Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/370

272 General History oj Europe The teachers of the thirteenth century were so fascinated by his logic and astonished at his learning, that the great theologians of the time, Albertus Magnus (d. 1280) and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), devoted much time to preparing elaborate commentaries upon all his works. He was called "The Philosopher"; and so fully were scholars convinced that it had pleased God to permit Aristotle to say the last word upon each and every branch of knowledge that they humbly accepted him, along with the Bible, as one of their unquestioned authorities. 450. Scholasticism. The name "scholasticism" is commonly given to the beliefs and method of discussion of the medieval professors. To those who later outgrew the fondness for logic and the supreme respect for Aristotle, scholasticism, with its neg- lect of Greek and Roman literature, came to seem a dry and profitless form of education. The scholastic training in logic, if it did not increase the sum of human knowledge, accustomed the student to make careful distinctions and present his arguments in an orderly way. 451. Course of Study. No attention was given in the medieval universities to the great subject of history, nor was Greek taught. Latin had to be learned in order to carry on the work at all, but little time was given to the noble literature of the Romans. The new modern languages were considered entirely unworthy of the educated. It must of course be remembered that none of the books which we consider the great classics in English, French, Italian, or Spanish had as yet been written. 452. Petrarch tries to learn Greek. Although the medieval professors paid the greatest respect to the Greek philosopher Aristotle and made Latin translations of his works the basis of the college course, very few of them could read any Greek and none of them knew much about Homer or Plato or the Greek tragedians and historians. In the fourteenth century Petrarch (1304-1374) set the example in Italy of carefully collecting all the writings of the Romans, which he greatly admired. He made an effort to learn Greek, for he found that Cicero and other