Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and Learning/Introduction

by Reginald Lane Poole

INTRODUCTION

The history of medieval thought falls naturally into two broad divisions, each of which is brought to a close not by the creation of a new method or system from native resources, but by the introduction of fresh materials for study from without. The first period ended when the works of Aristotle, hitherto known only from partial and scanty versions, were translated into Latin; the second, when a knowledge of Greek letters in their own language made it impossible for men to remain satisfied with the views of ancient philosophy to which they had previously been confined and upon which their own philosophy had entirely depended. An age of eclecticism, too eager in its enjoyment of the new-found treasure to care to bind itself, as its predecessors had done, to any single authority, was then followed by an age in which the interests of theological controversy drove out every other interest, until at length in the comparative calm after the tempest of the Reformation, philosophy entered a new phase, and the medieval or traditional method was finally rejected in favour of one common in this respect to both modern and ancient speculation, that it rested upon independent thought, and regarded no authority as beyond appeal.

In the two periods of the middle ages we find nothing absolutely original; advance is measured less by the power with which men used their intellects than by the skill with which they used their materials. Still there is a difference between the periods which makes the earlier the more interesting to the student of human thought considered as apart from any specific production of it: for while the works of Aristotle were almost totally unknown to the Latin world there was a wider sphere for the exercise of ingenuity, for something approaching originality, than there could be when an authoritative text-book lay ready to hand. In the following essay our attention will be mainly directed to these traces of independence, not so much in the domain of formal philosophy as in those regions where philosophy touches religion, where reason meets superstition, and where theology links itself with political theory. In the later period we shall limit ourselves exclusively to this last subject, to the attempts made to frame a political philosophy, and in particular to reconcile the notion of the state with the existence and the claims of an universal church, or to modify those claims by reference to the necessary exigencies of civil government.

The field therefore of our investigation is that of theology, but it does not follow on this account that its produce must also be theological. Theology is no doubt the mode of medieval thought: the history of the middle ages is the history of the Latin church. The overmastering strength of theology, of a clergy which as a rule absorbed all the functions of a literary class, gave its shape to every thing with which it came into contact. Society was treated as though it were actually a theocracy: politics, philosophy, education, were brought under its control and adjusted to a technical theological terminology. But when this characteristic is recognised, it is found to supply not only the explanation of the distance which seems to separate the middle ages from modern times, but also a means of bridging over the interval. Men thought theologically and expressed themselves theologically, but when we penetrate this formal expression we discover their speculations, their aims, their hopes, to be at bottom not very different from our own; we discover a variety beneath the monotonous surface of their thoughts, and at the same time an unity, ill-defined perhaps, but still an unity, pervading the history of European society. There was indeed never a time when the life of Christendom was so confined within the hard shell of its dogmatic system that there was no room left for individual liberty of opinion. A ferment of thought is continually betrayed beneath those forms; there are even frequent indications of a state of opinion antagonistic to the church itself. The necessity of a central power ruling the consciences of men of course passed unquestioned, but when this immense authority appeared not a protection but a menace to religion, it was seldom that it was submitted to in complete silence.

When the church seemed to be departing from its spiritual dignity and defiling its ceremonial by the superstitions and the prodigies of heathenism, or when its pontiffs seemed to have adopted all the vices of secular princes and to have exchanged totally the church for the world, there were rarely wanting advocates of a purer Christian order, advocates whose denunciations might rival in vehemence those of a modern protestant. Even the doctrinal fabric of the church was not always safe from attack; for although no one impugned the truth of Christianity, the attempt was still repeatedly made to clear away the dust of centuries and reveal the simpler system of primitive belief. Such efforts, until we approach the border-line of modern history, were invariably disappointed. They rarely exerted even a momentary influence over a wide circle. In truth, however generously conceived, however heroically sustained, the aims of the premature reformers were often too audaciously, too wantonly, directed against the beliefs of the mass of their fellow-Christians to deserve success. We may admire their nobility or their constancy, but an impartial judgement can hardly regret that they failed. They troubled the world, it might be for a few years, and left their single memorial in their writings. Yet, though they may occupy but a small place in the history of civilisation, the light they cast upon the unusual tendencies of thought, the eccentricities, of the middle ages, makes them a not unfruitful subject of study.

A still more suggestive line of enquiry is opened in the general history of thought and learning. The masculine spirit and the confidence with which the philosophers of the period carried on their speculations is hardly suspected by those who are not familiar with the original literature. Men who were least of all inclined to oppose anything that bore the stamp of traditional authority, displayed a freedom of judgement which could not but tend to consequences in one way or another divergent from the established system. The methods by which they accommodated the two are indeed evidence of the imperfect grasp they possessed of the inexorable demands of the reasoning faculties: their theological consciences were equally inexorable in requiring the adjustment; or perhaps more truly, the necessary conformity of reason and authority was so regularly assumed that they were unaware of the act of accommodation; the theological correctness of the conclusion, however arrived at, was the inevitable consequence of this implicit identification of contradictory terms in the premises. We are often at liberty to leave the ultimate reconciliation out of account, as a mode characteristic of the time rather than an argument due to the individual writer. It is the road on which their thoughts travel that retains its interest for the student of philosophical history.

