We are sometimes disposed to think and speak of the Middle Ages, as though by that term was to be understood a period including several centuries, during the whole of which society was governed by the same laws, and made but little progress. In point of fact, however, men seldom lived faster, if such an expression be admissible, than during the five centuries to which the term mediæval is most strictly applied. There was then, as now, a continual expansion and development going on, and then, as now, the development was partly good, and partly evil. During the hundred years that elapsed from the accession of Hugh Capet in 996, to the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, Christendom assumed an entirely new aspect. The institutions of feudalism and chivalry were becoming firmly established; the barbaric invasions had ceased, and the Crusades directed the arms of the Christians against a common enemy, and so put an end to the civil wars which had raged under the Carlovingian dynasty. If these changes cannot be said to have ushered in a period of absolute peace, they at least tended to consolidate civil government; and the comparative state of security and order which ensued, naturally encouraged greater intellectual activity. On the other hand, the Saxon emperors of Germany had been replaced by the house of Franconia, and that grievous contest had begun between the temporal and spiritual powers which, for centuries, formed the great political question of Europe; while the convulsions of the last century had let loose on the Church a flood of corruption which probably makes this period one of the saddest in her history.

The chronicles of a semi-barbarous age, however, possess one charm which does not attach in an equal degree to those of more civilised periods. Full as they are of crimes and scandals, they depict a state of society more keenly susceptible than our own to the influence of master-minds. Hence they are often enough the records of heroes, whereas our tamer annals deal less in the acts and words of great men, than in changes of ministry. The eleventh century groaned under the threefold scourge of simony, sensuality, and temporal usurpation. It had the peculiar infelicity of being an age of transition, when the children of the Church were growing weary of submitting to the canonical discipline of ancient times, whilst nothing had yet been established as its substitute. It was, therefore, a time of wild license and feeble restraint. Three men, however, arose to rule and reform their age. The first was of royal blood, a descendant of Charlemagne and Witikind, whom we first find studying at Toul about the year 1018, along with other princely and ducal cousins, for Toul was always celebrated for its noble students. Bruno of Dachsburg was the handsomest man of his time, the idol of his family, graceful, eloquent, and learned, and a skilled musician. The world was already predicting his success at the court of his imperial cousin Conrad, when a trifling accident changed his whole career. One day, the young student, after a hard morning’s work, threw himself on the grass at his father’s castle in Alsace, and fell asleep. An insect stung his face, and the result was a malignant fever which brought him to the gates of death. He rose from his sick bed to renounce all that the world had to offer, and to embrace the monastic state. In 1026 he became Bishop of Toul, and for two-and-twenty years devoted his energies to the reformation of manners and the revival of discipline. At the end of that time he was elected Pope, and, as St. Leo IX., struggled for five years more against simony, the Berengarian heresy, and the Greek schism. But, in the midst of his other labours, he did not neglect letters and the arts. He caused good studies to flourish at Rome, reformed her school of chant, and employed as his legates learned men, such as his old schoolfellow, Cardinal Humbert, who had acquired at Toul that Greek erudition which he used so ably against the Photians.

On the day when Pope Leo entered Rome barefoot to take possession of the Apostolic throne, he was accompanied by a Cluniac monk, whom he had met on his journey into Italy, and well-nigh compelled to join his train. Rome was no new scene to the monk Hildebrand; it was there, in St. Mary’s Abbey on the Aventine Mount,[154] that the poor carpenter’s son had received his education. But he returned thither now to fill a very different station, for Leo created him cardinal, and abbot of St. Paul’s; and from that time up to the day of his death, thirty-six years later, the life of Hildebrand forms the history of his times. The name of him whom the Church reveres as St. Gregory VII. must suffice in this place, there remains to be noticed a third Christian hero, a friend of both those illustrious pontiffs, who struggled with them in the same cause, and against the same enemies. Born at Ravenna towards the close of the tenth century, the youngest of a large family, who only saw in him another to divide their slender inheritance, Peter Damian was all but abandoned in his infancy, and on the death of his parents was maintained by a brother, who treated him as a slave, and employed him to keep swine. The poor farm-drudge grew up without friends and without education; but the soul that was within him had instincts and aspirations which no ill-usage could stifle. One day he chanced to find a piece of money lying on the ground; it was the first time his hands had ever touched silver, and for a moment the thoughts which might occur to other boys flashed through his brain. He would purchase food, or clothes, or give himself an hour’s brief enjoyment. But then came another thought: “When the food is eaten, and the enjoyment past, what will remain to me of my money? Better give it to the parish priest and have a mass said for my father’s soul.” The second thought was followed; and soon afterwards his elder brother Damian, the arch-priest of Ravenna, took pity on the boy, and sent him to school, first at Faenza, and then at Parma, which at that time possessed excellent masters. Peter, who in gratitude assumed his brother’s name in addition to his own, became not only a good scholar, but in time a professor, and his singular capacity in this office obtained him both scholars and wealth, for, as we have seen in the last chapter, the profession of scholasticus was beginning to be one of profit. But he had never forgotten his early experience, and the money that flowed in went to feed the poor, whilst he himself persevered in the practice of rigid poverty. One day he made the acquaintance of two poor hermits belonging to a community that had established itself at a spot called Fonte-Avellano, at the foot of the Umbrian Apennines. His biographer calls it a desert, but it was a desert only in the Italian sense of he word, a solitary valley, that is, shut in between mountains clothed with evergreen oaks, and chest nuts, and the silvery olive, its thickets bright with the blossoms of the Judas-tree and the oleander, and its grass, with the starry cyclamen. To this desert, then, Peter’s new friends conducted him, on a visit to their hermitage, which had been founded a few years previously by the Blessed Ludolf. He found there a community who took the same view of human life as himself. They regarded man as a being made up of two noble and immortal parts, that were to be served and cherished—the soul and the intellect; and of one base and perishable part, that was good only to be mortified—the body. Simple men as they were, they had conceived the idea of doing penance for the huge evil world that lay outside their wilderness. So they lived four days a week on bread and water, allowing themselves on the other three the indulgence of herbs, afflicted their flesh in many ways, and divided their time between psalmody and study. Peter embraced this life with hearty earnestness, and outstripped his companions alike in his austerities and in his application to sacred learning. But his light could not be hid; abbots entreated that he might be sent to instruct their religious; his own brethren elected him their superior; seven successive popes employed him in the service of the Church; and, in 1057, Stephen IX. created him cardinal bishop of Ostia. His life was spent in struggles to stem the corruption of his age and to reform the clergy. Fleury observes that we must not look in his writings for acuteness of reasoning; but he had to do with men sunk in rude gross vices, which were hardly to be remedied by metaphysics. The medicine which St. Peter Damian prescribed for the sick world was penance; and he preached it in a plain homely sort of way, which might possibly offend fastidious tastes, but which had this merit about it, that it was practical, and had results. He entered the profaned sanctuary, scourge in hand, to drive out the unclean animals, and to overthrow the tables of the money-changers. In the intervals between his incessant legations to reform churches and rebuke princes, he retired to his cell at Fonte-Avellano, and might be found there living on pulse and water, employed in making wooden spoons, or other coarse manual labour, and submitting, even to his eightieth year, to the same rule of life as the youngest novice. Yet this was the most elegant scholar of his time; nay, more, he was a poet. And we do not use the term as classing him among the crowd of versifiers who wrote their chronicles, and even their theological treatises in lines which, often enough as Hallam remarks, can only be rendered into hexameters “by careful nursing.” He imitated neither Virgil nor Horace, but wrote in those rhymed trochaics which many classical purists would brand as barbarisms. Yet where shall we see richness of imagery wedded to greater harmony of numbers than in those wonderful stanzas, De Paradisi Gloriâ, wherein Paradise is depicted under the form of all that is fairest and brightest to the poet’s eye? The sparkling of precious gems, the blossoming of early flowers, the glory of the autumn cornfields, and the long shining of a summer’s day, lit by a sun that knows no setting, are painted in words that sound like the echoes of a harpsichord. And from these sensible images of earthly beauty he rises to that which is above sense, and sets before us the ineffable joys of those who see the Divine Beauty face to face, and are filled from the fountains of Eternal charity. The joys of heaven formed, in fact, the constant subject of his meditation, and in one of his prose treatises, speaking on this exhaustless theme, he gives utterance to the sentiment felt by every poet, of the insufficiency of words to express the emotions of the heart. “There is always more in the thing itself than the mind conceives, and more in what the mind conceives than the tongue can utter.”

