UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 
 
 FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES 
 TO THE ROYAL INJUNCTIONS OF 1535.
 
 fLonJon 
 
 CAMBRIDGE WAREHOUSE, 17 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 Cambrtogc : 
 
 JDEIGIITON, BELL, AND CO.
 
 TIIK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 
 
 FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES 
 
 TO THE ROYAL INJUNCTIONS OF 1535 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES BASS MULLINGER, M.A. 
 
 ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1873 
 
 [All Rights reserved.]
 
 famfcri&ge : 
 
 FEINTED BY C. J. CLAT. M.A. 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PKK88.
 
 SANTA 
 
 TO 
 
 JOHN EDWIN SANDYS, ESQ., M.A., 
 
 FELLOW AND TUTOR OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 !us Folume 
 
 IS DEDICATED.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE large amount of attention that has, during the last 
 few years, been attracted to all questions bearing upon the 
 higher education of this country, and the increasing public 
 interest in all that is connected with the two older English 
 universities, might alone seem sufficiently to justify the 
 appearance of the present volume. It may not however be 
 undesirable to offer some explanation with regard to the 
 method of treatment which, in researches extending over 
 nearly seven years, the author has chiefly kept before him. 
 
 A very cursory inspection of the Table of Contents will 
 suffice to shew that the subject of university history has here 
 been approached from a somewhat different point of view to 
 that of previous labourers in the same field. The volume is 
 neither a collection of antiquities nor a collection of biogra- 
 phies ; nor is it a series of detached essays on questions of 
 special interest or episodes of exceptional importance. It is 
 rather an endeavour to trace out the continuous history of a 
 great national institution, as that history presents itself, not 
 only in successive systems and various forms of mental 
 culture, but also in relation to the experiences of the country 
 at large ; and at the same time to point out in how great a 
 degree the universities have influenced the whole thought
 
 vill PREFACE. 
 
 of the educated classes, and have in turn reflected the 
 political and social changes in progress both at home and 
 abroad. 
 
 To those who best understand how important and 
 numerous are the relations of university culture to the 
 history of the people, such a method of treatment will 
 probably appear most arduous and the qualifications neces- 
 sary to its competent execution most varied; it may con- 
 sequently be desirable also to explain how greatly the author 
 has been aided by the researches of previous investigators. 
 
 It is now more than thirty years ago since the late Mr. 
 C. H. Cooper 1 published the first instalment of that valuable 
 series, the Annals of Cambridge, the Memorials of Cambridge, 
 and the Athena Cantabrigienses, with respect to which it 
 has been truly said that ' no other town in England has three 
 such records.' To extraordinary powers of minute investiga- 
 tion he united great attainments as an antiquarian, a fidelity 
 and fairness beyond reproach, and a rare judicial faculty in 
 assessing the comparative value of conflicting evidence. It 
 need hardly be added that more than a quarter of a century 
 of research on the part of so able and trustworthy a guide, 
 has materially diminished and in some respects altogether 
 forestalled the labours of subsequent explorers in the same 
 field. But valuable as were Mr. Cooper's services, his aim 
 was entirely restricted to one object, the accurate investi- 
 gation and chronological arrangement of facts; he never 
 sought to establish any general results by the aid of a 
 legitimate induction ; and in the nine volumes that attest 
 his labours it may be questioned whether as many observa- 
 
 1 For the information of readers who may have no personal knowledge of 
 Cambridge, I may state that Mr Cooper was not a member of the university, 
 but filled for many years the offices of town coroner and town clerk.
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 tions can be found, that tend to shew the connexion of one 
 fact with another, or the relevancy of any one isolated event 
 to the greater movements in progress beyond the university 
 walls; while to the all-important subject of the character 
 and effects of the different studies successively dominant in 
 the university, he did not attempt to supply any elucidation 
 beyond what might be incidentally afforded in his own 
 department of enquiry. 
 
 The aid however which he did not profess to give has 
 been to a great extent supplied by* other writers. During the 
 same period contributions to literature, both at home and 
 abroad, have given aid in this latter direction scarcely less 
 valuable than that which he rendered in the province which 
 he made so peculiarly his own. The literatures of both 
 Germany and France have been richly productive of works 
 of sterling value illustrative of mediaeval thought and 
 mediaeval institutions ; and have furnished a succession of 
 standard histories, elaborate essays, and careful monographs, 
 which have shed a new light on the subject of the present 
 volume, in common with all that relates to the education 
 and learning of the Middle Ages. Among these it is sufficient 
 to name the works of Geiger, Huber, Kleutgen, Lechler, 
 Prantl, Ranke, Von Raumer, Schaarschmidt, Ueberweg, and 
 Ullmann in Germany; those of Victor Le Clerc, Cousin, 
 Haur^au, the younger Jourdain, Rdmusat, Renan, and 
 Thurot in France ; and to these may be added the histories 
 of single universities, like that of Basel by Vischer, of 
 Erfurt by Kampschulte, of Leipsic by Zarncke, and of Lou vain 
 by Felix Neve ; while at home, the valuable series that 
 has appeared under the sanction of the Master of the Rolls, 
 and the able prefaces to different volumes of that collection 
 from the pens of Mr. Anstey, professor Brewer, the late
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 professor Shirley, Mr. Luard, professor Mayor, and professor 
 Stubbs, the 'Documents' published by the Royal Com- 
 mission, the papers relating to points of minuter interest 
 in the publications of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 
 and the histories of separate colleges, especially Baker's 
 History of St. John's College in the exhaustive and ad- 
 mirable edition by professor Mayor, have afforded not less 
 valuable aid in connexion with the corresponding periods 
 in England. 
 
 But contributions thus varied and voluminous to the 
 literature of the subject, while forestalling labour in one 
 direction have also not a little augmented the necessity for 
 patient enquiry and careful deliberation in arriving at 
 conclusions; and the responsibility involved might have 
 altogether deterred the author from the attempt, had he 
 not at the same time been able to have recourse to assist- 
 ance of another but not less valuable kind. From the time 
 that he was able to make his design known to those most 
 able to advise in the prosecution of such a work, he has 
 been under constant obligations to different members of the 
 university for direction with respect to sources of informa- 
 tion, for access to records, and for much helpful criticism. 
 Among those who have evinced a kindly interest in the work 
 he may be permitted to name Henry Bradshaw, Esq., M.A., 
 fellow of King's College and university librarian ; William 
 George Clark, Esq., M.A., senior fellow of Trinity College and 
 late public orator; the Rev. John Eyton Bickersteth Mayor, 
 M.A., senior fellow of St. John's College, and professor of 
 Latin ; John Edwin Sandys, Esq., M.A., fellow and tutor 
 of St. John's College; and Isaac Todhunter, Esq., M.A., 
 F.U.S., late fellow of St. John's College; as gentlemen to 
 whom he is indebted not only for the revision and correction
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 of large portions of the work, either in manuscript or when 
 passing through the press, but also for numerous suggestions 
 and a general guidance which have served to render the 
 volume much less faulty and defective than it would other- 
 wise have been. 
 
 For facilities afforded, or for information and assistance 
 in matters of detail, his acknowledgements are also due to 
 the authorities of Peterhouse, and of Pembroke, Corpus 
 Christi, and Queens' Colleges ; to J. Willis Clark, Esq., M.A., 
 late fellow of Trinity College ; to W. A. Cox, Esq., M.A., fellow 
 of St. John's College ; to the late professor De Morgan ; to 
 E. A. Freeman, Esq., D.C.L. ; to the Rev. E. L. Hicks, M.A., 
 fellow and librarian of Corpus Christi College, Oxford ; to the 
 Rev. S. S. Lewis, M.A., fellow and librarian of Corpus Christi 
 College, Cambridge ; to the Rev. H. R. Luard, M.A., registrary 
 of the university; to the Rev. P. H. Mason, M.A., senior 
 fellow and Hebrew lecturer of St. John's College ; to M. Paul 
 Meyer, formerly editor of the Revue Critique ; to the Rev. 
 W. G. Searle, M.A., historian and late fellow of Queens' 
 College ; to professor Stubbs ; to the Rev. C. Wordsworth, 
 M.A., fellow of Peterhouse ; and to W. Aldis Wright, Esq., 
 M.A., senior bursar and late librarian of Trinity College. 
 
 Finally his grateful acknowledgements are due to the 
 Syndics of the University Press, during the last three years, 
 for encouragement and assistance most liberally extended in 
 relation to the publication of the present volume. 
 
 In conclusion, the author cannot but express his sense 
 that his work, notwithstanding these advantages, must still 
 appear very far from being a complete and satisfactory treat- 
 ment of the subject, even within the period it comprises. 
 He can only hope that, with all its defects, it may yet be 
 recognised as partially supplying a long existing want; and at
 
 xii PREFACE. 
 
 a time when those few restrictions that have been supposed to 
 hinder a perfectly free intercourse between the university and 
 the country at large either have been entirely removed or 
 seem likely soon to disappear, it will be no small reward if 
 his efforts should conduce, in however slight a degree, to a 
 more accurate knowledge of the past history, and a livelier 
 interest in the future prospects, of one of the most ancient, 
 most important, and most widely useful of the nation's insti- 
 tutions.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION l 
 
 The thirteenth century ib. 
 
 Imperial schools of the Empire 2 
 
 Commencement of the Benedictine era .... ib. 
 
 The Benedictine theory of education 3 
 
 Teaching of the Latin Fathers ib. 
 
 Theory of Augustine's De Civitate Dei .... 4 
 Apparent confirmation of this theory afforded by subse- 
 quent events 5 
 
 Teaching of Gregory the Great 6 
 
 Partial justification of his teaching afforded by the circum- 
 stances of the times 7 
 
 Arrival of Theodorus in Britain 8 
 
 Aldhelm, Bede, and Alcuin ........ 9 
 
 Change in the aspect of affairs in Europe .... ib. 
 
 The empire of Charlemagne ... . 10 
 
 The episcopal and monastic schools 11 
 
 Charlemagne and Alcuin ib. 
 
 State of learning among the clergy 12 
 
 Schools founded by Charlemagne . . . . . . 13 
 
 Alcuin's distrust of pagan learning 14 
 
 The study of ancient literature forbidden under a new 
 
 plea 15 
 
 Alcuin/s view becomes the traditional theory of the Church 18 
 
 Dr. Maitland's defence of this view ib. 
 
 Distinction instituted in the monastic schools between the 
 
 seculars and the dblati 19 
 
 Disturbed state of the empire after the death of Charle- 
 magne ib. 
 
 Bishop Lupus of Ferri&res 20 
 
 His letters and studies ib. 
 
 State of learning in England 21
 
 XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOS 
 
 SCHOOL BOOKS OF THE DARK AGES 21 
 
 Orosius 22 
 
 Martianus Capclla 23 
 
 Boethius 27 
 
 Aristotle as known to Europe before the twelfth century . 29 
 
 CassioHorus ib. 
 
 Isidorus 31 
 
 General conclusion with respect to the culture of ' the Dark 
 
 Ages' 32 
 
 THE CANON LAW 33 
 
 Growth of the spirit of imposture in the Church . . ib. 
 
 Isidorus De Officiis Ecclesiasticis ib. 
 
 The False Decretals ........ 34 
 
 Dispute between Hincmar and Rothrad .... ib. 
 
 The Decretum of Gratian 35 
 
 THE CIVIL LAW 36 
 
 Irnerius 37 
 
 Accursius ib. 
 
 Rapid spread of the study ib. 
 
 Opposition it at first encountered 38 
 
 Vacarius lectures at Oxford ib. 
 
 The study extensively pursued at a later period by the 
 
 clergy 39 
 
 Combination of the study with that of the canon law . . ib. 
 
 Evidence of increasing activity of speculative thought . 40 
 
 Paschasius Radbertus and Ratramnus .... ib. 
 
 John Scotus Erigena 41 
 
 The Pseudo-Dionysius ib. 
 
 Gerbert 42 
 
 The employment of the modern numeral notation . . 43 
 
 Gerbert's knowledge not derived from the Saracens . . ib. 
 
 His teaching at Rhcims 44 
 
 Approach of the expiration of the millennium ... 45 
 
 Panic throughout Christian Europe ib. 
 
 Belief in the approaching end of the world ceases after this 
 
 time to operate with similar intensity .... ib. 
 
 Berengar 46 
 
 Maintains the rights of reason against mere traditional 
 
 belief ... 47 
 
 His controversy with Lanfranc ib. 
 
 Anselm .... 49 
 
 COMMENCEMENT OF THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY . . . ib. 
 
 Dictum of Cousin with respect to its origin .... 60 
 
 The passage to which he refers in Porphyry . . . ib.
 
 CONTENTS. XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 This passage known throughout the Middle Ages through 
 
 two translations 51 
 
 Criticism of Boethius on the passage: (1) as it appears 
 in the version by Victorinus ; (2) as it appears in his 
 
 own translation 51 
 
 Cousin's view of the purport of the latter criticism . . 53 
 The controversy concerning universals evidently familiar to 
 
 the Middle Ages long before the time of Roscellinus . 54 
 
 Importance with which he invested the controversy . . 55 
 
 Relevancy of his doctrines to Trinitarianism . . . ib. 
 
 John of Salisbury 56 
 
 His estimate of the logical disputations at Paris . . ib. 
 
 Bernard of Chartres 57 
 
 Character of the Latinity of this period . . . . ib. 
 
 William of Champeaux ib. 
 
 Abelard ,.-... 53 
 
 Symptoms of the age ib. 
 
 A singularly critical time ib. 
 
 THE SENTENCES OF PETER LOMBARD 58 
 
 Outline of the work 59 
 
 Notable dialectical element in the treatment . . 60 
 
 Real value of the treatise 61 
 
 It encounters at first considerable opposition ... ib. 
 
 Remarkable influence it subsequently exerted ... 62 
 
 St. Anselm 63 
 
 Obligations of mediaeval theology to his teaching. . . ib. 
 
 Conclusion 64 
 
 CHAP. I. COMMENCEMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY ERA. 
 
 Recapitulation of introductory chapter 65 
 
 Fabulous element in the early accounts of the university of 
 
 Cambridge 66 
 
 The account given by Peter of Blois ...... ib. 
 
 Norman influences prior and subsequent to the Conquest . . 67 
 The university of Paris the model both for Oxford and Cambridge ib. 
 Influence of the French universities with respect to the mo- 
 nastic schools 68 
 
 Connexion between the schools of Charlemagne and the uni- 
 versity of Paris 69 
 
 The universities progressive, the monasteries stationary . . 70 
 
 Original meaning of the term Universitas 71 
 
 Savigny's view of the original formation of the older universities . 72
 
 XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OP BOLOGNA 73 
 
 Its schools and constitution ib. 
 
 Original significance of the doctorial degree .... ib. 
 
 Doctares legentes and non legentcs 74 
 
 Insignificance of the college system at Bologna ib. 
 Limits within which Bologna was adopted as a model for 
 
 later universities ib. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS 74 
 
 The ' Sinai of the Middle Ages ' ib. 
 
 Paris and Bologna compared 75 
 
 Origin of the university 77 
 
 Origin of university degrees . . . ' . . . 16. 
 Catholicity of their degrees dependent on the papal sanc- 
 tion 78 
 
 Professor Maiden's explanation ib. 
 
 The 'Nations' 78 
 
 Early theological activity of the university .... 79 
 
 Jealousy of Rome ib. 
 
 Explanation given by M. V. Le Clerc ib. 
 
 Other universities founded in the thirteenth century ... 80 
 
 Probable origin of Oxford and Cambridge ib. 
 
 The first Danish invasion 81 
 
 Destruction of the Benedictine monasteries .... ib. 
 
 Their revival under St. Dunstan ib. 
 
 The second Danish invasion ib. 
 
 Destruction of the libraries 82 
 
 Subsequent multiplication of the monasteries .... ib. 
 
 Revival of learning at Oxford 83 
 
 Robert Pullen ib. 
 
 Connexion between the schools of Oxford and the university of 
 
 Paris ib. 
 
 The statutes of the university of Paris adopted at Oxford . . ib. 
 
 Earliest recognition of the university of Cambridge ... 84 
 
 Robert Grosseteste . ib. 
 
 Object professedly in view in the formation of the new monastic 
 
 orders 85 
 
 Degeneracy of the Benedictines 86 
 
 Account of Giraldus Cambrensis ib. 
 
 Causes that favored monastic conniption 87 
 
 Influence of the Crusades ib. 
 
 The orders of St Dominic and St Francis d'Assisi ... 88 
 
 Conception of these orders contrasted with that of monasticism 89 
 
 Their rapid extension 90 
 
 The Franciscans at Oxford and at Cambridge .... ib.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Testimony of Grossetcste to the good effects of their activity . 90 
 
 ./ THE NEW ARISTOTLE 91 
 
 First known to Europe through Arabic sources . . . ib. 
 
 Previous knowledge in Europe of Aristotle's writings . . 92 
 
 Researches of M. Amablo Jourdain 93 
 
 Method which he employed in his investigations . . . ib. 
 
 Conclusions thus established 94 
 
 Aristotle's natural philosophy chiefly known from Arabic 
 
 sources ib. 
 
 Superiority of the versions from the Greek to those from 
 
 the Arabic 95 
 
 M. Kenan's account of the latter ib. 
 
 Difficulties of the Church with respect to the new philosophy 96 
 The traditional hostility to pagan literature not aimed at 
 
 the philosophers ib. 
 
 Hostility now excited at Rome . 97 
 
 The scientific treatises the first there condemned . . ib. 
 
 The emperor Frederic n . . 98 
 
 Anathemas pronounced by the Church .... ib. 
 
 The question which the schoolmen were called to decide . 99 
 
 The new literature appealed to the wants of the age . . ib. 
 A Norman and an English library of the twelfth century . 100 4 
 
 Comparison of their contents ib. 
 
 These libraries compared with that of Christchurch, Canter- 
 bury, a century later 105 
 
 Activity of the Mendicants favorable to the new learning . ib. 
 
 The Dominicans at Paris 106 
 
 Conflict between the university and the citizens in 1228 . ib. 
 
 The university leaves Paris . 107 
 
 The opportunity seized by the Dominicans .... ib. 
 
 Albertus Magnus . ib. 
 
 The Dominican interpretation of Aristotle . . . . 108 
 
 THOMAS AQUINAS ib. 
 
 Different methods of Albertus and Aquinas as commentators ib. 
 
 The Pseudo-Dionysius 109 
 
 The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs . . . . 110 
 Combination in Aquinas of Aristotelian aud Christian phi- 
 losophy ib. 
 
 Influence of Aquinas on modern theology . . . . 112 
 
 Difficulty of his position in relation to the thought of his age 113 
 
 Varied character of the intellectual activity of this period . ib. 
 
 Aquinas disclaims Averroes in order to save Aristotle . 114 
 
 Failure of his method in relation to psychology . . . 115 
 
 Theory of Aristotle's treatise De Anima .... ib. 
 
 b
 
 XV111 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Extension given to this theory by the Arabian commen- 
 tators .116 
 
 Views espoused by the Franciscans 117 
 
 Alexander Hales *& 
 
 Averroistic sympathies of the early Franciscans . . .118 
 
 Bonaventura & 
 
 His comparative indifference to Aristotle .... ib. 
 
 Temporary success of Aquinas's mode of treatment . . ib. 
 
 Return of the university to Paris 119 
 
 Rivalry between the seculars and the Mendicants . . ib. 
 
 William St. Amour ib. 
 
 His Perils of the Last Times ib. 
 
 Rivalry between the Dominicans and the Franciscans . . 120 
 
 The philosophy of Aquinas attacked by the latter . . ib. 
 
 Temporary success of their attack 121 
 
 Death of Thomas Aquinas ib. 
 
 His authority subsequently vindicated by the Church . 122 
 
 His canonisation ib. 
 
 Subsequent dissent from his teaching 123 
 
 Difficulty of the position of the schoolmen of the period . 124 
 
 Technical method of Aquinas 125 
 
 Translation of the Greek text of Aristotle .... ib. 
 
 THE COLLEGES OF PARIS 126 
 
 Foundations in the twelfth century " ib. 
 
 The Sorbonne 127 
 
 The College of Navarre ib. 
 
 Other foundations of the fourteenth century . . . 128 
 
 Description of the university by M. V. Lo Clcrc . . . 129 
 
 Procession of the colleges ....... ib. 
 
 Largeness of the numbers 130 
 
 Extreme poverty of the students ib. 
 
 Other characteristic features 131 
 
 CHAP. II. RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 Intimate connexion between Paris and the English univer- 
 sities ib. 
 
 Obscurity of the early history of Oxford and Cambridge . . 133 
 
 Students from Paris at Oxford and Cambridge .... ib. 
 
 Eminent Oxonians at Paris 134 
 
 Anthony Wood's account ib. 
 
 Migrations from Cambridge and Oxford ib. 
 
 Migration from Cambridge to Northampton . . . . 135 
 
 Migration from Oxford to Stamford . ib.
 
 CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Difficulties presented by the destruction of the early univer- 
 sity records ......... 136 
 
 Incendiary fires 137 
 
 Fuller's view of the matter ib. 
 
 Opportunities thus afforded for the introduction of forgeries . ib. 
 
 Disquiet occasioned by tournaments 138 
 
 Religious orders at Cambridge ib. 
 
 The Franciscans ib. 
 
 The Dominicans, Carmelites, and Augustine Friars . . . 139 
 
 The Priory at Barnwell ib. 
 
 OUTLINE OP THE EARLY ORGANISATION OP THE ENGLISH UNI- 
 VERSITIES ib. 
 
 Dean Peacock's account of the constitution of the univer- 
 sity of Cambridge 140 
 
 Authority of the chancellor 141 
 
 His powers ecclesiastical in their origin .... ib. 
 His powers distinguished from those, of the regents and 
 
 non-regents 142 
 
 Important distinction in the powers possessed by the 
 
 latter bodies .... .... 142 
 
 Powers vested in the non-regents at a later period . . 143 
 
 The proctors . . . . 144 
 
 The bedels ib. 
 
 Scrutators and taxors 145 
 
 The working body formerly the sole legislative body . . ib. 
 
 The university recognised at Rome as a stadium generate . ib. 
 
 Privileges resulting from the papal recognition . . . 146 
 
 THE MENDICANTS ib. 
 
 Increase of their power and decline of their popularity . ib. 
 
 Their conduct as described by Matthew Paris . . . 147 
 
 His description of the rivalry between the two orders . . 148 
 
 Conflict with the old monastic orders . ... 149 
 
 The Franciscans at Bury ....*... ib. 
 
 The Dominicans at Canterbury 150 
 
 Subserviency of the new orders to papal extortion . . ib. 
 Interview between the Franciscan emissaries and Grosse- 
 
 teste . 151 
 
 Rapid degeneracy of the friars 152 
 
 Testimony of Roger Bacon to the general corruption of the 
 
 religious orders in his day ib. 
 
 Death of Grosseteste 153 
 
 His services to his generation ....... ib. 
 
 Testimony of Matthew Paris to his merits ib. 
 
 His efforts on behalf of the new learning . . . . . ib. 
 
 62
 
 XX CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 His translation of Aristotle's Ethics . . . . . 154 
 
 His opinion of the existing translations of Aristotle . . . 154 
 
 ROGER BACON ib. 
 
 His account of the contemporary translators of Aristotlo . 155 
 
 Difficulties of his career as a Franciscan .... 155 
 
 Special value of his writings ib. 
 
 His Opus Majus, Opus Minus, and Opus Tertium . . 157 
 
 His censures of the defects and vices of his age . . . ib. 
 
 The remedies ho proposes . . . . . . . 158 
 
 Utter want of grammatical knowledge of any language . ib. 
 
 Value ho attaches to the study of mathematics . . . 159 
 
 Foundation of Morton College, A.D. 1264 ..... 160 
 
 Progress of the conception of foundations for the secular clergy ib. 
 
 The notion borrowed from Germany ib. 
 
 Cnut 161 
 
 Earl Harold's foundation at Waltham ib. 
 
 Mr Freeman's view of the character of this foundation . . 162 
 
 Harold's conception revived by Walter de Merton . . . 163 
 
 STATUTES OP MERTON COLLEGE, 1270 164 
 
 The religious orders excluded from the foundation . . ib. 
 
 Various pursuits of the secular clergy in those times . . 1 65 
 
 Contrast between the college and the monastery . . . 166 
 
 Character of the education at Merton college . . . 167 
 Restrictions under which the study of theology and the 
 
 canon law was permitted ib. 
 
 Only those actually prosecuting a course of study to bo 
 
 maintained on the foundation * 168 
 
 Distinguished merit of the whole conception . . . ib. 
 
 EMINENT MERTONIANS : DUNS SCOTUS 169 
 
 Oxford at the commencement of the fourteenth century . 171 
 
 Views of the schoolman and the modern scholar contrasted 172 
 
 Difficulties that attend any account of this period . . ib. 
 
 Progressive clemept in scholasticism . . . . 173 
 
 Researches of recent writers 1 74 
 
 Influence of the Byzantine logic 175 
 
 Learning at Constantinople in the eleventh century . ib. 
 
 Treatise on logic by Psellus 176 
 
 Translation of Psellus's treatise by Petnis Hispanus . . 176 
 
 Translation by William Shyrcswood ib. 
 
 Superiority of the Oxford translation 177 
 
 Extensive popularity of the version by Petrus Hispanus . 178 
 It partly neutralises the legitimate influence of the New 
 
 Aristotle 179 
 
 Presence of the Byzantine logic in writings of Duns Scotus 180
 
 CONTENTS. XXI 
 
 PAQK 
 
 Tlicory of tho intentio secunda 181 
 
 State of tho controversy prior to tho time of Duns Scotus . ib. 
 
 Theory of tho Arabian commentators ib. 
 
 Counter theory of Duns Scotus 182 
 
 Logic, a science as well as an art ib. 
 
 Logic, the science of sciences 183 
 
 Important results of tho introduction of the Byzantine 
 
 logic *..... 184 
 
 Limits observed by Duns Scotus in the application of logic 
 
 to theology ib. 
 
 Duns Scotus and Roger Bacon compared . . . . 185 
 Long duration of the influence of the former at the univer- 
 sities 186 
 
 Edition of his works published in 1639 .... ib. 
 
 Schoolmen after Dims Scotus ib. 
 
 WILLIAM OP OCCAM 187 
 
 Ascendancy of nominalism in the schools .... 188 
 
 Criticism of Prantl ib. 
 
 Influence of the Byzantine logic on the controversy re- 
 specting universals 189 
 
 Theory of tho suppositio ib. 
 
 Occam the first to shew the true value of universals . . 189 
 He defines the limits of logical enquiry with reference to 
 
 theology 191 
 
 Consequent effect upon the subsequent character of scholas- 
 tic controversy 192 
 
 The popes at Avignon opposed by the English Franciscans . 193 
 
 Eminent members of this fraternity in England . . . 194 
 
 Subserviency of the court at Avignon to French interests . ib. 
 
 Dissatisfaction in Italy ........ 195 
 
 Indignation in England ....... ib. 
 
 The writings of Occam condemned by John xxn. . . . ib. 
 
 Sympathy evinced with his doctrines in England . . . ib. 
 
 Contrast between Oxford and Paris 196 
 
 Anti-nominalistic tendencies at the latter university . . ib. 
 
 Popularity of Occam's teaching at Oxford .... 197 
 
 Influence of nominalism on the scholastic method . . ib. 
 
 THOMAS BRADWARDINE 198 
 
 His treatise De Causa Dei ib. 
 
 Its extensive influence . . . . . . 199 
 
 Illustration it affords of the learning of the age . . . 200 
 
 RICHARD OP BURV. ib. 
 
 His early career and experiences 201 
 
 His interview with Petrarch at Avignon .... ib.
 
 XX11 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Real character of his attainments 202 
 
 His library bequeathed to Durham College, Oxford . . 203 
 
 Character of the culture of the fourteenth century . . 204 
 
 Richard of Bury's description of the students of the time . 206 
 
 His testimony to the degeneracy of the mendicant orders . ib. 
 The monasteries superseded as centres of education by the 
 
 universities 207 
 
 Lull in the intellectual activity of Oxford and Cambridge . 208 
 Anthony Wood's criticism affords only a partial explana- 
 tion ib. 
 
 Absorbing devotion to the study of the civil law . . . ib. 
 
 Inaccuracy in Blackstono's account of the study . . . 209 
 
 Roger Bacon on its detrimental effects .... ib. 
 
 The study increases in importance 211 
 
 Testimony of Robert Holcot and of Richard of Bury . . ib. 
 
 Theology falls into comparative neglect . . . . 212 
 
 CHAP. III. CAMBRIDGE PRIOR TO THE CLASSICAL ERA. 
 Part I. Early College Foundations. 
 
 The intellectual supremacy of Paris passes over to Oxford . 213 
 
 Testimony of Richard of Bury 214 
 
 Influence of the court at Avignon upon the university of 
 
 Paris . . . . 215 
 
 Professor Shirley's criticism ib. 
 
 Scantiness of materials for early Cambridge history . . . 216 
 
 HOSTELS 217 
 
 Early statute relating to the hire and tenure of hostels . 21 8 
 
 Main object of this statute 220 
 
 Its details compared with those of statute Lxvm. . . 221 
 Hostels possessed of small attractions when compared with 
 
 the houses of the religious orders ib. 
 
 Enactments designed to counteract the proselytising ac- 
 tivity of the friars 222 
 
 Foundation of the Hospital of St. John the Evangelist . 223 
 
 Huon BALSHAM #. 
 
 His disputed election to the see of Ely ib. 
 
 His merits compared with those of Adam dc Marisco . . 224 
 
 His merits as an administrator 225 
 
 His equitable decision between his archdeacon and the 
 
 university . . ? -j 
 Scholars not under a master forbidden to reside in the 
 
 university . . . 22fi 
 
 Hugh Balaam introduces secular scholars into the hospital 227 
 
 Failure of this attempt at combining the two elements ib.
 
 CONTENTS. XX111 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Separation of the Seculars and Regulars .... 228 
 
 FOUNDATION OF PETERIIOUSE, A.D. 1284 ib- 
 
 Tlie college endowed with the site of a suppressed priory . 229 
 Simon Montacute surrenders his right of presenting to 
 
 fellowships on the foundation 230 
 
 Early statutes of Peterhouse (circ. 1338) .... ib. 
 
 Those statutes copied from those of Merton College . . ib. 
 Proficiency in logic the chief pro-requisite in candidates for 
 
 fellowships 231 
 
 Laxity at the universities with respect to dress . . . 232 
 
 Decree of archbishop Stratford on this subject . . . 233 
 
 Statute of Petcrhouso ib. 
 
 The foundation in its relation to monastic foundations . ib. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF MICHAELHOUSE, A.D. 1324 234 
 
 Early statutes of Michaelhouse given by Hervey de Stanton ib. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, A.D. 1347 .... 236 
 
 Marie de St. Paul ib. 
 
 Inaccuracy of the story alluded to by Gray .... ib. 
 
 The original statutes no longer extant . . . . . 237 
 
 Leading features of the second statutes . 238 
 
 FOUNDATION OF GONVILLE HALL, A.D. 1348 .... 239 
 
 Original statutes given by Edward Gonville . . . 240 
 
 His main object to promote the study of theology . . ib. 
 
 Study of the canon law permitted but not obligatory . . ib. 
 
 William Bateman, bishop of Norwich ib. 
 
 The Great Plague of 1349 241 
 
 Its devastations at the universities ib. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF TRINITY HALL, by bishop Bateman, A.D. 1350, 
 to repair the losses sustained by deaths among the 
 
 clergy 242 
 
 Statutes of Trinity Hall ib. 
 
 The college designed exclusively for canonists and civilians ib. 
 
 Conditions in elections to the mastership and fellowships . 243 
 
 Library presented by bishop Bateman to the foundation . ib. 
 
 Bishop Batemau confirms the foundation of Gonville Hall . 244 
 
 The alteration in the name of the Hall . . . . 245 
 Agreement De amicabilitate with the scholars of Trinity 
 
 Hall 246 
 
 Statutes given to Gonville Hall by bishop Bateman . . ib. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, A.D. 1352 . . . 247 
 
 Mr Toulmin Smith's account of the early Gilds . . . 248 
 
 Gilds at Cambridge ib. 
 
 Designs in view in foundation of Corpus Christi College 249 
 Its statutes apparently borrowed from those of Michael- 
 house ...... . ib.
 
 XXIV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Requirements with respect to studies 250 
 
 FOUNDATION OP CLARE HALL, by Elizabeth dc Burgh, A.D. 1359 ib. 
 
 Design of the foundress ib. 
 
 Losses occasioned by the pestilence one of her motives . 251 
 
 Liberality of sentiment by which these statutes are charac- 
 terised ' ib. 
 
 Conditions to be observed in the election of fellows . . 252 
 
 Provision for ten sizars ib. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF KING'S HALL by Edward n., A.D. 1326 . . ib. 
 
 Mansion given to the King's scholars by Edward m. . . 253 
 
 Statutes given by Richard IT. ib. 
 
 Limitations as to age at time of admission . . . . ib. 
 
 Other provisions in the statutes 254 
 
 The foundation apparently designed for students from the 
 
 wealthier classes ........ ib. 
 
 Illustration afforded in the foregoing codes of the different 
 tendencies of the age . : 
 
 The vital question with respect to University education 
 
 CHAP. III. CAMBRIDGE PRIOR TO THE CLASSICAL EKA. 
 Part II. The Fifteenth Century. 
 
 Visitation of Archbishop Arundel, A.D. 1401 .... 258 
 
 lie aims at the suppression of Lollardism ib. 
 
 Fundamental importance of the question raised by William 
 
 of Occam 25!) 
 
 Direct relevancy of the question concerning the temporal 
 
 power of the pope to the study of the canon law . . 2fiO 
 
 JOHN WYCLIP 261 
 
 In some respects a follower of Occam ib. 
 
 His relations to the Mendicants ib. 
 
 Tendencies of the English Franciscans .... ib 
 
 Policy of the Mendicants at the universities . . . 262 
 
 The Dominicans at Paris ib. 
 
 Defeat sustained by the Mendicants at Oxford . . . ib. 
 
 Statute against them at Cambridge 263 
 
 They appeal to Parliament ?7>. 
 
 Exclusive privileges which they succeed in obtaining . . 264 
 
 Opposition to the theory of Walter de Morton . . . ib. 
 
 Efforts of Wyclif on behalf of tho secular clergy at Oxford . if>. 
 
 Papal bull in their favour ib. 
 
 Wyclif leaves Oxford 265 
 
 Archbishop Islip attempts to combine the regulars and 
 
 seculars at Canterbury Hall 266 
 
 He finally expels tho monks ib. 
 
 Archbishop Langhani expels the cecular.s .... ib.
 
 CONTENTS. XXV 
 
 I'AOE 
 
 Efforts of tho laity to circumscribe the power of the Church 266 
 
 Real character of Wyclif s sympathies ..... 267 
 
 Wyclif the foremost schoolman of his day .... ib. 
 
 Not originally hostile to the Mendicants .... 268 
 
 Fierceness of his subsequent denunciations of their vices . 269 
 The struggle against the pope chiefly carried on, at this 
 
 time, by tho universities . . . . . . 270 
 The universities the strongholds of Lollardisin . . . ib. 
 Constitutions of archbishop Arundel, A.D. 1408 . . . 272 
 Extravagancies of the later Lollards . . . * . . 273 
 Lollardism suppressed in England reappears in Bohemia . ib. 
 Lollardism not the commencement of the Reformation . 274 
 Huber's estimate of the, results of the suppression of Lol- 
 lardism at the universities 275 
 
 His statement of the facts erroneous ib. 
 
 His explanation of the decline of the universities incom- 
 plete 276 
 
 The university of Paris regains her former preeminence . ib. 
 
 JEAN CHARLIER DE GERSON 277 
 
 His two treatises De Modi's and De Concordia . . . 278 
 Illustration they afford of the final results attained to in 
 
 scholastic metaphysics ib. 
 
 Cessation of the intercourse between Paris and the English 
 
 universities 280 
 
 Circumstances that led to the diminished influence of the 
 
 university of Paris in the 15th century .... ib. 
 
 The Great Councils 281 
 
 The policy of Gerson opposed at Basel by tho English 
 
 Ultramoutanists ib. 
 
 France enacts the Pragmatic Sanction ib. 
 
 The popes avenge themselves on the university of Paris . 282 
 
 Rise of new universities under the papal sanction . . ib. 
 
 The Teutonic element gradually withdrawn from Paris . 283 
 The action of the Statute of Pro visors prejudicial to tho 
 
 universities 284 
 
 Papal patronage less injurious than home patronage . . 285 
 
 Similar experience of the university of Paris . . . ib. 
 
 Huber's criticism gives a just appreciation of the facts . 286 
 
 Ultramontanist tendencies at Cambridge .... 287 
 
 THE BARNWELL PROCESS, A.D. 1430 ib. 
 
 Diocesan authority of the bishops of Ely reasserted over tho 
 
 university by Arundel ib. 
 
 This authority;abolished by pope Martin v in the Barmvcll 
 
 Process 288
 
 XXVI CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOE 
 
 REGINALD PECOCK . . . 290 
 
 His Reprcssor . . . 291 
 
 Logic his panacea for heresy ib. 
 
 He asserts the rights of reason against dogma . . . ib. 
 Is not afraid to call in question the authority of the fathers 
 
 and the schoolmen 292 
 
 Ho nevertheless advocates submission to the temporal 
 
 authority of the pope ib. 
 
 He denounces Lollardism 293 
 
 Summa Prccdicantium of John Bromyard .... ib. 
 
 Pecock and Bromyard contrasted 294 
 
 The contrast perhaps a typical one ib. 
 
 Pecock disapproves of much preaching .... ib. 
 
 His eccentric defence of his order .'.... ib. 
 
 Pecock something more than a mere Ultramontanist . . 295 
 
 He offends both parties , ib. 
 
 Possibly a victim to political feeling 296 
 
 His doctrines forbidden at the universities .... ib. 
 
 Torpor of the universities after Pecock's time .... 297 
 
 Oxford nearly deserted ...:..... ib. 
 
 Testimony of Poggio Bracciolini ....... ib. 
 
 Scantiness and poverty of the national literature . . . 298 
 
 Defective accommodation for instruction at both universities 29.") 
 
 Superior advantages in this respect possessed by the religious 
 
 orders 300 
 
 Erection of the Divinity Schools at Cambridge, A.D. 1398 . . ib. 
 
 Erection of the Arts Schools and Civil Law Schools . . . ib. 
 
 Learning forsakes the monastery 301 
 
 Its patrons begin to despair of the religious orders ... ib. 
 
 WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM #. 
 
 Foundation of New College, Oxford, A.D. 1380 ... 302 
 The college endowed with lands purchased from religious 
 
 houses ? 7, 
 
 Statutes of the foundation . . . #,. 
 
 A model for subsequent foundations 303 
 
 The second stage in endowment of colleges, the appropria- 
 tion of the revenues of alien priories .... ib. 
 
 Cough's account of the alien priories . . 304 
 
 Sequestrations under different monarchs . H. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF KINO'S COLCKGE and ETON COLLEGE, A.D! 
 
 1440 305 
 
 These colleges endowed from the property of alien priories ib. 
 
 Early statutes of King's College . 306 
 
 Commissioners originally appointed to prepare the statutes ib.
 
 CONTENTS. XXV11 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Their resignation 300 
 
 William Millington, the first provost ib- 
 
 Refuses his assent to the new statutes, and is ejected . ib. 
 
 The statutes borrowed from those of New College, Oxford . 307 
 
 Qualifications necessary for admission to scholarships . . 308 
 
 Studies prescribed or permitted ib. 
 
 Term of probation required before election to a fellowship . 309 
 
 Special privileges and exemptions granted to the society . ib. 
 
 Object aimed at by the society ib. 
 
 Objections of William Millington 310 
 
 Significance of Cardinal Beaufort's bequest . . . ib. 
 Ineffectual efforts of the university to annul the exclusive 
 
 privileges of the college ib. 
 
 Effect of these privileges on the college at a later period '. 311 
 
 FOUNDATION OF QUEENS' COLLEGE, A.D. 1448 . . . . 312 
 
 Margaret of Anjou . ib. 
 
 Her Ultramontane sympathies . . . . . . 313 
 
 Her petition to her husband ib. 
 
 Fuller's criticism 314 
 
 College of ST. BERNARD ib. 
 
 Charter of this college, of 1447 315 
 
 Foundation of Margaret of Anjou ib. 
 
 Views and motives of the foundress ib. 
 
 Statutes given by Elizabeth Woodville at the petition of 
 
 Andrew Doket . . .... 316 
 
 Regulations with respect to fellowships .... ib. 
 
 Studies prescribed ib. 
 
 Lectureships terminable at the expiration of three years . ib. 
 
 Study of the civil or canon law simply permitted . . . 317 
 
 Character of Andrew Doket ib. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF ST. CATHERINE'S HALL, A. D. 1475 . . . ib. 
 
 Robert Woodlark 318 
 
 His energetic character ib. 
 
 Forbids the study of either the civil or the canon law at 
 
 the hall ib. 
 
 The foundation designed for the benefit of the secular clergy ib. 
 Evident desire of founders at this period to check the 
 
 prevalent exclusive devotion to the study of the civil 
 
 and canon law ........ 319 
 
 FOUNDATION OF JESUS COLLEGE, A. D. 1497 . . . . . 320 
 
 The nunnery of St. Rhadegund ib. 
 
 The nunnery under the protection of the bishops of Ely . ib. 
 Its corrupt state and final dissolution at the close of the 
 
 fifteenth century ib.
 
 XXVill CONTENTS. 
 
 1-.VGK 
 
 John Alcock, bishop of Ely 321 
 
 Early statutes of Jesua College given by bishops Stanley 
 
 and West ib. 
 
 Study of the canon law forbidden 322 
 
 Despondency in the tone of promoters of learning at this 
 
 period ib. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY .... 323 
 
 Different benefactors to the library ib. 
 
 Two early catalogues *. ib. 
 
 The library building . ib. 
 
 Thomas Rotheram 324 
 
 Early catalogues of the libraries of Poterhouse, Trinity 
 
 Hall, Pembroke, Queens', and St. Catherine's . . ib. 
 
 Illustration of mediaeval additions to learning afforded by 
 
 these catalogues 325 
 
 Evidence afforded with respect to the theological studies 
 
 of the time ib. 
 
 Hugo of St. Victor, Hugo of St. Cher, and Nicholas de Lyra 326 
 
 Absence of the Arabian commentators on Aristotle . . ib. 
 
 Fewer works than we should expect on logic and contro- 
 versial theology ib. 
 
 The Fathers very imperfectly represented ib. 
 
 Entire absence of Greek authors 327 
 
 CUAP. IV. STUDENT LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 Changes which sever modern and mediaeval times . . . 328 
 
 Outline of the physical aspects of mediaeval Cambridge . . 329 
 
 The CAM .'...'. ib. 
 
 The Fen Country 329 
 
 Rivers by which it is traversed 330 
 
 Ancient channel of the Ouse ib. 
 
 Its course described by Spenser ib. 
 
 The Bedford Level ib. 
 
 Extent of the inundations in former times . . . . 331 
 
 Gradual growth of the town of Cambridge .... 332 
 The question, how such a locality came to bo selected for 
 
 a university discussed ..'.... 333 
 
 No definite act of selection ever took place .... ib. 
 
 Why the university was not removed 334 
 
 Migration opposed on principle ib. 
 
 Drawbacks to modern eyes recommendations in mediaeval 
 
 times ib. 
 
 The ascetic theor //,.
 
 CONTENTS. XXIX 
 
 PAOK 
 
 Results of monastic industry not to bo confounded with reasons 
 
 for the original selection of monastic sites . . . 335 
 
 Instance from Matthew Paris , , ib. 
 
 The Fen Country as described by the chroniclers . . . 336 
 
 Change in the monastic practice in the selection of new sites . 337 
 The change shewn to be at variance with their professed 
 
 theory ib. 
 
 Poggio Bracciolini and the Fratres Observantice . . . ib. 
 
 The mediaeval theory that on which Poggio insisted . . . 339 
 
 Sounder views held only by a few ...... ib. 
 
 Tho theory not without an element of truth .... 340 
 
 The university originally only a GRAMMAR SCHOOL ... ib. 
 
 The Magister Glomerice ib. 
 
 Course of study pursued by the student of grammar . 341 
 
 Introduction of the arts course of study at Cambridge . . 342 
 
 Intercourse between Paris and the English xiniversities . . ib. 
 Assistance afforded by the statute books of the university 
 of Paris in investigating the antiquities of the English 
 
 universities 343 
 
 Inferior position of grammar students compared with that 
 
 held by students in arts ib. 
 
 Causes which conduced to this result ib. 
 
 The grammaticus at this time nothing more than a school- 
 master 344 
 
 The class as described by Erasmus 345 
 
 EXPERIENCES AND COURSE OP AX ARTS STUDENT DESCRIBED . . ib. 
 
 Average age at time of entry ib. 
 
 Master and scholar 346 
 
 University aids to poor scholars 347 
 
 Practice of mendicity by the scholars ib. 
 
 Restrictions imposed upon the practice .... 348 
 
 Dress of the scholar ib. 
 
 Assumption of academic dress by those not entitled to 
 
 wear it ib. 
 
 Instruction in grammar to some extent preliminary to the 
 
 arts course 349 
 
 Foundation of grammar schools discouraged throughout 
 
 the country ib. 
 
 Concession made in 1431 . ib. 
 
 Foundation of GOD'S HOUSE, A.D. 1439 ... . ib. 
 
 Grammar always included in the arts course . . . ib. 
 
 Logic 350 
 
 The Summulce of Petrus Hispanus ib. 
 
 Rhetoric 351
 
 XXX CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The quadrivium 351 
 
 Mathematics ib. 
 
 Perceptible advance in the study in different universities . 352 
 
 The bachelor of arts 352 
 
 Original meaning of the term ib. 
 
 The sophister ib. 
 
 The questionist . 353 
 
 The supplicat ib. 
 
 Stokys' account of the ceremony observed by the questionist ib. 
 
 The determiner 354 
 
 Stare in quadragcsima ib. 
 
 Determiners admitted to determine by proxy . . . ib. 
 
 Importance attached to the ceremony of determination . 355 
 
 The inceptor ib. 
 
 Account of the ceremony of inception ib. 
 
 The 'father' 356 
 
 The prcecaricator ib. 
 
 Heavy expenses often incurred at the ceremony of inception ib. 
 
 Limitation on such expenses imposed by the university . 357 
 
 Incepting for others 358 
 
 The regent ib. 
 
 Lectures ib. 
 
 Lecturing ordinarie, cursorie, and extraordinarie . . ib. 
 
 Methods employed by the lecturer 359 
 
 The analytical method ...:.... ib. 
 
 The dialectical method 3GO 
 
 The non-regent 361 
 
 Professional prospects of an ordinary master of arts . . 362 
 
 Course of study in the faculty of theology 363 
 
 Bachelors of theology permitted to lecture ordinarie . . ib. 
 
 Course of study in the faculty of the civil law .... 364 
 
 Course of study in the faculty of the canon law .... ib. 
 
 The faculty of medicine . 365 
 
 The education thus imparted thorough of its kind . . . ib. 
 
 Baneful effects on the theology of the time .... ib. 
 
 COLLEGE LIFE .... 36C 
 
 Asceticism again the dominant theory .... ib. 
 
 Account given by Erasmus of the College do Montaigu . 367 
 
 His account unchallenged 36$ 
 
 Our early colleges designed only for poor students . . ib. 
 Certain attainments necessary in those admitted on the 
 
 foundation 3^9 
 
 Extreme youth of the majority at the time of their ad- 
 mission
 
 CONTENTS. XXxi 
 
 PAOE 
 
 Their treatment 36f) 
 
 Bachelors ib. 
 
 Rooms in college . ib. 
 
 The college library 370 
 
 Description of student life by a master of St. John's in the 
 
 year 1550 ib. 
 
 His description refers to an abnormal state of affairs . . 371 
 
 Other evidence, less open to exception .... ib. 
 
 Use of Latin and French in conversation .... ib. 
 
 Fellows required to bo in residence . . . . 372 
 
 Colleges increasing in wealth to add to the number of their 
 
 fellowships ib. 
 
 Autocracy of the master ib. 
 
 The office frequently combined with other preferments . ib. 
 
 SPORTS AND PASTIMES 373 
 
 Fishing . ib. 
 
 The river really the property of the town .... ib. 
 
 The rights of the corporation set at defiance both by the 
 
 religious and the university 374 
 
 Scholars required to take their walks with a companion . ib. 
 Features of the ancient town and university .... ib. 
 The majority of mediaeval students actuated by the same mo- 
 tives as those of modern times 375 
 
 A possible minority . . . . 377 
 
 Experiences of one of the latter number ib. 
 
 CHAP. V. CAMBRIDGE AT THE REVIVAL OP CLASSICAL LEARNING. 
 Part I. The Humanists. 
 
 PETRARCH 379 
 
 Effects of the revival of classical learning contrasted with 
 
 preceding influences 380 
 
 Extravagancies of the Averroists at this period . . . 381 
 
 General decline in the attention to Latin authors . , ib 
 
 Petrarch as a reformer ib. 
 
 His estimate of the logicians of his day and of the uni- 
 versities 382 
 
 His influence (1) on Latin scholarship ; (2) as a reviver of 
 
 the study of Greek 383 
 
 Change in the modem estimate of his genius from that of 
 
 his contemporaries ib. 
 
 Reason of this change ib. 
 
 His services in relation to the works of Cicero . . . 384 
 
 His knowledge of Plato 385 
 
 He initiates the struggle against the supremacy of Aristotle 386
 
 XXXli CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOF. 
 
 His position in relation to Aristotle compared with that of 
 
 Aquinas . . . 386 
 
 He attacks the style of the existing versions . . . 387 
 
 He rejects the ethical system of Aristotle .... ib. 
 
 The Italian Humanists of later times ib. 
 
 Florence and Constantinople contrasted .... 388 
 
 Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries . ib. 
 
 Contrast between the culture of the two cities . . . m 389 
 
 Causes of variance between the two cities .... 390 
 
 Italian scholars at Constantinople ib. 
 
 Philelphus . . ib. 
 
 His account of Greek learning at Constantinople . . 391 
 
 EMMANUEL CHRYSOLORAS ........ ib. 
 
 His eminence as a teacher of Greek 392 
 
 His Greek Grammar ib. 
 
 His residence at Rome 393 
 
 Closing years of his life . ib. 
 
 Critical condition of the eastern empire .... 394 
 
 He becomes a convert to the western Church . . . ib. 
 He attends the council of Constance as a delegate of Pope 
 
 John xxn ib. 
 
 His death at Constance . * . . . . . . 395 
 
 His funeral oration by Julianus 396 
 
 G CARING ib. 
 
 Eminent Englishmen among his pupils .... ib. 
 
 William Gray 397 
 
 MSS. brought by Gray to England ib. 
 
 His collection bequeathed to Balliol College . . . ib. 
 
 Old age of Guarino 398 
 
 LEONARDO BRCNI 398 
 
 His translations of Aristotle ib. 
 
 He translates the Politics at the request of Humphrey, duke 
 
 of Gloucester . ib. 
 
 Duke Humphrey's bequests to Oxford 399 
 
 Novel elements thus introduced ib. 
 
 FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE, A.D. 1453 400 
 
 The flight to Italy ib. 
 
 Prior importations of Greek literature .... ib. 
 
 Forebodings of Italian scholars ..'.... ib. 
 
 Lament of Quirinus ib.- 
 
 Predictions of JEncn* Sylvius 401 
 
 His predictions falsified by the sequel .... ib. 
 
 Conduct of the Greek exiles' in Italy ..... 402 
 
 Their decline in the general estimation .... ib.
 
 CONTENTS. XXXI 11 
 
 PAOK 
 
 BKSSARION 403 
 
 His patriotic zeal , t'6. 
 
 His efforts towards tli e union of the Churches . . . ib. 
 
 His conversion to the western Church 404 
 
 His example productive of little result .... ib. 
 
 Greek becomes associated with heresy 405 
 
 ARGYROPULOS .... ib. 
 
 Devotes himself to improving the knowledge of Aristotle . ib. 
 
 Admitted excellence of his translations .... ib. 
 
 His depreciation of Cicero as a philosopher .... 406 
 
 His other literary labours jjb, 
 
 Reuchlin and Argyropulos . ' . . . . " . . 407 
 
 LEARNING IN GERMANY ib. 
 
 ^Eneas Sylvius and Gregory Heiinburg .... 408 
 
 The Italian scholar and German jurist contrasted . . ib. 
 
 Hegius . ib. 
 
 His school at Deventer ' 409 
 
 Rudolf von Lange ib. 
 
 His innovations on the traditional methods of instruction . ib. 
 
 John Wessel ib. 
 
 He disputes the authority of Aquinas ib. 
 
 RUDOLPHUS AGRICOLA .' . .' .' . . . . 410 
 
 His De Formando Studio ib. 
 
 He regards natural science as ancillary to philosophy . . 41 1 
 
 Use of the native language in' classical studies . . . ib. 
 
 Acquired knowledge to be not only stored but assimilated . ib. 
 
 Real novelty of thoiight in this treatise .... 412 
 
 His De InT.eittione, a popular treatise on logic . . . ib. 
 
 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS FROM THE FOREGOING OUTLINE . . . 413 
 
 Italian and German scholarship compared .... ib. 
 
 Their respective affinities to the Reformation . . . 414 
 The forebodings of Gregory and Alcuin partially verified by 
 
 the result . . . 415 
 
 The Humanists and the religious orders . . . . . 4ig 
 
 The Humanists and the universities ib. 
 
 Progress of Nominalism at the universities . . ' . ' . . ib. 
 
 Attitude of the universities with respect to the new learning 417 
 
 The Humanists attack the civilians .' ." . . . . 413 
 
 Valla at the University of Pavia ' ib. 
 
 Comparison instituted by an eminent jurist between Cicero and 
 
 " Bartolus .* . . .' 419 
 
 Valla's attack on Bartolus ib. 
 
 Poggio and the^canonists .""^ 420
 
 XXXIV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOK 
 
 The opposition in the northern universities far more per- 
 severing 421 
 
 Causes of this difference ib. 
 
 Difference in the constitution of the respective universities 
 
 offers a further explanation of the fact .... ib. 
 
 Victories of the Humanists ib. 
 
 CHAP. V. CAMBRIDGE AT THE REVIVAL OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 
 Part II. Bishop Fisher. 
 
 JOHN FISHER 423 
 
 His parentage and early education ib. 
 
 Entered at Michaelhouse ib. 
 
 Elected master 424 
 
 Prosperity of Michaelhouse at tlu's period .... ib. 
 
 Character and views of Fisher ib. 
 
 EMINENT MEN AT CAMBRIDGE AT THIS TIME .... 425 
 
 Rotheram, John Barker, William Chubbes .... ib. 
 
 John Argentine . 426 
 
 His proposed Act in the schools . . . . . . ib. 
 
 Robert Hacomblene ib. 
 
 Henry Horneby ib. 
 
 These, and other eminent men in the university, able workers 
 
 but not reformers ib. 
 
 The phenomena of the age not of an inspiriting character . . 427 
 
 Fisher's description of the prevalent tone of the university . . ib. 
 
 A counter influence . 428 
 
 CONTINUED PROGRESS OF THE NEW LEARNING IN ITALY . . ib. 
 
 Demetrius Chalcondyles 429 
 
 His edition of Homer ib. 
 
 Angclus Politianus ib. 
 
 His Miscellanea, ib. 
 
 Theodorus Gaza ......... ib. 
 
 Oeorgius Trapezuntius . ib. 
 
 His Logic . ib. 
 
 Constantino Lascaris, Hermolaus Barbarus and George 
 
 Hermonymus 430 
 
 Early Greek Grammars ib. 
 
 Sentiments with which the progress of the new learning was 
 
 regarded at Cambridge 431 
 
 Progress of scepticism in Italy ib. 
 
 Testimony of Machiavelli and Savonarola to the depravity of 
 
 the nation ......... ib. 
 
 Feelings of the supporters of the traditional learning . . 432
 
 CONTENTS. XXXV 
 
 PAOH 
 
 Earliest traces of some attention to the writings of the Human- 
 ists at Cambridge 433 
 
 A treatise by Petrarch at Michaclhouso . . . . ib. 
 
 Caius Auberinus lectures on Terence to the university . . 434 
 
 Fisher at court . ib. 
 
 He attracts the notice of the king's mother, Margaret, countess 
 
 of Richmond 434 
 
 Baker's account of her ancestry . . ... . . ib. 
 
 Fisher appointed her confessor 435 
 
 Her character ^ 
 
 Fisher elected vice-chancellor $. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF THE LADY MARGARET PROFESSORSHIP Ob. 
 
 The revenues entrusted to the abbey of Westminster . . 436 
 
 Salary attached to the office #. 
 
 The subjects selected by the lecturer to be sanctioned by 
 
 the authorities ib. 
 
 Other regulations . . 437 
 
 Fisher the first professor ....... ib. 
 
 His successors ib. 
 
 Neglect of the art and practice of preaching at this period . ib. 
 
 Preaching discountenanced from fear of Lollardism . . . 438 
 
 Consequent rarity of sermons ib. 
 
 Artificial and extravagant character of the preaching in 
 
 vogue 439 
 
 Skelton's description of the young theologians of his day . . ib. 
 
 Efforts towards a reform ib. 
 
 Fund bequeathed by Thomas Collage at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge ib. 
 
 Bull of Alexander vi, A.D. 1503 ib. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF THE LADY MARGARET PREACHERSHIP . . . 440 
 
 Double purpose of Fisher if>. 
 
 Testimony of Erasmus to the character of his design . . ib. 
 
 Regulations of the preachership ib. 
 
 Fisher's claims to be regarded as a reformer .... 441 
 His election to the chancellorship and promotion to the bishopric 
 
 of Ely ib. 
 
 His influence with the countess 442 
 
 Motives of founders in these times 443 
 
 Design of the countess in connexion with the abbey of "West- 
 minster 444 
 
 She is dissuaded by the arguments of Fisher .... ib. 
 
 Signal gain of the university ........ ib. 
 
 HISTORY OF GOD'S HOUSE 445 
 
 Design of Henry vi ib. 
 
 e2
 
 XXXvi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Accessions to the revenues of the society . 445 
 
 Design of the lady Margaret ...... ib. 
 
 Fisher elected president of Queens' College .... 446 
 
 Foundation of. CHRIST'S COLLEGE, A.D. 1505 .... ib. 
 
 Estates settled on the society by the lady Margaret . . . 447 
 
 Other bequests to the college 448 
 
 The countess visits Cambridge in 1505 $ 
 
 HER SECOND VISIT WITH KING HENRY IN 1506 .... ib. 
 
 King Henry's reception 449 
 
 Fisher's oration to king Henry & 
 
 His excessive adulation ib. 
 
 Traditions concerning the foundation of the university . 450 
 
 Fisher's acknowledgement of the favours he had himself . 
 
 received ib. 
 
 The procession through the town 451 
 
 King Henry attends service in King's College chapel . . ib. 
 
 Incomplete condition of the building ib. 
 
 Good effects resulting possibly from the royal visit . . 452 
 
 The monarch's subsequent bequests for the completion of 
 
 the chapel ib. 
 
 His gifts to Great St. Mary's and to the university . . ib. 
 
 Erasmus is admitted B.D. and D.D. ib. 
 
 He becomes the friend and guest of Fisher .... 453 
 
 ORIGINAL STATUTES OP CHRIST'S COLLEGE, A.D. 1506 . . . ib. 
 
 Numerous restrictions imposed upon the authority of the 
 
 master 451 
 
 The conditions compared with those imposed at Jesus 
 
 College ib. 
 
 Residence strictly enforced ib. 
 
 Half-yearly accounts to be rendered of the college finances . ib. 
 
 Qualifications required for fellowships 455 
 
 Preference to be given to north countrymen . . . ib. 
 
 Form of oath at election ib. 
 
 The form compared with that prescribed at Jesus College . ib. 
 
 Clause against dispensations from the oath .... ib. 
 
 Precedent for this clause in statutes of King's College . 456 
 
 Question raised by dean Peacock in connexion with this clause ib. 
 
 The clause originally aimed at dispensations from Rome . 4">7 
 
 Clause in the form of oath administered to the master of 
 
 Christ's College .... :. ... 468 
 
 Probable explanation of the retention of the clause in sub- 
 sequent revisions of the statutes ib. 
 
 The scholars to be sufficiently instructed in grammar and 
 
 to be trained in arts and theology .... ib.
 
 CONTENTS. XXXVll 
 
 PAflB 
 
 Provision for the admission of pensioners of approved cha- 
 
 ractei* 458 
 
 A college lecturer appointed . . . . . 459 
 
 His lecture to include readings from the poets and orators . ib. 
 
 Lectures to be given in the long vacation .... 460 
 
 Fisher appointed visitor for life ib. 
 
 Allowance for commons ....... ib. 
 
 Object of these restrictions ib. 
 
 The same amount subsequently prescribed in the statutes of 
 St. John's and maintained by Fisher throughout his 
 
 life 461 
 
 Fortunate result of this frugality ib. 
 
 PROPOSED FOUNDATION OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, BY THE LADY 
 
 MARGARET ib. 
 
 The Hospital of the Brethren of St. John .... ib. 
 
 Its condition at the commencement of the 16th century . 462 
 
 Its proposed dissolution ib. 
 
 Endowments set apart by the lady Margaret for .the new 
 
 college ib. 
 
 King Henry gives his assent ib. 
 
 Death of king Henry and of the lady Margaret . . . 463 
 
 Fisher preaches her funeral sermon 464 
 
 Charter of the foundation of St. John's College, 1511 . . ib. 
 
 Robert Shorten first master . ...... . . ib. 
 
 Executors of = the lady Margaret 465 
 
 Lovell, Fox, Ashton, Hornby ib. 
 
 The burden devolves mainly on Fisher .... ib. 
 
 The revenues bequeathed by the lady Margaret to the col- 
 lege become subject to the royal disposal . . . 466 
 
 Apparent contradiction in the royal licence . . . ib. 
 
 Bishop Stanley opposes the dissolution of the hospital . . ib. 
 
 His character ib. 
 
 The executors obtain a bull from Rome for the dissolution . 467 
 
 This proves defective ib. 
 
 A second bull is obtained ib. 
 
 Dissolution of the hospital . ib. 
 
 The college still in embryo 468 
 
 Decision in the court of chancery in favour of the college . ib. 
 
 A second suit is instituted by the crown .... ib. 
 
 The executors abandon their claim ib. 
 
 The loss thus sustained attributed to Wolsey's influence . ib. 
 
 Motives by which he was probably actuated .... 469 
 
 The executors obtain the 1 ospital at Ospringe as a partial 
 
 compensation ib.
 
 XXXV111 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Baker's observations respecting the lost estates . . . 469 
 Formal opening of the College of St. John the Evangelist, 
 
 July, 1516 470 
 
 Fisher presides at the ceremony ...... ib. 
 
 Thirty-one fellows elected ib. 
 
 Alan Percy succeeds Shorten as master .... ib. 
 
 The statutes given identical with those of Christ's College . ib. 
 
 Illustration they afford of Fisher's character . . . 47 1 
 The clauses against innovations contrasted with a clause in 
 
 Colet's statutes of St. Paul's School .... ib. 
 
 ERASMUS 472 
 
 His second visit to Cambridge, 1509-10 ib. 
 
 Object of his visit ib. 
 
 Circumstances that led to his selection of Cambridge in pre- 
 ference to Paris, Italy, Louvain, or Oxford . . . 473-6 
 
 Friends of Erasmus at Oxford 476 
 
 Probable reasons why he did not return to Oxford . . . 477 
 OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF THE INTRODUCTION OF GREEK INTO 
 
 ENGLAND IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY .... ib. 
 
 William Selling ib. 
 
 Studies Greek in Italy under Politiau ib. 
 
 Thomas Linacre 478 
 
 The pupil of Selling at Christchurch and of Yitelli at 
 
 Oxford ib. 
 
 He accompanies Selling to Italy ...... ib. 
 
 Becomes a pupil of Politian ib. 
 
 Makes the acquaintance of Hermolaus Barbarus at Rome . 479 
 
 Important results of their subsequent intercourse . . ib. 
 Influence of his example at Oxford on Grocyn, Lily, and 
 
 Latimer jj. 
 
 Different candidates for the title of restorer of Greek learn- 
 ing in England ib. 
 
 Testimony of Erasmus to the merits of his Oxford friends . . 480 
 
 Debt of Cambridge to Oxford ib, 
 
 Gibbon's dictum t j 
 
 Where and when Erasmus acquired his knowledge of Greek . 481 
 
 Chiefly indebted to his own efforts ib. 
 
 Progress of Greek studies at Oxford ib, 
 
 Linacre's translations t 7, 
 
 The odium theologicum ...... 482 
 
 The study of Greek sanctioned in the fourteenth century by 
 
 papal decree ib. 
 
 Subsequent omission of Greek in the text of the Clemen- 
 tines i
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Greek fathers begin to be better known .... 483 
 
 Their influence on the views of eminent Humanists ... ib. 
 
 Vitrarius t&. 
 
 Erasmus . //>. 
 
 Colet and Rcuchlin 484 
 
 True cause of the dislike shewn to the Greek fathers by the 
 
 opposite party ib, 
 
 Spirit of the Greek and the Latin theology contrasted . . ib. 
 
 Position assumed by the anti-Augustinian party . . . 435 
 
 Permanence of Augustine's influence . . . . . ib. 
 
 Story from Eusebius ib. 
 
 Greek studies begin to be regarded as heretical . . . 486 
 
 Reuchlin's experience at Basel ib. 
 
 Prevalence of the same spirit at Oxford 487 
 
 Character of Erasmus ib. 
 
 Indications of character afforded in his letters .... 488 
 
 Luther on Erasmus . ib. 
 
 Impulsiveness of Erasmus's character ib- 
 
 Contradictory character of his criticisms on Rome, Italy, Holland 
 
 and England 489 
 
 His portrait as analysed by Lavater 490 
 
 His first lecture at Cambridge ib. 
 
 His previous career an example to the student .... ib. 
 
 Uncertain chronology of his Cambridge letters .... 492 
 
 Ammouius of Lucca ib. 
 
 Erasmus appointed lady Margaret professor of divinity . . 493 
 
 Failure of his hopes as a teacher of Greek .... ib. 
 His account of his disappointments and exaggerated sense of 
 
 failure ib. 
 
 His literary labours while resident 494 
 
 Their vast importance ib. 
 
 No record of any collision on his part with the Cambridge- 
 theologians 495 
 
 Forewarned by Colet ^ 
 
 protected by Fisher 495 
 
 His admiration of Fisher's character ib. 
 
 His influence on Fisher 497 
 
 His influence on other members of the university . . . 493 
 
 Henry Bullock fa 
 
 William Gonell 499 
 
 John Bryan ib. 
 
 Robert Aldrich ib. 
 
 John Watson f b. 
 
 His letter to Erasmus . . ib.
 
 xl CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 John Fawne, ftichard Whitford, and Richard Sampson . . 500 
 
 Gerard the bookseller ib. 
 
 Views of Erasmus compared with those prevalent in the uni- 
 
 'versity ditring his stay .' 501 
 
 His estimate of different fathers ...... ib. 
 
 St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, and Origen ..... ib. 
 
 SL Hilary .502 
 
 Nicholas de Lyra and Hugo of St. Victor ib. 
 
 The Hierarchy of Dionysius 503 
 
 His Cambridge experiences of a trying character ... ib. 
 
 Minor sources of dissatisfaction 504 
 
 His pecuniary circumstances 505 
 
 Erasmus's last Cambridge letter ....... ib. 
 
 The last glimpse of Erasmus at Cambridge . 506 
 
 Counter testimony of Erasmus in favour of Cambridge . . 507 
 
 Progress of theology in the university ..... ib. 
 
 His praise of three colleges ....... ib. 
 
 His own language and that of his biographers implies a sense 
 
 of failure 508 
 
 His failure apparent rather than real ib. 
 
 His Noeum Instrumentum ib. 
 
 The outcome of his work in England and of English patronage . 509 
 
 Professor Brewer's criticism ib. 
 
 Defects and errors in the work 510 
 
 its great merit 511 
 
 Bullock's letter to Erasmus, August, 1516 . . . . ib. 
 Favorable reception of the Novum Instrumentum among influ- 
 ential men ib. 
 
 Leo x accepts the dedication 512 
 
 Counter demonstrations at Cambridge ib. 
 
 Sarcastic allusions in the commentary of the Novum Instru- 
 
 n<> , i'n in ib. 
 
 He attacks the secular clergy, the monks, the Mendicants and 
 
 the schoolmen ib. 
 
 Erasmus's reply to Bullock, Aug. 31, 1516 513 
 
 He attacks his opponents with acrimony 514 
 
 Justifies himself by the precedent afforded by the new versions 
 
 of Aristotle ib. 
 
 Refers to the distinguished approval which his work had 
 
 already obtained 515 
 
 Compares the Cambridge of 1516 with that of thirty years 
 
 previous , . . . ib. 
 
 Hopes his work may lead men to study the Scriptures more 
 
 And to trouble themselves lew with qntvstivncs . . ib.
 
 CONTENTS. xli 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Believes posterity, will do him more justice . . . . 516 
 
 His prediction fulfilled . . 517 
 
 The subject of Greek continues to excite the chief interest at 
 
 . Cambridge *' ib. 
 
 Bryan lectures in the schools from the new versions of Aristotle ib. 
 
 Sir Robert Rede founds the Rede lectureships . . . 518 
 Sense of the importance of Greek induced by the controversy 
 
 respecting the Nocnm Instrument um .... ib. 
 
 Erasmus again visits England ib. 
 
 His testimony to the change at Cambridge .... 519 
 
 Fisher aspires to a knowledge of Greek ib. 
 
 Embarrassment of his friends ib. 
 
 Latimer declines the office of instructor ib. 
 
 Cambridge also in want of a teacher of Greek . . . . 520 
 
 FOUNDATION OF CORPUS CIIRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD, A.D. 1516 . 521 
 
 Bishop Fox's statutes ib. 
 
 Boldness of his innovations on the customary studies . . 522 
 
 Appearance of Erasmus's Novum Testamentum . . . 523 
 
 He discards the Vulgate translation < ib. 
 
 STATE OF FEELING AT OXFORD ib. 
 
 The earlier teachers of Greek no longer resident . . . 524 
 
 Conduct of the Oxford students ib. 
 
 Grecians versus Trojans ib. 
 
 More remonstrates with the university authorities on behalf 
 
 of the Grecians 525 
 
 He contrasts the disposition shewn by the Oxonians with 
 
 that of the Cantabrigians ib. 
 
 A royal letter to the university secures the Grecians from 
 
 further molestation . . . . . '. . 526 
 
 "VVolsey, in the following year, founds a chair of Greek at 
 
 Oxford ib. 
 
 RICHARD CROKE 527 
 
 Befriended by Erasmus ib. 
 
 His career on the continent ib. 
 
 He returns to Cambridge and lectures on Greek to the uni- 
 versity 528 
 
 Is appointed Greek reader in 1519 ib. 
 
 His antecedents better fitted than those of Erasmus to dis- 
 arm hostility ib. 
 
 His inaugural oration, July, 1519 ..... 529 
 
 Outline of his oration 529-37 
 
 Merits of the oration 537 
 
 The oration compared with that delivered by Mclanchthon 
 
 at Wittenberg in the preceding year .... ib. 
 
 Croke's second oration . . . . . 539
 
 xlii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Oxford '-a Cambridge colony' 539 
 
 Retort of Anthony Wood ib. 
 
 Institution of the office of Public Orator, A. D. 1522 . . ib. 
 
 Croke elected for life ........ ib. 
 
 JOHN SKELTON 540 
 
 His satirical verses on the attention now given to Greek at 
 
 Cambridge . ib. 
 
 THOMAS WOLSEY 541 
 
 His relations to Cambridge ib. 
 
 He declines the chancellorship .... ib. 
 
 Fisher elected for life 542 
 
 Wolsey visits Cambridge, A. D. 1520 ib. 
 
 Fisher absent on the occasion . . . . . 543 
 
 Relations of Fisher to Wolsey ib. 
 
 Fisher and Wolsey at the council of 1518 .... ib. 
 Contrast presented between the two prelates on that oc- 
 casion . 544 
 
 Wolsey's relations to Cambridge 545 
 
 Bullock's congratulatory oration 546 
 
 Grossness of his flattery ib. 
 
 Peroration of his speech 547 
 
 Wolsey's victims at the universities ib. 
 
 Stafford, Skelton, and Pace 543 
 
 Oxford surrenders its statutes to be altered at Wolsey's 
 
 pleasure 649 
 
 The precedent followed by Cambridge ib. 
 
 Fiddes's criticism on the Cambridge address . . . t'6. 
 
 A humiliating episode in the history of both universities . 550 
 
 Royal visits to Cambridge 551 
 
 Foundation of Cardinal College, Oxford .... ib. 
 
 Scholars from Cambridge placed on the foundation . . 552 
 
 CHAP. VI. CAMBRIDGE AT THE REFORMATION. 
 
 Different theories respecting the origin of the Reformation . 553 
 
 The Reformation in England began at Cambridge . . . 555 
 The Reformation not a development of Lollardism but to be 
 
 traced to the influence of Erasmus's New Testament . ib 
 
 Bilney's testimony . 555 
 
 Proclamation of Indulgences by Leo x ib. 
 
 Copy affixed by Fisher to the gate of the common schools . ib. 
 
 Act of Peter do Valence , 557 
 
 His excommunication fa 
 
 Prospects of reform prior to A. D. 1517 ?7.
 
 CONTENTS. xliii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Events of the year 1516 558 
 
 Hopes of the Humanists ib. 
 
 Commencement of a new movement at Cambridge . . . 559 
 
 THOMAS BILNEY . 560 
 
 His eccentric character ib. 
 
 His account of his spiritual experiences .... ib. 
 
 Over importance attached to his description by Protestant 
 
 writers 561 
 
 He reads the New Testament of Erasmus .... 562 
 
 Change in his religious views ib. 
 
 His character as drawn by Latimer ib. 
 
 His converts at Trinity Hall, Arthur, Paget, and Smith . ib. 
 
 His influence especially perceptible among natives of his 
 
 own country 563 
 
 Thomas Forman, John Lambert ib. 
 
 Nicholas Shaxton 564 
 
 Gonville Hall noted for its sympathy with the Reformers . ib. 
 
 ROBERT BARNES ib. 
 
 Character of the Augustiuian friars as a body . . . ib. 
 
 John Tonnys 565 
 
 Barnes sent to study at Louvain ib. 
 
 Jerome Busleideu ib. 
 
 Foundation of the collegium trilingue ib. 
 
 Jealousy of the conservatives ...... 566 
 
 Barnes returns to England with Payuell .... ib. 
 
 His lectures on the Latin classics and on the Epistles of 
 
 St. Paul ' ib. 
 
 GEORGE STAFFORD 567 
 
 He lectures on the Scriptures instead of the Sentences . ib. 
 
 Becou's estimate of the value of his services . .' . ib. 
 
 Barnes and Stafford dispute in the divinity schools . . . 568 
 
 Barnes converted to Bilney's religious views .... ib. 
 
 Luther's works 569 
 
 His earlier treatises handed over to the Sorbonne for ex- 
 amination 570 
 
 Rapid spread of Lutheran doctrines in the eastern counties . ib. 
 
 Wolsey adverse to extreme measures ...... ib. 
 
 Luther burns the papal bull at Wittenberg .... ib. 
 
 Wolsey convenes a conference in London t . . . . 571 
 
 Decisions of the Sorbonne and the London conference . . ib. 
 
 Luther's books burnt at Paul's Cross ib. 
 
 Fisher's sermon against Luther ib. 
 
 Wolsey authorises a general search for Luther's writings . . ib. 
 
 Luther's works burnt at Oxford and at Cambridge . . . ib.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FAOK 
 
 King IJenry and Fisher write against Luther .... 672 
 
 Meetings of the Reformers at Cambridge ib. 
 
 THE WHITE HORSE ib. 
 
 The inn becomes known as ' Germany ' . . . . 573 
 
 Participators in the movement ib. 
 
 Character of their proceedings ib. 
 
 The Cambridge Reformer* not all young men .... 574 
 Circumstances that plead in their behalf in connexion with their 
 
 subsequent career ib. 
 
 Their meetings reported in London 575 
 
 Wolsey declines to appoint a commission of enquiry . . . ib. 
 
 Barnes' sermon on Christmas Eve ib. 
 
 Articles lodged against him with the vice-chancellor . . . 576 
 
 He is confronted with his accusers in the schools . . . ib. 
 The proceedings interrupted by demonstrations on the part of 
 
 the students 577 
 
 His second examination, which is similarly interrupted . . 578 
 
 He refuses to sign a revocation ib. 
 
 Wolsey resolves on energetic measures ib. 
 
 Search made for Lutheran books at Cambridge .... ib. 
 
 Barnes is arrested and conveyed to London ... ib. 
 
 His trial before Fisher and other bishops at Westminster . . ib. 
 
 His narrative of the conclusion 579 
 
 HUGH LATIMER 680 
 
 His early career and character 681 
 
 He attacks Melanchthon ....... ib. 
 
 His position in the university ib. 
 
 He is converted by Bilney ib. 
 
 lie becomes his intimate associate 582 
 
 Effects of his example ib. 
 
 Bishop West attends Latimer's sermon .... 583 
 
 He requests Latimer to preach against Luther . . . ib. 
 
 West inhibits Latimer from preaching 584 
 
 Latimer preaches at the church of the Augustinian friars . ib. 
 
 Latimer is summoned before Wolsey in London ... ib. 
 
 Wolscy licenses Latimer to preach . ib. 
 
 .Sir Thomas More elected high steward .... ib. 
 
 Absorbing attention given to Luther's writings throughout Europe 585 
 
 General disquietude of the times . . t j 
 
 Natural phenomena ggg 
 
 Predictions of the almanac makers . . ^ 
 Appearance of William Tyndalc's New Testament . . ". 687 
 Ilia translation exactly what Erasmus had expressed the great- 
 est desire to see -
 
 CONTENTS. xlv 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Reason of the dislike with which it was now regarded . . 588 
 
 Erasmus writes De Libero Arbitrio against Luther ... ib. 
 
 His enemies denounce him as the cause of the Reformation . ib. 
 
 WILLIAM TYNDALE 589 
 
 Probably a pupil of Croke but not of Erasmus . . . ib. 
 
 His reminiscences of Oxford 4 590 
 
 He leaves Cambridge, circ. 1521 591 
 
 His life at Little Sodbury ib. 
 
 CUTHBERT TUNSTAL ib. 
 
 His character ib. 
 
 His temporising policy 592 
 
 His writings ib. 
 
 His De Arte Supputandi 593 
 
 Tyndale and Tunstal ib. 
 
 Tyndale's attainments as a scholar vindicated .... 596 
 
 Canon Westcott's summary of the question .... 597 
 
 Tyndale Lutheran in respect to doctrine 598 
 
 Change in the theological tendencies of the Cambridge Re- 
 formers .... ib. 
 
 Alarm raised by archbishop Lee on the appearance of Tyndale's 
 
 New Testament 599 
 
 Demand for the work in England ib. 
 
 The volume burnt by Tunstal at Paul's Cross .... ib. 
 
 Progress of Cardinal College . 601 
 
 Motives that possibly guided the selection of the Cambridge 
 
 students . ib. 
 
 The aid thus rendered to Oxford not superfluous . . . 602 
 
 Death of Linacre ib. 
 
 The Linacre lectureships 603 
 
 The Cambridge students at Cardinal College .... 604 
 
 Their treatment by, Wolsey ib. 
 
 Proceedings against the Reformers at Cambridge . . . 605 
 
 George Joye escapes to Strassburg ib. 
 
 Examination of Arthur and Bilney at Westminster . . . 606 
 
 Articles against Arthur ib. 
 
 His recantation ib. 
 
 Articles against Bilney , ib. 
 
 He recants a second time 607 
 
 Skelton's satire of the Cambridge Reformers .... ib. 
 
 Death of Stafford 608 
 
 Latimer's Sermons on the Card 609 
 
 Buckenham attempts to reply to Latimer . . . . . 610 
 
 Spread of the controversy in ihe university . . , ib. 
 
 The contest stopped by royal intervention 611
 
 xlvi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE ROYAL DIVORCE . 612 
 
 THOMAS CRANMEE ib. 
 
 His university career ib. 
 
 His suggestion at Waltham that the question should be 
 
 referred to the universities 613 
 
 The question, as thus referred ib. 
 
 It really involved that of the supremacy of the pope . . 614 
 
 Fallacious character of the expedient ib. 
 
 Croke in Italy ... 615 
 
 His activity in bribing the Italian universities . . . ib. 
 
 King Henry menaces Oxford . . . . . . 616 
 
 Mr. Froude's comparison of the conduct of Oxford and 
 
 Cambridge ib. 
 
 His criticism tested by the documentary evidence . . 617 
 
 King Henry's letter to the university of Cambridge . . ib. 
 
 Cranmcr's treatise on the question ib. 
 
 Report of Gardiner and Fox to the king . . . . 618 
 
 Grace proposed to the senate 620 
 
 Important reservation in the decision arrived at by the 
 
 university ib. 
 
 Buckmaster's narrative of his experiences at court and on 
 
 his return 621 
 
 Facts which tend to qualify Mr Froude's eulogium . . ib. 
 
 Position of Fisher 622 
 
 Prosperity of St. John's College under Metcalfe's rule . . 623 
 
 Fisher's statutes of 1524 and 1530 ib. 
 
 Multiplicity and elaborateness of the details .... ib. 
 
 The statutes nevertheless contain a grave omission . . . 624 
 Ascham's testimony to the evils resulting from the indiscriminate 
 
 admission of pensioners ib. 
 
 The omission repaired in the statutes of 1545 .... 625 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS ib. 
 
 John Siberch ......... ib. 
 
 Licence of 1534 626 
 
 Sygar Nicholson f&. 
 
 Singular phase of the relations between town and university . 627 
 
 Fisher is committed to prison 628 
 
 Feeling of the university ib. 
 
 Letter of St. John's College ib. 
 
 Cromwell succeeds Fisher as chancellor 629 
 
 His commissioners at Oxford and Cambridge .... ib. 
 
 Leighton> account of the proceedings at Oxford . . . ib. 
 
 THE ROYAL INJUNCTIONS OF 1535 630 
 
 Commencement of a new era in university history . . . 631
 
 CONTENTS. xlvii 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 (A) Lydgate's verses on the Foundation of the University of 
 Cambridge 635 
 
 (B) The University of Stamford 637 
 
 (C) An ancient Statute on the Hiring of Hostels ... 638 
 
 (D) The original Statutes of Michaelhouse 640 
 
 (E) Legere ordinarie, extraordinarie, cursorie .... 645
 
 ABBREVIATIONS, ETC. 
 
 Two names connected by a hyphen denote the author and 
 the editor : e. g. Wood-Gutch, Baker-Mayor, denote respectively 
 Wood's Annals of Oxford, edited by Gulch, and Baker's History 
 of the College of St. John the Evangelist, edited by professor 
 Mayor. 
 
 A smaller numeral added to that of the volume or page, e. g. 
 rv*, 375 4 , denotes the edition to which reference is made. 
 
 ERRATUM. 
 
 p. 282, note 2, lot 'collegium trilingue at Lonvain,' read ' university of 
 Louvain.'
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 ERRATA, &c. 
 
 P. 12, 1. 17, for 'suggestion' read 'that is suggestive.' 
 
 P. 21, 1. 15, for 'Aelfrid' read 'Aelfred.' 
 
 P. 43, 1. 20, for 'to the one' read 'from the one.' 
 
 P. 49, margin, for ' b. 1083 ' read ' 6. 1033.' 
 
 P. 67, 1. 25, for 'Paris' read 'Tours or Aachen.' 
 
 P. 223, 1. 25, 'exemption from taxation,' i.e. taxation by the chancellor 
 of the university. 
 
 P. 228, 1. 5, for ' adjourning ' read ' adjoining. ' 
 
 P. 235. 'John Hotham.' I have done Hotham some injustice in 
 omitting to notice that it was he who (see p. 253) appropriated Hinton to 
 Peterhouse. 
 
 P. 236, 1. 7, for '1350' read '1348.' 
 
 P. 255, 1. 7, for 'seven' read 'eight.' 
 
 P. 282, n. 2, ' foundation of the collegium trilinyue at Louvain,' for 
 'collegium trilingue at ' read ' university of.' Louvaiu, however, was created 
 a faculty of theology in 1451, and may thus afford an illustration of Thurot's 
 argument, though not at its first foundation. 
 
 P. 394. 1. 9, for ' Greek instructions ' read ' fresh instructions.' 
 
 P. 398, last line, for ' Pallas de Strozzi ' read ' Pallas de' Strozzi.' 
 
 P. 411, 1. 2, for 'is but' read 'but is.' 
 
 P. 431, last line, ' the right of virtue,' for ' right ' read ' sight.' 
 
 P. 433, 1. 8, for '1426' read '1418.' 
 
 P. 445, 11. 11 12, omit the words ' property once in possession/ 
 
 P. 464, 1. 29, for ' oraturarum ' read ' oraturoruni. ' 
 
 P. 630, 1. 12 from bottom, for 'geography' (thus printed in Cooper) read 
 ' geometry.' 
 
 P. 639, par. 6, for 'renuntiari' read ' renuntiare.' 
 
 P. 642, S. 6, for 'augentur' read 'augeatur.' 
 
 P. 643, par. 4, for ' competentur ' read ' competenter. ' 
 
 P. 644, par. 19, for 'quoad' read 'quoad.' 
 , , par. 21, omit comma after ' simpliciter. ' 
 
 P. 670, (Index), for ' Linacre, Wm.' read 'Linacre, Tho.'
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE thirteenth century embraces within its limits an INTRO- 
 ,, if , . - , . , Ti DUCTION. 
 
 eminently eventful era m European history. It was an age * v 
 
 of turbulence and confusion, of revolution and contention, 
 wherein, amid the strife of elements, it is often difficult to 
 discern the tendencies for good that were undoubtedly at 
 work, and where the observer is apt to lose sight of the real 
 onward progress of the current as he marks the agitations 
 which trouble the surface of the waters. But that a great 
 advance was then achieved it is impossible to deny. The 
 social, the religious, and the intellectual life -of Europe were 
 roused by a common impulse from comparative stagnation. 
 The Church, threatened by its own degeneracy, took to itself 
 other and more potent weapons; scholasticism, enriched by 
 the influx of new learning, entered on its most brilliant 
 phase ; oriental influences, the reflex action of the Crusades, 
 stirred men to fresh paths of thought ; and England, no longer 
 regarded as a subjugated nation, grew rapidly in strength 
 and freedom. To this century the University of Cambridge 
 traces back its first recorded recognition as a legally consti- 
 tuted body, and refers the foundation of its most ancient 
 college, and, in the absence of authentic records concerning 
 her early history, it becomes especially desirable to arrive at 
 a clear conception of the circumstances that belong to so 
 important a commencement. It will accordingly be desirable, 
 in this introductory chapter, to pass under review the leading 
 features of education and learning in those ages which 
 
 1
 
 2 THE BENEDICTINE ERA. 
 
 INTRO- preceded the university era; to trace out, as far as may be 
 - . v^' conducive to our main purpose, the habits of thought and 
 traditional belief that necessarily found expression in the first 
 organisation and discipline of the universities themselves ; 
 to estimate the character and direction of those innovations 
 which the universities inaugurated ; and in order to do this, 
 however imperfectly, we shall find it necessary to go back to 
 that yet earlier time which links the civilization of Paganism 
 with that of Christianity. 
 
 The university age commences in the twelfth century ; 
 and it is a fact familiar to every student, that nearly all 
 learning had up to that period been the exclusive possession 
 Tb inprrtu of the Church. In the third and fourth centuries indeed the 
 ^H**BM traditions of Roman culture were still preserved in full vigour 
 in Transalpine Gaul; Autun, Troves, Lyons, and Bordeaux 
 were distinguished as schools of rhetoric and their teaching 
 was ennobled by many an illustrious name ; but with the inva- 
 sion of the Franks the imperial schools were swept away, and 
 education when it reappeared had formed those associations 
 which, amid so many important revolutions in thought and 
 the decay of so many ancient institutions, have retained their 
 hold with such remarkable tenacity and power up to our 
 own day. The four centuries that preceded the reign 
 of Philip Augustus have been termed, not inaptly, ' the 
 Benedictine era 1 .' In the monasteries of that great order, 
 which rose in the sixth century, was preserved nearly all 
 that survived of ancient thought, and was imparted what- 
 ever still deserved the name of education. It is important 
 to remember to how great an extent the monasticism of 
 the West was the result of the troubles and calamities that 
 ushered in the fall of the western empire. The fierce ascetic- 
 ism of the anchorites of the East found no place in the 
 earlier institutions associated with the names of the most 
 illustrious of the Latin Fathers. The members of those 
 humble communities which were found in Rome, Milan, and 
 Carthage, were men seeking refuge from the corruption, 
 
 ' I40a Maitrc, Le$ Ecolei Epitcopalet et Monaitiquet de VOccident, p. 174. 
 
 < 
 
 Kn.
 
 THEORY OF MONASTICISM. 3 
 
 anarchy, and misery of their age, ready to bid adieu to the INTRO. 
 world and its cares, so that they might pass the remainder /--^' 
 of their days in holy duties and tranquil occupations, in coStionof 
 fasting, meditation, and prayer. In precisely the same spirit Ufa c 
 St Benedict reared on Monte Cassino the first monastery Foundation 
 of his order, and drew up those rules for its observance Monastery of 
 
 .... . Monte 
 
 whereby self-mortification, isolation from mankind, the ex- ^^ L 
 elusion of all social and patriotic virtues in the cultivation 
 of a lonely perfection, were indicated as the chief principles 
 of the religious life. 
 
 Inasmuch, accordingly, as the monk renounced the world, influence of 
 
 i t -i i -i i r i tne monastic 
 
 his education was conceived solely with reference to those view upon 
 
 * education. 
 
 acquirements necessary to the performance of his monotonous 
 routine of duties. The Benedictine's knowledge of music 
 was given him only that he might chant the Gregorian 
 antiphony; of arithmetic and astronomy, that he might 
 rightly calculate the return of Easter; of Latin, that he 
 might understand the Fathers and the Vulgate ; and these 
 acquirements, together with a slender knowledge of geometry 
 and versification, made up, for centuries, the ordinary culture 
 of his order. That the education of those times was that of 
 the monk, and consequently breathed only of the monastery, 
 has indeed been the superficial criticism with which the 
 subject has often been contemptuously dismissed, but a 
 somewhat closer investigation would seem to reveal to us 
 another element in the motives and sentiments then preva- 
 lent, which should not injustice be left unrecognized. 
 
 The teaching of the Latin Church at the time when, 
 under Gregory the Great, she laid the foundations of her 
 temporal power, rested on the authority of three Fathers, 
 Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine 1 . From the first she st Augustine, 
 derived her conception of sacerdotal authority ; from the <i *3o. 
 second, her attachment to monasticism ; from the third, her 
 dogmatic theology ; and to these three conceptions the most 
 remarkable phenomena in European history may undoubtedly 
 be referred. In the writings of Augustine, especially, ' the veioped by 
 
 1 Milman, Hist, of Latin Christianity, Book n c. 4. 
 
 12
 
 4 ST AUGUSTINE. 
 
 INTRO- oracle of thirteen centuries,' is to be found the key to the 
 ^1^-^ belief and practice of the Church in the Middle Ages. 
 
 The different treatises by the bishop of Hippo that have 
 descended to us are voluminous, but his philosophy of history 
 is set forth in a work of comparatively moderate compass, 
 HI. Df CM- the De Civitate Dei. From the earliest times, a very solemn 
 belief had prevailed with more or less intensity in the different 
 sections of the Church that the day of judgement and the end 
 of the world were at hand. As the troubles of the empire 
 multiplied, this conviction grew and deepened alike in the 
 eastern and western communities. It was held by Clemens 
 and Tertullian, by Origeti and Cyprian, by Athanasius and 
 Lactantius, by Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Jerome, but it 
 devolved on Augustine to develope it in its full significance 
 T-Nc*of and logical connexion with human history. The age in 
 * which this father lived was that wherein the fabric of the 
 empire, already undermined and shaken, began actually to 
 go to pieces. During his lifetime he saw the Eternal City 
 become the abode of the Goth ; he died while the Vandal 
 was laying siege to the city of his own episcopate. Paganism, 
 in its terror and despair at the fast thickening calamities, 
 affirmed that the ancient gods, incensed at the neglect of 
 their worship, had thus manifested their displeasure ; Chris- 
 tianity, it was declared, was responsible for the sack of Rome 
 and the defeat of the imperial armies. In reply to such 
 accusations, Augustine put forth the De Civitate Dei. An 
 exposition of the theory so elaborately unfolded in the 
 twenty-four books of this work would be here misplaced, 
 but the leading sentiment may be stated in a few words. 
 Rome had indeed fallen, replied the Christian Father, nor 
 could it well be otherwise ; for she represented an order of 
 things fated to be overthrown ; the earthly city, with its 
 superstitions and its crimes, its glory and renown, was 
 destined to give place to another city, the city of the New 
 Jerusalem. A sublime theocracy was to supersede the rule 
 of the Cojsars. No vision of temporal power, like that which 
 invested the seven hills, rose before his eyes; the city he 
 beheld was that which he of the Apocalypse saw descending
 
 FINIS MUNDI. 5 
 
 from heaven, whither should be brought the 'glory and the INTRO- 
 
 DUGTION 
 
 honour of the nations.' Time itself should cease to be when v ' 
 the true Eternal City had appeared. 
 
 In brief the advent of the new reign necessarily implied Theappiica- 
 the termination of the old, and the calamities of the age 
 were but the funeral knell of the Roman empire. But what 
 imported the downfall of an empire, when all earthly things 
 were destined so soon to pass away ? A question of far 
 deeper moment, of a far closer personal interest, pressed on 
 men for a solution. ' Seeing then that all these things shall 
 be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all 
 holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto 
 the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on 
 fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with 
 fervent heat 1 ?' The language of St Peter was but echoed 
 by Augustine with a greater particularity of time and place. 
 
 It is easy to perceive that events after Augustine's time seeming cor- 
 
 _ roboration of 
 
 would certainly not tend to dispel the belief to which he thus J^JS*}^ 
 gave expression ; that as the Visigoth in Spain, the Frank |"e^tal uent 
 in Gaul, the Lombard in Italy, trampled on the remnants of 
 ancient civilization, that as Christianity itself expired in 
 Africa, under the advance of the victorious Crescent, while 
 the sword and famine reduced once fertile and populous 
 regions to desolate wastes, men's hearts might well begin Despair the 
 to fail them at the contemplation of so hopeless a future, feeling. 
 We can well understand that the ordinary aims and pursuits 
 of life appeared frivolous and unmeaning, as the expected 
 crisis seemed yearly to draw nearer, heralded by each succes- 
 sive disaster ; and that the religious or monastic life might 
 thus come to be regarded as the only adequate expression of 
 one profound conviction, the conviction, to use the forcible 
 language of Guizot, of ' V impossibility de tout long travail 
 et de tout paisible loisir.' The monastery indeed which 
 St Benedict founded on Monte Cassino, and which the Lom- 
 bard soon after levelled to the ground, affords alike in its 
 conception, its institution, and its fall, an illustration of the 
 
 1 2 Peter iii 18.
 
 6 GREGORY THE GREAT. 
 
 IXTRO- characteristics of those times. In its conception, as an 
 IUMTIOX. effort to egcape f rom t h e disquiet of the age, and a renuncia- 
 tion of all hope and interest in the pursuits of mankind ; in 
 its institution, supplanting as it did a temple of Apollo 
 where the pagan peasant still brought his offerings and paid 
 his vows, but where the monk now cut down the once sacred 
 grove, and broke in pieces the idol ; in its fall, as partici- 
 pating in the general devastation that marked the progress 
 of the barbarian, hostile alike to the ancient civilization and 
 the new faith. 
 
 The terror and despair which the Lombard spread through 
 Italy imparted new force to the prevalent conviction, and the 
 r.ffr>rrtb policy of Gregory the Great affords a remarkable illustration 
 both of the hold which these forebodings had gained on the 
 foremost minds of the period, and their collateral effects on 
 learning and education. The activity and energy displayed 
 by this ecclesiastic in consolidating the institutions and 
 extending the authority of his see, might appear at variance 
 with such a theory, were we not also to remember that his 
 efforts were undoubtedly conceived in subordination to 
 exc l us ' vc ly religious feelings. It was thus that while he 
 laboured to raise his country from physical and moral degra- 
 dation, to husband and augment the patrimony of the Church, 
 to convert the heathen, to bring about a unity of faith and 
 of forms of worship, he is still to be found anticipating, with 
 an earnestness beyond suspicion, the approach of the final 
 consummation. 'What,' he says, at the close of a long 
 enumeration of the calamities that had befallen Italy, ' what 
 may be taking place elsewhere I know not, but in this 
 country, wherein we dwell, events plainly no longer foretell 
 the end but exhibit it in actual process ;' in a letter to the 
 converted Ethelbert, the Bretwalda, he again declares that 
 signs, such as those amid which St Benedict had foretold 
 that Rome should be overthrown, fearful portents in the 
 heavens and tumults in the air, war, famine, pestilence, and 
 earthquake, all point to the same conclusion 1 ; elsewhere he 
 
 ' Appropinqnanta antom eodcm ante non fuernnt, videlicet immuta- 
 mumli termino, multa imminent qu tiones aeris, terroresque de ctelo, et
 
 HIS ESTIMATE OF SECULAR LEARNING. 7 
 
 relates how the spirit of Eutychius the martyr appeared in a INTRO- 
 vision to the bishop of Ferentina, urging him to watchfulness s v " 
 with the thrice reiterated warning, 'Finis venit universes 
 carnis? in another passage he compares the age to the early 
 dawn, with the light of eternity already traversing the gloom 
 and darkness of time 1 . 
 
 That, with such convictions, he should have set small considcm- 
 
 ' tions that 
 
 value on merely secular learning becomes sufficiently intelli- SfywV 
 gible, and it might have served, perhaps, in many instances, hSJlracter. 
 to diminish the asperity with which his memory has been 
 treated, had this feature been more frequently borne in mind. 
 Puritanism, in later times, has reproduced his illiberal ity 
 with far less to plead in justification. Whether we owe to 
 him the loss of the Palatine library or that of the missing 
 decades of Livy, we need not here stop to enquire, but it is 
 certain that his hostility to pagan learning is but imperfectly 
 explained if attributed solely to the prejudices of a bigoted 
 and unlettered spirit. It took its rise rather in what 
 appeared to him the utter irrelevancy of such studies to 
 the religious life, as that life was conceived under the 
 influence of one overwhelming idea. He inherited in all its 
 force the theory of Augustine, but he lacked the sympathetic 
 genius and the culture of the African Father. In education, 
 that alone appeared to him of any value, which was recom- 
 mended by its presumed utility in promoting a more 
 intelligent comprehension of Christian doctrine or imparting 
 greater ability to conduct the services of the Church. What- 
 ever appeared likely to subserve such purposes at once gained 
 his warmest advocacy. Thus, accordingly, while he is to be 
 found on one occasion austerely condemning certain monks 
 who had ventured to instruct their pupils in profane litera- 
 ture 2 , he was yet the great promoter of education in his 
 
 contra ordinem temporum tempesta- grammaticam quibusdam exponere.' 
 
 tes, bella, fames, pestileutiae, tense Epist. xr 54. 'Grammatica' among 
 
 motus per loca.' Epist. xi 67. For the Romans in the time of the Em- 
 
 the prophecy of St Benedict recorded pire meant the elements of literature 
 
 by Gregory, see Dialog, n 15. generally; it also included Philology. 
 
 1 Dialogues, IT 41. 'Et grammatice, quam in Latinum 
 
 2 ' Quod sine verecundia memorare transferentesZitteratwrnivocaverunt, 
 non possumus, fraternitatem tuam fines suos norit.' Quiutil. vi 1 4.
 
 8 
 
 LEARNING IN BRITAIN. 
 
 INTRO- 
 
 T' -'. TUS. 
 
 /. - 
 
 time l ; and, while he so largely encouraged the monastic 
 spirit, his administration of the temporalities of his see was 
 eminently sagacious and successful. 
 
 The light of faith was rekindled in Britain by the 
 teaching of Augustine and his missionaries; and within 
 little more than half a century after the death of Gregory, 
 Theodorus, an Asiatic Greek, was appointed to the see of 
 Canterbury. The impulse given by this ecclesiastic to 
 education long continued to influence the course of instruc- 
 tion, and in the curriculum he introduced may be discerned 
 the rude outlines of our modern system 2 . His work was 
 ably continued by Aldhelm, second abbot of the Benedictine 
 monastery of Malmesbury, and afterwards also archbishop 
 of Canterbury. The talents and intense application of this 
 prelate enabled him to acquire a mastery of the Latin and 
 Greek tongues, and his biographer, the monk Faricius, even 
 
 See also Suetonius dt Grammaticis, 
 c. I, .in i remarks of Griifeuhan in bis 
 Getchichtt dtr Klattirhen Philoloyie 
 iin Altrrthum, iv 52, 53. In the 
 Chapter entitled I'rbfrblirk drx uram- 
 matiufhen Stud in ins (iv. 1)5 118) this 
 writer hun elaborately illustrated the 
 extended functions of the Grammatici 
 in the third and fourth centuries. It 
 in evident that they really included 
 those of the Rhetnrf*. Ozanam re- 
 marks that, in Gaul, ' grammar ex- 
 tended into the domain of rhetoric, 
 comprising the humanities, and a 
 critical reading of all the great <>ru- 
 tom and poets of antiquity.' Hixtory 
 of Civilization in thf Fifth Century, 
 i 2O4. The term continued to bear 
 thin meaning throughout the Middle 
 Ag'. Cf. l)n Cange, 8. v., and Dr 
 Maitland'H remark in Thf Dark Aiifs, 
 p. 170. 
 
 1 1'rof. Maurice adduces in proof 
 of tin* the Improvement in Britain 
 MOMqnent upon the arrival of Gre- 
 onr't miMktuuriM: 'Schools seem 
 tori** a* by enchantment ; all clasps, 
 down to the poorest (Bede himself is 
 the obvioun example;, are admitted 
 to them ; the *tudien beginning from 
 theology embrace logic, rhetoric, mu- 
 ie, and Mtronoiny.' Fhilrun>phy of 
 thf t'irtt Six Crnturin, p. 153. The 
 
 whole criticism of Gregory in this 
 treatise will be found eminently sug- 
 gestive : it may, however, be ques- 
 tioned whether, as Bede was born 
 seventy-six years after the landing of 
 Augustine and his fellow-labourers, 
 the learning of our earliest encyclo- 
 paedist is not rather attributable to 
 the influence of Theodore. 
 
 1 For an interesting account of the 
 instruction given in these schools, see 
 Dean Hook's Lives of the Archbishops 
 of Canterbury, i 240244. ' When 
 books were scarce, oral instruction, 
 or instruction through the medium 
 
 of lectures, was a necessity The 
 
 proficiency of the scholars was tested, 
 not only by an occasional examina- 
 tion, but by a constant course of 
 questioning and cross-questioning, as 
 connected with each lesson. The 
 instruction was catechetical. Of the 
 mode of conducting these examina- 
 tions some examples exist, and the 
 questions put to the pupils of the 
 arithmetic class are very similar to 
 those with which the masters and 
 scholars of National Schools are fa- 
 miliar as emanating from Her Ma- 
 jesty's ins|tectors.' Respecting the 
 library which Theodoras is reported 
 to have brought with him. see Ed- 
 wards' Memoirs oj Libraries, i 101.
 
 CHANGE IN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS. 9 
 
 accredits him with some knowledge of Hebrew 1 . Aldkelm TNTRO- 
 died in 709, and was succeeded by Bede the Venerable, ^ v 
 whose writings form an important contribution to the text- ^ 1 ^ ielnu 
 books of the subsequent age. In the eighth century the Itede ' 
 school of York rose into celebrity, distinguished by its di. 735. 
 valuable library and the eminence of its scholars ; of these, 
 Alcuin, for some time the guardian of its literary treasures, Aicuin.^ 
 must undoubtedly be regarded as the most accomplished d - 804 - 
 scholar of his day. The culture to which our country 
 attained at this period cannot however be shown to have 
 had much connexion with subsequent developements. The 
 comparative immunity she then enjoyed from troubles like 
 those that agitated the Continent favoured her advance in 
 education and learning, but with the Danish invasions the 
 fair promise disappeared. The land relapsed into semi- 
 barbarism ; and the ninth and tenth centuries, rising like 
 a wall of granite, between the times of Alcuin and those of 
 Lanfranc, seem effectually to isolate the earlier age. To 
 trace the progress of European thought we shall consequently charie- 
 find it necessary to follow Alcuin across the English channel *> 742. 
 to the court of Charlemagne. 
 
 It is a trite observation, that a state of warfare, like change in 
 
 the aspect of 
 
 many other evils, is far from being an unmixed ill, in that |^opi" 
 it calls into action virtues which are wont to slumber in 
 times of prosperity and peace; and similarly we may note 
 that, in seasons of great national suffering and trial, ideas 
 often reappear which seem to have well uigh passed from 
 the memory of man amid the pursuits of a more tranquil 
 age. Monasticism, in the sixth century, was dignified by 
 a conviction in comparison with which the ordinary hopes 
 and fears of men might well appear contemptible ; if repre- 
 senting despondency in relation to things temporal, it had 
 its heroism not less than its despair ; but when we recall to 
 how great an extent the theory enunciated by Augustine 
 
 1 'Mirodeniquemodogratiae[?Grai*e] tria volumina, Hebraicis literis bene 
 
 facundiae omnia idiomata sciebat, et novit, et legem Mosaicam.' Aldlielmi 
 
 quasi Graecus natione : scriptis et Vita, Faricio Auct., published by the 
 
 verbis pronuutiabat Prophetarum ex- Caxtoii Society, 
 empla, Davidis Psalmos, Salamonis
 
 10 
 
 RISE OF THE CARLOVINGIAN EMPIRE. 
 
 INTRO, 
 DUTIOX. 
 
 o( Itiaric 
 
 ..:.. 
 
 and. enforced by Gregory derived its strength from the 
 a pp arent corroboration afforded by contemporary calamities, 
 we naturally turn to enquire, with some curiosity, how far 
 such anticipations were found to consist with the spectacle 
 that now greeted Europe, the formation of a new and 
 splendid empire. It must then be admitted that this theory 
 appears well nigh lost to view amid the promise of the reign 
 of Charlemagne, but it should be remembered that a specific 
 as well as a general explanation of the fact offers itself for 
 our consideration. It was the belief of the Church that the 
 advent of Antichrist would precede the final dissolution of 
 a ^ things, and we accordingly find that, inasmuch as the 
 fall of the Roman empire had been supposed to be necessarily 
 involved in his triumph and reign, it was customary among 
 the earlier Christians to pray for the preservation and 
 stability of the imperial power, as interposing a barrier 
 between their own times and those of yet darker calamity. 
 It was not until Rome had been taken by Alaric that Augus- 
 tine composed the De Civitate Dei. But now, with the lapse 
 of the two centuries that separated the age of Gregory from 
 that of Charlemagne, a change had come over the aspect of 
 numan affairs. The empire of the Franks had, by successive 
 conquests, been extended over the greater part of Europe ; 
 the Lombards, the great foes of all culture, acknowledged 
 the superiority of a stronger arm ; the descendants of the 
 Huns, thinned by a series of sanguinary conflicts, accepted 
 Christianity at the point of the sword ; the long struggle 
 ln.'tween the emperor and the Saxons of the north had 
 represented, from the first, an antagonism between the 
 traditions of civilization and those of barbarism and idolatry ; 
 while in the devotion of Charlemagne to the Church, a 
 sentiment already so conspicuous in his father, it became 
 evident that the preponderance of strength was again ranged 
 on the side of the new faith. The advent of Antichrist was 
 therefore not yet ; and with that belief the still more dread 
 anticipation which had so long filled the minds of men ceased 
 to assert itself with the same intensity, and in the conception 
 of Charlemagne, to which our attention must now be directed,
 
 CHARLEMAGNE AND ALCUIN. 11 
 
 we discern the presence of ideas widely differing from those INTRO 
 of Gregory. mjcrnok. 
 
 We have already remarked that, in Gaul, the imperial 
 schools established under the Roman empire disappeared 
 amid the havoc wrought by the Franks ; those by which 
 they were succeeded were entirely under the control of 
 the Church. The researches of Ampere and other writers 
 have ascertained that these schools were of two kinds, the The E P I- 
 episcopal and the monastic. In the former an exclusively the Monastic 
 
 ,. . . . . . ,. . Schools. 
 
 religious training was imparted; m the latter a slight infusion 
 of secular knowledge found a place 1 . A similar fate to that 
 of their predecessors appeared likely at one time to befall 
 these institutions ; in the kingdom of Aquitaine, where they 
 had flourished with most vigour, the destruction of the 
 churches and monasteries by the Saracens well nigh extin- 
 guished education, and we can well understand that the rule 
 of Charles JVIartel and the Merovingian dynasty was little 
 likely to favour its restoration. We have therefore small 
 difficulty in crediting the statement of the monk of St Gall 
 that, at the accession of Charlemagne, the study of letters was 
 everywhere well nigh forgotten 2 . 
 
 It is no easy task, especially in the presence of the conflict- Different 
 
 . i opinions 
 
 ing conclusions of eminent authorities, to determine the exact respecting 
 
 Charlemagne 
 
 character of the parts played by Charlemagne and Alcuin as and Alcuin - 
 the authors of the great educational revival which marks the 
 close of the eighth century. Some have held that the 
 ecclesiastic was the leading mind; others, that all the origi- 
 nality and merit of the conception were the emperor's 3 ; but 
 
 1 Devoting some attention ' a des tiqut ; Monnier, Alcuin et son Influ- 
 connaissances qui ne se rapportaient e nce; Le*on Maitre, Les Ecoles Epi- 
 pas immediatement aux besoins jour- scopales et Monastiques de VOccident 
 naliers de 1'Eglise,' is the language depuis Charlemagne jusqu'a Philippe- 
 of Ampere. Histoire Litteraire de la Augusts. Milman, Latin Christianity, 
 France avant le Douzieme Siecle, n Book v c. 1, and Professor Maurice, 
 278. Mediceval Philosophy, p. 38, incline 
 
 2 ' Studia litterarum ubique prope- to a far less favorable estimate of 
 modum essent in oblivione,' Bouquet, the ecclesiastic. Alcuin has been 
 v 106. Compare Hallam, Middle least favorably judged by his own 
 Ages, in 10 418. countrymen, a fact which may be 
 
 3 Among the former may be cited explained by his sympathies with 
 Guizot, Civilisation en Europe, n monasticism in its more ascetic 
 202 ; Haure"au, Philosophic Scholas- phase.
 
 12 CHARLEMAGNE AND ALCUIN. 
 
 INTRO- none appear to have sufficiently taken into account the 
 ^ v ^ traditional theory that lay like an incubus upon the thought 
 rhriemne. an d learning of these ages. From that incubus it seems 
 natural to infer that the emperor, the warrior, the conqueror, 
 would be the first to set himself free, as he beheld athwart 
 the wide territories of his extending empire the bow of hope 
 rising again to view. The new element introduced by him 
 into the education of his times is, indeed, in perfect keeping 
 with the whole policy of that master intellect. Though his 
 admirers have probably exaggerated his attainments, it is 
 certain that they were such as alone to constitute eminence 
 in that age, and admitting that his Capitularies owe much of 
 their literary correctness to the aid of men like Theodulfus, 
 Alcuin, and Eginhard, it must be allowed that many of them 
 in their mere conception attest the presence of considerable 
 Akuin. culture. In Alcuin, on the other hand, judging from his 
 whole career, there is little suggestion of a mind of very 
 uncommon powers. His letters, valuable as illustrations of 
 the period, reflect a mind that can hardly be mistaken. 
 A clear cool intellect, capable of receiving and arranging 
 large stores of information, ' enough of a questioner to be able 
 to understand for himself what others imparted, not enough of 
 one to be embarrassed with any serious mental perplexities,' 
 a cautious conservative temperament, faithful to inherited 
 traditions. such are the leading characteristics of the first 
 scholar of the times of Charlemagne. 
 
 *** The immediate occasion of the emperor's action on behalf 
 
 ** of education arose out of the glaring solecisms that frequently 
 arrested his attention in the communications he received 
 from the monasteries. In a circular letter to Baugulfus, 
 abbot of Fulda, he calls attention to the grave scandal 
 then presented. The pious and loyal tone of the letters. 
 he allows, is worthy of all praise, but their rude and care- 
 less diction is such as to suggest apprehensions lest the Scrip- 
 tures themselves should be scarcely intelligible to readers 
 of so little learning, ne forte sicut minor esset in scribendo 
 prudentia, ita qnoque el multo minor esset, guam recte esse 
 debuisset, in e\* Sanctorum ficripturarum ad intelligendum
 
 THE SCHOOLS OF CHARLEMAGNE. 13 
 
 sapientia 1 . Such were the alleged motives of the emperor, INTRO- 
 ' pre'textes', as Ampere regards them, 'qu'il mettait en D Iil^J' 
 avant pour motiver sa reforme.' Gregory could not have 
 impeached them, though there is sufficient reason for con- 
 cluding that the emperor's reforms greatly exceeded what 
 Gregory would have approved. 
 
 The emperor had already made the acquaintance of Alcuin Theschoou 
 at Parma; he now invited him over from England and placed ma ne - 
 him at the* head of the Palace school attached to his own 
 court. Under Alcuin's directions a scheme of education was 
 drawn up which became the model for the other great schools 
 established at Tours, Fontenelle, Lyons, Osnaburg, and 
 Metz ; institutions which ably sustained the tradition of 
 education on the continent, until superseded by the new 
 methods and the new learning which belong to the com- 
 mencement of the university era 2 . 
 
 The work of Charlemagne may be characterised as one of character of 
 
 . . 111 the changes 
 
 both renovation and innovation : renovation as regarded the introduced 
 
 by the 
 
 already existing schools, innovation in the reconstruction of Jl^,^ 
 their methods and the extension of their teaching to other 
 classes. Hitherto the privileges of the monastic schools had 
 been jealously confined by the Benedictines to their own 
 order. By the efforts of Charlemagne they were now thrown 
 open to the secular clergy. The monasteries, in the new 
 movement, made common cause in the work of instruction 
 with the cathedral or episcopal schools 3 , and a new impulse 
 was thus communicated to education. If we add to these 
 centres of activity the slight element of lay education that 
 
 1 Launoy, De Scholis Celebrioribiis, et Monastiques of Le"on Maitre, deux- 
 
 etc., p. 7. ieme Partie. Gaillard, Histoire de 
 
 * 'It has been said that the manu- Cliartemagne, u 87, speaks of them 
 scripts which Alcuin procured from as ' e*coles que 1'universite' de Paris 
 England were the means of forming peut regarder comme son berceau ; ' 
 a special school of transcribers and this, however, is a point with respect 
 illuminators at Aix-la-Chapelle, which to which much diversity of opinion 
 for many generations preserved the prevails ; see commencement of Chap- 
 traditionary style of the Anglo-Saxon ter I. Savigny's judgement on the 
 artists.' Edwards' Memoirs of Libra- question is emphatic : ' ist doch eine 
 ries, i 106. unmittelbare Verbindung derselben 
 
 3 A full account of the method mit der spateren Universitat ganz 
 
 and discipline of these schools will unerweislich.' Geschichte des Rom. 
 
 be found in Les Ecolcs Episcopates Rechts, c. xxi sec. 126, note.
 
 ALCUIN. 
 
 IXTRO- 
 
 developed itself in the Palace school, where the emperor 
 ki mse if participated in the instruction given, we shall per- 
 ceive that a very general reform was initiated. The learned 
 Benedictine, Dom Bouquet, dwells with enthusiasm on the 
 benefits thos extended to the whole student class of the 
 period 1 . 
 
 It seems certain that, for a time at least, the English 
 ecclesiastic heartily seconded the plans of his royal employer; 
 but his zeal evidently declined with advancing age, and after 
 fourteen years of service he was glad to seek refuge from the 
 splendour of the court in the retirement of the monastery at 
 Tours. Gnizot has inferred that the demands made upon his 
 energies, and the continual tension at which his mind was 
 kept, by the mental activity and insatiable curiosity of the 
 emperor, urged him to this step, but there would appear to 
 be sufficient reason for surmising that the cause lay some- 
 what deeper. Those familiar with the history of these 
 centuries, will remember the frequent feuds between the 
 Benedictines and the secular clergy, and it would seem 
 doubtful whether Alcuin ever cordially sympathized with the 
 extension of instruction which Charlemagne brought about ; 
 his heart appears far more warmly given to the task of 
 refuting the Adoptionists and denouncing image-worship ; 
 it is certain that he viewed with dislike the increased atten- 
 tion to pagan literature, which necessarily resulted from the 
 mental activity thus aroused*. The large designs and wide 
 
 ' Tot enim gentes e German ia 
 ci Illinium, et ex Italia cis Alpes 
 eruperunt, ut publica; peuitus evanu- 
 crint 8cholfl>, et curam privatarum 
 ad eniditionem Clericorum in Epi- 
 copiifl gesscrint Kpincopi, tit Abbates 
 iii Ccenobiu ad Monachorum instruc- 
 tionem. Unde otudia dc-liteHcebant 
 in Boli Epiflcopiormn Monaterio- 
 rumqae clauBtrifl. 8ed quia tune 
 qnoqne ec langnebant, can priKtino 
 plendori rentituere Carolua etiam 
 Mtcgit, directis Epistolin, de quibus 
 upra. Yrrumcum priratamm huju*- 
 Cfmodi Scholarum aditu* Laid* librr 
 non ftttt, C'aro/iM publicat itutituit, 
 rt in ipto rrgio Palatio alia* erexit. 
 
 Regit exemplum statim tecnti sunt 
 Abbatet ft Episcopi. Publicce per 
 Epucopia, per Monateria max stre- 
 putrunt Scholte, alia: Canobitis, alia 
 S<tcularibu edoceitdis dettinatat.' 
 Bouquet, Reritm Gallicarum et Fran- 
 cicarum Scriptore*, v 621. 
 
 * A full account of the controversy 
 with the Adoptionists will be found 
 in the very able Life of .4lcuin by 
 Lorenz, Professor of History at the 
 University of Halle, 1829. The 
 Iloman Catholic writers have gene- 
 rally sought to show that the paper 
 found among the Carlovingian Docu- 
 ments against image-worship is spu- 
 rions, and have attributed it to
 
 HIS RETIREMENT AND DEATH. 15 
 
 views of the emperor ranged beyond the conceptions of the INTRO- 
 somewhat cold and decorous ecclesiastic. Though an ardent v ^- 
 admirer of the De Civitate Dei, Charlemagne had other nmeUts 
 sympathies, sympathies which strongly inclined him to that p*r. 
 secular learning so strongly condemned by Gregory. By his 
 directions steps were taken for the collection and revision of 
 manuscripts, a care especially necessary now that Egypt 
 under Saracen occupation no longer furnished the papyrus 
 for the use of Europe. One of the numerous letters of 
 Alcuin consists of a reply to two grammatical questions 
 propounded by the emperor, the proper gender of rubm, 
 and whether despexeris or dispexeris be the preferable 
 form. The letter attests no contemptible scholarship, sup- 
 ported as its decisions are by references to Priscian and 
 Donatus ; it is moreover an important piece of evidence with 
 respect to Alcuin's knowledge of Greek, for it contains seven 
 quotations in that language, and illustrates the force of di, 
 in such Latin compounds as divido, diruo, discurro, by the 
 Greek Sta 1 . 
 
 Such enquiries on the part of the emperor, together with ^^l? 1 
 those interesting dialogues wherein Alcuin unfolded to the J!^^ glec 
 courtly circle at Aix-la-Chapelle the mysteries of logic and succeS by 
 grammar, unmistakeably evidence the presence of a spirit very founded on 
 different from that of Gregory and altogether in advance of morality. 
 the ecclesiastical ideas of the time. It might seem indeed 
 not unreasonable to suppose that when the dark forebodings 
 that derived their strength from calamity and invasion drew 
 off at the approach of a more hopeful age, and that as the 
 horizon that bounded human life regained the charms that 
 belong to the illimitable and the unknown, men might well 
 again find leisure to draw delight and inspiration from the 
 page of Grecian and Roman genius. Such happiness how- 
 
 Karlstadt, who heralded the crusade ment to act as arbiter in a literary 
 
 against image-worship that preceded controversy, and should be willing 
 
 the Reformation. emeritce nomen militice in castrarevo- 
 
 1 Epist. 27. The tone of this let- care pugnantia, plainly shows how 
 
 ter, wherein Alcuin mildly expresses he sought in his latter life to with- 
 
 his surprise that the emperor should draw himself from the study of pagan 
 
 have summoned him from his retire- literature.
 
 16 
 
 THE NEW OBJECTION TO PAGAN LEARNING. 
 
 INTRO- 
 
 ever the scholar was not yet destined to enjoy. The course of 
 events, it is true, had tended to weaken the belief which 
 Gregory had held 1 , but there had at the same time been 
 growing up in the Church a subsidiary theory with respect 
 to pagan literature, which equally served to discredit and 
 discourage the study. From considerations which led to an 
 estimate of pagan learning as a thing wherein the Christian 
 had no longer part or lot, objectors now turned to considera- 
 tions derived from the morality of the literature. The spirit 
 of Tertullian and Arnobius long survived in the Latin Church ; 
 and the most learned ecclesiastics of these centuries are to 
 be found ignoring that very culture which in a later age has 
 proved the road to ecclesiastical preferment, on grounds 
 precisely similar to those assumed by the most illiterate and 
 bigoted zealots of more modern times*. Thus Alcuin himself, 
 who had been wont as a boy to conceal in his bed his Virgil 
 from the observation of the brother who came to rouse the 
 
 1 It ifi remarkable how the antici- 
 pations of Gregory assume at the 
 hands of Alcuin a comparatively 
 vague and indefinite character : 
 ' Quo-dam videlicet signa, quse ipse 
 DominuR in Evangelio ante finem 
 mundi futura esse pra-dixit,tranKacta 
 leguntur ; quipdam voro immincntia 
 qnotidie sontiuntur. Quwdam itaque 
 necdum acta Mint, Bed futura esse 
 
 rtrti-Minc creduntur et regnum 
 
 Antichrist! et crudflitas ejus in sanc- 
 tof* ; hire enim erit novissima perse- 
 cutio, novisHimo imminente judicio, 
 quam sanrta Ecclenia toto terrarum 
 orbcpatietur ; nnivena ncilicet civitas 
 Chriitti, ab univeraa diaboli civitate.' 
 Dt Pidf Sane. Trinitatix, Bk. in 
 c 19. Migne, ci 51. It is easy to 
 not* in thin pa88ag<>, perhaps the 
 roodt definite in Al.uin'n writings, 
 how the phrnMoli.iy of Augustine 
 continurd to be repented while the 
 pplicti<in of hid theory was no 
 l-.i.i'. r ir.-i-ti-d on with the name 
 di*tinctneii. In hi* brief commen- 
 tary on the Apocalypim we obaerve a 
 rinfrnlnr n-ticenco in interpreting any 
 portion of the prophecy by specific 
 erenU ; and in the Libelbu df Anti- 
 ehrittn. one* attributed to him, but 
 now proved to be by an Abbot of the 
 
 monastery at Montier-en-Der, and 
 written more than a century later, 
 we find the following remarkable 
 passage : ' Quicumque enim, sive 
 laicus, sire canonicus, give monachus 
 contra justitiam vivit, et ordinis sui 
 regulam impuguat, et quod bonum 
 est blasphemat, Antichristus et mi- 
 nister Satauffi est.' This brief tract, 
 successively attributed to Augustine, 
 Alcuin, and Babanus MauruB (see 
 edition of the last named, published 
 at Col. Agripp. vi 178, also Migne, 
 ci 1291), while it specifies a definite 
 period of persecution, asnigns the 
 East as the quarter from whence 
 Antichrist would appear, and ranges 
 against him the Western Powers. 
 The whole has a marked resem- 
 blance to Lactantius, Inttitutumes, 
 Bk. vii. 
 
 * Herwerden, in his Commentatio 
 De Caroli Magni, etc., one of his 
 earliest productions, has very happily 
 characterised this prejudice of the 
 time : ' Veteribus Latinis Graocisque 
 litteris pestifera prajsertim erat su- 
 perstitiosiRsimi ejus aevi opinio, stu- 
 dium i ariiin et exercitationem Chris- 
 tiano contumeliosa esne, eique notam 
 impietatis inurere, quaB 83tern89 ejus 
 saluti (ic beatitudini nociva nit.'
 
 THE CHURCH STILL HOSTILE TO PAGAN LITERATURE. 17 
 
 sleepers to nocturns, lived to set a bann upon the ' impure INTHO- 
 
 DI*( TlO V 
 
 eloquence.' of the poet, and forbade him to his pupils 1 . The -^-v-' 
 guardian of the library at York, who had once so enthusias- 
 tically described its treasures 2 , employed his later years in 
 testifying to the vanity of all pagan learning. The difference 
 we have noted in the spirit of the emperor and the ecclesiastic 
 is apparent to the close. The former withdrew, as far as he 
 was able, from the anxieties of political life, to devote himself 
 with yet greater ardour to his literary labours ; the latter put 
 aside his secular learning to cultivate more closely the 
 asceticism of the monastery. The one died while occupied 
 in restoring the text of the Gospels ; the other, worn out by 
 the austerities of the cloister*. 
 
 If we pursue our enquiry beyond the time of Alcuin it 
 is long before we find this tradition materially impaired. 
 
 1 'Sufficiunt divini poet vobis, 
 nee egetis luxuriosa serrnonis Yir- 
 gilii vos pollui facundia.' Alcuini 
 Vita, Migne, c 90. 
 
 2 ' Illic invenies veterum vestigia 
 
 Pair urn, 
 
 Quidquid habet pro se Latio 
 Bomanus in orbe, 
 
 Grseciavel quidquid transmisit 
 clara Latiiiis ; 
 
 Hebraicus vel quod populus bi- 
 bit imbre superno 
 
 Africa lucifluo, etc. 
 Pof.ma de Pontificibus et Sanctis 
 Ecclcsia Eboracensis. Migne, ci 843. 
 This description is of course exag- 
 gerated; in the actual enumeration 
 of authors the only Greek pagan 
 writers mentioned by Alcuin are Ari- 
 stotle and Aratus ; the only Greek 
 Fathers, Clemens, Chrysostom, and 
 Athanasius. The poem itself, it may 
 be observed, is of little historic value, 
 as it is little more than a versification 
 of the passages in Bede's history of 
 the Anglo-Saxon Church relating to 
 York, with additions respecting those 
 dignitaries who had filled the archi- 
 episcopal seat since Bede's time. 
 
 8 "La peuse'e de la mort e*tait 
 devenue pour lui une veritable con- 
 eolation. En lui s'^tait realise", apres 
 bien des transformations, 1'id^al du 
 spiritualiste : il vivait par 1'arne. Au 
 sein des grandeurs, le corps ne lui 
 avait semble" qu'une prison, la vie 
 
 qu'un exil. Ce qui n'6tait alors 
 qu'une sorte de reve 6tait jnaintenant 
 une ve'rite'. Son plus cher desir tait 
 de mourir le jour de la Pentecote. 
 En ce jour ou les ap6tres re9urent 
 une nouvelle existence, la mort lui 
 paraissait etre le souffle divin qui 
 reVeillerait son ame du sommeil de 
 la vie humaine. II avait choisi le 
 lieu de sa sepulture non loin de 
 1'^glise de Saint Martin. Des que la 
 uuit e"tait venue, il se rendait a la 
 de"rob6*e dans cet endroit solitaire, 
 et apres avoir re"cite" des prieres sur 
 sa tombe en esperauce, il disait : ' O 
 clef de David, sceptre de la maison 
 d'Israel, toi qui ouvres pour que 
 personne ne ferme, toi qui fermes 
 sans que persoune puisse ouvrir, 
 viens, prends celui qui est enchain^ 
 dans la prison, qui est assis dans les 
 te"uebres et a 1' ombre de la mort.' 
 Les fetes du Careme, de Paques et 
 de 1'Ascension, ranimerent ses forces. 
 Mais la maladie augmenta dans la 
 nuit de PAscension. II tomba sur son 
 lit, e'puise et sans mouvement. La 
 connaissance et la parole lui revive- 
 rent les jours suivants, et il re"cita sa 
 priere : ' O clef de David, viens.' Et 
 ce fut le matin du jour de la Pente- 
 cote, qu'entoure" de ses e'leves en 
 larmes, au moment rneme ou il 
 entrait ordinairement au choaur, il 
 rendit le dernier soupir." Monnier, 
 Alcuin ct son Influence, pp. 249-50. 
 
 2
 
 18 THE CHURCH'S TRADITION DEFENDED. 
 
 Rabanus Maurus, his most illustrious pupil, while distin- 
 guished by his ability and learning, still held it, as Trithemius 
 observes, the highest excellence of the scholar to render all 
 profane literature subservient to the illustration of the Scrip- 
 tures ; and, up to the eleventh century, the great prepon- 
 u'.Vtdi'tion derance of authority, including such men as Odo, abbot of 
 Clugni, Peter Damian, and Lanfranc, is to be found ranged 
 on the same side. Even so late as the seventeenth century, 
 De Ranee*, in his celebrated diatribe against secular learning, 
 could point triumphantly to the fact that the rule so 
 systematically violated by the honorable activity of the 
 
 's Benedictines had never been formally rescinded. ' I grant,' 
 
 defence of tlit- /> i i i i p t i < 
 
 tradition. says one of the ablest apologists of the culture and men of 
 these ages, ' that they had not that extravagant and factitious 
 admiration for the poets of antiquity, which they probably 
 would have had if they had been brought up to read them 
 before they could understand them, and to admire them as 
 a necessary matter of taste, before they could form any 
 intellectual or moral estimate of them : they thought too that 
 there were worse things in the world than false quantities, 
 and preferred running the risk of them to some other risks 
 which they apprehended ; but yet there are instances enough 
 of the classics (even the poets) being taught in schools, and 
 read by individuals ; and it cannot be doubted that they 
 might have been, and would have been, read by more, but for 
 the prevalence of that feeling which I have described, and 
 which, notwithstanding these exceptions, was very general. 
 Modern and, as it is supposed, more enlightened views of 
 education have decided that this was all wrong ; but let us 
 not set down what was at most an error of judgement, as 
 mere stupidity and a proof of total barbarism. If the modern 
 ecclesiastic should ever meet with a crop-eared monk of the 
 tenth century, he may, if he pleases, laugh at him for not 
 having read Virgil ; but if he should be led to confess that, 
 though a priest of Christ's catholic church, and nourished in 
 the languages of Greece and Rome till they were almost as 
 familiar to him as his own, he had never read a single page 
 of Chrysostom or Basil, of Augustine or Jerome, of Ambrose
 
 LETTERS AFTER THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE. 19 
 
 or Hilary if he should confess this, I am of opinion that rNrno- 
 the poor monk would cross himself, and make off without v ^ 
 looking behind him 1 .' 
 
 Within three years after the death of Charlemagne an A.D. SIT. 
 important change was introduced in the Benedictine schools. 
 The seculars, by the decree of a Council held at Aix-la- 
 Chapelle, were no longer admitted to mingle with the oblati Distinction 
 
 x 3 introduced in 
 
 and the monks, but received instruction in separate classes, "nV^hwit 
 and probably without the precincts of the monastery 2 . This 
 distinction continued to exist down to the twelfth century, 
 and may be regarded as favorable to learning in so far that 
 the most learned body of the period still continued to direct 
 the education of the secular clergy. 
 
 In the political disturbances that ensued upon the death Disturbed 
 of the great emperor the prospects of learning became again empire after 
 clouded, and the scholars of the time are loud in their Charlemagne, 
 laments over the palmy days of the past, and gloomy in their 
 prognostications of the future. The few who still essayed to 
 impart to others something of learning and culture, found 
 their efforts useless while a barbarous soldiery plundered the 
 monasteries, and the country resounded with the clang of 
 arms 3 . Heu ! misera dies quam infelicior nox sequitur ! is 
 the exclamation of Paschasius Radbertus*. The deacon 
 Florus, in the dismal strains wherein he describes the 
 disasters that followed upon the division of the empire, A m ' (T) 
 contrasts the prospects of learning with the bright promise of 
 the time when Charlemagne guided the fortunes of the state. 
 ' The cultivation of letters is at an end,' writes Lupus, bishop Lupus, 
 of Ferrieres, to Altwinus, ' who is there who does not deplore e 5 eres - 
 
 d. 861 (?) 
 
 1 Dr Maitland, Dark Ages, pp. 177 these Councils the formal distinction 
 179. of the secular clergy from the re- 
 
 2 ' Ut schola in monasterio non ligious orders. 
 
 habeatur nisi eorum qui oblati sunt.' 3 The school at Tours appears to 
 
 Baluze, Cap. Regum, i 585. ' Oblati have suffered under a special dis- 
 
 monasteriorum, qui se ac sua, vel advantage owing to the careless 
 
 majorem partem bonorum suorum management of Fredegis, the abbot ; 
 
 sine fraude ac dolo monasteriis ipsis its celebrity passed over to the school 
 
 sponte ac libere obtulerunt.' Du- at Fulda which Rabanus, a really 
 
 cange, s. v. Francis Monnier in his able man, raised to considerable 
 
 interesting Histoire des Luttes Poll- eminence. 
 
 tiques et Religieiises dans les Temps 4 Vita Wal<z t Migne, Vol. cxix. 
 Carolingiens, p. 38, refers back to 
 
 22
 
 20 BISHOP LUPUS. 
 
 INTRO- the unskilfulness of the teachers, the paucity of books, the 
 > v '"' want of leisure 1 ?' In a letter to Eginhard, he complains that 
 those who cultivate learning are regarded as useless drones, 
 and seem raised to unenviable eminence, only to be marked 
 out for the dislike of the crowd, who impute all their failings, 
 not to the common infirmity of human nature, but to their 
 HU icttM. literary acquirements 2 . The letters of this prelate are, 
 indeed, among the most interesting and valuable records of 
 the period. We prefer them greatly to the intensely edifying 
 correspondence of Rabanus, or even to that of Alcuin him- 
 self; and it must be owned, that the literary activity they 
 reveal is in singular contrast to the representations of those 
 writers who would have us regard the period that followed 
 on the reign of Charlemagne, as one wherein learning suffered 
 a well nigh total eclipse. At Ferrieres, at least, its lamp 
 ni.iiu-r.ry shone with no uncertain light. In a letter to one corre- 
 
 l>unuiu. 
 
 spondent, we find the good bishop begging for the loan of a 
 copy of Cicero's treatise on Rhetoric, his own manuscript 
 being faulty (mendosum), and another, which he had com- 
 pared with it, still more so 8 . In a second letter he mentions 
 that he intended to have forwarded a copy of Aulus Gellius, 
 but his friend, the abbot, has detained it. Writing to another 
 correspondent, he thanks him for the pains he has taken in 
 correcting a copy of Macrobius 4 ; to a third he promises to 
 send a copy of Caesar's Commentaries, and enters into a 
 lengthened explanation to show that a portion of that work 
 must be regarded as written by Hirtiua In another letter 
 we find him begging that a copy of the Institutes of Quiii- 
 tilian may be sent to Lantramnus to be copied under his 
 auspices*. When we consider that pursuits like these have 
 l*jen held to add lustre to the reputation of not a few of the 
 most distinguished prelates of our English Church, it seems 
 hard to withhold the meed of praise from a poor French 
 bishop of the ninth century; unless indeed such labours are 
 to be regarded as creditable enough when associated with 
 
 ' F.pitl. 84, Migne, Vol. cxix. Epi*t. 8, Ibid. 
 
 Eptot. 1, Ibid. Epittt 62 ibid. 
 
 ' Ibid.
 
 THE SCHOOL BOOKS OF THE DARK AGES. 21 
 
 the dignity and luxury of a modern bishopric, but quite n ^!}f]' x 
 another thing when carried on amid the alarms of war and a "-" v -" 
 constant struggle with poverty, and where the writer has 
 every now and then to pause to tell of the cruelty of the 
 soldiery, the scanty provision for his household, and the 
 tattered apparel of his servants. 
 
 In the fierce antagonism of races amid which the Carlo- peciine of 
 
 learning. 
 
 vingian empire broke up, we find little to illustrate the 
 progress of education. The light which illumined the court 
 of Charlemagne, and lingered round that of Charles the 
 Bald, died out in the tenth century, or took refuge with the 
 alien race that ruled in Andalusia. Learning still revolved 
 round the monastery and maintained its exclusively theo- 
 logical associations. How little it thus prospered in England state of 
 
 . c . learning in 
 
 is sufficiently attested by the evidence of our king Aelfrid, a En t''a nd - 
 monarch with strong points of resemblance to Charlemagne, 
 who declared that he knew not a single monk south of the 
 Thames capable of translating the Latin service. 
 
 Having now however examined, sufficiently for our pre- 
 sent purpose, what may be termed the external history of the 
 education of these centuries, we shall proceed to endeavour 
 to ascertain, in turn, the real value and amount of the scanty 
 learning thus transmitted to more hopeful times. 
 
 The fact that here at once arrests our attention is, that 
 while education was warped and curtailed by the views of 
 
 the theologian, the substance and the fashion of what was The text- 
 books chiefly 
 
 actually taught were to a great extent derived from pagan J^^,^ to 
 sources, and thus preserved in a very remarkable manner century - 
 the traditions of Roman culture. The ordinary instruction 
 imparted in the Middle Ages, prior to the twelfth century, 
 was almost entirely founded on the works of five authors, 
 Orosius, Martianus, Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Isidorus, of 
 these Martianus and Boethius were pagan, the others Chris- 
 tian writers, but all for the most part slavish compilers from 
 greatly superior Greek and Roman treatises. Let us be 
 distinctly understood. We do not assert that no other authors 
 were read 1 , but simply that these authors were the school- 
 1 The late M. Amable Jourdain, whose authority on such a subject
 
 22 
 
 THE SCHOOL BOOKS OF THE DARK AGES. 
 
 INTRO- 
 DriTIOV. 
 
 OfOHVA 
 
 fl. dre. 
 
 A.I I. 11-5. 
 
 IIU Ilitto- 
 ri-irnui 
 n <v nut 
 I'-ni'tnnt 
 
 Li6 HI. 
 
 books of those times. A far wider range of reading was 
 undoubtedly accessible. Here and there a mind of superior 
 energy aspired to overcome the difficulties of the Greek 
 tongue and gained an acquaintance with some of its master- 
 pieces, as well as with those of the Latin language. The 
 Latin Fathers were not unfrequently studied ; the Vulgate of 
 Jerome was extensively in use; Aristotle, as a logician, 
 survived both in Augustine and Boethius ; Priscian and 
 Donatus are oft-quoted authorities in questions of grammar ; 
 but the limits within which such studies are to be regarded 
 as having directly influenced the individual are so narrow, as 
 to render it especially necessary to be cautious how we regard 
 them as forming any appreciable element in the education 
 then imparted. 
 
 The first of the five treatises above enumerated represents 
 the school history then in use. Orosius, the compiler, 
 Ozanam remarks, was the first to condense the annals of the 
 world into the formula, divina providentia agitur mundus et 
 homo 1 . It was in the fifth century that Orosius wrote; a 
 time when paganism was loudly reiterating its accusations 
 against Christianity, in order to fasten upon the upholders of 
 the new faith the responsibility of the calamities that were 
 then falling so thickly on the empire. Augustine's elaborate 
 vindication was but half completed, and he called upon 
 Orosius, who was his pupil, to prepare a briefer and less 
 
 fow will call in question, claims for 
 these times a somewhat larger litera- 
 tim- than is usually admitted : 'A 
 toutes k>8 fpoqneH du moyen Age on 
 * lu les Questions Nature-lies de 
 K<m'-qnc, ! po : nie de Lucroce, les 
 ouvraw-H philooophiqnefl de Cic6ron, 
 ! livreM d' ApultV, cuux de Cassiodore, 
 do Bopcc, etc.' Recherche* Criliqurt 
 tur L'Agt rl l.'itriyint dt Trathic- 
 titmt I.<itf D'Arittotf, edit. 1H43, 
 p. 21. Mr IX.-WCH (lHt. of Pldloto- 
 j>hy. ii FA) doubts whether Lucretius 
 could pnHKihly have lx-en tolerated 
 in M> exdoaiveljr theological an age ; 
 but Iwth lUlianuH MaurtiH atid Wil- 
 liam of Conrhrti ap|>i-ar to have Ix-en 
 familiar with jiortions, at least, of 
 hia great IK.CIU. bet t'hark.s Joiir- 
 
 dain'R Dissertation sur VEtat de la 
 Philosophie Naturelle au Douzifrne 
 Sitcle, p. 26. Among the most recent 
 estimates of the learning of these 
 ages that of M. Victor Le Clerc's is 
 noticeable for its highly favorable 
 character: 'Quant A la literature 
 latino, pen s'en fullait qu'on ne 1'eut 
 il'j:"i telle que nous 1'avons aujour- 
 d'hui. Ce mot trop It'geremeut em- 
 ploye de renaissance des lettres no 
 saurait s'appliquer aux lettres latiues: 
 ellfg n'ont point retnucitf,parce yu'el- 
 lfn n'ftaient point mortes.' Hintoire 
 Littfraire de la France au Quator- 
 zifiiiu- Siccle, I 855. 
 
 1 ()/.:, 11:1111. llixtory of Civilization 
 in the Fifth Century, i 57.
 
 OROSIUS. 23 
 
 circumstantial reply. The ' Histories' are accordingly a kind INTRO- 
 of abstract of the De Civitate, the theory of Augustine ^^^~^' 
 without his philosophy, his eloquence, and his fertility of 
 exposition. Such was the origin of the volume which after- 
 wards became the school history of the Middle Ages, and it 
 must be owned that it is a decidedly sombre treatise. It was 
 the object of the writer to shew, over and above the exposi- 
 tion of his main theory, that the times were by no means so 
 exceptional as to justify the hypothesis of paganism; that in 
 all ages the Supreme Ruler had, for His own inscrutable 
 purposes, tried mankind by calamities even greater than 
 those that the pestilence and barbaric invasion were then 
 inflicting 1 . His pages are consequently filled with famines, 
 plagues, earthquakes, sieges, and battles, ; the tragic and the 
 terrible make up the volume ; there is no place for the tran- 
 quil days of the old Republic or for the sunny age of the 
 Antonines. It is difficult not to infer that, when generation 
 after generation was left to derive its knowledge of history 
 from such a book, the effect could scarcely have been otherwise 
 than too much in assonance with ideas like that which has 
 already come so prominently before us. 
 
 The treatise of Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis Philologice Martianus 
 et Mercurii et de Septem Artibus Libercdibus Libri Novem, is fl. circ! 424. 
 the work of a native of Carthage, a teacher of rhetoric and a His treatise 
 contemporary probably of Orosius. It is characterised by 
 the usual mannerisms of the African rhetoricians, an obscure 
 and forced diction, a turgid rhetoric, and endless artifices of 
 metaphor and expression, such as belong to the school of 
 Appuleius and Arnobius. The treatise, as the title implies, is 
 cast in an allegorical form : and the first two books are The allegory, 
 almost exclusively devoted to a somewhat tedious account of 
 the celebration of the marriage of Mercury with Philologia, 
 the goddess of speech. Jupiter, warned by the oracles, con- 
 
 1 Nactns enim sum prseteritos dies (Eyssenhardt, Lipsiae, 1866) considers 
 non solum aeque ut hos graves, verum that he lived before 439, and could 
 etiam tanto atrocius rniseros, quanto not possibly have written subse- 
 lougius a remedio verae religionia quently to the Vandal occupation of 
 alienos. Pnefatio ad Anrelium Au- Africa. He consequently places our 
 gustinum, Migue, xxxi 667. author nearly half a century earlier 
 
 2 A recent editor of Martianus than the usually assigned date.
 
 24 THE SCHOOL BOOKS OF THE DARK AGES. 
 
 INTRO- vcnes a meeting of the gods and demands the rights of natu- 
 > v -' ralization for one hitherto but a mortal virgin; and Mercury 
 assigns to his bride seven virgins as her attendants, each of 
 whom is in turn introduced at the marriage banquet and 
 descants on that particular branch of knowledge represented 
 by her name. Such is the fantastic allegory wherein was 
 transmitted to the universities of Europe the ancient division 
 of the trivium and quadrivium 1 . To modern readers neither 
 the instruction nor the amusement thus conveyed will appear of 
 a very high order. The elaborateness of the machinery seems 
 out of all proportion to the end in view, the allegorical por- 
 tion of the treatise occupying more than a fourth part of the 
 entire work. The humour, if not altogether spiritless, is 
 often coarse 2 , and when we recollect not only that such allure- 
 ments to learning were deemed admissible, but that the 
 popularity of this treatise in the Middle Ages is probably 
 mainly attributable to these imaginative accessories, we need 
 seek for no further evidence respecting the standard of literary 
 taste then prevalent. 
 
 A course of study embracing Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, 
 Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy, would appear 
 a far from contemptible curriculum; it is only when we 
 examine what was really represented under each of these 
 branches, that we become aware how inadequately they 
 corresponded to modern conceptions of such studies. The 
 definition, indeed, given by Martianus of grammar, would 
 lead us to anticipate a comprehensive treatment of the 
 ciraamur. subject, it is not only docte scribere legereque, but also 
 
 Sec- Haun'an, De la Philosophic the loud snores of Silcnus asleep 
 
 aekolattiqve. i 21. Bruckcr, Ilitt. under the influence of his deep 
 
 I. Phil, m 1157. This division of potations. The kiss wherewith Bhe- 
 
 thc nevrral liberal arts in to be found torica salutes Philologia is heard 
 
 in Augustine, T)e Online, c. 18. throughout the assembly, nihil enim 
 
 urtfau would therefore seem to be $ilein, nc ti cuperet, faciebat. John 
 
 r when be attributes its firHt of Salisbury (see Metalogicu*, Lib. iv) 
 
 conception to CapclU. See Dean frequently illustrates his discourses 
 
 trod, to Arti$ Logica Ru- by a reference to this allegory as 
 
 especially familiar to his age. Les 
 
 " "I"'?, 111 " 1 "' 1 following may imaijinatwiw vive*, remarks Ldon 
 
 c- plaudits that follow Mai'tre, dounaient leur presence ii 
 
 n|win the uixcoume delivered bv \t _* /in i ; 
 
 Arith n ,,tim are suppose*! to be ^P C>>Pel& ' 1>ISC ' 
 
 by laughter, occawioned by
 
 MARTIANUS CAPELLA. 
 
 25 
 
 erudite intelligere probareque. The actual information Ls 
 meagre in the extreme 1 ; the physiology of articulation, it is 
 true, is analysed with a care that M. Jourdain's tutor might 
 have envied ; but the writer appears to confuse quantity 
 with accentuation, and it indicates the neglect into which 
 Cicero's writings had already fallen that, in treating of the 
 comparison of adverbs, the author affirms that impune 
 has no comparative. Under Dialectics both logic and Dialectics, 
 metaphysics are included. In the former we have the old 
 definitions of genus and differentia, accidens and proprium, 
 and the diagram familiar to students of Aldrich or Whately, 
 illustrating the relations of the four kinds of logical proposi- 
 tions 2 . The portion devoted to Rhetoric contains the rules 
 and figures of the art, taken chiefly from Cicero, and profusely 
 illustrated from his writings. Geometry consists of little 
 more than geography, a short compend from Pliny with a 
 
 Rhetoric, 
 
 G conic' rv. 
 
 1 Kopp here observes, ' ea elegisse 
 videtur, in qnibus vel dissentiret a 
 superioribus grammaticis, vel clarius 
 se docere posse putaret,' an expla- 
 nation hardly warranted, I think, 
 when we compare the treatment with 
 that of similar writers like Cassio- 
 dorns and Isidore. C. F. Hermann, 
 in his preface to Kopp's edition, 
 expresses his belief that Martiamis 
 drew largely from Varro, ' qune si recte 
 observavi, fieri poterit ut ex Martiano 
 si uihil aliud tameu aliqnas principis 
 eruditionis lloinauze reliquias lucre - 
 mur.' 
 
 8 The causes that led to the sin- 
 gularly meagre treatment of Logic 
 by these writers have been thus 
 described by a very competent critic : 
 ' It was only indeed in the time of 
 Cicero, that Aristotle's writings were 
 brought to light from the long ob- 
 scurity in which they were buried. 
 And it is not asserting too much to 
 say, that, even had the Eomans been 
 disposed to encourage a speculative 
 philosophy t there was then no one 
 competent either justly to value, or 
 fully to explain, his logical doctrines. 
 An art of logic had long been current 
 in use, the Dialectic of the Stoics, 
 which so far from opening the mind 
 to the reception of a truly philoso- 
 
 phical method, had diverted men 
 from the right pursuit, had prejudiced 
 them with wrong notions of the 
 science. If Aristotle, therefore, were 
 studied, it would naturally be such 
 portions of his Logic as coincided, 
 or seemed to coincide, most with the 
 existing imperfect views. Hence the 
 almost exclusive use among the Latins 
 of his treatise entitled the Categories 
 or the Predicaments. Though other 
 treatises of his Logic were trans- 
 lated into Latin, these soon fell into 
 disuse. A compendium of Dialectic, 
 founded on the Categories of Aris- 
 totle, and passed under the name of 
 Augustine, became the ordinary text 
 book from which the whole science 
 was professed to be taught in the 
 Latin schools, down to the end of the 
 12th century Each distin- 
 guished master probably composed 
 his own treatise of the art, but all 
 were confined to the same meagre 
 technicalities, which alone accorded 
 with the corrupt theological taste of 
 the times.' Hampden's (Bp.) Bamp- 
 ton Lectures, p. 66. It will be ob- 
 served, however, that Dr Hampden 
 has scarcely given sufficient recog- 
 nition to the labours of Boethius, 
 see p. 27.
 
 26 THE SCHOOL BOOKS OF THE DARK AGES. 
 
 INTRO- few simple propositions concerning the properties of lines, 
 
 * "' plane figures, and solids, towards the close. Some of the 
 
 blunders are amusing. For instance, Pliny had stated that 
 
 the Northern Ocean had been explored under the auspices 
 
 illustrations of Augustus : Martianus, by way of embellishment, tells us 
 
 .K-rnpi.icai fa^ Tiberius had. in his own person, traversed the whole 
 
 knnwiodtfc r 
 
 ** extent of the Northern Ocean and had penetrated to the 
 country of the Scythians and the Arctic regions, magno dehinc 
 permenso ad Scythicam plagam ac rigentes undas usque 
 penetravit, a statement for which we can only account by 
 supposing that he had Germanicus in his mind. Other 
 details, too numerous to be noticed here, have a certain 
 interest as illustrative of the knowledge and nomenclature 
 of the times. Egypt he refers to, in common with other 
 geographers, as Asice caput; and, while admitting that the 
 sources of the Nile are unknown, makes mention of a tradition 
 that it takes its rise in a lake situated in the lower regions 
 of Mauretania. In speaking of Syria he refers to the Essenes, 
 but Palestine and Galilee fail to suggest the name of 
 
 Arithmetic. Christianity. The science of Arithmetic is discussed chiefly 
 with reference to the properties of numbers, mystically 
 
 MU.JC. interpreted after the manner of Pythagoras. ' Music ' includes 
 the subject of metre, together with a brief account of harmony 
 
 Autonomy, and of the scale of musical notation. Astronomy is treated 
 according to the traditions of Ptolemy, and contains a short 
 account of the heavenly bodies, and an investigation, by far 
 the most philosophical portion of the treatise, into the 
 supposed laws that regulate the movements of the planets, 
 the sun, and the moon 1 . 
 
 1 It is, however, vory remarkable queatur, plnnetre quotidio tarn loca 
 
 that inperflcial an in IHH treatment of quain diversitates arripiant circulo- 
 
 Mtronomy, ho yet appears to have rum. Nam ex his niillum nidus ex 
 
 some extent anticipated the Co- -eoloco undepridieortumimtelevatur. 
 
 penuean theory. The passage do- Quod Hi cst, dubium mm est, cen- 
 
 CTTM quotation: 'Licet ftenoraliter turn octogintn tres circulos habcre 
 
 idam.eanctUorbibuxplanetarnm Solem, per quos aut ab solstitio in 
 
 rccc-ntnin eno tell or em, hoc ent non briiinam redit, aut ab eadem in 
 
 re medium nirctilorum; quoniam solstitialera lineam sublevatur ; per 
 
 ndi wntron enH non dubium ; et easdcm (iuii>pe mutationes commeat 
 
 d graerala M-ptem omnibtu ad- circulorum. Sed quum Sol praedictum 
 
 wtendnm.qnodquummundusejuB- numerum habeat, Mars duplos cir- 
 
 dtm duttua rututi-jue unimoda tur- culos facit, lovis sttlla duodecies
 
 BOETHIUS. 27 
 
 If, as has been conjectured 1 , the allegory presented in the INTRO- 
 De Comolatione Philosophize of Boethius was conceived in * ^' 
 imitation of the allegorical treatment adopted by Martianus, b.^i-c.^s. 
 the fact would alone point to a wide and early popularity 
 gained by the latter writer, a popularity largely attributable 
 to the predilection for abridgements, making small demands 
 on the time and attention of the student, which characterised 
 that degenerate age. The reputation acquired by Boethius 
 rests upon a more satisfactory foundation. The services 's pi-eat 
 
 service to 
 
 which that distinguished statesman rendered to posterity learnin if- 
 have been suffered, to a great extent, to pass from recollection 
 ever since that infusion of learning which, in the thirteenth 
 century, superseded his philosophical treatises and led to 
 their comparative neglect from that time 2 ; but it is only 
 just to remember that to Boethius we owe the transmission 
 down to that era, of that element of purely Greek thought 
 which, imperfect and insignificant though it may now appear, 
 was, during seven centuries, nearly the sole remaining tradition 
 of the Aristotelian philosophy preserved by Western Europe. 
 
 If we compare the treatise by Boethius with that of Martianus 
 
 and Rnctlr.us 
 
 Martianus, we shall probably incline to the conclusion that c !* 1 - 
 Boethius wrote for a different and a higher class. The 
 
 exercet, octies vicies cumulatur Sa- tianus aurait rendu a 1'astronomie 
 
 turnus, eos circulos qui parallel! plus de services que des astronomes 
 
 dicuntur circunicurrens ; qui motus bien plus habiles, et nous devons lui 
 
 omnium cum mundo proveniunt, et pardonner son verbiage, ses be'vuea 
 
 terras ortibus occasibusque circum- et son galimathias.' 
 
 eunt. Nam Venus Mercuriusque 1 See article by Dean Stanley, 
 
 licet ortus occasusque quotidianos 'Boethius,' in Smith's Diet, of Greek 
 
 ostendant, tamen eorum circuli terras and Rom. Biography and Mythology. 
 
 omniiio non ambiunt sed circa Solan a " Both of the great esteem in 
 
 laxiore ambitu circulantur ; denique which the Consolation of Boethius 
 
 circulorum suorum centron in Sole was held by the Church of the 
 
 constituunt, ita ut supra ipsum all- Middle Ages, and of the great in- 
 
 quando, infra plerumque propmquiores fluence of the monastic schools, Dr 
 
 terris ferantur, a quo quidem signo Pauli finds evidence in the fact, that 
 
 uno et parte dimidia Venus disparatur; ' as soon as a newly formed language 
 
 sed quum supra Solem sunt, propin- began to produce, we meet with a 
 
 quior est terris Mercurius, quum infra version of Boethius in it ; this is 
 
 Solem, Venus, utpote qua orbe castiore also the case with all the most ancient 
 
 diffusioreque curvetur. 1 c. viii., p. 856, remains of the old High Germans, 
 
 ed. Kopp. ' On dit,' says Delambre, the ProvenQals, and the Northern 
 
 'qui c'est ce peu de ligues qui a e'tc French; even Chaucer formed him- 
 
 pris par Copernic pour le sujet de ses self upon it when he gave England its 
 
 meditations, et qui 1'a conduit a son language.'" Morley's English Writers, 
 
 systenie du inonde ; en ce cas Mar- Vol. i pt. 1, p. 399.
 
 28 THE SCHOOL BOOKS OF THE DARK AGES. 
 
 INTRO. Arithmetic in Martianus, for instance, occupies but 47 pages ; 
 
 wrrioN. ^ at Q f fj oe thius, in two books, nearly a hundred, and though 
 to a great extent founded on that of the Greek writer 
 Nicomachus, is far from a mere translation, being accompanied 
 by numerous and useful additions'. A yet greater disparity 
 is observable in their respective treatises on Music. The 
 
 Ti,e iuca- treatment by Boethius is not only far more comprehensive, 
 
 tinnal in.*- , . , , . . 
 
 but jnves to the whole curriculum a dignity and coherence 
 
 It.n-il.iin 
 
 pu'.il.mtTut altogether wanting in the works of the other compilers. The 
 ti"7r ri Bu"nii somewhat transcendental method which he adopts is, indeed, 
 perhaps the true explanation of the preference accorded to 
 other writers on these subjects during the Middle Ages. 
 A passion for mysticism, in an exposition of the exact 
 sciences, only tended still further to shroud such learning 
 from the gaze of the neophyte, nor will the modern mathe- 
 matician find much to repay his curiosity in the discussion 
 of the harmony of numbers, the generation of the perfect 
 number, and numbers proportional and the division of 
 magnitudes ; nor in the similar method of treatment to be 
 found in the five books on Music. The translation of Euclid, 
 however, that is to say of the first four books, together 
 with their figures, and a few additional propositions on the 
 properties of the rhombus, is of a more practical character. 
 
 The results of modern criticism would seem to have 
 established the fact that Boethius cannot be ranked among 
 the adherents of early Christianity*. The theological treatises 
 once attributed to him afford satisfactory evidence that they 
 are by a different hand. In fact, his efforts to familiarise his 
 
 1 CaHfiiodorus (in the two pages in Weber's Preface to Fragmentum 
 
 which lit* dixmisHCH the same subject) A. M. T. S. lioethii de Aritlimctica. 
 
 bears witness to its merits: 'quam Cassellis, 1847. 
 
 (aritbmeticam) apud (iriecoa Nico- 2 Boctlrium a Chrittl doctrina alie- 
 
 uiachus diligenter exposuit. Huno num. fuigxe multis ex rebus efficitur, 
 
 prinium Msdaurenais Apnleius, de- is the dictum of a recent editor. 
 
 nnle nmgnificus vir Boetius Latino See De Consul. Phil. ed. Obbarius, 
 
 Rvrninne translatura HOIIIHIUH contu- 1H48. Tlie Htipposition that Boethins 
 
 lit 1< ftituixhuii. ' I)f Artiliii* I Alter, encountered his fate as a martyr in 
 
 Mignc, i.xx 1207. Other followers the cause of orthodoxy against the 
 
 of Boethitu were Bclf, Gerbt-rt, and Arians, though sanctioned by Bach r 
 
 John of Salisbury. For a succinct and Heyne, has been completely 
 
 8<vnnt of the progress of the science refuted by Hand ; see Ersch and 
 
 up to the time of Lotthiua see C. F. Grub. Encyk'.opacdie, \i 233.
 
 CASSIODORUS. 29 
 
 countrymen with the writings of Aristotle and Porphyry, and JNTTIO- 
 to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, would at once suggest, to v-^- 
 those who bore in mind the character of his age, that his 
 sympathies were nothing more than those of enlightened 
 paganism. The student of the history of the Aristotelian vicissitudes 
 philosophy will be aware how frequently its predominant \^ t ^ t ; 1 , i 1 a , n 
 aspect has varied with the requirements, the tendencies, and 
 the fashion of the age. It has been the fortune of the 
 Stagirite successively to represent the final authority in the 
 arena of metaphysics, of morality, and of natural philosophy ; 
 but it was under none of these aspects that his influence was 
 preserved to Europe by Boethius. 
 
 The Aristotle of western Europe, from the sixth to the oniythe 
 thirteenth century, was simply Aristotle the logician ; and Aristotle 
 
 . . , i f known to 
 
 even as a logician he was but imperfectly known. The i:ur i )e from 
 
 * A.D. 500 tO 
 
 whole of the Organon had, indeed, been translated by Boethius, biftVpart' 18 
 but even of this the greater part was unknown to Europe 
 prior to the twelfth century 1 . The Categories and the De 
 Tnterpretatione, together with the Isagoge of Porphyry, were 
 in use, but the Prior and Posterior Analytics, the Topica, 
 and the Elenchi Sophistici are never quoted. Such are the 
 important limitations with which it is consequently necessary 
 to regard the study of Aristotle as existing during this 
 lengthened period; his logical method survived, but in 
 imperfect fashion ; while his mental and moral philosophy 
 remained altogether unknown, their resuscitation forming, as 
 we shall subsequently see, a separate and very important 
 chapter in the history of European thought. 
 
 The prejudices and suspicions to which, towards the close 
 of his reign, Theodoric surrendered his judgement, proved 
 fatal to Boethius, but a distinguished colleague of the patriotic 
 statesman, who, like him, had filled under the Gothic monarch 
 some of the highest offices of the state, managed to retain 
 the royal confidence unimpaired ; and at length, when nearly 
 
 1 Die boethianische Uebersetzung Jahrhunderte ganzlicb unbekaimt 
 
 der Hauptschrifteu des Organons, d. gewesen war. Prantl, Geschichte der 
 
 h. der beiden Analytiken und der Logik, in 3. 
 Topik nebst Soph. EL, vor deru 12.
 
 30 
 
 THE SCHOOL BOOKS OF THE DARK AGES. 
 
 ixrno- 
 
 seventy years of age, Cassiodorus effected his retreat to the 
 i- monastery which he had founded at Scylacium, to enjoy, far 
 
 "JJw* loru *' beyond the ordinary term of life, its tranquil solitudes and 
 studious repose. The Gothic History by this writer has 
 survived only in the abridgement of Jornandes ; but his 
 Epistles, a series of state documents prepared under the 
 direction of Theodoric and Justinian, that may be compared 
 to the Capitularies of Charlemagne, are a valuable illustration 
 of these times. His manual of education, however, with 
 
 HU treatise which we are here chiefly concerned, the De Artibus ac 
 
 De Artitnu. J ' 
 
 Disciplinis Liberalism Literarum, is the most meagre of all 
 the text books of the Middle Ages. The four subjects of the 
 Quadrivium, for instance, are each dismissed in two pages ; 
 the object of the writer being apparently rather to give 
 a general notion of the subject than definite instruction 
 therein. In his general arrangement he observes the same 
 traditional division that Martianus and Boethius follow ; 
 and the example of the latter, whose genius Cassiodorus 
 wannly admired, is to be discerned in the adoption of 
 Aristotle and Porphyry as the chief guides in the book on 
 Dialectics, the only portion of the work that presents what 
 can be held to constitute a real study of the subject. As the 
 production, then, of an aged monk, but of one who until long 
 past his manhood's prime had mingled much with the world, 
 borne high office in the state, and held intercourse with the 
 foremost spirits of the age, this work sufficiently shews how 
 the traditions of pagan culture were dwindling before the 
 combined influences of a narrow theology and barbaric rule 1 . 
 The wave of the Lombard invasion spent itself on the 
 north of Italy, and while Gregory was predicting from the 
 sufferings of his own nation the speedy dissolution of all 
 things, a contemporary ecclesiastic, in the neighbouring 
 
 'Hi Dialectic contains a hrief 
 analvdiH of tin- iHagoge of Porphyry 
 and the Organon of AriHtotle, with 
 additions, a considerable portion 
 bt-ing Ixjirowed from Apulcius and 
 HovthiuH. Hiu analyniH of the Or- 
 ganon doc not include the Sophistic 
 IkfuUttiooj, but coutuiub a separate 
 
 chapter Df Paralofjismi*, which treats 
 of purely logical fallacies. Tho ar- 
 rangement of the work is by no 
 means methodical, and extraneous 
 matters arc introduced which properly 
 In-long to llhctoric. ' Dean Manx 1, 
 Introd. to Artit Logics lluditnenta, 
 p. xxix.
 
 ISIDORUS. 31 
 
 peninsula of Spain, was engaged in the compilation of one of INTRO- 
 
 1111 i i i UUCTION. 
 
 the most remarkable educational treatises that belong to the v-' 
 Middle Ages. Though at various times a full participant in 
 the sufferings of the empire, Spain had enjoyed since the 
 establishment of the kingdom of the Visigoths comparative 
 immunity from invasion, and Isidorus could survey with isidorus. 
 a calmer eye than Gregory the portents of the time. 
 Descended from Theodoric the Great, son of a governor of 
 Cartagena, and himself bishop of an important see, he appears 
 to have passed a life of honourable activity in freedom from 
 political disquiet like that which agitated the country of the 
 pontificate. Considering the period at which he wrote, the 
 twenty books of the Origines, a kind of Encyclopaedia of In s origina 
 sacred and profane learning, must undoubtedly be regarded 
 as a remarkable achievement, a laborious collection of such 
 fragments of knowledge as were still discoverable amid the 
 gloom hastening to yet more intense darkness. The tradi- 
 tional classification of the subjects is retained, but the 
 treatment shews no advance on that of preceding writers. 
 Verbal explanations of scientific terms still mock with the 
 affectation of clearness and precision the enquirer after real 
 knowledge. 'How completely,' observes Mr Lewes, 'the 
 magnificent labours of Hipparchus and Ptolemy had vanished 
 from the scene, how utterly their results and methods had 
 passed away, may be estimated on finding Isidore, in his 
 chapter on the size of the sun and the moon, unable to give 
 more precise information than that the sun is larger than the 
 earth, and the moon less than the sun 1 .' Even the spark 
 which had illumined the dark page of Martianus appears to 
 have expired. 
 
 In one respect the Oriqines present a novel and noticeable Novel 
 
 " A ... , element in 
 
 feature, the incorporation of the remains of pagan learning this treatise, 
 with the new theology. Of the twenty books into which 
 they are divided, only the first three are devoted to the 
 subjects treated by those preceding compilers whose treatises 
 have occupied our attention; the remaining seventeen being 
 
 1 Lewes (G.H.), Hist, of Philosophy, n 68.
 
 32 THE SCHOOL BOOKS OF THE DARK AGES. 
 
 composed of an extraordinary medley of medicine, theology, 
 x. natura | philosophy and natural history, political history, 
 architecture, mineralogy, and husbandry. The good bishop 
 would seem, as though prescient of the future, to have sought 
 to gather and link together whatever still remained of 
 knowledge and learning before i* should be irretrievably 
 lost. Of the numerous historical and theological tractates of 
 Isidorus, many of them mere reproductions in an abridged 
 form of his larger works, we cannot here stop to speak ; but 
 whoever will examine them for himself will have forcibly 
 brought home to him, in the barbarisms, the solecisms and 
 the poverty of thought whereby they are characterised, the 
 actual state of learning in times when such productions could 
 suffice to obtain for their author the reputation of being the 
 most accomplished and erudite man of his age. 
 
 The more elaborate researches of later writers have tended 
 somewhat to qualify the representations of Robertson, Hallam, 
 and others who have slightly exaggerated and severely criti- 
 cised the ignorance of these times ; but there still remains 
 c.tntni sufficient evidence amply to warrant two general conclusions : 
 "itiir^IU 1 that the literature of the seventh, eighth, ninth, and 
 
 bi the culture 
 
 of UK- Dark tenth centuries was scanty m the extreme ; 2, that whatever 
 learning existed was almost exclusively possessed by the 
 clergy. Nor is there any good reason for believing that 
 these conclusions would be materially modified even if we 
 could restore to light the whole literature to which these 
 centuries gave birth; it would rather seem, that in what 
 remains we have enough to illustrate the real value and 
 direction of what intellectual activity existed, and are enabled 
 * discern, w ith but little difficulty, the torch of learning 
 passing in succession from the hand of each solitary runner 
 who maintained the race in that darksome night. In the 
 authors who have just occupied our attention we can trace, 
 for instance, with tolerable distinctness, the transmission of 
 the literary spirit. Orosius appears reproducing, under the 
 teaching of Augustine, the theological interpretation of 
 history; Martianus, as sustaining the traditions of pagan 
 culture; Boethius, as imitating the allegorical treatment
 
 ISIDORUS. 33 
 
 pursued by Martianus, and. in his turn, inspiring Cassiodorus, INTRO- 
 
 DITCTIOV. 
 
 who, in his monastic solitude, feebly retraced the outlines of * '" 
 learning marked out by his more brilliant compeer ; while in 
 Isidorus, the grandson of Theodoric the Great, we seem to 
 recognise the transmitted influence of both these illustrious 
 ministers of the most enlightened of the Gothic conquerors. 
 With the name of Isidorus again, is associated, though in no 
 true connexion, one of the most important movements of the 
 Middle Ages, the next prominent feature that arrests our 
 attention in pursuing our enquiry 1 . 
 
 Amid the numerous legends, pretended miracles, and 
 other inventions, which, as Christianity became corrupt, hid 
 the simplicity of the faith from view, it is undeniable that 
 a spirit of un veracity grew up, that, combining with the 
 superstition of the age, became a prolific source of imposture; 
 and in the ninth century we are presented with a notable 
 exemplification of this tendency, in an effort at investing the 
 dicta of Rome with the appearance of greater complete- 
 ness and continuity, which, commencing in deliberate fraud, 
 ultimately expanded into one of the most gigantic literary 
 forgeries that the world has seen. Among the numerous 
 writings of Isidorus was one, De Officiis Ecclesiasticis, where- ^ d ^,., 
 in he had collected the decisions of the Church on numerous *'*'-*"<* 
 points relating to discipline, ceremonies, and the limitations 
 of the authority attaching to the different sacred offices. The 
 work enjoyed a deserved reputation, and must still be 
 regarded as of high value by all who seek to form an accurate 
 estimate of the sanction afforded by the antiquities of the 
 Church for the observances of the Romish ritual. In one 
 respect however this treatise failed to satisfy the minds of a 
 later generation, for it contained little that could be quoted 
 in favour of the exclusive pretensions of the Romish see ; 
 and, more especially, the chain of continuity, the unbroken 
 tradition from the time of St. Peter, could not be traced in 
 
 1 ' Quant au programme des Etudes, premiers siecles du moyen age par 
 
 il n'a pas vane" d'une syllabe avant Boece, Martianus Capella, Cassiodore 
 
 le xii e siecle, il est reste" tel qu'il et Isidore de Seville.' Le"on Maitre, 
 
 avait 616 trace" pour les 6co\es des L es Ecoles Episcopates, etc. p. 300. 
 
 3
 
 34- THE CANON LAW. 
 
 INTRO- its pages; for between Clemens, the first bishop, and Siricius, 
 iK-n-iox. who dietl at the close of the f ourta century, the decrees of 
 
 the bishops of Rome were altogether wanting. But suddenly 
 the missing Decretals were forthcoming. An unknown 
 
 rrrtonrti individual, who styled himself Mercator, brought forward 
 
 MWU%. what purported to be a completion of the work of Isidorus, 
 inasmuch as it supplied what was necessary to constitute that 
 work an entire collection of the decrees of Rome from tiie 
 earliest times. No traces of these documents were discover- 
 able in the Roman archives, but they were nevertheless 
 accepted as genuine by Nicholas, and also by Hincmar, the 
 
 impute eminent archbishop of Rheims. It so happened that at the 
 time when this pretended discovery took place, Rothrad, 
 bishop of Soissons, had appealed to Nicholas against his 
 deposition from his see by his metropolitan, Hincmar. It 
 was however doubtful whether he was justified in such a 
 step, and Hincmar loudly affirmed that no such right of 
 
 pecuumin appeal existed. It was now found that, among the newly 
 discovered Decretals, was one that established the supremacy 
 
 fouiNlcd on * 
 
 g^J52u. f Rome over all other metropolitans; Rothrad was rein- 
 stated in his episcopal chair by Nicholas ; and llincmar was 
 compelled reluctantly to bow to the authority he had so 
 incautiously admitted. When too late, he endeavoured 
 indeed to call the genuineness of that authority in question, 
 but in so doing he only incurred the inevitable imputation 
 of having thus acted merely from a selfish regard to his per- 
 sonal interest and aggrandisement. From the recognition of 
 these Decretals the Papacy dates an important advance in 
 legislative power, and the attainment of a position from 
 which it never afterwards receded 1 . It was not until three 
 
 'The Fnlne Decretals do not Church property, on its usurpation 
 
 merely assert the Miprcmacy of tho ami Hpoliation ; on ordinations; on 
 
 Popes-the dignity and privileges of the sacraments, on baptism, confirm- 
 
 t l.r Biibop of Home. They com pro- ation, marriage, the Eucharist ; on 
 
 bond the whole dogmatic system and fasts and festivals ; the discovery of 
 
 discipline of the Church, the whole the cross, the discovery of the reliques 
 
 hierarchy from the highest to tho of the Apostles ; on the chrism, 
 
 loweM degree, their sanctity and iin- holy water, consecration of churches, 
 
 inanities, their persecutions, their blessing of the fruits of the field ; on 
 
 disputes, their right of appeal to the sacred vessels and habiliments. 
 
 Home. They are full and minute on Personal incidents are not wanting
 
 Till-: DECBETUM OF GRATIAN. 
 
 35 
 
 centuries later, in the year 1151, that Gratian, a monk of 
 Bologna, published a new Decretum or Concordia Discor- 
 dantium Canonum, wherein he incorporated the collection 
 by the Pseudo-Isidorus with numerous alterations and 
 additions. Respecting the amount of actual fraud contained 
 in these labours, some difference of opinion has prevailed. 
 It has even been pointed out, that Gratian, by the insertion 
 of decisions unfavorable to the pretensions of the Romish 
 see, has sufficiently proved the honesty of his motives ; but 
 it is certain that the scope of the entire work was largely 
 to augment the privileges and authority of the Papacy 1 . It 
 seems difficult moreover to understand, how many of the 
 canons could ever have been regarded as other than apo- 
 cryphal for, in the sixteenth century, Pope Gregory xni 
 deemed it expedient to expunge those parts which, however 
 they might charitably have been supposed to have deceived 
 
 INTRO- 
 
 I)l'(,T'I< 
 
 , 
 
 euiteer 
 
 '"'"' 
 
 to give life and reality to the fiction. 
 The whole is composed with an air 
 of profound piety and reverence ; a 
 specious purity and occasional beauty 
 in the moral and religious tone. 
 There are many axioms of seemingly 
 sincere and vital religion. But for the 
 too manifest design, the aggrandise- 
 ment of the See of Eome and the 
 aggrandisement of the whole clergy 
 in subordination to the See of Eome ; 
 hut for the monstrous ignorance of 
 history, which betrays itself in glar- 
 ing anachronisms, and in the utter 
 confusion of the order of events and 
 the lives of distinguished men the 
 former awakening keen and jealous 
 suspicion, the latter making the de- 
 tection of the spuriousness of the 
 \vhole easy, clear, irrefragable, the 
 False Decretals might still have 
 maintained their place in ecclesiasti- 
 cal history. They are now given up 
 by all ; not a voice is raised in their 
 favour; the utmost that is done by 
 those who cannot suppress all regret 
 at their explosion, is to palliate the 
 guilt of the forger, to call in question 
 or to weaken the influence which 
 they had in their own day, and 
 throughout the later history of Chris- 
 tianity.' Milman, Hist. Latin Chris- 
 tianity, in 192. A writer of a dif- 
 
 ferent school observes, ' The great 
 difference between the use which 
 Hincmar makes of these decretals 
 and the advantage to which they are 
 turned by Nicholas is that the latter 
 builds entirely upon them doctrines 
 hitherto unknown, and which could 
 be supported by no other proof, 
 whereas the archbishop of Bheims 
 quotes them, only as furnishing an 
 additional evidence to truths already 
 granted, and even without them easily 
 established or defended. In the 
 latter case their genuineness could 
 be of little importance, nor was it 
 necessarily incumbent on the writer 
 who thus used them to have satisfied 
 himself without any doubt on this 
 point. But when employed for such 
 a purpose as that for which they are 
 advanced by Pope Nicholas, any defi- 
 ciency in the fullest proof that they 
 were both genuine and of authority, 
 subjects the author to a graver charge 
 than even that of the most culpable 
 negligence.' Life and Times of Hinc- 
 mar, by the late Eev. James C. Prich- 
 ard, M.A., p. 330. 
 
 1 In one passage Gratian even 
 goes so far as to assert that the Pope 
 is not bound by the canons of his 
 predecessors. See Fleury, Troisieme 
 Discours snr I'Histoire Ecclesiastique.
 
 36 THE CANON LAW. 
 
 INTRO- the original compiler, could not sustain the scrutiny of a 
 
 DVCTION. .. . , 
 
 s> ' more critical age. 
 
 The Decretum, as it passed from the hands of Gratian, 
 consisted of three parts: the first being devoted to general 
 law, and containing the canons of Councils, decrees of the 
 Popes, and opinions of the Fathers; the second comprising 
 ecclesiastical judgements on all matters of morality and social 
 life ; the third containing instruction with reference to the 
 rites and ceremonies of the Church. The Decretum was 
 received throughout Europe with unquestioning submission ; 
 Pope Eugenius III marked his sense of its merits by raising 
 Gratian to the bishopric of Chiusi ; ancl Dante, a century 
 later, assigned to the monk of Bologna a place in the 
 celestial hierarchy, along with Albertus, Aquinas, and the 
 other great doctors of the Church 1 . Such was the work the 
 study of which known as that of the Canon Law, formed 
 so important a part of the training of students at the English 
 universities prior to the Reformation; which still survives in 
 both Protestant and Catholic Germany; and continues to 
 demand the attention of all those who seek to grasp intelli- 
 gently the history and literature of the Middle Ages. Other 
 additions have been made to the Decretum since the time of 
 Gratian, but it is to his labours and those of his predecessor 
 that are undoubtedly to be referred the most unjustifiable 
 pretensions and accordingly the greatest misfortunes of the 
 Romish Church 2 . It was on the foundation of the canon law 
 that those claims to temporal power were built up, which 
 gave rise to the De Potestate of Occam, to the De Dominio 
 Dicino of Wyclif, and to the English Reformation. 
 
 R*riT!of Somewhat earlier in the same century that saw the 
 
 MUclT of the <f 
 
 orullw ' completion of Gratian's labours, Irnerius began to lecture at 
 Bologna on the Civil Law. From the time of the disruption 
 of the Roman empire, the codes of Theodosius and Justinian 
 would appear to have survived as the recognised law of the 
 
 > Paradise, Bk. x 113. p. 3 ; the latter writer, though a 
 
 ee a Lecture by It. O. Philliraore staunch Catholic, admits and deplores 
 
 On thf Influence of Ecclnitutical the effects of the excessive preten- 
 
 J.av on European Ltgiilation ' also Bions of the Decretals on behalf of 
 
 Butler's Hone Juridica Subtecivte, the Papal power.
 
 IRNERIUS. 37 
 
 tribunals that existed under the Gothic, the Lombard, and TXTRO- 
 
 DIT TIOV 
 
 the Carlovingian dynasties; but the knowledge of them was Y -- 
 very imperfect, and indeed almost valueless, save as repre- 
 sentative of a great tradition and marking the path that led 
 to a more systematised and comprehensive theory 1 . The 
 school founded by Irnerius marks the commencement of an 
 improved order of things. The states of Lombardywere, 
 at this time, advancing with rapid strides in populousness 
 and wealth, and their increasing commerce and manufactures 
 demanded a more definite application of the admirable code 
 they had inherited. Irnerius accordingly not only expounded imenus iec- 
 the Roman code in lectures, but introduced, for the first , B '8 na circ - 
 
 illo* 
 
 time, the plan of annotating it with brief explanations of 
 terms or sentences, these annotations being known under the 
 name of glosses. His example was followed in the next 
 century by Accursius of Florence, whose labours may be Accuwius. 
 regarded as constituting an era in the history of jurisprudence. 
 The precise value of the service rendered by these glossers 
 has been the subject of some dispute ; it is not denied that 
 they promoted a more careful and intelligent interpretation 
 of the code, but some have regarded it as a serious evil that 
 their labours almost superseded the study of the text. The 
 construction placed by an eminent glossist upon an obscure 
 or doubtful passage became itself the law, and to master and 
 digest the various interpretations a separate and important 
 study. 
 
 It was now however that jurisprudence began again to Rapid spread 
 
 ... . r of the study 
 
 assume its true dignity as a science and a profession. The ^>> e av 
 fame of the new learning spread rapidly through Europe, and 
 the disciples of Irnerius diffused his teachings in Spain, 
 France, and Germany. In its progress however the science 
 lacked the all powerful aid that had attended the canon law, 
 and it is remarkable that a study which was before long to 
 become the special field of ambition to the ecclesiastic, 
 
 1 ' aber diese Kenntnisz und RecJits, c. XYIII. sec. 32. See the 
 
 Anwendung desselben sehr diirftig whole of the same chapter, entitled *r 
 
 vraren, undnuralsUebergangzueiner Wiederherstellung der Rechtsicissen~ 
 
 besseren Zeit Werth haben konnten. 1 chaft. 
 Savigny, Geschichte det Romischen
 
 REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN LAW. 
 
 INTHO- 
 WCTION. 
 
 The study 
 opposed at 
 first by 
 
 K ii.v. 
 
 Vmriis 
 lectuivs at 
 o\fc.nl cirr. 
 114ft 
 
 should, ill the first instance, have been viewed with such 
 disfavour at Rome. Already, before the appearance of the 
 Pandects of Amalfi, it had been forbidden to the religious 
 orders, and the interdict was renewed in 1139 and again in 
 1163. In 1219 Honorius ill banished it from the university 
 of Paris, and thirty-five years later Innocent III reiterated 
 the papal anathemas in France, England and Spain 1 . In our 
 own country the superior clergy appear to have advocated its 
 reception, and it is unquestionable that Vacarius lectured on 
 the Pandects at Oxford 2 ; he was silenced however by the 
 mandate of king Stephen, and John of Salisbury informs us 
 that many of his own acquaintance regarded the new learning 
 with so much animosity that they destroyed all the text- 
 books that came within their reach 3 . The opposition of 
 Stephen is attributed by Selden to the monarch's personal 
 dislike of archbishop Theobald, who had shewn a disposition 
 to introduce the study. This state of feeling however was 
 
 1 'Ces prohibitions furent vaines. 
 Chez nous, au centre et au nord, se 
 propageait en laugue vulgaire la 16- 
 daction des coutumes, qni, non moius 
 variees que les divisions fe'odales, 
 conservaient presque la mdthode et 
 Bouvent meine les dispositions des 
 lois romaines. Ces lois, dans les 
 pays de coutumes, furent e'tudie'es 
 comme raison e"erite, et, dans les 
 pays de droit romain, adoptees comme 
 lois. En Langnedoc, elles dtaient le 
 droit conimun du pays ; Toulouse et 
 Montpellier les enseignaient, mcrne 
 avnnt 1' institution dc leurs uuiver- 
 nit<;*. L'&olc de Paris, qu'on avait 
 Youlu preserver de cette innovation, 
 'enbardit junqu'a reconnaitro a 1'un 
 ft a I'autro droit une norte d'C-galitc" ; 
 lonqa'elle dnt, en 14d. aprt N s la 
 declaration do neutralitr outre les 
 papautl-H rivaled, fixer les conditions 
 necessairea pour ]K>HHedcr li-s bdnd- 
 fict-H, elk- cxigea JndifT.'rcnnncnt des 
 <5vequc' et den chefs d'ordres 1<> grade 
 de doctcur on de lioonci<5 soil en 
 thlologie, oit en droit canonique, 
 iioit en droit civil.' V. Lc Clerc, 
 Klat df Lrttrf* nu 14* Sicclf, p. 510. 
 * Vacarius appears to have taught 
 at Oxford about the year 1149, al- 
 most exactly the same time Hurt 
 
 Gratian published his Decretum. 
 The fact that Vacarius taught at 
 Oxford has been called in question, 
 but the evidence appears sufficiently 
 conclusive. Gervaise of Canterbury, 
 a contemporary writer says : Tune 
 leges et causidiei in Anyliam primo 
 vocati unt, quorum primus eratma- 
 gister Vacarius. Hie in Oxonefordia 
 leg em docuit. 
 
 3 Savigny's criticism throws addi- 
 tional light upon the circumstance : 
 ' Mehrere haben Anstosz daran gefun- 
 den,dass bei einem Streit unter (ieist- 
 lichen fiber geistliche Gegenstiindo 
 gcrade Ilomisches Recht wichtig uncl 
 unentbehrlicli gef undcn worden sey ; 
 sic haben daher angenommon, es scy 
 x.ugleich das canouische Recht mit 
 verpflauzt worden, ja Manche haben 
 den Unterricht des Vacarius lediglich 
 auf das canonischo Recht beziehen 
 wollen. Alleiu diese ganze Schwicrig- 
 keit schcint mir ohno Grund. Das 
 canonische Recht war stets als Thcil 
 der Theologie von der Geistlichkcit 
 erlenit worden, so dass wcder die 
 Abfassung des Decrets von Gratian, 
 noch dessen Erklnrung in der Schule 
 von Bologna, hierin einen ganz neuen 
 Zustand hervorbrachte. Anders ver- 
 hiclt cs sich mit dcm lUimischeu
 
 DEVOTION OF THE CLE1UJY TO THE STUDY. 39 
 
 but transitory ; before the expiration of the twelfth century TNTRO- 
 the attractions and direct importance of a science a know- 
 ledge of which had become essential to those concerned in St 
 the conduct of proceedings before ecclesiastical tribunals, Fa u t 
 
 11 11 ! e~ii -rt i i ky the clergy. 
 
 prevailed over all prejudices; St. Bernard complains, even 
 in his day, of the ardour with which the clergy betook 
 themselves to its pursuit ; and a century later, as we shall 
 hereafter see, the study had assumed such proportions as the 
 path to emolument and high office, that it seemed likely to 
 bring about an almost total neglect of theology and the canon combined 
 
 OJ with that of 
 
 law. In England indeed the canon law was mainly preserved J^ e w Canon 
 from the neglect into which it fell at a yet later period on the 
 continent, by the fact that the canonist and civilian were 
 often united in the same person, and did not, as in France 
 and Germany, represent distinct and separate professions. 
 It is to this combination that we owe the title, which still 
 survives, of LL.D. (formerly J.U.D. or Doctor Utriusque Juris}. 
 If we now turn to follow the faintly marked path of 
 learning and philosophy from the time of Charlemagne, we 
 shall soon perceive indications of an awakening activity of 
 thought that promised better things than the conceptions of 
 a Gregory or an Alcuin. How far the system which the 
 latter initiated at Tours influenced the course of subsequent 
 
 Eeclit, welches, in seiner Wieder- gliae Stephanus, allatis legibus Italire 
 
 berstellung durch die Glossatoren, in Angliam, publico edicto prokibuit, 
 
 in der That etwas Neues war. Zu- ue ab aliquo retinerentur. Si igitur 
 
 gleich aber ist es unverkennbar, dass lai'cus princeps lai'ci principis alte- 
 
 der Prozess, auch in geistlichen rius leges respueret, igitur multo 
 
 Gerichten, groszentheils auf Eomis- magis omnis clericus deberet respuere 
 
 ches Eecht gegriindet war. So er- leges lai'coruin. Addo etiam quod 
 
 kla'rt es sich, dass die Englische hohe magis concordant jura Franciae cum 
 
 Geistlichkeit durch ihre Prozesse vor Anglia, et e converse, propter vicini- 
 
 der Eomischen Curie veranlaszt wer- tatem regnorum, et communicatio- 
 
 den konnte, Legisten und Hand- nem rnajorern gentium istarum, quam 
 
 schriften des Eomischen Eechts aus Italia? et illarum. Igitur debereut 
 
 Italien in England einzuflihren, magis clerici Angliaa subjicere se 
 
 wahren kein ahnliches Bediirfniss in legibus Francise, et e converse, quam 
 
 Ansehung des canonischen Eechts legibus Lumbardiae.' Compendium 
 
 empfunden wurde.' C. xxxvi sec. 125. Studii Philosop hi<e, c. 4. It seems 
 
 Eoger Bacon, who was prejudiced difficult to believe that this passage 
 
 against the study by the abuse with could have been written by the same 
 
 which it had become associated in pen that has so admirably pointed 
 
 his day, sought to found upon Ste- out, in the Opus Tertium, the rela- 
 
 phen's opposition an argument a- tionsof the Eomance language to each 
 
 gainst its claims : 'Eex quidam An- other and to their common parent !
 
 40 INCREASING SPECULATIVE ACTIVITY. 
 
 INTRO, speculation it is difficult accurately to decide 1 , but it is 
 
 v-^ certain that, before the ninth century closed, there were 
 
 symptoms of returning vigour which plainly indicated that 
 
 the traditional limits would ere long be broken through. 
 
 PMCUIUS The dogma maintained by Paschasius concerning the real 
 
 Kadborttu, . * e 
 
 fl.drc.85o. presence, and that which Godeschalchus reasserted, on the 
 authority of Augustine, concerning predestination, attest how 
 men's minds were again essaying to grapple with the pro- 
 foundest questions appertaining to the Christian faith ; the 
 solutions propounded, it is true, were, after the fashion of the 
 time, conceived in conformity to the requirements of a formal 
 logic rather than in unison with the wants of men's inner 
 nature, but the controversies they were designed to set at 
 rest were not the less the commencement of that great eifort 
 to bring about a reconciliation between reason and authority, 
 belief and dogma, which underlies the whole history of the 
 scholastic philosophy 2 . It is impossible to look upon the 
 
 Rtrmmt, arguments of Paschasius and his able opponent Ratramnus 
 as a mere phase of bygone habits of thought when we 
 remember that they inaugurated a controversy which has 
 lasted to the present day ; which has exercised, perhaps more 
 than any other, the learning of Rome and the intellect of 
 protestantism; and in connexion with which these two writers 
 long represented the armoury whence combatants on either 
 side most frequently equipped themselves for the contest*. 
 
 In John Scotus Erigena, on whom it devolved to uphold 
 the less rigid interpretation against both Paschasius and 
 
 1 Professor Maurice, speaking of the Church of the ninth century, and 
 
 the theological disputes of this time, Paschasius was sharply rebuked hy 
 
 doe* not hesitate to say, 'It was a several contemporaries, among others 
 
 war of logic, of formal proposition on by Rabanus Maurus, then archbishop 
 
 this side and on that. Tliit was the of Mayence. At a subsequent period, 
 
 charactrr which the tchoult of Alcuin Pope Gregory VII declared that the 
 
 and Charlemagnt almont inevitably view of Paschasius, as expressed by 
 
 gave to it.' Mediteval Philoiophy, p. Lanfranc, was rejected both by him- 
 self and Peter Damiani. It was 
 
 * Harnpden, Scholtutie Philnnnphy, seven centuries after the time of 
 
 637. See also M. Barthe'lemy Hniut- Ratramnus, that Ridley, when plead- 
 
 ilaire, De la Logique cCArittote, ing before the commissioners at Ox- 
 
 11 H ford, said, ' This man was the first 
 
 ellarmme has unfairly repre- who pulled me by the ear, and forced 
 
 Rented Ratramnns as the inangurator me from the common error of the 
 
 of the controversy ; but the doctrine Roman Church, to a more diligent 
 
 of tranubflUntiatkm waa a heresy in search of Scripture and ecclesiastical
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA. 4-1 
 
 Godeschalchus, we have a metaphysician of the Platonic IXTRO- 
 school appearing in somewhat singular contrast to the -y <-' 
 quasi-Aristotelian succession of the western Church. In his 
 treatise De Divisione Naturce, he shews from St. Augustine 
 that the Categories fail altogether in the investigation of the 
 divine nature ; he maintains, in his theory of primordial 
 causes, an essentially different conception from that put forth 
 in the Ethics and the Metaphysics ; and his mental affinities 
 to the Platonism of the eastern Church are sufficiently- 
 indicated by his attempt to prove that the first chapter in 
 Genesis represents, not the creation of the visible world, but 
 the evolution of the typical ideas in the creative mind. With 
 the exception of a Latin translation by Chalcidius of a portion 
 of Plato's Timceus, Augustine was undoubtedly the source 
 from whence John Scotus derived his philosophy; with joim pcotus 
 respect to the general character of that philosophy it is the /srs"?). 
 less necessary to go into detail, inasmuch as, though he was 
 probably the first distinctly to indicate the main theory of 
 scholasticism 1 , his method was not that which scholasticism 
 adopted 2 , and his somewhat singular eclecticism and Platonic 
 affinities became lost to view amid the vastly extended influ- 
 ence which yet awaited the authority of Aristotle. His most 
 marked relation to posterity is to be traced in the attention 
 he directed to the writings falsely attributed to Dionysius 
 the Areopagite. Legend, already busy in the Church, 
 though the time of its greatest activity was still distant, 
 had ascribed to the Dionysius mentioned in the Acts 
 
 the Apostles 3 , and afterwards first bishop of Athens, the 
 conversion of Gaul, as the earliest Apostle to that country; 
 and in the ninth century there was in circulation a manu- 
 script, a forgery of the fifth century, sent by Michael the 
 
 writers on this question.' See Bel- equally unlike the pure Socratic Pla- 
 
 larmine, De Sac. Euch. Bk. i c. 1. tonismof which that was a corruption, 
 
 Milman, Hist, of Latin Christianity, different in most important respects 
 
 Bk.vni c. 3. from the Augustinian Platonism, or 
 
 1 ' Der friiheste namhafte Philo- from that of the Greek Fathers with 
 soph der scholastischen Zeit,' says which it stands in much closer af- 
 Ueberweg. See his Geschichte der finity.' Maurice, Mediteval Philoso- 
 Philosophie, n 3 103 111. phy, p. 68. See also Christlieb, 
 
 2 It was 'exceedingly unlike the Leben und Lehre des Joh* Scotu 
 Alexandrian Platonism from which Erigena, Gotha, 1860. 
 
 it has been supposed to be derived, 3 Acts xvii 34.
 
 42 THE TENTH CENTURY. 
 
 TNTUO Stammerer, emperor of Byzantium, to Louis le De'bormaire, 
 v 1-' which was asserted with equal truth to be the work of this 
 same Dionysius. The production, from whatever pen it 
 proceeded, is of small intrinsic value, being devoted to 
 speculations respecting the celestial hierarchy and the ex- 
 position of a highly mystical interpretation of Scripture; 
 but its translation into Latin from the Greek, undertaken 
 by John Scotus, in order, in all probability, to gratify the 
 feelings of his patron Charles the Bald, by rendering more 
 accessible to the subjects of the latter a treatise attributed 
 to their national Apostle, is an event of considerable 
 Estimation in importance in the history of European studies. From this 
 tmtiMWM period the Pseudo-Dionysius occupied a foremost place in 
 tin- t'um- of the estimation of the theologian, and it is melancholy to 
 
 Julm. Scotus. ^ * 
 
 note how long it continued to impose on the judgement and 
 to inspire the labours of some of the ablest scholars of 
 successive generations 1 . 
 
 With the tenth century the darkness in France and 
 England attained its greatest intensity ; it was the nadir of 
 the intellect in Europe. Spain alone, under the beneficent 
 rule of the Ommiades, offers to our notice any signs of 
 general culture and refinement, the instances observable 
 elsewhere presenting themselves as isolated and rare pheno- 
 mena. Of these the most remarkable is unquestionably that 
 roprsvirrv of Gerbert, afterwards pope Sylvester II, and the valuable 
 
 KTII. J. ii*.x . i m j 
 
 additions recently made to our knowledge respecting this 
 eminent man may be deemed sufficient excuse for attempting 
 briefly to embody them in the present sketch. It is now 
 nearly thirty years ago that antiquarian research brought to 
 light the long lost history of his times by his pupil Richerus, 
 and the information therein contained, together with the 
 admirable life prefixed by M. Olleris to the more recently 
 published magnificent edition of his works 8 , has somewhat 
 
 Df an Milmnn truly oWrveB that nnm df Sylvestrc II., CoUationfes *nr 
 
 ct of this work on the whole leu Manmcntu, PrMdtrii de sa IHo- 
 
 ccleiaMic system, and on the popu- (/rapine, suivieg de Note* Critique* et 
 
 Jar faith, it it* alrmmt impossible jtmtly Hixtorique*, par A. Olleris, doyen des 
 
 9r> tutimate.' Hint, of Latin Cltri*. Facnlte's dc Lettres, Clcrmont-Fcr- 
 
 ttanitu, Bk. vm c. 5. rand) 1867- 
 * Cfcurrr i de Gerbert, Papc tous le
 
 m 
 
 GKRBERT. 43 
 
 modified the conclusions previously formed respecting both INTRO- 
 
 Dl'CTIO.V. 
 
 the individual and his age, the obscure period of transition v " 
 when the sceptre passed from the Carlovingian to the Cape- 
 tian dynasty. 
 
 That the method of numerical notation employed by Employment 
 
 * * of toe mode 
 
 Gerbert was identical with that of our modern era, and that, ""^tion 11 
 at the same time, his knowledge was not derived from the byGerbert 
 Saracens, would appear to be equally well ascertained facts. 
 The dislike and dread with which the Mahometan race had 
 been regarded ever since the Crescent and the Cross con- 
 tended for the possession of France at Poitiers, and the 
 consequent rarity of their intercourse with Christian Europe 1 , 
 the entire absence of Arabic words and of everything 
 suggestive of Arabic influences in his writings, render it in 
 the highest degree improbable that Gerbert was indebted M. oiiem' 
 
 3 - 1 . conclusions 
 
 to such sources for his method. That method, M. Olleris E^/g^^e 
 considers, may have very well been derived from those Sl^ci-ived" 
 writers whom we have already passed under review as ledge. * 
 constituting the manuals of the Middle Ages, and especially 
 to the one by whose name, as the ' new Boethius,' Gerbert 
 was known among his admiring contemporaries 2 . Under 
 
 1 M. Guizot has pointed out the Olleris says : ' Le voile e"pais qui 
 
 remarkable contrast observable in the couvre cet e"poque de sa vie, ses con- 
 
 writings of the chroniclers of the first naissances fort exage"re"es en mathe"- 
 
 Crusades, such as Albert d'Aise, matiques eteu astronomie,permirent, 
 
 Robert le Moine, and Raymond pres d'un siecle apres sa mort, a 
 
 d'Agiles, and the accounts of the Beusson, cardinal de 1'antipape Gui- 
 
 later Crusades, belonging to the later bert, ennemi de Saint- Siege, de pro- 
 
 half of the twelfth and thirteenth fiter d'un mot e'chappe' a 1'ignorance 
 
 centuries, by Guillaume de Tyr and d'AdhtJmar de Chabanais, qui avait 
 
 Jaques de Vitry. By the former the dit que Gerbert etait alle" a Cordoue, 
 
 Mahometans are spoken of only with pour affirmer qu'il avait appris dans 
 
 contempt and hatred, the hatred and cette ville les sciences et la magie. 
 
 contempt of ignorance ; in the writings Des moines credules, avides du mer- 
 
 of the later chroniclers they are no veilleux accrediterent ces bruits, y 
 
 longer regarded as monsters ; it is ajouterent de nouvelles fables, que le 
 
 evident that a certain amount of in- moyen age accueillit sans he"siter, les 
 
 tercourse had been going on between temps modernes en ont admis une 
 
 the Christian and the Saracen, and a partie. Mais ces re"cits mensongers 
 
 corresponding amount of sympathy ne sont-ils pas completement repute's 
 
 has been developed ; the morals of par la faveur constante dont Gerbert 
 
 the latter are even favourably con- a joui aupres des eveques et des 
 
 trasted with those of the countrymen princes chre"tiens du X e siecle, par 
 
 of the writers. See Hist, de la Civili- le silence absolu de tous ses contem- 
 
 sation en Europe, in 204 207. porains, dont quelquesuns 1'ont at- 
 
 a With respect to the period of taque" avec acharnement, par son 
 
 Gerbert's residence at Barcelona, M. aveu indirect qu'il ne comprend pas
 
 44 GERBERT. 
 
 INTRO, the patronage of the princes of the house of Saxe, Gerbert 
 iMTmv g rea t success at Rheims, and the account given 
 
 by Richerus of the system he employed and the authors 
 upon whom he commented, is deserving of quotation ; it 
 must however be observed, that such instruction, at this 
 period, can only be regarded, in its thoroughness and extent, 
 1 1 HI teaching as of an entirely exceptional character: Dialecticam ergo 
 ordine librorum percurrens, dilucidis sententiarum verbis 
 enodavit. Imprimis enim Porphirii ysagogas, id est intro- 
 ductiones secundum Victorini rhetoris translationem, inde 
 etiam easdem secundum Manlium 1 explanavit; cathegoriarum, 
 id est prcedicamentorum librum Aristotelis consequenter enu- 
 cleans. Peri ermenias vero, id est de interpretation librum, 
 cujus laboris sit, aptissime monstravit. Inde etiam topica, id 
 est argumentorum sedes, a Tullio de Greco in Latinum 
 translata" 1 , et a Manlio consule sex commentariorum libris 
 dilucidata, suis auditoribus intimavit Nee non et quatuor 
 de topicis differentiis libros, de sillogismis cathegoricis duos, 
 de ypotheticis tres, diffinitionumque librum unum, divisionum 
 (eque unum, utiliter legit et expressit. Post quorum laborem, 
 cum ad rhetoricam suos provehere vellet, id sibi suspectum 
 erat, quod sine locutionum modis, qui in poetis discendi sunt, 
 ad oratoriam artem ante perveniri non queat Poetas igitur 
 adhibuit, quibus assuescendos arbitrabatur. Legit itaque ac 
 docuit Maronem et Statium Terentiumque poetas, Juvenalem 
 quoque ac Persium Horatiumque satiricos, Lucanum etiam 
 Itistoriographum. Quibus assuefactos, locutionumque modis 
 compositos, ad rhetoricam transduxit'. 
 
 I'arabc? II fnut done reconnaitre J ' Manilas ' is, of course, BoetbiuR; 
 
 iue Gerbert n'a \inH6 ni Seville ni see infra, pp. 61 53. It would 
 
 Cordoue, quo sea maitrc-H ^talent scarcely be necessary to make this 
 
 chr^tienn, quo les otiteura places en- observation had not Hock in his 
 
 tre sea mains eminent oeux qne Ton Hittoire dn Pape Sylvester II, 
 
 ^tudiaiten France avant les jnierres ci- tradiiite par M. VAbbf J. M. Axinger, 
 
 vilofi.entreautreHle rh^tetirVictorinuc, supposed a totally different person to 
 
 Martiamis Capolla, et suHout Boece, be designated. 
 
 dnnt Cvuiodore fait tin i pompeux a M. Olleris correctly observes, 
 
 C est chez lui qu'il puisa cos ' Richer se trompe quand il les prend 
 
 iHitionswientifiquestantadinir.'-eHpar i>our une traduction.' 
 
 I* HiVle, qui lui donna les titres Richeri (E.) Historiarum Quatuor 
 
 flatteurs de philosophe, do savant, J.ifcri, Lib. HI c. 46 <k 47. Reims 
 
 de nouveau Boecc.' Olleris, Vie de 1855. 
 Gerbert, p. 21.
 
 RECURRENCE OF THE OLD PANIC. 45 
 
 Pope Gerbert lived to see the commencement of the INTRO. 
 . . DUCTIO.V. 
 
 eleventh century and the inauguration of what may fairly v 
 
 be regarded as a less gloomy period, but the years which u.c p c r iot h of f 
 immediately followed on the thousandth Christian year were nun"'"' 
 clouded by a recurrence of that same terrible foreboding 
 which occupied our attention in the earlier part of our 
 enquiry. The Millennium was drawing to its close ; and the 
 monks, as they turned with trembling hand the mystic page 
 of the Apocalypse, declared that they could only interpret 
 the solemn prediction which marks the opening of the 
 twentieth chapter, into an announcement that the end of 
 all things must now be looked for. A panic not less severe Panic 
 than that of the age of Jerome or of Gregory seized upon riiristiau 
 men's minds. The land was left untilled ; the pursuits of 
 business and pleasure were alike disregarded ; the churches 
 were thronged by terrified suppliants seeking to avert the 
 Divine wrath. The paroxysm subsided indeed as the use to which 
 
 seasons revolved with their accustomed regularity, but the impression 
 
 " was eon- 
 
 clergy skilfully converted the predominant feeling into chan- ^ b - v the 
 
 nels that well subserved the interests of the Church. The 
 ordinary preamble to deeds of gift of this period, Mundi 
 appropinquante termino, Intonante jam per universum 
 globum evangelica tuba, attests the widespread character 
 and the reality of the conviction ; and from this time we 
 may date the commencement of that great architectural 
 movement which subsequently reared in the proudest cities 
 of Europe the monuments of Christian art and of Christian 
 self-devotion. 
 
 In no subsequent age do we find this belief, though ever The antidpa- 
 
 m, Honor the 
 
 and anon recurrent, operating with an equal power. The end of the 
 
 1 A L world ceases 
 
 theory has been revived by the student of prophecy and p"^' 1 ^ 
 by the charlatan, but it has never since so far attracted nmsel 11 ' 6 
 popular attention as to paralyse the activities of a nation 
 and to divert multitudes from the ordinary avocations of life. 
 It is only indeed in facts like these that we realise how 
 closely the avowed belief of those ages was interwoven with 
 their action, and, when we find conviction thus potent to 
 restrain the ardour of the warrior and to arrest the industry
 
 46 FINIS MUNDI. 
 
 INTRO- of the peasant, we begin in some measure to comprehend 
 
 DUCTIONi 
 
 * v ~-' how great must have been its power in the cloister where it 
 importance was born. We begin to discern how all education, conceived 
 
 of this belief ' 
 
 in th 1 e e dm- tnt an d directed as it was by those who upheld and inculcated 
 racter of the ^i s jjg^gf ^ mus t necessarily have reflected its influence ; and 
 conceding, as we well may, that in no other period in the 
 known history of our race have events more emphatically 
 seemed to favour the construction thus placed upon them, 
 we may claim that this conviction carried with it something 
 to justify as well as to explain the narrow culture of those 
 times. And further, if we add to this consideration the 
 recollection how imperfect was the possession then retained 
 of the literature of antiquity, the indifference with which 
 that literature was regarded by the majority, and the 
 difficulties under which it was studied and transmitted, it 
 may perhaps occur to us that the censure and the sarcasm 
 so often directed against these ages, might well give place 
 to something more of reverence and gratitude towards the 
 heroic few who tended the lamp amid the darkness and the 
 storm 1 . 
 Bercnsar, The eleventh century saw the revival of the controversy 
 
 i i(if){) ** *^ 
 
 ' >' -which Paschasius had initiated. In contravention of the 
 extreme theory which he had supported, Bcrcngar, an 
 archdeacon of Tours and head of the great school founded 
 by Charlemagne which still adorned that city, maintained 
 the entirely opposed view which regarded the Lord's Supper 
 
 1 It is somewhat remarkable that *tre futale eut sonne" sans catastrophe, 
 KO well-informed a writer as Mr les homines, animus d'nne ardour iu- 
 Lecky, in his able sketch of the he- accoutume'e, seiublerent appre'cier 
 lief of these centuries (see Hist, of davantage le bieufait de 1'existence. 
 Ilationalitm, Vol. i) should have left De toutes parts les deoles sortirent 
 this theory almost altogether uu- do letir long asBOUpissement ; on 
 noticed. M. Digot, Recherche* nur se mit a rcconstruire les dglises et 
 l f , Ecole* Epitcopales et Monast. de } es monaBtJrcn en mine, eufin les 
 la province de Trh-es, has indeed in- lettrcs et les arts P nrt ' nt subitement 
 dint .1 to the opinion that its influ- un essor nouvcau.' I.en Erole* Epin- 
 ence has been exaggerated, but Lon copales, etc. p. 96. M. Olkris has 
 Maitre quotes sutisfactorj' evidence forcibly characterised the sentiment 
 to show that the reconstruction of before prevalent : ' Pcrsoime no 
 the ruined churches and monas- songeait u s'instruire. A quoi bon 
 teries in France vras not attempted cultiver son esprit? Pourquoi tran- 
 until after the year 1000; of the ncrire des livres qui allaient peril- 
 change that then took place he thus d ins la conflagration universelle ?' 
 writes: 'Loisqne 1'heure qui devait Vie de Gcrbcrt, p. 21.
 
 BERENGAR OF TOURS. 47 
 
 as purely emblematical. This interpretation was as old as 
 
 . . 
 
 Clemens and Origen, but the principle which Berengar con- 
 currently asserted startled and aroused the Church. While 
 familiar with the writings of the Fathers, for he was one th 
 of the most learned men of his time, he refused implicit 
 deference to their authority, and declared that in the search 
 for truth reason must be the guide. The sacred writings 
 themselves attested, he urged, that the highest of all truth 
 had been inculcated by the Divine Master in a form that 
 recognised this fundamental law. Such was the commence- 
 ment of a fresh controversy which, though familiar to modern 
 ears, seemed strange and portentous to the eleventh century. L n franr% 
 The position which Berengar was led finally to assume <i. im. ' ' 
 aroused a host of antagonists. Foremost among them was 
 Lanfranc, the archbishop of Canterbury, an ecclesiastic who 
 having once contemplated the profession of the jurist, and 
 studied the civil law at Bologna, had afterwards taken upon 
 himself the religious life and uncompromisingly espoused its 
 most rigid interpretation. From the vantage ground of 
 learning superior even to that of Berengar, he assailed in 
 language of stern rebuke the assumptions of the latter. The iic maintains 
 right faith, he maintained, did not exhaust itself in efforts v at' vt view in 
 
 opposition to 
 
 to reconcile to the understanding mysteries above human Uurt - n -" r - 
 comprehension, and of these was that of the Real Presence. 
 ' God forbid,' he exclaimed, ' that I should rely rather on 
 human reasoning than on the truth and the authority of the 
 holy Fathers.' Ne videar magis arte quam veritate sancto- 
 rumqne Patrinn auctoritate confidere 1 . In the sarcasm here 
 implied in the use of arte in its technical sense, we are 
 reminded of that prevalent conception of proof, as essentially 
 a dialectical achievement in compliance with certain rules, 
 which perhaps more than anything else fettered the spirit of 
 enquiry in this age. A wide interval had been traversed 
 
 1 De Sacra Ccena, c. 7. The reply cnm secundum rationem est factus 
 
 of Berengar in the long lost trea- ad imaginem Dei, suum honorem re- 
 
 tise discovered by Leasing is worthy linquit, nee potest renovari de die in 
 
 of note: 'Maximi plane cordis est, diem ad imaginem Dei.' Adv. Lan- 
 
 per omnia ad dialecticam confugere, franc, Lib. Posterior, ed. Yischer, 
 
 quia confugere ad earn ad rationem 1834, p. 105. 
 est confugere, quo qui non coufugit,
 
 48 LANFRANC AND BERENGAR. 
 
 INTRO- since the time when Carneades and the disciples of the Later 
 
 DUCTIOK. _ * 
 
 ' * ' Academy proposed no longer to aspire to the possession of 
 Jumiiii^of" 8 " positive or absolute truth, but to rest contented in the hope 
 prfxiuix-d'by that they had attained to the probable. It was one of the 
 ^""attention effects, and undoubtedly a very pernicious effect, of the 
 LOK'C. almost exclusive study of the Categories, that the men of this 
 time were beginning to imagine that neither knowledge nor 
 faith was of any assured value or certainty unless reducible 
 to formal logical demonstration ; not merely that conformity 
 was deemed essential to those laws of thought of which the 
 syllogism is the embodiment, but that all belief was held to 
 be susceptible of proof in a series of concatenated propositions 
 like a theorem in geometry. It was consequently only in 
 compliance with the fashion of his time that Berengar thus 
 moulded the form of his first treatise, and incurred the 
 ridicule of Lanfranc for his pedantry. In method he fol- 
 lowed, while in argument he challenged, the traditions he 
 had inherited. 
 
 The spirit in which Lanfranc sought to defend the oppo- 
 site interpretation indicates no advance upon the conventional 
 treatment; and the whole tenor of his argument reveals 
 rather the ecclesiastic alarmed for the authority of his order 
 than the dispassionate enquirer after truth. It must, how- 
 JI,!ri!to of ever be admitted that the general tone of Berengar's treatise 
 gar ' was ill-calculated to disarm hostility. If his mental charac- 
 teristics may be inferred from thence, we should conclude 
 that he was one in whom the purely logical faculty over- 
 whelmed and silenced his emotional nature ; one unable to 
 ' comprehend that union of faith and reason which commends 
 itself to those in whom the religious sentiment maintains 
 its power.' The mind of the archbishop to some extent 
 resembled that of the archdeacon. Then came the inevitable 
 collision. The one sternly asserting the claims of authority; 
 the other contemptuously demonstrating the rigid conclusions 
 of logic. At first it seemed that the former would secure 
 an easy triumph. Berengar, to save his life, capitulated at 
 the summons of the second Lateran Council, and formally 
 recanted his opinions ; but, in a short time, he had revoked
 
 ORIGIN OF THE SCHOLASTIC .PHILOSOPHY. 49 
 
 his recantation, and again betaking himself to those weapons 
 of logic which he wielded with such remarkable adroitness, *- - 
 successfully parried the attacks of his opponents. The 
 decisions of three successive Councils vainly denounced 
 his tenets. Protected by the powerful arm of Hildebrand, 
 the archdeacon of Angers died in full possession of his 
 honours, unsilenced and unconvinced. The following year 
 died Laufranc, and the mitre of his episcopacy descended to 
 hit pupil Anselm. 
 
 But before Anselm succeeded to the see of Canterbury, 
 another controversy had arisen, which unmistakably attested a. 1109. 
 how the chord somewhat roughly touched by Berengar had 
 found response in the growing though tfulness of the time. 
 Speculations once confined to solitary thinkers were now 
 beginning to be heard in the schools and to be discussed in 
 the cloister. It was at the request "of his fellow monks, as 
 Anselm himself tells us 1 , that he entered upon those subtle 
 enquiries wherein we find the echo of Augustine's finest 
 thought, and the anticipation of Descartes. But it is rather 
 as participant in the controversy which would appear to 
 mark the true commencement of the scholastic era 2 , that 
 this illustrious thinker claims our attention, and here, before 
 we become involved in the great metaphysical dispute, it 
 
 1 Prtefatio ad Monologion. human thought; how it cannot but 
 8 ' It may appear at first singular encounter this same question, which 
 that the thought which suggested it- in another form divided in either 
 self to the mind of a monk at Bee avowed or unconscious antagonism, 
 should still be the problem of meta- Plato and Aristotle, Anselm and his 
 physical theology; and theology must, opponents, (for opponents he had of 
 when followed out, become metaphy- no common subtlety), Leibnitz and 
 sical ; metaphysics must become theo- Locke ; which Kant failed to reconcile ; 
 logical. This same thought seems, which his followers have perhaps 
 with no knowledge of its mediaeval ori- bewildered by a new and intricate 
 gin, to have forced itself on Descartes, phraseology more than elucidated; 
 was reasserted by Leibnitz, if not re- which modern eclecticism harmonises 
 jected was thought insufficient by rather in seeming than in reality; the 
 Kant, revived in another form by question of questions; our primary, 
 Schelling and Hegel; latterly has elemental, it may be innate or in- 
 been discussed with singular fulness stinctive, or acquired and traditional, 
 and ingenuity by M. de Re"musat. idea, conception, notion, conviction 
 Yet will it less surprise the more of GOD, of the Immaterial, the Eter- 
 profoundly reflective, who cannot but nal, the Infinite.' Milman, Hist. Lat. 
 perceive how soon and how inevitably Christianity, Bk. vm c. 5. 
 the mind arrives at the verge of 
 
 4
 
 50 ORIGIN OF THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 INTRO- becomes necessary to turn aside awhile to examine briefly a 
 DUCTION. 
 
 preliminary and not unimportant question. 
 
 It -was originally asserted by Cousin, and his dictum has 
 
 * . 111 
 
 repeatedly quoted, that the scholastic philosophy had 
 its origin in a sentence from the Isagoge of Porphyry as 
 interpreted by Boethius. ' Scholasticism,' he says, ' was born 
 at Paris and there it died ; a sentence from Porphyry, a 
 single ray from the literature of the ancient world, called 
 it into being; the same literature, which when more com- 
 pletely revealed, extinguished it 1 .' This statement, startling 
 though it may appear, is probably substantially correct; it 
 is certainly not conceived by Cousin in any contemptuous 
 spirit; but it has been insisted on by a later writer in 
 another tone, and apparently under considerable misappre- 
 hension with respect to its real import; and a fact which 
 simply points to the scantiness of the sources whence the 
 earlier schoolmen derived their inspiration, has been wrested 
 into fresh proof of their proneness to convert a purely verbal 
 or grammatical distinction into a lengthened controversy. 
 It may accordingly be worth while here to endeavour to 
 ascertain, in what sense influences which so long controlled 
 the whole course of education and learning can with accuracy 
 be referred to so narrow and apparently inadequate a source. 
 The original The passage in Porphyry, which is nothing more than a 
 Porphyry- passing glance at a question familiar to his age but not 
 admitting of discussion in an introduction to a treatise on 
 logic and grammar, is to the following effect. Having 
 premised that he must equally avoid questions of grave 
 importance and those of a trifling character, he goes on to 
 say: 'Thus, with respect to genera and species, whether 
 
 1 The terseness of the French is sur cette phrase et antour d'elle que 
 
 not easily preserved : un rayon d- va peu a peu se reformer une philo- 
 
 robf a Vantiquite la produiitit; Van- sophie nouvelle. Les commencements 
 
 tii/ a iti' tout entitre Vftouffa 'II de cette philosophic seront bien 
 
 fatit supposer,' he adds, ' le monde faibles, il est vrai, et se ressentiront 
 
 ancien 06 trait, la philosophic ancien- de la profonde barbarie du temps ; 
 
 ne ensevelie avec la civilisation dont mais une fois n6e, la puissance de 
 
 elle faisait partie, et la longue et Internal probleme la de*veloppera et 
 
 brillante polexniqne qui avait fait la lui ouvrira une carriere immense.' 
 
 Tie un TIM- de cette philosophic, re*- Fragments Philosophiques, Aboard, 
 
 dnite A la phrase de Porphyre dans pp. 82, 88, 89. ed. 1840. 
 la induction latino de Boc'ce. C'est
 
 BOETHIUS ON PORPHYRY. 51 
 
 they have a substantial existence or exist only as mere INTKO- 
 concepts of the intellect, whether, supposing them to have ^ v " 
 a substantial existence, they are material or immaterial, 
 and again whether they exist independently of sensible 
 objects or in them and as part of them, I shall refrain from 
 enquiring. For this is a question of the greatest profundity 
 and demanding lengthened investigation 1 .' It is to be noted 
 that of this passage two translations were familiar to the 
 scholars of the Middle Ages : the first that in the translation 
 of Porphyry by Victorinus, to which Boethius appended a 
 commentary in the form of a dialogue ; the second that in 
 the translation made by Boethius himself and accompanied Jhr 
 by a second and fuller commentary, also from his pen. In t^?trL- f 
 the interval between the composition of these two commen- 
 taries it is evident, as Cousin has very clearly pointed out, 
 that the views of Boethius had undergone an important 
 change. In the first he insists upon an ultra-Realistic in- 
 terpretation, and would seem to have misapprehended 
 Porphyry's meaning ; in the second, he inclines to a Nomi- 
 nalistic view, and pronounces that genus and species have 
 no objective existence 2 . Our concern however is with two 
 important facts which appear beyond dispute: first, that 
 the passage in Porphyry was known to the Middle Ages 
 through the medium of two translations; secondly, that in 
 both his commentaries Boethius recognises the question in- 
 volved as one of primary importance 3 . Of this the following criticism of 
 
 r . J . r . 6 Boethiusin 
 
 passages are conclusive evidence : ' Msec se igitur Porphyrius 1^-^ 
 breviter mediocriterque promittit exponere. Non enim in- HoVS'vic" 
 troductionis vice fungeretur, si ea nobis a primordio fundaret, to 
 ad quae nobis hsec tarn clara introductio prseparatur. Servat 
 
 ire/* ytvwv re Kal eltiuv, rl> lard, pp. 92, 93. ed. 1840. Dean 
 
 niv etre vfaaTyicfv etre Kal Iv nfoats Mansel is of opinion that Boe- 
 
 ^(Xats tirivolais Kfirai, efre Kal v<t>TTr)- thins in his second commentary is to 
 
 K^TO. ffuifMTa. tertv }) Affufnara, Kal be regarded as a conceptualist, see 
 
 irorepov xuptffTa ?J Iv TOIS atadrrrdis Artis Logicce Rudimenta, Appendix, 
 
 Kal irfpl ravra vfaffTiirra irapair-^ffOfjiaL p. 160. 
 
 s ovffrjs T^S rwoi'Tjjj 3 Cousin's remark that Boethius 
 
 Kal aXXijs /ic/fo^oj Seo- n'avait pas Vair (Ty attacker une 
 
 us. grande importance, appears to be in 
 
 a Cousin, Fragments Philosophi- no way warranted by the text of 
 
 ques, Philosophic Scholastique, Abe- Boetbius himself. 
 
 42
 
 52 ORIGIN OF THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 igitur introductionis modum doctissima parcitas disputandi 
 ut ingredientium viam ad obscurissimas rerum caligines 
 aliquo quasi doctrines suae lumine temperaret. Dicit enim 
 apud antiquos alta et magnified qucestione disserta, quae ipse 
 nunc parce breviterque composuit. Quid autem de his a 
 priscis philosophise tractatoribus dissertum sit, breviter ipse 
 tangit et praeterit. Turn Fabius : Quid illud, inquit, est ? Et 
 ego : Hoc, inquam, quod ait se omnino praetermittere genera 
 ipsa et species, utrum vere subsistant, an intellectu solo et 
 mente teneantur, an corporalia ista sint an incorporalia : et 
 utrum separata, an ipsis sensibilibus juncta. De his sese 
 quoniara alta esset disputatio, tacere promisit: nos autem 
 .adhibito moderationis freno, mediocriter unumquodque tan- 
 gamusV 
 
 The foregoing passage is from the first Dialogue on the 
 translation by Victorinus : the following are from the Com- 
 mentary by Boethius on his own translation : ' Sunt autem 
 quaestiones, qua? sese reticere promittit et perutiles ; et 
 secret*, et temptatae quidem a doctis viris nee a pluribus 
 dissolute V 
 
 'Ipsa enim genera et species subsistunt quidem aliquo 
 modo, intelliguntur vero alio modo et sunt incorporalia, sed 
 sensibilibus juncta subsistunt insensibilibus. Intelliguntur 
 vero praeter corpora, ut per semetipsa subsistentia, ac non 
 in ali is esse suum habentia. Sed Plato genera et species 
 caeteraque non modo intelligi universalia, verum etiam esse 
 atque praeter corpora subsistere putat : Aristoteles vero 
 intelligi quidem incorporalia atque universalia, sed subsistere 
 insensibilibus putat, quorum dijudicare sententias aptum 
 esse non duxi. Altioris enim est philosophise, idcirco vero 
 studiosius Aristotelis sententiam exsecuti sumus, non quod 
 earn maxime probaremus, sed quod hie liber ad Prasdicamenta 
 conscriptus est, quorum Aristotelis auctor est 8 .' 
 
 The VH-W taken by Boethius of that which he thus con- 
 ceived to be the Aristotelian theory respecting Universals, 
 
 1 Boothius, Dialugiu I. ed. Basil. 
 pp. 7 and 8. 
 
 3 Bocthius, Commtntarinrum in 
 
 Porphyrium a se Translation, Lib. i 
 cd. Basil, p. 64. 
 3 Ibid. p. 56.
 
 BOETHIUS ON PORPHYRY. 53 
 
 is clearly analysed by Cousin: 'The final conclusion of INTRO- 
 
 DUGTION 
 
 Boethius,' says this writer, ' upon the three questions contained - -y '* 
 in the sentence of Porphyry, is (1) that in one sense genera 
 and species may be regarded as possessing an independent 
 existence, though not in another; (2) that they are them- 
 selves incorporeal but exist only in corporeal objects of sense; 
 (3) that though they have no real existence save in the 
 individual and sensible object, they may be conceived, apart 
 from the sensible and particular, as incorporeal and self- 
 subsistent. According to Plato, says Boethius, genera, species, 
 and universals, exist not only as concepts of the intellect, but 
 independently of sensible objects and abstracted from them ; 
 according to Aristotle, they have no real existence save in 
 sensible objects and are universal and immaterial only as 
 apprehended by the mind. It remains but to add that 
 Boethius does not pretend to decide between the two ; the 
 decision of the controversy belongs to a higher branch of 
 philosophy. If he has given us the Aristotelian conclusion, 
 it is not because he approves it rather than that of Plato, but 
 because the treatise on which he is commenting is an intro- 
 duction to the Categories, the work of Aristotle himself. 
 From this statement, which is scrupulously accurate, it is 
 evident that if Boethius in his first commentary would seem 
 to favour without reservation and with but little judgement 
 the Platonic theory; in the second, without a single opinion 
 upon the question of Universals that can be called his own, 
 but solely in his capacity as translator and commentator on 
 Aristotle, he adopts the Peripatetic theory, enunciates it 
 with equal lucidity, follows it out into considerable detail, 
 devoting but a single line to the theory of Plato; and it 
 was thus that, of the two great schools which had divided 
 antiquity, one only, that of Aristotle, was to any extent 
 known, offering indeed with respect to the problem of 
 Porphyry a doctrine not altogether satisfactory, but at least 
 clear and well defined. Add to this that the Introduction 
 by Porphyry and the two works of Aristotle translated by 
 Boethius, are works on logic and grammar ; that these only 
 were studied and commented on, and this always in conformity
 
 54 ORIGIN OF THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 INTRO- with Boethius; and it is evident that from this exclusive 
 / ' study there could scarcely result anything but tendencies 
 and intellectual habits entirely opposed to realism Y 
 
 It will scarcely be deemed necessary that we should 
 
 produce further evidence to shew that not simply were the 
 
 main features of the Realistic controversy carefully preserved 
 
 in the pages of the best known author of the earlier Middle 
 
 Ages, but that the Aristotelian refutation was especially 
 
 familiar to the learned of those times; and it is further to 
 
 TiicttioMof be observed that the gloss of Rabanus Maurus quoted by 
 
 Mauri" Mr Lewes in his History of Philosophy, and erroneously 
 
 Tern're 1 -"*" attributed by him to Boethius, constitutes not the locus 
 
 i'nm'i classicus, as he has inferred, for the origin of the controversy, 
 
 to"i f ?tath but is rather evidence that the controversy was sufficiently 
 
 familiar to the age in which Rabanus wrote to permit him 
 
 to indicate it by nothing more than a passing allusion 2 . 
 
 Cousin, indeed, has ventured to surmise that, inasmuch as 
 
 Rabanus was a pupil of Alcuin at Tours and afterwards 
 
 himself head of the school founded by Charlemagne at Fulda, 
 
 this gloss may possibly represent the dialectical teaching of 
 
 those schools. However this may be, it is sufficiently certain 
 
 that the great dispute respecting Universals did not remain 
 
 fossilised in three words- from the time of Boethius to that of 
 
 Roscellinus, but that it was to a certain extent familiar to 
 
 the students of the ninth and tenth centuries, and that when 
 
 the daring upholder of ultra-Nominalism came forward to 
 
 1 Cousin,. Fragments Philotophi- three points: (1) in ascribing to 
 
 quc*,. Abeiurd, pp. 100 102. The Boethius the foregoing passage, which 
 
 arguments which Uoethius brings for- as Cousin expressly states is part of 
 
 ward are borrowed from Aristotle, the gloss of Rabanus Maurus ; (2) in 
 
 Alftaphyticg, Bks. in and vm pp. 62, applying the comments of Cousin on 
 
 16H, 174, ed. Brandis. the translation of Porphyry by Boe- 
 
 The following is the original of thius in the aixth century, to the 
 
 the passage quoted by Mr Lewes gloss of Kabanus Maurus in the 
 
 (Hilt, of Phil, u 25) -.Inlrntio For- ninth; (8) in leaving it to be inferred 
 
 phyrii ett in hue opere facilem intel- that the above fragment of this gloss 
 
 U c turn ad Pradicammta prapararc, was the ole surviving postage wherein 
 
 tractandodequinqucrrbutvflvocibii*, the question of Universals was ad- 
 
 grnere Kiticet, tpecie, differentia, pro- verted to by Boethius. So erroneous 
 
 prio et accident*, quorum cognitio a representation of the history of 
 
 valet ad Pradicamentontm coynitio- what Mr Lewes himself terms the 
 
 ntm. Mr Lewes (while quoting 'Great Dispute' of these times, 
 
 Cousin as his authorfty) has, as it attests a very hasty consultation of 
 
 appears te me, fallen into error on his authority.
 
 ROSCELLINUS. 55 
 
 urge his philosophic arguments in contravention of the doc- 
 trine of the Trinity, he did little more, as regards the arena 
 of metaphysics, than add fresh fuel to a controversy already 
 frequently debated 1 . 
 
 But though it would appear that Roscellinus cannot Rosceiiinus. 
 rightly be regarded as the first to renew the ancient battle, 
 it is undeniable that he invested it with a greatly increased 
 importance by the new element he introduced. Hitherto 
 the existence of Universals had probably been regarded as 
 little more than an abstract question,, and indistinguishable 
 as such from the many numerous discussions that exercised 
 the ingenuity of the dialectician. The new starting point HU appiica- 
 associated with the name of Roscellinus, is that marked by controversy 
 
 the application, which he was the first to make, of the universais 
 
 to the doc- 
 conclusions of the prevailing Nominalism to that great theo- T^ty?' 10 
 
 logical doctrine which one writer has ventured to characterise 
 as the 'foundation of all the metaphysical thought and 
 speculation of the ages after Gregory the Great,' the doctrine 
 of the Trinity. The seeming relevancy of his opinion to 
 this doctrine scarcely requires to be indicated. If indeed it 
 were possible to show that essences or qualities, over and 
 above their presence in the individual, had a separate entity, 
 that this entity again was something apart from the concept in 
 the mind, equally distinct from the sentient subject and the 
 sensible object, it might seem to many to follow that the 
 great mystery of a Triune Godhead, the Three in One, the 
 One in Three, was in some degree brought nearer to human 
 apprehension 2 . To such a conclusion however the Nomi- 
 
 1 ' En avan(;ant dans ce commen- peripate"ticieime repandue par Boece 
 
 taire (that of Rabanus) on s'apercoit prevalait gene'ralement, mats qu'il y 
 
 que ce doute n'est pas particulier a avait pourtant a cote de celle-la une 
 
 1'auteur ; on apprend qu'il avait de"ja solution difflrente, qui, nans etre aussi 
 
 deux partis sur cette question et accreditee, avait aussi scs partisans. 1 
 
 comme deux ecoles constitutes, et Fragments Philosophiques, Abelard,p. 
 
 que Tune de ces Ecoles pre"tendait 106 and 119. For an exhaustive ex- 
 
 que Porphyre ne considere dans cette amination of the relation of Boethius 
 
 Introduction le genre, 1'espece, la dif- to the whole controversy see Re"musat, 
 
 fe"rence, le propre, 1'accident, qu'ab- Abelard, n 37 64. 
 stractiveinent et comme des noms... 2 Such, at least, was certainly the 
 
 II re"sulte que le probleme pos6 view of Anselm : ' Qui enim nondum 
 
 par Porphyre dans les premieres intelligit quomodo phires homines in 
 
 lignes de 1' Introduction excitait deja specie sint homo unus, qualiterin ilia 
 
 quclque attention; que la solution secretissimanatiira^comprehendetqiiO'
 
 56 CONTROVERSY RESPECTING UNIVERSAL*?. 
 
 iwrrio~N na ^ sm ^ Roscellinus which appeared inevitably to lead' up 
 *v ' to Tritheism, offered an insuperable barrier, and hence the 
 origin of that great controversy, commencing between^ this 
 philosopher and Anselm, which so long divided the learning 
 and' the intellect of these times. Into the details of this 
 long dispute it is not within our province to enter 1 . For 
 more than two centuries it formed the rallying point of 
 contending parties, and the Schools re-echoed to cries of 
 
 u!i"i.'ury. universalia ante rem, and universalia in re. John of Salis- 
 bury, writing about the year 1152,, relates how when he 
 returned to Oxford after his residence at Paris, whither he 
 had gone to study the canon law, he found the wordy warfare 
 raging with undiminished vigour. The science of sciences, as 
 Rabanus Maurus had called it, seemed likely altogether to 
 absorb the rest. The enthusiasm of the disputants was 
 puzzling to his cool, practical, English mind, and elicited 
 from him expressions of unqualified contempt, the earliest, 
 perhaps, that greeted the ears of the learned of that period. 
 
 HP MUmitte ' They bring forth,' he said, ' some new opinion concerning 
 enera an( l species, that had escaped Boethius, and of which 
 Plato was ignorant, but which they by wonderful good fortune 
 have extracted from the mine of Aristotle; They are pre- 
 pared to solve the old question, in working at which the 
 world has grown old, and more time has been expended than 
 the Caesars employed in winning and governing the universe, 
 more money spent than Croesus ever possessed. Long has 
 this question exercised numbers throughout their whole lives; 
 this single discovery has been the sole object of their search; 
 and they have eventually failed to arrive at any result 
 whatever. The reason I suppose was that their curiosity was 
 unsatisfied with that which alone could be discovered. For 
 as in the shadow of any body the substance of solidity is vainly 
 
 mndo phtTf* ptrxona", quorum Kinrjula Science ; HaTirt-an, Philosophic Scho~ 
 
 ipifeqf rtt perfectiu Detu, tint Dm* lantiqut ; Hampdon's Hampton Lee- 
 
 ' Df Fide Trinitatit give In- tnret, Lect. n; and, for the im- 
 
 rnrnntiont I'rrbi, contra blaxphemias portant question of the relation of 
 
 I'erbi, quoted by Cousin. the Categories and the IsagoRe of 
 
 For an impartial account of the Porphyry to the controversy, Dean 
 
 controversy, sec Appendix (A) to Pro- Munsul's Artis Logics Rudimenta 
 
 lessor Bain's Mental and Moral Appendix, Note A. '
 
 JOHN OF SALISBURY. 57 
 
 sought for, so in those things that belong to the intellect, j, 1 , 
 and can only be conceived as universals but cannotr exist as 
 universals, the substance of a more solid existence cannot be 
 discerned. To wear out a life in things of this kind is to 
 work, teach, and do nothing ; for these are but the shadows 
 of things, ever fleeing away and vanishing the more quickly 
 the more eagerly they are pursued 1 .' It is an oft repeated 
 reminder to which he gives utterance in his writings, that 
 the dialectic art however admirable is not the sum and end 
 of human acquirement 2 . To such vagaries the school pre- 
 sided over by Bernard of Chartres at the close of the eleventh ei 
 century offers an agreeable contrast. Grammar and rhetoric 
 appear to have there been taught after a far less mechanical "'f,, 
 fashion; an attention to correct Latinity was inculcated, and tion 
 Cicero and Quintilian were studied as models. The Koman 
 poets were not neglected, and the whole system of instruc- 
 tion elicited the commendation of the writer above quoted. 
 It is to be observed indeed, that Lanfranc, Anselm, John of 
 Salisbury 3 , and Giraldus Cambrensis wrote far purer Latin uTu' 
 than is subsequently to be found among those whose taste was 
 completely corrupted by the barbarous versions of Aristotle 
 that were studied by the later Schoolmen. 
 
 In the year 1109 Anselm died ; it was the year in which 
 William of Champeaux opened a school of logic at Paris. 
 Among his pupils was Abelardj and a few years later we see 
 
 1 Policraticus, Bk.. vii c. 12. His sola. Tune demum eminet, cum ad- 
 description- of the different parties junctarum virtute splendescit.' 
 
 also deserves quotation: 'Sunt qui, 3 It may be here noted that the 
 
 more mathematicorum, formas ab- numerous citations in John of Salis- 
 
 strahunt,. et ad illas quidquid de bury from, classical writers are fre- 
 
 vmiversalibus dicitur referunt. Alii quently second-hand. His knowledge 
 
 discutiunt intellectus, et eos univer- of Greek was scanty; he had read 
 
 salium nominibus censeri coufirmant.. with a learned Greek parts of the 
 
 Fuerunt et qui voces ipsas genera Organon and of the Topica, but 'he 
 
 dicerent esse et species; sed eorum nowhere professes^ to have read [for 
 
 jam explosa sententia est,, et facile himself] a Greek book; we find in 
 
 cum aiictore suo evanuit. Sunt ta- him no citation from a Greek author, 
 
 men adhuc ,qui deprehenduntur in. not known to him through the me- 
 
 vestigiis eorum, licet erubescant auc- clium of Latin.' C. Schaarschmidt, 
 
 torem vel sententiam profiteri, solis Johannes Saresberiensis nach. Lebcn 
 
 nominibus inhaerentes, quod rebus et und Studien, Schnften und Philoso- 
 
 intellectibus subtrahunt, sermonibus phie, (Leipzig, 1862) 113'. (Quoted 
 
 ascribunt.' by Rev. J. E. B. Mayor, Pref. to 
 
 2 Afetalogicus, Lib. n c. 9 ; rv 27. Richard of Cirencester (Rolls Series), 
 ' Fere enim inutilis- est logica, si sit p. cxvii).
 
 58 
 
 ABELARD. 
 
