Even in the schools, however, over and above the influence of the more original teachers, there rises at the close of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth some measure of a new life, introduced into philosophy through the communication of Aristotle to the western world by the Saracens, largely by the mediation of the Jews.218 The latter, in their free life under the earlier Moorish toleration, had developed something in the nature of a school of philosophy, in which the Judaic Platonism set up by Philo of Alexandria in the first century was blended with the Aristotelianism of the Arabs. As early as the eighth and ninth centuries, anti-Talmudic (the Karaïtes) and pro-Talmudic parties professed alike to appeal to reason219; and in the twelfth century the mere production of the Guide of the Perplexed by the celebrated Moses Maimonides (1130–1205)220 tells of a good deal of practical rationalism (of the kind that reduced miracle stories to allegories), of which, however, there is little direct literary result save of a theosophic kind.221 Levi ben Gershom (1286–1344), commonly regarded as the greatest successor of Maimonides, is like him guardedly rationalistic in his commentaries on the Scriptures.222 But the doctrine which makes Aristotle a practical support to rationalism, and which was adopted not only by Averroës but by the Motazilites of Islam—the eternity of matter—was rejected by Maimonides (as by nearly all other Jewish teachers, with the partial exception of Levi ben Gershom),223 on Biblical grounds; though his attempts to rationalize Biblical doctrine and minimize miracles made him odious to the orthodox Jews, some of whom, in France, did not scruple to call in the aid of the Christian inquisition against his partisans.224 The long struggle between the Maimonists and the orthodox is described as ending in the “triumph of peripatetism” or Averroïsm in the synagogue225; but Averroïsm as modified by Maimonides is only a partial accommodation of scripture to common sense. It would appear, in fact, that Jewish thought in the Saracen world retrograded as did that of the Saracens themselves; for we find Maimonides exclaiming over the apparent disbelief in creatio ex nihilo in the “Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer the Great,” believed by him to be ancient, but now known to be a product of the eighth century.226 The pantheistic teaching of Solomon ben Gebirol or Ibn Gebirol, better known as Avicebron,227 who in point of time preceded the Arab Avempace, and who later acquired much Christian authority, was orthodox on the side of the creation dogma even when many Jews were on that head rationalistic.228 The high-water mark, among the Jews, of the critical rationalism of the time, is the perception by Aben or Ibn Ezra (1119–1174) that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses—a discovery which gave Spinoza his cue five hundred years later; but Ibn Ezra, liberioris ingenii vir, as Spinoza pronounced him, had to express himself darkly.229

Thus the Jewish influence on Christian thought in the Middle Ages was chiefly metaphysical, carrying on Greek and Arab impulses; and to call the Jewish people, as does Renan, “the principal representative of rationalism during the second half of the Middle Age” is to make too much of the academic aspects of freethinking. On the side of popular theology it is difficult to believe that they had much Unitarian influence; though Joinville in his Life of Saint Louis tells how, in a debate between Churchmen and Jews at the monastery of Cluny, a certain knight saw fit to break the head of one of the Jews with his staff for denying the divinity of Jesus, giving as his reason that many good Christians, listening to the Jewish arguments, were in a fair way to go home unbelievers. It was in this case that the sainted king laid down the principle that when a layman heard anyone blaspheme the Christian creed his proper course was not to argue, but to run the blasphemer through with his sword.230 Such admitted inability on the part of the laity to reason on their faith, however, was more likely to accompany a double degree of orthodoxy than to make for doubt; and the clerical debating at the Abbey of Cluny, despite the honourable attitude of the Abbot, who condemned the knight’s outrage, was probably a muster of foregone conclusions.

