Chapter XXIV (22)

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.