
learning which they represent. With regard to Hroswitha, however,
the true nature of her erudition is not left to conjecture. She has
left behind her writings which have attracted the favourable notice
even of modern critics, who agree in declaring that the Latin poems
of this obscure nun of the tenth century are marvels of classical
taste and poetic genius. Besides a panegyric on the three Othos, she
wrote eight poems on various religious subjects, some of them being
taken from the life of our Lord, and some from the legends of the
saints; and seven prose dramas in the style of Terence, being tales
of holy women, and having for their subject the praise of chastity.
While praising the delicacy of the sentiments and the correctness of
the style, her critics observe that these dramas afford incidental
evidence of her perfect familiarity with the sciences of music,
astronomy, and dialectics, as then taught in the schools. In one of
them she introduces a sort of apology for her own learning, which has
a certain feminine grace about it, more charming than all her logic.
It occurs in the drama of “Paphnutius,” where, after a philosophic
discussion on the art of music, one of the disciples of the saint is
made to ask him:

“Whence do you derive all this knowledge?” and he replies, “It is but
a little drop that I have gathered from the ever-flowing sources of
science; and now I desire to share it with you.”

_Dis._ “Thanks to your goodness; nevertheless that admonition of the
apostle terrifies me: ‘God hath chosen the foolish of this world to
confound the wise.’”

_Paph._ “Foolish and wise will alike be confounded before God, if
they do what is evil.”

_Dis._ “That cannot be denied.”

_Paph._ “How, I pray you, can the arts and sciences be better
employed than in the praise of Him who has created all things that we
can know, and who furnishes us at once both with the matter and the
instruments of our knowledge?”

_Dis._ “Certainly, that is the best way to use science.”

_Paph._ “It is; for the more we know of the admirable laws by which
God regulates the weight, number, and proportion of all things, the
more our hearts will burn with love of Him.”

Where shall we find more admirable teaching than this on the vexed
question of the danger of intellectual pursuits? Dangerous only, as
Hroswitha justly argues, when we cease to refer them to Him, who,
as she so beautifully expresses it, “furnishes us at once with the
matter and the instruments of our knowledge;” but good, holy, and
greatly to be desired, when, by supplying us with a more perfect
knowledge of Him, they fill our hearts with His love. That this was
her own case, we may gather from the modest preface which heads her
first collection of poems.

“Here,” she says, “is a little book, simple in style, though it
has cost the writer no small trouble and application. I offer it
to the criticism of those kind judges who are disposed rather to
put an author right than to find fault with him. For I willingly
acknowledge that it contains many errors as well against the rules
of composition as those of prosody; but methinks one who frankly
confesses her defects, merits to meet with a ready pardon and a
friendly correction. If it be thought amiss that I have taken some of
my subjects from books, considered by some to be apocryphal, I must
explain that this is not the result of presumption but of ignorance,
for when I began my work I was not aware that they were held as of
doubtful authority. As soon as I learned that this was the case, I
ceased to use them. For the rest I claim indulgence, in proportion
as I feel a want of confidence in myself. Deprived of most resources
of study, and still young, I have been forced to work in my rustic
solitude far from the help of the learned. It has been alone and
unaided that I have produced my little work, by dint of repeated
compositions and corrections. The main substance I have gathered
from the Holy Scriptures, which were taught me in this convent of
Gandersheim, first by the wise and blessed mistress, Richardis,
and the religious who succeeded her in her office: and then by the
excellent Gerberga, of royal birth, under whose government I am now
living. Younger than me in years, but older in knowledge, she deigned
to form my mind by the reading of good authors, in which she had also
been instructed by learned mistresses. Although the art of making
verses is difficult, specially for a woman, I have ventured, trusting
in the Divine aid, to treat the subjects of this book in heroic
verse. My only object in this labour has been to prevent the feeble
talent committed to my keeping from growing rusty. And I desired by
the hammer of devotion to compel it to give forth some sweet sounds
to the praise of God. Wherefore, dear reader, if thou thinkest
according to God, thou wilt know how to supply what is wanting in
this book; and if thou findest anything good in it, refer it to God
only, and attribute nothing to me but the faults; without, however,
reproaching me for them too severely, but excusing them with that
indulgence which a frank avowal deserves.”

Hroswitha’s humility had to stand the test of flattery from the
literary world, and it stood it well. There are phrases scattered
through her writings which evince how accurately she had gauged
the shallowness of intellectual vanity, and how little hold it had
upon her heart. “Often enough when curiosity is satisfied,” she
writes, “we find nothing but sadness.” In the epistle prefixed to
her prose dramas, she acknowledges the approbation which she has
received from the learned with an unaffected simplicity. “I cannot
sufficiently wonder,” she says, “that you who are so well versed in
philosophy should judge the humble work of a simple woman worthy of
your commendation. But when in your charity you congratulate me, it
is the Dispenser of that grace which works in me that you praise,
believing as you do that the little knowledge I possess is superior
to the weakness of my sex. Hitherto, I have hardly ventured to show
my rustic little productions to any one, but reassured by your
opinion, I shall now feel more confidence in writing, if God give me
the power. Yet I feel myself drawn by the two opposite sentiments
of joy and fear. I rejoice from my heart to see God and His grace
praised in me, but I fear lest men should think me greater than I am.
I do not mean to deny that, aided by Divine grace, I have attained
to a certain knowledge of the arts, for I am a creature capable of
instruction as others are; but I confess that left to my own strength
I should know nothing.”

These extracts require no comment. They prove something more than
the solid nature of the studies pursued in the convent school of
Gandersheim. How skilfully had the teachers of Hroswitha contrived,
whilst directing her intellectual labours, to preserve her womanly
modesty, her almost childish naïveté, and her deep religious
humility! Better things were included in their scheme of education
than a mere knowledge of the liberal arts; the wisdom “whose
beginning is the desire of discipline,” and into which “no defiled
thing cometh.” Under their training the genius of the young poetess
was guarded by the cloak of humility from the cunning moth of pride;
and whilst we are amazed at her learned attainments, her modesty and
candour at the same time conquer our hearts.

And with this agreeable picture we will close our present chapter,
trusting that the nun of Gandersheim may be allowed to have shed
something of beauty and fragrance over the rugged annals of the Iron
Age.[145]

_CHAPTER XI._

THE SCHOOLS OF BEC.

A.D. 1000 TO 1135.

With the close of the tenth century we may be said to have taken
our last farewell of the Dark Ages. Already on the horizon we have
seen the dawn of a period of greater intellectual light, which ere
long is to usher in the blaze of a splendid era. And yet it must be
owned, it is with something of regret that we take our leave of those
remote centuries, and with the wish of the poet in our hearts that
“their good darkness were our light.” The approaching sunrise puts
out the quiet stars; and in the bustle of intellectual life into
which we are about to enter, our heart misgives us lest something of
the charm which has hitherto hung round the history of the Christian
Schools may perchance be lost. Already a new element has appeared in
our studies, more easily felt than described. The career of Gerbert,
however brilliant, does not leave on the mind the same impression
as that of Bede; we feel a predominance of the scholastic, over the
religious character; and we think of him less as a monk than as a
mathematician. This element will now be far more frequently met with,
and what is worse, it will in many cases be found accompanied by the
ugly shapes of pride, love of novelty, and self-interest, too often
finding their final result in heresy and open unbelief. The design
of these pages is not to paint a series of fancy pictures, but to
study past ages so as to establish in our mind a true standard of
Christian Scholarship; to distinguish the precious from the vile, the
false lights of the intellect from those kindled at the altar fire;
and it will therefore be necessary to put forth some of these unhappy
examples in a broad and honest daylight, that we may better see what
those principles are, the forgetfulness of which renders intellectual
culture dangerous to faith.

Hitherto we have heard but little of the perils of the intellect.
Learning, in the eyes of the old monastics, was the twin sister of
prayer. They would almost as soon have thought of apprehending danger
in their Psalter as in their grammar, and indeed the end for which
they used them both was substantially the same. Among the characters
named in the foregoing pages, how few appear disfigured with the
stains of vanity or self-interest! Scotus Erigena indeed, is a
notable example of the self-sufficient rationalist, and Otheric of
Magdeburg is said to have died of disappointment at not obtaining a
bishopric; but such instances are rare exceptions; and though others
doubtless existed, they do not appear on the surface of history,
and give no character to the scholastic profession. As a class, the
pedagogues of the Dark Ages were the most disinterested of men.
Poverty was recognised, not as the accident of a student’s life,
but as one of its most honourable features, and it was reckoned as
something monstrous and disgraceful for a man to sell his learning
for gold. This, of course, arose from the religious light in which
learned pursuits were regarded; they were spiritual wares, the sale
of which was held almost as simoniacal as the sale of a benefice.
If instances occasionally occur of any such sordid practices, they
are named by historians with a kind of horror; and Launoy quotes
the reproof addressed by the abbot Baldric to a certain scholar
of Angers, who had gone over to England to teach grammar for the
sake of “cursed gold,” and whose sudden death was believed by his
acquaintances to have been sent in just punishment of his sin. This
tradition survived, in theory at least, for many centuries, and in
1362 the Professors of Paris University are found pleading their
inability to pay the expenses of a lawsuit then pending, “it being
their profession as scholars to have no wealth.” In Spain there was
a proverb which described a scholar as rich in letters, and ragged
in everything else, and Chaucer only produced the current type of a
student when he represented his Clerk of Oxenford as “full hollow and
threadbare.”

Now, however, a change passes over the picture; scholasticism is
about to appear less as a vocation than as a profession, and a
profession sought with the view of earning for him who embraces
it, honour at least, and perhaps also the more solid advantages of
worldly fortune and rich preferment. Some writers have supposed
that the promotion of Gerbert to the Papal dignity was one cause
of this change, leading others to hope that a brilliant scholastic
career might chance to prove the high road to wealth and dignities.
Rohrbacher recognises in the rising spirit of the age distinct traces
of an infernal agency. “Hitherto,” he says, “heresy had made no
great progress in the West. But in the eleventh century the Spirit
of Darkness, seeing its empire confirmed in the East by the great
apostacy of Mahomet and the formal schism of the Greeks, seems to
have transferred the war from the East to the West. From that epoch
down to our own time, the great revolt against God and His Church
has never ceased to appear in one form or another. Its two principal
sources have been Pride and Luxury, the corruption of the intellect,
and the corruption of the heart. Hence, in princes, the attempt to
usurp authority over the Church: hence, among men of learning, the
mania for innovation, together with that superficial vanity which
urged Berengarius to his fall; which Luther and Calvin erected into
a principle under the name of Reform, and to which Voltaire and
Rousseau put the key-stone under the title of Philosophy.”[146]
Fleury also supports this view, and speaking of the swarm of heresies
that sprang up suddenly in the eleventh century, sees in the fact
a fulfilment of the prophecy in the Apocalypse that Satan should
be loosed after being bound for a thousand years. The whole of
Christendom was possessed at the time with a vague foreboding that an
era had opened big with melancholy change, and this presentiment of
evil naturally enough took the shape among the vulgar, of the belief
that the world was about to come to an end.

It is at this precise epoch that we first begin to meet with teachers
who were neither monks nor clerics. Free from the restraints of
cloisteral discipline, these new scholastics were professors of
grammar and rhetoric, and they were nothing more. The saintly rule of
a Benedict or a Columbanus had not moulded them to habits of humility
and obedience; they taught, and they made profit by their teaching;
and he who taught the most attractive novelty drew most pupils, and
made his teaching answer the best. It was a question in which worldly
lucre, rather than the interests of souls, was at stake, and to be
successful it became necessary for the teacher to adapt himself to
the tastes and humours of his audience. Hence arose a race of pedants
who had nothing in common with the elder scholastics, and who bore
a peculiar stamp of self-sufficiency and arrogance, which impresses
them all with a sort of family likeness, and carries back one’s
thoughts to the sophists of the pagan schools.

The first notice which we find of a scholastic who was neither monk
nor canon, occurs about the year 1024, when Rodolphus Glaber, a monk
of Cluny, mentions in his chronicle a certain Witgard, a grammarian
by profession, who was so bewitched by the study of the Latin poets,
that he fancied he beheld in a vision Virgil, Horace, and Juvenal,
who thanked him for the affection he bore them, and promised him
immortality. The poor man’s head was so turned with this idea, that
he immediately began to teach that whatever was contained in the
poets, was to be believed _de fide_, and strange to say, not a few
were found to listen to him. He was cited before the archbishop
of Ravenna, and put to silence, after creating a good deal of
disturbance. I merely name him here as an indication of the new class
of men into whose hands the work of teaching was beginning to fall; a
far more important illustration of the subject is to be found in the
history of Berengarius. Before speaking of him, however, something
must be said of his master, Fulbert, the pupil of Gerbert, and the
restorer of the cathedral school of Chartres. Though reckoned among
French worthies, he seems to have been a Roman by birth, and received
his early education in a very humble school. However, he afterwards
studied under Gerbert, and under his direction the school of Chartres
rose to such an eminence, that it rivalled that of Rheims, and
Fulbert may be said to have become preceptor to almost every man
of letters who distinguished himself in France during the eleventh
century.

We gather from the catalogue of the Chartres library, that Fulbert
had inherited no inconsiderable portion of his master Gerbert’s
scientific tastes. We find in it treatises on the properties of
the sphere and the globe, on the astrolabe, on the measurement of
superficies, and on land measurement, together with a Greek and
Arabic alphabet. Fulbert himself had the rare accomplishment of
Hebrew learning, as may be seen by his “Treatise against the Jews.”
His disciples went forth from his school to restore sacred studies
all over France, and the honour of being a pupil of him whom they
lovingly termed “Father Fulbert,” was claimed by a long list of
excellent masters, every one of whom might be described in the
terms with which Adelman has sketched the character of Rainald of
Tours; as “ready with the tongue, fluent with the pen, and mighty
in grammar.” “As to thee, Father Fulbert,” he exclaims, “when I
attempt to speak of thee, my words fail, my heart melts, my eyes
break forth into weeping.”[147] Fulbert was, in fact, worthy of any
praise that could be bestowed on him, and so thoroughly convinced of
the sacredness of the office of teaching, that even after he became
Bishop of Chartres in 1016, he continued to direct the studies of his
episcopal school. He was regarded as the prelate of his time most
thoroughly versed in ecclesiastical discipline, which he caused to
be exactly practised. As a writer, he is best known by his letters,
which display a wonderful delicacy of thought. He was knit in bonds
of close friendship with St. Odilon of Cluny, to whom he confided his
fears, lest he might not have been truly called to fill an office,
the solemn responsibilities of which almost overwhelmed him. “Yet,”
he adds, “remembering my own nothingness, and that without birth
or fortune I have been raised to this chair like a beggar from the
dunghill, I am forced to believe it is the will of God.”

A teacher of this temper was sure to have it at heart to impress on
the souls of his disciples a love of humility. It was the favourite
virtue of this truly great man, who was perfectly aware that the
elevation of Gerbert to the pontifical dignity had given rise to
a sentiment of ambition among men of letters, from which he boded
evil. He was therefore earnest in warning his pupils to avoid
novelties and to walk in the old footpaths; and his keen sagacious
eye rested with uneasiness on one young face among the scholars who
were accustomed to gather round him in his little garden and listen
to his affectionate exhortations, as children hang on the words of a
venerated parent. Berengarius, for it was he, had begun his studies
in the school of St. Martin of Tours, whence he passed to Chartres,
in company with his friend Adelman. He had a brilliant rather than
a solid genius, a ready tongue which made the most of what he knew,
but withal a certain affectation in speech and manner which betrayed
a fund of secret vanity. Fulbert knew him well, and often spoke to
him even with tears, conjuring him never to forsake the beaten track,
but to hold fast to the traditions of the fathers. In 1028 the good
bishop, then lying on his death-bed, called all his disciples around
him to bid them farewell, but seeing Berengarius among the rest, he
motioned for him to withdraw, for, he said, “I see a dragon by his
side.”

His prognostics were too soon fulfilled. Berengarius returned to
Tours, where his reputation for scholarship induced the canons
to commit their school to his management; and even after he was
appointed archdeacon of Angers, he continued to lecture at Tours,
earning the reputation of immense learning, eloquence, and skill in
grammar and philosophy. All, however, were not equally pleased with
the character of his teaching, and some hesitated not bluntly to avow
their belief that the brilliant archdeacon was somewhat shallow, and
that his philosophy verged on sophistry. He had a way of mystifying
the simplest subjects by a display of learned words; affected new
and startling definitions, and had some tricks for practising on the
minds of his audience, which gave offence to many. He chose that
his chair should be raised higher than the others, had a pompous
way of walking, spoke in a slow and particularly plaintive tone of
voice, and would sit with his head wrapped up in his mantle, like an
ancient philosopher, absorbed, as it seemed, in some very profound
meditation. In short, he was one of those who aim at what Bacon calls
“being wise by signs;” did trifles in a solemn way, and so imposed on
the simpler sort who thought him a prodigy; a sentiment in which, it
is needless to say, he himself fully concurred.

Let us leave this pompous personage for a while to enjoy the
admiration of his numerous disciples, whilst we cast our eyes on the
schools of law which were just then springing up at Bologna, where a
young student of Pavia, Lanfranc by name, was distinguishing himself
by his skill as a writer and an advocate. On leaving Bologna, he is
thought to have taught jurisprudence for some time in his native
city, and then crossing the Alps, he came into France, bringing with
him no other riches than his learned reputation. Arriving at Tours,
his name reached the ears of Berengarius, who at once sought him out
and challenged him to a public disputation. The end aimed at was
evidently the glorification of the archdeacon, who counted on an
easy victory over the young stranger, which might help to swell his
reputation. Never were expectations more completely disappointed.
Berengarius was worsted in his arguments, and obliged to retire with
ruffled feathers; far from increasing his renown, he had suffered
a severe defeat, and in the eyes of wounded vanity, defeat is the
bitterest of mortifications. His followers were astonished to
find their master was not infallible, and began to transfer their
admiration to his successful rival. Lanfranc, meanwhile, proceeded
to Avranches, where he opened a school which was soon thronged by
deserters from that of Berengarius. It was a crisis in his life, for
his character was one which was as likely as not to have yielded
to the perils that surrounded him. If free from the vanity which
devoured his rival, his proud and impetuous temper was at that
time quite as little under the restraint of religious principle;
his devotion to science was perhaps more thoroughly the genuine
enthusiasm of a scholar who loved learning for its own sake, rather
than for the meed of human applause, but it was as yet wholly
unsanctified by a higher and diviner intention. Nevertheless, there
was a candour and uprightness of soul about him which the other
did not possess, and when the call of grace sounded in his ear, he
responded to it with noble generosity.

One day as he was journeying from Avranches to Rouen, he had to
pass through a forest, where he was attacked by robbers, who having
stripped him of all he possessed, tied him to a tree, wrapped his
hood about his head so as to muffle his cries for help, and then
abandoned him. Left thus during the entire night exposed to danger of
death from the wolves, or the more lingering tortures of starvation,
Lanfranc in his extremity bethought him of his prayers, but the
learned advocate and philosopher found himself unable to call to
his remembrance the simplest form of devotion. That one fact spoke
volumes to his conscience; during the long hours of that terrible
night he had time bitterly to mourn over the years lost in pursuits,
the vanity of which he had never known till now; and ere morning
dawned he solemnly vowed, if God should deliver him from his danger,
to dedicate the remainder of his life to the task of reparation.

At break of day some passing travellers discovered and unbound him,
and Lanfranc’s first request was to be led to the nearest monastery.
There was by this time no want of religious houses in the duchy of
Normandy. The century that had elapsed since the conversion of Duke
Rollo, had witnessed a very general restoration of the monastic
institute in that province, and many of the great abbeys, such
as Jumièges, St. Wandrille, Fécamp, and Bernai, had risen from
their ashes, with even greater splendour than they had exhibited
before their destruction. But it was to none of these that the good
Providence of God guided the steps of Lanfranc. In the year 1039 the
little house of Bec had been founded by a pious Norman knight named
Herluin, who himself became the first abbot. Nothing could be ruder
or simpler than the commencements of this famous abbey. Herluin was
poor and unlettered, he and his monks had to live hardly by the
labour of their hands, their ordinary food was bread made with bran,
and vegetables, with muddy water brought from a well two miles
off. At the very moment when Lanfranc presented himself, the abbot
was superintending the construction of an oven, and was kneading
the bread with somewhat dirty hands, for he had come fresh from the
labour of the field. At another time the sight would have disgusted
the refined and fastidious Lombard, but at that moment his heart felt
an appetite for abasement, and he promptly offered himself, and was
received as one of the little community.

He was subjected to a severe noviciate. For three years, it is
said, he kept a rigorous silence, and was tested by every kind of
humiliation. Once, when reading aloud in the refectory, the prior
corrected his Latin accent, and desired him to pronounce the _e_ in
_docere_ short. This was probably a hard trial to the humility of the
Bolognese professor, who must have regarded his Norman companions
as little better than barbarians; but Lanfranc complied without
hesitation, judging, says his biographer, that an act of disobedience
was a greater evil than a false quantity in Latin. After he had
passed through his probation, the abbot, who had learnt to value
both his learning and his sincere humility, finding him unfit for
manual labour, desired him to begin to teach, and thus were founded
the famous schools of Bec. Their renown soon eclipsed that of every
other existing academy. “Before that time,” says Odericus, “in the
reigns of six dukes of Normandy, scarce any Norman applied himself to
regular studies, nor had any doctor arisen among them till, by the
Providence of God, Lanfranc appeared in their province.” But now a
new era was inaugurated. Priests and monks came to Bec in multitudes,
in order to place themselves under a master who was pronounced the
best Latinist, the best theologian, and the best dialectician of
his time; there were never fewer than a hundred pupils; the Norman
nobles, and even the Dukes themselves, sent their sons thither for
education, and made enormous grants of land to the favoured abbey.

It is not to be supposed that the fame of this new academy was long
in reaching the ears of Berengarius, whose chagrin at finding his own
renown eclipsed by his former rival was hard to endure. Up to that
time he had addicted himself exclusively to dialectics, and had given
very little study to the Scriptures, a circumstance sufficiently
illustrative of the wide chasm which separated the rising school
of teachers from that which immediately preceded them. But now,
to support his failing credit, Berengarius began to lecture on a
subject he had never studied, and to explain the Scriptures, not
according to the traditions of the Fathers, but after the whims of
his own imagination. His first errors were on questions connected
with marriage and infant baptism, but it was not long before he
broached his grand heresy, and attacked the Catholic doctrine of the
Real Presence in the Most Holy Eucharist, reviving all the arguments
and sophistries of Scotus Erigena. The scandal spread from Tours
through France and Germany. His old friend Adelman, at that time
scholasticus of Liège, heard the news and wrote to him in moving
terms, conjuring him to retract his fatal errors. “I have been wont
to call you my foster brother,” he says, “calling to mind the happy
days we passed together at the school of Chartres (though you were
younger than I), under that venerable Socrates, Fulbert. Remember the
conversation he used to hold with us in his garden near the chapel,
how tenderly he used to speak to us, his voice sometimes choked with
tears, conjuring us not to depart from the old paths, but to keep
firm to the traditions of the Fathers. And now they tell me that
you have separated from the unity of the Church, teaching that what
we daily offer on the altar is not the true body and blood of Jesus
Christ, but only a figure! God help you, my brother! let me implore
you by the mercy of God, and the memory of the Blessed Fulbert,
not thus to trouble the peace of our Holy Mother the Church, for
whose faith so many millions of doctors and martyrs have constantly
contended.”

Adelman’s entreaties produced no effect on him to whom they were
addressed, and a controversy began in which Lanfranc took a
distinguished part, assisting at the councils of Rheims, Rome and
Vercelli. In all these Berengarius was successively condemned, and
required to abjure his errors. But he obeyed with the lips only.
As he continued to propagate his heresies in spite of repeated
abjurations, Pope Victor II., in 1054, summoned two other Councils,
at Florence and Tours, at the last of which Berengarius signed
a solemn retractation with his own hand. But so soon as he left
the presence of the assembled fathers, he set himself secretly to
disseminate his former doctrines. At a second Council held at Tours,
attended by 113 bishops, he again appeared, signed a profession of
Catholic doctrine, and threw all his own writings into the fire, and
the same farce was repeated at three other Councils, followed by the
same result. It was not until 1079 that Lanfranc, then Archbishop
of Canterbury, published his famous treatise “On the Body of Our
Lord,” and about the same time his scholar Guitmond, afterwards
Bishop of Aversa, wrote an equally celebrated treatise, bearing the
same title, in which he traces the errors of Berengarius to the fatal
root of vanity. “Even when a youth at school,” he says, “according
to the account of those who then knew him, he made little account
of the teaching of his master, held as nothing the opinions of his
companions, and despised the books on liberal arts. He could not
himself attain to the profounder parts of philosophy, for he was not
of a very penetrating mind, and therefore tried to gain a learned
reputation by new and unheard-of verbal definitions.” There is
something mournfully significant in this account, and the grievous
termination of a career, the very dawn of which was marked by such
prognostics, makes the character and history of Berengarius one which
scholars of all ages would do well to set before them as a warning
beacon. The writings of Lanfranc and Guitmond seem at last to have
opened his eyes to the truth; at any rate from that time he kept
silence, and is said to have spent the remaining eight years of his
life in retirement and sincere penitence. William of Malmsbury says
that his dying words betrayed his consciousness of the irreparable
evils he had inflicted on the Church, and the terror with which he
was filled at the thought of the souls whom he might have ruined.
“This day will my Lord Jesus Christ appear to call me, either to
glory, by His mercy, on my repentance, or, as I fear, on account
of the loss of other souls, to my punishment.” Yet his followers
were neither numerous nor of any weight or character. We find in
the letter written by Gozechinus of Liège to a brother scholastic,
that every one of the great masters of the time, such as those who
presided over the schools of Rheims, Paris, Spires, and Bamberg
joined heart and soul with Lanfranc in condemning his doctrines.[148]
Malmsbury says he had in all but three hundred disciples, while on
the other hand the united voice of Christendom, and especially of the
monastic order, was raised against him, and never was any heresy more
universally condemned.

Meanwhile the schools of Bec grew and prospered, and the convent was
soon found too small to contain its scholars. There were gathered
together students of all ranks and conditions, “profound sophists,”
as Oderic Vitalis calls them, and a long list of ecclesiastics
destined to become the shining lights of the Church. Among these
were Ivo of Chartres, Fulk of Beauvais, Gundulph, afterwards bishop
of Rochester, Anselm de Bagio, afterwards Pope Alexander II., and
a great number of the Anglo-Norman abbots. Alexander II., in after
years, gave a memorable sign of the respect with which he regarded
his old preceptor. When Lanfranc visited Rome as Archbishop of
Canterbury, and was introduced into the presence of the Pontiff, the
latter, contrary to the usual custom, rose, and advanced to meet him.
“I show this mark of respect,” he said, turning to the surrounding
prelates, “not to the archbishop, but to the man at whose feet I
sat as a disciple in the schools of Bec.” Besides these there was
Guitmond, already named, the courageous monk, who, entreated by
the Conqueror to accept high ecclesiastical promotion in England,
not only refused the offer, but accompanied his refusal with a
letter of reproof which probably spoke plainer truths to William
of Normandy than he had ever before had an opportunity of hearing.
Oderic calls him devout and deeply learned, and in his book on the
Sacrament of the Altar, the good monk recalls with affection the
teaching he had received at Bec, which he styles “that great and
famous school of literature.” But by far the greatest disciple of
this school was a countryman of Lanfranc’s, destined to surpass him
in renown both as a saint and a doctor. Anselm, a native of Aosta,
in Lombardy, abandoning his native land, had after three years of
study in Burgundy, established himself at Avranches, where he seems
to have taught for some time in the school formerly directed by
Lanfranc. But in 1059, being then but twenty-five years of age, he
found his way to Bec, and soon distinguished himself as the first
of all the noble crowd of scholars. For a while he continued there,
studying and teaching by turns, but erelong the desire of religious
perfection mastered that of intellectual progress. He resolved to
take the monastic habit, but was unable to determine whether it
should be at Cluny or at Bec. At Cluny indeed his vast acquirements
would be of small profit; at Bec the superiority of Lanfranc would,
he believed, almost equally eclipse him. But what of that? it was
eclipse and nothingness that he was in search of, rather than fame
and distinction. He opened his heart to his master, who, reluctant
to decide a point in which his own feelings would naturally colour
his advice, referred him to Maurillus, Archbishop of Rouen, and the
result was that Anselm remained at Bec. His profession took place in
1060, and three years later Lanfranc, being appointed by Duke William
abbot of his newly-founded monastery of St. Stephen at Caen, Anselm
succeeded him in the office of prior. Some of the monks murmured at
this appointment, but he overcame their ill-will by the sweetness of
his charity. One young monk, named Osbern, who had shown the greatest
opposition to the new prior, became at last his favourite disciple,
won over by the patient long-suffering of a master who showed him
a mother’s tenderness, mingled with a father’s care. At first he
gained his good-will by encouraging his talents, overlooking his
childish sallies of temper, and granting him many favours; but when
his confidence was secured he accustomed him to severer discipline,
and showed his satisfaction at his pupil’s progress by requiring him
to accept very humiliating penances. He trusted to have found in this
youth one destined to achieve great things for God, but Osbern was
carried off by a sudden sickness, and left none to replace him in the
affections of the prior.

Anselm’s life at Bec was one of continual labour. Whilst directing
the studies of his pupils he did not neglect his own. His deeply
philosophic mind was one of those which is incapable of desisting
from a course of reasoning on any subject which it has once
grasped, till the final solution is reached. His genius possessed
a certain metaphysical subtlety, which engaged him in speculative
questions, to resolve which he gave up, not merely whole days,
but whole nights also. His studies were accompanied with rigorous
austerities, which were, however, very far from diminishing that
sweetness of disposition which rendered him dear to God and man. To
his other labours were added those entailed on him as librarian to
the monastery. Lanfranc had commenced the formation of the library,
and his work was carried on by his successor with unwearied zeal.
The Bec library was afterwards enlarged by the donations of Philip
of Harcourt, Bishop of Bayeux, and besides a rich collection of
the Fathers and the Latin classics, contained the Institutes of
Quinctilian and the Hortensius of Cicero, of which latter work no
copy is now known to exist. The great destruction of books which had
taken place during the barbaric invasions rendered them now both
rare and costly. Superiors of the different religious houses were
therefore glad to establish friendly relations one with another, and
to make agreements by which each supplied what they possessed, and
what was wanting to the others. “We are ready to give you a pledge
of our affection,” writes Durandus, abbot of La Chaise Dieu, to St.
Anselm, “and in return we will ask one of you. Choose what you will
that we possess; as to us, our choice is the Epistles of St. Paul.”
Anselm was not content with collecting books; he spared no pains to
correct them, and spent a good part of his nights in this employment.
The multifarious duties which fell on him devoured so large a portion
of his day that he could only supply the requisite time for his
literary labours by defrauding himself of sleep; and he would have
resigned his office in order more exclusively to give himself up to
meditation and study had he not been withheld by the prohibition of
Maurillus.

The subject which most frequently engaged his thoughts was the
Being and Attributes of God. The first work which he wrote was his
_Monologion_, in which he endeavoured to state the metaphysical
arguments by which the existence of God might be proved even
according to mere natural reason. The work was written at the
request of some of the monks, but before publishing it he sent
it to Lanfranc, desiring him to correct, and even to suppress,
whatever he judged proper. After producing some other philosophical
treatises, the thought occurred to him to try and discover whether
it were possible, by following any single course of reasoning, to
prove that which in his _Monologion_ he had supported by a variety
of arguments. The idea took possession of his mind: sometimes he
thought he had found what he was seeking for, and then again it
escaped him. So utterly was he absorbed by the subject that he lost
sleep and appetite, and even his attention at the Divine Office
became distracted. Dreading lest it should be some dark temptation,
he tried to banish the whole matter from his mind, but it was in
vain; the more he fled from his own thoughts the more constantly did
they pursue him. At last one night every link in the chain being
complete, he seized some waxen tablets and wrote the argument as it
stood clear and distinct in his mind. A copy was made on parchment
by his monks, and this new work formed his _Proslogion_, which, at
the desire of the legate Hugh, Archbishop of Lyons, was published
with his name attached. The argument of this celebrated book is thus
analysed by M. Rémusat, in his life of the saint. “He who believes in
God believes that there is Something so great that a greater cannot
be conceived. Does such a nature really exist? The infidel who denies
it nevertheless understands what is meant by the idea, and this idea
exists in his understanding, if it exist nowhere else. The mere idea
of an object does not necessarily imply the belief in its existence.
A painter has an _idea_ of a picture which he knows does not as yet
exist. But this Something which is better and greater than anything
of which we can conceive cannot exist merely in our minds; for if
it did exist only in our minds, we should be able to imagine it as
existing in reality, that is to say, we should be able to conceive
of it as being yet greater, a thing which according to our original
supposition was not to be allowed as possible. Therefore, that which
is so great that nothing can be greater must exist, not only in the
mind, but in fact. Were the Being which is supposed to be above all
that can be imagined, to be regarded as having no real existence, He
would no longer be greater than we could conceive. To make Him so,
He must have existence. The contradiction is evident. There is then
really and truly a Being above Whom nothing can be conceived, and
Who therefore cannot be thought of as though it were possible that
He should not exist. And this Being, it is Thou, O my God! _Et hoc
es tu, Domine Deus noster!_”[149] Many were found both in his own
and later times who took alarm at reasoning so bold and original,
but Anselm defended his arguments in an Apology, which established
his fame as the greatest metaphysician who had appeared in the Latin
Church since the days of St. Augustine.[150]

As we are here engaged rather with the history of schools than with
that of literature, this passing glance at St. Anselm’s studies will
suffice to indicate the new direction which the awakening intellect
of Europe was about to follow. Hitherto ecclesiastical writers
had for the most part been content to gather up and reproduce the
traditionary wisdom of the Fathers; but now, when those traditions
had become firmly established, a scientific superstructure was to
be raised on that broad foundation, and the theology of the Church
was to be built up into a compact and well-ordered system. This was
the work of the scholastic theologians, of whom St. Anselm may be
considered as the first.

It is pleasant to trace in the system of education followed by so
profound a thinker, the same paternal sweetness which characterised
the older monastic teachers. Intellectual depth is often enough
deficient in tenderness, and it would scarcely have been matter of
surprise had we found the metaphysical mind of Anselm incapable of
adapting itself to the simplicity and waywardness of childhood. But
the problems, which intellect alone is powerless to resolve, are
quickly unlocked by the key of charity. Anselm would have been no
saint had not his heart been far larger than his intellect; and his
heart it was that communicated to him those three graces which one of
our own poets has so beautifully described as bearing up the little
world of education--Love, Hope, and Patience.[151] One day he was
visited by the abbot of a neighbouring monastery, who came to consult
him on the proper manner of bringing up the children committed to
his care. Those whom he had hitherto trained were, he said, most
perverse and incorrigible. “We do our best to correct them,” he
added; “we beat them from morning till night, but I own I can see no
improvement.” “And how do they grow up?” inquired Anselm. “Just as
dull and stupid as so many beasts,” was the reply. “A famous system
of education truly,” observed the abbot of Bec, “which changes men
into beasts. Now tell me, what would be the result, if, after having
planted a tree in your garden you were to compress it so tightly that
it should have no room to extend its branches? These poor children
were given to you that you might help them to grow, and be fruitful
in good thoughts; but if you allow them no liberty their minds will
grow crooked. Finding no kindness on your part, they will give you no
confidence, and never having been brought up to know the meaning of
love and charity, they will see everything around them in a distorted
aspect. You beat them, you tell me? But is a beautiful statue of
gold or silver formed only by blows? The weak must be treated with
gentleness, and won with love; you must invite a soul to virtue
with cheerfulness, and charitably bear with its defects.” He then
explained his own method of education, till at last the other cast
himself at his feet, owning his imprudence, and promising in future
to abandon his excessive severity.

The names of Lanfranc and St. Anselm have, of course, a special
interest to English readers, although it is rather as abbots of Bec
than as Archbishops of Canterbury that they find a place in these
pages. The Norman Conquest, which placed Lanfranc on the episcopal
throne of St. Augustine, must, however, be regarded as an important
era in the scholastic history of England, from the total revolution
which it effected in the ecclesiastical administration of that
country. Whatever may be thought of the manner in which the change
was carried out, there can be little doubt that the substitution
of an Anglo-Norman for an Anglo-Saxon hierarchy was on the whole
beneficial to the cause both of religion and learning. Most of the
ecclesiastics promoted by William were men of high character, and
this was indeed one of the few consolatory thoughts which presented
themselves to his mind when he lay upon his bed of death. His choice
of Lanfranc for the primacy filled that prelate with dismay, nor was
it until Cardinal Hubert laid on him the commands of the Apostolic
See, that he could be induced to accept a charge so begirt with
difficulty. His letter to his old pupil Pope Alexander II., shortly
after his arrival in England, expresses the distress of his mind,
at the hard heartedness, cupidity, and corruption which everywhere
met his eye, and which, together with the barbarism, as he deemed
it, of the inhabitants, and his total ignorance of their language,
moved him to implore that he might resign the onerous dignity. As,
however, this could not be permitted, he applied himself to the
reform of the church of Canterbury, and the restoration in it of the
monastic rule, which, since the martyrdom of St. Elphege, had fallen
into utter decay. In spite of the pressing difficulties of the times,
he contrived also to do something for the encouragement of letters,
though far less than he would have effected under more favourable
circumstances.

The schools of Peterborough and Evesham are likewise noticed as
famous during the reign of the Confessor, who was himself a lover of
learning, and, among his other laws, decreed that the person of a
schoolmaster should be regarded as equally inviolable with that of a
clerk. Winchcombe, always devoted to letters, whose scholars had been
famous since the days of St. Kenelm, was still known as a place of
study, and kept up its reputation so late as the fifteenth century.
Old Ramsey, too, retained its celebrity, and scholars still wandered
under the trees planted by St. Ethelwold, and kept up the arts which
he had introduced into its scriptorium. In 1047 a certain monk of St.
Edmundsbury became abbot there, whose skill in all gold and silver
work was a sort of marvel. One of his monks, named Oswald, refused
a bishopric on the simple ground that he could not tear himself
from his books. “He chose rather,” says the chronicler, “to cherish
the placid cultivation of letters in the bosom of his mother, the
church of Ramsey. We have still in our archives a certain versified
book of his, bearing evidence of his multifarious knowledge and
perspicacious wit.” Nor must we forget the holy Wulstan, the last of
our Anglo-Saxon saints. He had been educated in the minster school of
Peterborough by the monk Ervene, who coaxed him to learn his letters
by choosing for his lesson-book a fine Psalter, illuminated by his
own hands. After he became prior and scholasticus of Worcester,
Wulstan devoted himself to study with such ardour as often to spend
two or three days in reading without so much as breaking his fast.
His long night-watches seriously injured his health, and in the
morning he was often found in the church fast asleep, with his
worn-out head resting on the book he had been studying.

It will be seen, therefore, that the love of letters was not quite
extinct in the cloisters of Saxon England; and the coming of Lanfranc
blew the embers into a flame. He set himself to restore a great
number of cathedral and monastic schools that had fallen into decay,
and during his leisure hours liked to hear some poor scholars hold
disputations in his presence on learned subjects, rewarding them with
liberal gifts.

But besides his encouragement of learned men, Lanfranc did good
service to the cause of letters in other ways. He often interposed
his kind offices to save the ancient English foundations from the
vengeance of the Conqueror. Thus, having succeeded in averting the
threatened destruction of St. Alban’s Abbey, which William had
doomed in consequence of the brave resistance he had met with from
its abbot, Frithric, Lanfranc conferred it on a relative and pupil
of his own named Paulinus, who has fallen under the lash of Matthew
Paris, but who nevertheless proved an excellent abbot. He introduced
the “Constitutions,” published by Lanfranc for the government of
the English Benedictines, reformed a host of irregularities, and,
with the help of subsidies liberally granted by the archbishop,
built several useful offices, and established the first scriptorium
attached to the abbey.

I know not what my readers will say when they hear that the mill, the
bakehouse, and the scriptorium erected by Paulinus were all built
out of the tiles and stones of the ancient Verulam, collected by his
Saxon predecessors Ealdred and Eadmer, who had made some very curious
excavations among the ruins of the Roman city, and had laid open a
palace with its baths and its atrium. Moreover, they had dug up a
number of books in good preservation, one of which was in a tongue
unknown to all, and proved at last to be a British history of the
“Acts of St. Alban.” The other books were in Latin, and, relating to
heathen worship, were committed to the flames. This sounds barbarous
to antiquarian ears, but there is worse to tell. Eadmer ordered that
all the altars, urns, coins, and glass vessels discovered by the
workmen should be destroyed. The day had not yet come when relics
of paganism were deemed safe or fit objects for good Christians to
collect in their museums, and the Vatican collection itself would
probably have fared but badly in the hands of Alcuin or St. Boniface.
However, the monks of St. Alban’s, though destroyers of the Verulam
antiquities, were very active in setting up their scriptorium.
Paulinus furnished it with twenty-eight “notable volumes,” and many
others were presented by Lanfranc. There is, moreover, a distinct
notice of the existence of the abbey school. Abbot Richard, who
succeeded Paulinus (after the Red King had contrived to keep the
abbacy vacant for five years), showed a great interest in the success
of this school, and invited over from Maine a certain master named
Geoffrey de Gorham, to take on him its direction. Gorham however, was
rather dilatory, and by the time he arrived in England the office
had been given to another. So he removed to Dunstable, and there
read lectures for some time, and whilst so occupied, invented a
miracle-play, said to be the first that is noticed in history, the
subject being the martyrdom of St. Katherine. These sacred dramas
were used as means of popular instruction, and often contained a fine
vein of poetry. As time went on, and they fell out of the hands of
the ecclesiastics into those of a class of writers and actors whose
object it was to please, rather than to instruct the multitude, they
became debased by the introduction of coarse jests and buffoonery,
which abound in the specimens best known to English readers, but
of which there is not the slightest trace in the earlier religious
dramas. The dress and getting up of the pieces, in which there
was a wonderful amount of ingenuity displayed, and even of stage
trickery,[152] of course enhanced their success; and Gorham borrowed
from the sacristan of St. Alban’s the choral copes of the abbey,
to be used in the first representation of his play. Unfortunately,
the very next night his house caught fire, and the borrowed copes,
together with his own books, were all destroyed. It was a great
disaster; and in atonement for his carelessness he assumed the
monastic habit at St. Alban’s; and this was the reason, says Matthew
Paris, that when he became abbot he was so careful to provide the
choir with new rich copes.

In the midst of his many cares and anxieties, Lanfranc found time to
devote to literary toils. They were useful ones, well worthy of a
monk and a bishop. He corrected the text of the entire Bible, and of
several of the Fathers. He never forgot Bec, and sent several youths,
and among others his own nephew and namesake, there for education;
and much of his correspondence with St. Anselm turns on the progress
of these young men in their studies. Anselm, on his part, frankly
confesses that he gets very weary of continually teaching the younger
boys their declensions; and lets us know that he required his pupils
to compose often in Latin, and rather in prose than in verse; that
he recommended them to read Virgil and the other classics, and to be
diligent in copying manuscripts. At other times his letters, treating
of literary subjects, and accompanying presents of precious books to
the Canterbury scriptorium, introduce allusions to the health of his
scholars, evincing that paternal tenderness which was so remarkable a
feature in his character.

Anselm, who had been elected abbot of Bec on the death of Herluin,
during his visits to England became personally known to the
Conqueror, whose furious passions were restrained in presence of the
gentle saint, who won both his love and his reverence. It was whilst
at Canterbury, on a visit to his friend Lanfranc, that the abbot
of Bec made his first acquaintance with his future biographer, the
young Saxon Eadmer. This was the time when he so sweetly defended
the memory of the Anglo-Saxon saints from the contempt with which
Lanfranc was disposed to regard them; and possibly this circumstance
may have had some share in securing him the confidence and affection
of Eadmer, who then held the office of precentor in the cathedral of
Canterbury.

Lanfranc died in 1089, having survived the great Conqueror nearly two
years. The events which, four years later, placed St. Anselm on the
archiepiscopal throne of Canterbury, and his heroic struggles against
the usurpations of the temporal power in the reigns of William Rufus
and Henry I., scarcely fall within our present subject, though they
form not the least important chapter in our national Church history.
But the succession to the primacy of another great scholar was an
event which made itself felt in the world of letters, and kindled
extraordinary ardour for learned pursuits among the English clergy.
This spirit was certainly encouraged by the Norman kings, who,
ferocious tyrants as they were, all more or less exhibited a taste
for letters. The Conqueror took special care of the education of
his children. Henry Beauclerk was educated at Abingdon Abbey, under
the care of Faricius, an Italian monk of Malmsbury. The proficiency
of the young prince as displayed by his version of Æsop’s fables,
is commonly said to have earned him his learned sobriquet; but Mr.
Wright, in his “Biographia Britannica,” calls his authorship in
question. Both his sisters, and his two queens, Matilda of Scotland
and Adeliza of Louvaine, were patrons of letters. Some epistles from
Matilda to St. Anselm are preserved, which display no mean degree
of scholarship, if they were really the production of her own pen.
The encouragement of these two princesses quickened the imagination
of a host of versifiers, who began to neglect the composition of
hexameters in limping Latin, and to substitute in their room songs
and romances in Norman-French. The Anglo-Saxon tongue was, of course,
never heard at court; and some writers, like William of Malmsbury,
went so far as to omit the Saxon names of men and places, through an
over-delicate fear of distressing refined organs by such barbarous
sounds. A new literature meanwhile sprang up, bearing the impress
of an age of knight-errantry. Alexander, Arthur, and Charlemagne
found themselves transformed from historic personages into heroes of
quaint and extravagant fictions, full of hippogrifs, dragons, and
enchanted castles, where distressed damsels were held captive by
wicked magicians, in order to be delivered by the prowess of doughty
knights--a style of composition to which we give a name borrowed from
the language used by the narrators, that, namely, of the _Romance_
dialect of France. Among the accumulation of rubbish written in this
dialect, which was about this time poured forth into the world, one
book of a higher character appears, the production of Prior Guichard
of Beaulieu. It is a sermon in verse on the vices of the age, and
appears to have been written to be actually recited, for he begins by
telling his hearers that he is going to talk to them, not in Latin,
but in the vernacular, that every one may understand what he says. De
la Rue, who notices this curious poem, observes that the mention of
a sermon in verse need not cause surprise, as at that epoch it was a
common thing for the Anglo-Norman clergy to read to the people on
Sundays and holy-days the lives of the saints in French verse. Nine
such versified lives are still preserved, the production of Boson,
nephew to Pope Alexander II. The mediæval preachers had sometimes
recourse to strange expedients in order to rouse the slumbering
attention of their hearers. Vincent of Beauvais tells us that in his
time it was a common thing to lighten a dull subject by introducing
one of Æsop’s fables, a practice which he does not absolutely
condemn, but recommends to be used sparingly.

Besides the disciples reared in our native schools, a large number
of English scholars were to be found, who mingled with the graver
pursuits of learning something of that spirit of knight-errantry and
wild adventure which characterised the times. Arabic Spain was just
then regarded as the fountain-head of science. The Moorish sovereigns
of Cordova had collected an immense library in their capital, and
are reported to have had seventy others in different parts of
their dominions. Thither, then, wandered many an English student,
attracted rather than repelled by the tales of glamour associated
with a Moslem land. One of these scholar adventurers was Athelhard
of Bath, the greatest man of science who appeared in England before
the time of Roger Bacon. In the reign of the Red King he had left
his own country to study at Tours and Laon, in which latter place he
opened a school. Thence he proceeded to Salerno, Greece, Asia Minor,
and Spain, increasing his stock of learning, and returned at last,
after a long absence, in the reign of Henry I. After this he opened
a school in Normandy, where he taught the Arabic sciences, in spite
of the prejudices which many felt against learning acquired from so
suspicious a source. Among those who so objected was Athelhard’s own
nephew; and in defence of his favourite studies the English master
wrote a book, in which he reminds his nephew of an agreement formerly
made between them, that one should gather all the learning taught by
the Arabs, while the other should, in like manner, study the wisdom
of the Franks. This book is written in the form of a colloquy, in
which the nephew is made to appear as the champion of the old system
of education, and the uncle of the new.

I do not know whether we should conclude that Athelhard gained very
much from his Arabic masters; for if he studied at Cordova the causes
of earthquakes, eclipses, and tides, we find from his _Quæstiones_
that he had also devoted a considerable portion of his time to
investigating the reason why plants cannot be produced in fire, why
the nose is made to hang over the mouth, why the human forehead is
not furnished with horns, whether the stars are animals, whether on
that hypothesis they have any appetite, with other equally singular
and puerile questions. In spite of these eccentricities, however,
Athelhard was a really learned man. He translated Euclid and other
mathematical works out of the Arabic, and is styled by Vincent of
Beauvais, “the Philosopher of England.” A few years later we find
another Englishman, named Robert de Retines, studying at Evora
in company with a certain Hermann of Dalmatia, who is called a
most acute and erudite scholar. Robert had travelled in search of
learning through France, Italy, Dalmatia, Greece, and Asia Minor,
and finally made his way into Spain, where Peter of Cluny found the
two friends studying astrology at Evora. Peter’s journey into Spain
was undertaken with the view of obtaining more exact information as
to the Mohammedan doctrines and writings, and he induced the two
scholars to give up their unprofitable pursuits, and employ their
knowledge of Arabic in translating the Koran. This they did in
1143. Robert afterwards became archdeacon of Pampeluna; he did not,
however, entirely forsake his own country, but returning thither,
wrote a translation of the Saxon Chronicle, which is preserved in
the Bodleian library, and which is dedicated to Peter of Cluny. His
friend Hermann, who is styled “a most acute and profound scholastic,”
produced a translation of Ptolemy’s “Planisphere,” which he addressed
to his old Spanish preceptor Theodoricus, and from the preface to
this book we find that the school at which they studied was not
Arabic, but Christian, a fact of some importance, as it is very
generally stated that the Spanish academies resorted to at this
time by European students were those of the Arabic masters, who are
represented as alone possessing any knowledge of the mathematical
sciences. It is clear however that now, as in the time of Gerbert,
there existed Christian schools in Spain, no less efficient than
those of the Moors, and that it was to these that many of the French
and English scholars resorted for the purposes of study.

To the names of these learned Englishmen I must add that of Odericus
Vitalis, the course of whose education is best given in his own
words in that short summary of his life with which he concludes
his history. “I was baptized,” he says, “at Attingham, a village
in England, which stands on the bank of the great river Severn.
There, by the ministry of Odericus the priest, Thou didst regenerate
me with water and the Holy Ghost. When I was five years old I was
sent to school at Shrewsbury, and offered Thee my services in the
lowest order of the clergy in the Church of SS. Peter and Paul.
While there, Siward, a priest of great eminence, instructed me for
five years in the letters of Carmenta Nicostrata,[153] and taught me
psalms and hymns, with other necessary learning. I was ten years old
when I crossed the British sea, and arrived in Normandy, an exile,
unknown to all, and knowing no one. But supported by Thy goodness, I
found the utmost kindness and attention from these foreigners. I was
professed a monk in the monastery of St. Evroult, by the venerable
abbot Mainier, in the eleventh year of my age, and he gave me the
name of Vitalis, in place of that which I received in England,
and which seemed barbarous to the ears of the Normans. In this
monastery, through Thy goodness, I have lived fifty-six years, loved
and honoured by my brethren far more than I have deserved. Bearing
the heat and burden of the day in a strange land, I have laboured
among Thy servants, and as Thou art faithful, I fear not but I shall
receive the penny which Thou hast promised.”

He elsewhere tells us that his master in this abbey was John of
Rheims, a disciple of the famous school of that city, who was an
author of no mean fame, and composed a great number of works both in
prose and verse. It does not appear that he ever studied in any other
academy, but whatever learning he afterwards attained must have been
acquired within the walls of his own monastery, and he could scarcely
have found his way to a better school. In the eleventh century there
was no branch of learning which was not cultivated among the monks of
St. Evroult; music, medicine, poetry, painting, and the mechanical
arts, all found there able professors. The history of Odericus leaves
us in no doubt as to the extent of his literary attainments. He
quotes most of the ancient classical writers, and many of the Fathers
of the Church, and the intelligence of his mind is displayed by the
way in which he collected the materials of his work. Nothing escaped
his notice, and from the lips of some wandering Crusader or passing
pilgrim he gathered up the tales and episodes with which he enlivened
his pages, giving them in many parts the lively colouring of a
romance. One day a monk of Winchester who stopped at the abbey for a
few hours chanced to show him a life of St. William, copies of which
were then rare in Normandy. Odericus, in raptures at the sight of the
treasure, longed to copy it, but the traveller was in haste, and the
fingers of Odericus were benumbed with cold, for it was the depth of
winter. However, the opportunity was not to be lost, and seizing his
tablets he with great difficulty took such notes from the manuscript
as enabled him afterwards, at his leisure, to compose a life of the
founder of St. Gellone. His “Ecclesiastical History of England and
Normandy,” which occupied twenty years in its compilation, is the
only work he has left to posterity.

Thus much may suffice as to the state of letters in England and
Normandy in the time of Lanfranc and Anselm; the scholars who arose
after them were not unworthy to be the disciples of a school founded
by these two illustrious archbishops; and it will be seen that the
University of Paris, which was soon to efface by the splendour of its
fame that of every other lesser academy, owed its renown in no small
degree to the learning of its English professors.

_CHAPTER XII._

THE RISE OF SCHOLASTICISM.

A.D. 1049 TO 1200.

We are sometimes disposed to think and speak of the Middle Ages, as
though by that term was to be understood a period including several
centuries, during the whole of which society was governed by the
same laws, and made but little progress. In point of fact, however,
men seldom lived faster, if such an expression be admissible,
than during the five centuries to which the term mediæval is most
strictly applied. There was then, as now, a continual expansion and
development going on, and then, as now, the development was partly
good, and partly evil. During the hundred years that elapsed from
the accession of Hugh Capet in 996, to the conquest of Jerusalem in
1099, Christendom assumed an entirely new aspect. The institutions
of feudalism and chivalry were becoming firmly established; the
barbaric invasions had ceased, and the Crusades directed the arms of
the Christians against a common enemy, and so put an end to the civil
wars which had raged under the Carlovingian dynasty. If these changes
cannot be said to have ushered in a period of absolute peace, they
at least tended to consolidate civil government; and the comparative
state of security and order which ensued, naturally encouraged
greater intellectual activity. On the other hand, the Saxon emperors
of Germany had been replaced by the house of Franconia, and that
grievous contest had begun between the temporal and spiritual powers
which, for centuries, formed the great political question of Europe;
while the convulsions of the last century had let loose on the Church
a flood of corruption which probably makes this period one of the
saddest in her history.

The chronicles of a semi-barbarous age, however, possess one charm
which does not attach in an equal degree to those of more civilised
periods. Full as they are of crimes and scandals, they depict a state
of society more keenly susceptible than our own to the influence of
master-minds. Hence they are often enough the records of heroes,
whereas our tamer annals deal less in the acts and words of great
men, than in changes of ministry. The eleventh century groaned under
the threefold scourge of simony, sensuality, and temporal usurpation.
It had the peculiar infelicity of being an age of transition, when
the children of the Church were growing weary of submitting to the
canonical discipline of ancient times, whilst nothing had yet been
established as its substitute. It was, therefore, a time of wild
license and feeble restraint. Three men, however, arose to rule and
reform their age. The first was of royal blood, a descendant of
Charlemagne and Witikind, whom we first find studying at Toul about
the year 1018, along with other princely and ducal cousins, for Toul
was always celebrated for its noble students. Bruno of Dachsburg was
the handsomest man of his time, the idol of his family, graceful,
eloquent, and learned, and a skilled musician. The world was already
predicting his success at the court of his imperial cousin Conrad,
when a trifling accident changed his whole career. One day, the young
student, after a hard morning’s work, threw himself on the grass
at his father’s castle in Alsace, and fell asleep. An insect stung
his face, and the result was a malignant fever which brought him to
the gates of death. He rose from his sick bed to renounce all that
the world had to offer, and to embrace the monastic state. In 1026
he became Bishop of Toul, and for two-and-twenty years devoted his
energies to the reformation of manners and the revival of discipline.
At the end of that time he was elected Pope, and, as St. Leo IX.,
struggled for five years more against simony, the Berengarian heresy,
and the Greek schism. But, in the midst of his other labours, he did
not neglect letters and the arts. He caused good studies to flourish
at Rome, reformed her school of chant, and employed as his legates
learned men, such as his old schoolfellow, Cardinal Humbert, who had
acquired at Toul that Greek erudition which he used so ably against
the Photians.

On the day when Pope Leo entered Rome barefoot to take possession
of the Apostolic throne, he was accompanied by a Cluniac monk, whom
he had met on his journey into Italy, and well-nigh compelled to
join his train. Rome was no new scene to the monk Hildebrand; it was
there, in St. Mary’s Abbey on the Aventine Mount,[154] that the
poor carpenter’s son had received his education. But he returned
thither now to fill a very different station, for Leo created him
cardinal, and abbot of St. Paul’s; and from that time up to the day
of his death, thirty-six years later, the life of Hildebrand forms
the history of his times. The name of him whom the Church reveres
as St. Gregory VII. must suffice in this place, there remains to be
noticed a third Christian hero, a friend of both those illustrious
pontiffs, who struggled with them in the same cause, and against the
same enemies. Born at Ravenna towards the close of the tenth century,
the youngest of a large family, who only saw in him another to divide
their slender inheritance, Peter Damian was all but abandoned in
his infancy, and on the death of his parents was maintained by a
brother, who treated him as a slave, and employed him to keep swine.
The poor farm-drudge grew up without friends and without education;
but the soul that was within him had instincts and aspirations which
no ill-usage could stifle. One day he chanced to find a piece of
money lying on the ground; it was the first time his hands had ever
touched silver, and for a moment the thoughts which might occur to
other boys flashed through his brain. He would purchase food, or
clothes, or give himself an hour’s brief enjoyment. But then came
another thought: “When the food is eaten, and the enjoyment past,
what will remain to me of my money? Better give it to the parish
priest and have a mass said for my father’s soul.” The second thought
was followed; and soon afterwards his elder brother Damian, the
arch-priest of Ravenna, took pity on the boy, and sent him to school,
first at Faenza, and then at Parma, which at that time possessed
excellent masters. Peter, who in gratitude assumed his brother’s name
in addition to his own, became not only a good scholar, but in time
a professor, and his singular capacity in this office obtained him
both scholars and wealth, for, as we have seen in the last chapter,
the profession of scholasticus was beginning to be one of profit.
But he had never forgotten his early experience, and the money that
flowed in went to feed the poor, whilst he himself persevered in
the practice of rigid poverty. One day he made the acquaintance
of two poor hermits belonging to a community that had established
itself at a spot called Fonte-Avellano, at the foot of the Umbrian
Apennines. His biographer calls it a desert, but it was a desert
only in the Italian sense of he word, a solitary valley, that is,
shut in between mountains clothed with evergreen oaks, and chest
nuts, and the silvery olive, its thickets bright with the blossoms
of the Judas-tree and the oleander, and its grass, with the starry
cyclamen. To this desert, then, Peter’s new friends conducted him,
on a visit to their hermitage, which had been founded a few years
previously by the Blessed Ludolf. He found there a community who took
the same view of human life as himself. They regarded man as a being
made up of two noble and immortal parts, that were to be served and
cherished--the soul and the intellect; and of one base and perishable
part, that was good only to be mortified--the body. Simple men as
they were, they had conceived the idea of doing penance for the huge
evil world that lay outside their wilderness. So they lived four days
a week on bread and water, allowing themselves on the other three the
indulgence of herbs, afflicted their flesh in many ways, and divided
their time between psalmody and study. Peter embraced this life with
hearty earnestness, and outstripped his companions alike in his
austerities and in his application to sacred learning. But his light
could not be hid; abbots entreated that he might be sent to instruct
their religious; his own brethren elected him their superior; seven
successive popes employed him in the service of the Church; and, in
1057, Stephen IX. created him cardinal bishop of Ostia. His life was
spent in struggles to stem the corruption of his age and to reform
the clergy. Fleury observes that we must not look in his writings for
acuteness of reasoning; but he had to do with men sunk in rude gross
vices, which were hardly to be remedied by metaphysics. The medicine
which St. Peter Damian prescribed for the sick world was penance;
and he preached it in a plain homely sort of way, which might
possibly offend fastidious tastes, but which had this merit about
it, that it was practical, and had results. He entered the profaned
sanctuary, scourge in hand, to drive out the unclean animals, and to
overthrow the tables of the money-changers. In the intervals between
his incessant legations to reform churches and rebuke princes, he
retired to his cell at Fonte-Avellano, and might be found there
living on pulse and water, employed in making wooden spoons, or other
coarse manual labour, and submitting, even to his eightieth year,
to the same rule of life as the youngest novice. Yet this was the
most elegant scholar of his time; nay, more, he was a poet. And we
do not use the term as classing him among the crowd of versifiers
who wrote their chronicles, and even their theological treatises in
lines which, often enough as Hallam remarks, can only be rendered
into hexameters “by careful nursing.” He imitated neither Virgil
nor Horace, but wrote in those rhymed trochaics which many classical
purists would brand as barbarisms. Yet where shall we see richness of
imagery wedded to greater harmony of numbers than in those wonderful
stanzas, _De Paradisi Gloriâ_, wherein Paradise is depicted under
the form of all that is fairest and brightest to the poet’s eye? The
sparkling of precious gems, the blossoming of early flowers, the
glory of the autumn cornfields, and the long shining of a summer’s
day, lit by a sun that knows no setting, are painted in words that
sound like the echoes of a harpsichord. And from these sensible
images of earthly beauty he rises to that which is above sense,
and sets before us the ineffable joys of those who see the Divine
Beauty face to face, and are filled from the fountains of Eternal
charity. The joys of heaven formed, in fact, the constant subject
of his meditation, and in one of his prose treatises, speaking on
this exhaustless theme, he gives utterance to the sentiment felt by
every poet, of the insufficiency of words to express the emotions of
the heart. “There is always more in the thing itself than the mind
conceives, and more in what the mind conceives than the tongue can
utter.”

The reform of manners so vigorously set on foot by these saints and
their many disciples was friendly to the growth of letters. Parma
attained such celebrity as to be called _Chrysopolis_, or the golden
city, in the days of the great Countess Matilda, who was herself,
says Donizzo, her chaplain, more learned than many bishops, and was
never without an abundance of books. At her instance Irnerius, the
_Lucerna Juris_, as he was called, began to lecture at Bologna on
Roman law about the year 1128. The cathedral schools were everywhere
revived by St. Gregory VII., who required the bishops to found
seminaries where such did not already exist, where boys should be
educated for the priesthood free of cost, certain prebends being
set apart for the support of the masters. This injunction was very
generally obeyed, and many ancient schools were revived which had
fallen into decay. Landulph tells us that at Milan, where things had
been in a very bad state, but where the mingled zeal and gentleness
of St. Peter Damian, and of St. Ariald, had effected a reform,[155]
the schools of philosophy were held in the porch of the cathedral,
where the clerics attended, the archbishop presiding in person.
In fact, the Italians who, in the tenth century, are represented
as having none to teach them the first rudimentary elements, had
somehow contrived in the eleventh to possess themselves of academies
which they considered the first in the whole world.

A document given by Mabillon illustrates in an amusing manner the
jealousy existing at this time between the schools of Italy and
France. A certain prior of Chiusi, named Benedict, coming to the
abbey of St. Martial at Limoges, was imprudent enough to call in
question the commonly-received opinion that St. Martial was an
immediate disciple of our Lord. Of course a storm arose, its fury
bursting over the head of the luckless and too enlightened critic.
The quarrel was taken up by all the monasteries of southern Gaul;
and Ademar, a monk of Angoulême, thought it his duty to address a
circular to the French monasteries, warning them not to listen to the
horrible scandals promulgated by Benedict, whose conceit, he says,
was at the bottom of the whole affair. He attempts to pillory his
antagonist, by putting in his mouth a ridiculous speech. “I am the
nephew,” he is made to say, “of the abbot of Chiusi. He has taken
me to many cities of France and Lombardy to study grammar, and my
various masters have cost him the round sum of 2000 soldi. I studied
grammar nine years, and am studying it still. I am a most learned
man. I have two great boxes full of books, and I have not yet read
one-half of them. In fact there is not a book in all the world that
I have not got. When I leave the schools there will not be such a
doctor as myself under heaven.... I am prior of Chiusi, and know
how to write sermons.... I am so wise I could arrange and manage
an entire council. In Aquitaine there is no learning of any kind,
every one there is a dunce; if a man knows a sprinkling of grammar,
he is thought at once to be a second Virgil. In France (that is,
the province, not the kingdom of France), there is a little more
erudition, but not much. The real seat of wisdom is in Lombardy,
where I have carried on my studies.” In spite of the sarcastic
exaggeration running through this passage, we may gather from it that
Benedict had probably assumed a tone of superiority over his Gallican
neighbours, and that studies must have greatly revived in Lombardy
since the days of the Othos, to furnish the text for a _jeu d’esprit_
of this description.

An age of such increased intellectual activity could hardly fail to
be attended with many changes, bad as well as good. We have seen
in the last chapter that the new class of teachers who were now
springing up taught for gain or reputation, rather than with an eye
to the higher ends of education, and that thus learning in their
hands lost much of its Christian dress. The intellectual curiosity
of students induced many to seek for knowledge in distant lands, with
the same perseverance and spirit of enterprise which young knights
displayed in quest of military adventure. We can hardly in our day
appreciate the difficulties which had to be overcome by men like
Athelhard and Robert of Retines, whose student life was the very
romance of scholarship. If the stock of knowledge thus collected,
surpassed in breadth and variety that which could have been gained
in any single monastic school, it is evident, on the other hand,
that the education of these itinerant scholars must have been sadly
deficient both in mental and moral discipline, failings which were
abundantly evident in the character of the new scholastics. They had
picked up, it may be, a knowledge of medicine at Salerno, and of
mathematics at Cordova, but the claustral rule, the strict subjection
to authority, the holy atmosphere or devotion and obedience, had not
entered into their intellectual life. They had gained their learning
from the lips of professors, in order to become professors in their
turn; but a wandering life through half the cities of Europe was but
a poor exchange for the claustral discipline; and not a few were
found to embrace this kind of life for the very sake of its greater
license and freedom from restraint.

But though this new element was making itself perceptibly felt in
the learned world, it must not be supposed that in the eleventh
century the old system of education was at all superseded for the
cathedral and monastic schools still continued the chief seats of
learning. They even witnessed a sort of classical renaissance,
which sprung up under the encouragement of a crowd of masters
who directed the labours of their scholars to the imitation of
ancient models, without, however, in any way abandoning the line of
Christian studies traced out by Alcuin and his disciples. At Mans,
the office of scholasticus was held by the Blessed Hildebert a pupil
of Berengarius, and a poet and philosopher, who afterwards became
bishop of the same see, and had the distinguished honour of being
imprisoned by the Red King, for refusing, at his bidding, to pull
down the towers of his cathedral. At Autun, the cathedral schools
were directed for twenty years by Honorius, who in his treatise
_De Exilio Animæ_, reprinted in the _Thesaurus Anecdotorum_ of
Pez, has described the course of studies followed by his pupils.
To the ordinary branches of the trivium and quadrivium, he added
instructions in physical science, and gave a distinct course of Holy
Scripture. His lectures on rhetoric included the explanation of the
best Latin classics, and the same was done in most monastic schools
of the period. The notices become more frequent of scholars learned
in Greek and Hebrew, and the fact of their being named as engaged
in the correction of manuscripts in those languages, compels us to
believe that their learning was something more real and solid than
that which has been before noticed as rather foolishly displayed
on the pages of certain writers of the preceding centuries. Thus,
Sigebert of Gemblours, and Marbœuf of Angers, are both spoken of
as Greek and Hebrew scholars. Sigebert is said by his biographer
to have been learned in the Hebrew Scriptures, which he used in
his controversies with the Jews. He was also a good Latin classic,
and much addicted to the composition of verses in imitation of his
favourite author Horace. He gave lectures on poetry and logic in
Paris, but his vanity was not proof against temptation, and led him
to take part with Henry IV. against the Holy See. He is the author of
a chronicle and other historical works, which he made the vehicle for
conveying grave calumnies against the Roman pontiffs. Dante to whom
his character as a Ghibelline partisan was itself a recommendation,
has placed him in Paradise and notices him as lecturing on logic in
the streets of Paris, to students seated, after the custom of the
time, on bundles of straw.[156]

It is difficult to determine how much the scholars of this period
were really in advance of their predecessors. Hallam, who is
generally so sparing of his praise when speaking of any period
earlier than that of the Cinque Cento, admits that at the close of
the eleventh century a good, and even elegant school of Latin writers
was springing up; and notices the Latin vocabulary of Papias as
evincing an amount of profane learning far superior to anything that
had hitherto been known. Du Cange, however, shows that Papias drew
his materials from a dictionary which had been compiled in the Dark
Ages, namely, that published in the tenth century, by Solomon, abbot
of St. Gall’s. Still, it may be concluded that classical studies were
more universally followed than they had hitherto been, and at the
same time extraordinary activity was displayed in the multiplication
of books and the collection of libraries. Useful results sometimes
flow from human infirmities, and there is said to have mingled with
the honest love of learning which encouraged this activity, a certain
spirit of rivalry and emulation among the different monasteries and
religious orders. The Black Monks did not like to be cut out by the
new Cistercians; and Bec, as a matter of course, was not going to
yield to Cluny. Mabillon says that it was the peculiar pride of the
Benedictine abbots of this time, to collect large libraries, and
to have their manuscripts handsomely written and adorned. Never,
therefore, was there a busier time in the scriptorium; a finer
character of writing, and a more convenient system of abbreviation
was introduced, and many abbots are mentioned as remarkable for
their skill as miniaturists. It is said, however, I know not with
what truth, that the copyists, if they got through a greater amount
of work, were often less accurate than their brethren of the eighth
and ninth centuries, and that in this, as in other things, the
proverb held good of “more haste and worse speed.” Hallam, whilst
complaining of the multiplication of blunders, does full justice to
the prodigious industry exhibited by the monastic copyists of this
particular period. As an illustration of the subject, we may quote
the account which Othlonus, the scholasticus of St. Emmeran’s, gives
of his labours. He seems to have been a Bavarian by birth, and his
first school was that of Tegernsee, in Bavaria, a monastery which
had been founded in 994, and was famous for its teachers _in utrâque
linguâ_, and even for its Hebrew scholars. Here, in the twelfth
century, lived the good monk Metellus, whose eclogues, written in
imitation of those of Virgil, describe the monastic pastures and
cattle, and the labours of the monks in the fields. The library of
Tegernsee was rich in classic works, and possessed a fair illuminated
copy of Pliny’s “Natural History,” adorned with pictures of the
different animals, from the cunning hand of brother Ellinger.
Medicine was likewise studied here, to facilitate which, the monks
had a good botanical garden. In such a school Othlonus had every
opportunity of cultivating his natural taste for study, which grew
by degrees to be a perfect passion. As a child he had intended to
embrace the monastic state, but the persuasions of his father, and
his own desire to give himself up exclusively to learned pursuits,
induced him to abandon this design, and after leaving school he
devoted himself for several years to classical studies, with an
ardour which his biographer finds no words strong enough to express.

His only earthly desire at this time, as he himself tells us in
one of his later spiritual treatises, was to have time to study,
and abundance of books. It would seem, however, that this excessive
devotion to human learning had its usual results in the decay of
devotion. It is thus he describes himself at this period of his
life, in his versified treatise _De doctrina Spirituali_. “Desiring
to search into certain subtle matters, in the knowledge of which
I saw that many delighted, to the end that I might be held in
greater esteem by the world, I made all my profit to consist in
keeping company with the Gentiles. In those days what were not to me
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and Tully the rhetorician?... that
threefold work of Maro, and Lucan, whom then I loved best of all, and
on whom I was so intent, that I hardly did anything else but read
him.... Yet what profit did they give me, when I could not even sign
my forehead with the cross?”

However, two severe illnesses wrought a great change in his way of
looking at life, and in 1032, remembering his early dedication of
himself to God, he resolved to forsake the world and take the habit
of religion in the monastery of St. Emmeran’s, at Ratisbon, where
he gave up all thoughts of secular ambition, in order to devote
himself heart and soul to the duties of his state. St. Emmeran’s was,
like Tegernsee, possessed of an excellent school and library. In
the former many good scholars were reared, such as abbot William of
Hirschau, who became as learned in the liberal arts as in the study
of the Scriptures, and who afterwards made his own school at Hirschau
one of the most celebrated in Germany. Othlonus tells us that in this
monastery he found “several men in different classes, some reading
pagan authors, others the Holy Scriptures,” and that he began to
imitate the latter, and soon learnt to relish the Sacred Books, which
he had hitherto neglected, far above the writings of Aristotle,
Plato, or even Boëthius.[157]

It will be seen from this little sketch that Othlonus was not a mere
transcriber, and indeed he afterwards produced several treatises on
mystic theology, besides his “Life of St. Wolfgang,” and was regarded
by his brother monks as “a pious and austere man, possessed of an
immense love of books.” This love he showed not only by reading
them, but by multiplying them; and his achievements in this kind are
related by himself with a certain prolix eloquence which, in mercy to
the reader, I will somewhat abridge.

“I think it right,” he says, “to add some account of the great
capacity of writing which was given me by the Lord from my childhood.
When as yet a little child I was sent to school, and quickly learnt
my letters; and began long before the usual time of learning, and
without any order from the master, to learn the art of writing; but
in a furtive and unusual way, and without any teacher, so that I got
a bad habit of holding my pen in a wrong manner, nor were any of
my teachers afterwards able to correct me in that point. Many who
saw this, decided that I should never write well, but by the grace
of God it turned out otherwise. For, even in my childhood, when,
together with the other boys, the tablet was put into my hands, it
appeared that I had some notion of writing. Then, after a time, I
began to write so well and was so fond of it, that in the monastery
of Tegernsee, where I learned, I wrote many books, and being sent
into Franconia, I worked so hard as nearly to lose my sight....
Then, after I became a monk of St. Emmeran’s, I was induced again
to occupy myself so much in writing, that I seldom got an interval
of rest except on festivals. Meantime there came more work on me,
for as they saw I was generally reading, writing, or composing,
they made me schoolmaster; by all which things I was, through God’s
grace, so fully occupied that I frequently could not allow my body
the necessary rest. When I had a mind to compose anything, I could
not find time for it, except on holidays or at night, being tied
down to the business of teaching the boys, and transcribing what I
had undertaken. Besides the books which I composed myself I wrote
nineteen missals, three books of the Gospels, and two lectionaries;
besides which I wrote four service books for matins. Afterwards,
old age and infirmity hindered me, and the grief caused by the
destruction of our monastery; but to Him who is author of all good,
and who has vouchsafed to give many things to me unworthy, be praise
eternal!” He then adds an account of a vast number of other books
written out by him and sent as presents to the monasteries of Fulda,
Hirschfeld, Lorsch, Tegernsee, and others, amounting in all to thirty
volumes. His labours, so cheerfully undertaken for the improvement
of his convent, were perhaps surpassed by those of the monk Jerome,
who wrote out so great a number of volumes, that it is said a wagon
with six horses would not have sufficed to draw them. But neither
one nor the other are to be compared to Diemudis, a devout nun of
the monastery of Wessobrun, who, besides writing out in clear and
beautiful characters five missals, with graduals and sequences
attached, and four other office books, for the use of the church,
adorned the library of her convent with two entire Bibles, eight
volumes of St. Gregory, seven of St. Augustine, the ecclesiastical
histories of Eusebius and Cassiodorus, and a vast number of sermons,
homilies, and other treatises, a list of which she left, as having
all been written by her own hand, to the praise of God and of the
holy apostles SS. Peter and Paul. This Diemudis was a contemporary
of Othlonus, and found time in the midst of her gigantic labours to
carry on a correspondence with Herluca, a nun of Eppach, to whom she
is said to have indited “many very sweet letters,” which were long
preserved.

I have mentioned as one of the scholars of St. Emmeran’s the holy
William of Hirschau, who was chosen abbot of his monastery in 1070,
and applied himself to make his monks as learned and as indefatigable
in all useful labours as he was himself. He had about 250 monks at
Hirschau, and founded no fewer than fifteen other religious houses,
for the government of which he drew up a body of excellent statutes.
These new foundations he carefully supplied with books, which
necessitated constant work in the scriptorium. And a most stately
and noble place was the scriptorium of Hirschau, wherein each one
was employed according to his talent, binding, painting, gilding,
writing, or correcting. The twelve best writers were reserved for
transcribing the Scriptures and the Holy Fathers, and one of the
twelve, most learned in the sciences, presided over the tasks of the
others, chose the books to be copied, and corrected the faults of
the younger scribes. The art of painting was studied in a separate
school, and here, among others, was trained the good monk Thiemon,
who, after decorating half the monasteries of Germany with the
productions of his pencil, became archbishop of Saltzburg, and died
in odour of sanctity. The statutes with which abbot William provided
his monasteries, were chiefly drawn up from those in use at St.
Emmeran’s, but he was desirous of yet further improving them, and in
particular of assimilating them to those of Cluny, which was then
at the height of its renown. It was at his request that St. Ulric
of Cluny wrote out his “Customary,” in which, among other things,
he gives a description of the manner in which the Holy Scriptures
were read through in the refectory in the course of the year. This
“Customary” is one of the most valuable monuments of monastic times
which remains to us; it shows us the interior of the monastery,
painted by the hand of one of its inmates, taking us through each
office, the library, the infirmary, the sacristy, the bakehouse,
the kitchen, and the school. How beautiful is the order which it
displays, as observed in choir, where, on solemn days, all the
singers stood vested in copes, the very seats being covered with
embroidered tapestry! Three days in the week the right side of the
choir communicated, and the other three the left; during Holy Week
they washed the feet of as many poor as there were brethren in the
house, and the abbot added others also to represent absent friends.
When the Passion was sung, they had a custom of tearing a piece of
stuff at the words “they parted my garments;” and the new fire of
Holy Saturday was struck, not from a flint, but a precious beryl.
There were numberless beautiful rites of benediction observed, as
that of the ripe grapes, which were blessed on the altar during mass,
on the 6th of August, and afterwards distributed in the refectory,
of new beans, and of the freshly-pressed juice of the grape. The
ceremonies observed in making the altar breads were also most worthy
of note. The grains of wheat were chosen one by one, were carefully
washed and put aside in a sack, which was carried by one known to be
pure in life and conversation to the mill. There they were ground and
sifted, he who performed this duty being clothed in alb and amice.
Two priests and two deacons clothed in like manner prepared the
breads, and a lay brother, having gloves on his hands, held the irons
in which they were baked. The very wood of the fire was chosen of the
best and driest. And whilst these processes were being gone through,
the brethren engaged ceased not to sing psalms, or sometimes recited
Our Lady’s office. A separate chapter in the “Customary” is devoted
to the children and their master, and the discipline under which
they were trained is minutely described. We seem to see them seated
in their cloister with the vigilant eye of the master presiding over
their work. An open space is left between the two rows of scholars,
but there is no one in the monastery who dare pass through their
ranks. They go to confession twice a week, and always to the abbot
or the prior. And such is the scrupulous care bestowed on their
education, and the vigilance to which they are subjected, both by
day and night, that, says Ulric, “I think it would be difficult for
a king’s son to be brought up in a palace with greater care than the
humblest boy enjoys at Cluny.”

This “Customary” was drawn up during the government of St. Hugh of
Cluny, whose letter to William the Conqueror displays something of
the independence of mind with which abbots of those days treated the
great ones of the earth. William had written to him requesting him
to send some of his monks to England, and offering him a hundred
pounds for every monk he would send. This method of buying up his
monks at so much a head offended the good abbot, who wrote back to
the king declining to part with any of his community at such a price,
and adding that he would himself give an equal sum for every good
monk whom he could draw to Cluny. During the sixty-two years that he
governed his abbey, he is said to have professed more than 10,000
subjects. Enough has been said to show that the monastic institute
was still strong and vigorous in the eleventh century. Cluny, indeed,
represented monasticism rather in its magnificence than in the more
evangelic aspect of poverty and abasement, yet in the midst of all
her lordly splendour, she continued fruitful in saints. Even the
austere St. Peter Damian, whilst he disapproved of the wealth of
the monks, was edified at their sanctity, and left them, marvelling
how men so rich could live so holily. Their revenues were not spent
on luxury; they went to feed 17,000 poor people, and to collect a
library of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew authors, such as had not its
equal in Europe. It contained among other treasures a certain Bible,
called in the chronicle, “great, wonderful, and precious for its
writing, correctness, and rich binding, adorned with beryl stones,”
which had been written by the single hand of the monk Albert. The
following inscription inserted in the volume attests the piety as
well as the industry of the writer. “This book was written by a
certain monk of Cluny, named Albert, formerly of Treves. It was done
by the order and at the expense of the venerable abbot Pontius, Peter
being at that time the librarian, and providing all things necessary
with joy and diligence. And the aforesaid monk, in company with a
certain brother named Opizo, diligently read through the whole book,
that he might be able to improve it according to the authority of
other books; and he twice corrected it. Therefore Brother Albert a
sinner, prostrating himself at the feet of the brethren of Cluny,
humbly begs of them to pray to God for himself and for his father,
that they may obtain the forgiveness of their sins.”[158]

Elsewhere also the monastic schools continued to produce a number
of excellent masters who thoroughly entered into the revival of
classical studies, which we have noticed as having at this time
sprung up. At Fleury the monk Raoul taught the art of versification
to a crowded audience, and in his own poems advocated the study of
the ancient models, especially of Horace. Quotations from the same
poet, as well as from Virgil and Statius, not unfrequently appear
in the lives of the saints, and even the sermons of this period,
a fact not adduced as an instance of the good taste, but simply
of the erudition, of the authors. In the school of Stavelot, even
Greek poetry was studied. Here was trained the celebrated Wibald,
successively abbot of Stavelot, Monte Cassino, and Corby.

The letters and other remains of this remarkable man have been
inserted by Martene in his collection, and throw much light on the
history of the times. He filled several important offices under the
Emperor Conrad, who confided to him the education of his son and
successor Henry; but whilst constantly immersed in public business
he failed not to labour for the good cause which lay at the heart of
every true monk, the multiplication of books, and the encouragement
of learning. Thus among his letters we find one addressed in 1149
to the scholasticus of Corby, in which he enumerates among the
writers to be studied in the school, Pythagoras, Plato, Sophocles,
and Simonides, a sufficient proof that Greek literature was then
cultivated in certain seminaries, and that the knowledge of that
language was not confined, as Hallam suggests, to the occasional
singing of a Greek _Kyrie_ or _Sanctus_. There are other letters
addressed to the superiors of monasteries whom he engaged to
assist him in the collection of books. Among these was the abbot
of Hildesheim, from whom he hoped to obtain a complete copy of the
Offices of Cicero. His petition for these is in a certain sense
apologetic, for, from the days of St. Jerome, religious men were wont
to be a little sensitive, lest too great a love of the Latin orator
should expose them to the charge of being a _Ciceronian_ rather than
a _Christian_ student. Something of this sort had been playfully
hinted at by the abbot of Hildesheim, and Wibald replies: “We do not
serve the dishes of Cicero at the first or principal table; but when
replenished with better food we partake of them as of sweetmeats
that are served for dessert.” Sometimes his letters are addressed to
friends who have visited his library, and who shared in his literary
tastes. “I wish,” he writes to the Archbishop of Bremen, “that you
would come again and remain longer with us, and, as you promised,
turn over the volumes on our shelves. I wish we might have this
pleasure together in peace and quiet; there is surely no greater
happiness to be enjoyed in life.”

It is, perhaps, superfluous to multiply illustrations of this kind,
but I cannot resist adding to the names already cited that of
Marianus Scotus, whom some call an Irishman, and some a Scot, while
others affirm him to have been an honest Northumbrian, and a member
of the family of Bede.[159] He died towards the end of the eleventh
century, having been successively monk in the abbeys of Cologne,
Fulda, and Mayence, and professor of theology some years in that of
Ratisbon. He was a poet, and the author of a Chronicle frequently
quoted as one of the best mediæval histories, and continued by
later writers. His biographers say of him that his countenance
was so beautiful, and his manners so simple, that no one doubted
he was inspired in all he said and did by the Holy Ghost. A most
indefatigable writer, he transcribed the whole Bible with sundry
commentaries, and that not once but repeatedly. Moreover he drew out
of the deep sea of the holy Fathers, certain sweet waters for the
profit of his soul, which he collected in prolix volumes. With all
this he found spare moments which he devoted to charitable labours
on behalf of poor widows, clerks, and scholars, for whose benefit he
multiplied psalters, manuals, and other pious little books, which
he distributed to them free of cost for the remedy of his soul. Who
will refuse to believe that such loving toils as these were found
worthy to receive the miraculous token of favour related in the old
legend? “One night,” says the annalist, “the brother whose duty it
was, having forgotten to give him candles, Marianus nevertheless
continued his work without them; and when the brother, recollecting
his omission, came late at night to his cell, he beheld a brilliant
light streaming through the chinks of the door, and going in softly,
found that it proceeded from the fingers of the monk’s left hand, and
he saw and believed.”

In some writers of this time there are indications of increased
attention being paid to natural phenomena, and the geographical
notices introduced into the chronicle of Otto of Frisingia are
praised by the authors of the _Histoire Littéraire_ for their
exactness and intelligence. A very singular and interesting fact
is recorded in the chronicle of Marianus (or rather in its later
continuation), which, though of a supernatural character, may perhaps
be admitted among the scientific notices of the time. I allude to
the vision seen and described by the Blessed Alpais of Cudot, who
saw in rapture the earth hanging suspended in space shaped like a
globe, or rather a spheroid, for she calls it not perfectly round,
but egg-shaped. It was surrounded by water, and the sun appeared
of a vastly greater size. Equally remarkable in another branch of
science are the speculations of Ithier, a monk of Limoges, on the
faculties of the mind corresponding to different parts of the brain,
in which we catch a first glimpse of the modern theory of phrenology.
Nor must it be supposed that the classical and scientific studies,
which excited so much interest, caused the cultivation of the vulgar
dialects to be forgotten. Abbots and bishops often preached in
Romance, like St. Vital of Savigny and Hildebert of Mans, though
the latter is said to have succeeded better in Latin. St. Bernard
delivered his exhortations to his brethren not in Latin but Romance,
for the benefit of the lay-brothers who were ignorant of the learned
tongues, as Mabillon labours to prove. A vast number of translations
were likewise made into the popular dialects, and about the end of
the eleventh century the monk Grimoald published a version in Romance
of the entire Bible; this translation being made nearly a century
before that of the Waldenses, though the latter is very generally
represented to be the earliest known version of the Scriptures in any
vulgar tongue.[160]

It is evident, then, that all the learning of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries was not swallowed up by the new race of
scholastics, nor was every scholastic a Berengarius. Yet there is a
certain change perceptible in many of those who at this time attained
to literary eminence, and a greater predominance of the philosophic
element, consequent in some degree from the nature of the studies
rendered popular in the school of Bec. We begin more frequently
to meet with tales of scholars who, in the midst of their learned
pursuits, were overtaken with a dread of the perils which beset their
course, and sought to escape them by flying into the desert. The
cloisters were peopled with such refugees from the schools, who, like
Lanfranc, often reappeared after a while to resume the weapons of
human science, which they had thought to fling aside for ever, and
use them in the service of their Master.

Of these converts were St. Bruno, the founder of the Carthusians,
and Odo of Tournai. Bruno is said to have studied at Tours under
Berengarius, though this appears doubtful. In 1056 the scholasticus
of Rheims having resigned his charge, that he might devote himself
exclusively to the affairs of his own salvation, Gervase, Archbishop
of Rheims, promoted Bruno to the office, which by this time had
become associated to that of Chancellor of the diocese, and gave its
holder a certain superiority over the other diocesan schools. Bruno
continued to fill this responsible post for twenty years, during
which time he numbered among his pupils Odo, afterwards Pope Urban
II., and many of the greatest prelates of the time. He was reckoned
the first philosopher, theologian, and poet of France, and by writers
of his own day is extolled as “the doctor of doctors, the glory
of the Church, the model of good men, and the mirror of the whole
world.” The romantic story which ascribes his conversion to religion
to the horror caused by the voice which came from the dead body of a
certain eminent doctor, proclaiming his damnation, is now universally
rejected as the production of a later age. In fact, St. Bruno has
himself related the manner in which his resolution was first formed
in a letter addressed to Raoul, provost of Rheims, wherein he reminds
him of a certain day when they were walking with another canon named
Fulcius, in the garden adjoining his house, conversing together of
the vanities of the world. “Then it was,” he says, “that the Holy
Spirit moved us to renounce all perishable things, and embrace the
monastic life that we might merit life eternal.” It would also appear
that a grievous case of simony, which had scandalised the diocese,
powerfully wrought on Bruno’s mind, and moved him to fly from a world
so hedged about with temptations. He was followed into his retreat
by a number of his former scholars; but it was not until 1084 that
they at last determined on the way of life they should choose, and,
receiving the monastic habit from the hands of St. Hugh of Grenoble,
laid the foundation of the Carthusian Order, which took its name
from the desert they had chosen for their abode. In after years the
order continued to be largely recruited from the same class whence
their first founder had been drawn. Many a fine scholar came to the
wild rocks of the Chartreuse to seek in obscurity for a peace which
he found by experience the world of intellect could never give;
and Bulæus informs us that no order of monks received among their
ranks so many members of Paris University as did these austere and
penitential recluses.

Odo, or Oudart, the other convert to whom allusion has been made,
first attracted notice as a teacher at Toul, a city which had always
been rich in schools and schoolmasters, and which had felt a special
pride in keeping up its learned reputation, since 1048, when it had
sent its bishop to fill the chair of St. Peter in the person of
St. Leo IX. Odo’s fame reached the ears of the canons of Tournai,
who entreated him to take charge of their cathedral school, which
he accordingly governed for five years. A skilful teacher, and a
devourer of books, Odo possessed extraordinary powers of labour,
and when any literary work was in hand, he rested neither day nor
night till it was accomplished. He was also a great friend of method
and good moral discipline, but as yet he had been too exclusively
taken up with the cares and pleasures of his profession to give much
thought to spiritual things. Or perhaps we might rather say that he
hardly knew of their existence. Like other busy, hard-working men,
he was swept along in the tide of daily life, and thought it much
to preserve a character of stainless honour and respectability. His
success as a teacher was so great, that disciples came to him from
all parts of France, as well as from Flanders, Italy, and Saxony. The
city of Tournai became literally filled with students, who might be
seen disputing together in the public streets: and as you drew near
the school you would see them walking with the master, or seated
around him; or, in the evening, standing with him at the church door,
while he taught them the various constellations, and explained to
them the course of the stars.

Odo was as remarkable for his virtue as his learning. He took all his
disciples to the church with him daily. They never numbered fewer
than two hundred; but he made them walk two-and-two through the
streets, he himself bringing up the rear, and enforcing a discipline
as strict as would have been observed in the most regular monastery.
No one ventured to speak to his companion, or to look right or left,
and in choir they might have been taken for monks of Cluny. He did
not allow them to frequent the company of women, or to wear any kind
of finery; and if they transgressed his orders in these respects,
he turned them out of his school. At the hours when he gave his
lectures no layman was allowed to enter the cloisters, which were at
other times the resort of the public. So strict was he in this, that
he did not hesitate to exclude Everard, the Castellan of Tournai, a
nobleman of power and influence; for it was Odo’s principle that a
man must not deviate a hair’s-breadth from his duty from the motive
of human respect. By these means he won the love and esteem of
every one: canons and people alike spoke well of him, though some
were found to say that his regularity of life sprang rather from
philosophy than religion.

He had directed his school for about five years, when one day,
a certain clerk having brought him St. Augustine’s “Treatise on
Free-will,” he purchased it, merely with the view of increasing his
library, and threw it into a coffer among some other books without
looking at it, for his taste inclined him rather to the study of
Plato than of the Fathers. About two months afterwards, however, as
he was explaining Boëthius to his disciples, he came to the fourth
book of the “Consolations of Philosophy,” in which the author treats
of Free-will. Remembering the book he had lately purchased on the
same subject, he sent for it, and having read two or three pages, was
struck with the beauty of the style; and calling his pupils, said to
them, “I own that until now I was ignorant how agreeable and eloquent
are the writings of St. Augustine;” and that day and the following
he read to them from this work, explaining its difficulties as he
proceeded.

In this way he came to that passage in the third book, wherein St.
Augustine compares the soul of the sinner to a slave condemned to
some vile and disgusting labour. Odo sighed as he read the powerful
words of the writer, exclaiming, “How striking is this comparison!
it seems as if written expressly for us men of science. We adorn the
corrupt world with the little stock of learning which we possess,
and after death, perhaps, are not found worthy of eternal happiness,
because we have done God no service; but have used our intellects
for vanity and worldly glory!” With these words he rose from his
chair, and going into the church, remained there in floods of tears,
his scholars meanwhile remaining astonished and perplexed. From that
day he gradually discontinued his lectures, and began to frequent
the church more diligently, and to distribute in alms all the money
he received from his pupils. He also fasted so rigorously that
his appearance soon completely changed, and he became so thin and
attenuated as scarcely to be recognised.

The rumour soon ran through the town that Odo, the famous doctor,
was about to abandon the world. Four of his disciples resolved never
to quit him, and made him promise to do nothing except in concert
with them. Monks and abbots from every religious house in the
neighbourhood of Tournai, wanted Odo to join their communities, but
his disciples preferred the rule of the canons as being easier than
that of the monks. Rabod, the Bishop of Tournai, accordingly made
over to them an old church, part of an abbey which had been destroyed
by the Normans, and they took possession of it in 1092. Two years
later they resolved on embracing the monastic rule, and the bishop
giving his consent, Odo was elected first abbot of the restored abbey
of Tournai. Though he had fled to the cloister to escape from the
pride of the schools, he did not neglect the cause of learning. Like
most of the religious superiors of his day, he gave much time and
trouble to the formation of a good library and scriptorium, and used
to make an innocent boast of the many good writers whom the Lord had
given him. Had you gone into his scriptorium, says his successor, you
would have seen twelve youths, sitting in silence, most diligently
engaged in copying manuscripts, at tables made for the purpose. And
he enumerates among the books so transcribed the works of St. Jerome
and St. Gregory, and all that he could collect of Bede, Isidore,
Ambrose, Austin, and the Lord Anselm of Bec.

About this time the rival philosophical sects known as the
Realists and Nominalists began to attract attention. The questions
in dispute between them regarded the validity and existence of
_universal ideas_. The expression requires explanation. An idea
is the representation in the mind of some impression made on the
senses by an external object. These ideas may be either _particular_
or _universal_. They are particular when they correspond to some
individual object, as _John Smith_, or _that tree_. They are
universal when we separate them from any individual object, and
conceive them as corresponding to something which is to be found in
many individuals, whereby these may be classified together, as when
we speak of _men_ or _trees_. According to the scholastics, there
are five kinds of such universal ideas, namely, _species_, _genus_,
_difference_, _property_ and _accident_. The species includes many
individuals, as _sheep_, _oak_. The genus includes many species, as
_animal_, _tree_. Difference is something which distinguishes one
species from another belonging to the same genus. _Property_, or
essential attribute, is what necessarily belongs to the essence of
a thing; as when we say of a globe that it is _round_. Accident is
some attribute to be found in a thing which is not necessary to its
existence, as if we were to say of the same globe that it is _green_.
We are able to hold these ideas in our mind, abstracted from any
object, and so we come to have the abstract ideas of men, animals,
trees, roundness, or whiteness, without connecting them with any
particular individual. But the Nominalists denied the existence of
such ideas, and declared the above distinctions to be mere sounds
of the voice, corresponding to no external reality. They knew what
was meant by a wise man, or a white horse, but professed themselves
unable to comprehend what was meant by _wisdom_ or _whiteness_. The
Realists, on the other hand, appealing to the authority of Boëthius,
contended that these ideas were real and existent.

Both parties numbered great names in their ranks. Odo of Tournai
was a partisan of the Realists, as was also the Blessed Robert
of Arbrisselles. At the head of the Nominalists appeared his
fellow-student and professor in the Paris schools, Roscelin, a canon
of Compeigne, and a man whose character too closely resembled that of
Berengarius. He seems to have adopted novel and startling opinions
as a means of drawing the eyes of men on himself, and the manner in
which he applied his philosophical method of reasoning to revealed
doctrines, specially that of the Holy Trinity, resulted in actual
heresy, and brought on him in 1092 the condemnation of the Council
of Soissons. Taking refuge in England, he there met with a vigorous
opponent in the person of St. Anselm, who, whilst freely admitting,
and even advocating the exercise of the intellectual powers on the
mysteries of faith, marked out the limits between faith and reason,
and severely condemned the presumption of those who would attempt
to make reason the test of faith. He declares that we must seek the
intelligence of those things that we already believe; that reason is
not the means by which we attain to faith, but rather that by which
we enjoy the evidence and contemplation of the mysteries which we
already believe: and that right order demands that we should first
receive the profound truths of faith before we dare to exercise
our reason upon them.[161] As time went on, and both sects pushed
their philosophical views to extremes, grave errors were charged
against both, and the foundations were laid of many forms of modern
Rationalism.

Paris was now rapidly becoming the centre of scholastic activity. The
fame of her masters spread over Europe, and among them were Lambert,
a disciple of Fulbert of Chartres; Manegold, whose very daughters
were learned, and opened a school for the education of their own sex,
Anselm of Laon and Bernard of Chartres. John of Salisbury, whose
favourite master, William de Conches, had himself been a pupil of
Bernard’s, has left us an interesting account of the method of this
last-named teacher. He explained all the best authors, not confining
himself to grammar strictly so called, but making his pupils observe
all the refinements of rhetoric. He pointed out the propriety of
certain terms and metaphors, and the best order and arrangement of a
subject; and showed the variety of styles to be used according to the
different matters treated of by a writer. If any passage occurred in
their reading referring to other sciences, he took pains to explain
it, according to the capacity of his hearers. He was careful to
cultivate their memory, making them learn and recite choice passages
from the classic historians, poets, and philosophers; requiring them
one day to give an exact account of what they had heard or read the
day previous. He was always exhorting them to read much in private,
but not indiscriminately, directing them to avoid what was only
fit to feed curiosity, and to content themselves with the works of
standard authors. For, he used to say, quoting Quinctilian, “it is
a great weakness to read all that every miserable writer has to say
on every subject, and only loads the memory with superfluous and
worthless things.”

As he knew that it is to very little purpose to hear or study
examples unless we accustom ourselves to reproduce the treasures thus
stored up in the memory, he was anxious that his pupils should every
day compose something both in prose and verse, and he established
conferences among them wherein they mutually questioned and answered
one another, the utility of which exercise John of Salisbury speaks
of very highly; “provided,” as he observes, “that charity govern
the emulation displayed in such encounters, so that while we make
progress in letters we still preserve humility. For a man should not
serve two masters so opposed one to the other as learning and vice.”

This was also the rule observed by Bernard, who maintained that
the first and principal key to knowledge was Humility, to which he
assigned Poverty as a companion. The subjects on which he exercised
his scholars were always fitted to cherish both faith and good
morals. And the work of each day was finished with the recitation of
the “Our Father,” and a brief prayer for the dead.

Anselm of Laon was a teacher of much the same character, and, if
possible, of greater renown. He and his brother Radulph were called
by Guibert de Nogent the two eyes of the Latin Church, and by their
knowledge of the Scriptures converted many heretics. Some of their
pupils were as famous as themselves, such as Hugh Metellus, a great
lover of the classics, whose flow of language was so great that he
dictated to two secretaries at once, and could improvise a thousand
verses, standing on one leg, and who was induced by the teaching of
his pious masters to exchange a life of worldly vanity, the love of
dress and delicate diet, for the austere regimen of a canon regular
of Toul. Another of Anselm’s scholars was William de Champeaux,
under whom the Paris schools first attained that pre-eminence which
they maintained in the world of letters down to the period of the
Revolution. After studying successively under Manegold and Anselm, he
was appointed archdeacon of the Church of Paris, and master of the
Cathedral school, where he taught logic, rhetoric, and theology, with
great success. And about the year 1100 his reputation attracted one
disciple whose name is indelibly associated with the literary history
of the period,--the celebrated Peter Abelard.

Abelard’s choice of a scholar’s life is said to have been influenced
in the first instance by his dislike of the profession of arms.
Nature, while it had given him an insatiable desire for fame and
worldly glory, had denied him the gift of personal courage, and he
himself made no secret of the feeling which, as he said, had moved
him to enrol himself under the banners of Minerva, rather than those
of Mars. His subtle mind was very early devoted to the study of
logic, but not satisfied with the teaching to be found in his own
diocese of Nantes, he led a wandering life for some time, passing
from school to school; and at last found his way to Paris, where
William de Champeaux was then at the height of his reputation as a
teacher of dialectics. The brilliant qualities of his new pupil at
first won the heart of his master, but erelong Abelard began to show
signs of that presumption and contempt of every one’s attainments
except his own, which kept him at war with all his contemporaries.
He came to the lecture rooms less with the view of learning than with
the secret hope of outshining his fellow-students and perplexing
his master. He was perpetually proposing vexatious questions, for
the purpose of entrapping the latter in some logical subtlety; and
affecting to consider that William had shown himself unable to answer
these difficulties, he disdained any longer to be the scholar of
one whom he considered his inferior, and determined on setting up a
school for himself.

Unable to do this in Paris, where the influence of William de
Champeaux was at that time all-powerful, he established himself first
at Mélun, and then at Corbeil, which was nearer to the capital.
He was but twenty-two when he first appeared before the world as
an independent professor, and soon made himself talked of for his
brilliancy, his fluency, and the vehemence with which he attempted
to make the art of logic supersede all the other liberal arts,
which he was accustomed to treat with contempt. His passion for
glory soon brought him back to Paris, where William de Champeaux was
now archdeacon, and head of the cathedral school. Abelard renewed
his attacks on his old master, and that with such success, that the
cloisteral schools became deserted, and the fickle audience flocked
to the lectures of the new professor. The circumstance seems to
have touched the heart of William with a contempt for intellectual
renown which was so easily won and lost, and resigning his school,
he retired among the canons regular of St. Victor, a religious
house destined to play a great part in the history of the future
university. This was in 1109, and, by the advice of Hildebert, Bishop
of Mans, who wrote to the new canon, congratulating him on “the step
by which he had at last become a true philosopher,” William opened
a school within his monastery, which afterwards produced several
illustrious theologians, who are all distinguished by the surname of
St. Victor.

It is unnecessary to pursue the rivalries of the two professors
through all their windings; in 1113 William was raised to the see of
Châlons, a circumstance which seems to have first induced Abelard
to study theology, with the hope of attaining similar honours.
Accordingly, we next find him at Laon, attending the school of
Anselm, now dean of that church, whom, however, he very soon declared
to be altogether unworthy of his great renown. “His learning was,”
he said, “nothing but foliage without fruit; long custom, rather
than any real merit, had acquired him a name. If you consulted him
on any difficulty, you came away just as wise as you went. There was
nothing but abundance of fine words, without a grain of sense or
reason.” So, in despair of finding a master wise enough to teach one
of his genius, he resolved to do without one, and, with the help of a
commentary, began to give lectures on the prophet Ezechiel. His wit,
his fluency, and his singular charms of voice and manner, veiled the
real shallowness of his theological attainments, and, on returning to
Paris, he succeeded in gaining what had been for so many years the
great object of his ambition, the direction of the cathedral school.
Then began the period of his extraordinary popularity; disciples
flocked to him from all parts of France and Germany, as well as
from Rome and England. His vanity easily persuaded him that he was
not merely the greatest, but the only philosopher of his time; all
the world hung on his eloquence, but amid the long catologue of his
admirers, none was to be found so bewitched with his merits as he was
himself.

Abelard’s teaching bore the character of his own restless and
impatient genius. Disdainful of anything which did not promise quick
results, he aimed at presenting his disciples with a philosophy which
professed to lead them to the possession of wisdom by a royal road.
The trivium and quadrivium were to be consigned to oblivion; the
classics and the Fathers might alike grow dusty on the shelves, logic
was to be all in all, and the philosopher and the theologian might
abandon every other study, provided they perfected themselves in the
art which St. Bernard characterised with caustic wit, as “that of
ever studying, and never reaching the truth.” Abelard’s condemnation
of the classics is worth noticing, as showing the similarity of mind
which existed between him and Berengarius, whom Guitmond describes as
“making no account of the opinions of his masters, and despising the
liberal arts.” In neither of them did this condemnation arise from a
preponderance of the Christian sense; but from their repugnance to
objective realities.[162] Their philosophy was in short that of which
the apostle speaks, when he condemns the “vain babblings” of those
who “desire to be teachers of the law,” which differed little from
the “foolish questionings” of the sophists. The effect of these new
doctrines was to inaugurate a scholastic revolution. One by one the
fair branches of the tree of science were severed from the trunk,
till at last nothing remained but the exercise of subtle and captious
argumentation, wherein logic came to be used not as a means but an
end, and the scholar was no longer led to seek for truth as his
object, but to rest content with the search after it.

Thus passed several years, during which Abelard had earned a fame,
brilliant indeed beyond that of any of his contemporaries, but
unhappily one which left his moral reputation far from stainless. In
1117 we find him in the abbey of St. Denis, where he had taken refuge
from the disgrace entailed on him by his connection with Heloïsa.
Even here his insupportable vanity was not long before it betrayed
itself in the criticisms he passed on his abbot and his brother
monks, among whom he seems to have aspired to act as the reformer.
The abbot longed to get rid of so troublesome a subject, and the
opportunity of doing so soon presented itself. Crowds of students
began to clamour at the gates of St. Denis for their old master,
and to implore him to reopen his school. He therefore resumed his
lectures, but unable to rest contented with teaching only what had
been taught before him, he began to introduce logical subtleties into
his theological views, and put forth certain explanations on the
doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which raised a storm of opposition.
His chief opponents were Alberic and Lotulf, two former disciples
of Anselm of Laon, and William of Champeaux. They not only attacked
his opinions as heterodox, but complained that he had no right to
teach at all. His position as a professor was, they said, altogether
irregular, for, contrary to the established usages of the Paris
schools, he taught _sine magistro_.