 TNTRO- 
 l>r(Tinx. 
 
 of PvteT 
 
 Lombard. 
 
 the handsome, vain, impetuous youth challenging his master 
 to argument and completely discomfiting him amid the 
 wonder and applause of his fellow students. We see him 
 again, after his terrible fall and disgrace, venturing once 
 more to lift his head among men and asserting with far 
 greater power and acumen than Berengar, the rights of 
 reason against authority, essaying by an eclectic theory to 
 reconcile to the intellect the mysteries of faith, and even 
 daring to question whether Dionysius the Areopagite ever 
 set foot in GauL It is very evident, from the crowds which 
 hung upon his teaching, following him to his lonely retreat, 
 and from the efforts of William of Thierry and Bernard of 
 Clairvaux to check the progress of the new ideas, that a spirit 
 was moving among men which the mere traditionalist regarded 
 with apprehension and alarm. Throughout Europe indeed a 
 change was to be discerned. The preceding century, ushered 
 in amid dire apprehension, had closed in splendour. The 
 banner of the Cross had been seen floating from the battle- 
 ments of the Holy City; the second Crusade, already projected, 
 was rekindling enthusiasm. The university of Paris was 
 attracting numerous students; the teaching of Irnerius at 
 Bologna was diffusing a knowledge of the Roman law ; the 
 poets and orators of antiquity were beginning to be studied 
 with a genuine admiration, and a less barbarous Latinity to 
 prevail among the scholars of the age. ' It was,' observes a 
 writer whom we have already quoted, ' a very critical moment 
 in the history of European culture, not altogether unlike the 
 one in individual life when the boy leaves the school forms 
 for a more elaborate and systematic course of instruction. 
 In both there is the danger that what was vital and energetic, 
 however immature, in the first stage, should be exchanged 
 for formality in the second; the equal danger that there 
 should be a reaction against this formality, and that a stormy 
 life should take the place of a calm one 1 .' 
 
 Such were the tendencies of the age which saw the great 
 theological text-book of the next three centuries, the ' Sen- 
 
 1 Professor Maurice, Mcdiai-al Philotophy, p. 156.
 
 PETER LOMBARD. 59 
 
 tences' of Peter Lombard, launched upon the world, the 
 first of ' a long series of attempts to obtain for the doctrines 
 of the Church a scientific system 1 .' Little is known of the 
 author of this important volume, though archbishop of Paris 
 in 1159, and the originality of his performance has more 
 than once been called in question 2 . Our main concern, 
 however, is with its character as an embodiment of the 
 dogmatic teaching of the time 8 . 
 
 The Sententise are in four books, and are almost entirely outline of 
 
 the work. 
 
 derived from the writings of four fathers of the Latin 
 Church, Augustine, Ambrose, Hilary, and Cassiodorus, the 
 authority of the first being evidently paramount. The first 
 book, entitled De Mysterio Trinitatis, contains an exposition 
 of the recognized tenets of the Church concerning this 
 dogma, and its forty-eight Distinctiones are devoted to the 
 attributes of the Deity*. The second book, entitled De Rerum 
 Corporalium et Spiritualium Creatione et Formations, Aliis- 
 que Pluribus eo Pertinentibus, contains the doctrine of the 
 Church concerning Free Will and Original Sin ; the theory 
 maintained being, as may be anticipated, that first formulated 
 by Augustine. The third book bears the title of De Incar- 
 natione Verbi, and treats of such questions as 1. Utrum 
 Christus sit creatura, vel creatiis, vel factus. 2. Si Anima 
 
 1 Schwegler, Hist, of Philosophy, pression. The following passage 
 p. 144, Stirling's Translation. happily illustrates the older usage: 
 
 2 Some accuse the author of ex- ' And you, that do read Plato, as ye 
 tensive plagiarism from Abelard, and should, do well perceive, that these 
 the author of the Introduction in be no questions asked by Socrates, 
 Migne, Vol. cxci refers to a report as doutes, but they be sentences, first 
 that he is said Bandinum quendam affirmed by Socrates, as mere trothes, 
 obscuri nominis theologum in quatuor and after, given forth by Socrates 
 Sentcntiarnm libris, qui Vienna pro- as right rales, most necessarie to be 
 dieritnt anno 1519, pene integrum marked and fitte to be followed of 
 cxscripsisse. Others think his con- all of them that would have children 
 ception is to be traced to the example taught as they should.' Ascham'a 
 of Robert Pullen, an English scho- Scholemaster ed. by Mayor, p. 28. 
 lastic, who wrote Sententiarum Libri * The doctrine with which the 
 Octo. See Ueberweg, Geschichte der names of Fe'nelon and Paley have, 
 Philosophic, u 146. from divergent views, been associated 
 
 3 It may perhaps not be altogether is here perhaps first distinctly laid 
 superfluous to remind the reader down in the form of a decision from 
 that the word 'sentences' is here St. Augustine; virtue, says Peter 
 only a translation of ' sententise,' Lombard, is to be followed not for 
 a use of the word not uncommon in its own sake but as a course that is 
 our earlier writers, though now re- pleasing to the Deity. 
 
 tained solely as a grammatical ex-
 
 60 THE SENTENCES. 
 
 i> T rnrio.N Wtristi habuerit sapientiam parem cum Deo ; et si omnia scit 
 "-~v qu(e Dens. 3. Si Christus meruit et sibi et nobis, et quid sibi 
 et quid nobis 1 . The fourth book treats of the Sacraments, and 
 the distinction between the Old and New Law, the final 
 judgement, the resurrection of the dead, the final happiness 
 of the saints, and the sufferings of the damned. 
 
 A comprehensive outline of the work will be found in the 
 Benedictine Histoire Litttfraire de la France 1 ; our main 
 concern, however, is with that new element which the 
 nink-cticai Sentences, while apparently resting solely upon patristic 
 the work, authority, undoubtedly served to introduce into the study 
 of dogmatic theology. The dialectics of the age were pene- 
 trating to the very citadel of belief, and the recognition 
 afforded to this tendency of the times may be regarded as 
 the characteristic feature of the work. As each article of 
 belief is enunciated, an effort is made to define with greater 
 precision its true bearing and limitations ; hence a series 
 of Distinctions, as they are termed, conceived in conformity 
 with a dialectic of the severest order ; Cousin indeed has 
 asserted that in this respect they surpass all previous efforts 
 of scholasticism 8 . Of the value of such a method different 
 opinions may be entertained. It is easy, on the one hand, to 
 point to the merest puerilities, the natural result of the 
 application of the same process to details with respect to 
 which, as knowledge was wanting, the logician could but 
 fight the air, heresies, representing nothing more than 
 flights of the imagination, met by dogmas resting upon an 
 
 1 One of the questions that divi- J Vol. xn p. 589. A fuller and 
 
 tied the schools in the time of 1'etrus very careful one, but poor in lite- 
 
 was whether tho divine nature, or rary execution, is to be found in the 
 
 only the personality of the Son, be- Esai mr lea Srntenccs de Pierre 
 
 oaine incarnate. After Humming up Lombard Conxidtrf.cg sou* If point 
 
 fhe opinions of the Fathers, he con- de Vue Hittorico-Dogmatiqut ; These 
 
 eludes that we must admit that tho pour obtenir le Grade de Bachelier 
 
 pcreon of the Son has put on human en TlxSologie, par Jean Bresch. Stras- 
 
 nature, and that thus the divine and bourg, 1857. 
 
 human natures have been united in Cousin speaks of Petrus Lom- 
 
 flic Son. When therefore we say that bardus as distinguished ' par une 
 
 the Son baa taken on him the nature se've'rite' de dialectique que vous ne 
 
 of a slave, we intend not to exclude tronveriez point dans les scholasti- 
 
 tho divine nature but only the per- ques qui lui sont ant6rieurs.' (Euvres 
 
 nons ol the Father and the Holy (Bruxelles), i 192. 
 Ghost.
 
 THE SENTENCES. 61 
 
 equally unsatisfactory foundation. On the other hand, it 
 is certain that, in relation to fundamental articles of belief, 
 this rigid analysis of their meaning and whole context, could 
 scarcely fail to develop a more clear and intelligent com- 
 prehension of the doctrines of the Christian faith. 'No 
 student of divinity,' says a critic of acknowledged authority, criticism of 
 4 can read the first book, we should conceive, without acquir- professor 
 
 Maurice. 
 
 ing a deeper and clearer conception of principles in which he 
 has implicitly believed, without cultivating the precious 
 habit of distinction. And we doubt whether any student of 
 philosophy can read large portions of that book and of the 
 three following, without acquiring a new sense of the dignity 
 and responsibility of the name which he has taken upon 
 him, without confessing that the dogmatist has taught him 
 to be more of an enquirer than he was before.' 
 
 The modest language in which the compiler describes his 
 work, as containing within a small compass the opinions of 
 the fathers, to save the enquirer the trouble of turning over 
 many volumes 1 , might seem sufficient to have averted oppo- 
 sition. In that endeavour however he was by no means 
 completely successful. Like all innovations, this application 
 of the logician's art was regarded at first with dislike and opposition 
 
 ... 111-1 encountered 
 
 suspicion. The volume which was to become the theological n its > first 
 text-book of our universities up to the Reformation, was 
 severely criticised on its first introduction 2 . Gualterus, the 
 
 I ' brevi volumine conplicans Pa- had passed into records of opinions, 
 tram sententias, appositis eorum they readily adopted, as guides in 
 testimoniis, ut non sit necesse quse- their decisions of any new opinions, 
 renti librorum numerositatem evol- the conclusions of that rationalising 
 vere.' Pr<ef. ad Sententias. method which as such had been so 
 
 II ' It is a curious fact that the spi- passionately denounced. Through- 
 ritual powers persisted in strenuously out the whole period, when the scho- 
 opposing the successive efforts of the lastic method may be said to have 
 rationalists, and at the same time been growing, we meet with constant 
 gradually adopted the very system to disclaimers, on the part of Church 
 which they were so averse, into their leaders, of the system itself, a con- 
 own authoritative theology. They stant appeal to the authority of the 
 opposed, that is, both the principle Scriptures and the holy Fathers 
 of the rationalists, the principle against the rationalistic spirit of the 
 that human reason was to be exer- times. Luther himself has not more 
 cised in matters of religion, and the vehemently denounced the scholastic 
 conclusions to which the unrestrained philosophy, than Bernard and other 
 use of it had led. But afterwards, doctors anterior to the Reformation 
 when the books of controversialists have declaimed against the importu-
 
 <J2 THE SENTENCES. 
 
 DUCTION ^ > " or f tg Victoire, in his celebrated attack on Abelard, did 
 ' not spare the prelate who appeared to have learned so much 
 from that philosopher, and denounced a method which he 
 declared served rather to encourage doubt than to confirm 
 the belief of the faithful 1 . Nor can we assert that the 
 mistrust thus evinced was without foundation. Rome has 
 ever apprehended with mai'vellous instinct the approach of 
 danger, of danger not to truth but to her own interests and 
 power. The Sentences of Peter Lombard exerted an in- 
 Th influence fluence which equally exceeded the intentions of the compiler 
 UK- sentence* and the anticipations of his opponents. The appeal once 
 made from authority to reason, from implicit faith to logical 
 satisfaction, the old method of treatment could not be re- 
 stored ; the standard of the philosopher had been planted 
 within the precincts of the Church 8 . The opposition evoked, 
 however, was but shortlived, for the Sentences appealed 
 with singular success to both the wants and mental habits of 
 the age. Before long it became the recognised obligation of 
 each great teacher to reconcile his philosophic tenets with 
 the subtle definitions, the rigidly inflexible analysis of the 
 commentaries of Peter Lombard. To this task two of the 
 massive folios of Thomas Aquinas, in the edition published 
 at Venice in 1593, are devoted ; and in the great edition of 
 Duns Scotus, by Luke Wadding, no less than six folio 
 volumes, or half the whole number, are occupied with the 
 same labour. Albertus Magnus, Bonaventura, Durandus, 
 
 natencss of the speculations of their xufficcret disputatio. Bulseus, ///.-/. 
 
 times.' Hampden's Scholastic Philo- Univ. Paris, u 406. 
 tophy, Lect i. * ' Get ouvrage destine" A tracer des 
 
 1 The gravamen of the attack made limites a 1'esprit humain, a lui in - 
 
 by GnalteniH was quod qua ua esset diqner les sources ou il devait puiser 
 
 tententia, nunquam fere apcriret; sed la theologie, a eu un effet tout oon- 
 
 triplicrm vulgo de omni quatione traire a sn destination. Janmis la 
 
 proponent opinionem; quorum prima licence des opinions nefut plus" gran do 
 
 eorum erat qui nee Hteretici nee Ca- qn'apres les Sentences; jamais les 
 
 tliolici vert did poterant. 2. Eorum Scolastiques n'etudierent avec plus 
 
 qui manifettt Catholici erant. 3. De- d'ardenr la philosophie paiennc et 
 
 nique forum qui abtque ullo ditbio n'en ns^rent plus dans les matidrcs 
 
 ctrutndi rrant harttici. Omnet vero de religion que depuis que Lombard 
 
 authoritatilnu acr<e Scriptura; et en eu monfra les dangers. Jamais 
 
 tanrtorum Patrum, rationibu$ quoque 1'^tude des Peres ne fnt plus ndglig^e 
 
 et argumentit dialtcticit confirmabat, que depuis qu'iU'avaitrecommand^e.' 
 
 non determinant qua- vera ettent et UHistoirc Litttraire de France, xn 
 
 ttntnda, aieni nolle $e ut lectori nta 600.
 
 ST. ANSELM. 63 
 
 Occam, and Estius are scarcely inferior in their zeal as Di 
 expositors. The Church, in gratitude for the signal service 
 he had rendered, long celebrated the memory of Peter 
 Lombard by an annual commemoration in his honour, and 
 even in Protestant communions, those who could so far 
 divest themselves of the prejudices of association as to realise 
 the standpoint from whence those labours were conceived, 
 have borne emphatic testimony to their merit. 
 
 Hound the authoritative utterances of the Sentences grew 
 up the dogmatic theology of succeeding generations, the 
 theology of the schoolman, trained and trammelled over a 
 rigid network of dialectics, where the flower often lost its 
 perfume and the fruit perished. It was well for the faith of 
 those ages that, before the prevailing method had driven life, 
 
 warmth, and sensibility from out the pale of belief, a thinker st An 
 
 fc io^i 
 
 of a different school from that of Peter Lombard arose to <* 1109. 
 
 transmit a loftier tradition. It may be doubted whether 
 
 even the Sentences more strongly affected the habits of HU influence 
 
 religious thought for the next three centuries than did the gian. 
 
 writings of St. Anseim. Whatever of emotion trembles on 
 
 the lips of the later schoolmen, Bonaventura, Lincolniensis, 
 
 or Gerson, whatever of theological speculation still flung 
 
 its plummet into depths which defied the subtlety of the 
 
 dialecticians owed its inspiration, to a great extent, to the 
 
 author of the Proslogion. And yet Anseim was no mere 
 
 enthusiast; he was rather the metaphysician, indignantly 
 
 repudiating the shackles which the new logic was casting 
 
 around enquiries which he regarded as the highest activity 
 
 to which man could aspire. His argumentation, for the 
 
 most part, is equally removed from the puerilities of the 
 
 schools and from the inconclusive rhapsodies of the mystic. 
 
 In his writings the spirit of St. Augustine lives again, and it 
 
 was indeed, in all probability, chiefly through the influence 
 
 of the English archbishop that the genius of the African 
 
 Father retained its hold upon the western Church. The 
 
 Credo ut inteUigam became the key-note to all that was 
 
 most noble in the belief of the Middle Ages ; and modern 
 
 speculation, wearying of the endless search for mental assur-
 
 64 ST. ANSELM. 
 
 DUCTION ancc * n *^ P nenomena f *h e external world, has more than 
 1 *~- --" once returned to this subjective testimony, to reconstruct, 
 with a more elaborate synthesis, it is true, but on the same 
 foundation, the edifice of faith 1 . 
 
 conclusion. Our retrospect has now brought us to the threshold of 
 the thirteenth century. We have endeavoured to trace out 
 the chief elements and tendencies in the thought and culture 
 that preceded that .eventful age, and more especially to bring 
 out in their true importance and relations questions with 
 respect to which, as it has appeared to us, the interpretations 
 of certain writers have been .defective or erroneous : and 
 while the necessity for brevity has perforce diminished the 
 value of our enquiry for those .to whom the field is new, and 
 its interest for those to whom it is known,, we may yet hope 
 that we have succeeded in indicating the more important 
 materials for a more lengthened investigation. 
 
 1 ' La nouveaute" de cette the*ologie Anselmo n'appartient pas a la prc- 
 
 vient de ce qu'elle est une applica- miere-; il a peu fait pour elle, quoi- 
 
 tion an dogme, non do la logique, qu'il ait certainement sa place mar- 
 
 mais de la me*taphysique; non de la qu6e dans la philosophic proprement 
 
 dialectique d'Aristote, mais de la dia- elite ; et pour la secoude, il est venu 
 
 lectique de Platon. C'est done tout au moment ou elle se formait. II n'a 
 
 ensemble exage*rer et m6connaltre le pas i'tr sans influence sur sa forma - 
 
 rule d'Ansehne que de 1'appeler on tion, mais il n'en a pas pr6*cisment 
 
 des createurs dc la scolastique. II determine' le caract&re. II no ten- 
 
 fuudrait au moius faire nne distinc- dait pas a la faire scolastiqnc, mais 
 
 tion que les critiques omettent trop philosophiqne. II voulait fonder la 
 
 sonvent, entre la philosophic sco- philosophie da dogme.' Kdinusat, 
 
 lustique et la thuologie scolastique. St Anselm de Cantorbcry, p. 478.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 COMMENCEMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY ERA. 
 
 IN our introductory sketch we have essayed to point out CHA1> - T - 
 some of the more important data on which, up to the period 
 when the University of Cambridge first greets the research 
 of the historian, our estimate of the culture, the philosophy, 
 and the mental characteristics of the preceding centuries 
 must rest. Of both the darkness and the dawn which belong 
 to this era it seems fittest to speak in less general and un- 
 qualified language than has often been employed. The 
 darkness, great as it undoubtedly was, had still its illumina- 
 tion ; the dawn was far from steady and continuous, but 
 rather a shifting, capricious light, often advancing only again 
 to recede. We have seen how imperfect was the knowledge 
 of the literature of antiquity to which the student, in those 
 times, was able to attain, and how limited was the circle 
 to which what survived of that literature was known ; how, 
 amid the fierce shocks and dark calamities that prevailed, 
 the conceptions of the theologian were narrowed and over- 
 shadowed bv one dread conviction : how, as some sense of Recapituia- 
 
 ' ITT l ' on ^ 
 
 security returned, and the barbarian acknowledged a stronger 
 
 arm, learning again took heart, and minds began once more 
 to enquire, to speculate, and to theorise ; how scepticism, 
 with weapons snatched from the armoury of paganism, as- 
 sailed the doctrines of the Church ; how the study of law 
 followed upon the return of external order; how the political 
 exigencies of Rome led her to impose on Europe a code
 
 G6 EARLY TRADITIONS RESPECTING CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 CHAP. i. fraught with unscrupulous fiction; how, as the spirit of 
 enquiry awoke and reason reasserted its claims, authority 
 sought to define their prerogative by a more formal and 
 systematic enunciation of traditional dogma ; while, as yet, 
 the philosopher questioned and doubted, scarcely dreaming 
 of ultimate divergence, and the dogmatist distinguished and 
 proscribed, equally unprescient of the contest that was yet 
 to be. 
 
 Fabuiow It is at this stage in the progress of Europe that the 
 
 character of . 
 
 ac^mntiof English universities pass from the region of mere tradition 
 luv'o" cam- to that of history. Fable indeed long beguiled the ears of 
 our forefathers with the story of the ancient renown of Cam- 
 bridge, and within comparatively recent times an historian 
 of repute could unsuspectingly retail from Peter of Blois, as 
 ' an author of undoubted credit Y the details of the earliest 
 instruction given within her precincts. The canons of a 
 severer criticism however have swept away not only legends 
 of Spanish founders and Athenian teachers, of Sigebert for a 
 royal founder, of Bede and Alcuin for her earliest doctors of 
 divinity *, but have also pronounced Ingulphus and his con- 
 Tiie account tinuator alike undeserving of credit 8 . We are accordingly 
 i!.neraii7dig- com P e U e d to abandon, as an imaginary scene, the not un- 
 pleasing picture which represents the monks sent by the 
 abbat of Crowland to Cambridge, expounding, early in the 
 twelfth century, in humble barns and to enthusiastic au- 
 diences, the pages of Priscian, Aristotle, and Quintilian. Our 
 information indeed concerning the studies of both Oxford 
 and Cambridge continues to be singularly scanty and frag- 
 mentary up to the college era ; conjecture must, on many 
 points, supply the place of facts ; and it is only by a careful 
 
 1 Henry, Hint, of Kngtand, in 438. had before given to these accounts. 
 
 * Carter, in his llittury of the Uni- Sir Francis Palgrave inclined to the 
 
 renity of Cambridge, p. 7, gives with- belief that the Chronicle of Ingul- 
 
 out any apparent doubt, a letter from phuH was not of older date than the 
 
 Alcuin to the Scholars of Cambridge, 13th or first half of the fourteenth 
 
 exhorting them to diligence in their century, and that it must be con- 
 
 fttudies! See also Lydgate's verses sidered ' as little better than a monk- 
 
 on the Foundation of the University, ish invention, a mere historical novel;' 
 
 Appendix (A). Mr Wright regards the continuation 
 
 3 Halliun, in the later editions of attributed to Peter of Blois as equal- 
 
 hia Middle Age, (see eleventh edit. ly spurious. 
 in 421) retracted the crlonce be
 
 NORMAN INFLUENCES IN ENGLAND. 67 
 
 study of the circumstantial evidence that we are enabled to CHAP. r. 
 arrive at a sufficiently probable induction. The character of Nonuan in- 
 
 .... i A i i flui-nccs prior 
 
 the induction admits ot being very concisely stated. It is a ^ the <*>*- 
 fact familiar to the student of our early history that before 
 the Norman victory on the field of battle at Senlac, a gentler 
 subjugation had already been imposed. In the language of 
 Macaulay, ' English princes received their education in Nor- 
 mandy. English sees and English estates were bestowed on 
 Normans. The French of Normandy was familiarly spoken 
 in the palace of Westminster. The court of Rouen seems to 
 have been to the court of Edward the Confessor what the 
 court of Versailles long afterwards was to the court of Charles 
 the Second 1 .' To such an extent did this state of things 
 prevail, that at one juncture it even seemed probable that 
 the spread of Norman influences would culminate in a peace- 
 ful establishment of Norman dominion 2 . Such a sequel was Norman 
 
 influences 
 
 only prevented by a great national reaction ; and the ques- ?" the q coS- 
 tion then fell to the arbitration of the sword. But when quesu 
 a foreign dynasty had become firmly planted in our midst, it 
 necessarily followed that these influences were still further 
 intensified. To imitate the refinement, the chivalry, the 
 culture of the dominant race, became the ambition of every 
 Englishman who sought to avoid the reproach that attached 
 to the character of a Saxon boor. Teachers from York no 
 longer drew the outlines of education at Paris; and the great 
 university which now rose in the latter city, to give the tone 
 and direction to European thought, became the school whi- 
 ther every Englishman, who aimed at a character for learn- 
 ing, perforce resorted. The examples there studied and the 
 learning there acquired were reproduced at home. The con- The univer- 
 
 1 sity of Paris 
 
 stitution of the university of Paris formed the model on ^ h ^ el 
 which that of Oxford and that of Cambridge were formed ; cambnS 
 the course of study, the collegiate system, even the regula- 
 tions of the Sorbonne, were imitated with scrupulous fidelity. 
 It was not until two centuries after the Conquest that 
 Englishmen could acknowledge these obligations without 
 
 1 Macaulay, Hist, of England, i 4 2 Freeman's Hist, of the Norman 
 12. . Conquest, n 515. 
 
 52
 
 68 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 
 
 CHAP. I. 
 
 Did the 
 I'tilrersities 
 cause the 
 ruin of the 
 Kplscopal 
 mill Monastic 
 tchoola ? 
 
 humiliation, and could assert that, if their universities owed 
 their constitution to Paris, the debt had been more than re- 
 paid in the teachers whom Paris had received from England. 
 It is thus that, while the destruction of most of the early 
 records relating to the mental activity of Oxford, and a yet 
 greater blank in relation to Cambridge, present considerable 
 difficulties when we endeavour to trace out the connecting 
 links between these universities and the continent, the com- 
 paratively ample data which we possess concerning Paris 
 enable us to some extent to repair the loss, and, in the 
 absence of positive information, to fall back upon reasonable 
 presumptive evidence. It will consequently be needless 
 further to explain why, in the present chapter, we stop to 
 examine the constitution, early fortunes, and intellectual 
 experiences of the university of Paris, before passing on 
 to the universities of our own country. 
 
 An important question meets us at this stage of our 
 enquiry, which it is not within our province to investigate, 
 but which cannot be passed by altogether unnoticed. If we 
 accept the representations put forward by one particular 
 school of writers, the rise of the universities would appear 
 to have directly involved the downfal of the episcopal and 
 monastic schools; and the period from Charlemagne to Philip 
 Augustus has been indicated with fond regret, as the time 
 when the Church performed her fitting function, fashioning 
 the whole conception of education, and watching with ma- 
 ternal care over each detail of instruction 1 . Without entering 
 
 1 ' Parvenus an regne de Philippe- 
 AngUBtc, nous touchons a la nn de 
 l'f\i^t. nr,- glorieuse des e'coles e*pi- 
 scopales ft inonafttiques et a I'ave'ne- 
 nu-ut d'tiii uoqvtl unlre dea cboses. 
 Tons semble des lors conspirer centre 
 1'education claustrale, pour en ac- 
 crir-rcr la mine. Lcs pr<?lats babi- 
 tue*H & la vie tumultueuso depuis lea 
 croisadcs, se laissent absorber par 
 les preoccupations temport lies, et bri- 
 gueut 1'bonneur d'entrer dans ICB 
 conseils dot* princes ou de devenir 
 leur ministres d'Etat. Lets moineH 
 fc'engourdiflBent dans la relacbement 
 et roiaivcte* qu'ainene toujours apres 
 
 olle une trop grande opulence, et se 
 trouvent sans force pour lutter contro 
 les nouveaux ordres religieux qui se 
 sont empare's des chaires de 1'en- 
 seignement. II u'est pas jusqu' a la 
 transformation qui s'op^rait alors 
 dans la soci^t^ f^odale qui n'ait eu 
 eon influence sur ce ddnouement 
 pr<Scipit^. Ce n'est pas que le zele 
 des I'tudiiiiits se soit refroidi, au con- 
 traire, jamais il ue fut plus ardent; 
 mais les til- de ceux qui avaient 
 secoue" le joug des seigneurs pour 
 s'eriger en munieipalite's francb.es 
 se trouverent mal a 1'aise sous 
 la discipline du cloitre, et voulu-
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH UNIVERSITIES. 69 
 
 into the abstract merits of the question, it is sufficient here CHAP. i. 
 to point out that the facts, as pleaded by Theiner 1 and Le'on -^71^1- 
 Maitre, have met with a distinct and specific denial. Ifuun<Sl!y" 
 indeed the guidance of other investigators may be trusted, LewTMiatre 
 the thread that connects the schools of Charlemagne with the 
 university of Paris is to be traced in unbroken continuity. 
 ' Alcuin,' says Monnier, following in the track of the com- counter 
 pilers of the Histoire Litter aire* and of Mabillon, ' numbered V. onof 
 
 ' Monnier. 
 
 among his disciples Rabanus and Hay mo of Halberstadt. 
 Rabanus and Haymo of Halberstadt were both the preceptors 
 of Lupus Servatus 3 ; Lupus Servatus had for a pupil Eric 
 of Auxerre*; Eric of Auxerre was the master of Remy of 
 Auxerre 5 , who taught in turn both at Rheims and at Paris ; 
 at Rheims Remy of Auxerre numbered among his pupils 
 Hildebald and Blidulphus, founders of the schools of Lorraine, 
 and Sigulphus and Frodoard, who carried on the school at 
 Rheims and prepared the way for Gerbert ; while at Paris 
 he united the two branches of the Palatial school, the 
 one representing the tradition of Alcuin, the other that of 
 Johannes Scotus, and interpreted to them the logic attri- 
 buted to Augustine and the treatise of Capella. His pupil 
 was Odo of Cluny, who rekindled the monastic zeal and 
 trained numerous scholars, Aymer, Baldwin, Gottfried, 
 Landric, Wulfad, Adhegrin, Hildebald, Eliziard, and, most 
 distinguished of all, John, his biographer. These were the 
 men who, in conjunction with the pupils of Gerbert 6 , sustained 
 the tradition of instruction in the tenth century, whilst 
 Hucbald of Liege, proceeding from St. Gall, instructed the 
 canons of St. Genevieve at Paris, and taught in the cathedral 
 school. In the eleventh century Abbo of Fleury and his 
 
 rent respirer 1'air libre des grandes siecles et s'effacerent completement 
 
 villes. Loin de combattre ces ten- de la scene de 1'histoire.' Le'on 
 
 dances, Philippe-Auguste et ses sue- Maitre, Scales Episcopates, p. 170. 
 cesseurs les encouragerent enfondant i Hist, des Institutions d 'Education 
 
 des universite's et en comblant ces Ecclesiastique, i 181190. 
 corporations avec privileges. Inca- s Hist.LitterairedelaFrance,^iB2. 
 pables de soutenir une concurrence s j^p ,j e Ferrieres, v. pp 1921. 
 aussi redoutable, les (Scoles e"piscopa- 4 Hericus or Ericus of Auxerre, fl. 
 
 les et monastiques furent rapidement c irc. 880. Migne, cxxiv 1128. 
 de'posse'de'es du sceptre qu'elles tenai- s Remy of Auxerre, d. circ. 908. 
 ent avec honneur depuis quatre g e e p. 44.
 
 70 THE QUESTION IN DISPUTE. 
 
 CHAP. i. pupils Gozelin, Haymo the historian, Bernard, Herveus, 
 Odalric, Girard, and Thierry, imparted vigour to the culture 
 of their time. Drogo taught with eminent success at Paris ; 
 and all the neighbouring schools, Chartres, Tours, and Le 
 Bee, were attracted by the learning of that city, the habitual 
 residence of the Capetian dynasty. The fame of the con- 
 troversies there carried on soon drew together a crowd of 
 teachers and scholars. Among the pupils of Drogo was John 
 the Deaf, and John the Deaf had Roscellinus for his pupil. 
 Roscellinus was from the school of Ivo of Chartres, and had 
 for his disciples Peter of Cluny, Odo of Cambray, William of 
 Champeaux, and Abelard. The schools of Paris thus became 
 a real federal corporation ; Universitas magistrorum et dis- 
 cipulorum, such was the university: and thus, in the times 
 when books were rare, the precious legacy of learning was 
 transmitted from hand to hand across the fleeting genera- 
 tions V 
 
 Whatever value we may be disposed to attach to this 
 
 f 
 
 representation, as a statement of the precise mode of trans- 
 mission, it is certain that unquestionable authority can be 
 quoted to prove that both the monastic and episcopal schools 
 continued to exist long after the rise of the universities 2 ; 
 but it is obvious that if the former represented merely the 
 stationary and conservative element, while the latter attracted 
 to itself whatever lay beneath the ban of unreasoning au- 
 thority, whatever, feared at first as a heresy, was soon to be 
 
 versus inure 
 
 1 Monnier, A Icuin et son Influence, Clerc, Etat des Lettrts au XIV" 
 
 p. 189. i 802. It is however undeniable that 
 
 * ' Kniiii, on s'olistiw a ignorer though both the Monastic and Epis- 
 
 les profonds travaux d'un Benedict in , copal Schools may have continued to 
 
 dn vi-n^riil.lc fondateur de notre exist, they had suffered wofuldeterio- 
 
 grande Histoire litt^raire, qui attes- ration : Heppe quotes authority to 
 
 tent, Bur les meilleurcs autoritos, que the effect that, in the year 1291, in 
 
 les eYolea des Cvqnes et celles des the monastery of St Gall neither the 
 
 monasteres avaicnt continue* de fleu- abbot nor any of the monks could 
 
 rir avec lea nouvelles socie'te's d'eHu- write; and we have it on the state- 
 
 den. II faut, pour n'accuser ainsi ment of a Benedictine himself that in 
 
 qne les antres, no laisser faire illusion the 13th century it was rare even in 
 
 par la haine contre toute loi civile, his own order to find anyone ac- 
 
 coutre toute education eeculiere, et quaint cd with grammar. See chapter 
 
 im-mr centre tout ordre religieux qui entitled Die Kloster itnd Domxchulen 
 
 ne juge point la pieUe* incompatible des Mittelalters in Dr Heppe's Srhul- 
 
 aveo une instruction solide et sincere, weten Act Mittelalters, pp. 1525. 
 ni 1'histoire avec la vlrite.' V. Le
 
 VNIVERSITAS. 71 
 
 accepted as sound philosophy, all that widened the domain CHAP. i. 
 -of knowledge or enriched the limits already attained, the 
 comparative importance of the two agencies could not remain 
 the same. The former must decline in proportion as the 
 latter increased ; and it needs but little penetration to dis- 
 cern in this illogical confusion of the secondary effects of the 
 universities with their direct action, a genuine vexation at 
 the results that necessarily followed upon a blind and suicidal 
 adherence to the traditions of a bygone age. 
 
 At nearly the same era, the latter part of the twelfth Roiogna, 
 
 Paris, and 
 
 century, the historian becomes aware of the recognised exist- Sttl erao. 
 ence of three great schools in Europe, Bologna, Paris, and 
 Salerno. Of these the first was distinguished as the school 
 of civil law ; the second, as that of the arts and theology; 
 the third, as that of medicine. It is a significant proof of 
 the non-relevancy of the term Universitas to the range of^j^^, 0[ 
 studies pursued in these ancient seats of learning, that while $m- t r "a*. 
 Paris had completed the circle of her studies long before the 
 commencement of the thirteenth century, the term univer- 
 sity is first found applied to her in the year 1215, in the 
 reign of Philip Augustus 1 ; while Bologna, whose recognition 
 as a university is of at least equal antiquity, possessed no 
 chair of theology before the latter half of the fourteenth 
 century. The term indeed when first employed, had a 
 different meaning from that which it now conveys. ' In the 
 language of the civil law,' observes one writer, ' all corpo- 
 rations' were called universitates, as forming one whole out of 
 many individuals. In the German jurisconsults universitas 
 is the word for a corporate town. In Italy it was applied to 
 the incorporated trades in the cities. In ecclesiastical lan- 
 guage the term was sometimes applied to a number of 
 churches united under the superintendence of one archdeacon. 
 In a papal rescript of the year 688, it is used of the body of 
 the canons of the church of Pisa 2 .' 
 
 If however we agree to define a university as a corpo- 
 ration for the cultivation of learning formed under legal 
 
 1 Savigny, Geschichte des Eoim* a Prof. Maiden, Origin of the Uni~ 
 schen Rechts, c. xxi sec. 127. versities, p. 13.
 
 72 UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA. 
 
 CHAP. i. sanction, we shall find ourselves considerably embarrassed, in 
 investigating the comparative antiquity of Paris and Bologna, 
 by the fact that long before either received a formal recog- 
 nition it possessed a vigorous virtual existence 1 . With the 
 exception of the university of Naples, the spontaneity of 
 growth in these bodies forms indeed one of the most remark - 
 savfeny's able features of the age. 'It would,' says Savignv, 'be 
 
 criticism. . . . 
 
 altogether erroneous to compare the earliest universities of 
 the middle ages with the learned foundations of our own 
 times, established by a monarch or a corporation for the 
 benefit of the native population, the admission of strangers 
 being accorded as a favour. A teacher inspired by a love of 
 learning gathered round him a circle of learners. Other 
 teachers followed, the circle increased, and thus by a purely 
 natural process a school was founded. How great must have 
 been the reputation and influence of such schools at a time 
 when they were but few in number, and when oral instruction 
 was nearly the only path to knowledge ! How great the 
 noble pride of the professors and the enthusiasm of the 
 scholars, when, from all the countries of Europe, learners 
 flocked to spend long years in Paris and Bologna that they 
 might share in this instruction 8 !' 
 
 If we look therefore rather to the spontaneous than to 
 
 the formal element, Irnerius may be regarded as the founder 
 
 r n iYrity O f of the university of Bologna, and the movement which he 
 
 ... 
 
 initiated is seen acquiring a fresh developement in the lectures 
 on the Decretum of Gratian instituted by Eugenius in the 
 middle of the same century, until the university became 
 officially recognised in the charter of privileges which it 
 received from the emperor Frederic I, in the year 1158 3 . 
 it* charter <* In this charter we find provision made for the free admission 
 
 / / 
 
 of foreign students ; for their protection from legal proceedings 
 
 ' In der That nun kann der An- the time, the words Universitag vestra 
 
 fung der UnivcrHitiit deswcgen nicht meant the whole of you. 1 IntrocL 
 
 genau bestimmt werden, well sic gar to Munimenta Academica, i xxxiv. 
 
 nicht von emer willkiihrlichen Stift- Getchichte des Romischen Rechts, 
 
 img ausgieng.' Savigny, c. xxi sec. 3. c. xxx sec. 60. 
 
 Mr Anstey remarks that in the thir- * Bologna is not named in the 
 
 tenth and fourteenth centuries, Charter, but Savigny shows that re- 
 
 Btrange aa it may appear to those ference could have been intended 
 
 unacquainted with patent letters of only to that city. Ibid, xxi 63.
 
 ITS CONSTITUTION. 73 
 
 founded upon alleged offences or debts in other countries ; CHAP. i. 
 while with respect to misdemeanours committed within the 
 precincts of the university, it is enacted that any lawsuit 
 shall, at the discretion of the student, be brought before the 
 master under whom he is studying, or before the bishop of 
 the diocese. 
 
 At first only a school of law, Bologna successively incor- its schools 
 
 . J of Ijiw, Arts, 
 
 porated the other branches of learning. In 1316, a school a . nd Medi - 
 of arts and medicine was formed ; and in the latter half of 
 the same century a school of theology was founded by 
 Innocent VI. 1 It is to be noted that these schools were 
 really separate universities or corporations. Savigny points 
 out that the schools of civil and canon law were practically 
 distinct ; and it has been even customary with some writers 
 to regard them, together with the schools of arts and theology, 
 as representing four distinct universities. Under another 
 aspect a certain fusion of these bodies was brought about; 
 all students being further distinguished as Citramontani atramm- 
 and Ultramontani, Italians and foreigners. Thus divided uitramon- 
 they constituted the electoral body of the university ; the The students 
 officers being elected by the students and masters, while the the electoral 
 
 J body. 
 
 professors were subject to the officers. It is a noticeable 
 feature that at this university, the professors were, for the Professors, 
 most part, maintained at the public expense, and were not 
 dependent upon the contributions of the students. At the 
 head of the officers were the two rectors, one for each body, Hectors. 
 and representing the supreme authority. There were also 
 two chancellors ; ' counsellors,' who represented the different chancellors. 
 
 . , , .-,. . -, 7 - T7 . C'ouiisellors. 
 
 nations into which the Citramontam and uitramontam were 
 divided ; a syndic, who represented the university in its 
 external relations to the state ; a notary, a treasurer, and two other officers. 
 bidelli. The degree of doctor, almost as ancient as the pcpree of 
 
 ... doctor. 
 
 university itself, evidently derives its origin from the mere 
 exercise of the office of teacher, a function it was subsequently 
 found necessary to limit to those whom the university had 
 
 1 ' I/universite* de Bologne,' re- * pourrait la comparer a une sphere 
 
 marks M. d'Assailly in his recent dont la faculte" de droit tiendrait le 
 
 brilliant sketch, ' s'est construite, milieu.' Albert le Grand: VAncien 
 
 pour ainsi dire, piece par piece, et on Monde devant le Nouveau, 1 157.
 
 74 UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA. 
 
 CHAP. i. recognised as fitted for the task. The doctors at Bologna, 
 also known as magistri, domini, or judices, were further 
 orMnai ii*- distinguished as doctores legentes and non-legentes those 
 item. appointed by the university to teach, and those not yet 
 admitted to such a function, or who no longer exercised it : 
 over the latter the city appears to have claimed a certain 
 jurisdiction. The college system never attained to much 
 importance at Bologna. There were colleges, it is true, 
 designed like our own early foundations for the assistance of 
 poor scholars, but we have no evidence that these ever 
 exceeded their original design or exercised any perceptible 
 influence over the university at large. 
 
 Such were some of the more important features which 
 characterise the only school of learning that, at the com- 
 mencement of the new era, might seem to vie with the great 
 school at Paris. But the interest of Englishmen in the 
 history of the university of Bologna can in no way compare 
 with that which they must feel in the earlier annals of her 
 illustrious rival. If we except the impulse communicated to 
 Europe by the dissemination of one particular study, the 
 example of Bologna would appear to have exercised but little 
 influence north of Angers and Orleans. She formed it is true 
 
 Influence o< . 
 
 the model on which these, and most of the other minor uni- 
 versities were constituted, Toulouse, Montpellier, Grenoble, 
 and Avignon ; she gave fashion to the universities of Spain 
 and Italy ; but her example obtained no further than the 
 I)anul>e and the Seine 1 . The universities of the rest of 
 Europe, Oxford and Cambridge in England, Prague, Vienna, 
 Hfidelterg, and Cologne in Germany, derived their formal 
 constitution, the traditions of their education, and their 
 modi* of instruction from Paris. The influence of this 
 university has indeed emboldened some writers to term her 
 the ' Sinai of instruction/ in the Middle Ages 2 . From the 
 foregoing brief survey from the summits of the Appennines, 
 we now turn therefore, to where, amid civic strife and political 
 
 1 Savigny, c . xxi WH-. 63. Von 'The Sinai of the Middle Ages' 
 HMUMT, Gftchichle dtr Pulagogik, wa also a term applied by the Be- 
 nedictines to Monte Cabsino.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 75 
 
 agitation, the leading minds of Europe radiated forth their CHAP. i. 
 light, and the law was given from the chairs of the Dominicans. 
 The points of resemblance between Paris and Bologna 
 are few; those of contrast, numerous and marked. Like 
 Bologna, Paris finds her earliest legal recognition in inde- 
 pendence of the civic authorities. In the year 1200 Philip 
 Augustus passed a law, that students or professors, charged 
 with any criminal offence, might be arrested by the provost, 
 but should be taken for trial before an ecclesiastical tribunal 1 . 
 Like Bologna, too, Paris saw its university rise out of a 
 series of entirely spontaneous efforts. But with certain 
 general features such as these, the resemblance ceases. While 
 the associations of Bologna, during its earlier history, were The univer- 
 almost exclusively secular, those of Paris were as exclusively and Boiogna 
 
 J J contrasted. 
 
 theological. The teaching of the former grew up round the 
 Pandects ; that of the latter, round the Sentences. Tradition 
 points to the school attached to the church of St Genevieve 
 as the germ of the university. It is certain, that in the 
 spirit of antagonism which Paris evinced towards the worldly 
 lore of her Italian rival, and in her determination to guard 
 her more aspiring culture from the withering influences of 
 the civil and canon law, we must look for the causes that, at 
 a later period, still repelled those studies from her curriculum 
 to find refuge with the newly created provincial universities 2 , 
 
 1 Bulseus, Hist. Univ. Paris, n 2, of the thirteenth century the study 
 3. A decree of Innocent in. in the was prohibited by Honorius in. and 
 early part of the thirteenth century, Innocent iv; (3) In the latter half of 
 presents the earliest known instance the same century we find,* by the 
 of the application of the term Uni- testimony of Roger Bacon, that it was 
 rersitas to this body. Savigny, c. 21. everywhere in high favour with" the 
 sec. 127. ecclesiastical authorities, (see C^m- 
 
 2 Von Raumer, (iv 4) says ' Diirfte pendium Philosophic, c. 4) ; (4) It was 
 doch in Paris nur das vender Kirche not until the year 1679 that, after a 
 ausgehende canonische, nicht aber lengthened banishment it was again 
 das Civilrecht gelesen werden ; erst admitted into the university of Paris, 
 im Jalire 1679, ward dies Verbot auf- Savigny finds considerable difficulty 
 gehoben.' The real facts appear to in a statute of that university of the 
 be as follows: (1) The Civil or year 1370, permitting students to go 
 Roman Law was studied, to a con- through their course as canonists with- 
 siderable extent at Paris, in the out having studied the civil law; for 
 twelfth and the early part of the how, he asks, could they study the 
 thirteenth centuries, a fact which former without the aid of the latter? 
 the explicit testimony of Giraldus This difficulty however applies only to 
 Cambrensis and of Rigordius places a more advanced period in the history 
 beyond doubt ; (2) In the earlier half of the two studies. It is worthy of
 
 76 UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 
 
 CHAP. i. and still attracted to her schools the speculation, the contro- 
 versies, and the religious movements of the age. The 
 university of Paris again was distinguished by its unity ; 
 and Savigny attributes no small portion of its widely extended 
 influence to the intimate connexion of the different faculties, 
 whereby the whole body became participant in a vast variety 
 of scientific and theological discussions. Though Bologna 
 again professed chiefly the study of law, her discipline was 
 singularly defective ; while Paris, though she gave no heed 
 to the Pandects, asserted far more effectually the rights of 
 authority*. The former did little more than secure for the 
 student the advantage of able instructors, and a liberty that 
 too often degenerated into licence ; the latter forbade him to 
 exercise any power in her assemblies, and required that he 
 should be completely subject to the professors 2 , a subjection 
 which her statutes permitted to be enforced by that corporal 
 punishment which became a tradition in the universities 
 modelled upon her example. Another point of contrast is 
 that presented by the early developement and importance 
 of the college system. Bulaeus indeed inclines to the belief 
 that the system is coeval with the university itself; we shall 
 hereafter have occasion to note with what rapidity these 
 institutions succeeded each other in the fourteenth century, 
 
 note that the period when the civU vous a quelles consequences pratiques 
 WM mo8t in favour at Rome et demises poussent forewent des 
 
 
 
 
 t qui tmarrnt leur r<5ali,.ation com- tp n i,.i, , 
 
 pl*t dan* I'ordre >oi,il ct politimio * has endeavoured to prove 
 
 OM deox p>nple qui ont voulu crl'^i n certain occasions, the stu- 
 
 1'hommfi a Jpar itnaP eonforml " Were admitted * vote; an 
 
 miU IVxomplairc d> M ch'^c-s .living "S''",^ Wl " ch Savi K nv holds to * 
 
 trhichlf. dfs Hvmitclien Rcchts. c. xxi 
 sec. 30.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 77 
 
 when their utility and necessity had become more fully CHAP, r. 
 recognized. 
 
 We have quoted the observations of Savigny on the ?, ri # n . f tlie 
 
 > University. 
 
 spontaneous character of the growth of the university; it 
 remains to trace out the chief outlines of its formal deve- 
 lopement, and here conjecture must to some extent supply 
 the place of well-ascertained data. It would appear to be 
 a matter beyond doubt, that the faculty of arts, or of phi- 
 losophy as it was usually then designated, was the first 
 instituted at Paris. It is not however to this faculty that 
 the university owes its eminence, if indeed we are willing 
 to admit that the university can be held to have existed at 
 that period when the trivium and quadrivium of antiquity 
 embraced its whole culture. Its celebrity dates from the 
 time of Peter Lombard rather than from that of William 
 of Champeaux 1 , and the audiences who gathered round the 
 expounders of the Sentences must be regarded as the true 
 commencement of the new era. These audiences, it must 
 be noted, were not composed of the religious orders; and 
 the teachers for the most part, in singular contrast to the 
 intentions of the compiler of their celebrated text book, 
 represented the speculative tendencies of the age, and it was 
 only because all speculation was then directly concerned with 
 dogma, or in professed conformity to it, that they found 
 in the compilation of Peter Lombard sufficient material for 
 their powers. As the audiences increased, the teachers also 
 multiplied; and it is easy to understand that mere pretenders 
 to learning would frequently be starting up whose design it 
 was to impose upon their enthusiastic and youthful hearers. 
 It accordingly became necessary to protect alike the learner origin or 
 and the qualified professor. Out of such a necessity, Conrin- Degrees, 
 gius very plausibly conjectures, grew the licence to teach*. 
 But such a formal permission could not justly be made to 
 depend upon the vague impressions and personal prejudices 
 of the electors, who were, in all probability, the existing 
 
 1 William of Champeaux opened lard, who thus appears to represent 
 
 a school of logic at Paris in the year the connecting link between the two 
 
 1109; Abelard was his pupil, and faculties of philosophy and theology. 
 
 Peter Lombard was the pupil of Abe- 2 Conringius, De Antiquit* Acad.
 
 78 UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 
 
 CHAP. i. professoriate body ; and the next step the application of 
 a definite test to the qualifications of the aspirants to the 
 dignity of doctor followed as a necessary precaution. Hence 
 the system of examinations. The possession of a university 
 degree was originally nothing else than the possession of a 
 diploma to exercise the function of teaching ; a right, which, 
 at a later period, was equally recognised as a duty. The 
 bachelors expounded the Sentences and the Scriptures ; the 
 doctors and masters taught systematically in the schools or 
 preached to the laity ; but all those who gained the degree 
 of licentiate, master, or doctor, were held bound to devote 
 a certain period to again imparting the learning they had 
 
 umttatioi)* acquired 1 . The permission to teach, consequent upon success 
 in such examinations as were then instituted, was vested, so 
 
 uibortty. 
 
 far as the university was concerned, in the Chancellor ; but 
 the Pope alone had the power to make the degree of doctor 
 valid throughout Christendom. ' It may be worth while to 
 mention,' says Professor Maiden, ' that it was this privilege 
 of catholic degrees, if we may use the expression, which in 
 somewhat later times caused the confirmation of the popes 
 to be sought whenever a new university was founded. It 
 was not questioned that any sovereign might erect a uni- 
 versity in his own dominions; or if any difficulty were raised, 
 it was only with regard to a theological faculty : but it was 
 the Pope alone who could make degrees valid beyond the 
 limits of the university in which they were conferred V 
 
 The division that obtained at Bologna of Citramontani 
 
 and UUramontani was represented at Paris by the division 
 
 J^> into 'nations.' ^ These were four in number: (1) the French 
 
 nation, including in addition to the native element, Spaniards, 
 
 ItaliaiiH, and Greeks; (2) the Picard nation, representing 
 
 Crtrier, Ilitt. df ri'nirmttf. de cut <Ste moins sterile pour eux, si. 
 
 Par-it, ui 1H1. M. LeClerc remarks, par cettc manie de renfermer tou- 
 
 C'tfUit on* bonne institution que jours 1'esprit dans la plus e"troite 
 
 I* noTirut de* bftcbelitn, HVnwiyant prison, ils n'eussent 6i6 tenus, pour 
 
 i Ann an protosorat noun faire, comme on disait, leur prin- 
 
 U direction di. maltr*-*, qnoiqn'il cipe,' de commenter uniquement les 
 
 t point fallu pc-uU'tre leur im- Ii^ e8 dcs Sentences.' Etat des Let- 
 
 nw- annAp* d tpTOVM, ponr trr* au A7I' Sitcle, i 291. 
 
 r *v i th^olfwc. an grade do Maiden, Origin of Univerritiet, 
 
 Itctnat. Maia cct cxcrcict tnennal p 21
 
 UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 79 
 
 the students from the north-east and from the Netherlands ; CHAP. T. 
 (3) the Norman nation ; (4) the English nation 1 , comprising, 
 besides students from the provinces under English rule, those 
 from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Germany 2 . 
 
 It may at first appear somewhat anomalous that the 
 great centre of theological instruction in Europe, up to the 
 fifteenth century, should have been distinguished rather by 
 its allegiance to the secular than to the spiritual power, by 
 its sympathy with the kings of France rather than with the 
 popes of Rome. It does not however require much acquaint- 
 ance with these centuries to be aware that the papal policy 
 was systematically directed to the discouragement of theo- 
 logical controversy and speculation. At Paris the traditions Early 8 ym- 
 of Berengar and Roscellinus were still fresh in the memories university 
 
 of Paris. 
 
 of men. Even the excellent designs of Peter Lombard ap- 
 peared to have strangely failed of their avowed object, and 
 to have fanned the flames they were intended to allay. We 
 need not wonder, therefore, that this troublous mental 
 activity and unceasing controversial spirit were viewed with 
 disfavour and apprehension at Rome. On the other hand, 
 long before the time of William of Occam, the university 
 had evinced its sympathy with royalty and lent its aid in 
 repelling the arrogant assertion of the ecclesiastical power. 
 ' Notwithstanding/ observes M. Le Clerc, ' the ties that Explanation 
 bound it to the pontiff's chair, and the numbers of its clergy e here! 
 who had vowed allegiance to that authority, the university 
 had never been wholly an ecclesiastical body. Though born 
 under the shadow of the cathedral church, it took form and 
 grew up under the protection of the monarch rather than the 
 tutelage of the bishop. The French kings, who had at first 
 accorded it but dubious and precarious aid, as soon as they 
 perceived the accession to their own strength to be derived 
 
 1 Known after the year 1430 as cente experiencia legibus bene regi 
 the German nation. Universitatem nostram in quatuor 
 
 2 A corresponding division into nationes velut ilia distincta est licet 
 four nations was instituted at Prague, aliter nominatas, ad instar illius 
 Vienna, Heidelberg and Leipzic. duximus dividendam.' Statute of 
 ' Nos advertentes venerabilem Uni- Univ. of Vienna, Raumer, iv 16. 
 versitatem Parisiensem pre aliis do-
 
 CHAP. i. 
 
 
 
 
 
 -O EXTENSION OF THE UNIVERSITY MOVEMENT. 
 
 from the new alliance, became its avowed friends, while the 
 popes, its first and most ardent promoters, adopted towards 
 it a policy of mistrust, coldness, and opposition; and the 
 chancellor of the cathedral, on whom it devolved, as the 
 representative of the pontifical authority, to admit the licen- 
 tiates of the higher faculty, and whose claims even amounted 
 to a kind of perpetual presidency, ceased not, so long as his 
 office continued to exist, to persecute the university to which 
 he could not dictate 1 .' The force of this criticism will be 
 more apparent when we have passed under review the new 
 culture and the tendencies of thought that riveted the 
 attention of Europe upon Paris throughout the thirteenth 
 century ; but, before proceeding to this important subject, it 
 will be well to mark the rapid extension of the movement 
 of which the two most conspicuous examples have already 
 occupied our attention. 
 
 ^ 1C on ^ v ^ ner universities in France that trace back 
 their origin to the thirteenth century are those of Toulouse 
 and Montpellier ; but in Italy the impetus communicated by 
 the study of the civil law bore fruit in every direction. In 
 the year 1222 the civil discords that prevailed at Bologna 
 drove a large body of students and professors to Padua, where 
 they established a school of the new learning, the commence- 
 ment of that illustrious university. A similar migration in 
 1204- had already given birth to the university of Vicenza. 
 Pi*a, Vereclli, Arezzo, and Ferrara rose in the same century ; 
 
 , . J ' 
 
 while in our own country Oxford and Cambridge appear 
 emerging from an obscurity which, greatly as it has exercised 
 the imaginative faculty of some eminent antiquarians, seems 
 to indicate that the period and circumstances of these founda- 
 tions bdong to a field of enquiry which the seeker for real 
 knowledge will most prudently forego. It may however be 
 observed that such data as we possess would appear to point 
 to nn origin nimilar to that assigned to the university of 
 K'lmol in connexion with the priory of St Fri- 
 dwyde, and that of the conventual church at Ely, being 
 
 1 Etat dfi Ltitret an Qntorzitmf Sftclt, i 2C2.
 
 TRADITION OF LEARNING IX ENGLAND. 81 
 
 probably the institution from whence the universities of CHAP. L 
 Oxford and Cambridge respectively sprang 1 . 
 
 The scattered links which serve to mark the connexion 
 between the times of Bede and Alcuin and those of Robert 
 Grosseteste are few and imperfect. The chain of continuity 
 was snapped asunder by the Danish invasions, and it would *">* i>nish 
 
 * > Invasion. 
 
 here be of small profit minutely to investigate the evidence *" 8W - 
 for a tradition which can scarcely be said to have existed. 
 Learning, to use the expression of William of Malmesbury, 
 was buried in the grave of Bede for four centuries a . The 
 invader, carrying his ravages now up the Thames and now up 
 the Humber, devastated the eastern regions with fire and 
 sword. The noble libraries which Theodore and the abbats 
 Hadrian and Benedict had founded were given to the flames 3 . 
 In the year 870 the town of Cambridge was totally destroyed 4 . 
 The monasteries of the Benedictines, the chief guardians of Destruction 
 
 7 of the Bene- 
 
 learning, appear to have been completely broken up ; ' it is ^o^terfe*. 
 
 not at all improbable,' says Mr Kemble, ' that in the middle 
 
 of the tenth century there was not a genuine Benedictine 
 
 society left in England 5 .' The exertions of King Aelfred- 
 
 restored the schools and formed new libraries; and, under 
 
 the auspices of St. Dunstan, the Benedictine order, renovated TheirRevmu 
 
 under St. 
 
 at its sources by the recent establishment of the Cluniac J^ 1 ^ 
 branch on the continent, was again established. During the 
 reign of Eadgar, when the land had rest from invasion, no Ead#ar. 
 less than forty convents of this order were founded. But 
 once again the Danes swept over the country and the work 
 
 1 * While we cannot doubt that a henceforth began its corporate ex- 
 considerable number of scholars istence, its true history in its only 
 studied at Oxford in the eleventh recognizable form.' Anstey's Introd. 
 and twelfth centuries, yet the fact to Munimenta Academica, i xxxiv. 
 that no species of pecuniary support * ' Sepulta est cum eo gestorum 
 was from any source, that we know omnis pene notitia usque ad nostra 
 of, appointed for them, and that no tempora.' Gesta Begum Anglorum, i 
 royal charter or letter has ever been sec. 62. 
 
 produced hitherto, though Anthony * See Preface to Richard of Ciren- 
 
 Wood speaks of their loss, of an ear- cester (Rolls Series) by Rev. J. E. B. 
 
 lier reign than that of Henry III, Mayor, n cxvi. 
 
 seems to raise a very strong suspicion 4 Caius Hist. Cantebrig. Acad.p. 39. 
 
 that the University did not exist at 5 Kemble's Saxons in England, n 
 
 all before the Conquest, and that as 452. It is certain,' says Professor 
 
 soon as it became important enough Stubbs, ' that in 942 there were no 
 
 to deserve and require royal recogni- real Benedictines in England.' In- 
 
 tion, it immediately obtained it, and trod, to EpistoUe Cantuar. p. xviii. 
 
 6
 
 82 RESTORATION OF THE BENEDICTINE ORDER. 
 
 CHAP, t of devastation was repeated; Oxford was burnt to the ground 
 taT" in the year 1009; a like fate overtook Cambridge in the 
 fc,n. following year; the library at Canterbury perished in the 
 same visitation. The Benedictines indeed survived, and, 
 when the reign of Knut restored tranquillity, notwithstanding 
 the traditional jealousy of the secular clergy, their foundations 
 rapidly multiplied. Under the patronage of Eadward the 
 Confessor the order became still further strengthened and 
 
 tine Order 1 ^i . 
 
 extended. The rival foundations of St Augustine and Ghnst 
 Church at Canterbury, those of Abingdon, St Alban's, Bury, 
 Ely, Glastonbury, Malmesbury, Winchester, Westminster, and 
 Rochester, all professed the Benedictine rule. Odo, the 
 haughty bishop of Bayeux, refused to recognise any but a 
 Benedictine as a true monk. But though the monasteries 
 once more flourished, the losses to literature were for a long 
 time irreparable. With the second Danish invasion, authors, 
 whom Alcuin and Aelfred had known and studied, disappear 
 for centuries: it may indeed be doubted whether the flames 
 that at different times consumed the libraries of Rome, 
 Alexandria, and Constantinople, inflicted a more appreciable 
 loss upon the progress of education in western Europe. At 
 the time of the Conquest, if we may credit the testimony of a 
 competent though somewhat prejudiced witness, an acquaint- 
 ance with grammar marked out the possessor as a prodigy l . 
 Such, in briefest narrative, were the vicissitudes through 
 which learning in England had passed at the time when she 
 once more bowed before the conquering sword, and other and 
 more humanising influences began to give fashion to her 
 culture and her institutions. 
 
 Of VacaritiH, and his lectures at Oxford on the civil law 
 in the middle of the twelfth century, we have already spoken; 
 it wa* probably about twenty years before that an English 
 ecclesiastic returning from Paris, and commiserating the low 
 
 1 Perii*** autt-m iam tune per non pauci* ante adrentum Norman- 
 
 il>aiu|uc ernptiom-H omnem norum annin. Clerici literatura tu- 
 
 m in Aniilm raditiooem, In- multuaria contend vix Sacramento- 
 
 i (iuilidmtiH Mai- mm verba baibutiebant ; stupori et 
 
 pw.Conqaa^toriHBVopTox. miraculo erat caeterit, qui grammati- 
 
 terarvM,' inquit cam namt.'" Conringius, De Anti- 
 
 $tudia obioleverant quitatibut Academicit, p. 282.
 
 SCHOOLS OF OXFORD. 83 
 
 state of learning among his countrymen, essayed to rekindle CHAP. i. 
 at Oxford some acquaintance with Latin and a love for letters. 
 The Sententiarum Libri Octo of Robert Pullen have been Robert 
 supposed to have suggested the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Ilis <'- 
 
 . . . iMnim Libri 
 
 They are however characterised by strong points of difference; Octo - 
 an absence of the dialectical element and the elaborately 
 established ' distinction,' less exclusive regard to Patristic 
 authority, and a more generally scriptural method of inter- 
 pretation. His name is brought forward by Anthony Wood 
 to prove that Aristotle was studied at that period at Oxford 1 . 
 The same writer, on the authority of Leland, informs us that 
 ' Pulleyne taught daily in the Schools, and left no stone 
 unturned whereby the British youth might flourish in the 
 learned tongues. Which good and useful labours continuing 
 several years, multitudes came to hear his doctrine, profiting 
 thereby so exceedingly that in a short space the University 
 proceeded in their old method of Exercises,, which were the 
 age before very rarely performed 2 .' There appears to be no 
 reason why the general fact here recorded should be rejected. 
 Pulleyne, according to the consent of various authorities, ^.n^JV 
 was for some years a student at Paris, and it is sufficiently oxford wit 
 credible that what he had there learnt he should teach at S ity of P 
 Oxford. There also appears to be good reason for believing 
 that long before the thirteenth century, schools existed at 
 Oxford (tradition points to the Benedictines as their foun- 
 ders) and that these were presided over by teachers from 
 Paris 3 . Mr Anstey, who has devoted considerable attention 
 to the subject, regards it as almost beyond dispute that the 
 earliest statutes of his university were borrowed from the 
 same source. ' The transition,' he says, ' from mere grammar 
 
 1 Wood's conclusion rests on a ford by King Aelfred must be classed 
 
 rather narrow induction : ' Eobert with the other historical fictions 
 
 Pulleyue who flourished an. 1146, with which the earlier pages of 
 
 did before that time read at Oxford Wood's work are filled ; an infatua- 
 
 optimarum Artium disciplinas which tion which in so generally trustwor- 
 
 without Aristotle he could not well thy an antiquarian is almost in- 
 
 do.' Annals, i 280. explicable, unless, indeed, we regard 
 
 * Annals, i 142. these pages, as some have done, as 
 
 3 See Mr Anstey's Introduction to intended only for a ponderous and 
 
 Munimenta Academica, i xxix. The elaborate joke, 
 foundation of the University of Ox- 
 
 62
 
 sj. UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 CHAP. i. schools to a studium generate, or, as we call it, an university, 
 cannot l>e traced ; the probability however, almost amounting 
 to a certainty, is that it was effected by a nearly wholesale 
 adoption of the regulations of the university of Paris 1 .' 
 
 The 'earliest authentic legal instrument,' to use the 
 language of Cooper, containing any recognition of Cambridge 
 
 a un i vers ity ( i s a writ of the second year of Henry III, 
 addressed to the sheriff of the town, commanding all clerks 
 who had been excommunicated for their adhesion to Louis 
 the son of the King of France, and who had not been 
 absolved, to depart the realm before the middle of Lent; 
 those who failed to yield obedience to this mandate to be 
 arrested. ' If,' observes Cooper, ' (as seems very probable) 
 the word clerk is used in this writ as denoting a scholar, 
 this appears to be the earliest authentic legal instrument 
 referring to the existence of a University in this place 8 .' Our 
 university history would accordingly seem to date from the 
 commencement of our true national history, from the time 
 when the Norman element having become fused with the 
 Saxon element, and the invader driven from our shores, the 
 genius of the people found comparatively free scope, and the 
 national character began to assume its distinctive form. 
 Galling evidence of the Conquest still exhibited itself, it is 
 true, in the Poitevin who ruled in the royal councils, and 
 the Italian who monopolized the richest benefices ; but the 
 isolation from the Continent which followed on the expulsion 
 of Prince Louis could not fail to develope in an insular 
 race a more bold and independent spirit. The first half of 
 the thirteenth century in England has been not inaptly 
 designated ' the age of Robert Grosseteste.' The cold com- 
 mendation with which Hallam dismisses the memory of 
 that eminent reformer must appear altogether inadequate 
 to those familiar with more recent investigations of the 
 period. The encouragcr of Greek learning, the interpreter 
 of Aristotle, the patron of the mendicant orders, the chastiser 
 of monastic corruption, the fearless champion of the national 
 
 mdrmirti, p. xliv. Annal*, I 37.
 
 RISE OF THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 85 
 
 cause against Papal aggression, the leader of thought at the CHAP. i. 
 sister university, deserves a foremost place in the history of 
 his times. * Probably no one,' remarks his most recent 
 editor, ' has had a greater influence upon English thought nia influence 
 
 iTi-i'iT * i i i f 11 ' i as a tliiuker. 
 
 and English literature for the two centuries which followed 
 his age 1 .' Those familiar with the literature of those cen- 
 turies will bear witness how often the name of Lincolniensis, 
 the bishop par excellence, appears as that of an independent 
 authority 2 . Grosseteste died in the year 1253; and the half 
 century wherein he had been so prominent an actor had 
 witnessed those two great events, both inseparably associated 
 with his name, which gave a new aspect to learning and to 
 the institutions of the Church, the introduction of the new 
 Aristotle into Christian Europe, and the rise of the Franciscan 
 and the Dominican orders. 
 
 The evils that rarely fail to accompany the growth of v&agn of 
 
 r J the formation 
 
 corporate bodies in wealth and influence, had followed upon >Lm : *ti C ter 
 the aggrandisement of the Benedictines, and are attested by Ol 
 evidence too unanimous to be gainsaid, especially by the 
 successive institution of subordinate orders, which, while 
 adhering to the same rule, initiated or restored a severer 
 discipline 3 . The Cluniac and the Cistercian orders, those 
 of the Camuldules and the Celestines, of Fontevrault and 
 Grandmont, are to be regarded rather as reformed than as 
 rival societies, attempts to do away with grave causes of 
 
 1 Preface to Roberti Grosseteste Epi- nedict's rule, begun by Bernon, abbot 
 stolce by Rev. H. R. Luard (Rolls of Gigni in Burgundy, but increased 
 Series). and perfected by Odo, abbot of Cluni, 
 
 2 Even so late as in tbe course of about A.D. 912, gave rise to the Clu- 
 studies prescribed for the University man order; which was the first and 
 of Tubingen by King Ferdinand, in principal branch of the Benedictines ; 
 15'25, the name of 'Linconicus' ap- for they lived under the rule of St 
 pears with those of Averroes, Avi- Benedict, and wore a black habit; 
 cenna, Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, but observing a different discipline 
 Scotus and Occam. See Sammhing were called by a different name.' 
 dcr Wurttembertjischen Schul Gesetze, See Dugdale, Monast. v iv. With 
 dritte Abtheiluug, p. 91. respect to the Cistercians, we have 
 
 3 Respecting the origin of some of the testimony of Hugo, the Pope's 
 the minor orders, we have no satis- legate, in his letter on their first in- 
 factory information, but those of stitution, ' regulse beatissimi Bene- 
 Cluny and the Cistercians undoubt- dicti quam illuc tepide ac negligenter 
 edly took their rise in the spirit in eodem monasterio tenuerant, arc- 
 indicated in the text. ' The refor- tius deinceps atque perfectius inhse- 
 mation,' says Tanner, 'of somethings rere velle professes fuisse.' Ibid, v 
 which seemed too remiss in St Be- 219.
 
 Ml RISE OF THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 
 
 CIIAP. i. scandal, while the traditions of monasticism remained. Self- 
 perfection was still the professed aim of the monk ; devotion, 
 humility, seclusion and obedience, his cardinal virtues ; and as 
 he illumined the scroll or chanted the intercessory prayer, 
 he held himself well absolved from the duties of a secular life. 
 The isolation practised by the followers of Pacomius and 
 Antony in the fifth, widely differed however from that of 
 the Benedictine in the thirteenth century. The former, by 
 shunning intercourse with their fellows, sought to escape the 
 temptations of the flesh ; the latter, while they jealously 
 guarded their privileged seclusion, found for the most part a 
 solace in unmitigated sensual indulgence. The great Benedic- 
 tine movement in Normandy in the eleventh century, and the 
 great Cistercian movement in England in the twelfth, had 
 failed to effect anything more than a partial and evanescent 
 reform. The intense selfishness of a life which evaded the 
 social duties only to indulge, with less restraint, the indi- 
 vidual appetites, arrested the attention even of that gross 
 and uncritical age 1 , and a striking picture of the actual state 
 of affairs at the latter part of the twelfth century has been 
 preserved to us by the graphic pen of Giraldus Cambrensis. 
 In the year 1180, when a young man, he became a guest on 
 oMi.ntaiu his return from the Continent to London, at the famous 
 L monastery of St. Augustine at Canterbury. He was hospitably 
 
 1 Witness application by Giraldns I, a keen wit, a jovial pluralist, but 
 
 Cii-iil,.!-' ii-i- of the comparison in- a man of culture and true earnestness. 
 
 stitutcd by Jerome between the monk He had a living at Westbury-on- 
 
 and the secular priest to his own Severn, very near the Cistercian 
 
 time*, (iiraldtia was himself an abbey in the forest of Dean. En- 
 
 fcclcttiastic and an aspirant to the croachraent by the Cistercians on 
 
 *o of Ht David's. ' Monachus enim his clerical rights may have added to 
 
 taii'inain nnius cuatos, vel singularis the indignation of his satire. When 
 
 UM, *ui Holius ctiram agit. Cleri- on his rounds, as Justice in Eyre 
 
 en* vero circa multorum curam soli- for the King, he was wont when 
 
 riUri U-netur. Est itatnie mouachus taking the oath that he would do 
 
 ikmmain granum trilici nolum ma- equal justice to all, to except Jews 
 
 t auU-in clericus tanqinim and Cistercians, as men to whom 
 
 mum RvrminanH, ct in horrca Do- equal justice was an abomination. 
 
 mint miiltum fnirtuiu aflcreiw.' To. His Apocalypse of bishop Golias is a 
 
 ?'rnif. Hk. in c . 30. fierce satire on the debauchery and 
 
 I the friend of sensuality of the order. Bishop Go- 
 
 , Walter Map, points in the lias is represented as actuated by 
 
 Map wa* archdea- the fondest hope that he might die 
 
 con of Oxford in the ruign of Richard drunk in a tavern.
 
 RISE OF THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 87 
 
 'entertained, but his astonishment at what he witnessed was CHAP. L 
 intense. The conversation and manners of the monks, he 
 affirms, were such that he thought himself among players 
 and jesters. The table at dinner was regularly laid with 
 sixteen covers. Fish and flesh, roast and boiled, highly 
 seasoned dishes, piquant sauces, and exquisite cookery, 
 stimulated the flagging appetite. Though the ale of Kent 
 was of the best, it was rarely tasted where claret, mead, and 
 mulberry wine were constantly flowing 1 . There is ample 
 evidence that his is no exaggerated description, and that the 
 monastery at Canterbury was far from exceptional in its 
 character. A variety of causes, it would seem, had combined ^f^tuu 
 to produce this laxity of discipline. Lyttelton in his History corru P Uon - 
 of the Reign of Henry II attributes to the civil war in the 
 preceding reign the over-aggrandisement of the monastic 
 orders: the weak and the timid took refuge where alone 
 it was to be found ; while those who participated in the 
 struggle often committed atrocities for which, conscience- 
 stricken, they sought in after years to atone by founding or 
 enriching religious houses 2 . In some instances, the wealthier 
 and more powerful foundations had obtained exemption from 
 all episcopal control and were responsible only to the Pope 
 and his legate 8 . 
 
 The inevitable effects of such wide-spread corruption in influence of 
 
 . . . . the Crusades. 
 
 undermining the popular faith, were, for a time, to some 
 extent counteracted by two important movements. The vast 
 impulse communicated by the Crusades to Christian Europe 
 had subserved a double purpose, it had rekindled the flame 
 of religious enthusiasm, and had afforded to the more reckless 
 
 O 
 
 and lawless members of society the opportunity of reconcilia- 
 tion to the Church, not, indeed, by the alienation of worldly 
 wealth, but by appealing to those very instincts wherein 
 excess and criminality took their rise, the love of adventure 
 and excitement 4 . The ultimate effects of these memorable 
 
 1 De Rebus a se Gestis, Bk. n c. 5. discipline, appears to have been 
 
 3 Hist, of the Reign of King Hen- frequently laid aside for a dress of 
 
 ry II, p. 330. gay colours. See Pearson, Hist, of 
 
 * Even the garb of the monk, that England, i 294. 
 
 last external sign of compliance with * 'God,' says the abbat Guibert,
 
 '88 RISE OF THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 
 
 01 AH. i. expeditions widely differed however from those originally 
 contemplated by Urban II. Long residence in an enervating 
 climate, under conditions of so extraordinary and novel a 
 character, could scarcely prove favourable to the habits and 
 morals of those engaged. Whatever benefits the Crusades 
 conferred on Christendom were probably more than counter- 
 balanced by results of a different nature. If invasion was 
 repelled from Europe, and a bond of union created among 
 the nations of Christendom in the place of internecine strife, 
 if chivalry traces back its origin to the spirit then evoked, it 
 is equally certain that an inlet was afforded to many baneful 
 influences. The attempted conversion of the Saracen not 
 only proved fruitless, but, as a recent writer has observed, 
 it seemed, at one time, much more likely that the converters 
 would become converted. The Manicheistic tendencies which 
 infecU-d the Christianity of the fourth and fifth centuries 
 reapjjeared ; the belief in magic and the practice of the 
 magician's arts became widely extended ; the Communistic 
 excesses of these times have been attributed, with no small 
 probability, to the indirect influences of the Crusades. 
 Everywhere might be discerned the workings of a genuine 
 but ill-regulated enthusiasm. The austerities and doctrines 
 of the rival sects of the Patarins, the Cathari, Eons Homines, 
 Josephins, Flagellants, Publicani, and Waldenses, were 
 regarded by the orthodox with apprehension and dismay 1 . 
 
 Scarcely however had these secondary symptoms become 
 manifest, when another movement lent new prestige to the 
 Church and revived the hopes of the faithful. Long before 
 St. Iuis breathe* 1 his last on the coast of Africa, in that final 
 expedition on behalf of the beleaguered Christian settlements 
 
 invent* I the Crusades as a new those of the ' Everlasting Gospel' as 
 
 the laity to nt.-no for their attributable to the same influences, 
 
 to merit uhration,' quoted The Crusades appear rather to have 
 increased than diminished the nnm- 
 
 Krt-wor's preface ber of those who took refuge in the 
 
 nt.i Franeineana, p. monasteries. See Michaud, Hist. <lcs 
 
 LoftnTB Preface to Criade t iv 255; also Milmiwi, 
 
 fitf Kpittola. Mr whose view of their collective and 
 
 K-trinen of tho final effects is somewhat more favo- 
 
 Bpponr to hnvp rable. Hist. Latin Christianity, Bk. 
 
 a form <>i MankhouRB, and VH c. fi. 
 
 O? M. II-. III! 
 
 lr u I -I.
 
 KISE OF THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 89 
 
 in Syria, to which he had roused the flagging enthusiasm of CHAP. T. 
 his countrymen, he had beheld with admiration the rise and 
 rapid growth of those two great orders to whose untiring 
 zeal the Church of Rome was so largely indebted in the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Within less than ten 
 years of each other, were founded the order of St. Dominic 
 and the order of St. Francis of Assisi. The sagacious glance 
 of Innocent III had distinguished between the genuine 
 devotion that characterised the earlier spirit of these orders 
 and the fanaticism of preceding sects ; he had discerned the 
 valuable aid thus presented to the Church ; and it was 
 nearly his last act to bestow upon the humble followers of St. 
 Francis his sanction and benediction. 
 
 The whole spirit in which the institution of these two Ti.cconcep- 
 . . 1-1 tion of tnes 
 
 orders was conceived stood in startling contrast to the ideas gniew e sen : 
 
 tmlly opposed 
 
 then associated with the religious life. For isolation from B^SSL!^ 
 mankind there was now exemplified a spirit of evangelism 
 worthy of the apostolic age ; for princely edifices the renun- 
 ciation of a settled habitation ; for the allurements of pagan 
 learning an all-absorbing devotion to theology ; for luxury and 
 self-indulgence the meanest fare and the coarsest raiment ; 
 wherever vice and misery had their abode, amid the squalor, 
 poverty, and suffering of the most wretched quarters of the 
 town, the Dominican and the Franciscan laboured on their ciiamcteris- 
 errand of mercy. The fiery eloquence of the former, whose Dominicans 
 
 J and the 
 
 exemplar was St. Paul, drew around him numerous and 
 enthusiastic audiences ; the latter, who professed to imitate 
 rather the spirit of the 'beloved disciple,' won men by his 
 devotion and the spell of a mystic theology 1 . The contrast 
 
 1 ' The habits of the two orders, ciscan yielded. He was liable to all 
 
 great as were their outward resem- the diseases which assault men of 
 
 blances, were essentially and radically spiritual aspirations, to much of the 
 
 different. To organize and systema- sensualism into which they fall, 
 
 tize was the taste and business of through a desire of finding outward 
 
 the one. To bring out the human, images by which they may represent 
 
 sentimental, individual aspects of their deeper intuitions ; but he could 
 
 theology and of humanity was the not be withheld by mere maxims and 
 
 characteristic effort of the other. formulas from tracing the windings 
 
 The Dominican was always verging of a thought, or from following 
 
 upon the hardest intellectualism ; nature into her hiding places. Both 
 
 but he was exempt from much of were dangerous, each would have been 
 
 the superstition to which tlxe Fran- terrible without the other. Together.
 
 90 RISE OF THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 
 
 CHAP. i. presented by both orders to the inactivity of the Benedictines 
 
 necessarily appealed with singular force to the wants and 
 
 sympathies of the poor amid the vicissitudes of that tempes- 
 
 KapMpro- tuous century. The two orders extended themselves with 
 
 grvss of the 
 
 new orders. marv ellous rapidity over Europe and yet remoter regions. 
 Their convents multiplied not only in more civilized countries, 
 but also in Russia, Poland, and Denmark ; their missionaries 
 penetrated to the heart of Palestine, to the inaccessible 
 fastnesses of Abyssinia, and the bleak regions of Grim 
 Tartary. 'In a few years,' says Dean Milman, 'from the 
 sierras of Spain to the steppes of Russia ; from the Tiber to 
 the Thames, the Trent, the Baltic sea ; the old faith in its 
 fullest mediaeval, imaginative, inflexible rigour, was preached 
 in almost every town and hamlet 1 .' In England the 
 Dominicans met with less success, but this was fully com- 
 ThoFrandg- pensatcd by the rapid progress of the Franciscans. Very 
 i*n<i- soon after the establishment of the latter order, they had 
 
 formed a settlement at Oxford under the auspices of Grosse- 
 teste, and had erected their first rude chapel at Cambridge. 
 uritJSrifh 1 " Within thirty years from their first arrival in the country, 
 the people, j^ey numbered considerably more than a thousand and had 
 established convents in most of the more important towns. 
 ' If your holiness,' says Grosseteste, writing to Gregory ix in 
 1238, 'could see witli what devotion and humility the people 
 run to hear the word of life from them, for confession and 
 instruction as to daily life, and how much improvement the 
 clergy and the regulars (clerus et religio) have obtained by 
 imitating them, you would indeed say that they that dwelt 
 in the shadow of death upon them hath the light shinedV 
 Even by the existing religious orders they and their work 
 were regarded, in the first instance, with far from unfriendly 
 sentiments ; or, if jealousy were felt, it was deemed prudent 
 
 they served to shew forth tho count- intellectual energy, without which 
 
 erncting tendencieH of n very memo- those ages would have been very 
 
 rable period. If each held down barren.' Prof. Maurice, Mediceval 
 
 some truth, each brought Borne Bide Philoxophy, pp. 165 166. 
 
 of truth into light which its rival 1 Hist. Latin Christianity, Bk. u 
 
 would have crushed. If they left c. 9. 
 
 many pernicious influenced to after 3 Luard, Preface to Grosseteste Epi- 
 
 ages, they awakened a spiritual and ttolae, p. xxii; see also Epist. 58.
 
 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. 91 
 
 to repress its manifestation while the current of popular CIIAP. i. 
 feeling flowed so strongly in their favour. - Roger of Wend- 
 over, prior of the Benedictine convent of Belvoir, declares 
 that the labours of the new missionaries 'brought much 
 fruit to the Lord 1 .' 
 
 With the activity of the Dominicans is associated the instrument 
 
 ,, . . talityofthe 
 
 other great movement of this century, the introduction of i>nimicans 
 
 J ' and the Jews 
 
 'the new philosophy. The numerous foundations planted by [" ie br jy{jj|* in 
 them in the East, brought about an increased intercourse Am( 
 between those regions and Western Europe ; the influence 
 of the Crusades, as we have already seen, was tending to 
 a like result ; the barriers which, in the time of Gerbert, 
 interposed between Mahometan and Christian thought, were 
 broken down ; and, simultaneously with these changes, the 
 labours of Averroes, who died at Morocco in 1198, were 
 spreading among the Arabs a deference for the authority 
 of Aristotle such as no preceding commentator or translator 
 had inspired. Another widely scattered body supplied the 
 link that brought these labours home to Christendom. The 
 Jews of Syria, and those who, under the scornfully tolerant 
 rule of the Saracens in Spain, found refuge from the perse- 
 cution and insult which confronted them in the great cities 
 of Christian Europe, were distinguished by their cultivation 
 of the new philosophy, and their acquaintance with both 
 Arabic and Latin enabled them in turn to render the works 
 of Averroes accessible to the scholars of the Romance 
 countries. It would seem to be a well established conclusion Aristotle 
 
 ,.-. f+ 11 first known 
 
 that the philosophy of Aristotle was first made kn<^vn to t Europe as 
 
 a philosopher 
 
 the West mainly through these versions. The rarity, at this A '^; h 
 period, of a knowledge of Greek, and the attractions offered sources - 
 by the additional aid afforded in the Arabic commentaries, 
 secured for these sources a preference over whatever had as 
 yet appeared that was founded upon an immediate acquaint- 
 
 1 'Crevit igitur in brevi hie ordo ales, verbum vitie prasdicantes, et 
 
 fratrum pradictorum, qui Minores turbis agrestibus virtutum plantaria 
 
 dicuntur, per orbein iiniversum ; qui iuserentes, fructum plurimum Domi- 
 
 in urbibus habitantes et castellis, no obtulerunt.' Roger of Wendover, 
 
 deni et septeni exierunt in diebus Flowers of Hist. ed. Wats, p. 341. 
 illia, per villas et ecclesias paroclii-
 
 D2 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. 
 
 CTTAP. T. ance with the Greek originals 1 . A considerable interval 
 elapsed before translations direct from the Greek appeared 
 in sufficient number to rival those from the Arabic*, and 
 here it will be well before we proceed with the consideration 
 of the interpretation of Aristotle adopted by the earliest 
 teachers of our universities, to discriminate the sources 
 from whence their inspiration would appear to have been 
 derived. 
 Previous "We have already had occasion to notice that the Aristotle 
 
 knowledge in * 
 
 ih writings. f tne schoolmen, prior to the twelfth century, was nothing 
 more than probably two of his treatises on Logic, the 
 Categories and the De Interpretatione ; the remaining por- 
 tion of the Organon, as translated by Boethius, being first 
 made known at the beginning of that century*. It remains 
 to explain by what means the Middle Age translations from 
 the Arabic and those from the Greek have been distinguished 
 and identified. The theories of different scholars on this ques- 
 tion were for a long time singularly at variance. It could 
 not be doubted that the source from whence those who first 
 introduced the philosophy of Aristotle into Christian Europe 
 derived their knowledge, were Latin translations ; but in 
 what instances these translations had been made directly 
 from the Greek, and in what instances they were derived 
 from the labours of the Arabians, was in considerable dispute. 
 Brucker, in his History of Philosophy, put forth only a 
 confused and unsatisfactory statement ; Heeren inclined to 
 the opinion that the revival might be traced to sources 
 
 1 'On puisait plus volontiers a M ante, abbatisS. MidiacUs,Chronica. 
 
 cctte Bource qu'a 1'autre, parce que (quoted by Jourdain, p. 68). This 
 
 les tmductious de 1'he'breu et do however would, of course, add little 
 
 9 1'arabc eHuient plus litte"rales, et to the actual knowledge of Aristotle. 
 
 qn'on y trouvait des explications * These portions of the On/anon, 
 
 que robscurite" du texte rendait tres- that is to say, the Prior and Posteri- 
 
 D&enairefi.' Jourdain, Recherchet or Analytics, the Topica, and the 
 
 Critique*, etc. p. 16. Elenchi Sophistici became known 
 
 * The first known translation di- as the Nova Logica, the Categories 
 
 rect from the Greek is that of Jacques and the De Interpretation as Velu 
 
 de Venise, 1128. ' Jacobus, clt-ricus Logica. See Bulaeus, in 82. Praiitl 
 
 de Vcnitia, transtulit de gncco in observes that in Duns Scotus this 
 
 lut iniim quondam libros Aristotelis distinction appears to have been that 
 
 et commentatua est, scilicet Topica, by which the respective treatises were 
 
 Armlyticos priores ct posteriorea, et generally known. Oeschichte der 
 
 Eleuchos, quamvis autiqua trauslatio Logik, in 206. 
 super eon huberetur.' !{<>/,< rti de
 
 JOURDAIN'S RESEARCHES. 93 
 
 almost entirely independent of the Arabic translations : Buhle CHAP. t. 
 and Tiedemann advocated a contrary opinion ; Tennemann 
 attempted to reconcile the opposing hypotheses ; but it was 
 reserved for M. Jourdain, in his essay first published early S^Timtbie 
 in the present century, to arrive by a series of lengthened 
 and laborious investigations at those conclusions which 
 have, with a few qualifications, been now almost universally 
 accepted l . 
 
 The method employed by Jourdain was to take, in turn, Method of 
 
 ' his investiga- 
 
 the writings of each of the schoolmen, and carefully to tions - 
 compare whatever quotations presented themselves from 
 Aristotle with the earliest Latin versions we possess ; he was 
 thus enabled not only satisfactorily to determine the period 
 to which the introduction of the Aristotelian philosophy 
 must be referred, but also the sources to which each writer 
 was indebted. As regarded the earlier Aristotle, the trans- 
 lations by Augustine and Boethius were, of course, easily 
 distinguishable from those of the later period ; for, besides the 
 evidence afforded by the character of the writing and the 
 abbreviations employed, the former translations possessed a 
 certain elegance and freedom, while the latter were character- 
 ised by extreme literalness, a word for word substitution of 
 Latin for Greek which often greatly added to the obscurity 
 of the original Technical terms, moreover, were left un- 
 translated, being merely transcribed, though the Latin 
 supplied a perfectly satisfactory equivalent. An equally 
 trustworthy test enabled him to distinguish the versions 
 from the Greek from the versions from the Arabic ; 'for, in 
 the latter, he frequently found that Greek words which, in 
 the absence of an Arabic equivalent, had been retained in 
 the original version, were incorrectly spelt in the Latin 
 translation ; sometimes too the translator in ignorance of 
 the precise meaning of an Arabic word, left it standing 
 
 1 Mr Hallam's short note (Litera- us that long and tedious labour, on 
 ture of Europe, i 7 69) recognising his own part, over materials to which 
 Jourdain's researches, does but scant the father had not access, had been 
 justice to their thoroughness and almost entirely destitute of any re- 
 ability. Charles Jourdain, in his suit calculated to modify the original 
 preface to the edition of 1843, tells conclusions.
 
 94 THB NEW ARISTOTLE. 
 
 CHAP. i. untranslated. In many cases again considerable collateral 
 light was afforded by the divisions of the chapters ; in the 
 Metaphysics, for instance, and the treatise on Meteors, the 
 division of the Arabic version differed from that of the 
 manuscript employed by the translator from the Greek, and 
 the discrepancy, of course, reappeared in the corresponding 
 Latin versions. 
 
 Result* wta- The conclusions Jourdain was thus enabled to establish, 
 
 blishvd by hi* 
 
 pMMNiMt were, in substance, chiefly as follow: Up to the com- 
 mencement of the thirteenth century neither the philosophy 
 of Aristotle nor the labours of his Arabian commentators 
 and translators appear to have been known to the Schoolmen. 
 There were, it is true, translations of Avicenna and Alfarabi 
 by Gondisalvi, coming into circulation about the middle of 
 the twelfth century, but they failed to attract the attention 
 of the learned in France and England. Daneus remarks 
 that the name of Aristotle never once occurs in the Master 
 of the Sentences 1 . But by the year 1272, or two years 
 before the death of Thomas Aquinas, the whole of Aristotle's 
 writings, in versions either from the Greek or the Arabic, 
 had become known to Western Europe. Within a period 
 therefore of less than three quarters of a century, this 
 philosophy, so far as regards Christendom, passes from a state 
 of almost complete obscuration to one of almost perfect 
 revelation. A further attention to ascertained facts enables 
 us yet more accurately to determine the character of these 
 translations and the order of their appearance, and adds 
 considerable illustration to the whole history of the esta- 
 blishment of those relations of the Aristotelian philosophy 
 with the Church which constitute so important a feature 
 in the developement of this age. 
 
 The ntuni With regard to the sources from whence the respective 
 
 phllixioiihy of 
 
 intro- translations were derived, it is in harmony with what we 
 should be disposed to expect from the attention paid by 
 the Arabians to natural science, that we find it was chiefly 
 the natural philosophy of Aristotle that was made known 
 through their agency to Europe, and constituted consequently 
 
 1 Prolegomena in Petri Lomb. Sententias, Lib. I Geneva, 1580.
 
 JOURDAIN'S RESEARCHES. 95 
 
 the earlier known portion of the newly imported learning. CHAP. L 
 The Physics, the History of Animals, the De Plantis, the 
 treatise on Meteorology, were among the number; the 
 translation by Michael Scot of the De Anima must, when 
 considered in connexion with the Arabic interpretation of 
 the theory of the treatise, be added to the list; a complete 
 translation of the Ethics alone representing the other class 
 of Aristotle's writings. The translations from the Greek, 
 on the other hand, included the earliest version of the De 
 Anima, the Metaphysics, the Magna Moralia, the first four 
 books of the Ethics, the Politics, the Rhetoric and the 
 Poetics ; among the scientific treatises were the Parva 
 Naturalia and some others of minor importance. 
 
 So soon however as the translations from the Greek superiority 
 became more generally obtainable, they rapidly displaced sjonsfromth 
 the preceding versions. Of this the reason is not difficult t{J 8e A rLbi 
 to perceive. If the versions from the Greek by James of 
 Venice, John of Basingstoke, and William of Moerbecke, 
 were painful from their extreme literalness *, those from the 
 Arabic by Hermann the German, Adelard of Bath, and 
 Michael Scot, lay under the still more serious defect of 
 having been filtered through the medium of some half-dozen 
 preceding versions. It is an ascertained fact that the Arabic 
 translations were invariably made from Hebrew or Syriac 
 manuscripts 2 . Even Averroes, who was supposed by Jourdain 
 to have translated Aristotle into Arabic directly from the 
 Greek, has been shown by later investigators to have been 
 entirely ignorant of the latter language 3 . The statement of 
 
 M. Renan'g 
 
 Kenan leaves us almost bewildered as we seek to realise account of 
 
 the Utter. 
 
 the labyrinth which the thought of Aristotle was thus 
 doomed to traverse : ' Quant a la barbarie du langage 
 d'Averroes, peut-on s'en e*tonner quand on songe que les 
 
 1 ' Ou le mot latin couvre le mot arabes sur des versions hebraiques.' 
 
 grec, de meme que les pieces de Averroes et VAverroisme, p. 203. 
 1'echiquier s'appliquent sur les cases.' 3 ' Ibn-Roschd n'a lu Aristote que 
 
 Jourdain, Rcchtrches Critiques, p. 19. dans les anciennes versions faites du 
 
 s Renan says, 'Au xn et au xm syriaquepar Honeinlbn-Ishak, Ishak 
 
 sifecle, les traductions se faisaient ben-Honein,Iahjaben-Adi, etc.' Ibid. 
 
 toujours directement de 1'arabe. Ce p. 50. See also Munk, Melanges de 
 
 ne fut que beaucoup plus tard qu'on Philosophic Juive et Arabe, pp. 431, 
 
 se uiit a tnuluire les philosophes 432.
 
 96 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. 
 
 CIIAP. i. Editions imprimdes de ses oeuvres n'offrent qu'une traduction 
 latine dune traduction hebra'ique dune commentaire fait sur 
 une traduction arabe <Tune traduction syriaque dun texte 
 grec; quand on songe surtout au ge*nie si different des langues 
 se'mitiques et de la langue grecque, et a I'extre'me subtil itd 
 du texte qu'il s'agissait d'e'claircir 1 ?' 
 
 thc ffi nfuiS of ^ was nat urally to be anticipated that, with the strong 
 ui'ti.^ prepossession in favour of Aristotle which his traditional 
 philosophy. au th or ity as a logician had secured, and which, as Jourdain 
 remarks, had created a disposition to regard his dicta as 
 well nigh infallible in every field of knowledge 5 , this new 
 literature would at once command attention and form an 
 important contribution to the speculative philosophy of the 
 age. When we remember moreover that the Arabians in 
 their commentaries, by the light of which, as we have 
 already seen, this new learning was first studied, extolled 
 or interpreted the Aristotelian decisions with but little regard 
 to their antagonism to the Christian faith, we perceive that 
 there was far greater probability that those decisions would 
 be received and adopted under the impulse of a first enthu- 
 siasm rather than upon such reflexion as a more deliberate 
 estimate might suggest. It must also be remembered that the 
 traditional hostility to pagan learning inculcated by Gregory, 
 Alcuin, and Lanfranc, pointed more at the licentiousness 
 of the poets than at the dogmas of the philosophers. The 
 bitter invectives of Tertullian against Greek philosophy 
 would have seemed well nigh unintelligible to an age 
 wherein that philosophy had almost passed from men's 
 memories, or what remained of it had been received into 
 the bosom of the Church ; wherein Boethius passed for a 
 Christian writer, and Plato taught sheltered under the 
 authority of Augustine ; while Seneca, if studied, simply 
 enforced the rules of a virtuous life from a somewhat 
 different standpoint; and Cicero, to use the expression of 
 Niebuhr, was a 0ecx? oyi/axrTo? whose attributes were but 
 
 1 Avtrroto tt Arerr">imf, p. 52. qu'on le rcgardait comme un maitre 
 
 '^'La reputation dont Arifttote infallible en toute espcce de science.' 
 
 j"iiis-:iit. comme logician, donnait Rccherchct Critiquet, etc., p. 3. 
 
 one tellc extension a son autorite*
 
 DIFFICULTIES OF THE CHURCH. 97 
 
 dimly apprehended. Here however like Minerva from the CHAP. i. 
 head of Jupiter, had suddenly appeared an entire and 
 symmetrical philosophy, a system the cunningly contrived 
 fabric of which permitted not the rejection of a part without 
 danger to the stability of the whole ; a theory of ethics, 
 harmonious and admirably developed ; a psychology, somewhat 
 at variance with the schoolman's notions, but coherent and 
 well defined ; conjectural solutions in metaphysics, far less 
 harmonious and intelligible, but full of attraction for the 
 dialectician; theories of government for the statesman; 
 treatises on nearly every class of natural phenomena for the 
 investigator of physical science. It seemed equally perilous 
 to admit and to repudiate stores of learning sanctioned by 
 such authority but yet opening up to such dangerous specu- 
 lation. The ecclesiastic and the scholar, we may well 
 understand, were torn by contending emotions. 
 
 It is due to the intolerant sagacity of the Church of jjg^f, "J 
 Rome to acknowledge that she soon detected the hostile 
 element latent in the new philosophy. Very early in the 
 century her denunciations were distinctly pronounced. In 
 the year 1210, at a council convened at Paris, certain por- 
 tions of the scientific treatises were condemned 1 , and it 
 was forbidden either to teach or to read the commentaries 
 by which they were accompanied. M. Jourdain has shown 
 that these were undoubtedly translations from the Arabic, 
 and we may readily admit the hypothesis that their condemna- 
 tion was the result rather of the pantheistic interpretations 
 of the commentators than of the opinions of Aristotle himself 2 . 
 It is evident indeed that however much the Crusades may 
 have been instrumental in bringing about that intercourse 
 which led to the introduction of the new learning, the 
 feelings they evoked necessarily disposed the Church to 
 regard all Saracenic thought as hostile to the faith. Nor 
 
 1 Launoy (see De Varia A ristotelis is expressly stated that they are 
 
 in Scholis Protestant him Fortuna,c. 1) libri Aristotelis de naturali philoso- 
 
 relying on the authority of Rigordus phia. Recherches Critiques, p. 190. 
 has asserted that it was the Meta- 2 See chapter entitled Commentai res 
 
 physics that were condemned on sur Aristote in La Philosophic de 
 
 this occasion; but Jourdain has ad- Saint Thomas d'Aquin, by Charles 
 
 duced the sentence itself, wherein it Jourdain, i 83.
 
 98 
 
 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. 
 
 CHAP. i. was the patronage of the emperor, Frederic n likely to 
 win much favour for such literature 1 . He was himself 
 accused, at a somewhat later period, of having written a 
 book (now known never to have existed) which coordinated, 
 as developements of a like spirit of imposture, the Mosaic, 
 the Christian, and the Mahometan religions 2 ; the difficulty 
 with which he had been induced by the Pope to join in the 
 Crusades, was notorious ; and his sympathies with his Moorish 
 subjects, who were numerous in the two Sicilies, equally so. 
 Accordingly, as the new Aristotle made its way, the anathemas 
 of the Church were heard following upon the study. In 1215, 
 the Pope's legate repeated the prohibition of 1210. In 1231, 
 a decree of Gregory IX forbade the use of the treatises on 
 natural science, in the same university, until they should 
 have been inspected by authority and ' purged from all sus- 
 picion of error 8 .' We learn from Roger Bacon that this 
 prohibition expressly pointed at the commentaries of Avicenna 
 and Averroes. On the same authority we gather that it was 
 about this year that the most considerable influx of the new 
 learning took place 4 . 
 
 The New 
 Aristotle 
 anathema 
 
 ti/.-l. 
 
 1 It was probably about the year 
 1220 that Frederic II Bent to the 
 university of Bologna translations, 
 partly from the Greek, partly from 
 the Arabic of Aristotle and ' other 
 philosophers,' chiefly Ptolemy ; quas 
 adhuc, says the royal letter accompa- 
 nying them, originalium dictionwn 
 ordinatione consertaa, et vetustarum 
 vestium, qtuui eis atas prima conces- 
 terat, operimento contectag, vel homi- 
 nit defectug aut opens ad Latin<e 
 lingua notitiam non perduxit. Vo- 
 Itnteg igitur, ut veneranda tantonun 
 operum timul auctoritas apud nog, non 
 abgque commodix communibus, vocis or- 
 fi'iiin traduce innotencat; ea per viros 
 lectot, et in utriwque lingua prola- 
 tione peritot, instantrr juxximut ver- 
 borum fideliter gervata virginitatf, 
 trantferri. Conringius, be Antiq. 
 Acad. p. 101. Prantl attaches con- 
 fliderable importance to the Empe- 
 ror'a patronage : ' Hingegen ist wohl 
 anzunehmen, dass Beit der Anre- 
 gung, welche Friedrich gegeben hatte, 
 fortwiihrend an verschiedenen Orten 
 
 durch Manche, von welchen wir nicht 
 einmal die Namen kennen, neue 
 Uebertragungen zu Tage gefordert 
 werden konuten.' Geschichte der Lo- 
 gik, in 5. Among the translators 
 employed by the emperor was the 
 celebrated Michael Scott, who was 
 also patronised by Honorius III. 
 
 2 The De Tribus Impogtoribus. 
 'A book was said to have existed at 
 this time, with this title ; it has never 
 been discovered. I have seen a vulgar 
 production with the title, of modern 
 manufacture. ' Milman, ///.-.,'. Latin 
 Chrigtianity, Bk. x c. 4. 
 
 3 'Ad htec jubemus ut magistri 
 art i am 111111111 lectionem de Prisciano, 
 et unam post aliam ordinarie semper 
 legant, et libris illis naturalibus, qni 
 in concilio provinciali ex certa scien- 
 tia prohibit! fuere Parisius, non 
 utantur, quousque examinati fue- 
 rint, et ab omni errorum suspicione 
 purgati.' Launoy, De Varia Aristote- 
 lis For tuna, c. 1. 
 
 4 Opus Tertium, c. 9, ed. Brewer, 
 p. 28.
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE AGE. 99 
 
 Here then was a grave question pressing upon the leaders C AP. i. 
 of the age. Was this massive and imposing philosophy to The question 
 
 .., *! as it offered 
 
 be regarded as some hostile fortification menacing the rights j^o 1 , ,^ 
 and authority of the Church, or might it not be possible for 
 the Church herself to garrison it, and hold it as some strong 
 outwork against the foe? Was the new Aristotle to be 
 repudiated and denounced, even as Gregory had denounced 
 all pagan literature, or was it, if possible, to be accepted and 
 reconciled with Christian dogma? The degenerate Bene- 
 dictines, it need hardly be said, evaded the difficulty and the 
 responsibility of so momentous a decision ; upon the school- 
 men, who, as representatives of the progressive spirit of the 
 thirteenth century, were to be found among the mendicant 
 orders alone, it devolved to accept the nobler alternative and 
 to essay a perilous and arduous task. A concurrence of 
 events appears to have largely conduced to their temporary 
 success. Apart from the reverence with which any writings 
 that bore the name of Aristotle were then regarded, it is 
 evident that those influences to which we have already re- 
 ferred were extending the arena of mental activity. The The new lite- 
 rature ap- 
 
 dread anticipations of preceding centuries no longer hung 
 gloomily over thought and action ; and the impulse generated * Ke " 
 by the Crusades and the mendicant orders was fully shared 
 by the new and fast increasing centres of education and 
 learning. The scanty literature of the age failed altogether 
 to satisfy the growing appetite. The controversy respecting 
 Universals could not last for ever: even the Benedictines 
 were rousing themselves to fresh literary efforts; and the 
 rise of the Rhyming Chroniclers in England and that of 
 the Troubadours in France are indications of a very general 
 craving. It was precisely when this craving was at its height 
 that the new Aristotle appeared, and, considered in the light 
 of the facts which we have brought together in our preceding 
 chapter, it must be admitted that the sacrifice which the 
 Church at first sought to impose upon the orthodox, in de- 
 manding the exclusion of such important accessions to 
 philosophy, was one of no ordinary magnitude. 
 
 And here, before we pass on to note the effects produced 
 
 72
 
 100 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. 
 
 CHAP. i. by these accessions, and the new literature to which they 
 A Nonuan gave birth, it will be well to turn aside for a moment for 
 Kii3h R i[.it>rary the purpose of forming a final estimate of the sources from 
 
 of the Twelfth ... . T , 
 
 century. whence, up to about the year 1230, men like Anselm, John 
 of Salisbury, and Giraldus, derived their learning and their 
 inspiration. The two catalogues here annexed will serve to 
 furnish a sufficiently just conception of those stores. They 
 are both probably of the twelfth century, certainly not later 
 than the early part of the thirteenth, the one representing 
 the library of the Norman monastery at Bee, the other, that 
 of Christchurch, Canterbury 1 ; the former a purely Bene- 
 dictine foundation; the latter, at the period to which the 
 catalogue belongs, a more catholic society, where canons 
 mingled with monks, and having somewhat the relation of 
 a mother institution to other foundations throughout the 
 country*, a relation which probably accounts for the nume- 
 rous copies of the ordinary text books in its possession. 
 
 It will be seen that the literary resources of these two 
 great centres of monasticism were but little beyond what 
 our preceding investigations would lead us to anticipate. 
 The meagre literature of the traditional Trivium and Quad- 
 rivium is of course there. Martianus Capella, represented 
 by a single copy at Bee, has a quadruple existence and a 
 commentator at Canterbury ; but Cassiodorus and Isidorus at 
 the Norman foundation, and wanting to the other, may be 
 
 1 The first of these catalogues is thirteenth century, 
 
 taken from Ravaisson, Rapport sur * ' The cathedral church of Canter - 
 
 les liibliothtquet de VOuet. The bury was not a monastery in the 
 
 editor considers that the manuscript same sense as that of St. Augustine's 
 
 may possibly be of the thirteenth in the same city : the latter was 
 
 century (p. 1G2 and Append, p. 376); founded for monastic purposes; the 
 
 but M. Ik'musat observes that the other was the mother church of the 
 
 books given by the Bishop of Bayeux whole kingdom, its monastic charac- 
 
 could not have been given later than ter being almost accidental Hence, 
 
 1164, the year of his death. Saint even in the strictest days of regular 
 
 A ntelme de Cantorbtry (Paris 1853), discipline, it had contained many 
 
 p. 457. The second catalogue, now clergy who were not monks, and 
 
 printed for the first time, is from many monks who were so only in 
 
 MS. li. 8. 12, in the University name. As at the first the essential 
 
 Library, Cambridge. Mr. Bradshaw, character of its inmates was priestly, 
 
 to whom I am indebted for my not monastic, so as time went on, 
 
 knowledge of it, is of opinion that their successors included both monks 
 
 the manuscript belongs to the end of and priests.' Prof. Stubbs, Pref. to 
 
 the twelfth or the beginning of the Epitt. Cantuaricnset, pp. xxiii, xxiv.
 
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 104 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. 
 
 CFIAP. i. held to restore the balance. The educational activity of 
 Christchurch is indicated by its numerous Priscians ; five 
 copies, that is to say, of the entire work, and, for those who 
 might despair of traversing, like Odo of Cluny, ' so vast an 
 ocean 1 ,' the same number of the portion on Constructions. 
 Plato, whose name appears in both lists, means nothing more 
 than the translation of part of the Timoeus by Chalcidius. 
 Boethius the philosopher and Boethius the theologian stand 
 side by side as one personality. Bee, rejoicing in the muni- 
 ficence of Philip, the bishop of Bayeux, exhibits a noteworthy 
 array of the writings of Cicero, for which Canterbury can 
 shew only the De Senectute and the De Amicitia, but boasts, 
 on the other hand, eight Sallusts, three Virgils, four Juvenals, 
 and nine Persiuses, names wanting in the Norman library. 
 Macrobius, endeared to the Middle Ages by his gossip and 
 the fragmentary character of his lore, is possessed by both 
 foundations, and at Christchurch is more numerous than any 
 other author. The absence from the English catalogue of 
 any of Anselm's writings is remarkable, more especially when 
 taken in conjunction with the presence of his disciple and 
 editor, Richard, abbat of Preaux 8 . No Greek author appears 
 in the library at Bee, a fact from which M. Re'musat is pro- 
 bably justified in inferring that neither Lanfranc nor Anselm 
 possessed any acquaintance with the language 8 ; nor will the 
 presence of a Greek grammar (Danatus grece) at Canterbury 
 tend much to modify such a conclusion. The Nova Logica* 
 appears in the English catalogue in the Topica and the 
 Elenchi Sophistici, but is wanting in the Norman. The 
 Institutes of Justinian appear in both, but the single Codex 
 and Infortiatum shew that the study of the civil law is still 
 
 ' Immensum Prisciani transiit preuve ; et quoiqne, alors, on pass/it 
 
 transnatando pelagus.' It ill. Cluny, pour savoir cette langue, qnand on 
 
 col. 18. en lisait les caracteres, nous ne 
 
 * Richardns, abbat of Pratcllum in voyons nulle raison dc faire d'An- 
 
 the Provincia HotomagensiH, died selme mfime le plus faible des helle'n- 
 
 1131. He edited Anselm's commen- istes, parce qu'il croit quelque part 
 
 taries, and himself wrote allegorical que latitude se dit en grec irXaVoj, et 
 
 interpretations of the prophets, a donnelemotalte'r^ d'anagngen comme 
 
 commentary on Deuteronomy, etc. aynonyme de contemplatio. ' Aneelme 
 
 See Oallia Christiana, xi 837, 838. de Canterbury, p. 457. 
 
 3 ' On dit bien que Lanfranc savnit * Sec p. 29, and p. 72 note 3. 
 le grec, mais on n'cn domic aucunc
 
 SCANTINESS OF THE EXISTING LITERATURE. 105 
 
 in its infancy at Bee, and their entire absence at Canterbury CIIAP. i. 
 suggests that it had not yet found favour in this country. 
 The absence again of the Decretum of Gratian would lead us 
 to surmise that the English catalogues could not have been 
 drawn up many years after the half century. 
 
 On the whole, it would be difficult to select fairer or more 
 favorable specimens of the literary resources of western Europe 
 in the interval from between the earlier part of the eleventh 
 and the thirteenth century ; and as we glance through the 
 scanty array we begin to realise more clearly the position 
 of the scholar at that period, and to understand how little 
 he would be disposed to reject, how eagerly he would wel- 
 come, whatever offered itself as an accession to these slender 
 stores, especially when such accessions bore the name of the 
 highest authority that could be found in pagan literature. 
 The catalogue of Christchurch, again, is especially worthy of catalogue of 
 
 . ... 1 . the Monas- 
 
 note, as onering a striking contrast to the extensive catalogue teryofchHst- 
 
 e church a 
 
 consisting of no less than 698 volumes, each volume com- century later, 
 prising on the average some ten or twelve distinct works, 
 which we find representing the library of the same foundation 
 little more than a hundred years later 1 ; that is to say, after 
 the introduction of the new learning which we have already 
 described, and the consequent awakening of that literary 
 activity which we must now proceed to trace. 
 
 The increasing desire for what gratified either the imagi- Activity or 
 nation or the understanding, and the scantiness of the existing cants fcrour- 
 
 able to the 
 
 resources, were not the only circumstances that favoured the new learning, 
 introduction of the new learning. It is round the university 
 of Paris tKat the earlier history both of the mendicant orders 
 and of '.ne new Aristotle mainly revolves, and it was but two 
 years prior to the prohibition of Gregory ix that events, 
 which none could have foreseen, afforded- the Dominicans 
 a long coveted opportunity. At Paris, probably, was first 
 exhibited that sudden and surprising change in their de- 
 meanour to which we shall have occasion hereafter more 
 
 1 See Edwards' Memoirs of Libra- are to be recognised in this catalogue, 
 
 ries, i 122 135, where the catalogue but the greater, portion have dis- 
 
 fills 113 closely printed pages. A few appeared, 
 of the volumes of the older library
 
 106 
 
 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. 
 
 CHAP. I. 
 
 I'aris. 
 
 Conflict 
 between the 
 University 
 and the 
 
 Citizens in 
 1228. 
 
 fully to refer. The authorities of the university soon became 
 conscious that the efforts of the Mendicants were being 
 directed quite as much to the aggrandizement of their order 
 as to the common welfare. The spirit which had led St. 
 Paul to term himself the least of the apostles, had been 
 imitated by the Franciscans in styling themselves the Friars 
 Minor, but their conduct already began to belie the humility 
 of their professions, and the Dominicans were evidently at 
 least equally intent upon the increase of their own authority 
 and power. A special letter on their behalf was addressed 
 to the university by pope Gregory in the year 1227, but 
 with small avail. It became evident that a conflict was 
 impending ; when, in the following year, an unexpected turn 
 of events secured to the Dominicans an easy triumph. 
 
 The university, like all the other universities of that 
 age, was frequently in collision with the citizens and the 
 civic authorities. Foreigners, young, arrogant, wanton, and 
 imperious, harmonised ill with the native element, often 
 cherishing sullen and unreasoning antipathies. It so hap- 
 pened that a body of the students in a drunken outbreak of 
 more than ordinary licence, had fallen upon some of the 
 townsmen and severely maltreated them. The outcry raised 
 against the whole university was loud and fierce. Queen 
 Blanche, herself, appears to have shared the general feeling 
 of resentment. The city guard were authorised to take 
 vengeance on the offenders, and executed their instructions 
 with a barbarity which we may well believe far exceeded 
 the royal intentions. The real offenders had been of the 
 Picard nation, but the feeling roused was far too fierce to 
 discriminate in its revenge. The students had assembled 
 outside the city walls for their sports when they were sud- 
 denly attacked and compelled to take refuge in the city. 
 They were pursued through the streets, the citizens joining 
 in the chase ; some were dragged from their places of con- 
 cealment, among them two clerks of high dignity who were 
 stripped and murdered; others were left for dead. The 
 feelings of the whole university were roused to the highest 
 pitch. A deputation waited on the Queen demanding im-
 
 THE DOMINICANS AT PARIS. 107 
 
 mediate satisfaction. They were met by a haughty refusal, CHAP. i. 
 and professors and scholars alike, stung by the injustice, 
 resolved to quit the city. A simultaneous migration took Retirement 
 place to Rheims, Angers, and Orleans ; all lectures were sus- verify from 
 pended ; the assemblies were no longer convened 1 . It was 
 at this juncture that Henry III issued a general invitation 
 to the students to come and settle where they pleased in 
 England. The invitation was responded to by large numbers. 
 Many settled at Oxford, many at Cambridge ; and from the 
 narrative of these refugees Matthew Paris learned the details 
 which we have briefly reproduced 2 . 
 
 The Dominicans saw their opportunity and hastened to The opportu- 
 
 i f i i 111 n it.vi m P rove d 
 
 improve it. The secession of the students was resented both b y the Domi - 
 
 mcans. 
 
 by the Crown and the ecclesiastical authorities : the former 
 indignant that the newly constituted bodies at Orleans and 
 Angers were daring to confer degrees without the royal 
 sanction ; the archbishop aggrieved that the university should 
 have withdrawn from the sphere of his jurisdiction. The 
 Dominicans were warmly welcomed and were empowered to 
 open two schools of theology where, under the leadership of 
 Jordanus, the general of their order, a man eminent alike 
 for his virtues and his talents, their numbers rapidly in- 
 creased. Such were the circumstances under which Albertus 
 Magnus first began to teach in the neighbourhood of the 
 street that still bears his name 3 . He had already taught 
 with success at Cologne, where Thomas Aquinas had been 
 among his hearers, and his fame, as an expounder of Aristotle, 
 soon drew around him numerous audiences at Paris. 'It is 
 only when we consider in their true connexion the events 
 that combined at this crisis, the general craving for fresh 
 learning, the simultaneous introduction of the new philosophy 
 
 1 ' Scholares dispersi vagabantur, consecutus fuit, et per triennium 
 nulla amplius comitia, nullus Magis- publice docuit.' Bulasus, in 162. 
 tratus in Academia? soils.' Biilteus, Considerable difference of statement 
 in 1 38. is to be found respecting the date of 
 
 2 Ibid, in 132. the arrival of Albertus in Paris. 
 8 ' Hocce tempore Albertus Magnus Milman and Haure"au placing it as 
 
 summa celebritate docebat in platea early as 1228 ; Ueberweg and the 
 
 quae hodie etiain M. Albert! nomen author of the life of Albertus in the 
 
 prsefert (still known as the Rue de Nouvelle Biographic Generate, as late 
 
 Maitre-Albert) missus quippe Lute- as 1245. 
 tiam, anno 1236, Doctoratus apicem
 
 108 
 
 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. 
 
 CHAP. I. 
 
 The Domini- 
 can Inter- 
 pretation of 
 Aristotle. 
 
 Thomas 
 Aquinas, 
 6.1224. 
 ti.1274. 
 
 Different 
 methods of 
 Albertus 
 MaKnus and 
 Thomas 
 Aquinas. 
 
 Philosophy 
 of Tin imiii 
 Aquinas. 
 
 and the installation of the Dominicans in the chairs of the 
 university of Paris, that we are able to some extent to 
 realise the force of the current on which the thought of the 
 Stagirite was irresistibly borne within those precincts where 
 it was destined so long and so imperiously to reign. 
 
 We have now arrived at the chief mental phenomenon 
 of this century, the Dominican interpretation of Aristotle. 
 Of the Franciscan interpretation the earlier history is com- 
 paratively unimportant, or serves only to illustrate the anti- 
 pathies of the Church ; it was condemned by authority, and 
 forsaken by the Franciscans of a later period. The tradi- 
 tional method must be sought in the writings of Albertus 
 and Aquinas. While Albertus has been stigmatized as the 
 ' ape of Aristotle,' Aquinas has been reproached with equally 
 servile deference to the authority of Albertus. To. each 
 indictment a large exception may be taken. It would cer- 
 tainly be more accurate to describe the former as the ' ape 
 of Avicenna,' and the latter, in that he followed Averroes 
 rather than Avicenna, widely departed from the example of 
 his master \ Their method too was different ; while Albertus 
 composed paraphrases of Aristotle, Aquinas was the first 
 who, in imitation of the great commentary of Averroes, 
 surrounded the text with an elaborate exegesis. It would 
 perhaps be most correct to regard Albertus as the laborious 
 collector of materials from whence succeeding schoolmen with 
 distincter conceptions of science and method were afterwards 
 to draw 8 , Aquinas, as the inaugurator of that system of 
 scientific theology which formed the boast of the Dominican 
 school. 
 
 The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas can only be satis- 
 factorily discussed by considering it both in relation to the 
 
 1 'Avicenna est lo grand maltre 
 (V Albert. La forme de Bon commen- 
 taire est celle d'Avicenne ; Avicenne 
 est citd a chaqne page de ses fcrits, 
 tandis qu'Averrcics no Test qu'assez 
 raremcnt, et parfois pour easiiyer le 
 reproche d'avoir os6 contredire son 
 maitre... Albert doit tout a Avicenne; 
 saint Thomas, commc philosophe, 
 doit presqne tout A Averroes. ' Benan, 
 
 Averroes et V Averroutmt, pp. 231, 
 230. 
 
 3 Prantl, whose estimate of both 
 Albertus and Aquinas inclines to 
 severity, sternly refuses to allow the 
 former any other merit than that of 
 an indefatigable compiler. ' Er ist 
 nur Compilator, und Alles, durchweg 
 Alles, was er schreibt, ist fremdes 
 gut.' Geschichte der Logik, in 189.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. 109 
 
 genuine thought of Aristotle and to the multiform material, CHAP. i. 
 chiefly Arabian, which offered itself to the consideration of 
 philosophers in that age. But first it may be worth while 
 to notice that more general point of view from whence, in 
 contradistinction to thinkers like Gregory and Alcuin, he 
 professed to discern the grounds of reconciliation between 
 Christian and pagan thought. It has been the fashion in spurious 
 
 literature of 
 
 modern times, a fashion first set by Erasmus, to illustrate the a e - 
 the labours of the schoolmen by bringing forward some of 
 the most profitless and frivolous details into which, owing to 
 their peculiar exhaustive method of investigation, they were 
 often led 1 ; and, having selected these as fair specimens of 
 the questions whereon the scholastic ingenuity was expended, 
 to dismiss, as unworthy of grave discussion, treatises occupied 
 with such fruitless enquiries as those that concern the attri- 
 butes and capacities of angelic natures. It was, undoubtedly, 
 much to the disadvantage of the schoolmen, that forgeries 
 like that of the Pseudo-Dionysius, wherein no less than The Pseudo- 
 
 Dionysius. 
 
 fifteen lengthy chapters are devoted to unfolding the func- 
 tions, orders, and attributes of angels, stood, to their appre- 
 hension, on the same level as the Gospels or the Apocalypse*. 
 
 1 Articles 2 and 3 of Questio LH Oxford Reformers, p. 61. "The'Celes- 
 
 oiihe Secunda Secundce oi theSumma, tial Hierarchy' would command at 
 
 have been favorite illustrations : once, and did command, universal 
 
 2. Utrum angelus possit esse in respect for its authority, and uni- 
 
 pluribus locis simuL 3. Utrum plures versal reverence for its doctrines, 
 
 angeli possint esse in eodem loco. The ' Hierarchy' threw upward the 
 
 8 ' Ut docet Dionysius' is an oft Primal Deity, the whole Trinity, into 
 recurring expression in Aquinas. For the most awful, unapproachable, in- 
 a lengthened period the book appears comprehensible distance, but it filled 
 to have frequently supplanted the the widening intermediate space with 
 Bible as the basis of exposition in a regular succession of superhuman 
 English churches. Grocyn, so late Agents, an ascending and descending 
 as the year 1498, selected the book scale of Beings, each with his rank, 
 as the subject of a series of lectures title, office, function, superior or 
 in St. Paul's Cathedral. Its genuine- subordinate. The vague incidental 
 ness had, however, been already called notices in the Old and New Testa- 
 in question ; and having commenced ment and in St. Paul (and to St. 
 his lectures by strongly denouncing Paul doubtless Jewish tradition lent 
 such scepticism, the lecturer found the names), were wrought out into 
 himself compelled, before the com- regular orders, who have each, as it 
 pletion of his course, to inform his were, a feudal relation, pay their 
 audience that internal evidence too feudal service (here it struck in with 
 conclusive to be resisted had brought the Western as well as with the 
 home to his own mind the fact that Hierarchical mind) to the Supreme, 
 the book was undoubtedly spurious. and have feudal superiority or sub- 
 See Wood-Bliss, i 31. Seebohm's jection to each other. This theory.
 
 110 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. 
 
 CHAPEL In this however they only shared the delusions of their age; 
 nor was Dionysius the only forgery that commanded uni- 
 versal deference. The most influential contribution made by 
 Grosseteste to literature, was the translation which he under- 
 took, with the assistance of John Basing, of the ' Testaments 
 of the Twelve Patriarchs.' Basing, who belonged to the 
 Benedictine monastery of St. Alban's, had discovered the 
 manuscript at Athens, and returned with it to England in 
 the belief that he was bringing an inestimable treasure. No 
 treatise occupied a larger share of the attention of the age, 
 but its spuriousness has long been recognised 1 . In esti- 
 mating, accordingly, the labours of the schoolmen, it is only 
 just to bear also in mind the nature of the subject matter 
 which they were sometimes called to interpret and eluci- 
 date. 
 combination True wisdom, said Aquinas, echoing the thought of 
 
 in Aquinas of 
 
 Aristotle, is to know the end or reXo? of things, and to make 
 
 philosophy. one ' s action conducive to the accomplishment of that end. 
 The different branches of knowledge may be regarded as 
 ranking in dignity according as they are concerned with 
 ends of greater or less importance ; but all these ends merge 
 in a common centre, all truth is harmonious. The true phi- 
 losopher is he, who rising above these individual ends, seeks 
 out the final end, the attainment of ultimate truth, the per- 
 fection of the understanding. There are two paths whereby 
 he is enabled to attain to this absolute truth, reason and 
 faith*. Some truths, such as the doctrine of the Trinity, and 
 that of the Incarnation, altogether transcend the powers of 
 
 ere longbecame almost the authorised Jewish Christian who lived in the 
 
 theology ; it became, as far as such earlier half of the second century. 
 
 transcendant subjects could be fami- ' How great a sensation was produced 
 
 liarised to the mind, the vulgar by the publication of this worthless 
 
 belief." Milman's Hist . Latin Chris- book is shown by the fact of its 
 
 tiniiiii/, Bk. xiv c. 2. being mentioned by every chronicler 
 
 1 The work has recently received ...It is lamentable to think that these 
 
 a full investigation at the hands of two wretched forgeries (the ' Testa- 
 
 Mr. Sinker of Trinity College, Cam- ments' and the Pseudo-Dionysius) 
 
 bridge, in the Norrisian Prize Essay were the Greek books that mainly 
 
 of IftfM. Mr. Sinker enumerates no occupied Grosseteste's attention.' 
 
 less than thirty-one existing MSS. of Luard's Preface to Grosseteste Epis- 
 
 GroBseteste's version. He shewn that tola. 
 
 the original was known to Origen * Contra Gentiles, cc. 8 and 4. 
 and was the work probably of a
 
 THEORY OF THOMAS AQUINAS. Ill 
 
 the human understanding. These faith only can arrive at. CHAP. i. 
 There are others which reason seems enabled to grasp un- 
 aided by revelation, such as the existence and unity of God 1 . 
 This distinction, however, constitutes no real difference in the 
 truths themselves, for it exists only in relation to the human 
 intellect ; with God, all truth is one and simple. That reason 
 was never intended to be our sole guide to belief, Aquinas 
 pointed out, was evident ; its insufficiency for that purpose 
 is manifest. In the first place, all natural knowledge takes 
 its rise in experience, or the evidence of the senses ; but how 
 can sensible objects teach us to comprehend the Creator? 
 how can the effect explain the cause? Again, this know- 
 ledge differs from itself in degree and in kind: the philo- 
 sopher is familiar with ideas to which the ploughman is a 
 stranger; the knowledge of the angel transcends by a yet 
 greater interval that of the philosopher. And again, even 
 in the province that the natural reason calls its own, the 
 visible, the sensible, how incomplete, obscure, and confused 
 is the knowledge it can acquire ! How then can we be 
 surprised that it should fail to attain to the mysteries of the 
 divine, the invisible nature ? If, moreover, reason were the 
 only path whereby mankind could attain to truth, how evil 
 would be our lot ! How many, by sheer indisposition for the 
 task of investigation, would fail to pursue it ! The aversion 
 to serious intellectual effort, the pressing cares of daily life, 
 native indolence and social claims, call away the many to 
 more obvious pursuits. How uncertain, too, are the results 
 to which the natural reason can attain, how often are they 
 contested and overthrown 2 ! Properly regarded, therefore, 
 natural and revealed truth will appear as complementary to 
 each other. The divine knowledge in the mind of Christ, 
 said Aquinas, does not extinguish that in the human soul, 
 
 1 Summa i Qusest. n art. 3. sibi ipsis contraria senserunt. Ut 
 
 2 ' Katio enim humana in rebus ergo esset indubitata et certa cogni- 
 divinis est multum deficiens. Cujus tio apud homines de Deo oportuit 
 signum est quia philosophia de rebus quod divina eis per modum fidei tra- 
 humanis est multum deficiens. Cujus derentur, quasi a Deo dicta, qui 
 Bignum est, quia philosophi de rebus mentiri non possit.' Secunda Sc- 
 humanis natural! investigatione per- cund<e, Quaest. n art. 4. 
 scrutantes in multis erraverunt, et
 
 112 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. 
 
 CHAP. i. but invests it with a new brilliancy 1 . The natural reason 
 cannot prove the truth of divine knowledge, but may be 
 worthily employed in illustrating and defending it*. 
 
 l quh?iu f Such, in general terms, is the theory which underlies the 
 teaching of Aquinas. The thought may fail to strike us as 
 original or novel, but that it should thus fail, is perhaps the 
 strongest evidence how the influence of the Angelic Doctor 
 has permeated our whole theology ; and it can scarcely be 
 denied that it presents a sober and dignified estimate of the 
 ground whereon rational belief may take its stand. It long 
 inspired the defenders of the faith. It has been echoed in 
 every variety of tone by those whose contempt for the 
 schoolmen has only been equalled by their ignorance of the 
 scholastic literature. It was, after Albertus, the first serious 
 and systematic effort to construct a general formula which 
 should anticipate and meet each and every objection which 
 scepticism, in the garb of the philosopher, might urge against 
 the Christian faith. 
 
 The true test of every such general formula must however 
 be sought in its specific application ; and it is when the 
 transition has been made from the broad platform of com- 
 prehensive principles to the investigation of individual cases, 
 that we are best enabled to gauge the merit of the dominant 
 conception. On the other hand, it is only just to remember 
 that errors of method may bring discredit upon the soundest 
 hypothesis. But from whichever point of view we may form 
 
 1 Sttmma, in Quaest. ix art. 1. Compare also Secunda Secunda, 
 
 1 There is a marked resemblance Quaest. n art. 4. Dryden, as Johnson 
 
 to Aquinas in the theory developed has remarked, was far superior in 
 
 by Dryden in the first forty lines of learning to Pope, and though he enter- 
 
 the Rfligio Laid. The following ed Trinity during the Puritan ascend- 
 
 o<. incidence of thought would suggest ancy, he shared in those scholastic 
 
 that the poet must have derived the influences which strongly affected 
 
 idea either directly or indirectly from our Anglican theology in the seven- 
 
 the schoolman : 'Sensibiliaautemad teenth century. Few of Macaulay's 
 
 hoc ducere intellectum nostrum non criticisms are more unjust than that 
 
 ppssunt, ut in eis diviua substantia wherein he affirms of the poet ' that 
 
 videatur quid sit, cum sint effectus his knowledge both of the Church 
 
 causa virtu tern non ipquantos.' Contra which he quitted and of the Church 
 
 Geniet, i c.3. ' How can the less the which he entered were of the most 
 
 greater comprehend ? | Or finite rea- superficial kind.' Hist. England, 11* 
 
 son reach infinity? | For what could 1SJ7. 
 fathom God were more than He !'
 
 THOMAS AQUINAS. 113 
 
 our estimate of the manner in which Aquinas developed his CHAP. i. 
 main theory, it must be admitted that his treatment of the Difficulty of 
 Aristotelian philosophy can scarcely be accepted as a satis- 1 t ^ ri j i 1 ^ i u ? ht to 
 factory solution of a great difficulty. To reconcile, indeed, Oflli a 8 e - 
 is ever a harder task than simply to proscribe, and it is but 
 just to remember that it was the fate of Aquinas to encounter 
 in their first impetuous influx, a tide of theories, dogmas, and 
 interpretations, which might well have filled with despair a 
 less masculine and sinewy intellect. There is much in the 
 conflict which his age beheld between Oriental and Grecian 
 habits of thought and the widely different tendencies of the 
 West, that very forcibly recalls the mental phenomena of the 
 fourth and fifth centuries. The mere geography of the intel- 
 lectual activity of these times is suggestive of the meeting of 
 strongly opposed currents, a glare of differently coloured lights, 
 which seem in some instances to have neutralized each other, 
 in others merely to have stood out in strange and inharmoni- 
 ous juxtaposition. The thinkers who at the commencement XS^oftiw 
 of the century most strongly influenced Europe, were of Se- LctwtfJIf l 
 mitic race and pagan faith ; while those who rose within the 
 Church were of widely separated lands; Albertus was a native 
 of Swabia ; Aquinas studied at Naples, his family was Italian 
 and distinguished in the service of the house of Hohenstoffern ; 
 William of Moerbecke, the translator of Aristotle, died arch- 
 bishop of Corinth ; Duns Scotus was probably a Northum- 
 brian ; Bonaventura was a Tuscan ; Alexander Hales, an Eng- 
 lishman who taught at Paris. Amid an almost chaotic aggre- 
 gation of past and contemporary thought the great schoolman 
 took his stand, and strove to evoke order out of confusion, 
 harmony out of discord. The dogmas of Rome were the 
 Procrustean measure to which each theory had to be stretched 
 or to be reduced ; a task sufficiently arduous in the case of 
 Aristotle, in that of Averroes absolutely impossible. The 
 strongly Platonic cast of thought in the writings of Augustine 
 added another element of difficulty, and the influence of 
 Moses Maimonides 1 , from whose Dux Perplexoruni Aquinas 
 
 1 On the influence of this writer Religionsphilosophie, von Dr. A. 
 upon Scholasticism see Studien uber Schmiedl, Wien, 1869. How largely
 
 114 
 
 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. 
 
 CHAP. i. 
 
 A uhi 
 
 (as recent investigation has shewn) so largely drew, con- 
 tributed still further to the complication. If we add to these 
 elements his frequent but capricious employment of the 
 Byzantine logic, which afterwards produced such important 
 results in the hands of Scotus and Occam, the Neo-Platonic 
 tendencies of the widely circulated De Causis 1 , we must 
 admit that the task essayed by Numenius or Clemens was 
 one of comparative simplicity. We marvel how the great 
 schoolman could have ever ventured to essay the passage of 
 so dark a current, wherein, as round the hero of old, 
 
 KVKwutvov lara.ro KV/JM, 
 w6ti &' tr ffdicti rltrruv poor ovol 
 
 The course to which Aquinas found himself ultimately 
 impelled, may be briefly characterised as the sacrifice of 
 Averroes to save Aristotle. As the interpretations of the 
 Arabic commentators became more fully understood their 
 incompatibility with the teaching of the Church grew evident, 
 and in 1240 Guillaume d'Auvergne, the archbishop of Paris, 
 denounced as heretical another series of propositions taken 
 chiefly from the De Causis. The facts presented to our 
 observation exhibit, accordingly, Aquinas as, on the one 
 hand, following almost implicitly the method of Averroes 
 and imbibing many of his tenets, on the other hand as 
 strenuously opposing him whenever bis teaching threatened 
 to endanger the cause of orthodoxy*. M. Renan remarks 
 
 Albertns Magnus drew from his 
 writings may be seen in the treatise 
 of M. Joel, Breslau, 1863. 
 
 The I)e Catuit was another 
 popular forgery in these times ; a 
 Iran nlat ion from the Arabic of a 
 treatise falsely ascribed to Aristotle. 
 M. Jourdain (Recherchtt Critiques, p. 
 212) considers it to have been in 
 scarcely less favour than the Psendo- 
 Dionysins. 'It contains,' says Ne- 
 nii<li r. ' the principles of the Neo- 
 PUtonic monism, as the same was 
 reduced to form and systematic co- 
 herence \n Plotinus, the doctrine of 
 the Absolute as the super-existent, 
 from which issues forth the whole 
 developing process of being, pro- 
 
 ceeding by regular gradations, the 
 idea of creation transformed into the 
 doctrine of a process of evolution 
 grounded in immanent necessity.' 
 Church Hist, vin 206. 
 
 1 It is not uninteresting to note in 
 these times the first appearance of 
 that singular theory, revived amid 
 the metaphysical jugglery of the 
 present century, which would explain 
 all contradictions by suggesting as a 
 solution that what is true in science 
 may be false in theology, and vice 
 versa. Roger Bacon (Opus Tertium, 
 c. 23, 24) indignantly repudiates the 
 sophism, and Mr. Lewes (Hist, of 
 Philosophy, n 83) has noticed his 
 disclaimer with complacency. It is
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DE ANIMA. 115 
 
 however that in general he appears to have regarded his CHAP. i. 
 Arabian teacher rather as a pagan deserving compassion in 
 his ignorance, than as a blasphemer to be execrated. 
 
 The details of the system pursued by Aquinas obviously Fail j ofhis 
 lie beyond the range of our enquiry, but in pursuance of our 
 endeavour at elucidating the peculiar manner in which the 
 philosophy of these times entered into their whole spirit of 
 instruction, we propose to briefly point out how, on one 
 important point, the method of the schoolmen failed equally 
 to avert the censure of authority and the reproach of the 
 philosopher. 
 
 The theory respecting the intellect which Aristotle sets Especially 
 
 J r with refer- 
 
 forth, in the third book of the De Anima , is familiar to all 
 
 students of psychology. He regards the intellectual faculty 
 as existing under a twofold form, the passive principle Theory oi 
 and the active principle. This theory has its basis in a 
 presumed analogy ; as, throughout nature, we are conscious, 
 on the one hand, of matter, representing the potential exist- 
 ence of objects, and on the other of the causative principle, 
 or form, which gives them an actual existence, so we are 
 entitled to look for a like duality in the human intellect ; 
 and hence the Aristotelian division of the soul into two 
 distinct principles : the active intelligence, &v eWeXe^eia, 
 and the passive intelligence, &v Bvvd/j,6i. Of these the former 
 is the superior, and to it we ascribe the attributes of im- 
 perishability and impassibility ; this is the eternal principle 
 which endures, while the merely passive principle is the 
 subject of change, and, separated from the active principle, 
 perishes. Such is the theory unfolded in the De Anima, a 
 theory scarcely in harmony, it is true, with other portions of 
 the Peripatetic philosophy, being a reflex apparently of the 
 vovs of Anaxagoras, but where recognised almost invariably 
 interpreted as a decisive utterance on the part of Aristotle 
 
 however but fair to recognise that dumPhilosophiam,sednonsecundum 
 
 the conservative party were equally fidem Catholicam, quasi sint duas 
 
 loud in their denunciations of such veritates contrariae, et quasi contra 
 
 suggestions. 'Dicunt enim,' says veritatem Sacrae Scriptures sit veritas 
 
 Etienne Tempier, in his preamble to in dictis Gentilium damnatorum. ' 
 
 the articles selected for condemnation Bulaeus, in 433. 
 
 in 1277, 'ea esse nota et vera secun- 1 De Anima, in c. 5. 
 
 82
 
 116 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. 
 
 CHAP. T. against the belief in the immortality of the soul 1 . Such 
 teaching, it is evident, could not fail to encounter the con- 
 demnation of the Church; but his own heterodoxy was 
 almost lost sight of in the still less ambiguous theory 
 maintained by his Arabian commentator. It was not im- 
 possible for the schoolmen to maintain, as later interpreters 
 have done, that Aristotle did not really mean to deny the 
 immortality of the soul, and that the inferences that appear 
 warranted by the De Anima are contradicted by the tenour 
 of passages in his other writings ; but the corollary appended 
 to the theory by Averroes admitted of no dispute. The 
 active principle, said this philosopher, if alone possessed of 
 immortality must necessarily be anterior to the passive 
 principle. But when we take the individual man we find 
 the potential principle preceding the active, and it is con- 
 sequently evident that the active principle, the imperishable 
 and ever-existent, must not be sought for in the individual. 
 The active principle is devoid of personality, is one and 
 absolute. It was thus that Averroes deduced the doctrine 
 of the Unity of the Intellect, known in the time of Leibnitz 
 as Mouopsychism. 
 
 How far this reasoning represents a legitimate deduction 
 from Aristotle we are not here called upon to enquire, but 
 it is well known that his Arabian commentators have 
 frequently brought into undue prominence questions which 
 he has but very briefly indicated, or essayed in a purely 
 tentative manner. His immediate followers had certainly 
 
 1 ' II a bien dit que 1'entendement la personality humaine, de cette per- 
 
 ftaitun principe divin dans 1'homme, sonalite" sans laquelle 1' immortalite" 
 
 indestructible, fternel. II a bien dit de 1'ame n'est qu'un vain mot et 
 
 aiiMi que ce principe tait en nous un leurre.' Bartbe*lemySaint-Hilaire, 
 
 line veritable substance. Mais quelle Psychologic d' Arutote, Preface, p. 
 
 unbalance ? Nous 1'avons vu ; dans xxxix. ' L' opinion du philosophe a 
 
 IVntendernent lui-mc'-me, il y a une oet e'gard ne saurait fetre douteuse. 
 
 partie ptaiwable, comme sont p6ris- L'intellect universel est incorrupti- 
 
 able 1' imagination, la sensibiliW-, ble et separable du corps; 1'intel- 
 
 la nutrition : et cctte partie, c'est la lect individuel est periasable et finit 
 
 partie patmive, celle qui est, en quel- avec le corps.' Kenan, Averroes et 
 
 qnenorte, la mature de 1'intelligible. VArerroume, p. 153. See also Mr. 
 
 L 1 intelligence active, ct-lle qui fait Grote's Essay on the Psychology of 
 
 'lligible, unrvit eHernellement au Aristotle, appended to the third 
 
 orp, qui MU! doit pe>ir. Mais dans edition of Mr. Bain's Sentct and the 
 
 ctt ne nouvelle, il ue reste rien de Intellect.
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DE ANIMA. 117 
 
 not deduced any such doctrine from his teaching ; Alexander CHAP. i. 
 of Aphrodisias having been, it would seem, the first to bring 
 the theory into notice. Themistius, who lived in the reign 
 of Theodosius, informs us that it was a prolific source of 
 controversy in his day ; it arrested, again, the searching 
 glance of St. Augustine ; but Averroes was the first to give 
 it that developement which constituted it the leading 
 heresy of the thirteenth century. Such was the theory to the 
 refutation of which, as contravening the doctrine of the 
 resurrection and of the immortality of the soul, Aquinas 
 devoted the full force of his intellect, and in his indignation 
 at its author stigmatised him as non tarn Peripateticus quam 
 Peripateticce philosophies depravator 1 . 
 
 Other and not unimportant doctrines maintained by the 
 Arabian commentators, sometimes in conformity with the 
 teaching of Aristotle, though more frequently in excess of 
 the earlier Peripateticism, encountered the censure of the 
 Church 2 ; but it was chiefly against the theory of the Unity of 
 the Intellect that the scholastic artillery was directed, and in 
 direct connexion therewith arose the fierce controversy of the 
 next generation, respecting the principium individuationis. 
 It has already been observed that at the commencement of Views CS P U - 
 
 sed by the 
 
 the controversies to which the new Aristotle gave birth, other FrancUcana - 
 views than those of Albertus and Aquinas were espoused by 
 the Franciscans of comparatively small importance however 
 in relation to the progress of philosophic opinion. Foremost 
 among the leaders of this order was the Englishman, Alex- Alexander 
 ander Hales, who taught at Paris with distinguished success. <* 1215. 
 It is now known that the commentary on the Metaphysics 
 once attributed to this writer is by a different hand, but in 
 his Summa Theologies we have ample indications that he ven- 
 tured to dangerous lengths under the guidance of Averroes 3 . 
 
 1 De Unitate Intellectus, p. 257. commentaire du vrn'livre de la Phy- 
 
 s Among them Eenan enumerates sique,' he observes, 'est presque tout 
 
 ' la matiere premiere et indetermine'e, entier consacre' a r^futer celui d' Aver- 
 
 la hierarchic des premiers principes, roes.' Averroes et I'Averroisme, p. 
 
 le r61e interme'diaire de la premiere 238. 
 
 intelligence a la fois cree" et cre*atrice, 3 ' On pent designer comme les 
 
 la negation de la providence, et sur- deux foyers de 1'averroisme, au xm e 
 
 tout 1'impossibilite de la cr6ation. Le siecle, l'e"cole franciscaine et surtout
 
 118 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 
 
 
 The Irrefragable Doctor, for so he was named, died in the 
 year 1245, and his followers appear to have adopted yet bolder 
 doctrines. The tendency in Averroes towards investing ab- 
 stract notions with objective reality appears to have exercised 
 a strong fascination over the mysticism that characterised the 
 earlier Franciscan school. Bonaventura, indeed, the disciple 
 of Alexander Hales, presents a marked exception: but in him 
 the spirit of St. Francis glowed with an ardour that bore him 
 above the arena of human philosophy and controversial zeal. 
 Even now, as we turn the mystic pages of the Itinerary of 
 the Mind towards God, we recognise the deeply emotional 
 nature, the fervour of soul, that belonged to the great orator 
 who thrilled with his dying eloquence the august Council of 
 the western Church at Lyons; we are conscious of the aspira- 
 tions of the pilgrim, who, with but a languid glance for the 
 questions that divided the schools and surged round the 
 papal chair, pressed on to where, beyond the mists of time, 
 and the wandering gleams of philosophy, he seemed to dis- 
 cern the shining bulwarks of the celestial city 1 . 
 
 It probably marks the general success that was held to 
 navc attended the efforts of Aquinas to discriminate between 
 the doctrines of the Greek philosopher and his Arabian 
 commentators, that while Roger Bacon writing in the year 
 1207, was able to say that the Aristotelian natural philosophy 
 and metaphysics, which for forty years had been contemned 
 and vilified, were now recognised at Paris as 'sound and 
 useful doctrine,' we find Etienne Tempier, two years later, 
 condemning no less than thirteen of the most notable Aver- 
 rb'istic opinions ; and we may well understand that the blow 
 thus given to the Franciscan party considerably diminished 
 
 scholastics regmim longe amplifica- 
 runt. 1 in 657. 
 
 J 'Saint Bonaventura de*daignait 
 Aristote et sa cabale...nous serons 
 peu cnrieux do rechercher qnelle opi- 
 nion il lui a plu d'exprimer incidem- 
 ment, avec le laissez-aller de 1'in- 
 difference, BUT les grands problcMnes 
 du peripatdtisme.' Haurean, Phil. 
 Scholastique, n 219. 
 
 rf do Taris.' llnd. 259. 
 Roger Hacon reproduce* this tradition 
 ot ai* order : tee Oput Majut, pattim. 
 According to liuliriiH. Hales wa the 
 it U> comment on the Sentences : 
 ' I'rimuH nut. in c theologia nostrig 
 M. I'ftri Lombard] Kcntf-ntian com- 
 menUriii illuHtraiw diritur Alexan- 
 der AJenHiH, factua dcinde Minorita, 
 cujanexemplnmimitati AlbtrtiiHMag- 
 nna et TboiDM AqninoH thtologio;
 
 THE EARLY FRANCISCANS. 119 
 
 their prestige. It will be worth while to note how the uni- CHAP. L 
 versity had fared since the time of its memorable secession. 
 When the students and professors returned from Angers Return of the 
 and Kheims they found the chairs of instruction occupied i'^ mi. 
 by the Mendicants, and it was only by the exertions of 
 Gregory ix on their behalf that they were reinstated in their 
 privileges. For twenty years a hollow peace was preserved, Rivalry 
 
 j. i i t . i i i-i between the 
 
 during which the jealousies and nvalry thus evoked con- 
 tinued to increase, and at last broke out into open hostility cants - 
 when, one of the students having been killed in an encounter 
 with the citizens, the new orders refused to make common 
 cause with the university in obtaining redress. The uni- 
 versity appealed to the Pope, and Innocent IV published 
 his famous bull whereby the mendicant orders were sub- 
 jected to the episcopal authority 1 . His death, occurring 
 in the following month, was attributed to the prayers of 
 the Dominicans. His policy was altogether reversed by his 
 successor, Alexander IV, who, to use the expression of Crevier, 
 was intent throughout his pontificate upon tormenting the 
 university of Paris. The Mendicants were restored to their 
 former privileges, and the old warfare was renewed with 
 increased violence. It was at this crisis that William St. 
 Amour, standing forth as the champion of the university, A 1272< 
 assailed the new orders with an .eloquence rare in the hostile 
 camp. In his Perils of the Last Times, he denounced them 
 as interlopers into the Church, unsanctioned by apostolic ' 
 authority, equally wanting in honesty of purpose and in 
 credentials for the high functions they assumed. Aquinas 
 replied in his treatise Contra Impugnantes Dei Cultum et 
 Religionem, and William St. Amour was finally arraigned 
 before the archbishop of Paris on the charge of having pub- 
 lished a libel defamatory of the Pope. When however the 
 
 1 ' It is a characteristic trait of affairs into their own hands during 
 
 these Paris quarrels, that they were the absence of all other academicians, 
 
 mainly caused by the wilful course of Naturally this was resented keenly, 
 
 the Dominicans in the great secession and produced deep distrust. Their 
 
 of 1229. This measure had been de- submission to all university regula- 
 
 creed by a great majority of the tions was now exacted with increased 
 
 Masters, but the Dominicans dis- severity.' Huber's English Univer- 
 
 obeyed it, in order to get scholastic sities, by Newman, n 119.
 
 120 
 
 THE NEW ARISTOTLE. 
 
 CHAP. i. 
 
 betwwn the 
 
 Thphllo- 
 oplij of 
 A<|iiiruu 
 
 tUrkr.l t,T 
 
 UK KrmocU 
 
 intrepid champion of the university appeared, ready to attest 
 his innocence by solemn oaths over the relics of the holy 
 martyrs, the students who accompanied him made such an 
 imposing demonstration, that the archbishop deemed it 
 prudent to dismiss the charge. A few years later the Domi- 
 nicans attained their end. The Perils of the Last Times 
 was burnt in the presence of the Pope at Anagni, and William 
 St. Amour was compelled to retire into exile, a retirement 
 from which, notwithstanding the efforts of the university on 
 his behalf, he was -not suffered again to emerge 1 . 
 
 But while the cause of the Mendicants was thus triumph- 
 ant, disunion begun to spring up between the two orders. The 
 fame of Albertus and Aquinas, the latter the chosen coun- 
 sellor of royalty, and the prestige of the Dominicans, aroused 
 the jealousy of the Franciscans, rankling under the rebuke 
 which their Averrb'istic sympathies had incurred. They 
 begun, not unnaturally, to scan with critical eye the armour 
 of the great Dominican for some vulnerable point ; nor had 
 they long to seek ; the teaching of the Stagirite proved but 
 slippery ground from whence to assail the heresies of the 
 Arabians. It formed one of the most notable divergences 
 from Aristotle in the philosophy of Averroes, that while the 
 latter accepted the distinction to which we have already 
 adverted, of matter and form as representative of the prin- 
 ciple of potential and actual existence, he differed from his 
 teacher in regarding form as the individualising principle. 
 Aristotle had declared it to be matter, and in this he was 
 implicitly followed by Aquinas. The individualising ele- 
 ments in Sokrates said the Dominican, are hcec caro, hcec 
 ossa; if these be dissolved the Universal, Sokratitas, alone 
 
 1 'L'Unirmitl rpgrettainfiniment 
 non absence, et elle n'omit rien de 
 c qui pouvait d(?pendre d'elle pour 
 obU-nir on retonr A Paris. De"li- 
 berationH frequented, mortifications 
 procuree* HIIX Mendians ennemis de 
 co doctenr, deputations au pape : tout 
 fut inutile. 1 Crevier, n 27. The whole 
 hirtory of theconflict between \Villiam 
 fit. Amour and his opponent*, which 
 w* cannot further follow, forms a 
 
 (significant episode. His genius and 
 eloquence had the remarkable effect 
 of winning the sympathies of the 
 lower orders to the university cause, 
 and we are thus presented with the 
 somewhat singular conjunction of 
 the Pope, the Crown, and the new 
 Orders on the one side, and the 
 university in league with the com- 
 monalty on the other. See Bulaeus, 
 in 317, 32.
 
 OPPOSITION TO THE MENDICANTS. 121 
 
 remains. Theology, as with Roscellinus, here again supplied CRAP. i. 
 the readiest refutation, and from thence the Franciscans drew 
 their weapons. If matter, they asked, be indeed the princi- 
 pium individuationis, how can the individual exist in the non- 
 material world ? Such a theory would limit the power of the 
 Creator, for He could not create two angelic natures, if the 
 individualising element were lacking. In fact, the whole 
 celestial hierarchy concerning which the Pseudo-Dionysius 
 expounded so elaborately, threatened to vanish from appre- ^K&ul? 
 hension. The reply of the Franciscans was eminently sue- their attock " 
 cessful, for it enlisted the sympathies of the Church. In vain 
 did Albertus hasten from Cologne to the assistance of his 
 illustrious disciple ; in vain did JEgidius at Rome bring for- 
 ward fresh arguments in support of the Aristotelian doctrine. 
 The teaching of Aquinas had been found in alliance with 
 heterodoxy, and within three years after his death we find the 
 doctrine he had supported selected for formal condemnation. 
 A simultaneous movement took place, at Paris under Etienne 
 Tempier, in England under Kilwardby, archbishop of Can- 
 terbury, having for its object the repression of philosophic 
 heresies ; and a long list of articles summed up the doctrines 
 of Averroes for renewed condemnation ; the 'Franciscans 
 however found no little consolation in the fact that three of 
 the articles were directed contra fratrem Thomam 1 . 
 
 Aquinas had died in the year 1274, and contention, at Death of 
 
 Thomas 
 
 Paris, was for a brief season hushed amid the general sense Aquinas, 
 that a great light had been withdrawn from the Church. ' We 
 are not ignorant,' said the rector of the university, writing in 
 the name of all the masters, ' that the Creator, having as a 
 signal proof of his goodness given this great doctor to the 
 world, gave him but for a time, and meanwhile if we may 
 
 1 M. Kenan very justly observes ed articles, the principal is as fol- 
 
 that the majority of the articles con- lows : ' Item, quia intelligentias non 
 
 demned represented the tenets of hahent materiam, Deus non potest 
 
 scepticism; and that this incredulity plures res ejusdem speciei facere, et 
 
 is evidently associated by Etienne quod non est in angelis, contra fra- 
 
 Tempier with the study of the Ara- trem Thomam. 1 See Haure'au, Philo- 
 
 bian philosophy, but he has failed to sophie Scholastique, n 216. Kenan, 
 
 note the rebuff inflicted upon the Averroes et VAverroisme, p. 278. 
 
 Dominicans. Of the three condemn- Bulseus, in 433.
 
 122 
 
 THOMAS AQUINAS. 
 
 CHAP. i. 
 
 the church. 
 
 trust the opinion of the wise of old, divine wisdom placed 
 him upon earth that he might explain the darkest problems 
 of nature.' The Dominicans were as sheep having no shep- 
 herd, and when the teaching of their leader encountered the 
 deliberate condemnation of the Church, the blow was felt by 
 the whole order. The exultation of their rivals was pro- 
 portionably great ; the name of the Angelic Doctor began to 
 be mentioned in terms of small respect ; and at length, in 
 1278, it was deemed desirable to convene a Council at Milan 
 f r tne purpose of re-establishing his reputation. The priors 
 Q f ^ e diff eren t monasteries were invited to give their co- 
 operation, and, in the following year, a resolution passed at 
 Paris pronounced ' that brother Thomas of Aquino, of vene- 
 rated and happy memory, having wrought honour to his 
 order by the sanctity of his life and by his works, justice 
 demanded that it should be forbidden to speak of him with 
 disrespect, even to those who differed in opinion from his 
 teaching 1 .' This movement appears to have had the designed 
 effect. From the end of the thirteenth century the Domi- 
 
 * 
 
 nicans, who had themselves been threatened by schism, rallied 
 unanimously to the defence of their illustrious teacher. His 
 canonization, in the year 1323, placed his fame beyond the 
 reach of the detractor ; and years before that event his great 
 countryman and disciple had with raptured eye beheld him, 
 pre-eminent in that bright band, 
 
 Far di noi centre o di se far corona, 
 
 which shone with surpassing lustre among the spirits of the 
 blest*. The position thus assigned him among the teachers 
 of the Church the Angelic Doctor still retains ; his fame, if 
 temporarily eclipsed by that of Duns Scotus and Occam, was 
 more extended and enduring than theirs; and Erasmus, 
 standing half-way between the schoolmen and the Reformers, 
 declared that Aquinas was surpassed by none of his race, in 
 
 Hann'an, Philoiophit Scholatti- 
 qur .11 217. Buln-UH, in 448. 
 
 I>anto, Paradito, \ 04. The whole 
 of the opccch of Aquinas, in the fol- 
 
 lowing passage, is interesting as an 
 illustration of the comparative esti- 
 mation in which the chief doctors of 
 the Church were then held.
 
 OBJECTORS TO HIS TEACHING. 123 
 
 the vastness of his labours, in soundness of understanding, CHAP. i. 
 and in extent of learning. 
 
 The Summa of Aquinas has still its readers ; but his subsequent 
 commentaries on Aristotle are deservedly neglected, and the uiTteicw^ 
 crudeness of the reconciliation which he sought to find be- 
 tween pagan philosophy and Christian dogma startled even 
 the orthodox into dissent as the true thought of the Stagirite 
 became more distinctly comprehended. The devout have repu- 
 diated his dangerous temerity; the sceptical, his indifference 
 to radical inaffinities. Even in the Church which canonized 
 him there have been not a few who have seen, in the fallacious 
 alliance which he essayed to bring about, the commencement 
 of a method fraught with peril to the faith and with disquiet 
 to the believer. More than a century after his death, Gerson, ^j^ 08 of 
 the chancellor of the university of Paris, and long the reputed 
 author of the Imitatio Christi, declared that Bonaventura, as 
 non immiscens positiones extraneous vel doctrinas sceculares 
 dialecticas aut physicas terminis iheologicis obumbratas more 
 multorum, was a far safer guide, and abjured both the 
 Aristotelian philosophy and the attempted reconciliation. 
 Cardinal Alliacus stigmatized the teachers of the new learning cardinal 
 
 & Alliacus, 
 
 as false shepherds, and Vincentius Ferrerius complacently 
 called to recollection the saying of Hieronymus, quod Aris- 
 toteles et Plato in inferno sunt. Hermann, the Protestant Hermann, 
 editor of Launoy, denounced with equal severity, at the 
 commencement of the eighteenth century, this male sanum 
 philosophice Peripateticce studium, and declared it would have 
 been well had the schools confined themselves to the limits 
 marked out by Boethius and Damascenus, since they had 
 retained scarcely a vestige of true theology. Immodicus Peri- 
 pateticce philosophice amor, wrote Brucker a few years later, Bmcker, 
 virum hunc superstitioso obsequio philosopho addictum reduocit, 
 ut theologice vulneribus quce prcepostera philosophice commixtio 
 inflixerat, nova adderet vulnera, sicque sacram doctrinam vere 
 faceret philosophicam, immo gentilem 1 . Still heavier falls the 
 censure of Carl Prantl, who indeed has treated both Albertus Pranti, 
 and Aquinas with unwonted harshness, even denying to the 
 1 Hist. Phil, in 805.
 
 124- THOMAS AQUINAS. 
 
 CHAP. i. latter all merit as an original thinker, and affirming that it could 
 only be the 'work of a confused understanding,' 'to retain 
 the Aristotelian notion of substance in conjunction with the 
 Christian doctrine of the Trinity, or to force the Aristotelian 
 ethics into the garments of Christian moral philosophy 1 / 
 Difficulty of It is however scarcely necessary to observe that censures 
 
 the position 
 
 me l n e of i the >o1 " suc ^ ^ tnese are strongly opposed to the prevailing senti- 
 period ' ments of the Church before the Reformation, and it is easy 
 to understand that, contrasted with the ultra Nominalistic 
 excesses into which the later schoolmen were hurried, the 
 position of Aquinas may have appeared one of comparative 
 safety, the true Aristotelian mean between unreasoning 
 faith and unrestrained speculation. His repudiation of Aver- 
 roes was not improbably the salvation of his own authority, 
 for in the history of the Italian universities we have ample 
 evidence that the apprehensions of the Church with respect 
 to the tendencies of the Arabian philosophy were justified 
 by the sequel, and Petrarch has left on notable record some 
 of the traits of that coarsely materialistic spirit, which, taking 
 its rise in the teaching of Avicenna and Averroes, boldly 
 flaunted its colours, in his own day, at Padua and at Venice*. 
 If again, we pass from the rebuke of the theologian to that 
 of the philosopher, it is but just to remember the multiplicity 
 of the material that Albertus and his disciple found claiming 
 their attention and the vastness of the labours they thus 
 incurred. Theirs was the novelty, the obscurity, the con- 
 fusion ; theirs the loose connotation, the vague nomenclature, 
 the mistiness of thought, through which mainly by its own 
 exertions scholasticism was to arrive at firmer ground. On 
 them it devolved at once to confront the infidel and to ap- 
 
 1 Gftchichtt dfr Lngik, m 108. to the natural sciences, and the open 
 ' Petrarch even went BO far as to ridicule with which they assailed the 
 compose a treatise entitled I)e *ui Mosaic account of the Creation, effec- 
 ipiiusft multorumaliorumiflnorantia, tually checked much sympathy be- 
 having for it* object the rebuking of tween him and them. He was wont 
 the pert scepticism which was rife to tell them that he considered it of 
 among the young Venetians. In his more importance to explore the na- 
 intercourse with them he tells us ture of man than that of quadrupeds 
 that he found them intellectually and and fishes. See Gingue'ne', Hist. Litt. 
 studiously inclined, but their devo- d'ltalie, Tom. n p. 85. Tiraboschi, 
 tion, under the teaching of Averroes, v 45.
 
 THOMAS AQUINAS. 125 
 
 pease the bigot, to restore philosophy and to guard the 5^ p L T i 
 faith ; and if they failed, it must be admitted that their very 
 failures guided the thinkers of the succeeding age ; that the 
 paths they tracked out, if afterwards deserted for others, still 
 led to commanding summits, whence amid a clearer air and 
 from a loftier standpoint their followers might survey the 
 unknown land 1 . 
 
 It remains to say a few words respecting the develope- Technical 
 ment given by Aquinas to the dialectical method. In his Aquinas. 
 commentaries on Aristotle, he followed, as we have already 
 seen, the method of Averroes, but in those on the Sentences, 
 and in the Summa, he followed that of Peter Lombard. It 
 marks, however, the controversial tendency of the period, 
 that while Lombardus authoritatively enunciated the dis- 
 tinctio, Aquinas propounded each logical refinement as a 
 qucestio. The decisions of the Master were, indeed, as judi- 
 cially pronounced as before, but the change from a simple 
 contrasting and comparing of different authorities to a form 
 which seemed to invite the enquirer to perpetual search 
 rather than to a definite result, was obviously another ad- 
 vance in the direction of dialectics. The objections which, 
 as we have already seen, had been taken by the Prior of 
 St. Victoire to the original method, became more than ever 
 applicable ; for though the treatment of Aquinas might seem 
 exhaustive, the resources of the objector were inexhaustible. 
 
 We have already spoken of. the character of the trans- Translation 
 lations from the Greek, whereby, with the advance of the text h of Gr< 
 century, the proper thought of Aristotle began to be more 
 clearly distinguished from that of his Arabian commentators ; 
 but wherein an extreme and unintelligent literalness often 
 veiled the meaning and obscured the argument. It would 
 
 1 Prantl (Geschichte der Logik, n qui d6chiraient a cette e"poque le 
 118 21) enumerates thirteen distinct inonde philosophique, de saisir ex- 
 shades of opinion that divided the actement la nuance des diffe'rents 
 schools from the time of Boscellinus partis. Cette nuance meme e'tait-elle 
 down to that of Aquinas. Few who bien arrete"e? N'est-il pas des jours 
 have made the effort to grasp the de chaos ou les mots perdent leur 
 distinctions on which these contro- signification primitive, ou les amis 
 versies turned, will fail to feel the ne se retrouvent plus, ou les ennemis 
 force of Kenan's observation: 'II est semblent se dormer la main?' Aver- 
 fort difficile, au milieu des querelles roe* et FAverrolsme, p. 221 (ed. 1852).
 
 126 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 
 
 CHAP. I. 
 
 The Col leges 
 ofl'arU. 
 
 Two rop- 
 
 I ! Ml 
 
 li.ii. '-. n 
 founded in 
 the twelfth 
 century. 
 
 appear that Aquinas himself towards the close of his life 
 became aware of the unsatisfactory character of these ver- 
 sions, for within three years of his death he prevailed upon 
 William of Moerbecke to undertake the production of a new 
 version which, known as Nova Translatio, was long regarded 
 as the standard text, and still by virtue of its scrupulous 
 verbal accuracy possesses a value scarcely inferior to that of 
 the best manuscripts 1 . The commentaries of Aquinas had, 
 however, appeared nearly ten years before, and were conse- 
 quently liable to any error which might arise from the grosser 
 defects of the versions to which he had recourse 2 . 
 
 The commencement and extension of the collegiate sys- 
 tem constitutes another feature in the university of Paris 
 affording valuable illustration of the corresponding movement 
 in our own country. In France, as in England, the fourteenth 
 century was the period of the greatest activity of this move- 
 ment, but long before that time these institutions had been 
 subjected to an adequate test in Paris. Crevier indeed 
 traces back the foundation of two colleges, that of St. Thomas 
 du Louvre 8 and of the Danish college in the Rue de la 
 Montagne, as far as the twelfth century ; while he enume- 
 rates no less than sixteen as founded in the thirteenth 
 century 4 . Of these some were entirely subservient to the 
 
 1 ' Saint Thomas d'Aquin n'a em- 
 ploy^ que des versions de'rive'es imme- 
 diatement da grec, soit qa'il fait faire 
 de nouvelles, soit qu'il ait obtenu des 
 collations d'anciennes versions avec 
 1'original, et ait en ainsi des varian- 
 tcB. Guillaume Tocco, dans la vie 
 qu'il nous a laisode de ce grand doc- 
 tear, dit poflitivement : Scripsit ttiam 
 tupfr philotophicam naturalem et mo- 
 raUm et niper mftaphyiiicam, quorum 
 librorum procuravit ut fieret nova 
 traiulatio qua; nententia Aristotelis 
 contintrtt clariut vfritatem? (Acta 
 Kane. Antwerp, i 665.) Joardain, 
 Rfcherche Critiqiif*, p. 40. 
 
 Ibid. p. 895. Prantl, Getchichte 
 dfr iMgik, in 5. 
 
 * 'Dans cet dtablissement se mani- 
 festo 1'origine de nos boomers, qai 
 sont de jennes gens pauvres, aux- 
 quels le college dont ils eont mem- 
 
 bres fournit le logement et la subsis- 
 tance, ou du moins des secours pour 
 subsister pendant leurs e'tudes. Cette 
 oauvre de diari t ' n Vtuit pas nouvelle, 
 et il y avoit d6ja longtems que le roi 
 Robert en avoit donne 1 1'exemple en 
 entretenant de pauvres clcrcs, c'est- 
 a-dire de pauvres e*tudians. Nous 
 avons preuve que Louis le Jeune 
 faisait aussi distribuer des liberality's 
 a de pauvres e'coliers par son grand 
 aumonier. L'exemple de la munifi- 
 cence de nos rois i n vita les princes, 
 les grands, et les pr^lats a 1'imiter. 
 Cette bonne ceuvre prit favour, et se 
 multiplia beaucoup pendant les trei- 
 zieme et quatorzieme siecles, aux- 
 quels se rapporte 1'institution de la 
 plnpart des boursiers dans notre 
 University.' Crevier, i 269. 
 
 4 They are the College de Constan- 
 tinople, des Maturins, des Bons En-
 
 COMMENCEMENT OF THE COLLEGE ERA. 127 
 
 requirements of different religious orders, while others were, CHAP. i. 
 for a long time, little more than lodging-houses for poor 
 students in the receipt of a scanty allowance for their sup- 
 port (boursiers), and under the direction of a master 1 . The 
 most important, both from its subsequent celebrity and from 
 the fact that it would appear to be the earliest example 
 of a more secular foundation, that is to say a college for 
 the secular clergy, was the Sorbonne, founded about the The sor- 
 
 bonne. 
 
 year 1250 by Robert de Sorbonne*, the domestic chaplain 
 of St. Louis. Originally capable of supporting only sixteen 
 poor scholars, four of whom were to be elected from each 
 'nation,' and who were to devote themselves to the study 
 of theology, it eventually became the most illustrious founda- 
 tion of the university, and formed, in many respects, the 
 model of our earliest English colleges 3 . For a time, how- 
 ever, the modest merit of this society was obscured by the 
 splendour of a later foundation of the fourteenth century. 
 In the year 1305, Jeanne of Navarre, the consort of Philip The college 
 
 ~ r of Navarre. 
 
 the Fair, founded the great college which she named after 
 the country of her birth. In wealth and external import- 
 ance the college of Navarre far surpassed the Sorbonne. It 
 was endowed with revenues sufficient for the maintenance 
 of twenty scholars in grammar, thirty in logic, and twenty 
 in theology, and the ablest teachers were retained as in- 
 
 fans, de St. Honors', de St. Nicholas Latinos odium deponerent eorumque 
 du Louvre, des Bemhardins, des humanitatem et benignitatem expert! 
 Bons Enfans de la Eue St. Victor, ad suos reversi non sine magno La- 
 de Sorbonne, de Calvi, des Augustins, tini nominis incremento virtutes illas 
 des Cannes, des Pre'montre's, de passim prsedicarent, ac velut obsides 
 Clugni, du Tr^sorier, d'Harcourt, and nabiti, qui, si quid parentes et amnes 
 des Cholets. The circumstances of Graca levitati adversus Latinos mo- 
 the foundation of the College de lirentur, ipsi adolescentes Lutetia 
 Constantinople and the motives in conclusi fuerint.' Bulteus, in 10. 
 which De Boulay conjectures it may i Crevier, i. 271. Le Clerc, Etat 
 have taken its rise, are somewhat des Lettres au XIV* Siecle, i265. 
 singular: 'Post expugnatam Con- a ' Homme simple dans son carac- 
 stantinopolim a Francis et Venetis fe re e t dang ses moe urs.' Crevier. 
 sacro fcedere junctis Philippe Au- 3 'Avant Robert de Sorbonne nul 
 gusto rege Lutetiss conditum est college n'e"tait <5tabli a Paris pour les 
 collegium Constantinopolitanum ad pe'culiers e"tudians en The"ologie. II 
 ripam Sequanap prope forum Mai- voulut leur procurer cet avantage 
 bertinum, nescio in arcano imperil ^ a pau vret^ e"tait 1'attribut propre 
 consilio, ut Graecorum kberi Lutetiam de la maison de Sorbonne. Elle en 
 venientes una cum lingua Latina a conserve" longtems la re'alite' avec 
 paullatim vetus illud et patrium in j e titre.' Ibid, i 494, 495.
 
 128 UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 
 
 structors in each faculty. Throughout the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries it was the foremost foundation of the 
 university, nor can it be denied that many eminent men 
 received their education within its walls ; among them was 
 Nicolas Oresme 1 , afterwards master of the college; daman ges, 
 no unworthy representative of the school of Gasparin and 
 Aretino ; Pierre d'Ailly, afterwards bishop of Cambray ; and 
 the celebrated Gerson. But though poverty was here, as at 
 the Sorbonne, among the conditions prescribed by the 
 founders as essential to the admission of a scholar, the 
 associations of the college with rank and wealth soon de- 
 veloped an ambitious, worldly spirit that little harmonized 
 with the aims and occupations of the true student. High 
 office in the State or in the Church were the prizes to which 
 it became a tradition among its more able sons to aspire ; 
 and such prizes were rarely to be won in that age without 
 a corresponding sacrifice of integrity and independence. 
 The influence acquired by the college of Navarre was un- 
 happily made subservient to the designs and wishes of its 
 patrons, and the value of the degrees conferred by the 
 university and the efficiency of the examinations are stated 
 to have equally suffered from the interference and the fa- 
 vouritism resulting from these courtly relations*. In the 
 year 1308 was founded the College de Bayeux by the 
 bishop of that see, designed especially for the study of medi- 
 cine and the civil law ; and the College de Laon, in 1314, 
 
 1 For a brief account of this re- par les hommes de cette maison, 
 
 markable man see Egger, Lllellln- trop accoutume's a faire la volonte' 
 
 itmt en France, i 128 130. Oreame des rois et des princes pour etre de 
 
 was one of the earliest political econo- bon conseillers dans les temps diffi- 
 
 mists, and his treatises on mathe- ciles. On le vit bien quand e"clatrent, 
 
 matics and his linguistic attainments deux nu'des aprcs, les guerres de 
 
 constitute a phenomenon almost as religions. L'ascendant que Navarre 
 
 singular when taken in connexion avait pris sur le corps enseignant, 
 
 with the age in which they appeared, loin de le fortifier contre des perils 
 
 as the culture of Roger Bacon in the qu'il faillait braver, 1'affaiblit et 
 
 pwrious century. Of his acquaint- I'e'nerva, en lui 6tant peu a peu, de 
 
 anc with Greek we shall have oc- connivence avec des protecteurs puis- 
 
 casion to speak in another place. Bants, la liberte" de ses lecons et la 
 
 C fut un malhenr pour une publicity de ses examens.' Le Clerc, 
 
 corporation qni avait besoin d'ind6- v, . j T .., /> 
 
 ptndance, de rttr. laisser dumber Sj*. SefSE" "" ^^'^ 5 *
 
 DESCRIPTION OF M. LE CLERC. 129 
 
 represented a similar design. The institution of the College CHAP. i. 
 de Plessis-Sorbonne, for forty scholars, in 1323 ; of the College 
 de Bourgogne, for twenty students of philosophy, in 1332; 
 of Lisieux, for twenty-four poor scholars, in 1336, are 
 among the more important of no less than seventeen founda- 
 tions which we find rising into existence with the half 
 century that followed the creation of the ^college of Navarre. 
 
 ' Had all these colleges survived,' observes M. Le Clerc, Jfjj ri ion 
 'or had they all received their full complement of scholars, aer& 
 the procession headed by the rector of the university, who, 
 as it is told, was wont to enter the portals of St. Denis when 
 the extreme rear was only at the Mathurins, would have 
 been yet more imposing. Many however contained but 
 five or six scholars who, while attending the regular course 
 of instruction in the different faculties, met in general 
 assembly on certain days for their disputations and 
 conferences ; while others, founded for larger numbers, 
 maintained not more than two or three, or were completely 
 deserted, their revenues having been lost, or the buildings 
 having fallen into decay. At the general suppression of the 
 small colleges in 1764, some had already ceased to exist. 
 
 'Without adding to our lengthened enumeration the 
 great episcopal schools, which must be regarded as distinct 
 institutions, but including only the numerous foundations 
 in actual connexion with the corporation of the university, 
 as, for instance, the colleges of the different religious orders, 
 the colleges founded for foreign students, the elementary 
 schools or pensions, of the existence of which, in 1392, we 
 have incontestable evidence, and the unattached students, 
 we are presented with a spectacle which historians have 
 scarcely recognised in all its significance, in this vast multi- 
 tude which, undaunted by war, pestilence, and all manner 
 of evils, flocked to this great centre for study and increase 
 of knowledge. There was possibly something of illusion in 
 all this ; but notwithstanding, even the most able and most 
 learned would have held that their education was defective 
 had they never mingled with the concourse of students at 
 Paris. 
 
 9
 
 130 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 
 
 niAP. I. 
 
 'Towards the close of the sixteenth century, notwith- 
 standing the disastrous religious wars, a Venetian ambassador 
 was still able to say, "The university of Paris numbers little 
 less than thirty thousand students, that is to say as many 
 as and perhaps more than all the universities of Italy put 
 together." But Bologna, in the year 1262, was generally 
 believed to number over twenty thousand. The enquiry 
 naturally arises, how did this vast body of students subsist ? 
 an enquiry which it is by no means easy to answer, for the 
 majority had no resources of their own, and the laity had, 
 for a long time, been contending with a new inroad upon 
 their fortunes resulting from the rise of the Mendicants. 
 The secular clergy, threatened with absolute ruin by the 
 new orders, conceived the idea of themselves assuming in 
 self-defence the pristine poverty of the evangelists. There 
 were the poor scholars of the Sorbonne, the enfants pauvres 
 of St. Thomas du Louvre ; the election of the rector was for 
 a long time at Saint-Julien le Pauvre ; the College d'Har- 
 court was expressly restricted to poor students, the statutes 
 given to this foundation in the year 1311 requiring that ibi 
 ponantur duodecim pauperes, an oft-recurring expression: 
 and indeed the university was entitled to proclaim itself 
 poor, for poor it undoubtedly was. 
 
 ' The capotes of Montaigne, who were also, and not without 
 * reason, known as a community of poor students, were how- 
 ever not the most to be pitied, even after the harsh reform 
 which limited their diet to bread and water; there was 
 a yet lower grade of scholars who subsisted only on charity, 
 or upon what they might gain by waiting on fellow-students 
 somewhat less needy than themselves. Of Anchier Panta- 
 lion, a nephew of Pope Urban IV, by whom he was after- 
 wards raised to the dignity of cardinal, we are told that he 
 began his student life by carrying from the provision market 
 the meat for the dinners of the scholars with whom he 
 studied. This same humble little company, which formed 
 a kind of brotherhood with a chieftain or king at its head, 
 included in its ranks, besides other poor youths destined to 
 become eminent, the names of Ramus and Amyot. 
 
 Extreme 
 poverty of
 
 DESCRIPTION OF M. LE CLERC. 131 
 
 ' The distinguishing traits of this student life, the memo- CHAP. i. 
 ries of which survived with singular tenacity, were poverty, otherchara 
 ardent application, and turbulence. The students in the 
 faculty of Arts, "the artists," whose numbers in the four- 
 teenth century, partly owing to the reputation of the Parisian 
 Trivium and Quadrivium, and partly in consequence of the 
 declining ardour of the theologians, were constantly on the 
 increase, were by no means the most ill-disciplined. Older 
 students, those especially in the theological faculty, with 
 their fifteen or sixteen years' course of study, achieved in 
 this respect a far greater notoriety. At the age of thirty 
 or forty the student at the university was still a scholar. 
 This indeed is one of the facts which best explain the 
 influence then exercised by a body of students and their 
 masters over the affairs of religion and of -the state. 
 
 ' However serious the inconvenience and the risk of thus 
 converting half a great city into a school, we have abundant 
 evidence how great was the attraction exercised by this 
 vast seminary, where the human intellect exhausted itself 
 in efforts which perhaps yielded small fruit though they 
 promised much. To seekers for knowledge the whole of the 
 Montagne Latine was a second fatherland. The narrow 
 streets, the lofty houses, with their low archways, their damp 
 and gloomy courts, and halls strewn with straw 1 , were never 
 to be forgotten ; and when after many years old fellow-stu- 
 dents met again at Rome or at Jerusalem, or on the fields 
 of battle where France and England stood arrayed for con- 
 flict, they said to themselves, Nos fuimus simul in Garlandia; 
 or they remembered how they had once shouted in the ears 
 of the watch the defiant menace, Allez au clos Bruneau, 
 vous trouverez d qui parler*.' 
 
 1 The street in which the princi- 'In facultate artium, quod dicti scho- 
 
 pal schools were situated, was called lares audientes suas lectiones in 
 
 the Rue dufouarre, Vicus Stramineus, dicta facultate, sedeant in terra coram 
 
 or Straw Street, from the straw Magistro et non in scamnis aut sedi- 
 
 spread upon the floor, upon which bus elevatis a terra.' See Peacock 
 
 the students reclined during the con- on the Statutes, App. A. p. xlv. 
 
 tinuance of the lecture : benches and 2 L e Clerc> ^tat des Lettres au 
 
 seats being forbidden by an express ATP Siecle i 269 271. 
 
 statute of Pope Urban V in 1366. 
 
 92
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. ii. IN the preceding chapter our attention has been mainly 
 directed to the three most important phases in the develope- 
 ment of the great continental university which formed to so 
 large an extent the model for Oxford and Cambridge, its 
 general organization, the culture it imparted, and the com- 
 mencement and growth of its collegiate system. We shall 
 now, passing by for the present many interesting details, 
 endeavour to shew the intimate connexion existing in the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries between Paris on the 
 one hand and Oxford and Cambridge on the other, and the 
 fidelity with which the features we have noted were repro- 
 duced in our own country. The materials that Fuller and 
 Anthony Wood found available for their purpose, when they 
 sought to explore the early annals of their universities, are 
 scanty indeed when compared with those which invited the 
 labours of Du Boulay and Crevier. The university of Paris, 
 throughout the thirteenth century, well-nigh monopolised 
 the interest of the learned in Europe. Thither thought and 
 speculation appeared irresistibly attracted ; it was there that 
 the new orders fought the decisive battle for place and 
 power; that new forms of scepticism rose in rapid succession, 
 and heresies of varying moment riveted the watchful eye of 
 Rome; that anarchy most often triumphed and flagrant vices 
 most prevailed ; and it was from this seething centre that 
 those influences went forth which predominated in the con- 
 temporary history of Oxford and Cambridge.
 
 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 133 
 
 The glimpses we are able to gain of our own universities CHAP. n. 
 at this period are rare and unsatisfactory, but they suf- 
 ficiently indicate the close relations existing between those 
 bodies and the great school of Paris. The obscurity which 
 involves their early annals is not indeed of the kind that fol- 
 lows upon an inactive or a peaceful career, 
 
 Such whose supine felicity but makes 
 In story chasms, in epocha mistakes, 
 
 but through the drifting clouds of pestilence and famine, of 
 internal strife and civil war, we discern enough to assure us 
 that whatever learning then acquired, or thought evolved, or 
 professors taught, was carried on under conditions singularly 
 disadvantageous. The distractions which surrounded student 
 life in Paris were to be found in but a slightly modified form 
 at Oxford and at Cambridge, and indeed at all the newly- 
 formed centres of education. The restlessness of the age 
 was little likely to leave undisturbed the resorts of the 
 youthful, the enquiring, and the adventurous. Frequent mi- 
 grations sufficiently attest how troublous was the atmosphere. 
 We have already noticed that large numbers of students, in students 
 
 J ' from Paris at 
 
 the great migration from Paris, in the year 1229, availed ^, f ^| n ^ 
 themselves of King Henry's invitation to settle where they 
 pleased in this country ; and the element thus infused at 
 Cambridge is, in all probability, to be recognised in one of 
 four writs, issued in the year 1231, for the better regulation 
 of the university, in which the presence of many students 
 'from beyond the seas' is distinctly adverted to 1 . By another 
 of these writs it is expressly provided that no student shall 
 be permitted to remain in the university unless under the 
 tuition of some master of arts, the earliest trace, perhaps, 
 of an attempt towards the introduction of some organization 
 among the ill-disciplined and motley crowd that then re- 
 presented the student community. An equally considerable 
 immigration from Paris had also taken place at Oxford. The 
 intercourse between these two centres was indeed surprisingly 
 frequent in that age. It was not uncommon for the wealthier 
 
 1 Cooper's Annals, i 42.
 
 134 
 
 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 Kminent 
 
 < l\.illl:ill'i lit 
 
 Pari*. 
 
 Anthony 
 WoOd'lM- 
 
 tmtn rm- 
 
 :. 
 
 OxfunL 
 
 students to graduate at more than one university; 'Sundry 
 schools' were held, in the language of Chaucer, to 'make 
 subtil clerkes;' and Wood enumerates no less than thirty-two 
 eminent Oxonians who had also studied at Paris. Among 
 the names are those of Qiraldus Cambrensis, Daniel Merlac, 
 Alexander Hales, Robert Grosseteste, Robert Pulleyne, Roger 
 Bacon, Stephen Langton, ^Egidius, Richard of Cornwall, and 
 Kilwardby ; and it may be added that this list might be 
 considerably extended. 'Leland,' says Wood, 'in the lives 
 of divers English writers that flourished in these times' (sub 
 anno 1230), 'tells us that they frequented as well the schools 
 of Paris as those of Oxford de more illustrium Anglorum, and 
 for accomplishment sake did go from Oxford to Paris and so 
 to Oxford again. Nay, there was so great familiarity and 
 commerce between the said universities, that what one knew> 
 the other straightway did, as a certain poet hath it thus : 
 
 Et procul et propiiis jam Francnt et Anglicu* eque 
 Norunt Parisiu* quid feceris Oxonieqtie. 
 
 1 This familiarity,' he adds, ' continued constant till the time 
 of John Wycleve, and then our students deserting by degrees 
 scholastical divinity, scarce followed any other studies but 
 polemical, being wholly bent and occupied in refuting his 
 opinions and crying down the orders of Mendicant Friars 1 .' 
 We can hardly doubt that some quickening of thought must 
 have resulted both from this habitual intercourse and the 
 sudden influx of the year 1229; and that, though the foreign 
 students were probably chiefly possessed at the time by feel- 
 ings of angry dissatisfaction with Queen Blanche and William 
 of Auvergne, and full of invectives against the obtrusive 
 spirit of the new orders, something must have been learnt at 
 Cambridge respecting that new learning which was exciting 
 such intense interest on the continent, and which the autho- 
 rities of Paris had been vainly endeavouring to stifle. 
 
 Within thirty years of this event Cambridge and Oxford 
 in their turn saw their sons set forth in search of quieter 
 abodes. The division into ' nations ' in the continental uni- 
 
 1 Wood-Gutcb, i 20G 214.
 
 INTERCOURSE WITH PARIS. 135 
 
 versities was to some extent represented in England by that CHAP. n. 
 of North and South, and was a special source of discord 
 among the students. The animosities described by these 
 factions belonged not merely to the younger portion of the 
 community, but pervaded the whole university, and became 
 productive of evils against which, in the colleges, it long 
 afterwards became necessary to provide by special enactment. 
 It was in the year 1261 that an encounter at Cambridge 
 between two students, representatives of the opposing par- 
 ties, gave rise to a general affray. The townsmen took part 
 with either side, and a sanguinary and brutal struggle en- 
 sued. Outrage of every kind was committed; the houses 
 were plundered, and the records of the university burnt. It 
 was in consequence of these disturbances that a body of stu- 
 dents betook themselves to Northampton, whither a like Migration 
 
 from Cam- 
 migration, induced by similar causes, had already taken place bridge to 
 
 f J f Northamp- 
 
 from Oxford. The royal licence was even obtained for the ton - 
 establishment of another studium generate, but to use the 
 expression of Fuller, the new foundation ' never attained full 
 bachelor,' for in the year 1264 the emigrants were ordered 
 by special mandate to return to the scenes they had quitted. 
 Within three-quarters of a century from this event a like 
 migration took place from Oxford to Stamford, a scheme Migration 
 which to judge from subsequent enactments was persevered to Stanford. 
 in with some tenacity 1 . It would be surely an ignoble esti- 
 
 1 ' So that that prophecy of old by the old universities and elsewhere, 
 the ancient British Apollo, Merlin, until the year 1333, when Edward 
 was come to pass, which runneth III, upon the urgent complaint and 
 thus : Doctriiue studium quod mine application of the university of Ox- 
 viget ad Vada Bourn \ Tempore vcn- ford, ordered all such students to 
 turo celebrabitur ad Vada Saxi.' return under severe penalties, and 
 Wood-Gutch, i 425. Vada Bourn is that effectually checked the progress 
 here for Oxford; Vada Saxiior Stone- of a third university in this king- 
 ford or Stamford. The seer however dom ; and in the following year the 
 is guilty of a false etymology ; the root university of Oxford, and most pro- 
 ox being of Keltic origin and signify- bably, likewise at the same time, the 
 wgicater. Stamford was distinguish- university of Cambridge, with a 
 ed by the activity of the Carmelites view to the exclusive enjoyment of 
 who had an extensive foundation their own privileges, and the more 
 there, and taught with considerable complete suppression of this for- 
 success. Several halls and colleges midable rival, agreed to bind their 
 were founded and the remains of one of regents by an oath, neither to teach 
 these, known as Brazen Nose College, anywhere themselves as in a univer- 
 exist at the present day. ' Scholars sity, except in Oxford or Cambridge, 
 continued to resort to Stamford from nor to acknowledge, as legitimate
 
 136 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. n. mate of the spirit that actuated these little bands which 
 would suggest to us that their enthusiasm was a delusion, 
 and that, as far as we can estimate the value of the learning 
 they strove to cultivate, their text books might as well have 
 been left behind. We shall rather be disposed to honour the 
 stedfastness of purpose that actuated these poor students in 
 their desponding exodus. Their earnestness and devotion 
 invest with a certain dignity even their obscure and errant 
 metaphysics, their interminable logic, their artificial theo- 
 logy, and their purely hypothetical science ; and if we reflect 
 that it is far from improbable that in some future era the 
 studies now predominant at Oxford and Cambridge may 
 seem for the greater part as much examples of misplaced 
 energy as those to which we look back with such pitying 
 contempt, we shall perhaps arrive at the conclusion that the 
 centuries bring us no nearer to absolute truth, and that it is 
 the pursuit rather than the prize, the subjective discipline 
 rather than the objective gain, which gives to all culture its 
 chief meaning and worth. 
 
 On such grounds, and on such alone, we should be glad 
 to know more of the real status of our students at this period 
 and the conditions under which their work was carried on ; 
 in all such enquiries however we find ourselves encountered 
 by insuperable difficulties arising from the destruction of our 
 records. Antiquarian research pauses hopelessly baffled as it 
 arrives at the barren wastes which so frequently attest the 
 inroads of the fiery element upon the archives of our uni- 
 versity. This destruction was of a twofold character, de- 
 signed and accidental : the former however having played 
 by far the more important part. A blind and unreasoning 
 hatred of a culture in which they could neither share nor 
 sympathise, has frequently characterised the lower orders in 
 this country, and Cambridge certainly encountered its full 
 share of such manifestations. In the numerous affrays be- 
 tween 'town' and 'gown* the hostels were often broken 
 open by the townsmen, who plundered them of whatever 
 
 regents, thorn; who had rommfnccd in Peacock's Obsrrvatioiw, Appendix, p. 
 any other town ia Englnud.' Dean xxviii. Sec also note on Peck's Acadc-
 
 LOSS OF EARLY RECORDS. 137 
 
 
 they considered of any value, and destroyed everything that CHAP. n. 
 
 bespoke a lettered community. In 1261 the records of the 
 university were committed to the flames: the year 1322 i^wofuni- 
 
 J J veruity and 
 
 was marked by a similar act of Vandalism ; in 1381, during ^dfb/fi"^ 
 
 the insurrections then prevalent throughout the country, {^ ndiar y 
 
 the populace vented their animosity in destruction on a 
 
 yet larger scale. At Corpus Christi all the books, charters, 
 
 and writings belonging to the society were destroyed. At 
 
 St. Mary's the university chest was broken open, and all the 
 
 documents met with a similar fate. The masters and scho- 
 
 lars, under intimidation, surrendered all their charters, muni- 
 
 ments, and ordinances, and a grand conflagration ensued in 
 
 the market place ; an ancient beldame scattered the ashes 
 
 in the air, exclaiming 'thus perish the skill of the clerks 1 !' 
 
 Similar though less serious outrages occurred in the reign of 
 
 Henry v. Of the more general havoc wrought under royal 
 
 authority at the time of the Reformation, we shall have occa- 
 
 sion to speak in another place. The conflagrations resulting 
 
 from accident were also numerous and destructive 2 : though 
 
 Fuller indeed holds it a matter for congratulation that far Fuiier-s view 
 
 1 111 t 1TT1 ^ l ' 16 C&Se - 
 
 greater calamity was not wrought by such casualties : ' Who- 
 soever,' he says, ' shall consider in both universities the ill- 
 contrivance of many chimneys, hollo wness of hearths, shal- 
 lowness of tunnels, carelessness of coals and candles, catching- 
 ness of papers, narrowness of studies, late reading, and long 
 watching of scholars, cannot but conclude that an especial 
 Providence preserveth those places.' The result of these dis- 
 
 asters has unfortunately resulted in a positive as well as foniedtorttn 
 
 . . introduction 
 
 negative evil. It is not simply that we are unable to deter- of forgeries. 
 mine many points of interest in the antiquities of the uni- 
 versity, but the absence of definite information has also 
 afforded scope for the exercise of the inventive faculty to an 
 extent which, in a more critical age, especially when pre- 
 senting itself in connexion with a centre of enquiry and men- 
 tal activity, seems absolutely astounding. It was easy for 
 
 mia Tertia An(jUcana, Appendix (B). college foundations would have had 
 
 1 Cooper, Anna's, i 48, 79, 121. a special value, were lost in the fire 
 
 2 The records of Clare Hall, which of 1362, when the whole building 
 as those of one of the most ancient was burnt to the ground.
 
 138 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. ii. antiquarians like Fuller, when the sceptical demanded evi- 
 dence respecting charters granted by King Arthur and Cad- 
 wallader, and rules given by Sergius and Honorius, gravely to 
 assert that such documents had once existed but had perished 
 in the various conflagrations 1 . 
 
 Another and not infrequent source of disquiet to both 
 . universities was the celebration of tournaments in their 
 vicinity. ' Many sad casualties,' says Fuller, ' were caused by 
 these meetings, though ordered with the best caution. 
 Arms and legs were often broken as well as spears. Much 
 lewd people waited on these assemblies, light housewives as 
 well as light horsemen repaired thereunto. Yea, such was 
 the clashing of swords, the rattling of arms, the sounding of 
 trumpets, the neighing of horses, the shouting of men all 
 daytime, with the roaring of riotous revellers all the night, 
 that the scholars' studies were disturbed, safety endangered, 
 lodging straightened, charges enlarged, all provisions being 
 unconscionably enhanced. In a word, so many war horses 
 were brought hither, that Pegasus was likely himself to be 
 shut out ; for where Mars keeps his terms there the Muses 
 may even make their vacation.' 
 
 ^ w ^ not ^ e necessary further to illustrate the presence 
 of those disturbing elements in which Cambridge shared 
 scarcely less than Paris itself; the mingled good and evil 
 resulting from the influence of the Mendicants were also 
 equally her heritage. It is however to be noted, that 
 while at Paris the Dominicans obtained the ascendancy, 
 throughout England the Franciscans were the more nume- 
 rous and influential body. At Cambridge, as early as 1224, 
 the latter had established themselves in the Old Synagogue", 
 and fifty years later had erected on the present site of 
 Sidney a spacious edifice, which Ascham long afterwards 
 
 1 We bavc bnt one trne and sad the first of our antiquarians to per- 
 
 anHvrer to return to all their ques- ceive their real value. The absurd 
 
 lions, They are burnt." ' (Fuller, anachronisms they contain are point- 
 
 t. of thf Univ. p. 84). These cdoutbyDyer.Prm^a.iSi)? 416. 
 
 forgeries are given in MSS. Hare, i ' Cantabrigia; priino receperunt 
 
 i ', u opm ' on Ilaro WttMlf fratres burgeuses villa;, assignantes 
 
 their genuineness he has not eis veterum synagogam quaj erat 
 
 left on record. Baker was perhaps contigua carceri. Cum vero intole-
 
 RELIGIOUS ORDERS AT CAMBRIDGE. 139 
 
 described as an ornament to the university, and the pre- CHAP. ir. 
 cincts of which were still, in the time of Fuller, to be traced 
 in the college grounds. In 1274 the Dominicans settled The Domini- 
 where Emmanuel now stands. About the middle of the ^ 
 century, the Carmelites, who had originally occupied an The carmei- 
 extensive foundation at Newnham, but were driven from 
 thence by the winter inundations, settled near the present 
 site of Queens' ; towards the close of the century, the 
 Augustinian Friars, the fourth mendicant order, took up T he Augusti- 
 their residence near the site of the old Botanic Gardens ; 
 opposite to Peterhouse were the White Canons ; Jesus was 
 represented by the nunnery of St. Rhadegund, a Benedictine 
 foundation ; St. John's College by the Hospital of the 
 Brethren of St. John ; while overshadowing all the rest in 
 wealth and importance there rose in the immediate neigh- The Augusti- 
 
 -, . . _, _^ nian Canons 
 
 bourhood the priory of the Augustinian Canons at Barn well. atBamweii. 
 The general organisation of both Oxford and Cambridge ^ri lin eo ^. e 
 was, as we have already seen, modelled on that of Paris, and En^iuif the 
 it will here be well to point out what appear to have been 
 the main outlines of that organization in the period when 
 the colleges either did not exist or exercised no appreciable 
 influence on the university at large. It is to be remembered 
 that at a time when the Latin tongue was the medium of 
 communication between most educated men, the vehicle of 
 pulpit oratory and of formal instruction, the language of 
 nearly all recognised literature, a knowledge of it was as 
 essential to a student entering upon a prescribed course of 
 academic study, as would be the ability to read and write 
 his mother tongue in the present day. Though therefore 
 the term grammatica, as the first stage of the Trivium, 
 denoted an acquaintance with the Latin language generally, 
 it was customary in the earliest times to delegate to a non- 
 academic functionary the instruction of youth in the elements 
 of the language. Such, if we adopt the best supported con- 
 
 rabilis esset vicinia careens fratribus, pro reditu ares, et sic ffidificabant fra- 
 
 quod eundem ingressum habebant tres capellam ita pauperrimam, ut 
 
 carcerarii et fratres, dedit dominus unus carpentarius in una die faceret, 
 
 Bex decem marcas ad emendum et erigeret una die xrv coplas tigno- 
 
 reditum quod satis fieret saccario suo rum.' Honumenta Franciscana, p. 18.
 
 140 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. ii. jecture, was the function of the Magister Glomerice, an 
 officer whose duties have been the subject of considerable 
 controversy among those who have occupied themselves with 
 the antiquities of our university. It is not necessary to 
 infer that the instruction given by the Magister extended 
 beyond the merest rudiments, an excerpt probably from 
 the text of Priscian, whose treatise formed the groundwork 
 of the lecture to the university student. The Trivium and 
 Quadrivium formed the ordinary course of study, culminating 
 as it was theoretically assumed in theology, but often 
 abandoned on the completion of the Trivium, (which repre- 
 sented the undergraduate course of study,) for the superior 
 attractions of the civil and canon law. 
 
 If we now proceed to consider the formal organization of 
 the university, we shall scarcely be able to offer a more 
 succinct and lucid outline than that contained in the follow- 
 ing extract from the treatise by dean Peacock, an account 
 resting entirely on the unquestionable data afforded by the 
 Statuta A ntiqua 1 . 
 
 outline from The university of Cambridge, in the Middle Ages, 'con- 
 i'cockof sisted of a chancellor, and of the two houses of regents and 
 
 the early 
 
 of"f.e tulion non-regents*. The chancellor was chosen biennially by the 
 regents, and might, upon extraordinary occasions, be continued 
 in office for a third year. He summoned convocations or 
 
 1 The body of Statutes from which increase of the number of colleges, 
 dean Peacock's outline is derived is the changes of the government, and 
 not arranged in order of time, and the the reformation of religion, neces- 
 dates are, as he himself observes, 'in sarily produced great changes in the 
 some cases uncertain to the extent of condition, character, and views, of 
 nearly a century.' ' It is not surpri- the great body of students, and in 
 aiug therefore,' he adds, ' that they the relation of teachers to those who 
 should present enactments which were taught, yet we can discover no 
 are sometime* contradictory to each attempt to disturb the distribution of 
 other, when we are thus deprived of the powers exercised by the chaucel- 
 Ifae means of distinguishing the law lor and the houses of regents and 
 repealed, from that by which it was non -regents, or even to change mate- 
 replaced. In the midst however of rially the customary methods of 
 the confusion and obscurity which teaching, or the forms and periods of 
 necessarily arise from this cause, wo graduation.' Obercations, pp. 26,27. 
 experience no difliculty in recognia- s Jl<-<jere like legere (see p. 74) was 
 ing the permanent and more striking to teach: the regents were those 
 feature* of the constitution of the engaged in teaching, the non-regents 
 sjty, and the principles of its those who had exercised that function 
 administration; and though the great but no longer continued to do so.
 
 EARLY CONSTITUTION OF CAMBRIDGE. 141 
 
 congregations of regents upon all occasions of the solemn CHAP. ir. 
 resumption or reception of the regency, and likewise of both 
 houses of regents and non-regents to consult concerning 
 affairs affecting the common utility, public quiet, and general 
 interests of the university. No graces, as the name in some 
 degree implies, could be proposed or passed without his 
 assent. He presided in his own court, to hear and decide all Authority of 
 
 the Clian- 
 
 causes in which a scholar was concerned, unless facti atrocitas cellor - 
 vel publicce quietis perturbatio required the assent or cog- 
 nizance of the public magistrates or justices of the realm. 
 He was not allowed to be absent from the university for 
 more than one month during the continuance of the readings 
 of the masters : and though a vice-chancellor, or president, 
 might be appointed by the regents from year to year, to 
 relieve him from some portion of his duties, yet he was not 
 allowed to intrust to him the cognizance of the causes of the 
 regents or non-regents, ex parte rea, of those which related 
 to the valuation and taxation of houses or hostels, or of 
 those which involved as their punishment either expulsion 
 from the university or imprisonment. A later statute, ex- 
 pressive of the jealous feeling with which the university 
 began to regard the claim of the bishop of Ely to visitatorial 
 power and confirmation, forbids the election of that bishop's 
 official to the office of chancellor. 
 
 ' The powers of the chancellor, though confirmed and ^f le ^tioi 
 amplified by royal charters, were unquestionably ecclesiastical, j^ heir ori " 
 both in their nature and origin : the court, over which he 
 presided, was governed by the principles of the canon as 
 well as of the civil law ; and the power of excommunication 
 and absolution, derived in the first instance from the bishop 
 of Ely, and subsequently from the pope, became the most 
 prompt and formidable instrument for extending his authority: 
 the form, likewise, of conferring degrees, and the kneeling 
 posture of the person admitted, are indicative both of the 
 act and of the authority of an ecclesiastical superior.' 
 
 'It is very necessary,' adds dean Peacock, 'in considering 
 the distribution of authority in the ancient constitution 
 of the university, to separate the powers of the chancellor
 
 142 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. ii. from those of the regents or non-regents ; for the authority 
 HuT^r of the chancellor had an origin independent of the regents, 
 
 distiiixuinhod 11* i i * 
 
 from those of and his previous concurrence was necessary to give validity 
 dm- to their acts : he constituted, in fact, a distinct estate in the 
 
 rv.; i n:-. 
 
 academical commonwealth : and though he owed his appoint- 
 ment, in the first instance, to the regents, he was not 
 necessarily a member of their body, and represented an 
 authority and exercised powers which were derived from 
 external sources. The ancient statutes recognise the ex- 
 istence of two great divisions of the members of the second 
 estate of our commonwealth, the houses of regents and non- 
 regents, which have continued to prevail to the present time, 
 though with great modification of their relative powers, 
 important The enactments of these statutes would lead us to conclude, 
 
 dUtmction in 
 
 ^ a * * n ^ e ear ^ est a g es f tne university, the regents alone, 
 as forming the acting body of academical teachers and readers, 
 were authorised to form rules for the regulation of the terms 
 of admission to the regency, as well as for the general 
 conduct of the system of education pursued, and for the 
 election of the various officers who were necessary for the 
 proper administration of their affairs. We consequently 
 find, that if a regent ceased to read, he immediately became 
 an alien to the governing body, and could only be permitted 
 to resume the functions and exercise the privileges of the 
 regency, after a solemn act of resumption, according to 
 prescribed forms, and under the joint sanction of the chan- 
 cellor of the university and of the house of regents. The 
 foundation however of colleges and halls towards the close of 
 the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century, 
 as well as the establishment of numerous monasteries within 
 the limits of the university with a view to a participation of 
 ita franchises and advantages, increased very greatly the 
 number of permanent residents in the university, who had 
 either ceased to participate in the labours of the regency, or 
 who were otherwise occupied with the discharge of the 
 peculiar duties imposed upon them by the statutes of their 
 own societies. The operation of these causes produced 
 a body of non-regents, continually increasing in number and
 
 EARLY CONSTITUTION OF CAMBRIDGE. 143 
 
 importance, who claimed and exercised a considerable in- CHAP. n. 
 fluence in the conduct of those affairs of the university which Power* 
 were not immediately connected with the proper functions nm.-W"nta 
 of the regency ; and we consequently find that at the period P eri<xL 
 when our earliest existing statutes were framed, the non- 
 regents were recognized as forming an integrant body in the 
 constitution of the university, as the house of non-regents, 
 exercising a concurrent jurisdiction with the house of regents 
 in all questions relating to the property, revenues, public 
 rights, privileges, and common good of the university. 
 Under certain circumstances also they participated with the 
 regents in the elections ; they were admitted likewise to the 
 congregations of the regents, though not allowed to vote; 
 and, in some cases, the two houses were formed into one 
 assembly, who deliberated in common upon affairs which 
 were of great public moment. 
 
 ' When graces were submitted by the chancellor to the 
 approbation of the senate, the proctors collected the votes 
 and announced the decision in the house of regents, and the 
 scrutators in that of the non-regents ; and when the two 
 houses acted as one body, their votes were collected by the 
 proctors. It does not appear, from the earlier statutes, that 
 the chancellor was controlled in the sanction of graces, by 
 any other authority ; but, in later times, such graces, before 
 they were proposed to the senate, were submitted to the 
 discussion and approbation of a council or caput, which was 
 usually appointed at the beginning of each congregation. 
 Under very peculiar circumstances, the chancellor might be 
 superseded in the exercise of his distinctive privilege, when 
 he obstinately refused the sanction of his authority for 
 taking measures for the punishment of those who had 
 injured or insulted a regent or a community; for, in such a 
 case, as appears by a very remarkable statute 1 , the proctors 
 were empowered, by their sole authority, to call a congregation 
 of regents only, or of both regents and non-regents, notwith- 
 standing any customs which might be contrary to so violent 
 and unusual a mode of proceeding. 
 
 1 Stat. Antiq. 57. De potestate procuratorum in defectu cancellarii.
 
 144 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. IT. ' The two proctors, called also rectors, after chancellor and 
 proctor*. vice-chancellor, were the most important administrative 
 officers in the university. They were chosen annually, on 
 the tenth of October, by the regents, the master of glomery 
 and two junior regents standing in scrutiny and collecting 
 the votes ; they regulated absolutely the times and modes of 
 reading, disputations, and inceptions in the public schools, 
 and the public ceremonies of the university ; they superin- 
 tended the markets, with a view to the supply of wine, 
 bread, and other necessaries for the scholars, and to the sup- 
 pression of monopolies and forestallings and those other 
 frauds, in the daily transactions of buyers and sellers, which 
 furnished to our ancestors the occasions of such frequent and 
 extraordinary legislation ; they managed the pecuniary 
 affairs and finances of the university; they possessed the 
 power of suspending a gremial from his vote, and a non- 
 gremial from his degrees, for disobeying their regulations or 
 resisting their lawful authority ; they collected the votes and 
 announced the decisions of the house of regents, whose 
 peculiar officers they were ; they examined the questionists 
 by themselves or by their deputies ; they superintended or 
 controlled all public disputations and exercises, either by 
 themselves or by their officers the bedels ; they administered 
 the oaths of admission to all degrees, and they alone were 
 competent to confer the important privileges of the regency 1 . 
 'The other officers of the university were the bedels, 
 scrutators, and taxors. The bedels were originally two in 
 number, who were elected by grace by the concurrent 
 authority of the regents and non-regents in their respective 
 houses. The first was called the bedel of theology and 
 canon law, and the other of arts, from their attending the 
 schools of those faculties. They were required to be in 
 
 1 'The proctors were also authorised which could not be realised, incase 
 
 in those days of poverty, to take the pledges were not redeemed. By 
 
 pledge* for the payment of foes, which a late Statute (see Statuta Antique 
 
 were tonally jewels or manuscripts ; No. 182) no manuscript written or 
 
 theae books or manuscripts were book printed, on paper instead of 
 
 valued by the university ttationarii vellum, was allowed to be received in 
 
 (the booksellers), who were not unfre- pledge.' Peacock's Observations on 
 
 qnently bribed to cheat the univer- the Statutes, p. 25. 
 ity by putting a price upon them
 
 EARLY CONSTITUTION OF CAMBRIDGE. 145 
 
 almost perpetual attendance upon the chancellor, proctors, CHAP. ir. 
 and at the disputations in the public schools. 
 
 ' The two scrutators were elected by the non-regents at scrutators. 
 each congregation, to collect the votes- and announce the 
 % decisions of their house, in the same manner as was done by 
 the two proctors in the house of regents. 
 
 ' The two taxors were regents appointed by the house of Taxors. 
 regents, who were empowered, in conjunction with two 
 burgesses (liegemen), to tax or fix the rent of the hostels 
 and houses occupied by students, in conformity with the 
 letters patent of Henry in. They also assisted the proctors 
 in making the assize of bread and beer, and in the affairs 
 relating to the regulation of the markets.' 
 
 It will easily be seen, from the above outline, that the 
 example of the university of Paris was not less influential in 
 the organisation of Cambridge than in that of Oxford ; but a 
 fact of much deeper interest also offers itself for our consider- 
 ation, the fact that it was in those actually engaged in the ^ v w f ^Je 
 work of education in the university and in no one else, that l^od?. 81 
 the management of the university was vested. The diffi- 
 culties of intercommunication in those days of course pre- 
 cluded the existence of a body with powers like those of 
 the present senate ; but when we find that not even residents, 
 when they had ceased to take part in the work of instruction, 
 were permitted to retain the same control over the direction 
 of the university, it is desirable to recognise the fact that 
 it is in no way a tradition in the constitution of the uni- 
 versity, but a comparatively modern anomaly, which still 
 makes the efforts of those who are active labourers in her 
 midst dependent for the sanction of whatever plans they 
 may devise to render her discipline and instruction more 
 effective, upon those who are neither residents nor teachers. 
 
 It was not until the year 1318 that Cambridge received Papal 
 
 recognition 
 
 from Pope John xxn a formal recognition as a Studium ^a a s?$ 
 Generate or Universitas 1 , whereby the masters and scholars Ge 
 
 1 Brian Twyne, with his visual considered a university : ' quaa es- 
 
 unfairness, endeavours to wrest this sent admodum ridicula, si ante illud 
 
 fact into evidence that Cambridge, tempus Cantabrigia aut studium 
 
 before this time, had no claim to be generate, aut Universitas habita fu- 
 
 10
 
 146 
 
 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 C1IAP. II. 
 
 The Mendi- 
 canu. 
 
 Inrmwr of 
 thHr powt-r, 
 ml rapid 
 
 (1. . lui- of 
 thi-ir )< 'in 
 Urity. 
 
 became invested with all the rights belonging to such a cor- 
 poration. Among other privileges resulting from this sanc- 
 tion, doctors of the university, before restricted to their own 
 schools, obtained the right of lecturing throughout Christen- 
 dom ; but the most important was undoubtedly that which ' 
 conferred full exemption from the ecclesiastical and spiritual 
 power of the bishop of the diocese, and of the archbishop of 
 the province, these powers, so far as members of the 
 university were concerned, being vested in the chancellor. 
 It appears however that the immunity thus conferred was 
 not admitted by all the subsequent bishops of the diocese ; 
 the right of interference was claimed or renounced very 
 much according to the individual temper and policy of the 
 bishop for the time being; until the controversy was finally 
 set at rest, in the year 1430, by the famous Barnwell 
 Process. 
 
 If we now turn to consider the character of the in- 
 tellectual activity which chiefly distinguished our universities 
 at this period, we shall find that, as at Paris, it was the 
 Mendicants who assumed the leadership of thought, and 
 also, for a time at least, bore the brunt of that unpopularity 
 which papal extortion and ambition called up among the 
 laity at large. 
 
 There is, perhaps, no instance in English history, of any 
 religious body undergoing so sudden and complete a change 
 in popular esteem, as that afforded in this century by the 
 new orders. They entered and established themselves in 
 the country amid a tide of popularity that overbore all 
 opposition ; before less than thirty years had passed their 
 warmest supporters were disavowing them. The first symp- 
 toms of a change are observable in the alarm and hostility 
 
 t. ant privilegia Bub nomine Uni- 
 vermtatis. unquam ante id tcnipiiH, 
 a Bomanii pontifirihus obtinuieaet.' 
 (Antifj. Arad. Ofi>n. Apolofiia, p. 111.) 
 It is of course true that in the case 
 of the majority of the universities 
 created prior to the Reformation, the 
 granting of the Papal Bull was coin- 
 cident with their first foundation. 
 (BM Von Rmumer, GwhirhteHer Pa- 
 
 , iv 11.) But this fact proves 
 nothing with respect to Paris and 
 Bologna, Oxford and Cambridge. 
 The origin and formation of these 
 universities is lost in obscurity. 
 'Das gilt,' says Von Raumer, 'von 
 keiner deutschen Universitat, man 
 kennt bei alien die Geschichte ihrer 
 Entstehung.' iv 6.
 
 THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 147 
 
 which the regular orders found themselves unable any CHAP. n. 
 longer to disguise. It soon became apparent that the friar 
 so far from representing merely the humble missionary 
 to whom the task of instructing the multitudes might be 
 complacently resigned, was likely to prove a formidable and 
 unscrupulous rival in the race for influence and wealth. 
 Among the first to criticise their conduct in less favourable 
 language, is the historian Matthew Paris, a Benedictine, 
 familiar by official experience with the defects and scandals 
 of his own order, and distinguished by the energy with which 
 he sought to bring about a general and real reform. Writing 
 of the year 1235, he thus describes the conduct of the new 
 orders : ' In this year certain of the brothers Minor, to- 
 gether with some of the order of Preachers, did with extreme 
 impudence and in forgetfulness of the professions of their 
 order, secretly make their way into certain noble monasteries, 
 under the pretext of the performance of their duties and as 
 though intending to depart after they had preached on the 
 morroAv (post crastinam prcedicationem). Under the pretence 
 however of illness or of some other reason, they prolonged 
 their stay; and having constructed a wooden altar and placed 
 thereon a small consecrated altar of stone which they carried 
 with them, they performed in low tones a secret mass, and 
 confessed many of the parishioners, to the prejudice of the 
 priests (in prcejudicium Presbyterorum). For they asserted 
 that they had received authority so to do ; in order, forsooth, 
 that the faithful might confess to them matters which they 
 would blush to reveal to their own priest, whom they might 
 disdain as one involved in like sin, or fear, as one given to 
 intemperance; to such it was the duty of the brothers Minor 
 to prescribe penance and grant absolution 1 .' 
 
 As at Paris, again, the two orders were unable to repress 
 
 1 Historia Major, ed. Wats, p. opinion of Sir F. Madden, ' completed 
 
 419. MS. Cott. Nero. D.V. fol. 257 and corrected under the eye of Mat- 
 
 b. I have generally referred to this thew Paris himself.' It is, at any 
 
 manuscript when using the Historia rate, free from the liberties taken by 
 
 Major of Matthew Paris. It was Archbishop Parker with the text of 
 
 given by John Stow, the antiquary, the edition by Wats, 1640. See Sir 
 
 to Archbishop Parker, and the second F. Maddeu's Preface to the Historia 
 
 part (ann. 1189 1250) was, in the Anglorum, p. Ixii. 
 
 102
 
 148 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. IT. the signs of a growing jealousy of each other's influence and 
 reputation, and their rivalry before long broke out into open 
 Description warfare. The Benedictine historian does not fail to turn to 
 pufcortiM account so grave a scandal and descants thereon with well- 
 Wti.c two affected consternation: 'And as though,' he says, 'no part 
 of the horizon might appear unvisited by storms,' (he is 
 writing of the year 1 243) ' a controversy now arose between 
 the brothers Minor and the Preachers, which excited the 
 astonishment of not a few, inasmuch as these orders appeared 
 to have chosen the path of perfection, to wit, that of poverty 
 and patience. For while the Preachers asserted that, as the 
 older order, they were the more worthy, that they were more 
 decent in their apparel, had worthily merited their name and 
 office by their preaching, and were more truly distinguished 
 by the apostolic dignity ; the brothers Minor replied, that they 
 had embraced in God's service a yet more ascetic and humble 
 life, and one which as of greater humility was of greater 
 worth, and that brethren both might and ought freely to 
 pass over from the Preachers to themselves, as from an 
 inferior order to one more austere and of higher dignity. 
 This the Preachers flatly denied, affirming that though the 
 brothers Minor went barefoot, coarsely clad (viriliter tunicati) 
 and girded with a rope, the permission to eat flesh and even 
 yet more luxurious diet, and that too in public, was not 
 refused to them, a thing forbidden in their own order : so 
 far therefore from the Preachers being called upon to enter 
 the order of the brothers Minor, as one more austere and 
 worthy than their own, the direct contrary was to be main- 
 tained. Therefore between these two bodies, as between the 
 Templars and Hospitallers in the Holy Land, the enemy of 
 the human race having sown his tares, a great and scandalous 
 strife arose ; one too, all the more fraught with peril to the 
 entire Church inasmuch as it was between men of learning 
 and scholars (riri literati et scholares) and seemed to forbode 
 some great judgement imminent. It is a terrible, an awful 
 presage, that in three or four hundred years or more, the 
 monastic orders have not so hurried to degeneracy, as have 
 these new orders, who, within less than four-and-twenty
 
 THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 149 
 
 years, have reared in England mansions as lofty as the palaces of CHAP. 11. 
 Kings. These are now they who, enlarging day by day their 
 sumptuous edifices and lofty walls, display their countless 
 wealth, transgressing without shame, even as the German 
 Hildegard foretold, the limits of the poverty that forms the 
 basis of their profession ; who, impelled by the love of gain, 
 force themselves upon the great and wealthy in the hour of 
 death, to the wrong and contempt of the ordinary priests, 
 so that they may seize upon emoluments, extort confessions 
 and secret wills, extolling themselves and their order above 
 all the rest. Insomuch that none of the faithful now believe 
 that they can secure salvation unless guided by the counsels 
 of the Preachers and the Minorites. Eager in the pursuit 
 of privileges they are found acting as counsellors in the 
 palaces of Kings and nobles, as chamberlains, treasurers, 
 bridesmen, or notaries of marriages (nuptiarum prceloquutores) , 
 and as instruments of papal extortion. In their preaching 
 they are now flatterers, now censurers of most biting tongue, 
 now revealers of confessions, now reckless accusers. As for 
 the legitimate orders whom the holy fathers instituted, to 
 wit those of St. Benedict and St. Augustine, on these they 
 pour contempt while they magnify their own fraternity above 
 all. The Cistercians they regard as rude and simple, half 
 laics or rather rustics; the Black Monks as proud Epicureans 1 .' 
 
 It was not long before this arrogance brought about an contentions 
 open trial of strength between the old and the new orders. Mendicant* 
 
 T and the old 
 
 Among the wealthiest religious houses throughout the country orders. 
 was the monastery at the ancient town of Bury St. Edmund's; 
 originally a society of canons, it had, for reasons which we 
 can only surmise, and contrary to the tradition of the Danish 
 monarchs, been converted by Cnut into a Benedictine found- 
 ation, and its revenues had been largely augmented by 
 successive benefactors. In defiance of the prohibitions of 
 the abbat, and backed by some influential laymen, the 
 Franciscans endeavoured in the year 1258 to establish them- The Francis- 
 selves at Bury. A struggle ensued which lasted for five ^ 
 years. The friars erected buildings, which the monks de- 
 
 i Wats, p. 612. MS. Cott. Nero. D.V. fol. 324 a.
 
 150 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. ii. molished. The dispute was carried by the latter to Rome, 
 but their efforts in that direction proved of but small avail 
 while Alexander iv filled the papal chair. lu the year 
 1261 that pontiff died, and his successor Urban IV issued a 
 mandate requiring the Franciscans to quit the town; they 
 succeeded in avoiding actual expulsion by an unconditional 
 submission to the authority of the abbat; but not before their 
 protracted resistance to the jurisdiction of a foundation of 
 such acknowledged dignity and antiquity, had, according to 
 Matthew Paris, ' greatly scandalised the world V 
 
 In other quarters, where they managed to enlist on their 
 side the sympathies of the laity, the new comers proved too 
 powerful for their antagonists. In 1259 the Dominicans 
 established themselves at Dunstable, to the no small injury 
 
 The Domini- of the priory in that town*. In the year 1276 the same 
 
 ran* Bl 
 
 ouiu-rbury. order at Canterbury, acting in conjunction with the towns- 
 people, nearly succeeded in driving the monks of Christchurch 
 from the city, and Kilwardby, the archbishop, with difficulty 
 allayed the strife. But a policy thus aggressive could not 
 long be popular, and it would seem that even during the 
 lifetime of Grosseteste the enthusiasm which first greeted 
 
 8ubenriency the Mendicants had begun to ebb. Foremost among the 
 
 of the new 
 
 FalSuexu>r- causes f this change must be placed the fact that they 
 consented to subserve the purposes of papal extortion. It 
 was in the year 1249 that two messengers belonging to the 
 Franciscan order arrived in England, armed with authority 
 from Innocent iv to extort whatever money they could from 
 the different dioceses, for the use of 'their lord the Pope.' 
 The king, the historian tells us, was conciliated by their 
 humble demeanour, the missives they presented, and their 
 bland address. He gave them permission to proceed on 
 
 1 Matthew Paris, ed. Wat*, pp. 967 quantum ipsi in nedificiis et spatiis 
 
 ft, and 970; Rfgintfr Wtrketone, latioribufl augmentantur, tanto Prior 
 
 Harlcian MS. 638; Dugdale, Mo- et conventus in bonis suis et juribus 
 
 angustiantur ; quia mdditus quoH a 
 
 'Qui de die in diem acdificantes, messuagiis fratribus collatis recepe- 
 
 eollatiH sibi a quampluriiniB locis cir- rant, sibi nunc pereunt ; et oblationes, 
 
 cumjacentjbasdequibus Prior et con- quse eis dari consueverant, fratres 
 
 ventus redditug debent percipere, in jam noviter venientes, pnfcdicatio- 
 
 iMgnnm ejuadem domus detrimen- nibus suia urgentibus, funditus usur- 
 
 turn, in brevi satAgunt ampliare. Et pant.' Matthew Paris, p. 986.
 
 THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 151 
 
 their errand, stipulating only that they should ask for money CHAP. TI. 
 as a free offering and resort to no intimidation. They accord- 
 ingly set forth on their mission; they were richly attired, 
 booted and spurred, mounted on noble palfreys, their saddles 
 ornamented with gold. In such guise they presented them- [Jtw^nThe 
 selves to Grosseteste at Lincoln. He had been a warm messeng^s 
 supporter of their order, having even at one time intended 
 to enrol himself among their number, won by their devotion, 
 earnestness and missionary zeal. It must accordingly have 
 been a sad disenchantment for the good bishop, and his heart 
 must have sunk within him, as he looked on the two mes- 
 sengers and listened to their demands. Of what avail were 
 his efforts on behalf of church reform, his stern dealings with 
 the degenerate Benedictines, when those in whom his hopes 
 centered were thus falling away from their profession? 
 Their demand was the sum of six thousand marks, an ex- 
 orbitant amount even though levied through the length and 
 breadth of his wide bishopric. It would be equally impossible 
 and dishonorable, he declared, to pay it; nor would he even 
 entertain their application until he had consulted the rulers 
 of the state. Disconcerted and repulsed they remounted 
 their horses and rode away. It was not however the only 
 time that the Mendicants appeared before him on such an 
 errand; on his death-bed he lamented the manner in which 
 they had lent themselves to the extortionate policy of Rome, 
 though he still strove to believe that they were only its 
 unwilling accomplices. But such charitable views could not 
 long be shared by the world at large. The virtues of the 
 Mendicants, it soon became apparent, were not destined to 
 be more enduring than those of the Cistercians or the 
 Camuldules; as the morning cloud and as the early dew 
 that quickly goeth away, so passed the fair promise of the 
 followers of St. Dominic and St. Francis of Assisi. 
 
 It would perhaps be unjust not to recognise the fact, that 
 the Mendicants lay under a special disadvantage in that they 
 encountered to a far greater extent than any preceding order 
 the hostility of the older societies. Their system of propa- 
 gandism, again, directly clashed with the functions of the
 
 152 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. TT. parochial clergy. Everywhere the parish priest found his 
 authority contemned, his sphere of action invaded, his mode 
 of life censured and decried, by their unscrupulous zeal. 
 For a time, by talents of an essentially popular order, they 
 managed to retain their hold on the affections of the common 
 people, among whom indeed their example of mendicity 
 proved at one time so attractive that it is almost surprising 
 that all England did not turn able-bodied beggars. But with 
 the fourteenth century their character and popularity rapidly 
 declined, and even before the close of the thirteenth, it had 
 become manifest that the new movement which had enlisted 
 the warm sympathies of the most pious of monarchs, the 
 most sagacious of popes, and the most highminded of 
 English ecclesiastics, was destined, like so many other 
 efforts commencing in reform, to terminate only in yet deeper 
 T 1u^on f degeneracy. Consideremus religiosos, says Roger Bacon, 
 writing in the year 1271, himself a Franciscan friar, nullum 
 
 tK.'iteiou* ordinem excludo. Videamus quantum ceciderunt singuli a 
 statu debito, et novi ordines jam liorribiliter labefacti sunt a 
 pristina dignitate. Totus clerus vacat superbue, hixurice, et 
 avaritice 1 ; and, recalling the enormous vices which had 
 recently rendered the university of Paris a scandal to Europe, 
 he solemnly declares, homo deditus peccatis non potest pro- 
 ficere in sapientia*. The literature of England during the 
 Middle Ages, says Hallam, consisted mainly of 'artillery 
 directed against the clergy,' and of this artillery the Men- 
 dicants undoubtedly bore the brunt. Whether we turn to 
 the homely satire of the Vision of Piers the Ploughman, the 
 composition of a Londoner of the middle class, or to the 
 masterly delineations of the different phases of contemporary 
 society by Chaucer, the courtier and man of the world, or 
 to the indignant invectives of Wyclif, foremost among the 
 schoolmen of his time, we equally discern the inheritance 
 of hatred and contempt which followed upon the apostasy of 
 
 1 Crimp. Stttdii Plnloxophitr , c. 1. Consequent Philosophic, written in 
 
 This tr!tiHC, written in 1271, rnutit 1292. 
 
 be carefully distinguished from the Ibid. c. 6. 
 Compendium Studii Thcologia: et per
 
 GROSSETESTE. 153 
 
 
 the new orders from their high professions, until it culminates CHAP. IT. 
 
 with the sixteenth century, in the polished sarcasms of the 
 Encomium Morice and the burning hexameters of the Fran- 
 ciscanus of George Buchanan. 
 
 Grosseteste died in 1253, within five years of the day i>tii of 
 
 J J Grossutcstc. 
 
 when the Franciscan emissaries knocked at his door. It 
 marks the reputation which he had even in his lifetime 
 achieved, that though his closing years were vexed by ar- 
 duous contention, though the Pope appeared to him as Anti- 
 christ, and his dauntless spirit as a reformer had called up 
 unnumbered enemies at home, it was yet believed that at 
 the hour of his death celestial music was heard in the air, 
 and bells of more than earthly melody chimed untouched by 
 human hand 1 . Legend has surely often graced a far less 
 deserving name. His friend Simon de Montfort wrought 
 not a greater work in the world politic, than did Grosseteste 
 in that of literature and in the Church. He had stimulated "^ se^*^ 
 education ; he had revived learning ; he had enriched the ** *" 
 stores of the theologian ; he had brought back discipline and 
 suppressed abuses among the older religious orders, he had 
 been a father to the new ; he had confronted the extortion 
 of the Roman pontiff, in the noonday of the papal power, 
 with a courage which still endears his memory to English- 
 men ; and, though his hand had been heavy on the Bene- 
 dictines 2 , the contemporary historian, notwithstanding the 
 ties that bound him to that order, has left it on record, 
 in presrnant if not classic phrase, that he was prcelatorum Testimony of 
 
 * _ Matthew 
 
 correptor, monachorum corrector, presbyterorum director, j^J; ^ 
 clericorum instructor, scholarium sustentator, populi prce- 
 dicator, incontinentium persecutor, scripturarum sedulus per- 
 scrutator diversarum, Romanorum malleus et contemptor. 
 
 During the latter part of his life Grosseteste's attention ^ainJr ti e n 
 appears to have been given to the new learning scarcely less new learmDg - 
 than to the new orders, and he had sought to promote the 
 
 1 Matthew Paris, pp. 876, 877. severns sed potius ansterus et m- 
 
 2 ' In qua, si quis omnes tyran- humanus censeretur.' Ibid. p. 815. 
 nides quas exercuit recitaret, non
 
 154 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. IL study of Greek by inviting Greek scholars over to this 
 country, whom he appears to have placed on the foundation 
 at St. Alban's. His own scholarship did not enable him to 
 translate from the original unaided, but as soon as he had 
 gained the assistance of others, he at once perceived that by 
 far the greater number of the difficulties that obstructed the 
 comprehension of Aristotelian thought were to be attributed 
 to the wretched character of the existing translations and the 
 mechanical spirit in which the translators had performed 
 their task. To this conviction we may refer the fact, which 
 ^ere seems no good reason for calling in question, that he 
 himself caused to be prepared, and superintended the pro- 
 duction of, a new translation of the Ethics 1 . Of such 
 "" translations as were already in use he utterly despaired, and 
 asserted that those who wished to understand Aristotle 
 must study him in the original. His views were fully shared 
 
 B nil on. by his disciple and admirer, Roger Bacon. ' Sure am I,' says 
 the latter, ' that it would have been better for the Latins had 
 the wisdom of Aristotle remained untranslated, than that it 
 should be handed down amid such obscurity and perversity, 
 as it now is by those who expend thereon the labours of 
 thirty or forty years ; and who the more they toil the less 
 they know ; as I have ascertained to be the case with those 
 who have adhered to the writings of Aristotle. On which 
 account my lord Robert, formerly bishop of Lincoln of holy 
 memory, entirely neglected the books of Aristotle and their 
 
 modes of reasoning Had I the power, I would have all 
 
 the books of Aristotle burnt, as it is but waste time arid the 
 cause of error to study them.' Of the practical inconve- 
 niences resulting from the use of such translations, he had, 
 indeed, himself had some experience, for when lecturing on 
 Aristotle in the schools at Oxford, he had on one occasion 
 alighted on some Lombard or Spanish words inserted by 
 the translator to supply the place of the unknown Latin 
 
 1 The fact has been called in qnes- (Paris, 1861), p. 328: butsee Jourdain, 
 tion by M. Kinilo CharleB, Roijer Recherche* Critique!, p. 59, and Mr 
 Bacon, *a Vie, let Ouvragcs, etc. Luard's Preface to the Epistolcc.
 
 ROGER BACON. 155 
 
 equivalents, and on his stumbling over the strange difficulty, CHAR u 
 his scholars, with the rudeness characteristic of the times, 
 had openly derided his perplexity 1 . The efforts of Aquinas 
 towards remedying defects like these, do not appear to have 
 elicited any eulogium from the Oxford Franciscan, while Wil- 
 liam of Moerbecke is singled out by him for special attack ; 
 and the following verdict, delivered in his Compendium 
 Studii TJieologice, shortly before his death, may probably be 
 regarded as representing his deliberate opinion : ' Though "'t,^ 011111 
 we have numerous translations of all the sciences by Gerard 
 of Cremona, Michael Scot, Alfred the Englishman, Hermann 
 the German, there is such an utter falsity in all their writings 
 that none can sufficiently wonder at it. For a translation to 
 be true, it is necessary that a translator should know the 
 language from which he is translating, the language into 
 which he translates, and the science he wishes to translate. 
 But who is he ? and I will praise him, for he has done mar- 
 vellous things. Certainly none of the above named had any 
 true knowledge of the tongues or the sciences, as is clear, 
 not from their translations only, but their condition of life. 
 
 Hermann the German, who was very intimate with 
 
 Gerard, is still alive, and a bishop. When I questioned him 
 about certain books of logic which he had to translate from 
 the Arabic, he roundly told me he knew nothing of logic 
 and therefore did not dare to translate them ; and certainly 
 if he was unacquainted with logic he could know nothing of 
 any other science as he ought. Nor did he understand 
 Arabic, as he confessed, because he was rather an assistant 
 in the translations than the real translator. For he kept 
 Saracens about him in Spain who had a principal hand in 
 his translations. In the same way Michael the Scot claimed 
 the merit of numerous translations. But it is certain that 
 Andrew, a Jew, laboured at them more than he did. And 
 even Michael, as Hermann reported, did not understand 
 either the sciences or the tongues. And so of the rest, espe- 
 cially the notorious William Fleming who is now in such 
 reputation. Whereas it is well known to all the literati of 
 1 Comp. Studii Theologies, quoted in Wood-Gutch, p. 287.
 
 15G 
 
 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. ii. 
 
 hb career. 
 
 Taluc 
 
 
 Paris, that he is ignorant of the sciences in the original 
 Greek, to which he makes such pretensions; and therefore 
 he translates falsely, and corrupts the philosophy of the 
 Latins. For Boethius alone was well acquainted with the 
 tongues and their interpretation. My lord Robert, by reason 
 of his long life and the wonderful methods he employed, 
 knew the sciences better than any other man ; for though he 
 did not understand Greek or Hebrew he had many assist- 
 ants 1 .' 
 
 Ro<;er Bacon was of the Franciscan order, and the per- 
 secution he underwent at the hands of that community at 
 Oxford when he essayed to prosecute his scientific researches, 
 is a familiar tale. While Albertus and Aquinas were the 
 guests of royalty and expounded their interpretation of 
 Aristotle to admiring throngs at Cologne and Paris, the poor 
 English friar, as far as we can trace out the obscure records 
 of his life, was atoning for a mental activity in no wise less 
 honorable, by isolation, disgrace, and banishment ; and while 
 Aquinas was trusting to such aid as he could find in men 
 like William of Moerbecke for a clearer insight into the 
 thought of Aristotle, the occupant of the humble cell at 
 Oxford had, by his almost unaided efforts, raised himself to 
 be the first scholar of his age. 
 
 The writings of Roger Bacon have a value of an almost 
 unique kind. They not only give us an insight into the 
 learning of the age, such as is afforded by the writings of no 
 other Englishman in the thirteenth or the succeeding cen- 
 tury, but they also supply us with that most assuring of all 
 corroborations in our estimate of a remote and obsolete 
 culture, the concurring verdict of a contemporary observer. 
 When the Oxford friar denounces the extravagance, the fri- 
 volity, and the shortcomings of his time, we feel less diffident 
 lest our own impressions may be chiefly those of mere preju- 
 dice and association ; and, in bringing to a termination our 
 sketch of this era, we can scarcely do better than record the 
 conclusions wherein his penetrating intellect has summed up 
 
 1 Qnote.1 and trauhltttctl \<y Prof. Brewer, Preface to R. Baconi Opera 
 Infdita, p. Ix.
 
 ROGER BACON. 157 
 
 its stern indictment, as his eagle glance ranged over the CHAP. n. 
 
 domain of knowledge, and noted with what caprice, what 
 
 perversity, what blindness, the labourers yet tilled, planted, 
 
 and essayed to gather fruit on an ungrateful soil, while all 
 
 around them broad and fertile acres stretched far and wide 
 
 or faded from the gaze on the dim and distant horizon. It nis three 
 
 treatises, 
 
 was in the year 1267 that Bacon completed those three trea-^P 8ed 
 tises which he had, in obedience to the wishes of his patron 
 Pope Clement IV, drawn up in illustration of his views, and 
 which, known as the Opus Majus, the Opus Minus, and the 
 Opus Tertium 1 , are still extant, and constitute so remarkable a 
 monument of his genius. It is from these writings, together ms censures 
 with two other treatises written at a later period, that we and vices of 
 
 the age. 
 
 gain an insight into the actual education of the time, such 
 as we should vainly seek elsewhere ; and as the writer reviews 
 with scornful impartiality the errors and defects of the pre- 
 vailing methods, we seem rather to hear the voice of his 
 great namesake, speaking from the vantage ground of three 
 additional centuries, than that of a humble friar of the days 
 of Henry III. His censure falls alike upon Dominican 
 and Franciscan ; upon Aquinas and his method, wherein he 
 can only see philosophy aspiring to usurp the province of 
 theology 2 , and upon Alexander Hales, to whom the true 
 thought of Aristotle had never been known, and whose writings, 
 he notes with satisfaction, are already falling into neglect 3 ; 
 upon the superstitious reverence yielded to the Sentences 
 while the Scriptures were neglected and set aside 4 ; on the 
 
 1 It may be of service here to Brewer's edition for the Rolls se- 
 
 enumerate the different treatises by ries. 
 
 Bacon to which reference will fre- s Opus Minus, ed. Brewer, p. 322. 
 
 quently be made, with the assumed 3 Ibid. p. 325 327. 
 
 dates of their composition : (a) Opus * ' Nam ibi est tota gloria theologo- 
 
 Slajus (edited by Dr Jebb, 1733) ; rum, quae facit onus unius equi. Et 
 
 *() Opus Minus (extant only as a postquam ilium legerit quis, jam 
 
 fragment) ; *(y) Opus Tertium (in- praesumit se de magistro theologiae, 
 
 tended as a preface to the two for- quamvis non audiat tricesimam par- 
 
 mer), composed 1266 67 in com- tern sui textus. Et bacularius qui 
 
 pliaiice with the request of Pope legit textum succumbit lectori Sen- 
 
 Clement iv ; *(S) Compendium Studii tentiarum Parisius. Et ubique et in 
 
 Philosophies, 1271; (e) Compendium omnibus honoratur et praefertur. 
 
 Studii Theoloyitf (still in maim- Nam ille qui legit Sententias habet 
 
 script), 1292. The asterisk denotes principalem horam legendi secundum 
 
 the treatises included in Professor suam voluntatern, habet et socium
 
 158 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. ii. errors of the Vulgate 1 , the false Aristotle, the neglect of 
 science 1 , the youth and inexperience of those from whom the 
 ministers of the Church were recruited 8 , the overweening 
 attention given to the study of the civil law as the path to 
 honour and emolument 4 . 
 
 The rrawdiM g u t Bacon was no mere iconoclast ; and while he severely 
 
 lit* |>ropOMb 
 
 scrutinised existing defects he was not less explicit in the 
 remedies he advocated. Logic was, indeed, to be dethroned, 
 but its place was to be rilled by two other studies, which he 
 regarded as the portals to all knowledge, the study of language 
 and the study of mathematics. To the prevailing ignorance 
 of the original tongues he ascribes the confusion then so rife 
 rwprwwitof in theology and philosophy. The earliest revelation to man 
 ~ P * had been handed down in the Hebrew tongue ; the thought 
 of Aristotle was enshrined in Greek ; that of Avicenna, in 
 Arabic 8 . How important then that these languages should be 
 thoroughly known ! And yet, he affirms, though there are 
 many who can speak these languages, there is an almost 
 utter ignorance of them in their grammatical structure. 
 ' There are not four men among all the Latins,' he writes, 
 ' who know the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Arabic tongues 
 grammatically ; I know what I say, for I have instituted 
 rigorous inquiry, both at home and abroad, and have gone to 
 considerable pains in the matter 6 .' Of the great work, which 
 amid all the puerilities and extravagancies of dialectics was 
 really being performed by the schoolmen, the subtlety, pre- 
 cision, and vastly extended nomenclature that they were ' 
 imparting to the Romance languages, he seems to have had 
 no conception. 
 
 It is to Mathematics however that he assigns the foremost 
 
 rt eameram apud religiosos. Scd cum et theologian], quam unus ma- 
 
 qni Ifgit liiblium, caret bin et men- gister in theologia, et citius eligitur 
 
 dicat liornm Icgi-ndi, M-mndum quod ad ecclesiasticas dignitates.' Opu* 
 
 placet lectori Seutentianmi.' Ibid. p. Trrtium, ed. Brewer, p. 84. 
 
