Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/491

The Culture of the Middle Ages 455 They affirmed that the English were drunkards and had tails ; that the sons of France were proud, effeminate and carefully adorned like women. They said that the Germans were furious and obscene at their feasts ; the Normans, vain and boastful ; the Poitevins, traitors and always adventurers. The Burgundians they considered vulgar and stupid. The Bretons were reported to be fickle and changeable and were often reproached for the death of Arthur. The Lombards were called avaricious, wicked and cowardly; the Romans, seditious, turbulent and slanderous ; the Sicilians, tyrannical, brigands and ravishers ; the Flemings, fickle, prodigal, glut- tonous, yielding as butter, and slothful. After such insults as these in words they often came to blows. V. SUPREMACY OF ARISTOTLE IN THE MEDLEVAL UNIVERSITIES : SCHOLASTICISM Aristotle, utilizing all that the previous Greek phi- losophers, including Socrates and Plato-, had discovered, augmented what the past had bequeathed to him by his own thought and investigations. He then gathered the whole vast and heterogeneous material into a series of works summing up the achievements of the Greeks in all the more important fields of knowledge, logic, meta- physics, physics, natural history, politics, ethics, rhetoric, etc. His works form an encyclopedia of ancient thought and discovery. Abelard possessed none of Aristotle's works except a part of his logical treatises, but shortly after the year 1200 practically all of his works became known in Paris. The abstract scientific discussion and the unreligious character of his books offended some good people, but the enthusiasm for his incomparable learning and insight was so great that he was generally held in the utmost veneration.