The continuous activity of the human reason in Latin Christendom has its witness partly in the opposition, conscious or unconscious, to the tradition of the church, partly in the spirit of its philosophy. Through these currents we may learn the deeper springs which existed in men's minds and which, however often dormant, frozen by the rigid strength of theology, were yet capable of welling forth to nourish the world. The position held by intellectual studies and by learned men is uniformly the measure of the prevalence of these liberal forces in society; yet since the greatest writers have usually exercised a more powerful influence over posterity than over their own generation, it is chiefly from their works that we can estimate the power which the stimulus once given to learning and thought could gain in a few minds outstripping their fellows. The history of learning therefore not only supplies the links that connect the several divisions of the first part of our enquiry, but also the groundwork on which its argument must be constructed.

It is well known that the rise of the western church was accompanied by a rapid decline in the study of classical letters.^[1] Learning, such as it was, became restricted to the clergy and the monks, and these became more and more inclined to elevate their professional study at the expense, or to the condemnation, of every other. The rhetorical schools which had kept alive, however poorly, the tradition of classical learning, were suffered themselves to die out, and their place was only in a small part taken by the seminaries which gradually grew up about different cathedral or monastic establishments. The grammarian was expelled by the scholastic, and the scholastic had little interest or little power to imbue his disciples with more knowledge than was required for the performance of the offices of the church. Those who aspired to lead others would seek to advance to an acquaintance, seldom profound or extensive, with the writings of the fathers; and might thus obtain an indirect and distant view of that country from which Augustin and even Jerome had not been able, however desirous, to shake themselves free. But since the day when the expiring paganism of Rome had entered its last conflict with Christianity, the church had granted no terms to the system she had displaced. It was not alone that the philosophical spirit had proved inimical to orthodoxy: Tertullian's famous saying, a Haereticorum patriarchae philosophi, expresses but a portion of the truth. The entire classical tradition, all learning in its large sense, was treated not merely as irrelevant to the studies of the Christian, but as a snare from which he was taught to flee as from a temptation of the evil one. Such an antagonism inevitably tended to limit the aims and to narrow the character of the Christian church. It is not necessary here to trace its immediate result upon her doctrine and ceremonial; the fact by itself suffices to show that as Christianity extended its sway among the nations that had overwhelmed the empire, it could not bring with it those refining influences by which it would have been attended, had it absorbed and purified the culture of Rome. As it was, the church was built upon the ruins of a subjugated society; its fabric was but a step less barbarous than that of the Teutonic civilisation by which it was confronted.

If we confine our view to the literary aspect of the question, the marks of retrogression are clear and unmistakeable. Among the few who still cultivated learning oratory degenerated into panegyric, poetry occupied itself with mean or trivial subjects. With the rest the Latin language itself lost its nerve; idiom and even syntax were forgotten: it was enough if a writer could make himself understood at all. If down to the fifth century we find rare examples of an opposite tendency, the hostility of the church towards classical letters is thenceforth strongly marked. In the sixth century indeed Cassiodorus labours to prove that secular learning is good and profitable, utilis et non refugienda cognitio, and anxiously supports his argument by a catalogue of learned men downwards from Moses to the fathers:^[2] but the apology itself implies the discredit into which learning had fallen. A little later that discredit was completed when Gregory the Great employed his unrivalled authority to denounce all secular learning. The common story that the pope burned the Palatine library, because, as John of Salisbury hints, he had a greater interest in the holy Scriptures, is no doubt false; but it not inaccurately represents the attitude Gregory took up in regard to classical studies. The letter which he wrote on the subject to Desiderius, bishop of Vienne, has been often quoted, but it is too characteristic to be omitted here. The bishop, it seems, had ventured to teach grammar and read the poets. Gregory's remonstrance is as follows: A report has reached us which we cannot mention without a blush, that thou expoundest grammar to certain friends; whereat we are so offended and filled with scorn that our former opinion of thee is turned to mourning and sorrow. The same mouth singeth not the praises of Jove and the praises of Christ.^[3] Think how grievous and unspeakable a thing it is for a bishop to utter that which becometh not even a religious layman. . . . If hereafter it be clearly established that the rumour which we have heard is false and that thou art not applying thyself to the idle vanities of secular learning nugis et secularibus litteris, a significant hendiadys, we shall render thanks to our God who hath not delivered over thy heart to be defiled by the blasphemous praises of unspeakable men.^[4]

This then was the policy, of we may so call it, of the church with regard to education, declared by him who has an undisputed title to be called the father of the medieval papacy, and whose example was law to his successors, as indeed it was to the whole of Latin Christendom for many ages. From this authority there was however one corner of Europe practically exempted.^[5] Ireland had as yet remained free from the invasion of foreign barbarians, and had held its own tradition not only of Christian but also of classical culture. Although it did not receive Christianity until the middle of the fifth century,^[6] the newly-planted religion had grown up with astonishing rapidity and strength.^[7] The Irish, or, to give them their proper name, the Scots, had no sooner been enlightened by the preaching of a foreign missionary, saint Patrick, than they pressed forward to make all nations participators in the knowledge of their new faith. Already there was a steady emigration across the north channel into that country which was soon to borrow the civilisation, the very name, of the settlers.^[8] Now, that emigration took a distinctively religious character. The little island of Hy off the coast of Mull became the head spring from which Christianity was to penetrate among the rude inhabitants of the Pictish highlands, or the English of Northumbria or Mercia. But the zeal of the Irish missionaries could not be confined within the compass of Britain. The Celt yielded not to the Northman in his passion for travel;^[9] then as now the poverty of the land was the peremptory cause of emigration: but the ambition of the missionary supplied a far stronger incentive to distant enterprises than the mere love of adventure or the mere hope of gain; and those who had once been known but as the pirates whose terrible fleets ravaged the coasts of Britain or Gaul, became the peaceful colonists of Christianity in nearly every land where the Teuton in his advance westward had established himself. From Iceland to the Danube or the Apennines, among Frank or Burgundian or Lombard, the Irish energy seemed omnipotent and inexhaustible.