 5 Ibid. p. 32. 
 
 1 Ibid. p. 330. Jsam nrn snnt quatuor Latini, 
 
 Ibid. p. 323, 353. qui nciant grrmmatieam Hebraeorum, 
 
 1 Compendium Studii Philotophiee, et Gracornm, et Arabum : bene enim 
 
 P- ^2fi. cognosco eos, quia et citra mare et 
 
 'Nam pins landatur in ecclenia ultra diligenter feci inquiri, et mul- 
 
 Dei unn jurist* civiliH, licet solum turn in his laboravi.' Ibid. p. 83. 
 wriat jus civile et ignoret jus canon i-
 
 ROGER BACON. 159 
 
 place. Divine Mathesis, and she alone, can purge the intel- CHAP. 11. 
 lectual vision, and fit the learner for the acquirement of all vaiueat- 
 
 tached by 
 
 knowledge 1 . As for the implied non-approval of the study, ^"Pl th * 
 which, as some would have it, had been conveyed in the Mathem tic - 
 silence of the fathers, he urges that in the early days of the 
 Church mathematics were almost unknown, and consequently 
 could scarcely have been either condemned or approved; 
 but, so far as any evidence existed to shew, had not Isidorui? 
 carefully discriminated between the use and abuse of the 
 science, in the distinction he had drawn between the study 
 of astronomy, and that of astrology or magic 2 ? The uses of 
 logic cannot, he insists, compare with those of mathematical 
 or linguistic studies, for though its terminology is a matter 
 of acquirement in the language which we speak, the 
 reasoning faculty is itself innate, and, as Aristotle had him- 
 self admitted, even the uneducated syllogise 3 . Amid the 
 many disappointments which befel him in his troublous 
 career, Bacon was yet spared from foreseeing how completely 
 his estimate would, in a few years, be set aside at Oxford, 
 and how long language and mathematics would be doomed 
 to wait without her gates while logic reigned supreme 
 within. 
 
 And yet there were grounds for hope in the events that 
 were going on around him ; for at the time that these three 
 treatises were written, there had already been founded at 
 Oxford an institution, to which indeed we find no reference in 
 his writings 4 , but which we cannot but suppose must have 
 suggested to him a coming age when learning should be set 
 free from petty obstructions and vexations like those that 
 
 1 'Nee mirum si omnia sciantur 4 Mr Percival, in his edition of the 
 
 per mathematicain, quia omnes Foundation Statutes of Merton Col- 
 
 scientias sunt connexae (ut superius lege (Oxford, 1847), has stated in 
 
 dixi) licet quaalibet simul cum hac his Introduction, that ' Roger Bacon 
 
 habeat suam proprietatem.' Ibid. p. ...taught philosophy and rhetoric in 
 
 37. the schools of Merton ; ' an assertion 
 
 2 fbid. p. 26. which appears hardly reconcilable 
 
 3 'De logica enimnonest vistanta, with what we know of Bacon's life; 
 quia scirnus earn per naturam. licet and I may add, on the authority of Mr 
 vocabula logica in lingua, qua utimur, Coxe of the Bodleian, that no known 
 quaerimus per doctrinam.' Ibid. p. existing sources of information throw 
 102. any light on the question.
 
 160 
 
 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 
 CHAP. IT. haunted his Franciscan cell. The walls of Morton College 
 were already reared 1 , and though his soul would have been 
 but little gladdened could it have descried, in the future, 
 Duns Scotus descanting to breathless audiences on the 
 mysteries of the intentio secunda, he might have derived some 
 solace could he have foreseen the work of Occam and Wyclif. 
 The schools of Oxford had been rising rapidly in import- 
 ance ever since the arrival of the Franciscans in England. 
 Under the auspices of Grosseteste, first in his capacity of 
 rector scfwlarum and subsequently as diocesan 8 , and under 
 the teaching of Adam de Marisco and others of the Franciscan 
 
 O 
 
 order, the university began to attain to that celebrity which 
 culminated in the early part of the following century. It 
 would not appear however that either Grosseteste, or Adam de 
 Marisco, or even Roger Bacon, though all more or less keenly 
 alive to the evils resulting from the abuse of the papal power 
 and the laxity of monastic discipline, had ever seriously 
 contemplated the severance of the work of education from 
 its traditional associations. They looked for reform from 
 within rather than from without. The developement of the 
 new conception must be sought for in another and in many 
 respects a widely different school. 
 
 So far back as the time of Cnut and Harold, the idea of 
 founding colleges which should not be monasteries, and of 
 training clergymen rather than monks, had found occasional 
 expression. It is one of the early indications of the struggle 
 between Teutonic and Latin Christianity ; for Harold un- 
 doubtedly borrowed his conception from what he had seen in 
 Germany, and the system of secular colleges appears to have 
 been first established in Lorraine under Chrodegang bishop 
 
 the ci>nce|>- 
 
 "ti"i f 
 
 Th< notio 
 liorrmritl 
 from (ivr- 
 manjr. 
 
 1 Tim earliest college foundation 
 at Oxford appears really to have boon 
 Univerwity College, founded by Wil- 
 liam of Durham who, dying in 1'24J>, 
 bequeathed 310 murks for the sup- 
 port of poor scholars. His Iwquest 
 remained unapplied for many years, 
 during which interval Mcrton College 
 was founded. Mr Anstey considers 
 that Anthony Wood ia guilty of some 
 diimigenuousnesH in dunning, under 
 
 these circumstances, the priority for 
 Merlon ; ' before Merton College was 
 finally established William of Dur- 
 ham's bequest had been all applied 
 by the university in the purchase of 
 houses, and statutes given for tho 
 hulls founded therewith.' Introd. to 
 Mnnimenta Acailrmica, p. xxix. 
 
 8 Luard, Introd. to Grossetcgte 
 Epittola:, pp. xxxiii. and xl.
 
 SECULAR FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 161 
 
 of Metz 1 . The prevailing system iu England during the CHAP. IT. 
 supremacy of the family of Eadgar had been adverse to the 
 canons, who had been displaced from the colleges and cathe- 
 dral churches to make room for the Benedictines ; but the 
 Danish monarchs not unnaturally sympathised with the 
 party that Ethelred and his followers had oppressed, and 
 under their rule colleges for canons rose in rapid succession. 
 Cnut indeed appears to have been guided more by local ^nut- 
 considerations than by any abstract theory, and favoured 
 the two parties alternately 8 ; but Harold, the noble-hearted 
 and wide-minded Harold, was throughout distinguished as 
 canonicce regulte strenwis institittor*, and his foundation at f^,n,{I" n d 8 
 Waltham has been recently, and for the first time, brought ** Wttltham - 
 
 i Prof. Stubbs, Introd. to De In- 
 rrntione. Sanctte Cmcis, etc. pp. viii. 
 ix; and Introd. to Epistolce Cantua- 
 rienxftt, p. xvii. 
 
 * Tanner-Nusmith, pp. 84, 207, 
 504. See also Mr C. H. Pearson's 
 observations in Historical Maps of 
 J-'.naland, p. 54. 'It was,' says Pro- 
 fessor Stubbs, 'unfortunately the 
 policy of the monks and their advo- 
 cates to claim an original right to all 
 monastic churches, and to aggran- 
 dize themselves whenever they could 
 with the occupation of those to which 
 they had not the original claim, on 
 the ground of their sanctity. In this 
 way no prescription against them 
 was allowed to defeat their existing 
 claims, and the shortest prescription 
 in their favour was pressed against 
 the most just claim of the seculars. 
 To turn a church of clerks into a 
 monastery was a merit of great effi- 
 ciency for the remission of sins, but 
 to turn a monastery into a secular 
 church was an unheard-of impiety.' 
 Introd. to Epist. Cant. p. xxv. 
 
 3 He is so described in the 
 charter of Walth^am . ' We can ima- 
 gine, ' says Professor Stubbs, the 
 reasons that made him so : the fo- 
 reign predilections of the monks, 
 favoured by the simple monarch on 
 the throne; the decay of learning 
 which was beginning to be felt in 
 the institutions which had the mo- 
 nopoly of it, and which it was re- 
 served for the energy of Lancaster 
 to counteract ; and the danger which 
 
 a monastic power, separated in ideas 
 and sympathies from the people and 
 wielded by worldly men, always en- 
 tails on the religion and happiness 
 of a nation. The monks, like the 
 friars in later times, were always in 
 extremes; sometimes before, some- 
 times behind the age. The heroic 
 patriotism displayed by some of their 
 fraternities at the moment of the 
 Conquest and shortly after it, would, 
 if anything could, disprove this state- 
 ment : but the effort was short and 
 spasmodic, and served but to rivet 
 the fetters on the people, who would 
 have made it successful if it had 
 been attempted a few years earlier. 
 The multiplication of secular colleges 
 was one of the most likely means of 
 raising up a clergy whose knowledge 
 of mankind, general learning, and 
 thorough sympathy with English- 
 men, might improve the character 
 and help to save the souls of the 
 people Harold loved. Alfred and 
 Eadward the Elder, Athelstan and 
 Cnut, had shewn their sense of this 
 by secular foundations; the heroes 
 of the monks were Ethehvulf, Ea- 
 dred, and Eadgar: the contrast is 
 a speaking one. Nor was the lesson 
 lost on English statesmen who fol- 
 lowed them, such as were the great 
 bishops of the family of Beck, arch- 
 bishops Thornby and Chicheley, 
 Walter de Merton, and William of 
 Wykeharn.' Introd. to De Inven- 
 tionc, p. vii 
 
 11
 
 162 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. it. before the student of this period, in its true relation to the 
 majority of the foundations of the time. 'Every writer of 
 of English history/ says Mr Freeman, ' as far as I know, has 
 tonal ch*- wholly misrepresented its nature. It is constantly spoken 
 Knri iiiirokrg o f Qg an abbey, and its inhabitants as monks. Waltham 
 
 foundation. J ' 
 
 and its founder thus gets mixed up with the vulgar crowd of 
 monastic foundations, the creations in many cases of a real 
 and enlightened piety, but in many cases also of mere 
 superstition or mere fashion. The great ecclesiastical foun- 
 dation of earl Harold was something widely different. 
 Harold did not found an abbey ; Waltham did not become a 
 religious house till Henry the Second, liberal of another 
 man's purse, destroyed Harold's foundation by way of doing 
 honour to the new martyr of Canterbury. Harold founded 
 a Dean and Secular Canons ; them King Henry drove out, 
 
 and put in an Abbot and Austin Canons in their place 
 
 The clergy whom Harold placed in his newly founded minster 
 were not monks, but secular priests, each man living on his 
 
 own prebend, and some of them, it would seem, married 
 
 It is not unlikely that Harold's preference for the secular 
 clergy may have had some share in bringing upon him the 
 obloquy which he undergoes at the hands of so many eccle- 
 siastical writers. It was not only the perjurer, the usurper, 
 but the man whose hand was closed against the monk and 
 open to the married priest, who won the hatred of Norman 
 and monastic writers. With the coming of the Normans 
 the monks finally triumphed. Monasticism, in one form or 
 another, was triumphant for some ages. Harold's own foun- 
 dation was perverted from his original design; his secular 
 priests were expelled to make room for those whom the 
 fashion of the age looked on as holier than they. At last 
 the tide, turned ; men of piety and munificence learned that 
 the monks had got enough, and from the fourteenth century 
 onwards the bounty of founders took the same direction 
 which it had taken under yEthelstan and Harold. Colleges, 
 educational and otherwise, in the universities and out of 
 them, now again rose alongside of the monastic institutions 
 which had now thoroughly fallen from their first love. In
 
 SECULAR FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 1G.3 
 
 short, the foundation of Waltham, instead of being simply 
 slurred over as a monastic foundation of the ordinary kind, 
 well deserves to be dwelt upon, both as marking an era in 
 our ecclesiastical history, and also as bearing the most speaking 
 witness to the real character of its illustrious founder 1 .' 
 Such was the conception which Roger Bacon saw revived in 
 his own day, and which is still to be studied in the brief 
 and simple statutes of the most ancient of our English col- 
 leges ; the outcome of a mature and sagacious estimate of 
 the wants and evils of the time, not unworthy of one whose 
 experience combined that of a chancellor of the State and a 
 bishop of the Church ; of one who in his youth had sat at 
 the feet of Adam de Marisco 2 , but whose ripened judgement 
 comprehended in all their bearings the evils that must 
 necessarily ensue when the work of education is monopolised 
 
 CHAP. IL 
 
 Harold's 
 conception 
 revived by 
 Walter do 
 Merton. 
 
 1 Hist, of tlie Norman Conquest, n 
 440, 442, 444-5. I may perhaps 
 venture to state that I had origin- 
 ally been inclined somewhat to dis- 
 sent from the view here enforced by 
 Mr Freeman, but a communication 
 with which he has very courteously 
 favoured me on the subject, and a 
 careful perusal of Professor Stubbs's 
 Prefaces, have placed the matter in 
 another light. At the same time it 
 may, I think, be questioned whether 
 Harold's conception was of quite so 
 unique and anti-Norman a character 
 as Mr Freeman's language might lead 
 us to infer, and in support of this 
 opinion I would submit the follow- 
 ing facts: (1) In the year 1092, 
 Picot, the Norman sheriff of Cam- 
 bridgeshire, a man notorious for his 
 misrule and rapacity in his baili- 
 wick, instituted Secular Canons at 
 St. Giles in Cambridge; the foun- 
 dation being afterwards changed by 
 Pain Peverell, the standard-bearer of 
 Robert, duke of Normandy, into one 
 for thirty Augustinian Canons, and 
 removed to Barnwell, where it form- 
 ed the priory. (Cooper, Annals, i 20. 
 Hist, of Barnu-ell Abbey, 9, 10, 11.) 
 (2) Lanfranc, who had been educated 
 at the monastery of Bee, established 
 Secular Canons at St.Gregory's, whom 
 archbishop Corboil afterwards re- 
 moved, putting Regular or Augus- 
 
 tinian Canons in their place. (Le- 
 l&ud, Collectanea, i69.) (3) The Secu- 
 lar Canons on Harold's foundation, 
 though certainly treated with some 
 severity by the Conqueror, remained 
 undisturbed for more than a century 
 of Norman rule, i.e. from 1066 to 
 1177; and even then, if any credence 
 is to be given to the reason assigned 
 in the royal letter for their removal, 
 it was on account of their having 
 become a scandal to their neighbours 
 from their laxity of discipline, not 
 from hostility to their rule. ' Curn 
 in ea canouici seculares nimis ir- 
 religiose et carnaliter vixissent, ita 
 quod infamia conversationis illornm 
 inodum excedens multos scandali- 
 zasset.' Dugdale, Moiuuticons, vi 63: 
 or, in the language of the account 
 quoted by Dugdale, 'quia...mundanis 
 operibus, et illecebris illicitis magis 
 quarn divino servitio iutendebant.' 
 vi 57. 
 
 2 Such at least is the opinion of 
 his biographer, who founds his belief 
 upon the fact that Walter de Merton 
 was the bearer of an introductory 
 letter from Adam de Marisco, when 
 he presented himself to Grosseteste 
 for subdeacon's orders. See Sketch 
 of tJie life of Walter de Merton, by 
 Edmund, Bishop of Nelson, pp. 2 
 and 19; also Monumenta Franciscana, 
 letter 242. 
 
 112
 
 1G4 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. ii. by those with whom the interests of an order are likely to 
 outweigh the interests of their disciples. To raise up an 
 institution which should baffle that encroaching spirit of 
 Rome which had startled Grosseteste from his allegiance, and 
 to give an impulse to education that should diminish its 
 subservience to purely ecclesiastical ideas, such was the 
 
 waiter de design of Walter de Merton 1 ; when we add that his statutes 
 
 M.TU.II, 
 
 uni iiixii became the model on which those of the earlier colleges 
 
 ChaaevUor o 
 
 VUOM'!J!O" <I ' both at Oxford and at Cambridge were framed, we shall 
 Huch.M.u-r. nee( j no excuse for dwelling at some length on their scope 
 
 and character*, 
 statute* of The first broad fact that challenges our attention in these 
 
 M.-rti.n Col- 
 
 iii-, 1270. statutes is the restriction whereby 'no religious person/ 
 nemo reliffiosus, is to be admitted on the foundation ; a pro- 
 vision which it may be well to place beyond all possible 
 misapprehension. In those times, it is to be remembered, 
 there existed only two professions, the Church and the 
 military life; the religious life, whether that of the monk 
 or the friar, was a renunciation of the world; the former 
 withdrawing from all intercourse with society, the latter 
 disavowing any share in worldly wealth; and both merging, 
 as it were, their individual existence in their corporate life. 
 
 Kxciminnof Such were the two classes whom Walter de Merton sought 
 
 tli. r. II.IMMI 
 
 thMuulloa 1 - to exclude. It was his design to create a seminary for the 
 
 tl'.IL 
 
 1 'Ever a warm advocate of the Percival, Introd. to, Statutes of Merton 
 
 liberty of the subject, and a staunch College, p. xiv. It is noted by the 
 
 patron of education, Merton must Bishop of Nelson, as a proof of the 
 
 have viewed with a jealous eye the high estimation in which Walter de 
 
 advances of Home and the increasing Merton was held by the royal family, 
 
 influence of her emissaries in the that all its members contributed in 
 
 country. While filling the high office some way to the foundation of his 
 
 of chancellor of England, he had college. (Life, p. 7.) He was chan- 
 
 Icanied by experience how vain was cellor in tlie years 1201-2, a time 
 
 the attempt to struggle with the mi- when the troubles of Henry III. 
 
 tiinU?rH of Rome when once wealth were at their height, and he not im- 
 
 iind position had given them an over- probably earned the gratitude of the 
 
 whelming authority in Church and royal family by his able administra- 
 
 Htate. He therefore directed his tion during the monarch's absence 
 
 attention to the principal seat of from the kingdom, 
 
 education, and endeavoured to raise The statutes here referred to are 
 
 in the secular schools a power which those of 1270, and may be regarded 
 
 might, by crushing the strength of as embodying the final views and 
 
 the monasteries, check the growth of intentions of the founder, 
 the papal influence iu the bud.'
 
 MERTON COLLEGE. 165 
 
 Church, and he accordingly determined to place it beyond HTAP. TT. 
 the power of either monks or friars to monopolize his foun- 
 dation and convert it to their exclusive purposes. All around 
 him, at Oxford, were to be seen the outward signs of their 
 successful ambition : the Benedictine priory of St Frideswide, 
 the Augustinian Canons at Oseney, the Franciscans in St. 
 Ebbe's, the Dominicans in the Jewry, St. John's Hospital 
 where Magdalen College was one day to stand, the Augus- 
 tinian Friars on the future site of Wadham, the Carmelites, 
 and the Friars de Poenitentia. He might well think that 
 enough had been done for the recluse and the mendicant, 
 and that something might now be attempted on behalf of 
 those who were destined to return again into the world, to 
 mingle with its affairs as fellow-citizens, and to influence its 
 thought and action by their acquired learning. On the other 
 hand it would be erroneous to infer that Merton College was 
 originally any thing more than a seminary for the Church, 
 though such a limitation loses all its apparent narrowness 
 when we consider that the clerical profession at this period varied pur- 
 included all vocations that involved a lettered and technical ecclesiastic 
 preparation. The civil law, as we know from Bacon's testi- times." 
 mony, was already an ordinary study with ecclesiastics; so 
 also was medicine, though professed chiefly by the Men- 
 dicants; while chancellors of the realm and ambassadors at 
 foreign courts, like William Shyreswood and Richard of Bury 
 or Walter de Merton himself, were selected chiefly from the 
 clerical ranks; and even so late as the reign of Richard II, 
 churchmen, like the warlike bishop of Norwich, might ride 
 forth to battle, clad in complete armour, brandishing a two- 
 handed sword, and escorted by a chosen body of lancers 1 . 
 When such were the customary and recognised associations 
 of the clerical life, it obviously becomes an unmeaning 
 reproach to speak of the Church as usurping the functions 
 of laymen; the truth would rather appear to be, as has been 
 recently observed, 'that in the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries statesmen and lawyers usurped the preferments of 
 the Church than that ambitious churchmen obtruded on 
 1 Blomefield^ Hist, of Norfolk, m 109.
 
 16C 
 
 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 civil and legal offices 1 .' The restriction of Merton College to 
 the clergy cannot consequently bo held to have excluded any 
 of those professions that possess a curriculum at either 
 Oxford or Cambridge at the present day. Considerable stress 
 has indeed been laid on the extent to which the monastic 
 mode of life was reproduced in the discipline imposed upon 
 our colleges, but a very slight examination of the early 
 statutes is sufficient to show that such an approximation was 
 simply for the purposes of organisation and economy : the 
 essential conception of the college was really anti-monastic, 
 and its limitation to those designed for the clerical profession 
 was simply a necessary consequence of the fact that the acti- 
 vity of the Church embraced nearly all the culture of the age 2 . 
 
 1 Dean Hook, Lives of the Arch- 
 bishops, iv 73. The expression used 
 by Hugh BalBbam (A.D. 1-276) in his 
 decision as arbitrator between his 
 own archdeacon and the Master of 
 Gloinery, sire gcholare* give, laid, 
 shows how entirely ecclesiastical was 
 the character of the Universities at 
 this time. Laymen and clerk*, as Mr 
 Anstey observes, were the nearest 
 equivalents to the modern ' town ' 
 and 'gown,' Mnnimcnta A cad. i vi. 
 At the same time the very varied 
 character of the activity of church- 
 men in the Middle Ages has induced 
 many to maintain that the universi- 
 ties were as much secular as ecclesi- 
 astical. ' L'importantc question,' says 
 M. Thurot, in his very able treatise, 
 1 de savoir si I'Uuiversite' etait un 
 corps laic ou ecclfsiastique a e'te' tou- 
 jours controvert6e...Elle fut toujours 
 trait.'e coinrne un corps ecclesiastiquo 
 an xiii c an xiv" ct au xv siecle...Kllo 
 fut mCuie gi'-iie'ralement traitde com- 
 me un corps laic au xvii' ot au xviii 8 
 silvle'. l)e FOrijanisation de VKu- 
 teignemtnt <lnnx ri'niremitf de Pnrix 
 au Mnyrn-Afle. Par Charles Thurot. 
 rri. ls.*>0, pp. 2'.t -31. 
 
 * ' It in ciiHloiiiury with the igno- 
 rant to M|K-ak of our colleges as 1110- 
 naxtic iii-titutiuiis, but, as everv one 
 ktiowH wlio is acquainted with the 
 history of the country, the colleges 
 with very few exceptions were intro- 
 duce! to supplant tbe monanteries. 
 Karly in tin; 12th century the opinion 
 begun to prevail, that the monaste- 
 
 ries were no longer competent to 
 supply the education which the im- 
 proved state of society demanded. 
 The primary object of the monastery 
 was, to train men for what was tech- 
 nically called "the religious life," 
 the life of a monk Those who 
 did not become monks availed them- 
 selves of the advantages offered in 
 the monastic schools; but still, a 
 monastic school was as much de- 
 signed to make men monks, as a 
 training school, at the present time, 
 is designed to make men school- 
 masters, although some who are HO 
 trained betake themselves to other 
 professions.' Dean Hook, Lives of 
 the Archbixliopg, in 339. 'Our foun- 
 der's object,' remarks the bishop of 
 Nelson, ' I conceive to have been to 
 secure for his own order in the 
 Church, for the secular priesthood, 
 the academical benefits which tho 
 religious orders were so largely en- 
 joying, and to this end 1 think all 
 his provisions are found to be con- 
 sistently framed. He borrowed from 
 the monastic institutions the idea of 
 an aggregate body living by common 
 rule, under a common head, pro- 
 vided with all things needful for a 
 corporate and perpetual life, fed by 
 its secured endowments, fenced from 
 all external interference, except that 
 of its lawful patron ; but after bor- 
 rowing thus much, he differenced his 
 institution by giving his beneficiaries 
 quite a distinct employment, and 
 keeping them free from all those
 
 MERTON COLLEGE. ' 167 
 
 The next important feature is the character of the culture CMAP " 
 which the founder designed should predominate among thectanetaror 
 
 i i t T i ITI t ' le "lucKtion 
 
 scholars . It was his aim to establish a 'constant succession <" Merton. 
 of scholars devoted to the pursuits of literature,' ' bound to 
 employ themselves in the study of arts or philosophy, theology 
 or the canon law;' 'the majority to continue engaged in 
 the liberal arts and philosophy until passed on to the study 
 of theology, by the decision of the warden and fellows, and 
 as the result of meritorious proficiency in the first-named sub- 
 jects 3 .' The order in which the different branches are here 
 enumerated may be regarded, as is the case with all the 
 early college statutes, as significant of the relative importance 
 attached by the founder to the different studies. The J^ "'"/^ 
 canon law is recognised, but the students in that faculty are ","" v p^nit- 
 expressly limited to four or five ; to the civil law even less X^sS'w- 
 favour is shewn, for the study is permitted only to thementsia 
 canonists, and as ancillary to their special study, pro utilitate 
 ecclesiastici regiminis, and the time to be devoted to it is 
 made dependent on the discretion of the warden. A judi- 
 cious remedy for the prevailing ignorance of grammar which 
 Bacon so emphatically lamented 3 , is provided by a clause 
 requiring that one of the fellows, known as the grammaticus, 
 shall devote himself expressly to the study, and directing 
 
 perpetual obligations which consti- dation and participating in the gene- 
 
 tuted the essence of the religious ral government. Wherever the term 
 
 life The proofs of his design to appears to be used in its more 
 
 benefit the Church through a better- modern sense, attention will be drawn 
 
 educated secular priesthood, are to to the fact. 
 
 be found, not in the letter of their * ' While he provides for a good 
 statutes, but in the tenour of their liberal education, and general ground- 
 provisions, especially as to studies, ing in all subsidiary knowledge, he 
 in the direct averments of some of jealously guards his main object of 
 the subsidiary documents, in the theological study both from being 
 fact of his providing Church patron- attempted too early by the half-edu- 
 age as part of his system, and in cated boy, and from being abandoned 
 the readiness of prelates and chap- too soon for the temptations of some - 
 ters to grant him hnpropriatioiis of thing more profitable. It should be 
 the rectorial endowments of the remembered that while the warden 
 Church.' Bp. of Nelson's Life of is charged with the duty of keeping 
 Walter de Merton, p. 22. an illiterate youth from commencing 
 1 The term ' scholar ' may be re- the crowning study, he has no au- 
 garded as nearly equivalent to ' fel- thority for dispensing with it in any 
 low,' iii our early college statutes, one case,' Ibid. p. 27. 
 indicating a student entirely sup- 3 Compendium Philosophic, ed. 
 ported by the revenues of the foun- Brewer, p. 419.
 
 168 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 <* that he shall be provided with all the necessary books, and 
 shall regularly instruct the younger students, while the more 
 advanced students are to have the benefit of his assistance 
 when occasion may require. It is to be noted that English 
 as well as Latin enters into his province of instruction, 
 only real tu- it i s gumificant of the founder's intention that only, real 
 
 ili-nt to he 
 
 "iTui^ 1 ** 1 students should find a home within the walls of Morton, 
 that another statute provides that all students absenting 
 themselves from the schools on insufficient grounds shall 
 be liable to corresponding deductions in respect of their 
 scholarships, and even in cases where proper diligence in 
 study is not shewn, the authorities are empowered to with- 
 hold the payments of the usual stipends. There is also 
 another regulation, perhaps the only one of any importance 
 which may not, in some form or other, be found embodied in 
 the rule of subsequent foundations, providing that a year of 
 probation is to precede the admission of each scholar as a 
 
 wMomof permanent member of the society 1 . With this somewhat 
 
 the whole r _ * 
 
 conccpUon. remarkable exception, we find that the statutes of Merton 
 became for the most part the model of our English colleges ; 
 and it will be difficult for an unprejudiced mind to deny the 
 tolerant spirit, the wisdom, and the though tfulness by which 
 they are characterised throughout. In the construction of 
 the curriculum, were it not for the absence of natural science 
 from the prescribed order of studies, we might almost infer 
 that the counsels of Roger Bacon had aided the deliberations 
 of Walter de Merton. It appears indeed that, a few years 
 after, an attempt was made to remedy this deficiency by 
 establishing a faculty of medicine in connexion with the 
 college; an innovation which archbishop Peckham, in 1284, 
 decided was contrary to the tenour of the statutes, and con- 
 Hequently abolished. 'We do not conceive,' says Walter de 
 Helton's biographer*, in summing up his estimate of these 
 statutes, ' that there need remain any doubt that the par- 
 
 Stntutc*, ed. Pcrcival. p. 20. contraries, and in a capitular order of 
 
 Ibid. p. .,o. 'Medicine miver- 1604 is recognised as a philosophical 
 
 H became a flourish- act.' Bp. of Nolnon'K Life of Walter 
 
 ing todjr in the college daring the fa Merlon, p. 26, note. 
 
 fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
 
 DUNS SCOTUS. 1G9 
 
 ticular benefit which the founder designed to confer on the CHAP. n. 
 Church was the improvement of his own order, the secular 
 priesthood, by giving them first a good elementary, and then 
 a good theological education, in close connexion with a 
 university, and with the moral and religious training of a 
 scholar-family living under rules of piety and discipline. 
 And this design was, we have good reason to believe, in the 
 main achieved. Whilst the Visitor of 1284 brings to light 
 the fact that worldliness and selfishness were in some degree 
 marring the original design, there are abundant witnesses to 
 its general success. During the first eighty years of the life 
 of the institution, a brilliant succession of names, divines who 
 were also scholars and philosophers, shone forth, and kindled 
 other founders to devote their substance to the creation of 
 similar nurseries of learned clergy. The earlier statutes of 
 Balliol, University, Oriel, Peterhouse (Cambridge), all bor- 
 rowed with more or less closeness and avowal, the Begula 
 Mertonensis, and thus justified the assertion which the royal 
 founder of Eton afterwards used, that the later colleges bore 
 a childlike resemblance to their common parent, velut imago 
 parentis in prole relucent 1 . 
 
 We can certainly have little hesitation in asserting that if ^"0 
 the number of eminent men who proceeded from the new 
 foundation may be regarded as evidence of the wisdom and 
 discernment of the founder, no college can be held to have 
 more amply justified the motives that dictated its creation. 
 Within the walls of Merton were trained the minds that 
 chiefly influenced the thought of the fourteenth century. 
 It was there that Duns Scotus was educated; it was there 
 that he first taught. Thence too came William of Occam, 
 the revolutioniser of the philosophy of his age, and Thomas 
 Bradwardine, known throughout Christendom as the Doctor 
 Profundus, whose influence might vie even with that of the 
 Doctor In vincible; Richard Fitzralph, the precursor of Wyclif; 
 Walter Burley, Robert Holcot, and a host of inferior names, 
 but men notable in their own day. In attempting to 
 illustrate the culture and mental tendencies of this period 
 
 1 Ibid. p. 29.
 
 170 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. H. we can do no better than turn briefly to consider the special cha- 
 racteristics of the three most eminent Mertonians of the time. 
 Hitherto, the chief representative of progressive thought 
 at Oxford has been found in one solitary Franciscan friar, 
 whose superiority to the superstition, the mental servility, 
 and the ignorance of his age, seems rather to bring out into 
 stronger contrast the prevailing characteristics than to redeem 
 them from one general censure. It has indeed been asserted 
 on high authority, that the insight shown by Bacon into 
 questions like those discussed in his Opus Majus, taken in 
 conjunction with the time in which he wrote, is itself an 
 inexplicable phenomenon 1 ; but the additions that have been 
 made by recent research to our acquaintance with the Arabic 
 literature of that period, have revealed the sources from 
 whence he drew, and afford an adequate solution of the 
 difficulty. In fact, although in his preference for physical 
 researches, and his distrust of the current Aristotelianism, 
 Bacon undoubtedly presents strong points of difference from 
 the schoolmen, there are other points in which an equally 
 strong resemblance may be discerned ; and in estimating the 
 nun* scotm. genius of Duns Scotus, who next occupies the foreground in 
 the academical life of England, it will be important to note 
 the similarity not less than the dissimilarity of their views 
 and aims. 
 
 The spectacle presented by Oxford at the beginning of 
 
 'It is difficult to conceive how translations, which certainly appear 
 
 such a character could then exist. to have merited all his severity. Of 
 
 That he received much of his know- both Avicenna and Averroes ho 
 
 ledge from Arabic writers there is no speaks with invariable respect. Mr 
 
 doubt; for they were in his time the Lewes remarks, 'I am myself but 
 
 repositories of all traditional know- very superficially acquainted with 
 
 ledge. Hut that he derived from these (the Arabian) writings, yet I 
 
 them his disposition to shake off the have discovered evidence enough to 
 
 authority of Arintotle, to maintain make the position of Koger Bacon 
 
 the imjKirtance of experiment, and quite explicable without in the least 
 
 to look upon knowledge as in its in denying him extraordinary merit.' 
 
 fancy, I cannot believe.' (Whew.,-11, Hist, of Phil, n 84. Mr Shirley, in 
 
 fthelndtictiof Science*, 1 258.) the Introduction to the Fasciculi 
 
 t may be doubted whether any PUH- Xizaniurum, p. 1. has even gone so 
 
 wm in Bacon'* writing can be con- fur as to assert that we have in 
 
 fated into impatience of the autho- Koger Bacon ' the normal type of an 
 
 mU.tlo himself : a careful English philosopher' of the thir- 
 
 cjuunmntion will sh-w that his con- teenth century. 
 BUTCH are always directed at the Latin
 
 DUNS SCOTUS. 171 
 
 the fourteenth century is one of the most remarkable afforded CHAP. n. 
 by any university since the commencement of the new era, oxford at the 
 
 J J , p . . . coimuence- 
 
 the earliest developement, m our own country, ot that singular jjj^.^Jj 8 
 and almost feverish activity of thought which stands in such century, 
 marked contrast to the generally low culture of the period, 
 and which becomes intelligible only when we bear in mind 
 all the circumstances that, in the preceding chapter, we 
 have endeavoured to bring together in their mutual true 
 relations. At a time when learning had fewest followers 
 minds are to be found most excited and most enquiring. In 
 a century during which Greek scholarship in England is 
 represented by a single name, and wherein the comparatively 
 correct Latinity of the twelfth century, such as characterised 
 writers like Giraldus and John of Salisbury, was supplanted 
 by a barbarous jargon 1 , Oxford appears as the centre of a 
 purely philosophic ferment to which the subsequent annals 
 of neither university present a parallel. A young Francis- 
 can, originally a student at Merton, rises up ; disputes with 
 a subtlety never before exhibited the conclusions of his pre- 
 decessors ; gathers round him vast and enthusiastic audiences 
 as he successively expounds his doctrines at Oxford, Paris, 
 and Cologne; and is carried off at the early age of thirty- 
 four, while in the zenith of his fame, leaving behind a reputa- 
 tion unsurpassed both for sanctity and for learning. His 
 treatises become the text-books of English education up to 
 the time of the Reformation ; and his theories form the germ 
 of that dialectic freedom of discussion which ultimately snapt 
 asunder the links wherewith Albertus and Aquinas had 
 laboured to unite philosophy and faith. The leadership of 
 
 1 ' Down to .the thirteenth century ruption became rapid and marked in 
 it would not be easy to find among the all directions. The style of Giraldus 
 chroniclers or miscellaneous writers, is not purer than that of Malmes- 
 of Latin in the Middle Ages very bury ; not so pure as that of his con- 
 gross departures from the ordinary temporary, John of Salisbury. Yet 
 rules of Latin syntax. The niceties it would not be easy to find in Gi- 
 of the language had been lost ten raldus any violent transgressions of 
 centuries before; but the difference the rules of Latin construction; 
 of the Latinity of the age extending perhaps none for which sufficient 
 from Bede to Giraldus, that is, of the authority might not be produced in 
 seventh to the thirteenth century, from the wide range of Latin literature, 
 Tertullian or Ausonius, is not greater from the earliest period to the fall 
 than the decline of the latter from of the empire.' Prof. Brewer, Preface 
 the purer Latinity of the Bepublic. to Giraldus Cambrensis, n. xv. 
 After the thirteenth century, the cor-
 
 172 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. n. the age hod passed from the Dominicans to the Franciscans, 
 " ' nor can it be denied that to the latter order England was 
 mainly indebted for such profundity of thought and vigour of 
 speculation as the fourteenth century beheld 1 . 
 
 The causes of that onesided developement of mental 
 activity that is now presented to us are not difficult to assign, 
 view. <* the Tlie languid culture of the Benedictines had been thrust 
 El!J "lilT" aside by the fervid intellectualistn of the Mendicants. But 
 *?? in the very character of that activity the observer of the 
 fashions and revolutions that succeed each other in the 
 evolution of human thought, will discern a significant illustra- 
 tion of the interval that separates us from the mind of the 
 scholastic era. Precisely that contempt with which the 
 ordinary scholar now regards the metaphysical researches of 
 the schoolmen, was felt by the schoolman of the fourteenth 
 century for researches such as have mainly occupied many of 
 the learned of our own time. Discussions on Greek metres 
 and disquisitions on Etruscan pottery would have appeared, 
 to the Oxonian of the days of Edward I, but solemn trifling, 
 while the distinction between the prirtia and secunda intentio 
 still remained uninvestigated and the principium individua- 
 tionis undetermined; and students who could not have 
 written a Latin verse or a page of Latin prose without sole- 
 cisms that would now excite the laughter of an average 
 English public schoolboy, listened with rapt attention to 
 series upon series of- argumentative subtleties such as have 
 taxed the patience and the powers of some of our acutest 
 modern metaphysicians. 
 
 The name of the oracle of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 
 centuries, to whom Coleridge has assigned the praise of being 
 
 the only Englishman (if such he were) possessed of 'high 
 
 tnmr.itt* metaphysical subtlety V has passed, by a strange caprice of 
 
 -tm^ fortune, into an epithet for the grossest ignorance ; and as we 
 
 turn the leaves of the ponderous tomes which enshrine the 
 
 thought once deemed the quintessence of human wisdom, we 
 
 1 The prosperity and authority of university in this century as a ' heavy 
 
 UMDomiuioaiu appear to have been blow' to the order. Kee Fasciculi 
 
 very clowly amtociattHl with the pro- Xizanwntm, p. li. 
 
 parity of the university of Paris. * Coleridge's Literary Remains, 
 
 Mr Shirley notce tbe decline of that HI 21
 
 DUNS SCOTUS. 173 
 
 feel how vain must be the effort to realise the conditions CHAP. ir. 
 under which that thought was conceived. The materials and 
 the sympathies that should enable us to recover some adequate 
 impression of those days have alike vanished. It would con- 
 sequently be hopeless to seek to depict the Oxford of the 
 beginning of the fourteenth century, or to give colour and 
 life to the career of the greatest of the English schoolmen 1 . 
 We must pass by even the fragmentary data we possess 
 concerning that career; its early triumph and its sudden 
 close; the fierce controversy concerning the Immaculate 
 Conception which he was summoned to Paris to allay; the 
 peremptory mandate in obedience to which he repaired so 
 promptly to Cologne, from the green fields near Paris where 
 he was seeking a breathing space of repose, his manuscripts 
 left behind, his farewells to his friends unsaid ; his mysteri- 
 ous death, and the dark rumours that gathered round the 
 termination of that short but eventful life 8 . Whatever at- 
 tention we may venture to claim for Duns Scotus must be 
 restricted to a brief consideration of his philosophy and his 
 influence as an authority in our universities. 
 
 We have already adverted to the arduous character of Progressive 
 
 element ' n 
 the task which devolved upon the schoolmen of the preced- the inst. 
 
 of schol 
 
 ing century; the vastness, the novelty, and the heterogene- dsm - 
 ous nature of the thought they were called upon to interpret; 
 and we have shewn that, however meritorious the spirit in 
 which they essayed to grapple with overwhelming difficulties, 
 the verdict of posterity has failed to ratify their decisions or 
 their method. With the dawn of another century, when 
 the waters, turbid with their first inrush, had become com- 
 
 1 Through the courtesy of Pro- man's productiveness, is perhaps the 
 fessor Stubbs of Oxford, I am able most wonderful fact in the intellec- 
 to state, both on his own authority tual history of our race. He is said 
 and that of Mr Coxe, librarian of to have died at the age of thirty- 
 the Bodleian, that no materials now four, a period at which most minds 
 exist at Oxford likely to throw any are hardly at their fullest strength, 
 light on the personal history of Duns having written thirteen closely- priut- 
 Scotus at that university. The fate ed folio volumes, without an image, 
 that befel his writings there will perhaps without a superfluous word, 
 come under our notice in a future except the eternal logical formularies 
 chapter. and amplifications.' Milman, Latin, 
 
 2 ' The toil, if the story of his early Christianity, Bk. xiv. c. 3. 
 death be true, the rapidity of this 
 
 ory 
 
 lasti-
 
 174 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CH\P. n. paratively tranquil and clear, we naturally look for the 
 manifestations of a more critical spirit and a more deliberate 
 estimate. Nor shall we be disappointed. The decisions 
 delivered at Paris, if not altogether reversed at Oxford, re- 
 appeared only with numerous and important modifications. 
 An improved canon and the accession of new material equally 
 conduced to such a result. 
 
 There is, indeed, no graver error with respect to the 
 schoolmen than that which would lead us to regard them as 
 expending their efforts in one uniform direction, their argu- 
 ments revolving in one vicious circle and around the same 
 hopeless points of discussion; and, so long as metaphysics 
 hold their place in the domain of speculative enquiry, the 
 thinker who anticipated Hegel on the one hand, and Spinoza 
 on the other, would seem entitled to some recognition in the 
 history of human thought. Nearly half a century ago arch- 
 bishop Whately called attention to the want of a treatise on 
 the literature and antiquities of the science of Logic, and 
 while he insisted emphatically on the high qualifications 
 requisite in the writer of such a work, fully recognised tho 
 interest and value that its efficient performance would possess 
 for a select, though somewhat limited, circle of students 1 . 
 
 1 ' The extensive research which the opinions and expressions of va- 
 
 would form one indispensable qtiali- rious authors on points of science, 
 
 fication for such a task, would be only to guard both himself and his readers 
 
 one out of many, even less common, against the mistake of taking any- 
 
 (jnalih'cations, without which such a thing on authority that ought to bo 
 
 work would be worse than useless. evinced by scientific reasoning.' 
 
 The author should be one thoroughly Whately's Logic (ed. 1862), p. 2. 
 
 on his guard against the common In striking contrast to the view 
 
 error of confounding together, or above indicated, Dean Mansel con- 
 
 Wding his readers to confound, an siders that ' a historical account of 
 
 intimate acquaintance with many the Scholastic Logic ought to con- 
 
 books on a given subject, and a fine itself to commentaries and trea- 
 
 clear insight into the subject itself. tises expressly on the science ; and 
 
 With ability and industry for inves- the scholastic contributions to the 
 
 tigHting a multitude of minute parti- matter of Logic should be confined 
 
 culani, he should JKIHWHH the power to such additions to the Aristote- 
 
 of rightly extimating each according lian text as have been incorporated 
 
 to itH intrinsic Importance, and not into the Lorjica docens.' (Introd. to 
 
 ( b Y7 commonly done) accord- Artis Log. Hud. p. 31.) But in 
 
 ing to the degree of Inlmriuut Tf- treating a time when the application 
 
 trarrh it may have cost him, or the of this Lntjica doccm underlay almost 
 
 rarity of the knowledge he may in every treatise of a didactic character, 
 
 any ca*c have acquired. And he it is evident that to restrict the his- 
 
 Bhould be careful, while recording torical survey to the abstract art
 
 DUNS SCOTUS. 175 
 
 This want, at least up to the conclusion of the scholastic era, fir A p. n. 
 has now been to a great extent supplied by the labours of 
 Prantl, to whose researches, together with those of Haurdau 
 and Charles Jourdain, we have been so far indebted that it is 
 necessary to state that, without the aid of these writers, many 
 pages of this volume must have remained unwritten. To the 
 first named we are especially indebted for an investigation into 
 the progress of that new element, the tertium to the new Aris- 
 totle and the Arabian commentators, which hitherto appear- 
 ing only at intervals and exercising but little influence on 
 the philosophy of the schoolmen, now assumed in the writings 
 of Duns Scotus such considerable and significant proportions. 
 The Byzantine logic has a peculiar interest, inasmuch as it influence of 
 
 J 3 . . theByzantine 
 
 associates the learning of the Latins with that of the Greek Logic, 
 empire, and may be regarded as a stray fragment of those 
 literary treasures which, two centuries later, rolled in such 
 profusion from Hellas into western Europe. 
 
 In the eleventh century the seat of the Caesars of the f e ^j f r at 
 East, which had so often defied the fiercest assaults of the nophHn'the 
 infidel, and had not yet been subjugated to the rule of an illite- century! 
 rate Latin dynasty, still preserved some traces of that literary 
 spirit that in the West was almost solely represented by the 
 victorious Saracens. The masterpieces of Grecian genius 
 were still studied and appreciated ; the Greek language was 
 still written with a purity that strongly contrasted with the 
 fate that had overtaken the tongue of Cicero and Virgil ' ; and 
 
 would be to diminish, very mate- was spoken in the court and taught 
 rially, both the value and the iute- in the college, and the flourishing 
 rest of the whole work. state of the language is described, 
 1 If we accept the account of Philel- and perhaps embellished, by a learned 
 phus, this contrast was still to be Italian, who, by a long residence 
 discerned even so late as the period and noble marriage, was naturalised 
 immediately preceding the fall of at Constantinople about thirty years 
 Constantinople before the Turks in before the Turkish conquest. " The 
 1453. 'Since the barriers of the vulgar speech," says Philelphus, "has 
 monarchy, and even of the capital, been depraved by the people, and 
 had been trampled under foot, the infected by the multitude of stran- 
 varioiis barbarians had doubtless cor- gers and merchants, who every day 
 rupted the form and substance of flock to the city and mingle with the 
 the national dialect ; and ample inhabitants. It is from the disciples 
 glossaries have been composed, to of such a school that the Latin Ian- 
 interpret a multitude of words, of guage received the versions of Aris- 
 Arabic, Turkish, Sclavoniau, Latin, totle and Plato, so obscure in sense, 
 or French origin. But a purer idiom and in spirit so poor. But the Greeks,
 
 176 
 
 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 Tritiiiof 
 
 Ml. l,:l.-l 
 
 < 'nnilnntine 
 
 Translation 
 of tin- 1 rrntiae 
 f I'M-llu* by 
 
 IVllili 
 
 Hbnuitu. 
 ct77. 
 
 Tnuulalion 
 bjr William 
 
 works of extensive erudition and much critical acumen at- 
 tested, from time to time, that though the age of poetic genius 
 and original conception was past, scholarship and learning 
 were still represented by no unworthy successors of Strabo 
 and Aristarchus. Among such writers the name of Michael 
 Constantino Psellus, a learned professor at Constantinople 
 towards the close of the eleventh century, deserves a foremost 
 place; and to his treatise on logic, Eui/oi/rt? et? rtjv 'Apto-ro- 
 TeXoix? XoyiKTJv fTriffT^^v, we must refer those influences 
 upon the method of the schoolmen which now offer them- 
 selves for our consideration. This manual, though represent- 
 ing, according to Prantl, little more than ' the content of the 
 school logic received up to the close of antiquity 1 ,' and there- 
 fore in no way comparable for originality with the works of 
 Avicenna and Averroes, would, notwithstanding, seem to have 
 affected the developement of logic in the West to an extent 
 singularly in excess of its real value. Among the contem- 
 poraries of Aquinas was the once famous Petrus Hispanus, a 
 native of Lisbon, who after a brilliant career as a student 
 and teacher at Paris, was ultimately raised to the papal 
 chair under the title of pope John XXI. His literary activity, 
 which might compare with that of Gerbert himself, extended 
 to science, theology, and philosophy, and he was, until re- 
 cently, regarded as the earliest translator of the treatise by 
 Psellus 1 . This supposition however has been altogether 
 disproved by the researches of Prantl, who has shewn that 
 Petrus Hispanus was forestalled, by at least twenty years, by 
 an eminent Oxonian, William Shyreswood, whose name, 
 though it has now passed from memory, was long identified 
 
 who have escaped the contagion, are 
 thoMC whom we follow, and they 
 nlone ore worthy of our imitation. 
 In familiar discourse; they still Hpeak 
 the tongue of Aristophanefl and 
 Kuripideft, of the historians and phi- 
 loHophcrH of Athens ; and the style 
 of their writings is still more elabo- 
 rate and correct.'" (Gibbon, c. .'.6. 
 VIM ID.J. See also Hallaiu, Middle 
 Agtt, in 4G> 8. 
 
 1 Grtch. d. Lwj. n 2f>5. Anm. 0. 
 
 1 Dean Muucl, in the Introduc- 
 
 tion to his Artin Login* Itndimrnta, 
 1ms expressed his belief, in which he 
 informs us he is supported by the au- 
 thority of Sir William Hamilton, 
 that thn work attributed to Psellus 
 is, in reality, a translation into Greek 
 of the work of I'etrus Hispanus ! 
 In the later editions of the above 
 work lie has however omitted to 
 notice the most recent contribution 
 by I'rantl to the literature of the 
 whole subject. See sixth edition of 
 Artit Loyioc Ihidimenta, p. 33.
 
 THE BYZANTINE LOGIC. 177 
 
 at Oxford with the introduction of the new element. William CHAP.JI. 
 Shyreswood was a native of Durham, who, after having 
 studied both at Oxford and Paris, succeeded to the dignity of 
 the chancellorship at Lincoln 1 ; where he died in the year 1249. 
 As a writer on logic he exercised a potent influence on the 
 developement of that study in England. Internal evidence, 
 indeed, favours the supposition that there existed a version 
 of portions of the treatise by Psellus in circulation prior even 
 to that of Shyreswood, but on this point we have no certain 
 information; and the method of Duns Scotus, which was 
 founded, in no small degree, upon the Byzantine logic, does 
 not appear to have traced back its inspiration further than 
 to this writer. In Shyreswood we first meet with the fami- 
 liar mnemonic verses of the Moods of the Four Figures, still 
 preserved in every treatise on formal logic 2 ; and it would 
 appear, that from the time of Roger Bacon down to that of 
 Ben Jonson 3 his reputation as a logician was undiminished 
 in the university which he adorned. 
 
 As regards Petrus Hispanus, it would seem, if we accept 
 the conclusions of Prantl, that he was not only not the first 
 translator of Psellus, but that his performance was in every 
 way inferior to that of our own countryman : the work of the 
 one being spiritless and servile, while that of the other shews superiority 
 
 j- c /Y> , , , IT of the Oxford 
 
 indications 01 a genuine enort at intelligently appreciating translation, 
 the meaning of the original, characteristics which we may 
 suppose contributed not a little to procure for him the warm 
 eulogium of Bacon 4 , whose severest contempt was always 
 reserved for a mechanical spirit of interpretation, whether in 
 teacher or learner. The historian has, indeed, even ventured 
 to conjecture that Pope John may merely have transcribed a 
 
 1 For duties of the chancellor of a With the peakish nicety 
 
 cathedral see Ducange, s. v. Of old Sherwood's vicety.' 
 
 8 Thus given by Prautl : Barbara, Ben Jonson, Underwoods. 
 
 Celarent, Darii, Ferio, Baralipton, | ' ' Qod probare potestis per sa- 
 
 Celantes, Dabitis, Fapcsmo, Friseso- pientes famosiores inter Christianos, 
 
 morum, \ Cesare, Campestres, Festino, quorum unus est frater Albertus, de 
 
 Baroco, Darapti, \ Ftlapton, Disa- ordine Prsedicatorum, alius est Gu- 
 
 wm, Datisi, Bocardo, Ferison. lielinus de Shynvode thesaurarius 
 
 Gesch. d. Log. m 15. Lincolniensis eeclesia? in Anglia, 
 
 longe sapicntior Alberto. Nam in 
 
 3 ' Here is to the fruit of Pern, philosophia commtini nullus major 
 
 Grafted upon Stub his stem, est eo.' Opus Terlium, c. 2. 
 
 12
 
 178 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. n. Latin version that he found ready to his hand 1 . But, how- 
 ever this may have been, it is certain that the prestige which 
 necessarily invested the labours of the head of the Church 
 soon cast into the shade those of the English ecclesiastic, and 
 though the name of William Shyreswood was long remembered 
 at Oxford, his reputation in Europe could not compare with 
 Extensive that of Petrus Hispanus. For two centuries and a half the 
 fy'ivunt" 36 Summulce Logicales of the latter writer reigned supreme in 
 ilupauus. t j ie SC 1 100 1 S> an d during the hundred and thirty years that 
 followed upon the invention of printing, no less than forty- 
 eight editions are enumerated by Prantl as issuing from the 
 presses of Cologne, Leipsic, Leyden, Venice, and Vienna; 
 while already, with the commencement of the fourteenth 
 century, the importance of this new element had become so 
 generally recognized, that to reconcile the same with the 
 previously accepted dicta of authority had become a task 
 which no one who aspired to be regarded as a teacher of the 
 age found it possible to decline. Just therefore as it had de- 
 volved upon Albertus and Aquinas to decide how far the 
 Arabian commentators could be reconciled with the orthodox 
 interpretation of Aristotle, so did it devolve upon Duns Scotus 
 to incorporate or to shew reasons for rejecting the new 
 !i" fl Hv^it f inc thought presented in the Byzantine logic. The element, 
 'hi^tmore accordingly, which in Albertus, Aquinas, and Grosseteste, is 
 uhtS lly but an exceptional phenomenon (vereinzelten Erscheinungeii) , 
 now becomes in the great schoolman of Oxford a predominant 
 feature; a feature which Prantl in his almost exhaustive 
 treatment of the subject has fully investigated; and though it 
 is neither practicable nor desirable for us to attempt to follow 
 him into those technical details which belong to the special 
 province of his work, it is, on the other hand, essential to our 
 main purpose- to make some attempt at explaining the con- 
 
 'J-d-nfnllH ist nntcr don iihnli- den PsclluB zu iibersetzen, oder oh 
 
 irzeuguistten jcnt-r /fit das er nur als Abschreiber einer bereits 
 
 dram di* Petnii HiHjwmiH vorhandonen getrcuen UeberHetzung 
 
 i-Kte, mgoferne I-H ohne sich seinen ,,weltgescbichtlichen" 
 
 emzigen oigtuen Einfluss errungen habe, liinst nich 
 
 ir don Orundtest der nicbt entscbeidcn ; der Schweiss 
 
 fuhrtn byzantinischen dcs Angcsicbtes" kann in keinem der 
 
 r.lt. Ob der VorfHwcr beidcn Fiille gross gewesen sein.' 
 
 OM GnechiJicben miicLtig war, um in 34.
 
 
 THE BYZANTINE LOGIC. 17) 
 
 struction placed upon the Byzantine logic and the direction CHAP. IF. 
 in which it operated. ' One might easily be inclined to sup- 
 pose,' observes our authority, ' that its influence belonged 
 purely to the literature of the schools, and had nothing at all 
 to do with the Arabian Aristotelianism and the controversies 
 springing from thence, but the sequel shews that this Byzan- 
 tine weed-growth sent its offshoots deep into the logical party 
 contentions, and hence into the so-called philosophy of that 
 time, and that (since Occam and his followers) a knowledge 
 of the Byzantine material is the only key to the solution of 
 the oft-lamented unintelligibility of many entire writings as 
 well as of isolated passages.' 
 
 It will here be necessary, in order to gain a correct impres- The legiti- 
 sion of the precise position of Duns Scotus in relation to the f h u e e ^ e e w of 
 philosophy of the time, briefly to recall those important ^uny 
 modifications of theory that had already resulted from the 
 events of the preceding century. The first effects of the new logic. 
 Aristotle upon the schools would seem, as may be naturally 
 supposed, to have tended towards some diminution of that ex- 
 cessive estimation in which logic had hitherto been held. So 
 long as the Isagoge, the Categories, and the De Interpretations 
 represented the sum of the known thought of the Stagirite, 
 the importance of logical science had been unduly exalted and 
 the study had commanded exclusive attention. But as soon 
 as it was discovered that Aristotle himself had recognised 
 such branches of philosophy as physics, metaphysics, ethics, 
 and that it was difficult to say how far it could be proved 
 that he had regarded logic as anything more than an instru- 
 ment of enquiry, while the Aristotelian tradition had un- 
 doubtedly been that it was an art and not a science, that is, 
 that it had for its subject-matter no fundamental laws of 
 thought, but was merely an arbitrary process constructed for 
 the better investigation of real knowledge l , the prestige of 
 
 1 The distinction between a Science Sir William Hamilton (see Article 
 
 and an Art, that the former has for in Edin. Rev. Vol. LVII. p. 203) says, 
 
 its object-matter that which is neces- ' The Stoics in general viewed it 
 
 sary or invariable, the latter that (logic) as a Science. The Arabian 
 
 which is contingent and variable, and Latin schoolmen did the same. 
 
 dates back as far as Aristotle. See In this opinion Thomist and Scotist, 
 
 Ars Poet, i, ii. Topica, vi, viii. 1. Realist and Nominalist concurred ; 
 
 122
 
 180 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. IL the dialectic art became correspondingly lessened. Aquinas 
 and Roger Bacon, little as they agreed in other respects, 
 seemed in some sense at unison on this point. 'The subject- 
 matter of logic,' said the former, ' is not an object of investi- 
 gation on its own account, but rather as a kind of scaffolding 
 to other sciences; and hence logic is not included in specula- 
 tive philosophy as a leading division, but rather in subser- 
 viency thereto, inasmuch as it supplies the method of enquiry, 
 whence it is not so much a science as an instrument 1 .' The 
 view of Bacon, according to which he regarded the logica 
 utens as a natural inborn faculty, and the logica docens as 
 merely ancillary to other sciences, has already come under our 
 notice. That such views failed to find expression in a cor- 
 responding modification of practice, and that, notwithstanding 
 the more intelligent estimate of science that now undoubt- 
 edly began to prevail, logic continued for more than two 
 centuries to occupy the same 'bad eminence' both at Oxford 
 and at Cambridge, must be attributed to the Byzantine logic, 
 to Petrus Hispanus, and to Duns Scotus. 
 
 ' The lgi c f Duns Scotus,' says Prantl, ' which gave 
 birth to an abundant crop of Scotistic literature, does not 
 indeed proceed in entirely new paths which he had opened 
 up for himself, he is, on the contrary, as regards the tra- 
 ditional material, just as dependent and confined (abhdngig 
 und bedingf) as all the other authors of the Middle Ages. 
 But he is distinguished, in the first place, by a peculiarly 
 copious infusion of Byzantine logic, and secondly, by the 
 comprehensive precision and consistency with which he incor- 
 porates the Aristotelian, Arabian, and Byzantine material, so 
 that by this means many new views are, in fact, drawn from 
 the old sources, and, in spite of all opposition, the transition 
 to Occam effected*.' The treatise of Psellus, as translated by 
 Petrus Hispanus, thus enunciates the theory which Duns 
 Scotus developed ; Dyalectica est ars artiutn, scientia scien- 
 
 an opinion adoptrd.alrnoHt to a man, > Ad Boeth. de Trinitate, (Vol. 
 
 by the Jemiit. Dominican, and Fran- XVH 2) p. 134. quoted by Prantl, in 
 
 riwn Connalifftft.' More accurate ]08. 
 
 "nqniry ban hpwn thia to 1*> by f nr * Gmchichte rf.-r Lopifi. m 20.T. 
 UH> nreeping an asm-Minn.
 
 THE BYZANTINE LOGIC. 181 
 
 tiarum, ad omnium methodorum principia viam Jtabens. Sola CHAP, ir. 
 enim dyalectica probabiliter disputat de principiis omnium 
 aliarum scientiarum. Et ideo in acquisitione scientiarum 
 dyalectica debet esse prior V ' Physics, mathematics, meta- 
 physics,' said Albertus Magnus, 'are the three speculative 
 sciences, and there are no more, logic is not concerned with 
 being or any part of being, but with second intentions*.' It J^,^ ofth 
 was in connexion with this doctrine of the intentio secunda Secunda - 
 that Duns Scotus sought to find that 'consistency' of which 
 Prantl speaks, and to retain or even to augment the old 
 supremacy of logic. 
 
 It may be desirable briefly to restate the question as stateofth 
 
 J controversy 
 
 it presented itself before the enunciation of this theory. f)u^^ cotu 
 Logic, said the Thomist, is an art and not a science; a science 
 is concerned with real facts, with veritable entities, not with 
 artificial processes or arbitrary laws. Metaphysics are a 
 science, astronomy is a science, but logic, as concerned only 
 with those secondary processes of the mind which it seeks to 
 define and regulate, has no pretentions to rank as such. 
 While therefore they accepted, as Albertus has done, the ^ 
 Arabian theory of the intentio secunda, by far the most 
 important contribution to metaphysics since the time of 
 Aristotle 3 , they stopped short precisely at the point where 
 that theory touched upon the question of the right of logic 
 to be included among the sciences. That theory admits of 
 being stated in a few words. The intellect as it directs itself 
 (intendens se) towards external objects, discerns, for example, 
 
 1 Prantl remarks, 'dieser Satz secundas.' Mctaph. I 1, 1. The only 
 
 fi'iih in unserem Texte des Psellus ; sense in which Albertus appears to 
 
 er ist wohl aus der gewohnlichen bo- have been able to recognize logic as 
 
 ethianischeu Tradition aufgenoin- a science was as Logica Utens : see 
 
 men.' in 41. In the edition of the quotations in Prantl, in 92. 
 
 Synopsis by Axinger we have, how- 3 ' The principal material added by 
 
 ever, the original Greek: AiaXtxTiKJ the Arabians to the text of Aristotle 
 
 iffri. r^x" 1 ) Trxy&v KO.I tTTurrri/jLT) tin- is the celebrated distinction between 
 
 irpos ray dira<rut> TUV (j.ed68ai> first and second intentions. This is 
 
 xovffa, KCU Sia. TOUTO 4v rfj found in the epitome of the Catego- 
 
 rQiv tiriffTij/jiiav irpuTrjv flvai rty ries by Averroes. It has also been 
 
 SiaXeKTiKTjv xpij. i 1, p. 1, quoted by traced to Avicenna. To the Arabians 
 
 Prantl. also are probably owing some of the 
 
 * ' Istae igitur sunt tres scientise distinguishing features, though cer- 
 
 speculativae, et non sunt plures. Sci- tainly not the origin, of the Scholastic 
 
 entiffl logicae non considerant ens et Realism.' Dean Mansel, Introd. to 
 
 partem entis aliquam, sed intentiones Artis Log. End. p. xxix.
 
 182 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CIIAP. n. Socrates in his pure individuality, and the impression thus 
 received is to be distinguished as the intentio prima. But 
 when the existence of Socrates has thus been apprehended, 
 the reflective faculty comes into play ; Socrates, by a se- 
 condary process, is recognized as a philosopher or as an 
 animal ; he is assigned to genus and species. The concep- 
 tion thus formed constitutes the intentio secunda. But the 
 intentio secunda exists only in relation to the human intellect, 
 and hence cannot be ranked among real existences ; while 
 the objects of the external world, and Universals which have 
 their existence in the Divine Mind, would exist even if man 
 ihwrynf were not. It was in respect of this theory of the non-reality 
 *"* of the intentiones secundce, that Duns Scotus joined issue 
 with the Thomisfs. It is true, he replied, that existence 
 must of necessity be first conceded to the objects which 
 correspond to the primary intention, but it by no means fol- 
 lows that it is therefore to be denied to the conceptions 
 which answer to the intentio secunda, that these are nothing 
 more than creations of the intellect, and have consequently 
 only a subjective existence. They are equally real, and 
 though the recognition of their existence is posterior to that 
 of the phenomena of the external world, ' man ' and ' animal ' 
 are not less true entities than Socrates himself. Hence we 
 may affirm that logic equally with physical science is con- 
 cerned with necessary not contingent subject-matter, and is a 
 science not less than an art l . 
 
 1 Anch den Unterschied, welcher sense-haft sei, ira Ausschlnsse an Alf- 
 
 mchen Logik und Metaphywik arabi dabin, dasa die Logik einerseits 
 
 neben manchen Beriihrungspunkten als decent wirklich cine Wisscnschaft 
 
 a ala ein weaentlicher besteht, iwt uud andrerseits als itten* den 
 
 HootiiH ebeQBo wie all seine modus fiir alleiibrigenenthjilt.sodaBS 
 
 ren nnd jiingeren Zeitgenossen in wir bier... den Begriff einer "ange- 
 
 nlin lerunda, welchcr wir wandten Logik" treffen.' Prautl, 
 
 den Arabern xtets schon be- Geschichte der Logik, m 204-5. 
 
 t-n und er spricbt in mannig- According, therefore, to this view we 
 
 idungen wiederholt cs aus, have, Logica Docens = l^ire Logic = a 
 
 ik jenc Momente, welcbe Science; Logica Utens=Applied Logic 
 
 otxlcr von ,nj,//,rf, oder von =an Art. This appears almost 
 
 iu atugehen, kurz also der sub- identical with the view Bubsequently 
 
 V erkHUtte angebiiren, a uf espouHed by Wolf, and by Kant, who, 
 
 objective ^ \lewn der Dinge "an- in defining the Logica Docem as 
 
 apphcar, hhon hiednrcb The Science of the Necessary Laws 
 
 ranrbjeneFrage.obdie of Thought,' arrived, though by a 
 
 lxk vciy different process, at the same
 
 THE BYZANTINE LOGIC. 183 
 
 This conception of logic formed the basis of the Realism CHAP, it 
 of Duns Scotus, and the inferences he derived therefrom 
 struck deeply at the foundation of all theories concerning 
 education. The Cartesian dogma was both forestalled and 
 exceeded ; for it is evident that in postulating for all the 
 arbitrary divisions and distinctions marked out by the intel- 
 lect a reality as complete as that of all external individual 
 existences, the theory which claimed for every distinct con- 
 ception of the mind a corresponding objective reality, was at 
 once involved and still further extended. With Scotus the 
 conception was itself the reality; and hence, as an inevitable 
 corollary, there was deduced an exaggerated representation of 
 the functions of logic altogether incompatible with a just 
 regard to those sciences which depend so largely for their 
 developement upon experience and observation. Logic, no Logic the 
 longer the handmaiden, became the mistress, the ' science sciences. 
 of sciences ;' men were taught to believe that the logical con- 
 cept might take the place of the verified definition, and 
 that cl priori reasoning might supply that knowledge which 
 can only be acquired by a patient study of each separate 
 science 1 . Mathematics and language, which Bacon had re- 
 garded as the two portals to all learning, were to give 
 place to that science where alone could be found the perfect 
 circle, and the remedy for the inaccuracy and vagueness of 
 nomenclature and diction. The reproach which Cousin so 
 unjustly cast upon Locke, in reply to the almost equally 
 
 conclusion as Scotus. See Dean Man- konne und somit dem Universale 
 
 sel's Introduction, pp. xlv and xlvii. Etwas ausserhalb " entsprechen " 
 
 While I wish to speak with all re- (correspondere) miisse, was eben bei 
 
 spect of a work like Dean Milman's bloss Fingirtem nicht der Fall sei.' 
 
 Latin Christianity, I may venture to in 207. Indeed it was only by such 
 
 observe that in his statement of reasoning that Scotus redeemed his 
 
 Duns Scotus's philosophy he has ex- theory of logic from the imputation 
 
 actly inverted the order of the Scotian of making it, not simply the mistress 
 
 argument. A comparison of his ac- of the sciences, but the one and only 
 
 count (Bk. xrv c. 3) with that given by science. Universalia non sunt ficti- 
 
 Haure'au and Prantl will prove this. ones intellectus; tune enim nunquam 
 
 1 Prantl remarks that both Al- in quid prcedicarentur de re extra 
 
 bertus and Duns Scotus attempted nee ad definitionem pertinerent, nee 
 
 to prove the existence of Universals metaphysica diffeiret a logica, immo 
 
 from our subjective conception of omnis scientia esset logica, quia de 
 
 them : ' weil es ja von dem Nicht- universali. Theorem, 4 ni 269 A, 
 
 Seienden keine Erkenntniss geben quoted by Prantl, m 207.
 
 184 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 OIAP. ii. unjust assertion of the latter, that theological and scientific 
 disputes are generally little more than mere logomachies, 
 that he regarded science as nothing more, to use the aphorism 
 of Condillac, than une lanyue bien faite 1 , may, with the change 
 of a single word, be applied with perfect propriety to the 
 Subtle Doctor. ' Cela pose',' says Haureau, after an able ex- 
 position of the Scotian theory, ' cela posd, il va sans dire qu'& 
 toutes les pense'es correspondent autant de choses, qu'on pent 
 indiffdremment etudier la nature en observant les faits de 
 conscience ou en observant les phe'uomenes du monde ob- 
 jectif, et quune logique bien faite peut supplier a toute 
 physique, a toute me'taphysiqueV 
 
 J^Sfutfthe I* W *U not repay us to follow our laborious guide through 
 oTu^H? " tnose minute and subtle enquiries whereby he has demon- 
 *' strated the presence of the new element in the applied logic 
 ofScotus, our object being not to resuscitate the pedantry of 
 the fourteenth century, but to trace, if possible, the direc- 
 tion of the activity that then prevailed, and its influence 
 upon subsequent education. Nor will the foregoing outline 
 appear irrelevant to such a design if we remember that in 
 this Byzantine logic are to be discerned not only the influ- 
 ences that raised the logician's art to so oppressive a supre- 
 macy in the schools, but also the germs of the ultra-nomi- 
 nalism developed by William of Occam, the rock on which 
 the method of scholasticism went to pieces in our own 
 country; though in the obscurity that enveloped alike dogma, 
 philosophy, and language, men failed at first to perceive the 
 significance of the new movement. But before we pass from 
 Duns Scotus to his pupil and successor, it is but just that we 
 nhould give some recognition to that phase of his genius 
 which honorably distinguishes him from Albertus and Aqui- 
 '. h,'M h nas - Thc logician who riveted thus closely the fetters of 
 ~.u n b the schools, was also the theologian who broke through the 
 
 ItoMMok i i t i 
 
 ich his predecessors had so complacently con- 
 st rurted ; and it must be regarded as an important advance 
 
 ' il ' e > '," p , hi \ df !' rkf < 5th t<m *'"."'>, 197. 
 
 c, l-.^ny ,,n th, //. -. J'hilofophic fieolattiyue, il 313. 
 
 man LMtrttanainp, in 2, 4; Mill
 
 LOGIC OF DUNS SCOTUS. 185 
 
 in philosophic apprehension, that Scotus could admit the CHAP. n. 
 fact, that there were in the province of faith not merely 
 truths to which the human reason could never have attained 
 unaided, but also mysteries which even when revealed tran- 
 scended its analysis. It is true that in the theory of the 
 principium individuationis which he maintained, he sought 
 to escape from the perilous position of Aquinas by a solution 
 satisfactory to the comprehension ; but there were also many 
 other points in relation to which he could say with Ter- 
 tullian and Augustine, Credo quia absurdum 1 . The strain 
 beneath which the formulas that Albertus and Aquinas had 
 constructed were before long to give way, grew heavy under 
 the supremacy of the Subtle Doctor. He saw, too, far more 
 clearly than they, the real tendency of Aristotelian thought, 
 and that the theory of the vital principle pointed unmistake- 
 ably to a renunciation of the doctrine of a future life 2 . And, 
 while he recognised in all its force that desire for Unity 3 , 
 which has proved both the polar star and the ignis fatuus 
 of philosophy, he avoided with equal insight that theory of 
 reabsorption, towards which the mysticism of Bonaventura 
 had advanced so closely, and preferred simply to regard the 
 belief in human immortality as a revealed truth. 
 
 If, accordingly, we compare Duns Scotus with Roger ^Hoger"* 
 Bacon, there will be found, as we have already remarked, p a a r^! co 
 consent as well as contrast in their views. Both were dis- 
 tinguished by their devotion to the mathematics of their 
 time ; both said that knowledge must have its beginnings in 
 experience 4 , and in Duns Scotus we perhaps discern the 
 
 1 ' Auch besitzt Scotus darin tm- pour la connaitre, il cut fallu qu' 
 
 sere Sympathie, dass er ( um mit Aristote fut e'claire^ des rayons de la 
 
 moderuen Worteu zu sprechen ) auf grace.' Hanr&iu, Phil. Scolastique, 
 
 der Unerkennbarkeit des Absoluten n 369. 
 
 steht, dass er als Indeterminist die 3 ' Omnia quae sunt, secundum 
 
 thomisticbe Unterordnung des Prak- modum sibi convenientem et possi- 
 
 tiscben unter das Tbeoretiscbe ent- bilem unitatem appetunt.' De Rerum 
 
 ecbieden bekampft, und dass er der Principle, Quaest. xii 1. For expla- 
 
 Theologie nur cine praktiscbe Wirk- nation of this doctrine of the secun- 
 
 samkeit im Gebiete des praktiscben dum modum, see Haure'au, n 355. 
 
 Glaubenszuweist. 1 Prantl, Geschichte * Prof. Maurice considers tbat a 
 
 der Logik, in 202. certain inductive tendency, as op- 
 
 3 ' Suivant Duns-Scot, cette ve'rite posed to tbe deductive method of 
 
 ne se prouve pas : "Animam esse im- Aquinas, characterised the whole 
 
 mortalcm probari non potest ; " et, Franciscan order : ' The experimen-
 
 18C RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. ii. first signs of the gravitation of controversy towards the ques- 
 tion with which, since the commencement of the seventeenth 
 century, it has been mainly occupied ; both regarded logic as 
 essential to the right acquirement of knowledge 1 , though 
 differing widely with respect to its relative importance ; 
 both relegated to theology those deeper mysteries which 
 the thinkers of the preceding century sought to determine 
 by dialectics 3 . 
 
 tjo^o?"" The reputation of Duns Scotus in our universities is 
 DuMBwttw rivalled by that of Aquinas alone, and in all but theological 
 
 questions the influence of the former was probably far the 
 greater. His realism, it is true, was displaced by the nomi- 
 nalism of Occam, but his authority as a logician and a theo- 
 logian remained unimpaired. The literature to which his 
 theories with respect to isolated questions gave birth, would 
 alone form a considerable library. Even so late as the 
 seventeenth century, almost a hundred years after he had 
 been dragged so ignominiously from his pedestal at Oxford, 
 wwkof" flli8 an eu "ition of his entire works appeared under the auspices of 
 the Irish Franciscans at Lyons, unsurpassed by any edition 
 of the schoolmen for beauty of typography and accuracy of 
 execution ; while in the dedication of the work to Philip iv 
 of Spain, John Baptista a Campanea, the general of the 
 order, unhesitatingly claims for his author the fame that 
 belongs to ingentis families notissimus procceptor, ampliesinwB 
 schohu nobilis antesignanus*. 
 
 Among the most distinguished schoolmen in the genera- 
 tion that succeeded Duns Scotus were Mayronius, Petrus 
 Aureolus, bishop of Aix, and Durand de Saint-Porgain ; of 
 these the first was long a text-book in our universities ; the 
 
 tal tendencies of Roger Bncon ex- carried into metaphysics and theo- 
 
 preimed the method which he had logy, and so hecame the founder of 
 
 learned from the strictly individual- the great Middle Age sect which bears 
 
 imn mind of IUH founder. Francis his name.' Moral Phil. p. 5. 
 of AIM could l<x,k only at indivi- ' Et certe si logicam nescivit, non 
 
 ild only me to the universal potuit alias scire scientias, eicut 
 
 ongh individual*. Thence came decet.' Comp. Studii, c. 8. 
 1 nyrapathy, thence came his * Opu* Majug, cc. 4, 46. 
 
 tion. What Bacon trans- a Opera Omnia, cura Lucasi Wad- 
 
 ferred to phynicn at the peril of his dingii. Lugduni, 1G39. 
 character and liberty, Duns Kcotus
 
 SUCCESSORS OF DUNS SCOTUS. 187 
 
 second is credited by Haure'au with having been the leader CHAP. IT. 
 of the attack on the theory of Universals ; while the third 
 acquired distinction by his denial of some of the chief 
 doctrines of the Thomists, among them that of the 'first 
 intelligible' and that of representative ideas 1 . Both ap- 
 proached the confines of that border land where the phantasies 
 of realism were to be seen fleeing before the approaching 
 light. It is impossible indeed to follow the reasoning of the 
 most eminent logicians from the time of Aquinas without 
 perceiving that clearer and juster metaphysical thought was 
 being evolved from the long discussion. It needed but a few 
 bold strides, and the regions of realism, so far at least as 
 the theory of Universals was concerned, would be left be- 
 hind. It is hardly necessary to add that such an advance 
 was soon to be made, and that it was to be made by William 
 of Occam. 
 
 ' The demagogue of scholasticism ' is no inappropriate wiiiiam or 
 title for one who, at little more than twenty years of age, ' 
 defied the authority of Boniface vili, in a treatise against the 
 spiritual power of the Pope 2 ; who, in mature life, stood forth 
 in defence of the vow of poverty and of his order against 
 John xxn 3 ; and who so far reversed the tradition of the 
 
 1 Haure"au, Phil. Scolastique, n vobis possunt jura esse, nobis vero 
 
 410 416. Prantl, Geschichte der non suut. Nullus enim potest de iis 
 
 Logik, in 292. statuere, super qure constat ipsum 
 
 * That the Disputatio super Potes- dominium lion habere. Sic nee 
 
 fate was written during the lifetime Francorum rex potest statnere super 
 
 of Boniface seems certain. (See (rol- imperium : nee Imperator super 
 
 dastus, De Monarchia S. Romani Im- reguum Franciffi. Et quemadmo- 
 
 perii, ed. 1612, p. 13). Occam could duui terreni principes non possunt 
 
 therefore, if born in 1280, have been aliquid statuere de vestris spirituali- 
 
 little more than one or two and bus, super quae non acceperunt 
 
 twenty, for Boniface died Oct. 11, potestatem: sic nee vos de tempora- 
 
 1303. The Disputatio is in the form libus eorum, super qua? non habetis 
 
 of a dialogue between a soldier and auctoritatem. Unde frivolum est, 
 
 a priest, and it is certainly some- quicquid statuistis de temporalibus, 
 
 what startling to find sentiments like super quas potestatem non accepistis 
 
 the following proceeding from the a Deo. Unde nuper mihi risus 
 
 pen of a Franciscan of the fourteenth magnus fuit, cum audissem noviter 
 
 century. ' Clericus. Immo certe con- statutum esse a Bonifacio octavo, 
 
 tra omne jus, injurias innumeras quod " ipse est et esse debet super 
 
 sustinemus. Miles. Scire vellem, omnes principatus etregna," et sic 
 
 quid vocatis jus. Clericus. Jusvoco, facile potest sibi jus acquirere super 
 
 decreta patrum et statuta Eoma- rem quamlibet.' IMd. p. 13. 
 norum pontificum. Miles. Quae illi 3 Milman, Latin Christianity, vn 
 
 statuunt, si de temporalibus statuunt, 377. Bk. xn c. 6.
 
 In the 
 
 188 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. ii. schools, that from his time nominalism obtained the suf- 
 frages of the learned, while realism, in some instances, was 
 even regarded as a heterodox doctrine. The triumph of no- 
 minalism as opposed to the realism of this period, was but 
 
 shooi. t ue victory of more sober sense over the verbal subtleties and 
 subjective phantasies that had hitherto dazzled the other- 
 wise acute vision of the schoolmen; and the brief sentences 
 in which William of Occam sweeps away the elaborate web- 
 spinning of his predecessors have their brevity as well as 
 their logic reflected in the pages of Hobbes, of Locke, and 
 of Mill. Le caractere propre du nominalisms cest la sim- 
 plicitt, says Haure'au, in apology for his own brevity in ex- 
 pounding the doctrines of Occam; and though the application 
 of the method is modified with each separate thesis of realism, 
 the point of departure is the same, and the result is easily 
 anticipated. 
 
 The nominalistic philosophy, therefore, as representing 
 not an obsolete system but conclusions which have won the 
 suffrages of succeeding thinkers, requires no exposition at 
 our hands, but it will be necessary, having followed Prantl 
 thus far, to explain in what manner, according to his view, 
 
 influence of the Byzantine logic exercised such important influence on so 
 
 the iiijtn- * 
 
 fb"*c!J5 ccn fundamental a controversy, an influence in the absence of 
 & which he even ventures to assert Nominalism would not have 
 made its appearance at this era 1 . As the chief contribution 
 of the Arabian philosophy to the metaphysics of the age had 
 been the theory of the intentio secitnda, so that of the Byzan- 
 tine lo g ic was tne theory of the suppositio, a conception of 
 which no trace appears in Duns Scotus, notwithstanding the 
 very appreciable influence of the Byzantine element on his 
 writings. According to this theory neither the intentio prima 
 nor the intentio secunda is a real entity ; the intentio prima 
 is but the name designating the external object, while the 
 intentio secunda is a generalisation from the intentiones primce. 
 Both are but types of the reality, the former a sign of the 
 
 .. (lass ohiie nalismus Htigmatinirte, nicht ent- 
 >zant,niwhp I^.k jene R.ch- tanden ware.' m 233. 
 tnng, wclche man |mt r aln Nomi-
 
 WILLIAM OF OCCAM. 189 
 
 objective entity, the latter the collective sign of signs. And, CHAP. n. 
 
 so far was Occam from claiming for the intentio secunda a 
 
 real and distinct existence, as Duns Scotus had done, and 
 
 inferring therefrom the high prerogative of logic, that he 
 
 appears to have regarded this as a question in which logic 
 
 had no concern 1 . But while Occam struck thus boldly at the The true 
 
 , . value of 
 
 foundation of realism, he clearly discerned that individuals, universal* 
 
 J ' tlrst pointed 
 
 as such, could afford no real knowledge, and hence Universals \^ mof 
 assumed for him their true value as the aim of all scientific Occam - 
 induction. This, then, was the chief service which Occam 
 rendered to philosophy. He brought again to light, from the 
 darkness to which preceding logicians had consigned it, the 
 true value of the inductive method, as auxiliary to the deduc- 
 tive, the great truth which Aristotle had indicated and the 
 schoolmen had shut out. After a lapse of eighteen centuries, 
 the proper function of syllogism, as the bridge constructed by 
 induction for deduction to pass over, seemed likely at last to 
 be recognised. That the position Occam thus took up was 
 not subsequently recognised in all its importance as the equi- 
 librium between philosophy and science, must be referred to 
 the errors of yet greater reputations, who, in the strong 
 reaction from scholasticism which set in with the sixteenth 
 century, visited with indiscriminate censure its real services 
 as well as its follies and mistakes. 'In short,' says Prantl, 
 ' we find ourselves in Occam on the basis of an Aristotelian 
 
 1 'Utrum autem talia sint realiter form, and that involved in the theory 
 et subjective in anima an objective of the intentio secunda, are those 
 tantum, non refert ad proposituin on which Mr Shadworth Hodgson 
 nee hoc spectat deteriniuare ad lo- has built up the theory of his essay 
 gicum, qui tarnen principaliter dis- Time and Space. If I rightly un- 
 tinctionem inter nomina primse et derstand his profound exposition of 
 Becundse intentionis habet conside- first and second intentions (see pp. 
 rare, quia logicus precise habet di- 3345), his view, making due allow- 
 cere, quod in ista propositione " homo ance for the additional light thrown 
 est species" subjectum supponit pro upon the question by recent discus- 
 uno communi et non pro aliquo sig- sion, is essentially the same as that 
 nincato suo ; utrum autem illud of the Oxford schoolman of the four- 
 commune sit reale vel non sit reale, teenth century. ' First intentions,' 
 nihil ad eum, sed ad metaphysicum.' he says, 'may be defined as object? 
 Sent, i Dist. 23. Quaest. 1. (quoted in relation to consciousness alone; 
 by Prantl, in 342). The two great phi- second intentions, as objects in re- 
 losophical distinctions which chief- Lit on to other objects in conscious- 
 ly engaged the attention of the ness.' p. 39. 
 schoolmen, thatbetweeninatteraiul
 
 190 
 
 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CIIAP. n. empiricism, which, along with the admission that all human 
 knowledge begins with the perception of sense and of the 
 individual object, combines the claim that every science, as 
 such, can treat only of Universals: a fundamental conception 
 which appears clothed in Byzantine terminology, when he 
 says that the component parts of judgements in every case 
 occupy the place of singular individuals by means of suppo- 
 aitio, but for science only termini universales are of much 
 worth 1 .' According to this view the universal, it is hardly 
 necessary to point out, is represented in Occam by the inten- 
 tio secunda", and in this amount of consent between the para- 
 
 1 'Kurz, wir befiriden uns bei 
 Occam ftnf der Basis eines aristote- 
 lischen Empirismus, vrelcber mit 
 dem Zugestanduisse, dass alles men- 
 Rchliche Wissen von der Shines- 
 wahrnebmung und von den Einzeln- 
 Objecten anlicbt, zugleich die For- 
 derung verkniipft, dass jede Wis- 
 sencbaft als solche nur von Univer- 
 sellem handle, eine grundsat/liche 
 Anffasfiung, welche in byzantinische 
 Tenninologie eingckleidet ist, wenn 
 Occam sagt, dass allerdings die Be- 
 Htandtheile der Urtbeile mittelst svp- 
 positio an Stelle singuliirer Indivi- 
 duen Rtelien, aber fiir die Wissen- 
 Bcbaft doeh nur die termini unirer- 
 tale* werthvoll sind.' in 332. 
 
 8 The following quotations from 
 the Quodlibeta and the Summa To- 
 tiu* Lofiica-, indicate with such 
 remarkable clearness the views of 
 Ocram in conformity with the By- 
 7.ntino element, that I have thought 
 it worth while to give them in full as 
 printed by Prantl in illustration of 
 nia own criticism: 'Large dicitnr in- 
 tontio prima essc signum intensibile 
 exintenH in niiiina, quod mm significat 
 intentionem vel conceptus in ani- 
 ma vi-1 alia nigna pra'cise ; (pr<rci*e 
 in BchoUvitic terminology = omnino, 
 
 prornUH. K*-e Ducange, K.\\) et isto 
 
 mcnlo non nolum caU-gorenmata men- 
 talin.qtm- hignificnnt res, quienonKunt 
 HignincativH', sed etitun Kyncatego- 
 rcumata mrntalia et verba Pt con- 
 junrtionc-H et hujusmodi dicnntnr 
 
 priniH' iotcntioDM Sed Htricte 
 
 dicitur prima intentio nomen men- 
 tale pTH-cisc natum PBM> cxtremum 
 et suppouere pro re, 
 
 qum non est signum Similiter 
 
 large accipiendo dicitur intentio 
 secunda animne conceptus, qui stint 
 naturalia signa rerum, cujusmodi 
 aunt intentiones primae stricte ac- 
 cepta?, sed etiam pront ^igna uien- 
 talia ad placitum significantia signa 
 syncategoreumatica mentalia ; et isto 
 modo forte non habemus nisi vocale 
 correspondens intention! secunda?. 
 Stricte autem accipiendo dicitur in- 
 tentio secunda conceptus, qui prro- 
 cise significat intentiones naturnliter 
 significativas, cujusmodi sunt genus, 
 species, differentia et alia hujusmodi 
 
 Ita de intentionibus primis, qute 
 
 suppouunt pro rebus, pra'dicatur 
 nnus conceptus commnnis, qui est 
 intentio secunda. In the Summa wo 
 have the following equally explicit 
 exposition : 'sufficiat, quod intentio 
 est quoddam in anima, quod est sig- 
 num naturaliter significaus aliquid, 
 pro quo potest supponere, vel quod 
 potest esse pars propositions men- 
 talis. Tale autem duplex est. U- 
 num, quod est signum alicujus rei, 
 
 qua? non est tale signum et illucl 
 
 vocatur intentio prima.... Large 
 
 dicitur intentio prima omne fignum 
 intentionale existens in anima, quod 
 non significat intentiones vel signa 
 
 prtecise, et illo modo verba 
 
 mentalia et syncategoreumata men- 
 talia, adverbia, conjunctiones, et 
 hujusmodi possunt diei intentiones 
 prima?. Stricte autem vocatur in- 
 tentio prima nomen mentale natnm 
 pro sno significato snpponere. In- 
 tentio autem secunda est ilia, quse 
 est signum talium intentionum pri- 
 mamm, cujusmodi sunt tales in-
 
 WILLIAM OF OCCAM. 191 
 
 dox of the master 1 and the true discernment of the pupil, we OIAP. 
 have a striking illustration of the relevancy to true philoso- 
 phy, which, notwithstanding their many vagaries, the con- 
 troversies of scholasticism in relation to this vexata qucestio 
 may undoubtedly claim 8 . 
 
 The works of the schoolmen have often been compared to 
 the pyramids ; vast, indeed, in their aggregate, but tediously 
 minute and monotonous in detail; and even as Egyptian 
 travellers who have venturously essayed the labyrinths of 
 those ancient structures, have described their feelings of 
 inexpressible relief on regaining the light of day, so, we can- 
 not but conceive, notwithstanding the enthusiasm from time 
 to time evoked, the men of the fourteenth century must have 
 rejoiced as they saw some promise of escape from endless 
 perplexity and toil. It is inspiriting to note the ease where- J/^"., 1 
 with this English schoolman disentangles himself from the refereEU 
 toils of theological dogmas by his prompt disavowal of the dtouicff 
 ambitious all-sufficiency of Aquinas, a feature in which the 
 influence of his teacher Scotus is probably to be discerned. 
 Did the theologian seek to be informed whether the divine 
 intelligence were the first effective cause of all existence ? 
 'I know not,' replied Occam; 'experience tells me nothing of 
 the Cause of all causes, the reason has neither the right nor 
 the power to penetrate the sanctuary of the Divine.' Was 
 
 tentiones "genus," "species," et nur unmittelbar vorstellungsweise 
 
 hujusmodi.' See Prantl, in 342, 343. (objective) auftrete.' in 208. 
 
 1 That such was the view of Scotus 8 See Prantl, in 361379. Mill's 
 
 Prautl points out with considerable Logic, Bk. n cc. 1, 2, and 3. Bain, 
 
 clearness : ' So nimmt auch Scotus Mental and Moral Science, Appendix 
 
 vor Allem die allgemeiu recipirte B. Dean Mansel observes that ' Oc- 
 
 arabische Uuterscheidung einer dop- cam, like Petrus Hispanus, departs 
 
 pelten intentio in dem Sinue axif, from the ordinary arrangement of 
 
 dass die secunda intentio, d. h. die treating consecutively the Isagoge of 
 
 eigentlich logische, ein nachfolgen- Porphyry and the several books of 
 
 des Erzeugniss der Denk- Operation the Organon. He commences with 
 
 sei und so als Universale bezeichnet the different divisions of terms, of 
 
 werde, wahrend die prima intentio which his account is much more 
 
 als urspriinglich unbedingtes Er- complete than that of the Summuliz 
 
 fassen auf die objective Quidditat LogicalesS (Introd. to Artis Logicce 
 
 gehe, welche wohl gleichfalls TJni- Rudimenta, p. xxxvi.) Prantl shows 
 
 versale genannt werde, aber an sich that Occam exercises a perfectly in- 
 
 gleichgiiltig gegen Allgemeinheit oder dependent judgement in his employ- 
 
 Einzelnheit sei und daher auch im ment of the technical method of 
 
 Denken nicht mit concreter Gegen- that treatise: see Geschichte der 
 
 standlichkeit(sM&;Vctu'e)sonderneben Logik, in 382, 391, 392.
 
 192 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 . it. that Cause of causes omnipotent? asked the theologian. 
 ' According to logic/ was the reply, ' the mode of existence is 
 the same in the cause as in the effects : but the effects of the 
 First Cause are finite, the Cause itself is infinite, and is there- 
 fore removed from the province of my logic.' Such manly 
 sense finds an echo in our hearts. We are ready to surrender 
 to Luke Wadding his adored Scotus as a compatriot, in our 
 gratification at finding in this indubitable Englishman the 
 earliest discernment of the limits which more modern thought 
 has so distinctly recognised. 
 
 It would require very extended research in his writings 
 to enable us to affirm that Occam in no case recognised the 
 existence of an ultimate major premise, that is to say, a 
 major premise which could not, in conformity with the 
 nominalistic philosophy, be shown to be resolvable into 
 an induction from observed facts. But it is to be remem- 
 bered that the question of innate ideas was not familiar to 
 the schoolman. The belief in their existence had been 
 roughly rejected by the chief teachers of the early Latin 
 Church ; and it was not until Plato had again become known 
 to western Europe, that the theory began to advance 
 towards that position which it has since assumed in the 
 arena of philosophic controversy. There is nothing in the 
 peculiar direction of the prejudices which characterise the 
 age in which Occam lived, to suggest that he might not 
 have employed, with perfect impunity, the reasoning used 
 by Locke against an innate belief in the divine existence ; 
 but when we consider that Locke himself undoubtedly failed 
 to grasp the true bearings of nominalism upon the whole 
 theory of innate ideas, we may well hold his predecessor 
 by more than three centuries exonerated from reproach in 
 his corresponding lack of apprehension. On more perilous 
 ground it proved, in all probability, of eminent service to 
 the progress of speculation that Occam so definitely refused 
 
 op to render his method subservient to the test of theological 
 dogma. It might seem a bold step for a Franciscan friar 
 thus to proclaim the severance of logic from theology; but 
 thf> impossibility of that alliance which Aquinas had en-
 
 WILLIAM OF OCCAM. 193 
 
 deavoured to effect, was becoming increasingly apparent, CHAP. ir. 
 and the path pursued by Occam seemed at least to relieve 
 him from the arduous task of reconciling what both Bacon 
 and the Church had declared could not really be at variance. 
 To some he may indeed appear only to have evaded the 
 difficulty, but in the restrictions he thus imposed on logic 
 it is easy to see that he narrowed the field of controversy 
 with the happiest results. The dogma had hitherto been 
 the rallying point for the fiercest controversies. The Real 
 Presence, the Incarnation, the doctrine of the Trinity, the 
 existence of angelic natures, the Immaculate Conception, 
 such had been the questions which drew round each great 
 doctor the excited audiences of those centuries. The earn- 
 estness with which men then sought to approve to the reason 
 that which it was not given to the reason to explain, is 
 among the most remarkable, perhaps the most painful, 
 features of these times. With William of Occam we see 
 these feverish efforts sinking for a time into comparative 
 repose. Universals thenceforth, at least in the English uni- 
 versities, ceased to invite the ingenuity of the logical dis- 
 putant ; and each new comer, relieved from the necessity 
 of shewing how his doctrines might be reconciled with 
 dogma, cast his metaphysical theories into the arena of 
 the schools to be tossed from one disputant to another, in 
 comparative freedom from apprehension concerning their 
 bearing upon theological controversy. An immense acces- 
 sion had been gained to the cause of freedom in thought, 
 and few will be disposed to call in question the justice of 
 the comment of Hallam, that ' this metaphysical contention 
 typifies the great religious convulsion ' of a later time. 
 
 We have already alluded to those writings of Occam The Pope at 
 wherein he appeared as the confronter of the papal assump- opposed" by 
 
 the English 
 
 tions ; and the whole controversy between the pope at Franciscans. 
 Avignon and the English Franciscans is so pertinent to the 
 history of English thought at this period, that we shall need 
 no excuse for pausing for a while to note the main features 
 of this remarkable episode. We have adverted in the 
 preceding chapter to the rapid degeneracy of the Mendicants, 
 
 13
 
 194 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. ii. and it is undoubtedly somewhat difficult, at first sight, to re- 
 concile those general characteristics which drew from Wyclif, 
 the master of Balliol, such stern rebuke, and from Gower, 
 Chaucer, and Langlande such trenchant sarcasm, with the 
 merits of that order which could trace from Adam de 
 Marisco so illustrious a succession as is presented, in England 
 
 Fto'ISsH* alone, by the names of Richard of Coventry, John Wallis, 
 " Thomas Dockyng, Thomas Bungay, Peccham, Richard Mid- 
 dleton, Duns Scotus, Occam, and Burley. It is not less 
 singular to find the order which sacrificed the sympathy of 
 Grosseteste by its subserviency to papal aggression, now 
 foremost in the resistance to the papal power. 
 
 oni^TOurt* Of the latter phenomenon a sufficient explanation is 
 
 *o S n afforded in the policy of Boniface vm, and the subsequent 
 removal of the pontifical court to Avignon. The rapacity 
 of Boniface had effectually alienated the sympathies of the 
 English Franciscans 1 ; the subserviency of the court of 
 Avignon to French interests roused the indignation of all 
 true Englishmen. For seventy years, after the conclusion 
 of the struggle between the crafty and able pontiff and the 
 equally crafty and able Philip the Fair, the pope was the 
 humble vassal of France; and when at length he again 
 resumed his residence under the shelter of the Vatican, it 
 was soon discovered that, in that long humiliation, much of 
 the awe and reverence that once waited on his authority had 
 passed away, and that his mandates, his menaces, and his 
 anathemas were but feeble echoes of the thunder that 
 Hildebrand and Innocent III had wielded. The effects of 
 that long exile were indeed such as we may well suppose 
 none of the French monarchs had foreseen. The power of 
 France, at the opening of the century and up to the days 
 of Crecy and Poitiers, was a menace to all Europe, and 
 
 1 For an account of the extraordi- a Tope with the power and authority 
 ry fraud, n transaction rennbling of Boniface, to estrange the loyalty 
 the veriest modern sharper, of the Minorites, dispersed, but in 
 abyBomfaceontheFrancis- strict union, throughout the world, 
 inland, HOC Milman'g Latin and now in command not merely of 
 ook xi r.. -ItwuH,' the popular mind, but of the pro- 
 thai author, -a Md and foumlest theology of the age.' 
 desperate measure, even in a Pope
 
 WILLIAM OF OCCAM. 195 
 
 it was with unfeigned dismay that the surrounding nations THAI', n. 
 
 beheld the unscrupulous spirit and immoderate pretensions 
 
 of Philip enlisting in their support the servile cooperation 
 
 of the Papacy. In Italy the prevailing: sentiment was that ^^tufac 
 
 \ J J * lion in Italy. 
 
 of angry dissatisfaction. Petrarch, himself a spectator of the 
 shameless profligacy that gathered round the court at Avig- 
 non, sarcastically compared the exile of the pontiff to the 
 Babylonish captivity. Bienzi, during his brief tenure of 
 the tribuneship, summoned Clement V to return to Rome. 
 But it may be doubted whether the indignation of Italy was 
 not surpassed by that of England. In our own country the ^'^^1 
 national feeling was called forth as it had never been before. 
 The resentment, felt in the preceding century at the mono- 
 poly of the richest benefices by Italian priests, was trifling 
 compared with that evoked by the same monopoly when 
 claimed by the nominees of a foreign foe. The national 
 character was now fully formed ; the two nations had 
 blended into one ; and the strong purpose of the Saxon and 
 the high spirit of the Norman alike found expression in the 
 Statute of Provisors sanctioned by the most courageous of 
 English monarchs, and the denial of the papal pretensions 
 to temporal power asserted by the boldest of the English 
 schoolmen. 
 
 It can consequently excite but little surprise that, when (*f nKS 
 the opponent of the Papacy appeared as the author of a tuTpapai r 
 new philosophy, his doctrines fell, at Paris, under the ec- 
 clesiastical censure. The wrath of pope John xxii was 
 fierce against the whole Franciscan order ; against the 
 Spiritual Franciscans who inveighed against the corruptions 
 of Avignon, and against the partisans of Occam who denied 
 his claims to temporal power. The writings of the English 
 Franciscan were committed to the flames, and masters of 
 arts were forbidden to teach his doctrines. Occam himself sympathy 
 
 manifested 
 
 was a prisoner at Avignon, and only escaped death by secret ^ ^* . 
 flight and taking refuge at Munich with Louis of Bavaria, En s land - 
 who supported the cause of the rival claimant to the ponti- 
 ficate. From Munich he waged a further controversy with 
 his antagonists upon the question of the papal power, his 
 
 132
 
 19C RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 <IIAI. ii. manifest superiority over his antagonists extorting the ad- 
 miration even of the hostile pontiff, who styled him the Doc- 
 tor Invincibilis. In England, where the Franciscan order was 
 most powerful and the feeling excited by the usurpations of 
 the Papacy most intense, the sympathy evoked on his be- 
 '1"'' half was proportionably strong. From the time of Grosse- 
 raris" 1 * ' teste there appears to have been growing up a distinctive 
 school of English thought, separated by strong points of 
 contrast from that developed under the influence of the 
 Dominicans at Paris ; and not a few of our countrymen 
 regarded with exultation the vigour and freshness of specu- 
 lation at home when compared with the conservatism that 
 prevailed at the great continental university 1 . Traces of 
 this contrast of feeling are to be discerned long after the 
 s"mmaii.st:c time of Occam. Even so late as the latter part of the 
 Bt"uK- n iatu.T fifteenth century we find that at Paris, when the ban under 
 which Louis XI had placed the nominal istic doctrines was 
 removed, and the chains which bound the forbidden volumes 
 were loosened, the German nation, originally known as the 
 English nation, alone received with any manifestations of 
 joy the withdrawal of the prohibition 2 . 
 
 1 ' The school of philosophers in the year 1430. The historian of 
 which then (in the thirteenth cen- the university of Basle, Dr Vischer, 
 tury) arose in this country was dis- observes that at its first foundation 
 tinguished, in the judgement of con- in the year 14(50 the still raging con- 
 temporaries, by a luminous acute- troversy introduced an element of 
 ness, by a subtle rashness of specu- discord. Of the different phases of 
 lation, from the more grave and solid nominalism in that century, he ob- 
 Icarning of the continent.' Prof. serves: 'Der Nominalismus verei- 
 Shirley, Introd. to Fasciculi Ziza- nigt jetzt um sich die ganze gegen 
 niontm, p. xlviii. die kirchlichen Missbraucho anka'mp- 
 
 2 ' On voit, en 1473, les livres des fende, neuerude Partei, welcho in 
 nomiimiix, par les ordres de Louis den Concilien einen Weg zur Verbes- 
 xi, ftifpruirx sous de chaines ou mis sermig der Kirche sucht, und, so 
 au fera, comme (lit Robert (iaguin, auffallend es anch auf den ersten 
 pour nVtrr "droloiit'H et di'feriiK's," Blick ist, erscheiut er in bedeutenden 
 qnj unit an* npri-H, au tioiu du inf-me Vertretern sogar mit dern Mysticis- 
 roj, par li- piY-vot dc Paris, qui de- mus verbunden. Er fund trot/ dem 
 lar , 1'avenir, " rbucun y <<tu- Widerstaude dcs mit der romischen 
 diere <|in voudra." Scule dans 1'uni- Kirche verbundenen IlealiHmus im- 
 
 ! la nation d'Ailemagne revut mer mehr Verbreitung auf den Uui- 
 
 unc Brando joio cetto aiitorisa- versitiiten, und wurde am Endc des 
 
 . H<i< \Tf Littfiraire A,; vier/.ehnten und im Anfang des funf- 
 
 >< <tuatrz&mr ffii-rl,; } nr zebnten.Iahrhundertsvorherrschend, 
 
 t-rc, i 359. Tin- KiiKlish sclbst auf der Pariser Universitiit. 1 
 
 iv.-rs.ty of p tl ru be- <ie*rhichtt der Universitiit Banel, 
 
 Came known a.s the dtriuuu nation p 1:}<J
 
 NOMfNALISM. 197 
 
 At Oxford however the doctrines of Occam obtained CHAP. IT. 
 a decided, though by no means an undisputed, superiority 1 . Popularity of 
 Occasionally, indeed, supporters of the older philosophy at oxford, 
 avowed their dissent from his teaching ; of whom the most 
 eminent was perhaps Walter Burleigh, a pupil of Duns 
 Scotus, whose Expositio super artem Veterem long continued 
 a text-book in the university, and whose Liber de Vita ac 
 Moribus Philosophorum is interesting as perhaps the earliest 
 attempt at a connected view of the history of ancient 
 thought. But by far the greater number followed in the 
 new track. Among them were John Bacanthorpe, Adam 
 Goddam, and Armand de Beauvois ; while some even sought 
 to press the arguments of their teacher to yet more extreme 
 conclusions. Such was Richard Holcot, who did not hesi- 
 tate to insist upon that distinction between scientific and 
 theological truth which, as we have seen, both the Church 
 and Bacon declared to be impossible, and at which Occam 
 himself appears to have stopped short 2 . If we accept the 
 views of certain writers we shall be disposed to look upon 
 the distinguishing feature of scholasticism as well nigh 
 obliterated with the progress and diffusion of nominalistic 
 doctrines. ' The triumph of Nominalism,' says Dean Mansel, ^" e ^ d f 
 ' involved the downfall of the principal applications of the iSSaiisUe 
 scholastic method.' But, on the other hand, the facts shew timSethodof 
 
 - . , . . _ . the schools. 
 
 us that method as not less rigorously pursued by Brad- 
 wardine and Wyclif than by Albertus and Aquinas. Pro- 
 fessor Shirley, whose views on such a subject must carry 
 considerable weight, inclined to the opinion that a modified 
 
 1 Wood says, sub anno 1343, ' the rationem naturalem, articulos vero 
 
 divisions between the Northern and theologicos veritatem sibi vindicare 
 
 the Southern clerks were now as secundum rationem supernaturalem. 
 
 great, if not more, as those before. Nam (ut ait S. Thomas) nullo pacto 
 
 Those of the north held, as 'tis said verum alteri vero repugnare potest 
 
 with Scotus, and those of the south Quapropter Thomas, in Corn- 
 
 with Ockhain, and in all their dispu- ment. ad Lib. Triuit. Boethii, scribit 
 
 tations were so violent that the peace quod si quid inveniatur in dictis 
 
 of the university was thereby not philosophorum fidei repugnans, illud 
 
 a little disturbed.' Wood-Gutch, i non esse philosophia desumptum, 
 
 439. sed ex ejus abusu procedere propter 
 
 s 'Neque dicas, cuin Roberto Hoi- rationis defectum.' Mazonius in 
 
 coet in Prim. Sentcnt. philosophorum Univ. Platonis et Arist. Philosopli. 
 
 ratioues veras esse posse secundum p. 201. Quoted by Haure"au, n. 479.
 
 1.98 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. ii. form of realism still prevailed, though the theory of Uni- 
 versals as objective existences was abandoned. ' It is possi- 
 ble,' he says, ' that in order to be consistent with a revealed 
 religion, nominalism requires a definite boundary to be 
 drawn between the provinces of religion and philosophy, 
 and to this the whole genius of scholasticism is opposed. 
 But this at least is certain, whatever be the cause, that 
 almost all the religious life, and even all that was continuous 
 in the intellectual life of the middle ages, belonged to one 
 or other of the various shades of realism. In the latter 
 half of the fourteenth century, whatever there was among 
 the clergy, either of such religious feeling or of intellectual 
 activity, was to be found, speaking broadly, among the 
 secular priests. As a body, therefore, they were naturally 
 realists 1 .' It is evident, indeed, that if nominalism, in a 
 form incompatible with the scholastic method, had become 
 predominant to the extent that some authorities have re- 
 presented, the result must have inevitably led to a com- 
 parative neglect of those writers in whom that method is 
 the all-prevailing characteristic, but a very imperfect ac- 
 quaintance with the studies of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries suffices to shew us that such was not the case. 
 The pretensions of scholasticism were lowered, but its policy 
 was the same. The provinces of reason and faith may have 
 been no longer regarded as conterminous, but logic was still 
 the weapon that the theologian most relied upon in con- 
 troversy, and its popularity was undiminished in the schools. 
 liJCurTrdinp ^ proof were required of our statement, we could scarcely 
 adduce better evidence than is afforded by the great treatise 
 of Thomas Bradwardine, archbishop of Canterbury, the De 
 Causa Dei, and the rapid and permanent success that it 
 /UV^ 1 *"' ^ ta ' nt ' < l- This treatise, addressed ad suos Mertonenses, may 
 be regarded as one of the chief sources of the Calvinistic 
 teaching, so far as it has found expression, of our English 
 Church; founded for the most part on the work of Augustine, 
 it aims at developing, by a series of corollaries from two 
 
 1 Introtl. to Fatciculi Zizaniorum, p. lii.
 
 BRADWARDINE. 199 
 
 main propositions, the reasoning against Pelagianism. The CHAP. 11. 
 mode of treatment, which is almost as much that of the 
 geometrician as of the school logician, is perhaps the most 
 remarkable instance of the scholastic method to be found in 
 the whole range of middle age literature 1 . How soon its ^ c n ^ of 
 authority as a classic work on the controversy became recog- 
 nised, may be inferred from the simple yet reverential 
 language which Chaucer has put in the mouth of his Nonne 
 Prest : 
 
 ' But what that God forwot most needes be 
 After the opynyoun of certain clerkis. 
 Witnesse on him, that eny clerk is, 
 That in scole is gret altercacion 
 In this matier, and gret desputesoun, 
 And hath ben of an hundred thousend men. 
 But yit I can not bult it to the bren, 
 As can the holy doctor Augustyn, 
 Or Boece, or the bischop Bradwardyn, 
 Whether that Goddis worthy forwetyng 
 Streigneth me needely for to do a thing. 
 (Needely clepe I simple necessit6); 
 Or elles if fre choys be granted me 
 To do that same thing or to do it nought, 
 Though God forwot it, er that it was wrought; 
 Or if his wityng streyneth never a deel, 
 But by necessity condicionel.' 
 
 The work to which Chaucer thus deferentially alludes was 
 received with unanimous applause by the learned of Brad- 
 wardine's time ; it found its way to nearly all the libraries 
 of Europe 2 ; it was edited, in 1618, with laborious care by 
 
 1 A good outline of the general ex hypothesibus, et praedemonstratis 
 
 scope of the work will be found in reliqua omnia perpetua serie ad finem 
 
 Dean Hook's Luv?s of the Archbishops usque opens attexendo, quo fit ut 
 
 of Canterbury , iv 87 92 : and a care- conclusiones ejus cuipiam fortasse 
 
 ful study of it in Lechler's DC Tlwma nimis alte petitae videantur. Quodsi 
 
 Bradwardino Commentatio : Lipsise, in lemmatibus et propositionibus non 
 
 1862. Savile looks upon Bradwar- semper aKpipetav ilium mathemati- 
 
 dine's method as unique: 'Itaque cam potuit usquequaque assequi, 
 
 primus, quod sciam, et solus hanc meminerit lector non id auctori im- 
 
 viam tentavit in Theologicis, ut filo putandum, sed subjectaa, quam trac- 
 
 Mathematico Theologica contexeret, tat, materiae.' Prcef. Lectori. 
 
 ponendo scilicet primo loco duas 2 ' Fuit hie liber, statirn atque 
 
 hypotheses quasi principia, et ex iis editus est, tanto omnium doctorum 
 
 proxima qnoaqne demonstrando, et exceptus applausu, ut per omnes fere 
 
 corollaria deducendo, petitis etiam bibliothecas totius Europse describe- 
 
 ex Euclide probationibus ; deinceps retur.' Ibid.
 
 200 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. n. Sir Henry Savile, one of the latest of that eminent scholar's 
 services to literature, appearing as a folio of some 900 
 pages ; and even so late as the last century, Dean Milner 
 deemed it deserving of a lengthened and scrupulous analysis. 
 In the account of Bradwardine which Savile prefixes to his 
 edition, he extols in language of some exaggeration the 
 learning of his author, who, he says, solidam ex Aristotelis 
 et Platonis fontibus hamit philosophiam. What kind of 
 philosophy Bradwardine was likely to have imbibed as that 
 of Aristotle, we have already seen ; as for Plato, there is no 
 evidence in the De Causa Dei that the author had ever 
 had access to any of that philosopher's writings except the 
 old translation of the Timceus by Chalcidius. At the same 
 time it must be admitted that his references to ancient 
 authors are surprisingly numerous and extend over a wide 
 lilvmiwi'b? range. His pages bristle with quotations from Ptolemseus, 
 the Teaming Cyprian, Lactantius, Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, Boethius, 
 Seneca, Cassiodorus, Isidorus, Hermes, Johannes Scotus, the 
 Pseudo-Dionysius, Damascenus, Bede, Anselm, Grosseteste, 
 Avicenna and Averroes. Even had he at that time attained 
 to the dignity of the archbishopric, his literary resources 
 would appear far beyond what we should look for at this 
 period. Our knowledge of the facts of his life offer how- 
 ever an adequate explanation of this erudition ; for we know 
 that Bradwardine had access to the library of the author 
 of the Philobiblon. 
 
 "M'* There was no Grosseteste in the fourteenth century, but 
 
 !tiik his love of learning and liberality in its promotion were 
 worthily represented in Richard of Bury. The son of a 
 Norman knight of that ancient town, Richard received his 
 education at Oxford, where his academical distinctions were 
 such that he was selected to fill the post of tutor to the 
 Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward III. At court his 
 position was a difficult one ; for the rival parties were con- 
 tending in bitter enmity. By prudent reserve until the 
 time for action had arrived, he was however enabled to 
 render important service to his pupil's cause. To his 
 counsels have been attributed the deliberately concerted
 
 RICHARD OF BURY. 201 
 
 rupture forced on between Edward n and his brother-in- CHAP. 11. 
 law, Charles the Fair of France. It was he who, as the ins !> 
 royal treasurer in Guienne, forwarded the revenues he had txiHinenccs. 
 collected to Isabella on her arrival in Paris ; a daring step 
 which subsequently made it necessary for him to flee for 
 his life, from the pursuit of Edward's lieutenant, to the 
 campanile of the Franciscans in that city. During the 
 administration of the queen and Mortimer he appears to 
 have retained their favour without subsequently becoming 
 involved in their disgrace; and when the youthful Edward 
 had shaken off their dictation it soon became apparent that 
 his former tutor was the man whom he delighted to honour. 
 In 1330 Richard was appointed ambassador to pope John 
 xxn at Avignon, and the successful conclusion of the 
 business then entrusted to his care earned for him the 
 bishopric of Durham. The stewardship of the Palace, the 
 keepership of the Wardrobe, and the guardianship of the 
 Privy Seal, had already fallen in rapid succession to his 
 lot. 
 
 There seems to be little reason for inferring that Richard ins interview 
 
 with Petrarch 
 
 of Bury was a man of profound acquirements, even when at Avignon. 
 measured by the standard of that illiterate age. Petrarch, 
 who made his acquaintance at Avignon, describes him as 
 a man of ardent temperament, not ignorant of literature, 
 and with strong natural inquisitiveness into obscure and 
 out of the way lore. The poet, indeed, flattered himself that 
 he had found the very man to solve for him an antiquarian 
 difficulty he was then seeking to unravel, the geography 
 of the Thule of the ancients, and propounded his question 
 forthwith. We learn with regret that our eminent country- 
 man proved no CEdipus on this occasion. He took refuge 
 in a vague vaunting of those literary stores he was then 
 accumulating at home, and expressing his certain belief that 
 on his return he should be able at once to find the necessary 
 information. But though Petrarch, believing that the pres- 
 sure of more important affairs might have driven the con- 
 versation from the mind of the English ambassador, wrote 
 once and again to remind his lordship of Durham of his
 
 202 
 
 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 Ue\ cha- 
 racter of his 
 
 attainments. 
 
 promise, the oracle, greatly to the poet's disappointment, 
 preserved an obstinate silence 1 . From various data we 
 may, indeed, reasonably surmise that in Richard of Bury 
 the literary enthusiast and the bibliophilist prevailed over 
 the accurate scholar 2 ; nor does the appearance of some 
 half dozen Greek words in the Philobiblon warrant us in 
 concluding that the author had any extended acquaintance 
 with the language. Our admiration will more judiciously 
 select his really strong points : his indefatigable efforts in 
 rescuing valuable books from oblivion and destruction, the 
 genial manner, tinged with a harmless pedantry, in which 
 he descants on the advantages of learning, and on the 
 care, the respectful care, to which its treasures are en- 
 titled, his princely bequest to Oxford and wise provisions 
 for the maintenance of that bequest in its integrity, the 
 kindliness of his nature and his quick eye for genius, as 
 shewn in the men who formed the literary circles which 
 he loved to gather round him in his palace at Bishop's Auck- 
 land. Among these was Thomas Bradwardine, one of the 
 
 1 The lively manner in which Pe- 
 trarch has related this anecdote in- 
 duces me to transcribe the original 
 Latin : ' Mihi quidem de hac re 
 cum Richardo quondam Anglornm 
 regis cancellario, Benno non ociosus 
 fuit, viro ardentis ingenii, nee lite- 
 ral-urn inscio, et qui ut in Britannia 
 genitus atque educatus, abditarum- 
 que rcruni ab adolescentia supra 
 fidem curiosus, talibus praesertim 
 qna-stiunculis enodandis aptissimus 
 vidcrctur, ille autem, seu quia sic 
 Hperaret, sou quia puderet ignoran- 
 tiam fatcri (qui mos hodie multorum 
 fst, qni non intellignnt quanta mo- 
 il. -i :;i- laus Hit.homini nato, nee nosse 
 omnia volc-nti, profiteri ingenue e 
 ncHcire quod nesciat) seu forte, quod 
 non mwpicor, quia IIUJUH mihi arcani 
 notitiam invideret : rcnpondit, certe 
 *e dut>ietati moa> Hatiufncturum, Bed 
 non priuHquam ad libros BUGS, quo- 
 rum nemo copioaior fuit, in patriam 
 rrverti8t, crat enim dum in amici- 
 tiam ejtiR incidi, tractandis domini 
 *ni nrgotiin, apnrl sedcra Apostolicam 
 peregrinu* ca scilicet tempcstate, 
 
 qua inter pnefatum dominnm suum 
 et Francorum regem primi diuturni 
 belli semina pullulabant, quae cruen- 
 tam messem postea protulere ; nec- 
 dum repositaD falces aut clausa sunt 
 horrea, Bed dum promissor ille meus 
 abiisset, sivr nihil inveniens, sive 
 noviter injuncti pontificalis officii 
 gravi munere distractus, quamvis 
 BHjpe literis interpellate, expecta- 
 tioni mi ;i , non aliter quam obstinato 
 silentio satisfecit.' Epint. de Rebus 
 Fam. Lib. in. ed. Basil, p. 674. 
 
 s 'Iste Bumme delectabatnr in 
 multitudine libromm. Plures enim 
 libros habuit, sicut passim dicebatur, 
 quam omnen Pontifices Anglim. Et 
 praster eos quos habuit in diversis 
 maneriis suis, reponitos separatim, 
 ubicuuquo cum sua familia reside- 
 bat, tot libri jacebant sparsim in ca- 
 mera qnadormivit, quod ingredientes 
 vix stare poterant vel incedere nisi 
 librum aliquem pedibus conculca- 
 rent.' W. de Chambre, Continuatio 
 Hint. Dunelm, Surtees Society, p. 
 130, (quoted by Mr Macray, Annals 
 of the Bodhian, p. 4).
 
 RICHARD OF BURY. 203 
 
 bishop's chaplains ; and from 4he library of the episcopal CHAP. n. 
 residence the author of the De Causa Dei enriched the nu exertions 
 pages of his treatise. A certain community of error between "i?ector. 
 the bishop and his chaplain would, indeed, suggest that 
 they drew from common stores, for both are to be found 
 referring in their writings to a sorry poem, De Vetula, as 
 the work of Ovid 1 . In accumulating his collection, with all 
 the advantages of royal sanction and his own high position, 
 the English prelate had spared no effort. His agents ex- 
 plored the chief towns of France, Germany, and Italy. 
 He had himself conducted the search in Paris and among 
 the more important monasteries in England ; and at the 
 magic of his gold, many a religious house and many a 
 foundation school had yielded up from its dark recesses 
 and from mouldering chests some neglected, half-forgotten 
 volume, gnawed by the mice, eaten by the moth and the 
 worm, and covered with mildew and with dust. 
 
 It is gratifying to find that, unlike many libraries that SqueathS 
 have represented the literary zeal of a lifetime, the stores Lte h rdT* 
 which Richard of Bury had collected were not scattered i^ 1 Oxford. 
 at his death. At the close of the thirteenth century the 
 monks of Durham had founded for their order at Oxford 
 a college, first known as Durham and afterwards as Trinity 
 College, and to this foundation he bequeathed his library 2 . 
 The society was required to preserve the volumes in chests, 
 and the rules laid down for their use and preservation are 
 interesting as affording the earliest instance of the existence 
 of the pledge system in our universities, and also as another 
 
 1 Among other apocryphal books valuable collection bequeathed by 
 
 and writers whom Bradwardine cites, Thomas Cobham, bishop of Worces- 
 
 besides, of course, the omnipresent ter, in the year 1320, together with 
 
 Dionysius, we have the Vacca of those bequeathed by Richard of Bury. 
 
 Plato, the Pcemander of Hermes, and The original statute for the regula- 
 
 the Sccreta Secretorum of Aristotle. tion of the library is given by Mr 
 
 * Some of these books, on the dis- Anstey (Monumenta Academica, n 
 
 solution of the College by Henry viu, 227). The books were to be chained, 
 
 are said to have been transferred to ' in convenient order,' so as to be 
 
 Duke Humphrey's Library, and some accessible to the students. Part of 
 
 to Balliol College. Macray, Annals the library, amounting in value to 
 
 of the Bodleian, p. 5. The Univer- forty pounds, was sold, in order to 
 
 sity Library at Oxford was com- raise a salary for the librarian, 
 menced in 1367, on the funds and
 
 204 
 
 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 fur its pi . 
 starvation. 
 
 CHAP. ii. proof of the extent to which the regulations that obtained 
 iivuiatii.ns at Paris were reproduced at Oxford 1 . Five scholars deputed 
 by the master of the Hall were to have the custody of the 
 books, of whom the entire number, or .three, but not fewer, 
 were competent to lend the volumes for use and inspection 
 only ; no volumes were to be allowed to go beyond the walls 
 of the Hall to be copied or transcribed. No book was to be 
 lent to any but the scholars of the Hall unless there was 
 a duplicate in the library, and then only when security had 
 been given exceeding the value of the book itself. The 
 scholars were allowed free access to the library and use of 
 the books, the scholar's name and the day on which he took 
 away any volume having been duly registered 2 . 
 
 The lives of the three eminent men whose labours we 
 have thus briefly reviewed, all terminated at but a short 
 
 Omrncter of 
 tin- culture 
 of the four- 
 U-fiitli cen- 
 tury. 
 
 1 The regulations prescribed by 
 Richard of Bury appear to have been 
 almost identical with those of the 
 Sorbonne. M. Victor de Clerc, after 
 describing the latter, says, ' L'e"vcque 
 de Durham, dans la donation qu'il 
 fait de ses livres, in 1344, a 1'univer- 
 B\16 d'Oxford, reproduit presque lit- 
 tralement les memes articles, et ad- 
 met aussi, avec de sages restrictions, 
 le principe du pret. D6ja vers la fin 
 du x e siecle les livres de I'^glise cathe'- 
 drale de (Jlermont pouvaient etre pre- 
 tts & des particuliers. L'dveque de 
 Caraillon, Philippe de Cabassole, en 
 1372, n'interdit a personne 1'usage de 
 ceux qu'il le*gue a son chapitre ; inais 
 il veut qu'ils soient enchainds.' Etat 
 den I.i'ttre* nu Quatorzidme Sieclf, I 
 315. M. Cocheris (I quote Mr Hand's 
 translation) re-murks as follows : 
 4 They (the regulations of the Sor- 
 bonne) are more minute than those 
 of tins bishop of Durham, but do not 
 materially differ from them. The 
 first article prescribes a system of 
 pledges, and the second directs tho 
 election of the custodian ( , r libra- 
 rians by the mirii. These two fun- 
 damental artifli-H are to be found 
 in Bicbard of Bury's scheme and are 
 itfl essential features. It is there- 
 fore quite impossible not to perceive 
 tho imitation. It is, besides, easy 
 to explain this borrowing by Unr'v 
 from the Sorbonne. His literary 
 
 taste, and the high position which 
 he occupied in the literary world, 
 gave him easy access to this institu- 
 tion, where, once admitted, he would 
 not fail to visit the library and learn 
 from its officers the rules for its ma- 
 nagement.' Critical Notice, prefixed 
 to the Pliilobiblon, p. 37. 
 
 2 Pliilobiblon, c. xix. The amount 
 of illustration this treatise has re- 
 cently received at other hands ren- 
 ders a more lengthened notice here, 
 less necessary. Professor Morley has 
 given a careful epitome of its con- 
 tents in his English Writer*, Vol. n 
 pt. 1, pp. 43 57. Dean Hook has 
 also happily touched on some of its 
 most interesting features in his life 
 of Bradwardine, (Lives of ttie Arch- 
 bisliojM, Vol. iv). The original work 
 has been elaborately edited by M. 
 Cocheris, (Paris, 1856,) from tho 
 MSS. at tho Imperial Library of 
 Paris, with valuable biographical, 
 bibliographical, and literary excur- 
 suses ; there is an American transla- 
 tion of this edition (Albany, I8(il), 
 to which the editor has added tho 
 English translation by John B. Inglis, 
 (London, 1832) ; this latter transla- 
 tion is a very inaccurate perform- 
 ance. I have used the MS. in the 
 Ilurleian Collection, No. 41)2, which 
 appears in some respects superior in 
 accuracy to those towhich M.Cocheris 
 had access.
 
 RICHARD OF BURY. 205 
 
 interval from the close of the half century. Richard of CHAP. n. 
 Bury diod at his palace at Auckland in the year 1345; 
 William of Occam, in exile at Munich, in 1347 ; Thomas 
 Bradwardine, after holding the see of Canterbury for a few 
 months, was carried off by the prevalent epidemic, the 
 plague of Florence, in 1349 \ While recognising the 
 peculiar excellence of each, we must be careful lest their 
 conspicuous merit blind us to the real character of the age 
 in which they lived. There have been writers who, with 
 that caprice which is to be met with in every age, however 
 superior to preceding times, have professed to believe that 
 the England of the fourteenth century excelled the England 
 of the sixteenth 2 ; but a very cursory glance through the 
 pages of the Philobiblon suffices to show us that the author, 
 enthusiast though he undoubtedly was, had formed no very 
 hopeful estimate of the culture and the men of his own day. 
 The censures of Bacon, which have already occupied our 
 attention, are forcibly corroborated by Richard of Bury when 
 he tells us how he is endeavouring to remedy the almost 
 universal ignorance of grammar by the preparation of ma- 
 
 1 Dr Lechler has distinguished the evangelicae medulla est eritque. 
 
 scope and bent of Bradwardine's Neque Luthero proximis annis ante 
 
 writings from those of his great con- pugnain de indulgentiis coiurnissam 
 
 temporary in the following pregnant in meutem venit, aut ecclesiro Ro- 
 
 sentences : ' Bradwardinus euim, s^ mauae aut pontifici certe Romano 
 
 quid videnms, neque doctoribus illis adversari, ueque Bradwardinus um- 
 
 scholasticis admimerandus est, qui quam de impugnanda Roma cogitavit. 
 
 fidelissimi iuterpretes atque strenui Verum uterque ea fuit pietate erga 
 
 patroni Roinauaa medii sevi ecclesia? gratiam Dei, quae cum re poutificia 
 
 omniunique etiam errorum ejus de- non possit prorsus convenire. Et 
 
 fensores extiterxuit, neque illis viris, temporis tautum fuit, ut dissensus 
 
 qui Rornae adversarii in publicum eo usque latens in lucem proferretur. 
 
 prodierunt, sive, ut Occamus, imperil Itaque nulli dubitamus Bradwardi- 
 
 nomine cum sacerdotio pugnam com- num nostrum illis adnumerare viris, 
 
 mittebant, sive doctrine discipli- qui "testes veritatis" et praenuntii 
 
 naeque Romanna capita qutedam op- Reformatiouis nuncupati sunt.' Com- 
 
 pugnabaut. Bradwardinus neque in mentatio, etc. p. 18. 
 Romae decreta et instituta ita jura- s Thomas James, librarian of the 
 
 verat, ut Romam Romre causa vene- Bodleian in 1599, in a manuscript 
 
 raretur, neque ullo modo cousilium letter to Lord Lumley, preserved at 
 
 cepit arma Roma? inferre. Nihilo- the British Museum, in a copy of the 
 
 minus senteutia ilia de gratia Dei edition of the Philobiblon which he 
 
 per Christum gratis salvante et pec- published in the same year, speaks 
 
 catores justincante, quae medulla of his own time as 'an iron age,' 
 
 quasi Bradwardini fuit, cum Romanae while of Bury he says ' vixit in illo 
 
 ecclesiae miuime omnium convenit. aureo seculo cum illis priscis et bonis 
 
 Imo doctrina ilia eadem est, qua? a hominibus.' 
 Reforniatoribus tessera data, ecclesiie
 
 206 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. ii. nuals for the students, when he contrasts the ardour of 
 
 antiquity in the pursuit of learning with the superficial 
 
 impatience that marks the cultivation of letters among his 
 
 contemporaries, and especially when he thus characterises, 
 
 in language which might almost pass for a passage from the 
 
 Opus Tertium, the prevalent characteristics of the students 
 
 who composed the great majority at Oxford and at Paris : 
 
 the'tie, u 'and forasmuch as,' he writes, 'they are not grounded in 
 
 " Hid?ani their first rudiments at the proper time, they build a totter- 
 
 of Bury. * * 
 
 ing edifice on an insecure foundation, and then when grown 
 up they are ashamed to learn that which they should have 
 acquired when of tender years, and thus must needs ever 
 pay the penalty of having too hastily vaulted into the pos- 
 session of authority to whieh they had no claim. For these, 
 and like reasons, our young students fail to gain by their 
 scanty lucubrations that sound learning to which the an- 
 cients attained, however they may occupy honorable posts, 
 be called by titles, be invested with the garb of office, or be 
 solemnly inducted into the seats of their seniors. Snatched 
 from their cradles and hastily weaned, they get a smattering 
 of the rules of Priscian and Donatus ; in their teens and 
 beardless they chatter childishly concerning the Categories 
 and the Perihermenias in the composition of which Aristotle 
 spent his whole soul 1 .' 
 
 "on^ufthe ^ n no wa y ^ ess emphatic is his testimony to the decline of 
 ofTi.r'Sii. the mendicant orders, whom he describes as altogether busied 
 with the pleasures of the table, the love of dress, in which 
 they disregarded all the restrictions of their order, and with 
 the erection of splendid edifices 2 . Amid all their wide-spread 
 .activity, learning was falling into neglect; they still prose- 
 lytised with undiminished vigour, but they no longer helped 
 on the intellectual progress of the age. There is indeed one 
 
 * Philobiblon, c. 9. circa labentis corporia indigentias 
 
 ' Hod (prob dolor) tarn bos qitam occupati, ut sint epulro splendidae, 
 
 istonim Hcotantes effiKiem, a vestesque contra regulam delicate, 
 
 terna cultura librorum subtrabit necnon et ffldificiorum fabricoj, ut 
 
 tnplexcnra: cura superflua; ventris castrorum propugnacula, tali proce- 
 
 un, ct domormn. Sic sunt ritute, qu paupertati non convenit 
 
 BalvRtoria providon- exaltata;.' c. i. Querimonium Libro- 
 
 tia, qnc-m I aalmista circa paupcrem rum contra ReWjiosos Mendicantes. 
 et mendicant promittit tsse nolicitum)
 
 DECLINE OF THE MONASTIC SCHOOLS. 207 
 
 passage which, taken in its isolated sense, might seem to in- CHAP. ir. 
 dicate that he regarded the Mendicants with high favour, it 
 is that wherein he bears testimony to the aid he had received 
 from them in his researches, and to the invaluable lite- 
 rary stores of which their foundations were the repositories ; 
 but on a comparison of these encomiastic expressions with 
 other portions of the Philobiblon it will be seen that the 
 praise belongs rather to the workers of a prior generation, and 
 modifies but very slightly the impression conveyed in other 
 portions of the treatise. 
 
 It is however but just to notice that the religious orders, ^ e g ,J]. 
 and more especially the monastic foundations, were already 
 beginning to feel the effects of influences beyond their con- I 
 trol. We have already seen 1 thafr the decline of the episcopal 
 schools on the continent has been attributed, whether rightly 
 or not, to the superior attractions of the universities, and 
 it would certainly 'seem that Oxford and Cambridge must be 
 regarded as to some extent the cause, the innocent cause, of 
 the similarly rapid decline of the monastic orders in popular 
 estimation in England. Without denying that, from the in- 
 herent defect of their constitution, those orders must in all 
 probability have degenerated, just as all other orders had 
 degenerated in every preceding age, we may yet allow that 
 their fate overtook them with more rapid strides owing to 
 the correspondingly rapid encroachments made by the new 
 centres of learning upon their province as instructors of the 
 people, and to the loss of that occupation which, amid their 
 many shortcomings, had given something of dignity to their 
 office. Warton appears to us to have here pointed out the 
 connexion of cause and effect very justly: 'As the univer- 
 sities,' he says, ' began to flourish, in consequence of the dis- 
 tinctions and honours which they conferred on scholars, the 
 establishment of colleges, the introduction of new systems of 
 science, the universal ardour which prevailed of breeding 
 almost all persons to letters, and the abolition of that exclu- 
 sive right of teaching which the monasteries had so long 
 claimed ; the monasteries, of course, grew inattentive to stu- 
 
 1 See pp. 68 71.
 
 208 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. n. dies which were more strongly encouraged, more commo- 
 diously pursued, and more successfully cultivated in other 
 places ; they gradually became contemptible as nurseries of 
 learning, and their fraternities degenerated into sloth and 
 ignorance 1 .' It will devolve upon us, at a somewhat later 
 stage in our enquiry, to point out how a like decline awaited 
 the prestige of the mendicant orders, the penalty of their 
 own arrogance and bigotry. 
 T.uii in the In bringing to a close our retrospect of the intellectual 
 
 intllectual 6 fe 
 
 activity of England at this era, a yet more important decline 
 even than that of the monastic and mendicant orders presses 
 itself upon our notice and demands some explanation. How 
 is it, that from the middle of the fourteenth century up 
 to the revival of classical learning, the very period wherein 
 the munificence of royal and noble founders is most con- 
 spicuous in connexion with our university history, such a lull 
 comes over the mental life of both Oxford and Cambridge, 
 and so few names of eminence, Wyclif and Reginald Pecock 
 being the most notable exceptions, invite our attention ? 
 From the death of Bradwardine to the first battle of St. 
 Alban's, more than three quarters of a century intervene, 
 during which no adequate external cause of distraction ap- 
 peal's which may be supposed to account for the comparative 
 critj - inertness of the universities. The observation of Anthony 
 !~i.iuSn' Wood, already quoted, that, after the time of Wyclif ' the 
 lelBCt students neglected scholastical divinity and scarce followed 
 any studies but polemical, being wholly bent and occupied in 
 refuting his opinions and crying down the orders of mendicant 
 friars,' presents us with a true but only a partial explanation. 
 Other causes were at work, some of which will be best ex- 
 plained in a subsequent chapter, but it can hardly be ques- 
 tioned that the most baneful effects in the fourteenth century 
 are to be traced to the bias given to the studies then pursued. 
 Tnc shortcomings and excesses indicated by Bacon consti- 
 tuted the prevailing characteristics long after his time, and 
 the absorbing attention given to the civil and canon law was 
 undoubtedly one of the most fruitful sources of those evils. It 
 1 Dittertation on Introduction of Learning into England, p. cxiii. ed. 1840.
 
 THE CANON AND CIVIL LAW. 20.9 
 
 may not be unimportant here to notice, that it would be a CHAR ir. 
 serious misapprehension were we to regard these two branches 
 of jurisprudence as representing at that time the provinces 
 of the civilian and the ecclesiastic respectively. It is part of 
 the gravamen of Bacon's complaint, written in the year 1270, 
 that the effects of the civil law were to confound the distinc- 
 tion (the distinction which so frequently eludes the student's 
 grasp) between the laity and the clergy of those times. 
 Blackstone indeed in the Introduction to his Commentaries inaccuracy or 
 
 Islackstonc 8 
 
 has gone so far as to represent the civil law as from the first f,^"^ of 
 under the protection of the clergy, and contending in its this study< 
 progress against no other obstacle than that offered by the 
 laity, eager in the defence of their municipal law 1 . We have 
 already seen that such would be but a very imperfect account 
 of the history of the Pandects. The same conservatism that 
 had resisted the introduction of the Sentences and of the new 
 Aristotle, had opposed the study of the Roman Law. But 
 with the advance of the thirteenth century this opposition 
 had died away, how completely may be seen from the fol- 
 lowing passage from the Compendium Philosophic : 
 
 ' But as we have now come down to our own times, I am R e er Ba - . 
 
 con s account 
 
 especially desirous of introducing that which has been ad- Suiting 13 
 vanced in preceding pages concerning the causes of errors SSudro* 00 
 and the impediments of learning which have multiplied cMHaw. ' 
 during the last forty years, and to point out how error so 
 prevails in the Church of God, that either the approach of 
 Antichrist or some other heavy trouble must be near at 
 hand, or the advent of some most holy chief pontiff, who in 
 the strength of God will root out these causes of error and 
 
 1 ' The clergy in particular as they entirely under the influence of the 
 
 then engrossed almost every other popish clergy (Sir John Mason, the 
 
 branch of learning... vrere peculiarly first Protestant, being also the first 
 
 remarkable for their proficiency in lay, chancellor of Oxford), this will 
 the study of the law. Nullus clericus . lead us to perceive why the study of 
 
 nisi causidicus is the character given the Eoman laws was in those days of 
 
 of them soon after the Conquest by bigotry pursued with such alacrity 
 
 William of Malmesbury And if in these seats of learning, and why 
 
 it be considered that our universities the common law was entirely de- 
 began about that time to receive their spised, and esteemed little better 
 present form of scholastic discipline ; than heretical.' Blackstone, Corn- 
 that they were then and continued to mentaries by Kerr, i 15. 
 be till the time of the Reformation, 
 
 14
 
 210 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CHAP. ri. restore all things to their proper state. Of these causes two 
 have, in the last forty years, attained their climax, of which 
 one, the abuse of the civil law of Italy, not only destroys the 
 desire of learning but the Church of God and all kingdoms. 
 And thus, by this abuse, all those five before-mentioned 
 grades of learning are destroyed, and the whole world exposed 
 to the evil one. But as for the way whereby evil-minded 
 jurists destroy the love of learning, that is patent ; namely 
 that by their craft and trickery they have so preoccupied the 
 minds of prelates and princes that they obtain nearly all the 
 emoluments and favours, so that the empty-handed students 
 of theology and philosophy have no means of subsistence, of 
 buying books, or of searching and experimenting upon the 
 secrets of science. Even jurists who study the canon law 
 possess the means neither of subsistence nor of study unless 
 they previously possess a knowledge of the civil law. Whence, 
 just as with philosophers and theologians, no regard is paid 
 them unless they have a reputation as civil jurists, with the 
 abuses of which study they have disfigured the sacred canons. 
 Furthermore, eveiy man of superior talent, possessing an 
 aptitude for theology and philosophy, betakes himself to civil 
 law, because he sees its professors enriched and honoured 
 by all prelates and princes, and also that few, out of regard 
 for their kin, adhere to the study of philosophy and theology, 
 because the greedy faculty of the civil law attracts the great 
 body of the clergy. And not only does the civil law of Italy 
 destroy the pursuit of learning in that it carries off the re- 
 sources of students and diverts fit persons (from that pursuit), 
 but also in that by its associations it unworthily confounds 
 the clergy with the laity, since it is in no way the function of 
 the clergyman, but altogether that of the layman, to have 
 cognisance of such law, as is evident if we bear in mind 
 that this law was compiled by lay emperors and for the 
 government of the laity at large. And, indeed, the professors 
 of the law of Bologna are willing to be styled either teachers 
 or clergymen ; and they reject the clerical tonsure. They 
 take to themselves wives and regulate their household en- 
 tirely in secular fashion, and associate with and adopt the
 
 THE CANON AND CIVIL LAW. 211 
 
 customs of laymen. From whence it is evident that they are CHAP. n. 
 separate from the clerical office and station 1 .' 
 
 With the fourteenth century the combination which Bacon {^Jjj* '~ 
 thus loudly censures of the study of the civil with that of the tile civu \&* 
 canon law, had become the rule rather than the exception. 
 A powerful impulse had been given to the former study by 
 William of Nogaret,whoin his capacity of legal adviser to Philip 
 the Fair, in that monarch's struggle with pope Boniface, had 
 developed the resources of the code with startling significance. 
 Compared with such lore, theological learning became but a 
 sorry recommendation to ecclesiastical preferment ; most of 
 the popes at Avignon had been distinguished by their attain- 
 ments 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 ^g^JjJJ' 
 mistress 2 . The true 'scholar returned them equal scorn ; 
 and Richard of Bury roundly averred that the civilian, Testimony of 
 
 J J ' Richard of 
 
 though he might win the friendship of the world, was the Bur - v - 
 enemy of God 3 . Equally candid is the good bishop's ex- 
 pression of his indifference, notwithstanding his omnivorous 
 appetite for books, for the volumes of the glossists, which 
 alone he appears to have been careless of collecting or pre- 
 serving 4 . It is not improbable that, as M. Le Clerc has 
 suggested, the study of both codes had a genuine attraction 
 for students in that age, inasmuch as it provided, along with 
 the gratification of the love of subtlety induced by the train- 
 ing of the schools, an outlet for practical activity 5 . But it is 
 
 1 Compendium Studii Philosophic, capessenda sacra scriptnras mysteria 
 c. 4. et arcana fidei sacramenta, filiis lucia 
 
 2 Holcot, Super Libntm Sapientia, confert : utpote quaa disponit pecu- 
 Prffif. D. ' Leges enim,' he adds, ' et liariter ad amicitiam hujus mundi, 
 canones istis temporibus mirabiliter per quam homo, Jacobo testante, Dei 
 foecuudffl concipiunt divitias et pa- constituitur inimicus.' Philobiblon, 
 riunt dignitates. Et ideo sacra scrip- c. 11. 
 
 tura qua est omnium scientiarum 4 ' minus tamen librorum civilium 
 
 derelicta est; et ad illas affluit quasi appetitus nostris adhaesit affectibus, 
 
 tota multitude scholarium.' minusque hujusmodi voluminibug 
 
 3 ' In libris juris positivi, lucrativa acquirendis concessirnus tarn opera 
 peritia dispensandis terrenis accom- quam expense.' Ibid. 
 
 moda quanto hujus sseculi filiis 5 ' E t at des Lettres au xiV Siecle, r 
 famulatur utihus, tanto minus, ad 509. 
 
 H 2
 
 212 RISE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 CIIAP. IT. easy to see that its chief value in the eyes of the many, of 
 those who valued knowledge as a means rather than as an 
 end, was that asserted by Bacon, that it was the path to 
 emolument, to high office, to favour with 'prelates and 
 princes.' 'Who ever rose pricked in heart from reading the 
 laws, or the canons ?' asked John of Salisbury, when he 
 sought to draw away Thomas & Becket from his excessive 
 attention to the study 1 . But it was under the shelter of the 
 canon law that the archbishop fought out his struggle with 
 the king of England. As for the hope to which Bacon had 
 given expression, that some ' most holy pontiff' might arise 
 who should reform these crying evils, it is sufficient to note 
 the exclamation of Clement VII, a pope whose sole recom- 
 mendation to the tiara had been his unscrupulous political 
 genius, when he heard at Avignon that a young student of 
 promise in the university of Paris was devoting his attention 
 !i- to theology :' What folly,' he ejaculated, 'what folly, for 
 him thus to lose his time ! These theologians are all mere 
 dreamers 8 .' Neither from Rome nor from Avignon were 
 those influences to come which should guide into happier 
 paths the studies and learning of Europe. 
 
 1 ' Prosunt qnidem leges et canones, Plus dico : scholaris exercitatio in- 
 
 fied mihi credite, quia nunc non erit terdnm scientiam auget ad timorem, 
 
 his opus, Non hoc ista sibi tempu* sed devotionem aut raro aut nun- 
 
 spectacula poscit. Siquidem non tarn quam inflammat.' Epist. 138 [A.D. 
 
 devotionem excitant, quam curiosi- 1165] ed. J. A. Giles, i 196. 
 
 tatem Quis e lectione legum, aut a Crevier, m 186. 
 
 etiaai canonum compunctua Btirgit?
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 CAMBRIDGE PRIOR TO THE CLASSICAL ERA. 
 
 PART I: EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 THE names which, in the preceding chapter, have served CHAP, in . 
 to illustrate the varied activity of English thought would > ^ ^ 
 seem to justify us in asserting that, with the advance of the ofThe^feader- 
 
 fourteenth century, the palm of intellectual superiority had tVo^ht from 
 
 . . Pans to ox- 
 
 been transferred from Paris to the English universities. With- ford- 
 out insisting upon the philosophic insight of Bacon and the 
 metaphysical ability of Duns Scotus, we may fairly ask whe- 
 ther any other university can point, at this period, to men 
 comparable in their respective excellences and extended 
 influence with William of Occam, Bradwardine, and Richard 
 of Bury. If Paris can claim to have given to Oxford and 
 Cambridge their statutes and their organisation, Oxford can 
 boast that she gave to Paris some of her ablest and most 
 influential teachers 1 . As the renown of those eminent 
 thinkers became established, men did not fail to note the 
 
 1 ' Lyons, Paris, and Cologne were may have free interchange with Paris 
 
 indebted for their first professors to as regards the rights of masters of 
 
 the English Franciscans at Oxford. arts at that university, we find that 
 
 Repeated applications were made from the claim of Oxford as the source of 
 
 Ireland, Denmark, France, and Ger- the ancient instruction of Paris, is 
 
 many for English friars; foreigners plainly preferred: verum quia du- 
 
 were sent to the English school as bium nan est (secundum veterum Usti- 
 
 superior to all others.' Prof. Brewer, monia scripturarum) Gallicanum stu- 
 
 Pref. to Manumenta Franciscana, p. dium ab Anglicanis nostris originate 
 
 Irxxi. In a letter of Edward n to traxisse principium. SeeBrianTwyne, 
 
 Pope John xxn desiring that Oxford Apologia, p. 377.
 
 214 EAIILY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. HI. comparative sterility of the continental university. Pe- 
 >J^!1^ trarch exultingly pointed to the fact that her greatest names 
 were those of men whom he claimed as compatriots 1 . Ri- 
 chard of Bury, while he dwells with enthusiasm on the lite- 
 rary wealth and established prestige of the French capital, 
 does not hesitate to imply that her preeminence is already a 
 thing of the past, and attributes to his own country the 
 merit of according a far more ready reception to novel truth ; 
 Paris, he declares, in her regard for antiquity, seems careless 
 of adding to her knowledge, while the perspicacity of 
 
 7chS n df f English thought is ever adding to the ancient stores. ' We 
 behold the palladium of Paris,' he exclaims, writing while 
 the soldiery of Edward III were ravaging the French pro- 
 vinces, ' borne off, alas, by that same paroxysm which afflicts 
 our own land. The zeal of that illustrious school has become 
 lukewarm, nay, even frozen, whose rays once illumined every 
 corner of the earth. The pen of every scribe is there laid 
 aside, the race of books is no longer propagated ; nor is there 
 one who can be regarded as a new author. They wrap up 
 their thoughts in unskilful language, and are wanting in all 
 logical propriety, save when they learn by secret vigils those 
 refinements of English thought which they publicly disparage.' 
 
 1 'Est ilia civitas bona quidem, et les maitres qui forment, dirigent, 
 
 insignia Regia prscsentia, quod ad e'clairent; qui usent leur esprit et 
 
 studium attinet ceu ruralis est cala- leur vie a ce labour de tous les in- 
 
 thus, quo poma undique peregrina et stants, et ne se sentent pas humilie's 
 
 nobilia deferantur; ex quo enim stu- d'avoir des disciples plus hardis et 
 
 dium illud, ut legitur, ab Alcuino plus clcbres qu'eux. On sail bieii 
 
 prseceptoreCaroliregisinstitutumest, que la critique n'est point le gdnie; 
 
 nnnquam quod audierim Parisiensis or, dans les grandes villes, dans les 
 
 quisquam ibi vir clarus fuit, sed qui grands foyers destruction, la cri- 
 
 fuerunt externi utique et nisi odium tique roguo presque sans partage. 
 
 barbari oculos penstringeret, magna L'ancienne Rome, qui fut long temps, 
 
 ex parte Itali fuere.' Contra Galli comme Paris, une sorto d'e"cole uni- 
 
 Calumniat, (ed. Basil, 1554) p. 1192. verselle, n'a comptd non plus qu'un 
 
 He enumerates in support of his petit nombre de ses citoyens parmi lea 
 
 assertion Peter Lombard, Bona- orateurs et les poe'tes que Petrarque 
 
 ventura, Aquinas, and ^Egidius. To s'enorgueillit d'appeler des citoyens 
 
 these observations M. Le Clerc re- remains; et elle n'en a pas moius le 
 
 plica, Cette remarqne est juste, et droit de revendiquer, entre ses titres 
 
 continue mc'me de 1'etre pour les d'illustration, la gloire litt^raire.' 
 
 tele, qui suivirent Mais elle no x tat des Lettrfg au 14 Sreclej 81 . 
 
 ncn contro la pu^sance et An inge nious defence; but Petrarcb, 
 
 * de ces grands centres d'ac- I i mapine wou i d have regarded the 
 
 A f* T qUI , M C ?f gCnt Parallel instituted as defective. 
 de 1 education des peuples. La sont
 
 CAMBRIDGE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 215 
 
 But though we may readily admit that the temporary CHAP. IIL 
 effects of the events alluded to by Richard of Bury had their 
 
 share in bringing about this decline, it would seem that the IhecoCn 
 most potent cause must be sought in a long prior occurrence ; "pn ti.c uni- 
 and it is probably to the removal of the papal court to 1>aris - 
 Avignon that we must refer that paralysis which seems to 
 have overtaken the genius of the nation. The pope, while 
 he servilely subscribed to the political policy of the French 
 monarch, to some extent indemnified himself by the assertion 
 of an ampler authority over the centres of education and 
 intellectual activity. 'With such a neighbour,' remarks |w!S?cri- 
 Professor Shirley, ' intellectual independence was impossible. tlclsn1 ' 
 One of the many mortifications suffered by the pride of 
 Boniface vin, had been a refusal on the part of the univer- 
 sity of Paris to send to him a list of the lectures she de- 
 livered, together with the names of such of her professors, or 
 more distinguished graduates, as she wished to recommend 
 for promotion. What Boniface had solicited in vain was 
 freely granted by the university to John xxn. In 1316 the 
 first Rotulus Nominandorum was sent to the newly elected 
 pope at Avignon, and the practice once established soon 
 became annual. Ecclesiastical dignities and emoluments 
 fell in abundance upon the professors; and from that time 
 the university declined. Other causes were, indeed, in ope- 
 ration. Paiis had hitherto been the only great school of 
 theology on the continent. The time had come when this 
 could no longer continue. The demand for learning was 
 becoming daily more general; and, what is more important, 
 the spirit of nationality was growing every day more power- 
 ful. A vernacular literature had arisen in Italy, and was 
 rising on a humbler scale in England ; and even Germany 
 and Bohemia, which had contributed many illustrious pupils 
 to Paris, began to wish for national universities of their own. 
 In 1348 the university of Prague was founded in connexion 
 with Oxford; in 1365 that of Vienna, 'the eldest daughter 
 of Paris;' in 1362 and 1363 faculties of theology were given ' 
 to Bologna and Padua, where law alone had hitherto been 
 studied. To Paris, therefore, little more than France was
 
 216 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 p. in. left, at a time when France was torn by division and humi- 
 Jl^-L' liated by defeat. To Oxford passed what remained of her 
 
 intellectual empire 1 .' 
 scantiness of It is accordingly by a natural and inevitable transition 
 
 the materials . J J . -, t - rt -t 
 
 for history that, in tracing the progress of learning, the historian finds 
 
 of the uni- 
 
 himself passing with the advance of the fourteenth century 
 from the continent to England; and, having examined suffi- 
 ciently for our present purpose, the character and direction 
 of the new activity at Oxford, we may now proceed to 
 consider the rise in our own university of those new insti- 
 tutions, which, reflecting for the most part the example 
 set by Walter de Merton, occupy the foreground of our sub- 
 ject irf the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Lengthened 
 as our preceding enquiry has been, it has not been irrelevant 
 to our main purpose. The commencement and early celebrity 
 of the university of Paris, its remarkable mental activity 
 under the influence of the Mendicants, and its rapid collegiate 
 growth, are the three cardinal features in its early annals 
 which Oxford reproduced, in all essential points, with sin- 
 gular fidelity. It would be gratifying if our information 
 enabled us to trace out a similar resemblance at Cambridge, 
 but the obscurity which hangs over her ancient history, and 
 the loss of much that might have served to attest a corre- 
 sponding process of developement, preclude us from a like 
 course of treatment. Beyond those broad outlines which we 
 have followed in our preceding chapter, there is little that 
 we know concerning our ante-collegiate era; presumptive 
 evidence affords our principal guidance; it is not until the 
 rise of the Hospital of St. John the Evangelist and of Peter- 
 
 1 Introd. to Fasciculi Zizaniorum, proclame'e leur mere, ne nous paral- 
 
 p. li. M. Le Clorc, somewhat mis- tra jamais plus puissante, malgrd le 
 
 led, I rnthcr think, hy the numerous prestige qui environne au loin son 
 
 movement*, political and theological, nom, qu'elle ne le fut pendant co 
 
 jch found a centre at Paris during siecle au centre memo du royaume, 
 
 s century, movements however a Paris, et dans notre propre his- 
 
 that represent the conservatism ra- toire; car jamais, depuis qu'elle fut 
 
 tber than the advancement of the m$16e aux affaires du monde politi- 
 
 atmed for his university que , elle n'exerca, pr6s de cinquante 
 
 i undirmnished influence and pres- a ns de suite, un tel pouvoir sur lea 
 
 tlfn^nn '""i """T^ *" ^ P**- Etat des Lcttres au 14- Sig- 
 ns qu un BI grand nombre d autres, .// , OQO 
 
 en France et bora de France, ont
 
 CREATION OF HOSTELS. 217 
 
 house, of Michaclhouse and of King's Hall, of University CHAP. in. 
 Hall and of Clare, that our data assume something of com- -i^lx 
 pleteness and precision ; it is not until we decipher the faded 
 characters of the charters and earliest statutes of those an- 
 cient foundations, note the rude Latinity wherein the new 
 conception is seen struggling as it were for utterance amid 
 the terrorism and traditions of a monkish age, the mass and 
 the disputation, the friar and the secular, dogma and specula- 
 tion, in strange and bewildering contrast and juxtaposition, 
 that a sense, dim and vague though it be, comes over us of 
 the conditions under which our college life began; and it is 
 precisely as we turn to collect the scattered links that still 
 connect us with that age, that we become aware what a 
 chasm, deep and not to be bridged over, separates us from 
 its feelings and its thought. 
 
 Omitting for the present much interesting detail, it will 
 accordingly be our object in this chapter to gather from the 
 charters and statutes of the new foundations, that now began 
 to rise in such rapid succession, the motives and designs of 
 the founders, and to illustrate the dominant conception of 
 that new movement in which the old university life be- 
 came ultimately merged. Before however passing on to this 
 stage of our enquiry it will be necessary to devote some' 
 consideration to that intermediate institution, the hostel, 
 which took its rise in an endeavour to diminish, to some 
 extent, the discomforts, sufferings, and temptations, to which, 
 as we have already seen, students of the earliest period 
 were exposed. The hostel of the English universities in Hostels, 
 former times may be defined as a lodging-house, under the 
 rule of a Principal, where students resided at their own 
 cost. It provided for and completely absorbed the pensioner 
 class in the university; for the College, as we shall after- 
 wards see, was originally composed only of a Master, Fellows, 
 and Sizars. It offered no pecuniary aid, but simply freedom 
 from extortion, and a residence where quiet would be ensured 
 and some discipline enforced; advantages however of no 
 small rarity in that turbulent age. Fuller, in his history of Scount 3 
 the university, has enumerated, chiefly on the authority of *i>m. e "'
 
 218 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. HI. Caius and Parker, no less than thirty-four of these institu- 
 J!^LL tions, of which the greater number either fell into decay or 
 became incorporated with colleges 'before the Reformation, 
 while some undoubtedly survived for a longer period and are 
 supposed by the same authority to have been the residence 
 of many eminent men, who though trained at Cambridge 
 during the earlier half of the sixteenth century are unmen- 
 tioned on her college registers. ' Of these hostels,' he says, 
 'we see some denominated from the saint to whom they 
 were dedicated, as St. Margaret's, St. Nicholas's, etc. Some 
 from the vicinage of the church to which they were adjoined, 
 as St. Mary's, St. Botolph's, etc. Some from the materials 
 with which they were covered, as Tiled-Hostel. Some from 
 those who formerly bought, built, or possessed them, as Bor- 
 den's, Rud's, Phiswick's, etc. Some were reserved only for 
 civil and canon lawyers, as St. Paul's, Ovings', Trinity, St. 
 Nicholas's, Borden's, St. Edward's, and Rud's ; and all the 
 rest employed for artists and divines, Some of them were 
 but members and appendants to other hostels (and after- 
 wards to colleges), as Borden's to St. John's Hostel, then to 
 Clare Hall ; St. Bernard's to Queens'. The rest were abso- 
 lute corporations, entire within themselves, without any sub- 
 ordination.' 
 EMIT ..tntute \Ve are indebted to recent research for the discovery of 
 
 rwpectiiiK 
 
 t!-'nu l ro re of and an early statute concerning the hire and tenure of these 
 institutions, which may be regarded as one of the oldest 
 documents illustrating the internal economy of the univer- 
 sity ; it belongs to the latter part of the thirteenth or to the 
 early part of the fourteenth century; and offering as it does 
 marked points of contrast when compared with the statute 
 given in our Statuta Antiqua, has seemed worthy of inser- 
 tion: 
 
 ' ^ an y ne desire to have the principalship of any hostel 
 J' * in the said university, he must come to the landlord of the 
 said hostel on St. Barnabas the Apostle's day (June 11); 
 for from that time up to the nativity of the blessed Mary 
 (Sept 8) cautions may be offered and received and at no 
 other time of the year.
 
 HOSTELS. 219 
 
 ' Moreover, the first -by priority is the first by legal right, CHAP. IIL 
 and therefore he who first offers the caution to the landlord 
 of the house, his caution 'shall stand, and that same caution 
 must be preferred in the presence of the chancellor. nghl ga 
 
 ' Moreover, the scholar who is to give the caution must 
 come in person to the landlord of the hostel, on the aforesaid u^c 
 day or within [the abovenamed] period, but the sooner the 
 better, and in the presence of a bedell or a notary, or of two 
 witnesses, produce his caution, giving effect thereto, if he be 
 willing; by effect is intended either a cautio Jidejussoria or 
 pignoraticia, that is, two sureties, or a book or something of 
 the kind ; and if he be not admitted the same scholar is 
 forthwith to repair to the chancellor and produce his cau- 
 tion in the presence of the aforesaid witnesses and say in 
 what Avay the landlord of the hostel has refused him in the 
 matter of the acceptance of the caution ; and this having 
 been proved the chancellor shall immediately admit him on 
 that caution and to that principalship notwithstanding the 
 refusal of the proprietor. 
 
 ' Moreover, he who is a scholar and the principal of any R'gi't 
 
 A | f J tenur 
 
 hostel may not give up possession or renounce hie right in transferable, 
 favour of any fellow-student, but to the landlord of the hostel 
 only. 
 
 'Moreover, cessions of this kind are forbidden, because 
 they have proved to the prejudice of the landlord of the 
 hostel, which ought not to be. 
 
 'Moreover, if any one be principal of a hostel and any Admission to 
 
 . . the principal- 
 
 Other scholar desire to occupy the same hostel as principal, sh 'p of a > los - 
 
 let him go to the landlord of the hostel and proffer his cau- \%l eu ~ 
 tion, as above directed, with these words : ' Landlord, if it 
 please thee, I desire to be admitted to the principalship of 
 the hostel in such and such a parish, whensoever the princi- 
 pal is ready to retire or to give up his right, so that I may 
 first, as principal (principaliter) succeed him, if you are will- 
 ing, without prejudice to his right thereto, so long as he 
 shall be principal.' If he do not agree, thou mayest pro- 
 duce thy caution before the chancellor that he may admit 
 thee on the condition that whenever there shall be no prin-
 
 220 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. TIL cipal thou mayest be master and mayest succeed him (the 
 ^^L* former principal) in the same hostel rather than any one 
 else; and the chancellor shall admit thee even against the 
 wish of the landlord and that of the principal. 
 
 ' Moreover, if any landlord shall say to any scholar, 
 Dost thou desire to be principal of this mine hostel V and 
 
 ami principal the scholar answer ' Yes,' but the landlord says that he does 
 not wish that the hostel should be taxed in any way, and 
 
 the scholar says he does not mind, and enters into occupa- 
 tion as principal and receives scholars to share the hostel 
 with him, those same scholars may go to the chancellor 
 and have their hostel taxed, contrary to the wish of both the 
 landlord and the principal, and notwithstanding the agree- 
 ment between the landlord and the principal, inasmuch as 
 agreements between private persons cannot have effect to 
 the prejudice of public rights. 
 
 nure t 'of n the f 'Moreover, no one is to deprive any principal of his prin- 
 c ip a i s hip or fa supplant him, in any fashion, so long as he 
 pays his rent, or unless the landlord desire himself to be the 
 occupier, or shall have sold or alienated the hostel 1 .' 
 
 The rude Latinity of this statute, its simplicity and bre- 
 vity, would alone suggest its superior antiquity to the one 
 quoted in the Statuta Antiqua; but further internal evidence 
 may be noted in favour of such a conclusion. It will be 
 observed that with the exception of one clause, its purpose is 
 I" object to assert the rights of the university over the town. The 
 
 IU StttlUU'. * 
 
 presumably later statute contained in the collection above 
 referred to enters much more into detail ; it secures the 
 
 1 Sco Communication made ly printed editions, as the old Proctors' 
 
 llrnry Hradha\c, M.A., published books, from which the materials 
 
 with Report preaented to the Cam- chiefly came for the edition of 1785, 
 
 l>rid<if Antiquarian Society, May 11, seem not to have been drawn up till 
 
 1H03. 'A statute,' observes Mr. the end of the 14th century at the 
 
 liradshaw, ' concerning Hostels, made earliest, and so represent a time when 
 
 in the reign of Edward the First, the collegiate system had begun to 
 
 carries us back to a time in the his- get a firm footing in the University.' 
 
 tory of the university when Peter- The quaint character and eccentric 
 
 house was the only college, and nearly grammar of this ancient statute has 
 
 all the members lived in these IIos- seemed to render it worthy of inser- 
 
 pitia. It is therefore less remark- tion in its original form : see Appen- 
 
 ftble that we do not find this statute dix (C). 
 among the Statuta Antiqua in the 
 
 Mai 
 
 of tl
 
 HOSTELS. 221 
 
 rights of the landlord as well as those of the university; it CHAP. m. 
 forbids that houses formerly used as schools should be occu- >-^L * 
 pied as hostels unless good reason be shewn, the object being "' ra d p e ^d 
 evidently to secure to the university a sufficient number of statute CT. 
 suitable and convenient places for instruction; it provides 
 that the principal alone shall be responsible for the payment 
 of the rent, ' lest he who has made a contract with one per- 
 son should be distracted by a multitude of adversaries;' it 
 gives to the lord of the manor or the receiver of the superior 
 annual fees the right of distraining for rent. We can hardly 
 doubt that these provisions have reference to a later period, 
 when the points severally dealt with had become matters of 
 frequent experience; while in the shorter statute we seem 
 to recognise an enactment drawn up in that turbulent period 
 when the law between the two corporations was ill defined, 
 and the protection of the student was the primary object; 
 and it is deserving of notice that it is probably in virtue of 
 the power conferred by the third clause that we find, in the 
 year 1292, the Chancellor putting one Ralph de Leicester in 
 occupation of a house to the tenancy of which the Prior of 
 Barnwell had refused to admit him, though a sufficient cau- 
 tion for the rent had been duly tendered 1 . 
 
 But the aid afforded to^the student by the institution of S^a^iaa 
 the hostel was evidently of a very limited character. Ifba C ianfto 
 poor, the only assistance he obtained was protection against tio^oFthe 
 
 f i i i i i i ' i mendicant 
 
 the rapacity ot the lodging-house keeper ; the principal ap- 
 pears to have been in no way concerned with the instruc- 
 tion of the inmates; the Mendicants proselytised with impu- 
 nity, and inexperienced unsuspicious youth were induced to 
 enrol themselves as Dominicans or Franciscans long before 
 their judgment was sufficiently formed to estimate the full 
 importance of such a step. The attractions held out were, 
 indeed, well calculated to allure them from honorable acti- 
 vity in any secular calling. The indolent were tempted by 
 the prospect of a dronelike existence at the expense of the 
 public charity; the needy, by the temptations of a thinly- 
 disguised epicureanism and the security of a corporate life ; 
 1 Cooper, Annals, i 65.
 
 222 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. IIL while to the studious, the enthusiastic, and the ambitious, 
 J^_L the friar could point out how the great teachers of the age 
 had found in the ranks of his order the most congenial asso- 
 ciations and the opportunities for the most successful career. 
 It is difficult to study the character of such men as Roger 
 Bacon and William of Occam, and not to surmise that 
 their adoption of the vows of the Franciscan was the result 
 rather of the proselytising activity to which they were ex- 
 posed than of their own mature and deliberate choice. 
 ' Minors and children agreed well together/ says Fuller, in 
 his usual vein. 
 
 When such were the circumstances under which lads of 
 
 fourteen had to acquire a university education, we need feel 
 
 no surprise that both the academical authorities and private 
 
 Enactments munificence were roused to action on their behalf. In 1336 
 
 designed to 
 
 the"ro*?v- a statute of our own university forbade the friars to receive 
 into their orders any scholars under the age of eighteen 
 years, a measure which it required the united influence of 
 the four orders to repeal 1 . To such an extent had the evil 
 spread at Oxford that, in the preamble of a statute passed in 
 1358, we find it asserted as a notorious fact, that the nobi- 
 lity and commoners alike were deterred from sending their 
 sons to the university by this very cause, and it was enacted 
 that if any Mendicant should induce, or cause to be induced, 
 any member of the university under eighteen years of age to 
 join the said friars, or should in any way assist in his abduc- 
 tion, no graduate belonging to the cloister or society of 
 which such friar was a member should be permitted to 
 pive or attend lectures in Oxford or elsewhere for the year 
 ensuing 2 . 
 
 It may be questioned whether, at any period in our mo- 
 dern era, the spirit of cooperation has been more active in 
 this country than it was in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
 turies. The rapid spread of the religious orders, and the 
 numerous gilds among the laity attest its remarkable power ; 
 but, save for the purposes of propagandism, as among the 
 Mendicants, we rarely find this principle developing a novel 
 
 Cooper, Annali, i 109. Anstey, Munimenta Acadrmica, i 201-5.
 
 EARLY FOUNDATIONS. 223 
 
 conception. The gilds of the Middle Ages, -while sometimes CHAP. in. 
 subserving the purposes of superstition, were mostly societies J!^!_L 
 for the protection of the presumed interests of a class or of a 
 branch of industiy; they represented the traditions and pre- 
 judices rather than the advanced thought and enlightenment 
 of the time. It is therefore no matter for surprise that the 
 foundation of our colleges was left to the philanthropy of a 
 few illustrious individuals, and that it was not until the 
 example thus set had been six times repeated in our OAvn 
 university, that it occurred to any corporate bodies to com- 
 bine for a like purpose. 
 
 So early as the twelfth century, in the year 1135, the Foundation 
 * . f tlie Hos " 
 
 Frosts, an ancient and charitable family in Cambridge, S 1 ^}, /,,^ 
 
 founded there a hospital dedicated to St. John the Evan- Ev u s diA 
 gelist, under the management of Augustinian Canons. Tra- 
 dition has assigned to Nigellus, the second bishop of Ely, 
 the honour of the foundation, but in the list of benefactors 
 the name of Eustachius, the fifth bishop of that see, stands 
 earliest, and this must be accepted as conclusive against the 
 
 claim put forward on behalf of his predecessor. The bene- Eu 
 factions of Eustachius were of a princely character, and the "97 isia. 
 privileges he obtained for the new foundation added largely 
 to its importance. His example was followed by his sue- ^"mow 
 cessors in the bishopric ; by Hugh Norwold, who obtained J^-ios*. 
 for the foundation exemption from taxation (a material 
 relief at that period) in respect of two houses near St. Peter's 
 Church ; and by William of Kilkenny, the founder of our wiiiiam of 
 earliest university exhibition. William of Kilkenny was Jj?^^ 
 succeeded in the bishopric by Hugh Balsham. Hugh Bal- Hugh 
 
 liaMrmi 
 
 sham was a monk and subprior of Ely, and his election to ^-'l^ 
 
 the vacant see has a special interest, for it represents the 
 
 installation of a bishop through local influence in opposition 
 
 to the nominee of both the Crown and the archbishop, the 
 
 representative of a Benedictine community, in preference to 
 
 the foremost ' Franciscan of his day. It was the monks of 
 
 Ely who elected Hugh Balsham; the King quashed the His disputed 
 
 J election. 
 
 election and nominated Adam de Marisco 1 . 'A proceeding,' 
 1 'Dominus Rex, qni dominum Henricum de Wengham, sigilli sui
 
 224 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. in. says Matthew Paris, ' which excited the wonder of all ; for 
 neither the election nor the elected could be condemned 
 w ^ tu justice, nor any fault be found with the elect 1 .' It was 
 only by recourse to the usual bribery, and an expensive jour- 
 ney to Rome, that Hugh Balsham succeeded in obtaining 
 the papal confirmation of his election. It may possibly 
 appear to those who have read Professor Brewer's sketch of 
 the eminent Franciscan, that the friend of Grosseteste and 
 Simon de Montfort, and the founder of a distinguished 
 school of thinkers at Oxford, would have added more to the 
 lustre of the episcopal chair. But we must not forget that 
 Adam de Marisco was chiefly distinguished in connexion 
 with the Franciscan party, and we can hardly imagine that 
 the interests of his order would not have influenced him in 
 his capacity of diocesan. We may feel assured that he 
 would never have become, what Hugh Balsham became, the 
 founder of our first Cambridge college. He was moreover at 
 this time a worn out man, and died within twelvemonths of 
 the election; while Hugh Balsham filled the see of Ely for 
 nearly thirty years. Though therefore the Benedictine prior 
 might not compare with the Doctor Illustris* for genius and 
 varied learning, we can well understand that as a Cam- 
 bridgeshire man 3 , with strong local sympathies, and an 
 
 bajulnm, promovere cupiebat, speci- ciens ad custodiendum et tuendum 
 
 ales literas supplicatorias et Bolennes nobilem episcopatum Elyeusem, et 
 
 nuncios conventui Elyensi direxit; iusulam, qune ab antiquo asylum exti- 
 
 petens urgcnter et instanter, ut die- tit refngii omnibus oppressis tempore 
 
 turn domiuum Henricum in episco- tribulationis.' Ibid. p. 950. 
 
 pnm et suarum eligerent pastorem * The claim of Adam de Marisco 
 
 iininmruni. Conventus antem con- to this title is, Prof. Brewer observes, 
 
 hirlerans notitiam Bui supprioris, Be- hardly borne out by his letters, his 
 
 cuudumillud ethicum: Ignotumtibi only extant writings; but he quotes 
 
 til noli pra-ponere notis, ipsum me- from the Opue Tertium the emphatic 
 
 moratum mmm Priorcm, Hugonem testimony borne by lloger Bacon to 
 
 videlicet de Belesale, in suum episco- the attainments of his illustrious 
 
 pum elegerunt.' Paris, Hist. Major, brother Franciscan. See Monutnenta 
 
 ed. Wats, p. 930. Franciscana, Pref. p. c. 
 
 Super quo facto mirati sunt s Balsham, a village about ten 
 
 cnncti audientes, quia electus nee miles to the east of Cambridge, was 
 
 electio reprobari de jure poterat, nee formerly one of the manor seats of 
 
 in eisdem ritium rept-riri. Bed prne- the bishopric of Ely, and Simon 
 
 varicatoreH, qua-rentos nodnm in scir- Montacuto resided there. Fuller re- 
 
 po, et angulum in circulo, imircsue- marks that it was customary at this 
 
 runt ei quod simplex claustralis fuit, period for clergymen to take their 
 
 noc de negociis wecularibus exercita- surname from the place of their 
 
 tua vel expertus, et penitua insuffi- birth. In the accounts of the Pre-
 
 HUGH BALSHAM. 225 
 
 eminently practical turn for grappling with the defects and CI * AP - m - 
 evils which he saw around him, his merits may have *-*-' 
 appeared to many to outweigh even the fame and influence 
 of the Franciscan leader. 
 
 Some three and twenty years elapsed before the new 
 bishop of Ely founded Peterhouse, years during which he 
 was acquiring a real knowledge of the state of the neigh- 
 bouring university ; and it would be difficult to point to any 
 patron of learning either at Oxford or at Cambridge who 
 has combined with such enlightened activity such generous 
 self abnegation. Other founders have equalled Hugh Bal- sham's merits 
 sham in munificence and in earnestness, but mostly where strator. 
 they have established a claim to gratitude they have sought 
 to assert a corresponding authority. It was this prelate's 
 distinguishing merit that he could at once voluntarily sur- 
 render his powers of interference and increase his benefac- 
 tions ; be more a helper and yet less a dictator ; could cede 
 the ancient claims of his predecessors to control and com- 
 mand, and yet labour on in the same field where those 
 claims had been asserted ; preferring rather to survive as a 
 fellow-worker than as a lawgiver in the memory of a grate- 
 ful posterity. Of this spirit a signal instance is afforded us ^ e t , c n ,^^. 
 in the letters which he issued in the year 1275, whereby he OTOJ"^. 
 distinctly limited the jurisdiction claimed by former bishops, diction - 
 and extended that of the chancellor of the university, by 
 requiring that all suits in the university should be brought 
 before that functionary, and restricting his own authority as 
 bishop to the power of receiving appeals 1 . 
 
 In the following year, when he was called upon to adjust Hisequi- 
 
 3 J J table decision 
 
 a dispute between his own archdeacon and the authorities of ^deacon 
 the university, his decision was given in the same spirit, ^ity? um " 
 The archdeacon, it appears, not only claimed jurisdiction over 
 the churches in Cambridge as lying within the diocese, but 
 .also, through the Master of the Glomerels, whose nomination 
 
 center of Ely Cathedral, in the year supplement to Beutham, Hist, of Ely 
 
 1329, vre have the following entry: Cathedral, pp. 51, 86. 
 
 ' The Precentor, going to Balsham, * Dyer, Privileges of the Univ. i 8. 
 to enquire for books, 6 s . 7 d .' See 
 
 15
 
 226 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. in. was vested in the archdeaconry, laid claim to other authority 
 ^v " which threatened to encroach upon the rights of the chan- 
 cellor. The Glomerels, as we have already seen, constituted 
 a body distinct from the scholars of the university, and it 
 became necessary definitely to mark out the limits of the 
 jurisdiction exercised by the heads of the two bodies. Hugh 
 . Balsham's decision was clear and equitable. He decided that 
 
 the Magister Glomerice should be arbiter of all disputes con- 
 fined to the Glomerels themselves, or between Glomerels and 
 townsmen, but that whenever a dispute had arisen between 
 Glomerels and scholars there should be a power of appeal 
 from the decision of that functionary to the chancellor 1 . On 
 other points, such as the jurisdiction over university ser- 
 vants, over priests resident at Cambridge merely as cele- 
 brants, and priests resident for the purpose of study, the 
 bishop's decisions are equally clear and deserving of com- 
 mendation; but the most important is undoubtedly that in 
 confirmation of a statute previously passed by the chancellor 
 mui?TiS^- an( l mas ters, ' that no one should receive a scholar who has 
 tiieuniver- en n t- had a fixed master within thirteen days after the said 
 scholar had entered the university, or who had not taken 
 care that his name had been within the time aforesaid 
 inserted in the matriculation book of his master, unless the 
 master's absence or legitimate occupation should have pre- 
 vented the same.' To this 'commendable and wholesome* 
 statute, as he terms it (statutum laudabile et salubre), the 
 bishop gives his hearty sanction. ' In fact,' he further adds, 
 'if any such person be found to remain under the name of a 
 scholar, he shall be either expelled or detained, according to 
 the King's pleasure.' It will be readily allowed that the 
 
 1 ' It appears from the perusal of over and read (to have the tutela et 
 
 these very remarkable documents, regimen) in those schools, receiving 
 
 that the master of ^lomery received from the scholars or glomerelll the 
 
 his appointment and institution from accustomed collects or fees; that he 
 
 the archdeacon of Ely, to whose ju- was also attended by his proper be- 
 
 risdiction the regulation and colla- dell (now said to be the yeoman be- 
 
 tion of the schools of grammar of the dell), and that he exercised over his 
 
 university prescriptively belonged; glomerells the usual jurisdiction of 
 
 that he was required to swear obedi- regent masters over their scholars.' 
 
 ence to the archdeacon and his offi- Dean Peacock, Observations on the 
 
 cials : that it was his duty to preside Statutes, Appendix A.
 
 PETERHOUSE. 227 
 
 arbitrator in matters requiring such careful investigation as CHAP. IIL 
 the foregoing, must have had ample opportunities for a clear >-^-^ 
 insight into the defects and wants of the university, nor can 
 we doubt that the knowledge thus gained found expression 
 in the design which he shortly afterwards carried into exe- 
 cution. 'His affection for learning, and the state of the 
 poor scholars who were much put to it for conveniency of 
 lodging from the high rents exacted by the townsmen,' being 
 the causes assigned by the chronicler as weighing with Hugh 
 Balsham in his new endeavour 1 . 
 
 If we adopt the account accepted by so trustworthy a ^.^^ Iar 
 guide as Baker, his efforts were first directed towards a t 8 heH a o7 P rta? 
 fusion of those two elements which Walter de Merton had u^E^n- 
 striven to keep distinct. ' Having first obtained the King's ge 
 license and the consent of the brethren, he brought in and 
 engrafted secular scholars upon the old stock (the Hospital 
 of St. John the Evangelist), endowing them in common 
 with the religious brethren, as well with the revenues of the 
 old house, as with additional revenues, granted with regard 
 to, and in contemplation of his new foundation ; and so the 
 regular canons and secular scholars became unum corpus et 
 ununi collegium, and were the first endowed college in this 
 university, and possibly in any other university whatever 2 .' 
 The attempted combination was not successful. ' The scho- Failure or 
 
 this combina- 
 
 lars,' observes Baker, ' were too wise, and the brethren pos- ^* 
 sibly over good;' and Hugh Balsham, after vainly endea- 
 vouring to allay the strife that sprang up between the two 
 bodies, was compelled to take measures for their separation. 
 
 1 Additions to Camden, col. 412, sooner, and my reason is this, be- 
 quoted in Bentham, p. 150. cause they are said by Simon Mon- 
 
 2 Hist, of the College of St. John tacute (who knew very well) to have 
 the Evangelist, by Thomas Baker, continued here per longa tempora, 
 edited by John E. B. Mayor, M.A. i which in no construction of words 
 22. 'The precise time when this can be understood otherwise, than 
 was done, or how long they continued that they were placed here very early, 
 together, does not so clearly appear ; and towards the beginning of Hugh 
 for though the license to this pur- Balsham's prelacy at Ely: for that 
 pose was obtained from Edward the they were here before he was bishop, 
 First an. regn. nono, Decembr. 27, I can hardly imagine, he having no- 
 aud there might be no full and tho- thing to do with the government of 
 rough settlement till this time, yet I the house before he was bishop.' 
 am apt to believe they were placed Ibid, i 22, 23. 
 
 here (though not fully settled) much 
 
 152
 
 228 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. HL Such a proceeding involved, of course, a division of the com- 
 mon property, and the canons, who appear to have been 
 most anxious for the separation, were considerable losers by 
 t^e result. They resigned to the secular scholars the impro- 
 priation of St. Peter's Church with the two adjourning hos- 
 ctmicta wttb- tels already mentioned, receiving in return a hostel near the 
 teuton gates. Dominican foundation, afterwards known as Hud's Hostel, 
 and some old houses in the vicinity of the hospital. To the 
 two hostels of which they had thus become the sole proprie- 
 tors, the secular scholars removed in the year 1284, and there 
 f rme d the separate foundation of Peterhouse. But though 
 mi to ^at ancient foundation undoubtedly belongs the honour 
 of having first represented the Cambridge college, as a sepa- 
 rate and distinct institution, to the Hospital of St. John the 
 Evangelist belongs the credit of having first nurtured the 
 collegiate conception 1 . 'No doubt,' says Baker, 'our good 
 bishop was much grieved with these divisions ; but could he 
 have foreseen, that this broken and imperfect society was to 
 give birth to two great and lasting foundations, and that two 
 colleges were to be built upon one, he would have had much 
 joy in his disappointment 2 .' Within another quarter of a 
 century the foundation of Peterhouse was further enriched 
 by an unexpected addition. The immunities and influence 
 enjoyed by the Franciscans and Dominicans had excited the 
 emulation of not a few rival sects, until at length the Church 
 found it necessary to set bounds to a movement which 
 threatened to terminate in disaster from a too complete suc- 
 ji 6 *)*- cess. At the second Council of Lyons, held in 1274, it was 
 ofu, decked tnat on jy t ^ e f our ^. esii or( ] ers O f Friars should 
 
 henceforth be recognised, the other sects being formally sup- 
 
 ' It may even be urged,' observes possessions, may justly be accounted 
 
 Mr. Cooper, ' tbat St. John's college the first of our present colleges. ' Ba- 
 
 i of superior antiquity to any other, ker-Mayor, n 561. 
 
 u- the Hospital of St. John, on the a Ibid. p. 26. ' By his last will he 
 
 site of which it stands and with the left to his scholars many books in 
 
 revenues whereof it in endowed, al- divinity and other sciences, and 300 
 
 though a religious house, was also a marks for erecting new buildings ; 
 
 house of learning, its members being with which sum they purchased a 
 
 entitled to academic degrees.' Me- piece of ground on the south side of 
 
 Mortab,n3,noto. So Cole, who says, the said church, where they built a 
 
 t Johns college, now grafted on very fine hall.' MS. Harleian, 258, 
 
 that hospital, and still enjoying its quoted in Bentham, p. 161.
 
 PETEttHOUSE. 229 
 
 pressed. Among these was the order De Poenitentia Jesu, CITAP. m. 
 the site of whose foundation at Cambridge came into the --^-^ 
 possession of Peterhouse in the year 1309; the earliest 
 instance of that species of conversion which so largely aug- 
 mented the resources of the universities at a later era. 
 
 The example- set by Hugh Balsham was worthily followed 
 by Simon Montacute or Montague, his successor in the i 
 bishopric. The first efforts of this prelate were directed to a 
 more equitable adjustment of the terms on which the canons 
 and the scholars had parted company, for the dissatisfaction 
 of the former found unremitting and clamorous expression ; 
 the society at Peterhouse was confirmed in its possession of 
 the two hostels, but subjected to an annual payment of 
 twenty shillings to the brethren of St. John's. If we further 
 pursue the fortunes of these two foundations, we shall with 
 difficulty avoid the conclusion that their separation repre- |. 
 sented a real and radical inaffinity. Both became enriched 
 by valuable endowments; but under the management of the 
 canons the fortunes of their house dwindled, while the merits 
 of the scholars of Peterhouse attracted further munificence 
 to their foundation. Of the former, Baker tells us, a com- 
 mission appointed in the reign of Richard II reported how 
 ' by the neglect of the warden the number of students had 
 become diminished;' 'lands, rents, and possessions granted 
 them by Edward in wasted and destroyed;' ' charters, books, 
 jewels and other monuments, goods and chattels, alienated 
 and sold by the warden and his ministers or servants;' how 
 'debates, dissensions, and discords' had arisen betwixt the 
 master and students, ' so that the students led a desolate life 
 and could by no means attend to learning and study 1 .' 
 Very different is the account concerning Peterhouse, within 
 a few years of the above report ; for from the same writer we 
 learn how that John Fordham, bishop of Ely, ' having com- 
 passion of their case, and a tender regard to their notorious 
 indigence, as likewise with regard to their celebrated virtues, 
 as well as continued and unwearied exercise in discipline 
 and strudy, and as an inexpugnable bulwark against the per- 
 
 1 Baker-Mayor, i 37.
 
 230 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. m. verse and sacrilegious doctrines then prevailing,' made over 
 J[i!^L to them the church of Hinton, as a college property 1 . The 
 former foundation regained its exclusively religious cha- 
 racter; shared the corruption and degeneracy that mark 
 nearly all the religious foundations from the thirteenth to 
 the sixteenth century ; and was finally dissolved in the reign 
 of Henry vili, to be converted into the college that now 
 bears its name 2 . The college of Peterhouse, on the other 
 hand, developed the secular conception, and, further aug- 
 mented by the wise munificence of its masters, sent forth, 
 during the same three centuries, many well-trained scholars 
 and not a few able men; offering, in both its utility and 
 vitality, a marked contrast to the institution from which it 
 sprang. 
 
 It must be regarded as a signal proof of the moderation 
 of Simon Montacute, that he resigned to the college the 
 valuable right he possessed, in virtue of his office, of pre- 
 
 Peterh'ffuse. _. *". . . , 
 
 sen ting students to the fellowships , an act conceived in a 
 very different spirit to that displayed by some of his suc- 
 cessors a century later, when the encroachments of the see 
 of Ely gave rise to the famous Barnwell Process. But the 
 most eminent service rendered by this prelate to the new 
 foundation, was undoubtedly the body of statutes which he 
 caused to be drawn up for its government. To the con- 
 sideration of these we shall now proceed. We shall very 
 shortly, it is true, find a body of college statutes of yet more 
 ancient date engaging our attention, but, as the statutes 
 itaatarM. given by bishop Montacute appear to have faithfully reflected 
 the design and motives of the founder, there seems good 
 reason for regarding them as the embodiment of the earliest 
 conception under which our college life and discipline found 
 expression. 
 
 That the statutes of Peterhouse have no claim to origi- 
 nality has been already observed ; the phrase ad instar AulcB 
 
 \ Baker-Mayor, i 39. to th e university, he was commemo- 
 
 rated in the ancient formulary of 
 
 r which particular favour, as commemorating and praying for our 
 well M for privileges granted by him benefactors.' Ibid, i 33. 
 
 thoMof Mcr 
 Oxford.
 
 PETEIU10USE. 231 
 
 de Merton meets us at almost every page 1 . The second sta- CHAP. IIL 
 tute affords a definite exposition of the purpose of Hugh ^^L, 
 Balsham, as interpreted by his successor, ' of providing, as 
 far as lay in his power, for the security of a suitable main- 
 tenance for poor scholars desirous of instruction in the know- 
 ledge of letters.' A master and fourteen perpetual fellows 2 , SjndSS^Jd 
 ' studiously engaged in the pursuit of literature,' represent mS am* 
 
 the body supported on the foundation; the 'pensioner' ofiowg. 
 
 later times being, of course, at this period, already provided 
 
 for by the hostel. In case of a vacancy among the fellows r ^j, e tho 
 
 'the most able bachelor in logic' is designated as the one on ment^u'lr- 
 
 whom, ceteris paribus, the election is to fall, the other fow. n * 
 
 requirements being that, 'so far as human frailty admit,' he 
 
 be ' honorable, chaste, peaceable, humble, and modest.' The ^orai qua ii- 
 
 7 . flcations. 
 
 'scholars of Ely,' for by this name they were first known, 
 
 were bound to devote themselves to the ' study of arts, Ari- studies. 
 
 ntotle, canon law, or theology;' but, as at Mertou, the basis 
 
 of a sound liberal education was to be laid before the study 
 
 of theology was entered upon ; two were to be admitted to 
 
 the study of the civil and canon law; one, to that of medi- 
 
 cine. When any fellow was about -to incept in any faculty it Enquiries 
 
 f 11 preliminary 
 
 devolved upon the master with the rest of the fellows to f a ^''oiar's 
 
 incepting in 
 
 enquire in what manner he had conducted himself and gone any facult y- 
 through his exercises in the scholastic acts; how long he had 
 heard lectures in the faculty in which he desired to incept; 
 and whether he had gone through the forms according to 
 the statutes of the university. The sizar of later times is 
 recognised in the provision that, if the funds of the founda- 
 tion permit, the master and the two deans shall select two 
 
 1 The date assigned to these sta- foundation were known as the *c//o- 
 
 tutes in the Statuta Antiqua is 1338, lars: but in order to avoid the erro- 
 
 but internal evidence shows that neons impression which the use of 
 
 some of them are at least four years the latter term would be calculated 
 
 later. In the 35th statute reference to give, I have employed the other 
 
 is made to the provincial constitu- throughout. Judging from a passage 
 
 tion of Archbishop Stratford which in Chaucer, they were occasionally 
 
 belongs to the year 1342. The sig- called fellows in his day: 
 
 nature of Simon Montacute appears ' Oure corne is stole, men woll us 
 
 to have been given on the ninth of fooles call 
 
 April, 1344. Both the warden, and our fellowes 
 
 * At first the fellows of a college all.' Reve's Tale,
 
 232 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. m. or three youths 'indigent scholars well grounded in Latin* 
 I^-L* (jwvewes tncKgrewtes sc/ioares in grammatica notabiliter fun- 
 poorKho- dafog^ to be maintained, 'as long as may seem fit,' by the 
 college alms ; such poor scholars being bound to attend upon 
 the master and fellows in church, on feast days, and at other 
 ceremonial occasions, to serve the master and fellows at 
 common! 8 ^ seasonable times at table and in their rooms. All meals 
 were to be taken in common ; but it would seem that this 
 regulation was intended rather to conduce towards an econo- 
 mical management, than enacted in any spirit of studied 
 conformity to the monastic life, for, adds the statute, 'the 
 scholars shall patiently support this manner of living, until 
 their means shall, under God's favour, have received more 
 plentiful increase 1 .' 
 
 We shall be able, in a future chapter, to avail ourselves 
 of many of the interesting details observable in these sta- 
 tutes, which we shall here pass by; but one of the statutes, 
 relating to the dress of the scholars, though appertaining 
 to a minor point, affords such pertinent illustration of the 
 whole conception of the founder, that it seems to demand a 
 notice in this general outline. 
 
 Among other features that illustrate the character of the 
 clergy at this period, is one which forcibly attests how largely 
 they then intermingled with the laity and how little restraint 
 their calling imposed on their mode of life, their disregard 
 wdTe?Jtios e f the dress held proper to the profession. At the universi- 
 ties this licence had reached its highest point. The students, 
 we quote from Mr. Cooper, * disdaining, the tonsure, the dis- 
 tinctive mark of their order, wore their hair either hanging 
 down on their shoulders in an effeminate manner, or curled 
 and powdered: they had long beards, and their apparel more 
 resembled that of soldiers than of priests; they were attired 
 in cloaks with furred edges, long hanging sleeves not cover- 
 ing their elbows, shoes chequered with red and green, and 
 tippets of an unusual length; their fingers were decorated 
 with rings, and at their waists they wore large and costly 
 girdles enamelled with figures and gilt; to these girdles 
 
 1 Document i, ir 1 42.
 
 PETEilHOUSE. 233 
 
 hung knives like swords 1 .' In order to repress sucli laxity of CHAP. ift. 
 discipline an order was issued in the year 1342 by Arch- ^J^-l ' 
 bishop Stratford, whereby every student in the university ArehbWiop 
 was rendered incapable of any ecclesiastical degree or honour with'refer- 
 until he should have reformed his 'person and apparel;' and 
 it is with express reference to this order that the following 
 statute of Peterhouse appears to have been drawn up : 
 
 'Inasmuch as the dress, demeanour and carriage 
 
 itc of 
 rhouae. 
 
 scholars are evidences of themselves, and by such means it is 
 seen more clearly or may be presumed what they themselves 
 are internally, we enact and ordain, that the master and all 
 and each of the scholars of our house shall adopt the clerical 
 dress and tonsure, as becomes the condition of each, and 
 wear it conformably in every respect, as far as they conve- 
 niently can, and not allow their beard or their hair to grow 
 contrary to canonical prohibition, nor wear rings upon their 
 ringers for their own vain glory and boasting and to the per- 
 nicious example and scandal of others 2 .' 
 
 Similarly, as it was forbidden the clergy to play at dice, The founda- 
 
 J ... t ion nqn-uio- 
 
 so is the same pastime forbidden the ' scholars of Ely.' On n ** tic in it . 
 
 J character.lmt 
 
 the other hand the non-monastic purposes of the founder ^In^rit 
 are insisted upon with equal explicitness ; should either the the'monaiuc 
 master or one of the fellows desire to enter any of the r 
 approved monastic orders, it is provided that a year of grace 
 shall be given him, but that after that, another shall be 
 elected in his place, inasmuch as the revenues of the foun- 
 dation are designed for those only who are actual students 
 and desirous of making progress (pro actualiter studentibus 
 et prof cere wlentibus 3 }. No clearer evidence could be desired 
 that while, as in the case of Merton college, it was the 
 design of the founder to provide assistance for students 
 unfettered by the necessity of embracing the monastic life, 
 nothing hostile to monasticism was intended; but as it was 
 not the object of Hugh Balsham to found a monastery, the 
 college was no home for the monk. If we add to the fore- 
 going features that afforded by the statute which provides, 
 that on any fellow succeeding to a benefice of the annual 
 1 Cooper's Annah, i 95. * Documents, n 72. 3 Ibid, n 33.
 
 234 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 cit.vp. in. value of one hundred shillings, he shall, after a year's grace, 
 >-^L^ vacate his fellowship, we shall have enumerated the princi- 
 pal points in these concise and simple statutes 1 . 
 
 r^icHA *"- -A- 11 interval of forty years separates the commencement 
 
 Bomim of Michaelhouse from that of Peterhouse. In the year 1324 
 we find Hervey de Stanton, chancellor of the exchequer, and 
 canon of Bath and Wells, obtaining from Edward II permis- 
 sion to found at Cambridge, where, as the preamble informs 
 us, exercitium studii fulgere dinoscitur, the college of the 
 
 t^ooii- ' scholars of St. Michael.' Though itself of later date, yet, as 
 
 chaclhouse 
 given by He 
 vey de Stan 
 
 givm b U Hcr. an illustration of early college discipline, Michaelhouse is, 
 
 in point of fact, of greater antiquity than Peterhouse, for 
 the statutes given at the time of its creation preceded those 
 given by Simon Montacute to the latter society by at least 
 years. The foundation itself has long been merged 
 a niore illustrious society, but its original statutes are still 
 extant, and are therefore the earliest embodiment of the col- 
 lege conception, as it found expression in our own univer- 
 sity 2 . Their perusal will at once suggest that they were 
 drawn up in a somewhat less liberal spirit than presents 
 prominence itself in the code of Hugh Balsham. The monk and the 
 
 (firen to ccle- 
 
 n|riou"wr. re " fri ar are excluded from the society, but the rule of Merton is 
 feno 8 w b s! thl not mentioned. It is in honour of the holy and undivided 
 Trinity, of the blessed Mary, ever a Virgin, of St. Michael 
 the Archangel, and all the saints, that the foundation stone 
 is laid ; the fellows are to be priests or at least in sacris ordi- 
 nibus constitute ; they must have taught in the liberal arts or 
 in philosophy, or be at least bachelors incepting in those 
 branches, who intend ultimately to devote themselves to the 
 study of theology; the celebration of service at the neigh- 
 
 1 ' These statutes,' observes Dean printed, and as the earliest college 
 Peacock, ' present a very remarkable statutes of our university have con- 
 contrast to many of the later codes sequently seemed deserving of inser- 
 of statutes, which attempted to regu- tion in extenso: see Appendix (D). 
 late and control nearly every trans- I have printed them from a trans- 
 action in life, and which embodied cript of the original in Ottringham, 
 nearly every enactment which the or the Michaelhouse Book, now in 
 experience of other and more ancient the possession of the authorities of 
 bodies had shown to be sometimes Trinity college. There is also a 
 required.' Obtervations on the Sta- copy of these statutes in Baker MSS. 
 tutes, p. 110. xjx 7. XXXI !60. 
 
 3 These statutes have never been
 
 M1CHAELHOUSE. 235 
 
 bouving church of St. Michael is provided for with great CHAP. m. 
 minuteness ; the services to be performed are specified. So 
 much prominence, indeed, is given to this part of the foun- 
 der's instructions, that he deems it necessary to explain 
 that it is in no way his intention to prejudice the study of 
 secular learning: 'It is not,' he says, 'my design herein to 
 burden any of the officiating scholars with the performance 
 of masses, as aforesaid, beyond his convenient opportunity, 
 so as to prevent a due attention to lectures, disputations in 
 the schools, or private study; but I have considered that 
 such matters must be left to individual discretion 1 .' It is 
 required that the fellows shall pray daily for ' the state of 
 the whole Church,' and ' the peace and tranquillity of the 
 realm,' for the welfare of the king, of the queen Isabella, *of 
 Prince Edward and the rest of the royal family, of the lord 
 bishop of Ely, of the prior and convent of Ely, of the foun- 
 der and his family. The consent of the bishop of the dio- 
 cese had, like that of the reigning monarch, been necessary ; 
 and if, as from the tenour of different statutes appears pro- 
 bable, the general scheme of the new foundation had been 
 drawn up under the auspices of John Hotham, who at that 
 time filled the episcopal chair, the prominence given to the 
 religious services to be observed will be rendered more in- 
 telligible. That bishop, though a prelate of distinguished 
 ability, unlike Hugh Balsham, directed his efforts almost 
 exclusively to enriching and strengthening the monastic 
 foundations of his diocese, and left it to Simon Montacute, his 
 successor, to assist in the developement of the more secular 
 theory 2 . 
 
 The regulations concerning a common table, a distinctive 
 dress, and other details of discipline to be found in these 
 statutes, offer but few points of difference when compared 
 with those of Peterhouse, but many matters are unprovided 
 
 1 Compare note 5 p. 249. that adduced by Baker, namely his 
 
 8 ' An active prelate,' says Baker, interference in connexion with St. 
 
 ' and concerned himself in every- John's Hospital, in fixing the mode 
 
 thing that fell within the compass of of the election of the prior of that 
 
 his jurisdiction.' (Baker-Mayor, i house. Cf. Bentham, Hist, of Ely 
 
 31). I fail to find any other proof of Cathedral, pp. 156158. 
 his interest in the university than
 
 236 * EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. m. for concerning which the code of the latter college is circum- 
 >-J^!-^ stantial and explicit, while there is nothing to indicate that 
 the example of Walter de Merton was present to the mind 
 of Hervey de Stanton. 
 
 Th e two foundations which next claim our attention, that 
 of Pembroke Hall in 1347, and that of Gonville Hall in 
 1350, afford satisfactory evidence that the college was not 
 necessarily regarded as an institution hostile to the religious 
 
 Marie de st orders ; the former owed its creation to Marie de St. Paul, a 
 warm friend of the Franciscans; while the latter was founded 
 by Edmund Gonville, an equally warm friend of the Domi- 
 
 2JK* nicans. The allusion in Gray's Installation Ode, where in 
 
 jS. edtoby enumerating 
 
 All that on Granta's fruitful plain 
 Eich streams of regal bounty poured,' 
 
 the poet, himself a Pembroke man, designates the foundress 
 of his college, as 
 
 ' sad Chatillon, on her bridal morn 
 That wept her bleeding love,' 
 
 is founded on a mere fiction 1 ; but it is certain that the 
 untimely loss of her chivalrous husband first turned the 
 thoughts of Marie de St. Paul, better known as Mary de 
 Valence*, to deeds like that to which Pembroke College owes 
 its rise. Large endowments to a nunnery of Minoresses at 
 Waterbeach, and the foundation of Deney Abbey, had fully 
 
 1 ' However premature his death wife, and widow, her husband having 
 
 may have been, it assuredly did not been killed by a jousting on the very 
 
 take place so soon as our poet repre- day of his marriage. The date of 
 
 Bents. Not that he is chargeable his marriage being however ascer- 
 
 with the invention of this interesting tained the mere detail of subsequent 
 
 tale. Ho only relates what was and events occurring during his lifetime 
 
 is to this day currently believed to will at once prove the whole account 
 
 be true. And perhaps the lovers of to be a fable.' Memoirs of Marie de 
 
 poetry and romance, who have been St. Paul, pp. 26 28. By Gilbert 
 
 accustomed to indulge a feeling of Ainslie, Master of Pembroke College, 
 
 sympathy for the unhappy lot of Cambridge, 1847. I am indebted to 
 
 this bereaved lady, would rather that the courtesy of the present Master of 
 
 the illusion were not dispelled. The Pembroke, the Rev. J. Power, for ac- 
 
 historian of the sixteenth century, cess to this valuable and interesting 
 
 doubtless resting on the authority of manuscript. 
 
 monkish annals, and succeeding wri- * 'After her marriage she was 
 
 ters even to the present time, trearl- never known by any other surname 
 
 ing in their steps, state that she was than that of St. Paul.' Ibid. p. 87. 
 on one and the same day a virgin,
 
 PEMBROKE. 
 
 237 
 
 attested her liberality of disposition before the Aula seu CHAP. in. 
 Domus de Valencemarie arose. 
 
 It is much to be regretted that the earliest rule given to 
 the new foundation of Pembroke Hall is no longer extant 1 . { 
 A revised rule, of the conjectural date of 1366, and another 
 of perhaps not more than ten years later, are the sole data 
 whence the subjoined outline has been drawn up 2 . The 
 
 1 The preamble in Heywood, Ear~ 
 ly Statutes, p. 179, and that in Do- 
 cuments, n 192, are calculated to give 
 the impression that the statutes of 
 1347 are still extant ; but such is not 
 ttte case. 'Although no copy of them 
 is extant,' says Dr. Ainslie, ' yet it is 
 certain that they were enacted in the 
 year 1347, since the revised copy of 
 statutes, by which they were super- 
 seded, though itself wanting in date, 
 explicitly states that fact. The do- 
 cument containing the revised sta- 
 tutes is in the form of an indenture, 
 to one part of which remaining with 
 the college was affixed the seal of our 
 lady, and to the counterpart remain- 
 ing with her the seal of the college. 
 The part remaining with the college 
 was, upon a subsequent revision, can- 
 celled by cutting off the seal together 
 with the names of the witnesses. 
 The document never had a date. It 
 may be conjectured to be about the 
 year 1366. The like want of a date 
 throws the same uncertainty over 
 the time at which the second revi- 
 sion was made. All perhaps that 
 can be affirmed with certainty is that 
 it was not made later than the year 
 1420. Thus much at least there is 
 internal evidence to prove, if not in- 
 deed that it was made by the foun- 
 dress herself, that is, before March 
 17, 13767.' Ibid. p. 89. 
 
 2 The following succinct outline 
 from the pen of Dr. Aiuslie gives the 
 substance of the two codes: 'The 
 house was to be called the Hall or 
 House of Valence Marie, and was to 
 contain thirty scholars, more or less, 
 according to the revenues of the col- 
 lege; of whom twenty-four, denomi- 
 nated fellows, were to be greater and 
 permanent; and the remaining six, 
 being students in grammar or arts, 
 to be less, and at the times of elec- 
 tion either to be put out altogether 
 or else promoted to the permanent 
 
 class. If the whole number of fellows 
 was complete, six at least were to be 
 in holy orders; if there were twenty 
 there were to be at least four ; and if 
 twelve or upwards, there were to be 
 two for the performance of divine 
 service. These proportions were al- 
 tered in the next code thus : if there 
 were ten fellows or upwards, there 
 were to be at least six in orders ; and 
 four, if the number was less. 
 
 ' The fellows were to apply them- 
 selves solely to the faculty of arts or 
 theology ; the master might exercise 
 more than one faculty, according to 
 the judgement and approbation of 
 the two rectors. And when any one 
 should have finished his lectures in 
 arts, he was to betake himself to the- 
 ology. 
 
 ' The head of the college was to be 
 elected by the fellows and to be dis- 
 tinguished by the title of Keeper of 
 the House ; and he was to have a lo- 
 cum tenens. 
 
 ' There were to be annually elected 
 two rectors, the one a Friar Minor, 
 the other a secular, who should have 
 taken degrees in the university. They 
 were to admit fellows elect, and to 
 have visitorial jurisdiction, which 
 after the death of the foundress they 
 were to exercise even over the sta- 
 tutes with the consent of the college. 
 
 ' The later code however did not 
 recognise the rectors at all, but ap- 
 propriated their several duties to the 
 master either alone or in conjunction 
 with two or more of the fellows ; sav- 
 ing only the power of control over the 
 statutes, which, though reserved to 
 the foundress during her life without 
 any limitation, was not vested in any 
 one after her decease. 
 
 'And thus ended all connexion be- 
 tween the Franciscans and the col- 
 lege.***** 
 
 ' To return to the earlier code. In 
 the election of a fellow the prefer-
 
 238 
 
 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. in. points of contrast in those two later codes are however 
 deserving of close attention ; especially that whereby the 
 participation of the Franciscans in the management of the 
 , secured to them by the earlier statutes, is abolished 
 a second revision. The scholar, in the sense in which the 
 term is now used in the university, is also here first to be 
 met with; it being provided that six of the 'scholars' may 
 be minor scholars, eligible at elections to major scholarships, 
 L e. fellowships, or subject to removal. It is in connexion 
 with these six that we find, again, the standard of college 
 education so far lowered as to include Latin, (grammatica) ,. a 
 knowledge of which, as we have before had occasion to 
 observe, was generally looked upon as an essential pre- 
 requisite to a course of university study. Here, too, we 
 meet with the earliest formal recognition of the necessity of 
 providing against those local prejudices and partialities 
 which so often endangered the harmony of both university 
 
 included in 
 the college 
 course of 
 
 study. 
 
 elections to 
 fuilowihips. 
 
 ence was to be given to the most or- 
 derly, the best proficient in his stu- 
 dies, being withal freeborn and legi- 
 timate ; provided he were a bachelor 
 or sophist in arts, or at least had stu- 
 died three years in that faculty; and 
 he might be of any nation or realm, 
 that of France especially, if there 
 should be found anyone of that coun- 
 try qualified, as above stated, in either 
 university of Cambridge or Oxford. 
 The number of fellows of any one 
 county was not to exceed six, nor the 
 fourth part of the fellows. The scho- 
 lars also might be elected indiffer- 
 ently from among the students of 
 Cambridge or Oxford. 
 
 ' The fellow elect was required to 
 Bwear that he had neither by inhe- 
 ritauce nor of his own means above 
 forty shillings a your to spend. By 
 the next code this Hum was doubled, 
 being made six murks. 
 
 ' The election of a fellow was not 
 confirmed by admission till after the 
 lapse of a year; and then the major 
 part of the fellows might withhold 
 hii< h confirmation. 
 
 ' Every fellow before admission 
 pledged himself to vacate his fellow- 
 nhip as soon as ever he was promoted 
 to any more lucrative place, unless 
 
 previously to such promotion he had 
 become master ; for the master was 
 allowed to hold any preferment com- 
 patible with his office. The next 
 code did away with the year of pro- 
 bation, and directed that the pledge 
 should be to vacate on the expiration 
 of one year after such promotion as 
 would enable the fellow to expend 
 above six marks ; unless promoted in 
 the meantime to the mastership. 
 Beside taking an oath of fidelity to 
 the college aud of obedience to the 
 statutes, each fellow swore that, if 
 ever expelled from the society, he 
 would Biibmit to the sentence with- 
 out any remedy at law. 
 
 'In the choice of scholars those 
 were to lie preferred, who came duly 
 qualified from the parishes pertaining 
 to the college rectories; but there 
 were not to be more than two of the 
 game consanguinity. 
 
 'And as her final Vale, the foun- 
 dress solemnly adjures the fellows to 
 give on all occasions their best coun- 
 sel and aid to the abbess and sisters 
 of Deney, who had from her a com- 
 mon origin with them ; and she ad- 
 monishes them further to be kind, 
 devoted, and grateful to all religious, 
 especially to the Friars Minor.'
 
 GONVILLE HALL. 239 
 
 and college life. In days when intercourse between widely CHAP. m. 
 severed localities was rare and difficult, the limits of coun- >-^-_- 
 ties not unfrequently represented differences greater than 
 now exist between nations separated by seas. The student 
 from Lincolnshire spoke a different dialect, had different 
 blood in his veins, and different experiences in his whole 
 early life, from those of the student from Cumberland or the 
 student from Kent. Distinctions equally marked character- 
 ised the native of Somersetshire and the native of Essex, 
 Hereford, or Yorkshire. When brought therefore into con- 
 tact at a common centre, at a time when local traditions, 
 prejudices, and antipathies, operated with a force which it is 
 difficult now to realise, men from widely separated counties 
 were guided in the formation of their friendships by common 
 associations rather than by individual merit; and, in elec- 
 tions to fellowships, the question of North or South often 
 reduced to insignificance considerations drawn from the 
 comparative skill of dialecticians or learning of theologians. 
 That statute accordingly is no capricious enactment, but the 
 reflexion of a serious evil, which provides that the number of 
 fellows from a single county shall in no case exceed a fourth 
 of the whole body. Another provision is explained by the 
 descent and early life of the foundress. The countess had EP^^ 10 
 inherited from her father, John de Dreux, duke of Brittany, f^. of 
 extensive possessions in France; and it must be regarded 
 rather as a graceful recognition of the country of her birth 
 than as a national prejudice, that at a time when intercourse 
 between the two countries was so frequent, natives of France 
 belonging to either of the English universities were to be 
 entitled to preference in the election to fellowships. 
 
 The founder of the next college that claims our attention Foundation 
 
 , ,, . OfGoXTlLLB 
 
 was Edmund Gonville, a member of an ancient county family, HAtL - m8 - 
 a clergyman, and at one time vicar-general of the diocese of 
 Ely ; his sympathy with the Mendicants is indicated by the 
 fact that through his influence the earl Warren and the earl 
 of Lancaster were induced to create a foundation for the 
 Dominicans at Thetford. In the year 1348, only two years 
 before his death, he obtained from Edward in permission to
 
 240 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. m. establish in Lurteburgh lane 1 , now known as Freeschool lane, 
 -^^. a college for twenty scholars, dedicated in honour of the An- 
 nunciation of the Blessed Virgin 2 . 
 
 uiu^le*" The statutes given by Edmund Gonville are still extant, 
 
 l&nvlue! 1 " 1 ' but within two years of their compilation they were consi- 
 derably modified by other hands; they cannot therefore be 
 regarded as having long represented the rule of the new 
 foundation. Their chief value, for our present purpose, is in 
 the contrast they offer to the rule of another college, founded 
 at nearly the same time, that of Trinity Hall, to the con- 
 ception of which they were shortly to be assimilated. Ac- 
 cording to the design of Edmund Gonville, his college was 
 to represent the usual course of study included in the Tri- 
 vium or Quadrivium, as the basis of an almost exclusively 
 theological training. Each of the fellows was required to 
 nave studied, read, and lectured in logic, but on the comple- 
 * )logy ' tion of his course in arts, theology was to form the main 
 subject, his studies being also directed with a view to ena- 
 bling him to keep his acts and dispute with ability in the 
 schools. The unanimous consent of the master and fellows 
 was necessary before he could apply himself to any other 
 faculty, and not more than two at a time could be permitted 
 to deviate from the usual course. It was however permitted 
 to every fellow, though in no way obligatory upon him, to 
 devote two years to the study of the canon law 3 . 
 
 f re G m g scheme may accordingly be regarded as 
 an English clergyman of the fourteenth century, 
 
 ** tor) ' < actuated by the simple desire of doing something for the 
 encouragement of learning in his profession, and well ac- 
 quainted, from long residence in the diocese or in neighbour- 
 ing dioceses, with the special wants and shortcomings of his 
 order. It will be interesting to contrast his conception with 
 that of another ecclesiastic reared in a different school. 
 
 The see of Norwich was at that time filled by William 
 Bateman, a bishop of a different type from either Hugh 
 
 1 Or Luthbornf-lmif: see Masters' dedicated, was originally known by 
 
 Jliit. of Corpiu Chruti CMege, ed. the name of Gonville Hall. See 
 
 Lamb, p. 28. y f 245. 
 
 1 The college however though thus 3 MSS. Taker, xxix '2C 270.
 
 TRINITY HALL. 241 
 
 Balsham or John Hotham; one who had earned a high repu- CHAP. ITL 
 tatioii at Cambridge, by his proficiency in the civil and canon vll^LL 
 law; who had held high office at the papal court and resided 
 long at Avignon; and who, while intent it would seem, on a 
 cardinal's hat rather than upon the duties of his diocese, had 
 finished his career amid the luxury and dissipation of that 
 splendid city 1 . It is accordingly with little surprise that we 
 find a man of such associations deeming no culture more 
 desirable than that which Roger Bacon had declared inimical 
 to man's highest interests, but which pope Clement vil 
 regarded as the true field of labour for the ecclesiastic who 
 aimed at eminence and power. 
 
 The year 1349 is a memorable one in English history, "n^ Great 
 
 J ' plague of 
 
 for it was the year of the Great Plague; and it would be 1349 - 
 
 difficult to exaggerate the effects of that visitation upon the 
 
 political and social institutions of those days. Villages were 
 
 left without an inhabitant; the flocks perished for want of 
 
 the herdsman's care; houses fell into ruins; the crops rotted 
 
 in the fields. In the demoralization that ensued existing 
 
 institutions were broken up or shattered to their base. The 
 
 worst excesses of Lollardism and the popular insurrections of 
 
 the latter part of the century may both be traced to the 
 
 general disorganization. Upon the universities the plague fell 
 
 with peculiar severity. Oxford, which rhetorical exaggeration its dcvasta- 
 
 , ,. . . toons at the 
 
 had credited with thirty thousand students, was half depopu- universities, 
 lated, and her numbers never again approached their former 
 limits. At Cambridge, the parishioners, to use the expression 
 of Baker, 'were swept away in heaps;' from the Hospital of 
 St. John three masters, in the space of so many months, were 
 carried forth for burial 2 . The clergy throughout the country 
 fell victims in great numbers; it has been calculated that 
 more than two thirds of the parish priests in the West 
 Riding died; in the East Riding, in Nottinghamshire, and the 
 dioceses round Cambridge the losses were hardly less severe 3 . 
 
 1 Masters-Lamb, p. 29. ' He had cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and 
 
 desired to be interred in England, other great men. The service was 
 
 either among his ancestoi-s or in his performed by the patriarch of Jeru- 
 
 cathedral. His remains were how- salem.' Cooper, Memorials, i 112. 
 
 ever buried in the cathedral church 2 Baker-Mayor, i 34. 
 
 of St. Mary at Avignon, his body 3 See article on The Slack Death 
 
 being attended to the grave by the by Seebohm, Fortnightly Review, 
 
 16
 
 24*2 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. in. It was chiefly with a view to recruiting the thinned ranks 
 
 ll^-L- of the clergy in his diocese, that William Bateman proceeded, 
 
 Foundation in the year 1350, to the foundation of Trinity Hall 1 . In fact, 
 
 ofTaisiTY /"i i i 
 
 HALL, 1350. no l ess than three of the colleges that rose at Cambridge in 
 this century, distinctly refer their origin to the plague. 
 
 In the statutes of Trinity Hall the design of bishop 
 Bateman appears in its original and unmodified form. The 
 
 its early college is designed for students of the civil and canon law, 
 
 statutes, AS 
 
 STtenllin. bp ' an d for such alone, the balance inclining slightly in favour of 
 the civilians. The foundation, it is contemplated, will sup- 
 port a master and twenty fellows ; of these twenty it is 
 required that not less than ten shall be students of the civil 
 law, not less than seven students of the canon law. A civi- 
 lian may, at a subsequent period, devote himself to the study 
 of the canon law, or a canonist to that of the civil law, so as 
 d^sl "i"** 6 to augment the number of canonists to ten or that of the 
 foV^nomL civilians to thirteen; but these numbers represent the max- 
 ans * imum limits of variation allowed in the proportion of the two 
 elements. Thrice a week, on the evenings of Mondays, Wednes- 
 days, and Fridays, disputations are to be held, at which some 
 question taken from the decretals or the Pandects is to sup- 
 ply the place of the ordinary theological or logical qucestio. 
 
 All the fellows are to apply themselves to the prescribed 
 course of study until qualified to lecture; and are then to 
 lecture, the civilians on the civil law, the canonists on the 
 canon law, so long as they continue to be bachelors, until 
 they have gone through the customary course of reading 8 . 
 
 Vol. ii. It is however open to qnes- when they came to Cambridge. Bi- 
 
 tion whether the writer's inferences shop Bateman afterwards mude an 
 
 are quite justified by his facts. Two exchange with them, and gave them 
 
 thirds of the benefices in the West several parsonages for the said hostle, 
 
 Biding might be vacated without two and converted it into a college or 
 
 thirds of the priests dying. Let us hall.' Warren, Hint, of Trinity Hall, 
 
 suppose four benefices A, B, C, D, Cole MSS. LVIII 86. 
 
 worth respectively 4<M), 800, 200, and * ' Volumus enim quod Socii om- 
 
 100 marks. The holder of A dies: nes studio intendant scholastico dili- 
 
 then the holder of B is promoted to genter, quousque habiles fuerint ad 
 
 A, the holder of C to B, and the hoi- legendum ; et ex tune ad legendum 
 
 der of D to C. Thus one death gives continue in statu Baccalaurei se con- 
 
 rise to /our vacancies. vertant, quousque volumina in Jnre 
 
 had before been a hostle be- Civili Legists, et libros Decretalium 
 
 longing to the monks of Ely : John Decretistjc, more perlegerint consue- 
 
 of C'randen, one of their priors, pur- to.' Documents, u 419. 
 chased it for his monks to study in
 
 TRINITY HALL. 243 
 
 A fellow, whether a civilian or a canonist, is eligible to the CHAP. in. 
 mastership; but should none of the fellows appear deserving Jll^LL 
 of the dignity, a master of arts may be chosen from the uni- 
 versity at large, whose reputation entitles him to such a dis- 
 tinction. On a vacancy occurring among the fellowships conditions to 
 appropriated to civilians, it may be filled by electing a ba- ftl'^'j,* 10 
 chelor or a scholar of three years standing, whose studies f e h i&w?hip 
 have been directed to the civil law, or by the election of a 
 master or a bachelor of arts (the latter to be within a year of 
 incepting as master), provided he be willing to enrol himself 
 in the faculty. On a like vacancy occurring among the 
 canonists, whereby their number is reduced below seven, the 
 vacancy may be filled by the election of one of the civilians 
 already holding a fellowship, on his signifying his readiness 
 to become a canonist, and to take holy orders 1 ; but should 
 seven canonists still remain, the vacancy may be filled by 
 the election of either a civilian or a canonist as the majority 
 may decide. It is, however, imperative that whoever elects 
 to become a canonist, shall within a year from his election to 
 a fellowship, take upon himself full priest's orders, and forth- 
 with qualify himself for the performance of masses*. 
 
 A library given by the bishop to the new college affords Library pre- 
 
 . . sented'bybp 
 
 additional illustration of the comparative importance attached Bateman to 
 
 * his founda- 
 
 by him to theological and juridical studies. No less than tion - 
 four copies of the code of the civil law, each in five volumes, 
 integrum et glosatum, head the catalogue ; these are followed 
 by volumes of the lectures of Clinius, Raynerus, and Petrus, 
 on the Codex, Inforciatum, and Authentica. The volumes of 
 the canon law are seventeen in number; those in theology 
 only three ! viz. a small bible, a Compendium Biblie, in uno 
 parvo pulcro volumine, and unum librum Recapitulacionis 
 
 1 'Si quis eorum ad audiendum ordinarie vel cursorie Decretales; 
 
 jura Canonica, et ad gradurn Presby- quicunque, modo quo prjemittatur, 
 
 teri voluerit migrate.' Documents, ad studendum in Jure Canonico de- 
 
 n 621. putatus, seu in locum Canonists al- 
 
 s ' Item statuimus et ordinamus, terius subrogatus, infra anni proximi 
 
 quod exceptis iucepturis in Jure Ci- spatium a die quo admissus fuerit in 
 
 vili, jura Canonica infra tempus ad socium Canonistam, ad omnes sacros 
 
 incipiendum eisdem limitatum audi- ordines se facial promoveri, et post 
 
 entibus, ut praefertur, et Doctoribus susceptum sacerdotium se faciat cele- 
 
 Juris Civilis per biennium proximum riter instrui ad Missas celebrandas.' 
 
 post eorum cessatiouem legentibua Documents, n 424. 
 
 162
 
 244 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 j u - Biblie. There is however a second catalogue, the volumes 
 which are reserved by the bishop for his own use during 
 his lifetime, wherein theology is somewhat better repre- 
 sented '. 
 
 It is sufficiently evident from this outline that the new 
 foundation was certainly not conceived in a manner calcu- 
 lated to remove the evils which Roger Bacon deplored; the 
 combination of two branches of study which he held should 
 be regarded as radically distinct, the predominance given to 
 the secular over the sacred branch, the subservience in which 
 theology and the arts were to be placed to both, all point to 
 the training of a body of students either wholly given to 
 what he deemed, and what probably then was, an ignoble 
 and corrupting profession, or, to use his own expression, 
 civiliter jus canonicum tractantes, and thus debasing a reli- 
 gious calling to secular arid sordid purposes 2 . 
 
 We must now go back to trace the fortunes of Gonville 
 Hall. The plans of the founder, it appears, were so far 
 from being fully consolidated at the time of his death, that, 
 either from insufficiency of funds or some other cause, the 
 confirmation co ^ e g e would probably have ceased to exist, had not the 
 nmi?iii"" d founder of Trinity Hall given it effectual aid. In the same 
 iy "."stop * year that the original statutes were given, the year in which 
 ' Edmund Gonville died, bishop Bateman ratified the rule of 
 the house, and announced his intention of carrying out the 
 designs of the founder. ' Wisdom,' he says, in a somewhat 
 pompous manifesto, ' is to be preferred to all other posses- 
 sions, nor is there anything to be desired that can compare 
 with it; this the wise man loved beyond health and every 
 
 1 Warren, Uiat. of Trinity Hall, our college history would have saved 
 
 MSB. Cole, LVIH 115 18. him from this misconception. It 
 
 * The prominence given to the has heen pointed out to me that, 
 study of the civil law both at Oxford inasmuch as the fellows of Trinity 
 and Cambridge in the fourteenth and Hall were prohibited by one of the 
 fifteenth centuries seems to have statutes from noiiiff abmit to practise, 
 altogether escaped the observation of the design of the founder appears to 
 Huber. 'The department of civil have been to encourage the study of 
 law,' he says, ' which was of national the civil law rather than its practical 
 importance, was but limited; and profession; but, on the other hand, 
 the number of individuals who stu- the very necessity for such a pro- 
 died it wus too small to constitute a vision must be regarded as another 
 HtihooL' Kntilith Univmitia, i 158, indication of the mercenary spirit in 
 15'J. A closer acquaintance with which the study was then pursued.
 
 GONVILLE HALL. 245 
 
 good thing, preferring it even to life itself. The founder of CHAP. TIL 
 this college proposed to create a perpetual college of scholars >-^L 
 in the university of Cambridge, in the diocese of Ely, but 
 death prevented the execution of his praiseworthy design. 
 We therefore, bishop of Norwich, by divine permission, 
 although already over-burdened with the founding and 
 endowing of the college of Scholars of the Holy and Undi- 
 vided Trinity, in order that so praiseworthy an endeavour 
 may not wholly be brought to an end, and considering the 
 great benefits that must result in the salvation of souls and 
 to the public weal, if the seeds of the knowledge of letters 
 becoming moistened by the dew of scholastic teaching bring 
 forth much fruit, being also the more incited to such work 
 in that we have here ourselves received the first elements of 
 learning, and afterwards, though undeservedly, the doctorial 
 degree desiring that this design may be brought to its full 
 accomplishment, do constitute, ordain, and appoint the said 
 college, and moreover confirm and will that the said college 
 be called the college of the Annunciation of the Blessed The name 
 
 ,, -11 f i i i IT- ' GonvillcIIall 
 
 JVlary, proposing by the assistance ot the said glorious Virgin, altered to 
 so to endow the said college with revenues and sufficient college of the 
 
 o Annuncia- 
 
 resources. (when the present site or any other shall have Biw^i 118 
 been approved by our diocesan bishop of Ely,) that they M 
 shall, in all future time, be able to obtain the things neces- 
 sary for life 1 .' , 
 
 Within three months from the time when this document 
 received the bishop's signature, we find the royal license issu- 
 ing to the chancellor of the university and the brethren of 
 the Hospital of St. John empowering them to transfer to the 
 new foundation of the Annunciation of the Blessed Mary 
 two messuages in Lurteburgh Lane, manso prcedicto Custodis 
 et Scholarium contigua*. The phrase in the bishop's mani- 
 festo indicating a possible change of locality, is probably to 
 be referred to some uncertainty at the time as to the perma- 
 nent settlement of the college in Lurteburgh Lane, for we 
 find that in the following year an exchange of property was 
 
 * See Stabilitio Fundacionis per NorvTc : Episc : MSS. Baker, xxix 271. 
 Rev. Patrem Dnm: Willm: Bateman 2 Ibid, xxix 272.
 
 246 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 % CHAP. in. effected with the Gild of Corpus Christi, and the scholars 
 >l^I_Jx were removed from that part of the town to the present site 
 of the college in close proximity to Michaelhouse. The Hall 
 of the Annunciation was thus also brought into the imme- 
 diate neighbourhood of Trinity Hall, and under the bishop's 
 Agreement auspices a formal agreement of a somewhat novel character 
 
 'de Amicabi- . . . 
 
 litate-be- W as entered into between the two foundations, a Compositio 
 
 twcen the 
 
 Tr!nitvH aii de Amicabilitate, which, unnecessary and unmeaning as any 
 iFaV/im' such convention would now appear, was probably of real ser- 
 vice in preventing rivalries and feuds between colleges in 
 close juxtaposition and schools of the same faculty. By this 
 agreement the members of the two foundations, as sharers in 
 the protection of a common patron and living under nearly 
 the same rule, pledge themselves to dwell in perpetual con- 
 cord, in all and each of their necessities to render to one 
 another mutual succour, and throughout life as far as in 
 them lies to aid in promoting the reputation and welfare of 
 the sister college and its individual sons. On all public occa- 
 sions it is stipulated, however, that the scholars of Trinity 
 Hall shall have the precedence tanquam primogeniti et prce- 
 stantiores 1 . 
 
 ^n'bv But ^1 original statutes of Gonville Hall harmonised 
 
 man^fo't- but little with bishop Bateman's views, and his aid, unlike 
 Ha?io l f a the r that of Hugh Balsham, was to be bought only with a price, 
 tion, 1363. To the bustling canonist Avignon and her traditions were all 
 in all; to him, as to pope Clement, the theologian seemed 
 a 'dreamer,' and the civil and the canon law the only studies 
 deserving the serious attention of young clergymen aiming 
 at something better in life than the performance of masses 
 and wranglings over the theory of the Real Presence or the 
 Immaculate Conception. Accordingly, without explanation, 
 and even without reference to the former statutes, he sub- 
 stituted as the rule of the foundation of Edmund Gonville, 
 twelve of the statutes, but slightly modified, which he had 
 already drawn up for his own college*. The direction thus 
 
 1 See Stabilitio Fnndacionis, dec. tempore fuerint plene et integraliter 
 
 Baker M8S. xxix 279. faciant et obscrvent omnia et singula 
 
 * ' VolumuR incupcr quod omnes et que in duodecim Statutis Sociorum 
 
 singuli socii dicti Collegii qui pro Collegii Sancte Trinitatis per eos ju-
 
 CORPUS CHRIST!. 247 
 
 given to the course of study is a kind of mean between that CHAP. IIL 
 designed by the original founder and that of Trinity Hall. Ji^ll 
 The Trivium and Quadrivium are retained in the promi- 
 nence originally assigned to them, but the requirements 
 with respect to the study of theology are abolished. All the 
 fellows are to be elected from the faculty of arts, and are to 
 continue to study therein until they have attained to the 
 standing of master of arts, and even after that period they 
 are to lecture ordinarie 1 for one year; but from the expira- 
 tion of that year it is required that they shall devote them- 
 selves to the study of either the civil law, the canon law, 
 theology, or medicine ; but only two are permitted to enter 
 the last-named faculty 2 . The order of enumeration would 
 alone suggest that the first-named branches held the prefer- 
 ence in the bishop's estimation. The principal provision in 
 reference to other studies is that requiring that all students 
 elected to fellowships shall not simply have gone through the 
 usual course, but shall have attended lectures in logic for 
 three years; the three years being reducible to two only in 
 cases of distinguished proficiency. 
 
 The college of Corpus Christi is another foundation, Foundation 
 whose rise may be attributed, though in this case less directly, ^ L R L '|^ 
 to the effects of the plague; but the whole circumstances of 135i 
 its origin are peculiar. In the fourteenth century Cambridge 
 was distinguished by its numerous Gilds, among which those 
 of the Holy Trinity, the Annunciation, the Blessed Virgin, 
 and Corpus Christi, appear to have been the more important. 
 A recently published volume by a laborious investigator of 
 
 ratis, et tarn per Archiepum Cantuar dimus si Facultas Arcium Scientifica 
 
 quam per Universitatem Cantabrig: Liberalium invalescat: statuimus et 
 
 confirmatis, in titulatis inferius et ordinamus quod omnes Socii dicti 
 
 descriptis plenius continentur.' Do- vestri Collegii qui pro tempore fue- 
 
 cvments, n 228. In Documents, i rint, sint Artistae, et in ilia facilitate 
 
 406, bishop Bateman is spoken of continuent, quousqne in ilia Magis- 
 
 as having ' carried out Gonville's in- terii gradum obtinuerint, et per an- 
 
 tentions in giving statutes to Gon- num in eadem ordinarie legerint, ut 
 
 ville Hall ;' for carried out we may est moris. Quos statim post annum 
 
 read frustrated. cessare volumus, et ad Jura Civilia 
 
 1 For explanation of this term see seu Canonica Theologie aut ad Me- 
 chapter iv. dicine scientiam, juxta eorum electio- 
 
 2 ' In primis cum ad honorem Dei nem liberam se transferre.' Docu- 
 ac Universitatis decorem universeque ments, 11 226. Baker MSS. xxix 283. 
 literalis scientie fomentum fore ere-
 
 248 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. HI. the subject has thrown considerable light upon these ancient 
 institutions, and tends considerably to modify the conception 
 that before prevailed concerning their scope and character 1 . 
 'They were not,' says this writer, 'in any sense superstitious 
 foundations; that is, they were not founded, like monasteries 
 and priories, for men devoted to what were deemed religious 
 exercises. Priests might belong to them, and often did so, 
 in their private capacities* But the Gilds were lay bodies, 
 and existed for lay purposes, and the better to enable those 
 who belonged to them rightly and understandingly to fulfil 
 
 their neighbourly duties as free men in a free State It 
 
 is quite true that, as the Lord Mayor, and Lincoln's Inn, and 
 many other as well-known personages and public bodies, 
 have to this day a chaplain, so these old Gilds often took 
 measures and made payments to enable the rites of religion 
 to be brought more certainly within the reach of all who 
 belonged to them. This was one of the most natural and 
 becoming of the consequences following from their existence 
 and character. It did not make them into superstitious 
 bodies 2 .' 'Though it was in this way very general,' observes 
 his continuator, 'to provide more or less for religious pur- 
 poses, these are to be regarded as incidental only; and this 
 -is curiously exemplified by the case of three Gilds in Cam- 
 bridge, one of which, the Gild of the Annunciation, excludes 
 priests altogether; another, that of the Holy Trinity, if they 
 
 Not formed come into the Gild, does not allow them any part in its ma- 
 nagement; while the third, that of the Blessed Virgin, has a 
 chaplain, whose office however is to cease, in the event of the 
 funds proving inadequate to his support in addition to that 
 of the poorer brethren 8 . 1 The statement, accordingly, made 
 by the historian of Corpus Christi College, with reference to 
 the two Gilds to whose united action that College refers its 
 
 1 English Gilds. Edited by the * The Old Crown House, by Tool- 
 lute Ttmlmin Smith. With Intro- min Smith, p. 81. 
 dnction and Glossary by Lucy Toul- * English Gild*, Introd. p. xxix. 
 inin Smith, and Preliminary Exay ' The services of a chaplain were 
 on the Hittonj and Development of deemed quite secondary to the other 
 Gild* by Dr Brentano. 1M70. Pub- purposes of the Gilds.' Note, p. 
 liahed by the Early English Text 264. 
 Society.
 
 CORPUS CHRISTI. 249 
 
 origin, that ' they seem to have been principally instituted CHAP. in. 
 for religious purposes 1 ,' is scarcely accurate; but, though Ji^LL 
 incorrect with respect to the Gilds, it may be applied with 
 perfect accuracy to the college which they founded. It 
 would appear that among the many secondary effects that 
 followed upon the plague, the great mortality among the 
 clergy had induced the survivors in that profession consider- 
 ably to augment the fees they demanded for the celebration 
 of masses 2 ; and there is good reason for inferring that the 
 exorbitancy of their demands suggested to the members of 
 the Gilds of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin the idea 
 of founding a college for the education of the clergy, where 
 it should be obligatory on the scholars to celebrate whatever 
 masses might be desired for the repose of the souls of 
 departed members of the two Gilds. The duke of Lancaster, 
 known as the 'good duke,' had been elected by the two 
 Gilds as their 'Alderman 3 ' or president, and through his 
 offices the royal licence was obtained to found the college 
 now known by the name of Corpus Christi 4 . When such Its statutes 
 
 apparently 
 
 was the prevailing motive, we shall scarcely look for a very f r r t ^ d se of 
 enlightened conception of education in the statutes given to i^T 1 " 
 the new foundation; they present indeed little originality, 
 the greater part appearing to have been taken from those of 
 Michaelhouse, some passages in the latter being reproduced 
 verbatim 5 . The scholars are described as Capellani, though 
 
 1 Masters-Lamb, p. 8. The name in their processions, and some other 
 of Richard of Bury, it is worthy of presents not particularly specified.' 
 note, occurs in the list of benefactors Ibid. p. 23. 
 
 of the Gild of the Blessed Virgin. * 'About the close of the four- 
 
 Ibid. p. 16. teenth century, the college began to 
 
 2 English Gilds, Essay by Dr. be generally known as Benet College 
 Brentano, p. cxlii. (from its proximity to the church of 
 
 3 This explains the title in the S. Benedict), and this adventitious 
 preamble to the Statutes, 'Ad per- title was so generally adopted at a 
 petuam rei memoriam cum nos Hen- later period, as entirely to supersede 
 ricus Dux Lancastriae Aldermannus its correct designation of Corpus 
 et Confratres Gildae &c.' Masters re- Christi, which indeed has only been 
 marks 'Although he is usually deemed generally revived within the last 
 the Founder of the college, I meet forty years.' Cooper, Memorials, 
 with no considerable monuments of i 147.' 
 
 his bounty bestowed upon it, except 5 I am indebted to the courtesy of 
 
 a few silver shields enamelled with the Master of Corpus Christi College, 
 
 his arms and the instruments of the the Rev. James Pulling, D.D., for ac- 
 
 Passion upon them, to carry about cess to the Statuta Antiqua of 1350,
 
 250 
 
 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 Foundation 
 of CLARK 
 
 11ALL..1369. 
 
 1 Vsiitn of the 
 Foundress. 
 FJizaheth de 
 Burgh. 
 
 it is intimated that others may be admitted to the founda- 
 tion: it is required that they shall 'one and all' be in 
 priest's orders, and shall have lectured in arts or philosophy, 
 or at least be bachelors in either the civil or the canon law 
 or in arts, intending to devote themselves to the study of 
 theology or of the canon law, the number of those devoting 
 themselves to the last-named faculty being restricted to four. 
 If however we compare the general tenour of these statutes 
 with that of the ordinances of the Gilds themselves, we shall 
 have no difficulty in discerning that the religious sentiment 
 of those bodies found its chief expression in the foundation 
 of the new college. 
 
 The havoc wrought by the pestilence stimulated the phi- 
 lanthropy of others besides bishop Bateman. Within ten 
 years from its visitation of this country, we find Elizabeth de 
 Burgh, Countess of Clare, and grand-daughter of Edward I, 
 largely augmenting an already existing foundation 1 . The 
 following passage from the preamble to the statutes given by 
 the Countess in the year preceding her death sufficiently 
 explains her motives: 
 
 'Experience,' says this august lady, 'doth plainly teach 
 us, that in every degree, ecclesiastical as well as temporal, 
 skill in learning is of no small advantage; which, although 
 sought for in many ways by many persons, is found in most 
 perfection in the university, where general study is known 
 to flourish. Moreover, when it has been found, it sends out 
 its disciples, who have tasted its sweetness, skilful and fit 
 
 which do not, I believe, exist in a 
 printed form. Among the passages 
 common to the statutes of Michael- 
 house and those of Corpus Chriati, 
 I may quote the following, which 
 succeeds the regulations laid down 
 for the celebration of special Masses : 
 ' Per hoc tamen inteutionis nostrm 
 non existit eorum Scholarium Capel- 
 l&norum aliquem ultra poHsibilitatem 
 Bnam congruam super harum Misaa- 
 rum celebrationibus facicndis one- 
 rare quominus lectionibus dispn- 
 tationibus in Scholis seu studio 
 vacate valcat competenter super quo 
 
 eorum conscientias oneramus.' Cf. 
 p. 235. 
 
 1 The death of a brother, Gilbert 
 de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Here- 
 ford, who fell at Bannockburn, leav- 
 ing no issue, had placed the whole 
 of the family estates, which were of 
 a princely character, at the disposal 
 of the Countess and her two sisters. 
 See Cooper, Memorial*, i 25 30. 
 The change in the name of the foun- 
 dation from University to Clare Hall 
 is said to have been effected under 
 a charter granted by Edward in in 
 1338-9. Ibid. p. 29.
 
 CLARE HALL. 251 
 
 members of God's church and the state, who shall, as their CHAP. in. 
 merits demand, rise to various ranks. ^J^I . 
 
 'Being therefore induced by this consideration, and 
 desiring, as far as God has enabled us, to promote the ad- 
 vancement of divine worship, the welfare of the state, and 
 the extension of these sciences, which, by reason of the LOMWOCCB- 
 
 ' . , stoned by the 
 
 pestilence having swept away a multitude of men, are now {^^"her 
 beginning to fail lamentably, and directing our observation motive8 - 
 to the university of Cambridge in the diocese of Ely, in 
 which there is an assembly of students, and to a hall therein, 
 hitherto generally called University Hall, now existing by 
 our foundation, and which we desire to be called Clare Hall 
 and to bear no other designation; we have caused this to 
 be augmented with resources, out of the property given us 
 by God, and to be placed among the number of places for 
 study. 
 