This term requires a little explanation; and shows us the germ
of what soon afterwards developed into the system of university
graduation. According to established custom, no scholar could be
licensed to _teach_ publicly who had not previously gone through a
regular course of study under some approved doctor. But Abelard had
had no master in theology, except himself; for, as we have seen,
he gave up his attendance in Anselm’s school through contempt for
his inferiority, and had at once begun to teach a science which in
reality he had never studied. At a Council assembled at Soissons, his
Treatise on the Holy Trinity was condemned, and he himself required
to cast it into the fire, and to make public profession of the faith
by reciting the creed of St. Athanasius, which he did with many
tears and sighs, after which he was sent back to the monastery of
St. Denys. He had not been there long, however, when a controversy
which he thought fit to raise on the question of the identity of St.
Denys, the Areopagite, with the patron of the abbey, got him into
fresh trouble, and he fled from the monastery to the territory of
the Count of Champagne, where he fixed his residence in a beautiful
solitude near Nogent, which was soon found out by his disciples.
“They came crowding to me,” he writes, “from all parts, and leaving
the towns and cities, were content to dwell in the wilderness.
Instead of spacious houses, they set up for themselves little tents,
and put up gladly with wild herbs instead of delicate viands. People
said one to another, ‘Behold the world is gone after him.’ At last,
as my little oratory would not hold them, they enlarged it, building
it of wood and stone.” To this new building he gave the name of the
_Paraclete_, and it might truly have been his consolation could he
have learnt wisdom from the past, and bowed his erratic genius under
the yoke of faith. But the school of the Paraclete soon resounded
with new errors; to the former opinions put forth regarding the Holy
Trinity, were now added equally heterodox views on the subject of
grace and original sin, which were at once discerned and denounced by
two saints who then illuminated the church with their doctrine and
their virtue--St. Norbert, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Abelard,
whose natural cowardice shrank from the prospect of new dangers,
endeavoured to escape the consequences of his own imprudence by
abandoning the Paraclete, and accepting the government of St. Gildas’
abbey; but the uncouth manners and language of the monks filled him
with repugnance, or perhaps it would be truer to say, the monastic
routine proved insufferable to one who had nothing of the real monk
about him. In 1126, therefore, we find him once more teaching in the
schools of St. Geneviève. He was never really at home save in the
Professor’s chair, but unhappily he never filled it without betraying
himself into some of the audacities of unorthodox philosophy. Soon
his old errors were reproduced, and called forth the zeal of St.
Bernard, who protested with all the force of his nervous eloquence
against the strange assemblage of heresies to be found united in the
teaching of a single man. “When he speaks of the Holy Trinity,” he
says, “it is in the style of Arius; he is a Pelagian when he treats
of grace, and a second Nestorius when he speaks of the Person of
Jesus Christ. His vanity,” continues the saint, “is such that he
brags as if there were nothing in heaven and earth he did not know;
and in truth he knows a little of everything except himself.” In
his 190th Epistle, addressed to Pope Innocent II., St. Bernard sums
up all the errors of Abelard, who had ventured to deny, and even
to ridicule, the doctrine of Redemption, which he presumptuously
declared illogical, declaring that our Lord came only to instruct us
by His Word and Example. His final condemnation took place at the
Council of Sens, which imposed silence on him for ever, a sentence
confirmed by the authority of Pope Innocent II. This condemnation
might possibly have had no better result than that of Soissons,
had it not been for the charity of the Venerable Peter of Cluny,
at whose monastery Abelard stopped on his way to Rome, where he
purposed to appeal against his sentence. The holy abbot succeeded
in drawing from him a recantation of his errors; he induced him to
renounce the scholastic career, which had been the source of so many
temptations, and frankly to submit to the judgment of the Council and
the Pope. More than this, he exerted himself to effect a personal
reconciliation between Abelard and St. Bernard, and lastly, he
offered to the wounded spirit of the unhappy scholar a secure and
sheltered retreat in his own community, where, under the habit of
religion, the Professor of St. Geneviève spent the last years of his
life in the exercise of piety and penance.

There then, let us leave him, in his poor cell with its wooden
candlestick and its crucifix, with the Holy Scriptures and a few
treatises of the Fathers for his only library; defeated, as some
might say, put to silence, and extinguished--but with his heart,
at last, at peace. Well might he have exclaimed with the Psalmist,
“It is good for me that Thou hast humbled me!” A change was wrought
in him so great, that, as we read the words in which his good
abbot describes it, we can scarcely recognise the old Abelard of
former years. “Never did I see a man more humble,” writes Peter
the Venerable, “whether in gesture, habit, or countenance. He read
continually, prayed often, and kept silence at all times, unless when
forced to speak; and after his reconciliation with the Holy See,
offered the Holy Sacrifice almost daily, and occupied himself only
with meditating or teaching me truths of religion or philosophy.” A
marvellous change indeed; and happy were it if all who incurred the
same censures could follow in the same course.

We have seen that the rationalistic errors of Abelard found their
ablest opponent in St. Bernard, who had conceived a distrust of the
new philosophy when studying as a mere boy in the canon’s school
at Chatillon, where the fashionable scholasticism was just then
beginning to be introduced. He seems to have felt an instinctive
dread of its ultimate tendencies, and to have preserved during his
whole life the sentiments resulting from his early experience of
what his biographer Geoffery of Igny designates as the “wisdom of
the world.” Closely united to him in their theological views, were
the great scholars of St. Victor’s, Hugh, Richard, and Adam. Hugh of
St. Victor, the third prior in succession from William de Champeaux,
was styled the second Augustine, from his devoted admiration of that
Father. Brought up in a house of canons regular in Saxony, he bore
testimony in after life to the care they bestowed on his education.
“I do not fear to certify,” he says, “that they neglected no means of
perfecting me in the sciences, and even instructed me in many things
which might be thought trifling and extraordinary.” These words occur
in his _Didascalion_, or Treatise on Studies, which he drew up with
the view of remedying the disorderly and unmethodical manner in which
most scholars then pursued their academic labours. In it he gives
an interesting account of his own early life as a scholar. “I never
despised anything that belonged to erudition,” he says; “when I was
a scholar I studied the names of everything I saw. I committed to
memory all the sentences, questions, replies, and solutions I had
heard and learnt during the day; and I used to describe the figures
of geometry on the floor with charcoal. I do not say this to boast of
my knowledge, which is nothing, but to show that he proceeds best who
proceeds with order. You will find many things in histories and other
books, which taken in themselves seem of little profit, but which
nevertheless are useful and necessary when taken in connection with
other things.” Hugh, like all the disciples of this school, advocated
the old system, according to which all the parts of knowledge stood
in mutual relation to one another, and theology dominated over the
whole. In his Treatise _De Vanitate Mundi_, he describes an imaginary
school, in which is no doubt depicted that of his own monastery.
The students are described divided into groups, according to the
different subjects on which they are engaged. All the liberal arts
are cultivated in turn, and while the fingers of some are employed
in designing or colouring an illuminated page, others are studying
the nature of herbs, or the constitution of the human frame. As a
spiritual writer, Hugh of St. Victor is considered to be surpassed by
his disciple Richard of St. Victor, a Scotchman by birth, and one of
the greatest mystic theologians of the Church. The special doctrines
insisted on by this school were those which put forth faith, and
not reason, as the ground of certainty, and maintained that reason
was to be exercised only to demonstrate the truths that were held
by faith. Abelard, in his extravagant exaltation of the claims of
reason, had gone so far in his “Introduction to Theology,” as to
define faith as an opinion, and to depreciate a too ready belief,
praising that cautious philosophy which does not yield its faith
till it has subjected all things to the test of reason. To believe
without doubting, according to this view of things, was the religion
of women and children; to doubt all things before we believe them was
alone worthy of the dignity of man. The scholars of St. Victor not
only vindicated the true claims of faith, but they sought to prove
that faith itself must rest on the foundation stone of charity. They
loved to remind their disciples of those words of Our Lord, “If any
man will do the will of God he shall know of the doctrine.” Charity,
they said, is then the foundation, and Humility the key, to all true
science, and we can understand the Truth of God only in proportion
as we obey it. They did not seek to set aside the just use of the
reason, but to assign it limits, and to prohibit the search after
things confessedly above the grasp of human intellect. “What is it
to be wise,” asks Hugo of St. Victor, “but to love God? for love is
wisdom.” He complains of the cavilling spirit of the dialecticians
who would fain turn the simplest precepts of the Gospel into
matter of dispute. If they read that we are to love our neighbour
as ourselves, they begin to argue, saying, “If I love one man as
myself, then I must love three or four men more than myself;” and
this they style seeking truth. Again, he blames the conceit of those
who, ignorant of the very first elements, will condescend to study
nothing but the sublimest matters, forgetting that the beginning of
all discipline is humility. Neither would he endure that presumptuous
spirit which gloried in the subtlety of its own powers, but, like a
true disciple of St. Augustine, desired that reliance on Divine Grace
should be the foundation of the whole spiritual and intellectual
edifice.

Perfectly in accordance with this teaching was that of John of
Salisbury, who exposed the vain pretensions of those who ought to
make philosophy consist in a barren exercise of the reasoning powers.
“Philosophy,” he says, “is nothing else but the love of God, and
if that love be extinguished philosophy vanishes away. All studies
worthy of that end must tend to the increase of charity, and he
who acquires or increases charity has gained the highest object of
philosophy. This, therefore, is the true rule of philosophy, that
all learning and all reading should be made conducive to truth and
charity, and then the choir of virtues will enter into the soul
as into a temple of God. They most impudently err who think that
philosophy consists in mere words, who multiply phrases and propose
a thousand ridiculous little questions, endeavouring to perplex
their hearers that they may seem more learned than Dædalus. But
though eloquence is a useful and noble study, this loquacity of vain
disputation is a most hateful thing.” Truth, as all agreed, was the
only object of science; but whilst Abelard and his followers sought
this truth in the subjective reasonings of their own minds, the
mystics of St. Victor’s school declared that it was not to be sought
by the understanding alone, but by the heart and will. For what is
Truth, they asked, but God Himself? Who is to be sought by love
rather than by science. He therefore who seeks God, seeks the highest
truth, and embraces it when it finds Him. It knows all things in
proportion as it knows more of God, Whom not to know is darkness. And
it knows all things in Him, for, in the words of St. Gregory, “what
does not he see, who sees Him Who sees all things?”

Such was the sublime teaching which St. Bernard and the
contemplatives of his time opposed to the growing spirit of
philosophic rationalism. The Cistercian cloisters and the disciples
of the school of St. Victor everywhere propagated the same spiritual
maxims, and thus provided a wholesome antidote to the baneful spirit
of the age. But the very existence of the antidote bears witness how
wide-spread was the poison which it sought to nullify, how greatly
the mind of Christendom had broken away from the old landmarks of
thought, and how rapidly it was sweeping onward to what threatened to
cause the wreck of faith and philosophy together.

The actual state of the schools at the middle of the twelfth century
may best be gathered from the description given by our own country
man, John of Salisbury, of his own course of studies. He appears to
have come to Paris for the first time in 1136, being then a youth of
sixteen, and, like thousands of the same age, was launched into the
world of the great capital, to complete his education under the many
wise professors who were contending for popular favour. Here we catch
a glimpse of the new system which was gradually establishing itself.
Education was no longer given exclusively in cloistered schools, but
in great cities, where the young aspirant after science, instead
of being sheltered under law and discipline, was cast abroad to
shift for himself, and only required to attend the lectures of some
licensed master. No doubt it was an excellent way of teaching him a
knowledge of the world, but this had not hitherto been included in
the branches of a noble youth’s early education. However, at sixteen
John had to take care of himself in the great world of Paris, which
exercised over him the fascination of which all were conscious who
passed from the semi-barbarous isle of Britain to the brilliant
capital, and beheld the gay vivacity of its citizens, the gravity
of its religious ceremonials, the splendour and majesty of its many
churches, and the busy life of its schools.[163] “Happy banishment,”
wrote the young scholar, “that is permitted here to find a home!”
His first care was to choose what Professor he would attend. It was
just the time when Abelard’s fame was at its greatest height, and
the English youth was naturally enough led to join the crowds that
thronged the school of St. Geneviève. His first impression was one of
delight, but soon his English good sense revolted at the shallowness
which he detected under the showy outside, while the contemptuous
neglect with which Abelard was wont to treat the ancient learning,
was unendurable in the eyes of one who, young as he was, already
had a thoroughly-formed taste for the classics. So bidding adieu
to St. Geneviève, he placed himself under the two English masters,
Robert de Mélun and William de Conches; by the first of whom he was
initiated into the art of logic. He praises the disinterestedness
shown by Robert, who, in his conduct as Professor, despised worldly
gain and sought only the benefit of his scholars. Robert afterwards
became Bishop of Hereford, and in that capacity acquired a very
unenviable notoriety as one of the chief opponents of St. Thomas of
Canterbury. Under William de Conches, John next passed three years
with very great profit, studying grammar, which was then understood
to include the explanation of good authors. He never regretted the
time he devoted to this study. William was a disciple of the old
school, a stout champion of the liberal arts, and warmly opposed
to the new system introduced by Abelard. He liked to exercise his
pupils in prose and verse, and required not only good prosody, but
also good sense from his scholars. It was doubtless a fine thing to
hear the warm-hearted, testy Englishman speak of the schools in which
he had been brought up half a century ago, when boys were taught to
behave like boys, and to listen to their masters in silence. Things
were much altered now; and it was no longer the custom to follow
the wholesome rule which Pythagoras taught his disciples, namely, to
listen in silence for seven years, and only begin to ask questions
in the eighth. On the contrary, these new scholars would come into
your school with a supercilious air, and propose you their doubts and
quibbles before they were well seated. They seemed to fancy that they
knew everything when they had followed the schools for a year, and as
if their business was to instruct their masters by their amazingly
clever questions. On all these abuses Master William was wont to
expend his honest indignation, but he certainly could not complain
that John of Salisbury exhibited any of these marks of reprobation.
Far from seeming to think he knew everything after a year’s study,
John, after spending twelve years in the schools, regarded himself
as still a learner. After his three years of grammar, he spent
seven years more in successive courses of rhetoric, mathematics,
and theology. Among the masters whose lectures he attended were
Robert Pullus, or Pulleyne, and Gilbert de la Poiree. The latter
afterwards became Bishop of Poitiers, in which dignity he was accused
of teaching certain heterodox opinions on the Holy Trinity, which
were condemned at the Council of Rheims, in 1148. His errors, like
those of Abelard, appear to have arisen out of an abuse of that
scholastic method of argumentation so popular among the professors
of the time, and which too often proved dangerous weapons in the
hands of men whose theological studies by no means kept pace with
the cultivation of dialectics. Robert Pullus, the English master of
theology, and restorer of sacred studies at Oxford, was a man of far
more solid learning. “He knew,” says his great disciple, “how to be
wise with sobriety.” The soundness of his doctrine was evinced by
his “Sum of Theology,” and his disinterestedness, by his refusal of
a bishopric offered him by Henry I. Robert declined abandoning a
life of study for the precarious honours of a dignity which exposed
its owner to the almost certain contingency of a struggle with the
crown. He desired nothing more honourable than the life of a master;
nevertheless, he was unable to avoid the dignities thrust on him by
Celestine II., who created him cardinal and chancellor of the Roman
Church.

During the whole time of his residence at Paris, John of Salisbury
enjoyed a scholar’s honourable state of poverty, and supported
himself by giving lessons to younger students, much after the
fashion of a modern college tutor. His tutorship was, however, by no
means a very profitable post, and supplied him with little beyond
the bare necessaries of life. Happily, however, the threadbare
gown of the poor scholar was still regarded with respect, and his
humble circumstances did not prevent him from forming many valuable
friendships. Among his friends he numbered the two great masters Adam
du Petit Pont, and Richard l’Évêque, the former of whom he describes
as a man of undoubted learning, but so vain that he wrapped up his
knowledge in a cloud of obscurity, and made himself unintelligible
for the sake of appearing profound, saying to those who reproached
him with this weakness, that were he only to teach in the common
way, he should get no one to attend his lectures. Richard was a
man of a very different temper; his pride lay rather in concealing
what he knew, than in displaying it; he cared nothing at all for
worldly applause, and was deemed as holy in life as he was erudite.
At first he followed the excellent method of Bernard of Chartres,
but by degrees he yielded to the fashion of the times, and giving up
the teaching of grammar and rhetoric, confined himself entirely to
lecturing on dialectics.

To these friends of John of Salisbury we must add the name of a
third, an Englishman like himself, and one of Anglo-Saxon blood. He
was a young law-student, who, if inferior to many of his companions
in scholastic acquirements, made up for the deficiency by the
brilliancy of his native gifts, and those personal graces which add
so largely to the power of wit or eloquence. The large grey eyes,
thin aquiline nose, and beautiful countenance, so calm, yet with a
glance so full of fire, are all known to us; for if the features of
St. Thomas à Becket have not been preserved chiselled in marble,
they have yet been made familiar to us by the description of those
who laid up in their hearts the memory of that beloved countenance.
It bore the unmistakable impress of genius, and of that sensitive
organisation with which genius is so frequently accompanied. But
his great natural gifts had received very imperfect culture in
the schools of Merton and those of the English metropolis. At
Paris his studies were almost exclusively confined to law, and he
afterwards regretted that he had not devoted more time during his
academic career to sacred learning. The intimacy which sprang up
between him and John of Salisbury was not, therefore, based on any
similarity in their literary tastes. The letters of both evince a
striking difference in their intellectual training; those of St.
Thomas, powerful in matter, are yet abrupt, harsh, and technical
in style--those of his friend, on the other hand, are conveyed in
classic phraseology, and betray the careful polish, not always
free from affectation, of one who has laboriously formed himself
on ancient models. In fact, John of Salisbury was, beyond dispute,
the first scholar of his day, and naturally enough bewailed the
revolution which he witnessed taking place in the schools. The
science of reasoning was now affirmed by its advocates to contain the
pith of all philosophy. Rhetoric was regarded by them as altogether
unnecessary, because eloquence being a gift of nature, could not
be acquired by art. Those who possessed the gift needed no study
of ancient authors to infuse it into them; and those who did not
possess it, would study them to no purpose. The art of logic to
such men was all in all, and such was the eagerness with which they
indulged their taste for disputation, that some spent their whole
days in argument, and carried on their tiresome wrangling in the very
streets. And what arguments they were! They examined seriously and
at alarming length the weighty question, whether a pig who is driven
by a man to be sold at the market, is held by the man, or by the
cord fastened round his leg; and whether one who buys a cloak can be
held to have purchased also the hood fastened to the cloak. As two
negatives are equal to one affirmative, professors were accustomed
to introduce into their arguments such a number of negatives, that
in order to reckon them up, and see in what sense their propositions
were to be understood, the hearers had recourse to the device of
dropping a bean at each negative, and reckoning up the sum total at
the end of the lecture. John, in his writings, complains of all these
extravagancies, and of the tiresome way in which these choppers of
logic would dispute over a tuft of wool, and instantly contradict
any man who opened his lips in their presence. Nor did he cease
lamenting over the neglect of good literature, which was resulting
from the predominance given in the schools to logical disputation.
He specially attacks one of the leading scholastics whom he does not
name, but speaks of him under the sobriquet of “_Cornificius_;”[164]
and those who showed themselves hostile to the claims of grammar and
rhetoric are denominated by him “_Cornificians_.” In spite of all his
wit and eloquence, the Cornificians won the day. The study of polite
literature fell into neglect, and the intellectual power of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries was turned into another channel--a
channel which no doubt gave rise to a good deal of barbarous
Latinity, but whence was to issue, in process of time, something more
precious than mere literary elegance, the scholastic philosophy of
the Church.

The caustic strictures of John of Salisbury were not directed against
that system of philosophy, which as yet had no existence,[165]
but against the error which put forth the exercise of sophistical
argumentation as itself the sum of all philosophy, and the danger
which he saw too well must arise from the deification of human
reason. For the scholastic method, to which the theology of the
Church stands so deeply indebted, is not to be confounded with the
scholasticism which was rampant in the days of Abelard. The errors
and sophistries of the professors of his day, arising as they did out
of an extravagant adherence to the uncorrected teaching of Aristotle,
were from the first discerned and condemned by the ecclesiastical
authorities; and by none were they more firmly opposed than by St.
Bernard, who saw to what fatal results the unrestrained culture of
human reason, under the guidance of a pagan master, must necessarily
lead. We shall see further on how jealously the Church continued to
regard the study of Aristotle, and in what way she sought to check
the evils flowing from it to the schools, up to the time when his
philosophy was finally adapted to the service of the faith by the
labours of St. Thomas.

In the midst of his studies, his tutorships, and his passages of
arms with the Cornificians, twelve years slipped away, at the end
of which time John of Salisbury found himself possessed of a vast
fund of erudition[166] and an empty purse. The latter circumstance
was not one which greatly disquieted him, for his theory was that
the keys which opened the door of philosophy were not of gold, but
consisted of poverty, humility, silence, and a quiet life, together
with that detachment from family and worldly ties which is best found
in a foreign land.[167] So little had he of the spirit of worldly
ambition, that when in 1148 Peter des Celles, abbot of Moutier des
Celles, offered him a chaplaincy in his monastery, he gladly accepted
a post, which, however humble, gave him at least the leisure and
the means to study. He remained in this retreat for the space of
three years. Peter des Celles was one of the most remarkable men
of his time, and has made himself best known by his epistles;
for, like most of the literary personages of the twelfth century,
he was a great letter writer. He had received his education in the
monastic school of St. Martin des Champs, and does not seem to have
been one whit behind the more fashionable students of Paris. “I
had,” he writes, “an insatiable appetite for learning; my eyes were
never tired of beholding books, or my ears of listening to them;
yet with all my ardour, God was always the beginning, centre, and
end of all my studies. They had but Him for their object, though
indeed I studied everything, even law, without prejudice, however,
to the duties of my state, attendance on the Divine Office, and my
accustomed prayers.” This worthy inheritor of the genuine monastic
spirit acted the part of a true father to our English scholar, who
at last, through the favour of St. Bernard, obtained the post of
secretary to Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, in whose household
he renewed his acquaintance with two of his former fellow-students,
Peter de Blois, and Thomas à Becket. Peter de Blois had been one
of his pupils; a man of versatile talent, who had studied first
at Tours, then at Paris, and lastly at Bologna, and had seen
something of half the courts of Europe. He was equally skilled in
law, medicine, and theology, but it is by his epistles that he is
chiefly known, and his ready and somewhat gossiping pen has left
us graphic sketches of the manners and customs of his time. He
was, in fact, the Horace Walpole of the twelfth century, curious,
fluent, and volatile. Henry II. made him archdeacon, first of Bath,
and then of London, and often employed him as secretary, so that
he had excellent opportunities for studying the court of our first
Plantagenet sovereign, which he describes in a sufficiently amusing
manner. He assures us that Henry’s court, from the conversation of
learned men and the discussion of questions, was a daily school. The
king, he says, is deeply versed in literature, and has more gifts
of mind and body than he can so much as enumerate; nevertheless, he
lets out the ugly fact that it is best not to go too near him when
he is out of humour, as he is then more of a lion than a lamb, and
is quite as likely as not to tear out your eyes. How any man of
letters can ever attach himself to a court life is more than he can
understand; and how any man, lettered or unlettered, could be brought
to endure the daily miseries he describes, such as the eating of
“mouldy bread and stale fish, wine that can only be drunk with the
eyes shut, lodgings for which pigs would be ashamed to quarrel,” and
days spent “without order, plan, or moderation of any kind,” must
seem equally incomprehensible to his readers. But he has something
more cheering to say of the household of Archbishop Theobald. It is
crowded with learned men, who spend their time between prayers and
dinner in lecturing, disputing, and examining causes. All the knotty
questions of the kingdom are referred to them, and discussed in the
common hall; and there is no sort of jealousy or contention, but
the youngest present is listened to with courtesy and attention. In
these letters Peter de Blois has a good deal to say On the subject
of education. He tells us that in his youth he was trained, not in
idle fables, but solid literature, and names Livy, Quintius Curtius,
Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus among the books then most commonly
used in schools. He regards the new scholasticism with undisguised
contempt: it is good, he says, neither at home nor abroad, neither in
the church, the cloister, the camp, the court, or the bar. In fact,
in his literary tastes he showed himself a worthy disciple of John of
Salisbury.

Meanwhile the latter attached himself to the rising fortunes of St.
Thomas, and dedicated to him, when chancellor, his two great works,
the _Polycraticon_ and the _Metalogicon_, the last of which is a
formal apology for humane letters, and is considered to display an
amount of learning and literary elegance far exceeding anything
which had been produced since the days of Boëthius. When St. Thomas
became primate, his friend continued to retain the office he had held
under his predecessor, and never spared the archbishop the benefit
of his frank and fearless advice. Among other things, he took on him
to give him some directions with regard to his studies which are
worth quoting, as showing the view taken at that time by spiritual
men, of the danger resulting from an excessive application to law
and logic. “My counsel is,” he says, “that you put off some of your
other occupations, in order to give your whole mind to prayer. Laws
and canons are all very well, but believe me, they nourish curiosity
more than devotion.... Who ever rose from the study of law with a
sentiment of compunction in his heart? Nay, I will say more, the
exercises of the schools often increase knowledge till a man is
puffed up with it, but they rarely inflame devotion. I would far
rather that you meditated on the Psalms or read the ‘Morals of St.
Gregory,’ than that you were learned in philosophy, after the fashion
of the scholastics.” St. Thomas was not slow in taking his friend’s
advice, and both at Canterbury and Pontigny often spent whole nights
in the study of the Scriptures, and was wont always to carry a few
pages in the loose sleeve of his tunic, that he might have them at
hand whenever he found a leisure moment for reading.

We need not pursue further the history of John of Salisbury. The
fidelity with which he adhered to the cause of St. Thomas exposed
him to no small loss and personal danger, and after the martyrdom of
the saint he had to fly from England, and taking refuge in France,
became Bishop of Chartres in 1176, his election being entirely due
to his personal merits, and the honour with which the French clergy
regarded one who had been the companion of the Blessed Martyr. But
before concluding our notice of the Parisian masters, it remains for
us to name the three Peters, as they are called, who all illustrated
the schools about the same period. The first was Peter Comestor, or
the Eater--so called from his habit of devouring books--a very famous
personage in his day, who became chancellor of Paris in 1164, but
resigned all his dignities to put on the habit of the canons of St.
Victor’s. His _Historia Scholastica_, or Epitome of Sacred History,
was so much esteemed in the twelfth century, that portions of it were
read in the churches. A namesake of his, called Peter the Chanter,
was almost of equal fame. He too, after filling the eye of the public
for several years, withdrew from their applause, and became a simple
religious in the Abbey of Long-Pont, where he died in 1197.

Both were men of tried virtue, and showed themselves hostile to the
sophists of the day, whose wranglings they declared to be opposed to
the simplicity of the Gospel. But more renowned than either was the
Italian scholar, Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences, as he
was called, and the real Father and founder of scholastic theology.
He commenced his study of civil law at Bologna, and thence passed on
to Paris, where he was admitted among the canons of St. Victor’s,
and afterwards taught for some years in the cathedral school. In
1159 he became bishop of Paris, through the influence of his royal
pupil, prince Philip, brother to the reigning king, Louis the Young.
The king offered the bishopric to his brother, who was educated
for the ecclesiastical state, but he nobly refused it in favour of
his master. Peter Lombard’s great work was the celebrated Book of
Sentences, consisting of a number of passages selected from the works
of the fathers, and commented on in such a manner as to present the
student with a body of theological doctrines systematically arranged.
The convenience of finding every point of theology treated of in
a precise and methodical order, and within the compass of a single
volume, was speedily recognised, and the Book of the Sentences soon
became the favourite text-book used in the schools, both for the
lectures of the masters and the private study of their disciples.
Hence the title of _Sententiarus_, which came to be applied to those
who taught or studied the Sentences. Notwithstanding the immense
popularity obtained by this work, it is said to contain several
important omissions, and even some theological errors, one of which
was formerly condemned by Pope Alexander III. Its importance is
derived from the circumstance of its being the first attempt to
reduce theology to a compact and orderly scientific system; and
from this period we date the real rise of the science of scholastic
theology.

It will have been observed that in what has been said up to this time
of the schools of Paris, they have not been designated by the title
of a university. For, in fact, as yet these schools had no claim to
be regarded as a corporate body; they were accidents rather than an
institution, and it was only gradually that they acquired a corporate
character, and became possessed of a government, a head, and a body
of laws and privileges. This change was effected by no sudden act of
royal or ecclesiastical legislation; it developed itself insensibly
but of the very necessity of the case. The immense number of masters
and pupils who flocked to the capital, gave rise to disorders, which
obliged the superiors of the different schools to unite together and
agree to certain rules of common discipline.

Thus in 1195 we find a certain John, abbot of St. Albans, associated
to the “body of elect masters.” Some years before, in the very thick
of the quarrel between Henry II. and St. Thomas, occurs the first
notice of that division of the scholars into _nations_ or provinces,
which formed one of the peculiarities of the university. Henry
offered to choose as arbiters either the peers of France, the French
clergy, or the heads of the different _provinces_ in the school of
Paris. We find also certain laws, or at least established customs
having the force of laws, respecting the method to be observed in
granting licenses for the opening of a school. It was the rule in
all dioceses that no one could open a school without permission from
the cathedral scholasticus, or chancellor of the diocese, who was
bound to grant such licenses to all who were capable. Pope Alexander
III., who showed a lively interest in everything that concerned the
encouragement of education, ordered that such licenses should be
granted gratuitously, but he afterwards permitted the Chancellor of
Paris, who was at that time Peter Comestor, to exact a certain fine.
It appears, also, that in Paris the chancellor or scholasticus of
St. Geneviève shared this right with the chancellor of Notre Dame.
There were also other laws, such as those which prohibited religious
from teaching or studying in the schools of law or medicine. The
two faculties, as they were called, of arts and theology, which
formed the basis of the university, appear to have been already
distinguished. Certain privileges, too, were already enjoyed by the
students. They were beginning to claim the right of being tried
only by the ecclesiastical tribunals, and this right was granted to
them in 1194 by a decree of Celestine III. Alexander III. permitted
clerics to retain their benefices whilst teaching or studying at
Paris. Finally, in the year 1200, we find the existence of the
university as a corporate body, governed by a head, acknowledged
in the diploma of Philip Augustus, wherein, having confirmed the
exemption of the scholars from the secular courts, he decreed that
the head of the studies should, in particular, be incapable of arrest
or punishment from the secular judge, and obliged every provost of
the city on his entrance into office to swear to the observance of
this decree.

From this time, therefore, we may properly date the formal
recognition of the university of Paris, and passing over the
obscurities in which its earlier commencements are involved, shall
proceed to present our readers with a sketch of that institution as
it existed in the palmy days of the thirteenth century.

_CHAPTER XIII._

PARIS AND THE FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES.

A.D. 1150 TO 1250.

The modern visitor to Paris who finds his way to that portion of
the city lying on the southern bank of the river, which still bears
the name of the _Quartier de l’Université_, sees himself surrounded
by buildings, many of which bear unmistakably the character of
their original destination. He stands, in fact, amid the _débris_
of the old university of Paris, the schools and colleges of which
were clustered for the most part about the Mont St. Geneviève, and
occupied an entire suburb, which was first enclosed within the city
walls by Philip Augustus. That monarch, passionately desirous to
increase the splendour of his capital, and at the same time to afford
larger space for the accommodation of the crowds of students, whose
numbers are said to have exceeded those of the citizens themselves,
added a large district, which in the year 1200 presented a fair
expanse of fields and vineyards, interspersed with churches, houses,
and farms, but in which you would vainly have sought for any of those
magnificent and semi-monastic structures which we are accustomed
to associate with the idea of a university. Colleges, in fact, had
as yet no existence at Paris, and the university consisted of an
assemblage, not of stately buildings, but of masters and scholars
gathered out of every European land.

It is no easy matter to convey an idea of the enthusiasm with which
the Paris schools were regarded at the beginning of the thirteenth
century. No one, whatever might be his country, could pretend to any
consideration who had not studied there in his youth; if you met
a priest or doctor, whose skill in letters you desired to praise,
it was enough to say, “one would think he had passed his whole
life in Paris.” It was, to use the expression of Gregory IX., the
_Cariath-sepher_, or city of letters,[168] which drew to itself the
intellectual wealth of Christendom. “Whatever a nation has that is
most precious,” writes William of Brittany, the chaplain of Philip
Augustus, in his poem of the _Philipide_, “whatever a people has
most famous, all the treasures of science and all the riches of
the earth; lessons of wisdom, the glory of letters, nobility of
thought, refinement of manners, all this is to be found in Paris.”
Others declared, in yet more pompous language, that neither Egypt
nor Athens could be compared to the modern capital, which was, they
said, the very fountain-head of wisdom, the tree of life in the midst
of the terrestrial paradise, the torch of the house of the Lord.
The exile who had once tasted of its delights no longer regretted
his banishment from his own land; and, in truth, the beauty of the
city, its light elastic atmosphere, the grace and gaiety of its
inhabitants, and the society of all that was most choice in wit
and learning, rendered it no less fascinating a residence in the
thirteenth century as the capital of learning than it has since
become as the metropolis of fashion.

To these attractions were added the advantages which the Parisian
students enjoyed in virtue of their privileges. I have already spoken
of the diploma granted by Philip Augustus, and its provisions were
greatly enlarged by subsequent monarchs. Philip le Bel ordered that
the goods of students should never be seized for debt, and they were
also exempt from taxes. If a French scholar travelled, all farmers
were obliged to supply him with horses at a reasonable rate of hire.
Artisans were not allowed to annoy him with unpleasant odours or
noises, and on complaint being made of such nuisances, they had to
remove themselves out of his neighbourhood. The rights of citizenship
were likewise enjoyed by the members of all the French universities,
and in those days this involved many important exemptions.
Scholarship was, in short, regarded as an honourable profession,
something which almost conferred on its possessor a patent of
nobility; the new master of arts had lighted flambeaux carried
before him in the public streets, and the conferring of a doctor’s
degree was an event which caused as much stir as the dubbing of a
knight. Nay, in those days, so permeated with the romantic spirit of
chivalry, scholars were not unfrequently spoken of as “the knights
of science,” and the disputation at which some youthful aspirant
contended for the doctor’s cap was regarded as the intellectual
tournament.

Yet, there was another side to this brilliant picture, and one
plainly discerned by those whose calmer judgment would not suffer
itself to be deceived as to the perils which awaited so many young
and ardent minds, exposed without restraint or guidance to the
manifold temptations, both moral and intellectual, that awaited
them in that busy throng. “O Paris!” exclaims Peter of the Cells,
in a letter to one of his monks who had been sent thither to study,
“resort of every vice, source of every disorder, thou dart of hell;
how dost thou pierce the heart of the unwary!” John, the young monk
whom he addresses, had, it would seem, deplored the new scenes amid
which he found himself as painfully out of harmony with his monastic
training. “Who but yourself,” replies the abbot, “would not reckon
this Paris to be a very Eden, a land of first-fruits and flowers? Yet
you have spoken truly, though in jest, for the place which is richest
in bodily pleasures miserably enslaves the soul. So, at least, thinks
my John, and rightly therefore does he call it a place of exile. May
you always so esteem it, and hasten home to your true country, where
in the book of life you will find, not figures and elements, but
Divinity and Truth itself. O happy school of Christ! where He teaches
our heart with the word of power, where the book is not purchased nor
the Master paid. There life avails more than learning, and simplicity
than science. There none are refuted save those who are for ever
rejected; and one word of final judgment, _Ite_ or _Venite_, decides
all questions and all cavils for ever. Would that men would apply
themselves to these studies rather than to so many vain discourses;
they would find more abundant fruit and more availing honour.”

In these words we see the distrust with which the representatives of
the old learning regarded the rising university system, contrasting
as it did so strangely with the claustral discipline in which they
had themselves been reared. Nor can it be denied that the fair
outside of the great city concealed a monstrous mass of deformity.
James de Vitry, who had himself been a student, gives a frightful
picture of the vices which were fostered in a society drawn from
every rank and every country, and associated together without moral
discipline of any kind, at an age when the passions were least
subject to restraint. The very sense of moral rectitude, he says,
seems to have been lost. A profuse extravagance was encouraged by the
example of the more wealthy students, and those who lived frugally,
or practised piety, were ridiculed as misers and hypocrites.
There was at that time no provision for the accommodation of the
students in halls or hospices; they lodged in the houses of the
citizens wherever they could secure the cheapest entertainment.
Not unfrequently the very schools of the masters were held in the
upper story of some house, the groundfloor of which was the resort
of the most abandoned characters.[169] There was no common table;
but the students dined at taverns where they often associated with
the worst companions, and indulged in the lowest excesses, and the
jealousy between “town and gown” continually broke out in disgraceful
quarrels, terminating not unfrequently in bloodshed. As most of those
engaged in these affrays were clerics, and as the striking of a
cleric brought on the guilty party the sentence of excommunication,
the results of these disorders were exceedingly grave. It became
necessary to grant extraordinary powers to the university officers,
and to prohibit the scholars from bearing arms, a prohibition
grounded on the atrocious crimes with which they stood charged; and
which at one time threatened to bring about the total extinction of
the university. For the magistrates having proceeded to revenge a
certain riot which had arisen out of a tavern quarrel, by ill-judged
acts of severity, both masters and scholars resolved to abandon the
city; nor did they return till the wise and timely interference of
Pope Gregory IX. brought about a reconciliation between the civil and
academic authorities.

The university, in fact, presented the spectacle, at that time new
in Christendom, of a system of education which aimed at informing
the intellect without disciplining the soul. Its work was done in
the lecture room, where alone the master exercised any authority,
and the only tie existing between him and his disciples was the
salary paid by one party and received by the other. In addition to
the dangers incident to this state of uncontrolled liberty, were
the more subtle temptations to pride and presumption which beset a
man in the schools. Mere youths were sometimes seen promoted to the
professor’s chair, and seeking to win a passing popularity by the
promulgation of some new extravagance, an abuse which led to the
passing of an ordinance forbidding any one to teach Theology before
he had attained the age of twenty-five. But the teaching of the
professors was influenced by other peculiarities in their position.
“The university doctors,” says Fleury, “were doctors, and they were
nothing more. Exclusively engaged with theoretic views, they had
leisure to write at great length on the most frivolous questions; and
plentiful occasions were thus ministered of quarrel and dispute.” And
he proceeds to notice the contrast between such a system and that of
earlier ages, when the teachers of the Church were for the most part
bishops, engaged in the duties of their pastoral charge, and able
to support their doctrines with the weight of practical experience.
The character of the new professors is drawn severely enough in
the curious poem of Architrenius,[170] which was written towards
the close of the twelfth century by John de Hauteville, an English
monk of St. Albans. Architrenius, the hero, is supposed to travel
through the world, trying various states and conditions, and finding
vanity and emptiness in all of them; at last he comes to Paris, and
devotes a whole book to describing the vanity of the masters, and the
miseries of their disciples. He depicts the negligent and squalid
appearance of the poor scholars, their ragged dress, uncombed hair,
bad lodging and hard beds. After spending half the night in study,
he says, they are roused at daybreak and forced to hurry to the
school, where the master treats them rudely, and where they have to
endure the mortification of seeing others of less merit rewarded, and
themselves passed over with neglect. He goes on to describe the hill
of presumption which he peoples with doctors and scholastics, gifted
with far less learning than conceit, and concludes, that the schools
are as full of vanity and disappointment as the rest of the world.

The sufferings of the poor scholars, which Architrenius so
graphically describes, were destined, however, to bring about a
most beneficial change in the university system, by being the
chief occasion of the foundation of hospices and colleges, the
multiplication of which, and their organisation under regular
discipline, in time applied a remedy to the worst of the existing
evils. From a very early date, the relief and support of poor
scholars had been recognised as a meritorious work of charity; it
formed one of the favourite devotions of the two kings, Robert the
Pious and Lewis the Young, the former of whom attempted something
in the shape of a hospital to receive them. How miserable their
condition was, we may gather from the benefaction of the good knight
Jocius de Londonne, who, returning from the Holy Land in 1171, found
some poor scholars miserably lodged in the Hôtel-Dieu, and gave money
to provide them with beds, and a small monthly alms, on condition
of their carrying the Cross and Holy-water at the funeral of those
who died in the hospital, and repeating the Penitential Psalms for
the repose of their souls. The earliest establishment actually made
for their reception appears to have been the Hospice of St. Thomas
of Canterbury, founded in the twelfth century by Robert Dreux. It
embraced a number of other charitable works, and was administered by
canons who were under religious vows, the scholars being governed
by a provost of their own. Other colleges gradually arose, some for
scholars of particular nations, as those of the Danes and Swedes;
others for separate dioceses. One of the earliest foundations was
the College of Constantinople, founded by Baldwin of Flanders,
shortly after the taking of Constantinople by the Latins, for the
education of young Greeks in the orthodox faith. Chapels were opened
in connection with these colleges so early as 1248, in which year we
find Pope Innocent IV. granting permission for such a chapel to be
attached to the college _des Bons Enfants_. But the collegiate system
became more thoroughly established by the influence of the Religious
Orders, who very soon found themselves obliged to open religious
houses in connection with the university, for the education of their
own students. These houses of studies afforded the young religious
the regular discipline of the old monastic schools, combined with
the advantages of university education; and their example made it a
necessity to provide similar protection for the secular students.

The Trinitarian Order, founded by one of the most illustrious of
the Parisian doctors, and largely recruited from the ranks of his
co-professors, was naturally the first to associate itself to the
university, out of whose bosom it had sprung; and so early as the
year 1209, we find the friars in possession of the Church of St.
Maturin, which was ordinarily used by the university as their place
of assembly. Next to them came the Dominicans and Franciscans, the
former of whom owed their establishment in Paris to the good will
of the university authorities, who made over to them certain claims
they possessed on the Hospital of St. James, which had been granted
to the new comers by the good doctor, John of St. Quentin. A little
later, the College of the Bernardines was founded by Stephen of
Lexington, an Englishman who had been a pupil of St. Edmund, and
who in 1242 became abbot of Clairvaux. Strictly contemplative as
was the rule of the Cistercians, it did not exclude the cultivation
of sacred studies. It aimed rather at restoring monastic life to
the ancient Benedictine type, in which, as we have seen, the homely
labours of husbandry were mingled with those of the scriptorium. The
Cistercians, whilst they laboured to bring back religious poverty
and simplicity into the cloister, always showed themselves hearty
encouragers of learning. St. Stephen Harding had himself set on
foot that great copy of the Bible, long preserved at Citeaux, which
was corrected with the utmost precision after being collated with
a vast number of manuscripts, several learned Jews being consulted
by the abbot on the Hebrew text. To procure a correct version of
the Gregorian Antiphonary, he sent all the way to Metz, trusting to
obtain a sight of the copy laid up there by Charlemagne. The library
at Citeaux was rich in the works of the Fathers, though the outside
of the books exhibited nothing of that costly ornament on which the
skill of monastic binders and jewellers was elsewhere expended. The
early Cistercians were connected very closely with some of the best
Paris scholars, such as William of Champeaux, the friend of St.
Stephen, and after his elevation to the episcopate, the diocesan of
St Bernard. In England their ranks had been largely recruited from
the University of Oxford, and their monastery of Rievaux was famous
at home and abroad for its school of learning. Stephen of Lexington
was not, therefore, departing from the traditions of his order in
considering that the maintenance of sacred studies was a necessity of
the times. Two years after his election he obtained permission from
Pope Innocent IV. to begin the erection of a college at Paris for
the young monks of his order; but the proposal was very unfavourably
received by the other Benedictine houses who saw in it the break-up
of the old monastic system of studies. The conservative spirit which
was roused among them is discernible in the complaints of Matthew
Paris, who laments over the contempt with which a proud world is
beginning to regard the old Benedictine monks. “This new institution
of colleges,” he says, “is not, that we can see, derived from the
rule of St. Benedict; on the contrary, we read that _he_ quitted the
schools to retire into the desert.”

Stephen, however, persevered in his design; he was aware that the
contempt with which the monks were so frequently treated, both by the
secular doctors and the new orders of friars, was grounded on the
charge of their illiteracy, and he therefore believed it essential
to provide his monks with better means of education than, under the
altered state of things, they were now able to command in their
claustral schools. His design was crowned with perfect success.
Not only did the College of the Bernardines become illustrious for
its good scholarship, but the conduct of its religious shed a good
odour of edification over the whole university, and ten years after
its foundation, Matthew Paris himself bore honourable witness to
the holy example of the monks, which, he said, “gave pleasure to
God and man.” For Stephen there was reserved the reward of disgrace
and humiliation. The Chapter-General of Citeaux deposed him from
his office in 1255, instigated, says Matthew Paris, by envy for the
superior merits of an Englishman. Whatever were the cause of his
disgrace, it gave him an opportunity of proving that his adoption
of what had seemed an innovation on established customs, sprang out
of no defect in the religious spirit. He refused to accept of the
protection offered him by the Pope, in favour of which he might have
been reinstated in his dignity, and preferred spending the rest of
his days as a private religious, entirely occupied with his own
sanctification.

The example of the Bernardines was quickly followed by other
religious orders. The Carmelites took up their station at the foot of
Mt. St. Geneviève, the Augustinians in the Quartier Montmartre. The
old Benedictines, or Black Monks, had their college near the abbey
of St. Germain, and the Carthusians received from St. Louis a grant
of the royal Chateau de Vauverd. The monks of the latter order were
indeed prohibited by their rule from attending in the schools, but
the object of their establishment so near the capital is expressly
stated to have been, that they might profit by the salutary streams
of doctrine which flowed forth from the city of letters. To these
must be added the monks of Cluny and Marmoutier, the former of whom
provided their students with lecturers within their own cloisters;
and a new Institute originally founded by four doctors of theology,
who in 1201 gave up their academic honours and pursuits, and, smitten
with that desire of poverty and obscurity which not unfrequently
overtakes men in the very zenith of their popularity and success,
retired to a wild valley in the diocese of Langres, and assumed the
religious habit of the Canons Regular of St. Victor. Here they were
soon joined by other professors and scholars, till their numbers
rendered it impossible for them to find subsistence in the desolate
wildness they had chosen, exposed to the fury of the mountain
torrents, and the falling of precipitous rocks. They, therefore,
removed in 1224 to a more fertile valley, which obtained the name
of the Val d’Ecoliers, a title afterwards bestowed on the new order
itself. Five years later they opened a house of studies in Paris,
and the Church of St. Catherine was built for them at the charge of
a certain knight, in fulfilment of a vow he had taken at the battle
of Bouvines, the young St. Louis laying the first stone with his own
hand.

The bishops were not slow to follow the example set them by the
monastics; and indeed they, more than others, felt the necessity of
providing in some way or other for the training of their clerks. It
was vain to think of competing with the university in the cathedral
schools; and, on the other hand, what was to be hoped from a secular
clergy, formed in no higher school of discipline than that which
James of Vitry has described? Colleges, therefore, where the young
clerics might be reared in ecclesiastical habits, were, strictly
speaking, essential; and, accordingly, we find them established
for the clergy of different dioceses, as those of Laon, Narbonne,
and Bayeux. In these the scholars lived in common, celebrated the
Divine Office, had appointed hours of study and recreation, and were
governed and watched over by regents. In fact, says Fleury, “they
were so many little seminaries;” differing in many respects, and
doubtless, far inferior to those old ecclesiastical schools which
had been established in the bishop’s house, wherein the young clerks
grew up under the eye, and were trained by the lips of their chief
pastor; yet still schools of discipline, the good results of which
were so apparent that, erelong, every country which followed the
Latin rite adopted the system which had begun in France and Italy.
The most famous of all the secular colleges was that of the Sorbonne,
the founder of which, Robert of Sorbonne, was chaplain to St. Louis.
Crevier calls it the greatest ornament of the university, and from
very humble beginnings it came at last to be regarded as the first
theological school in the Christian world. In it were afterwards
founded no fewer than seven Chairs of Theology; namely, those of
the Reader, of Contemplative, and Positive Theology, of the Holy
Scriptures, of Casuistry, of Controversial Divinity, and of the
Interpretation of the Hebrew Text.

Gradually, but surely, the university freed itself from the chaotic
disorder of its first beginnings, and assumed the form of a great
institution, governed by regular laws and invested with vast powers
and privileges. At the period of its complete development, it was
composed of seven companies; namely, the Faculties of Theology, Law,
and Medicine, and the four nations of France, Picardy, Normandy, and
England. These four nations together formed the Faculty of Arts, but
each had a separate vote in the affairs of the university. The Rector
was chosen by the nations out of the Faculty of Arts, the other
faculties being governed by their deans.

An immense benefit was conferred on the University by Innocent
III., who had himself studied at Paris at a time when the want of
discipline was most severely felt. He was the first to supply his
Alma Mater with a body of academic statutes; which were promulgated
in 1215 by his legate, Robert de Courçon, an Englishman by birth,
and a man of piety and learning. They embraced the whole discipline
of the schools, regulating the conditions on which everyone was
to be admitted to teach, the books that were to be read and those
that were prohibited. No one was to profess arts before the age
of twenty-one, or without having previously studied for six years
under some approved master. He must bear a good reputation, and
before commencing his lectures, was to undergo an examination
according to certain rules. The books he was to read were to be the
“Dialectics” and “Topics” of Aristotle, Priscian, and certain others,
the authors of which are not named, but which seem to have been
well-known popular treatises on philosophy, rhetoric, grammar, and
mathematics. The physics and metaphysics of Aristotle were forbidden,
together with the writings of certain heretics, such as Amauri de
Bene, who had drawn their errors from the teaching of the Greek
Philosopher.[171]

To teach Theology, the statutes required that a man should be at
least thirty-five years of age, and that he should have studied
under some approved master. We see here the germ of the system of
graduation, which was perfected before the close of the century. The
rule, as then established, was for a bachelor to begin by explaining
the Sentences in the school of some doctor for the space of a year.
At the end of that time he was presented to the Chancellor of the
Cathedral of Paris, and if, on examination, he was judged worthy, he
received a license and became licentiate, until he was received as
doctor, when he opened a school of his own, in which he explained
the Sentences for another year. At the end of that time he was
allowed to receive some bachelor under him. The whole doctor’s course
lasted three years; nor could any one take a degree unless he had
taught according to these regulations. It was supposed that before
beginning his theological studies the doctor must have passed through
his course of arts, the various stages in which were distinguished
by the names of grammar, poetry, philosophy, &c., in each of which,
according to the theory of the ancient schools, a student had to
study successively for an appointed time. The plan was excellent,
says Fleury, had its execution been possible; but life was too
short to allow of a man’s perfecting himself in every known branch
of learning before entering on his theological studies. It implied
that his whole life was to be spent in the schools; and, indeed, no
inconsiderable portion of it was so spent, as we have seen in the
case of John of Salisbury, whose academical career spread itself
over the space of twelve years. But, in estimating the exact value
of these statements, we must bear in mind that the university course
at this time began at a very early age, and included those more
elementary studies which occupy a schoolboy of our day for several
years before his matriculation.

The statutes of Paris University, first promulgated by Innocent
III., and enlarged under subsequent pontiffs, not only regulated all
matters of study and discipline, but provided for the preservation
of that religious element which must always find a place in any
system of education sanctioned by the Church. The Christian schools,
as we have seen, found their cradle in the monastic and episcopal
seminaries, in which, as a matter of course, religious exercises were
intermingled with intellectual ones, to a very large degree. The
Catholic universities, in their complete form, adapted this system to
their own needs, and required of their students daily attendance, not
only in the lecture rooms, but also in the church or the collegiate
chapel. The weekly “chapels” exacted from our Oxford and Cambridge
students are fragments of the old rules, which, at Paris as in the
English universities, required daily attendance at Mass and Vespers,
and, at certain times also, at the Office of the Dead; and appointed
public processions at different seasons of the year, and days when
the public studies were suspended in order to give more time for the
due celebration of feasts, and preparation for the reception of the
Sacraments. If any reader be disposed to think that these demands on
the time of the students must have proved an interruption to their
studies, the fact is at once, and readily, admitted. But it may be
suggested whether, in this interruption, there does not manifest
itself a grand principle on which the Church acts wherever there is
question of the exercise of the human intelligence. The problem she
had to resolve was, not how to convey the greatest possible amount
of knowledge with the greatest possible saving of time; but rather,
how to provide that a certain amount of intellectual labour should
be gone through in such a way as not to interfere injuriously with
the spiritual well-being of the soul. In cases where the intellect
is brought into exercise and stimulated to extraordinary activity,
there is danger lest what is in itself a wholesome and necessary
exercise may become vitiated by a certain natural impetuosity, which
disposes a man to pour himself out into the occupation in which
he is engaged; an impetuosity which opens the door to the human
spirit, and which brings in along with it a host of bad company,
such as pride, envy, ambition, contention, and the like. If this be
allowed, study, instead of being an instrument of our sanctification,
degenerates into its enemy; and hence the object aimed at in the
Catholic system has ever been to supply checks and safeguards to
nature, and to sanctify intellectual labour by a large admixture of
prayer. Among the monastic students the regular duties of religious
life supplied these necessary checks, the “_retinacula_,” as they
were called by Bede, who fully understood their value and importance;
and the Catholic universities, to a certain degree, imitated the
monastic system, by requiring fixed religious duties to be complied
with by their students, as a part of their academic course. Nor need
we suppose that these interruptions, so salutary in a spiritual
sense, were at all injurious in an intellectual point of view. The
discipline of the Church, by a beautiful harmony, provides for the
well-being of our nature, at the very time that she mortifies it.
Her rules of fasting and abstinence, when observed, often prove the
best preservatives of health; and, in the same way, her checks on
study were not always hindrances. The truest economy of time does
not, obviously, consist in cramming the twelve hours of the day
with excessive work, but in laying them out to the best advantage.
It is possible to tax the mental powers beyond their strength, in
which case nature revenges herself on those who violate her laws,
and the mind itself weakens under the pressure of excessive labour.
Could we compare the _horarium_ of an Oxford or Paris student of the
thirteenth century, with that of a modern Rugby schoolboy, and obtain
an accurate statistical table, showing the proportion of exhausted
brains to be found among an equal number of either class, it might
appear that the Church legislated even for the mental well-being of
her children when she interposed so often between them and their
studies, by requiring of them the fulfilment of solemn offices at
stated times.

Of course, besides the principle above alluded to, there was the
more manifest object of religious training, touching which I will
merely quote the words of a former Rector of the Paris University,
who wrote in anything but a religious age. “Religion,” says M.
Rollin, in his treatise on “Education,” “should be the object of all
our instructions; though not perpetually in our mouths, it should
always be in our minds. Whoever examines the ancient statutes of the
university which relate to masters and scholars, and takes notice of
the prayers, solemnities, public processions, festivals, and days
set apart for preparing for the Sacraments, may easily discover that
the intention of their pious Mother is to consecrate and sanctify
the studies of youth by religion, and that she would not carry them
so long in her bosom were it not with the view of regenerating them
to Jesus Christ. It is with this design that she requires that in
every class, besides their other exercises of piety, the scholars
should daily repeat certain sentences from Holy Scripture, and
especially from the Gospels, that their other studies may be, as it
were, seasoned with salt.” And he quotes passages from the ancient
statutes, requiring that “the Divine Word be mingled with the
eloquence of the pagans, as is fitting in Christian schools where
Christ, the One Teacher of man, should not only be present, but
preside.”

The very slight mention made in the statutes of Robert de Courçon of
Rhetoric, as included in the course of arts, is the last which we
shall meet with for a considerable space of time. The Bull of Gregory
IX., published in 1231, and the statutes of the Regents of Arts,
which appeared in 1254, make no reference to this study. The arts are
there represented by philosophy alone, and there is no allusion to
the cultivation of rhetoric, or the reading of the classical authors,
which from this date became very generally neglected. As a natural
consequence, grammar also lamentably decayed. It was, of course, not
absolutely banished, inasmuch as a certain amount of it was essential
for the pursuit of any studies at all; but it became altogether
barbarised and debased. Those rules of syntax and prosody, over which
the old monastic masters had so lovingly lingered, were totally
neglected, and although Latin poems were still produced, their
Latinity was full of false quantities and grammatical solecisms. The
tenth century, with all its darkness, knew far more of humane letters
than the thirteenth; nor was the superiority of the earlier schools
confined to a knowledge of the classics. The exaggerated prominence
given to philosophy, or rather to dialectics, had caused a neglect
of the Fathers, who were now chiefly studied in Sums and Sentences,
which professed to present the student with the pith of theology in a
single volume, forming the text-books on which the doctors delivered
lectures and commentaries, coloured, naturally enough, with their own
ideas. The original works of the Fathers, which had been the familiar
study of the monastic students, appear at this time to have been
little in request; and when St. Louis, on his return from Palestine,
formed a plan for collecting a library of all the most useful and
authentic ecclesiastical writings, he had to get copies made of St.
Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, and other Catholic
doctors, from the codices stored up in remote monastic libraries;
for in the schools of Paris they were not to be found. The extreme
scholastics, indeed, were accustomed to speak of the Fathers as
_rhetoricians_; writers, that is, who expressed themselves according
to the rules of natural eloquence, a terrible delinquency in the eyes
of the new _illuminati_, who considered that a man should display
his science by loading his pages with the terms of logic--assertion,
proof, major, minor, and corollary. The good king, however, whose
taste was superior to that of most of his contemporaries, persevered
in his noble enterprise, and at great pains and cost collected a
library of the best Christian authors, in which he himself studied
profoundly; liberally granting its use to others also. “He read the
works of the Fathers, whose authority is established,” says his
biographer, “more willingly than those of the new doctors;” and he
gave as a reason for making new copies, in preference to buying up
the old ones, that by this means he multiplied writings which he
desired should be more widely known. He ordered that after his death
this library should be divided among the three monasteries he had
founded; those, namely, of the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the
Cistercians; and it was from this source that the Dominican, Vincent
of Beauvais, who filled the office of tutor to the royal children,
drew the materials of his famous work, _The Great Mirror_, of which
we shall hereafter have occasion to speak.

If positive theology and the humanities began to be neglected,
however, civil and canon law were better treated. The appearance in
1157 of the “Decretals” of Gratian, had been followed by the erection
of a Chair of Jurisprudence at Bologna, and another at Paris. The
new branch of study had one advantage which commended it to popular
favour: it led to substantial profits, and scholars were found not
unwilling to let Horace and Cicero drop into disuse in favour of a
science which paid so well for the time spent on its acquisition.
The prodigious popularity of these new pursuits at length caused
grave apprehensions lest the schools of arts and theology should
in time be altogether deserted, and in 1220 Honorius III. found it
necessary to forbid the further study of civil law at Paris. Crevier
complains of this prohibition as injurious to the university, and it
was, in fact, very generally eluded; although the formal permission
to include civil law in the Faculty of Right was not granted till
1679. But in point of fact, the alarm which was felt was not without
foundation. At Oxford such a revolution had been brought about by the
introduction of the law lectures, that it was feared both arts and
theology would be utterly neglected. What was worse, the law students
aspired after and obtained benefices; and this abuse was encouraged
by sovereigns, who found law prelates much more easy to deal with,
and to accommodate to their own political views, than theologians.
Innocent III. had, at last, to prohibit the admission to benefices
of those who had only graduated in law, and insisted that all who
aspired to ecclesiastical benefices should also pursue a regular
course of theology. The tendency of the age, however, was manifest;
the universities were falling more and more away from that idea of
education which the old system had, in theory at any rate, professed
to carry out; namely, the presenting of knowledge as a whole, its
various parts arranged under the heads of the seven liberal arts,
presided over by theology. Philosophy, according to this idea,
included a knowledge of truth in all its various departments, and all
the arts were but branches springing from one trunk, one of which
could not be struck off without injuring the proportion and harmony
of the whole.

The neglect of arts, and the excessive preponderance given to law
studies and dialectics, made up a grave and momentous change in the
whole theory of education, which was daily losing something more of
that breadth and largeness which formed one of the chief features
of education as proposed by the ancients, whose traditions had been
accepted by the Christian schools. This seems a fair statement of
the mischievous side of the change; but there is also another view
of the question, which justly claims to be recognised. There was a
deeper cause for the popularity of law and logic in the European
schools of this period than any sordid motive of gain, or any mere
love of disputation. Both of them formed a part of that extraordinary
intellectual revolution which marked the opening of the thirteenth
century. Men had grown indifferent to the study of language in
proportion as they had been aroused to the deeper interest of mental
science. Though the immediate result was to introduce a decay of
polite letters, and not a few philosophic extravagancies, it cannot
be doubted that many faculties were roused into vigorous action,
which, under the former system, had lain dormant. The grand defect
of the old monastic scholars, as scholars, was, that they cultivated
learning rather than mind; they studied other men’s thoughts, but
were not equally exercised in training their own. They seldom
investigated for themselves either mental or physical phenomena;
whatever absurdities were to be found in the natural philosophy which
they received from the ancients, were generally adopted without
question, and handed on to the next generation; and the instances
are rare in which an appeal is made to the results of personal
observation.

Even their theological works were chiefly compilations, and St.
Anselm may be called the first original thinker who had appeared
among divines since the close of the fifth century. When the
intellectual powers of Europe again woke into action, men were not
unnaturally induced to regard mere elegances of style with a certain
rude indifference. Like soldiers who, when about to engage in a
conflict for life or death, are careless whether or no they wear
their holiday trappings, the scholastics of the thirteenth century,
while they exercised their mental powers in subtle disputation,
conceived a contempt for the charms of mere rhetoric, and valued
language only as the vehicle for expressing the distinctions of
philosophy. Under such circumstances Latinity, of course, grew
barbarous; and many far graver disorders arose out of the daring
and undue exercise of reason. Yet, real intellectual progress was
being made, in spite of the decay of letters; and the growth of mind
went on in the same way as the growth of body, when the delicate
tints and graceful form of childhood disappear, whilst bone and
muscle are being built up, and the feeble child is expanding into
the strong-armed man. When the revival of literature took place
two centuries later, it found a race of strong thinkers in place
of diligent readers. The scholars of the Renaissance were forward
in ridiculing the barbarism of the scholastic philosophers, but in
doing so they showed that they had very superficially studied the
intellectual era that preceded their own. Undoubtedly, the _excess_
of legal and logical studies had many abuses, but they are not
therefore to be arbitrarily condemned. Even the lawyers, with whom it
is most difficult to keep charity, and whose influence was the most
mischievous in the schools, had a considerable share in the education
of modern Europe. Careful critics, on studying the legal documents
of the Middle Ages, such, for example, as our own Magna Charta,
fail not to express their wonder and admiration at the keenness of
intellect which is displayed in their provisions, and the precision
of language in which they are expressed. The men of the pen were
cautiously and sagaciously circumventing the men of the sword. Every
constitutional principle laid down in the statute-book established
the sovereignty of law over that of brute force; it was a victory of
mind over matter, and was therefore a mighty step in the history of
intellectual progress.

These considerations must be calmly weighed before we pass any
judgment on the scholastic revolution of the thirteenth century.
Our sympathies, no doubt, will linger with the elder scholars,
and we shall be disposed to look with a very jealous eye on the
triumph of the sophists and the Cornificians; but it will suffice
to reconcile us to the temporary necessity of the change, that it
was accepted by the Church, and that she set her seal to the due and
legitimate use of those studies which were to develope the human
intellect to its full-grown strength. Nay, more, she absorbed into
herself an intellectual movement which, had she opposed it, would
have been directed against her authority, and so, to a great extent,
neutralised its powers of mischief. The scholastic philosophy,
which, without her direction, would have expanded into an infidel
Rationalism, was woven into her theology itself, and made to do duty
in her defence, and that wondrous spectacle was exhibited, so common
in the history of the Church, when the dark and threatening thunder
cloud which seemed about to send out its lightning bolts, only
distils in fertilising rain.[172]

The statutes of Robert de Courçon, after regulating the studies, pass
on to the manners of the students. They descend with great simplicity
into various details, which are not uninteresting, as furnishing
us with some idea of the usages of the times. Great banquets were
forbidden to be held at the installation of new masters, who were
only allowed to invite a few companions and friends. No master
reading arts was to wear aught but a round black gown falling as low
as his heels, “at least,” adds the cardinal with much naïveté, “_when
it is new_.” A cloak is allowed, but the abomination of pointed shoes
is strictly prohibited. When a scholar of arts or theology died,
one-half of the masters were to attend his funeral; if it were a
master, all the other masters were to assist at the Office for the
Dead. They were, moreover, to recite, or cause to be recited, an
entire Psalter for his soul, to remain in the church where the Office
was celebrated until midnight, and on the day of burial all exercises
in the schools were to be suspended. He confirms to the students the
free possession of those broad and delightful meadows, so dearly
prized as a place of recreation, which gave their name to St. Germain
des Prés, and for the protection of the scholars, fixes the rate at
which the citizens shall be obliged to furnish them with lodgings.

The university thus established, redounded, it need not be said, to
the profit as well as to the glory of the French capital. Not only
the intellect, but the wealth also, of Europe flowed into that great
centre. New branches of industry sprang up in connection with the
schools; the Rue de Fouarre supplied them with straw for their seats,
and the Rue des Ecrivains was entirely peopled with booksellers
and book-lenders, mostly Jews, who furnished the scholars with
literary wares, suffering those who were too poor to buy, to hire
their volumes at a fixed rate. The bookselling trade fell at last
under the jurisdiction of the university, and the booksellers were
enrolled as academic officers, taking an oath on their appointment
to observe the statutes and regulations. They were not suffered
to open a traffic without testimonials as to character, and the
tariff of prices was fixed by four of their number appointed by the
university. Fines were imposed for incorrect copies, and the traders
were bound to hang up a priced catalogue in their shops. If books of
heretical or immoral tendency were found introduced, they were burnt
by order of the university officers. The same powers were exercised
over the book trade by the universities of Vienna, Toulouse, and
Bologna, and the name of _Stationarii_ began to be given to those
who held these stores; stalls, or shops of all descriptions, being
often denominated _Stations_. By degrees, however, the licensed
_Stationarii_ lost their monopoly of the trade, and the custom became
tolerated of allowing poor scholars to sell books of low price in
order to obtain the means of pursuing their studies. The _Librarii_
were the copyists of new books, who dealt also in parchment and
writing materials, and exercised a very important profession before
the days of printing; those who transcribed old books were considered
a separate branch, and styled _Antiquarii_, and by this distinction
the scholar in search of a volume knew at once from which _Statio_ he
might obtain the object of his desires.

But as in those days of high prices and book scarcity, the poor
student was sorely impeded in his progress, to provide against these
disadvantages, a law was framed at Paris, compelling all public
booksellers to keep books to lend out on hire. The reader will be
surprised at the idea of lending libraries in the Middle Ages, but
there can be no doubt of the fact that they were established at
Paris, Toulouse, Vienna, and Bologna. These public librarians, too,
were obliged to write out regular catalogues of their books, and hang
them up in their shops with the prices affixed, so that the student
might know beforehand what he had to pay for reading each book. Some
of these lists are preserved, in which we find three sous charged for
the loan of Peter Lombard’s Book of the Sentences, and ten sous for a
Bible.

The custom began to be introduced among the scholars of expending
great sums on the adornment of their books with gilt letters and
fantastic illuminations, and writers of the time complain of
the extravagant sums thus dissipated. Thus Odofred speaks of a
certain gentleman who sent his son to Paris, giving him an annual
allowance of 100 livres. “What does he do? Why, he has his books
ornamented with gold initials and strange monsters, and has a
new pair of boots every Saturday.” The mention of these literary
trades leads me to speak of what we may call the great festival day
of the trades in general, and of the scholars and booksellers in
particular. Who has not heard of the great fair of St. Denis, the
_Landit_, as it was called, originally held to enable the Bishop of
Paris to display the relics preserved in the abbey to those devout
multitudes whose numbers, being too great for any church to contain
them, rendered it necessary to assemble them in the open fields?
A French poet describes this fair as he beheld it at the close of
the twelfth century, crowded with tailors, furriers, linendrapers,
leather-sellers, shoemakers, cutlers, corn-merchants, jewellers,
and goldsmiths. The enumeration of all the trades at last passes
his powers, and he begs his readers to excuse his completing the
catalogue. And what has this to do with the university? it may be
asked. Much, for thither also flocked the sellers of parchment. The
rector of the university went there in state to choose the best
article which the fair produced; nay, what is more, all dealers in
parchment were forbidden by royal edict to purchase any on the first
day of the fair, until the merchants of the king and the bishop, and
the masters and scholars of the university, had laid in their yearly
provision. This going of the rector to the _Landit_ was the grand
annual holiday. He was attended by all the masters and scholars on
horseback, and not unfrequently, says Lebœuf, in his “History of the
Diocese of Paris,” this expedition was the occasion of many falling
sick, through heat and fatigue, especially the youngsters.

The _Landit_ was not the only recreation day of the scholars; besides
those red-letter days which in olden time were lavishly provided
for solace and refreshment of mind and body, they took part in all
popular rejoicings, and on occasion of the great victory of Bouvines
claimed and obtained a whole week’s vacation, during which time,
says Lebœuf, “they sang and danced continually.” Their country walks
to Chantilly and other rural villages were known as the _Ire ad
Campos_, for which leave had to be asked by the inmates of colleges.
James of Vitry alludes to the national characteristics apparent in
the different nations represented among the students, the luxurious
habits of the French, the love of fighting exhibited by the Germans,
and the propensity of the English to indulge in deep potations. In
the schools their habits were simple enough. The lectures were begun
punctually at the first stroke of the bells of Notre Dame, as they
rung out the hour of Prime. Clocks were not then very common, and the
cathedral bells, rung at the different hours and heard at a great
distance, furnished citizens and scholars with their ordinary mode
of reckoning time. At the last stroke the scholars were supposed to
be all assembled; seated on trusses of hay or straw, which supplied
the place of benches, they listened to the lecture of the master,
delivered after the manner of a spoken harangue, and took such notes
as they were able. The method of dictation, which had been in use in
the earlier schools, appears to have been dropped, or to have been
retained only in the more elementary schools. The _vivâ voce_ lecture
was, in fact, the speciality of the university system; and to its
use may, in great part, be attributed that enthusiasm which animated
the scholars of some popular master, who contrived to infuse the
charm of his personal grace and eloquence into the hard syllogisms
with which he dealt. “The act of instruction _vivâ voce_,” says one,
himself a master, “has I know not what hidden energy, and sounds more
forcibly in the ears of a disciple, when it passes from the master’s
lips, than the written word can do.” Hence these dry logicians of the
Middle Ages were possessed with as ardent an enthusiasm for their own
pursuits as that which kindled the armies of the Crusaders; nay, when
we read of the mad devotion of Abelard’s followers, or the resistless
impetuosity of those crowds who mustered in the Place Maubert to
listen to the great Albert as he lectured on the Sentences, we need
to bear in mind that the age was that of generous impulse; keenly
susceptible to personal influence, capable of being roused to great
enterprises by some strong word spoken to the heart, and ready to
cast itself on the shores of Palestine, or to swell the ranks of a
mendicant order, according to the deep emotions called forth by some
eloquent tongue.

The history of the university, indeed, is not without its chapters of
romance. At one time we may wander in imagination out into the green
meadows of St. Germains, and watch a group of young scholars, John,
the Englishman, and William Scot, with another John, of Provençal
blood, and his Italian fellow-student, the young Lothairius Conti, as
they join together in familiar talk, little thinking of the changes
which a few short years are to make in the destinies of each; when
the Provençal will have become the founder of the Trinitarian Order,
and his old companions, John and William, shall have flung away their
doctors’ caps, to assume the blue and crimson cross, and it shall be
from Lothaire himself, now seated in the chair of St. Peter as Pope
Innocent III., that he is to receive its first formal confirmation.

Or, shall we gaze for a moment on that poor ragged boy, begging
his bread in the streets of Paris, where like a rustic simpleton,
he has come in hopes of finding the way to fame and fortune? Yet,
a simpleton he is not;--he struggles on ill fed, ill-lodged, but,
thanks to pious alms, just able to scrape together the means of
study. He passes from one grade to another; and in time Paris learns
to be proud of her great doctor, Maurice of Sully, and forgets
that he owes his surname to the lordly territory where his fathers
cultivated the soil. At last his fame reaches his native place, and
his old mother who is still living, resolves to go and find out her
boy, whom she always knew would make his fortune. So taking staff in
hand, she found her way to the great city, and asked the first fine
ladies whom she met in the streets, if they could tell her where
she could find the Doctor Maurice. The good ladies, taking pity on
her, took her to their house, gave her refreshment, and throwing a
better kind of mantle over the coarse woollen petticoat which she
wore, after the fashion of French peasants, led her to Maurice,
and introduced her to him as his mother. “Not so,” said Maurice,
“my mother is a poor peasant woman, she wears no fine clothes like
these; I will not believe it is her unless I see her in her woollen
petticoat.” Then she threw off her cloak, and seeing her in her own
garb he embraced her, and introduced her to the great people who
stood about him, saying, “This is indeed my mother.” “And the thing
spread through the city,” says the chronicler, “and did good honour
to the master, who afterwards became Bishop of Paris;” in which
office he did many notable things, and among others built the present
Cathedral of Notre Dame.[173]

I might ask my readers, in like manner, to glance at other scenes, no
less characteristic; to look into that same cathedral where crowds
have assembled to hear the preaching of the famous doctor, John of
St. Quentin. He has chosen the subject of holy poverty, and he seems
inspired by some unwonted strain of eloquence as he speaks of the
snares, the emptiness, and the vanity of the world. At last he stops,
and descends the pulpit stairs. Is his discourse finished, or what is
he about to do? the crowd moves hither and thither with curiosity,
and sees him kneeling at the feet of the Dominican Prior of St.
James, of whose Order little was then known, save that its members
were mendicants, and owed their lodging in the city to the bounty of
this very John. But now the white habit is thrown over his doctor’s
gown, the black mantle, the garb of poverty and humility is added,
and he returns to finish his discourse, exhibiting to his wondering
audience that he can teach not by words only, but by example. Or,
once more let us wander into that old church of St. Mery, which even
to this day retains a certain air of quaint antiquity; where the
long lancet windows, and the Ladye chapel with its carved wooden
reredos, black with age, and adorned with silver statuettes, and its
walls frescoed with the figures of saints, carry us back to mediæval
times; and the cool air with its sweet fragrance of incense, and the
silence broken only by a passing footstep on the worn and broken
pavement, soothe and tranquillise us as though we had passed out
of the busy streets into the atmosphere of another world. In that
church, and before that Ladye altar, you might nightly have seen an
English scholar, who had passed over to Paris whilst still a mere boy
to study his course of arts. Every night he comes hither to assist
at Matins, and remains there till daybreak, kneeling absorbed in
heavenly contemplation till the hour strikes which is the signal for
him to betake himself to the schools. Against those very pillars,
perhaps, he leant his weary head; that dusty and shattered pavement
was once watered with his tears; and who is there that loves and
venerates the memory of St. Edmund of Canterbury, who will not, for
his sake, be glad to escape from the thoroughfares of the brilliant
capital to spend an hour of pilgrimage in the church of St. Mery?[174]

Pictures such as these, embodying the legends of an age, the daily
life of which was fraught with poetry, might be multiplied to any
extent; but I prefer to fix the reader’s attention on one which tells
more of the university life of Paris at this precise epoch, than
could be conveyed by many a laboured description. It was then about
the year 1199, just when the princes of Europe were deliberating
on a fifth crusade, that there lived at Neuilly-sur-Marne, halfway
between Paris and Lagny, a simple country Curé, named Fulk,
unlearned in worldly and even in divine science, but full of holy
zeal, governing his parish with all diligence, and preaching with a
certain rude eloquence--not sparing of his reproofs, but ready at
all times to speak the truth boldly and freely alike to rich and
poor. He who, of old, chose unlettered fishermen to be the heralds
of His Word, made choice of this poor priest to reform the follies
of those vain scholars who, to use the words of James of Vitry,
“intent on vain wranglings and questions of words, cared not to
break the Bread of Life to little ones.” Feeling his own want of
knowledge, and specially his ignorance of the Holy Scriptures, Fulk
determined, old as he was, to commence a regular course of study
in the schools, and began to go regularly into the city, attending
the theological lectures of Peter the Chanter. How the gay scholars
stared and wondered at the sight of the rustic Curé, in his coarse
frock and grey hairs, humbly entering the school, with his note-book
in his hand, wherein he entered only a few phrases, such as his
poor capacity was able to gather from the lips of the speaker. He
understood little and cared less for all the terms of art which the
dialecticians of those days so lavishly dispensed to their hearers;
and if his companions had glanced over his shoulder, they would have
read on the parchment page nothing but some scattered texts of
Scripture, sprinkled here and there with trite and practical maxims.
Yet these were enough for Fulk: they were the seed falling into good
ground, watered with prayer and meditation, and bringing forth the
hundredfold. Often did he read and ponder over his little book, and
commit its maxims to his memory, and on Sundays and Festival days,
returning to his own parish, he gave forth to his flock what he had
thus carefully gathered in the schools. His master, observing the
zeal and fervour of his new disciple, and penetrating through that
rough exterior which concealed a richly-gifted soul, required of him
at last that he should preach in the Church of St. Severinus before
himself and a great number of the students. Fulk obeyed with his
accustomed simplicity, and lo! “the Lord gave to His servant such
grace and power that it seemed as if the Holy Spirit spoke by his
mouth; and from that day masters and scholars began to flock to his
rude and simple preaching. They would invite one another, saying,
‘Come and hear the priest Fulk--he is another Paul.’”

One day a vast multitude were assembled to hear him in the Place de
Champeaux, for the churches were not large enough to contain those
who gathered to the preaching; and he spoke with such eloquence
that hundreds, pierced to the very heart, fell at his feet, and,
presenting him with rods, besought him to chastise them for their
sins, and guide them in the way of penance. He embraced them all,
giving thanks to God, and to each one he gave some suitable words
of advice. He had something appropriate to say to all, to usurers
and public sinners, fine gentlemen, men-at-arms, and scholars. He
admonished the masters to give more pithy, wholesome, and profitable
lectures in the fear of God; he bade the dialecticians put away what
was unprofitable in their art, and retain only that which bore fruit;
the canonists he reproved for their long and wearisome disquisitions;
the theologians for their tediousness and over-subtlety; and so, in
like manner, he fearlessly rebuked and admonished the teachers of
other arts, and called on them to leave their vain babblings, and
apply themselves to what was profitable to salvation.

The tide had now fairly turned, and those who, awhile before, were
ready to turn the poor Curé into ridicule, gladly changed places
with him, and brought their note-books to _his_ preaching, that they
might take down the words from his mouth. Many even entreated him
to accept them as his followers, and missions began to be preached
through all the neighbouring towns and villages by the company of
learned doctors, who put themselves under the direction of the Curé
of Neuilly. Among these were Peter the Chanter, his former master;
Alberic de Laon, afterwards Archbishop of Rheims; Robert de Courçon,
of whom we have already spoken; and our own Stephen Langton.

Fulk and his followers preached throughout France, Burgundy,
Flanders, and a great part of Germany. Their missions were followed
by a great reform of manners, and the sanctity of Fulk is said to
have been attested by miracles. He had a vein of pleasantry in him,
and sometimes treated his audience with a somewhat rough familiarity;
and, if he could obtain silence by no other means, would freely
use his stick over the shoulders of the disorderly. But the people
esteemed his very blows a blessing; wherever he appeared, they
pressed around him to tear away morsels of his habit. One day he
was nearly suffocated, and owed his deliverance to an ingenious
device--“My habit is not blessed,” he cried, “to what purpose, then,
would you carry it away? But I will bless the clothes of yonder man,
and you may take as much as you choose.” The individual whom he
indicated was at once surrounded, and thought himself happy to escape
with the loss of his mantle.

These scenes were of daily occurrence when Fulk, having himself
assumed the Cross, began to preach the Holy War; and, in fact,
the throngs who joined the Fifth Crusade from France and Flanders
were chiefly induced to do so by his eloquence. He chanced, on one
occasion, to hear that Count Thibault of Champagne had proclaimed
a magnificent tournament, which was to take place at the Château
d’Ecris, in the forest of Ardennes. All the chivalry of France
and England were gathered there; but amid the tossing plumes and
glittering pennons appeared the figure of Fulk of Neuilly, who bade
them first hear him, and painted to them the higher glory which
they might acquire in the sacred wars, instead of wasting their
time and strength on the mock combats of a tournament. A fiery
ardour kindled the brilliant throng, and Thibault himself, with his
noble guest, Simon de Montfort, and the two brothers, Walter and
John de Brienne, the latter of whom was destined to wear the crown
of Jerusalem, and five of the house of Joinville, and that heroic
knight, Sir Matthew de Montmorency, whose valour was so renowned that
Richard of England reckoned it his greatest deed of prowess to have
overcome him in single combat:--all these, and many more, hastened
to receive the Cross from the hands of the preacher, and to prepare
for that expedition which was to terminate with the Conquest, not of
Jerusalem, but of Constantinople.

It is not my intention, however, to speak further of the crusading
career of Fulk de Neuilly, and I have only introduced him here as an
illustration of the spirit which then animated all classes, whether
knights or doctors, easily swayed as they were to good or evil by the
words of a powerful leader; and to show, moreover, in what light the
subtle dialectics of the Paris schools were regarded by the Apostle
of his times.

We must now turn our attention to some of the other European
universities, and first to that of Bologna, the _Mater Studiorum_, as
it was called, of Italy, which vied with Paris in point of antiquity
as in renown. The revival of the study of Roman jurisprudence, which
took place in this city under Irnerius, has already been noticed;
when a chair of civil law was first erected in the High School, which
had existed in Bologna from very early times. It is unnecessary to
enter into the vexed question of the so-called discovery of the
Pandects[175] at Amalfi in 1137, which, according to Sigonius, was
the origin of a total change in the Italian jurisprudence. Tiraboschi
calls the whole story in question, and represents that the Pandects
had really never been lost, and that the revival of law studies must
be traced to the efforts made about that time by the Italian cities
to free themselves from the Imperial yoke, and appoint their own
judges and magistrates. However that may be, the fame of Bologna
as the first law school in Europe was fairly established by the
end of the twelfth century, and there is not an Italian writer of
that period who has not something to say of the science of _docta
Bononia_. By the middle of the same century the study of canon law
had been added to that of civil jurisprudence, chiefly, as has been
before said, after the publication of the Decretals of Gratian. This
prodigious work, executed by a simple Benedictine monk of Chiusi, was
a summary of the decrees of the Popes, and of 150 councils, with
selections from various royal codes, and extracts from the Fathers
and other ecclesiastical writers, all methodically arranged so as
to facilitate its use in the schools. Its compilation incessantly
occupied the author for the space of twenty-five years. Many errors
found their way into the work, which contained some false quotations,
and cited as authorities certain decrees and synodical acts which
have since been proved to be spurious, and are known as the False
Decretals. But whatever were its shortcomings, it gave a facility
to the study of canon law which had not before existed, and the two
branches of jurisprudence were immediately professed side by side in
the schools of Bologna. Almost at the same time the students obtained
some important privileges, which encouraged foreigners to resort to a
university where they were secure of protection from the civil power.
In 1158, when the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa held his great diet
on the plains of Roncaglia, for the purpose of publishing a code of
laws which should secure his own power in Italy, four professors were
summoned from Bologna to assist in the deliberations. He treated them
with much distinction, and with good reason, as they fully supported
the Imperial claims. They did, however, better service to their
university by obtaining from the emperor those celebrated ordinances
known as the _Habita_, which, though originally promulgated in favour
of Bologna, came to be recognised as establishing similar rights
in other European universities. In them he extends his protection
in a special manner to the masters and scholars. “It is our duty
to protect all our subjects,” he says, “but specially those whose
science enlightens the world, and who teach our people the obligation
of obeying God and us, the ministers of His Divine power. Who will
not have compassion,” he continues, “on those precious exiles, whom
the love of learning has banished from their own countries, who have
exposed themselves to a thousand dangers, and, far from their friends
and families, live here without defence, in poverty and peril?” He
therefore directs that all foreign students shall have safe-conduct
both for themselves and their messengers, both for coming, going, and
reading at the university, and that if anything be taken from them,
the magistrates of the city shall be bound to restore it fourfold.
Moreover, he exempts them from the ordinary civil jurisdiction, and
grants the right of being judged by the master of the school to which
they belong, or by the bishop.

The grant of these privileges at once raised the Bolognese
university to a position which ranked it on a level with that of
Paris, and whilst a tide of scholars from beyond the Alps, as well
as from the other Italian cities, flowed in, eager to take advantage
of these imperial favours, the Roman pontiffs began to extend their
protection to the rising institute. The first of these was Alexander
III., who had a particular interest in the university, having taught
theology there for some years before his elevation to the purple.

Among the more famous Bolognese scholars were St. Thomas of
Canterbury; Lotharius Conti, afterwards Pope Innocent III., both of
whom read canon law here after finishing their theology at Paris;
Vacarius, afterwards law professor at Oxford; and the troubadour
chronicler, Geoffrey de Vinesauf, who, though an Englishman by birth,
seems to have been rather ashamed of the barbarism of his mother
country, and declares that to go from England to Rome was like going
from darkness to light, and passing from earth into heaven.

He was the author of the _Ars Poetica_, and of another learned work
entitled _Ars Dictaminis_, written for the use of his Bolognese
pupils; but he is chiefly remembered as the companion and historian
of Richard Cœur de Lion, in the Second Crusade.

Before the end of the twelfth century, Bologna numbered 10,000
students, and in the following generation the influence exercised in
the schools by the Dominican Order, which made its headquarters in
Bologna, still further extended its fame. At this time, besides the
law lecturers, there were professors of moral and natural philosophy;
but it is somewhat singular that this flourishing university does
not appear to have had any regular chair of theology before 1362, in
which year a Bull for the erection of the theological faculty was
issued by Innocent VI. But we are not to suppose that the study of
theology was therefore neglected, for the want was supplied by the
schools attached to the monastic houses, specially the monasteries of
St. Felix and St. Proculus, and those of the two orders of Friars. It
was in one of these schools that Rolando Bandinelli, afterwards Pope
Alexander III., must have taught, as he professed theology at Bologna
at the same time that Gratian taught canon law, when certainly no
other theological schools existed in the university. Nor was this
state of things peculiar to Bologna. In Padua likewise, the students
appear to have been for some time dependent on the monastic schools
for the means of following their theological studies; so that in
1280 we find the Abbot Engelbert, after completing his course of
philosophy in the university, removing to the convent of the Friar
Preachers to study theology. Afterwards, when the Emperor Frederic
II. drove the Friars out of his dominions, the university had
recourse to the Benedictines of Monte Cassino, who sent thither the
monk Erasmus to open a theological school. We also find honourable
mention in this century of a certain Florentine physician named
Taddeo, a professor of the university, of whom the Bolognese were so
proud that they granted his scholars the privilege of law students.
The common physician’s fee at this time was a load of hay for his
horse; but Taddeo, if summoned to a distance, demanded fifty gold
scudi, and a safe-conduct out and home. This is one of the earliest
instances on record in which medicine takes its place among the other
learned faculties. The pay of all these professors seems to have been
extremely small, and never exceeding the sum of 200 _lire_, about £40.

The university of Padua appears to have owed its erection to a
quarrel among the Bolognese professors, some of whom migrated in a
body, about the year 1222, and opened schools which soon attracted
the notice of the learned. The new university was specially
distinguished by its excellent school of arts; these, as we have
seen, were sinking into neglect at Paris; but under the genial sky
of Italy, and in a country where Latin was still so completely
regarded as the native and living tongue, that as yet no one had
thought of using the vernacular Italian for literary purposes, it was
impossible that the names of Cicero and Virgil should be suffered
to drop into oblivion. Hence we find that the scholars of Padua _il
Dotto_ cultivated a taste for the profane poets and the great writers
of antiquity; and it has been observed that Albert the Great, who
studied in her schools for at least ten years, was so imbued with
the classic literature, that his very sermons often present us with
a tissue of philosophic maxims, drawn from the writings of Virgil,
Juvenal, and Cicero, the latter of whom he styles affectionately
_noster Tullius_. A love of the classics, in fact, survived in most
of the Italian schools, and Hasse tells us that the Mantuans went
so far as to give their capital the title of the “Virgilian city,”
in honour of the great bard, whose statue they erected in their
market-place, and on the 15th of October (which was supposed to be
his birthday) danced around it, crowned with laurel, and singing
verses in his praise.

Tiraboschi observes that in none of these universities does there
appear to have been erected anything like a library for the use of
the students. Copyists seem to have been employed to furnish them
with books, at a given price, and in Bologna, women were employed
on this work, a fact to which P. Sarti ungallantly attributes the
frequent errors found in many MSS. of the time. The rich collections
of books which had formerly been found in the cathedral and monastic
libraries, had been for the most part dispersed during the wars which
had ravaged Italy for so many centuries, and the scanty catalogues
which are preserved, generally present us with no more than the names
of a few books on canon or civil law.

In addition to the Italian universities already named, must be
noticed that of Naples, which owed its foundation, in 1224, to the
Emperor Frederic II. That monarch, irritated at the opposition which
he met with from the citizens of Bologna, who warmly embraced the
cause of the Popes, and refused to receive the emperor within their
walls, conceived, in revenge, the plan of ruining the university of
the refractory city, by establishing a rival institution in his own
Sicilian states. For this purpose he chose the city of Naples, and
used every effort to attract scholars, by the grant of extraordinary
privileges; and masters, by the promise of rare pecuniary advantages.
As regarded his own subjects he did not allow much liberty of choice,
but absolutely forbade them, under penalties, to study either at
Bologna or Paris, or anywhere but at the Imperial academy. No cost
was spared to put it on an equal footing with the institutions
with which it was to compete; an immense sum was expended in the
collection of Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew books, many of those
in the last three tongues being translated at the royal expense.
The works of Aristotle are said to have been translated into Latin
by the famous Michael Scott, who at that time filled the office
of astrologer to the emperor. The professor of philosophy was the
almost equally celebrated Peter the Irishman, grammar and rhetoric
being taught by another Peter, an Italian by birth. In short, ample
provision was made for the intellectual profit of the students,
but further than this little could be expected from a founder of
Frederic’s character.

Touron, in his life of St. Thomas, has given us a frightful picture
of the state of morals prevailing in the Ghibbeline university,
and says that there was a common proverb at that time current in
Italy, to the effect that Naples was an earthly paradise inhabited
by demons. Frederic was indeed a splendid patron of learning, and is
said to have been well skilled in the German, French, Latin, Greek,
and Arabic tongues. His book on birds is praised by Humboldt,[176]
as displaying a knowledge of natural history which at that time was
truly extraordinary. He was also reckoned, like all the princes
of his house, to be a good poet, and a somewhat freethinking
philosopher. Much of his literary and scientific tastes he owed to
the influence of his celebrated chancellor, Peter delle Vigne, who
had studied at Bologna, and was considered one of the most learned
men of his time. But his learning was steeped in the infidelity
peculiar to the age; and common belief attributed to him and to
his Imperial master the authorship of a blasphemous work, entitled
“The Three Impostors,” though the truth of this is warmly disputed.
Suspected of treachery by the emperor, Peter delle Vigne was at last
deprived of his eyes, and imprisoned in a monastery, where, in 1245,
he miserably put an end to his own life by dashing out his brains
against a wall.[177]

So much has been said by historians of the protection afforded to
letters by Frederic and his successors on the throne of Sicily, that
we might almost be led to suppose that the Ghibbeline monarchs had
none to share their fame in this respect. But in point of fact the
Popes in this, as in all times, were the true nursing fathers of
Christian science. To Innocent III., himself one of the most learned
men of his age, the university of Paris was indebted for that body
of laws of which we have already spoken; he also granted large
privileges to the university of Bologna, and it was he who ordained
in the Fourth Lateran Council that provision should be made for
the maintenance of Christian studies, by the appointment in every
cathedral church of a master in grammar for the instruction of the
younger clerics, as well as of a theologian. His successor, Honorius
III., directed the chapters to send certain of the younger canons to
study at the universities, and granted them a dispensation from the
obligation of residence; and we are told he once removed a bishop on
finding him grossly ignorant of grammar. Benedict XII. confirmed the
decrees of his predecessors, and required not only cathedrals, but
also monasteries and priories, to provide a master to instruct the
younger monks in grammar, logic and philosophy.

Gregory IX. who, according to Muratori, was profoundly skilled in
the liberal arts, and whom he calls “a river of Tullian eloquence,”
drew up five books of decretals, and was so firm a friend to the
university of Paris, that, to use the expression of Crevier “it had
no other support during the troubles with which it was vexed in
the thirteenth century, than in this Pope.” Innocent IV. erected
public schools of law at Rome, and founded the university of
Piacenza, besides which, as Crevier acknowledges, he surpassed all
his predecessors in the benefits which he heaped on the university
of Paris, and the singular protection he afforded it. Such was the
zeal of this pontiff in promoting learning, that wherever he was,
he established in his palace a little university. Thus, being at
Lyons in the second year of his pontificate, he opened a _studium
generale_ at his court for the study of theology and canon law; and
did the same at Naples, where he died; and at the Council of Lyons
in 1245, he enforced the decrees of previous pontiffs regarding
the establishment of cathedral grammar schools for the gratuitous
education of poor children.

It was Gregory X. who, among the other acts of his glorious
pontificate, moved the King of Sicily to restore the schools which
had fallen into decay in his dominions. His letter is printed in
the collection of Martene. God, he says, has willed that man fallen
into barbarism should be taught and civilised by the culture of the
arts and sciences. It is study which confers on man the grace of
a cultivated education, as a heavenly gift; and the king who uses
his power to continue a generation of wise and learned men, and
to provide the Church with worthy ministers, performs an act most
honourable and pleasing to God.

To Urban IV. belongs the glory of having revived the study of
philosophy in Italy. He is known to have commanded St. Thomas to
comment on the works of Aristotle; and so great was his love of
this branch of learning, that he always had at his table certain
professors whom he would afterwards cause to sit at his feet and
engage in erudite disputations among themselves, he himself presiding
over their trial of wits, and deciding to whom the victory was
due. It was to his noble encouragement that the world owed the
mathematical works of Campano of Novara, whom he appointed his
chaplain, and who wrote a learned commentary on Euclid. In one of
the mathematical treatises of this philosopher, is to be found a
dedication to Urban, in which he eulogises the magnificent support
afforded by that pontiff to philosophical studies, which, owing to
his encouragement, after having long languished in the dust, were
once more loved and cultivated. The university of Montpellier was
founded by Nicholas IV., and that of Cracow by Urban V.

We also find that, besides the universities, a vast number of public
schools were opened in Italy during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, most of them by authority of the Sovereign Pontiffs;
those founded in Rome by Innocent IV. were at first exclusively
intended for the study of law, but in 1303 Boniface VIII. erected
these schools into a university for every faculty. Other schools of
grammar, medicine, and law arose at Modena, Reggio and Parma, and
at Milan there were no fewer than eighty schoolmasters instructing
youth in the year 1288. The college of the Sapienza, at Perugia, was
founded by Innocent IV. out of his private purse, for the education
of forty boys, as the Gregorian college was raised somewhat later at
Bologna by Pope Gregory XI. And of Urban V. we read that he supported
more than a thousand scholars at different academies at his own
expense, and supplied them with the books necessary for prosecuting
their studies.

Enough has, perhaps, been said to show that the Roman Pontiffs of
this period were not altogether indifferent to the interests of
learning. Owing partly to their encouragement, and partly to the
excessive popularity then attaching to the study of law, the number
of universities continued, during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, to multiply in a manner which makes it difficult to
conjecture how students could have been found to people so many
academies. Thus, in France alone, we find the universities of
Toulouse,[178] Montpellier, Orleans, Lyons, Avignon, Poictiers,
Angers, Bourdeaux, Bourges, Cahors, Nantes, Rheims, Caen, Valence,
and Grenoble; in Italy, there were those of Ravenna, Salerno, Arezzo,
Ferrara, Perugia, Piacenza, Siena, Treviso, Vercelli, Pavia, and
Vicenza; in Spain, the two great universities of Salamanca, and
Valladolid, besides twenty-four smaller ones; in Poland, of Cracow;
in Germany, of Vienna, Prague, Heidelberg, Cologne, and Erfurt,
besides others of rather later date. Sixty-six such institutions
altogether are reckoned as having been founded in various European
countries before the period of the Reformation. The numbers of
students who repaired to these academies was certainly very great. At
Bologna, in the thirteenth century, we find mention of ten thousand
scholars; at Paris, of forty thousand; at Bourdeaux, a single
college boasted of upwards of two thousand scholars; and Oxford, in
Henry III.’s time, is said to have contained thirty thousand. These
universities had each their own distinctive character--Paris excelled
in theology, Montpellier and Salerno in medicine, Pavia in the arts,
Bologna, Bourges, and Orleans in jurisprudence. Caen, an English
foundation was particularly favoured by the monastic students, and
a great number of abbeys had here their own colleges, the abbots
being accustomed to assemble and assist at the yearly opening of the
schools. Of the English universities we will speak more at length in
another chapter, but it remains for us to say a few words here on the
general character and tendency of all these institutions, and of the
revolution which their establishment brought about in the system of
education.

To form something like an accurate judgment on this matter, we must
glance back at some of the facts elicited in the foregoing pages.
From what has been already said, it will appear that the germ of all
Christian schools is to be found in the episcopal seminaries--those
seminaries which, in ancient times, formed a part of the bishop’s
own household, and in which he himself personally directed the
studies of his younger clergy, and trained them to the duties of
the ecclesiastical state. The cathedral or canonical schools were
but the expansion of these early seminaries, over which the bishop
still presided, the office of scholasticus being conferred on one of
the canons, though, as we have seen, masters were often invited to
direct the studies from other dioceses. The monastic schools were
formed on the model of these episcopal schools, the abbot doing for
his own monks what the bishop did for the clergy of his diocese. The
constitution of all these schools was most strictly ecclesiastical,
and though seculars were admitted to share in their advantages, they
were primarily intended for the education of the clergy. The strong
religious character that must have been impressed on the education
given in such academies was perfectly in harmony with the spirit of
the early ages, when, as Balmez remarks, the intellectual development
of Europe had a distinctly theological bias. Religion in those days
was the preponderating element, it ruled the family and the state,
as well as the individual: and in days when the laws were drawn
up in the spirit and the language of ecclesiastical canons, there
was nothing at all out of place in the sons of knights and nobles
being set to study church chant, the Psalter, and the Fathers. That
their studies were by no means _exclusively_ theological has, I
think, been amply shown; nevertheless, it is undeniable that, in
the ecclesiastical schools, the liberal arts were chiefly cultivated
in their relation to the things of faith, and that every branch of
learning was more or less tinged with the theological element.

It was not to be expected that such a state of things could continue
without large modification. Nations, like individuals, pursue an
inevitable course of mental development, and the time necessarily
came when the human mind, growing from childhood into maturity,
demanded a wider and freer expansion. Hence ensued that remarkable
change observable at the opening of the eleventh century, when the
European intellect seemed to be passing out of a long winter into
a sudden spring, and burst into a vigorous activity, accompanied,
naturally enough, by many excesses. Schools and teachers were
indefinitely multiplied; the office of teaching was no longer
confined to ecclesiastics, and, falling into the hands of lay
professors, unavoidably assumed a new character. But it is remarkable
that the main principles of the former system still remained in
force. Education was recognised to be a religious work, and one
which, as such, fell under the jurisdiction of the bishop. As chief
pastor in his own diocese, he was supreme in all things appertaining
to the spiritual interests of his flock, and the office of teaching
was acknowledged to be one that fell under his pastoral charge.[179]
The new scholastics, therefore, were not entirely exempted from
episcopal jurisdiction; and in the eleventh century we find the
system generally established, according to which the _scholasticus_
of the cathedral, or bishop’s school, exercised a certain control
over all the schools in the diocese, no professor being suffered to
open any private school without a license from him.[180] I do not
know whether we can affirm that there were episcopal inspectors, but
there were certainly certificated masters in the days of St. Anselm.
The office of cathedral _scholasticus_ belonged properly to the
archdeacon of the diocese, who might appoint a substitute to direct
the school, but with whom the power of granting licenses always
remained. In many churches it was also identical with the office of
chancellor.[181]

And here one observation irresistibly presents itself. How striking a
contrast does not this system offer to that which finds favour in our
own times! Here we see it formally and distinctly recognised that the
office of teacher was one of those that fell directly under episcopal
supervision. The bishop of the diocese exercised jurisdiction
over schools, as he did over churches, in virtue of his pastoral
office, and his license was the necessary certificate of moral and
intellectual fitness. But, according to the principles accepted by
most countries which rejoice in a National system of education, the
authority formerly exercised by the bishop is transferred to a Board.
We make over to a minister of public instruction, or a committee of
privy council, or some other secular organ of an unspiritual state,
what our fathers regarded as an integral portion of the pastoral
office, an incongruity which, little as it now startles us, is, we
may say without exaggeration, scarcely less opposed to the Christian
order than if the crown should assume the power of granting faculties
to preach. What wonder that the result of such a change should be
the gradual, but most sure, unchristianising of the popular mind,
and that infidelity has found no more efficient allies than the
multitudinous and plausible codes of state education which have
sprung up since the destruction of the ancient system!

That the control thus recognised as belonging to the bishop through
his officers was not merely nominal is quite clear. In 1132, we
find Stephen de Senlis, Bishop of Paris, through his chancellor,
interdicting a certain professor, named Galon, from continuing to
teach. Galon persisted, in defiance of the bishop; and, his pupils
deserting his school through fear of incurring ecclesiastical
censures, he was at last put to silence. However, he appealed to
the Pope, and this, says Crevier, “is the first occasion in which
the authority of the Court of Rome appears as interfering in the
affairs of the university.” He adds that it was also the beginning
of those disputes which the university of Paris maintained for long
years against the bishop and chancellor of Notre Dame, arising
out of the claims of the latter to exercise jurisdiction over the
schools, and the vigorous resistance of the academic authorities.
It is clear that the episcopal rights were never totally and
completely revoked; nevertheless, they were reduced to a _minimum_,
and the universities, to all practical purposes, established their
independence. And the change thus introduced was the more portentous
from the fact that, with the rise of the universities, we date
the disappearance of the episcopal seminaries. “The institution
of seminaries,” says Theiner, “disappeared throughout Christendom
after the twelfth century.” The universities became the great seats
of learning, human and divine, and though the cathedral schools
continued to exist, their students passed from them at an early
age to finish their education in theology and canon law in Paris,
Oxford, and Bologna; whilst, in many cases, the cathedral schools
themselves were absorbed in the new universities of which they formed
the nucleus. The bishops, unable to stem the tide, were forced to
yield to it, and to witness the education of their clergy passing
out of their own control into the hands of newly-constituted bodies
which jealously disputed their authority, which were often enough
infected with an infidel philosophy, which did not at first supply
their members with any spiritual or moral discipline, and which were
not necessarily impressed with an ecclesiastical character. For,
what is a university? “It consists,” says a writer in the “Analecta
Juris Pontificii,”[182] “of an aggregation of schools, governed by
a body of doctors, who divide among themselves the several branches
of instruction which, in the public schools, are united under one
master.” “A university,” says Crevier, “is a body composed of
masters teaching and disciples who are taught.” And the writer first
quoted goes on to examine whether it would have been possible or
desirable for the universities to have established the collegiate
discipline of the ancient schools with a view to protect the piety
and morals of the students, and decides that such an attempt would
have been a chimera. The universities, he says, were intended for
seculars as well as clerics, and it was, therefore, unfitting that
the rule of clerical schools should be enforced in them. But it is
at least obvious that a prodigious and calamitous revolution was
being effected in the education of the clergy when young clerics
were trained in academies wherein such rules were avowedly _not_
enforced. The difference was this, that in old time they had received
secular students into their seminaries, and then the education of
laymen was tinged with an ecclesiastical character. Now the world
received clerics into her academies, and the education of the future
clergy of Europe became necessarily, in a certain sense, secularised.
Nor is this said as in any way depreciating the universities, or
representing them in an unfavourable light. They will lose nothing
by being represented as what they truly are, academies of science,
schools of worldly training, learned corporations in which degrees
are granted for intellectual proficiency in liberal studies, and in
which a man acquires knowledge, refinement, and all that can fit him
for taking his place in society, and filling it with credit. Yet, all
this does not make them substitutes for ecclesiastical seminaries.
They are doubtless capable of being employed in the service of
religion, and have often been so employed: they have been established
and encouraged by the bulls of Popes, and, in more than one instance,
founded with the direct view of furnishing bulwarks against the
spread of heresy. Yet, it is evident that, as places of education for
the clergy, the universities were at a disadvantage. They could not
give the young clerics that training in the ecclesiastical spirit
which they had hitherto enjoyed. Even granting that the establishment
of colleges afforded the benefits of regular life to their students,
it could not give them the watchful protection of their bishop’s eye.
That close and paternal tie which had grown up between the chief
pastor and his future clergy was altogether lost, except, indeed,
in so far as the evil results of the system were counteracted by
the personal efforts of the bishop. And here, happily, some of the
habits of feudal society came to his aid, and enabled him to receive
into the enormous household then maintained by every lord, whether
spiritual or temporal, a number of young clerks, who, after their
university career was over, thus passed under the immediate rule of
their bishop, and received a certain sort of ecclesiastical training
at his hands.

Fleury speaks of this custom as universal throughout the Church in
the Middle Ages; and says that each bishop took special care of the
instruction of his clergy, particularly of those young clerics who
were continually about his person, serving him in the capacity of
lectors or secretaries, carrying his letters and transmitting his
orders. These episcopal households, however, could not do the work
of a seminary, still less could they undo the work of a university
in the souls of those who had been subjected for a course of years
to its social and intellectual training. The idea of the seminary,
and the episcopal or monastic school, is pre-eminently that of
preservation; it takes the soul in the freshness of youth, and
hedges round with thorns the garden that is to be consecrated to
God. But according to the mediæval university system, a lad began
his studies at Oxford or Paris at the age of twelve or fourteen, and
seldom spent less than nine, sometimes twelve, years in native or
foreign academies, so that the whole of his most impressible years
were spent in the midst of secular fellow-students, thus opening
upon him a flood of evils that scarcely require to be pointed out.
The dissolute manners which prevailed, specially in the Italian
universities, which were, perhaps, next to that of Paris, the most
frequented, are depicted by successive Pontiffs as a sort of moral
contagion. In many there prevailed a tone of philosophic scepticism,
even yet more gravely injurious. False opinions were supported by
the example and eloquence of fine scholars and great intellects,
and few could enter such an atmosphere, and be subjected to such an
influence, without at least losing some of the instincts of faith.
The habits of expense, rendered fashionable by wealthy students,
brought poverty, the scholar’s ancient and honourable badge, into
disrepute, and encouraged an eagerness for offices and benefices. The
office of teaching itself lost something of its ancient nobility when
made a means of ministering to cupidity and ambition; for it must
be owned there were few Wolfgangs to be found at Paris or Bologna.
And as avarice and sensuality became the predominant vices of those
out of whose ranks the future clergy were to be formed, what wonder
that the two centuries which followed the rise of these brilliant and
captivating academies should be filled with complaints of clerical
corruption; that the salt of the earth should have lost its savour,
and that abuses accumulated which cried loudly for reform?

But besides all this the universities had a spirit of their own.
In most cases they were creations of the State, and betrayed their
origin in the principles which they advocated. We shall have occasion
hereafter to refer to the part taken by Paris university during
the struggle between Philip le Bel and Boniface VIII. That Pontiff
had been prodigal of his favours to the French schools, and had
done more than any preceding Pope to extend their privileges; yet
at the bidding of the crown the Paris doctors did not hesitate to
give their sanction to the monstrous charges by which Philip sought
to blacken the reputation of the man he had resolved to destroy.
They certified to the truth of accusations drawn up at the king’s
direction, representing the Sovereign Pontiff as having a familiar
demon, and as blaspheming the doctrine of the real Presence. Crevier
says one cannot but smile at these articles, which were notoriously
destitute of a shadow of foundation, and in which not one man who
signed them for a moment believed. Yet, he adds, the university of
Paris gave in its adhesion to this act, and her example was followed
by that of Toulouse, _because they deemed it proper to support the
authority of the Crown_. His own comments on these facts are not less
startling than the facts themselves. “It was an act,” he says, “of
great consequence, and the university has constantly adhered to this
_sound_ doctrine, and made it her greatest glory that, owing all her
privileges to the power of the Popes, she has never sought to extend
their power beyond its just limits, but on the contrary, has ever
been the scourge of theologians and canonists flattering to the court
of Rome.”[183] In the preface to his work he lays down this _sound
doctrine_ of the university in very plain terms, which we commend
to the attentive study of the reader, as indicating the inevitable
bias of State institutions. “The university of Paris is intimately
united to the State, of which it forms a part. It finds in the
public power that protection which it requires, and acquits itself
of all its duties towards the State by inspiring with all possible
care into the disciples whom it trains the sentiments of citizens
and Frenchmen. This is one of the chief characteristics, I may say,
the peculiar glory, of our university. Its first object is God and
religion. But it knows that God Himself commands us to regard _as the
first of duties those which refer to our country and our sovereign_,
who resumes all the rights of the nation in his own person. Hence
that enlightened and courageous zeal which has always animated the
university of Paris for the defence of our precious maxims on the
independence of the Crown, the distinction of the two powers, the
legitimate rights of the Head of the Church, and the respective
rights of the Church herself, _as opposed to her Head_. These maxims,
so important to the tranquillity of Church and State, have always had
adversaries, and our university shares with the Parliament the glory
of having ever faithfully maintained them.”