To account in any sort for this astonishing activity we have to go back to the form in which the Celtic church had grown up, and observe how its loose and irregular organisation left its ministers free to choose their own work where they would. In other countries the diocese had been the basis of Christian organisation: in Ireland it was the monastery. This was the centre of the religious community; the abbat, not the bishop, was its representative chief. When gifts were made to the church the monastery was the recipient; the abbat was their steward. Round the monastery then the clergy of the neighbourhood grouped themselves as a tribe or clan. The absence of any fixed endowment was an insuperable obstacle to the formation of an ecclesiastical constitution after the common pattern. Almost everywhere the bishops were untrammelled by the cares of a definite diocese; often a band of many bishops is found settled at one place. The lesser clergy were driven to earn a living as they might, in the secular business of the farm or the plough. They had no hopes of ecclesiastical preferment to tempt them to stay at home: poverty was their natural lot, and it might be met with as little inconvenience abroad. Thus they poured forth upon the continent, the most devoted, the least self-seeking of missionaries: how poor they were we may learn from the fact that special hostelries were founded for their reception in many places of the Frankish realm by the charity of their wealthier fellow-countrymen.^[10]

It is not however with the religious work of the Scots that we are immediately concerned: their literary tradition is still more remarkable and characteristic. Isolated in a remote island, the stream of classical learning had remained pure while the rest of Roman Europe had suffered it to be corrupted or dried up in the weary decay of the empire that followed the Teutonic influx. In Ireland it was still fresh and buoyant; and from the Irish it passed back to the continent in greater and greater waves. Of the means by which their education was acquired at home we are but scantily informed. In the seventh century, Bede tells us, the Northumbrian nobles, and others too of middle rank, flocked to the schools of Ireland; and while some faithfully dedicated themselves to the monastic life, others chose rather to pass in turn through the cells of the masters and give their labour to study: and the Scots most readily received them, and provided them daily their food without charge, and books also to read, and free instruction. But we have to guess from a variety of scattered notices and suggestions the precise way in which the Irish tradition of learning differed from that current on the continent. At one moment we read of saint Caimin, a teacher on an island of Loughderg, who made a critical edition of the Psalms;^[11] and there is at all events evidence to shew that the Scots possessed, in common with the Britons, a Latin version of the Bible distinct from the vulgate. It has been thought too that the Greek language which had almost ceased to be known elsewhere in the west, was widely cultivated in the schools of Ireland.^[12]

But of greater significance is the fact that there reigned, not only among her professed scholars but also among the plain missionaries whom she sent forth to preach the gospel to the heathen, a classical spirit, a love of literature for its own sake, a keen delight in poetry. The very field of study of which the Latin was taught to say, This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish, was that to which the Scot turned with the purest enthusiasm. The gaiety of the Celtic nature made him shew his devotion to the classical poets by imitating them. Saint Columban, the apostle of Burgundy, whom men knew as the stern preacher of an austere discipline,^[13] as the haughty rebuker of kings, was wont to seek refreshment from his religious labours in sending his friends letters in verse, now in the rhymed couplets of his own day, now m hexameters. Sometimes k the initials of the an acrostich : once the saint writes a long letter composed of a string of adonics.^[14] Meagre as his performances may appear, if judged by ancient models. Columban's more serious poems are neither awkward nor ungraceful. All of them are full of conceits and mythological allusions; they read as the work of an entire pagan.^[15] Equally they prove the breadth and freedom of the training which he had received at Banchor and which was the peculiar possession of the Scots. There is a vein of poetry running through the whole lives of these Irish confessors, a poetry of which the stories of their acts are indeed better witnesses than their practical essays in verse-making. They brought imagination, as they brought spiritual force, into a world well-nigh sunk in materialism.

Their lighter productions shew one side of the Scottish nature: their earnest, single-hearted pursuit of learning in the widest sense attainable, their solid hard work as scholars, is not less characteristic. Ireland was once the university, the literary market not only, as we have seen, of northern England, but also m of the Frankish realm; and if its progress at home was arrested after the fatal inroad of the Northmen in 795,^[16] the seed the Scots had sown in other lands grew to a nobler maturity than it had ever reached on its own soil. Wherever they went they founded schools. Malmesbury, the house of which saint Aldhelm was a scholar and ultimately abbat, took its origin from the company of disciples that gathered about a poor Scottish teacher, Mailduf, as he sat in his hut beside the walls of the old castle of Ingelborne. The foundations of saint Columban, Luxeuil, and Bobbio,^[17] long remained centres of learned activity in Burgundy and Lombardy; the settlement of his comrade, saint Gall, rose into the proud abbey which yet retains his name, and which was for centuries a beacon-tower of learning in western Europe; the sister-abbey of Reichenau, its rival both in power and in cultivation, also owed its fame, if not its actual establishment on its island in the lower lake of Constance, to Scottish teachers. Under the shelter of these great houses, and of such as these, learning was planted in a multitude of lesser societies scattered over the tracts of German colonisation; and most commonly the impulse which led to their formation as schools as well as monasteries is directly due to the energetic devotion of the Scottish travellers.

