CHAPTER III. Mediæbal Studies. To some it has appeared that the universities were ill calculated to promote solid learning, and served only for the vain subtleties of scholastic disputation. The fact, however, is, that they rendered immense service to religion, and exercised the reasoning faculties in such a manner as to prepare the human mind for the deeper investigations of after times, when the treasures of antiquity were laid open. Divinity was not originally studied in most of the universities, Paris for a long time having enjoyed the special privilege of public lectures on that subject. The youth of Italy did not hesitate to cross the Alps to hear the far-famed professors of that city descant on the sentences of Peter Lombard, or, at a later period, explain the summary of the Angelic Doctor. Bologna, however, and other universities, were afterward allowed to teach the same sublime science, which Clement VI. aptly designates, studium sacræ paginæ, the study of sacred Scripture. The holy volume was expounded to eager youth by men, who, although not skilled in the original languages, or familiar with classic lore, were, nevertheless, competent to teach accurately the revealed doctrines, and to guard against theological errors. Whoever will take the pains to peruse the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, who flourished in the middle of the thirteenth century, will not consider the scholastic study of divinity a mere exercise of vain dialectics. The whole counsel of God, as manifested and developed in the teaching of the Church, is there declared and sustained, chiefly by the authority of sacred Scripture, although occasionally illustrated by some testimony of ancient Christian writers. Reason herself is introduced as the handmaid of revelation. The difficulties which the pride of man presents to the belief of divine truth, are dissipated by a powerful logic, grounded on divine authority. The searching mind of the Angelic Doctor ventured far beyond the positive doctrine of the Church, and indulged in probable conjectures, which some may brand as idle speculations, but which certainly are not less profitable than many of the disquisitions of men of science in later times. It was his privilege to conceive, almost with the clearness of intuition, the whole revealed doctrine, and to comprehend and combine the sacred oracles, and the teachings of the ancient fathers, but especially to fix his gaze on the Divinity with a steadiness scarcely before granted to an uninspired mortal. In the language of the schools, he was as an angel admitted to view the glory of the Deity, and appointed to unfold to men His counsels. Recent Anglican writers have termed him "the great prophet of the Church," since his mind seems to have grasped in its vision the secrets of futurity, namely, the objections which sectaries in after ages would make to the divine doctrines. The Popes, in commending his works, showed not only their zeal for accurate and precise views of doctrine, but their just appreciation of the admirable method and deep reasoning of this most eminent theologian. "The Summa Theologiæ," says a writer in the British Critic, "is a mighty synthesis, in which Catholic doctrine is bound together in one consistent whole." "It was reserved for St. Thomas Aquinas to survey at one glance the whole of Christian truth as it had been developed in former ages, and to point out the relative bearings of the mighty mysteries to each other."* I cannot vindicate with the same confidence the homage rendered to Aristotle by the schools of the Middle Ages; yet, although blind deference for the dicta of the Stagyrite may have prevented the advancement of science, it cannot be thought that the study of his works, which are learned and profound, was in itself favorable to mental inertness. Urban IV. deserved well of mankind for laboring to revive philosophy, which for ages had been neglected. He enjoined on St. Thomas Aquinas to write commentaries on Aristotle, that the student of his works might not imbibe any error contrary to the doctrine of the sublime Master of Christians. The schools that admitted his authority, corrected his ethics by the maxims of the Gospel, and failed not to adore the Christian mysteries, notwithstanding the abstruseness or erroneousness of his metaphysical views. His sway, however, was that of an absolute monarch, in the realms of natural science. He was heard as an oracle, when he should only have been looked on as a guide; and the student, who should have sought to penetrate further into the recesses of nature, fancied he had reached the goal when he had understood what Aristotle had revealed of her secrets. It might be a matter of just exultation, that this excessive regard for individual authority has given place to a spirit of inquiry, which assumes nothing, and rests only on demonstration and experience, had not skepticism succeeded faith; the temerity of man extending the philosophic doubt to the very axioms of natural right, and to mysteries divinely revealed. A heathenish system, which abstracts from the fact that God has spoken, and, with the glimmering light of reason, scrutinizes the depths of His nature and works, has taken the place of the old philosophy; and men fancy themselves enlightened and intellectual, in proportion as they are destitute of the certain conviction of revealed truth. The whole structure of religion is placed by many on the sandy foundation of natural reason, unassisted and unenlightened. Number lxy., p. 110, 111. Whatever may be thought of the philosophy of the Middle Ages, we should not forget that the great science of legislation, both ecclesiastical and civil, was then effectually cultivated and promoted. The Popes, by their decrees on various cases submitted to their judgment, and the Councils of Bishops, combining their wisdom to remedy prevailing disorders and promote piety, had gradually formed a vast code of laws, of which collections had been made by various persons in the East and West; but it was reserved for Gratian, a Benedictine monk, in the middle of the twelfth century, to classify them, and adapt them to the use of students. This decree of Gratian, as the collection of canons has been rather strangely styled, was designed especially for the University of Bologna, to which the Popes likewise were thenceforward accustomed to address the subsequent collections. Those only who are unacquainted with the Canon Law can speak disparagingly of it. The Scripture is its foundation; the fathers of the Church have furnished many of its axioms; and its rules are the fruits of the experience of ages. It combines persuasion with authority, equity with law, and a due regard for forms with an inviolable respect for justice and right. It throws its shield over the humblest individuals, and bears aloft its mace to awe the proud. It tempers the exercise of power by the spirit of charity, sustains dignity without fostering pride; and, in the great variety of orders and offices throughout the Universal Church, presents a compact hierarchy, bound together by mysterious ties in indivisible unity. By encouraging this study, it is manifest that the Popes proved themselves the friends of order and justice, and took from the exercise