Chapter XXIV (19)

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]