A new epoch in their labours abroad is opened in the empire of Charles the Great, whose hearty goodwill towards scholars and whose zeal for the promotion of learning are as characteristic and well-known as his skill as a warrior or as a king. If his reign marks the dividing line between ancient and medieval history, it is not only by virtue of its political facts but also because it begins the age of the education of the northern races, fitting them in time to rule the world as the Romans had done before them. In this great work the Scots, instead of toiling humbly by themselves, were now welcomed and recognised as indispensable cooperators. Their entry into the Frankish realm is related in the Acts of Charles the Great, written by a monk of Saint Gall^[18] towards the end of the ninth century, whose account, however much coloured by legendary ornaments, may still P contain some features of a genuine tradition; at the least it points rightly to the main source from which the impulse of learning was communicated afresh to the continent.

When, says the monk, the illustrious Charles had begun to reign alone in the western parts of the world and the study of letters was everywhere well-nigh forgotten, in such sort that the worship of the true God declined, it chanced that two Scots from Ireland lighted with the British merchants on the coast of Gaul, men learned without compare as well in secular as in sacred writings; who, since they showed nothing for sale, kept crying to the crowd that gathered to buy, If any man is desirous of wisdom, let him come to us and receive it; for we have it to sell. This therefore they declared they had for sale, since they saw the people to traffic not in gifts but in saleable things, so that they thus might either urge them to purchase wisdom like other goods or, as the events following show, turn them by such declaration to wonder and astonishment. At length their cry being long continued was brought by certain that wondered at them or deemed them mad., to the ears of Charles the king, always a lover and most desirous of wisdom: who, when he had called them with all haste into his presence, enquired if, as he understood by report, they verily had wisdom with them. Yea, said they, we have it and are ready to impart to any that rightly seek it in the name of the Lord. When therefore he had enquired what they would have in return for it, they answered, Only proper places and noble souls, and such things as we cannot travel without, food and wherewith to clothe ourselves. Hearing this he was filled with great joy, and first for a short space entertained them both in his house hold : afterwards when he was constrained to warlike enterprises, he enjoined the one, by name Clement, to abide in Gaul; to whom he entrusted boys of the most noble, middle, and lowest ranks, in goodly number, and ordained that victual should be provided them according as they had need, with fitting houses to dwell in. The other^[19] he dispatched into Italy and appointed him the monastery of Saint Austin beside the Ticinian city, that there such as were willing to learn might gather together unto him.

Now, adds the biographer, a certain Albinus, the name is an accepted classical adaptation of Alcuin, by race an Englishman, when he heard that the most religious emperor Charles was glad to welcome learned men, he too entered into a ship and came to him. Here we are no doubt still wider of historical accuracy: it was not in this manner that Alcuin made acquaintance with the Frankish king, nor is it probable that the arrival of the Irish scholars was attended by the picturesque circumstances which the monk relates. Yet, however little there be of truth in the fable, it is still valuable as evidence of the clearness with which a subsequent generation seized the main fact of Charles s indebtedness to the British islands, and also with which it expressed, as an accepted and natural relation, the notion of affinity between learning and godliness which it was the work of Alcuin and still more of the Scots to inculcate upon their age. Through their influence it was that the king sent forth the famous capitularies of 787 and the following years, which enforced the establishment of schools in connexion with every abbey in his realm, and laid the new foundation of medieval learning.^[20] Arnabat peregrinos is said almost to Charles’s reproach by his biographer Einhard; yet the strangers whom he welcomed are in truth the first authors of the restoration of letters in Francia.

The name of Alcuin introduces us to another element in this work. For England had also been for some time the scene of a literary life, less independent indeed and more correct in its ecclesiastical spirit, but hardly less broad than that of the Scots. A singular fortune had brought together as the second fathers of the English church, a Greek of Tarsus and an African, Theodore archbishop chapters 219 of Canterbury, and Hadrian, abbat of Saint Peter’s in that city, the one from Rome, the other from the neighbourhood of Naples. While Theodore worked to reduce the church of England into a nearer conformity with catholic discipline, the two friends had their school at Canterbury, where one might learn not only the know ledge which made a good churchman, but also astronomy and the art of writing verses, and apparently even medicine. But the previous experience of the teachers enabled them to extend their lessons into a field still less in conformity with the accustomed routine of monastic schools: they made their pupils learn Greek so thoroughly that more than half-a-century later Bede says that some of them still remained who knew Greek as well as their mother-tongue. An Englishman too, Benedict Biscop, the friend of Wilfrid, who had attended Theodore on his road from Rome to Canterbury and had held for a while the abbacy to which Hadrian succeeded, helped forward the advancement of his countrymen in another way. He was a sedulous collector of books and took advantage of repeated journeys to Rome to return laden with purchases or the gifts of friends, gathered thence or from places on the road. With these he endowed the abbey which he erected at Wearmouth; and among his last charges to the brethren of his house we read that a he enjoined them to keep jealously the precious and very rich library, indispensable for the learning of the church, which he had brought from Rome,—bibliothecam quam de Roma nobilissimam copiosissimamqiie advexerat, ad instructionem ecdesiae necessariam,—and not to suffer it through carelessness to decay or to be dispersed abroad.