These words were written in the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI.
Who can regret that an institution, the character of which is thus
depicted by one of its own professors, should have been doomed to
extinction in the midst of that storm which overthrew both state and
monarchy, and taught the terrible lesson how little stability is
to be looked for in any civil power which seeks to base itself on
the “precious maxims” of State supremacy? Yet, this spirit was not
confined to the university of Paris alone; her doctors put it forth,
perhaps, with peculiar boldness and precision, but it was shared by
almost all her sister academies, as may be seen by the part which the
universities of Europe took in the contest between Henry VIII. and
the Holy See, and the active support which he obtained from their
professors. And there is no doubt that this is in great part to be
attributed to the excessive predominance of the study of the Roman
law, which rendered popular a certain Cæsarism in politics, which
eventually proved as destructive to civil, as it did to religious,
liberty.

So far, our observations apply to the universities at all periods of
their existence. But, in the beginning of the thirteenth century,
there existed some dangers peculiar to the time. The new academies
threatened to prove no less hostile to the purity of doctrine than
to the purity of manners. Aggregations of schools incorporated by
royal charters are not the appointed guardians of the deposit of
faith, nor has the promise of infallibility been given to doctors and
theological professors. The monastic scholars had, for the most part,
been secured from error by their reverence for tradition, and from
the fact of their naturally contemplating truth, rather through the
heart, than through the reason. But the new scholastics contemplated
it through the metaphysics of Aristotle, and, what is more, through
Aristotle as he was rendered by Arabic interpreters, who added to the
errors of the pagan philosophers a pantheistic system of their own.
At the head of these was Averrhoes, the son of an Arabian physician,
whose religion it would be hard to determine, as he scoffed alike
at Christianity, Judaism, and Mahometanism. His commentaries on
Aristotle found such favour in the eyes of the free-thinking students
of the day that they commonly spoke of him as “the Commentator.” His
grand doctrine was that which averred all mankind to possess but
one common intellect. All after death were to be united to what
the modern Germans would call the _Over-Soul_, and hence the dogma
of reward and punishment, according to individual merit, crumbled
away, and there was no difference between saint and sinner--between
St. Peter and Mahomet. These doctrines were propagated by wandering
minstrels, and supported by imperial scholars. Frederic II.
entertained at his court the two sons of Averrhoes, whose religious
views, in the main, coincided with his own. He patronised the Arabian
schoolmen, partly out of a love of the natural sciences which
they cultivated, and partly from a sympathy with their sceptical
philosophy; and his support helped to set the fashion. Soon the new
philosophy linked itself to those Manichean doctrines, the poison of
which was always lurking somewhere within the fold. Secret societies
were formed, the members of which were bound together by oaths, and
were to be found in most of the great universities; and Bulæus tells
us that an organisation existed for disseminating their opinions
among the people by agents disguised as pedlars. A new translation of
Aristotle’s Metaphysics appeared in 1167, and, says Crevier, “men’s
minds became wholly filled with them.” Many fell into open unbelief,
and he relates the well-known story of Simon of Tournai, who, after
explaining all the doctrines of religion with great applause,
blasphemously boasted that it was as easy for him to disprove, as
to prove the existence of God. He offered to do so on the following
day, but, in the midst of his impious speech, he was struck with
apoplexy, and the event was regarded as a manifestation of the Divine
displeasure.

Another of the Paris professors, Amauri de Bene, was regent of arts
about the same time with Simon. He was remarked as being fond of
singular opinions; and as having a way of thinking on most subjects
peculiar to himself, but in his own lifetime the real truth was
never suspected. But after his death startling discoveries were
made. He was found to have been the head of one of the Albigensian
sects who preserved the name of Christianity, while rejecting all
its dogmas. The doctrine of the sacraments was swept away; a new
religion was announced to the initiated as the work of the Spirit,
which was to replace that which had been introduced by the Son;
and this second gospel was associated with hideous immorality.
All this had been cautiously propagated among disciples bound to
secresy by oath. On investigation it proved that the greater number
of the Paris professors were infected with this poison, and the
university found itself compelled to limit the number of its doctors
in theology to eight. A council being called at Paris in 1210, it
was resolved to strike at the evil in its head by prohibiting the
study of Aristotle’s Philosophy in the schools. It was in consequence
of this decree that Robert de Courçon in his statutes interdicted
the reading of Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics. In 1231 Gregory
IX. rendered the prohibition less absolute, but before the end of
the century a recurrence of the old disorders rendered it once
more necessary to condemn a whole system of pagan errors taught by
the Parisian masters.[184] “Even those who did not push the abuse
to such extremes,” says Crevier, “altered, at least in part, the
purity of Christian dogma, by interpretations more conformable to
the principles of Aristotle than of the Fathers.” And it was this
that caused Gregory IX., true friend to ancient learning as he was,
to fulminate a bull against the Paris professors, charging them
with presumptuous arrogance, and forbidding them to mingle their
philosophic opinions with the truths of revelation.

Decrees of this nature were, however, insufficient to meet the evil.
The intellect of Europe, as it flowed into these academies, was
trembling on the brink of infidelity, and so long as the schools of
philosophy were in the enemy’s hands, it was vain to expect to put
down error by the simple voice of authority. What power, then, was to
be evoked in defence of Christian dogma? Where were the champions to
be found to meet the teachers of error on their own ground, and beat
them with their own weapons? The monastic orders had ever proved the
militia of the Church at such crises, but in the present case their
position seemed to preclude their taking a prominent part in the
contest. Though they were beginning to make use of the universities
for the education of their younger members, yet this was felt by many
to be a straining of their rule, and a very general prejudice against
the practice prevailed among the monks themselves. Certainly it would
never have been tolerated for them to have aspired to the professor’s
chair, yet the battle, it was plain, would have to be fought in the
arena of the schools. Something seemed required in which the spirit
of the schools and of the cloister should be combined; in which
all the science of the one should be united to all the unworldly
self-devotedness of the other. A new institute seemed called for in
the Church, and at the moment that it was called for, it appeared.
The Divine Householder, bringing out of His treasure-house things
new as well as old, had in His providence prepared the shield which
was to cast back the weapons of the new scholasticism on those who
wielded them; to Christianise the schools, and press philosophy into
the service of the faith. And this gigantic work was to be wrought
by the ministry of doctors indeed, but of men who were not merely
doctors, but saints. But of them and of their triumphs we must speak
in a separate chapter.

_CHAPTER XIV._

THE DOMINICANS AND THE UNIVERSITIES.

A.D. 1215-1300.

In the very same year which witnessed the publication of the Paris
Statutes by Robert de Courçon, the city of Toulouse was being
electrified by the lectures of a certain professor of theology named
Alexander, who was held in great esteem throughout the south of
France. One autumn day in the year 1215, having risen at a very early
hour to pursue his studies, he fell asleep in his chair, and in his
sleep he had a dream. He thought that seven stars appeared before
him, small at first, but gradually increasing in size, and at last
illuminating the whole world with their splendour. Starting from his
slumber, he found that the hour had come for him to open his school,
and hastening thither, seven men presented themselves to him as he
entered, and informed him that they were about to preach in the
country round about Toulouse, and desired, before doing so, to attend
his lectures. They wore the usual dress of the Canons Regular of St.
Augustine, namely, a white serge tunic covered with a linen surplice,
and over that a black mantle; and they were headed by one on whose
brow the master seemed to recognise the starry splendour which he had
seen in his late vision: they were Dominic Guzman, prior of Prouille
and Canon of Osma, and his first six followers.

The Order of Preachers was at this time but just founded, but even
before its holy patriarch had given it a rule, and obtained for
it the Apostolic confirmation, he directed its first steps to the
schools. The institute, of which he had conceived the plan, was
expressly designed for the purpose of teaching and preaching, and
hence the culture of sacred science formed, from the first moment
of its existence, one of its primary and essential duties. Having,
therefore, established his followers at Toulouse to pursue their
studies under the direction of Alexander, St. Dominic hastened to
Rome to lay his plans before Pope Innocent III., then presiding
over the Fourth Lateran Council. The Fathers of that Council had
already formally recognised the grand evils of the age, which cried
for a remedy, to be the want of sound religious instruction among
the people and of theological science among the clergy. And a decree
had been passed directing the bishops in each diocese to choose
persons capable of preaching and instructing the people who were
to be employed in this office; and requiring that certain learned
men should be appointed in all churches, whether cathedral or
conventual, to assist the bishops in preaching the Word of God and
administering the Sacraments. Thus the outline of a teaching and
preaching order had been sketched by the Lateran Fathers even before
its perfect design had been submitted to the Pope by its founder.
No wonder, therefore, that it was readily approved; it appeared as
though raised up by God to supply a want at the very moment when
the existence of that want had been distinctly acknowledged. And
as if to mark the fact that, from the first moment of its formal
existence, the Order of Preachers was expressly intended to teach and
cultivate sacred science, Honorius III., when confirming the rule in
the year following, bestowed upon St. Dominic the office of Master
of the Sacred Palace, which may be briefly defined as that of the
Pope’s theologian. This office became hereditary in the Order, and
distinguished the sons of St. Dominic as the chosen theologians of
the Church.

To form a just idea of the solicitude of the holy founder, and of
those who immediately succeeded him, in establishing a perfect system
of studies, we must turn to the Constitutions of the Order. It was
at the first general chapter held at Bologna in 1220, and presided
over by the saint himself, that an ordinance was passed declaring
that as the principal end of the Order is preaching, the brethren
should concern themselves rather with books and studies than with
the singing of Responsories and Antiphons, provided, however, that
prayer be vigilantly attended to.[185] And elsewhere the pursuit of
sacred learning is declared to be “most congruous to the design of
the Order,” both because the Order professes the contemplative life,
and the study of sacred things is necessary to this end, and because
it is also designed for teaching others the Divine knowledge which
its members have acquired by learning.[186] Schools were therefore
to be opened in every convent, under a Master of Studies, which
differed from the old monastic schools in being exclusively intended
as theological seminaries, and not as academies of the arts. The
study of arts was not indeed absolutely prohibited, but it was to
be pursued under limitations, and too much time was not to be given
to secular branches of learning.[187] It was, however, required
that in all convents the brethren should study the languages of the
neighbouring countries;[188] and early in the fourteenth century the
study of the Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic tongues was likewise enjoined.
Still later, in 1553, it was ordained that in all convents where
there were younger brethren, there should be a lector appointed to
teach them grammar and the arts, according to their capacity. But the
studies chiefly contemplated by the rule were those of philosophy and
theology. Three years were to be devoted to the study of philosophy,
before the commencement of the theological course. The length of time
devoted to theological studies may be gathered from the rule which
enjoined that in each of the chief houses of studies there should
be a Regent of Studies, a certain number of Bachelors and Lectors,
and a Master of Studies; but no one could be appointed Regent till
he had publicly taught theology for twelve years, and the Bachelor
or Lector, ten years; and all these must have maintained at least
five public disputations in the schools before the assembled doctors
and scholars. Moreover, before any one could present himself for the
examination required in order to become a Master of Studies, it was
necessary to have completed the course of arts, and another four
years’ course of theology.[189]

During the year of religious probation which preceded profession,
the novices were exclusively to occupy themselves in acquiring a
knowledge of their rule and the duties of their state, and were
exercised in chanting the Divine Office and studying the Ceremonies
of the Order. During this time they were not allowed to engage in
any study except that of languages. After their profession their
scholastic course began, during which time every facility was to
be afforded them for pursuing their philosophical and theological
course. They were to have suitable cells in which they might read,
write, and even sit up at night with a light. There was to be
some place in which the Master of Studies could assemble them to
propose doubts and questions, in discussing which good order and
courtesy were to be observed. Every student was to be provided
with three books; a Bible, a copy of the Sentences, and a book of
histories.[190] The studies began with a course of philosophy, then
the Scriptures were explained, and no one could be sent to a _Studium
Generale_, a house of general studies, until he had passed at least
one year under a professor of the Sacred Scriptures. After this
came the explanation of the Sentences, which formed the theological
text-book, until the works of St. Thomas were substituted in their
place. In the schools the Lector was forbidden to use any written
manuscript; he might have the text of Aristotle and of the Sentences,
but no gloss. The pupils might take written notes if they chose,
and if they were able to do so, though, as they sat on bundles of
straw, or at best on benches without desks, this was not always
easy. Most were content to trust to their memory, and assist it
afterwards by repetitions of the master’s lesson among themselves.
Classes were held every day, and there were weekly and yearly
examinations. At first there was but one _Studium Generale_, that,
namely, of St. James’s Convent in Paris, but in 1248 four others were
established at Cologne, Oxford, Montpelier, and Bologna, in all of
which the students were able to take the same degrees as in Paris.
The number of these houses was afterwards greatly multiplied, one
being provided for each province. Certain scholars of remarkable
capacity were selected by their superiors and sent to those houses.
From the _Studium Generale_ the students passed on to graduate at
some university, unless, as was often the case, the house was itself
aggregated to a university, as at Paris and Bologna. The order
observed at Paris in advancing to the degree of Doctor, is given by
Fleury in his “Fifth Discourse,” and was as follows. He who was named
_Bachelor_ by the General of the Order, or by the Chapter, began by
explaining the Sentences in the school of some doctor, for the space
of a year, at the end of which time the prior of the convent, with
the other doctors then professing, presented him to the Chancellor
of the Church of Paris, and affirmed on oath that they judged him
worthy of obtaining a license to open a school of his own and teach
as a doctor; after going through certain examinations, he taught the
second year in his own school, and the third year was allowed to have
a bachelor under him, whom at the end of that year he presented for
his license. Thus, the doctor’s course lasted three years, and no
one could be raised to the degree of Doctor of Divinity or Master of
Sacred Theology, who had not thus publicly taught.[191] The teaching
of the Friar Preachers, however, was not exclusively given in the
pulpit or the professor’s chair. It was their aim to ingraft in
men’s minds a knowledge and love of the truth, to protect them from
heresy by informing them with the spirit of the Church, that spirit
which finds expression, not in her creeds alone, but her Liturgy
and sacred ceremonies. In our own day we have become accustomed to
the idea that institutes founded for the purpose of teaching must
necessarily lay aside something of the monastic character. The
long offices, the solemn ceremonial, the austerities and ritual
observances which take up so large a portion of cloistered life, are,
it is thought, difficult, if not impossible, to associate with the
active work of the Apostolate. But in the thirteenth century men were
still deeply penetrated with the Liturgical spirit which animated
the Church in earlier times; it was held that no words could be so
fit to convey her teaching as her own, and not words alone but acts,
the exact performance of her beautiful rites, made familiar to the
eye and heart of the worshipper; her office, her music, the beauty
of her sanctuary, and the silent eloquence of her sacred art. All
these, therefore, were embraced by the Dominican rule and used as
instruments of popular instruction, and it is probable that the
Friars cherished those privileges which threw open their churches to
the people, and encouraged them to assist at their public offices,
almost equally with those that secured to them the free possession of
the professor’s chair.

How thoroughly the newly-constituted order was fitted to supply the
intellectual wants of the times is proved by the fact, that in the
first period of its existence it was chiefly recruited from the ranks
of university scholars and professors. Among the names that figure in
its early annals those of the Blessed Reginald of Orleans, and St.
Peter Martyr, Jordan of Saxony, and his friend Henry of Cologne, the
Englishman, John of St. Giles, and the Parisian, Vincent of Beauvais,
the three Bolognese doctors Roland, Conrad, and Moneta, Cardinal Hugh
de St. Cher, and his disciple the Blessed Humbert, with the Spanish
canonist St. Raymund Pennafort, were all taken from this class.

The chief extension of the Order, especially among the students
of Paris and Bologna, took place under the generalship of Blessed
Jordan, who had a remarkable gift of drawing to himself the affection
and confidence of the young. His influence was naturally enough most
powerfully felt among his own countrymen. The convent of Cologne
had already been founded by his old fellow-student and bosom friend
Henry of Utrecht; and a namesake of his, Henry the German, who had
begun life as a student, then assumed the cross, and finally taking
the religious habit, became its first theological professor. And
there in 1230 arrived the young Swabian, Albert of Lauingen, who had
been drawn to the Order by B. Jordan, whilst pursuing his studies at
Padua. Albert during his student-life had been remarkable for his
love of the old classic literature and his enthusiastic admiration
for Aristotle; and had already displayed a singular attraction to
those physical sciences which he afterwards so profoundly studied.
He had examined various natural phenomena, such as earthquakes, the
mephitic vapours issuing from a long closed well, and some curious
marks in a block of marble, which he explained in a manner which
betrays an acquaintance with some of the chemical theories of modern
geology.[192] After going through his theological course at Bologna,
he was appointed to fill the vacant post of professor at Cologne,
where he taught sacred and human science for some years, and lectured
moreover at Hildesheim, Strasburg, Friburg, and Ratisbonn, in which
last city an old hall is shown which still bears the title of
“Albert’s School.” Converted into a chapel by one of his successors
and ardent admirers, it may be supposed to exhibit the same form
and arrangement as that which it bore five centuries ago. Round the
walls are disposed ancient wooden seats, for the accommodation of the
hearers, and fixed against the middle of the wall is an oak chair, or
rather pulpit, covered with carvings of a later date, representing
St. Vincent Ferrer delivering a lecture, and a novice in the attitude
of attention. The chair is of double construction, containing two
seats, in one of which sat the master, and in the other the bachelor,
who explained under him the Book of the Sentences. All around are
texts from the Holy Scriptures, fitly chosen to remind the student
in what spirit he should apply himself to the pursuit of sacred
letters. _Ama scientiam Scripturarum, et vitia carnis non amabis.
Qui addit scientiam addit et laborem. Bonitatem et disciplinam et
scientiam doce me. Qui fecerit et docuerit, hic magnus vocabitur in
regno cælorum. Videte ne quis vos decipiat per philosophiam, secundum
elementa mundi, et non secundum Christum._

In such a hall as this we may picture to ourselves the Blessed
Albert the Great lecturing at Cologne in 1245, where he first
received among his pupils that illustrious disciple whose renown,
if it eclipsed his own, at the same time constitutes his greatest
glory. There are few readers who are not familiar with the student
life of St. Thomas of Aquin, the silent habits which exposed him to
the witticisms of his companions, who thought the young Sicilian
a dull sort of importation, and nicknamed him “the dumb ox;” the
obliging compassion which moved a fellow-student to offer him his
assistance in explaining the lessons of the master, and the modesty
and humility with which this greatest of Christian scholars veiled
his mighty intellect, and with the instinct of the saints, rejoiced
to be counted the least among his brethren. But the day came which
was to make him known in his true character. His notes and replies
to a difficult question proposed by Albert from the writings of St.
Denys, fell into the hands of his master, who reading them with
wonder and delight, commanded him on the following day to take part
in the scholastic disputation. St. Thomas obeyed, and the audience
knew not whether most to admire his eloquence or his erudition. At
last Albert, unable to restrain his astonishment, broke out into
the memorable words, “You call this the dumb ox, but I tell you his
roaring will be heard throughout the whole world.” From that day St.
Thomas became the object of his most solicitous care; he assigned him
a cell adjoining his own, and when in the course of the same year he
removed to Paris, to govern the school of St. James for three years,
in order afterwards to graduate as doctor, he took his favourite
scholar with him.

The position which the Friars at that time occupied in Paris requires
a few words of explanation. In the year 1228, a tavern brawl, which
terminated in a disgraceful riot, had brought on a collision between
the civic and academic authorities; and the indiscriminating severity
with which the excesses of the students had been punished, had
determined all the masters to desert the city, and open their schools
elsewhere. This quarrel, which threatened the entire break-up of the
university, lasted three years, and was only finally adjusted by the
interference of the Pope. During the absence of the masters, the
archbishop and chancellor of Paris conferred one of the vacant chairs
of theology on the Friars Preachers, and shortly afterwards erected a
second chair in their favour, Roland of Cremona and John of St. Giles
being named the two first university professors of the order.

When the masters returned to Paris they affected to regard this as
an infringement of their rights, and a warm controversy arose, which
lasted with ever-increasing violence for forty years, and was at
its height when the two saints made their first appearance in the
Parisian schools. It did not, however, prevent Albert from winning
his doctor’s cap, together with the reputation of having illuminated
every branch of science, and of knowing everything that was to be
known.[193]

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]

The English schools of that period enjoyed the benefit of no other
inspection than that of the parish priest and the archdeacon, “the
eye of the bishop,” as he was called; and if their pupils knew little
about “monocotyledons,” the “crustacea,” or grammatical analysis,
they were able to recite their _Alma Redemptoris_ and their _Dixit
Dominus_ with hearty, intelligent devotion. They knew the order of
the Church service, and could sing its psalms and antiphons in the
language of the Church, and to her ancient tones; and so they did
not, through their ignorance, oblige their pastors to lay aside, as
obsolete, the use of that office so truly called Divine, in order to
substitute in its place English hymns and devotions from any less
inspired source. On this point we hold their education, therefore,
to have been immeasurably superior to our own, nor are we to suppose
that because they learnt Latin prayers and the Church chant, they
learnt nothing besides. Reading and grammar are often named as taught
in parochial schools; and among the humblest class of pupils a good
deal of instruction, both devotional and practical, was conveyed in
English verse, which the pupils committed to memory, much as some
among ourselves have, ere now, learnt to remember the number of
days in each month by means of doggerel rhymes. The traditions of
the Saxon schools, wherein so much use was made of these versified
instructions, was kept up so late as the fifteenth century, when we
shall have occasion to quote some of the methods in popular use for
teaching children the succession of the English kings, the names of
towns and villages, the four quarters of the globe, and the outline
of the Latin accidence. The Commandments of God and the Church, the
Creed, Our Father, and Hail Mary, and other similar portions of
Christian doctrine, were also taught in verse, as they may still be
seen in most French elementary books of religious instruction; and
specimens of the English language, as it existed in the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, might very fairly be selected
from the different versified forms of the Hail Mary in use at these
periods. I will give but one, which is supposed to belong to the
early part of the thirteenth century:--

Mary ful off grace, weel thou be,
God of heven be with the,
Over all wimmen bliscedd thou be,
So be the bairn that is boren of the.

It is needless to observe, that in all times a very special
importance has been attached by Catholic teachers to the instruction
of the people in their prayers. In those early times, when the laws
of the State recognised that the people had souls as well as bodies
and purses, this was even made a matter of legislation, as in the
canons of King Edgar the Peaceable, and the statutes of Canute,
wherein every father was commanded to teach his children the Creed
and the Our Father, and every man was required to know them, “if
he desired to be laid in a hallowed grave, or to be thought worthy
of Holy Housel.” The familiar explanation of these prayers, and
of the Sunday Gospels, formed the ordinary subjects of the parish
priest’s sermon; and in almost every collection of Synodal decrees we
find injunctions calling on Christian men and women to learn their
prayers, and say them seven times a day. The Hail Mary was enjoined,
in addition, about the beginning of the thirteenth century, as we
find in the constitutions of St. Richard of Chichester.

Some of the very earliest known specimens of the English, as
distinguished from the Anglo-Saxon language, are fragments of hymns
which appear to have been in popular use in our poor schools. One of
these is commonly known as St. Godric’s hymm, and runs as follows:--

Seinte Marie, clene Virgine
Moder Jhesu Christe Nazarene,
Onfoll, scild, help thin godrich,
Onfangen bring hœle width the in godes riche.

Seinte Marie, Christes bour,
Meiden’s clenhed, Modere’s flour,
Dilie mine sennen, reyne in min mod,
Bring me to winne wit the selfe God.[247]

To understand whence St. Godric derived his poetical inspiration,
we must briefly glance at his history. He lived in the reigns of
Stephen and Henry II., and began life as a Norfolk pedlar, getting
his living by travelling about the country and selling smallwares in
the villages through which he passed. We may fancy him such a one as
Wordsworth’s Wanderer, concealing under a humble speech and garb a
sublime philosophy. Wanderers of the twelfth century, however, had
one advantage over our modern pedlars; they visited not only fairs
and cities, but holy shrines and places of pilgrimage; nay, generally
speaking, the fairs which they attended were assembled round some
holy spot, and took their origin in the devout celebration of a
martyr’s or a founder’s festival. Godric, as he plodded on through
the north country on his way from Scotland, whither he had gone by
sea on a trading expedition, visited Lindisfarne and Durham, and the
Isle of Farne, made sacred by the hermit-life of St. Cuthbert. These
pilgrimages awoke his soul to a new life, and abandoning his trade,
he repaired to Jerusalem, and on his way back visited the holy shrine
of Compostella.

Returning to England, he took service in the family of a Suffolk
gentleman, but disgusted with the profligacy of his fellow-servants,
once more left his country and went to visit the holy places of Rome.
Nevertheless, the scenes where first his heart had been touched by
God drew him back to them by a sweet, irresistible attraction; and
after some years more spent in these devout wanderings, Godric felt
himself moved to return to the north of England, and there seek
out some solitude where he might lead the life of an anchorite. He
entered Durham, therefore, a way worn, ragged pilgrim, and desiring,
before he utterly retired from the world, to acquire a knowledge of
such psalms and devotions as might enable him to sing the praises
of God in his cell, he repaired for that purpose to the school
which, as was often the case, was held, in default of a schoolhouse,
within the church of St. Mary’s.[248] In this school, says Reginald
of Durham, children were taught the first elements of letters, and
here Godric learnt many things of which he was before ignorant, but
which he now acquired “by hearing, reading, and chanting them.”
And those things which he heard the children frequently repeat
became tenaciously fixed in his memory. In a very brief space of
time, therefore, he learnt as many psalms, hymns, and prayers as
sufficed for his purpose, and retired to a lonesome wilderness north
of Carlisle, which he afterwards exchanged for that of Finchdale,
where he died, about the year 1170. William of Newbridge, who often
visited him, describes him as one whose body seemed already dead,
but whose tongue was ever repeating the names of the Three Divine
Persons. The similarity of some of the expressions occurring in St.
Godric’s hymn, to productions of the same kind in popular use in the
following centuries, leads us to believe that it may have been one of
the school hymns he had learnt at Durham, unless indeed we accept as
literally true the legend which represents it as having been taught
him by Our Lady herself. The whole notice of this Durham school is
exceedingly interesting, and not only confirms what has been said as
to the teaching of the Church chant and office, but shows us that
the poor children likewise learnt their letters, and were taught _to
read_--a fact greatly at variance with the vulgar notion of mediæval
ignorance. For that this was only a poor school is certain, from
the fact of the ragged and penniless vagrant being able to find
admission into it. And having begun to speak of the Durham poor
schools, I may take this opportunity of remarking that the city of
St. Cuthbert was remarkably well supplied with them. For besides her
parochial schools, she possessed an excellent monastic poor school,
which continued to flourish down to the time of the Reformation.
The usages of monastic bodies underwent so little alteration in the
lapse of centuries that the description of this school, as it existed
at the time of its suppression, probably gives us a sufficiently
accurate notion of its condition in far earlier times. “There were
certain poor children, called the children of the almery, who were
educated in learning, and relieved with the alms and benevolence of
the whole house, having their meat and drink in a loft on the north
side of the abbey gates. This loft had a long slated porch over the
stairhead, and at each side of the porch were stairs to go up to
the loft, with a stable underneath.... The children went to school
at the Infirmary School, without the abbey gates, which was founded
by the priors of the abbey at the charge of the house. The meat and
drink that the children had was what the monks and novices had left.
It was carried in at a door adjoining the great kitchen window, into
a little vault at the west end of the Frater House, like a pantry,
called the _covie_, kept by a man. Within it was a window, at which
some of the children received the meat from the said man (who was
called the clerk of the covie) out of the covie window, and carried
it to the loft. This clerk waited on them at every meal to preserve
order.” The description given of the Song school attached to Durham
monastery, which, according to the same authority, was built “many
years without memory of man, before the suppression of the house,”
is worth quoting, as showing that the material comfort of the pupils
was not uncared for. It was “very finely boarded round about, a man’s
height about the walls, and had a long desk from one end of the
school to the other for the books to lie on; and all the floor was
boarded under foot _for warmness_, and long forms set in the ground
for the children to sit on. And the place where the master sat and
taught was all close boarded both behind and on either side, _for
warmness_.”[249]

Similar schools for poor scholars were attached to all the great
abbeys, and were of a higher order with respect to learning than the
parochial schools. The pupils reared in them, though of the humblest
origin, often rose to high dignities in Church and State. John of
Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, born of a peasant’s family,
received his early education in the poor school of the Cluniac
monks of Lewes, where, many years later, Dudley, the son of a poor
travelling carpenter, was also received, and sent to Oxford by his
charitable patrons, who little foresaw the kind of renown which their
_protégé_ would achieve, or the evil which his descendants would
bring upon the Church. Alexander of Hales, “the Irrefragable Doctor,”
as he was called, was in like manner a pupil of the Cistercians, who,
says his biographer, “had the heroic charity to teach youth;” and it
is well known that the facilities afforded by the religious houses
to poor scholars were so great as to be regarded with much jealousy
by the feudal lords, whose pride revolted at the promotion to
ecclesiastical dignities of men who had risen from the lowest grades.

There will be occasion to examine our English poor schools more
closely in a future chapter, but at present we must return to Oxford,
where the collegiate system was gradually developing in its grandest
form, and the influx of the mendicant orders was introducing a
splendid era for the schools.

_CHAPTER XVI._

OLD OXFORD.

A.D. 1200 TO 1300.

There are probably few prospects which unite so many forms of
beauty and interest as the distant view of a great city; and none
in which the reality is more thoroughly idealised in the eye of the
spectator. As he gazes at some fair assemblage of ancient towers
gleaming aloft through a framework of green boughs, and hears their
far-off chimes mingling with the nearer music of the thrush’s note,
he forgets “the loud stunning tide of human crime” which surges at
their base, and is ready to cheat himself into the pleasant fancy
that he beholds a sacred city full of venerable shrines. But if this
character of solemn beauty attaches even to our busiest capitals
when seen from a distance, much more does it belong to Oxford, the
ancient “Bellositum,” which finds no rival to compete with her in the
marvellous aspect of her

Majestic towers
Lifting their varied shapes o’er verdant bowers.

Gardens, churches, and palaces shining through a vista of stately
forest trees, surrounded by green meadows and reflected in the waters
of a noble river, make up a picture which may well arrest the eye
of the artist or the poet, and suggest a dream which, if it find no
substantial reality, is yet a form of beauty evoked from the ancient
worship, carrying our thoughts to days when the sanctuaries of Oxford
were first raised for cloistered students, and when St. Edmund and
St. Richard were teaching in her schools.

Yet, if we were suddenly transported back to the beginning of
the thirteenth century, very little of this architectural beauty
would meet our eye. There was the castle indeed, and the spire of
St Frideswide’s priory, but they were surrounded, not as now with
graceful colleges, but with the humble straw-thatched houses of the
citizens, and with those equally humble inns and halls of which we
have already spoken. A great oak forest separated the city from the
village of Abingdon, and was inhabited by wolves and wild boars; and
tradition preserves the story of a certain student who was met in his
walk by a ferocious boar, which he overcame by thrusting Aristotle
down the beast’s throat. The boar, having no taste for such logic,
was choked by it; and his head, borne home in triumph, was no doubt
honourably served up at table with a sprig of rosemary in its mouth.
The stately abbey of Osney, second to none in the kingdom, would
have been seen in those islet meadows, where at present not a stone
remains to mark its former site; and its two grand towers rose among
the trees, musical with the bells which now ring out their tuneful
chimes from the cathedral spire. There were to be seen the stately
quadrangle and the abbot’s house, so often the resort of kings and
papal legates; and pleasant walks under the elm trees wound along the
waterside overlooking the stream which separated the abbey lands from
those other islets where the two orders of mendicant friars had just
established themselves.

The scholars were fond of such shady walks, and had laid out a
certain plot of ground which bore the name of _Campus Martius_,
and was divided into several portions, according to the scholastic
degrees. One of the walks was _non ultra_ walk, and led to a little
hill called Rome, wherein was a cave and a meander, or winding path,
and at the top thereof a cross of stone. Two clear springs were
seen at either end of this scholastic garden, appropriately bearing
the names of Plato and Aristotle. There were many other such wells
in the city, one of which was called Holy Well, over which was
raised a stately cross. Its waters were pure and intensely cold,
and were esteemed for the many cures which were wrought by them on
pious pilgrims. For Oxford drew pilgrims as well as scholars to
her holy shrines. Not only was the tomb of St. Frideswide visited
by thousands, but also her image in that little country church of
Binsey, which she is said to have founded, and which in early days
was surrounded by hawthorn woods, and was a place of recreation for
the nuns of her convent. There you may still see, not the image, but
the empty niche where it formerly stood, and the stone pavement worn
away with many feet and many knees, a relic in itself, which we may
stoop and reverently kiss; for here St. Edmund was wont to pray;
and here on certain festivals the scholars came out with cross and
banners, and wound their way among the flowering hawthorn woods to
pay their homage to the patron saint of Oxford.

There was another well in St. Clement’s parish, near the old hospital
of St. Bartholomew, which claimed to have been founded by Henry the
Scholar, which was also held in much esteem. It was one of those
spots which our ancestors were wont to designate “Gospel places,”
where, on the Rogation Days, it was the custom to read portions of
the Gospel, by way of invoking a blessing on the corn-fields, and the
streams, and the fountains of water, that they might not be infected
by the power of wicked spirits. The well was in a grove hard by St.
Bartholomew’s chapel; and here came out the students, young and
old, carrying poles adorned with flowers, and singing the canticle
_Benedicite_, wherein they called on the fountains and all the green
things of the earth to bless the Lord. The poor folk of the hospital
made ready for them by strewing the ground with flowers, and adorning
the well itself with green boughs and garlands. Then the Gospel was
read, and the well was blessed, and in later times an anthem, in
three or more parts, was sung by the scholars.

The meadows that lie around the city, through which, to use the words
of brave old Stowe, “the river passeth on to London with a marvellous
quiet course,” were then, as now, highly prized by the scholars
as places of recreation, and are as frequently alluded to in the
university histories, as the famous “Pré aux Clercs” at Paris. But
let us enter within the walls, and take a glance at the streets with
their quaint designations. “School Street” and “Logic Lane” speak for
themselves, but what can have been the origin of the “Street of the
seven deadly Sins”? Here is a very important turning which leads to
the _Schedeyerde_, or _Vicus schediasticorum_. You shudder perhaps,
at the sound of such barbarous Latin; yet had you been an Oxford
scholar of good King Henry’s days, you would very often have bent
your steps hitherward: for here abode the sellers of parchment, the
_schedes_ or sheets of which gave their name to the locality, and
here the transcribers and book merchants carried on their traffic;
and here scholars with long purses obtained their literary wares, and
those with empty ones were fain to look and long. You can tell the
schools by their pithy inscriptions, _Ama scientiam_, _imposturas
fuge_, _litteras disce_, and the like, but you will look in vain for
public schools, or congregation house, or library, or observatory,
or collegiate piles. Churches, indeed, there are in plenty, and
if the tower of St. Martin’s strikes your eye by its strength and
height, you may be surprised to learn that the citizens use it as
a fortalice, and on occasion of quarrels with the students retire
there to shoot at them with stones, and bows, on which account it was
afterwards cut down to its present dumpy proportions by Edward III.
In truth, it must be confessed, the state of things in old Oxford
was anything but orderly. Not only did the northern and southern men
embrace different sides both in philosophy and politics, and fight
out their differences in the public streets, but the townsmen and the
gownsmen stood on much the same terms as those which existed of old
time between Athens and Sparta; there might be a truce between them,
but there was never a peace. The students lived, as yet subject to
no statutes and very little law, and committed many villanies; and,
on the other hand, the burghers preyed on them, provoked them, and
sometimes burnt their books.

We have now to watch the gradual growth into form and order of these
chaotic elements, and will pass over to the other side of the great
oak forest, and make our way to the village of Abingdon, where the
abbey which we saw founded by good St. Ethelwold had been rebuilt by
his Norman successors, and in the early days of the reign of Henry
III. was flourishing in great splendour. In the village that had
gathered round its walls there lived, at that time, a widow, named
Mabel Rich, the mother of four children, whom she brought up in all
holy living. Her husband, before his death, had put on the monk’s
cowl in the neighbouring abbey of Eynsham, whither his eldest son
had followed him; another son retired to the priory of Boxley in
Kent, whilst Mabel, in heart also a religious, remained in the world
to educate her remaining children. Growing up under the shadow of
the old cloister, by the side of a mother who trained him in the
austere practices of ancient piety, Edmund Rich was steeped from
childhood in the spirit of Catholic devotion. He assisted with Mabel
at the midnight office in the abbey, he learnt the Psalter from her
lips; and his soul gradually received that beautiful mould which we
have again and again admired in the scholars of old time, and which
perhaps found in him its most perfect realisation. At twelve years
old he went to Oxford, and it is his own brother, Robert Rich, who
tells us how, at that time, going out into the meadows in order to
withdraw himself from the boisterous play of his companions, the
Child Jesus appeared to him, and saluted him with the words “Hail,
beloved one!” And he, wondering at the beauty of the Child, replied,
“Who are you, for to me you are certainly unknown?” Then said the
Child, “How comes it that I am unknown to thee, seeing that I sit by
thy side at school, and wherever thou art, there also do I accompany
thee? Look in My face and see what is there written.” Edmund looked
and saw the words, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” “This is My
name,” said the Child, “write it on thy forehead every night, and it
shall protect thee from sudden death.” Then He disappeared, on Whom
the Angels desire to look, leaving the other with a sweetness in his
heart passing that of honey.

From Oxford Edmund proceeded to Paris, where we have already seen
something of his manner of life. He seems to have studied more than
once at both universities, and also at Merton abbey, then a great
seat of learning. As soon as he had taken his master’s degree, he
opened a school of his own on the spot now occupied by St. Edmund’s
Hall. The favourite maxim he was accustomed to give to his pupils,
was this: “Study as if you were to live for ever, live as if you were
to die to-morrow.” For himself, he heard Mass daily, attended matins
in the nearest parish church, and recited the canonical hours before
beginning his lectures. And to satisfy his devotion with the greater
convenience, he spent part of his slender patrimony in the erection
of a Lady chapel attached to St. Peter’s church, where he and his
pupils regularly recited the Divine office. It must be remembered,
that at this period Oxford possessed none of those colleges and
collegiate chapels, in which the Church office was afterwards
celebrated with so much splendour; but the custom, introduced for the
first time by St. Edmund, was soon followed by other students. Those
who love the memory of the holy scholar may still visit his chapel,
which looks desolate enough, with its once delicate lancet windows
walled up; yet it is something to know the spots where saints have
prayed.

Did we know St. Edmund only by the records left us of his tender
piety, his singular devotion to our Blessed Lady, and his manifold
austerities, we might picture him as some contemplative saint, whose
thoughts were wholly withdrawn from the world, and fixed on unseen
things. Yet he was a scholar and a teacher; a close logician, and
a great lover of mathematics. Wood says that he was the first who
publicly read some of Aristotle’s Treatises at Oxford, and for six
years after the opening of his school he continued to lecture on
arts. The circumstance which led to his exchanging these studies
for that of theology is thus told by his biographer: “After he had
taught the liberal arts for six years, and was reading geometry with
his pupils, his mother one night appeared to him as he slept, saying:
‘What is it, my son, that you read and teach, and what are those
figures over which you are poring so intently?’ He replied, that they
were the figures of geometry, on which she took his hand in hers, and
drew thereon three circles, at the same time naming the three Divine
Persons--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Then she added, ‘These are the
figures which you must henceforth study.’” From that time he applied
himself exclusively to the sacred sciences, and that with greater
ardour than he had hitherto bestowed on secular learning. He hardly
gave himself time for sleep and refreshment, but studied night and
day. An ivory crucifix, with the mysteries of our redemption carved
round it, was always on his table when he read, and to it from time
to time he directed his eyes, feeding his heart the while with pious
ejaculations. He never went to bed, but took his scanty rest on the
floor, or in his chair, and was at his books again as soon as the
morning dawned. Does this intense application seem excessive? and
does any reader conceive a distrust of such absorbing studies? Let
them learn that at this very time St. Edmund sold all his books, to
supply the wants of some poor scholars whom he had no other means of
relieving, and seems to have been indebted to a charitable friend for
the gift of a Bible, which afterwards formed his principal study.

After some years, having taken his doctor’s degree, he once more
began to teach; and strange and beautiful were the scenes in that
saintly lecture-room, where the master was often rapt in ecstacy, and
the scholars were fain to shut up their note-books, being too much
blinded with their tears to use them. Wood mentions the tradition,
common at Oxford, that an angel, in the form of a beautiful youth,
was often seen standing by his side while he spoke, a legend which at
least shows in what sort of esteem he was held by his scholars. Among
them were St. Sewall, afterwards Archbishop of York, St. Richard of
Chichester, Stephen Lexington, and Robert Grosteste, all of whom took
part in the great intellectual movement shortly afterwards set on
foot at Oxford by the mendicant friars. He did not make much profit
out of his school, for the money he received from his pupils was
either spent in charity, or suffered to lie loose on his window sill,
where he would strew it over with ashes, saying, “Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust.” Any one might take it who chose, and his friends did
so sometimes, to see what he would say; but he asked no account of
it, and no persuasion would ever induce him to keep it under lock
and key. He was not the mere professor, whose care of his pupils
ceased when they left his lecture-room. He nursed them when they
were sick, and relieved them when they were in want; and they in
their turn loved to gather up each trait of their beloved master,
and handed down to those who came after them the portraiture of the
saint, with his beautiful countenance, the pallor of which became of
a fair shining red when he spoke of God or holy things, in his grey
scholar’s gown, which was poor without meanness, for he was wont to
say that a clerk should remember that his state was an honourable
one, and that his appearance, if simple, should never be abject.

St. Edmund had a real love for the work of teaching, and several
times when he had been persuaded to accept of benefices, he resigned
them in order to return to Oxford. At last, however, we find him
treasurer of Salisbury; and with his habits, a very strange treasurer
he must have made. And in 1234 he became Archbishop of Canterbury.
We need not follow the history of his troublous primacy; he fared
the usual fate of English primates who resisted the tyranny of
Plantagenet kings; and six years later was an exile at Pontigny,
living among the Cistercian monks as one of themselves, writing his
“Mirror of the Church,” and preparing for his end. He did not die at
Pontigny, however, but at Soissy, whither they brought him in hopes
that the cooler air might revive his exhausted strength. His last
days were spent in giving alms to the poor pilgrims who passed that
way, and when he was too feeble to rise from his chair and go to the
gate, he made one of his chaplains take his place, and give to all
who came. His last words are preserved, the words he pronounced with
outstretched hands, when about to receive the Holy Viaticum:--“Lord,
thou art He in whom I have believed, whom I have preached, whom I
have truly taught: and Thou art my witness that while I have been on
earth, I have sought nothing else besides Thee. And as Thou knowest
that I will only what Thou willest, so now I say, Thy will be done.”
“All the rest of that day,” says his biographer, “he was joyful and
even gay; you would not have thought he was suffering from sickness;
and many wondered to see him thus. The tears of devotion were indeed
in his eyes, but his beautiful countenance manifested the serenity
that filled his heart. There was no sign of approaching death; and
at the last moment, neither sigh nor death-rattle was heard; he did
not even sink back on his bed, as dying persons are wont to do, but
remained sitting, and so gently expired, leaning his head upon his
hand.” Pontigny keeps his dust as her most precious treasure, and
even in our own day, such a strange attractive power is possessed
by the sacred relics of the saints, that a newly-founded religious
congregation has selected its desolate church for the site of their
mother house, with the view of obtaining for their apostolic work the
blessing of _Saint Edmé_.

Meanwhile, if England had cast out her holy primate, Oxford had
not forgotten her doctor. The work he had begun in his schools was
carried on by the band of scholars whom he had trained and left
behind him. Five years before he left the university, the two orders
of mendicant friars had been established in the town. The first
colony of the Franciscans was sent thither in 1220, by Brother
Agnellus, who soon after came himself, and caused a decent school to
be built, in which he induced Master Robert Grosteste to deliver his
lectures. Grosteste was at that time the most illustrious doctor of
the university, and soon brought the Franciscan schools into high
repute. Agnellus, though himself unlearned, was most desirous that
the studies of his brethren should be amply provided for, and often
visited the schools to watch their progress. One day, to his great
surprise, he found them disputing on the thesis, “Whether there be
a God.” Whereon he cried out in great distress, “Alas, alas! simple
friars penetrate the heavens, while the learned are disputing if
there be a God.” With these words he left the school “in a chafe,”
says Wood, “to think he had built it for such debates,” but, becoming
a little calmer, sent the sum of ten marks to Rome to buy a correct
copy of the Decretals, charging his friars to apply themselves wholly
to the study thereof, and to lay aside questions of sophistry and
foolish babbling.

It must not be supposed from this story that the learning encouraged
at the university by Grosteste was entirely of that disputatious and
empty kind which had become fashionable in the schools since the time
of Abelard. Grosteste, if he exercised the friars in such scholastic
disputations, was himself a decided advocate of the older learning,
and may be regarded as, in the main, a disciple of the school of St.
Victor. When chancellor of the university, he used his influence
to promote the study of positive theology, and of that Biblical
learning in which he was himself a proficient. One of his modern
biographers has candidly admitted that “his wonderful knowledge of
Scripture might probably be worthy of remark in our day, though in
his own not more than was possessed by all theological students.”
But Grosteste had largeness of mind enough to appreciate the value
of the scholastic method at the same time that he laboured to prevent
the study of the Scriptures and the liberal arts from falling into
decay; and he probably found means of satisfying Brother Agnellus on
this point, for whatever use was made of the copy of the Decretals,
it is quite certain that the friars did not “apply themselves wholly”
to them, or lay aside their scholastic exercises. On the contrary,
Fuller tells us that they soon beat all their competitors in school
divinity, “out of all distance;” and Wood adds to his narrative as
given above, that Grosteste was not superficial in his performances,
and that under him the friars made extraordinary advances both in
disputation and preaching.

The great esteem in which Grosteste held the Franciscans led him,
not only to teach in their schools, but to persuade other first-rate
regents to do the same; besides which, he induced several of his own
personal friends to enter the order, among whom was Adam Marsh, the
parish priest of Wearmouth, better known by his Italian name of Adam
de Marisco, who is reckoned as the first regular professor of the
order at Oxford, and was known as “the Illustrious Doctor,” and Roger
Bacon, the wonder of his age, and the greatest natural philosopher
who appeared in England before the time of Newton. Besides these,
the Franciscans were joined by a crowd of other illustrious novices,
such as John Wallis, surnamed the “Tree of Life,” Alexander of Hales,
Haymo of Feversham, and more than one Benedictine and Augustinian
abbot, which latter circumstance has greatly excited the spleen of
Matthew Paris.

Grosteste, after for some time filling the office of chancellor,
became Bishop of Lincoln in 1235, in which capacity he was still _ex
officio_ head of the university, and continued to keep up an active
interest in its affairs. Among his letters is one addressed to the
regents of Oxford, in which he gives them much useful advice as to
the regulation of their studies. “Let the foundation-stones be well
laid,” he says, “on them the whole building rests. The morning is the
best time for study, and the good old Paris custom should be observed
of reserving those early hours for the lectures on Scripture, giving
the later part of the day to other subjects.” Even when treating of
questions altogether unconnected with natural science, his love of it
peeps out in spite of himself, as in the passage where he gracefully
compares the difference between direct and delegated authority to the
different powers of the sun’s rays when falling direct, or reflected
from a mirror. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest men of his
time, a universal genius, and revered by his countrymen as a saint.
After his death, the university united with the king in petitioning
for his canonisation, and sent a document to Rome, in which it is
declared “that the said Robert never left undone any good action
pertaining to his state and office for fear of any man, but was
rather prepared for martyrdom should the sword of the assassin have
fallen upon him. Likewise, the university certifieth of his splendid
learning, and that he most admirably governed Oxford, in his degree
of doctor of holy theology, and was illustrious for many miracles
after his death, wherefore he is named by the mouth of all men,
‘Holy Robert.’” He may, in fact, be regarded as, in his own time,
the representative of the university, and hence it is of particular
importance to ascertain what the studies were which he followed and
promoted. As a theologian, he belonged rather to the mystic than
the speculative school, and as a scholar he was a warm upholder of
the liberal arts, doing his utmost to encourage the study, not only
of the Latin classics, but also of Greek and Hebrew. He translated
the works of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, and, to facilitate the
study of Greek, is also said to have translated the Lexicon of
Suidas. He promoted two ecclesiastics who are likewise known to
have been Greek scholars: John Basing, archdeacon of St. Alban’s,
who in 1240 returned from Athens laden with Greek manuscripts, and
Nicholas, chaplain to the abbot of St. Alban’s, surnamed _Græcus_,
who assisted the bishop in some of his translations. He is also said
to have been acquainted with Hebrew. But his skill in the learned
tongues formed but a small part of Grosteste’s acquirements. He was a
mathematician, a poet, a musician, and a philosopher. Among the two
hundred treatises of various kinds which he left behind him are to
be found, besides his theological writings, works on the sphere, on
physical science, husbandry, political economy, medicine, and music;
commentaries on Aristotle and Boëthius, and Norman-French poems. Of
these last, one is entitled the “Château d’Amour,” a name he bestows
on the Blessed Virgin, and consists of a religious romance on the
fall and redemption of man. This, together with his “Manuel des
Péchés,” was translated in the following reign into English verse,
by Robert Manning, who, in the prologue to his poem, alludes to the
bishop’s well-known love of music, and tells us that--.

He loved moche to here the harpe,
For mannys witte yt maketh sharpe.
Next his chaumber besyde hys stody
Hys harper’s chaumber was fast thereby
And many tymes by nyghtes and dayys
He had solace of notes and layys.

Most readers are aware that Grosteste is commonly represented as
an enemy to papal supremacy, and is rather favourably treated, in
consequence, by some historians who find great consolation in the
thought that he died excommunicate. That he opposed the nomination
of foreigners to English benefices, and that in very bold language,
is quite certain, but the rest of the story belongs to our mediæval
myths. It is supposed to have been conjured out of the anathemas
attached to the Bull of provisors, the execution of which he
resisted. It is scarcely necessary to observe that petitions would
hardly have been presented to the Holy See in the next reign for
the canonisation of one who had died under the censures of the
Church, and in these petitions there is not to be found the smallest
allusion to his having even incurred any sort of disgrace. More than
this, Wood tells us that just before the death of Innocent IV.,
that Pontiff granted to the university four new Bulls containing
great privileges, which had been procured _through the interest of
Grosteste_. In point of fact, however bold and uncompromising he
may have been in resisting what he deemed a practical abuse, there
was no English Divine who ever expressed himself with more hearty
loyalty towards the chair of St. Peter than “Holy Robert.” He plainly
declared that to refuse obedience to the Supreme Pastor was “as the
sin of witchcraft and idolatry,” and even Mr. Berington is forced to
allow that his language regarding the authority of the Holy See is so
“adulatory,” that the attempt to rank him among its enemies must be
deemed a total failure.

It would carry us too far to attempt anything like a particular
account of the Franciscan scholars, who flourished at Oxford during
the time of Grosteste. One among them, it need hardly be said, towers
above all the rest, his celebrity having survived undiminished to
our own day. Roger Bacon, a west countryman by birth, and a pupil of
St. Edmund’s, had passed from Oxford to Paris, where he received his
doctor’s degree, and then returning to the English university, spent
forty years of his life in studying and lecturing upon the sciences.
He had acquired the Greek, Hebrew, and Oriental languages in Paris,
and wrote grammars of the two first-named tongues which are said to
be preserved in MS. at St. Peter’s College, Cambridge. But it was
as a natural philosopher that he chiefly distinguished himself above
his contemporaries, and anticipated the discoveries of later science.
At this time the physical sciences were chiefly cultivated by the
Arabians, who presented them in a mystic and fanciful shape, which
did not render them less acceptable to mediæval students. The study
of physics was understood to include mathematics, alchemy, astrology,
medicine, and mechanics, each of which received its own colouring of
romance. Thus a certain Arabian physician put forth the theory that
medicines could only be properly mixed according to the principles of
music, and no one ventured to doubt the connection of astronomy with
the medical science. Bacon was certainly not less credulous than his
contemporaries, but he was more experimental, and hence, though he
does not seem to have done much towards establishing truer scientific
principles, he obtained many brilliant results. The long list of his
writings includes treatises on Optics (then called Perspective),
Mathematics, Chemistry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, the Tides, and the
Reformation of the Calendar; and, as is well known, he was familiar
with the properties of mirrors, and appears to have been acquainted
with the principle both of the microscope and the telescope, and with
the powers of steam and of gunpowder. It is not to be doubted that he
was greatly in advance of his age in scientific knowledge, and it was
probably his skill in the use of optical and mechanical instruments,
which earned for him the vulgar reputation of dealing in magic.
Charges of this sort are commonly enough explained as arising out
of the ignorance of the multitudes, who thought every man who could
read Greek to be possessed of unlawful knowledge. But besides the
awe with which a semibarbarous age naturally regarded one possessed
of secrets not revealed to the vulgar herd, it must be remembered
that Bacon’s science sometimes clothed itself in very suspicious
language. He declared that his wonderful tube possessed the power of
beholding, not _distant objects_ only, but _future events_; and his
enthusiastic language in praise of his favourite science may read to
us as simple nonsense, but was understood in his own day to imply
something very like a magic art. He was not a whit less disposed than
his contemporaries to credit the wildest theories of the alchemists,
but believed in the possibility of contriving lamps that should burn
for ever, magic crystals, the elixir of life, and the philosopher’s
stone, and wrote treatises on the two last-named subjects. It is
plain, indeed, that he only expected to realise these schemes
by an application of the secret powers of nature, and not by any
forbidden arts. Yet it sounded startling to simple ears to hear of
schemes whereby one man might draw a thousand to himself, might raise
himself into the air and fly, or manage a ship with his single arm;
not to speak of his boastful offer to teach any man Hebrew in three
days, Greek in another three, and the whole course of arithmetic and
geometry in a week.[250] Unfavourable rumours having reached the ears
of Jerome of Ascoli, then general of his order, he was prohibited
from teaching, and for a time imprisoned; but in 1264, Cardinal
Fulcodi, formerly legate in England, becoming Pope under the title of
Clement IV., Bacon despatched to Rome his favourite disciple, John of
London, who placed in the Pontiff’s hands all his master’s books and
instruments, an examination of which appears to have justified him
in the opinion of his judges. Clement bestowed great marks of favour
both on the master and scholar, and it was at his suggestion that
Bacon made that collection of his chief philosophical views which
is known as the _Opus Majus_. When Jerome of Ascoli himself became
Pope Nicholas IV., Bacon was again imprisoned, but as Wood shows,
the assertion that he died in confinement during the pontificate of
Nicholas is clearly an error, for his death did not take place till
1292, he having survived the Pope four years, and having before his
death recovered his liberty, and published several theological works.

The only other Oxford Franciscan who must be mentioned in this
place, is Nicholas de Lyra, whose claim to be regarded as a native
of this country is not, indeed, undisputed, though it rests on the
respectable authority of Trithemius, Sixtus of Sienna, and a majority
of writers. The Flemings assert that he was born at Lyre in Brabant,
the French as peremptorily declare him a native of Lyra in Normandy,
and the English author of the _Collectanea Anglo-Minoritica_, will
have it that his real name was _Harper_, Latinised after the fashion
of the day into _Lyra_. Equal uncertainty rests on the point whether
he were by birth a Christian or a Jew, the common belief inclining
to the view that he was the son of Jewish parents, though this fact
is hard to reconcile with the assertion of his biographers, that
he only began the study of Hebrew at an advanced age. But whatever
doubt hangs over his origin, none exists as to the position he held
among the scholars of the day. Biblical learning and the study of the
Scriptural tongues had not quite fallen into decay, when the age
could produce the author of the “Scholastic Postils,” a commentary
upon every part of the Sacred Volume, which was the first commentary
on the Scripture ever printed. Nicholas de Lyra had studied at the
Universities of Paris and Oxford, and if it be true, as is asserted,
that he did not apply himself to Greek and Hebrew learning until
after his entrance into the Franciscan Order, we must allow his
erudition to have been gained in the university schools. Whether
himself a Jewish convert or not, his labours are said to have been
undertaken in the first instance with a view to the conversion of
that unhappy people, a work which, in the thirteenth century, engaged
the attention of the most illustrious divines. By his writings,
disputations, and sermons, Nicholas is said to have converted six
thousand Jews to the faith. But his great work was far from being
exclusively intended for their instruction; it became the Text Book
of Biblical students, an indispensable part of every cathedral and
monastic library, and laid down rules for the safe interpretation of
Scripture based upon the right intelligence of the literal sense.
It must be added, to the honour of English scholarship, that this
important work, which fills five folio volumes, was first published
at the expense of a private London citizen, and that the money paid
for copying it amounted to 670 florins. Its composition occupied the
author thirty-seven years, for, as he himself declares, it was begun
in 1293, and not completed until 1330.

Let us now turn to an Oxford scholar of a different stamp, whose
name, inseparably united to that of St. Edmund, almost closes the
catalogue of our English Saints. Born of respectable parents, who
owned the lands of Burford, near the little town of Wyche, in
Worcestershire, Richard had very early given evidence of a scholar’s
tastes, and the first fact which his biographer, Ralph Bocking,[251]
records regarding him, is his determined refusal to be drawn away
from his books to join in any of the village dances and revelries.
But a hard fortune left him little hopes of being able to devote
his life to books and learning. The death of his father, and the
mismanagement of the guardians to whose care he and his brothers were
consigned, reduced the family to extreme poverty. And Richard, with
generous self-devotion, gave up all his own cherished plans, and
entered his elder brother’s service in order, by a life of vigorous
labour, to put the affairs of the family on a better footing. “He
served him,” says Bocking, “in poverty and abjection, and that for
many years; working, now with the plough and now with the cart, and
enduring many other kinds of hard and humble toil, patiently and
modestly.” Richard’s memory was long preserved and revered in his
native place, and even down to the time of the great Rebellion,
the Droitwich peasantry put on their best clothes on St. Richard’s
day, and went to decorate with boughs and flowers a certain well
dedicated to the Worcestershire saint. Aubrey, who notices this
circumstance,[252] informs us that St. Richard was a person of good
estate, and “a brisk young fellow that would ride over hedge and
ditch;” a description which, quaint as it is, expresses well enough
one feature in his thoroughly English character. He was not a dreamer
or a bookworm; he did nothing by halves, and his strong, manly nature
loved the practical side of everything. As a Worcestershire farmer he
was just as ready to ride over hedge and ditch when that was needed,
as he was, when bishop, to do his pastoral work in the guise of a
poor beggar. The future chancellor of Oxford began life, in short,
as a simple yeoman. His energy and perseverance had their reward,
and in a few years his brother’s lands, well tilled and managed,
began to yield an ample revenue. But when a prosperous fortune
seemed opening before him, he refused every offer made him by his
kinsfolk, and as soon as his self-imposed task was over, he bade
farewell to his Worcestershire home, and betook himself to Oxford,
whence, after a time, he passed on to Paris. In both universities
he led the hard and mortified life of a poor scholar. For it must
be remembered that this was before the time of colleges; it was the
golden age when Oxford numbered her thirty thousand scholars, most
of whom had scanty means of subsistence. Some were supported by the
alms of private individuals, others by the great abbeys of Eynsham
and Osney, which on certain festival days, bound themselves to regale
the poor scholars with “honest refection.” Others went about begging
and singing the “Salve Regina” at the doors of the citizens, well
content to receive by way of payment a dish of broken meat from the
rich man’s table. Every one will remember the picture drawn, many
years later, by Chaucer, who describes the clerke of Oxenforde in his
threadbare doublet, who would rather have

At his beddes hed
Twenty bokes clothed in blake or red
Of Aristotle and his philosophie
Than robes riche, fidel or sautrie,
For al be that he was a philosopher
Yet hadde he but litel gold in coffor,
And all that he might of his frendes hente
On bokes and on learning he it spente,
And besily gan for the soules praie
Of them that gave him wherewith to scholaie.

The account that Bocking gives of St. Richard’s student life is
hardly less graphic. Like the poor Cambridge scholar before spoken
of, who had to run about to keep his feet warm, Richard never saw
a fire. But, unlike him, he was seldom able to afford himself
the luxury of _beef_ or even _mutton_, then reckoned as ordinary
“scholar’s fare.” “So entirely,” says Bocking, “was he carried away
with the love of learning, that he gave but little thought to the
necessities of the body. For, as he used afterwards to relate, having
two companions with him in his poor chamber, the three had but one
tunic each, and one hooded gown between them. One of them at a time,
therefore, put on the gown and went to hear the lectures, leaving the
other two in their lodgings, after which they in their turn put on
the gown and so went to lecture. Their food was bread, with a very
little wine, and salad, or other such poor sort of viands. For then
poverty did not allow them to eat flesh or fish except on Sundays
and high days, or when any friends were their guests. Nevertheless,
the saint was wont to affirm that no period of his life had ever
been more joyful and delightful.” His love of Oxford induced him
to return thither a second time, instead of taking his master’s
degree at Paris; and for some years after graduating at the English
university he taught in his own school, “liberally dispensing to
others what he had himself acquired.” After a while he repaired to
Bologna, and there spent seven years in the study of the canon law.
And in 1235 we find him once more at Oxford, where he was unanimously
chosen Chancellor of the University. He does not seem to have filled
this office for any great length of time, for Robert Grosteste and
St. Edmund of Canterbury were both anxious to draw him to their
respective dioceses, St. Edmund succeeded, and appointed him his
chancellor, and a close friendship sprang up between the two saints,
which is thus eloquently described by Bocking:--“In all things,” he
says, “Richard had an eye to the peace and quiet of his lord and
archbishop, who, as he knew, had chosen Mary’s better part. And the
archbishop exceedingly rejoiced that by the discreet affection and
loving discretion of his chancellor he was saved from the tumult of
outward business; while the chancellor was in like manner glad to
learn from the holy and heavenly conversation of his prelate. Each
leaned on each, the saint on the saint, the master on the disciple,
the disciple on the master, the father on the son, and the son on the
father. To one who looked on them religiously, they seemed like the
two cherubim stretching their wings over the ark of the Lord--the
church of Canterbury; each with holy eye gazing on the other, and
touching each other with the wings of holy love; their faces, that
is, their wills, ever turned towards the Mercy-seat.”

Richard followed his friend into exile, and was with him both at
Pontigny and at Soissy, where he died. Up to that time St. Richard
had not given much time to the study of theology, and had only
received minor orders on his appointment to the Chancellorship of
Canterbury. He had made himself known rather as a man of practical
sense than of profound intellect, and the tie that bound him to St.
Edmund drew something of its strength from the very contrast of their
natural characters. But the snapping of that bond was the heart wound
destined to draw St. Richard to yet more excellent things. The tree
must be pierced to give out its most precious balm, the leaf must
be bruised to yield its fragrant odours. The strong, manly heart of
the Worcestershire yeoman was bowed in anguish over Edmund’s grave;
but the anguish softened, refined, and elevated his nature; it drew
heaven nearer to him, and him nearer to heaven; so that, conceiving
a distaste for all secular studies, he retired to Orleans, and set
himself to study theology in the convent of Dominican Friars.

This was not his first acquaintance with the Friar Preachers, who
had established themselves in the Jews’ quarter of Oxford before St.
Richard’s residence there as Chancellor. The excellence of their
theological schools was therefore well known to him; and after
studying with them for two or three years, and receiving ordination
as a priest from the hands of the Bishop of Orleans, he returned to
England, and for some time exercised the office of parish priest
of Deal. Boniface of Savoy, the successor of St. Edmund in the
primacy, soon found him out, and compelled him to resume the office
of chancellor; but, before doing so, Richard, whose desire was to
lead a poor and apostolic life, took a vow to join the Dominican
Order, trusting that such an obligation would stand in the way of
his retaining any public dignity. He was never able actually to
fulfil this vow; yet, as Bocking remarks, the after circumstances of
his life may be regarded as a sort of virtual accomplishment of it,
“inasmuch as for many years he led the life of a true Friar Preacher,
preaching Jesus Christ in poverty, and labouring for the salvation of
souls, stripped of all worldly possessions.”

In 1244 the unwelcome news reached him that he was elected Bishop of
Chichester; but king Henry III., enraged that the canons had rejected
his own unworthy minister and nominee, Robert Passelew, revenged
himself by seizing the temporalities of the see; and when an appeal
to Rome resulted in the confirmation of St. Richard’s election, the
new bishop, compelled by obedience to accept the weighty charge, and
consecrated at Rome by the Pope’s own hand, returned to England to
find his manors confiscated and an edict published forbidding any man
to assist him even with a loan. This may be taken as a fair specimen
of the system steadily pursued by the English kings against the
Church, from the Conquest to the Reformation; and if such examples
may be adduced from the policy of him who was avowedly the most pious
and least ferocious of the Plantagenets, we may judge what sort of
measure was dealt to English prelates by sovereigns of more tyrannic
temper. In his younger days St. Richard might probably have repelled
the royal injustice with the bold courage of St. Thomas; he preferred
now to meet it in the spirit of patient endurance, and taking up his
residence with a poor priest of his diocese, gave England an example
no less sublime than that of her martyred primate. Utterly penniless,
and as dependent on the alms of the faithful as the poorest beggar,
St. Richard did not on that account neglect his flock. Like a true
apostle he journeyed on foot over the downs of Sussex, visiting
in turns every remote village, and exercising the Pastoral office
with a vigorous hand that stood in no need of courtly splendour to
enforce its authority. A poor priest of Ferring, named Simon, gave
him hospitality, and there, in the intervals of his toilsome journeys
the bishop recreated himself with gardening, and displayed the skill
in budding and grafting which he had acquired during his yeoman’s
life in Worcestershire. Simon regarded the plants which the bishop
tended as sacred relics, and was greatly distressed when one of
the grafts was destroyed by a beast which broke through the garden
fence. The next time that Richard visited Ferring he good-naturedly
consoled his host by putting in another graft, which that same year
bore flowers and fruit. It was during this time of outlawry and
humiliation that he published his Constitutions for the reform of his
diocese, in which he made special provision for the instruction of
the poor. At last, about 1247, king Henry was forced by the threat
of excommunication, to restore the temporalities, and Richard was
joyfully welcomed to his Cathedral city. But his private habits
underwent no change. He adhered to his old Oxford fare of bread and
a little wine; he seldom touched flesh, and if delicacies, such as
lambs or young chickens were placed on his table, would exclaim,
“Poor innocents; what have ye done to deserve death! Could ye but
speak, ye would surely blame our gluttony!” He rose with the lark, to
say his office in the silent early hours; and if it so fell out that
the birds had begun their matin-song before him, it mortified him:
“Shame on me!” he would say, “that I have allowed these irrational
creatures to be beforehand with me in singing God’s praises!” His
hand was ever open to poor scholars, and he would take the silver
goblets off his table to supply their needs. His whole life presents
us with a succession of beautiful, homely, and pathetic scenes, which
display to us a character wherein pastoral firmness, scholarlike
acuteness, and rustic simplicity are blended together, all bound
and beautified by the spirit of patience, humility, and prayer. At
one time we find him baptizing a Jew whom he has converted by his
learning; at another, preaching the Crusade on the Sussex sea-coast
to the rough sailors who flock to hear his simple, energetic
eloquence. It was whilst engaged in this last work that he was called
to his reward. He died in 1252 at St. Mary’s Hospital at Dover, where
he had just consecrated a church in honour of St. Edmund. In his last
moments his thoughts wandered back to the Convent of Orleans, and
with his parting breath he repeated the invocation, which he had so
often heard repeated by the white-robed Friars:

Maria, Mater gratiæ,
Mater misericordiæ,
Tu nos ab hoste protege,
Et hora mortis suscipe.

Of the English Friar Preachers, to whom St. Richard in heart at
least may be said to have belonged, and of their position in the
university, something must now be said. It was on the feast of the
Assumption 1221, that they first arrived at Oxford, and obtained from
the canons of St. Frideswide a settlement in the Jews’ quarter of
the town, where it was hoped that their learning and their preaching
might win many converts. From Elizabeth Vere, countess of Oxford,
they obtained a piece of ground on which they erected their first
schools, known as St. Edward’s schools, where the first lecturers
were the two friends Robert Bacon and Richard Fishacre, both of them
old pupils of St. Edmund, of whom Matthew Paris says that England
had no greater men living. The resort of scholars soon obliged them
to choose some more commodious site and in 1259 they removed to St.
Ebbe’s island in the south suburb, another adjoining island being
occupied by the Franciscans. The extraordinary popularity enjoyed by
the Dominican Order during the first century of its establishment
in England is attested by every historical document. The lower
classes loved them for taking the popular side in politics, while
the nobles were no less forward in appreciating their merits. It
became a coveted privilege to be buried in their churches, and Wood
says that even in his day skeletons and hearts encased in lead were
continually being disinterred from the ground formerly occupied at
Oxford by the Dominican convent, supposed to be those of devout
clients of the order. However, in spite of all this, they had their
enemies, especially among the secular regents, who were jealous
of their privileges, their popularity, and possibly also of their
learning. In 1360 Richard, afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, being
elected Chancellor of Oxford, was despatched by a certain party of
the Oxford doctors to Rome, to lay a formal complaint before the Pope
of the alleged delinquencies of the friars. One of his complaints
was, oddly enough, their perseverance in collecting libraries; if
he was to be believed, no one could now procure any books at Oxford
on canon law, arts, or theology; they were all bought up by these
insatiable friars, a charge which at least sets them in the light
of being favourers of learning. The chancellor’s mission proved
utterly fruitless, a result which Ayliffe attributes to the fact
that “they had money wherewith to purchase the Pope’s protection.”
This last-named writer, in common with most of the Post-Reformation
writers, labours hard to affix the stigma of ignorance on the
mendicant orders, which he denominates as locusts and caterpillars,
who devoured the vital parts of learning, and involved the Oxford
students in a fog of darkness but partly dispelled by “the daybreak
of Wickliffe’s doctrine.” Even their vast libraries were collected,
he assures us, only to lock up the treasures of knowledge from
other men, and to become the food of moths and worms. And here is
perhaps the place to notice the grave accusations brought against the
Christian schoolmen in general, and the mendicants in particular,
of bringing in a reign of literary barbarism. Fleury devotes a
considerable part of his fifth discourse to this subject, and the
German critics, especially Meiners, can never find enough to say
condemnatory of the scholastic jargon. Hallam adopts the same line,
and assures us that “the return of ignorance was chiefly owing to
those worse vermin, the mendicant friars, who filled all Europe with
stupid superstition.” Whether this is the best specimen that a man of
letters could give of refined and polished diction may be questioned,
but he goes on to remark (in a sentence which, considering the zeal
of its writer for grammatical accuracy, exhibits a rather remarkable
confusion of tenses),--“the writers of the thirteenth century
display an incredible ignorance, not only of pure idiom, but of the
common grammatical rules. Those who _attempted_ to write verse _have
lost_ all prosody, and _relapse_ into Leonine rhymes and barbarous
acrostics. The historians use a hybrid jargon intermixed with modern
words. The scholastic philosophers wholly neglected their style,
and thought it no wrong to enrich the Latin, as in some degree a
living language, with terms that seemed to express their meaning....
Duns Scotus and his followers in the next century carried this
much further, and introduced a most barbarous and unintelligible
terminology, by which the school metaphysics were rendered ridiculous
in the revival of literature.”

That the thirteenth century witnessed a great decay of Latinity is
not to be denied, though, as has been before shown, this decay and
the neglect of classical studies had set in before the rise of the
mendicant orders and is in no way to be attributed to them. Oxford
enjoyed the reputation of talking the very worst Latin in Europe,
whence arose the proverb, _Oxoniensis loquendi mos_. Certainly,
if the grammatical errors condemned in the visitation articles of
John of Peckham, as reported by Wood, were common in the schools,
there is not much to be said in their defence. The prevalence of law
studies, too, helped on the decline of rhetoric, for the diction of
the jurists was, if possible, worse than that of the scholastics;
and the inferiority, apparent during the reign of Edward II., in
the schools of divinity, philosophy, and arts, is attributed by the
learned Dominican, Holcot, to the over-abundance of law lectures.
Granting, however, a full share in the corruption of Latinity to
have been the work of the schoolmen, it is difficult to understand
how they can be said to have committed a “wrong” by “enriching the
Latin with terms which seemed to convey their meaning.” It is usually
supposed to be the object of language to convey one’s thoughts,
and writers who had to express the nice distinctions of Christian
theology would have been puzzled had they been bound to confine
themselves to the Ciceronian phraseology. They did, therefore,
what Cicero himself had done before them, and coined words and
idioms to express ideas which were not current in the Augustan age.
The writings of the scholastics must be regarded as in some sort
scientific works, in which the object was not elegance of style, but
accuracy of sense. We are not, therefore, necessarily to conclude
that the Latin of Duns Scotus was an example of the best that the
age could produce; on the contrary, many instances might be cited
to prove that even this unfortunate thirteenth century possessed
scholars whose Latin was at least as pure as the English of some of
their critics. Thus the Bull of Gregory X. for the canonisation of
St. Louis, is cited by M. Artaud, the biographer of Dante, as “a very
model of pure Latinity.” Cicero’s Rhetoric was so far from being
devoured by the moths, that it was almost the very first work chosen
for translation into Italian prose, and appeared in the vulgar idiom
in 1257, the translator being Galeotto, the professor of grammar
at the university of Bologna. But, putting aside all exceptional
cases of those who still studied and imitated the classics, may we
not reasonably complain of the narrowness of that criticism which
stigmatises as barbarous everything which does not belong to one
style, or reflect the phraseology of one arbitrarily chosen period?
“It is strange,” observes Rohrbacher, “that every one supposes and
repeats that the scholastics and the cloisters of the Middle Ages
produced no book capable of pleasing the world and becoming popular;
and yet, for centuries past, the world has read and delighted in a
book of scholastic morality, composed in the Middle Ages by a monkish
superior for the use of his novices, and that this book which has
been read, known, and admired by everybody, is especially a popular
book; and has been translated into every language, and gone through
thousands of editions.” He is speaking of the _Following of Christ_,
which, according to very probable conjectures, appears to have been
composed in the thirteenth century, by John Gersen of Cabanaco, abbot
of the Benedictine abbey of St. Stephen, at Vercelli.[253]

Again: among the writers who displayed such incredible ignorance as
to write Leonine verse were the authors of a sacred poetic literature
which will defy all the attacks of time, and which no classic revival
can ever render obsolete. The “Dies Iræ,” the “Ave Maris Stella,”
the “Stabat Mater,” the “Veni Sancte Spiritus,” the “Hymns of the
Blessed Sacrament,” and those innumerable sequences so familiar to
every Christian ear, owe nothing of their inspiration to classic
sources. It is even possible that they may set at defiance the
rules of Latin prosody; but all sense of harmony must be destroyed
before we can designate the language in which they are composed
as a “hybrid jargon.” And who were the writers of these exquisite
compositions, which gave a voice to popular Christian devotion, and
still preserve, like some choice balm, not merely the dogmas of the
faith, but the very unction of a believing age? They were, for the
most part, monks, schoolmen, and friars, the very men who stand
charged with a conspiracy against literature and common sense. St.
Peter Damian, Adam of St. Victor, Pope Innocent III., the Franciscan
Jacopone, the Dominican St. Thomas, and we may add, the gifted and
unfortunate Abelard, the very type and representative of the earlier
scholastics--these are the barbarians to whom we are indebted for
that mediæval lyric poetry, much of which has been incorporated
into the office of the Church. In the seventeenth century France
grew ashamed of her ancient hymnology, and committed the task of
liturgical reform to Santeuil, the half-scholar, half-buffoon, to the
Jansenist Coffin, and the Deist De Brienne. The hymns of Fortunatus
and St. Ambrose were then exchanged for studied imitations of Horace,
from the pen of a writer who boasted that he was ready to be hung up
at a lamp-post if he were detected in writing a single bad verse,
though one of his Jesuit critics has cruelly enumerated no fewer than
a hundred and eight. But whatever be the merit of his poetry, the
Catholic sense has long since passed its verdict on the question,
and declared the unction of the ancient lyrics to be worth the pure
Latinity of a thousand such writers as Jean Baptiste Santeuil.[254]

Both orders of Mendicant Friars gave to the English Church great
prelates as well as great scholars; Kilwarby the Dominican and
Peckham the Franciscan, two of the grandest of our English primates,
may be taken as fair representatives of their respective orders. In
the first we see the Oxford and Paris doctor, learned in scriptural
and patristic lore, the “great clerk,” as Godwin calls him, who
“disputed excellently in divers exercises,” and who, as primate,
distinguished himself by his bold, uncompromising resistance to the
tyranny of powerful nobles, and his efforts for the advancement of
learning and the correction of public morals. After filling the see
of Canterbury for six years, “he was obliged to fly from the king’s
anger,” says Harpsfield, and, retiring to Rome, resigned the English
primacy and became Cardinal Bishop of Porto.[255] His successor
was the Franciscan, John of Peckham, appointed like himself by
papal provision. How little was there of a worldly spirit in these
appointments, so loudly and captiously condemned, when a Pope could
put aside so powerful a personage as Robert Burnel, the chancellor
of the greatest king of England who had reigned since the Conquest,
in order to promote one, by birth a poor Sussex peasant, whose only
recommendations were his exquisite scholarship and his saintly
life! Peckham’s learned reputation was not indeed of an ordinary
kind. He was a doctor both of Paris and Oxford, and a pupil at the
latter university of St. Bonaventure; he had made the tour of all
the Italian universities, and in the Pope’s own palace had lectured
on sacred letters to a crowd of bishops and cardinals, who were
proud to call themselves his pupils, and who every day as he passed
through their ranks to his pulpit arose from their seats to show
him reverence. Wadding speaks of his singularly noble countenance
and graceful demeanour, and adds that, besides his other learned
acquirements, he was an excellent poet.

His appointment to the primacy being, strange to say, unopposed by
the Crown, he began his administration by calling a Provincial Synod,
among the acts of which is that memorable one which enjoins every
parish priest to explain to his flock the fundamentals of the Faith,
laying aside all the niceties of school distinction, and which draws
out in admirable and lucid terms what may be called an abridgment
of Christian doctrine, under the heads of the Creed, the Ten
Commandments, the Two Evangelical Precepts, the Seven Works of Mercy,
the Seven Deadly Sins, and those that proceed from them, the Seven
Contrary Virtues, and the Seven Sacraments.[256] Moreover, we find
him appointing parochial schoolmasters in holy Orders for teaching
the children of the poor.

Peckham not only visited his whole diocese, but travelled over
the greater part of England, informing himself of the exact state
of cathedrals, monasteries, clergy, and people, and making war
on pluralism, and every other abuse which be discovered. He also
showed himself very active in reforming the disorders that had
crept into the universities, and at his visitation, held at Oxford
in 1283, condemned a considerable number of false propositions,
as well in theology, as in grammar, philosophy, and logic. His
fearless independence of character did not shrink from presenting
a remonstrance against the tyranny of Edward I., and administering
a rebuke to the great Earl of Warren for allowing his deer and
cattle to trample down a poor man’s field of corn. The immense list
of his works, as given by Pitseus, shows that he was not of the
number of those who neglected the arts. Besides his “Concordance of
the Scriptures,” and his theological and scholastic works, there
are poems, treatises on geometry, optics, and astronomy, others on
mystical divinity, others on the pastoral office intended for the use
of the parochial clergy, and some apparently drawn up to facilitate
the instruction of the poor. Yet this illustrious man, undoubtedly
one of the greatest of our English primates, was never in private
life anything but the simple Friar Minor. “He was stately in gesture,
gait, and outward show,” says Harpsfield, “yet of an exceeding meek,
facile, and liberal temper.” At his own table sumptuously furnished
for his guests, he ate only the coarsest viands, always travelled
on foot, and chose to perform the humblest offices in his cathedral
church, such as lighting the waxen tapers on the altar. It is a
significant fact, that he always retained a prebend attached to the
see of Lyons, in case he might at any time be forced to fly from
England; and Godwin tells us, that after his time this benefice
continued annexed to the see of Canterbury, in order to provide
against the case of the more than probable exile of the Primates.

Our last specimen of an Oxford Don of the thirteenth century shall
be taken from a different class; no Worcestershire yeoman, or
Sussex peasant boy, but the son of the greatest and noblest of the
English barons, Cantilupe, Earl of Pembroke, marshal and protector
of the realm during the stormy minority of Henry III. Thomas
Cantilupe, his eldest son, was educated first at court, and then
at the universities of Oxford, Paris, and Orleans; and whether at
court or in the schools, he displayed the same piety and delicacy
of conscience. Deeply learned both in canon and civil law, he was
raised by king Henry to the post of Lord Chancellor, and was also
elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford. But on the accession
of Edward I. he obtained leave to resign his dignities, and retired
to Oxford, where he trusted he might spend the rest of his life in
the practice of study and devotion. He took his degree of Doctor of
Divinity in the church of the Dominicans, on which occasion his old
master and spiritual director, Robert Kilwarby, then Archbishop of
Canterbury, was present, and scrupled not publicly to declare his
belief that he had never forfeited his baptismal innocence. He was
then fifty-four years of age. “So help me God,” were the archbishop’s
words, “I believe him to be this day as pure from all actual sin as
on the day of his birth. And if any man ask, let him know that from
his childhood I have heard his confessions, and read his life and
conscience as clearly as a man may read an open book.”[257]

After attending the second Council of Lyons, he was elected Bishop
of Hereford, and in the government of his diocese found himself,
singularly enough, opposed to his saintly metropolitan, John of
Peckham, who, as he conceived, overstrained his authority as
Primate. Yet though he staunchly defended the rights of his Church,
and was constantly engaged in vexatious disputes with some of the
great barons, no one ever dreamt of charging him with a haughty or
ambitious spirit. The speciality of his sanctity was charity, and it
was said of him that he was never seen angry, save when a whisper of
detraction met his ear.

Such were some of the Oxford doctors and chancellors of this period,
and such the prelates chosen from their ranks. Not indeed that we
would be thought desirous of representing our ancient universities
as exclusively schools of saints; the slightest acquaintance with
the academic annals suffices to show that they were disgraced by
many scandals, and were too often the scenes of lawless outrages
and contentions, which, in our days of higher civilisation, must
naturally excite both wonder and disgust. Moreover, the halls of
Oxford were haunted by a spirit very different from that which
pervaded the cloisters of Jarrow. The world had entered there, with
all its false maxims, and scholars were not ashamed to squabble for
benefices, and often, on the motive of self-interest, to take part
with the Crown against the Church. Still, when all has been said
that impartial candour demands, we cannot doubt that many precious
traditions must have been preserved in the university schools,
and that they moulded many a poor scholar in the old saintly and
beautiful type. Moreover, we are approaching the time when the most
flagrant evils of the universities were about to receive a partial
remedy by the establishment of the collegiate system, which soon
became tacitly accepted as _the_ educational system of England.
It aimed, and to a great degree successfully, at combining the
discipline of the old monastic schools with the larger intellectual
advantages of the universities. The reputed priority is ordinarily
assigned to University College, which, on the ground of its supposed
foundation by Alfred, claims to be the first in point of antiquity
of the Oxford foundations. But its real existence as a college
dates only from the time of William, Archdeacon of Durham, by whose
will a sum of money was assigned for the maintenance of a body of
masters, who, in 1280, were required to live together in one house,
and receive a body of statutes. But Merton College had already
received its royal charter in 1264, and one year previously to that
date, John Baliol, father to the unfortunate Scottish King, had
taken some steps towards the foundation of the college which bears
his name. His intentions were carried into effect by his widow,
the Lady Devorgilla, who, at the instigation of her Franciscan
confessor, Richard Stickbury, founded the college in honour of the
Holy Trinity, Our Lady, and St. Catherine the Martyr. It would be
pleasant to present to the reader the heiress of the ancient princes
of Galloway, as she appears in semi-monastic costume, in her Oxford
portrait, or to reproduce those exquisitely engrossed statutes, which
provide that the students of Baliol shall be present at the divine
offices on Sundays and holidays, and shall on other days frequent
the schools; that they shall always speak Latin in common, and if
they neglect to do so, shall be served last at table; that a sophism
shall be disputed among them once a week, and that they be allowed
a penny a day for their sustenance, and two pence on Sundays! But
as our object is only to notice those collegiate foundations which
in a marked way influenced the system of education, we shall pass
on to Merton, avowedly the first English college incorporated by
charter, and the model on which most of the subsequent foundations,
both of Oxford and Cambridge were raised. Its founder, Walter de
Merton, Bishop of Rochester and Chancellor of the realm, may be,
in fact regarded as the originator of the collegiate system, and
is designated in his monumental inscription _unius exemplo, omnium
quotquot extant collegiorum Fundator, maximorumque Europæ totius
ingeniorum felicissimus parens_. The immense evils of the university
system, which was practically no system at all, early attracted his
attention, and determined him on making the experiment of gathering a
certain number of scholars from the halls and hostels where they now
congregated subject to a merely nominal discipline, and placing them
under the control of masters and tutors in a spacious building under
semi-monastic rules. What was designed with so much sagacity was
executed with corresponding magnificence, and the _Domus Scholarium
de Merton_ became the curiosity of its age. Architectural splendour
was not at first considered any necessary part of a collegiate
foundation, but the various tenements purchased by Bishop Merton
were reduced to a regular quadrangular form, and a college chapel
was included in the original design, two chaplains being appointed
for “the ministration of Divine service.” In 1265, the parish church
of St. John Baptist was made over to the founder by the monks of
Reading, and granted to the perpetual use of the scholars. Their
studies appear to have differed in no way from those of the other
Oxonians, but Wood considers the appointment of a grammar-master to
indicate that Bishop Merton designed to put some check on the decay
of arts.

Among the early benefactresses to this college was one who might
almost be called its co-foundress, Ella Longspée, Countess of
Warwick, and daughter to that other Ella, Countess of Salisbury,
who had obtained the conversion of her ferocious husband, Longspée,
through the instrumentality of St. Edmund.[258] The friendship of
the elder Ella with the saintly archbishop appears to have inspired
both her daughters with a singular goodwill towards Oxford, and Ella
in particular made large donations of lands and endowments to the
Merton scholars. Such was the success of the new foundation that the
king himself recommended it to Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, as
a model for his proposed Cambridge College of Peterhouse; and the
example once set, was soon taken up by others. The Benedictines had
possessed houses of studies in Oxford from a very early period, but
the proposal was now made to found a regular college, intended, in
the first instance, exclusively for students from Gloucester Abbey,
but the benefits of which were afterwards extended to those of St.
Alban’s, Glastonbury, Tavistock, Chertsey, Coventry, Evesham, St.
Edmundsbury, Winchcombe, and Malmsbury, all of which contributed to
the expense of rearing the necessary buildings. The real founder of
Gloucester College, however, was not an abbot, but a baron, John
Giffard, Lord of Brimesfield, and husband of Maud Longspée, whose
persuasions doubtless had great share in promoting his munificence.
In 1291, a general chapter was held at Abingdon of the monks of the
province of Canterbury, and a tax imposed on all the Benedictine
houses of the province, to raise the necessary funds.

The result was the erection of a grand and commodious pile of
buildings, some of which remain to this day, and form a part of the
modern Worcester College. The apartments occupied by the students
of the different religious houses were separate one from another,
and distinguished by their arms or rebusses. Thus, we see the
cross-keys for St. Peter’s of Gloucester, a comb and a ton, with
the letter W, for Winchcombe, and so of the rest. Each abbey sent
a certain number of students at a time, who were governed by a
prior, elected by themselves, called the “Prior Studentium,” and who
had a rule adapted to suit their peculiar requirements. They were
enjoined not to mix familiarly with the secular students, to have
divinity disputations once a week, and to practise preaching, both
in Latin and English. A chair of theology was afterwards founded
for their special instruction. In short, Gloucester College was a
true religious seminary, and continued to enjoy a high character for
learning down to the time of the general suppression of religious
houses. Wood gives many interesting particulars of the college,
and the good scholars whom it produced. Whethamstede, abbot of St.
Alban’s in the reign of Henry VI., of whom we shall have hereafter
to speak more at length, was at one time the “Prior Studentium,”
and afterwards bestowed such large benefactions on the house as to
be called its second founder. He put in the five painted windows
of the chapel, built a vestiary and a library, and presented many
books. Moreover, he adorned the images of the Crucifix and the Saints
with “deprecatory rhymes.” His dear and learned friend, Humphrey
of Gloucester, likewise enriched the library with several valuable
manuscripts. The first Benedictine of this college who took his
doctor’s degree was William Brok, who graduated in divinity in 1298.
The inception of a university doctor was in those days a stately
ceremony, and on this occasion the Benedictines thought it well to
celebrate the auspicious event with more than ordinary splendour. Six
abbots of the order, therefore, attended the customary procession
on horseback, besides “monks, priors, obedientiaries, and claustral
clerks, a hundred noblemen and esquires,” and most of the Benedictine
bishops of the province of Canterbury. The Durham monks were not
long before they provided themselves with a similar seminary, and
in 1286 obtained lands for the erection of their college from Dame
Mabel Wafte, abbess of Godstow. The endowments of this establishment
were intended half for lay and half for religious students. They also
had their “Prior Studentium,” and the good repute of their learning
induced Richard of Bury, the celebrated Bishop of Durham, to leave
them his magnificent library of books. The site of this foundation is
now occupied by the more modern Trinity College.

These religious establishments, it is not to be doubted, had a
considerable share in promoting the extension of the collegiate
system now fairly introduced into Oxford. The Merton scholars soon
attracted notice; of whom the most famous was Duns Scotus, who
after leaving the university entered among the Franciscan friars
of Newcastle, and returning to Oxford to study a second time under
the doctors of his own order, won perhaps the highest renown which
attaches to the name of any English divine since the days of
Bede.[259] The reign of Edward II. witnessed the foundation of two
more colleges. Oriel claims as its founder that unfortunate monarch
himself, who, whatever may have been his faults, was an undoubted
patron of letters. It is probable, however, that he had little more
than a nominal share in the foundation, which was the real work of
his almoner, Adam de Brom. Exeter owes its name to its founder,
Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, and both these were, more or
less, in their statutes and general spirit, copies of Merton. The
effects of the changes thus introduced into the university system are
differently estimated by different writers. By many the diminution
in the number of students which became apparent in the fourteenth
century, is attributed to the increase of colleges. These of course
could only accommodate a limited number, whereas any amount of
students might swarm in the hostels and lodging-houses which were
formerly their only resort. However, if the old adage, that quality
is to be preferred to quantity, is to be held of any force, this can
hardly be said to be a disadvantage. Six thousand students living
under regular discipline were perhaps better than thirty thousand,
containing a large proportion of “varlets;” and although in our
days the collegiate system may be regarded as having a tendency to
aristocratical exclusiveness, this was far from being its intention
or result in the early period of its institution. The endowments
were for poor scholars, and by poor scholars they were mostly
enjoyed. It appears probable also that the successive pestilences
which desolated Oxford in the reign of Edward III., and the troubles
occasioned by Wickliffe and his followers, had a great deal to do
with the decrease of the scholars. Besides which, it must be borne
in mind that the rage for scholastic learning which characterised
the thirteenth century, gave place in England during the fourteenth
to a rage for French conquests. So completely did the brilliant
successes achieved by the two Edwards root this passion in the
English mind, that the cultivation of letters was little regarded,
and perhaps after Wickliffe’s time it was looked on by some with a
not unnatural suspicion. Many of the colleges had become tainted with
Lollardism, and remained under a cloud; the tide of popular favour
had set in for the showy chivalry of the day, and clerks and scholars
went somewhat out of fashion. The close tie which had hitherto knit
together the schools of Oxford and Paris was henceforth totally
sundered, nor is it easy to estimate the injury thus accruing to
the English university, which in the thirteenth century enjoyed the
freest intercommunion with the French and Italian academies. The
narrow insular spirit which thus sprang up, and which was nourished
by the anti-Roman tendencies of English legislation, was fatal to
intellectual progress. Hence the learned renown of our universities
certainly declined, but so far was this from being the result of
the collegiate system that it is evident the noble foundations
of Wykeham, Waynflete, Fleming, Chicheley, and Henry VI., were
undertaken with the view of supplying a remedy to the existing evils,
and as a means of effecting a revival of learning among the English
clergy.

The history of these foundations belongs however to a later date.
For the present we must leave our semibarbarous island (for so,
under favour, must baronial England doubtless have been regarded
by dwellers south of the Alps), and see what kind of scholarship
was flourishing in the more classic atmosphere of Italy at the very
time when the first stones were being laid of our ancient Oxford
cloisters.

_CHAPTER XVII._

DANTE AND PETRARCH.

A.D. 1300 TO 1400.

In what has hitherto been said of the universities, which in the
thirteenth century had fairly established themselves as the great
organs of education, it has not been possible to convey any just or
satisfactory notion of the exact nature of those studies fostered
within their schools. The reader will perhaps have gathered a general
idea that a great change had been gradually effected since the days
of St. Anselm; that humane letters were becoming neglected, and
that scholastic philosophy and canon law had even threatened at
one time to discourage the cultivation of Scriptural and patristic
studies; that theology, on the other hand, had become digested into a
scientific system by the great scholastic doctors, who had reinstated
the study of the Scriptures and the Biblical tongues, but who had not
done much to restore polite letters; and finally, that the physical
sciences had made a certain sensible advance. This general statement
has in it a fair amount of truth; nevertheless, general statements
are such unsatisfactory things, that the desire rises to one’s
mind that some scholar of our old universities could be put on his
examination before a Royal Commission, and tell us with his own lips
what he did, and what he did not, learn from his mediæval teachers.
The wish is not so extravagant as it might appear. Fortunately for
our purpose, one scholar existed who gathered in himself the learning
of Padua, Bologna, Paris, and Oxford Universities, for he studied
successively at them all, and has left the result in writings, which
for six centuries have been submitted to close critical examination,
and are still in our hands. A glance through their pages promises,
therefore, to give us some information on the point in question.

It was probably some time in the reign of Edward I., that among the
30,000 students who crowded the inns and hostels of old Oxford,
there appeared an Italian of middle age, of whose previous career at
other universities we know no more, than that at Padua and Bologna
he had addicted himself to moral and natural philosophy; that at
Paris he was held to be a first-rate theologian; and that returning
thither a second time, after political troubles had driven him into
exile, he had held a disputation against fourteen opponents, had
taken his bachelor’s degree, and was only prevented by an empty
purse from graduating as master; and finally, that both at Paris
and elsewhere he had evinced a marked predilection for the mystical
interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. These are all the traces that
he has left behind him in the schools, and yet how well we know him!
The countenances of Shakespeare or Byron, or Sir Walter Scott, are
not more familiar to us than the grand and melancholy features of
Dante Alighieri, whom we claim as an Oxford student, on the authority
of John de Serraville, Bishop of Fermo, a writer who, as he lived
only a century later than the poet, may be supposed to have derived
his information from contemporary sources.[260] Plain in dress,
temperate in his habits, polished and dignified in his manners, which
were, however, dashed with more than a touch of sarcasm,--a man of
few words, given to long fits of abstraction, his form a little
stooping, his sight early impaired by excessive application to his
books; something of an artist, and such a lover of music that, as
he tells us, it had power to soothe him even in the worst of times,
an exquisite caligrapher, as they attest who have seen his writing,
and describe it as _magra e lunga, e molto corretta_, a close and
curious observer of nature, and above all, of the phenomena of the
starry heavens, a perfect scholar, yet, withal, a soldier too, well
skilled in all the martial exercises that became his rank--such was
he whom we have ventured to select as the representative man of the
Catholic universities as they existed before that new era of taste
and literature which was ushered in by his countryman Petrarch.

Dante is acknowledged by all critics to have been the most learned
of the poets, not excepting Milton, the character of whose genius so
closely resembles his own. His learning was characteristic of his
age: the extraordinary prominence given in his poem to the scholastic
theology and philosophy tells us at once in what century it was
composed. Aristotle, Christianised and interpreted by St. Thomas,
is the master whom he follows;[261] yet perhaps he is not quite so
exclusive an Aristotelian as most scholastics of his time, for it
is evident that he had studied Plato with almost equal attention,
specially the Timæus of that philosopher, to which he frequently
refers. He, however, invariably gives the preference to Aristotle,
whom he calls, “the master among the wise;” whereas Petrarch assigns
the first place to Plato. But “Dante the Theologian,” as he is
called in his epitaph, had other masters besides the Greeks. He
who had won his bachelor’s degree in fair fight against fourteen
opponents, a reminiscence to which he refers in his poem, had to be
furnished with arms from the scholastic arsenal. Accordingly, when
he describes himself as undergoing the questioning of the Apostles
on the subject of Faith, Hope, and Charity, he gives his answers in
the language of the Master of the Sentences, as well as of St. Denys
the Areopagite, and St. Augustine. His diction is thickly sown with
the phraseology of the schools, with “quiddities,” “syllogisms,”
“propositions,” “demonstrations,” and the like; yet when he comes to
make his profession of faith, how sublimely does he rise above these
technicalities, and declare that his belief rests neither on physical
nor metaphysical proof, but on the testimony of the Holy Ghost, on
Moses, the Prophets, the Psalms, and the Gospels.[262] Elsewhere he
appeals to the teaching of St. Jerome, St. Isidore, St. Gregory, St.
Bernard, and most of the other Latin Fathers, and names with loving
reverence not a few of those monastics and schoolmen with whom we
have made acquaintance in the foregoing pages, such as Bede and
Rabanus, St. Peter Damian, Peter Comestor, Hugh and Richard of St.
Victor, and Albert the Great. But above all these appear St. Thomas
and St. Buonaventura, the former of whom is, beyond all doubt, the
guide of Dante in philosophy and theology, and whom he introduces in
the thirteenth canto of the Paradiso, speaking in his own person, and
using the scientific phraseology of the schools.

The political opinions set forth by Dante are no less characteristic
of the mediæval university student than his theological views. Born
of a family attached to a party of the Guelphs, he himself kept aloof
for some time from either faction, and, as Chief Prior of Florence,
aimed at holding an even balance between them. This line of conduct
gave little satisfaction to the Neri, as the Florentine Guelphs were
called; and they accused him, as it would seem not without cause,
of concealing, under the show of impartiality, a secret leaning
towards the Ghibellines. On occasion of a popular insurrection, the
Priors agreed to banish the leaders of both parties; on this the
Guelphs leagued to call in the assistance of Charles of Valois,
Captain-General to Pope Boniface VIII. This appeal to the protection
of the hated lilies of France moved Dante to an act of severity
which proved his own ruin. The banished chiefs of the Bianchi were
recalled, while those of the Neri remained in exile. Driven to
extremity, the Guelphs despatched an envoy to Rome, entreating the
Pope to put the pacification of Florence into the hands of Charles
of Valois. Dante hastened to Rome to oppose this demand, but in his
absence another popular _émeute_ broke out, the Neri triumphed,
their exiles were recalled, and in their turn decreed banishment and
loss of goods against their enemies. The original document is still
preserved, in which, to the sentence of confiscation is added that of
_burning alive_, decreed against Dante and fourteen other citizens,
should they ever again set foot in Florence.[263]

It must be admitted that if the writings of Dante exhibit after this
time all the bitterness of “Ghibelline bile,” there was some excuse
to be made for him. Almost against his own will he had been thrown
from his position of theoretic impartiality into the arms of the
Ghibelline faction. Not that he ever entirely embraced their cause;
he had good sense enough to admit that truth is seldom to be found
in the ranks of party, and owned in after years that it was hard to
say whether Guelph or Ghibelline were most to be blamed for the evils
which their animosities had brought upon Italy.[264] He felt for the
sufferings of his country scarcely less than for his own; and the
only remedy which he saw for the miseries resulting from the rage
of factions was the establishment of a firm monarchical government,
such as was presented in the theory of the Holy Roman Empire. This
fancy he dwelt on and idealised till he came to believe that Empire a
thing of divine institution, applying to it the words of the Apostle,
“There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.” The extravagances
into which he suffered himself to be led on this subject are not
entirely to be referred to the influence of his university studies,
yet it is certain that the principles current in all the great
academies offered nothing to correct the absolutism of his political
creed. Bologna had received her “Habita” from the Emperor Frederic
II., in reward for the good services which her lawyers had rendered
him in supporting his claims against the Italian Communi. Paris was
on the very eve of supporting the sacrilegious enormities of Philip
le Bel. At Oxford, the greatest law school north of the Alps, the
imperial jurisprudence formed the favourite study; and though, with
that happy _inconsequence_ which is the national characteristic, the
English would none of it for practical purposes, yet they learnt
enough from their law studies to induce them to support a course of
legislation, the ultimate result of which was the establishment of a
royal supremacy.

In all these academies the supremacy of the temporal power was, in
one form or other, the favourite political dogma, and the tendency
of their teaching was, perhaps, more directly anti-Papal than
that of the Italian poet, for Dante’s Ghibellinism, bitter and
resentful as it was, never clouded the instincts of his faith. He
regarded Boniface VIII. as his personal enemy, and attributed to
his intervention the revolution that had driven him into exile.
With the terrible anger of his silent nature which suppressed every
outward demonstration of passion, he pursued and made war upon him
with his pen; yet the hatred he felt for the man never blinded him
as to the character of his office. When he comes to speak of the
outrages committed against him at the instigation of Philip le Bel,
he forgets that it is his enemy who is being thus dealt with, and
gives expression to the deep religious sense of a child of Holy
Church in lines for ever memorable. He beholds Christ once more
mocked and derided in the person of His Vicar, he sees the gall and
vinegar renewed, execrates the cruelty of the new Pilate and the new
thieves, and weeps over the sufferings of the Church, whose woes are
now, he says, the theme of every prayer.[265] Indeed, in all save
his politics, Dante reflects the spirit of the ages of faith. The
grim grotesqueness which mingles with his most terrible pictures
breathes the identical character to be found in the illuminations
and sculptures of the same period, evincing an intense sense of
certain grave realities which the mediæval artists never shrank
from picturing to the mind and eye. The liturgical spirit, too, is
there, reminding us almost at every page that we are reading the
words of one who lived when the office of the Church was still the
Prayer Book of the faithful, and when university students, like St.
Edmund, or Jordan of Saxony, were accustomed to rise at midnight
and attend the singing of Matins in their parish church.[266] Some
of the most exquisite passages of his poem owe their beauty to the
skill with which he has woven into his verse passages and phrases
from the Psalms, the Breviary Hymns, and other devotions of the
Church. Yet Dante was very far from being exclusively a theologian
and a scholastic. His writings offer sufficient evidence that the
scholars of the thirteenth century were familiar with other Latin
than that of Duns Scotus. He had closely studied all the Latin poets,
and sometimes translates or paraphrases entire lines from Virgil. His
mind was so steeped in the history and mythology of the ancients,
that many of his pages, if translated, might be taken for quotations
from Milton; for like him he possessed the art of stringing together
a series of classic names and allusions, the melody of which makes
us willing to pardon their pedantry. One example may suffice, which
shall be given in its English dress, the better to convey the
resemblance which it bears to kindred Miltonic passages. It is the
poet Virgil who is speaking to Statius, and describing the state of
the good heathen in limbo:--

There oft times,
We of that mount hold converse, on whose top
For aye our nurses live. We have the bard
Of Pella, and the Teian; Agatho,
Simonides, and many a Grecian else
Ingarlanded with laurel. Of thy train
Antigone is there, and Deïphile,
Argia, and, as sorrowful as erst,
Ismene, and who showed Langia’s wave;
Deidamia with her sisters there,
And blind Tiresias’ daughter, and the bride,
Sea-born of Peleus.[267]

Every one of the names here named are Greek, and it is clear that
Dante was well acquainted with the stories of the Greek poets; but
was he also acquainted with their language? This is a question
fiercely debated by his commentators, and considered to be still
an unresolved problem. In his prose work, the “Convito,” he has
criticised an erroneous translation from Aristotle, and in one of
the finest passages of the “Purgatorio” introduces a Greek word,
which alone has furnished matter for a voluminous controversy.[268]
These and other passages have led many to give him credit for being
possessed of Greek scholarship. The point is not decided, but the
probability appears to be that his knowledge of the language was at
any rate not very profound. In the same way he may be said to have
been not totally unacquainted with Hebrew and Arabic, for several
explanations of Hebrew words occur in his works, and the mysterious
words which he places with so tremendous and dramatic an effect in
the mouth of Nimrod,[269] are declared by one critic to be Arabic,
and by another to be Syriac; but are more probably, as Bianchi
observes, a jumble of sounds chosen from the Oriental dialects,
and intended to convey a notion of the confusion of tongues, and
to startle the ear with their uncouth cabalistic sound. Without
claiming for our poet the merit of Hebrew and Oriental learning, we
may at least gather from such passages that he had studied in schools
where these tongues were not entirely unknown, where the decree of
Clement V. was probably carried out, and professors were to be found
who could furnish him with enough of Eastern erudition to serve
his purpose. On other points his acquirements were, however, far
less superficial. The trivium and quadrivium in all their branches
are easy enough to be traced through his writings. He is known to
have been a proficient in music. He refers to the quadrature of the
circle and other problems of geometry, but astronomy was evidently
his science of predilection, and occupies a very considerable place
in his poem. He wrote at a time when the Pythagorean system was the
only accepted theory, and his scientific allusions can of course
only be explained according to its supposed laws. But he did not
draw all his ideas from the books of the ancients. In his “Convito,”
after giving the various explanations of the Milky-way furnished by
Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, and others, some of them sufficiently absurd,
he decides in favour of the opinion that there is a multitude of
fixed stars in that part of the heavens, so small (or, as we should
now say, so distant), that we cannot separately distinguish them,
but which cause the appearance of whiteness. The other views, he
observes, seem devoid of reason. The astronomer, Ideler, was the
first to point out that Dante’s description in the opening canto of
the “Purgatorio” of the four stars,[270] which he makes symbolic of
the four cardinal virtues, betrays a knowledge of the constellation
of the Southern Cross, of which he may have heard from the Genoese
and Pisan mariners who had visited Cape Comorin, and which he may
even have seen depicted on that curious globe constructed by the
Arabs in 1225, where it was distinctly marked. He had attentively
studied geography, and notices many such points as find a place in
our manuals of the globes, such as the intersection of the great
circles, as they are exhibited on the armillary sphere; and reminds
us that within the torrid zone at certain seasons no shadows fall,
on account of the sun being then directly overhead.[271] Tiraboschi
gives him credit for anticipating a supposed discovery of Galileo’s,
that wine is nothing but the heat of the sun mingled with the juice
of the grape; and Maffei comments on the “marvellous felicity” with
which he expresses his scientific ideas. The theory of the attraction
of gravitation[272] is stated as distinctly in his pages as in those
of Vincent de Beauvais; and his allusions to the nature of plants and
the habits of animals, and particularly of birds, seem to evince,
not merely a familiarity with the works of Albert the Great, but
the observant eye of a real naturalist.[273] His artistic feeling
appears in a thousand passages, which were afterwards given a visible
shape by Orcagna, and so many other painters of the early Florentine
school; as well as in some wonderful landscape-painting in words,
which, as Humboldt says, “manifest profound sensibility to the aspect
of external nature.” Such is his description, imitated by so many
later Italian poets, of the birds beginning their morning songs in
the pine forest of Chiassi, of the dawning light trembling on the
distant sea, of the goatherd watching his flocks among the hills,
and of the flowery meadow illuminated by a sudden ray of sunlight
darting through the broken clouds.[274] He never directly alludes
to those grand creations of Christian art, the cathedrals, most of
which were coeval in their rise with the European universities.
Yet he continually reminds us that he lived when religious artists
were carving the sacred sculptures on their walls, or filling
their windows with a mystic splendour, and that he had felt the
power of those vaulted aisles, which he had, perhaps, visited as a
pilgrim.[275]

Enough has been said to indicate the nature of Dante’s learning,
which was undoubtedly the learning of his time. It differed from
that of his contemporaries in degree, but not in kind. When Mr.
Berington gives expression to his delight at having at last found
a man who could admire Virgil, he shows not only a very imperfect
appreciation of the acquirements of mediæval scholars, but even of
the poet whom he condescends to praise. Dante’s aim was avowedly to
write a _popular_ poem; he desired to be read, not merely by the
learned, but by the mass of his countrymen; and it was with this
object that he sacrificed his first intention of writing in Latin
verse, and chose the rude Italian vernacular, not without a certain
regret, but with the design of being more widely intelligible, for,
to use his own words, “we must not give meat to sucklings.” We may
safely dare to affirm that had not the Latin classics been freely
admitted into the Christian schools of the thirteenth century, Dante
would never have ventured to have chosen Virgil as his representative
of Moral Philosophy. And if the world to which he addressed himself
had not known something--perhaps a good deal--of classical history
and poetry, his poem could not have achieved the popularity at which
he successfully aimed. But it is probable that on this point things
were not greatly changed from what they had been in the days of his
ancestor Cacciaguida, when, as he tells us, the ladies of Florence,
as they sat with their maidens,

Drawing off
The tresses from the distaff, lectured them
Old tales of Troy, and Fesole, and Rome.[276]

Certain it is that the erudition of the “Divina Commedia” proved
no obstacle to its popularity. There is nothing in the history
of literature that can be at all compared with the instantaneous
conquest which it achieved over the Italian public. Within thirty
years of the poet’s death an Archbishop of Milan appointed a
carefully-chosen commission of learned men to write a commentary on
the poem; Florence, which had cast him out of her walls when living,
now founded a public lecture to explain his works; and in 1373,
called on Bocaccio to deliver this lecture in the Church of St.
Stefano, at the annual salary of a hundred florins.

