time when Europe was still sunk in barbarism they had The Arabian brilliant schools in all the various parts of their schools. empire, which extended from Persia to Spain. Their translations of and commentaries on Aristotle and Plato were eagerly studied by the scholars of the West, who flocked to the Arabian schools at Cordova, Salamanca, or Salerno, for the study of philosophy, as well as for that of medicine and alchemy. Many Englishmen distinguished themselves not only by pilgrimages to these Arabian schools in search of learning, but by translating numerous classical works from Arabic versions. The thirteenth century was the great epoch of translations from the Arabic; but in the twelfth century Athelard of Bath, an English scholar, transIlated the elements of Euclid from the Arabic for the instruction of the West, besides other works, arithmetical or astronomical. Jewish Rabbins were sought out for instruction in Hebrew as well as in medicine, for which their schools were as famous as those of the Mohammedans. A new eagerness for knowledge sought for food on all sides. There was a revival of classical literature along with the eager study of Roman law. Never indeed was there a time of greater intellectual activity than the twelfth century.

sities.

The universities which were rising in Europe during the first half of the century were at once a sign and a stimulus The Univer- of the new craving for knowledge. They became the organs through which a common pulse of intellectual life beat throughout Europe. Intellectual growth becomes easy when the intellect thus finds a focus and a common life. The University of Paris was the intellectual centre of Europe in the beginning of the twelfth century, and was drawing to itself the scholarly youth of all European nations. The English among other nations had their own college there. The concourse of scholars was so immense that king Philip II. had to enlarge the bounds of the city. The lectures of the famous teachers of the day on the driest subjects were flocked to by admiring crowds; and the controversy concerning Universals was a subject of dinner-table conversation. The students appear to have led very hard lives in poverty and severe study. A satirist of the twelfth century pictures them, after having spent a great part of the night in study, roused from their sleep before daylight

to attend the lectures of the masters, treated there with continual rudeness, and finally, after having surmounted all the difficulties of their path, obliged to see the rewards and honours distributed with unjust partiality.'

The participation of England in the intellectual development of the time is shown by the rise of the University of Oxford. We first hear of it in the reign of Oxford. Stephen, through the lectures given there on

vium.

Roman law by the Lombard Vacarius. By the end of the twelfth century it had risen to a high rank among European universities, and some of the most distinguished minds of the next age-Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon, and Occam-were trained in its schools. The University of Paris was the model of Oxford, as afterwards of Cambridge. The course of study pursued at Oxford and most other universities was that of the Seven Arts, divided into the Trivium The Trivium and Quadrivium. The Trivium comprised gram- and Quadrimar (that is the Latin language), the Logic of Aristotle, and Rhetoric as taught by Cicero and Quintilian. The Quadrivium consisted of Geometry, Astronomy, Arithmetic, and Music. When the student had graduated in these Arts, he might advance to the Sciences of Theology, Medicine, and Law. At first sight this scheme, whatever its faults of classification and method, appears to open up a considerable field for the student. But when we inquire into the sources of knowledge possessed by the twelfth century, and find that they consisted of a few meagre manuals handed down from the later period of the Roman empire, a few scraps and fragments of the greater ancient authors, generally transmitted at second-hand, we shall wonder not that the students wasted a good deal of time on logical quibbles, or that the study of Roman law led to the neglect of the poets and philosophers (as a writer of the time complains), but that any mental growth was possible on such scanty food. Considered in this light, the intellectual eagerness of the twelfth century is a very wonderful thing. The human mind ap

peared to have awakened from a long sleep, and to be girding itself to start on a new pilgrimage, to scale all heights and sound all depths. All this mental development, even the universities themselves, had grown up under the countenance or even the direct influence of the Church. It

remained to be seen whether the Church would consent that the intellect should play the great part which it now for the first time aspired to. The supreme importance of the twelfth century lies in the fact that the course was then chosen which was to alter the whole future relations of the Church and mankind.

and intellec

ment.

To understand the mutual attitude of the Church and the new intellectual awakening, we must imagine how a The Church child who has been brought up from its earliest tual develop years under a wise and loving teacher, who has derived from her all its moral and intellectual training, grows up in profound respect for that teacher, and believes her every word to be indubitable truth. But the child has a quick and lively mind; the very lessons its teacher has given it teach it to think, and soon it awakes to a knowledge of its own powers. Still it has a reverent disposition, and does not reject all its old lore as soon as it has got new light. On the contrary, it is convinced that the old lore was so good that the new light cannot possibly contradict it, and its first step is to try to harmonise the discoveries of its reason with what it has learned from its teacher. So long as it does this, the teacher smiles approval. But by-and-by difficulties arise. The child begins to see that the teacher is not infallible, and that great as is its veneration for that teacher, truth has even higher claims. But alas! the teacher is unwilling to confess that she also is mortal, She wishes still to hold her pupil in leading-strings, and she tries to clip the wings of his intellect. Thus arises a gradual estrangement between teacher and pupil, which ends in a complete quarrel; until the child, now grown into a sturdy youth, is strong enough to break forcibly all the restraints his teacher has put upon him, and by this act enters upon the career of his manhood.