The example of these three men was not lost upon the English. Aldhelm who, pedant as he was, ranked among the most learned men of his time, passed from his Scottish master at Malmesbury to the school of Hadrian at Canterbury; arid a goodly band of other scholars see Bright (Greek is their peculiar qualification) went forth from his latter place to spread their knowledge over England. But it was in the north that the new learning took deepest root. At Jarrow, the offshoot of Benedict Biscop’s monastery of Wearmouth, lived and died Bede, the writer who sprang at once into the position of a father of the church, and whose influence was by far the greatest and most unquestioned of any between saint Gregory and saint Bernard. He is a witness to the excellence of Benedict’s collection of books : for though, he says, I spent my whole life in the dwelling of my monastery, he shews an extent of knowledge in classical literature and natural science entirely unrivalled in his own day and probably not surpassed for many generations to come. Yet, be it remembered, it was first and foremost as a theologian and interpreter of the Scriptures that the middle ages revered him; and it is as an historian and the father of English historians that we now see his greatest distinction. Nor can the student of his works fail to recognise that Bede, like Aldhelm, combined the current which flowed eastward from Ireland with that which came with Benedict from Canterbury. His genial and versatile learning is no less characteristic than the loyalty in which he held fast to the strict tradition of the Catholic church. A child of Bede's in spirit, though he was probably not born until about the time of the master's death, was destined to take back his tradition to the continent at the moment when it was first ripe to receive the stimulating influence.

Alcuin faithfully carries on the current of learning in the north of England of which Bede is the headspring. In his poem On the Pontiffs and Saints of the Church of York he describes his master's work in language which shews us the distinctive qualities for which his disciples valued him:

Discere namque sagax iuvenis seu scribere semper
Fervidus instabat, non segni mente laborans:
Et sic proficiens est factus iure magister.
Plurima quapropter praeclarus opuscula doctor
Edidit, explanans obscura volumina sanctae
Scripturae, nec non metrorum condidit artem;
De quoque temporibus mira ratione volumen,
Quod tenet astrorum cursus, loca, tempora, leges,
Scripsit, et historicos claro sermone libellos;
Plurima versifico cecinit quoque carmina plectro.

Alcuin, like Bede, was a teacher and an organiser of learning, a man of wide reading rather than of original thought. His position in the church at York had afforded him access to a library of unusual compass. In the poem just quoted he gives a list of these volumes; it can only be a selection of what he thought the most important. Among them appear the Greek fathers, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Basil, – partly perhaps in their original tongue;^[21] – with a good number of the Latins. Of classical poets are named Virgil, Statius, and Lucan; of their degenerate successors, Sedulius, Juvencus, Arator, and Fortunatus. History is represented by Pompeius Trogus, that is, in the abridgement which we know as Justin, and Bede; natural history by Pliny. Cicero is named only as an orator. For logic Alcuin mentions Aristotle, – certainly in a Latin guise,^[22] – and the translators and commentators, Victorinus and Boëthius; for grammar Donatus, Priscian, and Servius. These are the better known of the authors recited in this interesting poem. Alcuin studied them with the simple purpose of fitting himself to be a teacher. He adopts and adapts, as he thinks most appropriate to his scope; but he creates nothing. On the problems which were so soon to agitate the schools, the nature of being, and the relation of objects to thought, he has little to say of his own; his psychology is directly derived from saint Augustin, his logic from the abbreviators of Aristotle. Learning in England had indeed begun to decline, but before the process had gone too far, Alcuin transplanted it; and, whatever his intellectual limitations, just such a man was needed to set on foot a sound system of education in the Frankish realm.

It has been maintained that Alcuin, at least in his later years, and the Scots with whom he worked held opposed positions in this movement; that Alcuin remained true to the tradition of saint Gregory, while the Scots allowed too great a latitude in their learned ambition; that Alcuin treated them as rivals, almost as enemies to the truth. Nor is this view altogether groundless. There was without doubt a certain national jealousy subsisting between the English and the Scots; and Alcuin probably resented the predominance which the latter threatened to assume when, as an imaginative writer under Charles's grandson relates, almost all Ireland, regardless of the barrier of the sea, comes flocking to our shores with a troop of philosophers. There were also differences of ecclesiastical detail. Even in matters of doctrine more than once the Scots had given cause of offence: they had, it should seem, with their Greek learning, drawn more deeply from the wells of oriental theology than was approved by the cautious judgement of their age. One Clement, as saint Boniface reports, had denied the authority of the fathers and canons of the church, and besides holding some views dangerous to morality, had gone so far as to teach that Christ by his descent into hell delivered all its prisoners, the unbelieving with the righteous;^[23] and Virgil, bishop of Salzburg, had maintained the existence of dwellers in the antipodes 'in defiance of God and of his own soul,' because thus apparently he limited the sphere of the Saviour's work of redemption just as Clement had enlarged it.