For a time, indeed, in the energetic intellectual life of northern France the spirit of freethought went far and deep. After the great stimulus given in Abailard’s day to all discussion, we find another Breton teacher, Amaury or Amalrich of Bène or Bena (end of twelfth century) and his pupil David of Dinant, partly under the earlier Arab influence,231 partly under that of John the Scot,232 teaching a pronounced pantheism, akin to that noted as flourishing later among the Brethren of the Free Spirit233 and some of the Franciscan Fraticelli. Such a movement, involving disregard for the sacraments and ceremonies of the Church, was soon recognized as a dangerous heresy, and dealt with accordingly. The Church caused Amaury to abjure his teachings; and after his death, finding his party still growing, dug up and burned his bones. At the same time (1209) a number of his followers were burned alive; David of Dinant had to fly for his life;234 and inasmuch as the new heresy had begun to make much of Aristotle, presumably as interpreted by Averroës, a Council held at Paris vetoed for the university the study alike of the pagan master and his commentators, interdicting first the Physics and soon after the Metaphysics.235 This veto held until 1237, when the school which adapted the lore of Aristotle to Christian purposes began to carry the day.

The heretical Aristotelianism and the orthodox system which was to overpower it were alike radiated from the south, where the Arab influence spread early and widely. There, as we shall see, the long duel between the Emperor Frederick II and the papacy made a special opportunity for speculative freethought; and though this was far from meaning at all times practical enmity to Christian doctrine,236 that was not absent. It is clear that before Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) a Naturalist and Averroïst view of the universe had been much discussed, since he makes the remark that “God is by some called Natura naturans”237—Nature at work—an idea fundamental alike to pantheism and to scientific naturalism. And throughout his great work—a marvel of mental gymnastic which better than almost any other writing redeems medieval orthodoxy from the charge of mere ineptitude—Thomas indicates his acquaintance with unorthodox thought. In particular he seems to owe the form of his work as well as the subject-matter of much of his argument to Averroës.238 Born within the sphere of the Saracen-Sicilian influence, and of high rank, he must have met with what rationalism there was, and he always presupposes it.239 “He is nearly as consummate a skeptic, almost atheist, as he is a divine and theologian,” says one modern ecclesiastical dignitary;240 and an orthodox apologist241 more severely complains that “Aquinas presented ... so many doubts on the deepest points ... so many plausible reasons for unbelief ... that his works have probably suggested most of the skeptical opinions which were adopted by others who were trained in the study of them.... He has done more than most men to put the faith of his fellow-Christians in peril.” Of course he rejects Averroïsm. Yet he, like his antagonist Duns Scotus, inevitably gravitates to pantheism when he would rigorously philosophize.242

What he did for his church was to combine so ingeniously the semblance of Aristotelian method with constant recurrence to the sacred books as to impose their authority on the life of the schools no less completely than it dominated the minds of the unlearned. Meeting method with method, and showing himself well aware of the lore he circumvented, he built up a system quite as well fitted to be a mere gymnastic of the mind; and he thereby effected the arrest for some three centuries of the method of experimental science which Aristotle had inculcated. He came just in time. Roger Bacon, trained at Paris, was eagerly preaching the scientific gospel; and while he was suffering imprisonment at the hands of his Franciscan superiors for his eminently secular devotion to science, the freer scholars of the university were developing a heresy that outwent his.

Now, however, began to be seen once for all the impossibility of rational freedom in or under a church which depended for its revenue on the dogmatic exploitation of popular credulity. For a time the Aristotelian influence, as had been seen by the churchmen who had first sought to destroy it,243 tended to be Averroïst and rationalist.244 In 1269, however, there begins a determined campaign, led by the bishop of Paris, against the current Averroïst doctrines, notably the propositions “that the world is eternal”; “that there never was a first man”; “that the intellect of man is one”; “that the mind, which is the form of man, constituting him such, perishes with the body”; “that the acts of men are not governed by divine providence”; “that God cannot give immortality or incorruptibility to a corruptible or mortal thing.”245 On such doctrines the bishop and his coadjutors naturally passed an anathema (1270); and at this period it was that Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas wrote their treatises against Averroïsm.246

Still the freethinkers held out, and though in 1271 official commands were given that the discussion of such matters in the university should cease, another process of condemnation was carried out in 1277. This time the list of propositions denounced includes the following: “that the natural philosopher as such must deny the creation of the world, because he proceeds upon natural causes and reasons; while the believer (fidelis) may deny the eternity of the world, because he argues from supernatural causes”; “that creation is not possible, although the contrary is to be held according to faith”; “that a future resurrection is not to be believed by the philosopher, because it cannot be investigated by reason”; “that the teachings of the theologians are founded on fables”; “that there are fables and falsities in the Christian religion as in others”; “that nothing more can be known, on account of theology”; “that the Christian law prevents from learning”;247 “that God is not triune and one, for trinity is incompatible with perfect simplicity”; “that ecstatic states and visions take place naturally, and only so.” Such vital unbelief could have only one fate; it was reduced to silence by a papal Bull,248 administered by the orthodox majority; and the memory of the massacres of the year 1209, and of the awful crusade against the Albigenses, served to cow the thinkers of the schools into an outward conformity.