 'We have also had in view the object, that the pearl of 
 science, which they have through study and learning disco- 
 vered and acquired, may not lie under a bushel, but be 
 extended further and wider, and when extended give light 
 to them that walk in the dark paths of ignorance. It is also 
 our design that the scholars who have been long since dwell- 
 ing in our house, may, by being protected under a stronger 
 bond of peace and benefit of concord, devote themselves 
 more freely to study. With this view we have, with the 
 advice of experienced persons, drawn up certain statutes and 
 ordinances which follow, to last for ever 1 .' 
 
 The distinguishing characteristic of the design of the Liberality of 
 
 11 1- sentiment by 
 
 foundress would appear to be a greater liberality in the which these 
 
 * statutes are 
 
 requirements respecting the professedly clerical element. ^j[ act * r " 
 The scholars or fellows are to be twenty in number, of whom 
 it is required that six shall be in priests' orders at the time 
 of their admission; but comparatively little stress is laid, as 
 at Michaelhouse, on the order or particular character of the 
 religious services, and the provision is made apparently 
 rather with the view of securing the presence of a sufficient 
 number for the performance of such services, than for the 
 1 Baker, MS. Harleian 7041, ff. 4362. Documents, n 121.
 
 252 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. in. purpose of creating a foundation for the church 1 . The 
 
 ^J^!^ remaining fellows are to be selected from bachelors or soph- 
 
 conditions to isters in arts, or from ' skilful and well-conducted ' civilians 
 
 be observed . . . 
 
 in ti.c election an d canonists 2 , but only two fellows maybe civilians, only 
 
 of fellows. * 
 
 one a canonist. Three of the fellows, being masters of arts, 
 are to lecture; and on the inception of any other fellow, one 
 of the three has permission to retire from this function, 
 provided he has lectured for a whole year. This permission 
 does not, however, imply permission to cease from study; he 
 is bound to apply himself to some other service wherein, con- 
 sidering his bent and aptitude, he may be expected to make 
 the most rapid progress. The sizars are represented by ten 
 'docile, proper, and respectable' youths, to be chosen from 
 the poorest that can be found, especially from the parishes of 
 those churches of which the master and fellows are rectors; 
 every Michaelmas they are entitled to receive clothing and 
 necessaries to the value of half a mark sterling; they are to 
 be educated in singing, grammar, and logic ; and their term 
 of residence is to extend to the completion of their twentieth 
 year when, unless elected to fellowships, they are to with- 
 draw from the foundation. 
 F fu-^-i on The statutes that next claim our attention are the last 
 
 oi i\ I.M > 
 
 HALL, 1326. j n ^ ne fourteenth century, and offer some noticeable and 
 novel features. So early as 1326, thirty-two scholars, known 
 as the King's scholars, had been maintained at the univer- 
 sity by Edward II. It is probable that he had intended 
 thereby to extend the study of the civil and canon law, for 
 we find him presenting books on these subjects, to the value 
 of ten pounds, to Simon de Bury the master, from whom 
 
 1 One of the clauses, somewhat individual claims to preferment a- 
 ambiguonsly expressed, and, I sus- mong the disposers of benefices. See 
 pect, corrupt, seems designed to se- Document*, n 130. 
 cure those undertaking the perform- * Only two civilians and *>ne ca- 
 ance of the services against labouring nonist are however permitted to 
 under any disadvantage when com- hold fellowships at the same time, 
 pared with the rest, by providing for The clauses relating to the studies to 
 the retirement of one of the six every be pursued after the year of lecture- 
 time that there is a new election to ship are apparently intended to dis- 
 a fellowship: the expression, in fa- courage both these branches of the 
 voribut rtcipiendi* ampliu* reiiutti, law; possibly as an equipoise to 
 refers, probably, to opportunities of bishop Bateman's enactments, 
 leaving the college and pushing one's
 
 KING'S HALL. 253 
 
 they were subsequently taken away at the command of CHAP. HI. 
 queen Isabella. It had also been his intention to provide v- ' 
 his scholars with a hall of residence, but during his lifetime 
 they resided in hired houses, and the execution of his design 
 devolved upon his son, 
 
 Great Edward with the lilies on his brow 
 From haughty Gallia torn 1 .' 
 
 By this monarch a mansion was erected in the vicinity of Mansion 
 
 J * given to the 
 
 the Hospital of St. John, ' to the honour of God, the blessed K 8 V ^?' 
 Virgin, and all the saints, and for the souls of Edward II, of wardlu - 
 himself, of Philippa the Queen, and of his children and his 
 ancestors.' As Peterhouse had been enriched by the advow- 
 son of the church at Hinton, so the new foundation, now 
 known by the name of King's Hall, was augmented by that 
 of the church of St. Peter, at Northampton. Such was the 
 society which amid the sweeping reforms that marked the 
 reign of Henry vin was, in conjunction with Michaelhouse, 
 subsequently merged in the illustrious foundation of Trinity 
 college. 
 
 The statutes of King's Hall, as given by Richard II, are statutes 
 brief and simple, and bear a closer resemblance to those of ukuard IL 
 Merton than those of any of the preceding foundations, 
 Peterhouse alone excepted. It is somewhat remarkable, and 
 is possibly with a view to the youthful monarch's own edifi- 
 cation, that the preamble moralises upon 'the unbridled 
 weakness of humanity, prone by nature and from youth to 
 evil, ignorant how to abstain from things unlawful, easily 
 fallinsr into crime.' It is required that each scholar on his Limitation a 
 
 * to age at time 
 
 admission be proved to be of 'good and reputable con versa- of admission, 
 tion ;' and we have here the earliest information respecting 
 the college limitation as to age, the student not being admis- 
 sible under fourteen years of age, a point on which the 
 
 1 It is thus that Gray, in his In- regarded as the founder of the insti- 
 
 stallation Ode, has represented Ed- tution, and is SQ designated in the 
 
 ward in as the founder of Trinity ancient university statute, De exe- 
 
 College. But the honour more pro- quiis annuatim celebrandis, under 
 
 peiiy belongs to Edward n, for, as which his exequies were performed 
 
 Mr. Cooper observes, 'although that on the fifth of May annually.' Me- 
 
 monarch did not live to carry out his mortals, n 194. Cf. Documents, i 
 
 intention of erecting a hall. ..he was 405.
 
 254 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. in. Master is to be satisfied by the testimony of trustworthy 
 > 1!^-J- witnesses. The student's knowledge of Latin, on his admis- 
 
 rionl rprovi ~ s * on > mus ^ be such as qualify him for the study of logic, or 
 of whatever other branch of learning the master shall decide, 
 upon examination of his capacity, he is best fitted to follow 1 . 
 On enrolment in a religious order or succession to a benefice 
 of the value of ten marks, the scholar is to retire from the 
 foundation, a year being the utmost limit within which his 
 stay may be prolonged. On his ceasing to devote himself to 
 study, and not proving amenable to admonition, a sentence 
 of expulsion is to be enforced against him. From the general 
 tenour of these statutes we should incline to infer that the 
 enforcement of discipline, rather than the developement of 
 any dominant theory in reference to education, was the para- 
 mount consideration. Students are forbidden to transfer 
 themselves from one faculty to another without the approval 
 and consent of the master, and bachelors are required to be 
 regular in their attendance at repetitions and disputations; 
 but no one faculty appears to have very decidedly com- 
 manded the founder's preference. On the other hand, there 
 are indications in the prohibitions with respect to the 
 frequenting of taverns, the introduction of dogs within the 
 college precincts, the wearing of short swords and peaked 
 shoes (contra honestatem clericalem), the use of bows, flutes, 
 catapults, the oft-repeated exhortations to orderly conduct, 
 
 Thefoumu- and perhaps in the unusually liberal allowance for weekly 
 
 lion probably . * 
 
 Mpedfoi commons, that the foundation was designed for students of 
 
 1.1 1 II It'll H <lf 
 
 r the wealthier class"; poverty is not, as in the case of most of 
 
 1 'Bone conversation! s sit et ho- have been printed in Rymer, vn239. 
 neste, retails quatuordeeim annorum 2 The sum allowed for the weekly 
 vel ultra, de quo volumus quod pre- maintenance of a King's scholar was 
 fato Custodi fide dignornm testimo- fourteen pence: 'expense commen- 
 ' nio fiat fides: quodque talis sic ad- sales singulorum scholarium ningulis 
 mittendus in regulis grammaticali- septimanis summam quatuordecira 
 bus ita suflicieuter sit instructus, denarios nullatenus excedant.' This 
 quod congrue in arte Dialectica stu- was in 1379; no more was allowed 
 dere poterit seu in aliqua alia facul- at Peterhouse in 1510; the allow- 
 tate ad quam pravfatus Custos post ance at Clare Hall in the same cen- 
 examinationem et admiHsionem ejus tury was twelve pence, at Gonville 
 duxerit ilium depntandum.' ,S/a- Hall only ten pence ! At Corpus the 
 tuUi nf Kiny'g Hall (from transcript allowance was most liberal, amount- 
 in possession of the authorities of ing to sixteen pence. Chicheley, 
 Trinity College). These statutes when confined to his rooms by a
 
 CONCLUSION. 255 
 
 the other colleges, indicated as a qualification ; and it seems CHAP. m. 
 reasonable to suppose that a foundation representing the ~y * 
 munificence and patronage of three successive kings of 
 England, would naturally become the resort of the more 
 aristocratic element in the university of those days. 
 
 It is difficult perhaps to trace any real advance with "ffo?diby 
 respect to the theory of education in the statutes of the of e thesc U eariy 
 
 x^i ! . i r -I .. i_. i i j foundations 
 
 seven Cambridge foundations which we have now passed of the differ- 
 ent tendt-n- 
 
 under review, but it must be admitted that they afford con- ^ of the 
 siderable illustration of those different tendencies that have 
 occupied our attention in the preceding chapters. Jn Peter- 
 house, Clare, and King's Hall, we are presented with little 
 more than a repetition of Walter de Merton's main concep- 
 tion, not unaccompanied by a certain vagueness as to the 
 character of the education to be imparted, and an apparent 
 disinclination seriously to assess the comparative value of the 
 different studies of the time. In Trinity Hall and in Gon- J^stlo^nti. 
 ville Hall, (as modified by its second founder,) we hear J^^uy 
 nothing more than an echo of the traditions of Avignon, cu 
 traditions, it need scarcely be said, of a kind against which 
 all centres of culture of the higher order have special need 
 to guard. The question whether a university may advan- 
 tageously concern itself with education of a purely technical 
 character, was one which presented itself to the minds of the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as well as to those of the 
 nineteenth. At Paris, as we have already seen, it 'had been 
 decided in the negative. The civil and the canon law had 
 been excluded from her curriculum, for in the hands of the 
 jurist and the canonist they had become a trade rather than 
 a branch of liberal learning 1 ; and it is evident that those 
 who then guided the progress of ideas at Paris, whatever 
 may have been their errors and shortcomings, saw clearly 
 that if once the lower arts, conducive chiefly to worldly 
 
 severe illness in 1390-1, at New Col- J : Les th<k>logiens et les artistes,' 
 
 lege, Oxford, had allowance made says M. Thurot, 'ne consideraient 
 
 him for his commons at the rate of pas la science du droit cornme un 
 
 sixteen pence a week for six weeks ; art liberal. Pour eux c'6"tait un 
 
 which was afterwards reduced to me'tier plut6t qu'un art.' De VOr- 
 
 fourteen pence. Bursar's Accounts, ganisation de I'Enseignement, etc. 
 
 quoted by Dean Hook. Lives, v 8. p. 166.
 
 256 EARLY COLLEGE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 CHAP. in. success and professional advancement, were admitted within 
 > y-^ the walls of a university, they would soon overshadow and 
 blight those studies that appealed to a less selfish devotion 1 . 
 To bishop Bateman the question appeared in another light. 
 The civil and the canon law were the high road to ecclesi- 
 astical preferment, and he aimed at training up a body of 
 shrewd, practical men, who, though they might do little to 
 help on philosophy and science, would be heard of in after- 
 life as high dignitaries in church and state, and would exer- 
 cise a certain weight in the political struggles of the day. 
 But if the reiterated complaints of the foremost thinkers of 
 the time are to be regarded as having any basis in fact, it 
 would seem that the bishop had rendered his university but 
 a doubtful service; and though colleges multiplied at Cam- 
 bridge we may vainly look for any corresponding growth in 
 her intellectual activity. The statutes of the other founda- 
 tions scarcely call for comment. Those of Pembroke are 
 interesting as an illustration of the persevering endeavours 
 of the religious orders to upset what it is no exaggeration to 
 describe as the fundamental conception of the new institu- 
 tions, an endeavour which, as we shall shortly see, was pro- 
 secuted at nearly the same time with greater success at 
 Oxford. In Michaelhouse and Corpus Christi we recognise 
 little more than the sentiments of the devout laity, inspired, 
 in all probability, by the priest and the confessor. 
 
 It will scarcely be denied that in connexion with these 
 foundations questions of grave import were contending for 
 solution ; nor can we doubt that fuller records of our univer- 
 sity life at this period would reveal that the antithesis repre- 
 sented in the statutes of Peterhouse and those of Trinity 
 Hall, was a matter of keen and lively interest to the Cam- 
 bridge of those days; and inasmuch as an opportunity here 
 presents itself for a slight digression, for between the sta- 
 tutes of King's Hall and the foundation of King's College 
 (the first foundation of the following century) more than 
 
 1 ' II y aynit t\ craindre qu'unc singulitoement celles de theologie. 
 e"co)e de droit civil uuo foi ouverto Crevier, v 156. See p. 75, note 2. 
 ue fit d&ertcr touted les autres, et
 
 CONCLUSION. 257 
 
 sixty years intervene, we shall now proceed to illustrate CHAP. in. 
 more fully the scope and bearing of that antithesis, from the Jll^LL 
 history of the sister university and the progress of thought 
 in the country at large. 
 
 17
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 CAMBRIDGE PRIOR TO THE CLASSICAL ERA. 
 
 PART II : THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 IT Wcos on the sixteenth of September, 1401, that Thomns 
 Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, arrived in 'a stately 
 'ho f equipage' at Cambridge, upon his visitation as metropolitan. 
 The chancellor, doctors, and masters, whom he had already 
 cited, appeared before him the following day in the Congre- 
 gation House, and rendered their canonical obedience. Com- 
 missioners were appointed by the archbishop, who visited 
 Trinity Hall, Clare, Gonville, Michaelhouse, Peterhouse, Pem- 
 broke, St. John's Hospital, St. Rhadegund's Nunnery, and the 
 House of the White Canons 1 , and on the nineteenth his grace 
 departed for Ely. Before his departure, however, he had 
 privately put to the chancellor and the doctors, successively 
 arid individually, ten questions, having reference to the dis- 
 MI'"', TO. cipline and general state of the university. Among them was 
 aribm. onc which, at that juncture, possessed no ordinary signifi- 
 
 1 King's Hull and Corpus Christi colleges to which they did relate. 
 do not appear to have been visited. Absolute hostels, who stood by thera- 
 Cooper observes thut the master of selves, being all of them unendowed, 
 the bitter college, Kidiard Hilling- by consequence had no considerable 
 ford, was chancellor of the univer- statutes, the breach whereof was 
 pity at the time. Annah, i 147. 'As the proper subject of this visitation. 
 for hostels, the wonder is not BO Besides, the graduates therein may 
 great, why those commissioners stoop- be presumed for their personal de- 
 ed not down to visit them. First, meanours visited in the collective 
 Ixicauso dependent hostels were, no body of the university.' Fuller, 
 doubt, visited in and under those llixt. of the Univ.
 
 LOLLAUDTSM. 259 
 
 cancc; ' were there any,' the archbishop asked, 'suspected of CHAP. in. 
 Lollardism?' The ashes of Wyclif had not yet been cast into I> ^"* l ^j- 
 the Swift, and his memory was still cherished at Oxford, but 
 the preceding year had seen the appearance of the writ De 
 Ilcvretico Comburendo, and, but a few months before, the first 
 victim of that enactment, William Sautree, had perished at 
 the stake. Such an inquiry, therefore, from a man of Arun- 
 del's determined character and known views 1 , could scarcely 
 fail to strike ominous forebodings into the minds of those 
 students who favoured the doctrines of the great reformer 2 . 
 The number of these at both the English universities was 
 already far from contemptible; and the intimate connexion 
 of Lollardism with the whole question of university studies, 
 as it presented itself to the theologian and the canonist at this 
 period, will here demand some consideration, as affording one 
 of the main clues to the ecclesiastical and intellectual move- 
 ments of a somewhat obscure century. 
 
 In our brief notice of the career of William of Occam, we The question 
 
 . .,.. i'ii 11- orUiually 
 
 were occupied mainly with his metaphysical theory and his j*i '>y 
 influence in the schools, but his opinions with respect to the ^^to" 1 
 political power of the pope form a not less important element ^l" of the 
 in the thought of the fourteenth century, We have already fundamental 
 adverted to the fact that the most indefensible pretensions of 
 Rome were undoubtedly those which were founded upon 
 the successive forgeries and impostures which make up so 
 large a portion of the canon law. Her temporal supremacy, 
 in the days of Occam and Wyclif, pointed for its theoretical 
 justification to the cunningly fabricated system, known in the 
 barbarous diction of that age as the Digestum Novum, Infor- 
 tiatum, and Yctus, the massive tomes that, with the labours 
 of the commentators, form so prominent a feature in our most 
 
 11 It never seems to have occurred to never graduated at either of the 
 
 Arundel' s mind, that opposition could universities.' Hook's Lives, iv 493. 
 
 be met by anything short of phy- 2 Ten years later when Arundel 
 
 sical force or direct legislation. He visited Oxford for a like purpose, he 
 
 was himself no scholar he was only was met by the most determined 
 
 a bachelor of arts ; and he was spo- opposition, and a direct denial of 
 
 ken of at Oxford in terms similar to his powers of visitation. See the 
 
 those which would be employed in amusing account in Wood-Gutch, i 
 
 the present day, if a clerk were no- 455 458. 
 minated'to an episcopal see who had 
 
 172
 
 2GO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. ancient college libraries. From these sources were drawn all 
 ^PART^ those subtleties which, from the days of Hincmar to those of 
 Boniface vm, gave the Church such formidable advantages in 
 her struggles with the secular power, and it was against the 
 broad principle implied in the whole system that Occam 
 raised the standard of insurgency when, in his De Potestate, 
 he propounded as an open question for discussion, the query, 
 Can the spiritual and lay power dwell in the same person ? 
 It is evident that inasmuch as the assumed affirmative formed 
 the basis of the Romish polity at the period, the mere moot- 
 ing of such enquiry called in question what had hitherto been 
 an article of faith, the infallibility of the papal decrees, and 
 thus again opened up a way to still wider and more important 
 discussions. It was of course impossible that a code, pro- 
 nounced by the pope to be the binding law of Christendom, 
 could be challenged, without involving the far wider question of 
 belief in theological dogma: and when a Franciscan schoolman 
 
 was to be found asking, 'Whether the pope could be a here- 
 immediate 
 
 tiilf! u"stion ^ c ^ ^" e was man if es tly calling in question the whole theory 
 the^mporai ^ allegiance to spiritual authority. Nor is it difficult to see 
 the relevancy of such discussion to the contending theories of 
 academic education. If the canon and the civil law were to 
 be the standard to which, in those unquiet times, all disputes 
 concerning public and private rights were to be referred, 
 the importance of those two codes could scarcely be exag- 
 gerated; but if the authority of either one or the other could 
 be disputed, the value of both, from their intimate connexion 
 at that time, would suffer serious diminution. If again, all 
 theology, on the other hand, was to terminate in an implicit 
 acceptance and promulgation of already established dogma, 
 to be no longer regarded as a progressive science, and to be 
 reduced to a merely traditional interpretation of doctrine, 
 it must at once sink into secondary importance, for it lacked 
 almost entirely that objective value which imparted so much 
 significance to the civil and the canon law. It was in op- 
 position to any such conception of the theologian's province, 
 that William of Occam and his brother Franciscan, Marsilio 
 of Padua, waged war in the interest of the schoolmen 
 against the canonists of Avignon.
 
 JOHN WYCLIP. 2G1 
 
 As we have already seen, the application of his own me- CIIAP. 
 tliod to specific dogmas, was not made by William of Occam ; 
 nor was it made by Wyclif, who may fairly be regarded as the 
 representative of Occam in his assertion of the right of pri- 
 vate judgement against priestly authority. Some writers, 
 indeed, have spoken of Wyclif, as in all respects a thinker of t-op^afoi'- 
 the same school as his predecessor. 'He was,' says James, Occam, 
 
 J ' but opposed 
 
 the learned librarian of the Bodleian, ' a professed follower of otowpdW 
 Occam 1 ;' such a statement however can be accepted only with 
 an important reservation; in matters of ecclesiastical polity 
 and religious belief Wyclif undoubtedly adopted and developed 
 the theories of Occam, but in the schools of Oxford he was 
 known as a leader of the opposing party, being an upholder 
 of the theories of the Realist? 2 . While, again, Occam was the nis relation 
 champion of the Franciscans, Wyclif was their most formidable Mendicants, 
 opponent; and while the former defended the solicitation of 
 alms, the latter instituted his 'simple priests,' to be an exam- 
 ple to the world of evangelism without mendicity. The po- 
 sition of Wyclif in relation to the Mendicants will be best 
 understood by the light of the more important passages in their 
 career at the English universities in the fourteenth century, a 
 period wherein the corruption and demoralization of these 
 orders proceeded with ominous rapidity. The salt had lost 
 its savour ; and influences, which had once represented an 
 energising impulse in the direction of a higher culture, had 
 degenerated into a mischievous and disturbing element, 
 productive only cf strife and animosity, and seriously detri- 
 mental to the pursuit of true learning. 
 
 With the latter part of the century this evil had reached Tendencies of 
 
 > _ the English 
 
 a climax. The resistance that the English Franciscans had Franciscans. 
 
 1 Life of WicUi/c, appended to Zizaniorum, pp. lii and liii) from the 
 
 Two short Treatises a<ja ; nst the orders MS. sermons of Wyclif preserved in 
 
 of the Begyinp Friars: Oxford, 1608. the library of Trinity College, Cam- 
 
 s 'The immense services which bridge: where, so fur as it is possible 
 
 our great countryman, William of to judge from an isolated and cor- 
 
 Occam, had just rendered to science, rupt passage, the philosophical opin- 
 
 conld hardly have been unknown to, ions of the reformer appear to have 
 
 but they do not seem to have been been nearly identical with those of 
 
 appreciated by, Wyclif.' Mr. Thomas Aquinas. ' Of Ockham himself ,' says 
 
 Arnold, Theolog. Rev. Apr. 1870. the editor, 'Wyclif always speaks 
 
 See however the passage quoted by with respect.' 
 Prof. Shirley (Pref. to Fasciculi
 
 262 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. offered to Boniface vm, though it wore perhaps at the time 
 - P ^-" -!i'- an air of patriotism, was in reality actuated by little besides a 
 keen sense that their own interests were at stake. The strug- 
 gle with John xxn was also at an end. Their differences with 
 Rome had been composed, and they had betaken themselves 
 with undiminished energy to the task of pillaging the laity. 
 
 policy of the In the universities their activity assumed a less sordid though 
 
 Mi-wlicunts J . v 
 
 "I' 1 * .. not a less harmful character, and Paris, Oxford, and Cam- 
 
 uuiversities. 
 
 bridge were each in turn distracted by their assertion of in- 
 defensible rights and of equally indefensible immunities. 
 Neither the ambition nor the interests of the two orders 
 would permit them to forego the great centres of education 
 and progressive thought; while their vows and their aims 
 were incompatible with the obligations involved in the oaths 
 administered by the universities. It was their object accord- 
 ingly to create an impenum in imperio, and, while availing 
 themselves of those centres as fields of propngandism.they were 
 really intent on the creation of a rival if not of a hostile au- 
 thority. 'The battle of the Mendicants,' says Huber, 'was 
 fought simultaneously in all the universities of Christendom.' 
 It began however at Paris long before it assumed any consi- 
 derable proportions at either Oxford or Cambridge. In the 
 Tin- Domini- thirteenth century the Dominicans, supported by pope Alexan- 
 A i.. 124* Jer IV, had, after a protracted struggle, been admitted to a 
 
 ISoT. l 
 
 participation in the scholastic acts and privileges of the 
 former university, and, though excluded from all share in the 
 government, their admission had led to important changes, 
 among others the separation of the faculty of theology from 
 the faculty of arts. The annals of our English universities 
 equally attest the jealousy of the academic authorities and 
 toSilv'Vi.c tnc Pertinacious intrusion of the friars. We have already 
 order, at' adverted to the stringent provisions passed at Oxford to check 
 the widespread evil of proselytism. In the year 1311 the 
 Mendicants appealed to Rome against some of the provisions 
 enacted for the limitation of their independence, and in the 
 year 1314 a formal decision was pronounced by a Commission 
 jointly composed of representatives of the university and of 
 the four orders. The verdict was a severe blow to the latter,
 
 THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 263 
 
 for it involved the transfer of numerous acts and disputations, CHAP. in. 
 previously held at their different houses, to the church of r**^"-. 
 St. Mary, the recognised arena of academic ceremonies. The 
 sole concession in favour of the friars required that every 
 bachelor, when he had commented on the Sentences in the 
 public schools, should be bound to repeat his lecture at the 
 school of the Dominicans before he was admitted to teach in 
 theology. The decision, Wood tells us, sorely dejected the 
 Dominicans, who were thus compelled to witness large num- 
 bers of the students diverted from their doors and their own 
 sources of emolument considerably curtailed 1 . In the uni- statute 
 
 . c r i i r-i-ji i n~r\ against them 
 
 versity 01 Cambridge we mid, in the year l-Joy, a statute at cum. 
 
 J J bridge. 
 
 enacted prohibiting two friars of the same order from incept- 
 ing in the same year ; a subsequent statute required that two 
 regents, whether doctors or bachelors of divinity, of the same 
 house, should not concur in their 'ordinary' readings, whether 
 of the Bible or the Sentences, but that one of them must read 
 in his own convent, and the other in the schools of the univer- 
 sity. ' These statutes,' says dean Peacock, ' would seem to have 
 been framed with a view of compelling them [the friars], if 
 admitted to the regency in the university, to take part in the 
 public duties incumbent upon other regents, and not to con- 
 fine their labours within the walls of their own monasteries 2 .' 
 Such legislation on the part of the university was keenly They appeal 
 resented by the friars, and in the year 1366, the universities mem.' 
 on the one hand and the Mendicants on the other, besieged 
 parliament with angry recriminations. The chancellor and the 
 proctors, and the provincials and ministers of the four orders, 
 repaired to Westminster and submitted their disputes to the 
 royal decision. The conclusion arrived at by Edward in, to 
 which the bishops, dukes, earls, and barons all signified their 
 assent, was so far favourable to the Mendicants that it re- 
 scinded the statute forbidding them to receive into their order ctoded. te 
 
 1 Wood-Gutch, i 382 384. ' No- the performance of them they do not 
 thing was granted to the friars, but entrench upon, or contradict, the 
 only that they should enjoy their students of the university.' Ibid. 
 schools within the precincts of their * Cooper, Annals, i 105. Pea- 
 house, to he free for lectures, dis- cock, Observations, etc. Append. A. 
 putations, and determinations, and xliii, note, 
 nothing else, conditionally, that in
 
 264 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. HI. scholars under eighteen years of age, and forbade the enact- 
 ^^-!L ment of any similar statute: a far more important provision 
 however was that whereby all bulls and processes from Rome, 
 favouring the Mendicants in their relation to the university, 
 were definitely set aside, and the renunciation of all advan- 
 tages derived therefrom rendered compulsory 1 . But the per- 
 tinacity of the friars was not easily to be overcome; for within 
 nine years after the enactment of the above provisions, they 
 obtained through the assistance of Christ Church, Canterbury, 
 Exclude a bull enabling them to dispense with a statute which re- 
 muiiwuiytiie quired that all persons should be regents in arts before pro- 
 
 Memhcauts. ] / . . 
 
 ceeding to the degrpe of doctor of divinity; in other words, 
 enabling them to proceed to the highest academical degree 
 without having previously borne their part in the work of 
 university instruction 2 . 
 
 opposition to Other events occurring about this time sufficiently indi- 
 
 Waiterde cate that the theory advocated by Walter de Merton and 
 
 Hugh Balsham was encountering considerable opposition. 
 
 It is generally allowed that, for a short though not exactly 
 
 ascertained period, John Wyclif was master of Balliol College, 
 
 Wvciifon then known as Balliol Hall; and in the year 1361, during- his 
 
 In-half of the J 
 
 u^>"at tenure of that office, we find him exerting himself on behalf 
 of the secular clergy maintained on the foundation, by pro- 
 curing a papal bull permitting the impropriation of the living 
 
 i*;i in their of Abbotesley, recently presented by Sir William de Felton to 
 the college, for their support. In the recital the bull sets 
 forth how his holiness had been petitioned by the clerks and 
 
 1 Cooper, Annals, i 109. eunt et eruut pro tompore, qnamvia 
 J LCWIH, Life of Wyclif, p. 0. The non rexerint in bujuRmodi artium 
 object of tlif Meutlicants appears to facilitate, dummodo alias in primi- 
 have been to obtain the privilege of tivis scientiis snfticiente fucrint in- 
 reading and lecturing at their own structi oc cursus suos feccrint in 
 Hehooln instead of thowe belonging to tbeologicu facilitate, et per diligen- 
 the university: that they did not teni examinationem, juxta nioreiu 
 claim exemption from the COIUHC of ipniuH Htudii, sufficientes et idouei 
 instruction that preceded the period reperti cxtiterint ad uiaginterium ro- 
 of regency in evident from the Ian- cipiendum in eadem, ad hajnsmodi* 
 guage of Gregory: 'Nos igitur vo- magiaterii honoreui et docendi licen- 
 h-ntcs eosdem custodem et collegium tiam in ipsa theologica facilitate ia 
 
 favore prosequi, gratioHe hujosmodi studio supra-licto sublato cu- 
 
 rapplicationlbaa iuclinuti, volumus jusiibet diflicultatia obstaculo, libero 
 
 ac iHdem ciiHtodi et collegio apo- admittantur, etc.' See Collect, of 
 
 Ktolica auctoritate ooncedinma, (mod Payers and Records, Ibid. p. 302. 
 cujtoti et fccolaiea dicti colk-gii <jui
 
 WYCLIF AND THE MENDICANTS. 265 
 
 scholars of Balliol Hall who had represented that ' there were CI J AP - IIL 
 many students and clerks in the said hall, and that every one v ' 
 
 of them had anciently received only pence* a week, and 
 
 when they had taken their degree of master of arts were 
 immediately expelled the said hall, so that they could not, by 
 reason of their poverty, make any progress in other studies, 
 but sometimes were forced, for sake of a livelihood, to follow 
 some mechanical employment; that Sir William de Felton, 
 having compassion on them, desired to augment the number 
 of the said scholars, and to ordain that they should have, in 
 common, books ofdiver.se faculties, and that every one of them 
 should receive sufficient clothing, and twelve pence every 
 week, and that they might freely remain in the said hall, 
 whether they took their master's or doctor's degree or no, 
 until they had got a competent ecclesiastical benefice, and 
 then should leave the hall 1 .' On the 16th of May in the 
 same year that Wyclif exhibited this bull to Gymvell, bishop Wvclifleaves 
 of Lincoln, he was himself instituted, on the presentation of Oxford - 
 the college, to the rectory of Fylingham, in Lincolnshire, and 
 shortly after, probably as soon as his term of grace was ex- 
 pired, resigned the mastership of the college and went to 
 reside on his living. He did not become permanently resi- 
 dent again in Oxford until 1374; but in October, 1363, he is 
 found renting rooms in Queen's College, and in 1368 he 
 obtained two years' leave of absence from his living for the 
 purpose of prosecuting his studies at the university 2 . It was 
 probably therefore when at Fylingham that he heard the 
 history of similar efforts to his own on behalf of the secular 
 clergy, in connexion with Canterbury Hall. It was in the 
 year 1361, the same year that Wyclif obtained the papal bull 
 above quoted, that Simon Islip, archbishop of Canterbury, S imon isiip, 
 sought to carry out a plan resembling that conceived by a 
 
 * J 
 
 Hugh Balsham, a combination of the seculars and the reli- 
 gious on the same foundation. He had founded Canterbury 
 Hall, and had admitted to the society a warden and three 
 
 * The amount stands, as above, a of Peterborough). 
 
 blank in Lewis. a Shirley, Pref. to Fasciculi Ziza- 
 
 1 Lewis, Life of Wiclif, p. 4. (from niorum, pp. xiv, XT. Note on the 
 
 Manuscript Collections of the Bishop Two John Wyclif s, p. 527.
 
 26G THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. scholars who were monks from Christchurch, Canterbury, 
 
 .*!_* "_";.. and eight other scholars who were secular priests. The studies 
 
 His attempt prescribed were logic and the civil and the canon law. But, 
 
 to combine * 
 
 iiwuuiat' 10 " ^ a ^ Cambridge, the project served only to bring out more 
 
 raijtt-rimry c j ear jy ^he incompatibility of the two elements. The monks 
 and the seculars were perpetually at variance, and Simon 
 
 "peiTt'he I s lip> perceiving that harmony was hopeless, in 1365 expelled 
 the warden Woodhall, together with the other monks, and 
 constituted the college a foundation for the secular clergy 
 
 Simon Lan B - exclusively 1 . The successor of Simon Tslip was Simon Larig- 
 
 Iium, iirclibp. 
 
 burvi'Sw h am > a monk by education and entirely monastic in his sym- 
 pathies. Under his auspices and by the use of considerable 
 influence at Rome, the monks obtained a reversal of Simon 
 
 HC cxpcis Islip's decision. The seculars were all expelled, and their 
 
 tho teculan 
 
 bwy IUJL' r ' pl aces fiH^d by their rivals. Such a result must have 
 proved a bitter disappointment to the more liberal party 
 at the university, and the feelings of Wyclif when he came 
 up to Oxford in the following year, having obtained the 
 leave of absence from his living above mentioned, can hardly 
 have been those of much friendliness to either monk or 
 Mendicant. 
 
 Efforts <>r the While the seculars were thus contending under numerous 
 
 laity to cir- 
 
 ttorowof disadvantages against their powerful foes, the laity in their 
 the churdi. turn were seeking to circumscribe the power of the whole 
 Church. To counteract the rapacity of Rome the Statute 
 against Provisors was re-enacted six times in the course of 
 the century; while, for the purpose of limiting and defining 
 the functions of the ecclesiastic, we find parliament addressing 
 
 1 This fact is not brought out by John Wyclifx, appended to the Fate. 
 Dean Hook in his life of Simon 7Az.); such a conclusion, of course, 
 Langbam (Lifts, iv 210), but it is cancels many pages in the Lift- by 
 distinctly stated by Lewis, Life of Lewis, and in the JUonoyraph of Dr. 
 II' yd if, p. 13, and by Professor Shir- Robert Yuughan. The testimony of 
 ley, Fatciculi Xizaniorum, p. i!5. Wodeford, on which the latter writer 
 Dean Hook takes notice of the do- chiefly relies in endeavouring to 
 jHwition of Woodheod or Woodhall prove that the warden of Canter- 
 only. The new warden appointed on bury Hall and the reformer were 
 this occasion was John Wyclif of May- the same person, is shown by Pro- 
 Jirlt^ whom Prof. Shirley has, it muy fessor Shirley, upon a searching cri- 
 bc considered, satisfactorily proved ticisiu of the whole evidence, to Lo 
 to have been also the follow of Mer- uncntitled to credence, 
 ton College (sec Ntc on thi- Two
 
 JOHN WYCLIF. 2C7 
 
 the Crown, in the year 1371, with a general remonstrance CHAP. HI. 
 against the appointment of churchmen to all great dignities -^"-^ 
 of the state, and petitioning that laymen may be chosen for 
 these secular offices. The movement was attributed by 
 many to John of Gaunt ; but that Wyclif was the adviser of 
 his patron in this matter we have no evidence. Such data 
 as we possess would rather lead us to the conclusion that his 
 career as a reformer had scarcely commenced 1 . The long 
 neglect into which his Latin treatises have, in this country, 
 been allowed to fall, has indeed tended to create considerable 
 misapprehension as to his real character. Wyclif with all 
 his noble aims in the direction of Church reform and the 
 purification of doctrine, his translation of the Scriptures, his Rca) C ] iar ac. 
 English tracts, so full of pathos, irony, and manly passion, symputiiiesT 8 
 his denunciations of Romish innovations, was still the 
 schoolman, the dialectician, and the realist 2 . 'He was second 
 to none,' says the monk Kniffhton. ' in philosophy ; in the wyciif 
 
 ' V J > the foremost 
 
 discipline of the schools he was incomparable.' ' He was,' $ jjjy 1 ^." 
 says Anthony Harmer, 'far from being condemned at Oxford, 
 during his own life or the life of the duke of Lancaster, but 
 was had in great esteem and veneration at that university to 
 the last; and his writings, for many years before and after 
 his death, were as much read and studied there as those of 
 Aristotle, or the Master of the Sentences 3 .' ' A most pro- 
 found philosopher and a most distinguished divine; a man 
 of surpassing and indeed superhuman genius,' is the verdict 
 of Anthony Wood. When such is the testimony of preju- 
 diced if not hostile judges, we need seek for no farther evi- 
 dence to shew what was really the generally accepted repu- 
 
 1 Milman, Latin Christianity, Bk. in his description of the Parish Priest, 
 
 xni c. 6. Dr. Eobert Vaughaii has 'seems to have had him (Wyclif), 
 
 quoted from the Ecclvsue Regimen this friend and acquaintance of his, 
 
 (Cotton MSS. Titus, D. 1) passages in his thoughts.' Life of Wyclif, p. 
 
 which cleaily shew that Wyclif sub- 45. Mr. Eobert Bell, in his preface 
 
 sequeutly approved the views urged to Chaucer, observes, on the other 
 
 on this occasion ; the date of this hand, that ' the antagonism is per- 
 
 manuscript is iincertain, but there is feet ; ' and that if Chaucer meant to 
 
 every reason' for supposing that it is apply the sketch to Wyclif, it must 
 
 the production of a much later period have been as masked sarcasm and 
 
 in Wyclifs life, when he had actu- not as a panegyric, 
 
 ally assumed the part of a reformer. 3 Anthony Harmer's Specimen, p. 
 
 8 Lewis has asserted that Chaucer, 15 (quoted by Lewis). '
 
 2G8 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. m. tation of the character to whom they refer. It would seem 
 ^!^1L indeed that, during the greater part of his life, Wyclif was 
 chiefly known as the most eminent schoolman of his day ; 
 even his memorable citation before the archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, at St. Paul's, was the result of his political rather than 
 of his religious tenets, and the measure was probably aimed 
 at his patron rather than at himself 1 ; while his general 
 acceptance of the doctrinal teaching of the Church is suffi- 
 ciently indicated by the fact that it was not until within a 
 few years of his death that his bold revival of the doctrine 
 held by Berengar exposed him to the charge of heresy. That 
 doctrine again was one which related to a controversy that 
 had agitated both the eastern and the western Churches, 
 and which was peculiarly calculated to attract the ingenuity 
 of the schoolman ; and whatever of mistrust the name of a 
 refuted heretic might awaken, there were not a few at Oxford 
 who could remind those around them that the arguments of 
 Berengar had been those of the true logician, and who could 
 recognise in their illustrious contemporary the same or even 
 yet greater mastery over the acknowledged weapons of 
 
 wvciifnot debate. While finally, if we carefully examine the origin of 
 
 originally J ' J 
 
 M^dkluti* ki s hostility to the Mendicants, we shall find good reason for 
 
 inferring that had they suffered his teachings in the schools 
 to pass unchallenged, the fiercest passages and the heaviest 
 indictments that proceeded from his pen would never have 
 been written. A highly competent critic, the most recent 
 editor of the Trialogus, is even of opinion that Wyclif's 
 
 5 ' If Wyclif had confined his teach- doing, so long as the popes remained 
 ing to the schools, he would pro- at Avignon. In exposing the hypo- 
 bably have remained unmolested. crisy of the monks, lie acted with 
 Considerable latitude in speculation the applause of the bishops, whoso 
 was allowed to the schoolmen ; and jurisdiction they rejected or despised, 
 the heads of the Church of England He had not only the two universi- 
 at that time eared little for theo- ties, hut all the clergy, regular and 
 logical discussions. The university secular, with him when he attacked 
 was, itw;lf, vehemently antipapal, the Mendicants. Fitz-Kalph, who 
 long before Wynlif was matriculated; preceded him, and was equally vio- 
 un.l his antipathy to the Church of lent in his attacks upon the men- 
 Itorne was an inheritance on the part dicant orders, had been rewarded 
 of an Oxonian. In opposing the with the archiepiscopal mitre of Ar- 
 popc, a creature of France, Wyclif magh.' Hook, Lives of tlie Arch- 
 only did what every patriot waa lislwpt, in 83.
 
 WYCLIF AND THE MENDICANTS. 269 
 
 original sentiments towards those orders were certainly not CHAP. in. 
 of a hostile character 1 . J'ARTJL 
 
 It was undoubtedly an evil day for the Mendicants when Fierceness of 
 the great schoolman at last put on the armour of William of '. ut>nt inun- 
 
 cmtum of 
 
 St. Amour. The class hostility of the Benedictine historian, '** 
 the honest aversion of Roger Bacon, the sarcasm and con- 
 tempt of Langlande and Chaucer, even the hot anger of 
 Annachanus, seem tame and feeble when compared with the 
 glowing diatribes of the Oxford schoolman. They had but 
 denounced the abuses of those orders of whom he demanded 
 the extinction ; whoever in fact wishes to know the worst 
 that could be said against the Mendicants in the fourteenth 
 century, unmodified by any palliating circumstances or 
 counter considerations, will find it in the scholastic pages of 
 the Trialogus and the simpler diction of the English tracts. 
 With much of exaggeration in detail but with undeniable 
 fidelity of outline, the faultj, vices, inconsistencies, and short- 
 comings of his adversaries are there held up to view, and it 
 is difficult indeed to believe that we have before us the repre- 
 sentatives of those whose heroism and self-devotion had won 
 
 1 The late Dr. Eobt. Yaughan, in tium acerrimos esse patronos et 
 his work entitled John de WycJiJfe, vindices. Quod cum non ante an- 
 D.D., a Monograph, says 'From num 1381 factuin esse, et alia monu- 
 what we know of the controversy as menta et libri ejus nondum typis ex- 
 conducted by others, and from all script! testimonio sint, luce clarius est, 
 that we find bearing upon it in the Trialogumaut hoe aut posteriori anno 
 later works of the reformer, it is not editum esse.' Pro/, ad Trialngum, p. 
 difficult to judge of the manner in 3. Lewis, on the authority of Le- 
 which he acquitted himself in rela- land, De Script. Brit. p. 379, asserts 
 tion to it at this earlier period.' that Wyclif began, so early as 1372, 
 (See p. 88.) How far the inference to attack the Mendicants, in his lec- 
 here made is justified by the facts tures as Doctor of Divinity at Oxford, 
 may be seen from the following 'In these lectures,' he says, 'he fre- 
 words of Dr. Lechler : ' Sed Wicli- quently took notice of the corrup- 
 fuin non a primo iuitio de ' fratribus tious of the begging Friars, which at 
 miiioribus,' 'pnedicatoribus,' reli- first he did in a soft and gentle man- 
 quis, ita sensisse, potius magni eos ner, until, finding that his detecting 
 ffistiniavisse, nee antequam crepisset their abuses was what was accept- 
 doctrinse de 'transsubstantiatione' able to his hearers, he proceeded to 
 censurom agere, inendicantes im- deal more plainly and openly with, 
 pagnasse, ipsius opera testantur. them.' Life of Wyclif, p. 21. He 
 Cum enim theologi illis ordiuibus admits, however, that the tract edi- 
 adscripti prae ceteris ipsi adversa- ted by James, the librarian of the 
 rentur de doctrina ilia agenti, Wic- Bodleian, in 1608, which with the 
 lifus sibi persuadere ccepit, fratres Trialogus contains the gravamen of 
 mendicantes omnium errorum atque Wyclif s attack, was not written un- 
 malorum in ecclesia llomana vigen- til about ten years later. Ibid. p. 22.
 
 270 THE FIFTKKNTH CENTURY. 
 
 * 
 in. the admiration of St. Louis and of Robert Grosseteste. The 
 
 H, vow of poverty had long been disregarded ; the residences of 
 the orders were among the most magnificent structures of the 
 time, so thickly scattered too throughout the country that 
 a contemporary poet was scarcely guilty of exaggeration when 
 he declared that the friar might make a tour of the realm 
 and sleep each night under the shelter of some one or other 
 of these palatial abodes 1 . To Wyclif they appeared little 
 better than those ancient strongholds where lawless barons 
 were wont to set law and order at defiance, issuing forth at 
 intervals only to spread terror among the quiet homesteads 
 of their neighbours ; he termed them 'Cairn's Castles 2 .' As 
 for the mendicancy which supplied the place of force, he 
 declared that ' begging was damned by God both in the Old 
 Testament and the New ;' while the proselytism of the 
 orders, he described as habitually carried on by ' hypocrisie, 
 lesings and steling.' In short, after making all allowance for 
 the plain speaking of the period, it is difficult to conceive 
 that the resources of our Middle English could have supplied 
 the vocabulary for a much heavier indictment than that 
 wherein he stigmatises his antagonists as ' irregular procura- 
 tors of the fende, to make and maintain warrs of Christen 
 men, and enemies of peace and charity,' ' Scariot's children,' 
 'a swallow of simony, of usury, extortion, of raveynes and of 
 theft, and so as a nest or hord of Mammon's tresour,' 'both 
 night thieves and day thieves, entering into the Church not 
 by the door that is Christ,' 'worse enemies and sleers of man's 
 soule than is the cruel fende of hell by himself,' 'cnvenymed 
 with gostly sin of Sodom,' 'perilous enemies to holy Church 
 arid all our lond 3 .' We need scarcely wonder that charges 
 
 1 'For ye now wenden through by Wyclif OH ft term of reproach, as 
 
 the re.ilme, and ech night will lig embodying the initial letters of the 
 
 in your owne courtes, and BO mow name- of the four mendicant orders, 
 
 but right few lords do.' Jack Upland Carmelites, AugustiniaiiH, Jacobites 
 
 (quoted by Lewis), or Dominicans (called Jacobites from 
 
 1 Caymei Cattelu. 'That is Cain's the Rue St. Jacques in Paris, where 
 Caution; for in Wyclyffe's time the their famous convent stood), and Mi- 
 proper name Cain appears to have norites or Franciscans.' See note by 
 been commonly corrupted into ('aim. Dr. Todd to his edition of Wyclif's 
 So in hi New Testament : " AbeL of- treatise l)e, Ecclcsia et Membra Ejiu. 
 ferpd a myche more sacrifice thann 3 Tico sliort Treatixes afjaimt tlr 
 Cairn to God." The word is used Orders of the Beyaing Prinr*, ed.
 
 LOLLARDISM AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 271 
 
 and epithets such as these, made moreover by no obscure CHAP. m. 
 parish priest but by the most eminent English schoolman of - ! ^ E J^ 
 his day, should have called up the undying hatred of the 
 four orders. Wyclifs enemies could say no worse of him 
 than he had said of them. Netter and Kynyngham are 
 models of courtesy by comparison 1 . 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to point out the relevancy of T 1 " 3 stru reie 
 
 1__ . . . against the 
 
 these leading features in Wyclifs teaching and influence, JaJ^fonat 
 
 to the developement of thought and education in the J!^ umvers '- 
 
 universities ; but we may observe that we have here decisive 
 
 evidence that the systematic opposition to the corruptions of 
 
 the Church, which had begun to manifest itself in Occam and 
 
 was carried out by Wyclff, was essentially a university 
 
 movement. While conservatism found its chief support in 
 
 the superstitious zeal of the provinces, the spirit of reform 
 
 was agitating Oxford and Cambridge ; having its origin indeed 
 
 in a widespread sense of grave abuses, but mainly indebted 
 
 for its chief success to the advocacy of the most distinguished 
 
 schoolman of his day, whose arguments were enforced with 
 
 all the subtleties of the scholastic logic, as well as with the 
 
 simple rhetoric of his native tongue. The universities thus The univcrsi- 
 
 r ties the 
 
 became the strongholds of Wyclifism 2 ; of Lollardism, that 8 * r ? I H?J M i d * 
 
 & J of Lollard- 
 
 is to say, free for the most part from those abuses and extra- isiu - 
 
 vagancies which brought discredit upon the cause, as seen in 
 socialists like John Ball, and fanatics like Swynderby, but 
 firmly holding to the right of private judgement in the ac- 
 ceptance of theological dogmas. The views of Berengar were 
 
 James, Oxford, 1608. Lewis, Life of versity to reside on his own living. 
 Wyclif, pp. 23 30. If the reader allot to him the praise 
 1 Liugard has naturally not failed of courage, he cannot refuse to them 
 to find iu Wyclifs vituperations an the praise of moderation.' Hist, of 
 exculpation of the opposite party: England in 5 307. 
 ' It will not excite surprise,' he ob- - Of its presence at Oxford we have 
 serves, ' if invectives so coarse, and a signal proof in the fact that with- 
 doctrines so prejudicial to their in- in a few years after the foundation of 
 terests, alarmed and irritated the New College in 1380, we find the 
 clergy. They appealed for protec- courtiers reproaching William of 
 tion to the king and the pontiff ; Wykeham, the founder, with having 
 but though their reputation and for- raised up a seminary of heresy; so 
 tunes were at stake they sought not prevalent had the new doctrines be- 
 to revenge themselves on their ad- come within the college. See Wil- 
 versary, but were content with an Ham of Wykeham and his Colleges, 
 order for his removal from the uni- by Mackenzie E. C. Walcott, p. 282.
 
 272 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. reasserted byWyclif, not simply in connexion with a specific 
 ~^-LL tenet but with the whole field of religious enquiry; and it 
 was this spirit that, far more than the latter's opinions con- 
 cerning Church and State, began, soon after his death, to 
 spread with such rapidity at Oxford and Cambridge. The 
 preamble to archbishop Arundel's Constitutions, published in 
 1408, indicates veiy clearly the gravamen of the offence 
 constitutions given by the party of reform to the ecclesiastical authorities : 
 
 ofarclibp. 6 J . r . J 
 
 u<H Ude1 ' ' es an in j ur y to the most reverend synod, who examines 
 
 its determinations : and since he who disputes the supreme 
 earthly judgment is liable to the punishment of sacrilege, as 
 the authority of the civil law teaches us; much more grievously 
 are they to be punished, and to be cut off as putrid members 
 from the Church militant, who, leaning on their own wisdom, 
 violate, oppose, and despise, by various doctrines, words, and 
 deeds, the laws and canons made by the key-keeper of eternal 
 
 life and death when they have been published according 
 
 to form and cause, and observed by the holy fathers our pre- 
 decessors, even to the glorious effusion of their blood, and 
 dissipating their brains 1 .' In the same Constitutions it is 
 provided (1) that no master of arts or grammar shall instruct 
 his pupils upon any theological point, contrary to the deter- 
 mination of the Church, or expound any text of Scripture in 
 other manner than it hath been of old expounded, or permit 
 his pupils either publicly or privately to dispute concerning 
 the Catholic faith or the sacraments of the Church ; (2) that 
 no book or tract compiled by John Wyclif, or any one else in 
 his time or since, or to be compiled hereafter, shall be read or 
 taught in the schools, hostels, or other places in the province, 
 until it has first been examined by the universities of Oxford 
 and Cambridge, or at least by twelve persons to be elected 
 by each of these bodies, and afterwards expressly approved 
 by the archbishop or his successors; (3) that whoever shall read 
 or teach any book or treatise contrary to the form aforesaid, 
 shall be punished as a sower of schism and favourer of 
 heresy, according to the quality of his offence 2 .' 
 
 1 Quoted by Dean Hook, Lives, in 2 Cooper, Annalt, i 153. Wilkins, 
 7, Concilia, in 316.
 
 LOLLARDISM AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 273 
 
 Into the question of the political bearings of Wyclif's CHAP. IIL 
 doctrines we are not called upon to enter. They appear to ^^> 
 have been carried to dangerous excesses by the fanatics who, ^STor 
 under the general designation of Lollards, represented not Loiiarul 
 merely, as Professor Shirley observes, 'every species of re- 
 ligious malcontent,' but designs inconsistent with the then 
 existing form of government. Against these the statute 
 De Hceretico Comburendo was really aimed ; but the eccle- 
 siastical authorities subsequently found their advantage in 
 confusing the theological and political aspects of the move- 
 ment, and representing them as inseparable. Under both, 
 the followers of Wyclif strained his teachings to conclusions 
 that could scarcely fail, at any time, to excite alarm, and 
 call forth vigorous measures of repression 1 ; and while we 
 honour the integrity, the vigour of thought, and the untiring 
 zeal of their leader, we shall not the less lament the extrava- 
 gancies which obscured the original lustre of his design, and 
 contributed in no small degree to the defeat of a noble pur- 
 pose. It is certain that, in this country, measures like those 
 which Arundel, Chicheley, and Beaufort successively carried 
 out were attended with almost complete success ; and the 
 oft-quoted simile of Foxe typifies with singular felicity the 
 history of Wyclif's influence. As the ashes of the great 
 reformer were borne by the Avon and the Severn far from 
 the spot where they were first consigned to rest, even so his Loiiardism 
 
 * . _ supprcssc-d in 
 
 doctrines, well-nigh extinguished in England, rose again in El land 
 
 o reappear in 
 
 new purity and vigour in a distant land. Amid a Sclavonic Bolleima - 
 race, in the cities of Bohemia, the son of John of Gaunt 8 
 directed the persecuting sword against the tenets of which 
 
 1 'Another class, as truly alien have thoroughly approved itself to 
 
 from his spirit as any, and who them was that which to others ap- 
 
 began in the next generation to ap- peared the most mysterious of all, 
 
 pear in considerable number, were the exposition of the Bible by the 
 
 the men who rejected, as unworthy most ignorant of the priesthood. 
 
 of the Christian religion, whatever In the high value they set on this 
 
 did not appear patent at once to the unlettered preaching, and in that 
 
 intelligence of the most ordinary alone, they could truly claim the 
 
 learner. For them human nature authority of Wyclif.' Prof. Shirley, 
 
 had no hidden depths, religion no Pref. to Fasc. Ziz. Ixviii. 
 
 mysteries ; yet of the Christian ordi- 2 Cardinal Beaufort, 
 nances, that which alone seems to 
 
 18
 
 274 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CTIAP. in. his illustrious father had been a foremost protector 1 . But 
 at home, Lollardism, if it lived at all, survived rather by its 
 
 secondary effects than as a direct tradition. ' Notwithstand- 
 ing,' says a writer who has studied this period with special 
 care, 'the darkness that surrounds all subjects connected 
 with the history of the 15th century, we may venture pretty 
 not'uwcom sa ^ e ^y ^ affirm that Lollardy was not the beginning of mo- 
 Sf e tii C e emeilt dern Protestantism. Plausible as it seems to regard Wyclif 
 aon " as "the morning star of the Reformation," the figure con- 
 veys an impression which is altogether erroneous. Wyclif 's 
 real influence did not long survive his own day, and so far 
 from Lollardy having taken any deep root among the English 
 people, the traces of it had wholly disappeared long before 
 the great revolution of which it is thought the forerunner. 
 At all events in the rich historical material for the beginning 
 of Henry the Eighth's reign, supplied by the correspondence 
 of the time, we look in vain for a single indication that any 
 such thing as a Lollard sect existed. The movement had died 
 a natural death ; from the time of Oldcastle it sank into in- 
 significance. Though still for a while considerable in point of 
 numbers, it no longer counted among its adherents any man 
 of note ; and when another generation had passed away, the 
 serious action of civil war left no place for the crotchets of 
 fanaticism. Yet doubtless Lollardy did not exist in vain. 
 A strong popular faith does not entirely die, because it never 
 can be altogether unsound. The leaven of the Lollard doc- 
 trines remained after the sect had disappeared. It leavened 
 the whole mass of English thought, and may be traced in 
 the theology of the Anglican Church itself. Ball and Swyn- 
 derby were forgotten, as they deserved to be ; extravagance 
 effervesced and was no more ; but there still remained, and 
 
 1 Antony Wood states, I have been The number of students from Bo- 
 unable to ascertain on what grounds, hernia at the English university at 
 that Iltifis studied at Oxford, where this period is a noticeable feature, 
 he 'made it his whole employment' and is probably attributable to the 
 'to collect and trniiRcribe' Wyclif 8 increased intercourse between the 
 doctrines. The generally received ac- two countries that followed upon the 
 count is that HUBS became acquaint- marriage of king Wenzel's sister to 
 ed with those doctrines through writ- Richard n. Wood-Clutch, i 585, 586. 
 inirs brought by one of his scholars Milman, Latin Christianity, Bk. xm 
 who had been studying at Oxford, c. 8.
 
 LOLIARDISM AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 275 
 
 to this day continues, much that is far more sound than CHAP. m. 
 unsound 1 .' 
 
 But while it would seem indisputable that the doctrines "jj^or 
 
 of Wyclif were effectually suppressed in this country, it is foTiolx-u'" 14 
 i ' i /. , i MI i. .11 the sup- 
 
 necessary to guard against a tendency to refer to their sup- pression or 
 
 . J ... Lollardismat 
 
 pression consequences which demand a wider solution. The ^v^ 
 following passage from Huber, for example, is exaggerated in 
 its conception and erroneous as a statement of fact : ' One 
 might have expected/ he says, ' that this great battle should 
 be fought out at the universities, and that the emergency 
 would have called out the most brilliant talents on both 
 sides. It might have been so, had not the higher powers 
 from without, both temporal and spiritual, at each successive 
 crisis crushed the adverse party in the universities ; thus 
 entailing intellectual imbecility on the other side likewise, 
 when a battle essentially intellectual and spiritual was never 
 allowed to be fairly fought out. This has ever been the 
 effect everywhere, but especially at the English universities; 
 and it explains the extreme languor and torpor which pre- 
 vailed in them at that time Almost a century passed 
 
 after the suppression of the Wykliffite outburst, before classi- 
 cal studies were adopted in England: and during this 
 whole period the universities took no such prominent part 
 in the great ecclesiastical questions as might have been 
 expected from their ancient reputation. In the thirteenth 
 and fourteenth centuries, the university of Oxford had reared 
 and sent forth sons who attracted European regard : but in 
 the great Councils of the Church of the fifteenth century, 
 she was nowhere to be found 2 .' A more careful consideration Hisstate- 
 of the phenomena of the Sceculum Synodale, and a more fact;i crr - 
 
 ' neous, 
 
 intimate acquaintance with our university history, would 
 probably have led the writer considerably to modify if not 
 
 1 Fortnightly Rcvieic, vol. n, Bible was to his countrymen but a short 
 
 Thought in the Fifteenth Century, by blaze, soon damped and stifled by 
 
 James Gairdner. Milton, long after, the pope and prelates for six or seven 
 
 noted and commented on this sudden Kings' reigns.' Of Reformation in 
 
 extinction of reform in England : England, Bk. i. Works by St. John, 
 
 ' Wickliffe's preaching,' he says, ' at n 368. 
 
 which all the succeeding reformers 2 Huber, English Universities, i 
 
 more effectually lighted their tapers, 156. 
 
 182
 
 276 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP, in. altogether to cancel this passage. In the first place it is 
 certain that both Oxford and Cambridge were represented 
 at the council of Pisa 1 ; and when the deputation from 
 of t'fJdwTne Oxford was passing through Paris, it was addressed by Gerson, 
 sitiesinin- then chancellor of the university of Paris, and complimented 
 
 tvllectual ... . . 
 
 activity. on the spirited interest in the welfare of the Church, which 
 the body it represented had displayed at so important a 
 juncture*. At Constance, where the suppression of Wyclifism, 
 as that heresy had reappeared in the movement led by John 
 Huss, occupied a prominent place in the deliberations of the 
 council, Cambridge was represented by its chancellor and 
 other delegates, and Oxford by some of her most distinguished 
 sons 8 . Both universities, again, were addressed by the uni- 
 versity of Paris with a view to concerted action at the council 
 of Basel* ; and the fact that neither would seem to have so 
 far responded to the invitation as to send delegates, is satis- 
 factorily accounted for by the comparatively languid interest 
 which the whole country, on the eve of political disturbance 
 at home, appears to have taken in the lengthened proceed- 
 ings of that council. 
 
 That the suppression of Lollardism acted as a check upon 
 
 free thought at the universities is probable enough, but it is 
 
 far from supplying an adequate explanation of the 'torpor' 
 
 and ' languor' to which Huber refers, and which undoubtedly 
 
 prevailed. Between heresy of the most uncompromising 
 
 character and complete subserviency to mere tradition, there 
 
 was yet an interval that afforded sufficient scope for vigorous 
 
 speculation and active organic developement ; of this the 
 
 Thenni- position occupied by the university of Paris during the earlier 
 
 vnra'rv part of the fifteenth century is incontestible evidence. The 
 
 lain* IUT , J 
 
 ewlm-iiJT" centre f intellectual activity had again been shifted ; and 
 during that period Paris was again what she had been in the 
 
 1 Labbe and Cossart, xi 2221 ; Proporitio facto, a J. Gersonio ex parte 
 
 Wood-Ontoh, 544, 545. Univenitati* coram Analicis Pariio 
 
 1 ' Ecce qnid prn-clara nniversitas eiintibn* ad Sacntm Cnnsilium Pisis. 
 
 Oxonienaig, nnde sibi raeruit con- Opera, ed. Dnpin, n 126. 
 
 gratulari, pridem ad hoc Concilium * Cooper, Annals, i 158. 
 
 petendum detenninavit ne et misit * MS. Lambetbiani, No. 447, fo. 
 
 in Franciam, scio qni pra-sons inter- 143 (quoted by Cooper), 
 fui dum proponeretur Lac conclusio.'
 
 JEAN CHARLIEU DE GERSON. 277 
 
 days of Albertus and Aquinas. Never, declares Crevier, bad CHAP. IIL 
 she been consulted and listened to with greater deference ; ^!^-iL 
 never had she taken so conspicuous a part in the decision of 
 affairs of such importance ; while the names of Nicholas de 
 Clamangis, Pierre d'Ailli, and Jean Gerson might vie with 
 any that had yet adorned her academic annals 1 . It was the 
 era of the great councils ; and had the views advocated by 
 the two last-named illustrious scholars of the College of 
 Navarre obtained a permanent triumph over papal obstinacy, 
 it is not improbable that the fierce convulsion of the six- 
 teenth century might have been anticipated by more mode- 
 rate measures in the fifteenth. A reformed and educated 
 clergy, and the admitted right of synods oecumenical to over- 
 rule the authority of the pope himself, might have floated 
 the Romish system over the two fatal rocks on which, in 
 Germany and in England, it went to pieces 2 . 
 
 Of Gerson himself it has been truly said that ' he does j ea n 
 
 , lier de 
 
 more than almost any other man to link the thoughts of Ge 
 different periods together 3 ;' for, though essentially a repre- <* "29. 
 sentative of medkeval thought, he presents a union of some 
 of its most dissimilar phases and tendencies. The nominalist 
 and yet the mystic ; full of contempt for ' the fine spun cob- 
 webs ' that occupied the ingenuity of the schools, full of re- 
 verence for Dionysius, ' the holy and the divine ;' intent on 
 reformation in the Church, yet consenting to the death of 
 the noblest reformer of the age ; ever yearning for peace, and 
 yet ever foremost in the controversial fight, he adds to the 
 anomalies of a transitional period the features of an indi- 
 vidual eclecticism. It is foreign to our purpose to enter here 
 upon any discussion of the views which find expression in the 
 
 1 Crevier, m 3. independent way unsupported by the 
 
 s Similarly, of a somewhat earlier moral corruption of the Church from 
 
 period in England, Mr Fronde ob- which it received its most powerful 
 
 serves, 'If the Black Prince had impetus.' Hist of England, i 82. 
 lived, or if Richard n had inherited 3 Prof. Maur ce, Modern Philo- 
 
 the temper of the Plantageuets, the sophy, p. 46. Similarly Schmidt ob- 
 
 ecclesiastical system would have been serves, 'Gerson marque une pe"riode 
 
 spared the misfortune of a longer de transition; il est le representant 
 
 reprieve. Its worst abuses would d'une epoque ou les piincipes les plus 
 
 then have terminated, and the refor- contradictoires secombattent.' Est-ai 
 
 mation of doctrine in the 16th cen- sur Jean Gerson, p. 30. 
 tury would have been left to fight its
 
 278 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. I) e Triplici Theologia or in the De Monte Contemplationis ; 
 but in two of Gerson's shorter and comparatively unknown 
 tiL"s, DC treatises, the De Modis Siynifaandi, and the De Concordia 
 Metaphysiciv cum Logica, we have a valuable exposition of 
 the state of metaphysical science at Paris at this period, and 
 an incontrovertible proof of the progress which that science 
 had made since the time of Abelard. In the fifty propo- 
 sitions into which each of these treatises is divided, the 
 nominalistic conclusions are stated with a conciseness and 
 clearness that far exceed what is to be found in any other 
 writer of the century ; it may not indeed be easy to shew 
 any appreciable advance upon the views arrived at by Occam; 
 but it is certainly a noticeable fact that those views are here 
 reiterated with emphasis by one who had filled the office of 
 ' chancellor in the same university that had seen the writings 
 tiH-y'Ifford f the Oxford Franciscan given to the flames. It is to be 
 reHu'its""*' noted also, as perhaps the most significant feature, that the 
 nominalistic doctrines are here identified with the real mean- 
 ing of Aristotle, while the positions of the realists, from 
 Amalricus down to John Huss, are exhibited as instances of 
 philosophic error 1 . The distinction to be observed between 
 metaphysics and logic, on which Occam had insisted, is also 
 asserted with even yet greater distinctness. It belongs to 
 the metaphysician alone, says Gerson, to investigate the 
 essences of things ; the logician does not define the thing, 
 but simply the notion*; his object being, in more, modern 
 phraseology, 'to produce distinctness in concepts, which are 
 the things of logic.' The theory to which the realists had 
 adhered with such tenacity, that in some yet to be discovered 
 treatise of the Stagyrite would be found the necessary expo- 
 sition of the functions of logic as concerned with the definition 
 of things themselves 8 , is here given to the winds; and the 
 position taken up by Occam with reference to theology is 
 sanctioned by the greatest authority of the fifteenth century. 
 
 1 Opera, fid. Dnpin, iv 820. 827. fiignnm cst, pnrfiertim in anima, 
 
 Snmatur >x his diatinctionibaa ppectat ad Rrammaticain vcl logicam.' 
 
 hffic unica, quod conaideratio rci, tit Ibid, iv 829. 
 
 fCH est. special ad mctaphynic-ain. 3 D e an Mansel, Artis Logica Rudi- 
 
 Consideratio vcro rci, ut tantuniinodo mcnta, p. 40, note .
 
 JEAN CHARLIER DE OERSON. 279 
 
 Such then was the harvest which scholasticism finally reaped CHAP. in. 
 iu the fields of philosophy ! After the toil of centuries it had ^^ 
 at last succeeded in bringing back to view the original text 
 of the great master, which the vagaries of medieval specula- 
 tion had well-nigh obliterated 1 . 
 
 But it is not the nominalist only that appears in these J^*";," 118 
 pages ; the mystic and the theologian are also discernible, l^ return 
 The grand old mediaeval conception of theology, as the science "flrisuJt. 
 of sciences, struggles for expression. Theology or rather 
 ontology, in Gerbori's view, is not necessarily a terra incognita 
 for the intellect because not amenable to the reasonings 
 which belong to the province of the dialectician. ' Even/ he qcwon-s 
 says, ' as the sculptor reveals the statue in the block ' (a simile relations Jr 
 
 l lojrfc to 
 
 borrowed from his favorite Dionysius) ' not by what he brings tlluolo >'- 
 but by what he removes,' even so the divine nature is to be 
 apprehended by the man, only as he ceases to be the logician 
 and soars beyond the region of the Categories 8 ! Of the dis- 
 putes of the theologians Gerson appears absolutely weary ; 
 affirming that it were better controversy should cease alto- 
 gether than that discords like those which he had witnessed 
 should continue to scandalise alike the faithful and the in- 
 fidel. 
 
 The date of the composition of these two treatises ex- 
 
 1 A recent critic however sees in of solution for these contradictions. 
 
 Gersou's treatise something more Jean Charlier de Gersou's work, De 
 
 than a mere restoration of Aristo- 3Iodis Significandi and De Concordia 
 
 telian thought. 'The metaphysical Metaphysicte Cum Logica, may be 
 
 philosophy of the Mi.ldle Ages, with taken as an exponent of the results 
 
 its dominating controversy between obtained by Scholasticism; and it is 
 
 realism and nominalism, that is, surprising to see the close agreement 
 
 between metaphysic mixed with on- between it and modern Kantian, and 
 
 tology and metaphysic pure, is a therefore also of much post-Kantian, 
 
 painful working back to the point philosophy. It is the result of pre- 
 
 of view which Aristotle occupied, and vious philosophy, and the seed of 
 
 a rediscovery of his meaning. But modern philosophies.' Shadworth 
 
 at the same time it was a reproduc- H. Hodgson, Time and Space, p. 532. 
 tion of his meaning in a new and 2 'Sic Dionysius docet facere in 
 
 original mould, so that the form was mystica theologia per exemplum de 
 
 simpler and clearer, and the contra- sculptore qui f acit. agalma pulcherri- 
 
 dictions which Aristotle's system con- mum, id est, imaginem, nihil addendo 
 
 tained, in its combination of ontology sed reinovendo. Seqnitur eos Domi- 
 
 with metaphysic, were brought to nus Bonaventura, Itinerario Mentis 
 
 view. This was a great stej> in ad- in Deuni, eleganter valde.' Opera, 
 
 ranee, although no one as yet arose iv 827. 
 capable of introducing a principle
 
 280 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. plains their tone and invests them with additional interest. 
 !ll!^-Il, Gerson at this time was no longer chancellor of Paris. The 
 SuSc" noblest act of a far from ignoble career had made the duke 
 Zt'trS of Burgundy his mortal foe. In 1418 he fled from the city 
 written. 6 in which it is no exaggeration to say, that he had ' for a time 
 ruled like a king 1 .' He first took refuge in Bavaria, and 
 finally found a home in a monastery of Celestines at Lyons, 
 of which his brother was prior. It was here that on the 
 eve of the Nativity, in 1420, he summed up the foregoing 
 'conclusions.' The mediaeval student loved to bring some 
 cherished labour to its close at that sacred season of the 
 year ; and Gerson, as towards the end of life he thus enun- 
 ciated his philosophical belief, glanced forward to a time, for 
 him then very near, when these paths of thought and specu- 
 lation, which now crossed each other with bewildering com- 
 plexity or vanished from the mental eye in widely opposed 
 directions, should be found harmonious and concentric ; when 
 he should discern the true reconciliation, not merely of meta- 
 physic and logic, but of all knowledge, and see no longer as 
 through a glass darkly 8 . 
 
 tiu'lfu "" f The intercourse between Paris and the English univer- 
 twwnVaris sities appears to have died out about the time of Gerson's 
 Kniciwh chancellorship, and we have failed to discover any evidence 
 
 universities. > 
 
 that his speculations served in any way to stimulate the 
 
 progress of philosophic thought in England throughout the 
 
 "'that century. Over both countries the storm of war burst with 
 
 boutadi- peculiar severity* and when the fierce feuds of the Armag- 
 
 inhiiition of i i T- 
 
 th influence nucs and the rJurmmdians, the struggle between the two 
 
 of tli imi- 
 
 pfcrtHiTtbe nat i ns > an <l the Wars of the Roses were over, the supremacy 
 clntury! ^ Paris as the chief seat of European learning was also at 
 
 1 Prof. Maurice, Modern Fhilo- duplex, scilicet virc et prvtrim. Theo- 
 
 *npliy, p. 49. login via) rewpicit ens primum lit 
 
 ' 'Concordia metaphysicse cum creditnm cum siiis attrilmtivis non 
 
 theolngia net, si cnnsideretur ens excludendo intelligentiam dc multin. 
 
 Minplicitcr vel onH'purum, vel ens Theologia autein patrim reHpicit ens 
 
 nnivenaliter iH;rf-<-tum, quod est primum ut facialiter visum et objec- 
 
 Deua. Ant fi conrideretar gpnenilis talitnr in seipfio, non in fipoculo vel 
 
 ratio objertalis nitiK. Hecundum n-nigmate. Oratias ipsi qui apeniit 
 
 peetal m\ metaphymeapa : primum bane concordiam hominihuH bonae 
 
 proprie a<l theologiam, in qua DCUH voluntatis.' Opera, iv 82'J, 830. 
 fht Biibjcctum. Ettt autein
 
 THE SJ3CULUM SYNODALE. 281 
 
 an end. It may appear but natural that such a result should CHAP. in. 
 have followed upon the reign of the Cabochien and the Scor- ^^-J' 
 cheur ; it may even seem a fitting nemesis for the sentence 
 whereby the university consigned the Maid of Orleans to 
 her fate ; but so far as it is within our power to assign a 
 cause, it would rather appear that the decline which now 
 came over the prestige of the university of Paris must be 
 attributed to efforts as honorable as any which mark the 
 history of that illustrious body. It is well known that the tJSifduf 
 policy of the three great councils of Pisa, Constance, and 
 Basel rested upon the recognition of one fundamental prin- 
 ciple, the absolute authority of such assemblies over the 
 fiat of the pope himself. At the assembling of the council 
 of Basel however the course of events had given a different 
 complexion to the assertion of such a principle in the eyes 
 of different nations. The schism of the West had been 
 brought to a termination ; and the papal authority was again 
 concentrated in a single undivided head at Rome. English- 
 men accordingly no longer regarded the pope with the sus- 
 picion that had attached to the sole or rival pope at Avignon ; 
 and when the French deputies at Basel, pledged to support The policy of 
 and carry out the policy of Gerson, demanded measures of P'>SI t 
 
 J J IJasi'l oy the 
 
 reform to which Eugenius IV refused his sanction, they found {?,t*jj? h 
 themselves opposed by an English Ultramontane party, re- montanist8 - 
 presented by John Kemp, the archbishop of York, who sup- 
 ported the papal supremacy. This opposition was successful. 
 From the breaking up of the council of Basel we date a 
 new theory of the pontifical power. The supreme pontiff 
 no longer appeared as episcopus inter pares, but as the uni- 
 versal bishop, from whom all bishops in other countries re- 
 ceived their authority and to whom they owed allegiance. 
 The Sceculum Synodale was at an end 1 . 
 
 But before the council of Basel had ceased to sit, France France 
 
 re-enacts 
 
 had secured for herself at Bourges that independence of Rome t-^g^'-^ 
 which she had vainly striven to assert in the oecumenical 
 councils. The Pragmatic Sanction, re-enacted in 1438, vested 
 in the crown the most valuable church patronage of the king- 
 1 Dean Hook, Lives of the Archbishops, v 216 218.
 
 282 
 
 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The popes 
 avenge them 
 selves upon 
 the uni- 
 versity of 
 Paris. 
 
 Rise of new 
 universities 
 under the 
 papal 
 
 tuuiction. 
 
 dom ; it was to France far more than the statutes of Pro- 
 visors and Prcemunire had ever been to England ; for more 
 than half a century, says Ranke, it was believed to be the 
 palladium of the realm 1 . But, in the mean time, her ad- 
 herence to the policy of Gerson drew down upon the univer- 
 sity of Paris the enmity of successive popes, who repaid the 
 attempted limitation of their authority by a not unsuccessful 
 endeavour to diminish her influence and prestige. Hence 
 the encouragement now so conspicuously extended by Rome 
 to the creation of new centres of learning. In the thirteenth 
 century only three universities had risen on the model of 
 that of Paris ; the first half of the fourteenth century wit- 
 nessed the rise of the same number ; the second half, seven ; 
 but the fifteenth century saw the creation of eighteen' 2 . We 
 
 1 Milman, Latin Christianity, Bk. 
 SHI c. 13 ; Ranke,//j'sfon/ of the Popes, 
 i 25, 26. 
 
 3 'Lea differences sont encore plus 
 frappantes si Ton examine settlement 
 le uombre des Facultes de the'ologie 
 antorise'es par les papes; xm* siecle, 
 1 ; xiv siecle, avaut 1378, 5 ; de 1378 
 a 1500, 27. Si Ton rapprocbe ces 
 chiffres des e've'nements religienx et 
 politiques auxquels I'Universite' de 
 Paris a e"te" mele*e, on trouvera quo 
 les Universite's se sont plus particu- 
 lieremcnt multipliees a partir du 
 scliisme, des conciles de Bale et de 
 Constance, de la guerre des Armag- 
 nacs et des Bourguignons, de 1'in- 
 vasion anglaise. On est port6 a en 
 conclure que ces e've'nements, accom- 
 plis entre 1378 et 1430, n'ont pas et<* 
 sans influence BUT la multiplication 
 des Universit^s. L'e"tude des faits 
 confirmecette conclusion... Les papes, 
 iiritCsdelacondtritederUniveni&de 
 Paris <IJUIH leu conciles de Constance 
 et de Hale, autoriserent dou/.e Uni- 
 versik's nouvollos pour 1'Allemagne, 
 la Hongrie, la Hiif-de et le Dam-march. 
 En France nn'-inp, los papes et les 
 rois s'accorden-nt pour frapper au 
 ceeur I'Universitt' de Paris, diaries 
 vii la d&ettait parce quYlk- avait <5t6 
 dominie par lt-s Kupjx'.ts de la nation 
 Picarde, wujets du duo de Bourg^gne. 
 Le coi:cile de Bale donnuit peu de 
 satisfaction au pape Eugene iv. En 
 Ii37, ils autoriblrent tons deux la 
 
 fondation d'une University complete 
 a Caen, au milieu d'une des Nations 
 les plus riches et les plus iiuportuntcs 
 de 1' University de Paris. Charles 
 vii, reconnu roi au sud de la Loire, 
 avait de"ja autoris^ uno University a 
 Poitiers (1431). Eugene iv accorda 
 uue Faculte de theologie a Dole ( 1 437), 
 et one Univenite complete a Bordeaux 
 (1441). Louis xi et Pie n ne pouvnient 
 manquer de s'enteudre contre 1'Uni- 
 versite' de Paris, qui contenait des 
 sujets de Charles-le-Te'ineraire, et qui 
 souteiiait In pragmatique sanction. 
 Deux Universes furent autorisdes 
 dans les deux provinces qui envoy- 
 aient le plus d'Otudiants a la Nation 
 de France, en Bretagne (Nantes, 14f>0) 
 et en Berry (Bourges, 14(i4).' Thurot, 
 De f Organisation de I'Emeignement, 
 etc. pp. 200, 208. I may observe 
 that the foundation of the colli-r/ium 
 tiiliiifiue at Louvain, in 142fi, which 
 is among those enumerated by M. 
 Thurot, is hardly an illustration of 
 his statement. It was founded under 
 the auspices of the Duke <>f Brabant, 
 and designed for all the faculties 
 tare that of theology; the primary 
 object being to create a xtiidiinn i/ene- 
 rtile where the youth of the Low 
 Countries might receive a higher in- 
 struction without resorting to Paris 
 or Cologne, and encountering the 
 heavy expenses and numerous temp- 
 tations that beset the wealthier stu- 
 dents in large cities. See Mc'nwircs
 
 NEW UNIVERSITIES. 283 
 
 have already noted that the English ' nation' at Paris was CHAP. HI. 
 known after the year 1430 as the German 'nation'; but il^-Il' 
 within ten years from that time the German 'nation' had 
 in turn become temporarily defunct, for neither master nor 
 student remained 1 . The new universities, it is true, were 
 constituted at a trying period, when scholasticism was begin- 
 ning to yield before the new learning, and an age of revo- 
 lution was not that in which young institutions, conceived 
 in conformity with old traditions, were likely to find steady 
 and continuous developement. But, notwithstanding, they fj;' t utonic 
 each exerted more or less influence over a certain radius, frithdVawn 
 
 ill -i from Paris* 
 
 and the students attracted to each new centre were, in con- 
 siderable proportion, diverted from the schools of Paris ; 
 others again were driven from France into Germany by the 
 persecutions which Louis xi revived against the nominalists; 
 and the professors of the Sorbonne and of Navarre, as they 
 scanned the once densely crowded lecture rooms, could scarcely 
 have failed to be aware that the representatives of the Teu- 
 tonic races were gradually disappearing from their midst, 
 perhaps sometimes recalled, not without misgiving, how 
 largely the teachers whom that race had given to their uni- 
 
 sur les deux Premiers Siecles de V Uni- ulterius continuandis vel immntandia 
 
 versite de Louvain, par le Baron de in alia parva loycalia, scilicet Greffin- 
 
 Beiffenberg. Bruxelles, 1829. None stein vel Marsilii vel alterius.' The 
 
 of these fifteenth century nniver- authors and subjects required both 
 
 sities shew any advance in their con- for the bachelor's and the master's 
 
 ception upon the traditional ideas. degree are enumerated, and Aristotle 
 
 Leipzic, founded in 1409, adopted is nearly the Alpha and the Omega 
 
 in the first instance the course of of the course : in the first the candi- 
 
 study at Prague (founded 1348) with date must have attended lectures on 
 
 scarcely any modification. See Die the logic of Petrus Hispanus, and an 
 
 Statutenbiicher der Universitfit Leip- abridgement of Priscian; the whole 
 
 zic, aus den Ersten 150 Jahren Hires oftheOrganon specified as the Vetus 
 
 ]ie>itehens. Von Friedrich Zarncke, Ars, the Prior and Posterior Analy- 
 
 p. 311. ' Item die et loco, quibus su- tics, and the Elenchi Sophistici ; the 
 
 pra,placnit magistris pro tune facul- Physics, the De Anima, and the 
 
 tatem repraesentantibus, quod libri Sphaera Materialis ; in the second, 
 
 pro gradibus magisteiii et baccalari- the Topica, the De Coelo, De Gene- 
 
 r.tus in universitnte Pragensi siinili- ratione, De Meteoris, and Parva 
 
 iter hie permauere debeaut sine ad- Naturalia; the Ethics, the Politics, 
 
 uicioue et diminucione ad annum. and the Economics; common per- 
 
 Quo finito possit fieri mutacio, ad- spective, the theory of the planets, 
 
 dicio vel diminucio juxta placitum Euclid, the logic of Hesbrus, com- 
 
 facultatis. Et idem placuit de parvis mou arithmetic, music, and rneta- 
 
 loycalibus Maulfelt pro exerciciis et physics. 
 
 ordinario servandis ad idem tempus 1 Thurot, De T Organisation de 
 
 et postea juxta voluutatein facultatis VEnseiynement, etc. p. 208.
 
 284 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. versity had contributed to her ancient fame. In the decline 
 ^- R y T "'. that thus befel the university of Paris the English univer- 
 sities undoubtedly shared ; the cessation of their former in- 
 terchange of thought was a loss to both nations ; and not 
 least among the disadvantages that resulted to Oxford and 
 Cambridge is the fact that Gerson's remarkably able expo- 
 sition of the Aristotelian nominalism appears to have alto- 
 gether failed to arrest the attention of our countrymen, and 
 that nearly two centuries elapsed before philosophy in Eng- 
 land resumed the thread of speculation as it had fallen from 
 the hands of the great chancellor of Paris. 
 of Besides the forcible suppression of Wyclif's doctrines, 
 and isolation from the continent, a third cause affected yet 
 more closely the material prosperity of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, the action of the statute of Provisors. That statute, 
 after having been repeatedly confirmed, was found to be so 
 inimical in its operation to the interests of learning that it 
 began to be regarded with disfavour. Even so early as the 
 year 1392, the council of state had advised some relaxation 
 of its enactments, their recommendation being expressly 
 urged with a view to the relief of the universities. In the 
 year 1400 the house of commons is found petitioning the 
 new monarch with a like object; and in the year 1416 we 
 are confronted by the somewhat startling fact, that the de- 
 pressed state of the clergy and the rise of 'great and in- 
 tolerable heresies' are attributed by the same assembly to 
 the operation of the same statute 1 . Patronage, it had been 
 
 1 'Item supplionnt tres humble- anientisment de Scintc Esglise, et 
 
 nient voz Communes, quo come jadys Bur cos pur defuut que les diz Clerkes 
 
 l:i Clergie de hi Iloialme fuist creHsant etudiantz eu lea voz ditz Uuiversitees, 
 
 et fldurunt et profitant en voz Uni- ne sonnt pas avaunciez, prouiotz, et 
 
 verttitees d'Oxenford ft Cantebregge, nnrioez.en leur em prise honeHteetver- 
 
 p Dootours en Divinitee, en les Leyea tue, et si pur tuunt que la dite Clergie 
 
 Canon etCivill.etpourautresdemeyn- u'e.st comforte et miricee, grauntz et 
 
 dre degree, a gruund con fort, conso- intollerubles Errours et Herenyes 
 
 lation, et bant profit de toute Scintc envers Dieu, et Homme, et rebellion 
 
 Kglise, et votre jiocple Cristian d'En- et obstinacie encouutre Vons, trea 
 
 gleterre environ, a ore en contraire d' soveraiu. S# r . entre les commune 
 
 einsy, que I'estatnit de Provision ot en- ])le de votre Koialme sount nadguirs 
 
 cnuntre Provisoum fuit fait par Parle- ensnrdez, encountre auncien doctrine 
 
 in. Hi, la Clergie en lea ditz Univer- de noz Seiutz Piers, et determination 
 
 siteeH lamentablement -Ht extincte, et a tout Seint EsgliHc; et si Pnvaunt 
 
 eu pluHours parties dtspiae, a grauut ditz Universities ouut mys en hautz
 
 CHURCH PATRONAGE. 285 
 
 found, could be as much abused in England as at Rome ; and CHAP. in. 
 its exercise by their fellow-countrymen had proved specially ^ ^ 
 disastrous to students. The prevalent indifference to learn- puoLge 
 ins shewed itself in the nomination of uneducated men to u" i>uie 
 
 patronage. 
 
 valuable benefices ; while the claims of those trained at Ox- 
 ford and Cambridge were altogether passed by. The papal 
 patronage had rarely been characterised by partiality so un- 
 just : foreigners had indeed been generally appointed to the 
 more valuable benefices, but when the election lay between 
 Englishman and Englishman, the pope had rarely failed 
 to shew some appreciation of merit, though it might be 
 only that of the civilian and the canonist 1 . But at home 
 nepotism, or yet more mercenary motives, prevailed over all 
 other considerations, and the predilections of the English 
 patron proved but a poor exchange for those of Rome and 
 Avignon : while preferments fell all around the universities, 
 they, like Gideon's fleece, remained un visited by the refresh- 
 ing shower 2 . Precisely similar had been the experience of^^ e e * f ' 
 the university of Paris. In the year 1408, we find Charles VT ^ratty of 
 recognising by royal letter the inefficient working of home 
 patronage. It had been determined that a thousand bene- 
 fices should be set apart for the university, and four prelates 
 had been selected to recommend, from time to time, those 
 graduates whom they might deem most worthy. But through- 
 out the country those on whom it directly devolved to carry 
 out these recommendations had for the most part treated 
 them with contempt, and presented ignorant and unfit per- 
 sons 3 . A like complaint was urged in the latter part of the 
 century, when it was alleged that the Pragmatic Sanction 
 had utterly failed to secure a fair consideration of the claims 
 of graduates to church preferment 4 . This very noteworthy 
 
 lamentation desolation, et disheri- l Lingard, Hist, of England, in 
 
 tauce de sez Espirituelx sitz et pro- 538. 
 
 fitables studiauz, a grauntdescomfort 2 Wood-Gutch, i 617. Cooper, 
 
 et prejudice de toute Seinte Esglise Annals, i 158. 
 
 suis dite, et extinction de foie Chris- 3 Bulasus, v 186. 
 
 tien, et male exemple a toutz autres * Ibid, v 775. ' Les Prelats, colla- 
 
 Cristians Roialmes, si hasty remedie teurs, et patrons ecclesiastiques ne 
 
 ne soit fait en ceste matere si bosoin- gardoient ne entretenoient la Prag- 
 
 able.' Rot. Parl. iv 81. matique- Sanction, en tant que touche
 
 286 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. phase of the religious history of the fifteenth century has 
 
 ^ '- been but lightly treated or wholly slurred over by most of 
 
 tk^con 1 - 1 " our recent historians, but the comment of Huber places it 
 
 'mraehtkn in its true light: 'It is not,' he says, 'to be inferred that 
 
 of the facts. , J ' 
 
 church patronage was any the better bestowed when con- 
 fined to native holders and native clergy ; and it is certain 
 that the universities in particular gained nothing by the 
 anti-Romish system. In fact, after the end of the fourteenth 
 century, their complaints against the Prcemunire are still 
 more frequent and violent than they had been against the 
 papal provisions; insomuch that they occasionally extorted 
 from the king exceptions in their own favour. These were 
 mere temporary alleviations ; but at the time of the great 
 assemblies of the Church the grievance was urged so forcibly, 
 that the king and prelates, not choosing to open the way 
 again for Rome, sought for another remedy. In the con- 
 vocation of 1417, the patrons of livings were ordered to fill 
 up their appointments in part from university students, ac- 
 cording to a fixed arrangement. In practice however the 
 universities were the first to object to the working of the 
 system ; nor did the patrons adhere to the rule prescribed. 
 The same orders were re-enacted by the prelates in 1438, 
 but without effect; which is not strange, considering the 
 political aspect of the times. The universities gained no 
 relief, and continued to reiterate their complaints. Thus 
 both the Romish and the national systems failed to co-operate 
 aright with the academico-ecclesiastical institutions ; and 
 whichever system was at work appeared by far the more 
 oppressive of the two 1 .' From this criticism we are enabled 
 to understand more clearly how it was that the university 
 
 lea be'm'fiees qni estoicnt et scront presentation was invaded by the 
 
 deubs et effectez mix graduez et nom- papal claims, had originally pro- 
 
 mez de Universitez.' voked the complaints which the 
 
 1 Huber, KmjUxh Vniversitif*, i reader has so frequently noticed, and 
 
 173, 174. See also England under now were ready to submit to a minor 
 
 the Home of Lancaster, pp. 135, 136. sacrifice, rather than allow the re- 
 
 ' The truth is,' says Liiiffard, ' that peal of the statutes which secured to 
 
 the persons who chiefly suffered from them the influence of patronage, and 
 
 the practice of provisions, and who shielded them from the interference 
 
 chiefly profited by the statutes against of the pontiffs.' Hist, of England 
 
 them, were the higher orders of the in 539. 
 clergy. These, as their right of
 
 CHURCH PATRONAGE. 287 
 
 4 
 
 of Paris, following in the steps of Gerson, re-enacted the CHAP. in. 
 Pragmatic Sanction ; while the English universities led by >-^ ^ 
 the Ultramontane party sought to set aside the statute of 
 Pro visors. At Cambridge indeed there can be no question uitra- 
 
 montanlst 
 
 that the influence of that party predominated throughout "^'1*' 
 the century, and of this another proof is afforded by the cele- 
 brated Bamwell Process in the year 1430. 
 
 We have already seen that one of the earliest measures The BABS- 
 
 J WELL I'RO- 
 
 ascribed to Hugh Balsham had for its object the more CB88 ' im 
 accurately defining the jurisdiction respectively claimed 
 by his own archdeacon, by the Magister Glomerice, and 
 the chancellor of the university. The equitable spirit in 
 which his decision was conceived bore fruit in the com- 
 parative absence at Cambridge of disputes like those 
 which harassed the university of Paris; and indeed 
 throughout the history of our universities the absence of . 
 vexatious interference on the part of the diocesan authori- 
 ties is a noticeable feature. If we admit the pretensions riocesan 
 
 authority of 
 
 asserted by the university, the immunity was founded upon Hy"^, 1 ^ 
 ancient and indefeasible rights 1 ; but occasionally a bishop ^ i "e" it t |! e by 
 of Ely appeared who called these rights in question, and 
 endeavoured to establish his own right of interference. 
 In this manner, during the tenure of the see by Arundel, 
 the question of the allegiance of the chancellor of the uni- 
 versity to the bishop of the diocese, had been raised by the 
 refusal of John de Done wye, who had a second time been 
 elected chancellor, to take the oath of canonical obedience 
 to the bishop. Arundel was not the man to submit to any 
 abatement of his authority without a struggle, and he cited 
 the chancellor to take the oaths on a specified day. The 
 dispute was finally carried before the Court of Arches and 
 decided in the bishop's favour 2 . It is probably as the result 
 
 1 ' Nay even we find archbishops, wood, p. 208. This, the language of 
 
 bishops, archdeacons, and their offi- the prior of Barnwell, must be re- 
 
 cers to have themselves entirely ab- garded as very emphatic testimony, 
 
 stained from all and every kind of 2 Cooper, Annals, i 112. 'Bishop 
 
 jurisdiction ecclesiastical and spi- Barnet's omitting the usual oaths 
 
 ritual in the said university and taken by the chancellors on their 
 
 over the governor and members of admission and consecration all his 
 
 the same.' Barnwell Process, Hey- time, gave occasion to this contest.
 
 288 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. of the recognition thus obtained of his diocesan authority, 
 PART it. ^ a t we find Anmdel assuming the right of visitation when 
 metropolitan, in the manner already described at the com- 
 mencement of this chapter. The exercise of such right was 
 however so rare that it invariably gave rise to criticism if 
 not to actual resistance; so that we find Fuller in his His- 
 tory asking, with reference to Arundel'.s visitation, ' what 
 became of the privileges of the university on that occasion l ? ' 
 Whatever doubt existed respecting these privileges was now 
 ai t >Hs I iR" y by to be finally set at rest. In the year 1430 pope Martin V 
 in'ufe' " " issued a bull reciting how that the doctors, masters, and 
 Process. scholars of the university of Cambridge had lately exhibited 
 to him a petition, ' setting forth the bulls of Honorius i and 
 Sergius I, that by virtue thereof the chancellor of the uni- 
 versity for the time being had been accustomed to exercise 
 exclusive ecclesiastical and spiritual jurisdiction; that the 
 originals of these bulls had been lost for seventy years or 
 more, but that there were ancient copies in the archives of 
 the university, and praying that he would of his apostolic 
 
 However, bishop Arundel and some great immunities) : I mean, that the 
 of his immediate successors did not validity of them both, though not 
 "constantly insist on the chancellor's cancelled, was suspended for the 
 taking the oaths, but sometimes ad- present. If it be true, that the 
 mitted and confirmed them without legate de latere hath in some cases 
 it: neverthelesx, saving to thenmelvcs equal power with the pope, which he 
 and successor* the rigid of exacting represents; and if it be true, which 
 it whenever tliey should think fit so to some bold canonists aver, that none 
 do. 1 Bentham, Hist, and Antlq. of may say to the pope, cur ita facial 
 Ely, p. 165. Arundel appears to it was not safe for any in that age to 
 have been active in the affairs of the dispute the power of Thomas Arun- 
 university during his tenure of the del. But possibly the universities 
 see of Ely: see Cooper, Annals i willingly waved their papal privi- 
 122, 128, 129. In the year 1383 he leges ; and if so, injnria non Jit vo- 
 was appointed by the king to act as lentibus. I find something sounding 
 visitor of King's Hall, Cambridge, this way, how the scholars were 
 where great irregularities had taken aggrieved that, the supreme power 
 place, the buildings having fallen being fixed in their chancellor, there 
 into decay, and the books and other lay no appeal from him (when in- 
 goods having been purloined. Regis- jurious) save to the pope alone. 
 trum Aiuiulel, fol. 100 (quoted by Wherefore the students, that they 
 Dean Hook, iv 409). might have a nearer and cheaper 
 ' Some will say, where were now redress, desired to be eased of their 
 the privileges of the pope, exempt- burdensome immunities, and sub- 
 ing Cambridge from archiepiscopal mitted themselves to archiepiscopal 
 jurisdiction? I conceive they are visitation.' Fuller, Hist, of the Univ. 
 even put up in the same chest with of Cambridge. 
 Oxford privileges (pretending to as
 
 THE BARNWELL PROCESS. 289 
 
 benignity provide for the indemnity of them and the tiniver- CHAP. m. 
 sity in the premises 1 . He therefore delegated the prior of >!ll^-lL' 
 Bernewell and John Depyng, canon of Lincoln, or one of 
 them, to hear and determine upon this claim. 
 
 ' On the tenth of October, John Holbrooke, D.D., chan- 
 cellor, and the masters, doctors, and scholars, by an instru- 
 ment under the common seal of the university, constituted 
 Masters Ralphe Duckworthe, John Athyle, William Wraw- 
 bye, and William Sull, clerks, or either of them, their 
 proctors in this affair. 
 
 'On the fourteenth of October the pope's bull was ex- 
 hibited by William Wrawbye, in the conventual church of 
 Bernewell, to the prior of that house, who assigned the six- 
 teenth of the same month in his chapter house, for proceed- 
 ing in the business. At which time and place, William 
 Wrawbye exhibited six articles, setting forth the claim of 
 the chancellor of the university to ecclesiastical jurisdiction, 
 exclusive of any archbishop, bishop, or their officials; and 
 produced as witnesses, John Dynne, aged 79, John Thorp, 
 aged 68, Walter Barley, aged 58, Thomas Marklande, agecl 
 40, William Lavender, aged 48, John Thirkyll, aged 40, and 
 William Sull, aged 26, who deposed to the use of ecclesi- 
 astical authority by the chancellor, as far as their respective 
 memories extended. The proceedings were then adjourned 
 to the same place on the 19th of that month, when there 
 was produced an instrument attested by a notary and others, 
 setting forth the bulls of John XXII and Boniface ix, and 
 copies of the bulls of Honorius I and Sergius I, taken from 
 a register belonging to the university ; also various statutes 
 of that body. On the 20th the prior in the chapterhouse 
 
 1 ' Being mislaid or lost through that Honorius himself was a student 
 
 the negligence of their keepers or by in the university when young. Dyer, 
 
 other casualties,' is the further ex- the first of our university historians 
 
 planation offered. The whole pro- in whom the critical faculty exercises 
 
 cess is an amusing combination of any appreciable weight, mildly asks, 
 
 the strict observance of legal formal- ' is it reasonable to suppose, that 
 
 ities with a complete indifference to Honorius, when a boy, should be sent 
 
 the value of the evidence on which from Italy, in the 1th century t to be 
 
 the whole of the assumption rested, a student at Cambridge?' Privileges 
 
 The bull, it may be observed, implies of the Univ. of Camb. i 407. 
 
 19
 
 290 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. m. gave his definitive sentence in favour of the privileges 
 
 PAHT II. j i > 
 
 v' claimed . 
 
 When we note that this bull was granted by a pontiff 
 whose most vigorous efforts had been directed towards re- 
 pressing the spirit of independence in England, and that it 
 was confirmed three years later by pope Eugenius IV, who 
 endeavoured to break up the Council of Basle, we shall be 
 little likely to mistake this impatience of home jurisdiction 
 for any real growth in the direction of intellectual freedom*. 
 In fact there appears to have been a decided tendency in 
 both universities at this time towards Ultramontane doc- 
 trines, and of this tendency the celebrated Reginald Pecock, 
 of Oriel College, Oxford, affords an interesting example. 
 Rerfnaid Reginald Pecock, bishop of Chichester, the author of the 
 
 ofcwchMter ablest English pamphlet of the fifteenth century, was, like 
 <ii460(f). Gerson, an eclectic; and an eclectic of a yet more puzzling 
 description. By many he has been mistaken for a follower 
 of Wyclif, and he is even described by Foxe as one of those 
 'who springing out of the same universitie, and raised up 
 out of his ashes, were partakers of the same persecution;' 
 while he appears in reality to have been as he is character- 
 ised by dean Hook, 'an ultra-papist, a supporter of that 
 
 1 Cooper, Annalf, i 282, 283; Hey- Martin the Fifth, an. 1430, his bulls 
 
 wood, Early Cambridge Statutes, 181 to this purpose, directed to the prior 
 
 211. Huber, judging from his Ian- of Barnwell and John Doping canon of 
 
 guage .would appear to have been igno- Lincoln: John Deping being a e~ 
 
 rant of this document. See English cular was not fond of such employ- 
 
 Universities, i 63. ment, but the prior of Baruwell 
 
 3 Baker, in his History, seems to was a man for the purpose, who 
 
 be the first writer who has grasped sat and heard the process alone, and 
 
 the fact that the Barnwell Process the bulls of Honorius and Sergius 
 
 was an Ultramontanist movement, the First being produced (who had- 
 
 Speaking of the comparative indif- no more authority in England than 
 
 ference shewn by the two bishops of they had at Japan) he very Icarn- 
 
 Ely, John Fordham (bp. 1388 1425) edly gave sentence for the univers- 
 
 and Philip Morgan (bp. 1426 1435), ity upon two as rank forgeries as 
 
 to the affairs of the Hospital of St. ever were; for the whole stress of 
 
 John, lie says, ' These two bishops the controversy turned upon these 
 
 had some reason to bo out of hu- bulls. But the present pope was 
 
 mour with the religions as well as willing to believe there had been 
 
 with the university, who seem to have such a power exercised in England 
 
 conspired and joined in the same by his predecessors so many yearg 
 
 design of procuring exemptions from ago, and the honest prior was to 
 
 episcopal jurisdiction. For it was follow his instructions. And so there 
 
 under this bishop that the great was an end of ordinary jurisdiction.' 
 
 blow wag given to the see of Ely by Baker-Mayor, I 43, 44. 
 the university, by obtaining from
 
 REGINALD PECOCK. 291 
 
 doctrine which would, in these days, be called Ultramon- CHAP. m. 
 tane.' In some important respects, indeed, the views held Jil^-1^ 
 by Reginald Pecock were identical with those of the great n\ 
 reformer. Both strenuously contended for the right of //r " 
 private judgement and the necessity of approving to the 
 reason whatever was accepted as doctrine. Under this 
 aspect the English bishop, like his predecessor, offers a good 
 example of the effects of the university training of his day. 
 It was his great desire that every man, however humble his 
 station, who accepted the teaching of Christianity, should 
 have a rational faith, and the rational, at that period, it is 
 hardly necessary to add, was regarded as almost a synonym 
 for the formally logical. It was his belief that a large 
 amount of capricious scepticism and unmeaning declamation 
 might be done away with, if a knowledge of the method u lel< ^ now 
 unfolded in the Organon were to become general among the ^thYbest** 5 
 laity. The Ars Vetus was his panacea for all forms ofa^Mt 
 heresy, from Gnosticism to Lollardism, and he loudly lament- eresy * 
 ed that it was shrouded from the apprehension of the com- 
 mon people by a Latin garb. ' Would God,' he exclaimed, 
 'that it were learned of them in their mother's language, 
 for then they shoulden be put fro much rudeness and boist- 
 oseness which they have now in reasoning.' He even pro- 
 posed himself to undertake the remedying of the deficiency, 
 though he does not appear to have ever carried his purpose 
 to its accomplishment 1 . 
 
 Assuming then that the Scriptures were true, and that n~e asserts 
 
 the rights of 
 
 all truth was capable of being approved to the logical faculty, ^ t 
 he repudiated the notion that men were, in any case, bound dosmA - 
 to an implicit acceptance of dogma. So far as his writings 
 afford an indication, it may be doubted whether in his 
 opinion, the reason could ever be called upon to abdicate its 
 
 1 ' and thanne schulden thei not uysid for al the comown peple in her 
 
 be so obstinat agens clerkis and agens modiris langage; and certis to men 
 
 her prelatis, as summe of hem now of court, leeynyng the Kingis la we of 
 
 ben, for defaut of perceuyng \vhanne Ynglond in these daies, thilk now 
 
 an argument procedith into his con- seid schort compendiose logik were 
 
 clusioun needis and whanne he not ful prciose. Into whos making, if 
 
 so dooth but semeth oonli so do, God wole graunte leue and leyser, y 
 
 And miche good wolde come forth if purpose sumtyme aftir myn other 
 
 a schort compendiose logik were de- bisynessisfortoassaie.' Bfpressor,p t 9* 
 
 192
 
 292 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. m. function, and to veil its face before the ineffable and the 
 >-^ - divine. In respect to the moral law, he appears to have 
 held almost precisely the same view as that which Clarke 
 and Cudworth advocated so ably at a later period, that the 
 principles of morality are not derived from Revelation but 
 are discoverable by the unaided reason, if only that reason 
 be rightly and honestly employed. Right and wrong are as 
 .patent to the reasoning faculty, as a proposition in geometry; 
 and would be equally perceived if the Scriptures did not exist. 
 As reason is sufficient to provide man with a law of moral 
 action, so it is also the standard whereby he must decide 
 upon the interpretation of Revelation. 'And if,' said Pe- 
 cock, ' any seeming discord be betwixt the words written in 
 the outward book of Holy Scripture, and the doom of reason 
 writ in man's soul and heart, the words so written without 
 forth oughten to be expowned and interpreted, and brought 
 for to accord with the doom of reason in thilk matter ; and the 
 doom of reason ought not for to be expowned, glosed, inter- 
 preted, and brought for to accord with the said outward wri- 
 ting in Holy Scripture of the Bible, or anywhere else out of 
 the Bible.' How he proposed to provide for that class whom 
 Aquinas indicated, whom natural incapacity, or the cares, trials, 
 and temptations of human life shut out from this high exercise 
 of reason, does not appear : but it is evident, from various 
 
 neisnot passages in his writings, that he was prepared to set aside 
 
 afraid to call 
 
 he Bathers and the Schoolmen if their conclusions 
 
 thautiorit 
 
 [.(i' e uie tllcrs appeared to him erroneous. Views like these are now 
 
 BCn " neither strange nor singular, but it must be admitted that 
 
 such an adjustment of the respective provinces of faith and 
 
 reason, could hardly fail to startle the ears of the men of 
 
 the fifteenth century. 
 
 ^ ie an maly however which more particularly challenges 
 the attention of the modern student, is, that with all this bold- 
 
 uulorit?' uess an <l independence of thought, Reginald Pecock should 
 have been as much the advocate of unconditional submission 
 to the temporal authority of the pope, as Occam had been its 
 antagonist ; and that his 'Represser' should be mainly occupied 
 with a confutation of Wyclif's leading doctrines and a vindica-
 
 REGINALD PECOCK. 293 
 
 tion^)f the practices of the Mendicants, whose 'Cain's Castles' CHAP, tit 
 find in hirn an ingenious and elaborate apologist. As for the ^"-^ 
 claims of the uncultured Lollards to interpret for themselves andde- 
 the meaning of the Scriptures, he declared that such an Loiiardism. 
 attempt, for an intellect untrained by Aristotle, was a work 
 of the greatest peril. 'There is no book,' he says, 'written in 
 the world by which a man shall rather take occasion to err.' 
 While therefore his agreement with the followers of Wyclif 
 was sufficient to alienate him from the Romish party, his 
 divergences from them were such as totally to preclude the 
 possibility of his gaining their moral support; and on the 
 single point where they and the Mendicants were at one, he 
 again was at issue with both. 
 
 Evangelism, or the popular exposition of Scripture, was a 
 cardinal point with both the Lollards and the friars; with the 
 latter it had been the weapon which had given them the 
 victory over their earlier antagonists and contributed so ma- 
 terially to their widespread success; and a noticeable illustra- 
 tion of the estimation in which the preacher's art was held 
 by their party, is afforded us shortly before the time of Pe- 
 cock, about the commencement of the century, in connexion 
 with the university of Cambridge. Among those who taught 
 at the university at that period was John Bromyard, the uXyanL 
 author or compiler of the Summa Prcedicantium. He was a " < 
 
 Prtfdican- 
 
 Dominican, was both Doctor Utriusque Juris and master of"" 
 theology, and a strenuous opposer of Wyclif 's teaching ; his 
 estimate of the importance of the preacher's function however 
 is clearly attested by the massive volume which he put forth 
 as a professed aid to those who were called upon to expound 
 the Scriptures to the people. The work represents a series 
 of skeleton sermons, arranged not under texts, but under 
 single words expressive of abstract qualities, such as Absti- 
 nentia, Adulatio, Avaritia, Consdentia, Fides, Patientia, 
 Paupertas, Trlnitas, Vocatio, etc., each being followed by a 
 brief exposition, illustrated by frequent quotations from the 
 Fathers, and occasionally by an apposite anecdote 1 . The 
 
 1 Summa Pradicantium Omnibus Do- Verbi Prteconibus, Animarum Fide- 
 viinici Gregis Pastoribus, Divini Hum Ministria, et Sacrarum Literarum 
 
 nun.
 
 294 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. m. exegesis is cold, formal, and systematic, not without ^t 
 t^-^, amount of the logical element which finds expression in con- 
 clusions derived from a series of observations each commanding 
 the moral assent, but rarely deducing any novel aspect of 
 truth, and taking its stand, for the most part, entirely super 
 antiquas vias. In the contrast presented by this laborious, 
 careful, and learned production to the speculative tendencies 
 Pccockand t, na t belong to the doctrinal expositions of Pecock, we may 
 
 Bromyard * 
 
 contrasted. p erna p s discern the earliest instance of that antithesis which, 
 The contrast w i tn occasional exceptions, has generally characterised the 
 theological activity of the two universities; that however 
 with which we are here more directly concerned is, the widely 
 different implied estimate of the value of preaching when 
 compared with Pecock's views on the same subject. Neither 
 Wyclif 's ' simple priest,' nor the eloquence of the Dominican 
 appears to have found much favour in the bishop of Chiches- 
 ter's sight. He seems to have been of opinion that there was 
 
 approves of 
 
 a g rea t deal t much preaching already; and in an age 
 when the great majority of men were compelled to learn by 
 oral instruction or not at all, and at a time when the in- 
 difference manifested by the superior clergy to the instruc- 
 tion of the lower orders, and the numbers of non-residents 
 and pluralists were exciting widespread indignation, this 
 eccentric ecclesiastic thought it a favourable juncture for 
 compiling an elaborate defence, half-defiant, half apologetic, 
 of the conduct of his episcopal brethren. It can hardly be 
 said that in the pages of the ' Represser ' the author shews 
 much confidence in the resources of his logic to produce con- 
 ins eccentric viction ; rhetoric plays a much more conspicuous part. At 
 
 defence of .' , , i, ,1 . . 
 
 w order, one time he seeks to shroud the episcopal functions in a veil 
 of mystery, the bishop has duties to perform which the 
 vulgar wot not of; at another, he makes appeals ad miseri- 
 cordiam, bishops, after all, 'ben men and not pure aungels;' 
 again, only those who enter upon the office are aware with how 
 many difficulties it is beset ; no man, to use his own some- 
 what too familiar simile, knows how hard it is to climb a tree 
 
 Cultoribut longe iitilissima ac pernc- tiroes printed ; the edition I have used 
 ctttaria. The work has been several is that printed at Antwerp, in 1614.
 
 REGINALD PECOCK. 295 
 
 or to descend a tree, save the man that himself essayeth it 1 . CHAP. in. 
 To the Lollards, who held that it was the first duty of a - 1 ' A "^ 
 bishop to provide for and participate in the spiritual instruc- 
 tion of his diocese, such arguments could only have appeared 
 an audacious piece of special pleading in defence of some of 
 the worst abuses of the Church, and its author, much as he 
 appears to dean Hook, an Ultramontanist of the deepest dye. 
 It is easy to see that Reginald Pecock was both something Pecock some- 
 more and something less than this ; but his self-confidence led tiwufamere 
 him to sever himself from both parties, at a time when such 
 
 isolation was unsafe if not impossible 8 . He alienated a power- HC offends 
 
 both parties. 
 
 ful section at home, who still adhered to the theoiy of the 
 great councils, by his assertion of the absolute authority of 
 the pope. The universities, if conciliated by his support of 
 the theory represented by the Barnwell Process and his oppo- 
 sition to the statute of Provisors, were scandalised by his 
 attacks on two of the fathers, St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, 
 whose teaching was enshrined in their universal text-book, 
 the Sentences. While the bishops, far from being won by his 
 fantastic defence of their order, descried heresy in the man- 
 ner in which he had called in question such doctrines as the 
 Third Person in the Trinity, and the descent of Christ into 
 Hades. At Cambridge he encountered powerful enemies. 
 Among them were William Millington, the first provost of 
 King's 3 , a man of honorable spirit, and considerable attain- 
 ments, but of violent and unscrupulous temper; Hugh Dam- 
 let, master of Pembroke, who offered to prove from Pecock's 
 writings that he was guilty of the worst heresy, and who 
 formed one of the commission before which he was arraigned 4 ; 
 
 1 See The Represser of Over Much like him.' Ibid. p. xxvi. 
 
 Blaming of the Clergy, edited for the 3 Capgrave says of him, ' in scho- 
 
 Bolls Series, by Prof. Churchill Ba- lasticis inquisiciouibus, et profunda 
 
 bington, B.D. i 102 110. litteratura, ac maturis moribus, mul- 
 
 3 ' Perhaps it would not be greatly tos antecessores suos preoellit.' Lives 
 
 wrong to assert that Pecock stands of the Henries, quoted in Communica- 
 
 half way between the Church of tiom to tlie Camb. Antiq. Soc. i 287, 
 
 Home and the Church of England, as by Mr. Williams in his Communica- 
 
 they now exist, the type of his mind tion, Notices of William Millington, 
 
 however being rather Anglican than First Provost of King's College. 
 
 Roman. Of Puritanism, in all its * Communications of tlieCamb. Antiq. 
 
 phases, he is the decided opponent. Soc. n 18. 
 There were many others more or less
 
 296 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 .CHAP. in. Gilbert Worth ington, and Peter Hirforde, who had espoused 
 
 ^ * and subsequently renounced the doctrines of Wyclif 1 . The 
 
 Mendicants whom, in spite of his advocacy on their behalf, 
 
 he had made his bitter enemies, were equally zealous in their 
 
 P oSf * persecution. His arraignment before archbishop Bourchier, 
 
 sufferer. jj| g humiliating recantation, and subsequent consignment to 
 
 that obscurity in which his days were ended, are details that 
 
 belong to other pages than ours. 
 
 It has been conjectured that political feeling had its 
 share in the hostility which he encountered 2 . The Lancas- 
 trian party was distinguished by its leaning towards Ultra- 
 montanism, and it was within two years of the first battle of 
 St. Albans, when the Yorkists were everywhere in the as- 
 cendant, that Pecock was brought to trial. It is certain that 
 in both universities his doctrine attained to considerable 
 notoriety and commanded a certain following. In the year 
 1457 they are to be found prominently engaging the attention 
 "rbiddi^ar of the authorities of Oxford 8 . In the early statutes of King's 
 li'uei" v< College is one binding every scholar, on the completion of his 
 year of probation, 'never throughout his life to favour any con- 
 demned tenets, the errors or heresies of John Wyclif, Reginald 
 Pecock, or any other heretic 4 ;' and this prohibition is repeated 
 
 1 Cooper, Annah, i 153. Hare who was enduring hardship in the 
 
 MSS. ii 26. Lewis, Life of Pecock, papal cause; already a sufferer, and 
 
 p. 142. doomed possibly to become a martyr. 
 
 * See dean Hook, Lives of the Arch- And Pecock was not mistaken. Forth 
 
 "bishop*, v 308. Pecock, says this came fulminating from Home three 
 
 writer, ' had suffered in the cause of bulls, directed against the primate of 
 
 the pope. He had maintained the England, in vindication of the bishop 
 
 papal cause against the councils of of Chichester.' These bulls arch- 
 
 tbe Church ; he had asserted, with bishop Bourchier refused to receive, 
 
 Martin v, that the pope was the mo- * Wood-Gutch, i 603 606. 
 
 narch of the Church, and that every 4 'Item statuimus quod qui. 
 
 bisliop was 01, ly tie pope's delegate: libet scholaris,,....juret quod non 
 
 he had done boldly what Martin v favebit opinionibus, damnatis erro- 
 
 hiid called upon Chicheley and the ribus, ant hjeresibus Johannis Wyck- 
 
 bi h<)| s of his time to do; he had lyfe, Reginald! Pecocke, neque ali- 
 
 prot"sted against those statutes of eujus altcjrius haeretici, quamdiu vix. 
 
 pro\iirs and praemunire which the erit in hoc mundo, sub poena per- 
 
 clergy a-ul 1 iity hnd passi d as a safe- jurii et expulsionis ipso facto.' Stat. 
 
 gu rd against papal aggression ; and Coll. Reg d. Cnnttibr. c. ult. in fine, 
 
 surely tbe pope wo-ild uot desert him See also Prof. Babington's Introd. to 
 
 in h.s hour of ne 'd. If the pope the Jtrprestor, p. xxxiv. The date 
 
 possegsfd or claitnel the supremacy assigned to the above statutes in the 
 
 for which Pecock contende 1, he would Document* is 1443 ; but at that time 
 
 purely exercise it in behalf of one, Pecock's doctrines were not fully
 
 POGGIO BRACCIOLINI. 297 
 
 even so late as the year 1475, in the Statuta Antigua of CHAP. HI. 
 Queens' College 1 . ^IL 
 
 The literary activity of the fifteenth century furnishes 
 but little illustration of much value with respect to university 
 studies after the time of Reginald Pecock. The quickening 
 of thought which had followed upon the introduction of the 
 New Aristotle had died away. Scholasticism had done its Torporpfthe 
 
 * 11* i IT i / i universities 
 
 work and was falling into its dotage. Jl^ven before the out- fter '" 
 
 . time - 
 
 break of the civil wars, Oxford, in a memorable plaint pre- 
 served to us by Wood, declared that her halls and hostels 
 were deserted, and that she was almost abandoned of her oxford 
 own children 2 . The intercourse with the continent was now serte "- 
 rare and fitful. Paris attracted but few Englishmen to her 
 schools; the foreigner was seldom to be seen in the streets 
 of Cambridge or Oxford. Occasionally indeed curiosity or 
 necessity brought some continental scholar to our shores, but 
 the gross ignorance and uncultured tone that everywhere pre- 
 vailed effectually discouraged a lengthened sojourn. Among * sti r ? onyof 
 those who were thus impelled, in the early part of the cen- ^ r ^ c o linL 
 tury, was the distinguished Italian scholar, Poggio Bracciolini. d ' im 
 He' came fresh from the discovery of many a long lost master- 
 piece of Latin literature, and from intercourse with that rising 
 school of Italian literati, represented by men like Aretino, 
 
 known, and certainly had not been filii cognoverunt earn. Sic sic reve- 
 
 condemned. This is therefore an- ra Patres fremitu bellorum annonje 
 
 other instance of a by no means pecuniarumque caritate depaupera- 
 
 uncommon occurrence, viz. the in- turn est regnum nostrum ; tarn sera 
 
 corporation of a later statute in the insuper ac modica virtutis et studii 
 
 Statuta Antiqua of our colleges, meritis merces quod pauci aut nulli 
 
 without any intimation that it is of ad universitatem accedendi habent 
 
 a later date than that when the sta- voluntatem. Unde fit quod aulse 
 
 tutes were first drawn up. atque hospitia obserata vel verius 
 
 1 In the oath administered to the diruta sunt ; januae atque hospitia 
 fellows it is required by the fifth scholarum et studiorum clausa, et de 
 clause, ' Jurabit quod non fovebit aut tot millibus studentium quse fama est 
 defendet haereses vel errores Johan- istic in priori astate fuisse non jam 
 nis Wicklyf, Reginald! Pecocke, aut unum supersit.' From a Memorial 
 cujuscunque alterius hseretici per addressed to archbishop Chicheley 
 ecclesiam damnati.' MS. Statutes of and other bishops in synod, Apr. 28, 
 1475 in possession of the authorities 1438. It is somewhat remarkable that 
 of Queens' College. we also find in Bulseus (v 813), the 
 
 2 ' Jam siqu idem gloriosa mater olim following plaint by the university of 
 tarn beata prole foecunda, pene in ex- Paris on the occasion of an epidemic, 
 tirminium ac desolatiouem versa est : ' Nunc mihi de multis vix extat milli- 
 sola sedet plangens ac dolens, quod bus unus.' 
 
 non modo extranei, sed nee sui ventris
 
 298 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. Traversari, Guarino, and Valla. From such scanty records as 
 
 ^^ remain of his impressions we might conclude that the Roman 
 
 scantiness poet on the shores of the Euxine found a scarcely less conge- 
 
 ofour ^ Y nial atmosphere 1 . If indeed all that the fifteenth century pro- 
 
 natiunal 
 
 literature, duced in England were subtracted from our libraries, the loss 
 would seem singularly small, and the muses, like the princess 
 in the enchanted castle, might be held but to have slumbered 
 for a hundred years. Whatever still survives to represent 
 the national genius, is chiefly imitative in its character, de- 
 rived from writers like Bocaccio and the French romancers, 
 who though they might quicken the fancy did little to de- 
 velope and strengthen the more masculine powers, and, in the 
 opinion of Roger Ascham, were praised by those who sought 
 to divert their countrymen from that more solid reading 
 which, while it developed habits of observation and reflexion, 
 couM scarcely fail at the same time to direct the attention to 
 the necessity for ecclesiastical reform 2 . The few original 
 authors of this period, such as Capgrave, Lydgate, Pecock, 
 and Occleve, seem but pale and ineffectual luminaries in the 
 prevailing darkness. 'Learning in England/ says Hallarn, 
 'was like seed fermenting in the ground through the fifteenth 
 century.' Not surely a very happy simile: for the rich sheaves 
 that were afterwards to enter our own ports, were the fruit of 
 seed sown in other lands. But before we permit our attention 
 to be drawn away to events pregnant with very momentous 
 changes, it will be well to follow up the course of external 
 developement at Cambridge, and also to complete our survey 
 of those institutions which may be regarded as taking their 
 rise still in implicit accord with those theories of education 
 which were shortly to undergo such important modifications. 
 
 1 Poggio visited England at the tempo, perchiocche egli dice, che 
 
 invitation of cardinal Beaufort. 'The dopo lungo intervallo tonio final- 
 
 moti% f es,' says Shepherd, 'which in- mente alia Corte.' vi 701. 'DerHu- 
 
 duced him to take this step seem to inauist erging sich in grosseu Hoff- 
 
 be concealed iu studied and myste- nuugen, theils auf dein britischen 
 
 riutis silence." Life of Poijflio, p. Boden noch manchen verlorenen 
 
 124. Tiraboschi says Efr viaggio Classiker wiederzufinden, theils unter 
 
 ancora cira il 1418 nell' lughilturra, dem Schut/.e des kouigliehen Pra- 
 
 licncln'- non si nappia precisumente laten sein Gliick zu inachen.' Voigt, 
 
 per quel mottivo; del qual viaggio Die Wiederbelebting de clansiechen 
 
 fa egli stesso piu volte mcnzione; Alterthunw, p. 371. 
 e pare, che ci si trattenesse non poco s Sclwleinasicr, ed. Mayor, p. 81.
 
 
 ERECTION OF SCHOOLS. 299 
 
 It will be remembered that the papal decision in the CHAP. m. 
 year 1314 with reference to the privileges of the Mendicants - I ^"-!J'~ 
 in the universities, was regarded by them as a great blow to 
 their order, inasmuch as they were no longer permitted to 
 receive the general body of students in their houses for 
 lectures and disputations 1 . Up to the fourteenth century, it infective 
 
 J ' accouiino- 
 
 does not appear that either university was possessed of schools, hf^uctlonat 
 in the sense of buildings expressly erected for the purpose; ^tit4. um 
 the rooms to which it was necessary to have recourse were 
 those in the ordinary hostels 2 ; and when larger assemblies 
 were convened, St. Mary's church, or that of the Gray Friars, 
 supplied the required accommodation 8 . Under these circum- 
 stances the imposing dwellings of the different religious or- 
 ders had given them an advantage of which they were not 
 slow to avail themselves in their policy of proselytism and 
 self-aggrandisement. At Oxford, in the thirteenth century, 
 the faculty of theology had been indebted to the Augustinian 
 canons for a local habitation, and even in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury the university had been fain to take on hire rooms which 
 
 1 See pp. 262 3. ' The great schools of arts, and such as are called the 
 
 in the school street of Cambridge are great exercises. In the evening were 
 
 mentioned in a lease from John de the exercitia parva, sometimes cor- 
 
 Crachal, chancellor of the university, ruptly called parvisiaria, taken out 
 
 and the assembly of the masters of the Parva Loyicalia.' Wood-Gutch, 
 
 regent and non-regent, to Master n 7278. See also pp. 122, 123 
 
 William de Alderford, priest, M.A.. of Life of Ambrose Bonwicke, ed. 
 
 dated 15th February, 20 Edw. in. Mayor. 
 [13467].' Cooper, Memorials, in 59. 3 'The use of St. Mary's Church 
 
 3 It has even been asserted (Hu- for university purposes seems to 
 ber, i 168), that masters of arts were have been fully established before 
 in the habit of assembling their the end of the thirteenth century, 
 pupils in the porches of houses, but In 1273 the bells of St. Benet's, that 
 the inference of such a custom from most precious monument of ancient 
 the term in parvisio, from parvis Fr. Cambridge, appear as being rung, as 
 from paradisits, a mediaeval word a summons to university meetings, 
 denoting a ' church porch, ' cannot Soon after, we find those of St 
 be sustained. ' In my opinion,' says Mary's used for the same purpose, 
 Wood, ' the true meaning conies from and in 1275 we have a distinct ac- 
 those inferior disputations that are count of a university grace passed at 
 performed by the juniors, namely a congregation held in the church, 
 "geueralls," which to this day are In 1303 we begin to get notices of 
 called and written disputationea in university sermons, and in 1347 a 
 parcisiis. For in the morning were university chaplain was founded to 
 anciently, as now, the answering of celebrate daily masses in this church 
 quodlibets, that is the proposing of for the souls of benefactors.' Article 
 questions in philosophy and other in Sat. Rev. July 8, 1871, on San- 
 arts by certain masters to him or dar's Historical Notes on Great St. 
 them that intend to commence master Mary's.
 
 300 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. m. the rich abbey of Oseney had erected with the express pur- 
 >-^- ^ pose of letting them for such uses. It was not until the 
 year 1480 that the divinity schools were opened; and then 
 only by assistance begged from every quarter, and after the 
 lapse of many years from the time of their foundation. In 
 striking contrast to this deficiency in the resources of the 
 university were to be seen the dwellings of the Mendicants ; 
 remarkable not merely for their size and extent but for the 
 
 superior ad- beauty of their details. We know from a contemporary 
 
 thVs^pec 1 } poet how the whole effect must have been calculated to over- 
 possessed by 111-1 
 
 the religious awe and attract the youthful student; how the curiously 
 
 orders. J . J 
 
 wrought windows, where gleamed the arms of innumerable 
 benefactors, the pillars, gilded and painted, and carved in 
 curious knots, the ample precincts with private posterns, 
 enclosed orchards and arbours 1 , must have fascinated many a 
 poor lad whose home was represented by the joint occupancy 
 of some obscure garret, and who often depended on public 
 charity for his very subsistence ; and we can well understand 
 the chagrin of the Mendicants at finding themselves pro- ( 
 hibited from reaping the advantage which such opulence and 
 splendour placed within their reach. With the fourteenth 
 century, however, the universities began to seek for a more 
 effectual remedy than was afforded by mere prohibitory mea- 
 sures. In the latter part of the century Sir Robert de 
 
 the Divinity rrll . , . .. _, , . , 
 
 schools at Ihorpe, lord chancellor of England, and sometime master of 
 
 Cai n bridge, r 
 
 Pembroke, had commenced the erection of the divinity schools', 
 
 which was carried to completion by the executors of his 
 
 Erection or brother, Sir William de Thorpe, about the year 13.98 s . But 
 
 Hch.mu'and the grand effort was not made until the latter half of the 
 
 schools, circ. following century, when Lawrence Booth, the chancellor, 
 
 resolved on raising a fund for the building of arts schools 
 
 and schools for the civil law. Contributions were accord- 
 
 ingly levied wherever there appeared a chance of success: on 
 
 those who hired chairs as teachers of either the canon or 
 
 1 Creed of Pirr Ploughman, ed. room. ' Toujours le plnriel, ' observes 
 
 Wright, ii 400, 461. Thurot, 'memo pour designer une 
 
 Cooper, Annals, i 111. It is to be salle unique.' 
 
 observed that the use of the plural * Ibid. I 143. 
 does not imply more than one lecture-
 
 ERECTION OF SCHOOLS. 301 
 
 
 
 civil law, upon every resident religious, whether like the CHAP. m. 
 Benedictines and the canons recognised owners of worldly ^IL 
 wealth, or like the Mendicants avowedly sworn to poverty; 
 on the wealthier clergy, and on the higher dignitaries of the 
 Church, though in the last case assistance was besought 
 rather than authoritatively enforced. By efforts like these 
 the university began to attain to a real as well as legal 
 independence of the friars; and it was probably about this 
 time that a statute was formed making it obligatory on all 
 who lectured on the canon or the civil law, to hire the new 
 rooms and deliver their lectures there 1 . 
 
 81owly, but surely and inevitably, the tide of learning Jj^SJIfthe 
 was rolling on away from the friary and the monastery. m 
 From an attempted combination of the secular and religious 
 elements like that represented in the Hospital of St. John 
 and Pembroke College, and a vigorous effort at independence 
 on the part of the university like that illustrated in the fore- 
 going details, we pass to a fresh stage in the same movement, 
 the direct diversion of property from the religious orders 
 to the universities. It is evident that with the fifteenth 
 century a new feeling began to possess the minds of many 
 with respect to the monastic foundations, the feeling of 
 despair. There appears to have been as yet no distinct sen- The patrong 
 
 11 . . of learning 
 
 timent of aversion to monasticism as a theory, but even the be g? n 1 9 .- 
 
 " spair of the 
 
 lover of the monastery began to despair of the monk ; and it 1^"* or ~ 
 is among the most significant proofs of the corruption of 
 the different religious orders at this period, that the foun- 
 dations that began to rise at both universities are to be re- 
 ferred not to any dislike of the system which those orders 
 represented, but to the conviction that the rule they had 
 received was habitually and wilfully violated. In the foun- 
 dation, at Oxford, of New College by William of Wykeham we ^!J.^j 
 have a signal proof of this state of feeling, The college 
 itself, though built up as it were out of the ruins of monastic 
 
 1 Hence the frequent entries in history of the schools see Cooper, 
 the Grace JBooks, of payments pro Memorials, m 59 66. A large por- 
 tcholisinjurecivili. See Grace Book tion of the old gateway now forms 
 A 6b; Grace Book B p. 112. For a the entrance to the basse-cour at Ma- 
 detailed account of the architectural dingley Hall.
 
 302 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. foundations, retained more than any similar society, the disci- 
 pline of the monastic life. It was, in fact, half as a substitute 
 for the monastery that the college appears to have been 
 so*, isso. Designed. Long before it was constituted, William of Wyke- 
 ham had sought among monks and mendicants to find a less 
 glaring discrepancy between theory and practice, and he had 
 'sought in vain. 'He had been obliged,' says one of his 
 biographers, ' with grief to declare, that he could not any- 
 where find that the ordinances of their founders, according to 
 their true design and intention, were at present observed by 
 any of them 1 .' 
 
 Jn h dow"^ftii The extension given by this eminent prelate to the con- 
 cims^ffrom ception of Walter de Merton is represented by the fact that 
 hoiwes!* he endowed his college with lands purchased from religious 
 houses, and though there was nothing in such an act which 
 the most strenuous supporters of monastic institutions could 
 directly impugn, inasmuch as the new foundation was de- 
 signed for the secular clergy, we may be quite sure that the 
 alienation of the property from the communities to which it 
 originally belonged, was a measure regarded by many with 
 distrust and suspicion. It needed the stainless reputation, 
 the noble descent, and the high position of the founder to 
 sanction such an innovation, and the precedent probably had 
 weight in those more decisive acts in the same direction 
 which belong to the two succeeding centuries. But there was 
 nothing of an arbitrary character in William of Wykeham's 
 procedure; the lands which he purchased from Oseney Abbey, 
 the priory of St. Frideswide, and St. John's Hospital, were 
 bought with the full consent of the proprietaries ; the signifi- 
 cance of the proceeding consisted in the fact that such large 
 estates should be appropriated by one, whose example was 
 so potent among his countrymen, to such a purpose, 
 sututwof The scheme of his noble foundation threw into the shade 
 
 tilt' foUO<l&* 
 
 tion. every existing college whether at Oxford or Cambridge, and 
 
 was the first in our own country which could compare with 
 
 1 Lowth, Life of William of Wyke- several orders; but because he found 
 
 ham, p. 21. To exactly similar effect that few or none of them lived up to 
 
 is the language of Coltt's biographer: their vows and professions.' Knight, 
 
 'Not that ho hated any one of tht-ir Life of Colet, p. 72.
 
 NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD. 303 
 
 that of Navarre. It was intended to promote all the recognised CHAP. m. 
 branches of learning. The society was to consist of a warden lii^^-Il* 
 and seventy fellows, of whom fifty were to be students in arts 
 or divinity, two being permitted to study medicine and two 
 astronomy. The remaining twenty were to be trained for 
 the law, ten as civilians, ten as canonists. All were to be 
 in priest's orders within a fixed period, except where reason- 
 able impediment could be shewn to exist. There were more- 
 over to be ten conduct chaplains, three clerks of the chapel, 
 and sixteen choristers. By rubric 58, one of the chaplains 
 was required to learn grammar and to be able to write, in 
 order to assist the treasurer in transcribing Latin evidence. 
 
 ' From this princely and accomplished man,' says his Newouege 
 latest biographer, ' not only Henry vi at Eton and King's, subSlquent * 
 
 i n i i -i 1 f f i ' foundations. 
 
 but subsequent founders derived the form of their institution. 
 The annexation of a college in the university to a dependent 
 school, was followed by Wolsey in his foundation of Cardinal 
 College and Ipswich School; by Sir Thomas White at 
 St. John's College and Merchant Taylors' School; and by 
 Queen Elizabeth at Westminster and Christ Church 1 . 
 Chicheley and Waynflete almost literally copied his statutes. 
 The institution of college disputations, external to the public 
 exercises of the university, in the presence of deans and 
 moderators ; the cotemporaneous erection of a private chapel ; 
 the appropriation of fellowships for the encouragement of 
 students in neglected branches of learning, were among the 
 more prominent signs of that which must be viewed more as 
 a creation of a new system, than as the revival of literature 
 in its decline 2 .' 
 
 The next foundation that claims our attention discloses a p n e < 
 further advance in the direction marked out by William of! 
 Wykeham; from the simple conversion, by purchase, of r^nies'of 
 monastic property into college property, we arrive at the oriea. 
 stage of direct and forcible appropriation. The alien priories 
 were the first to suffer, the wars with France affording a 
 plausible pretext for the seizure of wealth which went mainly 
 
 1 And, it may be added, at Trinity 2 Walcott, William of Wykeham 
 College, Cambridge. and his Colleges, pp. 276, 277. 
 
 ovements:
 
 Alien Pri- 
 ories. 
 
 304 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. to enrich the foreigner. ' These priories,' says Gough, ' were 
 ^1^-IL cells of the religious houses in England which belonged to 
 foreign monasteries : for when manors or tithes were given to 
 foreign convents, the monks, either to increase their own 
 rule, or rather to have faithful stewards of their revenues, 
 built a small convent here for the reception of such a number 
 as they thought proper, and constituted priors over them. 
 Within these cells there was the same distinction as in those 
 priories which were cells subordinate to some great abbey ; 
 some of these were conventual, and, having priors of their 
 own choosing, thereby became entire societies within them- 
 selves, and received the revenues belonging to their several 
 houses for their own use and benefit, paying only the ancient 
 apport, acknowledgment, or obvention (at first the surplusage), 
 to the foreign house; but others depended entirely on the 
 foreign houses, who appointed and removed their priors at 
 pleasure. These transmitted all their revenues to the foreign 
 head houses ; for which reason their estates were generally 
 seized to carry on the wars between England and France, 
 and restored to them again on return of peace. These alien 
 priories were most of them founded by such as had foreign 
 abbeys founded by themselves or by some of their family 1 .' 
 Bequest- The first seizure appears to have taken place in 1285, on 
 estates under the outbreak of war between France and England ; arid in 
 
 different e 
 
 inonarchs. 1337 Edward in confiscated the estates of the alien priories, 
 and let them out, with their tenements and even the priories 
 themselves, for a term of 23 years ; but on the establishment 
 of peace they were restored to their original owners. Other 
 sequestrations were made in the reign of Richard II, and 
 under Henry iv, in the parliament of 1402, it was enacted 
 that all alien priories should be suppressed 8 ; the Privy 
 Council indeed actually received evidence in his reign, con- 
 cerning the different foundations, with the view of carrying 
 the enactment into effect : but the final blow did not come 
 
 1 Komt Account of the Alien Priories by Gough in his brief sketch, where 
 
 and of inch Lands an they are known he speaks of the policy of Henry rv 
 
 to have pattcutd in England and as more favorable to the mainte- 
 
 Lond. 1779. Pref. to Vol. i. nance of the foreign interests, i 
 
 1 This important fact is omitted ix, x.
 
 THE ALIEN PRIORIES. 305 
 
 until the war with France in the reign of Henry V ; when in CHAP. m. 
 the year 1414, in prospect of that great struggle, no less J 
 than 122 priories were confiscated under the direction of 
 archbishop Chicheley, and their revenues, for the time, ab- 
 sorbed in the royal exchequer 1 . From this extensive confis- 
 cation were derived the revenues of that princely foundation, 
 which, thirty years later, rose under the auspices of Henry vi 
 at Cambridge. 
 
 It is a'sserted that it had been the original intention of Foundations 
 Henry v to appropriate the whole of the revenues to the CHUM* , 
 
 > and KINO a 
 
 endowment of one great college at Oxford ; his son however Cambridge, 
 determined that there should be two colleges, and that of 1440 ' 
 these one should be at Eton and the other at Cambridge 2 . 
 In turning to trace the origin of one of our greatest colleges 
 and of our greatest public school, we are accordingly con- 
 fronted by the names of those yet more ancient institutions, 
 which superstition or philanthropy had reared on the plains 
 of Normandy when the universities themselves had no 
 existence. From the venerable abbey of Bee was wrested whence 
 the priory of Okeburne, the wealthiest cell in England 3 ; a 
 manor at Tyldeshyde in Cornwall and another at Felsted in 
 Essex, represented the alienated wealth of the abbey at 
 Caen ; the monastery of St. Peter de Conches forfeited many 
 a broad acre in Warwickshire, Worcestershire, and Norfolk ; 
 estates in Lincolnshire, once owned by the abbey of St. 
 Nicholas in Angers, and others that had enriched the priory 
 of Brysett in Suffolk, a cell to the priory of Nobiliac near 
 Limoges, numerous reversions from estates of minor impor- 
 
 1 Only those priories were spared death, his son King Henry vi be- 
 which had already shaken off their stowed many of the said priories on 
 dependence upon the continental his college at Eaton and that at Cam- 
 houses and, by electing their own bridge.' Wood-Gutch, i 565. 
 head, had become independent monas- 3 Gough says, ' Some of the lands in 
 teries. England belonging to the cells of the 
 
 3 Henry's intent, says Wood, ' was abbey of Bee, and to other alien prio- 
 to have built a college in the castle ries, were purchased temp. Richard n 
 of Oxford wherein the seven sciences by "William of Wykeiiam for his col- 
 should have been taught, and there- lege at Winchester.' Allen Priories, 
 unto to have anuected all the alien i 167. Purchase in the fourteenth 
 priories in England, and withal to century became confiscation in the 
 have reformed the statutes of the fifteenth, 
 university; but being prevented by 
 
 20
 
 306 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. tance and various hostels in the town, completed the long 
 >I!t^IL roll of the revenues of ' The King's College of Our Lady and 
 
 St. Nicholas 1 ' at Cambridge, 
 statutes The history of the new foundation affords another illustra- 
 
 of Kind's . . i i TTI i 
 
 college. tion of the way m which Ultramontamst theories were at 
 this time successfully contending for the predominance in 
 our universities, and the principle asserted in the Barnwell 
 
 The first Process receiving further extension. The commissioners 
 
 woners. originally appointed to prepare the statutes were William 
 Almvick, bishop of Lincoln, William Aiscough, bishop of 
 Salisbury, William Lyndewode, keeper of the privy seal, 
 John Somerseth, chancellor of the exchequer, and John 
 Langton, chancellor of the university ; but in the year 1443 
 
 nation!* 8 *" this commission was superseded, the king himself under- 
 taking to provide the rule of the foundation. There seems 
 to be good reason for supposing that, in some way or other, 
 the proposed scheme had failed to command the commis- 
 sioners' approval, for it was at their own request that the 
 work was confided to other .hands; they themselves being, as 
 they pleaded, fully occupied with other business, neyotiis et 
 occupationibus impediti. But it is difficult to believe that 
 the design of so important a foundation could have failed to 
 be a matter of lively interest to the bishop of a neighbouring 
 diocese and to a chancellor of the university ; and indeed we 
 know that Langton had been the first to suggest the creation 
 of the new college to the royal mind. At the same time 
 that the king undertook to provide for the preparation of 
 
 William the new statutes, William Millimjton, the rector of the 
 
 Mttllngton 
 
 p'rovML original foundation, had been retained in his post under the 
 
 name of provost; but when the new statutes had received 
 
 the royal sanction, he found himself unable to give a con- 
 
 MtnttoUM scientious assent to their provisions and was accordingly 
 
 new nUitutcs. . liii T -ni 1-11 
 
 lib ejection, cjectcu by the commissioners . It will be desirable to point 
 
 | The birthday of king Henry made provost, and which the new 
 
 being on the feast of St. Nicholas. drawn Ktatutes exempted him from; 
 
 * Cole says, ' the true reason of his besides lie was not thoroughly satis- 
 
 removal seems to proceed from him- fied that the scholars should fill rome 
 
 self and a point of conscience, he from Eton School.' Mr Williams, 
 
 having taken the oaths to the chan- who has carefully investigated the 
 
 cellor of the uuiveruity before he was whole evidence concerning the first
 
 KINGS COLLEGE. 
 
 307 
 
 out the character of those innovations with respect to which 
 his difficulties arose. 
 
 The elaborate nature of the code now given to the 
 foundation corresponds to the grandeur of its endowments, 
 and presents a striking contrast to the statutes of the colleges 
 founded at Cambridge in the preceding century. It is how- 
 ever entirely devoid of originality, being little more than a 
 transcript of the statutes which William of Wykeham, after 
 no less than four revisions, left to be the rule of New 
 College 1 ; but the minuteness of detail, the small discre- 
 tionary power vested in the governing body, the anxiety 
 shewn to guard against all possible innovations, must be 
 regarded as constituting a distinct era in the history of the 
 theory of our own collegiate discipline. The Latinity, it is 
 worthy of remark, is more correct, and copious to a fault ; 
 and there is also to be noted an increased power of expres- 
 sion which makes it difficult not to infer that a greater 
 advance must have been going on in classical studies during 
 the preceding years, than writers on the period have been 
 inclined to suppose. 
 
 The statutes 
 borrowed 
 
 from those 
 of New 
 College. 
 
 provost of his college, endorses this 
 account, and observes, ' that the 
 fcmnder had nothing to do with his 
 ejection, and was extremely sorry for 
 it, is confirmed by a fact which Mr 
 Searle has brought to my notice, viz. 
 that in 1448, only two years after his 
 removal, he was appointed, in con- 
 junction with others, to draw up sta- 
 tutes for Queens' College ; and that 
 this appointment was twice renewed.' 
 See Notices of William Millington, 
 First Provost of King's College, by 
 George Williams, B.D. , Fellow of 
 King's College, Communications of 
 Cambridge Antiquarian Society, i 287. 
 Cf. Documents, in 4. 
 
 1 Messrs Heywood and Wright at- 
 tribute them to Chedworth (see Pref. 
 to King's College Statutes, p. vii). 
 Mr Williams, who is followed by 
 Cooper (Memorials, I 182), says ' My 
 own belief is that the provost of Eton 
 (Wainfleet) was the framer of the 
 existing code, or, I should rather 
 say, that he it was who adapted the 
 statutes of the two foundations of 
 
 William of Wykeham to the two kin- 
 dred foundations of Henry vi. Wil- 
 liam of Wainfleet had been educated 
 at Winchester, and on the first found- 
 ation of Eton (A.D. 1441) had been 
 transferred, with half the Winchester 
 scholars, to Eton College, as its first 
 head master, and became (A.D. 1442) 
 its second or third provost. He is 
 known to have enjoyed the confi- 
 dence of the founder in the fullest 
 measure, and Capgrave's witness to 
 this fact, and the cause of it, may be 
 stated, from the passage following 
 that which relates to Millington ; 
 Alter aiitem dictus Majister Williel- 
 tmis Wayneflete non multum priori 
 dissimilis, earns nt putatur domino 
 Rfgi habetur, non tarn propter scien- 
 tiam salutarcm quam vitam celibrm. 
 The verbal agreement of most of the 
 statutes of Eton and King's, with 
 those of Winchester and New College 
 respectively, would be fully accounted 
 for by the long and intimate connec- 
 tion of Wainfleet with the earlier 
 foundations.' Ibid. p. 293. 
 
 202
 
 308 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CIIAP. in. The college is designed for the maintenance of poor and 
 ^-v '" needy scholars, who must be intending to devote themselves 
 
 Qualilica- 
 
 Mhoian- ^ e sacre " profession, at that time (says the preamble) so 
 Poverty. severely weakened by pestilence, war, and other human 
 calamities 1 ;' they must wear the 'first clerical tonsure,' be 
 Attainments, of good morals, sufficiently instructed in grammar 2 , of honest 
 conversation, apt to learn, and desirous of advancing in 
 knowledge. A provost, and seventy scholars (who must have 
 already been on the foundation of Eton for a period of not 
 Age. less than two years) whose age at admission must be between 
 
 fifteen and twenty, are to be maintained on the foundation. 
 The curriculum of study is marked out with considerable 
 R -ewriled or P rec i s i n : theology (sacra scriptura seu pagina), the arts, 
 permuted. an( j philosophy, are to constitute the chief subjects and to 
 form the ordinary course ; but two masters of arts, of superior 
 ability (vivacis ingenii) may apply themselves to the study of 
 the civil law, four to that of the canon law, and two to the 
 science of medicine; astronomy (scientia astrorutri) is per- 
 mitted as a study to two more, provided that they observe 
 the limits imposed by the provost and the dean, a pre- 
 caution, we may infer, against the forbidden researches of the 
 astrologer. The transition from the scholar to the fellow is 
 
 1 These statutes are remarkable of the trivium will have been accom- 
 for their verbosity and pleonastic plished at Eton : ' Et quiu sunnne 
 mode of expression: e.g. 'ac praeci- affectamus etvolnmus quod numerus 
 pue ut ferventius et frequentius scholarium et sociorum in dicto nos- 
 Christus evangelizetur, et fides cul- tro Regali Collegio Cantabrigiie per 
 tnsque divini nominis augcatnr, et nos superius institutus, plene et per- 
 fortius Bustentetur, sacra insuper fecte per Dei gratiam perpetius futu- 
 theologitB ut dilatetur laus, guberne- ris temporibus sit oompletus : ao 
 tur ecclesia, vigor atque fervor Chris- considerantes attente quod gram- 
 t iiiiiii' religionis coalescant, scieutiae matica, quic prima de artibus seu sci- 
 quoque ac virtutes amplius conva- entiis liberalibtis reputatur, funda- 
 lescant, necnon ut generalem mor- mentum, janua, et origo omnium 
 bum niilitin? clericalis (]uam propter aliarum artium liberalium et scicii- 
 paucitatcm clcri ex posiih-ntiis, guer- tiarum existit ; quodque sine ea cir- 
 ris, et aliis mundi niineris, graviter terae artes seu scieutite perfecte sciri 
 vulnerari oonapeximus, desolation! non possunt, nee ad earum vcram 
 compatientes tain triKti, partim alle- cognitionem et perfectionem quis- 
 vare poRsimus, qncm in toto sanare quain poterit pervenire: ea projitcr, 
 veraciter non vulemus, ad quod re- divina favente dementia, de bouis 
 vera pro nostra- devotionis nnimo nostris a Deo collntis unum aliud 
 nostros regios apponimus libenter Regale collegium in villa nostra de 
 Inbores.' Statutes, by Heywood and Etona ut superius memoratur innti- 
 Wright, p. 18. tuimus etc.' Hid. p. 21. 
 
 2 It is assumed that the first stage
 
 KING'S COLLEGE. 309 
 
 here first clearly defined. It is not until after a three years' CHAP. in. 
 probation, during which time it has been ascertained whether i!^-J- 
 the scholar be ingenio, capacitate sensiis, moribus, condition.!- ft^nj^ 
 bus, et scientia, dignus, habilis, et idoneus FOR FURTHER STUDY, MSiS!^ 
 that the provost and the fellows are empowered to elect him a 
 one of their number. 
 
 ' In addition to the various privileges granted by him jjj*j, e9 
 with the sanction of Parliament, to the college, the king tions e gr"nted 
 obtained bulls from the pope exempting the college and foundation, 
 its members from the power and jurisdiction of the arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, the bishop and archdeacon of Ely, and 
 the chancellor of the university ; and on the 31st of January, 
 14489, the university by an instrument under its common 
 seal, granted that the college, the provost, fellows, and 
 scholars, their servants and ministers, should be exempt from 
 the power, dominion, and jurisdiction of the chancellor, vice- 
 chancellor, proctors and ministers of the university ; but in 
 all matters relating to the various scholastic acts, exercises, 
 lectures, and disputations necessary for degrees, and the 
 sermons, masses, general processions, congregations, convoca- 
 tions, elections of chancellor, proctors, and other officers (not 
 being repugnant to their peculiar privileges), they were, as 
 true gremials and scholars of the university, to be obedient 
 to the chancellor, vice-chancellor, and proctors, as other 
 scholars were. To this grant was annexed a condition that 
 it should be void, in case the bishops of Salisbury, Lincoln, 
 and Carlisle, should consider it inconsistent with the statutes, 
 privileges, and laudable customs of the university 1 .' 
 
 It will be seen that, iust as the Barnwell Process had object aimed 
 
 J at by the 
 
 exempted the university from ecclesiastical control, it was society. 
 now sought to render the college independent of the uni- 
 versity ; to obtain for the new foundation, in short, an 
 independence similar to that enjoyed by the different friaries : 
 such was the provision to which William Millington found 
 himself unable to assent ; it also affords a sufficient explana- 
 tion of the resignation of Langton, who, if such an idea had 
 
 1 Cooper, Memorials, i 192, 193. MS. Hare n 139.
 
 310 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 . in. been in any way foreshadowed, could hardly have approved 
 ^_ a proposal to render any college independent of the jurisdic- 
 tion he personally represented, and whose privileges he was 
 bound to guard. Another and equally valid objection urged 
 objections by Millinton, appears to have been the limitation of the 
 
 of William 
 
 Miiiiugtou. advantages afforded by so splendid a foundation to the scholars 
 
 of Eton exclusively. 
 
 The countenance given to the new scheme illustrates, 
 
 not less than the opposition it encountered, its true nature. 
 
 Within three years after the foregoing statutes had been 
 
 given, cardinal Beaufort, the leader of the Ultramontane 
 significance party 1 , bequeathed the large sum of 1000 to augment the 
 
 of Cardinal r J ' 
 
 truest 1 s already princely revenues of King's College and the founda- 
 tion at Eton. His own student life had been passed chiefly 
 at Aix-la-Chapelle, where he was distinguished by his attain- 
 ments in the civil law ; but he had been a scholar at Peter- 
 house in 1388, and studied at Oxford in 1397, and the 
 preference thus shewn for the new society over his own 
 college is a fact of no little significance 2 . 
 
 ineffectual Within five years of these enactments the university 
 
 university made a strenuous effort to reassert its rights of jurisdiction, 
 
 to annul the _ Y . 
 
 forgoing an d the scholars of King's College were prohibited from 
 
 exclusive O O 
 
 pmiiegts. proceeding to degrees until they should, in their collective 
 capacity, have renounced their exclusive pretensions. This 
 prohibition however was immediately followed up by the 
 royal mandate compelling the university to rescind its reso- 
 lution 3 . Eventually, in the year 1457, an agreement was 
 entered upon by the chancellor and the doctors regent and 
 non-regent on the one hand, and the provost, fellows, and 
 scholars of the college on the other ; and as the result of this 
 composition the college succeeded, after some unimportant 
 
 1 ' Beaufort, though quiescent, was bcatc Marie do Eton juxta Windesor, 
 
 undoubtedly the main instrument in et Hancti Nicholai Cantabrigg', per 
 
 introducing the new papal usurpa- dictum dominum rneum Kogein ex 
 
 tion.' Dean Hook, I.iren, v 1/55. singular! et pnecipua ana devocione 
 
 Gough, Mntinmrnta I'ftuntu, it ad divini cultiiK augmentum catholi- 
 
 xi. Beaufort's bequext IH in a second cequo fidei exaltacione* nancte ac 
 
 co'iicil, bearing date April !, 1147. Kalubriter fumlatorum, etc.' Nicholn, 
 
 Tbe preamble is as follows:' lam llnyal and Xoble. Wilt*, p. 338. 
 tarneu reminiacena illorum notabi- Cooper, Annals, i 205. 
 Hum et iuHiguiiuu collegiorum, viz.
 
 KING'S COLLEGE. 311 
 
 concessions, in retaining those privileges which have formed CHAP. in. 
 the distinctive feature of the foundation up to our own day 1 . ^^1^ 
 
 It has been conjectured, and the conjecture is sufficiently afoct of 
 plausible, that this imperium in imperio which this society j^JJI," J'JJJ 
 succeeded in establishing, took its alleged justification in t!on. founda ~ 
 those immunities and privileges which the Mendicants so 
 long enjoyed and for which they so strenuously contended 2 . 
 However this may have been it will scarcely be denied by 
 the most enthusiastic admirers of the conception of William 
 of Wykeham, that the triumph gained by the fellows of King's 
 College largely partook of the character of a Cadmsean 
 victory, and it reflects no little honour on the integrity and 
 sagacity of its first provost that he protested so vigorously 
 against so suicidal a policy. It would indeed be useless to 
 assert that a society which has sent forth scholars like Sir 
 John Cheke, Richard Croke, Walter Haddon, Winterton, 
 Hyde, and Michell, mathematicians like Oughtred, moralists 
 like Whichcote, theologians like Pearson, antiquarians like 
 Cole, and even poets like Waller, has not added lustre to the 
 university of which it forms a part ; but it would be equally 
 useless to deny that when its actual utility, measured by the 
 number and celebrity of those whom it has nurtured, is 
 compared with that of other foundations of far humbler 
 resources, its princely revenues and its actual services seem 
 singularly disproportionate. For more than a century from 
 its commencement this royal foundation was by far the 
 wealthiest in the university. In the survey of the commis- 
 sioners, Parker, Redman, and Mey, in the year 1546, its 
 
 1 A singular illustration of the im- King's College made a closer ap- 
 muuities granted to the college dur- proach to the monastic conception 
 ing the lifetime of the founder is to than any other college at Cambridge, 
 be found in an act passed in the year ' Some of their most remarkable 
 1453 for raising 13,000 archers for characteristics,' observe the editors, 
 the king's service, wherein a clause 'were taken from the old monastic 
 expressly exempts the provost and discipline, such as the wish to pre- 
 scholars of this foundation from the serve the inmates from external con- 
 obligation of furnishing their quota nections, the extensive power given 
 to the levy imposed on the county of to the provost, the lengthy oaths at 
 Cambridge. Rot. Parliament, v 232. every step, and the urgent manner 
 Cooper, Annals, i 205. in which every member was desired 
 
 2 Hook, Lives of the Archbps., IT 4. to act as a spy upon the conduct of 
 It is certain that, in the spirit in his fellows.' Preface by Heywood 
 which its statutes were conceived, and "Wright.
 
 312 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. revenues were double those of St. John's, which stood second, 
 v-^1- and were only surpassed when the large endowment of 
 Trinity arose at the end of the same year 1 . The compara- 
 tive wealth of these three colleges remained nearly the same, 
 until the far wider activity of the two younger foundations 
 reaped a natural and honorable reward in the grateful 
 munificence of their sons and the generous sympathy of 
 strangers; while the foundation of Henry vi, shut in and 
 narrowed by endless restrictions, debarred from expansion 
 with the requirements of the age, and self-excluded from 
 cooperation and free intercourse with the university at large, 
 long remained, to borrow the expression of dean Peacock, ' a 
 splendid cenotaph of learning,' a signal warning to founders 
 in all ages against seeking to measure the exigencies and 
 opportunities of future generations by those of their own 
 day, and a notable illustration of the unwisdom which in a 
 scrupulous adherence to the letter of a founder's instructions 
 violates the spirit of his purpose. 
 
 Foundation Another royal foundation followed upon that of King's. 
 
 I^EOB. In the year 144-5 the party led by cardinal Beaufort had 
 succeeded in bringing about the marriage of the youthful 
 monarch with Margaret of Anjou, daughter of Re'ne', titular 
 king of Sicily and of Jerusalem. It was hoped that the 
 policy of the vacillating and feeble husband might be 
 strengthened by the influence of a consort endowed with 
 many rare qualities. The civil wars were not calculated for 
 the exhibition of the feminine virtues, but there is sufficient 
 
 Mnrsjarctor reason for believing that Margaret of Anjou, though her 
 name is associated with so much that belongs to the darkest 
 phase of human nature, was cruel rather by necessity than 
 by disposition or choice 2 . But whatever may have been the 
 
 J The revenues of King's College dications of that unyielding spirit 
 
 amounted to 1010. 12x. 11 ^<l. ; those which afterwards hurried her into 
 
 of St John's to ">3(;. 17*. l^d. ; those acts of perfidy, violence, and crime, 
 
 settled on Trinity College, on the When goaded into madness by the 
 
 24th of Pec-ember in the same year, unmanly assaults of men who sought 
 
 amounted to ir.7S. 3*. 9j</. to hlackeu her chaste character, to 
 
 * ' There was nothing in her early insult her husband, and to bastardize 
 
 years,' says a recent writer, ' which her child, she mistook cruelty for 
 
 marked her out for an Amazon, firmness ; and she who, at this time, 
 
 though there certainly were some in,- fainted at the sight of blood, could
 
 QUEENS' COLLEGE. 313 
 
 merits or demerits of her personal character, it is certain that CHAP. in. 
 her sympathies were entirely with the Ultramontanists, and J^^ 
 her policy was systematically directed to the encouragement "",,'',!*" 
 of friendly relations with her own country, in opposition to 8 y m P tttllies - 
 the popular party represented by the duke of Gloucester. 
 
 It was during a brief lull in that tempestuous century, 
 when the war in France had been suspended by a truce, and 
 the civil war at home had not commenced, that the following 
 petition was addressed by this royal lady to her husband : 
 
 To the King my souverain lord. Her petition 
 
 BESECHETH mekely Margarete quene of Englond youre i^baud. 
 humble wif, forasmuche as youre moost noble grace hath 
 newely ordeined and stablisshed a collage of seint Bernard in 
 the Universite of Cambrigge with multitude of grete and 
 faire privilages perpetuelly appurtenyng unto the same as in 
 youre Ires patentes therupon made more plainly hit appereth 
 In the whiche universite is no collage founded by eny quene 
 of Englond hider toward, Plese hit therfoure unto youre 
 highnesse to geve and graunte unto youre seide humble wif 
 the fondacon and determinacon of the seid collage to be 
 called and named the Quenes collage of sainte Margarete and 
 saint Bernard, or ellis of sainte Margarete vergine and martir 
 and saint Bernard confessour, and therupon for ful evidence 
 thereof to have licence and powir to ley the furst stone in her 
 owne persone or ellis by other depute of her assignernent, so 
 that beside the mooste noble and glorieus collage roial of our 
 Lady and saint Nicholas founded by your highnesse may be 
 founded the seid so called Quenes collage to conservacon of 
 oure feith and augmeutacon of pure clergie namely of the 
 imparesse* of alle sciences and facultees theologic...to the *'/" 
 ende there accustumed of plain lecture and exposicon bo- 
 traced* with docteurs sentence autentig' performed daily *iiatretted. 
 twyes by two docteurs notable and wel avised upon the bible 
 aforenoone and maistre of the sentences afternoone to the 
 
 afterwards command its effusion with- ginal disposition reasserted its ascen- 
 
 out remorse. But when she was dancy ; and this was not malignant 
 
 alone in the world, no husband to or selfish.' Dean Hook, Lives of the 
 
 protect, no son to fight for, her ori- Archbishops, v 183.
 
 314 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. publique audience of alle men frely bothe seculiers and 
 
 ^^__^ religieus to the magnificence of denominacon of suche a 
 Quenes collage and to laud and honneure of sexe femenine, 
 like as two noble and devoute contesses of Pembroke and of 
 Clare founded two collages in the same universite called 
 Pembroke halle and Clare halle the whiche are of grete 
 reputacon for good and worshipful clerkis that by grete 
 multitude have be bredde and brought forth in theym, And 
 of youre more ample grace to grauute that all privileges 
 immunities profits and comodites conteyned in the Ires 
 patentes above reherced may stonde in theire strength and 
 pouoir after forme and effect of the conteine in them. And 
 she shal ever preye God for you 1 .' 
 
 Fuller 1 * ' As Miltiades' trophy in Athens,' says Fuller, ' would not 
 
 suffer Themistocles to sleep, so this Queen beholding her 
 husband's bounty in building King's College was restless in 
 herself with holy emulation until she had produced some- 
 thing of the like nature, a strife wherein wives without 
 breach of duty may contend with their husbands which 
 should exceed in pious performances.' The college of St. 
 
 coiLKGRof Bernard, to which reference is made in Margaret of Aniou's 
 
 BT. HEK.NABD. *> 
 
 petition, was but a short-lived institution. We find, from 
 the enrolment of the charter of the first foundation preserved 
 in the Public Record Office, that it was designed 'for the 
 extirpation of heresies and errors, the augmentation of the 
 faith, the advantage of the clergy, and the stability of the 
 church, whose mysteries ought to be entrusted to fit persons.' 
 But before it had taken external shape and form, the society 
 had acquired land and tenements on a different site from 
 that originally proposed, the site of the present first court, 
 cloister court, and part of the fellows' building of Queens' 
 College. The original charter was accordingly returned into 
 the chancery with the petition that it might be cancelled and 
 another issued, authorising the erection of the college on the 
 newly acquired site next to the house of the Carmelite friars, 
 where greater scope was afforded for future enlargements. 
 
 1 Jlitt. of thf Qitrcns' Cnllcfip of W. G. Searle, M.A., pp. 15, 16. 
 St. Margaret and tit. Bernard, by
 
 QUEENS' COLLEGE. 315 
 
 The petition was granted and another charter, that of CHAP. in. 
 August 21, 1447, was accordingly prepared, permitting the ^1^-lL/ 
 foundation of the college of St. Bernard on the new site. ' In 
 this charter,' says Mr Searle, ' the king appears in some Founded by 
 degree to claim the credit of being the founder of the college, tuesutu. 
 as the reason for its exemption from all corrodies, pensions, 
 etc. (which might be granted by the king, rations dicte 
 fundationis nostri) is expressed in the words, eo quod colle- 
 gium predictum de fimdatione nostra, ut premittitur, exist it 1 .' 
 
 It was at this juncture of affairs that Margaret of Anjou * rterof 
 presented her petition, and as the result, the charter of 1447 cancelle<L 
 was like its predecessor cancelled 2 , and the new site with the 
 tenements thereon was transferred to the queen, with licence 
 to make and establish another college to be called the 
 ' Queen's College of St. Margaret and St. Bernard in the ^"n^ion 
 university of Cambridge.' In exercise of the permission thus ^ LLKOK - 
 conceded the royal lady, by an instrument bearing date 
 15 April, 1448, founded a new society, for a president and four 
 fellows ; she was at this time scarcely twenty years of age, 
 but her abilities and energetic temperament, combined with 
 her commanding position, had already made her perhaps the 
 foremost person in the realm. The archives of the college 
 still preserve to us the aspect under which the work pre- 
 sented itself to her mind, and the motives that led to its views and 
 
 T -11 -i motives of 
 
 conception. It is as the world advances to its old age and 'J^ foun - 
 
 dress. 
 
 as virtue is fading away, as the wonted devotion of mankind 
 is becomfmr lukewarm, the fear of God declining, and under 
 the conviction that the sacred lore of Cambridge, 'our fair 
 and immaculate mother,' ' under whose care the whole Church 
 of England lately flourished/ is fast deteriorating, that 
 Margaret of Anjou seeks to lay the foundation stone of the 
 College of St. Margaret and St. Bernard. We have no 
 evidence that any statutes were given to the new society 
 during the reign of Henry vi, and it is probable that the 
 outbreak of the civil Avars called away the attention of 
 royalty to more urgent matters ; but in the year 1475, when 
 the sanguinary struggle had been brought to a temporary 
 1 Hist, of the Queens' College, p. 7. * Ibid. p. 16.
 
 316 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. m. conclusion, a code was given to the college by Elizabeth 
 ^LIL Woodville 1 , the queen of Edward iv, who however reserved 
 to herself, the president and five of the senior fellows, full 
 power to alter or rescind any of the provisions during her life- 
 statutes time. Elizabeth Woodville had once sympathised strongly 
 f-tobrth with the Lancastrian party : she had been one of the ladies 
 
 Woodville. i r- 
 
 in waiting attached to the person of Margaret of Anjou, and 
 her husband had fallen fighting for the Lancastrian cause ; it 
 is not improbable therefore that sympathy with her former 
 mistress, then passing her days in retirement in Anjou, may 
 have prompted her to accede to the prayer of Andrew Doket, 
 the first president of the society, and to take the new found- 
 ation, henceforth written Queens' College, under her pro- 
 tection, 
 ^ranted at 'The duties of our royal prerogative,' says the preamble, 
 
 tNCDctitionof, . J i J *t 
 
 Andrew require, piety suggests, natural reason demands, that we 
 
 Dokt-t, 
 
 demof 1 **'" should be specially solicitous concerning those matters where- 
 Queens 1 . by ^he safety of souls and the public good are promoted, and 
 poor scholars, desirous of advancing themselves in the know- 
 ledge of letters, are assisted in their need.' At ' the humble 
 request and special requisition' of Andrew Doket, and by the 
 advice of the royal counsellors assembled for the purpose, 
 statutes are accordingly given for 'the consolidating and 
 strengthening' of the new society. The foundation is de- 
 signed for the support of a president and twelve fellows, 
 all of whom are to be in priest's orders. Every fellow must, 
 uu'ili* rcqui " a t the time of his election, be of not lower status tlfffii that of 
 frr'fi'iiow* a questionist if a student in arts, or a scholar, if in theology. 
 When elected he is bound to devote his time either to 
 stud! to philosophy or to theology, until he shall have proceeded in 
 the intervening stages and finally taken his doctor's degree. 
 On becoming a master of arts he is qualified to teach in the 
 trivium and quadrivium for the space of three years : a 
 
 ,. . , . , . , 
 
 function which, as it appears to have been a source of 
 
 expiration . * * 
 
 emolument, being rewarded by a fixed salary from the college, 
 
 1 I am indebted to the courtesy of to use the manuscript copy of these 
 the President of Queens', the Eev. statutes, which have never been 
 George Phillips, D.D., for ptrmisbion printed.
 
 ST CATHERINE'S HALL. 317 
 
 is limited to that period ; its exercise, on the other hand, is CHAP. IIL 
 not obligatory, provided that the fellow's time be devoted to v_l^ ^ 
 the study of the liberal sciences, or to that of the natural, 
 moral, or metaphysical philosophy of Aristotle. On the 
 completion of these three years, if a fellow should have no 
 desire to study theology or to proceed in that faculty, he is 
 permitted to turn his attention to either the canon or the study of the 
 
 . iiii , i civil or tlie 
 
 civil law : but this can only be by the consent of the master n n '-> w 
 
 f simply 
 
 and the majority of the fellows, and the concessive character P eruutted - 
 of the clause would incline us to infer that such a course 
 would be the exception rather than the rule. 
 
 Respecting Andrew Doket, the first president of Queens', character of 
 we have sufficient information to enable us to surmise the i>ket. 
 character of the influence that prevailed in "the college of 
 St. Bernard and subsequently in Queens' College during the 
 thirty-eight years of his energetic rule. He had before been 
 principal of St. Bernard's hostel, and incumbent of St. Botolph's 
 church, and within four years from the time that the fore- 
 going statutes were given by Elizabeth Woodville, we find 
 him executing a deed of fraternisation between the society 
 over which he presided and the Franciscans, whose founda- . 
 tion then occupied the present site of Sidney. We have 
 evidence also which would lead us to conclude that he was 
 a hard student of the canon law, but nothing to indicate that 
 he was in any way a promoter of that new learning which 
 already before his death was beginning to be heard of at 
 Cambridge 1 . 
 
 A far humbler society was the next to rise after the two Foundation 
 royal foundations. Among the scholars on the original CA HKRIXR'S 
 foundation of King's College, was Robert Woodlark, afterwards 
 founder and master of St. Catherine's Hall. On Chedworth's ^^Irk. 
 retirement from the provostship of King's, when elected to 
 the bishopric of Lincoln, Woodlark was appointed his suc- 
 cessor, and under his guidance the college wrung from the 
 university those fatal concessions which have already engaged 
 our attention. That he was an able administrator may 
 
 1 Hist, of Queens' College, by Kev. W. G. Searle, pp. 53, 54.
 
 318 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. in. be inferred from the prominent part assigned to him on 
 ^ ' different occasions. His name appears foremost among those 
 SJiSStoT 00 of the syndicate appointed for the erection of the new 
 schools ; he was clerk of the works at King's College, and the 
 spirit with which he carried on the buildings during the civil 
 wars, when Henry VI was a prisoner, earned him but an 
 indifferent recompense : for confiding in the fortunes of the 
 house of Lancaster, and relying probably on his royal master 
 for reimbursement, he was left to sustain a heavy deficit of 
 nearly 400 which he had advanced from his private fortune 1 . 
 Such public spirit would alone entitle his memory to be had 
 in lasting remembrance in the university, but ' herein,' says 
 Fuller, 'he stands alone, without any to accompany him, 
 being the first and last, who was master of one college and at 
 the same time founder of another.' 
 
 Forwds the There is little in the statutes given by Woodlark to the 
 civil y and ' e college which he founded, deserving of remark, beyond the 
 
 canon law at 
 
 Kt.cati.c- fact that both the canon and the civil law were rigorously 
 
 ruie s Hall. 
 
 excluded from the course of study. The foundation was 
 
 designed to aid ' in the exaltation of the Christian faith and 
 
 the defence and furtherance of holy church by the sowing 
 
 and administration of the word of God.' It appears to have 
 
 been the founder's design that it should be exclusively sub- 
 
 Thefounda- servient to the requirements of the secular clergy. The 
 
 t<> benefit the following oath, to be administered to each of the fellows on 
 
 secular 
 
 clergy. his election, shows how completely the whole conception was 
 opposed to that of bishop Bateman : Item juro quod nun- 
 quam consentiam ut aliquis socius hujus collegii sive aulie ad 
 aliquam aliam scientiam sive facultatem ullo unquam tempore 
 se divertat propter aliquem gradum infra universitatem susci- 
 piendum, prwterquam ad philosophiam et sacram theoloyiam, 
 sed pro posse meo resistam cum effeciu*. 
 
 1 'In proRccntion of the royal Hardwicke, at. A. , Cam. Antiq. Soc. 
 
 Bchcmc. it was originally commanded Pub. No. xxxvi. 
 
 that 1000 per annum should ha 2 Accordingly, in the lihrary which 
 
 paid to Wootllark out of the estates Woodlark bestowed on hid founda- 
 
 of the dnchy of Lam-aster; but owing tion, not a single volume of the canon 
 
 to the change of dynasty and other or civil law appears. See Catalogue 
 
 causes, a large balance was at last of the Hooks, etc. edited by Dr Cor ric; 
 
 remaining due to the magnanimous Cam. Antiq. Hoc. Pub. No. i. 
 provost.' Robert Woodlark, \>\ Charles
 
 ST CATHERINE'S HALL. 319 
 
 If in addition to this fact, we observe that among the few CHAP. in. 
 alterations introduced by Chedworth, or Wainfleet, into the >-^ T ^ 
 statutes given by William of Wykeham to New College at Evident ac- 
 
 <f sire at this 
 
 Oxford, the most important was that whereby the students in {^rt!ifthe tlie 
 civil law were reduced from ten to two, and in the canon law fo2iiSto 
 from ten to four, that in the statutes of Queens' College the excessive 
 
 devotion to 
 
 study of both these branches appears to have been permitted tlic s f u( J> <' 
 
 the civil and 
 
 rather than encouraged, and that in the statutes of Jesus canou law - 
 College, which next demand our attention, the study of the 
 canon law was altogether prohibited, while only one of the 
 fellows was allowed to devote himself to the civil law, 
 we shall have no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion 
 that at Cambridge, at least, a manifest reaction with refer- 
 ence to these studies had set in 1 , and that it had become 
 evident to those who sought to foster true learning in her 
 midst, that acquirements which well subserved the purposes 
 of worldly ambition and social success needed but little aid, 
 but that it was far from unnecessary to guard against their 
 attaining to such predominance as to overshadow that higher 
 culture which could only really prosper when pursued as an 
 end in itself and bringing its own reward 2 .' 
 
 1 The following lists from the Grace fifteenth century, is to almost pre- 
 Bool\8 of the number of graduates for cisely the same effect as those of 
 the years 1489 and 149'.), in the dif- Boger Bacon in the thirteenth : 
 fereut faculties, are worthy of note ; ' Dixi paulo ante, eos qui juri civili 
 they have, probably by a clerical error, et canonibus operam darent, non 
 been transposed in dean Peacock's sciendi, sed lucrandi cupiditate se ad 
 pages, Appendix A, p. xlix. eoruin cognitionen? conferre. Ex eo 
 
 (1489) videtis quautus fiat ad has discip- 
 
 30 Determiuatores in quadragesima linas concursus taiiquarn ad certain 
 
 (B.A.). aurifodinam. At hi cum qure appel- 
 
 84 Magistri artium. lautur insignia doctorum (licet plures 
 
 22 Baccalaurei juris canonici. suit iudocti) susceperunt,. hoc est, 
 
 10 Intrantes ad lecturani sententia- qurestus et avaritiic signa, scitis quam 
 
 rum (B.D.) including one canon frequententur, quam houoreutur ab 
 
 regular, two Doniiuicaus, and omnibus, quam colantur, ornantur 
 
 one Franciscan. quoque preciosioribus vestibus, anuli 
 
 (1499) aurei gestandi jus datum est, ut plane 
 
 32 Determinatores in quadragesima. intelligant homines id genus faculta- 
 
 16 Inceptores seu professores artium. turn solum auri corrodendi causa sus- 
 
 12 Intrantes in jure canouico. ceptum.' De Araritia, Opera, ed. 
 
 8 Intrautes in jure civili. Basil., p. 4. In the year 1339 a 
 
 3 Commeiisantes in theologia scrutiny was held at Merton College, 
 
 (B.D.). on which occasion we find a formal 
 
 2 The comments of Poggio Brae- demand made by the fellows of the 
 cioliiii upon the spirit in which these commissioners, ' quod ponantur de- 
 studies were pursued in Italy in the creta et decretalia in librario.' It
 
 320 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The circumstances attendant upon the foundation of 
 Jesus College, the fourth and last college founded in the 
 fifteenth century, illustrate both the degeneracy and the 
 higher aims of the age. Among the most ancient religious 
 The nunnery houses in the town was the nunnery of St. Rhadegund, 
 
 of St Kbade- J 
 
 run(L which, if tradition may be trusted, referred back its origin 
 so far as the year 1133, or not more than forty years 
 later than the foundation of the priory of St. Giles by the 
 wife of Picot the sheriff. The nuns of St. Rhadegund often 
 come under our notice in the early annals of Cambridge. 
 The foundation appears at one time to have enjoyed a fair 
 share of public favour ; it was enriched by numerous bene- 
 factions, and derived additional prestige from its close 
 
 The nunnery connexion with the see of Ely: even so late as the year 
 
 under the . . J 
 
 t p hebho nof 147, we find William Gray, one of the most distinguished 
 of the many able men who successively filled the chair of 
 Hugh Balsham, granting a forty days' pardon to all who 
 should contribute to the repair of the conventual church 1 . 
 But the corruption that so extensively prevailed among the 
 religious houses of every order towards the close of this 
 century invaded likewise the nunnery of St. Rhadegund; 
 
 lucomipt the revenues of the society were squandered and dissipated ; 
 
 state and . 
 
 i"u't?on U witii tnc conduct of the nuns brought grave scandal on their 
 
 tlu. fifteenth profession ; and in the reign of Henry vn not more than 
 
 two remained on the foundation, so that, to borrow the 
 
 charter or language of the college charter, 'divine service, hospitality, 
 
 the foiimla- t i i- i i 
 
 or ^ er wor ks of mercy and piety, according to the primary 
 
 was nearly the only lore that the Canon Law. Civil Law. 
 
 majority cared about in those days! 1470... 8 
 
 See Prof, llogers, Hint, of Prices, u 1481... 14 1481... 2 
 
 6714. 1483... 5 1483. ...1 
 
 The following lists give the admis- 1484... 4 1484... 5 
 
 fiioiiH of bachelors in civil law and 1487... 7 14.S7... 1 
 
 canon law in the latter part of the 1488... 3 1488... 4 
 
 century: 1489. ..22 
 
 Canon Law. Civil Law. 1490... 9 1490... 1 
 
 1459... 9 1491... G 1491... 1 
 
 14(50... 8 1492... 1 1492... 3 
 
 1461... 1 1493... 1 1493... 1 
 
 1462... 2 1494 6 
 
 1463... 1 1496 3 1496... 9 
 
 1466.. .12 1499V. 12 1499... 8 
 1467... 8 1467... 2 * Cooper, Annals, i 208.
 
 JESUS COLLEGE. 321 
 
 foundation and ordinance of their founders there used, could CIIAP. TIL 
 not be discharged by them 1 .' In the year 1497, through * ' 
 the exertions of John Alcock, bishop of Ely, the nunnery John 
 was accordingly suppressed by royal patent ; the bishop was **k*1$*L 
 a munificent encourager of the arts, and to his liberality and 
 taste the church of Great St. Mary and his own chapel in the 
 episcopal cathedral are still eloquent though silent witnesses 2 ; 
 and under his auspices Jesus College 8 now rose in the place 
 of the former foundation. The historian of the college, The site 
 a fellow on the foundation in the seventeenth century, included in 
 
 i i iii-i Cambridge. 
 
 remarks that it appears to have been designed that, in form 
 at least, the new erection should suggest the monastic life 4 ; 
 and to this resemblance the retired and tranquil character 
 of the site, which long after earned for it from king James 
 the designation of musarum Cantdbrigiensium museum, still 
 further contributed. 
 
 The original statutes of the college were not given until Early 
 early in the sixteenth century. Their author was Stanley, the "oiil-ge 
 the successor, one removed, to Alcock. in the episcopal chair at 2 ames 
 
 Stanley, D.D. 
 
 Ely, and son-in-law of Margaret, countess of Kichmond : iJ^fj^ 
 they were subsequently considerably modified by his illus- Nicholas 
 trious successor Nicholas West, fellow of King's, and the hpfVr KI.* 
 
 15151533. 
 
 friend of bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More 5 . The new 
 
 1 Cooper, Memorials, i 364. Do- plane fundamentis construxit qure 
 
 cuments, m 91. Shermanni Histo- monasterium etiamnum referat, et 
 
 ?-ia Cottegii Jesu Cantabrigiensit, ed. quantum ad situm, id sane loci oc- 
 
 Halliwell, p. 20. cupat, quod musis est accommoda- 
 
 s Alcock was also a considerable tissimum, viz. ab oppidanorum stre- 
 benef actor to Peterhouse (Cooper, pitu et tumultu remotissimum.' 
 Memorials, i 363); he was tutor to Shernumni Hittoria, p. 23. 
 the unfortunate Edward v until re- 8 ' Statuta insuper Jacobus [Stan- 
 moved from that post by the Pro- ley] consilio suo condidit, quse Julius 
 tector. Bentham, Hist, and Antiq. Secundus pontifex Romanus, simul 
 of Ely Cathedral, p. 182. et collegii fundationem, authoritate 
 
 3 ' The college was to have been Apostolica sancivit, Joannes [.47- 
 called " the College of the Blessed cock] episcopus, cujus nomen sit be- 
 Virgin Mary, St John the Evangelist, nedictionibus, vivendi rationem sub- 
 and StBadegund, near Cambridge : " ministravit, Joanne morte repentina 
 
 to be governed by such statutes as he sublato, Jacobus dein vivendi nor- 
 
 or his successors should think proper mam adhibuit: Nicholaus epis- 
 
 to make and ordain. But the bishop copus Eliensis Jacobi statuta revisit, 
 having thought proper to add to this multa immutavit, revocavit nonnulla, 
 title, that of the holy name Jesus, it cetera sanxit, et statutis ab eo con- 
 was even in his time commonly called ditis hodie utimur, quorum etiam 
 Jesus College.' Ibid. p. 182. quatuor copias habemus, omnes sans " 
 
 4 ' Collegium ea figura ab ipsis date, imperfectas quoque omnes, in- 
 
 21
 
 822 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAP. m. statutes however were in professed conformity with the 
 - PA * T "- presumed intentions of the founder 1 ; it is consequently all 
 study of the the more significant that, though both Alcock and West 
 
 ( anon law 
 
 forbidden. were distinguished by their acquirements in the canon law, 
 of the twelve fellows to be maintained on the foundation 
 not one is permitted to give his attention to that branch 
 of study, and only one to that of the civil law ; the others, 
 so soon as they have graduated and taught as masters of 
 arts, being required to apply themselves to the study of 
 theology. 
 
 But though the' injurious effects of such encouragement 
 
 to students as that extended by bishop Bateman had by 
 
 this time become apparent to nearly all, and though it is 
 
 evident that the founders of the fifteenth century were fully 
 
 sensible of the necessity for a different policy if they desired 
 
 to stimulate the growth of honest culture, we shall look in 
 
 vain within the limits of this century and of our own 
 
 university for much indicative either of healthy intellectual 
 
 activity or true progress. The tone of both the patrons and 
 
 Despond-^ the professors of learning is despondent, and the general 
 
 "remote of l an S uor that followed upon the Wars of the Roses lasted 
 
 twTperLxL nearly to the end of the reign of the first of the Tudors. 
 
 Before however we turn away from this sombre period, it 
 
 will be well to note not merely the studies enjoined upon 
 
 the student but the literature within his reach ; to examine 
 
 the college library as well as the college statutes ; and briefly 
 
 survey the contents of the scantily furnished shelves as they 
 
 appeared while the new learning still delayed its onward 
 
 flight from its favoured haunts in Italy. 
 
 Libraries. In a previous chapter* we have devoted some attention 
 
 tcrpolataa, nmaijuenBium incuria er- vivendi ordine, servanda statuta ant 
 
 rutis scatcntes, inter se discordantes, ordinatioues aliquas perfecte vel suf- 
 
 nulla authoritate episcopal! munitas.' ficienter ediderit : Nos igitur opua 
 
 Ibid. p. 24. tain pium tamque devoti patris et 
 
 ' Cetenun quia tantus pater optimi prasulis proposition, instinc- 
 
 morte pneventus, quod pio concepe- tu divino, ut speramus, inceptum, 
 
 rat animo, explere, et opus tarn me- quantum cum Deo possumus, et spi- 
 
 morabile absolvere non potuit, quo ritualiter et temporaliter finniter 
 
 fit, ut nee pro tanto numero susti- stabiliri paterno affectu intendentea 
 
 Tivndo collegium pracdictum suflicien- et magnopere cupientes, etc. ' Docu- 
 
 ter dotaverit, nee pro bono studen- meiitt, in 94. 
 tium regiminc ac recto et quieto * See supra pp. 1018.
 
 CAMBRIDGE LIBRARIES. 323 
 
 to the catalogues of two libraries of the period when the CHAP. in. 
 
 earliest universities were first rising into existence ; the ^_1L 
 
 period, that is to say, when so many of the authors known 
 
 to Bede and Alcuin had been lost in the Danish invasions, 
 
 but when the voluminous literature to which the Sentences, 
 
 the Canon Law, the Civil Law, and the New Aristotle 
 
 respectively gave birth was yet unknown. A comparison 
 
 of these two catalogues with those of libraries at Cambridge 
 
 in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries will present not 
 
 a few points of interest. 
 
 It was on a certain seventeenth of November, the feast Foundation 
 of St. Hugh in 1444, that Dr Walter Crome presented to the wnitjru- 
 
 c . r brary. 
 
 university a collection of books designed to increase the 
 slender stores of a new room, just finished and ready for 
 use, erected for the purpose of giving shelter to the recently 
 founded common library 1 . The library appears to date from 
 the earlier part of the same century, and a Mr John 
 Croucher, who presented a copy of Chaucer's translation of 
 Boethius De Consolatione, seems entitled to be regarded as 
 the original founder. One Richard Holme, who died in Different 
 1424, appears as the donor of several volumes ; many others 
 presented single works ; and in this manner was formed, 
 within the first quarter of the fifteenth century, the little 
 library of fifty-two volumes, the catalogue of which we still TWO early 
 
 J J . catalogue?. 
 
 possess. Next to this catalogue comes one drawn up by 
 Ralph Songer and Richard Cockeram, the outgoing proctors 
 in the year 1473, containing 330 volumes. This later cata- 
 logue possesses a special value, for it shews us the volumes 
 as classified and arranged ; and we have thus brought The library 
 
 f. . building. 
 
 before us the single room (now the first room on entering 
 the library) where these scanty treasures lay chained and 
 displayed to view, with stalls on the north side looking 
 into the quadrangle of the Schools, and desks on the south 
 side looking out upon the rising walls of King's College 
 chapel. These two catalogues do not include the splendid 
 
 1 Two Lists of Books in the Uni- Bradshaw, M.A. See also Tlie Uni- 
 versity Library. Cam. Ant. Soc. Pub. versity Library, article by the same 
 No. xkii. Communicated by Henry in Cam. Univ. Gazette, No. 10. 
 
 212
 
 324 
 
 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Kartv 
 catalogues 
 of the 
 libraries of 
 
 CHAP. IIL addition of some two hundred volumes, made by Thomas 
 PABI "' Rotheram very shortly after ; but the liberality of that 
 eminent benefactor of the university was already conspicuous 
 in the completion of the library and of the east part of the 
 quadrangle ; and the new buildings, bright as they appeared 
 to that generation, 'with polished stone and sumptuous 
 splendour 1 ,' were already evoking those sentiments of grati- 
 tude towards the illustrious chancellor, which, two years 
 later, led the assembled senate to decree that his name 
 should be for ever enrolled among those of the chief bene- 
 factors of the university. 
 
 The two above-named catalogues alone constitute valua- 
 ble evidence respecting the literature at this time most 
 uy TiS'i, esteemed at Cambridge, but other and ampler evidence 
 remains. It was on Christmas Eve, 1418, exactly eight 
 years before Gerson drew up his De Concordia, that an 
 unknown hand at Peterhouse completed a catalogue of the 
 library belonging to that foundation 2 . As libraries, in those 
 days, were almost entirely the accumulations of gifts from 
 successive benefactors, the most ancient college had, as we 
 should expect to find, acquired by far the largest collection 
 and possessed no less than from six to seven hundred distinct 
 treatises. The library given by bishop Bateman to Trinity 
 Hall has already come under our notice 8 . If to these col- 
 lections we add a catalogue of 140 volumes presented to the 
 library of Pembroke College in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries 4 , one of the library of Queens' College in the year 
 
 St Catharine's 
 
 1 ' Qnoniam ratio humanitasque 
 requirere videtur ut superioribua no- 
 bia benefactoribns, etsi non con- 
 dignas, galtem utcunque congruas 
 referamuB gratias, eisque juxta vi- 
 rium exilitatem, ut possumus, meri- 
 toria obsequia reddaimiH. hinc est 
 quod merito cum probitatia turn bo- 
 norum operum exhibition reveren- 
 dus in Christo pater ac dominus domi- 
 nus Thomas Rotheram divina misera- 
 tione Lincolniensis episcopus ac mag- 
 nun Anglic generalis hujusque alma? 
 universitatia preecipuns dignnsque 
 canccllariuB et aingtilaris patronns 
 turn in honorem Dei, incrementum 
 Btudil, et universitatia noatrte pro- 
 
 fectum, scholas novamque superiut 
 librariam polito lapide, sumptuosa 
 pompa, ac difjnis ccdijiciis perfecerit, 
 eamque, omnibus ut circuit rebus 
 exornatam, non paucia vel vilibna 
 libris opulentam rcddidit, plurimaque 
 insuper alia bona eidem univeraitati 
 procuravit, etc.' De exequiig Thonue 
 Rothfram, Documents, i 414. 
 
 1 This catalogue is still in manu- 
 script : I am indebted to the autho- 
 rities of Peterhouse for permission 
 to consult the volume in which it ia 
 contained. 
 
 3 See supra pp. 243, 244. 
 
 4 A Lint of Books presented to Pem- 
 broke College, Cambridge, by different
 
 CAMBRIDGE LIBRARIES. 325 
 
 1472 1 , amounting to 224 volumes, and one of the library of CHAP. in. 
 St. Catharine's Hall in the year 1475, amounting to 137 ^ E J ", 
 volumes*, our data, so far as Cambridge is concerned, will 
 be sufficiently extended for our purpose. 
 
 A systematic study of these several catalogues and an 
 enquiry into the merits of each author, however interesting 
 such researches might be, is evidently not needed at our 
 hands, but it will be desirable to state some of the general 
 conclusions to be derived from a more cursory view. On 
 referring to the contents of each catalogue it will be seen illustration 
 
 . of the 
 
 that they represent, in much the same proportions, those additions to. 
 new contributions to mediaeval literature which have already **. 
 so long engaged our attention. Ansel m, Albertus, Aquinas, "rt* 10 * 1108 - 
 Alexander Hales, Boethius, Bonaventura, Walter Burley, 
 Duns Scotus, Holcot, Langton, John of Salisbury, Grosse- 
 teste, and Richard Middleton ; Armachanus against the 
 Franciscans, Wodeford against Armachanus ; the discourses 
 of Reppington, bishop of Lincoln, once a Lollard, but after- 
 wards one of the fiercest opponents of the sect ; Histories 
 Chronicales, or metrical histories, after the manner of Laya- 
 mon and Robert of Gloucester, such as it was customary to 
 recite in the college hall on days of festivity ; none of these 
 are wanting, and they constitute precisely the literature 
 which our past enquiries would lead us to expect to find. 
 But besides these, other names appear, names which have Evidence ar- 
 now almost passed from memory or are familiar only to respect to 
 those who have made a special study of this period. Again d < ?*j c j^- 
 and again we are confronted by the representatives of that time> 
 great school of mediaeval theology which, though it aspired 
 less systematically to the special task of the schoolmen, the 
 reconciliation of philosophy and dogma, was scarcely less 
 influential in these centuries than the school of Albertus and 
 Aquinas. Divines from the famous school of St. Victor at 
 
 Donors, during the Fourteenth and Fif- late Fellow of Queens' College. Cam. 
 teenth Centuries. By the Rev. G. E. Ant. Soc. P ub. No. xv. 
 Corrie, D.D., Master of Jesus College. * A Catalogue of the original Li- 
 Cam. Ant. Soc. Pub. No. m. brary of St. Catharine's Hall, 1475; 
 1 Catalogue of the Library of communicated by the Rev. G. E. 
 Queens' College in 1472 ; communi- Corrie, D.D. Cam. Ant. Soc, Pub. 
 cated by the Rev. W. G. Searle, M.A., No. i. (4to Series.)
 
 326 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.' 
 
 CHAP. TIL Paris 1 ; and preeminently Hugo, ' the Augustine of the 
 twelfth century/ who sought to reconcile the divergent ten- 
 
 dencies exemplified in Abelard and St. Bernard, and who 
 though carried off at the early age of forty-four left behind 
 him a whole library of annotations on the sacred writings. 
 Not less in esteem than Hugo of St. Victor, was the Dorai- 
 nican, Hugo of St. Cher (or of Vienne), whose reputation, 
 
 d.i2tio. though it paled before the yet greater lights of his order, 
 long survived as that of the father of the Concordantists and 
 the author of the Speculum Ecclesiw*. While inferior to 
 neither of these in fame or learning comes the Franciscan, 
 
 Nichoiw Nicholas de Lyra, who died towards the middle of the four- 
 
 de Lyra, J ; 
 
 d.i3w. teenth century in high repute both as a Hebraist and 
 a Greek scholar; in whose pages are to be found, most fully 
 elaborated, the characteristic mediaeval distinctions of the 
 literal, the moral, the allegorical, and the analogic sense 
 of the inspired page, distinctions which Puritanism, though 
 all contemptuous of mediaeval thought, reproduced in un- 
 conscious imitation, the familiar commentator of his day, 
 whose Postilla commanded, even down to the eighteenth 
 century, the same kind of regard that in a later age has 
 
 Absence of waited on the labours of a Leighton or a Scott. In contrast 
 
 the Arabian ... ,. ... 
 
 coinmonta- to the spirit of the Italian universities throughout this 
 
 tors on Art- 
 period, we may note the entire absence of the Arabian com- 
 mentators from the college libraries, and the solitary copy 
 of a treatise by Avicenna and of another by Averroes in the 
 Fewer works university library. In the latter, again, Mr Bradshaw has 
 "''i't'Jm^oKic P om ted out the comparatively small proportion of libri 
 wrauulbTO- loyicales and libri theologian disputatce, and the observation 
 is nearly equally applicable to the catalogues of the former. 
 The Fathom It is important also to observe how small is the element 
 
 Terjr mi|>< r _ r 
 
 furnished by patristic literature. Ambrose, Gregory, Jerome, 
 and Augustine, the four great doctors of the Latin Church, 
 
 1 ' It would not be cany,' observes from this instil nti<ni during Hie 
 the archbishop of Dublin (who has twelfth and thirteenth centuries tip- 
 ably vindicated the Latin poetry of on the whole Church.' Sacred Latin 
 these ages from the contempt of the Poetry, p. 55. 
 
 claasiciHt), 'to exaggerate the in- * Fabricinn, Bibliothcca Lat. Mcd. 
 
 flueiice for good which went forth ct Inf. JUutis.
 
 CAMBRIDGE LIBRARIES. 327 
 
 are indeed represented, but only partially, while scarcely CHAP. in. 
 another name of importance appears. The entire absence *^"'^ 
 of Greek authors, and the almost equally entire absence of Entire ab- 
 
 . . senco of 
 
 all that, in the eyes of the classical scholar, gives its value <j 
 to the Latin literature, are the remaining features which 
 it is sufficient simply to point out in concluding these few 
 comments on the learning that nurtured the mind of the 
 Cambridge student at the time when mediaeval history was 
 drawing to its close.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 STUDENT LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 CHAP. iv. OUR researches into our university history during the Middle 
 amines Ages are now approaching their completion. We have ar- 
 n5p e Md rived at the boundary line which, by general consent, has 
 ttociT >a been drawn between the old and the new order of things, 
 the time when the traditions of the past began to give place 
 to those widely differing conceptions which the fifteenth 
 century ere it closed saw rising upon Europe. Momentous 
 and startling as have been the changes of the present cen- 
 tury, it may yet be questioned whether they do not yield 
 in importance to those that ushered in the Reformation. 
 The downfall of dynasties, the manifest shifting of the centres 
 of political power, even the triumphs of modern science and 
 art, can scarcely compare with influences like those that 
 readjusted the whole range of man's intellectual vision, and 
 transformed his conception of the universe. It was then 
 that the veil was lifted from the face of classic Greece, and 
 the voices which had slumbered for centuries woke again ; 
 that the accents of ancient Hellas blended with those of 
 regenerated Italy ; while Teutonic invention lent its aid in 
 diffusing with unprecedented rapidity both the newly dis- 
 covered and the nascent literature. 
 
 ' Another nature and a new mankind* 
 
 stood revealed beyond the Atlantic wave. The habitable 
 globe itself dwindled to but a point in the immensity of 
 space ; and the lamps of heaven now glimmered with a 
 strange and awful light from the far recesses of infinity. But 
 before we turn to trace out and estimate the changes thus 
 brought about in the culture and mental tendencies of the
 
 THE CAM. 329 
 
 age, it yet remains to attempt a somewhat more connected CHAP. iv. 
 view than we have as yet been able to gain of the charac- 
 teristics of university life in the period already traversed. 
 Hitherto we have passed by many interesting minor facts 
 in order to bring out more distinctly the general outline, 
 the principle indeed which has guided our whole treat- 
 ment of the subject. We shall now endeavour to bring 
 together a variety of details which tend to illustrate the life 
 and habits of those times, and to give a portraiture of the 
 ordinary student's experiences at Cambridge in the Middle 
 Ages. Such a piecing together will form, at best, but a very 
 defective whole. The mosaic will be wanting both in colour 
 and completeness. But we shall but share the difficulties 
 that beset all similar endeavours to revivify the forms and 
 fashions of a distant age. 
 
 A brief survey of the physical aspects of the locality will outline of the 
 
 ... 111 i physical as- 
 
 not be irrelevant to the sketch we are about to attempt, pectsofmedi- 
 
 * aeval Cam- 
 
 The river Cam 1 , formerly known as the Grant, is formed by bndgeshire. 
 the union of two minor streams ; of which one, the Rhee, 
 rises near Ashwell in Hertfordshire, the other at Little Hen- 
 ham in Essex. The point of junction is between Hauxton 
 and Grantchester. As it approaches Cambridge the stream The CAM. 
 widens, but rarely attains to much depth until the town is 
 passed, after which it flows on in greatly increased volume 
 by Chesterton, Waterbeach, Upware, and Harrimere, until 
 Ely is reached. At Harrimere it changes its name to that 
 of the Ouse, a change however which no longer represents 
 the actual point of confluence ; at the present time the 
 stream still, save on the occurrence of unusual floods, pursues 
 its course by way of Ely and Prickwillow to Denver before a 
 drop of Ouse water mingles with its current. The cause of 
 this deviation is an important fact in the history of the river 
 system of the whole district. The tract known as the Fen The Fen 
 
 Country. 
 
 1 The Celtic word kam, which long whereupon Brutus adds, 'Merely' 
 
 survived in English, means crooked. (that is, completely) ' awry.' Act in 
 
 In Shakespeare's Coriolanus, Sicinius sc. 1. So also Hooker in his sermons, 
 
 says of the logic of Menenius Agrip- speaks of a mind that is ' cam and 
 
 pa's arguments, 'This is clean kam;' crooked.' Works, fol. ed., p. 562.
 
 330 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CRAP. iv. country is traversed by the Nen, the Great Ouse, and the 
 Ri^rTbT' Little Ouse. Of these the first, which now flows in a navi- 
 tovtwed! gable stream by March, Upwcll, and Outwell, and discharges 
 itself into the Ouse near Denver sluice, formerly on arriving 
 Andent at Peterborough turned to the right, and making a circuit 
 thUS 6 ie through Whittlesey, Ugg, and Ramsey Meres, passed them in 
 a nearly direct course by March to Wisbeach. The second 
 enters the fens near Earith. At this place it formerly bifur- 
 cated: the larger stream flowing by Harrimere, Ely, and 
 Littleport, then by what is now called the Welney river to 
 Wisbeach, where in conjunction with the Nen it flowed on 
 to the sea. The other stream flowed towards the west, and 
 is now known as the West Water: its course is from Earith 
 to Benwick, where it formed a junction with the Nen. At 
 the present time however both these channels are closed to 
 the Ouse, which is conveyed in a straight line by the Bedford 
 rivers to Denver, where they form a junction with the Little 
 Ouse and are conveyed in its channel to the sea 1 . Wisbeach* 
 accordingly constituted the natural outlet of the principal 
 waters whose course lay through the great tract known as 
 the Bedford Level ; and such was the 'plenteous Ouse' when 
 TO course Spenser in his Faery Queene described it as coming 
 
 BftOMC. 
 
 1 far from land, 
 
 By many a city and by many a town, 
 And many rivers taking under-hand 
 Into his waters as he passeth dowse, 
 The Cle, the Were, the Grant, the Sture, the Bowne. 
 Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit, 
 My mother Cambridge, whom as with a crowue 
 He doth adorne, and is adorn'd of it 
 With many a gentle Muse and many a learned wit 8 .' 
 
 The ikdford Of the Bedford Level, the whole extent of which amounts 
 
 Luvvl. 
 
 to some 400,000 acres, nearly half lies in the county of 
 Cambridge, representing th*e fen country. Originally, it is 
 probable, the inundations to which it was exposed were far 
 
 1 Sec paper by Prof. C. C. Babing- conjectured, is a corruption of OUHC- 
 ton, Cam. Antiq. Soc. Pub. in 69. beach. 
 
 1 The name, it has been plausibly 3 Faery Qvcenc, iv xi 31.
 
 THE FEN COUNTRY. 831 
 
 less extensive and disastrous than those of a later period. CHAP. iv. 
 The Romans, it has been conjectured, brought their science 
 to bear upon the difficulty and mitigated the evil. Others 
 have supposed that the gradual silting up of the channel 
 directly communicating with the Wash sufficiently accounts 
 for the increase of the inundations in the fourteenth, fif- 
 teenth, and sixteenth centuries. It would seem certain that 
 with the suppression of the monasteries by Henry VIII 
 many of the precautions which the monks had vigilantly 
 enforced were no longer observed, and the evil became 
 greatly aggravated. ' The fens of England,' it has been said, 
 'enter largely into its early history/ and the remark is 
 specially true of Cambridgeshire and its university. In 
 Dugdale's elaborate work, the History of Embanking and Extent of the 
 
 .. . i T- i c i T i inundations 
 
 Draining, there is a map representing the Bedford Level at j?^^* 
 the time of an inundation. The waters are to be seen 
 extending in one continuous sheet from Downham Market 
 to Horningsey Common, from Peterborough to Mildenhall, 
 a few tracts of higher ground about Ely, Littleport, Soham, 
 Haddenham, Wingford, Chatteris, and Whittlesea, appearing 
 like islands in the midst 1 . On the frontier of this country 
 Cambridge stands, and often shared, though in a less degree, 
 the disastrous consequences of such visitations. In the year 
 1273 the waters rose five feet above the bridge in what is 
 now known as Bridge Street ; in 1290 the Carmelite Friars 
 removed from Newnham into the parish of St. John's, driven 
 from their extensive precincts in the former locality by floods 
 which frequently rendered their attendance at lectures or at 
 market impracticable ; in 1520, Garret Hostel bridge, now 
 known as the town bridge, was carried away by the waters. 
 Even so late as the close of the sixteenth century, when 
 legislation had but feebly grappled with the growing evil 2 , 
 
 1 The termination -ey or -y de- * 'The most important work as to 
 notes in Saxon an island ; and such public utility, prior to the Reforma- 
 were formerly Childerley, Denny, El y, tion, was the great channel made 
 Horuiugsey, Ramsey, Suthrey, Thor- by bishop Morton, which served the 
 ney, Wittlesea, etc. ; while the pas- double purpose of discharging the . 
 ture-land called meare must once overflowing of the Nene, and afford- 
 have been the bed of an inland lake. ing the convenience of water-car- 
 Taylor, Words and Places, p. 372. riage from Wisbech to Peterborough.
 
 332 MEDIEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. tradition was wont to foretell that all Holland was destined 
 to be submerged by the waters of the Welland and the Ouse, 
 and that the abode of learning would be transferred from 
 Cambridge to Stamford 1 . 
 
 oraduai From facts like these we are better able to understand 
 
 xrowth of the .. .., ...-,, 
 
 town of how it was that, in times before the university existed, the 
 
 Cambridge. 
 
 town that still represented the Camboritum of the Romans 
 was confined to the left bank of the river, where upon the 
 rising ground above, secure from inundations, rose the little 
 church of St. Peter (St. Peter's juxta castra), which together 
 with some three or four hundred tenements, many of them 
 fallen into decay, composed the Grantbrigge of the time of 
 the Norman invasion. It is worthy of remark that there is 
 nothing in Domesday Book that lends the slightest counte- 
 nance to the theory that anything resembling a university 
 existed in those days. The Norman occupation gave how- 
 ever additional importance to the town. Twenty-seven 
 houses were pulled down to make way for the new castle ; 
 then followed the erection of the church of St. Giles by 
 Picot, the sheriff of the county ; and probably soon after, 
 that of the 'school of Pythagoras,' undoubtedly a structure 
 of this period, and probably the residence of a Norman 
 gentleman. But the attractions of a river in those days 
 
 It has been said that after the dis- shall see Stamford, though now 
 solution of monasteries, the fenny homely hid, | Then shine in learning, 
 country became more overflowed than more then ever did | Cambridge or 
 it had formerly been, the sewers and Oxford, England's goodly beames.' 
 banks, which through the care of the Spenser, Faery Queen*, iv xl 35. 
 religious houses had been kept in a The 'old saws' here referred to are 
 state of good repair, having been those mentioned by Antony Wood, 
 neglected by the new proprietors of seep. 135. 'Holland', or 'Little Hoi- 
 the monastic estates. The first pro- land,' as it was sometimes called, is 
 jeet of a general drainage (which in- a division of the county of Lincoln, 
 deed was before the making of bishop the S.E. portion, having the North 
 Morton's canal) appears to have Sea on the east. The poet's mean- 
 been in the reign of Henry vi, when ing, I apprehend, is that inasmuch 
 Gilbert Haltoft, one of the barons of as an inundation of this country 
 the exchequer, who resided near Ely, could not fail to extend southwards, 
 had a commission for that purpose, and greatly to aggravate the evils to 
 mnlcr which he proceeded to make which Cambridgeshire was periodi- 
 laws, but nothing effectual was then cally liable, the latter county would 
 done.' ltyeoTiH''CamMd(/eshirf,p. 32. be rendered comparatively uninhabit- 
 1 'And after him the fatal Welland able ; while Stamford, as lying with- 
 went, | That, if old saws prove true, out the Bedford Level and on the 
 (which God forbid !) | Shall drowne rising land above the Welland, would 
 all Holland with his excrement, j And be beyond the reach of the waters.
 
 THE FEN COUNTRY. 333 
 
 were all powerful, and by and bye a suburb was formed CHAP. TV. 
 on the opposite bank ; this suburb gradually extended itself 
 until it incorporated what was probably a distinct village 
 encircling the church of St. Benet. Then the society of secular 
 canons, founded by Picot, crossed the river, as Augustinian 
 canons, to Barnwell ; private dwellings began to multiply ; 
 numerous hostels were erected ; the period of college founda- 
 tions succeeded ; and at last the new town completely 
 eclipsed the old Grantbrigge, which sank into an obscure 
 suburb 1 . 
 
 Such may be regarded as a sufficiently probable theory of The question, 
 the early external growth of Cambridge, but it still remains iwaiitycame 
 
 to be (elected 
 
 to explain how such a locality came to be selected as the Jjt^dS?* 8 *" 
 site of a university. Compared with Stamford, Northampton, cussed ' 
 or even Huntingdon, all of them seats of monastic education, 
 Cambridge, to modern eyes, would have appeared an un- 
 healthy and ineligible spot 2 . It was the frontier town of a 
 country composed of bog, morass, and extensive meres, inter- 
 spersed with occasional tracts of arable and pasture land, 
 and presenting apparently few recommendations as a resort 
 for the youth of the nation; the reasons therefore which 
 outweighed the seemingly valid arguments in favour of a 
 more inviting and accessible locality have often been the 
 subject of conjecture. Fuller himself seems at a loss to 
 understand why the superior natural advantages of North- 
 ampton did not win for that town the preference of the 
 academic authorities. 
 
 As regards the first commencement of the university, an Answer: no 
 
 J detinite act of 
 
 obvious explanation is to be found in the fact that, in all 
 probability, no definite act of selection ever took place. Like 
 Paris and Oxford, Cambridge grew into a centre of learning. 
 Somewhere in the twelfth century the university took its 
 
 1 The combined population even bridge,' says Harrison, writing in 
 
 towards the close of the thirteenth 1577, ' is somewhat lowe and neere 
 
 century does not appear to have ex- unto the fennes, whereby the hol- 
 
 ceeded 4000. See Cooper, Annals, somenesse of the ayre there is not a 
 
 i 58. little corrupted.' Holinshed's Chro- 
 
 8 In the sixteenth century writers nicle, 73 b. 
 begin to recognise this fact. ' Cam-
 
 334 MEDLBVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. rv. rise ; originating most probably in an effort on the part of the 
 monks of Ely to render a position of some military impor- 
 tance also a place of education. The little school prospered. 
 The canons of St. Giles lent their aid ; and when at length, 
 as at Paris and Bologna, a nucleus had been formed, its 
 existence became an accepted fact; royalty extended its 
 recognition, and Cambridge became a university, 
 why not But when we enter upon the wider question, why the 
 
 moved? drawbacks to the situation did not finally cause the removal 
 of the university to a less objectionable locality, we find our- 
 selves involved in a more perplexing but not uninteresting 
 inquiry. It can hardly be supposed that at a time when the 
 university had acquired but little property in the town, and 
 when the smallness of the worldly possessions of the student, 
 as described by Chaucer 1 , rendered removal from one part of 
 the country to another a less formidable undertaking in some 
 respects than even at the present day, that the difficulties 
 attendant upon a general migration deterred men from at- 
 Mterations tempting it. The question of a partial migration, or of the 
 principle. foundation of a third university, stood upon a different foot- 
 ing. Such measures were resisted to prevent the loss of 
 prestige and diminution in importance which it was supposed 
 the older universities would necessarily undergo ; losses like 
 those which the foundation of the university of Prague in 
 1348 undoubtedly inflicted on Paris, and which the founda- 
 tion of the university of Cracow in 1400 inflicted in turn 
 on Prague. We shall probably find the best answer to our 
 question in a consideration of the very different point of view 
 nnwt*ckt from which it was regarded in mediaeval times. And first of 
 yt* rvcom- all it is necessary to remember how entirely monastic ideas 
 
 iiioiuUtiorn * * 
 
 tTm'^.' difflVI11 predominated in the early annals of both Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, and also how prominent a place among those ideas 
 
 Thpaacctic asceticism has always, at least in theory, held. The theory 
 that inculcated a rigorous isolation from mankind almost 
 necessarily debarred the monk from the selection of the most 
 inviting and accessible localities ; and so long as the locality 
 produced his two chief requisites, timber and water, for fuel 
 1 Prologue to Canterbury Tale*, 257 310.
 
 THE FEN COUNTRY. 385 
 
 and food, he professed to crave for nothing more. If we CHAP. rv. 
 examine the sites selected for our earlier monasteries we 
 shall see that it was neither the bracing air nor the fertility 
 of the soil that allured the founders to the mountain summit founded with 
 
 T -11 reasons for 
 
 or to the far recesses of the vale. It was not until the ' orwiwi 
 
 selection of 
 
 Church began to rival the temporal power, not until thej?^" 
 piety or the penitence of the wealthy found expression in the 
 alienation of large estates to the different orders, not until 
 .asceticism had been practically set aside as the rule of the 
 religious life, that the houses of both the old and the new 
 societies began to rise on commanding eminences, in the 
 centre of productive and well cultivated districts, looking over 
 rich slopes and undulating plains whose fertility moved the 
 envy of the wealthiest noble. It is indeed a common ob- 
 servation that the monk had a keen eye for the fattest land 
 and selected the site of his residence accordingly : but it is 
 questionable whether, in many cases, effect has not been 
 mistaken for cause, and whether the skill and industry of 
 the new colonists did not often supply the place of natural 
 advantages and impart attractions which were afterwards 
 supposed to be natural to the locality. Of such a conversion 
 in the district adjacent to Cambridge we find a notable 
 instance in the pages of Matthew Paris, whose account can i nsta nce 
 hardly be better rendered than in the quaint version by Matthew 
 Dugdale : ' In the year 1256, William, bishop of Ely, and 
 Hugh, abbot of Ramsey, came to an agreement upon a con- 
 troversy between them touching the bounds of their fens; 
 whereof in these our times a wonder happened ; for whereas, 
 as antiently, time out of mind, they were neither accessible 
 for man or beast, affording only deep mud, with sedge and 
 reeds; aud possest by birds (yea, much more by devils, as 
 appeareth in the life of St. Guthlac, who, finding it a place 
 of horror and great solitude, began to inhabit there], is now 
 changed into delightful meadows and arable ground; and 
 what thereof doth not produce corn or hay, doth abundantly 
 bring forth sedge, turf, and other fuel, very useful to the 
 borderers V 
 
 1 Paris, Historia Major, ed. Wats, p. 929; Dugdale, Embanking and 
 Draining, p. 358.
 
 33G MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. TV. There is good reason for believing that the motives which 
 weighed with St. Guthlac were, in a great measure, those 
 which chiefly influenced the monk in his selection of places 
 like Thorney, Ramsey, Crowland, and Ely, as sites of religious 
 houses, all probably originally scenes of ' horror,' but rendered 
 not only habitable but inviting by patient toil 1 . The de- 
 scription given by the soldier to William the Conqueror, as 
 The Fen recorded in the Liber Eliensis*, of the localities which he had 
 dts"rib*i by visited, resembles rather that brought by the spies to Joshua, 
 
 the chron- . i-it PI-TI- 
 
 icien. than the picture which the name of the r ens is apt at the 
 present day to suggest. Fertile islands, like those of Ramsey 
 and Thorney, rose amid the meres, adorned with verdant 
 plains, rich cornfields, and stately woods; timber was plentiful, 
 the ash in particular attaining to unusual dimensions; orchards 
 abounded; the vine was successfully cultivated, sometimes 
 trained aloft, sometimes extending on framework along the 
 ground ; the rich turf supplied abundant fuel, and, conveyed 
 up the river in boats, often blazed on the winter hearths at 
 Cambridge. The fertility of the soil surpassed that of all 
 other parts of England. The red stag, now extinct in this 
 country, the roe deer, wild goats and hares, afforded ample 
 occupation for the huntsman. The wild goose and water- 
 fowl of various kinds multiplied in every direction. The 
 tranquil mere, which rolled its tiny wave to the island shore, 
 teemed with all kinds of fish, and yielded an unfailing supply 
 for the Cambridge market. Ely itself, if we may trust the 
 authority of Bede, derived its name from the abundance of 
 eels once found in the surrounding waters 8 . Perch, roach, bar- 
 
 1 The vigorous diction of Cobbett, the very best manner: their gardens, 
 
 in his eccentric History of the Pro- fishponds, farms, were as near per- 
 
 testant Reformation, has effectively fection as they could make them ; 
 
 illustrated this favourable phase of in the whole of their economy they 
 
 English monasticism : ' The mo- set an example tending to make the 
 
 nasties built as well as wrote for country beautiful, to make it an ob- 
 
 posterity. The never-dying nature ject of pride with the people, and to 
 
 of their institutions set aside in all make the nation truly and perma- 
 
 their undertakings every calculation nently great.' 
 
 as to time and age. Whether they J Liber Eliensis (ed. 1848), i 232. 
 
 built or planted, they set the gene- 8 ' Dicimus autem Ely Anglice, id 
 
 rous example of providing for the est, a copia anguillarum qu in eis- 
 
 pleasnre, the honour, the wealth, dem capiuntur paludibus, nomen 
 
 and greatness of generations yet nn- sumpsit ; sicut Beda Anglorum di- 
 
 born. They executed everything in sertissimus docet.' fbid. p. 3.
 
 THE FEN COUNTRY. 337 
 
 bels, and lampreys were scarcely less plentiful; pike, known CHAP. iv. 
 by the local name of ' hakeards,' were caught of extraordi- 
 nary size; and the writer in the Bamsay Register declares, 
 that though the fisherman and sportsman plied their craft 
 unceasingly the supply seemed inexhaustible. With such 
 resources at its command the fen country was in those days 
 the envy of the surrounding districts ; and when spring came 
 the island home of the monk seemed, the chronicler tells us, 
 like some bower of Eden. 
 
 It will be observed that we have referred to the earlier change in 
 
 . i . i .the monastic 
 
 monasteries as affording the chief examples of the practice *"*" in , 
 
 selection of 
 
 of the ascetic theory. But as generation after generation " uw sitcs - 
 passed away, and Benedictines and Mendicants vied with 
 each other in splendour and luxury, that theory was as little 
 regarded as the theory of Gregory the Great concerning 
 pagan literature 1 . Its disregard however always afforded 
 occasion to their adversaries for sarcasms which they found 
 some difficulty in repelling ; and the following episode in 
 the life of Poggio Bracciolini, a man who, though his sympa- 
 thies were with the Humanists, yet always expressed the 
 greatest reverence for the religious life, affords a singular illus- 
 tration of the whole question with which we are now occupied. 
 
 It was about the year 1429, that a new branch of the The change 
 
 shewn to oe 
 
 Franciscan order, calling themselves the Fratres Observantice, 
 and professing, as was always the case with new communities, 
 a more than ordinarily austere life, attempted to erect in the 
 neighbourhood of Arezzo a convent for their occupation. 
 The rapidity with which these new branches were multiply- 
 ing had however before this become the subject for serious 
 consideration with the main order, and it had been resolved 
 at a general assembly that no more such societies should be 
 formed without the consent of the chapter. Jt accordingly 
 devolved upon Poggio, who at that time filled the office o 
 secretary to Martin v, to prohibit the new erection at Arezzo 5^* 
 until the pleasure of the chapter should be known. This 
 
 1 It would be an interesting in- with the Mendicants, whose profes- 
 
 quiry, were we at liberty here to sion certainly did not include the 
 
 follow it up, whether the change in idea of isolation from mankind, 
 the above respect did not come in 
 
 22
 
 338 MEDLEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. interference, though simply a discharge of his official duty, 
 at once marked him out for calumnies and invectives like 
 those which at this period were the ordinary defensive 
 weapons of the religious orders. It was notorious that he 
 regarded the Mendicants with no friendly feelings, and the 
 Iratres Observantice accordingly now began to denounce him 
 as a foe to the Christian faith and a subverter of all religion. 
 Their outcries and misrepresentations were so far successful 
 that the good-natured Niccoli Niccolo was induced to address 
 to Poggio a few words in their behalf. But the antagonist 
 of Filelfo and Valla was quite equal to the occasion, and in 
 his reply to the Florentine Maecenas he gladly availed him- 
 self of the opportunity thus afforded him of exposing and 
 censuring the habitual practice of the whole order. * He was 
 far,' he said, ' from denying that the friars had substantial 
 reasons for grumbling, for they had been driven from a 
 delightful region, the vineyards of which, producing a drink 
 that Jove himself might envy, attracted visitors from far and 
 near. But surely such spots were not for those who professed 
 a life of austerity and poverty ! Plato, who had known nought 
 of Christianity, had selected an unhealthy place for his academy, 
 in order that the mind might be strengthened by the weakness 
 of the body and the virtuous inclinations have free scope. 
 But these men, although professing to take Christ as their 
 example, chose out pleasant and delightful residences, and 
 these moreover not in retired spots but in the midst of popu- 
 lous neighbourhoods, where everything allured to sensual 
 rather than to intellectual delights 1 .' 
 
 1 ' Si qui ex eis fratribus queruntur Epistola (ed. Mehus, Florcntia-,1759). 
 
 BO privari patria ainncnissinia, meo Lib. xxv 41, see also xxiv 8. With 
 
 judicio hand injuria id agunt. Iliad respect to Plato note ^lian, Variii 
 
 enim nostrum nectar, Jovis potus, Historia, rxlO: '0 TlXdruv, voetpov 
 
 multos allicit non solum peregrinos, \uplov \eyo/j.^vov tlvai T-rjs'Aica.drineias 
 
 sed et cives. Plato, vir minime Chris- iced ff\>iiflov\tv6vr<i3i> avr(j> TWI> larpuv ft 
 
 tianus, elegit Academiao locum insa- TO \VK(IOI> utTotK-tjo-cu, OVK ijiw<T(v el- 
 
 lubrem, quo magis infirmo corpore ircJi-, ' AXX' tywyt OVK av ovbl tt rd rov 
 
 animus easel firmior, et bonro menti "A6u nerifKyoa. &v viclp TOV naicpopi.u- 
 
 vacaret. At isti, qui Be Christum TeposyevtyOai.' It is not unlikely how- 
 
 sequi simulant, loca eligunt amoena, ever that Poggio had in his mind a 
 
 voluptuosa, omni referta jucunditate, passage in St. Basil, De legcndis libris 
 
 non iu solitndine, sed in summa Gentilium, c. 19 : Aid or) xal HXaVowa 
 
 * hominum frequentia, non ut menti faffi TW iic ffu/Mroi /3Xa/3i;^ irpotiSo- 
 
 vacent, sed corpori.' Travenarii fi*vov, TO voo-uStt
 
 THEORY OF EDUCATION. 339 
 
 It is certainly somewhat surprising to find a man of CHAP. iv. f 
 Poggio's intelligence implicitly asserting that the unhealthi- The media- 
 ness of a locality recommended it as a place of education for undoibt^iy 
 youth ; but the fact affords decisive evidence that such was l '^ in-' c 
 
 sisU'il. 
 
 the theory then generally recognised. The mens sana was 
 not to be sought in corpore sano. The modern theory of 
 education requires the simultaneous developement of the 
 physical and mental powers, or rather teaches us to look 
 upon them as only modes of the same force, a force purely 
 physical in its origin. In those days they were looked upon 
 as antagonistic ; the mind, it was held, was strengthened by 
 the weakening of the body. Occasionally indeed men of 
 more than ordinary discernment advocated a sounder view, sounder 
 We find Grosseteste, he who could cheerily suggest to a melan- ffi b y a 
 choly brother an occasional cup of wine as a remedy for over 
 depression, objecting on sanitary grounds to low and marshy 
 districts 1 ; and Walter Buiiey, if we may trust Dr. Plot's 
 account, seriously believed that philosophers from Greece had 
 selected Oxford as the scene of their labours on account of 
 the healthiness of the situation 2 . But views like these were 
 certainly the exception, and the prevailing theory was that 
 on which Poggio so unmercifully insisted 3 . Unreasonable 
 
 TTJV ' KKai5^tda.v KaraXajSeij' t&vlTtjSts, mountainous to the south and east; 
 
 &a Tijv dyav tvirdOetav TOV <rwfj.a.Tos, by reason of the purity of the two 
 
 olov dfiirfXov r-qv tis rd irepirrd <popdv, former quarters in respect of the 
 
 irefHK&irroi. The writings of St. Basil latter ; just as Oxford is situated 
 
 were much studied at this time in which was selected by the philoso- 
 
 connexion with the controversy be- phers that came from Greece." 'Plot's 
 
 tweeni the eastern and western Hist, of Oxford, p. 330. 
 Churches. 3 The first distinct expression of a 
 
 1 ' Ipse dixit ei quod loca super counter theory in connexion with 
 aquam non sunt sana, nisi fuerint in university requirements is perhaps 
 sublimi sita.' Eccleston, in Monu- that of the Duke of Brabant, the 
 menta Franciscana, p. 66. founder of the university of Louvain 
 
 2 ' I think it very considerable in 1426, who on announcing the pa- 
 \vhat remains upon record in Mag- pal sanction of the proposed scheme 
 dalen College library, in an antient describes the site as ' loco vinetis, 
 manuscript of Walter Burley's, fel- pratis, rivulis, frugibus et fructibus, 
 low of Merton (tutor to the famous ac aliis circa victualia necessariis re- 
 King Edward in and deservedly ferto, in acre dulci et bona temperie 
 stiled doctor profundus), who upon situato, loco quidem spatioso et ju- 
 the problem complexio rara quare cundo, et ubi mores burgensium et 
 sanior, has these words concerning incolarum sunt benigni.' Memoires 
 the healthy condition of Oxford and sur les deux Premiers Siecles de V Uni- 
 its selection by students for the seat versite de Louvain : par le Baron de 
 of the muses : " A healthy city must Beiffenberg, p. 20. This language it 
 be open to the north and east, and will be observed was used three years 
 
 222
 
 340 
 
 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 trith 
 
 The uni- 
 
 Yerslty 
 
 originally 
 
 only a 
 
 grammar 
 
 school 
 
 CHAP. rv. moreover as that theory now appears, it will be found, like 
 
 many other abandoned crotchets of medisevalism, to contain 
 
 The theory a germ of truth. The highest state of physical well-being 
 
 not without 6 . 
 
 ment f i s rare ty the most favorable to severe mental application; 
 and many a college tutor in the present day could probably 
 bear testimony, that the high tension of the nervous system 
 produced by athletic training often materially interferes with 
 the ability of the student to devote himself to the sedentary 
 labours of an Honour course. 
 
 Having pursued, as far as seems necessary for our pre- 
 sent purpose, our inquiry into the causes which may be sup- 
 posed to have determined the localisation of the university, 
 we may now proceed to examine the character of the stu- 
 dent life of these early times. If then we accept the theory 
 already put forward of the commencement of the university, 
 it necessarily follows that we shall be prepared also to accept 
 a very modest estimate of the culture that originally pre- 
 vailed. We shall postulate neither Greek philosophers nor 
 royal patrons, but readily admit that the instruction given 
 could only have been that of the ordinary grammar school of 
 a later period. The Latin language, or ' grammar ' as it was 
 designated, formed the basis of the whole course : Priscian, 
 Terence, and Boethius, were the authors commonly read 1 . 
 There were probably some dozen or more separate schools, 
 each presided over by a master of grammar, while the Magis- 
 ter Glomerice represented the supreme authority. It is in 
 connexion with this officer, whose character and functions sc 
 long baffled the researches of the antiquarians, that we have 
 an explanation of those relations to Ely, as a tradition of the 
 earliest times, which formed the precedent for that ecclesi- 
 astical interference which was terminated by the Barnwcll 
 Process. The existence of such a functionary and of the 
 
 The 
 
 MaQiiter 
 (ilomcria. 
 
 before the attack of Poggio on the 
 Observantists : bat on the other 
 hand it is to bo noted that it is the 
 language of a layman, and that the 
 university of Loavain was founded 
 for all the faculties gave that of theo- 
 logy. (See p. 282, note 2, andrrata.) 
 Nothing certainly can justify Dr 
 Newman in adducing Louvain, aa 
 
 lately in his Historical Sketches, as 
 an illustration of mediaeval notions 
 with respect to the best sites for uni- 
 versities. 
 
 1 Terence however par excellence ; 
 the grammar school, at a later period, 
 seems to have been also known under 
 the designation of the school of Te- 
 rence.
 
 STUDENTS OF GRAMMAR. 341 
 
 grammar schools, prior to the university, enables us to un- CHAP. rv. 
 derstand how, in the time of Hugh Balsham, an exertion of 
 the episcopal authority, like that which has already come 
 under our notice, became necessary in order to guard against 
 collision between the representatives of the old and the 
 new orders of things, between the established rights of the 
 Master of Glomery and rights like those which, by one of 
 our most ancient statutes, were vested in the regent masters 
 in the exercise of their authority over those students en- 
 rolled on their books. If we picture to ourselves some few 
 hundred students, of all ages from early youth to complete 
 manhood, mostly of very slender means, looking forward to 
 the monastic or the clerical life as their future avocation, 
 lodging among the townsfolk, and receiving such accommo- 
 dation as inexperienced poverty might be likely to obtain at 
 the hands of practised extortioners, resorting for instruction 
 to one large building, the grammar schools, or sometimes 
 congregated in the porches of their respective masters' houses, 
 and there receiving such instruction in Latin as a reading 
 from Terence, Boethius, or Orosius, eked out by the more 
 elementary rules from Priscian or Donatus, would repre- 
 sent, we shall probably have grasped the main features 
 of a Cambridge course at the period when Irnerius began 
 to lecture at Bologna, Vacarius at Oxford, and when Peter 
 Lombard compiled the Sentences. 
 
 Meagre as such a ' course ' may appear, there is every course of 
 reason for believing that it formed, for centuries, nearly the iwrfbrfta 
 
 . . * student of 
 
 sole acquirement of the great majority of our university stu- grammar, 
 dents. The complete trivium, followed by the yet more for- 
 midable quadrivium, was far beyond both the ambition and 
 the resources of the ordinary scholar. His aim was simply 
 to qualify himself for holy orders, to become Sir Smith or 
 Sir Brown 1 , as distinguished from a mere ' hedge-priest,' and 
 to obtain a licence to teach the Latin tongue. For this the 
 degree of master of grammar was sufficient, and the qualifi- 
 cations for that degree were slight: to have studied the 
 larger Priscian in the original, to have responded in three 
 
 1 Sir, the English for Magister; while Dontinus was contracted into Dan; 
 e.g. Dan Chaucer.
 
 342 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. public disputations on grammar, to have given thirteen lec- 
 tures on Priscian's Book of Constructions, and to have ob- 
 tained from three masters of arts certificates of his ' learning, 
 ability, knowledge, and moral character,' satisfied the re- 
 quirements of the authorities 1 . His licence obtained, he 
 might either be appointed by one of the colleges to teach in 
 the grammar school frequently attached to the early founda- 
 tions ; or he might become principal of a hostel and receive 
 pupils in grammar on his own account; or he might, as 
 a secular clergyman, be presented to a living or the master- 
 ship of a grammar school at a distance from the university. 
 
 introduction With the latter part of the twelfth century the studies of 
 
 of the art* , . . , i i L K 
 
 tne t rivium an d quadnvium, or in other words the discipline 
 of an arts faculty, were probably introduced at Cambridge. 
 This developement from a simple school of grammar into a 
 studium generate was not marked, it is true, by the same 
 dclat that waited on the corresponding movements at Bo- 
 logna, Paris, or even Oxford, but it is not necessary to infer 
 from thence that Cambridge was much inferior either in 
 numbers or organization. The early reputation of those seats 
 of learning survives almost solely in connexion with a few 
 great names, and the absence of any teacher of eminence 
 like Irnerius, Abelard, or Vacarius, at our own university, is 
 a sufficient explanation of the fact that no accounts of her 
 culture in the twelfth century have reached us. On the 
 other hand, the influx of large numbers from the university 
 of Paris, which we have already noted as taking place about 
 the year 1229, can only be accounted for by supposing that 
 the reputation of the university was by that time fairly 
 established. Of the frequent intercourse between Paris and 
 the English universities in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and 
 during part of the fifteenth century, we have already spoken. 
 This intercourse, it is to be observed, is to be traced not 
 merely in the direction assumed by the mental activity of 
 Oxford and Cambridge at different junctures, but also in the 
 more definite evidence afforded by their respective statute 
 books. It was natural that when a Cambridge or Oxford 
 
 1 Statute 117. De Ineepturii in Qrammatica. Document*, i 374.
 
 THE ARTS FACULTY. 343 
 
 graduate had spent two or three years and perhaps taken CHAP, w 
 an additional degree at Paris, he should, on his return, be 
 inclined to comment on any points of difference between 
 the requirements of the illustrious body he had quitted and 
 those of his own university. The statutes of both Oxford 
 and Cambridge had originally been little more than a tran- 
 script of those of Paris ; but the changes introduced at Paris 
 among the different 'nations' were so numerous as mate- 
 rially to modify the course of study in the fifteenth century 
 when compared with that of the thirteenth. In many in- Assistance 
 
 * afforded by 
 
 stances we find that these changes were subsequently adopted bookTof the 
 at Cambridge, and, as the chronology of the statutes at Paris pEril'inm- ' 
 is far more regularly preserved, they often afford us valuable thf^fuqui- 
 
 j / -11 i p ,1 HT , A j ties of the 
 
 guidance (more especially those oi the Nation Anqlaise, or English 
 
 . . . . universities. 
 
 Nation Allemande as it was subsequently called), in deter- 
 mining the relative antiquity of two statutes in our own code. 
 
 For a considerable period the students and masters of inferior esti- 
 mation in 
 
 grammar were probably, in point of numbers, by far the most g^\^ 
 important element in the university, but they receive quite a h^d^cTm 
 secondary amount of consideration in the ancient statutes. thoTeof The 
 The career of the arts student, on the other hand, is to be art - 
 traced with tolerable precision, and, with the collateral aid 
 afforded by the statutes of Paris and Oxford, we are enabled 
 to give a fairly trustworthy sketch of such a career in the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There is good reason 
 however for supposing that originally the masters and stu- 
 dents of grammar were not looked upon as occupying an 
 essentially inferior position : their decline in estimation was causes which 
 
 1111 in IT- conduced to 
 
 probably the result of those new additions to university tnis result - 
 learning which have occupied our attention in preceding 
 chapters. With the introduction of that portion of the 
 Organon which was known as the Nova Ars, logic, the second 
 branch of the trivium, began to engross a much larger amount 
 of the student's time. To this succeeded the Summulce of 
 Petrus Hispanus, and logic was crowned in the schools as 
 the mistress of arts, the science of sciences. In the mean 
 time the stores of Latin literature had been but slightly aug- 
 mented. Discoveries like those with which Petrarch was
 
 344 MEDIEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. rv. startling the learned of Italy, failed for a long time to awalcen 
 1 any interest in the northern universities. The splendid 
 library which duke Humphrey bequeathed to Oxford, though 
 received with profuse expressions of gratitude, was valued not 
 for its additions to the known literature of antiquity but for 
 its richness in mediaeval theology. Hence the grammarian's 
 art declined relatively in value, and the study of logic over- 
 shadowed all the rest. With the sixteenth century the 
 balance was readjusted ; the grammarian along with the 
 rhetorician claimed equal honours with the logician, and the 
 course of the grammar student was correspondingly extended 1 . 
 During the latter part of the Middle Ages however it was 
 undoubtedly the dialectician's art that was the chief object 
 of the scholar's reverence and ambition. A course of study, 
 moreover, in but one subject and occupying but three years, 
 was obviously not entitled to the same consideration as a 
 seven years' course extending through the trivium and quad- 
 rivium. Thus the masters and scholars in grammar grad- 
 ually subsided into acknowledged inferiority to those in arts, 
 an inferiority which is formally recognised in the statute 
 requiring that the funeral of a regent master of arts or of a 
 scholar in that faculty shall be attended by the chancellor 
 and the regents, and at the same time expressly declaring 
 that masters and scholars of grammar are not entitled to 
 
 a- such an honour 8 . The grammarian indeed in those days was 
 more than a nothing more than a schoolmaster, and the estimation in 
 
 school- ' 
 
 which that vocation was held had perhaps reached its lowest 
 point. The extended sense in which the term grammaticus 
 had been originally understood, and in which it was again 
 before very long to be employed, did not apply to the master 
 of a grammar school in the fourteenth century. He taught 
 only schoolboys, and they learned only the elements. It was 
 sadly significant moreover of the character of his vocation 
 that every inceptor in grammar received a ' palmer ' (ferule), 
 
 1 The last degree in grammar at torum, 'illis tantummodo exceptis, 
 
 Cambridge was conferred in the year qui artem solam decent vel audiunt 
 
 1542. Peacock, Observations, etc. grammaticam, ad quorum exequiaa 
 
 Append, p. xxx note. nisi ex devotione non veniant supra 
 
 Statute 178, De Exequiis Defunc- dicti.' Documents, i 404.
 
 THE ARTS FACULTY. 345 
 
 and a rod, and then proceeded to flog a boy publicly in the CHAP. it. 
 schools 1 . Hence Erasmus in his Encomium Morice, dear as ThTdlTaa 
 the cause of Latin learning was to his heart, does not hesitate i^m J Si by 
 to satirize the grammarians of his time as ' a race of all men 
 the most miserable, who grow old at their work surrounded 
 by herds of boys, deafened by continual uproar, and poisoned 
 by a close, foul atmosphere ; satisfied however so long as 
 they can overawe the terrified throng by the terrors of their 
 look and speech, and, while they cut them to pieces with 
 ferule, birch, and thong, gratify their own merciless natures 
 at pleasure.' Similarly, in a letter written somewhat later, 
 he tells us what difficulty he encountered when he sought 
 to find at Cambridge a second master for Colet's newly 
 founded school at St. Paul's, and how a college don, whom he 
 consulted on. the subject, sneeringly rejoined, ' Who would 
 put up with the life of a schoolmaster who could get his 
 living in any other way" ?' 
 
 From the career and prospects of a grammar student we Experiences 
 
 . and course of 
 
 may now proceed to examine those of the student in arts . study of an 
 
 * | f arts student. 
 
