Chapter I (1)

ON THE GENERAL STATE OF LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE END OF
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

_Loss of Ancient Learning in the Fall of the Roman Empire--First Symptoms of its Revival--Improvement in the Twelfth Century--Universities and Scholastic Philosophy--Origin of Modern Languages--Early Poetry--Provençal, French, German, and Spanish--English Language and Literature--Increase of Elementary Knowledge--Invention of Paper--Roman Jurisprudence--Cultivation of Classical Literature--Its Decline after the Twelfth Century--Less visible in Italy--Petrarch._

|Retrospect of learning in middle ages necessary.|

1. Although the subject of these volumes does not comprehend the literary history of Europe, anterior to the commencement of the fifteenth century, a period as nearly coinciding as can be expected in any arbitrary division of time, with what is usually denominated the revival of letters, it appears necessary to prefix such a general retrospect of the state of knowledge for some preceding ages, as will illustrate its subsequent progress. In this, however, the reader is not to expect a regular history of mediæval literature, which would be nothing less than the extension of a scheme already, perhaps, too much beyond my powers of execution.[1]

[1] The subject of the following chapter has been already
treated by me in another work, the History of Europe during the
Middle Ages. I have not thought it necessary to repeat all that is
there said: the reader, if he is acquainted with those volumes, may
consider the ensuing pages partly as supplemental, and partly as
correcting the former where they contain anything inconsistent.

|Loss of learning in fall of Roman empire.|

|Boethius--his Consolation of Philosophy.|

2. Every one is well aware, that the establishment of the barbarian nations on the ruins of the Roman empire in the West, was accompanied or followed by an almost universal loss of that learning which had been accumulated in the Latin and Greek languages, and which we call ancient or classical; a revolution long prepared by the decline of taste and knowledge for several preceding ages, but accelerated by public calamities in the fifth century with overwhelming rapidity. The last of the ancients, and one who forms a link between the classical period of literature and that of the Middle Ages, in which he was a favourite author, is Boethius, a man of fine genius, and interesting both from his character and his death. It is well known, that, after filling the dignities of Consul and Senator in the court of Theodoric, he fell a victim to the jealousy of a sovereign, from whose memory, in many respects glorious, the stain of that blood has never been effaced. The Consolation of Philosophy, the chief work of Boethius, was written in his prison. Few books are more striking from the circumstances of their production. Last of the classic writers, in style not impure, though displaying too lavishly that poetic exuberance which had distinguished the two or three preceding centuries, in elevation of sentiment equal to any of the philosophers, and mingling a Christian sanctity with their lessons, he speaks from his prison in the swan-like tones of dying eloquence. The philosophy that consoled him in bonds, was soon required in the sufferings of a cruel death. Quenched in his blood, the lamp he had trimmed with a skilful hand gave no more light; the language of Tully and Virgil soon ceased to be spoken; and many ages were to pass away, before learned diligence restored its purity, and the union of genius with imitation taught a few modern writers to surpass in eloquence the latinity of Boethius.

|Rapid decline of learning in sixth century.|

3. The downfall of learning and eloquence, after the death of Boethius in 524, was inconceivably rapid. His contemporary Cassiodorus, Isidore of Seville, and Martianus Capella, the earliest, but worst, of the three, by very indifferent compilations, and that encyclopedic method which Heeren observes to be an usual concomitant of declining literature, superseded the use of the great ancient writers, with whom, indeed, in the opinion of Meiners, they were themselves acquainted only through similar productions of the fourth and fifth centuries. Isidore speaks of the rhetorical works of Cicero and Quintilian as too diffuse to be read.[2] The authorities upon which they founded their scanty course of grammar, logic, and rhetoric were chiefly obscure writers, no longer extant. But themselves became the oracles of the succeeding period, wherein the trivium and quadrivium, a course of seven sciences, introduced in the sixth century, were taught from their jejune treatises.[3]

[2] Meiners, Vergleichung der sitten, &c., des mittelalters mit denen
unsers Jahrhunderts, 3 vols. Hanover, 1793. Vol. ii p. 333.
Eichhorn, Allgemeine Geschichte der Cultur und Litteratur, vol. ii.
p. 29. Heeren, Geschichte des studium der classischen Litteratur.
Göttingen, 1797. These three books, with the Histoire Littéraire de
la France, Brucker’s History of Philosophy, Turner’s and Henry’s
Histories of England, Muratori’s43d Dissertation, Tiraboschi, and
some few others, who will appear in the notes, are my chief
authorities for the dark ages. But none, in a very short compass,
is equal to the third discourse of Fleury, in the 13th volume of
the 12mo edition of his Ecclesiastical History.

[3] The trivium contained grammar, logic, and rhetoric;
the quadrivium, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, as in
these two lines, framed to assist the memory:--

“GRAMM. loquitur; DIA. vera docet; RHET. verba colorat; MUS. canit;
AR. numerat; GEO. ponderat; AST. colit astra.”

But most of these sciences, as such, were hardly taught at all. The
arithmetic, for instance, of Cassiodorus or Capella is nothing but
a few definitions mingled with superstitious absurdities about the
virtues of certain numbers and figures. Meiners, ii. 339. Kästner,
Geschichte der Mathematik, p. 8.

