their disobedience. And, therefore, the light of that doctrine has been hitherto covered and kept under here by a cloud of adversaries, which no private man’s reputation can break through, without the authority of the Universities. But out of the Universities, came all those preachers that taught the contrary. The Universities have been to this nation, as the wooden horse was to the Trojans.[1]
B. What was the Pope’s design in setting up the Universities?[2]
A. What other design was he like to have, but (what you heard before) the advancement of his own authority in the countries where the Universities were erected? There they learned to dispute for him, and with unintelligible distinctions to blind men’s eyes, whilst they encroached upon the rights of kings. And it was an evident argument of that design, that they fell in hand with the work so quickly. For the first Rector of the University of Paris (as I have read somewhere) was Peter Lombard, who first brought in them the learning called School-divinity; and was seconded by John Scot of Duns, who lived in, or near the same time; whom any ingenious reader, not knowing it was the de-
- ↑ B. Can you tell me why and when the Universities here, and in other places, first began?
A. It seems (for the time) they began in the reign of the Emperor Charles the Great. Before which time, I doubt not, but that there were many grammar schools for the Latin tongue, which was the natural language of the Roman Church; but for Universities, that is to say, schools for the sciences in general, and especially for divinity, it is manifest that the institution of them was recommended by the Pope’s letter to the Emperor Charles the Great, and recommended further by a Council held in his time, I think, at Chalons-sur-Saone; and not long after was erected an University at Paris, and the college called University College at Oxford. And so by degrees several bishops, noblemen, and rich men, and some Kings and Queens, contributing thereunto, the Universities obtained at last their present splendour.
This question and answer, exhibited by former edd. have been erased in MS. by the amanuensis as a repetition from p. 17.
- ↑ But what was the Pope’s design in it? Edd.