We are not, however, concerned with the literary history of Dante,
who is only here spoken of as the representative scholar of his
times. His profound learning has never been disputed; yet it is
worthy of remark that if it be good criticism to measure a man’s
scholarship solely by the style of his Latin compositions, we should
have to number the author of the “Divina Commedia” among the other
writers whose “incredible ignorance” disgraced their age. His prose
treatises, _De Monarchia_ and _De Vulgari Eloquio_, in substance
learned and full of acute observation, are declared to be rude and
unclassical in style; a fact which suggests doubts how far this
standard of criticism is a just one. It was fortunate indeed that he
abandoned his first purpose of writing his poem in the Latin tongue,
and chose rather that vernacular idiom which he raised to the dignity
of a language. How he dealt with it is the real marvel; he built up
his verse, much as the Athenians constructed their walls in the days
of Themistocles, laying hold of any material that came in his way,
quarrying words and phrases out of the Latin at his pleasure, filling
up chinks and vacancies with verbs and adjectives which, whatever
may have been their plebeian origin, became ennobled by his use; and
creating many a good strong word of mighty meaning which it would
have been well if his countrymen could have persuaded themselves to
retain. After his time the formation of the Italian language rapidly
developed, and the majestic mass which had been hewn into shape by
Dante, received a finer and softer polish from Bocaccio and Petrarch.

Of the latter poet we now have to speak; for any sketch of mediæval
scholarship would be imperfect without some notice of him who is
commonly regarded as the restorer of polite letters. The father
of Petrarch had been banished from Florence at the same time with
Dante; and when a child, he himself had once beheld the great poet,
whose fame he was in some respects destined to surpass. When he was
nine years old his parents removed to Avignon in France, where the
establishment of the papal court drew many Italians. There for four
years he learnt as much grammar, logic, and rhetoric as the schools
of Avignon and Carpentras could teach, and that does not appear to
have been much. However, even at this age his classic tastes betrayed
themselves. Whilst his comrades were still reading Æsop’s fables
and the verses of Prosper, he studied the works of Cicero, which
delighted his ear long before he understood their sense. Then came
another four years at Montpelier, after which he went to Bologna,
and there studied civil law for three years more. But as soon as he
found himself removed from his father’s watchful eye the study of
jurisprudence somewhat languished. “It was thus,” he says, “that I
spent, or rather wasted, seven years; and if I must say the truth,
disgusted with my legal studies, I spent my time mostly in reading
Cicero, Virgil, and the other poets. My father learnt this, and one
day he unexpectedly appeared before me. Guessing at once the object
of his coming, I hastily hid the great Latins, but he drew them from
their hiding-place, and threw them into the fire, as if they had been
books of heresy. At this sight I cried out as though I myself had
been burnt. My father, seeing my affliction, drew out two volumes
half-scorched with the flames, and holding one in his left and the
other in his right hand, he said, “Here, this is Virgil, take it, and
it will comfort your soul a little--and here is Cicero, you may have
him too, for he will teach you how to plead.” Somewhat consoled by
this, I ceased my lamentations.”

But a lawyer Petrarch was determined never to become. In 1327,
having lost both his parents, he returned to Avignon, put on the
ecclesiastical dress, and received the tonsure; but he had no
more serious intention of following the clerical than the legal
profession. He cared only for a life of literary ease, and the
“graceful indolence” which has been declared to form one of the
charms of his verses, was the predominant feature in his character.
It was at this time that he formed that attachment to Laura de Sade
which inspired the 400 sonnets, and other “Rime,” which have made the
celebrity of their author. At once to soothe his grief and to satisfy
his curiosity, he undertook a voyage through France and Germany. He
visited Paris, and describes its University as “a basket filled with
the rarest fruits of every land.” The French, he says, are “gay of
humour, fond of society, and pleasant in conversation; they make war
on care by diversion, singing, laughing, eating, and drinking.”
He visited Toulouse, and was introduced to the famous academy of
the _Gaie Science_, established in 1324, of which Laura de Sade was
herself a member. Seven poets, with a chancellor at their head, held
their meetings in a palace surrounded by beautiful gardens, and
solemnly granted the degrees of bachelor or doctor to the candidates
for Parnassian honours, the prize for the best poem produced at the
floral games of the month of May being a golden violet. At last he
returned to Avignon, and, retiring to a country house in the solitude
of Vaucluse, composed, amid its woods and fountains, some of his
sweetest Italian sonnets, some Latin prose treatises, and his heroic
Latin poem of “Africa,” on which he bestowed immense labour. Great,
indeed, would have been his own surprise could he have foreseen
that posterity would have cared nothing at all for the classical
imitations which procured him his laurel crown from the hands of
the Roman Senate, and that his immortality as a poet would rest on
those careless rhymes which he calls the unpremeditated songs of his
juvenile sorrows, and which, being written in the despised vernacular
tongue, he counted as of little merit. It was as a Latin writer that
he desired to be remembered, and it was the fame of his “Africa” that
induced the Senate of Rome and the University of Paris to offer him
their honours on the same day. Petrarch’s classic predilections, and
his intense love of his native country, determined him to give the
preference to Rome; and after a three days’ examination, which was
presided over by the learned King Robert of Naples, he was crowned on
the Capitol, on Easter-day, 1341, and hung up his laurel wreath in
the Basilica of the Apostles.

The rest of his life was chiefly spent in Italy, where the reigning
princes of the Visconti, the Este, the Scaligeri, and the Gonzaga
vied one with another in doing him honour. He devoted himself with a
sort of passionate eagerness to the enterprise of seeking out copies
of the neglected classics, and his correspondents in all parts of
Europe assisted him in his labours. Cicero was his literary idol, and
when the strangers who crowded round him asked him what presents they
could send him from their distant lands, his reply was ever, “Nothing
but the works of Cicero.” He rescued from oblivion some of the
epistles of his favourite author, and was once possessed of a copy
of his treatise _De Gloria_, now lost to the world. He had almost an
equal zeal in collecting and preserving medals and ancient monuments
of art, and severely reprehended the practice, so common among the
Romans, of destroying the venerable remains of antiquity, in order
to procure building materials at an easy rate. Though never able to
master the Greek language, he had the consolation of witnessing the
first steps which ushered in the revival of that study. In 1339,
Barlaam, a Calabrian monk who had for many years been a resident
in Greece, was despatched to Avignon on a mission to Pope Benedict
XII., from the Emperor Cantacuzenus. Petrarch took some lessons in
Greek from him, but had too little perseverance to profit much from
his master’s lessons. Barlaam is declared by Bocaccio to have been a
treasury of every kind of learning, and superior to any other scholar
of the time. He wrote on theology, astronomy, and mathematics,
and was well acquainted with the ancient Greek poetry. And so,
after all, the Greek literature was restored to Europe through the
instrumentality of a _monk_! For it was one of Barlaam’s disciples,
by name Leontius Pilate, also a Calabrian, who afterwards visited
Petrarch at Venice, and from whom Bocaccio acquired a knowledge of
Greek. The latter scholar persuaded the Florentine magistrates to
appoint Leontius Greek professor in their city, and in 1361 the first
Greek chair was erected in the West, and curious crowds flocked to
listen to lectures on the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey,” delivered from
the lips of one whose outward appearance was that of an uncouth
savage. He wore the philosopher’s, or rather the beggar’s, mantle,
his countenance was hideous, his beard long and uncombed, his manners
rude, and his temper gloomy. He remained at Florence three years, and
then returned to the East to search for manuscripts; but such was
his overbearing insolence that, in spite of his treasures of classic
erudition, Petrarch would have nothing to say to him when he proposed
a second visit to Italy. Leontius, however, embarked on board a
vessel with the intention of returning to Florence, but was overtaken
by a tempest, and struck dead by lightning. Petrarch was concerned
at his loss, and yet more so by the fear that his books had perished
with him. “Inquire, I beseech you,” he wrote to Bocaccio, “whether
there were not a Euripides or a Sophocles among them, or some other
of the books he promised to bring me.” He had already procured from
Nicholas Sigeros a Greek Homer, which he prized, though unable to
read it. “Your Homer,” he writes, “is dumb to me, and I am deaf to
it; nevertheless, the sight of it consoles me, and I often kiss its
cover. I beg of you send me Hesiod, send me Euripides.”

It was not only by the Italian dukes and princes that Petrarch was
cherished; the Popes--Benedict XII., Clement VI., and Urban V.--all
testified their sense of his merit, and enriched him with many
benefices, and Urban is said to have been somewhat influenced in
his determination to revisit Rome by the arguments of the poet. For
whilst Petrarch allowed his pen the most unwarrantable freedoms in
censuring the conduct of the papal court, he had nothing more at
heart than the restoration of the Popes to their ancient capital,
and on this point he shared the sentiments of Dante. Neither were
the middle and lower classes at all behind their betters in the
enthusiasm with which they regarded the great scholar. A certain
grammar-master who had grown half-blind and wholly crippled, hearing
that Petrarch was at Naples, determined to go thither to see him,
and made his son carry him there on his shoulders. By the time they
arrived the poet had departed for Rome. However, the old man declared
himself ready to journey to the Indies if he could only come up
with the object of his search, so they took the road to Rome; again
too late, they proceeded to Parma, and there, to the inexpressible
consolation of the venerable grammarian, he saw “his Petrarch,”
and causing his son to lift him up, he reverently kissed the head
that had conceived so many noble thoughts, and the hand that had
written so much good Latin.[277] In one of his familiar epistles,
Petrarch relates the story of a certain goldsmith of Bergamo who,
having exchanged the pursuits of trade for those of literature, was
possessed with such a passing great admiration of the author of the
“Rime,” that he declared he should not die content unless he were
once suffered to receive him in his house. Petrarch gave him that
satisfaction but the delight of the goldsmith was so excessive, that
his servants feared he would go mad with joy, and his guest had
some difficulty in freeing himself from his troublesome attendance.
Petrarch affected to treat these demonstrations of popular homage
with studied contempt, but whilst he talked and wrote of the charms
of solitude, it was evident that he was not a little intoxicated with
the vapours of gratified vanity. Whatever pains he took to express
his indifference to the world, he lost no opportunity of letting his
friends know that the world was not indifferent to him. “Whenever
I leave my house,” he wrote from Milan, “a thing that happens very
rarely, I bow right and left, and stop to speak to no one. I am more
esteemed here than I deserve, and far more than suits my taste for
quiet. Not only do the prince and his court love and honour me, but
the people respect me far beyond my merits, and love me without so
much as seeing me, for I rarely appear in public.” His letters are
filled with passages of this kind, which sufficiently betray that the
would-be philosopher, who had written long treatises on the Solitary
Life, and on Contempt of the World, was secretly devoured by a hungry
egotism. His notions of the joys of Solitude attained to nothing
more sublime than lying under a tree with a book in one’s hand,
and no one would have been less pleased than he, if his admirers
had taken him at his word and ceased to pester him. Yet the homage
of the world had no power to soothe the restlessness that devoured
him, and in the midst of all his outward successes, fortune failed
not to deal him many a cruel blow. The great plague of 1348, which
desolated all Europe, and which was so powerfully described by the
pen of Bocaccio, carried off Laura de Sade among its first victims,
and Petrarch recorded his sorrow on the blank leaves of his Virgil.
Other losses followed, and in the midst of these private griefs,
Petrarch, who had given his confidence to the celebrated Rienzi and
had dedicated a noble sonnet to one whom he fondly trusted would have
been the restorer of his country’s greatness, felt the fall of the
great Tribune as a personal misfortune. “Some,” he exclaimed, “can
still rejoice in riches, some in intellect, and some in health; but
for me, I see not what anything in the world can henceforth give me,
save tears.” A sad avowal for the greatest scholar of his age, but
a scholar whose character, whatever may be said of his genius, was
utterly hollow and superficial. The mere man of letters--and whatever
may have been his sincere regret for the graver irregularities of
his youth,--we must add, the unworthy ecclesiastic, ever sensible
in the midst of his literary triumphs of a want and a weariness,
is a poor exchange indeed, with all his erudition, for the race of
Christian scholars with whom we have hitherto been engaged. His last
residence was fixed at Arqua, near Padua; and there, on the 18th of
July 1374, he was found dead in his study, with his head leaning on
an open book. He had been struck by epilepsy, and so, as has been
said, passed from the quiet of his library to the quiet of the grave.
He had been the first to inaugurate a vast intellectual revolution,
and the restoration of classical studies, begun by him, was carried
on in the following century by Poggio and his contemporaries. For
Italy, at least, the age of mediæval darkness, had passed away for
ever, and with it passed away also not a few of the old Christian
traditions of thought, art, and taste. The mind of the coming
generations was to be formed on pagan models, and from this time,
as Hallam remarks, it became the main, if not the exclusive, object
of an educated man, to write Latin correctly, to understand the
allusions of the best classic authors, and to learn at least the
rudiments of Greek. That the revived taste for ancient letters did
eventually bring about a certain anti-Christian reaction in art and
literature cannot be denied; and the character of many of those who
became distinguished among the leaders of the Renaissance was such
as scarcely entitled them to be numbered among “Christian Scholars.”
Yet it would be most unfair to include under any sweeping censure
all those who originated, or took part in, the classical revival,
or to suppose that the movement was exclusively favoured by an
irreligious party. The Augustinian friars and the Camaldolese monks
of Florence were among the first encouragers of the new studies;
and one of the earliest institutions of the nature of a literary
academy, was that established in the Augustinian convent of the Holy
Spirit at Florence. This convent adjoined the house where Giannozzo
Manetti, then a mere boy, resided; and he contrived to make a door
through the partition wall, by means of which he was able to enter
the convent whenever he liked, and attend the conferences on literary
subjects held among the brethren; the subjects of which were every
day posted up in some conspicuous part of the cloister. Among the
Camaldolese the same studies were introduced even before the death
of Petrarch, and the monks of St. Mary of the Angels had among them
men like Zenobio Tantino, who corresponded with all the _literati_ of
the day in poetical epistles. So heartily did they take part in the
literary movements of their times that Ambrose Traversari, of whom
Roscoe says that he had the best pretensions of any man of his age to
the character of a polite scholar, was exclusively given up by his
superiors to learned pursuits for the space of thirty years. Some,
indeed, were to be found who dreaded the possible effects of reviving
the study of Gentile writers, and it was scruples such as these which
drew forth a graceful reply from Coluccio Salutati, the friend of
Petrarch and the learned chancellor of Florence, whose achievements
as a Latin poet won him the laurel wreath which was placed, not on
his brow, but on his coffin, and whose unblemished life secured him
a yet nobler reward in the friendship of St. Antoninus of Florence.
He justly protested against the narrowness of supposing that a man
could not be walking in the ways of God because he read the poets,
and argued that in literature, as in all besides, we may find God,
because all Truth and all Beauty is from Him, and to Him alone are
they to be referred. That the restoration of good models, those same
models which, as the historian Socrates informs us,[278] had been
studied by Christians from the very first centuries of the Church for
the sake of grace of elocution and the culture of the mind, was in
itself lawful and desirable, does not appear a point requiring proof.
Nevertheless, it is evident that the revolution effected in the
studies of Christendom by the introduction of this new element, was
one which demanded very powerful safeguards both on the side of faith
and morals; and falling, as it did, under the direction of a race
of captious and greedy professors, it resulted at last in grievous
excesses which threatened little short of an extinction of Christian
ideas altogether.

Already we begin to see the tide of learning dividing its waters
into two streams, running in contrary directions. The close of
the fourteenth century was illustrated, it is true, by a crowd of
saintly men, who endeavoured to establish schools of sacred art and
literature in the convents which they established or reformed. At
Fiesole, St. Antoninus of Florence passed through his noviciate, in
company with Beato Angelico, whilst, contemporary with them were St.
Bernardine of Sienna, and St. John Capestran, the two Franciscan
apostles, the former of whom drew half the Florentine grammar-masters
to listen to his eloquence, while the latter terrified the
fashionable ladies who thronged to his sermons into sacrificing their
perfumes, dice, and false hair, of which he had the satisfaction
of making several bonfires. An attentive study of the monuments,
as well as of the literary history of the times, will, however,
reveal significant tokens of the existence of a very different
element from that which appears in the paintings of Angelico. It is
remarkable that he formed no school, and found none to inherit his
ideas. After his time, Christian art, the faithful exponent of the
popular mind, daily lost something of the chaste severity of former
times; there was a growing disposition in favour of more florid
ornamentation in architecture, of a freer naturalism in painting, and
of a capricious effeminacy even in sacred music, which destroyed the
solemn religious character of the ancient chant. This latter abuse
was severely reprehended by Pope John XXII. in his Bull, entitled
_Docta Sanctorum_, wherein he complains of the innovations introduced
by “certain disciples of a new school, who, employing their whole
attention in marking time, endeavour, by new notes, to express airs
of their own invention to the prejudice of the ancient chants.” In
this, as in everything else, the mischief was chiefly effected by
the professors, who were gradually assuming a sort of dictatorship
in literature and the arts, and who, whether they lectured, sang,
or painted, sought as their main object, not the solid instruction
of their hearers, or the symbolism of divine truths, but merely the
display of their own talents.

The literary movement did not at first extend itself very rapidly
beyond the Alps, and in France particularly many circumstances
combined to check for a time the progress of letters. King Charles V.
had indeed a taste for the sciences, and founded a royal library at
the Louvre containing 900 volumes, and forming what his accomplished
biographer, Christine de Pisa, calls “une belle assemblée de
notables livres moult bien escripts, et richement adornés.” She
was the daughter of his Venetian astronomer, the authoress of
fifteen volumes in prose and verse, and was, as Tiraboschi affirms,
well acquainted with Greek. The king, however, found few among his
courtiers to share his learned tastes. The knights and nobles who
fought at Creçy piqued themselves on their ignorance of letters as
a sign of their gentle blood, and it is no uncommon thing to find a
formula like the following attached to public deeds of the fourteenth
century:--“Lequel a déclaré ne savoir signer, attendu sa qualité
de gentilhomme.” Eustache Deschamps, who wrote during the reigns
of John and Charles V., bitterly complains of the ignorance of the
upper classes as contrasted with those of an earlier generation.
Formerly, he says, nobles studied the liberal arts until their
twentieth year, before receiving knighthood; now they begin their
education on horseback, abandon learning to men of meaner birth, and
give themselves up to gaming and profligacy. He praises the older
days of chivalry, when knights loved truth, virtue, and loyal love,
and were not ashamed of being thought clerks, “car meilleur temps
fut le temps ancien.” Alain Chartier, another writer of the same
period, makes similar complaints. “Gentlemen live now,” he says, “as
if they were only made to eat and drink; and everywhere you hear the
ridiculous saying that it is unbecoming for a nobleman to know how
to read and write. It used not so to be in the days when men held
an ignorant king to be a crowned ass.” Nor are the accounts of the
actual state of the University of Paris much more satisfactory. The
schools were filled with teachers who introduced both philosophical
and theological errors, and the Latinity of the Parisians is said to
have been worse than that of their English neighbours. Discipline too
was beginning to flag, and in 1366 the Faculty of Arts had to publish
a decree of reformation, from which it appears that the regents had
begun to open their schools at a later hour, and to introduce the
hitherto unknown luxury of benches in place of the time-honoured
bundles of straw. With the exception of a few great names, such as
those of Gerson and Nicholas Oresme, this period is a dreary and
barren one in the literary annals of France. And the sterility of her
schools at this precise epoch is a remarkable and significant fact.
It was exactly the period when the peculiar political doctrines of
the Paris doctors appeared to have won their triumph. Adapting the
principles of the old imperial jurisprudence to the circumstances of
Christian Europe, if they did not actually identify the offices of
Emperor and Pontiff, they yet put forth doctrines which virtually
implied a species of royal supremacy. Gerson’s teaching on the same
subject, if less absolute, was not more orthodox, and tended to make
men regard the Pontifical dignity as a human thing which could be
legislated for according to principles of human policy. National
vanity came in to swell the pretensions of the Parisian doctors.
France was the centre of Christendom, and the heart of France was
the University. “Not Rome, but France,” said Nicholas Oresme, in his
oration to Urban V., “is the country beloved by God. Charlemagne
transplanted the liberal sciences from Rome to Paris, whose doctors
may be compared to the stars of the firmament and the voice of many
thunders; and on that _holy soil_, therefore, and not at Rome,
ought the Pope to reside.” This sort of eloquence was continually
reproduced in the treatises on the temporal and spiritual powers
which poured forth from the pens of the Paris legists, who were the
first to adhere to the Antipope, Clement VII., thus involving France
in the guilt of the Great Schism, and whose influence, fifty years
later, at the Schismatical Council of Basle, obtained the pretended
deposition of Eugenius IV., and the election of another Antipope,
Felix V. Nay, so thoroughly was the University of Paris in love
with schism, that when, in 1438, King Charles VIII. ordered all his
subjects to acknowledge the authority of Eugenius, she alone refused
to obey: the Antipope had been a creature of her own fabrication, and
she obstinately clung to his fortunes.

On schools which had thus deliberately cut themselves off from the
source of benediction the blessing of fertility could not rest.[279]
No dew fell on them, and it was as if the clouds had been commanded
that they should rain no rain upon them. Moreover, the frightful
wars that desolated France for 150 years were adverse to the spread
of letters. In them even Protestant historians have recognised the
marked and terrible retribution of sacrilegious crime. The long
struggle between Philip le Bel and Pope Boniface VIII. terminated,
in 1303, in what seemed the complete triumph of the Crown. Not only
had Philip firmly asserted the independence of the temporal power,
but to secure his victory he had calumniated the Vicar of Christ by
accusing him before all Europe as a sorcerer, a heretic, an infidel,
and a simonist. His two infamous satellites, William de Nogaret
and Sciarra Colonna, had entered Anagni with the banner of France
displayed, crying aloud, “Death to the Pope, and long live the King
of France!” They seized the venerable old man of eighty-six, as he
sat awaiting them, with passive courage, on his throne, with the
cross in his hand and the tiara on his brow, and treated him with
indignities which hastened, if they did not actually cause, his
death. And then the seat of the Popes was transferred from Rome to
Avignon, a calamitous event which weakened their independent power,
and eventually plunged the Church into schism. Respect for the
authority of the Sovereign Pontiff declined apace in the schools of
France, and it became fashionable for her lawyers and doctors to
discuss the question how far that authority extended, and to affix
limits to it of their own devising. All this was doubtless a great
victory, and seemed to be something very like the triumph of the
secular over the spiritual power. But it was a triumph terribly
avenged. At the time when these fancied successes crowned the daring
policy of Philip le Bel, he was in the flower of his age, surrounded
by his three sons, all inheritors of their father’s beauty, and
promising to carry on the glories of his race to distant generations.
But the King, in the forty-seventh year of his age, was killed by a
wild boar; his sons, one by one, followed each other, heirless, to
the tomb; at one and the same time the disgraceful crimes of their
three wives were published to the world; and the crown passed from
his family--and _to whom?_ To the son of Charles de Valois, the
friend and captain-general of Boniface VIII., who had refused to
take part in his brother’s crimes, and always remained loyal to the
injured Pontiff. But this was not all. A daughter of Philip le Bel
still survived, the she-wolf of France, who, after dyeing her hands
in the blood of her husband, King Edward II. of England, left to her
son, Edward III., those fatal claims which brought upon France the
outpouring of the cup of vengeance. Those golden fleurs-de-lys, which
Dante had beheld borne in triumph through the gates of Anagni, were
rolled and trampled in the dust for a century and a half by English
descendants of that very king who had fondly thought to establish
his royal power on the humiliation of the Vicar of Christ. France
was brought to the very lowest abyss of ignominy, and had to witness
the coronation in her capital of an English conqueror, who quartered
those same dishonoured lilies on his shield. What more need be said?
History teaches many lessons, but there is one which she repeats
through all ages with unvarying fidelity. It is vain for the kings of
the earth to stand up against the Lord and against His Christ. It is
idle for them in their mad presumption to dash themselves against the
Rock of Peter; for “whoso falls on that Rock shall be broken, but on
whomsoever it shall fall, it shall grind him to powder.”

_CHAPTER XVIII._

ENGLISH EDUCATION IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

A.D. 1300 TO 1400.

Although the French wars were hardly less injurious to the cause
of polite learning in England than in France, the reigns of Edward
III. and his successors are not without a peculiar interest in the
history of our popular education. One after another those magnificent
foundations were rising at the universities, the commencement of
which has been noticed in a previous chapter; and the English
collegiate system was taking root and attaining maturity. The
threefold pestilence of Lollardism, the Black Death, and a rage
for military glory, offered, it is true, some serious checks to
the progress of letters; yet in spite of every such disadvantage,
this epoch, so brilliant in the annals of chivalry, was hardly
less important in those of English literature, which in Chaucer
and Mandeville produced its first writers in prose and verse. And,
indeed, if the reign of Edward III. was not a splendid literary
era the fault is not to be charged to the deficient education of
the sovereign. His great natural powers had been cultivated with
extraordinary care under the direction of Richard Angervyle, or, as
he is commonly called, Richard of Bury. The most learned scholar
of his age, Richard was also a very great man as far as dignities
could make him so: Archdeacon of Northampton, Prebendary of Lincoln,
Salisbury, and Lichfield, Dean of Wells, and finally Bishop of
Durham; Lord High Chancellor and Treasurer of the Kingdom, and Envoy
Plenipotentiary for concluding the peace with France. Posterity,
however, has forgotten his honours, and remembers him rather as the
patron of learning, the correspondent of Petrarch, the founder of the
Angervyle library at Oxford, and the author of the _Philobiblion_,
a book in the compilation of which he was largely assisted by
the learned Dominican Robert Holkot, and in which he gives full
expression to that devouring passion for books, wherewith, says
Harpsfield, “he was mightily carried away.” His library was the first
public one ever founded in England. He bestowed it on Durham college,
which he completed and partly endowed, and made the inheritor of his
books, of which, says Wood, he had more than all the other bishops of
England put together. All his palaces were crammed with them, and the
floor of the room where he sat was so strewn with them that it was
no easy thing to approach him. He kept three collectors constantly
employed for him in France, Germany, and Italy. In his palace a
staff of writers, illuminators, and binders were constantly at work
under his own eye, and he gives ample details in his work of the
incredible pains and expense he was at to complete his collection.
It was undertaken in no light or capricious mood, but as a serious
and solemn duty. “Moved,” he says, “by Him who alone granteth and
perfecteth a good will to man, I diligently inquired what, among
all the offices of piety, would most please the Almighty, and most
profit the Church militant. Then before the eyes of our mind there
came a flock of chosen scholars in whom God, the artificer, and His
handmaid Nature, had indeed planted the roots of the best manners and
sciences, but whom penury so oppressed that they were dried up and
watered by no dew; and so they who might have grown up strong columns
of the Church were obliged to renounce their studies. Deprived of
the writings and helps of contemplation they return, for the sake of
bread, to base mechanical arts. And the result of our meditation was
pity for this humble race of men, and the resolution to help them,
not only with the means of sustenance, but also with books for the
prosecution of their studies; and to this end our intention ever
watched before the Lord. And this ecstatic love so moved us that,
renouncing all other earthly things, we applied ourselves to collect
books.”

In his bibliographical researches the still unplundered monasteries
afforded him an inexhaustible mine of literary treasures. Whenever he
visited towns where there existed religious houses, his first visit
was paid to their libraries; and he was not slow in examining their
chests and other repositories where books might lie concealed. Often
amid the greatest poverty he found the rarest stores; and the richest
in this kind of wealth, as well as the most liberal in dispensing
the use of it, were the Friars Preachers. Sometimes, however, he
had complaints to make of the carelessness and indifference of
those possessed of books, which he often found “turned out of
their interior chambers and secure depositories, and given over to
destruction for the sake of dogs, birds, and those two-legged beasts
called women.”

No catalogue of the Angervyle collection now exists, and at the
Reformation it was dispersed, and in great measure destroyed by
the Protestant plunderers, who saw a vision of Popery in every
illuminated manuscript. But there can be little doubt that it was
rich in works of high literary value. For the good bishop was one
of those who esteemed the liberal arts above the study of law, and
he expressly tells us that he provided his students with Greek and
Hebrew grammars. He gave them also very quaint and pithy directions
how to use his books. They were to take care how they opened and
shut them, not to mark them with their nails, or write alphabets on
the margin of the leaves. He criticises the bad habits of indolent
and careless youths, who lean both their elbows on their books, put
straws and flowers to keep their places, and eat fruit and cheese
over the open pages; and he exhorts those into whose hands his
treasures may fall, to wash their hands before reading, and to take a
little more care of their books than they would of an old shoe.

Several other prelates imitated the laudable example of Richard
of Bury, and endeavoured to make provision for the wants of poor
scholars by the foundation of public libraries. It is probable,
however, that most of these collections were extremely limited in
their range. The English universities were at this time almost
exclusively resorted to by lawyers and ecclesiastics, or, in other
words, by those who had chosen the calling of _clerks_. They were
not, as they afterwards became, and as they continue to be in
our day, places of liberal education for the sons of the gentry;
and hence the education given in them had a certain professional
narrowness; a defect which was further increased at this particular
period, by the presence among the students of a very large proportion
of beneficed clergymen, who having been appointed from an inferior
class to fill up the vacancies caused by the ravages of the Black
Death, were often found so ignorant as to render it necessary for
their diocesans to require their spending a certain time at the
universities, in order to acquire just so much learning as was
actually indispensable for their office. Men of this sort, of course,
spent little time on polite literature, and the influence of such a
class of students was, naturally enough, to pull down the academical
studies to a very low standard.

It will occur to every reader to inquire where the sons of the gentry
received their education, if they were not as yet in the habit of
frequenting the universities and public schools. And to furnish a
reply, we must call to mind the habits which prevailed in feudal
society, according to which every great baron or prelate presided
over a huge household, including, besides his domestic servants and
chaplains, a crowd of knights, esquires, and pages, among the last of
whom a certain number of noble youths were always admitted, in order
to receive the training suited to their rank. Chivalry, it will be
remembered, was not an accident, but an institution, and one which
was furnished with a rigorous system of graduation. A man who aspired
to the profession of arms, had to be trained for it according to
fixed rules, and to go through each successive degree with as much
precision as the bachelors and masters in the schools. Indeed, the
feudal castles may not unfitly be called schools of chivalry, and
in them alone could the future knight be instructed in the duties
of his state. As page in a baronial household, a youth was able to
acquire an education far more suited to his future position in the
world, than he could possibly have received at the universities.
There he would have been chiefly called on to attend lectures on the
Sentences, or on civil and canon law; but as page to a great lord,
spiritual or temporal, he learnt how to serve and carve at table, to
fly a hawk, manage and dress a horse, bear himself in the tilt-yard,
and handle his arms. Noble youths generally began their education
at the age of seven, when they were admitted to the service of the
ladies of the family, and were styled _Damoiseaux_. They were under
the immediate control of the lady of the house, and learnt from her
at once their Christian doctrine and the laws of courtesy.[280] I
say, the _laws_, for the teaching of this virtue was reduced to a
science, and had a literature of its own. By the fair virtue of
courtesy our forefathers understood something more than the mere
outside polish of worldly refinement. The author of the “Lytylle
childrene’s lytylle boke” informs us that according to cunning
clerks--

“Curtesye from hevyn come,
Whan Gabryelle our Ladye greete,
And Elizabeth with Mary mette.”

“Alle vertues are closide yn curteseye,” he says, “and alle vices in
vyllonie;” and he goes on to teach his pupils that they must love God
and their neighbours, speak the truth, keep their word, and neither
swear, quarrel, nor be idle. They are not to be proud or to scorn
the poor, and are to speak honestly whether it be to the lord or to
his servants. If his directions how to behave at table are somewhat
homely, it cannot be denied that they are much to the point, and Dame
Curtesye forgets not to remind her scholars that before eating they
should think of the poor, because a full stomach wots little what the
hungry ails.

As the boy grew older he came under the training of the seneschal and
the chaplain. The first, who was generally some old veteran knight,
taught him his martial duties, while the other imbued him with a
reasonable amount of book-learning in Latin and Norman-French. The
ignorance of French knights in Du Guesclin’s time must not be held to
disprove this latter statement, for it is plain that ignorance was
opposed to the older traditions of chivalry, and was commented upon
as a sign of decay by writers of the time. Knights were certainly
expected to know how to read and write, for the youthful aspirant to
chivalric honours, who, in the twelfth century, wandered from land to
land seeking goodly adventures, was always required to carry tablets,
and note down the deeds which he witnessed most worthy of remembrance
and imitation. He was required to know something of the tuneful art,
whether the plain song of the Church, or the lays of the troubadours,
and, as a matter of course, every well bred man was well instructed
in the abstruse science of heraldry. Chaucer, in describing his
squire, takes care to let us know that besides sitting his horse,
carving at table, and jousting in the lists, he could sing, write
songs, dance, “and wel pourtraie and write.” The education of his
mind, then, was not entirely neglected, and still less was that
of his manners. He was “courteous, lowlie, and serviceable;” and
elsewhere the same authority informs us, that the young squire
was often charged to be wise and equitable, godly in word, and
reasonable, to be courteous in salute, and to abstain from all words
of ribaldry, “and fro all pride to keep him well.” The last words are
worthy of notice, for this eschewing of pride is greatly insisted on
by all chivalric writers as one of the special characteristics of a
gentleman. It is a point on which Chaucer constantly loves to dwell:--

But understand to thine intent,
That this is not mine intendment,
To clepen no wight in no age,
Only gentyl for his lineage;
But whoso that is virtuous,
And in his port not outrageous:
When such one thou seest thee beforne
Tho he be not gentyl yborne,
Thou mayst wel seem in sooth,
That he is gentyl because he doth
As longeth to a gentyl man,
Of him, none other, deme I can.[281]

Exactly in the same spirit does the good king Perceforest in the old
romance instruct his knights: “Si me souvient d’une parolle que ung
hermite me dist une fois pour moy chastier. Car il me dist que si
j’avois autant de possessions comme avoit le roy Alexandre, de sens
comme le sage Salomon, et de bravoure comme le preux Hector de Troy,
seul orgueil, s’il regnoit en moy, destruieroit tout.” And in a book
of instructions on the duties of Chivalry, we find the following:
“Louange est reputée blâme en la bouche de celluy qui se loe, mais
elle exaulce celluy qui ne se attribue point de louange, mais à
Dieu. Si l’ecuyer a vaine gloire de ce qu’il a fait, il n’est pas
digne d’étre chevalier, car vaine gloire est un vice qui destruit
les merites de chevalerie.”[282] In the same Treatise the virtues
of chivalry are declared to be the three theological and the four
cardinal virtues, and a good knight will hold the opposite vices
in horror; he must keep himself from villanous thoughts, and be
unstained within and without, and must withal be modest, “the first
to strike on the battle-field, but the last to speak in the hall.”

Schools in which maxims such as these prevailed, and in which the
duties of religion were strictly enforced, must be admitted to fill
an important place in the system of Christian education. It may be
doubted, too, whether Eton or Rugby could bestow a more careful
polish than was inculcated by that minute etiquette which chivalric
usage demanded. The grace and manliness, the “pluck” and spirit
which Englishmen prize so highly, and purchase at so dear a rate,
were certainly not disregarded; but they were tempered with a
certain admixture of lowliness which has not retained an equal place
in our esteem. Despite all the extravagances of Chivalry, and the
exaggerated and injurious effect of some of its maxims, such as those
which inculcated a heathenish sensitiveness on the point of honour,
it enforced a law of self-restraint, a polite diction and etiquette,
and a government of the exterior man, in all which the education of
our own day is fatally defective. “One of the essential principles
of chivalry,” says Godwin, speaking of the education bestowed on
noble youths in these baronial households, “was, that no office was
sordid that was performed in aid of a proper object. It was the pride
of the candidate for knighthood to attend upon his superiors, and
perform for them the most menial services. The dignity of the person
assisted raised the employment, and the generous spirit in which it
was performed gave it lustre and grace. It was the office of a page
or an esquire to spread the table, to carve the meat, to wait upon
the guests, to bring them water to wash, and conduct them to their
bed-chamber. They cleaned and kept in order the arms of their lord,
and assisted him in equipping himself for the field. There is an
exquisite beauty in offices like these, not the growth of servitude,
not rendered with unwillingness and constraint, but the spontaneous
acts of reverence and affection performed by a servant of mind not
less free and noble than the honoured master whom he serves.”[283]
The truth and justice of this observation will be readily admitted,
and we stop and ask ourselves what substitute has our increased
civilisation furnished for this beautiful element in the education of
the Middle Ages? Where, except among the fags below the fifth form,
does a noble youth of our day learn anything of these “lowly and
serviceable” courtesies; and are they there performed in that spirit
of “spontaneous reverence and affection,” which renders them not
sordid, but illustrious? We must leave it to our public schoolmen to
reply.

Such an education as has been described above, taught exactly what
a secular youth of good birth now goes to the universities to
acquire--it taught him to be a gentleman. And it is probable that
in these chivalric households he received the culture suited to his
position with more safeguards to faith and morals than would have
been found in the schools of Paris or Oxford. In those days the
government of the family was the active, earnest business of the lord
and lady; noble rank was not held to dispense a baron and a baron’s
wife from seeing to very homely details with their own eyes; and
the everyday habits of their retainers were regulated by them in
a way which put into their hands a vast parental power. Doubtless
this “wondrous middle age” had plenty of barbarous violence, and
was disgraced by much gross immorality; nor do we aim at painting
it other than it was. But, whatever were its failings, it had one
merit,--the Family Life was then a reality and not a name.[284] Most
readers are familiar with the beautiful picture of the household of
Sir Thomas More, which all his biographers agree in holding up as a
model and pattern, though possibly an exceptional form of excellence.
It was exceptional, however, only in its extraordinary cultivation of
letters; in every other respect it did but present the old Catholic
type, of which we might adduce innumerable specimens both in earlier
and later times. Let us see what sort of rules were drawn up by a
French earl of the fourteenth century for the regulation of his
household, just premising that this is not an exceptional case, but
that any acquaintance with mediæval literature will convince the
reader that Elzear de Sabran ruled his family as many a good knight
of France and England besides him were doing at the same period.
Elzear had the greatest of all blessings, a good mother, whose piety
and charity had earned her the golden title of “The Good Countess.”
When he was born she took him in her arms and offered him to God,
and had him educated by his uncle in the abbey of St. Victor’s at
Marseilles. But he did not become a monk or a clerk: on the contrary,
he lived as a great baron, fought as a brave soldier, administered
justice to his feudal retainers, and was employed as ambassador from
the King of Naples to the court of France. He was at the head of
the State Council of Naples, and fought two pitched battles against
the Emperor Henry VII., so that I think we need have no mistaken
notion as to his being a mere pious recluse. Like other nobles of
the time, he received a number of youths into his house, among whom
was the eldest son of King Robert himself: Duke Charles of Calabria,
a circumstance which induces us to think that a certain instruction
in letters must have been given to the pages, for this King Robert
was the same who acted as examiner to Petrarch, and was used to say
that if he must choose between his crown and his studies, the latter
should have the preference. Surius tells us that Elzear took great
pains with the duke’s education, explaining to him the principles of
piety, justice, and clemency, making him frequent the Sacraments, and
advising him to keep flatterers at a distance. His wife, Delphina of
Glandeves, was worthy of directing a Christian household; she looked
to all things with her own eye, banished brawls and tale-bearing, and
was honoured by her servants as a mother and a saint. When first they
began to keep house at Puy-Michel, in Provençe, Elzear drew up rules
for the regulation of his family, of which the following is a short
abridgment:--

“Every one in my family shall daily hear Mass. Let no one curse,
swear, or blaspheme, under pain of chastisement. Let all persons
honour chastity, for no impure word or deed shall go unpunished in
the house of Elzear. The men and women shall confess their sins every
week, and communicate every month, or at the least at the chief
festivals, namely, Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, and on the
feasts of our Lady. No one shall be idle, but in the morning, after
prayers, let all go to their work, the men abroad, the women at home.
The life of the pious woman is not merely to pray, but to ply her
work, and take care of her household. Therefore, the ladies shall
read and pray in the mornings, and afterwards spend their time in
useful work of some kind. Every evening all my family shall assemble
for a pious conference, in which they shall hear something said for
the salvation of their souls. And let none be absent on pretence of
attending to my affairs. I have no affairs so near my heart as the
salvation of those who serve me. I will have no playing at dice or
games of hazard; there are plenty of innocent diversions, and time
passes soon enough without being thrown away: yet I do not wish my
castle to be a cloister, nor my people hermits. Therefore, let them
be merry, but without offending God. If any quarrel fall out, let not
the sun set before it be appeased. And I strictly command all under
my jurisdiction to hurt no man in goods, honour, or reputation. I
will not have my coffers filled by the emptying of others; we shall
be wealthy enough if we fear God.”

The nobles educated in such households are often spoken of in
after-life as evincing a certain love of polite letters, such as
Count Capranica, whom Petrarch describes as living in his feudal
castle, “governing his vassals with justice and love, cultivating the
Muses, and seeking the society of the learned.” Ordinarily speaking,
however, the merits of the mediæval system of education for the upper
ranks lay less in its intellectual than in its moral training. It is
true indeed that all great barons and their wives were not Elzears
and Delphinas, but it is probable that the families usually chosen as
homes for the young were those which were held in highest repute as
virtuous and well-ordered. And in such families we are justified in
saying that, as a general rule, the grand Christian traditions were
certainly upheld; that children were taught to be subject to parents
and governors, and parents were held bound personally to superintend
the education of their children; that there was a real parental
rule, that priests were had in worshipful honour, the poor regarded
as the members of Christ, women treated with respect and courtesy,
and elders had in reverence. The domestic virtues were taught after
another fashion than among ourselves, and whilst the education of a
gentleman aimed at making him brave, clement, courteous, and devout,
a high-born lady was trained to a life of vigorous practical utility.
She learnt to fill the responsible office of head of the family,
which demanded in those days no small capacity of government. She was
instructed in a hundred details of domestic life, which ladies are
now-a-days content to entrust to their servants. No great variety
of accomplishments was of course expected of her; and the author of
the “Advice to Ladies,” written in 1371, enumerates reading, church
music, embroidery, confectionery, and surgery as among the most
useful branches of female education. As to writing, he considers it
superfluous, and thinks it better if women “can nought of it.”

In the same spirit the good housewife is addressed in the “Menagier
de Paris,” and exhorted to take both pains and pleasure in her
household duties. She is expected to know something about gardening
and tillage, to be able to choose grooms, porters, and other
servants, and look after labourers, pastrycooks, bakers, shoemakers,
and chambermaids; to see that the sheep and horses are taken care
of, and the wines kept clear. Moreover, she must know what to order
for dinner and supper, and must understand how to make all manner
of ragôuts, and pottages for the sick. Much account was made of
early rising in all the books of instruction addressed to ladies.
The “Menagier” humorously complains of those sluggards whose Matins
are, “I must sleep a little longer,” and their Lauds, “Is breakfast
ready yet?” But in general it was the habit to rise with the lark,
and give the early hours, as in Elzear’s household, to prayer and
reading. Thus an old French poet describes it--

Le matin se donne à l’estude,
Chacun demeure en solitude,
Après avoir dedans les cieux
Fait monter l’offre de ses vœux.

Such homely duties as those enumerated above might seem to leave but
little room for cultivation of letters. Probably the writers of these
treatises made the most of their subject, but it is quite clear that
the “Valiant women” of olden time were not mere homely housewives,
innocent of intellectual culture, and with no ideas beyond their
distaffs and their confectioneries; on the contrary, many of them
were learned in their way, like the saintly Isabel of France, sister
to St. Louis, who was an excellent spinster, but was also well read
in St. Augustine. Froissart incidentally lets us know that many of
the noble ladies he names in his Chronicle were lovers of learning;
such as Mary de Bohun, the first wife of Henry Bolingbroke, who, as
he tells us, was well skilled in Latin and Church Divinity. And the
character of not a few of those grand heroic women, whose names so
beautify the page of history, might be summed up in the words with
which Gabrielle de Bourbon is described by the biographer of Bayard.
“She was,” he says, “devout, religious, chaste, and charitable; grave
without haughtiness, magnanimous without pride, and not ignorant of
letters, specially delighting in reading and hearing read the Sacred
Scriptures.” The considerable part taken in the foundation of the
English Colleges by noble ladies of the fourteenth century shows
that they were, at any rate, not indifferent to learning. I have
already spoken of Ella Longspée and the Lady Devorgilla, and in the
following century their noble example was followed by Philippa of
Hainault, the foundress of Queen’s College, Oxford, and Mary de St.
Pol, the widowed countess of Pembroke, who founded Pembroke College,
Cambridge, and was chosen on account of her virtue and learning to
direct the education of Queen Philippa’s daughters. No one can study
the histories of those times without being frequently struck by the
superiority which appears in the characters of their illustrious
women. Their education, however slender it may have been in a merely
literary sense (and, if less showy, it was perhaps quite as solid as
what finds favour among ourselves), evidently fitted them to take an
active and intelligent part in domestic and social life. The old
chroniclers often allude to the happy influence exerted over their
lords by such queens as Eleanor of Castile, and the Good Queen Maud.
Not a few English countesses merited the praises bestowed on Ildegard
by the historian Donizzo, who calls her _docta, gubernatrix, prudens,
proba, consiliatrix_. The practical mind of Philippa of Hainault was
employed in introducing useful arts into England, just as, a few
years later, the intelligence and commanding powers of Margaret, “the
Great Countess” of Ormonde, were similarly exercised in Ireland,
where she planted weavers and other artisans, built schoolhouses, and
“was ever showing herself liberal, bountiful, and devout.” They who
would understand the character of a true Catholic household, presided
over by a wise and intelligent mistress, may find it depicted in
countless beautiful pictures, both of history and romance. Thus, in
one of the works translated by Caxton, the Knight of the Tower holds
up for the imitation of his daughters the example of the Lady Cecily
of Balleville, whose daily ordinance was to rise early and say matins
with her chaplains, and then to hear High Mass and two low Masses,
“saying her service full devoutly.” Then she walked in her garden,
and finished her other morning devotions, and betimes she dined.
After dinner she visited sick folk, and caused her best meat to be
brought to them, and spent her day in other charitable and useful
works. After hearing vespers she went to supper, and betimes to bed,
making great abstinence, and wearing haircloth on all Wednesdays
and Fridays. In the same volume we find that the maxims of courtesy
and humility which found place in the training of a gentleman were
equally inculcated on noble ladies. The Knight of the Tower reminds
his daughters that courtesy is to be shown to persons of low degree
as well as those of gentle blood, and even more scrupulously, and he
gives his reasons. “Courtesy shewn to those of low estate,” he says,
“is more honourable than that shewn to the great, because it the
more evidently proceedeth from a frank and gentle heart.” He cites
the example of a certain great lady whom he once saw in company with
some fine knights and ladies, and who humbled herself to curtsey,
as she passed, to a poor tinker; and when her gay companions asked
her why she did so, she replied, “I would rather miss shewing such
courtesy to a gentleman than to him.” And this, he says, is what all
understand and practise who know the laws of true courtesy.

What has been said of the character of domestic life in the Middle
Ages will doubtless seem a partial view to those who consider that we
ought to gather our notions of the state of society then prevailing
from the debased literature of the jongleurs and troubadours, which
is universally acknowledged to have been exceedingly bad. It will be
remembered, however, that the “goliardi,” as they were called, were a
distinct class in society, the dead branches of the universities, men
who followed no profession save that of buffoonery, and had gathered
just so much education in school as enabled them to give point to a
licentious song or story. They wandered about from city to city and
from castle to castle; and in days when no places of public amusement
existed, there were plenty of knights and nobles ready to receive
such guests, and to while away the dulness of a winter’s evening
by listening to their narratives. The appetite for recreation in
an unregenerate world is hardly less clamorous in its demands than
the appetite for food, and the goods which are produced to supply
such a demand, are seldom, even in our own more refined age, of the
choicest description. But to take the offensive literature produced
by a corrupt and excommunicated class, for such the “goliardi” really
were,[285] and draw thence any conclusions respecting the manners of
the higher classes in ancient times, is about as fair as it would
be to judge of the state of society among ourselves by the plot
of a “sensation” novel or a French vaudeville. Even allowing the
character of their fictions to be taken as evidence of the existence
of widespread scandals, at least equal weight must be attached to the
_bonâ fide_ historical descriptions of households such as those of
Elzear or Charles the Wise, of whom Christine de Pisa says that he
suffered no pernicious book to remain in his palace for a single day;
nor any person whose language was not pure and innocent. Mr. Wright
expresses his surprise at the inconceivable corruption of a society
which could endure the goliardic tales to be recited in its presence.
But it would be easy to match the instances which he brings forward
with others which show us the domestic circle amusing itself in a
very different manner, like that in the castle of Count Charles of
Flanders, who entertained three monks, doctors of theology, that they
might daily, after supper, read and explain the Scriptures to his
family; or like that again, of the good king named above, who always
kept readers in his palace to relieve the winter evenings by reading
aloud “les belles ystoires de la sainct Escripture, ou des fais des
Romains, ou moralitées de philosophes, et d’autres sciences;” and
examples of this sort are by no means exceptional.

What, however, we are chiefly concerned with, is not so much the
practice of this or that individual, as the character of the
education by which they were trained. Our inquiry is what were the
principles and the standard of morals enforced in the chivalric
system of education. And the fact that this standard was far higher
than what exists among ourselves, has been acknowledged by writers
whose sympathies are all in another direction. Thus, M. Guizot, whose
study of European civilisation has certainly not been superficial,
expresses his admiration at “the moral notions, so delicate, so
elevated, and above all so humane, and so invariably stamped with
a religious character,” which are to be found in the oaths and
obligations imposed by the laws of chivalry. “Crimes and disorders
abounded in the Middle Ages,” he says, “yet men evidently had in
their minds lofty desires and pure ideas. Their principles were
better than their acts. A certain high moral ideal always soars
above the stormy element.” He goes on to remark that this pure tone
of morality which prevails in the laws of chivalry must be traced
to the influence of the clergy, who, though they did not invent
that institution, made it an instrument for civilising society
and introducing “a more enlarged and vigorous system of morality
in domestic life.” Expressions like these, which are abundantly
confirmed by a study of the ancient monuments, justify us in claiming
for the mediæval system of education the merit of at least presenting
to the world a lofty standard of right and wrong. That the acts of
the pupils often fell far below their principles, is saying no more
than that they were men. But it cannot be supposed that society could
be permeated with a high moral ideal, and that the strict obligations
of that class to which every man of gentle blood belonged, should
be redolent of a spirit at once “delicate, scrupulous, and humane,”
without effecting some practical results. The young were trained to
reverence a whole class of virtues which popular writers declare must
be regarded in our own day as “dead.” The system of education which
prevailed, presented them with a high ideal of moral excellence, a
lofty standard of thoughts and desires, precisely that, the loss
of which among ourselves is so bitterly deplored. And what is
all education but the formation of such an interior standard? A
teacher can do little more than grave on the soul principles which
may survive many practical shortcomings, and may eventually recall
a wanderer to better things. This is a point which non-Catholic
writers can hardly be expected to appreciate as it deserves, bound
up as it is with a class of ideas, and even of dogmas, to which they
are necessarily strangers. But whilst acknowledging the contrast
too frequently observable between the profession and the practice
of Christians in the Middle Ages, another remarkable feature in
those extraordinary times ought not to be overlooked,--I mean those
numerous episodes in history which exhibit its great criminals in
the light of great penitents. There had been early impressed on
those fierce hearts a fear of God, a sense of sin, and a living
faith in the possibility of obtaining pardon; nay, we will add, a
certain capacity of self-humiliation, which evoked grand heroic acts
of contrition from many whose previous lives had been a tissue of
enormities; and thus a man like William Longspée needed but the look
and the word of a saint to feel all the old teaching reawaken in his
soul, and with a rope about his neck “to abhor himself in dust and
ashes.”

To return from this digression, which is yet intimately connected
with our subject, let us proceed to examine a little more closely
the actual schools for rich and poor existing in England in the
fourteenth century. Besides the universities and monastic schools,
there were, as we have already seen, others presided over by
independent masters. Schools of greater or less pretension were
attached to most parish churches, and the scholars assembled either
in the church, or the porch, or “parvis.” Thus in 1300 we read
of children being taught to sing and read in the “parvis” of St.
Martin’s, Norwich. Endowed schools in connection with hospitals and
colleges were also springing up, of which we shall speak more fully
in another chapter, and in all these schools, as well as in the
universities, the studies, up to the latter part of the reign of
Edward III., were carried on in Latin and French. Ralph Higden, a
monk of Chester, who wrote his _Polychronicon_ somewhere about the
year 1357, informs us that in his day French was the only language
which schoolboys were allowed to use, except Latin. The passage
as translated by John de Trevisa in 1387 is as follows: “Children
in scoles agenst the usage and maner of all other nations beeth
compelled for to leve thir own language, and for to construe thir
lessons and thinges in Frenche. Also gentylmen children beeth taught
to speke Frenche, from the time that they beeth rokked in thir
cradel. And uplondish men (_i.e._ country people) will lyken hymself
to gentylmen and soundeth with gret besynesse for to speke Frenche to
be told of.” When Ralph was protesting against this custom its knell
was about to sound. In 1362 the celebrated statute was passed which
ordained that all pleadings in the Royal courts should now be made
in English instead of French, a change for which we stand indebted
to the spirit of nationality called forth by the continental wars.
By the time therefore that John of Trevisa wrote his translation of
the _Polychronicon_, a great revolution had taken place, so that he
thought it necessary to introduce this correction into the body of
his work: “This maner (the use of the French language) is now som
dele ychaungide: for John Cornwaile, a maister of gramer, chaungide
the lore in gramer scole and construction of Frensch, into Englisch,
and Richard Pencriche lerned that maner of teching of him, and other
men of Pencriche; so that now the yere of oure Lord a thousand thre
hundred foure score and fyve, of the secunde king Rychard after the
conquest, in alle the gramer scoles of England, children leveth
Frensch, and construeth and lerneth in Englisch, and haveth therby
avauntage in one side and desavauntage in another. Ther avauntage is,
that thei lerneth ther gramer in lasse tyme than children were wont
to do; desavauntage is, that now children of gramer scole knoweth no
more Frensch than knows thir left heele; and that is harm to them,
if thei schul passe the see and travaile in strange londes, and in
many other places also: also gentylmen haveth now myche ylefte for to
teche thir children Frensch.” It is evident that John of Cornwaile
and Richard Pencriche, were, like the author himself, Cornish men.
John of Trevisa was a Cornish priest, one of the earliest students
at Exeter College, or, as it was called at that time, Stapleton
Hall, Canon of Westbury in Wiltshire, and Vicar of Berkeley. His
translation of the _Polychronicon_ was undertaken at the request of
his Patron, Thomas Lord Berkeley, and was afterwards modernised and
continued by Caxton. At the request of the same noble friend he is
said to have undertaken an English translation of the Old and New
Testaments. Warton, and after him Craik, have stated that no account
of this work is known to exist, and doubts have even been raised
whether it were ever really written. One antiquarian, quoted by Lewis
in his History of the Translations of the Bible, assures a “learned
friend” that Trevisa translated no more of the Scriptures than
certain sentences painted on the walls of Berkeley Castle, which
sentences turn out to have been painted in Latin and French. But the
existence of the translation is uniformly alluded to by early writers
as a well-known fact, and Dr. Ingram informs us in a note appended to
his _Memorials of Oxford_ that in 1808 he was actually presented with
a copy of the work.[286]

There was the less excuse for the English gentry having eschewed
the use of the national tongue, from the fact that the language had
long since been redeemed from the character of a barbarous idiom
by the labours of the monks. Their rhyming chronicles and a vast
quantity of beautiful and pathetic poetry, attributed by critics to
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, must be regarded as the
real first-fruits of English literature; and the adherence to what
Chaucer lets us know was exceedingly bad French, in preference to
good English, was simply a remnant of Anglo-Norman pride. Chaucer
himself had to apologise for his use of the vulgar idiom, and in
the prologue to one of his prose treatises, he protests against the
speaking of “poesy matter” in French which, in the ears of Frenchmen,
is about as agreeable as a Frenchman’s English. “Let Frenchmen endite
their quaint terms in French,” he says, “for it is kindly to their
mouths; but let us show our fantasies in such words as we learned of
our dames’ tongues.” His example, of course, had great influence;
yet such was the force of this sentiment of gentility, that at the
universities the Oxonian and Cantabrian French (which was not much
better than that spoken at “Stratford-atte-Bowe”) held its ground for
some years; but in the primary schools the English tongue asserted
its supremacy, and primers and grammars began to be divested of
their foreign clothing. A great many fragments of English school
literature exist belonging to the fourteenth century, some of which
may furnish amusement to the reader. All perhaps may not have a very
clear idea of what an ancient _Primer_ really was. It was something
very different from the school books to which we ordinarily give the
name. For in the dames schools, of which Chaucer speaks, children
were provided with few literary luxuries and had to learn their
letters off a scrap of parchment nailed on a board, and in most cases
covered with a thin transparent sheet of horn to protect the precious
manuscript. Hence the term “horn-book” applied to the elementary
books in use by children. Prefixed to the alphabet, of course, was
the holy sign of the Cross; and so firm a hold does an old custom
get on the popular mind that down to the commencement of the present
century alphabets continued to preserve their ancient heading, and
derived from this circumstance their customary appellation of “the
Christ-cross row,” a term so thoroughly established as still to find
its place in our dictionaries. The mediæval primer is, however, best
described in the language of the fourteenth century itself. The
following passage occurs in the introduction to a MS. poem of 300
lines, still preserved in the British Museum, each portion of which
begins with a separate letter of the alphabet:--

In place as men may se
When a childe to schole shal sette be
A Bok is hym ybrought,
Naylyd on a bord of tre,
That men cal an A, B, C,
Wrought is on the bok without.
V paraffys grete and stoute,
Rolyd in rose red.
That is set, withouten doute,
In token of Christes ded.
Red letter in parchymyn,
Makyth a childe good and fyn
Lettres to loke and see,
By this bok men may devyne,
That Christe’s body was ful of pyne,
That dyed on wod tree.

After the difficulties of the primer had been overcome, a great
deal of elementary knowledge was taught to the children, as in
Saxon times, through the vehicle of verse. For instance, we find
a versified geography of the fourteenth century, of which the two
following verses may serve as a specimen, though it must be owned
the second is not very creditable to our mediæval geographers:--

This world is delyd (divided), al on thre,
Asie, Affrike, and Eu-ro-pe.
Wol ye now here of A-si-e,
How mony londes ther inne be?

The lond of Macedonie,
Egypte the lesse and Ethiope,
Syria, and the land Judia,
_These ben all in Asya_.

The following grammar rules are of rather later date, and belong to
the fifteenth century:--

Mi lefe chyld, I kownsel the
To forme thi vi tens, thou avise the,
And have mind of thi clensoune
Both of noune and of pronoun,
And ilk case in plurele
How thou sal end, avise the well;
And the participyls forget thou not,
And the comparison be in thi thought,
The ablative case be in thi minde,
That he be saved in hys kind, &c.

There is something in this last fragment very suggestive of the rod.
What would have been the fate of the unhappy grammarian, if in spite
of this solemn counsel he had failed to have his ablative case in his
mind, we dare not conjecture. Our forefathers had strict views on
the subject of sparing the rod and spoiling the child. Thus one old
writer observes of children in general:--

To thir pleyntes mak no grete credence,
A rodd reformeth thir insolence;
In thir corage no anger doth abyde,
Who spareth the rodd all virtue sette asyde

Yet the strictness was mingled, as of old, with paternal tenderness,
and children appear to have treated their masters with a singular
mixture of familiarity and reverence. And it is pleasant to find
among the same collection of school fragments a little distich which
speaks of peacemaking:--

Wrath of children son be over gon.
With an apple parties be made at one.

There is good reason for believing that schoolboys of the fourteenth
century were much what they are in the nineteenth, and fully
possessed of that love of robbing orchards, which seems peculiar to
the race. Chaucer has something to say on this head, but Lydgate’s
confessions are exceedingly pitiful:--

Ran into gardens, applys there I stol,
To gadre frutys sparyd kegg nor wall,
To plukke grapys in other mennys vynes,
Was more ready than for to seyne matynes,
Rediere chir stooney (cherry stones) for to tell,
Than gon to chirche or heere the sacry belle.

I must, however, add a few school pictures of a graver and sweeter
character. Chaucer, who painted English society as he saw it with his
own eyes, has not forgotten to describe the village school where “an
hepe of children comen of Christen blood,” acquired as much learning
as was suitable to their age and condition:--

That is to sey, to singen and to rede,
As smal children do in thir childhede.

And among these children he describes one, “a widewe’s lytel sone,”
whom his pious mother had taught whenever he saw an image of Christ’s
Mother, to kneel down and say an Ave Maria; and he goes on to tell us
how

This lytel childe, his litel boke lerning,
As he sate in the scole at his primere,
He Alma Redemptoris herde sing,
As children lerned the Antiphonere;
And as he derst, he drew him nere and nere
And herkened ay the wordes, and eke the note
Til he the first verse coulde al by rote.

He was too young, however, to understand the meaning of the words,
though, be it observed, his elder schoolfellows were more erudite
than himself:--

Nought wist he what this Latin was to say,
For he so yong and tender was of age,
But on a day his felow gan to pray,
To expounden him this song in his langage,
Or tell him why this song was in usage.

And when “his felow which elder was than he,” had expounded the sense
of the words, and made him understand that it was sung in reverence
of Christ’s Mother, the little scholar makes known his resolve to do
his diligence to con it all by Christmas, in honour of Our Lady.

In these parochial schools, as we have elsewhere seen, children of
the lower orders, even from St Dunstan’s time, were taught grammar
and church music gratuitously. It has been very constantly affirmed
that the education here spoken of was exclusively given to those
intended for the monastic and ecclesiastical states. But there is
direct evidence, that the parochial schools were frequented by the
children of the peasantry indiscriminately, and by those of the very
lowest and poorest condition. The proof of this is to be found in
the statutes of the realm. About the year 1406 a law was passed,
wherein, after complaint being made that in opposition to certain
ancient statutes, a vast number of the children of husbandmen, _who
laboured with cart and plough and had no lands_, were apprenticed to
handicraft trades, and thereby induced a great scarcity of husbandmen
and labourers in many parts of the country, it was enacted that
henceforth no one should be allowed so to apprentice his child to any
trade, unless he rented land to the annual value of twenty shillings.
The object of this blundering and tyrannical piece of legislation
was, of course, to keep down the lower orders from endeavouring to
raise themselves in the scale of society, and to oppose that upward
movement which had been one of the results of the enfranchisement
of so large a number of feudal serfs in the reign of Edward III.
But whilst decreeing that day-labourers _with the cart and plough_
should thus be kept back from advancing, or helping their children
to advance, in point of station and wealth, the very same statute
encourages them to _send their children to school_. “Every man or
woman, of whatever state or condition they be, shall be at liberty
to send their son or daughter to take learning in any kind of school
that pleaseth them within the realm.” This clause seems to have
had reference to a petition which had been presented to parliament
by certain lords in the reign of Richard II., to the effect that
children of serfs and the lower sort might not be sent to school,
and particularly to the schools of monasteries, wherein many were
trained as ecclesiastics, and thence rose to dignities in the State.
The statute aimed at appeasing the jealous pride of the nobles,
who regarded with dismay the prospect of bondsmen and husbandmen
emerging from their state of servitude; whilst at the same time, the
influence of the ecclesiastical body was strong enough to preserve
for the lower classes their hitherto undisputed right of receiving
such education as circumstances placed within their reach. I need
not pause to comment on the light which such a passage of history
sheds on the supposed solicitude of monks and clergy to check the
spread of learning for the furtherance of selfish ends. But it is
clear that the permission formally granted by this statute would have
been a simple mockery, unless schools existed adapted to the class
in question; and it may satisfy us of the fact that village schools,
in Chaucer’s time, were really frequented by much the same class
of scholars as in our own; and that not merely in special and more
populated localities, but in remote rural districts. William Caxton,
who was born about the time of the passing of this statute, tells us
that he learned his English in the Weald of Kent, a tract of country
which, fertile as it now is, was, even a century later than Caxton’s
time, a waste wilderness, thinly inhabited, save by herds of deer and
hogs, and a few adventurous men who undertook to clear the forest
and break up the land with the plough.[287] Yet in this wild country
Caxton learnt his English, “a broad and rude English, as is anywhere
spoken in England.” And in after-life, apologising to his readers
for the plain unadorned style which his “simple cunning” uses, he
speaks of his early education, “whereof I humbly and heartily thank
God, and am bounden to pray for my father’s and mother’s souls, who
in my youth sent me to school.” His education, we know, was carried
on in London at a later date, but it must have been begun in some
very primitive parochial school of Kent, where his companions could
only have been rustics. The teaching in such schools was, doubtless,
simple enough, but however small may have been the amount of secular
learning acquired by the scholars, all received instruction in
Christian doctrine, and learnt their prayers; the duty of providing
such instruction for the poorer members of their flocks being
earnestly pressed on the parish priests in the visitation articles
and synodal decrees of John of Peckham and other English prelates.

Prayers and instructions, both secular and religious, were often
taught to those who could not read, in a versified form, as had been
the custom in Saxon times. Thus there is a curious poem of this
period addressed to “Those who gete their lyvynge by the onest craft
of masonry,” in which the young mason is instructed, rather minutely,
how to behave himself when he comes to the house of God. Wherever he
works, he is to come to Mass when he hears the bell. Before entering
church he must take holy water, and is to understand that in doing
so devoutly, he quenches venial sin. Then he must put back his hood,
that is, uncover his head, and as he enters the church, look to the
great Rood, and kneeling down on both knees “pull up his herte to
Christe anon!” He must stand and bless himself at the Gospel, and
avoid carelessly leaning against the wall; and when he hears the bell
ring for the “holy sakerynge,”--

Knele ye most both ynge and olde,
And both yer hondes fayr upholde,
And say thenne yn thys manere,
Fayre and softe withouten bere;
Jhesu, Lord, welcome Thou be
Yn forme of bred as y The se;
Now Jhesu for Thyn holy name,
Schulde Thou me from synne and schame.
Schryff and hosel, grant me bo,
Ere that y schall hennus go.

Versified instructions of this kind were capable of being remembered
by many who never learnt to read, and were evidently in very common
use. We find them in all languages and on all subjects. Thus the old
French treatise entitled “_Stans puer ad mensam_,” selected by Caxton
for one of his translations, and another called “_Les contenances de
la table_,” which exists in a great variety of forms, give excellent
rules for behaving at table and saying grace:--

A viande melz main ne mette,
Jusques la beneisson soit faitte,
Enfant, dy benedicite
Et fait le signe de la croix.

After dinner he is reminded to pray for the dead:--

Prie Dieu pour les trespassez,
Et te souviengne en pitié
Qui de ce monde sont passez,
Ainsi que tu es obleigez,
Prier Dieu pour les trespassez

And the child is thus gently warned against the bad habit of noisy
disputes at table:--

Enfant, soyes toujours paisible,
Doulx, courtois, bening, aimable,
Entre ceulx qui sierront à table,
Et te garde d’estre noysible.
Il est conseillé en la Bible
Entre les gens estre paisible.

Teaching of some sort the peasantry certainly received, whatever
means may have been used to convey it; they probably knew little of
grammatical analysis, or the relative lengths of the European rivers,
but it may be doubted whether, with all our cumbrous machinery of
State education, we have hit on any system which is likely to form
the Christian character so successfully in the hearts of our people
as that which existed in the days of St. Anselm or Chaucer. “The
majority of husbandmen are saved,” writes the former, “because they
live with simplicity, and feed the people of God with their hands;
and therefore they are blessed.”[288] And the poet who never paints a
fancy picture, thus portrays from the life the character of his poor
ploughman:--

A true worker and a good was he,
Living in peace and perfect charity;
God loved he best, and that with alle his herte,
At alle times, were it gain or smart;
And then his neighbour right as himselve.
He wolde thresh, and thereto dyke and delve
For Christe’s sake, for every poor wight
Withouten hire, if it lay in his might.
His tithes paid he full fair and well,
Both of his proper work, and his cattel.

Have we not a right to say that such a character had somewhere and by
some means received a thoroughly Christian education, even though he
may never have learnt to read or write, and were wholly innocent of
grammar?

I must not be tempted to enter on the endless theme of school sports
and customs. But it is proper to mention that English schoolboys
had their patron saints, of whom St. Gregory the Great was one. So
we learn from the--shall I call it poetry?--of the Puritan, Barnaby
Googe, who tells us that

St. Gregory lookes to little boyes to teach their a, b, c,
And make them for to love their bookes, and schollers good to be.

On his feast the boys were called into school by certain songs;
presents were distributed, to make them love their school, and
one of their number was made to represent the bishop. But a yet
more universally acknowledged patron was St. Nicholas of Myra,
in honour of whom schoolboys of all ranks and conditions elected
their boy-bishop, and played pranks in which jest and earnest were
strangely blended together. The “childe bishope” preached a sermon,
and afterwards received welcome offerings of pence. And this
custom was one of those to which the people clung with the greatest
tenacity, so that it continued to survive down to the close of
Elizabeth’s reign.

The character of the studies followed at this time in the higher
English academies, may perhaps be best gathered from an examination
of the kind of learning displayed by the poet already so often
quoted. If Chaucer is to be taken as in any way a fair representative
of an educated Englishman of his time, it is plain that there was,
in a certain sense, no want of learning in the English schools,
though his critics acknowledged that however varied and extensive his
reading may have been, it was loose and inaccurate. In this respect
the English were far behind the Italians. I am not aware that Dante
has ever been convicted of a blunder in his classical allusions, but
in Chaucer such solecisms abound. “All through the poem,” says Craik,
in his critical examination of the _House of Fame_, “there runs
the spirit of the strange, barbarous, classical scholarship of the
Middle Ages. The Æneid is not wholly unknown to the author, but it
may be questioned if his actual acquaintance with the work extended
much beyond the opening lines. An abridgment, indeed, of the story
of Æneas follows, but that might have been got at second-hand. The
same mixture of the Gothic and the classic occurs throughout that is
found in all the poetry of the period, whether French, English, or
Italian.” He proceeds to quote lines, in which “the harper _Orion_”
is made to do duty for _Arion_; Mount Cithæron is supposed to figure
as the individual “Dan Citherus;” the musician Marsyas, who was
flayed alive, appears as “Mersia, that lost _her_ skin,” and so on.
However, it is agreed that Chaucer was, in a certain inaccurate
way, familiar with the stories of the Latin classics, and possessed
of whatever learning was to be acquired in the schools of London
and the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris, in all of
which, according to Leland, he had “gained great glory.”[289] At the
universities, moreover he had learned men for his cronies; his two
most familiar college friends were John Gower and Randolph Strode,
both of whom, like himself, afterwards attained poetic fame. It is to
them that he dedicated his _Troilus and Creseide_, addressing them as
“the philosophical Strode” and “the moral Gower.” The name of Gower
is too well known to require any comment, but all readers may not
be equally familiar with that of Strode, so we will briefly state
that he was a Scotchman by birth, a fellow of Merton, afterwards a
pilgrim to the Holy Land, and the author of a poem in the vernacular,
entitled “Phantasma,” which critics scruple not to place on a level
with Chaucer’s verse. He finally entered the Dominican Order, and
greatly distinguished himself in the controversy against Wickliffe,
thereby earning the distinguished honour of some very coarse abuse
from the pen of Bale.

Chaucer was educated for the law, and Speght records the doubtful
tradition that he was at one time a member of the Inner Temple,
at which period of his career he is said to have been fined two
shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street. At any
rate, his education was that of a “clerk,” and the office he
eventually filled under the Crown was that of Comptroller of the
Customs and Subsidies of wool, skins, and tanned hides in the port
of London--an office about as suitable to him as that of gauger was
to Robert Burns. He seems to have felt its incongruity with a poet’s
sensitiveness, and its necessary “reckonings” are often alluded to in
his verses as sad trials of patience. He was perfectly at home in the
French tongue, and his familiarity with Italian is stoutly maintained
by some, and as vehemently denied by others. Lydgate says that he
translated Dante, but no fragment of such a work is known to exist.
He was an incessant reader, as he is never weary of letting us know.
When he had done his “reckonings,” his manner was to go home to his
house and sit at his books, “as dumb as any stone,” and read till
he was half blind. Once, he tells us, he spent a whole day reading
Cicero’s _Somnium Scipionis_, from the Commentary of Macrobius. He
had a great liking for old books, and expresses it sweetly enough--

For out of old fields as men sayth,
Cometh all this new corn from yere to yere,
And out of old books, in good faith,
Cometh all this new lore that men lere.

He seems to have had a decided taste for mathematical and scientific
pursuits. The writings and example of Roger Bacon had given a great
stimulus to these pursuits in England, and Hallam mentions the names
of several Englishmen of the fourteenth century who distinguished
themselves as mathematicians, such as Archbishop Bradwardine, the
profound Doctor, as he was called. Among Chaucer’s prose works is
a Treatise on the Astrolabe, written for the instruction of his
youngest son, Lewis, who was studying at Oxford under a tutor. He
dedicates the work to his boy in the following words:--

“Lytel Lewis, my sonne, I perceive well by certaine evidences thine
abilitie to learne sciences touching numbers and proportions,
and also wel consider I thy busie prayer in especiall to learne
the Treatise of the Astrolabie ... therefore I have given thee a
sufficient Astrolabie for an orizont, compounded after the latitude
of Oxenford.” He has compiled it, he adds, because the charts of the
Astrolabe that he has seen were “too hard for thy tender age of ten
yeares to conceive,” and he has written it in English, “for Latine ne
canst thou nat yet but smal, my lytel sonne.”

In one of his poems he gives an exposition of the theory of
gravitation, and appeals to Aristotle and “Dan Plato” in confirmation
of his philosophy. He also explains the propagation of sound, which
he declares to be produced by a series of undulations of air like
those that appear when you throw a stone into the water. He was
familiar with the jargon of the astrologers and alchemists, and his
commentators assure us that he displays a very considerable knowledge
of the real science of chemistry as well as of its quackery, which
last does not escape his lash. For quacks of all sorts indeed he has
no indulgence, and spends his humour on the doctor of physic, whom he
describes as “well grounded in astronomy,” able to help his patients
by his knowledge of magic, no great reader of his Bible, which was
not a very fashionable study with the followers of Averrhoes and
Avicenna, but on excellent terms with his apothecary, and ready to
help him to get rid of plenty of drugs and electuaries. It will
be remembered that at the time when Chaucer wrote, the “Doctor of
Physic,” though a graduate of the universities, and a very important
person in his way, had no great claims to the character of a man of
science. John Gaddesden, a fellow of Merton, and court physician
to Edward, wrote a book called the “Rosa Anglica,” on his great
and successful method of treating patients for the smallpox, which
consisted in hanging their rooms and enveloping their persons in
_scarlet cloth_! He informs us that, with the blessing of God, he
purposes writing another book on Chiromancy, or fortune-telling by
the hand, condescends to give directions to the court ladies for
preparing their perfumes, washes, and hair-dyes, and interlards his
quack recipes with scraps of original verse.

In his treatment of religious subjects Chaucer represents the tone of
feeling which prevailed among a very large class of Englishmen in his
day. He was a political partisan of John of Gaunt, and therefore gave
the Lollards a certain kind of support. To a man of free life and
coarse humour it was both tempting and easy to exercise his wit on
fat monks and lazy friars, and to grumble like a true Englishman at
their demands on his purse. Doubtless there were plenty of unworthy
representatives of both professions to stand as the originals of his
poetical caricatures, and broadly enough did he paint their unseemly
features. But that was all; and his biographer, Godwin, admits that,
so far from sharing any of the heretical opinions of the Lollards,
his poems unmistakably prove his adherence to the Catholic dogmas,
especially those which they most malignantly attacked, namely, the
Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist; while his devotion to
the Blessed Virgin is expressed in a thousand passages, such as the
following:--

Lady, when men pray to the,
Thou goest before of thy benignitie,
And getest us the light of thi prayere
To giden us to thi Sonne so dere.

Occleve, his disciple, himself no mean poet, bears testimony to the
fact that his lamented master was a devout client of the Queen of
Heaven:--

As thou wel knowest, O blessed Virgyne,
With lovynge hert and high devocion,
In thyne honour he wroot many a lyne,
For he thi servant was, mayden Marie,
And let his love floure and fructifie.

Contemporary with Chaucer, the father of our poetry, was Sir John
Mandeville, who commonly enjoys the credit of being the father
of English prose, and whose travels let into the popular mind a
glimmering light as to the whereabouts of Tartary, Persia, Armenia,
Lybia, Chaldea, and Ethiopia, all which he visited, besides some
Eastern lands that he calls by the name of “Amazoyn,” “Ind the
Less and the More,” and “many isles that be abouten Ind.” In his
“Itinerary” he describes his visit to Jerusalem and the Holy Land,
apologising for possible inaccuracies by reminding the indulgent
reader that “thynges passed out of long time from a man’s mynd
turnen soon into forgetting; because that the mynd of man ne may
not be comprehended ne withholden for the freelty of mankind.” The
“Itinerary” was written in Latin, and translated by the author
first into French, and from thence into English, and enjoyed great
popularity. And the publication of these travels, together with those
of Marco Polo, stimulated an interest in the study of geography,
so that we begin to find more frequent mention in the catalogues
of monastic libraries of maps and charts. The whole science of
map-drawing, it may be observed, had developed in the cloister; the
German monks showing themselves indefatigable in improving this
branch of science. About the year 1370 Prior Nicholas Hereford of
Evesham Abbey, after collecting a fine assortment of books, caused a
great map of the world to be executed, at the cost of six marks, for
the use of his convent. And a certain Camaldolese monk, named Fra
Mauro, made use of the information derived from the writings of Marco
Polo, and produced a grand Mappamondo, wherein he depicts the sea
rolling round the southern extremity of Africa. On the margin of his
map appear some learned notes, referring the phenomena of the tides
to the moon’s attraction--a piece of natural philosophy, however,
which, as we have seen, was not unknown to Bede.

It has been already said that during the reign of Edward III. the
English universities had to sustain the twofold attack of Lollardism
and the Black Death, by the united effects of which they were reduced
to so low a condition, as at one time to have ceased to be regarded
as seats of learning. Nine tenths of the English clergy are said
to have been swept away by the terrible plague, together with the
population of entire cities, and the necessity of the case obliged
the bishops to fill the vacant benefices with men of inferior
education, a practice which for the moment told severely on the state
of the schools. But the effects of the pestilence were less fatally
disastrous than those caused by the heresy of Wickliffe. When in
1361, that celebrated man, then master of Baliol College, Oxford,
first made himself notorious by his attacks on the mendicant orders,
he seems to have done little more than repeat the old threadbare
calumnies of William de St. Amour and Richard Fitz Ralph. His views
were of course exceedingly relished by the secular doctors, and his
reputed talents induced the primate, Simon Islip, to offer him the
wardenship of Canterbury Hall, then newly founded, partly for secular
and partly for monastic students. In order to make room for him, the
former warden, Woodhal, a Canterbury monk, had to retire, and three
other monastic students who held scholarships in the college were at
the same time removed. Langham, the successor of Islip, pronounced
these proceedings irregular, and restored Woodhal to his post. The
matter was referred to the decision of Pope Urban V., who decided
in favour of Woodhal, and from that day Wickliffe became the deadly
enemy of the papal power. The university, or rather the secular
regents of the university, immediately took part with him against
the Pope and the Friars, and in 1372, to mark their adherence to his
cause, elected him Professor of Divinity. He succeeded, moreover, in
obtaining the powerful support of John of Gaunt, and on occasion of a
congress, held at Bruges, to settle various points in dispute between
the English Government and the Holy See, the name of John Wickliffe
appears in the list of Royal Commissioners. All this time there had
been no whisper of heresy, nor was it until after his return to
England, when he was promoted to a prebend in the collegiate church
of Westbury, and a little later was presented by John of Gaunt to the
rectory of Lutterworth, that he began to disseminate his pernicious
doctrines. Besides his peculiar views regarding the possession of
property, he had started views on the subject of predestination,
analogous to those afterwards embraced by Calvin, and attacked the
supremacy of the Pope, and the doctrines of penance, indulgences, the
worship of the saints and of holy images, and prayer for the dead.
He and his followers propagated their opinions by a sort of popular
preaching suited to the tastes of the common people, and accompanied
by a certain low buffoonery, in all ages specially attractive to
rude audiences of the Anglo-Saxon race. The coarse invectives
levelled against the clergy found eager reception among such hearers;
for there is perhaps to most men an irresistible fascination in
doctrines which aim at bringing down any dominant class of society
to a lower level. The English commons were at this period seething
in a chronic state of insurrection, and the Lollard denunciations
of the priests and land-holders were extremely to the taste of the
Socialists of the fourteenth century. It is therefore quite easy
to understand how it was that Hob Miller and Colin Lout should
have thought it an excellent joke to ridicule and despise their
betters; but that Wickliffe should have found warm supporters in the
university of Oxford is a fact that may well surprise and startle us.
But Lollardism had a double aspect, its theological heresies were
at first as little relished at Oxford as at Rome, but its enmity
to the religious orders happened to chime in with the views of the
secular faction, and therefore they gave it their support. An appeal
had already been made, not to Rome, but to Parliament, for a law
to prohibit any member of the university joining a religious order
before his eighteenth year, and the Oxonian divines were not ashamed
to accept, together with the desired statute, a prohibition to carry
the matter to Rome. They next established the rule that no religious,
whether monk or friar, should be admitted to graduate in arts, while
at the same time, by the university statutes, no one could fill a
theological professorship without so graduating. The monks appealed
to the Holy See, and obtained a dispensation from this unjust law,
and thus increased the ill-will of their thwarted and malicious
adversaries. The struggle was at its height when Wickliffe raised his
cry against the mendicant orders, whom he declared to be Antichrist,
and proctors of Satan; and he at once found plenty of grave divines
who were willing to regard him as a useful ally, and forgive both his
heresies and his nonsense for the support he furnished to their side
of the quarrel. Hence, in 1377, when Gregory XI. sent Bulls to the
Archbishop of Canterbury the Bishop of London, and the university of
Oxford, calling on them to take active measures for the condemnation
of the heresiarch, we are assured by Walsingham that the heads of
the university deliberated whether or no they should receive the
Bull, nor does it appear certain that it ever was received. At last,
however, in 1381, Wickliffe startled even his Oxford allies by his
attack on the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, and a decree was drawn
up, and signed by William de Burton, the chancellor, and twelve of
the chief divines, condemning his errors, and forbidding them to
be promulgated in the university. Hereupon Wickliffe scrupled not
to appeal to the Crown and Parliament, but the English people were
not yet quite prepared for such a step, and the act caused general
scandal. Even John of Gaunt, who had hitherto, from political
motives, given him his countenance, now withdrew his protection, and
declared his teaching on the Sacrament of the Altar to be a “doctrine
of devils.”

Oxford, however, had not yet entirely given up his cause. In 1382,
when Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, set on foot vigorous
measures for the eradication of the new heresies, he met with stout
resistance from Rigge, who had succeeded De Burton in the office
of chancellor of the university, and who flatly refused to silence
a Lollard professor. Courtenay at last obtained a royal mandate,
in virtue of which Wickliffe and his most obstinate adherents were
expelled the university, a good number of professors purchasing
immunity, however by a ready recantation of their errors, for few
evinced any desire of becoming martyrs in the cause.

The steps taken by Courtenay vindicated the authority of the Church
but they were far from being sufficient to purge the university from
the heretical leaven, or remedy the evils caused by these internal
troubles. So far is Ayliffe’s statement that the Wickliffites
restored sound learning at Oxford, from possessing a shadow of truth,
that the period when this heresy was rampant among her doctors was
precisely that when her schools had confessedly sunk to their very
lowest state of decay. The authorities were themselves perfectly
aware of the fact, and represented it as one of the unhappy effects
produced by papal provisions. But the statutes of Provisors, passed
in the reign of Edward III., by which all such provisions were
forbidden under severe penalties, instead of applying a remedy to
this evil, only hastened the decline of learning. It was found that
the Crown was far less disposed to promote men of learning than the
Popes had been; and, to quote the words of Lingard, “experience
showed that the statutes in question operated to the depression of
learning and the deterioration of the universities.” Accordingly in
the year 1399 petitions were presented to Convocation from Oxford
and Cambridge, setting forth that _while the Popes were permitted
to bestow benefices by provision, the preference had always been
given to men of talent and industry_, and that the effect of such
preference had been to quicken the application and increase the
number of the students; but that since the passing of the Act against
Provisors, their members had been neglected by the patrons of
livings, the _students had disappeared_, and the schools were nearly
abandoned.[290] Sixteen years later the House of Commons awoke to a
sense of the suicidal character of their own policy, and petitioned
King Henry V. that, _to save the universities from destruction_,
he would suffer the statutes against Provisors to be repealed. The
King referred the matter to the bishops, who, however, had no wish
at all to interfere with the existing legislation, and contented
themselves with passing a law in convocation obliging every patron of
a benefice for the next ten years to present a graduate of one of the
universities.

These facts may serve as sufficient reply to the vaunted “restoration
of learning” achieved by the Lollards. The effect of their influence
in the universities, coupled with that of an anti-Roman course
of legislation, had been to bring those institutions to the very
verge of ruin, and that in spite of the extraordinary efforts which
were being made by private munificence to enlarge and perfect the
collegiate system of education. Indeed, though Wickliffe himself
was a man of undoubted ability, the attempt to convert him into a
restorer of humane letters, savours of the absurd.[291] His learning
was precisely the same which, when found in the possession of friars
and other scholastics, earns for them such bitter taunts and gibes
as “locusts,” who devoured all the green things in the land, and
darkened it with bad Latin and captious logic. Wickliffe’s Latin was
not better than that of his adversaries, and his logic was of that
true Oxonian temper which Wood qualifies as “frivolous sophistry
whereby scholars could at any time be for or against anything
proposed.” The well-known ballad in which an Oxford student puzzles
his simple-minded parent by proving a pigeon and an eel pie to
be convertible terms, seems hardly a caricature when we read the
shifts, or, as Wood terms them, the “screws” by which the Lollard
chief sought to prove that he meant the precise contrary of what he
had been convicted of saying. “He so qualified his doctrines with
conditions,” says Lingard, “and explained them away by distinctions,
as to give an appearance of innocence to tenets the most mischievous.
On the subject of the Holy Eucharist he intrenched himself behind
unintelligible distinctions, the meaning of which it would have
puzzled the most acute logician to detect.”[292] And Rohrbacher
observes that instead of appealing to the Scriptures explained by
the Fathers, he took refuge in “arguments and dialectic subtleties,
wrapped up in an obscure and barbarous phraseology;” in other words,
he exhibited precisely the same description of learning, the display
of which has earned so many hard epithets for the academic “locusts.”

Wickliffe’s literary fame rests chiefly on his translation of the
Bible into the vulgar tongue, often incorrectly spoken of as the
earliest English version. It is not clear that he himself ever
translated more than the Gospels, for of the various manuscripts
which bear his name, some are now admitted to have been the
production of later Lollard writers. His English is declared by Mr.
Craik to be “coarse and slovenly,” and far more harsh and obscure
than that of Mandeville or Chaucer. His version was made the vehicle
for conveying his peculiar tenets, by means of corruptions of the
Sacred Text, and was accompanied by certain Prologues or Glosses,
explaining it in an heretical sense. On this account it was enacted
by Archbishop Arundel, in a Provincial Synod held in 1408, that
“no one should hereafter translate any text of Holy Scripture into
English by way of a book, and that no such book, _composed lately,
in the time of Wickliffe, or since his death_, shall be read.” This
decree has been erroneously interpreted as a prohibition to the
laity to read the Scriptures. But its real meaning is very clearly
explained by the Canonist Lyndwood,[293] a contemporary of Arundel’s,
as being, first, a prohibition to any private person to translate
the Scriptures into English without authority; and secondly, a
prohibition to use or read any such unauthorised and incorrect
versions. And he expressly adds that from the terms “newly composed,
in the time of Wickliffe, or since his death,” it is evident that
the Lollard versions only are prohibited, but that every one is
still at liberty to read those formerly translated from the text of
Scripture into English or any other modern idiom. Lyndwood died in
1446, and was living when the decree in question was first published.
His testimony as to its meaning as then understood and interpreted,
as well as to the fact that other earlier versions did exist at that
time, cannot therefore be called in question. Moreover, Fox the
Protestant martyrologist, tells us, on the authority of Polydore
Vergil, that this same Archbishop Arundel, who is so often accused
of prohibiting the reading of the Scriptures, preached the funeral
sermon of Queen Anne of Bohemia, and mentioned among other things in
her praise that she was a diligent reader of the Four Gospels written
in Bohemian, English, and Latin, with divers expositions, which book
she had sent to him to be viewed and examined.

If this account be correct, it equally vindicates Arundel from the
charge of prohibiting the Scriptures, and Queen Anne from that of
Lollardism on the ground of reading them, for it will be observed the
copy she used had been first submitted to the archbishop’s approval,
and his formal permission had been obtained. We have also another
interesting testimony to the existence of these earlier versions,
and an explanation of the decree against those of the Lollards, in
the words of Sir Thomas More, who, in his Dialogue, notices the
prohibitory Constitution of Arundel in the following terms:--

“Ye shall understand that the great arch-heretic, Wickliffe (whereas
the Holy Bible was long before his time by virtuous and well-learned
men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people,
with devotion and soberness, well and reverently read) took upon him,
of a malicious purpose, to translate it anew. In which translation
he purposely corrupted the Holy Text, maliciously planting therein
such words as might in the reader’s ears serve to the proof of such
heresies as he went about to sow; which he not only set forth in
his own translation of the Bible, but also in certain prologues or
glosses, which he made hereupon. So that after it was perceived what
harm the people took by the translations, prologues, and glosses of
Wickliffe’s, and also of some others who after him helped to set
forth his sect, then, for that cause, it was at a council holden
at Oxford provided, upon great pain, that no man should henceforth
translate the Scriptures into the English tongue _upon his own
authority_ by way of book or treatise, nor no man should read such
books as were newly made in the time of Wickliffe, or since, or that
should be made any time after, _till the same translation were by
the Diocesan or Provincial Council approved_. But that it neither
forbade the translations to be read that were already well done of
old before Wickliffe’s time, nor condemned his because it was _new_,
but because it was _naught_, nor prohibited new to be made, but only
provided that they shall not be read if they be made amiss, till by
good examination they be amended; except they be such translations
as those of Wickliffe and Tindal, which the malicious mind of the
translator hath so handled that it were lost labour to go about to
mend them.”

He goes on to say that he has seen, and, if necessary, could show,
copies of English Bibles, “fair and old,” approved by the Diocesans,
which have been left with lay men and women, and used by Catholic
folk with soberness and devotion, and that the clergy never kept
any Bibles from the laity save those that were “naught,” and not
so approved; that is, those in which heretical corruptions of the
text had been introduced, or to which were attached the pernicious
Lollard glosses. And he explains how it was that no printer had
yet ventured to print an English Bible, a great and expensive
undertaking, which might, after all, have been unsaleable, through
the question which might have been raised whether it were printed
from a version made before or since the days of Wickliffe. The whole
passage is sufficiently explicit, both as to the fact of approved
English versions of the Scriptures existing before the time of
Wickliffe, and also as to the received interpretation of Arundel’s
decree. We have the very explicit testimony of Cranmer to the same
effect. “It is not much above a hundred years,” he writes, “since
Scripture hath not been accustomed to be read in the vulgar tongue
within this realm; many hundred years before that it was translated
and read in the Saxon tongue, and when that language waxed old and
out of common usage, because folks should not lack the fruit of
reading it, it was translated again into the newer language.”[294]
It is, however, by no means easy in all cases to distinguish these
early versions from their later imitations. All the translations
of the Scriptures preserved in manuscript in the Oxford libraries
have been commonly assigned to Wickliffe, although Dr. Thomas James
is of opinion that a close examination of some of them would show
them to be of much more ancient date. He is also disposed to think
that one of the prologues ordinarily assigned to one of Wickliffe’s
disciples belongs to an earlier translation. Lewis, in his “History
of the English Translations of the Bible,” supposes this prologue to
have been written in 1396 by John Purvey, one of Wickliffe’s most
learned followers; but its allusions to the care taken to consult St.
Jerome, and the gloss of Nicholas de Lyra, do not seem to harmonise
very well with this theory. Dr. James considers that the copies
preserved in the Bodleian Library, and in Christ Church Library, are
of ancient Catholic versions, that in Queen’s College Library alone
being properly assigned to Wickliffe. Lewis opposes this view, yet he
admits that the Bodleian and Queen’s College versions are different
from that of Christ Church. Warton claims one of these for John of
Trevisa, and Weever assigns one to the Venerable Richard of Hampole,
an Austin hermit, who lived about the year 1349, near the Monastery
of Hampole in Yorkshire, and, according to Camden, wrote many books
full of “heavenly unction,” and whose translation of the Psalter
is still preserved. Whatever may be the real history of these three
versions (and it is evident that critics are by no means unanimous
as to their authorship), several fragments exist of different books
of Scripture which are admitted to be of ancient date. In the
library of Bennet College, Cambridge, a translation is preserved of
two of the Gospels and St. Paul’s Epistles, with a gloss, written
in the English spoken after the Conquest. In Sydney Sussex College
are portions of the Old Testament commented on in like manner. A
translation of the Psalter, with a gloss, is in the Harleian Library,
besides the Psalter of Richard of Hampole, mentioned above, to
which is prefixed a prologue, in which the author explains that he
has sought no strange English, but only that which was commonest
and easiest, and has been careful to consult the holy doctors.
There are also, according to Lewis, other translations extant of
the Psalter, the New Testament, and the Church Lessons and Hymns,
all made before the time of Wickliffe. It must be borne in mind
that the manuscripts preserved in our libraries are mere fragments
accidentally saved from destruction, and can scarcely be taken as
evidence of what existed in England before the Reformation. The
pious visitors of Edward VI., in their zeal to purify the university
of Popish service books, destroyed every manuscript they could lay
hands on, which exhibited illuminations or other ornaments, without
the slightest reference to its contents. Whole libraries were then
sold for waste paper, and bought by bakers to feed their ovens, or
for other base purposes. But among the scanty relics that escaped
the hands of these worse than Vandals, stray leaves are to be found
of sermons, treatises, and mutilated hymns, many of which are in the
vernacular English of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. One
of these interesting fragments has been printed by Messrs Wright and
Halliwell in the _Reliquiæ Antiquæ_, and is assigned by them to the
fourteenth century. The preacher appears to have been familiar with
some English version of the Canticle of Canticles, and introduces a
passage which may be quoted as a beautiful specimen of our ancient
English idiom:--“Behold my derlyng speketh to me; arys, come nerre my
beautiful, now wynter is passid; that is, the coulde wynd of worldly
covertise that mad me hard y-froze as yse: the floures scheweth them
on erth, the voys of the tortel is herd in our herber; that is, the
soule that the kyng of heven has y-lad to his vyne celler, syngeth
chast songes of mornyng for hir sinnes and for deth of Christ hir
mate: she will no more sette on grene bows lovynge worldlye things,
bote fedeth hir with love of Christ, the clene white corne, and
fleeth up to the holes of His five woundes, lookyng with sympel eyne
into the cler waters of holie writ.”

From what has been said, it may be gathered that before the time of
Wickliffe, the Scriptures were in no sense shut up from the laity;
that considerable portions of them were rendered into English, and
are known to have been actually in the possession of lay persons,
and that it was not until the corrupt versions and glosses of the
Lollards were made instruments of disseminating pernicious errors,
that any decrees were made on the subject. Even then the restrictions
were not prohibitions: the laity were still allowed to read approved
Catholic versions: though it is very probable, that at a time when
so large a portion of the population was infected with Lollardism,
and when there was a disposition to make the Sacred Text, interpreted
by each man’s whim, the rule of each man’s belief, the private
reading of the English Scriptures by lay persons was not greatly
encouraged. In fact, prohibitions or restrictions of this sort were
never promulgated by the ecclesiastical authorities, until rendered
necessary by the perverse misuse of the Sacred Volume by heretics.
Thus, in France no such restrictions existed until 1229 when the
extravagant doctrines which the Albigenses pretended to adduce from
Scripture, obliged the Council of Toulouse to forbid the translation
of the Sacred Books, the use of which had, up to that time, been
freely permitted. In no case was the _Latin_ Bible withdrawn from
the laity,[295] and it must be remembered that in those days the
majority of those who could read at all, could read Latin. Lewis,
indeed, would have us believe that before Wickliffe’s time, even
the Latin Bible was not allowed in common use; and gravely assures
us, that the monks and friars collected copies and laid them up in
their libraries, not (as one might suppose) for the obvious purpose
of reading them, but “to imprison them from the curates and secular
priests, and so prevent them from preaching the Word of God to the
people.” Nonsense of this sort is scarcely worth refuting, though
it finds a place in very grave writers, and by certain readers is
often enough believed. Bibles were, of course, comparatively rare
and expensive books, and not within reach of every poor curate’s
purse. But so far from any conspiracy existing to make them rarer,
it was a common devotion among those who possessed such a treasure,
to bequeath it by will to some public church, there to be set up and
chained, _ad usum communem_. This practice is often supposed to have
originated with the Reformers, and a modern artist has depicted, with
great skill, the grey-haired peasant approaching the chained Bible
set forth by order of his sacred majesty king Edward VI., and turning
over its pages with pious awe. It was, however, a good thought stolen
from the ancients, as there is abundant evidence to show. Thus, in
1378 a Bible and Concordance were left by will by Thomas Farnylaw,
to be set up and chained in the north aisle of St. Nicholas’ Church,
Newcastle; and in 1385, a Bible and Concordance were to be found
chained in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.

These Bibles were, of course, copies of the Latin Vulgate, for it
is not pretended that any effort was made to place a version of the
Scriptures, in the vulgar tongue, at the command of the unlettered
laity. The Catholic system of education did not aim at enabling every
poor man to read his Bible, but rather at making him know his faith.
Nevertheless, so true is it that a strong Scriptural element has
always predominated in the teaching of the Church, that the first
attempts to provide the poor with cheap literature of any sort were
called _Biblia Pauperum_, or the Bibles of the poor. They were rude
engravings of Scriptural subjects, or stories of the saints, taken
off carved wooden blocks, and accompanied with texts of Scripture, or
pious verses. These were known as block-books, and were reproduced at
a much cheaper rate than books written out by hand. Of course they
were not Bibles, but they show that even in the age most tainted by
the Lollard heresy, there was a disposition on the part of Catholic
teachers to supply the people with instruction into which a certain
Biblical element had been infused. The block-books were likewise used
to strike off small school manuals of grammar, and a book of this
sort was technically called a “Donatus.” If the grammars were welcome
boons to schoolboys, the Bibles of the poor were not less convenient
for the use of preachers, who could not carry so cumbrous a volume
as a whole Bible into the pulpit, and were often glad to help
their memory by a selection of suitable texts. Specimens of these
block-books are preserved as curiosities by modern bibliopolists,
and the contrivance seems to have been the immediate forerunner of
the more important invention of printing. But in mentioning them we
are somewhat departing from the order of time, as they can hardly be
assigned an earlier date than the beginning of the fifteenth century.

_CHAPTER XIX._

THE RED AND WHITE ROSES.

A.D. 1386 TO 1494.

The close of the fourteenth century witnessed the establishment in
England of two new schools, the importance of which caused them to be
regarded as models for all subsequent foundations of a similar kind
in this country. These were William of Wykeham’s twin colleges at
Oxford and Winchester the first of which, opened in 1386, may be said
to have perfected the collegiate system of our universities, while
the second, which was not completed till seven years later, laid the
foundation of another system, more peculiarly national--that of our
English public schools. The object of these two institutions was to
furnish a complete course of free education to two hundred scholars,
who were to be led from the lowest class of grammatical learning, to
the highest degrees of the various faculties. And at the same time
that their intellectual training was thus amply provided for, they
were subjected to a strict rule of discipline, and the religious
element of education was given a much larger development than it
had received in any collegiate foundations which had yet appeared.
Chapels had, indeed, in some cases been attached to colleges before
the time of Wykeham, though they do not seem to have been regarded as
any essential portion of such institutions; but now the choral office
and the magnificent celebration of ecclesiastical rites were provided
for with no less scrupulous care than the advancement of studies; and
thus the founder set his seal to one great principle of the earlier
monastic education, namely, that habits of devotion, and those too of
a certain liturgical character, ought to be infused into the training
which is given to the children of Holy Church. And in many ways these
foundations reflected the spirit of more ancient times, in what
regarded discipline. When the universities began to be frequented
in place of those monastic and cathedral schools, which up to the
twelth century had been the chief academies resorted to by students,
clerical or lay, no provision at all had been made for the government
of the scholars; a fact which sufficiently explains the scandals and
disorders which fill up the early history of Paris and Oxford. Nor
need the want of such provision excite any surprise, if we bear in
mind that the first universities were not institutions, founded at
any particular period according to some sagacious scheme; but that
they sprang up of themselves out of small beginnings, and developed,
like the grain of mustard seed, into a mighty tree. Scholars and
professors came first, and it was not till they had insensibly
grown into a population, and had committed the excesses of which
most lawless populations would be guilty, that authority stepped
in with statutes and decrees, and endeavoured to give shape and
method to the unwieldy mass. The collegiate system, as we have seen,
semi-monastic in its character, and undoubtedly formed in partial
imitation of the religious houses of study, was called into being in
order to struggle with the monster evils which had arisen out of the
university system; it was an attempt to return, in some measure, to
the ancient paths, and to reassert the principle that intellectual
education, when separated from moral and religious training, is no
education at all. Wykeham adopted this principle in all its fulness,
and herein lay the special value of his work. But with an admirable
discretion he contrived so to adapt it to the wants, the feelings,
and the habits of his age, that it assumed the appearance, not of a
retrogression but of an advance: nay more, he managed so thoroughly
to root his system in the English mind that it stood the brunt of
many revolutions, and even in our own day obtains a traditionary kind
of honour, encrusted as our old foundations have become with the
overgrowth of three Protestant centuries.

The Wykehamist colleges were not only the most splendid academies
of learning founded at this time, but they opened the way to other
foundations of a similar description; and a kind of fashion set in
for founding schools and colleges, which, during the reigns of our
Lancastrian kings, multiplied over the land. The alarm excited by
the spread of Lollardism had something to do with this movement,
and it is remarkable that one Oxford college, that of Lincoln, was
founded by a prelate, Richard Fleming, who at an earlier period
had taken part with Wickliffe, but who, thoroughly startled out of
his partisanship, hastened to make amends for his fault by raising
what he hoped would become a nursery of learned divines, who
should confute the errors of the wily heresiarch. That Fleming was
thoroughly in earnest in his change of views was manifested at the
Council of Constance, when we find him distinguishing himself by
a very able opposition to the Hussites.[296] His kinsman, Robert
Fleming, travelled into Italy, and there studied in the school of the
young Guarini. He was one of the earliest English scholars who took
part in the revival of classical learning, and during his foreign
travels collected great store of books for Lincoln College, some of
which he transcribed and illuminated with his own hand, being in
fact a very skilful limner. He was the author of a Greek and Latin
dictionary, as well as of a Latin poem entitled, “Lucubrationes
Tiburtinæ.” In 1438, Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had
already shown himself a patron of learning by the erection of a free
school at Higham Ferrars, and of St. Bernard’s College at Oxford
for the use of the Cistercian students, laid the foundation of his
noble college of All Souls, most liberally endowed, and furnished
with books, chapel furniture, and every requisite for the use of the
students. And in 1448 William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester,
obtained the royal grant empowering him to erect his college of
Magdalene, in which the collegiate system was more perfectly carried
out than in any previous or subsequent foundation.

Besides these Oxford colleges, those of Eton, and King’s at
Cambridge, owed their foundation to the zeal of Henry VI., being in
avowed imitation of the plan, already adopted by Wykeham, of uniting
a public school to a house of higher studies at the university, thus
providing an entire course of instruction for elder and younger
scholars.

Having elsewhere[297] given a more particular account than space
will here admit of the foundations of Wykeham, Waynflete, and Henry
VI., so important in the history of English education, it will not
be necessary to dwell on them more at length in this place; but it
should be remembered that these, if the most splendid, were very
far from being the only educational institutions of the period.
Our ancient school-system had ramifications which extended into
every grade of society and we are, generally speaking, but little
familiar with the method by which that system was worked, because we
are equally unaccustomed to study the grand system of our ancient
Catholic charities. A class of magnificent foundations formerly
existed in England, of which there only remain such scanty ruins as
escaped the rapacity of Henry VIII. and the Protector, Somerset,
but the multitude and real nature of which is hardly appreciated. I
refer, of course, to the hospitals and collegiate establishments,
which administered a vast revenue, voluntarily made over by private
charity, for the discharge of all the works of mercy.

