Chapter XXIV (20)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_CHAPTER XIV._

THE DOMINICANS AND THE UNIVERSITIES.

A.D. 1215-1300.