There was clearly a repugnance between the plain, solid English temperament and the more adventurous, speculative genius of their neighbours. If it be said with truth now that the two peoples are incapable of understanding one another, it is manifest that they are not likely to have made that acquaintance at a comparatively early date after their first introduction. To hold however that Alcuin and the Irish stood apart in the matter of learning, that Alcuin despised secular literature and forbade his scholars to cultivate it, appears to be an unfounded presumption: its sole positive basis lies in a story told by a biographer who was not even a contemporary and who relates the affair simply in order to show the master's miraculous gift of clairvoyance. It was fitting enough that Alcuin should have remonstrated with those who studied their Virgil to the exclusion or neglect of the Bible; but the fact proves nothing as to his general regard for letters, and the testimony of his writings and acts is more eloquent than such private admonitions. Alcuin and the Scots, we take it, laboured, with whatever transient jealousies, in a common love of learning. The old temper which regarded religion and letters as irreconcilable opposites, was clean forgotten; the spirit is caught up by the rulers of the church themselves; and soon a Roman council held under the pope, Eugenius the Second, can make a canon enjoining all diligence in the search for teachers to be appointed in all places to meet the necessities of the age, masters and doctors to teach the study of letters and liberal arts, and the holy doctrines which they possess, since in them chiefly are the divine commands manifested and declared.^[24]

That such an ordinance as this should have been required proves how much the learning of the new empire had lost its vigour and its wide diffusion in the troubled years that followed the emperor's death. Indeed barely fifteen years had passed since that event, when the prelates of Gaul appealed to Lewis the Pious to carry out the mandate issued by the Roman council, and to save the ruin into which the educational institutions of the country were already falling, We earnestly and humbly petition your highness, they said, that you, following the ensample of your father, will cause public schools to be established in at least three fitting places of your realm, that the labour of your father and yourself may not through neglect (which God forbid) utterly decay and perish: so, they added, shall great benefit and honour abound to God's holy church, and to you a great reward and everlasting remembrance. Still the impulse given to civilisation by the work of Charles, however intermittent its effects may appear, – dying out, as it seemed, by degrees until the second revival of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, – was never wholly lost. Nor was the decline of literature so rapid as is frequently supposed;^[25] the change is rather from an initiating to an appropriating age. In the eager life of Charles's day men had leisure for independent study and production: under his successors they were, as a rule, content with a reputation for learning. To be well-read and to reproduce old material, was all that was asked of scholars; and the few who overpassed the conventional boundary of the republic of letters found that they did it at their peril.

Nevertheless, even with these limitations, the age succeeding that of Charles the Great, partly from the very imperfection of its intellectual vision, was able to venture upon enterprises which had perhaps been suppressed in their birth under more regular and better organised conditions. In the first century of Christianity it has been said that 'the disciples of the Messiah were indulged in a freer latitude both of faith and practice than has ever been allowed in succeeding ages.' A like criticism would be true with respect to the progress of thought after Charles's day. Not for many generations did philosophy assume that definite medieval guise in which it remained fixed until the dawn of modern history. The gates of theological orthodoxy were even less closely guarded. Hardly a century will elapse before we see, preparing or already matured, some of the characteristic problems of church-controversy, even then held of paramount importance, though none could foresee the sway they would hold over the minds of men hereafter. The sacerdotal basis of the church is attacked, the nature of the divine Trinity is subjected to cold analysis; the doctrine of predestination is revived, the doctrine of transubstantiation is formulated. Such were the unexpected fruit of Charles's and Alcuin's husbandry. In the two following chapters we shall examine a few specimens of the literature and the speculations of the ninth century. The first examples will be taken from a class of writings but indirectly connected with learned studies, and will illustrate the movement of thought with respect to religious, or, it may be, superstitious, usages and beliefs: the second chapter will attempt to delineate the character of the theology of the greatest philosopher whom Ireland sent forth to glorify the schools of continental Europe.