The arithmetic of Cassiodorus occupies little more than two folio
pages, and does not contain one word of the common rules. The
geometry is much the same; in two pages we have some definitions
and axioms, but nothing farther. His logic is longer and better,
extending to sixteen folio pages. The grammar is very short and
trifling, the rhetoric the same.

|A portion remains in the church.|

4. This state of general ignorance lasted, with no very sensible difference, on a superficial view, for about five centuries, during which every sort of knowledge was almost wholly confined to the ecclesiastical order. But among them, though instances of gross ignorance were exceedingly frequent, the necessity of preserving the Latin language, in which the Scriptures, the canons, and other authorities of the church, and the regular liturgies, were written, and in which alone the correspondence of their well organised hierarchy could be conducted, kept flowing, in the worst seasons, a slender but living stream; and though, as has been observed, no great difference may appear, on a superficial view, between the seventh and eleventh centuries, it would easily be shown that, after the first prostration of learning, it was not long in giving signs of germinating afresh, and that a very slow and gradual improvement might be dated farther back than is generally believed.[4]

[4] M. Guizot confirms me in a conclusion to which I had previously
come, that the seventh century is the _nadir_ of the human mind in
Europe, and that its movement in advance began before the end of
the next, or, in other words, with Charlemagne. Hist. de la
Civilisation en France, ii. 345. A notion probably is current in
England, on the authority of the older writers, such as Cave or
Robertson, that the greatest darkness was later; which is true as
to England itself. It was in the seventh century that the
barbarians were first tempted to enter the church, and obtain
bishoprics, which had, in the first age after their invasion, been
reserved to Romans. Fleury, p. 18.

|Prejudices of the clergy against profane learning.|

5. Literature was assailed in its downfall by enemies from within as well as from without. A prepossession against secular learning had taken hold of those ecclesiastics who gave the tone to the rest; it was inculcated in the most extravagant degree by Gregory I., the founder, in a great measure, of the papal supremacy, and the chief authority in the dark ages;[5] it is even found in Alcuin, to whom so much is due, and it gave way very gradually in the revival of literature. In some of the monastic foundations, especially in that of Isidore, though himself a man of considerable learning, the perusal of heathen authors was prohibited. Fortunately Benedict, whose order became the most widely diffused, while he enjoined his brethren to read, copy, and collect books, was silent as to their nature, concluding, probably, that they would be wholly religious. This, in course of time, became the means of preserving and multiplying classical manuscripts.[6]

[5] Gregory has been often charged, on the authority of a passage in
John of Salisbury, with having burned a library of heathen authors.
He has been warmly defended by Tiraboschi, iii. 102. Even if the
assertion of our countryman were more positive, he is of too late
an age to demand much credit. Eichhorn, however, produces vehement
expressions of Gregory’s disregard for learning, and even for the
observance of grammatical rules. ii. 443.

[6] Heeren, p. 59. Eichhorn, ii. 11, 12, 40, 49, 50.

|Their usefulness in preserving it.|

6. If, however, the prejudices of the clergy stood in the way of what we more esteem than they did, the study of philological literature, it is never to be forgotten, that but for them the records of that very literature would have perished. If they had been less tenacious of their Latin liturgy, of the vulgate translation of Scripture, and of the authority of the fathers, it is very doubtful whether less superstition would have grown up, but we cannot hesitate to pronounce, that all grammatical learning would have been laid aside. The influence of the church upon learning, partly favourable, partly the reverse, forms the subject of Eichhorn’s second volume; whose comprehensive views and well directed erudition, as well as his position in a great protestant university, give much weight to his testimony. But we should remember also, that it is, as it were, by striking a balance that we come to this result; and that, in many respects, the clergy counteracted that progress of improvement which, in others, may be ascribed to their exertions.

|First appearances of reviving learning in Ireland and England.|

7. It is not unjust to claim for these islands the honour of having first withstood the dominant ignorance, and even led the way in the restoration of knowledge. As early as the sixth century, a little glimmer of light was perceptible in the Irish monasteries: and in the next, when France and Italy had sunk in deeper ignorance, they stood, not quite where national prejudice has sometimes placed them, but certainly in a very respectable position.[7] That island both drew students from the Continent, and sent forth men of comparative eminence into its schools and churches. I do not find, however, that they contributed much to the advance of secular, and especially of grammatical learning. This is rather due to England, and to the happy influence of Theodore, our first primate, an Asiatic Greek by birth, sent hither by the pope in 668, through whom and his companion Adrian, some knowledge of the Latin and even Greek languages was propagated in the Anglo-Saxon church. The Venerable Bede, as he was afterwards styled, early in the eighth century, surpasses every other name of our ancient literary annals; and, though little more than a diligent compiler from older writers, may perhaps be reckoned superior to any man the world (so low had the east sunk like the west) then possessed. A desire of knowledge grew up; the school of York, somewhat later, became respectable, before any liberal education had been established in France; and from this came Alcuin, a man fully equal to Bede in ability, though not, probably, in erudition.[8] By his assistance, and that of one or two Italians, Charlemagne laid in his vast dominions the foundations of learning, according to the standard of that age, which dispelled, at least for a time, some part of the gross ignorance wherein his empire had been enveloped.[9]

[7] Eichhorn, ii. 176, 188. See also the first volume of Moore’s
History of Ireland, where the claims of his country are stated
favourably, and with much learning and industry, but not with
extravagant partiality.

[8] Eichhorn, ii. 188, 207, 263. Hist. Litt. de la France, vols. iii.
and iv. Henry’s History of England, vol. iv. Turner’s History of
Anglo-Saxons. No one, however, has spoken so highly or so fully of
Alcuin’s merits as M. Guizot in his Histoire de la Civilisation en
France, vol. ii. p. 344-385.

[9] Besides the above authors, see, for the merits of Charlemagne as
a restorer of letters, his Life by Gaillard, and Andrés, Origine,
&c., della Litteratura, i. 165.

|Few schools before the age of Charlemagne.|

8. The praise of having originally established schools belongs to some bishops and abbots of the sixth century. They came in place of the imperial schools overthrown by the barbarians.[10] In the downfall of that temporal dominion, a spiritual aristocracy was providentially raised up, to save from extinction the remains of learning, and religion itself. Some of those schools seem to have been preserved in the south of Italy, though merely, perhaps, for elementary instruction. But in France the barbarism of the later Merovingian period was so complete, that, before the reign of Charlemagne, all liberal studies had come to an end.[11] Nor was Italy in a much better state at his accession, though he called two or three scholars from thence to his literary councils: the libraries were destroyed, the schools chiefly closed; wherever the Lombard dominion extended, illiteracy was its companion.[12]

[10] Eichhorn, ii. 5, 45. Guizot (vol. ii. p. 116) gives a list of
the episcopal schools in France before Charlemagne.