The reform of manners so vigorously set on foot by these saints and their many disciples was friendly to the growth of letters. Parma attained such celebrity as to be called Chrysopolis, or the golden city, in the days of the great Countess Matilda, who was herself, says Donizzo, her chaplain, more learned than many bishops, and was never without an abundance of books. At her instance Irnerius, the Lucerna Juris, as he was called, began to lecture at Bologna on Roman law about the year 1128. The cathedral schools were everywhere revived by St. Gregory VII., who required the bishops to found seminaries where such did not already exist, where boys should be educated for the priesthood free of cost, certain prebends being set apart for the support of the masters. This injunction was very generally obeyed, and many ancient schools were revived which had fallen into decay. Landulph tells us that at Milan, where things had been in a very bad state, but where the mingled zeal and gentleness of St. Peter Damian, and of St. Ariald, had effected a reform,[155] the schools of philosophy were held in the porch of the cathedral, where the clerics attended, the archbishop presiding in person. In fact, the Italians who, in the tenth century, are represented as having none to teach them the first rudimentary elements, had somehow contrived in the eleventh to possess themselves of academies which they considered the first in the whole world.

A document given by Mabillon illustrates in an amusing manner the jealousy existing at this time between the schools of Italy and France. A certain prior of Chiusi, named Benedict, coming to the abbey of St. Martial at Limoges, was imprudent enough to call in question the commonly-received opinion that St. Martial was an immediate disciple of our Lord. Of course a storm arose, its fury bursting over the head of the luckless and too enlightened critic. The quarrel was taken up by all the monasteries of southern Gaul; and Ademar, a monk of Angoulême, thought it his duty to address a circular to the French monasteries, warning them not to listen to the horrible scandals promulgated by Benedict, whose conceit, he says, was at the bottom of the whole affair. He attempts to pillory his antagonist, by putting in his mouth a ridiculous speech. “I am the nephew,” he is made to say, “of the abbot of Chiusi. He has taken me to many cities of France and Lombardy to study grammar, and my various masters have cost him the round sum of 2000 soldi. I studied grammar nine years, and am studying it still. I am a most learned man. I have two great boxes full of books, and I have not yet read one-half of them. In fact there is not a book in all the world that I have not got. When I leave the schools there will not be such a doctor as myself under heaven.... I am prior of Chiusi, and know how to write sermons.... I am so wise I could arrange and manage an entire council. In Aquitaine there is no learning of any kind, every one there is a dunce; if a man knows a sprinkling of grammar, he is thought at once to be a second Virgil. In France (that is, the province, not the kingdom of France), there is a little more erudition, but not much. The real seat of wisdom is in Lombardy, where I have carried on my studies.” In spite of the sarcastic exaggeration running through this passage, we may gather from it that Benedict had probably assumed a tone of superiority over his Gallican neighbours, and that studies must have greatly revived in Lombardy since the days of the Othos, to furnish the text for a jeu d’esprit of this description.

An age of such increased intellectual activity could hardly fail to be attended with many changes, bad as well as good. We have seen in the last chapter that the new class of teachers who were now springing up taught for gain or reputation, rather than with an eye to the higher ends of education, and that thus learning in their hands lost much of its Christian dress. The intellectual curiosity of students induced many to seek for knowledge in distant lands, with the same perseverance and spirit of enterprise which young knights displayed in quest of military adventure. We can hardly in our day appreciate the difficulties which had to be overcome by men like Athelhard and Robert of Retines, whose student life was the very romance of scholarship. If the stock of knowledge thus collected, surpassed in breadth and variety that which could have been gained in any single monastic school, it is evident, on the other hand, that the education of these itinerant scholars must have been sadly deficient both in mental and moral discipline, failings which were abundantly evident in the character of the new scholastics. They had picked up, it may be, a knowledge of medicine at Salerno, and of mathematics at Cordova, but the claustral rule, the strict subjection to authority, the holy atmosphere or devotion and obedience, had not entered into their intellectual life. They had gained their learning from the lips of professors, in order to become professors in their turn; but a wandering life through half the cities of Europe was but a poor exchange for the claustral discipline; and not a few were found to embrace this kind of life for the very sake of its greater license and freedom from restraint.

But though this new element was making itself perceptibly felt in the learned world, it must not be supposed that in the eleventh century the old system of education was at all superseded for the cathedral and monastic schools still continued the chief seats of learning. They even witnessed a sort of classical renaissance, which sprung up under the encouragement of a crowd of masters who directed the labours of their scholars to the imitation of ancient models, without, however, in any way abandoning the line of Christian studies traced out by Alcuin and his disciples. At Mans, the office of scholasticus was held by the Blessed Hildebert a pupil of Berengarius, and a poet and philosopher, who afterwards became bishop of the same see, and had the distinguished honour of being imprisoned by the Red King, for refusing, at his bidding, to pull down the towers of his cathedral. At Autun, the cathedral schools were directed for twenty years by Honorius, who in his treatise De Exilio Animæ, reprinted in the Thesaurus Anecdotorum of Pez, has described the course of studies followed by his pupils. To the ordinary branches of the trivium and quadrivium, he added instructions in physical science, and gave a distinct course of Holy Scripture. His lectures on rhetoric included the explanation of the best Latin classics, and the same was done in most monastic schools of the period. The notices become more frequent of scholars learned in Greek and Hebrew, and the fact of their being named as engaged in the correction of manuscripts in those languages, compels us to believe that their learning was something more real and solid than that which has been before noticed as rather foolishly displayed on the pages of certain writers of the preceding centuries. Thus, Sigebert of Gemblours, and Marbœuf of Angers, are both spoken of as Greek and Hebrew scholars. Sigebert is said by his biographer to have been learned in the Hebrew Scriptures, which he used in his controversies with the Jews. He was also a good Latin classic, and much addicted to the composition of verses in imitation of his favourite author Horace. He gave lectures on poetry and logic in Paris, but his vanity was not proof against temptation, and led him to take part with Henry IV. against the Holy See. He is the author of a chronicle and other historical works, which he made the vehicle for conveying grave calumnies against the Roman pontiffs. Dante to whom his character as a Ghibelline partisan was itself a recommendation, has placed him in Paradise and notices him as lecturing on logic in the streets of Paris, to students seated, after the custom of the time, on bundles of straw.[156]

