View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages Part 41

[824] No one probably would choose to rely on a pa.s.sage found in one ma.n.u.script of a.s.serius, which has all appearance of an interpolation. It is evident from an anecdote in Wood's History of Oxford, vol. i. p. 23 (Gutch's edition), that Camden did not believe in the authenticity of this pa.s.sage, though he thought proper to insert it in the Britannia.

[825] 1 Gale, p. 75. The mention of Aristotle at so early a period might seem to throw some suspicion on this pa.s.sage. But it is impossible to detach it from the context; and the works of Aristotle intended by Ingulfus were translations of parts of his Logic by Boethius and Victorin. Brucker, p. 678. A pa.s.sage indeed in Peter of Blois's continuation of Ingulfus, where the study of Averroes is said to have taken place at _Cambridge_ some years before he was born, is of a different complexion, and must of course be rejected as spurious. In the Gesta Comitum Andegavensium, Fulk, count of Anjou, who lived about 920, is said to have been skilled Aristotelicis et Ciceronianis ratiocinationibus.

[The authenticity of Ingulfus has been called in question, not only by Sir Francis Palgrave, but by Mr. Wright. Biogr. Liter., Anglo-Norman Period, p. 29. And this implies, apparently, the spuriousness of the continuation ascribed to Peter of Blois, in which the pa.s.sage about Averroes throws doubt upon the whole. I have, in the Introduction to the History of Literature, retracted the degree of credence here given to the foundation of the university of Oxford by Alfred. If Ingulfus is not genuine, we have no proof of its existence as a school of learning before the middle of the twelfth century.]

[826] It may be remarked, that John of Salisbury, who wrote in the first years of Henry II.'s reign, since his Polycraticon is dedicated to Becket, before he became archbishop, makes no mention of Oxford, which he would probably have done if it had been an eminent seat of learning at that time.

[827] Wood's Hist. and Antiquities of Oxford, p. 177. The Benedictines of St. Maur say, that there was an eminent school of canon law at Oxford about the end of the twelfth century, to which many students repaired from Paris. Hist. Litt. de la France, t. ix. p. 216.

[828] Tiraboschi, t. iii. p. 259, et alibi; Muratori, Dissert. 43.

[829] "But among these," says Anthony Wood, "a company of varlets, who pretended to be scholars, shuffled themselves in, and did act much villany in the university by thieving, whoring, quarrelling, &c. They lived under no discipline, neither had they tutors; but only for fashion's sake would sometimes thrust themselves into the schools at ordinary lectures, and when they went to perform any mischief, then would they be accounted scholars, that so they might free themselves from the jurisdiction of the burghers." p. 206. If we allow three varlets to one scholar, the university will still have been very fully frequented by the latter.

[830] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 47. Azarius, about the middle of the fourteenth century, says the number was about 13,000 in his time.

Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital. t. xvi. p. 325.

[831] Villaret, Hist. de France, t. xvi. p. 341. This may perhaps require to be taken with allowance. But Paris owes a great part of its buildings on the southern bank of the Seine to the university. The students are said to have been about 12,000 before 1480. Crevier, t. iv.

p. 410.

[832] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 43 and 46.

[833] The earliest authentic mention of Cambridge as a place of learning, if I mistake not, is in Matthew Paris, who informs us, that in 1209, John having caused three clerks of Oxford to be hanged on suspicion of murder, the whole body of scholars left that city, and emigrated, some to Cambridge, some to Reading, in order to carry on their studies (p. 191, edit. 1684). But it may be conjectured with some probability, that they were led to a town so distant as Cambridge by the previous establishment of academical instruction in that place. The incorporation of Cambridge is in 1231 (15 Hen. III.), so that there is no great difference in the legal antiquity of our two universities.

[834] Crevier, Hist. de l'Universite de Paris, t. ii. p. 216; t. iii. p.

140.

[835] Pfeffel, Abrege Chronologique de l'Hist. de l'Allemagne, p. 550, 607.

[836] Rymer, t. vi. p. 292.