References

1. In preparing tho following section for the press I have derived much help from the first chapters of M. Hauréau's Histoire de la Philosophie scolastique, 1872, and of Mr. James Bass Mullinger's essay on The Schools of Charles the Great; 1877. I am also indebted to A. F. Ozanam's Civilisation chrétienne chez les Francs, ch. ix, 3rd ed., 1861 (being the fourth volume of his Oeuvres). See also S. R. Maitland's remarks on the attitude of the church towards secular learning, in The Dark Ages, xi, pp. 171-187 (cf. p. 403 n. 2), 1844.
2. De institutione divinarum litterarum, xxvii, xxviii; Opp. 2. 523 sq., ed. J. Caret., Venice 1729 folio. Quis enim, Cassiodorus concludes, audeat habere dubium, ubi virorum talium multiplex praecedit exomplum? scientes plane . . . rectam veramque scientiam Dominum posse concedere.
3. The words, In uno se ore lovis laudibus Christ! laudes non capiunt, have been misunderstood: see Mullinger, p. 77. I have no doubt that the phrase is borrowed from saint Jerome, Absit ut de ora Christiana sonet lupiter omnipotens, &c.: Ep. ad Damas., Opp. 4 (1) 153, ed. Bened., Paris 1706 folio.
4. M. Haureau, 1. 5, wittily compares the language of Jack Cade to lord Say: Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar-school: and whereas before our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used; and contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill. It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun, and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear: 2 King Henry vi. iv. 7. On le voit, l’imagination du poetc n a pu rien ajouter au texte de la lettro pontificale. Unspeakable, nefandus, we may notice, was a favourite word with Gregory, to whom the Lombard was regularly nejandissimus.
5. M. Hauréau's chapter on the Écoles d'Irlande, in his Singularités historiques et littéraires, 1861, is full of the interest which that author is peculiarly skilful in giving to whatever he writes. A good survey of the Irish missions is contained in a learned essay by Arthur West Haddan on Scots on the Continent, printed in his Remains, 258-294, Oxford 1876. [Cf. L. Gougaud, Les Chrétientés Celtiques, 134-174, 1911; and W. Levison, Die Iren und die Fränkische Kirche, in the Historische Zeitschrift, 109. 1-22, 1912.] For the character of the ancient Irish church see the introduction to J. H. Todd's Saint Patrick the Apostle of Ireland, Dublin 1864.
6. That there might have been and probably were a few Christians in Ireland before saint Patrick's day is not of course denied: see Todd 197.
7. 'It is recorded by chroniclers, as one might chronicle a good harvest, that A.D. 674 Ireland was full of saints:' Haddan 264.
8. For a long time the name of Scotland continued to be common to the two countries. Thus saint Notker Balbulus speaks of an event as occurring in Scotia, insula Hybernia: Martyrolog. ad v. Id. Iun., in J. Basnage, Thesaur. Monum. eccles. et hist. 2 (3) 140, Antwerp 1725 folio. Compare the evidence collected by archbishop Ussher, Britann. Ecclesiarum Antiquit. 380-384, ed. 2, London 1687 folio.
9. Scotorum, quibus consuetudo peregrinandi iam paene in naturam conversa est: Vit. s. Gall. ii. 47 in Pertz 2. 30; 1829.
10. At least these 'hospitalia Scotorum quae sancti homines gentis illius in hoc regno construxerunt et rebus pro sanctitate sua acquisitis ampliaverunt' were sufficiently numerous for the abuses by which the foundations had been diverted from their proper purpose, to call for the attention of the council of Meaux in 845, can. xl.: Mansi, Conciliorum amplissima Collectio 14. 827 sq., Venice 1769 folio. The ordinance for their reform was sanctioned by a capitulary of Charles the Bald a year later: Pertz, Leg. 1. 390 sq.; 1835.
11. On this abbat Caimin of Iniskeltra who died in 653 see J. Lanigan, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland 3. 11, 2nd ed., Dublin 1829. Ussher says, Antiq. 503, that he saw a portion of the saint's work, said to be autograph. It was elaborately noted with the usual critical signs, and contained on the upper part of the page a collation with the Hebrew, and brief scholia in the outer margin. [Ussher's mention of Hebrew is a mistake. The Psalter, now in the Franciscan convent at Dublin, having been moved thither from the convent of S. Isidore at Rome in 1871, is assigned by J. O. Westwood, Facsimiles of the Miniatures of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Manuscripts, p. 88, 1868, to the eleventh or twelfth century. See also notes by Count Nigra in the Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes, 46 (1885) 344 sq.; and by Mr. M. Esposito in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 32. c. (1913) 78-88.]
12. [The evidence for this opinion, at least so far as it relates to the time before the eighth century, is extremely scanty. Cf. M. Roger, L'Enseignement des Lettres classiques d'Ausone à Alcuin, 1905, 268-272.]
13. The severity of the Rule put forth by Columban, in comparison with that of saint Benedict, is admitted, though Milman, History of Latin Christianity, 3rd ed., 1872, 2. 294, seems to imply an opposite judgement. Haddan, indeed, p. 267, goes so far as to claim an Irish origin for the substance of the entire penitential system. Compare William Bright, Chapters of early English Church History 96, Oxford 1878.

14. Accipe, quaeso,
    nunc bipedal!
    condita versu
    carminulorum
    munera parva.

    Afterwards he excuses the eccentricity of his metre:
    

    Sufficit autem
    ista loquaci
    nunc cecinisse
    carmina versu.
    Nam nova forsan
    esse videtur
    ista legenti
    formula versus.
    Sed tamen ilia
    Troiugenarum
    inclita vates
    nomine Sappho
    versibus istis
    dulce solebat
    edere carmen.

    Then he explains the construction of the verse and concludes with a second apology, this time in hexameters, urging the weariness of old age and feeble health as a justification of his license : Ussher 13-18. [The genuineness of these verses has been questioned, but it is defended by W. Gundlach, in the Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere Deutsche Geschichtskundc, 15. 514-526, 1890.]