It is difficult to determine how much the scholars of this period were really in advance of their predecessors. Hallam, who is generally so sparing of his praise when speaking of any period earlier than that of the Cinque Cento, admits that at the close of the eleventh century a good, and even elegant school of Latin writers was springing up; and notices the Latin vocabulary of Papias as evincing an amount of profane learning far superior to anything that had hitherto been known. Du Cange, however, shows that Papias drew his materials from a dictionary which had been compiled in the Dark Ages, namely, that published in the tenth century, by Solomon, abbot of St. Gall’s. Still, it may be concluded that classical studies were more universally followed than they had hitherto been, and at the same time extraordinary activity was displayed in the multiplication of books and the collection of libraries. Useful results sometimes flow from human infirmities, and there is said to have mingled with the honest love of learning which encouraged this activity, a certain spirit of rivalry and emulation among the different monasteries and religious orders. The Black Monks did not like to be cut out by the new Cistercians; and Bec, as a matter of course, was not going to yield to Cluny. Mabillon says that it was the peculiar pride of the Benedictine abbots of this time, to collect large libraries, and to have their manuscripts handsomely written and adorned. Never, therefore, was there a busier time in the scriptorium; a finer character of writing, and a more convenient system of abbreviation was introduced, and many abbots are mentioned as remarkable for their skill as miniaturists. It is said, however, I know not with what truth, that the copyists, if they got through a greater amount of work, were often less accurate than their brethren of the eighth and ninth centuries, and that in this, as in other things, the proverb held good of “more haste and worse speed.” Hallam, whilst complaining of the multiplication of blunders, does full justice to the prodigious industry exhibited by the monastic copyists of this particular period. As an illustration of the subject, we may quote the account which Othlonus, the scholasticus of St. Emmeran’s, gives of his labours. He seems to have been a Bavarian by birth, and his first school was that of Tegernsee, in Bavaria, a monastery which had been founded in 994, and was famous for its teachers in utrâque linguâ, and even for its Hebrew scholars. Here, in the twelfth century, lived the good monk Metellus, whose eclogues, written in imitation of those of Virgil, describe the monastic pastures and cattle, and the labours of the monks in the fields. The library of Tegernsee was rich in classic works, and possessed a fair illuminated copy of Pliny’s “Natural History,” adorned with pictures of the different animals, from the cunning hand of brother Ellinger. Medicine was likewise studied here, to facilitate which, the monks had a good botanical garden. In such a school Othlonus had every opportunity of cultivating his natural taste for study, which grew by degrees to be a perfect passion. As a child he had intended to embrace the monastic state, but the persuasions of his father, and his own desire to give himself up exclusively to learned pursuits, induced him to abandon this design, and after leaving school he devoted himself for several years to classical studies, with an ardour which his biographer finds no words strong enough to express.

His only earthly desire at this time, as he himself tells us in one of his later spiritual treatises, was to have time to study, and abundance of books. It would seem, however, that this excessive devotion to human learning had its usual results in the decay of devotion. It is thus he describes himself at this period of his life, in his versified treatise De doctrina Spirituali. “Desiring to search into certain subtle matters, in the knowledge of which I saw that many delighted, to the end that I might be held in greater esteem by the world, I made all my profit to consist in keeping company with the Gentiles. In those days what were not to me Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and Tully the rhetorician?... that threefold work of Maro, and Lucan, whom then I loved best of all, and on whom I was so intent, that I hardly did anything else but read him.... Yet what profit did they give me, when I could not even sign my forehead with the cross?”

However, two severe illnesses wrought a great change in his way of looking at life, and in 1032, remembering his early dedication of himself to God, he resolved to forsake the world and take the habit of religion in the monastery of St. Emmeran’s, at Ratisbon, where he gave up all thoughts of secular ambition, in order to devote himself heart and soul to the duties of his state. St. Emmeran’s was, like Tegernsee, possessed of an excellent school and library. In the former many good scholars were reared, such as abbot William of Hirschau, who became as learned in the liberal arts as in the study of the Scriptures, and who afterwards made his own school at Hirschau one of the most celebrated in Germany. Othlonus tells us that in this monastery he found “several men in different classes, some reading pagan authors, others the Holy Scriptures,” and that he began to imitate the latter, and soon learnt to relish the Sacred Books, which he had hitherto neglected, far above the writings of Aristotle, Plato, or even Boëthius.[157]

It will be seen from this little sketch that Othlonus was not a mere transcriber, and indeed he afterwards produced several treatises on mystic theology, besides his “Life of St. Wolfgang,” and was regarded by his brother monks as “a pious and austere man, possessed of an immense love of books.” This love he showed not only by reading them, but by multiplying them; and his achievements in this kind are related by himself with a certain prolix eloquence which, in mercy to the reader, I will somewhat abridge.

“I think it right,” he says, “to add some account of the great capacity of writing which was given me by the Lord from my childhood. When as yet a little child I was sent to school, and quickly learnt my letters; and began long before the usual time of learning, and without any order from the master, to learn the art of writing; but in a furtive and unusual way, and without any teacher, so that I got a bad habit of holding my pen in a wrong manner, nor were any of my teachers afterwards able to correct me in that point. Many who saw this, decided that I should never write well, but by the grace of God it turned out otherwise. For, even in my childhood, when, together with the other boys, the tablet was put into my hands, it appeared that I had some notion of writing. Then, after a time, I began to write so well and was so fond of it, that in the monastery of Tegernsee, where I learned, I wrote many books, and being sent into Franconia, I worked so hard as nearly to lose my sight.... Then, after I became a monk of St. Emmeran’s, I was induced again to occupy myself so much in writing, that I seldom got an interval of rest except on festivals. Meantime there came more work on me, for as they saw I was generally reading, writing, or composing, they made me schoolmaster; by all which things I was, through God’s grace, so fully occupied that I frequently could not allow my body the necessary rest. When I had a mind to compose anything, I could not find time for it, except on holidays or at night, being tied down to the business of teaching the boys, and transcribing what I had undertaken. Besides the books which I composed myself I wrote nineteen missals, three books of the Gospels, and two lectionaries; besides which I wrote four service books for matins. Afterwards, old age and infirmity hindered me, and the grief caused by the destruction of our monastery; but to Him who is author of all good, and who has vouchsafed to give many things to me unworthy, be praise eternal!” He then adds an account of a vast number of other books written out by him and sent as presents to the monasteries of Fulda, Hirschfeld, Lorsch, Tegernsee, and others, amounting in all to thirty volumes. His labours, so cheerfully undertaken for the improvement of his convent, were perhaps surpassed by those of the monk Jerome, who wrote out so great a number of volumes, that it is said a wagon with six horses would not have sufficed to draw them. But neither one nor the other are to be compared to Diemudis, a devout nun of the monastery of Wessobrun, who, besides writing out in clear and beautiful characters five missals, with graduals and sequences attached, and four other office books, for the use of the church, adorned the library of her convent with two entire Bibles, eight volumes of St. Gregory, seven of St. Augustine, the ecclesiastical histories of Eusebius and Cassiodorus, and a vast number of sermons, homilies, and other treatises, a list of which she left, as having all been written by her own hand, to the praise of God and of the holy apostles SS. Peter and Paul. This Diemudis was a contemporary of Othlonus, and found time in the midst of her gigantic labours to carry on a correspondence with Herluca, a nun of Eppach, to whom she is said to have indited “many very sweet letters,” which were long preserved.