[837] Crevier, t. ii. p. 398.

[838] Crevier and Villaret, pa.s.sim.

[839] Brucker, Hist. Crit. Philosophiae, t. iii. p. 678.

[840] Id. Ibid. Tiraboschi conceives that the translations of Aristotle made by command of Frederic II. were directly from the Greek, t. iv. p.

145; and censures Brucker for the contrary opinion. Buhle, however (Hist. de la Philosophie Moderne, t. i. p. 696), appears to agree with Brucker. It is almost certain that versions were made from the Arabic Aristotle: which itself was not immediately taken from the Greek, but from a Syriac medium. Ginguene, Hist. Litt. de l'Italie, t. i. p. 212 (on the authority of M. Langles).

It was not only a knowledge of Aristotle that the scholastics of Europe derived from the Arabic language. His writings had produced in the flourishing Mohammedan kingdoms a vast number of commentators, and of metaphysicians trained in the same school. Of these Averroes, a native of Cordova, who died early in the thirteenth century, was the most eminent. It would be curious to examine more minutely than has. .h.i.therto been done the original writings of these famous men, which no doubt have suffered in translation. A pa.s.sage from Al Gazel, which Mr. Turner has rendered from the Latin, with all the disadvantage of a double remove from the author's words, appears to state the argument in favour of that cla.s.s of Nominalists, called Conceptualists, with more clearness and precision than any thing I have seen from the schoolmen. Al Gazel died in 1126, and consequently might have suggested this theory to Abelard, which however is not probable. Turner's Hist. of Engl. vol. i. p. 513.

[841] Brucker, Hist. Crit Philosophiae, t. iii. I have found no better guide than Brucker. But he confesses himself not to have read the original writings of the scholastics; an admission which every reader will perceive to be quite necessary. Consequently, he gives us rather a verbose declamation against their philosophy than any clear view of its character. Of the valuable works lately published in Germany on the history of philosophy, I have only seen that of Buhle, which did not fall into my hands till I had nearly written these pages. Tiedemann and Tennemann are I believe, still untranslated.

[842] Buhle, Hist. de la Philos. Moderne, t. i. p. 723. This author raises upon the whole a favourable notion of Anselm and Aquinas; but he hardly notices any other.

[843] Mr. Turner has with his characteristic spirit of enterprise examined some of the writings of our chief English schoolmen, Duns Scotus and Ockham (Hist of Eng. vol. i.), and even given us some extracts from them. They seem to me very frivolous, so far as I can collect their meaning. Ockham in particular falls very short of what I had expected; and his nominalism is strangely different from that of Berkeley. We can hardly reckon a man in the right, who is so by accident, and through sophistical reasoning. However, a well-known article in the Edinburgh Review, No. liii. p. 204, gives, from Tennemann, a more favourable account of Ockham.

Perhaps I may have imagined the scholastics to be more forgotten than they really are. Within a short time I have met with four living English writers who have read parts of Thomas Aquinas; Mr. Turner, Mr.

Berington, Mr. Coleridge, and the Edinburgh Reviewer. Still I cannot bring myself to think that there are four more in this country who can say the same. Certain portions, however, of his writings are still read in the course of instruction of some Catholic universities.

[I leave this pa.s.sage as it was written about 1814. But it must be owned with regard to the schoolmen, as well as the jurists, that I at that time underrated, or at least did not antic.i.p.ate, the attention which their works have attracted in modern Europe, and that the pa.s.sage in the text is more applicable to the philosophy of the eighteenth century than of the present. For several years past the metaphysicians of Germany and France have brushed the dust from the scholastic volumes; Tennemann and Buhle, Degerando, but more than all Cousin and Remusat, in their excellent labours on Abelard, have restored the mediaeval philosophy to a place in transcendental metaphysics, which, during the prevalence of the Cartesian school, and those derived from it, had been refused. 1848.]