 As the university gathered its members from all parts of the 
 kingdom and many of the students came from districts a 
 
 1 ' Then shall the Bedell purvay cum, Latinum, mathematician, phi- 
 
 for every master in Gramer a shrewde losophum, medicum, KO! ravra fiaai.- 
 
 Boy, whom the master in Gramer \IKOV, jam sexagenarium, qui ceteris 
 
 shall bete openlye in the Scolys, and rebus omissis, annis plus viginti se 
 
 the master in Gramer shall give the torquet ac discruciat in grammatica, 
 
 Boye a Grote for hys Labour, and prorsus felicem se fore ratus si tam- 
 
 another Grote to hym that provydeth diu liceat vivere donee certo statuat 
 
 the Rode and the Palmer etc. de sin- quomodo distinguendae Bint octo par- 
 
 gulis. And thus endythe the Acte in tes orationis, quod hactenus nemo 
 
 that Facultye.' Stokes' Book, Pea- Graecorurn aut Latinorum ad plenum 
 
 cock, Observations, Append. A, p. prsestare voluit.' Encomium Morice. 
 xxxvii. s It is difficult to form any very 
 
 s Seebohm, Oxford Reformers, 220 2 . exact conclusion with respect to the 
 
 See also Mr Anstey's remarks, Mu- estimation in which the advantages 
 
 nimenta Academica, p. IxiiL It is of a university education were held 
 
 somewhat surprising, when such was in these times. Mr Anstey is of opi- 
 
 the prevailing estimate of the gram- nion that a lad was sent to Oxford or 
 
 marian's function, to find that there Cambridge when he seemed ' fit for 
 
 were notwithstanding enthusiasts in nothing else.' Professor Bogers says, 
 
 the purely technical branch of the ' There was as keen an ambition in 
 
 study. The following description for those days among the small proprie- 
 
 instance might almost serve for the tors to send one of their sons to the 
 
 original of the character which Mr university, as there is now in Ireland 
 
 Browning has so powerfully delineat- to equip a boy at Maynooth.' His- 
 
 ed in his Grammarian's Funeral: torical Gkanings, 2nd series, p. 17. 
 ' Novi quendam Tro\vrexv'oTa.Tov, Grse-
 
 346 MEDIEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. week's journey remote, it was customary for parents to 
 entrust their sons to the care of a 'fetcher,' who after making 
 a preliminary tour in order to form his party, which often 
 numbered upwards of twenty, proceeded by the most direct 
 road tor Cambridge. On his arrival two courses were open to 
 the youthful freshman : he might either attach himself to 
 one of the religious foundations, in which case his career 
 for life might be looked upon as practically decided ; or he 
 might enter himself under a resident master, as intending to 
 take holy orders, or perhaps, though such instances were 
 probably confined to the nobility, as a simple layman. In no 
 case however was he permitted to remain in residence except 
 under the surveillance of a superior 1 . Unless it was the 
 design of his parents that he should follow the religious life, 
 he would probably before setting out have beea fully warned 
 against the allurements of all Franciscans and Dominicans, 
 until a friar had come to be regarded by him as a kind of ogre, 
 and he would hasten with as little delay as possible to put 
 himself under the protection of a master. The disparity of 
 age between master and pupil was generally less than at the 
 
 Avenge age present day : the former would often not be more than 
 
 at time of 
 
 entry. twenty-one, the latter not more than fourteen or fifteen; 
 Master and consequently their relations were of much less formal charac- 
 
 Kholar. <* 
 
 ter, and the selection, so far as the scholar was concerned, a 
 more important matter. A scholar from the south chose a 
 master from the same latitude ; if he could succeed in meet- 
 ing with one from the same county he considered himself yet 
 more fortunate; if aspiring to become a canonist or a civilian 
 he would naturally seek for a master also engaged upon such 
 studies. The master in turn was expected to interest him- 
 self in his pupil ; no scholar was to be rudely repulsed on the 
 score of poverty ; if unable to pay for both lodging and 
 
 1 Statute 42, De Immunitatc Scho- Documents, i 832. This statute which 
 
 I iriiiin. 'Indignum esse judicamus was promulgated in the fifteenth of 
 
 ut quis scholarem tueatnr, qui cer- Henry in is evidently an echo of that 
 
 turn magistrnm infra xv dies post of the university of Paris passed six- 
 
 ejnfl ingressum in universitate non teen years before by Robert de Cour- 
 
 habuerit aut nomen suum infra tern- 9on. ' Nullus sit scholaris Parisius 
 
 pus pro libatum in rnatricula magis- qui certum magistrum non habeat.' 
 
 tri Bui redigere non curavurit, etc.' Buheus, in 82.
 
 THE ARTS FACULTY. 347 
 
 tuition he often rendered an equivalent in the shape of very CHAP, iv^ 
 humble services ; he waited at table, went on errands, and, 
 if we may trust the authority of the Pseudo-Boethius, was 
 often rewarded by his master's left-off garments. The aids university 
 
 J aids to poor 
 
 held out by the university were then but few. There were **"**** 
 some nine or ten poorly endowed foundations, one or two 
 university exhibitions, and finally the university chest, from 
 which, as a last resource, the hard-pinched student might 
 borrow if he had aught to pledge 1 . The hostel where he 
 resided protected him from positive extortion, but he was still 
 under the necessity of making certain payments towards the 
 expenses. The wealthier class appear to have been under no 
 pecuniary obligations whatever. When therefore a scholar's 
 funds entirely failed him, and his Sentences or his Summulce, 
 his Venetian cutlery, and his winter cloak had all found 
 their way into the proctor's hands as security for monies 
 advanced, he was compelled to have recourse to other means. 
 His academic life was far from being considered to preclude 
 the idea of manual labour. It has been conjectured, by a 
 high authority, that the long vacation was originally designed 
 to allow of members of the universities assisting in the then 
 all-important operation of the ingathering of the harvest 8 . 
 But however this may have been, there was a far more Practice of 
 popular method of replenishing an empty purse, a method the 9cboi'. 
 which the example of the Mendicants had rendered all but 
 universal, and this was no other than begging on the public 
 highways. Among the vices of that rude age parsimony was 
 rarely one, the exercise of charity being in fact regarded as a 
 religious duty. Universal begging implies universal giving. 
 And so it not unfrequently happened that the wealthy mer- 
 
 1 This fund represented the accu- factions up to that time. See Fuller- 
 
 mulation of successive legacies to Prickett and Wright, p. 201. 
 
 the university by persons of opulence : s ProfessorRogers,.Hi"storicaZOrfean- 
 
 each legacy appears to have been ings, 2nd series, p. 44. Mr Anstey 
 
 known as a chest, and we find arch- says, ' Those who left the university 
 
 bishop Arundel, on the occasion of probably often walked home, and 
 
 his visit, instituting an enquiry, even begged their way about the 
 
 'whether the common chests, with country, being, as we find from other 
 
 the money contained and the keys sources, quite a nuisance sometimes 
 
 belongingthereto,werecarefullykept.' to the farmers and others at whose 
 
 In the account of his visitation we doors they sought alms.' Introd. to 
 
 have also a list of the different bene- Munimenta Academica p. c.
 
 348 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. chant, journeying between London and Norwich, or the well- 
 % beneficed ecclesiastic or prior of a great house on his way 
 
 to some monastery in the fen country, would be accosted by 
 some solitary youth with a more intelligent countenance and 
 more educated accent than ordinary, and be plaintively 
 solicited either in English or in Latin, as might best suit the 
 case, for the love of Our Lady to assist a distressed votary of 
 learning. In the course of time this easy method of re- 
 plenishing an empty purse was found to have become far too 
 popular among university students, and it was considered 
 necessary to enact that no scholar should begin the highways 
 until the chancellor had satisfied himself of the merits of 
 each individual case and granted a certificate for the purpose 1 . 
 
 i>reMj>fthe It would appear from the phraseology of the statutes that a 
 scholar always wore a distinctive dress, though it is uncertain 
 in what this consisted 2 . It was probably both an unpretending 
 and inexpensive article of attire, but however unpretending 
 it is amusing to note that it was much more frequently 
 
 Assumption falsely assumed than unlawfully laid aside. In like manner 
 
 thos7not y ambitious sophisters, disguised in bachelors' capes, would 
 
 entitled to , r . ,., . . * 
 
 wear it endeavour to gam credit for a perfected acquaintance with 
 the mysteries of the trivium ; while bachelors, in their turn, 
 at both universities drew down upon themselves fulminations 
 against the 'audacity' of those of their number who should 
 dare to parade in masters' hoods 8 . In other respects the 
 dress of the undergraduate was left very much to his own dis- 
 cretion and resources, until what seemed excess of costliness 
 and extravagance, even in the eyes of a generation that 
 delighted in fantastic costume, called forth a prohibition like 
 that of archbishop Stratford 4 . 
 
 1 Cooper, Annnlx, i 245, 343. The academical dress' was worn by those 
 
 following authorization occurs among whom he terms ' undergraduates.' 
 
 the Chancellor's Acts at Oxford in lutrod. to Munimenta Acadcmica, 
 
 Hie year 1461: 'Eodem die Diony- p. Ixvi. But in statute 42 of our 
 
 MUsBnrnell ct Johannes Brown, pau- Statuta Antigua it is expressly re- 
 
 txjres scholares de anla " Aristotelis," quired that all out speciem gerunt 
 
 hahncrunt literas tewtimoniales sub gcJiolasticam shall really be scholars 
 
 Bigillo officii ad petendum eleemo- of the university. Documents, i 332. 
 pynam.' Anstey, Munimenta Aca- 3 Alunimenta Academica, i 360; 
 
 demica, n 684. Documents, i 402. 
 
 * Mr Anstey is of opinion that ' no 4 See p. 283.
 
 THE ARTS FACULTY. 349 
 
 It is most probable that it was usual, in the fifteenth CHAP. iv. 
 century, for arts students to have gained a certain acquaint- In ^^o7 
 ance with Latin before entering the university ; but it is to ta! m m * r 
 be remembered that instruction in such knowledge was not HmiMryui 
 
 tlii" arts 
 
 easily to be had away from the two great centres of learning, course. 
 The ecclesiastical authorities throughout the country, espe- 
 cially after the appearance of Lollard ism, regarded the 
 exercise of the teacher's function with considerable jealousy. 
 The creation of new grammar schools was systematically dis- 
 couraged, and at the same time it was penal for parents to ^u 
 send their sons to a private teacher. At length in 1431 theTo g i!nt!. 
 permission was granted for the creation of five additional 1431. 
 schools, but these afforded only partial relief, and the numbers 
 at the cathedral and conventual schools throughout the 
 country were still inconveniently large 1 . Accordingly in the Foundat:<m 
 year 1439 we find one William Byngham, rector of St. JohniiousB,im 
 Zachary in London, erecting a 'commodious mansion ' called 
 God's House 2 , and placing it under the supervision of the 
 authorities of Clare Hall, ' to the end that twenty-four 
 youths, under the direction and government of a learned 
 priest, may be there perpetually educated, and be from thence 
 transmitted, in a constant succession, into different parts of 
 England, to those places where grammar schools had fallen 
 into a state of desolation 3 .' But whatever might be the Grammar 
 
 ? . . .. always in- 
 
 freshman s attainments in grammar, it is probable that, a eluded in the 
 
 . r arts course. 
 
 certaiq amount of instruction in the subject was invariably 
 given : in the earlier times nothing more perhaps was taught 
 than what we have already described as included in the 
 course of study pursued by a candidate for the degree of 
 master of grammar; but in the fifteenth century there were 
 introduced larger readings from Terence, Virgil, or Ovid, and 
 
 1 Knight, Life of Colet, pp. 232, 3. founde of late over the est parte of 
 
 3 A literal rendering of the com- the wey leding from Hampton to 
 
 mon French Maison Dieu. Coventre and so forth, no ferther 
 
 3 Cooper, Annals, i 189. The con- north yan Rypon, seventie Scoles 
 
 tempt in which the vocation of the voide, or mo, yat were occupied all 
 
 grammaticus was then held seems to at ones, within fiftie yeres passed, 
 
 have cooperated with ecclesiastical bicause yat yere is so grete scarstee 
 
 jealousy: Byngham, in his petition of Maistres of Gramar.' Documents, 
 
 for permission to found God's House, in 153, 4. 
 
 says, 'Youre poure Besecher hathe
 
 350 
 
 MEDLEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. also some instruction in the rules of Latin versification 1 . The 
 study of grammar was followed by that of logic : and in this 
 branch the Summulce was as much the universal text-book 
 as the Sentences in that of theology. We have already noted 
 its prescribed use in the universities of Prague and Leipsic ; 
 Gerson complains that in his day it was thrust- in to the hands 
 of youthful students at Paris long before they could compre- 
 hend its meaning 2 ; Reuchlin when he went as a student to 
 Freiburg found it in general use there*. Its use in our own 
 university is sufficiently indicated by the occasional reference 
 to the Parva Logicalia, a portion of the work which treats of 
 ambiguities attaching to the use of words with a varying con- 
 notation 4 ; and if other proof were wanting that the Byzan- 
 
 1 Mr Anstey's account of the study 
 of grammar differs somewhat from 
 that which I have given. He seems 
 to me not to have given sufficient 
 prominence to the fact that there 
 existed simultaneously, (1) a distinct 
 faculty of grammar for those who 
 aimed at nothing more than a gram- 
 mar degree ; and (2) grammar schools 
 for those engaged upon an arts 
 course. He has consequently repre- 
 sented the grammar school as altoge- 
 ther distinct from the arts course, 
 and the student as only an artist 
 when he had entered upon the study 
 of logic. The scholar, he says, in his 
 valuable sketch, ' has completed his 
 grammar school life and is now to 
 enter upon his course of training as 
 an "artist."' I cannot think that 
 the first stage of the trivium was ever 
 so completely dissociated from the 
 other two. The existence of a dis- 
 tinct faculty of grammar, similar to 
 that presided over by our own Ma- 
 flitter Glomfrice, is clearly indicated 
 in the Antiques Ordinationes given in 
 Mr Anstey'n second volume, pp. 442 
 445, where the office of a regens 
 in grammatica is distinctly adverted 
 to. The existence of this faculty is 
 briefly mentioned by Mr Anstey to- 
 wards the close of his sketch. He 
 assigns to these Ordinances a ditto 
 certainly prior to 1350, and probably 
 much earlier. But on the other hand 
 grammar was certainly part of the 
 artist's* course. M. Thurot says 
 that for determining bachelors, 'Le 
 
 livre de Priscicn, le traite" de Donat 
 sur les figures grammaticales, 1'Orga- 
 non d'Aristote, les Topiques de Boece, 
 furent toujours au nombre des livres 
 que les candidate devaient avoir en- 
 tendus.' De V Organisation, etc. p. 45. 
 The Oxford statute, of the date 1267, 
 requires that they should have heard 
 the De Constritctionibus Prisciani bis, 
 Barbarismus Donati semel.' Muni- 
 menta Academica, p. 34. The statute 
 in our own Statuta Antiqua requires 
 'quod quilibet determinaturus audie- 
 rit in scholis ordinarie, librum Te- 
 rcntii scilicet, perbiennium, logicalia 
 verum per annum, naturalia quoque 
 seu metaphysicalia secundum quod 
 suo tempore ea legi contigerit per 
 annum.' Documents, i 385. While 
 therefore there were certainly many 
 students of grammar who were not 
 ' artists,' it seems to be equally clear 
 that instruction in grammar always 
 formed part of the ' artist's ' course. 
 * ' Apud logicos Summulte Petri His- 
 pani traduntur ab initio novis pueris 
 ad memoriter recolendum, et si non 
 statim intelligant.' Opera, i 21. 
 
 3 Oeiger, Johann Reuchlin, p. 8. 
 
 4 The following passage gives the 
 most satisfactory explanation of the 
 origin of this treatise and its scope 
 that I have been able to meet with : 
 'Logica nova...docet principaliter de 
 tota argumentatione et habet qua- 
 
 tuor libros, etc Logica vetus agit 
 
 de partibus argnmentorum et habet 
 duos libros apud Aristotelem (i.e. Cat. 
 and De Interp.)...de proprietatibus
 
 THE ARTS FACULTY. 351 
 
 tine weed-growth, as Prantl terms it, had reached the waters CHAP, iv.' 
 of the Cam, it is to be found in the scanty library of an 
 unfortunate student in the year 1540, where along with the 
 Pandects, the Gesta Bomanorum, a Horace, and the Encomium 
 Morice, the omnipresent Petrus Hispanus again appears, newly 
 edited by Tartaretus 1 . In the lectures on logic the lecturer 
 probably had most frequent recourse to the commentary of 
 Duns Scotus. In his fourth year the scholar was required to 
 attend lectures on some of the 'philosophical' writings of Rhetoric. 
 Aristotle, generally it would seem the Metaphysics or the 
 Naturalia, where Duns Scotus or Alexander Hales again The QuadH- 
 
 vtum. 
 
 supplied the office of interpreter. The fifth year was devoted 
 
 to a course of arithmetic and music : the sixth, to geometry Mathematics. 
 
 * . . w Perceptible 
 
 and perspective : the seventh, to astronomy. It would cer- advance in 
 
 * the study, in 
 
 tainly be erroneous to suppose that under the last three 
 subjects nothing more was comprised than was to be found 
 in the treatises of Capella and Isidorus, or that no advance 
 had been made since the days of Koger Bacon, when accord- 
 ing to his account the student of geometry rarely succeeded 
 " in getting beyond the fifth proposition of Euclid. We find 
 that in the university of Vienna, so early as 1389, the candi- 
 date for the degree of master was required to have read the 
 Theory of the Planets (a treatise by the Italian mathema- 
 tician, Campano of Novara), five books of Euclid, common 
 perspective, a treatise on proportional parts, and another on 
 the measurement of superficies 2 . It will be observed that 
 most of these subjects are included in the statute of the 
 university of Prague adopted by the newly founded univer- 
 
 autem terminornm, sc. suppositione, l Cooper, Annals i 399. See also 
 
 ampliatione, appellations, restric- letter of More to Martinus Dorpius, 
 
 tione, alienatione, Aristoteles speciales Erasmi Epistola, ed. Leyden, pp. 1897 
 
 libros non edidit, sed alii autores 9 ; and Vives, De Causis, Opera vi 
 
 utiles tractatus ediderunt ex his, 14856. More, in his Utopia, speaks 
 
 quse sparsira philosophus in suis of the inhabitants of that island as 
 
 libris posuerat, et ista sic edita di- ignorant of 'all those rules of restric- 
 
 cuntur PAKVA LOOICALIA eo quod a tions,amplifications, and suppositions 
 
 minoribus autoribus respectu Aristo- verye wittelye inuented in the small 
 
 telis sunt edita.' From Preface to Logicalles, whyche heare oure children 
 
 Johannes de "Werdea's Exercitata in euery place do learned Transl. 
 
 Parvorum Logicalium secundamViam by Robinson, ed. Arber, p. 105. 
 
 Modernorum. Reutlingen, 1487 (quo- 8 Kollar, Statuta Universitatis 
 
 ted by Prantl, iv 204). Wiennensis, i 237.
 
 352 MEDIEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. sity of Leipzic in 1409, which we have quoted in a preceding 
 chapter 1 . We have also evidence that at Paris, where such 
 precedents were likely to be most influential at Oxford or 
 Cambridge, the same subjects were introduced at nearly the 
 'same period, though it is not altogether clear how far they 
 formed an obligatory part of the arts student's course 8 . 
 
 It will be observed that we have avoided, in the foregoing 
 account, referring to the student, at any stage, as an under- 
 graduate. We have abstained from the use of the term in 
 order to guard against the misconception to which it might 
 
 Sdwior. l eac L Th e probability is that originally bachelorship did not 
 imply admission to a degree, but simply the termination of 
 
 meanui 1 of *he s ^ e f pupildom : the idea involved in the term being, 
 
 te term. \ha,\, though no longer a schoolboy, he was still not of suffi- 
 cient standing to be entrusted with the care of others 8 . It 
 is probable that as soon as a student began to hear lectures 
 on logic, he was encouraged to attend the schools to be 
 present at the disputations, but it was not until he had com- 
 pleted his course of study in this branch that he was entitled 
 to take part in these trials of skill and became known as a 
 
 bophuter. ' general sophister.' After he had attained to this status he 
 was permitted to present himself as a public disputant, and 
 at least two ' responsions ' and ' opponencies,' the defensive 
 and offensive parts in the discussion of a qucestio, appear to 
 have been obligatory, while those who shewed an aptitude 
 for such contests were selected to attend upon the determiners, 
 or incepting bachelors of arts, as their assessors in more 
 ardent disputes. When the student's fourth year of study 
 was completed, it devolved on certain masters of arts appoint- 
 ed by the university to make enquiry with respect to his 
 age, academical status, and private character*. If they were 
 
 1 See p. 282, note 2 ad fin. thologje montrent clairement que lo 
 
 3 ' Les rtformes do 1366 et do 1452 baccalaureat n'e'tait pas grade, mais 
 
 prcscrivent pour la licence qnelqnes un 6tat. En re*alite*, ce tenne fdgni- 
 
 livres de math^matiqucs, et d'astro- fiait apprcntissage, 1'apprentissage de 
 
 nomie, sans Us indiquer avcc pr6- la maltrise. Le bachelier e"tait celui 
 
 cition.' Thurot, De V Organisation, qui n'e'tait plus e*tudiant et qui n'etait 
 
 etc. p. 81. The same indefiniteness pas encore maltre.* Thurot,.p. 137. 
 
 characterises our own statutes on the * ' It was the danger of not being 
 
 subject. able to provide proper testimony of 
 
 1 ' Lea reglemonts do la Facultc de this kind or of not being able to take
 
 THE ARTS FACULTY. 353 
 
 satisfied on these points, he was permitted to proceed with CHAP. iv. 
 the examination which he must pass before he could present 
 himself as a questionist, ad respondendum qucestioni. This The 
 
 _* . .. Queationtat 
 
 ordeal took place in the arts schools, where he was examined 
 by the proctors, ' posers,' and regent masters of arts : as a test 
 of proficiency it appears to have corresponded to the present 
 final examination for the ordinary degree or for honours, and 
 when it had been passed the candidate received, either from 
 the authorities of his college or the master of his hostel, a 
 supplicat to the chancellor and the senate. This supplicat The 
 having been favorably entertained he was allowed to present 
 himself as a questionist. Of this ceremony, which was pro- 
 bably little more than a matter of form, we have an amusing 
 account in Stokys' Book, a volume compiled in the sixteenth stokyg' 
 
 account of 
 
 century by a fellow of King's College who had filled for 
 many years the office of esquire bedell, and that of registrary ^n 
 of the university. On the appointed day one of the bedells 
 made his appearance in the court of the college or hostel, 
 shortly before nine o'clock, crying ' Allons, allons, goe, Misters, 
 goe,' and having assembled masters, bachelors, scholars, and 
 questionists, and marshalled them in due order, proceeded to 
 conduct them to the arts schools. As they entered, one of 
 the bedells cried, Nostra mater, bona iiova, bona nova, and the 
 father of the college 1 took his seat in the responsions' chair, 
 ' his children standing over against him in order.' Then the 
 bedell, turning to the father, said, Reverende pater, licebit 
 tibi incipere, sedere, et cooperiri si placet. Then the father 
 proceeded to propound his questions to each of his children 
 in order, and when they had been duly answered he summed 
 up his conclusions. This questioning again was probably 
 purely formal in its character, for it appears to have been 
 regarded as unparental in the extreme if he replied to any 
 
 the necessary oath as to past studies, performance brought with it the con- 
 that the chance of failure consisted ; sequent applause or disgrace, which 
 there seems to have been nothing seems to have been the only gua- 
 corresponding to our modern pluck- rantee that he should really exert 
 ing; if the scholar could provide himself.' Introd. to M unimenta Aca- 
 testimony to his fitness, etc., he was demica, p. Ixxxv. 
 admitted to run the gauntlet of de- 1 The officer who represented the 
 termining without further enquiry, college on such occasions, was thus 
 and his successful or non-successful named. 
 
 23
 
 854 MEDLEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. rv. O f hi s children and involved a feeble questionist in argument, 
 it being expressly provided that if he thus unduly lengthened 
 the proceedings the bedell might ' knock him out,' an opera- 
 tion which consisted in hammering at the school doors in such 
 a manner as to render the voices of the disputants inaudible. 
 When each questionist had responded the procession was again 
 formed, as before, and the bedell escorted them back to their 
 college 1 . 
 
 The The above ceremony, it is to be observed, was always held 
 
 a few days before Ash Wednesday: on its completion the 
 questionist became an incepting bachelor, and from being 
 required respondere ad qucestionem, was now called upon 
 determinare qucestionem, that is, to preside over disputations 
 similar to those in which he had previously played the part 
 of opponent or respondent, in the language of dean Peacock, 
 'to review the whole question disputed, notice the imperfec- 
 tions or fallacies in the arguments advanced, and finally pro- 
 nounce his decisions or determination, scholastico more.' As 
 he was required to appear in this capacity throughout the 
 
 qlf^dra- "whole of Lent, he was said stare in quadragesima, and stems in 
 quadragesima was the academical designation of an incepting 
 bachelor of arts : as however the minimum number of days 
 on which he was required to determine was never less than 
 nine, and the discharge of such arduous duties for so lengthen- 
 ed a period might prove too serious a demand on the resources 
 or courage of some youthful bachelors 2 , the determiner was 
 allowed, if he demanded such permission, to obtain the assist- 
 
 Idmitted"^ ance ^ an ther bachelor and to determine by proxy. We 
 
 dctcnnine by g n( j accordingly a statute which relates to those determining 
 for others, whereby it is required that those bachelors whose 
 services were thus called into request should always be at 
 least a year's standing senior to those whom they represented 8 . 
 
 1 Cole MS8. xni 216. (Printed in first and last days of their determi- 
 
 Peacock'a Obtervationt aa Append. nation they disputed quastionft, i.e., 
 
 A.) probably, debated points in the text 
 
 1 According to an early Oxford of different treatises of Aristotle. See 
 
 statute determiners were required to Anstey, Munimenta Academiea, i 
 
 dispute logic every day except Friday, 246. 
 
 when they disputed or presided over * Statute 141. De Detcrminatori- 
 
 disputations in grammar : and on tho but, pro Alii*. Document*, i 885.
 
 THE ARTS FACULTY. 855 
 
 But while the timid or incompetent shunned the lengthened CHAP. iv. 
 ordeal, the aspirant for distinction hailed the ceremony of 
 determination as the grand opportunity for a display of his 
 powers. In the faculty of arts a scholar was aut logicus aut importance 
 
 nullus, and every effort was made on these occasions to th 
 
 , ,, . , .,, . of deterainn- 
 
 produce an impression ot superior skill. A numerous Uon - 
 audience was looked upon as essential. Friends were 
 solicited to be present, and these in turn brought their own 
 acquaintance: indiscreet partisans would even appear to 
 have sometimes placed themselves near the entrance and 
 pounced upon passers-by and dragged them within the 
 building, in order that they might lend additional dignity 
 to the proceedings by their involuntary presence. One of 
 the Oxford statutes is an express edict against this latter 
 practice 1 . 
 
 Before the bachelor could become a master of arts, he The inceptor. 
 must pass through another and yet more formidable ordeal, 
 he must commence. On notifying his wish to this effect to 
 the authorities, either personally or through the regent by 
 whom he was officially represented, he was required to 
 answer three questions, Sub quo, in quo loco aut ubi, quo 
 tempore aut quando, inciperet. The day selected was, under inception the 
 ordinary circumstances, the day of the Great Commencement, {|5eS erof 
 the second of July, and as this was the chief academical 8tudent - 
 ceremony of the year, it was held not in the arts schools, 
 but in the church of Great St. Mary. It would appear that 
 on the preceding day other exercises took place in the arts 
 schools, which from their immediately preceding the day 
 of inception were known as the Vesperics*. But the crown- 
 ing day was undoubtedly that of inception. As the disputa- Account of 
 tions were preceded by the celebration of the mass, the mon y- 
 assembly was convened at the early hour of seven, when the 
 sacred edifice became thronged by doctors of the different 
 
 1 'Item, inhibet dominus cancel- lenter trahant, sen iis quamcumque 
 
 larius, sub poena excommunicationis violentiam inferant, nee invite in- 
 
 et incarcerationis, ne aliqui, tempore trare compellant.' Munimenta Aca- 
 
 determinationis bachilariorum, ante demica, i 247. 
 
 ostia scholarum stantes, seu extra s Peacock, Observations, p. 11, Ap- 
 
 per vicos vagantes, transeuntes vio- pen J. p. xx. 
 
 23-2
 
 356 
 
 MEDLEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 The Pne- 
 
 vuricatur. 
 
 CHAP. TV. faculties, masters regent and non-regent, and spectators of 
 every grade. When the exercises began, the incepting 
 
 The Father, master, with the regent master of arts who acted as his father, 
 took up his position at an appointed place on the right hand 
 side of the church. The father then placed the cap (pileum), 
 the sign of the magisterial dignity, on the inceptor's head, who 
 would then proceed to read aloud a passage from Aristotle. 
 From this passage he would previously have selected and 
 submitted to the chancellor's approval two affirmations of 
 questions, which he proposed formally to defend in logical 
 dispute against all comers. It devolved first of all on the 
 youngest regent, his senior by one year, who was known 
 from his part on these occasions as the prcevaricator 1 , to take 
 up the gauntlet. The inceptor, if placing a modest estimate 
 on his own powers, would probably have selected some easily 
 defended thesis, and the prcevaricator would find all his dia- 
 lectical skill called into request by the attempt to turn an 
 almost unassailable position. He was however indemnified 
 to some extent by the licence which he received on these 
 occasions to indulge in a prefatory oration, wherein he was 
 permitted to satirize with saturnalian freedom the leading 
 characters in the university or more prominent transactions 
 of the preceding academical year. When this often dreaded 
 performance was over, and he had fairly tested the defensive 
 powers of the inceptor, the proctor said Sufficit, and the place 
 of the regent was forthwith filled by the youngest non-regent. 
 On the latter it devolved to sustain and carry out the attack 
 of his predecessor, and when he, in his turn, had sufficiently 
 tasked the ingenuity of the candidate, the youngest doctor 
 of divinity stepped forward and summed up the conclusions. 
 Other formalities of admission followed, until at last the 
 inceptor was saluted by the bedell as Nosier magister, who at 
 the same time pronounced his name ; he then retired from 
 the arena, and the next incepting master stepped into his 
 place 1 . 
 
 Such formalities, when compared with those of the pre- 
 sent day, would seem to constitute a somewhat trying ordeal 
 1 Ibid. Append, p. xxvi. Cole MSS. xin 220. 
 
 nary ex- 
 pense* atten- 
 dant upon 
 tli* cere- 
 mony.
 
 THE ARTS FACULTY. 357 
 
 for a diffident man, but it is probable that in many instances CHAP. rv. 
 they were regarded with far less apprehension than those by 
 which they were succeeded. It has at all times been a dis- 
 tinctly avowed article of faith with the majority of university 
 students that the depression of spirits incident upon severe 
 mental exertion should be relieved by occasional if not 
 frequent festivities, and Cambridge and Oxford, even in those 
 days of professed asceticism, were no exception to the rule. 
 The different stages of academic progress naturally suggested 
 themselves as fitting opportunities for such relaxations, the 
 main dispute between the authorities and the students being 
 apparently simply a question of degree. Thus even the Limitations 
 youthful sophister, at the time of his responsions, indulged in 
 
 an expenditure which the chancellor at Oxford found it university. 
 necessary to limit to sixteenpence 1 ; bachelors, stantes in 
 quadragesima, scandalized the university by bacchanalian 
 gatherings even in 'the holy season of Lent,' until they were , 
 forbidden from holding any such celebrations whatever*; 
 while at Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge, the papal authority 
 was invoked to prevent inceptors expending more than 
 tria millia Turonensium, a sum which as thus expressed in 
 the silver coinage of Tours equalled no less than 41. 13s. 4>d. 
 English money of the period, or some five hundred pounds 
 of the present day 8 . It is in the highest degree improbable 
 that the average expenditure of incepting masters of arts 
 made any approach to a sum of this magnitude, but in all 
 cases the expense was considerable. Presents of gowns and 
 gloves to the different officers of the university, together with 
 
 1 Anstey, M unimenta Academica, another instance of the intimate con- 
 
 ii 684. nexion that existed in those days 
 
 1 Ibid, ii 453. between Paris and Cambridge, that 
 
 1 'Jurent etiam in quacunque fa- this statute appears to have been 
 
 cultate incepturi quod ultra tria adopted without the slightest modifi- 
 millia Turonensium argenteorum . cation and even without the trouble 
 
 seu eorum valorem in solennitate being taken to express the foreign 
 
 circa doctoratum aut magisterium standard by its English equivalent. 
 
 habendum non expendant.' Docu- In Wood-Crutch the oath requires 
 
 ments, i 379. Professor Maiden ob- ' quod non expendes in inceptions 
 
 serves that this clause had its origin tua ultra tria millia Turonensium 
 
 in a decree of pope Clement V, made grossorum ; ' the grossi and Turo- 
 
 in 1311, especially directed against nenses were the same. Peacock, Ob- 
 
 the university of Bologna. It ia servationt, Append. A. xxi.
 
 358 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. their entertainment at a banquet, along with the regents for 
 the time being and the inceptor's personal friends, must at 
 all times have involved a formidable outlay, and enables us 
 to understand how it is that we find the wealthier inceptors 
 
 incepting for sometimes incepting for others, a phrase which probably 
 implies defraying the expenses of the ceremony and there- 
 with obtaining increased opportunities for the display of 
 their dialectical skill in the public exercises 1 . 
 
 The Regent When the year of his inception was completed the master 
 of arts was required, if called upon, to give an ordinary 
 lecture in the arts schools, for one year at least : while thus 
 officiating he was known as a regent master of arts 2 . 
 
 Such then were the successive stages that marked the 
 progress of the arts student : that of the sophister, or dis- 
 putant in the schools, of the bachelor of arts, eligible in 
 turn to give subsidiary or cursory lectures, of the incepting 
 master of arts who had received his licence to teach in any 
 university in Europe, and of the regent master of arts 
 who lectured for a definite term as the instructor appointed 
 by the university. 
 
 Lectures. It will now be necessary to enter upon a subject of some 
 
 difficulty, namely, the system of instruction that prevailed. 
 The bachelor, after the completion of his year of determina- 
 tion, was, as we have already stated, qualified for the office of 
 a lecturer ; as however he discharged this office while his own 
 course of study was still incomplete, he was himself known as 
 
 Lecturing a cursor and was said to lecture cursorie ; we must be careful 
 
 PftfMOrfl 
 
 no ^ t confound these lectures with the ordinary lectures 
 gi ven ^y ma sters of arts". The staple instruction provided 
 by the university for arts students was given by the regents ; 
 and as the funds of the university were not sufficient to pro- 
 vide this instruction gratis, while the majority of the students 
 
 1 Anstey, IntrocL to Munimenta tured to assign to the term cursorie, 
 
 Acadtmica, p. xci. differs from either of those which 
 
 1 Statute 134. De juramentit a dean Peacock and Mr Anstey have 
 
 magittri* in inceptionibut et solenni- been inclined to adopt. I have ac- 
 
 but reiumptiimibu* prattandit. Do- cordingly supplied in Appendix (E) 
 
 eument*, i 381. the arguments for the view adopted 
 
 1 The meaning which, under the in the present chapter, 
 guidance of M. Thurot, I have vcu-
 
 SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION. 359 
 
 could afford to pay but a trifling fee, it was found necessary CHAP. TV. 
 to make it binding on every master of arts to lecture in his 
 turn, if so required, the fees paid by the scholars to the 
 bedells constituting his sole remuneration. The lecture! thus 
 given took precedence of all others. They were given at 
 stated hours, from nine to twelve, during which time no 
 cursory or extraordinary lecturer was permitted to assemble 
 an audience. They commenced and terminated on specified 
 days, and were probably entirely traditional in their concep- 
 tion and treatment of the subject. It would frequently hap- 
 pen that overflowing numbers, or the necessity of completing 
 a prescribed course within the term, rendered it necessary to 
 obtain the assistance of a coadjutor, who was called the lec- 
 turer's 'extraordinary' and was said to lecture extraordinarie 1 . 
 [f this coadjutor were a bachelor, as was generally the case, 
 he would be described as lecturing cursorie as well as extraor- 
 dinarie; but in course of time the term cursorie began to be 
 applied to all extra lectures, and hence even masters of arts 
 are occasionally spoken of as lecturing cursorie, that is to say, 
 giving that supplementary assistance which usually devolved 
 on the bachelors. 
 
 If we now turn to consider the method employed by the Methods 
 
 IIITI i mm . , emploved by 
 
 lecturers, we shall readily understand that at a time when the lec'turer. 
 students rarely possessed a copy of the text of the author under 
 discussion, the Sentences and the SummulcB being probably 
 the only frequent exceptions, their first acquaintance with 
 the author was generally made in the lecture-room, and the 
 whole method of the lecturer must have differed widely from 
 that of modern times. The method pursued appears to have 
 been of two kinds, of which Aquinas's commentary on Aristotle 
 and the Qucestiones of Buridanus on the Ethics may be taken 
 as fair specimens. In the employment of the former the plan 
 pursued was purely traditional and never varied. The lecturer The 
 commenced by discussing a few general questions having method, 
 reference to the treatise which he was called upon to explain, 
 
 1 'Les cours extraordinaires ^talent ment.' Thurot, p. 78. See also 
 
 pour lea baclieliers une occasion de Pseudo-Boethius,DeDtscipiia Scho- 
 
 recruter un auditoire pour leur mal- larium, c. 5. 
 trise, et de s'exercer a 1'enseigne-
 
 360 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. and in the customary Aristotelian fashion treated of its mate- 
 rial, formal, final, and efficient cause. He pointed out the 
 principal divisions ; took the first division and subdivided it ; 
 divioed again the subdivision and repeated the process until 
 he had subdivided down to the first chapter. He then again 
 divided until he had reached a subdivision which included 
 only a single sentence or complete idea. He finally took 
 this sentence and expressed it in other terms which might 
 serve to make the conception more clear. He never passed 
 from one part of the work to another, from one chapter to 
 another, or even from one sentence to another, without a 
 minute analysis of the reasons for which each division, chap- 
 ter, or sentence was placed after that by which it was imme- 
 diately preceded ; while, at the conclusion of this painful toil, 
 he would sometimes be found hanging painfully over a single 
 letter or mark of punctuation. This minuteness, especially in 
 lectures on the civil law, was deemed the quintessence of 
 criticism. To call in question the dicta of the author him- 
 self, whether Aristotle, Augustine, or Justinian, never entered 
 the thoughts of either lecturer or audience. There were no 
 rash emendations of a corrupt text to be demolished, no 
 theories of philosophy or history to be subjected to a merciless 
 dissection ; in the pages over which the lecturer prosed was 
 contained all that he or any one else knew about the subject, 
 perhaps even all that it was deemed possible to know. 
 d"ecticai ^" ne 8econ d method, and probably by far the more popular 
 
 one, was designed to assist the student in the practice of 
 casting the thought of the author into a form that might 
 aerve as subject-matter for the all-prevailing logic. Whenever 
 a passage presented itself that admitted of a twofold inter- 
 pretation, the one or other interpretation was thrown into 
 the form of a qucestio, and then discussed pro and con, the 
 arguments on either side being drawn up in the usual array. 
 It is probable that it was at lectures of this kind that the in- 
 struction often assumed a catechetical form, one of the 
 statutes expressly requiring that students should be ready 
 with their answers to any questions that might be put, 
 * according to the method of questioning used by the masters,
 
 SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION. 3G1 
 
 if the mode of lecturing used in that faculty required ques- CHAP. iv. 
 tions and answers 1 .' Finally the lecturer brought forward his 
 own interpretation and defended it against every objection to 
 which it might appear liable : each solution being formulated 
 in the ordinary syllogistic fashion, and the student being thus 
 furnished with a stock of qucestiones and arguments requisite 
 for enabling him to undertake his part as a disputant in the 
 schools. Hence the second stage of the trivium not only 
 absorbed an excessive amount of attention but it overwhelmed 
 and moulded the whole course of study. It was the science 
 which, as the student's Summulce assured him, held the key 
 to all the others, ad omnium methodorum principia viam 
 habens. Even the study of grammar was subjected to the 
 same process. Priscian and Donatus were cast into the form 
 of qucestiones, wherein the grammar student was required to 
 exhibit something of dialectical skill. It was undoubtedly 
 from the prevalence of this method of treatment that dis- 
 putation became that besetting vice of the age which the 
 opponents of the scholastic culture so severely satirized. 
 ' They dispute,' said Vives, in his celebrated treatise, ' before 
 dinner, at dinner, and after dinner ; in public and in private ; 
 at all places and at all times 2 .' 
 
 When the student in arts had incepted and delivered his 
 
 K*. *rllt 
 
 lectures as regent, his duties were at an end. He had 
 received in his degree a diploma which entitled him to give 
 instruction on any of the subjects of the trivium and quadri- 
 vium in any university in Europe. He had also discharged 
 his obligations to the university in which he had been edu- 
 cated, and was henceforth known, if he continued to reside, 
 
 1 ' Item statuimus quod, audientes the employment of the catechetical 
 
 textum in quacunque facilitate, pro method? Otherwise, why so much 
 
 forma in eadern facilitate statuta et circumlocution to express what might 
 
 requisita rite enndem audire tenean- have been conveyed in a single word? 
 
 tur, una cum qusestionibus juxta See Appendix (E). 
 
 modum magistrorum suorum in quse- ' De Corruptis Artibus, i 345. A 
 
 Btionando usitatum, si modus legendi good illustration of -the application 
 
 in eadem facilitate qusestionem re- of the disputation to the mathema- 
 
 quirat.' Statute 138. Documents, i Ideal thesis will be found in Baker- 
 
 383. Does not the phraseology of Mayor, p. 1090, in a description given 
 
 this statute offer very strong proof by W. Chann of Emmanuel, of an 
 
 that the term ordinarie did not im- act in which he was respondent. 
 ply, as Mr Anstey has conjectured,
 
 362 
 
 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CTIAP. TV. 
 
 Professional 
 
 prospect of 
 
 as a non-regent 1 . If he left its precincts he was certain to be 
 regarded as a marvel of learning, and he might probably 
 rely on obtaining employment as a teacher and earning a 
 modest though somewhat precarious income. He formed 
 one of that class so felicitously delineated in Chaucer's ' poor 
 clerke,' and, dark and enigmatic as were many of the pages 
 of his Latin Aristotle, he valued his capacity to expound the 
 res t and was valued for it. But as in every age with the 
 
 * 
 
 majority of students, learning was seldom valued in those 
 days as an ultimate good, but for its reproductive capacity, 
 and viewed in this light the degree of master of arts had but 
 a moderate value. The ambitious scholar, intent upon 
 worldly and professional success, directed his efforts to theo- 
 logy or to the civil or canon law. As this necessitated a 
 further extension of his academic career to more than double 
 the time necessary for an arts course, it was perforce the 
 exception rather than the rule, and we consequently find, as 
 is shewn by the lists given in a previous page 2 , that the num- 
 bers of those who received the degree of D.C.L., D.D., or 
 
 1 It will not escape the observa- 
 tion of the reader that the coarse of 
 study above described must have 
 been attended with considerable ex- 
 pense, and taken in conjunction with 
 the numbers of those who appear to 
 have annually incepted, with the 
 known limits of the town of Cam- 
 bridge in those days, and with the 
 ascertained numbers in the university 
 of Paris at different and earlier pe- 
 riods, can hardly fail to disabuse our 
 minds of those exaggerated state- 
 ments with respect to numbers hand- 
 ed down by different writers. Of the 
 university of Paris, M. Thurot says, 
 ' Le noml>re des 6tudiants de toutet 
 Ift Facultf.fi peut-etre evalu6 en may- 
 cnne ft 1500, et celui des maltrei re- 
 gents A 200, aux epoqufn let plut flo- 
 rittantet de I' Universite.' De VOr- 
 ganitation de VEnseignement, p. 33, 
 n. 1. The numbers at Cambridge 
 could scarcely have been much higher. 
 Sir W. Hamilton has stated (Dit- 
 cut*ions, p. 484) , that in the thirteenth 
 century the scholars were certainly 
 above 5000, but I have met with no 
 
 evidence calculated to substantiate 
 his statement. It was customary 
 both at Oxford and Cambridge to 
 include in the grand total all those 
 attached to the university as servants 
 or tradesmen, and with this fact be- 
 fore us we may perhaps read 3,000 
 for 30,000 in the celebrated vaunt of 
 Armachanus with respect to the 
 numbers at Oxford in the commence- 
 ment of the fourteenth century. A 
 similar qualification will be necessary 
 in the statement quoted by M. Victor 
 le Clero (see p. 130), with respect 
 to the numbers at Paris. But the 
 exaggeration of mediaval writers in 
 the matter of statistics is notorious. 
 Mr Froude (Hist, of England, in s 407), 
 has furnished us with some interest- 
 ing illustrations of this tendency at 
 a yet later period. Both M. Kenan 
 and Mr Lecky have observed that it 
 was not until the introduction of the 
 exact sciences that men began to un- 
 derstand the importance of accuracy 
 in such matters. 
 See pp. 319, 320.
 
 THE FACULTY OF THEOLOGY. 363 
 
 B.D., was much smaller than the encouragement extended to CHAP. ir. 
 these branches of learning might otherwise lead us to expect. 
 As some counterbalance to the expenditure of time and money 
 involved in these courses of study, the bachelors of divinity or 
 of civil or canon law were permitted to lecture in their 
 respective faculties, and these cursory lectures, besides being 
 an immediate source of emolument, would also often enable 
 a civilian or canonist to acquire a considerable reputation 
 before he became fully qualified to practise. The requirements course of 
 
 , , . . study in the 
 
 for the degree of doctor of divinity in these times deserve to fc^y of 
 be contrasted with those until lately in force. It was necessary 
 (1) that the candidate should have been a regent in arts, 
 i.e. he must have acted as an instructor in the ordinary 
 course of secular learning ; (2) that he should have attended 
 lectures for at least ten years in the university ; (3) that he 
 should have heard lectures on the Bible for two years ; 
 (4) that during his career he should have lectured cursorily 
 on some book of the canonical scriptures for at least ten days 
 in each term of the academical year ; (5) that he should have 
 lectured on the whole of the Sentences ; (6) that he should, 
 subsequently to his lectures, have preached publicly ad clerum, 
 and also have responded and opposed in all the schools of his 
 faculty 1 . It was properly the function of a doctor to deliver 
 the ordinary lecture in this course, but the duty would appear 
 to have often devolved upon the bachelors, and thus, though Bachelors of 
 still pursuing their own course of study for the doctorial mitted to 
 degree, they were known as biblici ordinarii or simply g& 
 biblici; those of them who delivered the cursory lectures were 
 known as biblici cursores or simply cursores; and those who 
 lectured on the Sentences were known as the Sententiarii*. 
 
 1 Statute 124, De Incepturis in bonos vel males vel indifferentes ? ' 
 Theologia. Documents, i 377. The Anstey.Mum'merata Academica, n 716. 
 following questions are among those * It would seem that admission to 
 which we find a doctor of divinity lecture on the Sentences was the in- 
 determining at Oxford in the year termediate step between lecturing 
 1466 : ' Si est purgatorium ? Utrum cursorie and ordinarie on the Bible 
 ignis purgatorius est materialis ? U- Thurot says, ' Pour etre admis a 
 trum pcena inflicta in purgatorio sit faire lecon sur le Livre des Sentences, 
 poena inflicta a Deo immediate vel il fallait justifier qu'on avait etudi6 
 per ministros ? Si per ministros, an en the"ologie pendant neuf annees en- 
 una anima aliam punit? vel per ti&res, et fait deux cours sur la Bible.' 
 angelos, et tune utrum per angelos (Sur V Organisation, etc. p. 141.)
 
 364 MEDLEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. The courses for the doctorial degree in civil and canon 
 
 Bourse or law were equally laborious. In the former it was not im- 
 
 facuity'of the perativc that the candidate should have been a regent in arts, 
 
 but failing this qualification he was required to have heard 
 
 lectures on the civil law for ten instead of eight years ; he 
 
 must have heard the Digestum Vetus twice, the Digestum 
 
 Novum and the Infortiatum once. He must also have lectured 
 
 on the Infortiatum and on the Institutes, must himself be the 
 
 possessor of the two Digests and be able to shew that he held 
 
 in his custody, either borrowed or his own property, all the 
 
 8tudv1nthe ^ er text-books of the course 1 . In the course for the canon 
 ^on y ial! he l ftw tne candidate was required to have heard lectures on the 
 civil law for three years and on the Decretals for another three 
 years : he must have attended cursory lectures on the Bible 
 for at least two years ; must himself have lectured cursorie on 
 one of four treatises and on some one book of the Decretals 2 . 
 In both branches it was also obligatory that the candidate 
 should have kept or have been ready to keep all the required 
 oppositions and responsions. It is to be noted that, with the 
 fourteenth century, the labours of the canonists had been 
 seriously augmented by the appearance of the sixth book of 
 the Decretals under the auspices of Boniface vill, and by 
 that of the Clementines ; Lollard writers indeed are to be found 
 asserting that the demands thus made upon the time of the 
 canonist (demands which he dared not disregard, for the papal 
 anathema hung over all those who should neglect their study) 
 was one of the chief causes of that neglect of the scriptures 
 which forms so marked a feature in the theology of this period. 
 
 while, according to our own statutes, sum dixere vetores Sacrse Scriptures 
 lecturing sententiarie is made depen- tempus aliquod addictum. Ab eo 
 dent on a certain course in arts and vero docendi munere theologicum cur- 
 theology (see Statute 108, Documents, sum mum ordiebantur nuperi Bacca~ 
 i 870), and lecturing biblice is in turn larii curtores ; ac postea sententi- 
 made dependent on having already arum Petri Lombardi libros qnatuor 
 lectured on the Sentences. (See Sta- interpretabantur. Hinc nata ilia dis- 
 tute 112, Document*, i 372). Bulaeus tinctio Baccala riorum apud majores, 
 says, ' Baccalarii vero non ante licen- ut alii Biblici alii Sententiarii nun- 
 tiari poterant, quam Bibliam Senten- cuparentur." i 657, 658. 
 tiasque exponerent ; ut docet File- l Statute 120. Document*, i 875-6. 
 uacus in libro De Origine Pritca Fa- 3 Statute 122. Document!, i 376-7. 
 eultatis Theologia, p. 14, Biblin cur-
 
 STUDIES OF THE CIVILIAN AND THE CANONIST. 365 
 
 In the subjoined statute will be found the requirements CHAP. iv. 
 for the degree of doctor of medicine 1 . . 
 
 Such then was the character of the highest forms of cul- 
 ture aimed at in the Cambridge of those days ; and whatever thorough of 
 
 . ... . ita kind. 
 
 may be our estimate of its intrinsic value, it is evident that, if 
 the statutory course was strictly observed, the doctors of those 
 days could have been no smatterers in their respective de- 
 partments.' The scarlet hood never graced the shoulders of 
 one who was nothing more than a dexterous logician, nor was 
 the honoured title of doctor ever conferred on one who had 
 never discharged the function of a teacher. Throughout the 
 whole course the maxim disce docendo was regularly enforced, 
 and the duties of the lecture-room and the disputations in 
 the schools enabled all to test their powers and weigh their 
 chances of practical success long before the period of prepara- 
 tion had expired. But of the influence which such a curricu- Baneful 
 lum exerted on the character of the theology of that age, it is thloiogy n of e 
 impossible to speak with favour. The example which Alber- 
 tus and Aquinas had set, of reconciling philosophy and theo- 
 logy, had gradually expanded into a uniform and vicious 
 practice of subjecting all theology to the formulae of the 
 logician. Hence, as M. Thurot well observes, men thought 
 themselves bound to explain everything. They preferred 
 new and conjectural doctrines to those which were far more 
 just but long established ; they despised all that seemed 
 
 1 ' Item statuimus quod nullus minus unum librum de theorica et 
 
 admit tatur ad incipiendum in medi- aliuin de practica, et quod in scholis 
 
 cina nisi prius in artibus rexerit, et suae facuitatis publice et principaliter 
 
 ad minus per quinquennium hie vel opposuerit et respondent, et quod ad 
 
 alibi in universitate audierit medi- minus per H.rmnm exercitatus fuerit 
 
 cinam, ita quod audierit semel libros in practica: ita quod ejus notitia in 
 
 medicinse non commentatos, viz. li- statura moribus et scientia tarn in 
 
 brum Johannicii, librum Philareti theorica quam in practica fuerit me- 
 
 de pulsibus, librum Theophili de rito approbata ab omnibus magistria 
 
 urinis, et quemlibet librum Isaac, illius facuitatis secundum depositio- 
 
 viz. librum urinarum Isaac, librum nem de scientia eorundem modo su- 
 
 de dietis particularibus, librum fe- pradicto: et tune admittatur cum 
 
 brium Isaac, librum Viatici. Item formam prsdictam se complevisse 
 
 audiat semel antidotarium Nicholai : juraverit. Item statuimus quod nul- 
 
 item audiat bis libros commenta- lus admittatur ad incipiendum in 
 
 tos, viz. : librum Tegni Galieni, li- medicina, nisi per biennium exerci- 
 
 brurn prognosticorum, librum apho- tatus fuerit in practica.' Statute 119. 
 
 rismorum, librum de regimine acu- Documents, i 375. 
 toruui: et quod legerit cursorie ad
 
 366 MEDIEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. obvious and clear, and valued only what called forth a con- 
 siderable intellectual effort. ' The hearts of the learned were 
 dried up in the study of the abstract and the uncertain ; 
 devoid themselves of all fervour and unction they understood 
 not how to address themselves to the hearts of their auditors; 
 the disputation left them careless of the homily.' 
 
 college we. Up to the close of the fifteenth century it is evident that 
 college life represented the position of only a highly privileged 
 minority : the hostels, which had superseded the lodging- 
 houses, were, as we have already seen, far more numerous, 
 though in their turn diminishing in number as the colleges 
 multiplied. As however the college life of those times offers 
 the most direct points of comparison with modern experience, 
 it may be worth while to give an outline of the probable 
 career of a scholar of Peterhouse, Pembroke, Corpus, or 
 Michaelhouse, in the days when the original statutes of each 
 foundation still represented its existing discipline. 
 
 A Sfthe m '^ J1 ^ kere a g a i n it becomes necessary to bear in mind that 
 
 fljJUflS"* all-dominant conception which has already come so promi- 
 nently before us. Asceticism, as it was then the professed 
 rule of life with the monk, the friar, and the secular, was 
 also the prevailing theory in the discipline of those whom 
 they taught and trained for their several professions. The 
 man fasted, voluntarily bared his back to the scourge, kept 
 long and painful vigils : the boy was starved, flogged, and sent 
 to seek repose where he might find it if he were able. Even 
 tender girlhood did not altogether escape the pains thus con- 
 scientiously inflicted. From the days of Heloise, entrusted 
 by her natural protector to Abe'lard, to be beaten into sub- 
 mission if refractory or negligent, down to the days of Lady 
 Jane Grey, mournfully plaintive over the nips, bobs, and 
 other nameless petty tortures inflicted by her own parents, a 
 feminine wail often rises up along with the louder lamenta- 
 tion of the boy. But with the latter the severity of this 
 Spartan discipline often approached a point where it be- 
 came a struggle for very life. In justification of such treat- 
 ment the teacher would appeal to instances, like those which 
 occasionally come under our notice, of savage outbreaks on
 
 THE COLLEGES. 367 
 
 the part of the taught, to John Scotus Erigena perishing CHAP. rv. 
 beneath the stiluses of his own pupils, to the monastery of 
 St. Gall fired by its own extenies. How far such tragedies 
 were the result of the very system that aimed at their repres- 
 sion we will not here stop to enquire. In one of his amusing Account 
 dialogues, the Ichihyophagia, Erasmus has given a startling Krasmus O f 
 record of his own experiences at Paris. The College de Mon- <fe M 0n - 
 
 tilll^U. 
 
 taigu, or Montacuto, in that university, was a well-known 
 school for theologians, presided over by one Standin or Stan- 
 douk, a man whom Erasmus describes as notwanting in good 
 intentions but deficient in judgement, and who, having him- 
 self been reared in the stern school of poverty and privation, 
 believed it to be the best discipline for all over whom he 
 ruled. The scholars accordingly lived, even in the depth of 
 winter, on a scanty dole of coarse bread, accompanied occa- 
 sionally by rotten eggs, and wine, which from its resemblance 
 to vinegar, caused the college to be popularly known by the 
 name of Montaceto, but their ordinary drink was a draught 
 from a well of putrid water. Meat they never tasted. They 
 slept on the floors of damp chambers swarming with vermin 
 and pestilent with the stench of adjacent cesspools. It was 
 the professed aim of this regime to crush as far as possible 
 the spirit of the individual 1 ; unfortunately it often crushed 
 out the life as well. Erasmus declares that many high- 
 spirited youths, of wealthy families and distinguished pro- 
 mise, sank beneath the treatment; others lost their sight, 
 some became insane, some even lepers. He himself, rescued 
 before it was too late by the generous hand of lord Mountjoy, 
 brought away not merely pediculorum largissimam copiam, 
 but a constitution impaired by all kinds of humours. 
 
 Such is the description given by the foremost scholar of 
 his age (in a volume that within a few years of its first ap- 
 
 1 Sic aiunt dedisci ferociam ; fe- Oxford Reformers, 210 2 -2. With refer- 
 
 rociain appellant indolem generosi- ence to the College de Montaigu he 
 
 orem, quam studio frangunt ut eos says, 'Ne^ue vero haec commemoro 
 
 reddant habiles monasteriis.' Com- quod male velimillicollegio.sedoperffl 
 
 pare his very similar account of the pretium esse judicavi monere, ne 
 
 treatment of a boy of which he was sub umbra religionis humana saevitia 
 
 witness in a school in this country corrumpat astatem imperitam aut 
 
 presided over by an eminent divine. teneram.' Ichthyophagia. 
 DePuerisInstituendis,i 505. Seebohm,
 
 368 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. pearance had been read and discussed by numberless headers 
 in all the universities of Christendom), of a noted college in 
 the most famous seat of European learning, a college 
 which could boast that it h'ad sent forth not a few dis- 
 tinguished theologians and men of eminence. Among the 
 number was the celebrated John Major, the author of the 
 De Gestis Scotorum, who was resident at the college at the 
 same time as Erasmus, and again resident within a few 
 months of the time when the foregoing description appeared 
 
 Hit account in the first edition of the Colloquies at Basel 1 . Yet this de- 
 
 appcars to . 1 1 . . 
 
 have called scription appears to have provoked no outcry or indignant 
 JgJjgMit denial, nor does there seem any reason for doubting that it 
 had as good a basis of fact as those terrible delineations of 
 monastic life and character from the same pen, which were 
 then moving all Europe to laughter or 'alarm. With facts 
 like these before us, we shall probably incline to the conclu- 
 sion, notwithstanding frequent indications of hardship and 
 discomfort, that the mode of life at the English universities 
 was certainly not below the average continental standard, 
 our eriy There is perhaps no feature more uniformly characteristic 
 
 dwi^ed only of our early college statutes than the design of the founder to 
 assist only those who really required assistance and were in- 
 tent on a studious life. The stringency of the regulations, 
 and the preference to be given to those candidates who had 
 already made some acquirements, must necessarily have ex- 
 cluded the idler and the lover of licence*. It was designed 
 that each collegian should be a model of industry and good 
 conduct to the ordinary student. Hence, while offering but 
 moderate attractions to the wealthy, the college held out con- 
 siderable advantages to the poor scholar : compared with the 
 colleges of Paris, that of Navarre perhaps excepted, the aid 
 afforded was far more liberal and the discipline consequently 
 
 1 Cooper, Athena, i 92, 93. of the scholars who ' hauyng rych 
 
 The wealthier class of students frendes or beyng benefyced men dyd 
 
 resided in the hostels : this is clearly lyue of theym selueg in Ostles and 
 
 shown in Lever's sermon at St Paul's Lines be eyther gon awaye, or elles 
 
 Cross, preached in 1550, where, con- fayne to crepe into Colleges, and 
 
 tMiting the state of the university at put poore men from bare lyuyngeg.' 
 
 the time with that at an earlier part Lever's Sermont, ed. Arber, p. 121. 
 of the century, he says that many
 
 THE COLLEGES. 309 
 
 more easily enforced. The standard for admission varied UIIAP. iv. 
 from a moderate knowledge of Latin to an acquaintance 
 with the whole of the trivium. It was necessary that those ortain 
 
 attainments 
 
 elected should have been born in lawful wedlock, be of good J 1 n c ^^ ry ' 
 character, ' nor could a single county furnish more than a ^e"wn- u 
 certain proportion. Admission to some foundations was not 
 accorded until the scholar had passed through a probationary 
 test for one year : the oath of obedience to the college 
 statutes was administered to all, and it was regarded as an 
 unpardonable breach of fidelity if any divulged the ' secrets of 
 the house.' Once admitted, the student's anxieties as to 
 ways and means appear to have been, for a time, at an end. 
 It is a proof of the youth of those generally admitted, that Extreme 
 
 * . . . youth of the 
 
 although a certain amount of previous attainment was indis- majority at 
 
 O A iflG 111116 OI 
 
 pensable, the average age was such as to call for the dis- ^ adnus " 
 cipline of the schoolboy. The ' boys,' as they were termed, ^ r ment 
 were never permitted to go beyond the college gates unless 
 accompanied by a master of arts; they were distributed 
 through the college in threes or fours as joint-occupants of a 
 single room, which served both as dormitory and study : if 
 convicted of any infringement of the college rules they were 
 soundly birched in the hall or the court. With the period of 
 bachelorhood they entered upon a stage more nearly corre- Bachelors, 
 spending to that of the modern undergraduate. The bachelor 
 would be permitted to occupy a room jointly with a senior 
 fellow, association with one of graver years being supposed 
 to be more likely to prove productive of order. The room, Rooms, 
 scantily furnished, would always be comfortless and in winter 
 often scarcely tenable. There was no fireplace and no stove, 
 this luxury being reserved for the hall alone 1 . The wind 
 whistled shrewdly through the crevices of the ill-made case- 
 
 1 Bucer, the German reformer, dred Burghley, who died in the latter 
 who -resided at the university from half of the sixteenth century, that 
 1549 to his death in 1550, found this ' She gave a some of money to the 
 form of hardship almost insupport- master of St. John's Colledg, to pro- 
 able. Edward vi, hearing of his ill cure to have fyres in the hall of that 
 health, presented him with a German colledg uppoii all son days and holly- 
 stove. Zurich Letters, n 550. Even days betwixt the fest of all Sayntes 
 in the college hall a fire appears to and Candlemas, whan ther war no or- 
 have been very sparingly indulged dinary fyres of the charge of the col- 
 in. We are told of the lady Mil- ledg.' Baker-Mayor, p. 595.
 
 370 
 
 MEDIEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 The college 
 library. 
 
 Description 
 of a college 
 library of 
 
 tlu-st times. 
 
 Description 
 of studrnt 
 life by a 
 matter of 
 Kt. John's 
 In the year 
 1MO. 
 
 ment and the dim flame of the oil-lamp flickered fitfully, 
 as the student kept his vigils, intent upon some greasy parch- 
 ment page over which amanuensis and reader had alike 
 laboured with painful toil. The volume over which he pored 
 was probably from the college library, and it was one of the 
 most envied privileges of the collegian that he had access to 
 such aids as these. The library was accessible to all the 
 members of the college, but only fellows were permitted to 
 take away volumes to their own rooms ; and an inspection of 
 one of our earliest library catalogues, that of Peterhouse, 
 affords interesting evidence, in the different proportions of the 
 number of volumes thus withdrawn in each class of literature, 
 of the comparative popularity of different branches of study 1 . 
 If from such stray facts as have reached us we were to endea- 
 vour to form an idea of one of these ancient hiding-places of 
 learning, we should generally find rising before our mental 
 vision a long, dark, damp room little better than a hayloft, 
 reached by a staircase composed of blocks of timber, placed 
 one above another, with rows of rudely constructed book- 
 stands where the volumes lay chained, and where the young 
 scholar might commence his acquaintance with Bonaventura 
 or Aquinas. If the volumes were too numerous for the 
 shelves they were stowed away in chests, and sometimes 
 exposed for sale. 
 
 The allowance for the maintenance of a fellow never ex- 
 ceeded the weekly sum 3 , expressed in modern money, of from 
 sixteen to eighteen shillings ; in some colleges it was much 
 less. Lever, the master of St. John's, in an oft quoted passage, 
 describes the scholars of his college, then the poorest it is to 
 be observed in proportion to its numbers in the whole uni- 
 versity, as going to dinner at ten o'clock, content with a penny 
 piece of beef among four, having a little ' porage ' made of 
 
 1 The volumes, as entered in the 
 catalogue, are distinguished as ca- 
 thfnati and dirini inter socios: the 
 libri logice divisi inter socios are 29, 
 those cathenati, also 29; the libri 
 theologie eathtnati, 137, a**ignati 
 sociis, 41 ; the libri juris civilis ca- 
 thenati, 9, dirit inter socios, 15 ; 
 the libri juris canonici cathenati, 
 
 17, divisi inter socios, also 17 ; libri 
 naturalis et moralis philosophic ca- 
 thenati, 156, divisi inter socios, 75; 
 libri medicine cathenati, 13, divisi 
 inter socios, 3. 
 
 8 The ' communes ,' or commons, 
 were the expenses of maintenance: 
 all meals being at that time taken in 
 the common hall.
 
 THE COLLEGES. 371 
 
 the broth of the same beef, with salt and oatmeal, ' and CHAP. iv. 
 nothing else.' After this slender dinner, he continues, ' they 
 be either teaching or learning until five of the clock in the 
 evening, when as they have a supper not much better than 
 their dinner. Immediately after the which, they go either to 
 reasoning in problems or unto some other study, until it be 
 nine or ten of the clock, and then being without fire are fain 
 to walk or run up and down half an hour, to get a heat in 
 their feet when they go to bed 1 .' It is to be observed that 
 this description, given in the middle of the sixteenth century, 
 describes an exceptional state of affairs, when, owing to the This descnp- 
 
 tion refers to 
 
 rapacity of courtiers and nobles, the college had been reduced a . n excep- 
 
 * <f Uonal state 
 
 to the lowest ebb of its fortunes, and, to use Lever's own f a ff <"- 
 words, scholars were unable to remain ' for lack of exhibition 
 and help.' The speaker, moreover, was addressing a wealthy 
 congregation at Paul's Cross, and endeavouring to awaken 
 their sympathy on behalf of the universities. We have how- 
 ever other evidence which may be taken without qualification, other evi- 
 
 f deuce less 
 
 There is abundant indirect proof that Oxford was at this ^p^ 6 *" 
 period considered by far the more luxurious university ; and 
 yet we find that, compared with the scale of living among 
 the better classes of the time, Oxford fare was considered 
 to rank somewhat low. Sir Thomas More, after the great 
 reverse of his fortunes, in discussing with his family plans of 
 future economy, says, ' But my counsel is, that we fall not to 
 the lowest fare first, we will not therefore descend to Oxford 
 fare, nor to the fare of New Inn, but we will begin with 
 Lincoln's Inn diet.' In hall and in college generally the use use of Latin 
 
 . >2i required in 
 
 of the Latin language in conversation was imperative : but conversation, 
 
 * but French 
 
 in some of the earlier statutes, given at the time when French 
 was the language of the legislature, the use of the latter 
 
 1 Lever's Sermons, ed. Arber.p. 122. served that the dinner at five o'clock 
 
 This account conveys perhaps to was somewhat better : and it is evi- 
 
 most readers an impression of greater dent that the students had meat 
 
 hardship than it really implies. The twice a day. As for fires, at a time 
 
 penny in the sixteenth century was when the use of coal was limited to 
 
 quite equal in value to the shilling the immediate neighbourhood of the 
 
 of our own day. Meat, on the other coal mines, wood and turf being the 
 
 hand, was then far cheaper when ordinary fuel, these were a luxury 
 
 compared with other provisions, and with every class. 
 
 a 'penny piece' was probably not less s Peacock, Observations, p. 4, App. 
 
 than twa Ibs. Then it will be ob- A, note 2, p. v. 
 
 242
 
 372 MEDIEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. tongue was occasionally permitted. An Oxford statute of 
 this period enjoins that grammar students shall construe their 
 author into both English and French, in order that the latter 
 language may not be forgotten 1 . It is evident that the 
 scholar or fellow was always presumed to be in residence, 
 
 Feiiows re- and if in residence to be studying. If he absented himself, 
 
 ?n u residnce. unless upon business of the college, the allowance for his 
 weekly expenses was stopped. In the course of time he was 
 pennitted to be absent if he could shew good reason : the 
 supervision of a parish, or an engagement as tutor in a noble 
 family, appears to have been accepted as a valid excuse ; but 
 the time of absence was always defined, and his return at its ex- 
 piration, or a renewal of leave, was indispensable to the reten- 
 
 coiiegesta- tion of his fellowship*. If the property of the house increased 
 
 creasing in . * . 
 
 wealth to add in value, this increase was to be applied to the creation of 
 
 to the mini 
 
 feiio whi| new fellowships, not to be distributed among those already on 
 the foundation. Lectureships were held in rotation, and as 
 each lecturer retired he was supposed to apply himself to 
 
 Autocracy of a new line of study. On the other hand the master of the 
 
 the master. . . 
 
 college appears to have enjoyed unrestricted freedom of action, 
 a fact which partly explains the mismanagement that often 
 characterises the rule of some of the earlier foundations. 
 Though the election, or rather the nomination to the office, 
 was vested in the fellows, and to be made from their own 
 number, this privilege was often set aside by episcopal autho- 
 rity or by royal letter, and an entire stranger placed in autho- 
 The office of rity over the society. In addition to this he was capable 
 
 ni.i-.ti-r fre- . . 
 
 ^ holding other emoluments, sometimes even at another 
 c Uge. Thus John Sickling, the last master of God's House, 
 held at the same time a fellowship at Corpus ; Shorten, the 
 
 1 Munimenta Acadcmica, p. 438. * The earliest instance that has 
 
 Mr Anwtey conjectures that this sta- come under my notice of such leave 
 
 tute, which in without date, is at least of absence is that of Richard Whit- 
 
 as early as the thirteenth century. ford, the 'wretch of Sion,' who on 
 
 It is, I presume, by a misprint that the 23rd of March, 1497, received 
 
 he is made to speak of it in the pre- from the master and fellows of 
 
 face (p. Ixx), as' not one of the ancient Queens' College, of which he was a 
 
 statutes on grammar schools,' for the fellow, five years' leave of absence 
 
 whole statute evidently relates to that he 'might attend upon Lord 
 
 grammar students, and his marginal Mouutjoy in foreign parts.' Knight's 
 
 summary clearly implies that such is Life of Eratnuu, p. 64.
 
 THE CAM. 373 
 
 first master of St. John's, was also a fellow of Pembroke. Like CHAP. iv. 
 Rothcram when master of Pembroke, Story when master of 
 Michaelhouse, Fisher when president of Queens', the head of a 
 college was often at the same time the holder of a bishopric 1 . 
 
 Of the sports and pastimes of these days we have little sports and 
 record ; but we know the use of the crossbow to have been a 
 favorite accomplishment ; cock-fighting, that 'last infirmity' 
 of the good Ascham, was also a common amusement ; while 
 from certain college statutes requiring that no ' fierce birds ' 
 shall be introduced within the precincts of the college, we 
 may infer that many of the students were emulous of the 
 falconer's art 8 . The river again appears to have possessed Fishing, 
 considerable attractions, though of a kind differing from those 
 of the present day. By legal right it belonged to the town, The river 
 
 , . , ,,, , ? , i, i i really the 
 
 being held by the corporation ' with all and singular waters, property of 
 fishings, pastures, feedings, etc.,' in fee simple of the crown"; 
 and let it be added to their credit, that the men of Cam- 
 bridge, though they might have been puzzled to furnish a 
 chemical analysis of the waters of their native stream, never- 
 theless did their best to guard it from pollution, and any 
 attempt to treat it as a common sewer was met by prompt 
 action on the part of the town authorities*. In another 
 respect they were less able to protect their property. They 
 asserted their claim not merely to the river but to its pro- 
 duce ; and in those days the right of fishing was as jealously 
 guarded in our southern streams as it is to-day in the salmon 
 fisheries of the north. Their rights however were but too often The rights of 
 openly and audaciously ignored. Even the ' religious ' were ration'seTat 
 
 defiance by 
 
 1 The late Dr Ainslie, in his In- object of the foundation itself that 
 quiry concerning the earliest Masters the Master was from the first a priest.' 
 of the College of Valence Mary, p. This conclusion enables him to de- 
 276, a manuscript to which I have cide without hesitation that Robert 
 had access, even raises the question de Thorpe, the first master of the 
 whether the language of the earliest society, was not the same person as 
 extant statutes of Pembroke College lord chancellor Thorpe, whom Black- 
 absolutely requires that the master stone expressly notes as having been, 
 should not be a layman ! He quotes contrary to custom, a layman, 
 the expression qui nulli facultati sit * The early statutes of Peterhouse 
 astrictus : but he also observes that specify falcons and hawks ; St. John's 
 the omission was supplied in the statutes (1516), c. 21, canes aut ra- 
 second edition of the statutes by the paces aves; do. (1530 and 1545), c. 26, 
 words dum tamen sacerdos fuerit. He hounds, ferrets, hawks, singing birds, 
 adds ' I feel satisfied both by this 3 Cooper, Annals, i 353. * 
 and other passages and by the avowed * Ibid, i 258 et passim.
 
 374 MEDIEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. not blameless in this matter, and on one occasion the whole 
 bo^hthT"' community was scandalized by learning that the prior of 
 the unT- 3 ** Barn well and the mayor, after an angry altercation as to cer- 
 tain rights of fishing at Chesterton, had proceeded to lay 
 violent hands on each other 1 . But the university appears to 
 have furnished by far the most pertinacious aggressors. It 
 could never be brought to see that the Cam was not its own; 
 and the patience of the burgesses was sorely tried as they saw 
 exultant undergraduates, in broad daylight, continually land- 
 ing goodly perch and pike 2 to which they had not the 
 shadow of a claim. As a last resource they farmed out their 
 rights piscatorial to a number of 'poor men/ who, it was 
 supposed, as less able to sustain pecuniary loss, would exercise 
 a corresponding vigilance in protecting their property. But 
 the 'poor men' fared no better than the original proprietors; 
 their just complaints were treated with derision; their nets 
 were cut and broken ; and they themselves, in the indignantly 
 remonstrant language of the corporation, ' many times driven 
 out of their boats with stones and other like things, to the 
 danger of their bodies and their lives*.' 
 scholars re- It is not uninteresting to note that a custom of the pre- 
 
 quir.-d to 
 
 waiks'lritii a sen * ^ av > wn i c h it might be supposed was merely a matter of 
 companion. jj V i ous convenience, the daily walk with a single companion, 
 was originally inculcated by college statute 4 , while this in 
 turn is said to have derived its precedent from apostolic 
 uiTlnd^nf example. The country in those days was soon gained. God's 
 House, standing on the present site of Christ's College, looked 
 out from behind over a wide extent of corn-land. The road 
 
 1 Cooper, Annals, i 277. From these entries it would appear 
 
 'The pike at this time seems, es- that a single pike would often oom- 
 
 pecially when of unusual size, to have mand a higher price than would be 
 
 been regarded as a great delicacy, given for a turbot in the present day. 
 
 and the price it commanded in the 8 Cooper, Annals, i 353. 
 
 market must have made the right of 4 ' We wish that the fellows who 
 
 fishing in waters where it was to be are willing to walk out should seek 
 
 found one of considerable value. On each other's society, and walk to- 
 
 the Oflcasion of cardinal Wolsey's gether conversing with each other in 
 
 visit to the university in 1520, we pairs on scholarship or on some proper 
 
 find in the proctors' list of expenses, and pleasant topic, and so return 
 
 'for 6 great pikes, 33*. 4d.'; on the together betimes.' Statutes of Canter- 
 
 occasion of a royal visit in 1522 bury Hall given by Simon Islip, 1366. 
 
 twelve grete pyks, 55t.M.'; and in See also St. John's Statutes, (1516), 
 
 1633, ' payed for a great pyke govyn o. 25 ; and Whitaker's Whalley, p. 
 
 in present to my lord Mount Egle, 4.' 70.
 
 THE KING'S DITCH. 375 
 
 to Trumpington was skirted on either side by dreary marshes, CFIAP. iv. 
 the marshes to which the steeds of Chaucer's scholars of 
 'Soler Hall' broke away when liberated by the too cunning 
 miller. Beyond the river, at the 'Backs,' no houses were 
 to be seen until Newnham was reached. Where many a 
 good road now renders intercommunication an easy matter, 
 there was only a narrow and often treacherous path travers- 
 ing long tracts of oozing mud covered by sedge and rushes. 
 In the town, itself, the ground between the river and the 
 Hospital of St. John and Michaelhouse appears to have 
 consisted chiefly of orchards. King's College, on the north 
 side of the chapel, occupied the site of the present new 
 library building; the magnificent chapel rose amid a wide 
 expanse of grass land, with a few private dwellings forming 
 a frontage towards the street. The site of the present senate 
 house was partly occupied by St. Mary's hostel and was partly 
 a vacant space in front of the common schools, the latter being 
 approached by a narrow lane known as University Street, 
 with houses on either side. The encroaching tendencies 
 of the waters were conspicuous in a stream of some size, 
 known as the King's Ditch, which, branching off from the 
 river near St. Catherine's Hall, passed to the east of Petty 
 Cury and Trinity Church, flowing through the grounds of 
 the Franciscans (afterwards those of Sidney College), under 
 Jesus Lane, and then in a direction partly corresponding with 
 the present Park Street across the common, until it rejoined 
 the river near where the locks now stand. In one instance 
 land was to be seen where we now see only water, the river 
 at the back of Trinity Hall flowing round a little island 
 known by the name of Garrett's Hostel Green. 
 
 But the topographical antiquities of Cambridge are not The majority 
 
 of medieval 
 
 within the scope of the present chapter, and we must now students 
 
 actuated by 
 
 hasten to bring our sketch of student life in those distant o t ^ e as 
 days to a close. In looking back at the various features of modem 
 that life, its arid culture and ascetic discipline, it seems at tu 
 first not easy to understand how such a career could have 
 attracted large numbers, have excited such displays of 
 enthusiasm, and have nerved men to such prodigies of toil.
 
 376 MEDIAEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. But in truth it does not require a very extended acquaintance 
 with the history of learning to be aware, that the subject 
 matter whereon precedent has decided that the intellectual 
 energies of each generation are mainly to be expended has 
 but little to do with the numbers of those who may enter 
 the learned professions. In every age there will always be a 
 certain proportion of individuals with clear brains, retentive 
 memories, and superior powers of mental application. Con- 
 scious of these natural gifts they will not fail to turn them to 
 account in those fields where such qualifications come most 
 prominently into play. The abstract value of the different 
 studies wherein they are required to manifest their ability 
 will be to them a matter of little concern. The subject 
 matter may be congenial or it may be absolutely repellant to 
 the taste of the individual, but his disciplined faculties will 
 be but slightly affected by such considerations, and the 
 irksomeness of the labour will be counterbalanced by the 
 exhilarating consciousness of success. When his object is 
 gained, and he has achieved the distinction or realised the 
 substantial reward at which he aimed, he will feel little 
 inclination for further and more independent research in 
 fields of science or learning associated with the recollection 
 of so many painful hours. He will not indeed be disposed 
 to regard his past labours as time intellectually altogether 
 misspent, for he will be well aware that they involved no 
 small amount of both moral and mental discipline ; but if 
 his studies have been pursued entirely with reference to some 
 ulterior end, adjusted throughout solely with regard to the 
 exigencies of severe competition, they will have done little 
 to inspire a genuine love of knowledge or reverence for 
 truth. It may even be well if the race has not overtaxed his 
 powers and left him for the remainder of his life enfeebled 
 both in mind and body. 
 
 Notwithstanding then the enthusiasm that greeted re- 
 nowned teachers, the ardour with which disputations were 
 waged and the applause that they evoked, notwithstanding 
 the fortitude with which 'many students encountered great 
 hardships, we see no reason for concluding that the intellec-
 
 CONCLUSION. 377 
 
 tual ambition of the large majority of mediaeval seekers for CHAP. iv. 
 knowledge was in any way of a higher order than that of 
 subsequent periods. Whenever the eagle glance of genius, 
 whether that of Roger Bacon, Petrarch, or Poggio, surveyed the 
 contests of the schools, it detected the counterfeit and held 
 it up to lasting scorn. But while such were the majority, 
 it seems equally reasonable to suppose that there was also 
 a minority, however small, composed of those who had been 
 attracted to the university by a genuine thirst for knowledge, 
 men to whom it seemed that they could be said to live, only 
 so long as they continued to possess themselves of new truth 
 and daily to engage in the pursuit of more. And if such A possible 
 there were, in those faintly illumined days, it is hard to 
 withhold from them our sympathy and interest. We cannot 
 but feel what a mockery of true knowledge this mediaeval 
 culture must have appeared to many a young, ardent, and 
 enquiring spirit. The feats of the dialectician, whose most 
 admired performance was to demonstrate by syllogism the 
 truth of what even to the untutored reason was obviously 
 false the tedious ingenious trifling; of the commentators 
 
 O O 
 
 what fare for those who were seeking to grow in mental 
 stature and to find satisfaction for the doubts within ! We imaginary 
 
 experiences 
 
 can picture to ourselves one of this despised minority, some ^u^um 1 ! 6 
 young bachelor standing in quadragesima, weary with the ber- 
 austerities of Lent and harassed by his long probation. It 
 is his last day, and his performance hitherto has earned for 
 him but little credit, for he is one who finds more satisfaction 
 in revolving difficulties within his own mind in his chamber 
 than in attempting an off-hand solution of a qucestio in the 
 schools. His 'determinations' this afternoon are not felici- 
 tous, and now he is summing up after a hot disputation 
 between two strapping young north countrymen, each ready 
 of utterance, of indomitable assurance, and with most ex- 
 cellent lungs. He half suspects, from a peculiar gleam in 
 the eye of the opponent, that the latter feels confident that 
 if he, the determiner, were in the respondent's place, he, 
 the opponent, would have him in Bocardo before the act 
 was over-. But at last the task is accomplished, though
 
 378 MEDIEVAL STUDENT LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. iv. 'his final 'determination' is greeted with but faint applause, 
 and he hurries out of the crowded buzzing schools, thankful 
 that he shall have to stand in quadragesima no more. 
 Heedless of college statute and apostolic precedent, solitary 
 and dejected, he seeks some lonely country path, troubled 
 less by a sense of his recent failure than by a feeling of 
 dissatisfaction at whatever he has yet learned or achieved. 
 If this be all, he thinks, that Cambridge can do for him, 
 it were better he were back at home, again guiding his 
 father's plough or casting the falcon in the dear old fields. 
 And so he wanders on, until the waning day warns him that 
 he must be turning back if he would reach his college before 
 dark. The dull level landscape, we may well suppose, has 
 small power to win him to a less sombre mood. Communion 
 with nature is not for him the fountain at which he renews 
 his strength. The painter's pencil and the poet's song have 
 never stimulated his fancy or thrilled his heart. Yet even 
 to this poor student as he hastens homewards, what time 
 the sun, now approaching the horizon, is gathering new 
 splendour amid the mists that rise over the marish plain, 
 while tower and battlement gleam refulgent in the western 
 sky, there rises up a vision of a city not made with hands. 
 And as the twilight descends, and ere he reaches his college 
 gate the stars come forth overhead, he seems to see, very 
 near, the mansions of the blest. He sees that mystic chain 
 of sentient being of which Dionysius and Bonaventura have 
 told, that chain of which he is himself a link, vanishing in 
 the immortal and the divine. And he believes with a 
 perfect faith, for which our modern scientific enlightenment 
 seems but a poor exchange, that when a few fitful, feverish 
 years are over, he too shall be admitted to those bright 
 abodes, and the doubts and anxieties that have harassed 
 him here shall be exchanged for full assurance and unend- 
 ing peace.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE AT THE REVIVAL OF CLASSICAL 
 LEARNING. 
 
 PART I: THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 IT was at Avignon, in the early part of the fourteenth cen- CHAP. v. 
 tury, that a father and his son might one day have heen ^- 
 seen standing by a fire into which the former was thrusting ^ e i^If h ' 
 books. Had the volumes represented the literature of some d ' 
 condemned heresy, and had the son, the guilty and obstinate 
 student of their contents, been destined to perish martyr- 
 wise in the same flames, he could hardly have exhibited more 
 emotion. The father half relents as he witnesses his sorrow, 
 and rescuing two of the volumes hands them to the lad. 
 'Take this,' he says, as he hands him back a Virgil, 'as a 
 rare amusement of your leisure hours, and this' (the Rhe- 
 toric of Cicero), ' as something to aid you in your real work.' 
 
 ** In this chapter the sources of information to which I have been mainly 
 indebted, in addition to the original authors whose works I have frequently 
 consulted, are the following, and throughout the chapter the reference to 
 each author will be given with merely his name: (1) Hody, De Greeds Illus- 
 tribus Llngu<K Groecce Instauratoribus (ed. Jebb), 1742; (2) Boerner, De 
 Doctis Hominibus Greeds, Lipsiae, 1750; (3) Ambrosii Traversarii Generalu 
 Camuldulensium Aliorumque ad Ipsum et ad Alios de eodem Ambrosio Lati- 
 nce Epistolce, etc. Accedit ejusdem Ambrosii vita in qua Historia Litteraria 
 Florentina ab Anno 1192 usque ad Annum 1440 ex Monumentis potissimum 
 nondum editis deducta est a Laurentio Mehus Etruscce Academice Cortonensis 
 Sodo, Florentine, 1759. Of these three Hody is probably the best known in 
 England, but his work is a much less careful production than that of Boer- 
 ner, who, as well as Mehus, writing somewhat later, has pointed out not 
 a few important errors in the treatise of the Oxford professor. To these I 
 must add professor Georg Voigt's very able volume Die Wiederbelebung des 
 Classischen Altertlmms oder das erate Jahrhundert des Humanismus, Berlin, 
 1859.
 
 380 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. It was an experience of a kind far from uncommon in the 
 J^lL history of early genius, a total inability on the part of the 
 well-meaning but mediocre parent to recognise or to sympa- 
 thise with the as yet undeveloped genius of its own offspring. 
 The worldly prudence of Francesco di Petracco designed that 
 his son should gain his livelihood as a professor of civil law ; 
 while the ardent intellect of the youthful Francesco was 
 already being attracted, as by some magnetic power, to the 
 neglected and almost forgotten literature of antiquity. 
 Effect* of the The new influence to which our attention must now be 
 
 revival of 
 
 classical directed is distinguished from all the preceding influences 
 
 learning con- 
 
 th^ affected the course of learning by one important feature, 
 ^ g p ure jy secu i ar character. The canon law was the direct 
 outcome of the exigencies and corruptions of the Romish 
 Church ; the civil law was the favorite study of the ecclesi- 
 astic and, in his hands, as we have already seen, was closely 
 combined with the canon law; the New Aristotle had for the 
 most part been manipulated into supposed agreement with 
 Christian theology; the Sentences were nothing more than a 
 formal exposition of that theology as interpreted by four 
 eminent doctors of the Latin Church. But the revival of 
 classical learning involved the study of a literature altoge- 
 ther differing from these : it was of its very essence that the 
 student should for a time forget his scholastic culture and 
 identify himself in feeling with the spirit of cultivated pagan- 
 ism ; ' the cowl and the gown,' to use the language of Voigt, 
 ' had to be flung aside for the tunic and the toga;' and from 
 the monotonous rounds and arid abstractions of the schools 
 men now entered into a world of thought which, more than 
 any other, may be said to express the aims and aspirations of 
 civilised but not christianised humanity, -whose whole con- 
 cern is 
 
 Quidquid agunt homine, rotum, ti'mor, ira, volupta*, 
 Gaudia, ilixrursus . 
 
 And with this new experience there awoke again a keen 
 delight in the external world, an admiration of the beautiful 
 in nature, and an art that fashioned itself upon nature. It
 
 PETRARCH. 381 
 
 was as the shining of a soft and bright spring day after a CHAP. v. 
 
 long and uninterrupted reign of wintry frost and gloom 1 . ^ ^ 
 
 It was indeed time that some new spirit breathed upon Extravapm- 
 
 r cies of the 
 
 the waters over which the ancient darkness seemed threat- uiperi S <xL at 
 ening to resume its reign. Scholasticism was reaching the 
 length of its tether with the nominalism of Occam, while its 
 method was being exhibited in all its impotence by the follies 
 of the Averroists*. That method, as embodied in the writ- 
 ings of Aquinas or Duns Scotus in enquiries concerning the 
 divine nature or the mysteries of Christian doctrine, even 
 though it failed to establish a single conclusive result, might 
 still perhaps be defended as an invigorating and elevating 
 exercise of the human faculties: but when the pseudo-science 
 of the Averroists, while it discarded with undisguised con- 
 tempt all efforts at demonstrating the logical consistency of 
 the orthodox theology, proceeded to apply the same method 
 in discussing the nature of the phcenix or the crocodile, the 
 subject matter no longer shielded it from criticisms that 
 successfully exposed its radical defects. The prospect was General de- 
 
 cline in the 
 
 scarcely more encouraging in other fields. Gleams of classic J^f. 10 
 culture like those that have from time to time engaged our thors- 
 attention were becoming rarer and rarer. The Latin litera- 
 ture was less and less studied; and Dante, happily for his 
 fame, had abandoned a language so imperfectly understood 
 by his contemporaries, and enshrined the great masterpiece 
 of his genius in the beautiful dialect of Si. 
 
 In the prose works of Francesco Petrarch we have the Petrarch as a 
 
 reformer. 
 
 earliest indications of the verdict which the modern mind 
 has either tacitly or formally passed upon the method, the 
 conceptions, and the aims of the scholastic era 3 ; the verdict, 
 
 1 ' Die Italiener,' says Burckhardt, schaftliche Secte nur aus Petrarca's 
 ' sind die friihsten unter den Moder- Schilderung, und dieser hebt als ihr 
 nen welche die Gestalt der Laud- Gegner allein die negativen und an- 
 schaft als etwas rnehr oder weuiger stossigen Lehren hervor.' Voigt, p. 
 Schoneswahrgenornmen undgenossen 52. 
 
 haben.' See his interesting sketch 3 What Voigt says of Petrarch in 
 
 of the progress of this tendency in relation to his entire volume, I may 
 
 the chapter entitled Die Entdeckung apply to the present chapter: 'Die 
 
 der Welt und der Menschen, in Die Saat, die er ausgeworfen, hat Tau- 
 
 Cultur der Renaissance, pp. 222 82. sende von Menschen zu ihrer Pfiege 
 
 2 ' Leider kennen -wir diese \vissen- gerufen und Jahrhunderte zur Reife
 
 382 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP.V. it must be added, unaccompanied by those reservations and 
 
 > 1^1-1- qualifications that at a later period have been very forcibly 
 
 urged by more dispassionate critics. It is perhaps almost 
 
 essential to success in a reformer that his censures should be 
 
 sweeping and his invectives unsparing. When the work of 
 
 reform has been well nigh completed and the last vestiges of 
 
 the old order of things seem likely to disappear, a spirit of 
 
 conservatism again sets in and rescues much that is valuable 
 
 Hisestimau from the general destruction. Petrarch, it is evident, saw 
 
 of the logi- . . . / i i 
 
 CUM of iiia nothing in the \vhole system of scholasticism that he consi- 
 dered worthy to be thus spared. The labours of the school- 
 men were, in his eyes, only a vast heap of rubbish wherein 
 lurked not a single grain of gold. He was altogether unable 
 to understand how any man could find a real pleasure in 
 chopping the prevailing logic, and believed even the most 
 famous disputants in the schools to be actuated by no higher 
 motive than the professors of the civil law, but simply to ply 
 
 ana of the their trade for the love of gain 1 . The universities appeared 
 
 universities. 
 
 to him only 'nests of gloomy ignorance,' while he derided 
 the frequent investiture of the totally illiterate with the 
 magisterial or doctorial degree as a solemn farce 2 . On one 
 occasion, it is true, he is to be found adopting a less con- 
 temptuous tone, and styling Paris ' the mother of learning,' 
 ' the noble university/ but this was when the poet's crown 
 conferred by that famous body had but just descended on 
 his brows. 
 
 It would be a difficult and almost an endless task, to 
 endeavour to trace out all the different channels through 
 which Petrarch's genius acted upon the succeeding age, but 
 the two most important innovations upon mediaeval culture 
 
 bedurft. Nicht nur auf alien Seiten * ' Juvenis cathedram ascendit, nes- 
 
 dieses Baches, wohl auch auf alien cio quid confuBum murmurans. Tune 
 
 Blattern, welche die Weltgeschichte majores certatim ut divina locutum 
 
 der folgenden Jahrhunderte erzahlen, laudibus ad caelum tollunt ; tinniunt 
 
 wird der feinfiihlende Leser den Geist interim campanae, strepunt tubas, vo- 
 
 dea neubelebten Alterthums und ge- lant annuli, figuntur oscula, ver- 
 
 rade in der Oewandung rauschen tici rotundus ac magistralis biretus 
 
 boren, die er durch Petrarca empfan- apponitur; his peractis descendit 
 
 gen.' Ibid. p. 102. sapiens, qui stultus ascenderat.' De 
 
 1 Rtrum Memorand. Lib. i Opera, Vera Sapienlia, Opera, 324. 
 p. 456. De Vita Solitaria, i iv 1.
 
 PETRARCH. 383 
 
 attributable to his example, the revival of Latin scholar- CHAP. v. 
 ship in connexion with the discovery and study of the writ- v ^ 
 ings of Cicero, and, though less directly, the awakening of ^""J^j 11 . 
 Italy to the value of the Greek literature and, as a collateral (2) as a re- 
 
 . . viverofthe 
 
 result, the resuscitation of the Platonic philosophy and the JjJ!^ of 
 commencement of a less slavish deference to the authority of 
 Aristotle, admit of a comparatively brief discussion. An 
 accurate estimate of his more immediate influence is to be 
 arrived at only by a careful study of the writings of those 
 Italian scholars who adorned the succeeding generation. 
 Their reverence and regard for his genius while he lived and changeinth* 
 
 TIT . modern esti- 
 
 for his memory when dead, rested, as their language clearly mat . e of , hu 
 
 * J genius from 
 
 shews, on a very different basis from that which has sus- contemjJo S ra- 
 tained his reputation in later times. During the last three nes * 
 centuries his fame has been derived chiefly from his merits 
 as a poet ; the sonnetteer has almost completely eclipsed the 
 reviver of classical learning. But such was certainly not the 
 view of the generations to whom he was more directly 
 known, living as they did surrounded by the trophies of his 
 great triumph. Nor was it his own view. His poems were 
 the productions of his ardent but immature youth, and he 
 never for a moment believed that they were destined to out- 
 live his later writings 1 . This seeming reversal of the original Reason of 
 verdict can however be easily if not satisfactorily explained. 
 It was one of the services, though by no means the greatest, 
 rendered by Petrarch to the cause of learning, that he brought 
 back the use of the Latin tongue to something more nearly 
 approaching a classic standard. From the days of Boethius 
 down to the fourteenth century, we may seek vainly for any 
 author who appears even to have aimed at an imitation of 
 the models of antiquity. Medievalism altogether ignored <^|; 
 those models and set up a standard of its own. It can .-IP' 
 scarcely therefore be considered surprising that Petrarch 
 himself failed, all unaided as he was, in reaching the highest 
 excellence. His Latinity, though of Ciceronian elegance 
 when compared with that of Matthew Paris, of Anselm, or of 
 Dante, is still characterised by numerous defects. Gramma- 
 * Voigt, pp. 13, 14.
 
 384 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. tical errors and even barbarisms are not infrequent; the 
 -_^-Lx structure of the sentences is often awkward and obscure ; 
 the affectation of antiquity often clumsy and overwrought. 
 Thus neither his letters, his essays, nor his orations can com- 
 pare as specimens of a correct style with the prose of a later 
 period, with the standard of elegance attained to by Poli- 
 tian, Bembo, or Muretus; and hence the undeserved neglect 
 into which they have been allowed to fall by those who, care- 
 less of their historical value, have chosen to set mere elegance 
 of form above vigour of thought. It is only when we con- 
 sider that Petrarch's merits as a Latin writer were the result 
 solely of his own efforts, that his models were chosen with 
 no other guide than the intuitions of his own genius, and 
 that his errors have evidently been greatly multiplied by the 
 carelessness of transcribers and errors of the press, that we 
 begin to perceive that his style, when compared with the 
 barbarous idiom of the schoolmen, was, in spite of the 
 severe criticisms of Erasmus and Cortesius 1 , itself no incon- 
 siderable achievement. 
 Hi services It is scarcely necessary to say that Cicero was his chief 
 
 in relation to J J J 
 
 cta>ro rk80f m del; to Petrarch's efforts it was mainly due that, long 
 before the more general revival, the great Roman orator had 
 ceased to be any longer regarded as an ayvaa-Tos 0eo<;, and 
 that appreciation of his merits which culminated under 
 Erasmus was first awakened in the student of Latin litera- 
 ture. The list of his works that up to this time had been 
 known to scholars would seem to have been singularly meagre, 
 but the frequent quotations and allusions to be found in 
 other writers were sufficient to indicate the existence of 
 numerous productions still buried in oblivion 2 . From this 
 oblivion it was Petrarch's ambition to rescue them ; in fact, 
 
 1 See criticiHms quoted by Haliam, negative evidence : 'So schliesse 
 
 Literature of Kuropf, i 8 84. icb darauB, dass ich nur diese Werke 
 
 a The only oratiouH of Cicero knov. n in Dante's poetischen und prosai- 
 
 in the twelfth and thirteenth centu- schen Schriften erwahut gefundeu.' 
 
 Ties, according to Voigt, were the p. 23. Certain of Cicero's philoso- 
 
 Catiliues, the 1'hilippics, part of the phical treatises were of course known 
 
 Verrines, and the Pro Lege Manilia, both in Italy and other countries at 
 
 with one or twoother minor oneH. This this period : see catalogue printed 
 
 however is an inference from merely supra p. 101.
 
 PETRARCH. 385 
 
 in his efforts to recover the long lost masterpieces of antiquity CHAI. v. 
 he represented very much the part of Richard of Bury in v -^ 
 England, though far the superior of his indefatigable con- 
 temporary both in genius and learning; and without entering 
 upon the question as to how far he is entitled to be considered 
 the discoverer of any one treatise 1 , we may safely assume 
 that he was the first who directed the attention of scholars 
 to the value of Cicero's writings, and who kindled among 
 his countrymen that spirit of active research which brought 
 again to light so many a long lost treasure and so largely 
 enriched the literary resources of Europe. 
 
 When we remember how superficial was his knowledge n kllow - 
 
 - 1 ledge of 
 
 of the Greek tongue 2 , it was with difficulty that he spelt Plato - 
 out the Iliad with the wretched version by Pilatus at his 
 side, it may seem a somewhat overstrained interpretation 
 of his influence to speak of him as in any sense the origin- 
 ator of the Florentine school of Platonism. But if there be 
 any truth in the dictum of Coleridge, that every man is born 
 either an Aristotelian or a Platonist, there can be no doubt 
 as to which genius presided over Petrarch's birth. In an 
 age when every pretender to knowledge was hastening to 
 
 1 Voigt sums up the conclusion deru Sarnmlungen dieser Brief e und 
 
 ef the matter in the following terms : hatte bereits die tullianische Epistolo- 
 
 ' So ist es nun im Allgemeinen kein graphie in die neuere Literatur ein- 
 
 Zweifel, dass Cicero's Werke, auch gefiihrt, in der sie eine grossartige 
 
 diephilosophischenundrhetorischen, Rolle zu spielen berufen war, aber 
 
 durch Petrarca's Anregung unend- der neue Fund gab diesem wich- 
 
 lich mehr copirt und gelesen wurden tigen Belebungsmitiel des huananis- 
 
 als vorher ; davon zeugt ihre Verbrei- tischen Verkehrs sofort einen erhohe- 
 
 tuug im Beginne des folgenden Jahr- teren Schwung und hat so eine un- 
 
 hunderts. Aber um zwei Klassen niessbareWirkung geiibt, 1 p. 27, See 
 
 derselben hat Petrarch ein unmittel- also Mehus, pp. 213-20. 
 bares Yerdienst, um die Reden und - The manner in which Pilatus, 
 
 Briefe. Einen Codex, der eine Reihe whose knowledge of Latin was ludi- 
 
 von Reden enthielt, copirt er Jahre crously insufficient, rendered the 
 
 lang mit eigener Hand, damit ihm opening lines of the Iliad, will serve 
 
 nicht die bezahlten Abschreiber den as a specimen : 
 Text verdiirben. Mehrere einzelne ' Iram cane Dea Pelidce Achillis 
 
 Reden hat er auf Reisen gefunden, | Corruptibilem, qua innumerabiles 
 
 doch besass er noch lange nicht alle Gratis dolores posuit. \ Hultas autem 
 
 diejenigen, die wir jetzt lesen. Aber robustas animas Inferno antea misit \ 
 
 welchen Triumph empfand er, als ihm Heroum ; ipsorum autem cadavera or- 
 
 1345 zu Verona die seit dem 10 Jahr- dinavit canibus \ Avibusque omnibus. 
 
 huudertvb'lligverschollenensogenann- lovis autem perfaiebatur consilium, \ 
 
 ten familiaren Briefe Cicero's in die Ex quo jam primitus separatim Uti- 
 
 Hand fielen. Zwar besass er wahr- gaverunt \ Atridesque Rex Virorum 
 scheinlich damals schon diebeiden an- et Divus Achilles.' Mehus, p. 273.
 
 386 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. join the noisy throng in the Lyceum, he turned aside to 
 ^ ' explore the dim solitudes of the Academy. His actual 
 knowledge of Plato, it is true, was but slight ; but, as Voigt 
 observes, he was guided in this direction by a kind of instinct, 
 an instinct awakened of course, in the first instance, by the 
 study of Cicero's philosophical treatises. Like the geologist, 
 though he himself sank not the shaft, he pointed out to his 
 followers where the hidden wealth lay buried. To the Ari- 
 stotelians of his time Plato was no better known than Pytha- 
 goras, and in fact they believed, for the most part, that the 
 Timaeus and the Phsedo 1 were the only two treatises he had 
 ever written. Petrarch however was the possessor of sixteen; 
 and though these reposed on his shelves dark as the utter- 
 ances of the Sibyl, he knew that Cicero, Seneca, Apuleius, 
 St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine had held them in high 
 esteem, while the professed contempt of the Aristotelians 
 He initiates served rather to commend them to his respect. In his highly 
 
 the struggle 
 
 Supremacy of characteristic essay, De sui ipsius et aliorum ignorantia, we 
 Anatotie. nave the earliest intimations of that impending struggle be- 
 tween the modern partisans of the Platonic and Aristotelian 
 schools of philosophy, which under varying forms may be said 
 to have lasted to our own time, and to be even yet undecided, 
 nu position It is interesting in connexion with this controversy to com- 
 Aii**te pare the position of Aquinas with that of Petrarch. The 
 with that of schoolman, in his endeavour to introduce the New Aristotle. 
 
 Aquinas. 
 
 had found his most formidable difficulty in the evident dis- 
 agreement between that literature and traditional dogma; 
 the Italian scholar, in his efforts on behalf of a more liberal 
 culture, found himself confronted in every direction by the 
 supposed infallibility of what, but a century before, had been 
 looked upon as heterodox ! It was not much to say, but to 
 say it in those days at Padua and at Venice was the height 
 of boldness, that though Aristotle was a man of vast learn- 
 ing, he was after all only a man and liable to error. 
 
 1 De rui iptiut ft multorum igno- Latin translation of this dialogue in 
 
 rantia, Opera, 1162. Voigt, p. 48. a manuscript of the thirteenth cen- 
 
 I presume that the Phtedo was the tury. Fragments Philosophiquet, Abe- 
 
 second. Cousin informs us that the lard. Appendix, 
 library of the Borbonne contains a
 
 PETRARCH. . 387 
 
 The absolute value of the Aristotelian decisions was not CHAP.V. 
 the only article of the schoolman's faith that he was now > ^Ij- 
 
 of the later 
 times. 
 
 compelled to hear called in question. It marks the singular ne 
 
 -i -T i- 11 / the style of 
 
 insensibility to literary excellence of form induced bv the tlie * x|8tin 
 
 * v J versions. 
 
 scholastic training, that it was commonly believed that the 
 works of the great master, even in the shape in which they 
 were then known, were models of style and expression. 
 And here again Petrarch ventured upon a decided demurrer, 
 declaring that though Aristotle's discourses, as originally 
 delivered, might have been characterised by considerable 
 grace of style, no such merit was discernible either in the 
 treatises which survived the fall of the empire or in those 
 which had more recently been brought to light 1 . While, 
 finally, even the ethical system of the Stagirite failed to 
 awaken much admiration in the poet's fervid and enthusi- He rejects 
 
 the ethical 
 
 astic nature, the doctrine of the Mean appeared to him cold ^ristotte. 
 and formal when compared, not merely with the Christian 
 morality, but with the lofty Stoicism of the Academicians 2 . 
 
 The services of Petrarch to the cause of the new learning, J 1 
 as marking the initial chapter of its history and scarcely 
 perhaps estimated at their full value by many modern writers, 
 have seemed to call for the foregoing comments; but the his- 
 tory of the Italian Humanismus after his time is, in its main 
 outlines, a well-known episode in the annals of European 
 culture, and, even if our limits permitted, it would be unne- 
 cessary here to recall the varied phases of the onward move- 
 ment. The activity of that little band of enthusiasts who, 
 assembling within the walls of the convent of San Spirito, 
 sustained and enriched the traditions he had bequeathed to 
 them, the wider extension and deeper flow of the same 
 spirit as seen in the researches and discoveries of Poggio, in 
 the masterly criticisms of Valla (Erasmus's great exemplar), 
 and in the scholarship and satirical genius of Philelphus, 
 the circle of laborious though less original literati, chiefly 
 known as translators, that gathered round the court of Ni- 
 cholas V, the splendid array of genius fostered under the 
 
 1 Rerum Memorand. Lib. n; Opera,, p. 466. a Opera, p. 1159. 
 
 252
 
 388 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. successive protection of Cosmo, Lorenzo, and their descendant 
 ^ . ' on the papal throne (a care they so well repaid), the teachers 
 of Germany, France and England, all these require no illus- 
 tration at our hands ; and for our special purpose it will 
 suffice to give a brief consideration to the labours of those 
 few in the long array, whose names are most prominently 
 associated with the revival of Greek learning and its con- 
 sequent introduction into the Transalpine universities. 
 Florence and J n the fifteenth century there was but one capital in 
 
 Constant!- 
 
 "rested. 011 " Europe that could vie with Florence in the combination of 
 the beautiful in art with the beautiful in nature, and that 
 capital was the city of the Golden Horn. But while marked 
 by this general resemblance, the two cities offered in their 
 culture, their sympathies, and their political circumstances, a 
 yet more striking contrast. Even at this long interval of 
 time, it is difficult for the believer in human progress and 
 
 Florence in the lover of art and literature to look back upon what Flo- 
 
 thc four- 
 
 ftnth n cen- rence then was, and what she afterwards became, without 
 something of emotion. Alone among the Italian republics 
 she still reared aloft the triple banner of freedom, virtue, and 
 patriotism. While other republics had become subject to a 
 tyrant's yoke, or, like Genoa and Venice, were pursuing an 
 isolated, ignoble, and selfish policy, Florence was still to be 
 found the champion of the common weal. With a spirit of 
 heroism that has often been deemed characteristic solely of a 
 martial race, she combined a rare genius for commercial 
 enterprise that had raised her to the summit of mercantile 
 greatness. Her bankers ruled the markets of Europe. Her 
 surrounding territory in its wondrous productiveness bore 
 witness to the skill and industry of her agriculturists. Within 
 her walls successively arose those marvels of architectural art 
 round which the ancient glory still seems to linger, though 
 her greatness and power have fled. In the desolation that 
 followed upon the Great Plague the university had been 
 broken up, but it had been refounded and endowed with 
 ample revenues by the state : and it is significant of the 
 liberal conception of learning that there prevailed, that in the 
 year 1373 a chair had been established, at the special request
 
 FLORENCE. 389 
 
 of many of the citizens, for promoting the study of the works CHAP. v. 
 of Dante, which was afterwards combined with the chair of ^-~v- ' 
 philosophy and rhetoric. It was fit that at such a centre the 
 genius of intellectual freedom should gird itself for a con- 
 quest compared with which the proudest achievements of 
 Florence on the field of battle seem insignificant indeed. 
 
 To all these features the city of the Bosporus offered t < " s ."' 
 a complete antithesis. It was the tottering seat of a mori- 
 bund dynasty. At the time that the palaces of the Medici 
 reflected back the joyous spirit of the Tuscan capital, the 
 home of the Palaeologi was haunted by gloomy forebodings 
 or echoed with the utterances of actual dismay. The learn- contrast 
 
 between the 
 
 ing of the two capitals was in like contrast. As we turn the ^'"f^f the 
 pages of the Florentine writers, from Petrarch to Politian, all 
 is ardent, enthusiastic, and inspiring ; a glow of youthful 
 vigour lends a charm to the crudest fancies of the scholar 
 exultant in the discovery of a new world. The sentiment 
 often, it is true, now strikes us as singularly trite and little 
 beyond that of a clever schoolboy, the scholarship is often 
 of an order that many a modern schoolboy would blush to 
 own ; but the defects are those of immaturity not of in- 
 capacity, of ambitious talent rather than of hopeless medio- 
 crity. Even its most serious blemish, its grossness, seems 
 venial when compared with the sycophancy that repels us 
 at a later time, with the pedantic despotism of the 
 Averroists that ushered in the decline that awaited it in the 
 sixteenth century, or with the yet deeper degradation that 
 befel it in a yet later age, when a greater than Petrarch 
 visited that classic land and lamented over the servile condi- 
 tion to which letters had there been brought, until 'the glory 
 of Italian wits was damped,' and ' nothing written but 
 flattery and fustian 1 .' In Constantinople, on the other hand, 
 learning had deteriorated even when compared with the period 
 which has already occupied our attention, when Psellus com- 
 piled his treatise on logic 2 . The capture of the capital by 
 the Crusaders in 1204, and the discouragement to literary 
 culture given by their barbarous rule, mark the complete 
 1 Miltou, Affopagitica, a See supra, pp. 175-6.
 
 390 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. disappearance of authors, or different works of authors, that 
 ^-^-^ had survived up to that time. In the days of Petrarch the 
 city had regained its independence, but not its literary spirit. 
 It was again an acknowledged centre of learning, and at- 
 tracted numerous students from far and near, but its culture, 
 in many respects strongly resembling that of the western 
 scholasticism, had become mechanical in spirit and purely 
 traditional in method ; whatever of genuine mental activity 
 was to be discerned seems to have been mainly expended 
 on those theological subtleties to which perhaps the peculiar 
 refinements of the Greek language offered a special tempta- 
 tion, 
 causes of To differences thus marked must be added the great 
 
 variance be- 
 
 dti^ thetw political elements of variance. Ever since that eventful day 
 when Pope Leo placed upon the head of Charlemagne the 
 diadem of the Roman- empire, the attitude of the Byzantine 
 emperors and their subjects towards the nations of western 
 Christendom had been one of sullen aversion 1 ; and ever 
 since that inauspicious day in the succeeding century, when 
 Photius drew up the articles of faith that were to divide, it 
 would seem for ever, the Churches of the East and the West, 
 political estrangement had been intensified by theological 
 antipathies. 
 
 itaiun cho- Nevertheless the Italian scholar bent a longing eye 
 towards the city of the Bosporus, for there were still trea- 
 sured the masterpieces of a literature which he regarded with 
 none the less veneration because it was to him so imperfectly 
 known, Occasionally, like John of Ravenna, Philelphus, 
 Giacomo of Scarparia, and Guarino of Verona, he was to be 
 seen in the streets of Constantinople, seeking to acquire a 
 knowledge of the language, and to gain possession of copies 
 of the most esteemed authors. But instances like these were 
 rare, and attended with but partial success. Philelphus thus 
 describes his own experience in the year 1441 : ' When 
 
 ' The coronation of Charles was no claim to the Roman name except 
 
 in their eyes an act of unholy rebel- that which the favour of an insolent 
 
 lion; his successors were barbarian pontiff might confer.' Prof. Bryce, 
 
 intruders, ignorant of the laws and Holy Roman Empire, 191 s . 
 usages of the ancient state, and with
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE. 391 
 
 there,' he says, ' I studied hard and long, and made diligent CHAP - v - 
 search for some one or other of the full and careful treatises ^-~v-^' 
 of Apollonius or Herodian on grammar, which however were 
 nowhere to be found. The text-books used and the intro- HIS account 
 duction given by the lecturers in the schools are full of the 
 
 * 
 
 merest trifles, and nothing certain or satisfactory is to be ople< 
 gained from their teaching with respect to the grammatical 
 construction of a sentence, the quantity of syllables, or 
 accent. The ^Eolic dialect, which is that chiefly used by 
 Homer and Callimachus in their compositions, the teachers 
 of to-day are altogether ignorant of. Whatever I have 
 learned of those matters has been the result of my own 
 study and research, although I would be far from denying 
 the important aid that the instructions of my father-in-law, 
 Chrysoloras, have afforded me 1 .' 
 
 Occasionally, on the other hand, the teacher sought his 
 pupils, and a native Greek crossed the Adriatic and an- 
 nounced in Italy his ability and willingness to impart the 
 coveted knowledge. But from Barlaarno downwards these 
 men were mostly impudent charlatans, and their pretensions 
 were soon exposed even by those whom they pretended to 
 teach 2 . The true commencement of a systematic study of 
 Greek in Italy, dates from the arrival in 1396 of Emmanuel Emmanuel 
 
 Chrysoloraa, 
 
 Chrysoloras 3 , a relative of the John Chrysoloras of whom A m5 - 
 Philelphus above makes mention, as an ambassador from the 
 emperor of the eastern empire to solicit aid against the 
 Turks. 
 
 Chrysoloras was honorably distinguished from those 
 his countrymen who had hitherto assumed the literary cha- 
 racter in Italy, by his noble descent, his high and not unde- 
 
 1 Hody, p. 188. justly observes of the Greek refugees 
 
 8 .ZEneas Sylvius, in his Europa, c. on that occasion, ' Sie waren in kei- 
 
 52, tells an amusing story of how ner Weise die Manner, von denen 
 
 Ugo Benzi of Sienna, the learned einetiefgreifendeBewegunghatteaus- 
 
 physician, discomfited a whole party gehen konnen. In der That wurde 
 
 of these pretenders in a formal phi- der Anstoss schon bedeutend friiher 
 
 losophic discussion. durch Chrysoloras und seine Schiiler 
 
 3 Many writers, among whom I gegeben, unter denen wir die riistig- 
 
 notice so recent a contributor to the sten Forderer beider Literaturen 
 
 literature of the subject as Dr Gei- finden, und auf dem Unionsconcil 
 
 ger, have dated this revival from the wurde derFunkezurFlamme.' Voigt, 
 
 fall of Constantinople in 1453. Voigt p. 330.
 
 392 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. served reputation, and his real knowledge of the Greek 
 y L- literature. To the man of letters he added the man of the 
 world and the diplbmatist; he was acquainted with most of 
 the countries of Europe, and had visited our own court in 
 "iei'*t'm 3r8 * ne ^ig 11 f Richard II in an official capacity. He was, 
 language, however, like most of his countrymen, ignorant of the Latin 
 tongue, for the Greeks, while still claiming for their emperor 
 the sovereignty of the Roman empire, had well-nigh lost all 
 traces of western civilisation. It attests the energy of his 
 character, that though already advanced in years, he now 
 applied himself to the study of the language, and eventually 
 mastered it l . The literary fame of Chrysoloras had preceded 
 him ; for Guarino of Verona had studied the Greek language 
 for five years under his guidance at Constantinople, and he 
 now drew the attention of his countrymen to the rare oppor- 
 tunity presented by the arrival of so illustrious a scholar. 
 Eventually the services of Chrysoloras were secured by the 
 university of Florence, and he soon found himself the centre 
 of an enthusiastic circle of learners. His success in the field 
 of labour to which he was thus unexpectedly summoned was 
 as conspicuous as his efforts as an ambassador were fruitless, 
 ills eminence Most of those who had listened to Petrarch's famous pupil, 
 
 as t teacher . . . 
 
 or ureek. John of Ravenna, at Ferrara, in his exposition of the Latin 
 literature, now gathered with many others round the new 
 teacher of Greek at Florence. For their use he compiled a 
 
 in* on** Greek grammar, the Erotemata, egregium libellnm gram- 
 maticum, as Boerner justly terms it, the same that after- 
 wards served Reuchlin for a model at Orleans 2 , that was used 
 
 1 Void's language implies that his own scholars. This however was 
 
 Chrysoloras was already acquainted never deemed worthy of being printed, 
 
 with Latin, but the statement of -In- and as the title suggests contained 
 
 lianuH is explicit : ' Nam cum jam probably the merest elements, while 
 
 grandis esset, nullitts pneceptoris the Erotemnta went through many 
 
 auxilio nostras perdidicit literas, ne- editions, and was par excellence the 
 
 que sibi oneri viaum est, cum tot Greek grammar of the first century 
 
 annis philosophise studiis vacasset, of the Renaissance. SeeHallam, Lite- 
 
 ad puerilia literarum elcmenta re- rature of Europe, i" 101. According to 
 
 verti.' Boenier. p. 31. Constantino Lascaris it suffered con- 
 
 * See authorities quoted by Boerner, siderably from being often abridged 
 
 p. 21. Geiger, Johann Itcuchlin, 19, by ignorant compilers, TO , 
 
 20. BcuchJin himself compiled a OVK old' 6ru* nvis TUV apaOuv 
 
 Greek grammar, the niKpoirat.di.ia., for Xarrtt f>U<pdiipav. Hody, p. 22.
 
 EMMANUEL CHRYSOLORAS. 393 
 
 by Linacre at Oxford and by Erasmus at Cambridge, and CHAP. v. 
 long continued to hold its ground against formidable rivals. v~ ' 
 Aretino has left on record the feelings with which he has- 
 tened to join the circle. He was at that time occupied in 
 studying the civil law ; ' but now,' he exclaimed to himself, 
 ' it was in his power to gain a far higher knowledge, an ac- 
 quaintance with Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes, with all 
 those poets, philosophers, and orators, in short, of whom he 
 had so often heard. Could he possibly let slip so glorious 
 an opportunity ? For seven hundred years no one in Italy 
 had really understood the Greek language, though through 
 that language well nigh all knowledge had been handed 
 down to men. Of doctors of civil law there was plenty, of 
 whom he might learn at any time, but of teachers of Greek 
 this was the only one 1 .' 
 
 Chrysoloras taught not only at Florence but also at ins visit to 
 Venice, Padua, Milan, and Rome ; and from the last city he 
 addressed to his relative, John Chrysoloras, that graceful 
 letter wherein he describes the resemblance of the City of 
 the Seven Hills to the City of the Golden Horn, and tells 
 how, as he gazed from each surrounding eminence, he fancied 
 himself again in his native city, until his eye was fain to 
 seek out his own home with its cypresses and hanging garden*. 
 
 In such useful but tranquil labours he would, it seems, closing years 
 have been well content to pass the remainder of his days, 
 had he not suddenly been called away to duties of a more 
 arduous character. The closing scene in his career, though 
 less directly relevant to the progress of letters, is deserving 
 of careful study as affording a very apt illustration of the 
 state of the political and religious world at that time. If we 
 may trust the account given by Julianus, the illustrious 
 exile appears, in his latter years, to have ceased to hope for 
 the country of his birth, and his aims and sympathies had 
 begun to centre in the land that had afforded him so generous 
 a reception, and seemed destined to so glorious a future 3 . 
 
 1 Muratori Scriptores, xix '920; 3 'Nam cum Graces nihilaut parum 
 Hody, pp. 2830. literis suisanimumadverteresentiret, 
 
 2 Codinus, De Antiquitatibui Con- casque seusim sinistra rerura ac tem- 
 stantinop., quoted by Boerner, p. 23. porum varietate extiugui coguosceret,
 
 39 4 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. His efforts to arouse the western powers to concerted action 
 y 1" against the common, enemy had signally failed, while the 
 Stfoofthe" tide of invasion in th& East had begun to threaten the walls 
 ^f m of Constantinople itself. In the opinion of Gibbon it was 
 little more than a feeling of generosity in the foe that spared 
 the imperial city when the crescent already gleamed from 
 the walls of Adrianopolis 1 . An urgent summons had recalled 
 Chrysoloras for a short period to Constantinople to receive 
 Greek instructions, and what he then heard and witnessed 
 appears to have convinced him that the fall of the capital 
 could not much longer be averted. Unlike the majority of 
 his countrymen in their exile, he had been led to renounce 
 the distinctive tenets of the Greek Church, and had given 
 additional proof of his orthodoxy by a treatise on the chief 
 question in dispute the Procession of the Holy Ghost. It 
 was P r kably this fact, combined with his high reputation as 
 a diplomatist, that now marked him out in the eyes of pope 
 John XXII as an eminently fit person to accompany the 
 papal delegates to the council of Constance, where it was 
 designed that the union of the Churches of the East and the 
 He attends West should again become a subject of discussion. The 
 
 the council of i . i 
 
 Constance as proiect was one which commanded his warmest sympathies ; 
 
 a delegate of r J . J 
 
 the Pope, and, apart from the religious aspect, the circumstances under 
 which that council was convened must have had for every 
 Greek a peculiar significance. It was summoned not by the 
 pope, but by the emperor Sigismund 3 . For the first time, 
 
 no ipsorum studiorum vetus ilia glo- agitatm, divisre, laceratreque religio- 
 
 riadeficeret.inltaliamnavigavit.'etc. nis nostrse divino prope affectu per- 
 
 Andrea Juliani pro Manuele Chryso- motus, pontificibas maximis, qui ip- 
 
 lora Fiinebris Oratio, Boerner, p. 32. sius gravitatem, prudentiam et vitam, 
 
 1 Gibbon-Milman-Smith, vin 28. tanquam caeleste oraculam venera- 
 
 1 'Nam cum summus pontifex Con- bantur, concilii sententiaR, quantum 
 
 Shu i tin m iro constituisset, nonnul- in se fuit, suscipiendas fore, suadere 
 
 logquo summac auctoritatis viros et conatus est. Et ut ceterorum bono- 
 
 Bapientirc, atque erga hanc nostram rum judiciis adhrereret, omnem iti- 
 
 religionem insigni quadam pietate neris longitudinem, frigora, hicmes, 
 
 affcctos sibi delegisBet, Manuelem viarum asperitates atque mortem, si 
 
 inter primoa habere constituit, qui opus esset, perferre instituit. Qttm 
 
 in hanc laudatisHimam rem necessa- cum, ut cogitarat, perfecta fuissent, 
 
 ri unique negotium ita omnem curam, inveteratos Grecorum errores ad Ko- 
 
 studium, diligentiamque contulit ut manam religionem sua opera ac dili- 
 
 neque vim ullam, neqne insidiaB, ne- gentia deduxisset.' Boerner, pp. 26-7. 
 
 que niftus prospicere, nee sonectutia * It was on this occasion that Si- 
 
 euffi incommoda aut labures testimare gismund declared himseU, as rex Ro- 
 
 videretor. Quocirca hujua tarn diu mania, to be tuper grammaticam.
 
 GUARINO. 395 
 
 the ruler of western Christendom had assumed the highest CHAP. v. 
 prerogative of his imperial dignity, as the coequal or superior ^-^ 
 of the chief pontiff himself 1 . At the very time, therefore, that 
 the eastern empire appeared on the eve of dissolution, its 
 rival of the West was rising to the just level of its high 
 ideal ; and to Chrysoloras, who, as he gazed from the heights 
 that surrounded Rome had half imagined he beheld again the 
 city of his birth, who had seen the literature of his native 
 tongue, at the very time that it was dying out on the shores 
 of the Bosporus, taking vigorous root on the banks of the 
 Tiber, it may well have seemed that the faith and the 
 sovereignty of Nova Roma were also summoned by no 
 obscure or trivial portents to find their future home in the 
 Italian land. 
 
 In sentiments like these we have a sufficient explanation 
 of the readiness with which he accepted the task confided 
 to his hands, and, though advanced in years, boldly faced 
 the severities of a winter journey across the Alps to Con- 
 stance: they serve also to explain the bitterness of the 
 disappointment with which he witnessed the sudden break- 
 ing up of that memorable assembly. He was seized with n^ t c h e . a 
 fear and died after a few days ; the victim, according to 
 Julianus, of grief rather than of disease 2 . His remains 
 received honorable interment within the precincts of the 
 Dominican convent at Constance : and his epitaph, the 
 grateful tribute of Poggio to his memory, declared that he 
 had acquired in Italy that lasting fame which it was no 
 longer in the power of his native country to confer. His 
 
 1 ' It can hardly be said that upon urgente quam morbo, excessit e vita.' 
 
 any occasion, except the gathering of Juliani Funebris Oratio, Boerner, 
 
 the council of Constance by Sigis- pp. 26, 27. Unius is, of course, Si- 
 
 mund, did the emperor appear filling gismund ; Chrysoloras was the par- 
 
 a truly international place.' Prof. tisan of pope John. Julianus's ver- 
 
 Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, 253 ;J . sion of the story is worthy of note. 
 
 a ' Sed cum, prseter suam opinio- Hody, who is followed by Voigt, re- 
 
 nem atque omnium bonorum judi- presents Chrysoloras as sent by the 
 
 cium, communem omnium liber ta- emperor as interpreter to Constance, 
 
 tern obsessarn videret, et ad unius and as dying there before the council 
 
 voluntatem redacta omnia, tandem- had assembled. The quotation inn. (2) 
 
 que pontificem suum ad fugam redac- in preceding page shews this view to 
 
 turn, assiduis febribus obsessus est, be erroneous : seealso Boerner, pp. 14, 
 
 paucosque post, dies, dolore magis 26,27. Yaaiua,DeVirisIUustribus,p.8.
 
 396 
 
 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 <3HAP. V. 
 PART I. 
 
 His funeral 
 oration by 
 Julian us. 
 
 Guarino, 
 b. 1370. 
 
 <t 14O). 
 
 His fame as 
 a teacher. 
 
 Eminent 
 
 Ijj-'h-liin' 
 among his 
 
 epitaph was not the only memorial reared by the scholar to 
 his memory. With the revival of the ancient literature there 
 had been rekindled among the men of letters of that day 
 much of the oratorical spirit of Greece and Rome, and by 
 the fifteenth century it was rarely that any important public 
 event was allowed to pass unaccompanied by some rhetorical 
 effusion 1 . Among such efforts the funeral oration held a 
 conspicuous place; and on the death of Chrysoloras an 
 oration of this kind was pronounced in Venice, where he had 
 once taught with such signal success, by Andreas Julianus, a 
 noble of that city. This composition, equally deserving of 
 notice for its elegant Latinity and as a record of some in- 
 teresting facts respecting the father of Greek learning in 
 Italy, is still extant; and making all allowance for the 
 hyperbole of a Ciceronian diction and the partiality of private 
 friendship, we may conclude that Chrysoloras had earned 
 in no ordinary degree, both by his public and private cha- 
 racter, the esteem and admiration of his contemporaries. 
 
 Among the disciples of Chrysoloras Guarino was un- 
 doubtedly the one on whom the mantle of the master de- 
 scended. His reputation as a teacher induced the authorities 
 of the university of Ferrara to engage his services, leaving 
 him to fix the amount of his own salary. Nor was their 
 liberality misplaced ; for his fame soon attracted to the city 
 learners from every country. Poggio preferred his instruction 
 for his youthful son to any that Florence could offer ; and his 
 contemporaries were wont to apply to him the saying of 
 Cicero respecting Isocrates, that more learned men had 
 issued from his school than chieftains from the Trojan horse 8 . 
 Even Englishmen, little as learning was then in vogue in their 
 country, were to be found among the hearers of Guarino. Of 
 this number was the unfortunate John Tiptoft, earl of Wor- 
 cester, the author of various orations delivered before pope 
 Pius n, and one of the earliest translators from the Latin 
 into his native language, Robert Fleming, the papal protho- 
 
 1 For an account of the different 
 forms which this spirit assumed, see 
 Burckhardt, Die Cullur tier Renais- 
 sance, 180-7. 
 
 * This however was a kind of stock 
 .compliment at this period: Maffei 
 de Volterra applies it to John of lia- 
 vouna, Plutina to 13essariou.
 
 GUARINO. 397 
 
 notary, and author of the Lucubrationes Tiburtiance 1 , John CIIIAP - v - 
 Free, a lawyer of considerable eminence, whose performances v - 
 as a translator from the Greek were sufficiently meritorious to Gray, 
 induce the Italians to claim them as the work of their cele- 
 brated countryman, Poggio Bracciolini 2 , John Gundorp, 
 and William Gray, afterwards bishop of Ely 8 . To the last 
 named learning in England was indebted for an important 
 accession to its resources. On his return from Italy, Gray 
 brought with him a collection of manuscripts, some of them 
 of authors that had never before crossed the channel, and all 
 of them well calculated to impart to the few scholars to be 
 found among his countrymen a notion of the movement in 
 progress in the Transalpine universities. His collection in- 
 eluded the letters of Petrarch, and numerous orations by 
 Poggio, Aretino, and Guarino, compositions that by their 
 more classic diction and genuine admiration of antiquity 
 could hardly fail to awaken a like spirit in the northern centres 
 of learning ; a new translation of the Timceus and another of 
 the Euihypliron were a contribution to an extended know- 
 ledge of Plato ; the Institutions of Lactantius, versions of the 
 Golden Verses of Pythagoras (a favorite text-book at Cam- 
 bridge in after years), hitherto unknown orations and trea- 
 tises by Cicero and Quintilian, and many of the discourses of 
 Seneca, were also important additions ; while Jerome's Letter 
 to Pammachius, on 'Origenism,' is deserving of notice as the 
 first instalment of a special literature which was shortly to give 
 rise to a controversy of no ordinary significance 4 . We have no HIS collection 
 
 bt*<i u cat 1 1 ed 
 
 direct proof that bishop Gray was actuated by feelings of resent- 
 ment towards the university like those which Baker, as we have 
 already seen, attributes to bishop Fordham and bishop Morgan, 
 but so far as the bequest of his valuable collection may be looked 
 
 1 Johnson, "Life of Linacre, p. 91. Hebrew languages.' Hist, of Ely Ca- 
 
 3 Thorn Caii, Vindicice Antiquit. thedral, p. 177. See also Wharton, 
 
 Acad. Oxon. n 334, ed. Hearne. Anglia Sacra, i 672 ; Poggio, Epist. 
 
 3 Bentham says, ' being possessed 39 Episcopo Eliensi in Mai Spicileg. 
 
 of an ample fortune, he removed Bom. x 296. 
 
 to Ferrara, where he studied under 4 Catalogue Codicum MSS. qui in 
 
 Guarini of Verona, with as great Collegiis Aulisque Oxoniensibus hodie 
 
 benefit to himself as credit to his adservantur. Confecit Henricus 0. 
 
 master; especially in the Greek and Coxe, M.A., Oxonii, 1852. Pars i.
 
 398 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. upon as evidence the existence of such resentment is far from 
 t^-L, improbable. It is evident at least that his affection for his 
 own college at Oxford exceeded his care for the university of 
 his diocese, for his library was bequeathed to Balliol 1 ; and it 
 may easily be conjectured that the one or two scholars at 
 Cambridge in those days to whom the destination of such 
 a legacy appeared a matter of any interest, when they heard 
 to whose keeping these treasures had been confided, observed 
 that they might thank .pope Martin V and the Ultramon- 
 tanists for the -loss sustained by their own university. Like 
 Isocrates, Guarino also attained to an advanced and vigorous 
 ow age of old age, which found him still busied on his literary labours. 
 
 Guarino. 
 
 His productions were chiefly translations from the Greek ; 
 
 and only two years before his death, at the age of 88, he 
 
 completed a translation of the Geography of Strabo*. 
 
 Leonardo Not less eminent than Guarino, though distinguished in a 
 
 6/i3*i somewhat different manner, was Leonardo Bruni, known 
 
 iL 1443. 
 
 from the place of his birth as Aretino, and by his learned con- 
 temporaries as 'the modern Aristotle.' From him we date 
 the commencement of a more intelligent study of Aristotle's 
 writings, an improvement which the increasing critical 
 faculty of the age rendered indispensable if the authority of 
 the Stagirite were still to hold its ground. The conviction 
 that forced itself upon Grosseteste and Koger Bacon in the 
 thirteenth century was now the sentiment of every Italian 
 Humanist. Even pope Pius II, though ignorant of Greek, 
 was ready to declare that, if Aristotle were to come again 
 nu trans- to life, he would be totally unable to recognise as his own the 
 Arutotie. thoughts for which he was made responsible by his Latin in- 
 terpreters'. Among those who were attracted by the fame of 
 Aretino, was cardinal Beaufort's great rival, Humphrey, duke 
 thli^Htte^t f Gloucester. He had already become acquainted with 
 iiumTrTy, ' Aretino's translation of the Ethics, and he now besought him 
 oioumter. to give to the world a translation of the Politics, a copy 
 of which had recently been brought from Constantinople by 
 Pallas de Strozzi. Aretino acceded to his request, and laying 
 
 1 Bcntham says that ho also built Hi*t. of Ely Cathedral, p. 176. 
 a good part of the college library. Voigt, p. 257. * Asia, c. 71.
 
 AEETINO. 399 
 
 aside the senseless word-for-word metihod of translation CHAP. v. 
 hitherto in vogue, and totally disregarding tfhe endless sub- /-- 
 tleties of the Arabian commentators, produced, after three 
 years' labour, a version that with respect to clearness and 
 elegance threw every preceding version into the shade. 
 Scholars to whom criticisms like those of Petrarch had ap- 
 peared unanswerable, began to say that they could now 
 understand how Cicero could praise the Aristotelian style. 
 It was the first real advance towards a true knowledge of the 
 text of Aristotle since the time of Aquinas, though soon to be 
 completely outdone by the achievements of Argyropulos. 
 When the translation was completed, Bruni, it is said, dedi- 
 cated the work to duke Humphrey, and forwarded a copy to 
 England. But his noble patron, immersed probably in the 
 anxieties of his political career, delayed his acknowledgements, 
 and the haughty Italian recalled his dedication and laid it at 
 the feet of pope Eugenius instead l . 
 
 But if forgetful of Italy, duke Humphrey was not un- Duke Hum- 
 
 ph rev's bo- 
 
 mindful of Oxford, and it is not improbable that the splendid i ue *** 
 collections of manuscripts with which he enriched the univer- 
 sity in the year 1439 and 1443, donations which Mr 
 Anstey declares ' did more for the university than any other 
 benefaction, before or after, has done,' were partly the 
 means of awakening that active interest in the new learning 
 that in the latter part of the century was exhibited by various 
 members of the community. The theological authors, that Novel eie- 
 
 t j paents thus 
 
 occupy so large a proportion of the catalogues of these two introduced, 
 collections, would of course appear to the majority of the 
 students of the time the most valuable element ; but the 
 above-named translations by Aretino, both included in the 
 earlier list, and a new translation of the Republic of Plato, 
 could scarcely fail to attract the attention of the ' artists.' A 
 copy of Dante and numerous copies of Petrarch's best known 
 treatises must have also been singularly suggestive of bold 
 
 1 Voigt, p. 373. Bodleian : the translation of the Po- 
 
 2 Both the catalogues are printed litics above mentioned, (the identical 
 by Mr Anstey in Munimenta Aca- copy presented by Guarino, splen- 
 demica, pp. 758-72. Only three vo- didly illuminated), the Epistles of 
 lumes are still to be found in the Pliny.andacopyofValeriusMaximus.
 
 400 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. and novel habits of thought. The Verrines and Philippics of 
 v ^ Cicero and the letters Ad Familiares were an appreciable 
 addition to the stores of the Latin scholar ; while the theo- 
 logian would find no little material for reflexion, and much 
 that was startling and strange, in the Historia Ecclesiastica 
 of Eusebius. 
 
 Fail or con- As the first half of the fifteenth century drew to its close, 
 
 i3. it became evident that the progress of the Turkish arms in 
 
 the East was likely before long to be signalized by a decisive 
 triumph, and in the year 1453 all Christendom learned with 
 unmistakeable dismay, that the last of the Constantines had 
 fallen fighting at the gates of his imperial city, and that the 
 cry of the muezzin had been uttered from the loftiest turret of 
 St. Sophia. Though long anticipated, the event did not fail to 
 
 The night to awaken in Italy a feeling of profound commiseration. For a 
 time it was forgotten that the hapless fugitives who came 
 fleeing across the Mediterranean were schismatics, only to 
 remember that they were Christians, and they were received 
 with every manifestation of sympathy and respect. Among 
 them there came a few scholars of eminence, Argyropulos, 
 Chalcondyles, Andronicus Callistus, Constantine and John 
 Lascaris, bearing with them whatever literary treasures they 
 had been able to snatch from destruction. The efforts of the 
 
 Prior imnor- preceding half century had fortunately already introduced 
 into Italy many of the Greek classics ; the collection imported 
 by John Aurispa in 1423 forming probably the most im- 
 portant contribution. He had brought, according to Traver- 
 sarius, nearly all the extant works of Plato, and also those of 
 Plotinus, Proclus, Lucian, Xenophon, Dio, Arrian, Diodorus 
 Siculus, the Orphic Hymns, the Geography of Strabo, Calli- 
 maclius, Pindar, and Oppian 1 . To this array the poor exiles 
 
 choian contributed the last instalment of any magnitude, but the 
 ^ oas was enormous - Quirinus, a Venetian, writing to pope 
 Nicolas v, asserts that more than a hundred and twenty 
 thousand volumes had been destroyed by the conquering 
 Turks. In his eyes the loss would seem to have appeared not 
 merely irreparable in itself but fatal to the cause of Greek 
 1 Ersch and Grnber, Grieclienland, VHI 290.
 
 THE GREEK EXILES. 401 
 
 learning ; and he predicts, in language that seems the utterance CHAP. v. 
 of a genuine emotion, that the literature 'which had given ^Ll- 
 light to the whole world, that had brought in wholesome 
 laws, sacred philosophy, and all other branches of a noble 
 culture,' will absolutely be lost to men 1 . ^Eneas Sylvius, in a predictions 
 speech delivered a few months later before the assembled ByMu. 
 princes of Germany at Katisbon, echoed his despairing tones. 
 Constantinople, he declared, had been the home of learning, 
 the citadel of philosophy, and now that she had fallen before 
 the Infidel, the wisdom of Hellas was destined also to perish. 
 'Poetry and philosophy,' he exclaims, in a letter written at 
 nearly the same time, ' seem buried. There are, I admit, not 
 a- few illustrious seats of learning among the Latin race. 
 Rome, Paris, Bologna, Padua, Sienna, Perugia, Cologne, 
 Vienna, Salamanca, Oxford, Pavia, Leipsic, Erfurt, but 
 these are all but rivulets from the fountains of the Greeks, 
 and if you sever the stream from its source it dries up 2 .' It 
 would be unjust to set down these exaggerated expressions as 
 mere rhetorical outbursts, and we may fairly suppose that the 
 writers were in ignorance at the time of how much had 
 already been done towards averting a calamity like that 
 which they foreboded. They both lived to see the promise of * v?*- x 
 
 J J turns falsified 
 
 a very different future. The light in Constantinople was far j|-^ e8 *" 
 from being altogether quenched 3 , while in western Christen- 
 dom the capture of the eastern capital, with its immediate 
 consequences, served only to lend a new impulse to the ardour 
 of the scholar. ' It is hardly credible,' says an author of this 
 age, writing but a few years later, 'how many of our country- 
 men became almost like Greeks bred in Attica and Achaia, in 
 their capacity for comprehending the Greek literature 4 .' At 
 the very time moreover that the fugitives from Constantin- 
 ople were hastening across the Adriatic, it is probable that 
 the sheets of the Mazarin Bible were issuing from the press 
 
 1 Hody, p. 191-2. tur enim Reuchlinus (De Arte Caba- 
 
 2 Ibid. listica, lib. i), "plus illic fuisse dis- 
 
 3 ' Quin vero constat in urbe Con- cipulorum quam decem millium, e 
 stantinopoli, postquam a Turcis cap- Persia, Graecia, Latio, et Judaismo. " ' 
 ta fuisset, floruisse magno numero Ibid. p. 193. 
 
 literariun non modo aliarum verum * Angelus Decembrius, De Litera- 
 etiam Gragcarum studiosos. Testa- ria Politia (quoted by Hody). 
 
 "26
 
 402 
 
 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. 
 
 conduct of 
 scholars in 
 
 estimation. 
 
 of Guttenberg at Maintz ; and thus, while Italy was rescu- 
 ing from destruction the most valuable thought of the ancient 
 world, Germany was devising the means for its diffusion, in 
 lands of which Strabo never heard and to an extent of which 
 the Sosii never dreamed. 
 
 There was now no lack of teachers of Greek, or rather of 
 those who professed to teach the language. But, as Voigt 
 observes, the estimation in which the scholarship of the new 
 comers was held appears for the most part to have declined 
 in proportion as the knowledge of their language and litera- 
 ture increased among those whom they aspired to teach. 'As 
 they continued,' he says, ' to arrive in ever-increasing^num- 
 bers and yet more and more in the character of mendicants, 
 the respect with which these scions of the Homeric heroes 
 and of the ancient Athenians were at first regarded altogether 
 vanished. It was seen that they were totally unable to lay 
 aside their Byzantine arrogance ; that they were surly and 
 peevish, though dependent for their very existence on cha- 
 rity, destitute of the ordinary comforts of life, and under the 
 necessity of occupying themselves as teachers or of paying 
 court to the great. Men thought they would do better if 
 they were to endeavour to adapt themselves to the customs 
 of their new homes, to shave their white beards, and lay 
 as ide their dull affectation of superiority. They shewed 
 moreover a notable incapacity for acquiring either the Latin 
 or the Italian language. Of the former, but few, and these 
 only after long years of toil, acquired any command, while 
 not more than three or four attained to facility and elegance 
 of expression 1 . To the Latins, who acquired the Greek lan- 
 guage with such ardour and rapidity, and so zealously betook 
 themselves to the study of its literature, they consequently 
 appeared as boorish and indolent men. The sluggish By- 
 
 1 Even tho ablest among them 
 seem to have despaired of attaining 
 to a complete mastery of the Ian- 
 guage: Bessarion hiniHelf says: 
 NostrisimpoHHibileeHtaliquidnequali 
 gratia atque Latini in lingua Latina 
 Bcribere, quantumcumque vel Gneci 
 in Latins, vel Latiui in Grreca lingua 
 
 profecerint. CUJIIH rei turn ego tarn 
 alii de noHtris cligni MUUIIS testes, qui 
 Latinam utcumque mediocriter iu- 
 telligimus lingnam, nil tamen, quod 
 ornatum Latiueque compositum sit, 
 scribere possum.' Epltt. ad Lwsca- 
 rin, Hody, p. 177.
 
 BESSARION. 403 
 
 zantine temperament ill consorted with the lively Italian CHAP. v. 
 character: and even in the time of pope Eugenius (1431- ^-1" 
 1447) the readiness to assist these Greek wanderers, who 
 were almost entirely useless members of society, had already 
 sensibly declined 1 .' 
 
 The chief patron of the unfortunate exiles at this June- Bessarion. 
 ture was the celebrated Bessarion, a native of Trapezus but <* liti 
 of Greek descent 2 , and distinguished by his patriotic zeal in 
 behalf of the national cause. His efforts to sustain the tot- 
 tering empire had been of no ordinary kind, though he had 
 been absent in Italy when the final catastrophe occurred ; 
 we even find indeed one of his admirers asserting that to bis 
 absence that calamity was mainly due, and that the capital 
 had never fallen had Bessarion been there to animate the 
 spirit of its defenders 3 . Long after the event, he was still His patriotic 
 
 zeal. 
 
 foremost among those who urged aggressive measures against 
 
 the Turks, and he is said to have built and equipped at his 
 
 own expense a trireme to cooperate with the Venetian fleet. 
 
 In pursuance of the same policy he sought, like Chrysoloras, nu efforts to 
 
 to promote the union of the two Churches ; for it was, he churches. 
 
 maintained, the religious differences of the East and the 
 
 West which gave the infidel his chief advantage ; it was 
 
 those differences that had brought about the overthrow of 
 
 the great Churches of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria ; 
 
 and unless so prolific a source of disunited counsels were 
 
 removed, he predicted that Europe would share the fate of 
 
 Africa, and the Crescent everywhere be seen triumphant 
 
 over the standard of the Cross 4 . Such were the sentiments 
 
 1 Voigt, p. 332. rum calamitatum gnari sunt, duo 
 
 2 'Ex vetere Grsecia oriundus, na- ilia imperia nunquam fuisse corrui- 
 tusque in Asia, utriusque collegit tura, si Bessarion, magni animi at- 
 generosi spiritus semina.' Platinse que consilii vir, illis in locis turn 
 Panegyricus, Boerner, p. 82. This fuisset, cum tempestas ilia contra 
 panegyric, which contains much va- non Graces tantum sed humanum 
 luable material for the life of Bessa- genus exorta est. Excitasset enim 
 rion, -was composed during the life- vir omnium vigilantissimus dormi- 
 time of the cardinal, and gives no entem Gracam, armasset nimio otio 
 facts subsequent to the elevation of languentes animos, ire in hostem 
 his rival, Pius n, to the papal chair. suos, et a cervicibua tantam calami- 
 Hody, who had never seen it, speaks tatem avertere quantam passi sunt, 
 of it (p. 152) as a funeral oration ! spe vera et integra laudis proposita, 
 
 3 'Constans est certe, Quirites, compnlisset.' Ibid. pp. 84-5. 
 omnium bene sentientium opiuio, et 4 'Dicebat enim, quod verissimum 
 eorum ma, -rime qui suo periculo ista- est, Mahometanam perfidiam late 
 
 26 2
 
 404 
 
 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 HU conver- 
 sion to the 
 western 
 Church. 
 
 HU example 
 productive of 
 little result. 
 
 to which he gave expression in the year 1438, at the council 
 of Ferrara. On the convening of that assembly he had 
 appeared as the advocate of the Greek faith, and had seen in 
 the opposite ranks men like Guarino, Traversari, and Au- 
 rispa, whom Pope Eugejiius had deputed to defend the Latin 
 tenets. As the debates proceeded Bessarion had been 
 brought to the conclusion that the chief question in dispute, 
 that respecting the Procession of the Holy Ghost, turned 
 on a merely verbal distinction; and had consequently, with a 
 candour that offered a marked contrast to the characteristic 
 obstinacy of his countrymen, given in his adhesion to the 
 Romish faith as the representative of his party 1 . He was 
 shortly after created cardinal, and twice during his lifetime 
 it seemed more than probable that the supreme dignity of 
 the tiara would also fall to his lot. The attempted union of 
 the two Churches however it was beyond his power to bring 
 about. He continued firm in his allegiance to the western 
 communion, and his bearded countenance, along with that of 
 another convert of eminence, the cardinal of Kiew, was con- 
 spicuous in the throng of ecclesiastics at the papal court; but 
 his example attracted few or no followers. The great major- 
 ity of his countrymen still insisted with wearisome pertina- 
 city on their distinctive views, which they vindicated by 
 appeals to the early fathers of the eastern Church. It was 
 
 crevisse dnm religionis nostrae capita 
 inter se dissiderent ; procedatne Spi- 
 ritus Sanctus . a Patre tantum, ut 
 Gneci, an a Patre et Filio ut Latini 
 volebant ; his enim controversiis fac- 
 tiiin, nt ad Mahometanos, partim vi, 
 I M n i in sponte, deficerent populi, dum 
 Christiana religionis principes quid 
 potiwHimura teneaut incertos vident. 
 Hinc amissam esse Antiochcnam ec- 
 clesiam, hinc Hierosolymitanain, hinc 
 Alexandririam; hinc dcnique omnem 
 forme Asiain et totam Africam hanc 
 peotem occupasse, et, quod gravius 
 est, Europa> quasdam partes jamjam 
 infecisse ac longius evagaturam, ni, 
 propere Bublatin tarn perniciosis con- 
 troversiis ac pulsis Christianas rei- 
 public.u hostibus, in possessionem 
 veterem labore vigiliis ac sanguine 
 martyrum comparatam, armati cum 
 
 vexillo crucis pervenerint.' Ibid. p. 80. 
 1 Voigt says of the conduct of the 
 representatives of the Greek party 
 on this occasion: 'Sie kamen und 
 suchten Hiilfe ; schon in dieser eiu- 
 fachen Situation war es stillschwei- 
 gend ausgesprochen, dass sie bereit 
 waren, sich um guten Preis den Dog- 
 men der lateinischen Kirche zu fii- 
 gen. Dennoch wurden erst lange 
 gelehrte Scheingefechte eroffnet, 
 mochte nun der griechische Klerus 
 nicht ganz so glaubensbereit sein 
 wie der Kaiser oder mochte man 
 auch nur den Schein retten wollen.' 
 p. 333. Hody, who has taken his 
 account entirely from Sguropulos, 
 Hist. Cone. Florent., gives a Bome- 
 what different aspect to the proceed- 
 ings, see pp. 137-42.
 
 ARGYROPULOS. 405 
 
 thus that, unhappily for the progress of classical learning and CHAP. v. 
 the peace of the scholar, the Greek language became in the ^l^^lL, 
 minds of many associated with heresy, and an opposition far Greek b- 
 
 * . . comes asso- 
 
 more irrational even than that which the New Aristotle had Jj^^ wilh 
 evoked, confronted the professors of the Greek literature not 
 only in Italy but also in Germany and in England. 
 
 We have already mentioned John Argyropulos as one Anrvropuios. 
 of the few men of learning in the promiscuous throng of <* **<> (?) 
 fugitives from Constantinople. He was a native of that 
 city and of noble birth. Along with the majority of those 
 whose attainments encouraged them to look for assistance at 
 the hands of the patrons of letters, he betook himself to 
 Florence, where Cosmo de Medici was then at the height 
 of his popularity and power. Argyropulos was hospitably The Medici 
 received, and the instruction of the youthful Lorenzo was 
 confided to his care : he thenceforth attached himself to the 
 family of the Medici, and by the lustre which his numerous 
 dedications, the expressions of genuine gratitude and admi- 
 ration, cast upon that noble house, may be held to have 
 more than repaid the many favours he received. His real 
 learning, united to such powerful patronage, soon drew around 
 him a distinguished circle of scholars seeking to gain a 
 knowledge of the Greek literature, among whom the most 
 eminent was undoubtedly Politian. Driven by the plague 
 from Florence, Argyropulos next took refuge in Rome, where 
 his lectures on Aristotle still further enhanced his reputation. 
 According to the testimony of his illustrious scholar, his He devotes 
 
 ,, j j i himself to 
 
 rano-e of knowledge was unusually extended, embracing not improvim? 
 ' c the know- 
 
 merely grammar and rhetoric but a perfected acquaintance l j$j^ le 
 
 with the whole course of the trivium and yuadrivium 1 ; he 
 
 was however singularly disdainful of the Latin language and 
 
 literature, and his efforts were almost entirely concentrated 
 
 on promoting a more accurate acquaintance with the Aristo- Admitted ex- 
 
 telian philosophy. Philelphus, Cortesius, and Politian vie h . is tr 
 
 with each other in their praises of his services in this field. 
 
 Plura ' virorum, says Boerner, after quoting their emphatic 
 
 1 ' disciplinarum cunctarum, quae tissimus est habitus.' Miscellanea, 
 Cyclicaa a Martiano dicuntur, erudi- c. i. Hody, p. 199.
 
 406 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. encomiums, taceo testimonia, quibus de insigni eximiaque 
 >_J^L^ illius eruditions prcvdicarunt. Theodorus Gaza, whose mo- 
 dest worth stands in such favorable contrast to the vanity 
 and arrogance of many of the scholars of this period, burnt 
 his own translations of the Naturalia and the Ethics when he 
 heard that Argyropulos had also, versions of them forthcom- 
 ing 1 . We realise the change that had come about since the 
 time of Petrarch, when we find, the haughty exile declaring 
 that Cicero, from whose writings Petrarch had chiefly 
 gained his knowledge of the ancient philosophy, Cicero, 
 whose ascendancy over the minds of educated Italy was in- 
 iitsdeprecia- creasing with every year, had no true knowledge either of 
 
 tion of Cicero J J 
 
 waphiioso- the Greek language or of the systems of the great Greek 
 thinkers 2 . This jealousy of all Roman interpreters of the 
 Greek oracles was however too often exhibited by these un- 
 grateful dependants on Italian charity. Latinos, said Poli- 
 tian 'sarcastically, in participatum suce lingua doctrinceque 
 non libenter admittit ista natio. 
 
 ulboure. 117 Unlike Chry soleras and Guarino, his rivals in professional 
 fame, Argyropulos left behind him considerable contributions 
 to classical literature. They were chiefly translations from 
 Aristotle, but translations which afforded such assistance to 
 the student of philosophy as was to be found in no other 
 existing versions. Dissatisfied with the labours of Boethius 
 and Petrus Hispanus, he translated anew the Prcedicamenta 
 and the De Interpretatione. Roger Bacon, if not completely 
 reassured, would certainly have taken fresh heart could he 
 have seen the versions that now appeared of the Posterior 
 Analytics, the Physics, the De Ccelo, the De Anima, and the 
 Metaphysics. When we find the most eminent critics of the 
 age disputing whether these translations are to be praised 
 more for their elegance or for their fidelity, it seems reason- 
 able to conclude that both characteristics are present in a 
 
 1 Boerner, p. 146. ceteris turn quidem suis sectatoribua 
 
 ' Et ut homo erat omnium (ut persuaserat, ita ut, quod pene dictu 
 
 torn quidem videbatur) acerrirnuB in quoque uefas, pro concessp inter 
 
 dispntando, atque aurem (quod ait nos baberetur, nee philosophicam 
 
 Persiub) mordaci lotus aceto, pneterea scisse M. Tullium nee Graecas lite- 
 
 verborum quoque nostrorum fundita- ras.' Hody, p. 199. 
 tor maximus, facile id vel nobis vel
 
 AENEAS SYLVIUS. 407 
 
 marked degree. Their general excellence was rarely called CHAP. v. 
 in question, and they altogether surpassed the versions that ^s 
 appeared under the auspices of Nicholas v, by George Trape- 
 zuntius, Gregory Tifernas, or even those by Theodore Gaza 1 . 
 At Rome Argyropulos was wont to see cardinals, nobles, 
 and others of high civic dignity assemble around him. On A.D-HSI 
 
 c > f Reuchlin and 
 
 one of these occasions, when he was on the point of com- Argyropulos. 
 mencing a lecture on Thucydides, a young man whose 
 modest retinue and address afforded a strong contrast to 
 those of many of the august audience, stepped forward and 
 introduced himself to the lecturer. He expressed in courtly 
 phrase his sympathy with the exiled Greeks, and described 
 himself as a German not wholly ignorant of Greek, but anxious 
 to increase his knowledge of the language. Argyropulos, 
 to test his attainments, forthwith invited him to proceed with 
 the translation of one of the Thucydidean orations. Whether 
 or no it was the 'Funeral Oration' by Pericles we are not 
 informed, but the lecturer was startled by the correctness 
 of the new comer's pronunciation and the fidelity of his 
 rendering. Nostro exilio, he exclaimed, Grcecia transvolavit 
 Alpes*. 
 
 The flight of Greece across the Alps had however taken Learning in 
 
 Germany. 
 
 place long before Argyropulos became apprised of the fact 
 through the visit of John Reuchlin to Rome. Before the 
 close of the first half of the century, the scholars of Germany 
 had heard something about the new learning, and were now 
 already welcoming, though not without certain manifesta- 
 tions of that defiant spirit with which Teutonism has ever 
 been prone to regard the fashions of the Latin race, in their 
 own land, the culture to which they were in turn to impart 
 
 1 ' Freilich 1st ihr Verdienst so -wie translates ab eo fuisse ait. Petrus 
 
 das Bruni's in der Folge durck Argy- Nanuius auteni, ad verba magis quam 
 
 ropulos verdunkelt \vorden, und fiir ad sensum, Argyropulum attendisse, 
 
 ewige Zeiteu haben sie alle nicht ipsiusque adeo interpretationes nee 
 
 gearbeitet.' Voigt, p. 355. ' Diversa iidoles nee elegantes esse pronuntiat. 
 
 et contraria inter se de Argyropuli Attamen accurate interpretaudi lau- 
 
 versiouibus virorum doctorum sunt dem illi haudquaquam denegaudam 
 
 judicia. E. YoLiterranns eleganter esse, Huetius arbitrator.' Boeruer, p. 
 
 magis quam fideliter Aristotelis li- 149. See also Hody, 208-9. 
 bros eurn convertisse censet. Contra 2 The authority for this is ilelanch- 
 
 ea loach. Perizonius ndeliter magis thon; see his Oratio de lohanne Cap- 
 
 quam ornate eleganterque illos ipsos nione, Declamationes, i 625.
 
 408 
 
 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 Gregory 
 llciaiburg. 
 
 The Italian 
 scholar and 
 fieri nan 
 jurist ccn- 
 
 . 
 6. 1420. 
 
 the impress of the national genius. Of this movement ^Eneas 
 Sylvius, afterwards pope Pius II, is perhaps entitled to be 
 regarded as the inaugurator. At the time that he became 
 attached to the imperial court, all around him seemed dull 
 and mechanical as of old, and it was with but small success 
 that he endeavoured to arouse the phlegmatic nobles to a 
 sense of the higher pleasures now within their reach. He 
 describes them much as Poggio some thirty years before had 
 described the nobility of England. 'They prefer their horses 
 and their dogs to poets,' he says, 'and like their horses and 
 their dogs they shall perish and be forgotten 1 .' It must 
 have been an agreeable surprise for him when he one day, at 
 the court of Neustadt, heard a German voice boldly and 
 forcibly defending the merits of the new learning. The voice 
 was that of Gregory Heimburg, a sturdy Teuton, who though 
 at that time, in the enthusiasm of his youth, led captive by 
 the fascinations of the new school, lived to repudiate them 
 almost entirely and to exemplify, in his career as a jurist, 
 that nervous manly style of eloquence which he regarded as 
 altogether preferable to what seemed to him the effeminate 
 niceties of Italian scholarship. When -^Eneas Sylvius filled 
 the papal chair he was himself exposed to the lash of Heim- 
 burg's vigorous rhetoric; and Voigt in an admirable criticism 
 has enlarged upon the characteristics of these two, the 
 Italian scholar and the German jurist, as affording an apt 
 illustration of the points of national contrast that were after- 
 wards more fully brought out in connexion with the progress 
 of the Humanismus in their respective countries 2 . Pope Pius 
 died in the year 1464, and very soon after we have ample evi- 
 dence that his efforts, and those of others like him, had not 
 been expended on a wholly ungrateful soil. Hegius, who 
 combined in a remarkable degree the learning of the school- 
 
 1 In another of his writings he thus 
 contrasts the character of learning in 
 demand in Germany with that in 
 Italy : ' Teutoncs oinnes cancellariffl 
 aptoB arbitrantur qui vcl civilis vel 
 canonici juris periti dicuntur, aut 
 quoH vocant magiatroH artium, qui 
 prater garnilam et loquacem dia- 
 lecticam uiliil aliurmn uruum didi- 
 
 cere. Florentini eos asHumant, qui- 
 bus Ciceronin et Qnintiliani pracepta 
 notisHima sunt, poetaruin et oratorum 
 imlmti doctrinist, .... atque eos si 
 domi non inveniunt foris qiiffirunt.' 
 Hint. Friedrich I LI p. 327, (quoted 
 by Prantl, iv 160.) 
 8 Voigt, pp. 383-9.
 
 LEARNING IN GERMANY. 409 
 
 man with the spirit of an innovator, is to be found teaching CHAP. v. 
 at Deventer, and, though his own knowledge of Greek was J!l^lL 
 slender, strenuously exhorting his scholars to the acquirement nuwhoout 
 
 Ueventer. 
 
 of the language. He had himself been a pupil of the re- 
 nowned Rudolphus Agricola, and among his scholars was a 
 boy named Gerard. One day Agricola was on a visit to his 
 old pupil, and the youthful Gerard was brought before him 
 as one of whom the master entertained more than ordinary 
 expectations: the great teacher looked at the boy's bright 
 eyes and well-shaped head, and prophesied the future great- 
 ness of Erasmus 1 . At Munster we find the indefatigable 
 Rudolf von Lange watching with untiring greatness over nudoir von 
 his famous school, introducing new text-books and discarding & i9. 
 the old, and remodelling the whole system of instruction, 'J is inno - 
 
 / ' lions on the 
 
 until the monks of Cologne were ready to denounce him as ^XTof 
 a heretic. The counsels of Agricola sustained him in his "* 
 work. 'Your efforts,' wrote the latter, 'inspire me with the 
 fondest hope, and I predict that we shall one day succeed in 
 wresting from proud Italy that ancient renown for eloquence 
 of which she has hitherto retained almost undisputed pos- 
 session, and shall wipe away that reproach of barbarian sloth- 
 fulness, ignorance, poverty of expression and whatever marks 
 an unlettered race, with which she unceasingly assails us, 
 and Germany shall be seen to be in learning and culture not 
 less Latin than Latium herself 2 .' In spirit a not unworthy 
 compeer of these, the theologian, John Wessel, was manfully Joim 
 advocating a less tame submission to the scholastic yoke, and d - 1489 - 
 sturdily asserting that if Aquinas was a doctor he was a He disputes 
 
 . the authority 
 
 doctor too, that he was conversant with three of the ancient 
 tongues, while Aquinas had known but one, and that imper- 
 fectly, that he had gazed upon Aristotle in his native dress, 
 while Aquinas had scarcely beheld his shadow 3 . 
 
 1 Geiger, Johann Reuchlin, Em- et si quid est his incultius, esse nos 
 
 leitung, pp. x-xi. Yon Rauiner, jactitant, exsolvamus, futuramque 
 
 Geschicht-e der Padagogik, i 86-9. tamdoctam et litteratam Germaniam 
 
 3 'TJiium hoc tibi affirmo, fore nostram, ut non latinius vel ipsum 
 
 aliquando ut priscain insoleuti Ita- sit Latium.' Eichhorn, Geschichte 
 
 Use et propemodmn occupatam bene der Litteratur, n 157. 
 
 dicendi gloriam extorqueamus viu- 3 Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der 
 
 dicemusqtie nos, et ab ignavia, qua Reformation, n 285-685. 
 nos barbaros indoctosque et elingues,
 
 410 
 
 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 Rudolphus 
 Ajtricola. 
 t>. 1443. 
 d. 1485. 
 
 HisD 
 
 J-'ormando 
 
 Studio. 
 
 Philosophy 
 
 ilvfiiivd. 
 
 Of the foregoing, Agricola, short as was his career, attained 
 to by far the greatest eminence l . His translations from the 
 Greek were numerous and accurate; his Latinity was con- 
 sidered by so competent a judge as Vives, superior to that 
 of Politian; and his treatise on logic became a text-book in 
 our own university. It was not however by these perform- 
 ances that he exercised his chief influence on the age. 
 His most enduring monument is a short, but as Geiger terms 
 it, an 'epoch-making' treatise, the De Formando Studio, which 
 first appeared in the form of a letter to Jacob Barbirianus, 
 dated June 7, 1484 
 
 Few perhaps on turning to the treatise described by so 
 high-sounding an epithet, will fail at first to experience a 
 sense of disappointment. The opening remarks are certainly 
 not distinguished by any great appearance of novelty. 
 Agricola commences by observing that all students have to 
 decide for themselves two preliminary questions, what they 
 shall study, and how they shall study it. Some, as capacity 
 or circumstances may direct, choose the civil law; others, the 
 canon law; others, medicine. The majority however devote 
 themselves to the empty verbal trifling of an arts course, and 
 give up their time to bewildering disputations and riddles 
 which for many centuries have found no CEdipus, and are 
 never likely to find one 2 . Nevertheless it is his counsel to 
 Barbirianus to make philosophy his choice ; ' only let it/ he 
 says, ' be a philosophy entirely different from that of the 
 schools, let it be the art of thinking aright and of giving 
 fitting expression to each thought' 2 .' Philosophy may be di- 
 vided into two provinces, moral and natural ; the former is 
 
 1 ' Kann cin Mann als dcr Anfanger 
 und Vorkainpfer deutscber Bildung 
 im 15ten Juhrbundcrt betracbtet 
 werden, BO 1st es gewiss Itudolpb 
 Agricolft.' Von Ituumer, i 62. 
 
 * ' Civile jus uliiiH, alias pontificum 
 Banctioues, alias uicdicinw artem dis- 
 ciriidum Hiiiuit ; plerique etium lo- 
 quaces bas et iimni strepitu crepitan- 
 tes, qua* vulgo artrs jam tocanuu, 
 sibi vindicaut et perploxis disputa- 
 ti MI in in umbagibus vel etiam, ut verius 
 dicaifl, omiguiutibus diem teruut . . . 
 
 His miseras adolescentium onerant 
 aures, base subinde iugerunt iucul- 
 pantquo et in plerinque nieliorem 
 ingenii spem atque frugem in teneris 
 adbuc annis enecant.' Libellus De 
 Formando Studio, (Colouite, 1532), p. 
 4. Tbe words italicised are wortby 
 of note as corroborating tbe obser- 
 vations in tbe preceding chapter, on 
 tbe extent to wbicb tbe wbole of tbe 
 arts course was pervaded by tbe dia- 
 lectical element.
 
 RUDOLPHUS AGRICOLA. 411 
 
 not to be sought exclusively in Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca CHAP. v. 
 
 is but to be gathered from the actions and examples which ^-^-^ 
 
 history offers to our notice, and especially from the Holy 
 
 Scriptures, and the divine and sure precepts they contain. In 
 
 the latter alone can we find a right conception of the true end 
 
 of life and perfect freedom from error. The science of nature Natural 
 
 i 11 i i science an- 
 
 is less important than that or the moral law, and is to be re- ciliary to 
 
 * B plulosophy. 
 
 garded as chiefly ancillary in its character ; he recommends 
 however the study of geography, botany, geology, medicine, 
 architecture and painting. But both natural and moral phi- 
 losophy must be studied in the classical authors, if we would 
 learn at the same time the art of rightly expressing our 
 thoughts ; these authors again should be rendered with the 
 greatest possible accuracy into one's mother tongue, and then 
 the student on seeing a Latin word will gradually come to asso- 
 ciate it directly with its equivalent in his vernacular. What- use of the 
 
 * native lan- 
 
 ever, on the other hand, he may wish to express in Latin he ^?jj 
 must always first of all reduce to accurate expression in his studles - 
 own mind in his own language 1 . To write with purity and 
 correctness must always precede any attempt at elegance. 
 Further on, he observes that there are three points to which 
 every student must give particular attention : (1) first a clear 
 understanding of his author's meaning ; (2) the firm retention 
 of each idea in his memory ; (3) the acquisition of a habit of 
 adding to and enriching each idea out of his individual 
 thought. After giving a few hints on the way to study a dif- 
 ficult author and to render the memory more tenacious, 
 Aoricola proceeds to amplify on the third point. If we our- Acquired 
 
 . J . r knowledge 
 
 selves, he says, fail to brin^ to our acquired knowledge some- to, 1 * not 
 
 * ' only stored 
 
 thing of fresh thought in turn, our learning lies, not like seed ^ 
 in the fruitful soil, but as it were dead within us; and to 
 prevent this it is necessary that we should not store away 
 what we have acquired and then forget it, but have it, as it 
 were, ready to hand, in order that we may always be able to 
 
 1 'Quidquid apud autores leges, timum erit, id ipsum quam plenis- 
 
 utilissinium fuerit, id ipsum quam siine rectissimeque patrio sermone 
 
 maxirne propriis et idem significan- intra animum tuum forrnare, deinde 
 
 tibus verbis reddere vernaculo ser- Latinis pure proprieque id siguifi- 
 
 mone ... Si quid scribere voles, op- cantibus verbis explicate.' Ibid. p. S.
 
 412 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. compare it with whatever we may ourselves discover by 
 
 >_ '^L, original research. It is accordingly useful to categorize our 
 
 conceptions and to distribute our knowledge under different 
 
 heads ; and also carefully to analyze every conception and 
 
 acquire a habit of surveying it on every side. In this way 
 
 the student will acquire the facility of the ancient sophist, 
 
 who possessed the faculty of speaking impromptu on every 
 
 given theme. 
 
 Real novelty The thought contained in the foregoing outline is now 
 
 of thought in ii.ii 
 
 tuia treatise, almost as commonplace as it was then novel, but it is deserv- 
 ing of notice that we have here, (1) a distinct repudiation of 
 scholastic models, and an appeal to the literary standards of 
 antiquity, at a time when the schoolmen were still omnipotent 
 in Germany ; (2) the necessity of an accurate connotation in 
 the use of words, and the value of the vernacular speech in 
 aiding in such a resuk, clearly pointed out ; (3) a plea for the 
 rights of the individual thinker and an assertion of the 
 dignity of the individual enquirer, at a time when almost 
 every mind was bowing in servile submission to the authority 
 of a few great names and that of their almost equally servile 
 commentators. 
 
 ninDe In Agricola's De Inventione Dialectics we are presented 
 
 Invention. , . ... 
 
 with what Prantl characterizes as entirely ' erne ciceronisch- 
 quintilianische Topik.' The dialectical art, the author con- 
 siders, is simply a method of establishing the probable. In 
 discussing genus and species he endeavours to reconcile the 
 A popular views of Aquinas with those of Duns Scotus. The treatise, 
 
 nuiiiuul of 
 
 though highly praised by Melancththon as the best of his 
 day, is not one to which Prantl concedes any real origin- 
 ality 1 : it was however in general use long after the author's 
 
 1 'Abcr beziiglicb do,s logischen Sinne gibt er im 1 Buche eine Anf- 
 
 Gcbietes denkt vr ausscblicKsHch nur ziihlung der Topen, wobci er gele- 
 
 an eine Satnmlung topiscber Oe- gentlich der Definition auf die Be- 
 
 sicbtspunkto, und die Dialektik ist griffe fining, species u. dgl. koinmt 
 
 ttun nor eineMethode derWahrscbein- und sich veranlasst finrlet, betreffs 
 
 licbkeit, dabcr er miter den Sebriften der Universalien die tbomistiscbe 
 
 dew Aristoteles, deBscn nnentwirrbare Auffassung einer similitude essential is 
 
 Dnnkclbeit aucb er, wie die Uebrigen, in Verbiudung mit des Scotus Ha'c- 
 
 beklagt, lediglicb die Topik beriick- ceitat als den richtigen Standpunkt 
 
 Bicbtigt, und /war dieselbe nacb des zn bezeicbnen.' 1'ruutl, Gesch. d. Lo- 
 
 Boetbius Weise mit der ciceroni- gik, iv 168. 
 Bcbcu verschuiekou will, lu solcheiii
 
 RUDOLPHUS AGRICOLA. 413 
 
 death, and appears to have been one of the most popular of CIIAP.V. 
 the two or three manuals that, up to the time of Seton, i-^-^ 
 superseded for a time the purely scholastic logic 1 . 
 
 It is not necessary that we should here follow any further 
 the progress of the new learning either in Germany or in 
 Italy ; our sole aim in the preceding pages having been to 
 illustrate a few important points in that progress, respect- 
 ing which a certain amount of misapprehension has often pre- 
 vailed. It will be seen that, so far from Aristotle being 
 displaced and set aside by the earlier Humanists, his works 
 engaged a large amount of their attention, and that we may 
 date from the labours of Bruni and Argyropulos the com- 
 mencement of that more intelligent Aristotelianism which, 
 after a long and arduous struggle, succeeded in banishing both 
 the fanciful interpretations of the Averroists and the mechan- 
 ical versions of the schoolmen. It will also be seen that, at General con- 
 the very outset, indications were not wanting of ths uses to preceding 
 
 J outline, 
 
 which the Teutonic and the Latin races would respectively 
 convert the revived literature of antiquity. With the Ger- 
 man, it became the means of widening his whole range of 
 thought, of modifying his conception of education, and of 
 opening up a new field of doctrinal and speculative theology. 
 With the Italian, it served to refine his style, to quicken his 
 fancy, and to convert him into a meditative but generally 
 urbane and genial man of letters or philosopher. The former 
 betook himself to the study of the early fathers, especially 
 those of the Greek Church, and was thus gradually led to 
 reconsider and purify his religious faith ; the latter, lost amid 
 the speculations of the Academicians, became in many in- 
 stances the victim of a shallow scepticism which he scarcely 
 cared to veil. It was exactly in harmony with these tenden- Italian and 
 
 . . German 
 
 cies, that the German scholar, content with acquiring a fairly j 
 correct and vigorous Latin style, remained indifferent to those 
 minuter elegances and nuances of expression which lend a 
 charm to the productions of Ovid, Catullus, and Martial ; 
 while the excessive attention devoted by the Italian scholar 
 
 1 Von Eaumer (Gesch. d. Pdda- erkliirte sich auf's Scharfste gegen die 
 gogik, i 83) observes, ' Agricola selbst scholastische Dialektik.'
 
 414 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. to these same niceties, led him to regard with servile admira- 
 
 PABT I. 
 
 v tion the genius of those authors by whom they had been 
 most successfully cultivated. Hence, in his enthusiasm, he 
 imitated not only the elegance of the Latinity, but the im- 
 purity of the thought. We are here under no necessity of illus- 
 trating, as Voigt and other writers have done, the prevalence 
 of this element in the writings of the Transalpine scholars of 
 this period ; but the most adverse critic of that now some- 
 what neglected literature will find no difficulty in admitting, 
 that in the above respect the imitators fully reached the 
 standard of their originals. From this taint the learning 
 of Germany was for a long time comparatively free; and to 
 the last, men like Reuchlin, Mutian, and Erasmus, could 
 recall with honourable pride, that the party they represented 
 had never sullied a noble cause by productions like the 
 Facetice of Poggio or the Hermaphroditus of Beccadelli 1 . 
 B^uve e kffi- If we pursue our comparison into the days of the Re- 
 Rronnation. formation we shall find the above contrast still holding 
 good. The Humanists of Italy were for the most part 
 hostile to the Reformers, and the denunciations of Savonarola 
 were in turn not unfrequently directed against both the 
 learning and the licentiousness of the writers who adorned 
 the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent. In Germany, on 
 the other hand, though Protestantism was still far from 
 implying free thought, the two parties drew much more 
 closely together : and had Savonarola lived to witness the rise 
 of Luther, he could scarcely have denied, that the victory won 
 by those whom he denounced in Italy, largely contributed to 
 the victory won by those who represented his spirit among 
 the Teutonic race. It was undoubtedly the success in Italy 
 that made success in Germany and England possible, or at 
 least much less arduous. To the example of a Nicolas v, a 
 Pius II, and a Leo x, the Humanists chiefly owed it that the 
 
 1 Von Raumer (Gesch. d. Ptida- sional grossness. But in the mere 
 
 ffogik, i 109 n. 1) haH, as it appears question of degree there can be no 
 
 to me somewhat unjustly, compared comparison between the two, and the 
 
 the Colloquies of Eramnus to the coarseness of the Colloquies is but 
 
 Facetite of Poggio, and severely cen- their accident, while that of the 
 
 sores the former writer for his occa- Facetice is their essence.
 
 THE NEW WEAPON. 415 
 
 odium theologicum was not more powerfully and actively in- CIIAP. v. 
 voked against them, especially after the spread of Greek ^I^-L* 
 learning had lent new force to the old arguments, from the 
 supposed connexion of its literature with a formidable and 
 widespread heresy. 
 
 In reviewing these different features it is easy to perceive ^^ f 
 that the moot question of the advantages and disadvantages Ak&n'p^ 
 of classical learning was again already challenging the atten- fodVtue 
 tion of the world : and it is impossible not therewith to be 
 reminded of those warning voices which, some seven centuries 
 before, had been so emphatically lifted up against the allure- 
 ments of pagan genius. The evils which conservatism fore- 
 tells are certainly not always mere chimeras. We may feel 
 assured that could Gregory the Great have revisited Italy at 
 this crisis, and have seen the licentious muse of the Italian 
 scholars sheltering itself from censure by pleading the exam- 
 ple of classic models, or could Alcuin again have trod the 
 soil that once acknowledged the rule of Charlemagne, and 
 have witnessed the changes that resulted from the teaching 
 of Erasmus and the Reformers, they would each have 
 pointed to what they beheld as affording the amplest justifi- 
 cation of their own oft -repeated warnings. And not merely 
 this, they would also have seen that the ancient power of 
 the Church, to eradicate evils like those which had come to 
 pass, was no longer hers. With the discovery of printing the 
 tares sown by the enemy had acquired a new and irrepressi- 
 ble capacity of reproduction. With the rise of the art of 
 criticism a new weapon had been brought to bear upon the 
 defenders of the Church ; a weapon which, it has been aptly 
 said, changed the whole character of the strife between mind 
 and mind, as completely as did the invention of firearms that 
 of the art of war. The student of pagan literature was 
 no longer an isolated solitary monk, timidly and often fur- 
 tively turning the page of Terence or Virgil, exposed to the 
 sarcasms of his brethren or the rebuke of his superior, but 
 one of an illustrious band whose talents and achievements 
 were winning the admiration of Europe. The bigotry of the 
 adherents to the old discipline found itself confronted by
 
 416 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. weapons to which it could offer no effectual resistance ; the 
 Jj^Ii, ancient terrorism was in its turn besieged by the combined 
 
 forces of reason, eloquence, and satire. 
 The Human- As might be easily conjectured, but few of the Humanists 
 
 ists and the " 
 
 or- were to be found among either the monastic or the mendicant 
 fraternities. Traversari belonged to the order of the Camul- 
 dules ; Antonio da Rho was a Franciscan, and Cardinal 
 Bessarion was protector of the same fraternity ; Maffeo Begio 
 retired in his latter life to a Benedictine monastery 1 . But 
 these were notable exceptions, and generally speaking it was 
 among the religious orders that the most obstinate and 
 The Human- bigoted opposition was to be encountered. As regards the 
 
 istaatthe ... rr .. . f . , .. , , 
 
 universities, universities, it is ot importance to observe the general cha- 
 racter of their culture at this period. We have already 
 incidentally noted the progress of nominalism in one or two 
 of the most influential of these centres, and those who may 
 be desirous of tracing its progress more in detail will find 
 ample guidance in the fourth volume of Prantl's exhaustive 
 treatise. Everywhere the Byzantine logic, with its Scotian 
 developement and Occamistic illumination 2 , was giving birth 
 to a series of manuals, each designed to introduce some new 
 refinement on the theory of the suppositio or the theory of 
 the Terminists, or on the distinctions between scientia realls 
 and sermocinalis, or on quidditas, licecceitas, and formalitas. 
 The realists and nominalists however, now known as the 
 
 FroCTcsaof Aiitioui and Moderni, constituted the two great parties, and 
 
 nominalism 
 
 verlitk-s"" a ^ a ' mos t every university, Leipsic, Greiswald, and Prague 
 being the principal exceptions, were still waging, or had but 
 just concluded, the struggle for preeminence. At Paris, as 
 we have already seen, the overwhelming strength of the 
 theologians, notwithstanding the position assumed by Gerson, 
 still kept the nominalistic doctrines under a ban. At Heidel- 
 
 1 Voigt, 468-74. sit?' It was in his eyes another 
 
 * Occam appears to have been, in proof of the degrading tendencies of 
 
 the opinion of many, the real cause the study of logic that it found ac- 
 
 of the interminable warfare. Leo- ceptance among a race so barbarous 
 
 nardo Bruni in his treatise De I>is- as our own, ' etiam ilia barbara quro 
 
 piitiitinmnn Um, says, 'Quid est, tr,ans oceanum habitat in illam im- 
 
 inquam, in dialectica, quod non Bri- petum facit.' p. 26. 
 tannicis sophismatibus conturbatum
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES. 417 
 
 berg, on the other hand, which was now becoming a noted AP. v. 
 school of liberal thought, the nominalists had expelled their -y ' 
 antagonists. It was much the same at Vienna and at 
 Erfurt, a centre of considerable intellectual activity, which 
 its enemies were wont to stigmatise as novorum omnium 
 portus. At Basel, under the able leadership of Johannes 
 a Lapide, the realists, though somewhat outnumbered, main- 
 tained their ground. Freiburg, Tubingen and Ingoldstadt 
 appear to have arrived at a kind of compromise, each party 
 having its own professor and representing a distinct ' nation.' 
 At Maintz a manual of logic was published with the 
 sanction of the authorities, which, with certain reservations, 
 was essentially a nominalistic manifesto. A period of in- 
 ternal discord might naturally be supposed to have favoured Attitude of 
 
 the univer- 
 
 the introduction of a new culture, but the attitude of the ^^Jjj the 
 universities seems to have been almost invariably hostile new learning - 
 to the new learning, and both nominalists and realists laid 
 aside their differences to oppose the common foe. To the 
 Humanists, Prantl observes, two courses were open : they 
 could either insist on a restoration of the true logic of 
 Aristotle and a general rejection of the misconstructions and 
 unjustifiable additions made by Petras Hispanus and his 
 countless commentators, or they could denounce the whole 
 study of logic, as worthless and pernicious, and demand that 
 it should be altogether set aside and its place be filled by 
 rhetoric 1 . In Italy, the latter course was unfortunately the 
 one almost universally adopted, and the tone of the Hu- 
 manists was irritating in the extreme. Looking again at the 
 position of the universities, when compared with that when 
 the New Aristotle claimed admittance, we see that two 
 centuries had materially modified its character. They had 
 acquired distinct traditions in all the branches of learning ; 
 they possessed, in many instances, well-endowed chairs, 
 whose occupants were tenacious of the received methods of 
 interpretation, and strongly prejudiced in favour of the 
 current system of instruction. The literature which it was 
 sought to introduce was not only open, as formerly, to the 
 
 1 Prantl, Geschichte d. Loyik, iv 151-2, 
 
 27
 
 418 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. suspicion of heresy, but was undeniably exposed to the charge 
 -J^lL of licentiousness. Compromise accordingly appears to have 
 been desired by neither party ; and canonists and civilians 
 offered as hostile a front as the logicians. Bologna, jealous 
 on behalf of that special learning to which she owed her 
 fame, shut her gates in the face of the new comers. On the 
 one side the cry was 'No surrender,' on the other, 'No 
 quarter.' 
 
 ut"* e JttSSuhe The civil law was not, it is true, the weakest point in 
 
 """ the prevailing culture, but the absorbing attention given 
 
 to the study constituted it a central position which the 
 
 assailants seemed bound at almost any cost to carry, and 
 
 it was consequently selected for their most energetic attack. 
 
 It was the predominant school not only at Bologna but also 
 
 vaiia at the a t Padua and at Pavia : and when Valla received his appoint- 
 
 university of 
 
 ment to the chair of rhetoric in the last-named university, 
 he soon found that his own readiness for the battle was 
 for once fully equalled by that of his opponents. His pre- 
 vious utterances had not failed to attract the attention of the 
 civilians. The mercenary spirit in which they pursued their 
 calling had. as we have already seen, been sharply commented 
 on by Poggio ; but the criticisms of Valla in his Elegantia, 
 the foremost production of the age in the field of Latin 
 philology, had wounded their pride much more sensibly. 
 In pursuance of the general assertion which he had therein 
 maintained, that the want of an accurate knowledge of the 
 Latin tongue obscured the true meaning of the writers of an- 
 tiquity to students in every department of learning, he had 
 proceeded to compare the style of the ancient commentators 
 on the Pandects with that of the more modern school, repre- 
 sented by Accursius, Cinus, Baldus, and Bartolus (the most 
 highly esteemed commentators in his own day), and had 
 pointed out how deplorably the latter fell short of the lucid 
 diction and terseness of expression of the former. Most 
 probably even Valla, notwithstanding his dauntless and fiery 
 nature, would not have cared to revive the controversy in 
 the very heart of such a stronghold of the civil law ; but he 
 was not suffered to remain at peace. A jurist of some
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES. 419 
 
 eminence in the same city proceeded to inveigh against the CHAP. v. 
 Humanists in a manner which could not be left unnoticed. ^-^ 
 As Valla had called in question the merits of Cinus, the comparison 
 
 . / i instituted by 
 
 deity of the civilians, the jurist retorted by calling in question ^^ nt 
 the merits of Cicero, the deity of the rhetoricians. He MdSJnSiSS. 
 assumed the most irritating of all attitudes, the attitude 
 of calm unquestionable superiority. To argument he did 
 not condescend, but he laid it down as beyond dispute that 
 the efforts of the greatest rhetorician could not compare 
 with those of an average jurist. The most unimportant 
 treatise to be found in the literature of the civil law, for 
 example that by Bartolus, entitled De Insigniis et Armis, 
 was, he asserted, of far greater value than the most admired 
 production of the Roman orator. ' All the rhetoricians set 
 style above matter and preferred the foliage to the fruit; 
 Cicero was but an empty-headed babbler.' Incensed beyond 
 measure, Valla hastened to borrow of his friend Cato Sacco vaiia's 
 
 attack on 
 
 a copy of this precious treatise by Bartolus, and falling upon 
 it tooth and nail, composed, in a single night, a furious 
 diatribe which he subsequently circulated far and wide. 
 ' Ye gods ! ' he exclaims, after a merciless exhibition of the 
 triviality of thought and barbarous diction exhibited in the 
 dissertation of the defunct jurist, ' what folly, what puerility, 
 what inanity is here ! One would think that the book had 
 been written by an ass rather than a man!' In his wrath 
 he turns upon the whole body of commentators, until he 
 seems to threaten even the awful majesty of Justinian. As 
 to the existing representatives of the study, he avers that 
 there are scarcely any who are not completely worthless and 
 despicable. They are nearly always ignorant of all other 
 branches of a liberal education. They know nothing of that 
 precision and refinement of diction on which the ancient 
 jurists had bestowed such labour, and which must in turn 
 be apprehended by the reader before the treatises of those 
 writers can become really intelligible. Their poverty of 
 thought, their triviality of treatment are such, that he cannot 
 refrain from commiserating the study they profess, since it 
 seems equally unable to attract professors of any merit and 
 
 272
 
 420 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP. v. to rid itself of those who at present prey upon it. The 
 -1^-.-' upshot of the controversy, if such it can be called, appears 
 to have been, that Valla narrowly escaped being torn in 
 pieces by the students of the civil law at Pavia 1 . 
 
 It .is evident that had the whole struggle been waged 
 after the manner of Valla and his antagonist it would have 
 been as interminable as the controversy concerning uni- 
 versal s. Style versus matter is to a great extent a question 
 of taste, and so long as men by reading Bartolus could 
 qualify themselves for a lucrative profession, Bartolus would 
 continue to be read. No one had ever called the genuine- 
 ness of the Pandects in question, and the great weapon of 
 the Humanists, the art of criticism, was consequently here 
 unavailable. It was however far otherwise when they 
 brought their artillery to bear upon more vulnerable points, 
 and when once they had succeeded in convincing the educated 
 few that reason and even logic were on their side, they had 
 gained an advantage which told in their favour along the 
 line of battle. While accordingly Valla attacked with but 
 little success the abstract merits of the civilian commen- 
 tators, the effect produced when he laid bare that most 
 impudent of all forgeries, the Donation of Constantine, or 
 that most feeble of all myths, the joint parentage of the 
 
 and Symbolum, was unmistakeable. The popular belief in the 
 
 the canonist*. 111 
 
 canon law was not less severely shaken by the criticisms of 
 Poggio,. and from the same able pen there had also proceeded 
 the first exposure of the fictitious character of the Decretals 
 and of the sordid motives that had given rise to the whole 
 of this literature. The scholar could not conceal his derision 
 when he found the contemporaries of Tacitus and Quinti- 
 lian cited as speaking the barbarous Latin of the twelfth 
 century, and popes, who lived two centuries before Jerome 
 was born, quoting from the Vulgate. In short, Poggio de- 
 nounced the work of Gratian as that of a forger, and declared 
 that the chief result of his labours and those of his suc- 
 cessors had been to afford facilities for squabbling over 
 ecclesiastical benefices *. 
 
 1 Voigt, 451-2. a Voigt, p. 453.
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES. 421 
 
 But strenuous as was the opposition offered by the Italian CHAP. v. 
 universities, it was of short duration when compared with >-^Ll^ 
 that encountered in the universities Of France and Germany. n "n th?" 
 Politian, long before his death, must have felt himself master SniveMWes 
 of the field ; while Erasmus, who about the same time was persevering, 
 seeking to gain a knowledge of Greek at Paris, found the 
 Scotists fiercely denouncing all polite learning as incom- causes or thi 
 
 11-11 f 11 i difference. 
 
 patible with the mysteries of the schools, and seems even to 
 have been fain to imitate their barbarous Latinity in "order 
 to escape molestation 1 ; and Melanchthon, half a century 
 later, was exposed to the full brunt of the ancient prejudice 
 at Wittenberg. Of this difference the less impulsive cha- 
 racter of the northern nations, their inferiority at this period 
 in refined culture of every kind, and the absence of that 
 direct contact with the learning of Constantinople which 
 operated so powerfully in Italy, will suggest themselves as 
 obvious explanations. But not less potent than these was nifferenco in 
 
 i j.i j-fc x-i * f -.1 a.- theconstitu- 
 
 perhaps the different constitution of the respective uni- won ot th* 
 
 * respective 
 
 \ersities. In the short outline given in our first chapter "f^' 1 ' 68 
 of the universities of Paris and Bologna, it will have been p"^ c t i e n %f 
 noticed that while the constitution of the latter was demo- *' 
 cratic that of the former was oligarchical, and just as the 
 Italian universities had been modelled on Bologna, so those 
 of the Transalpine nations had nearly all been modelled on 
 that of Paris. Hence, as we should naturally expect, there 
 prevailed in the latter centres of learning a strongly conserva- 
 tive feeling : a feeling which was again more or less intense 
 in proportion as each university had acquired a special 
 reputation as a seat of theological learning, and imagined 
 that that reputation would be endangered by the introduction 
 of studies either entirely pagan or partially heretical. 
 
 But as in Italy, so in Germany and in England, the victories or 
 
 f -\ .the Human- 
 
 SUCCeSSlVe victories of the Humanists produced an impression *** 
 
 which could not be withstood. One by one the strongholds 
 of medieval culture and the idols of media? val credulity fell 
 before them. Grocyn. mounting the pulpit at St. Paul's 
 Cathedral, to confess with deep humiliation, that the same 
 1 Letter to Thomas Grey, Opera, in 77.
 
 422 THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 CHAP.V. long-revered treatise by Dionysius, the genuineness of which 
 - Y~-' he had in his first lecture so vehemently asserted, he was 
 unable on honest scrutiny to defend, Colet, turning his 
 earnest searching gaze on Erasmus as they sat communing 
 at Oxford, and disburdening himself of the conviction that 
 had long been growing up within, that the decisions of 
 Aquinas were characterised by both arrogance and pre- 
 sumption, Erasmus, in his study at Queens' College, ex- 
 posing the countless errors of the Vulgate and revolting from 
 the Augustinian despotism, William Tyndal at Cologne, 
 setting aside the commentaries of Nicholas de Lyra, with the 
 customary interpretations moral, anagogical, and allegorical, 
 and affirming that Scripture has but one meaning, the 
 obvious, literal sense, were each but indications of the 
 revolution that was going on in every department of study, 
 in every province of thought, as scholasticism tottered to its 
 fall.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE AT THE REVIVAL OF CLASSICAL 
 LEARNING. 
 
 PART II : BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 IN the ' famous old cytye ' of Beverley, as Lydgate terms CHAP. v. 
 it 1 , was born, about the year 1459, John Fisher, afterwards ^^JL 
 bishop of Rochester and, during the first quarter of the F? S H HKB. 
 sixteenth century, the leading spirit in the university of d'. i535. (?) ' 
 Cambridge. He was the son of Robert Fisher, mercer ofnisparent- 
 Beverley, and Agnes his wife. It was the father's wish early educa- 
 that the boy should receive a better education than ordinary, 
 and John was accordingly sent to receive instruction in 
 grammar in the school attached to the collegiate church 
 at Beverley. It appears that at the time when he was 
 a scholar there, Rotheram, the munificent chancellor of 
 Cambridge, was provost of the church 2 , and it is not im- 
 probable that young Fisher, as a boy of promise, may even 
 thus early have attracted the notice of one whom he must 
 have often met in after years. When Fisher was still a 
 lad of thirteen he lost his father ; the latter was, it would 
 seem, a man of considerable substance, and, judging from 
 his numerous bequests to different monastic and other 
 foundations, religious after the fashion of his age. In the 
 course of a few more years the son, then about eighteen, 
 was entered at Michaelhouse, under William de Melton, Entered at 
 fellow and afterwards master of the college. In 1487 he house? 
 proceeded to his degree of bachelor of arts ; was soon after 
 elected fellow, proceeded to his degree of master of arts in 
 1491, filled the office of senior proctor in 1494, and became 
 
 1 See Appendix (A). * Cooper, Athena;, i 1.
 
 424 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP.V. master of his college in 1497: facts which, as his bie- 
 ' grapher observes, sufficiently indicate the estimation in which 
 
 , i_ i j i 
 
 he Was held . 
 
 trusted with 
 
 It may be reasonably inferred that Michaelhouse had 
 throughout enjoyed the benefits of good government and 
 
 . - . . 
 
 the condition that its resources had been wisely administered, for not long 
 
 of other foun- * 
 
 dations. after the time that 'Fisher succeeded to the mastership we 
 find that, with respect to revenue, it stood sixth in the 
 list of college foundations 2 . That Fisher himself was a 
 conscientious administrator admits of little doubt ; and at 
 a time when the neighbouring hospital of St. John the 
 Evangelist was sinking into decay under the reckless rule 
 of William Tomlyn, until the very stones of the street were 
 silent witnesses against him 3 , and when the depredations 
 of bishop Booth, as master of Gonville, were still fresh in 
 the memory of the university 4 , the members of Michaelhouse 
 may well have congratulated themselves on the character 
 
 character of their head 8 . On the other hand, we have nothing to 
 
 and views 
 
 t f thii' er indicate that Fisher was, at this time, an advocate of 
 perio<L extensive reforms or of startling innovations. All in fact that 
 we know about him would lead us to infer the contrary. 
 He appears to have been generally recognised as a man of 
 exemplary life, signal ability, extensive learning, and un- 
 usual disinterestedness; but he was now approaching his 
 fortieth year ; he had received his early education in a city 
 and at a school pervaded by monastic influences, and his 
 more advanced education in one of the most monastic and 
 conservative of our English colleges; over that college he was 
 now called to preside ; it was natural that he should be 
 
 1 Lewis, Life of Fhher, i 4. together.' Biley's Second Report of 
 
 * Cooper, Annals, i 370. the Rmjal Commission of Historical 
 
 8 He was ' presented ' at the Law J/.S'.S. 
 
 Hundred or Lett of the town in 1502, 6 At the snrvey of the colleges in 
 
 for having the pavement in front of 1515, conducted by Parker, llediuan, 
 
 the college* broken and ruinous.' Hid. and May, Michaelhouse and Queens' 
 
 l 258. College (a foundation, it is to be borne 
 
 4 Booth, bishop of Exeter, master in mind, that had also for some years 
 
 of Gonville, 1405-78, was charged the benefit of Fisher's adnrinistra-. 
 
 with having ' most disgracefully made tion) vere the only two where the 
 
 away with the best cup and the best expenditure was not found consider- 
 
 piecfl of silver plate, together with ably to exceed the revenue. See 
 
 ait much money as he could tscrape Cooper, A nnali, i 431-8.
 
 HIS CAMBRIDGE CONTEMPORARIES. 425 
 
 strongly disposed in favour of the traditions of its rule, CHAP. v. 
 and there were probably few in the university who looked *~^ '' 
 for much that was novel at the hands of the master of 
 Michaelhouse. It will accordingly be of no little interest 
 to note the manner in which a mind like this, tenacious of 
 itsconvictions, yet candid and honest in investigating what 
 was new, was gradually led to recognise the value of a 
 culture in which it had not shared, and to enter upon the 
 path of moderate but energetic reform. 
 
 There is little reason for believing that if Fisher had 
 failed to apply himself to the work, other reformers would 
 have been forthcoming. Not that men of mark were wanting Eminent men 
 at Cambridge at this time; on the contrary, we are struck at tiusumef 8 
 by the fact that at no former period had the university 
 been better able to sustain a comparison with Oxford. The 
 spiteful exultation of Wood, as he points out that, at a 
 somewhat later juncture, nearly all the bishops were from 
 his own university 1 , would have found considerably less 
 cause for triumph in the list of the episcopal bench in the 
 A'ear 1500. Out of the twenty bishoprics into which Eng- 
 land and Wales were then divided, nine were filled by Cam- Bishops, 
 bridge men. Rotheram was archbishop of York ; Savage, 
 bishop of London ; Alcock, bishop of Ely ; Fox,' bishop of 
 Durham ; Story, bishop of Chichester ; King, bishop of Bath 
 and Wells ; Redman, bishop of Exeter ; Jann and Deane 
 (claimed, it is true, by both universities), were bishops of 
 Norwich and Salisbury respectively. But though these, and 
 not a few others, may be pointed out as men conferring 
 honour upon their university, none of them, with the notable 
 exception of Fox, seem to have been possessed by any new 
 ideas with respect to learning. Rotheram, munificent as Rotheram. 
 were his benefactions, was rather a promoter of it in others 
 than learned himself. John Barker, 'the sophister of King's,' John Barker, 
 and author of the Scutum Inexpugnabile, was a much 
 admired dialectician, but nothing more. William Chubbes, Wllliam 
 the first who bore the title of president of Pembroke College, ^isos! 8 " 
 was the author of an Introduction to Logic and a Com- 
 1 Wood-Gutch, ii 8.
 
 426 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 John 
 
 Artfentine. 
 </. 1508. 
 
 His proposed 
 Act in the 
 (schools. 
 
 Robert 
 
 Hacnmblene. 
 
 d.1528. 
 
 Henry 
 
 llorni;bv. 
 d. 1618. 
 
 Thenc, and 
 other emi- 
 nent men 
 in the uni- 
 Teraity, able 
 workers 
 but not re- 
 formers. 
 
 mentary on Duns Scotus ; he was also afterwards the first 
 master of Jesus College, and is said to have been the chief 
 adviser of bishop Alcock in his design of that foundation 1 . 
 John Argentine, provost of King's, and physician to the two 
 sons of Henry VII, was also a dialectician of some repute. 
 There is extant from his pen a series of verses on all the 
 faculties (twelve in number), which he designed as subjects 
 for his ' act,' as incepting master of arts in the year 1470. 
 It appears, however, that the ambitious disputant subse- 
 quently discovered that it was indispensable that the subject 
 for each disputation should be thrown into the form of a 
 qucestio, and his elaborate preparation was consequently 
 thrown jaway. The manuscript still remains in the library 
 of Corpus Christi College, Oxford 2 , and may be regarded 
 as a good illustration of the scope of the dialectical practice 
 in the schools of those days. Hacomblene, the eighth 
 provost of King's College, was known as the author of 
 a commentary on the Ethics of Aristotle, but his text was 
 the traditional text of the schoolmen, and his commentary 
 continued to slumber in manuscript in the library of his 
 college. Horneby, fellow of Michaelhouse, and afterwards 
 master of Peterhouse, was distinguished as a high-minded 
 and energetic administrator. But the limited views of these 
 men and others like them are sufficiently shewn in the nature 
 of the work they devised and carried out. The erection of 
 the different schools, as narrated in a previous chapter 8 , 
 the commencement in 1479 of the rebuilding of Great St. 
 
 1 Cooper, Athena, i 10. 
 
 1 At the commencement of the poem 
 is pasted a slip on which is written 
 in a different hand, Actus Mr* Jo. 
 Argtntyn publice habitut in universi- 
 tate C'antabriyiee contra omnes Re- 
 gentes htijus universitatis quoad op- 
 positionei,\.D. 1470. (The year iser- 
 roneonnly given in Nichols's edition 
 of Fuller, as 1407.) The following 
 lines, in the same handwriting as the 
 slip, seem to indicate the ambitious 
 design of the young inceptor : Ntu 
 nit turba Regent nostrot taciturn per 
 annot, \ Hinc cantre. ettanimo variit 
 ludendocicuti*. \ DuteiapleetramiM 
 tua porrige cantor Apollo \ At Stil- 
 
 bontis (Mercury) ope mea fistula per- 
 tonet apte. \ Sic mihi crinitiu cytha- 
 ram concedat lopas \ Threiciam ut 
 Thelim (? Chelyn) Phebeus spondeat 
 Orpheus. \ Ac me tifcveat caute lotto 
 ubere mater \ Kxigua ista suit modu- 
 Inbor cannina rivis \ Et velit hue 
 couferre pedem tacra turba Regentnm 
 | L'tferat (? sciat) an motiswciem bene 
 carmina ncrvis. I am indebted to the 
 courtesy of the Rev. E. L. Hicks, 
 M.A., librarian of the college, for the 
 foregoing particulars, and also for 
 two conjectural emendations of the 
 Latin verse. 
 
 3 See supra, pp. 300-1.
 
 TONE OF THE UNIVERSITY. 427 
 
 Mary's (a task of forty years) ', and other minor improve- CHAP. v. 
 ments of the kind, did nothing to stimulate the intellectual > - v '* 
 life of the university. Nor can we deny that the national 
 experiences of that age were not such as to encourage The phcno- 
 
 i i i mi i menu of th<j 
 
 sanguine sentiments or bold innovations. The early years *e not of an 
 
 J J inspiriting 
 
 of Englishmen of that generation had been darkened by character, 
 many a tale of horror, and their maturer years saddened by 
 the sense of exhaustion that came over the country when 
 the long struggle was at an end. The flower of the nobility, 
 now the chief patrons of learning, had fallen on the battle- 
 field. In the more distant horizon the steady and ominous 
 advance of the Turkish power, by land and by sea, was 
 striking terror throughout Christendom. From the general 
 dejection induced by such circumstances the university was 
 not exempt. ' Somehow, I know not how.' said bishop Fisher, Fisher's de- 
 
 . ' scription of 
 
 when in brighter days he looked back upon these times. J he prevalent 
 
 ' tone of the 
 
 * whether it were the continual strifes with the townsmen, universit y- 
 and the wrongs they did us, or the long abiding of the 
 fever, that tried us with a cruelty above the ordinary, 
 carrying off many of our learned men, or that there were 
 few or no helpers and patrons of letters, whatever were the 
 true cause, doubtless there had stolen over well nigh all 
 of us a weariness of learning and study, so that not a few 
 did take counsel in their own minds how that they might 
 effect their departure so as it were not to their own hurt*.' 
 The circumstances of the time indeed were precisely of the 
 kind wherein we should expect to meet with a revival of the 
 
 1 Or yet longer if we take Fuller's continuis litibus et injuriis oppida- 
 
 view of the matter: 'The mention norum (quibus eramus implicati), 
 
 of St. Mary's mindeth me of church- sive diuturna plaga febrium, quibus 
 
 work indeed, so long it was from the supra modum yexabamur, (nam ex 
 
 founding to the finishing thereof; literatoribus complures amisimus, et 
 
 as begun May 16th, 1478, when the ex ipso doctorum numero decein 
 
 first stone thereof was laid in the viros graves et valde erudites), seu 
 
 17th of Edward iv ; the church ended tertio bonarum artium fautores et 
 
 (but without a tower or belfry) 1519, benefaotores pauci erant et prope 
 
 in the eleventh of Henry vin. The nulli. Sive his sive aliis occasioni- 
 
 tower finished 1608, in the sixth of bus, profecto literarum et studiorum 
 
 King James; so that from the begin- nos prope omnes taedium cepit: adeo 
 
 ning to the ending thereof were no ut multi secum cogitarent, quorsum 
 
 fewer than an hundred and thirty hinc abirent commode.' Oratio ha- 
 
 years.' Fuller-Prickett & Wright, bita coram illustrissimo rege Hen- 
 
 p. 180. rico vn, Cantabrigite, A.D. 1506. 
 
 3 ' nescio quo infortunio, sive Lewis, Life of Fisher, App. vin.
 
 428 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. old theological notion of the approaching end of the world ; 
 ^ '" and the dreary spectacle of the unfinished structure of 
 King's College chapel, which from the death of Henry VI 
 until within a few years of that of Henry VII was almost 
 abandoned by the workmen, might well seem, to the Cam- 
 bridge of those days, to give a tacit sanction to such 
 iufl c u""< r forebodings. But in the midst of all this lethargy and 
 depression, one startling event, the significance of which 
 could be in some measure grasped by all, stood out in bright 
 contrast to the general gloom. It was bard to believe 
 that the Old World was about to perish, when the genius of 
 the navigator had just revealed the existence of the New. 
 By that discovery as it were an electric shock was sent 
 through the whole of Europe and the preconceived ideas of 
 the ancient world; and the faces of men, long bent with 
 eager but wearying gaze to where the light of ancient 
 tradition gleamed dimly in the east, were suddenly turned to 
 greet the tale of wonder borne upon the breeze that blew 
 freshly over the western main. 
 
 continued It is probable that, very early in his Cambridge course, 
 
 ieamij w - Fisher had heard of the great library which duke Humphrey 
 Ita)y - had bequeathed to Oxford. He must also certainly, we 
 should imagine, have heard how bishop Gray's valuable col- 
 lection had been left to Balliol College. But the interest that 
 a few isolated occurrences like these might awaken would 
 soon be merged in a far deeper curiosity, as the intense and 
 almost servile admiration with which Italian scholarship 
 now began to be regarded in England plainly indicated, that 
 it would be impossible much longer to ignore additions to 
 learning and literature compared with which the New 
 Aristotle seemed insignificant. Those few of our country- 
 men who, in the earlier part of the century, had been found 
 among the hearers of Guarino, were now represented by a 
 long array of names which will shortly claim more lengthened 
 notice at our hands. Italy herself was fully sustaining the 
 reputation she had acquired. Guarino, Valla, and Bruni, it 
 is true, had passed away. Argyropulos, if still living, was in 
 extreme old age ; but his chair at Florence was ably filled by
 
 PROGRESS IN ITALY. 429 
 
 Chalcondyles, an illustrious Athenian, the teacher of Grocyn CHAP. v. 
 and Linacre. His laborious zeal had just given to the world t^Lj, 
 that great glory of early typography, the Florence Homer cim"condy- 
 of 1488 x , a volume whose antique splendour recalls to us the huu 
 change, so ably touched by a living poetess, that had come ^'f^^ 11 
 to pass since the days of Petrarch, 
 
 'No more, as once in sunny Avignon, 
 The poet-scholar spreads the Homeric page, 
 And gazes sadly, like the deaf at song : 
 For now the old epic voices ring again 
 And vibrate with the beat and melody 
 Stirr'd by the warmth of old Ionian days.' 
 
 Politian, the rival of Chalcondyles, had been appointed in ^ff^Jf^ 
 1483 to the chair of both Greek and Latin in the same city, % \** 
 and the appearance of his Miscellanea, in 1489, was justly HU Miscei- 
 regarded as marking an era in the progress of Latin criti- 
 cism. Theodorus Gaza, the protege" of Bessarion, had died in Theodoras 
 
 \ Gaza. 
 
 1479, after teaching with eminent success at both Rome and <t.uw. 
 Ferrara : to him belongs the honour of having been the first 
 to appreciate the varied excellences of Plutarch and the 
 satiric genius of Aristophanes 2 . His rival, Georgius Trapez- ^^^ 
 untius, whose morose vindictive nature contrasted strongly ^^ 
 with the modest worth of Gaza, after forfeiting the favour of A 1485- 
 Nicholas v by a series of worthless and dishonest translations 
 from the Greek Fathers, and that of Bessarion by a singularly 
 venomous attack on Plato and his philosophy, had ended at 
 Rome his long and unhappy career; leaving behind him 
 however a manual of logic that, as an effort at an eclectic ma Logic, 
 system, attained to considerable popularity at the univer- 
 sities, and was introduced at Cambridge after the fall of 
 
 Duns Scotus 8 . At Messana, in the land which had once 
 
 
 
 1 Boerner, pp. 181-91 ; Hody, pp. cipe, existimabat, et omnibus quot- 
 
 211-26. See the glowing descrip- quot Grsecas literas discere vellent, 
 
 tion of the typographical beauties huuc scriptorem Atticae elegantise 
 
 of the volume in Maittaire, Annal. elegantissimum, assidua versandum 
 
 Typograph. i 183 ; and for facsimile manu commendabat.' Boeruer, 128. 
 
 of p. 1, plate 35 in Humphrey's H ist. 3 Ibid., 105-20; Hody, 102-35. 
 
 of Printing. His treatise on logic, De Re Dialec- 
 
 8 ' Plutarchum Chasronensem, prse- tica, was often printed: see Georgii 
 
 ter ceteros scriptores Graecos in de- Trapezuntii De Re Dialectica Liber, 
 
 liciis habuit Gaza . . . Magnifice idem scholiis loannis Neonutgi et Bartholo- 
 
 ille de Aristophane, comicorum piin- mtci Ldtomi illustrates. Lugduni,
 
 430 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 Gcorfte Her- 
 
 iiHiiiynius. 
 
 Greek gram- 
 mars of Theo- 
 dorus Gaza, 
 Chalcondy- 
 
 li-, and < ',,11- 
 sUintine Lus- 
 c&ris. 
 
 reflected so much that was most splendid and imposing in 
 the old Hellenic civilization, Constantino Lascaris was re- 
 viving with signal success the ancient admiration for the 
 masterpieces of Greek literature 1 . Hermolaus Barbarus, at 
 Venice, was rendering valuable service by the restoration of 
 the text of different Greek authors, and his reputation as an 
 elegant Latinist was second to that of none of his time. Nearer 
 home, the Spartan, George Hermonymus, at Paris, was as- 
 sisting, though in a somewhat mercenary spirit, and if the 
 account of one of his pupils is to be trusted, with but small 
 ability, the efforts of Reuchlin, Budoeus, and Erasmus, to gain 
 a knowledge of the Greek tongue 2 . The purely technical 
 treatment of that language had also been considerably de- 
 veloped. The little grammar by Chrysoloras, owing to its 
 admirable terseness and simplicity, still held its ground, but 
 in respect of scholarship had been altogether thrown into 
 the shade by the appearance, in 1495, of the treatise by 
 Theodorus Gaza, a production which competent judges at 
 once recognised as superior to all other manuals of the kind, 
 which Budaeus praised as a masterpiece of the grammarian's 
 art, and which Erasmus translated to his class at Cambridge 
 and Richard Croke to his class at Leipsic 8 . As a mean be- 
 tween this and the work of Chrysoloras, Chalcondyles had 
 compiled his Grammaticce Institutiones Grcecce'; while Con- 
 
 1559. Prantl speaks of the treatise 
 as a medley of the Ciceronian rhe- 
 torical conception with the usual 
 Aristotelian school tradition and a 
 slight infusion of the treatment by 
 the Moderni. The following extract 
 will explain to the student of logic 
 its scope : ' Nunc breviter dabimus 
 operam ea primo exponere quo) 
 Grasci^voces, Latini prscdicabilia, so- 
 lent appellare, dcinde de prcedica- 
 mentis et de praxlicatorio syllogismo 
 pauca admonebimus, postremo de 
 propositione hypothetica et syllo- 
 gismo et de definitione et divisione 
 disseremns nee omnino ea pnecepta 
 contemnemns, qua) ejus rei, quam 
 jnniores obligationem vocant, vim et 
 naturam complectuntnr.' Prantl, Oe- 
 tchichte dtr Logik, iv 169. 
 
 1 Jerome of Ragnsa in his Eulogia 
 Siculorum says : ' Postremo in Sici- 
 
 liam navigans Messanaj perpetuam 
 sedem fixit, cseli salubri temperie, 
 soli amoenitate, humaiiissimis civium 
 moribus allectus, quodque freqneus 
 esset navium appulsus Messanam ex 
 Oriente, unde suoruin littene ultro 
 citroque perferrentur facilius.' See 
 Boerner, pp. 170-80. 
 
 1 Boerner, p. 195, n. 4; Geiger, 
 Johann Reuchlin, p. 17. 
 
 3 ' Id tamen plerique vere nota- 
 rnut, provectioribus et OraBcarum 
 litterarum gnaris magis ilium inser- 
 vire quam Grawa discere incipienti- 
 bus; et librum primum, brevitato 
 iiiiiiiii obscuriorem, quartum vero, 
 qui eat de structure sermonis et va- 
 riis dicendi modis, et in quo Apollo- 
 nium maxime secutus est Gaza, 
 prioribus longe esse difficiliorem.' 
 Boerner, pp. 180-1. 
 
 4 ' Hanc eo composuisse videtur
 
 PROGRESS IN ITALY. 431 
 
 stantine Lascaris had also put forth a treatise, less elaborate CHAP. v. 
 than that of Theodoras, but, in the opinion of Erasmus, It^IL 
 second to it alone in merit 1 . 
 
 We can hardly be in error in supposing that the master sentiments 
 
 A A with which 
 
 of Michaelhouse and his contemporaries at Cambridge were fX r< 2ew M 
 frequently receiving intelligence respecting the new studies r^SdJda?* 
 that were slowly fighting their way in the continental uni- ^ 
 versities, but there is also good reason for believing that the 
 intelligence created, in the first instance, much more alarm 
 than emulation. They could not have failed at the same 
 time to be aware, that those cities where the new learning 
 most flourished were also becoming the centres of a yearly 
 more faintly disguised infidelity and a yearly more openly 
 avowed licentiousness 2 . The religious tone which the example 
 of Nicholas V had imparted to the circle of scholars whom he 
 patronised had passed away; and the idea of a reconciliation 
 between Christian dogma and the doctrines of the Academy, 
 similar to that which the schoolmen had attempted on the 
 appearance of the New Aristotle, had, after a brilliant effort at 
 Florence, been contemptuously abandoned 8 . The scientific illcepucUm'tu 
 scepticism of the Averroists was now reinforced by the philo- y- 
 sophic scepticism of the Platonists. Universal doubt and dis- 
 trust of all authority appear to have been the prevailing sen- 
 timents of those who gave the tone to public thought ; and con- 
 currently, as is almost invariably the case, the public morality, General de- 
 which had already seemed at its worst, manifested a yet further Sltuln! f 
 decline. JVlachiavelli, no squeamish censor, openly declared Testimony or 
 
 , , ,, , . . f. . Machiave'lli 
 
 that Italy exceeded all other nations in irrehgion and de- and savona- 
 pravity*. The young Savonarola, when he fled to the Domi- 
 nican convent at Bologna, declared in his letter to his father, 
 that he could no longer endure the ' enormous wickedness ' 
 of his countrymen, the right of virtue everywhere despised, 
 
 consilio ut auditorum suorum Grse- Const. Lascaris sibi jure suovendicat.' 
 
 cas literas ab ipso discentium con- De Ratione Studii (quoted by |Hody). 
 
 Buleret utilitati, ita videlicet com- a Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Be- 
 
 paratum, ut et plenior sit 'Ep&rri}- naissance in Italien, p. 404. 
 
 fj.affi Chrysolorae et intellectu facilior 3 Ibid., 341-65. See also Von 
 
 institutionibus Gazse.' Ibid. p. 187. Raumer, Geschichte der Padagoglk, 
 
 1 ' Inter Graecos grammaticos ne- i 55-6. 
 
 mo non primum locum tribuit Theo- * Discorsi, i 12 (quoted by Burck- 
 
 doro Gazse, proximum mea sententia hardt, p. 342).
 
 432 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. o f v i ce everywhere in honour 1 . To facts like these, that 
 
 FAET If. 
 
 * ^ could not but awaken the alarm of the more earnest and con- 
 
 scientious leaders of the university, must be added those 
 
 the sup- 
 
 tniditku^i' 118 apprehensions which aroused the hostility of a far more 
 learning. numerous and prejudiced section, actuated only by a dull 
 antipathy to all change. Both sections again were united by a 
 common jealousy, as they became aware that the Humanists 
 were waging a war of something like extermination against 
 all those studies to which their. own best years had been 
 devoted, and wherein whatever academic reputation they 
 possessed had been acquired. They must expect, if teachers 
 of the new school once gained a footing in Cambridge, to 
 have all those subtle distinctions, in which they had so long 
 delighted, treated as the creations of a perverted ingenuity, 
 those latent meanings of Scripture which they had laboured 
 to evolve, characterised as unauthorised tamperings with the 
 plain and literal sense, their great oracle disparaged, their 
 own efforts at interpreting his thought described as vain and 
 nugatory, each of them, in fine, would be called upon to 
 confess 
 
 ' After a search thus painful and thus long 
 That all his life he had been in the wrong.' 
 
 ' Behold these men,' had been the cry of Petrarch at the very 
 commencement of the struggle, as he exulted in the prospect 
 of a certain victory, ' who devote their whole lives to wrangling 
 and to the cavillings of sophistry, wearying themselves un- 
 ceasingly in idle speculations, and hear my prophecy concern- 
 ing them all ! All their fame shall perish with them ! For 
 
 1 The position of Savonarola with political theory of Aquinas. Of the 
 
 reference to the Humanists in Italy Italian Humanists Burckhardt truly 
 
 is worthy of note, as illustrating the observes, ' Dass Menschen von einem 
 
 entirely different spirit in which the so beschaffenen Innern nicht taugen, 
 
 revival of learning was there carried um eine neue Kirche zu bilden, ist 
 
 on from that which characterised the unlaugbar, aber die Geschichte des 
 
 scholarship of Germany and England. abendlandischen Geistes ware un- 
 
 When he became prior of St. Mark vollstandig ohne die Betrachtung 
 
 he kept entirely aloof from the court jener Gahrungszeit der Italiener, 
 
 of Lorenzo; and the scheme of go- wahrend sie sich den Blick auf an- 
 
 vi TII i)i cut that he drew up during dere Nationen, die am Gedanken 
 
 his short supremacy as ruler of the keinen Theil hatten, getrost ersparen 
 
 destinies of Florence, was merely a darf.' Ibid. p. 443-4. 
 somewhat servile transcript of the
 
 SYMPTOMS OF PROGRESS. 433 
 
 their name and their bones the same sepulchre shall suffice 1 !' CHAP. v. 
 And his trumpet note of defiance had been echoed by almost >-^ ' 
 every Humanist since the poet's time. 
 
 Among the earliest indications that the new thought in Earliest 
 
 traces of 
 
 Italy was beginning to be a matter of interest to Cambridge S^^hT 
 scholars, is the presence of a copy of Petrarch's letters in the ti"""^" 
 original catalogue of the library of Peterhouse, of the year brid^. 
 1426, referred to in preceding chapters 2 . A few years later we 
 find Ottringham, who preceded William de Melton as master 
 of Michaelhouse, borrowing a copy of Petrarch's well-known 
 treatise De Bemediis utriusque Fortunes. The manuscript 
 was the property of one Robert Alne, who, in his will dated 
 24 December, 1440, directs that Ottringham shall be allowed 
 to retain possession of the volume during his lifetime, after 
 which it is to become the property of the university, along 
 with other works directly bequeathed by the testator 8 . In 
 the catalogue of the university library drawn up in 1473, of 
 which some account has been given in a preceding chapter 4 , 
 we accordingly find the treatise in question among the 
 volumes enumerated, though it is not one of those few that 
 have been preserved down to the present time. We have no 
 evidence that Fisher ever read this treatise, but the fact that 
 it had been borrowed from the owner by a former master of 
 Michaelhouse, shews that there were some among the in- 
 fluential members of the university who were beginning to 
 take an interest in the writings of the Humanists. Perhaps 
 after the volume had been deposited in the common library, 
 and had been duly chained as No. 57 in its appointed place, 
 other students were occasionally to be found intent upon its 
 pages, contrasting its comparatively pure Latinity with the 
 uncouth diction to which they were more accustomed, or as 
 vague rumours of great battles reached the half-deserted 
 university, while Red and White were contending for the 
 
 1 ' Respice bos, qui in altercatio- nomini ossibusque sufficiet ! ' Epist. 
 
 nibns et cavillationibus sopbisticis Familiar, i 57J . 
 
 totuin vitse tempus expendunt seque 3 See supra, pp. 324, 370. 
 
 inanibus semper quaestiunculis ex- 3 See Paper by Mr. Bradsbaw in 
 
 agitant, et prsesagium meum de Cam. Ant. Soc. Com. n 239-40. 
 
 omnibus babeto : omnium nempecum 4 See supra, pp. 323-4. 
 ipsis fama corruet, unurn sepulchram 
 
 28
 
 434 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. 
 
 Fisher at 
 
 HC attract* 
 
 tlie notice 
 
 tes7ofTuch- 
 
 ancestry. 
 
 mastery, gathering consolation from the placid stoicism 
 preached by the great Florentine. If to such rare indications 
 the foregoing, we add that there was an Italian, one Gains 
 Auberinus, resident in the university, writing Latin letters 
 Qn f orma ] OCC asions for a fee of twenty pence each, and also 
 giving by permission a Terence lecture in vacation time 1 , we 
 shall have before us nearly all the existing evidence that, 
 with the commencement of the sixteenth century, may be 
 held to shew that there was at Cambridge a certain minority, 
 however small, to whom it seemed that the prevalent La- 
 tinity was not altogether irreproachable, and who were con- 
 scious that a new literature was rising up which might ere 
 long demand attention, even to the displacement of some of 
 the scholastic writers and mediaeval theologians. 
 
 \y e have already mentioned the election of Fisher to the 
 senior proctorship in the year 1494. The duties of the 
 office at that time appear to have involved occasional attend- 
 ance at court, and in his official capacity Fisher was sent 
 
 A 
 
 down to Greenwich where the royal court was frequently 
 held. It was on this occasion that he was introduced to the 
 notice of the king's mother, the munificent and pious coun- 
 tess of Richmond. ' I need say nothing,' says Baker in his 
 History of St. John's College, rising to unwonted eloquence 
 as he recalls the proud lineage of the foundress of his house, 
 ' ^ nee d say nothing of so great a name : she was daughter of 
 John Beaufort duke of Somerset, grandson of John of Gaunt, 
 and so descended .from Edward the Third ; consort of 
 Edmund Tudor earl of Richmond, son of Catharine of France, 
 and so allied to the crown of France ; and mother of Henry 
 the Seventh, king of England, from whom all our kings of 
 England, as from his elder daughter Margaret, who bore her 
 name, all the kings of Scotland, are ever since descended. 
 And though she herself was never a queen, yet her son, if he 
 had any lineal title to the crown, as he derived it from her, 
 so at her death she had thirty kings and queens allied to her 
 within the fourth degree either of blood or affinity, and since 
 her death she has been allied in her posterity to thirty 
 
 1 Cooper, Annalt, i 240; Athena;,! 9.
 
 THE COUNTESS OF RICHMOND. 435 
 
 more 1 .' This august lady appears to have at once recog- CHAP. v. 
 nised in Fisher an ecclesiastic after her own heart, and in the 
 year 1497 he was appointed her confessor. It was an aus- 
 picious conjunction for Cambridge; for to the wealth and 00 
 liberality of the one and the enlightened zeal and disinterest- 
 edness of the other, the university is chiefly indebted for that 
 new life and prosperity which soon after began to be per- 
 ceptible in its history. ' As this honourable lady,' says Lewis, "" cliarac " 
 * was a person of great piety and devotion, and one who made 
 it the whole business of her life to do good, and employed 
 the chief part of her noble fortune for that purpose, this her 
 confessor, who was a man of the same excellent spirit, soon 
 became very dear to her, and entirely beloved by her. Thus 
 Mr Fisher, a good while after, very gratefully remembers her 
 affection towards him. He styles her an excellent and 
 indeed incomparable woman, and to him a mistress most 
 dear upon many accounts ; whose merits whereby she had 
 obliged him were very great 3 .' 
 
 His promotion at court served still further to recommend ^j s vf c r e . elect " 
 Fisher to the favour of his university, and in the year 1501, i^i cellor> 
 when he had already commenced D.D., he was elected vice- 
 chancellor. In "the same year that the countess appointed o t "" d ,^ u 
 him her confessor (though how far her design is attributable p r o^^*- 
 to his influence is uncertain) we find her obtaining a royal 8hlp> 15< 
 licence for the establishment of a readership in divinity in 
 each university ; and a course of lectures on the Quodlibeta 
 of Duns Scotus, given by one Edmund Wilsford in the 
 common divinity schools at Oxford 3 , and certain payments 
 made for the delivery of a similar course at Cambridge 4 , are 
 sufficient evidence that the scheme was forthwith carried into 
 effect. The final regulations however, in connexion with 
 each readership, do not appear to have been given before the 
 year 1503, when the deed of endowment was executed 5 . In 
 
 1 Baker-Mayor, p. 55. * Cooper, Annals, i 247. 
 
 2 Lewis, Life of Fisher, i 5. 5 The countess, according to Wood, 
 
 3 'Edmund Wylsford, doctor of ' for several years maintained a reader 
 divinity and fellow of Oriel College, without any settled revenue on him 
 began to read this lecture on the mor- and his successors. At length mak- 
 row after the Trinity, ann. 1497.' ing a formal foundation according to 
 Wood-Gutch, ii 828-9. law by her charter, bearing date on 
 
 28-2
 
 436 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. 
 
 The revenues 
 
 entrusted to 
 
 Thc salary 
 
 attached to 
 
 the omce. 
 
 The BuWcc 
 
 to the 'MH 
 tion of the 
 authorities. 
 
 the absence of any assigned motive, it is not difficult to 
 conjecture the reasons that led the foundress to entrust 
 the management of the revenues set apart for the readers' 
 salaries to other than the academic authorities. The lax mo- 
 rality of the age in financial matters, the frequent instances 
 of maladministration in the different colleges, and the poverty 
 of the university, would hardly fail to suggest the possi- 
 bility, if not the probability, of misapplication of the funds. 
 If however there was one corporate body in England that 
 from feelings of gratitude towards the countess, from its 
 reputation for sanctity, and its enormous wealth, might be 
 
 r . 
 
 supposed superior to such temptations, it was the great ab- 
 bey of Westminster; and to this society the administration 
 of the estates and the payment of the salaries were en- 
 trusted x . Th e salary of the reader must have seemed a liberal 
 one m those days, for it amounted yearly to 13. 65. 8d. ; it 
 was, that is to say, more than three times that of the Rede 
 lectureships (founded twenty years later), considerably more 
 than that of any of the parochial livings in Cambridge, and 
 nearly equal to the entire yearly revenue of the priory of 
 St. Edmund or to a third of that of St. Catherine's Hall. 
 As so considerable an endowment might be expected to com- 
 mand the best talent of the university, and as the instruction 
 was to be entirely gratuitous, the theological students must 
 have looked upon the newly-created chair as no slight boon, 
 and it is deserving of notice that the regulations laid down 
 seem to have been singularly well adapted for guarding 
 against a perfunctory discharge of the specified duties. Each 
 reac ^ er was bound to read in the divinity schools libere, sol- 
 leniter, et aperte, to every one thither resorting, without fee 
 or other reward than his salary, such works in divinity as 
 the chancellor or vicechancellor with the ' college of doctors,' 
 should judge necessary, for one hour, namely from seven to 
 eight in the morning, or at such other time as the chancellor 
 
 the Feast of the Nativity of the lands and revenues) to pay to the 
 
 blessed Virgin (18 Hen. VH 1502), reader, and his successors of this 
 
 did then agree with the abbat and lecture, a yearly pension of twenty 
 
 convent of Westminster, (to whom marks.' \Vood-Gutch, n 826. 
 
 ghe had, or did then, give divers 1 Lewis, Life of Fisher, i 7.
 
 THE MARGARET PROFESSORSHIP. 437 
 
 or vicechancellor should think fit. He was to read every CHAP. v. 
 accustomed day in each term, and in the long vacation up to 
 the eighth of September, but to cease in Lent, if the chan- 
 cellor should think fit, in order that during that season he and Savin tfrm, 
 
 77 -7- 1 TT ftU< * a ' 8 ' 
 
 his auditors might be occupied in preaching. He was not to **"'* 
 
 cease from reading in any term for more than four days, The time or 
 
 11 ill Lent to ** 
 
 unless licensed for reasonable cause, to be approved by the given to 
 
 preaching. 
 
 chancellor or vicechancellor and major part of the doctors of 
 divinity, such licence not to extend to more than fourteen 
 days, and his place to be supplied in the mean time by a 
 sufficient deputy to be paid by him. The election was to The election 
 
 , . . to be biennial, 
 
 take place biennially, on the last day of the term before the and vested in 
 
 V ' J the doctors. 
 
 long vacation, in the assembly house, the electors being the j^lC^e- 
 chancellor or vicechancellor, and all doctors, bachelors, andJS'y. of(iivl " 
 inceptors in divinity, both seculars and*regulars (having been 
 regents in arts), who were to swear to choose the most wor- 
 thy, without favour, partiality, reward, fear, or sinister affec- 
 tion 1 . 
 
 It can be a matter of little surprise that the choice of the j^ 6 ^}*. 
 first election to the lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity 80r - 
 fell upon John Fisher. By the regulations given in 1503, it 
 was provided however that the reader, if elected to the office 
 either of chancellor or vicechancellor, should vacate his chair 
 within a month from the time of such' election. With the 
 new academic year, Fisher accordingly resigned the office, 
 and Cosin, master of Corpus, was elected in his stead. Cosin HU succes- 
 
 * sors. 
 
 at the expiration of two years, was succeeded by Burgoyne, 
 afterwards master of Peterhouse, and he in turn by Deside- 
 rius Erasmus. 
 
 The clause in the second provision, directing that lectures Neglect of 
 
 in -IT IT- T i i 111 the art and 
 
 shall be discontinued during Lent, in order that both the practice of 
 
 c preaching at 
 
 reader and his class may devote themselves to preaching, is this p riod - 
 deserving of special note as the corollary to the main object 
 of the lectureship. The revival and cultivation of pulpit 
 oratory of a popular kind had for a long time past been 
 strongly urged by the most eminent reformers both at home 
 and abroad. Nearly a hundred years before, Nicholas de 
 1 Cooper, Annals, i 271-2.
 
 438 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 Preaching 
 discounte- 
 nanced on 
 account of 
 the fear of 
 
 CHAP. v. Clemangis, a leading spirit in the university of Paris in his 
 day, had maintained that the chief end of theological studies 
 was the training of able preachers 1 . But with the close of the 
 fifteenth century both theology and the art of preaching 
 seemed in danger of general neglect. At the English uni- 
 versities, and consequently throughout the whole country, 
 the sermon was falling into almost complete disuse ; and how- 
 ever truly it might, in a later century, be affirmed of the 
 laity, 
 
 ' The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,' 
 
 the description was never truer than in the days of bishop 
 Fisher. By some indeed the usefulness of preaching was 
 openly denied ; or rather it was maintained, that its liability 
 to abuse outweighed ,its probable advantages ; and, com- 
 pletely as Reginald Pecock's doctrines had been disavowed 
 by the Church, his views on this point were, at least in prac- 
 tice, very widely adopted. Times had greatly changed since 
 the day when Grosseteste declared that if a priest could not 
 preach, there was one remedy, let him resign his benefice 8 . 
 The activity of the Lollards had brought all popular haran- 
 gues and discourses under suspicion, and a secular found 
 preaching without a licence was liable to summary punish- 
 ment. Thus the sermon had ceased to form part of an ordi- 
 nary religious service. The provincial clergy were directed 
 to preach once a quarter to their congregations, but no 
 penalty appears to have attached to the neglect even of this 
 rare duty; and Latimer tells us that, in his own recollection, 
 sermons might be omitted for twenty Sundays in succession 
 without fear of complaint 8 . Even the devout More, in that 
 ingenious romance which he designed as a covert satire on 
 many of the abuses of his age, while giving an admirably 
 conceived description of a religious service, has left the ser- 
 
 1 Neander, Church Jlistory, (Clark's 
 Series), ix 7881. 
 
 1 'Also Lincoln Bayeth in a sermon 
 that begynneth, Scriptum est de Le- 
 mtit : " Yf any prieste saye he can- 
 not preache, one remedye is resigne 
 he uppe his benefyce." 1 See A com- 
 
 pendious olde treatyse shewynge howe 
 that we ought to haue the scripture 
 in Englysshe, Arbor's ed. of Rede me 
 and be not wrothe, p. 176. 
 
 8 Blunt, Hist, of the Reformation, 
 c. 4 ; Latimer, Sermon*, i 182.
 
 THE MARGARET PREACHERSHIP. 439 
 
 rnon altogether unrecognised 1 . In the universities, for one CHAP. v. 
 master of arts or doctor of divinity who could make a text of 
 Scripture the basis of an earnest, simple and effective homily, ^ 
 there were fifty who could discuss its moral, anagogical, and ti 
 figurative meaning, who could twist it into all kinds of un- ta 
 imagined significance, and give it a distorted, unnatural appli- 
 cation. Rare as was the sermon, the theologian, in the form 
 of a modest, reverent expounder of scripture, was yet rarer. 
 Bewildered audiences were called upon to admire the per- 
 formances of intellectual acrobats. Skelton, who well knew skeiton-s de- 
 scription of 
 
 the Cambridge of these days, not inaptly described its young th^i^Ms 
 scholars as men who when they had ' once superciliously of 
 caught ' 
 
 'A lytell ragge of rhetoricke, 
 A lesse lumpe of logicke, 
 A pece or patche of philosophy, 
 Then forthwith by and by 
 They tumble so in theology, 
 Drowned in dregges of diuinite, 
 That they juge them selfe able to be 
 Doctours of the chayre in the vintre 
 At the Thre Cranes 
 To magnifye their names 2 .' 
 
 The efforts made towards remedying this state of things ^ s a 
 had hitherto been rare and ineffectual. We find in the year ^ndV 
 144)6, one Thomas Collage bequeathing forty pounds for the Thomas cdl- 
 payment of 6s. 8d. to preachers in each of the universities, so fordandcam- 
 long as the money lasted, ' to the end that encouragement 
 might be bestowed, upon divinity, now at a Icnu ebb* ; while in 
 1503, pope Alexander VI, in response to a special application, BUM of Alex- 
 issued a bull, empowering the chancellor of the university isos. 
 
 1 Utopia, ed. Arber, pp. 153-7. giana of Italy in his day, is worthy 
 
 2 A Eephjcacion agaynst certayne of note: 'Erant olim hujus scientiae 
 yony Scholers abjured of late, etc. [theologies] professores; hodie, quod 
 Skelton-Dyce, i 206. These lines, it indignans dico, sacrum nomen pro- 
 is true, were really aimed, some fani et loquaces dialectici dehones- 
 twenty years after the foundation of tant ; quod nisi sic esset, non haec 
 the lady Margaret preachership, at tanta tarn subito pullulasset seges 
 the young Cambridge Reformers: inutilium magistrorum. ' DeRemediis 
 but they describe with perfect ac- utriwque Fortune, p. 45. 
 
 curacy the ordinary theological train- 3 Cooper, Annals, i 198 ; Wood- 
 ing of the time. Petrarch's cor- Gutch, 1 596. 
 responding criticism on the theolo-
 
 440 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 Foundation 
 of the lady 
 Margaret 
 1'reacher- 
 sbip. 
 
 Double aim 
 of Fi.iher: to 
 revive the 
 practice, 
 and to re- 
 form the 
 method, of 
 preaching. 
 
 Testimony of 
 Kroamus. 
 
 Regulation* 
 of the 
 
 preaclicrship. 
 
 yearly to appoint under the university seal, twelve doctors or 
 masters, and graduates, being priests, most capable of preach- 
 ing, to preach the word of God in all parts of England, 
 Scotland, and Ireland, both to the clergy and the people, 
 notwithstanding any ordinance or constitution to the con- 
 trary 1 .' But the evangelizing spirit had been too long and 
 too sternly repressed for merely permissive enactments to 
 restore it again to life. Men began to surmise that, in seek- 
 ing to extirpate the ' tares,' the rulers of the Church had also 
 torn up much of the good wheat ; and to some it seemed that 
 the certainty of an uninstructed and irreligious laity was a 
 worse evil than the possibility of heretical preaching. Among 
 these were the lady Margaret and her adviser. Like One of 
 old, they were moved with compassion as they saw the flocks 
 wandering and fainting for want of the shepherd's care. The 
 lady Margaret preachership was the outcome of no pedantic 
 effort to uphold a system of effete theology ; it was an 
 eminently practical design for the people's good ; and it 
 reflects no little credit on the discernment of bishop Fisher, 
 that this endeavour was a direct anticipation of like efforts 
 on the part of the most enlightened reformers of his own and 
 the succeeding generation, from moderate Anglicans, like 
 Parker, to unflinching denouncers of abuses, like Latimer. 
 Nor was his aim confined to the simple revival of preaching; 
 he was also anxious, as we learn long afterwards from 
 Erasmus, whom he incited to the composition of his treatise 
 De Ratione Concionandi, to change the whole character of 
 the pulpit oratory then in vogue, ' to abolish the customary 
 cavillings about words and parade of sophistry, and to have 
 those who were designed for preachers exercised in sound 
 learning and sober disputations, that they might preach the 
 word of God gravely and with an evangelical spirit, and re- 
 commend it to the minds of the learned by an efficacious 
 eloquence 8 .' 
 
 By the regulations now given in connexion with the new 
 foundation, the preacher was required to deliver six sermons 
 
 1 Cooper, Annal*, i 2CO. 
 
 * Erasmi Opera, in 1253. Lewis, Life of Fisher, i 10, 277.
 
 THE MARGARET PREACHERSHIP. 441 
 
 annually, that is to say, one in the course of every two years CHAP. v. 
 at each of the following twelve places : on some Sunday at vli^IL 
 St. Paul's Cross, if able to obtain permission, otherwise at 
 St. Margaret's, Westminster, or if unable to preach there, 
 then in one of the more notable churches of the city of 
 London ; and once, on some feast day, in each of the churches 
 of Ware and Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, Bassingbourne, 
 Orwell, and Babraham in Cambridgeshire ; Maney, St. James 
 Deeping, St. John Deeping, Bourn, Boston, and Swineshead 
 in Lincolnshire. The preacher was to be a doctor of divinity 
 if a competent doctor could be found to undertake the duty, 
 otherwise a bachelor in that faculty and perpetual fellow of 
 some college ; by a clause subsequently added the preference 
 was to be given, cfieris paribus, to members of Christ's 
 College. The preacher was to be resident in the university 
 and to hold no benefice. The election to the office was 
 vested in the vicechancellor and heads of colleges, the vice- 
 chancellor having the right of giving a casting vote. The 
 appointment was to be made triennially, the salary being The appoint- 
 
 iiii 11 i menttobe 
 
 fixed at ten pounds per annum, payable by the abbat and ^e tnen- 
 convent of Westminster 1 . 
 
 On the whole, looking at the scope of these several Fisher's 
 
 r . claims to be 
 
 designs of the countess and her adviser, the provision f r a**^^ 3 
 gratuitous theological instruction in the university, the 
 direct application of the learning thus acquired, in sermons to 
 the laity, and the introduction of a more simple and evan- 
 gelical method of scriptural exposition, we can scarcely 
 deny Fisher's claim to rank with the theological reformers of 
 his own and the preceding age, with Gerson, Hegius, Ru- 
 dolf von Lange, and Rudolphus Agricola, and those other 
 eminent men whose services have entitled them to the 
 honorable designation of ' reformers before the reformation.' 
 