I have mentioned as one of the scholars of St. Emmeran’s the holy William of Hirschau, who was chosen abbot of his monastery in 1070, and applied himself to make his monks as learned and as indefatigable in all useful labours as he was himself. He had about 250 monks at Hirschau, and founded no fewer than fifteen other religious houses, for the government of which he drew up a body of excellent statutes. These new foundations he carefully supplied with books, which necessitated constant work in the scriptorium. And a most stately and noble place was the scriptorium of Hirschau, wherein each one was employed according to his talent, binding, painting, gilding, writing, or correcting. The twelve best writers were reserved for transcribing the Scriptures and the Holy Fathers, and one of the twelve, most learned in the sciences, presided over the tasks of the others, chose the books to be copied, and corrected the faults of the younger scribes. The art of painting was studied in a separate school, and here, among others, was trained the good monk Thiemon, who, after decorating half the monasteries of Germany with the productions of his pencil, became archbishop of Saltzburg, and died in odour of sanctity. The statutes with which abbot William provided his monasteries, were chiefly drawn up from those in use at St. Emmeran’s, but he was desirous of yet further improving them, and in particular of assimilating them to those of Cluny, which was then at the height of its renown. It was at his request that St. Ulric of Cluny wrote out his “Customary,” in which, among other things, he gives a description of the manner in which the Holy Scriptures were read through in the refectory in the course of the year. This “Customary” is one of the most valuable monuments of monastic times which remains to us; it shows us the interior of the monastery, painted by the hand of one of its inmates, taking us through each office, the library, the infirmary, the sacristy, the bakehouse, the kitchen, and the school. How beautiful is the order which it displays, as observed in choir, where, on solemn days, all the singers stood vested in copes, the very seats being covered with embroidered tapestry! Three days in the week the right side of the choir communicated, and the other three the left; during Holy Week they washed the feet of as many poor as there were brethren in the house, and the abbot added others also to represent absent friends. When the Passion was sung, they had a custom of tearing a piece of stuff at the words “they parted my garments;” and the new fire of Holy Saturday was struck, not from a flint, but a precious beryl. There were numberless beautiful rites of benediction observed, as that of the ripe grapes, which were blessed on the altar during mass, on the 6th of August, and afterwards distributed in the refectory, of new beans, and of the freshly-pressed juice of the grape. The ceremonies observed in making the altar breads were also most worthy of note. The grains of wheat were chosen one by one, were carefully washed and put aside in a sack, which was carried by one known to be pure in life and conversation to the mill. There they were ground and sifted, he who performed this duty being clothed in alb and amice. Two priests and two deacons clothed in like manner prepared the breads, and a lay brother, having gloves on his hands, held the irons in which they were baked. The very wood of the fire was chosen of the best and driest. And whilst these processes were being gone through, the brethren engaged ceased not to sing psalms, or sometimes recited Our Lady’s office. A separate chapter in the “Customary” is devoted to the children and their master, and the discipline under which they were trained is minutely described. We seem to see them seated in their cloister with the vigilant eye of the master presiding over their work. An open space is left between the two rows of scholars, but there is no one in the monastery who dare pass through their ranks. They go to confession twice a week, and always to the abbot or the prior. And such is the scrupulous care bestowed on their education, and the vigilance to which they are subjected, both by day and night, that, says Ulric, “I think it would be difficult for a king’s son to be brought up in a palace with greater care than the humblest boy enjoys at Cluny.”

This “Customary” was drawn up during the government of St. Hugh of Cluny, whose letter to William the Conqueror displays something of the independence of mind with which abbots of those days treated the great ones of the earth. William had written to him requesting him to send some of his monks to England, and offering him a hundred pounds for every monk he would send. This method of buying up his monks at so much a head offended the good abbot, who wrote back to the king declining to part with any of his community at such a price, and adding that he would himself give an equal sum for every good monk whom he could draw to Cluny. During the sixty-two years that he governed his abbey, he is said to have professed more than 10,000 subjects. Enough has been said to show that the monastic institute was still strong and vigorous in the eleventh century. Cluny, indeed, represented monasticism rather in its magnificence than in the more evangelic aspect of poverty and abasement, yet in the midst of all her lordly splendour, she continued fruitful in saints. Even the austere St. Peter Damian, whilst he disapproved of the wealth of the monks, was edified at their sanctity, and left them, marvelling how men so rich could live so holily. Their revenues were not spent on luxury; they went to feed 17,000 poor people, and to collect a library of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew authors, such as had not its equal in Europe. It contained among other treasures a certain Bible, called in the chronicle, “great, wonderful, and precious for its writing, correctness, and rich binding, adorned with beryl stones,” which had been written by the single hand of the monk Albert. The following inscription inserted in the volume attests the piety as well as the industry of the writer. “This book was written by a certain monk of Cluny, named Albert, formerly of Treves. It was done by the order and at the expense of the venerable abbot Pontius, Peter being at that time the librarian, and providing all things necessary with joy and diligence. And the aforesaid monk, in company with a certain brother named Opizo, diligently read through the whole book, that he might be able to improve it according to the authority of other books; and he twice corrected it. Therefore Brother Albert a sinner, prostrating himself at the feet of the brethren of Cluny, humbly begs of them to pray to God for himself and for his father, that they may obtain the forgiveness of their sins.”[158]

Elsewhere also the monastic schools continued to produce a number of excellent masters who thoroughly entered into the revival of classical studies, which we have noticed as having at this time sprung up. At Fleury the monk Raoul taught the art of versification to a crowded audience, and in his own poems advocated the study of the ancient models, especially of Horace. Quotations from the same poet, as well as from Virgil and Statius, not unfrequently appear in the lives of the saints, and even the sermons of this period, a fact not adduced as an instance of the good taste, but simply of the erudition, of the authors. In the school of Stavelot, even Greek poetry was studied. Here was trained the celebrated Wibald, successively abbot of Stavelot, Monte Cassino, and Corby.

The letters and other remains of this remarkable man have been inserted by Martene in his collection, and throw much light on the history of the times. He filled several important offices under the Emperor Conrad, who confided to him the education of his son and successor Henry; but whilst constantly immersed in public business he failed not to labour for the good cause which lay at the heart of every true monk, the multiplication of books, and the encouragement of learning. Thus among his letters we find one addressed in 1149 to the scholasticus of Corby, in which he enumerates among the writers to be studied in the school, Pythagoras, Plato, Sophocles, and Simonides, a sufficient proof that Greek literature was then cultivated in certain seminaries, and that the knowledge of that language was not confined, as Hallam suggests, to the occasional singing of a Greek Kyrie or Sanctus. There are other letters addressed to the superiors of monasteries whom he engaged to assist him in the collection of books. Among these was the abbot of Hildesheim, from whom he hoped to obtain a complete copy of the Offices of Cicero. His petition for these is in a certain sense apologetic, for, from the days of St. Jerome, religious men were wont to be a little sensitive, lest too great a love of the Latin orator should expose them to the charge of being a Ciceronian rather than a Christian student. Something of this sort had been playfully hinted at by the abbot of Hildesheim, and Wibald replies: “We do not serve the dishes of Cicero at the first or principal table; but when replenished with better food we partake of them as of sweetmeats that are served for dessert.” Sometimes his letters are addressed to friends who have visited his library, and who shared in his literary tastes. “I wish,” he writes to the Archbishop of Bremen, “that you would come again and remain longer with us, and, as you promised, turn over the volumes on our shelves. I wish we might have this pleasure together in peace and quiet; there is surely no greater happiness to be enjoyed in life.”