[844] Roger Bacon, by far the truest philosopher of the middle ages, complains of the ignorance of Aristotle's translators. Every translator, he observes, ought to understand his author's subject, and the two languages from which and into which he is to render the work. But none hitherto, except Boethius, have sufficiently known the languages; nor has one, except Robert Grostete (the famous bishop of Lincoln), had a competent acquaintance with science. The rest make egregious errors in both respects. And there is so much misapprehension and obscurity in the Aristotelian writings as thus translated, that no one understands them.

Opus Majus, p. 45.

[845] Brucker, p. 733, 912. Mr. Turner has fallen into some confusion as to this point, and supposes the nominalist system to have had a pantheistical tendency, not clearly apprehending its characteristics, p.

512.

[846] Petrarch gives a curious account of the irreligion that prevailed among the learned at Venice and Padua, in consequence of their unbounded admiration for Aristotle and Averroes. One of this school, conversing with him, after expressing much contempt for the Apostles and Fathers, exclaimed: Utinam tu Averroim pati posses, ut videres quanto ille tuis his nugatoribus major sit! Mem. de Petrarque, t. iii. p. 759.

Tiraboschi, t. v. p. 162.

[847] Brucker, p. 898.

[848] This mystical philosophy appears to have been introduced into Europe by John Scotus, whom Buhle treats as the founder of the scholastic philosophy; though, as it made no sensible progress for two centuries after his time, it seems more natural to give that credit to Roscelin and Anselm. Scotus, or Erigena, as he is perhaps more frequently called, took up, through the medium of a spurious work, ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, that remarkable system, which has from time immemorial prevailed in some schools of the East, wherein all external phenomena, as well as all subordinate intellects, are considered as _emanating_ from the Supreme Being, into whose essence they are hereafter to be absorbed. This system, reproduced under various modifications, and combined with various theories of philosophy and religion, is perhaps the most congenial to the spirit of solitary speculation, and consequently the most extensively diffused of any which those high themes have engendered. It originated no doubt in sublime conceptions of divine omnipotence and ubiquity. But clearness of expression, or indeed of ideas, being not easily connected with mysticism, the language of philosophers adopting the theory of emanation is often hardly distinguishable from that of the pantheists. Brucker, very unjustly, as I imagine from the pa.s.sages he quotes, accuses John Erigena of pantheism. Hist. Crit. Philos. p. 620. The charge would, however, be better grounded against some whose style might deceive an unaccustomed reader. In fact, the philosophy of emanation leads very nearly to the doctrine of an universal substance, which, begot the atheistic system of Spinoza, and which appears to have revived with similar consequences among the metaphysicians of Germany. How very closely the language of this oriental philosophy, or even that which regards the Deity as the soul of the world, may verge upon pantheism, will be perceived (without the trouble of reading the first book of Cudworth) from two famous pa.s.sages of Virgil and Lucan. Georg. I. iv. v.

219; and Pharsalia, I. viii. v. 578.

[849] This subject, as well as some others in this part of the present chapter, has been touched in my Introduction to the Literature of the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries.

[850] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 150.

[851] There is a very copious and sensible account of Roger Bacon in Wood's History of Oxford, vol. i. p. 332 (Gutch's edition). I am a little surprised that Antony should have found out Bacon's merit.

The resemblance between Roger Bacon and his greater namesake is very remarkable. Whether Lord Bacon ever read the Opus Majus, I know not; but it is singular, that his favourite quaint expression, _praerogativae_ scientiarum, should be found in that work, though not used with the same allusion to the Roman comitia. And whoever reads the sixth part of the Opus Majus, upon experimental science, must be struck by it as the prototype, in spirit, of the Novum Organum. The same sanguine and sometimes rash confidence in the effect of physical discoveries, the same fondness for experiment, the same preference of inductive to abstract reasoning, pervade both works. Roger Bacon's philosophical spirit may be ill.u.s.trated by the following pa.s.sage: Duo sunt modi cognoscendi; scilicet per argumentum et experimentum. Argumentum concludit et facit nos concludere quaestionem; sed non certificat neque removet dubitationem, ut quiescat animus in intuitu veritatis, nisi eam inveniat via experientiae; quia multi habent argumenta ad scibilia, sed quia non habent experientiam, negligunt ea, neque vitant nociva nec persequuntur bona. Si enim aliquis h.o.m.o, qui nunquam vidit ignem, probavit per argumenta sufficientia quod ignis comburit et laedit res et destruit, nunquam propter hoc quiesceret animus audientis, nec ignem vitaret antequam poneret manum vel rem combustibilem ad ignem, ut per experientiam probaret quod argumentum edocebat; sed a.s.sumta experientia combustionis certificatur animus et quiescit in fulgore veritatis, quo argumentum non sufficit, sed experientia. p. 446.