 Both at the university and at court Fisher continued to He is elected 
 grow in favour. In the same year that the foregoing preach- Me univer- 
 ership was founded, he was elected chancellor of the univer- noiiinated 
 
 1 Cooper, Annals i 273-4. 'The in English to the university. ' Wood- 
 preacher,' says Wood, 'was pro- Gutch, u 827. 
 bably the only person that preached
 
 442 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP.V. sity, and at nearly the same time was promoted to the 
 bishopric of Rochester. The circumstances under which he 
 succeeded to the latter dignity were of an exceptional and 
 more than ordinarily gratifying kind. In those days the royal 
 court, or as Wolsey began to grow in influence, Hampton 
 Court, was thronged by eager and often far from scrupulous 
 candidates for office and promotion ; unobtrusive merit and 
 the faithful discharge of duty rarely won for the parish priest 
 the recognition of the dispensers of ecclesiastical rewards; 
 circum- and it would seem that no one was more taken by surprise 
 
 stances un- 
 
 sucwed^to than Fisher himself, when, without solicitation or expectation 
 the bishopric. on n - g own p ar ^ as y e t unbeneficed, and still somewhat under 
 the age when long service might be held to mark him out 
 for such signal favour, he was called upon to succeed Richard 
 Fitzjarnes (who was translated to the see of Chichester), as 
 bishop of Rochester. Conjecture would naturally incline us 
 to refer his promotion to the influence of his patroness, but 
 the account given by Lewis, authenticated by the express 
 statement of Fisher himself 1 , proves that the initiative was 
 taken by king Hemy desirous, it would seem, as he ap- 
 proached the close of life, of redeeming many an ill-consi- 
 dered act of preferment by promotion that shewed a more 
 careful consideration of the personal merits of the individual. 
 Fisher's The influence of Fisher on behalf of his university now 
 
 iliththe began to make itself still more distinctly perceptible. In the 
 scheme of the foundation of the professorship, Oxford, as we 
 have seen, was an equal sharer in his patroness's bounty ; 
 and in that of the preachership, Anthony Wood has endea- 
 voured to prove that it was her intention to have equally 
 befriended the sister university 2 . That his assumption is en- 
 tirely unwarranted by the facts is clearly shewn by Baker, 
 and Cooper's industrious research has discovered nothing 
 that gives it countenance. It seems accordingly not un- 
 reasonable to conclude that the university was chiefly in- 
 
 1 ' Qnippe qni pancon annos habu- nibus liqoido constaret illomm causa 
 
 erim, qui nunqnam in curia obse- id factum ease . . Te nullius aut viri 
 
 quium prsestiterim, qui nullis ante aut feminac precibus adductum nt 
 
 dotatua bencficiis. Etqoamobrem id faceres asserebas.' Lewis, Life 
 
 ego ad episcopatum assumerer? Nihil of Fisher, n 270. 
 profecto aliod nisi nt ntudiosis om- * Wood, Annalt, n 827.
 
 HIS INFLUENCE WITH THE COUNTESS. 443 
 
 debted to Fisher for the latter benefaction; while, in the CHAP. v. 
 design that next claims our attention, the foundation of a t^-J' 
 new college, it is certain that the countess was not only 
 decided in her choice between the two universities by his 
 counsels, but that neither Oxford nor Cambridge would have 
 been thus enriched had those counsels been wanting. 
 
 Among the most noticeable characteristics of the mu- ^""dlre^n 
 nificence of nearly all founders of great institutions in these these Umes- 
 prse-reformation times, is one on which it would perhaps be 
 unwise to insist too strongly as detracting from the merit of 
 really generous acts, but which cannot be altogether dis- 
 regarded in estimating the motives that led to the alienation 
 of so much wealth. It is certain that the patrons of learning 
 never themselves sought to disguise the fact that their own spi- 
 ritual welfare entered largely into their calculations. Through- 
 out the Middle Ages, the Augustinian theory, set forth with 
 so much emphasis by Peter Lombard in the Sentences, that 
 good deeds are to be performed, not from conformity to any 
 abstract conception of right and wrong, but as acts of obe- 
 dience to the mandates of the Great Disposer of earthly 
 events and human destinies 1 , was the all-prevailing doctrine ; 
 and this principle, conjoined with the belief in purgatory, not 
 unfrequently imparts to the designs of genuine benevolence 
 an air of deliberate calculation that might seem, to a super- 
 ficial observer, to divest them of all claim to disinterestedness. 
 The efficacy of prayers offered up on behalf of those in 
 purgatory was universally taught. The more masses offered 
 up for the souls of the departed, the shorter, it was held, 
 would be the period of their suffering. And thus it was 
 rarely indeed that either a church was built, or a monastery, 
 college, or 'hospital' founded, without a proviso requiring 
 that every year so many masses or prayers should be offered 
 for the spiritual repose of the founder or foundress and of 
 their families. Both the lady Margaret professor and the 
 lady Margaret preacher were bound to pray at stated seasons, 
 and whenever they took part as celebrants in the mass, for 
 
 1 See supra, p. 59, note 4.
 
 444 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. the souls of the countess and certain of her relations. While 
 J^^lLr respecting king Henry, we learn on the authority of Fisher, 
 that notwithstanding his habitual parsimony, ' there was in 
 his realm no virtuous man that he might be credibly in- 
 formed of, but he gave him a continual remembrance yearly 
 and daily to pray for him ; some ten marks and some ten 
 c(.untes in ie pounds 1 .' But the prayers of the secular clergy were never 
 
 connexion . . . ft -i t i 
 
 with the so highly prized as those of the regulars, and over the mind 
 
 abbey of J r 
 
 Westminster. O f ^he devout countess the great community of Westminster, 
 with its ancient sanctity, new splendour, and imposing orga- 
 nisation, appears to have exercised no ordinary fascination. 
 The gorgeous chapel in the abbey church,, which perpetuates 
 the memory of her royal son, was already commenced, and it 
 was designed that at his side she too should find her earthly 
 resting place ; and though the wealth of the abbey was enor- 
 mous and had been already largely augmented by her libe- 
 rality, it would seem that her remaining charities would have 
 /the been similarly bestowed, had it not been for the disinterested 
 of and unanswerable remonstrances of Fisher. ' That,' in the 
 language of Baker, ' the religious house at Westminster was 
 already wealthy enough (as it was the richest in England), 
 and did not want support or maintenance, that the schools 
 of learning were meanly endowed, the provisions for scholars 
 very few and small, and colleges yet wanting to their main- 
 tenance, that by such foundations she might have two ends 
 and designs at once, might double her charity and double her 
 reward, by affording as well supports to learning as en- 
 couragements to virtue 2 ,' were cogent arguments that for- 
 tunately prevailed over the superstitious devotion of the 
 countess, and brought it to pass that her wealth, instead of 
 swelling the coffers soon to be plundered so mercilessly 8 , was 
 given to the foundation of two societies, which, after having 
 graced the university for more than three centuries with 
 
 J Lewis, Life of Finhtr, i 30. Nothing shows more clearly the hold 
 
 1 Baker-Mayor, p. 59. which the Abbey had laid on the af- 
 
 4 Nothing shows more clearly fections of the English people, than 
 
 the force of the shock that followed, that it stood the shock as firmly as 
 
 than the upheaving even of the solid it did.' Dean Stanley, Memorial of 
 
 rock of the Abbey as it came on. Westminster Abbey, p. 167.
 
 GOD'S HOUSE. 445 
 
 many a distinguished name> are still contributing with un- CHAP. v. 
 diminished efficiency to its reputation, adornment, and use- ^^-^ 
 fulness. 
 
 The foundation of God's House, as a school of grammar J? i8 >? r }', of 
 
 God g House 
 
 under the government of the authorities of Clare and in the J^^ 8101 " 1 " 
 immediate vicinity of the college, has already come under 
 our notice 1 . Shortly after its foundation, in consequence of 
 the numerous alterations involved in the erection of King's 
 College, it was removed to St. Andrew's parish 2 ; here it 
 appears to have attained to independence of Clare College*, 
 being aided by a grant from Henry VI of property once in 
 possession, ' two cottages formerly belonging to the abbey 
 of Tiltey and a tenement adjoining which had formerly be- 
 longed to the abbess of Denny, with gardens adjacent.' We Design of 
 learn indeed from the charter of Christ's College, that it was 
 the design of the good monarch ' to have endowed the society 
 with revenues sufficient for the maintenance of sixty scholars, 
 but the revenues actually granted sufficed only for four 4 .' 
 In the second of Edward iv we find the society receiving a Accessions to 
 slight accession of revenue in the shape of a rent of ten marks of the society. 
 ' which the prior of Monmouth used to pay to the chief lord of 
 the priory in foreign parts,' and also a rent of forty shillings 
 which the prior of Newstead-upon-Ancolme used to pay to the 
 abbat and convent of Longvillers 5 . Such was the foundation Designer the 
 which the lady Margaret, acting under the advice of Fisher ret. y " 
 as above described, resolved to take under her protection, 
 and to raise from a grammar school to a school of arts. The 
 revenues of the present society afford accordingly an instance 
 
 1 See p. 349, and Licenciafundandi spoken of as a proctor (procurator). 
 
 collegium vulgariternuncupatumGod- * Cooper, Annals, i 189; Nichols, 
 
 deshous (given 20 Henry vi), in Docu- Royal Wills, 369. The society was also 
 
 ments. in 155-9. endowed with certain revenues from 
 
 3 The fact that Christ's College the monasteries of Monmouth, Tot- 
 stood in this parish is said to have ness, Newstead, Sawtrey, and Cans- 
 decided the historian, John Major, in well in South Wales ; with the pri- 
 his choice of a college (St. Andrew be- ory of Chipstowe, the priory and 
 ing the patron saint of his nation). manor of Ikeham, and the advowsons 
 He resided at Christ's for about a of Fen Drayton and of Naumby in 
 year. Cooper, Athena, i 93. Lincolnshire. Documents, in 168-9. 
 
 3 There is no mention in thelicence, 5 Documents, i 59. The same grants 
 
 given 24 Hen. vi, of the master and had been made in the preceding reign 
 
 scholars of Clare Hall; but the head (Ibid.p. 55); therewould consequently 
 
 of the society of God's House is still appear to have been a resumption.
 
 446 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. o f a double conversion, from -monastic uses to those of a 
 
 JAKT II. 
 
 ^ v '" grammar school, and from those of a grammar school to those 
 of a college. 
 
 The precise time at which Fisher resigned his mastership 
 at Michaelhouse, is not recorded, but in the year 1505 we find 
 one John Fotehede elected to the post 1 , and Fisher's retire- 
 ment was therefore probably somewhat earlier. Though 
 chancellor of the university, the duties of that office were 
 such as he could for the most part easily delegate to his 
 subordinate, and the affairs of his bishopric and the necessity 
 for frequent attendance at court may naturally have induced 
 him to make his palace at Rochester his habitual residence. 
 So soon however as the countess had resolved upon carrying 
 out her new scheme, his presence at Cambridge, in order to 
 superintend the new works, became apparently indispensable ; 
 and it appears that his election to the presidency of Queens' 
 Fisher elect- College, which now took place, was not improbably designed, 
 
 ed president T ..,.,. 
 
 of Queens- as Lewis suggests, as a means of providing him with a 
 
 t'ollene, Apr. 
 
 12.1&& suitable place of residence during the erection of Christ's 
 College *. The president of the former society, Thomas Wil- 
 kinson, voluntarily retired from his post at the request of the 
 countess 8 , and his place for the next three years was filled by 
 Fisher. There can be little doubt that while the latter 
 rendered important service to the rising society, it was in no 
 way at the expense of the one over which he presided, for 
 we find that when he resigned the presidency in 1508, the 
 fellows were unanimous in their expressions of regret, and 
 that, at their urgent request, he undertook the responsibility 
 of appointing his successor*. 
 
 Foundation In the year 1505 appeared the royal charter for the 
 
 (v.LLKUB, foundation of Christ's College, wherein, after a recital of the 
 
 facts already mentioned together with numerous other details, 
 
 1 Cooper, Athena, i 23. dear to them all not only on ac- 
 
 1 Lewis, Life of Fisher, i 16. count of his ingenuous humanity, but 
 
 1 Wilkinson had succeeded An- for his excellent learning and pru- 
 
 drew Doket in the presidentship in dence, who they wished had as great 
 
 1484, and was probably at this time a desire to be their president, as 
 
 an elderly man. He died in 1511. they had of continuing him.' Lewis, 
 
 4 4 The bishop,' they said, ' was a Life of Fisher, p. 26. 
 man that, without flattery, was very
 
 CHRIST'S COLLEGE. 447 
 
 it was notified that king Henry, at the representations of his CHAP. v. 
 mother and other noble and trustworthy persons, percaris- -^^^ 
 simce mains nostrce necnon aliorum nobilium et fide dignorum 
 and having regard to her great desire to exalt and increase the 
 Christian faith, her anxiety for her own spiritual welfare, and the 
 sincere love which she had ever borne ' our uncle' (Henry vi), 
 while he lived, had conceded to her permission to carry 
 into full effect the designs of her illustrious relative. That 
 is to say, to enlarge and endow the aforesaid God's House 
 sufficiently for the reception and support of any number of 
 scholars not exceeding sixty, who should be instructed in 
 grammar or in the other liberal sciences and faculties or in 
 sacred theology. The arrival of the charter was soon followed 
 by the intelligence of the countess's noble benefactions ; and 
 the university next learned that the humble and struggling 
 society hitherto known as God's House, had received, under its 
 new designation as Christ's College, endowments which placed 
 it fourth, in respect of revenue, among existing colleges 1 . 
 
 'On the 14th of July, 1507,' says Cooper, 'the king Estates 
 granted to the countess the abbey of St.- Mary de Pratis, at {^ e t f c j^ y 
 Creyke in Norfolk, with licence to assign the same to this ]viar b' aret - 
 college, to which it was subsequently granted with the 
 sanction of the pope. The king, by other letters patent of 
 the same date, empowered the countess to grant to the 
 college the ad vow son of Manobre in Pembrokeshire, which 
 
 O * 
 
 she accordingly did. She also granted the manors of Malton, 
 Meldreth, and Beach, with lands in those places, and in 
 Whaddon, Kneesworth, Oakington, Orwell, and Barrington, 
 
 1 It is to be observed that the new ing society, and the appointment 
 
 college was an extension not a sup- of John Sickling, the proctor of God's 
 
 pression of the original institution, House, to the mastership of Christ's, 
 
 the developement of a grammar are evident proof. Baker, in his 
 
 school into a college for the whole History of St. John's College, speaks 
 
 course of the trivium and quadrivium. of the old society as having been 
 
 The mode of procedure was therefore ' suppressed upon the founding of 
 
 altogether different from that where- Christ's College,' and considers that 
 
 by the nunnery of St. Rhadegund this 'suppression' was the reason 
 
 was converted into Jesus College, that ' we meet with so few degrees 
 
 and the house of the Brethren of St. in grammar after that foundation.' 
 
 John into St. John's College; of this He also, with equal inaccuracy, speaks 
 
 the expressions addere, annectere, of God's House as originally an 
 
 unire, used with respect to the elec- adjunct to King's College instead of 
 
 tion of the new scholars by the exist- to Clare. See Baker-Mayor, p. 30.
 
 448 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 other be- 
 ike college, 
 
 i5os? eln 
 
 vinit, with 
 
 6111 
 
 * n Cambridgeshire, the manor of Ditesworth, with lands 
 there, and in Kegworth, Hathern, and Watton, with the 
 advowson of Kegworth in Leicestershire, also the advowson 
 of Sutton Bonnington in Nottinghamshire, and the manor of 
 Roydon in Essex, and procured the appropriation of the 
 churches of Fendrayton and Helpstone. By her will, she 
 directed that the college buildings should be perfectly finished 
 and garnished at her cost ; that the college should have other 
 lands, of the yearly value of 16 ; that 100 or more should 
 be deposited in a strong coffer for the use of the college, to 
 which she gave a moiety of her plate, jewels, vestments, altar- 
 cloths, books, hangings, and other necessaries belonging to 
 her chapel ; and that the manor-house at Malton should be 
 sufficiently built and repaired at her cost, "soo that the 
 maister and scolers may resort thidder, and there to tarry in 
 tyme of contagiouse siknes at Cambrige, and exercise their 
 lernyng and studies 1 .'" 
 
 Before the close of the year 1505 the countess honoured 
 the university by her presence. We have no details of this 
 visit, beyond the fact that she was met at a distance of three 
 miles from the town by the dignitaries and other members of 
 the community, whose gratitude she had so well deserved 3 ; 
 but in the following year we find her repeating her visit, 
 accompanied by her royal son. King Henry, with that 
 ostentatious devotion wherewith in his latter years he strove 
 to efface the recollection of many a cruel act of oppression, 
 was on his way to visit the famous shrine of St. Mary at 
 Walsinjjham. He was met, in the first instance, at three 
 m iles distance from the town, by the civic authorities ; as he 
 approached within a quarter of a mile, he found awaiting 
 him, in long array, first the four orders of the Mendicants, 
 then the other religious orders, and finally the members of 
 
 1 Cooper, Annah, i 275. 
 
 3 It was perhaps on this occasion 
 that the incident recorded by Fuller 
 occurred : ' Once the lady Margaret 
 came to Christ's College to behold it 
 when partly built; and, looking out 
 of a window, saw the dean call a 
 faulty scholar to correction; to whom 
 
 she said Lcnte, lente! "Gently, 
 gently," as accounting it better to 
 mitigate his punishment than to pro- 
 cure his pardon : mercy and justice 
 making the best medley to offenders.' 
 'This,' says Fuller, 'I heard in a 
 clemrn from Dr Collings.' Fuller 
 1'rickctt & Wright, p. 182.
 
 THE ROYAL VISIT. 449 
 
 the university according to their degree. As the monarch CHAP. v. 
 passed along he stooped from his saddle to kiss the cross borne ^-1^-IL 
 by each order, and at last arrived where the university cross 
 was planted, with a bench and cushion beneath. Here the 
 chancellor, with the other doctors, was stationed to give him 
 welcome ; the monarch alighted from his horse ; and Fisher ^ 
 thereupon delivered what Ashmole terms ' a little proposi- Henry- 
 tion/ or in other words, a short Latin oration, which has 
 fortunately been preserved entire. It is not certainly in the 
 florid oratory customary on occasions of this kind that we 
 should expect to meet with the most severe fidelity to his- 
 toric truth ; but, after making all allowance for any necessity 
 that the orator may have felt himself under to play the 
 courtier, it must be admitted that the speech in question 
 does more honour to his heart than to his head, and affords 
 a noteworthy illustration of that intense and credulous re- 
 verence for tradition, which, notwithstanding his natural good 
 sense and discernment, Fisher so often exhibited in the 
 course of his life. The speech opens with the usual ex- Hi excessive 
 
 1 adulation. 
 
 pressions of fulsome adulation. King Henry is complimented 
 on his skill in languages and on his finished eloquence ; on 
 his stately form and grace of figure, his strength, fleetness, 
 and agility; these natural gifts however the orator seems 
 rather disposed to regard as miraculous, 'inasmuch as,' he 
 observes (complimenting the son, it would seem, somewhat 
 at the expense of the mother), 'the countess was but small of 
 person, and only fourteen years of age when king Henry was 
 born.' But however this may be, it is impossible not to 
 discern the direct interposition of Providence in the frequent 
 royal escapes from peril and danger in early life, and from 
 the plots and treasons that at a later period had endangered 
 the stability of the throne. Other subjects of congratulation, 
 the orator holds, were to be found in the prosperity of the 
 kingdom, the warlike prowess of the people, and the mon- 
 arch's enormous wealth. It seems singular that, at a time 
 when the country was groaning under the extortion of the 
 royal commissioners, so delicate a topic should have been 
 touched upon ; but Empson was at that time steward of the 
 
 29
 
 450 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP.V. university 1 , and it is not improbable that Fisher may have 
 believed him to be unjustly assailed and have designed a 
 rebuke to the prevalent discontent. Then follows a recital 
 
 tToVof tht" f som e of the most extravagant fables respecting the origin 
 
 university. Q f ^ e un i vers it,y. Cambridge was founded by Cantaber, a 
 king of the East Saxons, who had been educated at Athens. 
 The archives, unfortunately, that should have preserved the 
 records of this illustrious commencement, had been lost in 
 the 'carnage, conflagrations, and plunderings' of a former 
 age. But other facts in the early history of the university 
 were attested by independent evidence. It was notorious 
 that Cambridge had been known as a seat of learning long 
 before the time of Honorius, 'for we have,' says Fisher, 
 ' copies, sub plumbo, of a letter which he sent us, and in that 
 letter he expressly refers to times far more ancient than his 
 own.' Honorius again, as every one knew, was pope sixty 
 years before Charlemagne ' founded the university of Paris ;' 
 nor could it be reasonably doubted that Paris owed its origin 
 to Cambridge, when we know that Alcuin, John Scotus, and 
 Rabanus Maurus were educated here, Gaguinum, testem 
 citabimus*. After thus propping up one fiction by another, 
 the orator turns to the less questionable records of the suc- 
 cessive benefactions of former monarchs ; and recalls, in a 
 passage already partly quoted 8 , how the favour of the mon- 
 arch whom he addressed had quickened the university to 
 new life when sunk in lethargy and despondency. Then 
 follows an undoubtedly genuine expression of feeling, 
 
 puberty Fisher's acknowledgement of the benefactions he had himself 
 received at the royal hands; and finally the oration closes 
 with a devout prayer that length of days, an undisputed 
 succession (prince Henry appears to have been standing at 
 
 t of t 
 feroun he 
 
 1 Cooper, Athena, 1 14. 
 
 * Oaguinus was an accepted au- 
 thority at this time. He was the 
 author of De Origine et Gettis Fran- 
 corum, a chronicle of French history 
 from the time of Pharamond down 
 to 1491, and held a chair of rhetoric 
 in the univtrnity of Paris. His ac- 
 count of contemporary history has 
 
 generally been regarded as trust- 
 worthy. Bee Potthast, Sibliotheca 
 Hittarica Medii JBvi, ed. 1862, 240, 
 825. Erasmus speaks of him in the 
 highest terms, ' Robertas Gagui- 
 nus, quo uno litterarum parente, an- 
 tistite, principe, Francia non injuria 
 gloriatur.' Opera, m 1782. 
 8 See snpra, p. 427.
 
 THE ROYAL VISIT. 451 
 
 his father's side), and every temporal and spiritual blessing CHAP. v. 
 may descend on the monarch and his son. 
 
 This ceremony over, the king remounted his horse, and The P roce- 
 
 j.1 J -i. i j i i ton through 
 
 the procession moved on; it appears to have made a kindle town. 
 
 of circuit of the best part of the town, passing by the house 
 
 of the Dominicans, where Emmanuel College now stands, 
 
 until the monarch alighted at the lodge of Queens'. It was 
 
 not his first visit to this society, for he had already, in 1497, 
 
 during the presidency of Wilkinson, been entertained under 
 
 the same roof. After resting for an hour, he again rose and 
 
 'did on his gown and mantle of the Garter,' his example 
 
 being followed by all the knights of that order in his train, 
 
 and then mounting his horse rode in solemn state to King's. King Henry 
 
 mi 111 i attends the 
 
 1 he chapel there, commenced half a century before, was at s* 06 in 
 
 * King's Col- 
 
 this time only half completed 1 ; ever since the accession 
 Edward iv the work had either altogether stood still, or 
 been carried on in a spiritless and inadequate fashion, owing 
 to the want of funds. As yet the red rose of Lancaster 
 gleamed not from the variegated pane ; the rich details of 
 the architecture, wearing the greyhound of Beaufort and the 
 portcullis of Blanche of Navarre, were still mostly wanting ; 
 
 1 King Henry vi had set apart, seems to have been carried up to the 
 from the revenues of the duchy of top of the E. window, and the two first 
 Lancaster, a special fund for carry- vestries towards the E. on the N. 
 ing on the building. But ' after side were covered in, but the battle- 
 Edward iv was proclaimed King,' ments over them were not set up, 
 says Cole, 'which was on 5th March, and thus the building stood sloping 
 1460, an entire stop was put to the towards the W. end, being carried 
 works, for the duchy of Lancaster no higher than the white stone rises, 
 and the whole revenue of the college till 28th May, A. K. 23 Henry vii, 
 was seized by him, part of which was from which time the work went on 
 regranted to the provost and scholars at the expense of Henry vn and his 
 for their maintenance, but nothing executors, till the case of the chapel 
 
 from the duchy for the building was finished, which it was 29 July, 
 
 1479 83. 1296. Is. Sd. were ex- A.D. 1515, A. B. 7 Hen. vm.' Cole 
 
 pended on the works, of which 1000 MSS. i 105-7. The roofing of the 
 
 was given by the King, and 140 by chapel was not commenced until A.D. 
 
 Thomas Eotheram, bishop of Lin- 1512. The clause in the royal will 
 
 coin and chancellor of England, and relating to the completion of the 
 
 formerly fellow of the college chapel is printed by Cooper, Annals, 
 
 1483. Thomas Cliff was by Ric. in i 28990. A further sum of 5000 
 
 appointed overseer of the works, and was given by the executors in 1512 
 
 continued so till December 23 fol- 13. The windows, according to 
 
 lowing, A. B. 2 Ric. in; during this contract of 1526, were to be after 
 
 time 746. 10s. 9d. was expended 'the form, manner, curiosity, and 
 
 on the works, of which the King cleanness of those in the King's new 
 
 seems to have given 700 At chapel at Westminster.* 
 
 this time the E. end of the chapel 
 
 292
 
 452 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. the building was 'not yet roofed. Sufficient progress had 
 ^ ^ however been made to admit of the performance of di- 
 vine service, in which Fisher took part as chief celebrant. 
 Possibiegood It is not unreasonable to suppose that the monarch's visit, 
 
 effects of the 
 
 royai viit. an( j personal observation of the fate that seemed threatening 
 to overtake an unequalled design, may have roused him to 
 his after liberality in behalf of this great memorial to the 
 ' holy Henry's shade.' He had at one time, it is said, in- 
 tended that ' the body and reliques of his uncle of blissful 
 memory should rest in his own chapel at Westminster,' 
 but this design was never carried into effect: perhaps, in 
 abandoning it, he conceived the idea, which he carried out 
 only on his death-bed, of proving his regard for the memory 
 of his Lancastrian ancestor in another way, by finishing, 
 in noble fashion, the work that Henry VI had commenced 
 at Cambridge. However this may have been, within three 
 years after the above visit, he left those princely bequests 
 that converted a sad spectacle of apparent failure into one 
 
 The mo- of splendid completion. Three weeks before his death he 
 
 narcli's sub- * * in 
 
 "JSffJJ?*" made over for this purpose to the college authorities the sum 
 uoVof'tiw" f fi ye thousand pounds, and left directions in his will, that 
 his executors should from time to time advance whatever 
 additional sums might be required for the ' perfect finishing' 
 of the whole. We can better estimate the magnitude of 
 these grants in the eyes of that generation, when we find 
 Hitgifuto that a gift of one hundred marks to the university, and 
 an ther of a hundred pounds towards the rebuilding of 
 Great St. Mary's, made by king Henry before his departure 
 from Cambridge on the foregoing occasion, were hailed as 
 indications of special favour in one whose parsimony was so 
 notorious. 
 
 There is some reason for conjecturing that, among those 
 wno fH we d in the royal train on this occasion 1 , was Desi- 
 derius Erasmus, for we find that he was in England during 
 
 1 Dr John Cains directly asserts ricus etiam Septimus Angli rex 
 
 (Hitt. Cant. A cad. p. 127), that prndentissimus Cantabrigiam invi- 
 
 Eraemus was living at Cambridge sit:' but this statement appears to 
 
 at the time when King Henry visited be without sufficient authority. See 
 
 the university,' quo tempore Hen- Knight's Life of Eratmut, pp. 85-8.
 
 STATUTES OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE. 453 
 
 the spring of the same year, and we also know that he was, CHAP. v. 
 about the same time, admitted by accumulation to the de- 
 grees of bachelor and doctor of divinity of the university 1 . 
 He was already well known to Fisher, whose guest he after- In 
 wards became at the lodge of Queens' College ; it is therefore 
 far from improbable that in the statutes of Christ's College 
 given about this time by the lady Margaret, the influence of 
 the great scholar was not without effect, and that, in the 
 clause which provides for the study of the poets and orators 
 of antiquity, is to be discerned the result of many a con- 
 versation between the president of Queens' and his illus- 
 trious guest. But be this as it may, it is certain that in 
 the statutes that now invite our attention we have a more 
 important and interesting code than any that has hitherto 
 come before us, presenting as it does the first endeavour to 
 introduce a new element of culture, being also a code given 
 as the rule of a third society by a distinguished leader in 
 the university, who had already presided over the discipline 
 of two other foundations, a code destined moreover after- 
 wards to serve as the rule of a fourth society, and one yet 
 more illustrious than that for which it was first compiled*. 
 
 In the commencing chapter we miss the ordinary pre- original su- 
 amble respecting the motives and designs of the foundress, fiwufs cow 
 
 ' lege, given 
 
 it being evidently understood that the college is to- be looked 1506 - 
 upon as an extension of the design of God's House : and it is 
 expressly stated that Sickling and the three remaining fellows 
 of the old society have given their assent to the new rule. 
 The prefatory chapter contains a somewhat quaint comparison 
 between the human frame and the organisation of a college. 
 
 1 This fact is referred to by dean tatur baccalanreus in eadem et in- 
 
 Milman as a mere report, and Mr tret libros Sententiarum bedellisque 
 
 Seebokm omits all notice of it in his satisfaeiat.' Liber Gratiar. B, foL 
 
 Oxford Reformers ; the entry in the 229 b. The sermo examinatorius, 
 
 Grace Book however places it beyond according to Caiua (Antiq. Cant. 
 
 dispute : ' Anno 1505 conceditur Acad., Lib. n), was so called, ' quia 
 
 Des. Erasmo ut unicum vel si exi- ante a doctoribus theologicis exami- 
 
 gantur duo responsa una cum duobus nabatur quam de suggesto pronun- 
 
 sermonibus ad clerum sermoneque ciabatur propter Wicliffi doctrinam.' 
 
 examinatorio, et lectura publica in The fear of Lollardism was evidently 
 
 Epistolam ad Romanos, vel quaevis far from extinct, 
 
 alia, sufficiant sibi ad incipiendum * These statutes are printed in 
 
 in theologia sic quod priua admit- Document*, in 174 212.
 
 454- BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. In the statute which follows next, relating to the duties 
 
 I> -^"-i^ and authority of the master, a contrast to preceding codes is 
 
 rue master: observable in the numerous limitations imposed. Hitherto 
 
 numerous re- x 
 
 po1ed i0 u n p 9 on m ~ the main object would seem to nave been to secure obedience 
 his authority. ^ Q j^ j^g. no apprehension is manifested lest he should over- 
 step the proper bounds and prove forgetful of the college 
 interests while promoting his own; and he is generally to be 
 found enjoying what was virtually almost unrestricted liberty 
 condition* of action. We find, it is true, in the statutes given to Jesus 
 
 compared /-. n . -if 11- i 
 
 with those College a few years before, that he is required to take an 
 
 imposed at e * 
 
 Jesus coi- oa th that he will neither alienate, pledge, nor mortgage any 
 of the property without the consent of the visitor and the 
 majority of the fellows; and he is also required to consult 
 with the fellows in rebus et negotiis arduis 1 . But these 
 obligations are vague and easily evaded when compared with 
 those here imposed. To the master of Christ's it is forbidden 
 to take action with respect to any complaint or concession, 
 until the majority of the fellows have given their assent; 
 to alienate or farm out the lauds, houses, tithes, dues, or 
 other sources of revenue ' whether spiritual or temporal, to 
 bestow any office, fee, or pension from the college revenue, 
 to present to any of the college livings, and finally, to enter 
 upon any matter wherein the college may be liable to suffer 
 disgrace or detriment, until all the fellows have been sum- 
 moned and the consent of the majority obtained.' It is also 
 required, 'inasmuch as it is not fit that the head should 
 be separated from the body ' (the statute here following up 
 the metaphor originally instituted), that the master shall be 
 
 llrtetj 611 ^ resident two mouths out of every three throughout the year, 
 unless engaged elsewhere in college business, or able to plead 
 
 Haif-yeariy exceptional circumstances. He is also required to render, 
 
 account* to . . 
 
 be rendered twice a year, a true and faithful account of all receipts and 
 
 of the college . 
 
 HUM*** disbursements and to account for the surplusage. 
 
 The fellows, twelve in number, are required, at the time 
 of their election, to be masters of arts or at least of bachelor 
 standing, and in priest's orders, or within a year of admission 
 to the same; they are to be chosen if eligible from the 
 
 1 Document*, in 98.
 
 STATUTES OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE. 455 
 
 scholars, but, if fitting candidates be not forthcoming from CHAP. v. 
 among the number of these, from the whole university: at ^"-l 1 - 
 no time are there to be more than two who are not in priest's 
 orders. The northern sympathies of both the foundress and Quaimca- 
 
 1-1 tioiure- 
 
 her adviser are evinced in the statute requiring that at least ? l ?, ircd '' or 
 
 fellowships. 
 
 half, but not more than nine, of the fellows shall be natives j^ e v 7n to*" 
 of one or other of the nine counties of Northumberland, Dur- trymi? un 
 ham, Westmoreland, Cumberland, York, Richmond, Lanca- 
 shire, Derby, and Nottingham ; no one of these counties how- 
 ever is to be represented by more than one fellow at a time. 
 The remaining three fellows to be from any three of the 
 remaining counties of the realm. 
 
 In connexion with both the mastership and the fellow- Form of oath 
 
 at election. 
 
 ships there is one feature which calls for special notice, 
 namely the form of oath administered at the time of election. 
 In the statutes of Jesus College we also find forms of oath comparison 
 
 of this form 
 
 imposed, but between the oaths prescribed at the two colleges 
 there is an important difference; as regards the point in 
 question, a comparison of the two fellowship oaths will suffice. le< 
 The fellow of Jesus College is required to swear, ' I will ?? dis . 
 hold and maintain inviolate all and each of the statutes and 
 ordinances of this college, without any cavilling or wrongful 
 or perverse interpretation whatever, and as far as in me lies 
 I will endeavour to secure their acceptance and observance 
 by others 1 .' Similarly the fellow of Christ's is required to 
 swear, ' I will truthfully and scrupulously observe all and 
 each of the statutes which Margaret, the mother of our most 
 illustrious king Henry VII and foundress of this college, has 
 either herself or by her advisers given for its rule, and will as 
 far as in me lies enforce their observance by my brother 
 fellows 2 .' Thus far the oaths are evidently substantially the 
 
 1 ' Ego N. in verum et perpetuum quantum in me erit ab aliis teneri 
 
 socium bujus collegii electus, ad- et observari faciam, etc.' Ibid, m 
 
 missus et institutus, juro ad haec 103. 
 
 sancta Dei evangelia, per me cor- s ' nullam ullo tempore adver- 
 
 poraliter tacta, quod omnia et singu- sus aliquod statutorum Fundatricis 
 
 la statuta et ordinationes bujus col- nostrse sive adversus boc juramen- 
 
 legii absque onini cavillatione, aut turn meum dispensationem impetra- 
 
 inala aut sinistra interpretatione, bo, nee curabo impetrari, neque ab 
 
 quatenus ipsa me concernunt, in- aliis impetratam acceptabo ullo mo- 
 
 violabiliter tenebo et observabo, et do.' Ibid, in 194.
 
 45G 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 Precedent 
 for this 
 ctausu in 
 statutes of 
 King'* Col- 
 lege. 
 
 same, but in a subsequent clause of the oath administered at 
 Christ's we find this addition, ' I will at no time seek for a 
 dispensation with respect to any one of the statutes of our 
 foundation, or this my oath, neither will I take any steps for 
 the obtaining of such dispensation or in any way accept it 
 if obtained by others.' It is to be observed that this latter 
 clause has a precedent in the fellowship oath administered at 
 King's College (which in dean Peacock's opinion Fisher had 
 taken as his model) *, that it is inserted in the oath adminis- 
 tered at St. John's, as contained in the later codes drawn up 
 by Fisher in the years 1524 and 1530 s , that it is retained in 
 the statutes given by Elizabeth to the same society in 1576, 
 and in those that received the royal sanction in the twelfth 
 of Victoria. It is also to be observed that at each of the 
 above three colleges, as also at Queens', Clare Hall, and 
 Pembroke 8 , the queen in council has always been the su- 
 preme authority; and that to this authority there has al- 
 ways belonged, as either implied or distinctly asserted in the 
 several codes, an unquestioned right to alter, rescind, or 
 dispense with any of the statutes of each foundation. In 
 dean Peacock's view we are consequently here presented with 
 c u k ' a most difficult question.' ' How/ he asks (in discussing the 
 clause as it appears in the statutes of King's College), ' could 
 the authorities of the college, the provost and fellows, con- 
 sistently with the oath which they had taken, either pro- 
 pose a change themselves, or accept it, if procured by others 4 ?' 
 
 1 Dean Peacock, Obtervations, etc. 
 p. 103. 
 
 * Early Statutes of St. John's Col- 
 lege (ed. Mayor), pp. 306 and COO. 
 
 * ' In Caius, Corpus, Downing, 
 Trinity Hall, Catherine Hall, it is 
 the queen in council or in a court of 
 equity. In Peterhouse, Jesus, Mag- 
 dalen, Sidney, Emmanuel, the visit- 
 ors, an representing the founders 
 and deriving from them peculiar 
 jurisdiction and authority, would 
 either be competent to sanction such 
 changes, or at all events to authorise 
 an application to the queen in coun- 
 cil or in a court of equity.' Peacock, 
 p. 101. Dean Peacock observes with 
 reference to Christ's College, ' There 
 
 U no power expressly reserved by 
 
 the statutes of this college to effect 
 or to authorise such alterations as 
 time and other circumstances might 
 render necessary ' (p. 99). This 
 does not quite agree with the con- 
 clusion of the tiual statute, chapter 
 48, where we read, ' Et reservamua 
 item nobis auctoritatem mutandi et 
 innovaudi quiecuuque statuta priora 
 aut alia adjiciendi pro nostro arbitrio 
 cum expresso consensu magistri et 
 Bociorurn pncdictorum.' Docvmentt, 
 in p. 212. In the oath taken by the 
 master he again swears to observe 
 
 all 'ordinationes et statuta jam 
 
 edita nive in posterum edenda.' Ibid. 
 in 1878. 
 4 Ibid. p. 96.
 
 STATUTES OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE. 457 
 
 In other words, how could the crown reserve to* itself a right CHAP. r. 
 to alter, and the master or the fellow swear at the same time ^1^ ^ 
 never to accept any alteration whatever. ' It is known,' he 
 subsequently adds, ' as an historical fact, that such dispensa- 
 tions were repeatedly granted by the authority of the crown, 
 and it was never contended, nor even conceived, that the same 
 royal authority which in those days was considered competent 
 to dispense with or alter the whole body of the statutes, 
 could be controlled in the exercise of a temporary dispensa- 
 tion of one or more of them, in favour of any specified 
 individual. But if it be admitted that the same power which 
 gave the statutes, did not, from the moment of the comple- 
 tion of that act, abdicate and renounce its authority, but 
 continued to retain and practically to exercise it in the modi- 
 fication and dispensation of its own laws, and that conse- 
 quently the clause in the oath against the acceptance of 
 dispensations, could not refer to those which were granted 
 by the crown, it may very reasonably be asked what were the 
 dispensations which it was designed to exclude, by subjecting 
 those who sought for or accepted them to the imputation of 
 perjury?' The answer which he gives to the question he 
 raises is somewhat unsatisfactory, inasmuch as he discusses 
 it in connexion with the original statutes of Trinity College, 
 'when,' as he observes, 'the reformation of religion in this 
 kingdom was only in progress towards completion, and when 
 the minds of all men were familiar with the dispensations 
 from the distinct obligations of oaths which were so readily 
 granted and accepted, both in the university and elsewhere 1 .' 
 It is obvious that this latter observation is not apolicable to The clause 
 
 TV . -I j T originally 
 
 the prge-Keformation period, and we are consequently under a^ed at 
 
 * * * dispensa- 
 
 the necessity of enquiring what may be supposed to have ii ^ e froM 
 been the design of this oath as originally framed in the 
 fifteenth century ? It is to be noted then that there is satis- 
 factory evidence that these precautions were, in the first 
 instance, aimed at dispensations from Home. In the twen- 
 tieth of the statutes given by the lady Margaret to Christ's 
 College, we have what is entitled Forma et Conditio Obliga- 
 
 1 Ibid. p. 97.
 
 458 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. tionis qua Mg.gister sive Custos obligabitur: and by this statute 
 the master is required to execute a bond for the payment of 
 200 to the provost of King's and the master of Michaelhouse. 
 So long however as he abstains from obtaining literas aliquas 
 apostolicas dispensatortas releasing him from his own oath, 
 and also refuses to allow the acceptance of any such letter 
 by any of the fellows, the bond is to remain inoperative 
 (nullius roboris 1 ). In other words, the dispensations referred 
 to were papal dispensations from an oath of obedience to the 
 royal authority; and the spirit in which the prohibitory clauses 
 were enacted was identical with the spirit of the law which 
 made it high treason for any ecclesiastic to exercise the powers 
 of a legate a latere in England, the law so basely called into 
 action by the crown in the prosecution of Wolsey. So far 
 therefore from this clause presenting any 'great difficulty/ 
 as enacted before the Act of Supremacy, it would appear to 
 be entirely in harmony with the legislation of the period. 
 
 Probable The difficulty, if such it can be termed, belongs to times 
 
 explanation , 
 
 of therein- subsequent to that Act, when of course the oath became 
 
 tion of the 
 
 SuTsiu"nt amiost unmeaning, and, as we learn from Baker, who found 
 th^btatutes. man y of these bonds among the archives of St. John's, the 
 name of the king was inserted instead of that of the pope 3 . 
 After this alteration the statute necessarily wore the appear- 
 ance, to which dean Peacock adverts, of direct contradiction 
 to the founder's reservation of a right to alter or rescind any 
 statute in the future. But it is sufficiently notorious that 
 statutes of every kind are frequently to be found embodying 
 clauses which, whatever may have been their original utility, 
 have in the course of time lost much of their significance 
 and effect. If however any explanation can be given of the 
 
 1 Docvm-ntt, in 188; see also after altered for the King, or else the 
 
 Early Statute* of St. John's, p. 64. bonds run in general expressions.' 
 
 1 ' The fellows at their admission In Baker's opinion these bonds 
 
 were to take a strict oath for the ob- 'were a just and reasonable security,' 
 
 scrvance of the statutes, and withal and ' such as it were to be wished 
 
 to give a bond of 100 not to obtain had been continued.' Baker-Mayor, 
 
 or cause to be obtained, directly or p. 99. By what refinement the fel- 
 
 iudirectly from the pope, the court low was supposed to be debarred 
 
 of Itome, or any other place, any from obtaining a dispensation dis- 
 
 licence or dispensation contrary to pensing him from his oath not to 
 
 their oaths, or to accept or use it so obtain a dispensation, I do not pre- 
 
 obtnined. Many of which bonds are tend to explain, 
 yet extant, only the pope icas xoon
 
 STATUTES OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE. 459 
 
 retention of this clause down to the reign of Victoria, that CHAP. v. 
 suggested by the above writer would certainly appear to be ^ 
 the most probable, that the object was 'to prevent the juror 
 from seeking, by any direct or indirect exertions of his own, 
 to procure a dispensation from the obligations and penalties 
 of the statutes, or from availing himself of an offer or oppor- 
 tunity of procuring it by the indulgence or connivance of 
 those persons or bodies with whom was lodged the adminis- 
 tration of the laws 1 .' 
 
 In the statute relating to the scholars (discipuli scholares). The scholars: 
 
 . to be suffi- 
 
 we find that they are to be students of promise, as yet neither cientiy in- 
 
 J structed in 
 
 bachelors nor in holy orders, able to speak and understand fj^"' 
 the Latin tongue, and intending to devote themselves to ^d" 
 literature (bonas artes), and theology, and the sacred profes- th 
 sion. They must be competent to lecture in sophistry, at 
 least; in elections the same preference, under the same re- 
 strictions, as in the elections to fellowships, is to be shewn to 
 candidates from the nine northern counties already named. 
 Throughout the statutes we find not a single reference to The canon 
 the canon or civil law or to medicine, and the master is !Sd uiedidna 
 bound by his oath not to allow any of the fellows to apply 
 himself to any other faculty than those of arts and theology. 
 
 The admission of pensioners or convives, as they are also Pensioners to 
 
 i i f , i i r -i i -i be admitted, 
 
 termed, is here nrst provided for; and it is required that who are of 
 
 . . good charac- 
 
 special vigilance shall be exercised in admitting only such as ter - 
 are probatce vitce et fames inviolatce, and who are prepared to 
 bind themselves by oath to a strict observance of the pre- . 
 
 scribed order of discipline and instruction. 
 
 In the course of study innovation is again apparent. 
 A college lecturer is appointed who is to deliver four lectures A college 
 
 , T i lecturer ap- 
 
 daily m the hall ; one on dialectics or sophistry, another on pointed, 
 logic, a third on philosophy, and a fourth on the luorks of His lectures 
 
 mi to in . c lude 
 
 the poets and orators . I he other provisions, it is to be g^f>* 
 noted, also make a much closer approach towards bringing ^torT 1 
 the college course into rivalry with that of the schools. 
 
 1 Peacock, Observations, p. 98. bitrio relinquimus quoad ipsi condu- 
 
 a ' Quern librum vero in quaque cibilius auditorio fore judicaverint.' 
 
 harum facultatum sit expositurus, et Documents, in 201. 
 
 qua hora, magistri et decanorum ar-
 
 460 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. There are to be ' oppositions ' every Monday and Wednes- 
 
 ^^^, day, between twelve and one; sophistry exercises every 
 
 Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, between three and five; 
 
 a problem in logic every Monday after supper until seven; 
 
 a problem in philosophy every Friday between three and 
 
 five; and in the morning a disputation in grammar between 
 
 Lectures to nine and eleven; and in the long vacation, in addition to all 
 
 viicltion *^ e f re g m o> there are to be sophistry exercises on Monday, 
 
 Tuesday, and Wednesday, from eight to ten, in quibus omnibus, 
 
 says the statute, diligentia et industria utetur sua, quomodo 
 
 speraverit se auditorio profuturum. 
 
 SSd'&i. In the statute relating to the visitor, Joannes Eoffensis 
 tor for life, episcopus, nunc ujiiversitatis Cantabrigice cancellarius, is ap- 
 pointed to the office for life 1 . 
 
 Another provision among those contained in these sta- 
 tutes, though apparently a mere matter of detail, is proba- 
 bly as significant a fact as any that the statutes present. 
 We have already had occasion to notice in connexion with 
 Allowance earlier foundations the sums allowed for the weekly expendi- 
 
 for commons. , T 
 
 ture m commons : and it is to be remembered that by stringent 
 regulations in relation to expenses of this kind, the founders 
 availed themselves of the only means in their power for 
 preventing the introduction of luxury like that which had 
 proved the bane of the monasteries. The pleasures of the 
 table were extolled and sought with little disguise in these 
 ruder times, and if the colleges rarely presented a scene like 
 that which startled Giraldus at Canterbury, it was mainly 
 
 because they were under definite restrictions, while the 
 monastic foundations were in this respect ruled only by the 
 k- discretion of the abbat or prior. Wherever at least such 
 limitations were not prescribed, abuses seem generally to 
 have crept in. The house of the Brethren of St. John was 
 at this very time sinking into ruin, chiefly as the result of 
 unchecked extravagance of this character. At Peterhouse, 
 where no amount had been prescribed, ' the whole being left 
 indeterminately to the judgement of the master,' the bishop 
 of Ely found, when on his visitation in 1516, that 'no little 
 1 Document*, in 203, 208, 201, 209. See supra, pp. 254, n. 2 ; and 370.
 
 STATUTES OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE. 461 
 
 disadvantage and considerable damage had arisen to the CHAP. v. 
 
 said college/ and decided that the amount for the fellows' 'J^IL* 
 
 weekly commons should not in future exceed fourteen pence 1 . 
 
 The amount now fixed upon for Christ's College by bishop 
 
 Fisher was only twelve pence: and when we consider that 
 
 the same amount had been assigned for the maintenance of 
 
 the fellows of Michaelhouse more than two centuries before, 
 
 we can only infer that he regarded an ordinarily frugal table 
 
 as an indispensable element in college discipline. It is to be The same 
 
 . amount sub- 
 
 observed also that he prescribed the same amount for the equentiy 
 
 prescribed in 
 
 commons at St. John's, and maintained it, notwithstanding omToh^x 
 the general rise in prices, in the revisions of the code of the ta bFi n s ifer" 
 latter foundation which he instituted in the years 1524 and hiTiifl 011 
 1530*. Long after Fisher's death, in the year 1545, the ^suu^nhis 
 fellows of the same society found that this compulsory eco- fn 
 nomy had done them good service ; for when the greedy hand 
 of the courtier was stretched out to seize the property of 
 the college, king Henry refused to sanction the spoliation, 
 observing that ' he thought he had not in his realm so many 
 persons so honestly maintained in land and living, by so 
 little land and rent*.' 
 
 The university had scarcely ceased to congratulate itself Proposed 
 on the foundation of Christ's College, when it became known oTst John's 
 
 -r College, by 
 
 that the lady Margaret was intent on a somewhat similar tlielad y Mir - 
 
 design in connexion with the ancient Hospital of the Bre- The Hospital 
 
 ~ _ .., ,' tne Bre- 
 
 thren of bt. John. In this case however the original stock thren of st 
 
 John. 
 
 had gone too far in decay to admit of the process of grafting, 
 and the society, as we have already noticed, presented a more 
 than usually glaring instance of maladministration. Through- 
 out its history it appears to have been governed more with 
 
 1 Heywood, JEor/y College Statutes, maintained at the same sum up to 
 
 p. 57. See supra p. 254, n. 2 ; Ful- the reign of Edward vi, when, in 
 
 ler mentions the fact that archbishop consequence of the great rise in 
 
 Arundel, in 1405, granted a faculty prices, it became really insufficient, 
 
 for increasing a fellow's weekly com- and the college addressed a remon- 
 
 mons to l&d. ; and this is the amount strance to the protector Somerset, 
 
 prescribed in the early statutes of representing that ' the price of every- 
 
 Jesus College. thing was enhanced, but their income 
 
 a Early Statutes (ed. Mayor), pp. was not increased ; insomuch that 
 
 163, 320/379. now they could not live for twenty 
 
 * Parker Correspondence (Parker pence so well as formerly they could 
 
 Society), p. 36 : quoted in Baker- do for twelve pence.' Lewis, Life of 
 
 Mayor, p. 572. The allowance was Fither, n 248.
 
 462 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP.V. regard to the convenience of a few than to extended utility; 
 > ~^~ J' for though possessed of a revenue amounting to nearly one- 
 third that of the great priory at Barnwell, a house of the 
 same order, it never maintained more than five or six canons, 
 while the priory, though noted for its profuse hospitality and 
 sumptuous living, often supported five or six times the 
 lt*the n rom- n number 1 . But with the commencement of the sixteenth 
 5 e the I d ! x n - t century, under the misrule of William Tomlyn, the condition 
 of the hospital had become a scandal to the community, and 
 in the language of Baker, who moralises at length over the 
 lesson of its downfall, the society had gone so far and were 
 so deeply involved ' that they seem to have been at a stand 
 and did not well know how to go farther; but their last 
 stores and funds being exhausted and their credit sunk, the 
 master and brethren were dispersed, hospitality and the 
 service of God (the two great ends of their institution) were 
 equally neglected, and in effect the house abandoned*.' 
 Such being the state of affairs, the bishop of Ely, at this 
 ^ me ^ ames Stanley, stepson to the countess, had nothing 
 to urge in his capacity of visitor against the proposed sup- 
 pression of the house, and gave his assent thereto without 
 demur: but the funds of the society were altogether in- 
 St aart to ^equate t the design of the countess, who proposed to erect 
 gareuoV'tnT on the same site and to endow a new and splendid college, 
 new college. an( j s ^ e accor( ji n giy found herself under the necessity of 
 revoking certain grants already made to the abbey at West- 
 King Henry minster. To this the consent of king Henry was indispen- 
 sable; and the obtaining of that consent called for the exercise 
 of some address, for the monarch's chief interest was now 
 centred in his own splendid chapel at Westminster. The 
 task was accordingly confided to Fisher, who conducted it 
 with his usual discretion and with complete success. ' The 
 second Solomon,' as the men of his age were wont to style 
 him, was now entering upon the 'evil days' and years in 
 which he found no pleasure: he responded however to his 
 
 1 The revenues of the hospital at Baker in estimating the latter, by 
 
 its dissolution amounted to 80. 1. what he calls ' a middle computation,* 
 
 10d.: those of the priory to 256. at 300, has placed them too high. 
 111. 10|<i. (Cooper, A-nnal*, i 370.) Baker-Mayor, p. 60.
 
 DEATH OF THE LADY MARGARET. 463 
 
 mother's petition in a ' very tender and affectionate ' manner, CHAP. v. 
 but, as Baker informs us, ' his sight was so much appayr'd ' y i- 
 that ' he declares on his faith " that he had been three days 
 or he could make an end of his letter." ' His consent having 
 been readily given, nothing more was wanting to enable the 
 countess to proceed with her design, and everything would 
 seem to have been progressing towards a satisfactory accom- 
 plishment, when, before the legal deeds could be duly drawn 
 up and ratified, king Henry died, and, within little more than Death of 
 
 J king Henry, 
 
 two months after, the countess also was borne to rest by his ^ >T -^>. lf> ^ g 
 
 J Death of the 
 
 side in the great abbey. Erasmus composed her epitaph ^^j^ff^ 
 Skelton sang her elegy* ; and Torrigiano, the Florentine 1509 " 
 sculptor, immortalised her features in what has been charac- 
 terised as 'the most beautiful and venerable figure that the 
 abbey contains 8 .' Upon Fisher, who had already preached 
 the funeral sermon for the son, it now devolved to render a 
 like tribute to the memory of the mother. 
 
 A large gathering at St. Paul's listened as he described, S 
 in thrilling tones and with an emotion the genuineness of 
 
 her funeral 
 sermon. 
 
 1 MARGARETS. RICHE- . magni, qnem locus iste fovet ; | Quern 
 
 HONDIJE. SEPTIMI HEN- locus iste sacer celebri celebrat poly- 
 
 RICI. MATRI. OCTAVI. Av- andro, | Ulius en genetrix hac tumu- 
 
 SJE. QV-E. STIPKNDIA latur hnmo ! | Cui cedat Tanaquil 
 
 CONSTITVIT. TRIB. Hoc. (Titus hanc super astra reportet), I 
 
 COENOBIO. MONACHIS. Cedat Penelope, cams Ulixis amor ; | 
 
 ET. DOCTOKI. GBAMMATI- Huic Abigail, velut Hester, erat pie- 
 
 CES. APVD. WYMBORN. tate secunda : | En tres jam procerea 
 
 PERQ : AVGLIAM TOTAM. nobilitate pares ! 
 DIVINI. VERBI. PR&CONI. etc. etc. 
 
 DVOB. ITEM. INTERPR.E- Skelton's Works, by Dyce, i 195. 
 
 TIB. LITTERAR : SACRAB : s Dean Stanley, Historical Memo- 
 
 ALTERI. OXONIIS. AL- rials of Westminster Abbey, p. 164 : 
 
 TEBI. CANTABBIGLE. ' More noble and more refined than 
 
 VBI. ET. COLLEGIA. DYO. in any of her numerous portraits, her 
 
 CHRISTO. ET. IOANNI. effigy well lies in that chapel, for to 
 
 DISCIPULO. EJUS. STRUX- her the King, her son, owed every - 
 
 IT. MORITUR. AN. DOMINI. thing. For him she lived. To end 
 
 M.D. ix. in. KAL. IVLII. the Civil Wars by his marriage with 
 
 1 In his capacity of laureate, in Elizabeth of York she counted as an 
 
 the year 1516, of which the following holy duty. On her tomb, as in her 
 
 lines may serve as a specimen of the life, her second and third husbands 
 
 standard attained at Cambridge in have no place. It bears the heraldic 
 
 Latin elegiacs at that time : emblems only of her first youthful 
 
 Aspirate meis elegis, pia turma love, the father of Henry vii. She 
 
 sororum, | Et Margaretam collacry- was always " Margaret Richmond." 
 
 mate piam; | Hac sub mole latet Ibid. p. 165. 
 
 regis celeberrima mater | Henrici
 
 464 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. which none could doubt, the manner of her life 1 . On the ears 
 J^LlL of the present generation, much that most edified and moved 
 the audience he addressed, falls doubtless somewhat strangely. 
 We hear with more of pity than of admiration the details of 
 her devout asceticism, of her shirts and girdles of hair, her 
 early risings, her interminable devotions and countless kneel- 
 ings, her long fasts and ever-flowing tears, but charity 
 recalls that in features like these we have but the super- 
 stitions which she shared with the best and wisest of her 
 contemporaries, while in her spotless life, her benevolence of 
 disposition, and her open hand, may be discerned the out- 
 lines of a character that attained to a standard not often 
 reached in that corrupt and dissolute age. 
 
 With the death of his patroness the troubles of bishop 
 Fisher began. In conjunction with seven others he had 
 iiereiecu- been appointed executor for the purpose of carrying out her 
 designs : his coadjutors were Richard bishop of Winchester, 
 and Charles Somerset lord Herbert ; Thomas Lovell, Henry 
 Marney, and John St. John, knights; and Henry Hornby 
 and Hugh Ashton, clerks. On the ninth of April, 1511, 
 
 the founda- 
 
 tionofST. the executors proceeded to draw up the charter of the 
 
 JOHN s Cot- < * 
 
 LXOB, i5iL foundation, setting forth the royal assent together with that 
 of the pope, and of the bishop and convent of Ely, whereby 
 the old hospital was formally converted into 'a perpetual 
 college unius magistri, sociorum et scholarium ad numerum 
 quinquaginta secularium personarum vel circa, in scientiis 
 liberalibus et sacra theologia studentium et oraturarum : it 
 being also ordained that the college should be styled and 
 called St. John's College for ever, should be a body corporate, 
 should have a common seal, might plead and be impleaded, 
 and purchase or receive lands under the same name. At 
 
 Rob*n shor- the same time Robert Shorten was elected first master, 
 and James Spooner, John West, and Thomas Barker, fellows, 
 on the nomination of the bishop of Ely, of the said college 1 .' 
 Of the above-named executors, the four laymen appear 
 
 The Sermon haa been twice tnry by Baker, and in the present by 
 edited ; in each case by fellows of Dr Hymers. 
 Bt. John's College : in the last cen- * Baker-Mayor, p. 68.
 
 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 4C5 
 
 to have taken little or no active interest in the scheme. CHAP.V. 
 Lovell, described by Cavendish in his Life of Wolsey as ' a 
 very sage counsellor and witty 1 ,' was probably well able to 
 render good service, for he stood high in the royal favour ; 
 but he was throughout his life a busy politician and was at 
 this time much occupied as executor to the late monarch 2 . 
 Of the four ecclesiastics, Fox, next to Fisher, was by far FOX. 
 the most influential, and, as master of Pembroke, might fairly 
 have been expected to interest himself in an undertaking on 
 which his services could be so easily bestowed. But he had 
 received his earlier academic education at Oxford, and 
 according to Baker, his sympathies with that university, His oxford 
 
 I'll , -> i . ''sympathies. 
 
 which subsequently found expression in the foundation of 
 Corpus Christi College, were already beginning to declare 
 themselves. He was also the intimate friend of Wolsey, 
 who was believed to be adverse to the design of the lady 
 Margaret, while with Warham, who warmly befriended that 
 design, and who was generally to be found in opposition to 
 Wolsey, he was at this time engaged in an irritating law- 
 suit 8 . Ashton, who had also received his education at Asnton. 
 Oxford, though afterwards a distinguished benefactor of the 
 college, seems to have possessed at this time but little 
 power to afford effectual aid. Hornby, formerly fellow of Hornby. 
 Michaelhouse and now master of Peterhouse, alone appears 
 to have entered heartily into the scheme 4 , and it soon 
 became evident that on Fisher would mainly devolve the The burden 
 
 of carrying 
 
 arduous task of bringing to its accomplishment, in spite of . ut 'J^tve 
 the dishonest rapacity of a few and the indifference of many, on tisher - 
 the final and most important design of the greatest bene- 
 factress that Cambridge has ever known. But at the very 
 outset, grounds for considerable apprehension began to appear. 
 The revenues of the estates bequeathed by the lady Margaret, J^ 6 *^ 
 together with those of the hospital, amounted annually to 
 nearly 500, an income second only to that of King's in the 
 list of college foundations. It was well known however that the e fou 
 
 1 Cavendish, Life of Cardinal * Ibid, i 527. 
 Wolsey (ed. Singer), p. 71. * Baker-Mayor, p. 78. 
 
 1 Cooper, Memorials, I 30. 
 
 30
 
 4G6 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 Apparent 
 contradic- 
 tion in the 
 original 
 lice net!. 
 
 liinhnp 
 Stanley 
 oppose* the 
 dissolution 
 of the Hos- 
 pital. 
 
 Ill* charac- 
 ter. 
 
 it depended entirely on the royal pleasure whether the 
 executors would be permitted to carry into full effect a 
 scheme, which, though there could be no doubt of the 
 executrix's design, had never received the final legal ratifi- 
 cation; the young monarch, to use the language of Baker, 
 ' not having the same ties of duty and affection, was under 
 no obligation to make good his father's promises ; and having 
 an eye upon the estate, had no very strong inclination to 
 favour a design that must swallow up part of his inheritance 1 .' 
 The executors indeed already found considerable cause for 
 perplexity in the fact, that in the royal licence above referred 
 to, granted Aug. 7, 1509, the revenue which the new society 
 was permitted to hold ('the statute of mortmain notwith- 
 standing '), over and above the revenues of the hospital, was 
 limited to fifty pounds. But as the licence also permitted 
 the maintenance of fifty fellows and scholars, and it was 
 evident that so large a number could not possibly be sup- 
 ported on an income of 130 a year, the executors were 
 fain to hope that the royal generosity would provide the 
 most favorable solution of the difficulty thus presented, and 
 determined on the bold course of carrying on the works as 
 though nothing doubting that the intentions of the countess 
 would be respected. A new difficulty however met them in 
 another quarter, in the reluctance exhibited by Stanley to 
 take the final steps for dissolving the old house. The 
 influence of his mother-in-law could no longer be brought 
 to bear upon him, and though as the promulgator of the 
 statutes of Jesus College and founder of the grammar school 
 attached to that foundation, it might have been hoped that he 
 would not be wanting in sympathy with the new scheme, 
 he was evidently little disposed to favour it. The fact that 
 he was visitor of the hospital, and that its suppression might 
 appear to reflect on his past remissness, partially accounts 
 perhaps for his disinclination, but the explanation must 
 mainly be sought in his personal character. From his boyhood 
 he had evinced if not actual incapacity, at least considerable 
 averseness to study; but with so splendid a prize as a bishopric 
 1 Baker-Mayor, p. 02.
 
 ST. JOHN'S COLLEQE. 467 
 
 within his reach, it was necessary that he should prove CHAP. v. 
 himself not totally illiterate, and when a student at Paris he v_iUJ-J, 
 endeavored to gain the assistance of Erasmus. Indolence 
 promised itself an easier journey on the back of genius. 
 But the great scholar flatly refused to undertake the instruc- 
 tion of a pupil who could bring him no credit, and the 
 noble youth was obliged to seek the requisite aid elsewhere 1 . 
 His promotion to the see of Ely, for which he was entirely 
 indebted to the interest of the countess, took place in due 
 course. ' It was the worst thing,' says Baker, ' that she ever 
 did.' The diocese soon began to be scandalized by the 
 bishop's open immorality ; and, with all the meanness of 
 a truly ignoble nature, he now thought fit to exhibit his 
 gratitude to his late benefactress by thwarting her benevo- 
 lent design. The dishonest, self-indulgent Tomlyn was a 
 man far more to the heart of James Stanley than the austere 
 and virtuous Fisher. The necessary steps for the dissolution 
 of the hospital were met by repeated evasions and delay. 
 It was found necessary to have recourse to Rome. A bull The eiecu- 
 
 T 11 t0rS btain 
 
 was obtained. When it arrived it was discovered that >>uii from 
 
 Rome. 
 
 certain omissions and informalities rendered it absolutely a*^ 
 nugatory, and application was made for a second. The latter A second 
 was fortunately drawn up in terms that admitted of no tained - 
 dispute. ' For this pope,' says Baker, (it was Julius Exclusus), 
 ' was a son of thunder; it struck the old house at one blow, 
 did both dissolve and build alone, without consent either of 
 the king or of the bishop of Ely.' ' And so,' he adds, ' the 
 old house, after much solicitation and much delay, after a 
 long and tedious process at Rome, at court, and at Ely, under 
 an imperious pope, a forbidding prince, and a mercenary 
 prelate, with great application, industry, and pains, and with 
 equal expense, was at last dissolved and utterly extinguished Dissolution 
 on the 20th day of January, an. 1510, and falls a lasting pitai. 6 
 monument to all future ages and to all charitable and re- 
 ligious foundations, not to neglect the rules or abuse the 
 institutions of their founders, lest they fall under the same 
 fate 2 .' 
 
 1 Knight, Life of Erasmus, p. 19. 2 Baker-Mayor, p. 66. 
 
 302
 
 468 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 During all this time the newly constituted society could 
 scarcely be said to exist. The three fellows received their 
 pensions, lodging in the town; and Shorten, in his capacity 
 of master, was rendering valuable service by the energy with 
 which he pushed on the erection of the new buildings, while 
 the infant society awaited with anxious expectation the 
 decision respecting its claim to the estates bequeathed by 
 the lady Margaret. At first there seemed reason for hope 
 that the voice of justice might yet prevail. The cause of the 
 defendants was not altogether unbefriended at court, and 
 Warham, in his double capacity of chancellor of England and 
 Decision in archbishop, rendered them good service. At last a tedious 
 
 the Court of.. . i-ii-i 01 
 
 chancery in SU it m chancery terminated in the legal recognition of the 
 
 favour of the . 
 
 college. validity of the late countess's bequest, and it was thought 
 that the chief cause for anxiety was at an end. But the 
 laborers in the cause of learning were now l>eginning to enter 
 upon that new stage of difficulty when the little finger of 
 the courtier should be found heavier than the thigh of the 
 
 A econd monk. Through the influence of 'some potent courtiers,' 
 
 uit institut- . i i . mi 
 
 edbythe a fresh suit was instituted by the royal claimant. Ihe ex- 
 
 Oown. f J J 
 
 tow abfJnd'on ecut <> rs perceived the hopelessness of a further contest and 
 their claim. re } uc t an tiy surrendered their claims. The beneficent bequest 
 of the lady Margaret was lost to the college for ever. Fuller, 
 in recording this ' rape on the Muses,' as he quaintly terms 
 it, vents his anger, in harmless fashion, on certain nameless 
 ' prowling, progging, projecting promoters/ such as, he says, 
 will sometimes creep even into kings' bedchambers.' But 
 the rumour of the day was less indefinite, and it was gene- 
 rally believed that Wolsey had been the leading aggressor 1 . 
 The IOM thu It is certain that, many years after, the college assumed it as 
 triimu-dto unquestionable that their loss had been mainly owing to his 
 
 Wolsey ' In- l _ ^ 
 
 hostility 2 . It may seem singular that one to whom the 
 learning of that age was so much indebted, should have 
 advised an act of such cruel spoliation. But the sympathies 
 
 1 Baker-Mayor, p. 72. golicit his aid in a suit with which 
 
 3 See abstract of Latin letter from they are threatened by Lord Cobham. 
 
 the college to John Chambre, M.D. ' The cardinal,' they e&y, 'had before 
 
 (Ibid. p. 849). The college, writing robbed them of lauds to the yearly 
 
 in 1531, the year after Wolwy's death, value of 400.'
 
 i execu- 
 tors obtain 
 
 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 4G9 
 
 of the ' boy-bachelor of Magdalen ' were chiefly with his own CHAP. v. 
 university, and very early in his career of power he seems to -li!^iL 
 have detected, with his usual sagacity, the presence of an wmch^wai 
 element hostile to his person and his policy at Cambridge. 
 Along with Fox, he may also have grudged to see the latter 
 university thus enriched by two important foundations, 
 when Oxford, if we except the then scarce completed founda- 
 tion of Brazenose, had received no addition to her list of 
 colleges since Magdalen College rose in the year 1457. 
 
 It was only through Fisher's direct application, and even 
 then not without considerable difficulty, that, as some compensa- 
 tion for the heavy loss thus sustained, the revenues of another 
 God's House (a decayed society at Ospringe in Kent), with The < 
 several other estates, producing altogether an income of 80, the S Host>itoi 
 
 J \l II V It n <rm_- 'at Ospringe 
 
 were made over to the college by the Crown. 'This, says as a P*** 
 
 J compeiisa- 
 
 Baker, 'with the lands of the old house, - together with the user's ob _ 
 foundress' estate at Fordham which was charged with debts u e ,e v iost ns a 
 by her will and came so charged to the college, with some 681 
 other little things purchased with her moneys at Steukley, 
 Bradley, Isleham and Foxton (the two last alienated or lost),. 
 was the original foundation upon which the college was 
 first opened; and whoever dreams of vast revenues or larger 
 endowments, will be mightily mistaken. Her lands put in 
 feoffrnent for the performance of her will lay in the counties 
 of Devon, Somerset and Northampton, and though I should 
 be very glad to meet with lands of the foundation in any 
 of these three counties, yet I despair much of such a dis- 
 covery. But whoever now enjoys the manors of Maxey and 
 Torpell in the county of Northampton, or the manors of 
 Martock, Currey Reyvell, Kynsbury and Queen Camell, in 
 the hundreds of Bulston, Abdike and Horethorn in the 
 county of Somerset, or the manor of Sandford Peverell with 
 the hundred of Allerton in the county of Devon, though they 
 may have a very good title to them, which I will not ques- 
 tion, yet whenever they shall be piously and charitably 
 disposed, they cannot bestow them more equitably than by 
 leaving them to St. John's 1 .' 
 
 1 Baker-Mayor, p. 74.
 
 470 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 Fisher pre- 
 sides at the 
 
 ceremony. 
 
 B statutes. 
 
 Such were the circumstances under which the college of 
 St. John the Evangelist was at last opened in July, 1516. 
 Fisher presided at the ceremony and was probably thankful 
 THE that they now knew the worst. He had not anticipated 
 July, i5i6 S ' being present, for he had been delegated to the Lateran 
 Qouncil at Rome, and was already counting upon the corn- 
 
 O i 
 
 panionship of Erasmus in the journey thither, when he was 
 reca |i e( i ky some fortunate chance at the last moment 1 . To 
 his presence in England at this juncture, the college was 
 solely indebted for the partial compensation which made it 
 the possessor of the estate at Ospringe. He now came up 
 from his palace at Rochester 2 , with full powers, delegated to 
 him by his fellow-executors, to declare the rule of the new 
 society and to arrange the admission of additional fellows 
 and scholars. Thirty-one fellows were elected, and Alan 
 Percy was appointed master in the place of Shorten. The 
 latter, from some reason not recorded, voluntarily retired, 
 carrying with him no slight reputation as an able and vigo- 
 rous administrator, and was shortly after elected to the 
 mastership of Pembroke College. His successor, a man of 
 greatly inferior abilities, held the mastership only two years, 
 when he in turn gave place to Nicholas Metcalfe, whose long 
 and able rule, as we shall hereafter see, contributed largely 
 to the consolidation and prosperity of the college. 
 
 The statutes given by Fisher were, as we have already 
 stated, identical in their tenour with those of Christ's 
 
 _, . , ... . . 
 
 College; and there were now accordingly two societies com- 
 mencing their existence at Cambridge, under a rule which 
 may be regarded as almost the exclusive embodiment of his 
 views and aims with respect to college education. It is not 
 
 Thirty-one 
 
 fellows 
 
 elected. 
 
 Alan Percy 
 
 succeeds 
 
 Khorton as 
 
 master. 
 
 The statutes 
 
 ofOhrisfs 
 
 college. 
 
 1 'Ante biennium igitar adornarnm 
 iter, comes futurus K. Patri D. lo- 
 anni Episcopo Roffensi, viro om- 
 iiiiiin Episcopalium virtutum genere 
 cumulatissimo : et ut compendio 
 1 mules illius explicera, Cantuariensi,' 
 (War-ham), 'cui subsidiarius est, si- 
 millitno. Verum is ex itinere subito 
 revocatns est.' Letter to Cardinal 
 Grymaniu, Erasmi Opera, in 142. 
 
 " Fisher had received, just before 
 leaving Rochester, a copy of Eras- 
 
 mus's Novum Inxtrumentum, and he 
 hastened to acknowledge it. ' Etsi 
 plurimis negotiis impediar (paro enim 
 me Cantabrifliam iturum pro collegia 
 nunc tandeminstituendo), noluitamen 
 nt is tuus Petrus meis lit tens vacans 
 ad te rediret. Ingentium gratiarnm 
 debitorem me conBtituisti ob Instru- 
 mentum Novum, tua opera ex Grseco 
 tradnctum, quo me donaveras. ' Eras- 
 mi Opera, in 1587.
 
 STATUTES OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 471 
 
 difficult to recognise in the different provisions at once the CHAP. v. 
 strength and the weakness of his character. His life pre- ^ - 
 sents us with more than one significant proof, how little mere {""faffo 
 moral rectitude of purpose avails to preserve men from di 
 pitiable superstition and fatal mistakes. As his faith in the 
 past amounted to a foolish credulity, so his distrust of the 
 future became an unreasoning dread. And consequently, we 
 here find, side by side with a wise innovation upon the exist- 
 ing course of studies, a pusillanimous anxiety to guard against 
 all future innovations whatever. Nor can it be accepted as 
 a sufficient justification of this vague jealousy of succeeding 
 administrators, that herein he only imitated the example of 
 "William of Wykeham, just as Wainflete had imitated it at 
 King's. The experiences that surrounded men at the time 
 that Fisher drew np the rule of Christ's College, were of a 
 very different character from those of a century before. 
 The age in which he lived was manifestly one in which the 
 old order of things was breaking up; and the leaders of 
 thought at so significant a crisis were specially called upon, 
 not only to recognise this fact in their own policy, but to 
 foresee the possibility, if not the probability, of yet greater 
 changes in the future. In proof that there were those who The 
 could thus rightly interpret the signs of the times, we may against an 
 
 11 i I\T- i e- future inno- 
 
 point to one illustrious example. Within two years after vation con- 
 
 trasted with 
 
 the day when St. John's College was formally opened, a con- co'e t "s e S to- 
 temporary of Fisher, in no way his inferior in integrity of p^f." f su 
 life, in earnestness of purpose, in ripe learning, or even in the "" 
 practice of a rigid asceticism, but gifted with that spirit of 
 'prophetic liberality,' as it has been termed 1 , in which Fisher 
 was so signally deficient, drew up a body of 'statutes as the 
 rule of a foundation for the education of youth, to which he 
 had consecrated his entire ' patrimony. In the original sta- 
 tutes of St. Paul's School 2 given by John Colet, we find the 
 following clause, a provision which every would-be bene- 
 
 1 Dean Milman, Essays, p. 105. anished and excluded,' and ' to in- 
 
 3 St. Paul's School was founded by crease knowledge and worshipping of 
 
 Colet in the year 1510, as a school God and our Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 
 'where the Latin adulterate which good Christian life and manners 
 
 ignorant blind fools brought into among the children.' Seebohm, 
 
 this world' should be 'utterly ab- Oxford Reformers, 208-9 2 .
 
 472 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. factor of his race in future times will do well to ponder, ere 
 
 PAET II. . ......,, 
 
 - v " he seeks to ensure for any institution immunity from the 
 great law of human progress, the law of frequent and constant 
 change, lest securities devised against imaginary evils prove 
 eventually a shelter for actual abuses, and the stepping-stones 
 laid down for one generation become the stumbling blocks of 
 another : 
 
 'And notwithstanding the statutes and ordinances before 
 written, in which I have declared my mind and will; yet 
 because -in time to come many things may and shall survive 
 and grow by many occasion* and causes which at the making 
 of this book was not possible to come to mind; in considera- 
 tion of the assured truth and circumspect wisdom and faith- 
 ful goodness of the mercery of London, to whom I have 
 confided all the care of the school, and trusting in their 
 fidelity and love that they have to God and man, and to 
 the school; and also believing verily that they shall always 
 dread the great wrath of God : Both all this that is said, 
 and all that is not said, which hereafter shall come into my 
 mind while I live, to be said, I leave it wholly to their 
 discretion and charity: I mean of the wardens and assist- 
 ances of the fellowship, with such other counsel as they 
 shall call unto them, good lettered and learned men, 
 they to add and diminish of this book and to supply it in 
 every default 1 .' 
 
 EAMius. The presence of Erasmus in Cambridge in the year 1506, 
 
 a. UM. and his admission to the doctorial degree, have already come 
 
 under our notice. Of his visit on that occasion there is 
 
 nothing mere to be recorded, as none of his extant letters 
 
 were written during his stay, or supply us with any further 
 
 HUwcond details; but, either in the year 1509 or 1510, he repeated his 
 
 rl.it to < am- . . * 
 
 brute. IM- visit, and resided for a period of not less than four years. 
 His lengthened sojourn at the university on this occasion, is 
 
 obiectofhu probably to be attributed to the inducements held out by 
 Fisher, whose influence appears to have obtained for him 
 the privilege of residence in Queens' College, though Fisher 
 himself was no longer president of the society; and a room 
 
 1 Beebohm, Oxford Reformer*, 465*.
 
 . ERASMUS. 473 
 
 ^at the top of the south-west tower in the old court was, CHAP. v. 
 according to tradition, the one assigned for his occupation. >-^ '* 
 So far as we can gather from his own statements the main 
 design of Erasmus, on this his second visit to the university, 
 was to gain a position, at once independent and profitable, 
 as a teacher. He seems, at one time, to have imagined that 
 he might be at Cambridge what Guarino had been at Flo- 
 
 O O 
 
 rence or Argyropulos at Rome ; that he might there gather 
 round him a circle of students, willing to learn and well able 
 to pay, such as his experience of the generous Mountjoy and 
 the amiable young archbishop of St Andrews had suggested 
 that he might find, and, while thus earning an income that 
 would amply suffice for all his wants, at the same time pro- 
 secute those studies on which his ambition was mainly cen- 
 tered. That his project ended in disappointment, and that 
 his Cambridge life was clouded by dissatisfaction, despond- 
 ency, and pecuniary difficulties is undeniable ; and we shall 
 perhaps better understand how it was so, if we devote some 
 consideration to the previous career and personal character- 
 istics of the great scholar. 
 
 It will be an enquiry not without interest, if we first of nrcum- 
 all examine the circumstances that led to Erasmus's selec- La ufhis *e- 
 tion of Cambridge, as the field for his first systematic effort Cambridge, 
 
 * in preference 
 
 as an academic professor, at a time when France and Italy, * 
 Lou vain and Oxford, were all, according to his own express 
 statement, either willing to welcome him or actually making 
 overtures to prevail upon him to become their teacher. It 
 would seem that Paris, as his alma mater, might have fairly PARIS, 
 claimed his services, but the considerations against such a 
 choice were too weighty to be disregarded. It was not the 
 dismal reminiscences of his student life that repelled her 
 former disciple; for, to do him justice, Erasmus always 
 speaks of that ancient seat of learning in terms of warm, if 
 not exaggerated, admiration 1 . But in truth, the university 
 
 1 ' Qua semper in re theologies litterarum genere, quod sibi propo- 
 
 non aliter principem tenuit locum suit, semper primas tenuit.' Letter 
 
 quam Komana sedes Christiana re- to Vines, Ibid, in 536. ' Academia- 
 
 ligionis principatum.' Opera, in 600. rum omnium regina Lutetia." Ibid. 
 
 ' Parisiensis academia, certe in hoc in 127.
 
 474; BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. of Paris, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, as ' 
 ^J^-J- we have already had occasion to note, was no longer what 
 she had once been. Louvain was now competing with her, 
 not unsuccessfully, as a school of theology; and to the main- 
 tenance of her theological reputation Paris had subordinated 
 every other branch of liberal culture. The new learning 
 had accordingly found, as yet, but a cold reception at her 
 hands. Erasmus, in his thirtieth year, and almost entirely 
 ignorant of Greek, had been sought out as the ablest instruc- 
 tor in the university 1 . When in quest, in turn, of a teacher 
 of that language, he had been compelled to fall back on his 
 own unaided resources. Her students had perhaps regained 
 nearly their former numbers, but they were drawn from a 
 far more limited radius 8 . The nations of Europe no longer 
 assembled round the ' Sinai of the Middle Ages ;' but, already 
 leaving behind them the desert wastes of scholasticism, and 
 nearing what seemed to be the Promised Land, were exulting 
 in the fair prospect that lay before. The fame that deserted 
 Paris had undoubtedly been transferred to Italy, and Italy 
 had offered to Erasmus a friendly welcome and a permanent 
 home. Notwithstanding his satire of the Roman court, in 
 his Encomium Morice, he seems always to have spoken of the 
 Italian land as at least one where the man of letters, what- 
 ever his nationality, was had in honour 8 ; and he readily 
 admitted that, in finished scholarship, its men of learning 
 greatly surpassed those of Germany or France*. In a letter 
 to Ambrosius Leo, a physician of Venice, he cannot refrain 
 
 1 ' Videbant enim Angli inter pro- De V Organisation de VEnseigncment, 
 
 fessores bonorum litterarum in tota etc. p. 2. 
 
 academia Parisiensi nullum existere, * ' Equidem faveo glorias Italine, 
 
 qui vel eruditius posset, vel fidelius vel ob hoc ipsum, quod hanc sequio- 
 
 docere consuesset.' Rhenanus, quoted rem experiar in me quam ipsam pa- 
 
 by Knight, p. 13 n. 1. triam.' Letter to Wm. Latimer (1518), 
 
 1 'Au commencement du xvi 9 Opera, in 379. 'Exosculor Italia) 
 
 Bicle, I'universit6 de Paris comptait candorem, quae favet exterorum in- 
 
 peut-etre plus d'etudiants qu'elle geniis cum ipsi nobis invideamus.! 
 
 n'en avait jamais eu; mais elle Letter to Bartholimis, Ibid, in 635. 
 
 avait perdu sa puissance et sn See also his letter to More in 1520, 
 
 grandeur. An lieu d'etre le Pe'mi- in 614-5. 
 
 naire de la chre'tiente', elle tendait a * 'Gallus aut Germanns cum Italis, 
 
 devenir une institution purement imo cum Mnsuri posteris inire cer- 
 
 1 1 ;it ion. ilc. La nSforme de 1598 ne tamen, quid nisi sibilos ac risum 
 
 fit que sanctionner des changements lucrifactnrus ?' Letter to Ambrosius 
 
 ccomplis depuis on siecle.' Thurot, Leo, Ibid, ut 507.
 
 ERASMUS. 475 
 
 from expressing his envy at the lot of one who could look CHAP. v. 
 forward to passing his life ia that splendid city, surrounded t^^ 
 by the learned and the noble '. But Italy, at the time of 
 Erasmus's own residence there, had been the scene of civil 
 war ; Mars, to adopt old Fuller's phrase, was frighting away 
 the Muses. She had moreover recently lost her most dis- 
 tinguished scholars ; while her Latin scholarship was becom- 
 ing emasculated by a fastidiousness of diction and foppery of 
 style, which, as a kind of heresy in learning, all the most 
 eminent teachers, Politian and Hermolaus Barb'arus among 
 her own sons, Budseus in France, and Linacre in England, 
 in turn deemed it their duty loudly to disavow. How Eras- 
 mus himself, in after years, directed against this folly those 
 shafts of ridicule by which it was most effectively assailed, is 
 a familiar story 2 . But the learning of Italy also lay under 
 another and graver imputation, one moreover to which its 
 ablest representatives were equally exposed, the imputation 
 of infidelity ; and Erasmus, who amid all his antipathy to 
 mediaeval corruptions retained throughout life a sincere 
 faith in Christianity, openly expressed his apprehensions lest 
 the scholars of Italy in bringing back the ancient learning 
 should also rebuild the temples of paganism 3 . If to consi- 
 derations such as these we add, that the light-hearted and 
 witty scholar, in whom discretion of speech was by no means 
 a conspicuous virtue, mistrusted his own prudence and reti- 
 cence in the land of the Inquisition 4 , we shall be at no loss 
 to understand how it was that Italy wooed Erasmus in vain. 
 His frequent visits to Louvain would seem to prove that that LOUVAIS, 
 rising school possessed for him considerable attractions. It 
 was natural that such should be the case. Louvain was on 
 the confines of his native country. He speaks, more than 
 once, in high terms of the courteous manners and studious 
 
 1 Letter to Ambrosius Leo, Ibid. nomineque bonarum litterarum re- 
 in 507. pullulascat Paganitas.' Letter to 
 
 2 See his Ciceronianus. Germanm Brixius, Opera, in 1119. 
 
 3 ' Suspicor istic esse aXXo^vXcws, ' Unus adliuc scrupulus habet ani- 
 quos intra sinum urit, quod nego mum meum, ne sub obtentu priscae 
 quicquam esse facundum, quod non litteraturae renascentis caput erigere 
 sit Ghristianum... Verum adversus conetur Paganismus.' Letter to Ca- 
 istos omni, quod aiunt, pede standum pito (1518), Ibid, in 186. 
 
 est, qui moliuntur ut sub isto titulo 4 Jortin, i 31.
 
 47G 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 OXFOKD. 
 
 Friends of E- 
 
 ra Mini - at the 
 university. 
 
 habits of its youth, and its freedom from turbulent outbreaks 
 like those which he had witnessed at Paris and at Oxford 1 . 
 He was charmed by its pleasant scenery and genial climate. 
 But at Louvain, as at Paris, theological influences were as 
 yet all-predominant ; in after years we find him speaking of 
 the university as the only one where an unyielding opposi- 
 tion to polite learning was still maintained 2 ; it prided itself, 
 moreover, on a certain cold, formal, stately theology, that 
 offered a singular contrast to the Parisian furor 3 , but was in 
 no way less adverse to the activity of the Humanists ; and 
 Erasmus saw but little prospect of a peaceful career at Lou- 
 vain. Under these circumstances it can hardly be a matter 
 for surprise that he again sought the English shores ; but the 
 question naturally arises how it was that he did not return 
 to Oxford. His early experiences there, during his eighteen 
 months' sojourn in the years 1498 and 1499, had been 
 among the most grateful in his whole career. He had found 
 a home in the house of his order, the college of St. Mary the 
 Virgin, then presided over by the hospitable Charnock ; and 
 at an age when new friendships have still a charm, he had 
 been brought into contact with some of the noblest spirits in 
 England, with the genius of More and the fine intellect of 
 
 1 ' Nnsqnam est academia, qua 
 modestiores habeat juvenes, iiiinns- 
 que tumultuantes, quam hodie Lova- 
 nium.' Letter to lodocua Noetius, 
 Opera, in 409. 
 
 1 ' Ceterum illud stepe mecum ad- 
 miror, quum omnes ferine totius orbis 
 academie, velati resipiscentes, ad 
 Bobrietatem quandam componant 
 aese, apud solus Lovanienses esse, 
 qui tarn pertinaciter obluctentur me- 
 lioribns literis ; pramertim quum nee 
 in hoc Bopbisiico doctrinae genere 
 manopere prtecellant.' Letter to 
 Lvdovicvt I'irr* (A.I>. 1521). Ibid, 
 in 689. 
 
 See an interesting letter, written 
 from Louvain, 1522, by one fellow of 
 St. John's to another, giving an amus- 
 ing account of the university (Har- 
 leian M8S. 6989. f. 7; Brewer, Let- 
 ten and Papert, Hen. vin, in 880-1). 
 Nicholas Daryngton tells Henry Gold 
 that he finds the theological exercises 
 
 very little to his taste ; they read and 
 argue coldly, what they call with 
 modesty, but they are lazy and te- 
 dious. ' Parisiis clamatur vere sar- 
 donice ; et voce (quod dicitur) sten- 
 torea, fremunt aliquando ad spumara 
 usque et dentium stridorem." He 
 would like something between the 
 two. Like Erasmus he admires the 
 beauty of the scenery, but he dislikes 
 the habits of the people. They are 
 great gluttons and drinkers. They 
 go on draining fresh cups till hands, 
 feet, eyes, and tongue refuse their 
 office; and you are an enemy if 
 you don't keep up with them. Their 
 food is coarse and greasy, et (ut ita 
 loquar) ex omni pnrte butyratus: a 
 dinner without butter would be 
 thought monstrous. ' Ecce descrip- 
 simus tibi felicitatem Teutonico- 
 rum ! ' See also Ascham's very simi- 
 lar testimony, Scholematter (ed. 
 Mayor), p. 220.
 
 ERASMUS. 477 
 
 Colet ; while in acquiring a further knowledge of Greek, he CHAP.V. 
 had been aided and encouraged by the able tuition and ex- ^^ 
 ample of men like Grocyn, Linacre, and William Latimer. We 
 have it on his own statement that Oxford would have been 
 glad to welcome, him back, and yet we find that he preferred 
 availing himself of 'Fisher's invitation to go down to Cam- 
 bridge. According to Knight 1 his chief reason for this pre- J^]**} ; 
 ference was the removal or death of most of his former ^ uruto 
 friends at the sister university ; but our information respect- 
 ing Oxford at this time, together with the few hints to be 
 gathered from Erasmus's own language, will perhaps enable 
 us to arrive at the conclusion that there were other reasons, 
 of a less purely sentimental character, which for the present 
 rendered his return thither at least unadvisable. And here outiineofthe 
 
 .,, -if 1-1 history of the 
 
 it will be necessary to turn aside tor a while, to trace out introduction 
 
 J of Greek into 
 
 the successive steps whereby the study of Greek had, in ui gl fifteenth 
 the preceding century, again become planted on English soil. centur y- 
 
 Among the earliest, if not the first, of those who in this 
 country caught from Italy the inspiration of the Grecian 
 muse, was William Selling, a member of the recently founded wniiam seii- 
 and singularly exclusive foundation of All Souls, Oxford, 
 and subsequently one of the society of Christchurch, Canter- 
 bury. His own taste, which was naturally refined, appears 
 in the first instance to have attracted him to the study of 
 the Latin literature, and this, in turn, soon awakened in him 
 a lively interest in the progress of learning in Italy 8 . He 
 resolved himself to visit the land that had witnessed so 
 wondrous a revival, and having gained the permission of his 
 chapter to travel, partly, it would seem, under the plea of 
 adding to his knowledge of the canon and civil law, lost no 
 time in carrying his design into execution. At Bologna, it 
 is stated, he formed the acquaintance of Politian, and forth- 
 with placed himself under his instruction 3 . From this 
 
 1 Life of Erasmus, p. 123. thority of Johnson. If, as Anthony 
 
 8 ' Ecce subito illi prae oculis noc- Wood implies, Selling was a fellow 
 
 tes atque dies observabatur Italia, at All Souls at the time that Linacre 
 
 post Graeciam, bonorum iugeniorum was born, he must have been con- 
 
 et parens et altrix.' Leland (quoted siderably Politian' s senior. Greswell, 
 
 by Johnson), Life of Linacre, p. 6. in his Life of Politian, makes no 
 
 3 I give this statement on the au- mention of that eminent scholar's
 
 478 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. eminent scholar he gained a knowledge of Greek, while his 
 ^IL leisure was devoted, like that of William Gray, to the col- 
 lection of numerous manuscripts. On his return to England, 
 Selling bequeathed these treasures to his own convent, 
 and his acquirements in Greek and genuine admiration 
 for the Greek literature became the germ of the study 
 in England. His attainments as a scholar now led to his 
 appointment as master of the conventual school, and among 
 Thomas his pupils was Thomas Li nacre. From Selling, Linacre 
 
 Ijnacre. 
 
 d. i52i' received his first instruction in Greek, and when, at the 
 
 jwawSffag* f twenty, he in turn went up to All Souls, Oxford, 
 roh ' it was probably with a stock of learning that, both as 
 regards quality and quantity, differed considerably from 
 the ordinary acquirements of an Oxford freshman in those 
 days. In the year 1484 he was, like Selling (to whom 
 he was probably related), elected to a fellowship at All 
 Souls, and became distinguished for his studious habits. 
 Like Caius Auberinus at Cambridge, there was at this time, 
 
 and of vitem at Oxford, a learned Italian of the name of Cornelius Vitelli ; 
 but while Auberinus taught only Latin, Vitelli could teach 
 Greek. Linacre became his pupil, and his intercourse with 
 the noble exile soon excited in his breast a longing to follow 
 in the steps of his old preceptor. It so happened that 
 Selling's acquirements as a scholar had marked him out for 
 a diplomatic mission to the papal court, arid he now gained 
 
 n accompa- permission for Linacre to accompany him on his iotirney. 
 
 nJe. Selling to *L . . , . , . -i 
 
 !' aboul ^ n " 1S arnva l m Italy* he obtained for his former pupil an 
 introduction to Politian, who, removed to Florence, was 
 there, as narrated in the former part of this chapter, dividing 
 the academic honours with Chalcondyles. After studying for 
 some time at Florence, where he was honoured by being 
 admitted to share Politian's instruction along with the young 
 Medicean princes, Linacre proceeded to Rome. In the 
 splendid libraries of that capital he found grateful employ- 
 ment in the collation of different texts of classical authors, 
 many of them far superior in accuracy and authority to any 
 
 residence at Bologna. See Johnson, et Antiq. Univ. Oxon. lib. n p. 177. 
 Life of Linacre, p. 6. Wood, Hitt.
 
 ERASMUS. 479 
 
 that it had previously been his fortune to find. One day CHAP. v. 
 while thus engaged over the Phcedo of Plato, he was accosted ^^IL 
 by a stranger ; their conversation turned upon the manuscript 
 with which be was occupied ; and from this casual interview 
 sprang up a cordial and lasting friendship between the Mketiiec- 
 
 . . , quaintance of 
 
 young English scholar and the noblest Italian scholar of the H er 
 
 period, Herinolaus Barbarus. It became Linacre's privilege Uo 
 to form one of that favored circle in whose company the 
 illustrious Venetian would forget, for a while, the sorrows of 
 exile and proscription ; he was a guest at those simple but 
 delightful banquets where they discussed, now the expedition 
 of the Argonauts, now the canons for the interpretation of 
 Aristotle ; he joined in the pleasant lounge round the ex- 
 tensive gardens in the cool of the evening, and listened to 
 discussions on the dicta of Dioscorides respecting the virtues 
 and medicinal uses of the plants that grew around. It seems important 
 
 i n results of 
 
 in every way probable that, from this intercourse. Lmacre their , s . ubse - 
 J qucnt mter- 
 
 derived both that predilection for the scientific writings of course - 
 Aristotle for which he was afterwards so distinguished, and 
 that devotion to the study of medicine which afterwards found 
 expression in the foundation of the College of Physicians, 
 and of the Linacre lectureships at Merton College, Ox- 
 ford, and at St. John's College, Cambridge. From Rome 
 Linacre proceeded to Padua, whence, after studying medicine 
 for some months and receiving the doctorial degree, he 
 returned to England. His example, and the interest excited influence of 
 
 r\ i i his example 
 
 b\ r his accounts at Oxlord, proved more potent than the ex- at oxford on 
 
 t Grocvn, Lily, 
 
 ample of Selling. Within a few years three other Oxonians, and Latiine ' r - 
 William Grocyn, William Lily, and William Latimer, also 
 set out for Italy, and, after there acquiring a more or less 
 competent acquaintance with Greek, returned to their uni- 
 versity to inspire among their fellow-academicians an interest 
 in Greek literature. To the united efforts of these illustrious 
 Oxonians, the revival of Greek learning in England is the titi e nf 
 
 ' restorer of 
 
 undoubtedly to be attributed ; but the individual claims of P re <* l *- 
 any one of the four to this special honour are not so easily land 
 to be determined. That Grocyn was the father of the new 
 study, is in Stapleton's opinion incontestable, inasmuch as 
 
 r
 
 480 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. he was the first who publicly lectured at Oxford on the 
 ^i^lL subject 1 ; ' if he who first publishes to the world the fruits 
 of his studies,' says Johnson, ' merits the title of a restorer 
 of letters above others, the award to Linacre will not be 
 questioned*;' while Polydore Virgil considers that Lily, from 
 his industry as a teacher, ought to be regarded as the true 
 founder of a real knowledge of the language". 
 
 Testimony of Such were the men from all of whom Erasmus, when 
 the merits of he came to Oxford in 1498, received that guidance and 
 
 his Oxford 
 
 friend*. assistance in his studies which he had so vainly sought at 
 Paris, and of whom, in his letter to Robert Fisher, he speaks 
 in oft-quoted terms of enthusiastic admiration 4 . But to 
 Linacre his obligations were probably the greatest, and in 
 that eminent scholar Cambridge may gratefully recognise an 
 important link in the chain that connects her Greek learning 
 with the scholarship of Italy. Oxford indeed has never 
 Debt of cam- ceased to pride herself on the obligation under which the 
 oxford. sister university has thus been laid ; and there are few of 
 oibbon'* Gibbon's sayings more frequently quoted than that wherein 
 he has described Erasmus as there acquiring the Greek 
 which he afterwards taught at Cambridge. The statement 
 however, like many of the epigrammatic sentences in which 
 the great historian has epitomised his judicial awards, is not 
 to be accepted without considerable qualification 5 . It is 
 certain, on the one hand, that Erasmus knew something of 
 
 1 ' Becens tune ex Italia venerat ciplinarum orbem non miretur ? Li- 
 
 Grocinus, qui primus ea rotate Grae- nacri judicio quid acutius, quid altius, 
 
 cas litteras in Angliam invexerat quid emunctiua ? Thome Mori in- 
 
 Oxoniique publice professus fnerat, genio quid unquam finxit natura vel 
 
 a cujus sodali Tho. Liuacro (Mo- mollius, vel dulcius, vel felicius ? ' 
 
 rus) Grcecas litteras Oxonii <1 illicit.' Opera, in 18. 
 
 Trtt Thomas, in 2'honue Mori Vita, * Hallam goes to the opposite ex- 
 
 c. i. treme in describing the statement as 
 
 ' Lift of Linacre, p. 152. ' His ' resting on no evidence' (Lit. of 
 
 translation of the Sphere of Proclus,' Europe, i 9 237): the following passage 
 
 Johnson adds, ' was the first correct in a letter from Erasmus to Latiiner 
 
 version of a Greek author executed in 1518, can hardly be otherwise un- 
 
 in thin country after the revival of derstood than as implying that he 
 
 letters, and in this the justice of his had formerly benefited by his cor- 
 
 claim is vested.' respondent's instructions as well as 
 
 * Hintoria Anylica (Basel, 1570), those of Linacre: 'sed ut ingenue 
 
 lib. xxiv p. 618. dicam quod sentio, si mihi contingat 
 
 1 Coletum mcum cum audio, Pla- Linacrus aut Tonstallus praeceptor, 
 
 tonem ipsum mihi videor audire. In nam de te nihil dicam, non deside- 
 
 Grocino qnis ilium absolutum dia- rarim Italiam.' Opera, m 379.
 
 ERASMUS. 481 
 
 Greek when he went to Oxford; it is equally certain on CHAP. v. 
 the other hand, that when he left he did not know much ; ^^^ 
 considerably less, that is to say, than he knew when he " T " ^. 
 entered upon the duties of instructor in Greek to our own hi S ko'w- rt 
 
 ledg, o f 
 
 university. In the year in which he left Oxford, we find on*k. 
 him speaking of an acquirement of the language as still the 
 object he had most at heart, and of himself as yet unpossessed 
 of the necessary authors for his purpose 1 . Nearly twelve 
 years elapsed from that time before he gathered round him a 
 Greek class at Cambridge, and it was undoubtedly during 
 this period of his life that his chief acquirements in the 
 language were made. Writing to Colet in 1504, he describes 
 himself as having been for the last three years intent on the 
 study, as he found he could do nothing without it 2 . The 
 year 1507 he spent in Italy, at Florence, Padua, Rome, and 
 Venice, where his acquirements could scarcely fail to be 
 augmented by his intercourse with scholars like Marcus 
 Musurus and Scipio Carteromachus 8 . But his own inde- chiefly in- 
 
 i debted to his 
 
 latigable industry, it is evident, accomplished the mam part w " efforts, 
 of the work ; and his expression in relation to the subject, as 
 being himself avroSiSaKros, clearly shews, as Miiller observes, 
 that he was his own chief instructor*. 
 
 During the time that Erasmus was resident at Oxford, Prepress of 
 
 . .if Greek studies 
 
 the study of Greek appears to have gone on among the few at oxford, 
 earnest students by whom it was pursued, quietly enough. 
 There was as yet nothing, in the application they seemed 
 disposed to make of their acquirements, that afforded any pre- 
 text for interference on the part of those who hated the new 
 study simply because it was an innovation. Linacre, who was ^nacre's 
 
 . . translations. 
 
 Aristotelian to the backbone, and heartily despised the Pla- 
 tonists, was occupied in translating Galen ; while, in conjunc- 
 
 1 'AdGraecaslitterastotumanimuin hoc unum expertus video, nullis in 
 
 applicui; statimque ut pecuniam ac- litteris nos esse aliqnid sine Graeci- 
 
 cepero, Graecos primuni auctores, tate.' Letter to Colet, Ibid, in 96. 
 
 deinde vestes emam.' Letter to Ja- 3 Jortin, i 28. ' Italiam adivimus 
 
 cobus Battus, Opera, in 27. Graecitatis potissimurn causa, verum 
 
 2 ' Quamquarn autem interim rein hie jam frigeut studia, fervent bella, 
 
 tracto, fortassis Iniiuiliorein, tamen quo maturius revolare studebimus.' 
 
 dum in Graecorum hortis versor, mul- To Servatius (Bologna, 1507), Ibid. 
 
 ta obiter decerpo, in posterum usui in 1871. 
 
 futura etiam sacris in litteris. Nam 4 Miiller, p. 171. 
 
 31
 
 482 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. (,i on w ith Grocyn and Latimer, he had conceived the vast de- 
 
 1'U.Tll. . J 
 
 ^ v - sign of giving to the world a new Latin version of the whole 
 of Aristotle's writings 1 . Neither Grocyn 2 nor Latimer gave, by 
 their pens, the slightest clue to their sentiments with respect to 
 those questions out of which a controversy was likely to arise ; 
 and it was probably not before some years of the sixteenth 
 century had elapsed, that the growing jealousy of the conti- 
 nental theologians began to find expression among theologians 
 * n England. In the first part of the present chapter it has 
 already been pointed out, how materially the schism between 
 the eastern and western Churches had impeded the progress 
 of Greek learning, by the belief which was concurrently 
 diffused that Greek could not fail to be heretical; and it 
 is easy to understand that such a conviction must have 
 operated with no little potency in universities like Paris, 
 Oxford, Maintz and Louvain, whose reputation, as yet, was 
 almost entirely derived from their theological activity. Up 
 to the fifteenth century however we hear but little of this 
 distrust ; and during the pontificate of Clement V, in the 
 The study of year 1311, Greek had been expressly sanctioned as an ortho- 
 
 Oreek nanc- J r J 
 
 "ultoe'ilth 116 d x study, by a decree for the foundation of two professor- 
 sn ips of the language, at the universities of Paris, Oxford, 
 Bologna, and Salamanca 8 . At the same time a like provision 
 was made for instruction in Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldee. 
 Neither Grosseteste and the continental translators of Aris- 
 totle in his day, nor Richard of Bury and Nicholas Oresme, 
 at a later period, though imputations of heresy were suf- 
 ficiently rife in their time, betray any consciousness of any 
 such stigma attaching to the study of Greek. The earliest 
 indication of the Church's mistrust is perhaps the fact that, 
 somewhere in the fifteenth century, it was discovered that, in 
 tnc papal decree above referred to, the provision for the 
 study of Greek had been silently withdrawn, while that for 
 
 text of the , , ' 
 
 three other languages was retained. The subsequent 
 
 I Life, by Johnson, p. 204. cyn's friendship. See his Letter to 
 
 Orocyn'B reputation for orthodoxy a monk, Jortin, n 673. 
 
 WM much, that More, writing in 1519, Thurot, De V Organisation de 
 
 considered it no little proof that VEnseignement, etc., p. 85. Vives, 
 
 Erasmus was sound in the faith, in De Cautis, rv 141. 
 that he had been honored by Gro-
 
 ERASMUS. 483 
 
 commentators on the Clementines had the hardihood to CHAP.V. 
 assert, that Greek had never been included in the original >Ii^HlL 
 decree that received the pontiffs signature 1 ; but the testi- 
 mony of Erasmus 8 , and his comments on the motives that had 
 led to the alteration, are satisfactory evidence that their 
 assertion obtained no credence among scholars; and his 
 letter to Christopher Fisher (in which his observations are 
 to be found) is an interesting indication of the approach of 
 the great struggle between the old theology and the new 
 scholarship. 
 
 It is evident that the prejudices against Greek did not 
 diminish as its literature, especially the patristic writings, 
 began to be better known. An acquaintance with the early The Greek fa- 
 Greek fathers awakened in many only additional mistrust ; be better 
 
 , , . . known. 
 
 and that acquaintance was now more easily to be gained. 
 Traversari had translated portions of the writings of both 
 St. Chrysostom and St. Basil ; versions of the latter had also 
 appeared from the competent hand of Theodoras Gaza; 
 George of Trebizond had given to the world translations 
 of some of the treatises of Eusebius. But the chief alarm Their influ- 
 was undoubtedly excited, not by the direct study of these and v"e C 4o n f emi- 
 similar writers, but by the tone of thought and occasional *<* 
 bold expressions of those who were able to form their opinions 
 on the subject without the aid of translations. Sentiments 
 were now to be heard which sounded strangely in the ears of 
 men who had been taught to regard Augustine as an in- 
 fallible oracle. Vitrarius, that noble Franciscan in whom, vurartas. 
 and in whom alone, Erasmus could recognise a genius that 
 might compare with that of Colet, preferred Origen, Arian 
 though he was called, to any of the other fathers 3 ; Erasmus Erasmus, 
 himself, who entertained a decided preference for the Greek 
 theology, declared that Jerome \vas worth the whole of the 
 
 1 Constitution's Clementines Papce Letter to Christopher Fisher, Opera, 
 Quinti, una cum Apparatu loannis m 99. Erasmus, it is to be noted, 
 Andrece (Venice, 1479); Johannes de speaks of provision being made origi- 
 
 1mo\&, In ClementinorumVolumlnibus nally for instruction in only three 
 
 Opulentissima Commentaria (1539), p. languages, of which however Greek 
 
 126. was one. 
 
 2 ' Quo in loco rursus admiror, quo 3 Miiller, Leben des Erasmus, p. 
 consilio Grsecam linguam eraserint.' 146. 
 
 312
 
 484 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. Latin fathers ; and even ventured to point out how far, by 
 
 Jll^IL virtue of his long and arduous study of the Scriptures and 
 
 his real knowledge of Greek, he was entitled to rank as 
 
 an authority above Augustine, who knew but little of the 
 
 language, and whose labours had been carried on amid the 
 
 coiet onerous duties of his episcopate 1 ; Colet, though ignorant of 
 Greek, shared the same views, and, of all the fathers, seems 
 
 Reuchiin. to have liked Augustine the least ; Reuchlin confessed to 
 an admiration for Gregory of Nazianzum far exceeding that 
 which he felt for any of the oracles of the western Church 2 . 
 
 True cause of It is hardly necessary to point out that none of the early 
 
 the dislike 
 
 wai^u the Greek fathers could fairly be charged with the special heresy 
 h/^c f op'-"* f the Greek Church, for they had lived and written long 
 podte party. b e f ore the doctrine of the Filioque became a subject of dis- 
 pute : nor can it be said that they gave countenance to the 
 Reformers, by affording authority for rejecting the method of 
 interpretation that characterised the mediaeval Church, for, as 
 is well known, it was this very same allegorising spirit, in the 
 works of the Alexandrian fathers, that Porphyry singled out 
 for special attack; nor did they necessarily encourage an 
 appeal from the ceremonial traditions of the Romish Church, 
 as countenanced by Isidorus and the Decretals, for Laud and 
 Andrewes are to be found among their chief admirers in the 
 Ppwt of the seventeenth century. The gravamen of the charge against 
 the uun them, in the days of Erasmus, was, that they favored rebellion 
 
 tm-oliitfy con- > > > 
 
 against the authority of Augustine. The theologian, as he 
 turned their pages, found himself in a new atmosphere ; he 
 sought in vain for those expressions so familiar to the western 
 Church. the reflex of the legal ideas that dominated in the 
 Roman mind, 'merit,' 'forensic justification,' ' satisfaction,' 
 ' imputed righteousness ;' he found little that favored the 
 doctrine of predestination ; while there was often discernible 
 a tolerance of spirit, a diversity of opinion, and a wide sym- 
 pathy with whatever was most noble in pagan philosophy, 
 which fascinated the man of letters no less than it alarmed 
 the dogmatist. Nor was it possible to deny that, compared 
 with Augustine, these early Greek fathers stood for the most 
 Setbohm, Oxford Reformers, p. 3C2. * Geiger, Johann Reuchlin, p. 99!.
 
 ERASMUS. 485 
 
 part much closer to apostolic times, arid were more nearly CHAP. v. 
 related, not only chronologically but ethnically and geographi- ^^2L 
 cally, to the most ancient Christian Churches ; that some of 
 them, a fact singularly calculated to win the reverence of 
 mediaeval minds, had lived, written, died, in that very land 
 
 ' Over 'whose acres walked those blessed feet 
 Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed 
 For man's redemption to the hitter cross,' 
 
 that land for the recovery of which Christendom had so long 
 
 and so unsuccessfully contended. It was thus that some even Position as- 
 sumed by the 
 
 ventured to maintain that Augustine, and not Origen or Euse- 
 bius, was the real schismatic, and such was the position 
 taken up by those who at a later period advocated the 
 doctrine of free-will. 'I follow the doctrine of the Greek 
 Church,' says Burnet, in the preface to his Exposition of the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, 'from which St. Austin departed and 
 founded a new system.' 
 
 But the authority of the great African father, intertwined Permanence 
 with the traditions of a thousand years, was not easily to tine-s innu- 
 
 * , * ence. 
 
 be set aside ; and whether we consider the teaching of Luther 
 or of Calvin, of the Romish or of the Lutheran Church, it 
 must be admitted that Augustinianism has held its ground 
 with remarkable tenacity. The educated few and the philo- 
 sophic divine have from time to time risen in revolt against 
 its sombre tenets; the eminent school of Platonists that 
 graced the university of Cambridge in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, were distinguished by their advocacy of a different doc- 
 trine; but with the systematic theologian and the rigid dogma- 
 tist, not less than with the illiterate multitude, the traditional 
 theory has always commanded by far the more ready assent. 
 
 There is a story told by Eusebius, in his Prceparatio story from 
 Evangelica, concerning the deacon Dionysius Alexandrinus, 
 which certainly had its moral for the theologians of Oxford 
 and Cambridge in Erasmus's day. Dionysius, it seems, was 
 in the habit of reading the works of heretical writers, being 
 desirous of knowing the arguments of those from whom he 
 dissented, in order "that he might the more successfully refute 
 them. An elder of the church however remonstrated with 
 him on this practice, and pointed out the danger he ran of
 
 486 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. becoming contaminated by the specious reasonings of error. 
 ^ - Dionysius admitted the justice of the rebuke, and would 
 have probably for ever turned aside from such literature, 
 had he not been reassured by a dream from heaven (bpapa 
 0eo7re/47TToz/), and heard a voice utter these words : ' Exa- 
 mine whatever comes into thy hands ; for thou art able to 
 correct and to test all doctrine, and the foundations of thy 
 faith were laid even in this manner 1 .' Perhaps if this story 
 could have been brought under the notice of those who, at 
 this time, were denouncing the study of Greek in the univer- 
 sities of Germany, France, and England, it might have been 
 not without avail in inducing them to reconsider the reason- 
 ableness of their opposition. But unfortunately the passage 
 lay hid in that very literature which they so greatly feared ; 
 and the Grecian muse, as, to use the expression of Argyro- 
 pulos, she winged her flight across the Alps, seems to have 
 been regarded by the great majority as little better than an 
 Greek studies evil spirit. Erasmus himself, ardent as was his love of 
 re;ar.iMi M learning, was well-nigh turned back in his youth from the 
 
 heretical. 
 
 pursuit of lore which might expose him to the imputation of 
 heresy; he could not forbear giving expression to his sur- 
 prise, on hearing Vitrarius praise Origen, that a friar should 
 thus admire a heretic ; to which the gentle Franciscan could 
 only reply, that he would never believe that one who wrote 
 with so much learning and fervent piety could be otherwise 
 than divinely inspired. Even the application of a know- 
 ledge of Greek to the text of Aristotle was looked upon by 
 Reuchiin-s many with suspicion ; and Reuchlin tells us that when he 
 first attempted such a method of treatment at Basel, and 
 was already diverting large numbers from the disputations of 
 the schools, he was vehemently assailed by the seniors of the 
 university, who declared that to give instruction in the opi- 
 nions of schismatic Greeks was contrary to the faith and ' an 
 idea only to be scouted 8 .' It was precisely the same spirit 
 
 1 Tla<Tu> hrvyxaiK ok & tit xe?pa a Dedication to Cardinal Hadrian, 
 
 Ad/tor ftoftpMiv yip iKaffra K cd SOKI- prefixed to Iris De Accentibu* et Or- 
 
 Ufawt tt, Kal <roi yfyovt TOVTO thoyraphia, quoted by Geigcr, Jo- 
 
 tW ri Trn * lffT(U < *" Hi*t. liann Reuchlin, p. 17. 
 LccUi. lib. vn c. 7. Migne, xx 648.
 
 ERASMUS. 487 
 
 that was now beginning to manifest itself at Oxford. In CIIAP. v. 
 many cases, no doubt, those who were loudest in their out- 
 cries against Greek, would have been quite unable to prove, l 
 by the citation of a single passage, the existence of those *$ at *" 
 heretical tenets in the Greek fathers from which they pro- 
 fessed to shrink with such alarm ; and it may serve as evi- 
 dence how little the much-vaunted logical training of those 
 times availed to preserve the judgement from error, that the 
 majority of the dialecticians at both Oxford and Cambridge 
 saw no inaccuracy in the framing of a syllogism, which, hav- 
 ing for its major premise the admitted heterodoxy of cer- 
 tain Greek authors, deduced from thence the necessity of 
 excluding the whole body of Greek literature. At Oxford 
 however, as we have already explained, these prejudices were 
 most active ; and it is in every way probable that the know- 
 ledge of this fact materially influenced Erasmus, in his elec- 
 tion between the two universities 1 , and decided him to make 
 his first essay as a teacher of Greek in England, under the 
 powerful proteotion of bishop Fisher at Cambridge. 
 
 In entering upon the experiences that now befell the character of 
 great scholar, some attention to the peculiarities of his cha- 
 racter will perhaps be of service, in enabling us to form our 
 conclusions without injustice either to himself or to the uni- 
 versity. It is impossible to deny to Erasmus the attribute 
 of genius, though that genius was certainly not of the highest 
 order, and sympathetic rather than creative in its manifesta- 
 tions. He could appreciate and assimilate with remarkable 
 power whatever was best and most admirable in the works 
 of others, and it would be difficult to name a scholar, whose 
 influence has been equally enduring, gifted with a like capa- 
 city for recognising true excellence in whatever quarter it 
 might appear. But nothing that Erasmus himself designed 
 or executed, strikes us as of more than secondary merit. He 
 left behind no such finely-wrought conception as the Utopia 
 of More ; he lacked altogether the prophetic instinct of Colet ; 
 in his boldest enterprise, his Novum Itistrumentum, he was 
 inspired by Valla ; the most powerful passages of the Enco- 
 1 See infra, p. 496, n. 3.
 
 488 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. mium Muriai pale by the side of the fury and the scorn of the 
 v '" Julius Exclusas. In his letters we naturally look to find the 
 or character man ; and however much they may increase our sympathy 
 hisTetiers/ for him in his career, it can scarcely be said that they tend 
 +0 raise our respect for his character. The proud, sensitive 
 scholar, easily elated and easily depressed, impulsive, san- 
 guine, resentful, vain, stands out amid all the apparent con- 
 tradictions of the evidence. He affected the philosopher, 
 but his philosophy was often discredited by a querulousness 
 somewhat below the ordinary measure of manly fortitude. 
 He wished to be thought indifferent to applause, but the 
 praise of others, the praise, be it in justice admitted, of the 
 best and wisest of his time, was his most cherished reward 
 i.uthrron for all his toil. ' Erasmus.' said Luther, who, though unable 
 
 Erasmus. 
 
 to appreciate the tolerance and charity that formed one of 
 the best pleases of his antagonist's character 1 , clearly saw 
 through his weaknesses, ' Erasmus wishes to be thought 
 contemptuous of the world's opinion, but wants the con- 
 impuisive- tempt to be all on his own side 2 .' His temperament was 
 mw-sciwnu:" singularly impulsive : a few courteous phrases, a dexterous 
 tribute to his reputation, together with a very moderate 
 amount of substantial kindness, at once gained his good 
 opinion and drew from him profuse expressions of gratitude 8 . 
 But when the temporary impression thus produced had sub- 
 sided, and the poor scholar was left to contrast vague assu- 
 rances with subsequent performances, his resentment at neg- 
 lect or insufficient aid was proportionably keen. Of all the 
 eminent men who befriended him in England, there are few, 
 
 1 We may search in vain through stint apiul nos in catalogo.' Convi- 
 
 Luther's writings for such a truly vium Religioswn. 
 ruuline sentiment as the following: 8 ' Pecuniffl studium nunquam me 
 
 ' Siicris quidem litteris ubique prima attigit, famna gloria nee tantillum 
 
 debetur auctoritus, Bed tainen ego tangor.' Erasmus to Servatins, Ope- 
 
 unuuunquam offendo quitdam vel ra, in 1527. ' At ille sic coutumnero 
 
 dicta a veteribrm, vel scripta ab eth- gloriam voluit, ut contemptus esset 
 
 nicis, . tiam poetiH tarn caste, tam non ab aliis sibi illatus sed apud sese 
 
 sanetc, tain divinitus, ut mihi non cogitatus.' (Luther, quoted by Miil- 
 
 poKhim penaadere, qiiin pectus illo- ler, Leben des Erasmus, p. 296.) 
 rum, qmim ilia ecriberent, numen 8 ' Erasmus, whose tongue maketh 
 
 liqnod bontun agitaverit. Et for- of little gnats great elephants, and 
 
 tawe latiuH t>e fnndit Hpiritus Christi lifteth up above the stars whoso- 
 
 quum non iuterpreturntir. Et uiulti ever giveth him a little exhibition.' 
 
 Bunt in cousortio saucloruua, qui non Tyudale-Walter, p. 396.
 
 ERASMUS. -189 
 
 Fisher and Warham being the most notable exceptions, CHAP. v. 
 of whom, after having spoken in terms of heartfelt gratitude, -'^-"'-Jl- 
 he is not subsequently to be found complaining as parsimo- 
 nious and forgetful. Hence the contradictions with which contradic- 
 
 . . tory charac- 
 
 1ns letters abound; contradictions so glaring and so frequent, ter of hiscri- 
 
 ticiaius: 
 
 that both the panegyrist and detractor of the men and ten- 
 dencies of these times, have claimed the sanction of his 
 authority. If we seek to gather his final and deliberate esti- 
 mate of the scholarship of Italy at this period, we are con- 
 fronted by the fact, that almost every complimentary phrase 
 in his letters has to be weighed against an equally uncom- 
 plimentary criticism in his Ciceronianus. When he left on 
 Rome, in 1509, his Encomium Morice was mainly dictated by 
 chagrin at the neglect he had experienced at the Roman 
 court 1 ; in letters of a later date, he declares that Rome was 
 of all capitals the one that had extended to him the most 
 flattering recognition, that Italy was the one land where 
 learning, whatever its nationality, was certain of receiving 
 due honour*. His native Holland is at one time stigmatised on 
 as a country of barbaric ignorance and the grossest sensual- 
 ity ; he would sooner, he asserts, take up his abode among 
 the Phseacians of antiquity 8 ; while on another occasion, 
 when repelling the sarcasms of an antagonist, he exalts his 
 countrymen to the skies 4 . On his first visit to England on England ; 
 nothing could exceed his delight at the climate, .the men, 
 the learning, and the manners : in writing to his old pupil, 
 Robert Fisher, he assures him that he has found at Oxford 
 
 1 Jortin, I 35. Knight, p. 137. glaubt melir Gelehrsamkeit, ein le- 
 
 2 See quotations supra p. 474. Con- bemligeres Leben in den Wissen- 
 sult also his letter to More, written schaften daselbst anzutreffen; ja er 
 1520. Opera, in 614-5. 'Uebrigens fiigte hinzu, er wiinschte Italien 
 sind seine Urtheile iiber Koin ttud mehr schuldig zu sein, als er ihin 
 Italien an verschiedeuen Orten seiner sei; denn er habe eher neue Keunt- 
 Schriften sehr ungleich. Hier nennt nisse und Bildung dahin gebracht 
 ef die Italianer das Volk das ihm am als daraus zuriick genommen.' Mtil- 
 besten gefallen, dessen Uingang ihm ler, p. 195. 
 
 am angenehmsten gewesen sei ; an 3 ' In Hollandia fere bimestres non 
 
 einem andern Orte spricht er von sedimus quidem, sed, uti in wEgypto 
 
 ihrern ganzlichen Maugel an Aufrich- canes, assidue cucurrirnus ac bibi- 
 
 tigkeit; einuial riihnit er ihre grosse mus. E quidem malim vel apud 
 
 Gelehrsamkeit uud ihren gliihenden Phreacas vivere.' Jacobo Tutori, in 
 
 Eifer fiir die classische Litteratur, 35. 
 
 uud anderswo sagt er, er habe ge- 4 Muller, p. 222.
 
 490 BISHOP FISHERv 
 
 cn\p. v. such finished scholarship, both in Greek and in Latin, that 
 - P -" "l- his motives for desiiing to visit Italy have lost half their 
 original force 1 ; in writing to Faustus Andrelinus, he tells 
 him that, if he only knew England, he would long to ex- 
 change the boorish society in France for a land so highly 
 adorned with every attractive grace 2 ; and yet within five 
 years later, before any additional experience of our coun- 
 try could have afforded grounds for a change in his opinion, 
 he is to be found lavishing, in a deliberately composed 
 oration, pronounced in the presence of a distinguished 
 audience, the most unbounded praise on France and its 
 capital, and ranking Englishmen with the Scythians and 
 Carians of antiquity*. Swayed by the mood of the hour, 
 while that mood in turn often reflected only some petty dis- 
 appointment or delusive hope, he left on record each tran- 
 sient impression ; little deeming, we may charitably suppose, 
 how each hasty verdict would be pondered and quoted by 
 distant generations. 
 
 In studying the details of his more familiar intercourse, 
 we are struck by the fact that he rarely seems to have added 
 to his reputation by his personal presence. It was not 
 merely that his modest stature, with the blue eyes and flaxen 
 hair that bespoke his Batavian extraction, was not imposing ; 
 his timid, vacillating, sensitive spirit faltered in the presence 
 of more robust though far more vulgar natures ; and even 
 over those few who could discern the finer traits of his cha- 
 racter, much as they envied his attainments and admired his 
 Devotion t letters, his genius cast no spell. Lavater, who 
 carefully compared five portraits of the great scholar, declared 
 that they all indicated with remarkable agreement the same 
 
 See supra, p. 474, n. 3, 4. cissimaa quasque, maximeqno bar- 
 
 ' Tu quoque, si sapis, hue advola- baras, pugnacissimas ease ? sicuti 
 
 bis, quid ita juvat te hominem tarn Cares, Scythas, et Britannos.' Ora- 
 
 najratum inter merdas Gallicas con- tionto Philip, duke of Burgundy , A.D. 
 
 BM8oere?...Quanquam ei Britannia 1604 (Jortin, n 171). Jortin under- 
 
 dotes natis pernosces, F"auste, naj tu stands the reference to be to the 
 
 alatia pcdibus hue accurreres : et si English of Erasmus's own day; but 
 
 podagra tua non sineret, Da-dalum te it is at least possible that Erasmus 
 
 fieri optares.' HI 56. meant to refer to the ancient Britons. 
 
 ' Annon videinus, ut inter foras, See also Knight's observations, p. 
 
 ita et inter nationes hominum, fero- 121.
 
 ERASMUS. 491 
 
 characteristics. In each there was the same retreating, CHAP. v. 
 timorous, half-suspicious bearing of the head; the furtive >-^^ 
 humour playing round the well-formed mouth ; the quiet 
 half-closed eyes, gleaming with the self-constrained enjoy- 
 ment of a shrewd observer and skilful, dexterous contriver ; 
 the nose, full of refinement and sensibility ; the broad well- 
 shaped chin, indicating a meditative nature, equally removed 
 from indolence and from violence. In the lines that crossed 
 the forehead the physiognomist saw traces of a less favorable 
 kind, a want of moral strength ; while nowhere could he 
 discern the signs of destructive power, of a bold, resolute, 
 combative nature 1 . 
 
 Such was the man, and such had been his career, who HIS first lec- 
 ture at cam- 
 early in the October term of the year 1511, saw gathered 
 
 round him at Cambridge a small circle of auditors to whom 
 he offered instruction in this same Greek language, the study 
 of which they all had probably heard both violently abused 
 and warmly defended ; and, with all his defects, we may yet 
 allow that learning, in that day, could have had no worthier 
 apostle than Erasmus, the student no more inspiring exam- 
 
 . , . -i 11 -i i - 
 
 ple. Like some ship, to use the trite simile under which he pie to the stu- 
 dent 
 
 often spoke of his vicissitudes 2 , driven from its course by 
 violent storms or becalmed in strange latitudes, the poor 
 scholar had many a time been carried whither he would not, 
 and left with no guide save that one dominant resolve which 
 formed the polar star of his career. One he was, whom a 
 cruel fate had bastardised and driven from his native land, 
 whom mercenary guardians had coerced into that very pro- 
 fession which most of all threatened to mar his projects and to 
 break his spirit, who had been exposed to all that could 
 crush life and high purpose out of a young heart amid the 
 harsh discipline of the friars of Herzogenbusch, to all that 
 
 1 Quoted by Miiller, pp. 108-9. * ' Quippe qui jam annum solidum 
 
 The portrait by Holbein, now the adversis ventis, adverse flumine, ira- 
 
 property of the earl of Radnor, re- to ctelo navigem.' Opera, in 83. 
 
 cently on view at the Royal Academy ' Cum me meus genius pluribus casi- 
 
 of Arts, has the disadvantage of hav- bus atque erroribus exercuerit, quam 
 
 ing been taken when Erasmus was in nnquam Neptunus Ulyssem Homeri- 
 
 his fifty-seventh year; but it closely cum.' Ibid, in 506. 
 corresponds to Lavater's criticism. 
 
 reeranexam-
 
 492 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. could ensnare and chain down the intellect among the sensual 
 ^ ^ unlettered natures that composed the community at Stein, 
 who had known the pestilential precincts, unwholesome fare, 
 and merciless floggings of ' Montaceto,' in whom an excru- 
 ciating malady, that left him only with his life, marred the 
 .very enjoyment of existence, and who yet, triumphant over 
 every difficulty and every disaster, had risen to be an oracle 
 in Europe, to gain the favour of princes and courts, who was 
 finally to inaugurate a new religious era, and to win a death- 
 less fame. Such was Desiderius Erasmus, as, with the little 
 grammar of Chrysoloras in his hand, he stood confronting the 
 gaze, half curious, half reverent, of his Cambridge class, em- 
 phatically one of those who, in a higher sense than the poet's, 
 vitai lampada tradunt. 
 
 uncertain I 11 endeavouring to connect together the few disjointed 
 
 hiMiIni* 7 f facts that have reached us respecting Erasmus's Cambridge 
 
 "" experience, we find an additional source of uncertainty in the 
 
 doubtful chronology of his letters written during this time 1 . 
 
 So far however as the correct dates are to be inferred from 
 
 the contents, it seems probable that his earliest Cambridge 
 
 letter is one to Ammonius, written from Queens' College, 
 
 wherein he speaks of himself as in but indifferent health 
 
 and even deferring work with pupils until more thoroughly 
 
 Ammonius recruited 2 . Ammonius of Lucca was a courtly, refined, and 
 
 d. INT kindly hearted Italian, who, by virtue of his attainments as a 
 
 scholar, was afterwards appointed to be Latin secretary to 
 
 Henry vill ; and also held the post of collector of the papal 
 
 dues in England 8 . He seems to have taken a special interest 
 
 in Erasmus's Cambridge prospects, and throughout the period 
 
 of the latter's residence there,, to have acted the part of a 
 
 ft?'* generous and sympathising friend. It is in a second letter to 
 
 cJwbrkige. Ammonius, accordingly, that we find the oft-quoted passage, 
 
 in which Erasmus states that he has already lectured on the 
 
 1 On the chronology of Erasmus's feci, cupiens valetudini inservire.' 
 
 earlier letters see Prof. Brewer's ob- Opera, in 108. 
 
 eryationH, Letter* and Papers of Hie * Knight, pp. 132-3 ; Jortin, i 35-6 ; 
 
 Reign of Hen. vm, vol. i, letters 1842 Brewer, Letters and Papers n 4 139. 
 
 and 1849 ; and Mr Seebohm's Oxford Aminouius was the successor of Poly- 
 
 dore Vergil when Wolsey had thrown 
 
 Auditonbus nondmn copiam mei the latter into prison.
 
 ERASMUS. 493 
 
 grammar of Chrysoloras, but has had but few hearers. CHAP. v. 
 ' Perhaps,' the poor sanguine scholar goes on to say, ' I shall ^i^IL 
 have a larger gathering when I begin the grammar of Theo- 
 doras ; it is also possible that I shall undertake a lecture in 
 theology 1 .' The lectureship to which he refers is no other 
 than that recently founded by the lady Margaret, and in this 
 respect his hopes were realised : for he was not only ap- iicisappoint- 
 
 .,,,,, , , , ed lady Mar- 
 
 pointed lady Margaret professor, but was re-elected at the Bret's pro- 
 expiration of the first two years and continued to fill the post 
 during the period of his residence 2 . But with respect to his Failure of his 
 Greek class he was doomed to almost complete disappoint- *?J r of . 
 ment. The elaborate treatise by Theodoras possessed no 
 more attractions for Cambridge students than the more ele- 
 mentary manual by Chrysoloras. In fact, it is evident from 
 Erasmus's own occasional observations, that the few students 
 who were disposed to occupy themselves with Greek learning 
 were not sons of wealthy families, but comparatively poor 
 men seeking to add to their store of marketable knowledge, 
 and of course totally unable to shew their appreciation of his 
 services after the fashion of lord Mountjoy, Grey, and the 
 young archbishop of St. Andrews. Erasmus had looked for- 
 ward to receiving handsome presents, and appears to have 
 stipulated for no fees 3 . He was accordingly chagrined be- 
 yond measure, when his pupils literally interpreted his cour- 
 teous refusals of the ordinary payments, and, if they learnt 
 but little, paid less. ' I see no prospect,' he says, in another His account 
 letter to his friend Colet, ' of making money, for how can I 
 demand it of men with empty pockets, inasmuch as I am not 
 without some sense of shame ; and was born, moreover, with 
 
 1 Hactenus prselegimus Chryso- openly for gain, without incurring 
 
 lorae grammaticen, sed paucis; for- censure. In a letter to Servatius, 
 
 tassis frequentiori auditorio Theodori the prior of his convent at Stein, 
 
 graminaticam auspicabimur; fortas- written the same year that he finally 
 
 sis et theologicam lectionem susci- quitted Cambridge, he says, ' Canta- 
 
 piemus,namidnuncagitur.' Opera, in brigise menses complures docui Grse- 
 
 110. See also supra, pp. 392 and 430. cas et sacras litteras, idque gratis, 
 
 8 Fisher, Funeral Serjnon for the itaque semper facere decretum est* 
 
 Countess of Richmond (ed. Baker and (Opera, in 1529.) Whatever construc- 
 
 Hymers), p. 63. tion we may put upon this assertion, 
 
 3 It is most probable that his pro- it certainly contrasts strangely with 
 
 fession, as an Augustinian canon, his complaints quoted in the follow- 
 
 rendered it difficult for him to teach ing notes.
 
 494 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. Mercury entirely unpropitious 1 .' 'The gain is too contempti- 
 
 ^t ' ble to be worth taking into account 2 ,' he writes somewhat 
 
 later to Ammonius ; while in a third letter, he seems to 
 
 imply that he might get pupils if he were disposed to tout 
 
 for them 8 . At one time he had quite resolved to leave for 
 
 London, but the plague had broken out there, and he was 
 
 also detained at Cambridge by the hopes of shortly receiving 
 
 some thirty nobles which he had earned 4 . Then the plague 
 
 travelled on to the university; most of the students dispersed, 
 
 Htafanureon and his hopes of pupils grew fainter than ever. If indeed we 
 
 the whole p- 
 
 were to form our conclusions respecting Erasmus's success at 
 Cambridge, solely from his own statements during the period 
 of his residence, we should infer that his projects were at- 
 tended by unredeemed failure. It is only when we turn to 
 note the eventful changes that followed upon his teaching, 
 long after his voice was no longer heard from the professorial 
 chair, that we perceive that his exertions were really produc- 
 tive of important and lasting results. And not only this : even 
 during his stay, his own pecuniary loss proved the world's 
 S ce& ^ g am * Disappointed in the class-room, he took refuge in 
 resident. ^ s t u dy ; and to his labours there, the men of his generation 
 were indebted for his two most notable achievements, 
 ^ e Novum Instrumentum and his edition of Jerome 8 . By 
 the one he directly paved the way for the Reformation ; by 
 
 1 ' De qnaestn nihil video, quid mihi fervet animns, nt afflatus a Deo 
 
 enim auferam a nudis, homo nee quopiam mihi videar. Jam pene to- 
 
 improbuB ct Mercurio irato natus.' turn emendavi collalione multornm 
 
 Ibid, in 109. ac veterum exemplarium. Atque id 
 
 * ' Qtuestus minor est quam ut me ago incredibili meo sumptu.' To the 
 
 moveat.' Ibid, in 110. tame, Ibid. To these labours we 
 
 1 ' Tom qtuestns video nonnihil may add a collation of certain manu- 
 
 ri quis ardelionem possit agere.' Ibid. scripts of Seneca's writings, ' Porro 
 
 m 112. Cantabrigia nacti veteres aliquot co- 
 
 1 ' Londini non minus saevit pestis, dices, adgressi sumus Senecam ora- 
 
 qnam isthic Mars. Itaque Canta- torem, magnis quidem laboribns nos- 
 
 rijjt* tenemus, quotidie circum- tria, sed quortun editio panim felici- 
 
 pcctantcs ut commode avolemus. ter cesserit.' The manuscript was 
 
 Sed non datur opportunitas. Et re- entrusted to a friend and lost. Jor- 
 
 tinent triginta nobiles quos ad Mi- tin (Appendix), n 424. Cooper (An- 
 
 chaelia exapecto.' To Ammonius, naU, i 282) mentions a short trea- 
 tise, De Comcribendis Epistolis, as 
 
 6 To the latter work he applied both written and printed by Erasmus 
 
 himnelf with more than usual ar- during his residence; but the work had 
 
 dour : Ad Hieronymum emendan- certainly been written long before: 
 
 dum et Bcholns illustrandnm, ita see Jortin, i 15 ; Knight, p. 87.
 
 ERASMUS. 495 
 
 the other he guided the student of his age to that juster CHAP. v. 
 estimate of the value and authority of mediaeval theologians, ^t^lL 
 which so largely, though less immediately, conduced to 
 the same great revolution. In brief, we cannot perhaps 
 better express the importance and significance of his work, 
 than when we say that the new Margaret professor, whom, 
 during the greater part of his residence at Cambridge, we 
 may picture to ourselves as thus toiling away in his chamber, 
 high up in the south-west tower of the first court of Queens' 
 College, was mostly engaged in investigations the result of 
 which was to be the eventual consignment to neglect and 
 oblivion of nearly nine-tenths of the literature on which the 
 theologians in the university around him looked with most 
 reverence and regard. 
 
 It is certainly a remarkable circumstance that holding, 
 as he did, those decided opinions to which he had a few 
 years before given expression in his letter to Christopher 
 Fisher, the papal prothonotary at Paris, a letter of which 
 Von der Hardt speaks as 'a presage of the Reformation 1 / 
 and described by Mr Seebohm as ' an assertion of the gram- 
 marian's rights in relation to theology,' Erasmus, notwith- NO record of 
 
 standing, appears to have succeeded in avoiding anything o^ws part 1 
 . rr . . -11 . , 6 with the cam- 
 
 approaching to a collision with the opposite party during the i>n<teetheoio- 
 
 time that he filled the. professorial chair. We can hardly 
 suppose that, in the discharge of his office, he made any 
 attempt to conceal his views, especially when we remember 
 how those views began to operate soon after he had quitted 
 the university; it is equally difficult to believe that, with 
 his habitual want of reticence 2 , he could have managed to 
 steer clear of such questions in his more familiar intercourse. 
 Very soon after he had taken up his residence at Queens' 
 College, we find him intimating in a letter to Colet, that he F( 
 
 1 Hist. Lift. Rcformationis, p. 4. quam fortasse deceat, et linguas libe- 
 Mr Seebohm gives some account of rioris quam nonnunquam expediat, 
 the letter in his Oxford Reformers, metior enim aliorum animos ex meo.' 
 pp. 97-8. The letter is also trans- (quoted by Knight, p. 321). 'Am- 
 lated at length by Muller, Leben des monius non ignorabat quanta liber- 
 Erasmus, pp. 247-59. tate soleam apud amicos effutire 
 
 2 ' Ut ingenue quod verum est fa- quicquid in buccam venerit.' Opera, 
 tear, sum natura propensior ad jocos HI 1459.
 
 496 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CFIAP. v. was beginning to be aware of the presence in the university 
 
 . PA ""'. of a certain class of men respecting whom his friend had 
 
 forewarned him 1 . They were probably men of the same 
 
 intolerant character as those who, a few years later, at one of 
 
 the colleges, prohibited the introduction of his edition of the 
 
 New Testament. That their opposition was not more 
 
 demonstrative during his stay, is perhaps to be attributed to 
 
 Protected by the influence of Fisher. The latter indeed was at this time 
 
 Fuller. 
 
 almost omnipotent at Cambridge ; he had been regularly 
 re-elected chancellor, at the expiration of each term of office, 
 ever since his first election ; and it would have been perhaps 
 impossible to find, in an equal degree, in any one of his con- 
 temporaries, at once that moderation, integrity of life, and 
 disinterestedness of purpose, which left the bigot no fault 
 to find, and that liberality of sentiment and earnest desire 
 for reform, which conciliated far bolder and more advanced 
 thinkers. Over Erasmus, whose wandering career had not, 
 by his own ingenuous confession, been altogether free from 
 reproach 8 , a character so saintly and yet so sympathising 
 exercised a kind of spell. Of all the men whom he ever 
 iiu admin- knew, Fisher seems to have most inspired his reverence and 
 's ci>a- regard. To Fisher's influence he attributes all that is most 
 
 . ll 
 
 hopeful and encouraging in the university; to Fisher Cam- 
 bridge was indebted for the peaceful introduction of the 
 study of Greek 3 , and for that salutary effort on behalf of 
 theological learning, the lady Margaret professorship, to 
 which he had himself been appointed ; he praises with spe- 
 cial emphasis the design of the lady Margaret prcachership, 
 as opposed to the prevailing artificial style of pulpit oratory ; 
 of Fisher himself, he observes that he preserved the golden 
 mean, neither adhering doggedly to the ancient learning, 
 nor siding with those who were wishing to set all tradi- 
 
 1 'Jam nnnc subodoror Reims hoc handquaquam incelebres, Cantabri- 
 bominum, do quo memineras; qua giam et Oxoniam. In utraqno tra- 
 de re pi nra coram.' Opera, HI 109. duntur Grtecae litterae, ted Canta- 
 ' Volnptatibus, ctsi qunndo fui brigite tranquille, quod ejus scholro 
 mqninatuH, nnnquam Hervivi.' Jbid. princcps sit Johannes Fischerius 
 in 1527. See also letter 071, Ibid. episcopus Koffentds, non eruditione 
 
 tantura, Bed vita theologies.' Ibid. 
 
 ' Anglia duas habet academias in 407.
 
 ERASMUS. 497 
 
 tional studies aside 1 ; he describes him as one in whom were CIIAP.V. 
 united the highest attainments and the most blameless cha- --^! * 
 racter, and in whom every virtue that became a bishop was 
 combined in an extraordinary degree 2 . On the other hand, it influence of 
 
 111 a -in MI on 
 
 is equally evident that Fisher was not less influenced, though H8her - 
 in a different manner, by his successor in the professorial 
 chair. Of the moderation which Erasmus so much admired 
 in his patron, he was himself a conspicuous example. The 
 good bishop took heart in his advocacy of the new learning, 
 when he found the foremost scholar of the age not less ready 
 to denounce the profanity of the Italian sceptics than the de- 
 generacy of the mendicant orders, and able both to discuss 
 with masterly discrimination the merits of classical authors 
 and to recognise the real value of the writings of St. Thomas 
 or St. Jerome. The various evidence indeed which we find 
 of their interchange of opinion on such subjects, would seem 
 to indicate that Erasmus's influence over Fisher, and through 
 Fisher over Cambridge at large, was far greater and more 
 enduring than their respective biographers would lead us to 
 suppose. In their views with respect to the necessity for a 
 thorough reform in the prevailing style of preaching, they 
 were so far at unison, that Fisher, as we have already noted, 
 could think of no one better qualified than Erasmus to pre- 
 pare a manual of the preacher's art 3 . After Erasmus had 
 left Cambridge we find Fisher writing to tell him that he 
 had, on his recommendation, bought and read Agricola's De 
 Inventione*, and only regretted that he had not himself had 
 the benefit of Agricola's instruction in his youth, for he 
 had never read anything at once so elegant and masterly 6 . 
 Under the same influence again Fisher was led to conceive 
 
 1 Lewis, Life of Fisher, i 12. 5 'Perlegimus, Erasme.his diebus 
 
 3 ' Vir unus vere episcopus, vere Eodolphi Agricolffl Dialecticam : ve- 
 
 theologus.' Letter to Vives (A.D. 1521), nalem enim earn reperimus inter 
 
 Opera, in 690. 'Vir omnium epis- bibliopolas Faucis dicam, nihil 
 
 copalium virtutum genere cumula- unquam, quantum ad artem illam 
 
 tissiinus.' Letter to cardinal Gryma- pertinet, legimus jucundius et erudi- 
 
 nus (A.D. 1515), Ibid, in 142. 'Vir tius, ita singula quidem puncta ex- 
 
 pietate doctrinaque singulari.' Let- pressisse videtur. Utinam juvenis 
 
 ter to cardinal St. George (A.D. 1515), prseceptorem ilium fuissem nactus ! 
 
 Ibid, in 145. Mallem id profecto, neque sane men- 
 
 3 See supra, p. 439. tior, qnam archiepiscopatum all- 
 
 See supra, p. 412. quern.' Opera, in 1813. 
 
 32
 
 498 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHART, that respect for the learning and character of Reuchlin, 
 
 ^J-J' which made him not only a student of his works, but a warm 
 
 sympathiser with the great scholar in the struggle in which 
 
 he afterwards became involved 1 . 
 
 influence or Nor was Erasmus's influence at Cambridge confined to 
 
 Erasmus on 
 
 the^ri?/ ^at which he exerted through its chancellor. Other and 
 younger men sought the acquaintance of the illustrious 
 foreigner, and recalled, long after he had left, and with no 
 little satisfaction, the details of their intercourse. It is evi- 
 dent indeed that none but those who felt a more or less 
 genuine interest in his work, were likely to become his 
 friends ; and it may be safely inferred that these were only 
 to be found among the most able and promising men in the 
 university at that time. The whole genius of the man, his 
 wit, his pleasantry, his learning, his cosmopolitanism, were 
 in exact antithesis to academic dulness. He again, on the 
 one hand, could speak no English ; while, on the other, there 
 were few with whom he conversed at Cambridge, but must 
 have often shocked his ears by their uncouth Latinity and 
 strange pronunciation. The one of whom, next to Fisher, 
 
 Henry BUI- he speaks in the most emphatic praise, is perhaps Henry 
 Bullock (whose name, after the usual fashion, he Latinised 
 into Bovillus), a fellow of Queens' College, mathematical 
 lecturer in the university, and afterwards vice-chancellor*. 
 In him Erasmus found an enthusiastic pupil during his 
 residence 8 , and a valued correspondent when far away. 
 Bullock too it was, who along with one or two others, sus- 
 tained the tradition of Greek learning, in the perilous inter- 
 val between their preceptor's departure and the advent of 
 Richard Croke; and somewhat later, we find his talents 
 and attainments earning for him the notice of Wolsey, by 
 whom he was induced to enter the lists against the Lutheran 
 party, and was rewarded by a chaplaincy in the cardinal's 
 household. Another student for whom Erasmus seems to 
 
 1 ' Ei (Johanrut Crulliut) commen- lin, p. 338. 
 
 dvi oodicem, in quo erant Reuch- Cooper, A thenee, i 33-4. 
 
 ttUM qua misere desiderabat Roffen- 'Bovillus gnaviter Grwcatur.' 
 
 U.' Eratmui to More (A.D. 1517), Letter to Ammonitu, in 106. 
 Ojwra,in234. Geiger.^o/wtm Revch-
 
 ERASMUS. 499 
 
 have entertained a real regard, was William Gonell, also CHAP. v. 
 afterwards one of Wolsey's household, and at one time tutor 
 in the family of Sir Thomas More 1 . There was also a young ^ 
 fellow of King's, whom he styles doctissimus and carissi- 
 vnus, of the name of John Bryan, who subsequently j hn Bryan, 
 attracted to himself no little criticism in the university, as 
 an assertor of the more genuine Aristotle of the Humanists 
 against the traditional Aristotle of the schoolmen 2 . Another 
 fellow on the same foundation, a youth who had but just 
 donned his bachelor's hood, was Robert Aldrich, the juvenis Robert 
 blandce cujusdam eloquentice, who accompanied Erasmus on <* isss. 
 his famed expedition to Walsingham, to interpret for him 
 on the journey, to quiz the guardian of the relics, and to 
 make fun over the 'Virgin's milk;' who lived however to 
 become bishop of Carlisle, to sit in solemn judgement on the 
 rites and ceremonies of the Church, and to be a commissioner 
 against heretics in queen Mary's reign 3 . There was also one 
 John Watson, fellow of Peterhouse, a select preacher before JohnWatson. 
 
 d. 1530. 
 
 the university, and afterwards master of Christ's College; 
 scarcely, it would seem, so friendly to the new learning as 
 might be desired, for Erasmus rallies him as a Scotist, but 
 to whom he was attracted by the fact that he had travelled 
 in Italy, and numbered among his friends there, some with 
 whom Erasmus was also well acquainted 4 . There is still Hi 8 letter to 
 
 Erasmus. 
 
 extant a pleasant letter to the latter, written by Watson from 
 Peterhouse, informing him that the writer has just been 
 presented to the living of Els worth, ' only seven miles from 
 Cambridge ; ' ' there is a capital rectory,' he adds (somewhat 
 in the mood, apparently, to fancy himself passing rich on 
 twenty pounds a year), but I shall have to spend half my 
 first year's income in repairs; such as it is however, it is 
 completely at your service whenever you may be disposed to 
 come 5 .' Among other of Erasmus's acquaintance were two 
 
 1 Cooper, A thence, i 94. p. 145. 
 
 1 Ibid. I 87 ; Knight, p. 146. 6 ' Nactus sum sacerdotium intra 
 
 8 Knight, p. 144; Erasmus, Pere- septem millia a Cantabrigia, sedes 
 
 grinatio Religionis Ergo; Cooper, habet pulchras, et mediocriter ad 
 
 Athence, i 142. victum utile est; porro valet viginti 
 
 4 Cooper, Athence, i39, 40; Knight, nostrates libras supra omnia annua; 
 
 322
 
 500 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 John Fawne. 
 ./. 1519. 
 Hichard 
 Whitford. 
 
 Kichard 
 Kampson. 
 </. 1554. 
 
 Gerard, tha 
 
 bookseller. 
 
 fellows of Queens* College, of maturer years, Dr Fawne, his 
 successor in the lady Margaret professorship, and Richard 
 Whitford (to whom he dedicated his translation of Lucian's 
 Tyrannicida), confessor to lord Mountjoy, and chaplain to bi- 
 shop Fox, and lastly, of greater note than either of these, there 
 was Richard Sampson of Trinity Hall, another of Wolsey 's 
 clients, afterwards bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and an 
 active participator in the affairs of state 1 . It is not impro- 
 bable however that Erasmus found in the shop of Gerard 
 the bookseller, conversation as much to his mind as any- 
 where in the university. It was customary in those days for 
 the authorities to license only foreigners to this trade 8 , for 
 as the great majority of new works issued from the presses 
 on the continent, the necessary knowledge of books was 
 rarely possessed by Englishmen. During some part of his 
 stay, it would seem indeed that Erasmus was resident with 
 Gerard, for we find him speaking of him in one letter as his 
 host 3 ; and we picture to ourselves the great scholar as often 
 dropping in, to while away a tedious hour, and discussing 
 with the worthy bookseller the typographical merits of the 
 last production of the press at Venice or Basel, or the possi- 
 bility of getting a respectable Greek fount at Cambridge, or 
 
 Bed hoc anno nunc primo fere dimi- 
 diata portio fundetur in reparationem 
 dt nuns ; hoc si tibi nut voluptati, aut 
 ulli UHui ease potuerit, tuum erit, 
 tibique mccum commune, quomodo 
 et erii qnicquid et aliud est meum.' 
 Erasmi Opera, in 1882. 
 
 1 Cooper, A thence, i 22, 79, 119; 
 Knight, p. 43. 
 
 * The booksellers were also re- 
 garded as agents by whom the sup- 
 pression of heretical books was to be 
 generally carried out. In a petition 
 presented by the university to cardi- 
 nal Wolsey in 1529, in the matter of 
 Dr Cliffe, considerable importance is 
 attached to the selection of those ap- 
 pointed : ' unum iwtud non leve mo- 
 mentum habere credimus, ad ejus- 
 modi in perpetuum profligandos er- 
 rores (quod tamen, sine tuae celsitu- 
 dinis ope, efficere non valemns), nem- 
 p si regia indulgentia concedatur 
 academi nostrre, tret habere biblio- 
 
 polas, homines probos atque graves, 
 qui sacramento et mulcta grandi ad- 
 Btringantur, nullum vel importare 
 vel vendere librum, quern non prius 
 viri aliquot absolute eruditionis (quoa 
 censores huic rei praenciet academia), 
 t .-ill-Hi pi-, in iiiu-ian n t ut qui tuto ven- 
 datur. Quos turn bibliopolas, quo- 
 niam e re nostra magis erit, alieni- 
 genas esse, sic eniin consuletur libro- 
 rtim pretiin, xumnif credimut ntcesta- 
 rinni, ilia uti libertate et immunitate 
 gaudere, quibus indigenaa turn fninii - 
 tur, ita provincial! jure donati, ut 
 Londiui aliisque regni hujus empo- 
 riis, ab exteris negotiatoribus libros 
 emere possint.' Fiddes's Life of 
 Wolsey, Collection 25. 
 
 3 'Salutabis diligenter meis ver- 
 bis amicos. quos animo mecum cir- 
 cumfero, Doctorem Phaunum, doc- 
 tissimum Joannem rianum,...ao 
 veterem honpitcm meum Gerardum 
 bibliopolam.' Opera, HI 130.
 
 ERASMUS. 501 
 
 perhaps the commercial prospects of his own forthcoming CHAP. v. 
 editions of the Greek Testament and St. Jerome. >^^-lL 
 
 But though Erasmus undoubtedly found at Cambridge 
 some staunch friends and not a few admirers, while Fisher's 
 patronage protected him from anything like molestation, it 
 would be contrary to all that we know of the prevailing tone 
 of the university at this time, to suppose that he could long 
 be resident without finding out how strongly his views ran views or E- 
 
 rasnius com* 
 
 counter to the traditional teaching. The school of theology P**** ^ lh 
 
 t OJ those preva- 
 
 with which his name is identified, was in direct antagonism ^"U^^ 
 to the whole system then in vogue. The historical element ^" e ^ 
 in the Scriptures, the existence of which he clearly discerned 
 and so ably unfolded, was precisely that element which the 
 mediaeval theologian, with all his untiring industry and 
 elaborateness of interpretation, had neglected and ignored. 
 To those (and such there were) who seriously believed that 
 the Vulgate was to be preferred as a textual authority to the 
 Greek original from which it had been derived, his labours over 
 his Novum Instrumentum appeared a pedantic impertinence ; 
 while men of real ability and learning, like Eck of Ingold- 
 stadt, were shocked when they heard of the non-classicality 
 of the New Testament Greek and of erroneous quotations 
 from the Septuagint. His estimate of the whole patristic HU estimate 
 
 . of different 
 
 literature, again, was almost a complete inversion ot that then fathers, 
 accepted at all the universities. Of St. Chrysostom, the st. chryso- 
 
 BtOIU. 
 
 only father of the eastern Church who appears to have re- 
 ceived much attention from mediaeval students, he spoke 
 with undisguised contempt 1 . St. Augustine was, according to 
 his award, to be ranked far below St. Jerome, whom he st Jerome, 
 styled theolofforum omnium princeps* ; while with respect to 
 Origen, then but little known and much suspected, he de- 
 clared that a single page of this neglected writer taught more 
 
 1 It must be observed however that ffv\\ri^Sijv, ut aiuut, coujunctum f uit, 
 
 these criticisms applied only to writ- exinsium fuit, quioquid in aliis per 
 
 ings falsely attributed to St. Chry- partes miramur . . . poterat hie unus 
 
 Bostom (see Jortin, n 15). In some pro cunctis sufficere Latinis, vel ad 
 
 of his letters Erasmus speaks of this vitaa pietatem, vel ad theologicse rei 
 
 father in terms of high admiration ; cognitionem, si modo integer ac in- 
 
 see Opera, in 1343, 1432. columis exstaret.' Jortin, n 530,531. 
 
 3 Ibid, in 146. ' in hoc uno Append. 52. See also- Opera, m 142.
 
 502 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 et. iiiiary. 
 
 CHAP. v. Christian philosophy than ten pages of St. Augustine 1 . Of 
 St. Hilary, it is true, he spoke with praise ; but in the pre- 
 ace to jj- g su |3 Se q Uen t edition of that father's works, there oc- 
 curred what was perhaps to the scholastic theologian the most 
 galling passage Erasmus ever wrote, a passage that roused 
 the doctors of the Sorbonne to a man. It is that wherein he 
 contrasts the reverent and moderate tone in which St. Hilary 
 approaches the mysteries of Christian doctrine, with the, fierce 
 and shallow dogmatism and unhesitating confidence shewn by 
 the interpreters of such subjects in his own time 1 . Towards 
 Nicholas de Lyra and Hugo of St. Victor, the two great lights 
 
 * 
 
 ^ H**di*val theology, whose pages were more diligently 
 studied at Cambridge than those of any other mediaeval 
 theologian, Lombardus alone excepted, he shewed but scant 
 respect. He considered indeed that the errors of De Lyra 
 might repay the trouble of correcting, and of these he subse- 
 quently pointed out a large number, and challenged any 
 writer to disprove the arguments whereby he impugned their 
 accuracy; with regard to Hugo however, he declared that 
 his blunders were too flagrant to deserve refutation 8 . But 
 
 Nicholas de 
 
 Lyra and 
 
 vktr fst ' 
 
 1 ' Aperit enim quasi fontes quos- 
 dam, et rationes indioat artis theo- 
 logies.' Opera, m 95. 
 
 1 'Subinde necessitatem hanc [de 
 talihu* pronunciandi] deplorat sanc- 
 tissimus vir Hilarius haudquaquam 
 ignarus quam periculi plenum Bit, 
 quam parum religiosum, de rebus 
 iueffabilibus eloqui, incomprehensi- 
 bilia Bcrutari,' de longe Bemotis a 
 captu nostril pronunciare. Sed in 
 hoc pelago longius etiam provectus 
 eat divus AugustinuB, videlicet felix 
 hominiB ingenium, quterendi volup- 
 tate, velut aura secundiore, aliunde 
 alio proliciente. Moderatior est et 
 Petrus Lombardus, qui eententias 
 alienas recitans non temere de suo 
 addit; aut si quid addit, timide pro- 
 pouit. ReH tandem UBque ad impiam 
 audaciam progrenHa ent. Sed veteri- 
 bug sit venia, quam precantur, quos 
 hue adegit ncccssitus. Nobis qua 
 fronte veniatn poscemus, qui de rebus 
 longe M-nint i-siniH - a nostra natura, 
 tot curio*(u, ne dicam impias, move- 
 mut quacttiontg; tarn multa deflni- 
 
 mus, qua;, citra talutis dixpendium, 
 vel ignorari poterant, vel in ambiguo 
 
 relinqui? Doctrina Christi, qua9 
 
 prius nesciebat \oyonaxlcu', coepit a 
 philosophic ] ini'sidi i s pendere : hio 
 erat primus gradus ecclesiiB ad de- 
 teriora prolabeutis. Accreverunt 
 opes, et accessit vis. Porro admixta 
 huic negotio Caesarum auctoritas, 
 non mult urn promovit fidei Binceri- 
 tatem. Tandem res deducta est ad 
 BophisticaB contentiones, articulorum 
 myriades proruperunt. Hinc deven- 
 1 1 1 11 1 est ad terrores ac minus. Quum- 
 que vita nos destituut, quum fides sit 
 in ore magis quum in animo, quum 
 solida ilia tacrarum Litterantm cog- 
 nitio 'nog dejiciat, tamen terroribus 
 hue' adigimus homines, ut credant 
 quod non credunt, ut ament quod non 
 amant, et intelligant quod non intel- 
 ligunt.' Ibid, in 693, 696. 
 
 8 'Qui quicquid Lyranus scripfle- 
 i it oraculi instar haberi volunt, tu- 
 eantur ilium in illis locia in qnibua 
 ab eo dissehtio. Nam in Hugone 
 quairere quod reprehendas, stultiesi-
 
 ERASMUS. 503 
 
 the most unpardonable offence of all, in the eyes of the CHAP. v. 
 majority of contemporary theologians, was probably the open >^!^ ^ 
 countenance he gave to that bold heresy of the coldly critical 
 Grocyn, respecting the authenticity of the Hierarchy of The iiiermr- 
 Dionysius. Almost alone amid the accepted oracles of the 8ius - 
 Middle Ages, that plausible forgery, with its half mystic, 
 half Platonic tone, and glowing speculations, inspired the 
 student with a rapture and an ecstasy which the passionless 
 doctrinale of the schoolmen could never awaken, and of 
 this too, the merciless critic demanded the total sacrifice I 
 
 It is true that there were some of these views which 
 Erasmus had not as yet put forth, beyond recall, through the 
 press ; but it is in every way probable that they were 
 already perceptibly foreshadowed by his tone and conversa- 
 tion ; and, if so, we can hardly doubt that, throughout the 
 latter part of his residence at Cambridge, he must have been 
 conscious of a surrounding atmosphere of dislike and sus- 
 picion ; while it is evident that his sojourn was, in many 
 respects, an irritating and depressing experience. Disap- 
 pointed in his main object, he was little disposed to take a 
 favorable view of minor matters. He professed to be scan- 
 dalized at a university where a decent amanuensis could not 
 be met with at any price 1 . He disliked the winter fogs 8 ; he HisCam- 
 
 J J * . bridge experi- 
 
 grumbled sadly over the college ale, which aggravated hw 
 complaint, and was always writing to the goodnatured 
 Ammonius for another cask of Greek wine 8 . Unable, from 
 his ignorance of their language, to converse with the towns- 
 people, he probably misunderstood them, and, being in turn 
 misinterpreted, encountered frequent annoyances, which led 
 him to denounce them as boorish and malevolent in the 
 
 mum arbitror. Paucula tantum 3 ' pro vino bibimus vappam, et 
 
 annotavi, sed insigniter absurda, si quid vappa detenus.' (Ibid, m 
 
 quo nimirum cautiores redderem eos, 105.) ' Cervisia hujus loci mihi nullo 
 
 qui hujusmodi scriptores summa modo placet, nee admodum satis- 
 
 fiducia nullo judicio leguut.' Ibid. faciunt vim; si possis efficereut uter 
 
 in 128. aliquis vim Graecanici, quantum po- 
 
 1 'Ethic (0 Academiam!), nullus test optimi, hue deportetur, plane 
 
 inveniri potest, qui ullo pretio vel bearis Erasmum tuum, sed quod 
 
 mediocriter scribat." Ibid, in 120. alienum sit a dulcedine.' Ibid, in 
 
 8 ' Nam hie sestivare malim quam 108. 
 hibernare.' Ibid, in 112.
 
 504 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 extreme 1 . When accordingly he took exercise, he seems to 
 have contented himself either with pacing up and down the 
 long walk which skirts the grounds of Queens' College on 
 the other side of the river*, or else he mounted the white 
 horse with which Ammonius had generously presented him, 
 and rode round and round the Market-hill 3 . Many a friar in 
 black or in grey, darted, we may be sure, far from friendly 
 glances at the dreaded satirist of his order. Many a staunch 
 conservative eyed askance the foreign scholar, who had come 
 Minor to turn his little university world upside down. Even from 
 
 sources of dis- * 
 
 the community of his own order at Barnwell, he received no 
 such flattering attentions as had been paid him by prior 
 Charnock at Oxford ; and there were probably not a few of 
 the members who thought it was quite time that their 
 truant brother was back at Stein. With ordinary prudence, 
 his income must have more than sufficed for his wants ; he 
 received from his professorship over thirteen pounds an- 
 nually ; he had been presented by Warham to the rectory of 
 Aldington in Kent 4 ; and, though non-resident, he drew from 
 thence an income of twenty pounds 4 , to which the arch- 
 bishop, with his usual liberality, added another twenty from 
 his own purse. To these sums we must add an annual 
 pension of a hundred florins from Fisher, and a second 
 pension, which he still continued to receive, from his 
 generous friend, lord Mountjoy 8 . His total income, therefore, 
 
 1 'Nisi vulgus Cantabrigiense in- the recipient was not too heavily 
 
 hoHpitales Britannos antecedit, qui mulcted by those through whose 
 
 cum .-mama rusticitate Rummam hands the moneys passed. In a 
 
 uiiilit iani conjunxere.' (Quoted by letter written some seventeen years 
 
 Fuller). later, he says: 'E duabus Anglia 
 
 * Wright and Jones, Queens' Col~ pensionibus debentur quotannis plus 
 Ifgt, p. 14. minus ducenti floreni, Bed ea pecunia 
 
 * Ascham, English Works (ed.Ben- ad me pervenit accisa, nonnunquam 
 nett), p. 77. usque ad quartam partem, interdum 
 
 4 An exception to Warham's prac- et intercipitur.' in 1292. He was 
 
 tice, and a deviation from Erasmus's however one of the few foreigners 
 
 principles, honorable, under the who in the heavy tax imposed on the 
 
 circumstances, to both. See Knight, clergy in 1522 was allowed to pay 
 
 pp. 168-60. < only as natives did.' Burnet-Po- 
 
 * Jortin, i 66; Knight, p. 159; cock, i 53. To the notice of those 
 Opera, in 1528-9. The statements who hold up this age to our admira- 
 in the text are, of course, made tion, as one of rough but honest 
 under the supposition that these virtues, I would commend the fact 
 sums were actually paid and that that, at no period in our national
 
 ERASMUS. 505 
 
 could scarcely have been less than 700 in English money of CHAP. v. 
 the present day; but Erasmus was no economist, and his >^ T -IL 
 literary labours involved a considerable outlay ; notwith- "ii a ,^; um . 
 standing therefore these liberal aids, he was always pestering 8tancc8 - 
 Ammonius for further loans, as he preferred to call them, 
 though he appears to have taken a flat refusal with perfect 
 good temper. An acute attack of his chronic complaint 
 completed the long list of his misfortunes. 
 
 At last the plague, which had long been hovering in the 
 distance, again made its appearance at Cambridge 1 . The 
 university sought safety in flight, and Erasmus was left 
 almost alone. It was then that, in his last Cambridge letter Erasmus's 
 to Ammonius, he gave full vent to his distress and despon- bridgeTtter, 
 dency. 'For some months past,' he writes, 'I have been 
 living the life of a snail in its shell, stowing myself away in 
 college, and perfectly mum over my books. The university 
 is a solitude ; most are away through fear of the plague, 
 though even when all are here, I find but little society. The 
 expense is past enduring ; the gain, not a farthing. Believe 
 me, as though I were on my oath : it is not five months since 
 I came back and I have spent sixty nobles, while I have 
 received only one from my pupils, and that not without much 
 protesting and declining on my part. I have decided not to 
 leave stone unturned this winter, and in fact to throw out 
 my sheet-anchor. If this succeeds, I will build my nest here; 
 if otherwise, I shall wing my flight, whither I know notV 
 
 history, not even after the Restora- turn quoqne solitudo est. Sumptus 
 
 tion, have we more frequent evi- intolerabiles, lucrum ne teruncii qui- 
 
 dence of contemptible swindling dem. Puta me jam hoc tibi per 
 
 and corrupt practices pervading all oinnia sacra dejerasse. Nondum 
 
 classes. quiuque menses sunt, quod hue me 
 
 1 In consequence of this, a grace coutuli, interim ad sexaginta nobiles 
 had already been passed for dispens- insumpsi. Unum duntaxat ab audi- 
 ing with the ordinary lectures, and toribus quibusdam accepi, eumque 
 those in divinity and sophistry, until multum deprecans ac recusans. 
 the feast of St Leonard's. Baker, Certum est his hibernis mensibus 
 MSS. xxxin 173; Cooper, Annals, i ira.vra. \iOov mveiv, planeque sacram, 
 295. quod aiunt, ancoram solvere. Si 
 
 2 ' Nos, mi Ammoni, jam menses succedit, nidum aliquem iiiihi pa- 
 aliquot plane cochleas vitam vivimus, rabo; sin minus, certum est hinc 
 domi contract! conditique mussamus avolare, incertum quo : si nihil aliud, 
 in studiis. Magua hie solitudo : certe alibi moriturus. Bene vale. ' 
 absunt pestilentiae metu plerique, Opera, in 116. This letter, in the 
 quanquam quum adsunt universi, Leyden edition, bears the date, Nov.
 
 PART II. 
 
 506 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. Such then is the final glimpse that we gain of Erasmus 
 at Cambridge: it is that of a solitary, isolated scholar, 
 prematurely old with anxiety and toil, weighed down by 
 physical suffering, dejected by disappointment, and oppressed 
 with debt; rarely venturing beyond the college gates, and 
 then only to encounter hostile or indifferent glances ; while 
 all around there waited for him an invisible foe, the pesti- 
 lence that walketh at noon-day; often by night, in his 
 study high up in the south-west tower, 'outwatching the 
 Bear' over the page of St. Jerome, even as Jerome himself 
 had outwatched it many a night, when transcribing the same 
 pages in his Bethlehem cell, some eleven hundred years 
 befora Then winter came on, and, towards the close of each 
 shortening day, Erasmus could mark from his window the 
 white fogs rolling in from the surrounding marshes, remind- 
 ing him of the climate he most of all disliked, the climate 
 of his native Holland ; while day after day, the sound of 
 footsteps, in the courts below, grew rarer and rarer. At last 
 the gloom, the solitude, the discomfort, and the panic, 
 became more than he could bear ; and, one night, the cus- 
 tomary lamp no longer gleamed from a certain casement in 
 the south-west tower. And when the fear of the plague was 
 over, and the university returned, it was known that Erasmus 
 had left Cambridge ; and no doubt many a sturdy defender 
 of the old learning said he was very glad to hear it, and 
 heartily hoped that all this stir about Greek, and St. Jerome, 
 and errors in the Vulgate, was at an end. 
 
 It would be obviously unjust to interpret the hasty 
 expressions used by Erasmus, when embittered by a sense of 
 
 28, 1511, and the reply of Ammonius Latin verse, and to the great amiiBe- 
 
 IMI 164), is dated Nov. 24, in the ment of both scholars had made the 
 
 same year. The internal evidence first syllable in pullulare short. By 
 
 however clearly proves the assigned the expression, quod hue me contuli, 
 
 year to be erroneous, for both letters Erasmus must therefore refer to hia 
 
 contain a reference to the epitaph by return after one of his journeys to 
 
 Carmilianus on the death of the King London, which he appears to have 
 
 of the Scots at Flodden, and must visited more than once during his 
 
 consequently have been written sub- residence at Cambridge; I have ao- 
 
 sequent to Sept. 9, 1613. Carmili- cordingly translated the words agree- 
 
 anas thought himself a master of ably to this sense.
 
 ERASMUS. .507 
 
 failure and in perplexity as to his future course, as his CHAP. v. 
 deliberate estimate of a university which, in reality, afforded J^LL 
 him far more substantial aid than he received from any 
 other learned body throughout his whole life ; and the follow- 
 ing passages from subsequent letters may fairly be regarded 
 as altogether outweighing his peevish complaints to Ammo- 
 nius. 'There are there,' he says, speaking of Cambridge in counter tti- 
 a letter to Servatius, written in the same year that he left nunwu in 
 
 >.. 11 f f . . , favour of 
 
 the university, ' colleges of such devoutness of spirit, such sane- Cambridge, 
 tity of life, that were you yourself a witness thereof the com- 
 parison would make you ready to despise the houses of the 
 religious orders 1 .' In a letter, written some seven years Progress in 
 later, to Everard, the stadtholder of Holland, he declares that t! ' e u ^ ver - 
 
 sity* 
 
 sound theology is flourishing at Paris and at Cambridge 
 more than at any other university. 'And whence,' he says, 
 ' is this ? Simply because these two universities are adapting 
 themselves to the tendencies of the age, and receive the new 
 learning, which is ready, if need be, to storm an entrance, 
 not as an enemy but courteously as a guest*.' And again, in 
 a third letter, to the archbishop of Toledo, written in his His praise of 
 
 r three col- 
 
 sixty-fourth year, when his recollections of Cambridge must le s es - 
 have begun to grow dim, he yet recalls with special delight 
 'those three colleges, where youth were exercised, not in 
 dialectical wrestling matches, which serve only to chill the 
 heart and unfit men for serious duties, but in true learning 
 and sober arguments ; and from whence they went forth to 
 preach the word of God with earnestness and in an evan- 
 gelical spirit, and to commend it to the minds 'of m^en of 
 learning by a weighty eloquence 3 .' 
 
 1 ' Sunt hie collegia, in quibus 3 ' in quibus non ea tradantur qua 
 
 tantum est religionis, tanta vitas mo- juvenes ad sophisticas palasstras in- 
 
 destia, ut nullam religionem eis prae struant, ad serias functiones frigidoa 
 
 hac non contempturus, si videas. ' reddaut et ineptos, sed unde prodeant 
 
 Opera, in 1529. veris disciplinis ac sobriis disputatio- 
 
 s 'Lutetiae Cantabrigiaeque sic floret nibus exercitati, qui graviter evange- 
 
 theologiaa studium, tit nunquam alias licoque spiritu prsedicent verbum Dei, 
 
 seque. Quid in causa ? Nimirum quod et efBcaci quadam eloquentia com- 
 
 eese accommodant seculo alio se flee- mendent eruditorum animis.' Ibid. 
 
 tenti, quod has meliores litteras, vel in 1253. The three colleges, it is 
 
 ri irrumpere conantes, non repellunt hardly necessary to say, are Queens', 
 
 ut hostes, sed ut hospites comiter Christ's, and St. John's. With re- 
 
 amplectuntur.' Ibid, in 677. spect to his deliberate estimate of
 
 508 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 His failure 
 apparent 
 nther tluui 
 
 llii .V.ITKHI 
 Initriuncit- 
 turn. 
 
 Nevertheless, judging from his own account and from the 
 silence of contemporaries, it must be admitted that Erasmus 
 appears to have regarded his sojourn at Cambridge as a 
 failure, and the language used by his different biographers 
 implies apparently, that such was also their opinion. He had 
 almost totally failed to gather round him a circle of learners 
 in any way worthy of his great reputation ; respecting his 
 lectures, as divinity professor, not a single tradition remains ; 
 while so completely were his efforts, as a teacher of Greek, 
 ignored by the university, that on the occasion of Richard 
 Croke (his virtual successor in this respect) being appointed 
 to the office of public orator a few years later, the latter was 
 honored by admission to certain special privileges, expressly 
 on the ground that he 'had been the first introducer of 
 Greek into the university 1 .' But on a careful examination 
 of the tendencies perceptible within a short time after 
 Erasmus's departure, we shall probably be inclined to infer 
 that his failure was far more apparent than real ; and even 
 to believe, that if the impulsive, sensitive scholar could have 
 abided his time, he might have been rewarded by the realisa- 
 tion of substantial success, and have for ever directly associated 
 his name with the most important movement that Cambridge 
 has ever originated. It is certain, that in the years imme- 
 diately following upon his residence, we are met by indica- 
 tions of a mental and speculative activity that is almost 
 startling when compared with the lethargy that had reigned 
 only a few years before, and we can have no hesitation in 
 assigning his Novum Instrumentum as the centre round which 
 that activity mainly revolved. 
 
 The Novum Instrumentum 9 of Erasmus, appeared, as is 
 
 England at large, we can ask for no 
 more favorable verdict than the fol- 
 lowing: 'ubi favore principum reg- 
 nant bona litteriB, viget honesti 
 Htudium, exsulat aut jacet, cum fu- 
 cata person a taque sanctimonia, futilig 
 et iiiMilsfi doctrina quondam dwonStv- 
 rut Ttwcuttvidi><in>.' Letter to Ilicluird 
 Pace (A.D. 1517), Oprra, in 237. 
 
 1 ' quift ille primus invexit 1 i ttcras 
 ad DOS Gra-cas.' Stat. Ant.p 112. 
 
 * ' Novum Instrumentum omne, di- 
 ligenter ab Erasmo lloterodamo re- 
 cognitum et emendatum, noil sol um ad 
 Graecam veritatem, verurn etiam ad 
 in nl i < >ru in utriusque linguae codicum, 
 eorumqne veterum simul et ememlato- 
 rum fidem, postremo ad probatissimo- 
 rum autorum citationem, emendati- 
 onem, et interpretationem, praacipue, 
 Origenis, Ghrysostomi, Cyrilli, Vulga- 
 rii, Hieronymi, Gypriani, Ambrosii,
 
 THE NOVUM INSTRUMENTUM. 509 
 
 well known to every scholar, from the printing press of CHAP. r. 
 Frobenius at Basel, on the 1st of March, 1516; but, as Pro- 
 fessor Brewer observes, ' it was strictly the work of his resi- 
 dence in England' (that is at Cambridge). * In the collation ! 
 and examination of manuscripts required for the task, he had pa 
 the assistance of Englishmen; Englishmen supplied the 
 funds, and English friends and patrons lent him that support 
 and encouragement without which it is very doubtful whether 
 Erasmus would ever have completed the work.... The experi- Professor 
 ment was a bold one, the boldest that had been conceived 
 in this century or for many centuries before it. We are 
 accustomed to the freest expression of opinion in Biblical 
 criticism, and any attempt to supersede our English version, 
 to treat its inaccuracies with scorn, to represent it as far 
 below the science and scholarship of the age, or as a barbar- 
 ous, unlettered production, made from inaccurate manuscripts, 
 and imperfectly executed by men who did not understand 
 the language of the original, would excite little apprehension 
 or alarm. To explain the text of Scripture exclusively by 
 the rules of human wisdom, guided by the same principles as 
 are freely applied to classical authors, to discriminate the 
 spurioifs from the genuine, and decide that this was ca- 
 nonical, and that was not, might, perhaps, be regarded as 
 audacious. Yet all this, and not less than this, did Erasmus 
 propose to himself in his edition and translation of the New 
 Testament. He meant to subvert the authority of the Vul- 
 gate, and to shew that much of the popular theology of the 
 day, its errors and misconceptions, were founded entirely on 
 a misapprehension of the original meaning, and inextricably 
 
 Hilarii, Augustini, una cum annotati- the authority of both Augustine and 
 onibus quse lectorem doceant, quid qua Jerome: 'Nee intelligunt ad eum 
 ratione mutatum sit. Quisquis igitur modum aliquoties loqui divum Hiero- 
 amas veram theologiam, lege, cog- nymum, nee legisse videntur Augus- 
 nosce, et deinde judica. Neque statim tinum, qui docet aptius dici Instrumen- 
 offendere, si quid mutatum offenderis, turn quani Testamentum. Idque veris- 
 sed expeude, nurn in melius mutan- simum est, quoties non de re, sed de 
 dum sit.' Erasmus preferred the word Toluminibus verba fiunt. Nam Testa- 
 Instrumentum to Testamentum on the mentum esset, etiamsi nullum ex- 
 ground that it more fittingly express- staret scriptum : quum enim Do- 
 ed the deed or written document minus diceret, " Hie est calix Novi 
 containing the Testament, arid he Testamenti," nullus erat liber Novi 
 defended his preference by citing Testamenti proditus.' Opera, m 1006.
 
 510 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. entangled with the old Latin version. It was his avowed object 
 >i-^-i^ to bring up the translation of the sacred books, and all criti- 
 cism connected with them, to the level of that scholarship in 
 his day which had been successfully applied to the illustration 
 of ancient authors ; to set aside all rules of interpretation 
 resting merely on faith and authority, and replace them by 
 the philological and historical. And it was precisely for this 
 reason that Luther disliked the work. In this respect the 
 New Testament of Erasmus must be regarded as the founda- 
 tion of that new school of teaching on which Anglican theo- 
 logy professes exclusively to rest ; as such it is not only the 
 type of its class, but the most direct enunciation of that Pro- 
 testant principle which, from that time until this, has found 
 its expression in various forms: "The Bible alone is the 
 religion of Protestants." Whatever can be read therein or 
 proved thereby, is binding upon all men; what cannot, is not 
 to be required of any man as an article of his faith, either by 
 societies or by individuals. Who sees not that the authority 
 of the Church was displaced, and the sufficiency of all men 
 individually to read and interpret for themselves was thus 
 MSerted by the New Testament of Erasmus 1 ?' 
 nefertand If from the foregoing general estimate of the influence of 
 
 error* in the 
 
 the work, we turn to the consideration of its abstract merits, 
 we may discern, from the vantage-ground of three centuries 
 of progressive biblical criticism, more clearly than either 
 bishop Fisher or bishop Lee, its merits and defects. Nor is 
 it possible to deny the existence of numerous and occasionally 
 serious errors and shortcomings. The oldest manuscript to 
 which Erasmus had access, was probably not earlier than the 
 tenth century ; the typographical inaccuracies are frequent ; 
 the very title-page contains a glaring and singularly dis- 
 creditable blunder 1 ; he even shews such ignorance of ancient 
 
 1 Preface to Lttter$ and Fapert, the following way. Erasmus had 
 
 Tol. ii pp. cclxiv-v. a copy of Theophylact on Matthew, 
 
 i was the mention, in the with this title : ToO QtoQiKtyrdrov 'Ap- 
 
 st of the Fathers whose works had x ieirt<r ' c ^ r01 ' BouXyap/cw Kvplov Qeo<f>v- 
 
 DMB ased in the preparation of the XC&KTOV ljyi)ffit (It rb ACOT& Marfleu- 
 
 text (see note 2, p. 508), of Vulga- w- 'Evayyt\u>. In his haste he took 
 
 HUH, a writer no one had ever heard Oco^oXa/croi; for an epithet, while for 
 
 of before. The mistake arose in "Bov\yaplai he must have read BotA^o-
 
 THE NOVUM INSTRUMENTUM. 611 
 
 geography as to assert that Neapolis, the port where the CHAP. v. 
 apostle Paul arrived on his journey from Samothrace to J!l^!l!L 
 Philippi, was a town in Caria; and even in subsequent 
 editions, he stubbornly maintained, in opposition to his 
 critics, that the Herodians mentioned by St. Matthew were 
 the soldiers of Herod the Great ! But even errors like these its great 
 become trifling, when weighed in the balance against the 
 substantial service nevertheless rendered to the cause of 
 biblical studies, the conscientious labour, the courageous 
 spirit of the criticisms, the scholarly sagacity which singles 
 out the Gospel by St. Luke as superior to the others "in the 
 purity of its Greek, which discerns the peculiar mannerism 
 of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and detects the discrepancies 
 in the quotations from the Septuagint. 
 
 On the 13th of the August following the appearance of Buiiock-s iet- 
 the work, Bullock wrote from Cambridge to inform his old pre- mus; Aug. 
 ceptor how matters were there progressing, and his report was 
 certainly encouraging. Greek was being studied at the univer- 
 sity with considerable ardour ; the Novum Instrumentum was 
 in high favour ; and Erasmus's Cambridge friends would be 
 only too glad to see him among them once more 1 . It is 
 evident indeed that by all, whose good opinion was most worth 
 having, Erasmus's performance, even on its first appearance, 
 was regarded as a highly meritorious achievement. Fisher Favorable 
 
 111 i TI 111 TTT i reception of 
 
 had throughout steadily promoted the scheme. Warham was the AWum 
 emphatic in his praise. Fox, whose opinion on such a (^ft ^i* 
 subject carried perhaps as much weight as that of any living men - 
 Englishman, publicly declared, in a large assembly, that he 
 valued Erasmus's labours more than those of any ten com- 
 
 plov, which he converted from the ceptor doctissime, est omnibus amicis 
 
 name of a country into the name of tuis Cantabrigianis oppido quam gra- 
 
 a man, and translated " Vulgarius " ; tus : super ceteros tamen mini longe 
 
 and under this name Theophylact was gratissimus, utpote qui aliis omnibus 
 
 quoted in his notes. To make mat- sum tibimultis partibusdevinctior... 
 
 ters worse, he attributed to Vulga- Hie acriter incumbunt litteris Greeds, 
 
 rius a reading which is not to be found optantque non mediocriter tuum ad- 
 
 in Theophylact, and in one place ventum : et hi magnopere favent huic 
 
 grossly misconstrued him.' See an tute in Novum Testamentum edition! : 
 
 article, Tlw Greek Testament of Er at- dii boni, quam eleganti, argutse, ao 
 
 mus,\)j K.B. Drummond. Theological omnibussanigustussuaviacperneces- 
 
 Review v. 527. saria 1 ' Opera, in 197. 
 1 ' Tuus in Angliam r edit us, pre-
 
 512 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 mentators 1 . Cuthbert Tunstall, just created Master of the 
 Rolls, was an avowed patron of the undertaking. The fact 
 indeed that the dedication of the work had been accepted by 
 ^ eo x> m ^ a ^ alone seem sufficient to disarm the prejudices 
 o tne mos ^ bigoted. But the suspicions of the theologians 
 were not thus to be lulled to sleep ; and in Erasmus's reply 
 to the foregoing letter from Bullock, dated Aug. 31, we find 
 that he had already become informed of the manifestation at 
 counter de- Cambridge of a very different spirit from that which Bullock 
 atTai lvat had reported. In the Novum Instrumentum the opponents of 
 Greek had recognised, as they believed, the opportunity for 
 which they had long been watching ; and having now more 
 definite ground whereon to take their stand, they were en- 
 deavouring by mere force of numerical superiority to over- 
 whelm the party of reform. 
 
 It would however be unjust not to admit, that the oppo- 
 nents of the work had more definite grounds for their hos- 
 tility than a mere general aversion to the special culture with 
 which that work was identified, and that their opposition was 
 not, as Erasmus himself alleged, commenced and carried on 
 in utter ignorance of the contents of the volume. Merits 
 and defects like those to which we have already adverted, 
 lay, it is true, somewhat beyond the range of their criticism ; 
 but there was in the commentary another feature, which 
 sarcastic ai- touched them far more closely, and this was the frequent 
 "mcntary 6 application, which the sarcastic scholar had taken occasion 
 to make (often with considerable irrelevance and generally 
 without necessity) of particular texts to the prevailing abuses 
 of the times. For example, he had progressed no further 
 ai'.d than the third chapter of St. Matthew, before he contrived 
 
 cants 
 
 to find occasion for dragging in a slur upon the whole 
 aii *tuckd. priestly order*; in commenting on Matt. xv. 5, he censures 
 
 1 'Wintoniensis episcopus, vir ut s It is when speaking of the MSS. 
 
 scia prudentiHsimus, in celeberrimo of the Gospels to which he had had 
 
 ccetu magnatum, quum de te ac tuis access at the College of St. Donatian 
 
 lucubratiunibuH incidisaet sermo, tes- at Bruges. 'Habebat ea bibliotheca,' 
 
 tatufl est omnibus approbantibus, ver- he goes on to say, ' complures alios 
 
 rionem tuam Novi Testamenti, vice libros antiquitatis venerandse, qui 
 
 ease sibi commentariorum decem, neglectu quorundam perierunt, ut 
 
 tantum afferre lucib.' Opera, in 1660. nunc fermc sunt sacerdotum more*
 
 THE NOVUM INSTRUMENTUM. 513 
 
 the monks and friars for the artifices whereby they prevailed CHAP. v. 
 on the wealthy to bequeath their estates to religious houses * v '- 
 rather than to their rightful heirs ; in a note on Matt, xxiii. 2, 
 he indulges in a tirade against the bishops ; Mark VL 9 
 affords an opportunity for attacking the Mendicants, Christ, 
 he says, never belonged to that order ; when he comes to the 
 mention of Dionysius the Areopagite, in Acts xvii. 34, he 
 does not omit to tell, with evident relish and in his very best 
 Latin, the story of Grocyn's humiliating discovery 1 ; while in 
 a note on Timothy i. 6, he attacks the disputations of the 
 schools, and supports his criticisms by a long list of qucestiones, 
 designed as specimens of the prevailing extravagance and 
 puerility of the dialecticians. Whatever, accordingly, may 
 be our opinion of the policy that imperilled the success of 
 a work of such magnitude, by converting it into a fortress 
 from whence to shoot singularly galling darts against the 
 enemy, there can be no doubt that it was by criticisms like 
 the foregoing that the active hostility of the conservative 
 party at Cambridge was mainly provoked, and that they 
 were induced to have recourse to acts of retaliation like that 
 referred to in the following letter from Erasmus 2 , a letter 
 that affords perhaps the most valuable piece of contemporary 
 evidence with respect to the state of the university that re- 
 mains to us of this period. 
 
 The letter is dated from Fisher's palace at Rochester ; Erasmus* 
 
 T-I i -n n i i reply to Bul- 
 
 and Erasmus commences by saying, in response to Bullock s jg ^ 1 * 
 expressed wish for his return, that he would be only too glad 
 to resume his old Cambridge life and to find himself again 
 
 magis incumbere patinis quampaginis, dimidium confecisset, ubi gustum at- 
 
 et potiorem habere curam nummorum tentius cepisset, ingenue coram audi- 
 
 quam voluminum.' (Quoted by Jortin, torio fassus est, sibi verso calculo non 
 
 ii 206.) videri id opus ease Dionysii Areo- 
 
 1 ' Ante complures annos, ut mem- pagitae.' Ibid, n 211. In the present 
 
 ini, vir incomparabilis Willelmus day, it has seemed fit to the mo- 
 
 Grocinus, ut theologus summus, ita dern representatives of Erasmus's 
 
 in milla disciplina non exquisite antagonists, to maintain that Qro- 
 
 doctus et exercitatus, auspicaturus cyn's first view was the right one ! 
 Londini in sede Divo Paulo sacra 8 Epist. 148, Opera, in 126. This 
 
 enarrationem Coslestis Hierarchiae, letter, by an evident anachronism, 
 
 meditata prsefatione multum asse- is dated in the Leyden edition 1513 : 
 
 veravit hoc opus esse Dionysii A- but a very cursory examination of its 
 
 reopagitse, vehementer destomachans contents will shew that it is a reply 
 
 in eorum impudentiam, qui dissen- to Bullock's letter of Aug. 13, 1516. 
 
 tirent. At idem priusquam operis Ibid, in 197. 
 
 33
 
 514 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. among so delightful a circle of friends, but at present he 
 >^^-J- is looking forward to wintering at Louvain. He is delighted 
 to hear that his Novum Instrumentum finds favour with those 
 whose good opinion is most to be desired ; ' but,' he goes on 
 to say, ' I also hear, on good authority, that there is one most 
 theological college (collegium 0eo\ojiKa>Tarov) among you, 
 ruled over by a set of perfect Areopagites, who have by 
 formal decree forbidden that the volume be introduced within 
 the college walls, either by horse or by boat, by cart or by 
 porter. Is this,' he exclaims, ' doctissime Boville, more to be 
 laughed at or lamented ? Unfortunate men, how their sym- 
 pathies are vitiated ! Hostile and angry against themselves, 
 He attack* grudging at their own profit ! Of what race can they be, 
 
 hw opponent* . * 
 
 WDO are k v nature so savage, that kindness, which soothes 
 even wild beasts, only irritates them ; who are so implacable 
 that no apologies can soften them ? Who, what is yet more 
 to their discredit, condemn and mangle a book that they 
 have never read, and could not understand if they had. Who 
 know nothing more than what they may have heard over 
 their cups or in public gossip, that a new work has come- out 
 with which it is designed to hoodwink the theologians ; and 
 straightway attack with the fiercest abuse both the author, 
 who by his protracted labours has aimed at rendering service 
 to all students, and the book, from whence they might them- 
 selves reap no small advantage 1 .' After pointing out what 
 excellent precedents for his performance were to be found in 
 the productions of different scholars at various times, he 
 turns to the new translations of Aristotle as his most per- 
 tinent illustration. 'What detriment,' he asks, 'did the 
 
 thr'm-w re'- writings of Aristotle suffer, when Argyropulos, Leonardo 
 
 Ions of ArU- . OJ r 
 
 Aretmo, and Theodorus Gaza brought forth their new ver- 
 
 1 'Quod genus hoc hominum, usque thos, aut in conciliabulis fori, pro- 
 
 adeo moroBum, ut officiis irritentur, disse novum opus, quod omnibus the- 
 
 qnibus manitucHcnnt et ferro belluro ; ologis, sen cornicibus, oculoa tentet 
 
 tarn implacabile, ut eos nee tarn configere : ao mox metis conviciis in- 
 
 multffi apologia lenire possint ? immo sectantur et auctorem qui tantis 
 
 (quod est impndentitiK), isti dainnant vigiliis studiis omnium prodesse stu- 
 
 ac lacerant librum, quern ne legerint duerit, et librnm, unde poterant pro- 
 
 quidem, ahoqui nee intellecturi si ficere.' in 126. 
 legant. Tantum andierunt inter cva-
 
 THE NOVUM INSTRUMENTUM. 515 
 
 sions ? Surely the translations of these scholars are not to be CHAP. v. 
 suppressed and destroyed, simply in order that the old inter- -^^-IL 
 preters of the Aristotelian philosophy may be regarded as 
 omniscient?' He then falls back, reasonably enough, on the R<,f crstothe 
 argument ad verecundiam : his work had gained the warmest 
 approval of Warham ; Capito, professor at Basel, and Berus, 
 at Paris, two of the most eminent theologians of the day, 
 had been equally emphatic in their praise ; so had Gregory 
 Reischius, who was listened to as an oracle in Germany ; so 
 had Jacob Wimpheling. ' But to say nothing of others,' he 
 continues, 'you yourself well know what a distinguished man 
 the bishop of Rochester, your chancellor, is, as regards both 
 character and attainments. And are not these obscure men 
 ashamed to hurl reproaches against what one of such dis- 
 tinguished worth both sanctions and reads? Finally,' he 
 adds, ' if with one man learning has most weight, I can claim 
 the approval of the most learned ; if with another, virtue, I 
 have that of the most virtuous ; if with a third, authority, 
 I have the support, not only of bishops and archbishops, 
 but of the supreme pontiff himself.' 
 
 'But perhaps,' he goes on to say, 'they fear lest, if the compare* the 
 
 / J iii Cambridge of 
 
 young students are attracted to these studies, the schools } rj h . . 
 
 that of thirty 
 
 will become deserted. Why do they not rather reflect on Vio^ pre ~ 
 this fact. It is scarcely thirty years ago, when all that was 
 taught in the university -of Cambridge, was Alexander 1 , the 
 Little Logicals 2 (as they call them), and those old exercises 
 out of Aristotle, and qucestiones taken from Duns Scotus. As 
 time went on, polite learning was introduced ; to this was 
 
 1 Lewis (Life of Fisher, i 27) ex- Alexander de Villa Dei was the author 
 
 plains this, as referring to ' Alexander of the Doctrinale Puerorum, for some 
 
 de Hales ', called doctor irrefragabilis, centuries the most common text-book 
 
 Expositio in libros Metaphysics Aris- on grammar. It was a compilation 
 
 totelis.' Jones and Wright (Queens' 1 from Priscian, and in leonine verse 
 
 Coll., p. 13) say, ' the middle-age (see Warton, Hist, of Eng. Poetry, n 
 
 poem of Walter de Castellis.' Nei- 347, n.). Compare also the follow- 
 
 ther of these, I think, is right, and ing, 'Qui praetor commentaries in 
 
 Mr Demaus who, in his Life of Lati- Alexandrum grammaticum et Bru- 
 
 mer (p. 19), suggests Alexander of nelli poetse fabulas et Buridani vul- 
 
 Aphrodisias, is still further from the garium dialecticorum sophismata... 
 
 mark. It was more probably the 'Alex- nihil unquam legissent, epistolas 
 
 ander, a gander of Menander's pole,' meas lucem hi tenebris putaverunt. 1 
 
 referred to by Skelton in his ' Speke JSneas Sylvius, Epistola, p. 935. 
 Parrot,' (ed. Dyce, n. 89, and 347,) 8 See supra, p. 350, n. 4. 
 as a common text -book at Cambridge* 
 
 332
 
 516 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. added a knowledge of mathematics ; a new, or at least a 
 ^IL regenerated, Aristotle sprang up ; then came an acquaintance 
 with Gfreek, and with a host of new authors whose very 
 names had before been unknown, even to their profoundest 
 doctors. And how, I would ask, has this affected your uni- 
 versity ? Why, it has flourished to such a degree that it can 
 now compete with the chief universities of the age, and can 
 boast of men in comparison with whom theologians of the old 
 school seem only the ghosts of theologians. The seniors of 
 the university, if candid men, do not deny this; they con- 
 gratulate others on their good fortune, and lament their own 
 loss. But perhaps these friends of ours are dissatisfied be- 
 cause, since all this has come to pass, the Gospels and the 
 Epistles find more numerous and more attentive students; 
 and, grudging that even this amount of time should be sub- 
 tracted from studies to which, forsooth, all the student's 
 entire time ought to be devoted, would prefer that his whole 
 life should be wasted in the frivolous subtleties of qucestiones ? 
 He hopes MS But I shall, on this account, certainly little regret my 
 ied men to midnight toil. It is notorious that hitherto there have been 
 theologians who have altogether neglected the Scriptures ; and 
 
 " tnat too not f r th e purpose of studying the Sentences, nor 
 indeed with a view to any other single thing save only the 
 dilemmas of quo3stiones. Is it not well, that such as these 
 should be summoned back to the fountain-head ? I long, 
 my friend, to see the toil I underwent, with a view to the 
 general good, toil of no ordinary kind, fruitful of benefit 
 to all... It is my hope, that what now meets with the 
 approval of the best among you, may, ere long, meet with 
 that of the larger number. Novelty which has often won 
 favour for others, has, in my case, evoked dislike. A 
 corresponding diversity of fate awaits us, I fancy, in the 
 j > uk. or " f uture - Time, while it deprives them of the popular regard, 
 may perhaps bestow it on me. This do 1 confidently predict ; 
 whatever may be the merit of my literary labours, they will 
 be judged with greater impartiality by posterity 1 .' 
 
 Ante annoi ferme triginta, nihil prater Alexandrmn, Parva Logicalia, 
 twdebatur in Mhola Cantabrigiensi, nt vocant, et yetera ilia Aristotelis
 
 GREEK AT CAMBRIDGE. 517 
 
 Erasmus's prediction was abundantly fulfilled ; and, CHAP. v. 
 within a few years from the date of the foregoing letter, he 
 saw the publication of his Novum Instrumentum attended "on 
 by effects of both a character and a degree far outrunning 
 his calculations, and even his wishes, when laboring over 
 those pages in his study at Queens' College. At present 
 however it is sufficient to note the satisfactory evidence 
 above afforded of the progress of the new learning at 
 Cambridge; more trustworthy testimony can scarcely be 
 required than that thus incidentally given, in a confidential 
 letter, written by an emeritus professor to a resident fellow. 
 
 The movement in favour of the study of Greek and the *** *ject 
 
 . . of Greek con- 
 
 opposition it excited, continued, it would seem, to be the StettodSw 
 chief subject of interest at Cambridge for some years after o 
 Erasmus thus wrote. In the year 1518, Bryan, his former 
 pupil, ventured upon a startling innovation on the traditional 
 method of instruction. On succeeding to his regency, as 
 master of arts, he not only put aside the old translations of 
 Aristotle, but had recourse to his knowledge of Greek in his 
 exposition of the new versions. It is scarcely necessary to 
 add that in adopting this mode of treatment, he found little Aristotle, 11 
 time for the discussion of the prevalent nominalistic disputes. v'SSons! ne 
 
 dictata Scoticasque quasstiones. Pro- sam setatem in qtuestionum frivolia 
 
 gressu temporis accesserunt bonaa argutiis conteri ? Atqui hoc sane 
 
 litters ; accessit matbeseos cognitio ; nomine non admodum poenitet me 
 
 accessit novus, aut certe novatus, niearuin vigiliarum. Compertum est 
 
 Aristoteles; accessit Grascarum lit- hactenus quosdam fuisse theologos, 
 
 terarum peritia; accesserunt auctores qui adeo nunquam legerant divinas 
 
 tarn uiulti, quorum oliui ne nomina litteras, ut nee ipsos Sententiarnm 
 
 quidem tenebantur, nee a summati- libros evolverent, neque quicquam 
 
 bus illis larebis. Quaeso, quid bisce omnino attingerent prater qusstio- 
 
 ex rebus accidit academiae vestrae ? num gryphos. An non expedit ejus- 
 
 nempe sic effloruit, ut cum primis modi ad ipsos revocari fontes ? Ego, 
 
 hujus sfficuli scholis certare possit; mi Boville, labores quos certe non 
 
 et tales babet viros ad quos veteres mediocres omnibus juvandis suscepi, 
 
 illi collati umbrae tbeologorum vide- cupiam omnibus esse frugiferos 
 
 antur, non theologi. Non inficiantur et spero futurum, ut quod mine 
 
 id majores, si qui sunt ingenio can- placet optimis, mox placeat pluri- 
 
 dido. Aliis suam felicitatem gratu- mis. Aliis gratiam conciliavit novi- 
 
 lantur, suam complorant infelicita- tas, ut huic open novitas invidiam 
 
 tern. An hoc istos male habet, quod peperit. Proinde diversum opinor 
 
 posthac et plures legent Evangelicas accidet. Ulis aatas favorem adimit, 
 
 Apostolicasque litteras, et attentius ; iniki fortassis apponet. Ulud certe 
 
 et vel hoc temporis his studiis deci- praasagio de meis lucubrationibus, 
 
 di dolent, quibus omne tempus opor- qualescunque sunt, candidius judica- 
 
 tebat impartiri ; malintque univer- turam posteritatem.' Opera, in 130.
 
 518 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. The young regent incurred, of course, a large amount of 
 v ' hostile criticism, but he probably felt more than compensated 
 by the cordial praise and increased regard of his old 
 instructor 1 . 
 
 sir Robert In the same year, the foundation of the Rede lecture- 
 
 tfMMb * ships gave additional sanction to the new learning. Sir 
 
 lectureship*. r 
 
 A.D. 1618. Robert Rede, who, at the time of his death, was lord chief 
 justice of the Common Pleas, had formerly been a fellow of 
 King's Hall ; and in his will, he bequeathed to the university 
 certain revenues, payable by the abbey at Waltham, of the 
 annual value of 12. This sum he directed to be divided 
 among three lecturers, appointed by the university, in 
 philosophy, logic, and rhetoric*. 
 
 Bwweoftbe In the mean time, Fisher's zeal in behalf of the study 
 
 importance of 
 
 rl'reeun* f * Greek appears not only to have remained unabated, but to 
 have been considerably enhanced by his sense of the growing 
 importance of a knowledge of the language, as he watched 
 the controversy that was agitating both the universities 
 in connexion with the Novum Instrumentum. That great 
 event in literature had indeed aroused not a few to a 
 perception of the value of the study ; and Colet, while 
 bewailing his own ignorance, declared that not to know 
 
 Knumu* Greek was to be nobody. In the year 1516, Erasmus 
 
 again rkiti * J 
 
 England. returned, for a short time, to England. He was everywhere 
 received with marked expressions of respect and considera- 
 tion. Both king and cardinal appear to have held out to 
 him tempting inducements to remain. Warham, whose deeds, 
 as usual, went beyond his words, made him a munificent 
 present. The grateful scholar, with his usual impulsiveness, 
 
 1 ' Aristotelem pnblice per bien- being appointed professor there, he 
 
 ninm publicis in scholis, non ex found the nominalists and realists 
 
 ftpinosis realinm et nominalium (quo- filling the university with their dis- 
 
 rnm turn altercationes academiam putes. He proposed to them that 
 
 pertnrbabant) subtilitatibus, Bed ex they should apply themselves to the 
 
 ipsis fontibus proponebat. Quo no- joint pursuit of truth in those books 
 
 mine mnltis factus inviajor, at Eras- ' which they quoted but had not 
 
 mo, eruditiasimo illi ingeniorum cen- read,' gave each of them a Greek 
 
 Hori, carissimuB est effectus.' MSS. and a Latin grammar, and established 
 
 Ttniton (quoted by Knight, p. 147). peace. Nisard, EtudessurlaRenais- 
 
 Compare the similar course pursued sance, p. 448. 
 
 by. Melanchthon at almost exactly Cooper, Annals, i 301. 
 the same time at Wittenberg. On
 
 HIS DESIRE TO LEARN GREEK. 519 
 
 declared in a letter to a friend, that Britain was his sheet- CHAP. v. 
 anchor, his only refuge from beggary 1 . He does not appear >I!^IL 
 to have visited Cambridge ; but writing from London at 
 the close of the year to Berus, he again bears testimony to inteu- 
 the remarkable and decisive change that had come over the Change at 
 
 Cambridge. 
 
 spirit of the university, and encourages his correspondent 
 by the assurance that he will, ere long, witness a like change 
 at Paris 8 . 
 
 It was during his stay at Rochester on this occasion, Hsheras- 
 that his patron gave convincing proof of his sense of the j^^ 6 of 
 value of Greek, by announcing his wish, though then fifty- 
 two years of age, to receive instruction in the language; 
 and there is still extant an amusing correspondence between 
 Erasmus, More, and Latimer, on the subject. It appears 
 that the former two were endeavouring to prevail on Latimer 
 to become Fisher's Greek master. The triumvirate however Embarrass- 
 all betray an uncomfortable foreboding that the undertaking, friends. 
 as likely to end in failure, would probably prove less 
 agreeable than might be desired. They seem to have 
 thought that the good bishop himself only half apprehended 
 the difficulties of the enterprise, especially to one of his 
 advanced years ; 
 
 'Expertus disces quam gravis iste labor,' 
 
 was the sentiment that doubtless often rose to their lips, 
 but regard and reverence checked its utterance. Moreover, 
 was there not the encouraging precedent of Cato, to be 
 pleaded in justification 3 ? The pressure put upon Latimer 
 was not slight, but he backed out of the engagement by Latimer de- 
 declaring that he had not opened either a Greek or Latin LS^ ISs er " 
 
 111-11 office of to- 
 
 classic for the last eight years, and he advised that an stmctor. 
 
 instructor should be sought in Italy*. It appears indeed 
 
 1 Jortin, i 110. vix ullam interim paginam, vel Grae- 
 
 3 ' Videbis eas ineptias magna ex cam vel Latinam attigerim, quod vel 
 parte explodi. Cantabrigia mutata: me tacente hse litters tibi facile de- 
 haec schola detestatur frigidas illas clarabunt, quid debui, aut etiam quid 
 argutias, quae magis ad rixam faciunt potui vel Moro roganti, vel tibi pos- 
 quam ad pietatem. ' tulanti promittere, quando etiam 
 
 8 Erasmi Opera, in 1573, 1574. vehementer pudet, x/? ya-P ol/Mi rd- 
 
 4 ' Sed cum octo aut novem annos \rj0ts cliretv, vel ad te scribere, homi- 
 in aliis studiis ita sim versatus, ut nem, ut nihil aliud dicam, dissertis-
 
 520 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. more than doubtful whether Fisher ever acquired the know- 
 
 PAT II. . 
 
 Y-' ledge he so much coveted . 
 
 Shortly after this, Erasmus left England for Lou vain. 
 In the following year Ammonius was carried off by the 
 sweating sickness ; and in the year after that, Colet also 
 was taken from the world. In them Erasmus lost his two 
 dearest friends, and he never again visited the English 
 shores. 
 
 Cambridge I n ^ ne mean time, the university was, like its chancellor, 
 
 or 9 * tocher lacking a teacher of Greek; and it was especially desirable 
 
 that when the whole question of this study was, as it were, 
 
 on its trial, the chief representative of such learning at 
 
 Cambridge should, like Erasmus, be one whose eminence 
 
 could not be gainsaid. Bryan and Bullock, though young 
 
 men of parts, do not appear to have acquired a decisive 
 
 reputation as Grecians ; and the friends of progress now 
 
 began to look somewhat anxiously round for a successor to 
 
 the great scholar who had deserted them some three years 
 
 before. The battle was still undecided. No chair of Greek 
 
 had, as yet, been established in the university ; while of the 
 
 Vi "u1Unr unabated hostility and unscrupulousness of the opposite 
 
 oxfo'rd? 7 ** P art y> Oxford, just at this time, had given to the world a 
 
 notable illustration. 
 
 As we have before had occasion to observe, the tendencies 
 of the sister university were more exclusively theological 
 than those of Cambridge, and the result was naturally a 
 correspondingly more energetic resistance to a study, which, 
 as it was now clearly understood, was likely, if it gained a 
 permanent footing, completely to revolutionise the traditional 
 
 simum?. Quapropter si vis utpro- tern, veluti in cunis relinquas.' E- 
 
 e<lat episcopus, et ad aliquam in his rasmi Opera, in 294-5. Erasmus 
 
 s frugem perveniat, fac peritum and More, it may be added by way of 
 
 uem harum rerum ex Italia ac- explanation, had wanted Latimer to 
 
 !- qU j et manere tantif> P er cum undertake the o%e of tutor for a 
 
 eo velit, donee se tarn firmum ac month, just as an experiment. 
 
 i Benserit, ut non repere so- The sole evidence in favour of 
 
 d et erigere sese ac stare the affirmative adduced by Lewis 
 
 n ingredi poasit. Nam hoc (i 61), the presence of a Greek quo- 
 
 i us, mea sentcntia, futurm tation on the title-page of the bishop's 
 
 iti i consules, quam si treatise against Luther, can hardly 
 
 ientm adhuc et pene vagien- be considered satisfactory.
 
 GREEK AT OXFORD. 521 
 
 theology of the schools. It was exactly at this time, more- <*HAP. v. 
 over, that a bold declaration of policy, on the part of one ^ - 
 of the chief supporters of Greek at Oxford, had roused the 
 apprehensions of their antagonists to an unwonted pitch. 
 In the year 1516, bishop Fox had founded the college of Foundation 
 Corpus Christi. Though at the time still master of Pern- CHMTi l coi 
 broke, his Oxford sympathies predominated, or he perhaps ford - 1516 - 
 thought, that with so powerful a patron as Fisher, Cambridge 
 had little need of his aid. In the following year, he drew 
 up the statutes for the new foundation, which, while con- 
 ceived in the same spirit as those already given by Fisher 
 at Cambridge, by whom indeed they were subsequently 
 adopted in many of their details, in his revision of the 
 statutes of St. John's College, in the year 1524, were also 
 found to embody a far more bold and emphatic declaration 
 in favour of the new learning. The editor and translator of 
 bishop Fox's statutes has indeed not hesitated to maintain, B P . FOX' 
 
 *. ' Statutes. 
 
 that Fox was the true leader of reform at Oxford at this 
 period, and that Wolsey was little more than ' an ambitious 
 and inconstant improver upon his hints 1 .' It is certain that 
 few Oxonians, at that day, could have heard with indifference 
 that at Fox's new college, besides a lecturer on the Latin 
 classics 8 and another on Greek 8 , there was also to be a 
 
 1 The Foundation Statutes of i- all of the household who wish to 
 shop Fox for Corpus Christi College hear him, either the elegancies of 
 in the University of Oxford, A.D. Laurentius Vallensis, or the Attic 
 1517. Translated into English, with Lucubrations of Aulus Gellius, or the 
 a Life of the Founder. By JR. M. Miscellanies of Politian.' Ibid. c. 22. 
 Ward, Esq., M.A., late fellow of * ' But the second herbalist of our 
 Trinity College, etc. 1843, p. xli. apiary is to be, and to be called, the 
 
 2 The first lecturer, who is to be Reader of the Grecists and of the 
 ' the sower and planter of the Latin Greek language : whom we have 
 tongue,' the statute directs ' to man- placed in our bee-garden expressly 
 fully root out barbarity from our because the holy canons have esta- 
 garden, and cast it forth, should it Wished and commanded, most suit- 
 at any time germinate therein.' He ably for good letters and Christian 
 was required to read ' Cicero's Epi- literature especially, that such an 
 sties, Orations, or Offices, Sallust, one should never be wanting in the 
 Valerius Maximus, or Suetonius university of Oxford ' [the reference 
 Tranquillus; next, Pliny, Cicero de is evidently, to the original decree in 
 Arte, De Oratore, the Institutio Ora- the Clementines of 1311, see supra, 
 toria of Quintilian ; next, Virgil, p. 482] ' in like manner, as in some 
 Ovid, Lucan, Juvenal, Terence, or few other most famous places of 
 
 Plautus.' He was also to read 'pri- learning He is to read on Mon- 
 
 vately in some place of our college, days, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 
 
 to be appointed by the president, to some part of the grammar of Theo-
 
 522 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. third lecturer, whose special task it was to be, not only to 
 
 v '> familiarise the minds of the students with those very Greek 
 
 no* on'i?"a U fathers whom so many were violently denouncing, but also 
 
 w "latin 011 to discourage the study of those mediaeval theologians who 
 
 classics, and . . -111 in 
 
 ?h c ot a^ck n en occu P ie d so considerable a space in all the college 
 Urtwwi* libraries, and whose authority was regarded as only inferior 
 u^jSsIiy to that of St. Augustine himself. With that fondness for 
 wad'the " metaphor which characterises the language of many of our 
 there ana to early college statutes, Fox spoke of his college as a garden, 
 
 discard the JO r 
 
 commcnto- ^ ^ e students as bees, and of his lecturers as gardeners. 
 'Lastly,' he accordingly goes on to say, 'there shall be a 
 third gardener, whom it behoves the other gardeners to 
 obey, wait on, and serve, who shall be called and be the 
 Reader in Sacred Divinity, a study which we have ever 
 holden of such importance, as to have constructed tlu's our 
 apiary for its sake, either wholly or most chiefly ; and we 
 pray, and in virtue of our authority command, all the bees 
 to strive and endeavour with all zeal and earnestness, to 
 engage in it according to the statutes. This our last and 
 divine gardener is, on every common or half-holiday through- 
 out the year, beginning at two o'clock in the afternoon, 
 publicly to teach and profoundly to interpret, in the hall of 
 our college during an entire hour, some portion of Holy Writ, 
 to the end that wonder-working jewels which lie remote from 
 view may come forth to light... But in alternate years, that 
 is, every other year, he is to read some part of the Old 
 Testament and some part of the New, which the president 
 and major part of the seniors may appoint ; and Jie must 
 always in his interpretation, as far as he can, imitate the 
 
 dorus, or some other approved Greek the divine Plato or some Greek theo- 
 
 grammarian, together with some part logian. Also, thrice every week, and 
 
 of the speeches of Isocrates, Lucian, four times only, at his own option, 
 
 or Philostratus; but on Tuesdays, during the excepted periods of the 
 
 hursdays, and Saturdays, he is to vacation, he shall read privately in 
 
 1 Aristophanes, Theocritus, Eu- some place of our college, to be as- 
 
 npides, Sophocles, Pindar, or He- signed for the purpose by the presi- 
 
 Biod, or some other of the most an- dent, some portion of Greek gram- 
 
 cient Greek poets, together with mar or rhetoric, and also of some 
 
 some portion of Demosthenes, Thu- Greek author rich in various matter, 
 
 cydidefl, AriHtotle, Theophrastus, or to all of the household of our col- 
 
 Plutaruh; but on holidays, Homer, lege who wish to hear him.' Sta- 
 
 the Epigrams, or some passage from tutes, by Ward.
 
 GHEEK AT OXFORD. 523 
 
 holy and ancient doctors, both Latin and Greek, and especially CHAP. v. 
 Jerome, Austin, Ambrose, Origen, Hilary, Chrysostom, Da- Jl^IL 
 mascenus, and that sort, not Liranus, not Hugh of Vienne, 
 and the rest, who, as in time so in learning, are far below 
 them ; except where the commentaries of the former doctors 
 fail 1 : 
 
 The theologians of Oxford had scarcely recovered from ^{^JJ^.g 
 the shock which the institution of bishop Fox's 'gardeners,' S^ TM(a " 
 and the formal declaration of a crusade against Nicholas de 
 Lyra and his school, must necessarily have occasioned, when 
 they were startled by another and equally bold manifesta- 
 tion, this time from without. In the beginning of the 
 year 1519, appeared the second edition of Erasmus's Novum 
 Instrumentum. So far as the title was concerned, they were 
 probably not displeased to find that it had been altered back 
 to the more orthodox designation of Novum Testamentum; 
 but, on further inspection, it was discovered that this was 
 but a delusive sign of the author's real intentions, and that 
 the volume was in reality the vehicle of a more serious inno- 
 vation than any that had yet been ventured on. The Latin 
 text of the Novum Instrumentum was that of the Vulgate ; 
 that of the Novum Testamentum was a substantially new 
 translation by Erasmus himself, for which the venerable 
 Vulgate had been discarded ! While, to fill up the measure He discards 
 
 the Vulrate 
 
 of his offence, he had prefixed to the volume a discourse translation, 
 entitled Ratio Verce Theologies, wherein, in opposition to the 
 whole spirit of mediaeval theology, he insisted yet more em- 
 phatically than ever on the necessity of applying to the 
 study of the Scriptures that historical method which had 
 so long been neglected in the schools 2 . 
 
 The new learning, it was now evident, was about, to use state or 
 
 feeling at 
 
 Erasmus's own expression, ' to storm an entrance/ if admis- oxford, 
 sion could be obtained on no other terms ; and the theolo- 
 gians of Oxford were called upon to decide whether they 
 would impose so stern a necessity on its supporters. TJn- 
 
 i Ibid. points of interest, see Mr Seebohm's 
 
 3 For the characteristic merits of admirable criticism in the fourteenth 
 this edition* as well as for other chapter of his Oxford Reformers.
 
 524 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. fortunately, their decision was, in the first instance, not in 
 
 ^-^-J' favour of the wiser course. The Mendicants were numerous 
 
 in the university ; their influence was still considerable ; 
 
 their hatred of Greek intense. And it was not accordingly 
 
 until the students had signalised themselves by an act of 
 
 egregious folly, such as is scarcely to be paralleled in the 
 
 history of either university, that Oxford conceded to the 
 
 study of Greek an unmolested admission to the student's 
 
 chamber and a tranquil tenure of the professorial chair. 
 
 The earlier The men whose character and reputation had upheld the 
 
 teachers of i /-^ 
 
 oree^nOj study m former years, were no longer resident. Grrocyn, 
 d * nt now a palsied old man, was living on his preferment as 
 warden of the collegiate church at Maidstone. Linacre, as 
 court physician, resided chiefly in London. Pace was im- 
 mersed in political life. Latimer had subsided into the 
 exemplary and unambitious parish priest. More, the young- 
 est of those who, twenty years before, had composed the 
 academic circle that welcomed and charmed Erasmus, had long 
 ago removed to London ; his interest however in the progress 
 of his university was unabated ; and it is to his pen that 
 we are indebted for the details of the tactics whereby the 
 defenders of the 'good old learning' at Oxford now endea- 
 voured to make head against heresy and Greek. 
 
 thToxtort -^ wou ld appear that the younger students of the univer- 
 
 ldento ' sity, who shared the conservative prejudices of their seniors, 
 were becoming alarmed at the steady progress of their 
 adversaries, and resolved on the employment of simpler 
 weapons and more summary arguments. Invective had 
 been found unavailing, and recourse was now had to arms 
 against which the profoundest learning and the acutest logic 
 were equally powerless. These youthful partisans formed 
 themselves into one noble army, rejoicing in the name of 
 'Trojans 1 .' One of their leaders, to whom years had not 
 brought discretion, dubbed himself Priam ; others assumed 
 the names of Hector and Paris ; while all gave ample evi- 
 
 ' in Trojanos istos aptissime sarcastic observation in his letter, 
 quadrare videtur vetus illud adagium, Jortin, n 663. 
 tero $apiunt Phryget,' was More'g
 
 GREEK AT OXFORD. 525 
 
 dence of their heroic descent, by a series of unprovoked CHAP. v. 
 insults to every inoffensive student who had exhibited a -L A "-I^- 
 weakness for Greek. While the seniors vilified the study 
 from the pulpit, the juniors mobbed its adherents in the 
 streets. The unfortunate Grecians were in sore straits ; 
 Fox's 'bees' dared scarcely venture from their hive. They 
 were pointed at with the finger of scorn, pursued with shouts 
 of laughter, or attacked with vollies of abuse. To crown all, 
 one preacher, a fool even among the foolish, delivered 
 from the pulpit a set harangue, in which he denounced, not 
 only Greek, but all liberal learning, and declared that logic 
 and sophistical theology were the only commendable studies 1 . 
 * I cannot but wonder, when I think of it/ says poor An- 
 thony Wood, at his wits' end to devise some excuse for 
 what could neither be denied nor palliated 8 . 
 
 More was at Huntingdon, in attendance on the king, 
 when he heard of that sermon. He was watching with no 
 little interest the progress of events at the university, and 
 had already been informed of the conduct of the 'Trojans'; 
 but this additional proof of their bigotry and stupidity was 
 more than even his gentle nature could endure, and roused 
 him to earnest though dignified remonstrance. He lost no 
 time in addressing to the authorities at Oxford a formal 
 letter, written March 29, 1519, wherein, after a concise recital 
 of the above facts as they had reached him, he proceeded to 
 implore them, on grounds of the most obvious prudence, to More remon- 
 
 i -i IT i i t strates with 
 
 put a stop to so senseless a crusade. You already see, he the university 
 
 r . authorities 
 
 writes, at the conclusion of a cogent statement with 
 respect to the claims and merits of Greek, ' that there are 
 many (and their example will be followed by others), who 
 have begun to contribute considerable funds in order to pro- 
 
 1 Jortin, ii 663-4, Wood-Gutch, realitd la lutte du catholicisme centre 
 
 ii 16-17. la civilisation moderne. La pre- 
 
 * M. Laurent, who in his sugges- miere faculty de the'ologie de la 
 
 tive work takes occasion to tell this chre'tiente', la Sorboniie osait dire 
 
 story, observes: 'Cesguerres nous devant le parlemeat, que e'en e"tait 
 
 paraissent aujourd'hui dignes de celle fait de la religion si on permettait 
 
 des grenouilles chante"e par Ho- Vetude du grec et de Vhebreu.' His- 
 
 mere ; au quinzieme eiecle, on ne toire du Droit des Gens, Tome Tin, 
 
 1'entendait paa ainei : c't'tait en La Reforme, p. 392.
 
 526 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. mote the pursuit of studies of every kind in your university, 
 
 / ' and particularly that of Greek. But it will be surprising 
 
 ne contrasts indeed, if their friendly sentiments are not chilled, when 
 
 the dispo- J 
 
 b?heo ^ey learn that their excellent designs have become the 
 
 object of unbounded ridicule. Especially, when at Cam- 
 bridge, which you were always wont to outshine, even those 
 who do not learn Greek are so far actuated by a common 
 zeal for their university, that, to their credit be it told, they 
 contribute to the salary of the Greek professor 1 .' How far 
 these temperate and unanswerable remonstrances might 
 have availed unaided, we can only conjecture; but fortu- 
 nately both More and Pace, from their presence at court, 
 were able to represent the matter, in its true light, to king 
 Henry himself. And one morning all Oxford was startled 
 A royai letter by the arrival of a royal letter, commanding, under the 
 
 U> the univer- * 
 
 severest penalties, that all students desiring to apply them- 
 selves to Greek studies, should be permitted to do so with- 
 out molestation. This was in the year 1519 ; and in the 
 W e OI f;io!rin fll ovv i n g y ear > Wolsey, into whose hands the university had 
 a7hair > or nd8 a l rea ^y surrendered itself, tied and bound, for a complete 
 revisal of its statutes according to his supreme will and 
 pleasure, founded a professorship of Greek. Then, even to 
 the dullest intellect, the whole question of this new lore 
 assumed another aspect. The Trojans suffered sorely from 
 numerous defections, and ultimately disbanded. Priam, 
 Hector, and Paris retired into private life. It began to be 
 understood that Greek was the road to favour at court and 
 to preferment, and consequently probably, after all, a lauda- 
 ble and respectable branch of learning. 'And thus,' says 
 Erasmus, who narrates the sequel with no little exultation, 
 rabulis impositum est silentium*. 
 
 'Practerea multoa jam coepisge sertim quum Cantabrigicc, cut vo 
 
 videtis, quorum cxcmpla sequentur prcclucere semper consuevistis, illi 
 
 alii, multum boni vestro conferre quoque qui non discunt Grace, tarn 
 
 Kymnasio, quo et omnigenam litera- communi sua scholce studio ducti, in 
 
 turam promoveant et modo nomina- atipendium ejus qui aliis Graxa prce- 
 
 tim Onccara. Quorum mine fervi- legit viritim perquam honeste contri- 
 
 das in vosaffectuB mirum ni frigescat, buunt.' Jortin, n 666. 
 
 si Urn pmm propositum summo In- Opera, in 408 
 dibrio isthic babcri Bcntiant. Prce-
 
 RICHARD CROKE. 527 
 
 The honorable and unimpeachable testimony above CHAP. v. 
 given in favour of Cambridge at this same period, sufficiently -i^-H' 
 exonerates us from the necessity of exposing the tissue of 
 misrepresentation and misstatement in which Anthony Wood 
 endeavours to veil the real facts, and even to make his own 
 university appear the less hostile to Greek of the two 1 . It 
 will be more to our purpose, if we direct our attention to the 
 appearance at Cambridge of this new professor of Greek, 
 who, wearing the mantle of Erasmus, was the fortunate 
 recipient of so much larger a measure of encouragement and 
 support. 
 
 Among the young students whom Eton had sent up to Richard 
 King's College, early in the century, was one Richard Croke, ^< ? > 
 a youth of good family and promising talents. He proceeded 
 to his bachelor's degree in the year 1509-10; and then, 
 having conceived a strong desire to gain a knowledge of 
 Greek, repaired to Oxford, where he became the pupil of 
 Grocyn. It would seem that before he left Cambridge, he Befriended 
 had already made the acquaintance of Erasmus ; for we find y 
 the latter subsequently giving proof of a strong interest in 
 his welfare, and on one occasion even endeavouring to 
 obtain for the young scholar pecuniary assistance from Colet 3 . 
 From Oxford Croke went on to Paris ; and having com- His career 
 pleted there his course of study as an ' artist,' and acquired a 
 considerable reputation, he next proceeded to Germany in 
 the capacity of a teacher. He taught at Cologne, Louvain, 
 Leipsic 8 , and Dresden, with remarkable success. Camera- 
 rius, who was one of his class at Leipsic, was wont to tell in 
 after life, how he had suddenly found himself famous simply 
 from having been the pupil of so renowned a teacher 4 . 
 
 1 Wood-Gutch, ii 16-17. perdisci illam posse, et quid momenti 
 
 3 Opera, in 131. ad omnem doctrinse eruditionem 
 
 3 ' Crocus regnat in academia Lip- atque cultum hujus cognitlo allatura 
 siensi, publicitus Grsecas docens litte- esse videretur, nostri homines sese 
 ras.' Letter from Erasmus to Linacre intelligere arbitrarentur. Nosquidem 
 (A.D. 1515), Ibid, in 136. certe ita statuebamns, hanc esse viam 
 
 4 ' In qua parte ' [Erfurt] ' ego, virtutis atque sapientiae, et iter di- 
 quanquam admodum adolescens, ta- rectum cum pietatis et religionis, 
 men f erebar in oculis, quia audiveram turn humanitatis et ' laudis in hac 
 Ricardum Crocum Britannum, qui vita et in terris.' Joach. Camerarii, 
 primus putabatur ita docuisse Grae- Narratio de Helio Eobano Hesso (ed. 
 cam linguam in Germania ut plane Kreyssig, Misense, 1843), p. 5.
 
 528 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. Eraser, writing to Erasmus, informs him, that the young 
 -^ ^ Englishman's professorial career, during two years, at Dres- 
 den, had won for him the highest regard. It was from 
 Dresden that, after a seven years' absence, Richard Croke 
 
 He returns to returned to his own university; he there proceeded to his 
 
 Cambridge, . . , 
 
 and proceeds master of arts degree, and at about the same time was 
 
 M A. In 1617. 
 
 appointed instructor in Greek to king Henry. In the year 
 
 Lectures on 1518 he commenced a course of lectures on the language at 
 
 gNwnJtyta Cambridge 1 . These lectures however, like those of Erasmus 
 
 and John Bryan, were given without the direct sanction of 
 
 1519. u p- the authorities; and it was not until the year 1519, that 
 
 tkmkmder. Crolce received his formal appointment as Greek reader to 
 
 the university. It was then that, about the month of July 
 
 in the same year, he inaugurated his entrance upon the 
 
 duties of his office, by an oration equally noteworthy as an 
 
 illustration of the ability and individual characteristics of 
 
 the orator, and of the learning and (we may perhaps add) of 
 
 the ignorance of his age. 
 
 HU antece- Apart from the numerous indications that the opponents 
 
 dcnU better r 
 
 V of Greek were fighting a losing battle, it is evident that 
 of there was much in the new professor's antecedents that was 
 calculated to thaw the icy hostility of the dullest conserva- 
 tive. He had not, like Erasmus, to confront the antipa- 
 thies of insular prejudice. It was no satirical, poverty- 
 stricken, little Dutchman, ignorant and disdainful of their 
 vernacular, that now pleaded the cause of the Grecian muse 
 with the Cambridge men; but one of their own number, 
 whom many must have well remembered in his undergra- 
 duate days, and have occasionally heard of in his subsequent 
 career. A youth of ancient descent, educated at their most 
 famous public school and at one of their most distinguished 
 colleges,, he had gone forth from their midst into the world ; 
 and wherever he had gone he had added to the fame of his 
 university. While Erasmus had been teaching Cambridge, 
 Croke had been teaching Germany. And they might 
 even find satisfaction in noting that while the former had 
 failed in England, the continental career of the latter had 
 
 1 Cooper, Athena, i 178.
 
 CHOKE'S INAUGURAL ORATIOX. 521) 
 
 been one of brilliant success. From that career this young CHAP. v. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 fellow of King's had now returned to take up his abode * v ' 
 among them. Instead of the timid, anxious valetudinarian, 
 verging upon fifty, they now saw before them a man of 
 scarcely thirty, full of hope and vigour, and flushed with 
 well-earned success. In after life, an act of base ingratitude 
 towards their great patron and protector lost for him much 
 of the esteem of all honorable men ; but as yet nothing had 
 arisen to cast a shadow on the fair fame of Richard Croke. 
 He appeared as that patron's delegate, to urge them on to 
 new paths of intellectual effort. And, as thus accredited, j^S 1 ^. 
 and laurel-crowned from the chief seats of continental learn- appointment 
 ing, the young orator sought their attention, and proceeded readeTde- 
 with an effective eloquence and a choice Latinity, thatisw. 
 bespoke however the influence of Quintilian rather than of 
 Cicero 1 , to urge upon them the claims of that learning of 
 which he was their chosen representative, it is reasonable to 
 suppose that he saw around him a far more sympathising 
 and numerous audience than it had been Erasmus's fortune 
 to find some eight years before. 
 
 The following abstract of his oration will be found by 
 those to whom the original may not be accessible 8 , to pre- 
 sent not a few points well worthy of note as illustrative of 
 the learning and rhetoric of the period : 
 
 It is with a somewhat elaborate occupatio benevolentice that 
 the orator commences : he would not, he declares, have ventured 
 to address so formidable an audience, had he not well known that 
 it was composed of those who looked rather at the matter of a 
 speech than its diction. There were those in the university on 
 whom his task might have much more fitly devolved ; but he 
 reminds them, that they have often listened riot only with de- 
 ference but with pleasure, when the delegates of princes have 
 spoken before them in a barbarous and even ludicrous style, Se "attention 
 simply out of feelings of deference for those whom the speakers n^ is ^ u t d h ' e 
 represented. On the same grounds he too claims a like con- delegate of 
 
 ... xv v n i their chan- 
 
 sideration ; for he represents their chancellor, one unsurpassed ceiior. 
 
 1 Croke had perhaps been led to s For the perusal of this very rare 
 
 form this preference through Lin- little volume I am indebted (as for 
 
 acre's influence; Erasmus, in his many similar advantages) to the 
 
 Ciceronianus, tells us that the latter choice and extensive library of Prof. 
 
 ' prius habuisset esse Quinctiliano J. E. B. Mayor, 
 similis quam Ciceroni. ' 
 
 34
 
 ,030 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 . v. iu watchful care for their interests, and to whom they owe those 
 ii. t wo distinguished ornaments of the university, Christ's College 
 and St John's. It would be nothing else than signal ingratitude, 
 were they to withhold a ready hearing from the representative of 
 one to whom they already owed so much ! 
 
 Fisher has What then is the message of my lord of Rochester 1 Why, 
 
 he exhorts them to apply themselves with all diligence to the 
 stuf ^y f Greek literature, that literature in praise of which so 
 niaiiy able men have recently sent forth dissertations. The ex- 
 
 gtudieis. hortation of one who had never urged them to atight but what 
 was most profitable, might alone suffice ; but it has been specially 
 enjoined upon the speaker to explain in detail the advantages of 
 Greek literature. 
 
 The study of The broad ground on which, first of all, he rests the claims of 
 
 the language i i ,1 r , i i , 
 
 ciufen.ic.Ki, as such learning, is the preeminence of the race whom it represents, 
 eminently su- The Greeks surpassed all who came after them, in wisdom and in 
 perior race, invention, in theoretical sagacity and in practical ability. What 
 city or what republic could compare with Lacedeemon, in the ad- 
 ministration of justice, in religion, in morality? what city, with 
 Athens, in genius and learning ? what, with either, in dignity and 
 greatness of soul ? Cicero, it was true, had ventured to assert 
 that these last-named features first appeared at Rome ; and had 
 cited as examples, the Camilli, the Decii, the Scipios, the Catos. 
 But let them compare these heroes with Codrus, Themistocles, 
 Leonidas, Pericles, Aristides, Xenocrates, and will it not rather 
 seem that moral greatness was a legacy from Greece to Rome ? 
 Let those who praised the piety, sanctity, and other Spartan 
 comparison virtues of Numa, consider how much more conspicuously the same 
 rorguiMid qualities shone forth in Lyourgus : the former raised to kingly 
 power on account of his character for justice, the latter preferring 
 justice even to a throne, the one ennobled by a crown which he 
 would have fain declined, the other by his voluntary resignation 
 of the sceptre which he already swayed, the former so distin- 
 guished by his virtues that he was deemed worthy of the supreme 
 power, the latter so distinguished by his contempt for power, that 
 he seemed above the sceptre itself! Nunia again had but restrained 
 the heroic ardour of his people, Lycurgus had augmented it; for 
 the latter expelled from Lacedaemon not bridles, swords, and spears, 
 but banquctings, costly attire, and the 'cursed lust of gold.' And 
 herein alone it might be seen how far Greece excelled not only 
 other nations but Rome herself, in that she had driven from her 
 midst not simply vice but its parent cause. Admitting, again, 
 the truth of Livy's assertion, that in no republic had luxury and 
 profligacy made their way more slowly than at Rome, it must 
 also be added that nowhere did they take root more deeply. If 
 indeed of Grecian origin, they so grew in Italy, as to owe far moro 
 to their nurse than to their parent. Lycurgus had expelled them 
 from Spnrta when that state was already weakened by their pro-
 
 CHOKE'S INAUGURAL ORATION. 531 
 
 valence, a feat that at' Rome surpassed the power of any ruler CHAP. v. 
 even in the stage of their early growth. ,!ll"_lL. 
 
 He then proceeds to apply the conclusion which these some- The language 
 what labored antitheses were designed to establish. These illus- J^JU^o 
 trious Greeks had dignified not merely their country and their be diffused, 
 
 i 1 1 , T t i i . 1 i A ' n proportion 
 
 race but also their native tongue. It is remarkable that it is on u> their in- 
 this ground alone, the superior moral excellence of 'the Roman {Jjv'entife' u? 
 people, that he asserts the claims of Latin over French or Celtic, perionty. 
 It is by the superiority of the race, he says, that their language 
 becomes diffused. Persia and India first received the Greek tongue 
 when they experienced the weight of Alexander's arms ; and the 
 Latin language was learned by the subjugated nations, only when 
 they had submitted to the sway and received the institutions of 
 Rome. Marius had despised the study of Greek, becaxise he looked 
 upon it as disgraceful and ridiculous to bestow toil upon a litera- 
 ture the masters of which were slaves. A lofty impulse urges 
 the mind of man to that which is associated with the supreme. 
 Greece had conferred on mankind by far the most precious boons, 
 the weaver's art, the architect's ; to plough, to sow ; all, in fine, 
 that has raised man from the savage to a civilized state, he owes 
 to Greece. In summa quicquid habemus in vita commodi, id totum care bestow- 
 Grcecorum benefic-io habemus. A people thus- devoted to the arts den'/Greeks 
 and refinements of life were not likely to be neglectful of the study j^",^ 
 of language. The testimony of antiquity is unanimous with re- guage. 
 spect to the care with which they elaborated and polished their 
 native tongue. What Cambridge man was there who knew not 
 the Horatian verse, 
 
 Graiis ingenium, Graiis declit ore rotundo 
 Musa loqui? 
 
 Had not Cicero, again, affirmed that if Jupiter were to deign to Preference 
 speak in mortal tongue, he would use the Greek which Plato ^l^of ail 
 wrote ? Let them note too how writers of all nations had pre- Jf r ^ ( r r 
 ferred Greek to their native language : Phavorinus the Gaul, their own 
 Porphyry the Phoenician, Jamblichus the Syrian, Philoponus the t01 
 Egyptian, Ammonius the Phrygian, Simplicius the Thracian, 
 Philo the Jew, and Musonius born at Volsinii near to Rome, 
 Trismegistus, Musseus, and Orpheus; the historians, Josephus 
 the Jew, ^Elian the Roman, Arrian, and Albinus, Albinus whom 
 Cato could never pardon for his assertion that it was evident that 
 the Latin tongue when brought into rivalry with the Greek, must 
 disappear and die out. He then quotes, from the Noctes Attica inferiority of 
 of Gellius, a passage wherein the writer points out how inferior, 
 on careful comparison, the Latin ^comedies are found to be to their 
 Greek originals, Csecilius to Menander. How harshly again Latin 
 grates on the ear when compared to Greek ! How vastly superior 
 in power of expression is the Attic dialect ! What Latin writer 
 could find a single word that served as an equivalent to 7roAv<<At'a, 
 ), T^ooxru/xopos ? How imperfectly did any amount 
 
 342
 
 532 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 
 Favours 
 
 K^uchijn 
 Erasmu *- 
 
 experienced, 
 
 Extreme an- 
 
 tiqulty of the 
 
 Greek lan- 
 
 </uadrmum. 
 
 of periphrases enable the Romans to express what the Greeks 
 often conveyed in a single word ! How absurdly moreover did 
 they blunder, who, ignorant of the large infusion of Greek in the 
 ancient Latin, actually supposed that the vocabulary of a language 
 was a matter at the arbitrary discretion of individuals, and de- 
 spised the aids afforded by the Greek 1 . 
 
 To tunl to another aspect of the case. How often had even 
 those who wore the Roman purple clad themselves in the elo- 
 quence of this mighty tongue ! Julius Caesar, Augustus Ger- 
 manicus, Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Severus, Theodosius. 
 To come nearer to their own time, how had Leo, the supreme 
 pontiff, and the emperor Maximilian, shewn their regard for those 
 devoted to the new learning, by interposing to rescue the inno- 
 cence of Reuchlin and Erasmus ' from those double-dyed younger 
 brethren of the giants ! 2 ' He would name too George, duke of 
 Saxony, but that he felt it was beyond his power to render due 
 praise to one who had recommended him to Henry vm and 
 defrayed the expenses of his labours with princely munificence. 
 Then again there was the bishop of Mayence 3 , one of the wealthiest 
 ecclesiastics in Germany, whether as regarded his mental endow- 
 ments or worldly fortune, who had given him no less than sixty 
 nobles for an inscription of Theodorus iv. To say nothing, again, 
 of his grace of Canterbury, ' my noble and chief MaBcenas,' or my 
 lord Cardinal, ' my lord bishop of Rochester is a host in him- 
 self.' 
 