It is, perhaps, superfluous to multiply illustrations of this kind, but I cannot resist adding to the names already cited that of Marianus Scotus, whom some call an Irishman, and some a Scot, while others affirm him to have been an honest Northumbrian, and a member of the family of Bede.[159] He died towards the end of the eleventh century, having been successively monk in the abbeys of Cologne, Fulda, and Mayence, and professor of theology some years in that of Ratisbon. He was a poet, and the author of a Chronicle frequently quoted as one of the best mediæval histories, and continued by later writers. His biographers say of him that his countenance was so beautiful, and his manners so simple, that no one doubted he was inspired in all he said and did by the Holy Ghost. A most indefatigable writer, he transcribed the whole Bible with sundry commentaries, and that not once but repeatedly. Moreover he drew out of the deep sea of the holy Fathers, certain sweet waters for the profit of his soul, which he collected in prolix volumes. With all this he found spare moments which he devoted to charitable labours on behalf of poor widows, clerks, and scholars, for whose benefit he multiplied psalters, manuals, and other pious little books, which he distributed to them free of cost for the remedy of his soul. Who will refuse to believe that such loving toils as these were found worthy to receive the miraculous token of favour related in the old legend? “One night,” says the annalist, “the brother whose duty it was, having forgotten to give him candles, Marianus nevertheless continued his work without them; and when the brother, recollecting his omission, came late at night to his cell, he beheld a brilliant light streaming through the chinks of the door, and going in softly, found that it proceeded from the fingers of the monk’s left hand, and he saw and believed.”

In some writers of this time there are indications of increased attention being paid to natural phenomena, and the geographical notices introduced into the chronicle of Otto of Frisingia are praised by the authors of the Histoire Littéraire for their exactness and intelligence. A very singular and interesting fact is recorded in the chronicle of Marianus (or rather in its later continuation), which, though of a supernatural character, may perhaps be admitted among the scientific notices of the time. I allude to the vision seen and described by the Blessed Alpais of Cudot, who saw in rapture the earth hanging suspended in space shaped like a globe, or rather a spheroid, for she calls it not perfectly round, but egg-shaped. It was surrounded by water, and the sun appeared of a vastly greater size. Equally remarkable in another branch of science are the speculations of Ithier, a monk of Limoges, on the faculties of the mind corresponding to different parts of the brain, in which we catch a first glimpse of the modern theory of phrenology. Nor must it be supposed that the classical and scientific studies, which excited so much interest, caused the cultivation of the vulgar dialects to be forgotten. Abbots and bishops often preached in Romance, like St. Vital of Savigny and Hildebert of Mans, though the latter is said to have succeeded better in Latin. St. Bernard delivered his exhortations to his brethren not in Latin but Romance, for the benefit of the lay-brothers who were ignorant of the learned tongues, as Mabillon labours to prove. A vast number of translations were likewise made into the popular dialects, and about the end of the eleventh century the monk Grimoald published a version in Romance of the entire Bible; this translation being made nearly a century before that of the Waldenses, though the latter is very generally represented to be the earliest known version of the Scriptures in any vulgar tongue.[160]

It is evident, then, that all the learning of the eleventh and twelfth centuries was not swallowed up by the new race of scholastics, nor was every scholastic a Berengarius. Yet there is a certain change perceptible in many of those who at this time attained to literary eminence, and a greater predominance of the philosophic element, consequent in some degree from the nature of the studies rendered popular in the school of Bec. We begin more frequently to meet with tales of scholars who, in the midst of their learned pursuits, were overtaken with a dread of the perils which beset their course, and sought to escape them by flying into the desert. The cloisters were peopled with such refugees from the schools, who, like Lanfranc, often reappeared after a while to resume the weapons of human science, which they had thought to fling aside for ever, and use them in the service of their Master.

Of these converts were St. Bruno, the founder of the Carthusians, and Odo of Tournai. Bruno is said to have studied at Tours under Berengarius, though this appears doubtful. In 1056 the scholasticus of Rheims having resigned his charge, that he might devote himself exclusively to the affairs of his own salvation, Gervase, Archbishop of Rheims, promoted Bruno to the office, which by this time had become associated to that of Chancellor of the diocese, and gave its holder a certain superiority over the other diocesan schools. Bruno continued to fill this responsible post for twenty years, during which time he numbered among his pupils Odo, afterwards Pope Urban II., and many of the greatest prelates of the time. He was reckoned the first philosopher, theologian, and poet of France, and by writers of his own day is extolled as “the doctor of doctors, the glory of the Church, the model of good men, and the mirror of the whole world.” The romantic story which ascribes his conversion to religion to the horror caused by the voice which came from the dead body of a certain eminent doctor, proclaiming his damnation, is now universally rejected as the production of a later age. In fact, St. Bruno has himself related the manner in which his resolution was first formed in a letter addressed to Raoul, provost of Rheims, wherein he reminds him of a certain day when they were walking with another canon named Fulcius, in the garden adjoining his house, conversing together of the vanities of the world. “Then it was,” he says, “that the Holy Spirit moved us to renounce all perishable things, and embrace the monastic life that we might merit life eternal.” It would also appear that a grievous case of simony, which had scandalised the diocese, powerfully wrought on Bruno’s mind, and moved him to fly from a world so hedged about with temptations. He was followed into his retreat by a number of his former scholars; but it was not until 1084 that they at last determined on the way of life they should choose, and, receiving the monastic habit from the hands of St. Hugh of Grenoble, laid the foundation of the Carthusian Order, which took its name from the desert they had chosen for their abode. In after years the order continued to be largely recruited from the same class whence their first founder had been drawn. Many a fine scholar came to the wild rocks of the Chartreuse to seek in obscurity for a peace which he found by experience the world of intellect could never give; and Bulæus informs us that no order of monks received among their ranks so many members of Paris University as did these austere and penitential recluses.

Odo, or Oudart, the other convert to whom allusion has been made, first attracted notice as a teacher at Toul, a city which had always been rich in schools and schoolmasters, and which had felt a special pride in keeping up its learned reputation, since 1048, when it had sent its bishop to fill the chair of St. Peter in the person of St. Leo IX. Odo’s fame reached the ears of the canons of Tournai, who entreated him to take charge of their cathedral school, which he accordingly governed for five years. A skilful teacher, and a devourer of books, Odo possessed extraordinary powers of labour, and when any literary work was in hand, he rested neither day nor night till it was accomplished. He was also a great friend of method and good moral discipline, but as yet he had been too exclusively taken up with the cares and pleasures of his profession to give much thought to spiritual things. Or perhaps we might rather say that he hardly knew of their existence. Like other busy, hard-working men, he was swept along in the tide of daily life, and thought it much to preserve a character of stainless honour and respectability. His success as a teacher was so great, that disciples came to him from all parts of France, as well as from Flanders, Italy, and Saxony. The city of Tournai became literally filled with students, who might be seen disputing together in the public streets: and as you drew near the school you would see them walking with the master, or seated around him; or, in the evening, standing with him at the church door, while he taught them the various constellations, and explained to them the course of the stars.

Odo was as remarkable for his virtue as his learning. He took all his disciples to the church with him daily. They never numbered fewer than two hundred; but he made them walk two-and-two through the streets, he himself bringing up the rear, and enforcing a discipline as strict as would have been observed in the most regular monastery. No one ventured to speak to his companion, or to look right or left, and in choir they might have been taken for monks of Cluny. He did not allow them to frequent the company of women, or to wear any kind of finery; and if they transgressed his orders in these respects, he turned them out of his school. At the hours when he gave his lectures no layman was allowed to enter the cloisters, which were at other times the resort of the public. So strict was he in this, that he did not hesitate to exclude Everard, the Castellan of Tournai, a nobleman of power and influence; for it was Odo’s principle that a man must not deviate a hair’s-breadth from his duty from the motive of human respect. By these means he won the love and esteem of every one: canons and people alike spoke well of him, though some were found to say that his regularity of life sprang rather from philosophy than religion.