[852] See the fate of Cecco d'Ascoli in Tiraboschi, t. v. p. 174.

[853] Le Boeuf, Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscript. t. xvii. p. 711.

[854] Gregorius, cognomento Bechada, de Castro de Turribus, professione miles, subtilissimi ingenii vir, aliquantulum imbutus literis, horum gesta praeliorum materna lingua rhythmo vulgari, ut populus pleniter intelligeret, ingens volumen decenter composuit, et ut vera et faceta verba proferret, duodecim annorum spatium super hoc opus operam dedit.

Ne ver vilesceret propter verb.u.m vulgare, non sine praecepto episcopi Eustorgii, et consilio Gauberti Normanni, hoc opus aggressus est. I transcribe this from Heeren's Essai sur les Croisades, p. 447; whose reference is to Labbe, Bibliotheca nova MSS. t. ii. p. 296.

[855] De Sade, Vie de Petrarque, t. i. p. 155. Sismondi, Litt. du Midi, t. i. p. 228.

[856] For the Courts of Love, see De Sade, Vie de Petrarque, t. ii. note 19. Le Grand. Fabliaux, t. i. p. 270. Roquefort, Etat de la Poesie Francoise. p. 94. I have never had patience to look at the older writers who have treated this tiresome subject.

[857] Histoire Litteraire des Troubadours Paris, 1774.

[858] Two very modern French writers, M. Ginguene (Histoire Litteraire d'Italie, Paris, 1811) and M. Sismondi (Litterature du Midi de l'Europe, Paris, 1813), have revived the poetical history of the troubadours. To them, still more than to Millot and Tiraboschi, I would acknowledge my obligations for the little I have learned in respect of this forgotten school of poetry. Notwithstanding, however, the heaviness of Millot's work, a fault not imputable to himself, though Ritson as I remember, calls him, in his own polite style, "a blockhead," it will always be useful to the inquirer into the manners and opinions of the middle ages, from the numerous ill.u.s.trations it contains of two general facts; the extreme dissoluteness of morals among the higher ranks, and the prevailing animosity of all cla.s.ses against the clergy.

[859] Hist. Litt. de la France, t. vii. p. 58. Le Boeuf, according to these Benedictines, has published some poetical fragments of the tenth century; and they quote part of a charter as old as 940 in Romance. p.

59. But that antiquary, in a memoir printed in the seventeenth volume of the Academy of Inscriptions, which throws more light on the infancy of the French language than anything within my knowledge, says only that the earliest specimens of verse in the royal library are of the eleventh century _au plus tard_. p. 717. M. de la Rue is said to have found some poems of the eleventh century in the British Museum. Roquefort, Etat de la Poesie Francoise, p. 206. Le Boeuf's fragment may be found in this work, p. 379; it seems nearer to the Provencal than the French dialect.

[860] Gale, XV Script. t. i. p. 88.

[861] Ritson's Dissertation on Romance, p. 66. [The laws of William the Conqueror, published in Ingulfus, are translated from a Latin original; the French is of the thirteenth century. It is now doubted whether any French, except a fragment of a translation of Boethius, in verse, is extant of an earlier age than the twelfth. Introduction to Hist. of Literat. 3rd edit. p. 28.]

[862] Hist. Litt. t. ix. p. 149; Fabliaux par Barbasan, vol. i. p. 9, edit. 1808; Mem. de l'Academie des Inscr. t. xv. and xvii, p. 714, &c.