Some amongst my readers may be able to look back to early days, whose
first associations are blended with the thought of a venerable pile,
which seemed altogether out of proportion in size and magnificence
to the purposes of a simple parish church. On Sunday afternoons
when the psalm has been unusually long, or the preacher unusually
drowsy, their childish fancies have, it may be, been busy, among the
bosses of the fretted roof, speculating as to the possible meaning
of its wondrous embellishments, and perplexed to account for the
fact that they should be summoned week after week to worship in what
had the outward grandeur of a cathedral, whereas the town or village
clustered round the minster walls seemed wholly undeserving of such
a dignity. Attached to the church there is probably a school, as at
Ottery, or Southwell, or Crediton, or Doncaster, or Shrewsbury; and
if tourists come that way to inspect the encaustic pavement, or to
take rubbings of the fine old brasses, and wonder to find so huge a
building in so insignificant a locality, they are content to receive
the information given them by their guide book, that “the church was
once collegiate.” How vast a meaning may be enclosed in a simple
phrase! “The church was once collegiate!” Yes: it was attached to one
of those creations of Catholic piety which did the work of almshouse,
schoolhouse, workhouse, hospital, and parish church, or rather,
which did a great deal more than any or all of those put together,
and did it with a magnificent profuseness of liberality, which
strikes one dumb with astonishment and admiration. Thus, the great
Lancastrian College at Leicester, known as the Newark, or College
of St. Mary’s the Greater, the remains of which still cover many
acres of ground, was originally founded for a dean, twelve secular
canons, twelve vicars, three clerks, six choristers, fifty poor men,
as many poor women, ten nurses, and other officers and attendants,
all plentifully provided for. It had, according to Leland, an
exceedingly fair “college church, large and fair cloisters, some
pretty houses for the prebendaries in the college area, and stately
walls and gates,” much of all which is still standing. That of
St. Cross at Winchester was founded by Henry de Blois, Bishop of
Winchester, for the maintenance of thirteen poor men, and the daily
feeding of a hundred others, who were to enjoy their loaf of good
wheaten bread, weighing three pounds, their three quarts of good
small beer, and two messes either of fish or flesh, as the day should
require, in the Hundred-mennes-hall; and as the allowance was more
than any ordinary capacity could dispose of at table, the statutes
judiciously permitted them to carry home what they could not eat.
Cardinal Beaufort enlarged this noble foundation by providing for
the maintenance of thirty-five additional brethren, and appointing
three religious sisters to attend the sick, and bestowed on it the
beautiful title of the “Almshouse of Noble Poverty.” Here, too,
we find a grand collegiate church, with a warden, four chaplains,
thirteen clerks, and seven choristers, for whose instruction
provision was made by keeping up a school. Sometimes the school
appears as the chief object of the foundation, as in the College
of Ottery St. Mary’s in Devonshire, which Bishop Grandison erected
in 1337, for a warden, eight prebendaries, ten vicars, a master of
music, a grammar-master, two parish priests, eight secondaries,
eight choristers, and two clerks. Sometimes the corporal and
spiritual works of mercy were blended together, as at the hospital
of St. Leonard’s at York, which maintained a master, thirteen poor
brethren, four secular priests, eight sisters, thirty choristers, two
schoolmasters, two hundred and six bedesmen, and six servitors. The
whole was governed by semi-monastic statutes under the rule of St.
Austin. Most of the smaller hospitals of York had likewise schools
attached to them.

Sometimes, again, as at Beverley and Ripon, the magnificent
collegiate establishments seem principally designed for the
celebration of the divine offices with a splendour which could
not be carried out in parochial churches; and the schools and
other charities attached to these foundations were not the primary
idea. The same seems to have been the case in the great college
of Stoke-by-Clare, the statutes of which are so very precise and
rigorous as to the quality of the plain chant to be sung in choir;
but here, too, there was a school in which boys were to be taught
“grammar, singing, and good manners.” The endowments are not always
on so sumptuous a scale as in these last-named colleges; yet often
in very remote villages and rural parishes we find a modest hospital
designed for the support of a few bedesmen of honest life, and a
grammar-school, wherein, as in St. Gabriel’s Hospital at Brough, in
Westmoreland, the chaplain was required to teach grammar and singing
to the children of the place. Thus, too, at Ewelme, in Oxfordshire,
De la Pole and his duchess had founded an almshouse, called God’s
House, wherein a priest was appointed as schoolmaster to teach their
grammar to the children of the Ewelme tenantry; and a very similar
foundation existed at Bentley, in Derbyshire, where the family of
Mountjoy erected a small college for seven old servants of the
lordship, who were to have pasture for seven cows, wood from the
lord’s manor, and a new gown and hood every third year, on condition
of their saying our Lady’s Psalter twice a day for the founder in the
chapel of the hospital. This last item in the constitutions sealed
its fate at the time of the Reformation, and it was abolished, as
being mixed up with “superstitious observances.” In foundations of
this sort, which were exceedingly numerous, the great proprietors
educated the children of their own tenantry at the same time that
they provided for their superannuated servants.

There is much in the character of these ancient institutions that
is suggestive and instructive to ourselves. What a vast machinery,
what an enormous disbursement for, comparatively speaking, small
results! Surely thirteen poor brethren could be fed and clothed
without its being necessary for Dame Isabel Penbridge to found that
great college of Tonge, in Shropshire, with its establishment of
clerks, and chaplains, and choristers, and to supply them with that
body of solemn statutes which regulates their community life and
choral office with the exactness of a religious rule! Turn again
to St. Giles’ Hospital at Norwich, and reckon what endowments it
must have taken[298] to support a master, deacon, and subdeacon,
eight chaplains, wearing the habit of St. Austin’s canons, four lay
brothers, and seven choristers, who were to be scholars likewise;
together with four religious sisters, in order to take care of eight
infirm folk and a few poor superannuated priests, and daily to
entertain thirteen non-resident poor at the common table. A liberal
foundation, it may be said, for a few insignificant paupers; but it
is clear the founder had in his mind the celebration of High Mass
and the choral office; and that providing for the celebration of
holy rites with becoming solemnity was reckoned then a good work as
pleasing to God as the feeding of the poor.

Again, in what a beautiful light were the poor themselves
regarded. They were not “paupers,” but “brethren.” They were not
kept alive with water gruel, but fed with meat and ale, and good
“mostrell.”[299] They were not assigned a narrow bench in a distant
corner of those grand collegiate churches, but often enough had
stalls like so many canons. Such stalls are still to be seen, or at
least were so a few years since, in St. Mary’s Hospital, Chichester,
and, I am glad to say, were still occupied by their lawful
owners--the thirteen poor brethren. The church was _their_ church;
its numerous staff of clerks and choristers were assembled there to
sing the divine office for _them_; they were honoured, not despised;
and in their turn they felt an honest pride in wearing that reverend
garb--the black gown or overcoat, with its red, white, or silver
cross--such as may still be seen in the hospitals of Winchester or
Worcester.

And, as to the schools attached to such foundations, what must have
been the effect produced on the mind of the scholars whose earliest
and most abiding lesson was, that nothing was too great or too good
to give to God or the poor! For God, the stately minister, the
magnificent vestments, and the solemn chant, which made up the daily
business of a whole college of priests, clerks, and choristers.

And for the poor, a home in their old age, the care of religious
women in time of sickness, generous maintenance, kindness, honour,
and respect. What a prodigious amount of moral and religious
education was conveyed in schools for the young, annexed to such
hospitals and colleges, wherein the two duties of prayer and
almsdeeds made up a portion of the daily life, and in which the
instincts of reverence must have become a sort of second nature!

In the fifteenth century we find these foundations rapidly
multiplying, and their scholastic character assuming a larger
development. To the masters of grammar and singing is now frequently
added a third for _writing_; the grammar-master is not unfrequently
provided with an usher, which seems to argue that the scholars were
becoming more numerous, and the salary of the masters is fixed higher
than that of the other priests. In the College of Bradgate in Kent no
chaplain was to be admitted who had not three qualifications--_bene
legere, bene construere, et bene cantare_. The great English prelates
had a special love for founding colleges of this description in the
places of their birth. Thus Thomas Scott, Archbishop of York, founded
the college and school of Rotherham; and Kempe, Archbishop of York,
and cardinal, who was a poor husbandman’s son, converted the parish
church of Wye, his native place, into a college for the education
of youth, and for perpetual prayer to be made therein “for the
sowles of them that set hym to schole.” And Chichele of Canterbury,
as has been already said, founded the college of Higham Ferrars in
Northamptonshire. This formerly occupied a grand quadrangle with
two great wings. The schoolhouse, in the florid style of Gothic
architecture, is, I believe, still standing; but the remainder of the
stately and beautiful buildings were a few years since laid waste
by the steward of a noble earl, and the site occupied by barns and
hunting stables. Choral schools appear moreover to have been attached
to the private chapels of great households. Thus there was a “Maister
of the childer” among the officers of the Earl of Northumberland’s
chapel, and the eight children belonging to King Edward IV.’s chapel
had likewise their “Maister” who was to draw them not only to the
study of prictsong, but also to that of their _facet_ or grammar,
“and suche other vertuous things.” Moreover his household accounts
contain the pay and livery of the “Scholmaster’s teaching, given in
the house.” Besides this choral school the same king maintained a
sort of Palatine Academy at his court, formed of six or more young
gentlemen, or _henxmen_, as they are called, whose master was to
teach them “to read clenely and surely, to learn them their harness;”
and moreover to teach them “_sundry languages_, and other vertuous
learnings, such as to harp, to pipe, to sing and to dance, each to be
trained to that kind of vertue that he is most apt to learn, with
remembrance dayly of Goddes Service.”

Another proof of the increasing interest which was being felt in the
work of education, is the occasional transformation of charitable,
into educational, institutions. Reading school was originally one
of those numerous hospitals which the lordly abbots had established
in their town. It was designed for certain poor women serving God
day and night, who prayed for the king’s estate and the soul of the
founder, the good abbot, Hugh. They had a fair chapel for divine
service, bread, meat, and drink from the abbey, and an annual sum of
money and outfit of clothing. The sisters were widows of respectable
persons in the town who had fallen into poverty; they had a _quasi_
religious character, and the formulary of their admission included
prayer, sprinkling of holy water, the blessing of the veil and
mantle, and the giving of the kiss of peace. In 1446, Abbot Thorne
suppressed this hospice, though as he applied its revenues to the
use of the almoner, we will hope that they were expended in charity.
“On a tyme, however,” says an anonymous and rather discontented
writer, “Kyng Edward IV. cam through Redyng to Woodstock,” and
expressed himself much displeased that “Saint Johny’s House,” as well
as another house for lazars, had been diverted from its original
purpose. He commanded Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, to institute a
reform, but he was unable to do so, and departed “ful ylle content.”
However, some years later, at the suggestion of Henry VII., the
hospital was re-endowed as “a fre scole,” and although when the
nameless author, above quoted, wrote, there was as yet “neither
scole, nor man, nor woman, nor chyld, relieved there,” yet in due
time the master and usher were appointed, and the school attained
no inconsiderable renown as a place of learning. It is remarkable
that among the privileges of the abbots of Reading was that of
granting school licenses. No one was permitted to open a school of
any description in the town without the approbation of the Abbot and
Convent, who exercised within certain limits the same authority as a
diocesan chancellor.

At Bury, again, the abbots had so early as 1193 founded in the town
a free school for forty poor boys. The building was near the present
shire house whence the street still retains the name of School
Street. This school was still flourishing in the reign of Henry VI.,
for we find a letter addressed by Abbot Curteys, a great friend of
that amiable and scholar-loving king, to Master William Farceaux,
graduate in grammar and arts, and master of the School of Bury. And
not to weary the reader with the enumeration of names and places, I
will only add that all the large abbeys appear to have maintained not
one, but several of these endowed free schools in various parts of
their domains.

The greater variety of seminaries now existing was gradually
introducing a greater separation of classes; hitherto students of
all ranks had mingled under the same master, but now aristocratic
distinctions began to be made. Eton soon became the favourite
resort of the sons of the gentry, though not a few continued to be
prepared for the universities at the monastic schools, especially at
Glastonbury and Pollesworth. The latter was found in an admirable
state of discipline at the time of the suppression, when the
commissioners testified to the fact that the town which had sprung
up round the monastery was almost entirely peopled, by “artifycers,
laborers, and vitellers, that lyve by the said house, and the
repayre and resorte that ys made to the _gentylmennes children and
studiounts_ that doo ther lif to the numbre of xxx. or xl. and moo,
that ther be right vertuously brought upp.” At Hyde Abbey eight noble
youths were received as students, who always ate at the abbot’s
table. Winchcombe likewise retained its character for learning, and
Abbot Kidderminster, by his wise government and encouragement of good
letters, is said to have made his school flourish so much that it
became equal to a little university.

If we put together the different classes of schools enumerated above,
it will, I think, appear that in the fifteenth century England was
quite as amply provided with the means of education for rich and poor
as she is in the present day. There were, it seems, two large public
schools for the gentry, other schools for the upper classes attached
to monasteries and the larger colleges; monastic and collegiate
schools for the middle classes, and other endowed free schools of a
similar grade, and schools attached to smaller hospitals, evidently
for a yet humbler class, such as the children of the neighbouring
villages, or the tenantry of the founder; and lastly, there were the
priests’ or parish schools, usually governed by a dame.

A more general interest was being felt in the work of education
among all classes, and an attentive study of the household accounts
of noble families of this period will discover among the items of
expenditure a more frequent mention of “pennes,” “ynke,” and “bokes.”
Hallam notices that the Paston letters, all written by members of
a private family during the reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV., and
Richard III., are not only grammatical, but fluent and elegant in
their style, and he remarks that it is a proof how unfairly we
should measure the refinement and education of an age merely by its
published literature. England in the fifteenth century was in too
troublous a state for men to have much leisure for writing books; and
hence though there was evidently an increased relish for literary
pursuits under our Lancastrian princes, we are not surprised to find
few additions to our national literature during this period. Yet
some writers there were, such as the poets Occleve and Lydgate; the
former a disciple of Chaucer, and author of a poem on the education
of princes; whilst Lydgate, the monk of Bury, enjoyed an immense
reputation in his own day, and in ours has been equally undervalued.
He was educated at Oxford, and was a man of varied learning, familiar
with the literature of France and Italy, both which countries he had
visited, a mathematician and a classical scholar, and altogether
well qualified to fill the post of professor in his own abbey.
Here he taught the sons of the nobility “the art of versification,
_elegancies_, poetry, rhetoric, geometry, astronomy, and theology.”
He was equally esteemed by the pious king Henry VI., who visited him
in his monastic cell, and by the London goldsmiths and citizens,
who employed him in writing verses, and contriving quaint devices
for their May games and city pageants. Of his two hundred and fifty
poems none have been judged worthy to find a place in the various
collections of the British poets, published during the last century.
Halliwell has published a selection of his minor pieces, but his
“Court of Sapience,” a noble poem extending to several hundred
stanzas, remains still in MS., or in the early Caxton editions. The
student of English literature is often perplexed to understand the
principles which appear to have directed the choice of our modern
editors. With the exception of Chaucer and Gower, whose claims were
too great to be disallowed, no ante-reformation poets are admitted
into the collections of Southey or Chalmers, with the exception
of Hawes and Skelton, whose doggerel is tolerated, possibly on
account of its scurrility. Even Occleve, though but a second-rate
versifier, is better than these, but Lydgate’s “Court of Sapience”
is incomparably superior to anything that appeared between the times
of Chaucer and Spenser. Its tone, however, is essentially Catholic,
and even theological, and this, together with the monkish titles of
some of his works, such as _the Lyf of our Ladye, and the Legende of
St. Edmund_, seem to have occasioned his exclusion by collectors,
who have not been ashamed to rake together all the rubbish, and
worse than rubbish, of our Restoration and Georgian periods. If the
ancient religious poetry of this country should ever find an editor,
readers who are accustomed to suppose that intelligible English dates
from the time of Spenser, would be amazed at the power and pathos
possessed by earlier writers. When we examine such poetical fragments
as are still preserved, the wonder perhaps ceases, that they should
have found small favour from modern editors. For the most part they
are devoted to celebrate the glories of the Blessed Virgin, or the
Mysteries of the Passion. The first subject has, of course, no chance
of indulgence from a Protestant public, and the second is hardly more
popular when treated precisely in the same spirit as it is presented
to us in the prayers of St. Bridget, or the devout productions of
antique Christian art. To Catholics, however, it is a joy and a
solace to look back into past centuries, and remember that there were
days when our poets drank of a purer fount than that of Castaly;
and made it their pride to celebrate in their verse, not Dian, nor
Proserpine, but the Immaculate Queen of Heaven. Of Chaucer’s devotion
to this theme I have already spoken, but other poets before his time
delighted in dedicating their verses to her who, as she has inspired
the most exquisite designs of the artist’s pencil, has also claimed
not the least beautiful productions of the poet’s pen. Thus, one
sings of her as “Dame Lyfe,” and describes how

As she came by the bankes, the boughs eche one,
Lowked to the Ladye, and layd forth their branches,
Blossoms and burgens (new shoots) breathed ful swete,
Floures bloomed in the path where she forth stepped,
And the gras that was dry greened belive.

Others, according to their quaint fashion, mixed up English and
Latin rhymes in a style which, barbarous as it is, is certainly not
deficient in harmony. One little poem, ascribed to a writer in the
reign of Henry III., commences thus:--

Of all that is so fayr and bright,
Velut maris Stella;
Brighter than the day is light,
Parens et puella.
I crie to The, Thou se to me,
Levedy, preye the Sone for me,
Tam pia,
That Ich mote come to The,
Maria.

Another class of poems is dedicated to the sorrows of Mary; from
one of which, apparently of the fourteenth century, entitled “The
Lamentation of the Blessed Virgin,” I extract but two verses, the
exceeding pathos of which can hardly be surpassed. Our Ladye is
supposed to be addressing her complaint to some happy mother, and
drawing a contrast between _her_ joys and her own sorrows:

O woman, a chaplet chosen thou hast
Thi childe to wear it does the gret likynge,
Thou settest it on with great solas,
And I sit with my Sone sore wepynge,
His chaplet is thornys sore prickynge,
His mouth I kis with a sorrowful cheer,
I sith wepynge, and thou sit synnynge,
For now lies ded my dere Sone dere.

Thou hast thi sone ful whole and sounde
And myn is ded upon my kne,
Thi childe is lose, and myn is bounde,
Thy childe is lyf, and myn--ded is He!
Whi was this, doghter, but for the?
For my Childe trespast never here;
Me think ye be holden to wepe with me,
For now lies ded my dere Sone dere.

The mystery, entitled “The Wepynge of the Thre Maries,” is a dramatic
paraphrase of the Gospel history, told in the same homely and
pathetic strain. It is thus that St. Mary Magdalene describes Our
Ladye at the foot of the Cross:--

When she herd Hym for His enmyse preye,
And promesid the thefe the blissis aye,
And to hirself no worde wolde saye,
She sighed, be ye sure;
The Sonne hynge, and the Mother stode,
And ever she kissid the drops of Blode
That so fast ran down.

And when after the Resurrection she runs joyfully to tell the holy
women that she has seen her risen Lord, and the second Mary asks

But have ye seen our Lord, Sister, are ye sure?

Her reply is from the heart:--

Sister, I have sene mi gretest tresure,
He callit me Mary by my name,
_And spake with me homlye_.

Warton, in his “History of English Poetry,” has published a few
fragments of poems on the Passion, which he ascribes to the reigns of
Henry III. and Edward I. There is a harmony in the versification of
the following that one scarcely looks for at so early a date:--

Jhesu for thi muckle might
Thou gif us of Thi grace,
That we may day and night
Thinken of Thi face:
In myn herte it doth me gode
Whan y thinke on Jhesu blod,
That ran down bi ys syde;
Fro ys herte don to ys fot,
For us he spradde ys hertis blod,
His wondes wer so wyde.
* * * * *
Ever and aye He haveth us in thought,
He will not lose that He so dearly bought.

And again:--

Now sprinketh[300] rose and lylie flour
That whilen ber that swete savour,
In somer, that swete tyde:
Ne is no queen so stark and stour,
Ne is no Ladye so bright in bower,
That ded ne schal by glyde:
Whoso wot flesh lust forgo, and heven’s blysse abyde
On Jhesu, be is thought anon, that therled[301] was in ys syde.

I will give but one fragment more, which is taken from a sort of
dialogue between our Lord on the Cross and the devout soul:--

Behold mi side
Mi woundes spred so wide
Restless I ride,
Lok on me, and put fro ye pride:
Dear Man, my love,
For my love sinne no more.

Jhesu Christe, mi lemman swete,
That for me deyedis on rood tree,
With al myn herte I The biseke
For Thi woundes two and thre;
That so fast in my herte
Thi love rooted might be,
As was the spere in Thi side
When Thou suffredst deth for me.

A great number of the Church hymns and other devotions are also to
be found translated in a versified form for the use of the laity,
such as the _Veni Creator_, the _Popule mi, quid feci?_ and other
portions of the Holy Week office. These fragments, which are mere
indications of the rich stores of religious literature possessed by
our ancestors, must not be lost sight of when studying the subject
of popular education. Were we to credit the majority of writers
on ancient manners, the poetry of the Middle Ages was exclusively
furnished by the profane and licentious _jongleurs_, whose
productions have been very diligently sought out and republished for
the edification of the curious, whilst the very existence of a vast
body of popular religious poetry is systematically ignored. Yet the
one class of writings is surely as characteristic of the age to which
it belongs as the other; and we are bound not to condemn the morals
of our forefathers from the study of that portion of their literature
which is corrupt and reprehensible, without also receiving the
evidence furnished by poetry of a totally opposite description.

We must not conclude our notice of the English writers of the
Lancastrian period without briefly noticing the names of two learned
monks. The first was John Capgrave, author of the _Legenda Sanctorum
Angliæ_, which Leland says was chiefly derived from an earlier
collection of saints’ lives by John of Tynemouth, a monk of St.
Alban’s, who died in 1370. Capgrave also produced other learned
works, a MS. copy of one of which, a commentary on the Book of
Genesis, is preserved in the library of Oriel College, and contains
in its initial letter a portrait of the author presenting his book to
Duke Humphrey, whose autograph is at the end of the volume. The other
religious writer was Walter Hilton, a Carthusian monk of Shene. His
“Scale of Perfection,” an invaluable spiritual treatise, which formed
the favourite study of Sir Thomas More, has been reprinted, but a
considerable number of his other spiritual works exist in manuscript
in the British Museum, and yet await an editor.

If the English did not compose many books at this period, they
bought and transcribed them with great diligence. More books were
copied during the first half of the fifteenth century than during
any previous century and a half. Book collectors were enterprising
enough to take journeys into Italy, and returned laden with literary
treasures; among whom, besides Fleming, already noticed, were
Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, the friend of Pius II.; John Free, a
British ecclesiastic, afterwards Bishop of Worcester; Millyng,
Abbot of Westminster; and Sellynge, Prior of Canterbury; all of
whom had studied the classical literature at Padua, or in Guarini’s
Florentine school. In the household accounts of Sir John Howard,
founder of the house of Norfolk, is a bill for the transcribing,
illuminating, and “flourishing” of books. Enormous sums were spent
by literary dandies on bookbinding. Edward IV. is said to have
spent as much on binding a book as was then the price of an ox,
and “caused thereafter to be delivered to his binder six yards of
velvet, ditto of silk, besides laces, tassels, and gilt nails.” The
Lancastrian princes were all patrons of letters: Henry V., as we
know, was a scholar of Queen’s, though, judging from his life after
leaving the university, we can hardly suppose him to have been at
that time much of a reading man. At a later period, however, he seems
to have had literary tastes, and in order to gratify them he did
not always return the books he borrowed. After his death, petitions
were presented from the Countess of Westmoreland and the Prior of
Christchurch, praying that certain books borrowed of them by the King
might be restored. Those lent by the Prior consisted of the works
of St. Gregory. His son, Henry VI., was the very type of a scholar;
whilst his uncle Beaufort, Cardinal and Bishop of Winchester, and
his two brothers, the Regent, Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, Duke of
Gloucester, were all distinguished as men of learning. Duke Humphrey
was beyond all doubt the most munificent patron of letters that had
yet appeared in England, and did his best to redeem her schools
from the charge of barbarism brought against them by Poggio and the
other classic scholars of Italy. He was a great book collector,
and the copies he caused to be transcribed were all of the most
costly and splendid description, written on vellum and adorned with
illuminations: 129 such manuscripts[302] were bequeathed by him to
the University of Oxford, of which _one_, and one alone, remains. All
the others were destroyed by the pious visitors of Edward VI., who
considered that everything that was enriched with illuminations must
be a popish missal, and therefore only fit to be cast to the flames.
The solitary survivor is a copy of _Valerius Maximus_, the index to
which is written by the hand of Humphrey’s dear and learned friend
Whethamstede, Abbot of St. Alban’s.

Humphrey’s patronage was not confined to English scholars. Heeren
prints a Latin epistle, addressed by him to the Italian Decembrio,
who had presented him with a translation of Plato _De Republica_. He
employed several learned French and Italian translators, and to him
Leonard Aretino dedicated his version of Aristotle, the presentation
copy of which is preserved in the Bodleian. Pope Pius II., in a
letter written about the middle of the century, mentions the fact
that the duke had sent into Italy and procured several professors to
explain the Latin poets and orators in his own country. And Vossius
speaks of a certain master from Ferrara, to whom he gives the name of
Titus Livius, and who, he says, came into England by the invitation
of the Duke of Gloucester, and while there wrote a life of Henry V.,
and dedicated it to his son Henry VI. This life has been republished
by Heeren. The real name of the author is unknown, and he probably
assumed that of the Latin historian to indicate that he imitated his
style.

Duke Humphrey’s chief assistant, however, in his literary labours
was the learned abbot named above, John Whethamstede of St. Alban’s.
He was originally a monk of Tynemouth, in Northumberland (which was
a cell of St. Alban’s), whence he removed to Gloucester Abbey; then
he was made prior of Gloucester College at Oxford, in which office
he had every opportunity for indulging his taste for study and his
equally characteristic liberality; for he spent a considerable sum
in the erection of a new library, on which he bestowed many books
prefixed with verses, warning off the fingers of pilferers. He also
adorned the college with painted windows, set up inscriptions under
the Crucifix and other holy images, and poured out so many other
benefactions on the house that he was formally declared to be its
second founder.

He was elected Abbot of St. Alban’s for the first time in 1420, and
having resigned his office in 1440, was elected a second time in
1451. It would be no easy matter to catalogue all his good deeds,
for Whethamstede was a great reformer and builder, and setter to
rights of decayed offices. In fact, he united in a very uncommon
degree the literary and the practical gifts, and while busy with his
books and libraries, did not forget the repairing of brew-houses
and enclosing of kitchen gardens; in spite of which services, the
monks very unjustly accused him of neglecting their affairs, and
giving all his time to study. Weever enumerates all the multifarious
decorations in the shape of painted windows, gilded and illuminated
verses, and other ornaments which he set up in his abbey. “Our
Lady’s Chapel,” he says, “was very curiously trimmed and depicted,
and letters dispersed therein in gold.” The north part of the abbey
church being somewhat dark, he made it glorious with new windows,
introducing, with taste more classical than suitable, the figures
of such heathen philosophers as had testified of Christ. He also
expended great sums in books for the abbey library, “as well for
the use of the brethren of the cloister as for the scholars;” an
expression which shows that the monastic school was still kept up.
These books exceeded eighty-seven in number, besides which he caused
to be begun the copying of Nicholas de Lyra’s great commentary on the
Bible, and employed Lydgate to translate the metrical life of St.
Alban into English verse. He also added many of his own compositions,
such as his _Granarium_, a sort of theological commonplace book,
in five volumes, dedicated to Duke Humphrey. The duke was fond of
visiting the abbey, to which he was a great benefactor, and employed
Whethamstede in collecting books for him; and after his death, St.
Alban’s was very fitly chosen as the place of his interment.

We must now for a time leave the company of princes and abbots,
and take our way through the streets of London--a city which, even
in the days of Henry II., was thickly populated with schoolboys,
and which, thanks to his pious namesake Henry VI., kept up its
name as a place of good learning in the fifteenth century. We have
already seen something of the university and domestic education of
Old England, but we have yet to make ourselves acquainted with the
schools and scholars of the middle class. The English Commons were
at this precise period fast rising in wealth and importance, and the
number among them who sought a good education for their children was
every year on the increase. The London citizens particularly were
men of intelligence and enterprise, fully conscious of the weighty
position they held in the State, and perfectly well qualified to
fill it. Nor let the fastidious reader scorn the idea of scholarship
as associated with that of a community of mercers and fishmongers;
for it is a fact of which England has no cause to be ashamed, that
many of her greatest public men, and not a few of her best scholars,
have risen from the mercantile and working classes. Lord mayors and
aldermen have not unfrequently spent the wealth they have amassed by
trade in foundations of charity or learning. Thus, Elsing Spittal,
at Cripplegate, was founded in 1329, by a London mercer, for the
sustentation of a hundred blind men; St. Lawrence’s College, in 1332,
by Lord Mayor Poulteney; St. Michael’s College, by Sir William
Walworth, of Wat Tyler-slaying celebrity; and Leadenhall College,
by Sir Simon Eyre, another lord mayor and draper, who provided that
a school should be attached to his college under the care of three
schoolmasters and an usher. His wishes do not seem to have been
carried out, but in 1446 his beautiful chapel was given over to the
newly-established confraternity of the Holy Trinity; and some of the
priests belonging to this society, says Stowe, celebrated divine
service in this chapel every market day for the market people.

So again in 1418, William of Sevenoaks, who from a foundling had made
his way to civic honours, built and endowed a college in his native
place, and a free school for the townsmen’s children; and, not to
multiply examples, the renowned Sir Richard Whittington, mercer and
Lord Mayor of London, after founding his noble College and Hospital
of St. Michael’s Royal, and repairing St. Bartholomew’s Hospital,
built at his own expense the great library of the Grey Friars, and
expended a considerable sum in furnishing it with reading pews, and
causing to be transcribed a fair copy of Nicholas de Lyra for the
friars’ use. Men of this stamp were solicitous to see their city
provided with good schools, and in 1446 we find a petition presented
to Parliament by four city priests, begging the honourable Commons
to take into consideration the great number of grammar-schools that
had formerly existed in the metropolis, and the fact that many of
them had lately fallen into decay. The petitioners go on to say that
many persons now resort to London to be informed of grammar, through
lack of good schoolmasters in the provinces, “wherefore it were
expedient that in London were a sufficient number of scholes and good
informers in grammar; for where there is gret number of lerners, and
few techers, the maisters wax rich of money, and the lerners poorer
in cunning, agenst all virtue and order of weal publik.” They entreat
therefore that schools may be opened in each of their parishes, and
persons learned in grammar set over them “there to teach to all that
will learn.” In compliance with this petition, we find the good king
Henry VI. founding no fewer than eight grammar-schools in this and
the following year. And Mercers’ School was likewise established in
connection with the Mercers’ Company.

Stowe describes the grammatical disputations kept up between the
scholars of these academies even in his time, and lets us know that
the scholars of St. Paul’s were wont to call those of St. Anthony’s
“Antonie pigs,” by reason that St. Anthony is usually figured with
a pig following him; and that they in their turn retaliated on
their rivals the sobriquet of “pigeons,” many such birds being wont
to make their haunt in the spire of St. Paul’s church. And it was
their custom when they met one another in the street to provoke one
another to disputation with the words _Salve tu quoque; placetne
disputare?_ To which, if the answer were _Placet_, they fell to
words, and soon to blows also, the satchels full of grammars serving
as convenient weapons, which oftentimes bursting in the fray,
the books were scattered about in heaps to the great trouble of
the passers-by. The least admirable thing recorded of the London
schoolboys, however, is their taste for cock-fighting. On Shrove
Tuesday every schoolboy in London brought a cock to his master, and
the whole of that forenoon, says Fitz Stephen, “is spent by them in
seeing the cocks fight in their schoolroom.” No wonder that Colet,
among other retrenchments, prohibited his scholars of St. Paul’s from
taking part in these Shrovetide cock-fightings, as a description of
sport eminently fitted to foster in the boyish nature those brutal
tendencies which are perhaps indigenous to the soil. That a taste
for learning and a generous disposition to encourage it were to
be found among not a few of the London citizens of this period is
sufficiently clear; and among many names that might be given of
founders of schools and lovers of letters, that of John Carpenter,
town clerk of London in the reigns of Henry V. and Henry VI., must
not be omitted. He was executor to Whittington, and the personal
friend of two at least of those four priests above named who had
petitioned Parliament for the establishment of more schools. These
were Thomas Neel, Master of the Hospital of St. Thomas de Acon, and
Incumbent of St. Mary, Colechurch; and William Lichfield, Rector
of Allhallows the Great. Lichfield was a considerable writer both
in prose and verse, whom Stowe calls “a great student and a famous
preacher.” These two excellent ecclesiastics took part in many good
works with John Carpenter, and probably assisted him in making that
collection of books, afterwards mentioned in his will. Carpenter
seems also to have had a taste for the arts; for the famous Dance of
Death painted in the cloisters of old St. Paul’s, was placed there
at his expense, with accompanying verses from the pen of Lydgate. It
is, however, as an encourager of liberal education that he claims a
place in these pages, and the benefaction by which he left certain
tenements in the city “for finding and bringing up four poor men’s
children with meat, drink, apparel, and learning, at the schools in
the universities, for ever,” was the foundation which has since grown
into the City of London School.[303]

But after all, the mind is trained by other things than schools and
pedagogues; and the London apprentice, no less than the university
undergraduate, drew in no small part of his education from the scenes
and daily life that went on around him. Old London, no less than
old Oxford, had a teaching of her own; she was not altogether that
place of smoke and trade and unceasing business which we think of
now when we name “the City:” she had a fairer,--I had almost said a
poetic--side, and her old historians grow eloquent when they describe
it. Who would suppose that it is the great Babylon that Fitz Stephen
is speaking of when he praises the picturesque beauty of the suburbs,
“with the citizens’ gardens and orchards planted with trees tall and
sightly, and adjoining together. On the north side,” he continues,
“are pastures and meadows, with brooks running through them, turning
water-mills with a pleasant noise. Not far off is a great forest and
a well-wooded chase, having good covert for harts, does, boars, and
wild bulls. The cornfields are not of a hungry, sandy mould, but as
the fruitful fields of Asia, yielding plentiful increase, and filling
the barns with corn. And there are near London abundance of wells,
sweet, wholesome, and clear, such as Holy-well, Clerken-well, and
St. Clement’s-well, much frequented by scholars and youth of the
city in summer evenings when they walk forth to take the air.” Stowe
likewise speaks of these pleasant walks in the suburbs, and adds a
feature of touching beauty to the picture:--“Near a fair field in
Houndsditch, belonging to the Prior of the Holy Trinity, were some
cottages and little garden-plots for poor bed-rid people, built by
some prior of that house; and in my youth I remember devout persons
were accustomed, specially on Fridays, to walk that way to bestow
their alms on the poor, who lay in their beds near the window, that
opened low, and on it was spread a fair linen cloth and a pair
of beads, to show that there lay a bed-rid person unable but to
pray only.” Within the walls were 130 churches, besides convents,
priories, and hospitals innumerable. In Westcheap, near the north
door of St. Paul’s, stood the great Crucifix surrounded by figures of
saints, where the choristers of St. Paul’s had a goodly exhibition
for singing on certain days the responsory, _Sancte Deus fortis_, and
thither on all feasts of St. Paul’s came the chapter in embroidered
vestments and wearing rose garlands on their heads. This last
ornament was very commonly worn in English processions, specially on
the summer festivals of Whit-Sunday and Corpus Christi, and not only
by canons and choristers, but also by young scholars, as we learn
from Matthew Paris. There were city companies then as now, and there
were guilds and confraternities, which gave to their members “gret
commodyte and surety of lyvyng,” and which recreated the citizens
with their gorgeous processions, while they provided support for
their poor brethren during life, and after death, burial, prayers,
and masses. On the feast of the patron saint, the guild brethren had
a dinner, of course, and generally an interlude or sacred drama;
and Fitz Stephen assures us that the citizens of his time preferred
those which were from sacred subjects, such as the Passion, or
the martyrdom of a saint. Clerkenwell received its name from the
Fraternity of Parish Clerks, who yearly assembled there to play “some
large history of Holy Scripture,” and in the reign of Henry IV.
enacted one which lasted _eight days_, and was “of matter from the
creation of the world.”

But, to use the words of our old historian, “a city should not only
be commodious and serious, but also merry and sportful,” and London
had nothing to blame herself for on this head. During the Easter
holidays there were sham fights on the river, with leaping, dancing,
shooting, and cock-fighting, and great twisted trees were brought
in from the woods to adorn the house of every man of worship. The
great May-pole hung in Westcheap, and on May morning every citizen
went forth early into the country to seek the May. All through the
summer months bonfires were kept up on the eves of great festivals,
and tables set out in the streets with meat and drink plentifully
provided by the wealthy householders, who invited the neighbours and
passers-by to eat and be merry with them with great familiarity,
and so thank God for His benefits. And Rome herself never witnessed
a more graceful celebration of the feasts of St. John Baptist and
the Holy Apostles than that which used to be held in the streets
of London, where “every man’s door was shadowed with green birch,
fennel, and St. John’s-wort, together with white lilies and such
like, and garnished with garlands of beautiful flowers, among which
lamps of glass burnt all the night;”[304] while some hung out huge
branches of iron, curiously wrought, whence hung hundreds of lamps
at once, and this was particularly the custom in New Fish-street.
At Christmas, of course, the houses and conduits were decked with a
profusion of evergreens, and the Christmas revels must be left to the
imagination of the reader.

When the holidays were over, came sports and contentions of another
sort. The masters of the different schools held solemn meetings
in the London churches, and their scholars disputed logically,
grammatically, and demonstratively. The disciples of rival academies
“_capped_ or _potted_ verses one with another, nipping and quipping
their fellows with pleasant rhymes, which caused much laughter.”
The poets sometimes addressed their fun and their verses to their
masters, expending their wit in hopes to obtain a holiday. And,
however it may be explained, I find more notices of versifiers among
the London scholars than elsewhere. Indeed, we must fain suppose
that the citizens had a naturally poetic vein when we read of their
gorgeous and fanciful devices. Chaucer tells us that the good
shopkeepers of the Cheap had weary work with their apprentices, who,
when there were any “ridings” or royal entries, would leap out of the
shop, and not return till they had seen all the sight, and had a good
dance into the bargain. And really, when we read how the fifth Harry
rode into London with little birds fluttering round his helmet, green
boughs cast in his way, priests, with gilded copes, swinging censers,
and every street exhibiting a castle, or a giant, or a legend of some
saint, we cannot wonder that it was sometimes a difficult matter to
keep the ’prentices behind the counter.

Surely too there must have been scholars among the citizens to devise
such scenes as were exhibited at the entry of Henry VI., when a
tabernacle of curious work arose on Cornhill, wherein Dame Sapience
appeared, surrounded by the seven liberal arts; and when divers
wells poured forth goodly wine to the passers-by, appropriately
named the Well of Mercy, of Grace, or of Pity. But, in fact, most
of such pageants were designed by men of letters, and no one was
more frequently called on for this purpose than the monk of Bury.
He was exceedingly popular with the London citizens, and whether a
disguising was intended by the company of goldsmiths, a May game for
the sheriffs, or a carol for the Coronation, it was generally Lydgate
who supplied the poetry. And he, in his turn, loved the citizens, and
ever spoke well of them in his verse:--

Of seaven things I prayse this citty,
Of true meaning and faithful observance,
Of righteousness, truth, and equity,
Of stableness aye kept in legiance.

A testimony to which we must add that delivered two hundred years
earlier by Fitz Stephen. “I do not think,” he says, “that there is
any city to be found wherein are better customs in frequenting the
churches, in serving God, in keeping holidays, in giving alms, in
entertaining strangers, in solemnising marriages, in furnishing
banquets, celebrating funerals, and burying dead bodies.” He
adds, however, that London had some “inconveniences,” such as the
immoderate drinking of some foolish persons, and the frequent fires.

Such then were some of the scenes in the midst of which the young
citizen grew up, and which supplied him with many ideas beyond those
of his shop wares and his reckonings. Sometimes he passed over to
France or Flanders to procure his stores of silks and velvets, or
fine Paris thread; and on such occasions, book collectors, like Duke
Humphrey, or Tiptoft of Worcester, did not disdain to employ the
services of an intelligent merchant to procure them choice copies
of foreign works. Treaties of commerce were generally negotiated by
merchants, who were thus brought into contact with courtiers and
politicians, and not unfrequently the commercial treaty was but the
veil to conceal more profound political intrigues. We need not,
therefore, be surprised to find a commission issued by Edward IV., in
1464, to Richard Whitehill and William Caxton, conferring on them the
quality of ambassadors at the court of Burgundy, to reopen the trade
with that country, which had been suspended in consequence of certain
prohibitive decrees issued by Philip the Good. All that we know of
Caxton up to this time was, that he had begun his education in a poor
school of the weald of Kent, and had probably perfected it in some
one of the London grammar-schools; that he had been apprenticed to
Master Robert Large, a mercer of Cheapside, who became Lord Mayor in
1440, and dying the next year, left the sum of twenty marks to his
_servant_ William Caxton. Then he appears as a travelling agent of
the London mercers in Brabant, and Holland, and Flanders, in which
countries he spent thirty years of his life, and at last we find
him at the court of Burgundy, to which the Flemish provinces were
then subject. When his mission was ended, he continued to reside at
the court, and was at Bruges in 1468, when the marriage took place
between Duke Charles the Bold and Margaret Plantagenet, sister to
Edward IV. He probably received some office in the household of the
Duchess, but he seems to have had little to do, and to fill up his
time the English mercer took to literary pursuits; considering, as
he says, that every man is bounden by the counsel of the wise man to
eschew sloth and idleness. He therefore resolved to translate into
English the “Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye,” by Raoul de Fevre,
wherein he had great delight, both for the novelty of the same, and
the fair language of the French; and having concluded to begin this
work, he forthwith took pen and ink, and set to work; but after
writing five or six quires, fell into despair over his task and put
it aside. Duchess Margaret, however, at this juncture came to his
aid: she had heard of his proposed translation, and required the
quires to be brought to her for inspection; praised them, found fault
with the English here and there, and finally commanded the translator
to continue and make an end.

“I might not disobey her dreadful command,” says Caxton, “seeing
that I was a servant of her Grace, and received of her yearly fee.”
Dibdin, in his “Typographical Antiquities,” endeavours to prove that
Caxton had _printed_ the original French book before _translating_
it into English; but this is mere conjecture, and there seem no
satisfactory grounds for supposing him to have turned his attention
to the new art of printing before the year 1471, when his English
translation of the “Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye” was printed
by him at Cologne. We are not told how he acquired a knowledge of the
art, which had then been in operation for about twenty years, but the
motive which led to his first applying himself to it was, as he tells
us, the desire to multiply copies of his book, which was in request
with divers gentlemen. Three years later he returned to England and
set up the first English printing-press in the Almonry of Westminster
Abbey, the learned abbot Millyng being his first patron, and evincing
a lively interest in his success. Caxton’s earliest works were
mostly his own translations; “The Game and Play of Chess” was the
first production of his Westminster press, and its second edition
was adorned with woodcuts. Another was “The Doctrine of Sapience,”
also translated by him from the French, and intended “for the use of
parish priests, and for the erudition of simple people.” “The Dictes
and Sayings of Philosophers” was a translation from the pen of his
accomplished friend Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, who had so high
an opinion of his printer’s literary powers that he permitted him
to overlook and correct the sheets. This accomplished nobleman, the
chosen “champion” of the English ladies, the best scholar, the best
poet, and the best jouster of King Edward’s court, helped to set the
types with his own hand, and afterwards presented both the book and
the printer to his royal brother-in-law.

Caxton did not altogether pursue his art in the spirit of a
tradesman. He evidently had it much at heart to provide his
countrymen with good and useful books, and took considerable pains
in their selection. In spite of Gibbon’s sneer at the number of
saints’ legends[305] and romances that issued from his press, we have
every reason to admire the variety of subjects to be found in the
sixty-four works which he lived to publish. They embrace religion
history, poetry, law, ritual, and romance. No original work of the
Latin classics appears on the list, which does not argue much for
the scholarship of the English reading public at that time, and
offers a striking contrast to the state of things in Italy, where
the first works printed at the Subiaco press were “Lactantius,” St.
Augustine’s “City of God,” and Cicero’s “Rhetoric;” and these were
followed a little later by twenty-three editions of ancient Latin
authors. But in England, though a few individuals had shown an
interest in the classic revival, the nation at large was, at this
time, wholly indifferent to the subject, and Caxton had to consult
their taste, at the same time that he attempted to raise and refine
it. He himself was no classical scholar; nevertheless, he chose a
certain number of French versions of ancient authors for translation
into English, such as the Treatise “De Senectute” of Cicero, Ovid’s
“Metamorphoses,”[306] Boethius’ “De Consolatione,” the “Fables of
Æsop,” and Cato’s “Morals.” The last he recommended as the best book
that could be used by children in schools. He likewise translated a
French narrative of Virgil’s “Æneid;” and contemptible as this sort
of literature may appear to scholars, it helped to give his readers
a certain acquaintance with the names and subjects of classical
authors, and prepared the way for the study of the originals.

On the other hand, the number of English works which he produced, and
the care he expended on presenting them to his readers in clear and
simple language, “casting away the chaff of superfluity, and showing
the picked gram of sentence,” gave a powerful stimulus to his native
literature. His own favourite author was Chaucer, in printing whose
works he grudged neither care nor expense: and he incidentally gives
us to understand that the English gentry of that period had, like
himself, a marvellous love for their great poet. He had no slight
difficulty in getting a correct MS. to print from, and his first
edition of Chaucer’s poems was, therefore, full of inaccuracies. A
young gentleman criticised its defects, and offered, if he would
print another edition, to supply him with a certain very correct
copy, which was in the possession of his father, who loved it much,
and would not willingly part with it. Caxton agreed to the proposal,
by which, of course, he lost considerably as a tradesman, but gained
in the esteem of the learned: and one is glad to find that the young
gentleman, in fulfilment of his part of the bargain, did not purloin
the book from his father but “got it from him full gently,” and
delivered it to the careful custody of the honest printer.

Not content with the labour of printing and translating, which he
carried on with so much eagerness that, as he tells us, his eyes
were half blinded with continual looking at the white paper, the
indefatigable old man undertook, at the age of seventy, to compose
his “Chronicles of England,” and “Description of Britain,” which
books he intended to convey to English readers a certain amount of
information about the history and geography of their own country. He
had plenty of critics while engaged on these works; some wanted him
to use only “old and homely” terms; others, who were finer clerks,
begged him to write the most _curious_ words he could find. Caxton
good humouredly complains of the difficulty he found in pleasing
everybody, and remarks on the variable character of the English
language, which gives ground for supposing that the English people
must be born under the domination of the moon, never steadfast, but
ever wavering. His own good sense, however, decided that the best
English for any writer to use is that common phraseology which is
more readily understood than what is antique or curious. He never
assumed the airs of a scholar, and in his preface to a modernised
version of Higden’s “Polychronicon,” calls himself “William Caxton, a
simple person,” and modestly apologises for his attempt to render the
rude old English of his author into more intelligible language.

One of his translations from the French, entitled “The Mirror of
the World,” gives an outline of as much natural philosophy as was
at that time known. This book was printed at the request, and at
the cost, of Hugh Brice, a London alderman, and the choice speaks
well for the intelligence of that worthy citizen. Caxton seems to
have taken considerable pains over it, and says he has made it so
plain, that every _reasonable_ man may understand it, and begs his
readers’ indulgence if there be found any fault in the measurements
of the sun, moon, or firmament. To assist the intelligence of his
“reasonable” readers, he added twenty-seven diagrams explanatory
of scientific principles, and woodcuts representing the seven
liberal arts. In these woodcuts we observe that the schoolmaster
generally appears seated, while his scholars kneel before him. The
grammar-master is furnished with a rod, which need not cause dismay,
for perhaps it was but the ferule, part of the academic insignia of a
master of arts. The logician’s book rests on a reading-desk, and he
is expounding its contents to his kneeling pupils.

Dibdin calculates that Caxton’s translations alone would fill
twenty-five octavo volumes, and that they extend to over 5000
closely-printed pages. His biographer Lewis bears witness to the
fact that in his original writings he constantly expresses himself
as “a man who lived in the fear of God, and desired much to promote
His honour and glory.” But he thinks it necessary to regret that he
should have been carried away by the superstitions of his times so
far as to print saints’ legends, advocate pilgrimages to the Holy
Land, and proclaim himself an enthusiastic admirer of the Crusades.
Mercer and printer as he was, Caxton was indeed thoroughly informed
with the spirit of chivalry. It was this that directed his choice
of “The History of Godfrey de Bouillon,” “The Book of Chivalry,”
and the “Histories of King Arthur.” In his preface to the first,
the venerable printer makes an appeal to all Christian princes to
establish peace and amity one with another and unite for the recovery
of the Holy City, where our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ redeemed us
with His Precious Blood; to encourage them to which “he emprised to
translate his book.” In the second he utters a lament for the good
days when the knights of England were really knights, “when each
man knew his horse, and his horse knew him.” And in the third he
confesses his conviction that Arthur was no fabulous character, but
a real man; and exhorts his readers to study his noble deeds, “for
herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness,
hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and
sin. Do after the good, and leave the evil undone, and it shall bring
you good fame and honour.”

Lewis informs us that the progress of printing terribly alarmed the
ignorant and illiterate monks, who saw in the advancement of learning
their own impending ruin. If so, they took a very strange way of
expressing their alarm, for they were the first to patronise the new
invention; so that in a very few years after Caxton had set up his
press in Westminster Abbey, other printing-presses were at work in
the monasteries of St. Alban’s, Worcester, Bury, and others. The monk
who first introduced printing at St. Alban’s was the schoolmaster;
his name is not known, though Sir H. Chauncey styles him “Insomuch.”
Bale and Pits tell us that he was a reader in history, and say that
he had collected materials for a history of England, but died before
it was completed, that his papers fell into Caxton’s hands, who
printed them under his own name. But this is evidently incorrect.
The St. Alban’s printer was still working his press in 1486; and
Caxton’s chronicles were printed six years earlier. Before the
death of Caxton, several other printers, both English and foreign,
were established in London, and among the latter was the celebrated
Fleming Wynkyn de Worde. An Oxford press was at work so early as
1478, and seven years later the Latin translation of the Epistles of
Phalaris issued from the press, to which is affixed a Latin couplet,
boasting that the English who had been wont in former times to be
indebted to the Venetians for their books, now themselves exported
books to foreign countries:--

Celatos, Veneti, nobis transmittere libros
Cedite; nos aliis vendimus, O Veneti.

However, I have no intention here of tracing the history of English
printers, and have only said thus much of Caxton, because he presents
us with an admirable example of an intelligent Englishman of the
middle class--a practical persevering man, full of the healthy energy
which belongs to a life of labour; a vigorous, homely writer who
desired, in his day, to serve his country in so far as he had the
needful “cunning;” whose plain broad sense is illumined by a ray of
piety, and warmed into a touch of generous enthusiasm, which makes
his name more dear and venerable to us than that of many a profounder
scholar. Is it fancy or partiality which makes one detect in the
fair large type that he uses, so clear and readable, a reflection
of his own simple and genuine character; a character which, making
allowance for the difference of station, reminds us of that of the
great Alfred, to whose written language also that of Caxton bears a
remarkable resemblance.

He died in the year 1492, at the age of eighty, having two years
previously completed his translation of “The Craft how to Die Well,”
from which the following is an extract:--“When it is so, that what
a man maketh or doeth, it is made to come to some end, and if the
thing be good and well made, it must needs come to good end; then,
by better and greater reason, every man ought to intend in such wise
to live in this world in keeping the commandments of God that he may
come to a good end. And then out of this world, full of wretchedness
and tribulation, he may go to heaven unto God and His saints, into
joy perdurable.”

Two years after writing these lines he was laid to rest in the Church
of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, not far from the spot where for
eighteen years he had carried on his noble and useful labours.

_CHAPTER XX._

THE RENAISSANCE AT FLORENCE.

A.D. 1400 TO 1492.

Eastern travellers tell us of certain richly-irrigated soils in
tropical lands, whereon the seeds that are cast spring up in a single
night, covering, as if by magic, vasts plains, which before appeared
barren wastes, with a mantle of tender green. Something like this
was the rapid fertilisation exhibited in the world of letters after
the death of Petrarch. More than a century, indeed, had to elapse
before Italy could produce any names fit to compete with those of
Dante, Petrarch, or Bocaccio; but the freshly-awakened enthusiasm
for ancient learning, to which the writings of the two latter had
so largely contributed, gave birth to a generation of scholars
whose labours communicated a new direction to European studies.
They did not leave behind them, as monuments of their genius, epic
poems or philosophical discoveries, but they disinterred forgotten
manuscripts, restored their corrupted texts, revived the study of
Greek, and at the same time made known to Western Christendom the
works of the great Greek authors by means of their own laborious
Latin translations. They were, in short, a generation of grammarians,
critics, and pedagogues, and were the instruments of achieving an
intellectual revolution hardly less momentous than the religious and
political revolutions which were to follow in after years.

The watered soil and the fruitful seed did not fail to be cherished
by the sun of princely favour. The fifteenth century was not more
remarkable for its learned men, than for its noble patrons of
learning. In Naples there was Alphonsus of Arragon, who, in the
midst of his warlike campaigns, had the Commentaries of Cæsar read
to him daily, and whose displeasure against the Florentine Republic
was appeased by the timely present of a copy of Livy. When Gianozzo
Manetti was sent to him as ambassador from Florence, and delivered
to him his opening oration, the king, out of respect to so great
a scholar, would not so much as raise his hand to brush away a
troublesome fly; and on one occasion, when Manetti had joined in a
dispute which Alphonsus was carrying on with certain learned men of
his court on the subject of the Holy Trinity, he so won the royal
heart by his skill and eloquence that the king exclaimed, “Had I
but a single loaf, I would divide it with Gianozzo!” He was one of
the greatest book collectors of his time, and loved to surround
himself with scholars, such as Antony of Palermo, commonly known as
Panormita, who is said to have cured his royal master of a fever by
reading to him the Life of Alexander, by Quintus Curtius. Perhaps
it was after his recovery that Alphonsus despatched Panormita to
Venice for the singular purpose of begging from the Venetian senators
_an arm_ of the Roman historian, with which classical relic he
triumphantly returned to Naples. Most of the other men of letters
who then flourished in Italy, such as Poggio, Filelfo, Valla, and
George of Trebizond, were at one time or other attached to his court,
and magnificently rewarded for their literary labours; and Pius II.,
in his “Description of Europe,” numbers Alphonsus himself among
the philosophers of the day, and says that he could discourse both
learnedly and gracefully on the most abstruse theological questions.

At Ferrara, Nicholas of Este not only refounded the university of
that city, but succeeded in gaining possession of two great teachers,
Guarino the Elder, and John Aurispa, who directed the education of
his son Lionel, and whose schools were frequented by students from
every European land. Lionel repaid their care by himself becoming an
elegant scholar, and establishing at his court an academy of poetry;
and his brother Borso, who succeeded him, proved, perhaps, a yet
more splendid patron of letters, though he had not himself received
a learned education. A new poem of Leonardi, a map of the world, or
a correct copy of Ptolemy’s geography, were treasures which won from
Duke Borso many a golden florin for the scholar fortunate enough to
present them; and the archives of Ferrara and Modena became crowded
with decrees for the protection of scholars, which Tiraboschi assures
us are no less remarkable for the elegant Latinity in which they are
drawn up, than for the munificent spirit in which they are conceived.

The Gonzaghi held rule at Mantua, and there an academy flourished
under the princely patronage of the Marquis John Francis, concerning
which I must speak a little more particularly, as its master in
some respects stands alone among the pedagogues of the Renaissance.
Who has not heard of Victorino da Feltre, and the “Casa Giojosa,” in
which he taught his crowd of princely pupils, contriving to mingle
in their ranks not a few poor scholars, the perpetual objects of
his generous solicitude; whose fame was so widely spread, and whose
blameless character was so respected, that in those days of bitter
scholastic jealousies all the greatest masters of Italy offered him
their gratuitous services, and counted it an honour to direct a class
in the “Joyous House” of Mantua? The house derived its name from the
beauty of its situation, and the care which Gonzaga had taken to
adorn it with everything that could contribute to the pleasure or
instruction of its inmates. It contained galleries and arcades, all
painted with pictures of children at prayer, at study, or at play;
around it stretched delicious gardens and woods well stored with
game, and the graver lectures of the master were relieved by lessons
in riding, dancing, fencing, and every other graceful accomplishment
suitable for noble youth. Victorino, on assuming the direction
of the academy, did not entirely discountenance these pleasant
pastimes, nor did he turn the Joyous House into a Castle Dismal; he
contented himself with introducing such reforms as banished habits of
self-indulgence, and prepared his pupils, not only to become elegant
gentlemen, but hardy soldiers. He reduced the princely banquets
to a reasonable limit, confiscated sweetmeats, and showed himself
pitiless upon all coxcombry in dress. It is remarkable, that though
he left not a line behind him as a monument of his scholarship, his
celebrity has survived to our own day, and certainly equals that of
the greatest of his contemporaries, resting as it does solely on
his merits as a teacher of youth. Not merely was he distinguished
as a lecturer in Greek, Latin, and mathematics (though even in that
capacity he had few equals), but as one who trained the heart, formed
the manners, and established, as the basis of all education, a strict
observance of religious duties, victory over the passions, and the
mortification of pride, selfishness, and sensuality.

A no less passionate admirer of the ancient authors than his friend
Guarino, who often assisted him in his school, Victorino was careful
to guard his pupils from the paganising tendencies which he discerned
in the spirit of the age. Along with the Greek and Latin classics,
therefore, he presented to their study the Fathers of the Church, and
the Divine Scriptures, and when lecturing on the heathen poets and
historians, he was wont, in a few luminous words, to lay before his
hearers the grand Christian principles which were never to be effaced
from the soul by Gentile sophistries and eloquence. Those principles
he taught yet more by example than by precept. Two hours before his
classes opened, Victorino might have been found in the hospitals and
prisons of Mantua, relieving and comforting every form of distress.
He founded among his noble pupils an association of charity, for
enabling poor scholars to pursue their studies with greater facility,
and this he did, not merely as a means of carrying out his favourite
work of charity, but yet more with the view of training the sons of
the Italian _noblesse_ from their earliest years to care for the
inferior classes, and to give to the poor out of their abundance.
His whole life was marked by a total disregard of his own private
interests. The good Marchioness, Paula Gonzaga, never made but one
complaint of him, and that was, that often as she tried to furnish
him with a better wardrobe, he frustrated her charitable attempts;
for so soon as he found himself possessed of two coats, one went to
clothe a poorer man than himself. It may be added, that though a
simple layman, he embraced a stricter rule of life than was followed
by many an ecclesiastic of the time. In an age when the practice of
frequent communion was far from common, he approached the holy table
twice every week, and encouraged his pupils to communicate every
Sunday. It is said that in the early part of his scholastic career,
his intercourse with St. John Capistran and St. Bernardine of Siena
had awakened in his soul a strong desire to enter the cloister, from
which he was deterred by the arguments of his learned friend Ambrose
Traversari, who assured him that his vocation was to remain in the
world, and there train souls for heaven. And as a divine vocation
he embraced it; and cast over the scholastic profession a grace, a
dignity and a beauty of holiness which made Eugenius IV. exclaim,
when he was presented to him at Florence, “If my rank as Supreme
Pontiff permitted it, I would rise from my seat to show honour to so
great a man!”

However, it must not be supposed that Victorino was a mere devotee,
or that his school was of a retrograde class, excluding the new
lights of classical literature. He was the friend and correspondent
of all the scholars of his day, and the pupils of the “Casa Giojosa”
were no whit behind their countrymen in classical acquirements.
Ambrose Traversari, who was considered to equal Leonard of Arezzo as
a Latinist, and to surpass him in his knowledge of Greek, has left
an account, in his “Hodœporicon” and in his epistles, of a visit
which he paid to the school of Victorino, and a kind of friendly
examination to which he subjected its pupils. “I reached Mantua,” he
writes, “where I was welcomed with singular kindness by Victorino,
the best of men, and my very dear friend. He is with me as much as
his serious occupations allow; and not he alone, but the greater
part of his disciples. Some of them are so well advanced in Greek,
that they translate it into Latin. He teaches Greek to the sons and
daughters of the prince, and they all write in that language.” Again,
“Yesterday Victorino presented to me Gian Lucido, the youngest son
of the prince of Mantua, a youth of about fourteen. He recited to me
200 Latin verses of his own composition, in which he described the
pomp with which the Emperor Sigismund had been received at Mantua.
The little poem was very beautiful, and rendered more so by the grace
and correctness of its delivery. Then he showed me two theorems which
the boy had added to the geometry of Euclid. There was also one of
his sisters at the academy who, though only ten years old, writes
Greek so well, that I am ashamed to say many of my own scholars
cannot show anything to equal it.” This last-named pupil was Cecilia
Gonzaga, whose learning afterwards became renowned throughout Italy.
Her sister Margaret, also a pupil of Victorino, became the wife of
Lionel of Este, but she herself consecrated her talents to God, and
entered a convent of poor Clares, founded by her mother in the city
of Mantua.[307]

While the smaller potentates of Italy were vying one with another
in their encouragement of letters and learned men, the Sovereign
Pontiffs were setting them the example on a yet more magnificent
scale. From 1447 to 1455 the chair of St. Peter was filled by
Nicholas V., who to extreme simplicity of manners united immense
learning, and a mind capable of vast and magnificent designs. Whilst
he was restoring peace to Italy putting an end to the schism which
had sprung out of the Council of Basle, planning a fresh crusade,
and laying plans for the rebuilding of Rome, on a plan realised
only in the pages of Vasari, his agents were busy, all over the
world, collecting, collating, or translating manuscripts, and giving
to the world, in versions undertaken at his sole expense, those
long-forgotten works of classical antiquity, the “History of Diodorus
Siculus,” the “Cyropedia” of Xenophon, the histories of Polybius,
Thucydides, and Herodotus, the “Iliad” of Homer, the geography of
Strabo, many of the works of Plato, and the Greek Fathers of the
Church. Most of the scholars of whom we shall have to speak in the
following pages were employed by him as translators and secretaries,
and were amply recompensed for their work. Poggio was thus enabled
to complete his version of Diodorus. Lorenzo Valla received 500
gold scudi for his translation of Thucydides; 10,000 scudi, a
house and estate, were promised to Filelfo for his translation of
Homer, and when giving Perotti 500 scudi for his Latin Polybius,
the Pontiff condescended to apologise for the smallness of the sum,
which he owned was below the value of the book. He is known to have
offered 5000 scudi for a Hebrew version of St. Matthew’s Gospel,
which, however, was never found. In his early years he had often
given utterance to the promise that if he ever found himself in the
possession of riches, he would employ them in the multiplication of
good books. He nobly kept his word; and, when he died, left, as his
bequest to his successor, the Vatican library, furnished, through his
munificence, with 5000 precious manuscripts.

The accession to the pontifical chair of Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini,
who became Pope in 1458, under the title of Pius II., seemed to
promise much for the world of letters. He had already acquired a
European fame as a poet and historian, and had received the laurel
crown from the hands of Frederic III. But his short pontificate
was almost entirely absorbed in preparations for the projected
crusade, which he had resolved to undertake for the recovery of
the Eastern Empire, and death alone prevented his carrying out his
grand designs, and accompanying the army into the East in order to
encourage the soldiers with his presence. Meanwhile a flood of Greek
refugees poured into Europe, contributing very largely to encourage
the restoration of ancient learning, though they certainly had
not given the movement its first impulse. Even before the fall of
Constantinople in 1453, many Greek scholars had judged it prudent to
pass over into Italy in order to escape the ruin impending over their
country. Others, again, had been attracted thither by the Council of
Florence, held in 1441, for the extinction of the Greek schism. Among
the latter was the celebrated Bessarion, Archbishop of Nice, who,
convinced of the fallacy of the Greek claims by the arguments of the
Latin prelates, urged his countrymen to acknowledge the supremacy of
the Holy See, and thereby incurred so much odium among them as to
be forced to remain in exile. He was raised to the purple by Pope
Eugenius IV., and employed in several important legations, but it was
as a man of letters that he chiefly distinguished himself. His house
at Rome became a sort of academy, and in it he trained a number of
scholars, both Greek and Latin, not only in learning, but in piety
and good manners; for Bessarion was as remarkable for his courtesy
and virtue as for his erudition. His great library, collected at
a cost of 30,000 golden scudi, was presented to the Republic of
Venice, in return for the affection with which he had been received
in that city; and though he only acquired a knowledge of the Latin
tongue after his removal to Italy, he produced several works in that
language, among which was a “Defence” of his favourite philosopher
Plato.

But neither Rome nor Naples was destined to be the Athens of modern
Europe, but a city, still proud of her republican institutions,
though on the point of surrendering all but the name of sovereignty
into the hands of a successful family of merchant princes. Many
circumstances had combined to render Florence the focus of the great
literary movement then in progress, and thither chiefly resorted the
exiled Greek scholars--such as Argyrophilus, George of Trebizond,
Theodore of Gaza, and Gemistus. Schools had been opened in this
city so early as 1393 by Emmanuel Chrysoloras, which may be said
to have given the first impulse to the revival of Greek studies.
Emmanuel came over to Italy, in the first instance, in the quality
of ambassador from Constantinople, to seek for aid against the
Turkish arms among the princes of the West. But he found it more
to his taste, and possibly also to his profit, to exchange his
diplomatic functions for those of a professor of letters, and soon
reckoned among his disciples a group of scholars who were in their
turn promoted to chairs of Greek rhetoric in the universities of
Venice, Ferrara, Bologna, and Naples. One of these, Guarino, had
been formerly acquainted with Chrysoloras at Constantinople, whither
he had travelled in 1388 in search of manuscripts. Guarino was at
that time only eighteen years of age, and after acquiring the Greek
language, he set out on his return to Italy, bearing with him two
great chests filled with the treasures which he had collected. A
storm overtook the vessel, and in his dismay the captain ordered
the whole cargo on board the ship to be cast into the sea. In vain
did Guarino throw himself at his feet, and conjure him to spare his
precious volumes; they were ruthlessly hurled to the fishes, and
when morning dawned the poor scholar’s raven locks were discovered
to have turned as white as snow, such had been the anguish which his
loss had caused him. However, if he had lost his books, he had not
lost his learned gifts, and on reaching Italy, he became professor of
rhetoric, first at Florence, and afterwards at Venice and Ferrara.
John Aurispa was more fortunate in his researches, and succeeded,
in 1423, in bringing back to Italy 238 Greek manuscripts. We have
already spoken of him as lecturing at Ferrara under the patronage
of the Este. He was secretary both to Eugenius IV. and Nicholas V.,
and before settling at Ferrara had also taught both at Bologna and
Florence. He was succeeded in the chair of rhetoric in the latter
city by the celebrated Filelfo, who had likewise made the grand
tour of the East, and brought home a magnificent Greek library.
This last-named scholar had studied at Constantinople under John
Chrysoloras, brother to Emmanuel, whose daughter Theodora he married,
a circumstance which swelled his already preposterous vanity, and
which he never lost any opportunity of trumpeting to the Greek-loving
world.

Filelfo, on returning to Italy, first selected Bologna as the happy
spot which was to be blessed with his erudite presence. He entered
the city in a sort of triumph, the enthusiastic populace giving
him the welcome ordinarily reserved for sovereign princes, and
erecting a chair of Moral Philosophy and eloquence for his express
occupation, with the handsome annual salary of 450 gold scudi.
Every day saw some new festa invented to do honour to the great
Professor and his charming “Chrysolorine,” as he somewhat affectedly
designated his Greek spouse; and for a brief space Filelfo declared
himself satisfied with the amount of homage offered to his genius.
“Bologna is a charming city,” he writes in one of his epistles;
“the inhabitants are courteous, and not insensible to letters; and
what specially pleases me is the consideration and affection which
they display towards _me_.” In 1428, however, a popular revolution
dissipated all these pleasing prospects; Filelfo, in company with the
Papal Legate, had to fly for his life, and while the cities of Italy
scrambled which should obtain possession of so rare a scholar, the
coveted prize fell to the share of Florence, where Cosmo de’ Medici
and his rival, Philip Strozzi, were just then struggling which should
outshine the other in acts of princely munificence. The vanity of
Filelfo was once more for a time amply gratified for the Florentines
yielded him their hearty applause, and if we are to credit his own
words, made him the great lion of their city. “All Florence runs
after me” he writes in his letters; “everybody loves me; everybody
honours me and lauds me to the skies; my name is in everybody’s
mouth. Not only the first men of the city, but the noble ladies also
give place when they meet me, and show me so much respect that I am
really ashamed. I have every day 400 hearers, or more, and all of
them persons of rank and importance.”

And it must be owned that Filelfo worked hard to gain their applause.
The routine of his everyday work involved an amount of labour to
voice and brain, under which any one but a professor of the fifteenth
century must have succumbed. About daybreak he began by lecturing to
a crowded audience on Cicero, Livy, or the Iliad. His explanations of
Cicero were considered his greatest successes and by his ready and
brilliant eloquence he seemed to reproduce the Roman orator to the
eyes and ears of his hearers. Returning home, he gave audience to
the favoured few who were happy enough to be on his list of private
pupils; and at mid-day he was again in the public chair, commenting
on Terence, or the Greek historians, Xenophon and Thucydides. Every
evening there were literary reunions and learned academies to be
attended, or private assemblies, in which Filelfo was, or, at any
rate, considered himself to be, the great centre of attraction, and
nurtured his good opinion of himself with the homage of an obsequious
crowd. Even Sunday was no day of rest to him, for then, in the Church
of Sta. Maria dei Fiori, he lectured and commented on Dante.

The fascination of such a life, however, had a make-weight of
mortification. Filelfo was possessed with one of those bitter and
malignant dispositions that turn the very sweets of life into poison.
His very jokes were malignant, as, when disputing with another
grammarian on the quantity of a Greek syllable, he offered to pay him
200 scudi if he were proved wrong, on condition that, if right, he
might have the satisfaction of shaving off his adversary’s beard. The
poor grammarian lost his wager, and, in spite of all his entreaties,
Filelfo gratified his revenge in the true spirit of a literary
Shylock. It was quite enough for any other scholar to be praised and
honoured for him to become at once the mark for Filelfo’s spite.
“What does Guarino know, of which Filelfo is ignorant?” he exclaims
in one of his letters, his bile being excited by the fact that
Guarino’s name was just then in everybody’s mouth. This intolerable
presumption raised him enemies in every city; and, indeed, in those
days it seems to have been the habit of literary men to spend the
greater part of their time in biting and devouring one another.
Filelfo, perhaps, may be regarded as the most venomous disputant
of them all. He who talked so much of being “loved” by everybody,
hated and made himself hated by the entire world. He hated the men
of learning who shared with him the favour of the Florentines,
because he regarded them as his rivals. He hated the great Cosmo, the
Pericles of the New Athens, because his benefits were not exclusively
showered on himself. He hated the good and honest citizen Niccoli,
the founder of St. Mark’s public library, because he was a friend of
the Medici. And he hated the very populace who gaped and wondered
at his erudition, because his appetite for flattery growing as it
was ministered to, they could not always satisfy its cravings,
and at such times Filelfo was ready to denounce them all in that
malignant language of which the elegant commentator on Tully was an
accomplished master. He poured out his venom on Cosmo in a series
of villanous libels, accusing him of attempting his life by poison
and the dagger; yet, at the very time when he was inventing these
calumnies against a man who had loaded him with favours, he was
himself hiring assassins to attack his rival, Carlo Marsuppini, in
the streets of Florence--a crime for which the Republic afterwards
condemned him to have his tongue cut out, should he ever set foot
again upon their territory.

To his other vices Filelfo added that of a grasping avarice: he was
continually appealing to the different princes of Italy for larger
money advances, and loading them with abuse if they did not satisfy
his demands. He threatened Pius II. to turn Turk, if the pension
granted by that Pontiff were not more regularly paid; and his
contemporary scholars continually complained that, after promising
them books, he would afterwards withdraw from his bargain, and demand
back again from them what was not really his own property. But,
in candour, it must be confessed that, in this last-named matter,
Filelfo appears to have been more sinned against than sinning. A very
bad habit prevailed at that time among literary men of borrowing
books and never returning them. Francesco Barbaro is accused of
keeping a chest of Filelfo’s books for thirty years; and similar
peccadilloes are charged to the account of Aurispa and Giustiniani.
Possibly, observes Tiraboschi, they regarded book thefts in the same
light as monks had been used occasionally to regard the pilfering of
holy relics. Anyhow, the injury was sensibly felt by the unfortunate
owner, and did not improve the asperity of his temper.

Whatever infamy attaches to the character of Filelfo, he met with his
match in one of the literary rivals whom he encountered at Florence.
Poggio Bracciolini had received his education in his native city,
and to a perfect knowledge of Latin and Greek literature added the
rarer merit of being a good Hebrew scholar. For thirty-four years of
his life he held the office of apostolic secretary under successive
Pontiffs, and during all that time he never spent an entire year
in any one city. He was present in his official capacity at the
Council of Constance, and to while away the hours that hung heavy
on his hands, made an excursion to the neighbouring abbey of St.
Gall, and disinterred from a damp tower the mouldering manuscript of
Quinctilian’s “Institutes.” From thence he passed over to England
to pursue his researches in the monastic libraries of this country,
but declares that they were full of nothing but “modern doctors,
whom _we_ should not think worthy so much as to be heard.” By his
discoveries of classic authors, and his own critical and historical
writings, he contributed more than any other scholar of his time
to the revival of learning, so that some writers have gone so far
as to confer on the first half of the fifteenth century the title
of “the age of Poggio.” But his glory was sadly clouded by the
furious quarrels in which he engaged with all his contemporaries,
and the foul and disgraceful language which he poured out against
every one who was unhappy enough to come into collision with him.
Among the works of this great champion of classic Latinity are four
“Invectives” against Filelfo, and five against Lorenzo Valla. The
latter were written in revenge for certain criticisms which Valla had
published of his Epistles, and are, says Tiraboschi, “a disgraceful
monument to the memory of a writer who observes neither rule nor
measure, but defiles his pen with every hideous abomination which
malice could suggest against his adversaries.” Valla, who was a
scholar of precisely the same temper, replied in his “Antidotes to
Poggio,” and Filelfo in his “Satires”--all of which are said to be
conceived in the same rabid and malignant strain. Nor was it only
against such men as these that Poggio directed his venom. Guarino
was made the subject of another ferocious onslaught, for no worse
misdemeanour than having differed from Poggio in preferring the
character of Cæsar to that of Scipio! George of Trebizond, a man of
like temper to his own, was another of his opponents, and on one
occasion the two disputants, after publicly giving each other the
lie, came to blows, and were with difficulty separated by their
hearers. And at last this detestable spirit grew on him to such
a degree that, no longer content with attacking individuals, he
published libels, if we may so say, on the literary world at large,
and did his best in his “Dialogue against Hypocrites,” to slaughter
the reputation of every man of virtue and celebrity in the world
of letters, such as the Blessed John Dominic, Ambrose Traversari,
Cardinal Luca Manzuoli, and the entire Franciscan Order. With all
this, Poggio probably held the first place among the scholars of
his time, unless the superiority be given to his adversary, Lorenzo
Valla, who is generally held to have surpassed him in grammatical
erudition. Erasmus, indeed, treated the merits of Poggio very
lightly. “Poggio was possessed of so little real learning,” he
says, “that, even if his books were less full of abominations than
they are, they would not repay perusal; as it is, were he even the
most erudite of writers, all good men must regard him with horror.”
Nor can a much better character be given to Valla; in arrogance
and vanity he equalled Filelfo; and in his famous “Treatise on the
Elegance of the Latin Tongue,” gave the world to understand that
he was about to explain a language which before his time had been
understood by none. “These books,” he says, “_will contain nothing
that has ever been said by anybody else_. For many ages past, not
only has no one been able to speak Latin, but none have understood
the Latin they read, the philosophers have had no comprehension
of the philosophers, the advocates of the orators, the lawyers of
the jurists,” and so of the rest. This kind of self confidence is,
however, so universal among scholars of the age as hardly to call
for special notice; but it was the least fault of which Valla stands
charged. Passing over grosser accusations brought against him by
adversaries whose habits of calumny render their testimony of little
value, there was a taint of ingratitude in Valla’s character which
is particularly offensive. Having, in his “Declamation against the
Donation of Constantine,” attacked the claims of the Holy See in
terms which Hallam himself admits could not be excused, be retired
from Rome, and found a warm welcome at the court of Naples. Here,
however, he soon got involved in difficulties with the Inquisition,
in consequence of certain impieties to which he gave utterance on
the subject of the Holy Trinity and other fundamental dogmas of
the faith. He was only released from prison through the friendly
interference of Panormita. Yet as soon as he recovered his liberty
he engaged in a furious quarrel with his benefactor, and spared
no calumnies by which he could bring discredit on his name and
character. He treated it as a crime for any one to differ from
him in any point of taste and criticism, and punished all such
transgressions by blackening the fair fame of his opponents.
Nevertheless, he met with far gentler treatment than he deserved,
for it was after he had established his renown as the best Latinist,
and, next to Poggio, the most malignant calumniator of his day, that
Nicholas V. invited him back to Rome, made him a canon of St. John
Lateran, and employed him in numerous translations, all of which
were liberally paid for. Valla accepted the dignities and the money
offered him by the Pope, and took advantage of his favourable turn
of fortune to complete that attack on the papal sovereignty which he
had before left unfinished; and he did so in a style which, Hallam
informs us, rather resembles the violence of Luther than what might
have been expected from a Roman official of the fifteenth century.
The clemency shown him by the Pope was perhaps excessive, for he was
suffered to live at Rome unmolested, and retained the office and
pension of apostolic secretary to the day of his death.

It must be owned that the portrait gallery through which we are
passing, has thus far been anything but pleasing, nor can it be
denied that in their main features of malice and presumption, most of
the scholars of the age exhibit a family resemblance to those noted
above. Hallam observes that the inferior renown enjoyed by Giannozzo
Manetti, is probably owing to the greater mildness of his character,
which involved him in fewer of those altercations to which Poggio and
Valla owed a great part of their celebrity. And Tiraboschi apologises
to his readers for leaving some portions of his history somewhat
obscure, on the ground that the calumnies and misrepresentations
indulged in by almost all writers of the period, render it nearly
impossible to rely on any of their statements, and to accept as facts
anything which they may say unfavourable of one another.

Some noble exceptions, however, are to be found, and among them
may be quoted the example of Leonard Bruni, or, as he is more
frequently styled from the place of his birth, Leonard Aretino.
Whilst Chancellor of Florence he one day engaged in a public
philosophic dispute with Giannozzo Manetti, in which the latter
gained the advantage over him. Stung with annoyance, Leonard let fall
some injurious words, to which, however, Giannozzo replied with his
customary good temper, and both returned to their respective homes.
But Leonard was so pursued by remorse for his fault that he could not
close his eyes all night, and so soon as morning dawned, he hastened
to the house of Giannozzo, who was greatly surprised to see the first
magistrate of Florence at his door at such an early hour. Leonard,
however, only bade him follow him into the city, and conducting
him to the great bridge over the Arno, then the most frequented
thoroughfare, he publicly asked his pardon, and acknowledged he had
had no rest since he had spoken injuriously of so noble an adversary.
Giannozzo received his apology with a modesty which was equally
admirable, and the friendship which from that day sprung up between
these two great men, remained unbroken to the death of Leonard,
on which occasion the funeral oration was spoken over his body by
Giannozzo.

From the scholars of Florence let us now turn to her Mecænas, the
merchant prince, who, for thirty years, held the first rank in the
Republic, and deserved to obtain from his grateful fellow citizens
the title of “Father of his country.” Cosmo de’ Medici was beyond all
question the greatest of his illustrious race. Machiavel calls him
the most magnificent and most generous of men, and Flavio declares
that he surpassed all his contemporaries in wisdom, humanity, and
liberality. His political career seems to have been for the most
part free from the vice of selfish ambition; whilst as a patron of
letters, even in that age of splendid patrons, he had no equal.
In Florence alone he founded three public libraries, expending
36,000 ducats on that of St. Mark’s, which he enriched with 400
Latin and Greek manuscripts, whilst he appointed as librarian
Thomas di Sarzana, afterwards Pope Nicholas V. A few years later
he rebuilt the library, and added a collection of Hebrew, Arabic,
Sanscrit, and Chaldaic books, collected at enormous cost. His love
of literature was so genuine, and so superior to the selfishness
of a mere bibliopolist, that even when in temporary exile at
Venice, he could not help opening his purse-strings in favour of
the Venetian library of St. George, and employed his fellow exile,
the architect Michelozzi, in providing it with reading benches and
other conveniences, presenting it also with many books. It was his
wish to draw to Florence all the learned men of the day. He it was
who invited thither the Greek Professor Argyrophilus, to the end
that he might instruct the Florentine youth in the philosophy of
Aristotle. A vast number of Greek exiles received from him a princely
welcome, to say nothing of the crowd of native scholars who thronged
his palace. Pages might be filled with the mere enumeration of the
convents, churches, and hospitals which he built or endowed, not
merely at Florence, but even at Jerusalem, where he founded a large
hospital for poor pilgrims. He had stewards and administrators in
every part of Europe, who helped him to dispense his treasures on
worthy objects. Yet with all this, his own establishment was always
conducted on the most modest scale, and he who enriched scores of
Florentine families, never assumed a more brilliant appearance than
that of an ordinary citizen. His liberality was altogether free from
ostentation, and appears to have flowed from the purest and most
Christian motives. “Never yet,” he complained to one of his friends,
“have I been able to spend in God’s honour the sums for which, when I
look over my ledger, I find myself indebted to Him.”

It was in the year 1438, whilst Pope Eugenius IV. was residing
at Florence, and the Council was still sitting which had for its
object the extinction of the Greek schism, that a certain Greek,
named George Gemistus, arrived in the city, and one day entered the
palace of Cosmo with a copy of Plato under his arm. This celebrated
scholar had received the surname of _Pletho_, in consequence of his
enthusiastic admiration of the academic philosopher, and is more
commonly known by this sobriquet than by his patronymic. Pletho, as
we shall therefore call him, read a few pages of his book to the
enraptured ears of Cosmo, and very soon communicated to him a portion
of his own enthusiasm. Until then Cosmo had been a stranger to all
save the Peripatetic philosophy, and the ideas which now presented
themselves to his mind seemed like the opening of some new world. In
his delight he conceived the plan of establishing a Platonic academy
at Florence, a design which was put into execution without delay.
Platonism, however, was then so new in the schools of the West, that
Cosmo could find no professor who seemed capable of filling the chair
of philosophy to be attached to this academy; and he resolved to
educate for that purpose a child whose talents had already attracted
his notice. Marsilius Ficinus was the son of his physician; his tiny
frame and delicate constitution seemed incapable of making head
against the host of maladies with which he had been beset from the
cradle. But Cosmo’s quick eye discerned the indications of early
genius. “This boy,” he said, “is destined to cure, not the maladies
of the body, but those of the soul.”

With his customary bounty, he became a second father to his future
professor, and under his direction, Ficinus received a thoroughly
Platonic education. He was carefully reared in the maxims and
philosophy of the great master, to the end that having early imbibed
the principles of Platonism as a kind of second nature, he might be
qualified afterwards to become the head preceptor of the new academy.
The whole scheme had something visionary about it, and no less so was
the character of the man chosen to carry it out. From his boyhood he
was a poet and a dreamer. He loved to wander at early daybreak by
the banks of the Arno, and recite aloud to the woods and the stream
the verses of Virgil’s “Georgics.” Light and country air were his
two necessaries; he seemed to live in the sunshine, and on those
rare occasions when the fair sky of Florence was overspread with
clouds, he could neither write nor study. His work as a composer was
exclusively carried on in the early morning hours; then it was that
his genius seemed to wake with the sunrise; and if he also spent long
night hours over his manuscripts, he only then applied himself to the
labour of revision. Cosmo gave him a little lamp, which was often
found burning when daylight dawned in the east; he also provided him
with books, and specially with manuscripts of Plato procured from
Venice at an enormous cost, and to these Ficinus applied himself with
such incessant application, that his health almost entirely gave
way; in fact, his life seemed always hanging by a single thread, and
was preserved only by such extraordinary precautions as are bestowed
on some exotic plant. At the age of twenty-three, the young student
considered himself ready to read to a learned assembly, presided
over by Cosmo, the first pages of his “Platonic Institutions.”
When the lecture was over, his patron smiled and gently shook his
head. Ficinus understood the gesture, but was not discouraged; he
prepared for a fresh course of studies, and placed himself under the
historian Platina, more illustrious for his Greek erudition than for
his orthodoxy, but the latter condition was not greatly cared for
by the young Platonist. In a few months he found that he had made
such rapid progress, that, remodelling his work, he submitted it to
the judgment of Marcus Musurus, the Greek professor of Venice, and
the first editor of Aristophanes. He found Musurus sitting at his
writing-table, and having engaged him to give an impartial opinion,
began the reading of his manuscript. As the professor listened, he
amused himself with turning over the various implements before him.
Ficinus at last paused, and asked him what he thought of it.

“I think _this_,” said Musurus, and taking the ink bottle, he shook
it over the open manuscript as if it had been sand. Ficinus betrayed
no impatience, which is saying something for his philosophy; and
retiring to the country house which Cosmo had presented to him,
devoted himself to the task of a third revision. Before it was
completed his great patron died leaving his son Pietro and his
grandson Lorenzo de Medici to succeed him in his pre-eminence, both
in the literary and political world. Pietro and Lorenzo showed
themselves as eager to encourage the Platonic academy as its
first founder had been; and their enthusiasm was shared by their
contemporaries. All the scholars of Italy aspired to the honour
of membership; Landino, Alberti, and John Picus of Mirandola,
these met together, and contended for the silver laurel wreath,
which was the prize of merit; and one of Pietro’s first acts was
to establish a professorship, the chair of which was immediately
bestowed on Ficinus. In the meetings of this academy the honours
bestowed on Plato came very near to idolatry. Its festivals were
the anniversaries of his birth and death, a lamp was burnt in his
honour, and the professor, in lecturing to his fellow academicians,
addressed them, not as “my brethren in Christ,” but as “my brethren
in Plato.” It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Ficinus did not rest
content with his professor’s chair and his academic reputation. In
such a position his Platonic enthusiasm might have been productive of
little injury, but at the age of forty-two he entered the priesthood,
became canon of Florence, and took up the study of theology. Plato,
however, was not laid aside for St. Paul. On whatever subject he
wrote or spoke, says Tiraboschi, he seemed unable to refrain from
tinging it with the doctrines of the academy. Gemistus, his first
master, had been an avowed disciple of the Alexandrian school, and in
the furious controversy then raging between the Platonists and the
Aristotelians, had highly lauded not only the writings of the Greek
philosopher, but those of Hermes and Zoroaster. In fact, as Hallam
cautiously expresses it, “there were some grounds for ascribing
to him a rejection of Christianity.” Ficinus cannot be charged
with similar scepticism, though his lectures seem to have sown the
seeds of religious doubt in the minds of some of his hearers. He
believed the Gospels, but they were the Gospels _Platonised_. He
went so far as to desire that his favourite author should be read
in the Christian churches, and published eighteen books of what he
called “Platonic Theology.” Hallam calls this work “a beautiful, but
visionary and hypothetical system of Theism.” He did not attack the
Christian dogmas, but he treated them as a philosopher rather than as
a theologian. He was not content with gathering up and giving to the
world the profound maxims of his illustrious master; but he undertook
to harmonise the teaching of Plato and the teaching of Scripture, and
attempted to prove that all the most prominent Christian mysteries
were to be found in the _Criton_, which he regarded almost as a
second Gospel.[308]

The extravagances in which Ficinus indulged were equally maintained
in other learned academies. That which flourished at Rome under
the direction of Pomponius Lœtus drew on its members the hostility
of Paul II., who has been repeatedly charged with “persecuting
the learned,” out of that natural antipathy to learning, of which
Popes and cardinals are sometimes imagined to possess a kind of
monopoly. The historian who originated the charge, however, is no
other than Platina, the former master of Ficinus, whom Paul II. had
made an enemy by suppressing the college of the _Abbreviatori_ to
which he belonged. He was himself a member of the Roman academy,
the suppression of which has been differently related by different
historians, but it appears certain that the alleged crime of the
members was, not their learning, but a real or supposed plot against
the Government and certain impious and anti-Christian tenets which
they were reported to hold. Tiraboschi considers that their innocence
of the charges brought against them may be deduced from the fact
that, after a year’s imprisonment, they were all set at liberty, and
that Platina in particular was afterwards honourably employed by
Sixtus IV., who made him librarian of the Vatican Library. Possibly
the impieties of which they were guilty might rather have sprung
from the foolish conceit of pedants than any positive unbelief; yet
still it must be owned that some of their acts had a suspicious
character, and could not but have appeared reprehensible in the eyes
of the Pontiff. Michael Canensius declares they were wont to affirm
that the Christian religion rested on no sufficient evidence, but
only on the testimony of a few weak-headed saints: that they laid
aside the use of their Christian names, and adopted others chosen
from the great heathens of antiquity; that they were in the habit
of swearing by the heathen gods and goddesses; that they disputed
concerning the immortality of the soul, and maintained many Platonic
errors, that Pomponius disdained the Scriptures, and was wont to
say that Christianity was only fit for barbarians, and that, in his
enthusiasm for ancient Rome, he even raised and decorated altars to
the god Romulus. Some of these charges the accused did not deny; but
though examined under the torture, it does not seem that anything
transpired which offered satisfactory proofs of the existence of a
conspiracy.[309] Paul contented himself, therefore, with suppressing
the academy, and thereby earned for himself immense obloquy, and the
character of being an enemy of letters; a most undeserved reproach,
for, besides maintaining a number of poor scholars in his palace, and
being an eager collector of ancient manuscripts and monuments, his
biographer tells us that he was accustomed to spend many hours of the
night reading the ancient authors, and “that he loved all learned
men, _provided_ that to their learning were joined good manners.”
This last condition was not always thought equally essential by
patrons of letters of this period, who seem, as a general rule, to
have cared but little what a man’s life was, provided he knew Greek.
Filelfo, however, adds his testimony (which, in this instance, may
perhaps be regarded as trustworthy), that Paul II. “was ever a
favourer of learned men.”

We must not, however, suppose that the scholars of the Renaissance
were exclusively made up of captious grammarians and philosophic
sceptics. The movement had its fairer side; it was bewitching in
its promise of literary excellence, and was not even devoid of its
character of romance. Chivalry was not yet entirely extinct, and
among the masters and scholars of the Italian schools some took up
the cause of learning in a truly chivalrous spirit, and without a
thought of self-interest, devoted themselves to study and teaching,
as to a work by which they might benefit their kind. Their enthusiasm
for their favourite pursuits appears sometimes in a more amiable
character than that which it assumed in the hands of Poggio and his
adversaries. Among the grammar professors enumerated by Tiraboschi
we find the name of Piattino de’ Piatti, a noble youth brought up
as a page in the household of Galeazzo Sforza, who for a very small
offence caused him to be imprisoned for fifteen months in a frightful
dungeon. We next find him figuring at a splendid tournament at the
court of Ferrara, where he bore away the prize, and at the same time
struck up an ardent friendship with the poet Strozza, who addressed
some verses to him, praising him for knowing how to blend together
the merits of the soldier and the scholar. For several years he
bore arms under the Duke of Urbino, but his warlike occupations
did not hinder him from cultivating the Muses, and he published a
volume of Latin poems, which was one of the earliest works printed
in Italy. Disappointed at not receiving the promotion he expected
from the French kings Charles VIII. and Louis XII., he abandoned
the profession of arms, and embraced that of schoolmaster in the
little village of Garlasco, opening his humble academy with as much
solemnity as if it had been a university, with a learned Latin
oration. And we are assured that the number of good scholars then
to be found in Italy was so great that many other villages besides
Garlasco could boast of possessing as their schoolmasters first-rate
professors of eloquence.

But the palm of Christian scholarship belongs, at this time, beyond
all question, to John Picus, Prince of Mirandola, whose brief life
closed in his thirty-second year, and whose acquirements probably
surpassed those recorded of any other scholar. Whilst still a child
he evinced so retentive a memory as to be able at once to repeat
any verses recited in his presence, and displayed a sort of natural
predisposition to the study of the _belles-lettres_. His mother,
however, who wished him to embrace the ecclesiastical state, sent
him to Bologna, to read canon law, at the age of fourteen, and after
spending two years there, he proceeded to study philosophy in the
principal schools of France and Italy. Besides a knowledge of the
scholastic writers, he acquired during the next six years the Latin,
Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaic tongues; but his enthusiastic
and imaginative disposition led him to explore with eagerness the
mysteries of the Jewish Cabala, a mass of mystic doctrine attributed
to Esdras; on which idle fallacies, says Corniani, Mirandola expended
a genius which was fitted to reach the most elevated truths of
philosophy.

In his twenty-third year the young scholar appeared at Rome, and
astonished the learned world by offering publicly to defend nine
hundred theses on questions logical, ethical, mathematical, physical,
metaphysical, theological, magical, and cabalistic; in short, _de
omni re scibili_. Four hundred of these propositions were taken from
Latin, Greek, Jewish, and Arabic doctors; the rest were announced
to be his own opinions, which he was prepared to defend, subject
to the judgment of the Church. There was a dash of vanity in all
this, excusable perhaps in so young a scholar, who could not but
be conscious of his superiority, and who in his anxiety to display
it, offered to pay the expenses of any learned man who might come
to oppose him from the utmost parts of the earth. His propositions
were meanwhile examined by order of Innocent VIII., and thirteen
of them pronounced unsound; whereupon he published an “Apology,”
explaining in what sense they were put forth, but wholly submitting
to the judgment passed on them by authority. The Holy Father,
therefore, while condemning the theses, forbade their author to be
in any way molested, and when some of his enemies revived these
accusations on the death of Innocent, his successor, Alexander VI.,
appointed a commission, which declared his innocence of the charge
of heresy. He next appeared at Florence, the most brilliant of all
the brilliant throng that was gathered in the court of Lorenzo de’
Medici, and was admitted to the closest friendship of that prince,
and his favourite scholars Ficinus and Politian. Young, gifted in
mind and person, and possessed of all the fairy favours of rank,
wealth, and an honourable fame, Picus of Mirandola yielded at first
to the fascinations of the world, which perhaps never assumed a more
bewitching guise than in the court of the Medici. His ardent poetic
temperament was sensitively alive to the seductions of pleasure,
when pleasure came hand in hand with all that was graceful in art
and polished in literature. But a few years of such life sufficed to
withdraw the veil from his eyes; the pursuit after worldly honours
and delights seemed after all, to use his own words, but a child’s
chase after painted soap-bubbles; and the day came when, flinging all
his lighter poetry into the flames, he prostrated before the altar of
the Blessed Virgin, and vowed to dedicate the remainder of his life
to the service of God alone. From that time he became as remarkable
for his admirable virtues, as he had been before for his learning;
his charities to the poor were dispensed on a princely scale, and
so great a horror did he conceive for the vain glory into which he
had been once betrayed, that he only allowed his writings to appear
under the name of some other author. He refused every solicitation to
engage in public disputations, and spent the remainder of his days
in mingled prayer and study, to which latter exercise, says Paul
Cortese, he generally devoted twelve hours a day.

It is remarkable that Picus of Mirandola, though so thoroughly
imbued with the literary tastes of the Renaissance, was very far
from sharing in that contempt for the elder Christian schoolmen,
in which the scholars of the fifteenth century commonly indulged.
When Hermolaus Barbarus, in one of his letters, gave vent to his
sentiments of scorn for men who could write such bad Latin, Picus
replied in an epistle, which Hallam quotes as affording a favourable
example of the ease and elegance of his own style, and in which he
puts a very good defence in the mouth of those despised barbarians;
and Hermolaus had nothing better to say in return than that they
would certainly have disowned their advocate for defending them in
such classical language.

But we must now enter the school of another Florentine canon, who
had the merit not only of being learned in Greek and Latin, but of
possessing some of that original and poetic genius which, since the
days of Petrarch, had been rare in Italy, overlaid, it may be, by
the superincumbent weight of grammar learning. Angelo Politian had
first made himself known to the world of letters by a graceful poem,
composed when a mere youth on the occasion of a tournament, at which
Julian and Lorenzo, the two sons of Pietro de’ Medici, appeared in
the lists. The young poet, scarce fifteen years of age, was at once
received into the Medici Palace, and astonished his tutors, Landino,
Argyrophilus, and Ficinus, with his Latin epigrams. He was not much
older when he undertook to translate Homer into Latin verse, and at
twenty-nine we find him filling the chair of rhetoric at Florence, a
distinction of which he was abundantly vain. Vanity was, in fact, his
prevailing fault, and it raised him a swarm of enemies who could not
forgive his airs of superiority, and those biting sarcasms which he
knew how to clothe in the most elegant Latin. But even his enemies
admitted that, as a professor of eloquence, he stood without a rival.
Equally at home in Greek, Latin, or Hebrew eloquence, in the Platonic
or the Peripatetic philosophy, in rhetoric or in jurisprudence, he
amazed his hearers by the multiplicity of his acquirements, no less
than by the facility of his style. No wonder that a lecturer of this
stamp should succeed in drawing around him all the great intellects
of that wonderful age. On the benches beneath that chair you might
see the young prince Picus of Mirandola, and the grey-headed men who
had been Politian’s own masters; a crowd of foreigners, too, such as
the Englishmen Grocyn and Linacre, who were destined to carry back
the seeds of polite letters to their own barbaric land, and other
pilgrims from France, Germany, and Portugal, besides native scholars
from all the cities of Italy. Lorenzo, who in 1469 had succeeded
to his father’s wealth and dignities, would also join the learned
throng, and hang on the honied words of the young professor. As
every one knows, the Muses are not always so happy as to carry the
Graces in their train, and Politian’s portrait has been drawn by
Jovius in no very flattering terms. On first beholding him, he says,
it was impossible to avoid an involuntary movement of surprise and
disgust; his huge, unsightly nose, squinting eye, and awkward stoop,
inspired no favourable impression; but no sooner had he begun to
speak, than your senses were fairly taken captive, and closing your
eyes, you willingly gave yourself up to the power of that graceful
eloquence and the exquisite music of that voice, which very soon
made you indifferent to the defect of other natural advantages in
the speaker. “Yes,” you might have said to yourself as you listened,
“this is indeed rhetoric; hitherto in that chair I have listened to
grammarians and critics, but the Muses have at last taken pity on our
grammar-beladen ears, and sent us one who can feel the sentiment of
Virgil and Homer, as well as explain their syntax.”

It was, in fact, the possession of that inexplicable gift, the
poetic sensibility, which raised Politian to an eminence differing
so very widely from that of the Poggios and Vallas who had preceded
him, and which made him more charming as a lecturer, and perhaps
more amiable as a man. Instead of wrangling over verbs and cases,
he loved to picture to his own and his hearers’ imagination, the
rural scenes which Virgil painted; and seizing some happy phrase
of the Latin poet, to expand, to colour, to revivify it till you
wandered under the shade of the beech trees, and heard the very hum
of the bees among the odorous limes. At such moments, laying down
his book, with the skill of an Improvisatore, he would take you to
the woods and fields, and make you listen to “the soft and soul-like
sounds” of the wind, as it sighed among the pines, to the rustling
of the oak leaves in Vallombrosa, to the merry chattering of the
tiny brook over its bed of pebbles, and the lowing of the herds in
the rich Tuscan pastures. All this, to the ears of the Florentines,
so long condemned to a sort of intellectual aridity, was like fresh
showers on a thirsty soil. To none was it more delightful than to
Lorenzo, himself a poet of no mean ability, and keenly alive to the
charm of rural sights and rural sounds; and after listening to such
a lecture, he would wait in the hall, and taking the professor by
the arm, would lead him out to that fair villa at Fiesole, which
looked over the dome and towers of Florence, and over a varied
landscape of mountains, woods, and gardens, all glittering in the
sunset glories of a Tuscan sky. There were gathered day after day
the choicest intellects and the most erudite minds, men of all
nations and of all gifts: critics, artists, poets, antiquarians;
Lorenzo had a welcome for each, and was as ready to reward the happy
presentee of an ancient medal or a classic vase, as he was to add
to his library a Greek manuscript brought from the farther end of
Europe by Lascaris,[310] or a new treatise from the pen of Landino.
Every day some fresh treasure was displayed to the admiration of his
illustrious friends, some _chef d’œuvre_ of ancient sculpture, or a
heap of Eastern manuscripts, sold to him by a Jewish merchant for
their weight in gold. “I love these books so dearly,” he once said,
“that I would give my whole princely wardrobe to purchase them.”
The arts were not forgotten. Perugino was among the honoured guests
of Fiesole; and among the pupils of Politian was the young sculptor
Michael Angelo Buonarotti, whom Lorenzo lodged in his palace, and
treated as his own son. The Platonic academicians, too, found a warm
supporter in the grandson of their founder, and Ficinus gratified
to the full his thirst for sunshine, and his dreamy poetic tastes
in that little chamber, where morning after morning he loved to
throw open the windows, and listen to the song of the birds as they
greeted the dawn, and drink in the fragrance of the hawthorn and the
honeysuckle, and the thousand exotic plants which blossomed on the
parterres and terraces. There, to use the exquisite similitude of the
English philosopher, “the breath of the flowers in the open air came
and went like the warbling of music;”[311] there the fountains threw
up their graceful jets, and made a pleasant murmur to the ear, and
the sensitive and highly-wrought organisation of the Platonic scholar
was soothed and invigorated by contact with all that was beautiful to
the eye and ear in nature or in art.

All this was delightful enough, nor is it to be wondered at that
the grace and fascination of such scenes blinded the eyes of those
who took part in them, and the judgment of those who have been
their historians. But, in truth, there was another side to the
picture. The revival of classic taste at Florence was a revival of
practical Paganism. It was not a mere return to those principles
which had been admitted in the Christian schools before the rise
of Scholasticism, when the Latin poets were freely studied even in
ecclesiastical seminaries, and the Greek learning of the monks of St.
Gall earned for some among them the title of the _Frati Ellenici_.
It was a great deal more than this. It not only restored the study
of the classic writers, but also their habits of thought, and their
gross sensuality. It revived the Pagan, and excluded the Christian
ideas; Christ was no longer recognised as “the One Teacher of man;”
on the contrary, even from the pulpit you heard quotations from
Virgil and Juvenal quite as often as from the Gospels. A style of
speaking had become fashionable, according to which a certain sort
of barbarism was associated with the idea of Christianity, as though
it were something Gothic and transmontane. The Saints and Fathers
of the Church gradually disappeared from the schools; the touching
representations of Christian mysteries were withdrawn from the
public eye; and society, instead of being permeated, as in former
centuries, with an atmosphere of the faith, was now redolent of
heathenism. Christianity was looked on as unworthy of furnishing
subjects to the pen or pencil of the scholar. In those trellised
gardens where the wits of Florence assembled to listen to the
graceful eloquence of Politian, were grouped fragments of ancient
art or the copies of modern sculptors, the eager students of the new
school of naturalism. Here it was an undraped Venus, there a Satyr or
a Bacchanal. Sometimes Lorenzo appeared among the brilliant throng,
and condescended to assign to the artists whom he entertained a new
subject for their genius. To Pollajuolo he gave the twelve labours
of Hercules, to Ghirlandajo the misfortunes of Vulcan, to Luca
Signorelli all the gods and goddesses of Olympus, whose stories were
to be represented with little of that reserve demanded by Christian
modesty. Yet artists might have been found at that time whose genius
was impressed with a more religious character, but they received
no encouragement at Florence, where the school most in favour was
that which substituted sensual for mystic beauty; and this debased
heathenised taste equally pervaded the Florentine literature and
schools.

The books admitted as class-books into the new academies were
precisely those authors which have been in all ages proscribed as
the most dangerous, but which were now placed in the hands of the
young without restriction of any sort. And, indeed, what kind of
moral safeguards were likely to be supplied by professors such as
Filelfo, Poggio, and Valla, whose licentious language was unhappily
rather the rule than the exception among the teachers of the day?
The study of the Scriptures, which in earlier times had filled so
large a place in the scholastic course, was now all but entirely laid
aside; and we are assured that some would even ask, with astonishing
simplicity, what use could be derived from the knowledge of events
that had happened so many ages ago? As to that liturgical element
which had hitherto mingled so largely in the scheme of Christian
education, it had little chance of being preserved in an age when
not lay professors alone, but even ecclesiastics, were so besotted
with their devotion to Pagan models, as to show themselves ashamed
of the language of the Church formularies. Whilst some escaped
from the misery of reciting their Latin breviaries by obtaining
permission to use a Greek or Hebrew version, others gave up reading
the Epistles of St. Paul through fear of accustoming their ears to so
unclassical a style; and numerous proposals were set on foot for what
was called a reform of the Liturgy, which should have for its object
the correction of its style and its adaptation to classical forms.
But even these were not the worst excesses. Tiraboschi assures us
that scepticism and open unbelief were becoming frightfully common
among men of letters, and specially in the Italian universities
which were declared in the following century to be hot-beds of
infidelity. Yet so innate in the human soul is the craving for some
kind of mysticism, that at the very time that faith in the Christian
mysteries was being rejected, many were entangling themselves
in the absurdities of the Jewish Cabala; and not a few addicted
themselves to magical studies, practising rites and incantations of
most shocking impiety. Even where these grosser disorders did not
exist, the combined influence of heathenism and sensuality produced
a certain irreligious and intensely worldly tone, more difficult,
perhaps, to combat than open vice or infidelity; and it was of this
that Savonarola complained when from the pulpit of St. Mark’s he
first addressed the Florentines with his fervid Biblical eloquence,
but found his glowing words fall, as he expressed it, upon hearts as
hard and as cold as marble.

In other respects, also, the age of the Medici resembled but too
closely that of Augustus. It was an age when a people were being
cajoled to surrender their freedom into the hands of an absolute
ruler, who used as his instrument for undermining republican
institutions weapons far more deadly than the sword. Lorenzo had
read Tacitus to some purpose, and thoroughly understood his maxim,
that the easiest way to enslave a nation is first to corrupt it.
He scrupled not to secure his political ascendancy in Florence
by ministering to the baser passions of the populace. He amused
them with shows and dances, carnival masquerades, and midnight
processions, in which the flood-gates of license were freely opened,
and heathen fables were represented in all their most unseemly
crudeness; and in return they let him steal away their independence,
and appropriate to himself the authority of the sovereign of Florence
under the title of her First Citizen. Magnificent orgies were held by
torchlight, wherein the triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, or some other
such subject, was enacted by bands of superbly-dressed masquers,
singing those celebrated carnival songs composed by Lorenzo,
which were, we are told, for the most part, immoral and indecent,
expressing, not the graceful Platonism of a classical academy, but
a mythological burlesque, flavoured for the grosser tastes of the
populace.

It was against this flood of iniquity in the schools, the palace,
and the public streets, that the bold eloquence of Savonarola was at
this time directed, creating a moral reaction, which proved, however
fallacious in its brilliant promise of reform. Taking the Scriptures
as his weapon of warfare, he dealt rude and terrible blows at those
who were sapping the very foundations of Christianity with their
elegant Paganism. He complained that priests and doctors now thought
of nothing but rhetoric. They studied Horace and Cicero to prepare
themselves for the cure of souls. They gave up the study of the
Scriptures in order to preach Plato from the pulpit. The very art
and music which they encouraged were instruments of demoralisation
rather than of popular instruction. Most terrible was the eloquence
with which he attacked the authors of such abuses. “How have _you_
renounced the Devil and his pomps?” he exclaimed in one of his
sermons--“you, who every day do his works, and attend not to the
law of Christ, but the literature of the Gentiles; declaring the
Scriptures to contain only food fit for women, and demanding in their
place the eloquence of Tully and the sounding words of the poets to
be preached to you!” On no subject were his strictures more unsparing
than on the education of the young. He built his hopes of reform not
on his grown-up hearers and converts; but on the children, for whose
benefit he sought to introduce a system of studies, the principles
of which in the main coincided with those of the ancient Christian
schools. He did not propose the exclusion of the heathen poets and
philosophers, but demanded that no lesson in Pagan literature should
be given without a simultaneous one from Christian sources; that the
Scriptures should be ever in the hand of the professor; that St.
Jerome and St. Augustine should be studied together with Homer and
Cicero; that no book of immoral tendency should be tolerated in the
schools; and that teachers should not fail to point out to their
pupils the folly and impiety of the heathen fables.