[11] Ante ipsum Carolum regem in Galliâ nullum fuerat studium
liberalium artium. Monachus Engolimensis, apud Launoy de Scholis
celebrioribus.

[12] Tiraboschi. Eichhorn. Heeren.

|Beneficial effects of those established by him.|

9. The cathedral and conventual schools, created or restored by Charlemagne, became the means of preserving that small portion of learning which continued to exist. They flourished most, having had time to produce their fruits, under his successors, Louis the Debonair, Lothaire, and Charles the Bald.[13] It was, doubtless, a fortunate circumstance, that the revolution of language had now gone far enough to render Latin unintelligible without grammatical instruction. Alcuin and others who, like him, endeavoured to keep ignorance out of the church, were anxious, we are told, to restore orthography; or, in other words, to prevent the written Latin from following the corruptions of speech. They brought back, also, some knowledge of better classical authors than had been in use. Alcuin’s own poems could at least not have been written by one unacquainted with Virgil:[14] the faults are numerous, but the style is not always inelegant; and from this time, though quotations from the Latin poets, especially Ovid and Virgil, and sometimes from Cicero, are not very frequent, they occur sufficiently to show that manuscripts had been brought to this side of the Alps. They were, however, very rare: Italy was still, as might be expected, the chief depository of ancient writings; and Gerbert speaks of the facility of obtaining them in that country.[15]

[13] The reader may find more of the history of these schools in a
little treatise by Launoy, De Scholis celebrioribus a Car. Mag. et
post Car. Mag. instauratis; also in Hist. Litt. de la France, vols.
iii. and iv.; Crevier, Hist. de l’Université de Paris, vol. i.;
Brucker’s Hist. Phil. iii.; Muratori, Dissert. xliii.; Tiraboschi,
iii. 158; Eichhorn, 261, 295; Heeren, and Fleury.

[14] A poem by Alcuin, De Pontificibus Ecclesiæ Eboracensis, is
published in Gale’s xv. Scriptores, vol. iii. Henry quotes a
passage from this, describing the books at York, in which we read
this line--

Acer Atistoteles, rhetor _atque_ Tullius ingens. Such a verse
could not have come from Alcuin; though he errs in the quantity of
syllables, where memory alone could set him right, he was not
ignorant of common rules. It is found in Gale:

Rhetor _quoque_ Tullius ingens.

[15] Nosti quot scriptores in urbibus aut in agris Italise passim
habeantur. Gerbert, Epist. 130, apud Heeren, p. 166.

|The tenth century more progressive than usually supposed.|

10. The tenth century used to be reckoned by mediæval historians the darkest part of this intellectual night. It was the iron age, which they vie with one another in describing as lost in the most consummate ignorance. This, however, is much rather applicable to Italy and England, than to France and Germany. The former were both in a deplorable state of barbarism. And there are, doubtless, abundant proofs of ignorance in every part of Europe. But, compared with the seventh and eighth centuries, the tenth was an age of illumination in France. And Meiners, who judged the middle ages somewhat, perhaps, too severely, but with a penetrating and comprehensive observation, of which there had been few instances, has gone so far as to say, that “in no age, perhaps, did Germany possess more learned and virtuous churchmen of the episcopal order, than in the latter half of the tenth, and beginning of the eleventh century.”[16] Eichhorn points out indications of a more extensive acquaintance with ancient writers in several French and German ecclesiastics of this period.[17] In the eleventh century, this continued to increase; and, towards its close, we find more vigorous and extensive attempts at throwing off the yoke of barbarous ignorance, and either retrieving what had been lost of ancient learning, or supplying its place by the original powers of the mind.

[16] Vergleichung der Sitten, ii. 384. The eleventh century he holds
far more advanced in learning than the sixth. Books were read in
the latter which no one looked at in the earlier. P. 399.

[17] Allg. Gesch. ii. 335, 398.

|Want of genius in the dark ages.|

11. It is the most striking circumstance in the literary annals of the dark ages, that they seem to us still more deficient in native, than in acquired ability. The mere ignorance of letters has sometimes been a little exaggerated, and admits of certain qualifications; but a tameness and mediocrity, a servile habit of merely compiling from others, runs through the writers of these centuries. It is not only that much was lost, but that there was nothing to compensate for it; nothing of original genius in the province of imagination; and but two extraordinary men, Scotus Erigena and Gerbert, may be said to stand out from the crowd in literature and philosophy. It must be added, as to the former, that his writings contain, at least in such extracts as I have seen, unintelligible rhapsodies of mysticism, in which, perhaps, he should not even have the credit of originality. Eichhorn, however, bestows great praise on Scotus; and the modern historians of philosophy treat him with respect.[18]

[18] Extracts from John Scotus Erigena will be found in Brucker, Hist.
Philosophiæ, vol. iii. p. 619; in Meiners, ii. 373; or more fully,
in Turner’s History of England, vol. i. 447, and Guizot, Hist. de
la Civilisation en France, iii. 137, 178. The reader may consult
also Buhle, Tennemann, and the article on Thomas Aquinas in the
Encyclopædia Metropolitana, ascribed to Dr. Hampden. But, perhaps,
Mr. Turner is the only one of them who has seen, or at least read
the metaphysical treatise of John Scotus, entitled De Divisione
Naturæ, in which alone we find his philosophy. It is very rare out
of England.

