2. § II
After the twelfth century broadening influences were at work. The
education given in the cathedral and monastic schools was found to be
too restricted; the monasteries, moreover, now began to refuse
assistance to secular students.[11.14] To
some extent the catechetic method of the theologians was forced to give
place to the dialectic method, equally dogmatic, but more exciting and
stimulating. Hence was compiled such a book as Peter Lombard's
Sentences (1145-50), a cyclopædia of disputation, wherein
theological questions were collected under heads, together with
Scriptural passages and statements of the Fathers bearing on these
questions. By the thirteenth century Lombard was the standard text-book
of the schools: a work of such reputation that it was studied in
preference to the Scriptures, as Bacon complained.
A demand also arose for instruction in civil and canon law, which
the existing schools did not supply. This broader learning was provided
in the early universities, at first to the dislike of the Church, and
sometimes to the
annoyance of royal heads. Particular objection was taken to the study of
law. An Italian named Vicario (Vacarius) lectured on Justinian at Oxford
in 1149. Then he abridged the
Code and
Digest for his
students there. King Stephen forbade him to proceed with his lectures,
and prohibited the use of treatises on foreign law, many manuscripts of
which were consequently destroyed. But these measures were not very
effectual. Within a short time civil law became recognised in the
University as a proper subject of study. By 1275, when another Italian
jurist named Francesco d'Accorso, a distinguished teacher at Bologna,
came to Oxford to lecture, the study of civil law was pursued with the
royal favour.
[11.15]
The searcher among old wills cannot fail to be struck with the
number of law books in the small private libraries. Sometimes the whole
of one of these little collections consists of law books; often there
are more books of this kind than of any other. For example, of eighty
books bequeathed by Prior Eastry to Christ Church, Canterbury,
forty-three were on canon and civil law: of eighty-four books given to
Trinity Hall, Cambridge, by the founder, exactly one-half were
juridical. A wealthy canon of York left but half a dozen books, all on
law. The books bequeathed to Peterborough Abbey by successive abbots
were chiefly on law. Many other examples could be recited. There was a
reason for this. Friar Bacon,writing in 1271, complained that jurists
got all rewards and benefices, while students of theology and philosophy
lacked the means of livelihood, could not obtain books, and were unable
to pursue their scientific studies. Canonists, even, were only rewarded
because of their previous knowledge of civil law: at Oxford three years
had to be devoted to the study of civil law before a student could be
admitted as bachelor of canon
law. Consequently a man of parts, with a leaning towards theological and
philosophical learning, took up the study of civil law, with the hope of
more easily winning preferment.
[11.16]
"Compared with such [legal] lore," writes Mr. Mullinger, "theological
learning became but a sorry recommendation to ecclesiastical preferment;
most of the Popes at Avignon had been distinguished by their attainments
in a subject which so nearly concerned the temporal interests of the
Church; and the civilian and the canonist alike looked down with
contempt on the theologian, even as Hagar, to use the comparison of
Holcot, despised her barren mistress."
[11.17] The most casual glance through some pages
of monastic records will show how frequent and endless was the
litigation in which the Church was engaged, and consequently how useful
a knowledge of civil law would be.
But these changes were trifling compared with the stimulus given
to medieval learning by the influx of Greek books and of Arabic versions
of them. In the second half of the eleventh century the works of Galen
and Hippocrates were re-introduced into Italy from the Arabian empire by
a North African named Constantine, who translated them at the famous
monastery of Monte Cassino. These translations, with the numerous
Arabian commentaries, and the conflict of the physicians of the new
school with those of the old and famous school of Salerno, constitute
the revival of medical studies which occurred at that time.
[11.18] It would seem that this revival was felt
quickly in England, as in the twelfth century four books by Galen and
two by Hippocrates, with some Arabian works, were to be found in the
monastic library of Durham; a number significant of the liberal feeling
of the monks of this house, inasmuch as in all the catalogues
transcribed by Becker appear only
ten books by Galen and nine by Hippocrates.
[11.19] Before 1150 the whole of the
Organon of Aristotle was known to scholars;
[11.20] but not till about that time did the
other works begin to be exported from Arabic Spain. Then Latin versions
of Arabic translations of the
Physics and
Metaphysics
were first made.
Daniel of Morley (fl. 1170-90) brought into this country
manuscripts of Aristotle, and commentaries upon him got in the Arab
schools of Toledo, then the centre of Mohammedan learning. Michael the
Scot (c. 1175-1234), "wondrous wizard, of dreaded fame," was
another agent of the Arab influence. He received his education perhaps
at Oxford, certainly at Paris and Toledo. From manuscripts obtained at
the last place he translated two abstracts of the Historia
animalium, and some commentaries of Averroës on Aristotle
(1215-30).[11.21] A third pilgrim from
these islands, Alfred the Englishman, also made use of Arabic versions;
and most likely both he and Michael brought home with them manuscripts
from Toledo and Paris. Of the renderings made by these men and by some
foreign workers in the same field, Friar Bacon speaks with the utmost
contempt. Their writings were utterly false. They did not know the
sciences they dealt with. The Jews, the Arabs, and the Greeks, who had
good manuscripts, destroyed and corrupted them, rather than let them
fall into the hands of unlettered and ignorant Christians.