Savonarola had the satisfaction of effecting not a few conversions
among the men of letters who gathered round his pulpit. Ficinus
became his warm apologist, and after listening to his sermons
declared his intention of devoting the rest of his life to religion.
Nicholas of Schomberg and Zenobius Acciajoli abandoned the world, and
assumed the Dominican habit. Picus Mirandola sold all his estates
and distributed the price to the poor, and even Politian on his
death-bed received the habit of religion from the hand of one of
his friars. But whatever were the success gained by the preacher
among the Florentine courtiers, his eloquence was powerless over the
mind of their master. Lorenzo and Savonarola each tried to gain the
other, and each was doomed to suffer defeat. Lorenzo vainly tried to
corrupt or silence an orator who was equally indifferent to threats
or bribes; and when the prince lay on his death-bed, Savonarola, as
vainly, strove to wring from him a promise to restore her liberties
to Florence. After his death, indeed, which took place in 1492, a
brilliant triumph seemed to crown the hopes of the popular friar, and
under his leadership, Florence, having expelled the Medici, seemed
about to exchange her debased republicanism for a theocracy, and her
free life of pleasure for an almost puritanic severity of manners.
But the tide of social corruption which had for a moment been thus
forcibly dammed up, soon burst the barrier that opposed it, and swept
away all traces of the seeming reform, the reformer himself being
the first victim of its fury. Those very streets of Florence which
had witnessed the Medicean carnival shows, and where a little later
the Florentines, under the direction of their republican chief, had
made solemn acts of reparation for past license, now saw the reformer
himself borne to ignominious execution amid the howls and blasphemies
of an infuriated populace.

The expulsion of the Medici from Florence in no way checked the
progress of the classical Renaissance, which only attained its
full growth in the following generation. To the age of Lorenzo the
Magnificent succeeded that of his son Pope Leo X., under whose
princely rule Rome drew to herself the literary throngs who had
before illuminated the Tuscan court, and rejoiced in the questionable
glories of a second Augustan age. But of Rome and her Pontiffs, her
garish splendour and her true reform, we shall speak in another
chapter. Before doing so we must first look across the Alps, and see
what has been going on in the world of letters in the colder climate
of the North.

_CHAPTER XXI._

DEVENTER, LOUVAIN, AND ALCALA.

A.D. 1360 TO 1517.

It is not to be supposed that the development which had been taken
by the universities, and which we have been engaged in tracing in
the foregoing chapters, the perils to which their younger members
were exposed, and the yet graver results that might be expected to
ensue to faith and morals if their influence continued without some
salutary check, could fail, even in their own day, of attracting the
attention of thoughtful men; and much curious illustration might be
drawn from the literature of the fourteenth century, tending to show
how questionable a place the great academies of learning at that
time held in popular estimation. The most racy legends of mediæval
_diablerie_ generally introduce us to some student of Paris or
Salamanca, who has made a compact with the enemy of souls; while the
graver histories of the saints are crowded with examples of those who
fled into the cloister to escape the contagion of the schools.

The danger to which the scholastic convertites seem to have been most
sensitively alive was not one, perhaps, which, to modern notions,
would seem the most appalling. It was not the licentious manners, nor
even precisely the heterodox opinions of the schools, which chiefly
terrified them, but the subtle perils of intellectual vanity. It
has been before remarked that, among the old monastic scholars, the
existence of this danger was hardly recognised. The obligations of
their state for the most part protected them from its attacks. “What
they learnt without guile they communicated without envy,”[312]
and they believed and practically set forth the doctrine which,
as one of modern times has beautifully expressed it, acknowledges
“humility, the basis of morals, to be also the foundation of reason.”
So entirely did the rules of holy living purge the pursuit of
science from the leaven of pride, that it is quite common to find
ancient writers speaking of learning as though it were almost a
virtue. Things had sadly changed in this respect since the close of
the tenth century, and the warnings which St. Bernard addressed to
the scholars of his day had to be repeated by the ascetics of each
successive age with ever-increasing earnestness. He sorrowfully
lamented that those who pursued learning were daily more and more
losing sight of its right _order_, its right _motive_, and its right
_end_. The order of true knowledge, he said, is to set in the first
rank the things that concern salvation; its motive should be charity,
and its end, neither curiosity nor vain-glory, but our own or our
neighbour’s edification. And he failed not to remind the would-be
philosophers whom he addressed, and whose chief object seemed to be
to make themselves talked about, that the “biting tooth” of the Latin
satirist had long before drawn their portraits, and ridiculed those
who only care to know in order that somebody else may know that they
know.[313] The evils he complained of had certainly not abated with
time; nevertheless, the old Christian morality, which was so based on
intellectual lowliness as to be hardly capable of realising a fear of
the opposite vice until it arose before the eye in all its deformity,
was too deeply rooted in Christendom to be eradicated by one or two
generations of professors; and its influence may be traced in the
horror which good men felt and expressed for what they regarded as a
more radical poison than the grosser temptations of an undisciplined
life. And we who have witnessed the later issues of that great Revolt
of Reason which took its beginnings in the pride of intellect, and
which will find its end in the reign of Antichrist, are bound to bear
witness that they judged aright, and to applaud a sagacity which
originated less perhaps in any very quick-sighted intelligence than
in the undulled instincts of the Christian sense.

When, therefore, we represent to ourselves the learned world of the
Middle Ages crowding to the universities that were starting up in
almost every provincial capital of France, Germany, Italy, and Spain,
we must not forget that a quiet undercurrent was always flowing in
an opposite direction, though it had no power to overcome the strong
full tide of fashion. Thus, the life of the Blessed Peter Jeremias,
of the Order of Preachers, presents us with the picture of the
student of Bologna about to read for his doctor’s degree, when, one
night as he sits at his books, the window of his room is dashed in,
and the voice of one of his fellow-students, recently departed,
warns him in terrible accents to renounce those academic honours, in
the greedy pursuit of which he had lost his immortal soul. Peter,
pierced to the soul by this voice from beyond the grave, abandons
his intention of reading for honours, and presents himself the next
morning at the gates of the Dominican Convent to implore admission
among the friars. And it was to another conversion of this sort,
somewhat less pictorial in its colouring, that we owe the foundation
of a very remarkable religious institute, too closely associated with
the history of education to be left unnoticed here.

Somewhere about the year 1360 there appeared at Paris a young Flemish
student named Gerard, a native of the town of Deventer, whose success
in every branch of study acquired him no mean fame in academic
circles, and inflated him with a corresponding degree of vanity. He
took his master’s degree in his eighteenth year, received several
rich benefices, began a very pompous and expensive way of life, and
at last removed to Cologne, less to study than to display and enjoy
himself. There, however, he found his fate awaiting him. It was
the precise period when a great spiritual reaction was going on in
Rhenish Germany: not twenty years before Cologne had witnessed the
conversion of the celebrated John Tauler, whose pride of learning
had yielded to the simple word of a nameless unlettered layman,
and who spent the rest of his life in preaching those doctrines of
self-abnegation on which he built the edifice of the spiritual life.
Ruysbroek, the greatest contemplative of his time, was still living
in the Green Valley of the forest of Soignies, and training many a
fervid soul in the mystic science which aimed at uniting man to God
by utterly separating him from creatures. It was probably one of
these disciples of Ruysbroek, a religious solitary, whose name, like
that of Tauler’s “layman,” has not been preserved, who determined to
undertake the conversion of the gay young canon, in whom, despite his
vanity and his love of the world, he detected the promise of more
excellent things.

The biographer of Gerard has told the story of his conversion briefly
enough, and compressed the arguments of the orator into one brief
sentence, _Quid hic stas, vanis intentus? Alius homo fieri debes._
And another man Gerard indeed became. He flung the world behind his
back, and entered on a life of penance with no less ardour than that
with which he had applied himself awhile before to the business of
the schools. For three years he retired among the Carthusians and
wholly disappeared from the world; and when he returned there was
little of the old Gerard about him. He at once devoted himself to the
work of preaching, and generally preached twice a day, his sermons
being seldom less than three hours in length. But it was difficult
to weary a German congregation of that enthusiastic period, and no
complaints appear to have been made of Gerard’s prolixity. During his
retirement he had placed himself under the direction of Ruysbroek,
and appears to have caught much of his tone and spirit. He had made
the Scriptures his only study, and these, expounded with simple
eloquence from earnest lips, drew him crowds of hearers, “clergy
and laity, men and women, little and great, learned and unlearned,
lawyers and magistrates, bond and free, rich and poor, beggars and
pilgrims.” He laid the axe to the root of the tree, and like St.
John Baptist, called on all men to do worthy works of penance. In
short, he gave the age what it wanted, and though he met with many
contradictions, he also effected many practical reforms.

Gerard the Great, as he was called, soon reckoned a considerable
number of disciples, whom he made it his chief object to ground
in the spiritual life; and in spite of his renown as one of the
most learned doctors of his time, he thoroughly inculcated the
lesson of intellectual humility. Out of the ranks of his followers
was gradually formed a sort of fraternity or congregation; and he
had conceived the design of founding for their reception certain
monasteries under the rule of the Canons Regular, in which purpose
he was greatly encouraged by Ruysbroek. Gerard died before he was
able to put his plans into execution, but they were carried out by
his disciples, and specially by Master Florentius Radewyns, a canon
of Utrecht, a former student at the university of Prague. The new
religious assumed the title of “Brethren of the Common Life;” their
mother-house was at Deventer, they lived like monks, though without
at first taking the religious vows, and their employment was the
correction and transcription of books, which formed their principal
source of revenue. Gerard, in the rule he had drawn up for his own
guidance, had prohibited all profane studies. He desired that his
children should exclusively addict themselves to the reading of
the Scriptures and the Fathers, not wasting their time over “such
vanities as geometry, arithmetic, rhetoric, logic, grammar, lyric
poetry, and judicial astrology.” In the rigorism of these views we
detect the spirit of one who has tasted of a poisoned cup, and knows
no other security than a rule of total abstinence. He specially
forbids all gainful studies, which obscure and obliquify the human
reason, and do not tend to God; and he roundly asserts that very few
persons who follow the pursuits of law or medicine are ever found
who live a just, honest, and quiet life. No doubt his principles
were extreme, and it is some consolation to find that he admitted of
certain dispensations. The wiser of the Gentile philosophers, such as
Plato and Socrates, might, he admitted, be read with profit. Seneca
also was to be tolerated, and with an amiable inconsistency we find
him, even in his rule of life, slipping in, half unconsciously, a
quotation from Virgil.

All this was exactly what might have been expected from a converted
man of the world; but Florentius had gone through a different kind of
experience, and one which made his views less austere and exclusive.
He had passed the ordeal of a university career unscathed, and his
biographer expends an entire chapter in bringing forward proofs why
the name he bore was specially appropriate to one whose life from
childhood had been so holy and unspotted. Not only was he himself a
flower of all perfection, but he was also destined to make the houses
he governed flower-beds from which spiritual bees were to suck the
honey of wisdom; his brethren were to give out to a naughty world
the sweet odour of virtue, according to that of the Spouse in the
Canticles, “The flowers have appeared in our land.” Florentius was
the model of a good scholar, kind to his equals, respectful to his
superiors, a proficient in the liberal arts, but keeping his heart
for the Divine law, which he loved and studied far more diligently
than he did the book of the Gentiles.

Under his superiority the labours of the brethren were made to
embrace a larger sphere of usefulness, and to include the education
of youth. The prohibition against profane learning speedily
disappeared, and the schools of Deventer attained high celebrity;
and there, in 1393, a little scholar, Thomas Hammerlein by name,
was admitted under the roof of Florentius, becoming afterwards the
biographer of his revered master, and the reputed author of the
“Following of Christ.”

Not to enter into the vexed question whether he were indeed the
author, or only the transcriber, of that first of uninspired books,
it is yet satisfactory to know that the Thomas à Kempis, whom
from infancy we have been used to revere, is not reduced by the
investigations of ruthless critics to a mere mythical existence.
He really lived, wrote, taught, and prayed. In the college of
Deventer he studied grammar and plain-chant under Florentius, and
tells us how, when present in choir with his schoolfellows, he loved
stealthily to watch his master, because of his devout aspect, being
cautious, however, that his pious curiosity was not perceived,
inasmuch as the good rector could make himself feared as well as
loved. He takes us into the school, too, and shows us the master
setting copies, and praising the flexible fingers of a little
disciple, whom, with the blessing of God, he hopes to form into a
good writer. Or we enter the cell of the devout brother, Gerard of
Zutphen, whose whole consolation lay in holy books, and who was
liable to get so absorbed in the study of them, that a charitable
brother had to come and warn him when the bell had rung for dinner.
He was the librarian, and had a passing great care for his books; but
as for himself and his corporeal wants, if superiors and companions
had not seen to them better than he did himself, he would have fared
but poorly. He thought so highly of the benefits to be derived from
useful reading, that he lent his books to ecclesiastics out of doors,
to win them from idle and frivolous amusements. “Books,” he would
say, “preach better than we can do.” And therefore he held them in
great reverence, read them lovingly, and copied them with the utmost
diligence. Nor must we omit to mention the pious cook, John Ketel,
the saint of the community, as all, by common consent, seem to have
regarded him. Florentius knew his merit, and to increase it never
gave him a civil word; but his humility and sweetness were proof
against every trial. Or that devout clerk, Arnold Schoonhove, a
schoolfellow of Thomas, who never played in the streets with other
idle boys, and when he sat in school with them heeded not their
childish pranks, but steadily wrote down the master’s words on paper,
and got a chosen comrade (who was probably Thomas himself) to read
over the lesson to him, or hear him repeat it. “It was God whom he
chiefly sought in his studies,” says his friend, “and what he liked
best was to get into a quiet corner and pray.” After seven years’
study among the Brethren of Common Life, Thomas took the habit of
the Canons Regular in the monastery of St. Agnes, at Zwoll, where
he lived till his ninety-second year, engaged in useful labours,
transcribing and composing pious books, which earned for him the
sobriquet of the Hammer of Hearts. He has left us memorials of his
monastery and his college-life, written with a sweet simplicity which
reminds us of Bede. Of his own life we know but little, yet that
little has a character of its own. His world was his cell; he was
never quite happy out of it, and if sometimes induced by his brethren
to go abroad and take a little air, he would soon contrive to get
away, with the transparent excuse, that “Some one was waiting for him
in his chamber.” The others would smile, knowing well Who He was of
Whom he spoke, even the Beloved, of Whom it is written that He stands
at the door and knocks. In all the books that he transcribed he wrote
his favourite motto, “Everywhere I sought for rest, but I found it
nowhere save in a little corner, with a little book.” And a certain
old and much-defaced picture was long preserved, which represented
his effigies surrounded with the legend, which must here be added
in its original phraseology:--“In omnibus requiem quæsivi, sed non
inveni, _nisi in Hoexkins ende Boexkins_.”

In process of time the Brethren of Common Life spread over Flanders,
France, and Germany, and the schools they founded multiplied and
flourished. They were introduced into the University of Paris by
John Standonch, a doctor of the Sorbonne, who gave into their
direction the College de Montaigu, of which he was the principal,
and established them in Cambray, Valenciennes, Mechlin, and Louvain.
He drew up statutes for their use, which are supposed by Du Boulay
to have furnished St. Ignatius with the first notions of his rule,
an idea which receives some corroboration from the fact that the
saint studied at the College de Montaigu during his residence at the
University of Paris. Standonch himself received the habit of the Poor
Clerks, as they were now often called, and had the satisfaction of
seeing more than 300 good scholars issue from his schools, many of
whom undertook the direction or reform of other academies. In 1430
the Institute numbered forty-five houses, and thirty years later the
numbers were increased threefold. The Deventer brethren were far
from being mere mystics and transcribers of books. The aim of their
foundation was doubtless to supply a system of education which should
revive something of the old monastic discipline, but they cultivated
all the higher branches of learning, and their schools were among
the first of those north of the Alps which introduced the revived
study of classical literature. One of their most illustrious scholars
was Nicholas of Cusa, or Cusanus, the son of a poor fisherman, who
won his doctor’s cap at Padua, and became renowned for his Greek,
Hebrew, and mathematical learning. Eugenius IV. appointed him his
legate, and Nicholas V. created him Cardinal and Bishop of Brixen,
in the Tyrol. His personal character won him the veneration of his
people, but, according to Tennemann, his love of mathematics led him
into many theological extravagances. He was strongly inclined to the
views of the Neo-Platonists; he considered, moreover, that all human
knowledge was contained in the ideas of numbers, and attempted to
explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity on mathematical principles.
He was undoubtedly a distinguished man of science, and was the first
among moderns to revive the Pythagorean hypothesis of the motion of
the earth round the sun. Cusanus had studied at most of the great
universities, but held none of them in great esteem, for he professed
a sovereign contempt for the scholastic philosophy which still held
its ground in those academies. At his death he left his wealth to an
hospital which he had founded in his native village, and to which he
attached a magnificent library. Deventer could boast indeed of being
the fruitful mother of great scholars, such as Hegius, Langius, and
Dringeberg, all of whom afterwards took part in the restoration of
letters. The brethren, moreover, displayed extraordinary zeal in
promoting the new art of printing, and one of the earliest Flemish
presses was set up in their college. And in 1475, when Alexander
Hegius became rector of the schools, he made the first bold
experiment of printing Greek.

It is not to be supposed that such a revolution as that which was
brought about in the world of letters by the new invention could fail
of producing events of a mixed character of good and evil. Whatever
was fermenting in the minds of the people now found expression
through the press, and Hallam notices “the incredible host of popular
religious tracts poured forth” before the close of the fifteenth
century, most of them of a character hostile to the faith. The first
censorship of printed books appears to have been established in 1480,
by Berthold, Archbishop of Mentz, who explained his reasons for
taking this step in a mandate, wherein he complains of the abuse of
the “divine art” of printing, whereby perverse men have turned that
to the injury of mankind which was designed for their instruction.
Specially he alludes to those unauthorised and faulty translations
into the vulgar tongue of the Scriptures, and even the canons of the
Church, wherein men of no learning or experience have taken on them
to invent new words or use old ones in erroneous senses, in order to
express the meaning of the original, “a thing most dangerous in the
Sacred Scriptures.” He therefore forbids any such translations to
be thenceforward published without being approved by four doctors,
under pain of excommunication, desiring that the art which was first
of all discovered in his city, “not without divine aid,” should be
maintained in all its honour.

This mandate was only directed against the faulty translations of
the Holy Scriptures. No opposition was offered to the multiplication
of correct versions, both of the Latin Vulgate and its various
translations. The Cologne Bible, printed in 1479, had before this
appeared, with the formal approbation of the university. The very
first book printed by Gutenburg and Fust in 1453, was the Latin
Bible, and among the twenty-four books printed in Germany before the
year 1470 we find five Latin and two German editions of the Bible.
Translations of the Holy Scriptures into various modern tongues were
among the very first books issued from the press; as the Bohemian
version in 1475, Italian in 1471--which ran through eleven editions
before the close of the century, the Dutch in 1477, and the French
in the same year. The admirers of Luther have therefore fallen into
a strange error, when they represent him as the first to unlock the
Scriptures to the people, for twenty-four editions of the German
Bible alone had been printed and published before his time.

It was in the year 1476 that a little choir-boy of Utrecht entered
the college of Deventer, and gave such signs of genius and industry
as to draw from his masters the prediction that he would one day
be the light of his age. He was a namesake of the founder, but,
after the fashion of the day, adopted a Latin and Greek version of
his Flemish name of Gerard, and was to be known to posterity as
Desiderius Erasmus. Like Thomas à Kempis, he passed from the schools
of Deventer to the cloisters of the Canons Regular, a step which, he
assures us, was forced on him by his guardians, and never had his own
assent. A happy accident enabled him to visit Rome in the suite of
the Bishop of Cambray and once released from the wearisome discipline
of convent life, he never returned to it, but spent the rest of his
life wandering from one to another of the capitals of France, Italy,
and England, teaching for a livelihood, courted by all the literary
and religious parties of the day, and satirising them all by turns,
indisputably the literary Coryphæus of his age, but penetrated
through and through with its scoffing and presumptuous spirit. It was
an age fruitful in pedants and humanists, whose destiny it was to
help on the revolution in faith by a revolution in letters. Schools
and professors multiplied throughout Germany. At the very time
when Hegius was teaching the elements of Greek to Erasmus, his old
comrades Langius and Dringeberg were presiding over the schools of
Munster and Schelstadt. Rodolph Langius exerted himself strenuously
in the cause of polite letters, and whilst superintending his classes
occupied spare moments in correcting the text of almost every Latin
work which at that time issued from the press, and in making deadly
war on the scholastic philosophy. His rejection of the old-fashioned
school-books and his innovations on time-honoured abuses raised
against him the friars of Cologne, and a controversy ensued in which
Langius won so much success as enabled him to affix the stigma of
barbarism on his opponents. His friend and namesake Rodolph Agricola,
who had studied at Ferrara under Theodore of Gaza, and was held by
his admirers superior in erudition to Politian himself, at this time
presided over the school of Groningen. Besides his skill in the
learned tongues he was a poet, a painter, a musician, an orator,
and a philosopher. Such a multitude of accomplishments won him an
invitation to the court of the Elector Palatine at Heidelberg, where
a certain learned academy had been founded, called the Rhenish
Society, for the encouragement of Greek and Hebrew literature,
the members of which, says Hallam, “did not scorn to relax their
minds with feasting and dancing, not forgetting the ancient German
attachment to the flowing cup.” This is a polite way of rendering a
very ugly passage, which in the original tells us plainly that the
Rhenish academicians were addicted to excessive inebriety and other
disgraceful vices. It is somewhat remarkable, however, that Agricola,
who died three years after his removal to Heidelberg, received on his
death-bed the habit of those very friars whom, during life, he and
his friend Langius had done their best to hold up to popular contempt.

About the same time Reuchlin was studying at Paris, where, in 1458,
Gregory of Tiferno had been appointed Greek professor. Reuchlin
visited Rome, and translated a passage from Thucydides in the
presence of Argyrophilus, with such success that the Greek exclaimed,
in a transport of delight (and possibly of surprise, at such an
achievement on the part of a Northern barbarian), “Our banished
Greece has flown beyond the Alps!” Reuchlin was a Hebrew scholar, a
circumstance which, in the end, proved his ruin; for, embracing the
Cabalistic philosophy, he abandoned classics and good sense in the
pursuit of that absurd mysticism. In this strange infatuation he had
many companions. Not a few of those who had shown themselves foremost
in deriding the scholastic philosophy, ended by substituting in its
place either open scepticism or the philosophy of magic. A few years
later, the wild theories of Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Jerome
Cardan, found eager adherents among those who conceived it a proof of
good scholarship to despise St. Thomas as a Goth. Reuchlin, whilst
pouring forth his bitter satires against the old theologians, was
printing his treatise on the Cabala, entitled _De Verbo Mirifico_,
wherein magic is declared to be the perfection of philosophy, which
work was formally condemned at Rome. However, all the French savants
of the Renaissance were not Cabalists, nor did all, when they
introduced the study of Greek, forget that it was the language of
the Gospels. The real restoration of Greek studies in France must
be ascribed to Budæus, who made up, by the piety and indefatigable
studies of his later years, for a youth of wild irregularity. He had
studied under Lascaris, and though he had reached a very mature age
before he devoted himself to letters, he soon became as familiar
with the learned tongues as with his native idiom. His treatise on
the Ancient Money first rendered his name famous, and secured him
the friendship of Francis I. He profited from the favour shown him
by that monarch, to solicit from him the foundation of the Royal
College of France, for the cultivation of the three learned tongues,
and thus fairly introduced the “Cecropian Muse” into the University
of Paris. If we may credit the authority of a grave rector of that
university, this momentous change was advantageous, not merely to
the minds but also to the morals of her students. St. Jerome, as we
know, imposed upon himself the study of Hebrew as an efficacious
means of taming the passions; and Rollin affirms that many who, in
former years, had been nothing but idle men of pleasure, when once
they began to read the Greek authors flung their vices and follies
to the winds, and led the simple and austere manner of life that
becomes a scholar. He quotes a passage from the manuscript Memoirs of
Henry de Mesmes, which gives a pleasant picture of the college life
of those days, and may be taken as an example of the sort of labour
imposed on a hard-working law student of the sixteenth century:--“My
father,” he says, “gave me for a tutor John Maludan of Limoges, a
pupil of the learned Durat, who was chosen for the innocence of his
life and his suitable age to preside over my early years, till I
should be old enough to govern myself. With him and my brother, John
James de Mesmes, I was sent to the college of Burgundy, and was put
into the third class and I afterwards spent almost a year in the
first. My father said he had two motives for thus sending me to the
college: the one was the cheerful and innocent conversation of the
boys, and the other was the school discipline, by which he trusted
that we should be weaned from the over-fondness that had been shown
us at home, and purified, as it were, in fresh water. Those eighteen
months I passed at college were of great service to me. I learnt to
recite, to dispute, and to speak in public; and I became acquainted
with several excellent men, many of whom are still living. I learned,
moreover, the frugality of the scholar’s life, and how to portion out
my day to advantage; so that, by the time I left, I had repeated, in
public, abundance of Latin, and two thousand Greek verses, which I
had written after the fashion of boys of my age, and I could repeat
Homer from one end to the other. I was thus well received by the
chief men of my time, to some of whom my tutor introduced me. In
1545, I was sent to Toulouse with my tutor and brother, to study law
under an old grey-haired professor, who had travelled half over the
world. There we remained for three years, studying severely, and
under such strict rules as I fancy few persons nowadays would care
to comply with. We rose at four, and, having said our prayers, went
to lectures at five, with our great books under our arms, and our
inkhorns and candlesticks in our hands. We attended all the lectures
until ten o’clock, without intermission; then we went to dinner,
after having hastily collated during half an hour what our master had
written down. After dinner, by way of diversion, we read Sophocles,
or Aristophanes, or Euripides, and sometimes Demosthenes, Tully,
Virgil, and Horace. At one we were at our studies again, returning
home at five to repeat and turn to the places quoted in our books
till past six. Then came supper, after which we read some Greek or
Latin author. On feast days we heard mass and vespers, and the rest
of the day we were allowed a little music and walking. Sometimes we
went to see our friends, who invited us much oftener than we were
permitted to go. The rest of the day we spent in reading, and we
generally had with us some learned men of that time.”

We have the satisfaction of knowing that the frugal and laborious
training of Henry’s early life was the means of forming a manly and
Christian character. Nor is the portrait less pleasing which the
biographer of Budæus has left us of the domestic life of that great
man, who, though he had visited the court of Leo X., in quality of
ambassador of France, and was the chief lion of the French world of
letters, retained to his dying day those simple tastes and habits,
which we are assured resulted from no affectation of laconic manners,
but a certain genuine sentiment of humility.[314] His secretary and
constant fellow-labourer was his wife, who sat in his study, found
out passages in his books of reference, copied his papers, and
withal did not forget his domestic comfort. Budæus needed some such
good angel by his side, for he belonged to that class of scholars
who are more familiar with the Latin _As_ than with the value of
louis d’ors. His mind was in his books, and whilst busy with the
doings of the Greeks and Romans he could not always call home his
absent thoughts. It is to be regretted, that with a character in
many respects so amiable, Budæus should have permitted his love of
Greek to lead him to take part with the Humanists in the ferocious
onslaughts which they directed against the adherents of the mediæval
learning. It was surely possible to revive the study of Homer and
Cicero with rejecting the philosophy of St. Thomas, nor did there
seem any reason why the lovers of polite literature should seek to
establish their fame as scholars by savage and unseemly pasquinades
on their literary rivals. And here it may be remarked that the title
of _Humanists_, applied to the rising school, was one of their own
choosing. By it they intended at one and the same time to indicate
themselves as the only cultivators of “humane” letters, and to imply
that the professors of the old school were barbarians. They were
not content with advocating good Latin, and reviving the study of
Greek; no one could join their camp who was not ready to rail at
monks and schoolmen as offensive idiots. The former, in the choice
vocabulary of Luther, were “locusts, caterpillars, frogs, and lice,”
the latter, in the more polished phraseology of Budæus, “prating
sophists,” and “divines of the Sorbonian Lake,” “Monks,” says Erasmus
(himself an apostate canon[315]), “are only acceptable to silly
women, bigots, and blockheads.” The Dominicans had the audacity to
protest against the freedoms he had taken with the Latin Vulgate,
and to complain of his version as that of a poet and orator rather
than of a divine. “Most men who know anything of the value of a
poet,” replies Erasmus, “think _you_ to be swine rather than men,
when they hear your stupid raving. Poetry is so little known to you,
that you cannot even spell its name;[316] but let me tell you, it
would be easier to cut two _Thomists_ out of a log of wood, than
one tolerable orator.” No matter what were a man’s talents, or how
reasonable were his arguments, the moment he opened his mouth in
opposition to these writers, he was placarded as a dunce. Erasmus,
in his new Version of the Greek Testament, had given just cause of
complaint by his use of a phraseology more elegant than theological.
A certain Franciscan friar ventured to object in particular to his
rendering of the Magnificat, whereupon Erasmus vented his spleen in
a Colloquy, and branded the critic as “a pig and a donkey; more of a
donkey than all donkeys put together;” and proceeded to justify his
translation by quoting the comedies of Terence. Standish, Bishop of
St. Asaph, took exception to another blot in the new version, the
substitution, namely, of the word _Sermo_, for that of _Verbum_, in
the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel; and Erasmus and his friends
considered that they sufficiently vindicated their good Latin by
nicknaming the objector, the _Bishop of St. Ass_. In the same style
of wit, Vincent the Dominican was _Bucentum_ the ox-driver, and the
Carmelites were commonly designated the _Camelites_. “I have hopes of
Cochlæus,” writes Luther, speaking of some of his adversaries, “he is
only an idiot; as for the other two, they belong to the devil.” This
was the ordinary style of the humanist controversialists; their puns
and sarcasms being, in most cases, accompanied with a shower of mud.

With these, however, we need not more particularly concern ourselves,
but turn our glance on Louvain, where, in the early part of the
century, a new university had arisen, under Duke John of Brabant,
which received its first diploma from Pope Martin V. in 1425, the
theological faculty being erected six years later by Eugenius IV. The
latter Pontiff had the satisfaction of receiving the firmest support
from the Louvain doctors during the troublous times of the Council
of Basle; and during the following century Louvain continued to be
not merely the chief seat of learning in Flanders, but one of the
soundest nurseries of the faith. She held stoutly to scholasticism,
and was distinguished by her resolute opposition to the Lutheran
heretics; yet it was in vain that her enemies attempted to charge her
with retrogression, for even Erasmus owns in his letters, that the
schools of Louvain were considered second only to those of Paris.

It is not difficult to explain the hostility which the Louvain
scholars had to encounter on the part of the partisans of the new
learning. Louvain, from the first, consecrated herself to the
defence of the scholastic theology. Immediately on the erection of
the theological faculty in 1431, the Dominicans arrived at Louvain,
and opened a school whence they sent forth fourteen doctors in the
space of twenty years. In 1447 they were formally admitted to all
the rights of the university, and obtained chairs of theology, and
the other privileges formerly granted to them at Paris and Bologna.
Their brethren were frequently aggregated to the college of the
strict faculty, and one of their order was always a member of the
council _strictæ facultatis_. From this period the _studium generale_
of the order at Louvain ranked as one of the highest character in
the order, and the influence of the Dominican doctors made itself
powerfully felt throughout the whole university. St. Thomas of Aquin
was _the_ doctor, _par excellence_, of the Louvain schools, and in
1637 was chosen by the faculty of theology their perpetual patron
and protector. It is needless to say that this determined _Thomism_
was not more agreeable to the humanists and their partisans than the
_Scotism_ of the Paris theologians; and they sought, with very poor
success, to squib down the university by representing it as nothing
but a nest of friars.

The University of Louvain enjoyed some advantages in which the
more ancient academies had been wanting. Not having grown up out
of accidental circumstances, like so many of her elder sisters,
but having been begun at a time when the principles necessary
for governing such institutions had been made manifest by long
experience, her founders were careful to provide her, from the first,
with a body of statutes sagaciously drawn up, so as to ensure the
preservation of regular discipline; and a well-organised collegiate
system protected the students from those disorders which had
disgraced the beginnings of Paris and Oxford.

In course of time separate schools and colleges were established for
the different faculties, one for medicine, eight for arts, and eight
for mixed studies. Among the latter was Standonch’s college of poor
scholars, and the celebrated _Collegium Trilingue_ founded in 1516 by
Jerome Busleiden, the friend of More and Erasmus, for the study of
Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. The idea of this academy had been suggested
to the founder by a visit to Alcala, where Cardinal Ximenes was then
completing the establishment of his university. Hallam tells us that
its foundation was fiercely opposed by the monks and friars, “those
unbeaten enemies of learning,” and it is true that the old professors
did at first regard the new institution with some jealousy. They had
been used to write and speak mediæval Latin, and grumbled sorely
when required to turn Ciceronians. The college happened to be first
opened in the fish-market, and hence arose the favourite bon-mot of
the Louvain Conservatives, “_We_ do not talk _Fish-Market_ Latin.” In
time, however, the fish-market Latin established its supremacy, and
Louvain grew proud of her classical professors, such as Louis Vives
and Conrad Goclen. The colleges gradually multiplied in number, and
even at the present day the city is filled with splendid buildings,
all of which owe their existence to the university of which they once
formed part.

It was at Louvain that Pope Adrian VI. received his education, and
from a poor scholar rose to fill the posts of professor and rector
of the university. The son of a boat-builder of Utrecht, he was
admitted among a certain number of poor boys whom the university
bound itself to educate gratuitously, and endured rather more than
his share of the hardships and privations to which scholars of that
class are usually exposed. Seldom able to provide himself with the
luxury of a lamp or a candle, he was accustomed to prosecute his
studies after dark in the porch of some church, where a lamp was then
usually suspended, or at the street corner, which supplied him with
a feeble light. However, he seems sometimes to have been able to
procure himself a better sort of light, for we read that, one cold
winter’s night, Margaret, the widow of Duke Charles of Burgundy,
then governess of the Netherlands, remarked a tiny ray that issued
from one of the college windows at a very late hour, and bidding
her chamberlain find out which of the students sat up so late in
such intense cold, she was told that it was only “little Florentius”
over his books. With a woman’s instinct of compassion, she sent him
the next day three hundred florins for the purchase of books and
firewood.

When he was afterwards raised to the head of the university,
he exhibited the same zeal for the promotion of ecclesiastical
discipline which afterwards won him so much unpopularity from his
Roman subjects. In spite of their contemptuous strictures on his
supposed barbarism, Adrian was revered in Louvain as a generous
patron of letters. He erected and endowed one of the most magnificent
colleges of which Louvain could boast, and in it was deposited the
autograph copy of his works, which is still preserved in the great
seminary of Mechlin.

A considerable number of other new universities sprang up in Germany
about the beginning of the sixteenth century, all more or less
stamped with the literary character of the age. Of these the most
famous was Wittemberg, marked out by an evil destiny as the cradle
of the Lutheran apostasy. It was founded in 1502 by Frederic,
elector of Saxony, who commissioned Staupitz, the provincial of the
Augustinians, to seek out men of learning and ability to fill its
vacant professorships. Luther was invited hither in 1508 to teach
the Aristotelian logic, and, four years later, after his return
from Rome, received his doctor’s cap, and took the customary oaths
to defend the faith against heresy to the last drop of his blood.
In 1516 the professor was to be found waging open war against the
philosophy he was engaged to teach, and drawing up ninety-nine theses
against the scholastic theology, in which is clearly laid down the
fundamental dogma of Lutheranism--the denial of free-will. They were
published many years later with a preface by Melancthon, declaring
them to contain the veritable sum of the reformed religion, which had
thus been reduced to system a year before that quarrel with Tetzel,
usually represented as the origin of Luther’s revolt.

Melancthon was given the chair of Greek in 1518, on the
recommendation of his master Reuchlin, and was introduced to
Wittemberg at the moment when Luther’s quarrel had been taken up by
the students and professors. In him Luther gained a disciple whose
learning and natural moderation of character were worthy of better
things than to become the author of the Confession of Augsburg,
and the colleague of Bucer. That horrible apostate, a renegade
Dominican, who condescended to every one of the rival schools of
heresy, provided only he was suffered to enjoy the license which
first tempted him to abjure the faith, filled for twenty years the
theological chair at Strasburg. Everywhere the reins of power had
fallen into the hands of the pedagogues, and the Lutheran army was
to be seen officered by humanists and university professors. The
facilities offered by the numerous academies that had sprung up since
the beginning of the century encouraged a rage for learning among all
classes, and many a poor artisan’s son, like Wolfgang Musculus, or
the notorious Henry Bullinger, scraped together a scanty pittance by
street singing, which they afterwards spent in procuring the means
of study at one or other of the universities. Musculus, indeed,
found charitable patrons in the person of some Benedictine monks,
who educated him, and gave him the habit; but he soon abandoned the
cloister, and after a wild adventurous life, during which we find him
working as a mason, and, during the scanty moments he could snatch
from his toil, studying the Hebrew grammar, he became “Minister” of
Strasburg, and theological professor in the Protestant University
of Berne. About the same time the Greek professorship of Calvin’s
college at Geneva was filled with another of these strange itinerant
scholars, Sebastian Castillon, a native of Dauphiny, who studied the
Oriental tongues in the early morning hours, before he went to his
day labour in the fields. He afterwards quarrelled with Calvin, who
accused him of theft, and went to teach Greek and Hebrew at Basle.
Here he produced a Latin and French version of the Scriptures, and
endeavoured to render the sacred books into the classical diction of
profane authors. We can scarcely form any correct idea of the period
of the Reformation without a glimpse at men of this stamp, who then
swarmed in every part of Germany; restless, self-sufficient, often
more than half self-taught, their minds untrained with the healthy
discipline of the schools, disposed to run after every novelty, and
to overvalue themselves and their attainments, they inevitably fell
into the extravagances to which vanity commonly betrays her victims.

From this class of men the German professorships were chiefly
recruited, and little foresight was needed to anticipate the
consequences which must ensue when the work of education had passed
into such hands. The state of the German universities during the
century subsequent to the Lutheran revolution, has been described
by the Protestant historian Menzel, from whom Rohrbacher has quoted
some remarkable passages. “The colleges where the future ministers
of the Lutheran religion spent six or seven years, were the abode
of a ferocity and licentiousness from which our moral sensibility
shrinks aghast. In the German schools and universities, the elder
students obliged new-comers to go about in ragged garments, filled
their mouths with ‘soup’ made of mud and broken bits of earthenware,
compelled them to clean their boots and shoes, and by way of salary,
to imitate the barking of dogs and the mewing of cats, and to lick
up the filth from under the table. In vain did the princes endeavour
to banish these savage customs; they held their ground in spite of
ordinances and edicts.”[317] At the University of Jena, the younger
students were robbed of their money, their clothes, and their
books by their elder companions, and compelled to discharge the
most disgraceful services. Those who had received what was called
“absolution,” treated new-comers in the same way; and these outrages
were often committed in the streets, and even in the churches during
the preaching, when the poor victims were pulled and knocked about,
and otherwise maltreated by their persecutors. And that no one
might escape, a particular part of the church was devoted to the
reception of “freshmen,” who were installed there with these edifying
ceremonies. Hence, during the whole time of divine service, one
incessant clamour went on, made up of the trampling, the cries, the
murmurs, and coarse laughter of the combatants.

If such were the manners of the future pastors, those of their
flocks may be imagined. Any one who tried to lead a good life,
observes Menzel, was stigmatised as an enthusiast, a Schwenkfeldian,
an Anabaptist, and a hypocrite; Luther’s dogma of justification
by faith only having brought good works into actual discredit. It
was dangerous at that time for a preacher to exhort his people to
keep the commandments--as if they were able to do so--it was quite
sufficient to render him a suspected person.[318] But we have no
heart to dwell on this subject, or to realise the degradation of
those old German dioceses and schools, the names of which are
so linked in our hearts with the memory of St. Boniface and St.
Wilibald, St. Bernward and St. Anscharius. So we will turn our
back on Germany and seek on Catholic soil for some more consoling
spectacle. We shall hardly find it in France: there, indeed, a
revival of letters is going on, under the splendid patronage of
Francis I.; and Budæus, the prodigy of his country, as Erasmus
called him, is writing his learned treatise on Ancient Money, and
persuading the king to found the College Royal. There perhaps the
greatest scholar of his time, though known to posterity chiefly by
his artistic fame, Leonardo da Vinci, is expiring at Fontainebleau
in the arms of the king. But the French Renaissance school is mostly
remarkable for its poets, by whom, indeed, the revival of letters was
first set on foot. Much edification was not to be anticipated from a
movement that reckoned as its originator Villon, whose verses were
as infamous as his life, and who found a worthy successor in Clement
Marot. The French kings, who by their Pragmatic Sanctions[319] had
condemned the Papal provision of benefices as a crying abuse, used
their royal patronage of the same as a convenient mode of rewarding
Court poets. Thus Octavien de St. Gelais, the translator of Terence,
obtained the bishopric of Angoulême from Charles VIII.; and his
son, Melin de St. Gelais, surnamed the French Ovid, was rewarded
by Francis I. for his “Epigrams” with an abbey. Ronsard, formally
proclaimed “the Poet of France, _par excellence_,” who was born on
the same day as the defeat of Pavia--as though (to make use of the
king’s words) “Heaven would make up to France, by his birth, for
the disgrace sustained by her arms”--who was the literary idol of
his time, had statues erected to his honour, and silver images of
the goddess Minerva presented to him by learned academies, to whom
Elizabeth sent a rich diamond, and Mary Stuart presented a gilded
model of Parnassus--the most appropriate present that could be
offered to the new Apollo--Ronsard, the vainest of men, as he might
well be, for assuredly he was the most flattered, died, literally
overwhelmed under the weight of his laurels and his priories. I will
not attempt the enumeration of his benefices, and perhaps he would
hardly have undertaken the task himself, for the prince of poets
enjoyed the revenues of half the royal monasteries of France. It
would be unbecoming to notice any writer of less renown, after so
very illustrious a personage, and the bare name of Rabelais will
probably content most readers. These were the stars of the French
Renaissance, well worthy of the monarch who patronised them, and
the Court over which he presided. Warton has thought good to praise
the enlightened wisdom which induced this prince to purge his Court
from the monkish precision of old-fashioned times, and enliven it
with a larger admixture of ladies’ society. There was certainly not
much to be complained of on the score of precision in the coteries
of Fontainebleau; yet it is curious that the fair dames who graced
the royal circle were chosen by the grim disciples of Calvin as the
likeliest agents for disseminating their views. The ladies of the
Court of Francis I. were the first Huguenot apostles, and it was
in this school that Anne Boleyn, in her quality of maid of honour
to Queen Claude, acquired, together with her inimitable skill in
dancing, that “gospel light” which, the poet informs us, first shone
on England and her king “from Boleyn’s eyes.”

Let us rather direct our steps across the Pyrenees, and watch the
erection of a Catholic university on the orthodox soil of Spain.
Up to this time the education which prevailed in the peninsula
appears to have been thoroughly of the old school. The Spanish
universities had indeed some peculiarities arising from their
proximity to the Moorish schools, and appear to have cultivated the
geometrical sciences and the Eastern tongues more generally than
was elsewhere the practice. But the prevailing tone was scholastic
and ecclesiastical. The monasteries still maintained those public
schools, which served as feeders to the universities, and in these a
discipline was kept up differing very little from that of Fulda and
St Gall. At Montserrat, peasants and nobles were received together,
and each wore a little black habit, and, in church, a surplice. They
sang every day at the Mass, and recited the Office of Our Lady,
eating always in the refectory of the brethren, and sleeping in a
common dormitory. Every month they went to confession, as well as on
all festivals, and their studies were of the monastic stamp, with
plenty of Latin and plain chant, and also instrumental music. A
number of the bravest Spanish knights had their education in these
monastery schools, and one of them, John of Cardonna, who commanded
the galleys of Sicily, and relieved Malta when besieged by the Turks,
chose as his patroness, in memory of his school days, Our Lady of
Montserrat, and bore her banner into battle. He used to call himself
Our Lady’s page, and said he valued the privilege of having been
brought up in her house more than his rank as admiral.

But these are old-fashioned memories, and must give place to
something more in accordance with the requirements of the age. The
Renaissance was making its way even into the Spanish schools, and the
literary movement had been fortunate enough to find a nursing mother
in the person of Isabella the Catholic. German printers and Italian
professors were invited into her kingdom, and Spanish students sent
to gather up the treasures of learning in foreign academies. Among
these was Antonio de Lebrija, whom Hallam calls the restorer of
classical literature in Spain. Italian masters directed the education
of the royal children, and from them the Princess Catherine, doomed
to be the hapless Queen of Henry VIII., received those learned tastes
which won the admiration of Erasmus. A Palatine school was attached
to the Court, in imitation of that of Charlemagne, and was placed
under the direction of Peter Martyr,[320] whose letters are filled
with accounts of the noble pupils who thronged his school, won from
frivolous pastimes by the charm of letters. In 1488 he appeared at
Salamanca to deliver lectures on Juvenal, and writes word that the
audience who came to hear him so blocked up the entrance to the
hall, that he had to be carried to his place over the heads of the
students, “like a victor in the Olympic games.” The rage for learning
went on at such a pace that the proudest grandees of Castile thought
it not beneath them to ascend the professor’s chair, and even noble
ladies delivered lectures on classical learning in the halls of
universities.[321] The queen’s noble encouragement of learning had
been fostered by her confessor, F. Francis Ximenes; and when, in
1495, the Franciscan friar became Archbishop of Toledo and Primate
of Spain, one of his first thoughts was the erection of a model
university, to which he resolved to devote the immense revenues of
his see.

It has been said that seats of learning require the accessories of a
fine air, and even the charms of natural scenery; and we might quote
one of the most exquisite pieces of word-painting to be found in any
language,[322] which is written to show the special gift enjoyed by
Athens, rendering her worthy to be the capital of mind. It was the
clear elastic air of Attica which communicated something of its own
sunniness and elasticity to the intellect of her citizens, just as
it imparted a golden colouring even to the marble dug out of that
favoured soil. So it had been with Paris, the Athens of the Middle
Ages, where students from the foggy shores of Britain conceived
themselves endowed with some new faculty when relieved from the
oppression of their native atmosphere. And even Louvain, though less
favoured than these by nature, had been chosen in preference to other
Flemish cities, chiefly on account of her purer air and her pleasant
_entourage_ of copses and meadows, with their abundant store of
“corn, apples, sheep, oxen, and chirping birds.”

It is not surprising, therefore, that Ximenes, when seeking the
fittest spot in which to plant his academy, took very gravely
into consideration the question of scenery and climate. The clear
atmosphere of Alcala, and the tranquil landscapes on the banks of
the Henares, so soothing to the meditative eye, had their share in
determining him to fix his foundation at the ancient Complutum. In
its grammar schools he had made his early studies, and old boyish
recollections attached him to the spot, the ancient traditions of
which rendered it dear to Christian scholars.[323] There, then, in
the year 1500 he laid the foundation of his first college, which
he dedicated to his saintly predecessor, St. Ildefonsus. This was
intended to be the head college of the university, to which all
the others were in a manner to be subordinate. It consisted of
thirty-three professors, in honour of the years of our Lord’s earthly
life, and twelve priests or chaplains, in honour of the twelve
Apostles. These latter had nothing to do with the education of the
students, but were to recite the divine office in common, and carry
out the rites of the Church with becoming solemnity. The professors,
who were all to be theologians, were distinguished by their dress, a
long red robe, which, being flung over their left shoulder, hung to
the ground in large and graceful folds. The colleges of St. Balbina
and St. Catherine were intended for students in philosophy, each
containing forty-eight students. There was a small college, dedicated
to Our Lady, for poor students in theology and medicine; and a larger
one, used for the reception of the sick. The college of SS. Peter
and Paul was exclusively for Franciscan scholars, corresponding in
character to the monastic colleges or houses of study at Oxford.
There were also two classical schools for young students, forty-two
of whom received a free education for three years; these were
severally dedicated to St. Eugenius and St. Isidore. And lastly,
there was the college of St. Jerome for the three languages, in
which ten scholars studied Latin, ten Greek, and ten Hebrew; a
foundation which, as we have seen, formed the model on which the
_Collegium Trilingue_ at Louvain was afterwards established.[324]
I will say nothing of the libraries, refectories, and chapels, all
of which were finished with great splendour; and the whole city was
restored and beautified, so as to make it more worthy of being the
site of so magnificent a seat of learning. Other houses of study
soon sprang up in connection with the different religious orders,
all of which were anxious to secure for their members advantages
which were nowhere else to be found in such abundance. For though
Ximenes was a mighty builder, and thereby exposed himself to many
bad puns from Court wits, who made much of the “_edification_” he
gave when he superintended his workmen rule in hand, he certainly
did not neglect the spiritual for the material building. Eight years
after he had solemnly laid the foundation stone of his first college,
the university was opened, and a brilliant staff of professors--in
all forty-two in number--were gathered round the Cardinal primate
to receive their respective offices from his hands. The government
of the university was vested in the hands of a chancellor, rector,
and senate. The system of graduation was copied from that of Paris,
except that the theological degrees were given a pre-eminence over
the others, and made both more honourable and more difficult to
attain. The professorships were distributed as follows:--Six for
theology; six for canon law; four for medicine; one, anatomy; one,
surgery; nine, philosophy; one, mathematics; four, Greek and Hebrew;
four, rhetoric; and six, grammar. There was no chair of civil
law, as this faculty was excellently taught at the other Spanish
universities, and Ximenes had no liking for it, and did not wish to
introduce it at Alcala, probably fearing lest it might prevent that
predominance of the theological faculty which he desired should be
the characteristic of his university. Provision was made for the
support of the aged and infirm professors; and on this point the
Cardinal consulted his former colleague in the regency of Castile,
Adrian of Utrecht, and established similar regulations to those
which existed at Louvain. The system of studies and rule of college
discipline were drawn up by himself, the former being in a great
degree borrowed from that established at Paris. Frequent disputations
and examinations quickened the application of the students, and
at these Ximenes loved to preside, and encourage the emulation of
his scholars with his presence. In the choice of his professors he
considered nothing but the merit of the candidates, and set at
nought all the narrowness of mere nationality. Spain was by this
time, however, able to furnish humanists and philologists equal to
those of Italy or Germany. And most of the first professors were
of native birth. Among them was Antonio de Lebrija, and though he
afterwards accepted a chair at Salamanca, yet he finally returned to
Alcala, and rendered invaluable aid to Ximenes in the philological
labours in which he was about to engage, and which shed an additional
lustre over the new academy.

Ximenes had always manifested a peculiar predilection for the
cultivation of Biblical literature. In his earlier years his love of
the Holy Scriptures had induced him to devote himself to the study of
Hebrew and Chaldaic, and he had often been heard to say that he would
willingly give up all his knowledge of jurisprudence to be able to
explain a single verse of the Bible. He considered a thorough revival
of biblical studies the surest means of defeating the new heretics,
and in the midst of Court engagements and political toils, he at
length conceived the plan of his great Polyglot Bible, in which the
sacred text was to appear in the four learned languages, after the
most correct versions that could be obtained. This great work, which
was to serve as the model for all subsequent attempts of a similar
kind, was no sooner designed than he set about its execution, and
secured the co-operation of a number of skilful scholars, fixing on
Alcala as the scene of their labours. Immense sums were expended in
obtaining Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldaic manuscripts; and in his
dedication, Ximenes acknowledges the invaluable assistance which he
received from Pope Leo X. The plan was exactly one sure to engage the
sympathies of that generous Pontiff, who accordingly placed at his
command all the treasures of the Vatican Library. The costly work
when complete presented the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the
Greek version of the Septuagint, the Latin version of St. Jerome,
and the Chaldaic paraphrase of the Pentateuch, together with certain
letters, prefaces, and dissertations to assist the study of the
Sacred Books. The work was commenced in 1502, and the last volume
was published in 1517. The same energy which had succeeded, in the
brief space of eight years, in raising a university which received
the title of “the eighth wonder of the world,” was able, in fifteen
years, to bring to a happy conclusion a literary undertaking which
might well have occupied thrice that space of time. Ximenes, who felt
his end approaching, desired to leave all his great works complete,
and urged on his scholars with frequent admonitions on the shortness
of human life. If _they_ lost _him_ as their patron, or if _he_ were
to lose _their_ labours, the whole design might fall to the ground.
On the 10th of July 1517 the last sheet of the great Complutensian
Polyglot was printed, and the young son of the printer, Bocario,
putting on his holiday garments, ran at once to present it to the
Cardinal. Ximenes received it with a solemn emotion of gratitude and
joy. “I thank Thee, O Lord Christ,” he said, “that Thou hast brought
this work to a desired end.” It was as though he had been permitted
this as his last earthly consolation, for four months later he closed
his great and useful career, being in the eighty-second year of his
age.

Louvain and Alcala, the two great Catholic creations of the age
of the Renaissance, both fell under the hammer of Revolution. The
memory of Ximenes has not prevailed to preserve his university from
destruction at the hands of the Spanish Progressistas, and we can but
hope that its restoration may be reserved for another generation.
That of Louvain has been witnessed even in our own time. Swept away
in 1797 by the decree of the French Republic, which at the same
time suppressed all the great ecclesiastical seminaries, it was not
restored by the Nassau sovereigns who, in 1814, became masters of
the Catholic Netherlands. William of Holland, so far from showing
his Catholic subjects any larger degree of favour than they had
enjoyed under French rule, did his best to render their position
worse than it had been under the Revolution. He put down all the
little seminaries, and proposed to supply the place of the ancient
university of Louvain by a grand royal philosophical college, through
which all ecclesiastical students were to be compelled to pass before
being received into the great seminaries. This was in the June of
1825; in the January of 1830 the determined resistance of the Belgian
Catholics obliged him to suppress his college, which had proved a
total failure. The August following witnessed the expulsion of his
dynasty and the establishment of Belgian independence; events which
were followed in 1834 by the erection at Louvain of a new university,
in virtue of an Apostolic brief of Pope Gregory XVI.

Planted on the Belgian soil, which has so long and so successfully
resisted the inroads of heresy, and which appears destined in our own
day to become the battle-ground of a yet deadlier struggle with open
unbelief, the Catholic university of Louvain has already merited to
be declared by illustrious lips “the glory of Belgium and of the
Church.” She has been presented by the Sovereign Pontiff to the
Catholics of these islands, as the model on which our own academic
restorations may fitly be formed; and at this very moment her example
is understood to have encouraged the prelates of Germany to attempt
a similar foundation in that land. May their generous efforts be
crowned with ample success, and may such institutions, wherein Faith
and Science will never be divorced, multiply in the Church, supported
by the prayers and good wishes of every Catholic heart.

_CHAPTER XXII._

THE RENAISSANCE IN ROME.

A.D. 1513 TO 1528.

On the morning of the 11th of April 1513 the streets of Rome were
thronged with a joyous and expectant crowd, assembled to witness the
public procession of the newly-elected Pontiff, Leo X., on occasion
of his taking possession of the Basilica of St. John Lateran. Many
circumstances combined to render the accession of Leo welcome to
his new subjects: they had already felt the charm of his courteous
manners, springing partly from careful culture, and partly from an
innate kindness of heart; and whilst the Roman citizens, who were
heartily tired of the wars and war-taxes of Julius II., rejoiced
at the prospect of peace and plenty, the artists and professors,
who made up a population by themselves, regarded the election of
a Medici as a sufficient guarantee for the protection of their
personal interests. The son of Lorenzo, and the pupil of Politian,
of Chalcondylus, and of Bernard Dovizi, he had imbibed a love of art
and poetry in the gardens of Florence and the villas of Fiesole.
Created a Cardinal at the age of fourteen, he was but thirty-seven
at the period of his election to the Papal chair, and during his
residence at Rome under the two preceding Pontificates had acquired
a character which his friends condensed into a motto, and exhibited
in golden letters on the canopy under which he was enthroned,
_Litteratorum præsidium ac bonitatis fautor_. If an ancient statue
had been disinterred in the baths of Titus, the Cardinal de’ Medici
had been the first to celebrate the auspicious event in graceful
iambics improvised to the music of his lyre; his house had been the
_rendezvous_ of artists, poets, and, above all, of musicians; and
whilst men of this stamp loudly proclaimed the taste and munificence
of the new Pontiff, the unblemished name which he had preserved in
the midst of a society the corruptions of which were matter of
public notoriety, put to silence the busy tongue of scandal.

It was truly, therefore, a festa-day which his subjects were
now celebrating; and as he rode on his white charger through
the brilliant streets, men contrasted his mild and _débonnaire_
countenance, his gay smile, and affable address; with the imperious
bearing of his predecessor, the warlike Julius; and the contrast was
all to his advantage. What a scene it was through which he was now
passing! Rome had been all but rebuilt under the four last Pontiffs,
and from the Vatican to the Coliseum the way was marked with
monuments of their munificence and of the genius of their artists.
Domes, amphitheatres, arcades, and fountains had risen during the
last seventy years with magnificent profusion; the old Basilica of
the Apostles had disappeared, and was in process of being replaced
by a pile worthy of the vast conceptions of its founders and its
architects. And now the splendid city had decked herself in gala
costume, and amid velvet tapestries and flowery wreaths, triumphal
arches, and private houses, with their facades improvised into
heathen temples, appeared a strange medley of saints and mythological
characters, in which the statues of Mars, Apollo, Minerva, and Venus,
were exhibited in close proximity to those of SS. Peter and Paul.
On the whole, however, the classic element predominated, and the
characters chosen at each resting-place to harangue the new Pontiff
were the Muses, the Seasons, and their attendant nymphs.

The hopes and expectations of the Roman populace on that day were
abundantly fulfilled. Leo did his best to restore peace to Italy,
and raised Rome to the dignity of a great capital. Few princes have
ever been more richly endowed than he with the qualities which make
princedom popular; a liberality which bordered on profuseness, a
generous readiness to reward merit, and a charming urbanity of
manners, which made every one who approached his person believe
himself the object of the Pope’s particular regard. Erasmus felt
the magical influence of his presence, and wrote to his friends,
saying, that Leo was as far superior to the rest of men, as men
are superior, to beasts. “He has the genius and the virtues of all
the Leos who have preceded him, and to perfect goodness of heart,”
he continues, “he unites an incredible strength of soul.” In the
church all beholders admired the majesty with which he officiated
at the sacred ceremonies; and his temperate habits in private have
been praised by all his biographers. He was not only a passionate
lover of literature and science, but was firmly persuaded that the
cultivation of letters, rightly regarded, is ever friendly to the
faith. “I have always loved learned men and good letters,” he wrote
to Henry VIII. “This attraction was born with me, and it has only
increased with years; for I always see that those who cultivate
literature are most firmly attached to the dogmas of the faith, and
form the glory of the Christian Church.” His patronage of arts and
letters, therefore, was hearty and munificent enough to satisfy even
the requirements of the learned world around him. He restored the
Roman University, and appointed a brilliant staff of professors,
men not only of the first ability, but of exemplary life. In his
Bull addressed to the students, he failed not to warn them against
substituting Plato and the poets for more serious studies, and
reminded the preceptors that they were called on to defend the faith
as well as to teach good letters. His own tastes, however, had the
character which might have been anticipated from his education: they
inclined almost exclusively to the _belles-lettres_. In many cases
the classic acquirements of those who were now promoted to canonries
and Cardinals’ hats were more regarded than their personal merits.
Bernard Dovizi, who, as tutor to the young Medici, had studiously and
successfully laboured to confer on his manners that exquisite polish
which was his greatest charm, was now raised to the purple, and,
as Cardinal Bibiena, endeavoured to surround the Pontifical palace
with every attraction of a secular Court. The literary public of
those days was not easily scandalised, but it was at least taken by
surprise by the first production which came from the new Cardinal’s
pen, his comedy of “Calandra,” written as a carnival piece for the
amusement of a noble lady, and acted in the private apartments of
the Vatican.[325] Ariosto was also welcomed at Court, and even the
infamous Aretino received marks of favour, whilst Bembo and Sadolet,
the two first Latinists of their day, were appointed the Pope’s
secretaries.

The patronage of Leo was not limited to any one kind of literary
excellence. He was as ready to reward a scientific treatise as an
imitation of Horace, and whilst encouraging the study of the Eastern
tongues, and publishing at his own expense a magnificent edition
of Tacitus from the unique manuscript obtained from the abbey of
Old Corby, he was accepting the dedication of Italian tragedies and
causing the “Rosamunda” of Ruccellai to be acted in his presence.
Almost his first act after his accession to the Papal dignity
was to summon Lascaris to Rome, and establish him in a palace on
the Esquiline, where, in concert with Musurus, he superintended
a Greek academy and printing press. Zenobius Acciajoli, the most
learned Orientalist of his day, who had shone among the stars of
Lorenzo’s Court, and had afterwards assumed the Dominican habit and
dedicated his genius to sacred studies, now became Prefect of the
Vatican Library; whilst another Oriental scholar of the same order,
the celebrated Sanctes Pagninus, found generous encouragement to
undertake his Latin translation of the Scriptures from the original
tongues.

But whilst extending his splendid patronage to every department of
literature, the personal predilections of Leo were undoubtedly for
poetry and the arts. Like a true Medici he loved the sunny side of
life, and delighted in surrounding himself with poets, wits, and
musicians, he himself being the gayest wit and best musician of the
party. The Court was crowded with professional improvisatori who
enlivened the suppers at the Vatican with their jests and pastimes.
In the mornings there were literary assemblies in which the great men
of the day recited their poems or epigrams, or more learned works.
Now it was Vida, whom Leo had engaged to undertake the composition
of his “Christiad,” and who beguiled his lighter hours by setting
forth the mysteries of the game of chess in Latin hexameters; or
Paulus Jovius,[326] the Italian Livy, who came to read a chapter of
his history; or “the divine Accolti,” as he was called, who recited
his poems surrounded by a guard of honour, and who in return for his
lyric productions was raised to the dukedom of Nepi and a bishopric.

Under such a _régime_ the arts flourished, and men of letters were
promoted to wealth and dignities; Rome grew daily more luxurious and
more splendid, but, alas! it must be said, her moral atmosphere was
a pestilence. The historian Mariana declares that at the opening of
the sixteenth century greater disorders existed there than were to
be witnessed in any other European capital. Even Bembo, whose own
life at this time was a disgrace to the ecclesiastical habit, admits
the charge, and owns that he who desired to lead a holy life would
do well to fly from Rome.[327] What else could be anticipated of a
society made up of artists and professors, paganised to the very core
in its literature, its language, and its every maxim? And when we
say _paganised_, let it not be supposed that the simple restoration
of classical studies is here intended, or that the abuses complained
of consisted only of the extravagances of a few learned pedants. In
Italian literary circles, if we may credit historians of the time,
the Christian ideas were slowly becoming obliterated. It had grown
fashionable in certain coteries to scoff at all the Christian dogmas
as obsolete and barbarous; and Antonio Bandino complains that you
were no longer regarded as a man of education unless you could jest
at the Scriptures and indulge in some witty piece of scepticism.
Many of the Italian schools were deeply infected with infidelity,
particularly the University of Padua, which for more than a century
had been notorious as the focus of atheism. Pomponatus,[328] one of
the Paduan professors, published a treatise on the immortality of the
soul, during the reign of Leo X., in which he endeavoured to show
that the doctrine was not held by Aristotle, that it rested _only_ on
the authority of Scripture and the Church, and was plainly opposed
to reason. A great number of professors taught similar errors, and
pretended that though contrary to revelation they might yet be taught
as _philosophically_ true. These were condemned in 1513 by the Fifth
Council of Lateran, which formally declared that “truth could not
contradict truth;” and to counteract the dangerous spirit prevalent
in the universities it was at the same time decreed that students
aspiring to sacred orders should not follow the course of philosophy
and poetry for more than five years, unless at the same time they
studied theology and canon law.[329] But little or no fruit was
produced by this decree, and as we shall see, at a somewhat later
period the “great and pernicious abuses” which were admitted as
loudly demanding reform, were formally declared by a commission of
Cardinals to have arisen mainly from the impious teaching tolerated
in the public schools.

In fact, Italy was at this time _professor-ridden_. Of all odious
dogmatisms surely that of pedagogues is the most intolerable form
of social tyranny, and under this the Transalpine world was then
groaning. Armed with their pens and their tinsel eloquence the men
of letters wrote down and talked down all opposition, and made so
much noise in the world that they seemed for a time to occupy a much
larger and more influential position than was really the case. They
dictated their laws to the literary world, and every one who would
not be pasquinaded as a barbarian was content to follow the fashion.
So in the pulpit preachers called on their audience to contemplate
the examples of Epaminondas or Socrates; parallels were drawn between
the sacred events of the Passion, and the self-devotion of a Curtius
or a Decius: our Divine Lord was commonly spoken of as a hero who had
deserved well of his country, and not unfrequently allusions would
be introduced to the thunders of Jupiter and the stories of heathen
mythology.

The grand object of Italian scholars at this time was to attain a
pure Ciceronian style, and in this none were more successful than
the two papal secretaries, Sadolet and Bembo. The pains taken by the
latter on his compositions at least deserved success. He is said
to have kept forty portfolios, into each of which his sheets were
successively entered, and only passed on to the one next in order
after undergoing careful revision. The rejection of every phrase not
absolutely Ciceronian led to very strange affectation when speaking
of events of ordinary life, as well as to the more offensive fault
of adopting heathen phraseology on matters relating to the Christian
faith. Thus the accession of Leo was announced to foreign Courts as
having taken place “through the favour of the Immortal Gods;” Divine
grace was the _magnificentia divinitatis_; Our Lady was the _Dea
Lauretana_, or the _Alma Parens_; and the Christian mysteries were
described in terms taken from the sacrificial terminology of the
Greeks. Erasmus had good sense enough to despise these extravagances,
and he did his utmost to render them ridiculous.[330] He describes
the Ciceronian spending a whole winter’s night on the composition of
a single sentence, compiling lexicons of Ciceronian words, tropes,
locutions, and pleasantries, more bulky than the great orator’s
entire works, and struggling with the insuperable difficulties of
rendering the wants and habits of a modern age into the colloquial
phraseology of the ancients.

The poets and artists followed the example set them by the
professors. They still occasionally condescended to choose Christian
subjects, but in most cases it was to debase them by a pagan method
of treatment. When Sannazar thought fit to employ his muse on so
old-fashioned a theme as the birth of Our Lord, he converted it into
a pagan fable, placed the prophecies of the Sibyls in the hands of
the Blessed Virgin, and the words of Isaias in the mouth of Proteus,
omitted the name of Jesus Christ throughout his entire poem, and
surrounded the holy crib with nymphs, satyrs, and hamadryads.
The very liturgy of the Church had a narrow escape of undergoing
a classical reform, and a new _Hymnarium_ appeared, drawn up by
Zachario Ferreri, “according to the true rules of Latinity and
metre,” in which, says Dom Guéranger, “occur every image and allusion
to pagan belief and customs which are to be met with in Horace.”
This work was undertaken by command of Leo X., but its use, though
permitted by Clement VII., was happily never enjoined on the clergy.

Hand in hand with the paganism of literature advanced the paganism
of morals. We are not here engaged in studying the history of the
Church, and may therefore be spared the pain of contemplating her
scandals--those scandals the existence of which, far from weakening
our faith, may rather confirm it, when we remember that they were
distinctly prophesied by her Divine Head as evils which “must needs
be” accomplished. Our business is with schools and scholars, and,
sooth to say, after wandering amid the dim religious light of the
mediæval cloisters, the blaze of the Roman literary circles, after
first dazzling our eyes, reveals such bewildering spectacles, that
we look about for some retreat into which the Christian scholar may
creep and hide himself.

Such, perhaps, was the feeling of many a student who, coming fresh
from the schools of Louvain, or the cloisters of Winchester or
Oxford, found himself suddenly dropped down upon a world which seemed
to have broken loose from all time-honoured traditions of scholastic
life. Perhaps he had been used to set before him the musty maxim
of Philip the Almoner,[331] that “that is no true science which is
not the companion of justice;” or he had learned from Hugh of St.
Victor to regard humility as the foundation of wisdom; or he was
familiar with the saying of the Angel of the schools, that the best
way to make progress in philosophy was to keep the commandments
of God. But if he had the gift of prudence, he would think twice
before citing such authorities in the polite circles of the Roman
_literati_. He would have been hooted at as a barbarian. The monks
and schoolmen were never spoken of by the professors of the new
learning save in terms of execration and contempt. They were, to use
the language of Erasmus, wretched creatures, whose language was as
uncouth as their apprehension was dull. In those days there was no
greater reproach than to call a man a _Scotist_--it meant precisely
a _dunce_[332]--and those who held communion with the Muses and
the Graces would have judged it an affront to be required to treat
with respect the memory of St. Thomas or St. Bonaventure. And truly
their venerable names, and the maxims they had laid down for the
guidance of Christian scholars, would have been sadly out of place
in the sumptuous orgies of the Chigi palace, or those luxurious
soirées where prelates, ambassadors, and men of letters did not
refuse to appear as the guests of the most questionable characters.
The Roman academy which had been suppressed by Paul II., and had
revived under Julius II., was now at the height of its renown. Its
members generally met in some delicious suburban garden, and there,
under the shade of the thick foliage, in an atmosphere heavy with
the perfume of the orange-flower, they recited poems, proposed
philosophic questions, and whiled away with song and merriment long
hours of the day and night. Amid scenes of such Epicurean enjoyment
the stranger might have been forgiven had he imagined himself taking
part in the revelries of pagan rather than of Christian Rome. On the
walls of the luxurious banqueting-rooms, in which he assisted at
those suppers of world-wide celebrity, he might see representations
from the comedies of Plautus, reminding him how close a parallel
was to be drawn between the manners described by the Latin poet and
those of the sixteenth century. From the elegant revellers around
him he might hear the authority of Pliny quoted to prove that the
human soul differed in nothing from that of beasts; or, exchanging
the philosophic for a lighter mood, he might perhaps be called on to
assist at some macaronic exhibition, such as the crowning of Querno,
the drunken buffoon, arch-poet of Rome; or be required to listen
to the facetious improvisation of Folengo or Mariano Fetti,--the
former a monk, the latter a friar,--both of whom had quitted their
cloisters to ply the trade of professional jesters. Thankful enough
he would be to escape from these polished circles and return to
his own barbarous land and the society of those rude English, who,
as Politian contemptuously remarked, “knew nothing of letters, and
busied themselves with their sheep,” and who perhaps might, in their
turn, have thought with the Psalmist, that it was well with those who
knew no literature, and were only mindful of justice.[333]

We are not left merely to conjecture the abuses which throve in such
a soil. We have the grave avowal of the commission of Cardinals
already referred to, that “in no city was there to be witnessed such
corruption of manners as in this city, which should be an example to
all.” Vice, in fact, had ceased to wear a veil; it stalked abroad
under the noonday sun, and too often found illustrious support. Yet,
strange to say, the existing abuses, monstrous as they were, were
more superficial than they seemed. The evil scum that rises to the
surface of society must not always be taken as a test of what lies
beneath; the gaudy charlock may toss its wanton head and blazon
itself to the eye, but the good seed is quietly germinating below,
and in the day of harvest its sheaves will not be wanting. The
Church is happily not governed by professors and scholastics, and
at the very time when the literary world of Rome was exhibiting the
spectacles described above, the Fifth Council of Lateran was holding
its sessions in that very city, and promulgating its decrees for
the reform of the Universities, the College of Cardinals, and the
Roman Court.[334] The Church, by the mouth of her episcopate, was
solemnly exposing and condemning those very evils which thoughtless
observers were perhaps laying to her charge. In the decree of the
Council on the study of the Scriptures and the liberal arts, the
Fathers, after setting forth the vital importance of the education
of youth, go on to declare that schoolmasters and professors are
bound not merely to teach their scholars grammar and rhetoric, but
yet more to instruct them in their religion, and to make them study
sacred hymns and psalms, and the lives of the saints; and forbid
anything to be taught on Sundays and festival days save what refers
in some way to religion or holy living. Decrees of this sort, if they
plainly indicate the deplorable practical paganism which at that time
prevailed in most public academies, show us also that the rulers of
the Church were sensible of the evil, and earnestly desirous to apply
a suitable remedy. And, as we shall see hereafter, this very city of
Rome that seemed so corrupt, cherished in her bosom a principle of
life and power, which eventually cast out the infection which had
hung over her so long, and so accomplished her own purification. Long
before Luther had uttered the word “Reform,” it had rung through
the halls of the Lateran. The Fathers of the Council spared nothing
and dissimulated nothing; and at the opening of the ninth session,
a remarkable oration was delivered by Antonio Pucci, clerk to the
Apostolic Chamber, in which he called on the Pope to set about the
work in earnest. “Holy Father!” he exclaimed, “you desire to restore
peace to Christendom, and you do well in so desiring. But see first
that you extinguish the intestine wars of our vices, and exterior
peace will soon reappear. Behold the world! Behold the cloister!
Behold the sanctuary! Everywhere there are abuses to reform, and it
is with the house of God that we must begin.”

Yet it can be no great matter of surprise that passing strangers
did not always penetrate the distinction between the _Church_ and
the _City_ of Rome, and that the undeniable corruption of the Roman
literary circles brought ecclesiastical rulers into disrepute, and
sapped in many minds the sentiment of loyalty to the Apostolic See.
That both Erasmus and Luther carried with them from Rome fatal
impressions, which, each in his own way, turned to the detriment of
religion, is not to be doubted. Erasmus, indeed, had no cause to be
scandalised by a state of society which was exactly to his taste. He
was _fêted_ and flattered by prelates and philosophers, and in his
letters from Rome he wants words to express his raptures at those
delicious hours which he spent among libraries and academies, in
the reunions at the palace of the _divine_ Cardinal San Giorgio, or
the yet more charming assemblies in the Pope’s private chambers.
Yet, while enjoying the cup of pleasure to the full, his keen
sarcastic eye was taking the measure of all he saw, and it was on his
journey back to the north, that he beguiled his travelling fatigues
with composing his “Praise of Folly,” in which Cardinals, Popes,
and Prelates are made the subject of his most caustic gibes and
pleasantries. And this, after all, is the way of the world; it is
a lynx-eyed critic, and has ever a rigorous standard for those who
ought to be saints, and a ready condemnation for those who fall short
of it. Erasmus, who was himself worldly to the heart’s core, had yet
sense enough to feel that worldliness, however delightful, was out of
place on the threshold of the apostles, and he made other men feel it
too, with all that biting irony of which he was the master.

Luther, a man of different mould, visited Rome in a widely
different spirit. He was in the first fervour of what he considered
his religious conversion, when in 1510 he came thither full of
enthusiasm, and fell on his knees as he entered the city, to kiss the
soil watered by the blood of martyrs; though he afterwards mocked at
his own devotion and at the simplicity with which he ran about from
church to church prepared to believe and venerate everything that he
saw. He too carried away impressions that were never effaced. His
coarse, strong Saxon nature had little taste for the arts and the
_belles-lettres_, and was only repelled by the magnificence around
him. The Olympic deities that met his eye at every street corner,
the heathenish adornments of the very churches, where pictures and
images of Christian mysteries were presented in the garb of paganism,
and the yet worse heathenism which met his ears from the elegant
literary crowds among whom he passed in his coarse friar’s frock, all
this sank into his soul to be reproduced on the day when he launched
his imprecations against the seven-hilled city, and held her up to
the scorn of his countrymen, as “the dwelling-place of dragons,
the nest of bats and vultures, the resort of hobgoblins, weasels,
gnomes, and demons.”[335] Nor did it matter anything to his audience
that the enormities he exposed were far surpassed by those which he
committed, and that the apostle of reform had himself let loose on
the world the reign of frenzied license; the scandals he propagated
did the work which he intended, and indelibly fixed in the Saxon mind
the tradition which identified Rome with Babylon.

We need not here concern ourselves with the history of that great
revolution which history miscalls the Reformation. Before the death
of Leo X., that which had been deemed in its beginning to be but “a
squabble of friars,” was ending in the apostasy of nations. The Roman
academicians, however, were less moved at the tidings which reached
them in 1520, that the Pope’s Bull, the Decretals, and the Summa
of St. Thomas, had all been burnt together by Luther in the public
square of Wittemberg, and that the Pope himself had been declared
by the same authority to be Antichrist, than at another piece of
intelligence, which was communicated to them on February 9, 1522, and
which startled them like a clap of thunder. Leo was dead, and the
choice of the Cardinals had fallen on the Cardinal Adrian of Utrecht.
The burning of St. Thomas in person would have been a light matter to
them, in comparison with the election to the Papal dignity of a plain
austere Louvain professor; already known to fame as the advocate of
ecclesiastical discipline, the friend and colleague of Ximenes, and
it was more than whispered, the supporter of scholasticism. He was a
Fleming, a “Scotist,” a Goth, and the enemy of letters. He had come
into the city without pomp of any kind, and had ordered one of the
half-finished triumphal arches, that was to have cost a thousand
ducats, to be destroyed. He had discharged ninety out of the one
hundred equerries kept by his predecessor. He had brought his old
Louvain housekeeper with him to the Vatican, and was dismissing the
improvisatori and whole troops of other Court idlers. They had taken
him over the Museum attached to his palace, and he had been heard to
mutter the words _Idola antiquorum_, when standing before the group
of the Laocoon. Some of Sadolet’s most elegant Latin epistles had
been placed in his hands, and he had briefly commented on them as
“the letters of a poet.” “I verily believe,” writes Jerome Negri, in
terrible alarm, “that he will do as Pope Gregory did before him, make
a clean sweep of our libraries, and perhaps grind up our statues to
furnish mortar for building St. Peter’s.” The artists cried out that
now they should all be starved; the professors bewailed the certain
return of Gothic barbarism: Bembo set out at once for Venice, and
Sadolet retired to his bishopric of Carpentras, where he displayed
those noble qualities which had as yet found no room to expand in the
artificial atmosphere of the Court.

Never was there a more undeserved reproach than that which
stigmatised Pope Adrian as the enemy of learning. Erasmus, who
had been defended by him from the attacks of some over-zealous
scholastics, judged far otherwise, but the Romans could not forgive
his indifference to ancient art, and his condemnation of those
paganising scholars, whom he termed “Terentians.” Still less could
they forgive his plain speaking on the subject of reform. “Many
abominations,” he said, “have existed near this Holy Chair, abuses
in spiritual matters, and evil everywhere. We pledge ourselves, on
our part, to use our utmost endeavour to reform that Court which has,
perhaps, been the source of the evils we deplore.”

In his brief pontificate of twenty-two months he was unable to
accomplish the work which lay so close to his heart. His death was
regarded by the Roman literati as a kind of providence, a special
grace from heaven which had averted the return of mediæval barbarism;
and some of them went so far as to adorn with garlands the house
of his physician, to whose want of skill the fatal termination
of Adrian’s illness was ascribed, hanging over his door the
inscription--“To the Saviour of his country.”

Yet those two-and-twenty months, which seemed so fruitless, witnessed
the turning of the tide. The election of another Medici as successor
to Adrian was the signal for extraordinary rejoicings, and for the
return to Rome of many who had abandoned it after the accession of
Adrian. Clement VII. had all the personal grace and refined intellect
of his family; he had less taste for pleasure, and more aptitude for
business than Leo, and was a true lover of learned men. He induced
Sadolet to resume his functions as secretary, and did his best to
engage Erasmus to devote his genius to the earnest defence of the
Church.

The spirits of the Romans revived when they witnessed the splendid
patronage of letters exercised by the new Pope and his kinsman,
Cardinal Hyppolitus de’ Medici, who entertained in his household no
fewer than three hundred learned men. The artists and academicians
confidently reckoned on a return of their golden age; and yet all
were more or less conscious of a certain indefinable change which
had stolen over the public mind, betokening that a reaction was
setting in, and that a new era was at hand. The German revolt
from the Church had by this time assumed proportions which it was
impossible to ignore. The question of the English divorce was causing
grave inquietudes, and whilst the shadow of new and unprecedented
calamities hung heavy over the world, even the most indifferent minds
felt perhaps that something more earnest was called for at that
moment than the cultivation of the Muses. It cannot, indeed, be said
that the tide of social corruption was checked; yet another and a
better element was silently at work; and, hidden in the glittering
crowd,

Some few there were who with pure hearts aspired
To lay their just hands on the golden key
That opes the palace of eternity.

Clement had summoned to his Court several illustrious ecclesiastics
who, whilst inferior to none of their contemporaries in literary
merit, were desirous above all things to provide a remedy for those
grave domestic abuses which, they rightly felt, afflicted the
Church more heavily than any attacks from her exterior foes. Among
these were the Venetian, Gaspar Contarini, a profound scholar,
and a man of fervent piety; Sadolet, who, now greatly weaned from
the pursuits which had formerly absorbed him, desired to devote
his remaining years to his pastoral duties; Matthew Ghiberti, the
worthiest prelate of his time, whom Clement had admitted to his
closest confidence, and raised to the dignity of Chancellor and the
see of Verona; the Prothonotary, Cajetan of Thienna, and the Cardinal
Caraffa, Archbishop of Theate, who afterwards became Pope under
the title of Paul IV. The jubilee year 1525 also brought to Rome a
number of devout and earnest pilgrims, among whom was our own great
countryman Reginald Pole, then a student at Padua, whom Bembo called
the most virtuous young man in Italy, and whose happiness it was to
enter on his list of friends the name of almost every one of his
contemporaries most illustrious for scholarship or piety. Men of this
stamp felt the need, in the midst of that luxurious and enervating
atmosphere, of some tie of Christian fellowship which might support
and invigorate their spiritual life; and the result was the formation
of a humble confraternity which met in the church of SS. Silvestro
and Dorotea, and took the name of “the Oratory of Divine Love.”

Similar associations were springing up in other cities of Italy,
but that at Rome is remarkable as being the germ whence afterwards
developed the order of the Theatines. A plan was concerted among
the members of the confraternity for instituting an order of
regular clerks, in which the ancient canonical mode of life should
be revived; this being suggested as offering the surest means for
effecting that reformation of manners among the clergy which all good
men so earnestly desired to forward. This design was carried out with
the approbation of the Pope; Caraffa and St. Cajetan being chosen
the two first superiors. Of the latter it was commonly said that he
desired to reform the world without letting the world know he was
in it, and in the northern cities of Italy, where he had hitherto
chiefly resided, he had the character of uniting in one person
the seraphic gifts of a contemplative to the heroic virtues of an
apostle. The rule adopted by the regular clerks was nearly the same
as that of the ancient Canons Regular. It appears certain that their
original design included the formation of ecclesiastical seminaries,
and in all essential particulars the new foundation bore a striking
resemblance to that set on foot in the eighth century, with a very
similar purpose, by St. Chrodegang of Metz. And thus we see how
saintly men, when they took in hand the work of ecclesiastical
reform, found no better means for carrying out their views, than
turning back into the old paths, and following the traditions
bequeathed them by a golden antiquity.

The order of Theatines, however, whilst yet in its infancy, was
threatened with extinction when that terrible calamity fell upon
Rome, to describe which one needs to use the language of the
inspired writers, when they detail the woes that were to chastise
the guilty city, which was yet the chosen city of God. The political
combinations which had closely allied the Roman Pontiff with the
Court of France, exposed him to the hostility of the Emperor Charles
V., whose armies entered Italy in the early part of the year 1527,
and threatened to lay siege to Rome. On the 5th of May, the city
was stormed by the ferocious bands of the Constable de Bourbon,
consisting chiefly of German Lutherans, animated to frenzy by the
thirst for plunder and a wild religious fanaticism. The Pope took
refuge in the castle of St. Angelo, and from thence had the anguish
of witnessing his capital given up to scenes of sacrilege and
violence which find no equal in history. The sack of Rome by the
barbarian Goths lasted but six days, but the Germans held possession
of their prey for _nine months_, every hour of which witnessed some
fresh abomination. The citizens were subjected to horrible tortures,
to compel them to give up their hidden treasures; the churches were
desecrated, and sacred relics tossed about the streets; troop-horses
were stabled in the Pontifical chapel, and littered with Bulls and
decretals; mock celebrations of holy rites were performed by drunken
troopers, who, decked out with cardinals’ dresses, pretended to hold
a conclave, and proclaimed the election of Luther as Pope. Out of a
population of 85,000, 50,000 citizens are calculated to have perished
by torture and the sword, and the excesses of the soldiers at last
brought a pestilence in their train, which all but annihilated, the
conquerors themselves; so that the city, awhile before so brilliant
and luxurious, became little better than a desolate and fetid tomb.

Amid the nameless horrors of that time it is needless to say that
neither piety nor learning procured any mercy for their owners.
St. Cajetan was scourged and tortured, and then compelled with his
brethren to abandon the Roman territory and take refuge in Venice;
where their modest house a few years later afforded hospitality to
St. Ignatius and his first companions. As to the academicians, we
are assured by Jerome Negri that the very few who escaped from the
sword were dispersed into foreign lands, and that all subsequent
efforts to restore their Society on its former footing proved an
utter failure. In fact, when the city was at last delivered from the
apostate hordes that possessed her, it was only to be exposed to the
new scourges of famine, pestilence, and inundation, and during these
calamities there reappeared in her streets, not the gay bands of
artists and _literati_, but reformed Camaldolese and Capuchin friars,
whose existence in the city, says one writer, was first made known to
the Romans during the plague of 1528. Rome, indeed, recovered from
her overwhelming disasters with astonishing rapidity, and it was not
long before the Court of Clement VII. reassumed much of the brilliant
character which it had borne under Leo X. But Roman society no longer
groaned under the dictatorship of professors. The grave troubles of
the Church drew to her capital men of earnest and exalted piety, who
responded to the cry that came from every Catholic land for a General
Council that should not only vindicate the doctrine of the Church
against heretical innovators, but courageously enter on the reform
of practical abuses. Delivered by her terrible chastisement from the
meretricious splendour of a false prosperity, Rome prepared to put
on her beautiful garments as of old, and to purify herself from the
contagion which worldly men had brought into the very presence of the
sanctuary. Even whilst her enemies were counting her among the dead,
and rejoicing over her humiliation, she arose to a more beautiful
and vigorous life than ever, so that many of those whose hearts had
become estranged turned to her once more, and beholding her invested
with the majesty of ancient discipline, recognised the seven-hilled
city to be indeed “the city of truth, the mountain of the Lord of
Hosts, the sanctified mountain.”[336]

_CHAPTER XXIII._

ENGLISH SCHOLARS OF THE RENAISSANCE.

A.D. 1473 TO 1550.

The revival of polite letters in this country may be considered as
dating from the foundation of Magdalen College, in 1473. Not only
was it the most perfectly constituted college in the realm, but
its great founder had amply provided for the cultivation of humane
literature; and at the period of his death, Grocyn, the future
restorer of Greek studies at Oxford, was Divinity Professor, and
Wolsey and Colet were among his pupils. Oxford at this time presented
a spectacle which seems to have struck the imagination of all her
foreign visitors. Three hundred halls and grammar-schools, besides
her noble colleges and religious houses, furnished means of education
to a far larger number of students than resort thither at the present
time. The English universities, though admitting the new learning,
still adhered to the scholastic philosophy--a fact which formed the
groundwork of those charges brought against them by some of their
contemporaries, and re-echoed by Wood, of being behind their time.
It is not very easy to determine what was the precise state of the
English schools at the opening of the sixteenth century. On the one
hand, it is clear that the revival of classical literature found
plenty of enthusiastic supporters among English scholars; and, if we
are to draw any conclusions as to the nature of English education
of this time from Sir John Elyot’s treatise of “The Governor,” we
should be disposed to think that children of the upper classes were
then expected to begin their classical studies while still in their
cradles. A nobleman’s son, he says, should have none about him, not
even his nurses, who cannot speak pure and eloquent Latin. At the
very least, their English should be clean, polite, perfect, and
articulately pronounced, omitting no letter or syllable. At seven,
a boy is to begin his Greek and Latin grammars together; and at
twelve he is supposed to have so completely made the Latin tongue
his own that he need no more apply himself to its study, but confine
his labours to Greek. The whole treatise, which is in many respects
valuable and interesting, proves that the writer had imbibed that
tiresome form of classical enthusiasm which wears you out with its
illustrations from the ancients. Even the necessity of religion is
supported by an appeal to the examples of Romulus and Numa Pompilius,
though, accidentally, we are allowed to peep into the old Catholic
nursery, and see the children “knelyng in thir games before ymages,
and holdyng up thir litel white handes, movyng thir mouths as if they
were praieing, or going and singyng, as it were in procession.” This
treatise, published in 1531, plainly infers that at that time a noble
youth was expected to begin his studies very early, and to aim at
something more than the name of a scholar. On the other hand, there
was a certain prejudice in favour of foreign academies, which induced
those who in all ages make it their business to follow the fashion,
to undervalue Eton and Oxford, and to consider you a Goth or a rustic
if you had not graduated in some Italian university. The mediæval
spirit which still hung about the cloisters of Oxford was quite out
of harmony with the prevailing tastes; and undoubtedly those same
cloisters sheltered many worthy Conservatives of the old school who
clung to Aristotle and Oxford Latin, and thought very little of the
new-fangled Platonists.

Hence, those who desired to imbue themselves with classic literature
generally found their way to Italy, and the rage for a foreign
education had become so excessive that Barclay introduces an allusion
to it in his “Ship of Fooles:”--

One runneth to Almayne, another to France,
To Paris, Padwy, Lombardy, or Spayne,
Another to Bonony, Rome, or Orleans;
To Caen, Toulouse, Athens or Colayne;
And at the last returneth home agayne
More ignorant.

The reproach conveyed in the last line was probably deserved by some
whose foreign scholarship was only sought for fashion’s sake; but
it does not certainly apply to the knot of illustrious Englishmen
whom we find studying in the Italian schools at the close of the
fifteenth century. Among them was Richard Pace, who had been brought
up in the household of Langton, Bishop of Winchester, and had been
sent by his patron to study at Padua, where he had Latymer and
Cuthbert Tonstall for his tutors; William Linacre, who had repaired
to Florence and been received into the family of Lorenzo de’ Medici,
who, charmed with his modesty and talents, chose him for the
companion of his son’s studies: and the amiable and simple-hearted
William Lily, whose Greek learning had been acquired at Rhodes, and
who was then perfecting himself in Latin literature in the schools of
Rome and Florence. Colet also made the tour of Italy, after taking
his degree at Magdalen, and on coming back to England, he returned
a second time to Oxford, where in 1497 he found Grocyn and Linacre
delivering public lectures on Greek. Their audience was at first a
small one, for the new learning was regarded with no little jealousy
and suspicion in many quarters, and parties ran high between the
Greeks and the Trojans, as the adherents of the opposite factions
were commonly called. The Greeks expended their wit on the dulness of
their adversaries, whom they represented as “sleepy, surly fellows,
who talked bad Latin, and never said a smart or clever thing;”
whilst the Trojans denounced their brilliant rivals as dangerous
innovators. The truth lay pretty evenly between the two parties.
The Oxford studies were possibly in some respects behind the time,
and not merely profane, but sacred learning also appears, from
Wood’s account, to have been at a low ebb; and for this, as has been
elsewhere shown, the lawyers and the logicians, the Lollards and the
Anti-Roman party, must share the blame among them. Still, when we
remember the enthusiasm with which men like More and Erasmus regarded
the English universities, it is difficult to believe that sound and
solid learning can have been entirely wanting at Oxford,[337] and
considering what sort of clouds hung on the horizon, the “Scotists,”
perhaps, did not show themselves such dull fellows after all, when
they warned their disciples to keep clear of foreign fashions, and
set afloat the well-known proverb, “Let the Greeks beware of heresy.”

Colet did not hesitate to join the party of the Greeks, and to this
he was moved not merely by a love of polite literature, but by the
contempt and aversion which he had conceived for the scholastic
philosophy. At Florence he had not only attended the Greek lectures
of Politian and Demetrius Chalycondylus, but he had listened to the
preaching of Savonarola, from whom he had caught an enthusiasm for
Scriptural studies, and a burning zeal for the reform of abuses.
So soon, therefore, as he had been ordained deacon he flung aside
the Master of the Sentences, and began to read public lectures on
the Epistles of St. Paul, though with characteristic temper he had
disdained to receive any degrees in Divinity, accounting the studies
which he should have had to engage in for that purpose as wholly
empty and unprofitable. His earnest eloquence and original mode of
treatment drew him more hearers than the classic erudition of Grocyn
had been able to command, and there was not a doctor of law or
divinity in the whole university, but gladly came to hear the young
preacher, bringing their books with them.

It was at this moment that Erasmus paid his first visit to England,
having been invited over by Lord Mountjoy, his former pupil at Paris.
Erasmus at this time supported himself partly by his tutorships, and
partly by the pensions which he received from the sovereigns who
sought to attach him to their Courts, and from the learned friends
whose pecuniary assistance he availed himself of with considerable
freedom. At Oxford he was received into St. Mary’s Priory by the
kind-hearted Prior Charnock, and in his letters expresses the
singular delight which he felt at all he heard and all he saw. He
soon made acquaintance with Colet, and was by him introduced to More,
then studying at Magdalen, and to Wolsey, bursar of the same college;
and in company with these new friends (he wrote to Mountjoy) he would
be content to live all his days in the farthest extremity of Scythia.
In short, he drew so brilliant a picture of the pleasant hours they
spent in one another’s company, that Mountjoy, who was but just
married, could not resist the temptation of running down to Oxford,
and beginning a fresh course of study under his old master.

The friendship that sprang up from that time between Erasmus and
Colet was strong and enduring. Yet no two men could be more unlike
in their real character, however much their literary tastes may
have coincided. Colet was heart and soul in earnest, and herein lay
the strength and nobleness of a disposition which, as his friend
owns, had in it many a dash of human infirmity. “When he speaks,”
writes Erasmus, “you would think he was more than man: it is not
with voice alone, but with eyes, and countenance, and with his whole
demeanour.” He was of a hot and haughty spirit, and impatient of
the least affront, qualities which imparted a certain harshness and
vehemence to all his words and actions. Yet he had (and who has
not?) his softer side, and the stern and fiery orator, as rigid and
severe to himself as he was to others, was a lover of children, and
delighted to make himself little with little ones, whom he compared
to the angels, though, as we shall presently see, his love even of
them was somewhat lacking in tenderness. Erasmus himself was not
likely to be led into the excesses to which a nature like Colet’s
easily betrays itself. There was no real earnestness about him. Had
he not left his Epistles behind him, we might be amazed that one so
deficient in every sterling quality of soul could have found a way to
the hearts of all with whom he associated. But his letters explain
the mystery. There was no resisting the charm of his wit, and his
extraordinary gift of treating every subject on which he touched in
the way that was most agreeable. After the lapse of three hundred
years, the reader, who possesses nothing but the dead written letter
of that graceful eloquence, feels its indescribable magic, the
“certain Erasmianism,” as Colet calls it, and is carried away against
his will by the bewitching pleasantry of a writer whose whole life
he knows to have been contemptible. There was, moreover, one most
attractive quality which he shared with More: nothing was able to
ruffle his temper; and he had the happiest ways of restraining the
sallies of his more fiery companions, and preventing their table talk
after dinner from ever ending in a quarrel. Thus, on one occasion,
when a disputation had arisen upon the sin of Cain, Erasmus, who
judged by Colet’s sparkling eyes that the conversation had lasted
long enough, and wished to end it, invented on the spot a story from
some pretended ancient author, by which ingenious fraud the argument
was broken off, and the company parted in the best of humours. He
was moreover an advocate for moderation in all things, even in
hostility to the scholastics, and once took up the defence of St.
Thomas against the attacks of Colet, and represented that the Angelic
doctor really did seem to have studied the Scriptures. But this time
Colet bore him down, and could not contain his impatience at hearing
a word said in favour of one whose dogmatic definitions of theology
he hesitated not to accuse of arrogance. More held an equal place in
the affections of both his friends; he had all the wit of Erasmus
without his flippancy, and all the earnestness of Colet without his
asperity of temper. He chose the latter as his director, and learnt
from him a singular love for the inspired writings, and many precious
secrets of self-mastery and mortification; but he had some spiritual
instincts to which Colet was an utter stranger; and while the one was
venting his annoyance at what he deemed the childish superstitions
of the Canterbury pilgrims, as he watched them crowding to kiss
the relics of St. Thomas à Becket, the other, with truer humility,
thought it not beneath the character of a man of letters to feed his
faith at the homely springs of popular devotion, and visited many an
old English shrine on foot--a rare thing in those days, when even the
common people went on horse-back.

We will pass over a few years, which brought their usual changes
to the Oxford friends in all save the mutual regard which they
bore for one another. The princely boy to whom Erasmus had first
been introduced in his schoolroom, and who had won his heart by
challenging him to reply to a Latin epistle, was now on the throne,
“tall in body, and mighty in will,” says Stow, “and so prosperous
in his kingdom, that it was called ‘The Golden Realm.’” Wolsey,
whom we left a Demy of Magdalen, was now Cardinal, and had just
succeeded Warham as chancellor, having the learned Richard Pace for
his secretary. The European politics which he sought to guide had not
made him neglect the cause of letters:--

“Witness for him
Those twins of learning which he raised in you,
Ipswich and Oxford!”

Good Bishop Fisher was hard at work introducing Greek studies at
Cambridge, where Croke was delivering lectures, and where the
new learning was better received than it had been at Oxford. The
noble Countess of Richmond[338] had founded her two Cambridge
colleges, her grammar-school at Wimbourne, and her “Lady Margaret”
professorships; Fox, now Bishop of Winchester, was drawing up the
statutes of Corpus Christi, that classical beehive, as he was pleased
to term it, in which he provided for the study of Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew, under the professors or “herbalists,” who were for ever to
drive all barbarism out of the bee-garden, and provide that the best
classical authors should be read by his students. Linacre was now the
royal physician and a man of importance; he had translated Galen,
founded two lectureships at Oxford, and the College of Physicians,
but at this moment he was contemplating whether it might not be well
to give up professional fame and Court favour, in order to die a
priest; and this design he afterwards executed. Grocyn, too, had ably
maintained his scholar’s reputation, and was universally respected
as long as he lived, says Erasmus, for his chaste and holy life. In
the judgment of that critic, however, his firm adherence to Catholic
dogma was somewhat excessive, and bordered on superstition, and he
considers it necessary to apologise for this weakness on the part
of his friend, who, he says, had from childhood been trained in
the scholastic theology, and was exceedingly learned in questions
of ecclesiastical discipline. More, whose early inclination for
the cloister had yielded to the persuasions of his director Colet,
had married and embraced a professional career; he had written
his Utopia, and was struggling hard to preserve his independence,
and keep out of the royal service, into which others so eagerly
sought admittance. He desired nothing better than to be suffered to
enjoy in freedom his happy Chelsea home, where it was his delight
to direct the education of his children, to gather around him his
learned friends, and relieve the intervals of business with polite
and Christian studies. In that family circle Erasmus always found
a place during his visits to England, and it is to him that we owe
the charming portraiture of a household, the venerable memory of
which has sunk into the English heart and become almost the typical
example of an English home. As to Erasmus himself, his course during
the same period is easily told: he had published his Greek Testament
and his learned editions of the Fathers, and had thereby earned a
European reputation; he had flitted about from England to Paris, from
Paris to Germany, from Germany back again to England, and thence
to Rome. Courted, flattered, and admired by all, he was the great
_bel-esprit_ of the day, and the lighter productions of his pen were
telling upon public opinion, much perhaps in the same sort of way
that clever journalism affects it in our own day. He was directing
his keen powers of ridicule against some real abuses, but at the
same time his mocking wit was recklessly striking at sacred things
and bringing them into popular contempt. In his “Praise of Folly,”
and his “Adages,” he had hit hard at popes, cardinals, pilgrimages,
devotions to the saints, and indulgences, but above all at monks and
friars, whom he invariably holds up to execration, as something too
pitiably vile and puerile to be endured by men of sense. In short, to
use the oft-quoted saying, he had laid the egg which Luther was to
hatch, and though he afterwards resented this charge, and was wont to
say that he had laid a hen’s egg, and Luther had hatched it a crow’s,
yet, as Hallam has shrewdly remarked, whatever were the bird, it
pecked hard against the Church and her religious orders. His mode of
warfare was to paint every one who opened his lips in defence of the
old order of things as a half-witted ignoramus, and to bespatter his
adversaries with epithets and witticisms, in an easy flowing style
which everybody read and everybody laughed at; and when the laugh was
once raised the victory was more than half won.

It remains to speak of Colet, now Dean of St. Paul’s, who had
steadily followed out the purpose to which he had devoted himself at
Oxford, had given himself up heart and soul to the task of reviving
the study of Scriptural Divinity, and was opposing himself like a
rock to every form of practical corruption. At this distance of time
it is not easy for us to satisfy ourselves as to the real character
of one who has left nothing but his fame behind him, and whose views
and teaching are to be gathered, not from his own writings but
from the epistolary correspondence of Erasmus, whose narrative is
naturally coloured by the bias of his own mind.[339] In those days of
Court sycophancy, we cannot but admire the courageous independence of
such a man, and the single-hearted fervour with which he set himself
to reform his chapter, to expound the gospel to the people, and to
urge upon his fellow clergy a strict observance of the canons. In
his sermon preached before Convocation, in 1511, he chose for his
text the words of St. Paul: “Be ye not conformed to this world;” and
thundered out in plain, strong, and noble words his denunciation
of those abuses which he called the “matter of the Church’s
reformation;” such as “the worldly lives of the prelates,” “their
hunting and hawking,” and “their covetousness after high promotions.”
The reformation he said must begin with my “reverend Fathers the
Lord Bishops,” whom he prayed to excuse his boldness, for he spoke
out of very zeal for Holy Church. In this famous sermon there is
doubtless something too much of asperity, yet it does not seem to
have been taken amiss. The single-hearted honesty of the speaker was
understood and appreciated by his hearers; and it must be added that
his own example added force to his words. Colet was a man of pure and
blameless life, simple and austere in manners, and ready to spend
himself for what he deemed the cause of Christ. His exhortations had
extraordinary success; other ecclesiastics were animated to greater
zeal in the discharge of their pastoral duties, and began to preach
to their people on sermons and festival days. Divinity lectures,
too, were delivered in the church of St. Paul, both by the Dean, and
certain learned men whom he invited to assist him, and these lectures
were no longer permitted to take the form of dry disputations,
but were chiefly commentaries on the Scriptures, particularly on
the Epistles of St. Paul, with which Colet was so enamoured, says
Erasmus, that he seemed to be wholly wrapped up in them. With all
his classical tastes he thought less of manner than of matter, in
his public orations. Scriptural simplicity was what he aimed at; he
wanted, to use his own rather uncourteous phrase, to “clear away the
cobwebs of the schoolmen from the plain text of the Bible.” He did
not altogether neglect the study of style, and sometimes condescended
to read Chaucer and other English poets for the purpose of improving
his diction. But in general his thoughts came out too hot and molten
for him to deliberate much in what words to utter them, and the
careful polish which Erasmus bestowed on his writings was viewed by
him as more worthy of a pedagogue than of a preacher, who has his
heart full of big thoughts and is in haste to utter them.

How little there was of a courtier about him may be gathered from
the sermon which he preached before the king at the time when he was
preparing for his French war, in which, instead of offering that
monarch the welcome incense of flattery, he very plainly expounded
to his hearers the sin which Christian princes committed by wars of
ambition, in which they fought, not under the banner of Christ, but
under that of the devil.[340] Much of this was surely excellent; and
had this been all, we should be ready to yield our hearty sympathy
to Colet in spite of those “specks of human infirmity” which his
best friends saw and regretted. A reformer has rough work to do,
and in doing it has need of a certain fund of audacity which easily
overpasses the just bounds of discretion, and can scarcely avoid
wounding the susceptibilities of those whom he undertakes to amend.
Yet such things are easily pardoned in them whom we know to be only
“zealous for the Lord of Hosts,” and who cannot “restrain their
lips” when they declare His justice in the midst of the people.
But there were other elements in the character of Colet from which
we instinctively shrink, for the simple reason that they betray a
mind out of harmony with the teachings of faith. We have already
seen him bringing the charge of arrogance--himself surely with
greater arrogance--against the Angelic doctor, unable to repress
his intolerance of what he deemed his too strict definitions of
doctrine; and betraying an angry contempt for the popular devotions
sanctioned by the Church, but which _he_ impeached of superstition.
That practical abuses may easily have crept into many of these
devotions is what no Catholic will think himself called on to
deny, and that where they existed they deserved to be exposed and
denounced is equally obvious; yet when we find that the only _fact_
alluded to by Colet’s biographer as having stirred the wrath of the
reformer was the eagerness displayed by the Canterbury pilgrims to
kiss the shoe of St. Thomas, preserved there as a relic, we are
disposed to think that it was not merely these supposed abuses, but
the devotions themselves which he regarded with dislike. And this
judgment is confirmed when we find him betraying a similar want of
sympathy with the spirit and practice of the Church in cases where
there could be no question of superstition. He set very little store
by the practice of daily hearing or saying Mass: he considered the
recitation of the Divine Office in private by priests to be both a
burdensome and a superfluous duty, and seems to have been, to say the
least, indifferent to the value of prayer for the dead. All this we
learn from the correspondence of Erasmus, who further informs us that
there were a vast number of opinions received in the schools from
which Colet strongly dissented, and that he not only read the works
of heretical writers without scruple, but was accustomed to say that
he often learned more out of them than he did from orthodox writers,
who were content to be always running over a beaten track.[341] It
can therefore be no great matter of surprise that Colet, before
long, became involved in trouble. While some men regarded him as
little short of a saint, others, alarmed at his bold views and the
uncompromising language in which he expressed them, looked on him
as an incipient heretic, and as such denounced him to his bishop.
Articles were drawn up against him and laid before the Primate,
but Warham dismissed the case as frivolous, and Colet was never
afterwards interfered with on account of his liberty of speech.[342]

Erasmus, and after him Fox, tells us that the three articles of
accusation referred to his manner of treating the worship of images,
his preaching against the worldly lives of the clergy, and his
complaints of those who read their sermons in a cold and formal
manner; vague charges, which would be very justly designated as
“frivolous.” Tyndale, however, in his usual burlesque style, declares
in his “Reply to More,” that “the bishop would have made Colet a
heretic for translating the Pater Noster into English,” and this
random shot has been gravely taken up and handed on from one author
to another as a sober bit of history. “He _even_ gave the people
parts of the Bible in English,” says a Scotch reviewer, “such as the
Lord’s Prayer!” Whilst Knight seriously assures his readers that not
only were the English Scriptures at this time utterly unknown, but
that “_there was scarce so much as a Latin Testament in any cathedral
church in England_.”

Colet’s friendship with More and Erasmus meanwhile remained unbroken,
and in the intervals of graver duties the three friends were wont to
meet at the house of Dame Christian Colet, the Dean’s mother, in the
(then) pleasant country suburb of Stepney, of which parish Colet was
vicar. Erasmus has sketched the good old lady in her 90th year, with
her countenance “still so fair and cheerful, you would think she had
never shed a tear;” and Colet lets us know the pleasure which she
found in receiving her son’s guests, and in their agreeable and witty
conversation. Stepney, with its green lanes, fresh country air, and
rural population, would often picture itself to the eye of More when
he grew weary of his life in town; and in his early married days,
when his narrow means obliged him to content himself with a house
in Bucklersbury, the hardworked lawyer was glad enough, like other
cockneys, to run down to Stepney on Saturday afternoons, and refresh
himself with the merry talk of his friends, as they sauntered in the
trimly-kept gardens and admired the noble strawberries brought over
from Holland, or the damask roses lately introduced into England by
Linacre.