|Prevalence of bad taste.|

12. It would be a strange hypothesis, that no man endowed with superior gifts of nature lived in so many ages. Though the pauses of her fertility in these high endowments are more considerable, I am disposed to think, that any previous calculation of probabilities would lead us to anticipate, we could not embrace so extreme a paradox. Of military skill, indeed, and civil prudence, we are not now speaking. But, though no man appeared of genius sufficient to burst the fetters imposed by ignorance and bad taste, some there must have been, who, in a happier condition of literature, would have been its legitimate pride. We perceive, therefore, in the deficiencies of these writers, the effect which an oblivion of good models, and the prevalence of a false standard of merit, may produce in repressing the natural vigour of the mind. Their style, where they aim at eloquence, is inflated and redundant, formed upon the model of the later fathers, whom they chiefly read; a feeble imitation of that vicious rhetoric which had long overspread the latinity of the empire.[19]

[19] Fleury, l. xlv. § 19, and Troisième Discours (in vol. xiii.),
p. 6. Turner’s History of England, iv. 137, and History of
Anglo-Saxons, iii. 403. It is sufficient to look at any extracts
from these writers of the dark ages to see the justice of this
censure. Fleury, at the conclusion of his excellent third
discourse, justly and candidly apologises for these five ages, as
not wholly destitute of learning, and far less of virtue. They have
been, he says, outrageously depreciated by the humanists of the
sixteenth century, who thought good Latin superior to every thing
else; and by protestant writers, who laid the corruptions of the
church on its ignorance. Yet there is an opposite extreme into
which those who are disgusted with the commonplaces of superficial
writers sometimes run; an estimation of men by their
_relative_ superiority above their own times, so as to forget
their position in comparison with a fixed standard.

An eminent living writer, who has carried the philosophy of
history, perhaps, as far as any other, has lately endeavoured, at
considerable length, to vindicate in some measure the intellectual
character of this period. (Guizot, vol. ii. p. 123-224.) It is with
reluctance that I ever differ from M. Guizot; but the passages
adduced by him, (especially if we exclude those of the fifth
century, the poems of Avitus, and the homilies of Cæsarius,) do not
appear adequate to redeem the age by any signs of genius they
display. It must always be a question of degree; for no one is
absurd enough to deny the existence of a relative superiority of
talent, or the power of expressing moral emotions, as well as
relating facts, with some warmth and energy. The legends of saints,
an extensive though quite neglected portion of the literature of
the dark ages, to which M. Guizot has had the merit of directing
our attention, may probably contain many passages, like those he
has quoted, which will be read with interest; and it is no more
than justice, that he has given them in French, rather than in that
half-barbarous Latin, which, though not essential to the author’s
mind, never fails, like an unbecoming dress, to show the gifts of
nature at a disadvantage. But the questions still recur: Is this in
itself excellent? Would it indicate, wherever we should meet with
it, powers of a high order? Do we not make a tacit allowance in
reading it, and that very largely, for the mean condition in which
we know the human mind to have been placed at the period? Does it
instruct us, or give us pleasure?

In what M. Guizot has said of the moral influence of these
legends, in harmonising a lawless barbarian race (p. 157), I
should be sorry not to concur: it is a striking instance of that
candid and catholic spirit with which he has always treated the
mediæval church.

|Deficiency of poetical talent.|

13. It might naturally be asked, whether fancy and feeling were extinct among the people, though a false taste might reign in the cloister. Yet it is here that we find the most remarkable deficiency, and could appeal scarce to the vaguest tradition, or the most doubtful fragment, in witness of any poetical talent worthy of notice, except a very little in the Teutonic languages. The Anglo-Saxon poetry has occasionally a wild spirit, rather impressive, though it is often turgid and always rude. The Scandinavian, such as the well-known song of Regner Lodbrog, if that be as old as the period before us, which is now denied, displays a still more poetical character. Some of the earliest German poetry, the song on the victory of Louis III. over the Normans in 883, and, still more, the poem in praise of Hanno, archbishop of Cologne, who died in 1075, are warmly extolled by Herder and Bouterwek.[20] In the Latin verse of these centuries, we find, at best, a few lines among many, which show the author to have caught something of a classical style: the far greater portion is very bad.[21]

|Imperfect state of language may account for this.|

14. The very imperfect state of language, as an instrument of refined thought, in the transition of Latin to the French, Castilian, and Italian tongues, seems the best means of accounting in any satisfactory manner for this stagnation of the poetical faculties. The delicacy that distinguishes in words the shades of sentiment, the grace that brings them to the soul of the reader with the charm of novelty united to clearness, could not be attainable in a colloquial jargon, the offspring of ignorance, and indeterminate possibly in its forms, which those who possessed any superiority of education would endeavour to avoid. We shall soon have occasion to advert again to this subject.

[20] Herder, Zerstreute Blätter, vol. v. p. 169, 184. Heinsius,
Lehrbuch der Deutschen Sprachwissenschaft, iv. 29. Bouterwek
Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit, vol. ix. p. 78, 82. The
author is unknown; aber dem unbekannten sichert sein werk die
unsterblichkeit, says the latter critic. One might raise a question
as to the capacity of an anonymous author to possess immortal fame.
Nothing equal to this poem, he says occurs in the earlier German
poetry: it is an outpouring of genius, not without faults, but full
of power and feeling: the dialect is still Frankish, but approaches
to Swabian. Herder calls it “a truly Pindaric song.” He has given
large extracts from it in the volume above quoted, which glows with
his own fine sense of beauty.

[21] Tiraboschi supposes Latin versifiers to have been common in Italy.
Le Città al pari che le campagne risonavan di versi. iii. 207.