of ecclesiastical authority all appearance of arbitrary power. In order to promote true liberty, which needs the salutary restraint of law, the Popes promoted the study of civil jurisprudence. The foundations of social order were laid in various enactments directed to maintain natural rights, and to restrain violence, by the censures of the Church: but it was their earnest desire to see the social fabric rise in just proportions, on the pillars of law; for which end they exerted their utmost influence to introduce everywhere its study. The civil law, as we are wont to designate the code used in the Roman empire, had been neglected and forgotten during the tumult and wars consequent on its dissolution, and usages derived from barbarian ancestors were the only rules of conduct acknowledged by the races that were spread over the greater part of southern Europe. It was revived in the Italian universities, especially in Bologna, where professors of great celebrity unravelled its intricacies with untiring ingenuity. Hallam observes: "The love of equal liberty and just laws in the Italian cities, rendered the profession of jurisprudence exceedingly honorable; the doctors of Bologna and other universities were frequently called to the office of podesta, or criminal judge, in those small republics; in Bologna itself they were officially members of the smaller or secret council; and their opinions, which they did not render gratuitously, were sought with the respect that had been shown at Rome to their ancient masters of the age of Severus."* Innocent IV., although he discountenanced the study of the civil law by clergymen, as likely to occasion the neglect of the more necessary qualifications for the sacred ministry, directed schools of law to be opened at Rome, and founded at Placentia a university, in which it was specially taught. Padua also was for some time the successful rival of Bologna in this science. The Cesarean code is acknowledged to contain the most just arrangement of the family and social relations; and if in any case its provisions were found severe, the mild spirit of the Church tempered its rigor, in the name of equity. Thus the confusion necessarily arising from the undefined customs of nations emerging from barbarism was remedied; and, instead of a variety of laws, usages, and tribunals, which threatened society with anarchy, the beauty and order of a comprehensive code were exemplified in all the relations of life. It was the wish and endeavor of several Popes to introduce into the universities the study of the Greek and Oriental languages. Long before the establishment of these institutions, they had labored to promote the study of Greek, in order more effectually to knit together the two great portions of the Church. Paul I., about the year 766, erected a monastery for monks of the Greek rite. Stephen IV., in 816, founded for them the monastery of St. Praxedes; and Leo IV. introduced them into the monastery of St. Stephen. Mills bears testimony to the efforts of Honorius IV., after the example of his predecessors, to promote the study of the Oriental tongues: "In the year 1285, Pope Honorius IV., in his design to convert the Saracens to Christianity, wished to establish schools at Paris, for the tuition of people in the Arabic and other Oriental languages, agreeably to the intentions of his predecessors. The Council of Vienne, in 1312, recommended the conversion of the infidels, and the re-establishment of schools, as the way to recover the Holy Land. It was accordingly ordered that there should be professors of the Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Arabic tongues in Rome, Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca; and that the learned should translate into Latin the best Arabic books."+ Mills, indeed, states that these measures were not effectually followed up; but this detracts nothing from the merit of the Popes who devised them, and who, but for the difficulties of the times, would have urged their execution. "The Roman Pontiffs," as Tiraboschi observes, "used every possible means to rescue men from ignorance, and probably would have done much more, had the sad state of the times allowed it; which was the cause of their not deriving that abundant fruit from their efforts which in better times they might have reaped." *Hallam, Literature of Europe, ch. i. n. 68. † History of the Crusades, ch. xv. p. 211. Note. The partial revival of learning, as well as the great advances toward social order, in the eleventh and succeeding centuries, may be traced to the efforts of the Popes, who sought, in every possible way, to establish law and order, and to promote every study that could improve the mind. This is virtually admitted by Hallam, who ascribes to Italy generally this intellectual and social renovation, which was in reality the work of the Pontiffs. "It may be said with some truth," he remarks, "that Italy supplied the fire, from which other nations in this first, as afterward in the second era of the revival of letters, lighted their own torches. Lanfranc, Anselm, Peter Lombard, the founder of systematic theology, in the twelfth century; Irnerius, the restorer of jurisprudence; Gratian, the author of the first compilation of canon law; the school of Salerno, that guided medical art in all countries: the first great work that makes an epoch in anatomy, are as truly and exclusively the boast of Italy, as the restoration of Greek literature, and of classical taste in the fifteenth century."* The same writer justly denies that in the thirteenth century learning declined: "In a general view," he says, "the thirteenth century was an age of activity and ardor, though not in every respect the best directed. The fertility of the modern languages in versification; the creation, we may almost say, of Italian and English in this period; the great concourse of students to the universities; the acute, and sometimes profound, reasoning of the scholastic philosophy, which was now in its most palmy state; the accumulation of knowledge, whether derived from original research or from Arabian sources of information, which we find in the geometers, the physicians, the natural philosophers of Europe; are sufficient to repel the charge of having fallen back, or even remained altogether stationary, in comparison with the preceding century." Of the period between 1250 and 1494, he says: "It is an age in many respects highly brilliant; the age of poetry and letters, of art, and of continual improvement." "It is a most childish fancy, certainly," observes Dr. Nevin, "to suppose that the revival of learning began properly with the sixteenth century. It dates at least from the eleventh; and there is abundance of evidence that the progress made between that and the age of the Reformation was quite as real and important as any that has taken place since. All sorts of learning were in active exercise before Protestantism came in, to share their credit with the Roman Church. So in the case of criticism, controversy, and the learned languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew."§ * Literature of Europe, ch. i. n. 81, vol. i. Middle Ages, ch. iii. part ii. Literature of Europe, ch. i. n. 86. "Modern Civilization." M. R., March, 1851. |