He had directed his school for about five years, when one day, a certain clerk having brought him St. Augustine’s “Treatise on Free-will,” he purchased it, merely with the view of increasing his library, and threw it into a coffer among some other books without looking at it, for his taste inclined him rather to the study of Plato than of the Fathers. About two months afterwards, however, as he was explaining Boëthius to his disciples, he came to the fourth book of the “Consolations of Philosophy,” in which the author treats of Free-will. Remembering the book he had lately purchased on the same subject, he sent for it, and having read two or three pages, was struck with the beauty of the style; and calling his pupils, said to them, “I own that until now I was ignorant how agreeable and eloquent are the writings of St. Augustine;” and that day and the following he read to them from this work, explaining its difficulties as he proceeded.

In this way he came to that passage in the third book, wherein St. Augustine compares the soul of the sinner to a slave condemned to some vile and disgusting labour. Odo sighed as he read the powerful words of the writer, exclaiming, “How striking is this comparison! it seems as if written expressly for us men of science. We adorn the corrupt world with the little stock of learning which we possess, and after death, perhaps, are not found worthy of eternal happiness, because we have done God no service; but have used our intellects for vanity and worldly glory!” With these words he rose from his chair, and going into the church, remained there in floods of tears, his scholars meanwhile remaining astonished and perplexed. From that day he gradually discontinued his lectures, and began to frequent the church more diligently, and to distribute in alms all the money he received from his pupils. He also fasted so rigorously that his appearance soon completely changed, and he became so thin and attenuated as scarcely to be recognised.

The rumour soon ran through the town that Odo, the famous doctor, was about to abandon the world. Four of his disciples resolved never to quit him, and made him promise to do nothing except in concert with them. Monks and abbots from every religious house in the neighbourhood of Tournai, wanted Odo to join their communities, but his disciples preferred the rule of the canons as being easier than that of the monks. Rabod, the Bishop of Tournai, accordingly made over to them an old church, part of an abbey which had been destroyed by the Normans, and they took possession of it in 1092. Two years later they resolved on embracing the monastic rule, and the bishop giving his consent, Odo was elected first abbot of the restored abbey of Tournai. Though he had fled to the cloister to escape from the pride of the schools, he did not neglect the cause of learning. Like most of the religious superiors of his day, he gave much time and trouble to the formation of a good library and scriptorium, and used to make an innocent boast of the many good writers whom the Lord had given him. Had you gone into his scriptorium, says his successor, you would have seen twelve youths, sitting in silence, most diligently engaged in copying manuscripts, at tables made for the purpose. And he enumerates among the books so transcribed the works of St. Jerome and St. Gregory, and all that he could collect of Bede, Isidore, Ambrose, Austin, and the Lord Anselm of Bec.

About this time the rival philosophical sects known as the Realists and Nominalists began to attract attention. The questions in dispute between them regarded the validity and existence of universal ideas. The expression requires explanation. An idea is the representation in the mind of some impression made on the senses by an external object. These ideas may be either particular or universal. They are particular when they correspond to some individual object, as John Smith, or that tree. They are universal when we separate them from any individual object, and conceive them as corresponding to something which is to be found in many individuals, whereby these may be classified together, as when we speak of men or trees. According to the scholastics, there are five kinds of such universal ideas, namely, species, genus, difference, property and accident. The species includes many individuals, as sheep, oak. The genus includes many species, as animal, tree. Difference is something which distinguishes one species from another belonging to the same genus. Property, or essential attribute, is what necessarily belongs to the essence of a thing; as when we say of a globe that it is round. Accident is some attribute to be found in a thing which is not necessary to its existence, as if we were to say of the same globe that it is green. We are able to hold these ideas in our mind, abstracted from any object, and so we come to have the abstract ideas of men, animals, trees, roundness, or whiteness, without connecting them with any particular individual. But the Nominalists denied the existence of such ideas, and declared the above distinctions to be mere sounds of the voice, corresponding to no external reality. They knew what was meant by a wise man, or a white horse, but professed themselves unable to comprehend what was meant by wisdom or whiteness. The Realists, on the other hand, appealing to the authority of Boëthius, contended that these ideas were real and existent.

Both parties numbered great names in their ranks. Odo of Tournai was a partisan of the Realists, as was also the Blessed Robert of Arbrisselles. At the head of the Nominalists appeared his fellow-student and professor in the Paris schools, Roscelin, a canon of Compeigne, and a man whose character too closely resembled that of Berengarius. He seems to have adopted novel and startling opinions as a means of drawing the eyes of men on himself, and the manner in which he applied his philosophical method of reasoning to revealed doctrines, specially that of the Holy Trinity, resulted in actual heresy, and brought on him in 1092 the condemnation of the Council of Soissons. Taking refuge in England, he there met with a vigorous opponent in the person of St. Anselm, who, whilst freely admitting, and even advocating the exercise of the intellectual powers on the mysteries of faith, marked out the limits between faith and reason, and severely condemned the presumption of those who would attempt to make reason the test of faith. He declares that we must seek the intelligence of those things that we already believe; that reason is not the means by which we attain to faith, but rather that by which we enjoy the evidence and contemplation of the mysteries which we already believe: and that right order demands that we should first receive the profound truths of faith before we dare to exercise our reason upon them.[161] As time went on, and both sects pushed their philosophical views to extremes, grave errors were charged against both, and the foundations were laid of many forms of modern Rationalism.

Paris was now rapidly becoming the centre of scholastic activity. The fame of her masters spread over Europe, and among them were Lambert, a disciple of Fulbert of Chartres; Manegold, whose very daughters were learned, and opened a school for the education of their own sex, Anselm of Laon and Bernard of Chartres. John of Salisbury, whose favourite master, William de Conches, had himself been a pupil of Bernard’s, has left us an interesting account of the method of this last-named teacher. He explained all the best authors, not confining himself to grammar strictly so called, but making his pupils observe all the refinements of rhetoric. He pointed out the propriety of certain terms and metaphors, and the best order and arrangement of a subject; and showed the variety of styles to be used according to the different matters treated of by a writer. If any passage occurred in their reading referring to other sciences, he took pains to explain it, according to the capacity of his hearers. He was careful to cultivate their memory, making them learn and recite choice passages from the classic historians, poets, and philosophers; requiring them one day to give an exact account of what they had heard or read the day previous. He was always exhorting them to read much in private, but not indiscriminately, directing them to avoid what was only fit to feed curiosity, and to content themselves with the works of standard authors. For, he used to say, quoting Quinctilian, “it is a great weakness to read all that every miserable writer has to say on every subject, and only loads the memory with superfluous and worthless things.”

As he knew that it is to very little purpose to hear or study examples unless we accustom ourselves to reproduce the treasures thus stored up in the memory, he was anxious that his pupils should every day compose something both in prose and verse, and he established conferences among them wherein they mutually questioned and answered one another, the utility of which exercise John of Salisbury speaks of very highly; “provided,” as he observes, “that charity govern the emulation displayed in such encounters, so that while we make progress in letters we still preserve humility. For a man should not serve two masters so opposed one to the other as learning and vice.”

This was also the rule observed by Bernard, who maintained that the first and principal key to knowledge was Humility, to which he assigned Poverty as a companion. The subjects on which he exercised his scholars were always fitted to cherish both faith and good morals. And the work of each day was finished with the recitation of the “Our Father,” and a brief prayer for the dead.