The specimens he afterwards produces, p. 219, are miserable.
Hroswitha, abbess of Gandersheim, has, perhaps, the greatest
reputation among these Latin poets. She wrote, in the tenth
century, sacred comedies in imitation of Terence, which I have not
seen, and other poetry which I saw many years since, and thought
very bad. Alcuin has now and then a Virgilian cadence.

|Improvement at beginning of twelfth century.|

|Leading circumstances in progress of learning.|

15. At the beginning of the twelfth century, we enter upon a new division in the literary history of Europe. From this time we may deduce a line of men, conspicuous, according to the standard of their times, in different walks of intellectual pursuit, and the commencement of an interesting period, the later Middle Ages; in which, though ignorance was very far from being cleared away, the natural powers of the mind were developed in considerable activity. We shall point out separately the most important circumstances of this progress; not all of them concurrent in efficacy with each other, for they were sometimes opposed, but all tending to arouse Europe from indolence, and to fix its attention on literature. These are, 1st. The institution of universities, and the methods pursued in them: 2d. The cultivation of the modern languages, followed by the multiplication of books, and the extension of the art of writing: 3d. The investigation of the Roman law: And lastly, the return to the study of the Latin language in its ancient models of purity. We shall thus come down to the fifteenth century, and judge better of what is meant by the revival of letters, when we apprehend with more exactness their previous condition.

|Origin of the university of Paris.|

16. Among the Carlovingian schools it is doubtful whether we can reckon one at Paris; and though there are some traces of public instruction in that city about the end of the ninth century, it is not certain that we can assume it to be more ancient. For two hundred years more, indeed, it can only be said, that some persons appear to have come to Paris for the purposes of study.[22] The commencement of this famous university, like that of Oxford, has no record. But it owes its first reputation to the sudden spread of what is usually called the scholastic philosophy.

[22] Crevier, i. 13-75.

|Modes of treating the science of theology.|

17. There had been hitherto two methods of treating theological subjects: one that of the fathers, who built them on scripture, illustrated and interpreted by their own ingenuity, and in some measure also on the traditions and decisions of the church; the other, which is said by the Benedictines of St. Maur to have grown up about the eighth century (though Mosheim seems to refer it to the sixth), using the fathers themselves, that is the chief writers of the first six hundred years, who appear now to have acquired that distinctive title of honour, as authority, conjointly with scripture and ecclesiastical determinations, by means of extracts or compends of their writings. Hence about this time we find more frequent instances of a practice which had begun before--that of publishing _Loci communes_ or _Catenæ patrum_, being only digested extracts from the authorities under systematic heads.[23] Both these methods were usually called positive theology.

[23] Fleury, 3me discours. p. 48. (Hist. Ecclés. vol. xiii. 12mo ed.)
Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 147. Mosheim, in Cent. vi. et post.
Muratori, Antichità Italiane, dissert. xliii. p. 610. In this
dissertation, it may be observed by the way, Muratori gives the
important fragment of Caius, a Roman presbyter before the end of
the second century, on the canon of the New Testament, which has
not been quoted, as far as I know, by any English writer, nor,
which is more remarkable, by Michaelis. It will be found in
Eichhorn, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, iv. 35. The Latinity is
very indifferent for the second century; yet it cannot be much
later, and may possibly be suspected of being a translation from a
Greek original.

Upon this great change in the theology of the church, which
consisted principally in establishing the authority of the fathers,
the reader may see M. Guizot, Hist. de la Civilisation, iii. 121.
There seem to be but two causes for this: the one, a consciousness
of ignorance and inferiority to men of so much talent as Augustin
and a few others; the other, a constantly growing jealousy of the
free exercise of reason, and a determination to keep up unity of
doctrine.

|Scholastic philosophy; its origin.|

|Roscelin.|

18. The scholastic theology was a third method; it was in its general principle, an alliance between faith and reason; an endeavour to arrange the orthodox system of the church, such as authority had made it, according to the rules and methods of the Aristotelian dialectics, and sometimes upon premises supplied by metaphysical reasoning. Lanfranc and Anselm made much use of this method in the controversy with Berenger as to transubstantiation; though they did not carry it so far as their successors in the next century.[24] The scholastic philosophy seems chiefly to be distinguished from this theology by a larger infusion of metaphysical reasoning, or by its occasional inquiries into subjects not immediately related to revealed articles of faith.[25] The origin of this philosophy, fixed by Buhle and Tennemann in the ninth century, or the age of Scotus Erigena, has been brought down by Tiedemann, Meiners, and Hampden,[26] so low as the thirteenth. But Roscelin of Compiegne, a little before 1100, may be accounted so far the founder of the schoolmen, that the great celebrity of their disputations, and the rapid increase of students, is to be traced to the influence of his theories, though we have no proof that he ever taught at Paris. Roscelin also, having been the first to revive the famous question as to the reality of universal ideas, marks, on every hypothesis, a new era in the history of that philosophy. The principle of the schoolmen in their investigations was the expanding, developing, and if possible illustrating and clearing from objection, the doctrines of natural and revealed religion in a dialectical method and by dint of the subtlest reasoning. The questions which we deem altogether metaphysical, such as that concerning universal ideas, became theological in their hands.[27]

[24] Hist. Litt. de la France, ubi suprà. Tennemann, Manuel de l’Hist.
de la Philosophie, i. 332. Crevier, i. 100. Andrés, ii. 15.

[25] A Jesuit of the sixteenth century thus shortly and clearly
distinguishes the positive from the scholastic, and both from
natural or metaphysical theology. At nos theologiam scholasticam
dicimus quæ certiori methodo et rationibus imprimis ex divina
scriptura ac traditionibus seu decretis patrum in conciliis
definitis veritatem eruit, ac discutiendo comprobat. Quod cum in
scholis præcipue argumentando comparetur, id nomen sortita est.
Quamobrem differt a positiva theologia, non re sed modo,
quemadmodum item alia ratione non est eadem cum naturali theologia,
quo nomine philosophi metaphysicen nominarunt. Positiva igitur non
ita res disputandas proponit, sed pæne sententiam ratam et firmam
ponit, præcipue in pietatem incumbens. Versatur autem et ipsa in
explicatione Scripturæ sacræ, traditionum, conciliorum et sanctorum
patrum. Naturalis porro theologia Dei naturam per naturæ argumenta
et rationes inquirit, cum supernaturalis, quam scholasticam
dicimus, Dei ejusdem naturam, vim, proprietates, cæterasque res
divinas per ea principia vestigat, quæ sunt hominibus revelata
divinitas. Possevin, Bibliotheca Selecta, l. 3. c. i.