Not unfrequently the party included some of the learned foreigners
who just then crowded the Tudor Court, such as Andreas Ammonius,[343]
the king’s Latin secretary, whom Erasmus praises as being “so noble
and generous, so free from envy, and so full of great endowments,”
or their old Oxford crony, John Sixtine, a Frisian by birth, but now
naturalised in England, and esteemed by all good scholars for his
versatile genius. It seems strange to us in these days to associate
the names of foreign canonists and divines with our country parish
churches, of which, however, they not unfrequently enjoyed the
revenues. Hidden in a sequestered valley of Devonshire, surrounded
by woods that are dear to village children for the sweet-scented
violets that grow there in such wild profusion, shut in by hills
which they will not easily forget who have seen their sloping fields
all bright with golden sheaves, made brighter with the intense
sunshine that seems borrowed from a southern sky; the tourist may
perhaps have stumbled on the little church of St. Blaze of Haccombe,
with its quaint encaustic tiles and cross-legged effigies of the
crusading lords of Haccombe, all as perfect as in the days of John
Sixtine, the friend of More and Erasmus, who was arch-priest of the
college formerly attached to this church by Sir Stephen de Haccombe,
to the end that perpetual prayer might be made there for the souls
of his ancestors. Dr. Sixtine had other more splendid and lucrative
benefices, but the beauty of that little rural valley seems to have
clung to his heart, and among the various bequests which he names
in his will, appears the sum of fifteen pounds in honour of God and
St. Blaze, towards the reparation of the church of Haccombe. Let the
good deed be noted here, as well as the kind and homely feeling which
induced him to direct that twenty pounds should be distributed among
his parishioners at Eglescliffe, “to buy them instruments necessary
for their country labours.”

Both these distinguished men were frequent visitors to Stepney,
and in the pleasant conferences which Colet held with the familiar
coterie, one project of his must often have furnished them with a
topic of conversation: it was his wish to found a school. Schools,
indeed, there already were in rich abundance; during the last thirty
years a very harvest of them had been springing up all over England,
but none yet founded were quite to Colet’s mind. He desired to see an
academy in which there should be laid a solid foundation of learning,
both sacred and profane. Classical, or what he termed “clene Latin,”
the fashionable study of Greek, and Scriptural divinity, would
never, he argued, establish themselves in the universities until they
were first taught in preparatory schools; and he pleased himself with
the thought of attaching such a grammar-school to his own church of
St Paul’s, and bestowing his wealth and his study in bringing it to
perfection. He hoped to raise a generation of scholars who should
be trained to understand the true sense and spirit of the classical
authors, so as to read, write, and speak the learned tongues with
ease and elegance; and who, at the same time, should have gone
through a careful course of religious instruction; a large-hearted
design, which met the warm approval of his literary friends, and of
none more than of Erasmus.

The school was accordingly commenced in 1509, at the east end of St.
Paul’s churchyard. The front next the church was finished in the
year following, and bore this inscription:--_Schola catechizationis
puerorum in Christi Opt. Max. fide et bonis literis, Anno Christi,
MDX_. The endowments provided for the free education of one hundred
and fifty-three scholars,[344] and for the maintenance of a master,
usher, and chaplain. The school, when complete, was divided into four
parts. First the porch, where those whom Colet called his catechumens
were instructed in religion, no one being admitted who could not at
least say the catechism and know how to read and write. Then came a
room for the lower class taught by the usher, and a third for the
higher class taught by the master. The captain of each form had a
little desk to mark his pre-eminence, and the apartments were only
divided by curtains. Lastly, there was a small chapel opening into
the schoolroom, where Mass was said daily. The children, however,
were not intended to _hear_ Mass daily, for, according to Colet’s
views, this would have been a waste of time. Unlike Bede and
Alfred, he was ignorant of what has been called the grand secret of
education, “the way how to lose time wisely.” Week-day Masses were in
his eyes simple superfluities, and he judged the moments so consumed
much better spent in study. In accordance with this principle, he
himself only said Mass on Sundays and festivals, and argued that he
spent the time thus saved more profitably in arranging the matter for
his sermons! His scholars, indeed, had their Mass said _for_ them
every morning in the chapel; but the statutes enjoined that when
the Sacring bell was heard, they should only prostrate until after
the Elevation, and then rise and go on with their studies. What a
revelation of character appears in traits like these, and how wide
a distance separates such a tone of spirituality from that of the
monastic scholars! How little of the spirit of faith was likely to
be imbibed during this daily lesson of irreverence, and what could
have been the theory which this much-vaunted director possessed of
the spiritual life, when he practically taught his pupils by word and
example to value work above prayer, and to save time for study by
cutting short their Mass! Yet Colet designed this as a _Catechetical_
school, and intended it to be a nursery of Christian piety. The image
of the child Jesus stood on the master’s seat in the attitude of
teaching, with the apposite inscription, “Hear ye Him.” The children
were instructed to regard Him as the Master of the school, and as
they went and came, to bow to His image and salute Him with a brief
hymn. Thrice a day, moreover, they were to prostrate, and recite
appointed prayers; in short, there were not wanting provisions of
a religious character, only much of the true spirit of Catholic
devotion had been pared away.

The statutes regarding recreation were drawn up with Puritanic
rigorism. Old traditions on this head met with small indulgence
at the hands of the reforming founder, and hardening his heart to
all the infirmities of the schoolboy nature, he strictly forbade
Shrovetide cock-fighting and the disputations of St. Bartholomew’s
day, which he denounced as “idle babbling.” The abolition of
cock-fighting was beyond all praise, but I grieve to add that there
were absolutely no play days. Nay, so rigid was this rule, that
the master was to forfeit forty shillings every time he broke it,
unless at the request of an archbishop, bishop, or king. But, strange
to say, there was a special provision for the due celebration of
Childermas day, when they were all to repair to St. Paul’s church,
hear the child-bishop’s sermon, assist at the High Mass, and offer
his lordship a penny. The studies were to consist of good Greek
and Latin authors, _especially Christian ones_, “for my intent
is,” writes the founder, “by this scole specially to increase the
knowledge and worshipping of God and our Lord Jesus Christ, and good
Christian life and manners in the children.” But whilst giving this
preference to Christian over Pagan authors he requires “the verrye
Romayne eloquence” to be taught, and warming at the bare notion of
Scholastic barbarism ever invading his seminary, “will utterly have
banished and excluded all such abusion as the later blind world
hath brought in, which is rather to be called _bloterature_ than
_literature_.”

Colet had no difficulty in finding a master fully qualified to
undertake the direction of this academy. William Lily, the god-son
and pupil of Grocyn, and the fellow-student of More, the very ideal
of a humble, devout, and unworldly scholar, who had never yet thought
of making his learning a way to fortune, but was still plodding on
as a poor London pedagogue, was at once promoted to the mastership
of St. Paul’s, with John Rightwyse for his usher. The next step was
to draw up a little book for the use of his scholars containing the
rudiments of grammar, and an abridgment of Christian doctrine; and
this little book, commonly called Paul’s Accidence, was dedicated by
Colet to Lily. Herein we find the creed in Latin and English, the
seven sacraments, brief explanations of the love of God, and our
duty to ourselves and our neighbours, including precepts for the
observance of appointed fasts and holy days, and some rules of holy
living, with a beautiful Latin prayer to “the Child Jesus, Master
of this school,” and two others for daily use, one for parents, and
another for the virtue of docility.

In his preface to his “Rudiments,” Colet apologises for writing on
a subject whereon so many had written before him, but explains his
purpose to have been the putting things in a clear order for the use
of young wits, out of compassion to the tenderness and small capacity
of little minds. “I pray God,” he continues, “that all may be to His
honour and the erudition of children. Wherefore I pray you all, lytel
babes, learn gladly this lytel treatise, and commende it dyligently
unto your memorye, trusting that ye shall proceed and growe to
perfyte literature, and come to be grete clerkes. And lyfte up your
lytel whyte hands for me also, which prayeth for you to God.”

Wolsey reprinted this little manual for the use of his Ipswich
scholars, recommending it to the masters in an epistle from his own
pen. In 1513 the indefatigable founder resolved on providing his
boys with something more complete. Grammars, indeed, there were in
plenty; there was the old Donatus, and the more modern “Lac puerorum”
of good Master Holte,[345] and a host of others whose quaint names
and flimsy contents have been whimsically criticised by Erasmus. But
they did not satisfy the requirements of Colet, and he accordingly
composed his treatise on the Eight Parts of Speech, which, with
some alterations and considerable additions, forms the syntax of
the grammar which afterwards bore the name of Lily’s grammar. After
Lily had revised and corrected the manuscript, Colet put it into the
hands of Erasmus, who made so many alterations, that neither of them
could in justice call the work his own, and in 1515 it was published,
with an epistle from Erasmus. After its publication Lily drew up the
rules, known as the _Propria quæ maribus_, and _As in præsenti_, his
usher Rightwyse adding some finishing touches. About the same time
Linacre was engaged on a somewhat similar work, but his “Compendium
of Grammar,” originally drawn up for the use of the Princess Mary,
was judged by Colet rather too abstruse for the comprehension of
beginners, and he did not, therefore, admit it into his school. This
seems to have been resented by the sensitive grammarian, and Erasmus
had to interpose to restore a good understanding between him and the
dean.

Lily proved an excellent master, and among his first pupils were the
famous antiquary Leland and Thomas Lupset, son to Colet’s amanuensis,
who was afterwards admitted to close intimacy by More and Reginald
Pole. One fault, however, appeared in the management of the school,
too common at that time, namely, the excessive severity of the
discipline. This is perhaps to be charged partly to the account of
Colet, whose views were as austere in what regarded the education of
children, as they were in the direction of souls; and partly to the
influence of Rightwyse, who was a scholar of Eton, and brought with
him thence maxims of school government, which were exceedingly harsh,
not to say cruel. In fact, since education had passed from the hands
of the monastics into those of professional pedagogues, the paternal
spirit which formerly presided over the Catholic schoolroom had
been gradually fading away. It seemed agreed by all that the Greek
grammar, and the “verrye Romayne eloquence,” could not be attained
without an unsparing use of the rod; for we find the same complaint
of cruelty made of the French professors of the time. In England
this unmerciful system kept its ground throughout the whole of the
Tudor period, and we find Sir John Elyot advising his “governor” to
provoke a child to study with a pleasant face, and deprecating “cruel
and yrous masters, by whom the wits of children be dulled, whereof
we need no better witness than daily experience.” The Eton fashion
was to flog a boy directly he appeared in the school, as a sort of
entrance fee, of which old Tusser dolefully complains;[346] and
something of this sort of discipline existed at St. Paul’s, and was
supported by the approval of Colet.

To the credit of Erasmus, it must be said that he strongly condemned
such severity; he knew from his own experience that brutal tutors
ruin many a hopeful lad, and advocated the milder system of teaching,
which he himself followed with so much success. He was wont to
quote the example of Spensippus, who would have pictures of joy and
gladness to be set round his school: and in his tract on education,
quotes with pleasure the story of an English gentleman, who seeing
that his little son was very fond of archery, bought him a bow and
arrows, and painted them with the letters of the Greek alphabet. The
capitals were marked on the butt, and whenever the child had hit a
letter and could tell the name of it, he was rewarded with a cherry.

This was not at all in Colet’s way, and Erasmus tells a frightful
story of the cruelty which he himself witnessed--practised under his
direction. “I once knew a certain theologian,” he says, “who must
needs have masters who were zealous floggers. He esteemed this an
excellent means for subduing all asperity of character, and mastering
the wantonness of youth. Never did he sit down to a repast with his
disciples, but at the end of the meal some one or other of them was
brought out to be flogged; and his cruelty was sometimes exercised on
the innocent, merely to accustom them to stripes. I was once standing
by when he thus called out from dinner a boy of, I should think,
ten years old, who had recently come to the school from his mother.
He began by saying that his mother was a most pious woman, and had
specially recommended the boy to his care, and then that he might
have an opportunity of flogging him, he charged him with I know not
what atrocity, and made a sign to the prefect of the school to give
him a flogging. The latter at once knocked the boy down, and beat him
as if he had committed a sacrilege. The doctor called out several
times, ‘Enough, enough,’ but the savage went on with his barbarity,
till the boy almost swooned. Then turning to us, the doctor quietly
observed that he had not merited any punishment, but that it was done
to humble his spirit. Who would treat his bondslave in such a way?
nay, I may say, who would thus treat his ass?”[347] Though Colet is
not named in this passage, yet he is generally believed to have been
the “theologian” in question, the prefect of discipline being no
other than his usher, Rightwyse.

We gather from Colet’s letters to his friend, that on one point of
opinion they greatly differed, namely, in the view they took of
religious life. Erasmus, when he speaks of monks, forgets his usual
politeness, and descends to a style of which Luther might have been
proud. They are designated as “foul and noxious insects, which
it is a sort of pollution to touch; creatures so detested and so
detestable, that it is regarded as an ill omen to meet one in the
street; dolts and idiots, who think it a mark of consummate piety
not to be able to read; wretched beings, who are distinguished by
a certain obstinate malignity of disposition, and who think that
they are charming the ears of the saints when, with asinine voices,
they bray out their psalms in choir.” One is ashamed to transcribe
such language, and to remember that the greatest scholar of his time
considered it to be wit.

But Colet was of another mind. He condemned the relaxed life led
in many religious houses; but there was a theory of monasticism
which he loved and admired. It was hardly the Catholic theory of
religious life, for Colet’s dream seems to have been to have found
some retreat where he could have spent the close of life with a few
chosen friends of kindred tastes, living and conversing with them
after the manner of the ancient philosophers. He even set on foot
inquiries, to discover if any house suitable for his purpose existed
in Italy or Germany; but finding none to his mind, he built himself
a residence adjoining the Carthusian monastery at Shene, whither he
often retired, and purposed withdrawing there altogether, and giving
up all his public engagements that he might prepare in quiet for his
end. In his last letter to Erasmus, we see that his old interests
were fast losing their hold upon him as he felt the sands of life
running out. His friend had sent him some of Reuchlin’s Cabalistic
works. “O Erasmus,” he replies, “of books and knowledge there is no
end. There is no better thing in this world than a holy life, and
no other way to attain it than by the earnest love and imitation of
Jesus. Wherefore, leaving all wandering paths, this, to the best of
my ability, is what I long for.” He made all his last dispositions,
therefore, bestowing extraordinary care in drawing up his will, in
which there occurs no word suggestive of suffrages for his soul; a
fact which shows, that if he did not condemn the practice of praying
for the dead, he at any rate attached no value to it. Death overtook
him sooner than he anticipated, and in the year 1519 he expired at
his favourite retreat, almost at the moment when Luther was making
his mock submission to the Sovereign Pontiff.

What shall we say of the character of this celebrated man? a strong
and earnest one it was, no doubt; one that loved justice and hated
iniquity, and had a zeal for the interests of God. Erasmus somewhere
speaks of his “passionate admiration for the wonderful majesty of
Christ.” Nor in judging him must we forget that he lived in an age
when worldliness had infected the high places in the Church; and
that, if his denunciation of abuses was often arrogant, there were
plenty of abuses to denounce. Yet granting all this, our readers
will long ago have agreed on their verdict. From such a type of
Catholicism, they will say, in which we see piety without unction,
austerity without sweetness, and an absence--if not of faith--at
least of all its tenderest instincts; from such a form of godliness,
over which the coming spectre of Lutheranism had already projected
somewhat of its baneful shadow, may the schools and scholars of
England be long preserved! Such characters, if we cannot impeach
them of formal heresy, yet indicate a woful wane of faith, and fully
explain the significance of those rules[348] left by St. Ignatius to
his disciples, wherein he taught them how to conform their sentiments
to the sentiments of the Catholic Church. He was not content with
bidding them hold fast to her creeds, but would have them esteem and
speak highly of all her minor practices of devotion. For these, in
the judgment of one of the most sagacious among the saints, are the
pulses by which we count the heart-beatings of the true believer; and
in Colet these were silent. Though he died a Catholic, therefore,
Protestants unanimously claim him as one of their precursors; and
his panegyric, from which we gather all that is known of his life,
was drawn up by Erasmus for the edification of his Lutheran friend,
the notorious Dr. Jonas Jodocus.

The mention of Shene may fitly introduce a younger and more
illustrious scholar, who had received his early education in that
monastery, and who, at the time of Colet’s death, was studying at
Oxford, and was received as a frequent and welcome visitor in the
family circle of Sir Thomas More. Reginald Pole was then a youth
of nineteen, exhibiting both the comely dignity of his Plantagenet
blood, and a promise of intellectual excellence that was not belied
by his after career. From Shene he had passed on to Oxford, and at
Corpus Christi College, under the tuition of Linacre and Latymer,
had thrown himself heart and soul into classical studies. Though he
afterwards in great part laid them aside, in order more exclusively
to devote himself to sacred letters, yet he always retained the style
of a polished Latinist, as all his writings testify. Young as he was,
he had secured the friendship of More, and was often admitted into
the family circle and the happy schoolroom of Chelsea. In a letter to
his daughter Margaret, More speaks of the admiration he had expressed
on reading one of his Latin epistles, and calls him “not so noble by
birth as he is by learning and virtue;” while Pole, on his side, was
wont in after years to boast of the friendship of More and Fisher
as something he valued more highly than the familiarity of all the
princes of Christendom.

The society at this time gathered round the English Court was
extraordinarily brilliant. Besides a throng of native scholars, it
included several illustrious foreigners, such as Ludovicus Vives, the
Spanish Quinctilian, as he was called, who condescended to direct the
education of the Princess Mary. Three queens graced the royal circle,
one of them the consort of Henry, and the other two his widowed
sisters of France and Scotland. The poets and pageant-makers of the
time racked their fancies to find new ways of introducing the Tudor
roses white and red and the rich pomegranates of Arragon (the devices
of the royal dames), and to make the most of a Court illuminated
by three crowned beauties. Erasmus is never weary of praising the
king, the queen, the cardinal, and the bishops; they are all patrons
of letters, the Court is the seat of the Muses, and might vie with
Athens in the days of Pericles. The queen is as virtuous as she is
learned; she daily reads the English Scriptures, spends six hours at
her prayers and kneels all the time without a cushion. The king is a
scholar and a musician; he is devout, moreover, writes very elaborate
Masses in eight parts, and has gone on pilgrimage to Our Lady of
Walsingham, walking barefoot from the town of Barsham; and Erasmus
has gone there too, and has hung up a copy of verses as his offering
at her altar. How artistically he paints the broad green way across
the fields by which the pilgrims approach, and the little chapel
built within the splendid church, in imitation of the Holy House of
Loretto, wherein there is no light save from the tapers that burn
with so delicious an odour, and the walls of which are blazing with
gold and jewels!

Or we are introduced to the “solemn Christmas” kept by the Court at
Richmond or Greenwich, with “revels, disguisings, and banquets royal,
all with great nobleness;” and we observe how the quaint mummings
which found favour at the beginning of the reign are gradually giving
place to “masks, after the manner of Italy, a thing not seen before
in England, with which some were content, but which others that knew
the fashion of it,”[349] appear to have disapproved. Such scenes were
well calculated to dazzle and fascinate a young courtier; but Pole
was proof against them; he showed no hurry either to plunge into the
amusements of his age, or to enter on the brilliant political career
which fortune seemed to open before him, and had hardly appeared at
Court before he solicited from the king a fresh leave of absence.

The six years he had spent at Oxford did not by any means satisfy
his ardour for study, and, with the consent of the king, who
had charged himself with the education of his young kinsman, he
proceeded to Padua, which Erasmus styled the Athens of Europe, and
where students from all countries were eager to resort. Here “the
nobleman of England,” as he was called by the Italians, soon won
golden opinions--from some, for his singular modesty and virtue, from
others, for the graceful acquirements that so well became his royal
birth; and here he first became introduced to Bembo and Sadolet,
with the latter of whom his acquaintance ripened into friendship.
After the fashion of the times, he received a certain number of
humbler scholars into his household, and among these were Longolius,
who records his dislike for frivolous conversation, and Lupset,
afterwards Greek Professor at Oxford. Erasmus, too, was often a
welcome guest when the wanderings of that restless scholar led him to
Padua, and his voluminous correspondence includes many letters to
Pole, who, though totally opposed to his views on religious matters,
was yet unable, like the rest of the world, to shut him out of his
affections.

Meanwhile the breach between the reformers and the Church had
terribly widened, and open war was being waged between the two
parties. Henry VIII. had written his “Defence of the Seven
Sacraments,” and Luther had published his “Reply;” the scurrility
of which had called both More and Fisher into the field as
controversialists. But Erasmus still kept silence. He was on
excellent terms with Luther and Melanchthon, the worthy Dr. Jonas,
and the other Coryphæi of the Reform. He corresponded with them
all, and did them every service in his power at the head of those
German Humanists whose literary labours were directed against the
old-fashioned theologians, while their political intrigues aimed
at winning over the young emperor to their side, or at least at
procuring his neutrality. It is true he regretted that Luther should
openly have broken from the Church, and the excesses of the heretics
offered fair mark for his satire; nevertheless with most of their
views of reform he heartily sympathised. On the other hand, as he was
not ashamed of avowing, he had no intention of dying a martyr for his
principles, neither did he at all contemplate offending the Catholic
sovereigns by whom he was petted and pensioned. He counted on his own
address for enabling him to steer a middle course, to save both his
head and his Court remittances, and earn a good name for moderation.
But on this fair horizon clouds were now about to rise. He received
an official hint from Cuthbert Tonstall that King Henry was surprised
and offended at his silence, and that rumours were even afloat that
he had assisted Luther in the composition of his “Reply.” In vain
did Erasmus protest his innocence; only one course would satisfy the
king. Let him write against Luther, if he wished his sincerity to
be believed; the whole Catholic world expected it of him, and was
scandalised at his delay. But if this did not suit him, he could not
be surprised if his pension from the Court of England were withdrawn.
Thus sorely pressed, Erasmus prepared to obey. But meanwhile, a
whisper of what was going on had reached Luther’s ears, and he wrote
at once, advising his quondam ally to be wise and preserve silence.
Luther, at least, had the merit of being a plain speaker; “If you
take up the cudgels against me,” he says, “you will be beset on both
sides, and must infallibly be worsted. Everybody knows that what
you style moderation, is really duplicity. All I ask is, that you
will stand quietly by and see the play, and not take part in it, and
then I will leave you alone; but if not, you know very well what
you have to expect.” This letter by some means became public, and
Erasmus felt that his last chance was gone. If _now_ he held his
tongue, he should be accused of collusion; so, in pure desperation,
he plunged into the combat, and wrote his treatise on Free Will,
copies of which he was careful to send to all the crowned heads of
Europe. Wonderful credit he took to himself for this achievement,
declaring that he had exposed himself to be stoned to death by the
heretics, but that he gloried in suffering for so good a cause. At
the same time his letters to Melanchthon are couched in the most
pitiful and apologetic strain. He could not help himself; he was a
lost man if he had held his peace; the _figuli Romanenses_ had made
the Catholic sovereigns believe he was a Lutheran; he would have been
ruined if he had refused to write. To Vives he was more explicit.
“I have written a treatise on Free Will,” he says, “but to confess
the truth I lost my own. There my heart dictated one thing, and my
pen wrote another.”[350] However, whether his attack were sham or
earnest mattered little to Luther; it was a declaration of war, and
as such he treated it, replying to it with his usual promptitude, and
with more than his usual grossness. The other leaders of the Reform
likewise gave tongue on the occasion, and denounced the unwilling
controversialist as a Balaam who had been hired to curse Israel.
Poor Erasmus had reaped the just reward of his shuffling policy, and
felt himself in a sad quandary. He knew not whether to advance or
retreat, and either way he had to wade through the mire. He pours out
his vexation in a letter to Pole; in which, however, he is careful
to keep up the tone of a sufferer for the faith. “Luther has written
a huge volume against me,” he says, “in a style one would not use in
addressing the Turk; and so, from the partisan of peace and quiet
which I would fain remain, I am forced to turn gladiator, and, what
is worse, to fight with wild beasts in the arena.”

On his return to England, Pole found a sad and ominous cloud hanging
over the Court which he had left so prosperous and splendid. The
question of the divorce had already been mooted, and the bad success
of the negotiations with Rome had brought about the fall of Wolsey.
Henry was anxious to secure the support of Pole, whose influence
at Rome he foresaw would one day be powerful, and employed his new
favourite, Cromwell, to sound and tempt him. That worthy minister
commenced operations by putting a copy of Machiavel’s works into the
hands of Reginald, who returned it to him with disgust, and contrived
to get leave to retire to Shene, where he took up his residence
in Colet’s old house. Here he remained for two years, carefully
abstaining from taking any part in public affairs, and at the end
of that time asked and obtained leave to proceed for another term
of study to the University of Paris. He was not long suffered to
remain there in peace. The notable scheme of consulting the European
universities and divines, which had been originally proposed by
Wolsey, was warmly taken up by his successors, and royal agents were
now busy in every foreign country, seeking, by bribes and cajolery,
to obtain opinions favourable to the king’s divorce. To the credit
of the English universities it must be said they opposed a stubborn
resistance, and the affirmative declaration sent to the king never
received the votes of the majority.[351] But foreign academies were
found more pliant; it is true the charge for a professor’s conscience
was somewhat exorbitant, but still they had their price, and did not
refuse to be bargained for. In Germany, indeed, Luther’s influence
was powerful enough to prevent his old adversary from receiving any
assistance, but greater success was met with in France and Italy, and
a commission was now sent to Pole, requiring him to gather up the
suffrages of the Paris professors. He contrived to evade the odious
office thus wilily thrust upon him, and was sickened to the heart
by observing the eagerness with which the Humanists came forward in
this disgraceful business. No one was a more active agent than Croke,
the Greek orator, who wrote complacently to the king, detailing the
success which attended his “honourable presents” to the Italian
professors. Richard Pace, too, the successor of Colet, and the holder
of several diplomatic offices, writes to say he has found a man ready
to put the case _either for or against_ the divorce, according to his
Majesty’s pleasure, so as all the divines of England shall not be
able to reply. The facile casuist here alluded to was no other than
Wakefield, the Hebrew professor at Oxford; and, in short, turn where
we will, we find the pedagogues busily engaged in doing very dirty
work at high wages.

Pole was next recalled to England to be tempted with caresses. The
Archbishopric of York, it was hinted, was at his command, if he were
willing to bend to the king’s wishes. His own family were employed to
move his determination, and at last, beset on all sides, he wavered,
and consented to see the king. Henry received him graciously in
the gallery at Whitehall; but when he tried to speak, conscience
gained the day, and, with a faltering voice, instead of protesting
his readiness to serve his Grace in his “secret matter,” he plainly
declared his conviction that the proposed divorce was utterly
unlawful. Though Henry cut him short with a volley of reproaches,
he treated him with more magnanimity than might have been expected.
He did not order him to the Tower, and silenced the officious
courtiers who expressed their disgust at Reginald’s ingratitude,
by the unexpected declaration that he loved him in spite of his
obstinacy.[352] His pension was not withdrawn, and he was suffered
once more to retire abroad; and in 1531 Pole withdrew to Italy, never
again to set foot on the English shores till he landed there a Papal
legate, to reconcile his country, for too brief a space, to the
communion of the Catholic Church.

It is unnecessary to pursue the events of the great tragedy, save in
so far as they affected the career of Pole. In his retreat at Padua,
his heart was torn by the news of each successive step by which the
infatuated king was plunging his country into schism; the rupture
with Rome, the repudiation of Catherine, the marriage with Anne, and
the formal establishment of the royal supremacy. The English Lords
and Commons submitted to all this with wonderful docility, but to
Henry’s vexation he found that his proceedings were daily losing him
the countenance of friends abroad. The Emperor of course, was his
sworn enemy; Francis I. had refused to listen to the explanations of
his ambassadors; Cochlæus, and other grave writers, had drawn the pen
against him; and even Calvin made game of his new-fangled supremacy,
and ridiculed the man who had delivered his country from the primacy
of Peter to saddle it with the primacy of Henry. Erasmus, too, had
withdrawn from a country where it was no longer safe for a man to
have an opinion. He was just then directing his irony against the
Protestants, who had disgusted him with their grossness, and whom he
pronounces a sad set of hypocrites. “People talk of Lutheranism as
a tragic business, but for my part I think it is a regular comedy,
and, like other comedies, the piece always ends with a marriage.”
Elsewhere he says, “We have been stunned long enough with the cry
of _Gospel, Gospel, Gospel_. What we want is Gospel manners. These
Evangelicals love money and pleasure, and despise everything else.”
Henry’s Acts of Parliament, too, seasoned as they were with axe and
fagot, did not suit his notions of moderation; and, besides, just
then Pope Paul III. was making him tempting offers, so that Erasmus
was not at all disposed to take up the gauntlet on behalf of a
prince, against whose conduct all the respectable part of Europe was
protesting. Henry had, therefore, no one to look to out of his own
kingdom save the small German princes and Protestant divines; and it
was a sore humiliation to sue for support to the religionists whom
it was his boast to have defeated in controversy. In this extremity,
his thoughts turned to Pole, who owed him everything, and who, he
could not believe, would ever openly take part against him. Cuthbert
Tonstall, Reginald’s dearest friend, had swallowed the new oath, and
accepted the bishopric of Durham; why should Reginald’s conscience
be more tender? A messenger was, therefore, posted to Padua, with
letters to Pole inviting him to accept the king’s offers of favour,
and write in defence of those royal claims which had been accepted
as law by the English Parliament and Hierarchy.[353] Pole saw that
the time was come to take his part openly and decidedly. He sat
down and counted the cost, and then he took pen in hand and wrote,
not an apology for the supremacy, but his celebrated treatise _De
Unitate Ecclesiastica_ in which he sums up all the acts by which
England has been severed from Catholic communion, fearlessly condemns
the sacrileges of the king, and calls on him to enter on the path
of penance. Whilst thus engaged, terrible tidings reached him: the
axe had fallen at last, and More and Fisher were numbered with the
martyrs; and, with the tears blotting his paper, he gave vent to his
sorrow in that magnificent apostrophe to the memory of his friends,
which he introduces in his Third Book. The treatise was finished in
four months, and despatched to England by a faithful messenger, who
was charged to deliver it into the king’s own hands; and then, fully
aware of the consequences of his determination, Reginald set out for
Rome, whither he had been invited by Paul III. almost immediately on
his accession. His friends entreated him not openly to break with
the king by accepting any preferment from the Pope. The two Houses
of Parliament even sent him a common letter to the same effect; but
before it reached him, Pole was at Rome, and had received from the
new Pontiff the dignity of Cardinal.

Two months later he found himself charged with a dangerous and
difficult mission. The fate of Anne Boleyn had, it was hoped, removed
from the king his worst councillor, and the insurrection of the
northern counties of England bore witness that the people themselves
were still true to the faith. Hopes were, therefore, entertained that
negotiations for a reconciliation might now be opened, and Pole was
accordingly appointed legate north of the Alps, with instructions to
proceed to Flanders, to bring about a peace between France and the
Empire, to announce the Pope’s resolve to call a General Council, and
to seize any occasion that might present itself for confirming the
English Catholics in their faith, and negotiating with the king’s
government. The legation, however, was an utter failure. Henry had
proclaimed the Cardinal a traitor, and set a price on his head; he
had offered to buy him of the Emperor in exchange for a force of
four thousand men; he had so managed matters that the legate was
warned to leave France as quickly as possible, and refused admission
into the imperial territory; the English agents were everywhere
busy endeavouring to procure either his open seizure or his secret
assassination; and in the midst of these multiplied perils Pole
had no support save his own great heart and dauntless courage. His
chaplains and followers were perplexed and terrified. A legate in
those days travelled in state, with his cross borne openly at the
head of his train; but the attendant, whose duty it was to carry
the cross, turned faint-hearted, and suggested the prudence of
concealing these marks of dignity in a hostile country. The last of
the Plantagenets, however, was not the man to quail in the presence
of danger; he calmly took the cross from the hands of the bearer,
and fixing its point firmly in his own stirrup, rode along, thinking
perhaps of St. Thomas, and certainly as ready as he to face the
assassins, and shed his life-blood in the cause of the Church.

A second legation in 1538 proved equally fruitless, and its only
result was the slaughter of every one of Pole’s family on whom Henry
could lay his hands. The Cardinal meanwhile was recalled to Rome,
and appointed to the government of Viterbo, where he heard, in
1541, of the murder of his aged mother, and gave thanks that she,
too, had been deemed worthy to suffer for the faith. His political
engagements had not weaned him from the love of letters, and, amid
his many trials, he found his chief solace, after his exercises of
piety, in the company of his learned friends. Pole entertained very
strong views as to the necessity of restoring a more Christian system
of studies, and laboured hard to bring those around him to the same
mind. Sadolet had just published his “Treatise on Education,” and
Pole addressed him a letter which Erasmus calls worthy of Cicero,
touchingly remonstrating with him for not giving a more prominent
place to Christian theology. Sadolet defends himself by saying
that theology is a part of philosophy, and the perfection of it;
but Pole was not satisfied. It might do well enough, he says, if
your pupil lived in the time of Plato or Aristotle, but a Christian
scholar requires something more than philosophy. Their difference of
opinion, however, was expressed on both sides with equal courtesy and
moderation, and the correspondence between them offers a pleasing
contrast to those acrimonious disputes, in which the scholars of the
last generation had so frequently disgraced themselves.

This was not the only occasion when Pole exerted himself to give a
more decidedly Christian direction to his friend’s studies. Sadolet
had two works on hand; one a treatise in praise of philosophy, the
other a Commentary on St. Paul. He was doubting which to finish
first, and Bembo of course advised the preference to be given to
philosophy. Pole was as great a lover of classical antiquity as
either of them, but at that grievous juncture, when a swarm of
heretics were in the field, it seemed to him a kind of infidelity for
the children of the Church to waste their time and genius on elegant
trifling. His arguments decided Sadolet in favour of St. Paul, and
he afterwards received his friend’s hearty thanks for having thus
determined his choice. “There were not wanting plenty,” writes
Sadolet, “who were ready to give me very different advice, but you
counselled me to embrace studies, the emoluments of which extend to
the other life, and your words have decided me henceforth to devote
myself to sacred literature.”

There was, however, nothing of the narrowness of a zealot in Pole’s
character; he and Contarini were advocates for a mild policy even
with heretics; and his gentle persuasion had a happy success in
recalling many who had been seduced by the new opinions, among
others, the Latin poet Mark Anthony Flaminius. This celebrated man
had been one of his early friends, but had suffered himself to be
won over by the specious arguments of Valdes. Pole invited him to
Viterbo, and, by dint of patience and kindness, restored him to a
better mind, and it was in his house that he afterwards expired, as
Beccadelli expresses it, “like a good Christian.”[354] In the same
spirit he received into his family Lazarus Bonamico, professor of
humanity at Padua, saying that he was worth something better than the
occupation of explaining Virgil, and that the study of theology which
he wished him to embrace, required the whole man. He assisted Bembo
also in his last moments, and his house was the refuge of all those
English Catholics, who, like himself, preferred exile to apostasy.

Among these, one is glad to reckon George, the son of our old
friend William Lily, whom he took under his protection, and who,
alter writing some learned works, and contributing to the history
of Paulus Jovius, returned with Pole to England in Queen Mary’s
days, and died a prebendary of Canterbury. And so we will leave our
great countryman for a time doing the work of an apostle among the
scholars of his day, to find him again at the head of that momentous
council, which owed to his influence not a few of its most important
measures of reform. Before following him there, we have to take our
farewell of the English schools, whose destinies from this time
form a page in the history of sacrilege. The first royal visitation
of the universities, held in virtue of King Henry’s newly-claimed
supremacy, took place in 1535, when the further study of scholastic
philosophy and canon law were prohibited. For a brief space the
attempt was made to fill up the hiatus with an extra quantity of
Greek and profane studies, and then it was that Sir John Cheke
achieved that celebrity at Cambridge which Milton has commemorated
in a sonnet. All the Humanists indeed were not men of equally solid
learning, for Saunders tells us the universities were filled with a
multitude of young orators and poets, who, after celebrating the mock
obsequies of Scotus and St. Thomas, tried, by means of unbecoming
comedies, songs, and verses, to decoy the unwary into the errors of
the sects, and immorality of life. On the whole, the attempt was a
failure; English scholars were nor yet sufficiently familiarised
with the new learning to give it a very warm reception, and the
exotic Greek studies, like plants that had been overforced, soon
drooped and perished.[355] Canon law and theology, and, above all,
the despised scholastic logic, were precisely the studies in which
Catholic Oxford had most excelled; and their abolition was tantamount
to the formal closing of her schools. And during the reign of Edward
VI. the divinity school was actually closed, and in spite of every
effort on the part of the Humanists, the decay became so universal
that all the other schools, except two, were shut up, or let out
to laundresses and glovers. “There, where Minerva formerly sat as
regent,” says Wood, “was nothing during all the reign of King Edward
but wretched solitariness; nothing but a dead silence prevailed.”
The dissolution of the monasteries, moreover, had ruined upwards
of a hundred flourishing academies, which served as feeders to the
universities, the place of which was very imperfectly filled by King
Edward’s grammar-schools. Thus, a large proportion of those who had
formerly followed the pursuit of learning, now betook themselves to
mechanical trades, and the schools literally died out for want of
scholars. In 1550 we find Roger Ascham, a strenuous adherent of the
new worship, lamenting over the decay of the old grammar-schools, and
predicting in consequence the speedy extinction of the universities:
whilst Latimer about the same time is found declaring that there were
at least ten thousand fewer students in the kingdom than might have
been found twenty years previously.

The ruin of learning at the universities was completed by the
bigotry of those foreign Protestant divines, who, in King Edward’s
time, were brought over from Germany and Switzerland to fill up the
professorships which no English scholar could be found to accept
under the new ecclesiastical régime. Among these the celebrated
Peter Vermigli, better known by the name of Peter Martyr, was indeed
a good scholar, but the greater number of his colleagues were not
only without learning, but, following in the footsteps of Luther,
they proclaimed war against it as “a human thing.” They voted the
academical degrees “Antichristian,” and showed their horror of all
the vain things fondly invented by Popery, not only by the breaking
of images, but by the burning of libraries. Duke Humphrey’s precious
collection of classical authors was condemned to the flames; the
exquisite illuminations of his costly volumes possibly suggesting the
notion that they must be of the nature of Roman service books. When
Sir Thomas Bodley took up his residence at Oxford, towards the end
of Elizabeth’s reign, he informs us that he found the libraries “in
every part wasted and ruined,” and it is well known that the splendid
foundation which we owe to his munificence, was but a collection of
such poor fragments as had accidentally escaped destruction.

Of the material sacrileges committed by King Edward’s visitors it
is unnecessary here to speak, and without necessity one would not
willingly enter on the sorrowful tale. The shell of the universities
was left, to be gradually informed with a new spirit, a new learning,
a new life; which, as years rolled on, became no longer new, and so
gradually grew to be regarded by Englishmen as venerable. Oxford,
with her thousand Catholic memories, became in process of time the
stronghold of Anglican Church Toryism; a pigmy destiny, indeed, for
her who had been founded by the hands of saints, yet one with which,
on the whole, she has showed herself amply satisfied. The Royal
Supremacy, which had first cut down her fair proportions, clung to
her like the poisoned garment of Nessus, but though it sometimes
galled her, she made the most (as was fitting) of her solitary dogma,
and, in a memorable moment of her history, proclaimed fidelity to it
in its extremest form to be “the badge of the Church of England.”

Here, then, we will bid farewell to Oxford; to those venerable walls
round which there still hang shadows of the past, out of which alas!
too many build up an unsubstantial cloudland, with the gorgeous
beauty of which they rest content. The Catholic, while he feels the
power which even such phantoms of the old faith exercise over the
heart, knows well enough that he does but gaze on

The loveliness of death
That parts not quite with parting breath.

He reads her ancient motto, and can but pray that a beam of the True
Light may one day again illuminate her, and that she, over whose
beautiful places the fire has passed, may once more sing, according
to the days of her youth, “_Dominus Illuminatio mea_.”

_CHAPTER XXIV._

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.

When the conclave of October 13, 1534, announced the election
of Cardinal Alexander Farnese as successor to Clement VII., few
men probably anticipated what would be the character of the new
pontificate. The antecedents of Paul III. appeared to link him with
what may be called the Conservative party of the day. He had been a
pupil of Pomponius Lætus, had been raised to the purple by Alexander
VI., had grown up in the luxurious atmosphere of Leo’s Court, and
in his early youth, before he embraced the ecclesiastical state,
had not escaped the worldly infection which clung to the literary
circles among which he mixed. Men of letters indeed might naturally
look for encouragement from the friend of Sadolet, the correspondent
of Erasmus, and the elegant commentator on Cicero, but few expected
to find in him the uncompromising champion of ecclesiastical reform.
Yet such he soon proved himself. One fault alone was charged to
his administration, the promotion of relatives whose subsequent
misconduct brought scandal on the Church, and anguish to his own
heart. But in other respects his favour was bestowed on precisely
those who were best qualified to forward the interests of religion.
He filled the sacred college with men worthy of the purple; Pole,
Fisher, Caraffa, Contarini, Sadolet, Aleander, and Cortese, were
all cardinals of his nomination. In his love of art and poetry he
was hardly inferior to Leo X., but the thoughts that occupied his
soul as Supreme Head of the Church had a higher and nobler aim than
even the encouragement of letters. To restore peace between France
and the Empire, to keep back the onward progress of the Turks, and
to call a General Council for the purpose of healing the wounds of
the Church, these were the objects he set before him as the work
of his pontificate, and he never rested till he had accomplished
them. Until Charles and Francis had laid down their arms, however,
the Council so loudly demanded by men of all opinions was a simple
impossibility, and ten weary years had to pass before these Christian
princes could be brought to terms. If for a moment they suspended
hostilities, it was only to renew them with greater animosity than
before, and to give the French king an opportunity of covering
himself with infamy by calling to his help the Turkish hordes, and
inviting them to overrun Italy. Whilst Europe was involved in these
broils, it was plain there could be no Council; but at least there
could be the initiatives of reform, and in 1537 Paul III. proved his
earnest desire to begin the work by naming a Commission of cardinals
and other ecclesiastics, whom he charged with the delicate task of
drawing up a statement of those abuses which, in their judgment, most
loudly called for redress.

This Commission was composed of nine men, whose names were equally
illustrious for integrity and learning. They were the cardinals
Contarini, Caraffa, Sadolet, and Pole, together with five other
prelates afterwards raised to the same dignity; namely, Fregoso,
Archbishop of Salerno; Aleander, Archbishop of Brindisi; Ghiberti,
Bishop of Verona; Gregory Cortese, Abbot of Lerins; and Father Thomas
Badia, Master of the Sacred Palace.

Some of these have already been spoken of. Contarini and Aleander
had distinguished themselves by their missions in Germany and their
fruitless efforts to conciliate and win back the misguided Lutherans.
Ghiberti had been associated with Pole in his legations, and was
bound to him by close ties of friendship. He was regarded by St.
Charles Borromeo as the ideal of a Christian bishop, and his portrait
always hung in the saint’s chamber, to urge him, as he said, to
imitate his pastoral career. He was also profoundly learned, and had
set up a printing-press in his episcopal palace, whence issued forth
magnificent editions of the Greek Fathers. Cortese, a Benedictine
abbot, had revived the fame of the old monastery of Lerins, and
restored regular observance in a great number of other houses of his
order. Tiraboschi calls him one of the most elegant writers of his
age, and says that his theological works are free from the least
tincture of scholastic barbarism. Frederic Fregoso was a Hebrew
scholar, and Aleander a learned Orientalist. Not one, in short, of
all the nine could be taunted as a disciple of the retrograde school,
and all had in one way or other taken part in the revival of polite
letters.

Out of the twenty-seven heads to which they reduced their statement
of existing abuses, one only concerns our present subject. The whole
report was indeed of great importance, and furnished the basis on
which were framed many of the decrees of discipline subsequently
promulgated by the Fathers of Trent. But it is the sixteenth article
alone which touches on the subject of university education, which
we will here reproduce as containing both a brief summary and a
sufficient justification of much that has been put forward in the
foregoing pages. After noticing the reforms urgently called for
in the collation to ecclesiastical benefices, the Congregation of
prelates proceed as follows:--

“It is a great and pernicious abuse that in the public schools,
especially of Italy, many philosophers teach impiety. Even in the
churches most impious disputations are held, and if some are of
a pious nature, yet in them sacred things are treated before the
people in a most irreverent manner. We think, therefore, that it
should be pointed out to the bishops, in those places where public
schools exist, that they admonish those who deliver lectures not to
teach impiety to the young, but to manifest to them the weakness
of natural reason in questions appertaining to God, to the recent
origin or eternity of the world, and the like, and that they rather
lead them to piety. Also, that they permit not public disputations
to be held on questions of this nature, nor even on theological
subjects, which certainly in this way lose much in vulgar esteem; but
let disputations be held in private on these matters, and let the
public disputations be on other questions of physics. And the same
thing ought to be enjoined on all other bishops, specially of great
cities where disputations of this sort are wont to be held. And the
same care should be employed about the printing of books, and all
princes should be written to, warning them not to allow books of
all sorts to be printed everywhere in their dominions. And the care
of the matter should be committed to the ordinaries. And whereas it
is now customary to read to boys in the schools the ‘Colloquies’ of
Erasmus,[356] in which there are many things which instil impiety
into inexperienced minds, the reading of this book, and of others of
a similar character, ought to be prohibited.”[357]

This certainly is a most remarkable document. It proceeded not from
a body of “Scotists” and “barbarians,” but from elegant Humanists,
all of them university scholars, whilst some, like Aleander, had
themselves occupied Professors’ chairs. It will be observed that
the evils which they point out in the existing system of education,
and which they indicate as lying at the root of so many prevailing
corruptions, are precisely those the growth of which we have been
watching from the time when the universities replaced the episcopal
and monastic schools. The whole weakness of the Professorial system
is here laid bare; its incitements to vanity, its tendency to
substitute novelties that tickle the ears of a mixed audience for the
teaching of solid truth; the system which had Berengarius and Abelard
for its fittest representatives; which had already produced a goodly
crop of heretics and false teachers, and which, while it extinguished
the old ecclesiastical seminaries, supplied in place of them,
nothing better for the training of the Christian priesthood, than
universities which, in Italy, at least, had grown to be little else
than academies of heathen philosophy. Such a grave and deliberate
declaration, and from such authority, requires no commentary; it was
a candid avowal from the choicest intellects of Christendom, that
three centuries before, a false step had been taken; and a plain and
solemn warning that if the evil results of that step were now to be
remedied, it could only be by returning to the ancient paths.

It was precisely at this time that St. Ignatius and his companions
first appeared in Rome, and submitted to the Holy See the plan for
the foundation of their society. The education of youth[358] is set
forth in the Formula of Approval granted by Paul III. in 1540 as the
first duty embraced by the new Institute, and it is to be observed
that the two patrons who most powerfully interested themselves in
obtaining this approval were both of them members of the above-named
commission, namely, Cardinal Gaspar Contarini, and the Dominican,
Father Thomas Badia. Although the new religious were not at once
able to begin the establishment of colleges, yet the plan of those
afterwards founded was gradually ripening in the sagacious mind
of St. Ignatius, who looked to these institutions as calculated
to oppose the surest bulwarks against the progress of heresy. The
first regular college of the Society was that established at Gandia
in 1546, through the zeal of St. Francis Borgia, third General of
the Society; and the regulations by which it was governed, and
which were embodied in the constitutions, were extended to all the
Jesuit colleges afterwards founded. The studies were to include
theology, both positive and scholastic, as well as grammar, poetry,
rhetoric, and philosophy. The course of philosophy was to last three
years, that of theology four; and the Professors of Philosophy were
enjoined to treat their subject in such a way as to dispose the mind
for the study of theology, instead of setting up faith and reason
in opposition to one another. The theology of St. Thomas, and the
philosophy of Aristotle, were to be followed, except on those points
where the teaching of the latter was opposed to the Catholic faith.
Those points of metaphysics which involved questions depending for
their demonstration on revealed truth, such as free-will, or the
origin of evil, were not to be treated in the course of philosophy,
but to be reserved for that of theology. No classical authors,
whether Greek or Latin, wherein was to be found anything contrary to
good morals, were to be read in the classes until first corrected,
and the students were subjected to rules of discipline which aimed at
forming in them habits of solid piety. It is clear that colleges thus
constituted were exactly fitted to carry out those reforms which Pole
and his colleagues had suggested as being so urgently called for,
and that the system of education thus proposed effectually excluded
the “impious philosophy” which had been nurtured in the academies of
Italy.

Meanwhile the political horizon was gradually growing clearer, and
on the 13th of December 1545, the first session of the long-expected
Council was opened by the three legates nominated by the Pope. They
were the Cardinals del Monte, Cervini, and Pole. The two first
successively filled the chair of St. Peter after Paul III., under
the titles of Julius III. and Marcellus II. Pole held his office
only until the October of the following year, when the state of
his health obliged him to retire from the legation. He nevertheless
continued to be employed in affairs connected with the Council, and
assisted in drawing up the Bull of Reform published by Julius III. in
1550. The exhortation addressed to the Fathers of the Council at the
opening of the second session was composed by him, and the doctrinal
decree on Justification, which defined the faith of the Church on the
point most warmly controverted by the Lutherans, is believed to have
been first sketched out by his pen,[359] and was certainly submitted
by his colleagues to his approval in its complete shape before
publication, he being then detained by sickness at Padua. In 1554
the accession of Queen Mary recalled him to England, where, for the
four remaining years of his life, he was engaged in reconstructing
the shattered constitution of the English Church, and was, of course,
unable to take any active part in the affairs of the Council. But
some of his Synodal Acts anticipated in so remarkable a manner the
Tridentine decrees of discipline that they have been even supposed
to have furnished the model on which the decrees were drawn up. At
any rate, they evince how thoroughly Pole was himself imbued with the
views and principles which guided the Fathers of the Council, and
bear too closely on our subject to be omitted here.

The first act of his primacy, after the formal reconciliation of the
nation to the Holy See, was to summon a Provincial Synod, which met
in Henry VII.’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, and continued to sit
from the November of 1554 to the same month in the ensuing year.
After regulations passed for the remedy of sundry abuses, such as
pluralities and non-residence, and others which aimed at providing
for the instruction of the people, by means of preaching, we come to
the important decrees on the subject of Church seminaries. A return
was made to the ancient ecclesiastical system, and the cathedral
schools were put on a footing which should enable them to train
the future clergy of the diocese. Every cathedral was to maintain,
in its own school, a certain number of boys, in proportion to its
revenues. Those only were to be chosen in whom there seemed to be
tokens of a vocation to the priesthood; they were to be received
about the age of eleven or twelve, rather from the ranks of the
poor than the rich, and were required before admission to know at
least how to read and write. All were to wear the tonsure and the
ecclesiastical habit, to live in common, and to assist daily at the
public office in the cathedral. They were gradually to be admitted to
Holy Orders, at proper intervals. The school was to be placed under
the superintendence of the Dean and Chapter. Other students might
be admitted, who were required to follow the rules of the seminary
in all things. Moreover, all the schools and schoolmasters of the
diocese were placed under the jurisdiction of the Ordinary, and the
books used in these schools were first to be approved by him.[360]
The acts of this synod were sent to Rome, and formally approved by
Pope Paul IV., and there is little doubt that they must have been in
the hands of many of the prelates who assisted at the later sessions
of the Council of Trent.

The next task which presented itself was the restoration of the
universities, which, as we have seen, had sunk during the reign of
Edward VI., into a state of utter decay. Here the Cardinal’s efforts
were nobly seconded by Queen Mary, who re-endowed the Colleges with
such portions of their revenues as had been seized by the Crown,
and at her own charges commenced the rebuilding of the schools. To
restore the ancient theological studies, and place the universities
on their former footing, Nicholas Ormanetti, formerly Vicar-General
to the good prelate Matthew Ghiberti, and now first Datary to the
English Legation, was appointed visitor. The heretical professors
were replaced with learned Catholics, both native and foreign, and
among the latter number were the two Spanish Dominicans, Peter
Soto and Bartholomew Carranza, both of whom had been present as
theologians at some of the sittings of the Council of Trent. By
their influence the scholastic theology was restored at Oxford--a
circumstance which occasioned the charge of _obscurantism_ to be very
unsuitably brought against the Catholic professors, by those who had
been engaged before them in crying down humane learning and burning
Duke Humphrey’s library. Pole certainly was not one to neglect the
cultivation of humane literature, but the restoration of the Divinity
schools of Oxford was just then of more urgent necessity than
anything else, and we could not have blamed the Catholic prelates
if, in their solicitude on this point, they had even allowed the
polite letters to remain for a time uncared for. They did, however,
the very reverse of this, and put such renewed life into the English
schools as inspired Sir Thomas Pope with courage to propose a new
Oxford foundation, for the express purpose of promoting classical
studies. The statutes of Trinity College, Oxford, were submitted
to the approval of Pole, who pleaded strongly for more Greek. Sir
Thomas Pope is represented by some to have resisted this, but his
own letters explain the true state of the case. “I like the purpose
well,” he says, “but I fear the times will not bear it now. I
remember when I was a young scholar at Eton the Greek tongue was
growing apace, but the study of it of late is much decayed.” That
is to say, that the real “obscurantism” had been occasioned, not
by the Spanish Dominicans, but by the Genevese Reformers, who left
it to Pole and his colleagues to undo their mischievous work. In
consequence of the Cardinal’s representations, a Greek lecturer was
appointed at Trinity, and the buildings of old Durham College were
given up to the new foundation, the present library being the very
same originally built to receive the books deposited there by Richard
of Bury.

The death of the queen in 1558, followed sixteen hours later by that
of the Cardinal Primate, put an end to the work of restoration, and
the curtain dropped heavily over the hopes of the English Catholics.
And in what way, it may be asked, did the triumph of Protestantism
affect the schools? “Duns, and his rabble of barbarous questionists”
(to use the language of Ascham) were, of course, put to the rout; but
what was substituted in their place during the golden reign of Queen
Elizabeth? Five years after her accession, we learn from Wood, that
there were only three divines in Oxford judged capable of preaching
the university sermon. The established clergy were recruited from an
illiterate class, who preached on Sundays, and worked at their trades
on week days, some of them being hardly able to sign their names.
Four years later, when Archbishop Parker founded three scholarships
in Cambridge, for the best and ablest scholars to be elected from the
chief schools of Kent and Norfolk, it was found prudent to require no
higher attainments from the candidates than a knowledge of grammar,
“and, if it may be, that they should be able to make a verse.”
And three years later again, we find Horne, bishop of Winchester,
requiring his minor canons every week to get by heart a chapter of
St. Paul’s Epistles in Latin, which task they had to repeat aloud at
the public episcopal visitation. The universities revived in some
degree towards the close of Elizabeth’s reign, and yet more under
the early Stuart princes, though it is remarkable how large a number
of the best English scholars of this period, such as Campion and
Crashaw, embraced the Catholic faith. But the free intercommunion
with the mind of Europe, which had been the great intellectual
advantage of these institutions in Catholic times, was now at an
end. Whatever scholarship they fostered was henceforth stamped with
a certain character of narrow nationality; their very Latinity
became Anglicised in its pronunciation, and thus the Latin language
ceased to be to English scholars what it was, and still is, to those
of Catholic academies--a medium of intercourse between educated
men. Among those Englishmen who have distinguished themselves
in the ranks of science and literature since the Reformation, a
very large proportion have not been university scholars, and our
two philosophers of greatest note, Bacon and Locke, so far from
acknowledging any obligations to their university training, avowedly
despised, and set themselves to make others despise, the academic
system of education.

It remains for us to speak of the decrees affecting the question of
ecclesiastical education passed in the later sessions of the Council
of Trent. The wars and political intrigues of that troublous time
caused so many interruptions in the sittings of the Council that they
were not finally closed until eighteen years from the date of their
first opening.

Few, comparatively, of those who had taken part in the first
sessions, assisted at the three last held in the year 1563, under
the presidency of five cardinal legates.[361] Of the three who had
presided at the opening of the Council, two had been successively
raised to the Chair of St. Peter, and all had passed to a better
life. Not one survived of those nine Cardinals who had sat in Paul
III.’s Congregation of Reform. But the new generation which had
arisen in their place were animated with the same spirit, or, if
there were any difference to be noticed, it lay, perhaps, in the
fact, that the deliberations of those eighteen years had supplied
them with fuller light, and deepened their desire for the restoration
of ecclesiastical discipline. The very troubles of the times had
co-operated in the development of a strong Christian reaction against
the Paganism of the last half century; and many prelates had not
waited for the close of the Council before instituting a vigorous
reform of abuses in their own dioceses. Thus the church of Verona
under Matthew Ghiberti had become a model of discipline, and in
Portugal the celebrated Bartholomew of the Martyrs, Archbishop of
Braga, had set the example of exact observance of the canons, in the
government of his large diocese. Among the other means he had adopted
for the reform of his clergy, was the establishment of a sort of
seminary in his own palace, which he endowed out of his episcopal
revenues, appointing as scholasticus a religious of his order. The
archbishop sat in the later sessions of the Council, and took a
very prominent part in its deliberations. Again, the establishment
of the Jesuit colleges, specially the German college in Rome, and
the extraordinary success which had attended the labours of the
Blessed Peter Canisius, in restoring Catholicism in Germany, had
poured a flood of light on the whole subject of educational reform.
Canisius assisted at the sittings of the Council in 1547 and again
in 1562, and even when absent his opinion was continually consulted
by Cardinal Hosius and the other legates. Reform was now not a
theory, but a fact. In Aichstadt, the old diocese of St. Wilibald,
where heresy and irreligion, had, as it seemed, firmly established
themselves, the university was purged of the evil leaven, and the
faith had revived in all its fervour. In Vienna, in spite of the
protection of the Government, religion had so rapidly declined under
the infection of the Lutheran doctrines, that for twenty years not
a single candidate for holy orders had presented himself. Parishes
were left without pastors, the sacraments were neglected, and
through timidity and human respect the Catholic clergy opposed but
a faint resistance to the encroachments of the heretics. But under
the direction of Canisius the university was restored, a college
was founded for the education of youth, and public catechisms were
instituted, which effected a change little short of miraculous, and
the same scenes were to be witnessed in the other cities of Germany.

The Fathers, therefore, who assembled at the twenty-seventh session
of the Council of Trent had facts as well as principles before them,
indicating a sound system of ecclesiastical education as the measure
best calculated to remedy the evils which afflicted the Church.
In earlier sessions the old canons had been confirmed requiring
cathedrals to maintain a theologian and grammar-master for the
instruction of the younger clergy, but this law fell very far short
of what was needed, and its frequent renewal by former Councils does
not appear to have been attended with much result. What the Church
had possessed in former ages, and what she now desired to restore,
were not mere theological classes, but rather nurseries, in which
her clergy could be trained in ecclesiastical discipline as well as
supplied with the learning proper to their state. Such seminaries
had existed before the rise of the universities; they were now to
reappear, and it was with unanimous consent, accompanied with an
emotion of grateful joy not easy to express, that the Fathers passed
that decree which has been called the practical _résumé_ of the
whole Council. It forms the eighteenth chapter of the twenty-seventh
session, and its provisions are briefly as follows:--

Every cathedral or metropolitan church is bound, according to its
means, to maintain a certain number of youths belonging to the city
or diocese in some suitable college, who shall then be trained for
the ecclesiastical state. They are to be at least twelve years old,
and chosen from those who give hopes of their being eventually fit
for the priesthood. The Holy Council desires that a “preference be
given to the children of poor parents,” though the rich are not to
be excluded. The college, which is to be “a perpetual seminary for
the service of God,” is entirely under the direction of the bishop,
who is to be assisted by two canons chosen by himself. The students,
on their entrance, are to wear the tonsure and ecclesiastical habit;
to learn grammar, church music, the ecclesiastical computation, and
the other liberal arts; but they are specially to apply themselves
to the study of the Scriptures, and all that appertains to the right
administration of the Sacraments. The bishop, or the visitors whom
he appoints, are to watch over the maintenance of good discipline
among them, and to take all proper means for the encouragement of
piety and virtue. The seminary is to be maintained by a tax on all
the benefices in the diocese. If in any province the dioceses are
too poor each to maintain its own seminary, the Provincial synod may
establish one attached to the metropolitan church for the general use
of all churches of the diocese; or, again, if a diocese be very large
and populous, the bishop may, if necessary, establish in it more
than one seminary. It belongs to the bishop to appoint or remove the
scholasticus, and no person is to be appointed who is not a doctor or
licentiate in theology or canon law. The bishop also has the right
of prescribing what studies are to be pursued by the seminarists,
according as he may think proper.[362]

So universal was the satisfaction caused by this decree, that many
prelates hesitated not to declare, that if no other good were to
result from the labours of the Council, this alone would compensate
to them for all their fatigues and sacrifices. They regarded such
a reform as was here provided, as the only efficacious means of
restoring ecclesiastical discipline, well knowing that in every state
and government, as are the heads, so are the members, and that the
character of a people depends on that of their teachers.[363]

It will be observed that in this famous decree there is no allusion
to the universities as in any way regarded as nurseries of the
clergy. Canons for their reform were passed in the twenty-fifth
session,[364] but not a word was said connecting them in any way with
the proposed seminaries. It is not even recommended that seminaries
should be established in the vicinity of universities where these
already existed, though at that time universities were far more
numerous than now, every province almost possessing one in its
territory; but it is distinctly laid down, that they are to form a
part of the cathedral establishment, and, where it can conveniently
be done, that they be erected in the cathedral city of the diocese.
The radical idea of the seminary is that of its being _the bishop’s
school_,[365] formed under his eye, and subject to his control--an
idea which is manifestly totally inconsistent with the plan of a
university. So strictly is this the case, that where colleges have
since been founded (as at Rome) for ecclesiastical students of
different nations, which of course could not be placed under the
jurisdiction of their own bishops, these colleges are rarely given
the name of seminaries, the nature of such institutions, properly
so-called, requiring them to be subject to the canonical authority of
their own Ordinary. Universities were not abolished or condemned, or
even discountenanced, by the Fathers of Trent: they were reformed,
indeed, and laws were passed requiring all masters and doctors
to engage by oath, at the beginning of each year, to explain the
Catholic faith according to the canons of the Council, and obliging
visitors to institute the necessary corrections of discipline. But
universities, when doing their own proper work, continued to receive
the same encouragement as before; and even in our own time, we have
witnessed new ones established, at the express recommendation of the
Sovereign Pontiff, to the end that the Catholic youth of Belgium
and Ireland might enjoy the same advantages for following a course
of liberal studies as were at the command of the uncatholic world
around them.[366] But other schools than those of the world were
to be provided for those who were to minister divine things, that
they might be “_wholly in them_, and that their profiting might be
manifest to all.”[367] Them the world was not to touch; the smell
of the fire was not to pass on them; from childhood they were to be
taken out of it, and fashioned after another model, signed and set
apart as “holy to the Lord.” Their consecration was not to be the
change of a moment, but the formation of a life; and for ever they
were to be preserved from what even the heathen poet bewailed as “the
intolerable calamity of yielding to what is base,” and to enjoy that
which he declares should be the object of all men’s prayers,--to
dwell in those sacred temples where “nature and the law of the place
should both conspire to present us in innocence to the Deity.”[368]

Besides the important decrees already referred to, the reform of
education was encouraged by other provisions of the Council of
Trent, in which we recognise the same solicitude for restoring the
Christian spirit, and abolishing the corrupt Paganism which had crept
into its place. The Tridentine Fathers had something to say on the
matter of art. The object of pictures and images, is, they remind
us, to instruct the people, and recall to them the mysteries of the
Faith; therefore everything profane and indecorous is to be avoided
in the House of God, and the beauty that is represented must be that
alone which savours of holiness. Nor was it to be supposed that
they could be silent on the subject of that ecclesiastical chant,
which from the very infancy of the Christian schools had taken its
place by the side of grammar. The Gregorian chant had by this time
all but disappeared in the greater number of churches, and had been
replaced by orchestral music of the most profane and unsuitable
description. Against this abuse, which had been growing for upwards
of two centuries, Popes and Councils had uniformly protested, but
with little fruit. The Fathers of Trent seriously contemplated
prohibiting the use of instrumental music altogether, but at the
earnest representations of the Emperor Ferdinand, they contented
themselves with prescribing the abuses introduced by the musical
professors,[369] and making the study of the plain-song of the Church
one of the indispensable studies of the new seminaries. They number
among the duties of those promoted to cathedral canonries that they
should “reverently, distinctly, and devoutly praise the name of God
in hymns and canticles in the choir appointed for psalmody;” and
require the Provincial synods to regulate the proper way of singing
and chanting the divine office. And the various Provincial councils
and synods held to promulgate the Tridentine decrees, failed not to
enforce the same salutary provisions, as that of Toledo, in 1566,
which forbade those noisy exhibitions wherein the sense of the words
is buried under the confusion of voices.[370]

The projected reforms had been very warmly urged on the Fathers by
St. Charles Borromeo in his letters from Rome. The friend of Pole
and of St Ignatius, he had watched with lively interest the success
of the German college, and in his twenty-third year had already put
his hand to the work of educational reform, by giving up the Borromeo
palace at Pavia, for the purpose of a college which he founded out
of his own revenues. When in the July of 1563, therefore, letters
from Trent arrived in Rome notifying to the Holy Father the decree
which had been passed, and soliciting his confirmation of the same,
St. Charles earnestly supported the petition of the Legates, and had
the happiness of conveying to them the warm approval of his Holiness,
and his promise that the confirmation should be published with the
least possible delay, and that he himself would be the first to carry
it into execution. Accordingly, on the 18th of August following he
convoked the Cardinals to deliberate with them on the subject. The
foundation of seminaries in all the dioceses of the Roman State was
at once determined on; 6000 scudi were assigned for the purpose by
the Pope, and a Commission of Cardinals, of whom St. Charles was one,
was appointed to carry the resolution into effect.

Thanks to the exertions of St. Charles, the solemn confirmation of
the Canons of Trent was not long delayed. In a consistory held on
the 30th of December, Pius IV, addressed a moving discourse to the
assembled Cardinals, including several who had recently returned from
the Council, in which, while declaring his firm resolve to enforce
every one of the reforms which had been therein recommended, he
took special notice of the decree on seminaries, which he praised
as having been suggested by the “special inspiration of God,”[371]
declaring again that he desired to be the first who should put his
hand to so blessed a work. The confirmation of the Tridentine Canons
followed on the 26th of January 1564, and on the 15th of April the
same year, in a consistory which met in the Hall of Constantine,
plans were proposed for the foundation of the Roman Seminary, the
care of which was committed to the Fathers of the Society of Jesus.

Nor was it at Rome alone that the decree of the Council was thus
eagerly and promptly carried out. The first act of Bartholomew of
the Martyrs, on returning to his diocese, was to institute measures
for the establishment of a seminary, in precise conformity to the
prescribed canons. He accordingly summoned his chapter and laid
before them the urgency of the business; giving them a noble example
by his own munificent contribution to the necessary expenses. As it
was an undertaking involving a question of finances, there were not
wanting those who murmured at the idea of a compulsory taxation, but
the prudence and moderation of the archbishop prevailed over every
difficulty, and at the end of six months he had the satisfaction of
seeing accommodation provided for sixty students, and of opening the
first seminary founded in Portugal. This appears to have been in
the year 1565. In the same year Daniel, the worthy successor of St.
Boniface in the See of Mentz, commenced the foundation of the first
episcopal seminary of Germany, which he appropriately dedicated to
our great English apostle, and placed under the direction of the
Jesuits. The Provincial Councils, held at Salzburg and Toledo in
1569, decreed the establishment of provincial seminaries, and, not to
multiply examples, we have but to turn to the correspondence of St.
Pius V. to see how rapidly this great work was taken up throughout
every part of Christendom, and how energetically it was encouraged by
the Sovereign Pontiff himself.

One Saint, however, and one diocese, stands out pre-eminent in the
history of Church seminaries. St. Charles Borromeo had protected the
design in its infancy, and he lived to give the Church a perfect
model of its practical realisation. Appointed to the archbishopric
of Milan when only in his twenty-second year, St. Charles found it
impossible for several years to obtain leave from Pope Pius IV.
to withdraw from Rome and devote himself to his pastoral cares.
Nevertheless, he never ceased to occupy himself with plans for
its benefit, and sought the counsel of every one whom he deemed
best able to instruct him in the duties of government. One of the
friends whose advice he most highly esteemed was Bartholomew of the
Martyrs; another was one whose name, if less famous than that of the
great Archbishop of Braga, has a peculiar interest to the English
reader--it was the good priest, Nicholas Ormanetti. This saintly
ecclesiastic had acted as Vicar-General to Matthew Ghiberti, and
assisted in the reforms which that zealous prelate had instituted
in his diocese. He had afterwards been appointed first Datary under
Cardinal Pole to the English Legation, and as we have seen, had been
named by him visitor of the English universities. He continued to
act as confidential adviser to our last Archbishop of Canterbury up
to the time of his death, when he left England and attended several
sessions of the Council of Trent.[372] After this he retired to a
humble country parish in the diocese of Verona, where he busied
himself with his parochial duties as quietly and happily as if he
had never exercised a more weighty charge. From this obscurity he was
drawn by St. Charles, who conjured Navagerio, now Bishop of Verona,
to send Ormanetti to him at Rome, that he might enjoy the benefit
of his counsels. He received the humble Curé with extraordinary
respect, and for weeks, to the amazement of the Roman courtiers, he
was closeted day after day with a man whom nobody knew, and nobody
thought worth knowing, and whose exterior was altogether poor and
unpretending. In these long conferences every point of pastoral
discipline was gravely and deliberately discussed, and the whole
plan of the future government of Milan moulded, as it were, into
shape. St. Charles listened eagerly to the account which Ormanetti
gave of the views and methods of government which had been adopted
by the two men whose example and maxims he most venerated, Ghiberti
and Reginald Pole. They consulted together on the fittest method of
executing the Tridentine decrees, and specially on the formation of
seminaries, and the holding of diocesan synods. And these measures
being thus concerted, Ormanetti was despatched to Milan to discharge
the office of Vicar-General until St. Charles should himself be able
to assume the government of his diocese. Poor Ormanetti, however,
found his new dignity beset with thorns, and the contradictions
he had to endure from the clergy who would not endure the name of
reform, moved St. Charles to make such renewed entreaties that he
might repair himself to his diocese, that he at last obtained from
the Pope the desired permission, and set out for Milan in 1565, where
he almost immediately held his first Provincial Synod. He commenced
the visitation of his diocese in the following year, and in spite of
the overwhelming labour which was thus imposed on him, found time to
begin a series of educational establishments such as never before, we
may confidently affirm, owed their existence to any single founder.
“Reform education,” said the sagacious Leibnitz, “and you will have
reformed the world.” And it was on this principle that St. Charles
applied himself to the task of reforming, not the world indeed, but
a vast province, in which doctrine and discipline had alike fallen
into decay. To begin with his foundations for seculars, which were
very numerous, the Borromeo College, dedicated to St. Justina, of
which mention has been already made, had been planned by him while
a student at Pavia, where his own observation of the disorders
prevalent there moved him to make larger provision for the protection
of his fellow-students. In 1572 he founded at Milan the College of
St. Fidelis, in which Humane Literature and all the higher branches
of study were taught, and which was more particularly intended for
the benefit of poor scholars. A second college was in the following
year attached to the church of St. John the Evangelist, for the
education of noble youths. It was under the care of the Oblates of
St. Ambrose, and was commonly known as the College of Nobles. St.
Charles himself drew up the rules both for the masters and scholars.
He marked the time to be assigned to prayer, reading, and study, and
established such a discipline as was calculated to form a character
of solid piety in the most influential classes of the laity. Next
to virtue and learning he desired to see his noble scholars trained
in habits of Christian courtesy, and was accustomed to insist much
on the importance of good manners. He often visited the school
in person, examined the boys at their tasks, and addressed them
some brief religious instructions. Every year, at the close of the
studies, he attended their public literary exercises, and distributed
prizes with his own hand; and so solicitous was he to perfect this
establishment, that he engaged Cardinal Sylvius Antonianus, his
former secretary and a man of rare learning, to write a work on
the education of the higher classes, for the guidance of those who
taught in his College of Nobles. Besides these colleges, he founded
others at Arona, Lucerne, and Fribourg, as well as the admirable
Swiss college established at Milan, for the education of young Swiss
ecclesiastics, which became afterwards the great means of upholding
religion in the Catholic cantons.

For the clergy of his own province he founded no fewer than six
seminaries--three in his cathedral city, and three in other parts of
the diocese. It must be remembered that the giant evil with which
St. Charles had to struggle was a slothful and corrupt clergy: the
salt had lost its savour, and had to be salted anew. The whole face
of the diocese had to be changed; and such a change demanded a body
of skilful workmen. To create these was his first care, and with
the sagacity of a mind illuminated with something higher than mere
human prudence, he perceived at once that an undertaking so vast as
the creation of a new body of clergy, and the reform of the old one,
could only be grasped by division. He had to classify his work in
order to master it, and in this lay the secret of his success.

His first and principal seminary was attached to his cathedral
church, and was intended to receive 150 of the most promising
candidates for the ecclesiastical state. In this greater seminary
dedicated to St. John the Baptist, the students went through a
regular course of philosophy, theology, and canon law.[373] But the
second seminary, called the _Canonica_, which was intended for youths
of less ability, who from their good dispositions, nevertheless
promised to make useful parish priests, nothing more was required
than a course of instruction on moral theology, Scripture, the
Catechism of the Council of Trent, and the rubrics and ceremonies of
the Church. A third seminary in the city was set apart to receive
such priests as, either from ignorance or negligence, were found
unfit to discharge their sacred duties, and were placed here for a
time to renew their ecclesiastical spirit, and acquire the learning
necessary for their state. These city seminaries received altogether
about 300 students--a number quite inadequate to supply the wants of
the diocese. Three others were, therefore, added in the different
deaneries, and these were intended as nurseries to those at Milan.
In them were received youths of all ages and ranks of society,
principally those of the poorer classes, who, when properly prepared,
were passed on into the higher schools, all being dependent on the
great seminary of St. John the Baptist as their head.

At first the archbishop supported these establishments at his private
charge, but he was at length obliged to have recourse to the plan
of taxation laid down by the Council of Trent, though this was only
continued until a permanent endowment had been secured. The rules
for their government he drew up himself, placing the care of their
temporal affairs in the hands of four of his clergy, chosen by
himself.

Every student on entering was required to make a spiritual retreat
under the director of the seminary, and a general retreat was made
yearly by all before the opening of the classes. The great object
aimed at in every regulation was to train the subjects in the
spiritual life, and to supply them with both the learning and the
habits proper to their state. The care and personal supervision
which the archbishop bestowed on his seminarists, whom he used to
call “the restorers of his diocese,” were rather such as might
have been expected from a father than a superior, and one whose
time was never at his own command. There were few days that he did
not visit the seminary, which occupied one side of his cathedral
quadrangle; it was his wish to receive all new-comers in person,
that he might examine their vocation himself; and when once he had
seen and conversed with them, each one had a peculiar place in his
memory, and became a separate object of his paternal care. Twice a
year he made a visitation of his seminaries, and held an examination
of all the classes. On such occasions he determined those who were
to be promoted to higher classes, and when the course of study was
finished, assigned them offices and benefices, according to the
ability of each. These visitations lasted a fortnight, besides other
shorter ones which he made in the course of the year. One result of
the extreme solicitude he bestowed on the spiritual training of his
disciples was not altogether such as he had anticipated: so many of
his priests evinced an inclination to embrace the religious life,
that he had to solicit from Pope Clement XIII. that some means might
be adopted for keeping them for the service of the diocese;[374]
for every religious order and every bishop were eager to obtain
subjects who had been educated in a seminary of St. Charles. On the
other hand, detractors were not wanting who busied themselves in
representing these colleges as prisons, in which the unhappy students
were worn to death by prayers, watchings, and austerities, by which
means they succeeded in frightening away some who were about to
enter. But the seminarists had but to show themselves in the streets
of Milan to dispel these malicious rumours; their countenances and
their whole deportment being marked with a certain character of peace
and joy, that was recognised as the effect of that holy discipline
under which the whole interior and exterior man was being formed anew.

St. Charles had now provided for the education of his clergy and
seculars of the upper ranks, but he did not stop there; he had
thought also for the children of the poor; and his plans on this
point were formed when he was still at the Court of Rome, presiding
over the brilliant academy of learned men which he had formed in
the palace of the Pope, and taking part in the erudite conference
of the _Noctes Vaticanæ_. Among the instructions which he gave to
his Vicar-General, Ormanetti, the establishment of poor schools
for teaching the Christian doctrine held a prominent place, and in
his first Provincial Synod he made a special decree obliging his
curates to assemble the children of each parish for catechism on
Sundays and other festivals. By his exhortations he moved a greater
number of pious persons, of both sexes, to interest themselves in
the good work, so that at the appointed hour the churches of Milan
were crowded with catechists and their classes, and it was the
good archbishop’s recreation, to go from one church to another,
encouraging teachers and learners with his presence and his gracious
words. Before he died there was not a parish in his diocese, however
remote, which had not its school; and whereas before his time it was
common enough to meet with persons of advanced age who scarcely knew
the Our Father and the Hail Mary correctly, it was now as common
to find children of ten or twelve perfectly instructed in their
religion. The schools of the diocese were at last entirely placed
under the care of the Oblates of St. Ambrose, that congregation which
had been created by St. Charles, and which he employed as a kind of
spiritual militia for carrying out all his charitable designs. The
discipline established in the poor schools of Milan by their means
was the admiration of every stranger, and the extent of their labours
may be estimated from the fact, that at the death of the archbishop
there existed in his diocese seven hundred and forty poor schools,
two hundred and seventy-three superintending officers, and seventeen
hundred and twenty-six others acting under their orders, having under
their care no fewer than 40,098 scholars.

* * * * *

Here, then, we may fitly close our studies of the Christian schools.
We have watched them in their infancy springing up under the shadow
of the cloister, and having traced them through their varied fortunes
of good and ill, we leave them at the moment when the episcopacy
was recovering its ancient jurisdiction over the ecclesiastical
seminaries, and when a vast majority of the secular schools of
Catholic Christendom were passing into the hands of a great religious
order, raised up, as it would seem, with the special design of
consolidating anew a system of Christian education. Did we need a
token that the reforms of the sixteenth century were truly the work
of God, we should find it in that deadly hostility which the enemies
of religion, and the rulers of the world, have never ceased to
exhibit against the seminaries of the Church and the colleges of her
religious orders. And this, not in Protestant countries alone, but
under nominally Catholic Governments, where heretical impieties have
been excluded, only, as it would seem, that there might be set up the
odious idol of the State.

For two centuries at least, education has been the battle-ground of
the Church, and the battle is not yet fought out and finished. In
France, in Belgium, in Germany, and in Switzerland, infidelity has
triumphed exactly in proportion as it has succeeded in substituting
an Anti-Christian State system of education for the system of the
Church, and has never done its work more surely than when its
agents have been philosophic universities, and ministers of public
instruction.

For us in England, who, by a strange anomaly enjoy a freedom denied
to many a Catholic land, and who are called on in one way or other
to take part in the reconstruction of so many of our shattered
institutions, the educational annals of the past have imperative
claims on our attention. It is not for a writer to point the moral
of his own tale; we can but hope, therefore, that our story, however
rambling and diffuse, may yet have been told with sufficient
clearness for our readers to draw that moral for themselves, and to
resolve that, in so far as they may be called on to lend their aid in
the great work of education, they will take no lower models for their
guidance than those that have been bequeathed them by the saints.

And what a calendar is that which belongs to the Christian schools!
The profession of the teacher, which in our day falls, by choice or
duty, on so vast a number, is irradiated by the light which streams
from ten thousand saintly aureoles. If the work be often wearisome
and seem to promise little hope; if the spirit flag, and, ignorant
of those sweet secrets by which the saints kept fresh their springs
of devotion in a thirsty soil, the teacher too often finds his heart
grow dry with incessant labour of the head; if pressed on by a busy
age, be he ever tempted to shorten prayer that he may double toil,
forgetful of the example of those who with one hand only did the
work, while with the other they held the sword;[375] if, in short,
the spirit of the world steal in upon him and assault him with its
manifold vexations, what can he do better than turn to those who
have gone before him, and learn from their examples, and invoke their
aid?

And what can we do better than commend these pages to the saints,
under whose patronage they were first undertaken; but chiefly
and above all to those,--too seldom venerated by us, too little
loved,--the saints and martyrs of England? To St. Bede and St.
Aldhelm, therefore, to St. Boniface, and St. Dunstan and St.
Ethelwold; to St. Edmund and St. Richard, and all who with them have
sanctified our cloisters with their prayers and studies,--for were
not the studies of the saints themselves a prayer?--to them in whose
ears the names of our own homes were once sweet household words,
and who, as they listen to the eternal chimes, do not, as we fondly
trust, forget those scenes where, in the days of their sojourning,
they learnt at the springs of heavenly wisdom “the true knowledge of
the things that are;” whose memory has been to us, wandering in the
wilderness, “as the flower of roses in the days of spring, and as the
lilies that grow upon the brink of the waters,”[376]--to our glorious
English Saints we offer these pages as an act of homage due to them
on a thousand grounds, and which, if unworthy of their greatness, may
by its own littleness the better move them to shelter it with their
aid, and may at least bear witness to the grateful love of the least
and humblest of their clients!

INDEX.

Abacus, the, 235, 287, and _note_.

Abbo of Fleury, 221, 248, 249.

Abbo, father to St. Odo, 242.

Abelard, 347, 352.

Abingdon, monastery and school of, 215-217.

Academy, Palatine, of St. Gregory, 58;
of Charlemagne, 128.

---- Florentine, 523.

---- Platonic, 613, 615.

---- Rhenish, 637.

---- Roman, 616, 662, 670.

---- Toulouse, 29.

Adalberon of Metz, 249, 252.

Adalbert of Prague, St., 268.

Adalhard, St., 136.

Adam Marisco, 484.

Adegrim, 240.

Adelaide of Gueldres, St., 192.

Ado of Vienne, St., 159;
his martyrology, 160.

Adrian, Abbot, 66.

Adrian I., Pope, 122, 125.

---- VI., Pope, his education at Louvain, 643;
his election, 666;
and death, 667.

Advice to ladies, 538.

Ædmer, death of, 216.

Ælfric, the homilist and grammarian, 219.

Æneid, the, 42.

Ængus, St., 52.

Æsop, fables of, 181.

Agatho, Pope, his letter, 27.

Agnellus, 483.

Aidan, St., 64.

Alban’s, St., school at, 316, 317.

Albert of York, 85.

Albert the Great, 415;
his writings, 418-422.

Albigenses, the, 407, 442.

Alcala, University of, 649-653.

Alcuin at York, 84.

---- in France, 119, 142.

Aldhelm, St., his studies, 68-70.

Alexander of Toulouse, 410.

Alexander Hales, 475.

---- III., Pope, 364, 365, 393.

Alexandria, 1-3;
its catechetical school, 3-10.

Alfred, King, 195-209.

Alpais, B. of Cudot, 340.

Alphabet, St. Patrick and the Roman, 43.

Amalarius of Metz, 193.

Amauri de Bene, 407.

Ambrose, St., 45, 59.

---- Traversari, 523.

Anastasius, Papal Librarian, 145.

Andreas Ammonius, 683, and _note_.

Angelbert, 136.

Angervyle, Richard, 529;
his library, 530.

Anglo-Saxon language, formation of, 81, 82.

---- grammars, 219.

---- versions of Scripture, 82, 208.

---- studied at Tavistock Abbey, 462.

Anglo-Saxon enigmas, 127.

Annibal Annibaldi, 441, 442.

Anscharius, St., 164-169.

Anselm of Laon, 343, 344.

Anselm, St., 307-315.

“Anthonie Pigs,” 588.

Anthony Woodville, 593, 594.

Antiphonary of St. Gregory, 60, 369.

---- Roman, 122, 173.

Antoninus, St., of Florence, 524.

Apollinaris, Sidonis, St., 2-8.

Apostolic Rule, the, 5, 13.

Aquileja, St. Paulinus of, 118.

Aquitaine, William of, 242.

Arabian Schools, frequented by medieval scholars, 317.

Arabic language, study of, 440, 441.

Aran, isle of, 45, 46.

Archdeacon, his duties, 12, 401.

Archetrenius, 367.

Aristotle, studied in the Dark Ages, 78, 113, 148, 174, 181, 274,
286.

---- translations of, 274, 407, 441.

---- errors arising from the study of, 360, 406, 408.

---- his Physics prohibited in the schools, 372, 408.

---- commented by Albert the Great, 418;
and by St. Thomas, 428.

Arithmetic, early study of, 69, 131, 179, 185.

---- much advanced by Gerbert, 287, 289.

Arles, St. Hilary of, 33.

Armagh, School of, 44.

---- Richard, Archbishop of, his complaints of the friars, 495.

Art, 444, 445, and _note_, 524.

Arts, the seven liberal, 31, 36, 131, 134, 147, 179, 225, 243, 249,
258, 286, 289, 350, 354.

---- decay of, 356, 375.

---- faculty of, 372.

---- contempt of, shown by Berengarius, 306;
and Abelard, 346.

Asaph, St., 38.

Asser, 199.

Astrology, 69, 79.

Astronomy, 79, 124, 125, 248, 287.

Athelhard of Bath, 320, 321.

Athens, Schools of, 17.

Attraction of gravitation, taught by Vincent of Beauvais, 436.

Augustine, St., of Hippo, 5, 16.

---- ---- of Canterbury, 63.

Aurelian, St., of Aries, 24.

Auricular confession, Colet on, 682, _note_.

Averrhoes, his errors, 406, 407, 428.

Avitus, St., of Vienne, 28.

Aymeric of Placentia, establishes Greek and Oriental studies, 441.

Bachelor’s degree, 372, 412, 414.

Bacon, Roger, 486-488.

Bald men, poem on, 159.

Baldwin of Canterbury, his journey through Wales, 459.

Bangor, 37, 38.

Barbarians, irruptions of the, 230-234.

Barbarous Latin, 496-498.

Barlaam, the Calabrian monk, 520.

Baronial households, 532-540.

Baronius on the Iron Age, 223.

Basil, St., 18, 23, 24.

Basilica of the Octagon, 20.

Basing of St. Alban’s, 485.

Bathildis, Queen, foundress of School of Chelles, 191.

Baume, La, 244, 245.

Beauvais, Vincent of, 434-436.

Bec, foundation of, 306.

---- its schools, 307-313.

Becket, St. Thomas à, 358.

Bede, St., 77-84.

Bembo, Cardinal, 657, 659, 660, 666, 701.

Benchor and its schools, 48, 49.

Benedict, St., 32, 33.

---- ---- of Anian, 135.

---- XI., Pope, 445.

Benedictine Schools, 113, 131.

Benignus, St., disciple of St. Patrick, 43.

Bennet Biscop, St., 66, 72, 76.

Benno, Cardinal, 288.

Bennon, St., of Misnia, his education, 265, 267.

Berengarius, 304-309.

Berington, Mr., quoted, 225, 226, 284, 486, 516.

Bernard, St., 351-355.

Bernardine Colleges, 371, 372, 373.

Bernward, St., of Hildesheim, 263-267.

Bertilla, 191.

Bessarion, Cardinal, 604, 605.

Beverley, St. John of, 67, 77.

Bibiena, Cardinal, author of “Calandra,” 657.

Bible, copies of the entire, 71, 72, 335, 337, 372.

---- Alcuin corrects the whole, 119;
as does Lanfranc, 318.

---- metrical versions of the, 189.

---- study of the, by the monks, 188, 189.

---- saved from barbarians, 236.

---- versions of, in the vulgar tongue, 340.

---- Commentary on, by Walafrid Strabo, 150.

---- Concordance of, first, 437.

---- of the poor, 567.

---- Bohemian, 562.

Bibles, chained in churches, 567.

---- Complutensian Polyglot, 652.

Black Death, the, 557.

Bobbio, 49, 128, 141.

Bocaccio, 198.

Boethius, 30-33, 288, _note_.

---- Alfred’s translations from, 205-207.

Bologna, University of, 328, 379, 391-393.

Bonaventura, St., 433.

Boniface, St., 89-112.

---- VIII., Pope, founds Roman University, 398.

---- ---- conduct of Paris University towards, 404, 405.

---- and Philip le Bel, 527.

---- and Dante, 512.

Book copying, 334.

Book trade in Paris, 383, 384.

Borromeo, St. Charles, 705, 718-724.

---- College, 720.

Botany, Albert the Great’s studies of, 421.

Bradwardine, Archbishop, 240.

Brendan, St., 49, 50.

Bridferth, monk of Ramsey, 221.

British Colleges, ancient, 35-42.

Bruno, St., of Cologne, 257-261.

---- founder of the Carthusians, 341.

Bucer, 644.

Budæus, 639, 640.

Bullinger, 645.

Bury, Monastery of, 577.

---- Richard, of, 529-531.

Cabala, the, 625, 638.

Cadoc, St., 40-42.

Cæsarius, St., of Arles, 24.

Cajetan, St., 668-670.

Camaldolese Order encourages revival of classical studies, 523.

Cambridge University, 64.

Cambridge scholar, the, 458.

Campanus, his Commentary on Euclid, 397.

Candidus, disciple of Rabanus, 149, 154.

Canisius, Peter, 713.

Canon law, study of, 391, 392.

Canonical schools, 131, _note_.

Canons Regular, 11, 63, 97.

Canterbury, school at, 64, 66-69.

Capella, Marcian, 31.

Capitulars of Charlemagne, 130.

Capgrave, John, 583.

Caraffa, 668, 669.

Carmenta Nicostrata, 322.

Carmina de Septem Artibus, 134.

Caroline College at Osnaburgh, 183.

Carpenter, John, founder of City of London School, 585, 589.

Carthage, schools of, 14.

---- Council of, 13.

Carthag, St., 53.

Casa Giojosa, the, 601.

Cassiodorus, 31-33.

Catacombs, Roman Academicians and the, 617, _note_.

Cataldus, St., 53.

Catechetical School of Alexandria, 3, 10;
of Jerusalem, 6.

Cathedral schools, 11-14, 95, 114;
revived by Charlemagne, 130, 131;
under the Othos, 262;
revived by St. Gregory VII., 328;
classical studies in, 330, 399.

Caxton, 592-598.

Celestine, St., Pope, 36, 38.

Centon, St. Gregory’s, 59.

Ceolfrid, 73, 74.

Chaldaic, study of, 437-441.

Chancellor, office of, 401, and _note_.

Chant, Ecclesiastical, 4, 53, 59.

---- introduced into England by St. Benedict Biscop, 75.

---- reformed in France by Pepin, 117;
and by Charlemagne, 122, 123.

---- at St. Gall, 173, 179.

---- corruption of, 524.

---- reform of, 717.

Charlemagne, 113, 143.

Charles the Bald, 144, 157, 159.

---- of Naples, 425.

---- V. of France, 525, 541.

---- St. Borromeo, 705, 717;
his Seminaries, 720-724.

Chartres, school of, 303.

Chaucer, 553-556.

Chelles, school of, founded by Queen Bathildis, 191.

Chigi soirées, 662.

Chivalry and education, 532-538.

Choral schools in private households, 576.

Christine de Pisa, 525.

“Christ-cross Row, the,” 546.

Chrysoloras, Emmanuel, 605.

Chrysostom, St., 19.

Church history, study of, 413, and note.

Cicero, copies of, in early Christian libraries, 84, 129, 148, 150,
157.

---- studied in schools of the Dark Ages, 161, 181, 338.

---- Petrarch’s love for, 519;
translated into Italian, 497.

Ciceronian Latin, 660.

Claud of Turin, 144.

Claudian Mamertus, 28.

Claustral schools, 131, _note_.

Clement, Irish professor, 141, 144.

---- of Alexandria, 7.

---- V. Pope, founds lectures in Oxford for Eastern languages, 440.

---- VII. Pope, 667.

Clonard, school of, 46.

Clonmacnois, 48.

Cloveshoe, Council of, 108, 109.

Cluain Ednech, 48.

Cluny, foundation of, 245.

---- Customs of, 335, 336, 337.

Cockfighting, London schoolboys’ love of, 588.

Colet, Dean, 674.

Colleges at Paris, 371-374.

---- at Oxford, 502-507, 539.

---- at Louvain, 642.

---- at Alcala, 650.

----, Wykehamist, 569, 571;
Old English, 572, 575.

Collegium Trilingue at Louvain, 643.

Colman, 51.

Coluccio Salutati, 523.

Columba, St., 47, 50.

Columbanus, St., 52.

Comestor, Peter, 363.

Commission of Cardinals on education, 705-707.

Computum, the, 8.

Concordance of the Bible by Hugh de St. Cher, 437.

---- by Archbishop Peckham, 500.

Contarini, Cardinal, 668, 700, 705.

Contemplative character of early monastic teachers, 165, 166.

Convito, Dante’s, 514.

Copyists, 100, 129, 172, 332-335.

Corby, Old, 136, 160, 658.

---- New, 167, 168.

Cornificians, the, 359.

Corpus Christi College, 678.

Cortese, Gregory, 705.

Cosmo de Medici, 612, 613.

Cosmos, Humboldt’s, quoted, 416, _note_, 419, 421, 460.

Council of Aix-la-Chapelle condemns Felix of Urgel, 142.

---- Carthage prescribes laws for manner of life of clergy, 13.

---- Constantinople orders priests’ schools, 13.

---- Cloveshoe, decrees of, 109, 110.

---- Frankfort, against Elipandus, 136.

---- Lateran, Fourth, 396.

---- Orleans, on priests’ schools, 110.

---- Sens, 352.

---- Soissons, 229;
second, condemns Abelard, 350.

---- Toledo requires bishops to found seminaries, 13, 14.

---- Trent, 708, 712.

---- Vaison, on priests’ schools, 13.

---- Valence, 145.

Councils of Rheims, Rome, Vercelli, Florence, and Tours successively
condemn Berengarius, 308.

Courçon, Robert de, Legate to Innocent III., 375.

Courtesy, laws of, 532.

Crevier, on principles of Paris University, 405.

Croke, Greek Professor, 677, 696.

Crusade, the fifth, 390.

Cummian, St., 52.

Cusanus, Nicholas, 634, 635.

Cuthbert of Wearmouth, 100.

Cynewulf of Peterborough, 219.

Cyril, St., of Jerusalem, 6.

Dado of Verden, and poor schools, 253.

Damasus, Pope St., 35.

Dames’ schools, 546.

Damian, St. Peter, 326-328.

_Damoiseaux_, 532.

Daniel, of Winchester, 103.

Danish College, 371.

Dante, 508-517.

Dark Ages, supposed ignorance of, 225-227.

David, St., 37.

Deacon, John, the, 58, 60, 123;
Paul, the, 58, 118, and _note_.

---- James, the, introduces Roman chant into Northumbria, 74.

Dead, prayers for the, 371, 376.

Decay of learning in seventh century, 27, 115.

---- of arts, 378, 379.

Decretals of Gratian, 379, 391, 392.

Degrees, 375, 414;
in grammar, 457;
in music, 458.

Delphina, St., 537.

Denys, St., the Areopagite, translated by Scotus Erigena, 145, 184;
commented by B. Albert the Great, 418;
translated by Robert Grostete, 485.

Deventer, schools of, 631-634.

Devorgilla, the Lady, 502.

Dialogues, Anglo-Saxon, 127, 139, 186.

Dictionaries, 183, 331, 485, 571.

Didier, Bishop, rebuked by St. Gregory, 57.

Diemudis, the copyist nun, 334.

Diploma of Philip Augustus, 365.

Discipline of the Universities, lax, 368, 374.

Distichia Moralia, old class-book, 181.

“Docta Sanctorum” Bull of Pope John XXII., 524.

“Doctrinale Puerorum,” 181.

Dominic, St., 410, 449.

Dominican Order, 411-417.

Dominican system of graduation, 414.

Dominicans in England, 475.

Donatus, St., 54.

Donatus, grammar of, 181, 250.

D’Oyley, Robert, his Oxford foundation, 452.

Dublin University, 442, 443.

Dunstable, miracle play at, 317.

Duns Scotus, 496, 505.

Dunstan, St., 212-218.

Durandus, 513, _note_.

Durham College, 505, 711.

Eadburga, her letters to St. Boniface, 101.

Easter, calculation of, 8.

---- controversy regarding, _note_, 65.

Easterwine, Abbot, 75.

Eberhard, Count, his will, 193.

Ecclesiastical chant, 5, 53.

Edmund, St., of Canterbury, 479-483.

Edmundsbury, 422, 462;
free school at, 577.

Education in the Dark Ages, 178.

---- St. Chrysostom, on, 19.

---- of women, 25, 26, 102, 183.

---- Roilin, on, 378.

---- Lateran Fathers, on, 664.

---- Cardinals, on, 706.

---- treatise on, by Sadolet, 700.

---- in Jesuit Colleges, 708.

---- National Systems of, 401.

Edward II. founder of Oriel, 505.

---- III., 529.

---- IV., 576, 577, 584, 592.

Egbert of York, 84.

Egbert, Anglo-Saxon priest, 92.

Eigil, St., 154.

Einold of Tours, 251.

Einsidlen, 176.

Ekkehard of St. Gall’s, 274.

Ella Longspée, 503.

Elyot, Sir John, author of the “Governor,” 672, 673.

Elzear of Sabran, 536, 537.

Emmeran’s, St., 335.

Enchiridion of King Alfred, 205.

Encyclopædias, 14, 32, 434.

Enda, founder of Aran, 45.

English schools of twelfth century, 320, 461.

---- language first used for literary purposes, 464.

---- in schools, 543-545.

---- versions of the Scriptures, 561-567.

---- poetry, specimens of early, 580-582.

---- poor-schools, 469, 471, 549.

---- school books, 546, 547.

Episcopal seminaries, ancient, 11.

---- revived by St. Gregory VII., 328.

---- decay of, after twelfth century, 402.

---- restored by Council of Trent, 714.

Erasmus, his early education, 636.

---- quoted, 641, 661, 662, 674, _note_, 679, 683, _note_, 697, 698.

---- in Rome, 664, 665;
in England, 675.

---- his grammar, 687, 688.

---- and Luther, 694, 695.

---- his Colloquies, 706 and _note_.

---- his death, 706, _note_.

Erigena, John Scotus, 145, 156.

Espousals of Mercury and Philology, 31.

Ethelwold, St., Bishop of Winchester, 217-220.

---- pupil of St. Aldhelm, 70, 71.

Eton school founded, 571.

Eucher, St., 33.

Euclid, 397, translated by Athelhard, 321;
commented on by Campanus, 397.

Eusebius, St., of Vercelli, 12.

Evesham Abbey, 315.

Evroult, St., relics of, 322, 323.

---- School of, 323.

Ewelme, God’s house at, 574.

Exeter, school at, 91.

---- given to Asser, 199.

---- Joseph of, author of the _Antiocheis_, 461.

---- College, 506.

Faculties at Paris University, 374, 375.

Fair of the Landit, 384, 385.

Faith and reason, St. Anselm on, 345;
St. Bernard on, 354;
St. Thomas on, 429.

Fathers of the Desert received young children, 21-24.

---- the, on education, 17-20.

---- neglect of the, 379.

---- St. Louis, collects copies of the, 379.

Felix, St., 64.

---- of Urgel, 144.

Ferrierès, school of, 156.

“Fescennine license” explained, 465, and _note_.

Ficinus, Marsilius, 613-616.

Filelfo, 606-609.

Finian, St., of Clonard, 46.

Fintan, St., 48.

“Fishmarket Latin,” 643.

Fitz Stephen, quoted, 464, 589, 592.

Flaminius, Mark Anthony, 700, 701, and _note_.

Fleury Abbey, reform of, 245, 246.

---- Abbo of, 221, 248, 249.

Flodoard of Rheims, 241.

Florence, Renaissance at, 605-624.

Florent, St., relics of, 236.

Florentius, scholar of Deventer, 632.

Florentine Academy in Convent of Augustinians, 523.

“Following of Christ,” the, 497.

Fontanelles Abbey, 129, 131, 233.

Fonte Avellano, 326.

Fontenay, battle of, 229, and _note_.

France, state of letters in, 526.

Francis I. founds a Royal College, 638.

Franciscans at Oxford, 483.

Frankfort, Council of, 136.

Frankish language, 126.

Frankish Church, reform of the, 116.

Frassinet seized by the Saracens, 247.

Frederick I., 392.

---- II., 394, 395, 425.

Fredigise, disciple of Alcuin, 119, 142, 144.

Freewill, Böethius and Alfred on, 206.

---- St. Augustine on, 343.

---- Erasmus on, 695.

French Language, 229, _note_.

---- spoken in England, 543-546.

---- scholars of the Renaissance, 646, 647.

Frideswide’s, St., Abbey, at Oxford, 451.

Friesland, missions to, 92, 93.

Frœlsung, the, 109.

Fulbert of Chartres, 303.

Fulda, foundation of, 102, 104.

---- school of, 146-149.

Fulk of Anjou, 180.

---- of Rheims, 241.

---- of Neuilly, 388-391.

Gaddesden, John, court physician, 555.

Gall’s, St., monastic school of, 169-173, 269-280.

Galon, his dispute with the Bishop of Paris, 401.

Gamut, invention of the, 294.

Gandersheim, school of, 295.

---- Hroswitha, of, 295-299.

Gemistus, or _Pletho_, 613, 615.

Geneviève, St., school of, 351, 356, 365, 366.

Geography Of Alfred, 207.

---- of Albert the Great, 420.

---- of Dante, 515.

---- specimens of, in old English schools, 547, 557.

Geometry, 117, 179, 289, 555.

Gerard the Great, 630, 632.

Gerbert, 284-291.

German language, formation of, 125, 126.

---- Emperors in the tenth century, 254.

---- Bibles, 636.

---- Universities after the Reformation, 644.

Germanus, St., of Auxerre, 36.

Ghiberti, Matthew, 668, 705, 713, 719.

Giannozzo Manetti, 523, 600, 611.

Gilbert de la Poirée, his errors, 359.

Gilbert, St., 465.

Gilbertine order, 467, 468.

Gildas, St., 41.

Geraldus Cambrensis, 459.

“Gloria, laus et honor,” origin of the Responsory, 134.

Gloss on the Scriptures, 150.

Gloucester, Duke Humphrey of, patron of learning, 584, 585.

Gloucester College, 504.

Godric, St., 472, 473.

“Goliardi,” the, 541.

Gonzaga, Cecilia, 603.

Gorham, Geoffery, author of the first miracle-play, 317.

Gorze, monastery of, restored, 252.

---- John of, 250-252.

Gospel places, 478.

Gospels, 4, 41, 63, 83, 172.

---- Harmony of the, 112, 151.

Gotteschalk, his errors, 155, 156.

“Governor,” the, 672.

Gower, 554.

Grammar, Latin and English, by Ælfric, 219.

---- German, begun by Charlemagne, 125, 151, 171.

---- Latin and Greek, 91, 135, 486, 531.

---- Latin, partly written by Erasmus, 687, 688.

---- Hebrew, 486, 531.

Grammarians of Toulouse, 29, 30.

“Great Mirror,” the, 435.

“Greeks and Trojans,” 674.

Greek refugees, 604.

Greek, early study of, 49, 52, 77, 78, 114, 118, 122, 134, 145, 172,
183, 184, 257, 267, 275, 296, 303, 438-440, 485.

---- restoration of, 520, 601, 605, 607, 609, 613.

---- first printed at Deventer, 635.

Gregorian School of Chant, 60.

---- College, 398.

Gregory, St., Nazianzen, 17.

---- ---- of Nyssa, 705.

---- ---- of Utrecht, 94, 95.

---- ---- the Great, Pope, 56-63.

---- II., Pope, 94.

---- III., Pope, 103

---- IV., Pope, 169.

---- VII., Pope, 326.

---- IX., Pope, 396.

Grimbald, 198, 209, 210.

Grocyn, 672, 674, 678.

Grosteste, Robert, 483-486.

Guarino, 600, 605, 606.

Guitmond, 309, 310.

Guizot, M., quoted, 114, 115.

Gundulph, 309.

“Habita,” the, 392.

Haimo of Halberstadt, 147.

Hallam, references to, 32, 332, 611.

---- on church music, 180.

---- on England before Danish Invasions, 195.

---- on the Dark Ages, 226.

---- on destruction of monasteries, 234.

---- on Greek and Oriental studies, 438.

---- on mendicant friars, 496.

Halls at Oxford, 453.

Hebrew, study of, 9, 14, 78, 114, 118, 134, 161, _note_, 303, 337,
437, 438, 441, 461, 485, 609, 619.

Hedwiga, Duchess, 275, 276.

Henry de Mesmes, 638.

Henry of Auxerre, 158.

---- St., of Bavaria, 255, 267.

---- of Wurtzburg, 260.

---- Beauclerk, educated at Abingdon Abbey, 319.

---- II. of England, 361, 455, 459, 464.

---- III. of England, 456.

---- V., 560, 584.

---- VI. of England, 571, 584, 586, 587, 591.

---- VIII. of England, 677, 692;
his “Defence of the Seven Sacraments,” 694;
and Pole, 696.

Heraclius of Liege, 240, 253, 257.

Hermolaus Barbarus, 620.

Hildebert of Mans, 330, 340.

Hildebrand, 336.

Hildesheim, school of, 264-267, 338.

Hincmar of Rheims, 156, 158, 241.

Hippolytus, St., 8, 9.

Hirsauge, or Hirschau, colony from Fulda, 148, 335.

“Hodœporicon,” the, 602.

Homer, study of, 19, 67.

Homilies of St. Gregory, 57.

---- of Ælfric, 219, 220, and _note_.

Honorius of Autun, 330.

---- III., Pope, 380.

Horoscopes, 69, and _note_.

Hospitals, old English, 572-578.

Hroswitha, the nun of Gandersheim, 295-299.

Hucbald of St. Amand, 241.

Hugh, St., of Cluny, 336, 337.

Humanists, 640, 696, 701.

Humbert of Verdun, 252.

---- de Romanis, 439, 447.

---- Cardinal, 325.

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, 584, 585.

Huns, invasions of the, 233.

Ideler and Dante, 515.

Ignatius, St., of Antioch, 59, and _note_.

---- ---- Loyola, 707, 708.

Iltutus, St., 37.

Innocent III., Pope, 375, 376, 380, 386, 393, 396.

---- IV., Pope, 371, 372.

Intellect, St. Bonaventure on the office of the, 433.

Iona, school of, 50, 51, 64.

Irenæus, St., 6.

Irish scholars, 52, 71, 141, 169, 270.

---- ---- at Oxford, 457.

Irnerius lectures on Roman law, 328, 391.

Iron Age, 225.

Isidore, St., author of the “Origines,” 14.

Iso of St. Gall’s, 270.

Italian Universities, 391-396, 398.

Italy, state of learning in, during the tenth century, 255;
twelfth century, 328;
fourteenth century, 518;
fifteenth century, 599.

Ivo of Chartres, 309.

James, St., liturgy of, 6.

---- ---- Hospital of, 371.

---- the Deacon, introduces Roman chant into Northumbria, 74.

---- of Vitry, on Paris University, 368, 369, 388.

James, King of Arragon, founds a college for Oriental languages,
440.

Jarrow, school of, 73, 75.

Jerome, St., 26.

Jerusalem, catechetical school of, 6.

Jesuit colleges, 707, 708, 713.

Jews at Oxford, 457;
banished from England, 461.

John, St., Chrysostom, 19.

---- the Deacon, biographer of St. Gregory, 60, 118, _note_, 123.

---- The Venerable, arch-chanter of St. Peter’s, 75.

---- St., of Beverley, 67, 77.

---- of old Saxony, scholar of Alfred, 198.

---- of Gerze, 250, 252.

---- of Salisbury, 355-363.

---- St., of Capistran, 524, 602.

---- of St. Quentin, 387.

---- of Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, 499, 500.

---- Picus of Mirandola, 618, 619.

Joseph of Exeter, 461.

Kenticern, St., 39, 40.

Kieran, St., 47, 48.

Ladies, advice to, 538.

Ladies, education of, early, 24-26;
ninth century, 191;
Middle Ages, 538-540;
fifteenth century, 603.

Lanfranc, 305-318.

Lanthorns, King Alfred and the, 203.

Lantnit, Monastery of, founded by St. Iltutus, 37.

Lascaris, 622, _note_.

Lateran, School of the, 11.

---- Fourth Council of, 411.

---- Fifth Council of, 663.