Anselm of Laon was a teacher of much the same character, and, if possible, of greater renown. He and his brother Radulph were called by Guibert de Nogent the two eyes of the Latin Church, and by their knowledge of the Scriptures converted many heretics. Some of their pupils were as famous as themselves, such as Hugh Metellus, a great lover of the classics, whose flow of language was so great that he dictated to two secretaries at once, and could improvise a thousand verses, standing on one leg, and who was induced by the teaching of his pious masters to exchange a life of worldly vanity, the love of dress and delicate diet, for the austere regimen of a canon regular of Toul. Another of Anselm’s scholars was William de Champeaux, under whom the Paris schools first attained that pre-eminence which they maintained in the world of letters down to the period of the Revolution. After studying successively under Manegold and Anselm, he was appointed archdeacon of the Church of Paris, and master of the Cathedral school, where he taught logic, rhetoric, and theology, with great success. And about the year 1100 his reputation attracted one disciple whose name is indelibly associated with the literary history of the period,—the celebrated Peter Abelard.

Abelard’s choice of a scholar’s life is said to have been influenced in the first instance by his dislike of the profession of arms. Nature, while it had given him an insatiable desire for fame and worldly glory, had denied him the gift of personal courage, and he himself made no secret of the feeling which, as he said, had moved him to enrol himself under the banners of Minerva, rather than those of Mars. His subtle mind was very early devoted to the study of logic, but not satisfied with the teaching to be found in his own diocese of Nantes, he led a wandering life for some time, passing from school to school; and at last found his way to Paris, where William de Champeaux was then at the height of his reputation as a teacher of dialectics. The brilliant qualities of his new pupil at first won the heart of his master, but erelong Abelard began to show signs of that presumption and contempt of every one’s attainments except his own, which kept him at war with all his contemporaries. He came to the lecture rooms less with the view of learning than with the secret hope of outshining his fellow-students and perplexing his master. He was perpetually proposing vexatious questions, for the purpose of entrapping the latter in some logical subtlety; and affecting to consider that William had shown himself unable to answer these difficulties, he disdained any longer to be the scholar of one whom he considered his inferior, and determined on setting up a school for himself.

Unable to do this in Paris, where the influence of William de Champeaux was at that time all-powerful, he established himself first at Mélun, and then at Corbeil, which was nearer to the capital. He was but twenty-two when he first appeared before the world as an independent professor, and soon made himself talked of for his brilliancy, his fluency, and the vehemence with which he attempted to make the art of logic supersede all the other liberal arts, which he was accustomed to treat with contempt. His passion for glory soon brought him back to Paris, where William de Champeaux was now archdeacon, and head of the cathedral school. Abelard renewed his attacks on his old master, and that with such success, that the cloisteral schools became deserted, and the fickle audience flocked to the lectures of the new professor. The circumstance seems to have touched the heart of William with a contempt for intellectual renown which was so easily won and lost, and resigning his school, he retired among the canons regular of St. Victor, a religious house destined to play a great part in the history of the future university. This was in 1109, and, by the advice of Hildebert, Bishop of Mans, who wrote to the new canon, congratulating him on “the step by which he had at last become a true philosopher,” William opened a school within his monastery, which afterwards produced several illustrious theologians, who are all distinguished by the surname of St. Victor.

It is unnecessary to pursue the rivalries of the two professors through all their windings; in 1113 William was raised to the see of Châlons, a circumstance which seems to have first induced Abelard to study theology, with the hope of attaining similar honours. Accordingly, we next find him at Laon, attending the school of Anselm, now dean of that church, whom, however, he very soon declared to be altogether unworthy of his great renown. “His learning was,” he said, “nothing but foliage without fruit; long custom, rather than any real merit, had acquired him a name. If you consulted him on any difficulty, you came away just as wise as you went. There was nothing but abundance of fine words, without a grain of sense or reason.” So, in despair of finding a master wise enough to teach one of his genius, he resolved to do without one, and, with the help of a commentary, began to give lectures on the prophet Ezechiel. His wit, his fluency, and his singular charms of voice and manner, veiled the real shallowness of his theological attainments, and, on returning to Paris, he succeeded in gaining what had been for so many years the great object of his ambition, the direction of the cathedral school. Then began the period of his extraordinary popularity; disciples flocked to him from all parts of France and Germany, as well as from Rome and England. His vanity easily persuaded him that he was not merely the greatest, but the only philosopher of his time; all the world hung on his eloquence, but amid the long catologue of his admirers, none was to be found so bewitched with his merits as he was himself.

Abelard’s teaching bore the character of his own restless and impatient genius. Disdainful of anything which did not promise quick results, he aimed at presenting his disciples with a philosophy which professed to lead them to the possession of wisdom by a royal road. The trivium and quadrivium were to be consigned to oblivion; the classics and the Fathers might alike grow dusty on the shelves, logic was to be all in all, and the philosopher and the theologian might abandon every other study, provided they perfected themselves in the art which St. Bernard characterised with caustic wit, as “that of ever studying, and never reaching the truth.” Abelard’s condemnation of the classics is worth noticing, as showing the similarity of mind which existed between him and Berengarius, whom Guitmond describes as “making no account of the opinions of his masters, and despising the liberal arts.” In neither of them did this condemnation arise from a preponderance of the Christian sense; but from their repugnance to objective realities.[162] Their philosophy was in short that of which the apostle speaks, when he condemns the “vain babblings” of those who “desire to be teachers of the law,” which differed little from the “foolish questionings” of the sophists. The effect of these new doctrines was to inaugurate a scholastic revolution. One by one the fair branches of the tree of science were severed from the trunk, till at last nothing remained but the exercise of subtle and captious argumentation, wherein logic came to be used not as a means but an end, and the scholar was no longer led to seek for truth as his object, but to rest content with the search after it.

Thus passed several years, during which Abelard had earned a fame, brilliant indeed beyond that of any of his contemporaries, but unhappily one which left his moral reputation far from stainless. In 1117 we find him in the abbey of St. Denis, where he had taken refuge from the disgrace entailed on him by his connection with Heloïsa. Even here his insupportable vanity was not long before it betrayed itself in the criticisms he passed on his abbot and his brother monks, among whom he seems to have aspired to act as the reformer. The abbot longed to get rid of so troublesome a subject, and the opportunity of doing so soon presented itself. Crowds of students began to clamour at the gates of St. Denis for their old master, and to implore him to reopen his school. He therefore resumed his lectures, but unable to rest contented with teaching only what had been taught before him, he began to introduce logical subtleties into his theological views, and put forth certain explanations on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which raised a storm of opposition. His chief opponents were Alberic and Lotulf, two former disciples of Anselm of Laon, and William of Champeaux. They not only attacked his opinions as heterodox, but complained that he had no right to teach at all. His position as a professor was, they said, altogether irregular, for, contrary to the established usages of the Paris schools, he taught sine magistro.