Both positive and scholastic theology were much indebted to Peter
Lombard, whose Liber Sententiarum is a digest of propositions
extracted from the fathers, with no attempt to reconcile them. It
was therefore a prodigious magazine of arms for disputation.

[26] The first of these, according to Tennemann, begins the list of
schoolmen with Hales; the two latter agree in conferring that
honour on Albertus Magnus. Brucker inclines to Roscelin, and has
been followed by others. It may be added, that Tennemann divides
the scholastic philosophy into four periods, which Roscelin, Hales,
Ockham, and the sixteenth century terminate; and Buhle into three,
ending with Roscelin, Albertus Magnus, and the sixteenth century.
It is evident, however, that, by beginning the scholastic series
with Roscelin, we exclude Lanfranc and even Anselm; the latter of
whom was certainly a deep metaphysician; since to him we owe the
subtle argument for the existence of a Deity, which Des Cartes
afterwards revived. Buhle, 679. This argument was answered at the
time by one Gaunelo; so that metaphysical reasonings were not
unknown in the eleventh century. Tennemann, 344.

[27] Brucker, though he contains some useful extracts, and tolerable
general views, was not well versed in the scholastic writers.
Meiners (in his Comparison of the Middle Ages) is rather
superficial as to their philosophy, but presents a lively picture
of the schoolmen in relation to literature and manners. He has
also, in the Transactions of the Göttingen Academy, vol. xii. pp.
26-47, given a succinct, but valuable, sketch of the Nominalist and
Realist Controversy. Tenneman, with whose Manuel de la Philosophie
alone I am conversant, is supposed to have gone very deeply into
the subject in his larger history of philosophy. Buhle appears
superficial. Dr. Hampden, in his Life of Thomas Aquinas, and view
of the scholastic philosophy, published in the Encyclopædia
Metropolitana, has the merit of having been the only Englishman,
past or present, so far as I know, since the revival of letters,
who has penetrated far into the wilderness of scholasticism. Mr.
Sharon Turner has given some extracts in the fourth volume of his
History of England.

|Progress of scholasticism; increase of university of Paris.|

19. Next in order of time to Roscelin came William of Champeaux, who opened a school of logic at Paris in 1109; and the university can only deduce the regular succession of its teachers from that time.[28] But his reputation was soon eclipsed, and his hearers drawn away by a more potent magician, Peter Abelard, who taught in the schools of Paris in the second decade of the twelfth century. Wherever Abelard retired, his fame and his disciples followed him; in the solitary walls of the Paraclete, as in the thronged streets of the capital.[29] And the impulse given was so powerful, the fascination of a science which now appears arid and unproductive was so intense, that from this time for many generations it continued to engage the most intelligent and active minds. Paris, about the middle of the twelfth century, in the words of the Benedictines of St. Maur, to whom we owe the Histoire Littéraire de la France, was another Athens; the number of students (hyperbolically speaking, as we must presume) exceeding that of the citizens. This influx of scholars induced Philip Augustus, some time afterwards, to enlarge the boundaries of the city; and this again brought a fresh harvest of students, for whom, in the former limits, it had been difficult to find lodgings. Paris was called, as Rome had been, the country of all the inhabitants of the world, and we may add, as, for very different reasons, it still claims to be.[30]

[28] Crevier, i. 3.

[29] Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. xii. Brucker, iii. 750.

[30] Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 78. Crevier, i. 274.

|Universities founded.|

|Oxford.|

20. Colleges with endowments for poor scholars were founded in the beginning of the thirteenth century, or even before, at Paris and Bologna, as they were afterwards at Oxford and Cambridge, by munificent patrons of letters; charters incorporating the graduates and students collectively under the name of universities were granted by sovereigns, with privileges perhaps too extensive, but such as indicated the dignity of learning, and the countenance it received.[31] It ought, however, to be remembered, that these foundations were not the cause, but the effect of that increasing thirst for knowledge, or the semblance of knowledge, which had anticipated the encouragement of the great. The schools of Charlemagne were designed to lay the basis of a learned education, for which there was at that time no sufficient desire.[32] But in the twelfth century, the impetuosity with which men rushed to that source of what they deemed wisdom, the great university of Paris, did not depend upon academical privileges or eleemosynary stipends, which came afterwards, though these were undoubtedly very effectual in keeping it up. The university created patrons, and was not created by them. And this may be said also of Oxford and Cambridge in their incorporate character, whatever the former may have owed, if in fact it owed anything, to the prophetic munificence of Alfred. Oxford was a school of great resort in the reign of Henry II., though its first charter was only granted by Henry III. Its earlier history is but obscure, and depends chiefly on a suspicious passage in Ingulfus, against which we must set the absolute silence of other writers.[33] It became in the thirteenth century second only to Paris in the multitude of its students, and the celebrity of its scholastic disputations. England indeed, and especially through Oxford, could show more names of the first class in this line than any other country.[34]

[31] Fleury, xvii. 13, 17. Crevier, Tiraboschi, &c. A University,
universitas doctorum et scholarium, was so called either from its
incorporation, or from its professing to teach all subjects, as
some have thought. Meiners, ii. 405. Fleury, xvii. 15. This
excellent discourse of Fleury, the fifth, relates to the
ecclesiastical literature of the later middle ages.

[32] These schools, established by the Carlovingian princes in
convents and cathedrals, declined, as it was natural to expect,
with the rise of the universities. Meiners, ii. 406. Those of
Paris, Oxford, and Bologna contained many thousand students.