[11.22] Aristotle should be read in the original,
he also says; it would be better if all translations were burnt. The
criticism is acrid; but the men he contemns served scholarship well by
quickening the interest in Greek books,
and they succeeded so well because they gave to the schoolmen not only
versions of Aristotle's text, but commentaries and elucidations written
by Arabs and Jews who had carefully studied the text, and could explain
the meaning of obscure passages in it.
[11.23]
When these translations were coming to England, travellers were
bringing Greek books directly from the East. A doctor of medicine named
William returned to Paris from Constantinople in 1167, carrying with him
"many precious Greek codices."[11.24] About
1209 a Latin translation of Aristotle's Physics or
Metaphysics was made from a Greek manuscript brought straight
from Constantinople. Some of these few importations were certainly
destroyed at once, probably all were, for Aristotle was proscribed in
Paris in the following year, and again in 1215, at the very time when
Michael the Scot was procuring versions in another direction, at
Toledo.[11.25] Not until mid-thirteenth
century was the ban wholly removed.
For a time, owing to the capture of Constantinople by the
Crusaders, intercourse between East and West had become far freer than
it had been for centuries (1203-61). Certain Greek philosophers of
learned mien came to England about 1202, but did not stay; and some
Armenians, among them a bishop, visited St. Albans. Whether they or
Nicholas the Greek, clerk to the abbot of that monastery, brought books
with them we do not know; Nicholas, at any rate, seems to have assisted
Grosseteste in his Greek studies.[11.26]
John of Basingstoke,
Grosseteste's archdeacon, carried Greek manuscripts—many valuable
manuscripts, we are told—from Athens, whither Grosseteste had sent him.
The bishop himself imported books to this country, probably from Sicily
and South Italy.
[11.27] He had a copy of
Suidas'
Lexicon, possibly the earliest copy brought to the
West. The
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs was also in
Grosseteste's possession: the manuscript was brought home by John of
Basingstoke, and still exists in the Cambridge University Library.
[11.28] These forged
Testaments were
translated by Nicholas the Greek, and as no fewer than thirty-one copies
of the Latin version still remain they must have had a good
circulation.
[11.29] Possibly the Greek
Octateuch (Genesis to Ruth), now in the Bodleian Library, was imported
into this country by Grosseteste or by somebody for him; at one time the
manuscript was in the library of Christ Church, Canterbury.
[11.30] Among other Greek books which Grosseteste
used and translated, or had translated under his direction, were the
Epistles of St. Ignatius, a Greek romance of Asenath, the Egyptian wife
of the patriarch Joseph, and some writings of Dionysius the Areopagite.
At Ramsey, where the bishop's influence may be suspected, Prior Gregory
(
fl. 1290) owned a Græco-Latin psalter, still
extant.
[11.31] Possibly all the
importations were of similar character, and the number of them cannot
have been great or we should have heard more of them.
Friar Bacon, writing about 1270, complains that he could not get
all the books he wanted, nor were the versions of the books he had
satisfactory. Parts of the Scriptures were untranslated, as, for
example, two books of Maccabees,
which he knew existed in Greek, and books of the Prophets referred to in
the books of Kings and Chronicles; the chronology of the
Antiquities of Josephus was incorrectly rendered, and biblical
history could not be usefully studied without a true version of this
book. Books of the Hebrew and Greek expositors were almost wanting to
the Latins: Origen, Basil, Gregory, Nazianzene, John of Damascus,
Dionysius, Chrysostom, and others, both in Hebrew and Greek.
[11.32] The scientific books of Aristotle, of
Avicenna, of Seneca, and other ancients could only be had at great cost.
Their principal works had not been translated into Latin. "The
admirable books of Cicero
De Republica are not to be found
anywhere, as far as I can hear, although I have made anxious inquiry for
them in different parts of the world and by various messengers."
[11.33]
The period during which the intellectual life of the Middle Ages
was broadened by the introduction of new knowledge and ideas originally
from Greek sources, began, as we have said, with the influx of
translations from the Arabic. The movement culminated with the work of
William of Moerbeke, Greek Secretary at the Council of Lyons (1274),
who, between 1270 and 1281, translated several of Aristotle's works from
the Greek, including the Rhetorica and the Politica.
Fortunately we have a record belonging to this time of a collection of
books which shows admirably the character of the change. A certain John
of London (c. 1270-1330), believed to have been Bacon's pupil,
probably became a monk of St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, and in due
course bequeathed a library of books to his house. This collection
amounted to nearly eighty books, of which twenty-three were on
mathematics and astronomy, a like number on medicine, ten on philosophy,
six on logic, four historical, three on grammar,
one poetry, and the rest collections.
[11.34] Such a collection is remarkable not only
for its character, but on account of its size, which was very large for
anybody to own privately in that age.