15. M. Haureau, Singularites 12 sqq., rightly dwells on this characteristic. I have not noticed the poem ascribed to saint Livinus, whom tradition makes the apostle of Brabant in the seventh century; because the likelihood is that these elegiacs (printed in Ussher 19 sqq.) are as spurious as the biography, called saint Boniface s, with which they appear to stand plainly connected. The poetry of the Scots is however far from being limited to these two examples: Ussher prints another piece, pp. 36 sq.; and in later times instances, as that of John Scotus, are not uncommon.
16. For the date see Todd, intr. to The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, pp. xxxii-xxxiv; 1867. The earlier invasion by the Northumbrian Ecgfrith (Bed. iv. 26) was little more than a momentary raid: the vikings on the contrary settled in Ireland, plundered the churches, and destroyed all the special tokens of Irish civilisation; see J. R. Green, Conquest of England, 65 sq.; 1883. From a poem describing how Sulgen, afterwards bishop of Saint David's ivit ad Hibernos sophia mirabile claros, written by the bishop's son John, Ussher, in his preface to the Sylloge, infers that there was a revival of the Irish schools after the Danish invasion; since the verse relates to about the middle of the eleventh century: but of this further proof is wanting. [Compare Dr. H. J. Lawlor's introduction to the Psalter of Ricemarch, 1. pp. x-xiii, 1914.]
17. On their foundation see Bede's life of Columban, x and xxix, Opp. 3. 283, 304 sq., ed. Basle 1563.
18. [Identified with Notker Balbulus: see K. Zeumer, in Historische Aufsatze zum Andenken von Georg Waitz gewidmet 97-118, 1886; and L. Halphen, in the Revue historique, 128 (1918) 293-298.]
19. 'Alterum vero nomine:' two manuscripts add the name 'Albinum;' the rest of those collated by Pertz leave a blank space after 'nomine,' while the copies from which Jaffé prints, Bibliotheca Rerum Germ. 4. 632, 1867, omit 'nomine' as well. Possibly 'Albinum' stood in the original text, and was excluded because the sequel showed that the person intended could not be the same with the well-known Alcuin, while no contemporary scholar of the name was known. It may be observed that the 'Albinum' does not appear in the quotation of the passage given by Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, xxiii. 173, Nuremberg 1483 folio. I notice this because M. Hauréau, De la Philosophie scolastique, 1. 14, 1850 (the passage seems to have been omitted in the new edition of his book,—the Histoire), states the contrary. The legend therefore says nothing of the English Alcuin, certainly nothing of John Scotus, ornaments added by later writers, which even M. Hauréau, in his earlier work, confounded with the original story.
20. A variety of notices respecting the schools of the time is collected by the Benedictines in the Histoire litteraire de la France, 4. 12 sqq.; 1738 quarto. They concern chiefly Lyons, Orleans, Fulda, Corbie, Fontenelle, Saint Denys, and Tours. It was to Tours that Alcuin withdrew, as abbat of Saint Martin s, in 796. A. F. Gfrorer comments on the importance of the schools of Aquitaine, Concha, Galuna, and Aniane : Allgemcine Kirchengeschichte, 3. 702 sqq., Stuttgart 1844.
21. Bishop Stubbs thinks that the York library actually contained manuscripts both in Greek and Hebrew: Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography, art. Alcuin, 1. 73 a; 1877. But Alcuin's words, de Pontif. 1535-1539, Jaffé p. 128, need not be pressed to mean more than the source from which the literature he mentions was derived; he does not speak of the language.
22. Most probably the reference is to the abridgement of the Categories then ascribed to saint Augustin: cf. Hauréau 1. 93-97.
23. 'Quod Christus, filius Dei, descendens ad inferos omnes quos inferni carcer detinuit inde liberasset, credulos et incredulos, laudatores Dei simul et cultores idolorum.' See saint Boniface's letter to pope Zacharias, ep. l., Jaffé 3. 140. Clement, we are informed, though a priest, apparently a bishop, was a married man with a family, and advocated marriage with a deceased brother's wife in conformity with the Jewish law: ep. xlviii, p. 133.
24. See the dissertation of Wilhelm von Giesebrecht, De Litterarum Studiis apud Italos primis medii Aevi Saeculis, 11, Berlin 1845 quarto. The 34th canon of the Roman council, as re-enacted in an assembly presided over by Leo the Fourth in 853, is as follows: 'De quibusdam locis ad nos refertur non magistros neque curam invenire pro studiis litterarum. Idcirco in universis episcopiis subiectisque populis, et aliis locis in quibus necessitas occurrerit, omnino cura et diligentia habeatur ut magistri et doctores constituantur, qui studia litterarum liberaliumque artium ac sancta habentes dogmata, assidue doceant; quia in his maxime divina manifestantur atque declarantur mandata:' Mansi 14. 1008. For 'ac sancta habentes dogmata' there is a variant 'habentium dogmata:' but though the 'sancta' seems required to justify the word 'dogmata,' the genitive 'habentium' is perhaps more suitable to the context than 'habentes.' The authoritative admonition was appealed to three centuries later by Abailard, as against the detractors of secular learning in his day: Theol. Christ. ii., Opp. 2. 442; Introd. ad theol. ii., ib. p. 69; ed. V. Cousin, Paris 1859 quarto.
25. For example, Dr. Hermann Renter, Geschichte der religiösen Aufklärung im Mittelalter, 1. 16, Berlin 1875, has no, justification in inferring from the words of Claudius of Turin, 'Nec saecularis litteraturae didici studium nec aliquando exinde magistrum habui' (praef. in Levit., Jo. Mabillon, Vet. Analect. 90, ed. Paris 1723 folio) that instruction was again becoming limited to the sphere of theology; since Claudius was brought up in Spain, when Christian letters were at a low ebb. Dr. Reuter is equally unfortunate in referring (ibid. 1. 15 and n. 7) to the same writer (praef. exposit. in ep. ad Eph., Mabillon 91) for evidence of the general decay of letters. Claudius is speaking of sacred learning; he has no interest in any other. On the state of literature under the later Carolings compare Carl von Noorden's Hinkmar Erzbischof von Rheims, 56, Bonn 1863; a dissertation written by an historical scholar who has but recently and prematurely passed from us, and for whose work and memory I would here express my gratitude and my personal respect.