[33] Giraldus Cambrensis, about 1180, seems the first unequivocal
witness to the resort of students to Oxford, as an established seat
of instruction. But it is certain that Vacarius read there on the
civil law in 1149, which affords a presumption that it was already
assuming the character of a university. John of Salisbury, I think,
does not mention it. In a former work, I gave more credence to its
foundation by Alfred than I am now inclined to do. Bologna, as well
as Paris, was full of English students about 1200. Meiners, ii. 428.

[34] Wood expatiates on what he thought the glorious age of the
university. “What university, I pray, can produce an invincible
Hales, an admirable Bacon, an excellent well-grounded Middleton, a
subtle Scotus, an approved Burley, a resolute Baconthorpe, a
singular Ockham, a solid and industrious Holcot, and a profound
Bradwardin? all which persons flourished within the compass of one
century. I doubt that neither Paris, Bologna, or Rome, that grand
mistress of the Christian world, or any place else, can do what the
renowned Bellosite (Oxford) hath done. And without doubt all
impartial men may receive it for an undeniable truth, that the most
subtle arguing in school divinity did take its beginning in England
and from Englishmen; and that also from thence it went to Paris,
and other parts of France, and at length into Italy, Spain, and
other nations, as is by one observed. So that though Italy boasteth
that Britain takes her Christianity first from Rome, England may
truly maintain that from her (immediately by France) Italy first
received her school divinity.” Vol. i. p. 159, A.D. 1168.

|Collegiate foundations not derived from the Saracens.|

21. Andrés is inclined to derive the institution of collegiate foundations in universities from the Saracens. He finds no trace of these among the ancients; while in several cities of Spain, as Cordova, Granada, Malaga, colleges for learned education both existed and obtained great renown. These were sometimes unconnected with each other, though in the same city, nor had they, of course, those privileges which were conferred in Christendom. They were therefore more like ordinary schools of gymnasia than universities; and it is difficult to perceive that they suggested anything peculiarly characteristic of the latter institutions, which are much more reasonably considered as the development of a native germ, planted by a few generous men, above all by Charlemagne, in that inclement season which was passing away.[35]

[35] Andrés, ii. 129.

|Scholastic philosophy promoted by Mendicant Friars.|

22. The institution of the Mendicant orders of friars, soon after the beginning of the thirteenth century, caused a fresh accession, in enormous numbers, to the ecclesiastical state, and gave encouragement to the scholastic philosophy. Less acquainted, generally, with grammatical literature than the Benedictine monks, less accustomed to collect and transcribe books, the disciples of Francis and Dominic betook themselves to disputation, and found a substitute for learning in their own ingenuity and expertness.[36] The greatest of the schoolmen were the Dominican Thomas Aquinas, and the Franciscan Duns Scotus. They were founders of rival sects, which wrangled with each other for two or three centuries. But the authority of their writings, which were incredibly voluminous, especially those of the former,[37] impeded, in some measure, the growth of new men; and we find, after the middle of the fourteenth century, a diminution of eminent names in the series of the schoolmen, the last of whom, that is much remembered in modern times, was William Ockham.[38] He revived the sect of the Nominalists, formerly instituted by Roscelin, and, with some important variances of opinion, brought into credit by Abelard, but afterwards overpowered by the great weight of leading schoolmen on the opposite side,--that of the Realists. The disciples of Ockham, as well as himself, being politically connected with the party in Germany unfavourable to the high pretensions of the Court of Rome, though they became very numerous in the universities, passed for innovators in ecclesiastical, as well as philosophical principles. Nominalism itself indeed was reckoned by the adverse sect cognate to heresy. No decline however seems to have been as yet perceptible in the spirit of disputation, which probably, at the end of the fourteenth century, went on as eagerly at Paris, Oxford, and Salamanca, the great scenes of that warfare, as before; and which, in that age, gained much ground in Germany, through the establishment of several universities.

[36] Meiners, ii. 615, 629.

[37] The works of Thomas Aquinas are published in seventeen volumes
folio; Rome, 1570; those of Duns Scotus in twelve; Lyon, 1639. It
is presumed that much was taken down from their oral lectures; some
part of these volumes is of doubtful authenticity. Meiners, ii.
718. Biogr. Univ.

[38] “In them (Scotus and Ockham), and in the later schoolmen
generally, down to the period of the reformation, there is more of
the parade of logic, a more formal examination of arguments, a more
burthensome importunity of syllogising, with less of the
philosophical power of arrangement and distribution of the subject
discussed. The dryness again irreparable from the scholastic method
is carried to excess in the later writers, and perspicuity of style
is altogether neglected.” Encyclopædia Metropol. part xxxvii. p. 805

The introduction of this excess of logical subtlety, carried to the
most trifling sophistry, is ascribed by Meiners to Petrus Hispanus
afterwards Pope John XXI., who died in 1271. ii. 705. Several
curious specimens of scholastic folly are given by him in this
place. They brought a discredit upon the name, which has adhered to
it, and involved men of fine genius, such as Aquinas himself, in
the common reproach.

The barbarism of style, which amounted almost to a new language,
became more intolerable in Scotus and his followers than it had
been in the older schoolmen. Meiners, 722. It may be alleged, in
excuse of this, that words are meant to express precise ideas; and
that it was as impossible to write metaphysics in good Latin, as
the modern naturalists have found it to describe plants and
animals.

|Character of this philosophy.|

|It prevails least in Italy.|

23. Tenneman has fairly stated the good and bad of the scholastic philosophy. It gave rise to a great display of address, subtlety, and sagacity in the explanation and distinction of abstract ideas, but at the same time to many trifling and minute speculations, to a contempt of positive and particular knowledge, and to much unnecessary refinement.[39] Fleury well observes, that the dry technical style of the schoolmen, affecting a geometrical method and closeness, is in fact more prolix and tedious, than one more natural, from its formality in multiplying objections and answers.[40] And as their reasonings commonly rest on disputable postulates, the accuracy they affect is of no sort of value. But their chief offences were the interposing obstacles to the revival of polite literature, and to the free expansion of the mind. Italy was the land where the schoolmen had least influence; many of the Italians who had a turn for those discussions repaired to Paris,[41] and it was accordingly from Italy that the light of philological learning spread over Europe. Public schools of theology were not opened in Italy till after 1360.[42] Yet we find the disciples of Averroes numerous in the university of Padua about that time.