Henceforward orthodox Aristotelianism, placed on a canonical footing in the theological system of Thomas Aquinas, ruled the universities; and scholasticism counts for little in the liberation of European life from either dogma or superstition.249 The practically progressive forces are to be looked for outside. In the thirteenth century in England we find the Franciscan friars in the school of Robert Grosstête at Oxford discussing the question “Whether there be a God?”250 but such a dispute was an academic exercise like another; and in any case the authorities could be trusted to see that it came to nothing. The work of Thomas himself serves to show how a really great power of comprehensive and orderly thought can be turned to the subversion of judgment by accepting the prior dominion of a fixed body of dogma and an arbitrary rule over opinion. And yet, so strong is the principle of ratiocination in his large performance, and so much does it embody of the critical forces of antiquity and of its own day, that while it served the Church as a code of orthodoxy its influence can be seen in the skeptical philosophy of Europe as late as Spinoza and Kant. It appears to have been as a result of his argumentation that there became established in the later procedure of the Church the doctrine that, while heretics who have once received the faith and lapsed are to be coerced and punished, other unbelievers (as Moslems and Jews) are not. This principle also, it would appear, he derived from the Moslems, as he did their rule that those of the true faith must avoid intimacy with the unbelievers, though believers firm in the faith may dispute with them “when there is greater expectation of the conversion of the infidels than of the subversion of the fidels.” And to the rule of non-inquisition into the faith of Jews and Moslems the Church professed to adhere while the Inquisition lasted, after having trampled it under foot in spirit by causing the expulsion of the Jews and the Moriscoes from Spain.251

We shall perhaps best understand the inner life of the schools in the Middle Ages by likening it to that of the universities of our own time, where there is unquestionably much unbelief among teachers and taught, but where the economic and other pressures of the institution suffice to preserve an outward acquiescence. In the Middle Ages it was immeasurably less possible than in our day for the unbeliever to strike out a free course of life and doctrine for himself. If, then, to-day the scholarly class is in large measure tied to institutions and conformities, much more so was it then. The cloister was almost the sole haven of refuge for studious spirits, and to attain the haven they had to accept the discipline and the profession of faith. We may conclude, accordingly, that such works as Abailard’s Sic et Non, setting forth opposed views of so many doctrines and problems, stood for and made for a great deal of quiet skepticism;252 that the remarkable request of the monks of Bec for a ratiocinative teaching which should meet even extravagant objections, covered a good deal of resigned unfaith; and that in the Franciscan schools at Oxford the disputants were not all at heart believers. Indeed, the very existence of the doctrine of a “twofold truth”—one truth for religion and another for philosophy—was from the outset a witness for unbelief. But the unwritten word died, the litera scripta being solely those of faith, and liberation had to come, ages later, from without. Even when a bold saying won general currency—as that latterly ascribed, no doubt falsely, to King Alfonso the Wise of Castile, that “if he had been of God’s council when he made the world he could have advised him better”—it did but crystallize skepticism in a jest, and supply the enemy with a text against impiety.

All the while, the Church was forging new and more murderous weapons against reason. It is one of her infamies to have revived the use in Christendom of the ancient practice of judicial torture, and this expressly for the suppression of heresy. The later European practice dates from the Bull of Innocent IV, Ad extirpanda, dated 1252. At first a veto was put on its administration by clerical hands; but in 1256 Alexander IV authorized the inquisitors and their associates to absolve one another for such acts. By the beginning of the fourteenth century torture was in use not only in the tribunals of the Inquisition but in the ordinary ecclesiastical courts, whence it gradually entered into the courts of lay justice.253 It is impossible to estimate the injury thus wrought at once to culture and to civilization, at the hands of the power which claimed specially to promote both.254