This is a true image of the relations of the Church and mankind in their gradual development from the eleventh century to the sixteenth. When first the new power of thought began to be felt, when the questionings of Roscellin about universals had grazed some of the most sacred mysteries of the Church's creed, the gratitude of mankind towards the Church from whom they had learned everything was too great for her influence to be at once shaken off. Her faith

ful children, while ardently thrilled with the new intellectual impulse of the time, were as deeply convinced that reason could never be the enemy of faith. Of these faithful children the greatest was St. Anselm (of whose life some- St. Anselm. thing has already been related), who at the end of

the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth century set himself to prove that the whole fabric of Christian doctrine could be built up by reason alone without the aid of authority. The aim was noble, and Anselm brought to the task the powers of a profound and original as well as of an earnest mind; yet the fabric of argument which he built up is very like a house of cards. In truth Anselm, like most of the thinkers of the day, greatly overvalued the capacity of human reason, that is, of reasoning; they thought it capable of solving problems before which it is powerless. They had studied the categories of Aristotle until they had come to believe that all truth must be capable of formal logical proof. And they had not measured the depths of human ignorance, its ignorance of even the nature of thought. Anselm indeed was aware that human words could not measure the infinite and ineffable; yet he continually used them as though they did. He thought that he found a demonstration of the existence of God in the fact of the mind's conception of God, so that he could prove conclusively that only the fool had said in his heart, 'There is no God.' The argument did not convince everybody even then; a monk named Gannilon wrote a book in defence of 'the fooi.' St. Anselm, however, did not regard reason as the right instrument for arriving at truth in spiritual things; it could only follow where faith led the way. What he believed he sought to demonstrate by reason, but his motto was: 'He that hath not believed will not understand; for he that hath not believed hath not experienced; and he that hath not experienced cannot understand.'

But meanwhile workers in other fields than theology were uttering bold words on behalf of the supremacy of reason. Early in the twelfth century Athelard of Reason and Bath, who was an original writer as well as a Authority. student and translator, speaks thus in a work on natural philosophy: 'What is authority but a halter by which credulous men are led bound into error like brutes? For they do not understand that reason is given to each and all that they ૨

Abelard.

may discern by her sole judgment between true and false.' Not long afterwards the same maxim was applied in the sphere of theology and philosophy by a more famous teacher than Athelard, the Breton Abelard. Instead of saying with St. Anselm, 'We must believe in order to understand,' Abelard said, 'We must understand in order to believe. Inquiry is the prime key of wisdom. То doubt about particulars is not without use. For by doubting we come to inquiry, and by inquiry we perceive the truth; as the Truth himself said, “Seek and ye shall find.”' Abelard attempted to cut the knot of the Realist and Nominalist controversy. He was a Nominalist in so far as he asserted that a Universal is only a collection of individuals, and not a real substance apart from them. But his further assertion that this collection is a substantial reality, and that in all individuals there is a certain portion of pure universal essence, was entirely in the direction of Realism.

It was impossible to philosophise without touching theology; and it was impossible to philosophise freely without coming into collision with some of the dogmas of the Church. All discussions about Being neces

Abelard condemned by the Church.

sarily had an application to the nature of God, and consequently to the doctrine of the Trinity. Abelard was no rebel against Christianity, he always believed himself to be orthodox in his faith; but he handled theological questions in a free and broad spirit. He was accused of heresy, and condemned by two councils. The man who stood forth as his accuser at the Council of Soissons in 1140 was none other than St. Bernard, the great saint of the twelfth century, the perfect model of monkhood. It would have been better for St. Bernard's fame if he could have let Abelard alone; but great as St. Bernard was, his greatness was one-sided; the ascetic ideal, which he represented, is a necessarily imperfect ideal, one that crucifies some of the best powers of human nature, and does not allow the whole man to grow to perfection. Feeling, devotion, obedience, were everything in the monastic ideal; when the intellect stood up to demand free development for the whole of man's nature, the ascetic revolted in horror and wrath. Abelard seems to have been as far from asceticism as he was from mysticism; he did not believe the body to be under a curse, he wrote in defence of