[39] Manuel de la Philosophie, i. 337. Eichhorn, ii. 396.

[40] See 5me discours, xvii. 30-50.

[41] Tiraboschi, v. 115.

[42] Id. 137, 160. De Sade, Vie de Pétrarque, iii. 757.

|Literature in modern languages.|

24. II. The universities were chiefly employed upon this scholastic theology and metaphysics, with the exception of Bologna, which dedicated its attention to the civil law, and of Montpelier, already famous as a school of medicine. The laity in general might have remained in as gross barbarity as before, while topics so removed from common utility were treated in an unknown tongue. We must therefore look to the rise of a truly native literature in the several languages of western Europe, as a more essential cause of its intellectual improvement; and this will render it necessary to give a sketch of the origin and early progress of those languages and that new literature.

|Origin of the French, Spanish, and Italian languages.|

25. No one can require to be informed, that the Italian, Spanish, and French languages are the principal of many dialects deviating from each other in the gradual corruption of the Latin, once universally spoken by the subjects of Rome in her western provinces. They have undergone this process of change in various degrees, but always from similar causes; partly from the retention of barbarous words belonging to their aboriginal languages, or the introduction of others through the settlement of the northern nations in the empire; but in a far greater proportion, from ignorance of grammatical rules, or from vicious pronunciation and orthography. It has been the labour of many distinguished writers to trace the source and channels of these streams which have supplied both the literature and the common speech of the south of Europe; and perhaps not much will be hereafter added to researches which, in the scarcity of extant documents, can never be minutely successful. Du Cange, who led the way in the admirable preface to his Glossary; Le Bœuf, and Bonamy, in several memoirs among the transactions of the Academy of Inscriptions about the middle of the last century; Muratory, in his 32d, 33d, and 40th dissertation on Italian antiquities; and, with more copious evidence and successful industry than any other, M. Raynouard, in the first and sixth volume of his Choix des Poesies des Troubadours, have collected as full a history of the formation of these languages as we could justly require.

|Corruption of colloquial Latin in the lower empire.|

26. The pure Latin language, as we read it in the best ancient authors, possesses a complicated syntax, and many elliptical modes of expression which give vigour and elegance to style, but are not likely to be readily caught by the people. If, however, the citizens of Rome had spoken it with entire purity, it is to be remembered, that Latin, in the later times of the republic, or under the empire, was not like the Greek of Athens, or the Tuscan of Florence, the idiom of a single city, but a language spread over countries in which it was not originally vernacular, and imposed by conquest upon many parts of Italy, as it was afterwards upon Spain and Gaul. Thus we find even early proofs, that solecisms of grammar, as well as barbarous phrases, or words unauthorised by use of polite writers, were very common in Rome itself; and in every succeeding generation, for the first centuries after the Christian æra, these became more frequent and inevitable. A vulgar Roman dialect, called _quotidianus_ by Quintilian, _pedestris_ by Vegetius, _usualis_ by Sidonius, is recognised as distinguishable from the pure Latinity to which we give the name of classical. But the more ordinary appellation of this inferior Latin was _rusticus_; it was the country language or _patois_, corrupted in every manner, and from the popular want of education, incapable of being restored, because it was not perceived to be erroneous.[43] Whatever may have been the case before the fall of the Western Empire, we have reason to believe that in the sixth century the colloquial Latin had undergone, at least in France, a considerable change even with the superior class of ecclesiastics. Gregory of Tours confesses that he was habitually falling into that sort of error, the misplacing inflexions and prepositions, which constituted the chief original difference of the rustic tongue from pure Latinity. In the opinion, indeed, of Raynouard, if we take his expressions in their natural meaning, the Romance language, or that which afterwards was generally called Provençal, is as old as the establishment of the Franks in Gaul. But this is, perhaps, not reconcileable with the proofs we have of a longer continuance of Latin. In Italy, it seems probable that the change advanced more slowly. Gregory the Great, however, who has been reckoned as inveterate an enemy of learning as ever lived, speaks with superlative contempt of a regard to grammatical purity in writing. It was a crime in his eyes for a clergyman to teach grammar; yet the number of laymen who were competent or willing to do so had become very small.

[43] Du Cange, preface, pp. 13, 29. Rusticum igitur sermonem non
humiliorem paulo duntaxat, et qui sublimi opponitur, appellabant;
sed eum etiam, qui magis reperet, barbarismis solæcismisque
scateret, quam apposite Sidonius squamam sermonis Celtici, &c.,
vocat.--Rusticum, qui nullis vel grammaticæ vel orthographiæ
legibus astringitur. This is nearly a definition of the early
Romance language; it was Latin without grammar or orthography.

The squama sermonis Celtici, mentioned by Sidonius, has led Gray,
in his valuable remarks on rhyme, vol. ii. p. 53, as it has some
others, into the erroneous notion that a real Celtic dialect, such
as Cæsar found in Gaul, was still spoken. But this is incompatible
with the known history of the French language; and Sidonius is one
of those loose declamatory writers, whose words are never to be
construed in their proper meaning: the common fault of Latin
authors from the third century. Celticus sermo was the patois of
Gaul, which, having once been Gallia Celtica, he still called such.
That a few proper names, or similar words in French are Celtic, is
well known.

Quintilian has said, that a vicious orthography must bring on a
vicious pronunciation. Quod male scribitur, male etiam dici necesse
est. But the converse of this is still more true, and was in fact
the great cause of giving the new Romance language its
_visible_ form.