This term requires a little explanation; and shows us the germ of what soon afterwards developed into the system of university graduation. According to established custom, no scholar could be licensed to teach publicly who had not previously gone through a regular course of study under some approved doctor. But Abelard had had no master in theology, except himself; for, as we have seen, he gave up his attendance in Anselm’s school through contempt for his inferiority, and had at once begun to teach a science which in reality he had never studied. At a Council assembled at Soissons, his Treatise on the Holy Trinity was condemned, and he himself required to cast it into the fire, and to make public profession of the faith by reciting the creed of St. Athanasius, which he did with many tears and sighs, after which he was sent back to the monastery of St. Denys. He had not been there long, however, when a controversy which he thought fit to raise on the question of the identity of St. Denys, the Areopagite, with the patron of the abbey, got him into fresh trouble, and he fled from the monastery to the territory of the Count of Champagne, where he fixed his residence in a beautiful solitude near Nogent, which was soon found out by his disciples. “They came crowding to me,” he writes, “from all parts, and leaving the towns and cities, were content to dwell in the wilderness. Instead of spacious houses, they set up for themselves little tents, and put up gladly with wild herbs instead of delicate viands. People said one to another, ‘Behold the world is gone after him.’ At last, as my little oratory would not hold them, they enlarged it, building it of wood and stone.” To this new building he gave the name of the Paraclete, and it might truly have been his consolation could he have learnt wisdom from the past, and bowed his erratic genius under the yoke of faith. But the school of the Paraclete soon resounded with new errors; to the former opinions put forth regarding the Holy Trinity, were now added equally heterodox views on the subject of grace and original sin, which were at once discerned and denounced by two saints who then illuminated the church with their doctrine and their virtue—St. Norbert, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Abelard, whose natural cowardice shrank from the prospect of new dangers, endeavoured to escape the consequences of his own imprudence by abandoning the Paraclete, and accepting the government of St. Gildas’ abbey; but the uncouth manners and language of the monks filled him with repugnance, or perhaps it would be truer to say, the monastic routine proved insufferable to one who had nothing of the real monk about him. In 1126, therefore, we find him once more teaching in the schools of St. Geneviève. He was never really at home save in the Professor’s chair, but unhappily he never filled it without betraying himself into some of the audacities of unorthodox philosophy. Soon his old errors were reproduced, and called forth the zeal of St. Bernard, who protested with all the force of his nervous eloquence against the strange assemblage of heresies to be found united in the teaching of a single man. “When he speaks of the Holy Trinity,” he says, “it is in the style of Arius; he is a Pelagian when he treats of grace, and a second Nestorius when he speaks of the Person of Jesus Christ. His vanity,” continues the saint, “is such that he brags as if there were nothing in heaven and earth he did not know; and in truth he knows a little of everything except himself.” In his 190th Epistle, addressed to Pope Innocent II., St. Bernard sums up all the errors of Abelard, who had ventured to deny, and even to ridicule, the doctrine of Redemption, which he presumptuously declared illogical, declaring that our Lord came only to instruct us by His Word and Example. His final condemnation took place at the Council of Sens, which imposed silence on him for ever, a sentence confirmed by the authority of Pope Innocent II. This condemnation might possibly have had no better result than that of Soissons, had it not been for the charity of the Venerable Peter of Cluny, at whose monastery Abelard stopped on his way to Rome, where he purposed to appeal against his sentence. The holy abbot succeeded in drawing from him a recantation of his errors; he induced him to renounce the scholastic career, which had been the source of so many temptations, and frankly to submit to the judgment of the Council and the Pope. More than this, he exerted himself to effect a personal reconciliation between Abelard and St. Bernard, and lastly, he offered to the wounded spirit of the unhappy scholar a secure and sheltered retreat in his own community, where, under the habit of religion, the Professor of St. Geneviève spent the last years of his life in the exercise of piety and penance.

There then, let us leave him, in his poor cell with its wooden candlestick and its crucifix, with the Holy Scriptures and a few treatises of the Fathers for his only library; defeated, as some might say, put to silence, and extinguished—but with his heart, at last, at peace. Well might he have exclaimed with the Psalmist, “It is good for me that Thou hast humbled me!” A change was wrought in him so great, that, as we read the words in which his good abbot describes it, we can scarcely recognise the old Abelard of former years. “Never did I see a man more humble,” writes Peter the Venerable, “whether in gesture, habit, or countenance. He read continually, prayed often, and kept silence at all times, unless when forced to speak; and after his reconciliation with the Holy See, offered the Holy Sacrifice almost daily, and occupied himself only with meditating or teaching me truths of religion or philosophy.” A marvellous change indeed; and happy were it if all who incurred the same censures could follow in the same course.

We have seen that the rationalistic errors of Abelard found their ablest opponent in St. Bernard, who had conceived a distrust of the new philosophy when studying as a mere boy in the canon’s school at Chatillon, where the fashionable scholasticism was just then beginning to be introduced. He seems to have felt an instinctive dread of its ultimate tendencies, and to have preserved during his whole life the sentiments resulting from his early experience of what his biographer Geoffery of Igny designates as the “wisdom of the world.” Closely united to him in their theological views, were the great scholars of St. Victor’s, Hugh, Richard, and Adam. Hugh of St. Victor, the third prior in succession from William de Champeaux, was styled the second Augustine, from his devoted admiration of that Father. Brought up in a house of canons regular in Saxony, he bore testimony in after life to the care they bestowed on his education. “I do not fear to certify,” he says, “that they neglected no means of perfecting me in the sciences, and even instructed me in many things which might be thought trifling and extraordinary.” These words occur in his Didascalion, or Treatise on Studies, which he drew up with the view of remedying the disorderly and unmethodical manner in which most scholars then pursued their academic labours. In it he gives an interesting account of his own early life as a scholar. “I never despised anything that belonged to erudition,” he says; “when I was a scholar I studied the names of everything I saw. I committed to memory all the sentences, questions, replies, and solutions I had heard and learnt during the day; and I used to describe the figures of geometry on the floor with charcoal. I do not say this to boast of my knowledge, which is nothing, but to show that he proceeds best who proceeds with order. You will find many things in histories and other books, which taken in themselves seem of little profit, but which nevertheless are useful and necessary when taken in connection with other things.” Hugh, like all the disciples of this school, advocated the old system, according to which all the parts of knowledge stood in mutual relation to one another, and theology dominated over the whole. In his Treatise De Vanitate Mundi, he describes an imaginary school, in which is no doubt depicted that of his own monastery. The students are described divided into groups, according to the different subjects on which they are engaged. All the liberal arts are cultivated in turn, and while the fingers of some are employed in designing or colouring an illuminated page, others are studying the nature of herbs, or the constitution of the human frame. As a spiritual writer, Hugh of St. Victor is considered to be surpassed by his disciple Richard of St. Victor, a Scotchman by birth, and one of the greatest mystic theologians of the Church. The special doctrines insisted on by this school were those which put forth faith, and not reason, as the ground of certainty, and maintained that reason was to be exercised only to demonstrate the truths that were held by faith. Abelard, in his extravagant exaltation of the claims of reason, had gone so far in his “Introduction to Theology,” as to define faith as an opinion, and to depreciate a too ready belief, praising that cautious philosophy which does not yield its faith till it has subjected all things to the test of reason. To believe without doubting, according to this view of things, was the religion of women and children; to doubt all things before we believe them was alone worthy of the dignity of man. The scholars of St. Victor not only vindicated the true claims of faith, but they sought to prove that faith itself must rest on the foundation stone of charity. They loved to remind their disciples of those words of Our Lord, “If any man will do the will of God he shall know of the doctrine.” Charity, they said, is then the foundation, and Humility the key, to all true science, and we can understand the Truth of God only in proportion as we obey it. They did not seek to set aside the just use of the reason, but to assign it limits, and to prohibit the search after things confessedly above the grasp of human intellect. “What is it to be wise,” asks Hugo of St. Victor, “but to love God? for love is wisdom.” He complains of the cavilling spirit of the dialecticians who would fain turn the simplest precepts of the Gospel into matter of dispute. If they read that we are to love our neighbour as ourselves, they begin to argue, saying, “If I love one man as myself, then I must love three or four men more than myself;” and this they style seeking truth. Again, he blames the conceit of those who, ignorant of the very first elements, will condescend to study nothing but the sublimest matters, forgetting that the beginning of all discipline is humility. Neither would he endure that presumptuous spirit which gloried in the subtlety of its own powers, but, like a true disciple of St. Augustine, desired that reliance on Divine Grace should be the foundation of the whole spiritual and intellectual edifice.