Latin Classics, in libraries of Dark Ages, 69, 84, 121, 129, 157,
171, 181, 286, 330, 332, 460, 461, 462.

---- prayers taught in poor schools, 469.

Latinities, the twelve, 30.

Laura de Sade, 518, 519, 522.

Law, Canon, 379, 391, 392, 454.

---- Civil, 379, 391;
first taught at Oxford, 454.

---- Effect of this study, 380, 496, 512.

Leander of Seville, St., 14.

Learning, dangers of, 628.

Learning, character of the monkish, 282, 285, 301.

Lectors, 414, _note_.

Leidrade, one of the “Missi Dominici,” 135.

Leo, St., IX., Pope, 325.

---- X., Pope, 655, 666.

Leonard Aretino, 611, 612.

Leonine verses, 496, 498.

Leontius, Pilate, 520.

Lerins, school of, 33;
revived, 705.

Letter from St. Aldheim to Hedda, 68.

---- from Alcuin to Charlemagne, 125.

---- from Charlemagne to his prelates, 130.

---- from St. Lioba to St. Boniface, 102.

---- from Fulk of Rheims to King Alfred, 198.

---- from John of Salisbury to St. Thomas à Becket, 362.

Letters of Wibald, 338.

---- ---- Peter of Blois, 361.

---- ---- St. Thomas of Canterbury, 358.

---- ---- Erasmus, 676.

Levitius of Monte Cassino, 179.

Liberal Arts, 179.

Libraries, circulating, 253.

---- destruction of, 234, 235.

Library of the Patriarchium, 11.

---- Palatine, supposed destruction of, 57;
St. Augustine’s, 63;
York, 84;
Cluny Abbey, 337;
of St. Louis, 379;
of King Charles V., 525;
Vatican, 604.

Licenses for schools, 400, 401, _note_.

Liege, school of, 240, 253.

Lily, William, 674, 687, 688, 701.

Linacre, 674, 678, 683.

Lincoln College, 571.

Lindisfarne, 64;
destruction of, 88.

Lioba, St., 101, 105, 106.

Lismore, school of, 52, 53.

Liturgical element in education, 61, 133, 469, 470, 513.

---- poetry, 498.

Liturgy of St. Mark, 4.

---- proposed reform of the, 624.

Llancarvan, school of, 40.

Llan Elwy, 40.

Logic, 338, 349.

Lollards, 557-561, 571, _note_.

London, schools of, 586-589.

---- Old, 589-592.

Longspée, William, 543.

Lorenzo de’ Medici, 620, 622, 627.

Louis the Debonnaire, 132, _note_, 134, 190, 228, 230.

---- IX., St., 379.

Louvain, 641, 644;
suppression and re-erection, 653.

Luanus, St., founder of Clonfert, 49.

Luidger, St., 95-97.

Lullus, St., 100.

Lupus, St., of Troyes, 36.

---- of Ferrières, 149, 150, 156.

Luther, 641, 644, 694.

Lydgate, his “Court of Sapience,” 579.

Lynwood, Bishop, canonist of fifteenth century, 562.

Lyons, Florus of, 183.

Lyra, Nicholas de, 488.

Mabel Rich, mother of St. Edmund, 479.

Magdalen College, Oxford, 571.

Magdeburgh school of, 268, 269.

Maieul, St., 246, 248.

Malmesbury, school of, 65, 70.

Mandeville, Sir John, 556.

Manegold, 346.

Manning, Robert, Gilbertine canon and chronicler, 468.

Mannon, 146, 257.

Mans, Hildebold of, 340.

Maps, 557.

Marcellus, monk of St. Gall’s, 270.

Margaret Plantagenet, Duchess of Burgundy, 593.

Marianus Scotus, 339.

Mark, St., the Evangelist, 1-5.

Mark’s, St., Library at Florence, 608.

Marmoutier, 33;
destruction of, 234.

Marsillus Ficinus, 613-616, 626.

Martian Capella, 31.

Martin’s, St., of Tours, 33, 35, 42, 137, 140.

Matilda, Queen, 319.

Maurice Sully, Bishop of Paris, 386, 387.

“Media Vita,” 272.

Medici, the, Cosmo, 612;
Lorenzo, 622.

Medicine, 291-293, 555;
one of the Faculties at Paris University, 375;
at Louvain, 643;
and at Alcala, 651.

Meinrad, St., 175.

Meinwerc of Paderborn, 267, 268.

Melanchthon, 644.

Melun, Robert of, 356.

Menagier de Paris, quoted, 538.

Merlac, Daniel, 455.

Merton College, Oxford, 503.

Metaphysics of Aristotle, 407, 408.

Minster, 97.

Mitterius, grammarian of Toulouse, 30.

_Monologion_ of St. Anselm, 312.

More, Sir Thomas, 675, 678, 683.

Music, 80, 162, 179, 294, 524.

Musicians, Irish, 52.

Musurus, Greek, professor, 614, 615.

Natural Philosophy of Bede, 79;
of Albert the Great, 418-422;
of Vincent of Beauvais, 435, 436.

Nazianzen, St. Gregory, 17.

Neckham, Alexander, 463.

Neot, St., 209.

Neo-Platonists, 4, 142, 145.

Neuilly, Fulk of, 388.

Nicholas I., Pope, 145, 146.

---- V., Pope, 603, 604.

---- de Lyra, 488.

---- Oresme, 526.

---- de Cusa, Cardinal, scholar of Deventer, 634, 635.

Nigel Wireker, author of _Speculum Stultorum_, 464.

Ninian, St., 35, 36.

Nomantula, Abbey of, seven times plundered, 234.

Nominalists and Realists, 344, 345.

Norman invasions, 230-232.

Northumbria, 64.

Notger of Liege, 240.

Notker of St. Gall’s, 272, 273.

Novalesa sacked, 235.

_Novellæ_ of Justinian, 242.

Nuns, learned, 105, 107, 191, 295.

Nutscell, monastery of, 91.

Occleve, 556, 579.

Odericus Vitalis, 321-323.

Odo, St., of Cluny, 245, 246.

---- of Canterbury, 214.

---- of Tournai, 342.

Ogres, 233.

Oratory of Divine Love, 668.

Oriel College, Oxford, 505.

Oriental languages, 437-441.

Origen, 8-10.

Orleans, 336.

Ormanetti, Nicholas, 710, 720, 724.

Orosius, translated by Alfred, 207.

“Orthographia, De,” 31.

Osbern, disciple of St. Anselm, 311.

Osney Abbey, foundation of, 452.

Oswald, St., of York, 214, 217, 336.

Otheric of Magdeburgh, 268, 289, 290.

Otho the Great, 254, 286.

---- II., 254.

---- III., 255, 291.

Ouche, 237-239.

Ovid, 141, 181, and _note_.

Oxford, in the time of Alfred, 209;
in Middle Ages, 453-458, 476-495;
and Lollardism, 558, 559, 560;
in sixteenth century, 672;
under Cardinal Pole, 710, 711;
after the Reformation, 702, 703, 711.

Oxonian Latin, 496.

Pace, Richard, 673, 696.

Pachomius, St., 21.

Paderborn, schools of, 268.

Padua, University of, 394, 659.

Paganism of the Renaissance, 623, 660.

Palatine school of St. Gregory, 58.

---- of Charlemagne, 119-129, 144.

Pamphilius, St., 15.

Pandects, the, 391, and _note_.

Pantœnus, St., 7.

Pantheism, 406, 428, 429.

Paraclete, the, School of, 351.

Paris, schools of, 346, 363.

---- University of, 366.

---- book trade at, 383.

Parma, schools of, 328.

Parochial schools, 13, 110, 133, 253, 469, 543, 546, 549, 550;
in diocese of Milan, 724.

Paschal cycle, 8, 65, and _note_.

Paschasius Radpert, St., 160-164.

Paston letters, 578.

Patrick, St., 42-45.

Paul’s, St., school, 685-688.

Paul II., Pope, 616.

---- III., Pope, 698, 704.

---- IV., Pope, 710.

Paul Warnfrid, 118.

Paulus, Jovius, 658, and _note_.

Peckham, John of, 499, 500.

“Pedagogues,” 177.

Pepin, 116.

Peter, St., the Apostle, 1, 59.

Peter Damian, St., 326, 327.

---- of Pisa, 118.

---- of Cluny, 352.

---- Martyr, of Anghiera, 649, and _note_.

---- Vermigli, 702.

---- Pomponatus, 659.

Petrarch, 517-522.

Philip Augustus, 365.

---- le Bel, 404, 527.

---- the Almoner, 662.

Philosophy, its true nature, 433.

---- of St. Thomas, 429.

Phrenology, 340.

Physician’s fee at Bologna, 394.

Physics of Aristotle, 408.

Picus Mirandola, 618.

“Piperis Granum,” 275.

Pius II., Pope, 604.

---- IV., Pope, 718.

---- V., Pope, 719.

Platina, 616.

Plato, quoted by St. Bennet, Biscop, 76;
studied by Othlonus, 335;
translated by Moerbeka, 441;
revived study of him at Florence, 613.

Platonic Academy, 613, 614.

Pliny, 332.

Poetry, specimen of Old English, 580-582.

Poggio Bracciolini, 609.

Pole, Reginald, 692-701;
his Provincial Synod, 709;
death, 710.

Politian, Angelo, 620-623.

Politics of the universities, 404-406.

Pollesworth, school of, 578.

Polyglot Bible, 652.

Pomponatus, 659, and _note_.

Pomponius Lætus, 616, 617, and _note_.

Popes, protectors of learning, 396-398.

Poppo of Wurtzburg, 260.

Printing, 593, 635.

Professors, tyranny of, 525, 660.

Prohibitory decree of Archbishop Arundel explained, 562.

_Proslogion_ of St. Anselm, 312.

Provisors, Statute of, injurious to learning, 560.

Psalter, the, 21, 178.

Public schools, 132.

“Pugio Fidei” by Raymund Martin, 437.

Quinctilian, 157, 181, 346.

---- copy of his institutes found in abbey of St. Gall’s, 609.

Rabanus Maurus, 147-156.

Radbod, Duke, 93.

---- Bishop, 257.

Radewyns, Florentius, 631.

Ramsey, Abbey of, 221, 315, 461.

Ratgar, abbot of Fulda, 152.

Ratpert of St. Gall’s, 270.

Reading School, 461, 577.

Realists and Nominalists, 344, 345.

Reichnau, Monastery of, 173.

Reform of Chant, 717.

Reformation, Protestant, 666, 667.

Remigius of Auxerre, 241.

Reuchlin, 637.

Rheims, school of, 241.

Rhenish Academy, 637.

Rhetoric, decline of, 378.

Richard, St., of Chichester, 489, 494.

Richard l’Evèque, a Paris master, 358.

Richer of Rheims, biographer of Gerbert, 285;
his journey, 291.

Richmond, Countess of, 677.

Ripon, 66.

Robert Melun, 356.

Robert Pullus, or Pulleyne, Cardinal;
restorer of sacred studies at Oxford, 357, 454.

Robert of Naples, King, crowns Petrarch, 519, 536.

---- Grosteste, 483-486.

Rodolph Agricola, 637.

---- Langius, 637.

Romances, 319.

Romanesque language, 152, 229.

Roman Academy, 616, 662, 670.

---- jurisprudence, 391.

Rome, state of, under Leo X., 658.

---- sack of, 669, 670.

Ronsard, poet of the Renaissance, 647.

Roscelin, the Nominalist, 345.

Ruodman, of Reichnau, 276.

Ruysbrock, 630.

Sadolet, 657, 660, 667, 700, 705.

Saltzburg, Virgil of, 97, 98.

Sanctes Pagninus, 658.

Sannazar, poet of the Renaissance, 661.

Santeuil, 498.

Saracens, invasions of the, 232, 246.

Savonarola, 625-627.

Saxons, 62, 160.

“Scale of Perfection,” 583.

Scepticism, 407, 428.

Scholastic Philosophy, 360.

“Scholastic Postils,” by Nicholas de Lyra, 489.

Schools, ancient Christian, 33.

---- public, of Charlemagne, 131.

---- of the Empire, 15.

“Scotists,” 642, 662.

Scotus Erigena, 145, 146, and _note_.

Scotus, Marianus, 339.

Scotus, Duns, 496, 505.

Scriptorium, labours of the, 100, 172, 332, 334.

Scriptures, study of the, 24, 188, 190.

---- laid aside by scholars of Renaissance, 624.

---- translations of the, 340, and _note_, 563, 635, 636.

Secret Societies, 407.

Sedulius, Cœlius, 39.

Seminaries, ancient Episcopal, 13, 14, 36, 39, 64, 95;
decline of, 402;
restoration of, by the Council of Trent, 714;
Cardinal Pole’s Synodal decree on, 709;
of St. Charles Borromeo, 721-723.

Sempringham, school of, 465-468.

Sens, Council of, condemns Abelard, 352.

Sentences, the Book of, 363, 364.

Serfs, education of, 549.

Servile work explained, 109.

Seven liberal arts, 179.

Sidonius Apollinaris, 28.

Sigebert of Gemblours, 331.

Sigfrid, Abbot of Jarrow, 76.

Sigulf, disciple of Alcuin, 121.

Siricius, Pope, St., his decretal, 12.

Sixtine, Dr., and Haccombe Church, 684.

Smaragdus, 135.

Soissons, school of music, 122.

Sophocles, studied at Corby, 358.

Sorbonne, College of, 374.

Spanish schools of tenth century, 253.

---- Renaissance, 649.

“Sparsa Dorsum,” 259.

“Speculum Stultorum,” 464.

Stamford schools, 468.

Standonch, John, 634.

“Stationarii,” 383.

State maxims of Paris University, 405, 406.

Stavelot, Wibald of, 358.

Stephen III., Pope, 116, 117.

---- IX., Pope, 327.

---- of Wurtzburg, 260.

---- of Lexington, 371.

---- St. Harding, 372.

---- of Senlis, 401.

Strabo, Walafrid, 151, 173, 174.

Strode, Randolph, 554.

Sturm, St. founder of Fulda, 104, 105.

Suidas, his Lexicon translated by Grosteste, 485.

Summa of St. Thomas, 425.

---- burnt, 666.

Syriac, Charlemagne’s knowledge of, 122.

Tacitus, manuscript of, in Old Corby, 168, 658.

Tangmar, master of St. Bernward, 264.

Tenth century, 225.

Tertullian, on schools of the Empire, 17.

Thecla, St., disciple of St. Paul, 26.

---- companion of St. Walburgh, 105.

Theodore, St., of Canterbury, 66.

Theodoric, 30.

Theodulph of Orleans, 133, 134.

Theology, positive, 187.

---- scholastic, 364.

“Theonine tooth” explained, 465, and _note_.

Theophania, the Empress, 263.

Thomas, St., of Canterbury, 358, 362.

---- Aquinas, 422-432.

---- of Hereford, 501.

Thorney Abbey, 223.

Toledo, Councils of, 13, 14, 717.

Toul, schools of, 325.

Toulouse grammarians, 29, 30.

---- University, 398, and _note_.

Tournai, schools of, 342, 344.

Tours, St. Martin of, 33, 36, 42.

---- schools of, 33, 36, 42, 137, 144, 233, 304.

---- Council of, 308.

Transubstantiation, 220, _note_, 308.

Trent, Council of, 708-717;
Decree on Seminaries, 714.

---- Decree on justification, 709.

Trevisa, John of, 544, 545, and _note_.

Trinitarian Order, 371.

Trinity, Holy, Abelard on, 351.

---- College, Oxford, 711.

Trivium and quadrivium, 179.

Tudesque dialect, 125, 126, 171, 229, _note_.

Tutilo of St. Gall’s, 271.

Udalric, St., of Augsburgh, 261, 262.

“Ungren,” the, 233.

Universities, rise of, 391;
Office of, 399;
and the Divorce, 696;
reform of, 716.

Urban IV., Pope, 397.

Utrecht, School of, 93, 96, 257.

Vacarius, 393;
lectures on law at Oxford, 454.

Vaison, Council of, establishes rural parishes, 11, 13.

Valence, Council of, condemns Scotus Erigena, 145.

Valerius, Maximus, copy of, 584.

Valla, Lorenzo, 609, 610.

Vatican Library, 604, 652.

Vaucluse, Petrarch at, 519.

Vercelli, St. Eusebius of, 33.

Verdun, schools of, 267.

Victor, St., 11.

Victor’s, School of St., 348, 352.

---- Hugh of, 353.

---- Richard of, 353, 354.

Vida, author of the “Christiad,” 658.

Vienne, schools of, 114.

---- Council of, and Oriental languages, 438.

Vincent, St., the Martyr, 11.

Vincent of Beauvais, 434, 435.

Vinsauf, Geoffrey of, 393, 461.

Virgil, early studies of, 41, 79, _note_, 84, 120, 121, 129, 141,
171, 181, 338.

---- the false, 29.

---- St., of Salzburg, 97, 98, and _note_.

“Vision of Purgatory,” Wettin’s, 150.

Vitalian, Pope, 66.

Vitalis, Odericus, 321-323.

Vives, Ludovicus, 692.

Wakefield, Hebrew Professor, 696.

Wala, 167, 168.

Walafrid Strabo, 150, 173, 174.

Walburga, St., 107.

Wandalbert, scholasticus of Prom, 159.

Waynflete, 571.

Wearmouth, 72.

Werden, monastery of, founded by St. Luidger, 97.

Whethamstede, Abbot of St. Alban’s, 584, 585.

Whitherne, 36.

Whitland Abbey, 37.

Wickliffe, 557-566.

Wigger, a monk of Hildesheim, 266.

Wilfred, St., 65, 66.

Wilibald, St., 104.

Wilibrord, St., 92, 93.

William, of Aquitaine, Duke, his love of learning, 242.

----, of Hirschau, 333, 335.

William the Conqueror, 310, 316, 373.

William de Conches, 346.

William de Champeaux, 348.

Wimbourne, nuns of, 101, 102.

Winchcombe, 221, 315, 453, 578.

Winchester, 220, 569.

Winfred, 91.

Winibald, St., 107.

Wippo, 256.

Wireker, Nigel, author of _Speculum Stultorum_, 464.

Witgard, 303.

Wittemberg, University of, 644.

Wolfgang, 260-263.

Wolsey, 672, 675, 677.

Woodville, Lord Rivers, 593, 594.

Writing, art of, 266, 334.

---- school copy of, 172.

Wulstan, St., of Worcester, 316.

Wurtzburg, school of, 260.

Wykeham, William of, 569-571.

Xenophon translated, 604.

Ximenes, Cardinal, 649-653.

Zachary, Pope, and St. Boniface, 98.

Zenobius Acciajoli, 626, 658.

Zodiac, 68.

Zozimus, Pope, 12.

THE END.

ERRATA.

Page 348, line 15 from top, _for_ “science” _read_ “art,” and _for_
“seven” _read_ “other.”

Page 406, line 10 from bottom, _for_ “logic” _read_ “metaphysics.”

Page 392, line 6, _for_ “degrees,” _read_ “decrees.”

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Fuit autem forma Beatissimi Marci hujusmodi: longo naso, subducto
supercilio, pulcher oculis, recalvaster, prolixa barba, velox,
habitudinis optimæ, canis aspersus, affectione continens, gratia Dei
plenus.--Metaphrastes, _Vita S. Marci_, ap. Surium.

[2] Nahum iii. 8.

[3] Vita S. Marci.

[4] A faded copy of St. Mark’s Gospel, preserved in St. Mark’s
Treasury at Venice, claims to have been written by his own hand.
Montfauçon, who has described it in his _Iter Italicum_, considers
that this claim cannot be supported, though he attests the great
antiquity of the manuscript.

[5] The ecclesiastical chant took its first great development at
Alexandria, and appears to have been brought thither from Rome by
St. Mark. Philo the Jew, a native of Alexandria, who lived in the
time of the Evangelist, describes the Christians passing their days
in psalmody and prayer, and singing in alternate choirs (Euseb. lib.
ii. c. 17). On the martyrdom of the Evangelist we read how certain
just men buried him “singing prayers and psalms.” (_Vita S. Marci_,
Sim. Met.) The nature of the chant established at Alexandria in the
time of St. Athanasius, is very precisely indicated by St. Augustine,
in that passage of his Confessions (lib. x. c. 33) where, speaking
of the _voluptates aurium_, he says that he sometimes desires even
to banish from his ears the sweet tones to which the Psalms of David
were generally sung in church; “and then that method seems to me
more safe which I remember often to have heard of Athanasius, Bishop
of Alexandria, who caused the lector to intone the Psalms with so
slight an inflection of the voice, that it was more like reading than
singing.” Hippolytus, in his Book on Antichrist, declares that one
effect of His coming at the end of the world will be the abolition of
the Psalmody of the Church.

[6] Cassian, Inst. ii. c. 5; Coll. 18. 6.

[7] Euseb. Hist. l. v. c. 20.

[8] Durandus, Rational. lib. viii. c. 1. It is also frequently used
to signify an elementary knowledge of arithmetic.

[9] In spite of the labours of recent critics, the history of St.
Hyppolitus still remains obscure. It appears uncertain whether
there were one or many saints of the name; whether the Hyppolitus
celebrated by Prudentius was ever really Bishop of Porto, and lastly,
whether he was, or was not, the author of the _Philosophumena_. The
former opinion is maintained by Bunsen, Döllinger, and the majority
of German and English critics; the latter is generally supported by
the Catholic writers of France.

[10] Acta S. Feliciani, ed. Boll.

[11] Fleury, l. xviii. 35.

[12] Breviary Lessons: Feb. 13, proper for Rome. Vignoli, Liber
Pontificalis, tom. ii. c. 89.

[13] Cœpit vivere secundum regulam sub sanctis apostolis constitutam.
(Office of St. Augustine.)

[14] Fleury, l. xx. 32.

[15] Fleury, l. xxxii. 22.

[16] Ruinart, Atti Sinceri, vol. ii. 367-381. Ed. Rom. 1777.

[17] S. Greg. Vita S. Benedicti.

[18] S. Aug. Conf. l. viii. c. 5.

[19] S. Basil. De Legendis Gentilium Libris, tom. ii. p. 245. Ed.
Gaume.

[20] S. Joan. Chrys. tom. i. pp. 115-122. Ed. Gaume.

[21] The words of the Christian orator are almost identical with
those of Quinctilian on the same subject. “Si studiis quidem scholas
prodesse, moribus autem nocere constaret, potior mihi ratio vivendi
honeste, quam vel optime dicendi videretur.”--Lib. i. c. 3.

[22] _Regula S. Pachomii_, cap. i. cxl.

[23] Boll., Vit. S. Pach. c. 3, 4.

[24] Mabillon, Acta SS. Ord. Ben. Præf. in sec. iii.

[25] Reg. S. Basil. fus. tract. 15. Tom. 2, p. 498. Ed. Gaume.

[26] Omnes literas discant: omni tempore duabus horis, hoc est, a
mane usque ad horam secundam, lectioni vacent.--S. Cæsarii Reg. ad
Virg. cap. xvii.

[27] S. Leand. De Instit. Virg. cap. vi. et vii.

[28] There are, however, indications that at Alexandria at least
young children took part in some of the exercises of the catechetical
school. St. Clement’s hymn to the Saviour appears to have been
written for his younger disciples. “O Shepherd of the _lambs_!” he
says, “assemble Thine innocent children, and let their stainless lips
sing hymns to Christ, the guide of youth.” And again: “Fed by the
Divine milk of wisdom, that mother of grace has taught our infant
lips, and made them taste the dew of the Spirit. Let us then sing
to Christ our King.... Let us celebrate the praises of the Almighty
Child.”

[29] 2 Tim. i. 5.

[30] Vit. S. Mac., cap. 2.

[31] Vita S. Fulgen., cap. i. ap. Surium.

[32] St. Hier., Ep. 96 (aliter 127, ed. Migne), ad Principiam.

[33] Gladstone, Studies on Homer.

[34] The works of Virgil the grammarian have been edited by Cardinal
Mai (Auctores classici, tom. v.), who considers that the Toulouse
Academy cannot be assigned a later date than the end of the sixth
century.

[35] Mabillon, Acta SS. Ben. Præf. Secul. iii. 39.

[36] These are the words of Trithemius, who says that from the very
beginning of the order the sons of nobles were educated in the
Benedictine monasteries, “non solum in Scripturis Divinis, sed etiam
in secularibus litteris.”

[37] In allusion to the waxen tablets then used for writing.

[38] S. Ælred, Vit. S. Nin.

[39] _A solis ortus cardine_ and _Hostis Herodes_, the latter of
which stands in the Roman Breviary under a somewhat altered form.
This Sedulius is to be distinguished from Sedulius the younger, who
was also of Irish extraction, and was Bishop of Oreta in Spain, in
the eighth century.

[40] Scripsit Abegetoria, ccclxv. Nenn. Camb. MS. c. 57.

[41] Acta SS. Boll. Mart.

[42] Columba had previously studied in the school of St. Finian of
Maghbile and received deacon’s orders, so that he could not have been
a mere boy when he came to Clonard. But Adamnan tells us that he was
still a youth, _adhuc juvenis_.

[43] Now Clonmacnois in King’s County.

[44] I should not have thought it necessary to remind the reader that
St. Columba, the founder of Iona in 563, is to be distinguished from
St. Columbanus the founder of Luxeuil in 585, had not so considerable
a writer as Thierry, in his history of the Norman Conquest, spoken of
them as the same persons.

[45] Act. SS. Boll.

[46] Ara Multiscilus, _Schedæ de Islandia_, cap. 2, quoted by
Haverty, who sums up the number of Irish saints known to have settled
in different parts of Europe as follows: 150 in Germany, of whom 36
were martyrs; 45 in Gaul, 6 martyrs; 30 in Belgium; 44 in England;
13 in Italy; and 8 martyrs in Norway and Iceland. They founded 13
monasteries in Scotland, 12 in England, 40 in Gaul, 9 in Belgium, 16
in Bavaria, 15 in Switzerland, 6 in Italy, and others in different
parts of Germany.

[47] It is first spoken of by John of Salisbury, a writer of the
twelfth century, who quotes no authority for the statement. With
regard to the reproof administered to Bishop Didier, it is not
denied, for the passage is extant in one of St. Gregory’s letters.
But the real and authentic justification is given in the Gloss on
the Canon Law, which explains that Didier’s fault did not lie in his
studying humane literature, but in his giving public lectures in his
church on the profane poets, and substituting the same in the place
of the Gospel lesson. “Recitabat _in ecclesia_ fabulas Jovis, et eas
moraliter exponebat in prædicatione sua.” (_Decret._ pars i. dis.
86.) And again, “Beatus Gregorius quemdam episcopum _non reprehendit_
quia litteras seculares didicerat; sed quia, contra episcopale
officium, _pro lectione Evangelica_, grammaticam populo exponebat.”
(_Decret._ pars i. dis. 37, c. 8. ed. Antwerp., 1573, quoted by
Landriot, _Recherches Historiques_, p. 212.)

[48] St. Ignatius is generally spoken of as a disciple of the Apostle
St. John. But many writers call him a disciple of St. Peter also, and
some even represent that Apostle as placing him in the see of Antioch
(S. Chrys. Hom. in S. Ignat. t. ii. p. 712). Tillemont (t. ii. p. 87,
ed. 1732) quotes St. Athanasius, Origen and Theodoret, to the same
effect. The historian Socrates speaks of St. Ignatius as introducing
into the ancient Church of Antioch the alternate chant of two choirs
(Socrates, lib. vi. c. 8.). Theodoret says that it was used there,
in the time of the Arians, as a powerful instrument to oppose their
blasphemous heresies.

[49] Bede, lib. i. ch. 27.

[50] This expression requires some explanation, being an apparent
contradiction of what has been said before as to the Roman origin of
the Irish schools. It must be borne in mind that the error in the
Irish manner of observing Easter was not that of the Eastern Quarto
Decimans, as they are called, who kept it on the fourteenth day
of the Jewish month Nisan, on whatever day of the week that might
fall. This error was corrected at the Council of Nice, when it was
commanded that the feast should always be celebrated on the Sunday
after the fourteenth day of the moon; and the decree of the council
was obeyed in Britain and Ireland as in Rome. But difficulties
afterwards arose in the method of calculating Easter; the _Cycles_,
or periods of years used for that purpose, were after a time found
to be incorrect, and the philosophers of Alexandria were applied to,
to calculate the day and notify it each year to the Pope, who should
publish it to the rest of the Church. Even this plan failed to secure
uniformity, and in the fifth century Rome and Alexandria were to
be found computing the time of Easter after different cycles, Rome
using one of eighty-four years, and Alexandria one of nineteen, which
caused the feast to be celebrated on different days. The old Roman
cycle was that which had been introduced into Ireland, and the Irish
clergy continued to use it after it had been reformed in the time of
Pope Hilarion, by whose command the Alexandrian cycle was established
as more correct, and the calendar was corrected by Victorinus of
Aquitaine. Such was the disturbed date of the world at this time,
however, that the British and Irish churches heard nothing of this
change, and stuck to their old Roman cycle even after the arrival of
St. Gregory’s missionaries. The notion of the Irish having adopted
the Eastern computation of the Quarto Decimans is very clearly
disproved by reference to Bede, lib. iii. ch. 4. They at last adopted
the Roman calendar at the Synod of Lene, held in 630, wherein it was
agreed that “they should receive what was brought to them from _the
fountain of their baptism and of their wisdom_, even the successors
of the Apostles of Christ.”

[51] By astrology and the calculation of horoscopes must not be here
understood the practice of _judicial_ astrology, which was regarded
by all the Anglo-Saxon prelates as a forbidden art; but, as Lingard
supposes, studies connected with the Zodiac, and the art of dialling,
here called _horoscopii computatio_; an art much in vogue among early
scholars, and which formed one of the scientific recreations of
Boethius.

[52] Surtees, History of Durham.

[53] Bede, lib. iv. c, 18.

[54] Alc. Opera i. p. 282.

[55] Nec linguam Hebraicam ignoravit. (Breviary Lessons.)

[56] Among the authors quoted by Bede are Virgil, Horace, Terence,
Ovid, Lucan, Lucretius, Prudentius, Juvencus, Macer, Varro,
Cornelius, Severus, Fortunatus, Sedulius, and Pacuvius, besides the
Latin Fathers. He also makes frequent references to Homer, which was
not at that time translated into Latin, and which he can, therefore,
only have known in its original Greek.

[57] See De Nat. Rerum, Op. tom. ii. p. 37.

[58] Iren. de Hær. l. iii. 4.

[59] Three, however, were preserved which expressed sounds not
conveyed by the Roman alphabet, corresponding to w, th, and dh.

[60] The instruction of the people was not, however, to be limited to
a knowledge of these prayers. “Let them be taught,” he says, “by what
works they may please God, and from what things they must abstain;
with what sincerity they must believe in Him, and with what devotion
they must pray; how diligently and frequently they must fortify
themselves with the holy sign of the Cross; and how salutary for
every class of Christian is the daily reception of the Lord’s Body
and Blood, which is, you know, the constant practice of the Church of
Christ throughout Italy, Gaul, Africa, Greece, and the whole of the
East.” This is a most important testimony as to the existing practice
of the Church in the eighth century, and Bede goes on to say that to
his knowledge there are innumerable young persons, of both sexes, who
might, beyond all question, be suffered to communicate, at least, on
all Sundays and festivals.

[61] “Caras super omnia gazas.” (De Pont. Ebor. Eccl.)

[62] Jamdiu optata adest dies. (Vita S. Bon. Acta SS. Ben.)

[63] “O felix collegium beatissimi Bonifacii!” exclaims the
biographer of S. Sola.

[64] Dr. Campbell in his “Strictures on the Ecclesiastical History of
Ireland,” observes that “this great man was degraded by Pope Zachary
on conviction of _being a mathematician_.” But perhaps the most
remarkable reproduction of this oft-told tale occurs in Dr. Enfield’s
translation of Brucker’s “History of Philosophy,” which I give
verbatim, as only to be paralleled in the “Art of Pluck.” “Boniface,”
he says, “_the patron of ignorance and barbarism_, summoned _Polydore
Virgil, bishop of Salisbury, to the Court of Inquisition_ for
maintaining the existence of the antipodes.” (Vol. i, p. 363.)
Would it be believed that a writer who is engaged in bewailing the
_ignorance_ of monkish philosophers should commit himself to a
statement which confuses St. Feargil, or Virgil, bishop of Saltzburg,
in the eighth century, with Polydore Vergil, archdeacon of Bath (for
he was never bishop of Salisbury at all), in the fifteenth? And then
the Inquisition! To make it complete he should have identified Virgil
with the Latin poet, and convicted him of the Albigensian heresy.
Yet these are the writers who find no terms contemptuous enough in
which to speak of mediæval ignorance. “Among the scholastics,” writes
Dr. Enfield, in the very next sentence, “we find surprising proofs
of weakness and ignorance.” The scholastics, could they speak, might
find something to retort on their accusers.

[65] The doctrines attributed to Virgil, and their condemnation by
Pope Zachary, have been examined by Decker, a professor of Louvain,
who shows very clearly that the error lay, not in their maintaining
the existence of the antipodes, but in the notion of a race distinct
from that of Adam. Feller, in the account he gives of the matter in
his Historical Dictionary, refers to the teaching of Bede, who, he
declares, denied the spherical figure of the earth. But the work
from which he quotes is not to be found among the writings of our
English saint, whose real opinion on the subject may be seen from
the following explicit passage: “We call the earth a globe, not
that it is absolutely the perfect form of a globe, by reason of the
unevenness of hills and plains, but because its whole compass, if
comprehended within the circumference of lines, would make the figure
of a globe.”--_De Nat. Rer._ c. xlvi. 118.

[66] This question was resolved by Pope Zachary in favour of the
validity of the baptism so administered.

[67] Vita S. Liob. ap. Surium.

[68] Tradition says that they stopped at Antwerp some days, and
a grotto is still shown in the ancient church dedicated to St.
Walburga, where she is said to have prayed.

[69] For the ingenious arguments by which certain writers have
endeavoured to show that the Council of Cloveshoe _rejected_ the
authority of the Roman Pontiff (by whose command it was summoned),
and for their able refutation, the reader is referred to “Lingard’s
Anglo-Saxon Antiquities,” vol. i. Appendix, note G.

[70] Thorpe II. 414.

[71] Sid. Apol. Ep. iv. 3.

[72] Hist. Litt. t. iii. p. 22.

[73] Guizot, Hist. de Civil. vol. ii. lect. 22.

[74] Guizot, Hist. de Civil. vol. ii. lect. 22.

[75] According to Durandus, the circumstances under which Paul the
Deacon wrote this hymn were as follows. Having to sing the blessing
of the Paschal candle on Holy Saturday, he unfortunately lost his
voice from hoarseness, and to recover it, invoked the aid of St.
John Baptist, in whose honour he composed this hymn, in which he
solicits him to restore him the use of his voice, and reminds him how
at his nativity he had procured a like grace for his father Zachary.
This anecdote explains the allusion in the opening lines. To avoid
the tiresome confusion arising from the similarity of names, I will
remind the reader that there were two persons designated as Paul
the Deacon; one the contemporary of St. Gregory, and the other his
historian; and moreover that he had another historian in the person
of _John_ the Deacon, who lived in the ninth century.

[76] The identical copy is still preserved in the Library of Sta.
Maria in Vallicella at Rome, and bears on its fly-leaf the following
inscription, which many suppose to be the autograph of Alcuin:--

Pro me quisque legas versus, orare memento.
Alcuine dicor; tu, sine fine, vale.

A folio Bible now in the British Museum, and formerly the property
of M. de Speyer Passavant, has also its claims to be considered the
original copy of Alcuin, though commonly held to have been written in
the reign of Charles the Bald.

[77] Crevier, Hist. de L’Univ. de Paris, vol. i.

[78] Vita Caroli Mon. Engol. an. 787.

[79] Vita S. Greg. Joan. Diac. lib. ii. 7.

[80] Quatuor Evangelia Christi in ultimo ante obitus sui diem, cum
Græcis et Syris optime correxerat. (Thegani, Vita Ludovici Pii,
printed in Pertz, _Mon. Germ._ t ii.)

[81] Vita Karoli, Eginhard, cap. 22.

[82] See Patrologie Latine, vols. xcvii. and xcviii.

[83] The interior schools were known as _claustral_, and the exterior
for secular students as _canonical_. Ekhehard, in his life of B.
Notker, is the first who accurately distinguishes the two sorts of
schools. “Traduntur post breve tempus Marcello _scholæ claustri_
cum beato Notkero Balbulo et cæteris monachici habitus pueris:
_exteriores_ vero, _id est canonicæ_, Isoni cum Salomone et ejus
comparibus.” It is probable however that the law directing a total
separation of the scholars under different masters, could not in all
cases be carried out as rigidly as at the great abbey of St. Gall’s,
where the studium was, in Notker’s time, the first in Europe; and in
many monasteries both schools continued to be directed by the same
scholasticus.

[84] Præfatio in IV. Sæculum, 184. Trithemius gives the names of
sixteen monasteries containing these major schools; Mabillon adds
eleven more, and the list might undoubtedly be yet further enlarged.

[85] He probably rested his statement on the petition presented by
the Council of Paris in 829 to Louis le Débonnaire, in which they
requested him, by his royal authority, to establish public schools
_in three chief cities of his empire_, to the end that the troubles
of the times might not quite destroy the good work set on foot by
his father. But this was a suggestion and nothing more; the three
cities were never named, and are merely spoken of as _in tribus
congruentissimis imperii vestri locis_; and the deposition of
Louis, and the civil wars that raged between his sons, effectually
prevented the suggestion from being carried out. The academy
founded by Charlemagne at Pavia, which was directed by the Irish
Dungal, was itself attached to a monastery. This is possibly the
school alluded to by Bulæus, but there is certainly nothing in its
history which claims for it the least pre-eminence over the monastic
schools of France and Germany. The university historians have, in
general, greatly misrepresented or misunderstood the character of
the monastic schools. Du Boulay talks of the _public schools_ of
Charlemagne as if they were Etons or Harrows, and in one place
likens them to universities. But, in fact, the term _public school_
meant simply that they were not confined to the use of the monks of
that monastery, but were open to all comers. We find in them rather
the germ of the _collegiate_ system, which was in some sense the
counterpoise of the university idea. But Bulæus and Du Boulay always
write with Paris University in their mind as the normal principle
of education. They seem unable to conceive of any institution for
teaching which was not either its copy or its anticipation.

[86] Mab. Vet. Analecta, i. 357.

[87] See his verses on the destruction of Lindisfarne (Acta SS. Ben.)

[88] At Aix-la-Chapelle his bones have been quite recently discovered
and identified.--See _Die Eröffnung des Karlsschreines_, being No. 61
of the _Aachener Zeitung_, March 2, 1861.

[89] See Ampère, Hist. Lit. avant le xii. Siècle, t. ii.

[90] Matthew of Westminster represents him as taking refuge in
England, where, according to the same authority, he was warmly
received by King Alfred, and becoming scholasticus at Malmsbury
abbey, was there stabbed to death by his scholars. This story was
received as authentic, until Mabillon showed it to have been an
incorrect version of the history of John of Saxony, who, when abbot
of Ethelingay, was killed in a commotion with some of his monks. In
spite of the pains taken by this writer to clear up the mistake, the
narrative still finds its place in most works which treat of our old
English schools, and will probably be as hard to dislodge as other
traditions of the same genus. It appears certain, however, that
Scotus Erigena returned to France and died there in peace, some time
after the death of Charles the Bald.

[91] Many of these towns derive their names from the monks under whom
the cells dependent on the abbey were first founded; thus we have
Abrazell, Aichezell, Kerzell, and Edelcell, from Abraham, Haicho,
Kero, and Edeling, all monks of Fulda.

[92] Nepotem meum et cum eo duo alios nobiles puerulos, quando, si
Deus vult, nostro monasterio profuturos, propter Germanicæ linguæ
nanciscendam scientiam, Vestræ Sanctitati mittere cupio. (Ep. xci.)

[93] He appears to have had some knowledge of Hebrew, and introduces
a quotation from the Hebrew Scriptures in his Treatise _De Partu
Virginis_.

[94] Rabanus, De Instit. Clericorum, lib. iii. c. 24.

[95] Tract. de Corpore Christi, printed in Martène, Vet. Script. t. 9.

[96]

Scandens et descendens inter montium confinia
Silvarum scrutando loca, valliumque concava.

(Hymn for the Procession of Relics. ap. Leibnitz.)

[97] Vita B. Notkeri. ch. ix. Acta SS. Ben.

[98] Archives of the Chapter of Rouen, ann. 1449.

[99] Spicilegium, t. ii. 311.

[100] Consuet. Clun. Spicileg. t. i. 687.

[101] Vita Ratgari. Acta S.S. Boll. t. i.

[102] D’Achery Spicileg. t. ii. p. 139.

[103] Hallam’s Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 330, and note.

[104] Guibert de Nogent refers to his school studies of Ovid
and Virgil’s Eclogues; and Peter de Blois names Suetonius and
Q. Curtius, “besides the other books which are commonly used in
schools.” For a full and careful enumeration of the class-books
used in the monastic schools, see Bahr: _Geschichte der Römischen
Literatur_; and also Prof. Pauly’s _Real Encyclopädie der Classischen
Alterthumswissenschaft_.

[105] Acta SS. Ben. Præf. in Secul. iii.

[106] It is reprinted by Mai, Scrip. Vet. t. iii. p. 251.

[107] Hilduin, abbot of St. Denis in 814, was the chief supporter of
this opinion. The letter addressed to him by the Emperor Louis, and
his reply, are prefixed to the Areopagitica in Surius. t. v.

[108] Deut. vi. 7.

[109] In the preface to the metrical version of the Bible, executed
by command of Louis le Debonnaire, we find the following passage:
“Præcepit namque uni de gente Saxonum qui apud suos non ignobilis
vates habebatur ut Vetus ac Novum Testamentum in Germanicam Linguam
poetice transferre studeret, quatenus _non solum litteratis verum
etiam illiteratis_ sacra divinorum præceptorum lectio panderetur.”

[110] Martene: Thesaurus Anec. i. 489.

[111] Vos lumina; vos mea vita ... vos novella plantatio. (Vita
Sanctæ Cæsariæ.)

[112] Si qua enim soror, reliquis in templo cantantibus, sonoræ
vocis modulatione non congrueret, a pia illa matre objurgata, vel
etiam in facie manibus cæsa, toto reliquæ vitæ spatio clara fuit et
delectabili voce. (Vita S. Adehildæ: ap. Surium.)

[113] The whole document is to be found in D’Achery’s “Spicilegium,”
vol. ii.

[114] Hallam, Middle Ages, iii. p. 332.

[115] This Saxon school became, afterwards, a great object of
interest to Alfred; and Asser tells us, that at his request Pope
Martin II. freed it from all taxes and tribute.

[116] Wise’s Edition, Oxon. 1722.

[117] Asser (Wise’s Ed.), p. 67.

[118] Among these homilies is that for the festival of
Easter, commonly quoted in support of the audacious theory
that the Anglo-Saxon divines knew nothing of the doctrine of
Transubstantiation. The whole question is satisfactorily examined by
Dr. Lingard, in his “History of the Anglo-Saxon Church,” to which the
reader is referred. But it may be observed, that whatever obscurity
is to be found in Ælfric’s language, that of other writers of his
nation is singularly emphatic. The very term, _Transubstantiation_,
is all but anticipated by Alcuin, who, in a letter to Paulinus, bids
him remember his friend “at that time when thou shalt consecrate the
bread and wine _into the substance_ of the body and blood of Christ.”
And of two saints contemporary with Ælfric, viz. St. Odo and St.
Oswald, their biographers record the fact, that while celebrating
mass, the appearance of a bleeding Host in their hands removed the
doubts of certain beholders. Yet, what doubts had to be removed if
the doctrine were not then held?

[119] Hist. of Ramsey, ch. lxvii.

[120] In the first edition of this book allusion was made to the
studies pursued in this century at Croyland abbey. But the chronicle
of Ingulphus from which the narrative was quoted, is now generally
admitted to be spurious, and the passage has therefore been omitted.

[121] Berington, Lit. Hist. book iii. 154.

[122] Hallam, Middle Ages, chap. ix. part 1. _passim_.

[123] Florus, Carmina Varia, Vet. Anal. 413.

[124] The battle of Fontenay was gained by Charles the Bald and Louis
the German over their elder brother Lothaire. The latter was totally
defeated, and the old Frankish or Teutonic nobility who supported
him were all but entirely destroyed. From this time the Gallo-Roman
element began to prevail in France over the German, and the treaty
shortly afterwards renewed between Charles and Louis at Strasburg,
is the first instance on record of the vernacular dialects being
employed on any solemn occasion. Louis as king of the Germans, swore
to the treaty in the Romance language, now formally recognised as the
language of France while the French king took his oath in Tudesque,
or German. On that day, France and Germany may be said to have first
assumed their distinct nationalities. The Romance or Rustic Latin
became the language of France, though this afterwards separated into
two branches, that spoken in the northern provinces, which was more
largely mingled with Germanic idioms, and which was known as the
_Langue d’oyl_, or _d’oui_ and the softer dialect of the south, which
was called the _Langue d’oc_. Later on, the Italian Romance became
distinct from either of these, and is sometimes spoken of as the
_Langue de si_.

[125] Footnote: Hallam, Middle Ages, chap. i. part 1.

[126] Acta SS. Ben. Vita S. Anscharii.

[127] Odericus Vitalis, B. vi. ch. 10.

[128] Analect. tom. i. 426.

[129] Gesta Epis. Leod. cap. 25.

[130] Fleury observes that by the “Dialectics of St. Augustine” is
supposed to be meant the treatise of the ten categories, attributed
to St. Augustine from the time of Alcuin.

[131] D’Achery, Spic. t. i. 372.

[132]

Esuries Te, Christe Deus, sitis atque videndi
Jam modo carnales me vetat esse dapes.
Da mihi Te vesci, Te potum haurire salutis,
Unicus ignotæ Tu cibus esto viæ;
Et quem longa fames errantem ambedit in orbe
Hunc satia vultu, Patris Imago, Tuo.

[133] St. Maieul of Cluny always “refreshed his mind with reading”
as he rode, and one day both horse and man fell into a quagmire. And
Thierry, abbot of St. Hubert’s, lost his way, and very nearly his
life also, owing to his being so intent on the recitation of the
Psalms that he did not see where his horse was going. Many examples
of a similar nature are to be met with.

[134] Quando illi prandentes in angulis scholæ, dulcia obsonia
magistro furantur.--_Vita S. Adalberti_, _Acta SS. Ben._

[135] The following is his version of the “Our Father”:--

Fater unser du in himele bist. Din na’ mo vuerde geheiligot. Din
riche chome. Din wille geskehe in erdo also in himele. Unser ta’
golicha brot kib uns hinto-unde. Unsere sculde belak uns, also ouch
wir bela’ zend unsern sculdigen. Und in chorunga nit leitest du
unsich. Nu belose unsich some ubele.

[136] I wish to be a Greek, lady, who am scarcely yet a Latin.

[137] I am altogether unable to compose worthy verses, for I am so
confused by the caresses of the duchess.

[138] Oderic. Vit. B. vi. c. iv.

[139] Wis. vii. 17. 22-23.

[140] Richer’s history is printed at length in Pertz’s _Monumenta
Germaniæ Historica_, Tom. iii.

[141] Gerbert taught his disciples the use of the monochord; a
single string, which being struck at different intervals, gave out
the different sounds of the gamut. These intervals were marked
on the chord, and the words to be sung had written over them a
cipher, showing to what interval on the monochord it corresponded.
A person therefore could always set himself right by sounding the
note he wanted, as we should use a pitch-key. A description of this
instrument is given by the monk Odoramn, whose works have been
discovered and published by Cardinal Mai, and whose musical treatises
are said to be based on the scientific principles of Boëthius and
Euclid.

[142] The Arabs received the knowledge of the Indian numerals in
the ninth century. “But the profound and important historical
investigations to which a distinguished mathematician, M. Chasles,
was led by his correct interpretation of the so-called Pythagorean
table in the geometry of Boëthius,” says M. Humboldt, “render it more
than probable that the Christians in the West were acquainted even
earlier than the Arabians with the Indian system of numeration; the
use of the nine figures, having their value determined by position,
being known by them under the name of the System of the Abacus.”
(_Cosmos_, vol. ii. p. 226, also note 358. See also M. Chasles,
_Aperçu historique des méthodes en géométrie_, 464-472, and his
papers in the _Comptes-rendus de l’Acad. des Sciences_.)

[143] The story has of course been taken up by the usual chorus of
modern writers, but its fallacy is well exposed by Gretser, who shows
that the tenth century knew nothing of the rumour, which entirely
originated in the fertile brain of Benno.

[144] Meibomius, Scrip. Rerum German. t. i. 706.

[145] In the year 1867 a controversy arose in Germany concerning
the authenticity of the works attributed to Hroswitha. Professor
Aschbach, of the Imperial Academy of Vienna, in a paper printed that
year in the Acts of the Academy, endeavoured to prove them audacious
forgeries; and supposed the author of the fraud to have been one
Conrad Celtes, a Humanist of the fifteenth century. The question
was taken up on both sides. Several distinguished writers and their
arguments and investigations appear to have successfully vindicated
the genuine character of the works, and to have established
Hroswitha’s claim to be considered their real authoress. See B.
Tenk, _Neber Roswitha Carmen de Gestis Oddonis_, Leipzig, 1876.
R. Kœpke, _Ottonische Studien zur deutschen geschichte im 10ten
jahrhundert_, II. _Hroswith von Gandersheim_ (xv. s. 314.) _Die
Aelteste deutsche Dichterin_ (III. 127. S), Berlin, 1869. _Hroswitha,
die helltönende Stimme von Gandersheim. In Westermann’s Illustr.
Monatsheften_, 1871, &c.

[146] Rohrbacher, Hist. de l’Eglise, vol. xiii. 540.

[147] Adelmann Rythmi Alphabetici. Vet. Anal. iv. 382.

[148] Analecta, t. iv. 385-387.

[149] Rémusat, St. Anselme de Cantorbéry, liv. ii. chap. iv. The
various opinions in favour of and against this argument are given in
chap. v.

[150] Fleury, lib. lxii. 1.

[151]

O’er wayward childhood wouldst thou hold firm rule,
And sun thee in the light of happy faces?
Love, Hope, and Patience, these must be thy graces,
And in thine own heart let them first keep school.
For, as old Atlas on his broad neck places
Heaven’s starry globe, and there sustains it;--so
Do these upbear the little world below
Of education,--Patience, Love, and Hope.--_Coleridge._

[152] So at least we conjecture from certain stage directions in the
dramas of Hroswitha, which seem to infer a good deal of skill on the
part of the stage manager.

[153] M. Delisle, in his Notice on the Life and Writings of Odericus,
explains this expression to mean the Latin alphabet; Carmenta
Nicostrata, the mother of the Arcadian Evander, being held by some to
have first invented letters. He could not, however, have been five
years learning his alphabet, so we may probably understand him to
mean the ordinary elementary instruction in Latin.

[154] Now known as the _Priorata_, or Priory of St. John of Jerusalem.

[155] Rohrbacher, Hist. Ecc. tom. xiv. 48-60.

[156]

Essa è la luce eterna di Sigieri,
Che, leggendo nel Vico degli Strami,
Sillogizzo invidiosi veri.--_Parad._ x. 136.

[157] Pertz, Monumenta Germanica, tom. iv. 39.

[158] Chron. Clun. ap. Bib. Clun. 1645.

[159] It may be taken as tolerably well proved, however, that he
was really an Irishman, and he is supposed to have been a monk of
Clonard. Contemporary with him was another famous Irish historian,
Tigernach, abbot of Clonmacnoise, who wrote his chronicle partly in
Irish and partly in Latin, and is held to have been well acquainted
with Greek. The Irish scholars highly distinguished themselves in
this century. There was an Irish monastery at Erford, and another at
Cologne, into which Helias, a monk of Monaghan, on returning from a
visit to Rome, introduced the Roman chant (Lanigan, Ecc. Hist. c.
xxiv.)

[160] Histoire Lit. tom. vii. 58, and tom. ix. 149. The same
authority makes mention of other translations in French of the Four
Gospels, the Epistles of St. Paul, the Psalms, and some books of the
Old Testament, all made in the diocese of Metz in the twelfth century.

[161] Sicut rectus ordo exigit ut profunda Christianæ fidei credamus,
priusquam ea præsumamus ratione discutere; ita negligentia mihi
videtur si postquam confirmati sumus in fide, non studemus quod
credimus intelligere. Opp. S. Anselm, _de Fide Trinitatis et de
Incarn._ Prœf. et _Cur Deus homo?_ c. i. et 2.

[162] Abelard is classed by John of Salisbury as belonging to the
sect of the Nominalists. (_De Nugis Curialium_, 7, 12. _Metalog._
2, 17.) His followers, however, disliked the name, and he is more
commonly described as a _Conceptualist_.

[163] Jo. Saris. Ep. xxiv.

[164] A certain enemy of the poets in the days of Virgil.

[165] Except indeed we reckon St. Anselm as the first of the
schoolmen. But though this would be, strictly speaking, correct,
the formation of Scholastic Theology as a distinct science is not
generally spoken of before the time of Peter Lombard.

[166] In his work entitled _De Nugis Curialium_, he is said to have
quoted upwards of one hundred and twenty writers of antiquity.

[167] Metalogicon, lib. vii. c. 13.

[168] Jos. xv. 15.

[169] Jacob de Vitrag. Hist. Occ. c. 7. Fleury, Hist. Eccles. liv.
66. lix.

[170] Archi-Trenius, or the Chief Lamenter,--a name taken from the
Greek title of the Book of Lamentations.

[171] Du Boulai. Hist. de l’Univ. t. iii. p. 31.

[172] Terra mota est, etenim cœli distillaverunt ... pluviam
voluntariam segregabis Deus, hæreditati tuæ. Ps. lxvii. 10, 11.

“La main de Dieu, lorsqu’elle nous châtie, est comme celle du
chirurgien qui ne blesse que pour guérir, et à la fin _les foudres
se convertissent en pluies_ que Dieu réserve pour l’heritage de ses
élus.” (Esprit de S. François de Sales.)

[173] Grandes Chroniques de France, ann. 1196.

[174] Lebœuf, Hist. du diocèse de Paris, i. 6.

[175] The collection of the Roman Imperial statutes, known as the
_Justinian Code_, was published by order of Justinian in 529. Three
years later appeared fifty books, containing the decisions of famous
jurists, and this digest received the name of the _Pandects_. An
introduction, to facilitate the study of the Pandects, with four
additional books, make up the _Institutes_; and, lastly, certain new
statutes added at the revision of the code made in 534, formed the
_Novellæ_; the whole collection making up the body of the Roman or
civil law.

[176] Cosmos (Sabine’s Translation), vol. ii. note 331.

[177] His story is introduced by Dante into the Inferno, cant. xiii.

[178] The university of Toulouse was established in virtue of certain
articles introduced into the treaty of peace between Count Raymund of
Toulouse and St. Louis of France. The count agreed to pay 4000 marks
for the maintenance of certain masters for ten years; namely, two
doctors of theology, two canonists, six masters of liberal arts, and
two of grammar. This foundation was made for the express purpose of
combating the Albigensian heresy in its headquarters.

[179] The feudal lords in the eleventh century frequently claimed
and exercised the right of appointing the scholasticus to certain
churches where benefices were attached to the office. (See Martene,
Ampl. Coll. t. ii. 974-979.) But even then the approval of the bishop
or his chancellor was required, and he could claim the right of veto,
when objections to the candidate existed on the score of faith or
morals.

[180] Crevier, Hist. de l’Univ. vol. i. p. 256. The custom was
made law by a decree of the Third Council of Lateran in 1179. But
forty years earlier we find the Council of Westminster prohibiting
cathedral scholastics from accepting payment for the licenses granted
by them to schoolmasters in towns and villages.

[181] Thus we read that W. de Champeaux held the office of archdeacon
of Paris, and governed the cathedral schools. “It had been the rule,”
says Crevier, “that all who wished to open a school should obtain
a license from the scholasticus, _that is, the chancellor_, of the
church in whose territory they wished to establish themselves.” See
also the statutes of Lichfield Cathedral. (Monas. Anglic. t. 3. p.
34.) “Officium Cancellarii est, sive residens sive non extiterit,
lectiones legendas in ecclesia per se, vel per suum vicarium,
auscultare, male legentes emendare, _scholas conferre_, &c.” (Quoted
by Du Cange.) The chancellor of St. Paul’s, London, had jurisdiction
over all the schools of the city. He was called the _Magister
Scholarum_, and the master of the cathedral grammar school acted as
his vice-chancellor. (Lib. Stat. Eccl. S. Pauli.) In the reign of
Stephen we find an ordinance from the legate, Henry de Blois, to the
effect that all schoolmasters teaching schools in London, without
license from the cathedral scholasticus, should be excommunicated.

[182] Quoted in Catholic University Gazette, Oct. 26, 1854.

[183] Crevier, Hist. de l’Univ. vol. ii.

[184] For a summary of the errors condemned, see Martene, Thesaur.
Anecdot. t. iv. col. 163, 164.

[185] Jasinski, Sum. Ordin. Cap. Gen. p. 403.

[186] Const. FF. Præd. dis. n. note _a._

[187] Const. FF. Præd. dis. ii. note _b._

[188] _Ibid._ Paris, 1236. De Studiis linguarum. S. (Const. Fontana,
1862.)

[189] Const. Dis. ii. De Student. iv. note _g._

[190] Const. F. F. Præd. De Studentibus. This provision of the
ancient Constitutions is commented on by the statutes of more modern
addition, wherein we see the immense importance attached by the Order
to the study of Church history. After speaking of the study of the
Scriptures, it is said: “Another fount of theological science is
ecclesiastical history, which is, as it were, the complement, and
ever-living interpreter of Holy Scripture; so that these two are
the _duo luminaria magna_, illuminating all the faithful in Christ,
and manifesting without a cloud of error, all those truths revealed
by God; for the history of the Church, rightly speaking, is nothing
else than Christian doctrine in act, nor is there any better or more
easy way of knowing the Catholic dogma; for it is nothing else than
a series of battles and triumphs of our faith against the insurgent
heresies, which the Church, by her doctors, martyrs, and decrees of
Popes and Councils has successively pierced through and overcome;
whence the certain interpretation of Scripture and the clear
explanation of tradition and the authoritative definition of dogma,
are all to be found in the History of the Church.” Const. F. F. Præd.
(Fontana, 1862.) De Studio, p. 458.

[191] Fleury, Histoire Eccl. Discours 5^me.

The order of graduation, as it exists at present, is as follows:
Eight years of study are required before any one can be admitted to
the degree of Lector, and to obtain this a student must undergo an
examination in Philosophy, Modern Controversy, Scripture, and the
Summa of St. Thomas. The active or teaching course, required for
the higher degrees of Bachelor and Doctor, remains nearly the same
as in former days. Various modifications have from time to time
been introduced into the legislation of the Order on this point,
but the principle has always been retained of making a long course
of teaching and repeated examinations the test of qualification.
_Secular_ students in a Dominican College, however, may be admitted
to the degree of Doctor after only a three years’ course of Theology,
provided they stand an examination in the Summa; and by the Bull
of Pope Clement XII., all such secular graduates of the Dominican
schools hold the same position in every respect as though they had
been promoted to the Doctorship in the Roman College of the Sapienza.
(Fontana, p. 206.)

[192] His words are as follows: “When I was at Venice, being still
a youth, they were sawing some stones for the repair of one of the
churches, and it chanced that in one of these blocks there appeared
the figure of a head; as of a king, crowned with a long beard. The
countenance had no other defect, save that the forehead was too high
ascending towards the top of the head. All of us who examined it were
satisfied that it was the work of nature. And I being questioned as
to the cause of the disproportioned forehead, replied that this stone
had been coagulated by the work of vapour, and that by means of a
more powerful heat the vapour had arisen without order or measure.”
(Op. tom. 2 De Mineralibus. lib. 2, tract. 3, c. i.) The expressions
here used are somewhat obscure, but they seem to imply that Albert
knew something of those phenomena which geologists explain as the
result of volcanic heat and the action of vapour. “Transformed, or
metamorphic rocks,” says Humboldt, “are those in which the texture
and mode of stratification have been altered either by the contact or
proximity of an irrupted volcanic rock, or, as is more frequently the
case, by the _action of vapours_ and _sublimations_ which accompany
the issue of certain masses in a state of igneous liquefaction.”
(Cosmos. vol. i. p. 236.)

[193] “Quia totum scibile scisti.”--Jammy, Vita B. Alberti.

[194] The very remarkable passage here referred to by Humboldt is to
be found in the Treatise, “De Cælo et Mundo.”

[195] Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 247.

[196] Among these, besides the celebrated speaking head, the account
of which is too legendary to be depended on, we must reckon the
mode of rendering sensible the phenomena of an earthquake, which he
describes in his book on meteors, and which finds a place in most
modern works on popular science; his automata made to move by means
of mercury according to the method of Chinese toys; and the so-called
magic cup, which is still preserved in the Museum of Cologne.

[197] Rutebœuf, the celebrated crusading minstrel of the thirteenth
century, whose reckless sarcasm spared no one, not even St. Louis
himself, endeavoured to console the defeated seculars by directing
his most cutting satire against their opponents, in a piece entitled
“La descorde de l’université et des Jacobins.” The poem contains
many curious illustrations of the manners and studies of the Paris
students, and it need hardly be said that the Jacobins fare but
badly. When first the friars came into the world, he says, they took
lodgings with humility, but now they are masters of Paris and Rome,

Et par leur grant chape roonde
Ont versé l’université.

[198] Ps. ciii. 13.

[199] Boll. Vita S. Thom. p. 712, n. 77.

[200] Institutions Liturgiques, tom. 1, 348.

[201] Frigerio, Vita di S. Tomaso, lib. ii. c. x.

[202] Sixtus of Sienna and Trithemius both declare that St. Thomas
explained _all_ the works of Aristotle, and that he was the first
Latin Doctor who did so, but the Commentaries that are preserved
treat only of fifty two books. This purgation of the pagan philosophy
is alluded to in the Matins hymn for his office, as forming one of
his chief glories:

Plusquam doctores cæteri
Purgans dogma Gentilium.

[203] Qu. 85, Act. 2, Ad. 3

[204] Qu. 84, 7.

[205] Contra Gen. 1, 7.

[206] Qu. i. Act. 8.

[207] Dalgairns, Introduction to the Life of St. Richard, pp. 36, 37.

[208] At Paris 1286, Bourdeaux 1287, and Lucca 1288.

[209] Vie de S. Thomas, livre v. ch. xi.

[210] Echard, de Script. Ord. t. i. 435.

[211] In c. 5. Matth. quoted by Touron, liv. 4, ch. 3.

[212] Lib. 1, contra Gentil. c. 2, quoted by Touron.

[213] Boll. p. 715, n. 80.

[214] This idea is doubtless little in accordance with our ordinary
way of regarding the mechanical arts, but the reader will remember
the words of Scripture, which tells us how the Lord called Beseleel
the son of Uri, and filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom
and understanding and all learning to work in gold and silver and
carpenter’s work; and how He put wisdom into the heart of every
skilful man to know how to work artificially, and to the women that
they might spin fine linen. (Exod. xxxi. 3; xxxv. 25, 35; xxxvi. 1.)
How sublime is this view, which displays to us every part of human
knowledge, the humblest as well as the most profound, as, alike, but
sparks from the One Fontal Light,--the Illuminating Spirit of God!

[215] S. Bonaventure (quoted in the _Dublin Review_, Dec. 1851), from
his small work called “The Reduction of the Arts to Theology.”

[216] De Studio legendi, iii. 3-6, quoted in the Appendix to Newman’s
University Lectures.

[217] Eccl. Hist. vol. 18, p. 434-444.

[218] _Ibid._ vol. 18, p. 444.

[219] See Touron, _Vies des Hommes Illustres_, tom. i. 489-504; where
are also to be found notices of F. Paul Christiani, and other Hebrew
scholars of the order.

[220] These foundations are thought worthy of being named among
his greatest works in the Breviary lessons for the Octave day of
his feast: “Hebraicæ et Arabicæ linguæ publicas scholas in Ordine
Prædicatorum impensis instituit.”

[221] The letter is printed at length in Martene’s Collection, Tom.
iv. col. 1527.

[222] Crevier, Hist. de l’Univ. de Paris. Vol. ii. p. 227. There
is incidental evidence that the Greek and Oriental tongues were
occasionally studied even by members of the secular colleges of
Paris, during this and the following century. Stephen Pasquier speaks
of a certain youth of twenty, who in the year 1445 spoke very subtle
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Arabic, besides many other
tongues; and winds up his account by saying that if an ordinary man
had lived a hundred years without eating and sleeping he could not
have learnt as much as this young prodigy. His learning, however, was
evidently something rather uncommon, for, says the historian, it put
all his fellow-students in fear lest he knew more than human nature
ought to know, and might possibly be “a young Antichrist.”

[223] Ayliffe; State of the University of Oxford, vol. i. p. 106.

[224] Fontana, Const. _De studio Linguarum_. g. p. 467; also
Jasinsky, _Studium Linguarum_. lit. B.

[225] Annibaldi was a pupil of Albert the Great, and took his
Doctor’s degree in Paris, where he enjoyed a very brilliant
reputation. Innocent IV. created him Master of the Sacred Palace.
But being promoted to the purple in 1263 be solicited Urban IV. to
name as his successor in that office a certain learned English Friar,
F. William Bonderinensis, as he is called in the Catalogue of the
Masters, who belonged to the Convent of London, and was the only one
of our countrymen who ever filled that important post.

[226] Hibernia Dominicana, p. 191.

[227] Speech on the Extension of Academic Education in Ireland,
delivered at Cork, Nov. 13, 1844; quoted in an article on the
_Ancient Dominican Irish Schools_; Dublin Review, Sept. 1845.

[228] Hib. Dominicana, p. 193.

[229] Cantu, Histoire Universelle, vol. xi, p. 593.

[230] M. Cartier, in his introduction to the Life of Fra Angelico,
has adduced many passages from St. Thomas, not only elucidating
the philosophy of Christian art, but showing that he had a natural
taste for such pursuits, and drew from them more than one graceful
illustration. Thus he lays down the three conditions of beauty to
consist in entireness, proportion, and clearness of colour. He also
enunciates that broad principle which justifies us in requiring that
one who aims at representing spiritual subjects should himself be
holy in life, when he declares that “all inferior forms flow from
the forms which are in the intellect.” For how then, we may argue,
can a spiritual form flow from a debased intellect? And among the
maxims and sayings preserved by his biographers there occur more than
one, the imagery of which seems to show even a practical acquaintance
with the art of painting.

[231] Histoire Eccl., vol. xviii. p. 686.

[232] The image is taken from St. Gregory, who compares secular
letters to the smiths’ tools which were to be found in the hands, not
of the Israelites, but of the Philistines. Nevertheless, he says,
as the Israelites went down to the Philistines and borrowed their
tools to sharpen their own instruments, so Christians may and ought
to use the liberal arts in order to explain and defend the truths of
religion. And those who seek to prohibit the faithful from the study
of the liberal sciences are like the Philistines who did not suffer
the children of Israel to have smiths among them, “lest they should
make them swords or spears.” (S. Greg. in 1 Reg. lib. v. c. iii. No.
30.)

[233] Greith; _Die Deutsche Mystik im Prediger-Orden_, pp 38, 39.

[234] Quoted by Sighart (French Trans.), p. 378.

[235] Summa, 2, 2, qu. 180, 1, ad 1 et 2.

[236] Ibid. 1. 2, qu. 27, a. 2, and 2.

[237] S. Thom. 2, 2, q. 27, a. 6.

[238] Sup. Psal. xxi.

[239] Sermon for the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost.

[240] S. Antoninus, Vita, § 6.

[241] Preface to his _Meditations from St. Thomas_.

[242] Eccles. xxiv. 43, 44, 47 (Lessons for the Common of Doctors).

[243] Leland.

[244] Nevertheless, oddly enough, the susceptibility to natural
beauty and the power of describing it with the pen is often claimed
as one of the good things restored to us by the Renaissance. The
author of Cosmos, in that beautiful Introduction to his work in which
he traces the history of the love of nature, observes that, “when the
sudden intercourse with Greece caused a general revival of classical
literature, we find as _the first example among prose writers_ a
charming description of nature from the pen of Cardinal Bembo.” Had
the writer opened any of the monastic Chronicles in which his own
country is so rich, he would have found that the monks, whom Bembo
would have regarded as barbarians, had been before him as landscape
painters in words, by at least six centuries.

[245] Fescennia, a town of Etruria, was noted in the days of Horace
for the rude extempore verses, full of coarse raillery, composed by
its inhabitants, and commonly known as _Fescennina carmina_ (Hor. Ep.
ii. 1. 145). The _Theonine tooth_ is likewise an expression derived
from Horace (Ep. i. 18. 82); and seems to have been a proverbial
expression derived from Theon, the name of a certain Roman freedman,
well known for his malignant wit. (See Notes on Horace by Rev. A. J.
Maclean.)

[246] If the suggestion to restore the teaching of the Latin prayers
and the plain song of the Church in our parochial schools be deemed
preposterous on the ground of its _difficulty_, we would simply
beg objectors to try the experiment before passing judgment. A
very short experience will prove that with ordinary perseverance
nothing is easier than to make a class of boys recite fluently and
chant correctly from note the Psalms of Vespers or Compline, or the
_Credo_, _Gloria_, and other portions of the Mass; and we may add,
that nothing seems more acceptable to the scholars themselves. What
was possible in an age when the whole instruction must have been
given orally, cannot have any insuperable difficulties about it in
days when every child may be provided with a printed book. Possibly
in a congregation thus trained there might be fewer complaints than
there now are on the score of children behaving badly in church:
for when children understand and take part in what is going on
around them, they do not behave amiss. More valid objections can be
conceived as arising from the difficulty of sparing the time when so
many other subjects have to be taught. But what is more essential
to teach Catholics than their Catholic prayers? and what branch of
secular learning will prove a substitute for sound, genuine, and
intelligent Catholic Faith?

[247] Many different versions exist of this hymn, which may be thus
rendered into modern English: “Saint Mary, pure Virgin Mother of
Jesus Christ of Nazareth, take, shield, help mine Godric, take, bring
him safe with thee into the kingdom of God., Saint Mary, bower of
Christ, purity of virgins, flower of mothers, take away my sins,
reign in my mind, and bring me to dwell with the only God.”

[248] The custom was very general in poor parishes. Thus Reginald of
Durham tells us of a certain scholar, Haldene by name, who was wont
to attend the school which, “according to the known and accustomed
usage,” was held in the Church of St. Cuthbert, at Northam. One day
Haldene, who did not know his lessons and was afraid of the rod,
conceived the bright idea of getting hold of the key and throwing it
into the Tweed, so that when the hour of Vespers came no key was to
be found. The example, in far later times, of “Wonderful Walker,”
keeping school in his village church, was therefore but a surviving
relic of the primitive manners.

[249] Antiquities of the Monastical Church of Durham, pp. 54, 77.

[250] Wood. Antiq. of Oxford, lib. i. p. 135.

[251] Ralph Bocking was a Dominican Friar and a native of Chichester,
and wrote the life of the Saint (whose confessor he was) with great
feeling and devotion.

[252] He adds that this decking of the well was prohibited by the
Parliament, as a popish abomination, after which “the water shranke
up.” On this the rustics set the Parliament at defiance and revived
the ancient custom, whereupon, to their inexpressible consolation the
water recommenced flowing.

[253] For a statement of the arguments by which this opinion is
supported, see Rohrbacher, Histoire Eccl. t. xviii. pp. 478-482.

[254] Fleury, who in his fifth Discourse has spoken with equal
contempt of the theological and literary merits of the scholastics,
winds up by reminding the reader that they wrote at a time when
everything exhibited the same bad taste as was displayed in Gothic
architecture, that absurd assemblage of petty ornaments “_which no
architect would ever dream of imitating_.” Nothing endurable in point
of style or art was, according to him, to be seen in Europe from the
fall of the Roman empire until the fifteenth century, that is, during
the whole essentially Christian period. With what amazement would he
have beheld the Christian Renaissance of our own days, and the reflux
of taste into mediæval channels!

[255] Godwin, and some other writers, claim Kilwarby as a Franciscan.
But the evidence in favour of his being a Dominican is irresistible.
He was present at the general chapter of the Order of Preachers
held at Barcelona in 1261; he attended the Provincial chapter
of Montpelier in 1271, and is named in the acts of that council
among other distinguished men of the Order then present. He was
discharged from his office of Provincial in the General Chapter held
at Florence, 1272, but was re-elected by the Provincial Chapter of
England the same year. He is described as a Friar Preacher in the
Patent Rolls of Edward I., when the temporalities of Canterbury
were restored; and Nicholas Trivet, the historian of the Order, who
lived only fifty years after the archbishop, distinctly names him as
a Dominican. Finally, his name does not occur in the Catalogue of
English Franciscan Provincials.

[256] Collier, Eccl. History; vol. i. Book 5, p. 484.

[257] Nich. Trivet. _Annales regum Angliæ_.

[258] For the beautiful narrative of this event see the Life of St.
Edmund, by the Abbé Massé.

[259] His name appears in the MS. Catalogue of Fellows of Merton
under Edward II., preserved in the College Library.

[260] In his inedited commentary on the _Divina Commedia_, written
whilst attending the Council of Constance, he says, “Anagogice
dilexit theologiam sacrum in qua diu studuit tam in Oxoniis in regno
Angliæ, quam Parisiis.” And again: “Dante se in juventute dedit
omnibus artibus liberalibus, studens eas Paduæ, Bononiæ, demum
Oxoniis et Parisiis, ubi fecit multos actus mirabiles, intantum
quod ab aliquibus dicebatur magnus philosophus, ab aliquibus magnus
theologus, ab aliquibus magnus poëta.” It is possible that his
authority for this statement was drawn from English sources; for his
own Latin translation of the poem was undertaken at the request of
two English bishops present at the Council, Bubwith of Bath and Halam
of Salisbury.

[261] Il _maestro vostro_ ben vi scrive.--Par. canto viii.

[262] Par. xxiv. 130.

[263] It must not be supposed, from the mention of _burning_, that
Dante was the object of religious persecution. A reference to the
annals of Florence, Siena, or any of the other Italian republics,
will show that this punishment was very commonly decreed by the
dominant party against their political opponents. Thus Silvestro de’
Medici, on gaining the upper hand in Florence, burnt several citizens
of note, with their palaces. And these atrocious cruelties were
perpetrated for no imaginable crime, but simply to get rid of hated
rivals. In the Revolution of 1369 we read that Bruno da Renaldini had
his head cut off, _senza cagione niuna_.

[264] Par. vi. 106.

[265] Purg. xx. 85.

[266] The celebrated Dominican, Durandus, Bishop of Mende, wrote
his _Rationale Divinorum Officiorum_ about the year 1290. He may be
considered almost the last of the great liturgical writers of the
Church, the catalogue of whom includes the names of St. Isidore of
Seville, Alcuin, Amalarius of Metz, Walafrid Strabo, Rabanus Maurus,
Bruno of Asti, the Abbot Rupert, Honorius of Autun, and Pope Innocent
III.

[267] Purgatorio, xxii. 101 (Carey’s translation).

[268] Purg. x. 128.

[269]

_Rafel maì amech zàbi almi_,
Comincio a gridar la fiera bocca
Cui non si convenien più dolci salmi.--_Inferno_, xxxi. 70.

[270] Purg. i. 23.

[271] Par. i. 37; Purg. xxx. 89.

[272] Inferno, xxxiv. 110.

[273] See particularly the description of the falcon (Purg. xix. 63),
the lark (Par. xx. 73), the rooks (Par. xxi. 34), the pigeon (Purg.
ii. 118), the cranes (Purg. xxiv. 63), and of other birds (Par.
xviii. 68, xxiii. 1).

[274] Purg. xxviii. 18, i. 113, and xxvii. 76; Par. xxxiii. 77.

[275] Purg. x. 37; Par. xx. 73, and xxxi. 40.

[276] Par. xv. 124 (Carey’s translation).

[277] Tiraboschi, Istoria della Lit. Ital. v. 43.

[278] Soc. Hist. Eccl., l. 3, c. 16.

[279] “Pendant deux siècles, ni parmi les évêques, ni parmi les
prêtres, ni parmi les moines français, on ne rencontre pas un seul
personnage d’une vertu, d’une saintété, d’une doctrine entièrement
approuvées par l’Église. Cette expérience de deux siècles
accuse dans le clergé français _une diminution de l’esprit de
Dieu_.”--Rohrbacher, xxii. 462.

[280] St. Palaye, _Mémoires sur l’Ancienne Chevalerie_, part i. 7.

[281] Chaucer, _Romaunt of the Rose_. Eustache Deschamps is equally
emphatic on this point:--

Vous qui voulez l’ordre de chevalier
Il vous convient mener nouvelle vie,
Devotement en oraison veillier,
Péché fuir, _orgueil_ et villenie.

[282] Ordre de Chevalerie, fol. 10, 11.

[283] Godwin, _Life of Chaucer_.

[284] How significant are the words _famulus_ and _famula_, by which
the household servants are designated in the unclassical Latin of the
Middle Ages! The _servus_ of the Romans was, we know, nothing more
than a slave; but the _famulus_, whether bond or free, was a member
of the family, and a servant only in that sense in which his master
owned himself the servant of Christ--_famulus Christi_.

[285] Innumerable decrees of provincial councils are to be found
directed against these wandering clerks. And Edward II. issued a
proclamation setting forth, “that whereas many idle and evil men,
under colour of minstrelsy, get received into the houses of the
rich to meat and drink, henceforth no great lord shall receive more
than three or four minstrels of honour; and that none shall thrust
themselves in unless they be sent for.”

[286] Dibdin in his _Typographical Antiquities_ (p. 142) examines
the question whether Trevisa did or did not translate the Bible into
English. To settle the question whether such a book was preserved at
Berkeley Castle (where Trevisa was chaplain in 1387) Dibdin wrote to
the Rev. J. Hughes, who filled the same office in 1807, and received
the following reply:--

“I have the strongest reason for supposing that such a translation
was made in the English language, and that it existed in the family
so late as the time of James I. The book translated by Trevisa was
given as a very precious gift by the Lord Berkeley of that time
to the Prince of Wales, and I have read his letter thanking Lord
Berkeley for the same. He does not positively say that the book was
the Bible, but he says he hopes to make good use of so valuable a
gift. This letter is still extant among the archives of the castle.
Lord Berkeley has informed me that the book so given by his ancestor
is at present in the Vatican Library. When he was at Rome several
persons mentioned to him having seen there such a book, written by
Trevisa; but as he had no opportunity of examining it, he cannot
ascertain if it were the Bible.”

[287] Lamberde’s _Perambulations in Kent_, 1570.

[288] S. Anselmi Elucidarii, lib. ii. cap. 18.

[289] Chaucer’s expansion of some of the Latin of Boëthius, in his
English version of the “Consolation of Philosophie,” has led some
people to suppose that the poet translated from a French rendering
of Boëthius, and not direct from the Latin. If he did so, the
version he would have used was doubtless that of one of his known
favourite authors, Jean de Méung, the continuator of Guillaume
de Lorris’s “Romance of the Rose.” A magnificent copy of Jean de
Méung’s Boëthius, printed in 1494, is in the British Museum. It is
illuminated with miniatures, bound in velvet, and was presented to
Henry VII. A chapter of this has lately been compared with Chaucer’s
translation and the original Boëthius, by Mr. Edward Bell, for the
Early English Text Society; and the result is, that Chaucer’s version
was certainly not made from the French of Jean de Méung, but direct
from Boëthius; though some phrases of the Latin are paraphrased
rather than translated, in order to bring out their meaning more
fully.

[290] Wilk. Con. iii, 242. Quoted by Lingard, v. ch. i.

[291] It appears that so far from being a friend to the classics,
Wickliffe felt almost a superstitious intolerance for anything that
savoured of ancient Rome. In one of his Prologues he condemns the
ecclesiastics for their study of a _pagan_ jurisprudence, meaning
thereby the Roman law.

[292] See Lingard, iv. ch. 3, where he gives several examples of
Wickliffe’s system of non-natural interpretation of his own words.

[293] William Lyndwood, LL.D., was Bishop of St. David’s, and a
learned canonist. He was the author of a collection of constitutions
of the English Primates, entitled, _Provinciale, seu Constitutiones
Angliæ_, which were printed by Caxton.

[294] Strype’s Cranmer, app. 242. We may compare this admission of
the Protestant archbishop with the statute of his royal master (33
Henry VIII. c. 12), whereby it was enacted that “no women not of
gentle birth, nor journeymen, artificers’ apprentices, should read
the Bible in English, either to themselves or others;” whilst another
Act of the same monarch forbade the public reading of the Scriptures.

[295] A field of battle is perhaps the last place where one would
expect to find a Bible; yet in the British Museum is still preserved
the copy of the Scriptures found in the tent of King John of France
after the battle of Poictiers. It may be remarked, that versions of
the Scriptures seem to have appeared in all languages as soon as the
vernacular idiom of any country assumed a literary form. Thus we
see Queen Anne had her Bohemian Catholic translation; and in 1399
the Polish translation was made by command of the learned queen St.
Hedwiges.

[296] The Lollard heresy had been imported from the University of
Oxford into that of Prague by some Bohemian gentlemen, who had come
over to England in the suite of Queen Anne during the height of the
controversy. Prague University at that time numbered as many as
60,000 scholars, and was divided into several nations, and presided
over by sixty deans. Only twelve of the deans were Bohemians, and
the rest Germans. John Huss, the rector of the university, who
eagerly embraced the new opinions, endeavoured to destroy the German
influence; and putting himself at the head of a national party
obtained that in future the Bohemians should have two votes in all
questions affecting the university and all the other nations united
but one. In consequence of this change, which took place in 1409,
the German students forsook the university, which from that time
fell into decay. This _national_ spirit, which was so largely mixed
up with the origin and progress of the Hussite heresy, must be taken
into account when studying the history of those social revolutions
which followed in the track of the new Apostles.

[297] For an account of these foundations see _The Three
Chancellors_. (Burns, 1860.)

[298] The present revenues amount to something like £4000 a
year, and still afford relief to about 140 poor persons. But the
beautiful collegiate church, the carved and gilded roof of which
is still visible, is now converted to domestic purposes. The choir
is occupied by the women’s wards, and the nave by those of the
men. This, however, is better than the fate which has awaited St.
Paul’s Hospital in the same city, which has been transformed into
a Bridewell. Few English cities can have been richer in these
charitable houses than Norwich, which contained, besides its great
College, _seventeen_ hospitals for the poor and the sick, by means
of which it is probable that very sufficient relief was given to all
in distress. For, in most cases, while only a limited number were
received into the house, outdoor relief was very extensively granted,
and at St. Giles’ Hospital it was customary on the Feast of the
Annunciation to distribute alms to 130 necessitous persons.

[299] _i.e._ bread and milk.

[300] Fadeth.

[301] Pierced.

[302] Warton says 600, but this possibly included the Angervyle
Library, which was united to Gloucester’s in 1480. The 129 volumes
named above were valued at £1000. Possibly his collection included
not a few of the 853 volumes sent over from Paris by his brother the
Duke of Bedford.

[303] Carpenter’s Life has been written by Brewer, and a statue to
his memory, on the pedestal of which are engraved all his munificent
deeds, has been erected by the Corporation of London. A catalogue of
his books is given in the Appendix to his Life.

[304] Stowe.

[305] The Saints Lives printed by Caxton are _The Lyf of St. Katherin
of Senis_, Bradshaw’s _Lyf of St. Wenefryde_, and _The Golden
Legende_, of which last he printed three editions.

[306] These he never lived to publish, but the autograph MS. of his
translation from the French is preserved at Cambridge.

[307] Martene has published in his _Collectanea_ an interesting
letter addressed to Cecilia by Gregorio Corraro, an old schoolfellow
of hers at the Joyous House, who then filled the office of Apostolic
Notary, in which he affectionately encourages her in her vocation.
Of her mother, Paula Gonzaga, we read that “she was a woman of
singular virtue, the mirror of excellence to all Italy. She had a
good knowledge of letters, always dressed with great modesty, and
daily recited the Divine Office. It was enough to see her,” adds her
biographer, Vespasiano Bisticci, “to understand what she was.”

[308] According to Echard, the dangerous tendency of his idolatry
of Plato was pointed out to Ficinus by St. Antoninus, who engaged
him to suspend his studies of the heathen philosopher till he had
read the _Summa_ against the Gentiles, of St. Thomas. And he was
wont afterwards to acknowledge that if he had been saved from actual
heresy, he owed it solely to the care of this good pastor.

[309] Some curious facts in connection with the proceedings of
Pomponius and his associates have recently come to light. Among other
discoveries made by the Cavaliere de Rossi in the Roman Catacombs,
are certain inscriptions left there by the Academicians, who appear
to have made use of these sacred excavations, which were at that
time quite neglected by the literary world, as convenient places in
which to hold their secret assemblies. One of the accusations brought
against them by Paul II. was that they sought to make one of their
own members _Pontifex Maximus_. In the Catacombs appear several
inscriptions conferring this title on Pomponius: _Regnante Pom. Pont.
Max._, _Pomponius Pont. Max._, &c.; and others, from which we gather
that the _unanimes antiquitatis amatores_, as they called themselves,
were lovers not merely of ancient names but of ancient manners; and
that they saw no disgrace in thus perpetuating the dissolute habits
of their members. It is remarkable that in none of their writings
have any of the Academicians said one word about the Catacombs; for
though they boasted of being the lovers of antiquity, it was only
Pagan antiquity which they regarded worthy of their study: and the
Catacombs were simply chosen by them for their convenient privacy.
(See De Rossi, _Roma Sutterranea_, tom. i.)

[310] In his second journey into Greece, Lascaris brought back 200
manuscripts, of which eighty were, he informs us, of authors at
that time unknown in Europe. The Medicean Library, however, was
not destined long to survive its noble collector. On the death of
Lorenzo, his son Pietro having become odious to the Florentines
in consequence of his intrigues with Charles VIII. of France, was
compelled to fly, the Medici Palace was sacked, and the great library
fell a little later into the hands of the French soldiery and the
Florentine mob, by whom its vast treasures were soon dispersed. Such
portions as could be recovered, however, were afterwards deposited in
St. Mark’s library.

[311] Bacon, Essay on Gardens.

[312] Wisd. vii. 13.

[313] St. Bernard, _Serm._ xxxvi. in Cantica Canticorum.

[314] Budæus did not escape the suspicion of heretical tendencies,
but the charge appears to have been chiefly grounded on certain
directions contained in his will for the performance of his funeral
obsequies, which his biographers assure us arose from no indifference
to religious ceremonial, but from a characteristic modesty and
dislike of ostentation.

[315] Perhaps I am wrong in calling Erasmus an apostate canon, for
though he quitted his monastery, he at times resumed his habit,
whenever he found it convenient. He generally wore it in England, for
old-fashioned ideas still held their ground at Oxford; and always
appeared with it in Rome, until having been once mobbed by some
ragamuffin boys, he applied to the Pope for a formal permission to
lay it aside for ever.

[316] This was a hit at the monkish Latin, in which _poetria_
sometimes does duty for _poeta_, and, as Erasmus seems to intimate,
for the _ars poetica_ itself.

[317] Menzel, t. 8, p. 455: t. 6, p. 6-10.

[318] Ibid. t. 6, p. 10-13.

[319] To do Francis I. justice, it must be admitted that he had in
his concordat with Leo X. repealed the Pragmatic Sanction; but the
same concordat abolished the right of election to benefices, on the
plea that such a right was too often abused, and gave the Crown the
nomination to all bishoprics, abbeys, and conventual priories within
his dominions, with a few privileged exceptions.--See Gaillard,
_Hist. de Francois I._ t. 6, p. 37.

[320] Not Peter Martyr Vermigli, the celebrated heretic who
afterwards figured as Professor at Oxford, but Peter of Anghieria,
a relation of the Borromeo family, who had come into Spain at the
invitation of the Spanish Ambassador at Rome, and at the solicitation
of Isabella, chose it for his adopted country.

[321] Prescott, Hist. of Ferd. and Isabella.

[322] See Newman’s Lectures; “Athens, the fit site for a university.”

[323] It was the scene of the martyrdom of the two scholars, Justus
and Pastor. See Prudentius, Hymn 4.

[324] By the middle of the seventeenth century the ten colleges of
the founder had increased to the number of thirty-five.

[325] This is generally spoken of as the first Italian comedy.
The first dramatic composition of the Italian muse, however, was
the Orpheus of Politian. Previous to this time the only scenic
representations known in Italy were sacred mysteries drawn from
Scripture. The questionable _glory_ of introducing profane
performances is due to Pomponius Lætus, who, along with his other
revivals of ancient Roman manners, caused the comedies of Terence and
Plautus to be acted in Rome, in which enterprise, says Maffei, he
was greatly seconded by Cardinal Riario, who opened a theatre in his
own private house. Jovius tells us that Cardinal Bibiena organised a
staff of skilful players, and encouraged the youths of Rome to take
part in his theatricals.

[326] Jovius, the first historian of his time, was accustomed frankly
to avow that “he had two pens, one of gold and the other of iron,
to write of princes according to the favours or slights which they
bestowed.” The Medicean princes were fortunate enough to secure the
services of the golden pen, and Clement VII. rewarded his services
with the bishopric of Nocera.

[327]

Vivere qui sancte vultis, discedite Roma:
Omnia hic esse licet, non licet esse probum.

[328] Pietro Pomponatus is by some writers erroneously confounded
with Pomponius Lætus, the founder of the Roman academy, of whom
mention has been made in a foregoing chapter. They resembled one
another as in their philosophic errors, so also in their sincere
conversion before their death. Pomponius died in 1495; Pomponatus,
thirty years later.

[329] The following are the words of Pope Leo X. in the Bull,
_Apostolici regiminis_:--“As truth cannot contradict truth, we
declare every assertion contrary to the truth of Divine faith to be
absolutely false, and strictly forbid any one to teach differently;
we command that those who adhere to such assertions shall be avoided
and punished, as men who seek to disseminate damnable heresies.”
Moreover, he rigorously prescribes to all and each of those who give
public lessons of philosophy in the universities and elsewhere,
that when they read or explain to their pupils the principles and
conclusions of those philosophers who notoriously wander from the
orthodox faith ... “they employ every effort to set before their eyes
the truth of the Christian religion, and persuade them to it with
all their power, and use every care to refute and expose philosophic
arguments of this kind, since there are none such which cannot be
refuted.”

[330] His critics, however, accuse him of often enough falling into
the like absurdities. In his version of the New Testament he was
accused of continually using pagan expressions, and even of adopting
the word _fable_ when speaking of the plan of Redemption, using it
in the sense in which it is employed by the ancient dramatists to
express the action which they portray.

[331] Also known as Philip of Having, or Philip de Bonne Espérance,
from the name of the abbey which he governed in the twelfth century.
He was the author of many learned works, and the good studies he
established in his abbey continued to flourish down to the eighteenth
century.

[332] A word first created by the Humanists, who made the name of
_Duns_ Scotus to stand for an ignoramus.

[333] Ps. lxx. 15.

[334] For the decrees of the Council on these heads, see Rohrbacher,
vol. xxii. ch. v.

[335] Audin. Hist. de Luth., ch. viii.

[336] Zach. viii. 3.

[337] Knight, in his life of Colet, remarks that “the History
and Antiquities of Oxford sufficiently confess that nothing was
known there but Latin, and that in the most depraved style of the
schoolmen.” Yet two pages back he has quoted from Wood an account
of Colet’s university studies, which show that this statement, like
many of a similar import, is grossly exaggerated. Colet, he says,
was educated in grammaticals in London, and then, after spending
seven years at Oxford in logicals and philosophicals, was licensed
to proceed to arts, “in which he _became so exquisitely learned that
all Tully’s works were as familiar to him as his Epistles_.” He
also read, conferred, and paralleled Plato and Plotinus (in Latin
translations), and attained great eminence in mathematics. Erasmus,
on occasion of his first visit to Oxford, writes thus to his friend
Pisco:--“You ask, does our beloved England please me? Nothing ever
pleased me so much. I have found here _classic erudition, and that
not trite and shallow, but profound and accurate, both Latin and
Greek_, so that I no longer sigh for Italy.” In fact, his own Greek
learning was chiefly acquired at Oxford, for previous to his coming
thither, his knowledge of that language was very superficial.
Elsewhere, he says, “I think, from my very soul, there is no country
where abound so many men skilled in every kind of learning as there
are here.”

[338] “Right studious she was in books,” says Bishop Fisher in his
funeral sermon on this princess, “of which she had great number both
in English, Latin, and French, and did translate divers matters of
devotion out of French into English.”

[339] Mr. Seebohm’s interesting work on the “Oxford Reformers of
1498” has appeared since the publication of our first edition. His
view of Colet’s character is naturally a more favourable one than
that here given; but in representing him as a sort of Broad Churchman
of the sixteenth century, he sufficiently justifies our strictures on
Colet as a Catholic divine.

[340] Knight, quoting from Antiq. Britan., speaks of his preaching
a _second_ sermon after his interview with Henry VIII., wherein, at
the king’s request, he spoke in _favour_ of the French war. Of this
Erasmus says nothing.

[341] To these free views, most Protestant writers, following the
authority of Fox and Knight, have added that Colet was opposed to the
practice of Auricular Confession. This charge is, however, distinctly
disproved in his life. Not only did he bear witness to the comfort
and help he himself found in the practice, but in his “Institution
of a Christian Man,” written for the use of his school, he expressly
enjoins the frequent use of confession. ‘Use oft tymes confessyon,’
is one of his “Precepts of Lyvynge,” besides other directions for the
reception of the Sacraments of Penance and Houslynge, in sickness,
and the hour of death. Colet’s strictures, however free, were in
fact never directed against the doctrines of the Church, but only
against popular practices of devotion. The idea of his having set
himself against the use of one of the sacraments, so very welcome to
those who would fain claim him as a precursor of the Reformation, has
arisen from a gross misconstruction put upon a passage in one of the
Epistles of Erasmus. That writer, speaking of his deceased friend,
says, among other things, “Ut confessionem secretam _vehementer
probabat_, negans se ulla ex re capere tantundem consolationis ac
boni spiritus; ita _anxiam ac subinde repetitam vehementer damnabat_”
(Eras. Jod. Jon. Ep. 577). Knight, in his Life of Colet (p. 68),
paraphrases this sentence in the following extraordinary manner:
“Though he approved of private confession, receiving himself a great
deal of comfort and inward satisfaction from the use of it, yet he
could not but condemn the popular custom of the frequent repetitions
of what they called _auricular confession_.” The uninitiated
Protestant reader is here given to understand that _private
confession_ was something quite distinct from _what they called
auricular confession_, and that whilst Colet approved of the one,
he vehemently condemned the other. The plain fact, of course, being
that he approved, practised, and enjoined the right and proper use
of the Sacrament of Penance, but condemned the indiscreet use which
may be made of it by scrupulous and weak-headed penitents. And it is
probable that most directors would be of the same opinion.

[342] Fox tells us that Colet sat with some others as judge on
certain Lollards, who were burnt for heresy.

[343] In connection with the name of Ammonius, I cannot help noticing
the ridiculous use which has been made of one of his familiar letters
to Erasmus. A native of Lucca, he suffered much from the inclement
English climate, and grumbles about it sadly, saying, moreover, that
the burning of heretics has raised the price of wood. Erasmus replies
in the same vein: “I am angry with the heretics for making wood so
dear for us in this cold season.” The jest was rather a heartless
one, yet it was but a jest; twenty-three heretics had been induced
to recant, but no more than _two_ had suffered in England up to
this date of Henry’s reign: nevertheless, Knight, and some other
writers, have made out from this passage the grave historic fact
that such numbers were put to death at this time that _all the wood
in London was spent in burning them_! The fact is, that Ammonius and
Erasmus ceaselessly exercised their wits upon each other, and all
their letters are couched in the same style of banter. Thus Erasmus
professing to instruct his friend how to get on in England, says in
the same merry strain: “First of all, my dear Ammonius, be impudent,
thrust yourself into everybody’s business, elbow every one who stands
in your way, give nothing to anybody without a prospect of getting
something better, and always consult your own advantage.”

[344] This mystic number bore reference to the miraculous draught of
fishes mentioned in St. John’s Gospel: ch. xxi. 11.

[345] Holte was usher at Magdalen school, and published his grammar
in 1497, under the patronage of Cardinal Morton. Among the grammars
enumerated by Erasmus, was one entitled “Mammotrectus” (or “a boy
taught by his grandmother”), a name which, as we shall see, was sadly
out of place in the academies of the sixteenth century. Before Lily’s
time, says Wood, there were as many grammars as masters, and the
rules of one were contradicted in another.

[346]

From Paul’s I went, to Eton sent,
To learn straightway the Latin phrase,
Where fifty-three stripes given to me
At once I had;
For fault but small, or none at all,
It came to pass thus beat I was,
See, Udall, see, the mercy of thee
To me, poor lad.

The result of the Eton system was, that many boys ran away from
the school to escape a beating, a circumstance which led Ascham to
compose his “Schoolmaster,” wherein, like Sir J. Elyot, he pleads for
a more humane treatment of young scholars.

[347] Erasmus, de Pueris instituendis. Mr. Seebohm questions the fact
of Colet being the “theologian” here referred to.

[348] Exercita Spiritualia. _Regulæ ad sentiendum vere cum Ecclesia._

[349] Hall.

[350] Ep. 871.

[351] Wilkins, Con. iii. 736. Collier, ii. 52, 53.

[352] Pole had explained the motives of his conduct in a letter
addressed to the king, of which Cranmer writes: “It is written with
such eloquence, that if it were set forth and known to the common
people, I suppose it were not possible to persuade them to the
contrary.”

[353] Pollina, lib. i. ch. xxix.

[354] As Flaminius is frequently made much of by Protestant writers
as an adherent to their opinions, it may be as well to add that
the passage touching his conversion by Pole, which appears in the
original Italian life of Beccadelli, is omitted in Dudizio’s Latin
translation. Beccadelli was the personal friend both of Pole and
Flaminius, and his testimony is above suspicion.

[355] This is admitted by Ascham, who after boasting in one letter
that Homer, Thucydides, and Xenophon are now critically studied at
Oxford, is to be found very soon afterwards complaining that these
authors are being neglected for others of an inferior calibre. It was
no better at Cambridge, where, after the departure of Sir John Cheke,
the classical revival died a natural death, the study of divinity
having expired long before. “It would pity a man’s heart,” says
Latimer, “to hear what I hear of the state of Cambridge. There be few
that study divinity, save those who must of necessity furnish the
colleges.”

[356] Erasmus died two years before the publication of this report.
His “Colloquies” were intended as an educational work, and were
written originally for the use of the son of his printer, Froben,
their elegant Latinity having found them a ready admittance into the
schools. He died in the Protestant city of Basle, unfortified by
the sacraments of the Church. His friends erected a monument to his
memory, which they surmounted with a bust of the God Terminus, and
his fellow-citizens of Rotterdam raised his statue in their great
square, the bronze of which was obtained by melting down a large
crucifix which had formerly stood there. The condemnation of his
“Colloquies” by the congregation of cardinals, was confirmed by the
judgment of the Council of Trent, which caused several of his works
to be placed on the index.

[357] _Concilium delectorum cardinalium et aliorum Prælatorum de
emendanda Ecclesia, S. D. N. D. Paulo III. ipso jubente conscriptum,
et exhibitum, anno MDXXXVIII._

[358] It is perhaps only fair to notice the earlier efforts made by
St. Jerome Æmilian to establish religious colleges and seminaries for
the clergy. He appears to have been greatly assisted by the advice
of St. Cajetan, and as he died in 1537, must be reckoned as one of
the first who organised any scheme for the reform of education. The
regular clerks of Somascha continue to this day to carry on the work
of their holy founder.

[359] It is stated by Phillips in his Life of Pole, that the rough
draft of the decree was after his death found among his papers.
Pallavicini tells us that during his absence at Padua, all important
questions were communicated to him by his colleagues, _especially_
the decree on Justification.

[360] Wilkins, Concilia, t. iv. p. 135.

[361] They were the Cardinals Moroni, Hosius, Gonzaga, D’Altemps, and
Navagerio. Cardinals Simonetta and Seripando had also been joined in
the Legation, but both died in the early part of 1563, and Cardinal
Navagerio was appointed in room of Seripando.

[362] _Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, Sess. xxiii. ch.
xviii. Pallavicini, lib. xxi. ch. xii. n. 8._ The prelate who most
warmly supported the decree was Balduino Balduini, bishop of Aversa.
See Martene, Coll. Vet. Scrip. tom. viii.

[363] Pallavicini, lib. xxi. ch. viii. n. 3.

[364] Pall., lib. xxiv. c. 7. n. 2.

[365] The words of M. Olier on this subject are worthy of quotation:
“The true and only superior of the seminary is the bishop, who,
containing in himself the plenitude of that grace and spirit which
is to be shed over the diocese, can alone impart to it its spirit
and its life. What the head is to the natural body, the bishop must
be in the mystical body of his clergy, and we should labour in
vain did we try any other means of sanctifying the ecclesiastical
colleges. However excellent may be the sanctity possessed by those
eminent and virtuous personages who are to be found scattered through
the dioceses, not having that peculiar and essential grace, that
spirit of headship (_cet esprit de chef_), which is attached to the
sacred character of the episcopate, they cannot attain the fulness
of spirit and of life which is capable of filling and vivifying the
whole body of the clergy: for, according to St. Paul, this must flow
from the head to the members by means of those joints, veins, and
nerves intended for the distribution and communication of life. And
these channels communicating with the Fountain Head are nothing else
than the priests united to their bishop, according to the primitive
ordinance of Jesus Christ.”--_Vie de M. Olier_, _t._ 2. _p._ 354.

[366] The Catholic university of Thonon was founded exactly with
a similar purpose by Clement VIII., at the request of St. Francis
of Sales, and the German bishops are said at one time to have
contemplated the foundation of a university for the benefit of the
Catholic youth of Germany.

[367] 1 Tim. iv. 15.

[368] Up to the present time, as we are informed by Dr. Döllinger,
in his inaugural discourse to the University of Munich, the Italian
clergy, the most numerous of Europe, make no use of the universities,
but are content with the 217 Episcopal seminaries which they possess
in their various dioceses.

[369] Ab Ecclesiis vero, musicas eas ubi, sive organo sive cantu,
lascivum aut impurum aliquid miscetur, arceant Episcopi. Sess. xx.
ch. ix.

[370] Caveant Episcopi ne strepitu incondito sensus sepeliatur.

[371] Pall., lib. xxiv. ch. ix. n. 6.

[372] Parvum gregem bonus Pastor, sancte quieteque pascebat. (Carol.
Basc. in Vita S. Caroli. l. i. c. 6, p. 9.) It would seem as if this
remarkable man were destined to take part in every good work set on
foot during his lifetime, for in 1574 we find him in Spain, where as
Apostolic Nuncio, he supported St. Theresa in her reforms. His love
of strict discipline earned for him from the wits the nickname of
“The World’s Reformer.”

[373] In the Acts of the Church of Milan (part 5, p. 948) are
given the rules for study, drawn by St. Charles for the use of his
seminarists. There was to be a grammar class, divided into two
sections, which were to be exercised in the grammar of Emanuel
Alvarez, the Jesuit, the Epistles of Cicero, and some of the works of
Ovid and Virgil. The second class was to be that of the Humanities,
also subdivided into two sections, in both of which the students
were to practise an elegant Latin style, and to study Cicero _De
Officiis_, his epistles to Atticus, and corrected editions of Virgil
and Horace. The Greek grammar of Clenard, a celebrated professor of
Louvain, was likewise to be explained three times in the week. In the
Jesuit schools of Milan the Hebrew language was likewise taught.

[374] They did, in fact, after this take an engagement to serve the
diocese for at least three years.

[375] 2 Esdras, iv. 17.

[376] Eccles. l. 8.

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious printer and scanning errors have been silently corrected.

Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation such as
“Boethius/Boëthius” and “Anglo-Saxon/Anglo Saxon” have been
maintained.

All changes noted in the ERRATA at the end of the book have been
applied to the etext.

Page x: “The nuns of Wimbonrne” changed to “The nuns of Wimbourne”.

Page 5: Second Footnote “1” changed to Footnote “2” after as St.
Jerome and Cassian.

Page 25: Added ellipsis after “taught the fables of the poets.”

Page 69: “wherein the ten fingures” changed to “wherein the ten
fingers”.

Page 127: “the other day a man stanning” changed to “the other day
a man standing”.

Page 134: “The whloe was explained in the” changed to “The whole
was explained in the”.

Page 154: “the result was that Ragtar” changed to “the result was
that Ratgar”.

Page 179: “from Jerusalem, came to Mount Albancta” changed to “from
Jerusalem, came to Mount Albaneta”.

Page 186: “the Church was not then exelusively” changed to “the
Church was not then exclusively”.

Page 212: “In there be any spot in England ” changed to “If there
be any spot in England”.

Page 223: “by the monks on their count” changed to “by the monks on
their countrymen”.

Page 319: “neglect the composition of haxameters” changed to
“neglect the composition of hexameters”.

Page 330: “sort of classical renaissanee” changed to “sort of
classical renaissance”.

Page 351: “heaven and earth he did no tknow” changed to “heaven and
earth he did not know”.

Page 379: “ordored that after his death” changed to “ordered that
after his death”.

Page 382: “superncially studied the intellectual era” changed to
“superficially studied the intellectual era”.

Page 382: “logical studies had many tbuses” changed to “logical
studies had many abuses”.

Page 409: “wrought by the ministry of doctom” changed to “wrought
by the ministry of doctors”.

Page 437: “education which in the twelth” changed to “education
which in the twelfth”.

Page 477: Second “his” removed in “met in his walk by a ferocious
boar”.

Page 557: “teputed talents induced the primate” changed to “reputed
talents induced the primate”.

Page 575: “there to sing the divine offoe” changed to “there to
sing the divine office”.

Page 606: “eloquence for his express ocoupation” to “eloquence for
his express occupation”.

Page 613: “extihction of the Greek schism” changed to “extinction
of the Greek schism”.

Page 614: “ready to read to a learned asseinbly” changed to “ready
to read to a learned assembly”.

Page 625: “inflnence of heathenism and sensuality” changed to
“influence of heathenism and sensuality”.

Page 632: “reaby lived, wrote, taught, and prayed” changed to
“really lived, wrote, taught, and prayed”.

Page 687: “Wolsey reprinted this little manuel” changed to “Wolsey
reprinted this little manual”.

Page 701: “whom he took under his plotection” changed to “whom he
took under his protection”.

Page 728: (Index) “Artrology” changed to “Astrology”.

Page 734: (Index) “Madgeburgh” changed to “Magdeburgh”.

Page 736: (Index) “Bishoo” changed to “Bishop”.

Page 736: (Index) “Flotentius” changed to “Florentius”.

Page 738: (Index) “Hieldesheim” changed to “Hildesheim”.

Footnote 5: Double quote added after “more like reading than
singing”.

Footnote 230: “spirivial form flow from a debased” changed to
“spiritual form flow from a debased”.

Footnote 230: “And among the mixims” changed to “And among the
maxims”.

Footnote 298: “boautiful collegiate church” changed to “beautiful
collegiate church”.

Footnote 313: “St. Pernard, Serm” changed to “St. Bernard, Serm”.

Errata: Page 348, line 15 from top, for “science” read “art”.

Errata: Page 348, line 15 from top, for “seven” read “other”.

Errata: Page 392, line 6, for “degrees,” read “decrees”. (Note:
Errata page in printed book listed page 492 instead of 392.)

Errata: Page 406, line 10 from bottom, for “logic” read
“metaphysics”.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Christian Schools and Scholars - or Sketches of Education from the Christian Era to the Council of Trent" ***

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