 Look again at the antiquity of the Greek tongue. Allowing 
 
 , , . .1 , u / i j j 4. TT t. 
 
 that, in this respect, the first place must be c -needed to Hebrew, 
 the lingtia Attica is certainly entitled to a second. Other cities 
 boasted of their founders; but Athens had no founder, for her sons 
 were avToxBoves. All the reverence that waits on antiquity is 
 fairly her's. 
 
 He passes on to shew the utility of the study ; and here he is 
 almost wearied by the mere contemplation of the field, ipsa sus- 
 CC /'' CB provincioe cogitatione pene, df/atiger. To commence with the 
 trivium and guadrivium, and first of all with grammar, which 
 many, ' inflated with a vain pretence of knowledge,' cavil at, as 
 
 1 'Neque snstinnit oonscius sibi 
 dJBfiimulari id gratissimus Lucretius 
 qui igitur multis ae dicitGnecis usum, 
 quod Latino ea dici non possent. O 
 qnam panim istnd pntant, qni igno- 
 rant veteri sermoni Latino plurima 
 (irwca fuisBe immixta, quique arbi- 
 traria omnia vocabula BIC esse volunt, 
 nt qnovimnodo a BO ficta authorita- <. 
 tern habitnra fidant, supino quodam 
 GrjBci fontin contemptn, ex quo si 
 non veniant dctorta, nemo, nisi cum 
 nun, novationem admittat!' 
 
 1 ' Cujns innocontia ab dibaphis 
 irtin Gigantnrn frntcrculi? totips af- 
 
 flicta, tandem succubnisset, nisi fessiB 
 doctissimi <>t optimi hominis rebus 
 sanctitas Leonis et Maximiliani pietafl 
 fiuccnrriBsent.' The interference of 
 Leo x between Reuchlin and his 
 antagonistB, a virtual triumph for the 
 reform party, had taken place in 
 the year 1516. See Geiger, Johann 
 Reuchlin, pp. 290321. 
 
 8 Luther's primate, and one of the 
 seven Electors of Germany; but a 
 faithless and unscrupnlous politician. 
 See Brewer, Lettert and Papert, HI
 
 CHOKE'S INAUGURAL ORATION. 533 
 
 trivial and sterile, he offers to point out a few facts from which CHAP. r. 
 they will perceive that it is of higher excellence than all other PAM IL 
 branches of knowledge. What does the name of 'grammarian' 
 
 i i < CT c* i Functions of 
 
 imply* He quotes the passage in biietonms , to shew that the the ancient 
 grammarian with the Greeks was the litteratus of the Romans, yrat 
 that is, the man who, either orally or by his pen, professed to 
 treat on any subject with discrimination, critical knowledge, and 
 competent learning. Properly however those who expounded the 
 poets were designated as grammatici; and what a range of acquire- 
 ments such a function would involve, might be seen from Lucre- 
 tius, Varro, and Empedocles. He reminds them how Aurelius 
 Opilius voluntarily abandoned philosophy and rhetoric for gram- 
 mar, and how Cicero, fresh from the praetorship, was found at the 
 school of Gnipho ; how liberally, at Rome, the grammar schools 
 were encouraged and the professors remunerated. Again, the Greek 
 very Latin alphabet was borrowed from the Greek ; its k was the Lsk(jni ntln 
 representation of the Greek Kainra ; the aspirate (h) so often found 
 in Latin words, denoted a Greek origin ; the reduplication in such 
 words as poposci, totondi, momordi, was nothing else than the 
 ira.pcLKtiiJ.evov of the Greek verb ; many constructions in Cicero are 
 to be explained by a reference to the Greek idiom. If we turn 
 to etymology, the debt of Latin to Greek is found to be yet greater : 
 Priscian, the most learned of the Latins, was chiefly a compiler 
 from Apollonius and Herodian. With respect to rhetoric, it is 
 needless to point out, how the use of metaphor, the frequent 
 sententiousness of the proverb, and the exact force of words, re- 
 ceive their best illustration from a knowledge of Greek. As for A definition 
 mathematics, it was notorious that no mathematician could detect ^stofeifto 
 tfie grave error that had found its way into Euclid's definition 0/snseby 
 
 f si i 11 comparison 
 
 a straight line, until the collation of a Greek codex exposed trie of a Greek 
 blunder 3 . Boethius too compiled his Arithmetic from the Greek. ^ 
 Even music is indebted for its nomenclature to Greece ; while as 
 for medicine, the names of Hippocrates, Galen, and Dioscorides, 
 are sufficient. 
 
 The utility of Greek in connexion with the trivium and utility of 
 quadrivium having been thus vindicated, he passes on to theology, {ue"^^ 9 
 He begs in the first place that they will not consider him to be, 
 like many men of his school (plerique niece farince homines), a 
 foe to theological learning. He loves Mayronius, he admires n e declares 
 Erigena, he esteems Aquinas, and the subtlety of Duns Scotus {oTto'the* 
 he actually embraces; he only desiderates that culture which sd">imea. 
 imparts brilliancy to all the rest. Let them only add to the study 
 of these authors the cultivation of Greek and Latin literature, 
 and learn to speak in such fashion that their diction may recall 
 
 1 See supra, p. 7, n. 2. virum a prodigioso indocti interpretis 
 
 * ' De mathematica istud dixisse erroreEuclidempotuisse explicare, 
 
 sufficiat, priusquam bonorum dili- lineam esse longitudinem sine lati- 
 
 gentia Attics litterae a tenebris essent tudine, cujus extrema duo esseut 
 
 vindicate, neminein ejus professionis puncta."
 
 534 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 The Bible 
 neglected. 
 
 the city and the youth of Rome ! But, some one might sny, 
 the schoolmen spoke Latin. Latin ! aye, but who of the orators 
 or poets ever spoke as they did? No doubt those on whom 
 polite learning had never smiled, saw no harm in a man using the 
 phraseology that pleased him best. But what a gross absurdity 
 was this! They laughed at the man who mingled Scotch or 
 French with his native speech, while wisliihg themselves to 
 be at liberty to import into Latin any barbarism they might 
 think fit. For his own part, he had no wish to see the disputations 
 in the schools abolished, but he did not like to see men growing 
 old in them : for subtleties like these were harmful, not to those 
 who studied them only for a time, but to those who were con- 
 result- tinually engaged in them. When the mind was thus exclusively 
 concentrated on extremely minute distinctions its powers were wasted 
 an d impaired, and the student was diverted from more useful learning, 
 from the Pauline Epistles, from the Evangelists, from the whole 
 Bible: and these Jiad a paramount claim on the theologian, tvhose 
 true function it was, so to guide the minds of men as to draw them 
 away from the things of earth and fix them on those above. The 
 example of many of the fathers, like that of the great men at 
 Rome, is next held up as a further incitement to classical studies ; 
 and a few additional considerations, derived from the importance 
 of Greek to those engaged in historical researches, conclude the 
 argument drawn from the abstract merits of the literature. 
 
 An appeal to the spirit of emulation holds a prominent place 
 i n his peroration. * The Oxford men, whom tip to the present time 
 V e have outstripped in every department of knowledge, are betaking 
 themselves to Greek in good earnest. They watch by night, 
 suffer heat and cold, and leave no stone unturned, to make this 
 knowledge all their own. And if that should come to pass, there 
 will be an end of your renown. They will erect a trophy from 
 the spoils they have taken from you, which they will never suffer 
 to be removed 1 . They number among their leaders the cardinals 
 of Canterbury and Winchester, and in fact all the English bishop*, 
 Rochester and Ely alone excepted. The austere and holy Grocyn 
 is on their side, the vast learning and critical acumen of Linacre, 
 the eloquence of Tunstal, whose legal knowledge is equalled by his 
 
 lie implores 
 be""""' ' 
 
 1 'Oxonienses, quo* ante hac in 
 omni tcirntiarum fjfiiere vicixtig, ad 
 litteras (ira-cas pcrfugere, vigilant, 
 jejunant, sudant et algent; nihil non 
 facinnt nt eas occnpent. Quod si 
 contingat, a<-turn est do fama vestra. 
 Erigent enim de vobis trophomrn 
 nunquam Buccnbituri.' Croko's 
 meaning appears to be that if Ox- 
 ford once succeeds in gaining the 
 reputation of being the school for 
 Greek, students will get into the 
 habit of going there to learn the Ian- 
 
 guage; just as mathematicians, in 
 the present day, generally prefer Cam- 
 bridge. Compare with the words in 
 italics, More's observation, addressed 
 to the Oxonians, already quoted: 
 Cnntabriaia , cm rot prcelncere semper 
 cojisuevistiit. Perhaps we may recon- 
 cile these diametrically opposed state- 
 ments, made in the same year, by in- 
 ferring that neither university had 
 much real reason for priding itseli 
 on superiority to the other.
 
 CHOKE'S INAUGURAL ORATION. 535 
 
 skill iu either tongue, the threefold linguistic learning of Stokes- CHAP. v. 
 ley 1 , the pure and polished elegance of More, the erudition and I>ART " 
 genius of Pace, commended by Erasmus himself, unsurpassed as a 
 judge of learning^ Erasmus ! once, would he were still, your own 
 Greek professor ! I have succeeded to his place. Good heavens J 
 how inferior to him in learning and in fame 2 ! And yet, lest I 
 should be looked upon as of no account whatever, permit mo to 
 state that even I, all unworthy though I be, have been recognised 
 by the leading men, doctors in theology, law, and medicine, 
 besides masters of arts beyond counting, as their acknowledged 
 teacher; and what is more, have, in most honorable fashion, 
 been escorted by them from the schools to church, and from 
 church to the schools. Nay, still further, I solemnly assure you, 
 gentlemen of Cambridge, that the Oxonians themselves have 
 solicited me with the offer of a handsome salary besides my main- 
 tenance. But feelings of respectful loyalty towards this university Oxford want- 
 and especially towards that most noble society of scholars, King's ^"butTie 
 
 College, to which I owe my first acquirements in the art of f 1 ' 11 ' bound l . 
 i i i T i i lus own um " 
 
 eloquence, nave enjoined that 1 should first oner my services to versity. 
 
 you. Should those services find favour in your eyes, I shall 
 esteem myself amply rewarded ; and I shall conclude that such is 
 the case, if I see you applying yourselves to the studies which 
 I advise. To imitate what we admire, such is the rule of life. 
 And, in order that you may clearly perceive how much I have He promises 
 your interests at heart, I shall make it especially my object, so to pu^Ss'to'the 
 adapt myself to each individual case, as to run with those who ^ e f llls 
 run, and stretch out a helping hand to those who stumble. I shall 
 adapt myself to the standard of each learner, and proceed only 
 when he is able to keep me company. And if, perchance, there 
 should be some to whom this learning may appear to be beset with 
 toil, let them remember the adage, that the honorable is difficult. 
 It is nature's law, that great undertakings should rarely be speedy Great things 
 in their accomplishment, and that, as Fabius observes 3 , the nobler "ouipS'i'iedf 
 races in the animal world should be longest in the womb. Let 
 tliem reflect too that nothing worth having in life is to be had with- 
 out considerable labour. Wherefore, gentlemen of Cambridge, 
 you must keep your vigils, and breathe the smoke of the lamp, 
 practices which though painful at first become easier by habit. 
 
 1 The name is printed Stopleiux, * Erasmus had heard of Croke's 
 and Wood (Annals, i 17) has trans- appointment, and wrote to congratu- 
 lated it as Stopley, without appa- late him thereon, in the best possible 
 rently having an idea who was meant. spirit: ' Gratulor tibi, mi Croce, 
 There can, however, be no doubt that professionem istani tarn splendidam, 
 Croke intended Stokfslcy, principal non minus honorificarn tibi quam 
 of Magdalen Hall, and afterwards frugiferam academies Cantabrigiensi, 
 bishop of London. Compare the en- cujus commodis equidem pro veteris 
 comiuin of Erasmus, '' Joannes Stok- hospitii consuetudine peculiari quo- 
 leius, pneter scholasticam hauc theo- darn studio faveo.' Letter to Croke 
 logiarn, in qua neinini cedit, trium (April, 1518), Opera, in 1679. 
 etiam linguarum baud vulgariter a Quintilian, x iii 4. 
 peritus.' Opera, in 402.
 
 536 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 Nerve yourselves, therefore, to courses such as these, and ere long 
 you will exult in the realisation of the words of Aristotle, that the 
 muses love to dwell in minds emulous of toil. But if some, after 
 the manner of smatterers, should shirk the inevitable amount of 
 effort, or some again (which I hardly look for), of the theological 
 or philosophical faculties, I mean those crotchety fellows, who 
 seek to make themselves pass for authorities by heaping contempt 
 on every one else, should dart back when they have scarcely 
 crossed the threshold, it does not follow that you are, one and 
 Greek not of all, to become despondent of this learning. Let each of you 
 dTiikuity?* 11 reflect that the mind of man has enabled him to traverse the seas, 
 to know the movements and to count the number of the stai-s, 
 to measure the whole globe. It cannot be, then, that a knowledge 
 of Greek is inaccessible or even difficult to a race so potent to 
 accomplish the ends it has in view. Do you suppose that Cato 
 would have been willing to devote himself to this study when 
 advanced in years, had it presented, in his eyes, much of diffi- 
 culty?... A certain order however is necessary in all things. The 
 wedded vine grasps first of all the lower branches of the tree, 
 and finally towers above the topmost; and you, Sir, who now 
 discourse so glibly in the schools, once blubbered over your book, 
 and hesitated over the shapes of the letters. Therefore, gentle- 
 men of Cambridge, bring your whole minds to bear upon this 
 study, here concentrate your efforts. The variety of your studies 
 need prove no impediment ; for they who plead that excuse, 
 forget that it is more laborious, by far, to toil over one thing 
 NO harm in long together, than over a variety of subjects. But the mind, 
 jtudies. 5 forsooth, cannot safely be employed in many pursuits at once, 
 why not then advise the husbandman not to cultivate, in the 
 same season, ploughed lands, vineyards, olive-grounds, and 
 orchards ? Why not dissuade the minstrel from taxing, at once, 
 his memory, his voice, and his muscles ? But, in truth, there is 
 no reason whatever why you should not come to me, when deaf 
 with listening to other teachers, and give at least a share of your 
 attention to Greek. Variety will pleasantly beguile you of your 
 weariness ; for who among you can have the audacity to plead 
 the want of leisure ? We should lack no time for learning, were 
 we only to give to study the hours we waste in sleep, in sports, in 
 play, in idle talk. Deduct from each of these but the veriest 
 trifle, and you will have ample opportunity for acquiring Greek, 
 to thd'pTo? 1 ** ut l{ tnere ke any who, after listening to my discourse, blush not 
 per pridt. to confess themselves blockheads and unteachable, let them be off 
 to the desert and there herd with wild beasts ! With beasts, did 
 I say ? They will be unworthy to associate even with these. 
 For only the other day, there was an elephant exhibited in 
 Germany who could trace, with his trunk and foot upon the sand, 
 not only Greek letters but whole Greek sentences. Whoever then 
 i so dense as to be unable to imbibe a modicum of Greek culture, 
 Irt him know, that though more a roan, he is in no way more
 
 CHOKE'S INAUGURAL ORATION. 537 
 
 humane', as regards his educated faculties, than the dullest brute. CHAP. v. 
 You see, gentlemen of Cambridge, there's no excuse for you, _i^^, 
 the capacity, the leisure, the preceptor, are all at your command. 
 Yield not then to the promptings of indolence, but rather snatch 
 the opportunity for acquirement. Otherwise, believe me, it will 
 seem either that I have pleaded with you in vain to-day, or that 
 you have been unmindful of the saying of Cato, Fronte capillata, 
 post hcec occasio calva. 
 
 Stripped of its Latin garb, the foregoing oration will 
 appear occasionally wanting in the gravity that becomes 
 the academic chair ; but those familiar with the licence 
 often indulged in on like occasions, up to a much later 
 period, will make due allowance for the fashion of the 
 time. The age of Grote and Mommsen may smile at a Merits of th 
 
 , foregoing 
 
 serious attempt to compare the merits of Numa and Ly- oration, 
 curgus, or at the assemblage of names, mythical and historical, 
 adduced to prove the estimation in which the Greek tongue 
 was held in ancient times. Many of the audience, doubtless, 
 stared and gasped, as the orator planted his standard at 
 the line which, he declared, was the only true boundary of 
 the grammarian's province in the realm of the Muses. Many 
 a learned sententiarius, we may be well assured, listened 
 with ill-disguised vexation at the claims set up in behalf 
 of strictly biblical studies. But it was not easy to call in 
 question the general reasonableness of the orator's argu- 
 ments ; and, at a time when the study of Greek is again 
 on its defence, as an element in the ordinary course of 
 study at our universities, it might not be uninteresting to 
 compare the claims put forward three centuries and a half 
 ago for its admission, with those which at the present day 
 are urged on behalf of its retention. A comparison however The oration 
 
 -II- 
 
 more within the scope of the present pages may be found, " 
 we proceed to contrast Croke's oration with the far better 2J 
 known address, entitled De Studiis Corrigendis, delivered by bergl 1518> 
 young Philip Melanchthon, before the university of Witten- 
 berg, in the preceding year 2 . Nor will the comparison be 
 
 1 Croke intends apparently a play cundum quidem naturam editam 
 
 upon the word humanus, ' Quisquis magis humanum quam imperfectissi- 
 
 igitur adeo hebes es, ut nihil Grseca- ma quaeque animalia.' 
 
 rum litterarum imbibere queas, scias a It may perhaps appear scarcely 
 
 te magis hominem esse, sed ne se- fair to compare the composition of a
 
 538 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. altogether to the disadvantage of the Cambridge orator. 
 
 >-^U ' To many indeed the oration delivered by the German 
 professor will probably appear to be the expression of more 
 strictly logical and philosophic habits of thought 1 . The 
 admirable outline in which he traces out the progress of 
 learning from the fall of the Empire up to his own day, 
 an outline that contains scarcely a sentence that the modern 
 critic would deem it necessaiy to expunge, indicates the 
 presence of the true historic spirit to an extent far beyond 
 anything of the kind in Croke; nor is there any one passage 
 in the Cambridge oration that can compare with that wherein 
 Melauchthon touches upon the intimate affinities between 
 the new learning and religious thought, ' unrolling,' as 
 it has been eloquently said, 'the hopeful picture of an 
 approaching new era ; shewing how the newly discovered 
 mines of antiquity subserve the study of the Scriptures ; 
 how every art and science would, through the refreshing 
 return to the sources, blossom anew, in order to present 
 their spices to an ennobled human existence*.' Thought of 
 this order lay somewhat beyond the range of Croke's sym- 
 pathies. But, on the other hand, if the purpose of the orator 
 be really mainly to persuade, and the object of both Philip 
 Melanchthon and Richard Croke was to prove to those who 
 listened to them, that the study of Greek was not, as many 
 would have them believe, a passing extravagance soon to be 
 abandoned, it may be fairly questioned whether the address 
 delivered at Cambridge was not the more likely to produce 
 the desired effect. If the oration of Melanchthon commends 
 itself to the reason by its real learning and thoughtful, 
 modest, earnest tone, that of Croke, by its copious and 
 
 youth of one and twenty with that of mento phisqnam Thracico revocant : 
 
 :i in :n 1 1 if thirty ; but Melauchthon was difficilius esse studium litterarum re- 
 
 a singularly precocious genius. naBcentium qnam utilius; Grteca a 
 
 1 Compare, from Melanchthon'a quibusdam male feriatis ingeuiis 
 
 own account, the arguments em- arripi, et ad ostentationem parari ; 
 
 ployed against (irrek nt Wittenberg duhiae fidei Hebrea esBe; interim a 
 
 with those used at Oxford and at genuine litteras cultu perire; philo- 
 
 Cambridge: '(lermanicam juventu- gophiam desertum iri; et id genus 
 
 tern paulo snperioribus annis ulicubi reliquis conviciis.' Declaniationfs, 
 
 conatam in hoc felix certamen litte- i 10. 
 
 rarnm desccndere, jam nunc qnoque * Dorner, Hist, of ProteMant Thto- 
 
 non panei. velnt e medio cursu com- 7o/// (Clarke's Series), i llfi.
 
 CHOKE'S SECOND ORATION. 539 
 
 apposite illustration, its far greater command of an elegant 
 Latiuity, its dexterous resort to the recognised weapons of v '" 
 the rhetorician, and even its broad humour, must, we 
 cannot but think, have been the better calculated to win the 
 suffrages of an enthusiastic and for the most part youthful 
 audience. 
 
 Within a short time after Croke delivered another o-oke's K- 
 
 co ud o ratio 11* 
 
 oration, but one inferior in interest to the first, and chiefly 
 designed to confirm his scholars in their allegiance to Greek, 
 in opposition to the efforts that were being made to induce 
 them to forsake the study. It contains however one note- 
 worthy passage, wherein he speaks of Oxford as colonia oxford 'a 
 
 .-,,..77 i . , , .. Cambridge 
 
 a (Jantabmgia aeducta, and again exhorts the university not colony.- 
 to allow itself to be outstripped by those who were once its 
 disciples. It was this passage that more particularly excited 
 the ire of Anthony Wood, and induced him to rake up, by Retort of 
 
 J r> J Anthony 
 
 way of retaliation, the venomous suggestion of Bryan Wood - 
 Twyne, that the ' Trojan ' party at Oxford were the real 
 Cambridge colony ; an assertion that certainly finds no 
 countenance from anything in More's letter, and that may 
 be looked upon as entirely gratuitous. 
 
 That Croke's exertions found a fair measure of accept- institution or 
 
 r the office of 
 
 ance with the university may be inferred from the fact, that t " b i|4 >ra 
 
 when in 1522 the office of Public Orator was first founded, 
 
 Croke was elected for life; while it was at the same time crote elected 
 
 provided, that when he had ceased to fill the office it should 
 
 be tenable for seven years only. As a mark of special honour 
 
 it was decreed, that the orator should have precedence of all 
 
 other masters of arts, and should walk in processions and 
 
 have his seat at public acts, separate from the rest 1 . The 
 
 salary however was only forty shillings annually ; ' a place,' 
 
 (to use Fuller's comment), 'of more honour than profit.' 
 
 With regard to the amount of success that eventually 
 attended Croke's efforts to awaken among the Cambridge 
 students an interest in Greek literature, and to stimulate 
 them to an active prosecution of the study, no more decisive 
 testimony need -be sought than is supplied by the hostile 
 1 Cooper, Annals, i 305.
 
 540 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. pen of the poet Skelton. In a satire composed about the 
 -^ '" year 1521 or 152 2, the writer represents, though with evident 
 
 hkeiton, poetical exaggeration, this new growth of learning as over- 
 
 <L i52& shadowing and blighting all the rest. The poet, who at this 
 time was probably more than sixty years of age, was one 
 who had won his earlier distinctions in the old paths; he 
 had proceeded to his degree of master of arts so far back 
 as 1484, and had subsequently been laureated not only at 
 Cambridge but also at Oxford and Louvain. Few who have 
 read his compositions with attention will deny that he pos- 
 sessed true genius. Erasmus, indeed, styles him unum Bri- 
 tannicarum litterarum lumen et decus ; but this was written 
 during his first visit to England, when his criticisms con- 
 tained little but indiscriminate eulogy of all about him, and 
 in this instance, as he was unable to read a line of English, 
 could only have been the reflex of the estimate of others, 
 an estimate almost as exaggerated as Pope's epithet of 
 'beastly Skelton' is unjust. The animosity with which 
 Skelton attacked Lilly, the grammarian, might alone lead 
 us to infer that the poet sympathised but little with the new 
 learning ; and the following lines, his indignant protest at 
 the attention now given to Greek at Cambridge, are evi- 
 dently the expression of genuine alarm and dislike such as 
 were shared by many at both universities at the time. 
 
 H i satirical j n Academic, Parrot dare no probleme kepe; 
 
 verse* on the 
 
 attention For Grace fari so occupyeth the chayre, 
 
 "/reek at" That Lutinuin fari may fall to rest and slepe, 
 
 And syllogisari was drowned at Sturbrydge fayre l : 
 Tryuyals and quadryuyals so sore now they appayre, 
 That Parrot the popagay hath pytye to beholde 
 How the rest of good leruyng is roufled up and trold. 
 
 'Albertus* de modo signtficandi, 
 
 And Donatus be dryuen out of scole ; 
 Frisian's hed broken now handy dandy, 
 
 1 For a complete collection of facts generally completely interrupted for 
 
 respecting thin ancient fair, the ex- the time the studies of the university. 
 istence of which is to be traced back * Not, according to Warton, the 
 
 as far as the thirteenth century, see great schoolman, but ' the author of 
 
 Life cfAmbrote ISonwickr,eA. Mayor, the Margarita Poetica, a collection 
 
 pp. 152 65. It was, in Skelton's of Floret from the classic and other 
 
 time, and long afterwards, much re- writers, printed at Nuremberg, 1472, 
 
 sorted to by the undergraduates, and fol.' Hint, of Etig. Poetry, n 347.
 
 WOLSET. r>41 
 
 And inter didascolos is rekened for a fole ; 
 
 Alexander, a gander of Menander's pole 1 , 
 With De Consalea 3 , is cast out of the gate, 
 And Da Rationales 3 dare not shew his pate 4 .' 
 
 In the year following upon that in which Croke delivered 
 his two orations the university was honored by a visit from 
 cardinal Wolsey. Hitherto Cambridge had endeavoured with Tho 
 but little success to ingratiate herself with the omnipotent 
 
 . d. Nov. 1530. 
 
 minister. In the year 1514, Fisher, on his appointment as 
 one of the royal delegates to the Lateran council, had deemed 
 it necessary to resign the chancellorship, to which he had 
 been regularly re-elected for ten successive years, and at 
 his suggestion Wolsey had been solicited to accept the office. His relations 
 
 ..... to Cam- 
 
 We shall scarcely be justified in inferring from this fact, that bridge. 
 Fisher himself did not attribute the heavy loss that St. John's 
 College had sustained to the cardinal's influence 5 ; but he 
 doubtless felt that the power of the royal favorite had reached 
 a point at which it became almost indispensable that the 
 university should conciliate his good will, and, with his usual 
 spirit of self-abnegation, waived his personal feelings out of 
 regard for the general welfare. Wolsey did not accept the He declines 
 proffered honour. In a letter, wherein the pride that apes lorehip. 
 humility is conspicuous in almost every sentence, he declared 
 that his numerous and important engagements rendered it 
 impossible for him to accede to the wishes of the university ; 
 at the same time, he intimated that he should be glad to 
 mark his sense of the honour done him, by serving them to 
 
 1 i.e. (according to Dyce) 'Msean- his influence to obtain for the col- 
 
 der's pole,' the stream or pool of the lege the estates of the nunneries of 
 
 famous river: for Alexander see Higham and Bromehall, as a partial 
 
 supra, p. 515, n. 1. The poet seems compensation for the loss of the 
 
 to have confounded the Mseander estates bequeathed by the founders ; 
 
 with the Cayster. See Iliad, n 460. a loss, as we have seen, laid at his 
 
 8 The Concilia or Canon Law. door. The forgiving spirit shewn by 
 
 3 Logic. the college was certainly politic ; but 
 
 4 SpekeParrot,Ske\ton-'Djce,iiS-9. it is to be noted that the list of 
 6 In the revised editions of the ' benefactors ' also included the name 
 
 statutes of St John's College (given of James Stanley, bishop of Ely, 
 
 by Fisher in the years 1524 and cujus concessione domus vetus et at- 
 
 1530), Wolsey's name is included in trita in collegium, quale nunc est, 
 
 the list of benefactors for whom the eximium sane t commutata est. (!) Ba- 
 
 prayers of the college are to be regu- ker- Mayor, p. 88. Early Statutes of 
 
 larly offered up. This is probably St John's (ed. Mayor), pp. 92, 310. 
 
 attributable to the fact, that he used Cf. supra, pp. 466-7.
 
 54-2 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. the best of his power 1 . Apcordingly, as Fisher, in the sequel, 
 
 ^^ ^ did not go to Rome, and Wolsey declined the office, the 
 
 Msher cicct- university thought it could do no better than re-elect the 
 
 ed for life. 
 
 former to the chancellorship for life ; and thus, for nearly 
 thirty years, John Fisher continued to represent the chief 
 authority in the community which he so ably and faithfully 
 served. 
 
 The visit of the great cardinal to Cambridge was pro- 
 
 iMa m bably gladly hailed as a sign of his favour, and every effort 
 was made to shew him an amount of respect in no way in- 
 ferior to that which ordinarily greeted royalty itself. The 
 streets were cleansed 2 ; the pavement was repaired ; swans 
 and huge pike were brought in to grace the feast ; and a 
 temporary platform was erected at the place of his "formal 
 reception 8 . Imperial ambassadors and sundry bishops fol- 
 ,lowed in his train. In the preceding year he had received 
 the appointment of sole legate ; and his power and wealth, 
 and it must be added his arrogance and ostentation, were 
 now nearing their culminating point. We have no details 
 of the circumstances of his entry into the town, but it may 
 be presumed it was marked by his customary display ; and 
 Roy, who afterwards described him as he was wont to ap- 
 pear in processions, 
 
 1 More lyke a god celestiall 
 Then eny creature mortall 
 
 With worldly pompe incredible,' 
 
 1 'Studebo igitur non solum gra- of rank was expected, special care 
 
 tias quas possum maximas vestris was taken to cleanse the streets ; and 
 
 humanitatibus agere; sed etiam dabo as they were usually dirty and un- 
 
 operam, ut quam stepissime (si qui- scavenged as those of an oriental 
 
 bus in rebus possim), non tarn vobis city, the common receptacle for the 
 
 pro meo virili gratificari, quam de filth and df-bris of the town, it is not 
 
 omnibus et singulis vestrse universi- surprising that the occasional stirring 
 
 tatis, nbi locus et tempus eruut, bene of this accumulated litter should be- 
 
 mereri.' See Fiddes, Collection*, get a plague.' Life of Latimer, p. 
 
 xxviii and xxix, p. 50. 18. It is certain" that, in this in- 
 
 * .^ r J* 6111 * 118 observes, in con- stance, the prevalence of the epi- 
 
 nexion with Wolsey's visit, 'Not demic prevented for a time the re- 
 
 uncommonly the reception of such assembling of the students in the 
 
 visitors was followed by a plague, so following year. See Cooper, Annal*, 
 
 severe as to compel the discontinu- i 804. 
 
 nee of the ordinary university work; Cooper, Annals, i 303. There- 
 
 and the explanation of this pheno- ception, judging from the close of 
 
 menon throws a curious light (or Bullock's oration (see infra, p. 647), 
 
 shade?) upon the domestic manners was at Great St Mary's. 
 of our ancestors. When nny visitor
 
 WOLSEV. 543 
 
 may not improbably have been a spectator on the oc- CHAP. v. 
 
 I'ABT II. 
 
 casion. v " 
 
 But in the academic throng that went forth to meet the nher absent 
 cardinal, the chancellor was not to be seen ; and the fact '<>. 
 could hardly have excited much surprise in the university; 
 for it was probably well known that, within the last two 
 years, the relations of Fisher to Wolsey had assumed a cha- Relations of 
 racter which must have made it equally difficult for the Wobey! 
 former to give utterance to the customary phrases of con- 
 gratulation and flattery, and for the latter to receive them 
 through that channel as the expressions of even ordinarily 
 genuine sentiments of regard. In the year 1518, Warham, 
 whose efforts towards counteracting the widespread corrup- 
 tion of the clergy were strenuous and sincere, had summoned 
 a council of the suffragans of his diocese for the purpose of 
 discussing future plans of reform. But though Wolsey him- 
 self had only four years before received, at Warham's con- 
 secrating hands, his admission to the see of Lincoln, the 
 cardinal and the legate a latere could not endure that any 
 such council should have been summoned without his sanc- 
 tion, and he accordingly compelled the archbishop to recall 
 his mandates 1 . In order however to meet the views that 
 found forcible expression in influential quarters, he subse- 
 quently convened another council for the purpose proposed 
 by Warham ; and Fisher, who looked upon the matter as 
 one of paramount importance, had even deferred his journey 
 to Rome in order to be present. When therefore the council Fisher at the 
 
 council of 
 
 at last met, and it was evident that nothing practical was no^cltthe 
 designed, but, to quote the language of Lewis, ' the meeting Fimur "$ the 
 was rather to notify to the world the extravagant pomp and cT|y. or 
 
 1 Lewis, Life of Fisher, i 68. woll execute any jurisdictyon as le- 
 
 Wolsey's language to Warham is gate a latere, but only as shall stande 
 
 worthy of note: 'My lorde, albeit with the King's pleasure; yet assured 
 
 such and many other things, as he I am, that his grace woU not that 
 
 specially expressed in your said mo- I shulde be so lytle estemed, that ye 
 
 nicyons, t>e to be reformed generally shulde enterpryse the said reforma- 
 
 through the churche of England, as cyon to the express derogacyon of 
 
 well in my province as in youre, and the said dignitee of the see aposto- 
 
 that being legate a latere to me chiefly like, and otherwise than the law woll 
 
 it apperteyneth to see the reforma- suffre you, -without myne aivyse, 
 
 cyon of the premyssis, though hy- consent, and knowledge.' Wilkins, 
 
 derto no in time coming, I have ne Concilia, in 660.
 
 544- BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. authority of the lord legate, than for any great good to the 
 PAMII. Church, in reforming the abuses and irregularities of the 
 clergy,' his disappointment was intense, and, rising from 
 his seat, he gave free though dignified expression to feelings 
 which were shared by not a few of those around. In language 
 that admitted of but one construction, he proceeded to in- 
 veigh against the growing luxury, pride, covetousness, and 
 worldliness of the superior clergy. ' How were they,' he de- 
 manded, ' to warn their flocks to shun the pomps and vanities 
 of the world, while they themselves minded nothing more ? 
 What had bishops to do with princes' courts ? If really de- 
 sirous of reform on the part of their humbler brethren, they 
 must first themselves, in their own persons, set an example 
 of holy living and true devotion to their calling 1 .' The high, 
 the spotless, character of the speaker gave irresistible force 
 to his appeal. Cambridge had never, perhaps, better cause 
 for priding herself on her chancellor, than on that day ; and 
 many then present must have afterwards recalled the scene 
 Fihr and as one of the most memorable in their lives. The attention 
 
 V olsey con- 
 trasted, of the most careless observer could scarcely fail to have been 
 
 arrested by the striking contrast between' the characters of 
 the great cardinal and the good bishop. Both high in the 
 favour of the monarch to whose wrath they were ultimately 
 alike to fall victims, but having won it by strangely dissimilar 
 careers! The one so 'unsatisfied in getting,' that he was 
 already the wealthiest ecclesiastic in the realm ; the other so 
 unambitious of preferment, that it came to him unexpected 
 and unsolicited. The one with his visage so disfigured by 
 a vicious life*, that Holbein could paint him only in profile ; 
 the other with a face so emaciated by habits of long asce- 
 ticism, that the same pencil has preserved to us the features 
 of a mummy*. The one seeking to overawe the assembly, 
 by the same energy of will and arrogance of demeanour that 
 
 ' Lewis, pp. 69-70. sinned in a great measure by the 
 
 Skelton Dyce, 11 62; Boy (ed. strict abstinence and penance to 
 
 Arber), p. 68. which he had long accustomed him- 
 
 his face, hands, and all hia self, even from hia youth.' Lewis, 
 
 body were BO bare of flesh as is al- n 215. 
 most ineredible; which was occa-
 
 WOLSEY. 545 
 
 had disconcerted even the majesty of France; the other CHAP. v. 
 pleading the cause of virtue and religion, with the calm dig- .^'Jl'- 
 nity and graceful elocution that had so often charmed the 
 ears of royalty ! ' After the delivery of this speech,' says one 
 of Fisher's biographers, ' the cardinal's state seemed not to 
 become him so well 1 ;' and we can well understand how it 
 was that Fisher was not now among those who hastened to 
 greet, with slavish adulation, the half-welcome half-dreaded 
 guest on his arrival at Cambridge. Upon Bullock, at that 
 time fellow of Queens' College, it devolved to deliver the 
 congratulatory address. 
 
 Though the acts whereby Wolsey most startled not only woisey weii 
 
 -nil MI understood 
 
 the university but all England, were still in the future, his at Cambridge 
 character must, by this time, have been tolerably well under- 
 stood ; his haughty nature and insatiable greed of flattery 
 were notorious ; and his state policy and administrative 
 merits could not fail to be a constant topic of discussion at 
 both Oxford and Cambridge. That his sympathies were 
 chiefly with his own university is undeniable, it was but 
 natural that it should be so ; and that learned body exulted 
 not a little at the prospect of all the benefits which his favour 
 might confer ; while to its annalist, the name of Wolsey 
 appears surrounded by a halo of virtues that language must 
 fail adequately to describe. From mere policy however, 
 Wolsey was not altogether disregardful of the sister univer- 
 sity, and his household already included not a few Cambridge 
 men. His subsequent biographer, Cavendish, had been edu- 
 cated at the university, and was now his gentleman usher. 
 Burbank, the friend and correspondent of Erasmus, was 
 his secretary, and a follower on this occasion in his train. 
 In that train was also to be found Richard Sampson, another 
 friend of Erasmus referred to in a preceding page, who was 
 one of the cardinal's chaplains. Out of compliment to their 
 patron; both Burbank and Sampson were now admitted to 
 the degree of doctor of canon law 2 . Shorton was subsequently 
 made dean of his private chapel ; he had perhaps already 
 
 1 Baily (quoted by Lewis, i 71). of Buckingham, as receiving the same 
 
 8 Cooper, Athena, i 41, 119. Fiddes honour on this occasion, and lays 
 
 mentions also Dr Taylor, archdeacon considerable stress on the compli- 
 
 35
 
 546 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. attracted the cardinal's notice ; for, within four years after, 
 v '- we find Wolsey availing himself of his assistance in connexion 
 
 with his magnificent foundation at Oxford. 
 Bullock's Whatever may be our opinion of the merits of Bullock's 
 
 oration well ' 
 
 o^Sio^ the oration in other respects, it can hardly be doubted that it 
 was well calculated to win the favour that it was designed 
 to conciliate. Scarcely from the obsequious senates of Ti- 
 berius and Domitian did the incense of flattery rise in denser 
 volume or in coarser fumes. In Wolsey the orator recognises 
 not only the youth who at Oxford outshone all competi- 
 
 r.rMMiMs of tors, the man in whom all the virtues, nrobitas, innocentia, 
 
 hU flattery. J 
 
 pudor, integritas, religio, were blended, the masterly nego- 
 tiator whose ability attracted the discerning eye of Henry 
 VII, the counsellor whose excellences had earned such 
 loving favour from the reigning monarch, the ecclesiastic 
 whose services to the Church had been so highly honored 
 by the supreme pontiff, but he salutes him as the uni- 
 woisey the versal benefactor of his race. Wolsey it is, who shields the 
 
 iruardia n of 
 
 tuc poor, humble from the powerful, the needy from the rich, who 
 rescues the innocent and simple from the meshes woven 
 by the crafty and unscrupulous ; he it is, who rebuilds the 
 villages sinking into ruins through the avarice of wicked 
 men, who gives back to the husbandmen the fertile acres 
 converted by mercenary owners into sheep-walks. Nor is 
 his power confined to Britain ; it has extended its benign 
 influence over the whole of Christendom. 'If,' says the 
 orator, 'we ransack the past annals of the Church, the 
 lives of pontiffs, in whom the virtues of cardinals so often 
 again meet our view, we shall find that neither all the 
 cardinals in any one age, nor any one cardinal in all the 
 ages, achieved within so short a time such signal services 
 
 ft'rlSK*' * Europe. This Italy herself admits, prone though she 
 be to praise only her own sons, and ready to yield to other 
 nations anything rather than renown; this Germany con- 
 fesses, where the common voice proclaims thee worthy of 
 the pontiffs chair; this France acknowledges, whose most 
 
 ment thus paid to Wolsey, these doc- exercises pre-required to that degree.' 
 tore being admitted ' freely and fully,' Life of Wolsey, p. 186. 
 1 an if they had performed the usual
 
 WOLSEY. 547 
 
 Christian king of late declared, that he would prefer thee CHAP.V. 
 for his counsellor to half his realm; the Bohemians, the - I ^" ^ 
 Poles, "the nations of the isles," in fine the whole globe nu woria- 
 resounds thy fame, eisdem sane finibus quibus ortus et oc- 
 casus, tui nominis claritudo terminatur. 
 
 1 Felix tellus/ exclaims the orator in conclusion, ' quae te Buiiock-g 
 in lucem edidit; feliciores principes, quibus accessisti; feli- 
 cissima respublica, quae talem moderatorem sortita est. Et 
 nos Cantabrigiarii non postremam sed vel primam felicitatis 
 partem videmur adepti, non solum quod huic nostrae acade- 
 mia3 tarn impense faves, adeo ut nonnullos ejus alumnos huic 
 tuse nobilissimae adscripseris familiae, beneficiisque non medi- . 
 ocribus cumulaveris ; sed quod nos tua praesentia longe sua- 
 vissima ornare dignatus es, quod hunc tuum vultum multo 
 gratiosissimum liceat intueri, hanc tuam celsitudinem am- 
 plecti; haud facile fuerit explicare quanto tripudio, quam 
 hilari vultu, quam ingenti laetitia, salientjbus praecordiis, tui 
 adventus nuntios excepimus. Facilius fuerit cuipiam aesti- 
 mare quam nobis exprimere. Ipse vidisti quam exporrectis 
 frontibus, quam blando ac sereno vultu, quam incredibili 
 omnium applausu, certissimis non ficti pectoris testimoniis, 
 exceptus es. Hi parietes, has columnae, haec subsellia, hoc 
 sacrum, hi onines denique scholastic! videntur mihi non 
 modo gestire sed et serio gloriari sese nobilitatos tali hospite. 
 Utinam haec nostra praecordia, has animi latebras, hos affectus, 
 istis tuis vivacissimis oculis introspicere posses; turn clare 
 deprehenderes, quam sinceriter, nullo asciticio colore, nullis 
 phaleris, nullo fuco, haec dicerentur. Ut enim opibus, aedium 
 magnificentia, supellectilis gloria, ab aliis superemur, nemini 
 concesserimus, hoc precati ut te propitium huic academiae, ut 
 omnibus solitus es, exhibeas patrouum, Deus optimus maxi- 
 mus te in usus publicos quam diutissime conservet inco- 
 lumemV 
 
 The love of flattery must have been inordinate indeed in woisey-s 
 Wolsey, if language like this, language which may well be universities, 
 permitted to remain veiled in the ornate Latinity of the 
 original, left him still dissatisfied. He went back from 
 
 a ' / 
 
 1 Fiddes, Collections, 43-5. 
 
 352
 
 548 
 
 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 PART II. 
 
 Stafford, 
 duke of 
 Buckinglu 
 
 Skclton. 
 
 Pace. 
 
 Cambridge, having made splendid but indefinite promises. 
 In the following year, the university learned that one of its 
 former scholars and distinguished benefactors 1 , the courtly, 
 munificent, chivalrous Stafford, had perished on the scaffold, 
 the victim as it was commonly believed of the resentment of 
 this paragon of virtue. ' The butcher's dog,' said Charles V, 
 'has killed the fairest buck in England 2 .' A few years more, 
 and it saw one of its most brilliant geniuses, the poet 
 Skelton, flying for shelter to the sanctuary at Westminster, 
 there to end his days, a fugitive from the wrath of this 
 eminent protector of the weak against the powerful. While 
 at nearly the same time, it was told at Oxford how one of 
 the most accomplished and blameless of her sons, the amiable 
 Richard Pace, -whose virtues almost merited the praise that 
 Bullock had heaped on Wolsey, had become the object of 
 equally fierce persecution at the same hands; until, in poverty 
 and insanity, he exhibited a pitiable warning to all who should 
 venture to cross the path of one so powerful and so merci- 
 less 8 . But to the great majority, proofs such as these of the 
 cardinal's might and energy of hate seemed only to prove 
 
 1 Stafford was generally looked 
 upon as the founder of Buckingham 
 (afterwards Magdalene) College, where 
 his portrait is still preserved. Cooper 
 notices however that the college was 
 certainly called Buckingham College 
 before the duke's time. In the Uni- 
 versity Calendar the foundation of 
 Magdalene College is incorrectly as- 
 signed to the year 1519; but the 
 foundation of Baron Audley belongs 
 to the year 1542 (see Cooper, Annals, 
 i 404), and consequently no account 
 of the college is given in the present 
 volume. 
 
 * Fuller-Prickett & Wright, p. 
 198. This was certainly the general 
 belief at the time: cf. Roy's com- 
 ment, 
 ' Also a ryght noble prince of fame 
 
 Henry, the Ducke of Buckingham, 
 He caused to die, alas, alas.' 
 
 (ed. Arber), p. 50. 
 
 Prof. Brewer (Preface to Lrtter* and 
 I'apfrt, in crvi) has represented this 
 view of the duke's fate as taking its 
 rise solely out of the misrepresenta- 
 
 tions of Polydoro Vergil ; ' from 
 whom,' he says, ' the calumny was 
 derived and rests on no other author- 
 ity.' IJe also denounces Vergil's nar- 
 rative, which he shews to be incor- 
 rect in detail, as ' a tissue of misre- 
 presentation, exaggeration, and false- 
 hood, devised by this partial histo- 
 rian to gratify his hostility to the 
 cardinal.' (p. ccxl.) But, without lay- 
 ing any stress on the saying attri- 
 buted to Charles v, it is certain that 
 Roy's satire was published about 
 1528 ; while the first edition of Ver- 
 gil's Hixtoria Antjlica, in which his 
 account of Wolsey is to be found, 
 was not published until 1534. 
 
 8 Richardus Factious qui regis sui 
 nomine legatus ad nos venit, vir est 
 insigni ntriusque litteraturae peritia 
 preditus, apud regiam majestatem 
 mnltis nominibns gratissimus, fide 
 sincerissima, moribns plusquam ni- 
 veis, totus ad gratiam et amicitiam 
 natns.' (Erasmi Opera, HI 441.) 
 Pace lived however to survive his 
 persecutor, and to regain, to some
 
 WOLSEY. 549 
 
 the necessity of conciliating his favour at almost any price; CIIAP.V. 
 and at Cambridge it appeared of supreme importance to -^^L, 
 shew that the university was in no way inferior to her rival 
 in solicitude for his good will and in deference to his 
 authority. Oxford however had recently set an example of TI.C univer- 
 
 1 r ji- i i i . sity of Oxford 
 
 slavish and abject submission which it was not easy top |ace8lu 
 
 J statutes in 
 
 outvie. In the year 1518, that venerable body had, to quote JJ^'^-^be 
 the language of Wood, ' made a solemn and ample decree, in pl^^ 1 "* 
 a great convocation, not only of giving up their statutes into 
 the cardinal's hands to be reformed, corrected, changed, 
 renewed, and the like, but also their liberties, indulgences, 
 privileges, nay the whole university (the colleges excepted), 
 to be by him disposed and framed into good order 1 .' It 
 might appear impossible that such a demonstration of abject 
 servility, as the surrender of the laws and privileges of an 
 ancient and famous corporate body into the hands of one 
 man, could be surpassed by the sister university. Cambridge, 
 it might have been supposed, could but add to a like act of 
 sycophancy the reproach of servile imitation. According 
 however to Fiddes, the terms in which a similar measure, TIMS example 
 that passed the assembly of regents and non-regents in the theunK-enuty 
 year 1524, and received the common seal, was expressed, brid s e > 152t 
 appear yet ' stronger, more specific and diversified.' ' To shew Fuidea-s 
 
 , , i-i criticism on 
 
 further, he adds, 'how much they desired to augment the i} > c f one of , 
 
 _ the letter of 
 
 cardinal's authority, and to render it, if such a supposition j&** lwr " 
 might be made, yet more despotic, they complain as if they 
 wanted words to denote the powers wherewith they moved 
 he might be invested, and the absolute conveyance of their 
 rights and privileges as an incorporable body to him.... They 
 desire their statutes may be modelled by his judgement, as by 
 a true and settled standard. They consider him as one sent 
 by a special divine providence from heaven for the public 
 benefit of mankind, and particularly to the end they might 
 be favoured with his patronage and protection. They salute 
 
 extent, both his mental powers and says, 'Video non dormire numen, 
 
 former emoluments. Erasmus writ- quod et innocentes eruit et feroces 
 
 ing to congratulate him on his reco- dejicit.' Jortin, i 147. 
 
 very, just after the cardinal's fall, x Wood-Gutch, n 15.
 
 550 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 CHAP. v. him by a title which even appears superior to that of 
 i^lL " majesty" from the other university, but the proper force of 
 which cannot, I believe, be expressed by any word of the 
 language wherein I write. Though an extract of several 
 other passages might be made from this submission, which 
 discover the profound deference and esteem which that 
 university then entertained of the cardinal, yet... I shall only 
 observe that the powers here vested in him, were not limited 
 to any determinate time, or such whereby himself, when he 
 had once executed them, should be concluded, but they are 
 granted for a term of life, and under such express conditions, 
 that he might exercise them as often, in what manner, and 
 according to what different sanctions he might think most 
 expedient 1 .' 
 The above a It must be admitted that the correctness of Fiddes's 
 
 humiliating . , 
 
 ei>i*<xie in the representations cannot be denied. An examination indeed 
 
 hutory of * 
 
 wSitfci" f ^ ne or ig ma l document 8 rather tends to enhance the im- 
 pression conveyed in his description. When we find his 
 ' most pious benignity' implored ' not to spurn or desert such 
 humble clients,' or to turn a favoring regard upon ' his most 
 humble and obsequious slaves 8 ,' we feel that the phraseology 
 of flattery must have been well-nigh exhausted. Our deduction 
 from the facts must however differ somewhat from that of 
 the Tory historian. This unmeasured self-abasement of two 
 ancient and learned bodies, while forming a humiliating 
 passage in their history, can surely tend but little to enhance 
 our estimate of the cardinal himself. The sense of honour, 
 the moral nature, must have been hopelessly blunted, in one 
 who could imagine his own dignity enhanced by such degra- 
 dation in such a quarter ; and we gladly turn away from an 
 
 1 I 'if'- of Woltey, p. 185. tiones omnes et singulas quocunqae 
 
 Cooper, AnnaU, i 307-9. 'Nos nomine vocitentur talem in DOS 
 
 ct unusqnisquo nostrum atque adeo et in haec omnia pnefato reverendis- 
 
 gyninamnnihocnniversum, leges, give simo concedimus potestatem, ut pro 
 
 scriptasBivenonHcriptaH.statutaordi- libero animi sui arbitrio (quod non 
 
 nationesf'tconsuetudinesquascunque potest non esse graviHsimum), jam 
 
 (privileguH ct Btatutix particularium constituta abroget, deroget, obroget, 
 
 collegiorum semper Hulvin), eidem mutet, reformet, intorpretetur, sup- 
 
 amplissirno Patri subniittiinus dedi- pleat, adjuvet, corroboret, et omnem 
 
 musque humillime, talem in oos in partem verset et tractet. ' Ibid. 
 legMqnenoHtras.Htatnta.nrdinationes 8 'Agnoscatque obsequentisBimos 
 
 BU consuetudincB, breviter ordina- servuloB.'
 
 WOLSEY. 551 
 
 episode creditable to Done, thankful that the fact of the 
 measure having remained altogether inoperative, absolves 
 us from the necessity of further discussing its scope and 
 character. 
 
 It only remains to be noted, that, at nearly the same Yearly ob- 
 time that the foregoing supplication was agreed upon, a 
 letter was also forwarded to the cardinal informing him that 
 the university, from feelings of gratitude for the many favours 
 he had bestowed upon them, proposed 'to appoint yearly 
 obsequies for him, to be celebrated by all graduates, with the 
 greatest solemnity.' In what these favours consisted does 
 not appear. Cambridge possesses no foundations, scholar- 
 ships, or exhibitions, that perpetuate the name of Wolsey. 
 It is probable therefore, that reference is intended rather to 
 the promotion of individual members of the university to 
 appointments in his household or other posts of honour and 
 emolument, like those mentioned by Bullock in his perora- 
 tion, than to any permanent benefits conferred on the cor- 
 porate body. The presence of queen Catherine at the uov-ai visits 
 university in the same year as Wolsey 's visit, and that ofbndgc. 
 king Henry himself, two years later, may perhaps be looked 
 upon as indications that the favour of the cardinal had not 
 been sought in vain. But he could scarcely have loved the 
 university where Fisher was the man most potent and most 
 esteemed. His genuine regard for learning, one of the bright . 
 phases of his character, found its fullest expression elsewhere; 
 and it soon became known at Cambridge, that he was erecting 
 at Oxford a new and splendid college, on a scale of unprece- Foundation 
 
 . * of Cardinal 
 
 dented magnificence. By the royal licence, he received per- j^ 
 mission to endow it with a yearly revenue of 2000', nearly 
 three times the amount of the income of the wealthiest 
 college at the sister university. The endowment however 
 
 1 See Brewer, Letters and Papers, Corpus Christi, 133. 6. 8 ; Lincoln, 
 
 iv 670. The following contributions, 100; Oryal, 100; University, 50; 
 
 levied upon different colleges at Ox- Exeter, 40; Bayly 40; Queen's, 
 
 ford and Cambridge for the royal loan 40. CAMBRIDGE. King's, 333. 6. 8; 
 
 in 1522, are probably a fair index King's Hall, 333. 6. 8; Queens', 
 
 to their relative resources : OXFORD. 200; Benet, 66. 13. 4; St John's, 
 
 Magdalen, 330; New, 336; Al 100; Christ's 100. Ibid, m 1048. 
 Sowle, 200; Martyii, 133. 6. 8;
 
 552 BISHOP FISHER. 
 
 en AP. v. W as not drawn from his own plethora of wealth, but re- 
 ^v--' presented, an ominous sign for the monks, the revenues 
 of sundry suppressed monasteries 1 . If any jealousy were felt 
 at Cambridge, it was probably to some extent allayed, when 
 the intelligence arrived that the cardinal was desirous of 
 placing on his new foundation some of the most promising 
 young scholars of their own university, in order that the 
 
 scholars infant society might from the first be distinguished by the 
 d presence of men of ascertained ability, and be known as a 
 school of the new learning. How this part of his scheme 
 was viewed at Oxford does not appear ; but it was difficult 
 to call in question, in connexion with the organisation of a 
 college, the judgement of one who had just been nominated 
 sole legislator of both universities. In many respects, again, 
 Wolsey, who reflected the transitional tendencies of his time, 
 was able by his reputation to disarm the apprehensions of 
 the conservatives ; and even those who regarded with distrust 
 his partiality for Greek, were reassured when they recalled 
 that his admiration for Aquinas had gained for him the 
 epithet of Thomisticus*. And here before we turn to note 
 the previous history and subsequent fate of those who com- 
 posed the little Cambridge colony at Cardinal College, it will 
 be necessary to enter fully into the circumstances under 
 which our own university was now about to pass through a 
 new experience, which, brief, tragical, and blood-stained 
 though it be, is yet one of the brightest chapters in her 
 records, the commencement of that important part which 
 she was ere long to play in the political and theological 
 contests of England in the sixteenth century. 
 
 1 Cardinal College itself was found- these societies (i.e. colleges) are ex- 
 
 on the site of the suppressed mo- pressly dedicated to God Almighty.' 
 
 *ry of St. Frideswide (Burnet- Collier-Lathbury, v 20-21. See also 
 
 >ck, i o5). This was a bold step Lewis's observations in his Life of 
 
 that day. Even Jeremy Collier Fisher, i 166-9. He there refers to 
 
 luspicious that an apology a theory that the suppression of the 
 
 ' If, he says, we consi- nunneries at Higham and Bromhall, 
 
 w application, there will in connexion with St. John's College 
 
 son to charge the cardinal (see Baker-Mayor, pp. 88, 89), was 
 
 with sacrilege. For h did not alien- 'a leading case' to the cardinal's 
 
 ate the revenues from religious ser- measure. 
 
 vic, but only made a change in the Fiddes, p. 252. 
 disposal. Now everybody knows
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE AT THE REFORMATION. 
 
 WITH the third decade of the sixteenth century, we enter CHAP. vi. 
 upon a period when the contentions of opposing theories of THE KBFOR- 
 philosophy in the schools, and the warfare between the sup- MJ 
 porters of the old learning and the new, were for a time to 
 be lost sight of in the all-absorbing interest of a religious 
 struggle, more extended in its action and more momentous 
 in its results than any that mediaeval Europe had known. 
 
 It is significant of the complex character of the questions Different 
 
 i i -I -rt f ' -I f f theories re- 
 
 which the Reformation opened up, and 01 the variety of specting ua 
 
 L origin. 
 
 the interests it affected, that even at the present day there 
 prevails the greatest diversity of opinion with respect to its 
 real origin and essential character. By some writers it is A consum- 
 
 11 i- -11 i i i / i mation of 
 
 regarded as the inevitable and natural result of that increased preceding 
 
 movements. 
 
 intellectual freedom, which, commencing with the earlier 
 schoolmen and deriving new vigour from the habits of 
 thought encouraged by the Humanists, culminated in a 
 general repudiation of the mental bondage that had attended 
 the long reign of mediaeval theologians 1 . Others maintain, 
 that it consisted rather in a general rejection of both the 
 dogmas and the speculation of the preceding ten centuries, 
 and was a simple reversion to the tenets of primitive Christi- A return to 
 anity 3 . A third school are disposed to consider it, so far at Christianity, 
 least as the movement in England is involved, as chiefly the 
 outcome of political feeling, and having in its commence- A political 
 
 movement. 
 
 ment but little reference to the question of doctrinal deve- 
 
 1 Lecky, Hist, of Rationalism, i * D'Aubign<5, Hist, of the Reforma- 
 285 3 . MUman, Hut. of Latin Chris- tion(transl. by White), 1 16-17. Hunt, 
 tianity ix 3 150, 266. Religious Thought in England, i 2.
 
 554 
 
 THE INFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 A war of 
 races. 
 
 An assertion 
 of moral free- 
 dom. 
 
 A recoil from 
 the corrup- 
 tion of the 
 age. 
 
 A friars' 
 squabble. 
 
 A miscon- 
 ception. 
 
 lopement 1 . That it rose out of a deep-rooted antagonism 
 between the Latin and Teutonic races 8 , that it was the 
 assertion of the principle of individual freedom and indivi- 
 dual responsibility 8 , that it was a revulsion from the wide- 
 spread and utter corruption of the age, are views which the 
 student of the period finds himself called upon to weigh 
 against assertions to the effect that it grew out of nothing 
 more dignified than a petty squabble between the Augustinian 
 and Dominican ordeYs 4 , that the age by which it was followed 
 was not one whit less corrupt than that by which it was pre- 
 ceded 8 , or that it is to be attributed to a fatal error on the 
 part of the Reformers, who confounded the essential and 
 accidental phases of Catholicism, the abuses of the times 
 and the fashions of scholasticism, with the fundamental con- 
 ceptions of the one universal and indivisible Church 6 . 
 
 1 Dean Hook, Life of Archbishop 
 Parker, p. 37. 
 
 a Db'llinger has not failed to note 
 the use to which Luther skilfully 
 converted the national antipathy in 
 his invectives against ' die Wahlen, ' 
 as he was wont to style the Italians. 
 Kirche und Kirchen, p. 11. See Lu- 
 ther's Tischreden, Walch xxn 2865. 
 
 8 A view recently reiterated by 
 Prof. Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, 
 p. 326*. See Hallam's sensible obser- 
 vations on this theory, Lit. of Eu- 
 rope, i 7 382. ' Historisch ist nichts 
 unrichtiger, als die Behauptung, die 
 Reformation sei cine Beweguug fur 
 Gewisseusfreiheit gewesen. Gerade 
 das Gegentheil ist wahr. FUr sich 
 selbst frcilich haben Luthcraner uud 
 Calvinisten, ebenso wie alle Meu- 
 Bchen zu alien Zeiten, Gewissens- 
 frcihcit bcgehrt, aber Andern sie 
 zu gcwnhren, fiel ihnen, wo sie die 
 Htark(>ren warcn, uicht ein.' Dollin- 
 gcr, Kirche nnd Kirchen, p. 68. 
 
 4 ' Personne n'ignore que ce zMe 
 de re'fonno tnnt vant, et sous le 
 prdtextc duqucl on a bouleverse' 1'E- 
 glise et 1'Etut dans nnc grande partie 
 do 1'Europe, a eu pour prindpo uue 
 iiii- : rnble jalousie entre inoines men- 
 dians au sujet do la prediction des 
 indulgences. Lrfon x fit publier en 
 1517 une croisade contro IPS Turcs, 
 ct il y attachait des indulgences, dont 
 
 il faut avoner que le but n'e'tait pas 
 bien canonique ni exempt d'inte're't. 
 La commission de pr6cher les indul- 
 gences en Saxe se donnait commune 1 - 
 ment aux Augustius. Elle fut don- 
 ne"e aux Jacobins. Voila la source 
 du mal, et Tdtincelle che'tive qui a 
 muse un si furieux embrasement. 
 Luther, qui e"tait Augustiu, voulut 
 venger son ordro que Ton privait 
 d'uue commission fructueuse." Cre- 
 vier, v 134-5. This was the view on 
 which Voltaire insisted: 'Un petit 
 inteiut des monies, qui s'enviaieut 
 la vente des indulgences, alluma la 
 revolution. Si tout le Nord se s^para 
 de Home, c'est qu'oii vendait trop 
 cher la d^livrance du purgatoire a 
 ill- - MIUCS dont les corps avaient alors 
 tres-peu d'argent.' Quoted by Lau- 
 rent, La Rfforme, p. 431. 
 
 6 ' Neither authentic documents, 
 nor the literature and character of 
 the times, nor, if national ethics are 
 essentially connected with national 
 art, its artistic tendencies, warrant 
 us in believing that the era preced- 
 ing the Reformation was more cor- 
 rupt than that which succeeded it.' 
 Brewer, Introd. to Letters and Pa- 
 pers, in ccccxvi. 
 
 8 Moehler, Symbolik, p. 25. Dol- 
 linger, Kirche und Kirehcn, pp. 25 
 30.
 
 THE REFORMATION. 555 
 
 An investigation of the merits of these different theo- CHAP. vi. 
 ries, or rather of the comparative amount of truth that 
 each embodies, would obviously be a task beyond our pro- 
 vince ; it will suffice to note the illustration afforded by our 
 special subject of the real nature of the movement in our 
 own country. Nor can it be said that the light thus to be 
 gained is dim or uncertain, or that at this great crisis our 
 Cambridge history still lies remote from the main current of 
 events : for it is no exaggeration to assert that the origin The Refor- 
 
 mation in 
 
 of the Reformation in England is to be found in the labours inland 
 
 begun at 
 
 of the lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge from Cambrid 8e. 
 the years 1511 to 1514 1 , while its first extension is to be 
 traced to the activity of that little band of Cambridge stu- 
 dents who were roused by those labours to study, enquiry, 
 and reflexion. 
 
 We have already cited facts and quoted competent autho- Notadeve- 
 . ' t m iiipfiiii-nt 
 
 nty to shew that the Refonnation was not a continuation of from Lo '- 
 
 lardism, 
 
 the reform commenced by Wyclif 2 . Though the term Lol- 
 lardism still served, at the commencement of the sixteenth 
 century, to denote forbidden doctrines, political or religious, 
 the movement itself had been effectually repressed. It has 
 indeed been long customary with writers of a certain school, 
 to speak of Wyclif as 'the morning star of the Reformation;' 
 and to such an epithet there can be no objection, if, at the 
 same time, we are not required to acquiesce in the old fal- 
 lacy of post hoc, propter hoc, and are at liberty to hold that 
 Wyclif was no more the author of the Reformation, than the 
 morning star is the cause of day. It was the New Testa- but to be 
 
 . J . traced to the 
 
 ment of Erasmus, bought, studied, and openly discussed by ^ t ^f to ~ 
 countless students, at a time when Wyclif 's Bible was only fraamua - 
 
 1 ' It was not Luther or Zwinglius Latin fathers to light and published 
 that contributed so much to the Be- them with excellent editions and use- 
 formation, as Erasmus, especially ful notes, by which means men of 
 among us in England. For Erasmus parts set^hemselves to consider the 
 was the man who awakened men's ancient Church from the writings of 
 understandings, and brought them the fathers themselves, and not from 
 from the friars' divinity to a relish the canonists and schoolmen.' Stil- 
 of general learning. He by his wit lingfleet (quoted by Knight, p. vii). 
 laughed down the imperious igno- See to the same effect Burnet-Pocock, 
 ranee of the monks and made them i 66-7. 
 the scorn of Christendom: and by 2 See supra, pp. 274-5. 
 his learning he brought most of the
 
 556 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. obtainable at ten times the price, and rendered the reader in 
 whose hands it was discovered liable to the penalty of death, 
 that relit the extinct flame ; and the simple confession of 
 
 Biiney's Bilnev, in his letter to Tunstal, supplies us with the true 
 
 testimony. * 
 
 connecting link : ' but at the last,' he says, ' I hearde speake 
 of Jesus, even then when the New Testament was first set 
 forth by Erasmus. Which when I understood to be elo- 
 quently done by him, being allured rather for the Latine 
 than for the word of God (for at that time I knew not what 
 it meant), I bought it, even by the providence of God, as I 
 doe now wel understand and perceive V 
 
 Those who may have occasion to consult the work to 
 which our own obligations have been so numerous, Cooper's 
 Annals of Cambridge, will find that there is but one year 
 in the sixteenth century, the year 1517, under which the 
 indefatigable compiler coiild find nothing that he deemed 
 deserving of record. And yet, in this same year, the whole 
 university was startled by an event as notable and significant 
 tk^lnJT ^ an y * n ^ s history- I n the preceding year, as is well 
 by'Ecol* known, Leo X had sent forth over Europe his luckless pro- 
 A.B. i5i. clamation of indulgences. The effects of the suicidal policy 
 of preceding popes, which led them to seek the aggrandise- 
 ment of their own families in the alienation of the fairest 
 possessions of the Church, had been for some time more and 
 more sensibly felt by each successive pontiff, and were excep- 
 tionally intensified by the lavish expenditure of Leo. His 
 proclamation was a last expedient towards replenishing an 
 exhausted treasury. Each copy of the proclamation was 
 accompanied by a tariff of the payments necessary for the 
 expiation of every kind of crime ; and though by many of 
 the Humanists the proceeding was treated with open ridi- 
 cule, the great majority of the devout only saw therein a 
 heaven-sent opportunity for securing their religious welfare. 
 A copy of Copies were of course forwarded to all the universities ; and 
 
 the pro- , 
 
 m"t U b? on the arrival of a certain number at Cambridge, it devolved 
 on Fi her, as chancellor, to give them due publicity. The 
 good bishop received them, apparently nothing doubting, and 
 
 1 Foxc-Cattley, iv 635.
 
 PETER DE VALENCE. 557 
 
 ordered that, among other places, a copy should be affixed to CHAP. vr. 
 the gate of the common schools. The same night, a young 
 Norman student, of the name of Peter de Valence, wrote over Act of p*tr 
 the proclamation, Beatus vir cujus est nomen Domini spes ejiw, 
 et non respexit in vanitates et insanias falsas ISTAS. When 
 with the morning the words were discovered, the excitement 
 was intense. Fisher summoned an assembly, and, after ex- 
 plaining and defending the purpose and nature of indul- 
 gences, named a day, on or before which the sacrilegious 
 writer was required to reveal himself and to confess his 
 crime and avow his penitence, under pain of excommunica- 
 tion. On the appointed day Peter de Valence did not appear, 
 and Fisher with manifestations of the deepest grief pro- 
 nounced the dread sentence 1 . It is asserted by one ofiiisexcqm- 
 Fisher's biographers, a writer entitled to little credit, that m ' 
 eventually De Valence did come forward, made open confes- 
 sion of his act, and received formal absolution 2 . The state- 
 ment however is not supported by any other authority, nor 
 is the question of its accuracy material to our present pur- 
 pose. But our thoughts are irresistibly recalled by the story 
 to that far bolder deed done in the same year at Wittenberg, 
 when, on the eve of All Saints' day, one of stouter heart 
 than the young Norman, pressing his way at full noon 
 through the throng of pilgrims to the doors of the parish 
 church, there suspended his famous ninety-five theses against 
 the doctrine of indulgences 8 . 
 
 The whole aspect of affairs seemed to change when the Prospect of 
 
 reform prior 
 
 sturdy figure of Martin Luther strode into the foreground. to A - D - 1S1T - 
 Up to that time, it is undeniable that there had been much 
 to warrant the hopes of those who looked forward to a mode- 
 rate and gradual reform within the Church, by means of the 
 
 1 Lewis, Life of Fisher, i 62-6. ther case is there any reason for infer- 
 
 a Baily, Life of Fisher, pp. 26-7, ring that the one suggested the other. 
 
 ' A book which when lately in manu- There had long before been observ- 
 
 script, I then more prized for the ra- able in the universities a growing 
 
 rity, than since it is now printed I distrust of this superstition. Both 
 
 trust for the verity thereof.' Fuller- Jacob von Jiiterbrock at Erfurt, and 
 
 Prickett & Wright, p. 196. John Wessel, his disciple, at Maintz 
 
 3 There seem to be no data for and Worms, attacked the doctrine in 
 
 determining whether Luther's or De more than one treatise. See Dorner, 
 
 Valence's was the prior act ; but in nei- Hitt . of Protestant Theology, p. 75.
 
 .">.">S THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. diffusion of liberal culture and sounder learning. Erasmus, 
 writing a few months later, records in triumphant tones the 
 progress of the Humanists in every nation in Christendom 1 . 
 
 Events of the The year 1516 had witnessed not a few significant indications 
 
 year 1516. 
 
 that the growing intelligence of the educated class was more 
 and more developing in antagonism not merely to specific 
 doctrines but to the whole spirit of mediaeval theology. It 
 was, as we have already seen, the year in which the Novum 
 Instrumentum of Erasmus appeared, in which Reuchlin 
 triumphed over the machinations of his foes, in which Fox, 
 at Oxford, so boldly declared himself on the side of inno- 
 vation. In the same year there had also appeared the famous 
 Enittaue EpistolcB Obscurorum Virorum, that TrdpeSpos to the Eiico- 
 
 Obieiirnrum ir t i .,. . 111 
 
 nrvrum, miuin Aloiice, which, emerging trom an impenetrable obscu- 
 rity, smote the ranks of bigotry and dulness with a yet hea- 
 vier hand ; which, in the language of Herder, ' effected for 
 Germany incomparably more than Hudibras for England, or 
 Garagantua for France, or the Knight of La Mancha for 
 Spain.' Then too was given to the world the De Immortali- 
 
 Pomponntius tote AnimcB of Pomponatius, wherein a heresy that involved 
 all other doctrinal belief, was unfolded and elaborated with a 
 
 candour that the transparent artifice of salvafide could not 
 Utopia of shield from punishment*. While finally, in the Utopia of 
 More, the asceticism of the monk was rejected for the theory 
 of a life that followed nature, and the persecutor, for the 
 first time for centuries, listened to the plea for liberty of con- 
 science in matters of religious belief. Amid indications like 
 these of extending liberty and boldness of thought, though 
 monasticism no longer sympathised with letters and the 
 Mendicants were for the most part hostile to true learning, 
 t ^ lere were vet not a few sincere and enlightened Catholics 
 who looked forward to the establishment throughout Europe 
 
 'Nunc nulla est natio sub Chris- reargued more at length the question 
 
 tiana dicionc in qua non omne dis- which had already been discussed by 
 
 ciplinarum genus (mnHis bene for- Averroes (see supra, pp. 115-7). His 
 
 tunantibuH) eloquentiaj majestatem denial extended only to the philoso- 
 
 eruditionis utilitati adjungit.' Eras- phic evidence, and he readily admitted 
 
 mi Opera, m 360. the authority of revelation. His 
 
 Pomponatius did not, as has of- book was however burnt by the in- 
 
 ten been asserted, himself deny the qnisitors of Venice and placed in the 
 
 immortality of the soul. He Bimply Index.
 
 A.D. 1516. 559 
 
 of a community of men of letters, who while, on the one hand, r " Ap - VI - 
 they extended the pale of orthodox belief, might, on the other, 
 render incalculable service to the diffusion of the religious 
 spirit. Learning and the arts, protected and countenanced 
 by the supreme Head of the Church, would in turn become 
 the most successful propagandists, and would exhibit to the 
 nations of Christendom the sublime mysteries of an historic 
 faith in intimate alliance with all that was best and most 
 humanising in the domain of knowledge. Such at least was 
 undoubtedly the future of which men like Erasmus, Melan- 
 chthon, Reuchlin, Sadolet, More, Colet, Fisher, and many 
 others were dreaming ; when athwart this pleasing creation of 
 their fancy there rushed the thundercloud and the whirl- 
 wind ; and when after the darkness light again returned, it 
 was seen that the old familiar landmarks had disappeared, and 
 like mariners navigating in strange waters, the scholar and 
 the theologian sounded in vain with the old plummet lines, 
 and were compelled to read the heavens anew. 
 
 Turning now to trace the progress at Cambridge of that 
 movement of which Peter de Valence's act was perhaps the 
 first overt indication, we perceive that the protest of the 
 young Norman really marks the commencement of a new 
 chapter in our university history. Hitherto it would seem to 
 have been the pride of Cambridge that novel doctrines found 
 little encouragement within her walls. A formal theology, 
 drawn almost exclusively from mediaeval sources, was all that 
 was taught by her professors or studied by her scholars. To 
 Oxford she resigned alike the allurements of unauthorised 
 speculation and the reproach of Lollardism. It was Lydgate's 
 boast that 
 
 ' by recorde all clarks seyne the same 
 
 Of heresie Cambridge bare never blame 1 .' 
 
 But within ten years after Erasmus left the university, 
 Cambridge was attracting the attention of all England as the 
 centre of a new and formidable revolt from the traditions of 
 the divinity schools. 
 
 1 See Appendix (A).
 
 560 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. Among the scholars of Trinity Hall who came up to the 
 university soon after Erasmus was gone, was a native of 
 
 Thomas Norfolk, one Thomas Bilney ; who to the reputation of an 
 
 ft.'isoo'n. indefatigable student united two less enviable claims to dis- 
 tinction. The one, that of being of very diminutive stature, 
 which caused him to be generally known as ' little Bilney 1 ,' 
 the second, that of being possessed by an aversion to 
 
 His eccentric music that amounted to a monomania. It is a story told by 
 
 character. 
 
 Foxe, that the chamber immediately under Bilney's was 
 occupied by Thirleby, afterwards bishop of Ely, who, at this 
 time at least, was as devoted to music as Bilney was averse ; 
 and whenever Thirleby commenced a tune, sprightly or 
 solemn, on his recorder, Bilney, as though assailed by some 
 evil spirit, forthwith betook himself to prayer. Even at 
 church the strains of the Te Deum and Benedictus only 
 moved him to lamentation ; and he was wont to avow to his 
 pupils that he could only look upon such modes of worship 
 as a mockery of God 2 . By the worldly-minded young civi- 
 lians and canonists of Trinity Hall, it was probably only 
 looked upon as a sign that Bilney's craze had taken a new 
 direction, when it became known that he was manifesting a 
 morbid anxiety about his spiritual welfare, that he fasted 
 often, went on lengthened pilgrimages, and expended all that 
 his scanty resources permitted in the purchase of indul- 
 gences. The whole need not a physician ; and to his fellow 
 students, the poor enthusiast could scarcely have been a less 
 perplexing enigma than Luther to the friars at Wittenberg. 
 In an oft-quoted passage he has recorded in touching language, 
 how completely the only remedies then known in the confes- 
 sional for the conscience-stricken and penitent failed to give 
 ii account him peace. ' There are those physicians,' he says in his letter to 
 tui ex- Tunstal, 'upon whom that woman which was twelve years vexed 
 
 l-vrii-iii. . 
 
 had consumed all that she had, and felt no help, but was 
 still worse and worse, until such time as at the last she came 
 unto Christ, and after she had once touched the hem of his 
 
 1 In this respect Biluey resembled he presents in many respects a sin- 
 
 bis celebrated contemporary and fel- gular likeness. See Bezae Icones. 
 km-warto, Faber or Lefevre, the Foxe-Cattley, iv 621. 
 reformer of Paris, to whom indeed
 
 THOMAS UILNEV. 5C1 
 
 garment through faith, she was so healed that presently she CHAP. VL 
 felt the same in her body. Oh mighty power of the Most 
 Highest! which I also, miserable sinner, have often* tasted 
 and felt. Who before that I could come unto Christ, had 
 even likewise spent all that I had upon those ignorant phy- 
 sicians, that is to say, unlearned hearers of confession, so 
 that there was but small force of strength left in me, which 
 of nature was but weak, small store of money, and very little 
 knowledge or understanding ; for they appointed me fastings, 
 watching, buying of pardons, and masses : in all which things, 
 as I now understand, they sought rather their own gain, than 
 the salvation of my sick and perishing soul 1 .' 
 
 There is perhaps no passage in the records of the Re- The contrast 
 
 Vi 11111 f 1-1 '"st'tuted by 
 
 formation in Eiiijnand, that has been more frequently cited Biiney 
 
 1 J perhaps 
 
 than this, by those whose aim has been to demonstrate the ^^h* 
 existence of an essential difference between the spirit of the b n vp*csunt 
 mediaeval and Romish Church, and the spirit of Protestant- wnters - 
 ism, between the value of outward observances and a 
 mechanical performance of works, and that of an inwardly 
 active and living faith. But it may at least be questioned 
 whether this contrast has not been pressed somewhat beyond 
 its legitimate application. That the clergy throughout 
 Europe, for more than a century before the Reformation, 
 were as a body corrupt, worldly, and degenerate, few, even 
 among Catholic writers, will be ready to deny ; and as was 
 the manner of their life, such was the spirit of their teaching. 
 But that this corruption and degeneracy were a necessary 
 consequence of mediaeval doctrine is far from being equally 
 certain ; nor can we unhesitatingly admit, that if Biiney, at 
 this stage of his religious experiences, had been brought 
 into contact with a spirit like that of Anselm, Bonaventura, 
 Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas a Kempis, or Gerson, he would 
 not have found in considerable measure the consolation that 
 he sought. But men like these were not to be found among 
 the priestly confessors at Cambridge in Biiney 's day, and he 
 accordingly was fain to seek for mental assurance and repose 
 elsewhere. It was at this juncture that, as we have already 
 
 1 British Reformers, i 267. 
 
 36
 
 5G2 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CIIAP. vi. seen, attracted rather by his tastes as a scholar than by the 
 hope of lighting upon new truth, he began to study the 
 m'nt of Novum Testamentum of Erasmus. It was the turning-point 
 in his spiritual life. He became a strenuous opposer of the 
 
 Tlew - superstitions he had before so assiduously practised ; and, 
 though he retained to the last his belief in purgatory and in 
 transubstantiation, was soon known as a student and admirer 
 of the earlier writings of Luther. Notwithstanding his 
 eccentricities, his honest earnest spirit and high attainments 
 won for him the hearing of the more thoughtful among his 
 associates: while his goodness of heart commanded their 
 
 nil character sympathy. 'I have known hitherto few such,' wrote Latimer 
 
 as drawn by J J 
 
 L * Umer - to Sir Edward Baynton, in reviewing his career, ' so prompt 
 and so ready to do every man good after his power, both 
 friend and foe: noisome wittingly to no man, and towards 
 his enemy so charitable, so seeking to reconcile them as he 
 did, I have known yet not many, and to be short, in sum, a 
 very simple good soul, nothing fit or meet for this wretched 
 world 1 .' By Foxe he is styled 'the first framer of the 
 universitie in the knowledge of Christ;' and he is un- 
 doubtedly to be looked upon as, for some years, the leading 
 spirit of the Cambridge Reformers. 
 
 lt 1 Trto l u erti I Q h^ s own c H e g e Bilney's converts were not numerous ; 
 nor should we look to find a keen interest in theological 
 questions in a society professedly devoted to legal studies. 
 It is also probable that any open declaration of novel 
 opinions would there have soon been met by repressive 
 measures, for among the more influential members of the 
 college at this time, was Stephen Gardiner, already dis- 
 tinguished by his attainments not only in the canon and 
 civil law but also in the new learning, who in 1525 suc- 
 ceeded to the mastership*. We meet however with a few 
 names that indicate the working of Bilney's influence. Among 
 these was Thomas Arthur, who in 1520 migrated to St. John's, 
 having been elected a fellow of that society on the nomina- 
 tion of the bishop of Ely 8 , and who about the same time was 
 
 1 Latimcr-Corrie, n 830. Cooper, Athena, i 139. 
 
 3 Ibid, i 4c>.
 
 THOMAS BILNEY. 563 
 
 appointed master of St. Mary's Hostel. There was also a CHAP. vi. 
 young man of good family, named William Paget, afterwards ^""* 
 lord high steward of the university and a watchful guardian p "* ct> 
 of its interests. He is said to have delivered a course of 
 lectures in the college on Melanchthon's Rhetoric, and to 
 have actively circulated Luther's earlier writings 1 . One 
 Richard Smith, a doctor of canon law, perhaps completes the nd Richard 
 list of Bilney's followers among his fellow-collegians. In HI influence 
 
 J especially 
 
 another relation however his influence is to be far more , tl ,5J[? 
 distinctly traced. Local associations, as we have before ^nVoun'fy 
 noticed 2 , retained their hold, in those days, even among 
 university men, with remarkable tenacity ; and Bilney, as a 
 native of the county of Norfolk, found his chief sympathisers 
 and supporters among Norfolk men*. Among this number 
 was Thomas Forman, a fellow of Queens' College, and sub- Thomas 
 
 i / i i * i TT Forrann of 
 
 sequently for a short time president of the society. He was Queem 1 . 
 somewhat Bilney's senior, and his position in the university 
 enabled him to be of signal service in secreting and pre- 
 serving many of Luther's works when these had been pro- 
 hibited by the authorities 4 . In the year 1521, the governing 
 body of the same college received from queen Catherine a 
 letter desiring them to elect to a vacant fellowship another 
 Norfolk man, a native of Norwich, of the name of John John 
 Lambert. He had already been admitted bachelor and his o^mu'. 
 attainments were considerable, but from some unassigned 
 cause his master and tutors declined to give the usual cer- 
 tificate of learning and character. The election however was 
 ultimately made, and Lambert was soon numbered among 
 
 1 In so doing, it would seem that generally. Strype, speaking of Nix, 
 
 he mast have managed to evade de- says, ' Some part of his diocese was 
 
 tection at the time, for he was sub- bounded with the sea, and Ipswich 
 
 sequently taken by Gardiner into his and Yarmouth, and other places of 
 
 household, when the latter became considerable traffic, were under his 
 
 bishop of Winchester. See Cooper, jurisdiction. And so there happened 
 
 Athena, i 221. many merchants and mariners, who, 
 
 3 See supra, p. 239. by converse from abroad, had re- 
 
 3 It is of course also to be remem- ceived knowledge of the truth, and 
 
 bered that Norfolk, from its traffic brought in divers good books.' Me- 
 
 with the continent, was one of the mortals of Crcmmer, p. 42. 
 
 counties that first became acquainted 4 Cooper, Athena, i 37; Fuller- 
 
 with Luther's doctrines, but this Prickett and Wright, p. 202. 
 would apply to the eastern counties 
 
 30 2
 
 564 
 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 Nicholas 
 Hhaxton of 
 (Jonville 
 Hall. 
 
 Oonrille 
 Hall noted 
 for its sym- 
 pathy with 
 the Re- 
 formers. 
 
 John Thix- 
 
 tillof 
 
 1'embrokc. 
 
 Robert 
 Barnes, 
 prior of the 
 Augustinum 
 friars. 
 
 Character of 
 the Augus- 
 tinians as a 
 body. 
 
 Bilney's converts, and subsequently played a conspicuous 
 part in connexion with the new movement 1 . Another 
 Norfolk man, of about Bilney's academic standing, was 
 Nicholas Shaxton, fellow of Gonville Hall, and also president 
 of the society ; in after life, as bishop of Sarum, though his 
 sympathies were certainly with the Keformers, he brought 
 no little discredit on the cause by a vacillating policy and at 
 one time by actual recantation ; but during his residence at 
 Cambridge he seems to have boldly advocated Lutheran 
 doctrines, and under his influence the college probably re- 
 ceived that bias which caused Nix, the malevolent and 
 worthless bishop of Norwich, to declare at a later time, that 
 he had heard of no clerk coming from the college 'but 
 savoured of the frying-pan, spake he never so holily Y From 
 the county of Norfolk came also John Thixtill, fellow of Pem- 
 broke, a warm supporter of the Reformation and also known 
 as an able disputant in the schools ; but the most conspicuous 
 of all those who, from their intercourse with Bilney as his 
 countymen, were led to adopt his religious opinions, was 
 undoubtedly Robert Barnes, a Norfolk man from the neigh- 
 bourhood of King's Lynn, and at this time prior of the 
 community of Augustinian friars 3 at Cambridge. 
 
 The Augustinians would seem at this period to have 
 generally deserved the credit, whatever that might be worth, 
 of being the least degenerate, as they were the least wealthy 4 , 
 of the four Mendicant orders. They shewed evidence of 
 being actuated by a more genuine religious sentiment and 
 
 1 Cooper, A thence, i 67. 
 
 * Ibid, i 158. Nix was a member 
 of Trinity Hall and founded three 
 fellowships in that society. 'A vici- 
 ous and dissolute man, as Godwin 
 writes.' Strype'a Memorial* of Cran- 
 mer, pp. 40, 694-6. 
 
 9 It may be of service here to dis- 
 tinguish between the Augustinian 
 canon* (or canons regular), and the 
 Augufitinian friars, ns existing at this 
 period at Cambridge. The former 
 were represented by the priory at 
 Barnwell and the dissolved commu- 
 nity of the Brethren of the Hospital 
 of St. John; tho latter, over whom 
 
 Barnes presided, had their house on 
 the site of the old Botanical Gardens, 
 to the south of what was formerly 
 known as the Peas Market. The 
 former order was first established in 
 1105 : the latter first came to England 
 in 1252. See Dugdale, Monaticon, 
 vi 38, 1591; Cole MSS. xxxi 213; 
 Wright and Jones, Memorials, vol. 
 ii ; Baker-Mayor, p. 48. 
 
 4 They do not appear to have re- 
 ceived, like the Franciscans and Do- 
 minicans at both universities, any 
 grants from the crown. See Brewer, 
 Lettert and Papers, n 365.
 
 ROBERT BARNES. 565 
 
 were distinguished by a more unselfish activity. At Oxford CHAP. VL 
 they had almost engrossed the tuition of grammar 1 , and at 
 one time were noted for giving their instruction gratuitously*. 
 The houses of their order in Germany had listened to many 
 a discussion on grave questions of Church reform, long before 
 either Luther or Melanchthon made their appeal to the 
 judgement and conscience of the nation. At Cambridge 
 their church, as not included within the episcopal jurisdiction, 
 gave audience on more than one occasion to the voice of the 
 reformer, when all the other pulpits were closed against him ; 
 while tradition attributes to a former prior of the same house, 
 one John Tonnys, the credit of having aspired to a know- John 
 ledge of Greek, at a ti'me when the study had found scarcely <* ^- 
 a single advocate in the university 3 . In the year 1514 
 Barnes, then only a lad, had been admitted a member of this 
 community ; and, as he gave evidence of considerable pro- 
 mise, was soon after sent to study at Louvain, where he Bames 
 remained for some years*. The theological reputation of that at Louvain. 
 university at this period, led not a few Englishmen to give 
 it the preference to Paris ; and during Barnes' residence it 
 acquired additional lustre by the foundation of the famous 
 collegium trilingue. The founder of the college, Jerome Jerome 
 Busleiden, a descendant of a noble family in the province of 
 Luxembourg, was distinguished as a patron of letters and 
 well known to most of the eminent scholars of his age. His 
 reputation among them not a little resembles that of our 
 Richard of Bury, and Erasmus describes him as omnium 
 librorum emacissimus*. It need scarcely be added that, with 
 tastes like these, he was an ardent sympathiser with the Foundatio 
 Humanists in their contests at the universities. Dying in 
 the year 1517, he left provision in his will for the foundation 
 
 1 Anstey, Introd. to Munimtnta tris grammaticse convertatur ad usum 
 
 Academica, p. Ixiii. magistrorum scholarum apud fratrea 
 
 3 'Et quia magistri scholarum Augustinenses.' Ibid. p. 363. 
 
 apud fratres Augustinenses, in dis- 3 Cooper, Athena, i 14. 
 
 . putationibus ibidem habitis, sine 4 Ibid, i 74. 
 
 mercede graves sustinent labores, 5 Neve, Memoire Historique et Lit- 
 
 magistri autem grainmaticze sine la- teraire sur le College des Trois-Lan- 
 
 boribus ad onus universitatis salaria gues d FUniversite de Louvain (1856), 
 
 percipiunt, ideo statuimus et ordiua- p. 40. 
 mus, quod ipsa suruma data magis-
 
 566 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. of a well-endowed college, which, while similar in its design 
 to the foundation of bishop Fox at Oxford, represented a yet 
 bolder effort in favour of the new learning, being exclusively 
 dedicated to the study of the three learned languages, 
 Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The measure was singularly 
 opportune; for the party whom it was designed to aid, 
 j*iouy of though now inspirited by the presence of Erasmus in their 
 
 tliecuuMU'- . , 11 i -r i i 
 
 vathea. midst, was still but a small minority ; and xJarnes, during his 
 sojourn at Louvain, must have witnessed not only the rise of 
 the new college, but also many demonstrations, on the part of 
 the theologians, of jealousy and alarm, almost as senseless 
 and undignified as those of which Oxford was at the same 
 time the scene 1 . He remained long enough however to see 
 
 B*rnere- the star of the Humanists manifestly on the ascendant: and 
 
 turn* to 4 J 
 
 tth lb i^* e ciL returned to Cambridge an avowed champion of the cause 
 and with largely augmented stores of learning. With him 
 came also one William Paynell, who had been his pupil at 
 Louvain, and who now cooperated with him as a teacher at 
 Cambridge*. Under their united efforts the house of the 
 
 HU lectures Augustinian friars acquired a considerable reputation ; and 
 many a young student now listened within its walls, for the 
 first time and with wondering delight, to the pure Latinity 
 and graceful sentiment of Terence, Plautus, and Cicero. It 
 is evident however that a follower of Erasmus could scarcely 
 rest content within these limits of innovation ; the lectures 
 on the classics were soon followed by lectures on the Scrip- 
 tures > an d Barn cs, in the language of Foxe, ' putting aside 
 Duns and Dorbel*,' this is to say the schoolmen and the 
 
 1 ' Quond le nouveau college venait multitudinous commentators on Pe- 
 
 d'fitre ouvert pr&R du man-he aux trus Hispanus. Prantl (Gesch. d. 
 
 PoisBons, des Itudiants de la faculte* Logik, iv 175) speaks of him as 'ein 
 
 des arts, excited peut-etre par Tun oil viel gelesener und haufig benutzter 
 
 I'autrede leur maitres ou bien par leur Autor, welcher (abgesehen von seiner 
 
 mlpris uaturel pour les belles-lettres, Erlauterung des Senteutiarius und 
 
 prenaient plai.sir & crier partout: der aristotelischen Physik) zu Petrus 
 
 Not non loquimur Latinum de foro Hispanns einen omschreibenden und 
 
 Piicium ted loquimur Latinum ma- zugleich im Einzeln reichlich be- 
 
 trit noitne facultati*.' Ibid. p. 62. lebrenden Commentar verfasste.' 
 
 Andrea, Fa*ti Academici ttudii gene- Dorbellus says in bis preface, 'Juxta 
 
 ralii Lovtatieiuit, p. 277. doctoris subtilis Scoti mentem aliqua 
 
 Cooper, A theme, i 78. logicalia pro juvenibus super sum- 
 
 Nicholaii de OrMli* or Dorbellus mnlns Petri Hispani breviter euo- 
 
 (d. 1155), waj one of the beat of the dabo.' In one of his prefaces we
 
 GEORGE STAFFORD. 567 
 
 Byzantine logic, next began to comment on the Pauline CHAP. vi. 
 Epistles. 
 
 It is evident from the testimony of contemporaries, that 
 Barnes' lectures were eagerly listened to and commanded 
 respect by their real merit 1 ; but whatever might have been 
 the views of the academic authorities, the lecturer was beyond 
 their control. There is however good reason for believing 
 that his efforts formed a precedent for a similar and yet 
 more successful innovation, shortly afterwards commenced 
 by George Stafford within the university itself. This emi- 
 
 nent Cambridge Reformer was a fellow of Pembroke and dis- M.A. i5k 
 
 d. 1529. 
 
 tinguished by his attainments in the three learned languages* ; 
 and on becoming bachelor of divinity was appointed an 
 ' ordinary ' lecturer in theology. In this capacity, as a recog- 
 nised instructor of the university, he had the boldness alto- He lectures 
 gether to discard the Sentences for the Scriptures 8 , a measure tureghisteCi 
 that could scarcely have failed to evoke considerable criti- 
 cism ; but the unrivalled reputation and popularity of the 
 lecturer seem to have shielded him from interference, and 
 for four years, from about 1524 to 1529, he continued to 
 expound to enthusiastic audiences the Gospels and Epistles. 
 Among his hearers was a Norfolk lad, the celebrated Thomas 
 Becon, who in after years, and perhaps with something of the 
 
 * 
 
 . . . estimate of 
 
 exaggeration that often accompanies the reminiscences of the value of 
 youth, recorded his impressions of his instructor's eloquence. 
 His sense of the services rendered by his teacher to the cause 
 of Scriptural truth, was such that he even ventures to hazard 
 
 meet, for the first time, with the oft- Jewel of Joy (ed. Ayre), 426. 
 quoted memorial verses on the sub- * That is to say, exactly like Lu- 
 
 jects embraced in the trivium and ther at Wittenberg, Stafford chose to 
 
 quadrivium, be a doctor biblicus rather than a doc- 
 
 ' Gram' loquitur, 'Dia' veradocet, tor sententiarius. This step, which 
 
 ' Ehet ' verba colorat, D'Aubigne" and others have spoken of 
 
 'Mus' canit, 'Ar' numerat, 'Ge' as a previously unheard-of innova- 
 
 ponderat, ' Ast ' colit astra. tion, was of course strictly within 
 
 1 ' Surely he [Barnes] is alone in the discretion permitted by the sta- 
 
 handling a piece of Scripture, and in tutes, though the Scriptures had been 
 
 setting forth of Christ he hath no for a long period almost totally neg- 
 
 fellow.' Latimer to Cromwell, Lati- lected by the lecturers appointed in 
 
 mer-Corrie, n 389. the universities. See supra, p. 363, 
 
 3 ' A man of very perfect life, and n. 2; Walch, xvi 2061; Mathesius, 
 
 npprovedly learned in the Hebrew, Lutheri Vita, p. 7. 
 Greek, and Latin tongues.' Becon,
 
 568 
 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vr. 
 
 Barnes and 
 Stafford 
 dispute in 
 the divinity 
 schools. 
 
 Ramos 
 converted 
 to Bilney'a 
 religioua 
 viewg. 
 
 a doubt, whether Stafford's debt of gratitude to St. Paul was 
 not fully equalled by St. Paul's obligations to Stafford, so 
 successful was the latter in exhibiting, in all their native 
 vigour and beauty of thought, the divinely inspired elo- 
 quence and wisdom which had before been hopelessly ob- 
 scured by the 'foolish fantasies and elvish expositions of 
 doting doctors 1 .' 
 
 Concurrently with these efforts both Barnes and Stafford 
 ventured on the yet bolder course of challenging for their 
 new method of instruction the attention of the schools. The 
 former indeed was throughout his career distinguished rather 
 by zeal than discretion 2 , and shortly before Stafford com- 
 menced his 'act' as bachelor of divinity, began to appear as 
 a disputant on qucastiones bearing on Christian doctrine, and 
 taken in all probability from the New Testament. According 
 to Foxe, Stafford, as a bachelor keeping his 'act' in the 
 schools, was called upon to reply 'to Barnes and was the 
 prior's first respondent. ' Which disputation,' says the Mar- 
 tyrologist, 'was marvellous in the sight of the great blind 
 doctors, and joyful to the godly spirited 3 .' 
 
 After a renunciation of the old for the new learning, and 
 of scholastic for scriptural divinity, the surrender of mediaeval 
 for apostolic doctrine was easy, perhaps inevitable. It was 
 not long before the prior was himself, in turn, called upon to 
 
 1 'I doubt whether he was more 
 bound to blessed 1'aul for leaving 
 those godly epistles behind him, to 
 instruct and teach the congregation 
 of God, whereof he was a dear mem- 
 ber, or that Paul, which before had 
 KO many years been foiled with the 
 foolish fantasies and elvish expo- 
 sitions of certain doting doctors, and, 
 as it were, drowned in the dirty dregs 
 of the drowsy duncers, was rallier 
 bound unto him, seeing that by liin 
 industry, labour, pain, and diligence, 
 he seemed of a dead man to make 
 him alive again, and putting away 
 all unseemliness to net him forth in 
 his native colours; so that now he is 
 both seen, read, and heard not with- 
 out great and singular pleasures of 
 them that travail in the studies of 
 his most godly epistles. Aiid as he 
 
 beautified the letter of blessed Paul 
 with his godly expositions, so like- 
 wise did he learnedly set forth in his 
 lectures the native sense and true 
 understanding of the four evangel- 
 ists, vivcly restoring unto us the 
 apostles mind, and the mind of those 
 holy writers, which so many years 
 before hl lien unknown and ob- 
 scured through the darkness and 
 mints of the Pharisees and papists.' 
 Ik-con, Jewel of Joy (cd. Ayre), 4'2(5. 
 For an illustration of Stafford's me- 
 thod of lecturing see Latimer-Corrie, 
 i 440. 
 
 2 Latimer in writing to Cromwell in 
 lf37 evidently implies that he con- 
 siders Barnes to be wanting in 
 'moderation and temperance of him- 
 self.' Latimer-Corrie, n 378. 
 
 3 Foxe-Cattley, v 415.
 
 LUTHER'S WORKS. 
 
 569 
 
 listen to arguments which he found it hard to refute, and CIIAP. vi. 
 was added to the number of Bilney's converts. Under the *~~" 
 combined efforts and influence of these three, Bilney, 
 Barnes, and Stafford, the work of reform went on apace ; 
 while at the same time the introduction of new contributions 
 to the literature of the cause began to give to the movement 
 at Cambridge a more definite aim and a distincter outline. 
 
 In the year 1520 appeared those three famous treatises Appearance 
 by Luther 1 , wherein by general consent is to be recognised early 
 the commencement and foundation of the doctrines of the 
 Reformers 2 . From their first appearance it was seen that 
 the religious world was now called upon to choose not merely 
 
 1 These were (1) The A n den christ- 
 lichen Adel deutscher Nation (an ad- 
 dress to the nobles of Germany on 
 the Christian condition) ; ('2) The De 
 Captivitate Babylonica; (3) The Von 
 der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen. 
 In the first of these Luther attacks 
 the Romish distinction between the 
 rights of the laity and of the clergy 
 in the Church ; developing, in con- 
 tradistinction, the idea of the inde- 
 pendent Christian state on the basis 
 of a universal Christian priestliood. 
 He also disputes the claim of the 
 pope to be the sole interpreter of 
 Scripture, and denies his exclusive 
 right to convene oecumenical coun- 
 cils. He next proceeds to indicate 
 propositions of reform to he discussed 
 at a general free council; and, in 
 particular, demands a reformation of 
 the whole system of education, from 
 the grammar school to the university, 
 and the. displacement of the Sentences 
 for the Bible. He also advises the 
 'rejection of all Aristotle's writings 
 that relate to moral or natural philo- 
 sophy, but is willing that tin Orga- 
 nou, the Rhetoric, and the Poetics 
 should continue to be studied. The 
 whole host of commentators are how- 
 ever to be abolished. The studies 
 he most strongly recommends are 
 Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, mathe- 
 matics, and history, of which last he 
 says, ' welche ich befehle verstandi- 
 gen, und sich selbst wohl geben 
 wiirde, so man mit Ernst uach eiuer 
 Reformation trachtete ; und f iirwahr 
 viel daran gelegen ist.' Walch, x 
 
 370-80. The De Captivitate Baby- 
 lonica was a fierce attack on the 
 special dogmas of Romanism; in- 
 stead of seven sacraments Luther 
 admitted only three, baptism, the 
 Lord's Supper, and repentance. A 
 lengthened analysis of this is given 
 in Lewis, Life of Fisher, c. xi. The 
 third treatise is comparatively free 
 from the polemical element, and is 
 devoted to an exposition of the work- 
 ing of faith and love as living prin- 
 ciples in the true believer. An able 
 criticism of each work is given by 
 Dornor, Hint, of Protestant Theology 
 (Clark's series), i 97-113. 
 
 8 ' It is the Reformation proclaimed 
 in these writings and no other, which 
 the German nation has accepted.' 
 Doruer, Ibid. 'In diesen Schriften 
 thtit sich zwischen der neneu Lehre 
 uuJ der alteii Kirche ein Abgrund auf , 
 der nicht inehr uberbriickt werden 
 konute. Verwerfungderganzeu kirch- 
 licheu Ueberlieferung und jeder 
 kirrhlichen Autoritat, Aufstellung 
 ernes Dogma tiber das Verhaltniss 
 des Meuscheu zu Gott, von welchem 
 der Urheber selbst bekauute, dass es 
 scit den Zeiteu der Apostel bis auf 
 ihu der ganzen Kirche unbekanut 
 geblieben sei, diese Dinge traten 
 uuverhiillt hervor. Die Forderung 
 lautete nicht mehr wie bis dahin: 
 dans die Kirche sich reformiren solle 
 an Haupt und Gliedern, sondcrn auf- 
 losen solle sie sich, und das Qericht 
 der Selbstzerstb'rung an sich vollzte- 
 hcn.' Dollinger, Kirche und Kirchcn, 
 p. 67.
 
 570 
 
 THE REFORMATION, 
 
 CHAP. vi. 
 
 These 
 
 writinpt 
 
 
 Rapid spread 
 
 of the 
 
 Lutheran 
 
 doctrines In 
 
 adrerws to 
 
 extreme 
 
 uieMure*. 
 
 ipibuii 
 
 W Itten- 
 
 between conservatism and reform, but between conservatism 
 and revolution, and that a new path, altogether independent 
 of that of the Humanists, had been struck out, leading few 
 could venture to say whither. At Paris, these writings were 
 
 * 
 
 nan ded over for examination to the doctors of the Sorboune, 
 an d Crevier represents all Europe as waiting for the decision 
 of that learned body 1 . But in England the decision that was 
 most anxiously awaited was undoubtedly that of the London 
 Conference. The rapidity with which the new doctrines were 
 spreading in this country, soon became a fact that it was im- 
 possible to disguise, and fully justified the confidence with 
 which the Lutherans in Germany anticipated the responsive 
 echo on the English shores. ' We will send them to England,' 
 said the German printers, when the nuncio Aleander notified 
 that Luther's works were prohibited throughout the empire ; 
 and to England the volumes were sent. The commercial 
 intercourse between the eastern counties and the continent 
 renc iered their introduction a matter of comparative ease ; 
 an d Cambridge, drawing as she did a large proportion of her 
 students from those districts, was necessarily one of the 
 earliest centres that became familiarised with the Lutheran 
 doctrines 1 . Nix, furious at the spread of heresy in his 
 diocese, called loudly for repressive measures. Wolsey how- 
 
 . J . . . . . . , 
 
 ever, who saw how impolitic would be a system of violent 
 
 _ f * 
 
 repression amid such unmistakeable proofs of the tendency of 
 popular feeling, shewed little eagerness to play the part of a 
 persecutor, and pleaded that his powers from Rome did not 
 authorise him to order the burning of Lutheran books 8 . But 
 on the tenth of December, 1520, Luther still further roused 
 the fury of his antagonists, by publicly burning the papal 
 bull, along with sundry volumes of the canon law, at Witten- 
 berg. It was then that Wolsey convened a conference in 
 
 1 Luther's writings were condemn- 
 ed by the Borbonue to be burnt, 
 April 21, 1521. 
 
 * The rapid spread of Luther's 
 writings in Europe is remarkable. 
 The writer of the able article on the 
 Reformer in Herzog's Rral-Enryklo- 
 padie (viii 578) stales that even in 
 
 1519 they had penetrated into France, 
 England, and Italy; and Erasmus 
 writing so early as May 15, 1520, to 
 OZcolampadius, states that they had 
 narrowly escaped being burned in 
 England. Brewer, Lettert and Pa- 
 pen, m 284. 
 3 Ibid, in 455.
 
 LUTHER'S WORKS. 571 
 
 London, to sit, as the Sorbonne had long been sitting, in CIIAP.VI. 
 judgement on the obnoxious volumes. In these proceedings woiwy 
 some of the most influential men at Oxford and Cambridge coSfcrenc. 
 
 in London. 
 
 took part, and about three weeks after the Sorbonne had { n ^!? binua 
 given its decision, the conference arrived at a similarly ad- u^S 
 verse conclusion 1 . The Lutheran treatises were publicly ultne'rT*' 
 burnt, on the twelfth of May, in the churchyard at Paul's at i-aurl 
 Cross* : and Fisher, in a sermon delivered on the occasion in May 12, 1521. 
 
 Fisher s 
 
 the presence of Wolsey and numerous other magnates, not J2Jt 
 only denounced the condemned volumes as heretical and Luther - 
 pernicious, but in his excess of religious zeal and indignation, 
 declared that Luther, in burning the pope's bull, had clearly 
 shewn that he would have burnt the pope too had he been 
 able. The saying was not forgotten ; and a few years after, 
 when Tyndale's New Testament was treated in like fashion, 
 the translator caustically observed, that the bishops in burn- 
 ing Christ's word had of course shewn that they would will- 
 ingly have also burnt its Divine Author 3 . 
 
 Within two days after Fisher's sermon, Wolsey issued woisey au- 
 his mandates to all the bishops in England, ' to take order general 
 
 search for 
 
 that any books, written or printed, of Martin Luther's errors J;^'^ 
 and heresies, should be brought in to the bishop of each 
 respective diocese ; and that every such bishop receiving such 
 books and writings should send them up to him 4 .' And be- Luther's 
 
 ... . books burnt 
 
 fore the Easter term was over similar conflagrations were at ' ) ! ord 
 
 and ( aiu- 
 
 instituted at both universities, that at Cambridge being brid e - 
 held under the joint auspices of Wolsey, Fisher, and Bullock 8 . 
 
 1 ' Whereupon after consultation zer, the maker and contriver thereof, 
 
 had, they' [the authorities at Oxford] and his books also burnt both here 
 
 ' appointed Thomas Brinkuell, about and at Cambridge.' Wood- Gutch,n 19. 
 
 this time of Lincoln College, John * Brewer, Letters and Papers, in 
 
 Kyuton, a Minorite, John Roper, 485. 
 
 lately of Magdalen College, and * Lewis, Life of Fisher, n 21 ; De- 
 John de Coloribus, doctors of di- maus, Life of Tyndale, p. 150. 
 vinity, who meeting at that place 4 Strype; Memorials, i 55-6. 
 divers learned men and bishops in 8 Wood (see supra, note 1) is 
 a solemn convocation in the cardi- right in placing these conflagrations 
 nal's house, and finding his doctrine in 1521. Cooper (Annals, i 30&-4), 
 to be for the most part repugnant who took his extracts of the proctors' 
 to the present used in England, accounts from Baker and has regu- 
 solemnly condemned it : a testimony larly placed them at the beginning of 
 of which was afterwards sent to Ox- each year, has thus left it to be in- 
 ford and fastened on the dial in St. ferrcd that the burning at Cambridge 
 Mary's churchyard by Nicholas Krat- took place in 1520-1; and 11. Parker
 
 572 
 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 King Henry 
 and higher 
 write Against 
 Luther. 
 
 Meetings of 
 tin- Reform- 
 er* at Cam- 
 bridge. 
 
 The ' White 
 Horse.' 
 
 Then, in the following year, king Henry himself compiled 
 his celebrated polemic, Contra Martinum Lutherum Hairesi- 
 archon ; and in 1523 appeared Fisher's Assertionis Lutheranas 
 Confutatio. Yet still, in spite of pope, king, chancellor, and 
 lawgiver, the religious movement at Cambridge continued to 
 gather strength, and to the systematic study of the Scriptures 
 there was now added that of the Lutheran doctrines. 
 
 It was not possible however to treat the edicts of Rome, 
 enforced as they were by the action of the authorities in 
 England, with an indifference like that which had confronted 
 the denouncers of Erasmus's New Testament, and a policy of 
 caution and secrecy had now become indispensable. It was 
 accordingly resolved to appoint a place of meeting where dis- 
 cussions might be held in comparative freedom from the 
 espionage of the college. On the present site of the Bull 
 Inn or closely adjacent to it, there stood in those days the 
 White Horse Inn, at that time the property of Catherine 
 Hall 1 . A lane, known as Mill Street, passed then as now to 
 the rear of the buildings that fronted the main street, and 
 afforded to the students from the colleges in the northern 
 part of the town, the means of entering the inn with less risk 
 of observation 8 . The White Horse was accordingly chosen 
 as the place of rendezvous ; and as the meetings before long 
 
 (Hist, of Cambridge, p. 197), actually 
 states that it was in 1520. But the 
 following entries by the proctors 
 (Grace Book, B 411, 416), coming as 
 they do at the conclusion of the en- 
 tries for the Easter term, 1521, 
 clearly shew that the proceedings 
 were consequent upon the decision 
 i of the conference held in London: 
 Expema, .Senior/* Proctoris: ' Item 
 solutum Petro bedello misso do- 
 iiiinn Cardinuli et Cuncellario cum 
 literis pro operibus Lutheri, 20.' 
 Expenta Junior in Proctoris: 'Item 
 Bolvi doctori Bullocke pro.expensis 
 Londiui circa examiuationem Lu- 
 theri ad maudatum domini Cardi- 
 nalis, 53*. 4d.' ' Item doctori Urn- 
 frey pro ejus expensis in consi- 
 mili negotio, 53*. 4d.' 'Item doc- 
 toribuH Watson et Itid'.ey pro eorum 
 expenais in eodem negotio, 5. 6*. Sd.' 
 'Item doctori Nycolas gercnti locum 
 
 vice Cancellarii pro munere quod 
 dedit tabellario domini Cardiualis, 4*.* 
 'Item eidem pro consimili munere da- 
 to tabellario Regine, 4*.' ' Item eidem 
 pro potu et aliis expensis circa combue- 
 tionem librorum Martini Lutheri, 2*.' 
 
 1 'The sign of the White Horse 
 remains, but it appears doubtful if 
 the old White Horse mentioned by 
 Strype in his Annals, has not given 
 way to the Bull Inn : especially as all 
 that ground does belong to Catherine 
 Hall, and there is no record of the 
 college having parted with the White 
 Horse, which was once their pro- 
 perty.' Smith, Cambridge Portfolio, 
 p. 364. Mr Smith conjectures, from 
 an indenture referred to in the re- 
 gister of Catherine Hall, that the 
 White Horse stood ' on the site now 
 occupied by Mr Jones's house and 
 the present King's Lane.' Ibid. 531. 
 
 * Strype, Memorialt, i 568-9.
 
 THE WHITE HORSE. 573 
 
 became notorious in the university, and those who frequented CTIAP. VL 
 them were reported to be mainly occupied with Luther's 
 writings, the inn became known . as ' Germany,' while its The inn 
 frequenters were called the ' Germans.' With these increased knnM 
 
 * , e 'Germany. 
 
 facilities the little company increased rapidly in numbers. 
 
 Their gatherings were held nominally under the presidency 
 
 -. . . J presiden at 
 
 01 -Barnes, whose position enabled him to defy the academic the meeting* 
 
 Miaxton, 
 
 censures, but there can be no doubt that Bilney's diminu- 
 tive form was the really central figure. Around him were 
 
 gathered not a few already distinguished in the university Hevnes, 
 and destined to wider fame. From Gonville Hall came not ""' 
 
 laverner, 
 
 only Shaxton, but also Crome the president of that society, ^rnJr and 
 and John Skip, who subsequently succeeded, like Shaxton, to "iidh l e r * 
 the office of master, a warm friend, in after life, of the ' 
 Reformers, and at one time chaplain to Anne Boleyn. Under- 
 graduates and bachelors stole in, in the company of masters 
 of arts. Among them John Rogers (the protomartyr of 
 queen Mary's reign) from Pembroke, with John Thixtill of 
 the same college, the latter already university preacher, and 
 one whose ipse dixit was regarded as a final authority in the 
 divinity schools. Queens' College perhaps, as Strype sug- 
 gests, not disinclined to cherish the traditions of the great 
 scholar who had once there found a home, sent Forman its 
 president and with him Bilney's ill-fated convert, John Lam- 
 bert ; and not improbably Heynes, also afterwards president 
 of the college and one of the compilers of the first English 
 liturgy. John Mallory came in from Christ's ; John Frith 
 from King's; Taverner, a lad just entered at Corpus, and 
 Matthew Parker, just admitted to his bachelor's degree, 
 came perhaps under the escort of William Warner, 'up' 
 from his Norfolk living. Such were the men who, together 
 with those already mentioned as Bilney's followers, and many 
 more whose names have passed away, made up the earlier 
 gatherings in ' Germany.' 
 
 In the old-fashioned inn, as at the meetings of the primi- character or 
 tive Christians, were heard again, freed from the sophistries 
 and misconstructions of mediaeval theology, the glowing 
 utterances of the great apostle of the Gentiles. There also,
 
 574 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vr. for the first time, the noble thoughts of Luther sank deeply 
 into many a heart ; while his doctrines, if not invariably 
 accepted 1 , were tested by honest and devout enquiry and by 
 the sole standard of Scriptural truth. To men who had 
 known many a weary vigil over the fanciful and arid subtle- 
 ties of Aquinas or Nicholas de Lyra, this grand but simple 
 teaching came home with power. Turning from a too ab- 
 sorbing study of tessellated pavement, elaborate ornament, 
 and cunning tracery, their eyes drank in, for the first time, 
 the sublime proportions of the whole. The wranglings of the 
 theologians and the clamour of the schools died away and 
 were forgotten in the rapture of a more perfect knowledge. 
 ' So oft,' said one of the youngest of the number, as in after 
 years he looked back upon those gatherings, ' so oft as I was 
 in the company of these brethren, methought I was quietly 
 placed in the new glorious Jerusalem 2 .' 
 
 It was a favorite mode of expressing contempt among 
 
 those who disliked the movement at the time, and one which 
 
 has been adopted by some modern writers, to speak of those 
 
 who thus met, and of the Cambridge Reformers generally, as 
 
 The cam- 'young men ;' but the ages of Barnes, Coverdale, Arthur, 
 
 Bftmntn Crome, Latimer, and Tyndale, are sufficient to shew that the 
 
 not all young . . 
 
 reproach thus implied of rashness and immaturity of judge- 
 ment was far from being altogether applicable. And on the 
 other hand it is to be remembered that it is not often among 
 men in middle life, in whom the enthusiasm of youth has 
 subsided, whose opinions are fully formed, and round whom 
 social ties have multiplied, that designs like those of these 
 Cambridge students are conceived and carried out. That 
 
 stance* that , . 
 
 tr those designs were not adopted until after long and earnest 
 counsel and thought will scarcely be denied ; and if in the 
 ^?^ nt final ordeal some lacked the martyr's heroism, it is also to be 
 remembered, that as yet the sentiments which most powerfully 
 sustained the resolution of subsequent Reformers were partly 
 wanting, and that religious conviction was not as yet rein- 
 
 1 Barnes (see infra, p. 680) appears, case with others, as for instance 
 
 at least while at Cambridge, not to Matthew Parker and Shaiton. 
 
 gire his assent to Lather's doctrinal Becon-Ayre, n 426. 
 theology, and this was certainly the
 
 THE WHITE HORSE. 575 
 
 forced by the political feeling with which the Reformation CTIAP. rr. 
 afterwards became associated, when the Protestant repre- 
 sented a widespread organisation actuated by a common 
 policy, which it was regarded as treachery to desert. 
 
 It was not long before intelligence of the meetings at the Thdrn**- 
 White Horse and of the circulation of Luther's works in the m* Lowion. 
 university, reached the ears of the ecclesiastical authorities 
 in London, and some of the bishops are said to have urged 
 the appointment of a special commission of enquiry, but the 
 proposal was negatived by Wolsey in his capacity of legate 1 , woiwyde- 
 Wherever indeed the cardinal's personal feelings and in-^P ' 1 ? 1 ? 
 
 commission 
 
 terests were not involved, it must be acknowledged that his of eu v^- 
 acts were generally those of an able, tolerant, and sagacious 
 minister. It is probable moreover that in the designs which 
 he had already conceived in connexion with the property of 
 the monasteries, he foresaw the opposition and unpopularity 
 which he should have to encounter from those whose interests 
 would be thereby most closely affected ; he would therefore 
 naturally be desirous of enlisting on his side the goodwill of 
 the opposite party, and at Cambridge the sympathies of that 
 party with the new doctrines were too obvious to be ignored. 
 Unfortunately it was not long before he was compelled to 
 adopt a different policy ; and the indiscretion of the leader 
 of the Reformers at Cambridge soon gave their enemies the 
 opportunity they sought. 
 
 On the eve of Christmas-Day, 1525, Barnes was preaching Barnes- 
 in St. Edward's Church 8 . We shall hereafter be better able cnrutmM 
 to explain how it was that he was preaching there instead 162S - 
 of in the church of his own convent. His text, taken from 
 the Epistle of the day 8 , was one which might well have 
 
 1 'When reports were brought to of hig impeachment).' Burnet-Po- 
 
 court of a company that were in cock, i 70. 
 
 Cambridge... that read and propa- * It will be observed that by preach- 
 
 gated Luther's books and opinions, ing in a parish church Barnes brought 
 
 some bishops moved in the year 1523, himself under the chancellor's juris- 
 
 that there might be a visitation ap- diction. 
 
 pointed to go to Cambridge, for try- s Phil. TV 4 : 'Rejoice in the Lord 
 
 ing who were the fautors of heresy alway: and again I say, Rejoice. Let 
 
 there. But he, as legate, did inhibit your moderation be known unto all 
 
 it (upon what grounds, I cannot ima- men.' Foxe adds that he 'postilled 
 
 gine), which was brought against the whole Epistle, following the 
 
 him afterwards in parliament (art. 43 Scripture and Luther's Postil.' (Foxe-
 
 576 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 .CHAP, vr. caused him to reflect before he indulged in acrimony and 
 satire. But controversial feeling was then running high in 
 the university ; and among his audience the prior recognised 
 some who were not only hostile to the cause with which he 
 had identified his name, but also bitter personal enemies. As 
 he proceeded in his discourse, his temper rose ; he launched 
 into a series of bitter invectives against the whole of the 
 priestly order ; he attacked the bishops with peculiar seve- 
 rity ; nor did he bring his sermon to a conclusion before he 
 had indulged in sarcastic and singularly impolitic allusions 
 to the ' pillars and poleaxes' of Wolsey himself 1 . 
 
 Articles "We can hardly doubt that these censures and allusions 
 
 lodged J 
 
 trifi'/the vice constituted the real gravamen of his offence ; but the pas- 
 chanceiior. sa g es no ted by his hostile hearers served to furnish a list of 
 no less than five-and-twenty articles against him. Among 
 these he was accused of denouncing the usual enjoined 
 observance of holy days and of denying that such days were 
 of a more sacred character than others, of affirming that 
 men dared not preach the 'very Gospel,' for fear of being 
 decried as heretics, of objecting to the magnitude of the 
 episcopal dioceses, and generally attacking the pride, pomp, 
 and avarice of the clergy, the baculus pastoralis, the orator 
 was reported to have said, ' was more like to knocke swine 
 and wolves in the heed with, than to take shepe ;' ' Wilt thou 
 know what their benediction is worth ? they had rather give 
 ten benedictions than one halfpenny 8 .' 
 Brnw u Early in the ensuing week Barnes learned that articles 
 
 confronted * 
 
 r^u^ f information had been lodged against him with the vice- 
 *ice7han* chancellor, and at once proposed that he should be allowed 
 ' to explain and justify himself in the same pulpit on the 
 
 Cattley, v 415) ; another of those In their hondes steade of a mace, 
 
 incautious statements of the Martyr- Then foloweth my lorde on his 
 ologist that so often land us in doubt mule 
 
 and difficulty. Compare Barnes' own Trapped with golde under her 
 statement, infra p. 680. cule 
 
 See Cavendish, Life of Wolsfy In every poynt most curiously, 
 
 (ed. Singer), p. 44 ; and compare Roy, On eache syde a pollaxe is borne 
 
 lledf me etc. (ed. Arber) p. 565. Which in none wother use is 
 After theym folowe two laye men worne, 
 
 secular, Pretendynge some hid mistery.' 
 And eache of theym holdynge a 
 
 Cooper, Annals, i 313-5.
 
 BARNES' SERMON. 577 
 
 following Sunday. Unfortunately the vice-chancellor for that CHAP. VL 
 year, Natares, master of Clare, was avowedly hostile to the 
 Reformers ; Foxe indeed does not hesitate to style him, ' a 
 rank enemy of Christ.' He responded accordingly to Barnes' 
 proposition by inhibiting him from preaching altogether, and 
 summoning him to answer the allegations contained in the 
 foregoing articles. The matter was heard in the common 
 schools; and according to Barnes' own account, the doors 
 were closed against all comers, and he was left to contend 
 single-handed with Natares, Ridley (the uncle of the Re- 
 former), Watson, the master of Christ's, a Dr. Preston, and 
 a doctor of law, whose name, at the time that he composed 
 his narrative, he had forgotten 1 . The articles having been 
 read over, the prior gave in a general denial of the respective 
 allegations; he admitted having used some of the phrases 
 or expressions that they contained, but even these, he said, 
 had been most unfairly garbled. ' Would he submit himself?' 
 was the peremptory demand of the vice-chancellor; to which 
 he replied, that if he had said aught contrary to the Word 
 of God, or to the exposition of St. Augustine, St. Jerome, or 
 of ' the four holy doctors,' he would be content to recall it. 
 ' Or to the laws of the Church/ added Ridley and Preston ; 
 but to this he demurred, on the plea that as he was not a 
 doctor of law he knew not what was included in that phrase. 
 At this stage of the proceedings there came a loud thun- TI.C proceed- 
 
 ings inter- 
 
 dering at the doors. It had become known throughout the P ted b r * 
 
 demonstra- 
 
 university that Barnes was undergoing the ordeal of an ^o" the 
 examination, and that his judges and accusers were denying 8tudenta - 
 him a public hearing; and the students, now hurrying en 
 masse to the common schools, demanded admittance. The 
 bedell endeavoured to pacify them, but in vain. Then Na- 
 tares himself appeared at the entrance; but, though 'he 
 gave them good and fair words,' his remonstrances were 
 equally unsuccessful. ' They said it appertained to learning, 
 and they were the body of the university ;' and finally the 
 hearing of the matter was adjourned. 
 
 1 'Theire was also one mayster appoyntedamongethemtobethepre- 
 1'ooke, and mayster Tyrell whiche \vas senter of these artycles.' Ibid. I 316. 
 
 37
 
 578 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CIIAP.VL Within a few days after, Barnes was summoned to the 
 HeTa^uT lodge at Clare College, and subjected to a further cross- 
 t e ht*"idge o* examination by the same authorities ; and again a similar 
 the proceed- demonstration on the part of the university put a stop to 
 the proceedings. An interval of about a month followed, 
 during which no further overt measures were resorted to; 
 but during that time Watson and Preston prepared a form 
 of revocation to which they called upon Barnes to affix his 
 signature ; but as the document implied the correctness of 
 He refuses to the articles originally preferred against him, he declined to 
 cation. do this until he had first consulted with eight of his friends, 
 among whom were Bilney and Stafford, and the result of his 
 conference was a formal refusal. 
 
 In the meantime his enemies had not been idle in 
 
 London ; and when Wolsey heard how his ' pillars and pole- 
 
 axes' had been singled out for scorn, his tolerance was at an 
 
 Wolsey re- end. A Dr. Capon and a serjeant-at-arms named Gibson 
 
 energetic were forthwith despatched to the university with instructions 
 
 measures. * 
 
 to make strict search for Lutheran books and to bring the 
 search made prior to London. On their arrival they were enabled, by 
 
 for Lutheran r J < ' J 
 
 information treacherously supplied, to go straight to the dif- 
 ferent hiding places where the poor ' Germans' had concealed 
 their treasures. They were however forestalled by Forman, 
 the president of Queens', who gave private warning to his 
 party ; and when the inquisitors entered the different college 
 rooms, and took up planks and examined walls, the objects 
 of their search had already been removed. Barnes, who had 
 Barn is ar- either received no warning or scorned to fly, was arrested in 
 
 rented and i 
 
 jJJJUJJ 110 the schools and brought to London ; and soon found himself 
 face to face with Wolsey in the gallery at Westminster. 
 At first his natural intrepidity and confidence in the justice 
 of his cause sustained him. Even in that dread presence 
 before which the boldest were wont to quail, he still de- 
 fended his theory of bishoprics, and dared to say that he 
 thought it would be more to God's honour if the cardinal's 
 
 nlhp e r 1 ^d re ' P'^ ars ant ^ poleaxes' were 'coined and given in alms.' But 
 bHhop, the interview with Wolsey was succeeded by the public ordeal 
 in the chapter-house, before six bishops (of whom Fisher and 

 
 BARNES' TRIAL. 579 
 
 Gardiner were two), and other doctors. So far as may be CHAP. vi. 
 inferred, Fisher inclined to a favorable view of the matter ; 
 and when the first article, charging Barnes with contempt 
 for the observance of holy days, was read over, he declared 
 that he for one 'would not condemn it as heresy for a hundred 
 pounds ;' ' but/ he added, turning to the prior, ' it was a fool- 
 ish thing to preach this before all the butchers of Cambridge.' 
 On the other hand, Clerk, bishop of Bath and Wells 1 , who 
 had recently been promoted to that see in acknowledgement 
 of his services against the Lutheran party, was evidently little 
 disposed to mercy, and pressed more than one point with 
 vindictive unfairness against the accused. The proceedings, 
 extending over three days, followed the course almost in- 
 variably pursued when the accused was a clergyman. There 
 was a great parade of patristic and scholastic divinity; a 
 continual fencing in dialectics between the bishops and the 
 prior ; the usual recourse to threats, subterfuges, entreaties ; 
 and at last, the sole alternative before him being death at 
 the stake, Barnes consented to read aloud before the assem- 
 bled spectators the roll of his recantation. The story cannot 
 be better concluded than in his own words : 
 
 'Then was all the people that stode ther, called to here HI own nw- 
 
 i PC -I rat ' ve of the 
 
 me. For in the other tbre dayes, was there no man sunered conclusion, 
 to here one worde that I spake. So after theyr commande- 
 ment that was gyven me, I red it, addyng nothyng to it, nor 
 saying no word, that might make for myn excuse, supposyng 
 that I shuld have founde the byshops the better. 
 
 'After this I was commaunded to subscribe it, and to 
 make a crosse on it. Than was I commaunded to goe 
 knel downe before the byshop of Bathe, and to require abso- 
 lucion of hym, but he wolde not assoyle me, except I wold 
 first swere, that I wolde fulfyll the penaunce that he shuld 
 enjoyn to me. So did I swere, not yet suspectynge, but 
 these men had had some crom of charite within them. But 
 whan I had sworne, than enjoyned he me, that I shuld re- 
 tourne that nighte agayne to prisone. And the nexte day, 
 
 1 He had been educated at Cambridge, though at what college does not 
 appear. 
 
 37-2
 
 580 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. which was fastyngame Sonday, I shuld do open penaunce 
 at Paules. 
 
 'And that the worlde shulde thynke that I -was a mer- 
 veylous haynous heretyke, the cardynal came the nexte daye, 
 with all the pompe and pryde that he could make, to Paules 
 Church, and all to brynge me poor soule out of conseite. And 
 moreover were ther commaunded to come all the byshoppes 
 that were at London. And all the abbotes dwellynge in Lon- 
 don, that dydde were myters, in so muche that the pry our of 
 sainte Mary's Spittal, and another monke, whyche I thinke 
 was of Towre Hylle, were ther also in theyr myters. And to 
 set the matter more forthe, and that the worlde shulde per- 
 fytly knowe and perceive, that the spiritual fathers had 
 determined my matter substancially, the byshop of Rochester 
 must preache ther that same daye, and all his sermon was 
 agaynst Lutherians, as ihoughe they had convicted me for one: 
 the whyche of truth, and afore God, was as farre from those 
 thinges as any man coulde be, savynge that I was no tyraunt 
 nor no persecutour of Gods worde. And al this gorgyous 
 fasyng with myters and cros-staves, abbotes, and pryours 
 were doone, but to blynde the people, and to outface me. 
 God amende all thyng that is amisseV 
 
 In the sequel Barnes was sentenced to imprisonment in 
 the house of his order at Northampton. From thence, after 
 nearly three years' confinement, he effected his escape and 
 fled to Germany. Here he made the acquaintance of 
 many of the leaders of the Lutheran party. It is evident 
 however, that, though his career was terminated at the stake, 
 he only partially embraced the doctrines of Protestantism ; 
 and from the time of his recantation his history can no 
 longer be associated with that of the Cambridge Reformers. 
 
 But before Barnes was lost to the cause, there had been 
 added to the reform party another convert, who, if inferior to 
 the prior in learning, was at least his equal in courage and 
 oratorical power, and certainly endowed with more discretion 
 and P ractical sagacity. This man was the famous Hugh 
 Latimer. At the time that Barnes preached his Christmas 
 
 1 The Supplication of doctour Barnet, etc., (quoted by Cooper, A nnalt, i 322).
 
 HUGH LATIMER. 581 
 
 Eve sermon, Latimer was probably over forty years of age, CHAP. vi. 
 and his adhesion to the new doctrines had not been given in 
 until long after the time when such a step could justly be 
 represented as that of a rash and enthusiastic youth. A 
 fellow of Clare College, he was distinguished in the earlier HU e*ri r 
 
 i career and 
 
 part of his career by everything that could inspire the confi- ci><*"- 
 dence and esteem of the grave seniors of the conservative 
 party. He was studious, ascetic, devout, and of irreproach- 
 able life ; and without being altogether unversed in the new 
 learning, he nevertheless shewed a far greater liking for the 
 old ; he looked upon Greek with suspicion, nor does he ap- 
 pear indeed ever to have made any real attainments in the 
 language ; he inveighed with warmth against Stafford's inno- 
 vations, and even went so far, on one occasion, as to enter the 
 schools and harangue the assembled students on the folly of 
 forsaking the study of the doctors for that of the Scriptures ; 
 while at the time that the rising genius of Melanchthon at 
 Wittenberg first began to challenge the admiration of the 
 learned throughout Europe, he availed himself of the oppor- He attack, 
 tunity afforded when keeping his 'act' for the degree ofchtho^ 
 bachelor of divinity, in 1524, to declaim with all his power 
 against the principles advocated by the young German Re- 
 former 1 . There were not many among the party whose 
 cause he had espoused who combined high character with 
 marked ability, and the authorities lost no opportunity of 
 shewino- their appreciation of his merit. He was invested HU position. 
 
 in the uni- 
 
 with the honorable office of crossbearer to the university, in verwty. 
 the public processions ; he was elected one of the twelve 
 preachers annually appointed as directed by the bull of 
 Alexander vi ; nor are other indications wanting to prove 
 that he was regarded as a fit person to represent the univer- 
 sity in negociations of an important and confidential nature 2 . 
 Among those who listened to Latimer's harangue against 
 Melanchthon was 'little Bilney.' He perceived that the He is con- 
 orator was ' zealous without knowledge,' and determined, i } 
 possible, to open his eyes to the truth. The plan he adopted 
 
 1 Cooper, Athenee, i 130; Dematis, Life of Latimer, c. 11. 
 3 See infra, p. 584, n. 3.
 
 582 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. VL in order to accomplish his purpose, was judiciously con- 
 ceived ; he sought out Latimer, not as an antagonist in the 
 schools, but in the privacy of his college chamber ; not as 
 one who by virtue of superior wisdom assumed the office of a 
 spiritual instructor, but as a penitent who sought his counsel 
 and direction. He asked Latimer to hear his confession, and 
 Latimer acceded to his request ; and in his own words, spoken 
 long afterwards, 'learned more than before in many years 1 .' 
 In short, the confessor became the convert of him to whom 
 he listened ; and it was soon known throughout the univer- 
 sity, that the saintly crossbearer, the denouncer of Luther and 
 Melanchthon, had himself gone over to the ' Germans.' In 
 Latimer's own quaint language, ' he began to smell the Word 
 of God, and forsook the school-doctors and such fooleries.' 
 The date of his conversion is assigned by his latest biographer 
 to the earlier part of the year ] 524, and from that time he 
 
 He becomes became the intimate friend and associate of Bilney, in whose 
 
 Bilney s in- 
 
 auodata. company he was now generally to be found ; one particular 
 walk where they were frequently to be seen, engaged in ear- 
 nest converse, was known among their satirists as the ' Here- 
 tics' Hill.' Together they visited and comforted the sick ; 
 preached in the lazar-cots or fever hospitals; their charity 
 extending even to the helpless prisoners confined in the 
 tolbooth and the castle. 
 
 Sttacr^ex- ^ ne i nn<uence f Latimer's example, unimpaired as it 
 was by eccentricities like Bilney's or indiscretion like that of 
 Barnes, soon began to be perceptible in the university ; his 
 converts were important and numerous ; and frequent re- 
 ports at last aroused the attention of the bishop of the diocese. 
 
 'We cannot doubt what the tenor comfort to his sick and languishing 
 
 of Bilncy's confession would be. La- soul ; how he had applied to those 
 
 timer had just been denouncing the physicians that Latimer so much 
 
 study of the Holy Scripture as dan- commended, and had diligently used 
 
 geroiiB to the soul, and had recom- all their remedies but had found no 
 
 mended his hearers to seek for peace benefit; how he had fasted and done 
 
 and spiritual Hfo in implicit obe- penance;... how at last he had read 
 
 dience to the teaching Qf the Church that Book which Latimer had con- 
 
 and the prescriptions of her ministers. 'detuned as fatal to the soul, and all 
 
 In reply to all this, Bilney would at once he had felt himself healed 
 
 repeat the touching story of his own as by the hand of the Divine Phy- 
 
 Rpiritual conflict, how he had gone sician.' Demaus. Life of Latimer, 
 
 about seeking to find health and pp. 36-7.
 
 HUGH LAT1MER. 583 
 
 West, who at this time filled the see of Ely, was now nearly CHAP. vi. 
 sixty years of age. His university education had been Mchou. 
 received at King's College, of which he was for some time bp'ofciy. 
 
 1616-liil. 
 
 fellow; and his later life had been largely devoted to political 
 affairs and the discharge of important embassies. As a pre- 
 late he was distinguished for his ostentation, and for a 
 splendid style of living, inferior only to that of Wolsey him- 
 self. One morning when Latimer as the appointed preacher 
 for the day was about to commence a sermon at St. Mary's 
 Church, the audience were startled by the sudden and un- 
 anticipated appearance of the bishop. The manreuvre, for west attend* 
 such it undoubtedly was, failed to disconcert Latimer, but it univerdiy 
 
 " sermon. 
 
 roused his spirit. Gravely observing that the advent of so 
 august an auditor called for a change of subject, he selected 
 another text, and proceeded to discourse from Hebrews ix. 
 II 1 , a passage which enabled him to take for his theme the 
 one subject which at that time most employed the tongues 
 and pens alike of the friends, the foes, and the satirists of 
 the Church, the shortcomings of the superior clergy, and 
 the contrast that their lives presented to the teaching and 
 practice of their great Exemplar. West listened with atten- 
 tion, disguised his chagrin, and, when the sermon was over, 
 sent for Latimer, and thanked him for the admirable manner 
 in which he had expounded the duties of the episcopal office. 
 There was but one favour that he had yet to beg of him. 
 ' What is your lordship's pleasure that 1 should do for you ?' 
 said the Reformer. 'Marry!' said West, 'that you will He requests 
 
 " Lattmer to 
 
 preach me, in this place, one sermon against Martin Luther {g 
 and his doctrine.' ' My lord,' replied Latimer, ' I am not Luther - 
 acquainted with the doctrine of Luther, nor are we permitted 
 here to read his works, and therefore it were but a vain thing 
 for me to refute his doctrine, not understanding what he hath 
 written, nor what opinion he holdeth. Sure I am that I 
 have preached before you this day no man's doctrine, but 
 only the doctrine of God out of the Scriptures. And if 
 Luther do none otherwise than I have done, there needeth 
 no confutation of his doctrine. Otherwise, when I under- 
 1 'But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come.'
 
 584- THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. stand that he doth teach against the Scripture, I will be 
 ready with all my heart to confound his doctrine as much 
 as lieth in me V 
 
 The dexterity with which Latimer at once eluded the 
 request and returned the thrust,- upset the bishop's compo- 
 sure ; bishop Nix's phrase, the phrase of the time, rose irre- 
 pressibly to his lips : ' Well, well, Mr. Latimer,' said he, ' I 
 perceive that you somewhat smell of the pan: you will repent 
 this gear one day.' It was accordingly not long before the 
 west inhrbits*bishop's voice was uplifted against Latimer at Barnwell 
 
 Latimer from i -i t i f i 
 
 preaching. Abbey ; and he finally inhibited him trom preaching any 
 
 where in the diocese or in any of the pulpits of the university. 
 
 uttmer It was then that Barnes invited Latimer to preach in the 
 
 preacliM at 
 
 the church of church of the AuoTistinian friars, where the episcopal veto 
 
 the August!- o i. 
 
 nian friars. cou \ft no ^ reach him ; and it was thus that, as before nar- 
 
 rated, on Christmas Eve, 1525, Barnes happened to be 
 
 preaching at St. Edward's Church, his own pulpit being filled 
 
 Latimer is by Latimer. Eventually Latimer too was summoned before 
 
 '"/orewoi- Wolsey in London. But his language had throughout been 
 
 Bey in I. on- 
 
 don - far more discreet than that of Barnes, and he was also, 
 
 what was much more in his favour, guiltless of having 
 uttered aught that touched the cardinal himself. He found 
 accordingly a fair and even a courteous hearing. Wolsey's 
 brow relaxed when he found that the accused was well read 
 in Duns Scotus ; he cross-examined him at some length with 
 reference to his whole treatment at the bishop's hands ; and 
 at last said, ' If the bishop of Ely cannot abide such doctrine 
 
 wn! r i"~ as y u nave nere repeated, you shall have my licence, and 
 shall preach it unto his beard, let him say what he will.' 
 And from this ordeal Latimer returned unscathed and 
 triumphant to Cambridge 2 . 
 
 pirThoma Towards the close of the year 1525, the high stewardship 
 
 * uw ' was ^ Gre ^ to an d accepted by Sir Thomas More, who con- 
 tinued to hold the office for several years 8 ; and with Fisher 
 
 Latimer-Corrie, pp. xxviii, xxix. Wingfield, 'a sad and ancient Knight' 
 
 Demaus, Life of Latimer, pp. (see Cooper, Athena, i 32), had set 
 
 00-58. jjj s heart upon succeeding to the 
 
 1 Mora was to have been elected in honour, and More, at the request of 
 
 the preceding year, but Sir Richard king Henry, retired from the candi-
 
 EUROPE IN 1524. 585 
 
 'for chancellor, and the statutes of the university at the dis- CIIAP. rf. 
 cretion of Wolsey, the friends of the new learning could 
 now have felt little misgiving respecting the ultimate 
 issue of the contest in which they had so long been engaged. 
 But throughout Europe the battles of the Humanists were 
 for a time lost sight of in the graver struggle that had 
 supervened. The writings of Luther absorbed almost the Absorbing 
 
 whole attention of educated Europe, and created a demand tfven to Lu- 
 
 ther's writ- 
 
 unparalleled in the previous experience of the publishing 
 world. From a letter written by Erasmus to Vives in 
 December, 1524, we find that the latter had applied to 
 Frobenius, to know whether he would undertake the print- 
 ing of a new edition of his works. The illustrious Iberian 
 was then at the height of his reputation; but the printer 
 sent word that it was useless at that time to print anything 
 but what bore upon the Lutheran controvery. It is said 
 that there were nearly two thousand pamphlets circulating 
 aainst the doctrine of transubstantiation alone. It was 
 
 season of deep disquiet, fierce excitement, and gloomy fore- ue time*. 
 bodings; and the universal anxiety and agitation told 
 sensibly on men of earnest and reflecting minds. Melan- 
 chthon, writing to Erasmus from Germany, complains that 
 he is a prey to constant sleeplessness ; Pace makes a pre- 
 cisely similar complaint ; Fisher, seriously ill at Rochester 
 and doubtful of the sequel, writes to Erasmus, urging him 
 to expedite the publication of his De Ratione Concionandi, 
 intimating however that he scarcely expects that it will 
 find him still alive 1 ; Erasmus himself, in whose character 
 
 dature. Wingfield was accordingly quam maxime cupit cum litteratia 
 
 elected; but his death, at Toledo in viris et musarum cultoribus familia- 
 
 July of the following year, left the ritatem contrahere ____ Et haec res tarn 
 
 office again vacant, and More was serio agitur, et tarn grato atque adeo 
 
 elected his successor. From the fol- tarn ardenti petitur aniino, ut quum 
 
 lowing extract from a letter written nihil praeter fidem antea venerando 
 
 by Latimer to Dr Green, who was Moro datam causari supererat nobis 
 
 master of Catherine Hall and vice- esoretnr jam Morus, sed regia id 
 
 chancellor in 1523, it appears that a quidem (ut fertur) intercessione, ut 
 
 salary was at that time attached to Wynfyldo cedat, liceatque nobis citra 
 
 the office: '...non quod tantillo so- omnem ignominiae notam Wynfyldi 
 
 lario sit opus tarn honorifico viro ' votis obsecundare.' Latimer-Corrie, 
 
 [Wingfield] ' et rerum omnium afflu- n 467. 
 
 entia tarn insigniter locupletato, sed 1 Lewis, Life of Fisher, c. xvn. 
 pro liberali sui animi generositate
 
 586 
 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. VL the superstition of his age and his superiority to it were 
 oddly blended, declares that omens so dire and so frequent 
 as those he saw around him, cannot but be looked upon as 
 heralding the final consummation of earthly destinies 1 ; 
 while amid the deepening tumult and alarm there rises up 
 the rugged refrain chanted at Strassburg by Roy and 
 Barlow, 
 
 ' Alas, alas 1 
 
 The world is worse than ever it was, 
 
 Never so depe in miserable decaye, 
 
 But it cannot thus endure alwaye.' 
 
 no*meM. phe " With these convulsions in the political and religious world 
 nature seemed herself to sympathise ; and for nearly two 
 years the greater part of Europe was visited by fearful 
 storms and disastrous inundations. The predictions of the 
 almanac-makers intensified the prevailing dread. The year 
 1524 it had been foretold would be marked by wondrous 
 conjunctions of the heavenly bodies and by events of awful 
 moment to all living beings ; and the author of a lugubrious 
 production, entitled Epistola, Cantabrigiensis, took occasion 
 to descant on the universal corruption and depravity of the 
 age, and chanted once more the forebodings of an Aiigustine 
 and a Gregory concerning the approaching end of all things 8 . 
 
 Predictions 
 of the 
 Imanac- 
 
 uualera. 
 
 1 'Velum templi scissum est, effe- 
 rnntur omnia, etiam qtue sacerdoti 
 dixeris in sacramentalissima confes- 
 Bione. Caveat sibi quisque; Domi- 
 nus venit' Letter to John Ccesarius, 
 (A.D. 1524) Opera, in 841. 
 
 3 After detailing the signsof the cor- 
 ruption of the age, especially of the 
 ftargy, the writer goes on to say, 
 | Unde nee miruin si nobis plurimum 
 irascitur, in cujus auribus peccato- 
 ruin noHtrorum horrida vox quotidie 
 clamat, eumque ad ultionem pro- 
 yocat: irascuutur quippe et astra 
 ipsa nobisque propinquum minantur 
 interitum. Dudum sane in quibus- 
 dam ephemeridibus, seu diuriis, quod 
 vocanf (here Brown stoutly anno- 
 tate* in the margin, no* Cantabriflien- 
 ff non *olemiu>, ut plurimum, multnm 
 almanacographit tribuere ; quodcun- 
 que hie bomu vir e Monteregio college- 
 
 rit), 'cujusdam .Toannis de Monte- 
 regio iusiguiRsiini astrologi de anno 
 salutiferce incarnationis quingentes- 
 i in vicesimo quarto supra milleximum 
 memini me ita legisse, " Hoc annoneo 
 solis nee lunoe eclipsim conspicabi- 
 mur; Bed pracsenti anno syderum 
 habitudines mir.it a diguissimo? acci- 
 dent ; in mensc enim Februario 
 viginti conjunctiones cum minime 
 mediocres, turn magnie accident, 
 quarum aedecim siguum aqueum 
 possidebuut, quse universe fere orbi, 
 climatibus, regnis, provinciis, stati- 
 bus, dignitatibus, brutis, belluis 
 maximin cunctisque terrae nascenti- 
 bus indubitatam mutationem, varia- 
 tionem, ac alterationem significabunt, 
 1. ili-ni profecto qualem a pluribus 
 seculis ab historiographis aut natu 
 majoribusvixpercepimnB.&c." Neque 
 is solum insueta prodigia minatur
 
 WILLIAM TYNDALE. 587 
 
 Such were the characteristics of the times, when in CHAP. vi. 
 England a new element of controversy, lighting fresh bon- 
 fires and evoking renewed denunciations, still further intensi- 
 fied the all-prevailing excitement. The day had come when 
 the scholar and the priest were no longer to be the sole 
 students and interpreters of Scripture, and their dogmas and 
 doctrine were to be brought home to an ultimate test by 
 those whom they had neglected to teach and whose judgement 
 they had despised. If the priest was incompetent or too 
 indolent to instruct the laity in the Scriptures, might not 
 the laity claim the right to study the Scriptures for them- 
 selves ? Such in reality was the simple question to which Appearanc* 
 the appearance of William Tyndale's New Testament gave 5^w d Twui- 
 rise, a question answered even by men of noted liberality ment 
 and moderation of sentiment, like Fisher, More, and Tunstal, 
 with so emphatic and passionate a negative. Nor will their 
 vehemence appear less surprising if we recall, that exactly 
 ten years before Tyndale's New Testament was seen in 
 England, the idea which he had carried out had been 
 
 O * 
 
 suggested and enlarged upon in a volume to which these 
 eminent men had given an unreserved sanction and encou- 
 ragement, the Novum Instrumentum of Erasmus. ' I totally m s transi- 
 dissent/ said the lady Margaret professor, in his admirable what e E^s- J 
 
 mus had ex- 
 
 Paraclesis prefixed to the work, 'I totally dissent from passed the 
 
 * greatest do* 
 
 those who are unwilling that the sacred Scriptures, trans- 8ire * ** 
 lated into the vulgar tongue, should be read by the un- 
 learned, as if Christ had taught such subtle doctrines that 
 they can with difficulty be understood by a very few 
 theologians, or as if the strength of the Christian religion 
 lay in men's ignorance of it. The mysteries of kings it 
 were perhaps better to conceal, but Christ wishes his 
 mysteries to be published as widely as possible. I could 
 wish even all women to read the Gospels and the Epistles 
 
 mortalibns; audivi jam nnper ex immutationem, tit vix homines diu 
 
 gravissimorum virorum relatu esse posse subsistereverisimilitercredant.' 
 
 rnodernos aliquos in ea scientia Epistola Cantabrigiensis cujusdam 
 
 probatissimos qui tantam tamque Anonymi de misero Ecclesia statu, 
 
 mirandam ex celestium corporum in- Gratius Fasciculus Eerum Expeten- 
 
 fluxione augurantur brevi eventuram darum, Appendix by Brown, vol. n.
 
 588 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. of St. Paul. And I wish that they were translated in all 
 languages of all people, that they might be read and known, 
 not merely by the Scotch and the Irish, but even by the 
 Turks and the Saracens. I wish that the husbandman may 
 sing parts of them at his plough, that the weaver may chant 
 them when engaged at his shuttle, that the traveller may 
 with their narratives beguile the weariness of the way 1 .' It 
 cannot be doubted that these words were noted and pondered 
 alike by Fisher, More, and Tunstal ; there is accordingly but 
 one explanation of the change which had come over their 
 of views when, in 1526, they loudly condemned what, in 1516, 
 
 uji which it they had implicitly commended ; and that explanation must 
 K^ded. be, the alarm that Luther's attitude and doctrines had 
 awakened throughout Christendom among all those who 
 yet clung to the theory of a one supreme visible Head 
 and of a one universal and undivided Church. In exact 
 correspondence with this change of sentiment, we find 
 
 Eramu Erasmus himself, at the earnest entreaty of Tunstal, entering 
 
 wi*.i> ,. ' . . 
 
 LibrroArbi- the lists against Luther, and maintaining, m opposition to the 
 
 I rin against 
 
 Luther. doctrine of predestination so inexorably asserted by the 
 Reformer, that counter theory which, while plainly supported 
 by the teaching of the Greek fathers, was far from being 
 altogether uncountenanced by the great lights of the western 
 communion. It is not impossible indeed that, as he witnessed 
 the progress of events, Erasmus might have even wished to 
 recall some of the sentiments to which he had given ex- 
 
 HU enemies pression in his Paraclesis. His enemies were now never tired 
 
 denounce . 
 
 CTu w *of the pointing out, not altogether without reason but with much 
 itefonntion. unfairness, the undeniable connexion between the new 
 doctrines and the new learning. In the opinion of not a few 
 he had sown the wind and was reaping the whirlwind ; .or, in 
 the homelier metaphor of the day, ' he had laid the egg and 
 Luther had hatched it.' It was in vain that the alarmed 
 scholar protested and disclaimed, declaring that he had laid 
 only a harmless hen's egg, while that which Luther had 
 hatched was of an altogether different bird 2 , the monks and 
 
 1 Opera, n 104-1. clusit. Mirum vero dictum Minori- 
 
 * 'Ego peperi ovum, Lutherus ex- tarum istorum magnaque et loua
 
 WILLIAM TYNDALK. 589 
 
 friars only reiterated their assertions yet more loudly, and at CHAP. vr. 
 Louvain, it would appear, he was at one time even re- 
 ported to be the author of the De Captivitate Babylonica. 
 
 But whatever might have been Erasmus's later senti- 
 ments, the noble sentences above quoted had been given to 
 the world past recall ; they had been read by Bilney at Cam- 
 bridge, and it is in every way probable that they had been 
 pointed out by Bilney to the notice of William Tyndale. It 
 has been supposed by some writers that Tyndale was one of Wintam 
 Erasmus's pupils at the university ; but this supposition rests 
 
 on very insufficient evidence, and other facts would rather in- d ' 15 ' 
 cline us to believe that Tyndale did not go to Cambridge 
 until after Erasmus had left 1 . It is certain that nothing in 
 the latter's correspondence, or in the manner in which Tyn- 
 dale afterwards spoke of him, in any way implies the exist- 
 ence of intimate or even of friendly relations between the 
 two 2 . We only know that for a certain period, from about 
 1514 to 1521, Tyndale was resident in the university; and c"okebut 
 it may safely be inferred that he was among the number of " 
 those who listened to Croke's inaugural oration and subse- 
 quently profited by his teaching. He had originally been 
 a student at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he had already 
 performed the office of lecturer, when he decided on remov- 
 ing to the sister university. His reasons for this step are not 
 
 pulte dignmn.. Ego posui ovum gal- cutum cum illo, qni ilium vidisset 
 
 linaceum, Lutherus exclusit pulluin exceptum Parisiis comitatu CL equo- 
 
 longe dissimillimnm, ' Opera, in 840. rum. Addebat se timere Tyndalus 
 
 1 Canon Westcott, Hist, of the nisi Gallia per ilium reciperet ver- 
 English Bible, p. 31; Demaus, Life bum Dei, confirmaretur in fide Eu- 
 of William Tyndale, p. 29 ; Mr De- charistica contra Vicleficam sectam. 
 maus himself assigns the period of Quam sollicite isti tractant hoc ne- 
 Tyndale's residence at Cambridge to gotium, tanquam ilh's delegasset Deus 
 between the years 1514 and 1521 ; instituendum et rudimentis fidei im- 
 and Erasmus, as we have already buendum orbem ! ' Opera, 111 1856. 
 seen, left at the close of 1513. There is certainly nothing in this 
 
 2 The sole reference to Tyndale in language, nor in the way in which 
 the Epistolce of Erasmus with which Tyndale speaks of Erasmus (see 
 I am acquainted, is the following supra, p. 488, n. 3), that would lead 
 passage in a letter from More, writ- us to infer that the Eeformer was an 
 ten about 1533 ; ' Rex videtur ad- old pupil of the great scholar. As 
 versus hsereticos acrior quam episcopi for his statement that he waited on 
 ipsi. Tyndalus, hsereticus nostras, Tunstal because Erasmus had praised 
 qui et nusquam et ubique exsulat, the bishop's munificence so highly, 
 scripsit hue nuper Melanchthonem it is evident that these encomiums 
 esse apud regem Galliaj ; semet collo- may have reached him by hearsay.
 
 590 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. VL recorded, and the language of Foxe is hopelessly vague. 
 ' Spying his time,' says that writer, ' he removed from thence 
 to the university of Cambridge.' It is however at least a 
 reasonable hypothesis, that he quitted Oxford from the same 
 motives that probably weighed with Erasmus when he gave 
 the preference to Cambridge, in order to escape the perse- 
 cutions of the 'Trojan' party 1 . In after years we find him 
 referring to persecution of this kind in terms that could only 
 apply to Oxford, and which are evidently the vivid recollec- 
 
 Hisreminis- tions of a painful personal experience. 'Remember ye not.' 
 
 conccs of Ox- . . 
 
 ford. he says in his famous ' Answer ' to Sir Thomas More, written 
 
 in 1530 (and More, we may well believe, must have remem- 
 bered very well indeed), ' how within this thirty years and 
 far less, and yet dureth to this day, the old barking curs, 
 Duns' disciples and like draff called Scotists, the children of 
 darkness, raged in every pulpit against Greek, Latin, and 
 Hebrew ? And what sorrow the schoolmasters, that taught 
 the true Latin tongue, had with them ; some beating the 
 pulpit with their fists for madness, and roaring out with open 
 and foaming mouth, that if there were but one Terence or 
 Virgil in the world, and that same in their sleeves, and a fire 
 before them, Ihsy would burn them therein, though it should 
 cost them thtir lives ; affirming that all good learning de- 
 cayed and was utterly lost, since men gave them unto the 
 Latin tongue*.' 
 
 At Cambridge, according to Foxe, Tyndale 'further 
 ripened in knowledge of God's Word.' Though his writings 
 contain no reference to the fact, it is not improbable that he 
 witnessed the burning of Luther's writings in the university 
 in 1521. But in the same year, under the constraint of 
 
 1 See snpra, pp. 487, 524-6. Reformation in England may be 
 
 * Works, in 75. D'Aubigne as- formed, when we state that, in one 
 
 Bares us that Oxford 'where Erasmus short chapter, he represents Bilney 
 
 had so many friends' (at this time he as a fellow of Trinity College thirty 
 
 had scarcely one there left) was 'the years before its foundation, Tyndalo 
 
 city in which his New Testament met as lecturing at Oxford on Erasmus's 
 
 with the warmest welcome.' Hist. New Testament years before the first 
 
 ofthf Reformation (transl. by White), edition appeared, and as converting 
 
 v 220. Some notion of the correct- Frith at Cambridge three years after 
 
 ness of this writer's account of the the former had left the university.
 
 CUTHBERT TUNSTAL. 51)1 
 
 poverty, for he appears to have belonged to no college and to ;cHAp.vr. 
 have held no fellowship, he went down to his native county uTi 
 of Gloucester, to be tutor in the family of Sir John Walsh, 
 We hear of him there as bringing forward for discussion, 
 among the neighbouring clergy who assembled at Sir John's HI life at 
 hospitable board, the questions he had learned to handle at bttr i'- 
 Cambridge, and as winning easy victories over well-beneficed 
 divines whose learning was of another century, and incurring 
 of course their dislike and suspicion. It was there that he 
 conceived and perhaps commenced his great design of trans- 
 lating the New Testament into the English vernacular 1 . From 
 thence, after about two years' residence, we trace him to 
 London ; where in citizen Humphrey Monmouth he found so 
 generous a friend, and where from his fellow university man, 
 Cuthbert Tunstal, he experienced such different treatment. 
 The memorable interview between these two eminent Cam- 
 bridge men has often been the subject of comment, and 
 affords perhaps as striking an illustration as any incident 
 of the kind, of the widely different spirit and aims by which 
 at this critical period the mere Humanist and the Reformer 
 were actuated. 
 
 Cuthbert Tunstal, who was some ten years Tyndale's Cuthbert 
 
 J J TunsUil. 
 
 senior, had originally been a student of Balliol College, but the * ^ 
 outbreak of the plague having compelled him to quit Oxford, 
 he had migrated to King's Hall, at that time one of the most 
 aristocratic and exclusive of the Cambridge foundations, and 
 had subsequently completed his student career at Padua. 
 On his return to England his talents and learning attracted 
 the attention of Warham, who made him his chancellor, and 
 from that time his rise in life was rapid and continuous*. 
 For that kind of success which depends on personal popula- 
 rity and social advancement, he was, no doubt, eminently 
 qualified. He had a stately presence 3 , a winning courtesy of 
 manner, and consummate tact. His virtues, if not of an heroic nu chan 
 order, stood often in favorable contrast to the passions of 
 
 1 See the interesting sketch of this a Cooper, Athena;, I 199. 
 period in Tyndale's history in Mr. 3 'A man right meet and conve- 
 Demaus's second chapter nient, as Warham assures Wolsey, to
 
 592 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. that tempestuous age. Naturally averse to violence and 
 contention, he was equitable, humane and merciful ; his bit- 
 terest enemies could not deny that his feet were never swift 
 to shed blood ; while among all his contemporaries the cha- 
 racter of none stood higher for prudence and moderation. 
 But all these advantages, natural and acquired, were marred 
 
 Si 1 tem oik ^7 an excess of caution ill-suited for stirring times ; and pre- 
 cisely at those junctures when his influence might have been 
 exerted with appreciable benefit to the state, he was to be 
 seen himself drifting with the current. He wrote in favour 
 of the divorce, and then sought to conciliate its opponents by 
 pleading the queen's cause ; he preached against the Act of 
 Supremacy, and subsequently gave it his unqualified support; 
 foremost among the patrons of Erasmus's Greek Testament, 
 
 HU writings, he gave Tyndale's translation to the flames. His literary 
 performances were characteristic of the man, of that safe 
 and respectable kind which, while earning for an author a 
 certain reputation, neither expose him to envy nor involve 
 him in controversy. He published hymns and sermons, 
 a small volume of devotional exercises, a synopsis of the 
 Ethics of Aristotle, of whose doctrine of the Mean he was 
 himself so eminent an example, and lastly, though not least, 
 an admirable Arithmetic. By this last work indeed there 
 can be no doubt that Tunstal rendered a genuine service to 
 his age. The science of numbers was then still in its infancy, 
 and in an age familiar with the knotty questions of Duns 
 Scotus, a teacher like Melanchthon found it necessary, in order 
 to incite his scholars to the study, to reassure them, on the 
 one hand, with respect to its difficulty, and, on the other 
 hand, to allure them by pointing out its uses with reference 
 to astrology 1 ! The treatise De Arte Supputandi has been 
 
 entertain ambassadors and other dete quam late pateat usus arithme- 
 noble strangers at that notable and tices in ceconomia et in Republicn. 
 honorable city of London, in the Aristoteles scribit Thraces quosdam 
 absence of the king's most noble csse qui nmnerando non possuut pro- 
 grace.' Hook's Live*, vi 213. gredi ultra quattuor; quieso te, an 
 1 For this amusing oration see talibus putes commendandam ease 
 Melanchthonis Dtclamationet, i 382- gubernationem, non dico magni mer- 
 91. After pointing out some of the catus aut venarum metallicarum sed 
 uees of arithmetic, he continues ' Vi- alicujua mediocria economise? Exia-
 
 TUNSTAL AND TYNDALE. 593 
 
 censured by Deschales for insufficiency in demonstration ; CHAP. vi. 
 but, to quote the late professor De Morgan's comment, ' Tun- nu it, Aru 
 stal is a very Euclid by the side of his contemporaries.' ' The 
 wonder is,' observes the same critic, ' that after his book had 
 been reproduced in other countries, and had become gene- 
 rally known throughout Europe, the trifling speculations of 
 the Boethian school should have excited any further atten- 
 tion. For plain common sense, well expressed, and learning 
 most visible in the habits it had formed, Tunstal's book has 
 been rarely surpassed, and never in the subject of which 
 it treats 1 .' 
 
 On Cuthbert Tunstal Tyndale now waited, carrying Tyndaie 
 with him his translation of Isocrates, in the hope that the 
 bishop might not be unwilling to extend to him a helping 
 hand. It was his object to obtain from Tunstal aid of a kind 
 frequently rendered by wealthy ecclesiastics to men of letters 
 in those days, a chaplaincy in his household, which would 
 have secured to the needy scholar the requisite leisure for 
 carrying on his literary labours. His hopes were high ; for 
 Erasmus had lauded the bishop's generosity to the skies, and, 
 
 timomnsnc a talibas posse rationes Harnm ope sublati in Cffilum, 1ns- 
 
 paululum modo intricatas evolvi et trare oculis universam rerum na- 
 
 explicari? Nequaquam. Sed horum turam, cernere spatia metasque maxi- 
 
 Thracum similes sunt in magnis morum corporum, videre siderum 
 
 rationibus et obscuris omnes qui de- fatales congressus, denique cansas 
 
 stituti sunt hujus artis prtesidio.' rerum maximarum qua in hac homi- 
 
 After having similarly recommended nurn vita accidunt, animadvertere po- 
 
 the study of geometry to their at- ttriti*.' 
 
 tention, he adds, 'His qui in stndiis 1 'The book,' adds De Morgan, 
 
 versantur et perfectam doctrinam 'was a farewell to the sciences on 
 
 expetunt, illam sibi utilitatern pro- the author's appointment to the see 
 
 ponunt, quod ad doctrinam de rebus of London. It was published (that 
 
 cselestibus nullus aditus patet nisi is, the colophon is dated) on the 14th 
 
 per arithmeticam et geometriam. Et of October, and on the 19th the con- 
 
 quidem tanta vis est arithmetices in secration took place. The book is 
 
 doctrina de rebus caelestibus, tit me- decidedly the most classical which 
 
 diocri arithmetico peue oinnia in ever was written on the subject in 
 
 doctrina rerum caelestium suut per- Latin, both in purity of style and 
 
 via ; certe magnam partem ejus doc- goodness of matter. The author had 
 
 trinae sine ullo negotio assequi potest. read everything on the subject in 
 
 Jam vide quam exiguo labore quan- every language which he knew, as he 
 
 turn pretium operje possis facere. avers in his dedicatory letter to Sir 
 
 Nihil facilius est quam has (ut vo- Thomas More, and he spent much 
 
 cant) species, in arte numeranda time, he says, ad ursi extmplum, iu 
 
 discere. His mediocriter cognitis, licking what he found into shape.' 
 
 propemodum tota astronomia statim Aritlunttical Books, p. 13. 
 percipl sine itlla difficultate potest 
 
 38
 
 594 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vr. f rom a scholar like Tyndale, a request for a chaplaincy was 
 but a modest petition. It has been assumed by some writers 
 that he explained to Tunstal the precise character of the 
 undertaking he had in view, and that Tunstal then and there 
 turned his back on so ' perilous ' an ' emprise.' But there 
 is nothing in Tyndale's narrative to sanction such an infer- 
 ence, and it seems therefore more reasonable to conclude that, 
 in canon Westcott's words, the bishop was ' not informed of 
 his ultimate design 1 .' It is far from improbable however 
 that Tunstal may already have heard something about his 
 visitor from other quarters, as a man of 'very advanced 
 opinions,' and consequently have regarded him as a dangerous 
 person to patronise. Nor can we altogether avoid the sur- 
 mise that, in the applicant before him, who, according to his 
 own description of himself, was 'evil-favoured in this world, 
 and without grace in the sight of men, speechless and rude, 
 dull and slow withal 2 ' the courtly ecclesiastic instinctively 
 recognised an uncongenial spirit, and one little likely to 
 prove a complaisant inferior in his household. It is certain 
 that he met Tyndale's application by a polite but cold 
 refusal. The latter, in his long-lived resentment, described 
 
 1st MB? M ~ him, many years after, as 'a still Saturn, that so seldom 
 speaketh, but walketh up and down all day musing, a duck- 
 ing hypocrite made to dissemble.'... 'His house was full,' the 
 bishop said, 'he had more than he could well find' (i.e. pro- 
 vide for) ; and he advised Tyndale to seek in London, ' where,' 
 he said, ' I could not lack a service.' 
 
 Ud their"" 11 l ^ ie P oor scn l ar went forth from Tunstal's presence dis- 
 heartened and humiliated, and it was left for a generous lay- 
 man to afford the aid which the cautious bishop had with- 
 held. The reasons that dictated the decision of the latter 
 were, we may be sure, of a kind that would have commended 
 themselves to the approval of not a few ; but nevertheless as 
 we turn to compare the subsequent achievements of these 
 two men, it is difficult altogether to avoid the conviction, that 
 though prudence and 'common sense' are doubtless in- 
 
 1 Hint. of the English Bible, p. 417. 
 1 Demaus, Life of Tyndale, p. 78.
 
 TUNSTAL AND TYNDALE. 595 
 
 valuable qualities, there are undertakings and junctures in CHAP. vi. 
 which 'the nicely calculated less or more' fails sadly as the 
 guide of action. Bishop Tunstal lived to a good old age ; 
 and though even his circumspect policy and foresight could 
 not secure for him complete immunity from the rude shocks 
 of the times, he reaped his reward in the fewness of his 
 personal foes, and died in a mild and honorable imprison- 
 ment. His excellent Arithmetic went through several 
 editions ; but in 1552 there appeared the greatly superior 
 work of Record and swept it to oblivion. William Tyndale 
 passed, as is well known, the remainder of his life in weary 
 exile, and died a martyr's death. But he accomplished the 
 work on which he had set his heart, and it has won for him 
 the gratitude of countless thousands and of long distant 
 generations ; even at the present day, after the lapse of more 
 than three centuries, the divine and the scholar are eloquent 
 in his praise ; and throughout the wide globe, wherever and 
 whenever the representatives of the English race are gathered 
 in the temples of Protestantism, the words of Scripture that 
 fall upon their ears recall the priceless service to his country- 
 men rendered by William Tyndale. 
 
 'That low man seeks a little thing to do, 
 
 Sees it and does it : 
 This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 
 
 Dies ere he knows it... 
 That has the world here should he need the next, 
 
 Let the world mind him ! 
 This, throws himself on God, and unperplext 
 
 Seeking shall find Him... 
 Lofty designs must close in like effects : 
 
 Loftily lying, 
 Leave him still loftier than the world suspects, 
 
 Living and dying.' 
 
 The story of Tyndale's life, from the time that he left Tyndaie-s 
 
 c 
 
 Cambridge, belongs to a wider current than that of uni- 1 
 versity history ; and his journey to Hamburg, his subsequent 
 intercourse with Luther at Wittenberg, the commencement 
 of the printing of his New Testament at Cologne, the dis- 
 covery of his proceedings by Cochlaeus, his flight up the 
 Rhine to Worms, and finally the appearance of numerous 
 
 382
 
 596 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. copies of the interdicted work in England in the spring of 
 1526, are facts that have within the last few years been 
 abundantly illustrated by the research of others. There is 
 however one point which cannot here be dismissed entirely 
 without comment : it seems certain that Tyndale was mainly 
 indebted to Cambridge for whatever Greek scholarship he 
 possessed, and the question of his acquirements in this respect 
 is consequently one in which the reputation of his university 
 is to some extent involved. 
 
 in* attain- It is not a little remarkable that it should have been 
 choiar mis- reserved for the research of the last few years to vindicate 
 
 represented 
 
 by More, ^Q labours of Tyndale, whose translation, it is to be borne 
 in mind, is essentially that of the present authorised English 
 version, from the charge of being a servile reproduction of 
 the German version by Luther and of the Vulgate. The 
 calumny, for such it may fairly be termed, seems to have 
 taken its rise with the assertion of More, who affirmed that 
 Tyndale's New Testament was merely a translation of 
 Luther's version 1 . Misrepresentation on the part of so 
 prejudiced a judge is small matter for surprise; but in the 
 
 Fuller, following century we also find Fuller, in his Church History, 
 implying that Tyndale, in his translation of the Old Testa- 
 ment, owing to his ignorance of Hebrew, was almost entirely 
 dependent on the Vulgate*. While within the present 
 
 Herbert century, even so competent a scholar as bishop Marsh, sitting 
 in the chair of Erasmus, gave deliberate countenance to the 
 
 ad iiaiiam, same view 8 ; and still more recently the authority of Hallam 
 
 1 'Whiche who so calleth the New the Hebrew.' Cliurch History, in 
 
 Testament, calleth it by a wrong 162. 
 
 name, excepte they wyll call it Tyn- 3 See Walter's Letter to Marsh, 
 
 dal'a Testament or Luther's Testa- On the Independence of the Autho' 
 
 ment. ^ For so hadde Tyndale after rized Verion of the Bible (1823). 
 
 Luther's counsayl corrupted and ' While I enjoyed the advantage of 
 
 changed it from the good and whole- attending your lectures, a painful 
 
 some doctrine of Christ to the deve- impression was forced upon me ; 
 
 lishe heresyes of their own, that it that I must, for the future, cease to 
 
 was cleane a contrary thing.' A Dia- view the authorized version of the 
 
 logue concerning Herenifs and Mat- Bible in a higher light than as a 
 
 ttr* of Religion, Englinh Works (ed. secondary translation.... It was the 
 
 1657), p. 228. combined effect of your language and 
 
 'He rendered the Old Testament manner which induced me to believe, 
 
 out of the Latin, his best friends not that Tyndal... in stead of translating 
 
 entitling him to any skill at all in directly from the original Scriptures,
 
 WILLIAM TYNDALE. 597 
 
 and the pages of an eminent living writer have not simply CHAP. VL 
 given further sanction to these conclusions, but have involved 
 the history of our early translations of the Scriptures in a com- 
 plete tissue of misstatement. From these misapprehensions 
 
 the masterly and lucid treatise of canon Westcott has twTITy io 
 triumphantly vindicated the character both of the translator 
 and of his work 1 ; and the annals of Cambridge at the 
 Reformation have acquired a new lustre, since the heroic 
 student, who so long labored in the university, has been 
 exhibited in his true light as the profound, accomplished, 
 and conscientious scholar, whose great achievement has 
 merited and received the following high eulogium. ' Before c*non 
 Tyndale began,' says canon Westcott, ' he had prepared him- summary. 
 self for a task of which he could apprehend the full difficulty. 
 He had rightly measured the momentous issues of a vernacular 
 version of the Holy Scriptures, and determined once for all 
 the principles on which it must be made. His later efforts 
 were directed simply to- the nearer attainment of his ideal. 
 To gain this end he availed himself of the best help that lay 
 within his reach, but he used it as a master and not as a 
 disciple. In this work alone he felt that substantial in- 
 dependence was essential to success. In exposition or ex- 
 hortation he might borrow freely the language or the thought 
 that seemed best suited to his purpose, but in rendering the 
 sacred text he remained throughout faithful to the instincts 
 of a scholar. From first to last his stifle ai*d interpretation 
 are his own, and in the originality of Tyndale is included in 
 a large measure the originality of our English Version. For 
 not only did Tyndale contribute to it directly the substantial 
 basis of half of the Old Testament (in all probability) and of 
 the whole of the New, but he established a standard of 
 Biblical translation which others followed. It is even of less 
 moment that by far the greater part of his translation 
 
 did bat compile a version from the was ignorant of Hebrew. See Baker- 
 
 Latin Vulgate and the German of Mayor, pp. 887-8. 
 
 Luther's Bible. 'pp. 1-2. This Marsh * Hist, of the English Bible, c. i 
 
 disclaimed, but he endeavored in and App. viii; Hallam, Hist, of Li- 
 
 bia reply to shew that Tyndale de- terature, i 7 386 ; Froude, Hisf . of Eng- 
 
 pended a good deal on Lather and land, c. xii.
 
 598 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CFIAP. VL remains intact in our present Bibles, than that his spirit 
 """*""" animates the whole. He toiled faithfully himself, and where 
 he failed he left to those who should come after the secret of 
 success. The achievement was not for one but for many ; 
 but he fixed the type according to which the later labourers 
 worked. His influence decided that our Bible should be 
 popular and not literary, speaking in a simple dialect, and 
 that so by its simplicity it should be endowed with per- 
 manence. He felt by a happy instinct the potential affinity 
 between Hebrew and English idioms, and enriched our 
 language and thought for ever with the characteristics, of 
 the Semitic mind 1 .' 
 
 But while Tvndale's independence of Luther .as a trans- 
 
 J 
 
 may be regarded as beyond question, it was far other- 
 wise in matter of doctrine ; for in this respect, as his 
 Prologues clearly shew, he completely submitted himself to 
 the teaching of the great Reformer*. And hence, although 
 the Cambridge Reformers undoubtedly derived their first 
 inspiration from Erasmus, under the new influence their 
 theology soon diverged from that of Rome to an extent 
 which Erasmus had never anticipated, and on some points 
 altogether discouraged that latitude of belief which he had 
 sought to establish. Both the German and the English 
 Reformer upheld in its most uncompromising form the 
 The cam- doctrine of predestination. They consequently treated 
 
 briilKt- Re- T , .1,1-1 
 
 fonnern con- Jerome and the Greek fathers with but little respect. 
 
 Mq neatly 
 
 th*>LV c Luther indeed stigmatised the former as a heretic, and 
 declared that he ' hated ' him more than any of the would- 
 be teachers of the Church 8 . And these views, though not 
 perhaps adopted by all the early Reformers*, were certainly 
 those that now prevailed at both universities. 
 
 1 Hitt. of the English Bible, pp. ein Ketzer gewesen Ich weiss 
 
 210-1. kcinen unter den Lehrern, dem ich 
 
 1 'Whose bokes be nothing els in BO feind bin als Hieronymo.' Tisch- 
 
 effect, but tbe worst heresies picked reden, Walch, xxn 2070. 
 out of Luthi-r's workes, and Luther's * The testimony of George Joye, 
 
 worst wordcH translated by Tyndall fellow of Peterhouse, seems to point 
 
 and put forth in Tymlal's own name.' to contrary tendencies. In his nar- 
 
 More, Knglith Work*, p. 228. rative of his interview with Gas- 
 
 1 'Hierouymus soil nicht unter die coigne, Wolsey's treasurer, he says: 
 
 Lehrer der Kirchen mit gcrechnet ' I came to Mr. Gascoing, whyche 
 
 noch gczehlot wcrdeu, denn er ist I perceyued by his wordes fauored
 
 TYNDALE'S NEW TESTAMENT. 599 
 
 Among the first to sound the note of alarm, as the report CHAP. VL 
 of Tyudale's New Testament began to spread abroad, was 
 Edward Lee, at that time king's almoner and afterwards 
 archbishop of York. A fit representative of the bigotry of 4 
 Oxford, he had already distinguished himself by a dishonest 
 and despicable attack on Erasmus's Novum Testamentum, 
 and had nearly quarrelled with Fisher on account of that 
 prelate's friendship for Erasmus himself 1 . Having heard 
 while on the continent that Tyndale's work was on its way to 
 England, Lee forthwith wrote to king Henry to apprise him 
 of the fact. ' I need not,' he said, ' to advertise your grace Lee sounds 
 what infection and danger may ensue hereby if it be not tile appear?" 
 
 anc<? oi 
 
 withstanded. This is the new way to fulfil your realm with Tyixiaie's 
 
 J J New Testa- 
 Lutherans All our forefathers, governors of the Church ment - 
 
 of England, have with all diligence forbid and eschewed 
 publication of English Bibles, as appeareth in constitutions 
 provincial of the Church of England 2 .' Spalatin, in Germany, 
 all absorbed as his thoughts might well have been with the 
 progress of events in his own country, noted down in his diary 
 under 'Sunday after St. Laurence's Day, 1526,' that the 
 English, in 'spite of the active opposition of the king, were Demand for 
 so eager for the Gospel as to affirm that they would buy a England. 
 New Testament even if they had to give a hundred thousand 
 pieces of money for it 3 .' The alarm excited by the publica- 
 tion of the volume was not diminished on an examination 
 of its pages. The circumstances that attended its appear- 
 ance were indeed almost an exact repetition of those that 
 marked that of Erasmus's Novum Tnstrumentum ; there was 
 the abstract hostility to the undertaking as an innovation 
 upon the current theological notions, and there was the direct 
 hostility to the volume itself as the vehicle of much that was 
 distasteful. It was soon recognised that another formidable 
 blow had been dealt at the whole system of mediaeval 
 
 me not, and he rebuked me because 1 Cooper, Athence, i 85 ; Lewis, Life 
 
 I studied Arigene [Origen] whyche of Fisher, n 201-2. 
 
 was an heretike, said lie; and he s Fronde, Hist, of England, n 31, 
 
 saide that I helde such opinions as note. 
 
 did Bilney and Arture.' Quoted by * Schelhorn, Amoenit. Lit. rv 431 
 
 Maitland, Essays on the Reformation, (quoted by "Westcott, p. 42). 
 
 p. 9.
 
 600 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. VL doctrinal teaching. The Greek words which in the Latin 
 f the Vulgate had been translated as equivalent to 'church,' 
 c'k 'priest,' ' charity/ ' grace,' ' confession,' ' penance,' had in Tyn- 
 dale's version been rendered by the words 'congregation,' 'elder,' 
 
 c?mpiaint of ' love,' 'favour,' 'knowledge,' 'repentance.' Ridley, the uncle 
 of the Reformer, writing to Warham's chaplain, complained 
 bitterly of the first of these substitutions. ' As if,' he says, 
 ' so many Turks or irrational animals were not a congrega- 
 tion, except he wishes them also to be a church.' ' Ye shall 
 not need,' he adds, ' to accuse this translation. It is accused 
 and damned by the consent of the prelates and learned men 1 .' 
 
 The volume Wolsey advised Henry to condemn the volume to be burnt, 
 
 burnt at , , - .' ..,.,. 
 
 pours cross, and the royal mandate to that effect was forthwith issued. 
 
 Cuthbert Tunstal, who presided at the burning at Paul's 
 
 Tun8tar set- Cross, declared in his sermon on the occasion, that the 
 
 iii' in on the 
 
 occasion. version contained two thousand errors'; while More, at a 
 somewhat later period did not scruple to assert, that Tyndale's 
 New Testament was ' the father of all the heresies by reason 
 o'f his false translating 3 .' Such was the reception originally 
 afforded by the ecclesiastic and the man of letters to the 
 
 1 Westcott, Hist, of the English like the children of Vippara would 
 
 Bible, p. 42, n. 2. So also More in now gnaw out their mother's bely, 
 
 his Dialogue (bk. in c. 8), 'Now dooe that the bare names of those bookes 
 
 these names in ourEnglishe toungne wer almost inough to make a booke, 
 
 neither expresse the thynges that be and of every sort of those bookes be 
 
 MM nt by them, and also ther ap- some brought into this realme and 
 
 peareth (the circumstances wel con- kepte in hucker mucker, by some 
 
 sidered) that he had a mischievous shrewde maisters that kepe them for 
 
 minde in the chaunge.' English no good. Besides the bokes of Latin, 
 
 Works, p. 229. French, and Dutch (in which there 
 
 * Westcott, p. 43. Or, according are of these evill sectes an innume- 
 
 to Roy, a yet larger number : rable sorte), there are made in the 
 
 'He declared there in his furious- English tongue, first, Tindale's Newe 
 
 nes Testament, father of them al by 
 
 That he fownde erroures more and reason of hys false translating. And 
 
 les after that, the fyve bookes of 
 
 Above thre thousande in the trans- Moyses, translated by the same man, 
 
 lacitm.' we nede not doubte in what maner, 
 
 liede. me, etc. (ed. Arber), p. 46. when we know by what man and for 
 
 More in his Dialogue says, ' wrong what purpose.' Confutation of Tyn- 
 
 and falsely translated above a thou- dale, Englixh Works (1532), p. 341. 
 
 sand textes by tale.' English Works, 'For he had corrupted and purposely 
 
 P- 25 chaunged in many places the text, 
 
 ' Of these bookes of heresies ther with such wordes as he might make 
 
 be so many made within these fewe it seme to the unlearned people, that 
 
 yeres, what by Luther himself and the Scripture affirmed their heresies 
 
 by his fdowea, and afterwards by the it eelfe.' Ibid. p. 310. 
 new sectes eprongen out of his, which
 
 THE CAMBRIDGE 'COLONY* AT OXFORD. G01 
 
 volume which must be looked upon as essentially the same CIIAP. n. 
 with that over which the foremost biblical scholars of our 
 country are at the present time engaged in prolonged study 
 and frequent consultation, and while aiming at the removal of 
 whatever is obsolete in expression or inaccurate in scholarship, 
 are none the less actuated by reverent regard for what is at 
 once the noblest monument of the English language and the 
 edifice round which the most cherished associations and the 
 deepest feelings of the nation have for three centuries entwined. 
 
 In the mean time the erection of Wolsey's college at Pro*.*** of 
 Oxford had been rapidly progressing. As the scheme of a lege. "* 
 
 single foundation it was on a scale of unprecedented magni- Jf 
 ficence, and when in the year 1527 the university took 
 occasion to address a formal letter of. thanks to the cardinal 
 for his numerous favours, they did not fail to select the new 
 college as the principal theme of congratulation and dwelt in 
 exuberant diction on the ' varied splendour and marvellous 
 symmetry ' of the architecture, the ' sanctity of the ordinances,' 
 the provisions for the celebration of divine service, the 'beauty 
 and order' that pervaded the whole design 1 . It was certainly Motive* that 
 
 f S~1 TIT 1 1 P 088 '^' I?* 1 ! 1" 
 
 no insignificant compliment to Cambridge that Wolsey paid i the ieiec- 
 
 J r tion of the 
 
 in inviting some of her most promising young scholars to ^ 
 transfer themselves as teachers and lecturers to the new 
 foundation ; nor can we ask for more unequivocal testimony 
 to the character and reputation of the younger members of 
 the reform party than the fact that it was almost exclusively 
 
 1 Wilkins, Concilia, in 709. 'The 186. And lastly, there was a revenue 
 
 cardinal's plan in this benefaction settled for the entertainment of 
 
 was large and noble, as appears by a strangers, the relief of the poor, and 
 
 draught of the statutes sent to the the keeping of horses for college 
 
 society under his hand and seal. By business. As to the building, it was 
 
 this scheme, there was a dean and magnificent in the model, curious in 
 
 Bub-dean, threescore canons of the the workmanship, and rich in the 
 
 first rank and forty of the second, materials; and if the cardinal had 
 
 thirteen chaplains, twelve clerks, lived to execute the design, few 
 
 and sixteen choristers ; to which we palaces of princes would have ex- 
 
 must add, lecturers or professors in ceeded it. Neither would the library 
 
 divinity, canon law, civil law, physic, have been short of the nobleness of 
 
 philosophy, logic, and humanity. the structure; for the cardinal in- 
 
 There were likewise four censors of tended to have furnished it with the 
 
 manners and examiners of the profi- learning and curiosities of the Vati- 
 
 cieucy of the students ; there were can, and to have transcribed the 
 
 also three treasurers, four stewards, pope's manuscripts for that purpose.' 
 
 and twenty inferior servants, in all, Collier-Lathbury, iv 57.
 
 602 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 C?IAP. vr. upon these that the choice fell. It is of course quite possible 
 that Shorten, who then filled the post of master of Pembroke 
 College and to whom Wolsey mainly entrusted the matter 1 , 
 was well aware of what was going on on the other side of 
 Trumpington Street within so short a distance of his own 
 lodge, and he may even have often noted Rogers and 
 Thixtill stealing out from the college to join the conferences 
 of the malcontents. But he may also not improbably have 
 thought that for a number of young men whose heads were 
 full of crude notions, and who were still in the first ardour 
 of their attachment to a cause they had but just embraced, 
 there could be nothing better than removal to a distant and 
 busy scene of action, where their minds would be absorbed 
 in active duties, and where, with the responsibility of instruct- 
 ing others devolving upon them, they might consider more 
 dispassionately the opinions they had embraced. Nor is it 
 impossible that Wolsey, whose acknowledged leniency to- 
 wards the Reformers had not yet been exchanged for a 
 harsher policy, may have been a participant in this view 
 
 Theaidthua and have applauded Shortou's discretion*. But however 
 
 Siren to * x 
 
 <uf?.n"*ii"t tn * s ma y nave been, we certainly cannot assent to the repre- 
 sen tations of Antony Wood 8 , who would have us believe that 
 learning at Oxford at this time was in so prosperous a state that 
 the aid thus afforded by Cambridge to the sister university 
 was altogether superfluous. The men who had most promoted 
 the new studies some twenty or fifteen years before, had 
 given place to another generation. Linacre, perhaps the 
 ablest scholar of them all, died in the same year that the 
 
 oct.ju, ISM. Cambridge students were transferred to Cardinal College. 
 His will, dated October 12, 1524, gave ample proof that 
 his attachment to the cause of science was still unabated 4 ; 
 and it is certainly not to be attributed to any defect in his 
 design or in his liberality that the founder of the College of 
 
 Strype (Life of Cranmtr, p. 3) some of the migrators to Oxford 'had 
 
 mentions Dr. Capon, matter of Jesus a shrewd name,' i.e. for heresy. 
 
 Collet, an also acting on Wolsey's 8 Wood-Outch, n 25. 
 
 behalf in the matter. 4 Brewer, Letters and Papers, IT 
 
 According to Dr. London's state- 322 ; Johnson, Life of Linacre, p. 
 
 xncnt to >>arham (Fronde, n 4G), 272.
 
 LEARNING! AT OXFORD. 
 
 COS 
 
 Physicians failed to identify bis name with the rise at both CHAP. vi. 
 Oxford and Cambridge of schools of medicine that might 
 have rivalled the fame of Salerno and of Padua. Unfortunately 
 his executors, though men of unquestioned integrity, were 
 already over-occupied with other important duties l , and the 
 founder's scheme remained for a long time inoperative ; 
 troublous times followed and the universities were wantonly 
 pillaged ; and ultimately the Linacre foundations, origin- 
 ally designed and not inadequately endowed as the nucleus 
 of an efficient school of natural science at both universities, 
 dwindled to two unimportant lectureships, each at the 
 disposal of a single college, and offering in the shape of The 
 
 i . - , . i i *i i Linacre Lec- 
 
 emolument but small attraction to recognised ability . turwhips. 
 
 1 The trustees were More, Tunstal, 
 Stokesley, and Shelley. It was not 
 until the third year of the reign of 
 King Edward vi that Tunstal, the 
 surviving trustee, assigned two of 
 the lectures to Merton College, Ox- 
 ford, and one to St. John's College, 
 Cambridge. 
 
 * The management of Linacre's 
 bequest has been criticised by Dr. 
 Johnson in his life of the founder, 
 published 1835, in the following 
 terms : ' Amongst the many in- 
 stances of misapplication and abuse 
 on the part of feoffees of funds, the 
 appropriation of which has been 
 specifically prescribed, a more glaring 
 one has seldom occurred than the 
 following, which recent enquiries 
 have been the means of exposing to 
 the world. Tunstal. ..seems on this 
 occasion either to have sacrificed the 
 consistence of his character to pri- 
 vate friendship, or to have been di- 
 verted from his duty by arguments 
 against which his old age and im- 
 becility of mind rendered him a very 
 unequal opponent. It is evident 
 from the tenour of the letters patent 
 that the inheritance of the ample 
 estates, which Linacre had assigned 
 to his trustees, was intended to be 
 vested in the university of Oxford, 
 for the performance of the obligations 
 which the letters specified. Wood 
 admits that the trustees meditated 
 such a disposal of them, but that 
 owing to the great decay of the uni- 
 versity in the reign of Edward vi, 
 
 the survivor was induced to settle 
 them in Merton College, and that he 
 was induced to this disposition of the 
 funds by Dr. Rainhold, the warden, 
 and by the preference which that 
 college had long enjoyed over others 
 in the university, as a foundation 
 whence inceptors in physic generally 
 proceeded. By an agreement be- 
 tween these parties, dated 10th of 
 December in the above year, a su- 
 perior and inferior reader were ap- 
 pointed, the one with an annual 
 salary of 12, the second with a 
 salary of 6. Tlie appointment to 
 these lectures had been originally 
 vested in the. trustees, but it was 
 agreed that it should be transferred 
 
 to the college The same influence 
 
 which prevented the intention of the 
 founder from being carried into effect 
 at Oxford, prevailed equally at Cam- 
 bridge. The remaining lecture was 
 there settled in St. John's College, 
 in whose statutes the reader is ex- 
 pressly mentioned, and the duties 
 of his office defined at large. It is 
 provided that the lecture should be 
 publicly delivered in the schools, un- 
 less a sufficient reason to the con- 
 trary should be assigned by the 
 master and a majority of the eight 
 seniors. The lecturer was to explain 
 the treatises of Galen De Sanitate 
 Tuenda and DeMethodo Medendi, as 
 translated by Linacre, or those of 
 the same author De Elementis et 
 Simplicibus. He was to continue in 
 office three years and a half ; but his
 
 604 
 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. VL 
 
 Spread of the 
 reformed 
 doctrines at 
 Oxford. 
 
 Wolsey's 
 treatment of 
 the young 
 Reformers at 
 Cardinal 
 College. 
 
 The history of those Cambridge students who accepted 
 Wolsey's invitations forms a well-known chapter in Foxe and 
 D'Aubigne", and has been retold, with all his wonted felicity 
 of narrative, by Mr. Froude. The principal names that 
 have been preserved to us are those of John Clerke 1 , 
 Richard Cox, Michael Drumm, John Frith, Richard Harman, 
 Thomas Lawney, John Salisbury, and Richard Taverner. 
 Though acting with greater circumspection and secresy, they 
 appear to have formed at Oxford a society like that they had 
 left holding its meetings at the White Horse at Cambridge ; 
 and the infection of Lutheran opinions soon spread rapidly 
 to other colleges. The authorities at Oxford, before the 
 lapse of two years, became fully apprised of their proceed- 
 ings, and the movement was clearly traced to the activity of 
 the new comers. ' Would God,' exclaimed Dr. London, the 
 warden of New College, when he learned that these pesti- 
 lential doctrines had penetrated even the exclusive society 
 over which he presided, ' would God, that my lord his grace 
 
 salary was to increase at the end of 
 the third year; the funds of the re- 
 maining half year to be appropriated 
 to indemnify the college. He was to 
 be at least a master of arts who had 
 studied Aristotle and Galen, and 
 during the continuance of his office 
 was interdicted from the practice of 
 medicine. The members of the col- 
 lege were to have preference before 
 other candidates, but in the event of 
 a deficiency of proper persons the 
 master and seniors had a power of 
 election from some other college. 
 An election was to take place imme- 
 diately upon a vacancy, or at least 
 twenty weeks previously to the com- 
 mencement of the lectures, that time 
 might be afforded to the reader to 
 prepare himself for his duty. At the 
 expiration of his term a reader might 
 be re-elected.' Johnson, Life of Li- 
 nacre, pp. 275-7. It will be seen 
 from the foregoing extract that 
 Johnson's censures apply to mis- 
 management of very ancient date. 
 Of late the appointment of Linacre 
 lecturer has been sought rather as a 
 recognition of acknowledged pro- 
 fessional ability than on account of 
 
 its emoluments. In the statutes 
 sanctioned by the queen in Council, 
 in 1860, it was ordered by statute 41 
 that the election should be vested in 
 the master and seniors of St. John's 
 College; that the lectures should be 
 open to any student of the univer- 
 sity ; and that the lecturer should re- 
 ceive all payments to which he was en- 
 titled by the foundation, together with 
 any other advantages or emoluments 
 which might be assigned to him by 
 the master and seniors. The advan- 
 tages thus resulting to the univer- 
 sity, in the shape of most competent 
 scientific instruction, have undoubt- 
 edly been fully commensurate with 
 the moderate salary that still repre- 
 sents the original foundation. Fur- 
 ther information on the subject will 
 be found in Appendix B to Lord 
 Brougham's Commission. 
 
 1 It is doubtful, as there were 
 several of his contemporaries of the 
 same name, whether this John Clerke 
 is the same as the one whose death 
 in prison was attended by such 
 touching circumstances. Mr. Cooper 
 (Athfnce, i 124), inclines to the ne- 
 gative conclusion.
 
 THE CAMBRIDGE 'COLONY* AT OXFORD. 605 
 
 had never motioned to call any Cambridge man to his most CHAP. rr. 
 godly college ! It were a gracious deed if they were tried 
 and purged and restored unto their mother from whence 
 they came, if they be worthy to come thither again. We 
 were clear without blot or suspicion till they came 1 !' But at 
 the same time he was compelled to admit that the proselyt- 
 isers had found their converts among 'the most towardly 
 young men in the university.' Wolsey's chagrin at the 
 discredit thus brought upon his new foundation was extreme, 
 and those students who were convicted of having Lutheran 
 volumes in their possession were treated with barbarous 
 cruelty. They were thrown into a noisome dungeon, where 
 four died from the severity and protracted duration of their 
 confinement, and from which the remainder were liberated in 
 a pitiable state of emaciation and weakness. Of the latter 
 number however it is worthy of note that nearly all subse- 
 quently attained to marked distinction in life. 
 
 In the meantime a rigorous enquiry had been going on at Proceedings 
 
 e 1 / 06 against the 
 
 Cambridge; and as the first result, towards the close of the J^"^** 
 year 1527, George Joye, Bilney, and Arthur, were summoned Geoiye Joye. 
 by Wolsey to appear before the chapter at Westminster to 
 answer to sundry charges. Joye's narrative of his individual 
 experiences is familiar through various channels to many 
 readers. Arriving in London one snowy day in November, 
 he found on proceeding to the chapter-house that Bilney and 
 Arthur were already undergoing examination; and, in his 
 own language, ' hearing of these two poore shepe among so , 
 many wolves,' was not ' over hasty to thrust himself in among 
 them.' Perceiving that he was circumvented by treachery, 
 he successfully outmanoeuvred his enemies, and effected his HIS fluht to 
 
 i r-i s-\ i i i Strassburg. 
 
 escape from London to Strassburg. On arriving there he lost 
 no time in publishing certain letters of the prior of Newnham 
 Abbey, by whom he had been accused to the authorities, and 
 vindicated with considerable ability the orthodoxy of the 
 heresies for which he had been cited 8 . His subsequent 
 
 1 Dr. London to TTarham, Rolls Colleges and Halls (ed. Gutch), p. 
 House MS. (quoted by Froude, n 188. 
 46). For Dr. London see Wood, * The Letters ichyche Jolian Ash-
 
 606 
 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CTTAP.VI. 
 
 Examination 
 
 of Arthur 
 
 Articles 
 
 against 
 
 Arthur. 
 
 tiou, 
 
 anainBil- 
 
 disingenuous performances in connexion with Tyndale's 
 New Testament, and Tyndale's description of his character 1 , 
 will perhaps incline us to conclude that the severity with 
 which Dr. Haitian d has commented on his want of veracity, 
 in common with that of other of the early Reformers, is in 
 this instance not altogether undeserved 8 . 
 
 With Arthur and Bilney, whom Joye had left undergoing 
 
 J ' J , 
 
 eiT examination at the chapter-house, it fared much the 
 same as with Barnes. The indictments against Arthur 
 were not numerous; and of these, while he admitted some, 
 he denied the most important. He denied that he had 
 exhorted the people to pray for those in prison on account of 
 their religious tenets, or that he had preached against the 
 invocation of saints and image worship ; but he confessed to 
 having used bold language in favour of lay preaching; to 
 having declared that every layman was a priest 3 ; and more 
 especially to having said, in a sermon before the university 
 on Whit Sunday, 'that a bachelor of divinity, admitted of 
 the university, or any other person having or knowing the 
 gospel of God, should go forth and preach in every place, 
 and let for no man of what estate or degree soever he 
 were: and if any bishop did accurse them for so doing, his 
 curses should turn to the harm of himself.' Of these latter 
 articles he now signed a revocation and submitted himself to 
 the judgement of the authorities 4 . 
 
 Bilney, who was regarded as the archheretic, and who 
 
 " * , 
 
 probably felt that on his firmness the constancy of his followers 
 materially depended, gave more trouble. He had offended 
 
 veil, prioiir of Ncwnham Abbey be- 
 tyrlfs Bedford*, sent secretly to tlte 
 bihope of Lyncolne, in the yeare of 
 our Lord 1527. Wheer in the tayde 
 prionr accuneth George Joye, that 
 tyme being felow of Peter College in 
 Cainbryrje, of fower opinyons : with 
 the anticere of the sayde George unto 
 the tayde opinynnt. Strassburg. ' I 
 believe the date from Strasfiburg to be 
 merely a blind, and that the book 
 was printed in London.' Maitland, 
 Eiay* on the Information, p. 12. 
 1 Canon Westcott, Hist, of the 
 
 English Bible, pp. 66-60, 69. 
 
 a Essays on the Reformation, pp. 
 4-12. 
 
 . * 'By the authority of God, where 
 He saith Euntes in mundum, pradi- 
 cate evanflflium omni creatnrce; by 
 which authority every man may 
 preach.' (Second Article, Foxe- 
 Cattley, iv 623). Arthur's inference 
 almost suggests a doubt whether he 
 rightly translated the Latin. 
 
 * Cooper, Annals, i 825; Foxe- 
 Cattley, IV 620-3.
 
 JOYE, ARTHUR, AND BILNEY. GO? 
 
 against the authority of the Church far more seriously by his CJIAP. vr. 
 obstinate practice of the theory which Arthur had asserted. 
 The friars had twice dragged him from the pulpit; his 
 voice had been heard at Christchurch and St. George's in 
 Ipswich, inveighing against pilgrimages and the pretended 
 miracles of the day; in the same city he had held a public 
 disputation with a friar on the practice of image worship ; he 
 had been no less vehement though less personal than Barnes, 
 in his attacks on the pride and pomp of the superior clergy; 
 and finally, he was a relapsed heretic 1 . At first it seemed 
 that he was resolved to incur the direst penalties rather 
 than abjure a second time. When urged by Tunstal he 
 three times refused his submission ; but the persuasions 
 of his friends ultimately prevailed, and he again consented 
 to sign an act of recantation. On the following Sunday, ne recants a 
 the 8th of December, he publicly, along with Arthur, bore 
 his fagot in procession at Paul's Cross. After this he was re- 
 committed to prison ; was a second time examined and 
 abjured by "Wolsey ; and finally after twelve months' imprison- 
 ment regained his liberty, and was once more seen at Cam- 
 bridge, walking and conversing with Latimer on Heretics' 
 Hill. 
 
 It seems beyond question that it was with reference s>eitoirss- 
 to this occasion 2 that Skelton attacked the Cambridge on>brid,fe 
 
 o Reformers. 
 
 1 Bilney denied that he Lad wit- Mr. Dyce's theory that Skelton (who 
 tingly taught any of Luther'sopinions. dedicated the ' Reply cacion ' Cardi- 
 ' Then the cardinal asked him, whe- nali mtritissimo it apostolicce sedit 
 ther he had not once made an oath legato, alatereque legato superillustri 
 before, that he would not preach, ...necnon prcesentis opusculi fantore 
 rehearse, or defend any of Luther's excellentissimo), fled to the Sanc- 
 opiiiions, but would impugn the tuary at Westminster so early as 
 same everywhere ? He answered 1523. 'It would be absurd,' he says 
 that he had made such an oath ; but (i Ivii), ' to imagine that, in 1523, 
 not lawfully.' Foxe-Cattley, rv 622. Wolsey continued to patronise the 
 'not judicially (judicialiter in the man who had written Why come ye 
 Register).' Burnet-Pocock, i 70. nat to CourteT But this objection 
 
 2 'For ye were worldly shamed rests entirely on the assumption that 
 At Poules crosse openly, Wolsey identified Skelton thus early 
 All men can testify ; as the author of that satire, of which 
 There lyke a sorte of sottes, we have no evidence; while there is 
 Ye were fayne to bear fagottes, certainly no other act of penance on 
 At the feeat of her conception the part of Cambridge Reformers 
 Ye suffred suche correction?' recorded as having taken place in a 
 
 Skelton-Dyce, i 211. It will not be prior year, on the 8th of December, 
 possible to reconcile this reference to i. e. the Feast of the Conception. 
 Bilney's recantation in 1527, with
 
 608 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. Reformers in the lines, the most contemptible of his extant 
 compositions, whereby he sought to second the terrors of the 
 law by the lash of satire. In his ' Replycacion against certain 
 yong Scholers abjured of late,' dedicated to his former patron, 
 we meet neither with the poetic fancies of the ' Garlande of 
 Laurell' nor the vigorous irony of 'Colyn Clout' or of 'Why 
 
 OMwof come ye nat to Courte?' but a mere outpouring of coarse 
 invective and rancorous spite. He grudges the poor scholars 
 the exhibitions which their talents and industry had gained 
 for them at the universities 1 ; declares, a singular charge 
 for a theologian of the old school to prefer, that they so 
 'cobble and clout' the Gospels 2 and Epistles, that the 
 laity are thrown into the utmost mental perplexity; and 
 reviles them in unmeasured terms for their rejection of pil- 
 grimages, Mariolatry, and image worship 8 . 
 
 It does not appear that Bilney on his return to Cambridge 
 was regarded with less esteem by his friends, but he was a 
 humiliated and saddened man, and his sufferings from self- 
 reproach were such, that it was for some time feared 
 that his reason would give way. It is certain that he no 
 longer assumed the part of a leader ; while, in the same 
 year that he returned, his party sustained another serious 
 
 Death or blow in the death of the eloquent and hi#hminded 
 
 Stafford. 
 
 Stafford. It was in the generous discharge of the offices of 
 Christian charity that the latter met his end. During the 
 prevalence of the plague he had the courage to visit one of 
 the infected, a master of arts of Clement's hostel. This 
 man, whose name was Henry, although a priest, was known 
 under the designation of 'the Conjuror,' owing to his reported 
 addiction to the study of necromancy. His malady, therefore, 
 
 1 'Some of you had ten ponnde pellers.' 
 
 Therewith for to be founde * Ibid, i 217-S. It will be observed 
 
 At the unyversyte that these are precisely the practices 
 
 Employed whiche might have against which Bilney directed his at- 
 
 '" tacks. There can be no doubt that 
 
 Moche better other wayes.' it is to Bilney's trial that More in 
 
 Skelton-Dyce, i 213. his Dialogue (written 1528) refers ; 
 
 1 Ibid, i 216. It may be noted for the same heretical tenets are 
 
 that it was on account of their atten- there animadverted upon in con- 
 
 tion to the Gospels rather than to nexion with a recent and important 
 
 the Sentences, that the early Reform- conviction for heresy. See his Eng- 
 
 en were often designated as ' Oos- luh Works (ed. 1557), p. 113.
 
 LATIMER'S CARD SERMONS. C09 
 
 not improbably, was regarded as a special judgement ; and CHAP. vi. 
 Stafford, seizing the opportunity, urged upon him the un- 
 lawful nature of his studies with such effect, that before he 
 left the ' conjuring books ' had been consigned to the flames. 
 His purpose accomplished, Stafford went home, and was him- 
 self attacked by the plague and carried off in a few hours 1 . 
 
 With Stafford dead, Bilney discredited, and Barnes in i-atimer-s 
 
 . 1/1 i ' t Sermons on 
 
 prison, the Cambridge Reformers might have lacked a leader, {J^'J^ 
 had not Latimer at this juncture begun to assume that 
 prominent part whereby he became not only the foremost 
 man of the party in the university but ' the Apostle of the 
 Reformation ' in England. His ' Sermons on the Card,' 
 two celebrated discourses at St. Edward's Church in Decem- 
 ber, 1529, are a notable illustration of the freedom of simile 
 and quaintness of fancy that characterise the pulpit oratory 
 of his age. Delivered moreover on the Sunday before 
 Christmas, they had a special relevancy to the approaching 
 season. It was customary in those days for almost every card-piaying 
 household to indulge in card-playing at Christmas time. ? 
 
 f .7 a ^ ^ diversion. 
 
 Even the austere Fisher, while strictly prohibiting such 
 recreation at all other times of the year, conceded per- Permitted by 
 
 /-.i r> -r i Fisher to the 
 
 mission to the fellows of Christ s and St. Johns thus to **"!<** 
 
 John 8 at thu 
 
 divert themselves at this season of general rejoicing 2 . By > 
 
 1 Fuller-Prickett & Wright, p. haec nemo sociorum tesseris, aleis, 
 206. Cooper's conjecture (Annals, i taxillis, chartis aliisve ludis jure 
 327 n. 5), that the conjurer was per- canonico vel regui prohibitis utatur, 
 haps only a mathematician, seeins praeterquam solo Nativitatis Christ! 
 scarcely compatible with what we tempore, neque turn in inultam noc- 
 know of the estimation in which ma- tern aut alibi qnam in aula, atque id 
 thematical studies were held at this duntaxat auiini remittendi causa, 
 time ; nearly a century before, John non quaestus Incrive gratia. Disci- 
 Holbrook, master of Peterhouse, had pulorum vero ncminem dictos ludos 
 compiled and bequeathed to that exercere ullo unquam tempore per- 
 society a complete set of astronomi- mittimus, aut intra collegium ant 
 cal tables; while Melanchthon, as we extra.' Early Statutes of St. John's 
 have already seen (supra, p. 592), had (1530), ed. Mayor, p. 138: for sta- 
 openly commended the study of as- tutes of 1524 see Ibid. p. 334. La- 
 trology. For Holbrook's labours, the timer does not seem to have in any 
 Tabulce Cantabrigienses, which be- way hinted disapproval of the prac- 
 long to the history of mathematical tice ; but the Reformers, generally, 
 studies in the university, see Mr. denounced it ; and at the Council of 
 HalliwelTs Catalogue of the Contents Augsburg it was decreed that those 
 of tin Codex Holbrookianus, 1840. who countenanced any game of 
 
 2 The scholars were forbidden to chance should not be admitted to 
 play even at Christmas time. 'Ad the communion. See Taylor's HiW. 
 
 ' 39
 
 610 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. having recourse to a series of similes drawn from the rules 
 of primero and 'trump 1 / Latimer accordingly illustrated 
 his subject in a manner that for some weeks after caused 
 his pithy sentences to be recalled at well nigh every social 
 gathering; and his Card Sermons became the talk of both 
 town and university. It need hardly be added that his 
 similes were skilfully converted to enforce the new doctrines 
 he had embraced ; more especially, he dwelt with particular 
 emphasis on the far greater obligation imposed on Christians 
 to perform works of charity and mercy than to go on 
 pilgrimages or make costly offerings to the Church. The 
 novelty of his method of treatment made it a complete 
 success ; and it was felt, throughout the university, that his 
 shafts had told with more than ordinary effect. Among those 
 who regarded his preaching with especial disfavour, was 
 M*mp n ua m Buckenham, the prior of the Dominican foundation at 
 i!a p t!iuw. Cambridge, who resolved on an endeavour to answer him in 
 like vein. As Latimer had drawn his illustrations from 
 cards, the prior took his from dice ; and as the burden of 
 the former's discourses had been the authority of Scripture 
 and an implied assumption of the people's right to study 
 the Bible for themselves, so the latter proceeded to instruct 
 his audience how to throw cinque and quatre to the con- 
 fusion of Lutheran doctrines the quatre being taken to 
 denote the 'four doctors' of the Church, the cinque five 
 passages in the New Testament, selected by the preacher for 
 the occasion 8 . 
 
 wiliSfvony ' But an imitation is rarely as happy as the original, nor 
 
 in the !r . was Buckenham in any respect a match for the most popular 
 
 and powerful preacher of the day ; and his effort at reply 
 
 only served to call forth another and eminently effective 
 
 of Playing Cards, pp. 249-88, for the called the triumph, which, if it be 
 
 games at earth in vogue at this well played at, he that dealeth shall 
 
 period. Seven of the cards in the win; the players shall likewise win; 
 
 Jeu de Mantffjnn were named from and the Btanders and lookers upon 
 
 the subjects of the trivium and quad- shall do the same.' Latimer, Ser- 
 mon* (ed. Corrie), p. 8. For the game 
 
 Prom the French trinmphe : so of La Triomphe, see Taylor, p. 372-3; 
 
 L,atimer in his first sermon : 'The it is, he says, ' the parent of ecartC 
 
 game that we will play at shall l>e Demans, LifeofLatimcr,p. 97.
 
 LATIMER. 611 
 
 sermon, by way of retort, from Latimer. Others thereupon CHAP. vr. 
 engaged in the controversy. The duel became a battle ; and 
 the whole university was divided into two fiercely hostile 
 parties. West again entered the lists against the Reformer, 
 at Barnwell. John Venetus, a learned foreigner, preached 
 against him from, the pulpit of St. Mary's 1 . St. John's 
 College, it was rumored under Fisher's influence, distin- 
 guished itself by a peculiarly bitter hostility ; and it was not Tie contest 
 until the arrival of the following missive from the royal 
 almoner to Dr. Buckmaster, the vice-chancellor, that peace, 
 at least in outsvard observance, was restored to the uni- 
 versity : 
 
 4 Mr. Vice-chancellor, I hastily commend me unto you, .adver- 
 tising .the same that it hath been greatly complained unto the 
 kinges highnes of the shamefull contentions used now of late in 
 sermons made betweene Mr Latymer and certayuo of St. John's 
 College, insomuch his grace intendeth to set some ordre therein, 
 which shulde not be greatly to yours and other the heades of the 
 universities worship. Wherefore I prey you to use all your wisdom 
 and authoritie ye can to appease the same, so that no further 
 complaints be made thereof. It is not unlikely that they of St. 
 John's proceedeth of some private malice towards Mr. Latymer, 
 and that also thei be any mated so to do by their master, Mr 
 Watson, and soche other my Lorde of Rochester's freendes. Which 
 malice also, peradventure, cometh partly for that Mr. Latymer 
 favoureth the king's cause, and I assure you that it is so reported 
 to the kinge. And contrary, peradventure, Mr Latymer being by 
 them exasperated, is more vehemente than becometh the very 
 evangeliste of Christe, and de industria, speaketh in his sermons 
 certen paradoxa to offende and sklaunder the people, which I 
 assure you in my mynde is neither wisely donne ut nunc aunt 
 tempora, neither like a goode evaugeliste. Ye shall therefore, in 
 my opynyon do well to commaunde both of them to silence, and 
 that neither of them from henceforth preche untyll ye know farther 
 of the kiiige's pleasure, or elles by some other waies to reduce 
 them in concordance, the waves how to ordre the same I remyt to 
 your wysdom and Mr. Edmondes, to whom I praye you have me 
 heartily commended, trustinge to see you shortly. At London, the 
 xxiiiith day of January. 
 
 Your lovinge freende, 
 
 EDWARD FOXE*.' 
 
 1 Cooper, Athena;, i 40. s Lamb, Cambridge Documents, p. 14. 
 
 392
 
 612 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. TI. The allusion in the foregoing letter to 'the king's cause' 
 i>m>RciL At refers to another important controversy then dividing the 
 sympathies of the English nation, and in connexion, with 
 which the universities played a prominent though little 
 honorable part, the question of the Royal Divorce. When 
 Wolsey, in the year 1524, was holding out inducements to 
 the ablest scholars in Cambridge to transfer themselves to 
 his new foundation at Oxford, there were some who, doubt- 
 less from good and sufficient reasons, declined his tempting 
 offers ; and, characteristically enough, among this number 
 Thoma* was the wary and sagacious Cranmer. Cranmer was at that 
 }*** time in his thirty-fifth year and a fellow of Jesus College. 
 The circumstances under which he had been elected were 
 peculiar, inasmuch as he was a widower and had vacated a 
 former fellowship by marriage. At the Bridge Street end 
 of All Saints' Passage there stood in those days a tavern of 
 TJj^ , good repute known by the sign of the Dolphin. From its 
 proximity to Jesus Lane it was probably especially patronised 
 by Jesus men; and Cranmer in his visits fell in love with the 
 landlady's niece, to whom his enemies in after years were 
 wont to refer under the designation of 'black Joan 1 .' His 
 marriage soon after he had been elected in 1515 a fellow of 
 
 
 
 Jesus College, involved of course the resignation of his 
 fellowship, and for a time Cranmer maintained himself by 
 officiating as 'common reader' at Buckingham College. 
 iTUnrifu-s jj u ^ w ith m a twelvemonth his wife died; and it may be 
 looked upon as satisfactory proof both of the estimation in 
 which his abilities were held and that no discredit attached 
 to tne connexion he had formed, that he was again elected to 
 a fellowship by the authorities at Jesus 8 . 
 
 ! v. 
 
 1 Cooper, A thenar, 1 145. According nostrot e*e maritoa vel maritatos. 
 
 to Fuller, Cranmer's 'frequent re- It seems this last barbarous word 
 
 pair' to the Dolphin 'gave occasion was not, or was not taken notice of, 
 
 to that impudent lie of the papists in Jesus College statutes. Cranmer 
 
 that he was an ostler. ' Fuller- herein is a precedent by himself, if 
 
 Prickett & Wright, p. 208 ; Morice, that may be a precedent which hath 
 
 AnfcdoUi of Archbp. Cranmer, in none to follow it.' Ibid. p. 203. A 
 
 Nichols, Narrative* of the Reforma- recent election, to a fellowship on 
 
 tion, p. 269. the foundation of the college of the 
 
 'I know the statutes of some same name at the sister university, 
 
 houses run thus : Noltimitg tociot has falsified Fuller's last words.
 
 CRANMER. 613 
 
 In the long vacation of 1529 the outbreak of the plague CIIAP.VL 
 at Cambridge had driven away the members of the university, fC^^TIt 
 and among the number Cranmer had taken refuge with two 1^*^,1^ 
 pupils, also relatives, of the name of Cressy, at their father's l!u"'huid 
 house at Waltham. It so happened that during his residence respect 
 
 , i , , . , . , . the royal 
 
 there, the same epidemic had compelled the court to leave <UYW. 
 London ; Waltham had likewise been selected for the royal 
 retreat ; and Fox, the writer of the above letter, then provost 
 of King's College, and Gardiner, then master of Trinity Hall, 
 were lodged at Cressy 's house. Cranmer was probably already 
 well known to both, and as his reputation as a canonist was 
 almost unrivalled at Cambridge, they naturally adverted to 
 the canonical difficulty that was then alleged to be trou- 
 bling Henry's mind, the legality of his marriage with 
 his brother's wife. It was then, according to the oft-told 
 story, under the shadow of earl Harold's foundation, that 
 nobly conceived innovation on the monastic monopoly of 
 learning 1 , that the fellow of Jesus College threw out the 
 suggestion, which, as adopted and carried out by Henry, was 
 in the course of a few years to prove the downfall of the 
 monastic system in England. 
 
 It is unnecessary that we should here enter upon the The question 
 
 J . i ii i as laid before 
 
 merits of a controversy respecting which, amid all the *!' niver- 
 sophistry and ingenuity that have been expended on it, few 
 candid students of the period are probably much at variance ; 
 but the morality of the royal divorce and the morality of 
 the universities in relation to the question are distinct 
 subjects, and the latter, though its details are correctly 
 described by Mr. Froude as ' not only wearying but scanda- 
 lous,' lies too directly in our path to be passed by without 
 comment. The question propounded to the universities, it 
 is to be observed, was very far from embracing those consi- 
 derations of expediency that have been urged by different 
 writers in extenuation of Henry's policy. The loss by death 
 of one after another of the royal children, the possibility of 
 a disputed succession and of the revival of civil war, were 
 not matters of which the pundits of Oxford and Cambridge 
 
 1 See supra 160-3.
 
 C14 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 ^_ A T'-^' were supposed to have any cognisance. The question, which 
 as canonists and theologians they \vere called upon to decide, 
 was simply whether a man may lawfully marry his brother's 
 wife, after that brothers death without issue 1 ; and there were 
 possibly some half-dozen men of education and intelligence 
 in the kingdom who seriously believed that the verdict of 
 these learned bodies would be in scrupulous conformity 
 with what they found to be the preponderance of authority 
 in the Scriptures, the fathers, the canonists, and the school- 
 
 riie question men. It was however patent to all that a far wider question 
 
 really involv- . ii/i 
 
 cd that of the was tacitly laid before the universities as an inevitable 
 
 suprviue an- * 
 
 uprviue 
 
 thori 
 
 of the coro llary to that which was formally submitted. Pope 
 
 Julius II had granted a dispensation for Henry's marriage 
 with Catherine ; and every effort on the king's part to prevail 
 on Clement to annul this dispensation had been unavailing*; 
 in referring the question to the universities it was therefore 
 obvious that Henry was tacitly reviving the fifteenth 
 century theory of oecumenical councils that of an authority 
 which could control the pontifical decrees. Apart therefore 
 from the known sympathies of Ann Boleyn with the 
 Reformers, the appeal to the universities at once evoked in 
 the most direct manner fresh demonstrations of that party 
 spirit which Cambridge had already seen raging so hotly 
 under the influence of Latimer. 
 
 Fallacious On the continent, as at home, it soon became evident 
 
 thp* how small was the probability that the different centres of 
 
 (UvnL 
 
 learning would consent to adjudicate upon the question on 
 its abstract merits, as tested by the authority of Aquinas 
 or Turrecremata. In Germany the Lutherans, partly from 
 hostility to Henry, partly from fear of the emperor, were 
 almost unanimous in opposing the divorce. Italy under 
 the machinations of Richard Croke proved more favor- 
 
 1 'An Kit jure divino et natural! out the words in italics. See Hitt. 
 
 prohibitum no fratcr d,ucat in uxo- of England, rv s 593, Append. M. 
 rctn relictam fratris mortui sine li- * Burnet himself admits that 'to 
 
 6m'*.' Lingard, whose account of condemn the bull of a former pope 
 
 the conduct of the universities in as unlawful, was a dangerous prece- 
 
 relation to the question appears to dent at a time when the pope's 
 
 be in other respects correct, has authority was rejected by so many 
 
 made a serious omission in leaving in Germany.' Burnet- Pocock, i 81.
 
 THE DIVORCE. 615 
 
 able to the king's wishes. That eminent scholar, who was CHAP. vi. 
 now Greek lecturer at St. John's, had been sent out, at the ookeiu 
 suggestion of Oanmer, to collect the opinions of the most 
 distinguished foreign canonists and jurists. Of the candour 
 and impartiality with which he might be expected to dis- 
 charge his mission he had recently given the university no 
 encouraging promise. In the preceding January it had been 
 decreed by the senate that a solemn annual posthumous 
 service should be celebrated at St. John's College in com- 
 memoration of the great benefactor of the university, its 
 chancellor, bishop Fisher. Croke had some six years before 
 been elected a fellow of the college, and there were few of its 
 members who lay under greater obligations to him whom it 
 was now decided thus to honour ; from motives however 
 which are not recorded he did his best to discourage the 
 proposal, and even declared that Fisher was intent on usurp- 
 ing the honours due to a founder, 'in derogation of the 
 right and honour of the lady Margaret.' His contemptible 
 meanness and ingratitude only served to draw from Fisher an 
 earnest and unanswerable letter of self- vindication, and at a 
 later time, from the historian of the college, the not un- 
 deserved epithets of ' an ambitious, envious, and discontented 
 wretch 1 .' He was now to be heard of at Venice, professedly 
 engaged in poring over ancient Greek manuscripts for 
 passages bearing on the all-engrossing question, or at 
 Bologna and Padua, whence he reported endless conferences 
 with various professors and divines ; but his more serious m< activity 
 
 11 ! 11 i ' n {"iMpK the 
 
 business consisted in collecting subscriptions, duly recognised universities 
 by an adequate honorarium, to an opinion favorable to his 
 royal employer 2 . 
 
 1 Baker-Mayor, p. 97- find however larger sums qnoted : 
 
 2 For a detailed account of Crete's but the most conclusive evidence is 
 mission see Burnet-Pocock, i 151-8. perhaps to be gathered from Croke's 
 Burnet quoting the sums named by lettr book. Cotton MS. Vitellius 
 Croke in his letters, thinks they can B 13. The statement of Cavendish 
 hardly be looked upon as bribes, [Life of fl'olsey (ed. Singer), p. 206], 
 from the smallness of the amounts: is perhaps as trustworthy as that of 
 'they' [the recipients] he says, 'must any independent contemporary, and 
 have had very prostituted con- he says 'there was inestimable sums 
 sciences if they could be hired so of money given to the famous clerks 
 cheap.' In Dodd-Tierney (i 201), we to choke them, and in especial to
 
 616 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 At home, though there is no evidence of bribery, there 
 King Henry was undeniable intimidation. The very first letter that 
 oxford. Henry addressed to the university of Oxford, where it was 
 well known that there existed a large and influential party 
 opposed to the divorce, contained a distinct and intelligible 
 threat 1 ; in a second, written when it had become apparent 
 that the anticipated opposition was likely to result in an un- 
 favorable verdict, the threat was yet more plainly repeated"; 
 and in a third letter, written after the Cambridge verdict 
 had been made known, the example thus set was appealed to 
 in order to quicken the irresolute counsels of the sister 
 university 8 . Having pledged himself to a theory of the 
 history of the divorce which represents it as ' a right and 
 necessary measure,' and conceived by Henry solely from 
 Mr. Froudc's honorable and conscientious motives, Mr. Froude, in com- 
 
 coniparison . .. . 
 
 of the con- paring the policy respectively pursued by these two learned 
 bodies, has not hesitated to draw the contrast entirely to the 
 disadvantage of the community to which he himself belongs. 
 ' The conduct of the English universities/ he says, ' was 
 precisely what their later characters would have led us 
 
 respectively to expect from them Cambridge, being 
 
 distinguished by greater openness and largeness of mind on 
 this as on the other momentous subjects of the day than the 
 sister university, was able to preserve a more manly bear- 
 ing, and escape direct humiliation 4 .' 
 
 sncb as had the governance and that our university of Cambridge 
 
 custody of their universities' seals." hath within far shorter time not 
 
 See also Lingard, Hist, of England, only agreed upon the fashion and 
 
 iv 6 693. manner to make answere to us effect- 
 
 1 'And in case you do not up- ually, and with diligence following 
 
 rightly, according to divine learning, the same : but hath also eight days 
 
 humble yourselves herein, ye may be since sent unto us their answere 
 
 assured that we, not without great under common scale, plainly deter- 
 
 cause, shall so quickly and HO sharply mining, etc.' Fiddes, Life of Wol- 
 
 look to your unnatural misdemean- sey, Collect. No. 85. (This letter is 
 
 our herein, that it shall not be to not referred to by Mr. Froude). 'So 
 
 your quietness and ease hereafter. 1 many thunderclaps of his dis- 
 
 Froude, i 258. pleasure,' says Anthony Wood, 'had 
 
 1 'And if the youth of the univer- been enough, if our famous univer- 
 sity will piny masteries as they begin sity had not been consecrated to 
 to do, we doubt not but they shall eternity, to have involved our col- 
 well perceive that non cut bonum leges among the funerals of abbeys.' 
 irritare crabront*.' Ibid, i 262. Wood -Oaten, n 40. 
 
 'And BO much the more marvel * Hist, of England, i 257, 262. 
 wo nt this your manner of ilelays,
 
 THE DIVORCE. 617 
 
 Without entering upon the question how far the com- CIIAP.VL 
 parisou thus drawn is to be justified on a consideration of H J^j^j] 
 the continuous history of the two universities, it may be di^'i'nui^ 
 worth while to examine to what extent Mr. Froude's eulogium er 
 of Cambridge is borne out by the documentary evidence. 
 The following royal letter, the first formal step in the pro- 
 ceedings, was received by Dr. Buckmaster, the vice-chancellor, 
 a fellow of Peterhouse, in February, 1529 : 
 
 ' To our trusty and well-beloved, tJie Vice-cJutncettor, Doctors, and Kimtiicnry- 
 Regentes and Non-Regentes of our Universitie of Cambridge. uniMwut'or 
 
 Cambridge. 
 
 * BY THE KING. 
 
 ' Trusty and well beloved, we grete you well. And where- 
 as in the matter of matrymonie between us and the Quene, uppon 
 consultation had with the gretest clerks of Christendom, as well 
 without this our real me as within the same, thei have in a grete 
 nombre affermed unto us in writing, and thereunto subscribed 
 their names, that ducere uxorem fratris mortui SINE LIBERIS sit 
 prohibitum jure divino et naturali, which is the chief and prin- 
 cipall point in our cause ; we therefore, desirouse to knowe and 
 understande your rnyndes and opynions in that bihalfe, and 
 nothing dowtinge but like as ye have all wayes founde us to you 
 and that our universitie favourable benivoleut, and glad to ex- 
 tend our auctoritie for youre wealthe and benefite when ye have 
 required the same, ye will now likewise not omytt to doo any- 
 thing whereby ye shulde ministre unto us gratuite and pleasor, 
 specially in declaration of the truthe in a cause so nere touching 
 us your prince and soveraine lorde, our soule, the wealth also and 
 benente of this our realme, have sent hither presently for that our 
 purpose, our trusty and right well beloved clerkes and coun- 
 saillors, Maister Doctor Gardyner our secretary and Maister Fox, 
 who shall oon our bihaulf further open and declare unto you the 
 circumstances of the pi-emises. Wherefore we will and require 
 you not oonly to gyve ferine credence unto them, but also to 
 advertise us by the same, under the common scale of that our 
 universitie, of such opynyon in the proposition aforesaid as sliul 
 be then concluded, and by the consent of lerned men shall be 
 agreed upon. In doying whereof, ye shall deserve our especiall 
 thanks, and geve us cause to encrease our favor towards you, as 
 we shall not fail to do accordingly. Geven under our signet at 
 Yorkes Place the xvith daye of February 1 .' 
 
 Some months before the arrival of this missive the cmnmer-s 
 university had been familiarised with the main arguments 
 
 1 Lamb, Cambridge Documents, p. 19.
 
 618 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. f or an{ j against the divorce by the appearance of Cranmer's 
 treatise on the lawfulness of marriage with a brother's wife 1 , 
 and its judgement, so far as that might be supposed to be 
 amenable to the influence of abstract reasons, had thereby 
 undoubtedly been biased in favour of ' the king's cause.' It is 
 evident indeed, on a comparison of the above letter with the 
 first of those that Henry addressed to the university of Oxford, 
 that he had grounds at the outset for anticipating a far more 
 ready assent to his wishes at Cambridge. Under these circum- 
 stances it is therefore of special interest to note the following 
 report made to him by Gardiner and Fox of the proceedings 
 that followed upon the arrival of his letter : 
 
 Oardinerand ' To THE KlNG'S HlGHNESS, 
 
 on the course Pleaseth it your highness to be advertised, that arriving 
 
 raniwm^nt here at Cambridge upon Saturday last past at noon, that same 
 rX>t f the n ^* anc ^ Sunday in the morning we devised with the vice- 
 royJ letter chancellor and such other as favoureth your grace's cause, how 
 bridge. and in what sort to compass and attain your grace's purpose and 
 intent ; wherein we assure yoiir grace we found much towardness, 
 good will, and diligence, in the vice-chancellor and Dr. Edmunds, 
 being as studious to serve your grace as we could wish and de- 
 sire : nevertheless there was not so much care, labour, study, and 
 diligence employed on our party, by them, oxirself, and other, for 
 attaining your grace's purpose, but there was as much done by 
 others for the lett and empeachment of the same ; and as we 
 assembled they assembled ; as we made friends they made friends, 
 to lett that nothing should pass as in the universities name ; 
 wherein the first day they were superiors, for they had put in the 
 ears of them by whose voices such things do pass, multas fabulas, 
 too tedious to write unto your grace. Upon Sunday at afternoon, 
 were assembled after the manner of the university, all the doc- 
 tors, batchelors of divinity, and masters of arts, being in number 
 almost two hundred : in that congregation we delivered your 
 grace's letters, which were read openly by the vice-chancellor. 
 And for answer to be made unto them, first the vice-chancellor, 
 calling apart the doctors, asked their advice aud opinion ; where- 
 unto they answered severally, as their affections led them, et res 
 erat in imdta coufnsione. Tandem they were content answer 
 should be made to the questions by indifferent men ; but then they 
 came to exceptions against the abbot of St. Benet's, who seemed 
 
 1 It in remarkable that not a single is a matter of doubt. See Cooper, 
 copy of this treatise is known to be Athcnce, i 146. 
 in existence, and even its exact title
 
 THE DIVORCE. 619 
 
 to come for that purpose ; and likewise against Dr. Reppes and CIIAP - VL 
 Dr. Crome ; and alao generally against all such as had allowed 
 Dr. Cranmer's book, inasmuch as they had already declared their 
 opinion. We said thereunto, that by that reason they might 
 except against all, for it was lightly, that in a question so notable 
 as this is, every man learned hath said to his friend as he thinketh 
 in it for the time ; but we ought not to judge of any man that he 
 setteth more to defend that which he hath once said, than truth 
 afterward known. Finally, the vice-chancellor, because the day 
 was much spent in those altercations, commanding every man to 
 resort to his seat apart, as the manner is in those assemblies, 
 willed every man's mind to be known secretly, whether they would 
 be content with such an order as he had conceived, for answer to 
 be made by the university to your grace's letters ; whereunto t/uit 
 night they would in no wise agree. And forasmuch as it was then 
 dark night, the vice-chancellor continued the congregation till the 
 next day at one of the clock ; at which time the vice-chancellor 
 proposed a, grace after the form herein enclosed ; and it was first 
 denied ; when it was asked again it was even on both parties to be 
 denied or granted ; and at the last, by labour of friends to cause 
 some to depart t/te house which were against it, it was obtained in 
 such form as the schedule herein enclosed purportheth ; where- 
 in be two points which we would have left out ; but considering 
 by putting in of them we allured many, and that indeed they 
 shall not hurt the determination for your grace's part, we were 
 finally content therewith. The one point is, that where it was 
 first that quicquid major pars of them that be named decreverit 
 should be taken for the determination of the university, now it 
 referred ad duas paries, wherein we suppose shall be no diffi- 
 culty. The other point is, that your grace's question shall be 
 openly disputed, which we think to be very honorable ; and it is 
 agreed amongst us that in that disputation shall answer the abbot 
 of St. Benet's, Dr. Reppes, and I, .Mr. Fox, to all such as will 
 object anything, or reason against the conclusion to be sustained 
 for your grace's part. And because Mr. Dr. Clyff hath said, that 
 he hath somewhat to say concerning the canon law ; I, your 
 secretary, shall be adjoined unto them for answer to be made 
 therein. In the schedule, which we send unto your grace here- 
 with, containing the names of those who shall determine your 
 grace's question, all marked with the letter (A) be already of your 
 grace's opinion ; by which we trust, and with other good means, 
 to induce and obtain a great part of the rest. Thus we beseech 
 Almighty God to preserve your most noble and royal estate. 
 From Cambridge, the day of February. 
 
 Your Highness's most humble subjects and servants, 
 
 STEPHEN GARDINER, 
 EDWARD Fox.'
 
 620 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 THE GRACE. 
 
 ' Placet vobis ut 
 
 (^) Vicec^ncelkm 118 Magistri in t/teologia 
 
 Doctor es Middle ton, 
 
 (A) Salcot, the abbot of St. (A) Heynes, 
 
 Benets, 
 Watson, Mylsent, de isto bene spe- 
 
 ratur. 
 
 (A) Repps, (A) Shaxton, 
 
 Tomson, (A) Latimer, 
 
 Venetus,cfe isto bene speratur.(A) Simon (Matthew), 
 (A) Edmunds, Longford, de isto bene spe- 
 
 ratur. 
 
 Downes, Thyxtel, 
 
 (A) Crome, Nicols, 
 
 (A) Wygan, Hutton, 
 
 (A) Boston, (A) Skip, 
 
 (A) Goodrich, 
 (A) Heth, 
 
 Hadway, de isto bene spe* 
 ratur. 
 
 Bayne, 
 
 (A) (A) Duo Procuratores, 
 
 habeant plenam facultatem et authoritatem, nomine totius universi- 
 tatis respondendi litteris Reyice Majestatis in hoc congregatione 
 lectis, ac nomine tolius universitat'is deftniendi et determinandi 
 qucestionem in dictis litteris propositam. Ita quod quicquid duce 
 paries eorum prcesentium inter se decreverint respondendi dictis 
 litteris, et definierint ac determinaverint super qucestione prceposita, 
 in iisdem ftabeatur et reputetur pro responsione dejinitione et de- 
 terminatione totius universitatis, et quod liceat vicecancellario pro- 
 curatoribus et scrutatoribus litteris super dictarum duarum par- 
 tium definitions et determinatiotie concipienda sigillum commune 
 universilatis apponere : sic quod disputetur qucestio publice et antea 
 legantur coram universitate absque ulteriori gratia desuper petenda 
 aut obtinenda. 
 
 Your highness may perceive by the notes that we be already 
 sure of as many as be requisite, wanting only three ; and we have 
 good hojx) of four ; of which four if we get two and obtain of 
 anotlter to be absent, it is sufficient for our purpose '.' 
 
 Such were the means by which, on the ninth of the 
 following March, a decision was eventually obtained favor- 
 able to the divorce ; but even then the decision was coupled 
 iJ^ition by an important reservation, that the marriage was illegal 
 
 by which tho /. ., IJl 11 n t > . 
 
 th^inTver' y could be proved that Catherine s marriage with prince 
 ^^ccoin- i Burnct, Uitt. of the Reformation, Records i ii 22. Cooper, Annals, 1 337-9.
 
 THE DIVORCE. 621 
 
 Arthur had been consummated 1 . It was however no slight CTIAI> - VL 
 achievement to have gained thus much from the university ; 
 and when Buckmaster presented himself at Windsor as the Buck- 
 
 f . master's 
 
 bearer of this determination, he was received by Henry with J^'J.! t [ on 
 
 every mark of favour, and Cambridge was praised for ' the nt court> 
 
 wisdom and good conveyance' she had shewn. The only 
 
 point indeed with respect to which the king intimated any 
 
 dissatisfaction was the omission of any opinion concerning 
 
 the legality of pope Julius's dispensation. Having received 
 
 a present of twenty nobles the vice-chancellor took his leave, 
 
 but ill at ease in mind. ' I was glad,' he says in a letter to 
 
 Dr. Edmunds, giving an account of the whole business, 'I 
 
 was glad that I was out of the courte, wheare many men, as 
 
 I did both hear and perceive, did wonder on me All the^ dotihe 
 
 1 indications of 
 
 world almost cryethe oute of Cambridge for this acte, and )p "{ a t r h e' cN 
 specially on me, but I must bear it as well as I maye/ He Univer8it r- 
 then goes on to narrate how on his return he found the 
 university scarcely in a' more pleasant mood. Fox's servant 
 had been beaten in the street by one Dakers, a member of 
 St. Nicholas's Hostel ; and Dakers on being summoned before 
 him (the writer), had demurred to his authority, ' because I 
 was famylyer, he said, with Mr. Secretary [Fox] and Mr. Dr. 
 Thirleby.' Thereupon he had ordered Dakers into custody, 
 who on his way to close quarters effected his escape from the 
 bedell ; ' and that night there was such a jettyng in Cam- 
 bridge as ye never harde of, with such boyng and cryeng 
 even agaynst our colleage that all Cambridge might perceave 
 it was in despite of meV 
 
 Whatever accordingly may be our opinion of the expe- 
 diency of the course whereby Cambridge escaped, in Mr. 
 Froude's words, 'the direct humiliation' that waited upon 
 Oxford, it seems impossible on the foregoing evidence to Facts which 
 
 tdi 1 to 
 
 deny, that this end was attained by the nomination of a juawv Mr. 
 commission which, if we examine its composition, can only p"iinn- 
 be regarded in the light of a packed jury, that the nomina- 
 
 i 'Quod ducere nxorem fratris hibitum jure divino ac natural!.' 
 mortui sine liberis coguitam a priori Lamb, Cambridge Documents, p. 21. 
 viro percarnalem copulam....est pro- * Cooper, Annals, i 340-2.
 
 622 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. tion of this commission was at the outset opposed by the 
 senate, being on the first division non-placeted, on the 
 second, obtaining only an equality of votes, on the third 
 carried only by the stratagem of inducing hostile voters 
 to stay away, that even of this commission, thus com- 
 posed and thus appointed, it .was found necessary to per- 
 suade at least one member to absent himself, and that 
 finally its decision was qualified by an important reserva- 
 tion, which, if the testimony of queen Catherine herself, 
 independently of other evidence, was entitled to belief, 
 involved a conclusion unfavorable to the divorce 1 . 
 
 rosition of It is almost unnecessary to say that from these proceed- 
 ings Fisher stood altogether aloof. He was throughout a 
 firm and consistent opponent of the divorce; and the troubles 
 which beclouded the last year of his life now began to gather 
 thickly round his path. But neither increasing anxieties, the 
 affairs of his bishopric, nor the infirmities of old age, could 
 render him forgetful of Cambridge. Over St. John's College, 
 more particularly, he watched to the last with untiring 
 solicitude, and in its growing utility and reputation found 
 
 1 The statement of Lingard in the that of the author of the Ditctor Dulri- 
 
 matter appears undeniable: that tantium; the second, that of Dodd, 
 
 both Clement and Henry were sen- the Catholic historian. 'Who [i.e. 
 
 Bible that, 'independently of other the learned men of the time] upon 
 
 considerations,' the decisions of the that occasion, gave too great testi- 
 
 universities did not reach tlie real mony, with how great weakness men 
 
 merits of the question; for all of them that have a bias to determine ques- 
 
 were founded on the supposition that tions, and with how great force, a 
 
 the marriage between Arthur and king that is rich and powerful, can 
 
 Catherine had actually been con- make his own determinations. For 
 
 fiummated, a disputed point which though Christendom was then much 
 
 the king was unable to prove and divided, yet before that time there 
 
 which the queen most solemnly was almost general consent upon 
 
 denied.' Hist, of England, iv s 551. this proposition that the Levitical 
 
 The general feeling of the two uni- degrees do not, by any law of God, 
 
 versitics is worthy of note in con- bind Christians to their observance.' 
 
 nexion with Mr. Fronde's assertion Ductor Dubitantium, p. 222. " It 
 
 that "in the sixteenth century, belongs not to us to judge, whether 
 
 queen Catherine was an obstacle to Julius n had any sufficient reasons 
 
 the establishment of the kingdom, to dispense with Henry and Cathe- 
 
 an incentive to treasonable hopes. rine ; but we may say, that Henry 
 
 In the nineteenth, she is an outraged Jutting married Catlicrinc by virtue 
 
 and injured wife, the victim of a of that dispensation, and lived near 
 
 false husband's fickle appetite.' i twenty-five year* with h?r a* In* wife, 
 
 9i. Perhaps side by side with this could not lawfully and in conscience 
 
 representation we may be permitted be parted from her, that he might 
 
 to place a erenteenth century and marry another. '(written 1737). Dodd- 
 
 eiyhUentJi century view : the first, Tierney, i 231.
 
 FISHER'S STATUTES. 623 
 
 his best reward. The promotion of Metcalfe to the master- CIIAP - VI - 
 ship in 1518 had proved eminently favorable to the best Prosperity of 
 
 . * wt - Jln 
 
 interests of the society. Metcalfe was himself indeed no Ji'^Met- 
 proficient in the new studies ; but in Fuller's phrase, though c * Ue ' i "** 
 ' with Themistocles, he could not fiddle, he knew how to 
 make a little college a great one 1 ;' and before Fisher's death, 
 the overflowing numbers of the students, their conspicuous 
 devotion to learning, and names like those of Ascham and 
 Cheke, had already caused the college to be noted as the most 
 brilliant society in the university 2 . In the year 1524 Fisher 
 had drawn up a new code as the rule of the foundation, 
 modelled to a great extent upon that of Fox at Corpus 
 Christi College, Oxford ; and in 1530 he gave a third body of 
 statutes in which he incorporated many of the regulations 
 given by Wolsey for the observance of Cardinal College. Of 
 the minuteness of detail and elaborateness of the provisions 
 that characterise these last statutes some idea may be formed 
 from the fact, that while the original statutes fill forty-six nsher-s 
 
 statutes of 
 
 closely printed quarto pages, and those of 1524, seventy-seven, J^ and 
 
 the statutes of 1530 occupy nearly a hundred and thirty. 
 
 Alarmed at the signs of the times and timorous with old age, 
 
 Fisher seems to have sought with almost feverish solicitude 
 
 to provide for every possible contingency that might arise. 
 
 Of the new provisions some, such as the institution of Multiplicity 
 
 lecturers in Greek and Hebrew, and the obligation im- rate** of 
 
 the details 
 
 posed upon a fourth part of the fellows to occupy them- 
 selves with preaching to the people in English, are un- 
 doubtedly entitled to all praise; but the additions that 
 most served to -swell the new statute-book were the lengthy 
 and stringent oaths imposed alike on master, fellows, and 
 scholars, and the introduction of innumerable petty restric- 
 tions, which it is difficult to suppose might not safely have 
 been left to the discretion of the acting authorities from 
 time to time. 
 
 It illustrates the fallacious nature of such elaborate 
 
 1 Fuller-Prickett & Wright, p. university see Ascham, Epistolte 
 227 ; Baker-Mayor, 107-8. (ed. Elstob), pp. 74-5. 
 
 2 For Cheke's celebrity in the
 
 624 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. precautions that, though the good bishop's care extended to 
 Th^taua^ details so trifling that the statute against ' fierce birds ' was 
 uLTaliraTe 11 extended to include the most harmless of the feathered 
 HUM no rac e the thrush, the linnet, and the blackbird 1 , he yet 
 
 standard of ... 
 
 SX^I^rt nevertheless omitted altogether to make provision with 
 L ? ow respect to one most important point, an omission which 
 fifteen years later it was found necessary to repair. We 
 have already noted that the statutes of Christ's College are 
 the first that contain a provision for the admission of 
 pensioners 8 , and that it was therein required, as also in each 
 of the three codes given by Fisher to St. John's, that 
 students thus admitted should have previously furnished 
 satisfactory evidence with respect to character. Unfortu- 
 nately it was not deemed necessary to insert a similar 
 requirement with respect to attainments, and an inlet was 
 thus afforded at both colleges to a class whose ignorance was 
 only equalled by their disinclination to study, and who, 
 as it was soon found, were a scarcely less formidable 
 element of demoralisation than the riotous and dissolute. 
 In less than twelve years after Fisher's death we accord- 
 Testimony of irnjly find Ascham in writing to Cranmer (then archbishop), 
 
 Aschamto J 5V F/ 
 
 inT?rom U this UMOTmuig him that there were two things ' which proved 
 Uxlty - great hindrances to the flourishing estate of the university ;' 
 and of these one was occasioned by such as were admitted, 
 ' who were for the most part only the sons of rich men, and 
 such as never intended to pursue their studies to that degree 
 as to arrive at any eminent proficiency and perfection in 
 learning, but only the better to qualify themselves for some 
 places in the state, by a slighter and more superficial know- 
 ledge 8 .' Of the general concurrence of the college authori- 
 
 1 Early Statutes (ed. Mayor), p. paid a pension, and hence the name 
 
 *38. of pensioner. Dr. Ainslie, in his 
 
 * See Bnpra, p. 459; though pen- Inquiry concerning the earliest Mas- 
 
 sioners are not recognised by college ters of the College of Valence Mary, 
 
 statutes, they existed in practice long p. 297, notes an example of this 
 
 before the sixteenth century. When practice, in the case of William 
 
 the number of fellows on the different Humberston, vicar of Tilney, as early 
 
 foundations was but small, it was com- as the fourteenth century. 
 mon for members of the university, Strype, Memorial* of Cranmer, i 
 
 generally masters of arts, to rent a 242. 
 chamber of the college, for which they
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 625 
 
 ties in the view thus expressed by Ascham, we have satis- CHAP. VL 
 factory proof in the fact that in the statutes given by king 
 
 Henry to St. John's in the year 1545, an endeavour is made rii 
 
 to remedy the above evil (so far at least as the college was j* J"'">' 
 
 J \ In the *ut 
 
 concerned), by the insertion of a clause requiring that no lutci 
 pensioner should be admitted who did not already possess 
 such a knowledge of Latin as would enable him to profit by 
 the regular course of instruction, and prevent his proving an 
 impediment to the progress of others 1 . 
 
 It must however be acknowledged that Fisher's mistrust Tr 
 
 ITiir 
 of the tendencies he saw around him was far from singular, !'***. 
 
 and the action of the university in reference to one im- 
 portant matter, at about the same time, sufficiently proves 
 that a policy of repression and coercion was rapidly gaining 
 ground. It was soon seen that Tunstal's plan of burning 
 the Lutheran writings was of but small avail, and the efforts 
 of the .ecclesiastical authorities were now directed to a more 
 effective method, that of stifling the press itself. The first 
 Cambridge printer was Erasmus's friend, John Siberch : and joim 
 in the year 1521 he printed seven books, one of which, 
 Linacre's translation of Galen De Temper amentis, a pre- 
 scribed text-book in the medical course of study, claims to 
 be the first book printed in England containing Greek 
 characters. In the following year he printed two more 
 volumes, and after that time we lose sight of his productions. 
 
 1 ' Maximum itaqne quod formida- hoc collegio quetnqnarn, ne externum 
 
 mus ex his provenire malum \ .otest, quidem aut pueruin, gramiimticani 
 
 si quosdam pneter hunc nnmerum in cubiculo suo aut iiitrn collegium 
 
 convictores et peusionarios iutra col- doceat, turn quia magnum studiis 
 
 legium admiserimus, quorum non suis jmpedimentuui erit, turn qnia 
 
 Integra conversatio ceteros inficiat, viajora docenda in coUetjiit stint, 
 
 atque ita sensiui reliquo corpori per- grammatica in ludis Utterariis di*- 
 
 nicies inferatur. Maguopere etiam cenda est, Habcant autem qui in 
 
 collegia interest ut adolescentes, collegium admissi aunt aliquam in 
 
 priusquam in collegium adruittuutur, litteris progressioutin, ut postquam 
 
 aliquam progressionem et cursum in ad dialecticam se contulerint, majo- 
 
 litteris facturn habeant. Debet enim rein operam et diligentiorem cum 
 
 nomuhil inter ludos litterarios ct .fructu in Aristotele poiiant. Hoc 
 
 acadeniiain interesse, ut nisi funda- nisi fiat, pennagnam in logics dis- 
 
 meutis bene jactis e scholis gramma- cenda jacturam facient, et eruditio 
 
 ticorum ad academiam non proce- ea qnne necessaria propter usum est 
 
 daut. Et fere cernitur eos postea insuavis propter illorum in discendo 
 
 maximum fructum studiorum per- tarditatem erit.' Early Statutes of 
 
 cipere, qui ante in linguis mediocri- St. John's (ed. Mayor), p. 85. 
 ter profecerunt. Itaque nullus in 
 
 40
 
 G26 
 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 Licence of 
 1534. 
 
 CHAP. vi. The humble dimensions of the publishing trade in those 
 days often led to the publisher, bookseller, and printer being 
 represented in one person; and the opponents of the Re- 
 formation probably flattered themselves that they had dis- 
 covered an effectual means of excluding heretical literature, 
 when in the year 1529 they petitioned Wolsey that only 
 three booksellers should be permitted to ply their trade at 
 Cambridge, who should be men of reputation and 'gravity,' 
 and foreigners, with full authority to purchase books of 
 foreign merchants 1 . The petition appears to have received 
 no immediate response; but in the year 1534 a royal licence 
 was issued to the chancellor, masters, and scholars of the 
 university to appoint, from time to time, three stationers and 
 printers, or sellers of books, residing within the university, 
 who might be either aliens or natives. The stationers or 
 printers thus appointed were empowered to print all manner 
 of books approved of by the chancellor and his vicegerent, 
 or three doctors, and to sell them, or any other books, 
 whether printed within or without the realm, which had 
 been allowed by the above-named censors. If aliens were 
 appointed to the office, they were to be reputed in all re- 
 spects as the king's subjects. In pursuance of this grant, 
 Nicholas Speryng, Garrat Godfrey, and Sygar Nicholson, 
 were appointed stationers of the university. The licensed 
 press was however singularly sterile ; and for more than half 
 a century, from the year 1522 to 1584, it would appear that 
 not a single book was printed at Cambridge. 2 
 
 Of the three booksellers above appointed, the third, 
 Sygar Nicholson, had been educated at Gonville Hall, and 
 justified bishop Nix's description of the college, by so strongly 
 ' savouring of the pan,' that he had already been charged 
 in 1529 with holding Lutheran opinions and having Lutheran 
 books in his possession. He had consequently been for some 
 time imprisoned, and, according to Latimer, was treated with 
 cruel severity 3 . That a member of the university should 
 
 V. : oh -- 
 
 1 Cooper, Annul* i 329; see also 
 Btipra, p. 500, n. 2. 
 
 * See an article, The Cambridge 
 Univertity Prt$$, in The BookteUer 
 
 (Feb. 1860), by Mr. Thompson 
 Cooper, F.B.A. 
 
 3 Cooper, Athena, i 51; Latimer- 
 Corrie, n 321.
 
 DEATH OF FISHER. 027 
 
 have engaged in a trade so directly and honorably associ- CHAP. vr. 
 ated with learning calls for little comment; but it is not 
 undeserving of notice that it was far from unusual for 
 students in those days to betake themselves to crafts and 
 callings that had much less direct affinities to academic cul- 
 ture. Nor does it appear that any discredit attached to 
 such a change in their vocation ; it is certain at least that 
 many who thus turned their energies into a different channel 
 saw no necessity for seeking a distant scene of action. The singular 
 
 ,. , . , .. r i i i phase of ih 
 
 disputant who perhaps made but a poor figure in the schools relations <f 
 
 * . town and 
 
 of the university, not unfrequently reappeared as a prosper- -J 
 ous tradesman in the town. With his wits sharpened on 
 qucestiones and by necessity, he flung aside his clerical attire, 
 espoused a wife, and commenced business as an innkeeper, 
 grocer, baker, or brewer, or devoted himself, in the language 
 of the corporation, 'to other feats of buying and selling, 
 getting thereby great riches and substance.' Though naturally 
 jealous of such competition, his fellow-tradesmen might have 
 contemplated his endeavours with tolerable equanimity, had 
 he pursued a consistent course, and shewn his readiness to 
 bear his part in the civic burdens and imposts. But the 
 habits of the schools were still strong upon him, and he too 
 often eluded the bailiff's appeals with Protean facility. Qua 
 profits and emoluments he was a townsman; qua taxes, 
 attendances, and contributions, he was a master of arts of the 
 university. The indignation of the honest burgesses, in their 
 petition to the lord chancellor and chief j ustices, evidently 
 exceeds their powers of expression l . 
 
 In the meantime significant events in the political world r 
 
 * _ last days. 
 
 came on in rapid succession ; and not long after Fisher had 
 drawn up his last code for St. John's College, it began to be 
 evident to all that the care and vigilance he had so often 
 exercised in the cause of others would soon be needed in his 
 own behalf. The credence which he, in common with so 
 many other able men, gave to the pretensions of the Maid of 
 Kent, and his subsequent refusal to take the oath imposed 
 by the Act of Supremacy, resulted in his committal to the 
 1 Cooper, Annals, l 347. 
 
 402
 
 628 
 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 mittcd to 
 prison. 
 
 Fceliiw of 
 the univer- 
 
 Hy. 
 
 CHAP. vi. Tower. Superstitious he might be, but where his super- 
 stition did not come into play he was clear-sighted and 
 sagacious, and his conscience and his intellect alike refused 
 assent to 'the Anglican solecism.' The foresight he thus 
 displayed was indeed in striking contrast to the indifference 
 shewn by his episcopal brethren, by whom a question of 
 really fundamental importance was treated as but of small 
 moment. 
 
 The story of his trial and death are matters that belong 
 to English history, and, as admirably told by Mr. Froude, are 
 still fresh in the memories of our readers, and require no 
 further illustration at our hands. When it was known at 
 Cambridge that the chancellor was under arrest, it seemed 
 as though a dark cloud had gathered over the university ; 
 and at those colleges which had been his peculiar care the 
 sorrow was deeper than could find vent in language. The 
 men who, ever since their academic life began, had been 
 conscious of his watchful oversight and protection, who as 
 they had grown up to manhood had been honored by his 
 friendship, aided by his bounty, stimulated by his example 
 to all that was commendable and of good report, could not 
 foresee his approaching fate without bitter and deep emotion ; 
 and rarely in the correspondence of colleges is there to be 
 Letter or st. found such an expression of pathetic grief as the letter in 
 college. which the society of St. John's addressed their beloved 
 patron in his hour of trial 1 . In the hall of that ancient 
 foundation his portrait still looks down upon those who, 
 generation after generation, enter to reap where he sowed. 
 Delineated with all the severe fidelity of the art of that 
 period, we may discern the asceticism of the ecclesiastic 
 blending with the natural kindliness of the man, the wide 
 sympathies with the stern convictions. Within those walls 
 
 'Tu nobis pater, doctor, praecep- 
 tor, legislator, omnis denique virtutis 
 et saiictilatis exemplar. Tibi victum, 
 tibi doctriuam, tibi quicquid est 
 quod boni vel habeuius vel Bcimus 
 
 no debere fatemur Quaecunquo 
 
 antem nobia in communi sunt opes, 
 qaicquid Label collegium nostrum, 
 id si totum tna causa profunderemus, 
 
 ne mill iic quidem tuam in nos bene- 
 ficentiam assequercraur. Quare (re- 
 verende pater) quicquid nostrum est, 
 obsecramus, ntere ut tuo. Tuum est 
 eritquequicquid possumus, tui omnes 
 Biunus erimuRque toti.' (Quoted in 
 Baker-Mayor, p. 465). See also Lewis, 
 Life of Fisher, u 356-8.
 
 THE ROYAL INJUNCTIONS. C29 
 
 have since been wont to assemble not a few who have risen c UP. VL 
 to eminence and renown. But the college of St. John the 
 Evangelist can point to none in the long array to whom her 
 debt of gratitude is greater, who have labored more untir- 
 ingly or more disinterestedly in the cause of learning, or who 
 by a holy life and heroic death are more worthy to survive in 
 the memories of her sons ! 
 
 Yet a few more months and both at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge the changes that had before been carried by argu- 
 ment, persuasion, and individual effort, were enforced in 
 ampler measure by the authority of law. Cromwell sue- 
 
 ceeded to the chancellorship at Cambridge ; and a ruder *' 
 
 1 ' chancellor 
 
 hand than that of Fisher or Wolsey ousted the professors of U35 - 
 the old learning from the academic chair, and gave the pages 
 of scholasticism to the winds. At both universities Duns 
 Scotus, so long the idol of the schools, was dragged from his 
 pedestal with an ignominy that recalls the fate of Sejanus. 
 The memorable scene at Oxford, as described by one ofniscomm 
 Cromwell's commissioners, though often quoted, we shall ^ 
 
 venture to quote once more : ' We have set Dunce in Bo- 
 cardo,' writes commissioner Leigh ton, 'and have utterly ban- 
 
 ' J account of 
 
 ished him Oxford for ever, with all his blind glosses ...... And 
 
 the second time we came to New College, after we had de- 
 clared your injunctions, we found all the great quadrant 
 court full of the leaves of Dunce, the wind blowing them 
 into every corner. And there we found one Mr. Greenfield, 
 a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, gathering up part of the 
 same book leaves, as he said, to make him sew ells or 
 blawnshers, to keep the deer within his wood, thereby to 
 have the better cry with his hounds 1 .' 
 
 At Cambridge Cromwell was in the same year appointed 
 visitor as well as chancellor, and the letter that notified 
 this second appointment to the university also conveyed 
 the following Royal Injunctions, imposed upon ' the chan- 
 cellor, vice-chancellor, doctors, masters, bachelors, and all 
 other students and scholars, under pain of loss of their dig- 
 
 1 Strype, Memorials, i 324.
 
 630 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. nities, benefices, and stipends, or expulsion from the univer- 
 ' sity:' 
 
 TH ROTAI '(1) That by a writing to be sealed with the common seal of 
 " * 8 t^ 6 university and subscribed with their hands, they should swear 
 to the king's succession, and to obey the statutes of the realm, 
 made or to be made, for the extirpation of the papal usurpation 
 and for the assertion and confirmation of the king's jurisdiction, 
 prerogative, and preeminence. 
 
 (2) That in King's Hall, King's, St. John's, and Christ's 
 Colleges, Michaelhouse, Peterhouse, (ronville, Trinity, and Pem- 
 broke Halls, Queens', Jesus, and Buckingham Colleges, Clare 
 Hall, and Benet College, there should be founded and continued 
 for ever by the masters and fellows, at the expense of those 
 houses, two daily public lectures, one of Greek the other of Latin. 
 
 (3) That neither in the university or any other college or hall, 
 or other place, should any lecture be read upon any of the doctors 
 who had written upon the Master of the Sentences, (a) but that all 
 divinity lectures should be \ipon the Scriptures of the Old and 
 New Testament, according to the true sense thereof, and not after 
 the manner of Scotus, etc. 
 
 (4) That all students should be permitted to read the Scrip- 
 tures privately or to repair to public lectures upon them. 
 
 (5) That as the whole realm, as well clergy as laity, had 
 renounced the pope's right and acknowledged the king to be the 
 supreme head of the Church, no one should thereafter publicly 
 read the canon law, nor should any degrees in t/tat law be conferred. 
 
 (6) That all ceremonies, constitutions, and observances that 
 hindered polite learning should be abolished. 
 
 (7) That students in arts should be instructed in the ele- 
 ments of logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geography, music, and philo- 
 sophy, and should read Aristotle, Rudolphus Agricola (/3), Philip 
 Melanchthon, Trapezuntius (y), etc., and not the frivolous ques- 
 tions and obscure glosses of Scotus, Burleus (8), Anthony Trom- 
 bet(e), Bricot(), Bruliferius (77), etc. 
 
 (8) That all statutes of the university or of any college, hall, 
 house, or hostel, repugnant to these articles and injunctions should 
 be void. 
 
 (9) That all deans, presidents, wardens, heads, masters, rec- 
 tors, and officers in every college, hall, house, or hostel in the 
 university, should on" their admission be sworn to the due and 
 faithful observance of these articles 1 .' 
 
 1 Cooper, Annals, i 375. Erlautenmg der Quodlibeta des Sco- 
 
 (o) see Bupra, pp. 59-62. tua schrieb unter dom Titel In Scoti 
 
 (ft) see supra, pp. 412-3. Farmalitate$ und cinen hochst aus- 
 
 (y) Bee supra, p. 429. fiihrlichen controvertirenden Com- 
 
 () nee supra, p. 197. mentar zu Sireotus verfasste, wobei 
 
 (t) One of the newest commen- er im Hinblicke auf die tmerlass- 
 
 tatora on Duns Scotus (tl. 1518), liche Reinheit der Parteistellung die 
 
 ' welcber Qiuestioncs quodlibctalet als Ansicht Brulifer's schon ziemlich
 
 CONCLUSION. 631 
 
 The day that saw the leaves of Duns Scotus fluttering CHAP. vi. 
 in the quadrant of New College, may be regarded as marking COUUMM* 
 the dowufal of scholasticism in England ; and here, if any- n^wemta 
 
 , . ' * uiiiv.r-ity 
 
 where, may be drawn the line that in university history 
 divides the mediaeval from the modern age. Yet a few more 
 mouths, and Erasmus, weary of life and even of that learning 
 to which his life was given, sank painfully to rest at Basel ; 
 Tyndale died at the stake at Vilvorde ; and the inaugurators 
 of the changes now finding their full effect in a revolution 
 thus widespread and momentous, gave place to another 
 generation. The men of that generation at Cambridge were 
 witnesses too of changes neither uninteresting nor un- 
 important. They saw the authority of the scholastic 
 Aristotle more rudely shaken by Ramus in the schools than 
 it had ever been shaken before ; they saw in the foundation 
 of Trinity College the rise of a new conception of college 
 discipline under distinctly Protestant auspices; and with 
 the Statutes of Elizabeth they saw the constitution of the 
 university assume that form which with but few modifications 
 has lasted to our own day. But with these changes we find 
 ourselves in the presence of new characters and new ideas ; 
 and the final triumph of the Humanists seems to mark the 
 point at which this volume may most fitly close. 
 
 In recording the fall of that system which in its un- 
 ceasing and yet monotonous activity has so long engaged our 
 attention, and against which the preceding pages have been a 
 more or less continuous indictment, our inclination is less to 
 reiterate the conventional phrases that express the common 
 verdict on its merits, than to recall the services which amid 
 
 deutlich als zmn Thomismus liinnei- unterlassen konnten.' Ibid, rv 200. 
 gend verdachtigte.' Prantl,Geschichte (>>) Another commentator on Si- 
 
 der Logik, rv 269. rectus; printed in different editions 
 
 (f) Textus totiuslogicespermagis- of that author, Venet. 1501, 1514, 
 
 trum Thomam Bricot abbreviates et 1526, 1588. He labored to reduce 
 
 per eumdem novis&ime emt-ndatus. the distinctio to two kinds. the dis- 
 
 (Basilece, 1492), ' zeigt sich uns tinctio formalis, and the distinctio 
 
 derselbe als einen rasonirenden und realis. ' Diese Dichotomic aberwurde 
 
 zugleich rechtfertigenden Auszug aus hinwiederum. . .von anderen conserva- 
 
 dem aristotelischen Organon mit tiven Scotisten geradezu als eine 
 
 Einschluss des Porphyrius, so dass Hinneigungzum Thomismus bezeich- 
 
 wir jede weitere Bemerkung iiber net.' Ibid, rv 198. 
 diese an sich untergeordnete Arbeit
 
 632 CONCLUSION. 
 
 CHAP. vi. much extravagance, much puerility, and much bigotry, 
 """^ scholasticism yet rendered to civilisation. We would fain 
 remember how dim was the age in which it rose ; that its 
 chief names are still the beacon lights whereby, and whereby 
 alone, the student can discern the tradition of Roman culture 
 and Athenian thought across centuries of barbarism, ignor- 
 ance, and superstition ; that at a time when the ancient 
 literature had been either forbidden or forgotten, and the 
 modern literature was not, it found at once a stimulus and 
 a career for the intellect, and generated a wondrous, far- 
 reaching, and intense, if not altogether healthy, activity ; 
 that with a subtlety and power not inferior to that of the 
 best days of Hellas, it taught men to distinguish and define, 
 and left its impress on the language and the thought of 
 Europe in lines manifold, deep-graven, and ineffaceable; 
 that the great contest in philosophy which it again initiated 
 still perplexes and divides the schools ; that the study it 
 most ardently cultivated and in which it had, as it were, 
 its being, has after long neglect been revived at our 
 universities and pursued with developements of system and 
 method of which Aquinas and Duns Scotus never dreamed ; 
 and thus while unhesitatingly acknowledging that scholasti- 
 cism mostly led its followers by bitter waters and over 
 barren plains, and that its reign can never be restored, we 
 may yet recognise therein a salutary, perhaps a necessary, 
 experience in the education of the world.
 
 APPENDIX.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 (A), pp. 66 & 559. 
 
 Lydgatdi Verses on the Foundation of the University of Cambridge. 
 
 (From the copy in Stokys' book f. 80 seq. in the registry, Cambridge.) 
 
 Johannes Lidgatus. 
 
 1 By trew recorde of the Doctor Bede, 
 
 That some tyme wrotte so mikle with his hande, 
 
 And specially remcmbringe as I reedo 
 
 In his cronicles made of England 
 
 Amounge other thynges as ye shall vnderstand, 
 
 Whom for myne aucthour I dare alleage, 
 
 Seith the translacion and buylding of Cambridge. 
 
 2 With hym accordinge Alfride the Croniclere, 
 Seriouslye who lyst his bookes to see, 
 Made in the tyme when he was Thresurere 
 Of Beverley an old famouse cytie, 
 Affinne and seyne the vniuersitie 
 
 Of Cambridge & studye fyrst began 
 By their wrytinge as I reporte can. 
 
 3 He rehersing first for commendation, 
 By their writiuge how that old cytie 
 
 Was stronglie whalled with towers manye one, 
 Builte and finished with great libertie 
 Notable and famous of great aucthoritie, 
 As their aucthors accordinge sayne the same, 
 Of Cantabro takyng first his name. 
 
 4 Like as I finde reporte I can none other. 
 This Canteber tyme of his lyvynge 
 
 To Pertholyne he was germayne brother 
 Duke in tho daies in Ireland a great Kynge, 
 Chieffe & principall cause of that building. 
 The wall about and towers as they stoode 
 Was set and builte vpon a large floode,
 
 636 APPENDIX. 
 
 5 Named Cantobro a large brode ryver, 
 And after Cante called Cantebro, 
 
 This famous Citie, this write the Cronicler, 
 Was called Cambridge; rchersing eke also 
 In their booke their aucthors bothe twoo 
 Towelling the date, as I rehearse can, 
 Fro thilke tyrne that the world began 
 
 6 Power thowsand complete by accomptes clero 
 And three hundreth by computation 
 Joyned thcrto eight and fortie yeare, 
 When Cantebro gave the fundacion 
 
 Of thys cytie and this famous towno 
 
 And of this noble vniuersitie 
 
 Sett on this ryver which is called Cantc. 
 
 7 And fro the great transmigracion 
 
 Of kyngcs reconed in the byble of old 
 
 Fro Iherusalem to babylon 
 
 Twoe hundreth wynter and thirtie yeares told. 
 
 Thus to writte myne aucthour niaketh me bold, 
 
 When Cantebro, as it well knoweth, 
 
 At Atheyues scholed in his yought, 
 
 8 Alle his wyttes greatlye did applie 
 
 To have acquayntaunce by great affection 
 With folke experte in philosophic. 
 From Atheines he brought with hym downe 
 Philosophers most sovcreigno of renowne 
 Vnto Cambridge, playnlye this is the case, 
 Anaxamandcr and Anaxagoras 
 
 9 With many other myno Aucthours dothe fare, 
 To Cambridge fast can hym spedo 
 
 With philosophers, & let for no cost spare 
 
 In the Schooles to studdie & to reede ; 
 
 Of whocs teachinge great profit that gan spreade 
 
 And great increase rose of his doctrine; 
 
 Thus of Cambridge the name gan first shyne 
 
 10 As chicffe schoolo & vniuersitie 
 
 Vnto this tyme fro the daye it began 
 
 By cleare reportc in manye a far countre 
 
 Vnto the reigno of Cassibellan, 
 
 A woorthie prince and a full knyghtlie man, 
 
 As saync cronicles, wlio with his might[ie] hand 
 
 Let Julius Cesar to arryve in this lande.
 
 APPENDIX. C37 
 
 11 Five hundrotli ycre full thirtio ycro & twentio 
 Fro babilons transmigracion 
 
 'I hat Cassibelan reigned in britayne, 
 Which by his notable royall discretion 
 To increase that studdio of great affection, 
 I meane of Cambridge the vniuersitio, 
 Franchized with manye a libertie. 
 
 12 By the meane of his royall favor 
 From countreis about manye one 
 Divers Schollers by diligent labour 
 Made their resorte of great affection 
 
 To that stooddio great plentio there cam downe, 
 To gather fruites of wysdome and science 
 And sondrie flowers of sugred eloquence. 
 
 13 And as it is put eke in memorie, 
 Howe Julius Cesar entring this region 
 On Cassybellan after his victorye 
 Tooke-with him clarkes of famouse renowne 
 Fro Cambridg and ledd theirn to rome towne, 
 Thus by processe remembred here to forne 
 Cambridg was founded longe or Chryst was borne, 
 
 14 Five hundreth yere thirtio and eke nyne. 
 In this matter ye gett no more of me, 
 Reherse I wyll no more [as] at this tyme. 
 Theis remembrauiices have great aucthoritio 
 To be preferred of longe autiquitie ; 
 
 For which by recorde all clarkes seyne the same, 
 Of heresie Cambridge bare never blame. 
 
 (B), p. 136. 
 
 Nearly all that is known about the university of Stamford, its 
 fabled foundation as Bladud's university in A.C. 863, its probable first 
 foundation under the patronage of Henry de Ilaima, the second Pro- 
 vincial general of the Carmelites in England, and its final dispersion 
 in 1335 (according to Wood 1334), is to be found in the Academia 
 Tertia Anglicana, or Antiguarian Annals of Stanford, compiled 
 by the laborious antiquary, Francis Peck, himself a native of Stamford. 
 "Whether the foundations there can be held to have constituted a 
 university as Peck (Lib. vm. p. 44) claims, may perhaps be questioned : 
 Wood hesitates to decide; and the language of the letter of Edward in 
 commanding the retuni of the Oxford students, 'we not being minded 
 that schools or studies should in any sort be any where held within
 
 638 APPENDIX. 
 
 our kingdom, save than in places where there are now univertities,' 
 certainly implies the contrary. All the four mendicant orders had 
 foundations there, and respecting the activity of the Carmelites and 
 the importance of their college there can be no doubt. ' It was,' says 
 Peck, 'a royal foundation, as is evident by the arms of France and 
 England quartered, and insculped in the stone work of the gate, yet 
 remaining. It was situate in the east suburb, and by the out walls 
 which are yet standing,' (written 1727) 'appears to have been near a 
 mile in circumference. If we may believe tradition it was a very 
 magnificent structure, and in particular famous for its beautiful church 
 and steeple, which last, they say, was very like that fine spire now 
 belonging to All Saints' church iu the mercat place at Stanford. As 
 for the house, history, as well as tradition, agrees, it was always made 
 use of for reception of our English princes, who were lodged and enter- 
 tained here, in their progresses and other journeys into or out of the 
 north.' (Lib. vin p. 44.) 'Certain it is,' he adds, 'this convent was 
 as happy in the many famous men it produced, as their schools and 
 house itself were remarkable for the strictness of their discipline.' 
 Among these 'famous men' he names William Lidlington, John Burley, 
 John Repiugdale, Walter Heston, Ralph do Spalding, John Upton, 
 Nicholas Kenton, and William Whetely. Of the last-named, styled by 
 Leland 'Boetianus,' Wood tells us that he 'was governor of the 
 schools ' (at Stamford) ' five and twenty years and above, before the 
 Oxonians received commands from studying and abiding there, as it 
 appears from a note at the end of his commentaries on Boetius, De 
 Disciplina Schrdarium, going thus, Explicit liber Boetii de disci- 
 plina scholarium in hunc modum ordinatus ac compiiatus per quen- 
 dam Magistrum qui rexit scholas Stamfordiae, anno db incarnatione 
 Domini MCCCIX: Wood-Gutch, i 431. This commentary, on a 
 treatise falsely ascribed to Boethius, is still preserved among the MSS. 
 in Pembroke College Library, commencing Hominum natura multi- 
 pliciter est. The note quoted by Wood belongs, according to Peck, to a 
 copy preserved at Morton College, Oxford. See Carrib. Ant. Soc. Com- 
 munications, ii 20 ; Peck, Hist, of Stanford, Lib. x p. 3. 
 
 (C), p. 220. 
 
 The following Statute occurs on the last page of one portion of a 
 miscellaneous volume in the University Library, (MS. Mm. 4. 41), none 
 of the contents of which can well be later than the 14th century, while 
 the part in question may probably be assigned to the reign of Edward 
 the First The handwriting is the same as that of the treatises imme- 
 diately preceding it, and it is quite possible that it was copied into this 
 book very soon after the time at which it was first made.
 
 APPENDIX. 639 
 
 Statuta Univerntatii Cantebrigiae. 
 
 Si aliquis velit habere aliquam principalitatcm alicnjus hospitii 
 in dicta universitate, vcniat ad dominum hospitii illius in die Sancti 
 Barnabae apostoli ; quia ab illo tempore [11 Jan.] usque ad Nativitatem 
 Boatae Mariae [8 Sept.] possunt offerri cautioned ct admit ti, ct nullo 
 alio tempore anni. 
 
 Item qui prior est tempore prior est jure ; ita, qui prius offert 
 cautionem domino domus, stabit cautio ; et ilia cautio debet praeferri 
 coram cancellario. 
 
 Item scholaris ille qui dare debet cautionem ipse debet venire 
 domino hospitii in praedicto die vel infra illud tempus, sed quanto 
 citius tanto melius, et in praesentia bedelli vel notarii vel duorum 
 testium et cautionem sibi exponere cum effectu, si velit ; ita videlicet 
 cum effectu, vel cautionem fidejussoriam vel pignoraticiam, id est, vel 
 duos fidejussores vel unum librum vel aliud tale ; et, si non admittatur, 
 ille scholaris debet statim adire cancellariuin et sibi exponere cauti- 
 onem in praesentia illorura testium et dicere qualiter dominus hospitii 
 te minus juste recusavit in cautione recipienda ; et hoc probato cancel- 
 larius statim te admittet ad ilium cautionem et ad illain principalitatem 
 invito domino hospitii. 
 
 Item ille qui scholaris est et principals alicujus hospitii non potest 
 cedere nee alicui clerico scholari socio reuuntiare juri suo, sed tantum 
 domino hospitii. 
 
 Item cessiones hujusmodi prohibentur quia fuissent in praejudicium 
 domini hospitii ; quod fieri non debet. 
 
 Item si aliquis sit principalis alicujus hospitii, et aliquis alius 
 scholaris velit inhabitare tanquam principalis in eodem hospitio, adeat 
 dominum hospitii et exponat sibi cautionem, ut dicitur supra, ita 
 dicens: Domine, si placeat tibi, peto me admitti ad principalitatem 
 hospitii tui in ilia parochia, quandocunque principalis velit cedere 
 vel renuntiari juri suo, ita quod ego primo et principaliter et immediate 
 possim sibi succedere, si placeat tibi, salvo jure suo dum principalis 
 fuerit. Si non vult, exponas cautionem cancellario, ut te admittat 
 ad illam conditionem quod quandocunque non fuerit principalis, 
 quod tu possis esse principalis et sibi succedere in eodcm hospitio 
 prae omnibus aliis ; et cancellarius te admittet invito domino et iiivito 
 principali. 
 
 Item si aliquis dominus dicit alicui scholari : Vis tu esse principalis 
 illius hospitii mei ? Scholaris dicit quod sic ; sed dominus hospitii 
 dicit quod non vult quod hospitium taxetur aliquo rnodo; scholaris 
 dicit quod non curat ; scholaris ingreditur tanquam principalis et 
 accipit sibi socios scholares in hospitio suo. Isti scholares hospitii 
 possunt adire cancellarium et facere hospitium eorum taxari invito 
 principali et invito domino, non obstante contractu inter dominum et 
 principalem, qui contractus privatorum non potest praejudicare juri 
 publico.
 
 640 APPENDIX. 
 
 Item nullus potest privaro aliquem principalem sua principali- 
 tatc nee aliquo modo supplantare, dummodo solvit pensionem, nisi 
 dominus hospitii velit iuhabitare, vel nisi dominus vcndiderit vel hos- 
 pitium alienaverit. 
 
 (D), p. 234. 
 
 The Statutes of Michael House under tJie seal of Harvey de Slanton. 
 (The earliest college statutes of the university.) 
 
 Universis Christi fidelibus prsesentibus et futuris, Hervicus de 
 Stanton clericus salutem, ad perpetuam memoriam subscriptoruin. Celsa 
 Flasmatoris omnium magnifice bonitatis immensitas, creaturam suam 
 rationalem quam sue similitudini conformarat, ingenuam volens ad 
 interne discretionis intelligentiam efferri, et in fide catholica solidari, 
 supema pietate disposuit creaturam ipsam fulgere virtutibus et doctrinis, 
 ut creatorem et redemptorem suum fideliter credendo cognosceret, et 
 eidem, absque criminis contagione niortiferi, deserviret. Cumque per 
 divini cultus obsequium et scriptune sacre documentum juxta sanc- 
 tiones canonicas sancta mater extollatur ecclesia. Quibus ab expellen- 
 tissiino principe et domino reverendo, domino Edwardo Dei gratia 
 rege Anglie illustri, devotione saluberrima pensatis, Idem dominus 
 rex ad honorem Dei et augmentum cultus diviui michi gratiose con- 
 cedere dignatus est, et per literas suas patentes concessit et licentiam 
 dedit pro se ac heredibus suis, quod in quodam mesuagio cum per- 
 tinentiis in Cantebrig: ubi exercitium studii fulgere dinoscitur, (quod 
 quidem meduagium michi in feodum adquisivi) quandam domum scola- 
 rium, capellanorum et aliorum, sub nomine Domus Scolarium Sancti 
 Michaclis Cantebrig: per quondam magistrum ejusdem domus regendam 
 juxta ordinationom meam, instituere et fundare possim et assignare pre- 
 dictis magistro et scolaribus, habendum sibi et successoribus suis pro 
 eorum injiabitatione im perpetuum. Super quo venerabilis pater domi- 
 nus Johannes Dei gratia Eliensis episcopus, loci diocesanus, in hac 
 parte, precibus meis, do consensu capituli sui, salubritcr annuendo, 
 gratiosc concessit, prcdictam Domum Scolarium Sancti Michaelis, ut pre- 
 dicitur, per mo fundari et firmitate pcrpetua etabiliri. 
 
 S. 3. Quapropter convocatis in presontia moa magistro Roberto do 
 Mildcnlmle, magistro Waltero do Buxton, magistro Thoma de Kyning- 
 ham, et Henrico de Langham presbiteris; Thoma de Trumreshale et 
 I .'1 1 M in i.lu do Mildenhall presbiteris et baccaUuriis in univcrsitato 
 Cantebrig: studentibus, qui artium liberalium philosophic, seu theol"gio 
 studio intendebant : dictam domum in Sancto et Individue Trinitatis, 
 Beate Mario matris Domini nostri Jesu Christi semper Virginis, Sancti 
 Michael!* Archangcli, et omnium Sanctorum venerationem, sub nomine 
 Domus Scolarium sancti Michaclis, ut predicitur, predictis Roberto,
 
 APPENDIX. 641 
 
 Waltero, Thoma, Henrico, Thoma, et Edmundo, scholaribus do piano 
 consentiontibus, in ipsorum scolarium persouis, collegium originalitcr 
 facio, ordino, stabilio, et coustituo in hac parto: quibus magistrum 
 Reginald do Honyngo subdiaconum associari conccdo. t prefatum 
 magistrum Walterum do Buxton eisdem domui, collegio, ct socio- 
 tati, in magistrum preficio: ot ipsum magiatrum ad salubre et 
 competens regimen corundem constituo, quibus quidem magistro ct 
 scolaribus, et eorum successoribus, locum inhabitationis in mesuagio 
 moo predicto cum pertincntiis scituato in parochia Sancti Michaelis 
 in vico qui vocatur Melnstrete, quod perquisivi do magistro Rogero 
 filio domini Guidonis Butetourte, im perpetuum concede et' assigno. 
 Quam quidem Domum Scolarium Sancti Michaelis volo imperpctuum 
 nuncupari. 
 
 8. 4. Super statu vero predictce domus scholarium, sic ordinandum 
 duxi et statuendum: primum quidem quod scholares in eadem domo 
 sint presbyteri, qui in artibus liberalibus seu philosophia rexerint, vei 
 saltern baccalaurii in eadem scientia oxistant, et qui in artibus incipero 
 teneantur, et postquam cessaverint studio Theologiae intendant. et quod 
 nullus de cetero in societatem diete domus admittatur preter presbi- 
 teros, vel saltern in sacris ordinibus constitutos, infra annum a tempore 
 admissionis sue in domum praedictam, ad ordinem sacerdotalem canonico 
 promovendos, honestos, castos, humiles, pacificos, et indigentes qui 
 consiniiliter in artibus liberalibus seu philosophia rexerint, vel saltern 
 baccalaurii in eadem scientia existant, et studio theologie ut pre- 
 dicitur, processu temporis vacent et intendant. 
 
 S. 5. Quibus magistrum preesse volo, et eidem magistro, seu sub- 
 stitute ab eodem, (cum legitimo impediments ipsum magistrum abesse, 
 vel adversa valetudine detineri contigerit) volo, ordino, et stabilio ceteros 
 dicto societatis scolares, tarn presbyteros quam alios subesse, et eidem 
 in canonicis et licitis, pro statu, utilitate et regimine dictarum domus 
 et societatis salubriter obedire. 
 
 S. 6. Et quod magister ct scolares capellani et alii, mensam com- 
 muuein habeant, in domo prcdicta: et habitum conformem, quanto 
 commode poterint, quorum quilibet in ordino presbyterus constitutus 
 quinque marcas, ct quilibet in diaconum aut subdiaconum ordinatus 
 quatuor marcas tantummodo, de me et rebus meis annuatim percipiat : 
 donee, Dei suffragio, pro ipsorum sustentatione, in tenementis, redditibus, 
 seu ecclesiarum appropriationibus provideatur; undo possint in forma 
 predicta sustentari. Ita quod singulis septimanis sumptus cujuslibet 
 eorundem in esculentis et poculentis duodecim denarios, nisi ex causa 
 necessaria et honesta, non excedat. Et si quod, anno revoluto, de pre- 
 dictis quinque et quatuor niarcis supererit, computatis expensis cujuslibet 
 juxta ordinationem predictam, distribuatur inter socios dicte domus pro 
 equali portion. Habeant insuper dicti scolares duos famulos ad minis- 
 trandum eis in hospitio suo, quorum uterque pro sustentatione sua in 
 esculentis et poculentis percipiat singulis septunanis decem denarios 
 
 41
 
 642 APPENDIX. 
 
 pro stipendio vcro eorundom duorum famulorum, ct barbitonsoris et 
 lotricis, percipiaut dicti scolares quadraginta solidos per annum, et 
 si pro minor! stipendio inter eos convenerit, quod residuum fuit inter 
 ipsos scolares distribuatur, sicut superius dictum est. 
 
 S. 7. Numerus vero capellanorum scolarium et aliorum, ut predicitur, 
 juxta quantitatem bonorum et proventuum dicte domus, processu tem- 
 poris augentur. Do expensis vero dictorum capellanorum et scolarium 
 super esculentis et poculentis, per unum sive presbyterum aut alium ex 
 sociis dicte domus, per magistrum deputandum vicissim ac alternatim, 
 singulis septimanis ministretur; et inde, singulis diebus Veneris aut 
 Sabbati, coram magistro et sociis fidcliter computetur. 
 
 8. 8. Nee aliquis in societate dicte domus ponatur seu admittatur 
 nisi per magistrum et scolares dicto domus; qui per scrutinium socios 
 eligendos in virtute juramenti sui, eligant simpliciter meliores; non 
 habendo respectum ad aliquam affectionem carnalem, nee instantiarn, 
 nee aliquorum requisitionem, seu precationem. 
 
 8. 9. Si vero dictorum presbyterorum seu scolarium alicui talis egri- 
 tudo supcrvenerit, quod inter sanos commode conversari non debeat; 
 BCU quis eorum religionem intraverit.; seu aliunde vagando se transtu- 
 lerit ; seu ab eadem domo per tres menses continues, sine licentia magistri, 
 se absentaverit; seu in ipsa domo studere neglexerit dum potens fucrit 
 ad studeudum; seu in divini cultus ministerio, juxta status sui exi- 
 gentiam et ordinationem predictam, negligens aut remissus notabiliter 
 extiterit; seu aliunde gubstantiam ad valentiam centum solidorum 
 annuorum in temporalibus seu spiritualibus consecutus fuerit; cosset 
 ex tune omnino in ejus persona exhibitio in domo predicta. Ita quod 
 n ichil inde percipiat in futurum. Quod si publica turpitudinis nota eorum 
 aliquem involverit, aut in ipsa domo per eorum aliquem grave scanda- 
 lum fuerit suscitatum; vel adeo impacificus et discors erga magistrum 
 et socios, seu jurgiorum aut litium creber suscitator extiterit; sen de 
 perjurio, sacrilegio, furto, scu rapina, bomicidio, adulterio, vel incon- 
 tinentia super lapsu carnis notorio diffamatur; ita quod, per socios dicto 
 domus statute sibi termino, se purgare non possit, dicta sustentatio 
 omnino sibi subtrabatur, et ipse velut ovis morbida, quo totam massam 
 corrumpit, a dicta congregatione juxta discretionem magistri et senioris 
 partis societatis predict, penitus excludatur. Nee alicui a domo pre- 
 dicta sic ejecto actio competat, contra magistrum dicte domus aut 
 Bcolarcs, seu quoscunque alios de dicta domo, agendo, appcllando, 
 conquerendo, give in intcgrum restitutioncm petendo; nee aliquibus 
 literis scu impetrationibus, in foro ecclesiastic seu seculari subveni- 
 atur: hujusmodi literis seu impetrationibus, qualitercunque optcntis, 
 utendo. 
 
 8. 11. Et nc litibus, placitis, seu querelis, bona dicto domus distra- 
 hantur, per aliquem seu aliquos socictatis predicte, aut in usus alios 
 convertantur, minuantur, aut dissipentur; sed dumtaxat in pios usua 
 ut predicitur, erogcntur; ordino, statuo, et atabilio, no qui in dicta
 
 APPENDIX. 643 
 
 sustontationo aut bonis dicto domus propriotatora habcant, ncc aliqaod 
 sibi vcndicare possint, nisi dum obodientcs, tolcrabilcs, humilcs fuorint, 
 adco et inodcati ut magister ot socii dicte domus corum conyersationcni 
 et sociotutcm laudabilom approbavorint, ot indo decrcvorint so contcntos 
 in forma predicta. 
 
 S. 12. Hoc autom scolares dicte domus diligcntcr inter so attendant, 
 ut nullus oorum, extraneos aut propinquos induceudo, dicte sue societati, 
 onerosus existat; no per hoc aliorum turbetur tranquillitas, aut conten- 
 tionis sen jurgiorum materia suscitetur, aut bonorum dicte societatis in 
 ipsorum dispendiuin portio subtrahatur, seu in usus alios minus provide 
 convertatur. 
 
 S. 13. Contentiones vero et discidia inter socios dicte domus suborta, 
 studeat magister ejusdem, juxta consilium sanioris partis eorundem, 
 diligenter corripere et sedare, viis et modis quibus poterit opportunis. 
 Sed ingruente super hoc correptionis seu correctionis importunitatc, 
 dominus episcopus Elyensis qui pro tempore fuerit, vel cancel larius 
 universitatis Cantebrig. juxta factorum oontingentiunf qualitatem, si 
 necesse fuerit consulatur. Preterea visitetur dicta domus per cancel- 
 larium universitatis^ semel, vol pluries, cum per magistrum dicte domus 
 aut scolares fuerit requisites. Et si quid corrigendum invenerit, emen- 
 dari faciat, juxta consuetudinem universitatis predicte; nicliil tamen 
 novi attemptet, statuat, ordinet, seu introducat per quod ordination! 
 mee predicte in aliquibus derogetur, seu valeat derogari. 
 
 Capellani et scolares societatis predicte, singulis diebus festivis 
 majoribus, in predicta ecclesia Sancti Michaelis, ad matutinas et alias 
 horas canonicas competeutur psallendas, personaliter conveniant; et 
 ad missas do die prout decet juxta festorum exigentiam, cum nota 
 quatenus commode vacare poterint, celebrandas. Singulis vero diebus 
 feriatis dicant onmes horas canonicas, prout decet Hoc semper obser- 
 vato quod singulis diebus in quibus licet celebrare, Missa bcate Vir- 
 ginis et Misse defunctorum extra festa majora, perpetuo celebrentur. 
 Et quod quilibet in ordine sacerdotali constitutus quinquies in septimana 
 missam celebret, cum commode vacare poterit, nisi per infinnitatem 
 aut alias ex causa legitima fuerit impeditus. Singulis vero diebus 
 Dominicis, a tempore inceptionis hystorio quo dicitur Deus omnium 
 usque ad adventum Domini, celebretur Missa de Trinitate. per singulos 
 autem dies Lunc, Missa de Sancto MichaeU Archangelo. Et quolibet 
 die Martis, Missa de Sancto Edmundo Rege et Sancto TJioma Archi- 
 episcopo Cantuariensi Martyribus et omnibus Martyribus. Quolibet 
 die Mercurii, Missa de Sancto Johanne Baptista et alia Missa de 
 Sancto Petro Apostolo et omnibus Apostolis. Quolibet die Jovis, Missa 
 dt Sanctis Etheldrcda, Katerina, Margareta, et omnibus Virginibus. 
 Quolibet die Veneris, Missa de Sancta Cruce, et quolibet die Sabbati, 
 Missa de Sanctis Nicholao, Martino, et omnibus Confessoribus. Et 
 quod ille misse speciales, extra festa dupplicia, celebrentur per 
 capellanum quern magister dicte domus ad hoc vicissim duxerit assig- 
 
 412
 
 644 APPENDIX. 
 
 nandum, prout ad missas illas spcciales horis captatis intendere potcrint 
 celebrandas. 
 
 17. Per hoc autem intentionis meo non existit, ipsorum scolarium 
 capellanorum aliquem ultra possibilitatcm suam congruam, super hujus- 
 modi missarum celebrationibus faciendis, onerare, quo minus lectionibus, 
 disputationibus in scolis, sive studio valeant vacare competenter; et 
 hec eadem ipsorum conscientiis duxi relinquenda. Psalmos vero peni- 
 tcntiales cum psalmis quindecim, scilicet Ad Dominum cum tribularcr, 
 et aliis usualibus: et litauia, placebo, et dirige, et animarum com- 
 mendationem, dicant sccundum usum Sarum, conjunctim vel separ- 
 atim, horis quibus vacare poterint competeiitibus, suarum periculo 
 auimamm. 
 
 18. In omnibus vero et singulis missis celebrandis, tenentur dicti 
 capellani scolares orare, pro statu universalis Ecclesie, et pace et 
 tranquillitate regni, et pro salute dicti doinini regis, domine Isabelle 
 regine, doinini Edwardi dicti regis primogeniti, et aliorum ipsius 
 regis liberorum, et prefati domini episcopi Elyensis, prioris et con- 
 ventus ejusdem loci, Mea, magistri Rogeri Butetourte, Dero de Wad- 
 dyngle et omnium parentum amicorum, et benefuctorum meorum: et 
 ipsorum cum ab hoc seculo migraverint, animabus, et omnium rcgum 
 Anglic animabus necnon specialiter pro animabus dominorum Radulphi 
 de Walpol et Roberti de Oreford quondam episcoporum Elyensium ; 
 Johannis de Northwolde quondam abbatis de sancto Edmundo ; Johannis 
 de Berwisco, Henrici de Guldeford, Johannis de Vivon, Ade de Ikelyng- 
 ham, Galfridi de Kyngeston, Johannis de Ely, Parentum et bcnefactorum 
 meorum ct omnium fidelium defunctorum. 
 
 19. De cameris vero in manso habitationis predicte dictis scola- 
 ribus assignandis, habeat magister cameram principalcm, et quo ad 
 alias cameras preferantur seuiores. 
 
 20. Item habeant dicti magistcr ct scolares communem cistam, pro 
 cartis, scriptis, et hujus modi rebus suis custodiendis, cum tribus scrruris 
 et clavibus; quarum unam clavem custodiat magister dicte donius, et 
 aliam clavem unus capellanorum, et tertiam clavem aliuscapcllauus,per 
 magistrum et scolares ad custodiam illam deputandi. 
 
 2 1 . Cedcnte vero aut decedente magistro dictc domus, alius magister 
 ydoneus, providus, et circumspectus, in ordiue sacerdotali coustitutus, 
 saltern qui in arte rexerit dialectica, per socios ejusdem domus seu 
 majorem et seniorem partem eorundem secundum numerum, de seipsia 
 aut aliis, cligatur; et hujus modi electio cancellario universitatis Cante- 
 brig: notificetur, simpliciter, approbanda, sed non examinanda. Nee 
 per hoc habeat canccllarius dicte universitatis potestatem sive juris- 
 dictioncm dictam electionem quassandi, scu do statu dicte domus ali- 
 qualiter ordinandi, seu aliquem in societatem dicte domus poucndi, 
 contra formam ordinationis nice supradicte. 
 
 22. Quod BJ forean scholares dicto domus, cedente vel dcccdcnte 
 magistro ejosdem, alium magistrum ad regimen dicte domus, infra duos
 
 APPENDIX. G45 
 
 menses a tomporo cessionis aut decessus magistri, cligere ncgloxerint: 
 tune statim post lapsum illorum duorum nieusiuin, dominus episcopus 
 Elyonsis, qui pro tempore fuerit, magistrum preficiat et dcputet ad 
 regimen antodictum; ot hujus modi profectio magistri, facta per pro- 
 dictum domimmi episcopura, cancellario notificetur, modo supcrius 
 annotnto, salva semper dictis scolaribus electione libcra magistrum 
 eligendi, in singulis aliis vacationibus, per mortem aut cessioneni magistri 
 sui, contingentibus in futurum. 
 
 23. Cum autem aliquis scolaris, sivo presbiter sive alius, in sacris 
 tamen ordinibus constitutus, ad societatem dicte domus sit recipiendus; 
 statim in admissione sua hujus modi recente, coram magistro [vel] 
 presidente dicte domus, et sociis, jurabit, inspectis sive tactis sacro- 
 sanctis evangeliis, quod predictas ordinationes et statuta, ut predicitur, 
 toto posse suo fideliter observabit, quatenus absque nota perjurii, juxta 
 conscientie sue sorenationem, ea tenere poterit et observare. 
 
 24. Ceterum liceat mihi, omnibus diebus vite mee, predictia ordi- 
 nationibus addere et easdem minuere, mutare, declarare, et interpretari 
 prout et quando, secundum Deum, michi placuerit et videbitur expedire. 
 
 25. In quorum testimonium presentibus sigillum mcum apposui, 
 testibus domino Ffultone Priore do Bernwelle, Roberto Dunning majore 
 Cantebrig: Eudone de Impringham, magistro Henrico de Trippelowe, 
 Jolianno Morris, Roberto de Cumberton, Petro de Bertuingham, Adam 
 de Bungeye, Willelmo de Hoywarde, Roberto de Brunne, Reginaldo de 
 Trumpeton, Bartholomeo Morris, Johanne Pilat, et aliis. Datum apud 
 Canteb. die lovis proxima ante festum Sancti Michaelis Archangeli, 
 anno Domini millesirno trecentissimo vicesimo quarto, et regni domini 
 regis Bdwardi filii regis Edwardi decimo octavo. 
 
 (E), p. 358. 
 
 Legere ordinarie, extraordinarie, cursorie. 
 
 The following passages contain the different views to which I have 
 referred in the text : 
 
 ' A distinction is made in the statutes of all universities between 
 those who read ordinarie et cursorie, though it is not very easy to 
 discover in what the precise difference consisted : it is probable how- 
 ever that whilst cursory lecture* were confined to the reading of the 
 simple text of the author, with the customary glosses upon it, the 
 ordinary lectures included such additional comments on the text, as 
 the knowledge and researches of the reader enabled him to supply- 
 The 'ordinary lectures would thus appear to have required higher 
 qualifications than the cursory lectures, a view of their character 
 which is confirmed by a statute of the university of Paris, ordering 
 that "Nullus magister qui leget ORDINABIK lectiones suas debet finire 
 CUKSOBIE.'" Peacock, Observations, App. A, pp. xliv, xlv.
 
 646 APPENDIX. 
 
 ' What these cursory lectures were wo can only conjecture; probably 
 they were more what we should call lectures, while the ordinary 
 lectures were actual lessons : in the cursory lecture the master was the 
 sole performer, in the ordinary the scholar was heard his lesson.' 
 Anstey, Introd. to Munimenta Academica, p. Ixix. 
 
 'Les lemons 6taient distinguees en ordinaires et extraordinaire*. 
 Les lecons ordinaires Staient ainsi appelSes parce que la mature, la 
 forme, le jour, Pheure et le lieu etaient d6termines par la Faculte et par 
 la Nation. Ces lemons ne pouvaient etre faites que par les Maitres. 
 L'objet, la fonne, le jour, 1'heure et le lieu des logons extraordinaires 
 Staient laissSs dans de certaines limites au libre arbitre do chacun. 
 Elles pouvaient etre faites soit par des maitres, soit par des bacheliers? 
 Thurot, De ^Organisation de tEnseignement, etc. p. 65. M. Thurot 
 then quotes in a note the phrases lectiones cursorial, legere ad cursum, 
 lectio cursoria, legere cursorie; cursory lectures being, he supposes, 
 nearly identical with extraordinary lectures, the view which I have 
 adopted in the text. In support of this view, and also to shew that 
 the original use of the terms ordinary and cursory had no reference to 
 any special mode of lecturing, I would offer the following considera- 
 tions: (1) The meaning I have assigned to these terms harmonises 
 with the etymology; but if ordinarie bo supposed to have reference to 
 a peculiar method of lecturing, what sense is to bo assigned to the 
 expression extraordinarie f (2) In the few early college statutes that 
 relate to college lectures, no such distinction is recognised : yet some of 
 these statutes specify not only the subjects but the authors to bo 
 treated. On the other hand, the view indicated by M. Thurot, that 
 the cursory lecture was an extra lecture, given in most instances by a 
 bachelor, whose own course of study was still incomplete, and upon a 
 subject which formed part of that course, derives considerable support 
 from the following facts: (a) Cursory readers had, in some instances, 
 their course of reading assigned to them by the reader in ordinary. 
 Thus in statute 100 (Documents, I 365, 366), De cursorie legentibus in 
 jure canonico, we find the cursory reader required to swear se lecturum 
 per duos tcrminos infra biennium in lectura sibi aszignanda per 
 ordinarie legentem. That is, according to Mr Anstcy's theory, the 
 lecturer engaged upon the more elementary part of the instruction 
 determined what should be read by the lecturer who taught the more 
 advanced pupils ! (ft) Those incepting either in medicine, in civil or 
 canon law, or in divinity, are required to have previously lectured 
 cursorily in their respective subjects before admission to the degrees 
 of D.M., D.C.L., J.U.D., or D.D. (see statutes 119, 120, 122, 124, Docu- 
 ments i 373377); but to have lectured ordinarily is never made a pre- 
 requisite : for before a lecturer could be deputed to deliver an ordinary 
 lecture, he must have passed through the trhole course of the faculty he 
 represented, (y) Among other statutes of our own university we find 
 the following: Item nullu* baccalaureue in artibut aliquem textwn
 
 APPENDIX. G47 
 
 publice legat ante anni tuce determinations completum. (Statute 142, 
 Documents i 385). This statute is entitled De artist it curtorie kgen- 
 tibus ; if therefore the title be taken in conjunction with the statute, it 
 is difficult not to infer that lecturing by bachelors was what was usually 
 understood by curtory lectures; an inference which derives confirma- 
 tion from the following statute among those which Mr Anstey has so 
 ably edited : 'Item, ordinatum est, quod quilibet Magister legens ordi- 
 narie metaphysicam, earn legat per tcruiinuni anni et majorem partem 
 ad minus alterius termini immediate sequentis, nee cesset a lectura ilia 
 donee illam rite compleverit, nisi in casu quo fidom fecerit corani Can- 
 cellario et Procuratoribus, quod non poterit commode et absque damno 
 dictain continuaro lecturam, in quo casu, facta fide, ccssare poterit 
 licenter, dum tamen Magister alius regens fuerit continuaturus et com- 
 pleturus lecturam : quod si Magister alius tune in ea non legerit, poterit 
 licenter per Bachilarium aliquem compleri quod dimittitur de lectura, 
 et valebit pro forma in casu prsemisso cursoria lectura, non obstante 
 ordinatione priore.' Munimenta Academica, p. 423. It remains to 
 examine the evidence for Mr. Anstey's theory contained in the following 
 statute, on which he lays considerable stress : ' Cum statutum fuerit ab 
 antiquo quod Magistri tenentes scholas grammaticales posititce infor- 
 mationi Scholarium suorum, ex debito juramenti vel fidei prsestitee, 
 summopere intendero debeant et vacare, quidam tamen eorum lucro 
 et cupiditati inhiantes ac propriie salutis iminemores, praedicto statute 
 contempto, lectiones cursorias, quas vocant audientiam abusive, in doc- 
 trime Scholarium suorum evidens detrimentum legere praesumpserunt; 
 propter quod Cancellarius, utilitati eoruudem Scholarium et praecipue 
 juuiorum volens prospicere, ut tenetur, dictum audientiam, quarn non 
 tautum frivolam sed damnosam profcctui dictorum juniorum reputat, 
 suspendendo statuit quod, quicumque scholas grammaticales dcinceps 
 tenere voluerit, sub poena prirationis a regimine scholarum, ac sub poena 
 iucarcerationis ad libitum Cancellarii subeundte, ab hujusmodi lectura 
 cursoria desistant, ita quod nee in scholis suis, uec alibi in Universitate 
 hujusmodi cursus legant, nee legi faciaut per quoscunque, sed aliia 
 omnibus pnxitermissis, instructioni positive Scholarium suorum inten- 
 daut diligeutius et insudent. Alii vero a Magistris scholas teuentibus, 
 qui idonei fuerint reputati, in locis distantibus a scholis illis, si volu- 
 erint, hujusmodi cursus legant, prout antiquitus fieri consuevit.' 
 (Munimenta Academica, pp. 86, 87.) This statute is referred to by 
 Mr Anstey as 'one forbidding cursory lectures except under certain 
 restrictions.' ' The most remarkable part of the statute is,' he adds, 
 'that it complains that teachers led by hope of gain indulged their 
 scholars with cursory lectures, so that it would really seem that it was 
 not uncommon for the boys to bribe the master to excuse them then- 
 parsing ! ' (Introd. p. Ixix.) The whole of tliis criticism, so far as it 
 applies to the question before us, falls to the ground, if we observe that 
 it is not cursory lectures that are the subject of animadversions, but a
 
 64-8 APPENDIX. 
 
 certain mode of delivering them : this appears to be beyond doubt if 
 we carefully note the expressions italicised; and finally the title of 
 the statute, Quomodo legi debent lectiones cursorice in scJtolis gram- 
 maticalibus, evidently signifies that cursory lecturers in grammar are to 
 observe a certain method, not that cursory lectures are to be discon- 
 tinued. In fact, in another statute, which seems to have escaped Mr 
 Anstey's notice, it is expressly required that cursory lectures in 
 grammar shall be given. (Man. Acad. 4389.)
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Abbo, of Fleury, sustains the tradition 
 of Alcuin's teaching, 69; his pu- 
 pils, 70 
 
 Abelard, pupil of William of Cham- 
 peaux, 57, 77, n. 1; asserts the 
 rights of reason against authority, 
 68 ; attacked by Gualterus, 62 
 
 Accursius, of Florence, his labours 
 in connexion with the civil law, 
 37 
 
 JEgidius, supports Aquinas against 
 the Franciscans, 121 ; a student 
 at the university of Paris, 134 
 
 ./Elfred, king, statement of respecting 
 the knowledge of Latin in Eng- 
 land in his time, 21 ; exertions of, 
 in restoring learning, 81 ; founda- 
 tion of the university of Oxford by, 
 now generally rejected, 83, n. 3 
 
 Age of students at the university of 
 Paris in the Middle Ages, 131 ; 
 limitation with respect to, in sta- 
 tute respecting admission of stu- 
 dents at King's Hall, 253 ; average, 
 of the arts student at time of 
 entry, 346 
 
 Agricola, Rudolphus, prophecy of, 
 concerning the spread of learning 
 in Germany, 409 ; scholarship of, 
 410 ; the De Formando Studio of, 
 ib. ; outline of the contents, ib. ; the 
 De Inventione of, 412; the latter 
 recommended by Erasmus to 
 Fisher, 497 ; a prescribed text-book 
 at Cambridge, 630 
 
 Ainslie, Dr., his Memoirs of Marie 
 de St. Paul, 236, n. 1 
 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, decree of council at, 
 A.D. 817, 19 
 
 Albertus Magnus, commentary of, on 
 the Sentences, 62; commences to 
 teach at the university of Paris, 
 107 ; reputation of, as an ex- 
 pounder of Aristotle, ib. ; street 
 
 which still bears his name, ib. n. 
 3; discrepancy in statements re- 
 specting time of his arrival in 
 Paris, ib.; known as the 'ape of 
 Aristotle,' 108 ; method of inter- 
 pretation of, compared with that 
 of Aquinas, ib. ; obligations of, to 
 Avicenna, ib. n. 1 ; characterised 
 by Prantl as a mere compiler, t'6. 
 n. 2 ; a native of Swabia, 113 ; sup- 
 ports Aquinas against the Fran- 
 ciscans, 121; theory of, with re- 
 spect to the subject-matter of logic, 
 181 
 
 Alcock, John, bp. of Ely, procures 
 the dissolution of the nunnery of 
 St. Bhadegund and the foundation 
 of Jesus College, 321 ; a benefactor 
 to Peterhouse, t'6. n. 2 
 
 Alcuin, diversity of opinion respect- 
 ing share of, in the revival of learn- 
 ing under Charlenfagne, 11 ; cha- 
 racter of, compared with that of 
 Charlemagne, 12 ; draws up a 
 scheme of education for the em- 
 peror, 13; retires to Tours, 14; 
 condemns Virgil, 16 ; and all pagan 
 learning, 17; library at York de- 
 scribed by, t'6. n. 1; death of, de- 
 scribed by Monnier, 1 6. n. 2 ; teacher 
 of Rabanus Maurus at Tours, 54; 
 tradition of the teaching of, 69 
 
 Aldrich, Eobt., fell, of King's, a friend 
 of Erasmus at Cambridge, 499 
 
 Aldhelm, archbp. of Canterbury, his 
 knowledge of Latin and Greek, 8 
 
 Alexander of Aphrodisias, extensions 
 given to the psychology of Aris- 
 totle by, 117 
 
 Alexander rv, pope, hostile to the 
 university of Paris, 119; appealed 
 to by the monks of Bury, 150 
 
 Alexander vi, pope, authorises the 
 licensing of 12 preachers annually 
 by the university, 439
 
 650 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Alexander, de Villa Dei, author of a 
 common text-book on grammar 
 used at Cambridge, 515 and n. 1 
 
 Alliacus, cardinal, unfavorable to the 
 teaching of Aquinas, 123 
 
 Alne, Robert, owner of a treatise by 
 Petrarch lent to a master of 
 Michaelhouse in the 15th cent., 433 
 
 Ambrose, founder of the conception 
 of sacerdotal authority in the 
 Latin Church, 3 
 
 Ammonius, the friend of Erasmus, 
 492 ; letters from Erasmus to, ib. ; 
 498, n. 3 ; 503, n. 3 ; 505 and n. 2 
 
 Ampere, view of, with respect to 
 Charlemagne's design, 13 
 
 Analytics, Prior and Posterior, of 
 Aristotle, not quoted before the 
 twelfth century, 29 
 
 Anaxagoras, the vovs of, the basis of 
 the theory of the De Anima, 115 
 
 Angers, migration to, from Paris in 
 1228, 107 
 
 Anjou, Margaret of, character of, 
 312 ; Ultramontane sympathies 
 of, 313 ; petition of, to king Henry 
 vi for permission to found Queens' 
 College, ib. 
 
 Annunciation of B. V. Mary, college 
 of the, Gonville Hall so called, 
 245 ; gild of the, at Cambridge, 248 
 
 Anselm, St., successor to Lanfranc 
 in the see of Canterbury, 49 ; grow- 
 ing thought fulness of his times, 
 //'.; considered that nominalism 
 was necessarily repugnant to the 
 doctrine of the Trinity, 55; his 
 Latinity superior to that of a sub- 
 sequent age, 57 ; his death, ib.; 
 character and influence of his 
 writings, 63; perpetuated the in- 
 fluence of St. Augustine, ib. ; his 
 theology characterised by Re"- 
 iini : -;it, 64, n. 1 ; none of his writ- 
 ings named in the catalogue of the 
 library of Christchurch, 104 
 
 Anatey, Mr., on the supposed exist- 
 ence of the university of Oxford 
 before the Conquest, 81, n. 1 ; on 
 the probable adoption of the sta- 
 tutes of the university of Paris at 
 Oxford, 8:j, 84; objections to the 
 theory of, of the relations of 
 grammar' to the arts course. 350. 
 
 D. 1 
 
 Antichrist, appearance of imme- 
 diately to precede the end of the 
 world, 10 
 
 Antichrittn Libflliu de, erroneously 
 attributed to Alcuin, 16, n. 1 ; its 
 resemblance to Lactantius, Hi. 
 
 Antony, St., the monachism of, com- 
 pared with that of the Benedic- 
 tines, 86 
 
 Aquinas, St. Thomas, commentary of, 
 on the Sentences, 62; one of the 
 pupils of Albertus at Cologne, 107; 
 method of, in commenting on Aris- 
 totle compared with that of Al- 
 bertus, 108 ; obligations of, to Aver- 
 rb'es, ib. n. 1 ; combination of Aris- 
 totelian and Christian philosophy 
 in, 110; influence of, on modern 
 theology, 112 ; difficulty of his 
 position with respect to the New 
 Aristotle, 113; sacrificed Averroes 
 in order to save Aristotle, 114; 
 adopted the method of Averroes, 
 ib.; philosophy of, attacked by the 
 Franciscans, 120; unfavorable cri- 
 ticism of the teaching of, prohibit- 
 ed, 122; canonisation of, ib.; vision 
 of, in Dante, ib. Summa of, 123 ; 
 method of, condemned by various 
 mediffival teachers, ib. ; method of, 
 as compared with that of Lombar- 
 dus, calculated to promote contro- 
 versy, 125 ; commentaries of, pre- 
 ceded the nova trarwlatio of Aris- 
 totle, 126 ; agreement of, with 
 Roger Bacon as to the subject- 
 matter of logic, 180; position of, 
 compared with that of Petrarch ,'386 
 
 Aquitaine, kingdom of, monasteries 
 in, 11 
 
 Arabian commentators on Aristotle, 
 their interpretations bring about a 
 condemnation of his works, 97 
 
 Aretino, see Bruni. 
 
 Argentine, John, provost of King's, 
 426; his proposed 'act' in the 
 schools, il>. 
 
 Aristotle, varied character of the 
 influence of, 29 ; known from sixth 
 to thirteenth century only as a 
 logician, ib.; Categories and Peri- 
 ermenias of, lectured on by Gerbert 
 at Rheims, 44 ; his theory of uni- 
 versals described in translation of 
 Porphyry by Boethius, 52; Pre- 
 dicamenta of, ib. ; supposed study 
 of, at Oxford in the twelfth cen- 
 tury, 83; the New, when introduced 
 into Europe, 85; respect for, in- 
 spired among the Saracens by 
 Averroes, 91 ; philosophy of, first 
 known to Europe through the Ara- 
 bian commentators, ib. ; only the 
 Categories and De Interpretation 
 of, known to Europe before the 
 twelfth century, 92 ; translations of, 
 from the Arabic and from the
 
 INDEX. 
 
 651 
 
 Greek, how distinguished, ib.; phi- 
 losophy of, not known to the 
 schoolmen before the thirteenth 
 century, 94; never mentioned in 
 the Sentences, U>.\ all the extant 
 works of, known to Europe through 
 Latin versions before the year 1272, 
 Hi.; writings of, on natural science 
 first known through versions from 
 the Arabic, 95 ; comparative accu- 
 racy of the versions from the Latin 
 and those from the Arabic, ib. ; nu- 
 merous preceding versions through 
 which the latter were derived, ib. ; 
 the New, difficulties of the Church 
 with respect to, 97 ; varied charac- 
 ter of its contents, ib.; scientific 
 treatises of, condemned at Paris, 
 //'.; and again in 1215 and 1231, 
 98 ; Dominican interpretation of, 
 a notable phenomenon in the thir- 
 teenth century, 108; psychology 
 of, 115 ; translations from the 
 Greek text of, 125 ; Nova Transla- 
 tio of, 126; Ethics of, newly trans- 
 lated under the direction of Grosse- 
 teste, 154; worthlessness of the 
 older versions of, ib.; the New, first 
 effects of on* the value attached to 
 logic, 179 ; works of, studied at 
 Fragile and Leipsic in the fifteenth 
 century, 282, n. 2; authority of, 
 attacked by Petrarch, 386 
 Arithmetic, treatment of the subject 
 by Martianus, 26; treatise on, by 
 Tunstal, 592 ; the study of, recom- 
 mended by Melanchthon, ib. n. 1 
 Argyropulos, John, 405 ; improve- 
 ments of on the interpretation of 
 Aristotle, ib.; declared Cicero had 
 no true knowledge of Aristotle, 
 406 ; translations of, from the 
 Greek, ib. ; admitted excellence of 
 these, 407 ; lecture of, attended by 
 Reuchlin, 407 
 
 Aruobius, an objector to pagan learn- 
 ing, 16 
 
 Arts course of study, when intro- 
 duced at Cambridge, 342 
 Arts, faculty of, the first instituted 
 
 at Paris, 77 
 
 Arts student, course of study pur- 
 sued by the, 345; his average age 
 at entry, 346 ; his relations to his 
 ' tutor,' ib.; aids afforded him by 
 the university, 347 ; aids afforded to 
 by public charity, ib. ; his prospects 
 on the completion of his course, 362 
 Arthur, Tho., a convert of Bilney, 
 5B2; migrates from Trinity Hall 
 to St. John's, ib. ; appointed mas- 
 
 ter of St. Mary's Hostel, 663; 
 summons of, before the chapter at 
 Westminster, COS ; articles against, 
 606 ; recantation of, Hi. 
 
 Arundel, archbp., his visitation at 
 Cambridge, 258; commission ap- 
 pointed by, ib. ; his character, 259, 
 n. 1; constitutions of, 272; when 
 bp. of Ely asserted his jurisdiction 
 over the university, 288; Fuller's 
 comments on his visitation, ib. n. 1 
 
 Ascham, Scholemaster of, quoted, 59, 
 n. 3 ; testimony of, to evils re- 
 sulting from indiscriminate ad- 
 mission of pensioners, 624 
 
 Ashton, Hugh, executor to the count- 
 ess of Richmond for carrying out 
 foundation of St.John's College,464 
 
 Astronomy, treatment of the science 
 of, by Martianus, 26 
 
 Augustine, St., founder of the dog- 
 matic theology of the Latin Church, 
 3 ; theory contained in the De Ci- 
 vitate Dei of, 4 ; juncture at which 
 the treatise was composed, 10 ; obli- 
 gations of John Scotns to, 41 ; in- 
 fluence of upon Anselm, 49; his 
 spirit revived in Anselm, 63 ; trans- 
 lations of Aristotle by, how dis- 
 tinguished from those of a biter 
 period, 93 ; Platonic tendencies of, 
 an element in the literature which 
 Aquinas attempted to reconcile, 
 113; little valued by many of the 
 Humanists, 484 ; regarded by Bur- 
 net as a schismatic, 485; tenacity 
 of the influence of, ib. 
 
 August inian canons, priory of at 
 Barnwell, 139 ; hospital of, founded 
 at Cambridge, 223 
 
 Augustiuian friars, their house near 
 the old Botanic Gardens, 139; 
 character of as a body, 564 ; site 
 of their foundation at Cambridge, 
 ib. n. 3 ; engrossed the tuition of 
 grammar at Oxford, 565; at one 
 time taught gratuitously, ib. ; 
 church of, at Cambridge, not in- 
 cluded in the episcopal jurisdic- 
 tion, i>>. 
 
 Aulus Gellius, Lupus of Ferrieres in- 
 tends to forward a copy of, 20 ; the 
 class lecturer at C. C. C. Oxford 
 ordered by bp. Fox to lecture on, 
 521, n. 2 
 
 Auvergne, William of, condemnation 
 of a series of propositions from the 
 De Causis by, 114 
 
 Averroes, familiarises his country- 
 men with Aristotle, 91; entirely 
 ignorant of Greek, 95; extension
 
 652 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 given to the psychological theory 
 of Aristotle by, 116; his theory of 
 the Unity of the Intellect, ib. ; the 
 first to develope the psychology of 
 Aristotle into a heresy, 117 ; criti- 
 cised by Aquinas, ib. ; followed by 
 Alexander Hales, ib. ; influence 
 exercised by, over the Franciscans, 
 118; differs from Aristotle in re- 
 garding form as the individualising 
 principle, 120; his writings rare 
 in the Cambridge libraries of the 
 fifteenth century, 326 
 
 Avignon, university of, formed on 
 the model of Bologna, 74 
 
 Avignon, subserviency of the popes 
 at, to French interests, 194; effects 
 of the papal residence at, ib. ; in- 
 fluence of the popes at, on the uni- 
 versity of Paris, 215 
 
 B 
 
 Bachelor, term of, did not originally 
 imply admission to a degree, 352 ; 
 meaning of the term as explained 
 by M. Thurot, ib. n. 3. 
 
 Bachelors of arts, position of, in re- 
 spect to college discipline, 369 
 
 Bacon, Roger, his testimony with 
 respect to the condemnation of the 
 Arabian commentaries on Aristotle 
 at Paris, 98 ; repudiates the theory 
 that theological truth can be op- 
 posed to scientific truth, 114, n. 2; 
 a student at the university of Paris, 
 134; his testimony to the rapid 
 degeneracy of the Mendicants, 
 152 ; his opinion of the early trans- 
 lations of Aristotle, 154; his em- 
 barrassment when using them at 
 lecture, ib.; his account of some 
 of the translators, 155 ; his career 
 contrasted with that of Albertus 
 and Aquinas, 156; unique value of 
 liis writings, ib. ; his Opus Majus, 
 Opux Minus, and Opus Tertinm, 
 157; his different treatises dis- 
 tinguished, ib. n. 1; importance 
 attached by him to linguistic 
 knowledge, 158; and to mathe- 
 matics, ib. ; probably not a lec- 
 turer nt Morton College, 159, n. 4 ; 
 his philosophic insight rendered 
 less marvellous by recent investi- 
 gations of Arabic scholars, 170; 
 his account of the evils resulting 
 from excessive study of the civil 
 law, 209 
 
 Baker, Tho., his observations on the 
 estates lost by St. John's College, 
 469 
 
 Balliol College, Oxford, a portion of 
 Richard of Bury's library trans- 
 ferred to, 203, n. 2; Wyclif master 
 of, 264; his efforts on behalf of the 
 secular clergy at, ib. 
 Balsham, the village of, formerly a 
 manor seat of the bishops of Ely, 
 224, n. 3 
 
 Balsham, Hugh, bp. of Ely, his elec- 
 tion to the see, 223; his struggle 
 with Adam de Marisco, 224 ; a Bene- 
 dictine prior, ib. ; an eminently 
 practical man, 225; his merits as 
 an administrator, ib. ; his decision 
 between the archdeacon and the 
 university, ib.; confirms the sta- 
 tute requiring scholars to enter 
 under a master, 226; introduces 
 secular scholars into the hospital 
 of St. John, 227; failure of his 
 scheme, ib. ; his bequests, 228, n. 2 
 
 Barnes, Robt., prior of the Augus- 
 tinians at Cambridge, 564; sent 
 when young to study at Louvain, 
 565 ; returns to Cambridge with 
 Paynell, 566; lectures on the La- 
 tin classics and St. Paul's Epistles, 
 ib. ; disputes with Stafford in the 
 divinity schools, 568*; presided at 
 the meetings at the White Horse, 
 573; his sermon at St. Edward's 
 Church, 575; is accused to the 
 vice-chancellor, 576 ; is confronted 
 privately with his accusers in the 
 schools, ib. ; refuses to sign a re- 
 vocation, 578; is arrested and exam- 
 ined before Wolsey in London, ib. ; 
 is tried before six bishops at West- 
 minster, Hi. ; signs a recantation, 
 //'. ; his narrative of the con- 
 clusion, Hi. ; disclaims being a 
 Lutheran, 580 ; is imprisoned at 
 Northampton, /'/. ; escapes to Ger- 
 many, ib. 
 
 Barker, John, 'the eophister of 
 King's,' 425 
 
 Barnet, bp. of Ely, omits to take the 
 oaths of the chancellors of the uni- 
 versity, 287, n. 2 
 
 Barnwell, priory at, a house of the 
 Augustinian canons, 139 
 
 Barnwell, the prior of, appointed by 
 pope Martin v to adjudicate upon 
 the claims of the university in the 
 Barnwell Process, 289; fight be- 
 tween and the mayor of Cam- 
 bridge, 374 
 
 Barnwell Process, the, terminates 
 the controversy concerning juris- 
 diction between the bishop of Ely 
 and the university, 146; bull for,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 C53 
 
 issued by pope Martin v, 288; real 
 character of, 290 and n. 2 
 
 Basel, council of, now theory of papal 
 power established by the, 281 
 
 Basing, John, assists Grosseteste in 
 translating the Testaments of the 
 Twelve Patriarchs, 110 ; the disco- 
 verefof the manuscript at Athens,! b. 
 
 Bartolus, a writer on jurisprudence 
 attacked by Valla, 419 
 
 Bateman, Wm., bp. of Norwich and 
 founder of Trinity Hall, 240 ; his 
 character, 241; his funeral at 
 Avignon, ib. n. 1; his design in 
 the foundation of Trin. Hall, 242 ; 
 account of library presented by, to 
 Trin. Hall, 243 ; assistance given 
 by, to Gonville Hall, 244; alters 
 the name of the Hall, 245 
 
 Bayenx, College de, in Paris, a 
 foundation of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, 128; designed for the study 
 of medicine and of the civil law, ib. 
 
 Beaufort, cardinal, bequeathed 1000 
 to King's College, 310; his attain- 
 ments as a canonist, ib.; his Ul- 
 tramontanism, ib. n. 1 
 
 Bee, monastery at, catalogue of its 
 library, 101 ; lands taken from to 
 found King's College, 305; lands 
 of, purchased by William of Wyke- 
 ham, //'. n. 3 
 
 Becon, Tho., his testimony to the 
 value of Stafford's lectures, 567 
 
 Bede, the Venerable, his writings the 
 text-books of subsequent ages, 9; 
 a reputed doctor of divinity of the 
 university of Cambridge, 66 ; state 
 of learning in England subsequent 
 to the time of, 81 
 
 Bedell, special, attendant on the 
 master of glomery, 226, n. 1 
 
 Bedells, originally attended the 
 schools of different faculties, 144 
 
 Bedford Level, the, 330 
 
 Begging, a common practice with 
 students in the middle ages, 347 ; 
 restrictions imposed on the prac- 
 tice by the university authorities, 
 348 
 
 Benedictine era, the, 2 
 
 Benedict, St., monastery of, on Monte 
 Cassino, 5 
 
 Benedictines, the, culture of, 3; 
 schools of, 13 ; destruction of the 
 monasteries of in the tenth cen- 
 tury, 81; rapid extension of the 
 order of, under Cnut and Edward 
 the Confessor, 82; different prin- 
 cipal foundations of, ib.; growing 
 laxity of discipline among, 85; 
 
 motives to which the formation 
 of new branches of the order is 
 attributable, ib. and n. 3 ; degene- 
 racy of the whole order, 86 
 
 Benet College, Corpus Christi Col- 
 lege formerly so called, 249, n. 4 
 
 Benet's St., bells of, used in the 
 13th century to convene university 
 meetings, 299, n. 3 
 
 Berengar, view of, respecting the 
 Lord's Supper, 46 ; his controversy 
 with Lanfranc, 47 ; his mental 
 characteristics compared with 
 those of Lanfranc, 48 ; his sub- 
 mission to the Lateran Council, ib. 
 
 Bernard, St., of Chartres, character 
 of the school over which he pre- 
 sided, 57 
 
 Bernard, St., of Clairvaux, com- 
 plains of excessive devotion of the 
 clergy to the civil law, 39 ; alarm 
 of at the progress of enquiry, 58 
 
 Bessarion, cardinal, 403; his patrio- 
 tic zeal, ib.; his efforts to bring 
 about a union of the two churches, 
 ib.; his conversion to the western 
 Church, 404; his example produc- 
 tive of little result, ib. 
 
 Beverley, town of, Fisher born at, 423 
 
 Bible, the, lecturers not allowed to 
 lecture on, until they had lectured 
 on the Sentences, 363, n. 2 
 
 Biblici ordinarii and cursores, 363 
 
 Bidelliu, an officer in the university 
 of Bologna, 73 
 
 Bilney, Thos., testimony of to the 
 influence of Erasmus's Greek Test., 
 556 ; his eccentric character, 560 ; 
 his account of his spiritual ex- 
 periences, ib. ; his character, by 
 Latimer, 562 ; converts of, ib. ; 
 his influence as a Norfolk man, 
 563 ; summoned before the chapter 
 at Westminster, 605; recants a. 
 second time, 607 ; penance of, at 
 Paul's Cross, ib* returns to Cam- 
 bridge, 608 
 
 Bishops, list of, in 1500, who had 
 been educated at Cambridge, 425 
 
 Blackstone, Sir B., inaccuracy ot his 
 account of the early study of the 
 civil law, 209 
 
 Boethius, a text-book during the 
 Middle Ages, 21; the allegory in 
 the De Consolatione of, probably 
 in imitation of Martianus, 27 ; his 
 services to learning, ib. ; his trea- 
 tise compared with that of Mar- 
 tianus, ib. ; not a Christian, 28 ; 
 commentaries of, on the Topic a of 
 Cicero used by Gerbert at Rheirns,
 
 654 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 44; the same as Manlius, ib. note 
 1; his commentary on the trans- 
 lation of Porphyry by Victorinus, 
 61 ; his translation of Porphyry, 
 ib. ; change in his philosophic 
 opinions, ib.; importance attached 
 hy, to the question respecting uni- 
 versals, ib.; difference in his views 
 with respect to universals as ex- 
 pressed in his two commentaries, 
 53 ; his conclusions with respect to 
 the question adverted to by Por- 
 phyry, ib. ; does not attempt to 
 decide between Plato and Aristotle, 
 ib. ; reason, according to Cousin, 
 why he adopted the Aristotelian 
 theory, ib.; translations of Aris- 
 totle by, how distinguished from 
 those of a later period, 93 ; passed 
 for a Christian writer in the Mid- 
 dle Ages, 96 ; the philosopher aud 
 the theologian confounded in cata- 
 logue of library at Christchurch, 
 104; Chaucer's translation of the 
 De Consolatione of, the commence- 
 ment of the university library, 323 
 
 Bologna, university of, the chief 
 school of civil law in Europe in 
 the twelfth century, 71; official 
 recognition of, by the emperor 
 Frederic i, 72; provisions contain- 
 ed in charter of, ib. ; constitution 
 of, 73 ; compared with university 
 of Paris, 75; numbers at, in the 
 thirteenth century, 130 ; professors 
 of civil law at, dressed as laymen, 
 210; first received a faculty of 
 theology, 216 
 
 Bonaventura, commentary of, on the 
 Sentences, 62; a native of Tus- 
 cany, 113; character of the genius 
 of, 118; indifferent to Aristotle, 
 ib. n. 1 
 
 Boniface vm, pope, defied by William 
 of Occam, 187; rapacity of alienates 
 the English Franciscans, 194 
 
 Booksellers, at Cambridge, required 
 to suppress heretical books, 600, n. 
 2; generally foreigners, f b. ; licence 
 of 1534 for, C26 
 
 Booth, Lawrence, chanc., raises the 
 funds for building arts schools and 
 civil law schools, 360 
 
 Bouquet, Dom, describes the bene- 
 fits of the system introduced by 
 Charlemagne, 14 
 
 Bourgogne, foundation of the College 
 de, 129 
 
 Bradshaw, Mr. H., his opinion with 
 respect to date of the catalogue of 
 library at Christchurch, Canter- 
 
 bury, 100, n. 1; his criticism on 
 early statute relating to hostels 
 quoted, 220 n. 1 
 
 Brad war dine, Thomas, his De Causa 
 Dei, 198 ; the treatise a source of 
 Calvinistic doctrine in the English 
 Church, ib. ; its eccentric method, 
 199 ; the work criticised by Sir 
 Henry Savile, 199, n. 1J; referred 
 to by Chaucer, ib.; edited by Savile, 
 ib.; its extensive erudition, 200; 
 had access to Richard of Bury's 
 library, ib. ; chaplain to the same, 
 203 ; apocryphal authors cited by, 
 ib. n. 1; compared with Occam, 
 205, n. 1 ; styled by Lechler a prte- 
 nuntius Reformationis, ib. 
 
 Bresch, Jean, Essay on the Sentences 
 by, 60, n. 2 
 
 Brewer, professor, observations of, 
 on the Latinity of mediteval 
 writers, 171, n. 1; criticism of, on 
 Erasmus's New Testament, 509 
 
 Bromyard, John, his Summa Pradi- 
 cantium, 293; a Dominican, ib.] 
 character of his work, 294; con- 
 trasted with Pecock, ib. 
 
 Bruui, Leonardo, his services to the 
 study of Aristotle, 398 ; his transla- 
 tions of the Ethics and the Poli- 
 tics, ib. ; his dedication of the 
 latter to the duke of Gloucester, 399 
 
 Brucker, unsatisfactory decision of, 
 with respect to the Latin transla- 
 tions of Aristotle, 92; condemna- 
 tion of the scholastic Aristotle by , 1 23 
 
 Bruliferius, the university forbidden 
 to study, 630 
 
 Bryan, John, fell, of King's, a pupil 
 of Erasmus at Cambridge, 499; 
 rejected the scholastic Aristotle, 
 ib.; takes the Greek text of Aris- 
 totle as the basis of his lectures, 
 617; not an eminent Grecian, 620 
 
 Buckenham, prior of the Dominicans, 
 sermon by, in reply to Latimer, 610 
 
 Buckmaster, Dr, fell, of Peterhouse, 
 letter of to Dr Edmunds on the 
 feeling of the university in con- 
 nexion with the divorce, 621 
 
 Buhle, theory of, that the mediorval 
 knowledge of Aristotle was derived 
 from Arabic translations, 93 
 
 Bullock, Henry, fell, of Queens', a 
 pupil and correspondent of Eras- 
 mus, 498; patronised by Wolsey,t'6.; 
 letter of to Erasmus, 512 ; oration 
 of, on Wolsey's visit to Cambridge, 
 546 ; grossness of his flattery, ib. ; 
 presides at the burning of Luther's 
 works at Cambridge, 571
 
 INDEX. 
 
 655 
 
 Bnrbank, Wm., secretary to Wolsey, 
 545 
 
 Buridanus, his Quaxtiones a good 
 illustration of the common mode 
 of lecturing, 859 
 
 Burley, Walter, defends the realistic 
 doctrines at Oxford, 197 ; his Ex- 
 positio super Artem Veterem, ib.; 
 his statement that the site of Ox- 
 ford was selected by philosophers 
 from Greece on account of its 
 healthiness, 339 and n. 2 ; his Logic 
 forbidden at Cambridge, 630 
 
 Bury, Richard of, tutor to Edward 
 in when prince of Wales, 200 ; his 
 important services to his pupil, ib. ; 
 his subsequent career, 201 ; not a 
 man of profound acquirements, 
 t'6. ; his interview with Petrarch at 
 Avignon, ib.; he disappoints the 
 poet, 202; his knowledge of Greek, 
 t'6. ; his real merits, ib. ; his mania 
 for books, ib. n. 2 ; his wisdom in 
 book collecting, 203; fate of his 
 library, ib. ; his rules for the ma- 
 nagement of Durham College li- 
 brary, ib. ; the rules almost iden- 
 tical with those of the Sorbonne, 
 204, n. 1; slight distinction be- 
 tween the two, ib.; his Philobiblon, 
 ib. n. 2; his account of the stu- 
 dents of his day, 206; on the de- 
 generacy of the Mendicants, ib. ; 
 his declaration respecting the civi- 
 lians, 211 ; his indifference to the 
 canon law, ib. ; his opinion of the 
 university of Paris in his day, 
 214 ; his testimony to the lethargy 
 that there prevailed, ib. 
 
 Bury St. Edmund's, contest at, be- 
 tween the monks and the Francis- 
 cans, 149 
 
 Busleiden, Jerome, founder of the 
 collegium trilingue at Louvain, 
 565 ; his family and character, ib. 
 
 Byzantine logic, the, influence of, 
 175 ; its presence in Duns Scotus, 
 180; important results that fol- 
 lowed upon the introduction of, 
 184; important results of, with 
 respect to nominalism, 188; in- 
 strumental in introducing the 
 theory of the Sufflwsitio, ib.; its 
 rapid spread in the 15thcentury,416 
 
 Caen, abbey of, lands taken from to 
 
 found King's College, 305 
 Caesar, Commentaries of, Lupus of 
 v Ferrie'res promises to send copy 
 
 of, 20; considers portion to have 
 been written by H irt in-, ib. 
 
 Cairn's Catties, the residences of the 
 Mendicants, BO called by Wyclif, 
 270 
 
 Caius Anberinus, a lecturer on Te- 
 rence at the university towards the 
 close of the 15th century, 434 
 
 Cam, the river, 329 ; route described 
 in its coarse, ib. ; its present point 
 of junction with the Ouse, 16.; 
 meaning of name, 16. n. 1 ; formerly 
 held by the town corporation of 
 the crown, 373 
 
 Cambridge, the town of, totally de- 
 stroyed in A.D. 870, 81; and in 
 1009, 82 ; ancient appearance of, 
 332; its gradual growth, ib.; why 
 chosen as a site of an university, 
 333 ; aspect of in the 15th century, 
 375 
 
 Cambridge, university of, its earliest 
 known legal recognition, 1; legends 
 respecting early history of, 66 ; 
 scantiness of our information re- 
 specting the statutes of, before the 
 college era, ib. ; modelled on the 
 university of Paris, 67; probable 
 origin of, 80 ; earliest legal recog- 
 nition of the, 84; students from 
 Paris settle in the, 107; presence 
 of students from Paris at, 133; 
 migration from the, to Northamp- 
 ton, 135 ; first recognised as a stu- 
 diurn generate in 1318, 145; ad- 
 vantages resulting from this recog- 
 nition, 146; chancellor of, present 
 at council of Constance, 276; re- 
 garded as deteriorating in theology 
 in the fifteenth century, 315; ori- 
 ginally only a grammar school, 
 340 ; period when the arts course 
 was introduced at, 342 ; fables re- 
 specting 'early history of, retailed by 
 Fisher, 450 ; tribute paid by Erasmus 
 to its fame, 507 ; progress of Greek 
 at, 511 ; declared by Erasmus La 
 
 - 1516 to be able to compare with 
 the most celebrated universities, 
 516; entire change at, 519, n. 
 2 ; favour shown by to the study 
 of Greek contrasted by More with 
 the conduct of Oxford, 526; had 
 always outstripped Oxford, 534; 
 Wolsey constituted sole reviser of 
 the statutes of, 549 ; abject flattery 
 of letter of, to the cardinal, 550; 
 contribution of colleges of to the 
 royal loan, 551, n. 1 ; royal visits to, 
 551 ; scholars from, invited by Wol- 
 sey to Oxford, 552 ; less forward to
 
 C56 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 espouse new doctrines than Oxford, 
 559; begins to take the lead in 
 connexion with the Eeformation, 
 ib. ; Luther's writings burnt at, 
 571 ; question of the royal divorce 
 referred to, 613; conduct of, in 
 relation to the question, compared 
 by Mr. Froude with that of Oxford, 
 616; letter to from King Henry, 
 617 ; decision of, on the question, 
 criticised , 621 ; royal injunctions 
 to, 630 
 Camerarius, testimony of, to fame of 
 
 1 lie-hard Croke at Leipsic, 527 
 Canon law, study of, founded on the 
 Decretum of Gratian, 36; simply 
 permitted at Merton College, 167 ; 
 permitted but not obligatory at 
 Gonville Hall, 240 ; how affected by 
 Occam's attack on the papal power, 
 259 ; four fellows allowed to study 
 at King's, 308; study of, simply 
 permitted at Queens' College, 317 ; 
 forbidden at St. Catherine's Hall, 
 318; and at Jesus College, 322; 
 admission of bachelors in, from 
 A.D. 1459 to A.D. 1499, 320; doctor 
 of, former requirements for degree 
 of, 364 ; lectures on and degrees in 
 prohibited, 630 
 
 Canterbury, destruction of the library 
 at, A.D. 1009, 82 ; both the monas- 
 teries at, professed the Benedictine 
 rule, Hi. ; mode of life at monas- 
 tery of St. Augustine at, described 
 by Giraldus Cambrensis, 87 
 Canterbury Hall, Oxford, efforts of 
 Simon 1 slip at, 266; expulsion of 
 seculars from, ib. 
 
 Cardinal College, Oxford, foundation 
 of, 551 ; its princely revenues, ib. ; 
 scholars from Cambridge placed 
 on the foundation, 552; founded 
 on the site of St. Frideswide's 
 monastery, ib. n. 1 ; magnificence 
 of the design, 601 and n. 1 
 Cards, playing at, allowed to fellows 
 at Christinas time, 609 ; always for. 
 bidden to scholars, ib. n. 2 
 Carmelites, the, their house near 
 
 Queens' College, 139 
 Cassiodorus, treatise of, a text-book 
 during the Middle Ages, 21; his 
 account of the Arithmetic of Boe- 
 thins, 28, n. 1; escapes the fate 
 of Boethins under Theodoric, 29; 
 his Gothic History, 30; his Epi- 
 stles, t b. ; his treatise De A rtibu*, ib.; 
 copy of, ut the library at Bee, 100 
 Categories of Aristotle, the, along 
 with the De Intcrpretatione, the 
 
 only portion of his logic studied 
 prior to the 12th century, 29 
 Cavendish, Wolsey's biographer, edu- 
 cated at Cambridge, 545 
 Chalcidius, Latin translation of the 
 
 Timteuti by, 41 
 
 Chalcondyles, successor to Argyro- 
 pulos at Florence, 429 ; his edition 
 of Homer, ib. ; his Greek gram- 
 mar, 430 
 Champeaux, William of, opens a 
 
 school of logic in Paris, 77, n. 1 
 Chancellor of the cathedral at Paris, 
 
 his hostility to the university, 80 
 Chancellor, office of the, in the uni- 
 versity, 140 ; his election biennial, 
 ib. ; elected by the regents, ib. ; 
 duties attached to the office, 141; 
 his powers ecclesiastical in their 
 origin, ib. ; originally not per- 
 mitted to delegate all his duties to 
 the vice-chancellor, ib. ; his powers 
 distinguished from those of the 
 regents, 142; first becomes vested 
 with spiritual jurisdiction in the 
 university, 146 ; his authority as- 
 serted by the Barnwell Process ex- 
 clusive of all ecclesiastical jurisdic- 
 tion, 289 
 Chancellors, two at the university of 
 
 Bologna, 73 
 
 Charlemagne, fosters learning in 
 conjunction with Alcuin, 9; effects 
 of his rule on the conception of 
 learning, 10 ; his Capitularies, 12 ; 
 his letter to Baugulfus, ib. ; in- 
 vites Alcuin over from England, 
 13 ; twofold character of his work 
 in education, Hi. ; his mental acti- 
 vity, 14; questions in grammar 
 propounded by, to Alcuin, 15 ; his 
 views in relation to learning com- 
 pared with those of Alcuin, 17 
 Charters university, supposed loss 
 
 of, 81, n. 1 ' 
 
 Chicheley, archbp., directs the con- 
 fiscation of the estates of the alien 
 priories, 305 
 
 Christchurch, monastery of, Canter- 
 bury, a mixed foundation, 100; 
 distinguished from that of St. Au- 
 gustine's, Canterbury, ib. n. 2; 
 contrast presented in catalogue of 
 library at, with that of a hundred 
 years later, 105; the monks of, 
 nearly driven from the city by the 
 Dominicans, 150 
 Christchurch, Oxford, see Cardinal 
 
 College 
 
 Christ's College, foundation of, 446; 
 endowments of given by Margaret
 
 INDEX. 
 
 C.57 
 
 of Richmond, 447; original sta- 
 tutes of, 453; qualifications of 
 fellows at, 455 ; oath taken by fel- 
 lows of, ib. ; power reserved by sta- 
 tutes of, of making alterations, 
 456, n. 3; error of dean Peacock 
 on this point, ib. ; clause in oath 
 administered to master of, 458; 
 requirements for fellows at, 459; 
 admission of pensioners at, ///. ; 
 appointment of lecturer on Latin 
 literature nt.ib.; lectures to be given 
 in long vacation at, 460 ; allowance 
 to fellows for commons at, ib. 
 
 Chrodegang, bp. of Metz, founder of 
 secular colleges in Lorraine, 160 
 
 Chrysoloras, Emmanuel, his charac- 
 ter, 391 ; he acquires the Latin 
 tongue, 392; his eminence as a 
 teacher of Greek, ib.; his Greek 
 Grammar, ib. and n. 2 ; his visit 
 to Borne, 393 ; his death at Con- 
 stance, 395 ; his funeral oration by 
 Juliauus, 396 
 
 Chrysostom, St., disparagingly spoken 
 of by Erasmus, 501 
 
 Chubbes, Wm., author of a treatise 
 on logic, 425; an adviser of bp. 
 Alcoc'k in the foundation of Jesus 
 College, 426 
 
 Cicero, Lupus of Ferrieres asks for 
 the loan of the Rhetoric of, 20; 
 Topica of, expounded by Gerbert 
 at Bheims, 44 ; studied as a model 
 under Bernard of Chartres, 57; 
 styled by Niebuhr a 0eos dfyvwo-Tos 
 in the Middle Ages, 96 ; numerous 
 treatises of, in the library at Bee, 
 in Normandy, in thirteenth cen- 
 tury, 104; Petrarch's model, 354; 
 orations of, known in the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries, 384, n. 2 
 
 Cistercian branch of the Benedictine 
 order, 85 ; testimony of Hugo, the 
 papal legate, to the motives of the 
 institution of the order, ib. n. 3 ; 
 order of the, satirised by Walter 
 Map, 86 
 
 Citramontani, & division of the stu- 
 dents at the university of Bologna, 
 73 
 
 Civil law, study of, revived by Irne- 
 rius at Bologna, 36; extended by 
 Accnrsius,37; at first regarded with 
 hostility by the Bomish Church, 
 ib.; forbidden to the religious or- 
 ders, 38; banished from the uni- 
 versity of Paris, ib. ; its relation to 
 the canon law explained by Savigny, 
 ib. n. 3 ; its general prevalence at 
 the close of the 12th century, 39; 
 
 the study of, often united with that 
 of the canon law in England, i'-. ; 
 studied by Lanfrauc at Bologna, 
 47 ; why discouraged at Paris, 75 ; 
 periods during which the study 
 was encouraged or prohibited in 
 the university of Paris, ib. n. 2 ; 
 none of the volumes of the, found 
 in the library at Christchnrch, 104 ; 
 studied at the College de Bayeux 
 in Paris, 128; conditions under 
 which the study of, was permitted 
 at Merton College, 167; absorbing 
 attention to, in the 14th century, 
 208 ; its tendency to confound dis- 
 tinctions between laity and clergy, 
 209; inaccuracy of Blackstone's 
 account of the study, ib. ; Beginold 
 Pecock on the evils resulting from 
 the study, ib. ; importance of the 
 code, shewn by William of No- 
 garet, 211; the Avignonese popes 
 distinguished by their knowledge 
 of, ib. ; study of, looked upon by 
 the ' artists ' and theologians at 
 Paris as a trade, 255, n. 1; evi- 
 dent desire of founders to check 
 the excessive attention paid, in 
 the 18th century, to the, 319; 
 spirit in which it was studied in 
 Italy entirely mercenary, ib.; ad- 
 missions of bachelors to degrees 
 in, from A.D. 1459 to 1499, 320; 
 the study of, especially attacked 
 by the Humanists, 418 
 
 Clare College, foundation of, 250; 
 designed to repair the losses occa- 
 sioned by the pestilence, 251 ; libe- 
 rality of sentiment in the early 
 statutes of, ib.; conditions to be 
 observed in the election of fellows 
 at, 252 ; sizars at, i ft. ; its reputa- 
 tion in the 15th century, 314 
 
 Clement vn, pope, his opinion of the 
 theologians, 212 
 
 Clergy, the, their participation in 
 secular pursuits in the thirteenth 
 and fourteenth centuries, 165 
 
 Clerk, probably synonymous with 
 scholar, 84 
 
 Clerk, John, bp. of Bath and Wells, 
 harshness of, towards Barnes at his 
 trial, 579 
 
 Clerke (or Clark), John, one of the 
 Cambridge Reformers, 604, and n. 1 
 
 Cluniac branch of the Benedictine 
 order, 85 
 
 Cnut, king, converts the canonry at 
 Bury St. Edmund's into a Bene- 
 dictine monastery, 149; favored 
 the creation of secular colleges, ICO 
 
 42
 
 (J58 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Cobbett, Win., Lis tribute to the work 
 of the monasteries, 336, n. 1 
 
 Cobham, Tho., his bequest to the uni- 
 versity library at Oxford, 203, n. 2 
 
 Cocheris, M., his edition of Richard 
 of Bury's Philobiblon, 204, n. 2 
 
 Cock-fighting, a common amusement 
 among students, 373 
 
 Colet, John, his spirit as a founder 
 contrasted with that of bp. Fisher, 
 471; his small liking for Augus- 
 tine, 484 ; letter from Erasmus at 
 Cambridge to, 493 
 
 Collage, Tho., bequeaths a fund for 
 the encouragement of preaching at 
 the university in 1440, 439 
 
 College de Moutaigu, account given 
 by Erasmus of the, 367 
 
 Colleges, of small importance in the 
 university of Bologna, 74 ; supposed 
 by Bulaeus to be coeval with the uni- 
 versity at Paris, 76; foundation of, 
 at Cambridge, the commencement 
 of certain information respecting 
 the university, 216; almost in- 
 variable design of the founders of, 
 368 ; intended for the poorer class 
 of stadents, ib.; standard of ad- 
 mission at, 369; age of students 
 on admission at, ib. ; discipline at, 
 ib.; becoming richer required to 
 increase the number of their fel- 
 lowships, 372; survey of, by Par- 
 ker, Redman, and May, aim. 1545, 
 424, n. 5 
 
 College life, sketch of, in the Middle 
 Ages, 366; asceticism a dominant 
 notion in, ///. 
 
 Cologne, university of, formed on 
 the model of Paris, 74 
 
 Commons, liberal allowance for, to 
 fellows at King's Hall, 254 ; allow- 
 ances for, at other colleges, ib. n. 
 2 ; allowance for, at Christ's Col- 
 lege, 4(30; long unfixed at Peter- 
 house, ib. ; amount prescribed for, 
 at St. John's College, 461 ; at Jesus 
 College, ib. n. 1 
 
 Conringius, his conjecture with rc- 
 Hpect to the origin of university 
 degrees, 77 
 
 Constance, council of, representatives 
 from both universities at, 276; 
 Emmanuel Chrysoloras at, 394 
 
 Constantinople, state of learning at, 
 in the eleventh century, 175 and 
 n. 1 ; in the 15th century, con- 
 trasted with Florence, 888; ac- 
 count given of its scholars by 
 Philelphus, 390; fall of, 400; state 
 of learning at, after capture in 
 
 1453, 401, n. 3; exiles from, their 
 character in Italy described, 402 
 
 Constantinople, College de, circum- 
 stances which gave rise to its foun- 
 dation, 126, n. 4 
 
 Copernican theory, partial anticipa- 
 tion of. in the treatise of Martian us , 
 26, note 1 
 
 Corpus Christi College, destruction 
 of the archives of, 137; founda- 
 tion of, 247; its peculiar origin, 
 ib. , motives of founders of, 249; 
 statutes of, borrowed from those 
 of Michaelhouse, ib. and note 5; 
 requirements with respect to 
 studies at, 250 ; not visited by 
 commission of archbp. Arundel, 
 258, n. 1 
 
 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, manu- 
 script of Argentine's proposed 'act ' 
 in the library of, 426 and n. 2 ; 
 foundation of, 521 ; statutes of, t'ft. ; 
 duties imposed upon readers of 
 divinity at, 522 
 
 Cosin, master of Corpus, succeeds 
 Fisher as lady Margaret professor, 
 374 
 
 Councils of the fifteenth century, re- 
 presentatives from the universities 
 present at, 276 
 
 Counties, limitations in elections to 
 fellowships with respect to, 238 9 
 
 Cousin, M. Viet., his dictum respect- 
 ing the origin of the scholastic phi- 
 losophy, 50; the passage quoted, 
 ib. n. 1 ; his opinion that Boethius 
 attached small importance to the 
 dispute respecting universols doubt- 
 ful, 51, n. 3; his account of the 
 controversy respecting universals 
 as treated by Boethius, 53 ; his 
 conjecture with respect to the 
 teaching of the schools of Charle- 
 magne, 54 
 
 Cranrner, Tho., fell, of Jesus, univer- 
 sity career of , 612 ; marriage of, t'ft.; 
 visit of, to Waltham, 613; sug- 
 gestion of, with respect to the 
 royal divorce, ib. ; his treatise on 
 the question, 618 
 
 Credo nt intelligam, dictum of St. 
 AIIM lin, 64 
 
 Croke, Rich., early career of, 527; 
 his continental fame, Hi.; instruc- 
 tor in Greek to king Henry, 528 ; 
 begins to lecture on Greek at Cam- 
 bridge, ilt.; formally appointed 
 Greek reader in 1519, t'ft.; his in- 
 'augural oration, 529 ; his Latin 
 style modelled on Quintilian, it,. ; 
 had received offers from Oxford to
 
 INDKX. 
 
 l>oconie A professor there, 534; 
 his oration compared with that of 
 Melanchthon De Studii Corrigen- 
 da, 537 ; his second oration, 539 ; 
 elected public orator, ib. ; ingrati- 
 tude of, to Fisher, 615 ; activity 
 of, in Italy, in gaining opinions 
 favorable to the divorce, ib. 
 
 Crome, Dr. Walter, an early bene- 
 factor to the university library, 
 323 
 
 Cromwell, Tho., elected chancellor of 
 the university, 629 ; and visitor, ib. ; 
 commissioners of, at Oxford, ib. 
 
 Croucher, John, perhaps the founder 
 of the university library, 323 
 
 Crusades, the, early and later chroni- 
 clers of, compared, 43 ; the second, 
 its influence on Europe, 58 ; two- 
 fold utility of, 87 ; Guibert on the 
 object for which they were per- 
 mitted, 88 ; various influences of, 
 ib. ; productive of increased in- 
 tercourse between Christians and 
 Saracens, 91 ; probably tended to 
 increase the suspicions of the 
 Church with respect to Saracenic 
 literature, 97 
 
 Cursory lectures, meaning of the 
 term, 358 and Append. (E) 
 
 D 
 
 D'Ailly, Pierre, bp. of Cambray, edu- 
 cated at the college of Navarre, 128 
 
 Damian, Peter, hostile to pagan 
 learning, 18 
 
 Dainlet, Hugh, master of Pembroke, 
 opposed to Reginald Pecock, 295 
 
 Dnues, first invasion of the, fatal to 
 learning in England, 9 and 81; 
 second invasion of, 81 ; losses in- 
 flicted by, 82 
 
 Daneus, observation of, that Aris- 
 totle is never named by Peter 
 Lombard, 94 
 
 Danish College at Paris, its founda- 
 tion attributed by Crevier to the 
 twelfth century, 126 
 
 Dante, tribute paid by, to memory 
 of Gratian, 36 
 
 D'Assailly, M., on the formation of 
 the university of Bologna, 73 ; the 
 universities of Bologna and Paris 
 compared by, 76, n. 1 
 
 D.C.L., former requirements for de- 
 gree of, 364 
 
 D.D. and B.D. , requirements for de- 
 grees of, in the Middle Ages, 363 ; 
 the degree formerly genuine in 
 character, 365 
 
 De Burgh, Eliz., foundress of Clan.- 
 Hall, 250; death of a brother of, 
 enables her to undertake the de- 
 sign, Hi. n. 1 
 
 De Causi*, the, a Neo-Platonic trea- 
 tise, 114 ; attributed to Aristotle, 
 //'. n. 1 ; considered by Jourdain 
 to have been not less popular than 
 the Pseudo-Dionysius, ib. ; the 
 work described by Neander, ib. 
 Decretals, the false, 34 ; criticised by 
 
 Milman, il>. n. 1 
 
 Degrees, origin of, conjecture of 
 Conringius respecting, 77 ; real 
 original significance of, 78; obli- 
 gations involved in proceeding to, 
 ib.; number of those who proceed- 
 ed to, in law or theology, smaller 
 than might be supposed, 363 
 De Hceretico Comburendo, statute of, 
 
 259 
 
 De Interpretatione of Aristotle, along 
 with the Categories the only por- 
 tion of his logic studied prior to 
 the 12th century, 29 
 Determine, to, meaning of the term 
 
 explained, 354 ; by proxy, t'6. 
 Dialectics, include both logic and 
 
 metaphysics in Martianus, 25 
 Dice, playing at, forbidden to the 
 
 fellows of Peterhouse, 233 
 Diet of students in mediaeval times, 
 
 367 
 
 Dionysius, the Psendo- .Celestial Hier- 
 archy of, 41; translated by John 
 Scotus Erigena, 42 ; character 
 and influence of the treatise, ib. ; 
 Abelard questions the story of his 
 apostleship in Gaul, 58; scholastic 
 acceptance of, as canonical, 109; 
 supplanted the Bible in the Middle 
 Ages, 16. n. 2; Grocyn in lec- 
 turing on, discovers its real charac- 
 ter, t'6. ; the work described by 
 Milman, ib. ; Erasmus's account 
 of Grocyn's discovery, 513, n. 1 
 Dispensations from oaths, clause 
 against, in statutes of Christ's 
 College, 455; and in statutes of 
 St. John's, 456 ; question raised by 
 dean Peacock in connexion with, 
 t'6. ; their original purport, 457 
 Disputations in parvisiii, 299, n. 2; 
 
 why so termed, i6. 
 
 Divorce, the royal, 612; question 
 with reference to, as laid before 
 the universities, 613 ; what it 
 really involved, 614 ; fallacy of the 
 expedient, ib.; decision of Cam- 
 bridge on, 620 ; criticisms on, 622 
 
 422
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Doctor, origin of the degree of, 78 ; 
 its catholicity dependent on the 
 pleasure of the pope, 78 
 
 Doket, Andrew, first president of 
 Queens' College, his character, 
 317 
 
 Dominicans, the, institution of the 
 order of, 89 ; open two schools of 
 theology at Paris, 107; their dis- 
 comfiture at the condemnation of 
 the teaching of Aquinas, 122 ; their 
 house on the present site of Em- 
 manuel, 139; their rivalry with 
 the Franciscans described by Mat- 
 thew Paris, 148; establish them- 
 selves at Dunstable, 150; activity 
 of, at Paris, 262 
 
 Donatus, an authority in the Middle 
 Ages, 22 
 
 Dorbellus, a commentator on Petrus 
 Hispanus, 566, n. 3 
 
 Dress, extravagance of students in, 
 232 ; clerical, required to be worn 
 by the scholars of Peterhouse, 233 ; 
 a distinctive kind of, always worn 
 by the university student, 348; 
 often worn by those not entitled 
 to wear it, Hi. 
 
 Drogo, sustains the tradition of Al- 
 cuin's teaching at Paris, 70; his 
 pupils, ib. 
 
 Dryden, John, resemblance in his 
 Religio Laid to Thomas Aquinas, 
 112, n. 2; his scholastic learning 
 underrated by Macaulay, ib. 
 
 Duns Scotus, his commentary on the 
 Sentences, 62; a teacher at Mer- 
 ton College, 169; difficulties that 
 preclude any account of his career, 
 172 ; his wondrous fecundity, 173, 
 n. 2; task imposed upon him by 
 the appearance of the Byzantine 
 logic, 178; Byzantine element in 
 the logic of, 180 ; exaggerated im- 
 portance ascribed to logic by, 183; 
 limited the application of logic to 
 theology, 184 ; compared with Ro- 
 ger Bacon, 185; long duration of 
 his influence, 186; great edition of 
 his works, ib.; fate of his writings 
 at Oxford, 629; study of them 
 forbidden at Cambridge, 630 
 
 Dunfitan, St., reviver of the Benedic- 
 tine order in England, 81 
 
 Durandus, his commentary on the 
 Sentences, 62 
 
 Durham College, Oxford, founded by 
 monks of Durham, 203 
 
 Durham, William of, his foundation 
 of University College, ifio. n. 1 
 
 K 
 
 Eadgar, king, numerous monasteries 
 founded in England during the 
 reign of, 81 ; unfavorable to the 
 secular clergy, 161 
 
 Eadward the Confessor, prosperity 
 of the Benedictines under, 82 
 
 Edward n, letter of, to pope John 
 xxn, respecting Paris and Oxford, 
 213, n. 1 ; maintained 32 king's 
 scholars at the university, 252; 
 properly to be regarded as the 
 founder of King's Hall, 253, n. 1 
 
 Edward in, commands the Oxford 
 students at Stamford to return to 
 the university, 135, n. 1; repre- 
 sented by Gray as the founder of 
 King's Hall, 253 ; builds a mansion 
 for the scholars of King's Hall, 
 Hi.-, confiscates the estates of the 
 alien priories, 304 
 
 Egiuhard, letter to, from bishop 
 Lupus, 20 
 
 Egypt, called by Martianus, Asia 
 cap ut, 26 
 
 Elenchi Sophlntici of Aristotle never 
 quoted prior to the 12th century, 
 29 
 
 Elv, origin of the name, 336 and 
 n. 3 
 
 Ely, archdeacons of, claims of juris- 
 diction in Cambridge asserted by, 
 225 ; nominated the ma'ster of glo- 
 mery, ib. 
 
 Ely, bishop of, exemption from his 
 jurisdiction first obtained by the 
 university, 146; this exemption 
 disputed by some bishops, H>. ; his 
 jurisdiction in the university alter- 
 nately asserted aud unclaimed, 
 287; maintained by Arundel, '&.; 
 abolished by the Barnwell Process, 
 288; blow given to the authority 
 of, by the Barnwell Process, 290, 
 n. 2 
 
 Ely, scholars of, the fellows of Peter- 
 In. 11. r originally BO termed, 231 
 
 Empeon, minister of Henry vn, high- 
 steward of the university in 1506, 
 449 
 
 Eraser, testimony of, to fame of 
 Richard Croke at Dresden, 528 
 
 End of the world, anticipations of, 
 45; influence of this idea upon the 
 age, 46 
 
 England, state of learning in, in 15th 
 century, 297, 298
 
 INDEX. 
 
 00 1 
 
 English ' nation' in the university of 
 Paris, when first called the Ger- 
 man ' nation,' 79, n. 1 
 
 Epistola Cantabrigiensit, the, 686; 
 gloomy prognostications of, id. n. '2 
 
 Epistolce Obscurorum Virorum, ap- 
 pearance of, 558 
 
 Erasmus, example set by, of ridi- 
 culing the method of the schoolmen , 
 109 ; account given hy, of the Col- 
 Idge de Montaigu, 367 ; his descrip- 
 tion of the Scotists at Paris, 421 ; 
 his testimony to Fisher's views 
 with respect to the pulpit oratory 
 of the time, 440; perhaps visited 
 Cambridge in the train of Hen. vn 
 in 1506,452 and n. 1 ; admitted B.D. 
 and D.D. in 1505, 453 and n. 1; 
 his intimacy with Fisher at this 
 time, ib. ; epitaph on Margaret of 
 Eichmond by, 463, n. 1; refuses 
 to undertake the instruction of 
 Stanley, afterwards bp. of Ely, 467 ; 
 letter from bp. Fisher to, 470, n. 
 2; second visit of, to Cambridge, 
 472; his object on this occasion, 
 473 ; circumstances that led to his 
 choice of Cambridge, ib. ; reasons 
 why he gave it the preference to 
 Oxford, 477 ; his testimony to the 
 scholarship of Oxford, 480 ; his obli- 
 gations to Liuacre, ib. ; extent of 
 his debt to Oxford, 481 ; his prefer- 
 ence of Jerome to Augustine, 483 
 and 501 ; character of, 487 ; his 
 weak points as noted by Luther and 
 Tyndale, 488 and n. 3 ; contradic- 
 tory character of his criticisms on 
 places and men, 489 ; his personal 
 appearance, the portrait of, ib., 
 490; criticism of Lavater on first 
 lecture of, at Cambridge, 491 ; Cam- 
 bridge letters of, 492 ; their uncer- 
 tain chronology, ib. ; his account of 
 his first experiences of Cambridge, 
 493; he is appointed lady Mar- 
 garet professor, ib. ; failure of his 
 expectations as a teacher of Greek, 
 ib. ; letters of, to Ammonius and 
 Colet, ib. ; his labours at Cam- 
 bridge, 494; forewarned by Colet 
 he avoided collision with the con- 
 servative party, 495 ; protected by 
 Fisher, 496; his admiration for 
 Fisher's character, ib.; influence 
 he exerted over Fisher, 497; his 
 influence over other members of 
 the university, 498 ; his Cambridge 
 friends, ib. ; his views contrasted 
 with those prevalent in the uni- 
 
 versity, 501; his estimate of the 
 fathers, ib. ; and of the media 1 va I 
 theologians, 502; hia Cambridge 
 experiences of a trying character, 
 603; his description of the towns- 
 men, 504, n. 1 ; his want of eco- 
 nomy, 604; his last Cambridge 
 letter, 505; his deliberate testi- 
 mony favorable to Cambridge, 507 ; 
 his Novnm Instnunentnm, 608; this 
 strictly Cambridge work, 509; its 
 defects and merits, 510; his reply 
 to a letter from Bullock, 513 ; his 
 third visit to England, 518; en- 
 deavours to persuade Wm. Latimer 
 to teach bp. Fisher Greek, 619; 
 leaves England for Louvain, 520; 
 his Novum Test., 523; befriends 
 Croke, 527; congratulates Croke 
 on his appointment as Greek reader 
 at Cambridge, 535, n. 2; his influ- 
 ence in promoting the Beformation 
 in England, 556 ; his assertion re- 
 specting the progress of the new 
 learning, 558 ; letter of, to Vives, re- 
 specting publication of his works, 
 585 ; letter to, from Fisher, respect- 
 ing the De Ratione Concionandi, 
 ib. ; thinks the end of the world 
 is at hand, 586 ; advocates a trans- 
 lation of the Scriptures into the 
 vernacular, 587 ; writes De Libero 
 Arbitrio against Luther, 588; de- 
 nies all sympathy with Luther, ib. ; 
 death of, 631 
 Erfurt, university of, styled novorum 
 
 omnium portitf, 417 
 Eric of Auxerre, sustains the tradition 
 
 of Alcuin's teaching, 69 
 Erigena, John Scotus, an exception 
 to the philosophical character of 
 his age, 40; his De Divisione Na- 
 turee, 41 ; his affinities to Platou- 
 ism, t'6. ; his philosophy derived 
 from Augustine, ib. ; translates the 
 Psendo-Dionysius, 42 
 Eton College, foundation of, by Henry 
 . vi, 305 
 
 Euclid, translation of four books of, 
 by Boethius, 28; definition in, re- 
 stored by collation of a Greek 
 MS., 533 
 
 Eugeuius in, pope, raises Gratiau 
 to the bishopric of Chiusi, 36 ; lec- 
 tures on the canon law instituted 
 by, 72 
 Eugenius rv, pope, confirms the 
 
 Barnwell Process, 290 
 Eusebins, story from the Pmparatlo 
 Evanjclica of, 485
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Kustiichiiis, fifth bp. of Ely, his 
 benefactions to the Hospital of St. 
 John the Evangelist, 223 
 
 Eutychius, the martyr, appearance 
 of, to the bishop of Terentina, 7 
 
 Exhibition, earliest university, found- 
 ed by Wm. of Kilkenny, 223 
 
 Expenses of students when keeping 
 'acts,' limited by the authorities, 
 357 
 
 P 
 
 'Father,' the, in academic cere- 
 monies, 856 
 
 Fathers, the, very imperfectly repre- 
 sented in the mediaeval Cambridge 
 libraries, 326 
 
 Fawne, Dr., lady Margaret professor, 
 a friend of Erasmus at Cambridge, 
 500 
 
 Fees paid by students to the lecturers 
 appointed by the university, 359 
 
 Fellows of colleges, allowances made 
 to, for commons, 370; required to 
 be in residence, 372; required to 
 go out in pairs, 374 and n. 4; 
 Cranmer's election as a, when a 
 widower, 612, n. 3 (for standard of 
 requirements at election of, see 
 under different colleges) 
 
 Fen country, the, 329 ; extent of in- 
 undations of former times, 331; 
 changes in, resulting from monas- 
 tic occupation, 335 ; description of, 
 in the Liber Klienttis, 33G 
 
 Ferrara, university of, founded in 
 the 13th century, 80 
 
 Fiddes, Dr., criticism of, on letter 
 of the university to Wolsey, 549 
 
 Fires at the universities, losses oc- 
 casioned by, 136 
 
 Fires, absence of arrangements for, 
 in college rooms, 369 
 
 Fisher, John, bp. of Rochester, his 
 parentage and early education, 
 422 ; entered at Michaelhouse, / '/. ; 
 elected fellow, /'//. ; elected master, 
 424; his views and character at 
 this period, ib. ; his account of the 
 tone of the university at beginning 
 of 15th century, 427 ; goes as 
 proctor to the royal court, 434 ; in 
 introduced to the king's mother, 
 ib. ; appointed her confessor, 435; 
 ia elected vice-chancellor, ib. ; and 
 lady Margaret professor, 437 ; aims 
 at a revival of popular preaching, 
 4 10; his claims to rank as a reform- 
 er, 141 ; elected chancellor, ib. ; pro- 
 
 moted to the bishopric of Roches-' 
 ter, 442; his influence with the 
 lady Margaret on behalf of Cam- 
 bridge, ///. ; resigns his mastership 
 at Michaelhouse, 446 ; elected presi- 
 dent of Queens', ib.; delivers the 
 address of the university on the 
 royal visit in 1506, 449 ; obtains 
 the consent of king Henry to the 
 endowment of St. John's College, 
 462; preaches funeral sermon for 
 the countess of Richmond, 463 ; the 
 task of carrying out her designs at 
 Cambridge devolves upon, 465; 
 presides at the openiugof St. John's 
 College, 470 ; gives statutes to the 
 college identical with those of 
 Christ's, ib.; letter from, to Eras- 
 mus, Hi. n. 2 ; character of statutes 
 given by, to the two colleges, 471 ; 
 obtains for Erasmus the privilege 
 of residence at Queens' Coll., 472 ; 
 Erasmus's admiration of his cha- 
 racter, 496 ; allows Erasmus a 
 pension, 504; supports Erasmus 
 in his design of the Novum Instru- 
 ment nm, 511; his approval referred 
 to by Erasmus, 515 ; aspires to a 
 knowledge of Greek, 519 ; Croke 
 announces himself a delegate of, 
 at Cambridge, 530 ; resigns the 
 chancellorship of the university, 
 641 ; is re-elected for life, 542 ; ab- 
 sent from the university on the 
 occasion of Wolsey's visit, 543 ; 
 why so, Hi.; his relations to the 
 cardinal, Hi. ; he attacks the pride 
 and luxury of the superior clergy 
 at the conference, 544 ; his cha- 
 racter contrasted with that of 
 Wolsey, 'ib.; affixes a copy of Leo's 
 indulgences to the gates of the 
 common schools, 556; excommuni- 
 cates Peter de Valence, 557 ; pre- 
 sides at the burning of Luther's 
 works at Paul's Cross, 571 ; his 
 observation on the occasion, i/>. ; 
 his treatise against Luther, 572; 
 inclined to leniency to Barnes at 
 his trial, 579; writes to Erasmus 
 urging the publication of his De 
 Ratione Concionandi, 685; in- 
 gratitude of Croke to, 615 : later 
 statutes of, for St. John's College, 
 623 ; death of, 628 
 
 Fishing, a favorite amusement with 
 students in former days, 373 ; com- 
 plaints of the corporation with 
 respect to, 374 
 
 Fleming, William, u translator of
 
 INDEX. 
 
 A i istotle, attacked by Roger Bacon, 
 155 
 
 Florence, in the fifteenth century, 
 contrasted with Constantinople, 
 388; culture of the scholars of, 
 389; relations of, to Constanti- 
 nople, 390 
 
 Fordham, John, l>p. of Ely, makes 
 over to Peterhouse the church at 
 Hinton, 230 
 
 Foreman, Tho., fell, of Queens', one 
 of Bilney's converts, 563 ; his ser- 
 vices to his party, ib. 
 Fotehede, John, elected master of 
 
 Michaelhouse, 446 
 Founders, motives of, in mediaeval 
 
 times, 443 
 
 Fox, Edw., bp. of Hereford, letter by, 
 as royal secretary, to the univer- 
 sity, 611 ; reports to king Henry on 
 the progress of the divorce question 
 at Cambridge, 618 
 
 Fox, Bich. , bp. of Winchester, bishop 
 of Durham in 1500, 425 ; exe- 
 cutor to the countess of Richmond, 
 464 ; Oxford sympathies of, 465 ; 
 praises Erasmus's Novuin Testa- 
 mentinn, 511 ; founds Corpus 
 Christi College, Oxford, 521 ; a 
 leader of reform at Oxford, ib.; 
 innovations prescribed by, at the 
 college, 522; his statutes largely 
 adopted by Fisher in his first re- 
 vision of the statutes of St. John's 
 College, ib. 
 
 France, natives of, to have the pre- 
 ference in elections to fellowships 
 at Pembroke College, 239 
 Franciscans, the, institution of the 
 order of the, 89; their rapid suc- 
 cess in England, 90; settle at Cam- 
 bridge, ib.; at Oxford under Grosse- 
 teste, ib. ; views espoused by, with 
 reference to Aristotle, 117; more 
 numerous and influential than the 
 Dominicans in England, 138; es- 
 tablish themselves at Cambridge, 
 ib.; their house on the present site 
 of Sidney, ib. ; their rivalry with 
 the Dominicans described by Mat- 
 thew Paris, 148 ; two of the order 
 empowered to levy contributions 
 in 1249, 150 ; their interview with 
 Grosseteste, 151 ; inclined in their 
 philosophy to favour the inductive 
 method, 185, n. 4; eminent, in 
 England, 194 ; eminence of the 
 English, at Oxford, 213, n. 1; 
 their tendencies in England in the 
 15th century, 261 ; deed of frater- 
 
 nisation between their house and 
 Queens' College, 317 
 Frederic n, the emperor, patronises 
 the new Aristotle, 98; accused of 
 writing De Tribtu Impottoribut, 
 ib. ; sends translations of Aris- 
 totle to Bologna, ib., n. 1; his 
 letter on the occasion, ib.; employs 
 Michael Scot as a translator, ib. 
 Free, John, one of the earliest trans- 
 lators of Greek authors in Eng- 
 land, 397 
 
 Freeman, Mr. E. A., on the preva- 
 lent misconception respecting earl 
 Harold's foundation at Waltbam, 
 162 ; facts which may tend to 
 slightly modify his view, 163, n. 1 
 Freiburg, university of, compromise 
 between the nominalists and real- 
 ists at the, 417 
 
 French, students permitted to con- 
 verse occasionally in, 371 ; stu- 
 dents required to construe an 
 author into, ib. 
 Frost, name of an ancient family at 
 
 Cambridge, 223 
 
 Froude, Mr., comparison drawn by, 
 between Oxford and Cambridge in 
 connexion with the royal divorce, 
 616 ; his criticism tested by docu- 
 mentary evidence, 617 
 Fuller, Tho., his view with respect 
 to conflagrations in the university, 
 137 ; his account of the early 
 hostels quoted, 218; his comments 
 on the visitation of archbp. Aruu- 
 del, 288 
 
 G 
 
 Gaguinus, cited as an historical 
 authority by bp. Fisher, 450 ; 
 praised by Erasmus, ib. n. 2 
 
 Gairdner, Mr. , his opinion on Lollard- 
 ism quoted, 274 
 
 Gardiner, Stephen, an active member 
 of Trinity Hall, 562 ; elected master 
 of, ib. ; reports to king Henry on the 
 progress of the divorce question 
 at Cambridge, 618 
 
 Gaza, Theodoras, his estimate of the 
 translations of Aristotle by Argy- 
 ropulos, 406 ; his success as a 
 teacher, 429 ; his Greek Grammar, 
 430; the work used by Erasmus 
 at Cambridge, ib. 
 
 Geography, errors in Martianus with 
 respect to, 26 
 
 Geometry, nearly identical with geo- 
 graphy in Martianus, 25
 
 GG4- 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Genesis, first chapter of, how inter- 
 preted by John Scotus Erigeua, 
 41 
 
 Genevieve, St., school attached to 
 the church of, the germ of the 
 university of Paris, 75 
 
 Gerard, a bookseller at Cambridge, 
 friend of Erasmus, 500 
 
 Gerbert (pope Sylvester n), edition of 
 his works by M. Olleris, 42 ; his 
 system of notation identical with 
 that of the Saracens, 43 ; but not 
 derived from them, ib.; derived Lis 
 knowledge solely from Christian 
 writers, ib. n. '2; his method of 
 instruction at Bheims, 44 
 
 Germany, the country where secular 
 colleges were first founded, 160; 
 learning in, in the 15th century, 
 407 ; its character contrasted with 
 that of Italy, 413 
 
 ' Germans,' the early Cambridge Re- 
 formers so called, 573 
 
 Gerson, Jean Charlier de, his prefer- 
 ence of Bona ventura to Aquinas, 
 123 ; educated at the college of Na- 
 varre, 128; the representative of a 
 transition period, 277 ; his De Mo- 
 di* and De Concordia, 278 ; illustra- 
 tion they afford of the results 
 arrived at by scholastic metaphy- 
 sics, ib. ; these results little more 
 than a return to Aristotle, 279; 
 views of, respecting the relations 
 of logic to theology, ib. ; circum- 
 stances under which these treatises 
 were written, 280; his ecclesiasti- 
 cal policy opposed at Basel by the 
 English Ultramontanists, 281 ; ob- 
 jected to boys being taught logic 
 before they could understand it, 
 350 
 
 Gibbon, his dictum respecting Eras- 
 mus's debt to Oxford, 480 
 
 Gilds, numerous at Cambridge, 247 ; 
 Toulmin Smith's description of 
 their character, 248; Masters' de- 
 scription of them open to excep- 
 tion, ;'.. 
 
 Giraldus Cambrensis, his Latinity 
 superior to that of a subsequent 
 age, 67; his comparison of the 
 monk with the secular priest, 86, 
 n. 1 ; description by, of the mode of 
 living at St. Augustine's, Canter- 
 bury, 87 ; a student at the univer- 
 sity of Paris, 134 
 
 Glomery, master of, received his ap- 
 pointment from the archdeacon of 
 Ely, 226, n. 1 ; see Mag. Glom. 
 
 God's House, foundation of, iu con- 
 nexion with Clare Hall, 349; re- 
 moved to St. Andrew's parish, 445 ; 
 receives a grant from Hen. vi, ib. ; 
 and of the revenues of alien 
 priories in reign of Edw. iv, ib. ; 
 Christ's College a developement of, 
 447 
 
 Godeschalchus, significance of doc- 
 trine respecting predestination 
 maintained by, 40 
 
 Gondisalvi, translations of Avicenna 
 by, in circulation in the twelfth 
 century, 94 
 
 Gonell, Wm., a pupil of Erasmus at 
 Cambridge, 499 
 
 Gonville, Edmund, founder of Gon- 
 ville Hall, a friend of the Domini- 
 cans, 236 
 
 Gonville Hall, foundation of, 239; 
 original statutes of, 240; these 
 statutes contrasted with those of 
 Trinity Hall, ib. ; design of the 
 founder of, ib. ; name of, altered 
 to that of the College of the 
 Annunciation, 245; agreement be- 
 tween scholars of, and those of 
 Trinity Hall, 246; statutes given 
 by bishop Bateman to, t'6. ; fellows 
 of, required to lecture ordinarie, 
 247; must have attended lectures 
 in logic for 3 years, ib. ; allowance 
 for fellows' commons at, 254, n. 2 ; 
 a noted stronghold of the Reform- 
 ers, 564 
 
 Gospellers, why the early Reformers 
 were so called, 608, n. 2 
 
 Gough, his account of the alien 
 priories quoted, 304 
 
 Graduates of the university in A.D. 
 1489 and 1499, 319, n. 1 
 
 Grammar, how defined by Martia- 
 nus, 24; taught in a less me- 
 chanical fashion by Bernard of 
 Chartres, 57; a knowledge of, a 
 rare acquirement at the Conquest, 
 82 ; special provision for the tuition 
 of, at Merton College, 167; first 
 included in college course of 
 study, 238; students at King's 
 College required to have learned, 
 before coming up, 308, n. 2 ; course 
 of (study pursued by the student 
 of, 341 ; students of, held in less 
 estimation, 343 ; the province of, 
 neglected for logic until the 16th 
 century, 344 ; present made to in- 
 ceptors in, ib. ; always included as 
 a branch of the arts course of 
 study, : ! P.I ; paucity of teachers of,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 005 
 
 in the 15th century, i/>. n. 8 ; 
 schools, f. mi ulii tii .1 1 of, discouraged 
 in the 15th century, 849; general 
 decay of, ib. n. 8 
 
 (Iramwaticux, the, at the university 
 in the Middle Ages, 344; Erasmus's 
 description of the life of, 345 
 
 (irantbrigge, the ancient, 332 
 
 Gratian, Decretum of, 35 ; general 
 scope of the work, ih. ; divisions of, 
 30; its general acceptance through- 
 out Europe, ib. ; lectures on, in- 
 stituted by Eugenius in the 12th 
 century, 72; not found in the 
 library at Christchurch, 105 
 
 Gray, the poet, Installation Ode of, 
 criticism on passage in, 236, n. 1 ; 
 inaccuracy in, 253, n. 1 
 
 Gray, Wm., bp. of Ely, grants a 
 forty days' pardon to contributors 
 to the repair of the conventual 
 church of St. Rhadegund, 320; 
 a pupil of Guarino at Ferrara, 397 ; 
 briugs a valuable collection of 
 MSB. to England, ib.; its novel 
 elements, ib. ; he bequeaths it to 
 Balliol College, ib. 
 
 Greek, known to Aldhelm, 8; but 
 slightly known by John of Salis- 
 bury, 57, u. 3 ; Laufranc ignorant 
 of, 104, n. 3; grammar found in 
 the catalogue of the library ut 
 Chribtchurch, Canterbury, 104; 
 scholars invited to England by 
 Grosseteste, 154; authors, entire 
 absence of, in the medieval Cam- 
 bridge libraries, 327; authors im- 
 ported into Italy in the 15th cen- 
 tury, 400; learning, becomes as- 
 sociated in the minds of many 
 with heresy, 405; study of, jealousy 
 shewn of, in fifteenth century, 
 482; decreed by Clement vin 14tu 
 century, ib. ; opposition shewn to, 
 at Basel, 486; more peacefully pur- 
 sued at Cambridge than at Oxford, 
 496, n. 3 ; progress of the study ol, 
 at Cambridge, 511 ; authors on 
 which the classical lecturer of C. 
 C. C., Oxford, was required to lec- 
 ture, 521, n. 2; Croke appoint- 
 ed reader of, at Cambridge, 528; 
 arguments used by Croke in favour 
 of study of, 530 
 
 Greek fathers, influence of, on emi- 
 nent Humanists, 483 ; translations 
 of, in 15th century, ib. ; spirit of 
 their theology, 484; ordered by bp. 
 Fox to be studied at C. C. C., 
 Oxford, 523 
 
 Green, Dr., master of St. Catherine'* 
 Hall, letter to, from Latiiuer, 584, 
 n. 3 
 
 Gregory the Great, his conception 
 of education, 6; he anticipateit the 
 speedy end of the world, Hi. ; 1m 
 character too harshly judged, 7 
 
 Gregory ix, letter to, from Kobt. 
 Grosseteste, 90 ; forbids the study 
 of Aristotle's scientific treatises at 
 Paris, 98; interferes on behalf 
 of the university of Paris, 119 
 
 Gregory xni, pope, expunges the 
 more obvious forgeries in the De- 
 cretum of Gratiau, 35 
 
 Greiswald, university of, less dis- 
 tracted by the nomiualistic con- 
 troversies, 416 
 
 Grenoble, university of, formed on 
 the model of Bologna, 74 
 
 Grocyn, Wm., claims of, to be re- 
 garded as the restorer of Greek 
 learning in England, 479 
 
 Grosseteste, Robert, 'the age of,' 
 84; scant justice done by Hallam 
 to his memory, 84, 85; Mr Luard's 
 testimony to his influence, 85 ; his 
 testimony to the rapid success of 
 the Franciscans in England, 90; 
 his translation of the Testaments 
 of the Twelve Patriarchs, 110; a 
 student at the university of Paris, 
 134 ; his interview with the Fran- 
 ciscan messengers, 151 ; his death, 
 153; testimony of Matthew Paris 
 to his character, ib. ; invited Greek 
 scholars to England, 154 ; despair- 
 ed of the existing versions of Aris- 
 totle, ib. ; ignorant of Greek, 156 ; 
 good sense of, in sanitary questions, 
 339 and u. 1 
 
 Grote, Mr., his essay on the Psy- 
 chology of Aristotle, 116, n. 1 
 
 Gualterus, his denunciation of the 
 Sentences, 62 
 
 Guariuo, the disciple and successor 
 of Chrysoloras, 396 ; his success as 
 a teacher, ib. ; his death, 398 
 
 Guilds, see Gild* 
 
 Hacomblene, Robt., provost of King's 
 College, author of a commentary 
 on Aristotle, 426 
 
 Hales, Alexander, an Englishman, 
 113; the first to comment on the 
 Sentences, 117, n. 3 ; a teacher at 
 Paris, 117; commentary on the 
 Metaphysics not by, ib. ; his Sum-
 
 GGU 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ma, ib.; the 'Irrefragable Doctor,' 
 118; a student at the university 
 of Paris, 134 
 
 Hallam, his retractation of credence 
 in accounts respecting the early 
 history of Cambridge, 66; scant 
 justice done by, to Jourdain's re- 
 searches upon the medieval Aris- 
 totle, 93; his observation on the 
 character of English literature 
 during the Middle Ages, 152 
 
 Hand, refutation by, of the theory 
 that Boethius was a martyr in the 
 defence of orthodoxy, 28, n. 2 
 
 Harcourt, the College de, restricted 
 to poor students, 130 
 
 Harmer, Anthony, his testimony to 
 the character of Wyclif, 267 
 
 Harold, earl, favours the foundation 
 of secular colleges, 160, 161 ; his 
 foundation at Waltham, 161 ; how 
 described in the charter of Walt- 
 ham, Hi. ; his conception at Walt- 
 ham revived by Walter de Merton, 
 163 
 
 Heeren, theory of, that the mediae- 
 val knowledge of Aristotle was not 
 derived from Arabic translations, 
 93 
 
 Hegius, school of, at Deventer, 409 
 
 Heidelberg, university of, formed 
 on the model of Paris, 74 ; division 
 into nations at, 79, n. 2 ; triumph 
 of the nominalists at, 417 
 
 Heimburg, Gregory, defends the new 
 learning at Neustadt, 408; subse- 
 quently rejects it, ib. 
 
 Henry n, king, expels the seculars 
 at Waltham, 162 
 
 Henry HI, writ of, to the sheriff of 
 Cambridge, 84 ; invites students 
 from Paris to coine and settle in 
 England, 107 
 
 Henry v, his design to have given 
 the revenues of King's College to 
 Oxford, 305 and n. 2 
 
 Henry vi, resolves on the foundation 
 of Eton and King's College, 305 ; 
 supersedes the commission for the 
 statutes of King's College, 306; 
 provides new statutes for the col- 
 lege, ib. ; had nothing to do with 
 the ejection of Millington, 307 ; at- 
 tachment to the memory of, shewn 
 by Margaret of Richmond, 447 
 
 Henry vn, gives permission to Mar- 
 garet of Richmond to found Christ's 
 College, 447 ; visits the university 
 in 1506, 448; attends divine ser- 
 vice in King's College chapel, 
 
 451 ; his bequests towards the com- 
 pletion of the edifice, 452; gives 
 his assent to the revocation by the 
 lady Margaret of her grants to 
 Westminster Abbey, 462 ; his 
 death, 463 
 
 Henry \ m, refusal of, to sanction 
 the spoliation of St. John's Col- 
 lege, 461 ; disinclined to surrender 
 the estates bequeathed by the lady 
 Margaret, 466; decrees that those 
 who choose to study Greek at Ox- 
 ford shall not be molested, 526; 
 treatise of, against Luther, 572; 
 stops the controversy bet ween Lati- 
 niiT and Buckenham at Cambridge, 
 611 ; menaces Oxford, 616 ; letter 
 of, to the university of Cambridge, 
 617 
 
 Henry, sir, of Clement's hostel, a 
 reputed conjurer, 608; visited by 
 Stafford, 609 ; burns his conjuring 
 books, ib. 
 
 Heppe, Dr., on the state of educa- 
 tion in the monasteries of the 13th 
 century, 70, n. 2 
 
 Heretics' Hill, a walk frequented by 
 Bilney and Latimer so called, 582 
 
 Hermann, a translator of Aristotle 
 attacked by Roger Bacon, 155 
 
 Hermolaus Barbarus, his services to 
 learning at Venice, 430; the friend 
 of Linacre at Rome, 479 
 
 Hermonymus, George, a teacher of 
 Greek in Paris, 430 
 
 Hervey de Stanton, founds Michael- 
 house, 234 ; statutes given by, to 
 the foundation, Append. (D). 
 
 Herwerden, quotation from a Com- 
 mi'iitntiii of, 16, n. 2 
 
 Heynes, Simon, president of Queens' 
 College, attended meetings at the 
 White Horse, 573 
 
 High steward, office of, formerly ac- 
 companied by a salary, 584, u. 3 
 
 Hildebrand, pope, protector of !'- 
 rengar, 49 
 
 Hildegard, fulfilment of her pro- 
 phecy respecting the Mendicants, 
 149 
 
 Hincmar, archbp. of Rheims, accepts 
 the forged decretals, 34 ; his conse- 
 quent submission to Rome, ib. 
 
 Histoire Litteraire de France, criti- 
 cism in, on the Sentences, 64, 
 n. 2 
 
 Hodgson, Mr Shad worth, his essay 
 on Time and Space, 189, u. 1 ; his 
 agreement with Occam, Hi.; quo- 
 tation from, on Gerson, 279, n. 1
 
 1NDKX. 
 
 Gt>7 
 
 Hulbrouk, John, master of Peter- 
 house and chancellor, appoints 
 proctors in the matter of the Bam- 
 well Process, 289 ; Tabula Canta- 
 brigieiueg of, 609, n. 1 
 
 Holoot, Richard, distinguishes be- 
 tween theological and scientific 
 truth, 197 ; censured by Mazonius, 
 ib. n. 2 ; on the neglect of theology 
 for the civil law, 211 
 
 Holland, a part of Lincolnshire for- 
 merly so called, 332, n. 1 ; Eras- 
 mus's observations on, 489 
 
 Holme, Richard, a benefactor to the 
 university library in the fifteenth 
 century, 323 
 
 Honorius i, pope, according to the 
 Baruwell Process a student at 
 Cambridge, 239, n. 1 
 
 Honorius HI, pope, forbids the study 
 of the civil law at Paris, 38 
 
 Horace, lectures on, by Gerbert, at 
 Rheims, 44 
 
 Hornby, Hen., executor to the count- 
 ess of Richmond for carrying out 
 the foundation of St. John's Col- 
 lege, 464; his zeal in the under- 
 taking, 465 
 
 Hospital of the Brethren of St. John, 
 formerly stood on the site of St. 
 John's College, 139; foundation 
 of, 223; secular scholars intro- 
 duced into, 227; separation be- 
 tween the seculars and regulars at, 
 228 ; first nurtured the college 
 conception, il>. ; its rapid decay 
 under the management of Wm. 
 Tomlyn, 424 ; character of the ad- 
 ministration at, 461 ; condition of, 
 at beginning of 16th century, 462 ; 
 dissolved by Julius n, 467 
 
 Hostels, definition of the term as 
 originally used at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, 217; account of early, from 
 Fuller, 218; early statute respect- 
 ing, ib. and Append. (C); the resi- 
 dences of the wealthier students, 
 368, n. 2 
 
 Hotham, John, bp. of Ely, probably 
 the organiser of the foundation of 
 Michaelhouse, 235; his character, 
 ib. and n. 2 
 
 Huber, misconception of, with re- 
 spect to the attention originally 
 given to the civil law at Oxford 
 and Cambridge, 244, u. 2 ; his de- 
 scription of the English universities 
 after the suppression of Lollard- 
 ism, 275 ; errors in his statement, 
 ib. ; his observations on the effects 
 
 of the statute of Proviso quoted, 
 286 
 
 Huobald, of Liege, instructor of the 
 canons of St. Genevieve in Parix, 
 69 
 
 Hugo of St. Cher or of Vienne, his 
 writings frequently to be met with 
 in the Cambridge libraries of the 
 15th century, 326; the divinity 
 lecturer at C. C. C., Oxford, or- 
 dered by bp. Fox to put aside, 
 523 
 
 Hugo of St. Victor, his writings fre- 
 quently to be found in the Cam- 
 bridge libraries of the l.'.th cen- 
 tury, 326; contempt of Erasmus 
 for, 502 
 
 Humanists, the, spirit of their stu- 
 dies contrasted with the preceding 
 learning, 380 ; few of, to be found 
 among the religious orders, 41(! ; 
 their position and policy with re- 
 spect to the old learning, 417 ; vic- 
 tories of, 421 ; hopes of, prior to 
 the Reformation, 559 
 
 Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, in- 
 duces Leonardo Bruni to translate 
 the Politics of Aristotle, 388 ; his 
 bequests to Oxford, 399 
 
 Incepting, meaning of the term ex- 
 plained, 355 ; account of the cere- 
 mony, ib. ; heavy expenses in- 
 curred at, 356 ; for others, 358 
 
 Ingulphus, discredit attaching to the 
 chronicle of, 66, n. 3 
 
 Injunctions, the royal, to the uni- 
 versity, in 1535, 629 
 
 Innate ideas, theory of, rejected by 
 the teachers of the early Latin 
 Church, 192 
 
 Innocent HI, pope, forbids the study 
 of the civil law, 38 
 
 Innocent rv, pope, subjects the Men- 
 dicants at Paris to episcopal autho- 
 rity, 119; empowers the Francis- 
 cans to levy contributions, 150 
 
 Intentio secunda, theory of the, 181; 
 Arabian theory of, ib. 
 
 Irnerius, his lectures at Bologna on 
 the civil law, 36 ; the real founder 
 of that university, 72 
 
 Isidorus, a text-book during the Mid- 
 dle Ages, 21 ; the Origines of, 31 ; 
 novel feature in, ib. ; De OfficH$ 
 of, 33; copy of, at the library at 
 Bcc, 100 ; quoted by Roger Bacon,
 
 G(J8 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 to distinguish the use and abuse 
 of astronomy, 159 
 
 Islip, Simon, archbp. of Canterbury, 
 plan of, resembling that of Hugh 
 Balsham, 265; attempts to com- 
 bine seculars and regulars at Can- 
 terbury Hall, 266; expels the 
 monks, ib. 
 
 Italy, universities of, formed on 
 the model of Bologna, 74; pro- 
 gress of learning in, in the latter 
 part of the 15th century, 428; 
 general depravity of, in the 16th 
 century, 431 ; praise bestowed by 
 Erasmus on, 474 ; character of her 
 scholarship in the early part of 
 16th century, 475 and u. 15 
 
 James, Tho. (Bodleian librarian), 
 his extravagant estimate of the 
 fourteenth century, 205, n. 2 
 
 Jerome, St., originator of monasticism 
 in the Latin Church, 3 ; Vulgate of, 
 much used in the Middle Ages, 22 ; 
 preferred by Erasmus to Augustine, 
 501 ; denounced by Luther as a 
 heretic, 698 and n. 3 
 
 Jesus College, foundation of, 320 ; 
 succeeds to the dissolved nunnery 
 of St. Khadegund, 321; the site 
 originally not included in Cam- 
 bridge, ib. n. 3 ; statutes of, given 
 by Stanley, bp. of Ely, 321 ; sub- 
 sequently considerably altered by 
 bp. West, ib. ; oath required of 
 master of, 454; oath required of 
 fellows of, 455 ; election of Cran- 
 mer to a fellowship at, when a 
 widower, 612, n. 3 
 
 Jews, the, instrumental in intro- 
 ducing the Arabian commentators 
 into Christian Europe, 91 
 
 Johannes a Lapide, maintains the 
 realistic cause at Basel, 417 
 
 John of Salisbury, see Salisbury 
 
 John ScotiiK Erigena, see Erigena 
 
 John the Deaf, pupil of Drogo, 70; 
 instructor of Koscellinus, ib. 
 
 John xxn, pope, recognises Cam- 
 bridge as a ttudium generate, 145 
 
 Jonson, Ben, his allusion to William 
 Shyreswood, the logician, quoted 
 177 
 
 JordanuH, general of the Dominican 
 order at Paris, 107 
 
 Jonrdain, M. Araable, his essay on 
 the Latin translations of Aristotle, 
 93; method employed by him in 
 
 his investigations, /'/.. ; conclusions 
 arrived at by, 94 
 
 Jourdaiu, M. Charles, testimony of, 
 to the completeness of his father's 
 researches in reference to the Latin 
 translations of Aristotle, 93, n. 1 
 
 Joye, George, fell, of Peterhouse, 
 accused of studying Origen, 598, 
 n. 4 ; his flight to Strassburg, 605 ; 
 character of, 606 
 
 Julianus, Andreas, pronounces tho 
 funeral oration of Chrysoloras, 
 396 
 
 Julius ii, pope, dissolves the Hos- 
 pital of St. John, 467 
 
 Justinian, code of, survives the dis- 
 ruption of the Empire, 36 
 
 Juvenal, lectures on, by Gerbert at 
 Rheims, 44 ; four copies of, in 
 library of Christchurch, Canter- 
 bury, 104 
 
 K 
 
 Kemble, Mr., on the Benedictines in 
 England, 81 
 
 Kilkenny, William of, a benefactor 
 of the Hospital of St. John the 
 Evangelist, 223 ; founder of the 
 earliest university exhibition, ib. 
 
 Kilwardby, archbp. of Canterbury, 
 condemnation of doctrines of Aver- 
 roes under, 121 ; a student at the 
 university of Paris, 134 
 
 King's College, scholars of, forbidden 
 to favour the doctrines of Wyclif 
 or Pecock, 296, n. 4 ; foundation of, 
 by Henry vi, 305 ; endowments of, 
 largely taken from the alien prio- 
 ries, Hi.; statutes of, 306; com- 
 missioners appointed to prepare 
 the statutes of, ib.; their resigna- 
 tion, ib. ; William Millingtou first 
 provost of, ib. ; his ejection, ib. ; 
 statutes of, borrowed from those of 
 New College, 307 ; their character, 
 /''. ; attributed to Chedworth by 
 some, by Mr. Williams to Wain- 
 fleet, H>. n. 1 ; provisions of the 
 statutes of, 308; verbosity of the 
 statutes of, Hi. n. 1; students at, 
 must have already gained a know- 
 ledge of grammar, ib. n. 2 ; special 
 privileges and exemptions granted 
 to, 309; bequest to, by cardinal 
 Beaufort, 310; struggle between 
 the scholars of, and the university, 
 ib. ; final victory of the college in 
 1457, ib. ; effects of these privileges 
 on the character of the foundation, 
 311 ; its discipline more monastic
 
 INDEX. 
 
 6C9 
 
 than that of any other Cambridge 
 college, Hi. n. 2; wealth of the 
 foundation, 312 and n. 1 ; Wood- 
 lark, provost of, 317; precedent 
 contained in statutes of, for oath 
 against dispensations, 456 
 
 King's College chapel, erection of, 
 451, n. 1 
 
 King's Hall, foundation of, 252 ; 
 early statutes of, given by Richard 
 ii, 253 ; limitation as to age in, 
 t6. ; other provisions in, 254 ; the 
 foundation probably designed for 
 sons of the wealthier classes, Hi. ; 
 liberal allowance for commons at, 
 ib. not visited by commission of 
 archbp. Arundel, 258, n. 1 ; irregu- 
 larities at, in 14th century, 288 
 
 Lactantius, resemblance of the IA- 
 bellus de Antichristo to his Insti- 
 tutions, 16, n. 1 
 
 Lambert, John, fell, of Queens', one 
 of Bilney's converts, 563 
 
 Lancaster, duke of, ' alderman ' of 
 the gild of Corpus Christi at Cam- 
 bridge, 249 
 
 Laufranc, archbp. of Canterbury, 
 hostile to pagan learning, 18 ; his 
 opposition to Berengar, 47; his 
 views contrasted with those of 
 Berengar, 48; his Latinity supe- 
 rior to that of a subsequent age, 
 57; founds secular canons at St. 
 Gregory's, 163, n. 1 
 
 Langham, Simon, archbishop of 
 Canterbury, expels the seculars 
 from Canterbury Hall, 266 
 
 Langton, John, chancellor of the 
 university, resigns his appoint- 
 ment as commissioner at King's 
 College, 306; his motives in so 
 doing, 309 
 
 Langton, Stephen, a student at the 
 university of Paris, 134 
 
 Languedoc, its common law founded 
 upon the civil law, 38, n. 1 
 
 Laon, College de, a foundation of 
 the 14th century in Paris, 128 
 
 Lascaris, Constantine, his success as 
 a teacher at Messana, 430; his 
 Greek Grammar, 431 
 
 Latin, importance of a knowledge of, 
 at the mediaeval universities, 139 ; 
 style of writers before the thir- 
 teenth century compared with that 
 of those of a later date, 171, n. 1 ; 
 its colloquial use among students 
 imperative, 371 ; authors on which 
 
 the classical lecturer of C. C. 
 C., Oxford, was required by bp. 
 Fox to lecture, 521, n. 2 
 
 Latimer, Hugh, fell, of Clare, cha- 
 racter given by, to Bilney, 862; 
 his early career and character, 
 581; he attacks Melanchthon, ib.; 
 his position in the university, ///. ; 
 is converted by Bilney, ib. ; hia 
 intimacy with Bilney, 582 ; effects 
 of his example, ib.; his sermon 
 before West, 583; evades West's 
 request that he will preach against 
 Luther, il>. ; is inhibited by him 
 from preaching, 584 ; preaches in 
 the church of the Augustinian 
 friars, ib. ; is summoned before 
 Wolsey in London, ib. ; is licensed 
 by the cardinal to preach, ib. ; ne- 
 gotiates respecting the appoint- 
 ment to the high stewardship, ib. 
 n. 3 ; Sermons on the Card by, 609 ; 
 controversy of, with Buckenham, 
 610 ; favored ' the king's cause ' in 
 the question of the divorce, 611 
 
 Latimer, Wm., declines the office of 
 Greek preceptor to bp. Fisher, 519 
 
 Lnunoy, in error with respect to the 
 particular writings of Aristotle first 
 condemned at Paris, 97, n. 1 
 
 Lavater, criticism of, on the portraits 
 of Erasmus, 490 
 
 Laymen, not recognisable as an ele- 
 ment in the original universities, 
 166, n. 1 
 
 Lechler, Dr., his comparison of Oc- 
 cam with Bradwardine, 205, n. 1 ; 
 on Wyclif's original sentiments to- 
 wards the Mendicants, 269, n. 1 
 
 Le Clerc, M. Victor, his favorable 
 view of the knowledge of Latin 
 literature in the Middle Ages, 21, 
 n. 1 ; statement by, respecting the 
 prevalence of the civil law, 38, n. 
 1 ; on the continuance of the mo- 
 nastic and episcopal schools sub- 
 sequent to the university era, 70, 
 n. 2; on the secular associations 
 of the university of Paris, 79, 80 ; 
 his account of the early colleges at 
 Paris, 129 31; his argument in 
 reply to Petrarch quoted, 214, n. 1 
 
 Lectures, designed to prepare the 
 student for disputations, 361 ; 
 ordered to be given in Christ's 
 College in long vacation, 460 
 
 Lecturing, ordinarie, cursorie, and 
 extraordinarie, explained, 358 and 
 Append. (E) ; two principal modes 
 of, 359
 
 <;7o 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Lee, arcbbp., alarm of, ou the ap- 
 pearance of Tyndale's New Testa- 
 ment, 599 
 
 Ltgert, meaning of the term, 74 
 
 Leipsic, university of, division into 
 ' nations ' at,79, n. 2 ; foundation of, 
 282, n. 2 ; adopts the curriculum of 
 study at Prague, Hi. ; less distracted 
 by the nominalistic controversies, 
 416 ; fame of It. Croke at, 527 
 
 Leland, John, on the intercourse be- 
 tween Paris and Oxford, 184 
 
 Leo x, proclamation of indulgences 
 by, in 1516, 556 
 
 Leon Maitre, on the decline of the 
 episcopal and monastic schools, 
 68, n. 1 ; his theory denied, 69 
 
 Lever, Tho., master of St John's, his 
 sermon at Paul's Cross quoted, 368, 
 n. 2 ; quoted in illustration of col- 
 lege life, 370 
 
 Lewes, Mr. G. H., his supposition 
 respecting the use of Lucretius in 
 the Middle Ages, 21, n. 1 ; his criti- 
 cism of Isidorns, 81; criticism of 
 his application of Cousin's dictum 
 respecting the origin of the scho- 
 lastic philosophy, 50 ; his miscon- 
 ception of the origin of the dispute 
 respecting Universals, 54 and n. 2 ; 
 notice of Roger Bacon's opinions 
 by, 114, n. 2 
 
 Libraries, destruction of those found- 
 ed by Theodore, Hadrian, and 
 Benedict by the Danes, 81 ; college, 
 their contents in the fourteenth 
 and fifteenth centuries, 325, 370 ; 
 see University Library 
 
 Library presented to Trinity Hall by 
 bishop Muton i ;u i. 243 
 
 Lily, Wm., regarded by Polydore 
 Virgil as the true restorer of Greek 
 learning in England, 480 
 
 Linacre lectureships, foundation of, 
 603 ; misapplication of estates of, 
 ib. n. 2 ; present regulations con- 
 cerning, Hi. 
 
 Linacre, Wm., pupil of Selling at 
 Christchnrch, Canterbury, 478; and 
 of Vitelli at Oxford.ifc. ; accompanies 
 Belling to Italy, //,.; becomes a 
 pupil of Politian at Florence, ib. ; 
 makes the acquaintance of Hermo- 
 laus Barbaras at Rome, 479 ; pro- 
 bable remits of this intimacy, Hi. 
 bis rettrrn to Oxford, ib. ; his 
 claims to be regarded as the re- 
 storer of Greek learning in Eng- 
 land, 480; obligations of Erasmus 
 to, ib. ; a staunch Aristotelian, 481; 
 
 preferred Quintilian's style to that 
 
 of Cicero, 529, u. 1 ; death of, 602 
 
 Lisieux, College de, foundation of, 
 
 129 
 
 'Little Logicals,' the, much studied 
 at Cambridge before the time of 
 Erasmus, 515; see Purva Logi- 
 calia 
 
 LL.D., origin of the title, 89 
 Logic, conclusions of, regarded by 
 Lanfranc as to be subordinated to 
 authority, 47; pernicious effects 
 of too exclusive attention to, 48 ; 
 proficiency in, required of candi- 
 dates for fellowships at Peterhouse, 
 231 ; works on, less common than 
 might be expected in the mediaeval 
 Cambridge libraries, 326 ; increased 
 attention given to, with the intro- 
 duction of the Nova Ars, 343; and 
 with that of the Summula, ib. ; 
 baneful effects of excessive atten- 
 tion formerly given to, 365 ; trea- 
 tise on, byRudolphus Agricola, 410, 
 .412; extravagant demands of the 
 defenders of the old, 516 
 Lollardism at Cambridge, 259; ex- 
 travagances of the later professors 
 of, 273 ; not the commencement of 
 the Reformation, 274 ; brings popu- 
 lar preaching under suspicion, 438 
 Lombard, Peter, the compiler of the 
 Sentences, 59; archbp. of Paris, 
 ib. ; accused of plagiarism from 
 Abelard, /'//. n. 2 ; thought to have 
 copied Pullen, ib. ; honour paid to 
 his memory, G3 ; a pupil of Abe- 
 lard, 77, n. 1 
 
 Lorraine, foundation of secular col- 
 leges in, 160 
 Louis of Bavaria, shelters Occam on 
 
 his flight from Avignon, 195 
 Louis, St., his admiration of the 
 
 Mendicant orders, 89 
 Louvain, university of, foundation 
 of, 282, n. 2 ; site of, chosen by 
 the duke of Brabant on account 
 of its natural advantages, 839, 
 n. 3 ; praised by Erasmus, 476 ; 
 character of its theology, ib. ; 
 foundation of the collegium tri- 
 lingue at, 565 ; conduct of the con- 
 servative party at, 566 and n. 1 
 Lovell, sir Tho., executor to the 
 countess of Richmond, 464; his 
 character by Cavendish, 465 
 I. mi n I. Mr. , on the forgeries that im- 
 posed upon Grosseteste, 110 
 I. ui-aii, lectures on, by Gerbert, at 
 Rheims, 44
 
 INDKX. 
 
 (J71 
 
 Lupus, bishop of Ferriores, his la- 
 ment over the low state of learn- 
 ing in his age, 20; his literary 
 activity, 16. 
 
 Luther, Martin, his observation on 
 Erasmus, 488; early treatises of, 
 569; advises the rejection of the 
 Sentences, ib. n. 1 ; and also of the 
 moral and natural treatises of 
 Aristotle, ib. ; rapid spread of his 
 doctrines in England, 670; his 
 writings submitted to the decision 
 of the Sorbonne, ib. ; condemned 
 by them to be burnt, ib. n. 1; 
 Wolsey considers himself not au- 
 thorised to burn them, ib.; burns 
 the papal bull at Wittenberg, ib. ; 
 his writings submitted to the Lon- 
 don Conference, 571 ; condemned 
 by the Conference, ib. ; burnt at 
 Paul's Cross, ib. ; and at Oxford 
 and Cambridge, ib. ; absorbing at- 
 tention given to his writings 
 throughout Europe, 585; his doc- 
 trines frighten the moderate party 
 into conservatism, 589; his con- 
 troversy with Erasmus, ib. 
 
 Lydgate, John, verses of, on Founda- 
 tion of the university of Cam- 
 bridge, Append. (A) 
 
 Lyons, council of, decrees that only 
 the four chief orders of Mendi- 
 cants shall continue to exist, 228 
 
 Lyttelton, lord, causes to which the 
 aggrandisement of the monasteries 
 in England is attributed by, 87 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay, lord, on Norman in- 
 fluences in England prior to the 
 Conquest, 67 
 
 Macrobins, correction of copy of, by 
 a correspondent of Lupus of Ferri- 
 eres, 20; numerous copies of, in 
 libraries of Bee and Christchurch, 
 Canterbury, 104 
 
 Maflister Glomerice, duties perform- 
 ed by the, 140; nature of his 
 functions, 340 
 
 Maimonides, Moses, his Dux Per- 
 plexorum much used by Aquinas, 
 113 
 
 Maitland, Dr., his defence of the 
 mediaeval theory with respect to 
 the pursuit of secular learning, 18 
 
 Maitre, Le"on, on the revival at the 
 commencement of the eleventh 
 century, 46, n. 1 
 
 Major, John, a resident at the Col- 
 
 lege de Montaigu, 868; alleged 
 reason of his choice of Christ's 
 College, 445 
 
 Maiden, prof., on the various appli- 
 cations of the term Univenitat, 
 71 ; on the sanction of the pope as 
 necessary to the catholicity of a 
 university degree, 78 
 
 Malmesbury, William of, his com- 
 ment on the state of learning in 
 England after the death of Bede, 81 
 
 Manlius, see Hoethiut 
 
 Mansel, dean, his dictum respecting 
 nominalism and scholasticism, 197 
 
 Manuscripts, ancient, preservation 
 of, largely due to Charlemagne, 15 
 
 Map, Walter, a satirist of the Cis- 
 tercians, 86, n. 1 
 
 Margaret, the lady, countess of Rich- 
 mond, her lineage described by 
 Baker, 434; appoints Fisher her 
 confessor, 435 ; her character, ib. ; 
 founds a professorship of divinity 
 at both universities, Hi. ; founds a 
 preachership at Cambridge, 440; 
 her design in connexion with West- 
 minster Abbey, 444 ; founds Christ's 
 College, 446 ; visits the university 
 in 1505, 448 ; visits it a second 
 time in 1506, ib. ; anecdote told by 
 Fuller respecting, ib. n. 2; pro- 
 poses to found St. John's College, 
 
 462 ; obtains consent of king Henry 
 to the revocation of her grants to 
 Westminster Abbey, ib. ; her death, 
 
 463 ; her statue in Westminster 
 Abbey, ib. ; her epitaph by Eras- 
 mus, t'6. ; funeral sermon for, by 
 Fisher, t'6.; her character, 464; 
 her executors, ib. 
 
 Margaret, lady, preachership, found- 
 ed, 440 ; regulations of, Hi. 
 
 Margaret, lady, professorship, found- 
 ed, 485 ; original endowment of, 
 436 ; regulations of, ib. 
 
 Marisco, Adam de, a teacher of Wal- 
 ter de Merton, 163 ; nominated by 
 Hen. in to the bishopric of Ely, 
 223; his death, 224; compared 
 with Hugh Balsham, ib.; warmly 
 praised by Roger Bacon, 16. n. 2 
 
 Marsh, bp., misconception of, with 
 reference to Tyndale's New Testa- 
 ment, 569 and n. 3 
 
 Martianus, Capella, his treatise De 
 Nuptiis, 23 ; course of study de- 
 scribed therein, 24; his errors in 
 geography, 26 ; compared with 
 Boethius, 27 ; copies of, at Christ- 
 church, Canterbury, 100
 
 G72 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Martin v, pope, issues the bull iu 
 the Barn well Process, 288 
 
 Mass, the, fellows required to qualify 
 themselves for celebration of, 243 
 
 Master of a college, limited restric- 
 tions originally imposed on the 
 authority of, 372 ; the office often 
 combined with other preferments, 
 ib. ; restrictions imposed on his 
 authority at Christ's College, 454 ; 
 oath required of, at Jesus College, 
 ib. 
 
 Mathematics, importance attached to 
 the study of, by Roger Bacon, 158 ; 
 studies in, in 14th and 15th cen- 
 turies, 351 
 
 Maurice, prof., his view of the in- 
 fluence of the schools of Charle- 
 magne, 40, n. 1 ; criticism of the 
 philosophy of John Scotus Eri- 
 gena by, 41 ; twelfth century cha- 
 racterised by, 58 ; his criticism of 
 the Sentences quoted, 61 ; on the 
 contrast between the Dominicans 
 and Franciscans, 89, n. 1 
 
 Mayence, archbp. of, a patron of 
 Kichard Croke, 532 
 
 Mayronius, a scholastic text-book in 
 the English universities, 186 
 
 M.D., former requirements for the 
 degree of, 365 
 
 Medicine, a flourishing study in Mer- 
 ton College in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, 168 ; see Linacre Lectures 
 
 Melanchthon, Philip, oration of, at 
 Wittenberg, 637 ; arguments of, in 
 favour of the study of arithmetic, 
 592 ; study of his works enjoined 
 at Cambridge, 630 
 
 Melton, Wm. de, master of Michael- 
 house, 422 
 
 Mendicant orders, institution of the, 
 88 91; spirit of the, compared 
 with that of the Benedictines, 89 ; 
 contrasted by prof. Maurice, 81, 
 n. 1 ; rapid extension of, 90 ; their 
 conduct at Paris, 106, 119 ; rapid 
 decline of their popularity, 146; 
 their conduct as described by Mat- 
 thew Paris, 147; their contempt 
 for the monastic orders, 149; their 
 rapid degeneracy, 151; their pro- 
 Rclytifiin among young students, 
 221 ; their policy at the universi- 
 ties, 262; their defeat at Oxford, 
 ib. ; statute against them at Cam- 
 bridge, 263; their appeal to par- 
 liament, ib. ; the statute rescinded, 
 ib. ; exclusive privileges gained by, 
 264 ; nature of exemptions from 
 
 university statutes claimed by, 
 iti. n. 1 ; advantages possessed by, 
 over the university in respect of 
 accommodation for lectures, 300; 
 immunities claimed by, perhaps 
 formed a precedent for those 
 claimed by King's College, 310 
 
 Mercator, forgery of Decretals by, 
 34 
 
 Merlin, his prophecy respecting Ox- 
 ford and Stamford, 135 
 
 Merton College, foundation of, 160 ; 
 distinguished from monastic found- 
 ations, 166 ; character of the edu- 
 cation at, 167 ; designed to sup- 
 port only those actually engaged 
 in study, 168 ; its statutes the mo- 
 del for other colleges, ib. emi- 
 nence of its students, 169 
 
 Merton, Walter de, revives earl Ha- 
 rold's conception of secular col- 
 leges, 163; his character, ib.; na- 
 ture of his design, 164 
 
 Metcalfe, Nich., prosperity of St. 
 John's College under rule of, 623 
 
 Michaelhouse, foundation of, 234; 
 early statutes of, the earliest col- 
 lege statutes in the university, ib. ; 
 printed in Appendix (D), ib. n. 2; 
 qualifications required in candi- 
 dates for fellowships at, 234; pro- 
 minence given to religious services 
 at, 235; John Fisher entered at, 
 422 ; prosperity of, in the 15th cen- 
 tury, 424 
 
 Michaud, on the influence of the 
 Crusades, 88, n. 1 
 
 Migrations, from Cambridge and Ox- 
 ford, 134 ; from universities, op- 
 posed on principle, 334 
 
 Millennium, anticipations excited by 
 close of the, 45 
 
 Millington, Wm., first provost of 
 King's, 295; his character, ///. and n. 
 3 ; opposed to Reginald Pecock, ib.; 
 refuses his assent to the new sta- 
 tutes and is expelled, 306; his 
 reasons for dissatisfaction, accord- 
 ing to Cole, //;. n. 2; appointed by 
 king Henry to draw up statutes of 
 Queens' College, Hi. ; unable to as- 
 sent to the proposed independence 
 of the university claimed by King's 
 College, 306, 309 
 
 Milman, dean, criticism of the False 
 Decretals by, 34 ; on the influence 
 of the Pseudo-Dionysius, 42; on 
 the inevitable tendency of philoso- 
 phic speculation to revert to in- 
 quiries concerning the Supreme
 
 IN'DKX. 
 
 G73 
 
 Being, 49, n. 2 ; on the evangelism 
 of the Mendicant orders, 90 
 
 Moerbecko, William of, bis transla- 
 tion of Aristotle, 126 ; bis transla- 
 tion of Aristotle attacked by Roger 
 Bacon, 155 
 
 Monasteries, origin of tbeir founda- 
 tion in the west, 2 ; monastery of 
 Monte Cassino, 3, 5; of Malmes- 
 bury, 8 ; destruction of those of 
 the Benedictines by the Danes, 81 ; 
 superseded as centres of instruc- 
 tion by the universities, 207 ; the 
 patrons of learning begin to despair 
 of the, 301 
 
 Monasticism, its origin in the west, 
 2; feelings in which it took its 
 rise, 5; its heroic phase, 9 ; asceti- 
 cism the professed theory of, 337 
 
 Monks, contrasted with the secular 
 clergy, 86, n. 1; the garb of, dis- 
 continued, 87, n. 3 
 
 Monnier, counterstatement of, with 
 respect to the episcopal and monas- 
 tic schools, 69 
 
 Montacute, Simon, bp. of Ely, me- 
 diates between the Hospital of St. 
 John and Peterhouse, 229 ; resigns 
 to Peterhouse his right of present- 
 ing to fellowships, 230; gives the 
 college its earliest statutes, ib. 
 
 Montaigne, College de, student fare 
 at, 130 
 
 Montpellier, civil law taught at, be- 
 fore foundation of university, 38, 
 n. 1 ; university of, formed on the 
 model of Bologna, 71 ; founded in 
 the 13th century, 80 
 
 More, sir Tho., quoted in illustra- 
 tion of standard of living at the 
 universities, 371; endeavours to 
 persuade "Wni. Latimer to teach 
 bp. Fisher Greek, 519 ; his interest 
 in the progress of learning at Ox- 
 ford, 524 ; his letter to the autho- 
 rities of Oxford on the conduct of 
 the ' Trojans,' 525 ; Utopia of, 558 ; 
 appointed high steward, 584 ; Tyn- 
 dale's 'Answer ' to, quoted, 590 ; 
 saying of, respecting Tyndale's 
 New Testament, 600, n. 3 ; refer- 
 ence of, to Bilney's trial, 608, n. 3 
 
 Music, treatment of the science by 
 Martianus, 26; treatment of the 
 science of, by Boethius, 28 
 
 N 
 
 Nat&res, master of Clare, an enemy 
 to the Reformers, 577; summons 
 
 Barnes in his capacity of vice- 
 chancellor, Hi. 
 
 Nation,' German, at Paris, when 
 first so called, 196, n. 2 
 
 ' Nations' in the university of Paris, 78 
 
 Navarre, college of, in Paris, 127; 
 its large endowments, ib. ; Jeanne 
 of, foundress of the college known 
 by her name, ib. ; the chief college 
 at Paris in the 14th and 15th cen- 
 turies, 128 ; injurious influences of 
 court patronage at, ib. n. 2 
 
 Neander, his criticism of the De 
 Causis, 114, n. 1 
 
 Nelson, late bp. of, his criticism on 
 Walter de Merton's design in found- 
 ing Merton College, 168 
 
 New College, Oxford, presence of 
 Wyclifs doctrines at, 271, n. 2; 
 an illustration of the feelings of 
 the patrons of learning with re- 
 spect to the monasteries, 302 ; en- 
 dowed with lands purchased of 
 religious houses, ib. ; statutes of, 
 Hi. ; these statutes a model for 
 subsequent foundations, 303 
 
 Nicholas i, pope, accepts the forged 
 Decretals, 34 
 
 Nicholas de Lyra, his writings fre- 
 quently to be met with in the 
 Cambridge libraries of the 15th 
 century, 326 ; his long popularity 
 with theologians, ib. ; not much 
 valued by Erasmus, 502 ; the divi- 
 nity lecturer at C. C. C., Oxford, en- 
 joined by bp. Fox to put aside, 523 
 
 Nicholson, Sygar, stationer to the 
 university, 626 ; character and ca- 
 reer of, id. 
 
 Nicomachus, Arithmetic of Boethius 
 taken from, 28 
 
 Nix, bp. of Norwich, fell, of Trinity 
 Hall, declaration of, respecting Gon- 
 ville Hall, 564 ; founder of three 
 fellowships at Trin. Hall, ib. n. 2 
 
 Nominalism, the prevalent philoso- 
 phy of the ninth century, 55, n. 1; 
 new importance acquired by, from 
 its application to theology, ib. ; its 
 tendency opposed to the doctrine 
 of the Trinity, 56 ; triumph of, in 
 the schools, 188 ; would not have 
 appeared with Occam but for the 
 Byzantine logic, 16. ; doctrines of, 
 forbidden at Paris by Louis xi, 196 
 and n. 2 ; its adherents oppose the 
 corruptions of the Church, ib. ; its 
 .triumph according to Mansel in- 
 volved the abandonment of the 
 scholastic method, 197 
 
 43
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Non-regents, gradually admitted to 
 share in university legislation, 142; 
 the term explained, 361 
 
 Norfolk, county of, many of the Cam- 
 bridge Reformers natives of, 663 
 
 Normans, influence of the, in Eng- 
 land prior to the Conquest, 67 
 
 Northampton, migrations to, from 
 Oxford and Cambridge, 135 
 
 Norwold, Hugh, bp. of Ely, his services 
 to the Hospital of St. John the 
 Evangelist, 223 
 
 Notation, Arabic system of, intro- 
 duced by Gerbert, 43 
 
 Nova Art, the, its introduction greatly 
 increased the attention given to 
 logic, 343 
 
 Novum Instrumentum of Erasmus, 
 508; why so called, 16. n. 2; de- 
 fects and errors in, 510 ; its great 
 merit, 511 ; its patrons, ib. ; dedi- 
 cated to Leo x, 512 ; sarcastic allu- 
 sions in, ib. ; name changed to 
 Novum Testamentum, 623 
 
 Oath, administered to regents of Ox- 
 ford, and Cambridge, not to teach 
 in any other English university, 
 135, n. 1; of submission, taken by 
 chancellors of the university, to 
 the bishops of Ely, 287, n. 2 ; im- 
 posed on masters and fellows of 
 colleges, 454, 455 
 
 Obbarius, his opinion of the religion 
 of Boethius quoted, 28, n. 2 
 
 Oblati, the term explained, 19, note 2 
 
 Occam, William of, his De Potcstate 
 opposed to the papal claims found- 
 ed on the canon law, 36, 187 ; 
 'the demagogue of scholasticism,' 
 ib. ; extends the scholastic en- 
 quiries to the province of nomi- 
 nalism, ib.; his chief service to 
 philosophy, 189; disclaims the ap- 
 plication of logic to theological 
 difficulties, 191; falls under the 
 papal censure, 195; his escape 
 from Avignon, 16. ; styled by pope 
 John xxn the Doctor Invincibilis, 
 196 ; compared with Bradwardine, 
 205, n. 1 ; his attack on the politi- 
 cal power of the pope struck at the 
 Htndy of the canon law, 259; his 
 l)e Potentate, 260 
 
 Odo, bishop of Bayeux, regarded none 
 but Benedictines as true monks 
 82 
 
 Odo, abbnt of Clugni, hostile to 
 
 pagan learning, 18 ; pupil of Bemy 
 of Auxerre, 69 ; sustains the tra- 
 dition of Alcuin's teaching, ib. ; 
 acquires a reputation as having 
 read through Priscian, 104, n. 1 
 
 Olleris, M., his edition of the works 
 of Gerbert, 42 ; his view respecting 
 intercourse of Gerbert with the 
 Saracens, 43, n. 2 
 
 Ordinarie, fellows of Gonville Hall 
 required to lecture, for one year, 
 247 ; lecturing, meaning [of the 
 phrase, Append. (E) 
 
 ' Ordinary ' lectures, meaning of the 
 phrase, 358 and Append. (E) 
 
 Oresme, Nicolas, master of the col- 
 lege of Navarre, 128 ; his remark- 
 able attainments, ib. n. 1 
 
 Origen, highly esteemed by Erasmus, 
 601 ; studied by some of the Cam-, 
 bridge Reformers, 598, n. 4 
 
 Orleans, migration to, from Paris in 
 1228, 107 
 
 Orosius, a text-book during the 
 Middle Ages, 21; his 'Histories' 
 characterised by Ozanam, 22 ; pre- 
 pared at the request of Augustine, 
 ib. ; description of the work, 23 
 
 Ottringham, master of Michaelhouse, 
 borrows a treatise by Petrarch, 433 
 
 Ouse, the river, its ancient and pre- 
 sent points of junction with the 
 Cam, 329, 330 ; its course as de- 
 scribed by Spenser, 330 
 
 Oxford, controversies in the schools 
 of, described by John of Salisbury, 
 66 ; university of, probable origin 
 of, 80; town of, burnt to the 
 ground in 1009, 82 ; early statutes 
 of, probably borrowed from those 
 of Paris, 83; teachers from Paris 
 at, /'//.; students from Paris at, 107 ; 
 intercourse of, with university of 
 Paris, 134; monastic foundations 
 at, in the time of Walter de Mer- 
 ton, 165; intellectual activity of, 
 at the commencement of the 14th 
 century, 171; in the 14th century 
 compared with Paris, 196; takes 
 the lead in thought, in the 14th 
 century, 213; her claim to have 
 given the earliest teachers to Paris, 
 ib. n. 1 ; resistance offered by, to 
 archbp. Arundel, 259, n. 2; a 
 stronghold of Wyclifism, 271 ; 
 schools of, deserted in the year 
 1438, 297 and n. 2 ; want of schools 
 for exercises at, 299 ; divinity 
 schools at, first opened, 300; friends 
 of Erasmus at, 476 ; Erasmus's
 
 INDEX. 
 
 075 
 
 account of, 490; state of feeling 
 at, with reference to the new learn- 
 ing, 523; changes at, 524; Greek 
 at, ib.; unfavorably contrasted by 
 More with Cambridge, 526; chair 
 of Greek founded at, ib. ; outstrip- 
 ped, according to Croke, by Cam- 
 bridge, 534 ; eminent men of 
 learning who favored, ib. ; styled 
 by Croke, colonia a Cantabrigia 
 deducta, 539 ; resigns its statutes 
 into Wolsey's hands, 549 ; contri- 
 butions of colleges of, to the royal 
 loan, 551, n. 1; Luther's writings 
 burnt at, 571 ; spread of the re- 
 formed doctrines at, by means of 
 the Cambridge colony, 604; un- 
 favorably compared with Cam- 
 bridge by Mr. Froude in connexion 
 with the question of the royal 
 divorce, 616; Cromwell's commis- 
 sioners at, 629 
 'Oxford fare,' not luxurious, 371 
 
 Pace, Kich., pleads the cause of the 
 Grecians at Oxford with Henry 
 vin, 526; one of Wolsey's victims, 
 548 ; his character as described by 
 Erasmus, ib. n. 3 
 
 Pacomius, the monachism of, con- 
 trasted with that of the Benedic- 
 tines, 86 
 
 Padua, university of, its foundation 
 the Eesult of a migration from 
 Bologna, 80 
 
 Paget, Win., a convert of Bilney, 
 563; lectured on Melanchthon's 
 Rhetoric at Trinity Hall, 16. 
 
 Pain Peverell, changes the canons of 
 St. Giles to Augustinian canons, 
 163, n. 1 ; removes them to Barn- 
 well, ib. 
 
 Pandects, see Civil law 
 
 Pantalion, Anchier, his student life 
 at Paris, 130 
 
 Paris, Matthew, his account of the 
 riot in Paris in 1228, 107; his 
 description of the conduct of the 
 Mendicants, 147; manuscript of 
 his Historia Major used, ib. n. 
 1 ; his testimony to the character 
 of Grosseteste, 153; his comment 
 on the nomination of Adam de 
 Marisco to the see of Ely, 224 ; 
 his account of a wonderful trans- 
 formation in the fen country, 334 
 
 Paris, university of, requirements of, 
 with respect to civil and canon 
 
 law, 38, n. 1 ; in the 12th century, 
 58; the model for Oxford and 
 Cambridge, 67 ; supplies important 
 presumptive evidence with respect 
 to their early organisation, 68; 
 chief school of arts and theology 
 in the 12th century, 71 ; first 
 known application of the term 
 1 university' to.'ift. ; compared with 
 that of Bologna, 75 ; theological 
 character of its early teaching, ib.; 
 its early discipline, 76 ; students 
 not permitted to vote at, ib. n. 2 ; 
 commencement of its first cele- 
 brity, 77; 'nations' in, 78; its 
 hostility to the papal power, 79; 
 its secular associations explained 
 by M. V. Le Clerc, ib. ; conflict of, 
 with the citizens, in 1228, 106; 
 colleges of, ib. ; sixteen founded 
 in the 13th century, ib. n. 4 ; sup- 
 pression of the small colleges at, 
 129 ; mediaeval education would 
 have been regarded as defective 
 unless completed at, ib. ; number 
 of students at, towards the close 
 of the 16th century, 130; its in- 
 fluence in the thirteenth century, 
 132 ; students from, at Oxford and 
 Cambridge, 133 ; whether a lay or 
 clerical body always a disputed 
 question, 166, n. 1 ; nominalistic doc- 
 trines forbidden at, 196 ; transfer- 
 ence of leadership of thought from, 
 to Oxford, 213; indebted for its 
 first professors to the Oxford Fran- 
 ciscans, ib. n. 1 ; regains its influ- 
 ence in the 15th century, 276 ; cessa- 
 tion of its intercourse with Oxford 
 and Cambridge, 280; ceases to be 
 the supreme oracle of Europe, ib. ; 
 causes of decline of, ib. ; efforts 
 made by the popes to diminish her 
 prestige, 282 ; subsequent relations 
 of, to the English universities, 342 ; 
 assistance to be derived from its 
 statutes in studying the antiquities 
 of Oxford and Cam bridge, 343 ; ma- 
 thematical studies at, in loth cen- 
 tury, 352; reputation of, at com- 
 mencement of 16th cent. , 474 ; 
 ceases to be European in its ele- 
 ments, ib. n. 2 
 
 Parker, Matthew, fell, of Corpus, 
 attended meetings at the White 
 Horse, 573 
 
 Parker, Rich., error in his History of 
 Cambridge with respect to the date 
 of the burning of Luther's books, 
 571, n. 5 
 
 432
 
 ()7(5 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Pari'a Logicalia, studied at Leipsic 
 and Prague, 282, n. 2 ; a part of the 
 Suivmulce of Petms Hispanns, 350 ; 
 why so called, ib. n. 4 ; not studied 
 in More's Utopia, 351, n. 1 
 
 Paschasius, Radbertus, his lament 
 over the prospects of learning after 
 the time of Charlemagne, 19 ; sig- 
 nificance of the doctrine respect- 
 ing the real presence maintained by, 
 40 
 
 Peacock, dean, his observations on 
 discrepancies in the different Sta- 
 tuta Antiqua, 110, n. 1 ; question 
 raised by, with reference to dis- 
 pensation oaths, 456 ; inaccuracy 
 in his statement with respect to 
 Christ's College, ib. n. 3 
 
 Pccock, Eeginald, an eclectic, 290 ; 
 mistaken by Foxe for a Lollard, 
 ib. ; really an Ultramontanist, ib. ; 
 his belief in logic, 291 ; asserts the 
 rights of reason agninst dogma, 
 16. ; repudiated the absolute autho- 
 rity of both the fathers and the 
 schoolmen, 292; advocated sub- 
 mission to the temporal authority of 
 the pope, ib. ; denied the right of 
 individuals to interpret Scripture, 
 293 ; disliked much preaching, 294; 
 his eccentric defence of the bishops, 
 ib. ; offended both parties, 295 ; at- 
 tacks the doctrines of the Church, 
 i ft. ; his enemies at Cambridge, ib.; 
 his character by prof. Babington, 
 ib. n. 2 ; possibly a political suf- 
 ferer, 29G ; his doctrines forbidden 
 at the university, ib. and n. 4 
 
 Pembroke College, foundation of, 
 236 ; earliest statutes of, no longer 
 extant, 237 ; outline of the revised 
 statutes of, ib. n. 2; leading fea- 
 tures of these statutes, 238 ; scho- 
 lars, in the modern sense, first 
 so named at, ib. ; grammar first in- 
 cluded in the college course at, t'ft. ; 
 limitations of fellowships to differ- 
 ent counties at, ib. ; preference to 
 be given to natives of France at, 239 ; 
 its reputation in the 15th century, 
 314 ; early catalogue of the library 
 of, 324 ; Fox, bp. of Winchester, 
 master of, 465 
 
 Pensioners, first admitted by statute, 
 at Christ's College, 459 ; evils re- 
 sulting from indiscriminate admis- 
 sion of, 024 
 
 Percival, Mr. E. F., his edition of 
 the foundation statutes of Merton 
 College, 159, n. 4 ; his assertion 
 
 respecting Roger Bacon.ift. ; quoted, 
 on Walter de Morton's design in 
 the foundation of Merton College, 
 164, u. 1 
 
 Persius, lectures on, by Gerbert at 
 Rheims, 44 ; nine copies of, in 
 library of Christchurch, Canter- 
 bury, *104 
 
 Peter of Blois, account attributed to 
 him of the university of Cam- 
 bridge, spurious, 66 
 
 Peterhouse, foundation of, 228; be- 
 comes possessed of the site of the 
 friary De P&nitentia Jesu, 229 ; 
 final arrangement between, and the 
 brethren of St. John the Evangelist, 
 ib. ; prosperity of the society, i'ft. ; 
 patronised by Fordham, bp. of Ely, 
 ib. ; early statutes of, given by Simon 
 Montacnte, 230 ; early statutes of, 
 copied from those of Merton Col- 
 lege, Oxford, t'ft. ; character of 
 the foundation, 231; sizars at, ib.', 
 all meals at, to be taken in com- 
 mon, 232; the clerical dress and 
 tonsure incumbent on the scholars 
 of, ib. ; non-monastic character of, 
 233 ; fellowships at, to be vacated 
 by those succeeding to benefices of 
 a certain value, 234 ; its code com- 
 pared by dean Peacock with those 
 of later foundations, jft. n. 1 ; 
 allowance for fellows' commons 
 at, in 1510, 254, n. 2; cardinal 
 Beaufort a pensioner at, 310 ; cata- 
 logue of the library of, ann. 1418, 
 324 ; illustration afforded by the 
 original catalogue of the library of, 
 370, n. 1 ; evils resulting from ex- 
 travagant living at, 460; Hornby 
 master of, 465 
 
 Petition of Parliament against ap- 
 pointment of ecclesiastics to offices 
 of state, 267 
 
 Petrarch, notice of the infidelity of 
 his day by, 124 and n. 2; com- 
 pares the residence at Avignon to 
 the Babylonish captivity, 195 ; his 
 interview with Richard of Bury at 
 Avignon, 201 ; his reproach of the 
 university of Paris, as chiefly en- 
 nobled by Italian genius, 214 ; scene 
 in the early youth of, 379 ; his esti- 
 mate of the learning of the uni- 
 versities in his day, 382 ; his in- 
 fluence, ib. ; change in the modern 
 estimate of his genius explained, 
 383 ; his Latin style, ifc. ; his ser- 
 vices to the study of Cicero, 38 1, 
 385, n. 1 ; his knowledge of Greek,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 f>77 
 
 885; his instinctive appreciation 
 of Plato, 386; he initiates the 
 struggle against Aristotle, ib. ; his 
 position compared with that of 
 Aquinas, il>. \ rejected the ethical 
 system of Aristotle, 387; succes- 
 sors of, ib. ; his prophecy of the fate 
 that awaited the schoolmen, 432 ; 
 copy of his Letters in the original 
 catalogue of the library of Peter- 
 house, 433 
 
 Petrus Hispanus, 176 ; not the ear- 
 liest translator of Psellus, ib. ; nu- 
 merous editions of his Summula, 
 178 ; theory enunciated by the trea- 
 tise, 180; its extensive use in the 
 Middle Ages, 350 
 
 Philelphup, his statement respecting 
 Greek learning at Constantinople 
 in the fifteenth century, 175, n. 1 ; 
 account given by, of Constantinople 
 in the year 1441, 390 
 
 Philip Augustus, decline of the epis- 
 copal and monastic schools com- 
 mences with his reign, 68 
 
 Philip the Fair, of France, his strug- 
 gle with Boniface vm, 194 
 
 Picot, sheriff, though a Norman, 
 founds secular canons at St. Giles, 
 163, n. 1 
 
 Pike, regarded as a delicacy in for- 
 mer days, 374, n. 2 
 
 Pisa, council of, representatives 
 from both the universities present 
 at, 276 
 
 Pisa, university of, founded in the 
 13th century, 80 
 
 Plague, the Great, 241 ; its effects on 
 the universities, t'6. 
 
 Plague, the, often followed upon the 
 visits of illustrious personages, 
 542, n. 2 
 
 Plato, Tinueus of, translated into 
 Latin by Chalcidius, 41 ; his theory 
 of Universals described by Por- 
 phyry as translated by Boethius, 
 52 ; Timaeus of, probably meant in 
 catalogues of libraries at Bee and 
 at Christchurch, Canterbury, 104; 
 Dialogues of, brought by Win. Gray 
 to England, 397 
 
 Pledges allowed to be given by stu- 
 dents, 144, n. 1 
 
 Plessis-Sorbonne, College de, founda- 
 tion of, 129 
 
 Poggio Braccioliui, visits England in 
 the 15th century, 297 ; nature of 
 his impressions, 298 ; his descrip- 
 tion of the spirit in which the civil 
 law was studied in Italy, 319, n. 2; 
 
 his quarrel with tho Fratret Ob- 
 gt-rraiitite, 337; exposes the ficti- 
 tious character of tho Decretal* 
 420 
 
 Politian, professor of both Greek and 
 Latin at Florence, 429 ; his Alitcel- 
 laiiea, ib.; the classical lecturer at 
 C. C. C., Oxford, ordered to lecture 
 on the work, 521, n. 2 
 Polydore Vergil, not the sole author 
 of the statement that ascribed the 
 death of Stafford to Wolsey's re- 
 sentment, 648, n. 2 
 Pope, the, reason why his sanction 
 was originally sought at the found- 
 ation of a university, 78; at 
 Avignon, opposed by the English 
 Franciscans, 193; oaths imposed 
 in early college statutes against 
 dispensations from the, with re- 
 spect to fellowship oath, 458 
 Porphyry, Inagoge of, lectures on, by 
 Geroert at Ehciins, 44 ; scholastic 
 philosophy owes its origin to a 
 sentence in, 50; the passage quo- 
 ted, ib. ; the passage known to the 
 Middle Ages in two translations, 
 51 ; influence it was calculated to 
 exercise on philosophy, 53 
 Prcecaricator, the, in academic exer- 
 cises, 356 
 
 Pragmatic Sanction, the, secures to 
 France independence of Rome, 
 281 
 
 Prague, university of, formed on the 
 model of Paris, 74 ; division into 
 nations at, 79, n. 2; founded in ' 
 connexion with the university of 
 Oxford, 215; its prescribed course 
 of study adopted by the university 
 of Leipsic, 282, n. 2; losses sus- 
 tained by Paris in consequence of 
 the creation of, 334 ; less distracted 
 by the nominalistic controversies, 
 416 
 
 Prantl, Carl, on the results of en- 
 couragement given by the emperor 
 Frederic to the new Aristotle, 98, 
 n. 1 ; his condemnation of the 
 scholastic Aristotle, 124; the au- 
 thor's obligations to his Geschichte 
 der Logik, 175; his observations 
 on the extensive influence of the 
 Byzantine logic, 179 ; his estimate 
 of Occam's philosophy quoted, 189 
 Preaching, neglect of, in the 15th 
 
 century, 437 
 
 Prichard, Jas. C., on distinction be- 
 tween use of the false Decretals by 
 Hincmar and Nicholas, 34, u. 1
 
 G78 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Priories, alien, appropriation of the 
 revenues of, to endow colleges, 303 ; 
 Gough's account of, 304 ; first se- 
 questration of their estates, ib. ; 
 act for the suppression of, in 1402, 
 ib.; confiscation of, by archbp. 
 Chicheley, 305 
 
 Priscian, an authority in the Middle 
 Ages, 22; numerous copies of, at 
 Christchurch, Canterbury, 104 
 Proctors, the two, collected the votes 
 of the regents, 143 ; empowered to 
 call a congregation, ib.; their dif- 
 ferent functions, 144 
 Professors at the university of Bo- 
 logna, 73 
 
 Provisors, statute of, its operation 
 unfavorable to the university, 
 284 ; Huber's comments on the 
 fact, 286 ; Liugard's ditto, ib., n. 1 
 Psellus, Michael Constantine, 176; 
 his treatise on logic, ib. ; transla- 
 tion of the same by Petrus His- 
 panus, ib. 
 
 Public Orator, Richard Croke elected 
 first, 539 ; privileges of the office, 
 ib. 
 
 Pullen, Robt., his work supposed to 
 have suggested the Sentences, 59, 
 n. 2 ; his Sentences compared with 
 those of Peter Lombard, 83; use 
 to which his name is put by An- 
 thony Wood, ib. ; account of his 
 teaching by the same, ib. ; a stu- 
 dent at the university of Parib, 
 134 
 
 'Pythagoras, the school of,' period 
 to which it belongs, 332 
 
 Quadrivium of the Roman schools, 
 24 
 
 Queens' College, scholars of, forbid- 
 den to embrace the doctrines of 
 Wyclif or Pecock, 297, n. 1 ; found- 
 ation of, 312; first founded as 
 Queen's College in 1448, 315; 
 statutes of, given by Elizabeth 
 "VVoodvillo in 1475, ib. ; first pro- 
 perly styled Queens' College, 316; 
 statutes of, given at petition of 
 Andrew l>oket, ib. ; studies and 
 lectureships at, ib.; early catalogue 
 of the library of, 324; bp. Fisher 
 appointed to tbe presidency of, 446; 
 residence of Erasmus at, 472 
 
 Question^, the, meaning of the term 
 explained, 352 ; ceremony observed 
 by, 353 
 
 Quintilian, Institutes of, Lupus of 
 Ferrieres writes for a copy of, 20 ; 
 studied as a model under Bernard 
 of Chartres, 57 ; style of, imi- 
 tated by Croke, 529 ; preferred by 
 Linacre to that of Cicero, ib. n. 1 
 
 Quirinus, his lament on the destruc- 
 tion of the literary treasures of 
 Constantinople, 400 
 
 Rabanus Maurus, pupil of Alcuin at 
 Tours, 54; gloss by, on Boethius, 
 erroneously quoted by Mr. Lewes, 
 ib.; the gloss quoted, ib. u. 2 ; his 
 commentary on Boethius, accord- 
 ing to Cousin, proves that the dis- 
 pute respecting Uuiversals was 
 familiar to the ninth century, 65, 
 n. 1 ; sustains the tradition of 
 Alcnin's teaching, 69; according 
 to bp. Fisher, educated at Cam- 
 bridge, 450 
 Ranee', De, his attack on the study of 
 
 the classics, 18 
 
 Ratramnus, opposes doctrine of real 
 presence maintained by Paschasius, 
 40; Ridley's testimony to his in- 
 fluence, ib. n. 3 
 
 Realism, doctrines of, favored a be- 
 lief in the doctrine of the Trinity, 
 55 
 
 Reason, the, inadequacy of, accord- 
 ing to Aquinas in attaining to 
 truth, 111 
 Rectors at the university of Bologna, 
 
 73 
 Rede, sir Robt., fellow of King's 
 
 Hall, 518 
 Rede lectureships, foundation of, 
 
 518 
 
 Reformation, the, took its rise in Eng- 
 land, partly from opposition to the 
 canon law, 36; its relations to the 
 new learning in Italy and in Ger- 
 many compared, 414 ; different 
 theories respecting the origin of, 
 553 ; began in England at Cam- 
 bridge, 651; not a developement 
 from Lollardism, 555 ; to be traced 
 to the influence of Erasmus's Greek 
 Testament, ib.; its spread in the 
 (astern counties, 563, n. 3 
 Reformers, the Cambridge, meetings 
 of, 572 ; chief names among, 573 ; 
 character of the proceedings of, 
 ib. ; not all young men, 574 ; their 
 meetings reported in London, 575;
 
 INDKX. 
 
 679 
 
 desert the theology of Erasmus, 
 698 ; treatment of, by Wolsey at 
 Oxford, 604 ; proceedings against, 
 at Cambridge, t'>o."> 
 
 Begents, distinguished from the non- 
 regents, with respect to their legis- 
 lative powers, 142; the acting body 
 of teachers in the university, ib. ; 
 their admission to the governing 
 body forfeited on their ceasing to 
 teach, 142, 145 ; position of, in re- 
 lation to the academic body, 358 
 
 Be"musat, M., his description of the 
 theology of St. Anselm quoted, 
 64, n. 1 ; observation on portion 
 of the catalogue of the library at 
 Bee, 100, n. 1 
 
 Bemy of Auxerre, sustains the tra- 
 dition of Alcuiu's teaching, 69 
 
 Benan, M., his account of the nu- 
 merous preceding versions through 
 which the Latin translations of 
 Aristotle from the Arabic were 
 derived, 95, 96; enumeration of 
 the Arabian heresies by, 117; his 
 criticism on the doctrines con- 
 demned by Etienne Tempier, 121, 
 n. 1 
 
 Keuchlin, John, attends a lecture of 
 Argyropnlos, 407 ; admiration of, 
 for Gregory of Nazian/uirn, 484 ; liis 
 knowledge of Greek denounced by 
 the older members of the univer- 
 sity of Basel, 486 
 
 Rheims, lectures at, by Gerbert, 44 ; 
 migration to, from Paris in 1228, 
 107 
 
 Bhetoric, the study of, as treated of 
 in Martianus, 25 ; taught by Ger- 
 bert at Rheims, 44; taught in a 
 less mechanical fashion by Ber- 
 nard of Chartres, 57 ; a lecturer 
 on, appointed in statutes of Christ's 
 College, 459 
 
 Richard, abbat of Preaux, his writings 
 found in the catalogue of the 
 library at Christchurch, 104 ; his 
 works, ib. n. 2 
 
 Richerus, his History of his Times, 
 42; his account of Gerbert's method 
 of instruction at Rheims, 44; his 
 misconception respecting the To- 
 pica of Cicero, ib. n. 2 
 
 Ridley, Robt., uncle of the Reformer, 
 one of Barnes' opponents, 577 
 
 Ridley, Nich., complaint of, respect- 
 ing Tyndale's New Testament, 600 
 
 Rome, Erasmus's observations on, 
 489 
 
 Roscellinus, his nominalist ic views 
 
 traditional, 54 ; new importance 
 given by, to such views, 65; a 
 pupil of John the Deaf, 70; his 
 pupils, Hi. 
 
 Rotheram, Tho., his benefactions to 
 the university, 824 ; provost of the 
 cathedral church at Beverley, 423; 
 a promoter of learning, 425 
 
 Rothrad, bp. of Soissons, supported 
 in his appeal from the decision of 
 Hincmar by the false Decretals, 
 34 
 
 Boy, Wm., his description of Wol- 
 sey's pomp, 542; his statement 
 that Wolsey was the author of 
 Stafford's death, 548, n. 2 
 
 Bud's Hostel, made over to the bre- 
 thren of the Hospital of St. John 
 the Evangelist, 228 
 
 Budolf von Lange, 409; his school 
 at Minister, ib. 
 
 S 
 
 St. Amour, William, attacks the 
 Mendicants at Paris, 119 ; his 
 Perils of the Last Time*, ib. ; ar- 
 raignment of, before the archbp. 
 of Paris, ib. ; his book burnt, 120 ; 
 his retirement into exile, t'6. 
 
 St. Basil, his statement that Plato 
 selected the site of his Academy 
 for its M/ihealthiness, quoted, 338, 
 n. 1 
 
 St. Benet, the church of, probably 
 once the centre of a distinct vil- 
 lage, 333 
 
 St. Bernard, foundation of college of, 
 314 ; charter of its foundation re- 
 scinded, ib. ; founded bv Henry vi, 
 315 
 
 St. Catherine's Hall, foundation of, 
 317 ; study of canon and civil law 
 forbidden at, 318 ; contrast in the 
 conception of the college to that 
 of Trinity Hall, ib. ; the college 
 designed to educate the secular 
 clergy, ib.; library of, ann. 1475, 
 325 ; the White Horse Inn origin- 
 ally belonged to, 572, n. 1 
 
 St. Gall, monk of, his statement re- 
 specting state of letters at the ac- 
 cession of Charlemagne, 11 
 
 St. Giles, foundation of secular 
 canons at, by. Picot, 163, u. 1 
 
 St. Guthlac, lived in the fens for 
 solitude, 335 
 
 Saint-Hilaire, Barthelemy, his criti- 
 cism on the psychology of Aristotle. 
 116, n. 1
 
 G80 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 St. Hilary, preface by Erasmus to 
 
 his edition of, 502 
 St. John the Evangelist, hospital of, 
 
 see Hospital 
 
 St. John's College, life at, hi 1550, 370; 
 statutes of, require from fellows 
 an oath against dispensations from 
 their oath, 456 ; amount fixed for 
 fellows' commons at, 461 ; fortu- 
 nate results of frugality at, ib.; 
 proposed foundation of, by the 
 lady Margaret, ib. ; charter of the 
 foundation of, 464; Shorten first 
 master of, ib. ; revenues bequeathed 
 to, by the lady Margaret, 465 ; the 
 revenues seized by Henry vin, 
 468 ; partial compensation gained 
 by, 469 ; formal opening of, in 
 1516, 470 ; clauses in early statutes 
 of, contrasted with one in Colet's 
 statutes of St. Paul's School, 471 ; 
 foundation of Liuacre lectureship 
 at, 603, n. 2; Fisher's later sta- 
 tutes for, 623 ; grief of, at Fisher's 
 fate, 628; letter from, to him in 
 prison, ib. 
 
 St. Mary's (Gt.) church, formerly 
 used for academic exercises, 299 ; 
 Commencement formerly held at, 
 355 ; rebuilding of, 426, 427, n. 1 
 St. Paul, Marie de, foundress of 
 Pembroke College, 236 ; a friend 
 to the Franciscans, ib. ; memoir of, 
 by Dr. Ainsh'e, ib. n. 1 
 St. Paul's School, foundation of ,471, 
 
 n. 2 
 St. Peter's church, appropriation of, 
 
 made over to Peterhouse, 228 
 St. Rhadegund, nunnery of, 320; 
 specially protected by the bishops 
 of Ely, ib. ; dissolved in the year 
 1496, 321; its revenues given to 
 found Jesus College, ib. 
 St. Thomas du Louvre, college of, at 
 Paris, 126 ; foundation attributed 
 by Crevier to the twelfth century, ib. 
 Salerno, university of, chief school 
 of medicine in Europe in the 12th 
 century, 71 
 
 Salisbury, John of, his frequent allu- 
 sions to the treatise of Martiauus, 
 24, n. 2 ; describes the hostility of 
 the clergy to the civil law, 38 ; his 
 description of the disputes in the 
 schools of Oxford, 56, 57; his de- 
 scription of the different parties, 
 57, n. 1 ; his Latinity superior to 
 that of a subsequent age, 57 ; his 
 quotations often second-hand, ib. 
 n. 3; sought to draw away A'Ucckct 
 
 from the study of the canon and 
 civil law, 212 
 Sallust, eight copies of, in library of 
 
 Christchurch, Canterbury, 104 
 Sampson, Eich., fell, of Trinity Hall, 
 a friend of Erasmus, 500; one of 
 Wolsey's chaplains, 545 
 Saracens, the destruction of monas- 
 teries by, 11 
 Savigny, on the growth of the early 
 
 universities, 72 
 
 Savile, sir Henry, his criticism on 
 Bradwardine's De Causa Dei 
 quoted, 199, n. 1 
 
 Savonarola, his horror at the de- 
 pravity of his countrymen, 431 ; 
 his position with reference to the 
 Humanists in Italy, 432, n. 1 
 Scholar, the term originally equiva- 
 lent to fellow, 167 ; first distin- 
 guished from that of fellow, 308 
 Scholars not under a master for- 
 bidden the university, 226 
 Scholars, foundation, first instituted 
 
 at Pembroke College, 238 
 Scholasticism, progressive element 
 
 in, 173 ; its services, 632 
 Schoolmen, the, difficulties of, with 
 respect to the new Aristotle, 124 ; 
 the views of, compared with those 
 of modern scholars, 172; Croko 
 professes his admiration of, 533 
 Schools, of the Roman Empire, 2 ; 
 character of instruction imparted 
 at the episcopal and monastic, 11 ; 
 of Charlemagne, 13; thrown open 
 to the secular clergy, ib. ; episcopal 
 and monastic, how far subverted 
 by the universities, 68 ; their tra- 
 dition one of mere conservatism, 
 70; their deterioration, ib. n. 2; of 
 arts and medicine, when formed nt 
 Bologna, 73; of theology, when 
 founded at Bologna, ib.; at Ox- 
 ford, prior to the thirteenth cen- 
 . tury, 83 ; the common, of the uni- 
 versity, 299; first mentioned iu 
 reign of Edw. in, ib. n. 1; di- 
 vinity, 300; arts and civil law, 
 ib. 
 Science, a, and an art, distinction 
 
 between, 179 
 Scot, Michael, his ignorance as a 
 
 translator of Aristotle, 155 
 Scrutatorn, their functions, 143, 145 
 Selden, John, his explanation of 
 hostility shewn by king Stephen 
 to the study of the civil law, 38 
 Selling, Wm., fell, of All Souls, Ox- 
 ford, 477 ; his scholarly tastes, il. ;
 
 INDEX. 
 
 681 
 
 studies under Politiau at Bologna, 
 il>. ; appointed master of the con- 
 ventual school at Canterbury, 1 ,'-> ; 
 Win. Linacre, pupil of, ib. 
 
 Sentences of Peter Lombard, 59; 
 characterised by Schwegler, ib. ; 
 description of the work, ib. ; mean- 
 ing of the title, ib. n. 3; antici- 
 pation of Paley in, ib. n. 4; dia- 
 lectical element in, 60 ; its method 
 of treatment, according to Cousin, 
 more severely logical than that of 
 any preceding writer, ib. n. 3; 
 testimony to its character by prof. 
 Maurice, 61 ; avowed object of the 
 compiler, ib. and n. 1 ; opposed on 
 its first appearance, 61 ; its exten- 
 sive influence and voluminous lite- 
 rature, 62; its method censured 
 by Gualterus, ib. n. 1 ; speculation 
 encouraged by the expounders of, 
 77; excessive attention to, cen- 
 sured by Roger Bacon, 157 ; re- 
 jected by Luther and Stafford for 
 the Scriptures, 567, 569 
 
 Sententiarius, the, 363 
 
 Shaxtou, Nich. , fell, of Gonville 
 Hall, 564 ; his connexion with the 
 reform party at Cambridge, ib. ; 
 attended the meetings at the 
 White Horse, 572 
 
 Shirley, prof., his view respecting 
 the continuance of realistic doc- 
 trines after the time of Occam, 
 198; his criticism on the effects 
 of the papal residence at Avignon 
 on the university of Paris quoted, 
 215 
 
 Shorten, Bobt., master of St. John's, 
 at the same time a fellow of Pem- 
 broke, 372 ; dean of Wolsey's pri- 
 vate chapel, 545; selects the Cam- 
 bridge students for Cardinal Col- 
 lege, 602 
 
 Shyreswood, William, 176; probably 
 the earliest translator of the Sum- 
 mulaot Petrus Hispanus, 177; first 
 author in whom the mnemonic 
 verses are found, ii. ; praised by 
 Boger Bacon, ib. 
 
 Siberch, John, first Cambridge print- 
 er, 625; his edition of Galen, ib. 
 Sickling, John, master of God's 
 House, at same time a fellow of 
 Corpus, 372 
 
 Sigebert, king of East Anglia, a re- 
 puted founder of the university of 
 Cambridge, 66 
 
 1 Sinai of the Middle Ages,' university 
 of Paris so termed, 74 ; Monte Cas- 
 
 sino so styled by the Benedictines, 
 ib. n. 2 
 
 Sinker, Mr., his essay on the Testa- 
 ments of the Twelve Patriarchs 
 cited, 110 
 
 Sizars, first instituted by statutes of 
 Clare Hall, 252 
 
 Skelton, John, elegy by, on Margaret 
 of Bichmond, 463, n. 2 ; univer- 
 sity career of, 540 ; extravagantly 
 praised by Erasmus, ib. ; his sym- 
 pathies with the old learning, ib. ; 
 his verses attacking the respect 
 paid to Greek at Cambridge, Hi. ; 
 falls into disgrace with Wolsey, 
 548 ; satire of, on the Cambridge 
 Beformers, 607 and n. 2 
 
 Smith, Bich., a convert of Bilney 
 at Trinity Hall, 563 
 
 Sorbonne, the, regulations of, imi- 
 tated at Oxford and Cambridge, 
 67; College de, founded in the 
 thirteenth century in Paris, 126, 
 n. 4 ; a theological college, 127 ; 
 the model for our earliest Eng- 
 lish colleges, ib. ; poverty an es- 
 sential characteristic of, ib. n. 3; 
 rules for the library of, copied 
 at Durham College, Oxford, 204, 
 n. 1 ; decided that Greek and He- 
 brew were subversive of religion, 
 525, n. 2 ; condemns Luther's 
 writings, 571 
 
 Sorbonne, Bobert de, founder of tho 
 college known by his name, 127 
 
 Spain, comparatively free from in- 
 vasion under the Visigoths, 31 ; 
 universities of, formed on the 
 model of Bologna, 74 
 
 Spalatiu, testimony of, to the de- 
 mand for Tyndale's New Testa- 
 ment in England, 599 
 
 Spenser, Edm., his description of 
 the course of the Ouse, 330; an- 
 cient prophecy recorded by, 332, 
 n. 1 
 
 Stafford, Edw., duke of Buckingham, 
 the supposed victim of Wolsey's 
 resentment, 548; generally re- 
 garded as the founder of Bucking- 
 ham College, ib. n. 1 ; popular be- 
 lief that his death was brought 
 about by Wolsey, 16. n. 2 
 
 Stafford, George, fell, of Pembroke, 
 567 ; his lectures in theology, ib. ; 
 discards the Sentences for the 
 Scriptures, ib. ; his services to St. 
 Paul as estimated by Becon, ib. ; 
 his disputation with Barnes in the 
 divinity schools, 508; visit of, to
 
 682 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Henry the 'conjurer,' 608; death 
 of, 609 
 
 Stamford, migration to, from univer- 
 sity of Oxford, 135 ; false derivation 
 of the name, il>. n. 1 ; existing 
 remains of colleges and halls at, 
 ib. ; prophecy that the university 
 would one day be transferred to, 
 332 
 
 Stanley, James, bp. of Ely, gives the 
 original statutes of Jesus College, 
 321 and n. 5; gives his assent to 
 the dissolution of the hospital 
 of St. John, 462; subsequently 
 opposes it, 466; his character, ib.; 
 name of, appears in list of bene- 
 factors of St. John's College, 541, 
 n. 5 
 
 Stare in quadragesima, meaning of 
 the phrase, 354 
 
 Statimiarii, the booksellers of the 
 university, 144, n. 1 ; fraudulent 
 practices of, ib. 
 
 Statius, lectures on, by Gerbert at 
 Bheims, 44 
 
 Statute, early, respecting hostels, 
 218 (see also App. C) ; its pro- 
 visions compared with those of 
 statute 67, 221; forbidding friars 
 to receive into their order youths 
 under eighteen, 222 
 
 Statute of Provisors, 266 
 
 Statutes, ancient, of the university, 
 contradictions to be found in, 140, 
 n. 1 ; earliest college, at Cam- 
 bridge, 234 
 
 Stephen, king, forbids Vacarius to 
 lecture on the civil law, 38; his 
 motives explained by Selden, ib. 
 
 Stokesley, bp. of London, his repu- 
 tation for learning, 535, n. 1 
 
 Stokys' Book, account extracted from, 
 of ceremony observed by the ques- 
 tionist, 353 
 
 Stratford, archbp., order of, with re- 
 spect to the dress of university 
 students, 233 
 
 Stubbs, prof., on the destruction of 
 the Benedictine societies in Eng- 
 land, 81, n. 5; his distinction be- 
 tween the two monasteries at Can- 
 terbury quoted, 100, n. 2 ; quoted, 
 on the monks and seculars, 161, n. 
 2; on the foundation of secular 
 colleges, 161, n. 8 
 
 Students at Oxford in the twelfth 
 century, not supported by pecu- 
 niary assistance, 81, n. 1 
 
 Studies, design of founders in the 
 15th century that they should not 
 
 be pursued from mercenary mo- 
 tives, 319, 322 
 
 Sturbridge fair, referred to by Skel- 
 ton, 540 ; note on, ib. n. 1 
 
 Suetonius, the classical lecturer at 
 C. C. C., Oxford, ordered by bp. 
 Fox to lecture on, 521, n. 2 
 
 Summu-la, see Petrns Hispanw 
 
 Sup2>licat, the, nature of, 353 
 
 Suppositio, the, theory of, 188; a con- 
 tribution of the Byzantine logic, 
 ib. 
 
 Sylvester u, see Gerbert 
 
 Sylvius, ./Eneas, his lament over the 
 fall of Constantinople, 401 ; his 
 efforts to awaken a love of learn- 
 ing in Germany, 408 ; his charac- 
 ter contrasted with that of Gre- 
 gory Heimburg, ib. 
 
 Syndic, an officer in the university 
 of Bologna, 73 
 
 Tavern er, Rich., attended meetings 
 at the White Horse, 573 
 
 Taxors of the university, their func- 
 tions described, 145 
 
 Tempier, Etienne, declares that theo- 
 logical and scientific truth cannot 
 be at variance, 114, n. 2; condem- 
 nation of Averroistic opinions by, 
 118 
 
 Terence, lectures on, by Gerbert at 
 Rheims, 44 
 
 Tertullian, an objector to pagan 
 learning, 16 
 
 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 
 translation of, by Grosseteste and 
 John Basing, 110; a spurious pro- 
 duction, ib.; Mr. Sinker's investi- 
 gations with respect to its genuine- 
 ness, i>i. n. 1 
 
 Theiner, his theory with respect to 
 the decline of the episcopal and 
 monastic schools called in ques- 
 tion, 69 
 
 Theodoras, archbp. of Canterbury, 
 his services to education, 8 
 
 Theodosius, code of, survives the 
 disruption of the empire, 36 
 
 Theology, preliminaries to the study 
 of, at Merton College, 167 ; study 
 of .neglected for that of the civil and 
 canon law in the 14th century, 211 
 and n. 2; faculties of, when given 
 to Bologna and Padua, 215; Gon- 
 ville Hall designed by the founder 
 to promote study of, 240 ; stu- 
 dents of, at Cambridge in the 16th
 
 INDEX. 
 
 683 
 
 century, described by Skelton, 439; 
 in Italy, by Petrarch, ib. n. 2 
 
 Thierry, William of, his alarm at the 
 progress of enquiry, 58 
 
 Thixtill, John, fell, of Pembroke, one 
 of Biluey's converts, 564 
 
 Thorpe, sir Robert de, master of 
 Pembroke, commences the divinity 
 schools at Cambridge, 300 ; execu- 
 tors of, complete the erection of 
 the divinity schools, ib. 
 
 Tiedemann, theory of, that the medi- 
 aeval knowledge of Aristotle was 
 derived from Arabic translations, 93 
 
 Tomlyn, Wm., his reckless manage- 
 ment of the hospital of St. John 
 the Evangelist, 424 
 
 Tonnys, John, prior of the Augnsti- 
 nians at Cambridge, 565 ; aspires 
 to learn Greek, i6. 
 
 Topica of Aristotle, never quoted 
 prior to 12th century, 29 
 
 Toulouse, civil law taught at, before 
 foundation of university, 38, n. 1 ; 
 university of, formed on the model 
 of Bologna, 74; founded in the 
 thirteenth century, 80 
 
 Tournaments, celebration of, in the 
 neighbourhood of Cambridge, 138 
 
 Translating, Agricola's maxims on, 
 411 
 
 Trapezuntius, Georgius, his career 
 as a scholar, 429 ; his .logic intro- 
 duced by authority at Cambridge, 
 76.; a prescribed text-book at the 
 university, 630 
 
 Trinity College, Oxford, originally 
 Durham College, 203 
 
 Trinity, gild of the Holy, at Cam- 
 bridge, 248 
 
 Trinity Hall, foundation of, 242; 
 designed exclusively for canonists 
 and civilians, ib. ; formerly a hostel 
 belonging to the monks of Ely, 16. 
 n. 1 ; conditions imposed at, with 
 respect to elections of a master 
 and fellows, 243 ; library given to, 
 by the founder, ib. ; certain sta- 
 tutes of, substituted for those of 
 Gonville Hall, 246; its early sta- 
 tutes an echo of the traditions of 
 Avignon, 255 ; Biluey's converts at, 
 562 
 
 Trivium of the Roman schools, 24 
 ' Trojans,' the opponents of Greek at 
 Oxford self-named, 524 
 
 Tubingen, university of, compromise 
 between the nominalists and real- 
 ists at, 417 
 Tunstal, Cuthbert, patronises Eras- 
 
 mus's Nov. Iiift., 612; academic 
 career of, 591 ; character of, 692 ; 
 temporising policy of, ib.; his writ- 
 ings, U>. ; his Arithmetic, ib. ; hia 
 interview with Tyndale, 693; de- 
 scription of, by Tyndale, 594; 
 preaches at the burning of Tyu- 
 dale's New Testament, 600; dis- 
 posal of the Linacre endowments 
 by, 603, n. 2 
 
 Twyne, Brian, disingenuous argu- 
 ment of, against the antiquity of 
 the university, 145, n. 1 ; his sug- 
 gestion that the 'Trojans' at Ox- 
 ford were Cambridge men, 539 
 
 Tyndale, Wm., his observation on 
 Erasmus, 488, n. 3 ; his New Tes- 
 tament a carrying out of an idea 
 sanctioned by Erasmus, 587 ; why 
 the work was denounced by the 
 moderate party, 588 ; probably did 
 not go to Cambridge until after 
 Erasmus had left, 589 ; probably a 
 pupil of Croke, ib. ; his reminis- 
 cences of Oxford, 590 ; his life in 
 Gloucestershire, 591 ; his inter- 
 view with Tunstal, 593;- his ser- 
 vices compared with those of Tun- 
 stal, 595 ; his career on leaving 
 England, H>.\ his attainments as a 
 scholar, 596 ; his scholarship vin- 
 dicated, 597 ; followed Luther's 
 teaching, 598 ; demand for his 
 New Testament in England, 599; 
 character of the work, 600 ; burn- 
 ing of the same at Paul's Cross, ib. 
 
 U 
 
 Vltramontani, foreigners so named 
 in the university of Bologna, 73 
 
 Ultramoutanists, English, at the 
 council of Basel, 281 ; their influ- 
 ence paramount at Cambridge in 
 the 15th century, 287 
 
 ' Undergraduate,' the term inapplica- 
 ble to students during the greater 
 part of the Middle Ages, 352 
 
 Unity of the intellect, theory of the, 
 117 
 
 Universals, controversy respecting, 
 prevalent in the schools, 56 ; every 
 science, as such, can deal only 
 with, 190 
 
 Universitas, real significance of the 
 term, 71 ; its first application to 
 Paris, ib.; the term employed in 
 various senses, ib.; Universitas 
 vestra, singular meaning of the 
 expression, 72, u. 1
 
 684 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Universities, spontaneity of the 
 growth of the early, 72 ; classifica- 
 tion of those formed on the model 
 of Bologna and of Paris respec- 
 tively, 74 ; centres of reform in the 
 14th century, 271 ; on the model of 
 Paris, comparative number founded 
 in 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, 
 282 and n. 2 ; for different univer- 
 sities see under respective names 
 
 University College, the earliest col- 
 lege foundation at Oxford, 160, u. 
 1 
 
 University education, conflicting 
 opinions as to the value in which 
 it was held in the Middle Ages, 
 345 
 
 University Hall, Clare Hall originally 
 so called, 250, n. 1 ; 251 
 
 University library, foundation of 
 tbe, 323 ; benefactors to, ib. ; two 
 early catalogues of, ib. ; first library 
 building, ib. 
 
 University library, Oxford, when com- 
 menced, 203, n. 2 ; original statute 
 respecting its management, ib. 
 
 University press, the, 625 ; its inac- 
 tivity 'in the sixteenth century, 
 626 
 
 Urban n, his object in authorising 
 the Crusades, 88 
 
 Urban iv, pope, orders the Francis- 
 cans to quit Bury, 150 
 
 Urban v, use of benches and seats 
 at lectures forbidden by, 131, n. 1 
 
 Vacarins, lectures at Oxford on the 
 civil law by, 38 and n. 2 
 
 Valence, Peter de, writes a denuncia- 
 tion over Leo's proclamation of 
 indulgences affixed to the gate of 
 the common schools, 557; is ex- 
 communicated by Fisher, ib.; story 
 respecting, ib. 
 
 Valerius Maximns, the classical lec- 
 turer at C. C. C., Oxford, ordered 
 by bp. Fox to lecture on, 521, n. 2 
 
 Valla, Lnurentius, his contests with 
 the civilians of Pavia, 418; his 
 controversy with an eminent jurist, 
 419 ; the classical lecturer at 
 C. C. C., Oxford, ordered by bp. 
 Fox to lecture on the Eleqnntimol, 
 521, n. 3 
 
 Vaugban, Dr. Robt., doubtful charac- 
 ter of his assumptions with respect 
 to Wyclif, 26'J 
 
 Venetns, John, preaches against La- 
 timer at St. Mary's, 611 
 
 Vercelli, university of, founded in 
 the 13th century, 80 
 
 Verses, memorial, on the tririinn 
 and quadrivium, first found in Dor- 
 bellus, 566, n. 3 
 
 Vicenza, university of, its founda- 
 tion the result of a migration from 
 Bologna, 80 
 
 Victorinus, his translation of the 
 Isagoge of Porphyry used by Ger- 
 bert at Bheims, 44 ; passage in 
 translation of Porphyry by, 61 ; 
 quotation from same translation, 
 52 
 
 Vienna, university of, formed on 
 the model of Paris, 74 ; division 
 into 'nations' at, 79, n. 2; statute 
 of, quoted, ib. ; 'the eldest daugh- 
 ter of Paris,' 215; mathematical 
 studies required for degree of mas- 
 ter of arts at, in 14feh century, 351 
 
 Virgil, lectures on, by Gerbert at 
 Eheims, 44 ; three copies of, in li- 
 brary of Christchurch, Canterbury, 
 104 
 
 Vischer, Dr. , his observations on the 
 progress of nominalism in the 
 Middle Ages, 196, n. 2 
 
 Vitelli, Cornelius, teaches Greek at 
 Oxford, 478 
 
 Vitrarius, friend of Erasmus, pre- 
 ferred Origen to any other father, 
 483 
 
 Vives, Frobenius declines to publish 
 the works of, in consequence of 
 absorbing attention commanded 
 by the Lutheran controversy, 385 
 
 Vulgate, the Latin, errors in, pointed 
 out by Roger Bacon, 158 ; dis- 
 carded by Erasmus in his Nov. 
 Test., 623 
 
 W 
 
 Wainfleet, Wm., provost of Eton, 
 probably prepared the second sta- 
 tutes of King's College, 307, n. 1 
 
 Waltham, earl Harold's foundation 
 :n. 162 
 
 Warham, archbp., presented Erasmus 
 to the rectory of Aldington, 504; 
 munificence of, to Erasmus, 518 
 
 Warton, his explanation of the de- 
 cline of the monasteries as centres 
 of education, 207 
 
 Watson, John, fell, of Peterhouse, 
 master of Christ's, a friend of
 
 INDEX 
 
 C85 
 
 Erasmus at Cambridge, 499 ; letter 
 from, to Erasmus, ib.; one of 
 Barnes' opponents, 577 
 
 'U 1'iidover, Roger of, testimony of, 
 to the successful preaching of the 
 Franciscans, 91 and n. 1 
 
 Wessel, John, rebels against the au- 
 thority of Aquinas, 409 
 
 West, Nicholas, fell, of King's, bp. 
 of Ely, remodels the statutes of 
 Jesus College, 321 and n. 5; does so 
 in professed conformity to the de- 
 sign of Alcock, 322 and n. 1; though 
 an eminent canonist forbids the 
 study of the canon law at Jesus 
 College, 322 ; ostentatious charac- 
 ter of, 583; attends Latimer's ser- 
 mon before the university, ib. ; 
 asks him to preach against Luther, 
 ib. ; inhibits him from preaching, 
 584 
 
 Westcott, canon, his estimate of Tyn- 
 dale's New Testament quoted, 597 
 
 Westminster Abbey, estates of the 
 lady Margaret professorship en- 
 trusted to the authorities of, 436 
 
 Whately, archbp., his recognition of 
 the need of a History of Logic, 
 174 
 
 "Whewell, Dr., his observation on 
 Koger Bacon combated by later 
 writers, 170, n. 1 
 
 White canons, the, their house op- 
 posite to Peterhouse, 139 
 
 White Horse Inn, the, 572 ; site of, 
 ib. n. 1 ; known as ' Germany,' 573 
 
 Whitford, Rich., fell, of Queens' Col- 
 lege, leave of absence granted to, 
 372, n. 2 
 
 Wilkinson, Tho., retires from the 
 presidency of Queens' College to 
 make way for Fisher, 446 
 
 Williams, George, Mr., his opinion 
 with respect to statutes of King's 
 College quoted, 306, n. 2 ; 307, n. 1 
 
 Wingfield, sir Rich., appointed high 
 steward in 1524, 584, n. 3 ; his 
 reasons for desiring the office, ib. 
 
 Wittenberg, arguments used at, 
 against the study of Greek, 538, 
 n. 1 
 
 Wolsey, cardinal, the reputed author 
 of the spoliation of St. John's Col- 
 lege,4(58 ; sympathies of, mainly with 
 Oxford, 469 ; an imitator of bp. Fox 
 in his innovations at Oxford, 521 ; 
 founds a chair of Greek at Oxford, 
 526 ; is solicited to accept the ofi!ce 
 of chancellor and declines, ib. ; 
 his name appears in the list of 
 
 benefactors of St. John's College, 
 ib. n. 5 ; his visit to Cambridge, 
 542 ; his character contrasted with 
 that of Fisher, 544 ; his relations 
 to Cambridge, 545 ; virtues ascribed 
 to, in Bullock's oration, 546 ; his 
 victims at the universities, 548; 
 is constituted sole reviser of the 
 statutes of the university of Oxford, 
 549; is investedwith similar powers 
 at Cambridge, ib. ; obtains the 
 king's licence to endow Cardinal 
 College, 551 ; invites scholars from 
 Cambridge to the new foundation, 
 552 ; his scholastic learning, ib. ; 
 pleads that he is not authorised to 
 burn Luther's early treatises, 570; 
 orders active search to be made 
 for Luther's works, 571 ; declines 
 to appoint a commission to en- 
 quire into the doings of the Cam- 
 bridge Reformers, 575 ; is attacked 
 f by Barnes, 576 ; summons Barnes 
 to London, 578; authorises Latimer 
 to preach in defiance of the bp. of 
 Ely, 584 
 
 Wood, Anthony, respecting the loss 
 of the most ancient charters of 
 Oxford, 81, n. 1; on the inter- 
 course between Paris and Oxford, 
 134 ; censured by Mr Anstey, 160, 
 n. 1 ; his explanation of the decline 
 of the ardour of the universities 
 in the 14th century, 208 ; his ob- 
 servation that nearly all the bishops 
 came from Oxford, 425 ; his retort 
 on Croke's assertion that Oxford 
 was colonia a Cantabrigia dediicta, 
 539 
 
 Woodlark, Robt., founder of St. Ca- 
 therine's Hall, 317 ; provost of 
 King's College, ib. ; his ability as 
 an administrator, 318 ; forbids the 
 study of the canon and civil law 
 at St. Catherine's, ib. ; no books 
 on these subjects in the library he 
 gave to the society, ib. n. 2 
 
 Woodville, Eliz. (queen of Edw. rv), 
 gives the statutes of Queens' Col- 
 lege, 316 
 
 Worcester, earl of, a disciple of Gua- 
 rino at Ferrara, 396 
 
 Wyclif, John, De Dominio Divino of, 
 opposed to papal claims founded 
 on the canon law, 36 ; how far a 
 follower of Occam, 261; his rela- 
 tions to the Mendicants, ib. ; his 
 efforts on behalf of the secular 
 clergy at Oxford, 264; leaves Ox- 
 ford, 265 ; his return, ib. ; his
 
 686 INDEX. 
 
 character, 267 ; period at which him to found New College, 302 ; in- 
 he assumed that of a reformer, fluence of his example, 363 
 Hi. n. 1 ; (?) the original of Chau- 
 cer's Parish Priest, ib. n. 2; not 
 
 originally hostile to the Mendi- Y 
 
 cants, 268 ; vehemence of his at- 
 tack upon them, 270 ; his doctrines Year, the, 1349, 241 ; 1516, prospects 
 opposed to the civil and canon law, of reform in, 558 
 
 272 ; his works prohibited, ib. York, school of, in the eighth cen- 
 
 Wykeham, Wm. of, motives that led tury, 9 
 
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